Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/346

322 outlaw when he asks for his dues. Is this the spirit of the American people?

They seek to excite the people of the West against the East, because, as Mr. Bryan said in the Chicago Convention, the East injuriously interferes with the business of the West. Aye, the East has interfered with Western business, but how? In helping to build Western railroads, to dig Western canals, to set up Western telegraphs, to establish Western factories, to build up Western towns, to move Western crops, to allay Western distress caused by fire, flood or drought. Has this served to enrich the East? Yes, and so it has enriched the West. Their wealth and greatness have been mutually built up by the harmonious coöperation of their brawn and brain and money, just as the blood of the East and the West mingled on the common battlefields of the Republic. And now comes this young man, as if we had not suffered enough from sectional strife, and talks of “enemy's country!”

They seek to excite what they call “the poor” against what they call “the rich”—in this land of great opportunities for all, where, now as ever, so many of the poor of yesterday are among the rich of to-day, and so many of the rich of to-day may be among the poor of to-morrow. Their candidate for the Presidency presented a characteristic spectacle when some time ago he was kindly shown over the farm of the governor of New York, who is himself an example of the poor country boy risen by able and honest effort to affluence and distinction; and when that candidate then straightway in a public speech drew invidious comparisons between the elegant houses on the Hudson and the poor cabins in the West—teaching not the true American lesson of success won by honest industry, thrift and enterprise, but the lesson that those who have succeeded less should hate and fight those who