Bancroft, Clinton The Conspiracy of Capital HB 501 B363 1901 % " f DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Y^.i; t '. V » ■ , J • « li - 'N • ' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/conspiracyofcapi01banc The Conspiracy of Capital *t* *t* *Z* "t* "If tttttttf 4» l.. t .4.. & »4Hii By CLINTON BANCROFT. ‘£e what there may behind, I lift the veiV' (Reprinted from the Railroad Telegrapher.) ♦f»A« H f !L212 *'*■ - PRICE 2 0 c 1 1.< •< »» ^ j». ** ** inj *« »« < ii ». «« .4 4 < '*i •* !»• 4 44 44 44 j.4 4, 4 44 44 44 44 4 4 1.4 44 44 44j 4 4 j.4 44 44 44j 4. 4 44 44 44 1.4 j». 4 44 j.4 44 44 4. 4 44 44 44 44 4. '4 44 44 44 44 4 •• *4 44 4 ■4 44 ^4 4* 4, 4 44 44 44 44 4. 4j 4»j44 44 4. GIRARD. KANSAS: J. A. WAYLAND, Pubtisher. THt CONSPIRACY or CAPITAL. what there may behind, I lift the veil.'^ CLINTON BANCROFT. 1901. PUBIilSHED BY J A. WAYLAND, GIBAED, KAS. Press of Appeal to Reason, O. JAMES BUTLER 5130 University Chicago !5, Illinois CONTENTS. CHArTEK I. "llie Reign of Conflict » CHAPTER II. 1 he Reign of Cax^ital 9- CHAPTER III. 'i'he Reign of Ihireason 13- CHAPTER IV. 'i he {'a’.n^e 15 CHAPTER V. 'Hie Reign of Porce ZO CHAPTER ^'I. 'i'iie Go\ eroinent of Ownership 24 CIIAP'J'ER VII. '! lie Remedy 20 CHAPTER VIII. home Prineijiies of Indnstrial Evolution 34 CHAPTER IX. 'i i;e -Signs >re 8 THE CONSPIHACY OF CAPITAL. than three millions of men for whom there are no places, no employment, no access to anything but such cold alms as m tv be thrown them; and these, the terror of the “place-holders,” the employed, are ever increasing. Every advance of science over the forces of Nature, and of art over muscular power, every development of the organizing faculty, every aildition to the sum of human knowledge affecting m,iterial things, but adds to the number of this great concourse of permanent- ly unemployed and increases the terror of t.hc “place-holders” above them, next ready to fall into their rar.!-;s, ami intensi- fies the already great and widespread uneasiness of society in general. This is the most significant phenomenon of modern times and the most ominous of direful consequences. When the very forces that should make for social order, man’s happiness and general improvement, make for the di- rect opposites — social ruin, misery and retrogression; when increasing xvnowledge means increasing evils; when develop- ing powers and faculties mean developing despotism and op- pression; when progress means progressive poverty and deg- radation of the masses, surely it is time to change the direction of our progress and power and knowledge. What could bet- ter show the ill-adaptedness of ancient, industrial and social systems to modern conditions; najq what could more clearly demonstrate the inherent evil of those old ways of doing things and the irremedial viciousness of their effects on hu- man progress. THE EEIGN OF CAPITAL. 9 CHAPTER II. THE REIGN of CAPITAL. A fter thousands of years of historic intellectual and moral development, governmental and industrial or- ganization and material improvement, vpe find no substantial advancement in the condition of the great mass of mankind. After nineteen centuries under the light of the Golden Rule, after five centuries of planetary ex- pansion adding three-quarters of the globe to the habitable regions of civilized man, after two centuries of the greatest agitation of the rights of man and the most wonderful exten- sion of human dominion over the powers of nature and the ap- plication of them to the production of wealth, so that one man may feed a thousand; after all this, want and misery and their consequent physical and moral degradation have not decreased in intensity among the masses of the people, actual liberty has made but little progress, and the reign of cap- ital, wilder yet, and yet more pitiless, still goes on. Irrespon- sible power still exploits the masses in the only field ever worth its while — the industrial — marshals them in contending hosts, and parcels its spoil, human and other, among its favorites. The barons of commerce and trade and industry still lord it over the people, exacting service, levying tribute, and dispens- ing judgment of happiness and misery, life and death at pleas- ure. Their retinues of retainers and conscripts, royal in their multitude, would shame the feudal lords of old, nay, the kings and despots of the most slavish times. As it ever has been, labor is still the drudge of capital ownership, and the com- mon people still but the pawns of irresponsible power. Three thousand men control over half the wealth of the country — wealth that the kingdoms of the past rolled to- gether would not equal. Think of it, you men who labor, and ponder well what it means. A handful of your fellow creatures with rights no greater than those of any common man, con- trolling access to one-half the people’s means of earning a living! standing guard over one-half of the producing means 10 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. of the nation; and this the dominant half, the great monopo- lized industries, the trusts, the public corporations, that iJrac- tically have the power to tax at will the other half of our producing capital and the labor therein employed; and this other half, the subservient half, under the dirct ownership and control of another small body of men, a few hundred thou- sand or so! Think what it means, ye lovers of liberty, who are striving for greater political power for the masses! Think of it, ye philanthropists, who are striving for the up- lift of humanity! Ponder it well, ye moralists, who would purify and ennoble and broaden the lines of the multitude. The fountain of physical life owned and controlled, legally, lawfully, owned and controlled by the few! Millions with no “right” to a foot of the earth except as a few may grant it to them! Millions without even an opportunity to labor ex- cept as the few may x>ermit! ilillions dependent for food, rai- ment and shelter upon the artificial “rights” of a handful of their fellows; after that, what meaning or value have these inalienable rights of the constitution, the “right to life, lib- erty and the pursuit of happiness?” After that, what mean- ing or value has personal freedom, constitutional authority, political privilege, or moral opportunity? After that, what/ meaning or value have noble ideals, pure aspirations, or right ambitious? Stand between the multitude and their means of life, deny them the right to justice in material things, and what meaning or value have all these other rights and priv- ileges about which so much sentiment is expended in poetry and eloquence and song? Look at our national condition to- clay, and see what meaning thej' have. Individual freedom chained to industrial servitude. Constitutional authority, the tool of private capital; political privilege the mockery and shame of the people, and moral opportunity dwarfed and de- stroyed by material necessities. In the industrial world we find an industrial system, which, differing practically in no wise from that of all times past, has developed conditions relatively not better, but worse than ever before in the history of the world. For under greater moral enlightenment, it still reverses every principle of justice, equity and morality. Xow, as formerly, it is un- profitabie to work. To labor is still the one thing men can- not afford to do. The God-made land is still abandoned for THE KEIGN OF CAPITAL. 11 man-made cities. Men crowd to the non-productive occupa- tions. The trade of the parasite is the one most honored and profitable; the trade of the producer, the most despised and unrewarded. Still labor biiilds the palace and lives in the hovel, still weaves the silk and wears the rags, still pro- duces the food of life and luxury and is forbidden to x^artake. Still it plows and sows and reaps, and still the grain disap- pears from its grasp. The primal injustice still x^revails. Past it the world may not iJroceed. In every field of social en- deavor progress is but as a treadmill until this fundamental wrong is righted. The rights of labor are foundation rights upon which alone social order exists. Evil there is evil ev- erywhere, and conflict there is conflict throughout the realm of organized mankind. In the political world the same mad carnival of evil there- fore prevails that exists in the industrial. In its condition we see the most notable illustration of the truth of our x^rimal law — upon justice in material things must justice in all things else at last depend. Its violation is the fundamental wrong; and no social, political or moral ideals can ever be built ux^on such a wrong. Evil here is corruption of the fountain, and its waters can never be purified bj^ any application of rights, priv- ileges, duties or ideals further down the stream. Our attempt to engraft political democracy upon an indus- trial despotism, to exercise political rights before possessing industrial rights, to inaugurate a just political government be- fore a just industrial government, to make political power re- sponsible to the people and leave industrial power to any ir- responsible hand that may be able to grasp it, to have political freedom flow from industrial dependence, has been but to poi- son good with evil, to expect truth from error, to hope incor- Tuption from corruption. Poxnilar politics is but the political statement of industrial conditions, and in the terms of that statement it is anarchy where it is not already despotism, and corrupting conflict where there is not already foiil subjuga- tion. Popular government does not exist. Suffrage is our mockery and shame. The people are practically as powerless to effect their will in government in any vital matter as are the subjects of the czar or the sultan. Capital-ownership rules — rules as it always has done, as it always will do; rules in the hands of the few, by force or by fraud as it necessarily 12 HE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. must. With us as yet, it rules by fraud, by indirection, cor- ruption and downright defiance of statutes and constitutions. From hustings to office, all is a wdld orgie of deceit, trickerj’, debauchery and corruption. Parties, platforms, suffrage — are the baubles of the people and keep them amused. Courts, coun- cils, legislatures, congresses and executives, ostensibly from the people, are but the outward show; the real power that gov- erns is the ownership of organized capital. For the owner- ship of organized capital controls the production and distribu- tion of material things and control of these means control of life, distribution of affluence, competence and poverty. Rule it must, necessarily and iuevitablj’, by direction or indirection, by force or fraud, if the few are the owners. And when fraud fails, force is ever ready at its hand, and force is to be forthcoming- withal. It needs must come. Indirection fails at last. Poverty grows. The army of the defrauded multix^lies. The “monster wdth the manj- heads” must be con- trolled, and ownership is marshalling “authority” to enforce the needed control. The signs are many and certain. Consti- tutions and statutes and court decrees are even now being stealthily and rapidly shaped to that end. Authority already well knows its master. The great labor centers today are practically under marshal surveillance. No pretext is left un- used to increase the army and navy, to build and equip arms and ordnance plants, to enlarge barracks and to make things safe generally. The means of transportation and communi- cation are under especial charge. Despotic censorship is a living fact. Freedom of speech is already curtailed. The free press no longer exists. Industrial coercion has been joined to fraud, and open force now eomes in the train of both. The political must ever come to the level of the industrial. Con- flict and despotism in industry means despotism and chaos in government. Imperialism has succeeded democracy. THE REIGN OF UNREASON CHAPTER III. THE REIGN OF UNREASON. A S the industrial shapes the political, so does it mold the moral status of a people. No sublime truths, no regenerating principles, no high ideals can make any great practical progress nor effect any general con- crete results among industrial dependents, taking them in mass and as a whole. The ground current is in the wrong direction. Injustice in material things forbids development ,in every faculty of our being. It nullifies all right effort. Erected into a system and molded into a law, its influence is so deadly and paralyzing as fo desfroy all practical understand- ing and appreciation of the highest ethical principles. So .erosive and corrupting is its power, that after two thousand years of agitation, admiration and worship of the most pro- found ethical ideal in the universe, its most enlightened and .conscientious devotees among its priests and apostles as well .as laymen, calmly and unquestioningly accept conditions and conform to systems which not only directly destroy and make impossible that ideal, but which daily and hourly results in the most appalling and far-reaching misery, inhumanity and crime. Nay, not only do they accept and conform to such con- ditions and systems, but they actively defend, conserve and .extend them. Glorifjdng service, they dishonor it in pracvlce; j)reaching brotherhood, they practice mastership; deifying jlove, they daily profane it in their lives. Coming up from the realm of material things the same reign of conflict and chaos prevails in the moral world as in the industrial. Professions rand practice clash. Hypocrisy holds high revel. The people draw aloof from the ehurch. The anchors of society and so- ecial life drag. A noted writer, summing up the situation, says: “The note of desperation sounds through the tumult of .our lives in the twilight of the waning centnry as a prophecy of the coming night. Everywhere we observe this spirit trans- lating itself into acts and phenomena. In religion, the repair of creeds outworn, the resnrrection of the crude and discarded •beliefs of antiquity and the piecing of new ones from the old. 14 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. fn politics, the spirit of anarchism, corruption and despotism^ In industry, monstrous animosities and destructive struggles between labor and capital; and through it 5.11, wild aspirations and insane reaching's for impossible advantage. In literature. It manifests itself in realism; in art, impressionalism; and in both as much else as is false and extravagant as it is possible to name. In morals it has gone to the length of den.^ iug the ex- pediency of morality — everywhere a wild welter of action, of thought and a cutting loose from all that is conservative and restraining — a reign of unreason.” And yet the earth is fair to look ui^on and exceeding gen- erous to man. Her springtime and harvest never faileth. Her stores are inexhaustible. The machinerj' and science of man applied to nature and its i^roducts may in three months pro- duce enough to supplj^ all abvindantlj' for a year. With a modi- cum of the labor now expended and wasted, each could be fur- nished with a mansion, be arrayed in “purple and fine linen and feast sumptuously every day.” Nay, it is passing easy to pro- vide all royally and to repletion with all things reasonable to be desired; so easy, that even now, illy organized as indus- try is today, a syndicate of trusts might well undertake and guarantee to do all this and do it well; and some day it wTll be so done; but the syndicate will be the syndicate of the peo- ple and its operation will be called government. But if so easy why the awful condition of today? Why is labor that produces the bread, the raiment and the shelter for the world, hungry, naked and paying rent for the privilege of occui^ying a place on the earth, while those who labor not, have all? Why turns the toiler cold with the fear of losing his job, and w’hy does his heart stand still with terror when he has lost it? Why the nameless dread of tomorrow in a mil- lion hearts today? AMiy the glutted markets and barns burst- ing with i^lenty, and the i^inched, ill-fed and starving multi- tude? fMiy the warehouse piled to the roof, and the ragged, patched, ill-clothed and ill-provided myriads of the earth? Why the abandoned farms, the silent factories and mills with their wonderful machinery, the closed mines, the idle hands seeking vainly and ititifully for work, and so many in want and in the shadow of it? Why the unlimited resources of nature, the un- limited power of man to produce, his unlimited capacity to use and his miserably limited power to buy? Why the luxury. THE EEIGN OF UNEEASON. 15 . the leisure and the ownership of the earth to the parasite class which produces nothing, and the drudgery and slavery and the emptiness of poverty to the laboring class which produces ev- erything? Whj'' all this in industry, and in politics, corrup- tion, coercion and threatened force; and in religion, hypocrisy and the practical perversion and profanation of a^l high ideals? Why the strife among them all? Why everywhere this veiled cannabalism, this irony of barbarism, this refinement of tor- ture called Christian civilization? Why throughoiit the body social, the natural antithesis of warring atoms, does this in- sensate reign of insane conflict rage? The cause has been in- dicated, we will examine it a little more in detail. 16 THE CONSPIEACY OE CAPITAL. CHAPTEPi IV. THE CAUSE. A S we have seen, the condition that prevails throughout the world, in every department of social ac- tivity is one of conflict, strife and struggle, man wdth man, man with combinations of men and combination wdth combination; and everywhere hu- manity the victim. And yet man is a social creature. Naturally he delights in the society of his fellows. Instinct and reason and the habit of ages incline him to association with his kind. He realizes the mighty potentialities of such as- sociation in its material advantage, its mental development, its moral uplift. And yet, neither instinct nor reason nor the habit of aeons, have sufliced to create a rightly organized so- ciety nor a just association of men. Indeed, the result is the antithesis of society; for society and conflict are opposites, and an association of hostile and warring atoms 15 a perver- sion of the term. What is the cause of this incredible and unnatural condi- tion? There are a thousand causes, results that have in turn become causes and pile yet higher the heap of human miseries and perplexities, but at the bottom there is but one cause. One man believes it is intemperance, another that it is money, another monopoly, another competition, another politics, another taxes, and each of these Is subdivided into many ditfering particulars carrying with them each its greater or lesser hosts of disciples and adherents. All are causes, all more or less fertile of evil, yielding their hundred or their thousand-fold to the diseased atoms of society. But the underlying cause, of which all others are but manifesta- tions or forms, the fundamental, ultimate cause in its practical, concrete aspects, so far as the outward man is concerned, may be Anally traced in every instance to the violation of the primal law of social order — upon justice in material things must jus- tice in all things else at last depend. In its last analysis of course, the moving cause to the viola- THE CAUSE. n tiou of this law must be sought in the mental state of the in- dividuals who go to make up society. That is to say — it is man himself, his savagei-y, his selfishness, his incompetence, in all their forms of envy, distrust, malice, avarice and ambi- tion that the final inward cause of all individual and social evil will be found to exist. But, as in the beginning, the first issue of these selfish and savage qualities upon the surface of things was in attacks upon the material rights of others, the right to place, to possession, to the products of labor; and as the prevailing traditions, laws, customs and systems of today are largely and practically founded upon the material conditions finally resulting from such attacks, so it may be truly said, that practically the fundamental cause of the continued reign of conflict among, meu, with the constant and almost irresistible tendency of society to revert to anarchy and chaos, may be found only as stated, in the violation of the foundation law of rightly or- ganized society — material justice. Once attention is directed to this vital truth and considera- tion is given to the fact that a denial of justice in material things strikes at the base of all human activity, the physical, life, the material body, upon whose full and free development must depend 1«he right development of all the powers and qual- ities of soul itself; once these truths and their deep and awful meaning are brought home to us, we stand appalled at the prospect before mankind; for upon the violation of this prime social law has been reared the whole super-structure of so- ciety — the laws, the customs, the systems, and organizations of men, industrial, social, political and religious. Think of it, you who have the cause of humanity at heart, who hope for our people a high destiny, who love your country, your friends and your families; consider it well and cease to wonder at the mysterious virus that poisons every channel of social life, develops its deadly disease in every organiza- tion of man, and carries its awful contagion to the very altar of science and religion. Eeflect upon it — that every organiza- tion and activity m society has a direct physical dependence upon industrial organization and that everywhere we find in- dustrial organization, founded upon systems that violate the fundamental social law of material justice; reflect further that this violation is a direct and ever-present threat made V is 'The conspiracy of capital. daily and holiidy by every man against the phy.sical life and well-being of every other man — a threat against which each must daily and hourly guard himself, and is it any wonder that society is in a state of turmoil and conflict, that power is per- verted to selflsh ends, knowledge prostituted to lowest pur- poses, and religion made but the cloak of hypocrisy. Is it any wonder that organization ends in despotism or dissolution; progress in degeneration and reform in disappointment. Is It any wonder that neighbor is arrayed against neighbor, friend against friend, and brother against brother, and that love is an unknown power in the world. Is not the wonder Pftther that society exists, and that such words as neighbor, friendship, brotherhood and love are known among men. tVith such a rotting evil at the heart of social life, rottenness and evil must of necessity characterize every organ and function, and disease and distortion and degeneration and deformity must everywhere abound. Here at the base of material life lies the apparent cause of causes of evil among organized men. The truth of it is sub- ject to the most satisfjdng demonstration. That the cause of conflict and all its train of evils lies in a reversal of the basic principle of association, in a violation of the primal law of so- cial order — justice in material things; that this is the founda- tion law of laws among men may best be shown by supposing a state in which the law is observed and justice in material things prevails. Suppose that to every man is restored his in- alienable right to a place upon the earth, to every one denied the wrong of a larger holding than he can use, to every one is granted the products of his labor unsealed in exchange by profit, and undiminished in distribution by rent, interest or unjust taxes; suppose that in distribution and exchange the fraud of money as a thing of intrinsic value is suppressed and money as the representative of an earned value deposited with society, or an order on labor for labor rendered is established among mem Suppose that to every one is given the access to the means of production without the intermediary of a rent- exacting owner or a profit demanding employer. Suppose in short, that the right and opportunity of robbery and theft were stricken from the systems and conventions of men, what meaning then would oppression have anywhere in government or industry'? tVhat the occasion of conflict in production, of THE CAUSE. 19 con ^j^tion in politics and hypocrisy in religion, of priae in so- ciety? What motive to the perversion of power, the prostitu- tion of intellect of the distortion of oxiportunity ? In such a state of society what significance could attach to such words as despot, oppressor, master, slave? What could poverty mean, exceiit of mind and character? What could opulence signify, except the accretions of industrj^ and providence? Let there be given jmu justice in your relations to material things, and all power of opiiression over you is effectually destroj'ed. Practically, you cannot be oppressed, except you be first denied some material, industrial right. Here is the be- ginning of despotism; here the pregnant source of all social evil; here the ultimate practical cause of all the poverty, the- degradation, the corruption and oppression of the world. Let there be inaugurated an industrial system that will give each, his rights in relation to material things, and right and justice- in every other relation of life will inevitably follow. Make safe the foundatipn of physical life, and the mental and moral and spiritual will take care of themselves. Get back to the primal law — thou shalt not sweat by proxy. Hear your industrial systems upon it, and the despotism and op- pressions of kingcraft and moneycraft and priestcraft will dis- appear before its power forever. Upon its violation the great evils of the world depend. The world is mad because of this one g-reat broken law. Its unending convmlsions and conflicts are but the ceaseless paroxysms of this insanity. How has it happened that this lunacy of man, the viola- tion of the fundamental principle of associated life, has be- come incorporated into the very fabric of his laws and customs and systems of government and industry? How has it been brought about that we have a state of society so based upon a reversal of law, so contrary to all principles of order and or- ganization, and therefore so distorted, diseased and unnat- ural? 20 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTEK V. THE EEIGN OF FOECE. M WAY back in the beginning of time it Degan. 'When, reason first rose above instinct mankind came to the- Jj \\ parting of the way. There the road forked. Form- ^ erly man must needs conform to natural law, now he could veer from it, but at his peril. He chose to veer. Eeason at first was weak and narrowly sel- fish. It displayed itself most in selfish cunning. Man measured himself against man. The one with the 'fig- gest muscle noted the fact. Two large ideas kinuied in the dark recesses of his brain — power and opportunity — and a low mentality prompted their immediate use to selfish ends. His instinct was towards the society of his fellows, but his first act was to violate the foundation law of association. He used his power and opportunity to take by force that which of right was his weaker brother’s, his place upon the earth or the products of his labor. Then the strong went forth to con- quer, and the age-long conflict began. So man in his first at- tempt to improve upon nature took the wrong fork of the road. Eight to material things belonged to him who had the physical power to seize and hold them. Force ruled the world. Not right, but the physical power of the individual determined ownership, and ownership acknowledges responsibility to naught but greater force. Custom now reared its mighty form, and through the force of habit the habit of force became the custom, and thus, with the material conditions it had wrought, was invested with the semblance of right. Still bear- ing with it these material conditions wTought by force, custom was erected into government, and government through its statutes and decrees confirmed the customs and conditions brought about by force with no reference to their righteous- ness or natural justice. Thus the struggle of force-wrought ownership w*as outwardly transferred from the immediate field of industry to that of government, and here for ages the conflict has raged. YTio should control the machinery of govern- THE EEIGN OF FOECE. 21 ment and througli it maintain for themselves the material conditions inherited through custom from physical power? The progress of human development may be easily traced through the gradual extension of this political or government- al control to an ever increasing number of individuals. From despot to barons; from barons to a yet wider nobil- ity; from them, in ever-increasing circles, it has come very close to the people. But always to all the object of getting within the stronghold of power has been, not to right the first great fundamental wrong, but to share in the material benefits arising therefrom, and which the first evil use of force had secured to itself and transmitted through government, custom and law to whomsoever by these means could gain possession of them. Even today, to “the people” themselves the great object of suffrage and control of government is not to effect thereby a return to first principles, but in the main the hope of each is to sheer off from himself the evil effects of its viola- tion or mayhap to secure to himself a share in the plundered rights of his brother. From this meager tracing perhaps the reader may be able to see how it has come about that the whole social structure from industrial to political is based upon a broken law of na- ture, upon the violation of the essential principle of physical well-being, and therefore of social order and mental and eth- ical development; how the first strong man by force deprived his weaker fellows of their rights in relation to materi.nl tl ings and appropriated to himself the products of their labor by means of the “ownership” thus acquired; how he sought to strengthen and perpetuate the condition thus brought ab-nit through the forms of government, that is through the con- ventions of himself and others like him, erected in the laws of custom and the decrees of government; and how thus ihe at- tention of men was diverted from the real wrong and the. struggle among them transferred from the common field of material things to the governmental and political. It may thus be easily seen how custom and law and gu\ crnment have be- come not the conservation of justice and right;, but the crj’s- talizations of the wrongs of violence upon prime material rights, the condensations of the injustice of force, verita^'le towers of physical power erected about the field of industry 22 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. for its safer holding and control by those who could occupy them. And being erected by force to conserve the effects of violence, a real change of occupants has never yet been effected save by the power that created them — force. And though the people have been called repeatedly to oust one set and to put in another, the result has alwaj^s been for them simplj’' a change of masters. But though violated industrial (or material) right had government anid custom erected over it to perpetuate its vio- lation, and thus became obscured from the common view by these superstructures of force; though for thousands of years mankind has traveled the wrong fork of the road through blood and conflict and misery and degradation, apparentlj' farther and farther from tbe right objective — true social life, yet really it has been veering around to its right destiny, slow- ly, slowly, like the ship that rounds the earth to Its point of de- parture, and whose voyagers in amazement and joy behold with new eyes and a new understanding the land of their nativity. Slowly, slowly as the day breaketh, the vision of men have pen- etrated the obscurations of governments and systems and cus- toms founded on force and violence, and gradually the true cause of evil among them has been unfolding itself to their view. Hai^pily with the developing of their vision and the broadening of their comprehension, there has been impressed upon their understanding tw'o lessons, learned at last through the ages of conflict and oppression, and now' in these modern times vitally necessary to that readjustment of society to its natural law wdiieh must take place — the lessons of Organiza- tion and Eesponsibility of Power, both learned in the strife over government. When the first strong men in the beginning by violence achieved owmership over the rights of others in their relation to material things, and sought to crystallize the wrong into the form of government, each found it necessary to gather immediately about him other men only less strong than him- self. These in the course of time saw that their combined strength was greater than that of their chief, and coveting the benefits and privileges his “ownership” conferred, they or- ganized to depose him and parcel out among themselves his “possessions.” About these others gathered, sa\v their opportunity and THE EEIGN OF FORCE. 23 combined; and the circle of dominant “ownership” gradually widening with the process, finally reached a number too great to give each a place in the governing body, and the idea was born of making the exercise of power responsible. Thus as the lesson of organization was extended to greater numbers of men, the idea of Responsibility of Power extended with it. And for the last few hundred years the conflicts of men have been evolved from these two ideas. Wars and revolutions have revolved about them. Before them thrones trembled and crumbled and from them republics were born. These ideas are founded upon the two great social principles that human na- ture cannot be trusted with irresponsible power, and that power cannot be made responsible except through organiza- tion. But for ages these costly truths learned in the dire school of experience, were confined in their application to the political world. Today, civilized men will not trust men to rule over them politically wdth irresponsible i^ower. Offices are made elective. An intricate system of checks are idaced upon those in authority. In theory nothing is left to indi\idual caprice and but little to individual discretion. Man cannot be trusted with irresponsible power; and only through organization can re- sponsibility be fixed and power rightly applied. These great ideas and principles have been clearly evolved from the age- long political struggles of the past. Graduatly as the genius of organization has crept over into the industrial world, the idea of responsible power has crept after it like a shadow; and lolwith them both has come the wonderful revelation that upon the industrial depends the political, and that government has no meaning except as it affects the rights of men in their rela- tion to material things, and that upon justice in material things must justice in all things else at last depend. 24 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTER VI. THE GOVERNMENT OF OWNERSHIP. HE condition of society today throug-hout the civil- I ized world is one of universal conflict, constantly j and necessarily tending to complete anarchy on the one hand, or to despotism on the other, and in either case to disintegration, degeneration and destruction of the social organism in question. In the political world, among na- tions, this condition of perpetual social conflict flnds its expressions in actual warfare, or in mighty preparations for war, or in hostile legislation, nation against nation, people against people, race against race. Christendom is an armed camp. The earth bristles with bayonets; the sea with the mightiest engines of war. In the industrial world, this universal condition finds its expression in a system denominated competitive, whose chief characteristic is a hostility of individual interests in both production and distribution that contravenes all social law, and rims counter to the very end and aim of social organiza- tion. This condition was brought about in the first instance by brute physical force, brought to bear upon the rights of weaker men in their relations to material things, whereby force as- serted ownership over labor itself, or over access to the means of production (whether natural or soeial) through which alone labor could be utilized. To render this forceful “ownership” more safely perma- nent, custom and law and government were finally builded upon it and about it, and thus these mighty conserving influ- ences and moulding agencies which naturally would have con- tributed to justice and the progress and well-being of society, have been largely but the ministers of injustice and the per- petuators of conflict. Stricken thus at its very foundation, the whole super- structure of society has been throughout all time the weak and tottering and disintegrating thing that it is today. And THE GOVEENMENT OF OWNEESHIP. 25 the people, deprived o± their fundamental, material rights, rights upon which their very physical life and well-being de- pend, struggle in vain for any other rights, social, political, intellectual, or moral, until these foundation rights are first regained. This it is that causes Pror. Huxley to say, “Even the best of modern civilization appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability.” This it is that causes one of the most profound economic philosophers to say, “Every im- provement of civilization but cherishes the want of today, and prepares the re%'olution for tomorrow.” Or, as a famous poet has paraphrased it, “ The car of human improvement, rushing through civilization, crushes beneath its wheels all who do not grapple to it, and in the awful struggle, only the few may grasp it.” To understand fully the significance of the remedy herein to be set forth, it is necessary to keep well in mind the suc- cession of cause and effect that has led up to the present “sys- tem.” It is necessary to remember that the whole of our so- cial system is grounded upon a continuous violation of the pri- mal law of social order, material (industrial) justice; that this violation was first affected by superior physical force assert- ing an unjust ownership over men in their relation to material things, and that this assertion of force precipitated a conflict that has never ceased, because upon and about the ownership thus affected, all social, governmental and industrial systems have been built. Or to state it more succinetly, the present system of conflict and despotism prevails because in ancient times force determined ownership, and this violent and un- just ownership, to perpetuate itself, created, molded and con- trolled government, and that through the forms of govern- ment, law and custom so created and controlled, peaceful succession to this “ownership” has ever since alone been possible. It is, therefore, evident that “ownership” even thus peace- fully acquired is but a perpetuation of the original injustice upon which it was founded, and which can never be righted ex- cept by the voluntary surrender of such ownership, however ac- quired, and the return of his ancient and primal birthright to each individual, however “weak” or “incompetent” he may be. 26 THE COHSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. Prom the foregoing' chain of cause and effect, as ■svell a^ from the very reason and nature of things this conclusion may be deduced and received as an axiom, that ownership necessa- rily creates government and controls it. If justice determines that “ownership,” then justice will create and control the gov- ernment; if force and violence is at the foundation of owner- ship, then must force and violence create, characterize and con- trol the forms of law and government. Ownership determines control. From this inexorable law there can be no departure. Ownership is diverted from individual to individual, from class to class; but control is never diverted from ownership. It always follows it as the needle follows the pole. From this unchanging law may be deduced another, equal- ly a social axiom — that the g'rasp of ownership upon control (government) can never be broken except by force, and never permanently even by force, except ownership is itself trans- ferred. The truth of this has been absolutely and literally demonstrated in modern times, where whenever force has been removed, we have seen ownership openly spring to its rightful and inevitable place as the true governing power. This ac- counts for the fruitless revolutions of the past, the disap- pointments of popular uprisings in all the ages of the world, and the emptiness of all efforts at peaceful reform today that aim only at control, and not likewise at ownership. Xay, if the peaceful effort aims at o\vnership through control, and not at control through ownership, it will also fail. It necessarily must fail; for ownership has never yet, and it never will, peacefully let go its grasp upon control. Practically it never can, for to do so is virtually to destroy itself. The attention of the reader is, therefore, dra’s^n again to this truth, for it has a mighty bearing upon the problem before us — that the grasp of ownership upon control (government) can never be jjrokcn except bj^ force. The grasp of individuals upon ownership may be broken by peaceful means, changed from individual to individual, from class to class, through the forms of custom and the law, i. e., government; but the grasp of ownership upon these forms (government) can not be broken except by revo- lution. There is a distinction here v^-ith a difference, most po- tential in its possible effects upon the history of the future, and students of economics and politics should ponder it well. It means that all peaceful attacks on ownership through L’HE GOVERNMENT OF O^YNEESHIP. 27 government are futile. It means that “government ownership” can only be effected by revolution, by the physical force of arms. It means that as against the government of ownership, all other government is meaningless; that as against it, all degrees and kinds of “poj)ular” ownership of government through “suffrage,” ' representation,” “initiative and referen- dum,” constitutions, statutes, and decrees of courts are abso- lutely valueless and imxiotent to all practical intents and pur- poses. It means that the government of ownership must ne- cessarily prevail against everything but superior force, and bows to it only when and so long as it is actively exerted against it. It means that the industrial condition is the deter- mining factor throughout the whole social organism, molding, informing, and characterizing its every function and organ. In more ancient times, government and ownership were united in the same person. The desj)otic, political chief was the actual owner of the land and the labor of his corner of the earth. Therefore, when ownership changed hands, as it fre- quently did, and always by force (I speak not of descent,) gov- ernment necessarily went with it. In less ancient times, the tw'o were always so intimately blended with the personnel of government, that the popular mind did not and could not dis- tinguish between them; and still when ownership “changed hands,” as it still frequently did, always still by the power of physical force, government still likewise went with it. In those times, attacks on ownership were always made through at- tacks on the “government” (official power), because they were actually or virtually united in the same person; but because of the “pomp and circumstance” of government, it was al- ways identified in the popular mind as the source of power, and to the people, ownership appeared to depend upon and follow it. Hence it was as we have already noted, that the “conflict” among men waged fiercest ostensibly about govern- ment, and that the pivotal ownership underneath has been lost to popular view. Hence it is also, that in modern times, the efforts of the “people” have been mainly directed to political relief, to governmental “changes,” not with intent to reorganize ownership on the new basis of industrial justice, but simply to readjust government to a slightly different position on the old basis of material injustice, thinking thereby to shift op- 28 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. pression to other shoulders, or to gain some of its “benefits” to themselves. It is only in these iast days of the closing century that the people have begun to awake to the stern fact that oppression may not be so shifted, nor benefits to them be so gained. As in the past, the people have found that a change in the personnel of “government” v/as at most but a change of masters; so in these later times, we are beginning to discover that a change of administration, the triumph or defeat of a party, the enactment or repeal of a law, nay, the possession of all political rights, and the establishment of constitutional and representative political government with the unjust basis of ownership left undisturbed, have absolutely no beneficial ef- fect upon the condition of the mass of the people, who if not in a worse state, are exactly as they were before. In short, we are just beginning to discover that there is no escape from the government of ownership, except in wresting ownership itself from the possession of the usurping and irresponsible individual, and consigning it to its rightful heritor, labor, and by mutual consent making the administration of its power responsible to the general societj'. In such action alone lies the remedy. How may this be done? In the right answer lies the true solution of the industrial and governmental problem. THE EEMEDY. 29 CHAPTER VII THE EEMEDY kO staxv. a condition and define the cause is to i^aicate the nature of the remedy. To those who have fol- lowed the course of reasoning herein pursued, and who accept it as true, it will already have appeared that the remedy must be essentially industrial and not politi- caE The political will have its place in the process; but it will be auxiliary and ancilliary, sujtplementary and completing to the industrial, following, and not preceding it. Whether there was ever a time in the history of our coun- try when the readjustment of ownership to a basis of material justice through social responsibility might have been effected wholly by political means, it is perhaps not now profitable to discuss. That it was not so done, is perhaps conclusive that practically speaking it could not have been. Whether it can yet be so effected, is another question to which attention will for a moment be directed; peacefullj'^ effected, of course, I mean, for with war and revolution this scribe in this work has noth- ing to do. That it cannot be so done would seem to follow from those axioms of social law that ownership creates and controls government, and that the grasp of ownership upon government can never be broken except by force. That the non-owners can never peacefully effect it by po- litical means would to an ordinary observer appear a foregone conclusion, for to such it is a very evident fact that practically the “right” of suffrage is to this class but permissive and de- pendent for its free exercise upon the power of their “owners,” virtually, and as much so for all vital, practical purposes as such a “right” would have been to the chattel slaves with ref- erence to their master’s ownership. Whether or not the large constituency of small “owners” may be able to combine against the large owners and their vast army of servants and retainers, and one by one reduce their industrial holdings to “public” ownership, is the only question. That this has been their policy and method in the 30 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. past must be admitted, but force was always then the suc- cessful weapon. May the ballot now effect in their hands what formerly re- quired the sword. Prom the indications of the times, there is no doubt that such an attempt will soon be put to an issue. That it will fail, there are many reasons for confident belief. First, because the grasi) of ownership on government that is vital and master- ful today is the grasp of the large owners. Control is in tbeir hands; control not only of the machinery of politics and gov- ernment, but of agitation and education so necessary to a revolutionary exercise of the ballot, and the indications are that in accordance wdth our axiom, they have already detcrminiri never to release this grasp peacefully; second, the small cwn- ership, though large in numbers, is not so reall3', for their own- ership is virtually only apparent, as may be seen bj' the power of political coercion, w^hich, through trade, commerce and finance, the large owmership is enabled to exercise over so large a part of them; third, and last but not least, there has alreac'\' been developed an ownership class-consciousness so to speak, which must necessarily still further divide the partj' of small owmers and tend to prevent united, consistent and harmonious action. There are other reasons; but perhaps these are enough to give serious pause to the hope of peaceful, political relief alone. For he who can believe that an3r class or part3' loaded with these impedimentia can break through the obstacles of part3' politics, bossism, corruption, indirection and betra3'al. thence thronuh the difficulties of the divided i^owers of government — legA’a- tive, executive and judicial — all of which for effective action must be concurrently possessed, and finalh’ through consti- tutions, amendments and interpretations, and by these means at last successfully reorganize industries to a basis of jiublic commonw'ealth — ^he, I say, wffio can believe all this, must in- deed be a hopeful creature. There may be those who will take issue with the statement of fact that large ownership has alread3' determined never to release its grasp of control (government) peacefulhg but in the presidential campaign of ’ 96 , where for the first time in anj^ open and extended way, the lines of hostile conflict were drawm betw'een the small owners and the large, those who THE REMEDY. 31 were in touch with plutocracy know that such a determination, implacable, imjuelding, and with the power to enforce its will, rode impudent and ill-disguised through all that masque of party contest. Its threat was all but publicly and officially made, and its purt)ose shown but with small pretense of con- cealment. That it still exists, always necessarily has and will, the economically well-informed have never attempted to deny. The fact is, that in piopular government, politics and party strife are but the veiled contests among- the brotherhood of ownership. As long as those contests are only for special priv- ilege and passing advantage, with always a chance of reversal, all is well. But let the contest involve the issue of ownership itself, by the one party or the other, and at once the good hu- mor of the gamblers disappears. It at once means rebellion, revolution, internecine war, bloody and to the hilt of the knife. That was tried once in this country on slave-owmership, and the mightiest civil war of history was f>recipitated. Try it on capital-ownership, and the “rebellion” of ’61 will go down to second place in the history of wars. The cold truth is, that under present industrial conditions, suffrage is but a bau- ble to keep the “people” quiet, and which they are “free” to use so long only as they threaten no vital danger to the govern- ment of ownership; and the sooner the small owner and non- owner come to understand that, the better for them and their children and all mankind. Xo, the peaceful application of the remedy will not be effected wholly, nor even mainly, by political effort. The storm of conflict that for ages rag'ed about “govern- ment” ostensibly per se has long since passed to another, and the only real j)oint of interest to mankind, MTien the people secured the right of ballot, then to all practical intents and purposes the j)olitical conflict ceased. Political government has never meant anything- to the people except a means of mak- ing- individual plwsical power responsible to society. This flower being the one which first violated the primal social law, it was natural and right that it should be the first to be re- strained. But when the ballot was gained, and public posi- tions, originally gained and held by physical force, were made resfjonsible to the people, the political battle was virtually ended; methods of elpcoion, legislation and execution are but matters of detail. The principle has been won; for it is now 32 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. universally conceded that physical force and all that naturally and obviously represents it in society, must be made responsi- ble to society. To attempt to use the ballot to readjust the basis of own- ership is very natural but a very serious error. The ballot is only an agreed-upon method of making force responsible. So- ciety has never so agreed in reference to ownership. It never will, for irresponsible ownership will never peaceably so con- sent. But you will remind me that I have said that owner- ship controls government, and therefore you will say that the people’s victory over government was also a victory over owner- ship. Not so, for at the time that victory was won, the person- nel of ownership was wholly (bj^ convention) and largelj' in fact dis-united from the personnel of government. That is to say, ownership had then already come to rule, as it does now, by indirection and not direction, and the only thing .-,et- tled by the winning of the ballot was the responsible exercise of force. I must remind you, too, that the ballot was not won by the ballot, it was not won by peaceful means, but bj' force battling against force; the organized force of the many weak against the organized force of the few strong, or the few that originally represented superior strength; the force of the peo- ple organized with a view of contesting irresponsible force, organized with a view of perpetuating itself in official power, and after victory won making the whole responsible. Political government, therefore, represents only the con- trol of irresponsible force; and modern ownership, the off- spring of the latter, having repudiated its father now that suc- cession could be effected by peaceful means, was the principal factor in his overthrow, and now keeps his cunning grasp upon the new associate ■Ruth the double purpose of seeing to it that the control of his deposed father is etfectual, and that the neo- phyte does not disturb his possessions. Or rather, perhaps, it were more nearly the truth to say that in its latest analysis and in fact the victory of suffrage was not exactly a victory of the “people” after all. It was but the culmination of the title of ownership that, from the beginning of the estab- lishment of government and its forms of succession, had been spreading in larger and larger circles from the despot to- wards the people. As ownership spread to these larger circles THE EEMEDY. 33 the potentialities of government moved ndth it, and each promptly organized to depose the force still officially repre- sented by the old circle and enthroned its own, making it re- sponsible to its circle alone; and when popular suffrage was obtained, it was but a method of announcing to the world that ownership had reached a circle of holders so large as to embrace a large majority of the people, and it was then nat- urally thought because the force then enthroned and made responsible, represented so numerous a constituency that the question of the responsibility of power was forever settled. Under ancient conditions such would probably have been the case; but unfortunately for such a result, just at the time that ownership had reached its last and widest circle of constituent holders, the modern facilities and opportunities of industrial organization sprang into being and the tide of ownership was turned. Faster and faster its circle again con- tracts; faster and faster it flows from the people and faster and faster it ebbs away toward the despot, and the people are realizing that political privilege without ownership means nothing. That without it, suffrage is but the form of freedom without its substance, and the ballot but a bauble with the power to effect nothing. But though it is not through the exercise of political pow- ers that relief must come, yet it is to the lesson learned in the political struggle and to faculties and powers therein first developed and nourished, that we must look for the methods by w'hich relief must be effected. We have already seen how' in the struggle for the owner- ship of government, as the circle of aspirants widened from about the single despot to larger and larger bodies of men, the faculty of organization was developed and its power more clearly apprehended. Also how, as the number of sharers in control grew and the impossibility of the personal participa- tion of all was finally made manifest, the idea of responsible administration of power was born and made a determining fac- tor in the final solution of the political problem. It is these lessons that must be learned anew by the peo- ple in their application to industrial ownership. The responsible administration of industrial power must be the slogan of the new crusade for the people’s rights, and it can only be realized through industrial organization. THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTEK VIII. SOME PEINCIPLES OF IXDUSTEIAL EVOLUTION. KGANIZATION for ownership, collective and respon- little more tolerable servitude. Organization for labor ownership in the various trades and industries, mutuallj' resj)onsible to each other and the pub- lic for uniform oj)eration according to agreed upon principles — this will be the objective of the new order. Nothing less will be accepted by it excei>t as means 'to this one great aim. We have seen that organized ownership is the i^ower that dominates societj% and, excepting force, it is the power that always has and alwaj^s will dominate. Its materialistic hand controls, not only government and industry, but, whenever the status quo upon which it is based is threatened bj' either in- tellect or morals, these, too, feel the power of its omnipres- ent and omnipotent grasp. Vi'e have seen that, necessarily and ine\-itably, this is sor for the ownership of that uiJon which physical life depends means the control of everything and all that depends on phy- sical life. Effective power, then, today practicallj' depends on the ownership of the j)roducing means — land and machinery of industi’3^ In the beginning this ownership depended on i^ower, i. e., phj'sical force, and we have alreadj' related how force, in order to make firmer the “ownership” of the “rights” ravished from others in violation of the primal law of social life, estab- lished government, and through it, such forms of possession and succession as were best designed to 'perpetuate the results of the original violation. How the reign of conflict thence arose, and wage and chattel slaverj^ and competition and the despot- ism of capital became engrafted into the customs and systems of society we know. And we know how in the course of time through the forms of succession referred to, principally those sible, will be the slogan of the New Order of Labor that is to succeed the many la.bor orders of today, or- ganized only for a little less unstable tenantry and a SOME PRINCIPLES OF INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 35 •of trade and commerce, ownership was gradually extended to others than those for whom authority designed it, and these possessing the substance of x^ower without its form, organized from time to time to secure it, and, having done so, x^roceeded to share with the ‘"recognized” classes the “honors, immunities and privileges” belonging thereto, but with never any thought of readjusting ownership to a basis of fundamental justice. Even in the domain of force, since government has become an established institution among men, there has never been a successful revolution not based on some claim' of ownership, and no successful “popular” revolutions excex^t those of “un- recognized” ownershix> organized for “recognition.” Without fear of any successful challenge, I make this uncompromising statement — there has never been a poxJular ux^rlsing, perma- nently successful, effected by the non-owning classes. These facts are reviewed here again for the purpose of emphasizing this truth — that ownership is today the only real power, and that organization excex^t for ownershixJ, is futile and meaningless in so far as a,ny x^ermanent beneficial results are concerned. The conflict among men has ahvays raged about the stronghold of ownership. There it always will be fought, and there it centers today. And no permanent civiliz- ation nor true and satisfactory social life can ever be attained except the conflict cease, and it will never cease until owner- ship is adjusted to a basis of exact justice to all. Hitherto the struggle has been for ownership on the basis established by force through the violation of natural social law. And it has been, in effect, an individual struggle for individual ownership without regard to the just rights of others. As long as the tendency of the tide was steadily from the few to the many, there was some ground for hope that the evil essentially involved in the violated law would at last bec-mm in effect so “highly attenuated” as to be at least bearable; but since the tide of ownership has to ebb away from the manj and flow strongly to the few, it is plain that the theory of at tenuation can not prevail. In a vague and somewhat instinctive way, the people seem to understand this, and to realize that the only hope of the future lies in a radical reorganization of industry on principles of ownership just to all. The efforts of the people to control monopolies and corporations, the tendency «f po- 3C THE CONSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. litical agitation towards industrial undertakings by tbe gov- ernment, and the spread of the co-operative sentiment in pri- vate enterprise, are all evidences of this feeling and understand- ing. Hitherto the wider attention has been given to the first two manifestations mentioned, namely, governmental inter- ference. We have already given our reasons for believing that such methods must necessarily fail. Government is organized ownership, and to attempt to capture ownership through its own organ is iike weaponless men attempting to capture an army by first capturing its arms. It must be admitted that one can imagine circumstances under which such a result could be effected, but certainly none that may be reasonably hoped for with reference to the fight for ownership. The development of the co-operative sentiment is more to the purpose. In it is indicated the only method by which the tide of ownership may be turned towards the people, and the only method by which the masses of men may right the ancient wrong of force, and the suicidal confiict of competition and place themselves in harmonj’’ with the fundamental social law of material justice. It is true that the small ownership of the country is still numerically strong enough to unite, and by force wrest own- ership and with it government from the usurping few, if too many of the non-owners did not side with the latter. But even then, the victory would be fruitless of any permanent good to the race, if the object should be as in the past, simply a change in the personnel of masterhood, a raising of the more numerous smaller ownership to a level of power with the larger, and leaving the whole still on the same unjust basis established of old by force. The result would be simply as the thrashing of old straw, Sysiphus would again have to bend to his never-ending task, and the real conflict would but begpn anew. And if the object of such an uprising of force, could, by any stretch of the imagination be supposed to be to reorganize ownership itself on a basis of social justice, there would nec- essarily have to be presupposed as a condition precedent to the entertainment of such an object by small ownership, an ex- tensive and personal experience in the successful organization and operation of industries on such a basis. In other words, SOME PEINCIPLES OF INDUSTEIAL EVOLUTION. 37 there would have to have been already attained by the people themselves in their private capacity, a very large degree of suc- cess in co-operative enterprises before the conserving and in- tensifying power of government could be effectually brought to bear upon them. The inexorable laws of evolution require this. Government is the conservation, the crystallization of the results of human progress. It follows, not precedes. Its functions are to conserve, to intensify, to generalize, not to lead. Industries may be so perfectly organized as to be finally brought one by one within the operation of this mighty organ of society; but this organization of industries must be done by their owners assentingly with that final consummation in view. So again and again we are brought up against this inevita- ble conclusion that the battle before “the people” is for indus- trial ownership, and that it must be an industrial battle, fought out to a finish strictly along industrial lines. As has been said, the methods to be used by both sides in this struggle will, in the main, be business methods, and the imme- diate and present object practical business results. Organization will be the watch-word by both the people •and the plutocrats. But the organization undertaken will be on a scale hitherto unattempted by even the latter. On the part of the people it will evolve a gigantic combination of business companies, each local in initiation, organization and management, but co-ordinated in distributive effects through the agency of a great central supervising connection, which will be invested also with the function of absorbing the gen- eral control and management of such industries as one by one may become so highly organized as logically and naturally to demand it. Commencing with the functions of exchange, banking, transportation, communication, etc., and so proceed- ing naturally as organization is perfected and requirements demand. This “great combination” of companies will be or- ganized for the ownership of each industry by the labor em- ployed in its operation, and hence the organization will nat- urally proceed along the lines of the trades. That is, finally each trade will so organize its industry that its operations will be managed from a central office, reducing "production to a science, practically eliminating all waste in both effort and ■38 THE COXSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. result. And yet oijpre.ssion, one of the other, Avill be impossi- ble, for all of these central trades ofHces will be joined to- gether in a general association for the purpose of adjusting exchange to a basis of approximate cost. This will be the final consummation of the present some- what incoherent attempts at conscious and voluntary co-op- erative endeavor among the “people.” From these isolated and systemless attempts will develoiD an industrial movement that will sweep iDlutocraey from the face of the earth \vith as much ease as a battleship wmuld sweep a wooden cruiser from the face of the waters. The practical means of effecting and directing the development of such industrial organization, itself will of course be based largely on the principles herein discussed. As tomorrow slowly and imperceptiblj' grows out of today, so will the new' industrial system grow out of the old. It will not spring forth in a day full statured and full panoplied, perfect and ideal. It will develoi^ rapidly and spread and increase as no movement of the x^ast has ever done, for the facilities for organization and the spread of information concerning new movements are greater today than ever before; but notwith- standing the phenomenal speed with which transformations are now effected, the new industrial society that shall reor-, ganize ownership, will be a develox^ment and not a fiat crea- tion, and must necessarily therefore conform to the law of grow'th, here a little and there a little. And, as in the past, the people organized their scattered physical forces and opposed them to organized irresponsible force and overcame it, so must they organize their scattered individual ownership (and industrial power which secures ownership,) and opx^ose it to organized irresponsible owner- ship and overcome it; and, as in the physical conflict, it must be done with the view of (after victory won) making the whole resulting ownership resx^onsible to the people. These lessons learned from ages of political conflict, the people are already pondering in their application to the indus- trial problem. They are learning that it is not simply in the realm of government and politics that men cannot be trusted with despotic pow'er, but that the truth applies to the realm of industry as well. Hay, they are beginning to see that every- where you find a man you find the principle, that human nature SOME PRINCIPLES OF INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 39 is yet so constructed that in its selfishness and greed, its lust for power and possession, that it is blundering folly to place one's self within reach of its claws. The edict is now being formulated in the hearts of the jaeople, that the wild beast in man must be perpetually caged; that it must have no free field in which to hunt its prey, and that least of all may that field be the industrial field. The lesson of their political history has not been lost upon them. They know that power must be made responsible, and that it can only be made so through organization motived to that end; and they know how to organize. Already do the peo^Dle know that not conflict but combina- tion is the order of the times; that not competition but co-opera- tion, organized and controlled, is the law of industrial success; that not in divided but in united ownership lies their route to economic freedom. And they are to apply their knowledge, to cease their warring with each other, and to combine and to put an end forever to irresi^onsible conflict in ownership as in g'overnment. Slowly but surely there has been razed out from the hearts of the battling millions the belief inherited from the isolated savage ancestor of pre-Adamite days, that each must needs fight the other or die. And slowly but surely there has been graven in its place the sentiments — “If my neighbor would not, neither would I;” and “would that we all might work together.” But each, though quite sure of his own heart, is not quite sure of that of his neighbor, and so the mighty conflict rages even wilder than before. Here for the moment lies the immediate cause that prevents -svdde and rapid organization among the people. It lies in a misunderstanding, or rather lack of under- standing' each of the other, arising from the survival among us of the instincts and habits of thought of the isolated savage ancestor. The situation at present is that condition of tremb- ling uncertainty which immediately precedes a full under- standing for united action. 40 THE CONSPIEACY OP CAPITAL. CHAPTER IX. THE SIGNS OF THE STORM. A COMPETENT observer of events during the last de- cade of the nineteenth century, could not fail to no- tice an uneasiness and unrest among the people that was ominous of a fateful change in both society and government. The times were rife with signs of an impending crisis. Men were gathering and grouping and dispersing and realigning in a way that showed a deep-seated dissatisfaction witn existing conditions. Their movements were like the move- ments of clouds that presage the storm. There were currents and counter-currents, a marching and counter-marching of forces, a crossing and re-crossing of effort. The nation was in a ferment. There was a manifest electric tension in the indus- trial atmosphere that w^as growing slowly but surely to the breaking point. Whatever might be the cause — the primary, the remote, the real root-cause of this alarming state of af- fairs — it was evident that the immediate, the apparent and proximate cause ■was the just alarm created by the accelerated . movement of the wealth of the nation into the hands of the comparative few individuals and corporations. These private accumulations of capital were already so vast that they had become an acknowledged source of many of the most pernic- ioTis evils that beset society and government. Chief among these evils was the reduction of the masses to a necessary and practically a perpetual poverty 'with all its attendant hardships and seemingly unavoidable loss of man- hood and independence, resulting as it finally must in a dis- tinct lowering of the national character and tone. And intelli- gently realizing the injustice and wrong of the situation, know- ing that the condition was unnatural and artificial, the irrita- tion and exasperation of the people w'ere becoming dangerous to a peaceful solution of the difficulty. A close second to this chief evil, second because the first made the second largely possible, was the corrupt and corrupt- ing methods and power of the o'^mers of these aggregations of THE SIGMS OF THE STOKM. 41 wealth at every point in government and society and industry which they touched. Let Croesus be threatened anywhere with a curtailment of opportunity for increasing his profits or his possessions and consequent power, either by lawful competi- tion or by governmental restraint, and promptly at the point of attack, whether in court or congress or political arena or in the field of commerce or industry, there appeared his cor- rupt and defiling representatives each an expert stategist in the work assigned him, and the competition disappeared or the governmental powers were “fixed.” Hor was this Modern-Man-of-'\Vealth content to act only when threatened. His attitude was not alone defensive by any means, but it was aggressive and triumphant. Flowing from these pregnant sources of wwong- and injustice, there came the overwhelming tide of evils that were adding their irritant poisons to the body industrial and the body politic. And this movement of wealth from the hands of its producers into the p>ossession of its manipulators, was, as stated be- fore, an accelerated movement. It was constantly increas- ing. It had the terrible numerical momentum of a geomet- rical progression. The complete absorption of all wealth, seemed to be but a question of time and continued opportunity, resulting as the natural end of this unnatural movement in an industrial dictatorship by the Few. But the people were aroused to the danger of the situation, and their activity, though it seemed to be more the activity of ferment than of progress in any single direction, boded ill for the continuance of such an alarming industrial condition. But notwithstanding the ferment and confusion of plans that was everywhere so apparent, there was a general (irift towards a common purpose, and that purpose was the simple but difficult one of curbing the industrial power of those dom- inating commercial and financial gemuses to whom the com- petitive system, the machine methods and the organising facili- ties of the times gave opportunities so large for the exercise of their peculiar talents, that the produce and labor of the masses were becoming as subservient to their manipulation and control as in other times the people themselves had been subject to military masterships and governmental despotisms. How this one common purpose could best be efletted was the supreme question of the times. The people were seeking in 42 THE COXSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. an earnest but ineffective way for an effectual remedy, in the hope of political relief they were moving from one great party to the other or massing in greater or lesser numbers in new ones; and in the hope of direct industrial relief they were auperized. ‘’Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you,” was the Golden Eule that the peo- ple praised; do unto others as you would that they should NOT do unto you, was the rule that they practiced. To love one’s neighbor as one’s self was the height of their religion; to live upon him was their highest ambition. And to add to the strang’eness of this strange inconsistency, it usually increased in direct x>rox>ortion to the amount of one’s possessions. Among the poor, among the toilers of the earth, it was the least to be noticed or found. There religion and life most closely con- formed; but the gap widened as the rich were reached, so that the difference between profession and practice could 4S THE COXSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. largely be measured by the distance between poverty and wealth. But the most wonderful thing about the whole mat- ter was that as the gap increased, the ability to see it de- creased. The immediate and pressing physical necessities of the poor, the broad apology with which they bridged the dif- ference between their conception of duty to their fellows and their performance of it, though substantial as the earth itself, seemed to them but weak and inadequate and they trod it but falteringly and with much self-condemnation; but the Al-Sirat which the rich had thrown across the mighty chasm between their religion and their life, though narrower than the hair- like thread which the Moslem prophet stretched between earth and heaven over an intervening hell, seemed ft) the narrow vision of wealth to cover it completely, and they rolled along with the comforting congratulation that it would bear them safely across; and those who had the most beatific mental visions of ethical ideals and the best opportunities of approx- imating them in their lives, had the least intention of doing so. And while thej' were the most vociferous in their ecstatic praise of the “Christian civilization” of the age, they did not seem to perceive that what they would define as “Christian” and what thej' would point to as “civilization,” (namely, them- selves,) were in antipodes. Such a curious mental and moral strabismus like the visual limitations with which is was ac- companied, was the most acute in the possessors of the heav- iest purses. The weight of the pocketbook seemed to have a most intimate though occult and esoteric effect upon the conscience and indeed upon all those human attributes that are usually described as domiciled in the heart. And the effect was al- wajn damaging. And so powerful was it that it seemed to be communicated in a no less degree to those who spiritually min- istered to such afflicted persons. Indeed, it was frequently the case that those who devoted their lives (for a price) to the propagation of Christianity or churchianity as it had properly come to be called, were themselves the most in need of the services of a surgeon skilled in the science of ethical optics. And so completely paralyzing was this effect upon the senses touched, that it destroyed along with them all consciousness of their destruction. As the man with a paralyzed arm knows of its presence only by the uncanny swing of the shriveled mem- ber, so with these wealth dessicated and mumyfied senses and THE ATTITUDE OE WEALTH TOWAEDS LABOE. 49 faculties and attributes; those who were afflicted with them, if they knew of it at all, knew it only by the dread swing of their lifeless weight. But this loss of consciousness, singular as the victim was made to appear, was simply but a manifesta- tion of the hopelessness of the malady. And in view of the uni- formity of such manifestations among the capitalistic employ- ers and possessors of fortunes generally, any attempt at the moral arousement of wealth to a realization of approaching dan- ger might rightly be declared futile. The man who could unethi- cally gather thousands from the necessities of those whom he called his laborers and capitalize the sweat that represented their lives and call it his, and live in luxury upon its dividends while they eked out a miserable existence in the want of their own which he possessed, and yet with apparent sineerity re- gard himself as THE representative of a “Christian civiliza- tion;” the man who could send his agent through tenements which he would not enter, to collect rent for apartments which even if chemically clean he would not live in for any pay and of which he would not go within two blocks from fear of offend- ing his specialized olfactories and yet regards the moral odor which surrounds himself as partaking of the spice and myrrh of the Indies; the man who could draw on a heavy storm coat in winter over a form already thickly and warmly clad, and indif- ferently stride past little ones barefooted and ragged and pinched with cold, whose chattering teeth and purple lips were hardly able to form the words “paper, sir?” which theypatienlly called out to his deaf ears, and yet believe himself to be human and humane; the man who spends with one hand princely thou- sands which he has just filched with the other from hunger and poverty, and yet looks upon his luxurious and selfish expendi- tures as a generous “distribution” of money among the people and iipon himself as a sort of God come down among men; a man who can minister to his self-esteem and vanity by estab- lishing universities and schools and libraries and gifts to the public which he has systematically robbed and which he con- tinues to rob, and grandly makes to a poverty stricken people a present which is really only a miserable pittance of the amount which he has squeezed from their hard earnings through a series of years, and yet really thinks himself benevo- lent and charitable and a benefactor to his race — such a man is hardly a hopeful subjeet for the moral suasionist to operate 5 () THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. upon. And &uch a man was the representative wealthy man of the times. To him in an industrial way, the people were simply machines to create him his wealth; in a social way they were machines to minister to his wants and luxurious living; while in a public way (if that is the right phrase) they ought at least to be his admirers and sycophants, nay, his incense-burners ■and worshippers, catering to his vanity, his self-esteem, his egotism. The attitude of capital towards labor, of wealth towards poverty, was the result of a habit of thought on the part of the dominant class which centuries of uninterrupted ascendan- had moulded into its verj^ character and to man}' seemed one of its necessary and natural attributes. And that such ascendency was directly and solely due from a remedial stand- point to the competitive wage system among producers and to private and irresponsible control of capital seems beyond dis- pute. It is true that it might be said to be due the individual superiority of those who manifested the ability to pocket the earth, and that the possession in a high degree of the predatory and acquisitive instincts gave them a natural advantage which under any industrial system would give them the advantage. Just as predacious and acquisitive animals have a natural ad- vantage over other animals. Such a contention could not be denied. But that the ascendant predacious and acquisitive man had devised a system that directly tended to specialize his pe- culiar qualities was equally true; and that it had specialized those animal qualities was a patent every day fact of which there was visible proof in the capitalist of the times. The same offensive faculties had for centuries been ascendant in the political world and the remedy had been in changing the system under which they had such free play and adopting one which had for its object their suppression. In like manner it could not be doubted that the remedy must be directed against the system and not against the individual. Logically therefore the truth is as stated above, that from a practical remedial standpoint the fault was in the system and not in the man. As affecting the crisis that was approaching, the machine- idea which the capitalist had formed of the working-man. and the condition of mind of the former which ignored the hun;an qualities of the latter, had also curiously destroyed in him any practical fear of his dangerous hostility. The capitalist was THE ATTITUDE OP WEALTH TOWARDS LABOR. 51 going- as unconsciously to his destruction as a deaf and blind man caught in the swirling waters of the Niagara. And as said before, to him there was no war, no struggles, no battles be- tween them. As a machine could not be said to be hostile, to be an enemy to a man; so neither could labor be practically thought of by the capitalist in such terms. It might, like any other machine, be difficult at times to operate; it might be troublesome; it might possibly at times be locally and spasmod- ically dangerous; but that was the extent of the capitalists practical fear of labor. On no other theory could the calmness with which he pursued his methods against the latter, and pro- gressively intensified them in the face of the agitation that was going on, be explained. From the low plane of his selfishness it seemed to him that the narrow circle of calm waters which the oil of his wealth created immediately about his small per- sonality, was a large part of the ocean itself, and big enough and broad and strong enough to protect him from the raging seas that might be tossing beyond. Indeed, to change the figure, so far from fearing the storm that was rising about him, he contemplated it with the same feeling of personal security and nebulous gratification with which the well-warmed and well- housed in winter listen to the noise of the warring elements without. And if to the illustration it should be added that the well-warmed and well-housed knew as they sat in the comforting light and heat of their luxurious apartments and enjoyed the storm, that thousands i^pon thousands of their fel- low-creatures were exposed to the blasts of snow and sleet and torturing cold and were huddled in pitiful groujjs, shelterless, ragged and starving, dying miserable deaths; that through the protecting walls that shut them in to warmth and life, and their perishing brothers and sisters out to darkness and dvatb they could hear the moans and cries of the suffering ones; and through their windows see the shadowy storm-swept forms of the despairing men and tortured women and clinging children as they went stumbling, reeling, staggering along in the night — then the picture of the modern capitalistic employer in his comfort and securitj^ and in his general attitude towards labor and labor troubles would be complete. Nay, not quite complete either, for somehow the artist would have to depict the fact that the luxurious individuals within the house, not only en- joyed in an animal way the outside storm and human distress 52 'THE CONSPIEACY OP CAPITAL. which, it inflicted; but that they were the cause of the shelter- less condition of the starved and naked ones without; and by a last stroke of his power he would have to limn on his can- vass as the plaything of the refi.ned civilization within, the Wonderful wand of Prospero with which had been raised the tempest they had neither the heart nor the art to stay. And as the element of security is probably the underlying one in our enjoyment of the wintry storms that break upon our house, so it was with the plundering despot of industry; the one thing of "Which he seemed most complacently confident was that the mis- erable hordes without could not break into the charmed circle which his wealth had drawn around him and his personally. He did not consider himself as forming any element in the labor problem. Labor troubles were not his troubles. They be- longed solely and alone to the laboring people. They could fight it out among themselves. And according to his view that was what they were doing. From his standpoint the labor trouble was simply a fight between laborers. He looked down upon their struggles with but little more personal feeling than the Homan nobles looked down upon the gladiator- ial combats in the bloody circus below. And as the spectators of those barbarous human shows probably cared but little about the personal feeling of the exhibited combatants to- wards themselves; so the modern spectator (as the capitalist regarded himself) cared even less about what bitterness mjght be in the heart of the warring workers below him regarding himself. That was a matter of absolutely no importance. They could no more reach him than the baited beasts and men in the ancient amphitheater of Home could reach the tiers of holi- day barbarians that were ranged so cruelly about them. He was safe. He was entrenched -within the law. He controlled its engines and the operation of all its machinery. He was the law. “Be it enacted,” and “stare decisis” were but the seals of his power and government was but a method of its manifesta- tion. What should be fear? Why should he be afraid? He could only be attacked by aggression. Aggression against the law, against him, was crime; it w-as lawlessness. And between him and crime, between him and lawlessness, between him and aggressive labor, there stood the power of the Xation itself. If the aggression took the form of the mob, of the riot, the bar- rier between him and its fury was the police, the courts, the THE ATTITUDE OF WEALTH TOWAEDS LABOE. 53 sheriffs and their deputies and the posje coinitatus. If the riot grew to the revolution a still mightier bulwark was his — the military power of the Nation which rested on the millions of the middle classes who were depended on to sustain the “gov- ernment” in its more serious crises. They were the great stone wall through which aggressive labor must batter its way be- fore it could get at him. This powerful conservative element in the nation was at once both the true basis of his security and the most impervious obstacle to the progress of the cause of labor. From the very nature of its conservatism, as of con- servatism in general, while it prevented hasty and ill-consider- ed radical action, it also just as effectually blocked the way to necessary and wholesome reforms. And behind its stolid and stony front the forces of evil and corruption always sought to mass themselves. No; he could have no doubt of his security. The tempest might beat around him but not upon him. He was under the canvass of the Gladiatorial Circus but not in the ring, a difference which to him had in it all the vastness of the dis- tance between heaven and hell. And whether or not labor was organized seemed to have not the weight of a straw. As long as toiler had to strive with toiler it mattered not whether they were organized or not. As long as there was a multitude of unemployed starving for work, clamoring for places already filled, the strongest Labor Organization must form but a rope of sand. As long as one could jjroduce enough for ten the Unity of Labor under the competitive system of “private con- trol” must be but a dream of childish hope. For as long as such conditions existed and such an industrial system prevailed, labor troubles must be largely as the capitalist conceived them to be — struggles between the laborers themselves, a striving together for places to work, for an opportunity to become his servants and supporters. And as long as they were fighting among themselves they certainly could not appear to be con- ducting a very vigorous campaign against their alleged oppres- sors. The fact seemed to be that labor having seen the effec- tiveness of the Organization of Capital, concluded that its pow- er lay in its organization. And applying the faulty logic to its own miserable condition it determined that the only complete and effective remedy for it was likewise in organization alone. It lost sight of the truth that organization is not power, but simply a means of applying pow"er and of increasing its effec- 54 THE CONSPIKACY OF CxVPITAL, tiveness. Now effectiveness is the very thing desired, and it depends as much upon the direction in which power is applied as upon organization. If power is directed towards an impossi- ble result organization will not help it. Indeed, the more or- ganizations, the more v^ste of power. If a forest fire is raging and a body of men start out to fight it, they could best do it of course in an organized way; but if the organized body is set to thrashing the smoke or fanning the fiames they will never put out the fire, however perfect their organization. If an army, drilled and disciplined fire its shot into the air, it will never win a victory over any formidable foe, however admirable its ma- neuvers. If a multitude of slaves compelled to maintain them- selves under masters who had places for onlj^ half of them should make a stand for freedom, they could best exert their strength through organization; but if that strength was ex- pended only in an effort to secure a milder slavery for some of them; if it was expended under a system devised by the mas- ters for themselves and adapted solely to their benefit, organiz- ation would never effect their freedom. SOME MISTAKES OF OKGANIZED LABOR. 55 CHAPTER XI. SOME MISTAKES OF ORGANIZED LABOR. S O it was with labor. It had learned the power of organization, but had stopped in its reformatory progress with the half-truth. And in dynamics a half- truth is no better than a who is error. The fatal weakness lay in the false direetioa of the ap- plication of its organizd strength. It had continued to apply its toil under the directing, private, irresponsible control of the very foe it had organized to light. It had failed to discover that the effective power of capital lay as much in the Industrial System under which it operated labor, as in its organization; nay, more; for in the system lay its real, natural power, while in its organization lay indeed, but an artificial means of apply- ing it. In the misdirection of the application of labor’s organized pow'er, in the false objective which it was pursuing, could be found the reason of its comparative failure. From the stand- point of capital, labor was but applying to itself unconsciously the suggestion of the man who would bury the devil face down- ward, and if he ever got out he wmuld have to go through hell to do it. So with labor; if it ever achieved freedom by scratch- ing down through the earth of competition, it would have to go through the fires of revolution to do it. And to this failure to grasp the whole truth might be ascribed the reason of organ- ized labor’s pitifully short application of some of the grandest principles which were even then, notwithstanding such short- ened applications, moulding the hearts and minds of the people to higher conceptions of life and duty. One of these principles, a favorite motto of the LTnions, was. that “an injury to one was the concern of all.’’ It was laid, down as the basis upon which organized labor was built. And yet an “injury” as conceived by the unions, consisted in a dis- charge of an employed man, a cut in his wages or discrimination against him as a union man. But the unemployed man, non- union or union, the man hunting a job and finding none, the man 56 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. soul-worried for work and denied it at any price, did not enjoy an injury that was the eoncern of anybody. It was only to the employed union man or at most to an unemployed one dis- eriminated against when employment was to be had that this mighty solidifying sentiment of humanity could be applied. They were apparently the only ones against whom an injury could be committed. While the truth would appear to be that the employed man who was paying practical allegiance to the system of private control of employed labor and of labor-em- ploying industries, by accepting work under the capitalistic employer at any wages however high, was himself committing the greatest injury of all against his class fellows. Organized labor would order a strike or a boycott against an employer who refused them work, when it coiild perhaps be shown that these union weapons should have been directed against the capitalist who presumed to offer them employment under the system of Labor Ownership which he practically as- serted over them. Speaking from the standpoint of capital again, i. appeared that labor’s peculiar definition of an injury and the singular limitations which it placed upon its applica- tion were as pitifully inadequate as if in olden times the chat- tel slaves had organized under the same great motto and had declared an injury to their fellows to be, not slavery itself, but some one of the lesser hardships which their masters occa- sionally imposed upon them. It was as if these union slaves had defined the greatest injury which one of their fellows could inflict upon another to be, not a submission to slavery, but a submission to any other than their particular brand of slavery and had declared a relentless war upon the serf who so far forgot his duty as to depart from their peculiar code of in- dustrial ethics, ignoring the cruel fact that his enslaved condi- tion physically required his submission to any hardships and to any brand of slavery w'hich his master might impose and not perceiving that the internecine warfare so carried on must prove perpetual and force their persecuted brethren into the position of buffers to their masters against whom they had originally organized. Such a childish apprehension and appli- cation of a great principle would appear ludicrous if the serious consequences which resulted from it had not made it pro- foundlj'^ pitiful to the humane observer. It was this adherence to a false industrial system, a system SOME MISTAKES OF OEGANIZED LABOE. 57 that was primarily the cause of all the evils from which they suffered, that made their struggles appear hopeless of perma- nent success though the hopelessness did not lessen the neces- sity of continued effort. But aside from this most fatal error, this capital inconsistency of warring with each other over the necessary evils of a system and not upon the system itself, there appeared another only less inconsistent and fatal than the first, namely, the strange practical indifference which or- ganized labor showed towards the unemployed. After recog- nizing the right of capital to the private control and practical ownership of labor and labor employing industries, it would appear that the first and most unyielding demand which the unions would have made of Master Capital would be to give em- ployment to all. Certainly if capital claimed the right to own and control the means of production and necessarily therefore the producers themselves, then it would seem that the greatest injury which it could inflict upon labor would be to deny it access to the producing means for any cause whatever. When therefore organized labor planted itse*.. upon the principle that “an injury to one was the concern of all,” it would naturally have been supposed that this unemployed man, this most in- jured of their fellow's, would have been the object of their first and highest concern; that around him they would have rallied ail their forces and upon his wrong staked the righteousness of their cause, giving him as he deserved their heartiest, their most loyal and undaunted support. But instead of recognizing his injury as the first and greatest, it was practically not re- cognized at all. Nay, not satisfied with the negative stultifica- tion of their basic principle, all the power of organized labor was actually turned against this miserable unfortunate. That is to say, it was selfishly used to keep those in their places who had work, to increase their wages, to prevent a decrease, to get recognition for the unions and occasionally to secure short- er hours. After these selfish objects were effected perhaps the unemployed man would come in for a job; but the prospect wasn’t very encouraging for the labor-saving machines which were being added so rapidly to productive industry were in- creasing the number of the employless men beyond all reasona- ble hope of a substantial decrease being effected by even the most powerful union of labor under the prevailing system. To intensify this condition and destroy the faintest vestige 58 THE CONSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. of such a hope, it had become the policy of capital to limit pro- duction in order to keep up prices and profits, and thus thou- sands of others could be added to their ranks at the nod of some industrial despot. And instead of the desperate situa- tion of this despairing' class being- made the subject of the practical sympathy of organized labor, instead of its deep in- jury being declared the gravest of all injuries which under the industrial system in vogue could be inflicted upon a man, in- stead of its cause being made the first and chiefest concern of organized labor, which it would seem the astutest policy -would have dictated, to say nothing of principle, (for they could hope to make no jirogress until this body of starving men were somehow absorbed into jiroductive industry,) instead of all this it was made the target of bitterest attacks; for if an unemploy- ed man should seek employment in a manner contrary to the ethical law which organized labor had established, he commit- ted a crime for which death itself was often not too harsh a punishment. The boycott, the strike, class ostracism would be used against him until he was driven from emploj-ment or into the union. But if he took refuge in the union his condi- tion was no better, for the union did not guarantee him work nor support and refused to recognize his employless condition as an injury to him which required any practical action in his behalf. Cajaital was no less merciless to him. It declared him a vagrant and a nuisance unless he got work and threatened him with the jail and the chain-gang until he did. So he was driven to the unpleasant alternatives of starving, fighting the union or becoming a criminal. And his tribe was increasing. He was becoming an army. And yet this was the man ux^on whose decrease alone organized labor could hope for success along the lines it was pursuing. And that was the way it was essaying to decrease him — by star-s-ing him as a union man or killing him as a scab. In the face of such blundering inconsistencies and such treatment of its own, the -v\-onder was that the union sentiment made any progress at all. The fact was that organized labor had made no progress in achieving any amelioration of the condition of the working classes. That it had grown in numerical strength was due solely to the inso- lent and inhuman attitude of the capitalistic employer. Grown overconfident, he had given full reign to his selfish greed and had literally chased the workers into the unions. The growing SOME MISTAKES OF OEGAKIZED LABOE. 59 Unity of Labor, aside from the natural class-sympathy that had always existed, was really more the mechanical unity of capi- talistic pressure than a chemical unity arising from a realiza- tion of the benefits of organization. But as the atoms of op- posing elements can be brought by pressure into such close contact that a real union will resuit, so with the atomic toilers under the encroachments and oppression of the employer; they were being brought (if they had not already been) into such vital touch that the unemployed though growing in numbers, were also becoming less and less disposed to play the part of buffers to capital, preferring to starve and beg and become vagrants rather than oppose the union or take the place of a “brother.” The brotherhood feeling had become strong, and though organization brought THEM no practical relief, they sympathized with the spirit of the unions and shared their feeling and attitude towards their common enemy. Their com- mon enemy was, notwithstanding, more complacent and confi- dent and over-reaching than ever. He viewed the gropings of the blind giant with no feelings of alarm. That the scales might sometime drop from his eyes did not disturb him. It was re- garded as too remote a possibility to consider seriously. That a light might arise that would pierce to his dormant power of vision and awaken it, was also improbable. And yet both the improbable and the impossible were happening. The scales were falling and the light was rising. Trades Union methods; Trades Union objects; Trades Un- ion interpretations, limitations and applications of golden truths; Trades Union burrowing into the earth of capitalism in its search for industrial light; Trades Union acceptance of the system of private control; Trades Unionism as a way out of slavery and misery and degradation; organization alone as a panacea for the wage-earners wrongs; failing belief in these were the falling scales whose presence had so long blinded the eyes of the laboring people. More and more they had come to see that the evils from which they suffered lay in tho Industrial System that permitted and encouraged the predatory instincts of the human animal instead of restricting and placing checks upon him. More and more they had come to see that effort was fruitless, that organization was powerless, that union w'as unavailing however ably directed under the pre- vailing employing system. 60 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. The consciousness too, was growing upon them, that cap- ital so far from fearing the unions or their weapons, was act- ually making them its playthings; was corrupting their lead- ers; creating dissentions in their ranks and actually forcing strikes and boycotts to bull and bear its stocks, to raise and lower prices and to exploit in various ways both producers and consumers. But though faith in unionism, as then under- stood and practiced, waned as their vision cleared; though they saw that their organized strength ought to be turned against the Industrial System through which their slavery had been wrought, they would not so direct it, notwithstanding the al- most unbearable oppression of capital, until a new system had been devised that would stand the practical test of an objec- tive demonstration. They would have no theories, no ideals, no Edenic plan adapted to the pre-satanic innocence of human nature under a primeval environment; but a system adapted to modern civilization with its herds of men, its crowded cit- ies, its intricate life, its division of labor, its labor-saving ma- chines and its large enterprises; a system adapted to the prac- tical understanding, operation and control of the working peo- ple and to human nature as substantially evidenced in the act- ions of men. And the new system for which they were bravely and patiently waiting, though a revolution, an appeal to arms, though the blood and smoke of battle might be necessary to bring it fully about, must itself be not a revolution but an evo- lution. That is to say, it must be seen to be a natural development from the old, with the useless and therefore bur- densome appendages of the latter dropped and its useful fea- tures preserved and adapted to the new and growing powers of the times. And so anti-anarchistic were the American peo- ple, so functional had become the principle of self-government among them, that though tempted almost beyond endurance, they would not destroy until they could see a way to rebuild, and the rebuilding must keep pace with the destruction. The New Industrial System for which they had so long been waiting and looking had at last arisen. The Industrial Social- ists had presented in the indnstrial plan which they had adopt- ed, a method of reform and reconstruction, practicable and safe. And the Trades Union Army was now preparing to ex- ert its organized strength in the only display of force neces- sary, namely — to burst the bonds of technical legal right by SOME MISTAKES OF ORGANIZED LABOR. 61 which, tinder the sacred names of constitutional guarantees, court decrees, legislative enactments and vested rights, capital had through its corrupted and class-influenced courts and con- gresses so skillfully bound the old industrial system to the po- litical, that to unravel peacefullj^ would be, if not practically impossible, so tedious and slow as to be intolerable to the toil- ing victims whom it had reduced to a practical, perpetual daily dependence upon it for access to the means of supporting life, and before whom was displayed a practical system of In- dustrial Freedom within their grasp but for those unnatural bonds. Organized labor (thanks to the oppression of capital that had forced it into organizing) was now ready for the revolu- tion which alone is ever justifiable or substantially effective — the revolution that is directed against those artificial barriers which class, through its manipulation of law and government, has erected across the path of Human Progress. And yet the capitalistic employer, idolatrous of self, con- temptuous of his labor-slaves, his man-machines by whom he was supported; secure in the belief that the bonds could never be broken which he had so firmly wound about what in his Christian Phariseeism and superior power he sometimes smil- ingly called the “many-headed-monster,” the people, compla- cently and confidently proceeded to the undreamed destruc- tion that awaited him. He had mistaken the revolutionary pow'er of Organized Labor to strike an effective blow for free- dom. He had mistaken patience for submission and perplex- ity for impotence. 62 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTER XII. THE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY. Y7 N marked contrast with the formal meetings of the work- ing people in their societies and unions and delegated as- semblies, were the gatherings of their controlling employ- ers. The former were characterized by a seriousness that was individual and personal, by a manifest feeling that they were assembled for mutual self-protection against a common aggressor and by a potentiality^ of tragedy revealed in their reports of strikes and lock-outs and relief funds and boycotts and arbitrations and grievances, that was none the less grave because it was common-place. They gave one the impression of being councils of war on the part of those sorely besieged or against whom was going the tide of battle. And that was what they really were. The latter on the contrary were simply business confer- ences among men who knew what they wanted and how fo go about getting it. There was no individual or personal concern displayed or felt. If there should be any gravity or serious- ness in the situation which they were met to discuss, it was only a business gra%dty and seriousness. It did not affect them in an individual or physical way. The morrow’s bread and clothing and living did not depend upon it. It was simply a matter of more or less dividends, more or less plunder, more or less power for the corporations or trusts which they rep- resented. Their meetings, though they had their societies and associations too, were for the most part informal and often with a rich veneering of the social and convivial and luxurious. Their gathering places were bank parlors, private offices of corporation presidents, back rooms of stock ex- changes and banqueting apartments of aristocratic caterers. Sometimes they met simply on invitation of some of the more powerful among them to complete the details of policies upon which there was already a partial, positive agreement or tacit understanding. And frequently the most powerful combina- tions and audacious and unlawful conspiracies were effected at THE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTEY. 63 these most informal conferences. Indeed it had become the favorite method of the capitalists of the time to resort to such informalities for consultation and agreement when some partic- iilarly “important” matter was to be undertaken. It relieved them of much of the “embarassment” that might arise from a too strict adherence to business forms in the way of memo- randa of agreements, written contracts and other tangible ev- idence of various kinds. And besides they were not needed among men whose honor was bounded alone by their self-inter- est, especially when the advancement of those interests was the sole object of such conferences. A “gentleman’s agreement” was all that was necessary. It had been so, since at least the days of Eobin Hood, and the capitalists of the nineteenth cen- tury would not be the first to break so ancient and honorable a tradition concerning the ethics of their profession. It was to one of these most informal conferences that a number of the most powerful “industrial magnates” of the land were gathered near the close of the last century. That the great employers of the country had under consideration a plan of concerted action of some kind inimical to organized labor could not be doubted. But it could not be said that the meeting of the barons of wealth on this occasion was secret in any sense exceist that it was a private assembly of cor- poration i^residents in an unofficial capacity in the private ofbces of one of their number for the discussion of matters pertaining to their common interests which they did not care to make public. The New York papers, for it was in that strong- hold of capital that they met. had the usual account of their arrival in the city, but as the reporters were told that there was nothing to give out, too much respect was had for their in- fluence to make any further mention of their movements. It was the flower of the capitalistic system of the private and irresponsible control of industry that assembled in the sumptuous offices of the manager of one of the greatest rail- road systems on the continent. The forty men who composed the gathering represented the business element of the times in the highest state of development, at once at its best and worst. They had the confident air of conquerors, of men with power and in authority over their fellow men, and the solid, substantial look which success always assumes. The air was not always a noble one, indeed among many of them that de- 64 THE CONSPIKACY OF CAPITAI . sirable quality was quite lacking; but it was always confident and conquering. And the solid, substantial look was som^ times rather beefy and bulldoggish, but it was always a suc- cessful look. They showed in every glance of the eye and move- ment of the body that they were alive in every nerve and brain- cell of their anatomy, predaciously alive that is, as one would perhaps wish to qualify it after a business interview with any one of them, for the alertness of intellect which they undoubt- edly exhibited, whether in lineament or expression, in voice or manner, was rather feline than benevolent or philanthropic. And yet there were a number among them, indeed most of them in a way, who were noted for their philanthropy, public spirit and generosity as such terms were understood and interpreted by the civilization of the period which these men represented. But however disparagingly the fact might correctly be stated, the fact remained that intellectually they were active, alert and masterful. They had a broad and comprehensive grasp of all matters that pertained to the business in which they were engaged. They read men as a scholar reads books — with a glance of instant judgment that classified them at once. Men were their tools, their stock in trade, their true capital. And in that sentence lay the secret of their power. Nay, in it lies the secret of all oppressive industrial power. Capital may be said in a general way to be anything used in the getting of what we desire. The capital of the woodman is his axe and the wood; that of the farmer is his land and agricultural im- plements; the miner’s capital is ore beds and tools; the raPfl road man’s is his road and rolling-stock; the telegrapher’s is his lines and instruments. As long now as the woodman him- self uses his axe, the farmer his implements, the miner his tools, the railroader his cars and the telegrapher his instruments — he is not, strange to say, a capitalist, but a laborer, a working- man. But let the woodman turn over his axe to another man and use him to chop his wood, and likewise the farmer, the miner, the railroad man and the telegrapher, and each straight- way becomes a capitalist. That is to say, a capitalist is a man whose capital is other men. Of course, the accepted fiction is that it is the axe, the land, the tools, the cars and the telegraph instruments in the other men’s hands that he is using; but the labor of these men, the men themselves are much more his real capital than the material things which he places at their THE CAPTAIHS OF INDUSTRY. 65 use. As men become the users of men, they become capitalists. And as the eontrol of material capital had been private and ir- responsible, so it had come about that the capitalist’s control of his human capital was likewise private and irresponsible. And herein lay the viciousness of the employing system of the times. It was not in interest, not in wages, not in profit in themselves considered, but in the private and irresponsible use of men by men. That constitutes slavery. That constitutes despotism. That constitutes oppression and has constituted them among every race and in every age since the beginning of time, and to it can be traced with the certainty of a dem- onstration the downfall and degradation of every government and people that have written their tragic history in the chron- icles of time. No human system that deals with humanSj whether political, social, industrial or ecclesiastical, can be erected upon that principle without resulting in misery, deg- radation, slavery and oblivion for the people over whom it ex- ercises its power. The history of the world has been but the history of the vain struggle of men against the inevitable re- sult of such systems. But the captains of industry, capturers of industry rather, who were gathered in the council chambers of their confrere to devise a more efficient handling of their “capital,” were not in- terested in the ultimate, inevitable results of anything that went beyond their business. They understood the principle, however, perfectly. They knew that it was men they were using. Money, bonds, stocks, railroads, land, mines, factories — these were but the outward show, the material things upon whieh they based their legal claims to men; these were but the wires; it was the puppet slaves at the end of them that they manipulated. They understood that; and the man who did not understand it and act upon it, could never hope to come into their august presence as one of them. The simple innocent who limited his conception of capital to “invested cost,” was brand- ed an “incompetent,” and promptly “submerged;” and if he did not become a tramp and a vagrant it was because the Goddess of Luck that presided at his birth, had secured him an humble place in the captive train of some industrial conqueror. It was only a man who could take a railroad, the actual, genuine in- vested cost of which was fifteen thousand dollars per mile and capitalize the employes and patrons along the line to the ex- 66 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. tent of fifty thousand dollars per mile, that could ever become a railroad king of those times. It was only the man who could take his coal mines, or his factories or mills and combine them into monopolies and trusts and hook his actual investment of a million on to fifty or a hundred million dollars worth of hu- man beings whom he capitalized under the name and style of stock and bonds and listed on ’change and bought and sold and bulled and beared into helpless slavery; it was only such a man who could ever become a baron or a prince or Napoleon of finance or array himself in the purple and power of an indus- trial potentate. And such a man was each one of the roj'al gentlemen here convened. And in such manner had the mighty fortunes which they possessed been accumulated; for it was only in such manner that such fortunes could be accumulated. And why should they not possess them? They were lying around loose, as it were. The industrial system permitted them to be had for the asking; yea, for the picking up without the' asking, and why not capitalize the productive capacity of a people and privately control it and pour its revenue into their own private coffers? The law allowed it and the people sanc- tioned it, and if these men did not take advantage of such op- portunities the next man who came along with a highly devel- oped bump of acquisitiveness lor other people’s property, would gather them in, and he might be a bad man who would not be a patriot and philanthropist and friend to the people like as they were. It is true that ever3' dollar of capitalization beyond actual investment meant a daj'’s labor confiscated from some poor unfortunate or mortgaged upon another, and appropri- ated to the private use of the honorable confiscator and mort- gagor; and that such confiscation ran directly counter to an ancient statute that said “Tho\i shalt not steal,” troubled them not at all. The ethical standard of the times which their ^•icious industrial system had necessarilj' developed did not so inter- pret it, and their consciences were unscarred bj" the brutal Angle-Saxon of the barbarous past. They were scrupulously honest, according to the standard mentioned. Their engage- ments and contracts were kept to the letter with religious promptness and exactness. Thej^ guarded their honor as the gambler his sporting reputation. It might be said, indeed, vrith- out disparagement, that the latter’s code was the one they fol- lowed. They would no more transgress the business rules THE CAPTAIXS OF INDUSTllY. 67 ■which they had established, than they would steal in a common, plebian way. To filch a purse or to empty a pocket was to their minds just about the most unpardonable crime in the calendar. To organize a company with a hundred thousand ■dollars capital and issue bonds and stocks for a million, was the best passport to their most resx^ectful regard. There are some people who might regard such mental and moral attitudes as inconsistent, but it could never be discov- ered that they did. They siinx)ly added that much human caj)- ital to their money capital; and the dividends squeezed from patrons and employes justified them to the “’world” and to themselves. They were honorable men and just and eminently respectable. And they were humane. If they made merchandise of men and women and little children; if they capitalized the wants and necessities of their fellow creatures and extracted their princely revenues from the toil of starving labor that was sinking under the slavery to which the extracting x^ro- cess subjected it; if they did anything that an unrefined per- son might regard as barbarous, it was never otherwise than in a business way and always in strict accordance with the rules of the game — that is, the system under which they op- erated. They had the utmost regard for the proprieties. If a transaction was regular and in accord with business customs, that fact settled all other questions in regard to it. No further inquiry was necessary. It was held, indeed, as rather ungen- erous or as an evidence of mental crankiness to carry resx^on- ■sibility further. And as these men represented the honesty and honor and humanity of the business world, that is, the cap- italistic world in its most orthodox development, so they rep- xesented its accepted philosoxihy in regard to social and indus- -trial conditions. The simplicity of that philosophy was as charming as its logic was irrefutable. It could be stated in two axioms: “Whatever is, is right,” and “the right,” (i.e., the status quo) “must be maintained.” Fatalism? Yes. The •doctrine of necessary evil was the logical conclusion and these caliphs of capital taught it with the most cheerful serenity and untiring iteracy. Poverty was a necessary evil. Of course. And if they helped it along by their business methods, why those methods were a necessity of the times, and if evil, there- fore, a necessary evil. Over-much wealth was an evil. Well, 63 THE CONSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. yes, possibly it was; but it, too, could be shown to be very essary. Whatever was evil in society or industry, in systems or government, in business methods, in business humanity, in busi- ness morals, was a necessary evil to be borne with resignation and fortitude. And they set an example by bearing their share- with great cheerfulness. In fact so complete was their resig-^ nation to prevailing conditions, that they viewed any attempt at change with a disfavor so distinct as to grow to indignation as the attempt showed chances of success. It was a reflection on Providence to propose remedies; it was impious to repine; it was anarchy to agitate. The reformer -was either a degen- erate or a natural; either a vicious man or a fool. Their phi- losophy was the apotheosis of conservatism, and they -were its high priests. They had built the mighty super-structure of their wealth upon a mountain of massed humanity. And what- ever their press fulminated or their pulpits thundered or their courts decreed or their legislatures enacted, it meant but one thing — “keep quiet below there.” They represented therefore, the law and order element. They believed profoundly in main- taining law and order “among the people,” and although they owned most of the wealth of the country, they were always- willing to submit to any amount of indirect taxation to sup- port the government. But whatever else they might have been — patriots, philosophers, philanthropists, public spirited citi- zens, above all they w'ere practical men. They dreamed no day- dreams, built no cloud castles, v\-rote no Utopias. They spec- iilated in stocks and bonds but not in the millenium. They op- erated in shares, but took none in the Brotherhood of Man. They worked reorganization schemes for railroads and trusts but none for society' or government or industry. They had no sentiment that did not yield a per cent and no ideal that did not declare dividends. They measured reforms by their poten- tial revenues and the practical by that which paid. They prided themselves on taking men as they found them, but made no reference as to how they left them. They' took men as they found them, not to do good unto them, not to make them bet- ter, but simply to use them. The man they^ could not use was a superfluous man, and it was a part of the practical to sup- press the superfluous. Their standard of value was the dollar; wealth was their measure of success, and coin their imiversal solvent. INDIVIDUALISM. 69 CHAPTER XIII. INDIVIDUALISM. A nd these were the men who by their private and irre- sponsible control of the immense wealth which they had accumulated, wielded a power more despotic than the Caesars. In their hands they held the destinies of millions of their countrym.en. “Woe, rapture, penury, wealth, throughout the vast realm of the republic, were theirs to dis- pense, to withhold.” The currents of trade flowed free through the nation or stood stagnant in its arteries at their command. In their breath there breathed the spirit of the pestilence or the balm of spring. From their far-reaching hands there drop- ped the thunderbolt or life-sustaining manna. At their pleas- ure the fires V)n a million hearthstones burned brightly, smould- ered sadly or were quenched entirely. At their pleasure, homes blossomed or grew desolate, families rejoiced together or were scattered, and hearts beat high with hope or sunk with de- spair. The miracles of Moses were discounted by these modern magicians of wealth. The gods of old had again come down among men, and at their nod, food, raiment, shelter, were given or denied. Their smile was sunshine, their frown a blighting shadow unto the multitude that depended upon their power. This handful of w'eak mortality, wdelding the power of Omnipo- tence, had under their direct control in the labor-employing in- dustries which they owned, more than two millions of men, actual laborers on the railroads, in the mines and mills and shops and factories which they operated. Two millions more were subject to control which these men could directly influ- ence. Add to these four million toilers the twelve million de- pendent upon them by family ties, and we have the vast number of sixteen million human beings subject to the direct influence of these forty capitalists. Nor was this all; for the manipula- tion of this mighty industrial power could be felt to the utter- most limits of the republic, and affected every one of its eighty millions of population for good or ill, as it suited the caprices of the manipulators. And yet there were those who believed 70 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL that the industrial system which permitted the private and ir- responsible control of such stupendous power, was a necessary system and the only one adapted to the development of the in- dividual. These princes of the republic themselves firmly be- lieved it. Nothing- could exceed the savage vindictiveness with which they and their class always resented any interference with the private control of “business,” and the power and priv- ileges which that business, so controlled, conferred upon them. The system of private control, the system by which a half mil- lion individuals were chained to the conquering chariot wheels of one, they declared to be a system of individualism, and in- dividualism was the only system adapted to man. The whole animal economy of the universe was evidence of its divinity and the entire brute creation of earth, its exponents. The deft handler of knuckles and club has alwaj's been an individual- ist. The first savage of primitive ages who conquered his neigh- bors by the might of muscle was its earliest advocate. And his descendants wherever found, at the head of ravaging armies, on thrones of despots, among the privileged caste and class, have always been his consistent followers. Scratch the thin veneering of so-called refinement with which the latter in later times had varnished themselves, and you found their ancestral prototypes — the savage, with all his basest qualities well pre- served. They who profited most by their wholesale suppres- sion of the individual in fact, in theory became most solicitous about him. Their individualism was the individualism of the tiger and the cat among beasts, of the spider among insects, of the cannibal among- men. It was the individualism of war. Of the higher and nobler individualism of peace, they had no adequate conception. The individualism of true civilization, of Christian manhood, of men, as social, gregarious beings, they preferred to ignore or to denounce. That there were nobler insects than the spider, nobler beasts than the cat, nobler men than the cannibal, they practically would never admit. These levelers down of humanity declared that any system of leveling iip was a vicious system. Sole ploughers of the plain, they claimed also the right to live on the plateau. En- slavers. of the individual, they drew a sacred circle about their own individ\:ality. And this right to level do-wn. to plough the plain, to enslave individuals, they called individualism; while INDIVIDUALISM. 71 the right claimed by others to level up, to live 6>. the resulting plateau, to draw a circle about their individuality, they called communism. And if there was anything which the communists of wealth, these Socialists of capital abhorred, it was any other sort of communism than their own. The communism of indus- try, the Socialism of Co-operative toil, was their especial nau- seate. They were loud and fierce in declaring that such a sys- tem would be a despotism, a tyranny, a slavery more desperate than any the world had ever seen. The despots of labor, the ty- rants of toil, the. masters of wage slaves were very solicitous that there should be no worse system than their own foisted upon the “people.” Socialism will result in a dead level of stag- nant mediocrity, says these disinterested champions of self, the capitalists. “Our system develops the man. Look at our magnifi- cent proportions.” “But it dwarfs the multitude,” replies some one. “To hell with the multitude,” answers these so-called in- dividualists; “we said it develops the man.” “But the multitude is composed of men,” persists the other. “Anarchy! Call out the troops!” shout these champions in a rage of terror. There are those who may regard this description of the po- sition and contentions of the upholders of the industrial sys- tem of itrivate control as unfair, ironical and overdrawn, but it is not. In fact, it falls far short of the truth. It was not only contended that this system which permitted these forty men to control sixteen millions of their fellows, was a system of indi- vidualism, but that it wa’s the only possible, isractical kind of individualism. Nor were the advocates and apologists of the sj'stem confined to its beneficiaries alone; but it found able and brilliant defenders among the theorists and philosophers of the times. They laid down the broad principle that the individual should be allowed full and free opportunities for the devel- opment of all his powers. Block by block they built upon it the logical propositions that powers can only be developed by effort, that effort requires incentive and that incentive de- pends upon desire and hope of attainment. By way of complet- ing their forensic structure, they continued — deny desire, de- stroy hope of attainment and you destroy incentive; no incent- ive, no effort; no effort, no development; no development, no man. The need of mankind, therefore, is a system that will develop the individual; the system of private control developed the in- dividual (as they could prove by pointing to some whom it had 72 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. developed) and therefore, it is the system which we need. But when confronted by the fact that the few individuals which their systems developed had themselves struck hope from out the hearts of millions and destroyed their opportunities of life, they replied that it was the fault of the millions and not of the system, and fell back upon the doctrine of the “sur- vival of the fittest,” a doctrine that has no more relation to the problem under discussion than arctic snows to tropic sun- shine. Fitness depends upon environment. The fit in one zone are the unfit in another. The successive ages of the world pro- duced a succession of organic life adapted to them. As the en- vironment changed, its creatures changed. Survival proves adaptation to environment, but nothing more. It proves noth- ing as to the desirability of the environment except perhaps to the particular creatures adapted to it. A different environ- ment might prove the fitness of nobler beings to survive. And the physical history of the earth has shown such to be the case. A higher tyj)e of creature has appeared ■with every change of environment. Now, systems bear the same relation to social life that climate does to the physical. Social systems largely constitute the social environment of man, just as climatic con- ditions largely create his physical environment. The fittest, that is those adapted to a social system, 'to their social environ- ment, survive and thrive under it, just as the animal best fitted to his physical environment survives and thrives. If that phys- ical environment is especially adapted to tigers, then tigers sur- vive because they are fittest. If the social environment is best adapted to the social cannibal, then the cannibal is the fittest and he survives. But the fact that he survives, that he is the fittest, does not prove that the environment, the social system which created him is the fittest and best. In fact, he is the best evidence of its viciousness and unfitness for a high and noble type of man. His survival, his fitness, is the best argument against the survival and fitness of the environment. Nor could these philosophic defenders of so-called individ- ualism elaim that environment is a fixed thing so far as its creatures are concerned. For man, the very creature about whom they were arguing, is an exception to that universal fact. He is the one creature that has the power to modify and change his environment, physical as well as social. Born amidst the INDIVIDUALISM. 73 tropics, ke has conquered zone after zone until he possesses the earth. And the semi-frigid regions where once he existed, if at all, only in a sporadic way, hare now become the habitat of his most vigorous representatives. If he had power to modify and alter his physical environment, how much more was he master of the social? Social and industrial systems were his creations; and though he in turn w'as subject to the moulding influence of the systems which he created, he never wholly lost the power of modifjdng and moulding them. At least the instant he did so marked the moment of time when the nation or race to which he belonged took up its march to de- generacy, extinction and oblivion; or rather, marked its ar- rival in those dark realms. Sometimes those modifying, mould- ing processes were characterized by explosions called revolu- tions; but more often their existence could only be detected by those more peaceful and silent evolutionary movements called agitation. For agitation is but the name given to the struggle of those unfitted to the prevailing environment, to mould that environment to their needs. And as the history of the ages shows that a higher type of creature is being con- tinually evolved, it is the complacent conclusion of the writer, that the agitators are made of finer clay than the “fit.” The doctrine of the survival of the “fittest” does not there- fore prove their moral right to exist. In fact, the character of some things is sufficient warrant not only for their extinction but for the extinction of the conditions that develop them. So it was with the individualism of the times and the in- dustrial system based upon it; the character of the individuals whom it produced was in itself the highest justification for the industrial extinguishment of both them and the system. The individualism that excuses one man in darkening the lives of millions on the ground of the survival of the fittest, is the in- dividualism of the animal, the individualism of force, the indi- vidualism that makes might, right. Its defenders forget that as we leave the animal and rise into the realms of the human, the doctrine of right is shifted to entirely different grounds. Abstract justice asserts its determined power upon all ques- tions. The moral and spiritual appear. The conscience' reigns. The divine right of any man or class to aught but justice falls dowm before it, and the right of the beggar to be weighed in the same scales that weigh the king or the capitalist is establi.shed 74 THE CO^SPIEACY OF CAPITAL. upon the earth. The individualism of the animal is no more the individualism of man in society than the freedom of the one is the freedom of the other. The former is simply a unit upon the earth separate and distinct from every other unit. Its right is perhaps that of might, for it is a physical right and forms the basis of the law of the survival of the fittest. The latter is a unit of an organism, society, and directly or immediately con- nected with every other unit. His right is justice from the other units, to the end that his development maybe sj'mmetrical with the rest of the organism; his duty is justice to the other units, to the end that their development may be like unto his. And the unit that demands more or performs less than that is a criminal unit and deserves the criminal’s punishment — expul- sion to the chain-gang. The unit that claims and exercises op- portunities for development so abnormal as to require the dwarfing of a multitude of other units to effect it, is the dis- eased unit and needs the physician or the surgeon, the re- former or the revolutionist, to reduce him. And yet the crim- inal and diseased units are representative effects of the appli- cation of animal individualism to the social and industrial or- ganism. Long ago in the political world such individualism had been seen to result in military despotisms, unlimited monarchies, official tyranny and a degraded people, and along with the “right of the fittest to survive” had been sent into the limbo of detected error and mistake. Eepresentative and constitu- tional government succeeded. A government that depended for its just powers upon the consent of the governed was proposed. A system of checks and restraints was established; and the wielder of power was made responsible to the people con- cerned. The diseased and criminal units were thus “reduced” to their proper relation to the political organism. Socialism? Yes; but nobody called it so. Socialism was an epithet in those dark times. It was a term to damn things with. And so the philosophers of individualism by some hocus-pocus of their logic claimed the new political system as their own. But though the industrial organism was simply reaching out for the like means of discipline for its despotic units; though it was pursuing the same path towards responsible industrial gov- ernment; though it was wrestling with the same animal indi- vidualism which the political organism had crushed, it was INDIVIDUALISM. .5 met with the frowns of philosophers, the denunciation of stupid conservatism and the active opposition of the entrenched kings and kaisers, Czars and Caesars of capital who held sway over it. As the people, however, as citizens had climbed up to po- litical freedom over similar obstacles, so neither .could their progress as toilers be stayed forever by them. The industrial world could no longer be confused by the terminology of phi- losophers. Schools and universities and religious institutions were jarred to their foundations for daring to teach these mighty truths; and ancient and modern governmental systems alike were threatened with destruction for refusing to ac- knowledge them. The industrial world savv' that the “right” of the fittest to survive was a physical and not a moral right; it saw that animal individualism was fit only for animals; it saw that the Ogre of Socialism was simply organic individualism perfecting the symmetry of both the organism and the individ- ual; and it saw that justice went deeper than vested, artificial right, and rose higher than any x^hysical or intellectual might. And it was determined that the man who aspired to industrial power should pass the scrutiny of his fellows and render an account of his stewardship according to forms which they would establish. But the representatives of animal individualism who were gathered together on this occasion reckoned ditferentl3% They firmly believed that their vested artificial rights and the vast might of their acquisitive intellectualitj', gave them sacred war- rant for any action they might choose to undertake. And they did not regard themselves as made of the stuff that renders ac- count to any power. Any proposition to that effect would have been looked upon as no less than audacious blasphemj'. They had been so used to wielding the power of omnipotence over their plebian brothers that thej' were now ready to try a col- lision with the car of the creator himself. The juggernaut of evolution was to be indefinitely sidetracked. The right of way was theirs if the power of capital could secure it. And in view of the immense wealth which they “possessed,” of the national monopolies which they “controlled,” and the vast system of in- terlocked industries which they “operated” under the form of trusts and associated corporations, their boldness could not be declared rash nor their confidence unfounded. Their far-reach- ing power was undoubtedly great. That they could produce 76 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. mighty effects upon the nation and the whole mass of the peo- ple could not be disputed. The barons of feudal times wno made and unmade kings, who established and overturned gov- ernments, had not more power to effect nations and people in a political and military way than had these men in an indus- trial way. Nay, capital had become far mightier than the sword had ever been, and the glittering blade that once had flashed across the earth the lightnings of its imperial power was now but one of the degraded tools of the modern mas- ters of the world, the capitalists. THE CABAL OF PEOPEETY. 77 CHAPTEE XIV. THE CABAL OF PEOPEETl. A nd this was a gathering of capitalists. The lowest figures by which the least of them could be repre- sented was not less than two hundred millions of dollars. And the wealth here gathered in confer- ence ranged from that modest sum to three quarters of a bil- lion. It is not to be understood that these figures represent the individual wealth of the persons referred to, though that W'as great, averaging more than fifty millions apiece and ag- gregating the enormous total of two thousand millions as the personal fortunes of forty men, which they felt no embarrass- ment in claiming to have justly acquired and justly possessed The income of one of the members of this group of industrial kings according to the report of a congressional investigating committee was seven million dollars per annum. From the same report it is found that the annual revenue of another was five millions, of another four millions and of another two mill- ions, while that of the least of them hovered close around the million. But not content with these annual incomes, vast be- yond the dream of oriental despots, each one of this private gathering of private citizens of the republic, accepted from the corporation he represented, from one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars per year as official salary. And when it is remembered that a dollar per day was the average earning of the labor that produced the wealth which was thus gathered annually from them in such plethoric store for the private use of irresponsible, private power; when it is remembered that three hundred dollars was the average year- ly earning of labor that toiled ten hours per day for three hundred days in the year, a simple calculation will show that at that rate to produce the income of the mightiest of these men, the labor of more than twenty-three thousand men was annually required. The Individualism of Private Industrial ■Control had then produced an individual who in one year ab- .sorbed from productive labor an amount exceeding- the earn- 7S THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. ings of twenty-three thousand faithful, intelligent toilers, faithfully and intelligently employed; and it had produced forty individuals whose collective annual incomes required the labor of more than a quarter of a million of other individ- uals to produce it. The history of the chattel slavery of the world can not furnish an instance of the subserviency of such multitudes to the industrial power of indi\’iduals as the fore- going figures exhibit. The nearest approach can De found only in the palmiest days of rottenest Eome. The records of the times, to be found in the newspapers and magazines show other facts which are in beautiful correlation with these. They show that the number of the unemployed needing work and eagerlj'' seeking it but finding it not, was conservatively esti- mated to be not less than two millions of people; while many millions more were daily haunted by the specter of poverty That continually followed them at less than a day's journey be- hind. Millions of toiling men and women and children gave ten long hours of labor for a j)ittance so miserable as barely to sustain physical life. But immense as was the personal wealth- power of these forty individuals, it paled into insignificance be- fore that of the corporations and trusts which they represent- ed and officially controlled. Here the figures grow to the incred- ible and aiTXsalling when we remember that the itower for which they stand was exercised bj^ private individuals practi- cally responsible to no authority. The proportion of the pro- ducts of toil which they extracted from the toiler was subject to no exterior control. The relation which the dividends they declared, bore to the aetual capital legitimately involved, could not be inspected nor inquired into. Extortion could not be XTrevented, injuries redressed, nor oppression punished. The caxTitalization of the corporations here represented ran into the billions and they XTractically covered the wliole field of national industry. The simple recital of a few of the figures and a few of the industries affected ttuII in itself be sufficient to give ’ any one a comiirehensive idea of the industrial situation of the times and the resulting condition of the people. It must first be understood that the organizing spirit which became characteristic of the movements of capital during the last half of the century, had proceeded to such lengths that all the corporations and companies engaged in any great line of in- dustry had by a series of successive combinations been united THE CABAL OF PEOPEKTY. 79 into a single gigantic central association which practically .controlled that line of industry throughout the nation. The process was a simiile one. Local, competing operators first in- formally united to establish prices, fix wages and limit compe- tition generally within the territory tributary to them. The beneficial elfects of the operators were unmistaicable. The informal union became formal, permanent and legal. The cap- ital of all was joined together, the corporation formed, a sin- gle large establishment created, and production cheapened but not prices, neither were wages increased. The “operators” prospered. Other local companies in other localities likewise hastened to combine. Thus far the movement had in it noth- ing particularly novel or alarming. Competing firms in near neighborhoods had frequently done so in the past. But the lo- cally big corporation now became more numerous and com- mon. It became the thing. Local injustice and oppression were frequent, but was largely iJrevented by competition from other localities and by public opinion. The railroad and the telegraph had appeared however and as these means of rapid transportation and communication were ijerfected and extend- ed the idea of locality changed. It enlarged. It stretched to the limits of the republic. To the business man, the wide expanse of the nation itself was but a “locality.” And as the idea of the “local” expanded, the organizing power expanded with it. The local corporations rapidly combined throughout large districts. The State and National Trust sprang into existence, and the subjugation of that industry to the power of the “operators” became complete. The results were startling in the extreme. Competition was now' destroyed, and the pow'er to control production and prices and wages became by far the largest portion of the “capital stock” of the management. In- deed, as has been already said, the capitalization of the trust had now no necessary reference to the amount of money act- ually invested, but w'as limited solely to its taxing power over its patrons and laborers, and that taxing pow'er wms limited only bj^ the necessities of the consumer and his ability to pay, and to the lowest living requirements of the producer. For all “practical purposes” the producer and consumer had become the “property” of the trust. And to complete the ignominy and humiliation of the situation, the organizers of these gi- gantic companies had taken this “property,” their fellow citi- 80 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. zens whom they had capitalized into “shares” and “bonds,” and sold them to aliens and foreigners by whom a very large proportion of the “capital” of the country was now owned. The enormous private fortunes just described were largely ac- cumulated by such processes. The people had not been slow to see and feel the growing ijower of these vast corporations over them. They had early become alarmed and through their gov- ernmental ore. ins sought to stay the progrc.ss of the sla’ery to which they were being reduced; but capital under the system of Private Control, always the nomad and pirate of the indus- trial world, became the debaucher of the political; and by finesse and cunning, by corruption and briberj”^ practiced upon party leaders and legislatures and courts, had succeeded in frustrating every attempt of the public to regulate or control it. Its retainers sat in every department of government; its paid lobbjdsts swarmed everywhere that authority resided; its corrupters and defilers, its tacticians and strategists, an army of brilliant and capable men but industrially without conscience or principle, guarded every constitutional avenue by which the people could lawfully approach it. The public will was paralyzed by methods which these men devised and popular government was practically dead so far as the corpo- rations and trusts were concerned. Indeed, the people them- selves from the first seemed to feel in a dim, unconscious, in- articulate waj^ the futility of attempting to control them. In the same nebulous way, they seemed to realize the inconsis- tency of asserting the right to “regulate” business while granting the right of private control. They saw too, that the principle of organizing and centralizing productive power was economically correct. They saw that industrial conditions not only made the trust sj'stem of production desirable but im- perative. They saw that it made practicable the use of the valuable but expensive labor-saving machinery that was just then becoming so plentiful. And they realized that it made possible an immense saving in unnecessary effort, unnecessary competition and unnecessary management. They knew that if its benefits could be equitably distributed among consumers, producers and operators (capital) that the result would be a substantial addition to the property of all. But how to effect that; how to divorce the industrial system of the trusts THE CABAL OE PEOPERTY- 81 from their exploiting system; how, in other words, to wrench control of the system from the hands of its distorters, their oppressors, was the supreme question which they had not worked out; and it remained unanswered until the Industrial Socialists offered the practical object lesson of their compre- hensive industrial plan. But the managers of the trust system did not content themselves with organizing single lines of in- dustries. They began to reach out for those that were natur- ally allied. If any business closely affected another business, the two were at once combined and conducted by a common management. The Iron and Steel Trust was an example of this. Its president was in the throng of the forty. He was in close consultation with the railway president and the great organizer of the Standard Oil and Mining monopoly. Here was represented a trium-virate of industrial power whose schemes and manipulations threatened to destroy the indus- trial freedom of a nation. Nay, they had already done so. Their combinations had many interests in common. The corpora- tion over which the Iron King presided included not only all the iron companies and corporations of any importance in the country, operating practically all the furnaces and smelters, reduction works and factories and shops that dealt in the crude material, but it also owned and operated the mines them- selves. Wherever valuable deposits of the mineral had been developed, in the south, the central west, the north along the lakes as well as in the east, they had been covered by the combine until the sources of supply were held securely by the trust. Then one by one it had taken a multitude of lesser trusts that had organized the various lines of the iron indus- try. For instance, it had absorbed the Merchants Steel trust with a capital of thirty millions, the trust in structural steel, in sheet steel, in steel rails, in Illinois steel, with capital re- spectively of eight millions, three millions, seventy millions and sixty millions. It held the stock of the Iron League of New York, with a capital of sixty million dollars; the stock of the American Steel and Wire company with Its capital of ninety million dollars and controlling the wire industry of the United States; the American Steel and Iron comiJany, of Phila- delphia, of the steel and iron trust of Missouri and the iron and coal trust of Alabama, with capital of twenty million.^, twen- ty-one millions and twenty-live millions respectively. It held The CONSHlHACY OF CAPITAL. stock in various coal mines that furnished their fuel, in rrdl- ■way companies and lake steamship lines that handled their ■goods either as ores or finished products. And the generalis- simo of this horde of business men, of this aggregation of business enterprises, was the president of the trust. The ■hnormous salary which he helped to vote himself was compen- sation for the use of his “talents” in directing these, his subordi- nates into their several lines of “work.” Large sums were an- nually placed at his disposal and posted to the “expense” ac- tjount without question from any source. A slush fund was part of the “fixed charges” of every “respectable” corporation. The capital stock of the National Iron and Steel trust over which this man held sway was ofiicially given as four hundred and fifty-six millions of dollars. The number of men employed by the various companies belonging to the trust, included practically all That were en- gaged in the iron and steel producing industries throughout the nation, and according to the census of the period could not have been less than one million including the thousands em- ployed in the allied coal mines and transportation companies. This vast army of men were absolutely dependent upon the trTist. Outside its corporations they could find no employment at their trades anywhere because their trades were controlled by the trust. To quit work in one establishment was but to seek it in another operated by the same management. They were the property of the combine in every sense except a chattel legal sense. Their wages, their hours of labor, their employment, their discharge were determined by the trust and continually subject to its manipulations. It is true that a very large majority of its employes were union men; and the unions were supposed to have a voice in all matters concern- ing its men but the supposition was a delusion. Organized labor was the victim of a confidence game worked by capital. If anything was apparently conceded to the unions, it was be- cause the trust controlled the situation, and the concession was only apparent, never real. Able to control production, to transfer orders from one establishment to another, to shut factories here and shops there, to close these mines or those mills, destroyed the eifect of any demands that the union might make. In so far as a necessary, enforced and unescapable in- dustrial dependence constitutes slavery, bondage and servitude, THE CABAL OE PROPERTY. 83 so fai' Were these million laborers the slaves, the bond-men and the servants of this handful of mortals. And only in a less de- gree was the general public itself a victim. The prices of the trust were “fixed” prices. They could be advanced at will. There was no parleying, no dickering, no bargaining with the trust. The people paid its prices or went without its products, and there was no going without them, for iron and steel were necessities. They entered into the implements, tools and ma- chinery of every trade and industry. The production of food, shelter and clothes depended upcvn them. The Iron King had no rivals or competitors. He had absorbed or crushed themi and he was master of the consumers. And the president of the railway trust with whom he was talking was even more powerful than himself. He too, was a king. His realm was- the republic; his subjects, the people. His agents sat at the receipt of customs in every passenger and freight depot iru the nation and exacted his tribute from the people. They stood at the toll-gates of traffic and no commodity went in of came out without rendering the tax that he demanded. He owned the highways of trade and nothing moved in all the land without a payment into* his treasury. National indus- tries, vital to the welfare of the whole people, languished un- der his exactions; proud cities bowed themselves to the dust under his threat of discriminating rates, and imperial states lay paralyzed under the might of his despotism. He was the pivotal power among the trusts themselves. Without his aid they could not exist. By his system of secret rebates he had built them up, crushed their rivals, destroyed competition and established their monopolies. And many of them had ac- knowledged the importance of his power by attempting to hedge against it as the Iron King had done, through heavy investments in the stocks or securities of those transoorta- tion lines that most nearly affected them and becoming them- selves members of the trust, thus in a measure identifying their interests. The railway trust had been growing to a consummation for years, but it was only recently that it had been perfected into national proportions. A deliberate system of wrecking followed by receiverships and reorganization schemes had resulted in consolidating the ownership of the principal lines east of the Mississippi into the hands of a few •§4 ■rHE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. American and foreign capitalists who at once united their in- terests and placed them under a single management. Possess- ing thus the keys to the lake and sea-coast cities, and virtual- ly commanding the commerce of the nation, it was an easy matter to gather in one after another the great trunk lines ■of the trans-Mississippi regions. This had been the work of the master organizer who now presided over the most stupen- dous and far-reaching transportation monopoly the world fever saw under private ownership and management. He saw tiie lines of his corporations girding the continent in quad- ruple belts from coast to coast and extending from the great lakes of the north to the capital of the Mexican repub- lic on the south. He saw them dotted wdth towns and vil- lages, traversing the great wheat regions of the northwest, stretching across the vast cattle country of the trans-Missouri plateau, climbing to the mines of the Eocky mountains, de- scending to the timber belts of Washington and Oregon, to the citrus orchards of sunny California, on down to the steam- ship wharves of the placid Pacific. He saw them parting the cotton fields of the semi-tropic south, gridironing the rich corn lands of the valley states and piercing the populous east by a hundred devious routes to the commerce-covered harbors of the Atlantic. And with lustful, avaricious eyes he saw them gathering in concentering bands like the radiate arms of the spider’s warp, and webbing themselves about the great cities of the interior and ports of every coast. 'Wherever there were coal or iron or precious ores to be dug from The mines, or grain or fruit or textiles gp-own or live-stock raised or lumber sawn or fabrics made in mill or factory, there stood his long ungainly freight trains readj' to bear away the pro- ducts shorn of all profits to the toiling producer by charges of all the traffic w'ould bear, and to turn them over to other trusts that used them to exploit the consumer. The length of his combined roads was estimated to be nearly ninety thousand miles and the pay rolls contained the names of about four hundred thousand men wffiose industrial condition was no less dependent than that of the employes of the iron and steel trust already mentioned. The capitalization of these roads under the system was nearly four billions of dollars, upon which the net earnings during the last year of the nine- teenth century was more than two hundred and fifty millions. THE CABAL OF PROPEETY. 85 That so great an industry, so public in nature, affecting neces- sarily the whole people and exercising such absolute sover- eign powers, should be permitted to rest in private hands for private gain, is more marvelous than the stories of oriental Despotism. The people had remained singularly blind to the danger of private ownership so long that when at last they did see it, they were impotent to effect a change. The monop- oly had grown strong enough to emasculate their “regulat- ing” statutes, over-ride their constitutions, and defeat by chicanery and corruption and fraud every effort at public con- trol that recognized the right of private ownership. And the people had grown too distrustful of their political system to agree upon ownership by the public.' 86 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTEK XV. THE TEUSTS. A mong the great chain of trusts that stretched over the land there was probably none better illustrated the viciousness of the principle of irresponsible pri- vate control than the National Eailway trust under consideration. Whatever was evil in it could be charged to that system of management which gave unrestrained free- dom to the selfish greed of man, to his dangerous ambition for power over his fellow men, and to all the resulting exact- ions, cruelties, corruptions and tyrannies that flow from these two lowest qualities of the human heart. The evil power of monopoly under private control had been recognized and fought by the Anglo-Saxon people for more than a thousand years. Laws against commercial and industrial combinations were a part of their governmental traditions. And because of the limitations of time and distance resulting from the slow means of transportation and communication, they had found no great difficulty in regulating the private control of indus- tries with a few court decrees and penal statutes. But the destruction of those limitations by the railroad and telegraph was so sudden and the growth of industries and combinations consequent thereto was so rapid, that before the people were fully aware of it, their regulating machinery (as regulation had hitherto been understood) was inadequate for the pur- pose, and dazed and bewildered they sank under the indus- trial combinations that soon overwhelmed them. No other theory perhaps could account for the apparent submission o-f so intelligent a people as the Americans to the glaring evils of the private and irresponsible control of great labor-employ- ing industries and such gigantic, natural and artificial monop- olies as those here officially gathered together. The two great trusts whose presidents were consulting so closely together, have been mentioned at length because typical of the times and with one or two exceptions more powerful perhaps, than any others here represented. But all THE TRUSTS. 87 were more powerful than was consonant with the freedom of the people affected by them either as laborers or patrons. One of the most, perhaps the most important personages in the room was the president of the International Banking association. He represented a heavier capitalization than any one present. English and German money lords had joined their power to those of America and the combine controlled the fate of nations. They were the arbiters of peace and war in the two hemispheres. They were more. Their fiat car- ried moderate prosperity or abject poverty to millions in the midst of peace and plenty. They were the Gods of the ele- ments of the industrial atmosphere. They rode on the wings of commercial storms, launched the whirlwinds of panics, and spoke peace to the troubled waters of trade. They command- ed the money of the world. And under their manipulation money had truly become what it had been so tritely defined, the life-blood of industry. They had fastened upon the civ- ilized world a money system so astounding in its power to afBiet sorely the industrial and cBdl liberties of men and na- tions, that Satanic cunning must itself have doffed his cap and bent his knee before those nineteenth century masters of the legerdemain of greed, and bowed his head in shame at their utter selfishness. And yet withal, it was so simple and unpretending that the Divine Intelligence must have blushed for the dupeability of his creatures who became its willing victims. By making an insignificant metal commodity money, and forcing the vast commercial exchanges of the world to a basis of barter for it, they put themselves in the way of con- trolling the possession of its limited supply and thereby con- trolled the exchanges, the commerce, the trade, the indus- tries of the earth. As the tides of the ocean follow the move- ments of the moon, so the tides of trade followed them. And the Heart of Trade instead of acting automatically as it should, instead of expanding and contracting solely in response to the needs of industry, became simply as the blacksmith’s bellows, responsive principally to outside manipulation and acting for the most part artificially. But the Amer- ican president of the Monetary Bellows was very cheer- ful over it. He did not doubt his ability to pump to the entire satisfaction of his associates. He was “sleek-headed” and fat and evidently “slept o’ nights” as his Caesars would 88 THE CONSPIEACY OP CAPITAL. have him do. There was no suggestion in his looks of the “lean and hungry Cassius,” and yet he was dangerous. But he was jolly and seemed in a most complacent good humor with himself and the world as he talked ^\dth the preside’it of the American Press Association. This latter gentleman, more like Cassius in physique than in heart, was a tall and graceful gentleman. The banker was much interested In him. finan- cially as well as otherwise. His “reports” were much userl by all the capitalists present. He, too, was a power In the coun- try; but he was well under the control of the trusts. The capitalists aid not fear him, but they needed him and ma ’e a g’reat man of him. It was his province to “educate” ihe peo- ple and to see to it that no information reached them that they ought not to have. Reform was a pestilence that never swept over his wires nor spread through his papers. lit, \sas the Sphinx-like front to the Conspiracy of Silenci Cnl pre- vented unwholesome truths reaching the ears of the multi- tude. The American people had read of a censorship of rhe press in the dark and tyrannous despotism of the effete eas-. They had heard that the autocratic Russian and the brutal and bigoted Turk and the heathen Chinee made use of that arch instrument of darkness to keep their sub- jects in happy ignorance of their degradation and slavery; but as for themselves the freedom of the press was their proudest boast. Nay, it had been, but no longer was; for that proud boast had fallen before the vilest censorship ever maintained, the censorship of cowardly venal greed that had laid its loul hands upon this palladium of pop- ular liberty and secretly filched it away. And that which the revolutionary fathers had deemed important and sacred enough to place among the constitutional, political rights of the people, had crumbled at the corrupting touch of private capital. The press was no longer free; it had become tlie grateful, fawning servant of its master — capital. The great dailies of the large cities and the weekly journals of widest circulation throughout the country that controlled the news agencies of the nation, had prostituted their high powers to the basest uses of the reigning plutocracy. The brilliant and talented editorial and reportorial staff that conducted them w'ere but the willing or unwilling, conscious or unconscious, tools of the cunning heaps of wealth that owned them THE TRUSTS. 89 and counted them along’ ■with their oils and stores and rails and merchandise and other gross, material things that constituted their stock in trade. But it could not be truly said that the press managers and editors Trere always venal and mercenary in the coarser sense of those terms, any more than it could be said that the drunkard and gambler and bar-keeper ■were in the same sense advocates of the saloon and all its kindred evils; for as the latter have breathed the foul atmosphere of their vile habitats so long' that it has be- come a part of their mental and moral nature, so had the former, the editors and managers of the press, lived and moved in the more refined perhaps but no less vile and vicious at- mosphere of capitalism until their minds and hearts had be- come normal to it. This atmosphere of capitalism, full of its disease-spreading microbes, had penetrated to the edi- torial rooms through the business department of the paper. Ne’wspapers required money to run them. Expensive machin- ery had to be bought, large buildings rented or constructed and big pay-rolls permanently maintained. The independent but respectable days of the modest but mighty hand-press had passed a’way. Companies had to be formed and incorporated. Stocks and bonds had to be sold and •wealthy and steady ad- vertisers found. This vvas the opportunity of capital; and tha freedom of the press ■was secretly and silentlj^ buried along- side the free ballot and industrial manhood. The genius and talent of the editor, that once had been the true capital of the publishing office, now became its least necessary append- age. And instead of his establishing the paper, as in the times from Franklin to Greeley, it now established him. He became a hireling, a sycophant paragraphist and a paid writer of advertisements, extolling the virtues of his masters wares, his schemes and plans for plundering the people and governing the nation. The street fakir, the patent medicine vendors and the shoe string peddlars were his superiors in independ- ence and respectability. The owners of their goods at least were not standing somewhere behind them hidden from the people, and pulling the wires that worked their jaws as the owners of the editor were. The noble profession of journal- ism that once had towered alongside that of the statesman and philosopher, became, under the industrial system that dominated it, simply a department in an advertising and news 90 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. vending bureau. And the survival of the fittest had once more demonstrated its unfitness to survive. But the president of the Press Association vras hobnobbing vpith greatness as he under- stood it, and fancied himself the equal of the mighty banker with whom he was conversing. The president of the Telegraph-Telephone Trust was there. He held one of the wires to which the puppet-news-man dan- gled. Indeed, he was an expert with wires in a double sense. It was his business to work them in both a literal and a figura- tive way and he understood his business, particularly the lat- ter part of it. He controlled the lines of communication among the people. They couldn’t exactly know “where they were at” without his aid, and he charged them a good, round price for it. For three hundred years those benefactors of the race, those patient delvers into the mysteries of natural science, had worked on the problem their partial solution of which had resulted in the instruments which his monopoly controlled. The sum of those centuries of intellectual labor w’hich had been freely given to the world, this man claimed with placid presumption as his, and privately proceeded to control it. He had scattered a few thousand poles about over the country, stretched a few tons of wire upon them, attached a few thousand batteries and signal apparatl, the actual cost of the whole of which did not exceed twenty-five million dollars, and lo! he was a king and a multi-millionaire, and likewise possessed the earth in common, with the people? No, in common with the other thirty-nine colossi assembled ■\%'ith him. He was undoubtedly a great man. He had capitalized his patrons for more than one hundred millions of dollars. He exercised autocratic power over thirty thousand knights of the key, the faithful telegraphers who expended their lives in his ill-paid service. He turned his telephone exchanges into sweat-shops where delicate girls and women labored at his nerve-wrecking and health-destroying switch-boards for a miserable pittance. He robbed of employment men who needed it, and stunted and dwarfed the prospective citizen, in order to squeeze dividends from child-labor, his messenger boys. And having established his monopoly over the people, he was so grateful for the franchises they had given him and for the privilege of “private control” with which they had entrusted him, that he rewarded them by helping to muzzle THE TEUSTS. 91 the press and by joining the patriotic band of forty con- spirators who were here assembled. In appearance, h* was tall and spare, like the president of the Press. He was far past the middle age, and his once black hair and beard were much tinged with grey. His manner was sedate and dignified and he had quite the air of a clergyman. One would hardly suspect him of possessing the “business ability” with which he was credited. He was listening very patiently to the con- versation of the banker and the news-man, occasionally join- ing with a word. The broad and spacious rooms, connected by large sliding doors, now thrown back, were comfortably thronged with conferring magnates. Besides those already mentioned, a list of those present included the presidents of the Anthracite and the Bituminous Coal trusts, both of whom were co-investors ■with the Iron King and the Railway Despot, who respectively represented absolute capitalizations of one hundred and fifty millions and sixty-four millions of dollars, and the number of whose employes was estimated to be over one hundred and eighty thousand; the president of the Northwestern Flour trust, who through his mills, his elevators, his alliance with the railroads and his arbitrary and swindling system of wheat grading, held the farmers of the grain states in his easy grasp as well as the consumers of his products; the president of the Cotton Trust, who controlled that textile from the com- press to the finished fabric; the president of the Dressed Beef and Pork Trust performed the same philanthropic office for the meat producers and consumers; the president of the Sugar Trust who controlled that prime staple and taxed the people as his greed prompted; the president of the American Harvester and Agricultural Machinery trust, who sold his goods cheaper in South America than to the farmers about the factory; the president of the Builder’s Supply trust who had gathered in one after the other the monop- olies that controlled the manufacture of nails, saws, bolts and nuts, hinges, wood screws and sashes and doors; his capital ran close to the hundred millions, his employes were thousands, his patrons, the nation; the president of the Municipal Light and Power trust, who controlled street rail- ways and illumination in forty great cities and more than one hundred and seventy large to'wns; the president of the Amer- 92 THE CONSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. ican Arms and Ammunition trust, who was expecting to be an important factor in suppressing the expanding ideas of labor; his trust manufactured the strongest arguments used by the capitalism of the day; the president of the Western Dam and Irrigation trust; his concern was the youngest of any, and he was modest; he rested content with the posses- sion of the biggest half of the republic; he was more than king; more than despot; more than Turk — he was God out there. In his domain prayers for “rain” came up to him and if accompanied by the cash, he might pro rate the drouth among the others who had likewise prostrated themselves before him. And last but not least, were the presidents of the Standard Oil trust and the Fire and Life Insurance league, who had distributed the colossal wealth which they controlled liberally among the other trusts here represent- ed, owning large blocks of stock in most of them. The president of the Eailway trust, big and rotund of body, massive and square of face, eyes, heavy lidded, but sharp and penetrating, turned from the Iron King with whom he was conversing, and looking quickly at his watch for a mo- ment, rapped sharply upon the long table near which he was standing. The presidents of the trusts, who were scattered about the room in groups of from two to half a dozen, some seated, some standing, turned attentively towards him and ceased their conversation. And what became known to his- tory as the Cabal of the Trusts was in session. THE EMPLOYEE’S ARGUMENT. 93 CHAPTER XVI. THE EMPLOYER'S ARGUMENT.' jHE dramatic environment with which conspirators of I old were wont to surround their gatherings when J meeting to formulate their plots against dynasties, established governments and official power, was entirely lacking in this conference of the Trust pres- idents. There were no secret chambers ap>proached by dark and winding passages, no sentinel at the door, no pass-word demanded. There was no obscure light from fitful, gleaming lamp, no masked and muffled figures, no ghastly tokens over wdiich were whispered blood-curdling- oaths of secrecj^ And yet no conspiracy of history was ever more i^otent with tragedy than this. Eighty millions of peo- ple were to be assailed by a. most ruthless and debasing power. A thousand bloody riots, the lurid fires of revolution, perpetual slavery for a mighty nation hung in the balanc". If these men succeeded in their plans, the republic itself w'ould go down in the wreck of industrial hope and industri.al freedom that would follow', and popular government once more take its place in those silent halls of death whence but four short generations before it had been resurrected. But there was nothing in their manner or surroundings that would indicate that they were plotters of such far-reaching treason to their government and people. The traitors of the nineteenth century had improved upon the methods of their ancient progenitors. They no longer skulked to midnight con- claves nor gathered by devious ways in dark and secret places, with hearts standing still and hands on sword at the sound of their own flaky footfalls. They no longer staked their lives on the success of their ventures. The most they staked now was money. Their methods were business methods. Their meeting places were on Boards of Trade, in Stock Exchanges, around directors tables and in private business offices, such as are before us. In fact, there was no reason for them to skulk or be afraid. What they did, they did for the most 94 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. part lawfully, at least not criminally. They could not go out with a club and beat their neighbor into captivity and make him their personal slave. They could not assemble war-like armaments against the people and government and “vis et armis” reduce them to subjection; but under the private and irresponsible control of great industries which the people per- mitted, they could effect the same results, and none knew it better than the men who at the invitation of the presiding President, gathered themselves about the long table at which he was standing, and seating themselves in the heavj", leather- covered chairs which had been provided for their convenience, were ready to discuss the “important business” that brought them together. “Gentlemen,” said the Kailway President, “it has been said that it is an impossible thing for as many as half a dozen Americans to meet together without organizing a society or company and electing a chairman and secretary. But I think we can best prove the rule in this instance by being the ex- ception to it. In fact, it is a rule that needs a somewhat vig- orous pruning. It stands for a habit that has gone to seed among the people and produced the very vicious result that a goodly portion of them who need to be put to work think that if they can organize something or join some society or union or other, that ease and plenty and nothing to do will be theirs ever after. And the commonest stick you meet be- lieves that he is just about the right timber for a manager of the whole business, and if he can’t boss the job he goes on a hopeless hunt for one that he can. That idea has spread to an incredible degree among our lower classes, among those fitted by nature to be onlj"^ what they are — hewers of wood and drawers of water for those placed in authority over them. And rooted in a diseased desire to live without work, nour- ished by an evil educational system that gives them a smatter- ing of knowledge above their station, and developed by political privileges which they are incompetent to exercise, it has cre- ated aspirations too big for their brains and unwarranted by the amount of grey matter therein contained, and has pro- duced longings for things that the good of society and gov- ernment and business requires us to keep out of their reach. To that same diseased desire to live without work, to the po- litical privileges which the age presents, and to the educa- THE EMPLOYEE’S AEGUMENT. 95 tional system mentioned may be also attributed the great part of the Socialistic movements and tendencies now-a-days so unhappily common among- that spawn of the nation, the pro- letariat, whose idea of Socialism is infinite license, infinite leisure and spontaneous plenty, free meals, free beds, and no labor. And they think all they have to do to bring about this delectable state is to organize something, or failing in that, which their lack of requisite intelligence and good faith makes certain, to seize upon that which the brains and energy of some one else has organized, and reap advantages not in- tended for such as they who have not the strength of char- acter to use them properly, even if possessed justly. If they could effect their object and bring within their grasp the organizations and institutions and powers which they covet, they do not seem to realize that at the first touch of their ignorant and incompetent hands, those coveted things would crumble to nothingness or turn to bitter ashes like the fabled fruit of the Desert Sea. It is impossible for them to under- stand that civilization itself with all its grand and noble achievements depends upon the possession of its powers re- maining with those who have been instrumental in evolving them and who know how to wueld them intelligently. They cannot believe it; and upon the fair form of that civilization therefore they dare to cast their lecherous eyes and to reach out for it in a lustful, unreasoning way like the freckled whelp of Sycorax for the beautiful Miranda. I can appre- hend no higher duty for those who stand in positions of trust and responsibility such as we possess, than to use all the means wdthin our power to strike down those covetous hands, to pluck out the vicious hope from the hearts of the mis- guided creatures who possess it and put them'to work at some- thing that their untutored minds can comprehend and their clumsy hands perform. It is imperatively demanded that all the civilizing agencies which we possess, be nnited in a single purpose and a common effort to destroy the industrial her- esies that are spreading among our laboring classes, making them idle, bold and impudent; and to inoculate them -with healthful and correct views of their station in life and the dnties that pertain to it. They are sadly in need of education along that line. They are great on organizing; but they have yet to learn that organization means organs which must per- 96 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITxVL. form the special functions for which they are created. They have yet to learn that hands must perform the work of hands, that feet must tread the dust and the mire, and that the essential and necessary but meaner members cannot aspire to the functions of the higher and nobler. The working classes and the cranks and demagogues that incite to insubordination and rebellion at their lot, are very fond of referring to them- selves as the bone and sinew of the nation, and so they are. But in the next breath perhaps you will hear them demanding that Brains abdicate forthwith and get off his throne and yield his functions up to them; as though the functions of mind could ever be performed by Bone and Sinew, whose work must ever be essentially and grossly physical. Xot only so, but unless that 'work is done humbly and obediently under the direction of some Master Mind, it will be ineffective and without value. The atoms of an organism go naturally where they belong. The Grey matter cannot be kept out of the brain; and the Bone and Sinew' and horny substances can not be kept in. If there are any among our laboring classes who belong among the nerves or in the cerebellum or cerebrum of the body politic, body industrial or body social, you may be sure that sooner or later they will be found there and royally welcomed; but those that don’t, will not for we must keep them where nature placed them. These wholesome truths must be drilled into our people; and the work cannot be com- menced too soon. It has been neglected so long already that it is going to require some genuine ‘apostolic’ blows and knocks to do it. The ignorant boast and false assertion that there are no classes in this country and should be none has given our people a perverted notion of their individual impor- tance. As a matter of fact, caste and class have always ex- isted in every country; and our own democratic republic has been and is no exception to that universal rule. It is true that in colonial and revolutionary times, when the nation was a mere collection of ganglionic settlements, the classes were likewise in a somewhat embryonic state; that is, the lines of demarcation were not so sharply defined as in the mother countries. But as we became more populous and our industries were developed and diversified and organized, as our power became centralized as it must in all complex organ- isms, our classes became more and more differentiated as was THE EMPLOYER’S AEGUMEXT. 97 inevitable and necessary and rig-bt, until today the ..nes be- tween them are as broad as can anywhere be found. In the wild-ass days of our early republic when the conquest of the frontier and the wilderness was the all-imxDortant matter, our laboring people in their semi-isolation and unconven- tional environment became imbued with the idea that caste was, and of right ought to be, dead. That erroneous idea and doctrine was handed down to their descendants; it be- came a provincialism, so to sj)eak, an Americanism, if you please. It was promptly inoculated into every immigrant, wise or otherwise who landed on our shores; and together with the free-ballot, the free school and the free homestead became the object of the tenderest regard of every long-eared Bottom that enjoyed privileges so beyond his station. It is with ill grace therefore and sullen reluctance that the peo- ple yield to the inexorable law of heaven-ordained order, the wise application of which, committed to our hands, is forcing them to the level to which they belong and is requiring us to take from them one by one those privileges which it is in- compatible with the public good for them to possess.” A low murmur of approval ran round the table at this; and the president seeing that he was treading on solid ground, set his massive jaws a little harder and in the easy, conversational tone in which he had begun, proceeded: “Gentlemen, however harsh and unfeeling it may sound to our democratic ears, the plain, unvarnished truth is that ‘the powers that be’ in our country must teach tlic lal)oring class their place and make them keep it. The growing evil of the times may be stated in one single word — insubordina- tion; a word that very accurately describes the chronic condi- tion and chronic ailment of our lower classes. With it conu s that congenital horde of evil mental conditions — class envy, class jealousy, class prejudice, class hatred, and class antag- onism, which we find agitating them, impairing their happi- ness and destroying their usefulness. Before deciding on measures looking to a correction of this state of affairs, it may be well for us to cast about for the causes that produc- ed it. Besides those already incidentally glanced at, there is one which we as business men are especially competent to recognize and of which it is within our province to take ‘ju- dicial notice.’ Stated in a few words it is — Superabundant 98 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. Prosperity. The cold fact is, the laboring classes of America, have prospered beyond their mental and moral capacity to use what is paid into their hands. That statement would doubtless be received with open-eyed astonishment in some quarters I know, and be regarded as a casus-belli by the so- called reformers; but to us who are in a position to review the situation intelligently, it will be accepted as a very com- mon-place truth. It is quite the fashion of course, to parade the desperate poverty of the slums, the great number of the unemployed and the unequal fortunes of the rich and poor and then jump to the conclusion that labor is being robbed of its share by the avaricious capitalists. Whereas, we know the fact to be that a century of high wages has induced in the people habits of life, desires of living and material long- ings and aspirations that are extravagantly bej’ond their means and stations. We know the result has been, that our laboring classes are extravagant, improvident, shiftless, high- headed and unwilling to perform the simple duties that de- volve upon them. This is particularly true of later genera- tions and especially applicable to those of the present day- To them, to have to labor is in itself a desperate grievance, work is a disgrace, and contentment with their lot, a crime- They go to their daily task like quarry slaves scourged to their dungeons, instead of with that healthful, breezy cheer- fulness that constitutes true independence. They are un- willing to start as their fathers started; or to follow the trades that their fathers followed; or to live as their fathers lived. Their w’ages range from four to ten times in amount and from ten to twenty times in purchasing power above what their fathers and grandfathers gladly and thankfully received and on which they reared large and healthful fami- lies; and yet these their sons and daughters are ground into the dust and robbed and reduced to serfdom by soulless cap- ital! One hundred years ago, labor netted only thirty per cent of the value of its products; today its share is nearly sixty per cent. One hundred years ago the share that went to capital from productive industry was two-thirds greater than that -which -went to labor; today the share of capital is two-thirds less than that of labor. A few generations ago the farmer hauled his w’heat from twenty to sixty miles in a crude wagon over unworked roads, sold it for thirty-five cents THE EMPLOYER’S ARGUMENT. 99 per bushel and bought his wife a calico dress at thirty-five cents per yard. And though he spent the greater part of a week going and coming, yet he was contented and she was proud and happy. Just think what a howl would go up if the farmer today had to trade a bushel of wmeat for a yard ■of calico, to say nothing of the trouble and expense of mar- keting. Yet in these times with all his labor-saving agricul- tural implements, he complains of sixty-cent wheat and five- cent calico. “In those good old days to eat ‘white bread’ was the syn- onym of luxury; tea, cofliee, sugar and store clothes were dreams of wealth. The cobbler came once a year and the shoes that he made must last till his coming again. The hand- loom furnished the men with home-spun suits of butternut jeans and the women with linsey dresses, thick and strong. The pine-knot and the rush-light were their astral lamps. Stoves were unknown, but instead the omnivorous fireplace blazed its wide-mouthed welcome and wasted sixty per cent of its heat up yawning, home-made chimneys. The Dutch oven and the crane-swmng pots and kettles were their kitchen ranges; deal boards their floors where they had any, and ax-hewn, hand-sawn planks, their lumber for houses and ta- bles and doors. Glass was precious and so were nails and builders tools; and yet wages were a shilling a day or at most ‘two bits.’ Were the people of those times ground into the dust? were they oppressed? were they howling about Indus- trial Slavery? On the contrary, they regarded themselves as the freest and most independent people on earth. They grew vigorous and strong on their coarse but wholesome fare. They were content with their homely but comfortable cloth- ing and they lived happily in their rude and rudely furnished, but debt-free homes. Their luxuries were few; none, indeed, according to labor’s standard today; but they had no sickly yearnings for more than they had. Their holidays were not many, but they enjoyed them. Their social life was far ■sweeter and more healthful, than that of the disease-proud labor of today. Their morals were purer, their hearts lighter and cleaner, and their minds nobler. They were indeed less educated than our lower classes, but God save the mark when the popular education of our times is mentioned, with its sur- face gleanings of undigested facts, its distorted ideals of la- 100 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. bor-life, its half-truths, its ’ologies, its sciences, its dead lan- guages, its scientific training — all intended only for scholars and gentlemen and those with the means and leisure to pur- sue and understand them properly. If the working people of a century ago had less of such education, they at least had more common sense. And thej’^ had that jewel, ‘content- ment with their station’ which the education of today is es- pecially designed to destroy. They were willing to live their lives as God had cast them. They were willing to live •svithin their means. They were willing to make the best of their opportunities, and the result was they prospered and were happy. They even saved a little from their scant wages, hoarded it little by little, added to it and laid the founda- tion of many of the mighty fortunes of today. How is it with our working people? Are they content to be working people? Verily not. Every stupid bumpkin of them wants to be a gentleman, and their vulg-ar wives want to be ladies; and their sons and daughters fairly yearn for those high estates which to them mean nothing more than fine clothes, plenty of money and nothing to do. Unfit to exercise the functions of higher stations, they refuse to conform to their own; and this is true throughout the whole range of industries. Every clod-hopping son of a farmer who has been kept at school instead of at work and has been unfortunate enough to get into a high school or so-called college, straightway wants to be a lawyer or other professional man. Every cigarrette- smoking son of an artizan or mechanic who has likev^fise been educated out of his class at public expense instead of being bound apprentice to some trade, wants to be what he can not be and do what he can not do and refuses to be or do- anything else. Though incompetent and -ofithout experience, they all want to be officers the da3" thej^ enlist. They scorn service in the ranks. Though burning with an unhappy de- sire to be above themselves, to be rich and live like the rich, none of them are willing to make an honest, intelligent, in- dependent, individual effort to effect it. If we force them down on to their proper level as we inevitably must, they yield doggedly and resentfullj'. The trades and industries today are full of such people. Are they willing to live within their means? Not so; though their wages are ample, many THE EMPLOYER’S ARGUMENT. 101 times more in both amount and purchasing power than that on which their fathers prospered, yet these would be aristo- crats find them quite inadequate to their educated and grow- ing wants. They must liye and dress in a style closely pat- terned after their betters. Their wiTes must be in the fash- ion which our wives affect. Bonnets and gowns and wraps must be ‘a la mode,’ until it is difficult to detect the differ- ence in dress between the mistress and maid, the wage-wo- man and her patroness. Their sons must dress and lire like gentlemen, and their daughters must be ‘fin-de-siecle’ in everything. Their houses must be of modern architecture and carpeted and curtained and furnished with plate-glass mirrors and ‘suites-des-chambers’ until their fathers and grandfathers would stand agape at the luxury of their de- scendants. Their holidays must be passed up the river or down the bay or on the cross country excursion. They make more in two months than their grandfathers did in twelve, and they save less in twelve months than those level-headed, class-satisfied old men did in two. Would they condescend to live as those men lived? Well, hardly. No deal tables, no batten doors, no ungrooved, unmatched bare floors for them. No grated meal, no dark unbolted flour, no cobbled shoes, no tallow dips. The white bread dainty of their fathers has be- come their necessity and likewise a hundred other luxuries of which their ancestors never dreamed. The honest Sunday jeans of the grandsire is the Sunday scorn of the grandson, and the grandmothers prideful calico is the granddaughters cheapest dress. Are they prosperous? Not if their daily tale of industrial woe is believed. Nor would they be if their wages were quadrupled. Though they get flfty cents or a dollar where their grandsires got but a shilling or ‘two-bits,’ though the shilling would not buy a twentieth part of what the dollar will buy, and though the grandsire prospered.yet are they going up and down the land bemoaning the hardness of their lot that prevents them from being millionaires. ■While they have work their earnings are squandered in what for them is really riotous living; and when the dark days come they have saved nothing and the cry goes up that they are robbed, ill-used and no better than slaves. They join the ranks of the unemployed and lacking energy they become pub- lic charges. The condition of the laboring people of our country 102 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPIT^L. is but a verification of the proverb, ‘put a beggar on horse- back and he will ride to the devil.’ Starting with a vigorous ancestry, glad of the privilege to work, content with their station in life, following earnestly and proudly their respec- tice trades and occupations, willing to live as their fathers had lived, to labor as their fathers had labored, giving proper reverence and respect to law-s and customs and social and po- litical institutions, American labor through too abimdant prosperity, too high wages, has degenerated Into a progeny that is sadly lacking in those fine ancestral qualities. They have grown proud and conceited. They are ashamed of their sta- tion and that of their fathers. They strive to obliterate class distinctions. They try to escape from the trades and enter the professions without any ability whatever to do so. They yearn for something that wdll relieve them of the need of effort. They look to the government as our Indian wards look to the Great Father at Washington and hope to effect through politics what can only be done by hard labor. Having wasted their opportunities and squandered their substance like the prodigal son they think of the flesh-pots of those who Jiave prospered, and bold and impudent and unrepent- ant they purpose to return and demand another portion, and expect no less than that the provident and prosperous shall meet them afar off, put rings on their Angers and robes on their backs and escort them with a brass band to the feast of the fatted calf. “Gentlemen, I believe in holding fast to the lines of the old parable. And when they come, sajdng, ‘I have sinned and am unw’orthy, and desire to be as one of thy hired serv- ants,’ then but not till then will it be wise to consider the ar- rangements for the feast. In fact, until such an honest dis- position is shown, I think it will be the part of wisdom for us to provide quite another reception for thenn’’ Frequent and vigorous signs of approval had assured the speaker of what he already knew, that he was simply giving voice to the thoughts and opinions of those about him and the class they represented. Continuing he said: “Two other causes lie with ‘over-prosperity’ at the root of present evil conditions. I have already incidentally allud- ed to them but they are important enough to emphasize by special mention. One is our much lauded and really vicious THE EMPLOYER’S ARGUMENT. 103 - educational system whicli gives to the children of all classes- free of charge what is really a gentleman’s education; pro- ducing or tending strongly to produce in all who receive it a desire for the life and station that naturally go with it. It is really a cruelty, an unpardonable injustice to rear a child with hopes, desires and aspirations that in the nature of things can not be satisfied. If we give to the children of the lower classes, to those who labor and must labor, a training at public expense that unfits them for the industrial duties that will devolve upon them; if at public expense, we educate the children of such parents to a life beyond their station,- our logical duty is to provide at public expense a way for them to enjoy such a life; and that is what they are clamor- ing for today. We can not have free schools and a gentle- man’s education without such an intolerable result. One or the other must go, or Socialism, communism and anarchy can not be stayed. “The third in the trio of evil causes which I have men- tioned, is unrestricted political privileges, universal popular suffrage. Before the resources of the country were develop- ed, before the business interests of the nation oecame so vast and varied, as long as the political questions submitted to the people were ‘tweedle dee and tweedle dum' popular suff- rage was a matter of no especial concern. It Is true it was- bad even then, developing as it did among the people that omniverous conceit and over-weening confidence now a part of their character, concerning their right and ability to de- cide the most involved and delicate political and industrial questions. But the evil effects are especially felt now as the' disposition grows to draw the great business and financial interests of the country more and more into the range of political action. More and more the people are evincing a de- sire to lay their hands in a political way upon that which otherwise they dare not touch. More and more business- questions are becoming political questions. More and more the people encroach upon our sphere. Of course if they can get a business question into politics they have the legal, con- stitutional right to pass upon it. And their unlimited assur-- ance and conceit does not tend to make them modest abou'f the difficulties at all. They affect to settle off-hand, matters that puzzle finer and bigger brains than they -will develop in THE COXSPIKACY OF CAPITAL. !i)l a hundred years. And side by side with the man who has given years of study to a question or has had years of prac- tical experience in dealing with it, they go to the polls and confidently shove in their ballots with his. They rush in where wise, and experienced men fear to tread i^.en lightly. The spectacle of submitting great governmental and busi- ness policies every four years to the horde of strange crea- tures that crowd to the booths to decide them, is enough to make the spirit of Jonathan Swift yearn for re-incarnation to damn it with a last chapter to his Gulliver. It is this privilege Which has produced the audacious efironterj’, not to say in- solence, with which they now propose to despoil the wealth- ow'ners of the country under the guise of municipal and gov- ernmental ownership). Hot content with their high wages, not content to enjoy as necessities, such luxuries as the mon- archs and nobility of a few centuries ago never conceived nor dreamed, not content with all these things which the genius of Organized Capital and the constructive business brains of the country have developed and made possible, they would now reach out their ignorant hands for the business organ- izations that produce them and control them, hoping thereby to live ever after in idleness and plenty. Our political system has engendered this spirit of egotism,assurance and false con- fidence among the people that makes them think themselves equal to any undertaking; and if they can settle questions of government, why not all questions? that is the way they reason, and the result is that the laboring people actually want to own and run their employers business. There are several thousand men on my railway lines who confidently believe they are able and ought to run the whole business collectively. All of you have the same thing to deal with in your lines of business. Their Unions are all built on that principle; but happily we are well able to manage them. They now turn to political effort and that too we have succeeded so far in controlling, but at great expense, the last two cam- paigns having cost us nearly forty millions of money. “It is here at this point of our political contact with the masses that lies our real danger, our only peril. Industrially. W'e are safely and surely their masters. We control produc- tion. We control exchange, its means and medium. We con- trol the most powerful engines of communication and THE EMPLOYER’S ARGUIMENT. 105 knowledge. Legally and lawfully we are masters and man- ipulators of these vast economic and industrial powers, for legally and lawfnlly their ownership and operation are con- ceded to us alone. “Not so with the political powers of the land. In the ex- ercise of them and in their exercise alone do the aspiring creatures on onr pay-rolls, the hay-seed statesmen and the bull-whacking economists of the country boroughs find them- selves legally and lawfully our equals. Here alone at the point of political power and control, do the claw-fingered ‘sans-culottes’ of industry, the baying wolf-packs of labor, the mangy ‘canaille’ of repudiation, reform and Socialism, the ignorant horde of economic barbarians find lawful warrant for their audacious purposes and hopes. “It is true we have so far been able even at this point to control them and beat them down and back to their places; and we will not, I think, fail to do so in the future. But we only know, and know only too well, the dubious and devious ways and means by which the political power and privileges of these creatures have been shorn of all their, to them, hoped for results. And not always, I fear, have these way.s and means been within the spirit of the law; but they have been within both the spirit and the letter of that higher law — the law of necessity, which alone under present political conditions may be recognized as valid by the controlling agencies of civilization represented by us. “The ends must ever justify the means; and measured by that rule, the methods and agencies employed by us in accomplishing by indirection what otherwise we could not directly do, are wholly and comi^letely justified. But while this is true and while, as I have said, those agencies and meth- ods are fully adequate to deliver us from the jaws of the ‘mapy-headed-monster’ that vv-ould devour us and the collos- sal industries which we have builded and upon which civiliza- tion itself depends, yet it is mortifying to our manhood and humiliating to the Genius of Management which we profess, to embody that we have to confess to such necessity. “Shall -we the sure Masters of this Beast, industrially and socially forever be compelled to fawn upon and cajole and buy and intimidate and threaten, in order to be its master polit- ically? Aside from the personally offensive aspect of the sit- 106 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAITI'AI. nation as a mere business proposition, and as such we are here to consider it today, as a mere business proposition, jcan we afford to have our vast holdings threatened annually, biennially and quadrennially? Stocks and bonds are timid, tender things. They shrink and tremble at shadows, and at the Shadow of the Multitude most of all. We feel confident and speak boldly of our ability to control political results by our present methods; but we can not disguise the fact that there is always a chance of disaster, of a rush of the populace, of a stampede of the people that we could not control by such means alone. It is true we are more or less prepared for such a contingency, remote as it may possibly be; for if there -is one thing upon which the controlling business men of the country are determined, it is that under no circumstances shall the ‘mutable and rank-scented many’ triumph in their schemes of Socialism or taste the sweets of any possible victory. “But even the chance must be taken from them. Their political privileges must be curtailed, directly or indirectly, I care not how; but diminished, they must be; diminished, diminished, diminished until practical elimination is reached. It can be done. It is not impossible; nay, it is easy to ac- •complish. Already a large majority among them are disgust- ed with the results of the barren \’ictories which we suffer now this party and now that to win. They are aweary of party triumphs whose fruits are ever filched from them. They are without faith in parties or leaders, suspicious of their own representatives and distrustful of each other. Even the thoughtful and earnest ones among them are divided in .counsels; they are ours already. The political machinery as well as the machinery of government itself, is in our hands. To effect our purpose, we have but to decide on the When and the How. “Does anyone among us fear a popular revolution? Fear it not. The people that have submitted to industrial depend- ence will never care enough for political power to fight for it. The revolution would prove but a National Eiot, and we have, I fancy, ample power to handle that. Indeed, so far from fearing such a denouement, I, for one, would welcome -it; for in the cloud and smoke and confusion of such a time, this bauble of the people could easily be made to disappear; THE EMPLOYER’S ARGUMENT. 107 and I am tired, and so I think are we all, of this eternal driv- ing and herding of the masses to the polls, this never-ending dickering with their minions in official power, this perpetual Banquo-play with the Ghost of Popular Power that flits in and out at every business office in the land. It is a reflection upon our capacity and ability as business managers of the na- tion to permit much longer a continuance of this condition of afliairs; and I believe it to be the part of wisdom for us to seize the first, best opportunity that offers and by a bold stroke of our power end at once this national farce of universal- suffrage, this biennial and quadrennial carnival of political fraud and hypocrisy and cajolery and crime. “The elements of the commercial and industrial world over which we preside will never become settled and calm un- til this is done. Our interests, our industries, our country, our chnlization demand of us accelerated action along the lines I have suggested. Of this, I think, we are all convinced. I have but intended to generalize the situation as it seemed to me to present itself to our collective view at our last meeting. Since then we have had to consider but the How and the When. Upon these jioints we are now gathered to delib- erate. Before entering into that matter however, it may oe best to ascertain first if we are still of one opinion in regard to the situation as I have stated it To that end I suggest that expressions upon that particular are now desirable.” So, concluding, the mighty railway president, the unoffi- cial chairman of the convocation assumed the seat immediately behind him, at the head of the table at which he had been standing, and awaited the responses of his confreres. One by one the conspiring potentates rose and wth more or less prolixity or brevity gave assurance of their concurrence with the sentiments and views which President Gorman of the Railway Trust had just enumerated. All having in one way or another expressed their approbation, the ponderous Gor- man speaking from his chair, this time without rising, said: “Unanimity is the key-note of our power. That matter being settled, I suggest that we hear from the Advisory Agent chosen at our last meetiHg to examine into the Ways and Means best adapted to the furtherance of our purposes.” Then for tne first time the Mephistopheles of the Cabal came into prominent notice. 108 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. CHAPTEK XVII. THE TIHBE OF ATTORXEYS-AT-LAW. E arose and in his rising seemed a Pillar of State.” He was a Pillar of State, the Pillar of State in fact in the state of Capitaldom, the state of Monopoly, of Combine, of Trust, of Corruption, of Chicanery, of Craft, of Oppression — ^compositely known as the Indus- trial and Governmental State of America. Suave, polished, plausible, refined, an Apollo in appear- ance, a Chesterfield in manners, a Machiavel In principles, a scholar, a courtier, a man-of-the-world, he was a fit and perfect type of the tribe which he represented; a tribe, which in its utter selfishness, its ability, its acute- ness, its subtlety, its speciousness, its wil3-ness, its in- siduous and tenuous cunning and its apparent respectability, has furnished to the world the only true characteristics of the onlj^ genuine Devil of modern times — the Tribe of Attor- neys-at-Law. •Law^'er-politicians and lawyer-statesmen; a tribe by pro- fession fee-takers, bribe-solicitors, mercenaries and ‘soldiers- of-fortune’ whenever and wherever in societj’ or government they have appeared; the Hessians of society, selling their sword for money to the highest bidder in anj' cause; a tribe alwaj's and everj'where sj'cophants of power, parasites of class, leeches of wealth, alvvaj's and everj'where tools of des- pots and demagogues among the people and alwaj's for a price; espousing a “corde,” never a cause, never a principle, never a truth; but alwaj's their own fortune and aggrandizement as represented in that of a client, whether the latter be a man, a corporation, a partj% or a power to which thej' have attached themselves for that single purpose. A tribe that has no con- victions, no principles apart from a client, and no client that does not pay. A tribe whose invulnerable armor Is the “ethics of the profession;” whose escutcheon is escalloped with thirty pieces of silver, and above whose bar-sinister is em- blazoned its significant and only motto, “For Sale.” THE TRIBE OF ATTOENEYS-AT-LAW. 109 Sworn upholders of the Law, they have been its arch be- trayers; sworn ministers of Justice, they have been its dead- liest poisoners; sworn officers of the Court, they have been its mockers and befoulers; and whether on the bench, at the bar, in jsarty councils, at the legislator’s desk, in the execu- tive chair or around the cabinet table — the ‘‘retainer” has ever been the only talisman to which they acknowledged sub- jection. Their ideal brain is the sx^ider’s spinneret; their ideal heart, the snake’s; their ideal client, the pocket-book; their ideal faith, Satanic; and yet to such brains and hearts and faiths, and client-seeKers, have the destinies of our peo- ple been almost wholly entrusted. Is it any wonder there- fore, that our courts are mazes of technicalities, our common law an “equivoque” like the Delphic Oracle, and our public bodies, hot-beds of corruption and faithlessness? Is it any wonder that the record of history uniformly shows that the rise of this potent, dangerous and contemptible tribe into prominence and power, has ever been accomxianied by nation- al degradation and the basest betrayal of the x^eople’s liber- ties and rights? It is a significant fact worthy to note in this connection, that the famous and infamous Praetorian Guards that finally possessed themselves of the crown of the Caesars and hawked it about to the highest bidder, selling it and retaking it to sell again, derive their name from that of the judicial officer of whose court decrees they were at first executors. It is a fundamental principle which every people who would be free and remain so, would do well to recognize — that the paid-advocate by occupation, the hired-pleader by nailing’, the side-taker for money, the man w’hose profession it is to demand pay before espousing- a cause, to espouse a cause only upon receiving pay therefor, is unfit to be trusted in any capacity other than professional; and even there, it will be found that the best interests of society and govern- ment imperatively demand his suppression; for the “code of ethics” to which he subscribes, breeds in him a moral lep- rousy that infects everything with which he comes in con- tact — courts, constabulary, legislation, politics, the people themselves. So long therefore as this Drummer whose wares are his wits, is commissioned or permitted to ply his in- iquitous vocation, and, O incredible! entrusted with place and no THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. official power, so long will the body politic remain diseased and impure, as he is diseased and impure. And yet to this vital truth the public is and has ever been practically blind. The lawyer-politician, the lawyer-statesman, the attorney- at-law, pervades every department of public affairs. All our judges and nine-tenths of our legislators and state executive.s. and twenty-two out of twenty-four presidents have belonged to this order of professional Pecksniffs. From this same class have come a still larger percentage of those carrion-birds of society, the professional politicians and the professional lob- byists. None have been so honored and trusted by the people as this Gentleman of the Law, this suave Judas who has uni- formly and promptly and characteristically betraj^ed them.. Ours has been and is a government of the lawyers, by the law- yers and for — the lawyers? No. True to the parasitism of their professional nature, they have made it a government for the clients who own them; and unless the people awake from their blindness it will continue to be such a government, until the Reign of the Lawyer is succeeded as it always has been in the past, by the open Reign of the Client himself; for loyal to his profession as an attorney, a retainer to the last, having always wielded his powers and his wits for the pay of a master, he meekly at the bidding of his lord, laj"S down the fruit at his feet. This the learned and courtly Counsel of the Cabal was now proceeding to do. As we have intimated, he was a perfect pattern of the dignified, the elegant and the respectable. His — “a front like Jove’s, eyes like Mars to threaten and com- mand;” and “deep graven on his brow Deliberation sat and Public Care.” This, the outside seeming; within, unconscious to himself, because justified by custom and precedent and the established Order of Things — the damning spirit of his pro- fession, prompting him to minister to all the evils of our false civilization and the false industrialism by which it is alrnost wholly supported. Oh! what talents are suborned to the vindoing of man- kind by the false systems of society that hold us in their de- stroying grasp; talents that else would straightway lead the miserable multitvide out of the mire and degradation in which it is now so pitifully groping. But not so are the refulgent plains of Universal Brotherhood to be reached, though reached’ THE TRIBE OF ATTOENEYS-AT-LAW. 131 at last they -will be. The toiling, yearning millions may only “rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to better things;” on stepping-stones of the toiling, yearning millions, dead and ■dying who precede them. Ay, so be it. If only that were all, how cheerfully w'ould the lowly ones of the earth go forward to their martyrdom and yield themselves living or dead to the upward mounting of their children and their children’s chil- dren in never-ending procession as they teem forth out of the eternal future through the eternal present into the ever- lasting past; that were happiness. But to go forward only to fill the crevasses prepared by Class and Power; only to fill the ditches dug by the selfish Few; only to fill the “sunken roads” washed by Privilege and Precedent and False System for their living grave; and to see their children and children’s children in endless train, driven, crowding after them into the same yawning pit-falls, and to feel and know that the awful sacrifice is needless but for these artificial chasms, though inevitable because they must be filled before the pressing myriads of the future can pass on; this is to dash the Im- mortal joy of martyrdom with unbearable bitterness. Wash deeper thy “sunken roads,” O Privilege! dig deeper thy ditches, O selfish Few! broaden thy yawning crevasses, O Class and Power! plant thou still mightier batteries beyond them, over against the onward-marching multitude and sweep them like grass before the scythe! strain and crack thy wits. O thou designer of Ways and Means! but for all that, thou art doomed. Thou canst not dig thy pitfalls deep enough, O self! O Privilege! O Class and Power! or fast enough or broad enough to stay but for a moment the onward sweep of the thronging millions of the Sons of Toil who are hearing down upon you. Though they must pass over on the quivering mass of their fallen and trampled fellows, again and again they reach you, they press upon you and at last will overwhelm you, like the mighty waters of an everlasting flood. Destiny leads them, hovers ’round about them and overshadows them unto final triumph. For destiny means God, and God means The Good, and The Good means thy eternal defeat. It means no bottomless pits on earth for the people; no “cul-de-sacs” for the human race; no Waterloos for Jnstice. It means Universal Brotherhood, Triumphant Humanity, the glory of the Reign of Right. ijfi THE CONSPIEACY OP CAPITAL And yet it is this against which thou raisest thy puny arm, O miserable Self! thy childish conventionalities, 0 con- temiJtible Class! thy bloody standard, O blinded Power! Against thy brothers, thy humanity, thy destiny, thy God. Foredoomed to defeat, thy very ^^.ctories, thy surest destruc- tion. And yet once again in spite of the awful warnings of the past, its charnel-houses where the skulls and bones and dust of Class and Power lie mingled ever with those of the people whom they would enslave; in spite of Its wrecks of wealth-glutted empires, its blackened ruins w'rought by the lurid fires of internecine warfare, with the dismantled palace ever side by side with the smoking cottage; in spite of its ghastly relics of popular revolution and national reigns of terror, where bloody crowns and coats of arms and mailed hands are seen in the awful death-clutch of those despised and oppressed but unconquerable ones — the People; and yet once again in spite of these warnings of the past, these les- sons of history, and the teachings of reason itself that tell thee thy fate is inextricably joined to that of thy brother, yet once again thou raisest thy sacrilegious hand against him; once again thou goest, if to his destruction, no less surely to thy own. THE WAYS AND MEANS. 113 CHAPTER XVIII. THE WAYS AND MEANS. ENTLEMEN,” said this personal representative of Hell; this ex-congressman, ex-senator, ex-cabinet member, present politician, lawyer and advisory agent of this treasonous council: “You hold in your easy grasp the Ways and Means for the rapid and final closing of the ancient and perplexing case of The People versus Property. “Social philosophers and politieal economists in their acutest definition of Man, have called him the produeing an- imal. That is, man alone lives by means of his own pro- ductions and produces by means of machinery. This is most obviously and vitally true of the massed and teeming life of modern civilization. Those then who control production, its sources and machinery, control the means of life, and there- fore, life itself. Old Shylock said truly, ‘you take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.’ Those there- fore who control the sources and machinery of producing the means of living, control the fountain of all earthly power. The physical, the social, the moral, the intellectual, the po- litical at last bow down before this control because all are de- pendent upon it. “A few more links of logic completes this philosopher’s chain and brings me to the point I wish to make. The sources and machinery of production constitute capital; capital con- stitutes the only true property, and property therefore, is the only true power. Fundamentally and practically there is no other. The breechless giant, the moneyless duke, the moral- ist in rags, the philosopher in crocked and battered hat, the king without revenue, the people without property are but puny and sorrj^ objects. Clothe them with property and you clothe them with power; strip them of property and you strip them of power. “History is but the vitascope in which this principle of phi- losophy is presented before us. “In the far-off past, property was held in the right of phys- -114 THE COHSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. ical miglit; and physical might possessing itself of property possessed itself of the source of power and thus held its sub- jects in a double bondage. But as society grew into the com- munity, and the community into the state, the physical was gradually merged into the political and the political in the course of time became the lawful — the legal. As this change progressed the power of property as the fundamental power of society became more and more apparent until today prop- >erty held by the right, not of physical might, but by the right 'of legal might, is undisputedly supreme and so regarded by ithose who understand the conditions of modern life. “Mark you, I said property held by the right of legal might, for I siiali have occasion to refer again to that phase of the situation. “Gentlemen, you and those you represent are today, the un- disputed masters, the legal possessors of the undisputed means of power in this country — the sources, the machinery, the means of production. The question you have submitted to me is, as I understand it, how may this possession be most securely retained in present hands, or rather most certainly prevented from passing into that of the incapable and incom- petent iJopulace. “In considering the ^Yays and Means of prevention, we must first consider and have a clear understanding of the methods by which such an undesirable transfer of j)ossession could possibly be effected. These methods will be found to re- solve themselves into two. The possession of the mighfy sources of industrial power which you own and control can be transferred from your hands into that of the people only by physical might or by legal might — by action of force or by action of law. “Action of law can be effected only either by the private acts of individuals in the usual course of commerce and trade or by the public acts of government in the usual course of legislation and politics. Whether or not the people can ever in their private capacity wrest from you the ownership and control of the property powers in question by the usual meth- ods of commerce and trade, it is needless I think to discuss. If they can,” and for the first time the features of the speaker relaxed into a characteristic smile that seemed a sort of com- posite reflection of the smiles of pride and security and dis- THE WAYS AND MEANS. 115 dain that played over the faces of his client audience; “if they can, why that is a private matter between them and you and is a liberty of which we would not deprive tbem. It would seem that the certainty of failure would be sufficiently ap- parent to deter them from such private commercial attempts but such we know has not been the case. We have been treated from time to time to the spectacle of ambitious popu- lar organizations having for their object the initiation and extension of the principle of private co-operative ownership and control of industry in general and distribution in par- ticular; said extension to result finally and naturally in re- solving the millions of the ‘hoi-polloi’ into a monster company identical in membership and territory with the nation itself. These for the most part have as a matter of course died ere they were born and in any case can usually be left to the nipping frosts of the greed, the over-reaching, the distrust and general managerial incompetency of both membership and directors. If anything else be needed to the utter overthrow of these attempts at the legal seizure of industrial power by the people in their private capacity, you have but to inter" pose most lightly and the project falls to the ground. Whether or not the last and most audacious of these attempts shall be left to the usual natural fate of such organizations or shall be hastened to its end by your interposing shadow, is but for you to determine. I refer of course to the organization knowi^ as the Industrial Socialists. “Like the many similar organizations which have preceded it to a disastrous end, it might be safely left to the disinte- grating effects of the selfish antagonisms inherent in human nature which forever make impracticable all co-operative schemes of large magnitude; but the bad effects on the peo- ple of its continued success and larger growth and most es- pecially the popular effects of some new and dangerous prin- ciples involved in its industrial system, may perhaps justify its quickened destruction at your hands. “The new and dangerous principles to which I refer and which I believe require the immediate suppression of the or- der, are embodied in its monetary plan and its so-called Po- licing of Industry; the former professedly reducing money to simply and only a medium of exchange, a counter in trade, destroying all its private investment and private money-loan- THE CONSPifiACi’' CAttTAL. n6 ing qualities by placing upon the collectivity the duty of me- diumizing all values, which is but another way of saying that the government shall be the only money-loaner; the latter re- quiring of all labor-employing industries a recognized responsi- bility to public supervision and control in regard to wages and dividends and profits, involving a most abject subjection of private affairs to a most inquisitorial public inspection. The disruption of the society at this stage of its growth would I believe result in a most salutary lesson to the people. You have but to speak, and it is done. At a breath from you this i’elatively and powerful and successful organization will be scattered as chaff before the wind. It is not necessary for me to suggest the Ways and Means of effecting so small a matter.” Whether the courtly gentleman of dignified cunning meant morally small or commercially small he did not stop to ex- plain. Certainly there were none in that assembly who would hare put the former construction upon it. “Other and mightier opponents have gone down before your quiet methods of boycott, discrimination and concen- trated competition and so will this latest. If however, any- thing else be needed to complete its dissolution, you have but to introduce your agents into the organization and the ma- chinery of the courts will do the rest; a few injunctions and forced receiverships would alone destroy its usefulness. And as I have said of all attempts of the people at your ouster by legal might from the possession of the industrial powers of the country through the private methods of trade and com- merce, they are foredoomed to failure. They may therefore be dismissed from further consideration;” and with a wave of his hand, he swept out of existence the hope of the independ- ent laborer, farmer and artizan, the free and independent in- dividual workman wherever he toiled for a simple living, an humble home, a crust of bread unpoisoned and unshadowed bj the presence of a Master; the same, same graceful gesture of the elegant and refined exponent of modern demonology, and demonolatry, likewise swept out of existence the hope of any combinations, industrial or commercial, having for their object the just and free participation of the individual members in the result of their toil. In that gentle w'ave of the white hand of the in- dividualist, individualism swallowed up the individual in an THE WAYS AND MEANS. 117 eighty million mouthful and there remained after the simil- itude of Jonah and the whale, only the people and the trusts; in sight, only the trusts; inside, only the people. But let us see how the advisory agent expresses it. “There remains then, gentlemen, only two methods through which your property and your powers may be com- passed by the people — through physical might or through the legal might, not of private action in trade and industry, but of public action in politics and g'overnment. Private endeavor is, as we have seen, eliminated from the problem. There re- mains for the people only the revolution of force or the revo- lution of political action. Of the two I am unable to decide from which you have the least to fear. The Ways and Means that will prevent and frustrate the one can be largely de- pended upon to prevent and frustrate the other; and as 1 have said, of those Ways and Means you are the easy Master. “For instance, taking first the revolution oi Force, mean- ing thereby a popular uprising of the people and not a local riot or ‘emeute,’ I have only to remind you that that means war, and that war in these modern times means organization and machinery, and organization and machinery mean capital. The engines of modern warfare are veritable machines that require capital and large and well organized capital to pro- duce and operate. The days of the knotted club, the battle-ax and the broadsword are gone. War now requires the mighty cannon, the matchless machine guns, the rapid-fire rifles, the dynamite projectors and ammunition literally by the ton. The multitude without the modern equipments of war are but a rabble; and they are not only without them today, but the possession of those in existence are practically in hands entirely friendly to your interests; whether or not you control the means of producing others, I leave to be answered by the president of the National Arms and Ammunition trust whom I see is present. “So much for the machinery of war — now as to its organ- ization. The latter requires first, that a sentiment favorable to it be aroused among the people; that means agitation, and agitation can practically be effected only through the chan- nels of communication, news dissemination and tte methods of popular education which you undoubtedly control. The president of the Consolidated Press who is also present, in- 118 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. forms liic iiliat their organization and news monopv,,^ _s now so perfect that it is possible to isolate completely anj' and every locality from the general news of the country except as the same may creep into public knowledge by the slow pro- cess of the mail; or to state it differently, any undesirable news may be strictly confined to the locality In which the happening occurred; and so thorough is the understanding and concert of action among the great central newspapers of the country, the mighty metropolitan press upon wlilch not only their own direct constituency depends for news, but the coun- try and exchange press as well, that news suppression and dissemination are under absolute control. Add to these com- fortable facts, the further statement that jmu liave in your hands the telegraph lines which furnish the only means of private raj)id communication and the transportation lines which carry the public mails, and that the postoffice depart- ment itself is subservient to your influence, and you wiU at once see that in a country territorially as large as ours, no revolutionary agitation can be successfullj^ carried on, no revo- lutionary organization successfully effected, and no concerted movement possible among the people. In a word, you Liave it in your power to work the wondrous miracle of rolling up like a scroll six centuries of time for the people and reducing them to the days of the stage coach, the private post and the penman’s art; while you yourselves remain heirs of all the ages, speaking across continents, gathering the news of the world from hamlet to mart at each morning's breakfast ta- ble and masters of all the modern means of organization, ed- ucation and intelligence; able therebj*, not onlj' to prevent ad- verse agitation, education and organization among the masses and keep them ignorant of things not mete for them to know, but to mould them to your hand by educating them as you desire, agitating your own cause and discounting undesirable news and retarding damaging facts before they can work their evil; and bewildering, confusing and dividing where j'ou cannot convince and unite to your own purposes. To strengthen the already seemingly impregnable posi- tion of the great property interests of the country, I would recommend in this connection that the movement so well be- gun of building armories and establishing barracks at all the large labor and transportation centers be continued. These THE WAYS AND MEANS. 119 should be so equipped and enlarged and strengthened as to make them practically unassailable by any local uprising of the people. The National Guard and regular army should be increased in both numbers and efficiency and the Arms and Ammunition trust should make complete their control of the producing plants of the country and as far as practicable should place their better class of small arms beyond the reach of the wage-earning classes by placing prohibitory prices upon them. Fortunately, most of our large labor-employing centers are lake or sea-coast cities, where under the plausible pretext of a foreign foe, the largest and completest govern- ment military works may be established. Under the same plea the most extensive plants for the production cV the most modern and deadly engines of war both government and pri- vate, may and should at once be carried forward to comple- tion. These things done, a handful of our soldiers will easily control any riotous mass of the populace, and a display of our power will overawe and quell the mightiest concourse of malcontents that they will be able to gather together. “So much for the ‘machinery of war.’ A word now as to the means of organizing’ a Revolution of Force. On all the modern facilities for organization you should obtain a stCl firmer grasp. The censorship of the news should be even more rigid, the metropolitan press should be organized into a still closer corporation. Newspapers offensive to your interests should be mercilessly but quietly blacklisted and boycotted as only Capital knows how to do it. The so-called reform press should be made to feel that ‘Jordan is a hard road to travel,’ and that it grows harder and more difficult as the months roll on. The establishment of new sheets of that kind should be made next to impossible, by charging letter postage on sam- ple copies of all newspapers not already having a bona-fide subscription list, and by denying admission to the mails as second-class matter all publications that have not such lists established. The Postal laws must be so amended as to give the Postmaster General the right to deny the use of the mails to such persons or organizations as he may have reason to believe are using them for incendiary purposes, such as in- citing the people to riot, insnrrection or other forms of treason, in much the same manner as he now has the power to deny mail privileges to such as he may believe are using them for 320 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. fraudulent purposes. The railroad, express and telegraph trusts should closely follow the actions of the authorities in these particulars and promptly second them, by, so far as prac- ticable, quietly denying the use of their facilities to their em- ployes or others for such purposes. If your labor organiza- tions are disposed to be troublesome, the means just suggested may be used to frustrate concert of action between them. Nor has the power of injunction been exhausted by our courts; but I would suggest as the surest means of their control, the, influencing of their officials by systematic political support, through whom alone the members may adequately act. Those who cannot be properly influenced must sj’stematically be made to feel that the power of property is not to be safely at- tacked. You know how to dispose of such unruly agitators and leaders; but quietly, gentlemen, quietly, in all things. The dignified and reposeful exercise of power is most impressive as well as most effective.” The attorney in an unconscious gesture here showed his own dignified and reposeful person to the best advantage as a living and therefore the most impressive and effective illus- tration of his remark. Pausing a moment as though to ob- serve the full effect of this personal illustration of his own innermost character and methods, he continued: “I come now a step nearer the real purpose of our delib- erations which is to decide not simply on the Ways and Means of preventing the people from possessing themselves ‘en masse’ of the property powers of the country, either by a Kev- olution of Force or by a Political Eevolution, but to destroy utterly as far as may be the Spirit of Change, of insubordina- tion or revolution among the people. Your present possse- sion must not only be made secure, but the futiire must be cleared of all menace, all threats, all doubts. To that end, as so accurately stated by President Gorman, the very Spirit of Insubordination that broods among the people must be forever quenched. The causes that produce this spirit of unrest, of discontent, of insubordination among the lower classes have also been very tersely stated by !Mr. Gorman as prosperity, education and political power beyond their station. High wages result in a standard of living and a hope that is very destructive of the -proper class feeling and respect which the wage-earning people must for their own good and the good of THE WAYS AND MEANS. 121 society and government be brought to possess. Like the peas- ant in the poem, it causes ‘a vague unrest, a nameless longing to fill their breast; a wish they hardly dare to own, for some- thing more than they have known;’ not only that, but a rela- tive high standard of living raises correspondingly what I may term the Level of Despair. That is, the Level of Despair follows closely the accustomed standard of living. But a curious property of this Desperation Level, is, that it can only be reached by a sudden drop in {he standard of living. If the latter is lowered gradually, the level at which despair and con- sequent desperation is reached keeps steadily below it, until a people can finally be brought to live very contentedly in a state which if they had reached suddenly would have seemed desperate. This fact must be taken into consideration by you in the general lowering of wages and consequent standard of living which you are con- templating for the people. For I warn you, that the Level of Despair must not be reached by a majority of our people at any time; for if it should be, all our calculations will have been made in vain. Despair and Desperation can no more be controlled by calculation or reason or foresight than could formerly ‘spontaneous combustion.’ Y^our organizing power, your power over organization among the people, would prove to be a but a rope of sand. Make a cut in wages, sudden, deep and general and the beast that now fawns upon you and cowers before you in chains that seem to us beyond his strength, will break them like threads and turn and rend you and destroy you. “But wages may be safely lowered gradually" ana systemat- ically or suddenly among now one class of laborers and then another as you may have some special purpose to serve in the, industry in which they are engaged. The working people too, must firmly be made to understand that a general lowering of wages and standard of living is inevitable from natural eauses. such as increasing density of population, fiercer competition of one section of the country with another, greater purchasing, power of money and natural over-production incident to the use of labor-saving machinery in industry. That this last will re- sult in producing a large and permanent class of unemployed can not be doubted; and to that fact must the people be brought to accustom themselves. This class, the unemployed. 122 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. while miserable in the extreme, I regard as very useful and necessary, not to say indispensable to our modern scheme of industry and civilization. They can never prove dangerous, for their numbers must always be but a tithe of our poulation. What are a few scattered millions among our teeming popu- lace, and besides those forced into that class are ever in the main the shiftless, wavering, weak, incompetent creatures who do but cumber the earth under any circumstances and their Level of Despair is so low that their maintenance will always be an insignificant item to society upon which they must de- pend. They seem to realize that it is a great charity to permit them to exist as best they maj' and are consequently grateful to be granted such permission. They are indispensable to us however, for they are the greatest levers we have in breaking the etiorts of labor organizations and in forcing continuall5' lower wages upon the emploj'ed. The unemployed man is al- ways so much more dependent than the emploj-ed, and his standard of living so much lower that he always regards the latter as a very lucky fellow whatever his wages may be and as a general thing stands eagerly ready to take any abandoned place opened to him. It is chiefly by means of this utterly de- pendent class that the dependence of the whole body of wage- earners is finally to be irresistibly effected. A few judicious turns of the wage-screw and thej’ will all realize and feel this dependence, and when they are in fact industrially dependent upon you and feel and realize it, they are yours. To effect this, the wage-rate must continuallj' be so adjusted as to keep the standard .of living among our lower classes too low for realizable hoj)e, too high for utter despair. “The second in our trio of insubordination breeders, ‘ed- ucation beyond their station,’ cultivates the spirit of insubor- dination in much the same way as ‘over-prosperity’ does. It creates in the people a desire for a standard of living above their class and besides makes them dissatisfied with their fixed condition in life and unfits them for the performance of the hard duties incident to and inseparable from it. This evil must be remedied. I do not however believe it to be feasible to make a direct attack upon the free public school system as an insti- tution. But there are more ways of taking the life of a canine than filling its trachea with butter. There are some really meritorious public school reforms which the people will read- THE WAYS AND MEANS. 123 ily accept as such without suspicion and which will serve our purpose quite as well. “The Institution may not be diminished, but the school age, school term apd school day may very properly be. This is but incidental however. My main recommendation is to attack not the institution but its curriculum. Gradually cut down the literary and scientific courses and substitute therefor Manual Training. And the press controlled by you should advocate this reform quietly and opportunely. “Manual Training, gentlemen, is the key by which a gen- tleman’s education may be locked from the people. If appren- ticeship were practicable that would be a remedy, or rather would make a remedy unnecessary. But the times are changed and the ancient and honorable Institution of apprenticeship is gone forever; for apprenticeship means trades, and today there are no trades. Organization has destroyed them. The tenth part of a trade may be learned, the thumb or the big-toe of a trade, but no trade. “Manual training furnishes however a perfect substitute in effect for the lost apprenticeship. The Industrial School must more and more be made to take the place of the literary school. The hands and eyes and bodily powers of the future genera- tions of workers may thus be educated to the purposes which they must serve in life. But as it is neither necessary nor de- sirable for their brains to serve any particular purpose aside from their vocation, brain education per se may very profita- bly for society be suffered to fall into ‘innocuous desuetude.’ As I have said, the people themselves will take very kindly and in- nocently to this reform, for I repeat, it really is in many ways very desirable apart from any ulterior motives connected with it. Give the people this in lieu of history, ancient and modern languages, literature, science, economics, civil government, etc., and they will be quite satisfied if their children can but indifferently read, write and cipher.’’ « ’24 THE COHSPlEAC'x OF CAPITAL. CHAPTER XIX. POLITICAL REVOLUTION. T here remains then to be considered, the tnird and last of the causes that lead to unrest and mutiny among the masses, namely, the possession of political privileges incompatible with their station in life, in- consistent with their dependent and subordinate condition and quite beyond their powers of mind to exercise wiselj' or safely. “How may this evil be remedied? This brings me to the consideration of the second of the only two possible means by which the people could triumph over property — namely. Po- litical Revolution. How may it be prevented? If I have felt that I was treading the firm earth before, I feel now that in my understanding of this phase of the subject and my ability to handle it, the firm earth has changed to solid rock. “Effectual Political Revolution by the masses is if possible, even more impossible than a Revolution of Force. Political power has already practically passed from their hands. The popular ballot is today but a popular bauble. It can never be effectually used against you. As in industrial, so in political power you hold the famous ‘nine points of the law.’ and in pol- itics the nine points control the tenth, as indeed in industry it does as well. Political independence can never be associated in the same person with industrial dependence. As long as any considerable portion of the people are industrially your dependents, they will remain your political dependents. A ma- jority are so today, will remain so and more will rapidly be- come so as the determinations of this council are put into ex- ecution. “Again, successful effort by the people through political action essentially requires agitation and education to arouse a favorable sentiment, and organization to put the sentiment into effect. As I have already reminded you, the means and facilities for popular agitation, education and organization^re under your complete control. The people are absolutely shut off from these first necessary requisites to successful action; and POLITICAL EEVOLUTIOJr. 125 those incomplete organizations which they may and will from time to time etfect, impotent hy reason of their very incom- pleteness, can be rendered utterly harmless by the usual meth- ods of controlling their leaders. There are always a sufficient number of those who make their way to the front in every so- called reform political organization, who are susceptible to in- fluence. They are after loaves and Ashes of one brand or an- other and we know that they know who possesses the brands they eovet, whatever their name may be. Those political par- ties to which full organizing facilities are permitted will of course always be officered in their highest leadership by those in proper sympathy wuth the property interests of the country. This has been and always will be the case, because modern po- litical organization and manipulation is a science, and science requires intellect, and intellect was never yet allied very strongly with the masses. It goes where it naturally belongs, to the conserving and civilizing influences of society. The lesser officers and leaders of these dominant political parties will, by those natural instincts of their constitutions which bring them to the front, be yours ever most obediently to serve. “But gentlemen, not only are the people completely shut out from effective political power by their industrial depeiffi- ence, their agitational and educational dependence, and their organizing dependence upon you, but to set the seal forever upon their political impotence, they are bound hand and foot by the very form and plan of our most wise governmental sys- tem itself. I am ready to stake my reputation as a politician and statesman upon the truth of this declaration — that foi; completest and safest investment of Class and Property with effective political sovereignty to the people, no form of gov- ernment has ever been or ever will be devised equal to that of a representative, constitutional democracy such as ours. That may appear to be a remarkable declaration but I repeat it — no other form of government so effectually and safely closes the door of sovereignty on the people, and so effectually and safely opens it and keeps it open for Property and Class. No other so guarantees conservatism, that is, the Established Order of Things, with such favorable changes as the Estab- lished Order may desire; and no other so completely prevents popular reforms as the people understand that term. Giving 126 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. the people the semblance of power over every department of the government, it everywhere denies them the substance. Ostensibly and by construction a government by their consent, it really and in fact is a government in which their consent is nil. It gives them the privilege of selecting the agents of au- thority but absolutely no direct power over their acts. They may pass upon men, but, and here is their bondage, not upon measures. Having selected their agents, they can neither force them to any desired action, nor having acted contrary to their desire, can they revoke their acts. I say the people can not. Their only remedy is no remedy, for it is but a repetition of the farce, electing other agents endowed with like powers. Their agents are in fact not agents, not servants, but despots in their sphere so far as the people are concerned, independ- ent of them, above them, over them. “Naturally and as a matter of course these creatures-of- the-hour act for the public weal only and alone when their in- dividual weal does not prompt them to act otherwise. And here is the especial opportunity of Property and Class (the many and potent campaign and ante-election opportunities be- ing passed over) here is the especial opportunity of Property and Class to see to it that the individual weal is made para- mount to that of the consenting, helpless public. It may not be indeed that every man has his price, as that eminent and high-priced statesman Walpole so sagaciously observed; but certain it is that enough of these ‘agents of the people’ will always be found ready priced and priced low. “No better evidence could be adduced touching the utter incapacity of the masses for self-government and unfitness to be entrusted with real political or industrial power than this conception of theirs, that sovereigntj* consists in the right to delegate authority and not in the right to control continuously the acts of the person to whom authority is so delegated; in the right to choose their political despots and not in the right to control them, to make of them ofhce-men, not officials. “To illustrate still further this profound misconception and ignorance on the part of the people, of things govern- mental and their inability ever to exercise real power in this country, they are almost unanimous in their belief that the only way to prevent or escape the despotism of their chosen agents, is first — to have as manj' despots as possible, not per- POLITICAL KEYOLUTION. 127 ceiving that in their numbers individual responsibility is evaded, avoided, shirked, thrown from one to another, then to nebulous majorities and finally to that arch-humbug and scape- goat — party; not perceiving that with their conception of sover- eignty and for their purposes the fewest possible agents, nay one supreme one in whom all authority should for the time appointed be invested, would be infinitely better than a multi- tude in that it concentrated, if authority, also individual re- sponsibility and in the same degree the power of public opin- ion which alone can control such agents. “Second, having selected their despots and surrendered the sovereign power to them, they childishly think to escape the effects of their folly by dividing the powers of government into executive, legislative and judicial. It is a popular sentiment amounting to a fetich or superstition that if these three func-* tions of government can be kept separate, the people are safe from political oppression. They think by electing some of their numbers executive despots, others legislative despots and others judicial despots, the one acting as a check upon the other, the whole problem of government and popiular inde- pendence is solved. They fail to see that responsibility is again divided and lost, that to secure action favorable to them- selves all three sets of despots must be faithful to popular in- terests, and that on the other hand the so-called enemies to the general weal have only to secure one set favorable to them, and may by influencing first one and then another and another, now this one, now that, now the other, completely block any ‘reform’ of the people and easily secure what they want them- selves. They do not perceive that to divide power among ir- responsible agents is but to furnish the ‘cups’ for the shell- man’s game, and that such a government is only the ancient game of thimble-rig over again, and that again the bumpkin is the victim when he thought he had a sure thing. “The people can not comprehend that however convenient and highly proper and important such a division of powers may be, the essential reason therefor is simply and alone that tTle public eye may easily and clearly see the every process by which governmental effects are produced, in order that, not individ- ual but functional responsibility may be identified, to tile end that the people themselves by direct act could remedy the wrong or the defect. The essential reason for the division of 12S THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. g-overnment functions is not primarily for safety from func- tionaries, but for clearness of popular vision into processes; the end is safety of course, not by making one a check against another, but, seeing clearly where the evil lies to remedy it by forcing the proper performance of the one going wrong. The object is to enable the sovereignty to say — our agents fail in the execution of a law, we direct its execution; our agents err in their judgment of a law, we direct this judgment; our agents refuse to make or repeal a law, we make or repeal it. The people are blind to this vital principle and being blind to it, they may be led whithersoever you list. “But their crowning folly and our greatest security lies in their third and most trusted refuge against the power of their chosen agents, namely, their reverenced and most holy consti- tution; a trojan horse taken by them for the one and only true palladium of liberty. “Constitutional rights is a word they conjure with; but constitutional-wrongs is a word they know nothing of. Now a constitution like the division of government functions, is right and proper enough if confined to its legitimate purpose. It is a convenient instrument for directing governmental agents in the performance of their duties; it is proper enougli as a general ‘letter-of-instruction’ to office-men informing them on important heads of duties how far they may go and where stop, in the absence of special instructions and advice from their principal; its legitimate purpose is to direct, In- struct and restrain subordinates. But the ludicrous, the ri- diculous, the childish aspect of the popular conception lies in the fact, that they make their constitution restrain them- selves as well as their servants; they make it a letter of in- struction to themselves as well as their agents and one that practically can not be recalled, amended or changed. It not only irrevocably binds themselves but their posteritt' to un- numbered generations as well. Not only that, but to clinch the thing, to forge and rivet the chain of their own making un- alterably upon themselves, they have even denied themselves the right of declaring what their constitution means and given the authority of interpreting it unreservedly into the keeping of agents removed the furthest possible from them — agents whom they can neither select, remove nor control. I know of nothing in all history to parallel this remarkable display of POLITICAL EEVOLUTIOX. 129 simplicity in the masses. But, gentlemen, in their simplicity lies your opportunity and your safety. The powers which you possess can not be wrested from you except the plan of government be first radically changed or at least the constitu- tion be vitally amended. The processes by which such amend- ments and changes can only be effected, place them among the things virtually impossiule so far as the people are con- cerned. As I said therefore a moment ago, the very form and plan of our government bind the people hand and foot in un- breakable chains of their own forging. The founders of gov- ernment purposely or accidentallj% consciously or uncon- sciously, have most skillfully rendered the people impotent while apparently striving to make them omnipotent, and at the same time most securely enthroned Property and the Prop- erty Classes. They deposed George the Third, but placed a Caesar on his throne; they destroyed the House of Lords, but erected th« Constitution in its place; they gave the people the privilege of choosing their rulers, but denied them the right ■of controlling their acts; they divided the powers of govern- ment, but placed them beyond the reach of the people; they made a constitution, but practically forbade the people to change or construe it. In short they probably fooled some of themselves, certainly fooled the general populace, triple pad- locked its powers and bequeathed the key thereof to you. “Besting then already so secure from effective political revolution, will the denial of the ballot to any considerable portion of the people further enhance that security? In my opinion, clearly not. The only reason that can be urged foj; such action, is, that the privilege of suffrage tends to breed the Spirit of Insubordination. No doubt that is true. But I think that tendency is best corrected by such a continual frustration of their hopes from political action as will teach them finally to regard the ballot, not as a public means of es- tablishing public measures and principles, but as a personal privilege by means of which very narrow personal ends at most may be effected. By this method the right-of-suffrage ceases to be regarded by the people as a palladium of liberty and becomes a very cheap and common thing; too cheap and common ever to breed by its use any high and insubordinate spirit, the very reverse in fact. “On the other hand there are many reasons that cause me 130 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. to regard unrestricted suffrage as a very important element in the present and future security of your Class. The wage-earn- ing classes which would of course be the ones cut off by a re- stricted ballot are the very ones over whom you have the most control. They are in the main absolutely dependent upon j'ou. They are to all intents and purposes yours. They have no in- terests outside their job. On that one and only question they are as intensely conservative as you could desire. Thej’ will vote to hold their job when they will vote for nothing else under the sun. Their job is of your giving, and they can always be brought to see that your interests are theirs. As touching yoiir interests therefore thej’ can never be radical. “With the next class above them, the small property own^ ers, they can politically have nothing in common; and it is to this class to whom power would be given by a restricted suff- rage, a class conservative indeed but not as against you; and being far less completel3^ and directl}^ dependent upon .voUr they would be far more dangerous and difficult to handle. Cut off the wage-earners politically and j’ou cut off the great body of your own retainers — a body that can alwaj-s be effectively used by j’ou against the middle classes politicallj' as surelj' as- you can use the latter against the former phj'sicallj’. “And lastlj', j'ou can onlj' keep the people in subjection to you by keeping a practical majoritj" of them dependent iipon jmu, by keeping their knowledge to the level of their pur- suits and bj- keeping up a show of giving them the measure of ‘rights’ which the age and the civilization under which they live have accustomed t^em to regard as theirs. To state it boldly and plainly', j'ou must keep them dependents poor; you must keep them ignorant, and j'ou must amuse them with a bauble of ‘rights.’ “The ballot is the bauble which for the present they must keep. But gentlemen, while it may be wise to allow them to keep it, it wll not be wise to allow them its too frequent use. I be- lieve in a universal suffrage as to the individuals possessing it, but restricted as to the occasions of its use. There lies your safest waj^ out of much of the worrj’, much of the turmoil, much of the expense attendant upon the political control of your people. Business requires it, discipline of the people re- quires it, decency, comfort, ease, economy, and above all, our completest safetj' requires it. / POLITICAL EEVOLUTION. 131 “Strong arguments are from time to time urged in favor ‘of a change in the tenure of the Presidential office. Thc’se should challenge serious consideration and attention, t > the end that the present Constitutional limit may be removed and a more reasonable and useful one substituted. Your biisiness -and other important interests are now too frequently dis- turbed and disquieted by the turmoil and heat of a Presidential election. Between elections the people are without even the semblance of power. During these periods the entire sovereignty is yielded up to irresponsible officials. Double the time between elections and you divide all the evils attendant upon them. You destroy half the opportunities for insubordination and quadruple your own power. Such a procedure as I suggest, would avoid this disturbance of business relations which now comes every four years and would do away with a lot of useless and, to you, •dangerous agitation. It may not be amiss to add that a sub- stantial extension of the Executive tenure may easily be se- cured by providing at the same time for the ineligibility of m incumbent to succeed himself — a measure which has long found favor with a large class of our people as a consummation much to be desired, and which seriously threatens to interfere with -our designs by limiting the tenure of office to one short term of four years. How may these changes be accomplished? By a simple amendment to that unchangeable Constitution, doub- ling the term of office established therein. “And I would recommend that while the amendment busi- ness is up, another section be added, reciting that neither the police powers of government nor the right of eminent domain shall ever be exercised to the direct or indirect injury or de- struction of established private industries as such. This will effectually draw the great properties of the country out of the range of political action, stopping the present tendency to- wards police control and forever settling the question of Pub- lic Ownership. “I advise you however, that no important amendment can be made to our constitution by ordinary methods. Practically there has never been a section added to that famous instru- ment that has not been put there by the sword. Of its fifteen amendments in more than a hundred years, twelve were really but after- thoughts of the generation that created it; the re- 1B2 ^ THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. mainiBg’ three, the only ones that may be called amendments^ had a bloody birth. The times of course have changed since then. The great industrial powers of the present had then practically no existence as a controlling factor in politics and government. But great as those powers are, and potent as is their influence, I do not believe that even the simple additions to the fundamental law of the land suggested can be made ex- cept in the confusion and turmoil of civil strife. This may be comparatively mimic in its proportions, should be entirely the result of your own secret manipulation, and brought about only when the entire machinery for putting them through shall be- ready for action. The industrial movements which you contem- plate will probably be sufficient in themselves to result in the state of disorder desired for such a purpose. The next great strike may be given a quasi political significance by the press, charged in part to the secret agitation of some one of the rev- olutionary political parties and in the general apprehension and alarm aroused among the smaller business and property classes, the thing may be done with the aid of jmur retainers broken in organization and spirit by the successful suppres- sion of their impotent rebellion. “In my opinion the Eeign of Property is already assured in this country. On its side are arraj’ed all the organizing, ed- ucating, civilizing forces of the age — the press, the pulpit, the bar, the, bench, the news agencies gathering, transmitting, dis- seminating or suppressing altogether, and the government powers themselves. The latter are identified as completely as possible with the great business interests of the country, in its legislative, executive and judicial branches. The recom- mendations I have made but assure an easier, pleasanter, deeper, more permanent flow of power from the Fountain of Property. Property can never be dethroned, you may depend upon that. It is entrenched in every civilized government on the globe more firmly today than ever before in the history of the world. It stretches beyond national boundaries, crosses and recrosses its lines of interest from nation to nation, and binds governments so intimately together that tacitly there exists among them an alliance offensive and defensive against the hordes of discontent and Socialism wherever they may ap- pear upon the earth. In this country we do not need any out- POLITICAL EEVOLUTION. 133 ' side aid. It would be forthcoming if we did; but happily the task before us is an easy one.” Down sat Mephistopheles with the same stately grace with which he had arisen. Then up rose one after another of the Cabal, approving, suggesting, criticising. Over all hovered the spirit of mastery, security and certain success. Result, de- sired result, was but a matter of detail and instructions tO' subordinates. After much sharp and rapid discussion and comparing of plans, it was decided that by a systematic and concerted em- ployment of all the agents industrial, agitational and political at their command, all the immediately practical in the advis- ory agents suggestions might be effected in a reasonably short time, not later than the next Presidential election. Then or before, the amendments should be fixed in the Constitution; labor organizations controlled or destroyed; the Industrial So' cialists “blown from the guns;” the wage-class reduced to a proper wage-scale, and undesirable agitation and unruly agi- tators practically suppressed, the required “enactments” and “constructions” of law to that end having been previously se- cured. The military arm of the government should be strength- ened, armories built, arms plants extended, the arms supply controlled, and the army and national guard increased in num- bers and efficiency and so placed and handled as most effectu- ally to keep the i^opulace in subjection. Various committees were appointed to perfect and direct the details of these move- ments, and the advisory agent was selected to be the first President under the New Regime. THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. Hc,4 CHAPTER XX. r THE NEW REGIME. HE NEW Regime! The New Order of Things! What was it to be? and when? and how? Some there were who dreamed of crowns and cor- onets and the brilliant pageantry of splendid courts, glowing, glittering and shining over and around and through the streets of beautiful Washington, democratic Washington, phosj^horescent, putrescent Wa-shingdon; with a House of Lords in the north end of the Capitol and a House of Commons, very common Commons in the south end, and Windsor Castle “en- larged and improved” at the White House, through whose royal halls should sound from lackey lip to lackey lip their own princely titles nobly carved for themselves, by themselves, with the sw’ord? no, barbarian! with the milled edge of the almighty dollar. The dream of wmmen, this, you ask dear reader! no, sweet innocent! of many brawny, broadclothed men as well as hun- dreds of their weakling apes; some with brains and some with none, but all with that false ambition for the show and power of prideful privilege and place, which the surge and flow of a republic made so uncertain and unstable as to be uncomforta- ble and undignified if not absolutelj^ ridiculous. “1X110 in a republic,” asked these roj'alists of each other, “can found a ‘house?’ who can build up and establish permanent place or position for one’s children and his children’s children to even the second or third generation? what incentive to noble action in this changing, heaidng, shifting, evanescent condition of so- cial and political life; no class to rise out of, no class to rise into, no stable ‘orders,’ no lasting ‘honors;’ this mulish state, with no pride of ancestry, no hope for posterity? “Oh, for a fixed ‘place,’ a secure ‘position,’ an heirloom of privilege and power for me and mine, for us and ours.” No selfishness in that, you see; no cruelty, no injustice for you and yours, for the people and theirs, for the unnum- bered millions shut out forever. Not for these ambitious ones the pride of ancestry, that the grey hairs were honest, the THE NEW EEGIME. 135 hoary head honorable, the worn, bent frame the housing of a man who loved justice and truth and mercy and his fellow- man, and “did unto others as he would they should do unto him;” not for them the “hope for posterity” that it should in- herit such heirlooms from such an ancestry, that it should hold no “place” it had not earned, no “position” to which it had no right, no “privilege and power” except that of right- eous opportunity to do the best and be the noblest permitted it by nature; not for them the lasting “honors,” the “stable orders,” the established “classes” of justice, truth and right; Oh, no. And yet there were some thousands, some few thousands happily, of these shriveled souls, with these worm-ripened ideals and hopes. Not often did the people hear of their sen- timents. Not often were they spoken outside of their “set.” But by the example of their living they were doing what they could to propagate them, and they were not without power and influence. Many of the trust presidents and officials as- sembled at the banquet aud many more of the capitalists whom they represented would have hailed with delight the imme- diate prospect of an American monarchy. They only regretted that the time was not yet quite ripe for the “coup d’tat” that should effect it, and comforted themselves meanwhile with the thought that it was surely and rapidly coming. “Yes, that,” they dreamed, and their wives and sons and daughters and their sycophants dreamed, “was the new regime. But not yet.” Some good and true and patriotic citizens dreamed it too, fearingly dreamed it. Others there were who did not dream, but saw or thought they saw that the new regime was but the old intensified, - strengthened, extended, continued indefinitely; political meth- ods more and more “effective and practical;” political parties more and more amenable to control of “leaders” and politB cians; legislative bodies more and more responsive to the in- terests of “business and property;” the judiciary more and more conservative of the “rights of capital;” the executive more and more the “special agent of the money power;” the press, the pulpit, the bar, the bench, more and more the “or- gans of wealth;” the riotous mistakes of labor more and more capital’s opportunity of pegging it down and pegging property 136 THE CONSPIRACY OF CAPITAL. up; the people more and more dependent, subservient, sub- missive, until the rule of the dollar is undisputed in the land, and the pathway of the Oligarchy of Wealth is smoothed of all difficulties, social, industrial, and political. To this number be- longed a large majority of the “money changers;” the man- agers of industry, the stock and bond holders and manipula- tors, the politicians and the professions generallJ^ They said to each other, “Why paint the lily or gild refined gold? Why perilously do by blundering farce, what can be safely done bj finesse and stealth? No new regime except the old for a hun- dred years and more at least.” “No new regime, aha! we’ll see,” laughed others confidently who knew they didn’t dream, but saw, not “as in a glass, darkly,” either, but as “face to face.” “Our party will sweep the country this campaign and then you il see. No new regime? aha! watch us turn the rascals out and our own honest fel- lows in, and then you’ll see! then, ho, for high tariff, for pros- perity, for more confidence, for a vigorous foreign policy, for ■expansion; and ho, for low tariff, for more coin, for sympathy for the man in the moon; down with the trusts, down with imperialism! ho, for the Monroe doctrine, for the Nicaragua canal, for currency reform, for rotation in office, for civil ser- vice, for undoing what the other fellows ought not to have ■done, and doing what they ought to have done. Ho, for the triumph of tw'eedledum! ho, for the downfall of tweedledee! no new regime? Well, what name will you give to that?” So thought and lived the thought, thousands upon thou- ■sands of the “old party” voters in town and country, in factory nnd field and mine and farm, blinded by the prejudice and big- otry of habit, custom, environment, partisan passion, section and narrow self-interest; so thought and lived the thought thousands upon thousands of good men and true, who though senseful and bright, lived in the narrow circle of the past, partly from wilfulness, partly from lack of real opportunity, to know of a different present, and partly from ignorance of their vital need to know' it. But their wilfulness was growing less; their opportunities greater; and their Ignorance en- lightened. Still to them, in wnning hope and belief however, the new administration if it w'ere THEIR administration was the only new' regime their vision could discern. Passing over those despairing ones to whom the on-rush- THE NEW REGIME. 13T ing new order of things meant the sun veiled in darkness and the moon and stars in blood, the earth in chaos and mankind in everlasting woe; there was yet another class to whom the new regime meant a triumph for justice, for right principle and for the people; a restriction of privilege, an enlargement of just opportunity. To them it meant, that the reigning forces of corruption, defilement and polhition that marked industry, politics, government and society, growing over-bold, over-con- fident and over-impudent would overleap their purpose and by some audacious movement careless and contemptuous of the people, reveal their hideousness, hypocrisy and treason and thereby rouse to indignant and effective action an outraged nation. Whether that action of the disallusioned people would be of force and arms or of the ballot, they did not know; it depended on the measure of confidence among the adherents, of entrenched capital; but this they knew, that it would be ef- fective, that the despotism of capital would be forever broken and the reign of rings and bosses, political and plutocratic would be known no more in the land; for the causes that made them possible and the means of their extirpation were being revealed to the people, and the tide of aroused- indignation would in its flood carry the people to the fullest and most ef- fective reforms. To them it meant a new Declaration of Inde- pendence, a New Bill of Rights, a New Constitution, a govern- ment of the People, by the People and for the People, indus- trial as well as civil. The when and how were not for them to forechoose or foresee. A power mightier than they or the opposition would determine that; but when it came, that would be the New Regime. Those who actually held to this belief were not many as. compared with the multitude of the people, neither were they- powerful, industrially or politically; but they did what they could to hasten the glad hour that should ring out the old and ring in the new. They were not always united in the has- tening methods they undertook, but their one object was tu bring the Thought, the Idea, the Principle of the Coming Ref-. ormation as clearly and rapidly as possible before the minds and hearts of the people. In the organization of labor into trades unions, in the up- building of a political party, in educational agitation, in induS' trial association, in a hundred ways they labored but alwaj's. 138 THE CONSPIEACY OF CAPITAL. steadily towards the same object — the Kesponsible Administra- tion of Industrial Power. And they believed that the leaven was working, that the people unconsciously even to themselves were absorbing and assimilating the doctrine more perhaps from the example and oppression of capitalism than from their own direct teachings; and that as the match to the fuse and the fuse to the mine, so would the provocation and the oppor- tunity be to the present Order of Things. The most they could do would be to prepare and be ready to help shape the Xew Order upon the principles truest to justice and good govern- ment for all. The action determined upon at the Cabal of the Trusts was already bearing fruit. In the deepening distress and fer- ment among the people an experienced eye could detect the results of a systematic movement in some powerful quarter that was steadily driving towards some fore-determined ob- ject. The arbitrary reduction of wages in first one industry controlled by the trusts and then in another and another; the skill and judgment shown in selecting the time and place and industry to be affected, making ineffective and vain the pro- tests and strikes of the helpless employes; the closing of shops and shutting down of factories now here, now there, on plausi- ble but specious pretenses; the wide range of industries af- fected, all clearly betokened that Design was at work in the first great movement against the people. I THE END. BOOKS TO READ. BOOKS TO READ. 5c Books. Trusts J. A. Wayland A Study in Government H. E. Allen Christ, Property and Man Rev. Breeze Socialist Cartoons and Comments Warren Bad Boy, illustrated E. A. Stockweli Municipal Socialism Gordon Socialism and Farmers Simons Property Pyburn Utopia Thomas Moore Ten Men of Money Island Liberty Debs Prison Labor Debs Government Ownership of Railroads Gordon The Evolution of the Class Struggle Imprudent Marriages Blatchford Packingtown A. M. Simons Wage Labor and Capital Karl Marx Poems for the People The Mission of the Working Class Vail Socialist Songs, adapted to familiar tunes How I Acquired My Millions The Man Under the Machine Simon.s After Capitalism, What Woman and the Social Problem The Axe at the Root. .William Thurston Brown Plutocracy or Nationalism, Which? Bellamy The Real Religion of Today.. Rev. W. T. Brown Decoy Ducks and Quack Remedies Leon Greenbaum Why I Am a Socialist Geo. D. Herron Evolution of Industry Watkins Socialism and Slavery Hyndman Land, Machinery and Inheritance Pyburn The American Farmer Gordon Panics, Cause and Cure Gordon Labor, the Creator of Capital Pyburn The Water Tank Bellamy The Social Conscience Why Working Men Should Be Socialists Why Railroad Men Should Be Socialists Why Working Men Should Be Socialists Title Deeds to Land Spencer Socialism Simons Wanted — A New Conscience Wilshlre The Man Under the Machine Simons New Zealand in a Nutshell What the Socialists Would Do A. M. Simons A Political Quack Doctor W. A. Corey A Possible Twentieth Century Trust Grey $t.50 Worth of (A.bo’ve Books for $l .00 BOOKS TO BEAD. lOc. Books. Socialism and the Labor Problem McGrady Coming Civilization Hedrick Uncle Sam in Business Public Ownership of Railroads The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand To What Are the Trusts Leading Smiley Merrie England Blatchford The Labor Question Kuenemann Pendragon Posers Socialism, Utopian and Scientific Engels No Compromise Liebknecht The Drift of Our Time Parsons The Secret of the Rothschilds Seven Financial Conspiracies Emery In Hell and the Way Out Allen A Philosophy of Happiness The Outlook for the Artisan and His Art Scientific Socialism Beresford Socialism Liebknecht Was It Garcia’s Fault The Right to Be Lazy Paul Lafargue I5c. Books. Social Democracy Red Book Heath Natioal Ownership of Railroads Vail A Tramp in Society Guernsey Market House Plan of Payments 25c. Books. Modern Socialism Vail A Story Prom Pullmantown Man or Dollar, Which Horace Greeley, Farmer, Editor, Socialist President John Smith A Perplexed Philosopher George $t.50 Worth of Aho’ve Books for $1,00 BOOKS TO READ. iii Protection or Free Trade The Land Question, Property in Land and the Condition of Labor, (1 Tol.) George Progress and Poverty George Woman— Past, Present and Future Modern Socialism Rational Money ■Government Ownership of Railroads and Tel- egraph Louck Evolutionary Politics Mills The Co-Opolitan National Party Platforms Frederick Fabian Essays in Socialism News From Nowhere Six Centuries of Work and Wages The Banker’s Dream History of the Paris Commune Benham Socialism John Stewart Mill The Future Commonwealth The Concentration of Wealth In Brighter Climes ■Caesar’s Column Donnelly 50c, Books. Christ, the Socialist A Financial Catechism Brice and Vincent Volney’s Ruins C. F. Volney Looking Backward Edward Bellamy Equality Edward Bellamy Whither Are We Drifting F. O. Willey Waiting For the Signal (paper)... H. O. Morris The Legal Revolution of 1902 The American Plutocracy M. W. Howard If Christ Came to Congress ..M. W. Howard The New Zealand Labor Laws The Millennial Kingdom W. A. Redding The Co-Operative Commonwealth.. L. Gronlund The City for the People Parsons What’s to Be Done Tehernychewsky Nequa Adams Politics of the Nazarene Jones $t .50 Worth of Abonfe ^ooks for$t.00 BOOKS TO READ. Cloth Bound Books. The Labor Movement in America — Ely 1.50 Problems ot Today — Ely 1.50 Taxation in American Cities — Ely 1.75 Social Aspects of Christianity — Ely 90 Social Reform and the Church — Commons.. .75 Proportional Representation — Commons 1.75 Between Caesar and Jesus — Herron; paper, 40 cents; cloth 75 Municipal Monopolies — Bemis 2.00 Sociaiism and Social Reform— Ely 1..50 Equality— Bellamy 1.25 Looking Backward— Bellamy 1.00 Christ, the Socialist 75 Wealth Against Commonwealth 1.00 A Traveler From Altruria 1.50 Labor Co-Partnership — Lloyd 1.00 Socialism from Genesis to Revelations Sprague 1.00 The New Economy — Gronlund 1.25 Things as They Are — Hall 1.25 The Railroad Question — Larrahee 60 Nequa — Adams 1.00 Address all orders to appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, U. S. A What is Socialism? Some people have queer ideas of what Socialism means. They con- found it with anarchy, disorder, dividing up property and other absurd statements. For the benefit of such, the definitions from dictionaries and world-famous men are here appended; The ethics of Socialism are identical with the ethics of Christianity.— "Encyclopedia Brittanica. Socialism is simply applied Christianity; the Golden Rule applied to ^very^^v ’ ,fe. — Prof. Ely. Th^ eepest depths of vulgarism is that of setting up money as the ark of the covenant. — Thomas Carlyle. Socialism being the product of social evolution, the only danger lies in obstructing it. — Rev. P. M. Sprague. The whole aim of and purpose of Socialism is a closer union of social factors. The present need is growth in that direction.— R. T. Ely. Socialism is the idea and hope of a new society founded on industrial peace and forethought, aiming at a new and higher life for all men. — William Morris. The abolition of that individual action on which modern societies de- pend, and the substitution of a regulated system of co-operative action.— Imperial Dictionary. Government and co-operatio* are in all things and eternally, the laws of life; anarchy and cempetition, eternally and in all things, the laws of death. — John Ruskin. A theory of society that advocates a more precise, orderly and harmo- nious arrangement of the social relations of mankind than that which has hitherto prevailed. — Webster. A science of reconstructing society on entirely new basis, by substitut- ing the principle of association for that of competition in every branch ef industry. — Worcester’s Dictionary. No thinking man will contradict that associated industry is the most Til agent of production and that the principles of association,' are ’e of further and beneficial development. — John Stuart Mill. does not wish to abolish private property or accumulation of aims to displace the present system of private capital by a fectlve capital, which would introduce a unified organization &hor. — Prof. Schafile. ^er of Socialism to the capitalist is that Society can do without society now does without the slave owner and the feudal lord, formerly regarded as necessary to the well being and even the .dstence of society. — Prof. W. Clarke, ne citizens of a large nation, industrially organized, have reached ^eir happiness when the producing, distributing and other activities are • ;ch that each citizen finds in them a place for all his energies and apti- tudes, while he obtains the means of satisfying all of his desires. — Herbert Spencer. A theory of policy that aims to secure the reconstruction of society. Increase of wealth, and a more equal distribution of the products of labor through the public collective ownership of labor and capital (as distin- guished from property) and the public collective management of all indus- tries. Its motto is, “Every one according to his deeds.” — Standard Dic- tionary. Any theory or system of local organization which would abolish en- tirely or in a great part, the Individual effort and competition on which motRjm ^society rests, and substitute co-operation; would Introduce a mor« perfect and equal distribution of the products of labor, and would mak» land and capital, as the instruments of production, the Joint possession of the community. — Century Dictionary. '■■V’y- V A Movement Which Supports a Paper With a Circulation of Orcr 175,000 Copies Per Week And in One Year Circulates 694,381 Books and Pamphlets Must hare something back of it to enlist the number of American citizens necessary to carry on this stupendous work — work accom- pushed during the past summer months by the Appeal to Reason and i^lts army of workers. The Appeal stands for constructlye Socialism — the Socialism which means the economic and industrial freedom of the world. A postal card will bring you a sample copy of this remarkable paper, which stands without a peer in the arena of political joumal-^ ism In this country. Why Not Investigate? APPEAL TO REASON. SanIa?.