My dear Judd:
It is an interesting thing to study the development of human society through a long period of history. Men began in small tribes, in which they were very much alike, and stood on an equal footing. These tribes fought, and absorbed one another, and grew more complex, with greater differences among the members; dukedoms and principalities arose, and then kingdoms, and at last great empires, with rulers and subjects ranged in classes, and the class lines rigidly drawn.
It was against such a form of society that our ancestors revolted; they had a new theory of government, and established a new form—a republic, owned and run by its citizens, all standing on an equal plane. The process of evolution in the political world is still going on, and some day we shall see a world-wide federation of republics, in which the human race will share equal rights.
It is fascinating to realize that this same process is going on in the world of industry. Here also we see the various enterprises struggling, and some winning and absorbing the others, until today we have industrial monarchies and empires. It is not merely a figure of speech when we talk about coal barons and steel kings and emperors of finance, for these men occupy the same positions and hold the same kind of power as the rulers of old days. And just as we saw revolutions in the field of politics, so we shall see them in industry. In fact, the first of these great revolutions has taken place before our eyes; the workers of Russia are now trying to show us that a government of industry by the citizens of industry is a possible thing and a step in progress. Our capitalist newspapers are sure that they must fail; but even if they did, that would not upset the argument,for the first political revolution in England failed, and the first two in France; but that has not kept a whole string of other countries from turning into republics.
The way human beings learn is by trying; and we are in the stage of history where men are getting ready to try democracy in industry. There will be mistakes, and a great deal of waste and suffering; nevertheless, we shall press on, and in the end we shall achieve a higher type of society than anything conceivable under industrial monarchy, or imperialism such as we have today.
You remember King Louis of France, the “grand monarch,” who said, “The state, it is I”; well, imagine the scoffing you would have met with, if you had talked with some haughty marquis of that court, and tried to tell him how some day in France the common “riff-raff” would have votes, and choose parliaments, and decide the issues of war and diplomacy. He would have been quite sure they could never do it; and as a matter of fact, they don’t, Judd—but they will; yes, even here in the United States the people will some day decide!
Today our great captains of industry are no less certain that common workingmen cannot possibly have intelligence enough to run factories, to say nothing of deciding the broad policies of business. The masters have won the money fight, and got the power, and they mean to hold on to it, and train their descendants and found great money-dynasties. But the same thing happens that we saw two hundred years ago with the French kings—the new generations become enervated and worthless, and the wealth of the community flows into the lap of idlers and parasites, who squander it in dissipation and display; the poor become discontented and rebellious, and the rumble of the approaching deluge is heard.
Our capitalist newspapers never get tired of harping upon the failures of government ownership, the waste and the graft. Private ownership is the way to efficiency! Well, Judd, there is a lot of present-day efficiency which I am ready to do without, beginning from this very hour. For example, efficiency in maiming and killing workers—which caused one million in our country to be disabled in 1925! Labor today works under the lash of the slave-driver, and I am willing to see industry slow down, so that workingmen may be human beings. And then, I examine the graft under public ownership, and what do I find? Private owners seeking private profits out of government! Here is a slogan, Judd:
The cause of graft is not public ownership of industry, but private ownership of politicians!
The cause of graft is not public ownership of industry, but private ownership of politicians!
How can we stop that? We have tried the plan of sending the grafters to jail, but that doesn’t work, for the reason that the grafters buy the prosecuting officials and the judges; in the few cases where we get them into jail, they buy the jailers. So Isuggest a new plan—that we take away the motive to graft, by making it impossible for any man to exploit the labor of his fellows, or to monopolize those things which are necessary to the life of all.
Learning industrial democracy is like learning to swim. You stick one foot into the water, and you see that it sinks, and so you draw it out in a hurry, and decide, it is impossible for you to stay on top of the water. And then along comes a man who says: “Yes, you can swim, but not until you go all the way in.” It seems an absurdity at first, yet it is the literal truth about government ownership; you can own and run it all, but you can’t own and run a small part!
At present private ownership is making all the big profits, and so, of course, it is paying all the big salaries, and getting most of the competent men. Not content with that, it is undermining the competition of government, using its huge resources to buy the political parties, and nominate incompetent men to public office. That is no wild statement, but a fact of big business policy. Our masters, who control the political parties, are afraid to have competent men in public office, for fear they might take up a notion to do something real for the public welfare. They prefer a man who can’t kick over the traces, because he is too feeble. That is why at the last nominating convention they turned down a really competent and loyal servant of theirs, Mr. Herbert Hoover, and gave us poor, shy, pitiful Mr. Coolidge, who can never by any possibility do anything, for the reason that he doesn’t know what to do.
When you and I, Judd, and the rest of the useful workers of America, get ready to run our own business, we can do it. We shall do it, if for no other reason, because we have to—because we need food in our cities, and machinery on our farms. We shall hire the best experts to run our industries; and many of them will be the very men who are running them now—they will be just as well content to work for the American people as for Johnny Coaloil, who is now taking a yachting trip with a dozen chorus girls on the Riviera, or for Mrs. Silly Splash, who is setting the new fashion in diamond-embroidered bathing suits at Palm Beach. Yes, Judd, we shall find ways to run our business without these elegant idlers; and whatever waste there may be won’t be so bad as having them corrupt a whole generation of our young people by their vicious folly. If there is graft, we’ll find ways to stop it, and if more efficiency is needed, we’ll get it—because it will be our business, and our loss if we fail.
I’ll go even further, Judd; I’ll assert that the amount of waste inherent in capitalism is so frightful, that no amount of inefficiency under a free system can approach it. Remember the “iron ring,” and what it will mean to us to get into the factories, with the right to run them for ourselves! Remember our figures on the wastes of competition! Let us have a “slogan,” for you to paste in your hat and learn, Judd:
To compare the productive powers of a free system with those of capitalism, is to compare a normal human being with a vicious maniac.
To compare the productive powers of a free system with those of capitalism, is to compare a normal human being with a vicious maniac.
Just a sentence or two, Judd, to remind us what this maniac has done:
Capitalism, between 1914 and 1918, deliberately destroyed 30,000,000 human lives, and $300,000,000,000 worth of property!
Capitalism, between 1914 and 1918, deliberately destroyed 30,000,000 human lives, and $300,000,000,000 worth of property!
And again, Judd:
Capitalism in the United States keeps an average of five million men out of work all the time!
Capitalism in the United States keeps an average of five million men out of work all the time!
And again, Judd:
Capitalism in Europe last summer had nine million men working hard at learning to destroy the wealth which the rest of the workers were creating!
Capitalism in Europe last summer had nine million men working hard at learning to destroy the wealth which the rest of the workers were creating!
And then paste this sentence in your hat, Judd:
While our population increased 200 per cent in the past 50 years, capitalism increased our expenditures for mass-slaughter more than 2400 per cent!
While our population increased 200 per cent in the past 50 years, capitalism increased our expenditures for mass-slaughter more than 2400 per cent!
My dear Judd:
We are going to take over the industrial plant of the United States, and run it as one planned enterprise for the benefit of the whole people.
Just what do we mean to take? Roughly speaking, all railroads, telegraphs and telephones, all banks, the mines and large factories, the large oil fields with pipe-lines and refineries, the large packing and canning plants, the large warehouses and stores, and what office buildings are necessary for these enterprises. We do not want the homes, nor the personal property, nor the automobiles, nor the livestock; nor, if I have my way, shall we want farms. Some old-time Socialists will contest this, but the new generation will agree, I think. The reason is interesting, and it may help to clear up the whole matter if we begin by considering the problem of the land.
Karl Marx thought that the farms would go the same way as the factories; that is, they would get bigger and bigger, under capitalist ownership. He failed to allow for the essential factor—that no capitalist can work his employes so hard as the small farmer works his women and children. So the small farmer has stayed on his small farm; a free man—except that every year he is deeper in debt to the banker, and in a larger percentage each year he loses the ownership, and is merely a tenant, supporting an absentee landlord. The modern Socialist, recognizing that situation, does not propose to walk into the trap, but seeks a different solution of the land problem.
The single taxer comes, urging us to take the burden of taxesoff improvements, which are made by human labor, and put it on the land, which is the gift of Nature. He points to the rise of land values in cities, the so-called “unearned increment”; values go up, because people crowd into the city, and private owners get a colossal increase, which they have done nothing whatever to earn; their gains make a heavy burden on production, which the whole community must pay. That sounded reasonable, and so for a while I was a single taxer; you’ll be interested to know, Judd, that the reason I gave it up was you!
We had a big single tax campaign here in California in 1916, and I put in some hard work at it; among other things I spent a day arguing with my friend Judd. We were sitting on the roof of the garage, laying shingles, and all the time I tried to make you “see” the single tax. But you had read in the Los Angeles “Times” that it would increase the taxes on your two lots, and that had made you mad; also, you had read that it would take the taxes off the rich man’s bonds, and off his wife’s jewels, and that had made you madder. I tried to get you to see the absurdity of believing that the “Times” could be interested in keeping any taxes on the rich; I tried to show the actual reason, that the tax collector couldn’t find the rich man’s bonds, nor his wife’s jewels. But you didn’t get it, Judd, and when I saw the votes of all the other Judds in that election, I decided that the single tax is a tactical blunder. Never again will I be caught proposing to take any taxes off the rich; from that day forth I have been a multiple taxer—I want to put just as many kinds of taxes on the rich as the imagination can invent.
Joking aside, Judd, I changed my whole strategy as result of that day on the roof with you. For twelve or thirteen years I had been expecting to see Socialism brought about by some sort of tax on wealth; but you made me realize how passionately every human creature hates taxes. Could one not find some easier way? I realized that all men like money, the more the merrier; and then came the war, and I saw our government making money by the billions, just by acts of Congress and the waving of a presidential pen. Then came the panic, and I saw our wonderful Federal Reserve System making more billions for the use of the big bankers and the trusts; so a great light dawned upon me, a heavenly light! I see now, Judd, that we shall forget taxes altogether, and take a leaf out of Wall Street’s new book; we shall make as many billions of new money as the emergency requires, and instead of having Wall Street put that new money off on us, we shall put it off on Wall Street!
I know some young workers in our country who call themselves social revolutionists, and are impatient when they hear me talk about compensation for the capitalists. These young people feel ugly towards the capitalists, and for this I do not blame them, seeing how they have been treated. But the point of my criticism is that these young enthusiasts want to be ugly to the capitalists in an old-fashioned, out of date way, with guns andbarricades, while I want to be ugly in the modern way of high finance.
What is it we really want? Is it to kill the capitalists? No, but merely to take from them their power to exploit labor. And how do they get this power? By guns and barricades? They hold it that way, of course; but inside each modern country they have devised the new and infinitely more effective scheme of financial manipulation, the creation of imaginary money with which to buy everything in sight. And it is this weapon I want to turn against them. Why, for heaven’s sake, do we want to have insurrections and riots, when by means of this modern Aladdin’s magic we can walk peaceably into every factory and take charge? The capitalists have created the magic lamp for us—this wonderful new Federal Reserve System; all we have to do is to turn out the present board of bankers’ bankers, and put in a new board of workers’ bankers, and create a hundred billion dollars of new money, and pay for the industries, and there you are! Not a court in the land can stop us, and if any capitalist tries to, he is a revolutionist, and we have criminal syndicalism laws for him!
This is “inflation,” we are told; and inflation raises the cost of goods, and so brings no benefit to the worker. Yes, Judd, but get the point clear—inflation is one thing if you use it to buy goods, and quite a different thing if you use it to buy factories. In buying goods, you buy on a rising market, but in buying factories you buy at a fixed price, and so it is the owners who suffer the loss. And that is the beauty of this scheme I am unfolding; these Wall Street gentry have “passed the buck” to us—and we pass it right back!
The Russian revolutionists made a grave mistake in their dealings with world capitalism; they were too honest. They repudiated the debts of the Tsar’s government—declaring that the money had been spent to enslave the Russian workers, and they would never repay it. Therefore world capitalism went to war with Russia, and is still at war, and that error in tactics has cost the new government many times the debts of the old regime. But how much more clever were the capitalist governments of Italy and France! They also owed us money; but they were so polite—they are the politest people in the world! They owed it, of course, and they would pay, of course; never would they dream of failing to pay their debts; but just now they were very poor, and couldn’t pay, and wouldn’t we please lend them another hundred million or so? We loaned it—because if they go bankrupt they will also go Bolshevik, and that scares the gizzard out of our bankers. So these smooth capitalist nations have never paid us a dollar, but their credit is still good, and we never think of them as criminals and murderers—oh, nothing like that, it is all between gentlemen in Wall Street, and the worthless bonds have been worked off on the general public, and all is serene!
So, Judd, I say, let us be gentlemen, too, and pay! Pay any price the capitalists ask—anything to get them out of thefactories, and get the workers in! It will mean that we support a horde of parasites for awhile; but we are doing that, anyhow, and can do it better then, because we shall double production. Young Johnny Coaloil will still be able to keep his yacht and his chorus girls on the Riviera, and Mrs. Silly Splash will continue to wear diamond-embroidered bathing suits at Palm Beach; but notice the difference, Judd—from now on they can buy nothing but goods with their money, they can no longer buy the means of production, and so they will not be able to increase their income!
On the contrary, we can proceed at once to cut it down, by means of an inheritance tax. We already have such a tax—the Coolidge crowd is trying to get rid of it at this moment, and likewise the publicity clause of the income tax, which exposes the big exploiters to uncomfortable daylight! But we can put it back, Judd; we can make the provisions that gifts in anticipation of death count as inheritance; we can register the owners of the bonds, and so wipe out that whole mass of privilege in a generation or two. I promised to show you how the useful workers of America can take possession of their industrial plant, and here is the way. Nothing prevents them but lack of knowledge; and that is why I am writing these letters!
My dear Judd:
We have been discussing the problem of how the workers are to get possession of the industrial machinery of the country. I have proposed to pay for it; but there are some who insist that the workers should seize the plant. It has been built by the workers, and taken from them by fraud; if we purchase it, we merely continue exploitation under another form; the government replaces the owners as task-master, and collects the profits and pays them to the owners in the form of dividends.
This statement sounds all right, but it overlooks the essential factor in our business situation—that “iron ring” I have been telling you about. At the present time not one per cent of our factories are run at full capacity all the year round; but when we get possession for the workers, we break the iron ring, and can run them all day and all night. We have five million unemployed—the average of good years and bad, you remember—five million men to go to work, to turn out more goods for themselves and for all. We cut out the wastes and reduplication; and according to the lowest estimate, we double our production of goods.
The plant we propose to buy is worth, roughly, one hundred billion dollars, and its annual product is twenty billions, possibly thirty; let us say twenty, to be safe. We pay for it with five per cent bonds, which means the former owners get five billions a year. If we double production, we have forty billions a year, which leaves thirty-five billions for us. In other words, Judd:
We can work half an hour a day for the owners, and four hours a day for ourselves, and be twice as rich as at present.
We can work half an hour a day for the owners, and four hours a day for ourselves, and be twice as rich as at present.
So you see why I am in favor of compensation! Not because I love the owners, but because, as a matter of cold cash, we shall do better that way. I will go so far as to argue that if we try to pay nothing, we shall really pay more. If we try to kick the bosses out, and seize the factories, and run them by workers’ councils—obviously, that may mean civil war. The bosses have the factories, and they have machine-guns and airplanes and poison gas—a system for wiping out the lives of thousands of workers, if necessary. One of the embarrassments of physical force revolution is that it may fail, and the workers, instead of getting the factories, may get castor oil and Fascist clubs. There is a big group of our masters who think that is what the workers need, and would take delight in administering it.
I know some young revolutionists who are prepared to die for the proletariat, in a fine spirit of martyrdom. They are impatient of talk about money, but I beg them to pause and consider the balance sheet of Compensation versus Confiscation. Even though they succeed in their revolution, they surely cannot do it without industrial waste. They will have to stop the machines while they are fighting; they may shoot holes in the factories, and even burn some of them down. And just what will that cost? We are reckoning, you understand, on our possible double production—forty billions a year. The interest we pay the owners is five billions a year. So now:
If in the course of our revolution we destroy one-eighth of our industrial plant, it would have been cheaper to pay the owners for the whole thing.
If in the course of our revolution we destroy one-eighth of our industrial plant, it would have been cheaper to pay the owners for the whole thing.
Or, suppose we have the good luck to get by without much fighting—what then? Well, the present management, which knows the industry, and is keeping the plant going—this management is hired by the owners, and is loyal to the owners, and will have to be booted out the back door, which will certainly stop production, cripple it for months, perhaps years. But if our government comes to the owners in a business deal, and buys the plant, the management will stay on, as it did when we took over the railroads during the war. On that basis, we shall not lose an hour of the plant’s time, nor will the workers lose an hour of their wages. And how does this figure up, in the balance sheet of Compensation versus Confiscation? Listen:
If our industrial plant is idle for six weeks, we have lost what would have paid the owners for a year.
If our industrial plant is idle for six weeks, we have lost what would have paid the owners for a year.
And again, an obvious consequence:
Every day over six weeks that the plant is idle, the workers are paying from their own pockets!
Every day over six weeks that the plant is idle, the workers are paying from their own pockets!
Our young revolutionists are going by the Russian model, and that is natural, because many of them come from there. ButRussia had a small industrial plant, and we have a great one, enormously complicated. Moreover, Russia had no middle class, while we have a powerful one, ready to turn out at a moment’s notice and use machine guns and poison gas in the interest of property rights. The workers’ revolution succeeded in Russia, because the country was broken by war; but to bring us to a similar state of disorganization would take decades of suffering and waste—I venture the guess that it would be twenty times cheaper to buy the capitalists out, than to bring America to the point where a physical force revolution could prevail.
And yet, having said all that, fairness compels me to admit another side. I have been setting forth the ideal procedure; but this is not an ideal world, and many times we have to take what we can get, instead of what we want. Having told you my hopes, I will now tell you my fears.
The masses of our country are ignorant and unorganized. More than half of them do not vote at all; a large percentage value their votes at two dollars each, and the rest take their party as they take their God—from their grandfathers. They are interested in baseball and prize fighting, and jazz, and the doings of the “smart set”; they do not know how to think, and they never read anything but the “kept” newspapers and magazines, which tell them they are the greatest people in the world. Never in history has there been so elaborate a system for the hoodwinking of a hundred million people; and they lap up the propaganda, and go to the polls and vote their government into a branch-office of J. P. Morgan and Company.
But all this does not stop the process of industrial evolution; rather it speeds it up—giving the rich more money to produce more goods, and causing the poor to have less money to buy the goods. So the crisis comes on like a cyclone; and we shall find ourselves with our factories idle and millions of people starving, and no idea of the next step to take. There will be no time to teach the masses, no machinery for reaching them; but the desperate workers in our cities will hear the voice of the Communist soap-boxer, saying, “Take the factories, and produce goods for yourselves and your fellows.” The soap-boxer will ask: “Do you have to starve, because the majority has not voted you food?” He will ask: “Does a man have to remain a slave because the majority has not voted him free?” So it may happen that the hungry workers seize the factories and attempt to run them; and we shall have to make the best of it and help them to success.
In such an emergency, the social changes will be sudden and drastic; and that is the reason why I do not attempt to foretell what the new industrial forms will be. Just how the business will be managed depends in great part upon those who now have the power in their hands; they may choose either to be stubborn and brutal, or to display vision and a sense of justice, not to say of common prudence. You can see the difference this makes if you compare the great French revolution of a century and a halfago with the series of changes that have taken place in England during the same period. England has become a partly democratic country in fact, while remaining a monarchy in form; the reason being that the governing classes never pushed the people to the last extreme, but made concessions, just enough to keep themselves in power.
There is room for a variety of compromises between the workers and the capitalists, and also between the workers and the state. The capitalists may permit the setting up of shop committees, with the right of control over working conditions; they may consent to representation of the workers in boards which oversee each industry, with power to make adjustments and enforce decrees. Or both sides may prefer to call upon the government to do the adjusting. Or again, the workers may get control of the government, and laws may be passed providing for the taking over of control by the trade unions. A practical program has been worked out by the railway brotherhoods, the Plumb plan; providing for the purchase of the roads by the government, and their operation by a board representing the government, the brotherhoods, and the bondholders until the latter have been paid off. The day may come when the money-masters of this country will wish they had had the statesmanship to put that plan into operation while there was time.
I have argued here for government ownership of industry; but you must understand—that is not the same thing as operation of industry by politicians. The people who understand an industry are those who work in it; and the way to combine democracy with efficiency is to make each industry a self-governing unit, and confine the part of government to supervision, and the regulation of prices. Let us have an industrial constitution and an industrial parliament, and let every man become a citizen of industry, with a voice in the control, and equal rights with all other citizens. That is the goal we work towards, and it is a strictly American goal, in line with American traditions. The practical steps are, first, to organize the workers in each industry, and make them class conscious, awake to their own interests; and second, to use the power of the state to open the books of each industry and expose the profits, cutting down the share which goes to the idle owners, and increasing the share which goes to the useful workers.
My dear Judd:
The social revolution has already happened over one-sixth of the earth’s surface, and 140,000,000 people are now living in a working class world. Whatever may be our point of view, we cannot afford to misunderstand what has happened in Russia, for capitalism has made the world one, and our efforts to shut ourselves up in our own country are bound to fail.
The Russian revolution came as the result of a breakdown inthe midst of war. The great empire was rotten with graft, and after three years of fighting, had got to a state where it could no longer keep its railways going, or feed the people in its cities. With starvation actually upon them, the soldiers, sailors and workers formed unions, and in October, 1917, they overthrew the government of the Tsar, and formed a new government—and gave world capitalism the most painful shock of its career.
There have been slave revolts all through history, but always blind and futile, put down with hideous slaughter. But here in the Russian revolution appeared a new thing; the control was seized by a group of men who had been trained in Western ideas, and had a theory of revolutions, and of working-class mastery of society. These men knew what they wanted, and they tried their plan, and it worked—at least to the extent that they are still in power, in spite of two years of war waged upon them by the whole capitalist world, and six more years of financial blockade, plus the greatest campaign of falsehood in all history.
Who were these men? They call themselves Marxians, and apply the adjective “scientific” to themselves, because they think they have studied the capitalist system—the laws of its growth and decay, the forces which are destined to overthrow it, and the kind of society these new forces will establish. History, says Marx, is a series of class struggles, and the end is the victory of the working class, and the beginning of a society in which there are no classes, for the reason that nobody lives by exploiting anybody else. “Workers of all countries, unite,” runs the slogan. “You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a world to gain.”
The Marxian theory is, in brief, that the development of large-scale capitalism brings the workers into factories, where they toil for the benefit of absentee owners whom they never see; it subjects them to low wages, long hours and uncertainty of employment, and forces them to organize and fight for better conditions. In this fight they develop “class consciousness,” and in the end they are forced by capitalist breakdown to revolt, and take possession of the factories, and run them for the benefit of the workers and not of the masters.
They had a chance to try it in Russia, and they did so; the question of what they have accomplished is the most fiercely debated of all questions today. To help us get it straight, understand first, that they had to do what they did. In other countries—America, England, France, Germany, Austria—the middle class took charge of the revolutions; but in Russia there was practically no middle class, it was the workers or chaos. And second, they took over a busted machine, a country in collapse after three years of modern war, the most destructive of all things known this side of hell. And third, they had to face years of invasion from Europe, America and Japan, fighting on 26 fronts at once; and at the same time civil war, and a blockade, and financial boycott, and world propaganda, besides two successive years of famine,something which comes every so often in Russia—caused by drought, and not by revolutions.
In spite of all this, Soviet Russia confronts its world of enemies, eight years young, and proud and confident. It has restored its agriculture to the pre-war standard, and its industry to nearly 80 per cent of this standard, with the certainty of passing it in 1926 or 1927 if peace is maintained. It has turned one-sixth of the earth’s surface from a militarist empire into a federated group of commonwealths, governed under a new system, in which the voters are classified according to their occupations. It has trained a new generation of young workers, and taken some five hundred thousand of them into its governing party. It has taught millions of men and women to read and write, including everybody in its army, and nearly everybody in its industries. It would seem that all this entitles the new system to study, and to fair play in the field of thought.
But Russia is not democratic; so they tell you, Judd—and you are strong for democracy. Well, I also share that faith; but if, as time goes on, the workers of the world discover that democracy means inequality such as we have here in America, while the “dictatorship of the proletariat” means cultural freedom for the workers and a swiftly spreading plenty for all—well, Judd, we advocates of democracy will have a hard time in debates! But the truth is that we have in America political democracy alongside industrial autocracy; and these two are making a war upon each other, and we shall have to choose whether our country is to become a capitalist empire or an industrial republic.
Russia has never had democracy, nor even the ideal of it, except among a few dreamers. Less than seventy-five years ago its farm population were all serfs, bound to the soil. Many of its outlying peoples are semi-barbarous tribes. Its factories are few and at the time of the world war they were financed by foreign capital, and run by foreigners. There came this devastating war, and then a breakdown; and to expect those who took control to set up at once such a democratic system as we know in America, is to be absurd. Many who talk about it are dishonest, for they know that if their own parties get control, they will hold it by exactly the same means as the Bolsheviks—that is, by force.
What the Bolsheviks are doing is to educate the workers and peasants, and then take them into the governing party. The purpose of that party is to hold power until all the workers have come into it, and the “Union of Socialist Soviet Republics” includes the whole population of the former empire of the Tsar. In fact, they expect to include a lot more, because they think the workers of some other countries are going to join them; and the rulers and capitalists of those countries fear the same thing—which is the reason they hate the Bolsheviks, and carry on such deadly lying about them.
The British Tories, backed by American bankers, are now conducting a world-wide intrigue against Russia; and soon they maybe calling the American people to join in a new war “to make the world safe for democracy.” And what then? The chances are that the American people will join in, for they dearly love everything that is upper-class British, and enjoy nothing so much as crushing labor anywhere in the world. They elected Coolidge in a fervor of patriotism because they thought—mistakenly—that he had had something to do with smashing the Boston police strike. As I write, our government is donating a billion dollars—in the form of a pretended “debt settlement”—to the Italian government, because Judge Gary and our other masters so love these black-shirt Fascisti, and look forward to the time when they can administer the castor-oil treatment to American labor.
Yes, Judd; and we simply ladled out our money to the Tsarist adventurers, to every nation and tribe of reactionary that was fighting Soviet Russia on twenty-six fronts; we dressed up Polish troops in American uniforms to make war on Russia, and even burned American Red Cross supplies to keep them from being captured and used for the sick and starving people of the Soviet republic. We allowed Woodrow Wilson to send our boys to their death in his private war on a friendly people—under the command of British officers in Archangel, and helping the Japanese to take Siberia.
All that was done, Judd, and done with your money, and under the flag of your country; and it will be done again when the British Tories are ready—for the bull-dog never sleeps, and he never lets go his hold. He has set out to strangle the Soviets, as once he strangled Napoleon—and for the same reason, to keep his grip on the 300,000,000 serfs of India. If, when the next attack begins, America does not hasten to pour out its blood and treasure, it will be for one reason and one only; because in the meantime it has been possible to reach the plain people like yourself, and make them understand, and hold back the world bankers from their next World Crime.
My dear Judd:
Our country today is traveling headlong the road which has led every great empire in history to its doom. And this is no piece of rhetoric, but a summary of statistics to be found in our census reports. What ruined Rome was the spread of capitalist imperialism with its consequences—the undermining of the independent farmers, the growth of tenantry and absentee landlordism, and the turning of the country population into city slum-dwellers, uncertain of their employment and dependent upon public doles.
And every one of these things is happening right before our eyes. The price of farm-land is going up, steadily and inexorably; the profits of agriculture are going to middlemen, speculators, and moneylenders. Farm mortgages are increasing, farm tenantry isincreasing, decade after decade, with the certainty of a doom. The young men are leaving the farms and going to the city, to increase unemployment and bring down wages. The man who wants a city home pays a constantly increasing tribute to land speculators; while in the business districts land values double or treble in a decade, and no work can go on until the landlord’s greed has been appeased.
Millions of little fellows like yourself, Judd, support that system, because you own a lot or two, and are making a little profit; just as millions support the big trusts, because they own a share or two of stock. They do not see that under a just system they, as producers, would get many times what they get as petty speculators. Our first task is to show them, and bring them to our side. We wish to take the government out of the hands of the capitalist and landlord class; and then to apply the remedy for land speculation, a tax on land values, falling heavily on rented land, and still more heavily on land not used at all. This will set free the soil, and wipe out the gamblers; there will be plenty of farm-land open for use, and lots near the cities will be cheap. At the same time both cities and states will have money for public improvements, bringing high wages, and benefit to all. The farmer will have abundant markets, because the city population will no longer be on half rations. The land values tax is the only just one, because it taxes the wealth created by nature, and not by human labor; also, it is the only tax which can be fully collected—all others are taxes on honesty, and we need that commodity badly, and should not tax it out of existence.
There is a form of conflict between farmers and organized workers, because the farmer has to hire labor, and wants it cheap. This conflict is carefully made use of by the old party politicians, who wish to plunder the two groups separately. I point out to both farmer and workingman that their deeper interests are identical; they are the producers, and supplement each other. The farmers grow food for the city workers, while the city workers make building materials and machinery, clothing, newspapers—everything the farmers need. These two groups form the basis of the new society, and in their political union lies our hope for the future.
When I say “workers,” understand that I mean workers of both hand and brain: housewives and teachers, clerks and stenographers, architects, chemists and doctors, foremen, superintendents and executives—all who are actually necessary to the efficient production of wealth. The only ones not necessary are the owners, in their capacity as exploiters and parasites.
I know that many owners also work as managers, and if they are competent, I respect them, and invite their aid. I should be glad to see young Rockefeller managing our national oil trust—provided only that somebody would convert him to the ideal of public service. When the real crisis comes, some employers will realize that the making of industrial democracy is a task worthyof all the energy they are now putting into making millions of dollars—to be used later on in wrecking the lives of their descendants.
The useful workers of industry, and those on the land, must get together. They must have a political party of producers—the plan has been fully worked out in Minnesota, and the other states have only to follow. Also we must build up and strengthen the trade unions of both workers and farmers; for it is not at all certain that the masters of money will surrender to white paper ballots in whatever number; they must know that these ballots are backed by nationwide organizations, capable, determined, and wielding the threat of the mass-strike.
As part of the process of organizing and drawing together farmers and workers, we must encourage business co-operation between these groups. The farmers can feed the workers, and the workers can set up co-operative factories for their farmer customers. The railway brotherhoods have made a beginning at this, and so have the clothing workers. Equally important is labor-banking, to finance such undertakings. At present a great deal of labor-banking turns out to be shadow—there is no real control by labor, and all that happens is, some former labor officials become successful bankers. But that also will be remedied—the unions will have banks which they actually control, and whose funds they use for their own enterprises. What could be more pitiful than the present situation—the workers putting their billions of savings into capitalist banks, to be shipped on to Wall Street and there used for robbing labor, and financing anti-labor newspapers—and even breaking labor strikes!
At the present time the policies of American labor both political and industrial, are a generation out of date; our workingmen are like the Moros in the Philippines, fighting machine-guns with bows and arrows. The unions are still organized according to crafts; and they face gigantic combinations of capital, which have merged a hundred different crafts into one. So of course the unions are beaten or outwitted at every turn; and membership falls off, and the old officials whistle to keep their courage up.
I remember, Judd, that in some of our arguing you asserted that many labor leaders are corrupt; that is one reason why you are not a union man. But go and investigate trade union corruption, and you find just what we found about political corruption. Who puts up the money to buy labor leaders? The employers, and the employers’ associations! Wherever you touch this evil in our society, it is one and the same thing—private wealth seeking to increase itself at the expense of the poor and weak. In Chicago I once investigated a strike of teamsters, which had kept the city in an uproar for weeks, and cost several lives—to say nothing of discrediting the workers. And what was behind it? A great mail-order house trying to put another mail-order house out of business, hiring a strike and gangs of sluggers!
The remedy for that is not to desert the unions, but to put new blood into them, a new policy and a new ideal. The task of labor is no longer to get five cents more per hour for its members, or an extra hour off on Saturdays; it is to reconstruct society, and make a world of producers, managed by producers, for the benefit of producers. And for that every worker is needed, and the place where he is needed is in the union with his fellows. If there are officials without vision, go in and teach them; point out how the employers have formed trusts, and how the workers must match them with great industrial unions. If labor officials are dishonest and betrayers of their cause, kick them out, and find others who are class conscious and loyal. I know that is easy to say and hard to do; yet surely, Judd, labor cannot lie down and give up! Get it straight—this is a changing world, and you can’t stay as you are; there are forces at work that will beat the workers back into their age-old status of serfs, unless they have the courage and brain power to master these forces, and lift themselves to the new status of citizens of industry. Join, and do your part; and some day the law will provide that every man who works at a trade becomes automatically a member of his union, an equal citizen of the industry, with no power to exploit others, nor fear of being exploited by others.
My dear Judd:
We have come to the end of our task. I have tried to show you what is going on in our country, and the job you have to do.
We are moving towards a new American revolution. That does not mean riot and tumult, as our enemies try to represent; but neither does it mean slavish submission to every repression of government. There is the best American precedent for resistance to tyranny, and those good ladies who call themselves “Daughters of the American Revolution” would be shocked speechless if I were to quote to them the authentic words of Sam Adams and Patrick Henry and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson on the right of the people to overthrow unjust governments. Said Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address: “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.” There can be no question that those words come precisely under the specifications of the California “criminal syndicalism” law, and a man who said them today would be sent up for fourteen years, to cough out his lungs in the jute-mill of San Quentin prison.
We have to get rid of the capitalist system. It is close to breaking down, and will soon be unable to run the factories it has built, or to bring food to the people in its giant cities. We have got to stop producing goods for profit, and learn to produce themfor the use of those who work. I have pointed out the way to make that change under our Constitution. I say: if there is violence, let the capitalists start it—and then you, Judd, and the rest of the workers, can finish it!
Abraham Lincoln hated the slave power, just as I hate the capitalist power; but he moved carefully, keeping the mass of the people with him, and pushed the slave power against the wall, until presently it revolted and began the fighting; then Lincoln called for seventy thousand men to put down the rebellion, and presently he called for a million, and before he got through he had freed the slaves, and put an end to that evil forever. And maybe that is going to happen again; maybe when we get seriously to work, the capitalists are going to organize their armed bands of rowdies, as they did in Italy, and as they are now doing in France and Germany and England, and set out to thwart the people’s will as expressed at the polls. If that happens, Judd, let us have the traditions of America, and the moral forces of America, on our side.
I am one who believes in those traditions; coming, as I do, of a line of naval ancestors. My great-grandfather once commanded the frigate “Constitution,” and I am standing by the old ship—while our money-masters and their hired political servants are trying to torpedo it. When I try to read the Constitution of my country in a public place, and a drunken chief of police throws me into jail, and drunken newspaper publishers shout with approval—well, Judd, I bide my time. I once spent two years reading the history of the period prior to the Civil War, and I know what the moral forces of America are. I know how long they wait, and how slow they seem to be in getting into motion; nevertheless, they are there, and I make my appeal to them, and I expect to hear it answered. I am taking care of my health, with the idea of living to sing once more the Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
I have written these letters as an act of service to my country. I personally am not suffering, as you know; I have won my fight, to the extent that I am an independent man, and no one can muzzle me. But how can I be happy in this so-called civilization, where I see on every hand about me war and the preparation for war, poverty and the despair which poverty brings, crime and prostitution, suicide and insanity—such a mass of misery that I cannot face the thought of it, and all those beauties of nature and art which in my youth set me a-thrill from top to toe, now mean hardly anything to me, because of the wrongs I see about me—and all so needless, Judd, so utterly, utterly needless!
And something just as bad as the misery of the poor, the decay in the souls of the rich! To see a whole society chasing false ideals, vanity and luxury and waste; admiring and imitating wretched parasites, who have millions of dollars and not one useful thing to do! I know a few of these people, Judd, their livestouch mine here and there, and the truth is they are just as unhappy as the poor, and just as much to be wept over, with their jazz and their bootleggers and their petting parties and their pitiful empty heads. A brief little hour of excitement and display—and then so much suffering, and bewilderment, despair about life, and cynicism about everything sound and true. I think of the millionaire youth I know, drinking himself to death; and the gay young society matron with a venereal disease in her blood and terror in her heart—I feel like calling upon the useful workers of America to organize and save the rich from the misery of being out of work!
What we want, Judd, is a world with neither rich nor poor, but with people who live by producing, and not by taking what others have produced. We want to make that sort of world, and we call to our aid all men and women who are willing to work for it. We want to study this problem, and fill our minds with real information, and stop reading the poison press of our enemies. Indeed, Judd, it is not too much to say that we want to make over our moral and mental life, so that we cease to admire the ideals of our exploiters—waste and the display of waste, plundering and the power to plunder. We want to teach ourselves and our children to admire useful labor, and social vision, and loyalty to the cause of those who produce. We who serve that cause call one another “comrade,” or “brother,” or “fellow-worker”; and we invite you to join our ranks.
PASADENACALIFORNIA
March 15, 1926.
Dear Friend:
I do not think that since the world began there has ever been a people so lied to as the American people to-day. There are 110,000,000 of us, and at least 105,000,000 are completely befuddled by a campaign of deception, backed by the whole power of American big business, the newspapers, the magazines, the movies, the radio, the vast machinery of government, and the two major political parties. I am supposed to be working on a novel, “Oil,” to the writing of which I had hoped to give the next year; but I couldn’t stand it, so I took a couple of months off, to pay a debt which an honest American owes to his ancestors—to help break the power of the organized knaves who are looting our country in broad daylight.
I have written a little book, “Letters to Judd.” It is running serially in the “American Appeal,” where some of you may be reading it. Judd is an old carpenter who has worked for us off and on, a typical, old-fashioned American; I have taken him as the type of person I want to reach, and have written him a series of nineteen letters, telling those elementary facts which our ruling classes are trying so desperately to keep hidden from us all. This is the first time I have covered our political and social problems fully, since “The Industrial Republic,” which was published 19 years ago, and has been out of print more than half that time. My mail is full of letters asking for something of the sort, so here you have it.
The book tells why there is poverty in the richest country in the world. It proves that in America for the past thirty-five years the rich have been growing richer and the poor poorer, and it shows exactly what the rich have done to bring this condition about, and exactly what the poor will have to do to change it. It explains unemployment and hard times, the money system, inflation, stock watering and manipulation, the tariff and the trusts. It studies the world situation, explaining the wars we have had, and showing how the present system is preparing new ones. It discusses Russia and the revolution—in short, everything the average man or woman needs to know about affairs at home and abroad, and all in plain, everyday language. It is a 100% American book, intended for 100% American readers, and it is written and published as an act of love for our country.
A few times past we have had great crises, and it has been found possible to reach the people by a pamphlet. Paine’s “The Crisis,” and Helper’s “The Impending Crisis,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Progress and Poverty,” “Looking Backward”—these books have helped to make our history. I am making a try at this kind of thing; I mean, I have put aside everything else, and done my best to make a good job, to get the facts, and make them fool-proof, as well as knave-proof, and to present them in such a way that anyone can understand them. Thirty years’ study of our problems has gone into the book, also thirty years oflearning how to write. Having faith in our people, I have borrowed money, and gone ahead to make the plates and print twelve thousand copies; now I am appealing to you to do the rest of the job—to see that the “Letters to Judd” reach the millions of “Judds” who need them.
The book will be in two editions: first two thousand cloth bound, price $1, to enable my friends to pay the cost of the undertaking; and second, ten thousand copies, paper bound, a neatly printed wire-stitched pamphlet, to be sold at meetings, and passed about among workingmen and women; this is the form for which I hope to get a million or two circulation, and I have put the price so low that nobody will suspect me of making money—15 cents a copy, or ten copies for a dollar. This 15 cent price for a single paper copy is a price for meetings and book-stores—I cannot mail the book for that, because, including postage, wrapping, and overhead, it costs about 15 cents to handle an order in my office. What I ask you to do is to order at least 10 paper copies to give to your friends, and in addition a cloth copy for your library. I will take a gamble and say: place a $2 order, for one cloth and 10 paper copies, and when you have read the book, if you don’t find it worth distributing, you may send back the whole lot, and I’ll send back your money. I ask for a prompt response, as I want to advertise the book, and haven’t the money. Both editions will be ready for shipment by the time your order gets back to me.
Our reprint of “The Moneychangers” has been ready for a couple of months, and if you haven’t seen it, here is a reminder. This novel, first published in 1908, tells the story of the panic of 1907, how and why it was brought about by the elder J. P. Morgan. I do not recommend it as a great work of literature; reading it over, I found many crudities, some of which I remedied. But I will guarantee it a lively story, full of facts about Wall Street which the American people do not yet understand.
Also, my wife has published a new volume by Mrs. Kate Crane-Gartz, author of “The Parlor Provocateur.” The new volume is called “Letters of Protest,” the price is $1 cloth and fifty cents paper. The book is full of that burning indignation at social injustice, combined with motherly tenderness, which has made Mrs. Gartz the bewilderment of the prosecuting officials of Los Angeles county. They want so much to send her to jail, but they don’t quite dare! I was talking the other day with a prominent physician of Los Angeles, and he mentioned his intimate friend, the president of the Better America Federation, the propaganda society of big business here in California. “He doesn’t love you, Upton,” said the physician, “but Kate Gartz is the real one who gets his nanny.”
The money which has come in from our “Loan Plan” has gone into the printing and binding of “Bill Porter” and “The Moneychangers,” a part payment on a new edition of “The Cry for Justice,” a new binding of “The Jungle,” and finally, this circular. More money is needed for a new printing and binding of “The Profits of Religion,” and for advertising the “Letters to Judd.” Also my novel, “Sylvia,” is out of print, and I’d reprint it if I could afford the luxury. So I tell you again about this “Sinclair Loan Plan.” Those who believe in my work and want to promote it lend me what they can afford, and the money serves as working capital, to pay for the new plates and stock of bookswhich a publishing business has to keep on hand. The lenders receive a certificate of indebtedness, and have the right to buy each year a quantity of my books at half the retail price. Thus, if you lend ten dollars, you can get $5 worth of books for $2.50. These books must be ordered in one shipment, so as to save handling costs; under the Loan Plan you may place one such half-price order every year. The saving takes the place of interest on your money; it amounts to 25% interest—a pretty good rate, but not so high as millions of poor farmers are having to pay to national banks all over the country—see my “Letters to Judd”!
I want to cover all the details of this Loan Plan, so as to avoid having to write long explanations. If you have already come in under the plan, and have your certificate of indebtedness, you may order books once in the year 1926, to the amount of one-half of your loan. Thus, if you have loaned $10, you may order $5 worth of books for $2.50; you can get, for example, one cloth and ten paper copies of “Letters to Judd,” one cloth “Mammonart,” one paper “Bill Porter,” and one paper copy of Mrs. Gartz’s book, all for $2.50. I will throw in a copy of my wife’s “Sonnets,”—and if you know any place in the world where you can get as much value in books for the money, I do not!
If you are not at present at subscriber to the Loan Plan, you are invited to join. Send $12.50, and you will receive a certificate for a $10 loan, with the privilege of getting your money back at any time on thirty days’ notice. Also you will receive $5 worth of books, and will have the privilege each year of ordering another $5 worth of books for $2.50. Most of my readers say they don’t want the certificates, but I send them just the same; paste them in your autograph album, and some day they may be worth the price in that form, and without hurting the publishing business!
Sincerely,
Upton Sinclair.
P. S. We have received from our German publishers, the Malik Verlag of Berlin, five stately volumes, the “Collected Novels of Upton Sinclair.” From Gossizdat, the State Publishing House of Moscow, we have a list of various editions of our books which have been issued in Soviet Russia; counting, not new printings, but separate publications under different titles, there is a total of sixty-nine. Michael Gold, recently returned from Russia, writes: “The sort of people who in America know Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan, in Russia know Upton Sinclair.” We are advised by the Japanese translator of “The Jungle” that the book has just been issued, but the government compelled the publisher to recall all copies, and cut out the last chapters, dealing with Socialism. The Japanese translation of “Mammonart” is about to appear. From Warsaw comes an offer from a large publishing house to issue twenty of our books in a cheap library, at .95 zloty per volume, about thirteen cents American. A Czechish publisher applies for all books not hitherto issued. We have a review of “Mammonart” which was broadcasted from the radio station of the Labour Party of Australia; also a letter from a Ukrainian writer, telling how our plays are being acted there, and our novels made into movies. We have established book-store agencies in London, India and South Africa, and we learn that readers are circulating our books in Java, Honduras, and Iceland. We await returns from the U. S. A.