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exhibit some feeling? I have sat here for two months, and these men have poured their vituperations out upon my head and I have not been permitted to utter a single word in my own defense. For two months they have poured their poison upon me and my colleagues. For two months they have sat there and spit like adders the vile poison of their tongues, and if men could have been placed in a mental inquisition and tortured to death, these men would have succeeded here now—vilified, misrepresented, held in loathsome contempt without a change to speak or contradict a word. Therefore, if I show emotion, it is because of this, and if my comrades and colleagues with me here have spoke in such strains as these, it is because of this. Pardon us. Look at it from the right standpoint.
What is this labor question? It is not a question of emotion; the labor question is not a question of sentiment; it is not a religious matter; it is not a political matter; no, sir, it is a stern economic fact, a stubborn and immovable fact. It has, it is true, its emotional phase, it has its sentimental, religious, political aspects, but the sum total of this question is the bread and butter question, the how and the why we will learn and earn our daily bread. This is the labor movement. It has a scientific basis. It is founded upon fact, and I have been to considerable pains to my researches of well-known and distinguished authors on this question to collect and present to you briefly what this question is and what it springs from. I will first explain to you briefly what capital is.
Capital—artificial capital—is stored-up, accumulated surplus of past labor; capital is the product of labor. Its function is—that is the function of capital is—to appropriate or confiscate for its own use and benefit the "surplus" labor product of the wealth-producer. The capitalistic system originated in the forcible seizer of natural opportunities and rights by a few and then converting those things into special privileges which have since become "vested rights," formally intrenched behind the bulwarks of statue law and Government. Capital could not exist unless there also existed a majority class who were propertyless, that is, without capital, a class whose only mode of existence is by selling their labor to capitalists. Capitalism is maintained, fostered, and perpetuated by law; in fact, capital is law—statute law—and law is capital.
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