1^ MR, CUSHING's address. 



mans, and of Ireland by the English, or from the introduetionof 

 laborers foreign or of another race, as in our Southern States 

 and the West Indies, — then, one of two things happens : Eith- 

 er the owners and laborers are legally independent of each oth- 

 er, and associated only by the contract of hire, in which case 

 pauperism is rife ; — or the two classes are mutually co-depen- 

 dent, in which case there is no pauperism, but, to compensate 

 for this^ the laborers are in the condition either of vassalage or 

 servitude. 



In all the known, or at least in all the existent, forms of po- 

 litical society, this is the terrible alternative, attending unequal 

 distribution of property, namely, either serfdom, or pauperism. 

 And the great question of the day in Europe is, whether thcra 

 be any middle term ; — whether it be possible so to reconstitute 

 society, that the rights of capital and labor may be reconciled, 

 and that, with the employer free to engage the employed or 

 not as he pleases, and the employed free to engage with the 

 employer or not as he pleases, still the employed shall at all 

 times have work at a price adequate for his subsistence. That 

 is a social problem not yet experimentally solved. 



S. In proportion as productive land is abundant, and easy of 

 acquisition by all the members of the community, will society 

 be sound on the main point, that is, the absence either of serf- 

 dom, or of pauperism, and of the criminal classes created by 

 the unequal distribution of limited national wealth. If, in that 

 profusion of productive land, there be nothing to check the 

 natural progress of population, or it be supplied by coloniza- 

 tion, then will there be a rapid growth of the country in pow- 

 er. If the land be all taken up, if it be deficient in quantity, 

 if manufacturing and commercial interests have overgrown the 

 agricultural, then is the condition of the country abnormal ; 

 and the continuance of its prosperity is dependent on circum- 

 stances foreign to itself, and beyond its control ; and tlie acci- 

 dents of political change may at any moment produce its de- 

 cline or downfall. 



In saying this, let me not be understood to speak in dispar- 

 agement of manufacture and commerce, those hand-maidons 

 of agriculture ; but only as attributing to each that which is, 



