cannot have failed to observe that during the past half century society
has been sharply divided into classes--into a capitalist class upon the
one hand, into a working class upon the other hand. I shall not take the
time to trace this evolution. I shall simply call your attention to the
fact that half a century ago all a man needed was a trade and having
this he could supply himself with the simple tools then used, produce
what he needed and enjoy the fruit of his labor. But this has been
completely changed. The simple tool has disappeared and the great
machine has taken its place. The little shop is gone and the great
factory has come in its stead. The worker can no longer work by and for
himself. He has been recruited into regiments, battalions and armies and
work has been subdivided and specialized; and now hundreds and thousands
and tens of thousands of workingmen work together co-operatively and
produce in great abundance, not for themselves, however, for they no
longer own the tools they work with. What they produce belongs to the
capitalist class who own the tools with which they work. A man fifty
years ago who made a shoe owned it. Today it is possible for that same
worker, if still alive, to make a hundred times as many shoes, but he
doesn't own them now. He works today with modern machinery which is the
property of some capitalist who lives perhaps a thousand miles from
where the factory is located and who owns all the product because he
owns the machinery.
I have stated that society has been divided into two warring classes.
The capitalist owns the tool in modern industry, but he has nothing to
do with its operation. By virtue of such ownership he has the economic
power to appropriate to himself the wealth produced by the use of that
tool. This accounts for the fact that the capitalist becomes rich. But
how about the working class? In the first place they have to compete
with each other for the privilege of operating the capitalist's tool of
production. The bigger the tool and the more generally it is applied,
the more it produces, the sharper competition grows between the workers
for the privilege of using it and the more are thrown out of employment.
Every few years, no matter what party is in power, no matter what our
domestic policy is, how high the tariff or what the money standard,
every few years the cry goes up about "over-production" and the working
class is discharged by the thousands and thousands, and are idle, just
as the miners have been in this field for many weary months.
No work, no food, and after a while, no credit, and all this in the
shadow of the abundance these very workers have created.
Don't you agree with me, my brothers, that this condition is an
intolerable and indefensible one, and that whatever may be said of the
past, this system no longer answers the demands of this time? Why should
any workingman need to beg for work? Why forced to surrender to anybody
any part of what his labor produces?
Now, I ask this question, and it applies to the whole field of industry:
If a hundred men work in a mine and produce a hundred tons of coal, how
much of that coal are they entitled to? Are they not entitled to all of
it? And if not, who is entitled to any part of it? If the man who
produces wealth is not entitled to it, who is? You say the capitalist is
necessary and I deny it. The capitalist has become a profit-taking
parasite. Industry is now concentrated and operated on a very large
scale; it is co-operative and therefore self-operative. The capitalists
hire superintendents, managers and workingmen to operate their plants
and produce wealth. The capitalists are absolutely unnecessary; they
have no part in the process of production--not the slightest.
Now I insist that it is the workingman's duty to so organize
economically and politically as to put an end to this system; as to take
possession in his collective capacity of the machinery of production and
operate it, not to create millionaires and multi-millionaires, but to
produce wealth in plenty for all. That is why the labor question is also
a political question. It makes no difference what you do on the economic
field to better your condition, so long as the tools of production are
privately owned, so long as they are operated for the private profit of
the capitalist, the working class will be exploited, they will be in
enforced idleness, thousands of them will be reduced to want, some of
them to vagabonds and criminals, and this condition will prevail in
spite of anything that organized labor can do to the contrary.
The most important thing for the workingman to recognize is the class
struggle. Every capitalist, every capitalist newspaper, every
capitalist attorney and retainer will insist that we have no classes in
this country and that there is no class struggle. President Roosevelt
himself has declared that class-consciousness is a foul and evil thing.
Now, what is class-consciousness? It is simply a recognition of the fact
on the part of the workingman that his interest is identical with the
interest of every other workingman. Class-consciousness points out the
necessity for working-class action, economic and political.
What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that
is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they
suffer? Just one thing; it can be stated in a single word. It is
_Ignorance_. The working class have not yet learned how to unite and act
together. There are relatively but few capitalists in this country;
there are perhaps twenty millions of wage workers, but the capitalists
and their retainers have contrived during all these years to keep the
working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it
will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn--and they are
learning daily and by very bitter experience--to unite and to act
together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for
emancipation.
The workingmen you represent, my brothers, are in an overwhelming
majority in every township, county and state of this nation. You declare
you are in favor of united action, but still you don't unite. You unite
under certain conditions within your union, you get together upon the
economic field to a limited extent, but you have yet to learn that
before you can really accomplish anything you have got to unite in fact
as well as in name. The time is coming when workingmen will be forced
into one general organization. The time is coming when they will be
compelled to organize on the basis of industrial unionism.
At this very hour there is a strike on the Canadian Pacific. Eight
thousand workingmen who are more or less organized and who have been
wronged in many ways, have finally gone out on strike. There are other
thousands remaining at their posts and non-union men flowing in there
will be hauled to their destination by union men, and union men will
continue to work until their eight thousand brothers have lost their
jobs and many of them have become tramps. That is called organization,
but it is not so in fact. It is at best organization of a very weak and
defective character. Now, the right kind of organization on the Canadian
Pacific would embrace all the workers. They should all be included
within the same organization and then have one general working agreement
with the company so that if there was a violation of it, it would
concern every man in the service. But how is it at present? The
engineers, conductors, trainmen and switchmen are in separate unions and
after they have been signed up, the company can treat the rest just as
they please, for they know that if they strike and the others remain in
their service, as they are bound to do under their agreement, they can
very easily supplant them and remain in perfect control of the system.
We have had enough of that kind of experience and we ought to profit by
it. We ought to realize that there is but one form of organization that
answers completely, one in which all subscribe to the same rules and act
together in all things, and you will have to organize upon that basis or
see your unions become practically worthless.
Now let us consider another line briefly for the benefit of those who
have opposed political action. We are all aware of the trend of the
decisions recently rendered by the United States supreme court. Three
decisions have been rendered in rapid succession which strike down the
rights of labor and virtually strip organized labor of its power. Under
these decisions organized labor has been outlawed, and while upon this
question I want to suggest that this body at the proper time in its
deliberations put the following questions to the candidates for the
United States senate and house of representatives in the State of Kansas
and request them to answer:
In view of the fact that the United States supreme court has rendered a
number of decisions placing the working class at a tremendous
disadvantage in its struggle with the employing class for better
conditions, we respectfully submit to the candidates for the United
States senate and house of representatives the following questions:
1. Are you in favor of issuing injunctions against trade union members
because they refuse to patronize a non-union employer and advise their
friends to do likewise?
2. Will you introduce and vote for a measure setting aside the decision
of the supreme court of the District of Columbia in the case of Buck
Stove and Range Company against officers of the A. F. of L., making it a
criminal act for a labor union to place an employer on its unfair list?
3. Are you in favor of classifying trade unions as "trusts in restraint
of trade," as was done by the supreme court in the case of Lowe vs.
Lawler, and will you introduce a measure, should you be elected,
providing for the exemption of trade unions from the operation of the
anti-trust law under this court decision?
4. Do you endorse the supreme court decision making it lawful for a
corporation to discharge a man because of his membership in a labor
union? If you do not, will you introduce and vote for a bill setting
aside this decision of the supreme court and making it unlawful for a
corporation to discharge a man because he is a member of a trade union?
Here are these candidates in the State of Kansas for the United States
senate and house of representatives and if they are elected they will
have the power to control legislation, and it is perfectly proper that
you, as the representatives of the workers, should put these questions
squarely to these candidates and demand that they answer them. They are
very simple questions. The United States court has rendered a decision
to the effect that a trade union is a trust and that if it exercises
its legitimate powers it is a criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade.
That decision of the court congress has the power to set aside, and if a
man stands as a candidate for congress, in the upper or lower branch,
and appeals to you for your vote--and bear in mind he can only be
elected by your vote--it is right and proper that you should know if he
is in favor of the decision or opposed to it. And if he is in favor of
this decision he is your enemy.
Now, these candidates are trying to carry water on both shoulders. They
declare they will give both labor and capital a square deal, and I want
to say that is impossible. No man can be for labor without being against
capital. No man can be for capital without being against labor.
Here is the capitalist; here are the workers. Here is the capitalist who
owns the mines; here are the miners who work in the mines. There is so
much coal produced. There is a quarrel between them over a division of
the product. Each wants all he can get. Here we have the class struggle.
Now, is it possible to be for the capitalist without being against the
worker? Are their interest not diametrically opposite?
If you increase the share of the capitalist don't you decrease the share
of the workers? Can a door be both open and shut at the same time? Can
you increase both the workers' and the capitalist's share at the same
time? There is just so much produced, and in the present system it has
to be divided between the capitalists and the workers, and both sides
are fighting for all they can get, and this is the historic class
struggle.
We have now no revolutionary organization of the workers along the lines
of this class struggle, and that is the demand of this time. The pure
and simple trade union will no longer answer. I would not take from it
the least credit that belongs to it. I have fought under its banner for
thirty years. I have followed it through victory and defeat, generally
defeat. I realize today more than ever before in my life the necessity
for thorough economic organization. It must be made complete.
Organization, like everything else, is subject to the laws of evolution.
Everything changes, my brothers. The tool you worked with twenty-five
years ago will no longer do. It would do then; it will not do now. The
capitalists are combined against you. They are reducing wages. They have
control of the courts. They are doing everything they can to destroy
your power. You have got to follow their example. You have got to unify
your forces. You have got to stand together shoulder to shoulder on the
economic and political fields and then you will make substantial
progress toward emancipation.
I am not here, my brothers, to ask you, as an economic organization, to
go into politics. Not at all. If I could have you pass a resolution to
go into politics I would not do it. If you were inclined to go into
active politics as an organization I would prevent such action if I
could. You represent the economic organization of the working class and
this organization has its own clearly defined functions. Your economic
organization can never become a political machine, but your economic
organization must recognize and proclaim the necessity for a united
political party. You ought to pass a resolution recognizing the class
struggle, declaring your opposition to the capitalist system of private
ownership of the means of production, and urging upon the working class
the necessity for working class political action. That is as far as the
economic organization need to go. If you were to use your economic
organization for political purposes you would disrupt it, you would
wreck it.
But I would not have you renounce politics, nor be afraid to discuss
anything. Who is it that is so fearful you will discuss politics? It is
the ward-heeling politician, and isn't it because he knows very well
that if you ever get into politics in the right way he will be out of a
job? He is afraid you will get your eyes open.
Why should a union man be afraid to discuss politics? He belongs to a
certain party; his father belonged to that party and his grandfather
belonged to that party, and perhaps his great-grandfather belonged to
the same party, and that is probably the only reason he can give for
belonging to that party. He don't want anybody to suggest to him the
possibility of being lifted out of that party and into some other.
Parties change. The party that was good forty years ago is completely
outgrown and corrupt and has now no purpose but the promotion of graft
and other vicious practices.
Workingmen in their organized capacity must recognize the necessity for
both economic and political action. I would not have you declare in
favor of any particular political party. That would be another mistake
which would have disastrous results. If I could have you pass a
resolution to support the Socialist party I would not do it. You can't
make Socialists by passing resolutions. Men have to become Socialists by
study and experience, and they are getting the experience every day.
There is one fact, and a very important one, that I would impress upon
you, and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political
action.
No one will attempt to dispute the fact that our interests as workers
are identical. If our interests are identical, then we ought to unite.
We ought to unite within the same organization, and if there is a strike
we should all strike, and if there is a boycott all of us ought to
engage in it. If our interests are identical, it follows that we ought
to belong to the same party as well as to the same economic
organization. What is politics? It is simply the reflex of economics.
What is a party? It is the expression politically of certain material
class interests. You belong to that party that you believe will promote
your material welfare. Is not that a fact? If you find yourself in a
party that attacks your pocket do you not quit that party?
Now, if you are in a party that opposes your interests it is because you
don't have intelligence enough to understand your interests. That is
where the capitalists have the better of you. As a rule, they are
intelligent, and shrewd. They understand their material interests and
how to protect them. You find the capitalists as a rule belonging only
to capitalist parties. They don't join a working-class party and they
don't vote the Socialist ticket. They know enough to know that Socialism
is opposed to their economic interests. Now, both republican and
democratic parties are capitalist parties. There is not the slightest
doubt about it. It can be proved in a hundred different ways. You know
how the republican party treated the demands of labor in its recent
national convention. You know, or ought to know, what has taken place
under the present administration. You know, or ought to know, something
about the democratic party, national, state and municipal. If there are
those who say that the democratic party is more favorable to labor than
the republican party it is only necessary to point to the southern
states where it has ruled for a century. In no other part of the nation
are workingmen in so wretched a condition. In no other part are working
people so miserably housed, so wretchedly treated as they are in the
southern states where the democratic party rules supreme.
At this very hour miners in Alabama are on strike under a democratic
administration. I know the condition there, for I have been in the
mines. I know many of those men personally. I know under what conditions
they have had to work. I have been in the shacks in which they live and
have seen their unhappy wives and ill-fed children. I know whereof I
speak. Only in the last extremity have those men gone out on strike.
They bore all these cruel wrongs for years and were finally forced out
on strike. And then what happened? The very first thing the democratic
governor did was to send the soldiers to scab the mines. It doesn't make
any difference to you, if workingmen are starved and shot down, which
party is in power. It occurs under both republican and democratic
administration. There will be no change as long as you continue to
support the prevailing capitalist system, based upon the private
ownership of the tools with which workingmen work and without which they
are doomed to slavery and starvation.
Now, I repeat that this body should declare against this system of
private ownership and in favor of the collective ownership by the
workers of the tools of production. This will give you a clear aim and
definite object. This will make your movement revolutionary in its
ultimate purpose, as it ought to be, and as for immediate concessions in
the way of legislation by capitalist representatives and more favorable
working conditions, you workingmen have only to poll two million
Socialist votes this fall, and you will get those concessions freely and
you will not get them in any other way. You will not frighten, you will
not move the great corporations by dividing your votes between the
republican and democratic parties. It doesn't make any difference which
of these two parties wins, you lose! They are both capitalist parties
and I don't ask you to take my mere word for it. I simply ask, my
brothers, that you read and study the platforms for yourself. I beg of
you not to have an ignorant, superstitious reverence for any political
party. It is your misfortune if you are the blind follower of any
political leader, or any other leader. It is your duty as a workingman,
your duty to yourself, your family, to quit a party the very instant you
find that that party no longer serves you; and if you continue to adhere
to a party that antagonizes your interests, if you continue to support a
system in which you are degraded, then you have no right to complain.
You must submit to what comes, for you yourself are responsible.
Let me impress this fact upon your minds: the labor question, which is
really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is
solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the
capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will
remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you can stand
and are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will remain;
but when you unite all over the land, when you present a solid
class-conscious phalanx, economically and politically, there is no power
on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation.
As individuals you are helpless, but united you represent an
irresistible power.
Is there any doubt in the mind of any thinking workingman that we are in
the midst of a class struggle? Is there any doubt that the workingman
ought to own the tool he works with? You will never own the tool you
work with under the present system. This whole system is based upon the
private ownership by the capitalist of the tools and the wage-slavery of
the working class, and as long as the tools are privately owned by the
capitalists the great mass of workers will be wage-slaves.
You may, at times, temporarily better your condition within certain
limitations, but you will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves?
For just one reason and no other--you have got to work. To work you have
got to have tools, and if you have no tools you have to beg for work,
and if you have got to beg for work the man who owns the tools you use
will determine the conditions under which you shall work. As long as he
owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the
master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to
his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not.
Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that
humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a
free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence. You will never be
free, you will never stand erect in your own manly self-reliance until
you are the master of the tools you work with, and when you are you can
freely work without the consent of any master, and when you do work you
will get all your labor produces.
As it is now the lion's share goes to the capitalist for which he does
nothing, while you get a small fraction to feed, clothe and shelter
yourself, and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power. That is
all you get out of it and all you ever will get in the capitalist
system.
Oh, my brothers, can you be satisfied with your lot? Will you insist
that life shall continue a mere struggle for existence and one prolonged
misery to which death comes as a blessed relief?
How is it with the average workingman today? I am not referring to the
few who have been favored and who have fared better than the great mass,
but I am asking how it is with the average workingman in this system?
Admit that he has a job. What assurance has he that it is his in
twenty-four hours? I have a letter from an expert glass worker saying
that the new glass machine which has recently been tested, has proven
conclusively that bottles can be made without a glass blower. Five or
six boys with these machines can make as many bottles as ten expert
blowers could make. Machinery is conquering every department of
activity. It is displacing more and more workingmen and making the lot
of those who have employment more and more insecure. Admit that a man
has a job. What assurance has he that he is going to keep it? A machine
may be invented. He may offend the boss. He may engage in a little
agitation in the interest of his class. He is marked as an agitator, he
is discharged, and then what is his status?