CHAPTER XIIF NOT SOCIALISM—WHAT?
I have never seen you, but I know you. Your knuckles are bloody from continued knocking at the door of happiness. The harder you knock, the bloodier your knuckles become. But the door does not open. It stands like an iron gate between you and the desires of your soul.
What is the matter with this world? Was it made wrong? Is it a barren spot to which too many have been sent? After Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Morgan had been sent, should you have been kept? Is this their world and are you an intruder here?
You are not an intruder here. You know that. You have as good a right here as anyone else. But perhaps, nevertheless, this world was made wrong? If you had the power to make worlds, could you make a better one? Could you make fairer skies? Could you make greener fields? Could you improve the sun? Could you make better people?
Perhaps you could do none of these things? If not, what is the matter with this world? Look at it again. Here it is—spinning beneath your feet as it has spun since the dawn of time, and, never before, since the dawn of time, has it been such a world as it is now. Never before, since the dawn of time, was it so well suited to your purposes as it is now.
Your ancestors enjoyed no material thing that they had not wearily created with their hands. You need createnothing with your hands. You need but to touch with the tips of your fingers the iron hands that can make what man could never make so well. Whatever machinery can make, you can have. And, to drive this machinery, you have the forces of the sun, as they come to you in the form of steam and electricity.
Make no mistake—good, bad or indifferent as this world may be, it is at least moving. None of your ancestors ever lived in such a world. And none of your descendants will ever live in such a world as we live in to-day.
Edison once pictured to me the world that he already sees dawning. It was a wonderful world, because it was filled with wonderful machinery. Cloth would go into one end of a machine and come out at the other end finished suits of clothes, boxed and ready for the market. Every machine, instead of making a part of a thing, would make the complete thing and put it together. The world would be smothered with wealth.
But there was one disquieting feature about his world. There was not much room in it for men. Each machine, attended by but a single man, would do the work of hundreds of men. Moreover, that one man need not be skilled. He need be but the merest automaton. Only the inventor of the machine need have brains.
Maybe Edison was dreaming. The easy way is to say he was dreaming. I, who know him, have my doubts. Edison always dreams before he does, but everything that he dreams seems pitifully small beside what he does. He dreamed of the electric light before he made it, but his dream was paltry beside the light he made. And, the dynamo of his dream was a wheelbarrow beside the dynamo that to-day sings its shrill song around the world.
This much, however, is not a dream. Some of theautomatic machinery that Edison spoke of is already here. One man behind a machine is doing the work of hundreds of men. Men are becoming a drug upon the labor market. More than five millions are often out of work. As invention proceeds, the percentage of the population who cannot find work must increase.
What is going to become of these men? Do you expect them to starve quietly? Do you believe they will make no outcry? Do you believe they will raise no hand against a world that raises both hands against them? Moreover, what kind of a world is it in which the greater the machinery, the greater the curse to the men who run machinery? We do not yet live in such a world, it is true, but if Edison be not in error, we shall soon live in it? What shall we do when machinery does everything?
This may seem like a far cry, but it isn’t. The germ of the Socialist philosophy is contained in this one word “machinery.” Let us put the spot-light upon that word and show everything that is in it.
Suppose there were one machine in this country that was capable of producing every material thing that human beings need or desire. Suppose the machine were so wonderfully automatic that it could be perfectly operated by pushing a button, once a day, in a Wall Street office.
Beside this push-button, suppose there were another button that operated all of the railroads in the country; passenger trains automatically starting and stopping at the appointed places; freight trains automatically taking on and discharging their cargoes. Not a human being at work anywhere.
Imagine also one man owning this great machine and the railroads.
The rest of the race, if it were to remain law-abiding,would be compelled to change the law or starve to death, would it not? What else could the race do? Nobody would have any work. Nobody would therefore have anything with which to buy. The single giant machine might be capable of producing, with the push-button help of its owner, more necessities and luxuries than the entire race could consume. The automatic railway system might be capable of delivering to every door everything that everybody might want. The single owner might have more billions of dollars than Mr. Rockefeller has cents. But nobody else would have anything.
What I am trying to show is that the private ownership of machinery is a gigantic wrong. If it were not a wrong, the world would be helped by the private ownership of a single machine fitted to produce every material thing that the race needs. If the people owned such a machine, there would certainly be no more poverty. There would be no more poverty because the people would get what the machine produced.
If this be plain, let us further consider the present situation.
We live in a wonderful world.
It is big enough and rich enough to enable everybody in it to live in comfort.
But hundreds of millions throughout the world do not live in comfort because the progress of the world has brought relatively little to them.
They have no share of stock in the earth—somebody who has a little piece of paper in his hand claims the ownership of the spot of earth upon which they wish to lay their heads and charges them rent for using it.
Another little group own all of the machinery, handing out jobs here and there to the men who offer to work for the least.
Nor is this a chance situation. A small class has always robbed the great class. It has been and is the rule of the world. The methods of robbery have been changed. Method after method has been abandoned as the people awakened to the means by which they were being robbed. But robbery has never been abandoned. The small, greedy, cunning class that will not be content with what it can earn is here to-day, playing the old game with a new method.
Socialists declare the new method is to own the industrial machinery with which all other men must work. You may not agree with this. Probably you do not. If you do not, will you kindly answer some questions?
Why do a few men, who will work with no machinery, want to own all of the machinery in the country?
Would these men care to own any machinery if there were not an opportunity in such ownership to get money?
Where can the money they get come from except from the wealth that is produced by the men who work with their machinery?
So long as a few men own all of the machinery, must not all other men be at their mercy?
How can anyone get a job so long as the men who own the machinery say he can have no job?
How can anyone demand a wage that represents the full value of his product so long as the capitalist refuses to pay any wages that do not assure a profit to him?
Mr. Roosevelt and some others would have you believe that all of these wrongs can be “regulated” into rights. They would have you believe that only “strong” commissions are necessary to make all of these wrongs right. But Mr. Roosevelt and some others do not know what they are talking about. This is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact. Men have talked as they talk sincerobbery began. History records no instance of one of them that made good. During all of the years that Mr. Roosevelt was in the White House, he never appointed a commission that was “strong” enough to make good.
We have it upon the authority of no less a man than Dr. Wiley that Mr. Roosevelt’s commission to prevent the poisoning of food was not strong enough to make good. The food-poisoning went on.
I mention Mr. Roosevelt’s food commission because it is a shining example of what his “strong” commission theory of government cannot do. Mr. Roosevelt, unquestionably, is and was opposed to the poisoning of food. He appointed a commission to stop one kind of poisoning. But, for reasons that you, as well as anyone else, can surmise, the commission decided in favor of the food-poisoners instead of in favor of the public. Which brings us to this question: If Mr. Roosevelt could not appoint a commission “strong” enough even to prevent the poisoning of food, what reason have you to believe that he or anyone else could appoint a commission strong enough to prevent capitalists from robbing workingmen?
You who oppose Socialism do so, no doubt, largely because you believe the people could not advantageously own and manage their own industrial machinery. We who advocate Socialism reply that it is much easier to manage what you own than it is to manage what someone else owns. The facts of history show that it is practically impossible to manage what someone else owns. That is what we are trying to do to-day—and we are failing at it. We are trying to manage the trusts. Fight as we will, the trusts are managing us. They fix almost every fact in our lives. They begin fixing the facts of our lives even before we are born. They determine even whether all of us shall be born. Itis a well-known fact that when times are bad, the birth-rate decreases. Having the power to make bad times, the trusts also have the power to diminish the number of births. The trust panic of 1907 unquestionably prevented thousands of children from being born. No one can ever know how many, but we do know that both marriages and births decreased.
In view of such facts as these, is it not idle to talk about “regulating” the property of others? Is it not stupid to believe that in such regulation lies our greatest hope of material well-being? You must admit that, thus far, the process of regulation has gone on painfully slowly. If poverty, the fear of poverty and enforced idleness are any indications of the progress of the country, it is difficult to see that we have made any progress. Never before were so many millions of men out of work in this country as there were during the panic of 1907. Never before were so many millions of human beings so uncertain of their future. A few men hold us all in the hollows of their hands. Our destinies lie, not in ourselves, but in them.
Is it not so? Don’t be blinded by “commissions,” political pow-wow and nonsense—is it not so? If it is so, how much progress have we made toward getting rid of poverty by trying to regulate property that we do not own? We have been playing the game of “regulation” for more than a generation. It has done nothing for you. How many more generations do you expect to live? Are you willing to go to your grave with this pestilential question of poverty still weighing upon your heart? Are you willing to go out of the world feeling that you never really lived in it—that it was only a place where you toiled and sweat and suffered while others lived?
We Socialists put it to you as a common-sense affirmation that your time can come now if you and all others like you will join in a political effort to make it come.
Any political partisan will make you the same promise, but you know, from sad experience, that their promises are worthless. We ask you to consider whether our promises are worthless.
We promise you, for instance, that if you will give us power you need never again want for work. If the people, through the government, owned the trusts and other great industries, why should anybody ever again want for work? Thenceforward, the great plants would always be open. No factory door would ever be closed so long as there was a demand for the product of the factory. If the demand for goods were greater than the capacity of the factories, the number of factories would be increased. Nothing is simpler than to increase the number of factories. Only men and materials are required. We have an abundance of each.
But we promise you more. We promise you that, if you will give us power, we will give you not only the continuous opportunity to work, but we will give you continuous freedom from robbery. Again, nothing is simpler than to work without robbery. All that is necessary is to enable the worker to go to work without walking into anyone’s clutches. No one can now go to work without walking into many men’s clutches. When a man goes to work for the Steel Trust, he walks into the clutches of everybody who owns the stocks or the bonds of the trust. When a man goes to work for a railway company, he walks into the clutches of every person who owns the stocks or the bonds of the railway company. In other words, the stock and bondholders of these institutions, by virtue of their control of the machinery involved,have it in their power to say whether the worker shall work or not work. They say he shall not work unless they can make a profit upon his labor. The worker cannot haggle too long because he must labor or starve. Therefore, he comes to terms. He walks into the clutches of those who want to rob him of part of what he produces. He consents to work for a wage that represents only a part of what he has produced.
That is robbery. You may call it business, but it is robbery. If robbery is anything, it is the taking of the property of another against his will. The worker knows his wage is not all he earns. He resents the fact that he must toil long and hard for a poor living, while his employer lives in luxury without doing any useful labor. But the worker has no alternative. He must consent. He does consent.
Under Socialism, there would be no such robbery, because goods would not be produced for profit. Goods would be produced only because the people wanted them. Whatever the people wanted would be produced, not in niggardly volume, but in abundance.
Decent homes, for instance, would be produced. Millions of people in the great cities now live in houses that are death-traps. They are not houses, in the sense that country dwellers understand the word, but dingy rooms, piled one upon another in great blocks. Light seldom enters some of them. Fresh air can hardly get into any of them. The germs of tuberculosis abound. The germs of other diseases swirl through the dust of the streets. The death-rate is abnormally high—particularly the death-rate of children. Yet, nothing would be simpler, if the profit-seeking capitalists were shorn of their power, than to give every human being in this country a decent home.
The best material out of which to make a house is cement or brick. Either is better than wood because wood both rots and burns. There is practically no limit to the number of cement and brick houses that could be built in this country. Every State contains enough clay and other materials to build enough houses to supply the whole country. If the five millions of men who were out of work for many years following the panic of 1907 could have been employed at house-building, they themselves would not only have been prosperous, but the American people would have been housed as they had never been housed before. If the two millions of men who are always denied employment, even in so-called “good” times, were continuously engaged in house-building, good houses would be so numerous that we should not know what to do with them.
The same facts apply to all other necessities of life. The nation needs bread. Some are starving for it all the while. Yet what is simpler than the furnishing of bread? We know how to grow wheat. With the scientific knowledge that the government could devote to wheat growing, combined with the improved machinery that a rich government could bring to bear upon the problem, the wheat-production of the country could easily be multiplied by four. Little Holland and little Belgium, with no better soil than our own, raise almost four times as much wheat to the acre as we do. And, with wheat once grown, nothing is more simple than to make it into flour. Probably we already have enough milling machinery to make all the flour we need. If not, we could easily build four times as many mills. We should never be unable to build more mills until we had no unemployed men to set to work. And, if we had no unemployed men to set to work, we should have, for the firsttime in the history of the world, a completely happy nation.
Do you doubt any of these statements? How can you doubt them? We have the men. We have the materials. The only trouble is that they are kept apart. They are kept apart because a few men control things and will not allow men and material to come together unless that means a profit for the few men. We Socialists purpose to put them together. If they were put together, how much longer do you believe the people would have to shiver in winter for lack of woolen clothing? There is no secret about raising sheep. We have vast areas upon which we could raise more than we shall ever need. Even a concern like the Woolen Trust—the head of which was indicted for conspiring to “plant” dynamite at Lawrence to besmirch the strikers—even such a concern enables some of us to wear wool in the winter time. How many more do you believe would wear wool if the United States government were to take the place of this concern as a manufacturer of woolen goods? Do you believe anybody would be compelled to suffer from cold for lack of woolen clothing? How can you so believe? The government, if necessary, could build four woolen mills for every one that exists. The government could not fail to supply the people’s needs. And, with all goods sold at cost, prices would be so low that the people could buy.
These, and many other possibilities, are entirely within your reach. You can realize them now. Will you kindly tell when you expect to realize them by voting for the candidates of any other party except the Socialist party? No other party except the Socialist party proposes to put men and materials together. Every other party except the Socialist party proposes that a smallclass of men shall continue to own all of the great industrial machinery, while the rest shall continue to be robbed as the price of its use. Every other party except the Socialist party proposes that a small body of men shall continue to graft off the rest by wringing profits from them. No party except the Socialist party puts the people above profits.
Even Mr. Roosevelt and his party do not. Mr. Roosevelt stands as firmly for the principle of profits as does Mr. Morgan. Mr. Roosevelt differs from the most besotted reactionary only in his hallucination that he could appoint “strong” commissions that would successfully regulate other people’s property. Mr. Roosevelt does not seem to recognize that, so long as profits are in the capitalist system, the workers must not only be robbed of part of what they produce, but that they must be periodically denied even the right to work at any wage. Nor does he seem to realize that, if he were to reduce the profits to the point where there was not much robbery, the capitalists would no longer have any incentive for remaining in business.
With profits eliminated, or cut to the vanishing point, the capitalist system cannot stand.
With profits not eliminated or cut near the vanishing point, the people cannot stand.
Therefore, Mr. Roosevelt is trying to bring about the impossible. He is trying to prevent the people from being robbed without destroying the power of the capitalist to live by robbery. Mr. Roosevelt probably would like to decrease, somewhat, the extent to which capitalists practice robbery. But he is not willing to take away from them the power to rob.
If Mr. Roosevelt were chasing burglars instead of the Presidency, we should first laugh at him and then put anew man on the force in his place. Imagine a policeman trying to prevent burglary by “regulating” the burglars, saying to them in a hissing voice: “Now, gentlemen, this burglary must stop. We really can have no more of it. None of you must carry a ‘jimmy’ more than four feet long. Any burglar caught with more than twenty skeleton keys will be sent to prison.”
Yet that is practically what Mr. Roosevelt says to the capitalists. The “jimmy” of the capitalist is his ownership of the tools with which his employees work, but Mr. Roosevelt makes no move to take this instrument from the men who are despoiling the workers. All that Mr. Roosevelt purposes to do is to place a limit upon the amount that the capitalist can legally abstract. And he depends upon “strong” commissions to keep the ferocious capitalist in order.
We Socialists have no faith in such measures. We frankly predict their failure, precisely as twenty years ago we predicted the failure of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. We were then known to so few of our own people that not many persons had the pleasure of calling us fools. Now, nobody wants to call us fools for that. We are now fools because we do not believe in Wilson or in Roosevelt.
We are not content to await the verdict of time, but we await it with confidence. We dislike to waste twenty-five more years in chasing up this Roosevelt blind alley, but if you should determine to make the trip—which we hope you will not—we shall still be on the main track when you come back.
If somebody else had the key to your house and would not let you in unless you paid him his price, you would not value highly the services of a policeman who should tell you that the way to deal with the gentleman was to“regulate” him. If the gentlemen had locked you out upon an average of four times a week, you would feel even less kindly disposed toward such a policeman.
We Socialists feel that the capitalist class has keys that belong to the American people, and that it has used and is using those keys to prevent the people from using their own, except upon the payment of tribute.
We feel that the capitalist class holds the keys to our workshops and will not let us enter except upon such tribute terms as they can wring from us.
We feel that the capitalist class has the keys to our coal fields and will not let us be warm in winter except upon the payment of money that should go, perhaps, for food or clothing.
We feel that the capitalist class has the keys of our national pantry and compels those to go hungry whom it has denied the right to work.
In short, we feel that the capitalists have the keys of our happiness—so far as happiness depends upon material things—and are compelling us to subsist upon uncertainty and fear, when security and contentment lie just at our elbows, awaiting the turn of the keys.
We Socialists are ready to stand behind any party that will pledge itself to return these keys to the people, reserving only the right to be convinced that the pledge is made in good faith and will be kept.
If Mr. Roosevelt will promise to use his best efforts to take from the capitalists the private ownership of industry, we Socialists shall believe he means business and shall begin to respect him.
If Mr. Wilson will make a similar promise, we shall feel the same toward him.
But if Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilson should make such a promise, they would have absolutely no capitalistsupport. Mr. Perkins would not be with Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Ryan would not be with Mr. Wilson. So far as great capitalists are concerned, Armageddon and Sea Girt would look a good deal like a baseball park two weeks after the close of the season.
All the world over, the Socialist party is the only political organization that frankly stands up to the guns and demands the keys. It is the only party that minces no words and looks for no favors from the rich. The Socialist party is avowedly and earnestly committed to the task of compelling the capitalist class to surrender the power with which it robs. And, anyone who believes that power does not lie in the private ownership of industrial machinery need only try to become rich without owning any such machinery or gambling in its products. We Socialists are willing to stake our lives on the statement that if you will transfer the ownership of industry from the capitalist class to the people, those who now constitute the capitalist class will never get another dollar that they do not work for or steal in common burglar or pickpocket fashion. If we are in error about the significance of the private ownership of industry, the transfer of such ownership to the people would not hurt the capitalist class. But the capitalist class evidently does not believe the Socialists are wrong in holding this belief, because the capitalists are fighting us tooth and nail.
Nothing is the matter with this world. Whatever is the matter is with you. You can begin to get results now if you will begin to vote right now. The election of Victor L. Berger to Congress in 1910 threw more of the fear of God into the capitalist class of this country than any other event that has happened in a generation. If fifty Socialists were in Congress, the old parties would outdo each other in offering concessions to the people.
As an illustration of what fifty Socialist Congressmen could do I will relate an incident that took place in Washington in the winter of 1912.
Berger, by playing shrewd politics, had brought about a congressional investigation of the Lawrence woolen mill strike. He had brought to Washington a carload of little tots from the mills—boys and girls—and they had spent the day telling a committee of the House of Representatives of their wrongs. The stories were heartbreaking. Here was a stunted little boy who declared he worked in a temperature of 140 degrees for $5 a week. A young girl—the daughter of a mill-worker—told of an insult offered to her by a soldier and of her own arrest when she struck him. A skilled weaver described the difficulty of keeping life in his four children on a diet of bread and molasses. Every story was different in detail, but all were alike in the depths of poverty that they revealed. The testimony bore heavily upon those who listened, and when the session was suspended for the day the members of Congress hastened quickly from the room.
As Berger walked rapidly toward the door an old man stopped him. Apparently he was a business man, 55 or 60 years old. Certainly he was not a workingman. But he had heard the day’s testimony and he could not remain silent.
“Mr. Berger,” he said, “I have always been against you and all Socialists. I was sorry when I heard you had been elected to Congress. But if you brought about this investigation, as I am informed you did, I want to say to you that if you were never to do another thing during your term, your election would have been more than justified. I hope your people will keep you in Congress as long as you live.”
How many more men would change their minds if there were fifty Socialists in Congress? How many capitalists would change their minds as to how far they could safely go in robbing the people?
Three millions of votes for the Socialist ticket would by no means elect a Socialist president. But they would squeeze out more justice from the capitalist parties than the people have had since this government began.
Moreover, if you want the world during your own lifetime you will have to take it during your own lifetime. It will not do you much good to let your grandchildren take it during their lifetime.