The Socialist party is the only party that has the children at heart; the only party that takes them into its confidence; the only party that has a message for them in a campaign year.
In my travels about the country I have met many thousands of little children and their fresh and eager faces have always given me joy and their merry voices have filled me with delight and made me stronger for my work.
These children are not yet old enough to join the Socialist party and have an active part in its great work, but they are old enough to understand why their parents belong to it, and why they are proud of their card of membership, and of the red button they wear, to show that they are socialists and that as socialists they are working hand in hand with thousands and thousands of others to change things so that this world may be a better, kinder and sweeter world for us all to live in.
Now let me talk directly as I may to the more than thirty millions of children and young folks in our country who are less than eighteen years of age. I fancy I can see them all spread out in all directions, far as the eye can reach, and farther and farther still to the very shores of the seas and lakes and gulf that bound our western continent.
What a wonderful audience I am about to address! Not a grown person in it. Only children. Millions of them and all eager to hear the message that socialism has to offer to the child-world.
My dear little children, I am sure you will understand me when I say that in speaking to you of socialism I feel very near to all of you and I know you will believe me when I tell you that I would if I could make you all happy and keep you sweet and loving toward each other all your lives. Most of you are the children of the poor, some of the well-to-do, and a few of the rich, but all of you are the children of the same Father and all of you are sisters and brothers in the same great family of humankind.
If any of you feel that you are better than others because you wear better clothes or live in better houses or go in what you think is "better society," it is because your young minds and hearts have been tainted by wrong example and wrong education. It is this wicked feeling that corrupts the conscience and hardens the heart and begets the envy and hate of our fellow-beings, instead of their love and good will.
When that best friend the children ever had on earth said, "Suffer little children and forbid them not, to come unto me; for such is the kingdom of heaven" he meant all children, poor and rich, but especially the poor. He loved and pitied them because of their poverty and suffering.
He himself had been born in a manger and when he was grown up he said sorrowfully that "he had not where to lay his head." He did not despise little children because they were poor and neglected and shabbily dressed but he loved them all the more; and as he looked down upon them his heart melted with compassion and the tears of tenderness filled his eyes; and then he became grave and his fair brow grew dark with wrath as he thought of those who sat in rich church pews and piously thanked the Lord that they were not as other people. He denounced them as hypocrites for pretending to be religious while they robbed the poor and turned the little children into the street to suffer hunger and fall into evil ways.
Nearly twenty centuries have passed since the suffering poor heard with gladness the message of the Lowly Nazarene and since he was moved to tears by the sight of the little children of the street, but the world has not yet learned the meaning of his tender and touching words, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." If he were to walk the streets of New York or Chicago, or Lawrence, Massachusetts, or any of the cities where the mills and sweatshops are filled with child slaves—as he once walked the streets of Jerusalem—he would grow sick at heart as he saw the little ones he so loved, pale and wan and worn, harnessed to monstrous machines and slowly put to death to swell the profits of the greedy mill owners who sit in the rich pews of the synagogue, as did the pharisees he scourged without mercy twenty centuries ago.
The children of the working people have always been poor because the world has never been just. For ages and ages those who have builded the houses, cultivated the fields, raised the crops, spun the wool, woven the cloth, supplied the food we eat and the clothes we wear, and furnished the homes we live in, have been the poor and despised, while those who profited by their labor and consumed the good things they produced, have been the rich and respectable.
Jesus himself was a carpenter's son and suffered the poverty of his class and when he grew up it was not the rich and respectable, but the poor and despised who loved him, and opened their arms to receive him, and heard gladly his tender and comforting ministrations. He was one of them in poverty and suffering and in all his loving and self-denying life he never forgot them. Had he deserted the poor from whom he sprang, had he gone over to the rich as their preacher, or their judge, or their lawyer or teacher or scribe—as so many of his pretended followers have done and are still doing—he never would have been crucified, nor would the world today know that he had ever lived.
It was because, and only because, Jesus loved and served the poor and rebuked the rich who robbed them, and threatened to array them against their rich despoilers, that he was condemned to die and that the cruel nails were driven into his hands and feet on the cross at Calvary.
Jesus taught that the earth and the air and the sea and sky and all the beauty and fulness thereof were for all the children of men; that they should all equally enjoy the riches of nature and dwell together in peace, bear one another's burdens and love one another, and that is what socialism teaches and why the rich thieves who have laid hold of the earth and its bounties would crucify the socialists as those other robbers of the poor crucified Jesus two thousand years ago.
Now let us see what message the Socialist party has for the children and why all children should be socialists and help to speed the day when the brotherhood of socialism shall prevail throughout the earth.
But first let me say that the Socialist party has reason to know that the children have great influence when they become interested in a given work and set their hearts on doing that work. The Socialist party knows better than to ignore the children as if they were china dolls or stuffed teddy bears, as all the other parties do, for it knows by what they have already done that when once they get fairly started they will make the air hum like swarms of bees with the glad tidings of socialism.
The little boys and girls who have already become socialists are among the busiest workers for our party and they love so well to work for socialism that it is play to them and fills their hearts with joy. They wear the red button and they know why it is red and what its meaning is; they tack up bills and distribute dodgers advertising our meetings; they sell tickets, take up collections, act as ushers, provide the soap-box for the corner speaker, carry chairs for the women so they may sit in comfort after their day's work, go around among the neighbors and remind them of the meeting and not to forget to attend, sell socialist books, papers and pamphlets, and do a score of other things which are just as useful in their way as the speech of the orator that wins the applause of the people.
Now the Socialist party is the only party in the world that wants to put an end once and forever to all kinds of child labor and to have it so that all children, white and black, without a single exception, shall be allowed to grow up in the free air, with plenty of time for mirth and play; that they shall all have decent homes to live in, comfortable beds to sleep in, plenty of good food to eat, plenty of good clothes to wear and that when they reach the proper age they shall go to school and college and continue their course until they have obtained a sound and practical education. Then they will have strong, healthy bodies, trained minds and skilled hands, and not only enter cheerfully upon the duties of life, but be certain of making it a success.
If you listen to the old fogies who still belong to the parties their grandfathers did and who have not moved an inch from their grandfathers' graves, they will tell you that socialists are foolish people and that what they propose never can be done. That is what the fogies of every age have always said. They are the "wise" people who do things in the same way that their dead grandparents did before them, who never change their minds, never accept a new idea, never grow, and who are always dead long before they are buried and forgotten the day after the funeral. Whatever you may be I beg of you not to be a fogy, nor to follow a fogy's solemn advice. His brain has ceased to work—if it ever did work. He is mentally stagnant and moss-covered and votes the same old ticket with no more idea of what he is voting for than a wooden Indian.
The Socialist party says there have got to be some changes and has set about making them, or at least getting ready to make them. It says that the world is big enough for all the people that are in it, with plenty of room to spare for groves and parks and playgrounds; that there is land enough to go around without crowding; that there are farms enough, or can be easily provided, to raise all we can eat, so that no child in all the world need to go hungry; that there is plenty of coal and iron, oil and gas, gold and silver and other minerals and metals, stored in the earth; that there are forests and mountains and water courses galore; that there are mills and mines and factories and ships and railways and telegraphs, and the power supplied free by nature to run them all; that there are millions of men and women ready to do all the work that may be required to build homes, raise crops, bake bread—and cake too—weave cloth, make clothes and everything else that is necessary for everybody, and have time enough besides to build schools and provide playgrounds for every last one of the children, with plenty of toys thrown in to make this earth a children's paradise.
Now why should not just these things come to pass and why should not you children help us speed the day when they shall come to pass?
Everything you can possibly think of to make this earth sweet and beautiful and to make life a blessed joy for us all is within our reach. The raw materials are at our feet; the forces to fashion them into forms of beauty and use are at our finger tips. We have but to put ourselves in harmony with nature and with one another to spread far and wide the gospel of life and love and once more hear "the sons of God shout for joy."
Socialists not only dream of the good day coming when the world shall know that men are brothers and that women are sisters to each other, but they are at work with all their hearts and all their heads and hands to make that dream come true.
If you want to know what the plans of the socialists are in detail read their platform, attend their lectures and study their literature.
Socialism is the greatest thing in all the world today and the boys and girls of this generation who will be remembered in the next are those who are clear-eyed enough to see that socialism is coming and are at the battle-front fighting bravely to overcome the prejudice against it and to pave the way for it so that it may come soon and in peace and order.
Many of us who have been long in service will not be here when the bells peal forth the joyous tidings that socialism has triumphed and that the people are free, but the children that now are will live to see it and in the day of their rejoicing they will not forget those who toiled without recompense that they might live without dread of poverty or fear of want.
As we look about us today we see that the world is filled with suffering and despair and when we come to look into the cause of it we find that it is a reproach to us all. As I write the news comes of the fierce battle that is being fought between ten thousand hungry miners in West Virginia and the thugs and ex-convicts and murderers armed by the coal corporations to force the strikers back into their dismal and hopeless pits. The battle has already lasted two days. Many on both sides have been killed, but the capitalist papers are doing all they can to hush it up.
Long ago the miners were evicted from the company's wretched hovels. They and their wives and children live in tented fields and the brutal guards have even driven the women and children from there into the wilderness to starve that the strike may be broken and the miners compelled to go back to work at the terms of their greedy and heartless masters.
And why is this awful battle raging and human beings murdering each other as if they were wild beasts? Because a few gluttonous slave owners like Henry Gassaway Davis and the Watsons and Elkinses who dwell in gorgeous palaces on vast estates occupying whole mountain ranges, privately own the mines and minerals which were intended for all, and consequently the thousands of miners and their wives and children are at their mercy, and when they meekly asked for five per cent more wages so their families would not suffer for bread the brutal lords of the mines sent out their private army of assassins to hunt them down and kill them as if they were mad dogs.
The Socialist party says that those mines should be owned by all the people and that is what will come to pass when the socialists get into power, and then the green hills of West Virginia and other states will no longer echo with the rifle shots of corporation assassins, nor run red with the blood of honest workingmen slain to appease the greed of their soulless masters.
In February last, four boys were hanged in Chicago. The oldest was twenty-one, the youngest barely out of his childhood. They had held up and robbed and murdered a poor truck farmer for the little money he had on his person. Not one of these boys ever had a decent home. They were born in poverty, reared in ignorance, and surrounded by vice and filth.
This is cultivating crime and reaping the harvest. We socialists weep as we think of the cruel fate of those four poor, friendless boys who died on the gallows while they were still in their childhood, because the world has not yet learned that there is greater profit in raising children than there is in raising hogs.
The frightful stories of the little children in the mills of Lawrence and the cruel suffering they endured is still fresh in the public memory. When the poor and despairing mothers, their hearts wrung with agony and their eyes blinded with tears, attempted to save their children from starvation by placing them in the keeping of sympathizing friends, they were beaten, insulted, and with babies at their breasts thrown into jail, bleeding and stunned, by the brutal police acting under orders from the far more brutal mill owners.
The world will never know the suffering and terror these poor working people—especially the women and children—had to endure for daring to ask the millionaire mill owners for a pittance more in return for their labor to keep the wolf of hunger from their gloomy hovels.
When the Socialist party gets into power those mills at Lawrence and all others like them will be taken over by the people and operated for the good of all, and then the workers will keep the wealth they produce for themselves, instead of turning it over to the greedy mill bosses; they will have decent homes to live in, food in plenty on their tables, and their children will go to school to be properly educated instead of to the mills to be ground into profits to gorge their idle owners.
In March last, Mrs. L. F. Jellson of Salem, Oregon, gave poison to each of her four little children, her own offspring, because they were starving and she was poor and had no way to get them bread. She then poisoned herself and all she asked in the note she left was that she and her darling children be buried together. This poor heart-broken soul was driven to destroy herself and her precious babes because the world as it now is would not allow them to live.
Think for just a moment of all the food there is in the world and all there might be and then tell me if socialists are wrong and foolish and wicked for saying that the self-murder of this poor woman and the murder of her children is a terrible crime of which society is guilty and for which there is no excuse on earth or in heaven.
A recent investigation showed that in the City of St. Louis there are 16,000 young women who receive as wage-earners less than $8 per week and over 3,000 who receive from $3 to $4 per week.
It is easy to see from this why so many little girls and younger women are forced to enter upon the path which leads to shame and sorrow and which seldom bears the impress of returning footsteps.
When the giant Titanic met her fate, fifty little bellboys went down with her to the bottom of the sea. They were ordered, according to the account, to their regular posts in the main cabin and warned by their captain not to get into the way of the escaping passengers. James Humphries, as quartermaster and eye witness said, "throughout the first hour of confusion and terror these lads sat quietly on their benches. Not one of them attempted to enter a lifeboat. Not one of them was saved."
Can you read this without being moved to tears? Brave, noble little lads! I almost feel as if it had been a privilege to go down with these great little souls to their watery grave.
The little boys who perished here were poor boys, many of them without fathers, and others obliged to support widowed mothers and little brothers and sisters younger than themselves.
What a lesson this touching, deeply pathetic incident teaches and what a world of meaning there is in the sad circumstances of their tragic death!
Had they not been poor children, little waifs, they would not have been locked in the cabin to perish like rats. They would not, in fact, have been there at all, and had it not been for the pride and pomp, the greed and luxury that paraded the upper deck, the Titanic never would have gone to the bottom of the sea.
And now, my children, I must come to a close. I have taken up much of your time, but I have only been able to trace in barest outline what the Socialist party is organized for, what it aims to do, and will do, and why the children, above all, should vie with each other in helping it to grow and speeding the happy day of its success.
When that day comes the rejoicing people will realize that the kingdom of heaven, so long prayed for, has been set up here on earth in the social brotherhood of all mankind.
The large increase in the Socialist vote in the late national and state elections is quite naturally hailed with elation and rejoicing by party members, but I feel prompted to remark, in the light of some personal observations made during the campaign, that it is not entirely a matter of jubilation. I am not given to pessimism, or captious criticism, and yet I cannot but feel that some of the votes placed to our credit this year were obtained by methods not consistent with the principles of a revolutionary party, and in the long run will do more harm than good.
I yield to no one in my desire to see the party grow and the vote increase, but in my zeal I do not lose sight of the fact that healthy growth and a substantial vote depend upon efficient organization, the self-education and self-discipline of the membership, and that where these are lacking, an inflated vote secured by compromising methods, can only be hurtful to the movement.
The danger I see ahead is that the Socialist party at this stage, and under existing conditions, is apt to attract elements which it cannot assimilate, and that it may be either weighted down, or torn asunder with internal strife, or that it may become permeated and corrupted with the spirit of bourgeois reform to an extent that will practically destroy its virility and efficiency as a revolutionary organization.
To my mind the working class character and the revolutionary integrity of the Socialist party are of first importance. All the votes of the people would do us no good if our party ceased to be a revolutionary party, or came to be only incidentally so, while yielding more and more to the pressure to modify the principles and program of the party for the sake of swelling the vote and hastening the day of its expected triumph.
It is precisely this policy and the alluring promise it holds out to new members with more zeal than knowledge of working class economics, that constitutes the danger we should guard against in preparing for the next campaign. The truth is that we have not a few members who regard vote-getting as of supreme importance, no matter by what method the votes may be secured, and this leads them to hold out inducements and make representations which are not at all compatible with the stern and uncompromising principles of a revolutionary party. They seek to make the Socialist propaganda so attractive—eliminating whatever may give offense to bourgeois sensibilities—that it serves as a bait for votes rather than as a means of education, and votes thus secured do not properly belong to us and do injustice to our party as well as to those who cast them.
These votes do not express socialism and in the next ensuing election are quite as apt to be turned against us, and it is better that they be not cast for the Socialist party, registering a degree of progress the party is not entitled to and indicating a political position the party is unable to sustain.
Socialism is a matter of growth, of evolution, which can be advanced by wise methods, but never by obtaining for it a fictitious vote. We should seek only to register the actual vote of socialism, no more and no less. In our propaganda we should state our principles clearly, speak the truth fearlessly, seeking neither to flatter nor to offend, but only to convince those who should be with us and win them to our cause through an intelligent understanding of its mission.
There is also a disposition on the part of some to join hands with reactionary trade-unionists in local emergencies and in certain temporary situations to effect some specific purpose, which may or may not be in harmony with our revolutionary program. No possible good can come from any kind of a political alliance, express or implied, with trade-unions or the leaders of trade unions who are opposed to socialism and only turn to it for use in some extremity, the fruit of their own reactionary policy.
Of course we want the support of trade-unionists, but only of those who believe in socialism and are ready to vote and work with us for the overthrow of capitalism.
The American Federation of Labor, as an organization, with its Civic federation to determine its attitude and control its course, is deadly hostile to the Socialist party and to any and every revolutionary movement of the working class. To kowtow to this organization and to join hands with its leaders to secure political favors can only result in compromising our principles and bringing disaster to the party.
Not for all the vote of the American Federation of Labor and its labor-dividing and corruption breeding craft-unions should we compromise one jot of our revolutionary principles; and if we do we shall be visited with the contempt we deserve by all real Socialists, who will scorn to remain in a party professing to be a revolutionary party of the working class while employing the crooked and disreputable methods of ward-heeling politicians to attain their ends.
Of far greater importance than increasing the vote of the Socialist party is the economic organization of the working class. To the extent, and only to the extent, that the workers are organized and disciplined in their respective industries can the Socialist movement advance and the Socialist party hold what is registered by the ballot. The election of legislative and administrative officers, here and there, where the party is still in a crude state and the members economically and politically unfit to assume the responsibilities thrust upon them as the result of popular discontent, will inevitably bring trouble and set the party back, instead of advancing it, and while this is to be expected and is to an extent unavoidable, we should court no more of that kind of experience than is necessary to avoid a repetition of it. The Socialist party has already achieved some victories of this kind which proved to be defeats, crushing and humiliating, and from which the party has not even now, after many years, entirely recovered.
We have just so much socialism that is stable and dependable, because securely grounded in economics, in discipline and all else that expresses class-conscious solidarity, and this must be augmented steadily through economic and political organization, but no amount of mere votes can accomplish this in even the slightest degree.
A vote for socialism is not socialism any more than a menu is a meal.
Socialism must be organized, drilled, equipped, and the place to begin is in the industries where the workers are employed. Their economic power has got to be developed through efficient organization, or their political power, even if it could be developed, would but react upon them, thwart their plans, blast their hopes, and all but destroy them.
Such organization to be effective must be expressed in terms of industrial unionism. Each industry must be organized in its entirety, embracing all the workers, and all working together in the interests of all, in the true spirit of solidarity, thus laying the foundation and developing the superstructure of the new system within the old, from which it is evolving, and systematically fitting the workers, step by step, to assume entire control of the productive forces when the hour strikes for the impending organic change.
Without such economic organization and the economic power with which it is clothed, and without the industrial co-operative training, discipline and efficiency which are its corollaries, the fruit of any political victories the workers may achieve will turn to ashes on their lips.
Now that the capitalist system is so palpably breaking down, and in consequence its political parties breaking up, the disintegrating elements with vague reform ideas and radical bourgeois tendencies will head in increasing numbers toward the Socialist party, especially since the greatly enlarged vote of this year has been announced and the party is looming up as a possible dispenser of the spoils of office. There is danger, I believe, that the party may be swamped by such an exodus and the best possible means—and, in fact, the only effectual means—of securing the party against such a fatality is the economic power of the industrially-organized workers.
The votes will come rapidly enough from now on without seeking them and we should make it clear that the Socialist party wants the votes only of those who want socialism, and that, above all, as a revolutionary party of the working class, it discountenances vote-seeking for the sake of votes and holds in contempt office-seeking for the sake of office. These belong entirely to capitalist parties with their bosses and their boodle and have no place in a party whose shibboleth is emancipation.
With the workers efficiently organized industrially, bound together by the common tie of their enlightened self-interest, they will just as naturally and inevitably express their economic solidarity in political terms and cast a united vote for the party of their class as the forces of nature express obedience to the law of gravitation.
In looking over some old letters a day or two ago I found a postal card which Susan B. Anthony had written to me over thirty years ago, and, strangely enough, it was held fast by a letter that was written to me about the same time by Wendell Phillips, as if these two epistles had been attracted to each other and held together in the bonds of mutualism as were the great souls who had written them in their heroic struggle for human enfranchisement.
The faded and time-worn old card carried me back to the day I met Miss Anthony at the depot on her arrival at Terre Haute, where she was to speak in public for her sex. At that time Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who afterward became Miss Anthony's confidential friend and authorized biographer, and I, and two or three others, were about the only people in Terre Haute who believed that woman was a human being and entitled to the rights of citizenship. We had arranged these meetings for Miss Anthony and her three active coadjutors in woman's cause at that time, and they arrived according to the schedule.
I shall never forget how Miss Anthony impressed me. She had all the charm of a real woman and all the strength of a perfect man. Style, personal adornment, she did not know; vanity found no lodgment in her great soul. She was born with a heroic purpose, and she set out in fulfillment of that purpose with a spirit of dauntless valor and determination which knew "no variableness or shadow of turning" to the day that ended her consecrated life and she passed from the scenes of men.
The trials, privations, insults borne by this grand old pioneer will never be known by those who are in the ranks today. An event characteristic of the struggle in which she engaged almost single-handed for so many years was her arrest and trial for voting in the presidential election of 1872. A fine of one hundred dollars and costs was imposed upon her, which she vowed she would not pay, even if she were sent to jail. When Miss Anthony said a thing she meant it. That fine was never paid.
It was, after all, a stroke of good fortune that Miss Anthony was the victim of this barbarous indignity. It inspired one of the greatest speeches of her life. In opening this dramatic plea and protest she said:
"Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny."
She then quoted from the preamble of the Federal Constitution: "We, the people of the United States," etc., and proceeded:
"It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we the male citizens; but, we the whole people, who formed the union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people—women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government—the ballot. The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4 said: 'The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse between the people of the different States of the Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted) shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizen, of the several States.'
"Thus, at the very beginning did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all, in order to produce the desired results—a harmonious union and a homogeneous people."
Miss Anthony then quoted the New York State Constitution: "No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of its peers."
She then proceeded with her argument, which has never been and never will be answered. It is to be regretted that space forbids more ample quotation in this article. Here is a glowing paragraph from her impassioned plea which is characteristic of the entire address:
"To them (women) this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons the oligarch over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household; which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects; carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the nation."
There has never been a more logical unanswerable argument for the political enfranchisement of women than was here made by Miss Anthony. And yet only a very few of the people were fair enough to listen, intelligent enough to understand, or candid enough to give approval, if they did.
Susan B. Anthony's whole career was one tempestuous struggle for the rights of her sex. She never wavered and she never wearied in the conflict. She had the moral courage of a martyr, and such she was as certainly as any that ever perished at the stake.
On my visit to Johnstown, N. Y., recently, the comrades pointed out the spot where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, another pioneer heroine of the movement, was born. Mrs. Stanton has long since been gathered to her fathers, but her work remains an imperishable monument in memory of her achievements.
It was at the first Woman's Rights convention ever held in the United States, July 19, 1848, that Mrs. Stanton delivered an oration that will forever have a place in the literature of woman's struggle for freedom. The doctrine she advocated was at that time little less than treason, but she knew it was true, and she boldly took her stand and maintained it to the end. In her speech at this first convention she said:
"Now is the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy—contempt and ridicule. The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some men and women for the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our work today is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by the prophet. * * * We do not expect our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will be our way, and on our banner will beat dark storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undauntedly we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it: 'Equality of Rights.'"
There was thrilling power in the burning eloquence of Mrs. Stanton, but only they who had a part in the struggle at that time could have any conception of what bitter hatred, blind prejudice and malign persecution there were to overcome.
In February, 1854, Mrs. Stanton made a notable plea for the political rights of women to the legislature of New York. In mentally invoicing an average legislature today one gets some idea of the self-imposed task of this brave old pioneer, and the indomitable spirit required to undertake it, of arousing a body of sodden bourgeois legislators, ward politicians, to recognize the right of women to breathe the air of civilized citizenship and belong to themselves. In this thoroughly militant and inspiring appeal she said:
"The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense. His majesty no longer awes the multitude; his scepter is broken; his crown is trampled in the dust; the sentence of death is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief. * * *
"We demand the full recognition of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons; natives, free-born citizens; property holders, taxpayers, yet we are denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have every qualification required by the constitution necessary to the legal voter but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous and intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and negroes."
These two sturdy pioneers in woman's struggle present a magnificent picture in the perspective. They did not know the meaning of discouragement. They were strangers to weakness and fear.
Both were of heroic mould. Both were born and endowed for great service and both made their names synonymous with the struggle of their sex to shake off the fetters of the centuries.
Mrs. Stanton was born in 1815, ante-dating Miss Anthony by five years. They were inseparable friends, and they who saw them together say that their love and fealty toward each other was so beautiful and touching that it was an inspiration to all their co-workers and shamed to silence all their bickerings and petty jealousies.
They both lived to be over eighty years. After full half a century of unrelaxing fidelity to their principles and unceasing battle for their cause they saw but the beginning of the glorious fruition of their consecrated service. Such has been the fate of all who, like these great souls, loved principle better than popularity and humanity more than themselves.
The women who are in the ranks today may well rejoice that these grand women and others who shared in their bitter persecution blazed the way through the dense wilderness of ignorance, prejudice and hatred for what is now a world movement, with millions proudly bearing its banner, inscribed with the conquering shibboleth: Equal Freedom and Equal Opportunities for All Mankind.
Introduction by Chairman Cable.
Gentlemen of the Convention: I assure you it is a great privilege on my part to present to you at this time a gentleman who needs no introduction at my hands; a gentleman who is known to you and who is known to the workingmen throughout the length and breadth of this country as a true and tried trade unionist and the candidate of the Socialist party for President of the United States. I, therefore, take great pleasure in presenting to you Brother Eugene V. Debs.
Mr. Chairman, Delegates and Fellow Workers: It is with pleasure, I assure you, that I embrace this opportunity to exchange greetings with you in the councils of labor. I have prepared no formal address, nor is any necessary at this time. You have met here as the representatives of organized labor and if I can do anything to assist you in the work you have been delegated to do I shall render that assistance with great pleasure.
To serve the working class is to me always a duty of love. Thirty-three years ago I first became a member of a trade union. I can remember quite well under what difficulties meetings were held and with what contempt organized labor was treated at that time. There has been a decided change. The small and insignificant trade union has expanded to the proportions of a great national organization. The few hundreds now number millions and organized labor has become a recognized factor in the economics and politics of the nation.
There has been a great evolution during that time and while the power of the organized workers has increased there has been an industrial development which makes that power more necessary than ever before in all the history of the working class movement.
This is an age of organization. The small employer of a quarter of a century ago has practically disappeared. The workingman of today is confronted by the great corporation which has its ironclad rules and regulations, and if they don't suit he can quit.
In the presence of this great power, workingmen are compelled to organize or be ground to atoms. They have organized. They have the numbers. They have had some bitter experience. They have suffered beyond the power of language to describe, but they have not yet developed their latent power to a degree that they can cope successfully with the great power that exploits and oppresses them. Upon this question of organization, my brothers, you and I may differ widely, but as we are reasonable men, we can discuss these differences candidly until we find common ground upon which we can stand side by side in the true spirit of solidarity—and work together for the emancipation of our class.
Until quite recently the average trade unionist was opposed to having politics even mentioned in the meeting of his union. The reason for this is self-evident. Workingmen have not until now keenly felt the necessity for independent working class political action. They have been divided between the two capitalist parties and the very suggestion that the union was to be used in the interest of the one or the other was in itself sufficient to sow the seed of disruption. So it isn't strange that the average trade unionist guarded carefully against the introduction of political questions in his union. But within the past two or three years there have been such changes that workingmen have been compelled to take notice of the fact that the labor question is essentially a political question, and that if they would protect themselves against the greed and rapacity of the capitalist class they must develop their political power as well as their economic power, and use both in their own interest. Workingmen have developed sufficient intelligence to understand the necessity for unity upon the economic field. All now recognize the need for thorough organization. But organization of numbers of itself is not sufficient. You might have all the workers of the country embraced in some vast organization and yet they would be very weak if they were not organized upon correct principles; if they did not understand, and understand clearly, what they were organized for, and what their organization expected to accomplish.
I am of those who believe that an organization of workingmen, to be efficient, to meet the demands of this hour, must be organized upon a revolutionary basis; must have for its definite object not only the betterment of the condition of workingmen in the wage system, but the absolute overthrow of wage slavery that the workingman may be emancipated and stand forth clothed with the dignity and all other attributes of true manhood.
Now let me briefly discuss the existing condition. We have been organizing all these years, and there are now approximately three millions of American workingmen who wear union badges, who keep step to union progress. At this very time, and in spite of all that organized labor can do to the contrary, there is a condition that prevails all over this country that is well calculated to challenge the serious consideration of every workingman. To begin with, according to the reports furnished us, twenty per cent of the workingmen of this country are now out of employment. I have here a copy of the New York World containing a report of the labor commissioner of the State of New York who shows that during the quarter ending June 30 there were in that state an army of union men out of employment approximating thirty-five per cent of the entire number; that is to say, in the State of New York today, out of every one hundred union men (these reports are received from the unions themselves, verified by their own officers, so there can be no question in regard to them), out of every 100 union men in New York, 35 are out of employment. The percentage may not be so large in these western states where the industrial development has not reached the same point, but go where you may, east or west, north or south, you will find men, union men, who are begging for the opportunity to work for just enough to keep their suffering souls within their famished bodies. A system in which such a condition as this is possible has fulfilled its mission, stands condemned, and ought to be abolished.
According to the Declaration of Independence, man has the inalienable right to life. If that be true it follows that he has also the inalienable right to work.
If you have no right to work you have no right to life because you can only live by work. And if you live in a system that deprives you of the right to work, that system denies you the right to live. Now man has a right to life because he is here. That is sufficient proof, and if he has the right to life, it follows that he has the right to all the means that sustain life. But how is it in this outgrown capitalist system? A workingman can only work on condition that he finds somebody who will give him permission to work for just enough of what his labor produces to keep him in working order.
No matter whether you have studied this economic question or not, you cannot have failed to observe that during the past half century society has been sharply divided into classes—into a capitalist class upon the one hand, into a working class upon the other hand. I shall not take the time to trace this evolution. I shall simply call your attention to the fact that half a century ago all a man needed was a trade and having this he could supply himself with the simple tools then used, produce what he needed and enjoy the fruit of his labor. But this has been completely changed. The simple tool has disappeared and the great machine has taken its place. The little shop is gone and the great factory has come in its stead. The worker can no longer work by and for himself. He has been recruited into regiments, battalions and armies and work has been subdivided and specialized; and now hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of workingmen work together co-operatively and produce in great abundance, not for themselves, however, for they no longer own the tools they work with. What they produce belongs to the capitalist class who own the tools with which they work. A man fifty years ago who made a shoe owned it. Today it is possible for that same worker, if still alive, to make a hundred times as many shoes, but he doesn't own them now. He works today with modern machinery which is the property of some capitalist who lives perhaps a thousand miles from where the factory is located and who owns all the product because he owns the machinery.
I have stated that society has been divided into two warring classes. The capitalist owns the tool in modern industry, but he has nothing to do with its operation. By virtue of such ownership he has the economic power to appropriate to himself the wealth produced by the use of that tool. This accounts for the fact that the capitalist becomes rich. But how about the working class? In the first place they have to compete with each other for the privilege of operating the capitalist's tool of production. The bigger the tool and the more generally it is applied, the more it produces, the sharper competition grows between the workers for the privilege of using it and the more are thrown out of employment. Every few years, no matter what party is in power, no matter what our domestic policy is, how high the tariff or what the money standard, every few years the cry goes up about "over-production" and the working class is discharged by the thousands and thousands, and are idle, just as the miners have been in this field for many weary months.
No work, no food, and after a while, no credit, and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created.
Don't you agree with me, my brothers, that this condition is an intolerable and indefensible one, and that whatever may be said of the past, this system no longer answers the demands of this time? Why should any workingman need to beg for work? Why forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his labor produces?
Now, I ask this question, and it applies to the whole field of industry: If a hundred men work in a mine and produce a hundred tons of coal, how much of that coal are they entitled to? Are they not entitled to all of it? And if not, who is entitled to any part of it? If the man who produces wealth is not entitled to it, who is? You say the capitalist is necessary and I deny it. The capitalist has become a profit-taking parasite. Industry is now concentrated and operated on a very large scale; it is co-operative and therefore self-operative. The capitalists hire superintendents, managers and workingmen to operate their plants and produce wealth. The capitalists are absolutely unnecessary; they have no part in the process of production—not the slightest.
Now I insist that it is the workingman's duty to so organize economically and politically as to put an end to this system; as to take possession in his collective capacity of the machinery of production and operate it, not to create millionaires and multi-millionaires, but to produce wealth in plenty for all. That is why the labor question is also a political question. It makes no difference what you do on the economic field to better your condition, so long as the tools of production are privately owned, so long as they are operated for the private profit of the capitalist, the working class will be exploited, they will be in enforced idleness, thousands of them will be reduced to want, some of them to vagabonds and criminals, and this condition will prevail in spite of anything that organized labor can do to the contrary.
The most important thing for the workingman to recognize is the class struggle. Every capitalist, every capitalist newspaper, every capitalist attorney and retainer will insist that we have no classes in this country and that there is no class struggle. President Roosevelt himself has declared that class-consciousness is a foul and evil thing. Now, what is class-consciousness? It is simply a recognition of the fact on the part of the workingman that his interest is identical with the interest of every other workingman. Class-consciousness points out the necessity for working-class action, economic and political.
What is it that keeps the working class in subjection? What is it that is responsible for their exploitation and for all of the ills they suffer? Just one thing; it can be stated in a single word. It is Ignorance. The working class have not yet learned how to unite and act together. There are relatively but few capitalists in this country; there are perhaps twenty millions of wage workers, but the capitalists and their retainers have contrived during all these years to keep the working class divided, and as long as the working class is divided it will be helpless. It is only when the working class learn—and they are learning daily and by very bitter experience—to unite and to act together, especially on election day, that there is any hope for emancipation.
The workingmen you represent, my brothers, are in an overwhelming majority in every township, county and state of this nation. You declare you are in favor of united action, but still you don't unite. You unite under certain conditions within your union, you get together upon the economic field to a limited extent, but you have yet to learn that before you can really accomplish anything you have got to unite in fact as well as in name. The time is coming when workingmen will be forced into one general organization. The time is coming when they will be compelled to organize on the basis of industrial unionism.
At this very hour there is a strike on the Canadian Pacific. Eight thousand workingmen who are more or less organized and who have been wronged in many ways, have finally gone out on strike. There are other thousands remaining at their posts and non-union men flowing in there will be hauled to their destination by union men, and union men will continue to work until their eight thousand brothers have lost their jobs and many of them have become tramps. That is called organization, but it is not so in fact. It is at best organization of a very weak and defective character. Now, the right kind of organization on the Canadian Pacific would embrace all the workers. They should all be included within the same organization and then have one general working agreement with the company so that if there was a violation of it, it would concern every man in the service. But how is it at present? The engineers, conductors, trainmen and switchmen are in separate unions and after they have been signed up, the company can treat the rest just as they please, for they know that if they strike and the others remain in their service, as they are bound to do under their agreement, they can very easily supplant them and remain in perfect control of the system. We have had enough of that kind of experience and we ought to profit by it. We ought to realize that there is but one form of organization that answers completely, one in which all subscribe to the same rules and act together in all things, and you will have to organize upon that basis or see your unions become practically worthless.
Now let us consider another line briefly for the benefit of those who have opposed political action. We are all aware of the trend of the decisions recently rendered by the United States supreme court. Three decisions have been rendered in rapid succession which strike down the rights of labor and virtually strip organized labor of its power. Under these decisions organized labor has been outlawed, and while upon this question I want to suggest that this body at the proper time in its deliberations put the following questions to the candidates for the United States senate and house of representatives in the State of Kansas and request them to answer:
In view of the fact that the United States supreme court has rendered a number of decisions placing the working class at a tremendous disadvantage in its struggle with the employing class for better conditions, we respectfully submit to the candidates for the United States senate and house of representatives the following questions:
1. Are you in favor of issuing injunctions against trade union members because they refuse to patronize a non-union employer and advise their friends to do likewise?
2. Will you introduce and vote for a measure setting aside the decision of the supreme court of the District of Columbia in the case of Buck Stove and Range Company against officers of the A. F. of L., making it a criminal act for a labor union to place an employer on its unfair list?
3. Are you in favor of classifying trade unions as "trusts in restraint of trade," as was done by the supreme court in the case of Lowe vs. Lawler, and will you introduce a measure, should you be elected, providing for the exemption of trade unions from the operation of the anti-trust law under this court decision?
4. Do you endorse the supreme court decision making it lawful for a corporation to discharge a man because of his membership in a labor union? If you do not, will you introduce and vote for a bill setting aside this decision of the supreme court and making it unlawful for a corporation to discharge a man because he is a member of a trade union?
Here are these candidates in the State of Kansas for the United States senate and house of representatives and if they are elected they will have the power to control legislation, and it is perfectly proper that you, as the representatives of the workers, should put these questions squarely to these candidates and demand that they answer them. They are very simple questions. The United States court has rendered a decision to the effect that a trade union is a trust and that if it exercises its legitimate powers it is a criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade. That decision of the court congress has the power to set aside, and if a man stands as a candidate for congress, in the upper or lower branch, and appeals to you for your vote—and bear in mind he can only be elected by your vote—it is right and proper that you should know if he is in favor of the decision or opposed to it. And if he is in favor of this decision he is your enemy.
Now, these candidates are trying to carry water on both shoulders. They declare they will give both labor and capital a square deal, and I want to say that is impossible. No man can be for labor without being against capital. No man can be for capital without being against labor.
Here is the capitalist; here are the workers. Here is the capitalist who owns the mines; here are the miners who work in the mines. There is so much coal produced. There is a quarrel between them over a division of the product. Each wants all he can get. Here we have the class struggle. Now, is it possible to be for the capitalist without being against the worker? Are their interest not diametrically opposite?
If you increase the share of the capitalist don't you decrease the share of the workers? Can a door be both open and shut at the same time? Can you increase both the workers' and the capitalist's share at the same time? There is just so much produced, and in the present system it has to be divided between the capitalists and the workers, and both sides are fighting for all they can get, and this is the historic class struggle.
We have now no revolutionary organization of the workers along the lines of this class struggle, and that is the demand of this time. The pure and simple trade union will no longer answer. I would not take from it the least credit that belongs to it. I have fought under its banner for thirty years. I have followed it through victory and defeat, generally defeat. I realize today more than ever before in my life the necessity for thorough economic organization. It must be made complete. Organization, like everything else, is subject to the laws of evolution. Everything changes, my brothers. The tool you worked with twenty-five years ago will no longer do. It would do then; it will not do now. The capitalists are combined against you. They are reducing wages. They have control of the courts. They are doing everything they can to destroy your power. You have got to follow their example. You have got to unify your forces. You have got to stand together shoulder to shoulder on the economic and political fields and then you will make substantial progress toward emancipation.
I am not here, my brothers, to ask you, as an economic organization, to go into politics. Not at all. If I could have you pass a resolution to go into politics I would not do it. If you were inclined to go into active politics as an organization I would prevent such action if I could. You represent the economic organization of the working class and this organization has its own clearly defined functions. Your economic organization can never become a political machine, but your economic organization must recognize and proclaim the necessity for a united political party. You ought to pass a resolution recognizing the class struggle, declaring your opposition to the capitalist system of private ownership of the means of production, and urging upon the working class the necessity for working class political action. That is as far as the economic organization need to go. If you were to use your economic organization for political purposes you would disrupt it, you would wreck it.
But I would not have you renounce politics, nor be afraid to discuss anything. Who is it that is so fearful you will discuss politics? It is the ward-heeling politician, and isn't it because he knows very well that if you ever get into politics in the right way he will be out of a job? He is afraid you will get your eyes open.
Why should a union man be afraid to discuss politics? He belongs to a certain party; his father belonged to that party and his grandfather belonged to that party, and perhaps his great-grandfather belonged to the same party, and that is probably the only reason he can give for belonging to that party. He don't want anybody to suggest to him the possibility of being lifted out of that party and into some other.
Parties change. The party that was good forty years ago is completely outgrown and corrupt and has now no purpose but the promotion of graft and other vicious practices.
Workingmen in their organized capacity must recognize the necessity for both economic and political action. I would not have you declare in favor of any particular political party. That would be another mistake which would have disastrous results. If I could have you pass a resolution to support the Socialist party I would not do it. You can't make Socialists by passing resolutions. Men have to become Socialists by study and experience, and they are getting the experience every day.
There is one fact, and a very important one, that I would impress upon you, and that is the necessity for revolutionary working class political action.
No one will attempt to dispute the fact that our interests as workers are identical. If our interests are identical, then we ought to unite. We ought to unite within the same organization, and if there is a strike we should all strike, and if there is a boycott all of us ought to engage in it. If our interests are identical, it follows that we ought to belong to the same party as well as to the same economic organization. What is politics? It is simply the reflex of economics. What is a party? It is the expression politically of certain material class interests. You belong to that party that you believe will promote your material welfare. Is not that a fact? If you find yourself in a party that attacks your pocket do you not quit that party?
Now, if you are in a party that opposes your interests it is because you don't have intelligence enough to understand your interests. That is where the capitalists have the better of you. As a rule, they are intelligent, and shrewd. They understand their material interests and how to protect them. You find the capitalists as a rule belonging only to capitalist parties. They don't join a working-class party and they don't vote the Socialist ticket. They know enough to know that Socialism is opposed to their economic interests. Now, both republican and democratic parties are capitalist parties. There is not the slightest doubt about it. It can be proved in a hundred different ways. You know how the republican party treated the demands of labor in its recent national convention. You know, or ought to know, what has taken place under the present administration. You know, or ought to know, something about the democratic party, national, state and municipal. If there are those who say that the democratic party is more favorable to labor than the republican party it is only necessary to point to the southern states where it has ruled for a century. In no other part of the nation are workingmen in so wretched a condition. In no other part are working people so miserably housed, so wretchedly treated as they are in the southern states where the democratic party rules supreme.
At this very hour miners in Alabama are on strike under a democratic administration. I know the condition there, for I have been in the mines. I know many of those men personally. I know under what conditions they have had to work. I have been in the shacks in which they live and have seen their unhappy wives and ill-fed children. I know whereof I speak. Only in the last extremity have those men gone out on strike. They bore all these cruel wrongs for years and were finally forced out on strike. And then what happened? The very first thing the democratic governor did was to send the soldiers to scab the mines. It doesn't make any difference to you, if workingmen are starved and shot down, which party is in power. It occurs under both republican and democratic administration. There will be no change as long as you continue to support the prevailing capitalist system, based upon the private ownership of the tools with which workingmen work and without which they are doomed to slavery and starvation.
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.