The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—PoliticalIngersoll, Robert Green
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The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Political
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
There is no place in the wide world where, in my judgment, labor reaps
its true reward. There never has been. But I hope the time will come
when the American laborer will not only make a living for himself, for
his wife and children, but lay aside something to keep the roof above
his head when the winter of age may come. My sympathies are all with
them, and I would rather see thousands of... '' palaces of millionaires
unroofed than to see desolation in the cabins of the poor. I know that
this world has been made beautiful by those who have labored and those
who have suffered. I know that we owe to them the conveniences of life,
and I have more conveniences, I live a more luxurious life, than any
monarch ever lived one hundred years ago. I have more conveniences than
any emperor could have purchased with the revenue of his empire one
hundred years ago. It is worth something to live in this age of the
world.
And what has made us such a great and splendid and progressive and
sensible people?
[A voice: "Free thought."]
Free thought, of course. Back of every invention is free thought. Why
does a man invent? Slavery never invents; freedom invents. A slave
working for his master tries to do the least work in the longest space
of time, but a free man, working for wife and children, tries to do the
most work in the shortest possible time. He is in love with what he is
doing, consequently his head and his hands go in partnership; muscle and
brain unite, and the result is that the head invents something to help
the hands, and out of the brain leaps an invention that makes a slave
of the forces of nature--those forces that have no backs to be whipped,
those forces that shed no tears, those forces that are destined to work
forever for the happiness of the human race.
Consequently I am for the protection of American labor, American genius,
American thought. I do not want to put our workingmen on a level with
the citizens of despotisms. Why do not the Democrats and others want the
Chinese to come here? Are they in favor of being protected? Why is it
that the Democrats and others object to penitentiary labor? I will tell
you. They say that a man in the penitentiary can produce cheaper. He has
no family to support, he has no children to look after; and they say, it
is hardly fair to make the father of a family and an honest man compete
with a criminal within the walls of a penitentiary. So they ask to be
protected.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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