You may have plenty of money. The poorest people on this earth are those
who have most money. A man is said to be poor who has none, but he is a
pauper who has nothing else. Now this farmer, what does he know about
literature? After his hard day’s work is done, here he sits in his
little shack. He is fed, and his animal wants are satisfied. It is at
this time that a man begins to live. It is not while you work and slave
that you live. It is when you have done your work honestly, when you
have contributed your share to the common fund, that you begin to live.
Then, as Whitman said, you can take out your soul; you can commune with
yourself; you can take a comrade by the hand and you can look into his
eyes and down into his soul, and in that holy communion you live. And if
you don’t know what that is, or if you are not at least on the edge of
it, it is denied you to even look into the promised land.
Now this farmer knows nothing about the literature of the world. All its
libraries are sealed to him. So far as he is concerned; Homer and Dante
and Dickens might as well not have lived; Beethoven, Liszt and Wagner,
and all those musicians whose art makes the common atmosphere blossom
with harmony, never have been for this farmer. He knows nothing about
poetry or art. Never rises above the animal plane upon which he is
living. Within fifteen minutes after he has ceased to live he is
forgotten; the next generation doesn’t know his name, and the world
doesn’t know he ever lived. That is life under the present standard.
You tell me that is all the farmer is fit for? What do I propose to do
for that farmer? Nothing. I only want him to know that he is robbed
every day in the week, and if I can awaken him to the fact that he is
robbed under the capitalist system he will fall into line with the
Socialist movement, and will march to the polls on election day, and
instead of casting his vote to fasten the shackles upon his limbs more
firmly, he will vote for his emancipation. All I have to do is to show
that farmer, that day laborer, that tramp, that they are victims of this
system, that their interests are identical, that they constitute the
millions and that the millions have the votes. The Rockefellers have the
dollars, but we have the votes; and when we have sense enough to know
how to use the votes we will have not only the votes but the dollars for
all the children of men.