AMERICAN LABOR AND ITS POSITION. 33 



AMERICAN LABOR AND ITS POSITION. 



From an Address before the Worcester North Agricultural Society, at Fitchburg. 



BY DANIEL NEEDHAM. 



'■ We, as Americans, have nationalized labor. From the prod- 

 uct of the centuries we have created a system differing widely 

 from all previous systems of labor, and which seems to me with 

 great significance can be denominated the American system, — 

 original with us, finding neither its counterpart or resemblance 

 in any system heretofore in operation either in the Mother 

 Country or in the older nations of the East, — a system which 

 has given a dignity and character to labor ; which has not only 

 rolibed it of its ugly features so repellant in the history of the 

 past, but given to it a charm and a power making it both desir- 

 able and attractive. 



When the fathers landed and colonized Plymouth, and es- 

 tablished on these far-off western shores a new home, they 

 established also a new civilization. They broke off not only 

 from the conventionalisms of European and Eastern govern- 

 ments, but from the established usages of organized society. 

 In fact they became new men, — a new race of men, — differing 

 widely in opinion, in habit of life, in thought, motive and action 

 from all who had preceded them. They had new ideas of life — 

 social and domestic life, as well as government. They saw in 

 man a different being from what had been seen or recognized 

 in the Old World. They saw man as God made him — above 

 the fowls of the air, the fish of the seas, the beasts of the field 

 and the products of the earth ; for God had given him dominion 

 over all these, and they endeavored to establish a government 

 which would recognize their inalienable rights which had so 

 long been denied to the majority of men. Therefore, while 

 still on board the little vessel which had safely borne them 

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