36 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



the race for wealth, for honors, for emoluments, there shall be 

 no drawbacks because fortune failed to smile on the infant brow 

 that was kissed for the first time by the air of this Western 

 World. 



In America, for the first time in the history of the world, 

 capital has failed to dictate the wages of labor. The laborer 

 has, for the first time, been able to meet the capitalist on a 

 common ground, and arrange his own terms and place his 

 own estimate on the value of his services. This recognized 

 right has given a dignity to labor, which has elevated the 

 laborer by making common to him the right to knowledge 

 and the uses of knowledge. Labor — American labor — has 

 thus made subservient to its uses the school, the academy, the 

 college and the university. It has commanded and received 

 protection from the legislative, the executive and the judicial 

 departments of the government. It has adorned not only these 

 departments of the government, but all the professions and the 

 industries which are developed by the cultivation and study of 

 the most intricate of the arts and sciences. The lumberman 

 of the Mississippi Valley and the honored Executive of the 

 nation have found embodiment in the same person. 



American labor, then, is educated labor ; is free, independent 

 labor; is cultivated labor. Thinks for itself; reasons for itself; 

 makes its own terms and fixes the value for its production. It 

 is well fed, well housed, well clothed ; it is a necessity to the 

 development of the moral, intellectual and physical man ; it is 

 a growth of civilization and Christianity. 



Compare for a single moment the condition of an English 

 laborer with that of an American laborer. Until very recently 

 the rate of wages paid an English laborer was two dollars a 

 week ; it is now about two dollars and a half. Out of this the 

 laborer must pay from one to two shillings for house rent, and 

 live in a hovel at that ; provide food, clothing and fuel for him- 

 self and his family ; not allowed to keep even a pig or a fowl, 

 for fear that he may steal food for them from his employer. 

 He works twelve hours a day, and frequently sixteen and seven- 

 teen, and is never paid for extra hours of work except by some 

 present or gift which is comparatively of trifling value. Says 

 a paper recently read before the British Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science : " The women earn seven or eightpence 



