VIII.

Address at Home on the Labor Question-Protection of American Labor-Republican Consideration of the Tariff-Pensions-Cleveland's Extraordinary Exercise of the Veto PowerSpeech on the Soldiers' Vote-Record in the Senate on the Labor Question-The Knights of Labor-Testimonial from the Knights of Labor-A Patriotic Response.

T Indianapolis he made the following speech, September 15, 1886: "I believe that a large majority of our people-not themselves wage-workers-sympathize with and will give their aid to every reform calculated to make the burdens of labor lighter and its rewards more adequate. These, added to the vast army of wage-workers, can and will bring on in orderly procession those well-digested reforms which experience and study have suggested, and will yet suggest. A contented and thrifty working class is the surest evidence of national health and the best pledge of public security. The men who fought the war for the Union were its working people. It was true of the army as of the kingdom of heaven-not many rich. The reforms suggested have relation, first, to the health and comfort of the workman. I believe the law should vigorously, and under severe penalties, compel all employers of labor to reduce the risk to health and limb to the lowest practicable limit. Overcrowding, il ventilation, unhealthful surroundings, should be made unlawful and unprofitable. The life of man or woman should not be woven into a fabric. Every appliance for safety should be exacted. . I believe that the wages of the laborer should be given such preference as will secure him against loss. As long ago as 1878, in a public speech, I said upon this subject: If any railroad or other business enterprise cannot earn enough to pay the labor that operates it and the interest on its bonds, no right-minded man can hesitate to say which ought to be paid first. The men who have invested money in the enterprise or loaned money on its securities ought to have the right to stop the business when net earnings

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fail, but they cannot fairly appropriate the earnings of the engineer, or brakeman or laborer.'

"I believe the law should require the prompt payment of wages in money. I believe that the number of working hours can, in most of our industries, be reduced without a serious loss to production, and with great gain to the health, comfort and contentment of our working classes. I advocated and voted for the law of Congress prohibiting the importation of laborers under contracts made abroad, and believe that such legislation is just and wise. But I cannot extend

this discussion further. The recent State platform of our party, in its declarations on this subject, meets my entire approval. The labor reform needs only to trust to reason and fair argument to secure success. Its two worst enemies are anarchy and the demagogue. If it escapes these it will succeed. The masses of our people are disposed to be kind, just and liberal-hospitable to reason and reform. But the majority in favor of law and public order is overwhelming. Nothing can succeed upon the line of lawlessness. It is the most hopeful sign that attends this great movement that the great body of its promoters have

not failed to see this truth, and have united with their fellow citizens in denouncing the fierce and destructive doctrines of the anarchist and his bloody work.

"The Republican party, on the other hand, holds to the doctrine that in fixing tariff rates the effect of the rate proposed upon American industries and upon the wages of American workmen should be carefully and kindly considered. We do not think that the shutting up of shops or the extinguishment of industries is a pleasant work. We have not reached the plane of that cold philosophy which refuses to recognize a closer relationship and a higher duty to the American workman and his family than to the English. The foundations of our national security, and life are not of stone-the good will and good conscience of our voting population support the stately fabric. Contentment is a condition of good will, and has an important relation to a good conscience. Good wages promote contentment. The cry of the Free Trader is for a cheaper coat, an English coat, and he does not seem to care that this involves a cheapening of the men and women who spin, and weave, and cut, and stitch. He may even deny this. But let one of these gentlemen whose lives have been so favored that they have never had any personal contact with business' go into any great manufacturing establishment and tell the grimy workmen that the product of their work is to be reduced 25 per cent in the market. He will see that the men who have had a very rough personal contact with business' at once understand that the hope of better wages is gone, and that lower wages are imminent. It is no answer to say that the manufacturer ought to stand the reduction himself. Perhaps in some cases he ought. In other cases he could not without producing his goods at a loss. I may admit that selfishness is the genius that presides in the mill office, but even this evil genius can be made to serve the workman when the product of the mill is in demand at good prices. 1 do not say that our American workman gets all the benefit he ought to enjoy from a protective tariff, but I do believe that his condition and that of his family is vastly better than it would be under a free-trade free-trade or tariff-for-revenue-only policy. It is noticeable that even the McDonald school of Democrats take great comfort in what they call the incidental protection,' which a tariff for revenue will afford to our industries and to our workmen. They admit the benefit of protection, but insist that it must be an accident. As I said once before, we, on the other hand, prefer that the good shall be designed and so intelligent. "Mr. Cleveland has one great eminence-I will not say fame-by his extraordinary exercise of the veto power. He has vetoed more bills than all

of his predecessors, from Washington down. I must defer to another time a discussion of this feature of his administration. But as we have been challenged to examine his vetoes of private pension bills I will refer to one.

"Sally Ann Bradley was the widow of Thomas J. Bradley, who served as a private in Company B, 24th Regiment Ohio Volunteers, from June 13, 1861, to October 9, 1865. He was pensioned on account of a shell wound in the back, received at Murfreesboro, Tenn., January 2, 1862, and died October 21, 1882. The commissioner of pensions decided that his death was not entirely attributable to his military service, and that his widow could not secure a pension under existing law. She was seventy years of age, as helpless as an infant, without means of support, or friends able to assist her. Four of her sons followed their father to the war. Two of them were killed upon the battle-field, and the other two returned, one with the loss of an eye, the other of an arm. The bill gave her a widow's pension, $12 a month. In his veto of this bill Mr. Cleveland said: 'No cause is given of the soldier's death, but it is not claimed that it resulted from his military service, her pension being asked for entirely because of her needs and the faithful service of her husband and sons. This presents the question whether a gift, in such cases, is a proper disposition of money appropriated for the purpose of paying pensions. The passage of this law would, in my opinion, establish a precedent so far-reaching, and open the door to such a vast multitude of claims not on principle within our present pension laws, that I am constrained to disapprove the bill under consideration.'

"Does this case need any comment? Would the question have been raised in any other mind, whether what the President is pleased to call a gift was proper in such a case? A gift of $12 a month, and in exchange for what? What gift has she made to her country? Two sons that she had nourished at her breast lying in unknown graves upon distant battle-fields. Two more,

her only ones, came back from the war maimed in limb and crippled in their ability to maintain the mother who bore them. A husband upon whom she had leaned for support returned to her no longer the stalwart helper and defender he had been and is called before her to the grave. She is alone. Cannot a great, rich government like ours take care of this patriotic woman? Must she go to the poor-house or die of want? May not a nation do out of its great resources what an individual, not lost to a sense of justice, would do

under like circumstances?

"Our President seems to think that only a policeman's club or a fire engine stands related to the public safety and the substantial welfare of the people. Those finer spiritual influences, patriotism, courage, heroism, he would probably call sentimental and not substantial.

"Patriotism saved this country from a revolt that the policeman's club could not quell-it extinguished in blood a flame that water could not quench -and the nation can afford to honor it, and relieve the burdens it brought upon its heroes and their families."

Senator Harrison spoke as follows at Indianapolis, in October, 1886: "Fellow citizens: There are some things connected with this administration of special interest to soldiers, and I will ask their attention while I state them. I know the power of the soldier vote is diminishing; the column is moving on, and from its head the aged and infirm are dropping into the grave. I know there are not so many Union soldiers to vote now as there were in 1865, and yet, my comrades, there is still a large body of the surviving veterans of that war, and if they are as faithful to themselves as they were to the country, they have the power to rebuke those who now show a disposition to forget the liberal promises with which they sent the boys to the field in 1861. Some of you went out Democrats and came back Democrats. But politics cannot break the bond of comradeship. I honor you as I honor any other soldier. I give you increased honor, because in many cases you went to the war in spite of the beguilements of those to whom you had been accustomed to look for political advise. What liberal promises were made, my comrades, in 1861 and 1862! Ah! when the stress of war was on, when the old ship was in the storm, how profuse were the promises made to the boys! Shall they be forgotten now? Shall our people in these times, when increasing years and infirmities are bringing to many of the old soldiers needs they never felt before, forget them? I pledge myself, and I am sure I can pledge the Republican party, to be faithful, generous and liberal to the soldiers that survive, to care for them and to honor them until the last veteran sleeps his last sleep. . . But I now come to consider the President's attitude toward the soldier. President Cleveland will be known as the great veto President. All of our President's prior to President Cleveland vetoed altogether 110 bills passed by Congress, and President Cleveland vetoed in eight months' session of the last Congress 114. He is four ahead of all his predecessors!"

In 1886 in his seat in the Senate Harrison's record, notably in regard to the