The cause of the striking girls at Wallack's shirt factory is not only the cause of womanhood throughout the world; it is also the entering wedge for the great problem, 'What are rights of labor?' It must be obvious to every senator and congressman and to every dabbler in political economy that life is not worth living when honest girls cannot support themselves by sixty hours of intense labor. It is idle to prate about the great laws of supply and demand in the face of this present fact that an honest girl, who works ceaselessly throughout the week, has not enough wages to pay for her board and clothes. In America we change conditions and right wrong by inquiry. In Europe a social revolution is brewing, however, before which the great revolution of France will pale."
I merely quoted this article in order to show that class of people who are crying out that our grievances are imaginary—that these grievances are facts—not imaginary.
Well, now, I come to consider our city of Chicago. Take the management of the political affairs of the city, your honor. They are noted for their political corruption. Take these policemen—now, I do not abuse the policemen; the policeman is a workingman the same as I am. Now, a man's standing on the police force, it is notorious, depends entirely upon his ability and his willingness to club, and club often—hit everything that comes along and drag it in. The policemen have to get their positions through the aldermen. It is notorious that they have to use corrupt methods to do it, and when a man is once on the force, imagine how subject he is to his higher officials. Whatever his superior hands him to do he must do. He must obey. He must do it or he will lose his job. I do not blame the police. It is not individuals that I blame at all. I say here as I said at the Haymarket—it is not individuals, it is not against the man, but it is against the system that produces these things that we contend. We object to that.
The charge is made that we are "foreigners," as though it were a crime to be born in some other country.
My ancestors came to this country a good while ago. My friend Neebe here is the descendant of a Pennsylvania Dutchman. He and I are the only two who had the fortune, or the misfortune, as some people may look at it—I don't know and I don't care—to be born in this country. My ancestors had a hand in drawing up and maintaining the Declaration of Independence. My great great grand-uncle lost a hand at the Battle of Bunker Hill. I had a great great grand-uncle with Washington at Braddywine, Monmouth and Valley Forge. I have been here long enough, I think, to have rights guaranteed at least in the constitution of the country. I am an internationalist.
My patriotism covers more than the boundary lines of a single State; the world is my country, all mankind my countrymen. That is what the emblem of the red flag signifies; it is the symbol of the free, of emancipated labor. The workers are without a country. In all the lands they are disinherited, and America is no exception. The wage slaves are the dependent hirelings of the rich in every land. They are everywhere social pariahs without home or country. As they create all wealth, so also they fight every battle, not for themselves but for their masters. There is an end to this self-degradation. In the future labor will fight only in self-defense and work for itself and not
