1882.], . HOME MANUFACTURES. 205 



always to give power to the worst. Honesty and patriotism are 

 weighted, and unscrupulousness commands success. The best gravitate 

 to the bottom, the worst float to the top, and the vile will only be 

 ousted by the viler. While as national character must gradually assimi- 

 late to the qualities that win power, and consequently respect, that 

 demoralization of opinion goes on which in the long panorama of his- 

 toiy we may see over and over again transmuting races of freemen 

 into races of slaves. 



As in England in the last century, when Parliament was but a close 

 corporation of the aristocracy, a corrupt oligarchy clearly fenced off 

 from the masses may exist without much effect on national character, 

 because in that case power is associated in the popular mind with other 

 things than corrujjtion. But where there are no hereditary distinctions, 

 and men are habitually seen to raise themselves by corrupt qualities 

 from the lowest places to wealth and power, tolerance of these qualities 

 finally becomes admiration. A corrupt democratic government must 

 finally corrujit the people, and when the people become corrupt there is 

 no resurrection. The life is gone, only the carcass remains ; and it is 

 left for the ploughshares of fate to bury it out of sight. 



In view of these remote possibilities, for this country, — sparsely 

 peopled as it is — we should think Mr. Henry George, the author, 

 would allow there still might be good chances in honorable citizen- 

 ship for land-owners and home manufacturers. I trust that his 

 " Progress and Poverty " paid him well, and that he has invested 

 the proceeds in a bit of land that pleases him. 



My friends here must not run away with the idea that I am 

 pitching into manufactures, when I am only trying to discriminate 

 among them. Every class has members which it cannot control 

 without outside help. Manufacturers vary as farmers do, just as 

 you light o' chaps. Farmers selling wood in cities are met by offi- 

 cial measurers. Yet T have seen a farmer with such a reputation 

 for integrity, that his loads of wood were never measured by any 

 one but himself, and he had no trouble in selling a great deal of 

 wood, as fast as he chose to haul it to market. Not long ago, a 

 villager of my section complained to me of the " pig " pork he had 

 engaged to be delivered to him having the teats shaved off. I 

 had to explain, that the fellov/ who sold him the pork was a 

 recent graduate of a mill, not a farmer who had been tested as 

 such and was satisfied with his life, but one who already wanted 

 to sell his place. 



The manufacturer in the beginning grew up from a farm, and 

 the stricter and more thorough was his rural education the better 



