Here I stand, just as I was created. I have two hands that represent my
labor power. I have some bone and muscle and sinew and some energy. I
want to exchange the use of these for food and clothing and shelter. But
between me and the tools with which work is done there stands a man
artificially created. He says, “No, no!” Why not? “Because you cannot
first make a profit for me.”
Now, there has been a revolution in industry during the last fifty
years, but the trouble with most people is that they haven’t kept pace
with it. They don’t know anything about it and they are especially
innocent in regard to it in the small western cities and states, where
the same old conditions of a century ago still largely prevail. Your
grandfather could help himself anywhere. All he needed was some cheap,
simple primitive tools and he could then apply his labor to the
resources of nature with his individual tools and produce what he
needed. That era in our history produced our greatest men. Lincoln
himself sprang from this primitive state of society. People have said,
“Why, he had no chance. See how great he became.” Yes, but Lincoln had
for his comrades great, green-plumed forest monarchs. He could put his
arms about them and hear their heart-throbs, as they whispered: “Go on,
Abe, a great destiny awaits you.” He was in partnership with nature. He
associated with birds and bees and flowers, and he was in the fields and
heard the rippling music of the laughing brooks and streams. Nature took
him to her bosom and nourished him, and from his unpolluted heart there
sprang his noble aspirations.
Had Lincoln been born in a sweatshop he would never have been heard of.
How is it with the babe that is born in Mott street, or in the lower
Bowery, or in the east side of New York City? That is where thousands,
tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of babes are born who are to
constitute our future generations.
I have seen children ten years of age in New York City who had never
seen a live chicken. The babes there don’t know what it is to put their
tiny feet on a blade of grass. It is the most densely populated spot on
earth.
You have seen your bee-hive—just fancy a human bee-hive of which yours
is the miniature and you have the industrial hive under capitalism. If
you have never seen this condition you are excusable for not being a
Socialist. Come to New York, Chicago, San Francisco with me; remain with
me just twenty-four hours, and then look into my face as I shall look
into yours when I ask: “What about Socialism now?” These children by
hundreds and thousands are born in sub-cellars, where a whole grown
family is crowded together in one room, where modesty between the sexes
is absolutely impossible. They are surrounded by filth and vermin. From
their birth they see nothing but immorality and vice and crime. They are
tainted in the cradle. They are inoculated by their surroundings and
they are doomed from the beginning. This system takes their lives just
as certainly as if a dagger were thrust into their quivering little
hearts, and let me say to you that it were better for many thousands of
them if they had never seen the light.
Now I submit, my friends, that such a condition as this is indefensible
in the twentieth century. Time was when everything had to be done in a
very primitive way, and most men had to work all their days, all their
lives, to feed and shelter themselves. They had no time, they had no
opportunity for higher development, and so they were what the world
calls “illiterate.” They had little chance. It took all their time and
energy to feed the animal; but how is it today? Upon the average twenty
men can today, with the aid of modern machinery, produce as much wealth
as a thousand did a half century ago. Can you think of a single thing
that enters into our daily existence that can not be easily produced in
abundance for all? If you can I wish you would do me the kindness to
name it.