care of capital, when fertile Southern lands are a wilderness for want of this harmony between it and capital, has concluded that the old battle between rich and poor was a folly.  The obscure hamlets of New England, which have within thirty years become beautiful towns, with lyceums, libraries, and schools, are the most striking examples on earth of the arrant folly of this gabble of ‘capital as opposed to labor.’  In the South, however, the old theory is held as firmly as in the days when John Randolph prophesied Northern insurrections of starving factory-slaves against manufacturing lords, and—­as President Lincoln recently intimated in his Message—­the effort is there being made to formally enslave labor to capital.  That is to say, the South not only adheres to the obsolete theory that labor is a foe to capital, but proposes to subdue it to the latter.  The progress of free labor in the North is, however, a constantly increasing proof that labor is capital.

Let the reader carefully digest this statement, and regard it not as an abstraction of political economy, but as setting forth a vital truth intimately allied to our closest interests, and to a future involving the most serious emergencies.  We are at a crisis which demands a new influx of political thought and new principles.  Our Revolution, with its Constitution, was such an epoch; so too was the old strife between Federalism and Democracy, in which both sides contended for what were their rights.  Since those days we have gone further, and the present struggle, precipitated by the madness and folly of the South, sees those who understand the great and glorious question of free labor with its affinities to capital, endeavoring to prepare the way for a grand coming North American Union, in which poor and rich hand in hand shall press on, extending civilization, and crushing to the ground all obsolete demagogueism, corruption, and folly.

It is time that the word ‘radical’ were expunged from our political dictionary.  Under the old system of warfare men were regarded as being divided into the ‘poor,’ who were ‘out’ of capital, and the rich, who were ‘in.’  The progress of good, honest, unflinching labor is causing men to look higher than these old limitations.  We want no ‘outs’ or ’ins’—­in this country every man should be ‘in,’ given heart and soul to honest industry.  And no man or woman who can work is without capital, for every such person is a capital in self.  When politics are devoted, as they must be, to extending education and protecting industry, we shall hear no more of these absurd quarrels between the ‘conservative’ and ‘radical’ elements.