Chapter C: S. McAuliffe, Wisconsin (7)

The president was much impressed by the delegation and the delegation by him. The president was really addressing his own brethren, for, like themselves, he was a brotherhood man, and had the grip, sign and pass-words, all up to date; and they were all agreed that no injustice must be done the poor capitalists. The latter themselves were not in evidence. Their president and their brotherhoods would see that no harm came to them.

* * * * *

In his message to the banquet of the Order of Railway Conductors, given at Chicago on December 31, 1905, in behalf of the railroad corporations, and presided over by Major (?) B. B. Ray, paymaster, U. S. A., in recognition of his faithful services in lining up railway employes in support of the corporation ticket on election day, and as smooth a politician as ever came down the avenue—in his communication to this corporation auxiliary, regretting his inability to mingle with the railway presidents and managers who were in attendance to point around at the conductors as evidence that the working class in general, and the railway slaves in particular, were opposed to rate legislation—in his telegram of regret Vice-President Fairbanks, once himself a railroad attorney and now a magnate, said:

“The Order of Railway Conductors * * * recognizes in full degree the right of both employer and employe and understands full well that in a large sense the interests of one are the interests of the other, and that the interests of neither can be disregarded without harm to both.”

* * * * *

Precisely! “Our interests are one,” exclaimed the fox, after devouring the goose. “Same here,” answered the hawk, with the feathers of the dove still clinging to his beak. “I’m with you,” chipped in the shark; and “I congratulate you upon your wise political economy” was the amen of the lion as the lamb’s tail disappeared down the red lane.

* * * * *

Toastmaster Ray, the mortgaged major of the railroads, read another telegram of regret from President “Jim” Hill, of the Great Northern, and then President Delano, of the Wabash, was introduced and proceeded to orate on “Opposition to Railroad Rate Legislation.” The dummies are reported to have nodded in hearty approval every time he looked at them. President Delano might have stayed at home and used a string to operate his puppets.

Upon this important point of “identity of interests,” between lion and mutton, President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks and all the railroad presidents, corporations and brotherhoods are a unit.

The railroads furnish the lion and the brotherhoods the mutton.

It is upon this false basis, this vicious assumption, this fundamental lie, that the railroad brotherhoods are organized, and in that capacity they are of incalculable value to the railroads, the very bulwarks of their defense, and the sure means of keeping the great body of railway employes in economic ignorance, and, therefore, unorganized, divided and helpless.

* * * * *

Such unionism means organized strength for the railroads and organized weakness for the employes. And the latter foot the bill. No wonder their grand officers get annual passes and their delegates free trains. The stupid employes pay for them all an hundredfold.

And to what base purpose the railroad magnates put these brotherhoods to still further entrench their power and perpetuate their reign of robbery!

* * * * *

At this very moment they are using them as political pokers to stir up the fire of public sentiment against rate legislation. And the poor dupes that pay the dues don’t even know that their unions are in politics, corporation politics, the dirtiest of all politics.

On their own account the unions are forbidden to have anything to do with politics—that would fracture their delicate diaphragm—but when the corporations need them as political tools—ah, that’s different; that’s what they are for!

Cannot you hoodwinked railway slaves begin to see something?

In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions appear at this very hour before the American people and the world.

It is a spectacle for the gods, and future generations will marvel that such an exhibition of servility was possible in the twentieth century.

* * * * *

Union workingmen, rallying round the robbers of the working class, and defending them against their own people!

It is true that there is nothing in rate legislation for the workingman, but the incident loses none of its significance on that account.

The free use of the brotherhoods by and for the corporations, at election time, when the legislature meets, when congress is in session, whenever and wherever required—that is the point.

How smoothly this emergency appliance works!

* * * * *

The corporations sniff danger; they send for their officials—the officials for the “grand chiefs” of the brotherhoods—the “grand chiefs” for their decoy ducks, and presto! a joint committee—and it is a “joint” committee—serves notice on the president and the country that the million and more railway employes want no interference with the divine right of the railroad robbers to hold up the people.

Then another set of political tools of the same robbers take their cue and bound to their feet in the capitalist congress and in a serio-comic burst of paid-for passion, exclaim: “Don’t you see, gentlemen, that organized labor, the horny-handed nobility of the land, the muscle and sinew, the very backbone of the nation, recognizes this measure as a menace to its “full dinner pail” and interposes its righteous indignation! Gentlemen, we dare not make such an assault upon the dignity, the sacred rights, aye, the very life of honest toil!”

* * * * *

That settles it! The trick is done. The Goulds, Vanderbilts and Harrimans are on top, their slaves at the bottom, and their “identity of interests” is once more triumphantly vindicated.

* * * * *

I purpose now to deal briefly with that ghastly lie itself.

In what way, Mr. Railroad Slave, is your interest identical with that of “Jim” Hill, your master?

He owns the railway system that you workingmen built and now operate.

He pulls every dollar of profit out of it for himself he can, and leaves you not one dollar more than he must.

* * * * *

If you don’t suit him, he discharges you, and you then have to pull up stakes and hunt another master. He gets the lion’s share, you get what’s left; and in the aggregate that is fixed by what is required to fill your dinner pail, cover you with overalls and maintain a habitation where you can raise more wage-slaves to take your place when you are worn out and go to the scrap heap.

The “Jim” Hills live out of your labor—out of your ignorance—for if you were not densely stupid you would not be their dumb-driven cattle.

Now they and their politicians and preachers and “labor leaders” tell you how bright and smart you are to flatter your ignorance, and keep you from opening your eyes to your slavish condition, and above all, to the wage-system, which lies at the bottom of your poverty and degradation.

Your interests as wage-slaves are not only _not_ identical with, but are directly opposed to, the interests of the “Jim” Hills and the railroad corporations, and I challenge any of your “grand chiefs” to deny it in my presence on any public platform.

You have got to get rid of the capitalist leeches that suck your hearts’ blood through the quill of “identity of interests.”

They are in the capitalist class; you are in the working class. They gouge out profits; what’s left you get for wages. They perform no useful work; you deform your bodies with slavery. They are millionaires; you are paupers. They have everything; you do everything. They live in palaces; you in shanties. They have abundance of leisure and mountains of money; you have neither. Finally, they are few; _you are legions_!

Poor, dumb giant, you could in a breath extinguish your pigmy exploiter, were you only conscious of your overmastering power!

The workers made and operate all the railroads; the capitalists had and have nothing to do with either. They pocket the proceeds on a basis of watered stock and other “stock,” in the form of employes, and then issue fraudulent reports to show on what a small margin of profit they are actually doing business.

In this connection it should be said that the railroads pad their “operating expenses” outrageously to deceive their employes and the general public, and their reports can be shown to be full of duplicity and fraud. They are not required to itemize their “operating expenses” in their reports to the interstate commerce commission; this they only do in the reports of the directors to the stockholders, and an examination of these will disclose the swindle and show how much reliance can be placed in the public reports of private grafters.

* * * * *

Mr. Railway Slave, to resume our interview, you are not in the same class with the “Jim” Hills of the railroads. You don’t visit their homes; nor they at yours. You don’t ride in their private cars and yachts and automobiles. Your wives don’t wear the same kind of clothes and jewelry and move in the same circle with theirs. You don’t join them in their luxuriant travels to Europe when they are received by the crowned heads and other parasites and given a private audience by the pope. You stay at home and sweat and suffer to foot all the bills; they do all the rest.

To sum up: They are in the capitalist class; you in the working class. They are masters; you slaves. They fleece and pluck; you furnish the wool and feathers.

* * * * *

That is the basis of the class struggle.

Upon that basis you have got to organize and fight before you can move an inch toward freedom.

You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and _strike and vote together_, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.

The railroads will oppose this; they want to keep you divided and at their mercy. Your grand officers will oppose it; they want to keep you divided and continue to draw their salaries.

When you have a little time figure out the amount annually paid to the grand officers of the railway unions in salaries and expenses, and you will be amazed; you will also understand why railroad employes will never get together as long as their grand officers can prevent it.

By the way, why do you persist in calling your officers “Grand Chiefs” and “Grand Masters”? Are they “grand” because you are petty?

The working class, the rank and file, are _grander_ than all the labor leaders, good and bad, that ever lived.

A “Master” implies slaves. It is bad enough to be slaves without glorying in it. A “Master” is bad enough; a “Grand Master” is the limit, especially if the title is voluntarily conferred by the slaves.

There was a time when I did not realize this and many other things I now do. The difference is that I have learned to think and can now see these things as they are.

* * * * *

_The capitalist class! The working class! The class struggle!_ These are the supreme economic and political facts of this day and the precise terms that express them.

* * * * *

These are the grim realities in the existing capitalist system, and the sooner you drop your brotherhood toys and deal with the labor question, to which most of you are strangers, the better will it be for you.

What is the labor question?

It is the question of the working class organizing to overthrow the capitalist class, emancipating itself from wage slavery and making itself the ruling class of the world.

Can this be done?

Anything can be done by the working class.

Labor has but to awaken to its own power. Then the earth and all its fullness will be for labor. Now the exploiters of labor have it; and they must be put out of that business and into useful service.

First of all, you railroad workers, you million and almost a half of slaves, must wake up; realize that you are a part of the working class and that the whole working class must unite, close up the ranks and present a solid front, every day in the year, election day especially included.

As individual wage-slaves you are helpless and your condition hopeless. As a _class_, you are the greatest power between the earth and the stars. As a _class_, your chains turn to spider-webs and in your presence capitalists shrivel up and blow away.

The individual wage-slave must recognize the power of class unity and do all he can to bring it about.

That is what is called _class-consciousness_, in the light of which may be seen the _class struggle_ in startling vividness.

* * * * *

The class-conscious worker recognizes the necessity of organization, economic and political, and of using every weapon at his command—the strike, the boycott, the ballot and every other—to achieve his emancipation.

He, therefore, joins the union of his _class_ and the party of his _class_ and gives his time and energy to the work of educating and lining up his _class_ for the struggle of his _class_ for emancipation.

You railroad men may think you are doing this now, but you are not. You are wasting most of your time and money for that which will bring no returns.

* * * * *

Let me tell you a few things the railroad corporations and your leaders, between whom there is an “identity of interests,” are having you do to occupy your time and keep you chained to the kennels of your masters.

_First_—They have you divided into petty groups, each trying to be it, and not one having any real power for working class good.

_Second_—They have you quarreling about jurisdiction and about an “open door,” and the corporations smile serenely while you play with these toys.

Your jurisdiction squabbles never will be settled, but grow worse. At places the B. L. E. and B. L. F. are at swords’ points, and the O. R. C. and B. R. T. are ready to fly at each others’ throats; and so intense is the petty craft jealousy that they are ready to scab on one another.

And if they ever go out on strike, particularly the B. L. E., their own former members, victimized by them, will rise up to smite them.

The other day I met a man who had an official position that paid him $5,000.00 a year. Said he to me: “I will quit this job for but one thing, and that will be to take an engine when the B. L. E. go out on strike.” He used to be a member.

There are any number of men scattered over the country—most of them its own former members—waiting for the B. L. E. to strike, and the day is not distant when that union will reap the harvest it has sown.

_Third_—You are kept apart from other workers, for it would be dangerous if you affiliated with them and got an idea above the round-house or caboose or cab you work in. Besides, you might get class-conscious and that would endanger your slavery.

_Fourth_—You spend hours in the lodge room, “riding the goat,” getting the secret work “down fine,” giving “passwords” and “signs,” and unpacking job-lots of “secret work” that any railroad official in the country can have any day he wants it.

These are but bibs and rattles for mental babies, and the more time you amuse yourselves with them the less danger there is of your thinking about anything that will break your chains and set you free.

These are a few of the things; I have not space for more. The hundreds of columns of stale stuff rehashed for years in your journals that might be called goose gossip would, perhaps, be excusable in the official organ of some feeble-minded asylum, but it is woefully out of place in a working class publication.

Now let me say a few more things—and space will allow only a few of the many that might be put down—that you may think about at your leisure.

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers is forty-two years old and has never won a strike of any consequence in all its career.

It is called a success because the corporations make some concessions to it so as to use it as a battering ram against other employes in the service; and this is substantially true of all the “brotherhoods.”

* * * * *

Then, again, the brotherhoods are used against each other.

The union switchmen on the Denver and Rio Grande, at Pittsburg and other places; the engineers on the C., B. & Q.; the telegraph operators on the A. & P., M., K. & T., Great Northern and Northern Pacific; and the machinists on the Santa Fe are but a few of the long list of victims of the “dog-eat-dog” unionism, a quarter of a century behind the times.

But the grand officers of the several unions attend one another’s conventions and join in solemn chorus in telling the delegates of each other’s union what wise grand officers they have, how kind the corporations are to them, and how proud they ought to be of their noble brotherhoods.

In the next few years locomotive engineers will become motormen and firemen will disappear. It is safe to say that in another twenty years locomotive firemen will be practically of the past. They can then cling to their last straw—their insurance policy—and that is the main thing that holds them together today. But for that they would soon cave in, and that is true of them all. They are then, primarily, coffin clubs and not labor unions. They care for the sick and bury the dead—a good thing, incidentally, for the corporations. To get the full benefits, it is necessary to be maimed or killed.

* * * * *

It is well to bury the dead, but the living are infinitely more important.

One effective blow to break the chains of wage slavery is better than a century of attention to dead bodies.

Class-consciousness is better than corpse-consciousness.

* * * * *

A good deal more that should be said must be omitted for the want of time and space.

It is my hope that the facts here presented may lead the railroad workers to study the real labor question. A few of them only know what Socialism is, and they are Socialists. The rest are opposed to it because the little they know about it is not true.

* * * * *

No honest workingman understands Socialism without embracing it.

* * * * *

The railroad workers, if they want their eyes opened, must read class struggle literature.

The Appeal to Reason, with a circulation of over three hundred thousand copies, can be obtained for a trifle—fifty cents for a whole year—and if they can’t afford that, they can send ten cents for a trial subscription.

They cannot afford to remain in ignorance of the class struggle, or of what Socialism really means.

* * * * *

A mighty social revolution is impending—it is shaking the earth from center to circumference, and only the dead may be deaf to its rumblings.

Revolutionary education and organization is the vital need of the working class.

Let every railroad employe who is alive enough to want to know how the working class can emancipate the working class and walk the earth free, and enjoy all its manifold blessings, subscribe for a revolutionary paper and read it for a year; and he will then find himself with the rest of us, in class-conscious array, in the struggle for freedom.

The Appeal to Reason, already suggested, will make an excellent beginning. There is a long list of other papers and magazines that can be read with profit.

Drop a card to J. Mahlon Barnes, National Secretary Socialist party, 180 E. Washington street, Chicago, asking him to send you printed matter in regard to this working class party, and also to send you a list of Socialist papers and magazines, and a catalog of working class books and pamphlets.

* * * * *

Great is the privilege we enjoy in being permitted to take part in this mighty historic struggle.

The base and cowardly will sneer and sneak to the rear, but the brave and true, though hell itself gape, will do battle with all the blood in their veins, and write their names in living letters on the shining scroll of LABOR’S EMANCIPATION.

The Growth of Socialism

_Written for Success Magazine_

_The article being reduced and some vital passages omitted, on account
of space limitations, it was reproduced in its complete form in the
Appeal to Reason, March 17, 1906._

Not many of those schooled in old-party politics have any adequate conception of the true import of the labor movement. They read of it in the papers, discuss it in their clubs, criticise labor unions, condemn walking delegates, and finally conclude that organized labor is a thing to be tolerated so long, only, as it keeps within “proper bounds,” but to be put down summarily the moment its members, like the remnants of Indian tribes on the western plains, venture beyond the limits of their reservations. They utterly fail or refuse to see the connection between labor and politics, and are, therefore, woefully ignorant of the political significance of the labor movement of the present day.

It is true that in all the centuries of the past labor has been “put down” when it has sought some modicum of its own, or when it has even yearned for some slight amelioration of its wretched condition, as witness the merciless massacre of the half-famished and despairing subjects of the Russian czar, a few months ago, for daring to hope that their humble petition for a few paltry concessions might be received and considered by his mailed and heartless majesty.

It is likewise true, that, in the present day, and in the United States, all the powers of government stand ready to “put down” the working class whenever it may be deemed necessary in the interest of its industrial masters.

All great strikes prove that the government is under the control of corporate capital and that the army of office-holders is as subservient to the capitalist masters as is the army of wage-workers that depends upon them for employment.

But, true as these things are, it is not true that labor is ignorant of them, nor is it true that such conditions will continue forever.

The labor movement has advanced with rapid strides, during the last few years, and is, today, the most formidable factor in quickening the social conscience and in regenerating the human race. It is not the millions that are enrolled as members of labor unions that give power and promise to this world movement, but the thousands, rather, that are not trade-unionists merely, but working class unionists as well; that is to say, working men and women who recognize the identity of the industrial and political interests of the whole working class; or, in other words, are conscious of their class interests and are bending all the powers of their minds and bodies, spurred by the zeal that springs from comradeship in a common cause, to effect the economic and political solidarity of the whole mass of labor, irrespective of race, creed or sex.

These class-conscious workers—these Socialists—realize the fact that the labor question, in its full and vital sense, is also a political question, and that the working class must be taught to extend the principle of unionism to the political field, and there organize on the basis of their economic class interests; and, although they are engaged in a herculean task, the forces of industrial evolution and social progress are back of them, and all the powers of reaction cannot prevail against them.

The labor movement has had to fight its way, inch by inch, from its inception to its present position, and to this very fact is due the revolutionary spirit, indomitable will, and unconquerable fiber it has developed, and which alone fit it for its mighty historic mission.

In the beginning the workers organized in their respective trades simply to improve working conditions. They had no thought of united political action. The employing class at once combined to defeat every attempt at organization on the part of its employes; but, notwithstanding this opposition, the trade union, which had become an economic necessity, grew steadily until at last the employers were compelled to recognize and deal with it. Being unable to destroy it, they next proceeded to control its operations by confining it to its narrowest possible limitations, thus reducing it to inefficiency—from a menace to a convenience.

The late Marcus A. Hanna crushed the trade union with an iron boot in the beginning of his career as a capitalist. In his maturer years he became its patron saint. He did not change in spirit, but in wisdom. What is true of Mr. Hanna is true of the principal members of the Civic Federation, that economic peace congress conceived by far-sighted capitalists, sanctified by plutocratic prelates, and presided over by a gentleman who, but a few months ago, engaged James Farley and his army of five thousand professional strike-breakers to defeat the demands and destroy the unions of his New York subway employes.

A new unionism has struggled into existence, and the coming year will witness some tremendous changes. The old forms cramp and fetter the new forces. As these new forces develop, the old forms must yield and finally give way to transformation.

The old unionism, under the inspiration of a Civic Federation banquet, exclaims jubilantly: “The interests of labor and capital are identical. Hallelujah!”

To this stimulating sentiment the whole body of exploiting capitalists give hearty assent; all its politicians, parsons, and writers join in enthusiastic approval; and woe be to the few clear, calm, and candid protestants who deny it. Their very loyalty becomes treason, and the working class they seek to serve is warned against them, while the false leaders are loaded with fulsome adulation.

But, nevertheless, the clear voice of the awakened and dauntless few cannot be silenced. The new unionism is being heard. In trumpet tones it rings out its revolutionary shibboleth to all the workers of the earth: Our interests are identical—let us combine, industrially and politically, assert our united power, achieve our freedom, enjoy the fruit of our labor, rid society of parasitism, abolish poverty, and civilize the world!

The old unionism, living in the dead past, still affirms that the interests of labor and capital are identical.

The new unionism, vitalized and clarified by the living present, exclaims: We know better; capitalists and wageworkers have antagonistic economic interests; capitalists buy and workers sell labor power, the one as cheaply and the other as dearly as possible; they are locked in a life-and-death class-struggle; there can be no identity of interests between masters and slaves—between exploiters and exploited—and there can be no peace until the working class is triumphant in this struggle and the wage system is forever wiped from the earth.

The months immediately before us will witness a mighty mustering of the working class, on the basis of the class struggle, and the day is not far distant when they will be united in one vast economic organization in which all the trades will be represented, “separate as the waves, yet one as the sea,” and one great political party that stands uncompromisingly for the working class and its program of human emancipation.

In the late national election, for the first time, the hand of the working class was clearly seen.

The Socialist party is distinctively the party, and its vote is distinctively the vote, of the working class.

More than four hundred thousand of these votes were counted; probably twice as many were cast. This was but the beginning. From now on there is “a new Richmond in the field.”

There is but one issue from the standpoint of labor, and that is: Labor versus Capital. Upon that basis the political alignment of the future will have to be made. There is no escape from it.

For the present the ignorance of the workers stands in the way of their economic and political solidarity, but this can and will be overcome. In the meantime, the small capitalists and the middle class are being ground to atoms in the mill of competition. Thousands are being driven from the field entirely, beaten in the struggle, bankrupt and hopeless, to be swallowed up in the surging sea of wage-slavery; while thousands of others cling to the outer edge, straining every nerve to stem the torrent that threatens to sweep them into the abyss, their condition so precarious that they anticipate the inevitable and make common issue with the wage-workers in the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system and reconstruct society upon a new foundation of co-operative industry and the social ownership of the means of life.

Of all the silly sayings of the self-satisfied of the present day, the oft-repeated falsehood that there are “no classes” in this country takes the lead, and is often made to serve as the prelude to the preposterous warning that periodically peals from rich and sumptuous club banquets, at which the president and other patriots are guests, that “it is treason to array class against class in the United States.”

If there are no classes, how can they be arrayed against each other?

The fact is that precisely the same classes and conditions that exist in the monarchies of the old world have also developed in our capitalist republic. The working class sections, including the tenements and slums of New York and London, are strikingly similar; and the wealth-owning class of the United States represents as distinct an aristocracy as England can boast, while the laboring elements of both countries are distinctively in the “lower class” by themselves and practically on the same degraded level.

Deny it as may the retainers of the rich, the classes already exist; they are here, and no amount of sophistication can remove them, nor the chasm that divides them. The rare and exceptional wage-worker who escapes from wage-slavery simply proves the rule and emphasizes the doom of his class in capitalist society.

The existing classes and the struggle going on between them are not due to the mischievous influence of labor agitators, as certain politicians and priests, the emissaries of the “rich and respectable,” would have it appear.

The long swell of the wave but expresses the agitation of the deep.

The agitator is the product of unrest—his is the voice of the social deep; and, though he may be reviled as a demagogue who preys upon the ignorance of his fellows, the unrest continues and the agitation increases until the cause of it is removed and justice is done.

Classes and class rule and their attendant progress and poverty, money and misery, turmoil and strife, are inherent in the capitalist system. Why? Simply because one set of men owns the tools with which wealth is produced, while another set uses them, and there is an irrepressible conflict over the division of the product.

The capitalist owns the tools he does not use; the worker uses the tools he does not own.

The principal tools of production and distribution in the United States—mammoth machines, complex social instruments, made and used co-operatively by millions of workingmen, their very lives, their wives and babes being dependent upon them—are the private property of a few hundred capitalists, and are operated purely to make profits for these capitalists, regardless of the poverty and wretchedness that ensue to the masses.

In virtue of the individual ownership of the social instruments of production, one capitalist may exploit the labor of a million workingmen and become a billionaire, while the million workers struggle through life in penury and want, to a bleak and barren old age, to find rest at last in the pauper asylum, the morgue and the potter’s field.

This vast and resourceful country should be free from the scourge of poverty and the blight of ignorance; but it never will be until the private ownership of the means of sustaining life is abolished and society is organized on the basis of social ownership of the social means of wealth production and the inalienable right of all to work and to produce freely to satisfy their physical needs and material wants. It is for this great organic change, this world-wide social revolution, that the Socialists of all countries are organizing, that it may be intelligently guided, and come, if possible, in peace and order when the people and conditions have been prepared for it.

The present order of society is developing all the symptoms of degeneracy and dissolution. Only the individualist self-seekers and their mercenaries—they who believe in making the animal struggle for existence perpetual, in climbing to the top over the corpses of their fellows—only they are satisfied, or would appear to be, and expatiate upon our marvelous prosperity, and the incomparable glory of our “free institutions.”

The man who can look upon New York or Chicago, today, and utter such sentiments should blush for his perverted sense of justice, to say nothing of his total lack of humanity.

Many thousands of men, women and children suffer for food and shiver in the cold in these typical capitalist cities, while the beef trust is crammed to bursting and the cotton kings of the South burn cotton to keep up prices.

Has the world ever heard of such monstrous iniquity—such unspeakable crime? In the name of all that has heart in it not yet turned to adamant, has human life any value, even that of the lowest grade of merchandise? And is it not high time to call a halt to the ravages of capitalism and give a little thought and consideration to humanity?

Let us briefly note some of the crying evils which infest the class-ruled society of the present day. First of all, millions are poverty-stricken, the result, mainly, of no work or low wages. The great book of Robert Hunter, on “Poverty,” recently published, abounds in facts, supported by incontrovertible proofs, which silence all doubt upon this point.

In New York City, alone, fifty thousand children, when they go to school at all, go without sufficient and proper food, and one corpse in every ten is dumped into the potter’s field.

New York and Chicago are filled with unemployed and suffering, and in the country at large ten millions are in want. In the shoemaking industry, fifty-one per cent of the laborers receive less than three hundred dollars per year. In cotton spinning, the wages of thousands average from two hundred and twenty dollars to four hundred and sixty dollars per year. During the last year tens of thousands of coal miners were allowed to work but from one to three days per week. Fall River capitalists reduce wages three times in rapid succession, and lock out and starve their employes for six months, declaring that they cannot afford to pay the high price’s for cotton, while the planters of the South burn up the cotton to keep up prices rather than clothe the naked whose labor produced it.

The state of Colorado seethes with military brutality and reeks with political corruption because the mine owners are practically proprietors of the state and propose to do as they please with their own; and they who have the temerity to protest are branded outlaws and bull-penned, deported, or shot dead in their tracks.

The United States senate is dominated by the special representatives of the trusts and corporations, and several of its members are under indictment for playing the game of their masters in their own personal interests. Think of Senator Chauncey M. Depew reforming the abuses of the railroads, or Thomas C. Platt stopping the extortion of the express companies, in the interest of the people!

The Pennsylvania Railroad company dictated the recent election of the United States senator from Pennsylvania, and the most flagitious political debauchery attended the election of many others, such proceedings being regarded as so entirely in consonance with our capitalist-owned republic as to excite little more than passing notice.

Only a short time ago the late John H. Reagan, the venerable ex-senator of Texas, in discussing the federal courts, said that he expected no improvement in them “as long as railroad lawyers are allowed to go on the bench to interpret legislation affecting the management of the railroads.” As long as the railroads are privately owned they will have their judges on the bench, and the government, that is to say, the capitalist politicians, will do their bidding.

Judge Reagan closed his sweeping arraignment of the courts as follows: “I have seen such gross perversions of the law by the courts that I have lost confidence in them and regret that I cannot feel the respect for them that I once felt.”

These are ominous words and from a source that gives them the weight of high authority.

Census figures recently published show that “every fifth child between the ages of ten and fifteen in the United States is a breadwinner. One out of every three of these children workers is a girl. There are one million seven hundred and fifty thousand one hundred and seventy-eight children employed, an increase of thirty-three and one-third per cent in ten years.”

The land frauds, postal steals, and Indian graft all cry out in condemnation of private ownership of capital, the source and inspiration of all the political corruption that, like a pestilence, blights the land.

Charles F. Kelly, speaker of the house of delegates, at St. Louis, the convicted boodler, in making his confession, described in a few graphic words the methods and motives of office-holders and politicians in the grab-all regime of profitocracy. Said he: “Our combine was not along party lines. Both democrats and republicans belonged to it. My experience has been that boodlers line up according to their own interests, and not under party standards. In the majority of the wards of St. Louis both the democratic party and the republican usually nominate men to go to the house of delegates for the money they can get out of it. Each party man votes for his own fellows, and either one that gets in serves those who rob the city of franchises.”

Be it noted that the corrupters of courts, the bribers of legislators, and the debauchers of public morals are all capitalists in high standing, the gentry whose subservient and hypocritical underlings are forever preaching about “law and order” to the working class.

In the face of these frightful eruptions on the body-politic, President Roosevelt coolly informs us that we are passing through a period of “noteworthy prosperity,” and that “we must raise still higher our standard of commercial ethics, and we must insist more and more upon those fundamental principles of our country—equality before the law and obedience to the law. _In no other way can the advance of Socialism, whether evolutionary or revolutionary, be checked._”

The words “still higher” seem like sarcasm when applied to our so-called “standard of commercial ethics,” that is mired in profit-mongering and can never rise above the sordid level of brutal self-interest in the declining stages of the competitive system.

The commercial pirates who rob the nation of its franchises and organize monopolies to exploit the people are not in the business of raising the standards of ethics, commercial or otherwise. The only ethics they know is to “get there”; the end always justifying the means.

Just at present President Roosevelt, typical capitalist executive that he is, is after the railroads—so we are told. His organs assure us that he proposes to bring these great corporations to their knees, and make them obey the law and stop robbing the people. And yet President Roosevelt has had one of these criminal offenders in his own cabinet.

It is known of all men that Paul Morton, late secretary of the navy, is a self-confessed lawbreaker, who would now be serving a prison sentence if the law in his case had been enforced.

Then, again, can President Roosevelt consistently crack the whip above the heads of these corporations after sharing in the special privileges they enjoy at the expense of the people? In making his political campaigns, and on other occasions since he has become a commanding figure in national politics, the railroad corporations have provided Mr. Roosevelt with the most luxurious special trains, sumptuously furnished and abundantly stocked, _free of charge_. The thousands of dollars of expense thus incurred by the railroad corporations could not have been without some consideration, and, whatever that may be, it is not calculated to inspire self-respecting and candid men who think for themselves with faith in the sincerity of the president when he vaults into the arena to do battle against the railroads as the champion of the people.

It is not to reform the evils of the day but to abolish the social system that produces them that the Socialist party is organized. It is the party not of reform but of revolution, knowing that the capitalist system has had its day and that a new social order, based upon a new system of industry, must soon supplant the fast decaying one we now have.

Every social system changes ceaselessly, and, ultimately, having fulfilled its mission, passes away.

Capitalism is the connecting link between feudalism and Socialism.

The industrial forces are now making for Socialism, preparing the way for it, and sooner or later it is sure to come.

On the one hand the capitalist class are combining their resources, centralizing their capital, co-operating instead of competing, organizing industry, and eliminating competition. This is the new and better way. It is good as far as it goes. It is the limited application of the economic principles of Socialism.

On the other hand, the working class are organizing. They are beginning to spell solidarity and to pronounce Socialism. They are yearning for emancipation from the galling yoke of wage-slavery, and with all the power of their minds, all the strength of their bodies and all the passion of their souls they are crusading against the ignorance of their fellow-workers and the prejudice of the people.

Steadily the number of class-conscious toilers is increasing, and higher and higher rises the tide that is to sweep away the barriers to progress and civilization.

Let others talk about the tariff and finance—the enlightened workers demand the ownership of the tools of industry and they are building up the Socialist party as a means of getting them.

_The working class alone made the tools; the working class alone can use them, and the working class must, therefore, own them._

This is the revolutionary demand of the Socialist movement. The propaganda is one of education and is perfectly orderly and peaceable. The workers must be taught to unite and vote together _as a class_ in support of the Socialist party, the party that represents them as a class, and when they do this the government will pass into their hands and capitalism will fall to rise no more; private ownership will give way to social ownership, and production for profit to production for use; the wagesystem will disappear, and with it the ignorance and poverty, misery and crime that wage-slavery breeds; the working class will stand forth triumphant and free, and a new era will dawn in human progress and in the civilization of mankind.

An Ideal Labor Press

_The Metal Worker, May, 1904_

The prime consideration in the present industrial system is profit. All other things are secondary. Profit is the life blood of capital—the vital current of the capitalist system, and when it shall cease to flow the system will be dead.

The capitalist is the owner of the worker’s tools. Before the latter can work he must have access to the capitalist’s toolhouse and permission to use the master’s tools. What he produces with these tools belongs to the master, to whom he must sell his labor power at the market price. The owner of the tools is therefore master of the man.

Only when the capitalist can exact a satisfactory profit from his labor power is the worker given a job, or allowed to work at all.

Profit first; labor, life, love, liberty—all these must take second place.

In such a system labor is in chains, and the standard of living, if such it may be called, is corner-stoned in crusts and rags.

Under such conditions ideas and ideals are not prolific among the sons and daughters of toil.

Slavery does not excite lofty aspirations nor inspire noble ideals.

The tendency is to sodden irresolution and brutish inertia.

But this very tendency nourishes the germ of resistance that ripens into the spirit of revolt.

The labor movement is the child of slavery—the offspring of oppression—in revolt against the misery and suffering that gave it birth.

Its splendid growth is the marvel of our time, the forerunner of freedom, the hope of mankind.

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but, notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as the setting of the sun.

The most vital thing about this world movement is its educational propaganda—its capacity and power to shed light in the brain of the working class, arouse them from their torpor, develop their faculties for thinking, teach them their economic class interests, effect their solidarity, and imbue them with the spirit of the impending social revolution.

In this propaganda the life-breath of the movement, the press, is paramount to all other agencies and influences, and the progress of the press is a sure index of the progress of the movement.

Unfortunately, the workers lack intelligent appreciation of the importance of the press; they also lack judgment and discrimination in dealing with the subject, and utterly neglect some good papers, and permit them to perish, while others that are anything but helpful or beneficial to the cause they are supposed to represent are liberally patronized and flourish in the ignorance and stupidity which support them.

The material prosperity of a labor paper of today is no guarantee of its moral or intellectual value. Indeed, some of the most worthless labor publications have the finest mechanical appearance, and are supported by the largest circulations.

Such a press is not only not a help to labor but a millstone about its neck, that only the awakening intelligence of the working class can remove.

How thoroughly alive the capitalists are to the power of the press! And how assiduously they develop and support it that it may in turn buttress their class interests!

The press is one of their most valuable assets, and, as an investment, pays the highest dividends.

When there is trouble between capital and labor the press volleys and thunders against labor and its unions and leaders and all other things that dare to breathe against the sacred rights of capital. In such a contest labor is dumb, speechless; it has no press that reaches the public, and must submit to the vilest calumny, the most outrageous misrepresentation.

The lesson has been taught in all the languages of labor and written in the blood of its countless martyred victims.

Labor must have a press as formidable as the great movement of the working class requires, to worthily represent its dignity and fearlessly and uncompromisingly advocate its principles.

Every member of a trade union should feel himself obligated to do his full share in the important work of building up the press of the labor movement; he should at least support the paper of his union, and one or more of the papers of his party, and, above all, he should read them and school himself in the art of intelligent criticism, and let the editor hear from him when he has a criticism to offer or a suggestion to make.

The expense of supporting the labor press is but a trifle to the individual member—less than the daily outlay for other trifles that are of no benefit, and can easily be dispensed with.

The editor of a labor paper is of far more importance to the union and the movement than the president or any other officer of the union. He ought to be chosen with special reference to his knowledge upon the labor question and his fitness to advocate and defend the economic interests of the class he represents.

The vast amount of capitalist advertising some labor publications carry certifies unerringly to the worthlessness of their literary contents. Capitalists do not, as a rule, advertise in labor papers that are loyal to working class interests. It is only on condition that the advertising colors and controls the editorial that the capitalist generously allows his patronage to go to the labor paper.

The workingman who wants to read a labor paper with the true ring, one that ably, honestly and fearlessly speaks for the working class, will find it safe to steer clear of those that are loaded with capitalist advertising and make his selection from those that are nearly or quite boycotted by the class that live and thrive upon the slavery and degradation of the working class.

The labor press of today is not ideal, but it is improving steadily, and the time will come when the ideal labor press will be realized; when the labor movement will command editors, writers, journalists, artists of the first class; when hundreds of papers, including dailies in the large cities, will gather the news and discuss it from the labor standpoint; when illustrated magazines and periodicals will illuminate the literature of labor and all will combine to realize our ideal labor press and blaze the way to victory.

[8]Childhood

_Appeal to Reason_

What sweet emotions the recollections of childhood inspires, and how priceless its treasured memories in our advancing and declining years!

Laughing eyes and curly hair, little brown hands and bare feet, innocent and care-free, trusting and loving, tender and pure, what an elevating and satisfying influence these little gods have upon our maturer years!

Childhood! What a holy theme! Flowers they are, with souls in them, and if on this earth man has a sacred charge, a holy obligation, it is to these tender buds and blossoms of humanity.

Yet how many of them are prematurely plucked, fade and die and are trampled in the mire. Many millions of them have been snatched from the cradle and stolen from their play to be fed to the forces that turn a workingman’s blood into a capitalist’s gold, and many millions of others have been crushed and perverted into filth for the slums and food for the potter’s field.

Childhood is at the parting of the ways which lead to success or failure, honor or disgrace, life or death. Society is, or ought to be, profoundly concerned in the nature of the environment that is to mold the character and determine the career of its children, and any remissness in such duty is rebuked by the most painful of penalties, and these are inflicted with increasing severity upon the people of the United States.

Childhood is the most precious charge of the family and the community, but our capitalist civilization sacrifices it ruthlessly to gratify its brutal lust for pelf and power, and the march of its conquest is stained with the blood of infants and paved with the puny bones of children.

What shall the harvest be?

The millions of children crushed and slain in the conquest of capitalism have not died in vain. From their little martyr graves all over this fair land their avenging images are springing up, as it were, against the system that murdered them and pronouncing upon it, in the name of God and humanity, the condemnation of death.

The Crimson Standard

_Appeal to Reason_

A vast amount of ignorant prejudice prevails against the red flag. It is easily accounted for. The ruling class the wide world over hates it, and its sycophants, therefore, must decry it.

Strange that the red flag should produce the same effect upon a tyrant that it does upon a bull.

The bull is enraged at the very sight of the red flag, his huge frame quivers, his eyes become balls of fire, and he paws the dirt and snorts with fury.