STATE CONVENTION—LABOR. 
259 
many of the essential comforts of life. He builds our cities and 
villages, and constructs our churches and school houses. He 
erects the pleasant cottage and the elegant mansion. He manu¬ 
factures your reapers, and the other implements of husbandry are 
the labor of his hands. If the Niagara is to be spanned, or the 
Alps are to be tunneled, who but the mechanic is summoned to 
accomplish it. 
Our plow shares and pruning hooks for peace, and our imple¬ 
ments of war are all the result of his labor and skill. He builds 
our steam vessels, our steam printing presses, our locomotives, our 
railroads, our ships, our telegraphs, and our mills and manufac¬ 
tories. I know it is the habit of some persons to undervalue and 
look with indifference upon the laboring man, the farmer and the 
mechanic, but in my judgment if there is one class of persons- 
more than another that tends to develop our resources and add 
wealth and competence to the couutry, it is the laboring people. 
And will the ladies allow me to remind them how great obliga¬ 
tions they are under to the laboring mechanic. If you want a 
sewing or knitting machine to relieve your constant wearying toil,, 
you apply to the mechanic. Do you want a “ love of a bonnet )T 
or a tiny slipper, you go to the mechanic. Do you want a carriage 
for your comfort and pleasure, who but the laboring mechanic is 
to build it. Do you want to send messages of love or mercy on 
the wings of the lightning, the mechanic has supplied you with 
the means. 
Let labor, then, be more and more regarded as honorable, 
because indispensable, whether in the field or the workshop, 
engaged in commerce or in the schoolroom, and let the rights of 
honest toil be protected and fostered, and let capital be com¬ 
pelled to divide fairly with the peaceful pursuits of industry, and 
let our country’s history be not the plunder of the many by the 
few, but apply fair and even principles to labor and commerce, 
and let our motto be honor to every man and every business, or 
craft in proportion to merit, and our country’s greatness will be 
the sure and happy result. 
In conclusion let us not be understood as asserting or promul¬ 
gating the idea that the highest object of government is to simply 
promote material good; civilization has or ought to have, higher 
