Hellraisers Journal: Debs on the Capitalists’ Parties: “Differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.”

Share

—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday September 11, 1904
Indianapolis, Indiana – Debs Opens Campaign with Impassioned Address

From the Appeal to Reason of September 10, 1904:

Published in the Appeal we find the entire text of the speech made by Socialist Presidential Candidate, Eugene Debs, in Indianapolis, Indiana, on Thursday, September 1st. The article begins with a few notable quotes:

TOCSIN OF THE 1904 CAMPAIGN SOUNDED
———-

In an Eloquent and Impassioned Address Before A Multitude of
Cheering People, Eugene V. Debs, Candidate for President of
the Socialist Ticket, Opened the Campaign at
Indianapolis, Indiana, Last Thursday.

SPA Ticket Debs and Hanford, 1904

SOME OF DEBS’ EPIGRAMS.

     “Ignorance alone stands in the way of Socialist success.”

———-

     “Capitalist parties stand for slavery and night; the Socialist party is the herald of Freedom and Light.”

———-

     “The ballot of united labor expresses the people’s will, and the people’s will is the supreme law of a free nation.”

———-

“The divided vote of labor is the abuse at the ballot and the penalty is slavery and death.”

———-

     “Labor has always been the mud-sill of the social fabric-is so now, and will be until the class struggle ends in class extinction and free society.”

———-

     “These are stirring days for living man. The day of crisis is drawing near and Socialists are exerting all their power to prepare the people for it.”

———-

     “The old order of society can survive but little longer. Socialism is next in order. The swelling minority sounds warning of the impending change. Soon that minority will be the majority, and then will come the Co-operative Commonwealth.”

———-

     “The Socialist party comprehends the magnitude of its task and has the patience at preliminary defeat and the faith of ultimate victory.”

———-

     “With faith and hope and courage we held our heads erect and with dauntless spirit marshal the working class for the search from capitalism to Socialism, from slavery to Freedom, from barbarism to Civilization.”

—————

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Debs on the Capitalists’ Parties: “Differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles.””

Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Delivers Talk to Packed House in Duluth, Minnesota, and Is Greeted With Rising Cheer

Share

Quote EVD, Socialist Ripe Trade Unionist, WLUC p45, May 31, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday June 21, 1914
Duluth, Minnesota – Debs Speaks to Packed House, Supports Colorado Miners

From The Labor World of June 20, 1914:

DEBS DELIVERS TALK TO A PACKED HOUSE
———-
Socialist Apostle At His Best In Speech
Last Monday Night At Auditorium
———-

SOCIALIST PARTY FOR THE WORKERS
———-
The Only Political Party Which Aids
Workmen on Strike Says Debs.
———-

EVD, LW p1, Aug 30, 1902

Before an enthusiastic audience of close to 2,500 people, Eugene V. Debs of Terre Haute, delivered a most powerful address in behalf of the striking miners in Colorado and the socialist movement, of which he is recognized as America’s most forcible exponent, last Monday night at the Auditorium. To the discredit of the Duluth dailies very little notice was given to the reading public of this meeting.

When Mr. Debs entered the hall he was greeted with a rising cheer from the audience, which lasted fully five minutes.

Debs Introduced.

W. E. Towne the socialist candidate for congressman at the primary election acted as chairman and introduced the speaker as “the most loved and the most hated man in the United States.”

In opening his address, Mr. Debs pointed out the evolution in society, stating that “never in the world’s history has their been a self governing people. Aristocracy, monarchy and republic have all been governed by a minority. The working class has always been in some form of slavery or servitude.”

“Capitalism,” he declared, “must be abolished” before real democracy can be realized. Lawrence, Patterson, Little Falls, Calumet and Ludlow were cited as glaring instances of the impossibility of a further continuance of the capitalist system. The strikes of the workers at the various cities were spoken of as being lessons to the working class. “No strike has ever been lost,” said Mr. Debs. “The working class must free themselves from their bondage, and to accomplish this freedom they must unite in their industrial and political organizations regardless of nationality, creed, sex, or color.”

The Workers Being Educated.

The working class is educating itself. They are developing their own thinkers. There is nothing more glorious than a thinker in overalls. Emerson once said that “when a thinker acts the earth trembles.” The working class now beginning to think the world is being shaken to its foundations

Speaking of the socialist party he characterized it as the greatest political movement in the world. “Its final triumph is assured.” This coming triumph he declared, may be “hastened or retarded but cannot be prevented.”

That socialist speakers and adherents of the party are vilified to-day was not at all deplored by the speaker. The American patriots of the Revolution were slandered by the ruling class of their day. Such men as Samuel Adams, Thos. Paine and Patrick Henry were mentioned among the many. A glowing tribute was paid to Thos. Paine, the greatest of America’s patriots, who has been slandered and vilified for many years.

Urges Affiliation.

Mr. Debs urged upon all workers, affiliation with the socialist party. He said, “a worker in the republican party is as much out of place as John D. Rockefeller would be in the socialist party. Rockefeller knows why he is a socialist but you don’t know why you are not.”

The crimes at Ludlow were graphically portrayed by the speaker. Louis Tikkas [Tikas], the Greek miner who was murdered in cold blood by gunmen, who Debs said, “are men with the heart of hyenas and the conscience of a rattle-snake,” was spoken of as a hero.

Ben Lindsey, who visited President Wilson in an effort to adjust the struggle in Colorado was referred to by the speaker as a truthful man.

The system of society which allows a title deed to stand between the welfare of the people and the interests in control of the resources of wealth was severely criticized. “Rockefeller could have prevented Ludlow by one word. The blood of Ludlow is not only on his head but also on his hands. When Rockefeller stated that his conscience was clear then he showed he has no conscience. When Rockefeller testified that only ten percent of the miners wanted to strike, he lied,” said Debs.

Objections Answered.

Mr. Debs briefly referred to those speakers who are going around the country lecturing against the socialist movement.

The socialist does not propose to break up the home but on the contrary hopes to make the real home a possibility for the working class. When they tell you socialism will rob you of your religion, they lie, I should like to meet one of these gentlemen before a working class audience for about five minutes and I would tear him to tatters.

The socialist party is the only party that supports the working class when on strike, continued the speaker. The party sent $40,000 to the Michigan miners, and five carloads of food and three carloads of clothing.

The future was referred to as the coming ideal of man. The address was closed admist deafening applause with Ingersoll’s “Vision of the Future.”

[Photograph and emphasis added]

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Delivers Talk to Packed House in Duluth, Minnesota, and Is Greeted With Rising Cheer”

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions

Share

Quote re Annie Clemenc at Mass Funeral Calumet, Day Book p4, Jan 6, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday February 3, 1914
“Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions

From the International Socialist Review of February 1914:

Calumet MI by LH Marcy, ISR p453, Feb 1914

[Part II of II]

Italian Hall Massacre Calumet MI, Small White Caskets, ISR p457, Feb 1914

We have seen how the copper country is governed by an “invisible government”; from the judge on the bench, to the grand jury in session; from the national guard of the state of Michigan, on “duty,” since July 24, 1913, to the sheriff with his hundreds of imported professional strike breakers whom he swore in as deputies. The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company, Calumet, is the invisible government of Michigan.

This poor-little-rich corporation was “created” in the early fifties. According to a statement given out by Attorney Peterman, and endorsed by General Manager W. F. Denton, and General Manager C. L. Lawton, we find this devout confession: ”The profits of the Calumet and Hecla have been large, but they were due solely to the fact that the Creator put such rich ore in the company’s ground.”

However, Congress in the year of our Lord, 1852, seems to have been in total ignorance of this little gift on the Creator’s part to the copper crowd, for we find that “it gave to the state of Michigan 750,000 acres of public land, to aid it in building a ship canal around the Falls of St. Mary. The state in turn bargained this land to the contractors who built the canal, at a dollar and a quarter an acre. The lands thus disposed of at so beggarly a price were supposed to be swamp, or overflowed lands, but somehow, and strange to say, a part of them are now the rocky matrices from which the Calumet and Hecla has long been extracting shot-copper,-that company having in some way got hold of them. Years later a man named Chandler, who claimed to have bought the same land over again from the State of Michigan, brought a suit to dispossess the copper company,-charging all sorts of fraud in the switching of swamps so as to be quarries of copper-bearing rock. But the Supreme Court ruled against him, on the ground that as he got his deed from the state, he was in no better plight than the state, and that the state could not go back on its first deed to the canal contractors: so the Calumet and Hecla people kept it.”

This “good thing” was capitalized for $2,500,000 in shares of $25 each, instead of $100-note that. Of this $25 a share, only $12 was paid in. A total cash investment of $1,200,000. According to the Mining and Engineering World of December 27th, Calumet and Hecla has declared dividends on issued capitalization to December 1, 1913, amounting to $121,650,000, or $1,216 a share or $101 profits for each dollar invested.

Dividends for 1900 amounted to 320 per cent; for 1906, 280 per cent; for 1907, 260 per cent. In the Boston market, the stock was quoted on the day before New Years, at 427, bid price. Bearing in mind that the par value of the shares is but $25, this figure means that the stock is now worth more than 1,700 per cent, and bearing in mind also that only $12 a share was actually paid in, it means more than 3,400 per cent, market value. The president of the company receives a salary greater than the president of the United States.

Not long ago, when dividends threatened to be unusually enormous, the company purchased an extensive island in Lake Superior, stocked it with the finest game, and it is now used by stockholders of the company as a hunting preserve.

And the capitalists, who have never seen the inside of a mine shaft, who have stolen and defrauded to gain possession of the Calumet mines, have refused to permit their wage slaves, who produce all the wealth brought out of the mines, to organize into a union. They have denied the right of these workers to organize to demand more wages and better working conditions. Their arrogance is summed up in the words “We have nothing to arbitrate.”

These capitalists want MORE labor from the laborers. They are not satisfied with having stolen hundreds of millions from the men who have dug the wealth from the dangerous recesses of the earth. They demand still MORE.

* * * * * * *

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Calumet” by Leslie H. Marcy, Part II-Profits, Wages and Working Conditions”

Hellraisers Journal: El Paso-Mother Jones Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels, Wishes We Had Men Like That in This Country

Share

Quote Mother Jones re Pancho Villa, Day Book p13, Jan 16, 1914—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 4, 1914
El Paso, Texas – Mother Speaks, Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels

From El Paso Herald of January 3, 1914:

Mother Jones Speaks in El Paso, El P Hld p6, Jan 3, 1914

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: El Paso-Mother Jones Praises Pancho Villa and the Rebels, Wishes We Had Men Like That in This Country”

Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Speaks in Rochester, N. Y.: “Some Phases of the Labor Movement; or, Socialism and Civilization.”

Share

Quote EVD, Socialist Ripe Trade Unionist, WLUC p45, May 31, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 22, 1903
Rochester, New York – Eugene Debs Speaks on Socialism and the Labor Movement

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (New York) of February 9, 1903:

SOME PHASES OF LABOR MOVEMENT
———-

ADDRESS OF EUGENE V. DEBS AT FITZHUGH HALL.
———-

THE WORKINGMAN’S HOPE
———-
Socialistic Programme Set Forth as
the Need of the People-The Tool of Production

-Reflections on Trusts-Panic Prophesied.
———-

EVD, LW p1, Aug 30, 1902

Eugene V. Debs, of Denver, Col., the prominent labor leader and Socialist, spoke at Fitzhugh Hall yesterday afternoon, under the auspices of the Labor Lyceum. His subject was “Some Phases of the Labor Movement; or, Socialism and Civilization.” Mr. Debs was given an enthusiastic reception, and for two hours he had the close attention of the audience. The seats on the floor of the hall were filled and but few were empty in the gallery.

Phillip Jackson presided at the meeting and made a few remarks, after which he introduced Mr. Debs. In his eloquent address, Mr. Debs said, in part:

The labor question broadly stated is the question of all humanity and upon its just solution depend the peace of society and the survival of civilization. The central and controlling fact of civilization is the evolution of industry.

A little over a century and a quarter ago, the American colonists were compelled to declare their political independence. The people were then engaged largely in agricultural pursuits, what they manufactured was produced in simple and primitive ways and they used with their hands the tools with which they did their work. The problem of making a living was a comparatively easy one. Each man could with the product of his own labor satisfy his own wants.

Long ago the too simple tool of those days was touched by the magic want of invention, until its mechanism has now become marvelously complex. In the great modern industrial evolution, the workingman has suffered, and because of his ignorance has allowed the tool of production to pass from his grasp. The cunning that was in the hand of labor has passed into the machine. As competition has become keen, handicraft has been succeeded more and more by the machine work, until skilled labor has become common labor; the struggle for existence became so hard that woman was forced into the labor market and become a factor in industrial conditions.

As the evolution of machinery has continually progressed, it has been found that many of these could be operated by the deft touch of children, until now 3 million of these have been forced into the labor market in competition with men and women. This has resulted from the system that makes profit the all-important consideration and life of little importance. There must be cheap labor in spite of its effects on the lives of human beings.

The state of Alabama once had a law against child labor. The time is coming, however, when competition will force manufacturers to operate their factories where the raw materials are produced. This has already been done by the New England manufacturers. They went to the lawmakers of Alabama and said: “We must have cheap labor if we are to compete in the markets of the world, and in order to do this, we must employ the children in our mills. You have a law against the employment of children in this state. We should like it to come here, but, if this is enforced, it will compel us to go elsewhere.” What was the result? Today there is no law against the employment of children in Alabama.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Speaks in Rochester, N. Y.: “Some Phases of the Labor Movement; or, Socialism and Civilization.””

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part II: The Capitalist System

Share

Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday January 18, 1903
“Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by Editor Algie M. Simons

From the International Socialist Review of January 1903:

Bishop Spalding and Socialism.*
[by A. M. Simons]
—————

[Part II of II]

Bishop Spalding, Colfax WA Gz, p5, Nov 28, 1902

Again, in [Bishop Spalding’s] recognition of the class character of our present law, he comes very close to Socialism. Speaking of punishment for crime, he says:

The delinquents who are incarcerated are chiefly the poor, who had they money to pay the fines would escape punishment. The heaviest punishment is inflicted on the most helpless, and frequently on the least guilty; and thus the morally weak, the victims of unfortunate environments, are degraded, hardened, and made habitual offenders.

I do not wish to push the matter too far and to ascribe too great a comprehension of or favorable attitude towards Socialism on the part of Bishop Spalding. But on page 58 we see some thing that reads very like a description of the rise of proletarian class consciousness. He says:

The laborers, who in proportion as their minds have been awakened, have become conscious of the hardships and limitations to which they are subject, feel this more keenly than any other class, and hence they have formed in numerable organizations to protect their rights and promote their interests.

Finally, we would seldom find a harsher indictment against the capitalist system than is to be found on pages 173 and 174:

The political and social conditions which involve the physical deterioration and the mental and moral degradation of multitudes are barbarous, and unless they are improved must lead to the ruin of the State. From this point of view, which is the only true point of view, our present economic and commercial systems are subversive of civilization. They sacrifice men to money; wisdom and virtue to cheap production and the amassing of capital. They foster greed in the stronger and hate in the weaker. They drive the nations to competitive struggles which are as cruel as war, and in the final results more disastrous; for their tendency is to make the rich vulgar and heartless, and the poor reckless and vicious. As stratagems and lies are considered lawful in war, so in the warfare of commercial competition opinion leans to the view that whatever may be done with impunity is right. The adulteration of food and drink, the watering of stocks, the bribing of legislators, the crushing of weaker concerns, the enforced idleness of thousands, who are thereby driven to despair and starvation, are not looked upon as lying within the domain of morals, any more than the shooting of a man in battle is considered a question of morality. The degradation and ruin of innumerable individuals are implications of the law of competition, just as in the struggle for existence there is a world-crushing and destruction of the weak by the strong.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part II: The Capitalist System”

Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part I: The Laboring Classes

Share

Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday January 17, 1903
“Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by Editor Algie M. Simons

From the International Socialist Review of January 1903:

Bishop Spalding and Socialism.*
[by A. M. Simons]
—————

[Part I of II]

Bishop Spalding, Colfax WA Gz, p5, Nov 28, 1902

OWING to the prominence which Bishop Spalding has attained in the recent coal strike and in other matters relating to labor, his recent book on Socialism and Labor is worthy of more attention than it might otherwise merit. But the book itself is well worthy of examination. The introductory paragraphs are, on the whole, a very fair statement of the Socialist argument; and we therefore quote them at length:

The interest which all who think take in the laboring classes, whether it spring from sympathy or fear, is a characteristic feature of the age.

Their condition seems to be the great anomaly in our other wise progressive and brilliant civilization. Whether when compared with the lot of the slaves and serfs of former times that of the laborer is fortunate, is not the question. He is not placed in the midst of the poverty and wretchedness of a rude and barbarous society, but in the midst of boundless wealth and great refinement. He lives, too, in a democratic age, in which all men profess to believe in equality and liberty; in an age in which the brotherhood of the race is proclaimed by all the organs of opinion. He has a voice in public affairs, and since laborers are in the majority, he is, in theory, at least, the sovereign. They who govern profess to do everything by the authority of the people, in their name and for their welfare; and yet, if we are to accept the opinions of the Socialists, the wage-takers, who in the modem world are the vast multitude, are practically shut out from participation in our intellectual and material inheritance. They contend that the poor are, under the present economic system, the victims of the rich, just as in the ancient societies the weak were the victims of the strong; so that wage-labor, as actually constituted, differs in form rather than in its essential results from the labor of slaves and serfs. And even dispassionate observers think that the tendency of the present system is to intensify rather than to diminish the evils which do exist; and that we are moving towards a state of things in which the few will own everything, and the many be hardly more than their hired servants. In America they admit that sparse population and vast natural resources that as yet have hardly been touched helped to conceal this fatal tendency, which is best seen in the manufacturing and commercial centers of Europe, where the capitalistic method of production has reduced wage-earners to a condition of pauperism and degradation which is the scandal of Christendom and a menace to society.

The present condition of labor is the result of gradually evolved processes, running through centuries.

The failure of the attempt of Charlemagne to organize the barbarous hordes which had overspread Europe into a stable empire was followed by an era of violence and lawlessness, of wars and invasions, from which society sought refuge in the feudal system. The strong man, as temporal or spiritual lord, was at the top of the feudal hierarchy, and under him the weak formed themselves into classes. The serf labored a certain number of days for himself, and a certain number for his lord. In the towns the craftsmen were organized into guilds which protected the interests of the members. The mendicant poor were not numerous, and their wants were provided for by the bishops and the religious orders.

Then the growth of towns and the development of trade and commerce brought wealth to the burghers, who became a distinct class, while domestic feuds and foreign wars, especially the Crusades, weakened and impoverished the knights and barons. The printing press and the use of gunpowder in war helped further to undermine the feudal power, while the discovery of America, the turning of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Protestant revolution threw all Europe into a ferment from which new social conditions were evolved. The peasants who had been driven from the land by the decay of the great baronial houses, and the confiscation of the property of the church, flocked into the towns or became vagabonds. The poor became so numerous that permanent provision had to be made for them, and poor laws were consequently devised.

The master-workman, who in the middle ages employed but two or three apprentices and as many journeymen, gave way to a class of capitalists, enriched by the confiscated wealth of the church, by the treasures imported from America and the Indies, and by the profits of the slave traffic, who at once prepared to take advantage of the stimulus to industry given by the opening of a vast world market. As late as the middle of the last century, however, manufacturing was still carried on by masters who employed but a small number of hands, and had but little capital invested in the business; and the modern industrial era, with its factory system, properly begins with our marvelous mechanical inventions and the use of steam as a motive power. Machinery made production on a large scale possible, and threw the whole business into the hands of the capitalists, while laborers are left with nothing but their ability to work, which they are forced to sell at whatever prices it will bring.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: International Socialist Review: “Bishop Spalding and Socialism” by A. M. Simons, Part I: The Laboring Classes”

Hellraisers Journal: Spokane Industrial Worker: Cost of Fire Escapes vs. Cost of Help Wanted Ad, Cartoon by Ernest Riebe

Share

Rose Schneiderman Quote, Life So Cheap, NY Met Opera Hse, Apr 2, Survey p84, Apr 8, 1911—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday December 15, 1912
Cartoon by Ernest Riebe: The Cost of Doing Business

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of December 12, 1912:

CRTN Ernest Riebe re Cost of Fire Escapes, IW p1, Dec 12, 1912

From the New York Evening Journal, March 27, 1911:

Triangle Fire, One of Hundred by TAD, NY Eve Jr Mar 26 to 28, 1911, Lbr Arts, Cornell U, Wiki
“Operators Wanted. Inquire Ninth Floor.”

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Spokane Industrial Worker: Cost of Fire Escapes vs. Cost of Help Wanted Ad, Cartoon by Ernest Riebe”

Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1902, Part I: Speaks in Iowa, Takes Part in Anthracite Strike Conference in New York

Share

Quote Mother Jones, Coming of the Lord, Cnc Pst p6, July 23, 1902—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday November 15, 1902
Mother Jones News Round-Up for October 1902, Part I

Found in Colfax, Iowa, and at New York Anthracite Strike Conference

From the Des Moines Registrar and Leader of October 1, 1902:

Mother Jones HdLn Speaks at Colfax IA, DMns Reg Ldr p1, Oct 1, 1902

Mother Jones , Phl Inq p24, June 22, 1902

Colfax, Ia., Sept. 30.-(Special.)-Mother Jones, the famous organizer of the miners in the anthracite region, gave an address, tonight at the Methodist church, and urged the miners of the Sixth district to work for John P. Reese of Albia for congress. Mother Jones denounced the capitalists of the country in severe terms, and was bitter against the use of the injunction by the courts. Her address was listened to by a large audience, composed for the most part of miners. Immediately after her speech, Mother Jones started across the country to Prairie City and caught a night train for Albia, where she will speak. She will also deliver an address at Ottumwa and then return east.

Mother Jones is now over sixty years of age, her hair being white as snow. Yet she is vigorous and energetic, and speaks with wonderful feeling and eloquence when describing the sufferings of the miners in the anthracite regions. She urged the miners and workingmen to wake up and work for their rights.

[She said:]

You don’t need a gun. Let us bury the bullet and resurrect the ballot.

Wants Iowa to Act.

I want Iowa to be the first state to carry the banner of organized labor into congress and elect a workingman to that body. I want a worker to make laws for me and not a henchman. If ever an awakening comes in this country it must come now. The injunction must be stopped. I plead with you young men; shall you all be slaves or shall you be men? You have got to take hold of this government and run it for all the people. It is your duty to see that the next congressman from this district is a miner so that the next congress shall have a miner in it. When the last injunction bill was up before congress there was no one there to press it, because no one there had felt the sting of the injunction injustice.

I say down with the government that upholds injunctions. I repeat I want to see the next congress have a miner in it. When the corporations see the workingmen waking up and electing workingmen to office they will tremble. You have got to break up this corporate power. The only way to break it up is by legislation. If you men feel that you are too big cowards to do it, stand aside and let us women do it and we’ll show you how. Woman is the greater sufferer from the power of corporate wealth.

Mother Jones, at the outset of her address, spoke of the progress of the human race and the various inventions that have been made.

[She said:]

Yet the workers have not the benefit of these inventions. A few men who have never done anything in their lives have taken advantage of them all and the human race stands aghast and asks “What shall we do?” If these inventions have been produced by society, why should one band of thieves and robbers, and assassins, and plunderers possess them to the detriment of all the rest? That is the great question before the human race. There is no other question before you. You have the labor question to settle, and it will be settled in this century. The men who produce the wealth will have the wealth.

Who has built your magnificent homes and public buildings? Who have gone down into the depths of the earth and toiled sixteen hours a day? The workers. Who live in your palaces? The parasite. Why? Because he has plundered other men of what they produce. When he boasts of prosperity, what is it to 30,000 breaker boys in the anthracite region? That you can make money by scheming doesn’t make a nation prosperous. You can’t have a prosperous nation until the workers prosper. If you give to your nation an illiterate broken down body of workers, ruin will overtake your country.

Mother Jones paid her respects to Morgan for saying he had nothing to arbitrate, and to Baer, who says he owns the earth and is the “steward of the Almighty.”

[She said:]

I wish he would take care of these men and women down in West Virginia, if he is the Almighty’s steward, as he claims.

[And again:]

Every page of every book of every Carnegie library in the country is written with the blood of Homestead.

Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: Whereabouts and Doings of Mother Jones for October 1902, Part I: Speaks in Iowa, Takes Part in Anthracite Strike Conference in New York”