important, and to my mind, the pleasantest part of that partnership business.  He was watching the ladies as they went by; and where is the man that wouldn’t get rich at that business?  But when John Jacob Astor saw a lady pass, with her shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was out of sight he knew the shape of the frame and the color of the trimmings, the curl of the—­something on a bonnet Sometimes I try to describe a woman’s bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be out of style to-morrow night.  So John Jacob Astor went to the store and said:  “Now, put in the show window just such a bonnet as I describe to you because,” said he, “I have just seen a lady who likes just such a bonnet.  Do not make up any more till I come back.”  And he went out again and sat on that bench in the park, and another lady of a different form and complexion passed him with a bonnet of different shape and color, of course.  “Now,” said he, “put such a bonnet as that in the show window.”  He didn’t fill his show window with hats and bonnets which drive people away and then sit in the back of the store and bawl because the people go somewhere else to trade.  He didn’t put a hat or bonnet in that show window the like of which he had not seen before it was made up.

In our city especially there are great opportunities for manufacturing, and the time has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the stockholders of the factory and their employes.  Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this country and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over their heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the aristocratic money-owner himself is so far above that he will never descend to their assistance.  That is the thought that is in the minds of our people.  But, friends, never in the history of our country was there an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now and in the city of Philadelphia.  The very fact that they get discouraged is what prevents them from getting rich.  That is all there is to it.  The road is open, and let us keep it open between the poor and the rich.  I know that the labor unions have two great problems to contend with, and there is only one way to solve them.  The labor unions are doing as much to prevent its solving as are the capitalists to-day, and there are positively two sides to it.  The labor union has two difficulties; the first one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile that cannot earn fifty cents a day.  That is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things for the working man.  He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or higher work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to get every