GREENBACKS AND BONDS. 557 



the other piece had to be subjected to the same process 

 of absorption. This continued until the monkey had eaten 

 the whole. Equal rights was his pretext. The bonds were 

 funded at a lower rate of interest ostensibly in the interest 

 of the people. Now we are compelled to pay a premium 

 to the extent of five or six times the amount of the interest 

 saved. Do you see the point? A pup gets its eyes open 

 in nine days; the people ought to get theirs open in nine 

 years. O the bondholder is a patriotic citizen! He loves 

 the dear people so well! But some of our Democratic pol- 

 iticians will say : u O that was the 'dog-goned ' Republicans 

 who did this." Were there 207 Republicans in the forty- 

 sixth Congress? Were there only eighty-five Democrats? 

 Was Fernando Wood, of New York, who introduced the 

 bill to fund the debt, a Republican. 



It was the members of both old parties who passed 

 the law. These men are opposed to the organization of 

 labor. They are opposed to the laboring classes uniting. 

 Laboring men ! You, who have toiled from early morn to 

 dusky eve; who have felt the burning rays of the hot 

 mid-summer's sun while you have worked in the cotton 

 fields; who have gazed with tender sympathy on the pale 

 and care-worn face of your faithful wives who toiled on by 

 your side; who have looked upon your children half-clad, 

 and less than half-educated, who were also compelled to 

 work at an age when their young minds should be in 

 training to prepare them to go out into the world to do 

 battle for themselves; you, who have witnessed the 

 financial wreck of thousands; the ruin of homes; the 

 agony of despair; the increase of crime and the ever-grow- 

 ing poverty of your fellow-man; you, I say, who have 

 witnessed all these things, while blindly following a party 

 belonging body and soul to the moneyed aristocracy of the 

 East, on which side are you enlisted in this great battle 

 for human rights? 



