State Agricultural Society. 87 



tributary to them? If it is confessed that there is a general aim of 

 workmen to do the least work for the most money, the reason is given 

 why enterprise languishes and capital is dormant or removed from the 

 State. Adopt this principle and Chicago will do our casting, New York 

 build our ships, and repair them where possible, the East supply our 

 manufactures, and the world combine against our prosperity. It is 

 oatural that there should be the same unwillingness on the part of labor 

 to adapt itself to the new order of things as that which distinguishes 

 employers. It is the necessary outgrowth of our isolated and prosper- 

 ous past. There is need for all classes to recognize the inevitable, and 

 bring alike their expenditures and their expectations down to the present 

 capacity of the State. Outside pressure and home distress will force 

 us to this in spite of ourselves if we do not divert the necessity; while 

 there is an alternative of a better and more durable prosperity if we 

 heed the obvious lessons of the present. 



Many have seen a solution of the labor question in the employment of 

 Chinese, who furnish a fair article of labor, skilled and unskilled, at 

 which white men cannot subsist. This may be a temporary relief to 

 capital, and may forward enterprises that else would halt indefinitely. 

 But I am not able to concur in the opinion that the immigration in large 

 numbers of this people is desirable. A slower growth of a community, 

 with the elements in it only of Christian civilization, seems to me far 

 preferable to rapid development by an alien, heathen population. Would 

 not twenty-five stalwart German or Scandinavian emigrants, with their 

 families, be better for the real interests of the- State than the whole 

 Chinese population of I street? If the object of society is merely to 

 accumulate wealth in the hands of an upper class, and have the laborer 

 the mudsill — if American civilization and republican institutions could 

 coexist with such a theory and practice — then it might be well to crowd 

 every avenue of labor with Asiatics, and rejoice in the cultivation of the 

 last inch of soil, the working of the deepest mine, the guidance of every 

 wheel of industry by the adroit Chinese to the exclusion of white labor. 

 But while white laborers need employment, as they always will, while 

 their families must live and their children be educated, while Europe 

 otters to us every year hundreds of thousands of emigrants of cognate 

 languages, religion, civilization, and hopes, it may be well to husband 

 our undeveloped resources for the profitable employment of the future 

 rather than exhaust them beyond the needs of the present. The census 

 now being taken will show some remarkable facts in the movements of 

 populations. The crowded Atlantic States have sent out their enter- 

 prising young men and women to the West in great numbers, while 

 Europe has furnished its best populations to create new homes there. The 

 national development during the past ten years has been enormous. Here, 

 we have been stationary, our population probably diminishing, unless the 

 decrease has been supplied by Chinese importations. Not so the West. 

 A population easily resolving itself into the mass of American society, 

 readily acquiring our language, honoring our institutions, worshiping 

 our God, unexcelled in industry and skill, has spread like a flood over 

 the broad Western prairies, fertilizing like the swellings of the sacred 

 river. Cities have sprung up all over the land, tied together in every 

 direction by lines of busy railways. There has been haste of develop- 

 ment it is true. The stumps of the original forest are seen in the streets; 

 the prairie mud is innocent of macadam. But there is life, and labor, 

 and sure advancement, and contentment. There is the life and beauty 

 of Christian civilization. The school house and the church nestle 



