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1900
Socialist
Campaign
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TRADIN
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NIT.
CONTENTS
1. Evolution of the American P
Il. Growth of Trade-Unionism.
III. Trusts Industrial Progress
IV. Trusts - Despotism in Indus
V. The Farmer and His Future
VI. Labor's Demands and Car
Answers.
VII. Wages and Living Expense
Vill. How the Working Class Li
IX. Towards Plutocracy.
X. Capitalist Political Platform.
XI. The Growth of Socialism.
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The
Socialist Campaign Book
of 1900
Edited under the Supervision of
THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
of the Social Democratic Party.
☺
Library of Progress
No. 30, August 16, 1900
Quarterly, 81.00 a year
Entered at the Postoffice, Chicago, as second class matter
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1900
Preface
The republican and democratic parties have issued
millions of dollars worth of campaign literature this year,
Tons are sent out daily from the Chicago headquarters.
You will search all this in vain for those facts which bear
most directly on the life and labor of the workers. This
is a field as dreaded as the plague by these capitalist
parties. They ignore the most vital facts altogether, and
those they do use are most crudely perverted and twisted
from the truth. We aim to throw a search-light on these
distortions and to supply those indispensable facts the
capitalists have so strongly "forgotten."
It is the conviction of all socialists that the presentation
of the facts of our economic and industrial conditions is
sufficient in itself to expose the uselessness and falsity
of the capitalist parties. This little book brings before
the workers the more important facts of the present situ-
ation-economic and political—from the inost reliable
sources. Government publications are used in most
cases and other authorities have been utilized with the
greatest care. It is hoped that the exposures of the real
position of the two capitalist parties will be of service to
every socialist.
2312
Introduction
This book is primarily addressed to the working class.
The prosperity and the social and moral vigor of a na-
tion depends upon the condition of its working class.
Not only does the working class constitute the large ma-
jority of a nation but by this class all material and
intellectual value is created. That this class produces
all the material goods that make life possible and give
to it its comfort and pleasure, is an apparent fact, al-
though the “Captains and Directors” of industry step
out of the industrial circle and claim a different classifi-
cation and a different reward, and the “Financier" has
secured the privilege of robbing this class of the greater
part of the returns of its labor.
But the working class is also the source of all prog-
ress, intellectual and spiritual. It is this class that stands
close to nature, wrenches from her the means of existence,
and in this struggle learns nature's life-giving secrets.
The individuals of this class are forced shoulder to shoul-
der, and in close contact with each other without the
barriers of cast or conventionality, learn to know the
human heart and develop the feelings of human kinship,
without which true progress is impossible. It is in the
experiences of this close struggle with nature and man
that the forces of success and progress are found. In
this struggle only does evolution produce types of real
value to mankind.
But it is true that even here the working class is largely
deprived of the honor and profit of its successes. The
leisure class delegates its "educated and artistic servants
to collect the results of this struggle with nature and pre-
sent them in a shape acceptable to the leisure class.
Withdrawing from this struggle, that alone can give
strength to the arm, and refusing useful co-operation
with fellow men, that alone teaches sympathy to the
heart, the leisure class is deprived of every stimulus to
progress. The principle work of its members is to ex-
8
Introduction
ploit the laboring class and to cheat one another. Its
desire is to perpetuate its present conditions as evolved
from the dark ages of the past. When the light of prog-
ress kindled by the laboring class forces it to look
ahead, its only thought is whether this new light may
not by the alchemy of its cunning be turned into gold.
The laboring classes have no time to formulate for
their own use the experiences gained in the struggle.
This is done for them by the servants of the leisure class.
Labor's inventions, by which toil is saved and nature
made to yield her riches, are turned into increased sources
of profit to the capitalist. The knowledge gained in pro-
duction in the factory and in exchange of these products
between the distant parts of the globe is turned by the
"economist” into a "science” that dictates that the pro-
ducer must receive only enough to subsist, and the owner
all the rest, however fabulous the amount; and when ex-
perience shows that one owner receives as much as 18,000
producers, this apostle of science declares that each has
received its just reward. (J. B. Clark, Distribution of
Wealth.)
The law also steps in and sanctions the sacredness of
contract by which the weak barter to the strong their life
and health for a piece of bread; it declares that the system
under which this is possible is inviolable. When the
working man turns away from the trouble of the present
and scans the unknown for a ray of hope, other represen-
tatives of the leisure class preach to him that this status
of master and servant existed from the beginning and
therefore must remain to the end; and that man's duty is
to patiently endure this relation.
This book is primarily addressed to the working class,
because it is the most important class. But it is also
addressed to all other classes whose superior existence is
made possible by the existence of the working class. A
people may shine by a civilization that is only skin deep.
The leisure classes may make an impressive appearance
through their glittering education. Philosophy, art and
religion may be the topic of conversation among the
clubs. Bourses and trade halls may be filled with excited
speculators who bandy thousands and millions as if they
Introduction
9
were scraps of paper, and not dollars. Newspapers may
cover the land as dry leaves the autumn forest, seeming-
ly attesting the desire for universal information. But if
the laborer has not attained that plane where life's oppor-
tunities lie open to him and he cannot use the results of
his own labor for his own development, progress will
stop from a lack of incentive. The few who can enjoy
will make the enjoyment an end in itself, because the
struggle for existence is no longer an immediate neces-
sity. The many who toil will lose the power of progress,
because with the fruits of labor they are also deprived of
hope, and without the inspiration of hope no man strug-
gles forward.
Therefore this book is also addressed to those who are
able to look ahead and try to see the future, to those
whose enthusiasm to share in the true development of
his country has not been effaced by the scramble for
riches.
But first and last this book is addressed to the intelli-
gent working man, because the delivery of the working
class can only be accomplished by its thinking members.
CHAPTER I.
The Evolution of the American Proletarian
[A proletarian is a worker who does uot own the tools
with which he produces.]
When the Revolution of our fathers declared the right
of all to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness the claim
of equality was not a mockery. Inequalities in the pos-
session of property were not pronounced. Labor was al-
most exclusively hand labor, performed with the simple
tools that the laborer himself owned. If the laborer was
poor, it was because he was not able with his undevel-
oped means to extort from nature a great return. Even
when the master mechanic had in his employ a few men
his profit from their surplus labor was small because of
the small total production. Even the slave owner of the
South was unable to extort from his cheap labor any con-
siderable fortune, because of the crude method by which
the staple product, cotton, was picked and prepared for
the market. The opportunity of appropriating the labor
of others had not arrived. Political equality was the re-
sult of the common struggle, the social inequality that
still remained from the European ancestry was under-
mined by the general economic independence and the
revolutionary philosophy of the time. All men at least
the white men—"were created equal;" each citizen had an
equal opportunity to secure economic independence.
But the relation between the free citizens changed
through the introduction of machinery. The invention
of Watts' steam engine in 1769, Crompton's mule 1779,
the power-loom 1789, and the cotton-gin 1793, intro-
duced a new era in the cotton industry. The example
was followed everywhere and the greatest of all revolu-
tions, the "Industrial Revolution" had come.
Where formerly each laborer with his own simple tools
produced merely enough for his own subsistence, leaving
I2
Socialist Campaign Book
no margin of surplus labor for his master, now, with im-
proved methods of production the results of the labor of
each were rapidly increasing. But expensive machines
were substituted for simple tools and the little shop grew
into a factory. The same number of men produced a
greatly increased output. The owner of the factory with
its complicated machinery could pay out of the product
a share to sustain the laborers and still have a consider-
able surplus for himself. In this the vital change from
the past to the present consisted. As long as each
worker owned his own tools the product was his. No
one could (in a legal way) fatten on the labor of an-
other. But when the new improved methods of produc-
tion came in, hand labor could not compete with the
machine. The simple tools could not produce as much
as the machine. He must give up his tools and hire
himself to the owner of the machine. The machine
turned out commodities with a small expenditure of la-
bor and made it possible for the owner of the machine
to appropriate for himself a larger amount from the
total output and still leave a subsistence wage to the
worker.
The factory production developed rapidly. The ma-
terial gains to society were in many ways apparent. Con-
inodities became diversified and cheapened. But the de-
sire to get hold of this surplus of the worker's labor be-
came also intensified among the capitalists. Factories
started up everywhere. Every line of industry was
brought under the factory system.
When the owner found others entering upon his field,
competition between producers begun. But the compe-
tition was primarily for profit. To compete with others
the capitalist must sell cheaply. The first thing to do
then was to reduce operating expenses and cut wages.
This made it still more impossible for the laborer to save
capital sufficient to become his own inaster, and a dis-
tinct laboring class arose.
Another result of competition must also be noticed.
Production was still carried on on an individual scale.
Each capitalist tried to produce for as large a market as
possible, in order to have as large a share of this surplus,
Evolution of the American Proletarian
13
created by labor, as possible, and a startling result fol-
lowed, a result which under the system of hand labor and
direct contact between producer and consumer could
never have happened. This result was over-production.
More was produced than people could buy, and the
market was glutted. Now followed a period of depres-
sion and if the condition was very acute a crisis took
place. The wheels of industry were clogged and the
whole machinery must stop, till by some process un-
known to the capitalist owner the system should right
itself and the capitalist again resume his profit exploita-
tion.
Another important feature of the factory system was
that the laboring class in the period of prosperity, when
the capitalist regularly drew his surplus value, never re-
ceived more than was necessary to keep it in fair work-
ing condition. When through improved methods labor
was saved and products turned out at an increased rate,
the laborer's share became smaller and smaller. Never
do we find in this rapidly developing industrial system a
tendency to let a greater proportion of the production
fall to the laborer in the shape of increased wages. All
through the capitalistic system of production there runs
a thread of reddest color, the attempt of the capitalist
owner to pay the lowest wages for which he can find men
willing to work. The distinctive feature of the capital-
istic system which inheres in its nature, especially when
capitalism is combined with competition, is the desire of
the capitalist to increase the surplus value, profit, rent,
or what one may call it, by cutting down the wages of
labor and increasing its hours. The system itself creates
an irreconcilable conflict between these two parties, the
capitalist and the wage-earner; no matter how strongly
imbued the capitalist may be with humanitarian
tives--as an employer he is forced to accept the methods
of his class.
Still the American Proletarian was not fully evolved.
A distinct working class had grown up that as a class
promised perpetual existence; but it was possible for the
enterprising individual at least to leave the factory and
attain
kind of economic independence. The
mo-
some
14
Socialist Campaign Book
American working man was saved by the boundless
prairies of the West. As long as he had a chance to ex-
change his present dependent condition for a farm the
competition between the workers could not bring them
down to the lowest state. But when the public land fit
for cultivation had either been taken by bona-fide set-
tlers, or had been gobbled up by railroad corporations
and speculators, this outlet for the laborer closed and a
class of unemployed grew up that threatened to force
the competition between the laborers for a job down to
the subsistence point. We may therefore say that the
fully developed American propertyless Proletarian came
into existence when the laborer had no longer a choice
between a factory position and a decent living on a farın.
This period has already been passed.
According to the U.S. Census of 1890 the total num-
ber of persons who were unemployed at their principal
occupation during any portion of the census year was
3,523,730, being 15.30 per cent of the total number en-
gaged in gainful occupations in 1890.
1,818,865.... unemployed from 1 to 3 months.
1,368,418.... unemployed from 4 to months.
336,447.... unemployed from 7 to 12 months.
Which is equivalent to approximately 1,139,672 persons
unemployed at their principal occupation for the entire
twelve months.
The Illinois Labor Reports for 1886 published returns
from representatives of 80,000 wage earners in regard to
time employed during the year, as follows:
Average Per cent
weeks. full time.
40,281 Trade Unionists
35.5
68
7,036 Coal Miners..
.23.4 45
5,567 Railroad Men.
46.1
88
32,445 Knights of Labor....
..41.5
85,329 Workmen .
.37.1
71
Among unskilled workmen the amount of time lost
is much larger
Evolution of the American Proletarian
15
This picture, although sad, is too rosy for the actual
situation. With an army of tramps estimated at several
hundred thousand, with another million that finds itself
slowly but surely pushed down among the perennially
unemployed, with the workers who have employment
losing nearly one-third of their labor time, the American
laboring classs will soon be forced to recognize its pro-
letarian character.
It remains, however, to see what the American work-
ingman has done in self defence against capital. The
greatest of these defensive movements has been the trades
union movement.
CHAPTER II.
The Growth of Trade-Unionism
· The history of the American trades unions may be
divided into five periods. First, the formative period
reaching down to 1840 and including the early 10-hour
movement. Second, a period of quiet growth on trade
union lines accompanied by a wave of Fourierite so-
cialism in the country, and then the concentration of
all the interest in the War of the Rebellion ending in
1866. Third, a period of active effort in trade-union
lines reaching to 1878. Fourth, a period of great strikes
and efforts at general organizations, like the Knights of
Labor culminating in 1886. Fifth, the present period of
the dominance of the American Federation of Labor.
The real formative period of American trade unionism
is from 1825 to 1840. In 1825 Robert Owen's communis-
tic attempt at New Harmony, Ind., occasioned wide-
spread social discussion. The same year the Working
Man's Advocate, which Prof. Ely believes to be the first
American labor journal, appeared in New York City. It
was followed by the Daily Sentinel and Young America,
all published by two Englishmen, George Henry Evans
and Frederick W. Evans. These papers advocated the
freedom of public lands, the breaking up of monopolies,
the adoption of a general bankrupt law, a lien of the
laborer on his work for his wages, the abolition of im-
prisonment for debt, equal rights for women and men,
and the abolition of chattel slavery and of wages slavery.
Over six hundred papers are said to have endorsed these
demands. In 1830 the working man's convention was
held in Syracuse, N. Y., and nominated Ezekiel Williams
governor, giving him 3,000 votes, and in 1832 a dele-
gated convention met in the State House at Boston. A
*The article of Trade-Unions in Bliss' Encyclopedia of Social Re-
form is laid as the foundation of the historical data in this chapter,
The Growth of Trade-Unionism
17
were
10-hour movement was adopted. Laborers at that time
were employed from 10 to 15 hours per day, and women
and children were treated inhumanly. There were many
strikes. They mainly failed, but the agitation went on.
April 10, 1840, President Van Buren issued a proclama-
tion establishing the 10-hour system in the United States
government establishments. In 1841 a boat building firm
in Bath, Maine, granted the ten-hour day. From 1840
to 1850 a wave of Fourierite socialism swept over the
land. Horace Greely opened the pages of the New York
Tribune to its advocacy.
This period reaching through the war saw the appear-
ance of most of the great national trades unions. The
National Typographical Union was organized in 1852,
called in 1862 International, to admit Canadian unions.
The hat finishers organized a national union in 1854.
The iron moulders' union of North America was founded
in 1858 and led to the more important Amalgamated
Association of Iron and Steel Workers in 1876. By
1860, twenty-six national unions
formed. The
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers started as "The
Brotherhood of the Footboard" at Detroit in 1863. The
Cigarmakers' National Union followed the next year.
The Bricklayers and Masons International Union dates
from 1865. Central labor unions, too, began to be
formed in the larger cities. In New York, the Central
Labor Union was formed as early as 1883. The National
Labor Union was formed in 1861, but did not endure.
After the war the majority of the trades-unions con-
centrated their efforts on the short-hour movement. This
movement has played a large part in the history of
American unions. The philosophy of the movement,
sometimes called the 8-hour philosophy, was first ade-
quately formulated by two Boston men, Ira Steward and
George E. McNeill. A Grand Eight Hour League had
been formed previously, but had disappeared, when these
two men with a few friends organized in the spring of
1869 the Boston Eight-hour League. It influenced the
whole trade-union movement. With the aid of Wendell
Phillips and others they succeeded the same year in se-
curing the establishment of the Massachusetts Bureau
18
Socialist Campaign Book
reaus.
of Statistics of Labor, the parent of all other labor bu-
The bureau's statistics aided the movement. Agi- .
tation for shorter hours became general. There were
numerous strikes, many of them successful. In 1874
Massachusetts enacted a ten-hour law for women and for
children under the age of 18. In 1868 Congress enacted
an eight-hour bill for United States employes. This was
ignored, until at last Congress in 1869 enacted another
law securing to all government employes full compen-
sation for an eight-hour day. To-day eight hours is the
rule in the government works.
The great order of the Knights of Labor was first es-
tablished as a local secret labor union in Philadelphia,
December 28, 1869. The result of the efforts of Uriah
S. Stephens and six associates. At the time of its founda-
tion this organization was practically pledged to a So-
cialist platform. It gradually spread but did not hold its
first general assembly until January 1st, 1878, when Mr.
Stephens was chosen General Master-workman. It
aimed to unite all working men in one great organiza-
tion, with the key thought that "an injury to one is the
concern of all."
The great railroad strike of 1877, beginning on the
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad at Martinsburg, W. Va.,
and leading to riots and destruction of property in vari-
ous places, and particularly at Pittsburg, Pa., marks a pe-
riod in the development of American trade-unions. The
rioters were put down, buit vast numbers of the people of
Pittsburg sympathized with the strikers, and the general
attention of the whole country was for the first time
drawn to the labor movement. There was a rush into
organization. By 1886 the Knights of Labor had a mem-
bership of over 500,000. But the growth was too rapid.
Reaction set in. In 1885 and 1886 occurred two great
strikes on the Gould system of railways south and west
of St. Louis, the first successful, the second turning pub-
lic sympathy against the strikers. In 1886, too, occurred
the Haymarket riot in Chicago, the arrest, trial, and, in
1887, the hanging of the "anarchists." It called new
attention to the necessity of industrial reforms. Mean-
while a growing dissatisfaction with the Knights of La-
The Growth of Trade-Unionism
ig
bor had been developing. That order attempted to mold
the men of all trades into one organization with little or
no respect to the autonomy of each craft. Mr. Terence
V. Powderly, who had been General Master-workman
since 1879, with a General Executive Board, developed
dictatorial powers, resulting in the weakening of the
order. In 1881 some of the trades-unions organized a
Federation of Trade and Labor Unions, which became
the American Federation of Labor, at Columbus, O.,
December 8, 1886. This organization recognizes the au-
tonomy of the separate crafts, but federates them for
purposes of strength. Its appearance marks the begin
ning of the present period. It has become the one great
labor organization of the country, and has grown as
the Knights of Labor has gone down. Committed from
the first to the short-hour movement, in 1889 it voted
to make an effort annually to establish the eight-hour
day in some one craft. The plan was for some trade each
year to strike for eight hours, while all other trades
should support that trade. The carpenters were chosen
to lead. In May, 1890, they struck in almost all cities,
and in many cities gained the day. In 1891 the miners
were to strike, but the depressed conditions in their trade
ad the dual form of their organization prevented any
action. This broke up the annual plan.
The American Federation of Labor embraces to-day
most of the great unions of the country.
The trade-union movement is the direct outgrowth of
the capitalistic system. It is the first and greatest ex-
ponent of the inherent antagonism between capital and
labor. The possession of capital gave into the hand of
the owner an organized power equal and even greater
than that of all the workers combined. When this power
was turned against individual workingmen, the latter
was powerless to resist. Consequently his only resource
was to combine with his co-workers.
The activity of the trade-unions has been confined to
limits set by the capitalistic system: To protect wages
and to shorten the hours of labor. The laborer has had
two valuable allies in this struggle, the existence of free
public lands that absorb part of the surplus numbers, and
20
Socialist Campaign Book
the right to suffrage. As long as the organized laborer
confined his efforts to the industrial field, fighting the
capitalist on his own grounds, he could become only
partly successful, inasmuch as labor organizations could
never become as perfect as the organization of capital.
With the rapid perfection of the latter organization the
difficulties of labor to uphold its defenses increase. Even
the statement of Samuel Gompers at a trust conference in
Chicago, that it would by no means be impossible for
the trade-unions to perfect their organization as satisfac-
torily as the organizers of capital improve theirs, so that
trade-unions will without difficulty be able to resist the
encroachments of capital, cannot remove the impression
that the wish was the father to the thought. At no stage
of the game has labor been able to equal capital in
power. The greatest weapon of organized labor has been
the competition between employers. When the trust is
perfectly organized, it becomes substantially the only em-
ployer, and Gompers acknowledges that "the State is not
capable to prevent the natural concentration of industry.'
The men trained in only one line of industry would have
the same difficulties to contend with as the consumer who
is within the power of the producer who controls the
whole product. If a strike were threatened in one of the
plants of the combination the orders of this plant could
be transferred to another and a general strike all along
the line would be necessary. At present the attitude of
trusts is on the whole favorable to the trade-unions. The
testimony of the trust magnates before the Industrial
Commission shows a fervid desire to further the happi-
ness of the laborer, with the exception of Mr. Gates, of
the American Wire and Steel Company, who insists pos-
itively that his Company has not recognized trade-union-
ism and will not recognize it. The money wages under
the trust have in inany instances shown a small increase.
In its struggle with capital organized labor has over-
looked an important factor. In its early growth capital
outflanked labor. The laborer was dreaming of his
democracy given him by the founders of the republic,
but capital by the suddenness of its growth captured
political institutions and tinctured them by its essence.
The Growth of Trade Unionism
21
"The State has always been the representative of
the wealth possessors.” (Samuel Gompers in his report
of the Annual Convention of the American Federation
of Labor.) Capital shaped the development of our politi-
cal institutions while they were yet young and amenable
to rapidly changing conditions. Thus our legislatures
were filled by men whose characters had been formed
by capitalistic interests. Our Courts were directed by
men grown in the same atmosphere. There lay no con-
scious design in all this to pervert the democracy of our
childhood. The material development of the century cen-
tered in industry, and it by the force of circumstances
directed the development of our life. The reaction
against this plutocratic regime took its first form in the
early labor unions. So we have the plutocratic develop-
ment in capitalism, and the democratic in organized labor.
But plutocracy was the first one to be conscious of its
advantages, and captured the political State in order to
fortify itself. Democracy also had power which proved it-
self in the deference plutocracy showed in promising la-
bor legislation as a bait for the labor vote. But as we
show elsewhere these were empty promises. It is only
when labor wakes up to consciousness of its power that
it will recapture the advantages it thoughtlessly let slip,
and makes the political institutions adapt themselves to
the interest of labor. It is only when labor organizes its
vote and uses its political power for the benefit of the
whole people that true democracy will again permeate
our life, political as well as industrial, and the sham
democracy and republicanism, the daughters of plutoc-
racy, will be a memory only of days when the many in
their blindness let a few reign over them.
CHAPTER III.
Trusts-Industrial
OOMPETITION MEANS INDUSTRIAL ANAROHY. ORGANIZATION
MEANS INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS.
The trust problem has occupied so much attention
during the last years and has been made such a promi-
nent issue of this campaign, that a thorough understand-
ing of it is necessary. Much has been written about both
the good and evil of trusts, but it has invariably been
done from a capitalistic standpoint with an occasional
reference to the effect upon the public in the form of rise
in prices. Little has been done to show the relation of
this highest form of industrial organization to the lives
and fortunes of the laboring class, and that little has
invariably been done in a partisan and confusing spirit,
in order to enlist the sympathies of this class, to keep
the political power and all that this implies with one or
the other of the capitalistic parties.
No change in the history of the human
race has
brought such powerful results as the change from hand
labor to machine labor. With the introduction of the
factory in our life a new era began. Our industrial de-
velopment has been praised by some as the wonder of
all ages. Other voices have condemned it as the source
of greater misery than the world has ever seen before. It
is therefore necessary to analyze calmly industrial de-
velopment to see whether it is the essential nature of this
system to be a grievous burden to the men upon whose
shoulders it must rest.
The increase of productive ability that this new system
brought about is simply astonishing. Spinning machines
operated by one operator and two girls, turn out more
yarn than 11,000 old time hand spinners could do.
In weaving one man now does as much work as 95
could do with the old hand loom.
Trusts-Industrial
23
One man tending a nail machine turns out as many
nails as 1,000 men forinerly did by hand.
Formerly it required a good workman to gin 5 lbs.
of cotton a day. Now two men with a machine turn out
4,000 pounds.
Two machines operated by two girls will now turn
out 240,000 screws a day, while a few years ago 20,000
screws was the most that 20 skilled workmen could turn
out in a day.
Formerly it took a quick worker to sew six pairs of
shoes in a day. Now one man will sew 1,000 pair in a
day with a machine.
With a match machine 300 girls will turn out as many
matches as 8,000 men could formerly do.
In making wall paper one man does the work formerly
requiring 100 men.*
In 1889 the Berlin Bureau of Statistics estimated the
power capable of being exerted by the steam engines of
the world as equivalent to 200,000,000 horse power, rep-
resenting in men three times the entire population of the
globe. It has increased very much sinec then.
Facts like these might be extended indefinitely. The
ability of man to produce wealth is so marvelously in-
creased that it would seem as though hunger and poverty
ought to be abolished. All that is needed to satisy
every human need can be produced in abundance. It
seems strange that want and misery can exist in the midst
of this plenty. And they would have been removed if
the productive power had been intelligently utilized and
the wealth so abundantly produced had been equitably
distributed among the people.
But from the start the means of production becanie
separated from the producer. The small Colonial for-
tunes were invested in manufacturing establishments,
small at first but destined to grow into gigantic under-
takings. The Revolutionary fathers who anxiously tried
to safeguard the equality and liberty of every citizen
could not foresee that this infantile institution should
grow into a power that would soon over throw their
*See United States Labor Bureau Report on Machine and Hand
Labor.
24
Socialist Campaign Book
cherished equalities; that “the pursuit of happiness”
would grow into a race for the possession of property, a
property acquired by appropriating the surplus value of
other people's labor.
The unprecedented rapidity with which the industrial
revolution took place would naturally present problems
the nature and outcome of which no one could predict.
We cannot blame the framers of the Constitution that
they did not provide for contingencies they could not
foresee. We cannot even blame the early capitalists who
availed themselves of the opportunity of a rapid acquisi-
tion of wealth and fixed the lines in which the new in-
stitutions should develop. Mankind, like individuals,
must pass through its period of tuition and experiment.
Its education takes a longer period than individuals, be-
cause it is composed of so many diverse elements. Its
most afflicted members are the first to feel the result of
misguided development and cry out that something is
wrong. From this cry rises the desire to find the source
of trouble and the remedy for the evil.
During the first period of capitalist production the
markets were small and limited on account of the ini-
perfect means of communication. But the capital ac-
cumulating in the hands of the owner demanded an out-
let, and inventions to facilitate transportation were the
result. The steamboat was perfected and the rivers were
made the highways by which the products of the factory
could be carried to distant settlements. Soon the rivers
were too inadequate and railroads were built. Distance
was now a minor factor in the calculations of the manu-
facturer. The limited home market expanded fast over
State and Continent, only to be followed by the world
market.
The building of water and railways had also other re-
sults. If one man in a factory could with the help of a
machine supplant the labor of ten men under the old
hand production, this country would soon be filled with
men who had become superfluous in the industrial sys-
tem. The farm land would, as it really did, absorb a
number of them, but on the farms the productions of food
stuffs would have become so large that no buyers could
Trusts-Industrial
25
have been found. The fariner would have soon been in
a position where he produced food only for himself with-
out being able to exchange his surplus food stuffs for
other articles of necessity.
The building of railroads and other transportation fa-
cilities absorbed a large percentage of this otherwise un-
employed class. The new industries, as machine pro-
duction, manufacture of building material, etc., which this
rapid development necessitated, gave employment to still
others. The extractive industries like mining, forestry,
wool raising, etc., absorbed still more. Thus we have
seen in the chapter on the Evolution of the American
Proletarian the laboring class in spite of the continued
labor-saving inventions was still able to find employ-
ment in the various branches of industry or transporta-
tion, and the surplus found an outlet in profitable farm-
ing. It is only within the last decade that we are con-
fronted with the grave problem of an ever-increasing class
of permanently unemployed for which no place can be
found in our system of production.
Some inconsistencies in the individual capitalistic sys-
tem soon became apparent. The aim of each competitor
was to reach as large a constituency of consumers as
possible in order to extend his production and conse-
quently increase profit. The endeavor of every capitalist
was to over-reach all others in supplying a large market.
But the knowledge of the conditions of the market was
very limited and inadequate in spite of the improved
method by which intelligence could be communicated.
When each manufacturer tried to deceive and outwit his
competitor, no systematic information of the needs of
the consumers could be found, and the adjustment of
production to the needs of the people became only a mat-
ter of hazard and speculation. Under this system of
competition such maladjustment of industry took place
as we have experienced under the name of over-pro-
duction, hard times, crisis, and what-not. In all of these
maladjustments the laborer was the ultimate sufferer.
While the factories were closed to allow the stored up
goods to be consumed, the laborer had no income, while
capitalists still owned the products upon which he could
}
26
Socialist Campaign Book
а.
exist. It is true that individual capitalists suffer in the
struggle of competition, but the loss of one is the gain
of another, and the class as whole sit secure
through its ability to draw the surplus labor from the
working class.
This does entirely away with the idea that presidential
elections are the cause of crisis. When we come to inquire
into the effect of other presidential campaigns upon the
business situation, we find quite as little to support the
complaint regarding their depressing influence. The
statistics of business failures are perhaps the most accur-
ate register of commercial activity or depression, and
these indicate that presidential election years have been,
on the whole, as prosperous as any other. R. G. Dun &
Co.'s statistics go back to 1857-_a year of panic which
succeeded a presidential election in which the party in
power remained in power. In that year there were 4,932
failures, with liabilities aggregating $292,000,000. In
1860 when the next presidential election was held, the
number of failures was but 3,676, and the liabilities ag-
gregated but $80,000,000. In 1861, owing to the out-
break of the war, the number of failures nearly doubled;
but in 1864, when the next presidential election occurred,
there were but 530 failures in all the loyal States, and
the aggregate of liabilities was but $8,000,000. The rise
in prices due to the depreciation of greenbacks made it
difficult for anybody to fail in that year. In 1868 and
1872 the number of failures was merely normal; and
though it was exceptionally large in 1876, it was more
exceptionally small in 1880. 1884 was again a year of
depression, but 1888 was in every way normal, and 1892
was a year of marked prosperity. Apparently the com-
plaint against presidential years has little historical basis
except the recollection of the depression after 1892.
Many of the most severe crises of the United States
have extended also over Europe and could not have re-
sulted from our local politics. This is true of the crises
of 1890, 1873, 1857, 1847, and others.
The present situation is also an example. The dull
times are not confined to the United States. In England,
to quote from the Financial Chronicle: "The dividends
Trusts--Industrial
declared by the railways have been very disappointing."
And “Trade has undoubtedly received some check fro:n
the rise in the value of money, and still more from the
high prices of coal and other raw materials.” “In Berlin
also trade has received considerable check." And "specu-
lation is almost at a standstill;" while in France, the
woolen centers are reporting "the dullest kind of dull
business." Evidently, therefore, the present lull in trade
here and there, like the great revival of the past three
years, is an international phenomenon and is not to be
accounted for by the change of party administration.
These maladjustments in the industrial system caused
by competition point out their own remedies. Experi-
ence shows that certain advantages come from the pos-
session of large capital. The storekeeper who supplies
the necessities of a hundred families must employ a clerk,
keep a horse and wagon and pay the same rent as the
man who with the same help supplies two or three hun-
dreds. The part of the operating expenses that falls
upon each sale of the latter storekeeper becomes much
less than that which falls on the former, and he can sell
his goods cheaper. It is only a question of time when
the former must be driven from the field. The large
capitalist who can afford the most developed machinery,
who has the advantage of the best situation, who can
utilize all the by-products of the raw material, etc., has a
tremendous advantage over the small capitalist. The
latter must either leave the field altogether or form a
combination with other capitalists.
Another factor also comes to the help of the large pro-
ducer. All unnecessary and wasteful methods in the pro-
cess of production must be an item of expense in the
price. Contrary to the popular opinion competitive prices
are frequently, if not usually, high prices. The cost of
selling is in most cases a very important factor in the
determination of price. The whole class of middlemen
who come in between the producer and consumer is a
heavy and to a great extent useless burden upon the con-
sumer. If the functions of retail merchants, salesmen, etc..
could be performed by one-tenth of the present number
a tremendous saving would result to society. When
28
Socialist Campaign Book
a manufacturer or railroad president finds that he has
more men on his wage list than are necessary to perform
his work the useless ones are cut off and told to seek em-
ployment where their work is more needed. No one
raises a voice against the hardships of the dislocated
men. If the middle class finds its present occupation
gone, and is forced to take its share in productive labor,
the sacrifice must be made for the good of the whole so-
ciety.
The saving in this respect is considerable. Instead of
representatives of a number of competing houses visit-
ing the same community, one can do the business of the
combination of these houses. When the American Steel
and Wire Company was formed it was on this account
possible to dispense with the services of nearly two hun-
dred salesmen. One of the whiskey combinations spared
in the same manner 300 traveling salesmen. From evi-
dence before the Industrial Commission it was found that
in the sale of alcoholic liquors in this country, there was
a loss somewhere between the distiller and the consumer
of at least $40,000,000 a year. The result of this loss is
a higher price to the consumer. The cost of advertising
is enormous and advertisements are intended more to at-
tract customers to a certain store than to increase con-
sumption. This is also an important item of price. The
saving in cross freights by the American Steel and Wire
Company was estimated by Mr. Gates at more than $500,-
000 a year. From the first annual report of the United
States Commission of Labor we make the following
quotation: "A man who weaves cloth for which he re-
ceives less than 4 cents a yard as a producer, inay have to
pay 75 cents a yard as a consumer, the profit of the re-
tailer in such a case being at least 25 cents a yard; that is,
the retailer for handling one yard of goods receives 25
cents compensation, where the weaver for weaving the
same yard receives less than 4 cents.”
These are only examples that could be repeated at great
length, showing the advantage of the great corporation
in reducing the operating expenses.
The path of evolution of the monopoly industry is
clearly traced by Mr. Rockefeller in his testimony before
Trusts- Industrial
29
the Industrial Commission: "I speak from my experi-
ence in the business with which I have been intimately
connected for about 40 years. Our first combination was
a partnership and afterwards a corporation in Ohio. That
was sufficient for a local refining business. But depend-
ent solely upon local business we should have failed years
ago. We were forced to extend our markets and to seek
for export trade. This latter made the seaboard cities a
necessary place of business, and we soon discovered that
manufacturing for export could be inore economically
carried on at the seaboard, hence refineries at Brooklyn,
at Bayonne, at Philadelphia, and necessary corporations
in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
"We soon discovered as the business grew that the
primary method of transporting oil in barrels could not
last. The package often cost more than the contents, and
the forests of the country were not sufficient to supply
the necessary material for an extended length of time.
Hence we devoted attention to other methods of transpor-
tation, adopted the pipe-line system, and found capital for
pipe line construction equal to the necessities of the
business.
"To operate pipe-lines required franchises from the
States in which they were located, and consequently cor-
porations in those States, just as railroads running
through different States are forced to operate under sep-
arate State charters. To perfect the pipe-line system of
transportation required in the neighborhood of $50,000,-
000 of capital. This could not be obtained or maintained
without industrial combination. The entire oil business
is dependent upon this pipe-line system. Without it
every well would be shut down and every foreign market
would be closed to us.
“The pipe-line system required other improvements,
such as tank cars upon railways, and finally the tank
steamer. Capital had to be furnished for them and cor-
porations created to own and operate them.
"Every step taken was necessary in the business if it
was to be properly developed, and only through such
successive steps and by such an industrial combination is
America to-day enabled to utilize the bounty which its
30
Socialist Campaign Book
land pours forth, and to furnish the world with the best
and cheapest light ever known, receiving in return there-
for from foreign lands nearly $50,000,000 per year.
I
have given a picture rather than a detail of the growth
of one industrial combination. It is a pioneer, and its
work has been of incalculable value."
Looking aside from the financial side of trusts--the
determination of prices and wages—which needs a sep-
arate treatment, one cannot but acknowledge the natural
development of the successive steps of this monopoly. No
better way could be invented by which the natural re-
sources may be made available for the world's need. The
lesson of the trust, how to secure the greatest satisfaction
for the least expenditure of human energy, is too good
to be lost.
With monopoly, as this word is at present used, is
meant control unified enough to hold competitors in
check, as evidenced by the power to put prices higher
than former competitive rates, whilst still excluding
nearly all competitors. This power to get higher rates
of profit depends generally upon its ability to put goods
on the market without loss at lower rates, if need be,
than can its rivals.
For political purposes a discrimination has been made
between the combination of capital owned by many people
and the large capital by which one man could control a
whole trade. It is absurd to niake this discrimination
except to coin party capital. The effects of monopoly
by one person are exactly the same as those of the
monopoly owned by many in combination. It matters
nothing to the public whether the meat industry is con-
trolled by one firm or a set of bondholders. The working
men under this firm are certainly not any better off. The
means by which John M. Wanamaker has succeeded to
build up a business that overtowers all his competitors are
in their nature no different from those of any trust. The
tentacles of the “octupus," whether they gather in the
small oil refiner into the maw of the oil trust, or the
small country dealer into the maw of Montgomery Ward
(which is a single firm), are just as efficient. The best
example of the efficiency of a large capital to gain
Trusts - Industrial
31
monopolistic control without the aid of the legal form of
trust formation is shown in the case of Andrew Carnegie,
whose establishments are a larger and stronger element
in the iron and steel industry than those of any of the
inonster “trusts."
The same methods are used; the power of big capital
to produce cheaper, to eliminate waste in distribution and
to undersell the competitior, and when in power control
prices is the same. It matters not to the working class
whether the "dishonest trust” pays to the Republican
campaign fund or the "honest corporation" pays into
the Democratic. The nature of both is the same.
It is natural that the transition from the competitive
to the monopolistic system wherever accomplished could
not take place without a great outcry from the inferior
competitors, and that an appeal would be made to the
sympathies of society at large. Some forty sugar re-
fineries were in existence in the whole United States
before the formation of a sugar trust in 1887. From
three to five millions of dollars are required to build and
run satisfactorily a sugar refinery. Competition among
the refiners became so fierce that some eighteen of the
forty had gone into bankruptcy before combination into
the trust, which abated for a time the fury of the contest.
In 1880 there were 1,943 plants with a combined capital
of $62,000,000 manufacturing agricultural implements.
In 1890 there were but 910 plants, while the capital
invested had more than doubled. The number of
plants engaged in the manufacture of leather de-
creased in the same period from 5,424 to 1,596, while
the capital invested increased from $67,000,000 to 81,-
000,000. The growth of the department store in our
great cities has had a revolutionary effect upon the small
dealers, and the mail order houses are in the same man-
ner invading the country.
It is but natural that a squeezed pig should squeal.
The shopkeeper and the manufacturer coming out of the
bankruptcy court would endeavor to enlist public sym-
pathy, but the march of progress cannot be stopped be-
cause the unfit are eliminated. The industries are be-
coming still more consolidated, and the gates of eco-
32
Socialist Campaign Book
nomic opportunity are one by one closed to the middle
class. The great laboring class opens its ranks and
tries to give the newcomer a place.
The great tendency of our whole industrial history
has been, as shown, in the direction of organization and
the minute division of labor. By this double process in-
dustry has attained its present perfection. Great indus-
trial undertakings have been located where the natural
advantages have been most favorable. Factories have
gravitated to the centers whence the great railroad and
waterways could most easily distribute the products.
Plants have been constructed with the most modern ap-
pliances. Machinery is run to its fullest capacity. Care-
ful intelligence in regard to the conditions of the mar-
kets is collected to determine accurately the output. No
waste or unnecessary reduplication is allowed. All this
would be impossible under a system of limited produc-
tion and free competition. Competition must necessarily
mean confusion and destruction.
To what extent the natural development of the eco-
nomic forces have perfected this industrial organization,
the following illustrations will show: "The Federal
Steel Company is a combination of several companies.
It owns the Minnesota Iron Company with iron
ore property, also the Duluth & Iron Range R. R. Co.,
which connects its mines with Lake Superior at two
points. It owns ore docks and also 22 steel lake vessels
that can carry a large proportion of its product each
year. It bought all the stock of the Lorain Steel Com-
pany, which manufactures chiefly steel rails for street
railways; it bought all the stock of the Johnson Company,
which is engaged chiefly in manufacturing frog switches
and crossings for street railroads, as well as electric
motors. Another company, all the stock of which it pur-
chased, is the Illinois Steel Company, with several plants,
which produced pig, iron, steel rails, steel billets, steel
plates, etc. This company is also the owner of the
stock of the Chicago, Lake Shore & Eastern Ry, which
connects its plants in the neighborhood of Chicago and
also gives to these plants an outlet to the general market
over all the railroads in the country. It also owns large
Trusts-Industrial
33
tracts of coal property on which it manufactures coke
used in its plants."*
Through this combination the company controls the
raw material in the mine, the coal used, the transporta-
tion facilities both on land and water, with docks, and
the plants where the raw material is turned into the fin-
ished products.
The American Tin Plate Company, the National Steel
Plate Company, and the American Steel Hoop Com-
pany, although legally independent, are to a considerable
extent controlled by the same men acting as large stock-
holders and as directors.
No better illustration can be had of a perfect indus-
trial organization than the combination of companies
forming the Standard Oil Trust. It controls over 80
per cent of the oil refined in the United States, its output
in 1898 being 23,914,938 barrels to the competitors' 3,-
914,999. The value of its export of petroleum products
to Europe was $1,126,401,021 of the total value of $1,-
246,846,381. Besides this Rockefeller has taken posses-
sion of the electric light and gas plants in New York
City and other places. He is fast coming into control
of the iron industry. He already owns the Lake Superior
mines and the Lake transportation service. He is about
to control the copper mines of the United States. He is
heavily interested in the great passenger ships of the In-
ternational Navigation Company. He also controls the
most important banks and trust companies in New York
and other cities, with an estimated capital of $22,900,000,
surplus $44,023,734; and loans, $342,775,000; deposits,
$432,092,200; government deposits, $21,641,100.
Not only have trusts become national, but as in the
case of the Standard Oil, they are growing into interna-
tional organizations. This fact makes the proposition to
remove the trust, by removing the tariff, ridiculous. At
present there exists an international thread combina-
tion. Already many of the American trusts have ex-
tended into British territory, covering Canada; as, for
instance, the American Tobacco Company, the Inter-
*See "The Trust Problem," by Jeremiah W. Jenks.
34
Socialist Campaign Book
national Drug Company and others, and several still
larger international trusts are in the process of forma-
tion.
CHAPTER IV.
Trusts-Capitalistic
SOCIALISM IS
CAPITALISM IS DESPOTISM IN INDUSTRY,
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY.
We have in the previous chapters seen the marvelous
development of the mechanism of production. The in-
dustrial system has been completely organized and all
its details perfected. Still with the evidence before him,
no fair-minded man can say that the modern laborer
with his small and uncertain wage is much better off
than his predecessors were fifty or one hundred years
ago. Why is it that while the necessities and comforts
of life have increased in abundance, the conditions of
the working class have not had a corresponding improve-
ment? The answer to this question is found in the two-
fold nature of the capitalistic system. The right under-
standing of this twofold nature of the capitalistic system
will explain to us all the incongruities of our social and
economic structure and give us the key to the attitude
of existing political parties. One function of the trust
as the highest exponent of the industrial system, is as
we have already seen, to produce at the lowest cost. The
other function, which we will analyze in this chapter, is
to keep as much as possible of this cheapened production
for the capitalist owner. The first function of capitalism
is the industrial function; the second, the financial or
pecuniary, or to use a more expressive word, the func-
tion of exploitation. The first function is a useful and
praiseworthy one, and experience has shown us that a
trust has developed this function to its highest degree.
In all our economic thinking we ought never to overlook
the fact that competitive industry has developed into
monopolistic industry simply because the latter was able
to produce cheaper, and, if need be, sell at lower prices
than the former. We may 'hear people rail against the
36
Socialist Campaign Book
trusts and combinations because they reduce the number
of jobs, but that should not close our eyes to their im-
portant function of organizing the means of production
to their most efficient form. Let us rather distinguish
between the various functions of the capitalistic system
to see which of them are useful and necessary to the
whole society and which of them are only the means by
which one class can take advantage of another and ex-
ploit it. Whatever faults there are in trusts they are
faults that are inherent in the whole capitalistic system.
It is impossible to kill off the trusts and retain the capital-
istic system of production, as the democratic party
seems to advocate. Why this proposition is true will
appear in the following discussion.
The financial or exploiting function of a trust as the
creature of capitalism is twofold. First, the endeavor to
raise prices in order to exploit the whole consuming pub-
lic. Second, the endeavor to reduce to a minimum the
laborer's share in the product.
I.
TRUST PRICES.
As to the first point let us take a few examples fron
the largest trust. In 1887 the sugar trust was formed.
The difference between the price of raw sugar and gran-
ulated sugar, in which margin the profits are contained,
was immediately raised more than half a cent, and at
times even fully one cent a pound. These prices are
wholesale prices in the New York market. For the ad-
ditions of the retailer the trust is not responsible. Dur-
ing the two years 1888-9 when one takes into account
the lessened cost to manufacture that came from the
organization of this combination, one may fairly judge
that the trust made enormous profits.
The margin fell again in 1890 to 1892, during the
Spreckles' competition. From 1892 to 1898 the high
margin returned with a slight gradual lessening, owing
no doubt to the fear of giving an opportunity to new
capital to enter the field. In the latter part of 1898 the
Arbuckle Bros. and others made a vigorous competition
Trusts-Capitalistic
37
and the margin between raw and refined sugar fell from
75 cents and $1 per 100 pounds, as it had been during
previous years, to a little above 50 cents per 100 pounds.
The price of oil has shown a gradual decline since
Rockefeller took charge of the whole oil production, with
the exception of those places where competition needed
to be crushed. In 1898 the price of crude and refined
oil began to rise, due partly to increased cost of produc-
tion, but partly also to the 30 per cent dividends that
these companies have been able to pay.
From the study of the prices of the whisky trust it
would seem that the combination has been able to hold
prices and profits high only for short periods. In their
attempts to overreach and secure too high profits new
capital again brought competitors and great fluctuations
in price followed. According to the testimony of the
President of the Distilling Company of America, the
combination has finally adopted the policy of compara-
tively low profits, but invariably secure ones. Whether
this policy will be carried out or not remains to be seen.
A generalization in regard to the trust prices is very
hazardous to attempt, because their recent appearance
gives too few results as basis of deduction, and the pol-
icy of the trust has not yet had time to settle. If one
may be attempted it would be that trusts, although in
their first stages eager to reap all the rewards their
position gives them, will be forced by their economic
situation to reply upon the profits that saving and ad-
vantages of large capital gives them. Moderate profits
on large sales will in the long run be found more desir-
able than larger profits followed by periods of competi-
on and industrial warfare. It must, however, be borne
in mind that the prices in competitive industries by no
means show a continual downward tendency, but that,
as shall be shown in tables in Chap. VII., all prices of
manufactured articles whether controlled by trusts or
not have lately shown an upward tendency. To quote
Mr. Altgeld in a speech before the National Anti-Trust
Conference: "The statistics show that almost every
manufactured article used by the American people has
during the last two years been arbitrarily: marked up
38
Socialist Campaign Book
from 20 per cent to upward of 100 per cent. This is
the natural result of monopoly.” Why this general rise
of prices in industries not controlled by trusts is the re-
sult of monopoly, is difficult to understand. The corner
grocer who is by competition forced to use the most
desperate means to live, will take the same advantage
of his customer as any rapacious trust. The fluctua-
tions in prices existed long before the trusts were
known and must be accounted for from other reasons.
}
II.
EXPLOITATION OF THE WORKER.
The second point in the financial function of the trust
is common to the whole capitalistic system. This func-
tion is to deprive the laborer of his share of the prod-
uct. The captains of industry have undertaken not only
to guide the productive processes in order to provide
the best and most economical satisfaction of human
wants, but also to guide as large a share as possible of
the rewards of this production into the pockets of the
capitalist class. This it is able to do through its own-
ership of the means of production. The share of the
worker's returns is not determined by the value of the
product, but by cost of labor. The capitalist buys la-
bor at a price that is determined by the cost of sub-
sistence. The difference between this labor cost and
the price of the output, belongs to the capitalist in the
form of profit, rent, interest, or whatever highsounding
name may be given to it. Today this difference is
appalling. We are not going to enter upon some refined
system of ethics to determine the justice or injustice of
this system. We would only ask why it is that while
human ingenuity and invention have made the produc-
tion of everything that satisfies human needs so abun-
dant, the laboring classes must live on the plainest
foods, wear the cheapest shoddy, dwell in crowded and
unhealthy homes, enjoy the
the cheapest pleasures, be
debarred from all higher education, and always have a
Damocles' sword suspended over their heads from the
fear of losing the opportunity to earn even that? Why
Trusts-Capitalistic
39
is it thus, while the capitalist class and the classes that
derive their support from that class revel in all the
comforts and luxuries that make our "civilization” so re-
splendent? Why is it that the working class that con-
stituted in 1890 fifty-five per cent of the population, had
only 4.21 per cent of the wealth? Why is it that the
agricultural class numbering 29.93 per cent of the pop-
ulation had 15.33 per cent, while the other classes con-
stituting 25.7 per cent with the foreign investors in-
cluded, had 80.46 per cent of the wealth? Why is it
that while the percentage of the wealth that flows into
capitalistic coffers is continually increasing, that women
and children take the places of men among the laboring
ranks, on account of their cheaper labor?
Let us ask another question, the answer to which
may perhaps formulate itself in figures. What is the
effect of this evergrowing surplus in the hands of a
small class upon society as a whole? Has it any influ-
ence upon its institutions? Can we trace it in its politi-
cal and social life? Can any industrial and economic
structure remain well balanced while all the wealth
gravitates to one side and all the people to another?
The first result of this unequal distribution of wealth
is the disturbance of equilibrium of production and con-
sumption. In order that the cycle of production shall
be renewed, it is necessary that what is produced shall
find customers who are able to purchase. In order that
healthy equilibrium shall exist between supply and de-
mand, there must be an amount of saved capital to re-
store the wear and tear of existing equipment of indus-
try, to provide new equipment for the increase of popu-
lation and to afford a fund for investment of really prof-
itable new devices for saving labor and increasing pro-
duction. If more capital than is necessary to keep the
machinery of production going is "saved" and invested
in new business, the supply of goods exceeds the
amount purchased by those able to buy, and overpro-
duction and commercial convulsion follow. This is
what the capitalists are doing. The wealth that results
from labor flows into two channels. One part goes to
the laborers to fit them for further production. The
other part goes to the capitalist class and is again
40
Socialist Campaign Book
turned into two channels. The first part of the capital-
ist wealth is consumed in satisfying their highly devel-
oped wants. What the laborers lack in comfort is here
found in luxury. The other part of the capitalist's share,
that which remains after his own living expenses are
paid, must be invested in other capitalistic undertakings
by which still more wealth may be produced. As the
capitalistic system develops the surplus capital rolling
in on the capitalist's hands becomes a difficult thing to
handle. With incomes counted by the millions, the
question how to invest these becomes serious. A float-
ing capital is created that demands investment. Expe-
rience has shown that when surplus capital accumulates
rapidly, the groping after new uses for it causes waste
and disaster. A crisis comes to sweep away part of this
overproduction. Sometimes war is a welcome agent to
destroy the existing wealth that the capitalist may pro-
duce more--all at the expense of the people.
The investment of this surplus capital still remains a
serious thing. The principle constituency of our home
market consists of the laboring classes. Their purchas-
ing power is narrowly limited by the capitalist employ-
After the home market has been thoroughly ex-
ploited and goods sold to everyone that is possibly able
to buy, the capitalist must look to foreign markets to
find customers for the wealth on his hands. The civil-
ized world is carefully canvassed and swift steamships
dispatched. But here the same conditions meet the in-
vestor. Other capitalists as eager as he are pushing to
sell their wares. Therefore the "heathens' must be
made to buy. Suddenly a necessity for colonies is dis-
covered. Spheres of influence over weaker nations
must be secured. This interest in the affairs of other
nations disguised under whatever phrases it may be, is
only the necessity of the capitalist to find an outlet for
the wealth that is rapidly accumulating on his hands.
Thus we see how our economic system enters poli-
tics. Our sympathy with struggling Cuba and Puerto
Rico, and our fraternal interest in the poor Filippinos
is excited by our concern for the capitalist's surplus
wealth. Our indignation over the atrocities in China
will be soothed by the chance of forcing the yellow man
er.
Trusts-Capitalistic
41
to carry the white man's burden of surplus wealth.
Meanwhile our own laborer is anxiously figuring how to
make an income of $400 to $500 meet the necessities of
his family.
But the surplus wealth of the capitalist forces him not
only into politics but also into the law. He first creates
laws to secure his supremacy over his laborers. This is
a comparatively easy thing and excites very little com-
ment. But when he touches his relation to other capi-
talists, "society” is growing interested. Since the be-
ginning of the 80's a great outcry has been raised
against the trusts, and all kinds of legislation has been
proposed to regulate and even to exterminate them. A
political party has even, in lack of other issues, taken up
this cry, in order to catch voters. What does this agi-
tation mean to the working class? Is it anything that
is going to benefit them, or is it only a struggle by the
small capitalist to prohibit the larger from swallowing
him? If it is only a struggle for the spoils by the vari-
ous capitalists and not an attempt to increase the share
of the laborer, the working class has little to do with it.
A $500,000 capitalist is just as great an exploiter as a
$10,000,000 one, and often meaner. What the laboring
man has to do is to get rid of all exploiters, not to help
one capitalist in his struggle to exploit another, or to
avoid being exploited by another.
There are three points around which the present agi-
tation against trusts center. First, a demand for
publicity of accounts. Second, security to stockhold-
Third, discrimination of railroad rates.
The first is aimed to compel the officers of a corpora-
tion to give public and accurate accounts of the state
of its business and earning capacity that prospective
buyers of stock may know what they are getting. As
laborers have no money for such investment, this does
not affect him. The second is an invocation of the
power of the courts to prohibit the officers and direct-
ors of a corporation from speculating with the property
of the corporation, that they in the resulting fluctuations
of stock may enrich themselves. For the same reason
the laboring man is not interested in this. The third,
namely discriminating railroad rates is an evil which
ers.
42
Socialist Campaign Book
as
corrects itself: The large corporations control their own
railroads. The only remedy for this discrimination, Na-
tional and Municipal control of the means of transpor-
tation, would not remove the advantage that the large
corporation has that can locate its plants at the various
railroad centers, and distribute its products from the
nearest point. This advantage would, under National
ownership of railroads, just as inevitably lead to monop-
oly.
Twenty-seven states and territories have passed laws
intended to destroy such industrial combinations
now exist and to prevent the formation of others. Fif-
teen states have similar provisions in their constitu-
tions. Besides this we have a Federal anti-trust law,
the Sherman Act of 1890, and certain provisions of the
Inter-State Commerce law of 1887. A study of these
statutes and of the decisions of our Courts of Last Re-
sort which has been made under them, will show that
they have had practically no effect as regards the trend
of our industrial development. Even Altgeld, a high
democratic authority, admits the futility of such legisla-
tion: “We are told on all sides that we must have leg-
islation; that the government must act. Some say, let
the State act. Others say, the Federal government must
act. Still others say, let both act. With charming im-
partiality the trusts play one against the other. When
the Federal government is invoked, they cry, this is a
State matter. Strange as it may seem they then insist
on State's rights. But when a State does act, then
they find some convenient Federal judge who holds the
act unconstitutional. This is the uniform history. Near-
ly every State in the Union has acted, but all State ef-
forts have been futile."
There is only one way by which trusts may be de-
stroyed and the value of their economies be retained.
Let the people who have been instrumental in their up-
building own them. “Through the specialized means
of production and distribution we have the gradual de-
velopment that has changed our methods of carrying
on an industry from the individualistic method, when
everything was done by hand, to first, partnership of
two or more, then the corporation, then the combina-
tion of corporations or the trust, owning, controlling
and managing under one head enormous branches of the
Trusts-Capitalistic
43
commerce and industry of the world. All the saving that
has been effected by this development has been made pos-
sible by the elimination of useless toil. This saving is
a social product; it is not the result of individual effort;
being a social product, it belongs to society, and the crime
of which the trust owners and makers are guilty is the
crime of appropriating the product of the labor of others
to their own use in order to accomplish individual suc-
cess.'
Governor Andrew E. Lee, of S. Dakota, said before
the Anti-Trust Conference:"We do not oppose the trust,
for trusts save time and toil. That ought to be the chief
purpose of industrial progress. There is no
There is no sense in
wasting wealth or 'human life and energy. Life is hard
enough and short enough in its best and highest develop-
ment. We object to the trust because there are too few
in it. We should find no fault with a trust which in-
cluded all men and showered its blessings upon everybody
as it now surfeits a constantly diminishing number of peo-
ple. What is the remedy? We cannot hope to success-
fully 'control capital, because capital, in private hands,
will control us. It is bound to be supreme, as it now is,
under any system which admits its existence in that form. .
There can be no gain in tormenting it; and to try to 'reg-
ulate' by legal restrictions simply countenances its evils
under conditions which would not wipe out the system's
wrongs. It is the fundamental wrong of the system, not
its surface aspect, which makes it imperative to do some-
thing more than compromise with the people's oppres-
sors. Licensing monopoly would be like licensing train
robbery. You would not get rid of the robber, nor se-
cure relief from his continued plundering; you would
simply recognize the robber system and admit your in-
ability to conquer him. You cannot get rid of him by
refusing to recognize him in social intercourse. He has
created a society for himself into which you cannot get,
unless you are as prosperous a robber as himself, and
he looks down upon you from the pinnacle of the 'Four
Hundred and visits his scorn upon you while he buys
your public servants and despises your laws. He fears
nothing but an attack upon the system by which he
44
Socialist Campaign Book
maintains his tyranny over the people. If you would
reach him, you must exterminate the whole system of
robbery. When that is done, he must go to work or be-
come a social exile. We may legislate against private
monopoly till doomsday, but so long as we do not de-
prive these institutions of their ownership of the means
of production and distribution, we need entertain no hope
that they will cease to torment us, for experience has
shown that they thrive under hostile legislation. The
remedy will be found in an attack upon the system of
which these monopolies are the fruit. Revolutionize the
control of production and distribution. Make it demo-
cratic. It is now an imperial system. Substitute public
for private ownership. Throw off private for public
monopoly. Crush the rule of money and establish the
rule of men. Do not destroy the machines nor blot out
the details for swift and perfect handling of commodities,
but make things for people to use, not to fight over, and
maybe die later for want of. Produce and distribute
wealth for the enrichment of the race; for the gratifica-
tion of needs and the satisfaction of worthy aspirations.
Such a policy can be squared with the Declaration of In-
dependence and the Golden Rule. Such a policy will
destroy public and private rascality and give birth to a
new social life of which the people are capable when they
are delivered from the dread of starvation and death."
Mr. Bryan says: “Let the people control the trust, or
the trust controls the people. It is just this "control-
ling” that politicians are hankering after. Corporate in-
dustry is a source of wealth. In "controlling” the
source the politicians have an inexhaustible bag in which
to put their hands. The republican politicians are sat-
isfied to bleed a few deeply. The democratic politicians,
being of a smaller stamp, want to dribble many. Both
are anxious that capitalism, the source of ill-gotten
wealth, shall remain forever.
The working class, suffering deeply by the exploita-
tion of the many by the few, will one day say, let the peo-
ple own the capital, as the capitalist hitherto has owned
the people.
CHAPTER V.
The Farmer To-Day and His Children
To-Morrow
In a book primarily dedicated to the working class, ex-
planation of a chapter with this heading may be thought
necessary. The farmer is often considered as a member
of the capitalist class, but we urge that not only is the
farmer becoming less and less a holder of capital, but
that where he is, in the outward seeming a capitalist, he
is actually in the same position as a workman. He has
permanent employment but is made dependent by the
manipulation of the price list in the hands of those above
him, just as a worker in the factory is enslaved by lack
of the opportunity to work.
The farming element in this country has for a long
time enjoyed unique privileges. Writers have doffed their
hats and made compliments to the “backbone of the coun-
try." The farmer was the backbone of the country; be-
ing strongest in numbers he could control legislation; be-
ing in possession of a large proportion of the country's
wealth he could enjoy independence; being without
rivals in other countries or in his own he could enjoy, as
a class, more or less of a monopoly; and being in a new
country he was able to gain the advantage of its progress
by rise in the value of his land. With all these advantages
the farmer was indeed the backbone of the country. In
his pride he was wont to think that on the free farming
class the country must always, in the last resort, depend.
True it is that in America we must depend on the farm
for our food, just as they must in other countries. But
if the collecting of wealth in the hands of a few is the main
object of civilization, why cannot we be fed by a debased
and enslaved peasantry, as is the case in the older coun-
46
Socialist Campaign Book
tries? The wealthy will live just as well, and, indeed,
being wealthier-better.
The power of the agricultural class has been due in a
large degree to its proportionate numerical strength.
This strength grows less with each year.
The urban population of the United States has in-
creased from something over 29 per cent in 1890 to
31.60 per cent in 1900. The census returns for the en-
tire country are not yet complete, but an illustration of
the rural exodus is shown from the returns already pub-
lished for New Hampshire. In this state, while the total
population has increased faster than during any other
decade in its history there has been an actual decrease
in the rural districts, some of the smaller towns being
almost depopulated.
The "independent farmer" has owed much of his in-
dependence to the fact that he controlled a large share
of the nation's wealth. He has a less per cent each year.
1850. 1860. 1870.
Wealth of farmers.. $3,966,000 $7,980,000 $11,123,000
Wealth of U. S..... 7,135,000 16,159,000 30,068,000
Per cent....
55
43
36
Wealth of Farmers..
Wealth of United States...
1880. 1890.
$12,103,000 $15,981,000
43,642,000 65,037,000
Per cent....
27
24
There was a time when, in addition to the return from
his labor, the farmer was able to appropriate a portion
of the whole social wealth through the rise in land values.
But with the decrease in ownership of farms comes a
movement which deprives the remaining owners of this
source of revenue. Mr. Edward F. Adams, in his book
on the modern farmer, says in speaking of this fact: "The
more land a man owed for the faster he was assumed to
be getting rich. Whenever an entire community becomes
imbued with a speculative disposition of this kind, and
results regularly continued for generations seem to just-
Farmer To-Day–His Children To-Morrow
47
ify anticipations, nothing will cure it except an absolute
demonstration continued through many years, of the
final bursting of the bubble. Such a demonstration began
with a panic in 1893, and will continue until rural com-
munities thoroughly learn that never again in this coun-
try is it likely to be safe to incur debt in the expectation
of paying any portion of it from the ‘rise in land.' Ag-
ricultural land is now as high in the United States as it
ever will or can be until the cheap lands of other con-
tinents are settled and the population of the earth so in-
creased as to require. its entire surface for its support.
A great portion of the indebtedness of the farming class
is of this speculative character, and of such indebtedness
a great part can never be paid. The early settlers in a
new country, who endure the privations incident to settle-
ment, and build the roads, schoolhouses, churches and
other public improvements, are entitled to the natural in-
crease in the value of their holdings which results from
suich improvements, but in most of those sections of our
country which are still sparsely settled, all this ultimate
value is assumed by holders to have accrued, and land
is held at prices full as high as it can ever reach within
the lifetime of men now living, and in many cases at
higher prices. And yet it is a fact that a great deal of
the indebtedness of farmers has been incurred for land
at such exorbitant prices that the debts can never be paid
off from the products of the soil.”
A previous chapter has mentioned the effect of the dis-
appearance of free land as narrowing the opportunity
of the workingman. The same fact reacts upon the farm-
er. The best blood of the farms, and indeed all the sur-
plus population, has for years been poured into the city.
We have seen how the army of the unemployed camps
in every municipality, and how the industrial (commer-
cial) concentration has made two applicants for each po-
sition. In "The Modern Farmer” Mr. Adams says on
page 92, in speaking of the "illusion” that a chance for
the country boy exists in the city says: “It is the duty of
the farmer to impress his children with the truth that the
day when such things are possible to the ordinary boy
is forever gone in this country. Ninety-nine out of every
48
Socialist Campaign Book
hundred who hereafter may try this route to success will
fail. Every avenue to employment in American cities is
now choked as completely as it has been for centuries in
Europe. In every mercantile or manufacturing estab-
lishment those already employed are constantly on the
watch for every opening in behalf of their own depend-
ents and friends. There are twenty applicants for
every place. It is also an age of specialization. The boy
wanted now, when any is wanted, is not one who is will-
ing to do anything, but one who knows how to do some-
thing. The farmer's duty, therefore, is to train his chil-
dren to be either farmers or something else. Some trade
or profession they must have, or they will be terribly
handicapped in the race of life. City boys themselves
understand this. Country boys do not realize it."
It would seem that the chances of getting employment
as a farm laborer were growing less:
1880. 1890. Decrease.
Number of agricultural la-
borers
3,323,876 3,004,061 319,815
The farmer's position is not, then, what it was. What
of the farmer of to-morrow? What does the future hold
for the children of those who at present still own their
farms, and if not as prosperous as formerly, still are not in
want? Some answer may be made to this query by a
study of the general tendency of the present system in
regard to prices of farm products.
Average Annual Wholesale Prices in New
York City Markets.
Relative Com-
bined av. of the
Nine Products in
Calendar
Year.
Wheat per Bush.
Rye per Bush.
Oats per Bush.
Corn per Bush.
Upland Cotton
per lb.
Refining
Sugar
per lb.
Kentucky Leaf
Tobacco per lb.
Fresh Beef per
100 lbs.
per
Fresh Pork
100 lbs.
Currency.
Gold.
Silver.
1850-59....
1860–69....
1870-79...
188089....
1890–94...
1.589 .912.479.7641.109.082.092 5.365 5.552 101.8 101.8 99.0
1 901 1 1198.652 .991).439.112.145 7.634 7.675 184 4 130.6 128.2
1.428 .8821.511 .6941.156.083'.103 6.583 6 096 109.0! 98 9 102 3
1.050 .736.407.575.108.063 .092 5.840 5.628 89 1 89.11 109.8
.867 .697.3691.5471.086.0997.095 5.368) 5.286 80.91 80.81 124.7
Farmer To-Day-His Children To-Morrow
49
The results may be seen in the growing number of the
completely dispossessed farmers (tenant farmers) and of
the partly dispossessed farmers (farmers with mortgaged
farms). According to the Extra Bulletin 1898, 34 per cent
of the farmers were tenant farmers, 19 per cent owned
mortgaged farms, and less than half entirely own their
land. The mortgages averaged a third the value of the
farms on which they were placed. In the abstract of the
Eleventh Census, page 97, it is shown that while farms
cultivated by their owners increased only 9.56 per cent,
farms rented increased 41.04 per cent and farms rented
for share of the product increased 19.65 per cent.
If this dispossession of the farmer continues in the fu-
ture as it has in the past, not many years will be re-
quired to reduce the great majority of the American
farmers to the position of tenants. Already this is be-
ing accomplished in some of the Eastern states. At the
present rate only a few years will be required to reduce
our farmers to the same economic status as that of
the peasants of Europe.
As transportation facilities increase the farmer must
compete with larger and larger markets and become more
and more dependent upon the means of transportation.
The farmer, besides becoming more and more the slave
of the owners of the railway, the commission men, the
elevators, etc., is compelled more and more to compete
with the cheap labor of other countries.
The independent position of the farmer does not secure
him from a contact with the trusts. He is surrounded by
them on every side. He first sees their effect upon the
public whom he expected to purchase his products.
When the farmer is ready to sell the fruits of his farm and
secure the things that he can use, he is told that so much
has been produced that his products cannot be sold. But
the same paper that brings him news of the "overpro-
duction" tells him also of men, women and children suf-
fering and dying by thousands in the slums of the great
cities for lack of the very things that are rotting on his
fields. It is here, then, that the farmer is made to suffer from
the condition of the class, that by its numbers as con-
sumers of foodstuffs, is of the greatest importance to him.
50
Socialist Campaign Book
It must very deeply touch the farmer's self-interest if the
laboring classes in urban communities are kept in a sit-
uation where they cannot afford to buy his products. The
farmers and laboring classes are closely united, the one
as producers and the other as consumers of foodstuffs.
Let our capitalistic system reduce the laborers purchas-
ing power to a minimum and the farmer will also suffer.
But there is another side of capitalism, from the effects
of which the farmer has often suffered but which he has
not yet understood. The production of a commodity
consists in taking some portion of nature's products and
changing it into a form desired by man, and then taking
it to some place where it can be used, at a time when it
is wanted. These three conditions—form, place and time
--are necessary to any form of production and no article
has a value or price until it has gone through all these
processes. The farmer may own the land, grow his wheat
and raise his stock, but while these are still on the farm
they are not at a place or time where they can be used or
are wanted; hence, they are not yet "produced.” When
the farmer tries to finish the process of production and
add these two essential qualities, time and place, he finds
that the instruments for this—the railroads, telegraphs,
elevators, stockyards, etc.—belong to some one else who
appropriates all that the farmer has produced save the
same share that the laborer has always received—a bare
living. So well has this fact become recognized that it
is a common thing to say that "there is no money in farm-
ing" and that "all the farmer gets is wages.”
In this respect the farmer is placed in the same posi-
tion as the wage-laborer. The latter cannot use his capi-
tal-labor power—to produce goods, until the capitalist
allows him to use the capitalist's means of production.
The farmer cannot bring the results of his capital—farm
and labor power combined--to a complete product, un-
less he has the permission from the capitalist to use the
capitalist's means of transportation, storage, etc. In
both cases the capitalist holds the laborer and farmer at
his mercy and extorts the tribute that is satisfactory to
himself.
On another side also is the farmer hemmed in by the
Farmer To-Day-His Children To-Morrow
51
capitalist. The old "A" drag that in earlier days bounded
from stump to stone, and occasionally made a short
scratch in the ground, has given way to a whole list of
"spring-tooths, disks, pluverizers, sod-cutters, steel
smoothing harrows," etc., each of which is adapted to
some special work and all of which must be used by the
farmer who would profitably produce crops at present
prices. The scythe, pitchfork and handrake that made
up the outfit of the haymakers of but a few decades ago,
have now given place to the six-foot mower, sulky ted-
der and hayrake, with the mechanical loader and horse-
fork. The same change is seen everywhere. The wind-
mill has replaced the "old oaken bucket” and the great
steam thresher, with automatic feeder and "blow stacker"
does in an hour the work that once kept the flail sounding
lipon the barn floor through almost the whole winter.
Entirely new and expensive machinery appears, and the
farmer who would feed his cornstalks and root crops or
pumpkins with economy must own an ensilage cutter and
steam cooker.
With the development and improvement of farm ma-
chinery, it, too, becomes a means to the farmer's enslave-
ment. With the machinery as with the land, it was more
profitable and involved less risk to allow the farmer to re-
tain a nominal ownership, and then under the disguise
of credit, pluck him to the last cent with exorbitant
prices, usurious interest and excessive "repair bills.”
Many and many a farmer has thus become as completely
enslaved to his self-binder or sulky plow as any city
worker to the great factory in which he toils.
Still other changes bring the farm into closer connec-
tion with the factory system. Many things that were
once a part of farming are now great capitalist industries.
The creamery and the cheese factory are the first of these
that occur to the mind, and the beet sugar is an example
of an almost new industry that has been grafted upon
farming and that is but a portion of the great factory
system.
The canning of fruits and vegetables and the slaught-
ering and packing of meat are even more important ex-
amples of this tendency. Before the advent of these
52
Socialist Campaign Book
newer industries, numerous branches of agriculture,
such as the production of cotton and flax were depend-
ent on the manufacturers of the products from these raw
materials for their patronage. Now as we have shown
elsewhere, and as is universally observed, all branches
of manufacture have a tendency to concentrate and near-
ly all have already reached an advanced stage of central-
ization. Therefore large classes of agriculturists will
soon have large combinations or monopolies for their
only patrons and every agriculturist will be more or less
dependent upon the patronage of these enormous cap-
italistic enterprises.
The farm products connected with these industries
are absorbed by the owners of the plants, and the
farmer who grows the beets, cotton, fruits, vegetables
or live stock receives simply wages for his share of the
labor performed upon the finished product, and not in-
frequently these wages are even lower than those paid
the employees within the walls of the plant itself. Here,
at least, there can be no doubt but that the interests of
the wage-worker and the farmer are the same.
In his fight against this power of capitalism the farmer
is as yet helpless. He patiently suffers the ills that af-
flict him.
To quote from Prof. C. S. Walker, of the Massachu-
setts Agricultural College: “The farmer trades provisions
and raw material for manufactures and for money. The
manufacturers and the money which are the stock in trade
of the city, are commodities which are easily controlled
by their owners, who, readily combining among them-
selves, can sell or hoard very much as they please; they
sell when they choose to sell, and succeed to a greater or
less extent in fixing their prices. The provisions and
raw material, on the other hand, which are the stock in
trade of the country, are commodities which the farmers
are compelled to throw upon the market all at once in the
fall of the year, and sell at any price the city chooses to
pay. The farmer must sell; he cannot help himself. The
cotton and tobacco of the Southern farmers are already
mortgaged, and the money-lender takes the crop as a
matter of course. If there should be a few who have not
Farmer To-Day-His Children To-Morrow
53
mortgaged the crop, they are nevertheless in debt, and
these debts must be paid. The Western farmer cannot
keep his wheat, corn and oats, his poultry, beef and pork.
He has no facilities for storage. As a consequence,
every fall thousands of millions of dollars worth of agri-
cultural produce is thrown upon the market, enough to
supply all home demand and leave a surplus of the value
of $500,000,000 for export. The American farmer, then,
North, South, East and West, is forced year after year
to sell to the city his products when the market is glutted
and prices are lowest. He sells at the greatest disad-
vantage. This, of course, leads us to infer that, when he
buys, he buys at a great disadvantage. The farmer must
have money to pay his taxes and his interest in the fall,
but that is the very time when money, being a commodity
in great demand, is very scarce and very high. With
his produce forced down to the lowest price, he is forced
to buy money that is up to the very highest price. Again
in the spring the farmer is forced to buy seed and fertil-
izers, and agricultural implements and labor; he has no
enoney with which to pay for them, although then money
is cheap. He pays for them with his note or gets trusted
for them. Under such circumstances the seller has the
advantage and the farmer is forced to pay the highest
price for all he gets. So it has come to pass that year af-
ter year, spring time and autumn, the farmer sells cheap
and buys dear, and buys dear and sells cheap.
“The manufacturing and the trading classes (the capi-
talists) have, as a rule, concentrated in the city. Their in-
terests have for the most part been in common. They
have easily combined; they have acquired the wealth of
the nation; they have the press in their hands; they con-
trol the school, the college and the church; they are domi-
nant in the caucus, the political convention, the state and
the national legislatures. When their interests come in
conflict with that of the farmers it requires little thought
to discern which has of late years prevailed. One might
speak of a rapid increase of tenant farmers. Of the num-
bers of alien landlords, already counting the thousands of
acres; of the vast tracts of land voted to railroad and
other corporations; of the multiplication of mortgages;
54
Socialist Campaign Book
of the growth of the debtor class among agriculturists; of
the condition of the black farmers of the South; of the
importation of European peasants to take the abandoned
farms of New England; but it is hardly necessary. The
fact is already too manifest that the American farmer at
the close of the 19th century, after 100 years of Republi-
can government, is directly confronted with the question
whether or not he shall, like the tillers of the soil in the
old world, degenerate from his honorable station to the
condition of the serf."
Remedies have been proposed by which the farmer may
raise himself from these conditions. He has been advised
to use more intelligent methods in the cultivation of his
land. Mr. G. T. Powell, of Columbia County, N. Y., in
a report on the promotion of agriculture, advises the
farmers to use better methods in the cultivation of their
land; greater care in selecting live stock, etc. He in-
stances cases where the presence of agricultural schools,
experiment stations, etc., or even lectures on agriculture,
have changed the outlook of whole communities, turning
failure into success. But does this go to the root of the
evil? As long as a few farmers improve their methods,
more than the average, these few will gain success by
having an advantage over their competitiors; but if all
the farmers, or even a majority of them, adopted these
methods, the result would be a greater production at
cheaper cost; and so prices would simply go down or the
farmer would be left financially no better off than before.
The effect of all these forces upon the size of the farm
is difficult to state. There are many farmers who believe
that dishonest legislation and dishonest officeholders by
iniquitous laws, or iniquitous violations of just laws have
allowed great railroad corporations, foreign syndicates,
favorite capitalists, to buy up at a song, or to get free
under abuse of the Homestead Law large tracts of the
best land, for which they have often paid nothing, and
on them to create bonanza farms worked with machin-
ery. Here producing on a large scale, and with no
mortgages to meet, they are able to raise and sell grain
at prices with which ordinary farmers cannot compete.
Railroads, too, and grain speculators in New York
Farmer To-Day-His Children To-Morrow
55
and Chicago, the farmers claim, create corners in the
market and compel the farmers to sell to them at almost
a loss.
This concentration of farming is made easier through
the introduction of large and labor-saving machinery.
Notwithstanding these undoubted advantages experi-
ence in many parts of the country seems to decide in
favor of the small farm. Why is this? Is the small
farmer ever better off than the large farmer?
Political economists have been puzzled because of the
tenacity with which the small farmer holds on in a com-
munity in which the large capitalist everywhere enjoys
an advantage. None deny the superiority of machinery
and other economies enjoyed only by those with the cap-
ital to afford them. In parts of the country where these
economies can be applied the large farmer with a capi-
tal of, say $20,000, has a natural advantage. But any
man with a capital like this has an expectation of some
profit in this country, though perhaps a small one. He
will not leave such a capital invested where it does not
bring in some return. On the other hand, the small farm-
er makes little or no profit on his capital and considers
himself lucky if he produces a surplus of $250 or $300 af-
ter deducting for next year's expenses.* This is the
equivalent to the city workman's income after deducting
for food, and represents the wages earned by the farmer
by his work, being a similar aniount to that which he
would have to pay to another for the same work that he
has done himself. But the small farmer with a capital of
$2,000 to $4,000 can find no paying business open to a
man with that amount. In most lines of manufacturing
a very large capital is required, and in trade, Bradstreet
shows that the chance of success for such a capital is in-
finitesimal. If the farmer invests in a mortgage loan at
6 per cent his return will be $120 to $240, and he will
have to hire himself out as a farm laborer or learn a new
trade to make a living. He knows enough about the
former occupation to give it a wide berth, and the latter
is impossible to an old man and exceedingly difficult and
* See Wisconsin Reports.
56
Socialist Campaign Book
I.
costly even to a young one, and if he does enter another
occupation he is only lost in the hardships of the great
ocean of wage-laborers, being not even sure of anything
like steady employment. The small farmer, as a sensible,
hard-headed man, refuses the alternative and gives up the
hope of making anything like a commercial rate of profit
on his investment. As the large farmer is not forced by
a lack of alternatives to give up profits on his capital and
may even live on a 6 per cent loan, which would give
him $1,200 income on a $20,000 capital, he would prefer
to leave farming rather than give up his profits. As he
must compete with the small farmer this is what he is
often forced to do, notwithstanding the advantages given
him by a large capital, through the use of which he may
purchase the best machinery and make every needed in-
provement on his farm.
This does not show the prosperity of the small farmer,
but the reverse. To sum up it shows two things:
The small farmer is unable to do anything else but
fari.
He is receiving the income of a wage-worker.
The small may in this way compete the large farm out
of business. But the small farmer is in no way as well
off as the richer large farmer.
Being conscious of this oppression the farmers have
attempted various ways of resistance, as is indicated by
such movements as the Granger's movement, the Farm-
er's Alliance, etc. But organization among farmers has,
from the nature of their scattered position, been difficult.
Nor have they been intelligently directed. The root of
the evil in the farmer's position is that he does not re-
ceive the full value of his labor. As long as railroads,
elevator companies, commission men, etc., hem in the
farmer and surround him by a wall that entirely excludes
him from the general market, he must share the price of
his product with them. All of these agencies are, by the
means of their capital, closely organized with a perfect
understanding how to take as large a share as possible
from the returns of the farmer's labor. In this the farmer
suffers equally with the laborer.
All these circumstances have worked together to inake
2.
Farmer 70-Day-His Children To-Morrow
57
the farmer but a portion of the great laboring class, re-
ceiving the same return as the factory wage-slave-a sub-
sistence. Both laborer and farmer are in this condition
because a possessing class stands between them and the
means of production and distribution. Neither can se-
cure relief until both shall join hands at the ballot box to
secure a common ownership of these means by those who
must use them. Only by socialism can the problem of
the farm as well as of the factory be solved.
CHAPTER VI.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's
Answers
Labor legislation in the United States is mainly con-
spicuous by its absence. We are even worse off in this
respect than “monarchical Europe.” While England has
hundreds of regulations protecting the workers in fac-
tories, the great manufacturing State of Illinois has three.
Where England has many efficient provisions protecting
the lives and healtlı of the worker in the "dangerous
trades," such as match-making, white lead works, chemi-
cal works, potteries, etc., there is only one such provision
in any State of the Union, the law adopted by several
States relating to emery wheels.
As we have shown, there were in the United States in
1890 thirty-four million wage-earners. Yet the last Con-
gress contained not a single workman. Workmen are
almost unknown in our State legislatures. They have
filled no important administrative offices and their pres-
ence among the judiciary is impossible under the present
system. This is the reason the working class is scorned
or ignored when it comes to our legislatures, administra-
tions or courts for relief of the untold abuses under which
it labors. Only in the brief period before the elections is
it flattered and cajoled by the capitalist parties.
How have our Congresses answered the demands of
labor? Either by inadequate and ineffective laws or by
silent contempt. In many cases laws have been allowed
to pass with the certainty that the courts would declare
them in violation of the "sacred freedom of contract."
In others the laws, when passed, have been ignored by
both democratic and republican administrations. Every
trade-union can multiply instances of this kind, and it is
liseless and impossible to draw lip a list of the unenforced
and "unconstitutional" laws.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
59
But what is the record of Congress? The eight-hour's
law, passed in 1868, was riddled with holes by the courts
and administration until it became more a name than a
reality. Yet notwithstanding continuous agitation by
the unions, no Congress since that time has remedied its
defects. Many elections placed the democrats in power
in Congress, but they did no more than the republicans.
In 1900 the bill offered by the Federation of Labor was
again defeated in the Senate.*
The democrats pretended to favor the anti-injunction
bill, yet that bill was so radical and effective in its char-
acter that they submitted to its being killed without a
protest. When these same lawyers and propertied gentle-
men came to financial or taxation bills that touched their
own pockets they occupied the floors of both houses for
weeks and months and filled whole volumes of the Con-
gressional Record with their oratory and protests. Their
democratic brothers in the Massachusetts legislature
were in a worse predicament and voted against the anti-
injunction bill. This was unnecessary in Congress, as
the bill was quietly disposed of without coming to a
vote.
The most important measures advocated by the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor are:
A legal workday of not more than 8 hours.
The repeal of all conspiracy and penal laws affect-
ing seamen and other workmen, incorporated in the Fed-
eral and State laws of the United States.
3.
Abolition of the contract system on all public
works.
4.
Abolition of the sweating systeni.
5. Sanitary inspection of workshop, mine and homes.
6. Liability of employer for injury to life, body and
health.
7. Abolition of child-labor.
8. Compulsory education.
9. Nationalization of telegraphs, telephones, railways
and mines.
I.
2.
*Sce an. Federationist, 1900, p. 270.
See Convention Reports and the Federationist.
60
Socialist Campaign Book
10. Abolition of the monopoly system of land-holding
and substitution therefor of the title of occupancy only.
Now let us see what has happened to these demands.
Remember, they have been urged for years by the unions
as being the most important of all questions to the work-
ing class.
1.-LIMITATION OF THE LEGAL HOLIDAY.
In 1868 Congress, as has been said, passed a law limit-
ing the hours of labor of government employees to eight
a day. The law was nullified by courts and administra-
tion. In 1900 Congress defeated a new eight-hour law
for government work. Several states have passed eight-
hour laws for all trades. They have been declared un-
constitutional and were never supposed to be anything
else by the legislatures that passed them. In no state of
the Union is there any law limiting the hours of men's
work. They may be forced by their employers' greed and
their own necessities to work 24 hours out of 24 if they
are physically capable of doing so. No restriction is placed
on night work if the manufacturer sees fit to demand it.
"Sacred freedom of contract” demands that the law shall
not step in between the destitute worker and his million-
aire employer. There must be no interference in the
bargain between these "equals" before the law.
Several states have passed laws forbidding more than
eight hours work on government contracts,* but none
have been claimed to be effective until the present New
York Law. And in this case when the laborers struck
to secure its enforcement the militia were called out to
force them back to work in violation of the law's pro-
visions. The other manufacturing states are without
any such laws.
În three states the hours of street railway men have been
limited to ten, in four others to 12 hours per day. But, of
course, even these laws are not enforced and loopholes
have been discovered in them.
Of the 45 states only 12 limit the hours of women.
In several this law has been declared inconstitutional-
*Cal., Col., Id., Kan., Mass., N. Y., W. Va.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
61
among them, Illinois, the third state of the Union. In
others, the legislatures have refused to enact such a
statute. Where the hours are limited it is in nearly
every case to 10 hours a day—which is already the aver-
age number for all employees in the country and inani-
festly too long for women. The unions say an eight-
hour day is in most trades imperative for men-and of
course it is all the more so to the health of women and
the happiness of the home. Yet our most enlightened
legislatures are satisfied to leave their hours at 10.
Only 19 states out of 45 put any limit whatever on
the hours of labor of children. Of these all but three allow
10 hours' labor. Under the head of Women and Chil-
dren the nature of the work these children do has been
shown. Yet the legislatures say that 10 hours a day is
not too much for our child-workers who are wearing out
their health and even lives in factory, workshop and mine.
II. -THE REPEAL OF ALL CONSPIRACY AND PENAL
LAWS AFFECTING SEAMEN AND OTHER WORKMEN,
INCORPORATED IN THE STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS.
President Gompers says of the recent Seaman's Rights
Bill that is only "a partial reversal of a policy that has
existed in our country since 1793, namely, that of treating
the seamen as serfs. Even this partial reversal is only
secured after years of effort with democratic and repub-
lican Congresses. *
The federal anti-injunction bill was buried in Congress,
another one defeated in Massachusetts by democratic
votes, as has been mentioned.
The republican Congresst and most of the democratic
legislatures have passed anti-trust acts. Every one of
these acts is also an anti-union act. Also the Interstate
Commerce act has the same effect. President Gompers
says in his last address to the American Federation of
Labor:
"The Interstate Commerce Law, enacted with the
avowed purpose of protecting the people from discrimina-
*See Am. Federationist, 1900, p. 217.
7 Sec Am. Federationist, 1900, p. 199.
Sec pp. 18 and 15, 19th A. ſ. of L. Conv.
62
Socialist Campaign Book
tion at the hands of transportation companies, has been
utilized for no other purpose than to imprison union men
employed in transportation service. The so-called Sher-
man Anti-trust Law, ostensibly enacted to protect the
people from unlawful combinations of capital, has simply
resulted in the arrest and indictment of union workmen,
because, in their effort to protect their common interests,
their action has been construed to be in restraint of trade.
These two laws have been cunningly devised by your an-
tagonists (foolishly acquiesced in by men believing them-
selves reformers), and have proven then to be the incu-
bators of our modern injunction, trial without jury, and
imprisonment.
We have seen
have seen those
those who
knew little of statecraft, and less of economics, urge the
adoption of laws to 'regulate' inter-state commerce, and
laws to 'prevent' combinations and trusts; and we have
also seen that these measures, when enacted, have been
the very instruments to deprive labor of the benefit of or-
ganized effort, while at the same time they have simply
proved incentives to more subtly and surely lubricate the
wheels of capital's combination."
1II.-ABOLITION OF THE CONTRACT SYSTEM ON ALL
PUBLIC WORKS.
In no state has this been accomplished and only in the
fewest instances have any steps been taken in this direc-
tion.
IV.-ABOLITION OF THE SWEATING SYSTEM.
Far from being abolished, this system is growing by
leaps and bounds in every state where it has obtained a
foothold. In Chicago* alone the number of the shops
nearly doubled in five years (1894 to 1899) and the num-
ber of employees increased over 75 per cent. Similar re-
sults have been shown in the other states. Though the
evils exists in at least 15 states, only nine have taken any
steps to check its growth, and of these but four have en-
acted the license law. The other laws have been ac-
knowledged worthless by the inspectors themselves.
*See State Factory Inspector's Report, Illinois, 1899.
*See Ill. Report, 1900.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
63
It is of this system the Report of the Factory Inspec-
tors of Illinois, 1899, says:
"No more serious problem has developed in recent
years in connection with what is called the labor question
than that relating to the manufacture of clothing in tene-
ment houses. It would be lamentable if these white
slaves were contented with their lot. Such conditions
must not exist in our community, and the willingness to
bubmit to filthy and unwholesome sanitary surroundings,
in order to get the bare means of existence, affords no
excuse for those who are endeavoring to maintain the
sweating system among us. The people who toil 12 and
14 hours in the sweatshops, for less than the means of
comfortable subsistence, and, in addition, are compelled
to employ the labor of their children to avoid starvation,
are being robbed of their rights as human beings. The
sweating system—and everything akin to it and resulting
from it-must be suppressed in the interest of humanity.”
V.--SANITARY INSPECTION OF FACTORY,
HOME AND MINE.
Most of the mining states have complex mining laws
and considerable sums are spent in mine inspection and
mine reports, but the facts brought out by the strike of
the anthracite miners in Pennsylvania have shown how
little they amount to in any way. Company stores have
been forbidden by law repeatedly but nothing has ever
been put on the statute books that prevents their opera-
tion. Provisions have been made to check the compan-
ies weighing of the coal but they have proved ineffective.
The measures taken to prevent accidents have had little
effect and the year 1899 produced the largest number of
fatal accidents in the Illinois mines yet reported, with the
exception of a single large disaster.*
The sanitation of the home has been left to the tender
mercies of the municipal authorities until the legislation
we have had on that subject is recognized by all to be a
farce. Democratic New York and Chicago and repub-
lican Philadelphia are in an equally disgraceful condition.
*See Ill. Coal Rep., 1899.
64
Socialist Campaign Book
Some of the facts are brought out in our chapter on How
The Working Class Lives. The facts are so notorious
that no farther treatment is needed.
The inspection of the factory is a larger and less un-
derstood subject. Factory buildings should not be put
up in a way to endanger the lives or health of the en-
ployees. Yet only five states out of the 45 have any regu-
lations on the subject. Only nine states have any require-
ments as to ventilation. Out of the 45 only 10 provided
for closets or dressing rooms. Only seven require any
degree of cleanliness in the factories. Just five states
concern themselves with the lighting and heating ar-
rangements of the buildings where the vast bulk of their
population (excepting farmers) is at work. The dust
from emery wheels will inevitably kill in the course of
time, yet only seven states require the simple device that
will carry the dust away.
The following grades reported as "Dangerous Trades"
in the Parliamentary Report of 1899, are totally without
special legislation in the United States:*
India Rubber Works.
Paper Steaming, Coloring and Enameling.
Basig Slag Work.
Glass Polishing
File Cutting
Bronzing, etc., in Lithographic Works.
Dyeing
Chemical Works.
Manufacture of Lead and Colors.
Pottery.
Manufacturing of Matches
Enameling and Tinning
Flax Mills and Linen Factories.
Many of these trades are normally accompanied by
loathsome and fatal diseases. In lead poisoning one
symptom is the dropping out of the teeth. This is also
a common result in chemical works. Phosphorous poi-
+ See the U. S. Labor Bulletin on the Slums of Our Great Cities and
the reports of the New York and Chicago Tenement Committees.
The report of the latter will be published in a few months.
*See Final Report of Departmental Committee on Dangerous
Trades, 1899.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
65
soning produces the most horrible results. The same
trades are present in this country, the same processes
used and the same awful results follow.
But besides the dangers of germ diseases from bad
sanitation and the risks due to poisonous gases and dust,
every factory, every railroad and every mine has its long
lists of killed, maimed and injured. The dangers from
machinery are not generally such as cannot be prevented
by proper precautions. There are devices adapted to
nearly every machine which will either lessen or prevent
altogether accidents from that source. This has been
proved by the English reports, which show a decided de-
crease in all accidents since these devices have been intro-
cluced by law. But such things cost money and hinder
the speed of work. Consequently they are lacking al-
inost entirely in this country except where adopted by
law. In only 12 states are any such precautions re-
quired by law in the factories. As a result the loss of
life and limb is appalling.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York showed
in one year (1899) nearly 1,000 killed outright and over
40,000 injured. In the war with Spain, 280 American
soldiers were killed. In 1890, 18 per cent of our indus-
trial population was in New York State. If the same
rate of death and casualty rules in the other states,
then in the United States there were in one year (1899)
5,555 workers killed outright in industrial accidents and
250,000 injured. The New York report adds: "Few
workinen carry accident insurance of any kind.
In many cases the injured man and his family are de-
pendent on public charity for their means of living dur-
ing the period of disability.”
As to railway employees the United States Interstate
Commerce Commission report for 1899 says: "Of rail-
way employees 2,210 were killed and 34,923 were in-
jured during the year covered by this report." While
more than 36,000 out of 227,000 were killed or injured
by the railways, only 1,640 were killed or wounded in
the Philippines out of an army of 63,000—16 casualties
in each 100 men on the railroads, and a somewhat
smaller rate among the soldiers.
+
66
Socialist Campaign Book
In ten years (1889-1898) the railways of America
have killed 21,510 of their employees and wounded
267,075. If we allow the imagination to draw upon the
suffering this loss of life, limb and means of support has
caused to the railway workers of America and their
families we see a sum of human misery the like of
which the world has seldom seen—and this at the very
end of the "glorious civilization" of the nineteenth cen-
tury.
The following is a detailed list of the accidents. Re-
member, the automatic coupling law which would have
saved thousands of these lives, only went into effect
last year, after this table was prepared:
+
ACCIDENTS TO RAILROAD EMPLOYES.
.
Year.
1898
1897
1896
1895
1894
1893
1892
1891
1890
1889
Killed.
1,958
1,693
1,861
1,811
1,823
2,727
2,554
2,660
2,451
1,972
Injured.
31,761
27,667
29,969
25,696
23,422
31,729
28,267
26,140
22,396
20,028
21,510
267,075
The rate of casualties in the mines is also startling.
The Illinois Coal Report for 1899 shows among 37,000
miners, 84 killed outright and 597 injured, with an aver-
age loss of 42 days. The number of miners in the
United States in 1890 was 350,000. If there are 400,000
in 1900 and this ratio of accidents is maintained, there
would be in one year 905 miners killed outright, and
6,464 injured.
These same reports also show that these rates of cas-
ualties are practically being maintained.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
67
VI.--LIABILITY OF EMPLOYER FOR INJURY TO
LIFE, BODY AND HEALTH.
Our law as to employer's liability is a disgrace to
civilization. Even if the law were what it should be the
worker's chance before the capitalist courts would not
be much, as is shown in another chapter. But as it is
the law forbids any recovery of damages when the ac-
cident is partially due to a fellow-servant, i. e., another
employee of the company. As the employer himself is
usually absent this law covers a large part of all cases
of accident. A very few states have amended the law
but the amendments have proved inadequate. The
New York Labor Report recognizing this fact, shows
that Germany, Austria, England, France, Norway, Den-
mark, Italy and Switzerland, give the workingman in-
jured at his work, a stipulated compensation without
recourse to the law-courts. The Report says: "The
underlying principle of these workingmen's compensa-
tion acts is the demonstrated fact that most accidents
are an incident of the industry, rather than the fault of
individuals. : . A vast number of accidents is
positively inevitable under the pressure of competition.”
The Report does not suggest the removal of this pres-
sure. Is it to be concluded that the working people of
America have been converted to the principle that such
enforced payments to them for the loss of life or limb
are interferences with the right of the employer “to do
what he pleases with his own property," or that the
workers are so small a factor before our Congresses
and the legislatures, that their demands are met with
smooth words but real contempt?
VII. - ABOLITION OF CHILD LABOR.
Less than half of our states have set any limit what-
ever on the age at which children may be employed in
the factories. Several of these put the limit at the ri-
diculous age of 10 years. Six states allow children of
12 to work in the workshops and factories, and eight
states have set the limit at 14 years. Even in these
latter cases the law often fails to cover mercantile and
other establishments. The other states have no laws
68
Socialist Campaign Book
on the subject. Among the democratic states of the
South children are almost entirely unprotected. In the
great cotton manufacturing states of the South children
under 13 years of age are to-day working from 6
o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock at night.
But this is not the worst of it, for none of the laws
are effective. The State Factory Reports of several
states acknowledge that a very large proportion are em-
ployed under the legal age, some estimating that 20
per cent of the children found at work were under the
required age. Some states have recognized by general
enactments that the health of children should be pro-
tected and that they should not be employed in occupa-
tions unusually dangerous. But only in a single in-
stance* has the dangerous trade been designated by
law and in the others the law is a dead letter. There
is no subject on which the American tradition is more
clear than on the work and education of children. Our
institutions, thinkers, and leaders have all taught the
duty of the nation to the child. But no tradition is
strong enough to resist the demands of capitalism for
cheap labor, and the state of our legislation on this sub-
ject shows not only the present weakness of the work-
ing class, but the shaky ground on which the best of
American institutions rest.
VIII.-COMPULSORY EDUCATION.
The only way any education can be guaranteed to the
working class is through efficient compulsory education
laws. The United States Report on Labor Legislation
says that several of the leading states require only three
months of school work in the school year from children
of school age. This age is generally defined as under
14 or 15 years, though in some cases even less than
that. This is enough to show that our legislators have
virtually abandoned the idea of any universal education
worthy of the name. That our popular education is
steadily deteriorating is shown in another chapter, as is
also the ineffectiveness of those laws we have.
*The N. Y. law with reference to emery-wheels.
Labor's Demands and Capitalism's Answers
69
IX.-THE NATIONALIZATION OF MINES, TELEGRAPHS,
TELEPHONES AND RAILROADS.
Although this movement was endorsed by large
bodies of farmers representing perhaps 2,000,000 votes,
as well as by the American Federation of Labor with
a similar vote behind it, the capitalist parties have both
ignored it, not only in Congress, but even in their plat-
forms. It seems that the support of the corporations
at present exploiting these businesses is even more val-
uable to the capitalist parties than the popularity the
verbal endorsement of this measure would give them
with so many voters. At any rate they have shelved
the issue.
X.–ABOLITION OF THE MONOPOLY SYSTEM OF LAND-
HOLDING AND SUBSTITUTION THEREFOR OF
THE TITLE OF OCUUPANCY ONLY.
This measure no section of the capitalist or middle
classes seem to have taken seriously, though it is urged
continuously by the Federation and its constituent
unions.
How do the capitalist parties dare face the laborer
with a record like this and ask him for his vote? Ig-
norance is the only answer—ignorance fostered by
false government reports, schools that teach nothing
about the labor movement and a press that directly or
indirectly deceives the laborer on every public issue.
The only party that includes all these demands in its
platform and has always done all in its power to put
them into execution is the workmen's own party, the
party of Socialism.
[The laws of the states referred to in this chapter have been obtained from
the Report of the U. S. Department of Labor on Labor Laws, from the Labor
Bulletins of that department, and from the annual report of the New York
Library Association on the legislation of the United States for 1898.1
CHAPTER VII.
Wages and Living Expenses
The laborer in the capitalistic system is between two
mill-stones. The capitalist may either decrease his
wages, or charge him more for what he buys. It is a
matter of complete indifference to the capitalist whether
he exploits labor on the one side or the other. Usually
the rise in prices long precedes the rise in wages. The
gratification of receiving an increase in wages will often
blind the laborer to the fact that this increase is more
than nullified by the increased cost of living. By grant-
ing an increase in wages the capitalist demands the
gratitude of the laborer, oblivious of, or rather hiding
the fact that he has already taken back with one hand
what he has granted with the other. When the laborer
complains that he is no better off than he was before,
he is sermonized about his continual discontent and de-
praved nature. Just now he is told about his great
prosperity and his rapidly improving conditions. In
what this great prosperity consists the following anal-
ysis of wages and living expenses will show:
INCREASED COST OF LIVING.
From the Seventh Annual Report, United States De-
partment of Labor, p. 864, the following budget for a
family with an income between $400 and $600 is esti-
mated. The families whose living expenses were as-
certained numbered 2,562, so that the estimate may be
considered accurate:
Food
44 per cent.
Rent
15 per cent.
Clothing
15 per cent.
Fuel and light
7 per cent.
Miscellaneous expenses
19 per cent.
.
O
Total ....
. 100 per cent.
Of the last item 2.5 per cent is reckoned for furniture,
Wages and Living Expenses
71
.
In Bulletin No. 55, United States Department of Ag-
riculture, Office of Experimental Stations, the results
are given from an investigation of the various kinds of
foods that enter into the consumption of laboring fam-
ilies. The following foods entered into the diet: Meat,
fish, eggs, cheese, milk, butter, cereals, potatoes, veg-
etables, sugar. These families were living in a typical
Chicago laboring center. They belonged to various
nationalities and by giving the relative importance to
the nationalities as given in the school census, this table
is the result:
Per ct.
Meats, 33.4 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
14.70
Cereals, 16.5 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
7.26
Vegetables, 10.8 per cent, or on a basis of 44.. 4.75
Milk, 9.3 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
4.09
Eggs, 7.8 per cent., or on a basis of 44.
3.43
Butter, 6.1 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
2.68
Sugar, 5.7 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
2.50
Potatoes, 4.2 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
1.85
Cheese, 3.3 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
1.44
Fish, 2.9 per cent, or on a basis of 44.
100 per cent.
44.
Then 25 typical articles included under the heads of
food, clothing, fuel and furniture, constituting in all
76.5 per cent of the total budget were selected and their
wholesale prices from January 1, 1897, to July 1, 1900,
tabulated. By weighting these prices by index-numbers
indicating their relative importance in the budget, the
exact increase in the cost of living is ascertained. This
increase was found as follows:
From 1897-98
.increase 6.56 per ct.
From 1897-99
.. increase 10.24 per ct.
From 1897-July, 1900... increase 10.66 per ct.
Thus an increase of 10.66 per cent in prices of articles
that constitute 76.5 per cent of a laboring family's total
expenses has taken place from 1897.
From the inspection of rent books of large real es-
țatę firms in Chicago it was found that rents of work-
1.20
0
72
Socialist Campaign Book
ingmen's dwellings were unchanging until the spring
of 1900, when they were uniformly raised $1.00 per
month. If the workingmen were paying an average
rent of $7.00, this rise would mean an additional in-
crease of 2.15 per cent. This is equivalent to a reduc-
tion of 12.81 per cent in wages.
INCREASE OF WAGES.
Our question now is, "Have money wages increased
as fast as living expenses?" That money wages have not
kept step with the increased cost of living is apparent
even to a casual observer. "Prosperity” newspapers
have been filled with accounts of increased money
wages, but these have never applied to more than a
small proportion of the total wage-earners of the Unit-
ed States. Whole classes, such as the common laborers,
have been given little or no attention. The incidences
given by the papers have been those of the highest
skilled and best organized laborers, where the increase
has been largest. Yet even in these cases the rise in the
last three years has in the fewest instances been as much
as 12.81 per cent, that is in most of the instances given
by the capitalist press there has been an actual fall of
real wages.
To give actual statistics of the increase or decrease of
money wages is impossible. A few indications may,
however, be given. In the U. S. Labor Bulletin of July
1900, the wages of a large number of selected establish-
ments in 38 different trades are given. These embrace
principally skilled workmen and can be taken as typical
only for the manufacturing industries and building
trades. They give the day wages only, not the average
yearly earnings. They show that in 27 trades an increase
of the rate of money wages had taken place between
1891 and 1900. In eight there was a decrease and in
three no change. The period of 1895-1900 shows a sim-
ilar result. The average percentage of increase being
6.8 per cent during this period. (This does not mean an
average rise for each man of 6.8 per cent. To know what
the average increase was for each man we would have to
Wages and Living Expenses
73
know what was the number of men working at each oc-
cupation.)
Even if one takes the rosiest view of the situation it is
impossible to ignore the fact that the cost of living has
risen much faster than money wages leaving a net result
of lower real wages in 1900 than in the years preceding.
The report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Ohio
for 1898 says: “The average daily wages during 150 days
worked was $1.27. The average yearly wages amount-
ed to $192 as against $221.56 in 1896."
Another way to view wages is to consider the total
annual earnings today compared with the purchasing
power of today. Prof. Mayo Smith, in his work “Sta-
tistics and Economics," shows that in 1890 an income of
$520 was necessary to sustain the average working class
family, unless such important articles as beef and milk
were dropped from the diet. The range of prices as
shown by our table is not much different now from what
it was then.
The above statistics of money wages show that at the
present time few men are able to give this necessary
support to their families. An additional instance is that
of the anthracite coal miners in Pennsylvania.
Chas. B. Spahr, in the Outlook of Sept. 29th, shows
on the basis of the state reports that the annual net
earnings of the miners is $285. Even with the aid of the
wages of breaker boy or silk mill girl this would not be
enough to support a family according to Prof. Smith's
standard.
The miners of Illinois have been getting $406.98 per
year, according to the state report. With deductions
of days unemployed this would amount to about $232,
the amount claimed by the Miners' Union. In North
Carolina the wages of skilled men were in 1899 $1.27
per day and for unskilled men 64 cents.*
But even the rise in money wages has come
standstill. The tin-plate trust has refused any real in-
crease to its employes. The Amalgamated Iron and
Steel Workers will obtain a decreased rate of pay, per
unit of work done under their new scale. The Illinois
to
а.
*12th ann, labor report for North Carolina.
74
Socialist Campaign Book
Steel Co. has even given notice of an additional reduc-
tion on January the first. The Deering Harvesting Ma-
chine Co., of Chicago, employing over 8,000 persons,
has lately ordered an all around decrease in wages esti-
mated in the newspapers at from ten to fifty per cent.
That this is merely the beginning of a general move-
ment throughout industry may be inferred on the evi-
dence from the best commercial authorities as given at
the end of the succeeding section.
In order to get anything whatever of the recent capi-
talist prosperity for themselves organized labor
throughout the country has recognized the necessity of
a large increase in money wages to correspond with the
increased cost of living. Therefore we have seen in the
first nine months of 1900 a series of strikes, more im-
portant in the aggregate than any year of our industrial
history has previously shown. Organized capital has
perhaps shown itself more doggedly hostile to the inter-
est of labor than ever before. The building trades have
seen the largest and most extensive strikes in their his-
tory. In Chicago at one time 30,000 were out accord-
ing to the most conservative estimate, besides at least
10,000 men engaged in the manufacture of building ma-
terial. At the end of seven months the strike was not
yet terminated. In Kansas City 5,000 men were out.
And not a city in the country has been without unusual-
ly large strikes in the building trades this year. The
machinists have this year seen the largest strike in their
history, not less than ten thousand men being out at
one time. The cigar makers' strike, of New York, which
has been in progress for several months, has involved
over seven thousand people. The greatest street car
strike the country has ever seen took place in St. Louis
last summer, involving directly 4,000 men.
The big-
gest miners' strike the world has ever known is now in
progress in Pennsylvania, involving over 140,000 men.
With the outragės perpetrated by the capitalists during
these troubles, and their refusal to make concessions to
the workmen we are not here concerned. But all this
only goes to show that wliat little advance has been
gained even in the way of money wages has been se-
Wages and Living Expenses
75
cured only by the most desperate efforts on the part of
the workers and the most determined resistance on the
part of the capitalists.
In cases where a substantial rise has been secured
even by these desperate methods only a small portion of
the great working class have obtained even a rise in
money wages, and the fewest possible numbers in actual
wages. In those cases where organized labor has been
successful the capitalist has often succeeded in making
the working men pay more for their victory than that
victory has brought them in return. The U. S. Labor
Reports on strikes show that for many years this has
been the result in the majority of cases.
But the vast majority of the workers of the United
States are not organized. In 1890 there were 15,650,-
000 wage-earners in the United States, which number
must have risen to at least 20,000,000. Of these it has
never been claimed that more than two million are in-
cluded in any labor organizations whatever. Of the
others, President Gompers says, “Practically the only
advantage which has come to unorganized labor from
the industrial revival has been longer hours of daily
labor with additional burdens to bear.” This is also
acknowledged in Baker's book, "Our New Prosperity,"
in which every attempt is made to prove that prosperity
has reached all classes of the people. *
THE UNEMPLOYED.
Among the official declarations of the American Fed-
eration of Labor adopted at their last annual conven-
tion, we find the following: "Referring to the present
industrial condition, it is a well known fact that indus-
trial revivals alternate with industrial panics with more
or less severity in cycles which come with remarkable
certainty and regularity. It is noted, too, that as we
progress, the periods of depression become more ex-
tended, and periods of revival of shorter duration. We
therefore warn the wage-earners to be not latent in
their energy, but to use all efforts in extending and pro-
*See President Gompers' address to the A. F. L. courention, 1899,
and "Our Ney Prosperity," page 226.
76
Socialist Campaign Book
tecting the organizations while this period of revival is
on, in order that the suffering which will come with the
inevitable coming panic may be of less severity.” The
courses of these panics have already been shown,* and
it has been proved that they are not confined to the
United States nor caused by national politics, but are
the direct outcome of the capitalist system. Below will
be found statements from a high commercial authority
attributing the late reaction and partial depression of
last summer to overproduction, and the same authority
and others equally reliable have repeatedly traced indus-
trial depressions to the same source. Indeed, the fact
is almost self-evident and is the basis of our demand for
commercial expansion as stated by Senator Depew be-
fore the republican national convention. He
says:
“The surplus productions of the civilized countries of
modern times are greater than civilization can consume.
This overproduction goes back to stagnation
and poverty.” The latest book on the subject, though
not written by a socialist, admits overproduction as the
most important cause of crises. $ As there are many
times as many unemployed at such periods as in "good
times," we will consider the statistics of unemployment
as follows:
1. The "prosperous" period of 1889-1892,
The depression of 1893-1897.
3. The "new prosperity.'
4. The present "reaction."
1. The United States census shows that in the year
of our prosperity, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety,
1,068,304 workers in the manufacturing and mechanical
industries were unemployed during a portion of the
year. This is 21 per cent of the total number employed
in those industries. All these were unemployed for
more than one month and almost half of them more than
four months. These statistics are verified by the Mass-
achusetts report of another year of “prosperity,” 1885,
In that year 29.6 per cent of all the persons engaged in
2.
*See Chapter IV.
Dun's Review.
Jones-Industriaļ Crisis,
Wages and Living Expenses
777
gainful occupations in Massachusetts were unemployed.
They were unemployed at their principal occupation on
an average 4.11 months.
2. Coming now to hard times or the last period of
overproduction and industrial depression, we find the
following estimates:
(a) Mr. C. C. Closson, in the winter of 1893-4, ad-
dressed 300 circular letters to authorities in 38 leading
cities. In these he found 491,000 unemployed. Brad-
street's estimated 581,950 unemployed in the same cities
that winter.
(b) About July 1st, 1893, the depression struck us in
earnest. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics for 1893 shows that in the establishments canvassed
15.5 per cent were unemployed. In 1890 5,091,000 per-
sons were employed in the manufacturing and me-
chanical industries. If the above rate was maintained
there were in the United States in these industries at
least 763,000 unemployed. During the winter months,
January, February and March the situation grew worse
and continued in a very bad condition for several years.
Even in 1897 and 1898 the returns from the trade-unions
of New York* show the following results:
During entire Total number Unem- Per gt.
quarter.
Reporting: ployed. Unemp'd.
1897
142,570 35,381 24.0
1898
179,955
18,102
On March 31st.
1897
142,570 43,654 30.1
1898
179,955 38,857 16.6
The latter figures approximate the average number
unemployed during the year. If the returns for 1897
. represent the country the unemployment must have
been greater than that shown by our previous figures
for 1893. This would not show that unemployment
was less in 1893, but rather that the amount of unem-
ployment in Massachusetts at that time was not so
great as that of other portions of our country and there-
10.0
$Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 3, 1893-94.
*See N. Y. Labor Bulletin No. 1.
78
Socialist Campaign Book
fore calculation for 1893 is under the mark. All that
those figures show is that unemployment can hardly
have been less than 763,000 employed in the manufac-
turing industries alone in the last six months of 1893.
The New York returns also show that our "new
prosperity" can hardly be said to have begun before
January ist, 1899, for in the previous quarter the New
York unions had 46,000 members unemployed or 29
per cent of the total membership.
3. In the spring of 1899 "our new prosperity" was
upon us in full force. As McKinley said: “Prosperity
abounds everywhere throughout the republic." No
doubt Mr. McKinley, surrounded by his four leading
advisers, Senators Hanna, Elkins, Fairbanks and
Spooner, could see nothing but prosperity around him,*
but we produce in this chapter a few facts that show the
real condition of the wage-earners at this time. As to
the numbers unemployed we find some interesting sta-
tistics from the republican states of New York and
Massachusetts.
The New York Labor Bulletins give quarterly reports
of unemployment among trade-unions on the last day
of the four quarters of the years. These show the fol-
lowing:
Per cent.
No. report-
No. unem-
unem-
ing
ployed. ployed.
Dec. 31, 1898......167,543 46,125
29.0
Mar. 31, 1899.
166,235
31,049
18.6
June 30, 1899. 188,455
20,106
10.9
Sept. 30, 1899. . 205,933
4,788
2.3
Dec. 31, 1899.
219,166
10,238
Mar. 31, 1900.
..226,263
22,895
June 30, 1900. ..239,500
22,491
9.4
By October ist, 1898, all agreed that "prosperity":
was arriving. We had brought the Spanish war to a
"glorious" conclusion. Hundreds of millions of dol-
*According to the Washington correspondent of the republican Chi-
cago Tribune these men were the constant advisers of the President
He was seen constantly with them and not a day
passed without a consultation with one
one or another of this "Big
4.6
.
IO.I
.
at that time.
Four.'
Wages and Living Expenses
79
lars had been spent in our industries by the Federal
government, and even the "calamity howlers” were si-
lent. Yet during the 19 brief months of the height of
prosperity the average proportion of unemployed among
the best organized workers was over 12 per cent. That
this was not due to seasonal idleness may be shown
from an examination of the detailed figures for each
trade. Or it may be seen from the fact that on two
different quarters the proportion fell as low as 4.6 and
2.3 per cent respectively, which figures must have in-
cluded the regular seasonal idleness. Even the strikes
as shown in the New York report account for only a
small part of this unemployment.
The only possible conclusion is that the capitalist sys-
tem does not provide work for the workers even in its
most prosperous years. Each period of comparatively
busy industry employs more men than the preceding
period of depression, but as we have shown, these pe-
riods do not originate in the United States or any one
country. The republican party supposing that they are
going to be given the credit of this improvement have
issued tons of "prosperity pamphlets, just as the dem-
ocrats would do if they were now in power. In one of
these,* the boast is made in large capitals that "whereas
in 1896 there were 393,162 men employed in coal min-
ing, in 1899 there were 410,635 so employed, an in-
crease of 17,473." By the natural increase according to
United States census the miners and their sons of work-
ing age would number 28,300 more in 1900 than in
1896. Therefore, this “barometer of prosperity” has
failed to give enough employment to provide for the
normal growth of the mining communities. More than
10,000 of its working members must either find employ-
ment elsewhere or live as parasites on the mining com-
munity. Coal mining is one of the latest industries
where machinery has been introduced and this has pro-
duced the enormously increased output with a very
small increase in the numbers of workmen. In 1896
the miners produced 191,986,357 tons; in 1899 they pro-
*Republican pamphlet on “Coal."
80
Socialist Campaign Book
duced 258,539,650 tons. In 1896 the average miner
produced 471 tons; in 1899 he produced 629 tons.
The same tendencies have long been found in our
other industries and it has only been a rapidly increas-
ing foreign market that has saved the capitalist system
from an industrial depression that should never have
an end; a fate we seem narrowly to have escaped lately,
and one which is sure to arrive when the great nations
of the world have no new foreign markets to exploit.
There must be new markets, for the workers of the old
markets when once organized on a capitalistic basis are
unable to buy more, as is shown in this chapter.
IV. THE PRESENT
REACTION.”
But we have beside the severe Industrial Crisis the
lesser evil of "Industrial Reaction."
Dun's Review, on July 7th of this year, said that
probably wage difficulties would not cause new embar-
rassments after that time because “the closing of works
for want of orders shows their condition.” This over-
production which first made itself felt last May, is re-
ferred to in the following terms by the same authority:
May 19: "Business is not what it was a year ago, but
men do not agree in defining the difference. The work-
ing force, then increasing fast, is now decreasing.
Works are stopping to relieve excessive output in man-
ufactures of paper, cotton, wool, leather and some forms
of steel, while prices are suddenly reduced for the same
purpose in lead, wire and nails. What seems to some
‘merely spring dullness, others think 'the beginning of
reaction. The remedy for one difficulty does not fit
the other, and there is more need than usual for close
attention to the meaning of events."
June 2: "Orders for boots and shoes have been re-
duced much more than shipments, because many works
had orders which are not yet exhausted. But new bus-
iness is not enough to keep nearly the full force at work,
and with many works closed and others working short
time or force, the shipments in May have been smaller
than in any other year since 1892. They were larger
Wages and Living Expenses
81
by 17.4 per cent in 1896, by 22.8 per cent in 1895, and
by 27.7 per cent last year."
June 23: “There will be time to work off excessive
stocks in some lines, and to adjust prices to a new basis
for the latter half of the year.
June 30: "The boot and shoe industry makes slow
progress. Most local works have closed or are about
to close."
July 7: “Had it been predicted that the vast iron
industry would be thrown from unprecedented activity
into great depression, with many works closed and
prices reduced fully a quarter, without failures amount-
ing in all to $30,000, it would have been thought impos-
sible. Yet the six failures in that department for the
last quarter were in all for $28,935, though Bessemer
pig has fallen from $25 to $18, and plates from 3.1 to 1.5
cents, and the average for iron and steel products has
declined just 25 per cent since June 10. Some further
decline is now expected before things are adjusted for
another active season, and efforts to arrange wages are
progressing. The Thomas and Empire and some other
large concerns have given notice of a reduction, while
the tin plate and other large combinations have closed
their works, waiting for a settlement.
Similar difficulties occur at this season in other indus-
tries, but with small prospect now of serious embar-
rassment, as the closing of works for want of orders
shows their condition. The Fall River committee has
decided to close their cotton mills for a time and some
of the largest woolen works have been closed or much
reduced in force. A large share of the boot and shoe
force is inactive, and no change in prices has resulted
since those of some weeks ago which, according to later
accounts, were made by fewer of the manufacturers
than was at the time believed."
July 21: "The closing of important mills was the
more meritorious because it gave occasion at the end
of a season, with an over-supply here, both of goods
and material, to rest until Europeans have settled their
affairs. Without formal agreement the woolen industry
adopted in part the same course, many mills having
82
8
Socialist Campaign Book
stopped or reduced force, so that experts believe that
less than half the capacity is now at work, because the
nature of the next season's demand does not yet ap-
pear."
Aug. II: “Working forces are smaller and will soon
be further reduced, probably for three weeks, by the
closing down of cotton mills in New England, which
has been delayed longer than expected."
Aug. 18: “In the boot and shoe industry the trade
is suffering from accumulation of stocks that cannot be
sold without a loss as compared with the price at which
shoes could now be made. Idle shops throughout the
East are a natural remedy."
Aug. 25: “Factories are still working only part time
in the eastern boot and shoe districts, and it is evident
that earlier estimates of accumulated stocks were much
too small."
It was at a commercial banquet during the above
period that Senator Wolcott said: “There isn't an idle
mill in the country to-day.” This again goes to prove
that no dark facts can be glaring enough to be seen by
an individual saturated with a feeling of his own pros-
perity. The editor of the Cleveland Citizen estimated
from clippings taken from the capitalist papers, that
there were 250,000 workers idle through shut-downs
alone in a single week of last summer.
There were
60,000 men thrown out in the iron and steel industry
alone. According to every estimate 60,000 men were
idle in that industry from July ist to September 15th,
and though there was a wage dispute, Dun's Review
shows that it was of secondary importance to the exist-
ing overproduction, wlich had been shown before the
wage difficulty arrived.
The Massachusetts Labor Bulletin for August, 1900,
shows that in the establishments canvassed there was a
decrease of the total number employed from 76,464 to
67,713, or 11.44 per cent, between April 14th and July
14th, 1900, and as we have shown, the greatest enforced
idleness followed the latter date. If this same propor-
tion holds true throughout the country, there were even
at that early date, 684,000 idle workers in our manu-
Wages and Living Expenses
83
facturing industry. At a later date there were certainly
more idle than on July 14th.
That this condition was due to overproduction is also
shown by the following facts:
Dun's Review for
August 17th, says of prices, "the reaction has followed
in every large industry." Bank clearings have shown
a large decrease during the same period. Towards the
end of August many of the largest railroads showed less
earnings than during the same weeks of the year be-
fore. In the month of August even our foreign trade
decreased. Exports fell $1,500,000 below the amount
of August, 1899, and imports decreased about $5,000,-
000. Every sign is now pointing to business on a more
restricted scale.*
The conditions immediately preceding an election are
commonly traced to political uncertainties. That his-
tory has proved the reverse we have shown elsewhere.
Moreover during July and August nothing was more
commented upon than the universal political apathy and
the certainty that there would be no political changes.
This was the time when the reaction was at its worst,
but it still continues and is no more due to political
causes in October than it was in July. The present in-
dustrial sufferings of the working people are due solely
to the capitalist system.
THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
The employment of women and children has increased
enormously in the last, as in the previous decade. This
means that the women are being taken away from our
homes and the children from our schools. It means
that grown-up men must compete more and more with
women's and children's wages in many lines of work.
Neither of these results of women's and children's work
are disputed by the authorities who are therefore forced
to disguise the facts themselves. This has been most
crudely done by Carroll D. Wright in his labor reports
and in his work in the United States census.
In the early days of our industrial development the
* See another part of this chapter on Wage Reductions.
† See section on Government statistics.
84
Socialist Campaign Book
as
bulk of the women were at home while those earning
their living were occupied either as servants or
workers in industries otherwise related to honie-work,
as hand-sewing or laundry work. At a somewhat later
period the textile factories absorbed a considerable
number. These remained the only important occupa-
tions for women up to 1870. From 1870 to 1890 start-
ling developments took place. Female servants became
an increasing element in our population. The number
of seamstresses and tailoresses was multiplied by three;
at the same time these women were taken in great num-
bers from the home to the sweatshop. This was the period
of the growth of the steam laundry where tuberculosis
is bred and the working hours are only regulated by the
work on hand-conditions which have been repeatedly
exposed in our state factory reports. The laundresses
numbered in 1890 215,000; enough to make a city larger
than Louisville.
We had 170 women clerks in 1890 where we had one
in 1870. The wages of all clerks have been brought
down in the competition of these women, whose earn-
ings in our large department stores are usually below
$5 per week.*
In shoes, tobacco, printing, shirts paper, rubber, hats
and caps and corsets, 137,000 are employed, and the
increase in these during the last 20 years varies from
250 to 650 per cent; and to a smaller extent women are
entering as manual workers into hundreds of other in-
dustries. Many of these industries are most unsuited
to them. No more unwholesome surroundings exist
than in the Chicago stock yards where this year's fac-
tory report shows 1,500 women employed.
Moreover a large per cent of the women employed
are married or widows. In 1890 the married women oc-
cupied numbered 515,000, and the widows 630,000. This
is one of the ways in which the home is being under-
mined by our "industrial progress.” When the wife is
away the home is destroyed.
The figures on women Wright was unable to garble,
*See Free Employment Agency Rep., Chicago, Ill.
Wages and Living Expense ·
85
but with those on children he conveys a wholesale un-
truth.
The factory reports of the various states show that
there were large numbers of children not reported by
the census enumerators for the simple reason that the
parents understated the number of children they had
employed. In Pennsylvania 30,433 were found by the
inspectors, while only 22,419 were found by the enu-
merators. Other reports show the same results. For
some unaccountable reason children were defined in
1880 as those under 16, in 1890 they were defined as
those under 1472.
Wright's own figures are as follows: Number of
children at work from 10 to 1472 years, 603,013. *
The Massachusetts factory inspectors report for 1890
shows that there were about 3 children employed there
under 16 to one child under 1472. Applying this ratio
to the whole United States we find that there were 3X
603,013; or 1,809,039, or 21.61 per cent of the total num-
ber employed under 16 years of age. The table would
then read:
NUMBER AND PEROENTAGE OF OHILDREN AT WORK AT THE
THREE CENSUS YEARS, 1870, 1880 AND 1890.
Census years and classification of ages.
Total.
1880.
Total children 10 to 15 years, inclusive......5,604,369
Number of above at work ..
739,164
Percentage of above at work.
13.19
1880.
Total children 10 to 15 years, inclusive......6,649,483
Number of above at work..
.1,118,356
Percentage of above at work.
16.82
1890.
Total children to to 16 years, inclusive. ..8,322,363
Number of above at work 10 to 16 years....1,809,039
Percentage of above at work.....
21.62
Of course there is no way of counting in the children
omitted by the enumerators, as has been shown above.
.
.
ISee H, L. Bliss, Journal of Sociology, 1897, p. 368.
*See U. S. Labor Report on the employment of women and chil-
dren.
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Socialist Campaign Book
The above statements of Wright are quoted from the
summary of the Labor Report of 1896 and are contra-
dicted in the body of the same report. In his summary
Wright goes back to the census of 1896 and ignores the
results of his own report, which were as follows for 931
establishments examined:
Increase of number of employees between 1885 and
1895:
Males over 18..
.63.1
Females over 18..
Males under 18.
..80.6
Females under 18.
..89.1
.66.3
This shows that the employment of females is increas-
ing at the present time more rapidly than that of males,
and that the employment of children and young persons
is increasing immensely faster than that of adults.*
The greatest number of children are employed in agri-
culture and domestic labor. In 1890 there were 327,000
in the former, and 90,000 in the latter, occupation under
the age of 141/2 (Bulletin of the U. S. Dept. of Labor, p.
422). These children should obviously be in school.
But besides these there are many occupations in which
the health, mind and morals of the children are injured.
The Illinois factory inspectors reports show some of these
conditions. The Illinois reports are so interesting that
we quote them at some length.† “In the great tin can
factory at Maywood, through all the heat of last summer
little boys worked among unguarded shafting and belting
in the fumes of the soldering room, or crouched on a shelf
in every crooked and unwholesome posture, poking sharp
edged circles of tin through the holes of the shelf; or
were seated at the stamp and die machines, where every
fall of the stamp is a menace to the fingers and hands."
"Some children at the Stockyards are boys who cut up
the animals as soon as the hide is removed, little butchers
working directly in the slaughterhouse, at the most re-
volting part of the labor performed in the Stockyards.
1
*See section on Goverument Statistics.
i Second Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors of Illinois.
Wages and Living Expenses
87
These children stand ankle deep in water used for flood-
ing the floor for the purpose of carrying off blood and
refuse into the drains; they breathe air so sickening that a
man not accustomed to it can stay in the place but a few
moments; and their work is the most brutalizing that can
be devised. Other boys cut bones with a buzz saw placed
within 50 feet of the drying racks where skulls and horns
are scorching over a flame, and the smell of the smoking
bones and rags of hide excels in horror all the smells for
which the Stockyards are notorious. Here in a dark,
foul passage, young boys work at a machine of the most
dangerous character, an unguarded buzz saw. No crim-
inal in the United States could be punished by an hour's
imprisonment in such a place without a horrified protest
ringing through the land. But these young victims are
kept here by their employers day after day and n10 voice
is raised in their behalf. Nor is there any excuse for the
existence of such surroundings. With the facilities for
ventilation and deodorizing that are readily available, this
passageway could be made inoffensive. Meanwhile the
employment of any human being in such a place is an
outrage and should be summarily stopped, but the law
confers upon the inspectors no power to stop it.
"Another indication of the insufficiency of the law is the
presence of 721 children in sweat shops in 1894. Many
of the boys in these shops are button holers and every
little button holer is destined sooner or later to develop
a lateral curvature of the spine. Other boys run foot
power machines and the doom that awaits these is con-
sumption of the lungs or intestines. Many of the little
girls are "hand” girls wliose backs grow crooked over
hemming, felling and sewing on buttons. The rest of the
girls run foot power machines and incur both tuberculo-
sis, which they share with the machine boys, and also pel-
vic disorders ruinous to themselves at present and to their
children in the future.
"Of the 135 children who, during the year, were given
medical examination, 72 were found sufficiently normal
to be allowed to continue work. Of the 63 refused cer-
tificates 53 were not allowed to work at all, and were
stopped working at unwholesonie trades, as tobacco
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Socialist Campaign Book
stripping, grinding in cutlery factory, running machines
by foot power and crimping cans.
“In several cases different diseases existed in the sanie
child. There were 14 children with spinal curvature, 12
with heart murniur, 6 with lung trouble, 24 with enlarged
glands, 25 with defective sight, 6 with defective hearing
and 56 with defective teeth.
“The report of this department for 1894 showed that.
the 721 children found in the sweatshops of Chicago dur-
ing that year were illiterate, while the majority of them
could not speak English. In this respect there has been
no improvement. That statement applies equally to the
1,307 children found at work in these shops in 1895."
From a special report concerning the children at work
in the glass works, the following is garnered:*
"Other citizens tell me that the larger boys (from 12 10
16 years old) struck during the autumn against a cut in
wages from 45 cents a day to 40 cents; all those who held
out being blacklisted. The lads under 14 now receive
but 40 cents per day. It is therefore clear that any dearth
of available boys which the company may find incon-
venient is caused by its refusal to pay wages acceptable
to boys of legal working age.
The glass company and the entire press of Alton con-
tinually urge that the blowers must cease work unless
furnished boys of less than legal age. In no case, how-
ever, has a blower made this statement. On the con-
trary, the men themselves told ine that they would prefer
to have the company furnish them boys of legal working
age; but that the company was unwilling to employ boys
old enough to insist upon more than 40 cents a day.”
"The load of bottles which a boy carries at any one
time is small, and he has no heavy lifting to do. The
work is, therefore, described by President Smith as 'light
and easy.'' This assertion can be accepted as true only
by persons who have not seen the little boys at work.
Young children, with heads and hands bandaged,
where they have received burns from melting glass or
red-hot swinging rods, dodging in all directions to escape
* See Third Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors of Illinois.
-
Wages and Living Expenses
89
the danger which each causes the other where their paths
cross, while the blowers' long pipes swing over their
heads, are not doing "light and easy" work. Loss of
time from burns, and cost of clothing to replace burned
coats and shoes (for fragments of cooling glass fall on the
floor in all directions) were the burden of complaint of
more than one poor mother, in telling us how hard her
little boy found his life in the glass works.
While this conspicuous danger strikes the eye at once,
the greater and more permanent injury to all the young
children may be overlooked in a casual visit. The speed
required and the heated atmosphere surrounding the
fires, render the boys' continuous running most exhaust-
ing. An hour's steady trotting in the open air tires a
healthy school-boy of 7 to 14 years; but these little lads
trot hour after hour, day after day, month after month,
in the heat and dust.
This strain must be borne by night as well as by day,
for there is no legal limit to the hours which may be re-
quired of the boys, nor any restriction upon night work
for them. Nor is there any discrimination in favor of
employing the older boys at night. Children 7 and 8
years old work until 3 a. m., and then, scantily clad, go
from their exhausting toil, running in the hot air beside
the furnaces out over the ice, through the chill air of the
early morning, to the tents and boats beside the frozen
river.
All these conditions, taken together, render absurd the
description of the boys' work for the glass company as
"light and easy."
In all the families which we visited none of the chil-
dren have ever gone to school.
"In laundries, the only limit to the hours of work of
children seems to be the limit of their usefulness. It has
been found that their little fingers become expert at
"marking," and at this they are much employed, although
they are also found at mangles and other dangerous na-
chines used in steam laundries. Marking is one of the
occupations which superficial observers class as "light
and easy," but handling soiled clothing on its way to the
washing machine is not fit work for any child. Apart
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Socialist Campaign Book
em-
from the unfitness, there is great danger from infection;
much greater in the case of young children exhausted by
overwork in the heat and steam of the laundry than in the
case of older persons.
The children were found to be working in the stores
from nine to fifteen hours at wages averaging $2.50 per
week, from which many had to deduct carfare. In the
sweatshops the hours at the height of the season were
fourteen a day.
Girls are employed by the thousands in stores, textile
mills, sweatshops, cigar factories and binders and in con-
siderable numbers in other industries. Boys are
ployed by the thousands in all these places and in the
sawmills, foundries, metal factories, and by the meat
packers as well. A very large number are employed in
the mines—especially those of Pennsylvania where the
miserable conditions are so well known.
Since the census of 1890 and the U. S. Labor Report
of 1896, the State factory inspectors' reports show that
the movement has continued. The 1899 report of Illi-
noish shows that the number of children under 16 in-
creased in one year from 11,845 to 13,646, an increase
of 1800. Not only does the proportion of children at work
in that State increase but the number of children in-
creases faster than the number of adults. The percentage
of women in the total employees has also increased in
one year from 18.2 to 18.6.
CHAPTER VIII.
How the Working Class Live
"Even to-day when nearly all join in the joyous ac-
claim of industrial progress and commercial success, we
may witness in any of our cities poverty, misery and
despair. The slums of our great cities stand as an accus-
ing spectre to the naladministration of our economic
political and social affiairs."-Pres. Gompers to the A. F.
of L., 1899.
During the last century we have passed from a domes-
tic system of industry to a competitive system; first,
among small producers; and, second, among large pro-
ducers. We are now entering upon a system of industry
which is commonly designated as monopolistic. The
concentration of population elsewhere shown in this book
is really the agglomeration of workers at industrial cen-
tres. There is a rural exodus. The country districts are
decreasing, in many instances, all over the western
world. Young men and young women are coming into
the city, not only because they delight in the attractions
of city life, but also because the workers in small towns
and in the country are forced by economic pressure into
the cities. The small manufactory gives way to the fac-
tory system as the small country store gives way to the
large city stores and the many schemes of ordering goods
by mail. The last few years have been most marked by
an enormous increase in city populations, and every-
where, from St. Petersburg to San Francisco, the cities
are presented with some baffling problems connected
with the housing of the working people. It is not neces-
sary nor desired that a survey of teneinent house reform
should be given. The purpose of what follows is to give
to the public a statement of the terrible facts concerning
the condition of the working class in their homes.
In Cincinnati there are some dangerously unsanitary
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Socialist Campaign Book
districts. There are streets and rows of tenements, where
the houses, court-yards, and out-houses are so filled with
the germs of disease that anyone moving into those dis-
tricts is instantly infected with them. The people of the
districts become innoculated with the disease germs, and
while not attacked themselves by the disease are yet dis-
seminators of the germs. Some say that this is a good
thing, because those who survive those conditions will be
more rugged and more fit to compete. But this is not a
sound argument. However, even for the sake of the
few who will survive in these localities, can we allow the
frightful mortality their inoculation causes wherever they
may venture?.
The very bad system of drainage in Cincinnati, to-
gether with an exceedingly impure water supply gives
that city a very high death rate from typlus. In 1894
the rate was three times that of London, eight times that
of Hamburg, ten times that of Vienna, twelve times that
of Berlin, and twenty times that of Munich. In Vienna
before the introduction of a pure water supply the deatlı
rate was 200 per 100,000, after the advent of pure water
it fell to IO.
In Angouleme pure water reduced the
deaths from typhoid fever in the proportion of 18 to
0.063, in Amiens from all to 17.
But the most painful of all, the most wretched of the
workers, the lowest, filthiest district of the city was char-
acterized by the total absence of children. The sanitary
conditions were so vile, the standard of life so low, and
the heritage to the children so meagre that undervitalized
as they were they early succumbed in the struggle for
existence. Probably the promiscuity and scant powers
of procreation caused few children to be born.
Other and probably equally bad conditions could be
shown to exist in Boston, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Buffalo,
Philadelphia, etc., but the story would be too long. Books,
papers, and magazines are filled with descriptions of
our cities—moral and physical pest holes. There is small
use in the attempts to describe them. Sometimes, one
would think, this is a main cause of our apathy to the
awful conditions. But this has been found true and may be
useful to state here, that the health, strength and morality of
How the Working Class Live
93
the workers and all things depending on these qualities bear
a definite relation to the sanitary conditions of the streets,
alleys, court-yards, out-houses, scwerage and water supply.
And now let the foregoing typify, as it may, the unsan-
itary conditions outside of the house. But, of course,
this is not all, nor even the worst. Inside of the house,
in the rear tenements, in the sweating dens, and lodging
houses, we find other conditions of unhealth. In order to
understand fully what these are, the foot-note on the dif-
ferent kinds of housing will be valuable. The problems
of each city in regard to unsanitary conditions within the
houses is different from that of any other.
The following statistics from the reports of thic National Bureau of
Labor on "The Sluins of Great Cities" and of the Massachusetts
Bureau of Labor for 1892 on the tenements of Boston, will show
the various housing facilities. The following figures are for the
so-called slums: In Baltimore they contain 18,048 individuals; 4,028
families occupy 15,195 rooins, showing an average of 1.19 persons to
a room; Chicago shows an average of 1.37 persons to a room; New
York 1.88, and Philadelphia 1.47 persons. The greatest number of
tenements to a house is: in New York 29, Chicago 24, Philadelphia
15, and Baltimore 13. The large number of families in Baltimore,
Chicago and Philadelpbin living in houses of from one to five tene-
ments is noticeable. New York is the exception, showing a greater
proportion of familles living in houses having a larger number of
tencments to a house. Philndelphia shows 53.91 per cent of all fam-
ilies, comprising 60.97 per cent of all individuals living in houses of
onc tenement, that is, occupying the whole house. From the Lley-
enth Census the number of people to a dwelling (any abode where
any one lives) in all the cities is as follows: Baltimore, 6.02 per-
sons; Philadelphia, 5.60 persons; Brooklyn, 9.80 persons; Chicago,
8.60 persons; New York, 18.52 persons; St. Louis, 7.41; and Boston,
8.52.
Comparing the statistics of the cities as a whole with those
of the slum districts, we find in most cases that the number of
persons to a room ir the slums is almost double to that in the city.
Chicago bas 15.51 persons to a dwelling in the sluins and New
York 36.70
Therefore the question is what is the sanitary condi-
tion of these houses? In 1867, of the 18,582 tenements
in New York, 9,846 were in a very bad sanitary condi-
tion. In 1893, the tenenients in New York City num-
bered 39,138, with a population of 1,332,773. How many
were badly unsanitary is not known but certain it is that
3,984 were absolutely unfit for human habitation. The
Secretary of Tenement House Committee, Mr. Edward
Marshall, in his report says: “Omitting from the techni-
cal tenement houses, such flats and apartments houses,
as do not properly come within the province of the semi-
annual inspection, it is proper to say that almost no
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Socialist Campaign Book
100.00
100.00
2.
4. Fair
louses which do not contain defects of construction,
plumbing and drainage in direct violation of the sanitary
or building-code can be found." The inside sanitary con-
ditions of New York tenements are extremely bad.
The excellent and exhaustive report of the Massa-
chusetts Bureau of Labor on the sanitary conditions of
the Boston tenements will give us an idea of the condi-
tion of health there:
Sanitary Condition. Outside Sanitary Condition.
No. of
Popula-
Families.
tion.
I. City of Boston..
Excellent
15.77
16.61
3.
Good .
40.60
40.30
30.87
31.02
5. Poor
9.10
9.33
6. Bad
2.66
2.74
Inside Sanitary Conditions.
Light and Air.
Ventilation.
Cleanliness.
No. of Popula- No. of Popula- No. of Popula-
Families. tion. Families. tion. Fainilies. tion.
I00.00 100.00
I00.00 100.00
18.66 16.44
18.49
20.67 19.84
44.39 44.50 44.07
44.16
39.33 38.97
28.58 28.68 28.80 28.94
28.89
6.56 6.61
6.79
6.86
9.15
9.68
1.81
1.77
1.60
1.55 2.41 2.62
These figures show that 11.76 per cent of the families
in the rented tenements of Boston live in poor or bad
outside sanitary conditions. This means 8,426 families
and 37,613. individuals. Those tenements classed as poor
or bad, with reference to inside conditions, house 5,992
families or 26,097 individuals. The families constitute
8.36 per cent of the whole number of families; and the
individuals 8.38 per cent of the whole population.
The conditions in certain districts, however, are by no
means shown in these figures. Many wards have much
larger percentages than the cities as a whole. In ward
4, 27.95 per cent; in ward 7, 25.86 per cent; in ward 13,
I00.00
I00.00
18.74
28.44
.
How the Working Class Live
95
26.41; and in ward 25, 22.45 per cent of the population
live in poor or bad sanitary conditions. In eleven out
of the twenty-five wards the percentages are higher than
in the city as a whole. Thirteen wards, classed as having
poor or bad sanitary conditions inside, have larger per-
centages than the city as a whole. In ward seven the
families living without proper provision for light and
air are 26.66 per cent of the whole. The streets and alleys
of this ward are very dirty-great accumulations of rub-
bish and filth in the courts and passage-ways.
The conditions in the tenement houses of Baltimore,
Chicago, New York and Philadelphia are shown us in
a Report of the National Bureau of Labor in 1894. The
investigation in this case was not so careful as in that of
Boston. The leap from fair to bad tenements is a long
one and does not give the reader a definite idea of what
the less favorable conditions are. The figures however,
are at least helpful.
Among the very worst classes of bad housings are the
rear tenements. They are in such conditions that the
sanitary authorities are hopeless of making them health-
ful. The walls and floors are always damp and cold,
without any possibility of sunlight. Increased evils arise
from the fact that the tenants are usually the poorest
and dirtiest. The space commonly between the front
and rear tenements is generally filled with any filth and
unhealthy rubbish which the people may throw there.
They are the worst of all housing because it is impossible
for them to furnish the necessities to good health; sun-
light, fresh air, dry and warm floors, cleanliness and suf-
ficient room. The rear tenements of our cities do much
toward the vast unhealth of our municipalities.
As a means of comparing the healthfulness of the rear
tenements to those standing singly on a lot these figures
from the Report of the Tenement House Committee of
1894 are significant:
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Socialist Campaign Book
I
2
I
2
92.78
Death-rate in houses Death rate in houses
New York standing singly on a having front and rear
Wards.
lot.
on same lot.
29.03
61.97
28.57
3
15.55
22.55
23
18.31
49.38
I2
20.67
29.05
24
7.30
Notice the death rate of the children under five years
of age in these "slaughter houses."
109.58
204.54
105.69
114.68
8
95.58
I 29.56
9
130.56
No greater evidence could be found than these figures
to show the horrible conditions of disease common to the
rear tenements.
If possible worse, yet very much like the rear tene-
ments, are the old and dilapidated buildings. The two
need not be mutually exclusive. These houses are often
the old houses of wealthy people who, moving away,
allow the buildings to become patched and altered into
the most frightful tenements. They are in no way fitted
for homes to the people crowded into them.
And they make the very unsanitary and unhealthful
tenements which so greatly augment the death-rate in
these districts. The deaths in sixty-six of these homes,
the worst in New York, were as follows:
Total population.
Deaths in 1889..
207
Deaths in 1890.
237
Deaths in 1891.
247
Deaths in 1892.
217
Deaths in 1893.
348
These enormous death-rates-over 63 per thousand in
1893-are arguments without equal. It seems little less
than cool and determined massacre.
5,560
How the Working Class Live
97
500.00
PRIVATIONS DUE TO EXCESS OF RENT.
As Marcus T. Reynolds says high rents are due to ex-
cess of demand over supply the ignorance of the newly
arrived immigrant is an element in high rents, but the
main cause is the concentration of the factories in the
large cities. As the workers cannot afford to go a long
distance to work they are forced to swarm around the
factories or shops.
Percentage of annual
Combined valuation
rental of combined
of land and
valuation of land:
buildings. Annual rental. and buildings.
$400.00
$144.00
36.00
1,600.00
576.00
39.00
600.00
228.00
38.00
600.00
282.00
48.00
500.00
246.00
49.00
195.12
39.00
The above investigation relates to 646 houses of estates
which were reported by the investigators to be in a bad
sanitary condition.
Miss Adah A. Woolfolk, of the College Settlement in
Rivington St., found that among 600 families, 27 per
cent of the earnings were expended in rent. Some cases
were found in New York where the rent amountd to 25
per cent of the amount invested by the owners. “The old
tenements, without any improvements
most profitable.” The high rents of the tenements in-
volve great hardships to the tenants. One-eighth is
enough of a wage-earner's income for this purpose, but,
as we saw, there are cases where it demands nearly one-
third.
Excessive rents involve many hardships and among
the chief of these is overcrowding. The overcrowding
in New York is to be guessed, at least imagined, from
the fact that it has a greater density per acre than any
other city in the world. The density of population in a
few cities of this and foreign countries is shown here:
(From tables of comparative density of population in
different cities of the world, by Roger Tracy, M. D., Re-
port Tenement House Committee, 1894, page 256.)
are the
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Socialist Campaign Book
.
Paris
Berlin
New York...
Below Harlem.
Greater London.
Per acre.
125.2 for 1891
113.2 for 1894
76.0 for 1893
. 148.2 for 1894
13.2 for 1893
.
.
.
The following are comparisons of certain crowded dis-
.tricts in the world, made by Mr. Tracy:
City.
Density
per acre.
Date.
..986.4
.626.26
'94
'93
District.
Sanitary district A.,
Eleventh ward', ... New York...
Tenth ward... New York..
Bethnal Green north
Mile End...
.London
Newton
.Whitechapel
Koom barnara. Bombay
Chukla
. Bombay
:
.
.
.
..365.3
· 303.5
:759.66
-718.26
'91
'91
'81
'81
.
.
Even in these crowded conditions the rents force many
families to take boarders.
A witness before the Ten. H. Comm. of 1894 re-
ported an investigation which found 218 families that ac-
commodated 348; 151 families had 311 lodgers; 139
families had 214 boarders. Mr. Robert Graham tells of
a family consisting of a man and wife, girl of 18 and a boy,
they had a married couple for lodgers, who had twins
of 14, another girl of 16, two boys, and, in addition to
that, there were four male lodgers, making 15 people.
This was done at the expense of decency in order to pay
rent. In New York there were found eleven residents
living in two rooms.
Some of the evils of overcrowding are thus summar-
ized by the Tenement House Commission: "It results in
keeping children up and out of doors until midnight in
warm weather because the rooms are almost unendurable,
making cleanliness of house and street difficult; filling the
air with unwholesome enianations and foul odors of ey-
ery kind; producing a condition of nervous tension; in-
How the Working Class Live
99
terfering with separateness and sacredness of home life;
leading to promiscuous mixing of all ages and sexes in a
single room; thus breaking down the barriers of modesty,
conducing to the corruption of the young and occasion.
ally to revolting crimes.” These are indeed some of the
most evident and dreadful evils which accompany over-
crowding. But these are not all; the resulting bad health
and the ever increased number of deaths are not spoken
of.
The intimacy of the tenement house population makes
the spread of disease there almost unpreventable. If the
homes represent cells in our social life, the analogy can-
not be distasteful if we call the tenement houses sores
from which contagion is spread throughout the whole so-
ical body.
The question of sweating is closely connected with the
great amount of sickness in the tenement. By means
of clothes and all products of the sweating-dens, disease
goes into every home. The Factory Inspectors of Illi-
nois report this case: "A tailor was making a coat in
his bedroom and his wife was making butter in the kitch-
en and had several tubs of it for sale, while a baby lay
ill of small-pox in a room opening into both the others.
Under the Workshop and Factory Law the coat could
be destroyed, but the butter, so far as the inspectors
know, was sold in the ordinary way of the trade." There
are many like cases.
This report Mrs. Florence Kelly and her co-inspectors
shows: First, “that each manufacturer of clothes” whose
business was "investigated," has some shops not on tene-
inent house prenises, but every one has more shops that
are on such premises; second, that the tenement house
premises are, as a rule, crowded with tenants; third, that
a large proportion of these shops are over stables or
sheds, in basements mixed in with the sweater's family,
or upon upper floors; and upper floors of these build-
ings, where shops and tenants are crowded together,
are almost invariably found with a defective water sup-
ply, pest-breeding closets, walls covered with filth, in-
fested with vermiu." This valuable report shows clearly
Why a tenement house is a breeding place for disease,
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Socialist Campaign Book
from which the germs are disseminated with the prod-
ucts and with the workers.
The great prevalence of typhoid, measles, scarlet-fever,
tuberculosis, diphtheria, small-pox, etc., caused by the
unlawful and disgraceful condition is greatly enhanced by
the ignorance of the inhabitants. Then, too, landlords,
shopkeepers and manufacturers for pecuniary reasons, do
much to conceal disease. Even the parents hide their
infected children in order to keep their chance of work.
But sometimes the concealment is caused by an intense
aversion and fear of the hospitals and pest-houses. The
reason of the fear varies; mostly it is ignorance, but
sometimes it is knowledge of these places.
Sir James Paget, the distinguished English physician,
estimates that the whole population of England between
the ages of 15 and 65 years old in each year work 20,-
000,000 weeks less than they might if it were not for
sickness. The domestic, industrial and agricultural
classes lose about 53,531,500 annually. The preventable
sickness among the workers he estimates at one-fourth.
Therefore the loss on the working class must be nearly
$14,599.500. Typloid fever, which is entirely preventa-
ble, causes an annual loss of 230,000 weeks of work to
those who survive it.
Mr. E. R. L. Gould says in this connection: “Some
years ago an inquiry, made by the sanitary authorities in
the very poorest part of London, disclosed the fact that,
upon the lowest average, every workingman lost about
twenty days in the year from sheer exhaustion. Putting
the value of his labor at a low figure, a good-sized addi-
tional sum would have been available for the rent bill
had exhaustion not occurred.
There is nothing in this country which will compare
with the statistics for English conditions. But possibly
it is only valuable as suggestion-we cannot prove a point
with such material, but we can get some good ideas of
what bad housing means. The death rates make a good
measure of the healthful conditions of homes, but even
it is not accurately indicative of the amount of sickness.
These we examine under a former title.
To summarize these points: First, the intimacy of
How the Working Class Live
ioi
tenement-house life is most favorable for the spread of
contagion; second, the concealment of disease fosters
epidemics; third, the vast number of sweating dens in
the tenements makes them hot houses of disease from
which the seed is regularly distributed; fourth, the great
unwillingness of the inhabitants and others to enforce
sanitary conditions costs a tremendous annuity to the
poor in the way of sickness, etc.
Concerning rents in this country the testimony of the
Tenement House Committee of 1894 is significant: "I
found that the average monthly rental paid by families
occupying five rooms was $21.39; that the average rental
of families occupying four rooms was $15.38; that the
average rental paid for three rooms was $11.12; that the
average rental paid for two rooms was $7.86, and for one
room $5.04; that led me to a comparison between the con-
ditions of life among a similar class of people in London
and here; the high rentals had puzzled me ever since
I had been in New York, and I passed a note over to
Dr. Gould asking him if he would state to me his opinion
as to the relative rentals for equal accommodation in
London, Edinburgh and any other English towns, espe-
cially Birmingham, and I received a reply which coin-
cided with my own opinion, that the rent paid for two,
three or four rooms, as the case might be, was very
nearly double in the city of New York to what it was in
London, and that it was more than double that paid in
either Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow or Edin-
burgh.”
SOME DEATH RATES FOR CHICAGO.
The following will show the awful contrast between
the death rates in a respectable well-to-do neighborhood
and a respectable working class neighborhood:
Locality.
Death rate.
16th ward.
17.03
City of Chicago.
14.57
22nd ward..
11.65
These figures show that the death rate in the 16th
ward is 16 per cent greater than in the city of Chicago
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Socialist Campaign Book
.
taken as a whole. It also shows that the death rate in
the 16th ward is 46 per cent greater than the death rate in
the 22nd. ward.
Death Rates for Children froin 1 to 5 Years.
Locality.
Death rate.
16th ward.
21.19
22nd ward..
9.08
These figures show that the death rate for children in
the 16th ward is 121 per cent greater than in the 22nd.
The shocking conditions which make this great difference
in death rates between these two wards cannot be imag-
ined and can hardly be believed.
Death Rates for Children Under i Ycar.
Locality
Death rate.
16th ward...
139.57
22nd ward..
89.64
The death rate for children, as here shown, is 56 per
cent greater in the 16th ward than in the 22nd ward.
Private action is, of course, powerless against such evils
as these, but the local governments may do much when
in the hands of Socialists in the way of immediate meas-
ures. Otherwise nothing of much importance has been
or will be done.
Socialism will ultimately put the whole machinery of
government in the hands of the worker. Meanwhile
where it can gain control of local government it will
afford immediate relief from such conditions as these.
Last year the Socialists had control of the West Ham
Town Council, London. The Labour Annual of 1900
gives the following account of their work:
“During their tenure of office the Council established
an eight-hour day for municipal employes, doubled the
number of sanitary inspectors, erected many workmen's
dwellings (which compete very satisfactorily with the
privately owned slum property), passed a big housing
scheme which, if sanctioned by Parliament, will give
them power to erect over 3,000 houses, and provide
good municipal accommodations for from 15,000 to 20,-
000 people; erected baths, found useful work for the
How the Working Class Live
103
unemployed; provided free concerts to counteract the
public-houses, and were still able in two years to reduce
the rates by 3d. in the pound. They seriously in-
tended to ensure that every landlord who had raised
his rents should in turn hiave his assessment similarly
raised; also proposed taking over the tramways, and
providing cheap electric light for all."
CHAPTER IX.
Towards Plutocracy
The effect of such stupendous differences in the distri-
bution of wealth as exist in the United States upon the
life of the individual is apparent to the most casual ob-
server. This division of the people of the country into
economic classes and the movement which is constantly
going on to widen the gulf between them at the same
time, is slowly and surely undermining those of our pub-
lic institutions which tend to act as safeguards for the
masses. The rigidity of the class lines in this supposedly
democratic nation is manifested in a thousand ways. Cit-
ies are divided into class districts; amusements differ-
entiate themselves by classes; education is a badge of
class; the charitable institutions and their growing im-
portance shows the cleavage; the cut of a man's clothes
marks the circle in which he may move. These denon-
strations of the state of affairs are, however, of minor
significance. The very channels through which relief
may come are in the hands of the enemy. The presence
of classes threatens the life of democracy. From the
point of view of the present ruling classes popular suf-
frage must be regarded with a more and more jealous
eye; public opinion must be muzzled; public education
is a danger; equality before the law is not to be con-
sidered.
Democracy and Plutocracy cannot continue to exist
together in the State. Democracy must be given new
life or cease to be.
PUBLIC EDUCATION.
The education of the public is the prime duty of all
governments, especially it is the duty of a democracy.
In the United States workingmen and their sons are
rarely if ever found in the universities. In the first-
Towards Plutocracy
105
0
class institutions living expenses form a drawback which
few even of the middle class may overcome.
Conse-
quently no mention is made here of the "Institutions of
Higher Learning."
In those States where most wealth has been produced
in recent years and where industrial development is
most protected, there is a growing neglect of the educa-
tion of the people.
Below is a comparison of a comparative rate of increase
in population and of school enrollment:
From the U. S. Census of 1880-1890:
Popula- School
tion. Enrollment.
Per cent. Per cent.
Illinois
.24.32 10.55
Massachusetts
..25.57 17:33
Pennsylvania
22.77
6.40
New York..
. 18.00 1.38
But what does this schooling amount to? The aver-
age number of days in the school year was 139. The aver-
age attendance of each pupil was only 86 days. The
average number of years each pupil attended school was
slightly over four. Each pupil then received 86 times 4
or 344 days of schooling during his school life. This
formed his complete education.
This is what a distinguished and efficient foreigner af-
ter a thorough investigation says of what is taught: "It
is evident that the achievement of even a highly gifted
people must fall below a high standard under such a re-
gime.”
Again: "It is almost ludicrous to say that compulsory
education is generally adopted in the United States."
-Prof. Waetzoldt.
A worse state of affairs exists in the wealthy cities.
From the report of the school board of Brooklyn for
'94 it is shown that though 30 or 35 is known to be as
large as number of students as can be decently handled
in a room, yet of 377 classes 231 had between 60 and
70 pupils; 65 had between go and 100 pupils; 18 had be-
tween 100 and 110 pupils; 2 had between 130 and 140
106
Socialist Campaign Book
2.
pupils; 4 had between 140 and 150 pupils. Moreover
there were only 1,800 new sittings for 5,000 new pupils.
In Philadelphia 8,000 children receive only half-day
sessions. In Chicago where 25 new school buildings were
asked for, one was built. About 6,000 children had only
a half-day's session. Of the 16,000 reported to the tru-
ancy board, but 7,000 were returned. How many cases
of non-attendance were not discovered at all is a matter
for conjecture.
Daniel Folkmar, in speaking of the degree of mental
instruction enjoyed by the so-called "lower classes” of
all the children that enter the public schools of the two
named cities:
I. About one-third go no further than the first
grade.
About one-half go no further than the second
grade.
3. About two-thirds go no further than the third
grade.
4. About three-fourths go no further than the fourth
grade.
5. About nine-tenths go half way only through the
twelve grades.
6. About ninety-seven in every hundred drop out be-
fore reaching the high school,
7. Only three in every thousand finish the entire
course, or more exactly, the following per cents drop out
at each grade:
Grade 1, 32 per cent; 2, 51; 3, 66; 4, 78; 5, 86; 6, 92;
7, 95; 8, 97; 9, 98.6; 10, 99.3; 11, 99.7.
Ex-State Superintendent C. L. T. Smart, of Ohio,
states that only about 3 per cent of the pupils enrolled
in the public schools ever enter the high school, and
from them less than I per cent graduate; 50 per cent of
the youth enrolled in the public schools of the state do
not attend school more than four years; 75 per cent
stop attending school before entering the eighth year
or grade, and 97 per cent do not attend beyond the
eighth year.
Dr. Wm. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of
Education, says in his report of the committee of fifteen:
Towards Plutocracy
107
"The average number of pupils of the St. Louis schools in
the lowest three years of the course was about 72 per
cent of the entire number enrolled. Nearly three-fourths
of all the pupils of the public schools are in the studies
of the first three years or in primary studies. Six-sevenths
of the population of the United States on arriving at the
proper age for the secondary education never receive it.
Thirty out of thirty-one fail to receive higher education
upon arriving at the proper age. Obviously the data of
Milwaukee and Chicago are typical for the United States
in general.
Mr. C. L. T. Smart says in explanation: "A majority
of the patrons of the public schools cannot do without the
labor of their children and therefore cannot give then
time to attend school longer."
Prof. D. Folkmar states: "I answer without hesitation
that the chief factors are economic conditions. Too
niany either cannot support their children as they desire,
or cannot spare them through a longer period of school-
ing."
Prof. Waetzoldt says: "The insufficient expenditure
for education,
easily explains the policy
of many cities in
eventually limiting the
course to the three R's."
It cannot be said that immigration is responsible for
the existing state of affairs. For though the total illiter-
acy of the population of over 10 years in 1890 was 13.3
per cent, the per cent of foreign-born illiterate of over
10 years was only 13.1 per cent.
The census of 1890 shows that while the population be-
tween 5 and 18 years is 20,865,000, the average attendance
at school is only 9,747,000, or 46.7 per cent.
Where there are most opportunities for education and
most wealth there seems least inclination to insist on a
decent standard of complusory education. The reluct-
ance of the wealth holders to pay for the education and
the need for the child's labor to help support the family,
whether by working in the factory or on the farm, are re-
sponsible. The reluctance grows on the one side, the
necessity on the other. As classes become more and more
separated, the need for education in the lower classes-at
iog
Socialist Campaign Book
least in the eyes of the rich-becomes more and more use-
less, dangerous, and a needless expense. The corre-
sponding increase of child labor is discussed in a pre-
vious chapter.
PUBLIC OPINION.
A more important force than the school, more pow-
erful and more truly educating is the control of public
opinion. The ownership of the sources of information
are necessary to exert this control. A new trust seeins
to have been formed, for the sources are in the same
hands--in the hands of the capitalistic class. The three
chief sources from which public information is dissenin-
ated are, the universities, the newspapers and the govern-
ment reports.
The aim of the university should be to bring light and
report the truth. As such they are a menace to the gov-
erning classes. But there is little to be feared by the rich
from the colleges in this country. In the first place they
are beyond the reach of those most concerned in the pres-
ent conditions. In the second place they are owned by
the wealthy. The private gifts to institutions of an edu-
cational character during the past year amounted to $62,-
750,000. (App. Encl. 1899.) During the past seven
years the gifts from private sources amounted to $266,-
550,000. (App. Encl. 1899.) This gives some idea of
who has control of our universities. Rich men are in-
variably chosen on the boards that they may be compli-
mented into giving to the institution. At present the en-
dowments of the private institutions make them the most
important. The professors in the State Universities also
must depend on one or the other capitalistic party for
support, and few of them care to lose their job by express-
ing radical opinions.
The money power must not be displeased and hence
alienated.
Here are some newspaper clippings selected by Prof.
T. E. Will, in an article entitled "The Prostitution of Ed-
lication":
Did space permit, an extended list of of cases could be
given illustrative of the proposition that economic teach-
Towards Plutocracy
109
ers in America who adhere to educational ideals of this
paper are to-day proscribed. To remove all doubt,
however, on this point, I submit the following news-
paper clippings in connection with the case of President
Andrews. That the issue on this occasion was silver is
immaterial. The same results are visited upon profes-
sors and presidents whose views are "unsound” upon
other aspects of the social and industrial questions.
The utterly sordid character of these editorial expres-
sions and their absolute repudiation of the educational
ideal is obvious:
There can be no doubt that an advocate of the unlim-
ited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to i is not a valu-
able president for an eastern college, which must in the
nature of things depend upon the support of men who
believe in the maintenance of the gold standard.—New
York Critic, July 31, 1897.
In these very practical days of the closing years of the
nineteenth century, the final test of a college president is
his ability to draw funds toward the institution over which
he presides.—Maryland Democrat, July 3, 1897.
If they (the trustees) had come out man-fashion and
told him that in their judgment no institution of learning
that tolerated such a man as he at its head could or ought
to expect to receive endowments from anybody, they
would have strengthened their university and have greatly
improved their own personal relation with the question
at issue.—New York Sun, quoted in Chattanooga Times,
Aug. 3, 1897
A college president has no right to promulgate views
of such a character as to react against the interests of the
college of which is in charge.—Boston Journal, quoted
in Public Opinion for Aug. 5, 1897.
The trustees
did ask him to modify his activ-
ity in behalf of free silver. . . . . They had a right to ask
that because they represented the persons whose money
had made the university a possible success.-St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, July 30, 1897
It was a simple business proposition.
The
trustees
can scarcely be blamed for protecting
its financial interests.-Kansas City Star, July 28, 1897.
IIO
Socialist Campaign Book
The trustees of the college had an indisputable right
to object to his public advocacy of those views if in their
judgment such a course was detrimental to the interests
of the institution. ... It was a business matter re-
garding which they had disagreed.—Troy (New York)
Times, Aug. 30, 1897.
He was only a servant; and a servant must do as his
employers wish or quit their service.—Globe-Democrat,
July 30, 1897
But neither he nor the juvenile portion of the faculty
of Brown university can deny the right of any congre-
gation to select the kind of doctrine that it would like its
youth to be taught.—New York Mail and Express, Aug.
3, 1897.
The trustees have the unquestionable right to suppress
teaching which they believe to be false, as well as injur-
ious to the college. -Penn Yan (New York) Express,
July 28, 1897.
The Philadelphia Commonwealth for July 31, 1897, a
gold paper, but comparatively fair, said:
The trustees had, indeed, a right to expect him to shape
his teachings in economics to meet their views, but it was
imprudent for them to use their right.
It is simply a question of whether Dr. An-
drews, the employe, is satisfactory to Brown corporation,
the employer.—New York Press, Aug. 5, 1897.
We go further and say that if he (the president) had not
offered his resignation it would have been their duty
to dismiss him.-Poughkeepsie Eagle, July 29, 1897.
The trustees of a college when they find a president or
a professor teaching pernicious doctrines or those which
appear to the trustees to be pernicious ought to discharge
him and put in his place an orthodox teacher. ... If
the issue should be raised between business men who sup-
port colleges and professors who live upon them the lat-
ter will find their occupation gone.-Philadelphia Led-
ger, Aug. 5, 1897.
But, it may be urged, the above are but the irrespon-
sible utterances of nameless newspaper scribblers 1111-
familiar with educational ideals. Do not college trustees
Towards Plutocracy
III
repudiate such sentiments and insist upon freedom of
teaching in their institutions ?
Let us take some testimony:
Mr. James Henry Raymond, A. M., LL. B., one of the
trustees of Northwestern university at Evanston, Illinois,
commenting at length over his signature, in a Chicago
paper, on the case of President Andrews, declared that
the board of trustees constitutes the absolute and final au-
thority in colleges and universities. Continuing, he said:
In social science and political science they (the faculty
of the college or university), as a rule, are only a little
less qualified to be the final arbiters as to what should be
taught than they are concerning financial problems, and,
I repeat, in all things they should promptly and grace-
fully submit to the final determination of the trustees
when the latter find it necessary to act. There would be
as much propriety in the trustees permitting a president
or a professor to remain in the ranks of an institution
having the special support of a Christian denomination,
to embrace every available public opportunity to preach
atheism or agnosticism as there would be in the trustees
of any university of rank yėt organized in this country
permitting the preaching of the silver doctrine of Doctor
Andrews.
A professor is not a mere parrot to repeat and fairly
explain to his students the diametrically opposite prem-
ises, arguments and conclusions of the writers and teach-
ers of the ages upon any given subject. He must of
necessity be an advocate, but his advocacy must be in har-
mony with the conclusions of the powers that be,with the
animus and the main purposes of the institution, and the
teachings of his colaborers.
Mr. George H. Shibley in the role of a newspaper re-
porter sited Mr. Raymond and interviewed him con-
cerning the above published expression of his views.
Mr. Raymond said:
During the week that has elapsed since its publica-
tion I have not received any criticism from university
circles, but I have received from most unexpected sources
the most unqualified commendation. . . ... The com-
mendations that I refer to come not only from officers of
II2
Socialist Campaign Book
our university but also from those connected with other
institutions who have given this matter, long and careful
study.
Armed with a copy of Mr. Raymond's statement Mr.
Shibley next visited members of the governing boards
of the following institutions: Northwestern, Cornell,
Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Johns Hopkins and
the American. To these trustees he submitted Mr. Ray-
mond's statement and questioned them concerning their
opinion of it. He found that, alnost to a man, they sup-
ported Mr. Raymond's view.
Examination of these clippings leads to another recog-
nition. There is something odd about the press.
The large city newspaper is becoming more and more
powerful and is swiftly pushing its small competitors out
of the field,
There is a growing tendency for even these enormous
forces to unite. Mr. Hearst has brought the control of
three of the largest papers of the country into his single
hands. The press associations are another factor work-
ing towards unification.
These papers are not always paying concerns. Often
they are only by-products of large corporations in exactly
the same sense as bristles are a by-product of the Chicago
Stock Yards. They are owned merely to help make
power and money for the corporation. Mr. Yerkes
ownership of the Chicago Inter-Ocean is a fair example.
But whether these stupendous powers upon which the
people depend for their news and which ingeniously form
their opinion to-morrow (as did Cecil Rhodes in South
Africa, when, failing in his plan, the Jamieson Raid, he
bought and became the principal stockholder in all the
important papers in the colony and after a few years ex-
perienced no trouble in gaining his end), are making
money or losing money, they must from their very size
be controlled by the capitalist class, and their editors
must, from the very nature of their employment, bend to
the will of the stockholders.
All that this means, it is not easy to state. Through
this power nations may be hurled into unjust war; whites
stirred with race hatred against blacks-though their i11-
Towards Plutocracy
113
terests be identical; strikers may be maligned and made
to lose public sympathy; crimes may be hidden and
glossed over, and other crimes may be manufactured
just as real in their result as if true.
GOVERNMENT STATISTICS. *
As essential to the maintenance of power to enslave
the masses, plutocracy has successfully sought control not
only of the press and our institutions of learning, but also
of the sources of information regarding social and eco-
nomic conditions. Through its domination in politics the
capitalist class controls the appointment of officials of
our statistical bureaus and decides the character of the
information or rather mis-information given to the pub-
lic through numerous reports. Their tenure of office
depending on the influence and good will of this all-
powerful class, officials of statistical bureaus of necessity
became the apologists and defenders of the injustice of
the existing social system, ready to statistically and “con-
clusively” demonstrate its benificience. That it is very
easy to puzzle with figures is adınitted by our most
eminent statistical authority, Col. Carroll D. Wright, at
present in charge of the National figure factory known
as the Department of Labor and lately in charge of the
statistics of the Eleventh Census. While admitting the
ease with which statistics may be juggled, this official,
at the same time, maintains that “as a matter of fact fig-
ures will never lie, but liars will figure.”+
While it might be shown that even honestly compiled
statistics may be grossly misleading because of failure
to comprehend their true import, there can be no ques-
tion that Col. Wright, who is usually wrong, is right as
to the ease with which statistics may be juggled, for of
this his official reports and contributions to popular lit-
erature furnish numerous illustrations.
That both female and child labor is increasing and that
as a consequence the tendency of wages is downward, is
plain to every open-eyed observer, and was remarked by
*See articles by H. L. Bliss: Jourual of Sociology, June 1897,
July 1900, and Journal of Political Economy, Dec. 1899.
Gunton's Magazine, March, 1896.
114
Socialist Campaign Book
Col. Wright himself, before it became necessary for the
maintenance of his official position, that he should statis-
tically demonstrate the contrary. Before his elevation to
his present lucrative office, in his Sixth Annual Report, as
Chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Col. Wright remarked: “There seems within recent times
to have occurred a change in the relation of wages to sup-
port, so that more and more the labor of the whole family
becomes necessary to the support of the family. If we
are right in our surmises that this is becoming more fixed
and recognized from decade to decade it certainly bodes
no good to our future. The civilization of the nineteenth
century, which seems to especially emphasize the home
as its most prominent and valuable institution, should
not allow it to become necessary that any but the husband
and father should labor for its support and security.” In
this report Col. Wright shows at considerable length the
manner in which the introduction of machinery enables
the child to take the place of the parent and through com-
petition to reduce his earnings. Now, though there has
been rather an increase than a decrease of this tendency,
we find this official juggler of statistics demonstrating
to the satisfaction of the capitalist class that child-
labor is rapidly decreasing and wages no less rapidly in-
creasing. Col. Wright's investigation regarding the
employment of women and children, made in pursu-
ance of a joint resolution of the LIII Congress, is a
conspicuous illustration of this eminent official's dispo-
sition to discover and demonstrate anything but the
truth.
Observation indicates that establishments in which fe-
males and children form the larger proportion of em-
ployees, particularly such establishments as are engaged
in trade, have increased more rapidly in numbers as well
as in size than their competitors, and are to a large ex-
tent monopolizing the retail trade of our cities. Besides
numerous smaller establishments of similar character, we
have at present in Chicago a half dozen department stores,
nearly or quite equal in size with "The Fair," which but
a few years ago was the only establishment of this type in
this city. A comparison of the proportion of females and
Towards Plutocracy
I 15
children employed in this establishment at the present pe-
riod, and ten years previously, manifestly would not in-
dicate the increased employment of females and children
in department stores. Yet this is precisely the method
followed by our eminent statistical humbug, who obtained
information as to the number of female and child em-
ployees in 931 establishments in different parts of the
country and in various industries at two periods ten years
apart, and in his report presented the results as indicat-
ing the increase in female and child-labor. Notwith-
standing the adoption of a method that must necessarily
utterly fail to discover the full increase, the result of this
investigation showed a decided increase of female and
child labor in the establishments investigated. As a show-
ing of even a slight increase of this character would never
suit the Colonel's capitalistic friends, our eminent expert,
to prove the contrary, lugs into his report a comparison
of juggled, incomparable census statistics. The incom-
parability of the statistics quoted is due to a change in
method that could have had no other possible purpose
than the concealment of the truth. While at previous
censuses the classification of child workers was from 10
to 15 years inclusive, at the census of 1890 the classifica-
tion was changed so as to include only those reported as
between the ages of 10 and 14. While there was thus an
apparent change in the classification of but one year,
there was another important change which had the effect
of making a practical change of one-half year additional.
This resulted from a change in the question as to age
asked by census enumerators—the question at the census
of 1880 calling for anwer as to "age last birthday” and
that at the census of 1890 for "age nearest birthday.”
Of this important change in the age question and the con-
sequent change in the classification of child workers, the
census makes no mention, and it can only be ascertained
by reference to the original schedules used by census
enumerators. This change, evidently made with a pur-
pose to mislead, escaped notice until attention was called
to it by H. L. Bliss in the American Journal of Sociology.
Of this change Col. Wright makes no mention, but in-
stead, takes advantage of it to "conclusively” demonstrate
116
Socialist Campaign Book
or
a great decrease in child labor, though the figures may be
fairly taken as indicating a large increase.
How, when occupying official positions, “liars will
figure," is farther illustrated by the wage statistics of the
Aldrich Report, quoted by Col. Wright as “conclusively”
demonstrating a great increase in wages. The increase in
wages of recent years indicated by the summary of this
report, results from a fallacious method of analysis
adopted for the evident purpose of concealing an actual
decrease. By the method of this report equal
weight is given to the increase of wages of a
class embracing a single foreman or overseer with that
given to the increase decrease of a - class
embracing a large number of operatives. If dur-
ing a period of years the wages of the foreman of an
establishment have increased 100 per cent and those
of the remainder of the employees but 10 per cent there
is not an increase for the establishment of 55 per cent-
that is, 100 per cent and 10 per cent added together and
divided by two. Absurd as this may seem, this is pre-
cisely the method of the Aldrich Report, except that
there are several instead of but two classes. In one
brewing establishment, which, though an extreme case,
may serve for illustration, the wages of the brewer in-
creased from $3.19 per day in 1855 to $23.96 per day in
1891, or 650 per cent. This brewer being put in a class
by himself, the increase of his wages is given equal weight
with the increase of each of four other classes, which in
1891 embraced 70 operatives. In consequence of this de-
ceptive method of computation there is an apparent in-
crease in the average wages of the establishment of 165.9
per cent, whereas, if we omit from the calculation the
class comprising but the one brewer, the average for the
remaining classes shows an increase for the period of but
90 per cent. Thus, the increase in the wages of but one
-an increase which does not show that he was re-
ceiving better pay for the same work but only better pay
for a position of increased responsibility, requiring
greater skill and efficiency—is made to nearly double the
apparent increase in the average wages of the whole
man
Towards Plutocracy
117
brewing industry, for which this establishment stands as
the sole representative in the Aldrich Report.
In the cotton goods industry the overseers of the weav-
ers, of the spinners, of the cards, of the dyeing department
and of the cloth room, is each put in a class by himself,
and his increase of wages given equal weight with that of
large numbers of operatives in each department. The
average for the different industries thus obtained is
equalled or averaged and taken as representing the
average wages of operatives in all the industries of the
United States.
It is from such statistics as these that our most eminent
statistical authority "conclusively' demonstrates an in-
crease instead of a decrease of wages since 1873. Col.
Wright's demonstrations are all labeled “conclusive” and
are accepted as such by many of our people, too indolent
and indifferent or too busily engaged in the struggle for
existence to investigate and discover the truth of Col.
Wright's assertion that "liars will figure."
UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.
The essential test of growth towards or away from the
ideal of democracy is found in the tendency of the laws
and their administration toward or away from universal
suffrage. Any movement which has for its end the dis-
enfranchisement of a single voter must be looked upon
with suspicion. Any state of public opinion which does
not cry out at such an attempt and put an end to it, marks
the decline of democratic sentiment. There is no arti-
ficial line which can mark off him who may vote froin him
who may not. Education is not the test, for the state is
to blame if any of its citizens, except defectives, lack
education. Property cannot be the test, for the property-
less, as the weakest, are most in need of the protection
of the ballot. Sex or race may serve as distinguishing
marks, but on what principle?
In the United States there are hundreds of thousands
of disfranchised men. Those of the democratic South-
ern States which have not as yet abolished their negro
vote have avowed their intention of so doing. The reason
that these men have their ballots stolen from them is not
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Socialist Campaign Book
alone on account of race prejudice. It is because they
belong to the so-called “lower orders.” The same argu-
ment that in England prevents 20 per cent of the popula-
tion from voting is used against the negro, to wit: they
are declared irresponsible because they are without prop-
erty. Indeed, these election laws deprive the whites of
many votes. Senator Pritchard estimates that 20,000
whites were unable to pay their poll taxes and hence
will lose their votes under the North Carolina election
law. There was no danger of negro supremacy in North
Carolina, for the white population was 1,050,000 strong;
the colored 562,000.
In speaking of the North Carolina outrage Mr. Bryan
requested his auditors to forget the negro of North Caro-
lina and think of the native of the Sulu Islands. It is true
that actual slavery exists in our dominions in the colonies,
as well as this practical slavery at home. It is true also
that the same capitalistic system which is responsible for
the one state of affairs is responsible for the other.
Another conspicuous instance of the movement away
from democracy may be observed in the election laws of
certain states. The democratic party in Kentucky framed
the well-known Goebel law, which denied the right of the
majority to rule. In the spirit of reform the democrats
introduced a substitute measure. The substitute was dis-
covered by the republicans to be more unjust than the
original, nor were they made content when they were
told that the new measure was a counterpart of the one
adopted by their own party (republican) in Ohio.
The Nesbit law in Missouri places the control of elec-
tions absolutely in the hands of the governor, and hence,
in the hands of the democrats.
This is bound to continue to spread as long as property
interests remain supreme, for it is not in the interest of
property that the majority should have a voice in the
management of affairs.
Minnesota has a law providing for a $50 fee for eachi
candidate for office or presidential elector. This meant
that $450 (9 electors) must be paid before a party could
vote for president. This disfranchised the Socialists in
the election of 1900. New York requires that a party
Towards Plutocracy
119
going on by petition must secure 50 signatures in eacli
county of the State for the State ticket.
EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW.
Property interests have, from all time, had control of
the law. The laws were and are made by them. They
administer them. In early days land was the only import-
ant possession. Then, every conceivable advantage was
given to the landlord. The law of primogeniture kept
the estate together. The right to distrain for rent placed
the tenant in his master's power. The exemption of the
landlord's land from levy for debt gave the land owner
protection for his property.
Laws were made to the contrary, but courts and law-
yers had slight difficulty in finding technicalities by which
they could be avoided. These circumlocutions, like the
inethods employed to-day, required "the legal mind” for
their comprehension, and were safely beyond the ken of
those most concerned-the people.
Later, the ruling power has come into the hands of
those owning the means of production and exchange-
the holders of the “vested rights.”
The chance of the ordinary citizen and the general
public in a contest against these forces is a matter of com-
mon conversation. These tendencies to exalt the prop-
erty interests above all else are inherent in the law.
"The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
is a sounding phrase, but with it goes in every constitu-
tion another phrase which generally takes this form:
"right to security of property." This is the balance:
"life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" on the one
side, "security of property' on the other. The writers of
the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution
left out the phrase about property, but it has been sup-
plied by decisions of the Supreme Court.
In some of the early state constitutions where the
prop-
erty interests were as yet undeveloped the freedom of the
citizens alone was important, but new constitutions have
remedied the omission.
Our whole law is very logically permeated with a con-
scious endeavor to maintain this "security of property,”
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Socialist Campaign Book
110 matter what the cost. The law is made up of prece-
dents. The best of lawyers and every system of direct
and indirect corruption that can be devised by cunning
minds are at work trying to build up a set of precedents
which shall become law on the one side; the working
man, through a lawyer whose interest he cannot afford
to buy, and under a judge who belongs to another class,
fights on the other. With these facts in mind the tend-
ency of the law is easy to discover.
Fundamental theories make our law unjust.
1. FREEDOM OF CONTRACT.
“The right to acquire and possess property necessarily
includes the right to contract. Of all the rights of person
it is the most essential to human happiness.”—U. S. Su.
Ct.
Under this theory every man is presumed to be free to
contract as he pleases, and every infringement of this
right to starve or obey orders is jealously guarded by the
courts.
The following memoranda are collected from U. S.
Labor Bulletins for the past two years:
In Missouri an act which made it unlawful for an em-
ployer to prohibit an employee from joining any labor
or trades union, or to require an employee to withdraw
therefrom, was declared illegal as infringing on freedom
of contract.
In Pennsylvania an act making the owner of mines
liable to injury to other employes occasioned by the neg-
ligence of a mine foreman, was declared unconstitutional
and void for the same reason.
In many states acts prohibiting the truck system were
declared unconstitutional, as violating the right to con-
tract. In others eight-hour laws were declared beyond
the pale of the law, and so the list may be made to
continue.
Everywhere it has been held that an employee assumes
all risk incident to his employment, especially if his in-
jury should be due to the carelessness of a fellow-sery-
ant. Acts which have declared that the employee should
not be held to have assumed such risks, have either been
Towards Plutocracy
I21
declared unconstitutional or their significance has been
explained away under the principle that the employee
was free to contract.
Tardy recognition of the fact that the immense major-
ity of the people are in no sense free to act in any man-
ner whatsoever as they will, has come from the Supreme
Court.
"The former (employers) naturally desire to obtain as
much labor as possible from their employees, while the
latter are often induced by the fear of discharge to con-
form to regulations which their judgment, fairly exer-
cised, would denounce as detrimental to their health or
strength. . . . . In other words, the proprietors lay down
the rules and the laborers are practically constrained to
obey them."
This decision recognizes that men are not actually free
to contract. In this case the courts must determine just
how far they are free—and we know who stands at the
ear of the court. Each decision which serves to define
the existing classes will serve as a precedent to make the
dividing line rigid. When the possession of property is
held to be “the most essential element of human happi-
ness," these decisions can have but one tendency.
2. NO CLASSES BEFORE THE LAW.
“Theoretically there are no classes in the eyes of the
law."-U. S. Sp. Ct.
This means that protection may not be extended to any
set of persons who stand in a special need thereof.
In the Labor Bulletins of '98-'99 the following deci-
sions were based on this supposition:
A Sunday closing law was declared unconstitutional in
the state of Illinois, as was also an act compelling the
weighing of coal at the mines.
In Michigan an act permitting the serving of a special
process in the case of mechanics' lien was declared void.
A law protecting the trade marks of trades unions was
declared unconstitutional in New Jersey, also an act com-
pelling the marking of convict made goods
An act to provide for the payment of coal miners for
I 22
Socialist Campaign Book
all the coal mined by them was declared to be class leg-
islation.
In Pennsylvania, as the only possible method to pre-
vent importation of labor from other countries, an act
passed placing a tax on foreign born unnaturalized
laborers, was declared void.
In Colorado an act demanding that attorney fees be
allowed the plaintiffs upon foreclosure of mechanics' lien,
was rendered nugatory. And so the list runs.
The courts in some instances have passed favorably on
legislation of a class character, and in fact recognized the
existence of classes. This means that every new deci-
sion and every new law will serve as a precedent to clearly
distinguish and make iron-bound the class lines as they
exist to-day.
One particular set of decisions, which in actual fact
recognizes the existence of classes, is found in the dam-
age cases.
Here we find that the worth of life and limb is appor-
tioned to earning capacity. (50 So. W. 477.]
A verdict for $15,000 for loss of a foot resulting in total
disability, etc., is not excessive, plaintiff being a man of
37, in excellent health and earning from $1,800 to 2,400
a year. [79 N. W.783.)
In an action for wrongful death of plaintiff's son where
evidence disclosed that plaintiff was 54 years of age, etc.,
and that deceased was unmarried and lived with plaintiff
an paid therefore $5 per week, a verdict for more than
$1,500 is excessive. (Wood vs. L. & N. Ry. Co. (Tenn.).]
A verdict for $8,000 for loss by railway brakeman of
one foot and four toes on the other foot, is excessive.
If the plaintiff had lost his life I think it ap-
parent from his earning capacity and amount required
by him to live, that in the common experience of a switch-
men he would not have been able to earn sufficient money
after paying his living expenses to provide for himself a
policy of insurance for $8,000, upon which he would be
able to pay the premium. He would not be able
fairly and reasonably to insure his life from his earnings
for the sum of $8,000, nor would he be able to provide
the necessary amount of money to insure himself against
Towards Plutocracy
123
loss of limb for that amount of money.” Damages de-
clared excessive.
From the general character of these very typical de-
cisions it will be observed that the existence of classes is
recognized, and the tendency is to fix a value upon life
and limb according to the varying class of the injured
party. This is not surprising under the present system, as
the difference in opportunity which exists between classes
is much greater than the courts could possibly reckon.
If the existence of classes is completely recognized by
the court it is easily to be seen from perusal of the latter
part of this section what is to be expected.
The choice open to the courts is certainly a perplexing
one. They must either refuse to recognize the actual
condition of things by making use of legal fictions or they
must make the difference permanent and absolute.
What the courts actually do is determined by the best
method to protect property. By one theory protective
legislation is undone, by the other the value of life and
limb is made to correspond to economic class.
PROTECTION OF VESTED INTERESTS.
The protection of vested interests is declared by all the
courts to be one of the primary functions of the law.
The use of the injunction will best explain for what
purpose the bulk of the machinery of the law has its being
and for whom it grinds.
The injunction is a necessary arm of the law and one
which is likely to reach in any direction. Judge Brewer
says: "I believe most thoroughly that the powers of a
Court of Equity are as vast and its processes and proced-
ure as elastic as all the changing emergencies of in-
creasingly complex business relations and the protection
of rights demand."
.. Contests over wages and terms of service will
always exist until human nature is revolutionized or the
government is sufficiently paternalized to take charge
of the subject of wages generally."
Judge Ross says: “But the proud boast of equity is:
Ubi jus ibi remedium (where the law is there is a remedy).
It is a maxim which forms the root of all equitable deci.
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sions. . . . . I shall award an injunction requiring the
defendant to perform all of their regular and accustomed
duties so long as they remain in the employment of the
complainant company, which injunction, it may be well
to state, will be strictly and rigidly enforced.”
The celebrated Kansas City injunction forbade the
newsboys from selling buttons with the words "I will
walk until the company settles," and the boys were ar-
rested and fined for disobeying it.
Another notorious injunction was the one lately issued
by Judge Freedman against the cigarmakers of New York
city. In the language of Judge Freedman's decree the
strikers are restrained from "interfering with, annoying,
accosting, threatening, waylaying and following the
plaintiffs and their employees and from loitering around,
picketing, patroling and standing in and about the street
and sidewalk in front of the premises, and the streets and
avenues adjacent thereto, and from loitering at, or near,
picketing, patroling, waylaying the plaintiffs and their
employees and persons seeking employment of the plain-
tiffs, on the streets and sidewalks in front of, adjacent
thereto, and at the homes of the plaintiffs, their employees
and workers, and from doing any act or thing, the com-
mission of which has the tendency or effect of molesting
the plaintiffs and their employees in the quiet and peace-
ful enjoyment of their business and their coming or going
therefrom.
.
"Further, pending a determination of this action the
defendants were restrained from 'paying any persons any
sum of money for picketing, patroling and loitering about
the plaintiff's premises, and from any interference with,
annoyance, threats, and insults to the plaintiffs and their
employees and workers and persons seeking work in
plaintiff's factory, wliether in the streets or on the side-
walks adjacent to the said factory or in any other place,
and from paying or offering or promising to pay to any
former employe of the plaintiffs any sum of money for
the purpose ofinducing such person or persons to refuse
to enter plaintiffs' employment and from paying or prom-
ising to pay to any former employee of the plaintiffs any
sum of money for the purpose of continuing organized,
i
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concerted and combined action on the part of said former
employees of plaintiffs, with the object and purpose of
interfering with and preventing the plaintiffs from carry-
ing on their business."
This is the way in which the machinery of "equity” ad-
justs itself “to the changing emergencies of increasingly
complex business relations."
In reviewing the decisions in regard to boycotting the
United States Court says: "They have very generally
condemned those combinations usually termed boy-
cotts."
In the Massachusetts court an injunction was issued
which forbade “the defendants to interfere with the plain-
tiff's business by any scheme organized for the
purpose of preventing any person or persons who are
now or may hereafter be .. desirous of entering the
(plaintiff's employment) from entering it." The dissent-
ing judge argued that persuasion, advice and social pres-
sure, when used for a good purpose, were justifiable, but
he admits that the decisions are against him.
These are the opinions of courts of the very highest
standing, and give some idea of the attitude of the law
towards any movement of the workingman to protect
himself by strikes.
In New York one newspaper endeavored to obtain an
injunction against another newspaper for endeavoring to
induce its subscribers and advertisers to break their con-
tract. The injunction was not granted. (47 N. Y. 264.)
Yet in the same state Judge Bookstaver enjoined the
printers from making known the relations of the New
York Sun to its labor.
"The existence of the relation of trade competitor jus-
tifies acts that are the natural incident or outgrowth of
such relation whether or not done with a direct intent to
injure one's rivals."--Trade & Labor Organization,
Cooke.
This is the generally acknowledged law of trade, but
it only applies to capitalized trade. The laborer with only
his labor to sell is not able to enter this legalized compe-
tition.
The injunction takes advantage then of every oppor-
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tunity to protect property and steps in either to prevent
boycotting entirely, or to rob it of all of its force when-
ever the boycott is directed against holders of "vested
rights.”
In what way does equity "adjust itself” to protect the
rights of the worker as against the boycott of the em-
ployer? It is a well-known fact that a system of blacklist-
ing is very widespread throughout the industries of this
country. Mr. William J. Strong says: “This is slavery,
pure and simple, yet it is without exaggeration the condi-
tion of most railway employees in this country to-day. The
blacklisting system is also being adopted in nearly all
other branches of corporate employment, such as the
large packing houses, street railroads, clothing manufac-
tories and coal mines. It is one of the growing evils of
the present era of combinations and trusts, menacing the
liberty of a large class of our citizens. A recent illustra-
tion shows this. In 1897 the Chicago City Railway
Company, as I have mentioned, forbade their employees
to join a union, and discharged such as did join. The
men, having freshly in mind the terrible suffering and
privations of the American Railway Union men, who
struck out of sympathy for the oppressed employees of
the Pullman Company, also knowing that winter was
coming on, yielded to the tyranny of the company rather
than bring misery and distress on their wives and chil-
dren. The railroads use the black list not only to punish
those who have been discharged, but to coerce and intim-
idate those still in their employ."
Although for the protection of property, the injunction
is used; the effectiveness of organization destroyed; trial
byjury denied; double penalty inflicted both for contempt
of court and for the act; yet there is no case where the
"protection of rights” has demanded an injunction to pro-
tect the employee. The question of the legality of the
black list is short-lived. The only ground on which the
courts attack this "right of the employer, is that there is
a conspiracy between firms. As concentration goes on
and industries come more and more into the hands of
single firms and corporations the only ground of legal at-
tack is lost. It is recognized by all of our laws that the
Towards Plutocracy
127
individual (the corporation is an individual before the
law) may hire whom he pleases.
There are diseases in the law which are more easy to
see than those mentioned above.
If a working man is charged with any offense he is con-
fronted with the problem of bail. The amount of bail is
left to the judge's discretion, but the amount is never
made so small that a working man or his comrades could
raise it. A propertyless man is without recognition. In
the large cities it will take about one month for a criminal
case to get before the court, and years for cases of other
description. If one has money or rich friends, or has
been employed to do the dirty work for some "vested in-
terest" bail is easily forthcoming, and if the crime is one
which would lead to the exposition of certain existing
states of fact, bail may be jumped.
The jury bribing cases in Illinois are notorious. Cer-
tain men were indicted for bribing jurors in damage
suits in which the Illinois Central Railway was the de-
fendant. The men accused were not men of means, yet
without exception they found it worth their while to
jump the $5,000 bail required of them.
The working man has no money to purchase an attor-
ney. On his petition the courts will assign him one of
the inexperienced lawyers who hang around the court
Time is not allowed to prepare the defense which
is to stand against the efforts of the whole state.
The sentence, very likely, contains a choice between
fine and imprisonment. Ten dollars or ten days. You
then choose according to your capital. One man makes
$10 a day when working, or very often when idling,
another man earns $1 per day.
earns $1 per day. The first man has a
choice; he may give up the proceeds of one day's work
or stay ten days in prison. The second man has no
choice for he has no money. He must give up ten days
instead of one.
There is a chance for an appeal. If a man can buy a
good attorney, exception after exception to the judgment
may be discovered. If the man can afford to pay the at-
torney he may appeal and have another chance. This
chance is in direct proportion to his capital, or in other
room.
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Socialist Campaign Book
words, to the brand of attorney he can purchase. The
trial of those without the prominence and friends which
even a small amount of property brings, passes unnoticed.
No newspapers find it their mission to bring it into no-
toriety. The evidence has no criticism of public opinion
to pass upon it.
In suits for damages which are mostly brought by
those without means (for it is because they are without
the protection which money brings that they are sub-
jected to dangers), it is very important indeed to have a
good lawyer. The choice open to the workingman is
to offer the lawyer what is known as a contingent fee,
to have him take up the case. Namely, he must offer a
very large proportion of what may be recovered. A
recent decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois has
denied even this opportunity.
If he wins the case is appealed. The table below, from
Mr. Gilbert's “The Courts and the Railways,” show his
chance of recovery upon appeal. These cases represent.
decisions in which the four principal railways in Illinois
were concerned during a term of a couple of years:
Against the Railway For Railway in Per
in lower Court. Supreme Court Cent.
63
53
84
27
24
88
The second set of figures represent cases in which
death ensued, so there could be 110 question that there
was an injury.
The table below, gathered from the same source, tells
the other side of the story:
For the Railway Against the Railway Per
in lower Court. in Supreme Court.
Cent.
53
But the true state of affairs is worse than this, for of
the cases finally won by the plaintiff there was often more
than one trial and corresponding delay and expense.
Another fact should be noted. Year by year the weaker
side becomes weaker, the stronger side becomes stronger.
Each decision and set of instructions gained by those
21
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Towards Plutocracy
129
with the power acts as a precedent, in the light of which
the following decisions are made. Thus the burden of
the failures of others is placed upon the shoulders of the
already weaker side.
Such is the law at its best. But the law is by no means
always its best. The administration of the law is entirely
in the hands of men who have found gain under a capi-
talistic regime. Their whole lives are spent among the
propertied class. Their whole training as lawyers has
been to exalt and protect vested interests. The majority
of the judges have been in the possession of corporations
for years as attorneys prior to their judgship, and must in
many cases return to the same employment. Indeed, it
is impossible to gain sufficient prominence in the law to
be spoken for as judge without some connection with
this or that body of wealth. A list of the leaders of the
capitalist parties, of the legislators, of the recent presi-
dents and of the Supreme Court judges compared with a
list of their clients, may throw light on the conditions
of the equality which exists before the law.
CHAPTER X.
The Platforms of the Capitalist Parties*
It is a commonly understood fact that the platforms
of the two capitalist parties are not to be taken
seriously. They do not express the heartfelt wishes of
the party managers, nor are they intended to outline the
future policy of the party. But they will in some meas-
ure give an indication of their position on the burning
questions of the day. The party managers are very
sensitive to every expression of these currents of feeling
that stir the people, and will crystallize them into catch-
words, by which this sympathy may be attracted to their
party. The platform, then, is principally a vote-catcher,
and must not be remembered in after years if the party
attains the position of power from which it can direct
the policy of the nation.
In platform-making the party in opposition has the
advantage. It has no past record to trammel it. The
faults of the party in power are open to attack, and all
that the opposition party has to do is to make liberal
promises. Whether these promises can ever be re-
deemed is of no consequence; they look inviting in the
platform.
MUTUAL COMPLIMENTS.
Let us look at the platform of the Republican and
Democratic parties to see what they promise to do dur-
ing the next four years. The Republican platform com-
pliments the Democratic party in the following lan-
guage: "Under Democratic administration business
was dead, industry paralyzed, and the national credit
disastrously impaired; capital was hidden away, labor
distressed and unemployed; the menace to prosperity
*See Job Harriman in the International Socialist Review for Sep-
tember, 1900.
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
131
has always resided in Democratic principles and in the
general incapacity of the Democratic party to conduct
public affairs; the Democratic party has never earned
public confidence.” Meanwhile the Democratic plat-
form compliments the Republican party as follows:
"The Puerto Rico law, enacted by a Republican Con-
gress is a flagrant breach of the national good faith;
the Republican carpetbag officials plunder the revenues
(of Cuba) and exploit the colonial theorty, to the dis-
grace of the American people; the declaration that the
Republican party steadfastly adheres to the policy an-
nounced in the Monroe doctrine is manifestly insincere
and deceptive; the Republican party supports the trusts
in return for campaign subscriptions and political sup-
port."
DEAD ISSUES.
The Democratic party has openly confessed that the
issue of 16 to I, upon which only four short years ago
the institutions of this country were eternally to stand
or fall, is now of minor importance, and the question
of imperialism has taken its place. Thus the burial
ceremonies were said; while the Republican party in-
sists that their legislation on money and tariff has been
followed by "prosperity more general and more abun-
dant than we have ever known.” And this claim is made
in the face of the facts that a high "tariff” and a "gold
standard” prevailed under Cleveland at the time when
the Republicans insist that “business was dead, industry
paralyzed, credit impaired, money hid away, labor dis-
tressed," and also in the face of the facts that they made
no material change in the tariff and the gold-standard
laws, and the slight alteration in the currency law was
not made until the last session of Congress, after the
"wave of prosperity” had passed. Priding themselves
upon the "wisdom of the gold-standard legislation of
the Fifty-sixth Congress” passed after the boom was
over, they proceed to bury the tariff, with the following
inscription upon the tombstone: "We renew our faith
in the policy of protection to American labor," "whose
constantly increasing knowledge and skill have enabled
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Socialist Campaign Book
them to finally enter the markets of the world." Thus
they paid tribute to the dead issue, for of what value is a
tariff if we are able to "enter the markets of the world?"
IMPERIALISM.
But since that is a fact, could protection have caused
the boom of which they boast? Surely this will need no
argument. These issues buried, they take their respec-
tive positions upon the new issues of imperialism, of the
trust and of expansion, with a bait on the side of labor.
The Republican party, in its efforts to justify imperial-
ism, declares that the "war was for liberty and human
rights,” and that “ten millions of the human race were
given a new birth of freedom and the American people a
new and noble responsibility.” If these men are free, are
we responsible for them? Is it really freedom or slavery
into which they have been born? The Republican party
says the "largest measure of self-government consistent
with their welfare and our duties shall be given them."
What right have we to determine upon the measure of
self-government consistent with their welfare? Was
this not precisely what England said of us when we
were weak? Is this not always the excuse of the power-
ful when they are unscrupulously forcing tribute from
the weak? Thus our institution and Declaration of
Independence are trampled under foot, and taxation
without representation becomes the policy of the Re-
publican party.
The Democratic party, being ever watchful for polit-
ical advantage, perceives this flaw and promptly de-
clares "that any government not based upon the con-
sent of the governed is a tyranny .. and is a sub-
stitution of the methods of imperialism for those of a
republic,” “and that all governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed." Indeed!
and did the Democratic party disfranchise the colored
people of North Carolina because "all governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the gov-
erned?"
The Democrats assert that "no nation can long en-
dure half republic and half empire." Can any state
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
133
long so endure? Look again at North Carolina. Again
they warn us that "imperialism abroad will lead quickly
and inevitably to despotism at home.” Has not des-
potism already followed imperialism in North Carolina?
Were the Democrats in power, would they be more just
to the colored Porto Rican than they are to the colored
Carolinian? Is not Democratic imperialism and tyranny
as hateful in North Carolina as Republican tyranny and
imperialism is in Porto Rico and the Philippines?
The Republicans are doing in Porto Rico and the
Philippines precisely what the Democrats are doing in
North Carolina, and there is no reason to suppose that
either would change their conduct if they were to ex-
change their places. Give them power, and they will
both be imperialists.
The Democrats assert they "favor trade expansion by
every peaceful and legitimate means." We have seen in
the analysis of the growth of our industrial system that
the surplus awealth which cannot find purchasers in the
home market compels the capitalist to seek outlets on
the foreign. Our foreign policy is shaped by the domi-
nant force at hand-demand for markets. Whether a
capitalist is Democrat or Republican matters nothing;
he is compelled to obey the force of circumstances, or
face failure. The only difference between the Democrat
and the Republican is that the Republicans in power
have to take hold of the means at hand, which in this
case happen to be warlike, while the Democrat, longing
for the same foreign markets, but out of power, can talk
about their opposition "to force and violence," and is
sure to use "the persuasive power of a high and honor-
able example," as long as they are out of power.
TRUSTS.
The Democratic platform says that “Private monop-
olies are indefensible and intolerable. They destroy
competition, control the price of all material, and of the
unfinished product, thus robbing both producer and
consumer." The Republican platform "Condemns
all conspiracies and combinations intended to restrict
business, to create monopolies, to limit production, or
134
Socialist Campaign Book
to control prices, and favors such legislation as will
effectually restrain and prevent all such abuses."
Since they are both agreed upon this proposition, and
since they are the only parties represented in Congress,
it is pertinent to ask why they did not do something
toward carrying out their professions? Each blames the
other, and again they are both right, for they are both at
fault. The proof is to be found in the fact that they are
agreed upon two still more fundamental propositions,
from which the other issues arise. They indorse the wage
system and uphold the rights of capital. The Republican
platform says, first: “We renew our faith in the policy
of protection to American labor," by which “the wages
in every department of labor has been maintained at
high rates." Second: "We recognize the necessity and
propriety of the honest co-operation of capital to meet
new business conditions."
The Democratic platform says, first: "We favor arbi-
tration as a means of settling disputes between corpora-
tions and their employes." Second: "Corporations
should be protected in all their rights and legitimate
interests.”
THE PARAMOUNT ISSUE-CAPITALISM.
Upon these two propositions they are certainly
agreed. But the wage system means that one man ex-
ploits another for a part of his product and keeps the
rest. It also means that the employer will keep more of
the worker's product than is sufficient to live upon;
otherwise he would do as well for a wage. But since
the workers produce more than enough to pay them-
selves and to keep their employers, where is there to be
found a market for the rest? Evidently there will be no
home market for such products. That which is left over
will first become capital. The aggregation of this cap-
ital will grow into corporations with their alleged
“legitimate interests." The aggregation of these cor-
porations means trusts. In proportion as the number of
trusts increases the number of employes decreases. As
the machinery of production is improved in its effi-
ciency, so also can fewer men perform the task and at
Platforms of the Capitalist Parlics
135
the same time live on a smaller proportion of their in-
creased product. Thus is the surplus for which there is
no market constantly and necessarily increased.
Senator Frye said lately to the Secretary of the Amer-
ican Asiatic Association: "We must either have new
foreign markets or revolution." This latter term is evi-
dently applied to the socialists, since Mr. Bryan claims
to be and is conservative in his opinions and plans.*
It was this surplus that led up to our war with Spain,
under the pretext of freeing the suffering Cuban. Yet
the Republican party claim that the war was "unsought
and patiently resisted.” It is also this surplus which is
causing the war with China, under the pretext of saving
the missionaries and legations. The Republican plat-
form says that "Every effort should be made to open
and obtain new markets, especially in the Orient." And
those markets or people which are conquered will be
given that "measure of self-government consistent with
their welfare and our duties." And thus is political im-
perialism becoming established as a result of our indus-
trial imperialism, and taxation without representation
is the ruling policy. But it is to be expected that this
will be the political policy when every industrial estab-
lishment in our country is a little empire, with an em-
ployer as absolute monarch, "protected in his legitimate
interests, and where the workers are his subjects. Nor
should we be surprised at the policy of taxation without
representation in the colonies, for this is our custom in
our industries.
It is apparent that the live issues of this campaign
have been forced to the front by our industrial devel-
opment. Starting with the wage system, the first result
is a surplus, which develops the autocratic employer on
the one hand and the workman as his subject on the
other. As the surplus increases the employer develops
into a capitalist, then into a corporation "without a
soul," but with "legitimate (?) interests," while the
workman remains a subject, with no voice in the man-
*Sec W. J. Bryann in Democratic leaflet entitled "The Party rif
Revolution."
136
Socialist Campaign Book
agement of affairs. When the surplus grows still larger
it represents more power, with which the trust is organ-
ized, and the prices to some degree controlled, with the
working class still in subjection.
As the trust becomes more powerful the surplus seeks
foreign markets, and the workers in foreign lands who
are being fleeced, are considered even less capable of
acting intelligently than are the American workers, and
thus political imperialism abroad is added to industrial
imperialism at home. Instead of compulsory education,
with state support, both the Republican parties favor
educational qualification, and in some states agitation is
being made for property qualification. As the surplus
product increases beyond the market, men are thrown
out of work. As men are discharged, competition for
positions begins among the workers, and wages go
down; as wages go down the worker is less able to own
property or to school his children, and thus a process
of disfranchising the working class begins, imperialism
rears its head from the industrial into political affairs,
and taxation without representation becomes the polit-
ical as well as the industrial policy of our country. The
capitalist will diligently support the wages system and
loudly declare that capital, though the product of labor,
has "legitimate interests" antagonistic to labor, because
it is by this process that they gain their power. They
will multiply the issues and magnify their importance in
their mad greed for power. A vote for either the Dem-
ocratic or the Republican parties is a vote for the trust,
for expansion and for imperialism, because these issues
are the logical and inevitable result of the wages sys-
tem, which they both support. Not until the working
class organize a political party, managed by and for the
interests of their class, and through the instrumentality
of that party conquer the powers of government and re-
organize the industrial institutions to the end that each
producer shall have an equal voice in the management
thereof, and that all productive capital shall be owned
in common, and that the wages system shall be abol-
ished and that each worker shall receive an equivalent
for his total product, will the problems of imperialism,
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
137
taxation without representation, expansion, trusts, cor-
porate greed and labor wars be settled, and the two
now warring classes be united into one fraternal bond of
fellowship, making war upon nature for her fruits in-
stead of upon one another.
This devolves upon the working class. It is to their
interest. They have the votes, the power and the intel-
ligence, and it depends upon the concerted action of the
Socialists to deliver to them the necessary information
as to its exercise.
The attitude of Mr. Bryan upon the points mentioned
in the Democratic platform is interesting to know. It
may safely be said that at this time the winner of the
Democratic presidential ticket is not the truest expo-
nent of the party machinery. Mr. Bryan's honesty and
sincerity of purpose cannot be found among the men
who shape the practical politics of the party. But eco-
nomically Mr. Bryan, however well meaning, is only
the reflection of the others of the middle class exploiter
who is unwilling to leave to the bigger fellow the spoils.
In his letter of acceptance Mr. Bryan says: “The Dem-
ocratic party makes no war upon honestly acquired
wealth; neither does it seek to embarrass corporations
engaged in legitimate business." And again, in his reply
to the Notification Committee: "The Democratic party
is not making war upon the honest acquisition of
wealth; it has no desire to discourage industry, econ-
omy and thrift. On the contrary, it gives to every citi-
zen the greatest-possible stimulus to honest toil when it
promises him protection in the proceeds of labor. Prop-
erty rights are more secure when human rights are
more respected.” These are noble sentiments, and Mr.
Bryan feels an inspiration in being their champion. But
the laboring man knows that "this honest acquisition of
wealth," whether exerted by a trust-baron or a little
employer who is always worse at squeezing labor, ineans
the acquisition of the wealth produced by the laborer
over and above his subsistence. And Senator J. K.
Jones, chairman of the Platform Committee, and mem-
ber of the Financial Committee of the United States
Senate, which framed the "Sugar Trust Tariff” of 1894,
138
Socialist Campaign Book
and a stockholder in the Round Bale Cotton Trust, also
knows that it means just this, and can afford to smile
in the enthusiasm of Mr. Bryan, who, in the security of
his professional position, has not been taught the les-
sons of producing and exploiting surplus labor.
Mr. Bryan's remedy for trusts is the same as the
Republicans', restrictive legislation. He finds that this
will be difficult; a new interstate commerce law, then
new state laws, and as these are not likely to prove
effective, a constitutional amendment is necessary. But.
still Mr. Bryan does not feel secure. What people will
have they manage to get in spite of legislative enact-
ments. Mr. Bryan sees the necessity of finding a new
set of men to enforce the new laws. "I shall select an
attorney-general who will, without fear or favor, enforce
existing laws.” The next step that the logic of his
reasoning will force Mr. Bryan to take is to change the
hearts and nature of the people. Experience has so far
failed to lead us to expect different treatment from
Democratic officeholders than from Republican.
That President McKinley substantially agrees with
Mr. Bryan in these glittering generalities is well known.
In his letter of acceptance of the Republican nomination
he says:
“Combinations of capital which control the market in
commodities necessary to the general use of the people,
by suppressing natural and ordinary competition, thus
enhancing prices to the general consumer, are ob-
noxious to the common law and the public welfare. They
are dangerous conspiracies against the public good, and
should be made the subject of prohibitory or penal leg-
islation. Publicity will be a helpful influence to check
this evil. Uniformity of legislation in the several states
should be secured. Discrimination between what is in-
jurious and what is useful and necessary in business
operations is essential to the wise and effective treat-
ment of this subject. Honest co-operation of capital is
necessary to meet new business conditions and extend
our rapidly increasing foreign trade, but conspiracies
and combinations intended to restrict business, create
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
139
monopolies and control prices should be effectively re-
strained.''
THE CAUSE OF HARD TIMES.
Chauncey Depew, in his speech at the National Re-
publican Convention, said:
"What is the tendency of the future? Why this war
in South Africa? Why this hammering at the gates of
Pekin? Why this marching of troops from Asia to
Africa? Why these parades of people from other em-
pires and other lands?
"It is because the surplus productions of the civilized
countries of modern times are greater than civilization
can consume. It is because this overproduction goes
back to stagnation and poverty.
"The American people now produce two thousand
millions dollars' worth more than they can consume;
and WE have met the emergency, and by the provi-
dence of God, by the statesmanship of William McKin-
ley, and by the valor of Roosevelt and his associats, we
have our market in Cuba, We have OUR market in
Puerto Rico, we have our market in Hawaii, we have
our market in the Philippines, and we stand in the pres-
ence of 800,000,000 of people, with the Pacific as an
American lake, and the American artisan producing
better and cheaper goods than any country in the world,
and, my friends, we go to American labor and to the
American farm and say that with McKinley for another
four years there is no congestion for America."
To an American workingman, even a skilled me-
chanic who makes $3 a day, it must be gratifying to
know that he belongs to the favored people who pro-
duce more than he can consume, and that in conse-
quence he stands before the markets of Cuba and
Puerto Rico to sell what he in his superfluity cannot
use.
But perhaps the celebrated after-dinner speaker did
not mean the American workingman when he said WE.
Valable information as to who "WE” are in the Dem-
ocratic party is given in the Chicago American,
Sept. 6th
140
Socialist Campaign Book
WHO ARE “WE”?
"Ten or twenty men at most bought the fifty millions
of English bonds. Suppose that industry, properly or-
ganized, had given the fifty millions of American dollars
to one thousand American citizens. Those would have
been extremely prosperous men, with $50,000 of profits
each. They would have been plutocrats—wildly, fabu-
lously successful in the ordinary man's eyes. But their
prosperity would have helped the whole country.”
The "WE” in the Republican party are the men who
own five or two and a half millions. The "WE” in the
Democratic party is the man who owns $50,000.
OTHER SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES RECOGNIZED.
In a Democratic campaign leaflet the following is
found:
“The Republicans are giving us socialism, with all its
demerits and none of its advantages. Socialism, not for
the common benefit, but for the advantage of a few.
They have organized the industries of the nation, so
that for the vast bulk of the people nothing is left but
wages. The element of profits is concentrated in the
possession of a handful of proprietors. This is a change
as revolutionary as the transition from feudalism to the
factory system. The party that advocates it is the revo-
lutionary party, and the one that opposes it is the con-
servative party."
A Republican painphlet tries to open the eyes of the
workingman in the following manner:
"It is of the highest importance to the workingmen of
our country that they should thoroughly understand
the vital relation of this policy of commercial expansion
to their immediate welfare. No portion of our people
are more directly interested in it than they are. What
they want is the most active and constant operation of
our industrial machinery. That means steady employ-
ment for labor; that means good wages; that means
comfort and happiness for themselves and their families.
If we can produce more than we can consume at home,
if we should have a surplus that would be unsalable un-
less we could find markets for it abroad, then it follows
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
141
that the labor which produces that surplus is deeply
concerned in a national policy which opens such out-
'
On page 765 of the North American Review Mr.
Bryan says of the anti-trust movement: "The Demo-
cratic party is better able to undertake this work be-
cause all of the trust magnates have left the party.”
To illustrate the accuracy of this statement we give the
following list, largely taken from the Congressional
Record:
DEMOCRATIC TRUST MAGNATES.
THE ICE TRUST—Croker, Van Wyck, Wood, Gil-
roy, Brady, Carroll, Crummins, Sewell, Untermeyer,
Myers, and the leading Democratic Judges and office-
holders of New York, including nearly all the principal
officials of the city.
SEWALL, of Maine, Bryan's previous running-mate,
was one of the largest shipbuilders in America, and the
richest man in Maine, the value of his property at his
death running up to many millions.
J. K. Jones, of Arkansas, the national manager of the
Democratic party, is a large stockholder in the Round
Cotton Bale Trust.
Croker, Van Wyck and others of the New York lead-
ers are among the organizers of the auto-car company.
John Brisbane Walker, editor of the “Cosmopolitan,”
is president of a big automobile corporation.
Senator Gorman, one of the richest men in Maryland,
is interested in several trusts.
Clark and Daly, of Montana, control the largest
copper mines in the world.
The silver magnates are, of course, all Democrats.
Whitney controls some of the principal street rail-
ways of New York City.
Belmont is one of the wealthiest men in New York-
and we know what that means.
Olney is interested in several large Massachusetts
corporations.
*From a speech by the Hon. Charles Emory S'mith, Postmaster
General
142
Socialist Campaign Book
Bremner, one of the largest holders in the Biscuit
Trust, has lately joined the Democrats.
Hearst, the California multi-millionaire, runs three of
the largest papers in the country for the Democratic
party.
Mills, and other Democratic Senators from the South,
are very wealthy and hold stock in many corporations.
But perhaps Mr. Bryan's statement is after all cor-
rect, for Mr. Hanna sublimely declares in a speech made
at the down-town McKinley Club, "I believe that there
isn't a trust in the entire United States.” If the Dem-
ocrats have gotten rid of their trust magnates, and no
trusts can be found under the Republican administra-
tion, why make so much fuss about the trust question?
SOCIALISM VS. BRYANISM.
"Is socialism an element of Bryanism?” is a question
that Mr. Albert Watkins, a fellow-townsman and inti-
mate friend of Mr. Bryan, answers in the “Arena”
for September. "What is erroneously and insidiously
termed socialism in the populist and democratic parties
is a popular determination to do away with the inequi-
table and oppressive industrial advantage held by cor-
porate combination of capital.” He maintains that none
of the demands, even of the populists, may fairly be
termed "socialistic," unless it be that for public owner-
ship of railways and other natural monopolies. "If
favoring municipal ownership of the so-called national
monopoly is to be called 'socialistic,' then Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain, notably, and the leading men of all Eng-
land, must be called socialists, and the great municipal-
ities of England are socialistic." "Mr. Bryan was nomi-
nated by both Democrats and Populists, but their plat-
forms contain no socialistic declarations."
"The socialists' platform of that year defines socialism
--what is now meant by the word-in its demand for re-
distribution of the land and all means of production,
transportation and distribution to the people as a col-
lective body. It seems to me that it is essential to a
rational discussion of present political conditions to
keep this distinction in mind. The real socialists were
Platforms of the Capitalist Parties
143
the first in the field this year with a candidate of their
own kind for President, and they fiercely and truthfully
denounced Mr. Bryan as an individualist.
"Whatever may be said of Mr. Bryan's audacious op-
portunism, of the facility with which he catches political
sentiment of the hour and turns it to his own account,
yet he undoubtedly retains the traditional or instinctive
spirit of individualism inherited from a deniocratic an-
cestry, and this quality still inheres in the democratic
party in the main. Having observed Mr. Bryan's polit-
ical beginnings and evolution, or, as others would put
it, his evolutions, from the standpoint of a near neigh-
bor, I have no doubt that he is a positive anti-socialist.
And whatever his political eccentricities, he is not a
radical. The great body of Mr. Bryan's supporters, the
farmers of the West and South, have no thought of in-
stituting or advancing socialism. On the contrary, they
are in a campaign for overcoming obstacles to competi-
tion and individualism in all the ordinary industrial pur-
suits."
Mr. Bryan hiniself has compared the position of his
party with that of those people who resisted the break-
lip of the feudal system and the introduction of ma-
chinery. On this ground he defends the present "con-
servative” position of the Democratic party which is
opposed to this industrial revolution. We know what
happened to the ignorant opponents of mechanical ma-
chinery. The same fate lies in store for those who put
themselves in the way of twentieth century machinery-
the machinery of industrial organization. *
Mr. Bryan himself has repeatedly declared that he is
not a socialist, but stands on the individualistic platform
of competition in industry. Only his desire is to check
the growth of the competing capitalists, to have the
state prevent the national growth of capital. He has no
conception of the rights of the laborer to have voice in
the industrial institutions.
He clings to capitalism as a drowning man to a straw.
*See Democratic leaflet “The Party of Revolution," which is
taken from an editorial written by Mr. Bryan for the Chicago Amer-
ican,
144
Socialist Campaign Book
His watchword is prosperity for the middle classes, at
the expense of the large capitalists, "and the devil take
the hindmost-the laborer."
CHAPTER XI.
Socialism in America
No effort will be made in this chapter to treat this
subject exhaustively as the time at the disposal of the
committee makes impossible the extended research
which would be necessary for this purpose. It is only
desired to set forth something of a description of the
growth of socialism in the last year and a glimpse of its
present extent.
When the socialist movement definitely rid itself of
the pernicious anti-trade union attitude that had been
saddled upon it and the two socialist parties joined for
a common effort the effect upon its growth was at once
felt.
The following publications were orginally issued in
the interest of the Social Democratic Party, when union
of the S. D. P. and S. L. P. was perfected:
New York Volkszeitung (daily).
New York Vorwaerts.
New York Forward (Jewish).
New York People.
Philadelphia Tageblatt (daily).
Haverhill Social Democrat.
Erie (Pa.) Public Ownership.
Milwaukee Wahrheit.
St. Louis Arbeiter Zeitung:
Chicago Workers' Call.
Chicago Social Democratic Herald.
San Francisco Advance.
San Francisco Tageblatt (daily).
Farmers' Review, Bonham, Tex.
Since amalgamation was accomplished, the following
trade union, reform and newly-established publications
are spreading the propaganda of Socialism for the new
movement, nearly all supporting Debs and Harriman:
146
Socialist Campaign Book
Brewers' Journal, official organ of national union, Cin-
cinnati.
Exponent, Saginaw, Mich.
Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kan.
Toiler, Terre Haute, Ind.
Coming Time, Columbus, O.
Enterprise, Stoddard county, Missouri.
Texas Republic, Paris, Tex.
The Herald, Warren, Mass.
Cincinnatier Zeitung.
Labor Journal, Dallas, Tex.
Revyen (Danish), Chicago.
People's Paper, Santa Barbara, Cal.
Herald, Omenee, N. D.
Lantern, Fort Scott, Kan.
Miners' Magazine, official organ Western Federation
of Miners, Denver, Col.
Western Socialist News, Topeka, Kan.
Kentucky Socialist, Louisville, Ky.
Nebraska Socialist, Omaha.
The Socialist, Seattle, Wash.
Coming Nation, Ruskin, Ga.
Arbeiter Zeitung, Buffalo, N. Y.
Der Herold, Detroit, Mich.
Humanity, Thomaston, Me.
Socialist Review, Kearney, Neb.
Civic and Social Problems, San Francisco.
Social Gospel, South Jamesport, N. Y.
Truth and Freedom, Fitchburg, Mass.
Social Forum, Chicago.
Young Socialist, Equality, Wash.
The New Light, Port Angeles, Wash.
Industrial Freedom, Equality, Wash.
The Co-operator, Burley, Wash.
People's Press, Chicago.
Social Crusader, Evanston, Ill.
The Critic, Rich Hill, Mo.
The Cleveland Citizen.
The International Socialist Review, Chicago.
Arbeiter Zeitung, Chicago.
Socialdemokrat, Chicago.
Socialism in America
147
Robotnik, Chicago.
Minnesota Social Democratic Bulletin, Minneapolis.
The News-Letter, Chicago.
Perhaps no better illustration of the rapidity of the
growth of socialist publications can be offered than that
although this list was compiled with great care the ed-
itors of this handbook were able to add five additional
names from their own knowledge while without a doubt
a large number are still omitted.
Any attempt to describe the increase in pamphlet and
more permanent literature would be wholly unsatisfac-
tory but it is easily within the bounds of truth to say that
there will be over two hundred times as much literature
circulated this campaign as four years ago. One charac-
teristic of this new literature which is a distinct mark of
advance is that it is very largely written by American
authors. Up to one year ago the socialist literature cir-
culated in this country was composed almost exclusively
of translations from foreign writers. While it is still
true that as yet no American writer has produced any-
thing that can be considered among the classics of scien-
tific socialism, they are now occupying the field of propa-
ganda and many signs point to the near coming of the
time when American socialist writers will rank on a par
with their comrades of other and older countries.
In no direction has the growth of socalisin been more
pronounced than among the trades unions. One year
ago almost the only sentiment to be found anong trade-
unionists as a body relative to socialism was that of dis-
tinct hostility. While today this has by no means wholly
disappeared there are a multitude of signs of change. So-
cialist papers are now having an extensive circulation
among trade-unionists and many local unions have sub-
scribed for such papers for their entire membership. On
last May day in New York nearly 40,000 union laborers
marched behind the socialist banners and listened to so-
cialist speeches. The Social Democratic party has been
directly endorsed by the United Brewery Workers at
their recent national convention at Detroit and by the St.
Louis Central Labor Council. The Western Federation
148
Socialist Campaign Book
of Miners have endorsed independent political action
along the lines of socialism. Such a resolution was also
adopted at the convention of International Typograph-
ical Union but afterwards rescinded by a narrow vote.
The A. F. of L. itself at its last annual convention adopt-
ed a resolution, "that the various central and local
bodies of labor in the United States take steps to use
their ballots, their political power, on independent lines,
as enunciated in the declaration of principles of the
American Federation of Labor." There is no other pos-
sible way of carrying out the meaning of this resolution
save by working with and through the Social Demo-
cratic Party.
The spread of socialism is also marked by the inroads
its doctrines are making among the professional and
educated classes. The process of industrial concentra-
tion is crowding these classes to the wall and forcing
theni to turn their attention to the social problems with
which they are confrotned. Among those who liave
come from this class into the movement within the last
few months it suffices to mention the names of Eugene
Brewster, Prof. Geo. D. Herron, Walter Thomas Mills
and ex-Governor Llewelling of Kansas.
A year ago the colleges and universities of America
were the recognized citadels of plutocracy and the
preaching of socialism within their walls would have
been considered a mere waste of energy. Today an or-
ganization of college socialists has branches in almost
every institution of advanced learning in the country
and counts its total adherents by the hundreds. The
day is now almost at hand when the American universi-
ties, like those of Europe, will be centers of socialist
propaganda.
Victories have been won and socialists elected to of-
fice in numerous local elections, notably in Haverhill
and Brockton, Massachusetts, and Marion, Indiana. Two
members have been elected to the Massachusetts legis-
lature and are there doing valiant work in the cause of
labor. The party is now on the official ballot in several
states and will have its ticket in the field in nearly every
Socialison in America
149
state at the coming presidential election, while in thou-
sands of towns and cities throughout the country full
local tickets are nominated and an active canvass is
being made.
It has been a part of the political liistory of all cap-
italist nations that as the middle class is forced out by
economic advance the political party representing it dis-
integrates. This is the process which is now going on in
relation to the Liberal parties of France, Belgium, Ger-
many and England and which is now well advanced in
the Democratic party of this country. No matter what
the outcome of the present Presidential election may be
the Democratic party is the representative of a dying
class—the class of small exploiters of labor--and is
being crushed between the real contending forces in the
great struggle of socialism against plutocracy. To the
Social Democratic party belongs the future and the
present is a time of clearing the ground and organizing
the forces for the oncoming battle for political suprem-
acy between exploiters and exploited, producer and
consunier, master and slave, capitalist and laborer.
There can be but one outcome to such a struggle. The
living vital force in society will cast off the decaying
incunibrance of a past age and press on to the better day
of a grander social order just bursting into view.
Owing to the short time at the disposal of the committee having
this book in charge, many things were omitted and others treated
much less thoroughly than they should have been. It is felt, how-
ever, that a very creditable beginning has been made for a series
of handbooks which will each year present, in a classified and intel-
ligible form, the facts of the American social and economic rela-
tions of most value in socialist propaganda. Quite a number of
persons co-operated on the present work, and it is hoped that a still
larger number will assist in the forthcoming volumes. It would add
much to the value of the work if the readers of the present volume
would send any criticisms or suggestions for future numbers to
"Editors Socialist Campaign Book, care Charles H. Kerr & Coin-
pany, 56 Fifth avenue, Chicago, Ill." All such suggestions and
criticisms will be turned over to whatever committee may have
the publication of future volumes in hand, and will tend to make
their work much easier and more effective for the purpose in view.
THE SOCIALIST PLATFORM.
The Social Democratic party of the United States reaffirms its allegiance to the revolu-
tionary principles of international socialism and declares the supreme political issue in
America to-day to be the contest between the working class and the capitalist class for the
possession of the power of government. We affirm our steadfast purpose to use those pow-
ers, once achieved, to destroy wage slavery, abolish the institution of private property in
the means of production and distribution, and to establish the Co-operative Commonwealth.
In the United States, as in all other civilized countries, the natural order of economic
development has separated society into two antagonistic classes—the capitalists, a com-
paratively small class, the possessors of all the modern means of production and distribu-
tion, (land, mines, machinery and means of transportation) and the large and ever increas-
ing class of wage earners, possessing no means of production.
This economic supremacy has secured to the dominant class the full control of the gov-
ernment, the pulpit, the schools, and the public press, thereby making them the arbiters of
the fate of the working class, while it is reducing it to a condition of dependence, econom-
ically exploited and oppressed, intellectually and physically crippled and degraded, and
its political equality rendered a bitter mockery; and the contest between these two classes
grows ever sharper. Hand in hand with the growth of monopolies, goes the annihilation
of small industries and the middle class depending upon them. Ever larger grows the mul-
titude of destitute wage workers and of the unemployed, and ever fiercer the struggle be-
tween the class of the exploiter and the exploited, the capitalists and the wage workers.
The evil effects of capitalistic production are intensified by the recurring industrial
crises, continually rendering the existence of the greater part of the population more pre-
carious and uncertain, which amply proves that the modern means of production have out-
grown the existing social order based on production for profit.
Human energy and natural resources are wasted for individual gain.
Ignorance is fostered, that wage slavery may be perpetuated. Science and invention
are perverted to the exploitation of men, women and children.
The lives and liberties of the working class are recklessly sacrificed for proit.
Wars are ſomented between nations; indiscriminate slaughter is encouraged; the de-
struction of whole races is sanctioned, in order that the capitalist class may extend its
commercial dominion abroad and enhance its supremacy at home.
The introduction of a new and higher order of society is the historic mission of the
working class. All other classes despite their apparent or actual conflicts are interested
in the upholding of the system of private ownership of the means of productiou. We there-
fore charge that in this country the Democratic, Republican and all other parties which do
not stand for the complete overthrow of the capitalist system of production are alike the
tools of the capitalist class.
The working class can not however, act as a class in its struggle against the collective
power of the capitalist class except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct
and opposed to all parties formed by the propertied classes.
We, therefore, call upon the wage workers of the United States, without distinction of
color, race or sex, and upon all citizens in sympathy with the historic mission of the work-
ing class, to organize under the banner of the Social Democratic party, as a party truly
representing the interests of the toiling masses and uncompromisingly waging war upou
the exploiting class, until the system of wage slavery shall be abolished and the Co-oper-
ative Commonwealth shall be established.
As steps in that direction, we make the following demands:
First-Revision of our federal constitution, in order to remove the obstacles to complete
control of government by the people irrespective of sex.
Second-The public ownership of all'industries controlled by monopolies, trusts and
combines.
Third-The public ownership of all railroads, telegraphs and telephones; all means of
transportation, and communication; all water-works, gās and electric plants, and other
public utilities,
Fourth-The public ownership of all gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, coal and other
mines, and all oil and gas wells.
Fifth-The reduction of the hours of labor in proportion to the increasing facilities of
production.
Sixth-The inauguration of a system of public works and improvements for the employ-
ment of the unemployed, the public credit to be utilized for that purpose,
Seventh-Useful inventions to be free, the inventor to be remunerated by the public.
Eighth-Labor legislation to be national, instead of local, and international when pos-
sible.
Ninth---National insurance of working people against accidents, lack of employment
and wantin old age.
Tenth-Equal civil and political rights, for men and women, and the abolition of all
laws discriminating against women.
Eleventh-The adoption of the initiative and referendum, proportional representation,
and the right of recall of representatives by the voters.
Twelfth- Abolition of war and the introduotion of international arbitration,
.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
DATE DUE
10
EB 1974
JAN 31 1974
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DATE DUE
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