Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/333

Rh by the silver orators, that addressed to the wage-earners seems to me the most heartless and damnable. And of all the instances of reckless credulity we witness, that of wage-earners who actually permit themselves to be persuaded that free silver coinage will be a blessing to them is the most incomprehensible and the saddest. There is something pathetic in their delusion. Of all things, human labor is the one that has during the last fifty years in this country largely and almost steadily risen in price. Average wages have nearly doubled since 1840 and have risen more than 60 per cent. since 1860. The steady rise has been owing partly to organization, in greater part to the larger average productiveness of human labor in connection with machinery—in one word, to the progress of civilization. As civilization has served to multiply and cheapen labor's products, it has at the same time served to enhance labor's earnings. It has thus secured to the laboring man, especially in this Republic, a double advantage—a greater number of dollars by way of wages, and for every dollar more of the things which the laboring man has to buy for the necessities and enjoyments of himself and his family.

This is one of the greatest achievements of our age, at which every true friend of humanity will heartily rejoice, but which more than all others the workingman himself should appreciate. That the workingmen should be called upon, by the exercise of their right as voters, to aid in despoiling themselves of this combined blessing, looks like a satanic mockery. And when we see pretended labor leaders join the silver mine millionaires, the silver politicians and the nebulous silver philosophers in an effort to seduce the workingmen into an act of self-destruction so supremely foolish, there is good reason for warning these of treason in their camp. If there is anybody in the wide world who should fight to the last gasp for a money of