The unemployed were clubbed by the police
under republican Mayor Busse in Chicago
and under democratic Mayor McClellan in New York.
-Ben Hanford, 1908
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hellraisers Journal, Sunday June 28, 1908
Chicago, Illinois – Republican Party to Unemployed: “Go and eat grass!”
From the Socialist Montana News of June 25, 1908:
Ben Hanford and Republicans
—–“GO AND EAT GRASS” IS ADVICE.
—–
Socialist Candidate for Vice President
Scores Hypocrisy and Vulgarity
of Wall Street’s Recent Convention.
—–
“Go and Eat Grass!”
“If the people have no bread, why don’t they eat cake?”
So says the national convention of the republican party to the more than five million unemployed men in the United States. What sweet consolation to them and the twenty millions of people dependent on them.
We are a prosperous people, declared the leaders of the convention.
We have wealth to the value of $110,000,000,000, more than one quarter of all the wealth on earth.
We make more than one-third of the world’s modern manufactured products.
The republican convention was opened each day with prayer, and by a different clergyman—but there is no evidence that it was closed with a benediction.
The delegates considered themselves “the people”, and therefore they could truly say “the people” were prosperous. It was a convention of lawyers, office holders and millionaires. Why shouldn’t Senator Burrows be prosperous? For thirty-nine years he has drawn pay from a city, county, state or national treasury. Why shouldn’t Senator Lodge be prosperous? He graduated from Harvard Law School thirty-three years ago, and has been fed at the public crib for twenty-five of the years since past. These worthies fear lest socialism would “have the nation own the people.”
