The question of Labor and Capital, as was said before, is included in the greater and more important question of a Common Equality, or an equality which is predicated upon the fact that all mankind are brethren.
Victoria C. Woodhull
The Public Record
Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin, was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for president of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians and authors agree that Woodhull was the first woman to run for the presidency, some disagree with classifying it as a true candidacy because according to the Constitution she would have been too young to be president if elected.
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The great object of a republican form of government is to arrive at that condition wherein all the people constituting its citizens will stand upon a perfect equality in all things, which can be effected by government.
Whether this policy is immediately adopted by government or not, it certainly will be, when the rapidly increasing West shall become the dominant power in it.
The farmers of the rich Western prairies would no longer be able to complain of the discrimination of government in favor of the cotton, woolen and iron manufacturers of the sterile East.
No immediate jump—nor even rapid advance that would produce misfortune to any branch of industry, should it be attempted—but an approach, running through a sufficient number of years to allow of the adjustment of industries, should be the…
What should be done is this: Unrestricted commerce, which would allow of the natural demands of a country being supplied, without restrictions of any kind, should be laid down as the true principle, and a gradual approach from present…
This would be as grossly unjust to all these interests which have been encouraged into existence by the present system, as that of protection was to the common industries.
Such is the general argument against protective duties; but it does not by any means follow that all protection should be immediately abandoned and Free Trade become at once and fully inaugurated.
The laboring classes of the country are not so well off under the present system of high prices as they were before the war, which indicates that the advance in wages has been more than counterbalanced by the increase in the prices of the…
It enables the few to pursue callings at the expense of the many without returning to that many any adequate benefit.
The result is, that all purchasers of vegetables in the city are forced to pay the additional cost merely to enable a few insignificant persons to pursue a calling which they would otherwise abandon for some other which they could pursue…
The moment a law is made to assist an individual, or any number of individuals, in the performance of his or their undertaking, that moment equality on the part of all other citizens ceases.