into the private preserves of a plutocracy as brutal and defiant as any
privileged class that ever ruled in a foreign despotism; they see
machinery and misery go hand in hand; they see thousands idle and
poverty-stricken all about them while a few are glutted to degeneracy;
they see troops of child-slaves ground into luxuries for the rich while
their fathers have become a drug on the labor market; they see parasites
in palaces and automobiles and honest workers in hovels or tramping the
ties; they see the politics of the ruling corporations dripping with
corruption and putridity; they see vice and crime rampant, prostitution
eating like a cancer, and insanity and disease sapping the mental and
physical powers of the body social, and involuntarily they cry out in
horror and protest, THIS IS ENOUGH! THERE MUST BE A CHANGE! And they
turn with loathing and disgust from the Republican and Democratic
parties under whose joint and several maladministration these appalling
conditions have been brought upon the country.
The message of Socialism, which a few years ago was spurned by these
people, falls today upon eager ears and receptive minds. Their prejudice
has melted away. They are now prepared to cast their fortunes with the
only political party that proposes a change of system and the only party
that has a right to appeal to the intelligence of the people.
_First Socialist Congressman._
The political beginning of the Socialist party in this country is now
distinctly recognized by its most implacable enemies. A single Socialist
congressman has been sufficient to arouse the whole nation to the vital
issue of Socialism which confronts it. Victor L. Berger as the first and
until now the only representative of labor, has had the power,
single-handed and alone, to compel the respectful consideration of the
American congress, for the first time in its history, of the rights and
interests of the working class. To be sure the capitalists do not relish
this and so they have consolidated the Republican and Democratic forces
in Berger's district to defeat him, but the rising tide of Socialism
will overwhelm them both and not only triumphantly re-elect Berger but a
score of others to make the next congress resound with the demands of
the working class.
Now is the time for the workers of this nation to develop and assert
their political as well as their economic power, to demonstrate their
unity and solidarity.
Back up the economic victory at Lawrence with an overwhelming victory at
the ballot box! Sweep the minions of the mill-owners from power and fill
every office from the ranks of the workers! Deliver a crushing rebuke to
the hireling-officials of San Diego by a united vote of the workers that
will rescue the city from the rule of the degenerates and place it
forever under a working class administration.
_The Only Democratic Party._
The Socialist party is the only party of the people, the only party
opposed to the rule of the plutocracy, the only truly democratic party
in the world.
It is the only party in which women have equal rights with men, the only
party which denies membership to a man who refuses to recognize woman as
his political equal, the only party that is pledged to strike the
fetters of economic and political slavery from womanhood and pave the
way for a race of free women.
The Socialist party is the only party that stands a living protest
against the monstrous crime of child labor. It is the only party whose
triumph will sound once and forever the knell of child slavery.
There is no hope under the present decaying system. The worker who votes
the Republican or Democratic ticket does worse than throw his vote away.
He is a deserter of his class and his own worst enemy, though he may be
in blissful ignorance of the fact that he is false to himself and his
fellow-workers and that sooner or later he must reap what he has sown.
_Wages and Cost of Living._
The latest census reports, covering the year 1909, show that the
6,615,046 workers in manufactories in the United States were paid an
average wage of $519 for the year, an increase of not quite 9 per cent
in five years, and an increase of 21 per cent in ten years, but the
average cost of living increased more than 40 per cent during the same
time, so that in point of fact the wages of these workers have been and
are being steadily reduced in the progressive development of production
under the capitalist system, and this in spite of all the resistance
that has been or can be brought to bear by the federated craft unions.
Here we are brought face to face with the imperative need of the
revolutionary industrial union, embracing all the workers and fighting
every battle for increased wages, shorter hours and better conditions
with a solid and united front, while at the same time pressing steadily
forward in harmonious co-operation and under the restraints of
self-discipline, developing the latent abilities of the workers,
increasing their knowledge, and fitting them for the mastery and control
of industry when the victorious hosts of labor conquer the public powers
and transfer the title-deeds of the mines and mills and factories from
the idle plutocrats to the industrial workers to be operated for the
common good.
_Industrial Unity._
If the printing trades were organized on the basis of industrial
unionism the spectacle of local unions in the same crafts pitted against
each other to their mutual destruction would not be presented to us in
the City of Chicago, and the capitalist newspaper trust would not now
have its heel upon the neck of the union pressmen. For this lamentable
state of affairs the craft union and William Randolph Hearst, its chief
patron and promoter, are entirely responsible.
The Socialist party presents the farm workers as well as the industrial
workers with a platform and program which must appeal to their
intelligence and command their support. It points out to them clearly
why their situation is hopeless under capitalism, how they are robbed
and exploited, and why they are bound to make common cause with the
industrial workers in the mills and factories of the cities, along the
railways and in the mines in the struggle for emancipation.
The education, organization and co-operation of the workers, the entire
body of them, is the conscious aim and the self-imposed task of the
Socialist party. Persistently, unceasingly and enthusiastically this
great work is being accomplished. It is the working class coming into
consciousness of itself, and no power on earth can prevail against it in
the hour of its complete awakening.
_Socialism Is Inevitable._
The laws of evolution have decreed the downfall of the capitalist
system. The handwriting is upon the wall in letters of fire. The trusts
are transforming industry and next will come the transformation of the
trusts by the people. Socialism is inevitable. Capitalism is breaking
down and the new order evolving from it is clearly the Socialist
commonwealth.
The present evolution can only culminate in industrial and social
democracy, and in alliance therewith and preparing the way for the
peaceable reception of the new order, is the Socialist movement,
arousing the workers and educating and fitting them to take possession
of their own when at last the struggle of the centuries has been crowned
with triumph.
In the coming social order, based upon the social ownership of the means
of life and the production of wealth for the use of all instead of the
private profit of the few, for which the Socialist party stands in this
and every other campaign, peace will prevail and plenty for all will
abound in the land. The brute struggle for existence will have ended,
and the millions of exploited poor will be rescued from the skeleton
clutches of poverty and famine. Prostitution and the white slave
traffic, fostered and protected under the old order, will be a horror of
the past.
The social conscience and the social spirit will prevail. Society will
have a new birth, and the race a new destiny. There will be work for
all, leisure for all, and the joys of life for all.
Competition there will be, not in the struggle for existence, but to
excel in good work and in social service. Every child will then have an
equal chance to grow up in health and vigor of body and mind and an
equal chance to rise to its full stature and achieve success in life.
_Socialist Ideals._
These are the ideals of the Socialist party and to these ideals it has
consecrated all its energies and all its powers. The members of the
Socialist party _are_ the party and their collective will is the supreme
law. The Socialist party is organized and ruled from the bottom up.
There is no boss and there never can be unless the party deserts its
principles and ceases to be a Socialist party.
The party is supported by a dues-paying membership. It is the only
political party that is so supported. Each member has not only an equal
voice but is urged to take an active part in all the party councils.
Each local meeting place is an educational center. The party relies
wholly upon the power of education, knowledge, and mutual
understanding. It buys no votes and it makes no canvass in the red-light
districts.
The press of the party is the most vital factor in its educational
propaganda and the workers are everywhere being aroused to the necessity
of building up a working class press to champion their cause and to
discuss current issues from their point of view for the enlightenment of
the masses.
_This Is Our Year._
Comrades and friends, the campaign before us gives us our supreme
opportunity to reach the American people. They have but to know the true
meaning of Socialism to accept its philosophy and the true mission of
the Socialist party to give it their support. Let us all unite as we
never have before to place the issue of Socialism squarely before the
masses. For years they have been deceived, misled and betrayed, and they
are now hungering for the true gospel of relief and the true message of
emancipation.
This is our year in the United States! Socialism is in the very air we
breathe. It is the grandest shibboleth that ever inspired men and women
to action in this world. In the horizon of labor it shines as a
new-risen sun and it is the hope of all humanity.
Onward, comrades, onward in the struggle, until Triumphant Socialism
proclaims an Emancipated Race and a New World!
THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM.
Campaign Speech, Pabst Park, Milwaukee, Wis., July 21, 1912.
Friends, Fellow-Socialists and Fellow-Workers: The existing order of
things is breaking down. The great forces underlying society are
steadily at work. The old order has had its day and all the signs point
to an impending change. Society is at once being destroyed and
re-created.
The struggle in which we are engaged today is a struggle of economic
classes. The supremacy is now held by the capitalist class, who are
combined in trusts and control the powers of government. The middle
class is struggling desperately to hold its ground against the inroads
of its trustified and triumphant competitors.
This war between the great capitalists who are organized in trusts and
fortified by the powers of government and the smaller capitalists who
constitute the middle class, is one of extermination. The fittest, that
is to say the most powerful, will survive. This war gives rise to a
variety of issues of which the tariff is the principal one, and these
issues are defined in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic
parties.
With this war between capitalists for supremacy in their own class and
the issues arising from it, the working class have nothing to do, and if
they are foolish enough to allow themselves to be drawn into these
battles of their masters, as they have so often done in the past, they
must continue to suffer the consequences of their folly.
_Parties Express Economic Interests._
Let us clearly recognize the forces that are undermining both of the old
capitalist parties, creating a new issue, and driving the working class
into a party of their own to do battle with their oppressors in the
struggle for existence.
Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those
who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the
capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the
Socialist party the working class.
There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic
parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist
parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences
as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of
the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists.
The Republican and Democratic parties are alike threatened with
destruction. Their day of usefulness is past and they among them who see
the handwriting on the wall and call themselves "Progressives" and
"Insurgents," are struggling in vain to adjust these old parties to the
new conditions.
_Two Economic Classes._
Broadly speaking, there are but two economic classes and the ultimate
struggle will narrow down to two political parties. To the extent that
the workers unite in their own party, the Socialist party, the
capitalists, large and small, are driven into one and the same party.
This has happened already in a number of local instances, notably in the
City of Milwaukee. Here there is no longer a Republican or Democratic
party. These have merged in the same party and it is a capitalist party,
by whatever name it may be known.
Temporarily this united capitalist party, composed of the two old ones,
may stem the tide of Socialist advance, but nothing more clearly reveals
the capitalist class character of the Republican and Democratic parties
to their own undoing and the undoing of the capitalist system they
represent.
The great capitalists are all conservatives, "standpatters"; they have a
strangle-hold upon the situation with no intention of relaxing their
grip. Taft and Roosevelt are their candidates. It may be objected that
Roosevelt is a "Progressive." That is sheer buncombe. Roosevelt was
president almost eight years and his record is known. When he was in
office and had the power, he did none of the things, nor attempted to do
any of the things he is now talking about so wildly. On the contrary, a
more servile functionary to the trusts than Theodore Roosevelt never sat
in the presidential chair.
_La Follette vs. Roosevelt._
Senator La Follette now makes substantially this same charge against
Roosevelt, but by some strange oversight the senator did not discover
that Roosevelt's presidential record was a trust record until after
Roosevelt threw him down in the "Progressive" scramble for the
Republican nomination.
When Senator La Follette supposed he had Roosevelt's backing, he
pronounced him "the greatest man in the world," and it was only after he
fell victim to Roosevelt's duplicity that he made the discovery that
Roosevelt had always been the tool of the trusts and the enemy of the
people.
_Test of Parties._
There is one infallible test that fixes the status of a political party
and its candidates. Who finances them?
With this test applied to Theodore Roosevelt we have no trouble in
locating him. He is above all "a practical man." He was practical in
allowing the steel trust to raid the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; he
was practical when he legalized the notorious "Alton Steal"; he was
practical when he had Harriman raise $240,000 for his campaign fund, and
he is practical now in having the steel trust and the harvester trust,
who made an anteroom of the White House when he was president, pour out
their slush funds by millions to put him back in the White House and
keep him there.
_Financed by the Trusts._
Taft and Roosevelt, and the Republican party of which they are the
candidates, are all financed by the trusts, and is it necessary to add
that the trusts also consist of practical men and that they do not
finance a candidate or a party they do not control?
Is the man not foolish, to the verge of being feeble-minded, who
imagines that great trust magnates, such as Perkins, McCormick and
Munsey, are flooding the country with Roosevelt money because he is the
champion of progressive principles and the friend of the common people?
The truth is that if the Bull Moose candidate dared to permit an
itemized publication of his campaign contributions in his present mad
and disgraceful pursuit of the presidency, as he has been so often
challenged to do by Senator La Follette, it would paralyze him and
scandalize the nation.
Roosevelt must stand upon the record he made when he was president and
had the power, and not upon his empty promises as a ranting demagogue
and a vote-seeking politician.
For the very reason that the trusts are pouring out their millions to
literally buy his nomination and election and force him into the White
House for a third term, and if possible for life, the people should rise
in their might and repudiate him as they never have repudiated a
recreant official who betrayed his trust.
So much for the Republican party, led by Lincoln half a century ago as
the party of the people in the struggle for the overthrow of chattel
slavery, and now being scuttled by Taft and Roosevelt in base servility
to the plutocracy.
_The Democratic Party._
The Democratic party, like its Republican ally, is a capitalist party,
the only difference being that it represents the minor divisions of the
capitalist class. It is true that there are some plutocrats and trust
magnates in the Democratic party, but as a rule it is composed of the
smaller capitalists who have been worsted by the larger ones and are now
demanding that the trusts be destroyed and, in effect, that the laws of
industrial evolution be suspended.
The Democratic party, like the Republican party, is financed by the
capitalist class. Belmont, Ryan, Roger Sullivan, Taggart and Hinky Dink
are liberal contributors to its fund. The Tammany organization in New
York, notorious for its corruption and for its subserviency to the
powers that rule in capitalist society, is one of the controlling
factors in the Democratic party.
Woodrow Wilson is the candidate of the Democratic party for president.
He was seized upon as a "progressive"; as a man who would appeal to the
common people, but he never could have been nominated without the votes
controlled by Tammany and the "predatory interests" so fiercely
denounced in the convention by William Jennings Bryan.
It is true that Woodrow Wilson was not the first choice of Belmont,
Ryan, Murphy and the Tammany corruptionists, but he was nevertheless
satisfactory to them or they would not have agreed to his nomination,
and since the convention it is quite apparent that Wilson has a working
agreement and a perfect understanding with the predatory interests which
Bryan sought to scourge from the convention.
_Bryan and Wilson._
In his speech before the delegates denouncing Ryan, Belmont and Murphy,
Bryan solemnly declared that no candidate receiving their votes and the
votes of Murphy's "ninety wax figures" could have his support. Woodrow
Wilson received these votes and without these and other votes controlled
by "the interests" he could not have been nominated, and if Bryan now
supports him he simply stultifies himself before the American people.
Mr. Wilson is no more the candidate of the working class than is Mr.
Taft or Mr. Roosevelt. Neither one of them has ever been identified with
the working class, has ever associated with the working class, except
when their votes were wanted, or would dare to avow himself the
candidate of the working class.
When the recent strikes occurred at Perth Amboy and other industrial
centers in New Jersey, Governor Woodrow Wilson ordered the militia out
to shoot down the strikers just as Governor Theodore Roosevelt ordered
out the soldiers to murder the strikers at Croton Dam, N. Y., for
demanding the enforcement of the state laws against the contractors.
_They Reek With Corruption._
Both the Republican and Democratic parties reek with corruption in their
servility to the capitalist class, and both are torn with strife in
their mad scramble for the spoils of office.
The Democratic party has had little excuse for existence since the
Civil War, and its utter impotency to deal with present conditions was
made glaringly manifest during its brief lease of power under the
Cleveland administration. Should this party succeed to national power
once more, seething as it is with conflicting elements which are held
together by the prospect of official spoils, its career as a national
party would be brought to an early close by self-destruction.
The Republican convention at Chicago and the Democratic convention at
Baltimore were composed of professional politicians, office-holders,
office-seekers, capitalists, retainers, and swarms of parasites and
mercenaries of all descriptions.
There were no workingmen in either convention. They were not fit to be
there. All they are fit for is to march in the mud, yell themselves
hoarse, and ratify the choice of their masters on election day.
The working class was not represented in the Republican convention at
Chicago or the Democratic convention at Baltimore. Those were the
political conventions of the capitalist class and the few flattering
platform phrases in reference to labor were incorporated for the sole
purpose of catching the votes of the working class.
Let the American workers remember that they are not fit to sit as
delegates in a Republican or Democratic national convention; that they
are not fit to write a Republican or Democratic national platform; that
all they are fit for is to elect the candidates of their masters to
office so that when they go out on strike against starvation they may
be shot dead in their tracks as the reward of their servility to their
masters and their treason to themselves.
_Vital Issue Ignored._
The vital issue before the country and the world is not touched, nor
even mentioned in the Republican or Democratic platforms. Wage-slavery
under capitalism, the legalized robbery of the workers of what is
produced by their labor, is the fundamental crime against modern
humanity, but there is no room for the mention of this vital fact, this
living issue in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties.
They continue to babble about the tariff and other inconsequential
matters to obscure the real issue and wheedle the workers into voting
them into power once more.
These parties have been in power all these years, why have they not
settled the tariff and the currency and such other matters as make up
their platform pledges?
_Let Them Act Now._
While the Republican convention was in session at Chicago and while the
Democratic convention was in session at Baltimore, the Republican and
Democratic congress was also in session at Washington. These parties
already have the power to make good their promises, then why do they not
exercise that power to redeem their pledges and afford relief to the
people?
In other words, why do not the Republican and Democratic parties
perform at Washington instead of promising at Chicago and Baltimore? How
many more years of power do they require to demonstrate that they are
the parties of the capitalist class and that they never intend to
legislate in the interest of the working class, or provide relief for
the suffering people.
The Republican and Democratic platforms are filled with empty platitudes
and meaningless phrases, but they are discreetly silent about the
millions of unemployed, about the starvation wages of factory slaves,
about the women and children who are crushed, debased and slowly
tortured to death by the moloch of capitalism, about the white slave
traffic, about the bitter poverty of the masses and their hopeless
future, and about every other vital question which is worthy of an
instant's consideration by any intelligent human being.
_The Socialist Party._
In contrast with these impotent, corrupt and senile capitalist parties,
without principles and without ideals, stands the virile young working
class party, the international Socialist party of the world. The
convention which nominated its candidates and wrote its platform at
Indianapolis was a working class convention.