I don’t hate the workingman because he has turned against me. I know the
poor fellow is too ignorant to understand his self-interest, and I know
that as a rule the workingman is the friend of his enemy and the enemy
of his friend. He votes for men who represent a system in which labor is
simply merchandise; in which the man who works the hardest and longest
has the least to show for it.
If there is a man on this earth who is entitled to all the comforts and
luxuries of this life in abundance it is the man whose labor produces
them. If he is not, who is? Does he get them in the present system?
And, mark you, I am not speaking in a partisan sense this afternoon. I
appreciate the fact that you have come here as republicans and democrats
as well as Socialists to do me a personal honor, and I would be
ungrateful, indeed, if I took advantage of such an occasion to speak to
you in an offensive partisan sense. I wish to say in the broadest
possible way that I am opposing the system under which we live today
because I believe it is subversive of the best interests of the people.
I am not satisfied with things as they are, and I know that no matter
what administration is in power, even were it a Socialist
administration, there will be no material change in the condition of the
people until we have a new social system based upon the mutual economic
interests of the whole people; until you and I and all of us
collectively own those things that we collectively need and use.
That is a basic economic proposition. As long as a relatively few men
own the railroads, the telegraph, the telephone, own the oil fields and
the gas fields and the steel mills and the sugar refineries and the
leather tanneries—own, in short, the sources and means of life—they will
corrupt our politics, they will enslave the working class, they will
impoverish and debase society, they will do all things that are needful
to perpetuate their power as the economic masters and the political
rulers of the people. Not until these great agencies are owned and
operated by the people can the people hope for any material improvement
in their social condition.
Is the condition fair today, and satisfactory to the thinking man?