Part 8

Now, I repeat that this body should declare against this system of private ownership and in favor of the collective ownership by the workers of the tools of production. This will give you a clear aim and definite object. This will make your movement revolutionary in its ultimate purpose, as it ought to be, and as for immediate concessions in the way of legislation by capitalist representatives and more favorable working conditions, you workingmen have only to poll two million Socialist votes this fall, and you will get those concessions freely and you will not get them in any other way. You will not frighten, you will not move the great corporations by dividing your votes between the republican and democratic parties. It doesn't make any difference which of these two parties wins, you lose! They are both capitalist parties and I don't ask you to take my mere word for it. I simply ask, my brothers, that you read and study the platforms for yourself. I beg of you not to have an ignorant, superstitious reverence for any political party. It is your misfortune if you are the blind follower of any political leader, or any other leader. It is your duty as a workingman, your duty to yourself, your family, to quit a party the very instant you find that that party no longer serves you; and if you continue to adhere to a party that antagonizes your interests, if you continue to support a system in which you are degraded, then you have no right to complain. You must submit to what comes, for you yourself are responsible.

Let me impress this fact upon your minds: the labor question, which is really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you can stand and are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will remain; but when you unite all over the land, when you present a solid class-conscious phalanx, economically and politically, there is no power on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation.

As individuals you are helpless, but united you represent an irresistible power.

Is there any doubt in the mind of any thinking workingman that we are in the midst of a class struggle? Is there any doubt that the workingman ought to own the tool he works with? You will never own the tool you work with under the present system. This whole system is based upon the private ownership by the capitalist of the tools and the wage-slavery of the working class, and as long as the tools are privately owned by the capitalists the great mass of workers will be wage-slaves.

You may, at times, temporarily better your condition within certain limitations, but you will still remain wage-slaves, and why wage-slaves? For just one reason and no other--you have got to work. To work you have got to have tools, and if you have no tools you have to beg for work, and if you have got to beg for work the man who owns the tools you use will determine the conditions under which you shall work. As long as he owns your tools he owns your job, and if he owns your job he is the master of your fate. You are in no sense a free man. You are subject to his interest and to his will. He decides whether you shall work or not. Therefore, he decides whether you shall live or die. And in that humiliating position any one who tries to persuade you that you are a free man is guilty of insulting your intelligence. You will never be free, you will never stand erect in your own manly self-reliance until you are the master of the tools you work with, and when you are you can freely work without the consent of any master, and when you do work you will get all your labor produces.

As it is now the lion's share goes to the capitalist for which he does nothing, while you get a small fraction to feed, clothe and shelter yourself, and reproduce yourself in the form of labor power. That is all you get out of it and all you ever will get in the capitalist system.

Oh, my brothers, can you be satisfied with your lot? Will you insist that life shall continue a mere struggle for existence and one prolonged misery to which death comes as a blessed relief?

How is it with the average workingman today? I am not referring to the few who have been favored and who have fared better than the great mass, but I am asking how it is with the average workingman in this system? Admit that he has a job. What assurance has he that it is his in twenty-four hours? I have a letter from an expert glass worker saying that the new glass machine which has recently been tested, has proven conclusively that bottles can be made without a glass blower. Five or six boys with these machines can make as many bottles as ten expert blowers could make. Machinery is conquering every department of activity. It is displacing more and more workingmen and making the lot of those who have employment more and more insecure. Admit that a man has a job. What assurance has he that he is going to keep it? A machine may be invented. He may offend the boss. He may engage in a little agitation in the interest of his class. He is marked as an agitator, he is discharged, and then what is his status?

The minute he is discharged he has to hunt for a new buyer for his labor power. He owns no tools; the tools are great machines. He can't compete against them with his bare hands. He has got to work. There is only one condition under which he can work and that is when he sells his labor power, his energy, his very life currents, and thus disposes of himself in daily installments. He is not sold from the block, as was the chattel slave. He sells ten hours of himself every day in exchange for just enough to keep himself in that same slavish condition.

The machine he works with has to be oiled, and he has to be fed, and the oil sustains the same relation to the machine that food does to him. If he could work without food his wage would be reduced to the vanishing point. That is the status of the workingman today.

What can the present economic organization do to improve the condition of the workingman? Very little, if anything. If you have a wife and two or three children, and you take the possibilities into consideration, this question ought to give you grave concern. You know that it is the sons of workingmen who become vagabonds and tramps, and who are sent to jail, and it is the daughters of workingmen who are forced into houses of shame.

You are a workingman, you live in capitalism, and you have nothing but your labor power, and you don't know whether you are going to find a buyer or not. But even if you do find a master, if you have a job, can you boast of being a man among men?

No man can rightly claim to be a man unless he is free. There is something godlike about manhood. Manhood doesn't admit of ownership. Manhood scorns to be regarded as property.

Do you know whether you have a job or not? Do you know how long you are going to have one? And when you are out of a job what can your union do for you? I was down at Coalgate, Oklahoma, on the Fourth of July last, where six hundred miners have been out of work for four long months. They are all organized. There are the mines and machinery, and the miners are eager to work. But not a tap of work is being done, and the miners and their families are suffering, and most of them live in houses that are unfit for habitation. This awful condition is never going to be changed in capitalism. There is one way only and that is to wipe out capitalism, and to do that we have to get together, and when we do that we will find the way to emancipation.

You may not agree with me now, but make note of what I am saying. The time is near when you will be forced into economic and political solidarity.

The republican and democratic parties are alike capitalist parties. Some of you may think that Mr. Bryan, if elected, will do great things for the workers. Conditions will remain substantially the same. We will still be under capitalism. It will not matter how you may tinker with the tariff or the currency. The tools are still the property of the capitalists and you are still at their mercy.

Now let me show you that Mr. Bryan is no more your friend than is Mr. Taft. You remember when the officials of the Western Federation of Miners were kidnaped in Colorado, and when it was said they should never leave Idaho alive. It was the determination of the Mine Owners' Association that these brave and loyal union leaders should be foully murdered. When these brothers of ours were brutally kidnaped by the collusion of the capitalist governors of two states, every true friend of the working class cried out in protest. Did Mr. Bryan utter a word? Mr. Bryan was the recognized champion of the working class. He was in a position to be heard. A protest from him would have tremendous weight with the American people. But his labor friends could not unlock his lips. Not one word would he speak. Not one.

Organized labor, however, throughout the length and breadth of the land, took the matter in hand promptly and registered its protest in a way that made the nation quake. The Mine Owners' Association took to the tall timber. Our brother unionists were acquitted, vindicated, and stood forth without a blemish upon their honor, and after they were free once more, Mr. Bryan said, "I felt all the time that they were not guilty."

Now if your faithful leaders are kidnaped and threatened to be hanged, and you call upon a man who claims to be your friend, to come to the rescue and he refuses to say a word, to give the least help, do you still think he is your friend? Mr. Bryan had his chance to prove his friendship at a time when labor sorely needed friends, when organized labor cried out in agony and distress. But not a word escaped his lips.

Why did not Mr. Byran speak? He did not dare. Mr. Bryan knew very well that the kidnapers of those men were his personal friends, the association of rich mine owners, who had largely furnished his campaign funds. For Mr. Bryan personally I have always had a high regard. I am not attacking him in any personal sense at all.

But the extremity to which a man is driven who tries to serve both capital and labor! It can't be done. Mr. Bryan did not dare to speak for labor because if he had he would have turned the mine owning capitalists against him. He is afraid to speak out very loudly for capitalists for fear the workers will get after him. He has compromised all around for the sake of being president.

You have heard him denounce Roger Sullivan. Mr. Bryan, four years ago, in denouncing this corruptionist, at the time of the nomination of Alton B. Parker, said he was totally destitute of honor and compared him to a train robber. Notwithstanding this fact, Mr. Bryan recently invited Sullivan to his home in Lincoln, took him by the hand and introduced him to his family. Mr. Bryan also invited Charley Murphy, the inexpressibly rotten Tammany heeler of New York. Mr. Bryan had him come to Lincoln so as to conciliate Tammany, and they were photographed together shaking hands.

No man can serve both capital and labor at the same time.

You don't admit the capitalists to your union. They organize their union to fight you. You organize your union to fight them. Their union consists wholly of capitalists; your union consists wholly of workingmen. It is along the same line that you have got to organize politically. You don't unite with capitalists on the economic field; why should you politically?

You have got to extend your class line. You can declare yourselves in this convention and make your position clear to the world. You can give hope and inspire confidence throughout the state.

And now in closing, I wish to thank you, each of you, from my heart, for your kindness. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to address you and whether you agree with me or not, I leave you wishing you success in your deliberations and hoping for the early triumph of the labor movement.

* * * * *

The convention passed a unanimous rising vote of thanks at the close of the address.

POLITICAL APPEAL TO AMERICAN WORKERS.

Opening Speech of National Campaign, Riverview Park, Chicago, June 16, 1912.

Friends, Comrades and Fellow-Workers: We are today entering upon a national campaign of the profoundest interest to the working class and the country. In this campaign there are but two parties and but one issue. There is no longer even the pretense of difference between the so-called Republican and Democratic parties. They are substantially one in what they stand for. They are opposed to each other on no question of principle but purely in a contest for the spoils of office.

To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather, it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation of the workers, and for wage-slavery.

Both of these old capitalist class machines are going to pieces. Having outlived their time they have become corrupt and worse than useless and now present a spectacle of political degeneracy never before witnessed in this or any other country. Both are torn by dissension and rife with disintegration. The evolution of the forces underlying them is tearing them from their foundations and sweeping them to inevitable destruction.

We have before us in this city at this hour an exhibition of capitalist machine politics which lays bare the true inwardness of the situation in the capitalist camp. Nothing that any Socialist has ever charged in the way of corruption is to be compared with what Taft and Roosevelt have charged and proven upon one another. They are both good Republicans, just as Harmon and Bryan are both good Democrats--and they are all agreed that Socialism would be the ruination of the country.

_Puppets of the Ruling Class._

Taft and Roosevelt in the exploitation of their boasted individualism and their mad fight for official spoils have been forced to expose the whole game of capitalist class politics and reveal themselves and the whole brood of capitalist politicians in their true role before the American people. They are all the mere puppets of the ruling class. They are literally bought, paid for and owned, body and soul, by the powers that are exploiting this nation and enslaving and robbing its toilers.

What difference is there, judged by what they stand for, between Taft, Roosevelt, La Follette, Harmon, Wilson, Clark and Bryan?

Do they not all alike stand for the private ownership of industry and the wage-slavery of the working class?

What earthly difference can it make to the millions of workers whether the Republican or Democratic political machine of capitalism is in commission?

That these two parties differ in name only and are one in fact is demonstrated beyond cavil whenever and wherever the Socialist party constitutes a menace to their misrule. Milwaukee is a case in point and there are many others. Confronted by the Socialists these long pretended foes are forced to drop their masks and fly into each other's arms.

_Twin Agencies of Wall Street._

The baseness, hypocrisy and corruption of these twin political agencies of Wall Street and the ruling class cannot be expressed in words. The imagination is taxed in contemplating their crimes. There is no depth of dishonor to which they have not descended--no depth of depravity they have not sounded.

To the extent that they control elections the franchise is corrupted and the electorate debauched, and when they succeed in power it is but to execute the will of the Wall Street interests which finance and control them. The police, the militia, the regular army, the courts and all the powers lodged in class government are all freely at the service of the ruling class, especially in suppressing discontent among the slaves of the factories, mills and mines, and keeping them safely in subjugation to their masters.

How can any intelligent, self-respecting wage-worker give his support to either of these corrupt capitalist parties? The emblem of a capitalist party on a working man is the badge of his ignorance, his servility and shame.

Marshalled in battle array, against these corrupt capitalist parties is the young, virile, revolutionary Socialist party, the party of the awakening working class, whose red banners, inscribed with the inspiring shibboleth of class-conscious solidarity, proclaim the coming triumph of international Socialism and the emancipation of the workers of the world.

_The Two Political Forces._

Contrast these two political forces and the parties through which these forces find concrete expression! On the one side are the trusts, the corporations, the banks, the railroads, the plutocrats, the politicians, the bribe-givers, the ballot-box stuffers, the repeaters, the parasites, retainers and job-hunters of all descriptions; the corruption funds, the filth, slime and debauchery of ruling class politics; the press and pulpit and college, all wearing capitalism's collar, and all in concert applauding its "patriotism" and glorifying in its plundering and profligate regime.

On the other side are the workers and producers of the nation coming into consciousness of their interests and their power as a class, filled with the spirit of solidarity and thrilled with the new-born power that throbs within them; scorning further affiliation with the parties that so long used them to their own degradation and looking trustfully to themselves and to each other for relief from oppression and for emancipation from the power which has so long enslaved them.

Honest toil, useful labor, against industrial robbery and political rottenness!

These are the two forces which are arrayed against each other in deadly and uncompromising hostility in the present campaign.

_Corrupt Capitalist Politics._

We are not here to play the filthy game of capitalist politics. There is the same relative difference between capitalist class politics and working class politics that there is between capitalism and Socialism.

Capitalism, having its foundation in the slavery and exploitation of the masses, can only rule by corrupt means and its politics are essentially the reflex of its low and debasing economic character.

The Socialist party as the party of the working class stands squarely upon its principles in making its appeal to the workers of the nation. It is not begging for votes, nor seeking for votes, nor bargaining for votes. It is not in the vote market. It wants votes, but only of those who want it--those who recognize it as their party and come to it of their own free will.

If, as the Socialist candidate for president, I were seeking office and the spoils of office I would be a traitor to the Socialist party and a disgrace to the working class.

To be sure we want all the votes we can get and all that are coming to us but only as a means of developing the political power of the working class in the struggle for industrial freedom, and not that we may revel in the spoils of office.

_Political Power._

The workers have never yet developed or made use of their political power. They have played the game of their masters for the benefit of the master class--and now many of them, disgusted with their own blind and stupid performance, are renouncing politics and refusing to see any difference between the capitalist parties financed by the ruling class to perpetuate class rule and the Socialist party organized and financed by the workers themselves as a means of wresting the control of government and of industry from the capitalists and making the working class the ruling class of the nation and the world.

The Socialist party enters this campaign under conditions that could scarcely be more favorable to the cause it represents. For the first time every state in the union is now organized and represented in the national party, and every state will have a full ticket in the field; and for the first time the Socialists of the United States have a party which takes its rightful place in the great revolutionary working class movement of the world.

Four years ago with a membership of scarcely forty thousand we succeeded in polling nearly half a million votes; this year when the campaign is fairly opened we shall have a hundred and fifty thousand dues-paying members and an organization in all regards incalculably superior to that we had in the last campaign.

We are united, militant, aggressive, enthusiastic as never before. From the Eastern coast to the Pacific shore and from the Canadian line to the Mexican gulf the red banner of the proletarian revolution floats unchallenged and the exultant shouts of the advancing hosts of labor are borne on all the breezes.

_There Is But One Issue._

There is but one issue that appeals to this conquering army--the unconditional surrender of the capitalist class. To be sure this cannot be achieved in a day and in the meantime the party enforces to the extent of its power its immediate demands and presses steadily onward toward the goal. It has its constructive program by means of which it develops its power and its capacity, step by step, seizing upon every bit of vantage to advance and strengthen its position, but never for a moment mistaking reform for revolution and never losing sight of the ultimate goal.

Socialist reform must not be confounded with so-called capitalist reform. The latter is shrewdly designed to buttress capitalism; the former to overthrow it. Socialist reform vitalizes and promotes the social revolution.

_The National Convention._

The national convention of the Socialist party recently held at Indianapolis was in all respects the greatest gathering of representative Socialists ever held in the United States. The delegates there assembled demonstrated their ability to deal efficiently with all the vital problems which confront the party. The convention was permeated in every fiber with the class-conscious, revolutionary spirit and was thoroughly representative of the working class. Every question that came before that body was considered and disposed of in accordance with the principles and program of the international movement and on the basis of its relation to and effect upon the working class.

The platform adopted by the convention is a clear and cogent enunciation of the party's principles and a frank and forceful statement of the party's mission. This platform embodies labor's indictment of the capitalist system and demands the abolition of that system. It proclaims the identity of interests of all workers and appeals to them in clarion tones to unite for their emancipation. It points out the class struggle and emphasizes the need of the economic and political unity of the workers to wage that struggle to a successful issue. It declares relentless war upon the entire capitalist regime in the name of the rising working class and demands in uncompromising terms the overthrow of wage-slavery and the inauguration of industrial democracy.

In this platform of the Socialist party the historic development of society is clearly stated and the fact made manifest that the time has come for the workers of the world to shake off their oppressors and exploiters, put an end to their age-long servitude, and make themselves the masters of the world.

To this end the Socialist party has been organized; to this end it is bending all its energies and taxing all its resources; to this end it makes its appeal to the workers and their sympathizers throughout the nation.

_The Capitalist System Condemned._