Читать книгу Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States - Benjamin Harrison - Страница 27
INDIANAPOLIS, AUGUST 4.
ОглавлениеThe most remarkable night demonstration of the campaign occurred August 4, the occasion being the visit of the Harrison and Morton Railroad Club of Terre Haute, a thousand strong. They were met by twelve hundred members of the Indianapolis Railroad Club, and, escorted by several thousand citizens, marched to the Harrison residence.
At the head of the column rolled the model of a monster locomotive, emitting fire and smoke and bearing the significant number 544, Hundreds of stores and residences along the line of march were illuminated.
At the head of the visiting club marched its officers: President, D. T. Downs; Secretary, Chas. E. Carter; Treasurer, Benj. McKeen; and Vice-Presidents, R. B. Woolsey, J. L. Pringle, J. N. Evanhart, E. G. South, L. M. Murphy, H. M. Kearns, George Leckert, and W. H. Miller.
President Downs delivered an address and presented an engrossed copy of the club roster. General Harrison spoke from a stand in front of his residence, and said:
Mr. Downs, Gentlemen of the Terre Haute Railroad Club, and Fellow-citizens—I am amazed and gratified at the character of this demonstration to-night. I do not find words to express the emotions which swell in my heart as I look into your faces and listen to the kindly greetings which you have given me through your representative. He has not spoken in too high praise of the railroad men of the United States. The character of the duties they are called to discharge require great intelligence, in many departments the best skill in the highest mechanic arts, and in all, even in the lowest grade of labor in connection with railroad management, there is required, for the safety of the public who entrust themselves to your care, fidelity and watchfulness, not only in the day, but in the darkness. The man who attends the switch, the trackman who observes the condition of the track—all these have put into their charge and keeping the lives of men and women and the safety of our commerce. Therefore it is that the exigencies of the service in which you are engaged have operated to select and call into the service of our great railroad corporations a picked body of men. I gratefully acknowledge to-night the service you render to the country of which I am a citizen. The great importance of the enterprises with which you are connected have already suggested to our legislators that they owe duties to you as well as to the travelling and mercantile public. The Congress of the United States has, under that provision of the Constitution which commits to its care all foreign and interstate commerce, undertaken to regulate the great interstate railroads in the interest of equal and fair competition and in the equal interest of all members of our communities. I do not doubt that certain and necessary provisions for the safety of the men who operate these roads will yet be made compulsory by public and general law. [Applause.] The dangers connected with your calling are very great, and the public interest, as well as your own, requires that they should be reduced to the minimum. I do not doubt that we shall yet require that uniformity in the construction of railroad cars that will diminish the danger of those who must pass between them in order to make up trains. [Applause.] I do not doubt, either, that as these corporations are not private corporations, but are recognized by the law to which I have referred and by the uniform decisions of our courts as having public relations, we shall yet see legislation in the direction of providing some suitable tribunal of arbitration for the settlement of differences between railroad men and the companies that engage their services. [Great applause.] I believe that in these directions, and others that I have not time to suggest, reforms will work themselves out, with exact justice to the companies and with justice to the men they employ. Because, my friends, I do not doubt—and I hope you will never allow yourselves to doubt—that the great mass of our people, of all vocations and callings, love justice and right and hate oppression. [Applause.] The laboring men of this land may safely trust every just reform in which they are interested to public discussion and to the logic of reason; they may surely hope, upon these lines, which are open to you by the ballot-box, to accomplish under our American institutions all those right things you have conceived as necessary to your highest success and well-being. Do not allow yourselves to doubt, for one moment, the friendly sentiment of the great masses of our people. Make your appeal wisely, and calmly, and boldly, for every reform you desire, to that sentiment of justice which pervades our American public. [Applause.]
You come to-night from one of our most beautiful Indiana cities. It was built on the Wabash in the expectation that that stream would furnish the channel of its communication with the outside world. But the Wabash is a small tributary to-day to the commerce of Terre Haute. The railroads that span it are the great vehicles of your commerce. They have largely superseded the water communication that was deemed so important in the first settlement, and, perhaps, was so decisive in the location of your city. Terre Haute is conspicuous for its industries. The smoke of your factories goes up night and day. The farms about your city have become gardens, and the cordial and harmonious relations between the railroad shop and the factory and the farms that lie about have a conspicuous illustration with you. You have found that that policy which built up these shops, which maintains them, which secures the largest output yearly from the factories, which gives employment to the largest number of men, is the best thing not only for the railroads that do the transportation, but for the workingmen, who find steady employment at good wages, and for the farmers, who supply their needs. [Applause.] You will not willingly be led to believe that any policy that would check the progress and the prosperity of these enterprises is good for you or for the community in which you live. [Applause and cries of "No, never!"] It will be hard to convince such an intelligent body of workingmen that a policy which would transfer from this country to any other the work that might be done here is good for them. [Applause.] It can easily be demonstrated that if our revenue laws were so adjusted that the imports from Great Britain should be doubled it would be good for the workingmen of England, but I think it would be hard to demonstrate that it would be good for the workingmen of America. [Applause.] There is a wise selfishness; it begins at home, and he who has the care of his own family first, of the community in which he lives, of the nation of which he is a citizen, is wise in his generation.
Now, my friends, I have been daily talking. I used to be thought by my friends to be a reticent man. [Laughter.] I fear I am making an impression that I am garrulous. [Cries of "No! No!"] And yet, when friends such as you take the trouble you have to-night to visit me, I feel that I owe it to you to say something.
Now, thanking you for this roster, which will furnish authentic evidence, if it is challenged, that this visit to-night has been from genuine railroad men [applause], I venture to invite my Terre Haute friends to enter my house. I will ask the citizens of Indianapolis, the escort club of my own home, railroad friends who have done so much to make your coming here to-night pleasant, to kindly refrain themselves, and allow me to greet the visitors. In order that that may be accomplished, I will ask some of my Terre Haute friends to place themselves by the door, that I may meet those who are of their company. The others I have seen, or will see some other day.