Can you tell me why there wasn’t a tramp in the United States in 1860?
In that day, if some one had said “tramp,” no one would have known what
was meant by it. If human nature is innately depraved and men would
rather ride on brake-beams and sleep in holes and caves instead of
comfortable beds, if they would do that from pure choice and from
natural depravity, why were they not built that way fifty years ago?
Fifty years ago capitalism was in its earlier stages. Fifty years ago
work was still mainly done by hand, and every boy could learn a trade
and every boy could master the tools and go to work. That is why there
were no tramps. In fifty years that simple tool has become a mammoth
machine. It gets larger and larger all the time. It has crowded the hand
tool out of production. With the machine came the capitalist.
There were no capitalists, nor was there such a thing as capital before
the beginning of the present system. Capitalists came with machinery. Up
to the time that machinery supplanted the hand tool the little employer
was himself a workingman. No matter what the shop or factory, you would
find the employer working side by side with his men. He was a superior
workman who got more orders than he could fill and employed others to
help him, but he had to pay them the equivalent of what they produced
because if he did not they would pack up their tools and go into
business for themselves.
Now, the individual tool has become the mammoth machine. It has
multiplied production by hundreds. The old tool was individually owned
and used. The modern tool, in the form of a great machine, is social in
every conception of it. Look at one of these giant machines. Come to the
Appeal office and look at the press in operation. Here the progressive
conception of the ages is crystallized. What individual shall put his
hand on this social agency and say, “This is mine! He who would apply
labor here must first pay tribute to me.”
The hand tool has been very largely supplanted by this machine. Not many
tools are left. You are still producing in a very small way here in
Girard, but your production is flickering out gradually. It is but a
question of time until it will expire entirely. In spite of all that can
be said or done to the contrary production is organizing upon a larger
and larger scale and becoming entirely co-operative. This has crowded
out the smaller competitor and gradually opened the way for a new social
order.