Leland Stanford
Leland Stanford
Amasa Leland Stanfordwas an American tycoon, industrialist, politician, and a co-founderof Stanford University. Migrating to California from New York at the time of the Gold Rush, he became a successful merchant and wholesaler, and continued to build his business empire. He served one two-year term as governor of California after his election in 1861, and later eight years as senator from the state. As president of Southern Pacific Railroad and, beginning in 1861, Central Pacific, he had tremendous power in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth9 March 1824
CityWatervilet, NY
CountryUnited States of America
A co-operative association designed to furnish labor for farming operations is clearly within the realm of practical achievement.
I want, in this school, that one sex shall have equal advantage with the other, and I want particularly that females shall have open to them every employment suitable to their sex.
We deem it of the first importance that the education of both sexes shall be equally full and complete, varied only as nature dictates.
The only distribution of wealth which is the product of labor, which will be honest, will come through a more equal distribution of the productive capacity of men.
It is probable that for a long time to come the mass of mankind in civilized countries will find it both necessary and advantageous to labor for wages, and to accept the condition of hired laborers.
I never saw a woman to come into one of our mining camps in California but her mere presence effected a change in the conduct of all the men there.
In a very alert and bright state of society people learn co-operation by themselves, but in older and quieter conditions of laboring enterprise, such a bill as I propose will point out the way to mutual exertion.
In a condition of society and under an industrial organization which places labor completely at the mercy of capital, the accumulations of capital will necessarily be rapid, and an unequal distribution of wealth is at once to be observed.
The employer class is less indispensable in the modern organization of industries because the laboring men themselves possess sufficient intelligence to organize into co-operative relation and enjoy the entire benefits of their own labor.
Each co-operative institution will become a school of business in which each member will acquire a knowledge of the laws of trade and commerce.
The great advantage to labor arising out of co-operative effort has been apparent to me for many years.
The rights of one sex, political and otherwise, are the same as those of the other sex, and this equality of rights ought to be fully recognized.
The seeming antagonism between capital and labor is the result of deceptive appearance.
Every thoughtful and kind-hearted person must regard with interest any device or plan which promises to enable at least the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined part of those who are not capitalists to cease to labor for hire.