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
When the great notes, winged like eagles, soar to the great dome of
sound, I have felt just as good as though I had a hundred million
dollars.
Do not try to divide this country into classes. The rich man that
endeavors to help his fellow-man deserves the honor and respect of the
great Republic. I have nothing against the man that got rich in the
free and open field of competition. Where they combine to rob their
fellow-men, then I want the laws enforced. That is all. Let them play
fair and they are welcome to all they get.
And why should we hate the successful? Why? We cannot all be first. The
race is a vast procession; a great many hundred millions are back of the
center, and in front there is only one human being; that is all. Shall
we wait for the other fellows to catch up? Shall the procession stop?
I say, help the fallen, assist the weak, help the poor, bind up the
wounds, but do not stop the procession.
Why should we envy the successful? Why should we hate them? And why
should we array class against class? It is all wrong. For instance, here
is a young man, and he is industrious. He is in love with a girl around
the corner. She is in his brain all day--in his heart all night, and
while he is working he is thinking. He gets a little ahead, they get
married. He is an honest man, he gets credit, and the first thing you
know he has a good business of his own and he gets rich; educates his
children, and his old age is filled with content and love. Good! His
companions bask in the sunshine of idleness. They have wasted their
time, wasted their wages in dissipation, and when the winter of life
comes, when the snow falls on the barren fields of the wasted days, then
shivering with cold, pinched with hunger, they curse the man who has
succeeded. Thereupon they all vote for Bryan.
Then there is another question, and that is whether the Government has
a right to protect itself? And that is whether the employees of railways
shall have a right to stop the trains, a right to prevent interstate
commerce, a right to burn bridges and shoot engineers? Has the United
States the right to protect commerce between the States? I say, yes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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