YOUR PAY ENVELOPE
BY
JOHN R. MEADER
EDITOR OF “THE COMMON CAUSE”
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
437 FIFTH AVENUE
1914
COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PROBLEM STATED 1
II. WHAT SOCIALISM IS AND ISN’T 9
III. THE WORKER’S WAGE 19
IV. HOW THE “ROBBING” IS DONE 32
V. YOUR OWN PAY ENVELOPE 41
VI. YOU “WAGE SLAVES”! 54
VII. YOUR BOSS UNDER SOCIALISM 67
VIII. SOME MORE “EQUALITY” 77
IX. A FEW “MINOR DETAILS” 87
X. LABOR’S FULL PRODUCT 101
XI. IS WRETCHEDNESS INCREASING? 116
XII. THE CLASS STRUGGLE 133
XIII. SHALL WE TAKE IT OR PAY FOR IT? 144
XIV. THE REVOLUTION 160
XV. WHAT WE ARE PROMISED 173
XVI. WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD? 189
XVII. THE REMEDY 200
YOUR PAY ENVELOPE
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM STATED
Dear Mr. Smith,
I am glad that you have asked me if the soap-box orator told the truth
when he said that all the arguments against Socialism are either “lies”
or “foolish misrepresentations.”
The soap-box orator wants you to believe that all the wise men in this
world are Socialists, and that those who do not accept the teachings of
Karl Marx are either ignoramuses or wicked men.
You tell me that your “common sense” teaches you that “there are two
sides to every question.” This statement shows that you are an honest
and a practical man. You say that you are a worker, a trade unionist, a
Christian--all of which means that you are a good citizen. These frank
statements are the best introduction you could offer. It is this kind
of man who insists upon having “facts,” and who is not likely to be
carried away by theories--even by plausible theories. He insists upon
knowing that there are plenty of “facts” to back up the theories before
he accepts them.
Hence, I am going to write to you at some length--to you and to all
the rest of the John Smiths. In these letters I shall express myself
as simply and as clearly as possible. I shall give you plenty of
facts--“the hardest of hard facts”--and a mass of cold, logical reasons
that cannot fail to appeal to “robust common sense” and the “love of
fair play.”
As you have said, there are two sides to every question, and the
question of Socialism is no exception to this rule. The reason that
the soap-box orator attracts so large a crowd is because he tells the
people who listen to him a lot of things which they know are true.
He tells them, for example, that wages and the expense of living have
not kept equable pace with each other--that the smaller rate of wage
which the worker received fifteen or twenty years ago may really have
been a higher rate of wage because the man who got it was able to
buy more with it. He tells us that it is a bad thing that children
should be compelled to work for a living at an age when they ought to
be in school or playing the games which nature intends children shall
play. He points to the employer as he rides by in his $4,000 touring
car, and he asks how long it has been since you have had a ride in
an automobile. He reads to you the newspaper report of an elaborate
dinner given by “society women” to their poodle dogs, and supplements
it with another item, from the same paper, telling the number of people
who have died of starvation during the past six months. With eloquent
words, vibrant with sympathy, he paints a picture that makes your
blood boil with indignation, and the worst of it is that the things he
describes are true.
Every man, if his heart is in the proper place, knows that things are
not right. He knows that there are plenty of workers to-day who do
not earn money enough to enable them to live decently. He knows that
workingmen do not make their wives and children toil in the factories
for the mere joy of knowing that they are not idle. The worker is not
so blind to the advantages of education, that he does not want to see
his children well-educated. If he insists upon their going to work
instead of to school, it is because he needs the few dollars which they
can earn to supplement somewhat his own too meagre wage.
The worker is justified in not being satisfied with his lot. If a man
is treated unjustly, he has a moral right to protest; and I am the
last person who would wish to deny him that right. At the same time, I
am going to take exception to one statement that the soap-box orator
makes. He tells us that Socialism is the one and only solution of all
the industrial and social evils of the world. He asserts that, if
enough of us will vote the Socialist ticket, we can get the industries
away from their present owners and own them ourselves, paying ourselves
for our labor by taking all the profits that now go to the men who
furnish the capital to carry on the business.
If this were true--and that were all there was to it--I might be a
Socialist. It is because it is impossible for it to be true that I am
writing these letters; and, before I have finished, I think you will
admit that I shall have proved that the soap-box orator is talking
“through his hat.”
I do not ask you to reject the teachings of Socialism because they
are new or untried. Every good thing was new once, and I am not so
foolish as to imagine that every possibly-good thing has been tried.
Indeed, a great many ideas and inventions that have proved of the
greatest advantage to the world were once denounced as impracticable.
The telephone is one of them. I can remember the time when the best
business men laughed at the idea of anybody’s buying stock in a
telephone company; they admitted that people could talk over the wire,
but it was impossible to make them believe that the instrument could be
made strong enough to carry the sound of the human voice more than a
few blocks. They said it was all right as a “toy,” but that it had no
“commercial utility”--which meant that they did not think they could
make any money out of it.
To tell the truth, some of the basic ideas in Socialism are not at
all new. They are very, very old; but, if they were as old as a dozen
Methuselahs, this fact would not make them any more true. It is not the
age of a theory that makes it true; it is the principle underlying it.
And I propose to show you that, instead of being the combination of
all wisdom, the principles of Socialism are so unreasonable that it is
difficult to understand how any thinking man can accept them.
To prove this, I shall resort chiefly to facts and very little to
theoretical argument. I shall not ask you to believe that a thing is
so, merely because I say that it is so. When I present an argument,
I shall explain all the facts upon which it is based, and you may
consider the argument on its own merits.
In doing this, I must ask you to forget yourself. A prominent Socialist
writer has told us that it is necessary to “get out of the body to
think.” As he explains, “that means that when a problem is before you,
you should not let any personal prejudice, or class feeling, come
between that problem and your mind; that you should consider a case
upon the evidence alone, as a jury should.”
I shall be satisfied if you will follow this advice. I can ask you to
do no more than to forget your own condition, your own troubles, your
own life-problems, and consider this question simply as a man--as a
jury-man, if you will. If you were asked to figure how much you can
earn in three days and two hours and fifteen minutes at your present
rate of wage, you would not think whether you were a Republican or a
Democrat, would you? You would simply apply the rules of arithmetic to
your sum, and I ask you to read my letters and decide, by the same kind
of unbiased judgment, whether I am right or wrong.
By way of anticipation, let me assert that it is possible for us to
solve every problem that confronts us to-day without resorting to the
proposed “remedy” of Socialism. We have here a country, big enough and
productive enough to give all the people plenty of room and all they
want to eat. There are facilities to supply all the children with a
good education and ample opportunities for recreation. The fact that
so many of the people do not succeed in securing plenty, shows that
something is wrong. But, is the “wrong” in our system of industry, or
are we ourselves--and, when I say “we,” I mean the whole people, not
you and me alone--to blame for these conditions? That is the important
question.
Socialism promises that it will right all wrongs and asserts that this
cannot be done in any other way. I do not believe that Socialism could
“make good,” and it is here my task to prove it.