for support to the same class of voters which gave
to Republican principles their first triumphs,—the
intelligent mechanics and artisans, the laboring men.
However many or few of the deserters of 1884 may re-join
the standard now that Mr. Blaine is defeated it is
not likely that for many years to come, if ever, the
Republican party in Massachusetts will be able, to
lean upon the immense majorities of former years,
that ran away up to sixty, seventy, and eighty thousand.
With a Democratic administration installed at Washington,
and the power and prestige which that fact will imply
and apply in the local politics of the States,—and
in no State more powerfully than in Massachusetts,
where the shifting body of Independent voters, so-called,
is largely made up of the Hessian element that will
incline to whichever side has spoils to bestow,—the
Republican party in order to hold Massachusetts will
have to cultivate and strengthen the alliance which
it formed in the late election with the laboring class
of voters. It will have to revert to the sympathetic
and liberal policy touching all questions that affect
labor, and the welfare of the working people of the
State, which marked the earlier years of its power.
The Ames family is linked in the popular mind with
that policy. And justly so, too! Oakes Ames
was a true friend to labor, as well as one of the
most practical; and the fine instinct which guided
him in making of North Easton a model industrial community,
where the happiest relations of mutual confidence
and support have subsisted between employer and employed,
he bequeathed to his sons, and to Oliver in an especial
and marked degree. It has been said, and there
is no element of exaggeration in the statement, that
if all our large capitalists and manufacturers could
succeed in establishing the same rapport between themselves
and their employes which the Ameses have always maintained
at North Easton, the vexed problem of capital and
labor would be solved; for there would be no more
conflict between them. Oliver Ames is held in
the same high esteem and almost affectionate regard
by the working people of the Old Colony district,
where the interests of the Ames Manufacturing Company
are centred, in which his honored father was held before
him. As the father so the sons! When the
time comes, and it is not far off, that the Republican
party in Massachusetts shall feel the necessity of
getting nearer to her common people, and, in order
to retain its supremacy in the State, of offering
to their suffrages a man whose whole life has been
spent in close and friendly relations with her working-men,
it will be strangely blind indeed, to its opportunity,
if it shall not turn to the present popular Lieutenant
Governor, and present the name of Oliver Ames as one
well fitted to lead the revival of Republicanism among
the working-classes, and certain, if presented to
them, to be endorsed by a splendid majority for the
first office in the popular gift.