|
can, because I saw fit to be a member of a labor organization; that I had been deprived repeatedly of my bread for that reason by my employer. I then called attention to the United States census for the year 1880, and I shoed that the returns made there—statistically gotten up by a Republican administration—these returns sowed that 85 cents from every dollar produced went to the profit-taking classes, and that 15 cents was the average sum received by the producing classes for having produced the whole dollar. I said that this was wrong, and that in the fact of such a condition of things we could expect nothing but poverty, destitution, want, and misery. I showed how, under this system, the workingmen of the United States were really doing ten hours' work to work only eight hours; that the employers say to the men: 'You want to work only eight hours. Do you mean to say that we must give you ten hours' pay for eight hours' work?' I said: "Gentlemen, fellow-workmen, let us answer these men and say, and prove to them by the official statistics of the Untied States census, that we are receiving now but two hours pay for ten hours' work; that that is what the wages of the country on the average represent.' I spoke of corporations crowding the workingmen to the wall, and summed it up in some such words as these: 'Now, for years past the Associated Press, manipulated by Jay Gould and other traitors to the Republic, and their infamous minions, have been sowing the seeds of revolution.' These seeds, I thought, could be summarized about as follows:
"To deprive labor of the ballot.
"To substitute a Monarchy for the Republic.
"To rob labor and then make poverty a crime.
"To deprive small farmers of their land, and then convert them into serfs to serve a huge landlordism.
"To teach labor that bread and water are all that it needs.
"To throw bombs into crowds of workingmen who were opposed to laboring for starvation wages.
"To take the ballot by force of arms from the majority when it is used against the interests of corporations and capital.
"To put strychnine upon the bread of the poor.
|
