POSSIBLE FRUITS OF VICTORY.
We have considered, and we hope with charitable eyes, the scenes
resulting from the victory in that skirmish at Homestead, between
Carnegie, Frick, and the Common People; we have thought of the
result of the picket fire at Buffalo between organized labor and the
combination of capital represented by the New York Central Railroad;
both of which engagements, while only out-post encounters of the
on-marching army of the Common People, were decisive victories for the
capitalists, the sham aristocrats, believers in “caste.” In the name
of law and order (so dear to the American heart) they had appealed to
the power of the State to protect, with militia, their property, and
that militia, ever loyal and truly American, had responded to the call
of the Executives (both Democrats) of the two most powerful States in
the Union. That militia, largely composed of poor men, and men of the
people, absolutely abhorring anything like the disregard of established
laws, had responded to the call of the Governor of each respective
State, New York and Pennsylvania. Law and order were re-established by
the people of which the militia is but part. Two Democratic Governors,
like patriotic citizens that they are, had bowed their heads before
enacted laws--no matter what their personal feeling may have been upon
the subject--and granted protection to the property of the capitalists,
who, as citizens of each State, were entitled thereto, no matter by
what means the capitalists and sham aristocrats may have acquired
that property. The result of the action of these two Governors, and
the acquiescence by the people and the support of the militia, is
incontestible evidence that Socialism and Anarchism have no home in
America.
The people accepted the result, as did the people of Homestead
starvation and distress, because its presence at every hearth became
a matter of trifling consequence; each hearth of the poor “Common
People” of America is illuminated and warmed by the patriotic fires
lighted thereon by our forefathers in 1776. The law must be obeyed!
As long as that law exists, unrepealed, unmodified, or unamended, it
must be obeyed! And the might of the people, the “Common People,” the
Abraham Lincoln party, the Andrew Jackson party, the Thomas Jefferson
party, and the Grover Cleveland party, all guarantee the enforcement
of every law upon our statute-books. And the chiefest of these is the
Constitution of the United States of America, wherein is guaranteed
the franchise of every citizen; wherein is declared that the “majority
shall rule in America.” The poor, the “Common People,” have suffered
defeat in their strikes and attempted resistance to the claim of social
difference existing in our country. They have borne the arrogance,
insults, and wrongs inflicted by a sham aristocracy. All attempts at
correction of the evil have proved abortive.
On November 8, 1892, the “Common People” resorted to that most
efficacious of remedies in this great Republic, the ballot-box; and
their victory was as great and pronounced as their suffering had
been severe in the past. As the fruit of their victory, as in 1860,
they will place in the Presidential chair at Washington a MAN OF THE
PEOPLE--Grover Cleveland--whom they believe to be honest, as they
believed that Abraham Lincoln was honest, in 1860. They have elected
the men of their choice, men representing the “Common People,” to both
branches of the Legislature of the National Government. They have
selected those who will express the sentiments of the “Common People”
in the legislative halls of the nation. They, the “Common People,” will
be heard through their representatives in the Congress of the Union.
From the sad picture of unsuccessful strikes, starvation, and
destitution, let us turn to the more pleasing picture of the
possibilities offered by this exhibition of the POWER OF THE PEOPLE.
Carnegie, Frick, Webb, and others, have enjoyed a transient, delusive
dream in which the delights of victory were enjoyed for the moment. Now
comes the time of the people! They have learned that their power does
not lie in associations, amalgamations, and organization. It lies in
the selection by the majority, at the ballot-box, of representatives
who will express the will of the people in making the laws of the
land, such laws as will enforce and insure equality, the extinction of
“caste,” and the protection of the poor men, who constitute the larger
portion of the population of our country, and are therefore greater,
being the majority on election day, than the rich, sham aristocrats,
who have insulted, jeered, and snubbed the poor during the past
twenty-five years.
Now will come the crucial test of the honesty and fidelity reposed, by
the people, in the administration and legislative bodies elected by
them. Should they prove recreant and traitors to the trust reposed in
them, it would be the first time in the history of the nation (with
possibly the single exception of John Tyler, who became President by
the death of William Henry Harrison). Then, should the will of the
people become manifest through the agency of their representatives, in
Congress assembled, whereby the present laws be repealed; if it become
evident that it was the will of the people that the Constitution of the
United States should be amended, so as to be in accordance with the
laws the enactment of which the people demanded, the legislators would
be obliged to so amend and change the Constitution of the United States
to make it consistent with the will of the people. Rock and foundation
of the edifice of the Federal Government, the Constitution as it is,
that which is more powerful than even the Constitution is the will of
the people, the majority of the citizens of the Union, irrespective
of wealth or assumed social position. It has been demonstrated that
by some peculiar kind of method the wealth of the nation is becoming
centralized in the hands of a few families and persons who render
possible the construction of an oligarchy similar to that existing in
the Republic of Venice.
Suppose that the people should demand and insist upon the passage of
an income tax for the support of the Federal Government, which would
relieve them, the “Common People,” from paying for the privileges
enjoyed by the rich, of living in a Republic and the security which
their property there enjoys.
And, suppose that the sham aristocracy should cry, “Inherent Rights,”
as they would; the people might respond that it is not a question as
to the Inherent Right of Mr. Astor, Mr. Vanderbilt, Mr. Rockefeller,
_et al._, to possess, under the present system of laws, any amount of
property. It is a mere question of the Will of the People. Many good,
learned, and great Constitutional lawyers have argued, and with much
apparent truth, that the federation of States prior to 1865 was but a
mutual copartnership entered into by the sovereign States, springing
from the original thirteen colonies, constituting but a copartnership,
surrendering no right to the firm or copartnership except such rights
as had been specifically named in the Federal Constitution.
Without entering into the legal aspects of the case, as to whether
these claims be just or not; without assuming to know whether the
nullification proposed by John C. Calhoun was legally sound; without
discussing the question whether South Carolina and the other States of
the South had a _right_ to secede and disintegrate the Union; assuming
that they had the right, inherently, and to draw a parallel to the
assumed Inherent Right of the rich of America under the laws and the
Constitution as they now exist, their attention might be attracted
profitably to the lesson that was taught the minority in the South when
they assumed to exercise Inherent Rights contrary to the wishes of the
majority. 2,800,000 bayonets, with the flag of the Union floating over
them, was conclusive argument that the Inherent Rights claimed by the
Southern States were actually Wrongs in a Republic.
“Vox populi, vox Dei.” The voice of the people, the majority, is the
voice of God in a Republic, from which there is _no appeal_. Seek it,
as the South did in 1861, and the result will be the same. THE MAJORITY
WILL RULE.
Suppose that the Common People should demand a repeal of all the
revenue laws, a repeal of all tariff duties and protection which
did not result in direct benefit to them; suppose that they should
insist that, except so far as protection benefited them (the “Common
People”) by an increase of wages, which should be arrived at by a
fair adjustment of the conflicting interests of capital and labor,
adjusted by a board of arbitration selected by them, the Common People;
suppose that the people should demand that these tremendous incomes
enjoyed by the Vanderbilts, Astors, Goulds, Carnegies, Fricks, and
others, should pay the pensions of the Federal soldiers who fought
for the preservation of the Union; suppose the people should demand
that the expenses of the Federal Government, instead of being levied
upon _them_, should be levied upon the incomes of those who remained
at home in safety during the four years of the Civil War; who, while
far away from the field of battle, have speculated upon the necessities
and needs of the nation, who have utilized that protection, born in
a spirit of patriotic desire to furnish means for the support of the
defenders of the Union, emanating from patriotic principles of the
Abraham Lincoln Republican party; suppose that the people should
demand that they--not out of the accumulated mass, but out of the
interest upon the amount accumulated under existing laws--which said
laws the people, through their representatives, shall deem wise to
change--requiring that in the future these masters of immense wealth
shall contribute a share to the defraying of the expenses of the
Government commensurate with the advantages they have derived, from the
load of debt, in the shape of pensions and otherwise, occasioned by the
Civil War, wherein the Union was preserved.
Let us imagine a scale of income tax for the people of America:
$5000 and under, untaxed; $5000 and over, to be taxed. If the chosen
representatives of the people, selected by them last November and to
be selected by the various State Legislatures elected by the people
within the near future, refuse to make such an enactment as an income
tax upon all incomes of more than $5000; suppose the people organize
themselves, and call upon the country in a general election; gentlemen
of aristocratic proclivities, where will you be? Of the mass of
freeborn American citizens (quite as good as the sham aristocrats) not
five per cent. enjoy an income as great as $5000. Would you resort
to physical force? The Hon. J. Brisben Walker, in his article in the
_Cosmopolitan_, indicates the true position that you would occupy.
Consider the possibility. Yell “Unconstitutional.” Proclaim that it is
illegal. The people would change the Constitution. By the voice of the
majority, they would change the laws.
What have you to offer to stem this tide of indignation that you have
provoked? Do you say, “Capital would leave the country?” Well, you
can’t carry the railroads, the factories, the soil, the buildings from
America. You may have your castles in Scotland, but we have your plants
of machinery, your buildings, and that upon which your security depends
and is founded is in our power in America. Would you secede, as the
Plebeians proposed to do from the Patricians at Rome, and found a
city on the Sacred Hills of your sham aristocracy? The Plebeians, the
Common People, would never seek you with the olive branch of peace and
promise offers of compromise, as did the Patricians of old seek the
Plebeians, but they would recall to your attention in forceful manner
the lesson taught to the Southerners in 1861, when the “Common People,”
the majority in America, by their might, overpowered and overturned the
seceders who, when they found that the minority, even though blessed
with an attempted social superiority, could not rule in the American
Republic, sought to secede.
The Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Astors, Fricks, and others, would be as
helpless in such a struggle, and never as brave and earnest, as was
Lee’s decimated army at Appomattox.
What the people _should_ or _will_ do, it does not interest us to
discuss. What they _can_ do is to require that the payment of the taxes
for the support of the nation be derived from those sources which
have become hateful and oppressive to the people; and, at a general
election, the men who form the majority would be those whose incomes do
not exceed $5000--no, not even $2000 per annum.
Then, let us establish for the fancy of our sham aristocrats a picture
for those who believe in the crime of “Caste” in our country, to dwell
upon. The victors at Homestead and at Buffalo would do well, while
imbibing the sweet draughts of victory, to consider the bitter cup of
hemlock that the people can require them to partake of. Anything is
possible in a Republic, by the votes of the majority.
_All incomes less than five thousand dollars to be entirely exempt from
taxation; from five to ten thousand, a tax of five per cent.; from ten
to twenty thousand, ten per cent.; from twenty to fifty, twenty per
cent.; from fifty to a hundred, forty per cent.; from a hundred to two
hundred, fifty per cent.; from two hundred thousand to half a million,
seventy-five per cent.; from half a million and onward, ninety per
cent._
There is no pretence in this scale to be equitable or just. That could
be arrived at by the statistician and the legislators. It is merely an
example of what the people CAN AND MAY DO. The fund thus derived would
more than defray all the expense of the Federal Government, pensions
included, and increase the pensions besides.
What is to prevent the enactment of such a law, if the majority should
demand it?
You may say, Gentlemen of the Privileged Classes, “It is contrary to
the spirit of the Republic. It will amount to confiscation.” To men
of the Carnegie, Frick, and Webb stamp the people might reply, “Was
the hiring of armed bullies, outcasts, and residents of other States
consistent with the spirit of the Republic? When you have formed those
hirelings into a private army to do your bidding against the lives of
your fellow citizens, is it not late in the day for you to call up
‘the Spirit of the Republic’? You have gloated in triumph over your
victories and the wants of the people. You have seen us surrounded by
starvation and destitution. You, professing Christianity, have made us
objects of your contempt and insult. Our daughters have not been safe
from the contaminating gaze of your weak, puerile progeny. You have
adopted crests, castes, social distinctions, sham aristocracy. You have
bowed the knee before the degenerate British peerage. You have taken
the money earned by our labor to purchase alliances with the decayed
aristocracy of Europe. Is it not _late_, good my would-be lords and
barons, to call up the Spirit of 1776?”
And, even should it come, like the spectres of the dream of Richard
III., would it not make you quake and quiver, so contrary are your
wishes to the spirit of the founders of the Union?
“Impracticable, the collection of these taxes,” is one of the excuses
for their non-imposition. The people have trusted Grover Cleveland
with the power of executing the laws of the nation. The people believe
that, as Lincoln, Jackson, and Jefferson, he will not be recreant to
the trust reposed in him. He will collect the taxes; he will seize
the property of the corporations; he will imprison the perjurers. He
will perform the duties imposed upon him, in the high office of the
nation to which the will of the people has called him. He will see that
the mandates of the people are obeyed. This tremendous accumulation
of fortunes must cease! A Vanderbilt leaves a hundred million to one
son! At five per cent. per annum, the income is five millions each
year. It is impossible for him to spend it. The difference between his
expenses and his income is added to this mighty mass of money, which
is concentrating each year more and more, compounding the interest
thereon, in the hands of a few citizens of the Republic. Mr. Gould
dies and leaves a hundred millions. If evenly distributed between his
children, it would be impossible for the income to be spent, and it
would simply accumulate, generation after generation. The Astors have
adopted a habit, like most of the rich men of the nation, in imitation
of English entailment, of leaving the bulk of their property to the
eldest son, while apportioning off the younger children with a million
or two. The impossibility of that elder son spending the income is
perfectly apparent. The object is to accumulate, in the hands of a few
families, the wealth of the nation. The tendency is exactly in that
direction.
Not only is it un-American, but especially obnoxious to the people
generally, as it tends toward the accumulation of wealth, not only
to an unwholesome but to an alarming degree, in the hands of the
eldest sons of these families. It is practically the entailment of the
estate, without so announcing it. Let us take, for example, the Goulds,
Vanderbilts, or Astors, and let this peculiar kind of distribution of
their property continue, apportioning out the younger members of the
family with a comparatively small sum, but leaving the bulk to the
first son. Is it not concentrating wealth in the hands of one man, the
income of which it is impossible that he should spend? The accumulation
still goes on from generation to generation until, practically, the
money power of our land lies within the grasp of the representatives of
a few families. Let us imagine the condition of affairs a few hundred
years hence, if we allow the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Rockefellers and
Astors to apportion off, from generation to generation, the younger
sons and daughters of the family, concentrating the vast accumulation
from the interests of their tremendous fortunes in the hands of one
representative of the family. Some dozen men of this great Republic,
by a combination, could then practically control at all times the
financial situation of the nation. There is no possibility of an
equalizing process and the scattering of the wealth and accumulations
of these families. From generation to generation, under this peculiar
method of distribution and disposal adopted by our would-be nobility,
there would be created a condition exactly similar to that existing in
the pre-eminently commercial Venice, from which thraldom the Common
People were only relieved by a foreign conqueror, Napoleon, whom they
welcomed with unpatriotic joy because he brought relief from the
discriminations with which the masses were cursed.
No one will deny that, under the existing laws, Mr. W. H. Vanderbilt,
the gentleman (?) who so forcefully and elegantly expressed himself in
the utterance of his sentiments, “The public be damned,” had a perfect
right, under the laws as they now exist, to leave the bulk of his
property to his eldest son. Nay, he might have called him the Duke of
Vanderbilt, if he pleased. By the pleasure of the people, he had the
right to dispose of his possessions as to him seemed best.
[Illustration: WM. H. VANDERBILT,
AUTHOR OF THE FAMOUS SPEECH, “THE PUBLIC BE D----D.”]
This is all perfectly within the bounds of and consistent with the laws
that the people have made; but remember, that these people who made
these laws can UNMAKE them; they can require that a man’s property
shall be equally divided among all of his children; they can tax it so
that this infernal and ever-increasing income shall not create such
an accumulation as to present a danger to the life and existence of
the Republic. And this is not against the law. Good my lords, as the
barons, the Common People will kill this “caste,” not by the headsman’s
axe that decapitated the Stuart, not by the guillotine that drank the
blood of a Bourbon; but they’ll do it with legislation, more peaceful,
more quiet, and with more “general apathy;” but the result will be just
as efficacious.
Now that the nation, composed of the Common People of America, has
suffered the assumption, upon the part of these few families, of a sham
aristocracy and attempted “caste” in this country; suppose, when the
people have felt the power that lies in them, that they should rise in
their might and decree that the support of the Federal Government shall
come from that surplus income, instead of permitting it to accumulate
in the hands of each succeeding generation of a few families in
America. What, again it may be asked, can the sham aristocrats do about
it?--you people of the Carnegie, Astor, Vanderbilt class. The people
decree it, and you must bow your heads to their will.
The people are not socialistic. They do not believe in the division
of property. Men like Dolan, at the Clover Club in Philadelphia, and
others of his kind, deliberately libel and traduce the Common People
when they pretend to explain the defeat of the Republican party upon
the ground of a socialistic tendency in the people of this nation. The
lie is apparent by the action of the militia, composed of the Common
People, both at Homestead and Buffalo. The people are for law and order.
The poor man’s morals are quite as good or better than the morals of
the rich. His home is as sacred, and the slimy serpent of Nihilism is
as objectionable in his home as it would be to the millionaire in his
palace of grandeur. The little holdings of the poor man, his farm, his
tool chest, and his furniture, are his; and he holds the right to own
them as dear as Astor holds his right to his property in many hundred
houses. The poor man, the Common People, nowhere in this broad Union
wants anarchy. He’ll stamp it out, as he did in Chicago, and it is a
libel upon him and the nation, for the rich and those who would impose
the yoke of “caste,” to attempt to wave the bloody shirt of Socialism
by their speeches on this subject.
But this accumulation of property in the hands of the few, to the
detriment of the nation, has become so pronounced and overwhelming in
its productiveness of evil that, suppose the people should--for they
could, by means of an income tax--decree that it should cease. Now,
men of a sham and wealthy aristocracy, what would you do about it?
You would be obliged to drink your cup of hemlock, as the striker at
Homestead was obliged to partake of his draught of defeat.
Gentlemen, who assume to be better every other day in the year, but who
realize on election day that your votes are no better, and count for no
more, than the laborer’s, mechanic’s, and the poor man’s all over our
land, what are you going to do about it? It is a condition so pregnant
with possibilities that it should occasion you to take thought. Do not
arouse the resentment of your fellow-citizens; poor they may be, but
rich in their rights as freemen. By the exercise of their franchise
they can make legal that which would demand a division of some of
your ill-gotten gains for the support of the Federal Government, thus
lightening the taxes upon those who can least afford to pay them.
[Illustration: W. SEWARD WEBB,
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK CENTRAL R. R.]
The poor have learned; the workman has been taught by sad experience;
the laborer has had it forced down his throat, by the point of the
bayonet in the hands of the militiamen, that he cannot hope to
win in the battle against capital by strikes or organized labor.
Homestead, and the wretched condition of the people there, is fraught
with significance, to the laboring man, of the consequences of his
ineffectual battle against capital. He knows that to resort to
violence, mob law, dynamite, is against the spirit of the people of
America. In his heart of hearts his home is as dear to the workman as
yours is to you, Mr. Carnegie. He does not believe in anarchy, and the
dissolution of law, order, and the morals of the people any more than
you do. He doesn’t believe, any more than you do, Mr. Son-in-law Seward
Webb, in the destruction of property. He feels oppressed; he feels
that the burden has been laid too heavily upon his shoulders; he is
irritated at the load he is carrying; no longer will he resort, as the
acme of his hopes, to a strike or a labor organization; he has learned
in the election of 1892 that the power to correct these evils is his;
that on election day, at the polls, he may right these wrongs. Be you
warned, who count your millions, that the bandage which has blinded
the eyes of the poor, making them fight at shadows, has been removed
from their eyes, and that they will make such a vigorous and effectual
onslaught upon your cherished bulwarks of bullion that the equalizing
process may become so rapid and effectual as to demolish your cherished
fortresses of wealth.
It is not to disorganize society; it is not to overturn religion, or
resort to Nihilism, that the tendency of the workingman’s mind leans.
It is your presumption, arrogance, and overwhelming self-esteem that
has offended him. A baby’s finger may touch the spring holding the bar
by which is caged the lion. The lion once uncaged, and a hundred men
cannot restrain its freedom. A little stream of water, flowing over the
top of a dam, might have been stopped by a handful of mud in the hands
of a child; increasing, the stream weakens the barrier; the dam has
gone, the flood has come.
There’s a little stream of truth trickling over the dam that holds back
the flood of the resentment of the people; silently, softly, with an
appearance of “apathy,” it began to move, until the rich received the
first spray, notifying them of its approach, November the 8th, 1892.