|
Socialism
is a foreign importation!
* * *
I know it because I read it in the papers. I also know it to be the case
because in every country I have graced with my presence up to the present
time, or have heard from, the possessing classes through their organs
in the press, and their spokesmen upon the platform have been vociferous
and insistent in declaring the foreign origin of Socialism.
* * *
In Ireland Socialism is an English importation, in England they are convinced
it was made in Germany, in Germany it is a scheme of traitors in alliance
with the French to disrupt the Empire, in France it is an accursed conspiracy
to discredit the army which is destined to reconquer Alsace and Lorraine,
in Russia it is an English plot to prevent Russian extension towards Asia,
in Asia it is known to have been set on foot by American enemies of Chinese
and Japanese industrial progress, and in America it is one of the baneful
fruits of unrestricted pauper and criminal immigration.
* * *
All nations today repudiate Socialism, yet Socialist ideas are conquering
all nations. When anything has to be done in a practical direction toward
ameliorating the lot of the helpless ones, or towards using the collective
force of society in strengthening the hands of the individual it is sure
to be in the intellectual armory of Socialists the right weapon is found
for the work.
A
case in point
There
are tens of thousands of hungry children in New York today as in every
other large American city, and many well-meant efforts have been made
to succour them. Free lunches have been opened in the poorest districts,
bread lines have been established and charitable organisations are busy
visiting homes and schools to find out the worst cases. But all this has
only touched the fringe of the destitution, with the additional aggravation
that anything passing through the hands of these charitable committees
usually cost ten times as much for administration as it bestows on the
object of its charity.
* * *
Also that the investigation is usually more effectual in destroying the
last vestiges of self-respect in its victims than in succouring their
needs.
* * *
In the midst of this difficulty Superintendent Maxwell of the New York
Schools sends a letter to a committee of thirteen charitable organizations
which had met together to consider the problem, and in this letter he
advocates the method of relieving distress long since initiated by the
Socialist representatives in the Municipality of Paris. I quote from the
New York World:
"A committee of seven was appointed to inquire more fully into the
question of feeding school children and to report at a subsequent meeting.
School Superintendent Maxwell sent a letter advocating the establishment
in New York schools with city money of lunch kitchens, these to sell food
at actual cost and to give to needy children tickets just like those paid
for, to the end that no child might know that his fellow was eating at
the expense of the city by the color of his ticket. This is done in Paris."
Contrast this solicitude for the self-respect of the poor children, recognized
by Superintendent Maxwell in the plan of these "foreign Socialists"
with the insulting methods of the capitalist "bread lines" and
charitable organizations in general.
* * *
But all the same it is too horible to take practical examples in relieving
the distress caused by capitalist society from pestilent agitators who
wish to destroy the society whose victims they are succouring, and mere
foreigners, too. The capitalist method of parading mothers and children
for an hour in the street befofe feeding them is more calculated to build
up the proper degree of pride in the embryo American citizens; and make
them appreciate the benefits their fathers and brothers are asked to vote
for.
* * *
Read this telling how hungry children and mothers stood patiently waiting
for a meal on the sidewalk, and whoop it up for pure ecstacy of joy that
you are permitted to live in a system of society wherein a great metropolitan
daily thought that the fact of five hundred children getting a "hearty
luncheon" was remarkable enough to deserve a paragraph:
"Five hundred ill-fed children who attend the schools on the lower
east side got a hearty luncheon yesterday when the first of the children's
lunchrooms was opened at Canal and Forsyth streets. Long before noon there
was a large gathering of children, some of them accompanied by their mothers,
awaiting the opening of the doors."
Well, I am not interested in internationalism. This country is good enough
for me.
Is that so? Say: Are you taking a share in the Moscow Windau-Rydinsk Railway?
* * *
"No, where is that?"
My dear friend, where that railway runs has nothing to do with you. What
you have to do is simply to take a share, and then go and have a good
time whilst the Russian railway workers, whom you do not know, working
in a country you never saw, speaking a language you don't understand,
earn your dividend by the sweat of their brows.
* * *
Curious, ain't it?
We Socialists are always talking about the international solidarity of
labour, about the oneness of our interests all over the world, and ever
and anon working off our heaving chests a peroration on the bonds of fraternal
sympathy which should unite the wage slaves of the capitalist system.
But there is another kind of bond - Russian railway bonds - which join,
not the workers, but the idlers of the world in fraternal sympathy, and
which creates among the members of the capitalist class a feeling of identity
of interest, of international solidarity, which they don't perorate about
but which is most potent and effective notwithstanding.
* * *
You do not fully recognise the fact that the internationality of Socialism
is at most but a lame and halting attempt to create a counterpoise to
the internationality of capitalism. Yet so it is.
Here is a case in point. The Moscow-Windau-Rydinsk railway is, as its
name indicates, a railway running, or proposed to be run, from one part
of Russia to another. You would think that that concerned the Russian
people only, and that our patriotic capitalist class, always so ready
to declare against working class Socialists with international sympathies,
would never look at it or touch it.
* * *
You would not think that Ireland, for example - whose professional patriots
are forever telling the gullible working men that Ireland will be ruined
for the lack of capital and enterprise - would be a good country to find
money in to finance a Russian railway.
* * *
Yet, observe the fact. All the Dublin papers of Monday, June 12, 1899,
contained the prospectus of this far away Russian railway, offered for
the investment of Irish capitalists, and offered by a firm of London stockbrokers
who are astute enough not to waste money in endeavouring to catch fish
in waters where they were not in the habit of biting freely.
And in the midst of the Russian revolution (of 1905) the agents of the
Czar succeeded in obtaining almost unlimited treasures in the United States
to pay the expenses of throttling the infant Liberty.
As the shares in Russian railways were sold in Ireland, as Russian bonds
were sold in America, so the shares in American mines, railroads and factories
are bought and sold on all the stock exchanges in Europe and Asia by men
who never saw America in their lifetime.
Now, let us examine the situation, keeping in mind the fact that this
is but a type of what prevails all round; you can satisfy yourself on
that head by a daily glance at our capitalist papers.
Capital
is International
The
shares of Russian railways, African mines, Nicaraguan canals, Chilian
gas works, Norwegian timber, Mexican water works, Canadian fur trappings,
Australian kanaka slave trade, Indian tea plantations, Japanese linen
factories, Chinese cotton mills, European national and municipal debts,
United States bonanza farms are bought and sold every day by investors,
many of whom never saw any one of the countries in which their money is
invested, but who have, by virtue of so investing, a legal right to a
share of the plunder extracted under the capitalist system from the wage
workers whose bone and sinew earn the dividends upon the bonds they have
purchased.
When our investing classes purchase a share in any capitalist concern,
in any country whatsoever, they do so, not in order to build up a useful
industry, but because the act of purchase endows them with a prospective
share of the spoils it is proposed to wring from labour.
Therefore, every member of the investing classes is interested to the
extent of his investments, present or prospective, in the subjection of
Labour all over the world.
That is the internationality of Capital and Capitalism.
The wage worker is oppressed under this system in the interest of a class
of capitalist investors who may be living thousands of miles away and
whose very names are unknown to him.
He is, therefore, interested in every revolt of Labour all over the world,
for the very individuals against whom that revolt may be directed may
- by the wondrous mechanism of the capitalist system - through shares,
bonds, national and municipal debts - be the parasites who are sucking
his blood also.
That is one of the underlying facts inspiring the internationalism of
Labour and Socialism.
But the Socialist proposals, they say, would destroy the individual character
of the worker. He would lean on the community, instead of upon his own
efforts.
Yes: Giving evidence before the Old Age Pensions' Committee in England,
Sir John Dorrington, M.P., expressed the belief that the "provision
of Old Age Pensions by the State, for instance, would do more harm than
good. It was an objectionable principle, and would lead to improvidence."
There now! You will always observe that it is some member of what an Irish
revolutionist called "the canting, fed classes," who is anxious
that nothing should be done by the State to give the working class habits
of "improvidence," or to do us any "harm." Dear, kind
souls!
To do them justice they are most consistent. For both in public and private
their efforts are most whole-heartedly bent in the same direction, viz.,
to prevent improvidence - on our part.
They lower our wages - to prevent improvidence; they increase our rent
- to prevent improvidence, they periodically suspend us from our employment
- to prevent improvidence, and as soon as we are worn out in their service
they send us to a semi-convict establishment, known as the Workhouse,
where we are scientifically starved to death - to prevent improvidence.
Old Age Pensions might do us harm. Ah, yes! And yet, come to think of
it, I know quite a number of people who draw Old Age Pensions and it doesn't
do them a bit of harm. Strange, isn't it?
Then all the Royal Families have pensions, and they don't seem to do them
any harm; royal babies, in fact, begin to draw pensions and milk from
a bottle at the same time.
Afterwards they drop the milk, but they never drop the pension - nor the
bottle.
Then all our judges get pensions, and are not corrupted thereby - at least
not more than usual. In fact, all well-paid officials in governmental
or municipal service get pensions, and there are no fears expressed that
the receipt of the same may do them harm.
But the underpaid, overworked wage-slave. To give him a pension would
ruin his moral fibre, weaken his stamina, debase his manhood, sap his
integrity, corrupt his morals, check his prudence, emasculate his character,
lower his aspirations, vitiate his resolves, destroy his self-reliance,
annihilate his rectitude, corrode his virility - and - and - other things.
* * *
Let us be practical. We want something pr-r-ractical.
Always the cry of hum-drum mediocrity, afraid to face the stern necessity
for uncompromising action. That saying has done more yeoman service in
the cause of oppression than all its avowed supporters.
The average man dislikes to be thought unpractical, and so, while frequently
loathing the principles or distrusting the leaders of the particular political
party he is associated with, declines to leave them, in the hope that
their very lack of earnestness may be more fruitful of practical results
than the honest outspokenness of the party in whose principles he does
believe.
In the phraseology of politics, a party too indifferent to the sorrow
and sufferings of humanity to raise its voice in protest, is a moderate,
practical party; whilst a party totally indifferent to the personality
of leaders, or questions of leadership, but hot to enthusiasm on every
question affecting the well-being of the toiling masses, is an extreme,
a dangerous party.
Yet, although it may seem a paradox to say so, there is no party so incapable
of achieving practical results as an orthodox political party; and there
is no party so certain of placing moderate reforms to its credit as an
extreme - a revolutionary party.
The possessing classes will and do laugh to scorn every scheme for the
amelioration of the workers so long as those responsible for the initiation
of the scheme admit as justifiable the "rights of property";
but when the public attention is directed towards questioning the justifiable
nature of those "rights" in themselves, then the master class,
alarmed for the safety of their booty, yield reform after reform - in
order to prevent revolution.
Moral - Don't be "practical" in politics. To be practical in
that sense means that you have schooled yourself to think along the lines,
and in the grooves those who rob you would desire you to think.
In any case it is time we got rid of all the cant about "politics"
and "constitutional agitation" in general. For there is really
no meaning whatever in those phrases.
Every public question is a political question. The men who tell us that
Labour questions, for instance, have nothing to do with politics, understand
neither the one nor the other. The Labour Question cannot be settled except
by measures which necessitate a revision of the whole system of society,
which, of course, implies political warfare to secure the power to effect
such revision:
If by politics we understand the fight between the outs and ins, or the
contest for party leadership, then Labour is rightly supremely indifferent
to such politics, but to the politics which centre round the question
of property and the administration thereof Labour is not, cannot be, indifferent.
To effect its emancipation Labour must reorganise society on the basis
of labour; this cannot be done while the forces of government are in the
hands of the rich, therefore the governing power must be wrested from
the hands of the rich peaceably if possible, forcibly if necessary.
In the phraseology of the master class and its pressmen the trade unionist
who is not a Socialist is more practical than he who is, and the worker
who is neither one nor the other but can resign himself to the state of
slavery in which he was born, is the most practical of all men.
The heroes and martyrs who in the past gave up their lives for the liberty
of the race were not practical, but they were heroes all the same.
The slavish multitude who refused to second their efforts from a craven
fear lest their skins might suffer were practical, but they were soulless
serfs, nevertheless.
Revolution is never practical - until the hour of
the Revolution strikes. Then it alone is practical, and all the efforts
of the conservatives and compromisers become the most futile and visionary
of human imaginings.
For that hour, let us work, think and hope; for that hour let us pawn
our present ease in hopes of a glorious redemption; for that hour let
us prepare the hosts of Labour with intelligence sufficient to laugh at
the nostrums dubbed practical by our slave-lords, practical for the perpetuation
of our slavery; for that supreme crisis of human history let us watch,
like sentinels, with weapons ever ready, remembering always that there
can be no dignity in Labour until Labour knows no master.
* * *
Would you confiscate the property of the capitalist class and rob men
of that which they have, perhaps, worked a whole life time to accumulate?
Yes sir, and certainly not.
We would certainly confiscate the property of the capitalist class, but
we do not propose to rob anyone. On the contrary, we propose to establish
honesty once and forever as the basis of our social relations. This Socialist
movement is indeed worthy to be entitled The Great Anti-Theft Movement
of the Twentieth Century.
You see, confiscation is one great certainty of the future for every businessman
outside the trust. It lies with him to say if it will be confiscation
by the Trust in the interest of the Trust, or confiscation by Socialism
in the interest of All.
If he resolves to continue to support the capitalist order of society
he will surely have his property confiscated. After having, as you say,
"worked for a whole lifetime to accumulate" a fortune, to establish
a business on what he imagined would be a sound foundation, on some fine
day the Trust will enter into competition with him, will invade his market,
use their enormous capital to undersell him at ruinous prices, take his
customers from him, ruin his business, and finally drive him into bankruptcy,
and perhaps to end his days as a pauper.
That is capitalist confiscation! It is going on all around us, and every
time the business man who is not a Trust Magnate votes for capitalism,
he is working to prepare that fate for himself.
On the other hand, if he works for Socialism it also will confiscate his
property. But it will only do so in order to acquire the industrial equipment
necessary to establish a system of society in which the whole human race
will be secured against the fear of want for all time, a system in which
all men and women will be joint heirs and owners of all the intellectual
and material conquests made possible by associated effort.
Socialism will confiscate the property of the capitalist and in return
will secure the individual against poverty and oppression; it, in return
for so confiscating, will assure to all men and women a free, happy and
unanxious human life. And that is more than capitalism can assure anyone
to-day.
So you see the average capitalist has to choose between two kinds of confiscation.
One or the other he must certainly endure. Confiscation by the Trust and
consequently bankruptcy, poverty and perhaps pauperism in his old age,
or --
Confiscation by Socialism and consequently security, plenty and a Care-Free
Life to him and his to the remotest generation.
Which will it be?
But it is their property. Why should Socialists confiscate it?
Their property, eh? Let us see: Here is a cutting from the New York World
giving a synopsis of the Annual Report of the Coats Thread Company of
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, for 1907. Now, let us examine it, and bear in
mind that this company is the basis of the Thread Trust, with branches
in Paisley, Scotland, and on the continent of Europe.
Also bear in mind that it is not a "horrible example," but simply
a normal type of a normally conducted industry, and therefore what applies
to it will apply in a greater or less degree to all others.
This report gives the dividend for the year at 20 per cent per annum.
Twenty per cent dividend means 20 cents on the dollar profit. Now, what
is a profit?
According to Socialists, profit only exists when all other items of production
are paid for. The workers by their labour must create enough wealth to
pay for certain items before profit appears. They must pay for the cost
of raw material, the wear and tear of machine-ry, buildings, etc. (the
depreciation of capital), the wages of superintendence, their own wages,
and a certain amount to be left aside as a reserve fund to meet all possible
contingencies. After, and only after, all these items have been paid for
by their labour, all that is left is profit.
With this company the profit amounted to 20 cents on every dollar invested.
What does this mean? It means that in the course of five years - five
times 20 cents equals one dollar - the workers in the industry had created
enough profit to buy the whole industry from its present owners. It means
that after paying all the expenses of the factory, including their own
wages, they created enough profit to buy the whole building, from the
roof to the basement, all the offices and agencies, and everything in
the shape of capital. All this in five years.
And after they had so bought it from the capitalists it still belonged
to the capitalists.
It means that if a capitalist had invested $1,000 in that industry, in
the course of five years he would draw out a thousand dollars, and still
have a thousand dollars lying there untouched; in the course of ten years
he would draw two thousand dollars, in fifteen years he would draw three
thousand dollars. And still his first thousand dollars would be as virgin
as ever.
You understand that this has been going on ever since the capitalist system
came into being; all the capital in the world has been paid for by the
working class over and over again, and we are still creating it, and recreating
it. And the oftener we buy it the less it belongs to us.
The capital of the master class is not their property; it is the unpaid
labour of the working class - "the hire of the labourer kept back
by fraud."
Oh, the capitalist has his anxieties too. And the worker has often a good
time.
Sure: Say, where were you for the holidays?
* * *
Were you tempted to go abroad? Did you visit Europe? Did you riot, in
all the abandonment of a wage slave let loose, among the pleasure haunts
of the world?
Perhaps you went to the Riviera; perhaps you luxuriated in ecstatic worship
of that glorious bit of nature's handiwork where the blue waters of the
Mediterranean roll in all their entrancing splendor against the shores
of classic Italy.
* * *
Perhaps you rambled among the vine-clad hills of sunny France, and visited
the spots hallowed by the hand of that country's glorious history.
* * *
Perhaps you sailed up the castellated Rhine, toasted the eyes of bewitching
German frauleins in frothy German beer, explored the recesses of the legend
haunted Hartz mountains, and established a nodding acquaintance with the
Spirit of the Brocken.
Perhaps you traversed the lakes and fjords of Norway, sat down in awe
before the neglected magnificence of the Alhambra, had a cup of coffee
with Menelik of Abyssinia, smelt afar off the odors of the streets of
Morocco, climbed the Pyramids of Egypt, shared the hospitable tent of
the Bedouin, visited Cyprus, looked in at Constantinople, ogled the dark-eyed
beauties of Circassia, rubbed up against the Cossack in his Ural mountains,
or...
Perhaps you lay in bed all day in order to save a meal, and listened to
your wife wondering how she could make ends meet with a day's pay short
in the weekly wages.
And whilst you thus squandered your substance in riotous living, did you
ever stop to think of your master - your poor, dear, overworked, tired
master?
* * *
Did you ever stop to reflect upon the pitiable condition of that individual
who so kindly provides you with employment, and does no useful work himself
in order that you may get plenty of it?
* * *
When you consider how hard a task it was for you to decide in what manner
you should spend your Holiday; where you should go for that ONE DAY, then
you must perceive how hard it is for your masters to find a way in which
to spend the practically perpetual holiday which you force upon them by
your love for work.
* * *
Ah, yes, that large section of our masters who have realised that ideal
of complete idleness after which all our masters strive, those men who
do not work, never did work, and with the help of God and the ignorance
of the people - never intend to work, how terrible must be their lot in
life!
* * *
We, who toil from early morn till late at night, from January till December,
from childhood to old age, have no care or trouble or mental anxiety to
cross our mind - except the landlord, the fear of loss of employment,
the danger of sickness, the lack of common necessities, to say nothing
of luxuries, for our children, the insolence of our superiors, the unhealthy
condition of our homes, the exhausting nature of our toil, the lack of
all opportunities of mental cultivation, and the ever-present question
whether we shall shuffle off this mortal coil in a miserable garret, be
killed by hard work, or die in the Poorhouse.
With these trifling exceptions we have nothing to bother us; but the boss,
ah, the poor, poor boss!
He has everything to bother him. Whilst we are amusing ourselves in the
hold of a ship shoveling coal, swinging a hammer in front of a forge,
toiling up a ladder with bricks, stitching until our eyes grow dim at
the board, gaily riding up and down for twelve hours per day, seven days
per week, on a trolley car, riding around the city in all weather with
teams or swinging by the skin of our teeth on the iron framework of a
skyscraper, standing at our ease OUTSIDE the printing office door listening
to the musical click of the linotype as it performs the work we used to
do INSIDE, telling each other comforting stories about the new machinery
which takes our places as carpenters, harness-makers, tinplate-workers,
labourers, etc., in short whilst we are enjoying ourselves, free from
all mental worry.
Our unselfish tired-out bosses are sitting at home, with their feet on
the table, softly patting the bottom button of their vests.
Working with their brains.
Poor bosses! Mighty brains!
Without our toil they would never get the education necessary to develop
their brains; if we were not defrauded by their class of the fruits of
our toil we could provide for education enough to develop the mental powers
of all, and so deprive the ruling class of the last vestige of an excuse
for clinging to mastership, viz., their assumed intellectual superiority.
I say "assumed," because the greater part of the brainwork of
industry today is performed by men taken from the ranks of the workers,
and paid high salaries in proportion as they develop expertness as slave-drivers.
As education spreads among the people the workers will want to enjoy life
more; they will assert their right to the full fruits of their labour,
and by that act of self-assertion lay the foundation of that Socialist
Republic in which labour will be so easy, and the reward so great, that
life will seem a perpetual holiday.
* * *
But Socialism is against religion. I can't be a Socialist and be a Christian.
O, quit your fooling! That talk is all right for those who know nothing
of the relations between capital and labour, or are innocent of any knowledge
of the processes of modern industry, or imagine that men, in their daily
struggles for bread or fortunes, are governed by the Sermon on the Mount.
But between workingmen that talk is absurd. We know that Socialism bears
upon daily life in the workshop, and that religion does not; we know that
the man who never set foot in a church in his lifetime will, if he is
rich, be more honored by Christian society than the poor man who goes
to church every Sunday, and says his prayers morning and evening; we know
that the capitalists of all religions pay more for the service of a good
lawyer to keep them out of the clutches of the law than for the services
of a good priest to keep them out of the clutches of the devil; and we
never heard a capitalist, who, in his business, respected the Sermon on
the Mount as much as he did the decisions of the Supreme Court.
These things we know. We also know that neither capitalist nor worker
can practice the moral precepts of religion, and without its moral precepts
a religion is simply a sham. If a religion cannot enforce its moral teachings
upon its votaries it has as little relation to actual life as the pre-election
promises of a politician have to legislation.
We know that Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourselves,
but we also know that if a capitalist attempted to run his business upon
that plan his relatives would have no difficulty in getting lawyers, judges
and physicians to declare him incompetent to conduct his affairs in the
business world.
He would not be half as certain of reaching Heaven in the next world as
he would be of getting into the "bughouse" in this.
And, as for the worker. Well, in the fall of 1908, the New York World
printed an advertisement for a teamster in Brooklyn, wages to be $12 per
week. Over 700 applicants responded. Now, could each of these men love
their neighbours in that line of hungry competitors for that pitiful wage?
As each man stood in line in that awful parade of misery could he pray
for his neighbour to get the job, and could he be expected to follow up
his prayer by giving up his chance, and so making certain the prolongation
of the misery of his wife and little ones?
No, my friend, Socialism is a bread and butter question. It is a question
of the stomach; it is going to be settled in the factories, mines and
ballot boxes of this country and is not going to be settled at the altar
or in the church.
This is what our well-fed friends call a "base, material standpoint,"
but remember that beauty and genius and art and poetry and all the finer
efflorescences of the higher nature of man can only be realised in all
their completeness upon the material basis of a healthy body, that not
only an army but the whole human race marches upon its stomach, and then
you will grasp the full wisdom of our position.
That the question to be settled by Socialism is the effect of private
ownership of the means of production upon the well-being of the race;
that we are determined to have a straight fight upon the question between
those who believe that such private ownership is destructive of human
well-being and those who believe it to be beneficial, that as men of all
religions and of none are in the ranks of the capitalists, and men of
all religions and of none are on the side of the workers the attempt to
make religion an issue in the question is an intrusion, an impertinence
and an absurdity.
Personally I am opposed to any system wherein the capitalist is more powerful
than God Almighty. You need not serve God unless you like, and may refuse
to serve Him and grow fat, prosperous and universally respected. But if
you refuse to serve the capitalist your doom is sealed; misery and poverty
and public odium await you.
No worker is compelled to enter a church and to serve God; every worker
is compelled to enter the employment of a capitalist and serve him.
As Socialists we are concerned to free mankind from the servitude forced
upon them as a necessity of their life; we propose to allow the question
of all kinds of service voluntarily rendered to be settled by the emancipated
human race of the future.
I do not deny that Socialists often leave the church. But why do they
do so? Is their defection from the church a result of our attitude towards
religion; or is it the result of the attitude of the church and its ministers
towards Socialism?
Let us take a case in point, one of those cases that are being paralleled
every day in our midst. An Irish Catholic joins the Socialist movement.
He finds that as a rule the Socialist men and women are better educated
than their fellows; he finds that they are immensely cleaner in speech
and thought than are the adherents of capitalism in the same class; that
they are devoted husbands and loyal wives, loving and cheerful fathers
and mothers, skilful and industrious workers in the shops and office,
and that although poor and needy as a rule, yet that they continually
bleed themselves to support their cause, and give up for Socialism what
many others spend in the saloon.
He finds that a drunken Socialist is as rare as a white blackbird, and
that a Socialist of criminal tendencies is such a rare avis that when
one is found the public press heralds it forth as a great discovery.
Democratic and republican jailbirds are so common that the public press
do not regard their existence as "news" to anybody, nor yet
does the public press think it necessary to say that certain criminals
belong to the Protestant or Catholic religions. That is nothing unusual,
and therefore not worth printing. But a criminal Socialist - that would
be news indeed!
Our Irish Catholic Socialist gradually begins to notice these things.
He looks around and he finds the press full of reports of crimes, murders,
robberies, bank swindlers, forgeries, debauches, gambling transactions,
and midnight orgies in which the most revolting indecencies are perpetrated.
He investigates and he discovers that the perpetrators of these crimes
were respectable capitalists, pillars of society, and red-hot enemies
of Socialism, and that the dives in which the highest and the lowest meet
together in a saturnalia of vice contribute a large proportion of the
campaign funds of the capitalist political parties.
Some Sunday he goes to Mass as usual, and he finds that at Gospel the
priest launches out into a political speech and tells the congregation
that the honest, self-sacrificing, industrious, clean men and women, whom
he calls "comrades" are a wicked, impious, dissolute sect, desiring
to destroy the home, to distribute the earnings of the provident among
the idle and lazy of the world, and reveling in all sorts of impure thoughts
about women.
And as this Irish Catholic Socialist listens to this foul libel, what
wonder if the hot blood of anger rushes to his face, and he begins to
believe that the temple of God has itself been sold to the all-desecrating
grasp of the capitalist?
While he is yet wondering what to think of the matter, he hears that his
immortal soul will be lost if he fails to vote for capitalism, and he
reflects that if he lined up with the brothel keepers, gambling house
proprietors, race track swindlers, and white slave traders to vote the
capitalist ticket, this same priest would tell him he was a good Catholic
and loyal son of the church.
At such a juncture the Irish Catholic Socialist often rises up, goes out
of the church and wipes its dust off his feet forever. Then we are told
that Socialism took him away from the church. But did it? Was it not rather
the horrible spectacle of a priest of God standing up in the Holy Presence
lying about and slandering honest men and women, and helping to support
polidcal parties whose campaign fund in every large city represents more
bestiality than ever Sodom and Gomorrah knew?
These are the things that drive Socialists from the church, and the responsibility
for every soul so lost lies upon those slanderers and not upon the Socialist
movement.
* * *
Well, you won't get the Irish to help you. Our Irish-American leaders
tell us that all we Irish in this country ought to stand together and
use our votes to free Ireland.
Sure, let us free Ireland!
Never mind such base, carnal thoughts as concern work and wages, healthy
homes, or lives unclouded by poverty.
Let us free Ireland!
The rackrenting landlord; is he not also an Irishman, and wherefore should
we hate him? Nay, let us not speak harshly of our brother - yea, even
when he raises our rent.
Let us free Ireland !
The profit-grinding capitalist, who robs us of three-fourths of the fruits
of our labour, who sucks the very marrow of our bones when we were young,
and then throws us out in the street, like a worn-out tool, when we are
grown prematurely old in his service, is he not an Irishman, and mayhap
a patriot, and wherefore should we think harshly of him?
Let us free Ireland!
"The land that bred and bore us." And the landlord who makes
us pay for permission to live upon it.
Whoop it up for liberty!
"Let us free Ireland," says the patriot, who won't touch Socialism.
Let us all join together and cr-r-rush the br-r-rutal Saxon. Let us all
join together, says he, all classes and creeds.
And, says the town worker, after we have crushed the Saxon and freed Ireland,
what will we do?
Oh, then you can go back to your slums, same as before.
Whoop it up for liberty!
And, says the agricultural workers, after we have freed Ireland, what
then?
Oh, then you can go scraping around for the landlord's rent or the money-lenders'
interest same as before.
Whoop it up for liberty!
After Ireland is free, says the patriot who won't touch Socialism, we
will protect all classes, and if you won't pay your rent you will be evicted
same as now. But the evicting party, under command of the sheriff, will
wear green uniforms and the Harp without the Crown, and the warrant turning
you out on the roadside will be stamped with the arms of the Irish Republic.
Now, isn't that worth fighting for?
And when you cannot find employment, and, giving up the struggle of life
in despair, enter the Poorhouse, the band of the nearest regiment of the
Irish army will escort you to the Poorhouse door to the tune of "St.
Patrick's Day."
Oh, it will be nice to live in those days!
"With the Green Flag floating o'er us" and an ever-increasing
army of unemployed workers walking about under the Green Flag, wishing
they had something to eat. Same as now!
Whoop it up for liberty!
Now, my friend, I also am Irish, but I'm a bit more logical. The capitalist,
I say, is a parasite on industry; as useless in the present stage of our
industrial development as any other parasite in the animal or vegetable
world is to the life of the animal or vegetable upon which it feeds.
The working class is the victim of this parasite - this human leech, and
it is the duty and interest of the working class to use every means in
its power to oust this parasite class from the position which enables
it to thus prey upon the vitals of Labour.
Therefore, I say, let us organise as a class to meet our masters and destroy
their mastership; organise to drive them from their hold upon public life
through their political power; organise to wrench from their robber clutch
the land and workshops on and in which they enslave us; organise to cleanse
our social life from the stain of social cannibalism, from the preying
of man upon his fellow man.
Organise for a full, free and happy life FOR ALL OR FOR NONE. SPEED
THE DAY
|