"Fellow-Countrymen,--There is not recorded an era in the history of our country, nor, indeed, in the history of all nations, when the great subject of the natural and social rights of those who live by means of their labour was required to be so thoughtfully considered, so clearly explained, and so zealously and faithfully supported, as the present era."
It afterwards goes on to treat the question of cheapness thus:--
"We have it announced to us that it is under the operation of unregulated, stimulated, and universal competition, we are henceforth to live.
"Cheapness is proclaimed to be the one great and desirable attainment. But the cheapness that is attained under this system is not the result of fair and distributory abundance--being mainly acquired by diminishing the enjoyments, or the consumption, of those by whose labour productions are derived, and by that economy of labour by which, in so many instances, the labourer is cast off altogether from employment, because a cheaper, that is, a less consuming instrument than his body, is invented and applied. The labour of the working man thus becomes a superfluous commodity in the market, so that he must either be an outcast altogether from society, or else find some way of doing more work for less of materials of consumption; and even then, if he should succeed in this course of realising cheapness, he becomes instrumental in bringing many others of his fellow-labourers down to the same degraded level to which he is reduced. (Loud cheers.)