The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 4, January, 1885. Various
in his factories he enjoys an unbounded popularity. This is but natural, since he is himself a skilled artisan, an inventive and ingenious mechanic, familiar through a personal experience with every detail of the work in which they are engaged. This, coupled with his native kindness of heart, and his unpretentious manners, makes him the model employer.
The custodian of great wealth, he uses it in a spirit of wise benevolence, and his public and private benefactions, while large, are made without ostentation or affectation. Affable, approachable, companionable, devoted and faithful in his personal friendships, it is little wonder that some of them now and then impulsively speak of him as "the best man in the world."
In the full vigor of a robust manhood, Mr. Ames attends to his vast private business affairs, performs faithfully his official and public duties, finds time for his favorite authors, and keeps fully abreast with current thought and the progress of the age. His brow is yet unwrinkled and cares rest lightly upon him. Free from the pride of wealth, temperate, conservative, clear-headed, and distinguished for his strong common sense, his generous, unsuspicious nature, and unswerving fidelity to the interests committed to his trust justly win for him a multitude of friends.
Faithful in his devotion to the principles of the Republican party, and in his services to his native Commonwealth, Massachusetts has reason for a just pride in her Lieutenant Governor. His name may yet stand the Republican party of the State in good stead in a political exigency not unlikely to arise in the near future. Whatever may be said of the causes of the defection from the Republican ranks which took place in the last national campaign, there is no doubt about one of its results,—it has driven the Republican party to seek a closer alliance with the working-people of the Commonwealth. The Republican bolters were almost exclusively drawn from the aristocratic end of the party. It was Harvard and Beacon Hill that revolted. To make good the loss the Republican leaders had to appeal for support to the same class of voters which gave to Republican principles their first triumphs,—the intelligent mechanics and artisans, the laboring men. However many or few of the deserters of 1884 may re-join the standard now that Mr. Blaine is defeated it is not likely that for many years to come, if ever, the Republican party in Massachusetts will be able, to lean upon the immense majorities of former years, that ran away up to sixty, seventy, and eighty thousand. With a Democratic administration installed at Washington, and the power and prestige which that fact will imply and apply in the local politics of the States,—and in no State more powerfully than in Massachusetts, where the shifting body of Independent voters, so-called, is largely made up of the Hessian element that will incline to whichever side has spoils to bestow,—the Republican party in order to hold Massachusetts will have to cultivate and strengthen the alliance which it formed in the late election with the laboring class of voters. It will have to revert to the sympathetic and liberal policy touching all questions that affect labor, and the welfare of the working people of the State, which marked the earlier years of its power. The Ames family is linked in the popular mind with that policy. And justly so, too! Oakes Ames was a true friend to labor, as well as one of the most practical; and the fine instinct which guided him in making of North Easton a model industrial community, where the happiest relations of mutual confidence and support have subsisted between employer and employed, he bequeathed to his sons, and to Oliver in an especial and marked degree. It has been said, and there is no element of exaggeration in the statement, that if all our large capitalists and manufacturers could succeed in establishing the same rapport between themselves and their employes which the Ameses have always maintained at North Easton, the vexed problem of capital and labor would be solved; for there would be no more conflict between them. Oliver Ames is held in the same high esteem and almost affectionate regard by the working people of the Old Colony district, where the interests of the Ames Manufacturing Company are centred, in which his honored father was held before him. As the father so the sons! When the time comes, and it is not far off, that the Republican party in Massachusetts shall feel the necessity of getting nearer to her common people, and, in order to retain its supremacy in the State, of offering to their suffrages a man whose whole life has been spent in close and friendly relations with her working-men, it will be strangely blind indeed, to its opportunity, if it shall not turn to the present popular Lieutenant Governor, and present the name of Oliver Ames as one well fitted to lead the revival of Republicanism among the working-classes, and certain, if presented to them, to be endorsed by a splendid majority for the first office in the popular gift.
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