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Better Times!
BY
DR. A. DOUAI
PUBLISHED BY
The Executive Committee
OF THE
WORKINGMEN'S PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES.
PRINTED BY THE
Social-Democratic Printing Association of Chicago.
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Better Times!
BY
DR. A. DOUAI
PUBLISHED BY
The Executive Committee
OF THE
WORKINGMEN'S PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES.
PRINTED BY THE
Social-Democratic Printing Association of Chicago.
INTRODUCTION.
The object of this pamphlet is to direct the thoughts of the laboring people toward a consideration of the fundamental laws upon which Society is based, and which determine the prosperity or degradation of the people, according to their observance or violation. In the month of July, 1877, the employes of the principal Railroads between Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Western States, ceased to work—opposing in a most desperate manner a proposed reduction of their wages by the corporations operating those Railroads. Immediately many of the workingmen of the principal cities in the United States also ceased work, partly from sympathy but especially because they recognized some hidden truth which, although not defined clearly in their minds, nevertheless forced them to demand of Society an inteference in behalf of oppressed Labor, and against the corporate monopolies which are sucking the life-blood from the people. We will endeavor to show in this short work the true principles governing the relations of Labor and Capital, and briefly offer the means of raising up our class through legal and peaceable means, to the dignity of independent and enlightened citizenship, with equality of opportunities and true freedom of the individual. In the earnest hope that all readers of these pages will reflect carefully upon the arguments presented, we are,
Yours in the cause of Labor,
The Executive Committee
BETTER TIMES!
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What is the cause of all this? We must know the cause, if we are to find the remedy. Some say it is depreciation of our currency; on the contrary, others say, it is that we have not greenbacks enough. Some will have it that our protective policy is the cause, and others, that our duties are not high enough. Some find the fault with the Republican party, others with the Democratic party, and others again charge several, or all of these agencies with the blame; or name still other causes.
We need not investigate how far, or, if any one of these alleged causes are responsible for our ills. Side by side with our country lies the Dominion of Canada, where they have a free-trade policy, and Great Britain and other countries of Europe have the same policy,—and we find there the same depression of business. France and Russia are blessed with protective duties—and stagnation and bankruptcy are there spread as with us. Both the hard-money and the soft-money countries are suffering under an unprecedented crisis. The Republic of Switzerland no less than all the Monarchies of the Old World are complaining of miseries like our own. In short, it is a World's Crisis which we are in. There must, then, a cause prevail all over the world likewise, which is at the bottom of this universal depression; and all the other causes which may be found at work in our own country, can be of less importance only. In some respects we shall find our country better off than some or all the others, in other respects we are worse off than some or all; in fact, it is difficult to show which country fares worst, since each claims to be at the foot of the ladder of thrift.
Now, as all the world is depressed, and as everywhere the majority of the people are growing poorer, there can be no prospect of better times anywhere, there can come no relief from any country, unless the one great cause of depression is everywhere discovered, and the means for its removal is applied.
That cause is no secret. It has been manifest to the eyes of Science for more than thirty years; the present world's crisis has been foretold. But so long as the people are prosperous, the voice of prophetic Science counts for nothing. Let now that voice be heard, if a new prosperity is to return.
This one cause is called Capitalistic Production. What does that expression mean? It means that those who produce all the goods and merchandise are not the owners of their means of labor (lands and real estate, mines, factories, machines, means of transportation, etc.,) but must sell their working force to some owner of those means of labor; the former are called wages laborers, the latter capitalists. The capitalist does not pay to the laborer all the earnings of the labor of the latter, but only a portion thereof; he keeps the rest to reward himself for the loan of the means of labor—or, in other words, he makes the laborer work more hours a day than is needed to refund the outlay of capital and the outlay for wages. And he has the power to do so for reasons to be stated below. For the present it suffices to know that capitalistic production means a lawful state of things, in which the majority of a population are unable to own the means of labor, so as to work on their own account and to keep all their earnings for themselves, but must enter into the employment of some owner of means by which they can make their livelihood, and leave in his hands part of their earnings, called surplus labor, or surplus value.
It is evident (and will be made more evident in what follows) that under such a state of things the poor will become poorer, and the rich richer by degrees. It is further easy to see that such a state of things cannot prevail, where a majority of the workers own their means of labor, or may acquire them within a few years, by diligence and economy. But in the United States—it will be said—the majority do own their means of labor.
Let us see if this is the fact! Some of us will remember the time when it was a fact. The fathers of our Republic took care (by Jefferson's Ordinance of 1787) that the public domain be parceled out to men of small means at a nominal price, so that every new settler might be his own landlord. They exempted homesteads to a certain value from being seized for debt, and rendered it easy for bankrupts to shake off a load of debt, so as to begin afresh and quickly a new life of prosperity. Everywhere at the North, the policy then prevailing was to break up large landed estates and banking privileges, and at the beginning of the civil war, the existing homestead law was passed. The fathers of the republic bought, from foreign powers, extensive territories in order to open them for independent settlers and to create a rapidly-growing, sturdy, and well-to-do yeomanry.
Could they have foreseen that a time would come, when, through an unheard of growth of the population, all the valuable portions of our public lands would be taken up and held as private property, so as to raise the price of land for all late comers to figures far beyond the means of a majority? Could they have imagined that the system of Capitalistic Production, which then was in its infancy, would, within a century, distribute the national riches so unequally, as we now see it,—a few hundred millionaires and a few dozen share companies, owning each from ten to several hundred millions, some hundreds of thousands owning all the way up from a competency to a million, and the rest of about nine million voters about equally divided into small farmers and independent trades people on the one hand, and as many wages laborers on the other, the former growing poorer always, the latter already staring slow starvation in the face? Who could have foreseen such results of a benevolent and wise statesmanship? Are there not even now-a-days many wiseacres pretending that they cannot see the facts as they really are? who even now insist that "everybody can, in this country, be a capitalist, whenever he chooses?" (New York Tribune, August, 1877.) But let us look at some statistical facts!
Within a dozen years the expenses toward public charities have increased tenfold in the few states which dare to publish their statistics in this respect, to-wit, in Massachusetts from less than $200,000 to more than three million a year; in the state of New York from about $300,000 to beyond three million and a half.
Says the official statistician of Massachusetts ("the model state"): "After giving the grand aggregate of all classes reported as supported or relieved as 283,476, and after making all allowances, it is found that we support in full or in part one person in every 19 of the population, while in England and Wales they have one in every 23." "In the number of convicts Massachusetts also claims leadership, having one convict to each 380 of the population, while England and Wales has one to every 790, or two and one-tenth convicts in Massachusetts to one in England." (Report of 1876, page 211.)
But this picture of misery is not complete without adding that there are from 100,000 to 110,000 weavers and spinners, from 50,000 to 60,000 shoemakers, and tens of thousands more of workers in that same state who are not receivers of alms or any public charities, but whose wages do not amount to more than $300 a year on an average, even when fully employed, so that they cannot support a family without their wives and most of their children going also to the factory. As early as 1870 the official statistician reported 66,000 children of school age who did not enjoy any schooling.
All the other states having no official labor statistics, we can only guess at the state. of things there from some established facts. In the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania there are about 60,000 miners whose average yearly earnings are not quite $300. This pittance is greatly curtailed by the truck-system which there as well as among the spinners and weavers of New England has made of the laborers real wages slaves.
The census of the United States taken in 1870 exhibits some labor statistics which have been analyzed in a book by Mr. Young, and still further by Dr. Stiebeling of New York. Although that census was taken during the period of our greatest manufacturing and agricultural prosperity, and although the figures are derived from statements of employers who cannot be expected to understate the earnings of their employes; it appears from those figures that there were few industries in 1870 in which the employes could support a family without some additional earnings of their wives and children, or lay up savings and become small capitalists. Most laborers in those industries had to leave more than one-half of their earnings as profits in the hands of their employers, some two-thirds or three-fourths. As it is well known that since 1870 wages have sunk to less than one-half, rent and victuals to only about two-thirds of their former prices, it follows that even fully employed wages people can now no longer expect to become independent owners of their means of labor.
At the South, the number of land owners—outside of the cities—was, in 1860 no more than 159,000, most of these owners of extensive tracts of land. That number now can hardly be more than 200,000, as there is nowhere at the South an effort going on to attract white settlers from the North in greater numbers, and most lands offered for sale are in remote and little coveted neighborhoods. In Texas and California there are almost none but large landed estates, and rare chances for men of small means to become independent farmers or small capitalists. Ever since 1861 Congress has donated to monopolies almost all the desirable lands fit for free homesteads, and David Wells, who was for years connected with our Department of the Interior, says there are scarcely any acceptable homestead lands left. In consequence of this waste of our public domain, the price of all raw lands within the states, and still more that of cultivated farms, had been rising prodigously, down to the great crisis. Since then it has come down to, perhaps, one-half, but now there are hardly any more laborers able to turn to farming.
It is a fact that our country is now no longer a new country, but resembles the old countries of Europe in every respect, except the density of the population. But this latter feature is no advantage if all the desirable lands are private property, and dear beyond the means of a wages laborer. It is also true that as yet about one-half of our voters are small farmers who by dint of hard labor of all their family, of great economy, average crops, and tolerable prices were able to bridge over the last four years. But they cannot be called a prosperous class; and they will be less so from year to year. In former days they could make up for the low prices of their products by the steady rise of the price of their lands, which, within one generation, would be from two or three to ten or twenty-fold. This favor of circumstances is forever ended. There is no longer a great tide of emigrants from Europe, able to buy lands, and there is no longer a numerous young generation of natives willing to toil on and on in the fields, if their lands are no longer to rise considerably in price within a few years, and their products are to leave only small net profits. And the increasing number of city and industrial laborers being reduced to a lower living—a scantier consumption—will not sufficiently raise the price of farm produce to indemnify the farmers for the slow growth of the capital sunk in their farms. European wars cannot always be expected to open markets for our grains and cattle in the Old World, and whenever they do, there capitalistic farming is invited on a large scale. Farming on a large scale with machines, chemicals, draining, and subsoiling, improved breeds of domestic animals and rational division of labor will, just as in the Old World, drive the small farmers out of competition, will reduce them to wages laborers, or overseers. Meanwhile the poor-rates, expenses for prisons, work-houses, the police, and the judiciary must go on increasing, while the number of laborers decreases who are able to support all the growing burdens of the state. Suppose now that the system of Capitalistic Production is carried through still more by the importation of half-starved and over-cheap Chinese, French Canadians, Poles, and Italians, who can live at 10 or 20 cents a day, having no families, or educational and civic institutions to support; why, consumption would still further be reduced, the reward of production will be diminished, and the wages class will be utterly impoverished and demoralized.
Let no small farmer imagine that he can stand any competition with great Capitalistic farming, except by special crops perhaps, such as flowers, fruit, berries, greens, grapes, milk, and the like. The experience made in this respect in the Old World is conclusive. So long as there is a well-to-do middle-class in the cities and industrial districts who can afford to pay handsomely for such dainties, the competition of large establishments on a rational basis will surely crush the small farmer. And have we not already warning examples to that effect in the New World? The flourishing butter and cheese industry of the small farmers of New York and New Jersey is now rapidly yielding to the monopoly of large establishments. In Louisiana it pays no longer to make one's sugar from one's own cane, the latter must be sold to the capitalist who makes the sugar and the price of the cane. The proceeds from the peach orchards of southern New Jersey and Delaware, etc., fall a prey to the speculators and railroad monopolies. The truck-farmers from Virginia down to Florida, and much more, their hands, are squeezed out by the same sort of gentry. The small milk farmers in the neighborhood of New York and Philadelphia are ruined by bad debts, or by the competition of the great dairies. All produce, especially which is liable to a rapid decay, is already at the mercy of speculators who buy up the market stalls of the cities, and monopolize all the means of conveyance, so as to leave the producers hardly a fourth-part of the selling retail price of such produce.
Now, all these developments have been the offshoot of Capitalistic Production within about fifteen years. And together with these have come all the whims of European prejudices and abuses, and the worst forms of demoralization. Our rich men keep liveried servants, and display a coat-of-arms painted on their coaches; they have fashion-able clubs, and ape servilely all the fashions of the aristocracies of the Old World. They send their children no longer to public schools, or if they do so, there are separate public schools singled out for them, where the young aristocrats need not come into contact with laborers' children; and in the private schools which they patronize, these young noblemen learn nothing so much as the absurd imitation of European aristocratic manners and views. They have their fashionable churches of every denomination where the gospel of the rich is preached to them, and the poor are not admissible. The words of Christ, "Blessed are the Poor," is there thus interpreted: The poorer we render and keep our wages people, the more they are blessed, and we with them and through them. It is this capitalist class who grudgingly appropriate the funds for our public schools, cut down the salaries and rights of the teachers so that persons of talent and character are less and less attracted to the calling of teachers, and who subordinate the teachers and schools to the government of incapable laymen and vulgar snobs. They never mingle with the working people, when they can help it; they have their fashionable watering places, sea baths, summer resorts, theatres and concerts, lectures and other gatherings; but above all, they spend a_ hundred million a year of the people's earnings in travelling, and in mingling among the aristocratic circles of the Old World. You ought to see them there, how they crave a gracious glance from some despot, an introduction to Kings, Dukes, Counts and Statesmen, and thereby render our Republic contemptible in the eyes of foreign rulers and peoples. On their return they smuggle through our corrupt custom houses jewelry, silks, and costly things of all kinds, and cheat our government and the tax-paying people. They corrupt our press to flatter the rich, to depreciate the working class, to palliate the crimes of the former, to denounce the strikes and trades unions of the latter, and to blind public opinion to party misdoings and the best interests of the people. They corrupt our politicians, and rule through them our legislatures and courts and party politics, so as to obtain special laws for their own benefit at the expense of the workers. They offer their good-for-nothing sons and salaried employes for members of the militia to keep down the rising indignation, and to shoot down the crowds of despairing workpeople; and just now they clamor for a large standing army, because they have found out that our government can easily be converted from a government of the people into one of the capitalists against the people. They have during these fifteen years robbed the nation of many thousands of million dollars through the National Banks, the three Pacific Railroads, and the Credit Mobilier swindles, through war and other contracts with the Government and States, and through Rings in all our great communities and concerns, through bankrupt Insurance Companies and Savings Banks, and in countless other ways they have robbed us; and are scheming for more such swindles. They have lulled the political watchfulness of the people to sleep, through their stump-speakers and newspapers, campaign tracts, and conspiracies between the two ruling parties. It is to them that we owe the rapid spreading of prostitution, of venality among public men and voting cattle, of beggary and pauperism, of crimes and malfeasance in office, of matrimonial scandals and rowdyism, of youthful profligacy, and of all the vices and evils of European society.
We ought, however, to reproach ourselves no less than them. We workers have tolerated their doings too long. We forgot, while prosperity lasted, "the watchfulness which is the price of liberty." We thought only of our own present advancement in the world, not of the fate of our children, and the destiny of the coming generations. We imagined that the fathers of the Republic had left us the heritage of a perfect politico-social fabric, although our dreadful four years’ Civil War should have taught us that they were erring men like all of us, and that every generation of citizens must improve their legacy, if it is to be adapted to the wants of the changing times. We have, through our recklessness, run so deeply into misery and corruption, that no slight reforms can help us out of our despondency, but that a complete, though gradual reconstruction of the entire social fabric is necessary. We are in the state of a patient who cannot be cured by any medicine, but by a thoroughly new mode of life only. In order to understand this more clearly, we must enter somewhat more fully into the nature of Capitalistic Production.
All the Old Nations had social institutions which made it impossible that any freeman could ever be helpless, disinherited, and unable to uphold his independence. He had a share in the common property of the tribe or the community, or in its proceeds, and could fall back on this last resource when all others failed. Now, at the end of the middle ages, and at the beginning of Capitalistic Production, this common property was everywhere in Europe legislated away, or first stolen by the powers that were, and the theft afterward sanctioned by law. Thus a disinherited class was artificially created, and by degrees reduced to slavery or enforced service at low rates of wages or income. This fact can be demonstrated by the very words of the laws then passed which have been preserved. As regards industrial pursuits, they were carried on in the cities by privileged guilds, which formed, at the same time, armed companies to defend their rights and cities from the robbing nobles and arbitrary rulers. These guilds guaranteed each other, and every one of their members an existence of some sort, so that nobody could be entirely helpless who was willing to learn a trade thoroughly, and took care that only skilled workmen should be educated. This latter benevolent provision was likewise destroyed by laws in the interest of Capitalist producers' or destroyed by their competition. The resistance of the working classes was but gradually broken down, so that the new generations of wages laborers grew up in the belief that their wages were a fair equivalent for their work, and that the capitalist employer was fairly entitled to all the additional profit which he might coin out of their work. And there arose a new school of "philosophers," called Political Economists, who tried to demonstrate on Scientific grounds that this could not be otherwise, that it was a divinely ordained and an iron natural law that there should be employing capitalists, and that they should be the benefactors of mankind by employing laborers who otherwise would starve, in advancing all kinds of industry and making them far more productive of merchandise than ever before, and by enriching thus the nations. And this seemed to be proven furthermore by a wonderful development of industry and private riches, when railroads were built, steam introduced into machinery, telegraphs were invented, and a world's commerce sprang up which led to a rapid settlement by millions of workers of countries like ours, and Australia, the Dominion of Canada, Siberia, and others. It was evident that only a concentration of capital could produce such wonders of civilization and progress, and capital began to be looked upon as far more important than labor. There arose a Religion of Mammon which overshadowed all other religions and all human ideals.
Of all this philosophy, which was imbibed by all of us with our mother's milk, not one word is founded in fact or truth, as we are going to show. But before doing so we must overthrow a mistaken popular belief.
It is undoubtedly true that an accumulation of riches is necessary in order to create and uphold our modern civilization. If all the goods and wares which human labor produces, were fully consumed by each generation, there would be no progress in any direction. Some economy for future improvements is practiced in every, even the most rude community, and was known for thousands of years—long before there was any private capital. But it is a mistaken notion that the accumulated riches must be private possessions, in order to benefit a community or a nation; this institution of private capitalism is of a comparatively recent origin, and was, in Northern Europe, hardly known a few hundred years ago. If all the means of labor be common property of the people, accumulation may be as great, or greater, than when distributed into private ownership. We shall prove this assertion beyond doubt. But we concede that the institution of private capitalism was in its day an historical necessity, and at first productive of more good than evil. It is only in its progress to absolute sway that it calls into existence an intolerable host of evils, and thus in the end, to which we are now approaching, works its own destruction.
After these concessions, we will prove to every honest person's satisfaction that private capital cannot exist without robbery, sanctioned by law. Suppose a workman lays up, in many years of labor and self-denial, a sum of $10,000, and the laws of the country did not allow him to loan this sum on interest, or to employ wages laborers at a lower rate than their real product of labor is worth. If he now ceases to work himself, he still owns his $10,000, and this sum may amply suffice to keep him in food, dwelling, and all his wants down to his death, by spending it dollar by dollar. But such sums are not Capital in the usual sense of the word; they do not grow, but decrease. Only what bears interest is called Capital; and interest is the fruit of the labor of others which is but partially rewarded. This example will be still more to the point if we further assume that the workman had invested in a farm the entire $10,000. That farm will abundantly support his old age, provided he is allowed to employ laborers at less wages than their work is really worth. But if there be no law allowing that, and he ceases to labor himself, he would certainly die of starvation on his farm. This example alone is conclusive. But we shall add some more proofs of the truth that only by unpaid labor private capital can come into existence.
Suppose the said workman had invested his $10,000 in a productive business in which he officers a number of wages laborers without doing anything but superintending their work, and buying and selling the incoming raw materials and outgoing merchandise. He realizes within a given time $10,000 profit, and now owns $20,000. If we subtract from this sum a moderate salary which he votes himself for his labor, all the balance of the $20,000 are the proceeds of the labor,—the unpaid labor,—of his employes. For his original $10,000 are gone by investing them in means of labor, raw materials, and wages, and must come back to him by selling the merchandise produced. Not only is the clear profit of $10,000 almost all the fruit of unpaid labor, but the return of the capital itself is secured chiefly by the fruit of that same unpaid labor. To make this still more obvious, let us assume that he hires one of his laborers to be superintendent in his own place, and does nothing himself but cash the net proceeds—is it not clear that, if his original investment is to return. to him, and to return in the double amount, all his $20,000 are the proceeds of partly-paid labor? This latter case is by no means an impossible case. Almost all the greatest Capitalistic Production is now-a-days carried on by share companies whose members have nothing to do but to vote who shall be manager, and to write receipts for their dividends.
But it may be objected that a great amount of talent, business experience, and circumspection is required to carry on some kinds of productive industries. Is it not becoming and just that these qualities should be well rewarded, being so rare? Well, let them have their fullest reward, is our answer; but no more than that. Why should there be an extra reward for the capital in the hands of that employer? Has capital a soul? has it talent, business experience, and circumspection?
Again, the objection may be raised that no capitalist would care for investing his money in industrial enterprises, unless these bear him an interest on the capital. Who then would introduce new industries and advance the progress of the nations? We answer that the necessary capital is of secondary importance, but the science and technical experience needed in every business is of the first importance. If a community, a state, or the nation have confidence in the mental and moral qualities of a number of Co-operative workingmen, and loan them, as to a corporation, the capital necessary for a certain industry without any, or at a merely nominal interest, the loaner would be more benefited by the increased capacity of paying taxes, on the part of the Co-operators, than by a high rate of interest. But we shall later see that it is scarcely necessary to support Co-operation by capital, if the public institutions and laws be different from what they now are.
The most absurd of all objections that commonly are heard in favor of Capitalistic Production is, that the capitalists who undertake industrial production are running great risks, and losing, during bad times, a great deal; and that, as a compensation, they should be allowed to indemnify themselves by corresponding profits in good times. We answer that they would not care to be simply indemnified for losses, if there were no excessive profits allowed. Their risks are altogether voluntary, and no sensible man thinks that they should be forced to such hazardous enterprises. The laborers, on the other hand, run far greater risks, and are by the force of circumstances driven to run them, but who indemnifies them? There is the miner who every day risks his life, limbs, or health in the pit, the mason and house carpenter on high scaffolds, and there are hundreds of branches of work, in which the average duration of life of the operatives amounts to less than 30 years, while that of the employing class is 60 years—who offers any indemnification to such risks as these? risks that, perhaps, might be avoided, if the employers were more humane? The unnecessary loss of lives, limbs, and healthy constitutions among the operatives of Capitalistic Production is truly fearful, and causes untold misery in their families,—all for the sole benefit of soulless capital. Nobody is allowed to take a single acre of raw land, or a city lot without paying for it the full value; but Capitalistic employers are allowed to take the most precious common property of the community and state,—human labor, health, and even life,—to underpay it to the laborer, and to throw on the community the whole burden of educating the laborers, of supporting them in old age, or when out of work, and their families, when not self-supporting.
But the chief arguments against the institution of private capital are yet to be established. It will readily be conceded that a well educated person who is skillful and thorough in his self-chosen branch of labor, represents a higher capital, so to speak, than a mere dunce of a laborer who is fit for the menial kinds of work only. The difference in value between the two may be as ten to one, or, more. Now it is a fact that Capitalistic Production needs less and less well educated and thoroughly skillful laborers, it renders them superfluous by a constantly increasing division of labor, and by a larger application and a greater perfection of machinery. It is in this way that millions of skilled and independent mechanics have been superseded entirely and thrown as burdens on the community, and other millions that might be intelligent and independent men, are kept in a decreasing state of moral and mental worth. Who indemnifies these men and the state for their incalculable losses?
It is one of the most disgraceful features of Capitalstic Production that one of the means to make labor cheap is the employment of women and children, who are satisfied with less wages, in the place of men who are thereby superseded. It frequently happens that while the wife and children from their ninth year upward are toiling for ten, twelve, or more hours in the close atmosphere and at the exhausting treadmill of the factory, the husband and father is out of employment and supported by the labor of his family. He is forced by dire need to sell his wife and children into a slavery that in some respects is worse than negro slavery ever was. Family life, paternal education, conjugal purity, the chastity of the rising generation of girls, are sure to be ruined by degrees, while public schooling ceases to benefit factory children. If this is not robbery, robbery protected by law, it is certainly more diabolical than robbery.
It is another feature of this system that there is in it a constant inducement to lengthen the working part of the day, and to render at the same time the labor more intense, uniform, mind-killing,—in short to make the wages laborer a slave who puts up with indignaties offered to him, who loses all power of resistance to tyrannical treatment, and becomes the mere tool of his task-master, part of his machinery, his voting cattle, and lickspittle. It is a matter of history that the English government had to throw legal obstacles into the way of this degenerating system, because the race of men from which soldiers and crews of the navy could be recruited, was dying out, and epidemics began to decimate even the well-to-do population. The factory and sanitary inspection and regulation laws which have ever since 1833 been directed to the remedy of this evil could, however, not have been carried by the influence of the workingpeople; it required the intervention of the landed aristocracy to somewhat relieve them from the shackles of the industrial lords, and it required the envious and revengeful intervention of the latter to somewhat relieve the agricultural "wretches" (that is the vulgar designation of the gangs of field hands.) In our own country we saw only last winter an effort of the mill owners in Massachusetts to increase by law the daily hours of labor (which in practice are as a rule lengthened in spite of the law) and would have been successful but for the manly opposition of our fellow-laborer George McNeill.} In fact the larger an industrial establishment is, the more the managers seem to act upon the belief that their laborers are their property, body and soul, and that those who oppose their absolute sway are pestilential demagogues and criminals. And the farther this industrial system spreads in any country, the more dangerous becomes the attempt of all who declare war against its abuses.
But we must still further prove that Capitalistic Production is, by the very nature of things, legalized robbery. We ask what is it that has made industrial production on an increased scale the order of the day? It is not Capital; it is the progress of the Sciences and Arts. It is the modern Discoveries and Inventions and improvements in their mechanical application. Who ever heard of a capitalist being a great inventor or discoverer? And who ever heard of great discoverers and inventors becoming great capitalists through their mental work? There may be some insignificant exceptions to the rule that mental excellence and the qualities requisite to the ownership of capital do not unite in the same person; but the rule is thereby only confirmed. For whenever a great and useful invention or discovery or improvement in industry has been thought out, it can—if the community does not furnish the means for its realization—be carried out only by an investment of capital, and private capitalists must be called in to aid. But they would be slow to embark in an outlay of capital for hazardous purposes. They want the lion's share in the profits, if they can be convinced that the new scheme promises well; their incredulity prevents many a useful new scheme from being carried out; their greed appropriates many an invention into the secrets of which they had to be initiated, and robs the inventor of either his honor or reward, or of both. Among our greatest American inventors Eli Whitney, Robert Fulton, the Brothers Goodyear, McCormick, Morse, and the unknown inventor of the sewing-machine, died poor. Thousands of others of minor rank in merit have died poor, broken-hearted, insane, and almost all the well-paying patents have not inured to the benefit of the really deserving men. Among our greatest discoverers and scientists a long list might be given of such as have not derived any great reward or even any reward at all for their meritorious work. hey were compensated by the thought that they had benefited mankind, and had discharged in this way a debt of gratitude which they owed to all previous thinkers and workers. For, what would even the most eminent inventor or discoverer be, if there had not a long series of thinkers and workers preceded him, each of whom advanced by a little the store of wisdom, knowledge, and power of mankind? Already in the earliest, darkest ages were invented the arts of weaving and spinning, of tanning hides and melting ores, of striking fire and cooking, of taming domestic animals and improving plants, of navigating and wagoning, and many more, of whose inventors no name has come down to us, so that all mankind must be taken as the creator of all of these. And last, but not least, the origin and very gradual improvement of spoken, and later, of written language, this most important means of progress, is it not the common work of all men that ever lived? Is it, therefore, not a sacred truth that all the means of progress and wealth are a common inheritance of mankind, because they are produced by its common work and gradual self-development? Is it not a thievish undertaking to fence in, as it were, Sciences, Arts, Knowledge and Skill, and their fruits, for the exclusive appropriation of a minority of men, instead of preparing and inviting all to enjoy them? Is it not enough that unjust laws give a few the power which lies in private riches, for political rule; must also the great and only redeeming and liberating power which exists in the human treasure of knowledge and_ skill, be made a tool for the rich to wield it for the debasement and subjection of the working classes? Is it not the worst kind of robbery to measure out a better kind of education to the upper-ten thousand, a worse one to the millions of workers? to enable by patent laws the capitalists to swallow up almost all the benefits accruing from inventions and discoveries, instead of rewarding the inventors and discoverers, and at once publishing their new schemes? to force, by a network of legal circumstances, the Scientists and artists into the service of private capital, instead of employing them for the furtherance of universal Co-operation among workers?
And not even in minor matters does our legislation protect labor from the robbery of capital. There is no lien law for unpaid wages, no law against the truck-system, no law against contract labor in our prisons; no law forbidding unsafe scaffolding in building operations; no law for the industrial education of apprentices; no law providing for the sanitary inspection and regulation of factories, mines, and conveyances (except in one or two places) and of workingmen's dwellings, etc., etc.
This is the gratitude of Capital toward its producers and protectors! Already Adam Smith, the first of all Political Economists, has confessed to us the truth that labor is the only source of all wealth, that capital will never produce anything without labor, and that it could not for a moment continue to exist without the protection which the great body of workers give it by their voluntary respect for the laws. No standing army and no police force, however numerous, could ever repress a majority of laborers who are smarting under the sufferings and indignities inflicted on them by capital, and prevent them from forcibly destroying its privileges or abuses, and from helping themselves to what they need. If those privileges and abuses are respected for the time being and attacked only in a lawful way, it is but the good sense and the wonderful patience of the workers which is the cause of the security and, therefore, of the high value of private property. It is not so very long ago that the Barn-burners in the state of New York destroyed by force the great feudal properties and privileges which had, by the English government, been conferred upon a few wealthy monopolists; and their deeds of violence were justified by great lawyers, and finally sanctioned by law. The revolutionary heroes of American history broke a great many of the laws imposed by England, and destroyed many vested rights and properties, and their names have come down to us revered and immortal. Every revolution destroys some vested and property rights, and the only difference there is between a revolution which is forever extolled and a riot against capital which is condemned is, that the former is successful, because upheld by a majority, and the latter is not.
We come to the last argument which proves that capital is legalized robbery. There could no capital whatever exist, if there did not exist private property in land. And for three reasons: 1. The laws which sanction private property in land, cause sooner or later a majority of citizens to be poor, and dependent for their livelihood on the owners of he means of labor. The greater the number of the landless, and the more dependent their condition, the greater is also their competition for employment; and the more the rate of wages is lowered, the greater is the rate of employers' profits—which are the origin of capital. In this downward tendency of wages the capitalists who are engaged in the same kind of production lend a helping hand. They compete among themselves to secure the best market for their merchandise, and the more so, the more there are countries with Capitalistic Production and varied industry, whose producers compete for the world's market. In this competition the greater capitals which can apply all the most modern improvements of production on a large scale, have advantages over the smaller. The greater the profits, the greater can be the accumulation of capital. The smaller the rate of wages, the greater can be the profits. Thus it is a double competition, that of the capitalists of all the world, and that of the laborers of all the world, which grinds, as between millstones, the laborers to dust, and reduces the large number of small capitalists to a small number of large capitalists, or real monopolists. 2. When private property in land is sanctioned, money becomes a far more valuable property than before, because it now can buy land. When land can lawfully be bought, sold, mortgaged, and encumbered, it is the best of all securities for money, and these two kinds of merchandise enhance each other in price, while that of labor sinks. When money can be exchanged for real estate, it can no longer be stolen, lost, burned, or annihilated, and for this reason it grows more valuable. When land can be sold or mortgaged, it assumes all the privileges of money, it becomes a value easy to exchange, to transport (the title, of course) to speculate with it, and to bring greater returns by improvements with borrowed money. Besides, when land can be sold or mortgaged, a far greater amount of money is needed to carry on the exchanges of goods than before; money is more in demand, and will be loaned out on interest only. This is the reason why all the established religions forbid the taking of interest. The Hindu, Mosaic, Christian, and Mahometan religions were all founded at a time, or in countries when and where land could not be sold; money then was not capital, it was considered unfair to loan it on interest, or at a high rate of it. All lenders on interest were styled usurers, harpies, robbers of the needy. But when, at a later epoch, land became private property and was sold and mortgaged, Hindus, Jews, Christians, and Mahometans (and the clergy foremost) disregarded their religious teachings, and by allowing interest the laws created capital. 3. But this system of capitalism once inaugurated, every kind of speculation, however immoral was admitted, and could not without inconsistency, ever again be stopped by laws. The owner of some capital could now borrow on credit so as to double or treble his investments in merchandise and his profits accruing therefrom, while the disinherited laborer enjoyed little or no credit at all. A crafty speculator could now buy up lands, food, raiment, or any kind of wares needed by the poor, and sell them at great profits which allowed him to double his capital and his credit within a very short period. Small capitals could now be united into gigantic capitals with corresponding credit, and undertake monopolistic enterprises which bore unheard of rates of returns, all from the unpaid labor of the workers. Real estate now rose to prices and assumed (in the fancy of the people) values of an almost ridiculous amount. We will not waste our space with a description of the gambling operations practiced at the Bourse, in which—though every nine gamblers may loose their capital to one big swindler—the loss is always in the end borne by the working people, the only producers, payers of interest, and taxes. We will only analyze how it is that most real estate has a most unreal, a fictitious value, and thus becomes the basis of all capitalism.
It is but natural that fertile lands should be considered more useful than barren ones, a location near a sea harbor more valuable than one in a neighborhood which is remote from all communications, because in the former case human labor can produce more value, within a given time, than in the latter. But this natural difference in the valuation of lands will not be very great, never at the rate of a thousand-fold or more. On the contrary, we find it to be an invariable law (in capitalistic times) that the price of the land increases with the population, and in new countries nearly twice as quick as the population (in the United States, from the first census of 1790 down to the last of 1870, the population was doubled in every 28 years, the value of real estate in every 16 years.) This law applies with equal force to the several portions of the country, so that in a neighborhood with one hundred people on one square mile, the price of an acre will, on an average, be nearly the four-fold of what it is in a neighborhood of but fifty people on one square mile. The exceptions to this rule are few, and can be accounted for without disproving the law. It is, therefore, the demand for land which raises the price, because the supply cannot be increased, and raises it proportionally more than the population increases, because that demand comes from new comers that are all landless, and must at once be domiciled and fed, the means for which demand are brought with them. A strong and steady current of immigration brings along with it two things or values which it costs the country nothing to produce—laborers that need not first be raised to the grown age, and money that need not first be earned within the country. The latter seeks at once security and growth by acquiring real estate, the former soon follow the example' by diligence and economy. In old countries the same law obtains, but the growth in the price is far slower, for the reason that those are countries from which emigrants come.
Every new-born infant helps to raise the price of real estate, and when grown to be a man or woman, must pay by surplus work that increase to the then owners of land and capital, just as he must help to pay the interest and to extinguish the capital of all public debts, which were, perhaps, contracted before he or she was born. That is law in the present Capitalistic world. Instead of placing every new generation on a better footing for a start in life, it diminishes the chances for a prosperous career to every new generation of laborers, in spite of the rapid increase of the wealth of the nation, because that is constantly accumulating in fewer and fewer hands, and with it go power and freedom.
Oh, that every worker might again and again ponder on this ultimate cause of all the bad times, present and future! Unless this cause be removed, no good times can return. This last or first cause is—the private property in land, on which capitalism in every shape is based. If you are a holder of real estate or a small farmer—you need not here throw this pamphlet aside—there is hope and security for your property, but only under the one condition that you study well and take to heart all the contents of this pamphlet.
No amount of specious sophistry can refute the truth that land cannot, should not, must not be made private property. Can water, air, sunheat, and daylight be made private property? And if not, can land be private property according to common sense and morality? There is no moral, equitable title to private property but work. There is no value ever created except by labor. If we, by our labor improve a piece of land, we certainly have a moral and reasonable title to the value of our improvement; but not to the land itself, because we did not create the land. It is a free gift of Nature, and no one can—in higher law—lay his hand on a piece of this gift which was given to all, and call it his own, to the exclusion of all others. To deny this would be as much as to say, that a handful of men should have the right to demand that all the rest must drown themselves in the ocean, if those few did not choose to tolerate their existence. In Scotland and in Ireland, as is notorious, millions of inhabitants were, within the last thirty years, forcibly exiled from the land of their birth and their inherited share of the products of the soil, to make room for sheep drifts or deer parks or cattle pastures, for the sole benefit of a few robbing land-owners. And even in our own state of Massachusetts, there are some dozen towns belonging exclusively to one person, or to one company who have the right to drive out of the limits of the town any one of their operatives who should dare to oppose their lordship's intentions. In Texas, there are whole counties belonging to one or a few great cattle raisers who may exile any inhabitant obnoxious to the lords. And all this is so late and rapid a growth that no one can deny that this system will spread very soon all over the country if a determined resistance is not organized.
The private ownership of the soil is commonly justified—not on a principle of moral right, but on a maxim of expediency. It is said this ownership is useful because it encourages the owners to improve their land, and so to make it far more fruitful for the owners and the State. Nobody would care to cut down the forests, to drain the swamps, to break and plough and improve the soil, to erect durable and ornamental buildings and fences on it, to build roads and keep them in repair, to plant trees and stock the waters with fish, etc., unless he knew that he could safely enjoy the fruit of all this labor down to his last days, and leave to his children and grand-children this land as their birthright. To this defense we must object that no sane person will try to destroy an inducement to such work, or blame the hankering of most men for a secure possession of a share in the soil and a life among the charms of nature. It just for this reason that we reformers wish to secure the blessings connected with a share of the soil to every mother's son who wishes for it. But for this purpose long leases—lasting, perhaps, several generations—are altogether sufficient; it is not at all necessary that the property-right in the soil should be granted by the National Government. There are two dangers of a most serious kind connected with this right. It implies that the private land may be sold, mortgaged, and encumbered, and, as we have seen would thereby bring into existence the system of private capitalism. And when it is sold, where is the argument of our opponents? where the benefit to the human heart, and where the improvement of the soil? The second danger is that the soil may not be improved, even by many subsequent generations of one family, or at least not in a manner to benefit the community. The more dense a population grows, the more prevails a common need of fertilizing the soil to the utmost, of husbanding groves, forests, or large trees so as to secure a sufficient amount of rain, dew, and snow at the proper time, a wholesome climate, and as many rural homesteads as possible for the necessary and always increasing agricultural laborers—in short what is called rational husbandry, or Scientific farming. This requires combined wealth and Co-operation of laborers according to Scientific principles. All the Nation is deeply interested in this provision, and can not satisfy this indispensable demand without having herself the only right of property, and without insisting that her leased land should be husbanded in the most productive way, and for the benefit of all.
Europe furnishes a warning example in all the lands along the Mediterranean sea, no less than the opposite shores of Africa. These countries were, two thousand years ago, the most fruitful and beautiful of the world, and richly fed 150 or 200 millions of cultured people, while now they are, in great part, a barren, sparsely peopled, and uncultured waste. This was brought about by the private ownership of the soil, which was, in the course of centuries, divided among a diminishing number of lordly owners who did not care for a prosperous and numerous yeomanry. The consequence was that all these lands were tilled by slaves, and could not withstand the repeated attacks of foreign warlike nations, in the wars with which, forests and buildings were destroyed. Rains began to fail, or when they came, they poured down in torrents which washed all the good soil down the slopes, formed pestilential swamps in the plains, and ruined the pastures by the cover of gravel and boulders which were swept down. No animals but goats could live along the hilly regions, and they ate all the young sprouts of trees, so that the barrenness went on increasing. Navigable rivers turned into sluggish brooks, aqueducts and roads decayed—in short, where once ten men could live in plenty as freemen, and produce the highest culture of ancient times, one or two miserable paupers, beggars, robbers, or boors now toil for the sole benefit of a few worthless nabobs. It is time in our own country that we should learn from such dreadful examples.
It would no doubt be an unwise policy to begin the fight against capitalism where its power originated, in the many small real estate owners, who may have escaped the swallowing jaws of capital. The real root of the evil is not the owners of the soil, much less the small owners—the real root is a principle, a false opinion and _ practice. The error is that there can be a private property in what we do not create, and that error leads to the immoral principle that it may be lawful and just to appropriate a portion of the fruit of the labor of others. And all the dangers, all the social ills that flow from that principle and its capitalistic consequences, may be uprooted by a law that forbids all sales of real estate after a certain year in the future; every sale after that date to be a sale to the state or government for a personal income during the life of the seller—or some other measure which puts an end to the money value of land.
From the moment that such a law is passed, the price of land, and with it that of money will gradually sink, and the price of labor will rise proportionally. Indeed, the transition from the present immoral and ruinous state of society to a prosperous future society built on moral principles, may be rendered as slow, gradual, and safe as is desirable to the majority of voters, but it cannot help being a sudden, revolutionary, and stormy transition if it be long delayed. It is perfectly in the power of our voters to adopt or to reject a moral and just principle in matters of property, but it is not in their power to prevent its natural effects. An immoral and unjust principle in property legislation will, with an iron force, and by and by with the velocity of steam, overthrow the prosperity of the people and the constitution of the state, and has, in bygone centuries, entirely wiped out many a nation and its culture. A moral and just principle in property laws, being akin to our better nature, will cure one after another the ills of Society.
The system of Capitalistic Production creates wealth for the few through the unpaid portion of the labor of the many. The system of Wages Labor is but another name for that of Capitalistic Production. All over the civilized world the loud cry of the masses is heard that Wages Labor must give way to Co-operation of the laborers, and it will soon be followed by the filling up of legislatures with real laborers only, mental and bodily laborers, to the exclusion of representatives of capital. If this future legislation through laborers for the exclusive benefit of labor is to be successful, we must not indulge in any illusions like that which now seems to have a hold upon the mind of the majority, to wit.: "That Capital and Labor should be in harmony." By that term "Capital" now-a-days private capital is understood. But it is an illusion, a dangerous mistake to suppose that private capital and labor could ever be in harmony. Private capital is a beast of prey that lives and thrives solely on human flesh and blood, on the substance of wages laborers. How can beasts of prey live in harmony with their victims? How can legal robbers and the robbed have the same interests? How can, then, a system of Co-operation become universal before the system of capitalist robbery and legislation is abolished? How can laborers, the great majority of whom are more and more reduced to slow starvation, undertake a successful competition in productive industry with the great capitalistic producers, or their giant monopolies? They never can do it, unless they have the legislative and executive powers of the state on their side; and even then they can do it only if their laws are calculated to utterly abolish the system of private capitalism.
Let us well understand what the "abolition of private capital" (or wages slavery) means. If to-day, by some miracle or revolution, all the great private capitalists and their companies could be removed from our country, would we to-morrow be any poorer for all that? No, we should be richer. They could remove only their persons which we now must feed, house, clothe, and protect, at the outlay of at least two-thirds of our labor product—these two-thirds we should thenceforth keep for ourselves. They could take along also all their legal titles to property within our borders, such as titles to land, mortgages, shares in moneyed institutions, policies, and the like, but all this is a sham value, worth nothing anywhere else, unless we pay interest on it, that is to say, unless we work at wages which are two-thirds two low, or, unless we work two-thirds of our time for lazy people. They could also take along their clothes and finery, diamonds, jewelry, coaches, and coach horses, their gold and silver money. But what of it—as much gold and silver money as we should want we could soon have dug from our mines. They could not take along what no human labor can create—lands, air, water, and sunshine; they could not take along what the accumulated labor of all mankind has created—Sciences, Arts, improvements of the soil, the laboring force of all of us, and all the means of labor, such as buildings, establishments, machines, conveyances. Oh, how much richer should we be! And what moral wrong would be done to them by our exiling them? We would do nothing but stop their lawful robbery which has continued so long. Individual cases of hardship might occur; there might be many innocent sufferers among them, but we would gladly guarantee them a well-to-do existence in our midst, if they would stay and go to labor in whatever branch they are capable of following. Or if not able to work, we would in some other way provide for them at home or abroad.
Now, in fact, we do not propose such a revolution. We laborers are less cruel, more humane than our legal robbers; we would even rejoice in keeping them among ourselves, and make good citizens, better men, and useful laborers of them. But our humanity must not go so far as to allow their robbery to continue among us. We are ready for all sorts of compromises with them, provided they agree that after a reasonable period, all capitalistic titles or sham values shall be extinguished, and that we in the meantime shall have our burdens lightened, a generous system of universal education carried out, and guarantees for the future given.
And this,—no more,—is what the Workingmen's Party of the United States—which stands on the same principles as the International Workingmen's Association, a powerful body of laborers with mind and body, spread over most of Europe—is about. Our platform and the methods of our present activity may be found at the end of this tract. We must, however, explain the same still more unmistakably.
In the first place, the improvement of Education, the universal propagation of all true Sciences and Arts, of a higher morality based on the dignity and value of labor, and the furtherance of freedom and justice through Education lie at our heart. As soon as a legislative compromise with our opponents can be had, we shall formulate—as has already in part been done in Europe—our demands with regard to all matters of Education. In the meantime our platform exhibits only the first fundamental planks in this respect.
As the social fabric of all the modern nations has, for centuries, been based on legalized robbery by the powerful, and the indifferent ignorance and slavish tolerance of the powerless majority, it is merely impossible to rear a new social edifice of a juster, freer, and truly moral sort on the present foundation of Eeducation. A great moral reform of the Nations is needed, and can be produced by rendering Sciences and Arts and the love for Labor universal. Teaching must be the most honored and influential profession and very attractive for all persons born with an aptitude to teach, and the education of the teachers themselves must be go complete and thorough, that none but the wisest and best persons shall be trusted with conducting all our schools and educational institutions, and shall have the management of the same as unhampered as possible by outsiders. In this way alone can "a higher humanity be inaugurated," and all the people be prepared to really govern themselves. So deeply are the bulk of our party imbued with this idea that already thousands of them have, in spite of a former neglected education, gone into serious study of such Sciences as History, Political Economy, Philosophy, and Pedagogy, Foreign Languages and Grammar and others, and can exhibit creditable progress therein. No less are the members of our party, as a rule, intent on reflecting credit on their family life; they fight not only prostitution, the curtailment of family happiness by factory labor of women and children, the sexual profligacy of the ruling classes and the wrongs embodied in our matrimonial laws, but they will be less liable to the charge of dissolute living than any other body of men.
It is now clear that our party, which recognizes no other property as just and moral than that which is produced by real labor, must have some sort of capital or accumulation of riches, by which labor can be made profitable. More than that. The system of Capitalistic Production is vicious only in so far as it is robbery of the labor product of others; but it was heretofore the only means to apply the grand modern discoveries and inventions of Science, and thus and by a progressive division of labor to render labor ten-fold, nay, a hundred-fold (in some branches) more productive of useful wares than it ever had been. This advantage of modern technical Science must not be lost in reforming society, but increased, far more increased than capitalistic speculators will henceforth be willing to allow. Every hour of labor which inventions take from man's hand and impose on some machine, should benefit the real laborer, and not a private tax-gatherer of an employer. The increased mass of merchandise should ennoble the life of the worker, and allow him to devote more and more spare time to his own and his family’s education, and higher recreations. The wealth created by an ever augmented productivity of divided labor should be the means to remedy the wear and tear of body and mind which one-sided productive activity brings with it, and to remedy it by an increasing leisure of the worker so that he may cultivate the neglected sides and inclinations of his natural endowment. It has been shown that even at present our machinery, chemical appliances, and minute divisions of labor are sufficient to produce with six hours' work a day (if all grown men are employed) all the necessaries and enough of the accustomed luxuries for everybody. Well then, why should the really deserving people, the creators of wealth, work from ten to twelve or more hours a day, especially when millions are out of employment, for the sole benefit of the undeserving speculators? Let us work eight hours, every one of us, and devote the proceeds of the two superfluous hours to the accumulation of capital, that is to say, to the increase of our means of labor; and when four hours a day will be as productive as six are now, let us work six, and so on to continue increasing our investment of common capital.
A common investment of capital, to the exclusion of all private capital—that is the prophetic cry of History. Our party has been (reproachfully) called the Communistic party. We do not indignantly repudiate that name, it is in our view no title of reproach, but rather an honorable name. But we indignantly throw the calumnies which our opponents connect with it, back into their faces. They play the contemptible old "stop thief" trick. It is not the robbed who need protest their innocence, as against their robbers. Honest laborers need not plead Not Guilty when they are charged with thievish propensities by life-long usurers, profit-mongers, and sharks.
Aye, all means of labor to be common property of the people, while the full proceeds of labor are to be private property. The laborer to be indeed, for the first time within many centuries, worthy of his full hire. Everbody to be at fullest liberty to choose a calling, to enter one of the National Trades Unions, which all and each govern themselves, and are governed by a compromise with all others and with the state, the latter leasing out under specified contracts the means of labor to the Trades Unions. The State or Nation to be really Democratic, since no law can be passed but which was first compromised with the advisory body or the Parliament of all the Trades Unions. Every citizen to be twice represented, once as a citizen in the Government, once as a worker, with his special interest in his Trade Union. No interest to be unrepresented, and all compelled to peaceably devise bills for the common and most equitable interest of all, and the Government to be unable to do great wrongs and to inflict great evils, but to be able to hear and carry out the wisest advice of all conflicting interests which must be harmonized by the Trades Unions. A Government, therefore, which is just as progressive as the march of Science and Education can demand, and just as stable as the Economical wants of each age will enforce. All the Nations which have been organized on the same basis, to enter into a compact for the abolition of all war and for a World's Court of Justice to settle amicably all Economical and Political differences or disputes. Reason and Science to have a universal field of advisory and executive action.
This is a meagre outline of the future organization of Society as far as it now needs to be foreshadowed. This is the goal at which present knowledge of the spirit of the times bids us aim, leaving the specialties to future consideration. It is useless to declaim against this conception as a mere fancy picture, against this goal as an impossible, or far too arduous undertaking. Historical necessities are "stubborn things," which we either must comply with or perish; and where there is a will there's a way. The world is full of wisdom and knowledge now to serve all our purposes, provided we give it fair play. Infinitely more wisdom and knowledge is as yet squandered to defend, uphold, and patch up old worn out immoral institutions and superstitions, errors and vices, than there is applied to the solution of a future moral society. There is no lack of means to advance mankind on the largest scale; all that is wanted is unanimity of the workers of the foremost countries to be no longer harnessed to the wrong side of the wagon of progress.
It is, of course, of the first importance that not one Nation alone should try to realize our schemes of the regeneration of Society, but several of the prominent ones at the same time; otherwise every thoroughgoing reform would be a failure. Private capital is now internationally organized and confederated, the Party of Labor can not conquer it without an International Brotherhood.
But we of the United States are in this respect far less advanced than Europe is. We have not thirteen National Representatives, as our brothers in Germany have; we have not two millions of Nationally organized Trades Unionists, as our brothers in England and Scotland have; we have not even that degree of organization and influence which our brothers have in some of the most brutally governed states of the Old World. We must hurry up to fall into line with them, and to do our share of the Emancipation of the Laborers of the world. But whether we will or no, we shall be compelled to do it, and the later we resolve to do it the greater will meanwhile be our suffering, and the more difficult or desperate our task afterward. The United States is the one civilized country in which the rule of Capitalism is least limited, its progress quickest, its prejudices and superstitions most deeply rooted among the working people themselves. There is among us far more to do toward weaning the latter from their egoistic isolation. They are wont to think that as members of a Church, or a Lodge, or some other small Benevolent Society they will forever be safe from the worst miseries. They fail to see that when the great majority of a Nation has once entered upon the downward path of impoverishment, all the channels of mutual help and benevolence must dry up; and that a great National, even a World's Crisis, like the present, cannot be overcome but by a great and general growth of the feeling of solidarity. The maxim thus far prevailing, "Every one for himself, and the dl take the hindmost" is played out, as we all can observe, and should yield to the great principle of the future, "One for all, and all for one."
As regards the measures which our Party Congresses have devised for our common immediate activity, none are of greater importance than organization of Trades Unions on a Socio-Democratic basis, and political action to obtain a law in favor of a work-day of Eight Hours and its faithful execution.
Wherever the old Trades Unions, which exclude political discussion and action, can be induced to give up that portion of their maxims, and to place themselves squarely on our platform,—because our Party is founded in an uncompromising hostility to both the old parties—there it is far preferable to increase their membership by new accessions. Where, however, this conversion is for the moment not feasible, it should be tried again and again, and in the meanwhile corresponding Trades Unions should be founded on our own basis and induce the old Unions to join their action to ours wherever they sympathize with it. The Unions of every kind should most energetically be expanded into National, International, and common local organizations of all. They should collect Labor Statistics within their sphere, subscriptions to our Labor Papers, and Party Demands at the hand of the Legislatures; they should join our public demonstrations, and take care that all their members may be converted to our party creed and membership. It is only in these Unions that all the followers of the same trade or profession can form an intimate acquaintance with the capacities and moral trustworthiness of each member, so as to have a sufficient number of fitting organizers of business in the new society of the future, when the State must trust them with the productive interests of all. And it is only there that the brotherly spirit of solidarity can be fostered, especially among the rising generation of workers who are not yet voters.
The Normal Work-day of, for the present at most, Eight (later of less) Hours, is a most urgent necessity. Hundreds of thousands of working people are out of employment, and without daily bread, but might find employment, and by earning their bread increase consumption which in turn would increase production and the confidence in better times; they might find it if those who have employment were not compelled by their task-masters, or their own wants, to work all the way up from ten to fifteen hours, and, of course, at starvation wages, too. The greater amount of leisure would enable our workers to devote more time and energy to the study of Labor problems and Scientific writings, and to recreation in family life and party festivities; and as less hours mean higher wages—a natural law, proven by the history of all Labor organizations—they would have their means for higher aspirations gradually enlarged. The Normal Workday is equivalent to a new Declaration of Independence, this time the independence of Labor from Capital.
These two measures need not stand in the way of other measures devised by our Congresses, but should be ever present to the mind of every member of our party. They are, as has been shown, not of a present only, but also of a perpetual future importance—the foundation of the Socio-Democratic policy of the future.
We must conclude—the rest of our Platform will explain itself.
We do not strike any bargains with any of the old parties—they have all alike been the tools of that private Capitalism which has made this land of plenty one of misery, and threatens the destruction of the Liberty of all of us and of the Republic itself. For that same reason we cannot compromise with the Greenback and Granger organization though we sympathize with some of their aims and with all organizations of real laborers. The platforms of these two latter bodies do not strike at the root of our complaints, and are even yet imbued with the Capitalistic spirit. We cannot yield any of our principles which were formulated by the united experience and wisdom of the Laborers of many countries. We cannot afford to waste time with such slender reforms as these bodies propose, and which are more difficult to carry out than our programme, because they contain no great moral principle, and are opposed by the Capitalistic class with no less energy than are our ideas.
What is needed is a regeneration of mankind, and the universal enthusiasm which an insight into its necessity alone can stir up. There is no shorter way to the great goal than a universal enlightenment of all the Workers of all the prominent countries in regard to the necessity and means of our grand effort of Emancipation. Whether we will or not, we must choose that way, because the growth of Capitalistic oppression hurries to that gulf in which we all, together with Culture, Freedom, Progress, and Humanity would be buried, unless we hurl into it that Capitalistic system itself.
Our war is a war of principle against principle. Our principle is a moral and irrefutable one, while the Capitalistic principle is utterly wrong, immoral, and ruinous. We are, therefore, fully convinced that our principle must be, and must soon be, completely victorious. It is for that reason that we deprecate and shun all violence, all wanton disregard of existing laws, how bad so ever they be, and all bloodshed, unless we be provoked and wantonly attacked, and forced to resist.
PLATFORM AND PRINCIPLES
OF THE
Workingmen's Party of the United States.
The Emancipation of the Working Classes must be achieved by the Working Classes themselves, independent of all political parties of the propertied class.
The struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Classes means not a struggle for Class privileges and monopolies, but for Equal Rights and Duties, and the abolition of all Class Rule.
The Economical subjection of the man of Labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor—the sources of life—lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence.
The Economical Emancipation of the Working Classes is therefore the great end, to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means.
All efforts aiming at that great end have hitherto failed from want of solidarity between the manifold Divisions of Labor in each country, and from the absence of concerted action between the Workingmen of all countries.
The Emancipation of Labor is neither a local nor a national, but a Social Problem, embracing all countries in which modern society exists, and depending for its solution upon the practical and theoretical concurrence and co-operation of the most advanced countries.
For these reasons, the Workingmen's Party of the United States has been founded.
It enters into proper relations and connection with the Workingmen of other countries.
Whereas, Political Liberty without Economical Freedom is but an empty phrase; therefore we will in the first place direct our efforts to the Economical question. We repudiate entirely connection with all political parties of the propertied classes without regard to their name.
We demand that all the means of labor (land, machinery, railroads, telegraphs, canals, etc.) become the Common property of the whole people, for the purpose of abolishing the Wages System, and substituting in its place Co-operative Production with a just distribution of its rewards.
The Political Action of the party is confined generally to obtaining legislative acts in the interest of the working class proper. It will not enter into a political campaign before being strong enough to exercise a perceptible influence, and then in the first place locally in the towns or cities, when demands of purely local character may be presented, provided they are not in conflict with the Platform and Principles of the party.
We work for organization of the Trades Unions upon a National and International basis to ameliorate the condition of the working people and seek to spread therein the above principles.
The Workingmen's Party of the United States proposes to introduce the following measures, as a means to improve the condition of the Working Classes.
1. Eight Hours for the present as a Normal working day, and legal punishment of all violators.
2. Sanitary Inspection of all Conditions of Labor, Means of Subsistence and Dwellings included.
3. Establishment of Bureaus of Labor Statistics in all States as well as by the National Government; the officers of these Bureaus to be taken from the ranks of the Labor Organizations and elected by them.
4. Prohibition of the use of Prison Labor by private employers.
5. Prohibitory laws against the employment of children under 14 years of age in Industrial Establishments.
6. Gratuitous Instruction in all Educational Institutions.
7. Strict laws making employers liable for all accidents to the injury of their employees.
8. Gratuitous administration of Justice in all courts of Law.
9. Abolition of all Conspiracy Laws.
10. Railroads, Telegraphs, and all means of Transportation to be taken hold of and operated by the Government.
11. All Industrial Enterprises to be placed under the control of the Government as fast as practicable and operated by free Co-operative Trades Unions for the good of the whole people.
Workingmen's Party of the United States.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS.
PHIL VAN PATTEN, corr. Sec., 103½ N. Wells Street.
BOARD OF SUPERVISION NEWARK, N. J.
Sections of the Workingmen's Party of the United States.
| Alleghany, Pa. | 3 | Sections. | Iowa City, Ia. | 1 | Sections. |
| Albany, N. Y. | 1 | Sections.„ | Jeffersonville, Ind. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Armstrongs, Penn. | 1 | Sections.„ | Jersey City Heights, N. J. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Baltimore, Md. | 2 | Sections.„ | Lawrence, Mass. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Bickars Hill, Baldwin Township, Pa. | 1 | Sections.„ | Louisville, Ky. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Boston, Mass. | 1 | Sections.„ | Manchester, N. H. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Brooklyn, N. Y. | 1 | Sections.„ | Menominee, Wis. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Burlington, Iowa | 1 | Milwaukee, Wis. | 1 | Sections.„ | |
| Chicago, Ill. | 3 | Newark, N. J. | 3 | Sections.„ | |
| Cambridge, Mass. | 1 | Sections.„ | Olnyville, R. I. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Cedar Rapids, Ia. | 1 | Sections.„ | Paterson, N. J. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Cincinnati, O. | 3 | Sections.„ | Philadelphia, Pa. | 3 | Sections.„ |
| Cleveland, O. | 3 | Sections.„ | Pittsburgh, Pa. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Council Bluffs, Iowa | 2 | Sections.„ | Rockville, Conn. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Detroit, Mich. | 3 | Sections.„ | Sacramento, Cal. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| East New York, L. I. | 1 | Sections.„ | San Francisco, Cal. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Evansville, Ind. | 1 | Sections.„ | South Bend, Ind. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Fond-du-Lac, Wis. | 1 | Sections.„ | Springfield, Mass. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Grand Rapids, Mich. | 2 | Sections.„ | Springfield, Ohio | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Hartford, Conn. | 1 | Sections.„ | St. Louis, Mo. | 3 | Sections.„ |
| Hoboken, N. J. | 1 | Sections.„ | Suterville, Penn. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Holyoke, Mass. | 2 | Sections.„ | Syracuse, N. Y. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Ilion, N. Y. | 1 | Sections.„ | Utica, N. Y. | 2 | Sections.„ |
| Indianapolis, Ind. | 1 | Sections.„ | West Meriden, Conn. | 1 | Sections.„ |
| Xenia, O. | 1 | Sections.„ |
We recommend the following Labor Papers.
"LABOR STANDARD," New York, (English weekly).
"EMANCIPATOR," Milwaukee, Wis., (English weekly).
"STAR," St. Louis, Mo., (English weekly).
"VORBOTE," Chicago, Ill. (German weekly).
"ARBEITERSTIMME," New York, (German weekly).
"ARBEITER VON OHIO," Cincinnati, O., (German weekly).
"VORWAERTS," Milwaukee, Wis., (German weekly).
"VORWAERTS," Newark, N. J. (German weekly).
"DELNIKE LISTY," Cleveland, O., (Bohemian weekly).
"SOCIALIST," Milwaukee, Wis. (German daily).
"ARBEITER-ZEITUNG," Chicago, Ill., (German Tri-weekly).
"VOLKS-STIMME DES WESTENS," St. Louis, Mo., (German daily).
"OHIO VOLKS-ZEITUNG," Cincinnati, O., (German daily).
"VORWAERTS," Newark, N. J. (German daily).
"THE VINDICATOR," Lynn, Mass., (English weekly).
"IRONMOULDER'S JOURNAL," Cincinnati, O., (English).
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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