SOCIALIST LANDMARKS - 2/4 -WHAT MEANS THIS STRIKE- BY DANIEL DE LEON

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ONE OF THE GREATEST ORATORY SPEACH
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WHAT MEANS THIS

STRIKE?

by

Daniel DeLeon
An address delivered at
the City Hall, New Bedford, Mass.,
February 11, 1898
Workingmen and workingwomen of New
Bedford:
Ye striking textile workers; and all of you
others, who, though not now on strike, have
been on strike before this, and will be on strike
some other time:
It has been the habit in this country and in
England that, when a strike is on, “stars” in the
labor movement are invited to appear on the
scene, and entertain the strikers; entertain them
and keep them in good spirits with rosy
promises and prophesies, funny anecdotes,
bombastic recitations in prose and poetry; stuff
them full of rhetoric and wind—very much in
the style that some generals do, who, by means
of bad whiskey, seek to keep up the courage of
the soldiers whom they are otherwise unable to
beguile.
Such has been the habit in the past; to a great
extent it continues to be the habit in the present;
it was so during the late miners’ strike; it has
been so to some extent here in New Bedford;
and it is so everywhere, to the extent that
ignorance of the social question predominates.
To the extent, however, that Socialism gets a
footing among the working class such false and
puerile tactics are thrown aside.

The Socialist workingmen of New Bedford,
on whose invitation I am here; all those of us
who are members of that classconscious
revolutionary international organization of the
working class, that throughout the world stands
out today as the leading and most promiseful
feature of the age—all such would consider it a
crime on the part of the men, whom our
organization sends forth to preach the gospel of
labor, if they were to spend their platform time
in “tickling” the workers.
Our organization sends us out to teach the
workers, to enlighten them on the great issue
before them, and the great historic drama in
which most of them are still unconscious actors.
Some of you, accustomed to a different diet,
may find my speech dry. If there be any such
here, let him leave. He has not yet graduated
from that primary school reared by experience
in which the question of wages is forced upon
the workers as a serious question, and they are
taught that it demands serious thought to grapple
with, and solve it.
If, however, you have graduated from that
primary department, and have come here with
the requisite earnestness, then you will not leave
this hall without having, so to speak, caught
firm hold of the cable of the labor movement;
then the last strike of this sort has been seen in
New Bedford; then, the strikes that may follow
will be as different from this as vigorous
manhood is from toddling infancy; then you will
have entered upon that safe and sure path along
which eternal disaster will not, as heretofore,
mark your tracks, but New Bedford,
Massachusetts, and the nation herself, will
successively fall into your hands, with freedom
as the crowning fruit of your efforts.
Three years ago I was in your midst during
another strike.

The superficial observer who looks back to
your attitude during that strike, who looks back
to your attitude during the strikes that preceded
that one, who now turns his eyes to your attitude
in the present strike, and who discovers
substantially no difference between your attitude
now and then, might say, “Why, it is a waste of
time to speak to such men; they learn nothing
from experience; they will eternally fight the
same hopeless battle; the battle to establish `safe
relations’ with the capitalist class, with the same
hopeless weapon: the `pure and simple’
organization of labor!”
But the Socialist does not take that view.
There is one thing about your conduct that
enlists for and entitles you to the warm
sympathy of the Socialist, and that is that,
despite your persistent errors in fundamental
principles, in aims and methods, despite the
illusions that you are chasing after, despite the
increasing poverty and cumulating failures that
press upon you, despite all that, you preserve
manhood enough not to submit to oppression,
but rise in the rebellion that is implied in a
strike.
The attitude of workingmen engaged in a
bona fide strike is an inspiring one. It is an
earnest that slavery will not prevail. The slave
alone who will not rise against his master, who
will meekly bend his back to the lash, and turn
his cheek to him who plucks his beard - that
slave alone is hopeless. But the slave, who, as
you of New Bedford, persists, despite failures
and poverty, in rebelling, there is always hope
for.
This is the reason I have considered it worth
my while to leave my home and interrupt my
work in New York, and come here, and spend a
few days with you. I bank my hopes wholly and
build entirely upon this sentiment of rebellion
within you.

WHENCE DO WAGES COME, AND WHENCE

PROFITS?

What you now stand in need of, aye, more
than of bread, is the knowledge of a few
elemental principles of political economy and of
sociology.
Be not frightened at the words. It is only the
capitalist professors who try to make them so
difficult of understanding that the very
mentioning of them is expected to throw the
workingman into a palpitation of the heart. The
subjects are easy of understanding.
The first point that a workingman should be
clear upon is this: What is the source of the
wages he receives; what is the source of the
profits his employer lives on? The following
dialogue is not uncommon:
Workingman”“Do I understand you rightly,
that you Socialists want to abolish the capitalist
class?”
Socialist”“That is what we are after.”
Workingman”“you are!? Then I don’t want
any of you. Why, even now my wages are small;
even now I can barely get along. If you abolish
the capitalist I’ll have nothing; there will be
nobody to support me.”
Who knows how many workingmen in this
hall are typified by the workingman in this
dialogue!
When, on payday, you reach out your horny,
“unwashed” hand it is empty. When you take it
back again, your wages are on it. Hence the
belief that the capitalist is the source of your
living, that he is your bread-giver, your
supporter. Now that is an error, an optic illusion.

If early in the morning you go on top of some
house and look eastward, it will seem to you
that the sun moves and that you are standing
still. Indeed, that was at one time the general
and accepted belief. But it was an error, based
upon an optic illusion. So long as that error
prevailed the sciences could hardly make any
progress. Humanity virtually stood stock still.
Not until the illusion was discovered, and the
error overthrown, not until it was ascertained
that things were just the other way, that the sun
stood still, and that it was our planet that moved
at a breakneck rate of speed, was any real
progress possible.
So likewise with this illusion about the source
of wages. You cannot budge, you cannot move
one step forward unless you discover that, in
this respect also, the fact is just the reverse of
the appearance: that, not the capitalist, but the
workingman, is the source of the worker’s
living; that it is not the capitalist who supports
the workingman, but the workingman who
supports the capitalist; that it is not the capitalist
who gives bread to the workingman, but the
workingman who gives himself a dry crust, and
sumptuously stocks the table of the capitalist.
This is a cardinal point in political economy;
and this is the point I wish first of all to establish
in your minds. Now, to the proof.
Say that I own $100,000. Don’t ask me where
I got it. If you do, I would have to answer you in
the language of all capitalists that such a
question is un-American. You must not look
into the source of this, my “original
accumulation". It is un-American to pry into
such secrets. Presently I shall take you into my
confidence. For the present I shall draw down
the blinds, and keep out your un-American
curiosity. I have $100,000, and am a capitalist.
Now I may not know much; no capitalist
does; but know a few things, and among them is

a little plain arithmetic. I take a pencil and put
down on a sheet of paper, “$100,000.” Having
determined that I shall need at least $5,000 a
year to live with comfort, I divide the $100,000
by $5,000; the quotient is 20. My hair then
begins to stand on end. The 20 tells me that, if I
pull $5,000 annually out of $100,000, these are
exhausted during that term. At the beginning of
the 21st year I shall have nothing left.
“Heaven and earth, I would then have to go to
work if I wanted to live!”
No capitalist relishes that thought. He will tell
you, and pay his politicians, professors and
political parsons, to tell you, that “labor is
honorable.” He is perfectly willing to let you
have that undivided honor, and will do all he
can that you may not be deprived of any part of
it; but, as to himself, he has for work a
constitutional aversion. The capitalist runs away
from work like the man bitten by a mad dog
runs away from water.
I want to live without work’ on my $100,000
and yet keep my capital untouched. If you ask
any farmer, he will tell you that if he invests in a
Durham cow she will yield him a supply of 16
quarts a day, but, after some years, the supply
goes down; she will run dry; and then a new
cow must be got. But I, the capitalist, aim at
making my capital a sort of $ 100,000 cow,
which I shall annually be able to milk $5,000
out of, without her ever running dry.
I want, in short, to perform the proverbially
impossible feat of eating my cake, and yet
having it. The capitalist system performs that
feat for me. How?
I go to a broker. I say, Mr. Broker, I have
$100,000. I want you to invest that for me. I
don’t tell him that I have a special liking for
New Bedford mills’ stock; I don’t tell him I
have a special fancy for railroad stock; I leave

the choosing with him. The only direction I give
him is to get the stock in such a corporation as
will pay the highest dividend. Mr. Broker has a
list of all of these corporations, your New
Bedford corporations among them, to the extent
that they may be listed. He makes the choice,
say, of one of your mills right here in this town.
I hire a vault in a safe deposit company, and I
put my stock into it. I lock it up, put the key in
my pocket, and I go and have a good time. If it
is too cold in the north I go down to Florida. If it
is too hot there I go to the Adirondack
Mountains. Occasionally I take a spin across the
Atlantic and run the gauntlet of all the gambling
dens in Europe. I spend my time with fast horses
and faster women. I never put my foot inside the
factory that I hold stock in; I don’t even come to
the town in which it is located, and yet, lo and
behold, a miracle takes place!
Those of you versed in Bible lore surely have
read or heard about the miracle that God
performed when the Jews were in the desert and
about to die of hunger. The Lord opened the
skies and let manna come. But the Jews had to
get up early in the morning, before the sun rose;
if they overslept themselves the sun would melt
the manna, and they would have nothing to eat.
They had to get up early, and go out, and stoop
down and pick up the manna and put it in
baskets and take it to their tents and eat it.
With the appearance of the manna on earth the
miracle ended. But the miracles that happen in
this capitalist system of production are so
wonderful that those recorded in the Bible don’t
hold a candle to them. The Jews had to do some
work, but I, stock-holding capitalist, need do no
work at all. I can turn night into day, and day
into night. I can lie flat on my back all day and
all night; and every three months my manna
comes down to me in the shape of dividends.
Where does it come from? What does the
dividend represent?

In the factory of which my broker bought
stock, workmen, thousands of them, were at
work; they have woven cloth that has been put
upon the market to the value of $7,000; out of
the $7,000 that the cloth is worth my wage
workers receive $2,000 in wages, and I receive
the $5,000 as profits or dividends. Did I, who
never put my foot inside of the mill; did I, who
never put my foot inside of New Bedford; did I,
who don’t know how a loom looks;’ did I, who
contributed nothing whatever toward the
weaving of that cloth; did I do any work
whatever toward producing those $5,000 that
came to me? No man with brains in his head
instead of sawdust can deny that those $7,000
are exclusively the product of the wage workers
in that mill. Out of the wealth thus produced by
them alone, they get $2,000 in wages, and I,
who did nothing at all, I get the $5,000.
The wages these workers receive represent
wealth that they have themselves produced; the
profits that the capitalist pockets represent
wealth that the wage workers produced, and that
the capitalist, does what?—let us call things by
their names—that the capitalist steals from
them.
You may ask: But is that the rule, is not that
illustration an exception? Yes, it is the rule; the
exception is the other thing.
The leading industries of the United States are
today stock concerns, and thither will all others
worth mentioning move. An increasing volume
of capital in money is held in stocks and shares.
The individual capitalist holds stock in a score
of concerns in different trades, located in
different towns, too many and too varied for him
even to attempt to run. By virtue of his stock, he
draws his income from them; which is the same
as saying that he lives on what the workingmen
produce but are robbed of. Nor is the case at all
essentially different with the concerns that have
not yet developed into stock corporations.

Again, you may ask: The conclusion that what
such stockholders live on is stolen wealth
because they evidently perform no manner of
work is irrefutable, but are all stockholders
equally idle and superfluous? Are there not
some who do perform some work? Are there not
“directors"?
There are “directors,” but these gentlemen
bear a title much like those “generals” and
“majors” and “colonels” who now go about, and
whose general ship, majorship and colonelship
consisted in securing substitutes during the war.
These “directors” are simply the largest
stockholders, which is the same as to say that
they are the largest sponges; their directorship
consists only in directing conspiracies against
rival “directors,” in bribing legislatures,
executives and judiciaries, in picking out and
hiring men out of your midst to serve as
bellwethers, that will lead you, like cattle, to the
capitalist shambles, and tickle you into
contentment and hopefulness while you are
being fleeced. The court decisions removing
responsibility from the “directors” are numerous
and increasing; each such decision establishes,
from the capitalist government’s own mouth, the
idleness and superfluousness of the capitalist
class.
These “directors,” and the capitalist class in
general, may perform some “work,” they do
perform some “work,” but that “work” is not of
a sort that directly or indirectly aids production,
any more than the intense mental strain and
activity of the “work” done by the pickpocket is
directly or indirectly productive.
Finally, you may ask: No doubt the
stockholder does no work, and hence lives on
the wealth we produce; no doubt these
“directors” have a title that only emphasizes
their idleness by a swindle, and, consequently,
neither they are other than sponges on the

working class; but did not your own illustration
start with the supposition that the capitalist in
question had $100,000, is not his original capital
entitled to some returns?
This question opens an important one; and
now I shall, as I promised you, take you into my
confidence; I shall raise the curtain which I
pulled down before the question, Where did I
get it? I shall now let you pry into my secret.
Whence does this original capital, or “original
accumulation,” come? Does it grow on the
capitalist like hair on his face, or nails on his
fingers and toes? Does he secrete it as he
secretes sweat from his body? Let me take one
illustration of many.
Before our present Governor, the Governor of
New York was Levi Parsons Morton. The
gentleman must be known to all of you. Besides
having been Governor of the Empire State, he
was once Vice President of the nation, and also
at one time our Minister to France. Mr. Morton
is a leading “gentleman"; he wears the best of
broadcloth; his shirt bosom is of spotless white;
his nails are trimmed by manicurists; he uses the
elitest language; he has front pews in a number
of churches; he is a pattern of morality, law and
order; and he is a multimillionaire capitalist.
How did he get his start millionaire-ward? Mr.
Morton being a Republican, I shall refer you to
a Republican journal, the New York Tribune,
for the answer of this interesting question. The
Tribune of the day after Mr. Morton’s
nomination for Governor in 1894 gave his
biography.
There we are informed that Mr. Morton was
born in New Hampshire of poor parents; he was
industrious, he was clever, he was pushing, and
he settled, a poor young man, in New York City,
where in 1860, mark the date, he started a
clothing establishment; then, in rapid

succession, we are informed that he failed, and
started a bank!
A man may start almost any kind of a shop
without a cent. If the landlord gave him credit
for the rent, and the brewer, the shoe
manufacturer, the cigar manufacturer, etc., etc.,
give him credit for the truck, he may start a
saloon, a shoe shop, a cigar shop, etc., etc.,
without any cash, do business and pay off his
debt with the proceeds of his sales. But there is
one shop that he cannot start in that way. That
shop is the banking shop. For that he must have
cash on hand. He can no more shave notes
without money than he can shave whiskers
without razors.
Now, then, the man who just previously stood
up before a notary public and swore “So help
him, God,” he had no money to pay his
creditors, immediately after, without having in
the meantime married an heiress, has money
enough to start a bank on! Where did he get it?
Read the biographies of any of our founders
of capitalist concerns by the torchlight of this
biography, and you will find them all to be
essentially the same, or suggestively silent upon
the doings of our man during the period that he
gathers his “original accumulation.” You will
find that “original capital” to be the child of
fraudulent failures and fires, of high-handed
crime of some sort or other, or of the sneaking
crime of appropriating trust funds, etc. With
such “original capital" - gotten by dint of such
“cleverness,” “push” and “industry” as a
weapon, the “original” capitalist proceeds to
fleece the working class that has been less
“industrious,” “pushing” and “clever” than he. If
he consumes all his fleecings, his capital
remains of its original size in his hands, unless
some other gentleman of the road, gifted with
greater “industry,” “push” and “cleverness” than
he, comes around and relieves him of it; if he

consume not the whole of his fleecings, his
capital moves upward, million-ward.
The case is proved. Labor alone produces all
wealth. Wages are that part of labor’s own
product that the workingman is allowed to keep.
Profits are the present and running stealings
perpetrated by the capitalist upon the
workingman from day to day, from week to
week, from month to month, from year to year.
Capital is the accumulated past stealings of the
capitalist, cornerstoned upon his “original
accumulation.”
Who of you before me fails now to
understand, or would still deny that, not the
capitalist supports the workingman, but the
workingman supports the capitalist; or still
holds that the workingman could not exist
without the capitalist? If any there be, let him
raise his hand and speak up now. None? Then I
may consider this point settled, and shall move
on.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
The second point, on which it is absolutely
necessary that you be clear, is the nature of your
relation, as working people, to the capitalist in
this capitalist system of production. This point is
an inevitable consequence of the first.
You have seen that the wages you live on and
the profits the capitalist riots in are the two parts
into which is divided the wealth that you
produce. The workingman wants a larger and
larger share. So does the capitalist. A thing
cannot be divided into two shares so as to
increase the share of each.
If the workingman produces, say, $4 worth of
wealth a day, and the capitalist keeps 2, there
are only 2 left for the workingman. If the
capitalist keeps 3, there is only 1 left for the
workingman. If the capitalist keeps 3 1/2, there

is only 1/2 left for the workingman. Inversely, if
the workingman pushes up his share from 1/2 to
1, there are only 3 left to the capitalist. If the
workingman secures 2, the capitalist will be
reduced to 2. If the workingman push still
onward and keep 3, the capitalist will have to
put up with 1.
And if the workingman makes up his mind to
enjoy all that he produces, and keep all the 4,
the capitalist will have to go to work.
These plain figures upset the theory about the
workingman and the capitalist being brothers.
Capital—meaning the capitalist class—and
labor have been portrayed by capitalist
illustrated papers as Chang and Eng. This, I
remember, was done notably by Harper’s
Weekly, the property of one of the precious
“Seeley Diners”—you remember that “dinner.”
The Siamese Twins were held together by a
piece of flesh. Wherever Chang went, Eng was
sure to go. If Chang was happy, Eng’s pulse
throbbed harder. If Chang caught cold, Eng
sneezed in chorus with him. When Chang died,
Eng followed suit within five minutes.
Do we find that to be the relation of the
workingman and the capitalist? Do you find that
the fatter the capitalist, the fatter also grows the
workingmen? Is not your experience rather that
the wealthier the capitalist, the poorer are the
workingmen? That the more magnificent and
prouder the residences of the capitalist, the
dingier and humbler become those of the
workingmen? That the happier the life of the
capitalist’s wife, the greater the opportunities of
his children for enjoyment and education, the
heavier becomes the cross borne by the
workingmen’s wives, while their children are
crowded more and more from the schools and
deprived of the pleasures of childhood? Is that
your experience, or is it not?

The pregnant point that underlies these
pregnant facts is that:
Between the working class and the capitalist
class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class
struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can
vault over it, no capitalist professor or official
statistician can argue it away; no capitalist
parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it;
no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops
up in all manner of ways, like in this strike, in
ways that disconcert all the plans and all the
schemes of those who would deny or ignore it.
It is a struggle that will not down, and must be
ended, only by either the total subjugation of the
working class, or the abolition of the capitalist
class.
Thus you perceive that the theory on which
your “pure and simple” trade organizations are
grounded, and on which you went into this
strike, is false. There being no “common
interests,” but only hostile interests, between the
capitalist class and the working class, the battle
you are waging to establish “safe relations”
between the two is a hopeless one.
Put to the touchstone of these undeniable
principles the theory upon which your “pure and
simple” trade organizations are built, and you
will find it to be false; examined by the light of
these undeniable principles the road that your
false theory makes you travel and the failures
that have marked your career must strike you as
its inevitable result. How are we to organize and
proceed? you may ask. Before answering the
question, let me take up another branch of the
subject. Its presentation will sweep aside
another series of illusions that beset the mind of
the working class, and will, with what has been
said, give us a sufficient sweep over the ground
to lead us to the right answer.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CAPITALIST SOCIETY

Let us take a condensed page of the country’s
history. For the sake of plainness, and forced to
it by the exigency of condensation, I shall
assume small figures.
Place yourselves back a sufficient number of
years with but 10 competing weaving concerns
in the community. How the individual 10
owners came by the “original accumulations”
that enabled them to start as capitalists you now
know. Say that each of the 10 capitalists
employs 10 men; that each man receives $2 a
day, and that the product of each of the 10 sets
of men in each of the 10 establishments is worth
$40 a day. You know now also that it is out of
these $40 worth of wealth, produced by the
men, that each of the 10 competing capitalists
takes the $20 that he pays the 10 men in wages,
and that out of that same $40 worth of wealth he
takes the $20 that he pockets as profits. Each of
these 10 capitalists makes, accordingly, $120 a
week.
This amount of profits, one should think,
should satisfy our 10 capitalists. It is a goodly
sum to pocket without work. Indeed, it may
satisfy some, say most of them. But if for any of
many reasons it does not satisfy any one of
them, the whole string of them is set in
commotion.
“Individuality” is a deity at whose shrine the
capitalist worships, or affects to worship. In
point of fact, capitalism robs of individuality,
not only the working class, but capitalists
themselves. The action of any one of the lot
compels action by all; like a row of bricks, the
dropping of one makes all the others drop
successively.
Let us take No. 1. He is not satisfied with
$120 a week. Of the many reasons he may have
for that, let’s take this: He has a little daughter;
eventually, she will be of marriageable age;
whom is he planning to marry her to? Before the

public, particularly before the workers, he will
declaim on the “sovereignty” of our citizens,
and declare the country is stocked with nothing
but “peers.” In his heart, though, he feels
otherwise. He looks even upon his fellow
capitalists as plebeians; he aspires at a prince, a
duke, or at least a count for a son-in-law; and in
visions truly reflecting the vulgarity of his mind
he beholds himself the grandfather of prince,
duke or count grandbrats. To realize this dream
he must have money; princes, etc., are
expensive luxuries. His present income, $120 a
week, will not buy the luxury. He must have
some more.
To his employees he will recommend reliance
on heaven; he himself knows that if he wants
more money it will not come from heaven, but
must come from the sweat of his employees’
brows.
As all the wealth produced in his shop is $40
a day, he knows that, if he increases his share of
$20 to $30, there will be only $10 left for
wages. He tries this. He announces a wage
reduction of 50 per cent.
His men spontaneously draw themselves
together and refuse to work; they go on strike.
What is the situation? In those days it needed
skill, acquired by long training, to do the work;
there may have been corner loafers out of work,
but not weavers; possibly at some great distance
there may have been weavers actually
obtainable, but in those days there was neither
telegraph nor railroad to communicate with
them; finally, the nine competitors of No. 1,
having no strike on hand, continued to produce,
and thus threatened to crowd No. 1 out of the
market. Thus circumstanced, No. 1 caves in. He
withdraws his order of wage reduction.
“Come in,” he says to his striking workmen,
“let’s make up; labor and capital are brothers;

the most loving of brothers sometimes fall out;
we have had such a falling out; it was a slip; you
have organized yourselves in a union with a $2 a
day wage scale; I shall never fight the union; l
love it, come back to Work.” And the men did.
Thus ended the first strike.
The victory won by the men made many of
them feel bold. At their first next meeting they
argued: “The employer wanted to reduce our
wages and got left; why may not we take the
hint and reduce his profits by demanding higher
wages; why should we not lick him in an
attempt to resist our demand for more pay?”
But the labor movement is democratic. No
one man can run things. At that union meeting
the motion to demand higher pay is made by one
member, another must second it; amendments,
and amendments to the amendments, are put
with the requisite seconders; debate follows;
points of order are raised, ruled on, appealed
from and settled; in the meantime it grows late,
the men must be at work early the next morning,
the hour to adjourn arrives, and the whole matter
is left pending. Thus much for the men.
Now for the employer. He locks himself up in
his closet. With clenched fists and scowl on
brow, he gnashes his teeth at the victory of his
“brother” labor, its union and its union
regulations. And he ponders. More money he
must have and is determined to have. This
resolution is arrived at with the swiftness and
directness which capitalists are capable of.
Differently from his men, he is not many, but
one. He makes the motion, seconds it himself,
puts it, and carries it unanimously. More profits
he shall have. But how? Aid comes to him
through the mail. The letter carrier brings him a
circular from a machine shop. Such circulars are
frequent even today. It reads like this:

“Mr. No. 1, you are employing 10 men. I have
in my machine shop a beautiful machine with
which you can produce, with five men, twice as
much as now with 10. This machine does not
chew tobacco. it does not smoke. Some of these
circulars are cruel and add: This machine has no
wife who gets sick and keeps it home to attend
to her. It has no children who die, and whom to
bury it must stay away from work. It never goes
on strike. It works and grumbles not. Come and
see it.”

INVENTION

Right here let me lock a switch at which not a
few people are apt to switch off and be banked.
Some may think, “Well, at least that machine
capitalist is entitled to his profits; he surely is an
inventor.”
A grave error. Look into the history of our
inventors, and you will see that those who really
profited by their genius are so few that you can
count them on the fingers of your hands, and
have fingers to spare.
The capitalists either take advantage of the
inventor’s stress and buy his invention for a
song; the inventor believes he can make his haul
with his next invention; but before that is
perfected, he is as poor as before, and the same
advantage is again taken of him; until finally,
his brain power being exhausted, he sinks into a
pauper’s grave, leaving the fruit of his genius
for private capitalists to grow rich on; or the
capitalist simply steals the invention and gets his
courts to decide against the inventor.
From Eli Whitney down, that is the treatment
the inventor, as a rule, receives from the
capitalist class.
Such a case, illustrative of the whole situation,
happened recently. The Bonsack Machine Co.
discovered that its employees made numerous

inventions, and it decided to appropriate them
wholesale. To this end, it locked out its men,
and demanded of all applicants for work that
they sign a contract whereby, in “consideration
of employment” they assign to the company all
their rights in whatever invention they may
make during the term of their employment.
One of these employees, who had signed such
a contract, informed the company one day that
he thought he could invent a machine by which
cigarettes could be held closed by crimping at
the ends, instead of pasting. This was a valuable
idea; and he was told to go ahead. For six
months he worked at this invention and
perfected it; and, having during all that time
received not a cent in wages or otherwise from
the company, he patented his invention himself.
The company immediately brought suit
against him in the federal courts, claiming that
the invention was its property; and the federal
court decided in favor of the company, thus
robbing the inventor of his time, his money, of
the fruit of his genius, and of his unquestionable
rights.
“Shame?” Say not “Shame!” He who himself
applies the torch to his own house has no cause
to cry “Shame!” when the flames consume it.
Say rather, “Natural!”, and smiting your own
breasts, say, “Ours the fault!” Having elected
into power the Democratic, Republican, Free
Trade, Protection, Silver or Gold platforms of
the capitalist class, the working class has none
but itself to blame if the official lackeys of that
class turn against the working class the public
powers put into their hands.
The capitalist owner of the machine shop that
sends the circular did not make the invention.
THE SCREWS BEGIN TO TURN

To return to No. 1. He goes and sees the
machine; finds it to be as represented; buys it;
puts it up in his shop; picks out of his 10 men
the five least active in the late strike; sets them
to work at $2 a day as before; and full of bows
and smirks, addresses the other five thus: “I am
sorry I have no places for you; I believe in union
principles and am paying the union scale to the
five men I need; I don’t need you now; good
bye. I hope I’ll see you again.” And he means
this last as you will presently perceive.
What is the situation now? No. 1 pays, as
before, $2 a day, but to only five men; these,
with the aid of the machine, now produce twice
as much as the 10 did before; their product is
now $80 worth of wealth; as only $10 of this
goes in wages, the capitalist has a profit of $70 a
day, or 250 per cent more. He is moving fast
toward his prince, duke or count son-in-law.
Now watch the men whom his machine
displaced; their career throws quite some light
on the whole question. Are they not “American
citizens"? Is not this a “Republic with a
Constitution"? Is anything else wanted to get a
living? Watch them!
They go to No. 2 for a job; before they quite
reach the place, the doors open and five of that
concern are likewise thrown out upon the street.
What happened there? The “individuality” of
No. 2 yielded to the pressure of capitalist
development. The purchase of the machine by
No. 1 enabled him to produce so much more
plentifully and cheaply; if No. 2 did not do
likewise, he would be crowded out of the market
by No. 1. No. 2, accordingly, also invested in a
machine, with the result that five of his men are
also thrown out.
These 10 unemployed proceed to No. 3,
hoping for better luck there. But what sight is
that that meets their astonished eyes? Not five
men, as walked out of Nos. 1 and 2, but all No.

3’s 10 have landed on the street; and, what is
more surprising yet to them, No. 3 himself is on
the street, now reduced to the condition of a
workingman along with his former employees.
What is it that happened there? In this instance
the “individuality” of No. 3 was crushed by
capitalist development. The same reason that
drove No. 2 to procure the machine rendered the
machine indispensable to No. 3. But having,
differently from his competitors Nos. 1 and 2,
spent all his stealings from the workingmen,
instead of saving up some, he is now unable to
make the purchase; is, consequently, unable to
produce as cheaply as they; is, consequently,
driven into bankruptcy, and lands in the class of
the proletariat, whose ranks are thus increased.
The now 21 unemployed proceed in their hunt
for work, and make the round of the other mills.
The previous experiences are repeated. Not only
are there no jobs to be had, but everywhere
workers are thrown out, if the employer got the
machine; and if he did not, workers with their
former employers, now ruined, join the army of
the unemployed.
What happened in that industry happened in
all others. Thus the ranks of the capitalist class
are thinned out, and the class is made more
powerful, while the ranks of the working class
are swelled, and the class is made weaker. This
is the process that explains how, on the one
hand, your New Bedford mills become the
property of ever fewer men; how, according to
the census, their aggregate capital runs up to
over $14,000,000; how, despite “bad times,”
their profits run up to upwards of $1,300,000;
how, on the other hand, your position becomes
steadily more precarious.
No. 1’s men return to where they started from.
Scab they will not. Uninformed upon the
mechanism of capitalism, they know not what
struck them; and they expect “better times,” just
as so many equally uninformed workingmen are

expecting today; in the meantime, thinking
thereby to hasten the advent of the good times,
No. 1’s men turn out the Republican’ party and
turn in the Democratic, turn out the Democratic
and turn in the Republican, just as our misled
workingmen are now doing, not understanding
that, whether they put in or out Republicans,
Democrats, Protectionists or Free Traders,
Goldbugs or Silverbugs, they are every time
putting in the capitalist platform, upholding the
social principle that throws them out of work or
reduces their wages.
But endurance has its limits. The
superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad for
the Indiana Division, speaking, of course, from
the capitalist standpoint, recently said: “Many
solutions are being offered for the labor
question; but there is just one and no more. It is
this: Lay a silver dollar on the shelf, and at the
end of a year you have a silver dollar left; lay a
workingman on the shelf, and at the end of a
month you have a skeleton left.”
“This,” said he, “is the solution of the labor
problem.” In short, starve out the workers.
No. 1’s men finally reach that point. Finally
that happens that few if any can resist. A man
may stand starvation and resist the sight of
starving wife and children; but if he has nor
wherewith to buy medicine to save the life of a
sick wife or clild, he loses all control. On the
heels of starvation, sickness follow, and No. 1’s
men throw to the wind all union principles.
They are now ready to do anything to save their
dear ones. Cap in hand, they appear before No.
1, the starch taken clean out of them during the
period they “lay on the shelf.” They ask for
work. They themselves offer to work for $1 a
day.
And No. 1, the brother of labor, who but
recently expressed devotion to the union, what
of him? His eyes sparkle at “seeing again” the

men he had thrown out, at their offer to work for
less than the men now employed. His chest
expands, and, grabbing them by the hand in a
delirium of patriotic ecstasy, he says:
“Welcome, my noble American citizens. I am
proud to see you ready to work and earn an
honest penny for your dear wives and darling
children. I am delighted to notice that you are
not, like so many others, too lazy to work. Let
the American eagle screech in honor of your
emancipation from the slavery of a rascally
union. Let the American eagle wag his tail an
extra wag in honor of your freedom from a
dictatorial walking delegate. You are my long
lost brothers. Go in, my $1-a-day brothers!””and
he throws his former $2-a-day brothers heels
over head upon the sidewalk.
When the late $2-a-day men have recovered
from their surprise, they determine on war. But
what sort of war? Watch them closely, and you
may detect many a feature of your own in that
mirror. “Have we not struck,” argue they, “and
beaten this employer once before? If we strike
again, we shall again beat him.” But the
conditions have wholly changed.
In the first place, there were no unemployed
skilled workers during that first strike; now
there are; plenty of them, dumped upon the
country, not out of the steerage of vessels from
Europe, but by the native-born machine.
In the second place, that very machine has to
such an extent eliminated skill that, while
formerly only the unemployed in a certain trade
could endanger the jobs of those at work in that
trade, now the unemployed of all trades,
virtually the whole army of the unemployed,
bear down upon the employed in each. We
know of quondam shoemakers taking the jobs of
hatters, quondam hatters tailing the jobs of
weavers, quondam weavers taking the jobs of
cigarmakers, quondam cigarmakers taking the
jobs of machinists, quondam farmhands taking

the jobs of factory hands, etc., etc., so easy has it
become to learn what now needs to be known of
a trade.
In the third place, telegraph and railroad have
made all of the unemployed easily accessible to
the employer.
Finally, different from former days, the
competitors have to a great extent consolidated.
Here in New Bedford, for instance, the false
appearance of competition between the mill
owners is punctured by the fact that to a great
extent seemingly “independent” mills are owned
by one family, as is the case with the Pierce
family.
Not, as at the first strike, with their flanks
protected, but now wholly exposed through the
existence of a vast army of hungry unemployed;
not, as before, facing a divided enemy, but now
faced by a consolidated mass of capitalist
concerns, how different is now the situation of
the strikers! The changed conditions brought
about changed results; instead of victory, there
is defeat; and we have had a long series of them.
Either hunger drove the men back to work; or
the unemployed took their places; or, if the
capitalist was in a hurry, he fetched in the help
of the strong arm of the government, now his
government.
PRINCIPLES OF SOUND ORGANIZATION
We now have a sufficient survey of the field
to enable us to answer the question, How shall
we organize so as not to fight the same old
hopeless battle?
Proceeding from the knowledge that labor
alone produces all wealth; that less and less of
this, wealth comes to the working class. and
more and more of it is plundered by the idle
class or capitalist; that this is the result of the
working class being stripped of the tool,

machine, without which it cannot earn a living;
and, finally, that the machine or tool has reached
such a state of development that it can no longer
be operated by the individual but needs the
collective effort of many; proceeding from this
knowledge, it is clear that the aim of all
intelligent classconscious workingmen must be
the overthrow of the system of private
ownership in the tools of production because
that system keeps them in wage slavery.
Proceeding from the further knowledge of the
use made of the government by the capitalist
class, and of the necessity that class is under to
own the government, so as to enable it to uphold
and prop up the capitalist system; proceeding
from that knowledge, it is clear that the aim of
all intelligent, classconscious workingmen must
be to bring the government under the control of
their own class, by joining and electing the
American wing of the international Socialist
party—the Socialist Labor Party of America,
and thus establishing the Socialist Cooperative
Republic.
But in the meantime, while moving toward
that ideal, though necessary, goal, what to do?
The thing cannot be accomplished in a day, nor
does election come around every twenty-four
hours. Is there nothing that we can do for
ourselves between election and election?
Yes”plenty.
When crowded, in argument, to the wall by us
New Trade Unionists, by us of the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance, your present, or old
and “pure and simple” organizations, yield the
point of ultimate aims; they grant the ultimate
necessity of establishing Socialism; but they
claim “the times are not yet ripe” for that; and,
not yet being ripe, they lay emphasis upon the
claim that the “pure and simple” union does the
workers some good NOW by getting something
NOW from the employers and from the

capitalist parties. We are not “practical” they tell
us; they are.
Let us test this theory on the spot. Here in
New Bedford there is not yet a single New
Trade Unionist organization in existence. The
“pure and simple” trade union has had the field
all to itself. All of you, whose wages are now
HIGHER than they were five years ago, kindly
raise a hand. All of you whose wages are now
LOWER than five years ago, please raise a
hand. The proof of the pudding lies in the
eating. Not only does “pure and simpledom”
shut off your hope of emancipation by affecting
to think such a state of things is unreachable
now, but in the meantime and RIGHT NOW,
the “good” it does to you, the “something" it
secures for you “from the employers and from
the politicians” is lower wages.
That is what their “practicalness” amounts to
in point of fact. Presently I shall show you that
they prove “practical” only to the labor fakers
who run them, and whom they put up with. No,
no; years ago, before capitalism had reached its
present development, a trade organization of
labor could and did afford protection to the
workers, even if, as the “pure and simple”
union, it was wholly in the dark on the issue.
That time is no more.
The New Trade Unionist knows that no one or
two, or even half a dozen elections will place in
the hands of the working class the government
of the land; and New Trade Unionism, not only
wishes to do something now for the workers, but
it knows that the thing can be done, and how to
do it.
“Pure and simple” or British trade unionism
has done a double mischief to the workers.
Besides leaving them in their present pitiable
plight, it has caused many to fly off the handle
and lose all trust in the power of trade
organization. The best of these, those who have

not become pessimistic and have not been
wholly demoralized, see nothing to be done but
voting right on election day—casting their vote
straight for the SLP. This is a serious error. By
thus giving over all participation in the
industrial movement, they wholly disconnect
themselves from the class struggle that is going
on every day; and by putting off their whole
activity to a single day in the year, election day,
they become floaters in the air. I know several
such. Without exception they are dreamy and
flightly and unbalanced in their methods.
The utter impotence of “pure and simple”
unionism today is born of causes that may be
divided under two main heads.
One is the contempt in which the capitalist
and ruling class holds the working people. In
1886, when instinct was, unconsciously to
myself, leading me to look into the social
problem, when as yet it was to me a confused
and blurred interrogation mark, I associated
wholly with capitalists. Expressions of contempt
for the workers were common. One day I asked
a set of then why they treated their men so hard,
and had so poor an opinion of them. “They are
ignorant, stupid and corrupt," was the answer,
almost in chorus.
“What makes you think so?” I asked. “Have
you met them all?”
“No,” was the reply, “we have not met them
all individually, but we have had to deal with
their leaders, and they are ignorant, stupid and
corrupt. Surely these leaders must be the best
among them, or they would not choose them.”
Now, let me illustrate. I understand that two
days ago, in this city, Mr. Gompers went off at a
tangent and shot off his mouth about me. What
he said was too ridiculous for me to answer.
You will have noticed that he simply gave what
he wishes you to consider as his opinion; he

furnished you no facts from which he drew it, so
that you could judge for yourselves. He
expected you to take him on faith. I shall not
insult you by treating you likewise. Here are the
facts on which my conclusion is based:
In the State of New York we have a labor law
forbidding the working of railroad men more
than 10 hours. The railroad companies
disregarded the law. In Buffalo, the switchmen
struck in 1892 to enforce the law; thereupon the
Democratic governor, Mr. Flower, who had
himself signed the law, sent the whole militia of
the state into Buffalo to help the railroad
capitalists break the law, incidentally to commit
assault and battery with intent to kill, as they
acflially did, upon the workingmen. Among our
state Senators is one Jacob Cantor. This
gentleman hastened to applaud Gov. Flower’s
brutal violation of his oath of office to uphold
the Constitution and the laws. Cantor applauded
the act as a patriotic one in the defense of “law
and order.”
At a subsequent campaign, this Cantor being a
candidate for reelection, the New York Daily
News, a capitalist paper of Cantor’s political
complexion, published an autograph letter
addressed to him and intended to be an
endorsement of him by labor. This letter
contained this passage among others: “If any
one says you are not a friend of labor, he says
what is not true.”
By whom was this letter written and by whom
signed ?”by Mr. Samuel Gompers, “President of
the American Federation of Labor.”
Whom are you hissing, Gompers or me?
Do you imagine that the consideration for that
letter was merely the “love and affection” of
Senator Cantor?

Again: The Republican party, likewise the
Democratic, is a parry of the capitalist class;
every mam who is posted knows that; the
conduct of its presidents, governors, judges,
congresses and legislatures can leave no doubt
upon the subject. Likewise the free coinage of
silver, or Populist party, was, while it lived, well
known to be a party of capital; the conduct of its
runners, the silver mine barons, who skin and
then shoot down their miners, leaves no doubt
upon that subject. But the two were deadly
opposed: one wanted gold, the other silver.
Notwithstanding these facts, a “labor leader” in
New York City appeared at a recent campaign
standing, not upon the Republican capitalist
party platform only, not upon the Free-Silver
capitalist party platform only, but on both; he
performed the acrobatic feat of being
simultaneously for gold and against silver, for
silver against gold.
Who was that “labor leader” ? Mr. Samuel
Gompers, “President of the American
Federation of Labor.”
Again: In Washington there is a son of a
certain labor leader with a government job. He
is truly “non- partisan.”’ Democrats may go and
Republicans may come, Republicans may go
and Democrats may come, but he goeth not; the
Democratic and the Republican capitalists may
fight like cats and dogs, but on one thing they
fraternize like cooing doves, to wit, to keep that
son of a labor leader in office.
Who is the father of that son ? Mr. Samuel
Gompers, “President of the A.F. of L.”
Again: You have here a “labor leader,” named
Ross.
[Applause]
Unhappy men! Unhappy men! As well might
you applaud the name of your executioner.

When I was here about three years ago I met
him. He was all aglow with the project of a bill
that he was going to see through your
legislature, of which he was and is now a
member. It was the anti-fines bill; that, thought
he, was going to put an end to an infamous
practice of the mill owners. I argued with him
that it does not matter what the law is; the all
important thing was, which is the class charged
with enforcing it? So long as the capitalist class
held the government, all such labor laws as he
was straining for, were a snare and a delusion.
What I said seemed to be Greek to him. He went
ahead and the bill passed. And what happened?
You continued to be fined after, as before; and
when one of you sought to enforce the law, was
he not arrested and imprisoned? And when
another brought the lawbreaking mill owner,
who continued to fine him, into court, did not
the capitalist court decide in favor of the
capitalist, and thus virtually annulled the law?
And where was Mr. Ross all this time? In the
Massachusetts Legislature. Do you imagine that
his ignorance of what a capitalist government
means, and of what its “labor laws” amount to,
did not throw its shadow upon and color you in
the capitalist’s estimation? Do you, furthermore,
imagine that his sitting there in that legislature, a
member of the majority party at that, and never
once demanding the prompt impeachment of the
court that rendered null that very law that he had
worked to pass, do you imagine that while he
plays such a complaisant role he is a credit to
the working class?
No need of further illustrations. The
ignorance, stupidity and corruption of the “pure
and simple” labor leaders is such that the
capitalist class despises you. The first
prerequisite for success in a struggle is the
respect of the enemy.
The other main cause of the present
impotence of “pure and simple" unionism is
that, through its ignoring the existing class

distinctions, and its ignoring the close
connection there is between wages and politics,
it splits up at the ballot box among the parties of
capital, and thus unites in upholding the system
of capitalist exploitation.
Look at the recent miners’ strike; the men
were shot down and the strike was lost; this
happened in the very midst of a political
campaign; and these miners, who could at any
election capture the government, or at least, by
polling a big vote against capitalism, announce
their advance toward freedom, are seen to turn
right around and vote back into power the very
class that had just trampled upon them.
What prospect is there, in sight of such
conduct, of the capitalists becoming gentler? Or
of the union gaining for the men anything NOW
except more wage reductions, enforced by
bullets? None! The prospect of the miners and
other workers doing the same thing over again, a
prospect that is made all the surer if they allow
themselves to be further led by the labor fakers
whom the capitalists keep in pay, renders sure
that capitalist outrages will be repeated, and
further capitalist encroachments will follow.
Otherwise were it if the union, identifying
politics and wages, voted against capitalism; if it
struck at the ballot box against the wage system
with the same solidarity that it demands for the
strike in the shop.
Protected once a year by the guns of an
increasing classconscious party of labor, the
union could be a valuable fortification behind
which to conduct the daily class struggle in the
shops.
The increasing Socialist Labor Party vote
alone would not quite give that temporary
protection in the shop that such an increasing
vote would afford if, in the shop also, the

workers were intelligently organized, and
honestly, because intelligently, led.
Without organization in the shop, the
capitalist could outrage at least individuals.
Shop organization alone, unbacked by that
political force that threatens the capitalist class
with extinction, the working class, being the
overwhelming majority, leaves the workers
wholly unprotecteced.
But the shop organization that combines in its
warfare the annually recurring cIassconscious
ballot can stem capitalist encroachment from
day to day.
The trade organization is impotent if built and
conducted upon the impotent lines of ignorance
and corruption. The trade organization is NOT
impotent if built and conducted upon the lines of
knowledge and honesty; if it understands the
issue and steps into the arena fully equipped, not
with the shield of the trade union only, but also
with the sword of the Socialist ballot.
The essential principles of sound organization
are, accordingly, these:
1st”A trade organization must be clear upon
the fact that, not until it has overthrown the
capitalist system of private ownership in the
machinery of production, and made this the joint
property of the people, thereby compelling
everyone to work if he wants to live, is it at all
possible for the workers to be safe.
2nd”A labor organization must be perfectly
clear upon the fact that it cannot reach safety
until it has wrenched the government from the
clutches of the capitalist class; and that it cannot
do that unless it votes, not for men but for
principles, unless it votes into power its own
class platform and program: the abolition of the
wages system of slavery.

3rd”A labor organization must be perfectly
clear upon the fact that politics are not, like
religion, a private concern, any more than the
wages and the hours of a workingman are his
private concern. For the same reason that his
wages and hours are the concern of his class, so
is his politics. Politics is not separable from
wages. For the same reason that the organization
of labor dictates wages, hours, etc:, in the
interest of the working class, for that same
reason must it dictate politics also; and for the
same reason that it execrates the scab in the
shop, it must execrate the scab at the hustings.

THE SOCIALIST TRADE AND LABOR ALLIANCE

Long did the Socialist Labor Party and New
Trade Unionists seek to deliver this important
message to the broad masses of the American
proletariat, the rank and file of our working
class. But we could not reach, we could not get
at them. Between us and them there stood a
solid wall of ignorant, stupid and corrupt labor
fakers. Like men groping in a dark room for an
exit, we moved along the wall, bumping our
heads, feeling ever onwards for a door; we made
the circuit and no passage was found. The wall
was solid. This discovery once made, there was
no way other than to batter a breach through that
wall. With the battering ram of the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance we effected a passage;
the wall now crumbles; at last we stand face to
face with the rank and file of the American
proletariat; and we are delivering our message,
as you may judge from the howl that goes up
from that fakers’ wall that we have broken
through.
I shall not consider my time well spent with
you if I see no fruit of my labors; if I leave not
behind me in New Bedford Local Alliances of
your trades organized in the Socialist Trade and
Labor Alliance. That will be my best
contribution toward your strike, as they will
serve as centers of enlightenment to strengthen

you in your conflict, to the extent that it may
now be possible.
In conclusion, my best advice to you for
immediate action, is to step out boldly upon the
streets, as soon as you can; organize a monster
parade of the strikers and of all the other
working people in the town; and let the parade
be headed by a banner bearing the
announcement to your employers:
“We will fight you in this strike to the bitter
end; your money bag may beat us now; but
whether it does or not, that is not the end, it is
only the beginning of the song; in November we
will meet again at Philippi, and the strike shall
not end until, with the falchion of the Socialist
Labor Party ballot, we shall have laid you low
for all time!”
This is the message that it has been my
agreeable privilege to deliver to you in the name
of the Socialist Labor Party, and of the New




Trade Unionists or Alliance men of the land.