MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—For the first time in my life I
address an audience in the open air. And as I stand here in this
beautiful morning, so shot through and through with sunshine that the
very air is as molten gold to the touch—under these trees in whose
trunks the rains and suns of years are compacted, and on whose leaves
God has laid His whispering music—here in His majestic temple, with the
brightness of His smile breaking all about us—standing above the soil
instinct with the touch of His life-giving hand, and full of His promise
and His miracle—and looking up to the clouds through which His thunders
roll, and His lightnings cut their way, and beyond that to the dazzling
glory of the sun, and yet beyond to the unspeakable splendor of the
universe, flashing and paling until the separate stars are but as mist
in the skies—even to the uplifted jasper gates through which His
everlasting glory streams, my mind falls back abashed, and I realize how
paltry is human speech, and how idle are the thoughts of men!
Another thought oppresses me. In front of me sit several thousand
people. Over there, in smelling distance, where we can almost hear the
lisping of the mop as it caresses the barbecued lamb or the pottering of
the skewered pig as he leisurely turns from fat to crackling, is being
prepared a dinner that I verily believe covers more provisions than were
issued to all the soldiers of Lee’s army, God bless them, in their last
campaign. And I shudder when I think that I, a single, unarmed,
defenseless man, is all that stands between this crowd and that dinner.
Here then, awed by God’s majesty, and menaced by man’s appetite, I am
tempted to leave this platform and yield to the boyish impulses that
always stir in my heart amid such scenes, and revert to the days of
boyhood when about the hills of Athens I chased the pacing coon, or
twisted the unwary rabbit, or shot my ramrod at all manner of birds and
beasts—and at night went home to look up into a pair of gentle eyes and
take on my tired face the benediction of a mother’s kiss and feel on my
weary head a pair of loving hands, now wrinkled and trembling, but,
blessed be God, fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal women, and
stronger yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man, as they laid a
mother’s blessing there, while bending at her knees I made my best
confession of faith and worshiped at the truest altar I have yet found
in this world. I had rather go out and lay down on the ground and hug
the grass to my breast and mind me of the time when I builded boyish
ambitions on the wooded hills of Athens, than do aught else to-day. But
I recall the story of Uncle Remus, who when his favorite hero, Brer
Rabbit, was sorely pressed by that arch villain, Brer Fox, said:
“An’ Brer Rabbit den he climb’d a tree.” “But,” said the little boy,
“Uncle Remus, a rabbit can’t climb a tree.”
“Doan you min’ dat, honey. Brer Fox pressed dis rabbit so hard he des
bleeged to clim’ a tree.”
I am pressed so hard to-day by your commands that I am just “bleeged” to
make a speech, and so I proceed. I heartily invoke God’s guidance in
what I say, that I shall utter no word to soil this temple of His, and
no sentiment not approved in His wisdom; and as for you, when the time
comes—as it will come—when you prefer barbecued shote to raw orator, and
feel that you can be happier at that table than in this forum, just say
the word and I will be with you heart and soul!
I am tempted to yield to the gaiety of this scene, to the flaunting
banners of the trees, the downpouring sunshine, the garnered plenty over
there, this smiling and hospitable crowd, and, throwing serious affairs
aside, to speak to you to-day as the bird sings—without care and without
thought. I should be false to myself and to you if I did, for there are
serious problems that beset our State and our country that no man,
facing, as I do this morning, a great and intelligent audience, can in
honor or in courage disregard. I shall attempt to make no brilliant
speech—but to counsel with you in plain and simple words, beseeching
your attention and your sympathy as to the dangers of the present hour,
and our duties and our responsibilities.
At Saturday noon in any part of this county you may note the farmer
going from his field, eating his dinner thoughtfully and then saddling
his plow-horse, or starting afoot and making his way to a neighboring
church or schoolhouse. There he finds from every farm, through every
foot-path, his neighbors gathering to meet him. What is the object of
this meeting? It is not social, it is not frolic, it is not a
pic-nic—the earnest, thoughtful faces, the serious debate and council,
the closed doors and the secret session forbid this assumption. It is a
meeting of men who feel that in spite of themselves their affairs are
going wrong—of free and equal citizens who feel that they carry unequal
burdens—of toilers who feel that they reap not the just fruits of their
toil—of men who feel that their labor enriches others while it leaves
them poor, and that the sweat of their bodies, shed freely under God’s
command, goes to clothe the idle and the avaricious in purple and fine
linen. This is a meeting of protest, of resistance. Here the farmer
meets to demand, and organize that he may enforce his demand, that he
shall stand equal with every other class of citizens—that laws
discriminating against him shall be repealed—that the methods oppressing
him shall be modified or abolished—and that he shall be guaranteed that
neither government nor society shall abridge, by statute or custom, his
just and honest proportion of the wealth he created, but that he shall
be permitted to garner in his barns, and enjoy by his hearthstone, the
full and fair fruits of his labor. If this movement were confined to
Elbert, if this disturbing feeling of discontent were shut in the limits
of your county lines, it would still demand the attention of the
thoughtful and patriotic. But, as it is in Elbert, so it is in every
county in Georgia—as in Georgia, so it is in every State in the South—as
in the South, so in every agricultural State in the Union. In every
rural neighborhood, from Ohio to Texas, from Michigan to Georgia, the
farmers, riding thoughtful through field and meadow, seek ten thousand
schoolhouses or churches—the muster grounds of this new army—and there,
recounting their wrongs and renewing their pledges, send up from
neighborhoods to county, from county to State, and State to Republic,
the measure of their strength and the unyielding quality of their
determination. The agricultural army of the Republic is in motion. The
rallying drumbeat has rolled over field and meadow, and from where the
wheat locks the sunshine in its bearded sheaf, and the clover carpets
the earth, and the cotton whitens beneath the stars, and the tobacco
catches the quick aroma of the rains—everywhere that patient man stands
above the soil, or bends about the furrow, the farmers are ready in
squads and companies and battalions and legions to be led against what
they hold to be an oppression that honest men would not deserve, and
that brave men would not endure. Let us not fail to comprehend the
magnitude and the meaning of this movement. It is no trifling cause that
brings the farmers into such determined and widespread organization as
this. It is not the skillful arts of the demagogue that has brought
nearly two million farmers into this perfect and pledge-bound
society—but it is a deep and abiding conviction that, in political and
commercial economy of the day, he is put at a disadvantage that keeps
him poor while other classes grow rich, and that bars his way to
prosperity and independence. General Toombs once said that the farmer,
considered the most conservative type of citizenship, is really the most
revolutionary. That the farmers of France, flocking to the towns and
cities from the unequal burdens of their farms, brought about the French
Revolution, and that about once in every century the French peasant
raided the towns. Three times the farmers of England have captured and
held London. It was the farmers of Mecklenburg that made the first
American declaration, and Putnam left his plow standing in the furrow as
he hurried to lead the embattled farmers who fought at Concord and
Lexington. I realize it is impossible that revolution should be the
outcome of our industrial troubles. The farmer of to-day does not
consider that remedy for his wrongs. I quote history to show that the
farmer, segregated and deliberate, does not move on slight provocation,
but organizes only under deep conviction, and that when once organized
and convinced, he is terribly in earnest, and is not going to rest until
his wrongs are righted.
Now, here we are confronted with the most thorough and widespread
agricultural movement of this or any other day. It is the duty alike of
farmers and those who stand in other ranks, to get together and consult
as to what is the real status and what is the patriotic duty. Not in
sullenness, but in frankness. Not as opponents, but as friends—not as
enemies, but as brothers begotten of a common mother, banded in common
allegiance, and marching to a common destiny. It will not do to say that
this organization will pass away, for if the discontent on which it is
based survives it, it had better have lived and forced its wrongs to
final issue. There is no room for divided hearts in this State, or in
this Republic. If we shall restore Georgia to her former greatness and
prosperity—if we shall solve the problems that beset the South in honor
and safety—if we shall save this Republic from the dangers that threaten
it—it will require the earnest and united effort of every patriotic
citizen, be he farmer, or merchant, or lawyer, or manufacturer. Let us
consider then the situation, and decide what is the duty that lies
before us.
In discussing this matter briefly, I beg the ladies to give me their
attention. I have always believed that there are few affairs of life in
which woman should not have a part. Not obtrusive part—for that is
unwomanly. The work falling best to the hand of woman is such work as is
done by the dews of night—that ride not on the boasting wind, and shine
not in the garish sun, but that come when the wind is stilled and the
sun is gone, and night has wrapped the earth in its sacred hush, and
fall from the distillery of the stars upon the parched and waiting
flowers, as a benediction from God.
Let no one doubt the power of this work, though it lack pomp and
circumstance. Is Bismarck the mightiest power of this earth, who is
attended by martial strains when he walks abroad, and in whose path
thrones are scattered as trophies? Why, the little housewife alone in
her chimney-corner, musing in her happiness with no trophy in her path
save her husband’s loving heart, and no music on her ear save the
chirping of the cricket beneath her hearthstone, is his superior. For,
while he holds the purse-strings of Germany, she holds the heart-strings
of men. She who rocks the cradle rules the world. Give me then your
attention, note the conflict that is gathering about us, and take your
place with seeming modesty in the ranks of those who fight for right. It
is not an abstract political theory that is involved in the contest of
which I speak. It is the integrity and independence of your home that is
at stake. The battle is not pitched in a distant State. Your home is the
battle-field, and by your hearthstones you shall fight for your
household gods. With your husband’s arms so wound around you that you
can feel his anxious heart beating against your cheek—with your sons,
sturdy and loving, holding your old hands in theirs—here on the
threshold of your house, under the trees that sheltered your babyhood,
with the graves of your dead in that plain enclosure yonder—here men and
women, heart to heart, with not a man dismayed, not a woman idle—while
the multiplied wolves of debt and mortgage, and trust and monopoly,
swarm from every thicket; here we must fight the ultimate battle for the
independence of our people and the happiness of our homes.
Now let us look at the facts: First, the notable movement of the
population in America is from the country to the cities. In 1840—a
generation ago, only one-twelfth of the American people lived in cities
of more than 8000 people. In 1850, one-eighth; in 1860, one-sixth; in
1870, one-fifth; in 1880, one-fourth. In the past half-century the
population of cities has increased more than four times as rapidly as
that of the country. Mind you, when I say that the city population has
increased in one generation from 8 per cent. to 25 per cent. in
population, I mean the population of cities of more than 8000 people.
There is not such a city in this congressional district. It is the
village and town population, as well as that of the farms, that goes to
swell so enormously the population of the great cities. Thus we see
diminishing with amazing rapidity that rural population that is the
strength and the safety of the people—slow to anger and thus a
safeguard, but terrible in its wrath, and thus a tremendous corrective
power. No greater calamity could befall any country than the sacrifice
of its town and village and country life. I rejoice in Atlanta’s growth,
and yet I wonder whether it is worth what it cost when I know that her
population has been drawn largely from rural Georgia, and that back of
her grandeur are thousands of deserted farms and dismantled homes. As
much as I love her—and she is all to me that home can be to any man—if I
had the disposal of 100,000 immigrants at her gates to-morrow, 5000
should enter there, 75,000 should be located in the shops and factories
in Georgia towns and villages, and 20,000 sent to her farms. It saddens
me to see a bright young fellow come to my office from village or
country, and I shudder when I think for what a feverish and speculative
and uncertain life he has bartered his rural birthright, and surrendered
the deliberation and tranquillity of his life on the farm. It is just
that deliberate life that this country needs, for the fever of the
cities is already affecting its system. Character, like corn, is dug
from the soil. A contented rural population is not only the measure of
our strength, and an assurance of its peace when there should be peace,
and a resource of courage when peace would be cowardice—but it is the
nursery of the great leaders who have made this country what it is.
Washington was born and lived in the country. Jefferson was a farmer.
Henry Clay rode his horse to the mill in the slashes. Webster dreamed
amid the solitude of Marshfield. Lincoln was a rail splitter. Our own
Hill walked between the handles of the plow. Brown peddled barefoot the
product of his patch. Stephens found immortality under the trees of his
country home. Toombs and Cobb and Calhoun were country gentlemen, and
afar from the cities’ maddening strife established that greatness that
is the heritage of their people. The cities produce very few leaders.
Almost every man in our history formed his character in the leisure and
deliberation of village or country life, and drew his strength from the
drugs of the earth even as a child draws his from his mother’s breast.
In the diminution of this rural population, virtuous and competent,
patriotic and honest, living beneath its own roof-tree, building its
altars by its own hearthstone and shrining in its own heart its liberty
and its conscience, there is abiding cause for regret. In the
corresponding growth of our cities—already center spots of danger, with
their idle classes, their sharp rich and poor, their corrupt politics,
their consorted thieves, and their clubs and societies of anarchy and
socialism—I see a pressing and impending danger. Let it be noted that
the professions are crowded, that middlemen are multiplied beyond
reason, that the factories can in six months supply the demand of
twelve—that machinery is constantly taking the place of men—that labor
in every department bids against itself until it is mercilessly in the
hands of the employer, that the new-comers are largely recruits of the
idle and dangerous classes, and we can appreciate something of the
danger that comes with this increasing movement to strip the villages
and the farms and send an increasing volume into the already overcrowded
cities. This is but one phase of that tendency to centralization and
congestion which is threatening the liberties of this people and the
life of this Republic.
Now, let us go one step further. What is the most notable financial
movement in America? It is the mortgaging of the farm lands of the
country—the bringing of the farmer into bondage to the money-lender. In
Illinois the farms are mortgaged for $200,000,000, in Iowa for
$140,000,000, in Kansas for $160,000,000, and so on through the
Northwest. In Georgia about $20,000,000 of foreign capital holds in
mortgage perhaps one-fourth of Georgia’s farms, and the work is but
started. Every town has its loan agent—a dozen companies are quartered
in Atlanta, and the work goes briskly on. A mortgage is the bulldog of
obligations—a very mud-turtle for holding on. It is the heaviest thing
of its weight in the world. I had one once, and sometimes I used to
feel, as it rested on my roof, deadening the rain that fell there, and
absorbing the sunshine, that it would crush through the shingles and the
rafters and overwhelm me with its dull and persistent weight, and when
at last I paid it off, I went out to look at the shingles to see if it
had not flopped back there of its own accord. Think of it, Iowa strips
from her farmers $14,000,000 of interest every year, and sends it to New
York and Boston to be reloaned on farms in other States, and to support
and establish the dominion of the money-lenders over the people. Georgia
gathers from her languishing fields $2,000,000 of interest every year,
and sends it away forever. Could her farmers but keep it at home, one
year’s interest would build factories to supply at cost every yard of
bagging and every pound of guano the farmers need, establish her
exchanges and their warehouses, and have left more than a million
dollars for the improvement of their farms and their homes. And year
after year this drain not only continues, but deepens. What will be the
end? Ireland has found it. Her peasants in their mud cabins, sending
every tithe of their earnings to deepen the purple luxury of London,
where their landlords live, realize how poor is that country whose farms
are owned in mortgage or fee simple by those who live beyond its
borders. If every Irish landlord lived on his estate, bought of his
tenants the product of their farms, and invested his rents in Irish
industries, this Irish question that is the shame of the world would be
settled without legislation or strife. Georgia can never go to Ireland’s
degradation, but every Georgia farm put under mortgage to a foreign
capitalist is a step in that direction, and every dollar sent out as
interest leaves the State that much poorer. I do not blame the farmers.
It is a miracle that out of their poverty they have done so well. I
simply deplore the result, and ask you to note in the millions of acres
that annually pass under mortgage to the money-lenders of the East, and
in the thousands of independent country homes annually surrendered as
hostages to their hands, another evidence of that centralization that is
drinking up the life-blood of this broad Republic.
Let us go one step further. All protest as to our industrial condition
is met with the statement that America is startling the world with its
growth and progress. Is this growth symmetrical—is this progress shared
by every class? Let the tax-books of Georgia answer. This year, for the
first time since 1860, our taxable wealth is equal to that with which,
excluding our slaves, we entered the civil war—$368,000,000. There is
cause for rejoicing in this wonderful growth from the ashes and
desolation of twenty years ago, but the tax-books show that while the
towns and cities are $60,000,000 richer than they were in 1860, the
farmers are $50,000,000 poorer.
Who produced this wealth? In 1865, when our towns and cities were
paralyzed, when not a mine or quarry was open, hardly a mill or a
factory running; when we had neither money or credit, it was the
farmers’ cotton that started the mills of industry and of trade. Since
that desolate year, when, urging his horse down the furrow, plowing
through fields on which he had staggered amid the storm of battle, he
began the rehabilitation of Georgia with no friend near him save nature
that smiled at his kindly touch, and God that sent him the message of
cheer through the rustling leaves, he has dug from the soil of Georgia
more than $1,000,000,000 worth of product. From this mighty resource
great cities have been builded and countless fortunes amassed—but amid
all the splendor he has remained the hewer of wood and the drawer of
water. He had made the cities $60,000,000 richer than they were when the
war began, and he finds himself, in the sweat of whose brow this miracle
was wrought, $50,000,000 poorer than he then was. Perhaps not a farmer
in this audience knew this fact—but I doubt if there is one in the
audience who has not felt in his daily life the disadvantage that in
twenty short years has brought about this stupendous difference. Let the
figures speak for themselves. The farmer—the first figure to stumble
amid the desolate dawn of our new life and to salute the coming
day—hurrying to market with the harvest of his hasty planting that
Georgia might once more enter the lists of the living States and buy the
wherewithal to still her wants and clothe her nakedness—always
apparently the master of the situation, has he not been really its
slave, when he finds himself at the end of twenty hard and faithful
years $110,000,000 out of balance?
Now, let us review the situation a moment. I have shown you, first, that
the notable drift of population is to the loss of village and country,
and the undue and dangerous growth of the city; second, that the notable
movement of finance is that which is bringing villages and country under
mortgage to the city; and third, that they who handle the products for
sale profit more thereby than those who create them—the difference in
one State in twenty years reaching the enormous sum of $110,000,000. Are
these healthy tendencies? Do they not demand the earnest and thoughtful
consideration of every patriotic citizen? The problem of the day is to
check these three currents that are already pouring against the bulwarks
of our peace and prosperity. To anchor the farmer to his land and the
villager to his home; to enable him to till the land under equal
conditions and to hold that home in independence; to save with his hands
the just proportion of his labor, that he may sow in content and reap in
justice,—this is what we need. The danger of the day is centralization,
its salvation diffusion. Cut that word deep in your heart. This Republic
differs from Russia only because the powers centralized there in one man
are here diffused among the people. Western Ohio is happy and tranquil,
while Chicago is feverish and dangerous, because the people diffused in
the towns and the villages of the one are centralized and packed in the
tenements of the other; but of all centralization that menaces our peace
and threatens our liberties, is the consolidation of capital—and of all
the diffusion that is needed in this Republic, congesting at so many
points, is the leveling of our colossal fortunes and the diffusion of
our gathered wealth amid the great middle classes of this people. As
this question underruns the three tendencies we have been discussing,
let us consider it a moment.
Few men comprehend the growth of private fortunes in this country, and
the encroachments they have made on the rest of the people. Take one
instance: A man in Chicago that had a private fortune secured control of
all the wheat in the country, and advanced the price until flour went up
three dollars a barrel. When he collected $4,000,000 of this forced
tribute from the people, he opened his corner and released the wheat,
and the world, forgetting the famishing children from whose hungry lips
he had stolen the crust, praised him as the king of finance and trade.
Let us analyze this deal. The farmer who raised the wheat got not one
cent of the added profit. The mills that ground it not one cent. Every
dollar went to swell the toppling fortunes of him who never sowed it to
the ground, nor fed it to the thundering wheels, but who knew it only as
the chance instrument of his infamous scheme. Why, our fathers declared
war against England, their mother country, from whose womb they came,
because she levied two cents a pound on our tea, and yet, without a
murmur, we submit to ten times this tax placed on the bread of our
mouths, and levied by a private citizen for no reason save his greed,
and no right save his might. Were a man to enter an humble home in
England, bind the father helpless, stamp out the fire on the
hearthstone, empty the scanty larder, and leave the family for three
weeks cold and hungry and helpless, he would be dealt with by the law;
and yet four men in New York cornered the world’s cotton crop and held
it until the English spindles were stopped and 14,000,000 operatives
sent idle and empty-handed to their homes, to divide their last crust
with their children, and then sit down and suffer until the greed of the
speculators was filled. The sugar refineries combined their plants at a
cost of $14,000,000, and so raised the price of sugar that they made the
first year $9,500,000 profit, and since then have advanced it rapidly
until we sweeten our coffee absolutely in their caprice. When the
bagging mills were threatened with a reduced tariff, they made a trust
and openly boasted that they intended to make one season’s profits pay
the entire cost of their mills—and these precious villains, whom thus
far the lightnings have failed to blast, having carried out their
infamous boast, organized for a deeper steal this season. And so it
goes. There is not a thing we eat or drink, nor an article we must have
for the comfort of our homes, that may not be thus seized and controlled
and made an instrument for the shameless plundering of the people. It is
a shame—this people patient and cheerful under the rise or fall of
prices that come with the failure of God’s season’s charge as its
compensation—or under the advance at the farm which enriches the farmer,
or under that competitive demand which bespeaks brisk prosperity—this
people made the prey and the sport of plunderers who levy tribute
through a system that mocks at God’s recurring rains, knows not the
farmer, and locks competition in the grasp of monopoly. And the
millions, thus wrung from the people, loaned back to them at usury,
laying the blight of the mortgage on their homes, and the obligation of
debt on their manhood. Talk about the timidity of capital. That is a
forgotten phrase. In the power and irresponsibility of this sudden and
enormous wealth is bred an insolence that knows no bounds. “The public
be damned!” was the sentiment of the plutocrats, speaking through the
voice of Vanderbilt’s millions. In cornering the product and levying the
tribute—in locking up abundant supply until the wheels of industry
stop—in oppressing through trusts, and domineering in the strength of
corporate power, the plutocrats do what no political party would dare
attempt and what no government on this earth would enforce. The Czar of
Russia would not dare hold up a product until the mill-wheels were idle,
or lay an unusual tax on bread and meat to replenish his coffers, and
yet these things our plutocrats, flagrant and irresponsible, do day
after day until public indignation is indignant and shame is lost in
wonder.
And when an outraged people turn to government for help what do they
find? Their government in the hands of a party that is in sympathy with
their oppressors—that was returned to power with votes purchased with
their money—and whose confessed leaders declared that trusts are largely
private concerns with which the government had naught to do. Not only is
the dominant party the apologist of the plutocrats and the beneficiary
of their crimes, but it is based on that principle of centralization
through which they came into life and on which alone they can exist. It
holds that sovereignty should be taken from the States and lodged with
the nation—that political powers and privileges should be wrested from
the people and guarded at the capital. It distrusts the people, and even
now demands that your ballot-boxes shall be hedged about by its
bayonets. It declares that a strong government is better than a free
government, and that national authority, backed by national armies and
treasury, is a better guarantee of peace and prosperity and liberty and
enlightenment diffused among the people. To defend this policy, that
cannot be maintained by argument or sustained by the love or confidence
of the people, it rallies under its flag the mercenaries of the
Republic, the syndicate, the trust, the monopolist, and the plutocrat,
and strengthening them by grant and protection, rejoices as they grow
richer and the people grow poorer. Confident in the debauching power of
money and the unscrupulous audacity of their creatures, they catch the
spirit of Vanderbilt’s defiance and call aloud from their ramparts, “the
people be damned!” I charge that this party has bought its way for
twenty years. Its nucleus was the passion that survived the war—and
around this it has gathered the protected manufacturer, the pensioned
soldier, the licensed monopolist, the privileged corporation, the
unchallenged trust—all whom power can daunt, or money can buy, and with
these in close and constant phalanx it holds the government against the
people. Not a man in all its ranks that is not influenced by prejudice
or bought by privilege.
What a spectacle, my countrymen! This free Republic in the hands of a
party that withdraws sovereignty from the people that its own authority
may be made supreme—that fans the smouldering embers of war, and loosing
among the people the dogs of privilege and monopoly to hunt, and harrow
and rend, that its lines may be made stronger and its ramparts
fortified. And now, it is committed to a crime that is without precedent
or parallel in the history of any people, and this crime it is obliged
by its own necessity as well as by its pledge to commit as soon as it
gets the full reins of power. This crime is hidden in the bill known as
the service pension bill, which pensions every man who enlisted for
sixty days for the Union army. Let us examine this pension list. Twelve
years ago it footed $46,000,000. Last year it was $81,000,000. This year
it has already run to over $100,000,000. Of this amount Georgia pays
about $3,500,000 a year. Think of it. The money that her people have
paid, through indirect taxation into the treasury, is given, let us say
to Iowa, for that State just equals Georgia in population. Every year
$3,500,000 wrung from her pockets and sent into Iowa as pensions for her
soldiers. Since 1865, out of her poverty, Georgia has paid $51,000,000
as pensions to Northern soldiers—one-sixth of the value of her whole
property. And now it is proposed to enlarge the pension list until it
includes every man who enlisted for sixty days. They will not fail. The
last Congress passed a pension bill that Commissioner Black—himself a
gallant Union general—studied deliberately, and then told the President
that if he signed it, it would raise the pension list to $200,000,000,
and had it not been for the love of the people that ran in the veins of
Grover Cleveland and the courage of Democracy which flamed in his heart,
that bill would have been law to-day. A worse bill will be offered.
There is a surplus of $120,000,000 in the treasury. While that remains
it endangers the protective tariff, behind which the trained captains of
the Republican party muster their men. But let the pension list be
lifted to $200,000,000 a year. Then the surplus is gone and a deficiency
created, and the protective tariff must be not only perpetuated but
deepened, and the vigilance of the spies and collectors increased to
meet the demands of the government. And back of it all will be mustered
the army of a million and a half pensioners, drawing their booty from
the Republican party and giving it in turn their purchased allegiance
and support.
My countrymen, a thousand times I have thought of that historic scene
beneath the apple-tree at Appomattox, of Lee’s 8000 ragged, half-starved
immortals, going home to begin anew amid the ashes of their homes, and
the graves of their dead, the weary struggle for existence, and Grant’s
68,000 splendid soldiers, well fed and equipped, going home to riot amid
the plenty of a grateful and prosperous people, and I have thought how
hard it was that out of our poverty we should be taxed to pay their
pension, and to divide with this rich people the crust we scraped up
from the ashes of our homes. And I have thought when their maimed and
helpless soldiers were sheltered in superb homes, and lapped in luxury,
while our poor cripples limped along the highway or hid their shame in
huts, or broke bitter bread in the county poor-house, how hard it was
that, of all the millions we send them annually, we can save not one
dollar to go to our old heroes, who deserve so much and get so little.
And yet we made no complaint. We were willing that every Union soldier
made helpless by the war should have his pension and his home, and thank
God, without setting our crippled soldiers on the curbstone of distant
Babylons to beg, as blind Belisarius did, from the passing stranger. We
have provided them a home in which they can rest in honorable peace
until God has called them hence to a home not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens. We have not complained that our earnings have gone to
pension Union soldiers—the maimed soldiers of the Union armies. But the
scheme to rob the people that every man who enlisted for sixty days, or
his widow, shall be supported at public expense is an outrage that must
not be submitted to. It is not patriotism—it is politics. It is not
honesty—it is plunder. The South has played a patient and a waiting game
for twenty years, fearing to protest against what she knew to be wrong
in the fear that she would be misunderstood. I fear that she has gained
little by this course save the contempt of her enemies. The time has
come when she should stand upright among the States of this Republic and
declare her mind and stand by her convictions. She must not stand silent
while this crowning outrage is perpetrated. It means that the Republican
party will loot the treasury to recruit its ranks—that $70,000,000 a
year shall be taken from the South to enrich the North, thus building up
one section against another—that the protective tariff shall be
deepened, thus building one class against another, and that the party of
trusts and monopoly shall be kept in power, the autonomy of the Republic
lost, the government centralized, the oligarchs established, and justice
to the people postponed. But this party will not prevail, even though
its pension bill should pass, and its pretorial God be established in
every Northern State. It was Louis XVI. who peddled the taxing
privileges to his friends, and when the people protested surrounded
himself with an army of Swiss mercenaries. His minister, Neckar, said to
him: “Sire, I beseech you send away these Swiss and trust your people”;
but the king, confident in his strength and phalanx, buckled it close
about him and plundered the people until his head paid the penalty of
his crime. So this party, bartering privileges and setting up classes,
may feel secure as it closes the ranks of its mercenaries, but some day
the great American heart will burst with righteous wrath, and the voice
of the people, which is the voice of God, will challenge the traitors,
and the great masses will rise in their might, and breaking down the
defenses of the oligarchs, will hurl them from power and restore this
Republic to the old moorings from which it had been swept by the storm.
The government can protect its citizens. It is of the people, and it
shall not perish from the face of the earth. It can top off these
colossal fortunes and, by an income tax, retard their growth. It can set
a limit to personal and corporate wealth. It can take trusts and
syndicates by the throat. It can shatter monopoly; it can equalize the
burden of taxation; it can distribute its privileges impartially; it can
clothe with credit its land now discredited at its banks; it can lift
the burdens from the farmer’s shoulders, give him equal strength to bear
them—it can trust the people in whose name this Republic was founded; in
whose courage it was defended; in whose wisdom it has been administered,
and whose stricken love and confidence it can not survive.
But the government, no matter what it does, does not do all that is
needed, nor the most; that is conceded, for all true reform must begin
with the people at their homes. A few Sundays ago I stood on a hill in
Washington. My heart thrilled as I looked on the towering marble of my
country’s Capitol, and a mist gathered in my eyes as, standing there, I
thought of its tremendous significance and the powers there assembled,
and the responsibilities there centered—its presidents, its congress,
its courts, its gathered treasure, its army, its navy, and its
60,000,000 of citizens. It seemed to me the best and mightiest sight
that the sun could find in its wheeling course—this majestic home of a
Republic that has taught the world its best lessons of liberty—and I
felt that if wisdom, and justice, and honor abided therein, the world
would stand indebted to this temple on which my eyes rested, and in
which the ark of my covenant was lodged for its final uplifting and
regeneration.
A few days later I visited a country home. A modest, quiet house
sheltered by great trees and set in a circle of field and meadow,
gracious with the promise of harvest—barns and cribs well filled and the
old smoke-house odorous with treasure—the fragrance of pink and
hollyhock mingling with the aroma of garden and orchard, and resonant
with the hum of bees and poultry’s busy clucking—inside the house,
thrift, comfort and that cleanliness that is next to godliness—the
restful beds, the open fireplace, the books and papers, and the old
clock that had held its steadfast pace amid the frolic of weddings, that
had welcomed in steady measure the newborn babes of the family, and kept
company with the watchers of the sick bed, and had ticked the solemn
requiem of the dead; and the well-worn Bible that, thumbed by fingers
long since stilled, and blurred with tears of eyes long since closed,
held the simple annals of the family, and the heart and conscience of
the home. Outside stood the master, strong and wholesome and upright;
wearing no man’s collar; with no mortgage on his roof, and no lien on
his ripening harvest; pitching his crops in his own wisdom, and selling
them in his own time in his chosen market; master of his lands and
master of himself. Near by stood his aged father, happy in the heart and
home of his son. And as they started to the house the old man’s hands
rested on the young man’s shoulder, touching it with the knighthood of
the fourth commandment, and laying there the unspeakable blessing of an
honored and grateful father. As they drew near the door the old mother
appeared; the sunset falling on her face, softening its wrinkles and its
tenderness, lighting up her patient eyes, and the rich music of her
heart trembling on her lips, as in simple phrase she welcomed her
husband and son to their home. Beyond was the good wife, true of touch
and tender, happy amid her household cares, clean of heart and
conscience, the helpmate and the buckler of her husband. And the
children, strong and sturdy, trooping down the lane with the lowing
herd, or weary of simple sport, seeking, as truant birds do, the quiet
of the old home nest. And I saw the night descend on that home, falling
gently as from the wings of the unseen dove. And the stars swarmed in
the bending skies—the trees thrilled with the cricket’s cry—the restless
bird called from the neighboring wood—and the father, a simple man of
God, gathering the family about him, read from the Bible the old, old
story of love and faith, and then went down in prayer, the baby hidden
amid the folds of its mother’s dress, and closed the record of that
simple day by calling down the benediction of God on the family and the
home!
And as I gazed the memory of the great Capitol faded from my brain.
Forgotten its treasure and its splendor. And I said, “Surely here—here
in the homes of the people is lodged the ark of the covenant of my
country. Here is its majesty and its strength. Here the beginning of its
power and the end of its responsibility.” The homes of the people; let
us keep them pure and independent, and all will be well with the
Republic. Here is the lesson our foes may learn—here is work the
humblest and weakest hands may do. Let us in simple thrift and economy
make our homes independent. Let us in frugal industry make them
self-sustaining. In sacrifice and denial let us keep them free from debt
and obligation. Let us make them homes of refinement in which we shall
teach our daughters that modesty and patience and gentleness are the
charms of woman. Let us make them temples of liberty, and teach our sons
that an honest conscience is every man’s first political law. That his
sovereignty rests beneath his hat, and that no splendor can rob him and
no force justify the surrender of the simplest right of a free and
independent citizen. And above all, let us honor God in our homes—anchor
them close in His love. Build His altars above our hearthstones, uphold
them in the set and simple faith of our fathers and crown them with the
Bible—that book of books in which all the ways of life are made straight
and the mystery of death is made plain. The home is the source of our
national life. Back of the national Capitol and above it stands the
home. Back of the President and above him stands the citizen. What the
home is, this and nothing else will the Capitol be. What the citizen
wills, this and nothing else will the President be.
Now, my friends, I am no farmer. I have not sought to teach you the
details of your work, for I know little of them. I have not commended
your splendid local advantages, for that I shall do elsewhere. I have
not discussed the differences between the farmer and other classes, for
I believe in essential things there is no difference between them, and
that minor differences should be sacrificed to the greater interest that
depends on a united people. I seek not to divide our people, but to
unite them. I should despise myself if I pandered to the prejudice of
either class to win the applause of the other.
But I have noted these great movements that destroy the equilibrium and
threaten the prosperity of my country, and standing above passion and
prejudice or demagoguery I invoke every true citizen, fighting from his
hearthstone outward, with the prattle of his children on his ear, and
the hand of his wife and mother closely clasped, to determine here to
make his home sustaining and independent, and to pledge eternal
hostility to the forces that threaten our liberties, and the party that
stands behind it.
When I think of the tremendous force of the currents against which we
must fight, of the great political party that impels that fight, of the
countless host of mercenaries that fight under its flag, of the enormous
powers of government privilege and monopoly that back them up, I confess
my heart sinks within me, and I grow faint. But I remember that the
servant of Elisha looked abroad from Samaria and beheld the hosts that
encompassed the city, and said in agonized fear: “Alas, master, what
shall we do?” and the answer of Elisha was the answer of every brave man
and faithful heart in all ages: “Fear not, for they that be with us are
more than they that be with them,” and this faith opened the eyes of the
servant of the man of God, and he looked up again, and lo, the air was
filled with chariots of fire, and the mountains were filled with
horsemen, and they compassed the city about as a mighty and
unconquerable host. Let us fight in such faith, and fear not. The air
all about us is filled with chariots of unseen allies, and the mountains
are thronged with unseen knights that shall fight with us. Fear not, for
they that be with us are more than they that be with them. Buckle on
your armor, gird about your loins, stand upright and dauntless while I
summon you to the presence of the immortal dead. Your fathers and mine
yet live, though they speak not, and will consecrate this air with their
wheeling chariots, and above them and beyond them to the Lord God
Almighty, King of the Hosts in whose unhindered splendor we stand this
morning. Look up to them, be of good cheer, and faint not, for they
shall fight with us when we strike for liberty and truth, and all the
world, though it be banded against us, shall not prevail against them.
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