Workmen's advocate., February 22, 1890, Image 2

About Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891

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WORKMEN'S ADVOCATE,
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JSfOBKM0fSit)VOCAtti
AM OFFICIAL JOUBKAL Of
THE SOCIALIST LABOR PARTY
rCkURUED EVIHT Wilt
IT TBI NATIONAL EXIUUTIVI OOlBHTTll.
Central Ofllce,
S Eut Fourth Street. New York City.
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SOCIALIST I. A It OK I'AKTY.
Katiohal Enri.TiTi CoMmrrKK, II. J. Oiikti.h,
Beeretury, Sf East Fourth Htreet, N. Y.
Board or Ubietanved, Kunkst C. Hciiindlrii,
Secretary, 63 Dover atreet, lloston, Macn.
Laws News Co., 1'Annr Job I'iunthbt,
45 Kant Fourth atreet. New York.
Febkuaky 22, 1890.
SHORTEN THE WORKDAY.
Onward for eight hours ! Cut down
one-fifth tho chain of wage slavery.
Toilers of New York, attend tho great
mass meeting at Cooper Union next
Monday.
On the 22d hist, meeting will he held in
every center of industry throughout the
country. Let the halls overflow with
producers of wealth. Let the voice of
Labor ho heard. Let its mighty hosts
be counted.
Onward for eight hours !
THE PRESS AND THE SCHOOLS
Our extensive report of the great
mass-meeting held at the Cooper Union
last Wednesday under tho auspioen of
the School Conference speaks for itself,
No editorial comment is necessary.
We nuiHt, however, observe that the
New York promt, which advertised mo
extensively the World's Fair meeting,
had little or nothing to say of the de
monstration in favor of the schools either
before or after it took place.
In one case there is, most plainly, a
conspiracy of silence; in the other a
simultaneity of outburst. Why?
This enterprising press of ours tells us
every dBy that the prime mover of en
terprise is self-interest. Wo may not be
unfair, then indeed, wo must he tiitc
right if we tteek in its own selfishness
the motive of its different behavior in
two matters of at least equal public
interest.
Now mark this. A World's Fair in
New York would largely increase the
sale of our great metropolitan dailies
and lill their columns with advertise
ments, whereas school houses and com
pulsory education would deprive them
of their newsboys.
But the School Conference will not
and shall not besilciited. It is composed
of men and women who can light ignor
ance and the newspapers combined. It
will hold other meetings, bigger than
the first, and in all parts of the city.
It will, if necessary, have its own press.
In the meantime ten thousand copies
of its startling, report are Wing printed,
and a committee has been appointed to
devise means of agitation upon a scale
far more startling even than its report.
THE TAXING POWER OF CA
PITAL. An Albany correspondent of this pa
per, Mr. W. C. Clark, calls our atten
tion to an article in the N. Y. Evvuimj
Telegram of a recent date, showing
that the gross receipts of the railroads
in the Empire State alone during the
past eight years constituted a larger
eum than the national debt, and that
their net annual profits are greater than
the aggregate of all taxes levied in this
State last year.
There are many ways of comparing
and illustrating statistic. By looking
over a tile of the Workmen's Advocate
it will he seen, for instance, that several
weeks before the Tektjrmn had thus
spoken of the "taxing power" f the
railroads, wo hud not only given an ac
count of the enormous profits of Hioko
corporations in New York State during
the past year, but had observed that the
"taxing power" of the whole railway
system of the country, as shown by its
annual receipts, was more than three
times the revenues of our national gov
ernment. Again, our correspondent suggests
that "a most convincing article might
be written, showing the taxing power of
corporations, trusts ami oilier mono
polies in one grand column." An un
dertaking of this magnitude will not bo
possible until the Census: of 1!I0 alfords
the necessary data. Even then the re
sults arrived at will be mere approxima
tions, because the monopolies are care
fully doctoring their returns, so us to
conceal a large portion of their profits.
But in previous issues of this paper we
have shown, most conclusively, that the
share of labor in its product was only 25
per cent., or one quarter of the whole;
monopoly in every form absorbing
three-quarters. We have also Btaleil,
from the most careful analysis of pro
duction and consumption that a statisti
cian can make with tho data now at
hand, that the present increase of capi
talistic wealth is at the rate of three bil
lion dollars a year, or nine million dol
lars per working day. This is the mere
"net saving" of the capitalist class and
does not include its exptuditure in ne
cessaries and luxuries, which the laboring
claso supplies also. In brief, we con
tend that the taxing power of monop
oly in all forms is 75 cents on every
dollar of product. And we dare to pre
diet that the Census of 1890, however
doctored with a view to the concealment
of portentous facts, will unquestion
ably show that we are right .
Now, a word of advice to our readers
and correspondents. We shall be thank
ful to them for any suggestive clippings
from newspapers that they may send us,
and especially for original information
resting upon a personal knowledge of
facts: that is, for facts gathered within
their respective range of observation.
Though we may not use it immediately,
anything of actual value will come out
in time, greatly strengthened by verifi
cation, comparison, classification and
generalization.
As a rule the statistical and econom
ical statements in the daily press cannot
bo trusted, because of its superficiality
and bias. But if our readers will keep
a tile of the Workmen's Aovocatk,
they will have at t Loir command an
almost exhaustless supply of well au
thenticated, Rulfttantial information
upon every economic question an in
valuable encyclopedia of economic
knowledgo.and the means of individually
making original comparisons.
BLIND OF ONE EYE
In commenting on Col. lngersoll's re
markable address to the New York State
Bar Association the Industrial Journal
of Cleveland observes:
Col. Iugetsoll's statement that "tene
ment and flats and rented lands are,
iu my opinion, (lie enemies of civiliza
tion; they put a few in palaces and many
in prisons, ' is virtually an endorsement
of the single tax, winch would abolish
" tenements and llati and rented lands."
This is a rather ha-ty conclusion, and
we happen to know that lngersoll would
knock it "higher than a kite" if he
cared at all to consider the economic
pretensions of singlc-taxcrtt.
It is marly time for the few labor
paper that are still looking with one
eye at the bare laud to look with the
other eye at the capital that covers the
land. It is preposterous at this late day
to still contend that the single tax would
"abolish tenements, flats, and even
rented lands." Exclusively free from
public burdens, Capital, to a greater
extent than ever, would monopolize
what George calls, in his unscientific
terminology, " natural opportunities."
Capitalists only could pay the tax; cap
italists only could build, improve and
apply the machinery by means of which
all but capitalists are now debarred
from availing themselves of the land and
other "natural opportunities."
Ingersoll saw that long ago, and the
evolution of his sympathies is not in the
direction ot the single-tax superstition.
His friend, Thaddeus B. Wakeman, is
an outspoken Socialist; call him a Na
tionalist, if you please.
A BAD COOK.
The notorious Joe Cook undertook the
other day to roast Bellamy on the plat
form of Tremont Temple in Boston. He
made a bad mess of it. "We have", he
said, "no aristocrats in this country. If
2,000 men own more than all the rest,
they do not own us." Why, Joe Cook,
they own you, soul and body ; and as to
laboring people, they may not own our
souls, but they certainly own our bo
dies : make us go about, or not go at
all, as they please. Again : "The ques
tion is whether, by a wide system of
national control, we should not open the
way to prodigious corruption whether
we should have, beside political parties,
political land, political coal, political
cotton, sugar and oil." Why, Joe Cook,
that is precisely what we have now
even political Christianity. The "na
tional control" is in the hands of those
who have stolen the public machinery
of production, the public lands, tho
public franchises, everything that i8
rightly public and without which the
people can hardly say that they own
their houIm, not to speak of their bo
dies. (Jo to, Cook, thou art a mere scul
lion, lit only to wash the dishes of the
"two thousand-'.
UHUWlrl Ul- IINVLIN IIUIN.
Statistics lately collected by an Eng
lish specialist illustrate most strikingly
the development of mechanical applian
ces and other improvements in the
methods of production, by showing the
number of patents applied for and
granted in the manufacturing countries
during the last twenty-live years. The
United States heads the list with 35,797
applications and 110,006 grants iu 1888, as
against 0,032 applications and 5,025
grants in 1804. Great Britain comes
second with a proportionate advance
from 2,024 grants in 1801 to 9,410 in 1888.
Franco ranks third with 8,0tilt patents
granted in 1888 ; but the advance in
that country has been comparatively
small, for in 1804 she stood ahead of
both Great Britain and the United States
with 5,053 patents to her credit. At that
time the French engineers weie cover
ing Europe with works and industries,
and their activity extended to other
continents. Since then their energies
were largely diverted from industrial to
military fields, and this of itself would
account for the slower rate of inventive
progress in France than in the United
States and in England. But if we con
sider, in addition, the inducements
offered to inventive exertion by the vast
territories, increasing populations and
unlimited resources at the command of
the latter countries, we can only wonder
that France is not more greatly distanced
than appears from the aforesaid ligures.
A remarkable fact is that little Bel
gium is in advance of the whole German
Empire to a considerable extent. In
1888 there were 4.770 patents granted in
Belgium, as against 3, 123 in Germany,
What a comment this is upon the blood
Biid iron policy of the grim Chancellor 1
We have, of course, no means of
ascertaining the reward of inventors for
their intellectual activity. That they
are revolutionizing the world, we know,
That they are multiplying the means of
producing wealth far more rapidly than
the capitalists who finally get the control
of inventions are multiplying wealth, we
know also. Thet many of the greatest in
ventors die in absolute or comparative
poverty is a matter of record.
NATIONAL FIRST, THEN IN
TERNATIONAL We have it at last from no less an
authority than the official organ of the
New York Produce Exchange that
" trusts exist under both free trade and
protection." True, this important a I
tnission is qualified by the remark that
" the policy of protection often strength
ens the trusts by shutting out foreign
supplies, and giving them a costly mon
opoly of home markets;" in other words,
that the policy of protection promotes
the formation of national trusts. But
it might be argued with as much force
that the policy of free trade would
necessarily induce the formation of in
ternational trusts, which in the course
of time would control all the markets of
the world. Both positions are true in
part, and false as a whole. They are
true in what is granted on both sides
and false in the conclusion that either
of the two policies can quicken or delay
the march of the trust system, the tend
ency of which is to become interna
tional, regardless of free trade or pro
tection. CHILD INSURANCE.
That is a startling statement made by
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children in New York that the
system of securing insurances on the
lives of children is a powerful tempta
tion to depraved parents to maltreat
their offspring, in the hope that they
may die and thus become a source of
profit.
It is alleged that there are hundreds of
thousands of children in this State who
have what is known as a " burial insur
ance" upon their lives, and the society
claims that in three-fourths of the cases
of neglect and inhuman treatment of
children that it attends to in a year, the
guardians, parents or step parents of the
children have insurance on the children's
lives.
Most people will be unwilling to draw
the inference which the society seems
inclined to draw from these facts. We
must maintain faith in human nature,
even though there are exceptional cases
of depravity. Morning Journal.
This monstrous speculation on the
lives of infants by th-.ir own parents
and the resulting infanticides are by no
means a new feature of our "civiliza
tion". Such a condition of alfairs has
long prevailed in the manufacturing
districts of England, and a few years
ago some terrible revelations of the
same character cast a deserved odium
upon our own State of Pennsylvania.
Nor is it true, as the Journal intimates,
that the cause of it is to be found in the
"natural depravity" of ' some" human
faced devils, Nature never made human
monsters in such numbers. The deviltry
of our social system poverty and ignor
ance worse in the midst of our civiliza
tion than in savagery can alone trans
form fathers and mothers into blacker
devils than cannibals.
One of the most notorious "boodlers"
in the United States Senate has prepared
a bill for the restriction of "undesirable"
immigration. Among the aliens that
Mr. Chandler proposes to exclude are
not only the idiots, the insane, the pau
pers, the contract laborers, the poly
gamists, the criminate convicted of
misdemeanors involving moral turpi
tude, the persons afflicted with loath
some and contagious diseases, but and
above all others the Socialists. It befits
such a moral idiot and political leper as
the author of this bill to imagine that
he can protect domestic turpitude from
the irresistible advance of Socialism.
It Is announced by cable that the Em
peror of Germany has authorized the
publication of the following remarks
inade to Deputy Baron Eynem: "Wheth
er we reap gratitude or ingratitude, we
shall not weary in our endeavors for
the welfare of the working classes. Ins
cause we are convinced that this will
ultimately enable us to reconcile the
workingmen with their position in the
social seal1?. These endeavors will, at
any rate, give me a quiet conscience for
all we do." This is plain enough. The
object of the Emperor is to " reconcile
the workingmen w ith their position in
the social scale." Such is precisely the
object of our humbugologists. Should
the wage workers refuse to be reconciled
then, in the words of Tom Scott, " give
them the rifle diet". German Emperors,
like American humbugologists, must
have a "quiet conscience," and they
will get it at any cost. Where Is Bis
marck all this while? lie, of the quiet
conscience, surely laughs in his sleeve.
But the Socialists may well laugh out
right. No sleeve for them, and no re
conciliation. The youngster who plays
Emperor in Berlin is a poor diplomat.
The Daily Commercial Bulletin of this
city pays Samuel Gompers the compli
ment of an editorial ''refutation"'. Gom
pers had spoken of some of the opponents
of the eight hour workday as "men of
learning", and the Bulletin, highly flat
tered by a courtesy which may not have
Ik en intended for its editor, brays like
an ass and kicks like a mule. Of learned
asses we have heard sometimes ; of
moral ones never. And so the Bulletin
ohji cts to Gompers' proposition, that if
the hours of lahor are reduced the work
ing man will not waste his spare time in
rum holes or debauchery, but will so
improve it as to become a better man
morally and intellectually. Not that
the Bulletin "distrusts the workman's
morul character." Oh no I But "the
eight-hou question is more a question
of political economy than of morality",
and "to drag the latter in the discus
sion is liegging the question". At la;t,
then, we have it in a nutshell : Political
economy the economy of capitalism
and its "learned men" is immoral ; it
cannot stand the test of morality.
The Labor Movement in America.
UY LUCIKN SaNIAL.
An Address Delivered t the Inauguration
Moetliifc of the N. Y. American Section
Friends: It is a long, rough, dark
and up-hill road that the great army of
Labor has been traveling these thou
sands of years. How it ever came to
pass that a majority of mankind a
majority ! indeed, nearly the whole of
it, mark well submitted to toil in slav
ery for a few despots, we shall not con
sider to-night. For the purpose of this
lecture it is enough to state that such a
thing has been, and is ; and that, from
the moment it was, no road remained
opeu to liberty but through the dark and
successive passages of slavery, serfdom
and wagedoui. Through those passages
generations without number have crept,
and are creeping still, dying by the
way. From time to time a light appears
in the distance. Sure'y it is the light of
day, the light of freedom ; and the sad
procession accelerates its creeping.
Were it not for that light and the hope
it inspires, mankind would turn back
into beastkind.
Such a light appeared on this conti
nent one hundred years ago. Europe
saw it across the Ocean, and by a des
perate effort the serfs of the Old World,
issued from the slaves of antiquity,
sprang from serfdom into wagedom. The
advance was great, though the creeping
and the starving and the dying were
hardly less than before.
To this continent, where the light had
appeared, millions of tho self-emanci
pated serfs escaped crept through a
lissure of the wagery passage, right into
the wilderness. The wilderness ! No man
there to claim a share of another man's
labor. No civilization there, either of
the bogus sort that we know, or of the
true sort that we dream of. No art, no
luxury, no cooperation of man with
man in any form, but a constant fight
of man against the untamed forces of
Nature. Anarchy of the best Pentecost
brand. With a gun for the wild beasts,
who could alone dispute his right, the
pioneer went on and farther and far
ther, contented and happy. But when
he reached the Pacific, there was no
longer any wilderness liehind him; and
at the time my lecture begins, wagery
covered the land.
In the world behind him, both in
Europe and here, great events had oc
curred, which must be seen in their true
light if the twenty years that I am to
review briefly to-night can be made in
telligible at all.
No sooner had the wage system neen
established than the way out of it became
the question. True, at first, the wage
working masses could see little beyond
the fact that machmeiy, by depriving
them of thtir property in tools their
only property under serfdom tended to
make them even more dependent uism
the ruling class than they had been
throughout the middle ages. Hence
their general oppifeition to machines in
the early part of this century. Aud il
may be observed that their first organ
izations were largely induced or pervad
ed by a spirit of resistance to machinery.
On the other hand, machinery was un
questionably directed by the ruling class
against the wage-workers, whose organ
izations it then-fore opposed b7 law and
by force. But there were intelligent
men, who plainly saw in the simultane
ous progress of both machinery and
organization the long expected means of
final emancipation ; and these began to
preach that labor should organize with
the immediate object of obtaining a
larger share in the larger product of
modern industry, and with the ultimate
object of obtaining absolute, common,
undivided possession of the whole ma
chinery of production. They plainly
saw that organization for the first
purpose must finally end in the over
throw of the wage system.
Such was Socialism at its birth, and
such to-day i3 still Socialism. Socialism
is the labor movement and the labor
movement is Socialism. And any man
who advocates labor organization is,
consciously or unconsciously, under this
or that name, a Socialist. liis object is
to place the social power all power, in
dustrial and political in the hands of the
wealth producers; and such is precisely
the object of the man who, boldly calling
himself a Socialist, proclaims the self
evident truth that this power, when at
last vested in its rightful owners, will
inevitably be used for the abolition of
wagedom.
Now, it is customary to say that Social
ism in this country is a foreign import
ation. Inasmuch as the European race
itself, with its own wage system, is a
foreign importation, that is a truism.
The wage system is as inevitably pro
ductive of Socialist thought and move
ment, regardless of climate, latitude,
longitude, race, or color, as the applica
tion of steam to a motor is productive of
motion. But, foi the further inform
ation of those wiio may not know it, I
may state hero that St. Simon, the
French founder 'if modern Socialism,
was first induced to a study of social
problems by the radical utterances of
Thomas Jefferson and other founders of
the American Republic, for the establish
ment of which he fought by the side of
Lafayette. That the ideas which he f oria
ufa.ced did not, until lately, impress
themselves so universally upon the
American mind as they did at an earlier
period upon the European, is plainly
owing to the fact that the wage system
itself was not, until lately, as extensive
here as in the Old World. The economic
conditions of the far West as I have
already intimated were for a time
essentially favorable to a half-anarchist,
half capitalist system of industrial life.
But, in the older States of the Union,
where the wage system had reached the
European stage of development, the
Socialist spirit was at w ork with no less
energy than in the most advanced
centers of thought and agitation on the
other side of the Atlantic.
I shall, in this brief review, pass over
the early attempts of labor to organize
for the purpose of obtaining some of the
benefits of machinery in the form of
shorter hours and higher pay; move
ments in which the Yankee girls of 1825
and subsequent years played a prom
inent part. But, as early as 1829, a
workingmen's ticket was nominated in
New York upon a platform from which
the following extracts are made :
"Resolved, That the first appropria-.
tion of the soil to private and exclusive
possession is eminently and barbarously
unjust ;
" That it is substantially feudal in its
character, inasmuch as those who re
ceive enormous posessious are lords, and
those w ho receive little or nothing are
vassals ;
"That hereditary transmission of
wealth on one baud, and of poverty on
the other, has brought down to the pres
ent generation all the evils of the feudal
system ; and that thia, in our opinion,
is the primary source of all our calami
ties. Was not this Socialism, pure and
simple?
Surely, at that time, St. Simon was
unknown here; Proudhon had not is
sued his formula, "Property is Rob
bery :" Loui Blanc's "Organization of
Labor" did not exist; Lassalle was four
years old, and Karl Marx's "Capital"
could not yet be criticised by a Guuton.
And, by the way, what of George?
Where is he, what ligure does he cut by
the side of this declaration of principles,
issued by the workingmen of New York
in 1829?
On the first day of the election the
workingmen's ticket was so far ahead of
all others that a panic ensued among the
capitalists, who immediately dropped
their political differences and united on
one set of "boodlers." Then, as in 1886,
" society was saved."
Twenty years passed, curing which a
number of trade-unions were established
and a considerable agitation was carried
on for the shortening of the workday to
ten hours. Then came, in 1845, the New
England Workingmen's Association,
among the founders of which figured
those American thinkers who had been
strongly impressed by the intellectual
movement of France. 1 shall name a few
of them : Wendell Phillips, William
Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Albert
Brisbane and 1 am sejry-n say tha
renegade Chas. A. Dana. A constitu
tion was adopted, the preamble of which,
is suggestive :
"Whereas we, the mechanics and
workingmen of New England, are con
vinced by the sad experience of years
that under the present arrangements of
society labor is and must be the slave of
wealth; and whereas the producers of
all wealth are deprived, not merely of
its enjoyment, hut also of the social and
civil rights which belong to humanity;
and whereas we are convinced that re
form of these abuses must depend upon
ourselves, and ourselves only ; and
whereas we believe that in intelligent
union alone is strength ; we hereby de
claie our object to be union for power
power to bless humanity -and to further
this object we resolve ourselves into an
association."
Here we have, in almost identical
words, the much later declaration of the
International Society of Workingmen,
that the wage system is t'.te source of ail
industrial and political dependence, and
that the emancipation of the working
men must be accomplished by the work
ingmen themselves.
All these movement were clearly in