Page:Address as the ABA president.pdf/25

 was employed abroad at decreased wages and brought here to take the place of American labor then upon a revolt because of a reduction of their wages. This foreign labor, at that time content to receive lower wages, supplied the places of the American laborers, who were then on a strike; but a few years after the foreign labor itself demanded higher wages, and being refused, a most destructive strike followed, resulting in immense loss of property, if not of human life.

No conflict should ever occur between capital and labor at this advanced age of the world. Negotiation has supplanted physical conflict. The interest of both requires amity and peace. Let there be no discord between dependent interests. Let neither capital nor labor ever become unjust, oppressive, suspicious, or hard to each other. The only divinity which was ever clothed in Humanity in this world, was the embodiment of love. He was our exemplar and elder brother. He said: "The laborer is worthy of his hire;" and that the master must be just, as well as honest, to his servants. "Do unto one another, what ye would at all times, have done unto you"—then labor and capital will have no more strikes, no more collisions.

A stringent law was enacted on the subject of bribery in any manner or form at elections. It prescribes disfranchisement for not less than eight years as the minimum punishment on conviction, and provides for the posting of a copy of the law at every election precinct upon every general election.

Laws were passed providing for the erection of asylums for pauper children by the county authorities; for the education of poor children at public expense; the prohibiting of the employment of children under twelve in any factory for the manufacture of tobacco, or iron in any form, and prohibiting the working of children under twelve for more than eight hours a day in any factory. A legal friend from Indiana suggests that the fish, dog, sheep, and bird law received their biennial indorsement [sic]. In the latter, a nice point of international comity was suggested, by the withdrawal of all statutory protection from the "English sparrow."