I 
14S Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
These discoveries of a great thinker absolutely revolutionized 
the whole trade and commerce of the world, diminished the 
causes and of course the chances of war between nations, and 
thus increased the happiness of mankind. But how much greater 
good would flow from the discovery of some principle by which 
labor would receive its just reward and have its due influence in 
the affairs of men! The great principle discovered, illustrated 
and enforced by Adam Smith, applied to and affected nations di¬ 
rectly, and individuals as an incident. If this rule can be 
reversed, and some plan hit upon which will affect individuals 
directly, and the whole people incidentally, I will not say that the 
millennium will have come, but peace, prosperity and good will 
surely prevail on earth to an extent never yet realized. 
1 
ANTAGONISM OF CAPITAL AND LABOR. 
Capital and labor ought not to be antagonistic, but somehow 
they are so ; and they have been so among all commercial and 
civilized peoples so far back as we have any intelligent account 
of time, and, so long as commerce and trade are carried on under 
the present system I do not see how it can possibly be otherwise. 
It is true that many causes of the difference of prosperity be¬ 
tween persons are directly connected with the individual man, and 
are plainly to be accounted for from the difference in inclination, 
habit, disposition and temperament. Thus we can easily see why 
one man is more thrifty and prosperous than another. But why 
whole classes of people should fall under this rule is not so easy 
to discover ; and certainly it cannot be attributed to the cause j ust 
assigned. When we reflect that all wealth is the product of 
labor, and that the great mass of mankind must labor, it must be 
a matter of surprise that capital so seldom aggregates in their 
hands, and it is equally a matter of surpise that it is mainly found 
in the possession, and under the control of the comparative few. 
It is a strange spectacle, that the few are and have been enabled 
at all times to control absolutely, when they would, both the capi¬ 
tal and labor of every people, while the many who produce the 
wealth are toiling on, year by year, in humble circumstances and 
in comparative poverty. That this is so will be apparent to all, 
when you reflect that whenever the country is depressed by a 
