In our last the attempt was made to show how important the laborer
should consider the choice of representatives to be, and also what class
of persons should be chosen. The task of making these selections cannot
be begun too soon. In every district in the Union the laborers should be
made alive to this question. Some who fully appreciate its importance
should take it upon themselves to begin the work; they should converse
with the few they come in contact with, and these, becoming interested,
should be induced to extend the agitation; and finally, all over the
country, primary labor meetings would come to be held for the full and
complete discussion of the whole subject.
It is the most complete evidence of supineness on the part of the
laboring classes that they are not now represented as they should be.
Being so vastly in the majority, every office should be filled by them.
The difficulty has been—and we fear will be—that while the laborer has
been busy at his regular task, others have managed the incipient stages
that produce the candidates, in such a manner that the interests of the
majority have been entirely ignored. Finally, when the regular party
ticket is presented, the least objectionable one receives the support;
and thus it comes that the real interests and wishes of the people are
seldom represented, and as seldom is the elected candidate the real
choice of the people.
Unless our laboring classes arouse themselves to the real importance of
this matter, and become willing to devote sufficient time to preparing
their candidates, they should cease blaming others for results; for they
now complain of things they have it in their power to remedy, but which
they cannot expect others, whose interests seem to be at variance with
theirs, to correct for them. Those who declaim so loudly and profusely
about the wrongs labor suffers at the instance of capital, should be
strictly guarded against, lest they, unwittingly, become your leaders
and advisers.
There are at all times numbers of persons standing waiting and ready to
step forward to take advantage of any favorable movement among the
people which seems to offer inducements. It matters not to them in what,
or where the movement may originate; they have no principles to crush
out or control in order that they may fall into the current. It is
almost impossible to escape the curse of these ever-ready tools. The
safest and surest remedy against them is to select those who have never
mingled in politics, and who will come direct from the shop or the
field. It does not matter so much if they are not able advocates, if
they only understand the work to be done and are devoted and true. Let
this course be pursued a few years, and the enormous proportion of
lawyer-legislators would be diminished by one-half. Many of these have
no sympathies in common with you, most of them are, by all their
controlling influences, drawn from the consideration even of your
condition. What does it matter to them if the few articles you must
purchase to render yourselves and families comfortable, cost you ten,
twenty or fifty per cent. more than the actual cost of their production,
if corporations for which they are attorneys become still more corpulent
upon this that is indirectly filched from you! For, do you not know that
capital under such rule does not pay the taxes of the country, but that
your labor does? In this way, the common laborer, who should not be
compelled to pay any levy at all, is taxed on almost everything he eats,
drinks and wears, and thus labor is compelled not only to produce what
makes wealth possible, but also to sustain it after having produced it.
This is a vast inequality in favor of capital and against labor, and
still it is the laborer’s fault; and it lies just where we pointed, in
the selection of proper candidates as representatives, State and
national.
There are but a very few newspapers that do not _profess_ to be the
advocates of the rights of labor. Let them be called upon to take hold
of this matter, and take hold of it at just that point where the remedy
must be applied. Let them lay before the people a plain exposition of
the matter, and certainly aim to make the people understand it. Let them
urge the people to assemble and concert plans and devise means to carry
them out, and to warn them to no longer intrust the most vital parts of
the “necessary course” to the care of hereditary members of the caucus,
whom money buys or whisky controls. It has become proverbial that he who
would be elected to any important position must dispense both these
“powers” with a lavish hand; and he who can do this the most profusely
is pretty sure to “be elected.” You may rest perfectly assured that if
he spend ten thousand dollars to secure his election by your votes, he
intends at least to double his venture during his official term. You
should know by this time that “the purity of the ballot box” is simply a
“play upon words,” and that elections are but farces to approve what is
previously determined.
The people, then, must look on every side for treachery to their
interests and dishonesty of purpose, not forgetting that a large portion
of the press that profess your interests so warmly, that you almost know
their truth, are open to the influence of at least one of the
abovementioned powers, and that to go counter to the _commands_ of those
who “back them” is to go to certain destruction. Nevertheless, demand of
the press a course that cannot be denominated hypocritical, and if it
does not respond, withdraw your patronage, and give it where it will
contribute to your interests.
These introductory details cannot be dwelt upon too long nor insisted
upon too earnestly. To begin a work right, is to have it half
accomplished; and most powerfully does this apply in the matter of
determining who shall be your representatives.