... Greece presented the first great proof of a fact of which we are now in danger of furnishing another and more terrible example to the world. It is the utter impossibility of peace, in a territory made by nature a geographical unity, inhabited by a people, or peoples, of one lineage, one language, bound together in historical reminiscences, yet divided into petty sovereign States too small for any respectable nationalities themselves, and yet preventing any beneficent nationality as a whole. No animosities have been so fierce as those existing among people thus geographically and politically related. No wars with each other have been so cruel; no home factions have been so incessant, so treacherous, and so debasing. The very ties that draw them near only awaken occasions of strife, which would not have existed between tribes wholly alien to each other in language and religion. [Footnote 49: State sovereignty.] * * * * * =_Horace Greeley,[50] 1811-1873._= From a "Lecture on the Emancipation of Labor." =_164._= THE PROBLEM OF LABOR. The worker of the nineteenth century stands a sad and careworn man. Once in a while a particular flowery Fourth of July oration, political harangue, or Thanksgiving sermon, catching him well filled with creature comforts, and a little inclined to soar starward, will take him off his feet, and for an hour or two he will wonder if ever human lot was so blessed as that of the free-born American laborer. He hurrahs, and is ready to knock any man down who will not readily and heartily agree that this is a great country, and our industrious classes the happiest people on earth.... The hallucination passes off, however, with the silvery tones of the orator, and the exhilarating fumes of the liquor which inspired it. The inhaler of the bewildering gas bends his slow steps at length to his sorry domicile, or wakes therein on the morrow, in a sober and practical mood. His very exaltation, now past, has rendered him more keenly susceptible to the deficiencies and impediments which hem him in: his house seems narrow, his food coarse, his furniture scanty, his prospects gloomy, and those of his children more sombre, if possible; and as he hurries off to the day's task which he has too long neglected, and for which he has little heart, he too falls into that train of thought which is beginning to encircle the globe, and of which the burden may be freely rendered thus: "Why should those by whose toil all comforts and luxuries are produced, or made available, enjoy so scanty a share of them? Why should a man able and eager to work, ever stand idle for want of employment in a world where so much needful work impatiently awaits the doing? Why should a man be required to surrender something of his independence, in accepting the employment which will enable him to earn by honest effort the bread of his family? Why should the man who