The World for its Builders.

With the following earnest and eloquent words John Swinton introduced an oration delivered by him on the evening of March 16 before the largest audience of working-people ever gathered in Philadelphia:

This is a new idea, these great conferences of world-builders in the chief cities of the country to examine the groundwork of things. It is a genuine democratic idea, worthy of the American people.

Outside of political parties, beyond the control of party leaders, looking to other ends than those pursued by the cormorants of office are the men of the new movement. I have observed, in these great conferences at which I have been present in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, as well as here in Philadelphia, a readiness to take hold of questions from which the pusillanimous parties shrink, but which are advancing inexorably to the front, and which must be grappled with if we are not to succumb to their menaces and dangers.

It is not with foolish audacity, but with due regard to the public safety and welfare, that we confront these great questions — that we demand a hearing for the millions against the millionaires, for man against parties, and establishments, and vested privileges, and corporations, and courts, and customs, and cannon, and capital,— against the false system of land, holding, the wrongful features of trade, the crashing contrivances of legislation, and the ruinous practices of society.

It is not with malice or levity, but with serious mind and purpose, that we approach the fundamental principles that must be properly solved, under penalty of death. We know the powers that are defying the people,— their might and insolence. We behold their ravages and their victims. We can see into what a state they are bringing our beloved country. It is too grave for bitterness, too alarming for charlatanry.

The world-builders, the men who do the world’s work, have a right to take up these questions, and they have the power to settle them. This is the feature of our Democratic-Republican Constitution,— the one about which flourishes all our cheer for the future. To you, men of Pennsylvania, all power is given over all things within your dominion, and yon can fashion everything here according to your judgment of the proper nature of things. Yours is the land of the State, if ye do but know it; yours are its mines of coal and iron, if ye do but take them; yours are all its swelling resources as soon as ye assert your right to them; yours are its institutions, yours its laws and legislature, if ye will but lay hold of them.

The world belongs to its builders. and theirs is the loss if they permit the plunderers to seize it, or the gamblers to cheat them out of it.