6 



harder climbing to the Presidential chair than the son of the 

 President himself. But there are no poor classes among us, 

 and therefore, really, no cases of individual poverty. The 

 man whom we call poor is able to educate his children, and 

 there is open before them any position for which they may 

 be fitted, with surrounding agencies assisting them towards 

 it, rather than repelling them from it. The resources, that 

 is, of the community in which he lives, are largely at his 

 disposal, and he is not^ therefore, poor. 



A variety of causes have contributed to bring al)Out, and are 

 operating still to maintain, this state of hopefulness and thrift 

 and measurable equality. The opening newly before us of a 

 wide land has had its share. Favoring providences from the 

 past have assisted. Our planting was of a stock distinguished 

 and notably, at that time, for vigor and endurance, for strong 

 personal independency, conjoined with a public spirit resolute 

 and tenacious. Our civil institutions took a form in which 

 these qualities found expression and exercise, and through 

 which they have continued reproduction. Our social ideas and 

 customs were drawn into a corresponding order, from which 

 they have not, as yet, greatly removed. And all this has been 

 done beneath the fashioning power of a religion set by all its 

 precepts, and far more thoroughly and irremovably in all its 

 fundamental truths and facts, for the recognition of brother- 

 hood and the ordaining of justice and love among men. 



The developing causes have been various, but the fact itself, 

 near at hand, is this : that the great leading class of working 

 men, by whom the soil is tilled, have never been and are not 

 poor. They own the land. They live by it. They have 

 resources. They keep their place with dignity and power in 

 that general society which they largely constitute. They hold 

 a due control over the institutions and tlie government which 

 their fathers formed, and which in principle or in administra- 

 tion they themselves, and none without them, are al)le to 

 change. 



Labor in other departments has had its share ; but this 

 agricultural interest is great and fixed beyond any other. The 



