STATE OKANGE OF ILLINOIS. 97 



conform to tlie general laws of the State. As the number of slaves and 

 the cunceutration of property increased, the work of private citizens 

 came to be chiefly performed bv mechanics of that class, and the Trades- 

 unions depended more and more on the employment furnished them by 

 the novernment in the execution of its enormous public works, such as 

 temples and other public buildings, aqueducts, and those admirable 

 roads, bridges, ('transportation routes') and other works which not only 

 in Italy and the East, but throughout Spain, Gaul, Germany, England 

 and the north of Africa, remained as indestructible monuments of Ronutn 

 Cicilization. The Trades-unions were thus drawn into closer relations 

 with the State, were subjected more and more to its regulations, and 

 finally became its regular functionaries — not merely executing' its works, 

 but collecting a portion of its 'revenues.' " 



" It was by the aid of the Trades-unions that the government organiztd its 

 administration sendee. There were Trades-unions charged with the collection 

 of revenues, others supplied Home with provisions, others took care of tfie edi- 

 fices, others clothed the soldiers, others armed the?n, others supplied the interior 

 and domestic wants of a city full of riches and devoted to all kinds of 

 pleasures. Rome in its palmy days. 



" The Trades-unions tlien were the framework of bone tlmt supported the 

 great liom/m body, tlie same as the farmers and Patrons of Husbandry are 

 the bone and muscle of tlie United States." 



" The Roman Trades-unions were of two sorts, the Commercial and Indus- 

 trial, and bore the name of Corporations. The principal Commercial 

 Corporations of the Empire were: the sailors' union, the bakers' union, 

 butchers', limeburners', weavers' and tailors' unions, the shell-fish gath- 

 erers', silk-dyers,' carriers', wine-merchants', and lumbermen's unions,' and 

 many others, including a respectable corps of sworn measurers of grain 

 at the warehouses of the port of Olisa, the great entrepot of Rome." 



"The interior organization of the Roman Trades-unions was ver}- sim- 

 ple. Those of the same trade were divided into groups in the ditfercnt 

 provinces and cities. A law of llonorius and Theodosius fixes the max- 

 imum of each of these local unions at five hundred and sixty -three mem- 

 bers. Each of these unions elected, annually, ofiicers who bore the name 

 of Patrons.' " 



A wonderful coincidence, your Order possesses in the Patrons of 

 Husbandry, and your relations to our government of this nineteenth cen- 

 tury, to its revenues, to its existence, to its prosperity, to its transportation 

 routes (and their management), in fact, to everything pertaining to the 

 individual prosperity of one and all in our glorious country, is of far 

 greater importance to-day, on this the evening (as it were) of our first 

 hundred years of existence, than it ever was before in the history of the 

 world. 



In our land must be worked out the great first principle in humanity, 

 ©f "justice to all." That nation is doomed which seeks the prosperity of 

 the /*«» individuals, the isolated corporations, hy the cru&hing out of the 



