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HISTORY OF LABOR MOVEMENT IN AMERICA
By Albert Parsons
Holly Lodge Kensington,
London, May 23, 1857
As long as you (Americans) have a boundless extent of fertile and unoccupied land, your laboring population will be far more at ease than the laboring population of the old world, and while that is the case the Jeffersonian politics may continue to exist without causing any fatal calamity. But the time will come when New England will be as thickly peopled as old England. Wages will be low, and will fluctuate with you as well as with us. You will have your Manchesters and Birminghams, and in those Manchesters and Birminghams hundreds of thousands of artisans will assuredly be sometimes out of work. Then your institutions will be fairly brought to the test. Distress everywhere makes the laborer mutinous and discontented.
The day will come when in the state of New York there will be a multitude of people, none of whom has had more than half a breakfast, or expects to have more than half a dinner. On one side is a statesman, preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of the capitalists and usurers, and asking why anybody be permitted to drink champagne and ride in a carriage, while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. What is the workingman likely to do when hears his children cry for bread? – Lord Macauley.
CAPITALISM- ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES.
Among all nations, the United States of America has alone possessed the opportunity for developing representative or Republican government to its utmost. Separated by two oceans, isolated and comparatively secure from sudden invasion or the diplomatic imbroglios of imperialistic Europe and Asia, the united capacity of Republican government to minister to the peace and welfare of
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