Chapter II: Part 2

If one could get Mr. Carnegie into one of the works in which he is interested and stand with him in front of one of the great furnaces as it poured forth its stream of molten metal, he might say: "See! that is partly mine. It is part of my wealth!" Then, if one were to ask "But what are you going to do with that steel, Mr. Carnegie--is it useful to you?" Mr. Carnegie would laugh at the thought. He would probably reply, "No, bless your life! The steel is useless to _me_. I don't want it. But somebody else does. _It is useful to other people._"

Ask Mr. Rockefeller, "Is this oil refinery your property, Mr. Rockefeller?" and he would reply: "It is partly mine. I own a big share in it and it represents part of my wealth." Ask him next: "But, Mr. Rockefeller, what are _you_ going to do with all that oil? Surely, you cannot need so much oil for your own use?" and he, like Mr. Carnegie, would reply: "No! The oil is useless to me. I don't want it. But somebody else does. _It is useful to other people._"

To be rich in our present social state, Jonathan, you must not only own an abundance of things useful to you, but also things useful only to others, which you can sell to them at a profit. Wealth, in our present society, then consists in the possession of things having an exchange value--things which other people will buy from you. So endeth our first lesson in political economy.

And here beginneth our second lesson, Jonathan. We must now consider how wealth is produced.

The Socialists say that all wealth is produced by labor applied to natural resources. That is a very simple answer, which you can easily remember. But I want you to examine it well. Think it over: ask yourself whether anything in your experience as a workingman confirms or disproves it. Do you produce wealth? Do your fellow workers produce wealth? Do you know of any other way in which wealth can be produced than by labor applied to natural resources? Don't be fooled, Jonathan. Think for yourself!

The wealth of a fisherman consists in an abundance of fish for which there is a good market. But suppose there is a big demand for fish in the cities and that, at the same time, there are millions of fish in the sea, ready to be caught. So long as they are in the sea, the fish are not wealth. Even if the sea belonged to a private individual, as the oil-wells belong to Mr. Rockefeller and a few other individuals, nobody would be any the better off. Fish in the sea are not wealth, but fish in the market-places are. Why, because labor has been expended in catching them and bringing them to market.

There are millions of tons of coal in Pennsylvania. President Baer said, you will remember, that God had appointed him and a few other gentlemen to look after that coal, to act as His trustees. And Mr. Baer wasn't joking, either. That is the funny part of the story: he was actually serious when he uttered that foolish blasphemy! There are also millions of people who want coal, whose very lives depend upon it. People who will pay almost any price for it rather than go without it.

The coal is there, millions of tons of it. But suppose that nobody digs for it; that the coal is left where Nature produced it, or where God placed it, whichever description you prefer? Do you think it would do anybody any good lying there, just as it lay untouched when the Indian roved through the forests ignorant of its presence? Would anybody be wealthier on account of the coal being there? Of course not. It only becomes wealth when somebody's labor makes it available. Every dollar of the wealth of our coal-mining industry, as of the fishing industries, represents human labor.

I need not go through the list of all our industries, Jonathan, to make this truth clear to you. If it pleases you to do so, you can easily do that for yourself. I simply wanted to make it clear that the Socialists are stating a great universal truth when they say that labor applied to natural resources is the true source of all wealth. As Sir William Petty said long ago: "Labor is the father and land is the mother of all wealth."

But you must be careful, Jonathan, not to misuse that word "labor." Socialists don't mean the labor of the hands only, when they speak of labor. Take the case of the coal-mines again, just for a moment: There are men who dig the coal, called miners. But before they can work there must be other men to make tools and machinery for them. And before there can be machinery made and fixed in its proper place there must be surveyors and engineers, men with a special education and capacity, to draw the plans, and so on. Then there must be some men to organize the business, to take orders for the coal, to see that it is shipped, to collect the payment agreed upon, so that the workers can be paid, and so on through a long list of things requiring _mental labor_.

Both kinds of labor are equally necessary, and no one but a fool would ever think otherwise. No Socialist writer or lecturer ever said that wealth was produced by _manual labor_ alone applied to natural resources. And yet, I hardly ever pick up a book or newspaper article written against Socialism in which that is not charged against the Socialists! The opponents of Socialism all seem to be lineal descendants of Ananias, Jonathan!

For your special, personal benefit I want to cite just one instance of this misrepresentation. You have heard, I have no doubt, of the English gentleman, Mr. W.H. Mallock, who came to this country last year to lecture against Socialism. He is a very pleasant fellow, personally--as pleasant a fellow as a confirmed aristocrat who does not like to ride in the street cars with "common people" can be. Mr. Mallock was hired by the Civic Federation and paid out of funds which Mr. August Belmont contributed to that body, funds which did not belong to Mr. Belmont, as the investigation of the affairs of the New York Traction Companies conducted later by the Hon. W.M. Ivins, showed. He was hired to lecture against Socialism in our great universities and colleges, in the interests of people like Mr. Belmont. And there was not one of those universities or colleges fair enough to say: "We want to hear the Socialist side of the argument!" I don't think the word "fairplay," about which we used to boast as one of the glories of our language, is very much liked or used in American universities, Jonathan. And I am very sorry. It ought not to be so.

I should have been very glad to answer Mr. Mallock's silly and unjust attacks; to say to the professors and students in the universities and colleges: "I want you to listen to our side of the argument and then make up your minds whether we are right or whether truth is on the side of Mr. Mallock." That would have been fair and honest and manly, wouldn't it? There were several other Socialist lecturers, the equals of Mr. Mallock in education and as public speakers, who would have been ready to do the same thing. And not one of us would have wanted a cent of anybody's money, let alone money contributed by Mr. August Belmont.

Mr. Mallock said that the Socialists make the claim that manual labor alone creates wealth when applied to natural objects. _That statement is not true._ He even dared say that a great and profound thinker like Karl Marx believed and taught that silly notion. The newspapers of America hailed Mr. Mallock as the long-looked-for conqueror of Marx and his followers. They thought he had demolished Socialism. But did they know that they were resting their case upon a _lie_, I wonder? That Marx never for a moment believed such a thing; that he went out of his way to explain that he did not?

I don't want you to try to read the works of Marx, my friend--at least, not yet: _Capital_, his greatest work, is a very difficult book, in three large volumes. But if you will go into the public library and get the first volume in English translation, and turn to page 145, you will read the following words:

"By labor power or capacity for labor is to be understood the aggregate of those _mental and physical_ capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises when he produces a use-value of any description."[2]

I think you will agree, Jonathan, that that statement fully justifies all that I have said concerning Mr. Mallock. I think you will agree, too, that it is a very clear and intelligible definition, which any man of fair sense can understand. Now, by way of contrast, I want you to read one of Mr. Mallock's definitions. Please bear in mind that Mr. Mallock is an English "scholar," by many regarded as a very clear thinker. This is how he defines labor:

"_Labor means the faculties of the individual applied to his own labor._"

I have never yet been able to find anybody who could make sense out of that definition, Jonathan, though I have submitted it to a good many people, among them several college professors. It does not mean anything. The fifty-seven letters contained in that sentence would mean just as much if you put them in a bag, shook them up, and then put them on paper just as they happened to fall out of the bag. Mr. Mallock's English, his veracity and his logic are all equally weak and defective.

I don't think that Mr. Mallock is worthy of your consideration, Jonathan, but if you are interested in reading what he said about Socialism in the lectures I have been referring to, they are published in a volume entitled, _A Critical Examination of Socialism_. You can get the book in the library: they will be sure to have it there, because it is against Socialism. But I want you to buy a little book by Morris Hillquit, called _Mr. Mallock's "Ability,"_ and read it carefully. It costs only ten cents--and you will get more amusement reading the careful and scholarly dissection of Mallock than you could get in a dime show anywhere. If you will read my own reply to Mr. Mallock, in my little book _Capitalist and Laborer_, I shall not think the worse of you for doing so.

Now, let us look at the division of the wealth. It is all produced by labor of manual workers and brain workers applied to natural objects which no man made. I am not going to weary you with figures, Jonathan, because you are not a statistician. I am going to take the statistics and make them as simple as I can for you--and tell you where you can find the statistics if you ever feel inclined to try your hand upon them.

But first of all I want you to read a passage from the writings of a very great man, who was not a "wicked Socialist agitator" like your humble servant. Archdeacon Paley, the great English theologian, was not like many of our modern clergymen, afraid to tell the truth about social conditions; he was not forgetful of the social aspects of Christ's teaching. Among many profoundly wise utterances about social conditions which that great and good teacher made more than a century ago was the passage I now want you to read and ponder over. You might do much worse than to commit the whole passage to memory. It reads:

"If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and
if (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking
just as much as it wanted, and no more) you should see
ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap,
reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse,
keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps
worst, pigeon of the flock, sitting round and looking on, all
the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and
wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the
rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly
flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see
this, you would see nothing more than what is every day
practised and established among men.

"Among men you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping
together a heap of superfluities for one (and this one, too,
oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the set, a child, a
woman, a madman or a fool), getting nothing for themselves,
all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the provision
which their own industry produces; looking quietly on, while
they see the fruits of all their labor spent or spoiled; and
if one of their number take or touch a particle of the hoard,
the others joining against him, and hanging him for theft."

If there were many men like Dr. Paley in our American churches to-day, preaching the truth in that fearless fashion, there would be something like a revolution, Jonathan. The churches would no longer be empty almost; preachers would not be wondering why workingmen don't go to church. There would probably be less show and pride in the churches; less preachers paid big salaries, less fashionable choirs. But the churches would be much nearer to the spirit and standard of Jesus than most of them are to-day. There is nothing in connection with modern religious life quite so glaring as the infidelity of the Christian ministry to the teachings of Christ.

A lady once addressed Thomas Carlyle concerning Jesus in this fashion: "How delighted we should all be to throw open our doors to him and listen to his divine precepts! Don't you think so, Mr. Carlyle?" The bluff old puritan sage answered: "No, madam, I don't. I think if he had come fashionably dressed, with plenty of money, and preaching doctrines palatable to the higher orders, I might have had the honor of receiving from you a card of invitation, on the back of which would be written, 'To meet our Saviour.' But if he came uttering his sublime precepts, and denouncing the pharisees, and associating with publicans and the lower orders, as he did, you would have treated him as the Jews did, and cried out, 'Take him to Newgate and hang him.'"

I sometimes wonder, Jonathan, what really _would_ happen if the Carpenter-preacher of Gallilee could and did visit some of our American churches. Would he be able to stand the vulgar show? Would he be able to listen in silence to the miserable perversion of his teachings by hired apologists of social wrong? Would he want to drive out the moneychangers and the Masters of Bread, to hurl at them his terrible thunderbolts of wrath and scorn? Would he be welcomed by the churches bearing his name? Would they want to listen to his gospel? Frankly, Jonathan, I doubt it. A few Socialists would be found in nearly every church ready to receive him and to call him "Comrade," but the majority of church-goers would shun him and pass him by.

I should not be surprised, Jonathan, if the President of the United States called him an "undesirable citizen," as he surely would call Archdeacon Paley if he were alive.

I wanted you to read Paley's illustration of the pigeons before going into the unequal distribution of wealth. It will help you to understand another illustration. Suppose that from a shipwreck one hundred men are fortunate enough to save themselves and to make their way to an island, where, making the best of conditions, they establish a little community, which they elect to call "Capitalia." Luckily, they have all got food and clothing enough to last them for a little while, and they are fortunate enough to find on the island a supply of tools, evidently abandoned by some former occupants of the island.

They set to work, cultivating the ground, building huts for themselves, hunting for game, and so on. They start out to face the primeval struggle with the sullen forces of Nature as our ancestors did in the time long past. Their efforts prosper, every one of the hundred men being a worker, every man working with equal will, equal strength and vigor. Now, then, suppose that one day, they decide to divide up the wealth produced by their labor, to institute individual property in place of common property, competition in place of co-operation. What would you think if two or three of the strongest members said, "We will do the dividing, we will distribute the wealth according to our ideas of justice and right," and then proceeded to give 55 per cent. of the wealth to one man, to the next eleven men 32 per cent. and to the remaining eighty-eight men only 13 per cent. between them?

I will put it in another way, Jonathan, since you are not accustomed to thinking in percentages. Suppose that there were a hundred cows to be divided among the members of the community. According to the scheme of division just described, this is how the division would work out:

1 Man would get 55 Cows for himself
11 Men would get 32 Cows among them
88 Men would get 13 Cows among them

When they had divided the cows in this manner they would proceed to divide the wheat, the potato crops, the land, and everything else owned by the community in the same unequal way. I ask you again, Jonathan, what would you think of such a division?

Of course, being a fair-minded man, endowed with ordinary intelligence at least, you will admit that there would be no sense and no justice in such a plan of division, and you doubt if intelligent human beings would submit to it. But, my friend, that is not quite so bad as the distribution of wealth in America to-day is. Suppose that instead of all the members of the little island community being workers, all working equally hard, fairly sharing the work of the community, one man absolutely refused to do anything at all, saying, "I was the first one to get ashore. The land really belongs to me. I am the landlord. I won't work, but you must work for me." And suppose that eleven other men said in like manner. "We won't work. We found the tools, we brought the seeds and the food out of the boats when we came. We are the capitalists and you must do the work in the fields. We will superintend you, give you orders where to dig, and when, and where to stop. You eighty-eight common fellows are the laborers who must do the hard work while we use our brains." And suppose that they actually carried out that plan and _then_ divided the wealth in the way I have described, that would be a pretty good illustration of how the wealth produced in America under our existing social system is divided.

_And I ask you what you think of that, Jonathan Edwards. How do you like it?_

These are not my figures. They are not the figures of any rabid Socialist making frenzied guesses. They are taken from a book called _The Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States_, by the late Dr. Charles B. Spahr, a book that is used in most of our colleges and universities. No serious criticism of the figures has ever been attempted and most economists, even the conservative ones, base their own estimates upon Spahr's work. It would be worth your while to get the book from the library, Jonathan, and to read it carefully.

In the meantime, look over the following table which sets forth the results of Dr. Spahr's investigation, Jonathan, and remember that the condition of things has not improved since 1895, when the book was written, but that they have, on the contrary, very much worsened.

SPAHR'S TABLE OF THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN THE UNITED STATES

==========+============+=======+==========+=================+======= | No. of | Per | Average | Aggregate | Per Class | Families | Cent | Wealth | Wealth | Cent ----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+------- Rich | 125,000 | 1.0 | $263,040 | 32,880,000,000 | 54.8 Middle | 1,362,500 | 10.9 | 14,180 | 29,320,000,000 | 32.2 Poor | 4,762,500 | 38.1 | 1,639 | 7,800,000,000 | 13.0 Very Poor | 6,250,000 | 50.0 | | | ----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+------- Total | 13,500,000 | 100.0 | $4,800 | $60,000,000,000 | 100.0 ----------+------------+-------+----------+-----------------+-------

Now, Jonathan, although I have taken a good deal of trouble to lay these figures before you, I really don't care very much for them. Statistics don't impress me as they do some people, and I would far rather rely upon your commonsense than upon any figures. I have not quoted these figures because they were published by a very able scholar in a very wise book, nor because scientific men, professors of political economy and others, have accepted them as a fair estimate. I have used them because I believe them to be _true and reliable_.

But don't you rest your whole faith upon them, Jonathan. If some fine day a Republican spellbinder, or a Democratic scribbler, tries to upset you and prove that Socialists are all liars and false prophets, just tell him the figures are quite unimportant to you, that you don't care to know just exactly how much of the wealth the richest one per cent. gets and how little of it the poorest fifty per cent. gets. A few millions more or less don't trouble you. Pin him down to the one fact which your own commonsense teaches you, that the wealth of the country _is_ unequally distributed. Tell him that you _know_, regardless of figures, that there are many idlers who are enormously rich and many honest, industrious workers who are miserably poor. He won't be able to deny these things. He _dare_ not, because they are _true_.

Ask any such apologist for capitalism what he would think of the father or mother who took his or her eight children and said: "Here are eight cakes, as many cakes as there are boys and girls. I am going to distribute the cakes. Here, Walter, are seven of the cakes for you. The other cake the rest of you can divide among yourselves as best you can." If the capitalist defender is a fair-minded man, if he is neither fool nor liar nor monster, he will agree that such a parent would be brutally unjust.

Yet, Jonathan, that is exactly how our national wealth is divided up. One-eighth of the families in the United States do get seven-eights of the wealth, and, being, I hope, neither fool, liar nor monster, I denounce the system as brutally unjust. There is no sense and no morality in mincing matters and being afraid to call spades spades.

It is because of this unjust distribution of the wealth of modern society that we have so much social unrest. That is the heart of the whole problem. Why are workingmen organized into unions to fight the capitalists, and the capitalists on their side organized to fight the workers? Why, simply because the capitalists want to continue exploiting the workers, to exploit them still more if possible, while the workers want to be exploited less, want to get more of what they produce.

Why is it that eminently respectable members of society combine to bribe legislators--_to buy laws from the lawmakers!_--and to corrupt the republic, a form of treason worse than Benedict Arnold's? Why, for the same reason: they want to continue the spoliation of the people. That is why the heads of a great life insurance company illegally used the funds belonging to widows and orphans to contribute to the campaign fund of the Republican Party in 1904. That is why, also, Mr. Belmont used the funds of the traction company of which he is president to support the Civic Federation, which is an organization specially designed to fool and mislead the wage-earners of America. That is why every investigation of American political or business life that is honestly made by able and fearless men reveals so much chicanery and fraud.

You belong to a union, Jonathan, because you want to put a check upon the greed of the employers. But you never can expect through the union to get all that rightfully belongs to you. It is impossible to expect that the union will ever do away with the terrible inequalities in the distribution of wealth. The union is a good thing, and the workers ought to be much more thoroughly organized into unions than they are. Socialists are always on the side of the union when it is engaged in an honest fight against the exploiters of labor.

Later on, I shall take up the question of unionism and discuss it with you, Jonathan. Meanwhile, I want to impress upon your mind that _a wise union man votes as he strikes_. There is not the least bit of sense in belonging to a union if you are to become a "scab" when you go to the ballot-box. _And a vote for a capitalist party is a scab vote, Jonathan._

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Note: In the American edition, published by Kerr, the page is 186.

V

THE DRONES AND THE BEES

Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions
yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
They have enabled a greater population to live the same life
of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of
manufactures, and others, to make large fortunes.--_John
Stuart Mill._

Most people imagine that the rich are in heaven, but as a rule
it is only a gilded hell. There is not a man in the city of
New York with brains enough to own five millions of dollars.
Why? The money will own him. He becomes the key to a safe.
That money will get him up at daylight; that money will
separate him from his friends; that money will fill his heart
with fear; that money will rob his days of sunshine and his
nights of pleasant dreams. He becomes the property of that
money. And he goes right on making more. What for? He does not
know. It becomes a kind of insanity.--_R.G. Ingersoll._

Is it well that, while we range with Science, glorying in the time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in City slime?
There, among the gloomy alleys, Progress halts on palsied feet,
Crime and Hunger cast our maidens by the thousand on the street.
There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread,
There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead;
There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
In the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor.
--_Tennyson._

When you and I were boys going to school, friend Jonathan, we were constantly admonished to study with admiration the social economy of the bees. We learned to almost reverence the little winged creatures for the manner in which they

Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower.

We were taught, you remember, to honor the bees for their hatred of drones. It was the great virtue of the bees that they always drove the drones from the hive. For my part, I learned the lesson so well that I really became a sort of bee-worshipper. But since I have grown to mature years I have come to the conclusion that those old lessons were not honestly meant, Jonathan. For if anybody proposes to-day that we should drive out the drones from the _human_ hive, he is at once denounced as an Anarchist and an "undesirable citizen."

It is all very well for bees to insist that there must be no idle parasites, that the drones must go, but for human beings such a policy won't do! It savors too much of Socialism, my friend, and is unpleasantly like Paul's foolish saying that "If any man among you will not work, neither shall he eat." That is a text which is out of date and unsuited to the twentieth century!

"Allah! Allah!" cried the stranger,
"Wondrous sights the traveller sees;
But the greatest is the latest,
Where the drones control the bees!"

Every modern civilized nation rewards its drones better than it rewards its bees, and in every land the drones control the bees.

I want you to consider, friend Jonathan, the lives of the people. How the workers live and how the shirkers live; now the bees live and how the drones live, if you like that better. You can study the matter for yourself, right in Pittsburg, much better than you can from books, for God knows that in Pittsburg there are the extremes of wealth and poverty, just as there are in New York, Chicago, St. Louis or San Francisco. There are gilded hells where rich drones live and squalid hells where poor bees live, and the number of truly happy people is sadly, terribly, small.

_Ten millions in poverty!_ Don't you think that is a cry so terrible that it ought to shame a great nation like this, a nation more bounteously endowed by Nature than any other nation in the world's history? Men, women and children, poor and miserable, with not enough to eat, nor clothes to keep them warm in the cold winter nights; with places for homes that are unfit for dogs, and these not their own; knowing not if to-morrow may bring upon them the last crushing blow. All these conditions, and conditions infinitely worse than these, are contained in the poverty of those millions, Jonathan.

If people were poor because the land was poor, because the country was barren, because Nature dealt with us in niggardly fashion, so that all men had to struggle against famine; if, in a word, there was democracy in our poverty, so that none were idle and rich while the rest toiled in poverty, it would be our supreme glory to bear it with cheerful courage. But that is not the case. While babies perish for want of food and care in dank and unhealthy hovels, there are pampered poodles in palaces, bejeweled and cared for by liveried flunkies and waiting maids. While men and women want bread, and beg crusts or stand shivering in the "bread lines" of our great cities, there are monkeys being banqueted at costly banquets by the profligate degenerates of riches. It's all wrong, Jonathan, cruelly, shamefully, hellishly wrong! And I for one, refuse to call such a brutalized system, or the nation tolerating it, _civilized_.

Good old Thomas Carlyle would say "Amen!" to that, Jonathan. Lots of people wont. They will tell you that the poverty of the millions is very sad, of course, and that the poor are to be pitied. But they will remind you that Jesus said something about the poor always being with us. They won't read you what he did say, but you can read it for yourself. Here it is: "For ye have the poor always with you, and _whensoever ye will ye can do them good_."[3] And now, I want you to read a quotation from Carlyle:

"It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man
wretched; many men have died; all men must die,--the last exit
of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live
miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing;
to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt-in with
a cold universal Laissezfaire: it is to die slowly all our
life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as
in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and
remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made."

"Miserable we know not why"--"to die slowly all our life long"--"Imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice"--Don't these phrases describe exactly the poverty you have known, brother Jonathan?

Did you ever stop to think, my friend, that poverty is the lot of the _average_ worker, the reward of the producers of wealth, and that only the producers of wealth are poor? Do you know that, because we die slowly all our lives long, the death-rate among the working-class is far higher than among other classes by reason of overwork, anxiety, poor food, lack of pleasure, bad housing, and all the other ills comprehended in the lot of the wage-worker? In Chicago, for example, in the wards where the well-to-do reside the death-rate is not more than 12 per thousand, while it is 37 in the tenement districts.

Scientists who have gone into the matter tell us that of ten million persons belonging to the well-to-do classes the annual deaths do not number more than 100,000, while among the very best paid workers the number is not less than 150,000 and among the very poorest paid workers at least 350,000. To show you just what those proportions are, I have represented the matter in a little diagram, which you can understand at a glance:

There are some diseases, notably the Great White Plague. Consumption, which we call "diseases of the working-classes" on account of the fact that they prey most upon the wearied, ill-nourished bodies of the workers. Not that they are confined to the workers entirely, but because the workers are most afflicted by them. Because the workers live in crowded tenement hovels, work in factories laden with dust and disease germs, are overworked and badly fed, this and other of the great scourges of the human race find them ready victims.

Here is another diagram for you, Jonathan, showing the comparative mortality from Consumption among the workers engaged in six different industrial occupations and the members of six groups of professional workers.

Deaths per 100,000 living in the same occupation

Marble and stone cutters. 540
Cigar makers and tobacco workers. 476
Compositors, printers, pressmen. 435
Barbers and hairdressers. 334
Masons (brick and stone). 294
Iron and steel workers. 236
Physicians and Surgeons. 168
Engineers and Surveyors. 145
School teachers. 144
Lawyers. 140
Clergymen. 123
Bankers, brokers, officials of companies, etc. 92]

I want you to study this diagram and the figures by which it is accompanied, Jonathan. You will observe that the death rate from Consumption among marble and stone cutters is six times greater than among bankers and brokers and directors of companies. Among cigar makers and tobacco workers it is more than five times as great. Iron and steel workers do not suffer so much from the plague as some other workers, according to the death-rates. One reason is that only fairly robust men enter the trade to begin with. Another reason is that a great many, finding they cannot stand the strain, after they have become infected, leave the trade for lighter occupations. I think there can be no doubt that the _true_ mortality from Consumption among iron and steel workers is much higher than the figures show. But, taking the figures as they are, confident that they understate the extent of the ravages of the disease in these occupations, we find that the mortality is more than two and a half times greater than among capitalists.

Now, these are very serious figures, Jonathan. Why is the mortality so much less among the capitalists? It is because they have better homes, are not so overworked to physical exhaustion, are better fed and clothed, and can have better care and attention, far better chances of being cured, if they are attacked. They can get these things only from the labor of the workers, Jonathan.

_In other words, they buy their lives with ours. Workers are killed to keep capitalists alive._

It used to be frequently charged that drink was the chief cause of the poverty of the workers; that they were poor because they were drunken and thriftless. But we hear less of that silly nonsense than we used to, though now and then a Prohibitionist advocate still repeats the old and long exploded myth. It never was true, Jonathan, and it is less true to-day than ever before. Drunkenness is an evil and the working class suffers from it to a lamentable degree, but it is not the sole cause of poverty, it is not the chief cause of poverty, it is not even a very important cause of poverty at all.

It is true that intemperance causes poverty in some cases, it is also true that drunkenness is very frequently caused by poverty. They act and react upon each other, but it is not doubted by any student of our social conditions whose opinion carries any weight that intemperance is far more often the result of poverty and bad conditions of life and labor than the cause of them.

The International Socialist Congress which met at Stuttgart last summer very rightly decided that Socialists everywhere should do all in their power to combat alcoholism, to end the ravages of intemperance among the working classes of all nations. For drunken voters are not very likely to be either wise or free voters: we need sober, earnest, clear-thinking men to bring about better conditions, Jonathan. But the Socialists, while they adopt this position, do not mistake results for causes. They know from actual experience that Solomon was right when he attributed intemperance to ill conditions. Hunt out your Bible and turn to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 31, verse 7. There you will read: "Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more."

That is not very good advice to give a workingman, but it is exactly what many workingmen do. There was a wise English bishop who said a few years ago that if he lived in the slums of any of the great cities, under conditions similar to those in which most of the workers live, he would probably be a drunkard, and when I see the conditions under which millions of men are working and living I wonder that we have not more drunkenness than we have.

A good many years ago, "General" Booth, head of the Salvation Army, declared that "nine-tenths" of the poverty of the people was due to intemperance. Later on, "Commissioner" Cadman, one of the "General's" most trusted aides, made an investigation of the causes of poverty among all those who passed through the Army shelters for destitute men and women. He found that among the very lowest class, the "submerged tenth," where the ravages of drink are most sadly evident, depression in trade counted for much more than drink as a cause of poverty. The figures were:

Depression in trade 55.8 per cent.
Drink _and Gambling_ 26.6 per cent.
Ill-health 11.6 per cent.
Old Age 5.8 per cent.

Even among the very lowest class of the social wrecks of our great cities, who have long since abandoned hope, depression in trade was found to count for more than twice as much as drink and gambling combined as a producer of poverty.

That is in keeping with all the investigations that have ever been made in a scientific spirit. Professor Amos Warner, in his valuable study of the subject, published in his book, _American Charities_, shows how false the notion that nearly all the poverty of the people is due to their intemperance proves to be when an intelligent investigation of the facts is made.

Dr. Edward T. Devine, of Columbia University, editor of _Charities and the Commons_, is probably as competent an authority upon this question as any man living. He is not likely to be called a Socialist by anybody. Yet I find him writing in his magazine, at the end of November, 1907: "The tradition which many hold that the condition of poverty is ordinarily and as a matter of course to be explained by personal faults of the poor themselves is no longer tenable. Strong drink and vice are abnormal, unnatural and essentially unattractive ways of spending surplus income." Dr. Devine very frankly and bravely admits that poverty is an unnecessary evil, "a shocking, loathsome excrescence on the body politic, an intolerable evil which should come to an end." What else, indeed, could a sane man think of it?

As a conservative man, I say without reservation that accidents incurred in the course of employment, and sickness brought on by industrial conditions, such as overwork accompanied by under nourishment, exposure to extremes of temperature, unsanitary workshops and factories and the inhalation of contaminated atmosphere, are far more important causes of poverty among the workers than intemperance. Every investigation ever made goes to prove this true. I wish that every one who seeks to blame the poverty of the poor upon the victims themselves would study a few facts, which I am going to ask you to study, without prejudice or passion. They would readily see then how false the belief is.

Last year there was a Committee of very expert investigators in New York which made a careful inquiry into the relation of wages to the standard of living. They were not Socialists, these gentlemen, or I should not submit their testimony. I am anxious to base my case against our present social system upon evidence that is not in any way biased in favor of Socialism. Dr. Lee K. Frankel was Chairman of the Committee. He is Director of the United Hebrew Charities of New York City, an able and sincere man, but not a Socialist. Dr. Devine, another able and sincere man who is by no means a Socialist, was a member of the Committee. Among the other members were also such persons as Bishop Greer, of New York, Reverend Adolph Guttman, president of the Hebrew Relief Society, Syracuse, New York, Mrs. William Einstein, president of Emanu El Sisterhood, New York; Mr. Homer Folks, Secretary State Charities Aid Association and Reverend William J. White, of Brooklyn, Supervisor of Catholic Charities. The Committee was deputed to make the investigation by the New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections, and made its report in November, 1907, at Albany, N.Y.

I think you will agree, Jonathan, that it would be very hard to imagine a more conservative body, less inoculated with the virus of Socialism than that. From their report to the Conference I note that the Committee reported that as a result of their work, after going carefully into the expenditure of some 322 families, they had come to the conclusion that the lowest amount upon which a family of five could be supported in decency and health in New York City was about eight hundred dollars a year. I am quite sure, Jonathan, that there is not one of the members of that Committee who would think that even that sum would be enough to keep _their_ families in health and decency; not one who would want to see their children living under the best conditions which that sum made possible. They were philanthropists you see, Jonathan, "figuring out" how much the "Poor" ought to be able to live on. And to help them out they got Professor Chapin, of Beloit College and Professor Underhill, of Yale. Professor Underhill being an expert physiological chemist, could advise them as to the sufficiency of the expenditures upon food among the families reported.

But the total income of thousands of families falls very short of eight hundred dollars a year. There are many thousands of families in which the breadwinner does not earn more than ten dollars a week at best. Making allowance for time lost through sickness, holidays, and so on, it is evident that the total income of such families would not exceed four hundred and fifty dollars a year at best. Even the worker with twenty dollars a week, if there is a brief period of sickness or unemployment, will find himself, despite his best efforts, on the wrong side of the line, compelled either to see his family suffer want or to become dependent on "that cold thing called Charity." And Dr. Devine, writing in _Charities and the Commons_, admits that the charitable societies cannot hope to make up the deficit, to add to the wages of the workers enough to raise their standards of living to the point of efficiency. He admits that "such a policy would tend to financial bankruptcy."

Taking the unskilled workers in New York City, the vast army of laborers, it is certain that they do not average $400 a year, so that they are, as a class, hopelessly, miserably poor. It is true that many of them spend part of their miserable wages on drink, but if they did not, they would still be poor; if every cent went to buy the necessities of existence, they would still be hopelessly, miserably poor.

The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics showed a few years ago, when the cost of living was less than now, that a family of five could not live decently and in health upon less than $754 a year, but more than half of the unskilled workers in the shoe-making industry of that State got less than $300 a year. Of course, some were single and not a few were women, but the figures go far to show that the New York conditions are prevalent in New England also. Mr. John Mitchell said that in the anthracite district of Pennsylvania it was impossible to maintain a family of five in decency on less than $600 a year, but according to Dr. Peter Roberts, who is one of the most conservative of living authorities upon the conditions of industry in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the _average_ wage in the anthracite district is less than $500 and that about 60 per cent. receive less than $450 a year.

I am not going to bother you with more statistics, Jonathan, for I know you do not like them, and they are hard to remember. What I want you to see is that, for many thousands of workers, poverty is an inevitable condition. If they do not spend a cent on drink; never give a cent to the Church or for charity; never buy a newspaper; never see a play or hear a concert; never lose a day's wages through sickness or accident; never make a present of a ribbon to their wives or a toy to their children--in a word, if they live as galley slaves, working without a single break in the monotony and drudgery of their lives, they must still be poor and endure hunger, unless they can get other sources of income. The mother must go out to work and neglect her baby to help out; the little boys and girls must go to work in the days when they ought to be in school or in the fields at play, to help out the beggars' pittance which is their portion. The greatest cause of poverty is low wages.

Then think of the accidents which occur to the wage-earners, making them incapable of earning anything for long periods, or even permanently. At the same meeting of the New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections as that already referred to, there were reports presented by many of the charitable organizations of the state which showed that this cause of poverty is a very serious one, and one that is constantly increasing. In only about twenty per cent. of the accidents of a serious nature investigated was there any settlement made by the employers, and from a list that is of immense interest I take just a few cases as showing how little the life of the average workingman is valued at:

_Nature of Injury._ _Settlement_

Spine injured $ 20 and doctor
Legs broken 300
Death 100
Death 65
Two ribs broken 20
Paralysis 12
Brain affected 60
Fingers amputated 50

The reports showed that about half of the accidents occurred to men under forty years of age, in the very prime of life. The wages were determined in 241 cases and it was shown that about 25 per cent. were earning less than $10 a week and 60 per cent. were earning less than $15 a week. Even without the accidents occurring to them these workers and their families must be miserably poor, the accidents only plunging them deeper into the frightful abyss of despair, of wasting life and torturous struggle.

No, my friend, it is not true that the poverty of the poor is due to their sins, thriftlessness and intemperance. I want you to remember that it is not the wicked Socialist agitators only who say this. I could fill a book for you with the conclusions of very conservative men, all of them opposed to Socialism, whose studies have forced them to this conclusion.

There was a Royal Commission appointed in England some years ago to consider the problem of the Aged Poor and how to deal with it. Of that Royal Commission Lord Aberdare was chairman--and he was a most implacable enemy of Socialism. The Commission reported in 1895: "We are confirmed in our view by the evidence we have received that ... as regards the great bulk of the working classes, during their lives, they are fairly provident, fairly thrifty, fairly industrious and fairly temperate." But they could not add that, as a result of these virtues, they were also fairly well-to-do! The Right Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, another enemy of Socialism, signed with several others a Minority Report, but they agreed "that the imputation that old age pauperism is mainly due to drink, idleness, improvidence, and the like abuses applies to but a very small proportion of the working population."

Very similar was the report of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, appointed to consider the best means of improving the condition of the "aged and deserving poor." The report read: "Cases are too often found in which poor and aged people, whose conduct and whose whole career has been blameless, industrious and deserving, find themselves from no fault of their own, at the end of a long and meritorious life, with nothing but the workhouse or inadequate outdoor relief as the refuge for their declining years."

And what is true of England in this respect is equally true of America.

Let me repeat here that I am not defending intemperance. I believe with all my heart that we must fight intemperance as a deadly enemy of the working class. I want to see the workers sober; sober enough to think clearly, sober enough to act wisely. Before we can get rid of the evils from which we suffer we must get sober minds, friend Jonathan. That is why the Socialists of Europe are fighting the drink evil; that is why, too, the Prussian Government put a stop to the "Anti-Alcohol" campaign of the workers, led by Dr. Frolich, of Vienna. Dr. Frolich was not advocating Socialism. He was simply appealing to the workers to stop making beasts of themselves, to become sober so that they could think clearly with brains unmuddled by alcohol. And the Prussian Government did not want that: they knew very well that clear thinking and sober judgment would lead the workers to the ballot boxes under Socialist banners.

I care most of all for the suffering of the innocent little ones. When I see that under our present system it is necessary for the mother to leave her baby's cradle to go into a factory, regardless of whether the baby lives or dies when it is fed on nasty and dangerous artificial foods or poor, polluted milk, I am stirred to my soul's depths. When I think of the tens of thousands of little babies that die every year as a result of these conditions I have described; of the millions of children who go to school every day underfed and neglected, and of the little child toilers in shops, factories and mines, as well as upon the farms, though their lot is less tragic than that of the little prisoners of the factories and mines--I cannot find words to express my hatred of the ghoulish system.

I should like you to read, Jonathan, a little pamphlet on _Underfed School Children_, which costs ten cents, and a bigger book, _The Bitter Cry of the Children_, which you can get at the public library. I wrote these to lay before thinking men and women some of the terrible evils from which our children suffer. _I know_ that the things written are true. Every line of them was written with the single purpose of telling the truth as I had seen it.