“When they at last discovered that they were, then began a radical change. I am not exaggerating the evils of the times. I am merely setting them forth to show you how our race has improved with its maturity. If my purpose required it, I could detail many good things in the life of that people. One bright point in their character, to which I just now referred, I will illustrate. My boy, who is also my student in drawing, will never be able to make a straight line until he can see that the line he has already made is not straight. His improvement depends upon more than a steady hand. So with this people. Deep down in their being, planted by a divine hand, were the instinct of truth and the principle of growth, and when, in the natural course of their development, they came to realize how unworthy they were of their better nature, they set about the work of improvement. “But they came to that knowledge through many sad experiences. I have not begun to tell you the number and extent of the evils they endured. “The desire for money affected all classes. The general prosperity had bettered the condition of the wage-earners, creating many artificial wants which could not be satisfied without good pay. Hence arose a natural and constant effort to obtain higher wages, while competition among the employers operated just as constantly to keep them down, and the result was a sharp and increasing antagonism between capital and labor. The general public shared in the blame for this state of things by reason of the almost universal demand for cheap goods. “While the introduction of machinery was a real advance, whose benefits we are reaping to this day, other conditions had not become adjusted to it at the time of which we are speaking, so that there was often a surplus of workmen, especially in the lower grades of labor. This had a tendency to reduce wages, of course; and the want of employment, improvidence in the use of small wages, intemperance and other immoralities, ignorance and misfortune, all combined to keep part of the people in poverty. On the other hand, it was a time of great wealth and luxurious living, and these two classes, so far apart in their manner of life but often so near each other in all their selfish aims, seemed to have a strong mutual attraction, for they were always found together, crowding upon each other in every large city.