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the Socialistic organizations; but always as an organizer of workingmen, always as a labor speaker at labor meetings.
Now, if there is anything for which I am well known it is my advocacy of the eight-hour system of labor. But because I have in this connection that I did not believe it would be possible to bring about a reform of this present wage system, because of the fact that the power of the employing class is so great that they can refuse to make any concessions, you say that I had no interest in the eight-hour movement.
Is it not a fact that the present social system places all power in the hands of the capitalistic class? They can and do refuse to make any concessions, and where they grant anything they retract it when they choose to do so. They can do it. The wage system gives them the power. The tyranny and the despotism of the wage system of labor consists in the fact that the laborer is compelled under penalty of hunger and death by starvation to obey and accept terms laid down to him by his employer. Hence I have pointed out that it might be difficult, for this reason, to establish an eight-hour rule.
What have I said in this connection? I have said to the employers, to the manufacturers, an to the corporations—the monopolists of America: "Gentlemen, the eight-hour system of labor is the olive branch of peace held out to you. Take it. Concede this moderate demand of the working people. Give tem better opportunities. Let them possess the leisure which eight hours will bring. Let it operate on the wants and the daily habits of the people." I have talked this way to the rich of this country in every place I have gone, and I have told them –not in the language of a threat, not in the language of intimidation—I have said: "If you do not concede this demand, if on the other hand you increase the hours of labor and employ more and more machinery, you thereby increase the number of enforced idle; you thereby swell the army of the compulsory idle and unemployed; you create new elements of discontent; you increase the army of idleness and misery." I said to them: "This is a dangerous condition of things to have in a country. It is liable to lead to violence. It will drive the workers into revolution. The eight-hour demand is a measure which is in the
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