Another specimen of this bushwhacking, that “shoe strike.”  Now be it understood that I do not pretend to know all about the matter.  I am merely going to speculate a little about some of its phases.  And at the outset, I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to, where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not tied down and obliged to labor whether you pay them or not!  I like the system which lets a man quit when he wants to, and wish it might prevail everywhere.  One of the reasons why I am opposed to slavery is just here.  What is the true condition of the laborer?  I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can.  Some will get wealthy.  I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.  So, while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.  When one starts poor, as most do in the race of life, free society is such that he knows he can better his condition; he knows that there is no fixed condition of labor for his whole life.  I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer, mauling rails, at work on a flatboat—­just what might happen to any poor man’s son!  I want every man to have a chance—­and I believe a Black man is entitled to it—­in which he can better his condition; when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him!  That is the system.  Up here in New England, you have a soil that scarcely sprouts black-eyed beans, and yet where will you find wealthy men so wealthy, and poverty so rarely in extremity?  There is not another such place on earth!  I desire that if you get too thick here, and find it hard to better your condition on this soil, you may have a chance to strike and go somewhere else, where you may not be degraded, nor have your families corrupted, by forced rivalry with negro slaves.  I want you to have a clean bed and no snakes in it!  Then you can better your condition, and so it may go on and on in one endless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!

Now, to come back to this shoe strike,—­if, as the senator from Illinois asserts, this is caused by withdrawal of Southern votes, consider briefly how you will meet the difficulty.  You have done nothing, and have protested that you have done nothing, to injure the South.  And yet, to get back the shoe trade, you must leave off doing something which you are now doing.  What is it?  You must stop thinking slavery wrong!  Let your institutions be wholly changed; let your State constitutions be subverted; glorify slavery, and so you will get back the shoe trade—­for what?  You have brought owned labor with it, to compete with your own labor, to underwork you, and to degrade you!  Are you ready to get back the trade on those terms?