poison upon me and upon my colleagues. For two months they have sat here and spat like adders the vile poison of their tongues, and if men could have been placed in a mental inquisition and tortured to death, these men would have succeeded here now, for we have been villified, misrepresented, held in loathsome contempt, without a chance to speak or contradict a word. Therefore, if I show emotion, it is because of this, and if my comrades and colleagues with me here have spoken in such strains as these, it is because of this. Pardon us. Look at it from the right standpoint. What is this labor question? It is not a question of emotion; the labor question is not a question of sentiment; it is not a religious matter; it is not a political problem; no, sir, it is a stern economic fact, a stubborn and immovable fact. It has, it is true, its emotional phase; it has its sentimental, religious, political aspects; but the sum total of this question is the bread and butter question, the how and why we shall live and earn our daily bread. This is the labor movement. It has a scientific basis. It is founded upon fact, and I have been to considerable pains in my researches of well known and distinguished authors on this question to collect and present to you briefly what this question is and what it springs from. I will first explain to you briefly what capital is:
Capital is the stored up and accumulated surplus of past labor; capital is the product of labor. The function of capital is to appropriate or confiscate for its own use and benefit the "surplus" labor product of the wage laborer. The capitalistic system originated in the forcible seizure of natural opportunities and rights by a few, and then converting those things into special privileges which have since become vested rights, formally entrenched behind the bulwarks of statute law and government. Capital could not exist unless there also existed a majority class who were propertyless, that is, without capital a class whose only mode of existence is the selling of their labor to capitalists. Capitalism is maintained, fostered, and perpetuated by law; in fact capital is law—statute law—and law is capital. Now, briefly stated, for I will not take your time but for a moment, what is labor? Labor is a commodity and wages is the price paid for it. The owner of this commodity sells it, that is himself to the owner of capital in order to live. Labor is the expression of energy, the power of the laborer's life. This energy or power he must sell to another person in order to live. It is his only means of existence. He works to live but his work is not simply a part of his life; it is the sacrifice of it. His labor is a commodity which under the guise of free labor he is forced by necessity to hand over to another party. The whole of the wage laborer's activity is not the product of his labor—far from it. The silk he weaves, the palace he builds, the ores he digs from out the mines, are not for him. The only thing he produces for himself is his wages, and the silk, the ores, and the palace which he built, are simply transformed for him into a certain kind of means of existence, namely, a cotton shirt, a few pennies, and the mere tenancy of a lodging house. In other words, his wages represent the bare necessities of his existence, and the unpaid-for or "surplus" portion of his labor product constitutes the vast superabundant wealth of the non-producing or capitalist class.
That is the capitalist system defined in a few words. It is this system that creates these classes, and it is these classes that produce this conflict.
