Eye to Eye

President Mitchell, of the United Mine Workers, is reported as saying that if only the capitalist and workingman will look straight into each other’s eyes and speak the truth, there will be no more strikes. The trouble is that, inasmuch as the capitalist is on the back of the workingman, they can’t look into each other’s eyes unless the capitalist dismounts or the workingman twists his spine, and he is already suffering from curvature of that sorely-strained member of his saddled, bridled, whipped and spurred organism.

The capitalist can hardly be expected to rein up and get down purely to see the color of the optics of his “mount.”

Stopped the Blacklist

Wayland’s Monthly, September, 1902

It was on a mixed train on one of the mountain roads in the western states. The conductor and both brakemen had already shown me their old A. R. U. cards, which they treasured with almost affectionate tenderness. The soiled, illegible scraps were souvenirs of the “war,” and revived a whole freight train of stirring reminiscences. The three weather-beaten trainmen were strangers prior to ’94; they were off of three separate roads, and from three different states.

Each of the brakemen had told the story of his persecution after the strike. The companies had declared that no A. R. U. striker should ever have another job on a railroad, and they were doing their level best to make good their brutal avowal. These two brakemen had to suffer long in the role of the “wandering Jew.” Again and again they had secured jobs, under assumed names and otherwise, but as soon as they were found out they were dismissed with the highly edifying information that the company no longer needed their services.

They were on the railroad blacklist. Only they know what this means who have been there. Many times had these brakemen been hungry, many times ejected from trains, often footsore after a weary walk to the next division point. But they bore it all and made no complaint. Fortunately they were both single men and their privations were at least free from the harrowing thought that wife and child were being tortured by their merciless persecutors. They finally conquered the blacklist and were once more allowed to become the slaves of the railroads.

It was about noon when the conductor tapped me on theshoulder and invited me into the baggage end of the car to have dinner with the crew. They had their own kitchen and cooking utensils and had managed to dish up a most appetizing bill of fare. I was first served with a steaming platter of “mulligan,” a popular dish with the mountain men. Then followed cold meat, bread and butter and hot coffee, topped off with a quarter section of pie.

The pipes were next lighted and a lively exchange of reminiscence followed.

The conductor was obliged to leave us for a time and while he was gone the two brakemen told me how he had “stopped the blacklist.” It is a short but immensely suggestive story. The conductor, like all brave men, was too modest to tell it himself. Here it is:

Bill, that was the conductor’s name, was running a train on the S—— railway when the strike of ’94 came. He was also chairman of the local grievance committee. He lost out with the rest and took his medicine without a whimper. When he left home to look for a job his wife had the cheerful assurance that she and the two children would soon hear from him and that they would be united again at an early day.

Bill secured five jobs in straight succession. He was a firstclass railroad man and could fill any kind of position. But as fast as he got a job he lost it. The black demon was at his heels. He had offended his former master and now he and his loving wife and innocent babes must die.

The last job Bill had held good for some days before he was spied out and discharged. He drew $15, but he did not send it to his wife, nor did he use it on himself. Bill had a grim determination written in every line of his swarthy face when he pocketed that $15 and his discharge, and started toward the city. He stopped short before a hardware store and his eyes scanned the display in the window. In less than five minutes he had entered, investigated and emerged again.

With rapid strides the blacklisted man hurried toward the railroad station.

We next see Bill on the streets of his old home. His friends, if any remained, would scarce have recognized him. Upon hiswan features there was an ugly look that boded ill to someone, and in his hip pocket a loaded six-shooter was ready for action.

The superintendent turned deadly pale when Bill entered. He instinctively read his indictment in Bill’s grim visage before a word was spoken.

“What can I do for you, Mr. ——?” tremblingly asked the pilloried official.

“Not a damned thing,” replied Bill, in a strange, hoarse voice.

“You know what I’m here for,” continued the victim of the blacklist, “and if you’ve got any prayers to offer before I make a lead mine of your carcass, you’d better begin at once.”

While Bill spoke the superintendent looked into the murderous pistol pointed at him by the desperate man, and an instant later his office was turned into a prayer meeting. Such piteous pleas were rarely heard from such coward lips.

Bill’s heart was touched; he would give the craven assassin another chance.

Withdrawing the weapon and shoving it into his pocket, Bill looked the official straight in the eye and in a steady voice said: “You have beaten me out of five jobs and you are responsible for my wife and babies being homeless and hungry. You know that there is not a scratch upon my record as an employe, nor a stain upon my character as a man. You have deliberately plotted to torture and kill an innocent woman and two babies who depend upon my labor, and by God, you deserve to die like the dog you are. But I’m going to give you another chance for your life—mark me, just one. I shall get another job, and I shall refer to you as to my service record. If I lose that job, G—— d—— your black heart, you’ll do your blacklisting in hell, not here, for I’ll send you there as sure as my name’s Bill ——.”

The superintendent drew a long breath of relief when Bill turned on his heels and left him alone. He did not doubt Bill’s word. It is hardly necessary to say that the blacklist was ended. Bill got the job and holds it to this day. Not a man on the road is more respected than he, especially by the officials.

Bill did not appeal to the courts. He took no chances on abrace game. His nerve and his six-shooter settled the case and there were no costs to pay.

Bill and his two brakemen are now Socialists. The three hours I spent with those three men rolling over the western mountains I shall remember always with interest and satisfaction.

Prince and Proletaire

Wilshire’s Magazine

The two types represented in the above caption are brought into vivid contrast by the visit of Prince Henry to our democratic domain and the hysterical demonstrations that assail him as he is whirled from point to point in his royal carousal among the plebeians. According to reports the royalty of the old world has been totally eclipsed by the democracy of the new, and his deputy imperial majesty is fairly dazzled and bewildered by the fast and furious display in his honor. At the opera in New York he was surrounded by a palpitating wall of nude flesh, ablaze with diamonds—a scene of gorgeous, glittering splendor compared with which the courts of kings are dim as dirt.

And this is but an incident among a thousand in which our democratic (?) people of every rank and station, save Socialistic alone, abase themselves in vulgar fawning at the feet of tyranny. Shall the titled snob be blamed for holding all such flunkeys in contempt?

Who is this royal lion in the democratic den? A total stranger from an alien land. What has he done to command the reverence of a god? Ask yourself if you can answer. It is not then to the man—for he’s unknown—but to the Prince that Uncle Sam gets down full length into the dust and spreads the Stars and Stripes for royal feet to tread upon.

What difference is there between the monarchy of William and the republic of Roosevelt? Could the Lick telescope discover it?

Bear in mind that here “we” are the people; “we” live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”; “we” are all sovereigns; “we” have no classes; “we” scorn royal snobs; “we” love liberty and despise display; “we” hold “divine right to rule” in contempt; “we”—

The simple truth is we are like the rest—we have prince and pauper, power and poverty, money and misery in our capitalist republic, just as they have in their capitalist monarchy across the water.

Chauncey M. Depew has 150 pairs of creased trousers; many of his sovereign constituents have patches on their only pair of pants.

In our great eastern cities more than half the people live in tenements unfit for habitation, and thousands of babes, denied fresh air, die every year.

The sweating dens are packed with human vermin, but Henry, by the grace of God, will not behold the reeking ballast of the “ship of state.”

A few rods from the Waldorf in New York and the Auditorium in Chicago, are the districts of the doomed and damned. The squares of squalor and miles of misery inspire in men, instead of “Hoch der Kaiser,” the wish “to hear the nightingale sing new marseillaises” and revive the ominous notes of “La Carmagnole.”

“Thus fares the land, by luxury betray’d;In nature’s simplest charms at first array’d,But verging to decline, its splendors rise,Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,The mournful toiler leads his humble band;And while he sinks, without one arm to save,The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.”

“Thus fares the land, by luxury betray’d;

In nature’s simplest charms at first array’d,

But verging to decline, its splendors rise,

Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;

While, scourged by famine from the smiling land,

The mournful toiler leads his humble band;

And while he sinks, without one arm to save,

The country blooms—a garden, and a grave.”

Not long ago the millionaires and labor leaders had a feast in New York; they met as one, and declared that henceforth they were “one and inseparable, now and forever.” President Roosevelt ratified the compact by dining the leaders at the White House. But where are labor’s representatives to the Prince Henry banquets and receptions? Have they been lost in the shuffle? Can it be that they are not fit to meet a prince? Absurd! This is a Republic; labor here is royal and wears the imperial crown. So, at least, Mr. Hanna and other poor and oppressed capitalists tell us, and surely they should know the working kings who rule them.

But again, where are the representatives of labor at thesecourtly social functions? Why is no American workingman allowed near the prince except as menial and spaniel, to guard his noble majesty and do slavish obeisance to his every whim?

Why is there no inch of room for labor in any house or hall, or park, or boat in all this vaunted Republic when a “prince” is guest?

Why are the working class excluded from such “public” functions as rigidly as if they wore the stripes of convicts?

Why must a prince be guarded?

On “great occasions,” such as the presence of a royal guest, the streets and alleys are reserved for the working class, and in these thoroughfares the dead-lines of the common herd are guarded with policemen’s clubs.

How melancholy to see shivering humans, packed together like cattle in a car, rend one another in mad strife to honor those who look upon them as unclean and hold them in supreme contempt!

The working class of the United States, with few exceptions, cheered and shouted for the prince as though he had been their lord and savior. He cares no more for them, this pampered prince, than if they were so many sheep or swine, for he believes that royal blood, by God’s decree, flows through his veins and that common humans are but beasts of burden.

Not long ago Ben Tillett came from England as the representative of labor. All his life he worked to help the men of toil. In point of honest worth Ben Tillett far outweighs ten thousand blooded princes. Yet workingmen, except the few, ignored him, and the scant regard they showed him is to their disgrace.

The point I make is, that from the time the ship that brought the prince touched our shore until it left again no workingman was tolerated in any banquet or reception tendered him in the name of the American people. Office-holders and politicians spouted, while capitalists lined the tables and wined and dined themselves—all of which simply proves that there are no classes in the United States, and that Socialism has no business in a republic.

The envoys for the coronation of King Edward have been announced by President Roosevelt. There will be no hornyhandedprince of labor there. Whitelaw Reid, known only for being the opposite of Horace Greeley, and as small as he was great, will be our knee-breeched, official flunkey at the crowning of the king.

Of course it would not be consistent for our president to drop a crumb of comfort to the Boers.

Let it not be understood that I have the slightest feeling against Henry of Prussia; it is the prince I have no use for. Personally, he may be a good fellow, and I am inclined to believe he is, and if he were in trouble and I had it in my power to help he would find in me a friend. The amputation of his title would relieve him of his royal affliction and elevate him to the dignity of a man.

This is a necessary part of the mission of Socialism, and the revolutionary movement is sweeping over the United States as well as Germany.

It means the end of princes, the end of paupers and the beginning of Man.

“To ears attuned, the victor’s shoutsAre crossing o’er the sea;Resounding like Jove’s thunder pealsThe working class are free.”

“To ears attuned, the victor’s shouts

Are crossing o’er the sea;

Resounding like Jove’s thunder peals

The working class are free.”

Revolution

New York Worker, April 27, 1907

This is the first and only International Labor Day. It belongs to the working class and is dedicated to the Revolution.

Today the slaves of all the world are taking a fresh breath in the long and weary march; pausing a moment to clear their lungs and shout for joy; celebrating in festal fellowship their coming Freedom.

All hail the Labor Day of May!The day of the proletarian protest;The day of stern resolve;The day of noble aspiration.Raise high this day the blood-red Standard of the Revolution!The banner of the Workingman;The flag, the only flag, of Freedom.

All hail the Labor Day of May!

The day of the proletarian protest;

The day of stern resolve;

The day of noble aspiration.

Raise high this day the blood-red Standard of the Revolution!

The banner of the Workingman;

The flag, the only flag, of Freedom.

Slavery, even the most abject—dumb and despairing as it may seem—has yet its inspiration. Crushed it may be, but extinguished never. Chain the slave as you will, O Masters, brutalize him as you may, yet in his soul, though dead, he yearns for freedom still.

The great discovery the modern slaves have made is that they themselves their freedom must achieve. This is the secret of their solidarity; the heart of their hope; the inspiration that nerves them all with sinews of steel.

They are still in bondage, but no longer cower;No longer grovel in the dust,But stand erect like men.

They are still in bondage, but no longer cower;

No longer grovel in the dust,

But stand erect like men.

Conscious of their growing power the future holds out to them her outstretched hands.

As the slavery of the working class is international, so the movement for its emancipation.

The salutation of slave to slave this day is repeated in every human tongue as it goes ringing round the world.

The many millions are at last awakening. For countless ages they have suffered; drained to the dregs the bitter cup of misery and woe.

At last, at last the historic limitation has been reached, and soon a new sun will light the world.

Red is the life-tide of our common humanity and red our symbol of universal kinship.

Tyrants deny it; fear it; tremble with rage and terror when they behold it.

We reaffirm it and on this day pledge anew our fidelity—come life or death—to the blood-red Banner of the Revolution.

Socialist greetings this day to all our fellow-workers! To the god-like souls in Russia marching grimly, sublimely into the jaws of hell with the Song of the Revolution in their death-rattle; to the Orient, the Occident and all the Isles of the Sea!

Vive la Revolution!

The most heroic word in all languages is REVOLUTION.

It thrills and vibrates; cheers and inspires. Tyrants and time-servers fear it, but the oppressed hail it with joy.

The throne trembles when this throbbing word is lisped, but to the hovel it is food for the famishing and hope for the victims of despair.

Let us glorify today the revolutions of the past and hail the Greater Revolution yet to come before Emancipation shall make all the days of the year May Days of peace and plenty for the sons and daughters of toil.

It was with Revolution as his theme that Mark Twain’s soul drank deep from the fount of inspiration. His immortality will rest at last upon this royal tribute to the French Revolution:

“The ever memorable and blessed revolution, which swept a thousand years of villainy away in one swift tidal wave of blood—one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the proportion of half a drop of blood for each hogshead of it that had been pressed by slow tortures out of that people in the weary stretch of ten centuries of wrong and shame and misery the like of which was not to be mated but in hell. There were two Reigns of Terror, if we would but remember it and consider it: the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death on ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror, which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over, but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

Arouse, Ye Slaves!

Appeal to Reason, March 10, 1906

The latest and boldest stroke of the plutocracy, but for the blindness of the people, would have startled the nation.

Murder has been plotted and is about to be executed in the name and under the forms of law.

Men who will not yield to corruption and browbeating must be ambushed, spirited away and murdered.

That is the edict of the Mine Owners’ Association of the western states and their Standard Oil backers and pals in Wall street, New York.

These gory-beaked vultures are to pluck out the heart of resistance to their tyranny and robbery, that labor may be left stark naked at their mercy.

Charles Moyer and Wm. D. Haywood, of the Western Federation of Miners, and their official colleagues—men, all of them, and every inch of them—are charged with the assassination of ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg, of Idaho, who simply reaped what he had sown, as a mere subterfuge to pounce upon them in secret, rush them out of the state by special train, under heavy guard, clap them into the penitentiary, convict them upon the purchased perjured testimony of villains, and strangle them to death with the hangman’s noose.

It is a foul plot; a damnable conspiracy; a hellish outrage.

The governors of Idaho and Colorado say they have the proof to convict. They are brazen falsifiers and venal villains, the miserable tools of the mine owners who, themselves, if anybody, deserve the gibbet.

Moyer, Haywood and their comrades had no more to do with the assassination of Steunenberg than I had; the charge is a ghastly lie, a criminal calumny, and is only an excuse to murder men who are too rigidly honest to betray their trust and too courageous to succumb to threat and intimidation.

Labor leaders that cringe before the plutocracy and do its bidding are apotheosized; those that refuse must be foully murdered.

Personally and intimately do I know Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, St. John and their official co-workers, and I will stake my life on their honor and integrity; and that is precisely the crime for which, according to the words of the slimy “sleuth” who “worked up the case” against them, “they shall never leave Idaho alive.”

Well, by the gods, if they don’t, the governors of Idaho and Colorado and their masters from Wall street, New York, to the Rocky Mountains had better prepare to follow them.

Nearly twenty years ago the capitalist tyrants put some innocent men to death for standing up for labor.

They are now going to try it again. Let them dare!

There have been twenty years of revolutionary education, agitation and organization since the Haymarket tragedy, and if an attempt is made to repeat it, there will be a revolution and I will do all in my power to precipitate it.

The crisis has come and we have got to meet it. Upon the issue involved the whole body of organized labor can unite and every enemy of plutocracy will join us. From the farms, the factories and stores will pour the workers to meet the redhanded destroyers of freedom, the murderers of innocent men and the arch-enemies of the people.

Moyer and Haywood are our comrades, staunch and true, and if we do not stand by them to the shedding of the last drop of blood in our veins, we are disgraced forever and deserve the fate of cringing cowards.

We are not responsible for the issue. It is not of our seeking. It has been forced upon us; and for the very reason that we deprecate violence and abhor bloodshed we cannot desert our comrades and allow them to be put to death. If they can be murdered without cause so can we, and so will we be dealt with at the pleasure of these tyrants.

They have driven us to the wall and now let us rally our forces and face them and fight.

If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns.

They have done their best and their worst to crush and enslave us. Their politicians have betrayed us, their courts have thrown us into jail without trial and their soldiers have shot our comrades dead in their tracks.

The worm turns at last, and so does the worker.

Let them dare to execute their devilish plot and every state in this Union will resound with the tramp of revolution.

Get ready, comrades, for action! No other course is left to the working class. Their courts are closed to us except to pronounce our doom. To enter their courts is simply to be mulcted of our meagre means and bound hand and foot; to have our eyes plucked out by the vultures that fatten upon our misery.

Capitalist courts never have done, and never will do, anything for the working class.

Whatever is done we must do ourselves, and if we stand up like men from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada to the Gulf, we will strike terror to their cowardly hearts and they will be but too eager to relax their grip upon our throats and beat a swift retreat.

We will watch every move they make and in the meantime prepare for action.

A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat at Chicago, or some other central point, would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising.

If the plutocrats begin the program, we will end it.

Growth of the Injunction

Social Democratic Herald, May 6, 1905

In the month of December, 1893, something over eleven years ago, a federal injunction was issued that broke all the records up to that time and stirred up the whole country. This injunction was issued by James G. Jenkins, judge of the United States Circuit Court, and restrained the employes of the Northern Pacific railway from quitting the service of that company under penalty of being found guilty of contempt and sent to jail.

The facts in the case, which are recalled by a recently published interview with Judge Jenkins, who has retired from the bench, were as follows:

The Northern Pacific, robbed and wrecked by the knaves who had control of its affairs, applied to the federal court in the person of Judge Jenkins for a receivership, which was promptly granted. Following this order of the court and the appointment of the receivers, the latter petitioned the court for an order making sweeping reductions in the wages of employes, and fearing that a strike might follow, the receivers asked the court at the same time to issue an order restraining the employes from leaving the service of the company, and this was also promptly granted. It was this latter order that aroused the storm and it raged fiercely for some months. Indignation meetings were held by labor unions, notably in Chicago, where a mass meeting was called for the special purpose of denouncing Judge Jenkins and demanding his impeachment. Obedient to the indignation and clamor of organized labor, Congressman McGann, of Illinois, introduced a resolution in Congress looking to the investigation of the affair by the judiciary committee, but, of course, nothing came from it, and it was not long before the judicial crime, for such it was, was forgotten.

The strange thing about it was that the employes did not strike under such extreme provocation, and this was due to the fact that their leaders, the national officers of the unions, urged them not to do so, and united in a letter to the general manager accepting the order of the court and acquiescing in the situation. The writer, who was then organizing the American Railway Union, tried to have the employes resent the despotic decree of the court and quit in a body from end to end of the line, but other counsels prevailed and they remained at work. It would have been interesting to see the ten or twelve thousand employes quit as one and defy the outrageous order of the court, and then see Jenkins make good his order and send them to jail. The judicial bluff would have been called and not only would they not have gone to jail, but the court would have stood exposed and rebuked and the reduction in the wages would have been restored. I am still waiting for organized workingmen to take advantage of just such an opening when ten thousand or more workers shall all be simultaneously in contempt for the defiance of some outrageous federal injunction. It will have a most wholesome effect—infinitely better than the servile pleas of labor leaders and legislative committees in the humiliating role of mendicants, crawling in the dust at the feet of their supposed servants.

Had the army of Northern Pacific employes resented the outrage of Judge Jenkins in 1893 by quitting in defiance of his injunction—and they would have done it but for the national officers of their unions—an object lesson of inestimable value would have been taught the courts and their capitalist masters, and the rapid evolution of the labor injunction which had then fairly set in would have been checked for a time at least, and it is doubtful if it had ever developed its present unrestrained restraining power.

Judge Henry Clay Caldwell, who was also on the federal bench at the time the Jenkins injunction was issued, declared strongly in opposition to it, saying:

“If receivers should apply for leave to reduce the existing scale of wages, before acting on their petition I would require them to give notice of the application to the officers or representatives of the several labor organizations to be affected bythe proposed change, of the time and place of hearing, and would also require them to grant such officers or representatives leave of absence and furnish them transportation to the place of hearing and subsistence while in attendance, and I would hear both sides in person, or by attorneys, if they wanted attorneys to appear for them. * * * If, after a full hearing and consideration, I found that it was necessary, equitable and just to reduce the scale of wages, I would give the employes ample time to determine whether they would accept the new scale. If they rejected it they would not be enjoined from quitting the service of the court either singly or in a body.”

Judge Jenkins gave the employes no hearing, no notice, no consideration. He simply ordered their wages reduced and told them that if they quit work he would send them to jail. This is the order—and a beautiful order it is in a land of boasted freedom—that Judge Jenkins now says has been vindicated and that the precedent then established by him is now followed by all courts. He is right. The evolution of the injunction has indeed been swift and what was regarded as exceedingly novel and venturesome a decade ago is now securely incorporated in our established system of capitalistic jurisprudence.

The late Judge Dundy, of Omaha, notoriously the creature of the Union Pacific, issued the order reducing wages on that system when it was in the hands of receivers appointed by him, but Judge Caldwell, who was on the Circuit bench and had prior jurisdiction, took the case away from Dundy, had the employes come into court and be heard, and, after hearing all the evidence, revoked the order of Dundy, restored the wage reductions and administered a scathing rebuke to the receivers.

Judge Caldwell was appointed to the Federal bench by President Lincoln. They don’t appoint that kind of judges any more.

Such eminent lights as Dundy, Jenkins, Ricks, Taft, Ross, Woods, Grosscup and Kohlsaat now illumine the Federal bar and all their names are immortally associated with the evolution of the injunction and the subjugation of labor by judicial prowess.

One of the first and most illustrious in this line is Judge Taft, who won his spurs in the Toledo, Ann Arbor & North Michigan case. He has been a prime favorite with the corporations ever since, is now in the cabinet, and is being groomed for the presidency. As a candidate for the white house he has the two essential qualifications—unswerving loyalty to capital and unmitigated contempt for labor—and this should and doubtless will secure his nomination and election by an overwhelming majority.

In his published interview, Judge Jenkins, discussing his Northern Pacific injunction, says:

“Within the last twelve years, by reason of popular discontent at legal restraint, the issuance of this writ has been designated opprobriously as ‘government by injunction.’ Well, it is in a true and proper sense ‘government by injunction,’ for it is a government by law. The remedy has long existed and will exist so long as government by law continues, so long as we have liberty regulated by law, and not irresponsible, uncontrolled license to exercise one’s sweet will without regard to others’ rights, which is anarchy, and no howling of the mob can ever abolish it until government by law is wrecked and ‘chaos is come again.’”

Let me ask Judge Jenkins if he would be of the same opinion if at the time he cut the wages of the Northern Pacific employes and restrained them from quitting some other judge had issued an order reducing his salary as judge and restraining him from resigning under penalty of being sent to jail. That is the position precisely in which he placed the employes of the Northern Pacific, and it is this that he now calls “liberty regulated by law.” If that is liberty it would be interesting to know what slavery is.

It has been about fifteen years since the court injunction began to figure in labor affairs. It was threatened in the C., B. & Q. railroad strike of 1888, but not resorted to. After the Homestead strike, in 1892, during which Pinkertonism reached its culmination and this brutal form of warfare upon labor by Carnegie and Frick excited the most intense indignation, the injunction came into general use. It proved a great thing for the corporations, just what they had beenlooking for. No longer was there any need for a private Pinkerton army. That was a clumsy contrivance compared to the noiseless, automatic, self-acting injunction. The Pinkertons were expensive, cumbersome, aroused hatred and sometimes missed fire. The injunction was free from all these objections. One shock from the judicial battery and labor was paralyzed and counted out.

Since first introduced in the struggle between labor and capital the injunction has developed from the flintlock to the rapidfire. Judge Jenkins enjoys in his retirement the distinction of having contributed one of its chief improvements. His fame is secure and so is his infamy. He need not worry about vindication. He was as loyal a judge as ever bowed to Mammon, as faithful a tool as ever served his master, and as consummate a hypocrite as ever stabbed liberty in the name of law.

The injunction is playing its usual role in the teamsters’ strike in Chicago. The Team Owners’ Association of Chicago are incorporated in West Virginia and by this trick become an interstate association and nestled under the wing of the United States court. The Federal injunction to destroy the strike and rout the strikers has already been applied for and granted. This goes without saying. What are Judges Grosscup and Kohlsaat on the bench for? Certainly not for the health of the teamsters. They are there to do what they were appointed to do by the president of the exploiting capitalists elected by the exploited workers.

At this writing carloads of negroes are being shipped into Chicago to take the places of the striking teamsters, while injunctions, like swords suspended by threads, hang above their heads and ten thousand regular soldiers with shotted guns are on the edge of the city awaiting the command to sprinkle the streets with the blood of labor.

Oh, that all the workers of Chicago would back up the teamsters and garment workers by throwing down their tools and quitting work! Twenty-four hours of such a strike would bring the masters to their knees. But they have too many unions and too many leaders for this, and so they must fight it out to the bitter end.

In the meantime the evolution of the injunction is makingfor Socialism. Nothing more clearly shows that the labor question is also a political question and that to conquer their exploiters the working class must build up the Socialist party and capture the powers of government.

What’s the Matter with Chicago?

Chicago Socialist, October 25, 1902

For some days William E. Curtis, the far-famed correspondent of the ChicagoRecord-Herald, has been pressing the above inquiry upon representative people of all classes with a view to throwing all possible light upon that vexed subject.

The inquiry is in such general terms and takes such wide scope that anything like a comprehensive answer would fill a book without exhausting the subject, while a review of the “interviews” would embrace the whole gamut of absurdity and folly and produce a library of comedy and tragedy.

Not one of the replies I have seen has sufficient merit to be printed in a paper read by grown folks, and those that purport to come from leaders of labor and representatives of the working class take the prize in what would appear to be a competitive contest for progressive asininity.

The leader, so-called, who puts it upon record in a capitalist paper and gives the libel the widest circulation, that Chicago is alright, so far as the workers are concerned, that they have plenty and are prosperous and happy, is as fit to lead the working class as is a wolf to guide a flock of spring lambs.

It is from the wage worker’s point of view that I shall attempt an answer to the question propounded by Mr. Curtis, and in dealing with the subject I shall be as candid as may be expected from a Socialist agitator.

The question is opportune at this season, when the “frost is on the pumpkin,” and the ballot is soon to decide to what extent the people really know “What is the matter with Chicago.”

First of all, Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like all other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation. The Illinois Central Railroad Company selectedthe site upon which the city is built and this consisted of a vast miasmatic swamp far better suited to mosquito culture than for human beings. From the day the site was chosen by (and of course in the interest of all) said railway company, everything that entered into the building of the town and the development of the city was determined purely from profit considerations and without the remotest concern for the health and comfort of the human beings who were to live there, especially those who had to do all the labor and produce all the wealth.

As a rule hogs are only raised where they have good health and grow fat. Any old place will do to raise human beings.

At this very hour typhoid fever and diphtheria are epidemic in Chicago and the doctors agree that these ravages are due to the microbes and germs generated in the catchbasins and sewers which fester and exhale their foul and fetid breath upon the vast swarms of human beings caught and fettered there.

Thousands upon thousands of Chicago’s population have been poisoned to death by the impure water and foul atmosphere of this undrainable swamp (notwithstanding the doctored mortuary tables by which it is proven to prospective investors that it is the healthiest city on earth) and thousands more will commit suicide in the same way, but to compensate for it all Chicago has the prize location for money-making, immense advantage for profitmongering—and what are human beings compared to money?

During recent years Chicago has expended millions to lift herself out of her native swamp, but the sewage floats back to report the dismal failure of the attempt, and every germ-laden breeze confirms the report.

That is one thing that is the matter with Chicago. It never was intended that human beings should live there. A thousand sites infinitely preferable for a city could have been found in close proximity, but they lacked the “Commercial” advantages which are of such commanding importance in the capitalist system.

And now they wonder “What is the Matter with Chicago!” Look at some of her filthy streets in the heart of the city,chronically torn up, the sunlight obscured, the air polluted, the water contaminated, every fountain and stream designed to bless the race poisoned at its source—and you need not wonder what ails Chicago, nor will you escape the conclusion that the case is chronic and that the present city will never recover from the fatal malady.

What is true of Chicago physically is emphasized in her social, moral and spiritual aspects, and this applies to every commercial metropolis in the civilized world.

From any rational point of view they are all dismal failures.

There is no reason under the sun, aside from the profit considerations of the capitalist system, why two million humans should be stacked up in layers and heaps until they jar the clouds, while millions of acres of virgin soil are totally uninhabited.

The very contemplation of the spectacle gives rise to serious doubt as to the sanity of the race.

Such a vast population in such a limited area cannot feed itself, has not room to move and cannot keep clean.

The deadly virus of capitalism is surging through all the veins of this young mistress of trade and the eruptions are found all over the body social and politic, and that’s “What’s the matter with Chicago.”

Hundreds of theRecord-Herald’squacks are prescribing their nostrums for the blotches and pustules which have broken out upon the surface, but few have sense enough to know and candor enough to admit that the virus must be expelled from the system—and these few are Socialists who are so notoriously visionary and impracticable that their opinions are not worthy of space in a great paper printed to conserve the truth and promote the welfare of society.

This model metropolis of the West has broken all the records for political corruption. Her old rival on the Mississippi, catching the inspiration doubtless, has been making some effort to crown herself with similar laurels, but for smooth political jobbery and fancy manipulation of the wires, Chicago is still far in the lead. In the “Windy City” ward politics has long been recognized as a fine art and the collection is unrivalled anywhere.

From the millions of dollars filched from the millions of humans by the corporate owners of the common utilities, the reeking corruption funds flow like lava tides, and to attempt to purify the turbid stream by the “reform measures” proposed from time to time by the Republican-Democratic party in its internal conflict for the spoils of office, is as utter a piece of folly as to try with beeswax to seal up Mount Pelee.

Chicago has plutocrats and paupers in the ratio of more than sixteen to one—boulevards for the exhibition of the rich and alleys for the convenience of the poor.

Chicago has also a grand army of the most skilled pickpockets, artistic confidence operators, accomplished foot-pads and adept cracksmen on earth. So well is this understood that on every breeze we hear the refrain:

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