THE RISE OF THE
MERICAN PROLETARIAN
BY
AUSTIN LEWIS
ONM. LIBRARY
OF
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA.
Class
THE RISE OF THE
AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
BY
AUSTIN LEWIS
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1907
Copyright 1907
By CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
PRESS OP
JOHN F. HIGGINS
CHICAGO
984 k
PREFACE
The proletarian is a new factor in American politi-
cal life. Up to within a very recent period his exis-
tence has been denied by statesmen and publicists.
In the eyes of the ordinary respectable historian, this
phenomenon of the growth of a class, in all respects
similar to the European proletarian class, has been
ignored. Even where the economic and political activ-
ities of this class have provoked a necessary and un-
avoidable interest, the peculiar aspect of these ac-
tivities has either been uncomprehended or conven-
iently neglected. This ostrich tactic is not only foolish
but dangerous as well. To ignore facts is the very
worst way of meeting them. To ignore the fact of the
American proletarian is mere stupidity.
The proletarian class has been born. It is already
beginning to find itself. It will soon thoroughly un-
derstand the use of its organs. The economic and
political efforts made by it will constitute the greater
part of the history of the future in this and in all civil-
ized lands.
The object of the following pages is to show briefly
the causes of the origin of this proletarian class in the
United States and to describe the mode in which it
has made its existence manifest up to the present time.
This naturally involves a critical estimate, from the
proletarian point of view, of the environment in which
it has developed. It is perhaps as difficult for the
modern proletarian to arrive at an impartial estimate
of the value of the capitalist system as it was for a
Whig to correctly appreciate the feudal nobility.
While antagonisms exist, hostile regards cannot be
165129
PREFACE
avoided, and to exhibit correctly the modern prole-
tarian it is necessary, also, to make clear his attitude
to the force with which he finds himself in antagonism.
While the proletarian suffers the anguish of the condi-
tions with which he is oppressed it would be very re-
markable if he could view his antagonists with philo-
sophic calm and front the battle with a mind clear of
animosity. Desirable as such an attitude might be, it
is, in the very nature of things, impossible. Therefore,
in any discussion of the proletarian position, the prole-
tarian psychology must also be taken into account.
The introductory chapters are intended as a brief
resume of industrial history. Their purpose is to point
out to what extent the American industrialist, prole-
tarian as well as captain of industry, has been indebted
to preceding epochs of human history. Given the ma-
chine development of the eighteenth century and the
factory system, the results have been unavoidable. The
course of development in this country has presented
no new aspects. It has been more rapid and more in-
tense than in any other, except perhaps Japan, but the
broad features of resemblance to that of other coun-
tries have been preserved. No form of government
has presented any effective barrier to the advances of
modern capitalism. Wherever the essential prerequi-
sites of capitalistic growth have been found, the plant
has flourished. The economic forces which have pro-
duced an ambitious and energetic proletariat in Rus-
sia, as far as the modern system has penetrated that
country, have also produced a class conscious and am-
bitious proletariat in the United States. Political forms
prove to be merely forms in face of the ceonomic fact.
The capitalist becomes master under any political
system and President and King are equally his ser-
vants. Ouida somewhere remarks that a King is a
PREFACE
fat man who bows well and a President is a fat man
who bows badly ; the essential point is that they each
bow equally to the dominant capitalism. But where
capitalism is dominant there the proletarian move-
ment raises its head. In the hour of his triumph and
amid the salutes to his victory, the capitalist, had he
the powers of perception, might hear the tolling of his
passing bell. The imperious demands which change
makes upon life cannot be denied, and the young prole-
tariat must in the course of time come to claim its own.
In the meantime, however, the proletariat has to
grow up. To the fact of this growth the organs of
public expression unanimously testify. With the rec-
ognition of this new development there is also mingled
a fear a fear, moreover, which is entirely unfounded.
To the timorous and uninitiated bourgeois, which
means to the popular journalist and the popular poli-
tician, this growth implies the destruction of what he is
pleased to term civilization. According to all his
gloomy vaticinations art and science, which the mod-
ern bourgeois claims to take under his protecting
shield, are doomed to extinction at the hands of a bru-
tal and violent working class. There need, however,
be no alarm on this score. As Kautsky says : "It is not
by the proletariat that modern civilization is threat-
ened. It is those very communists who to-day con-
stitute the safe refuge of arts and science for which
they stand in the most decisive manner."
\Yhen the course of the proletarian is finally
crowned with victory there is no reason to believe that
the results of this step in human development will
differ from those which have marked its predecessors.
On the contrary, the triumph of the proletariat implies
the triumph of Humanity over the tyranny of ma-
terial things.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter.
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Vn OLIGAZCHT AKD IMPEMAIJBM 141
Tm THB PKMOD or Oanmrasoar ---- 174
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN
PROLETARIAN
CHAPTER I
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION
The commodity presses itself upon our attention di-
rectly we begin to examine any problem of social im-
port, that thing made by human labor and offered upon
the market for sale, satisfying some human need, ele-
vated or base, and by virtue of its function as a thing
desired, challenging other commodities to exchange;
thus forming the basis of that intricate and elaborate
arrangement which we call commerce, for the protec-
tion of which armies and navies are maintained, and in
whose name and for whose perpetuation holocausts are
sacrificed.
The fight of the modern man equally with the low-
est savage is a fight for the possession of these instru-
ments of satisfaction. The difference in kind and in
number of commodities is the difference between the
modern man and the barbarian, between savagery and
civilization.
We may examine this commodity as regards its
price the ratio in which it exchanges at a given time
with other commodities we are then engaged upon a
9
10 THE RISE OP THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
study of economics. We may study its mode of creation,
the processes through which it passes before it reaches
the market a finished product. This would be a tech-
nical study of the commodity, an examination into
what Marx would call the making of the "use value,"
and then, again, we may eliminate all distinctions of
kind in commodities and simply regard them as a
whole mass of articles, presented for exchange upon
the market, as products of human energy, as the re-
sults of human industry.
This last is the purpose which we have set before
us viz., to follow the most marked of the changes
which have occurred in the making of things which
man has required, without any special study of the
processes involved in the making of any particular com-
modity, except in the cases where a change in the
manufacture of a particular commodity, such as that
in the manufacture of cotton a hundred and thirty years
ago, has been preliminary to a general change in the
mode of making commodities of all kinds, and has led
to a new form of the organization of industry.
It will be observed that the term industry implies
tfie division of labor, else it were plainly improper to
speak of the evolution of industry. If each person sup-
plied his own needs in his own way, entirely indepen-
dent of the rest of mankind, there could be no evolu-
tion of industry as such. But from the earliest times
men have associated themselves together, having prob-
ably been compelled to do so in self-defence, and as
a result of their mutual defence against external foes,
have learned to combine against the common enemy
nature. They are not alone in this. Various animals
and insects, which will be at once suggested, have also
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 11
organized themselves into associations for the satis-
faction of their needs.
The study of the evolution of industry, then, in the
first place, becomes a study of the various forms as-
sumed by the division of labor, the human arrangement
for the making of things to satisfy human needs.
How, then, did this division of labor originate?
Was it the result of that tremendous intelligence with
which man is gifted, and upon which so much en-
thusiasm and self-admiration is bestowed? Hardly,
for we have seen that certain of the lower animals at
all events have displayed at least an equal degree of
intelligence with the lower races of man, as we have
discovered his in out of the way places and amid
primitive conditions. The same degree of sagacity as
marks the labor of the beaver, the same sense of pru-
dence as distinguishes the bee, is hardly to be dis-
covered among any primitive people. It was not the
innate sagacity of man that determined his career as a
maker of commodities as an organizer of the labor
force inherent in him, but the force of circumstances.
The necessities of the case drove a feeble animal,
without any very effective means of defence, against
the elements and the rapacity of the beast and his fellow
man, to solve, one by one, the problems of sustenance
as they were presented to him, and to use nature herself,
his erstwhile foe, as his slave.
Looking back over the wonders achieved, the men
of primitive tribes endeavored to typify the first tri-
umphs of their race under the names of individuals
and to describe as one great achievement of super-
human strength the startling records of human activity
and progress through countless generations. Tubal-
12 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
Cain and Prometheus are the naive explanations of
great and permanent inventions and discoveries. We
laugh at their childishness, but as a matter of fact the
ascription of superhuman power to individuals is no
more absurd in the naive hero-worship of the early]
tribesmen than the later conception of the same idea
in the mind of a Carlyle.
What the race has won the race has earned; and
by the race we mean not the individuals whose names
stand out as conspicuous landmarks to mark an epoch
or an event, but the great common mass of men and
women whose lives and experiences have been blended
in what we call the experience of mankind and from the
great stores of which the inventor and the organizer
must draw his material be he never so mighty.
The division of labor is therefore the history of
the race in more than one sense. It is to a great ex-
tent its record as seen in the passing events and inci-
dents which go to make up history, and, in a still
greater and wider sense, it is the sum of the mental
activities generated by the efforts of man to solve the
various problems which have been from time to time
presented in his struggle for existence.
Men come and go, much of the result of labor is
lost by the way, but the store continually increases in
the treasure-house of mankind. Peoples must appar-
ently begin at the beginning. They work out their
first problem by themselves and afterwards they
spread out, come into contact with other peoples, who
have themselves been solving their problems. They
melt the one into the other and at the same time their
different industrial efforts amalgamate, and the whole
race is permanently endowed with the results of the
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 13
separate achievements of its component peoples. New
methods succeed the old ones, and thus old arts decay
and the skill achieved in certain directions to which
the roads have been forgotten is evidenced by the finds
in sepulchers and the ruins of long buried buildings.
It thus appears at first glance that the division- of
labor is not the result of individual but of social effort.
It is not due to the transcendent ability of this or
that man, but is, on the contrary, the stored-up knowl-
edge of man, dealing with new conditions and amid
a fresh environment. With this truth admitted disap-
pears one of the most cherished ideas of a once exceed-
ingly popular school of philosophers.
When Defoe put Robinson Crusoe on his desert
island he little thought that the genial Yorkshireman
was to become the center of a conflict with which any
of those waged against his cannibal foes is very in-
significant. Robinson Crusoe was a great find for the
old individualistic political economist. It saved him
inventing anybody. This economic man was made
ready to his hand, and Robinson with his bags of
potatoes has served as an object lesson for all sorts of
learned dissertations, from the greatest happiness
theory down to the most modern abstractions in the
shape of marginal utility.
But if Robinson was a favorite instance with
the individualistic economist and philosopher, there
is no reason why we should not use him also, and he
will be found at least a valuable example for us, and
not as embarrassing as Professor Bohm-Bawerk ap-
pears to have found him to be. It is really worth con-
sidering whether Robinson in the flesh had ever half
as heavy a load to carry, as he climbed the winding
14 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
road to his cabin, as the learned Austrian has laid upon
his back, and if he was nearly as surprised at the
footprint of the savage as he would be at the marvelous
legerdemain shown in the handling of his modest bags
of provisions.
.True, Robinson was a mighty individual. He
routed the savage tribes with a spirit and a measure
of success which is very pretty to read about and he
provided for his own comfort in an exceedingly satis-
factory manner. His Yorkshire appetite and his York-
shire anxiety about his food supply never desert him
and he solves all the little problems incident upon his
strange conditions with a dexterity which has been the
wonder and admiration of school boys and still con-
tinues to be so.
But if Robinson had been the great individual, the
supreme and all-conquering one, Nietszche's "over
man" incarnate, he should have started from the begin-
ning. Defoe should have put him on the island a
naked man, unequipped to begin his struggle with the
elements. How long it would have been then before
Robinson would have found himself in the cannibal
economic system?
Instead of that, one simple tool after another comes
into his hands. An axe what generations, nay ages
of human toil and experience lay behind that axe which
Robinson so easily finds and so skilfully uses? How
immeasurably had the people to whom an axe was a
familiar implement progressed beyond the savages
whom Robinson met and to whom it was a strange
and wonderful thing! And so with all the tools until
the crowning one is reached, the gun, which made him
master of the bird, the beast and his undeveloped
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 15
fellow-man. Even had Robinson been placed on the
island under the elementary conditions of which we
have spoken he would still by virtue of the racial ex-
perience behind him and the greater brain development
consequent upon his inheritance of racial experiences,
have been immeasurably superior in resource to the sav-
ages against whom he had to contend.
All that Robinson had he owed to human society,
to the aggregated experience of countless men and
women, who had been associated for generations on
generations before his time. In fact, this typical indi-
vidual turns out not to have been an individual at all,
so far as the solution of his problems on the island is
concerned, but a broken-off section of a society which
had formerly claimed him as a fraction, and composed
of the same materials as the society from which he
had been separated by shipwreck.
We have dealt with Robinson at some little length
because through him we can reach a whole host of be-
lated individualistic objections to the later philosophy
of society and industry. Thus the utilitarian accounts
for the growth of the organization of industry, the
creation of the division of labor, upon the assumption
that it was made in the pursuit of human happiness.
This is an old idea. The argument runs something in
this way : Every man desires to be happy, the sanction
of every man's acts is his individual happiness; there-
fore the evolution of industry has come about as the
result of individual experimentation in the direction
of individual happiness.
Unfortunately for this argument it remains to be
proved whether there has been any increase in what
may be termed human happiness, owing to the institu-
16 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
tion of the division of labor. Happiness is a sufficient-
ly indefinite term in any sense, but it would puzzle even
an individualistic philosopher to show that the terrible
suffering and destitution which have been the lot of
great masses of men at every period of industrial tran-
sition, have been willingly undertaken by them for the
purpose of securing at most a doubtful happiness to
other people. Imagine the happiness which is at the pres-
ent time expressed in a slum-huddled and gin-befuddled
submerged population, called into existence, and doomed
to extinction under circumstances of the greatest pos-
sible misery by the industrial organization invented
by individuals, each one of them bent upon securing the
greatest possible amount of happiness !
It would be hard in the history of human thought to
find a theory so absurd in irs aefrtal results as the utili-
tarian. It was a ready-made affair, intended uncon-
sciously to serve the purposes of the new capitalists
and the Manchester economists. It has gone with much
other lumber of the same kind. But it has to be
mentioned because venerable old gentlemen who were
at college when John Stuart Mill was a power, still put
up their hands and deliver themselves of portentous
platitudes based upon such utilitarian ideas. There
are few things as persistent as a preconceived notion,
and the ghosts of utilitarianism come back with quite
depressing frequency to haunt the age of trusts and the
dynamo.
What then are we to say? That men began the di-
vision of labor because they could not help it ? Even this
would be much nearer the mark. Men invented the di-
vision of labor because they had to do so or succumb. They
must go forwards or backwards. There was offered for
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 17
their choice in the prehistoric times, merely extinction or
a new way of grappling with the environment. How
many races perished because they did not discover a way
of meeting the exigencies of the circumstances we know
not, but one race at least worked it out and survived, and
by continual modifications of its methods at long intervals
still continued to survive.
This much we know, at all events, that the progress of
a people in the sciences, arts, and all other things of that
nature, is dependent upon the degree of efficiency which
has been attained on the field of industry. We know
also that these fine things are the effects and not the
causes of industrial progress, which depends, in its last
resort, upon a much more prosaic fact, the necessity of
each man, woman and child eating at least one meal a day.
The object then, of the division of labor is the sup-
port of the group in which it is employed, not the support
of the individual of the group, except incidentally, but the
support of the group itself as a unit. As Professor Gid-
dings says in a burst of candor and straightforwardness,
as refreshing as it is rare among professors : "Industry is
the solution of the problem of subsistence."
The division of labor then consists in the employment
of different kinds of human activities to one definite end,
and that is the subsistence of the group. It can only,
therefore, be effected among the members of an already
constituted society.
The industry of wandering tribes is of necessity a
simple thing. Even here we find some differentiation
of activities, but, generally speaking, each member
is able to perform any duty which may devolve
upon him at any particular time with regard to tribal
life. Thus, as Spencer points out, the industry of nomadic
f UNIVERSITY I
18 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
tribes in itself implies an absence of concentration and a
a dispersal over as wide an area as possible. All of which
is naturally against the development of any complex sys-
tem of organization.
Agricultural settlement, on the other hand, is much
more conducive to a more complex form of industrial
organization, but still does not give scope for this in any
degree at all comparable with later forms of the social
structure. The various activities of agricultural life de-
mand some sort of organization and arrangement, and in
the patriarchal system there is a very complete and practi-
cal delegation of duties.
A later French sociologist, Durkheim, has defined
earlier forms of social life as consisting of repetitions of
the same segments. This is rather an effective compari-
son. Thus in agricultural societies, the society is made
up of farm after farm, each of them presenting the same
features, one being, as regards its economic structure, a
repetition of the other.
The division of labor arises from and results in the
breaking up of these segments. As its result we get
the organized society of to-day, which is just the reverse
of segmental. In the segmental form of organization, any
segment may be injured or destroyed without any partic-
ular effect being experienced by those remaining. It is
quite otherwise with the societies of to-day, at least with
those which combined constitute the great modern system.
The least upset or disturbance in the industry of the one
is the cause of suffering and misery in another. A drought
in Dakota may set the children of a London carpenter
crying for food, a financial disturbance in Vienna sends
the daughters of a San Francisco banker out into the
world to earn a living.
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 19
Spencer gives a definition of social evolution, which
appears to fill all the requirements of such a definition.
He says that in the course of such evolution, small and
simple types first arise and disappear after short exis-
tences, that these small and simple types are succeeded
by higher, more complex and longer lived types ; and these
I again by others which give promise of greater longevity
and a higher type of existence.
The evolution of industry fulfills all these conditions ;
it has kept step in its complexity with the growing com-
plexity of society ; nay, it has been the cause and the rea-
son of the complexity in society. In its gro\vth to a
more and more involved machine it has dragged along
with it society willy-nilly, but always in pursuit of the
same object, the satisfaction of human needs, for, under-
neath all the superimposed grandeur and magnificence of
modern civilization, the same problem, the problem of
subsistence, lies at the base.
Industrial evolution has been divided in to four stages
called, respectively, the Family,. System, the Gild System,
the__Domestic System and the Factory System.
These are useful divisions, but they are by no means
absolute. They cannot be regarded as hard and fast di-
visions, for, in some conditions of society, we may get
several of them working together. Thus, even in the form
of industry at the present day, the dominant expression
of which is the factory system, we get a great and strong
survival of what was called the domestic system, and still
some other survivals of an old gild system. But each of
them has, at any rate, represented the dominant form
of industry at some time in the evolution of a society up
to the present form. They appear to be the recognized
steps, by which the division of labor progresses, and so-
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
cial activity, on its industrial side, may be included in one
or other of them.
In the family system the work was carried on by the
household for the good of the housesold. The household
may be large or small, as small as a Boer farm, where
this system was the only one commonly employed, or large
enough to include a feudal manor. In either case the es-
sential marks are practically identical.
The distinguishing marks of this system are that sale
is not by any means a dominant factor; where it occurs
it is, for the most part, accidental and occasional. Pro-
duction is mostly for use. These are the main charac-
teristics of the family system, in whatever form it shows
itself. Among the forms assumed by the family system
at different periods we get :
(a) Communal or Tribal Production. This is found
among nomads, savages, barbarians and village Indians.
The Pueblo Indians furnish a good example of this stage
in the organization of industry. These Pueblo Indians
tilled their fields in common, they divided their food from
a common store and they cultivated gardens, etc., in com-
mon ? beside making a common provision against the pos-
sible encroachments of hard times. Perhaps even a better
example still is furnished by the Polynesian Islanders.
The great war canoe of the Fiji Islanders is a striking
instance of the working of the system in what was to
them an exceedingly great enterprise, the building of a
ship as the common property of the tribe. There is not a
nail in all the canoe. It is held together by cocoanut
fiber, the deck is adzed with a flint adze, there is a house
in the middle of the canoe, which is capable of holding
about two hundred people. This canoe took about two
years to make. During its construction a portion of the
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 21
tribe labored upon it while another portion provided food
and clothes for those engaged in the building. At the
end of the work, the canoe became the property of the
tribe. Here is an elementary form of the division of
labor sufficient to answer all the needs of the society in
which it existed and which it sustained. ( See Hyndman's
"Economics of Socialism.")
(b) Slavery. Not until the institution of slavery did
the division of labor make any great headway. Slavery
was the source and origin of many of the separate and
independent trades as they exist to-day. The differentia-
tion of labor was a result of a desire to get as much labor
as possible out of the slaves whose surplus products went
in the aggrandizement and luxury of the master. Under
slavery arose the distinction between agriculture and
handicraft. Some sort of trade, not ostensibly as trade
but rather as exchange, arising from a superfluity of cer-
tain commodities, arose, and this naturally tended to in-
crease. But there was no production for the sake of
sale alone; the values created were for the most part
use values. Labor over and above what was required
for the purpose of maintenance was usually expended in
the making of luxuries, whence arose the magnificence
which Oriental despots and the Roman nobility enjoyed.
The great Oriental empires rested on a foundation of
chattel slavery. It appears in a very crude form among
the Greeks of Homeric times, although here we find
a certain intimacy and even friendliness between master
and slave, for which our later conceptions of the system
of slavery do not altogether prepare us. In spite of the
terrible personal powers of the master in the disposal of
the slave, it is at least doubtful whether the burden
22 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
weighed as heavily upon him as that of the modern system
upon our free proletarians.
The system appears in a more advanced form in Spar-
ta, where we have an example of communist property in
slaves, and again in Athens, where a comparatively small
free population subsisted for the most part upon slave
labor, and under the exceptionally good climatic condi-
tions of the Hellenic peninsula found an opportunity for
the cultivation of the fine arts and the development of the
aesthetic instinct to an extent which has never yet been
equaled.
But Rome furnishes the best and most extensive ex-
ample of slavery as an institution brought to perfection.
The great wars of the later republic were undertaken
largely to replenish the numbers of slaves held by the
prominent Romans, under whose superintendence the di-
vision of labor was greatly extended. Slaves were largely
employed for all kinds of work, the coarsest and the most
refined. The slave market at Rome offered for sale men
who were capable of serving in the most intimate capaci-
ties, as scribes or private secretaries, and in the most
menial, as tenders of cattle or tillers of the soil. No occu-
pation was too high or too low for the slaves; they
filled the harems of the nobility and they ministered to
culture and the arts. Upon their shoulders rested the
cultivation of the latifundia, or large farms, which were
the source of wealth of the nQbility; they were employed
not only in Italy, but also in the provinces, and large
numbers of them toiled for the production of that corn
supply upon which crowded Rome, with its bands of pro-
fessional politicians, had to rely for very life.
Naturally, under such circumstances, the slave, with
his command of a trade of some sort or other, gradually
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 23
became a person of greater and greater importance, his
enormous numbers threatened the stability of the State,
concession after concession was made to him. Some of his
labor time he obtained for himself and with the money he
was able to earn in this time he was permitted to purchase
his freedom. This "peculium," as it was called, was
analogous to the small sums which sometimes the modern
proletarian can save out of his wages, and which, when
deposited in the banks, form the subject of much con-
gratulatory satisfaction from the economists and statisti-
cians of the class in power. This fact, coupled with the in-
crease in liberality of legislation mentioned above, paved
the way for the creation of a new kind of man the free
laborer.
(c) Succeeding slavery we get still another form of
the employment of labor, which contained within itself
the possibilities of a still greater extension of the division
of labor. This was serfdom. Here, the personal owner-
ship of the slave by the master disappears. It was a
modified form of slavery, but was marked by a break-
ing down of the single farm segment. The serf formed
the basis of a wider social organization, a feudal system
which included and united within itself various smaller
estates and formed the nucleus of the modern State. The
serf performed certain duties which did not monopolize
his time and which left him considerable leisure for the
following of his own pursuits. It is clear that this fact
would in itself make for a still further development of
the division of labor than was possible under slavery.
Round the castle of the feudal lord clustered the huts of
the serfs, who each followed specific pursuits; the ar-
morer, the blacksmith, the worker in wood and others
who followed their avocations, and step by step developed
24 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
the individual trade distinctions which mark the di-
vision ofJaj2DX-a& it-appears at the present time.
It must be remembered, 'however, that the majority
of these trades were followed, though in an ever lessening
degree, as merely by-employments. The workman of the
early feudal times was a much less specialized individual
than is the workman of to-day, who is gradually being
reduced to an almost my^ic condition by the sameness
and dreariness of his daily task. But, as the development
of personal skill led, on economic grounds as well as
those of personal enjoyment, to a selection of a particular
kind of work, the standard of work improved, and the
way was gradually prepared for the development of a new
and still more important system, namely, the gild system.
With the end of serfdom we find ourselves outside
the narrow limits of the family system. This having be-
gun in the prehistoric stages of family life, lasted up to
a time which brings us within a comparatively short
distance of our own. Savagery and barbarism had found
its applications sufficient for their needs. From step
to step it developed, widening the scope of the division
of labor at every grade, and, like all systems, preparing
itself for its own final disappearance.
In the light of our own later knowledge it appears
almost incredible that men, wise men, too, should have
taken the absolute and static view of human society which
has been the rule up to a comparatively recent date.
The examination of the family system, with its different
forms of organization, shows how necessary each step
was, how essential was the link that each stage furnished
in the development of industry. Any pause in the devel-
opment would have necessarily meant the arrest of human
development ; any diminution of the suffering even would
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 25
have probably resulted in the staying of the wheels of
progress.
It is well to bear this in mind when we are consider-
ing the horrible conditions which were an essential part
of the system of chattel slavery. Repugnant as the whole
idea of chattel slavery is to our minds, and incredible as
would be its existence at the present time, it must be re-
membered that to that institution we owe much of the
impetus in the direction of the division of labor of which
we some day hope to reap the benefit for ourselves.
i It is not by the good in a system but by the evil in it
that progress is made. Anything which tends to obscure
the antithesis existing in a. social organization, to hide
the contradiction, is an obstacle in the path of progress.
Boards of arbitration and such like efforts to reconcile
irreconcilable interests are really only nuisances. The
antithesis is there, all soft words to the contrary notwith-
standing, it must work itself out and upon this working
out depends the progress and further development of the
particular society. We shall now see how the antithesis
existing in the feudal system declared itself, and how it
finally resulted in the destruction of that social system,
for, as Engels says, in a sort of paraphrase of the Hegelian
dictum concerning the rationality of all existing things,
the chief value of all phenomena is the certainty of their
disappearance.
The next form assumed by the division of labor, the
gild, was the beginning of the end of feudalism.
The gild system began about the middle of the eleventh
century. The reason of its coming into being was chiefly
the development of particular trades under the system
of serfdom and the consequent increase in steady demand
for certain commodities, which encouraged a more regular
86 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
attention being paid to their manufacture. This was ac-
companied by an increase in the food supply due to an im-
provement in the system of farming, longer periods of
peace and the settlement and reclamation of larger tracts
of land. These causes encouraged specialization and did
away with the mere by-employment in manufacture of
time snatched from farming. Hence, the crafts arose,
and the gilds were organized for the purpose of regulat-
ing the work done in the craft. The chief feature of gild
work was excellence of quality, and to ensure this, a sys-
tem of graded apprenticeship was devised. The result
was a growth in personal relations as opposed to the re-
lations of the feudal system which were based on the
holding of land. But the gild itself contained the con-
tradiction that was to destroy it. The gild master ac-
quired more and more power, and the gild system con-
tinually grew in the direction of monopoly; in some
cases certain families monopolized an entire craft in a cer-
tain district. None but members of the gild were allowed
to practice a craft in a particular place, and hence grew
the element which was destined later to destroy the gild.
Coincident with the gild grew up the merchant adventur-
ers, and as trade developed, the merchant gilds arose,
which after a time, became stronger than the craft gilds,
and established commerce as commerce.
The distinguishing feature of the gild system was the
combination of labor with a small capital. The gild
master had a little money; he bought the material and,
with his apprentices, made the finished product. This
he sold directly to the customer. The personal relation
was very marked. The gild master worked as a rule in
the shop with his men ; there was no class difference be-
tween them, at least, at first ; but later as the gild masters
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 27
increased their wealth and became tyrannical, the appren-
tices and journeymen were often in sharp conflict with the
former.
It will be observed that the gild system greatly in-
creased the effectiveness of the division of labor, estab-
lished the crafts upon a firm basis and introduced a degree
of technical skill which had hitherto never been attained,
at least, on such a scale and in such variety. It caused a
growth in wealth and laid the foundations of a class
which, by virtue of its control of commodities, was a
dangerous rival to that class whose power was based on
land.
The domestic system succeeded the gild system, which
began to give way about the sixteenth century in England.
The master no longer manufactured directly for the
customer ; he sold the product to a middleman. Frequently,
also, he bought the raw material from a middleman. This,
of course, tended to increase the number of middlemen
very greatly, and they became a mere money power,
taking the risks of the market and speculating in the
values of commodities. They were only traders, having
nothing to do with the manufacture of the commodities,
but sucking sustenance from the makers. One effect
of this system was the break-up of the narrow local or-
ganizations of the feudal system. The cry of nationality
arose with the extension of the market, and the confined
and restricted limitations upon buying and selling were
gradually abolished.
There is no necessity to go into the manifold disad-
vantages of the domestic system. But under it the stand-
ard of the work done by the crafts lamentably deteriorated.
The conditions under which labor was carried on were fre-
quently of the very worst, the comparative isolation was
28 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
a great destroyer of the social spirit which the modified
communism of the feudal system had preserved from the
earlier tribal communism, and the outward expression of
social life, in the shape of architectural and artistic monu-
ments, was practically destroyed. It was a crude and
unlovely period and is absolutely undeserving of the
praises which are bestowed upon it by the narrow reac-
tionists who attack the present system by speaking en-
thusiastically of the "much better life" of our fathers.
The fact of economic moment in the domestic system
was the frank substitution of manufacture for exchange
instead of manufacture in part for use. The commodities
were made expressly for the market and several
proverbs are still alive which appear to show a certain
understanding of this fact; for example, the homely say-
ing that the children of the shoemaker are always without
shoes.
There was a sense of personal freedom, however,
which the feudal system lacked, for the workmen were
free as to their daily toil. The innumerable restrictions
of the gilds were abolished and labor became a com-
modity, competing like all other commodities upon the
open market. The master was no longer a shopkeeper
or a merchant. He had lost what may be called his
economic independence. He depended upon the mid die-
man and the market, a market which was, by its expan-
sion, slipping further and further away from him
The next step was a comparatively easy one; it was
merely to transform these unorganized individual pro-
ducers into an organized effective indti^trial^fprce. This
was accomplished by the discovery of a new motive power,
in the shape of team. Henceforward, the factory was
possible, and a struggle was thereupon entered into be-
THE GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION 29
tween the old domestic system and the new factory sys-
tem. This struggle has been carried on for more than a
century, each year marking a definite increase in the
power and strength of the new system. With the passing
of the domestic system we come, practically, to modern
imes.
The factory system consists in the thorough carrying
out of the division of labor. It wipes outThe last ves-
tiges of manufacture as a by-employment; it continually
narrows the scope of human activities and by concentrat-
ing the whole attention upon some detail of manufacture
creates a class of mechanical specialists, whose united
skill is devoted to the production of the finished com-
modity, no part of which any individual worker can
claim as his own handiwork. It destroys individual ex
pression, and with it, all incentive for artistic creation.
But it is undoubtedly, the most effective means ever de-
vised for the making of commodities. Its particular ex-
cellencies and drawbacks will be considered under an-
other head.
We have thus cursorily examined the course of the
division of labor, which, arising in prehistoric times, has
been the foundation of all progress and which in the
factory system appears to have reached its culmination.
But the modern system, also like all others, carries within
itself the hidden contradiction; from it must grow the
new force which is destined, finally, to overthrow it.
CHAPTER II
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION
Concurrently with the development of the divis-
ion of labor, and the growth in complexity of the
human arrangement for the making of commodities,
there has been an evolutionary growth on the part
of the instruments of industry analogous to and con-
comitant with the growth of the industrial organiza-
tion. Thus the tool, the intermediary between man
and the -raw material of nature, has developed from
the simplest and most elementary forms to the most
intricate and complex. The highly intricate and in-
volved machinery of to-day exactly corresponds with
the intricate and involved society of which it is the
servant. Nay perhaps it cannot, with exactness, be
said that it is altogether the servant, for it compels
organization along the line which is best adapted to
its own use. In more than one sense it is indeed the
master, a cruel master, which devours men, women
and little children indiscriminately, with a preferen-
tial fondness for ^the little children, a master which
relentlessly "grinds life down from its mark," and
yet a slave, which in the end finds the same last
resting place as the human slave which tends it, the
scrap-heap.
The discovery of the tool placed man at one
bound above the lower animals, and put him on the
30
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 31
high road to all his future greatness and unlimited
prospects. We, who are face to face with the tre-
mendous engines of production, and who have grown
so blase with the wonders of the last hundred and
fifty years, to whom the surprises of mechanical in-
vention have become the merest commonplaces and
who are apt to sneer at the latest achievement and
smile "cui bono"? at the newest and largest promise,
have lost all conception and appreciation of what
even the most elementary tool signified to the peo-
ple of a more primitive and less arrogant time.
But our traders, wise men, have learned practi-
cally what we have for the most part failed to grasp
intellectually and a flourishing barter has been car-
ried on for more than three hundred years in the ex-
change of elementary tools with savages and bar-
barians for valuable land concessions, mineral claims,
tons of ivory, loads of spices, and all that ministers to
the luxury and pride of life of the pampered favorites
of the tool and the machine.
Peary, from the far Arctic, declares that the impor-
tance attached to elementary tools by the Eskimo
is very great, and until the circumstances of his life
are thoroughly comprehended, inconceivable. Thus
he says, "A man offered me his wife and two children
for a skinning knife . . . and a woman, everything
she had for a needle."
Accustomed to regard merely the exchange-value
of these instruments of production we forget the use-
value attached to them by those who do not possess
them. Incidentally, Lieut. Peary's story furnishes a
beautiful example for the marginal utility professors,
32 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
of which it is to be hoped they will take an immediate
advantage.
The origin of the tool lies far back in prehistoric
times. It must have existed, at all events, before even
elementary ideas of decency had become the property
of the race or the book of Genesis cannot be relied upon
for the story of Eve and her apron.
We must remember that the experience in savagery
was longer than in all subsequent periods together.
Men were savages much longer than they have been
anything else. We can only guess what experiments
and experiences in the long, long darkness of savage
animality were made; but we know that, at last, the
stored up results of these experiences were accumu-
lated, and that these rendered possible the discovery
and use of the tool.
Haeckel says, speaking on this very point, "There
cannot be the slightest doubt that the development of
the human race went on by leaps after certain discov-
eries had been made ... to wit, those of imple-
ments and of fire. That creature which first took up
a stone or branch and wielded it, thereby got such an
advantage over his fellow-creatures that his mental
and bodily development went on apace."
In a recently published work entitled "Flame, Elec-
tricity, and The Camera," the author says: "Of the
strides taken by humanity on its way to the summit
of terrestrial life, there are but four worthy of men-
tion as preparing the way for the victories of the elec-
trician, the attainment of the upright attitude, the in-
tentional kindling of fire, the maturing of emotional
cries to articulate speech, and the invention of written
symbols for speech."
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 33
Such are the crude and elementary beginnings up-
on which depend the whole structure of economic pro-
gress and the development of material well being. It
is not surprising that this undignified and elementary
origin of man's triumph should have been intolerable
to his conceit, and that he should have required a
demi-god to supply to him out of the plentitude of
heaven's resources, the ideas which are the building
stuff of his progression (e. g. The Prometheus Myth.)
It was, as a matter of fact, in the earlier stages that
the first victory was achieved. The elementary in-
ventions gave man the power to develop still further.
It has been pointed out by a modern economist that
the change from the axehead of stone to one of bronze
was of infinitely greater human import than has been
the subsequent change of any dynasty, and that it
constituted in itself as important an economic revolu-
tion at least as the change from handloom weaving to
steam-driven machinery. One cannot help imagining
that the power of the new bronze axe must have im-
pressed itself very disagreeably upon the head of any
opposing tribesman who was armed only with a flint one,
and that the process of conviction, although more rapid,
was after all perhaps not more conclusive than that
employed by the modern trust in dealing with the
small producer.
Even to-day we find tribes which are in the most
rudimentary state as regards their instruments of pro-
duction and hence in every other sphere of activity.
Thus the lower savages of Australia and Polynesia
represent, perhaps, the lowest stage which has yet been
discovered. They are armed only with a wooden club
or spear, that is with a thick heavy piece of wood for
34 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
striking purposes, and a pointed piece for piercing pur-
poses.
Morgan's "Ancient Society" gives a very useful clas-
sification of the leading stages in industrial develop-
ment and the following sketch of the ground covered
is taken very freely from his book.
The next great step was the making of the bow and
arrow, a complicated tool consisting of several parts
and showing sufficient ingenuity to make it a matter
of surprise that it should have appeared so early in
human history. This was followed, or perhaps, ac-
companied by a large number of elementary inven-
tions such as wooden vessels and implements, finger-
weaving with thread made from the inner bark of trees,
and the making of shaped and smooth stone tools as
distinguished from the rough tools of the so-called
palaeolithic age.
This was soon succeeded by the making of pottery
which probably originated in the smearing of clay-
around basket work in order to make it water tight;
when the basket work burned out and left the clay
standing, the hint was given for the making of pot-
tery.
The first inhabitants of England of whom we have
any knowledge were in the neolithic age. They were
able to spin and weave, mine for flints, make pottery,
and build boats. There must also have been some trad-
ing, for jade axes are found at intervals, and these
must, of necessity, have been introduced from the
outside, as there is no jade in England.
The best type of a period superior to that in which
the early British were, is that of the Homeric age as
described in Homer's Iliad. The industrial achieve-
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 35
ments of the Homeric Greeks represent the highest
point which has ever been reached by a people still
in a state of barbarism. They had cereals, cities with
walls, and used marble in their buildings. They made
ships with planks, a great step in advance of the old
hollowing out process, and perhaps, though this is by
no means sure, used nails in the construction of their
vessels, but wooden pegs or rawhide served commonly
as a substitute for nails.
They possessed the wagon and the chariot, metallic
plate armor, a copper-pointed spear, and an iron sword.
They had all the mechanical powers with the excep-
tion of the screw. The potter's wheel and a handmill
f6r grinding corn were to be found among them.
Among ordinary tools they possessed the iron axe and
spade, hatchet and adze, hammer and anvil, bellows
and forge.
A glance at this list of tools will show that these
Homeric Greeks were about as well equipped to con-
tend against the hindrances and incumbrances of na-
ture as were the first settlers of New England. All
the means of elementary achievement at least are there
at hand and the development from the industrial stage
in which the early inhabitants of Britain are discovered
is exceedingly marked. For several thousand years no
marked advance was made over the place won by the
Homeric Greeks in the matter of simple mechanical im-
plements. It rested with a later age by a subtle de-
velopment of the tool, to place man in a still superior
position, as far as concerns his power over the raw ma-
terial.
These Greeks had also fabrics woven on a loom.
Attention may here be drawn to the wonderfully con-
36 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
spicuous part played by women in the development of
the first industrial implements and in the discovery of
important inventions. The tasks of the women in and
about the camp, while the men were out hunting or
fighting, necessarily led them to adopt simpler means
of labor and in the course of their handling of ma-
terials to discover combinations which would ulti-
mately be of use to them. Thus the discovery of pot-
tery and weaving from the first crude attempts with the
basket to the weaving of material upon the loom were
in all probability the work of women, and many other
of the initial discoveries and inventions which after-
wards developed into separate trades, and, with their
development, were parted from their original discov-
eries, owed their origin to women. It is impossible, in
such a cursory and superficial glance at the subject at
the present, to enter at any length into this part of the
question, which furnishes a very fine field for investiga-
tion and consideration, for although some attempts
have been made, a really valuable study of the eco-
nomic influence of the primitive woman has not been
written.
In comparison with the ground won by the better
developed barbarians but little progress was made for
a long period of time. The last century and a half have
added immeasurably more to the acquisition of the race,
than many preceding centuries. Thus the later Greek
civilization succeeding the Homeric age, and the Roman
civilization combined only added to the store collected by
the Homeric Greeks the following: fire-baked bricks, the
crane, water-wheels for driving mills, the bridge, the
aqueduct, the sewer, lead-pipe and the fly-wheel.
When we come to medieval times we find a still
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 37
greater poverty of invention. In fact there was but
little incentive to invent. The rigidity of the system,
the uncertainty of tenure, the absence of a market, and
the comparatively savage state of the victorious bar-
barian tribes who had finally vanquished the Empire,
were all so many obstacles in the way of industrial de-
velopment. The scattered farms, the wild and savage
life of the feudal lords, the perpetual warfare, rendered
the period one in which the finer arts and the study of
mechanical appliances were as a rule not only unnecessary
but impossible.
Only in the quiet cloister where all men of all
sorts of personal beliefs found under the protection
of the Church a shelter from the boisterous life out-
side and where there was leisure and opportunity to
think out the problems of work and life, always, how-
ever, within the strict bounds of ecclesiastical disci-
pline, did invention progress.
Under the protecting care of the monks agriculture
developed and horticulture began to differentiate it-
self, fruit trees and flowers added their products to the
sum total of human enjoyments and Roger Bacon toil-
ing with crucible and retort produced gunpowder. The
elements of the natural sciences with all their possibil-
ities of future adaptability to the service of man began
to peep out from the mass of superstition and knavery
in which they were embedded. Thus the Middle Ages
dark as they have been called and unprogressive as
the stupid bourgeois is pleased to term them, were in
reality a necessary interval, not a time of retrogression,
but a time of strengthening and maturing, a time of
preparation for the possibilities which were opened by
the creation of the market and the rise of the system of
38 THE RISF OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
production for exchange in distinction to production
for use.
But this view of the Middle Ages and their effect
upon human development has been now generally ac-
cepted and there is no occasion to dwell upon it. It is
one more instance of the rising revolt against the bour-
geois philosophy, even in the schools. It is satisfac-
tory to observe in this connection that the socialists
have been in advance of the universities in this matter,
as they have been in most other matters of a political or
social significance.
As an instance of the paucity of invention of the Mid-
dle Ages, Adam Smith mentions the fact that there were
only three inventions in the art of weaving woolen fab-
rics between the reign of Edward IV. and 1760. These,
however, do not give a complete idea of the development
in that industry as the invention of the flying shuttle
in 1738 is omitted from his list.
As late as 1760 the machinery used in the manufac-
ture of cotton cloth was of a most elementary description,
in fact, it is said to have been as rudimentary as that used
among the Hindus for the same purpose, the only differ-
ences being that the English machines were made more
strongly and that cards had been introduced from the
woolen industry for the purpose of combing the cotton.
Morgan cites as the inventions peculiar to our civil-
ization gunpowder, the mariner's compass, the canal-
lock, printing, the ponderability of the atmosphere, the
telescope, the power-loom, the spinning jenny, the steam
engine and the electric telegraph. Of course this list
is inadequate at the present time for, since Morgan wrote
this work the whole subject of electricity has received
attention and the results are so well known that it is
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 39
unnecessary to cumber these pages with the story. Suf-
fice it to say that the present epoch is only at the thresh-
old of discovery. The practical application of science, the
spirit of investigation, the clarifying of philosophical con-
ceptions, the decay of superstition and over and above
all the opportunities for the acquisition of wealth, which
are open under existing conditions, to the successful ex-
ploiter of new machinery, have given a stimulus to in-
vention, and at the same time have destroyed any of that
moral hestitancy in its employment, to which the contem-
plation of the havoc wrought by its unregulated use may
at one time have given rise.
We have now arrived at the eventful year of 1760,
as eventful as any in the history of the human race, per-
haps the most eventful in the history of man ; for, in that
year began that series of discoveries which has caused a
complete change in the social structure.
The world is a different world now than it was in
1760. Old faiths have gone down in the turmoil like
logs down a swollen stream : old loyalties have been de-
stroyed, and, with the loyalties, the class to which they
were formally accorded. Before the iron of the machine
the power of the sword and the authority of the feudal
manor have been completely broken. Heavy mortgages,
impoverished estates, and the merest rags of dignity
are all that remain to the all-powerful nobility, except to
such families as have sacrificed every thing of the feudal
tradition but the family name, and have gone into trade,
either actually or by astute alliances with wealthy traders.
The bourgeois, arrogant, inflated with the pride of
wealth which he has gathered under circumstances of the
most appalling tyranny on the one hand and the most
dreadful suffering on the other, has placed his heavy foot
rv
40 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
upon the world as its conqueror, and the world has
groaned under the pressure. Vulgar, with the vulgarity
of money-hunting and crammed full of the pietistic
phrases which were the stock in trade with which he be-
gan his political movement the bourgeois has invented a
sham art, a sham culture, a sham religion, and a sham
literature.
But even his kingdom contains that contradiction
which will realize itself in the disappearance of the king-
dom itself. Ranged against the bourgeoisie is a new
class, one which the rule of the bourgeois has itself called
into being: the proletarian, a new class, destined in time
to be the victorious class.
At least as remarkable as the change was its rapidity.
In a quarter of century, what had been a dominant mode of
industry was swept out of existence and an entirely new
one substituted in its place. The domestic system of
whose painful development we have already taken notice,
was destroyed and a new and infinitely more powerful
and effective system substituted for it. In place of the
cottage with its overcrowded family which depended for
its subsistence upon the garden patch or the few acres,
and the product of the little wheel or loom, rose the great
factory both as monster and as deliverer; as monster
for it tore the family to fragments and destroyed the
last remnants of the patriarchal system in the home,
slew the children, practically divorced the parents, and
packed fetid slums with the refuse of its human energy;
on the other hand, as deliverer, for it contained in itself
the germ of the higher and better system, of which man
must yet reap the benefit. Even in the factory system
the essential contradiction is apparent; the competitive
anarchy which has driven the machines at such headlong
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 41
rate is met by the order and discipline of the workers,
a necessary harmony of action, so that the machines may
accomplish the greatest amount of which they are capable,
and the competing interests of the commodities and con-
sequently of their owners are antagonized and contra-
dicted by the growing unity and community of interest
of the workers.
In the year 1770 Hargreaves invented the spinning
jenny. This was an improvement on the old spinning
wheel. Formerly, the wheel had allowed of the spin-
ning of but one thread at a time. Hargreaves by arrang-
ing a frame with a number of spindles side by side, and
an apparatus for feeding, brought it about that many
threads could be spun at once.
Still the essential problem had not yet been solved.
The revolution of the modern epoch has depended not
upon a greater production of handwork but upon the
elimination of handwork and the substitution for it of
machine work. The first real result in that direction was
reached by Arkwright who in 1771 invented a spinning
frame which could run by water, and in 1789, a revolu-
tionary year, Crompton by a combination of the two ma-
chines produced the mule, which was able, by means of
motive power, to accomplish the work of many spinning
wheels by an almost automatic action.
The improvements extended to the weaving industry,
and by the invention of the power loom in 1785 that
industry was put upon a plane of advance, corresponding
with the position attained by the spinning industry, and
henceforward, the great step having been made, there re-
mained but to improve the results and to accommodate
the machine to the necessities of the work.
The great fundamental difficulty was a motor. It
42 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
is evident that, mere human labor would be inadequate,
without external assistance, to accomplish the gigantic
tasks imposed upon it by the new industry. Water and
wind had both been called in to assist the labors of man.
The water wheel is a very old invention dating back from
the days of the early Greeks, its limitations are however
sufficiently obvious. However valuable it might be as an
auxiliary in a small district, where manufacturing for
use was the main purpose of industry, it is evident that it
must have fallen entirely short when the dominant work
of industry was manufacture for a large and continually
growing market, where the fluctuations of price were so
pronounced that it became a matter of importance to get
one's wares in first.
Holland by reason of its flatness and of its conse-
quent slight fall for water, employed the windmill very
largely and brought it to a perfection not hitherto attained,
and in the latter part of the seventeenth century windmills
had become very common, and were employed largely in
the grinding of corn, but there does not appear to have
been any serious effort made to use the power thus gener-
ated for other purposes. The drawbacks to the employ-
ment of wind are, though not so obvious as those of
water, sufficiently clear, and the demands of the market
insisted upon a more efficacious means of generating
power for the continually increasing requirements of pro-
duction for the market. In other words, when the first
steps were made in the substitution of the machine for
the tool, the solution of the problem of industry was
within the immediate grasp of man. Just as the earlier
inventions had taken long to develop in their crude be :
ginnings, so the machine industry was slow to solve the
first difficulties, but, once established, the road was com-
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 43
paratively straight, and the discovery of a constant and
powerful motor was the only thing lacking to the com-
plete development of modern industry after the primary
inventions already recounted.
In April, 1784, this problem was solved. Watts took
out his patent for his so-called double action steam-
engine. He with a keenness of economic foresight,
which has been, unfortunately, for most inventors, absent
from their dispositions, described it in his specifications
as an agent universally applicable to mechanical industry.
Here was the motor which was sought independent of
weather, constant in its action, easily regulated, able
to run night and day, summer and winter, and with its
iron force to crush out all opposition, creating that iron
force itself, and requiring only to be fed with coal and
water.
Before the creation of the double action steam engine,
Watt and Boulton had entered into partnership to carry
on an industry fraught with as much importance to mod-
ern society as the invention of that engine itself. Watt
had invented a pump to be driven by steam. This the
partnership proceeded to put in operation. The sinking
of shafts for coal which had up to the present been im-
possible to any great degree was thus rendered possible,
and food for the new iron monster was thus regularly
secured.
For it the proletariat must work at the bottom of
great holes, in Stygian darkness, with a miserable death
impending all the time, so that the monster may be fed
and enabled to devour the children of the working class
in the prisons, above ground, called factories.
The effect of this ability to obtain coal upon a great
scale is of course obvious. Iron at once became absolutely
44 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
essential. This led to the removal of the center of the
iron industry. The forests of the South of England had
furnished the charcoal necessary, and hence had been the
chief place of manufacture, but now, the coal fields of
the North were more essential to the well being of a trade
which under the demand for new machines, and all the
iron work incidental to them became more and more
prominent.
Smeaton's new and powerful bellows in addition made
the iron industry upon a large scale possible, and so this
industry developed greater and greater energy. In the
iron industry alone there were no less than three new
great inventions between 1766 and 1784.
The new machines with their intricate construction
and the amount of hard metal of which they were com-
posed, offered another problem. The tools at the
disposal of the artisans were not of a nature to
cope with these technical difficulties, and the making
of the machines required by the new system would
have been an entire impossibility had it not been
for one invetnion, the slide rest. This rendered pos-
sible the shaping and handling of the iron, the new
machine had found the machine capable of making
it, and the cycle of invention was now complete.
All the conditions for a transformation of the mode of
industry were fulfilled. The system of manufacture for
the market had stimulated production and, hence, re-
quired the creation of more effective tools of production
than had hitherto existed. The making of new com-
modities in turn aroused new demands, and the market
expanded continually, offering fresh and more glittering
rewards to the most successful invader, and thus again
flogging the new machines and the human slaves which
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 45
tended them to still renewed activity, until the nation
reeled and almost broke under the consuming passion for
money, and generations of children were offered as a
sacrifice upon the shrine of manufacturing progress.
The entire edifice of modern culture and refinement is
built upon the bones of murdered children, and this is
true wherever modern industry has gained a place.
England introduced the system and set the pace.
Other nations had to follow her or succumb. The
United States with all its natural advantages and re-
sources, with its freedom of contract, and its entire ab-
sence of any medieval fetters, plunged headlong into
the fray, and to-day is emerging from the battle a victor
in the fight for commercial supremacy.
But she, also, is paying the same price. The towns
with their slum populations grow and become more and
more terrible in the hopelessness of the problem which
they offer for solution to statesman and philanthropist.
Not only that, but in spite of the terrible example of
Great Britain, the same sacrifice of children is demanded,
and the new textile industry of the South shrieks for its
Minotaur banquet just as did the cotton mills of Lanca-
shire. The path seems to be a monotony the machine
and factory industry must be established if the national
capitalists are to make profits in the markets of the
world, and nations nowadays exist for no other purpose
than that national capitalists should make their profits.
To this end children are sacrificed, the country is wasted,
its resources are dissipated, and the new machinery, whose
advent might have been a blessing, is turned into a means
of national degradation and of ultimate decay.
The machine possesses some points of variation from
the tool. Marx has pointed out some of the chief of
46 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
these differences with his usual careful analytic power.
Thus, he says, that a machine consists of a motor power
plus a transmitting power and a tool. It must have a
motive power, whatever form that power may assume;
whether water, gas ? steam or the hundred and one other
means of mechanical propulsion which have been dis-
coveredj since first the invention of the steam engine
seriously turned the minds of men to the discovery of
mechanical driving power. It must also have an arrange-
ment for transmitting that driving power so as to bring
it into connection with the tool, and this force must be
intended to accomplish a certain specific work.
The tool is the earliest form of the instrument of
production. It is, as it were, a part of the human body
a prolongation of the bodily organs, and is guided by
the muscles which in their turn are directed and con-
trolled by the human will, acting under the influence of
human experience and intelligence. Hence the man con-
trols the tool. Every bit of work done by the tool is the
work of the man, the result of consciousness and inten-
tion, so that it may, in the fullest sense, be said that the
work accomplished by him is his product, his own crea-
ture. In the machine, however, the tool is separated from
the man, it is no longer under his influence or control,
he can no longer direct it, he must follow the machine;
no longer does he create; he merely serves. Thus a
merely mechanical process is established without a cor-
responding mental one, with the result that much of the
work can be performed as well by children as adults,
a fact which led to the early employment of children.
They are just as well able as grown up people to follow
the movements of a machine. These movements are
monotonous, completing a cycle, and in this respect dif-
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 47
fer from those of the tool, which are separate, each be-
ing the result of the individual volition. Hence arises
the outcry against the degradation of art. Much of
this, as far as the middle class esthetes are concerned,
is mere talk and pretence, but the decay of artistic handi-
work, particularly of spontaneous artistic work done
by artisans in the ordinary course of their daily labor
cannot be doubted.
The tool has been taken from the hand of the laborer,
his skill accumulated through generations of trained
work has been thrown on the scrap heap, he is exiled
from the opportunities of creation or even of reasonable
artistic liberty in his own work, and worse than all he has
got used to it and does not appear to mind. The labor
has lost its zest: the iron of the machine has eaten into
the soul of the artisan. Henceforth work is not expression,
but grind, to be accomplished as easily as possible and to
be compensated for by indulgence in cheap, potent, and
vilely adulterated drugs. The market needs speed and
cheapness in the making of commodities, which means
in plain words the sacrifice of those engaged in their pro-
duction.
This is not the place however to consider the ethical
and artistic effects of the introduction of the great ma-
chine industry. The point is that the machine has had an
evolution; that this evolution has developed with aston-
ishing rapidity during the period of a century and a half,
and that it shows not the slightest signs of diminishing
in power and velocity, but rather the contrary. The de-
mand for fresh inventions is stimulated continually and
the disturbance and displacement caused by their sudden
and uncalculated introduction tends to disturb the finan-
cial market, to glut the accumulated stores, to throw men
48 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
idle upon the streets and to reduce prosperous artisans to
the level of the lower proletariat.
At the same time the power which resides in a new
machine and the market rewards for the promoter of a
new method of producing, at a saving, continually leads
to new invention, causes the institution of technical
schools, for the purpose of studying the fundamental
laws of mechanics, and thus greater sagacity in the making
and controlling of new machines. It converts the univer-
sity into a breeding place for the upper slaves of the mid-
dle class, for those who themselves can never hope to be
capitalists, but who may be managers, foremen, or in-
ventors, who are unable to market their own invention,
and so must give their labor to the capitalist in exchange
for the means of subsistence.
As we have already seen, the break up of the leuda.
system meant not only the destruction of the nobility
but the creation of the proletariat. This was primarily
accomplished by an economic revolution and was accentu-
ated by the mechanical changes which followed in the
wake of that economic revolution. Thus the proletarian
was driven to greater and greater extremes of proletarian-
ism by virtue of the changes in the machine, and losing
his skill was obliged to succumb beneath the weight of
the overpowering economic pressure. But in the natural
course of events, the employer is bound to give educa-
tional opportunities to the proletarians that he may in-
stitute, and manage, the machines, and thus the education
of the proletarian has changed from that which was appro-
priate to the production of individual small commodities,
to the education which fits him for the management of
great social economic instruments. So, out of the
very class of the proletariat itself are provided the of-
INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION 49
ficers who will be competent to manage the economic ar-
rangements in the event of that class, by a political revolu-
tion, obtaining possession of the instruments of pro-
duction.
CHAPTER III
THE FACTORY SYSTEM
It is now appropriate to consider the origin of the
peculiar modern system of manufacture which consti-
tutes the present and more highly developed form of
production the Factory System.
The various anterior systems paved the way for its
introduction, and the gradual improvements in ma-
chinery made possible its development. Its sudden ar-
rival swept away like a devouring pestilence the home
and all that the home stood for; it converted a strong
peasantry into a puny set of slaves, it set "Timour
Mammon high on his pile of childrens' bones," and
defied all the decencies.
But by some strange alchemy, that system which
appeared to be fraught with the most disastrous con-
sequences, and which almost succeeded in destroying
the very life of the nation which first employed it, is
now the greatest and most promising possession which
the laboring classes have ever had thrust upon them.
The very herding of the workers together in the un-
sanitary shed, where the machine ground out its cease-
less task, was the beginning of modern working-class
association; the sameness as well as the dreariness of
the employment spoke to them continually of identity
of interest, preaching a sermon punctuated with the
hiss and shriek of the engine, the wail of the child
50
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 51
flogged at its task, and the scream of the murdered
victim dragged to death by the unguarded machinery.
It is probable that no age in the history of the
world, with all its record of suffering and its sickening
monotony of pain and death, ever furnished such a
ghastly record as did the factory system in its earliest
days. Its history or at least, some of it, is open to the
student in the pages of English blue-books; the agi-
tation of the Christian socialists, the burning pages of
Engels' "Condition of the Working Classes in Eng-
land," and the violent splenetics of Carlyle, all of which
bear testimony to its horror. And the tale is even yet
not complete, for it must be mentioned with shame
that the United States to-day allows the perpetua-
tion of the same kind of infamies which have made the
name of the English manufacturers a hissing and re-
proach throughout the world.
The break up of the medieval towns was in great
measure due to the exactions of the gilds, and from the
decay of these towns dates the beginning, in a rudi-
mentary way, of the factory system. The limitations
imposed upon the manufacture of articles which were
in the hands of certain powerful gild-masters and the
tendency on the part of these gild-masters to gain
complete monopolies to themselves caused the move-
ment of the more adventurous of the journeymen to
open villages where gild exactions did not prevail,
and where freedom of operation in the manufacture of
commodities and something like freedom as regards
the relations of master and servant, might be had.
These industrial villages were not places where the
cottage or domestic system of industry was carried on,
but were populated by laborers and their families, as-
5 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
sociated under control of one person, who organized
this labor upon capitalistic lines. That is to say,
there was a direct freedom from restrictions in the
matter of wages and hours of labor which the gild
system had imposed, and at the same time there was a
disciplinary control which did not obtain under the
domestic system, here the middle-man had nothing to
do with the organization of industry but was merely
concerned in the making of profits. It is noticeable
that from these industrial villages developed many of
the largest of the English manufacturing towns of the
present day. Certain local advantages, such as prox-
imity to a coal and iron region, might have made their
growth inevitable, but they were promising and grow-
ing places before manufacture had become the creature
of its own motive power, and this, very largely, from
the fact of the liberty which was enjoyed by their in-
habitants.
But it must be apparent that the organization of
industry when the machines were of so small a size
as to demand, generally speaking, an individual for
each machine, was not altogether a very successful
method of production, for although even under such
circumstances, the mere fact of human association
probably led to an increase in output, yet the dis-
ciplinary control and the necessity for detailed over-
seership made the industrial village an unsatisfactory
experiment. Still some employers gained important
successes even in the industrial village, and in the lat-
ter part of the fifteenth and the earlier part of the six-
teenth centuries, certain of these manufacturers were
very notable persons. Among these may be mentioned
the famous "Jack of Newbury," who was a prominent
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 53
manufacturer of kerseys, and kept a hundred looms
running steadily. He was powerful and rich enough
to equip and send to the Battle of Flodden Field a
hundred of his journeymen as soldiers.
This fact in itself is eloquent of the decay of the
feudal nobility. In the fact that a common merchant
and manufacturer could send a hundred soldiers at a
time when the keeping of retainers by feudal nobles
was already forbidden by law, we see the downfall of
the old regime to have been practically accomplished,
at least in Great Britain.
These journeymen of the manufacturers were to be
employed on scores of bloody fields henceforward.
They were to go shouting in their red coats after
Marlborough through the fertile lands of Europe, to
fight hand to hand with French journeymen on the
Heights of Abraham, to engage the dusky hordes of
India, and to roar through the Pyrenees in mad pur-
suit of what was left of the Grand Army. In blue coats
they were to march through the Southern States and
to break up a rival system to their own, founded on
chattel slavery, they were to demolish the power of
Spain in a few weeks' fighting, and to chase patriots
and ladrones in vain pursuit, for years through the fetid
jungles and reeking swamps of the Philippine Islands.
Red, or buff, or white, or blue, they all serve the same
class. "Jack of Newbury V hundred journeymen have
become the armies of the modern world the strong
right arm of the trader, wearing his badge, expending
labor force on the battle field just as their fellows ex-
pend it in the factories, mines, and machine shops.
The hundred journeymen, the soldiers of a mere mer-
chant and manufacturer, upon whom the decadent
54 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
feudal nobility looked scornfully down, have grown
into the great modern military system with its millions
of men continually under arms, its well nigh intol-
erable load of vice and taxation the great system of
modern standing armies with the German war lord as
its glittering commander-in-chief, and Rudyard Kip-
ling as its prophet and laureate.
But the factory system was not to be introduced at
once. The industrial villages were the first feeble at-
tempts to initiate a system which the machinery of that
day was as yet unable to properly carry out. The
ground had to be cleared, the gild system abolished,
free labor created, and all the encumbrances of feudal
privileges and royal prerogatives cleared off the track
before the panoply of the new proprietary class could
be forged, and the might of broad acres, cultivated
by a subject tenantry, converted into the might of hum-
ming factories, brought into existence, and controlled by
a sweating and dying crowd of nominally free slaves.
War and revolution were the precursors of the change.
Travail and blood is the price which nature demands
for a new birth, and the introduction of the modern sys-
tem was an epoch of such blood and travail.
The French wars, which were wars for commercial
mastery, stimulated demand and the means at hand were
inadequate to meet the requirements. How the problem
of production was finally solved by the introduction of
the machine has already been described and "the tumult
and the shouting" died away, leaving in its place one
powerful dominating people, masters of the industrial
world.
In place of the quiet country districts, with the un-
eventful and happy life of their inhabitants, monstrous
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 55
eities had arisen, over which hung perpetual clouds of
smoke. The whirr of wheels and the clangor of machin-
ery reverberated through the alleys, where once had been
green fields, and the little children who played by the
brooks, and poached in the woods were imprisoned in the
fortresses of the new masters and compelled to toil for
their subsistence. They were flogged at their tasks often
until they literally dropped, and their little bodies bruised
with work and blows were huddled into the grave, in
many cases, secretly, so that the world should not be in-
formed of the sacrifice which the newly instituted factory
system had rendered necessary. As early as 1795 a cer-
tain Dr. Aiken describes in plain language the change
which had taken place in the habits and manners of the
people, owing to the introduction of the new methods
of production. He says:
"The sudden invention and improvement of ma-
chinery have had surprising influence to extend our trade
and also to call in from all parts, particularly children,
for the cotton mills." After enumerating the effects of
this system upon the health and morals of the commu-
nity, we find him saying : "The females are wholly unin-
structed in knitting, sewing and other domestic affairs
requisite to make them frugal wives and mothers. This
is a very great misfortune to them and to the public as is
very easily proved by a comparison of the laborers in hus-
bandry and those of manufacture in general. In the
former we meet with neatness, cleanliness and comfort,
in the latter with filth, rags and poverty."
It must not be supposed that the working classes suc-
cumbed to the factory system without a struggle. They
were, for the most part, literally starved into it. Their
old methods were absolutely powerless against the new,
56 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
and want confronted them if they did not take their places
along with others of their class in the factories. They
regarded the new employment with loathing and contempt,
and a girl who worked in the factory was treated with a
certain contumely by other working girls who had not la-
bored at a machine. It was, even as late as the forties,
the boast of many Lancashire working-class families that
they had never worked in a factory, and even to this
day, though the old form of hand-loom weaving is en-
tirely abolished and the great majority of the people have
been driven into factory-work in one form or another,
the same stigma attaches, in some degree, to the occupa-
tion.
This is not surprising when the actual conditions
under which labor was performed in these places are con-
sidered. Physical and moral degradation of the lowest
type and the very crudest species of brutality were the
concomitants of the system in its inception. It is very
doubtful if in the most tyrannical times of human history,
when slavery was at its lowest point, and unlimited power
of life and death over chattels, was the recognized right
of their proprietor the mass of men suffered more. Nay,
it is almost certain that the suffering was in reality less,
for there existed in slavery a certain personal relation
which tended always to obviate the most brutal of its
features and a slave possessed a certain pecuniary value
which could not be replaced in the event of his death. In
the factory system and indeed in the entire modern sys-
tem the personal element is practically abolished and the
proprietor is seldom brought into actual contact with his
employes, hence the finer feelings are not called upon.
Again the free market, by placing an unlimited field of
labor exploitation at the disposal of the employer, does
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 57
away with the necessity of any care on his part for the
physical well being of his work-people.
It was owing to these facts that the employing classes
of England were so obtuse with regard to the treatment
of their "hands," and well meaning philanthropic factory-
owners would go on their way to meetings called for the
abolition of negro slavery, passing, as has been said, their
own factories, blazing with light and humming with ac-
tivity, where little children of their own race were wast-
ing their feeble lives in hard and unremitting toil, aver-
aging sometimes as much as sixteen hours, and frequently
fourteen hours a day.
The time came, however, when the enormity of the
system began to impress itself upon the minds of the peo-
ple at large and an efficient and active agitation was com-
menced against the excesses of the manufacturers. This
was a very difficult task, for the politicians were wedded
to the economic doctrines of individualism or "laissez-
faire," as the slang expression ran, and any interference
with the existing order in the direction of what was, cu-
riously enough, called freedom of contract, met with the
most violent opposition on the part of those in author-
ity, and, particularly, at the hands of those who were
considered to be the popular leaders, the radicals. This
party represented the interests of the manufacturing
classes and opposed with might and main the least in-
vasion of their sphere. Such men as John Bright vehe-
mently contested every effort to ameliorate the condition
of the workers. The philanthropists had to contend not
only with a stupid and unthinking populace, but with
the intellect of the time. The economists were leagued to-
gether to defend to the last ditch the freedom of children
to contract their lives away, and of women to labor in
58 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
unhealthy and immoral conditions. Not only this, but
the proletariat itself had become to a great extent de-
bauched by the system in which it was compelled to labor,
and many of the men deriving an income from the labor
of their own children, opposed the agitation for the re-
lease of their offspring from what was worse than slavery.
These two features of this period of agitation are well
worth more than a passing notice, for they are most
valuable as showing the incapacity of the people in au-
thority to consider and provide against actual evils in a
dominant system.
The possessing classes and their intellectual servants
are invariably the enemies of popular movements. They
are wedded to the present, for from the present they de-
rive their power, and any interference with the existing
order is naturally enough regarded by them with appre-
hension. This astigmatism though unrecognized, is none
the less there, and may be described as almost instinctive.
It is the same, not only in economics, but also in art and
literature, and all other matters connected with social life.
The factory system might have existed until it had
actually destroyed all the vigor and force of the English
stock, as it narrowly escaped doing, if it had not been for
the antagonism between the possessing landed classes and
the purely commercial class.
Heavy duties had been imposed upon grain in the in-
terests of the landed classes. These duties were regarded
by the commercial classes as a due levied upon themselves,
and tending to impede the progress of industry, thus
placing them at a disadvantage. Hence arose the agita-
tion for the repeal of the Corn Laws by which the manu-
facturing classes hoped to reap greater profits and to ef-
fectually offset the competition which was arising on the
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 59
continent of Europe in manufacturing for the world-mar-
ket and which is today bearing fruit in the aggressive
commercial tactics of Germany.
The Corn Laws were repealed and the landed gentry
were plunged from affluence into comparative poverty,
the agricultural interests of Great Britain were sacrificed
to the commercial interests. Prior to this, however, the
representatives of the landed interests had made a be-
ginning of the Factory Acts and had supported the ef-
forts of the philanthropists and reformers. Hence was
born that curious hybrid denominated Tory Democracy
which, by pretending to support the working population
in its struggle against the employers, has converted a
great number of the manufacturing towns, formerly the
source of strength of the Liberal or capitalistic party, into
steady supporters of a so-called Conservative party. But
the course of time has wiped out these distinctions, and
the landed party has saved its hide, so far, by amalga-
mating with the manufacturers and forming one great
party for the upholding of the greater capitalism. This,
by the way, but it is obvious therefrom that not from
philanthropy, or even from the most generous sentiments
does progress come, but from the conflict of material in-
terests which impel classes of men to go down into the
arena and fight for them, as Lassalle, with a somewhat
hyperbolic oratory, says that we are forced by our ideas.
The fact that the working classes themselves opposed
their own deliverance is considered by some as evidence
of their irreclaimable sordidness, but it is, as a matter of
fact, merely an evidence of the terrible struggle which
they must make in order to exist. It was continually
preached to them that the reduction of the hours of labor
meant the reduction of wages and, as want, even in the
60 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
best circumstances, stared them ever in the face, they
shrank back in alarm at the prospect which the philan-
thropist held out to them, for one must live, even if he
lives like a dog.
There is nothing to be gained by following further the
course of factory legislation. Suffice it to say that once
begun, act after act was passed to make the condition of
these slaves more tolerable, and though little enough has
been done up to the present, the conditions are infinitely
improved and there is some grounds for the belief that the
improvement will be constant and progressive. It is
worth noting, however, that these reforms were not car-
ried out without much labor and care, and the first acts
were rendered almost abortive, owing to the wicked care-
lessness and negligence of corrupt officials. Factory in-
spectors regularly shirked their duties and the whole feel-
ing of coroners' juries, of the school authorities, and even
of the great mass of the clergy, was for the most part on
the side of the factory owners. But for the unremitting
zeal of the reformers, and for the formation of trades
unions, by the workers, the acts would have been rendered
practically valueless. The same thing is common enough
nowadays, everywhere, and legislation which should pro-
tect the worker is made a mere farce by the purchase of
officials and inspectors by the class in power. Thus we
frequently read of mining inspectors reporting workings
as free from gas, and a few hours afterwards in those
very workings many workers meet the death from which
the inspector was employed and paid to protect them.
Yet progress is made and in that fact lies one of the
chief values of the factory system. The possibilities of
inspection and improvement are simply unlimited, and
there is no reason why this mode of labor should not be
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 61
rendered at once comparatively pleasant or, at least, en-
tirely decent and respectable.
It has been noted that the first periods of industrial
systems display all their worst points. They come into
existence unregulated and unassuaged and thus work their
evil before the masses of the people are aware of their
deficiencies. Thus it was with the system of slavery in
Rome. The law of the later Roman empire shows, stage
by stage, a recognition of the evils wrought by unregu-
lated slavery, and a constant effort to repress the most
obvious of these evils. So it was with the factory sys-
tem. Its first evils have been mitigated, and in some
cases entirely removed. But just as the gradual improve-
ment of the condition of the slaves presaged the aboli-
tion of slavery, and the practical delivery of the servile
masses from the yoke of their master, so the gradual im-
provement in the conditions of factory employment, and
the insistence by the State upon the more humane treat-
ment of the factory employes means the abolition of the
factory system as a means of individual exploitation and
the substitution for it of free collective labor.
This is a long cry, but that it has a certain basis in
reason may be seen from a consideration of the effect
which the factory system has had upon the operatives
themselves. This will show that the factory system is by
no means to be entirely condemned, even from a stand-
point of the workers.
Mr. W. A. S. Hewins in his "English Trade and Fi-
nance, chiefly in the Seventeenth Century" makes the
following strong and, to those who have been in the habit
of generally denouncing the factory system, inexplicable
remarks : "The factory system gradually gave the work-
ers back powers which had been in abeyance for two
62 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
centuries. It made possible new manifestations of the
spirit of association which had been well nigh quenched,
and in spite of its many deplorable features it must be
considered an upward step in social development."
In order to see the full force of this statement a com-
parison must be made between the factory system and its
immediate predecessor, the domestic system, of which
some slight mention has already been made.
Under the domestic system, the industries were car-
ried on sometimes in small manufactories but, for the
most part, in cottages and dwelling houses, the finished
product being delivered into the hands of a middleman,
who in turn had to warehouse it, and if it were intended
for export, hand it over to a carrier, who took it by the
very imperfect means of transportation then in use, to one
or other of the ports where the trade was controlled by
certain privileged merchants. So the whole progress of
the product from its raw state to its final market was
marked by the exactions of the various middlemen, or fac-
tors, from whose predatory enterprise there was no possi-
bility of escape.
The working classes were the abject slaves of these
factors. It is true that they worked in their own houses
and so were free from the interference of the overseer
and were spared the humiliation of the personal indignity
which the factory overseers were able to inflict upon the
factory workers. But the factor held their life completely
in his power, for he could cut off their source of livings.
If the cottager refused to accept the terms of the factor,
the latter could simply refuse to supply him with the raw
material, and separation from the raw material meant
starvation or, at all events, threw the workman back
upon the precarious subsistence which his garden and
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 63
such odd jobs as he could get from day to day afforded.
Not only that, but when the work was done the mode of
payment lay altogether in the discretion of the factor,
he could pay in kind or money, and force his payment,
upon the worker in spits of the Acts of Parliament which
were intended as a protection of the laborer, and thus
force the workman who had completed his task into the
acceptance of "truck." And, as the writer above quoted
points out, the factor could always gratify his spite and
malevolence by having the weaver, who carried on cot-
tage industry, arrested for embezzling cloth, and whipped
or put in the stocks. This was all the easier when we
consider that the magistrate and the folks in authority
were, as usual, all on the side of the factor and that no
workman had much chance of getting anything approach-
ing justice.
Again, even had stringent laws against the formation
of trades unions not been in force, it is difficult to see
how such scattered individuals could possibly have com-
bined to resist the attacks of the factors, as there was
none of that cohesion and association which are the nec-
essary prerequisites to combined action.
When these drawbacks to the domestic system are
fully perceived, the justice of the quotation above made
becomes at once apparent. The factory system rendered
possible the association of workers, without which the life
of the laborer is only a prolonged misery; it endowed
him with all the strength and confidence which proceeds
from a feeling of harmony of interest with his fellows,
and thus paved the way for that intelligent co-operation
upon which the future of the working class so largely
depends.
There is one aspect, however, in which the work
64 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
under factory regulations appears at a manifest disadvan-
tage as compared with that of the domestic system, that
is with respect to its monotony in the factory. There is
a ceaseless flow of the same motions, a constant repetition
of the same functions with a resultant action upon the
human system which tends not to happiness but rather
to a debilitation of the nervous system. The domestic sys-
tem, on the other hand, with its cottage industry, gave
a greater diversity of the occupation and thus tended to
the greater physical well-being of the individual. The
cultivation of the garden patch, the care of the cow, the
little extra field-tasks which seed-time and harvest de-
manded, all took the toilers away from the loom or wheel
for breathing spells, and gave them a taste of freedom and
change which the workers in the great modern factories
amid the closeness and overcrowding of city life never
enjoy. We must also take into account the loss of caste,
which the worker has undergone by the transformation
of himself, as an individual, with his individual responsi-
bilities, into a mere part of a machine, for that is all that
he is in the factory system, just as much a factor in the
mechanism of production, as the very machine by whose
movements his own are regulated. He loses his iden-
tity in the common mass and thus part of his accountabil-
ity to his neighbors ; his respectability is extinguished by
his environment, and he undoubtedly feels the effects of
the nullifying force of his occupation upon his ethical
standards. The recognition of this result probably tended,
as much as anything, to lower the occupation of factory
"hands" in the estimation of the laborers not employed in
factories, in the earlier epochs of factory history. The
same fact, no doubt, contributes to the lowering of the
standard of morality in city life in comparison with that
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 65
of the rural districts, and this consideration must also
serve to offset the advantages which have been gained by
the organization of the factory industry.
The decay of handicraft has also attributed very
generally to the introduction of the factory system, but it
is by no means clear that this is the case. The decay
of handicraft is primarily chargeable to the break-up of
the gilds which undertook to keep up a certain standard,
and this attitude reacted favorably upon the general pro-
duct. On the other hand, it does not appear that the
standard of handicraft was any higher under the domestic
than under our present system; in fact, the latter days
of the factory system have been marked by a growth,
rather than a deterioration in handicraft.
The reason of this is not very far to seek. The opera-
tion of the Factory Acts has given greater leisure to the
workers and much of this leisure has been spent in self-
improvement. Thus singing societies and scientific and
literary societies have sprung up among the masses of the
toilers, and the Arts and Crafts Gild and such other
organizations have had a considerable influence in calling
the minds of the workers to the consideration of art in
handicraft.
As regards the actual products of the factories them-
selves but little can be said in their favor. They are
cheap and that is the best, and at the same time the worst
that can be said of them. Cheap products are as a rule
the products of cheap men and it will have to be admit-
ted that the standard of production of the factories has
tended to vulgarisation, and to deterioration of the pub-
lic taste. This has been insisted upon so strongly and so
ably by men like William Morris that there is no need
to pursue that side of the question farther at present.
66 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
This view of the deteriorating influence of the modern
system upon artistic handiwork has recently received
corroboration from an unexpected quarter. The artist,
the critic and the workingman may in the eyes of the
money classes be safely ignored and their opinions
laughed at, but when the Viceroy of India takes occasion
to expatiate upon the same theme, it becomes evident that
the constant attacks upon the artistic deformity of factory
production are at last beginning to produce some effect.
Lord Curzon at the recent Durbar is reported to have
spoken to the following effect:
"They were witnessing in India one aspect of the pro-
cess which was going on throughout the world, which
long ago had extinguished the manual industries of Great
Britain and was rapidly extinguishing those of China and
Japan. Nothing could stop it, because it was inevitable
in an age which wanted things cheap and did not mind
their being ugly; which cared much for comfort and
little for beauty," and after admonishing the Indian
princes to do all in their power to preserve the tradi-
tional skill of the Hindu people the Viceroy concluded
despairingly, "So long as they preferred to fill their places
with flaming Brussels carpet, cheap British furniture,
Italian mosaics, French oleographs, Austrian lusters and
German brocades, there was not much hope."
It is evident that the factory system can furnish no
solution of the problems involved in the question of a
revival of art-industry. The machine can never make
an artistic product, and a revival in the manufacture of
artistic commodities can only arise in response to a wide-
spread development of artistic taste. But, under a proper
regulation of the machine industry the hours of labor
may easily be reduced so as to furnish sufficient leisure
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 67
to the artisan class. This leisure will, in turn, lead to a
demand for better surroundings and hence, probably, to
the revival in some degree of esthetic taste.
\Yhatever may be the results, the system is with us,
and, as far as can be at present seen, is destined to be
long lived, for unless society is to prove false to its own
laws of evolution, there does not appear to be any reason
to anticipate any simplification of the process of manu-
facture, but rather a still further development in the
direction of greater intricacy, with still greater insistence
on the social and less on the merely individual factors.
The organized co-operation of Man and Machine is the
salient feature of the system. One single moving force
animates and drives a number of different machines, and
sets in motion a collection of various agencies each of
which contributes its quota toward the production of a
definite result. In obedience to this force and the amount
of the machinery thus engendered, the human beings
co-operating in the common task are set in motion, and
man and the machine combine their movements towards
one definite end. Each part of each machine must per-
form its function, or the work ceases ; each human being
must sink his individuality in the common task or the
operations cannot proceed, and the creation of the pro-
duct is interrupted. Man and machine are merged to-
gether in the one all-absorbing task.
The factory has been thus defined:
"Combined co-operation of many orders of work-peo-
ple adult and young attending with assiduous skill a
system of productive machines continuously impelled by a
central power."
Another definition of the system runs as follows :
"A vast automaton composed of various mechanical
68 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
and intellectual organs acting in uninterrupted concert for
the production of a common object, all of them being
subordinated to a self-regulated force."
Here, it is evident, we get the perfection of human
organization. The motive force is single, the working
force is completely organized, and the product appears
as the product of collective labor, free from the dis-
tinguishing marks of individual effort.
No longer can the workman say that any particular
portion of the result is his own handiwork; his contribu-
tion is swallowed up in the collective effort; the result is
the result of the organization which levels all distinctions
of ability and physical strength, and reduces human labor
to one common average.
In face of this fact the complaint made by employers
that trades unions interfere with the right of individual
ability to receive its due reward falls to the ground.
Under a disciplinary method, such as is maintained in
a modern workshop carried on under the factory sys-
tem, such individual ability will have no chance to dis-
play itself, and any attempt to revive a system of indi-
vidual payment of wages upon the basis of individual
output would only lead to a lowering of wages and the
tyranny of the employer over the individual workman,
precisely the state of things against which the trades
unions and factory legislation have worked for so many
years. In other words, the factory system by its very
form of organization converts production from a matter
of individual effort to a matter of social concern. Thills
the unrestricted authority of the factory owner simply
endows him with the power to use a social function for
his private purposes and gives him the advantages which
arise from social effort and the experience of the race
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 69
without any adequate compensating returns to society
therefor.
The solution, then, of tjje factory question consists
in the recognition by society of this fact, and the appli-
cation of it to the system itself. This of necessity in-
volves a series of attacks upon the position of the em-
ployer and converts the question into a cause of conflict
between the two parties interested. The employing or
capitalistic class naturally aims to gain as large an
amount of profit as possible even at the expense of the
well-being of the workers and is prepared, as it has
ever been, to sacrifice the laboring classes, and hence the
nation itself for its own peculiar class-interestis. The
laboring class, on the other hand, is equally anxious to
gain as fair a livelihood as possible with the least pos-
sible expenditure of physical energy. And as national
welfare depends primarily upon the physical well-being
of the masses the cause of the laborer becomes of ne-
cessity the cause of the nation, and thus citizens who are
patriotic in the true sense of the term, that is, careful
for the real interests of their own country, naturally
incline to the side of the laborer. This tendency is
offset, however, by the power of money, the corrupting
influences set in motion by those who are able to offer
immediate personal gain to those who will take their
side, by the propaganda of false ideas of national glory
by which patriotic sentiments are used as a cloak for
the basest of personal interests, and by actual threats
of deprivation of work and consequently of even bare
subsistence.
The problem is somewhat modified by the better
organization of industry and the annihilation of numbers
of small individual producers. On the other hand, a
70 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
growing consciousness of the identity of the interests
of the laborers renders the attack upon the intrenched
capitalists more effective. Thus, on the whole, in spite
of many serious drawbacks, and in spite of the much
disputed, but still obvious fact that the rate of wages
by no means keeps pace, in proportion, with the increase
in actual production, the laborer in the factories has
gained, and the tendency once begun, as it has been
already begun, cannot well be seriously interrupted. The
path of true reform of the factory system is obvious
enough. The trades unions should be able to maintain
their rate of wages and even to improve upon it, and if
so far they have not been able to do so, it is a reflection
upon their methods, which should cause them to over-
haul the machinery and to find exactly where they are
wanting. It will be discovered, as a result of such ex-
amination, that they have neglected the weapon which
is at once the readiest and the most effective, that is,
their own political power.
Continual watch must be kept upon the employment
of children, and the minimum age of employment con-
stantly raised, until the disgraceful institution of child
labor is completely abolished.
The inspection of machinery and sanitary arrange-
ments should be thoroughly carried out, and more and
more stringent provisions made in regard to these mat-
ters; for with our present improved system of build-
ing, there is no reason why the factory should not be
converted into a convenient and healthy place of labor.
Many other suggestions have been made to improve
the condition of factory laborers, most of which are so
obvious as to require no special mention.
It will be seen that such modification in the factory
THE FACTORY SYSTEM 71
system can hardly be made without diminishing, in some
degree, at least, the profits of employers, and that con-
sequently they will meet with bitter opposition, and it
will be further seen that these modifications cannot be
successfully carried out while the political power remain^
in the hands of the present possessing classes. The first
preliminary, therefore, to reform of the factory system
is the growth in political power of the laboring classes.
The development of the working class from a sub-
ject to a dominant class involves the substitution of a
higher system for the factory system of to-day and, as
far as appears at present, such substitution can only be
accomplished by means of the actual efforts of the work-
ing class itself. It will thus be seen that the factory sys-
tem may be rendered as effective a means of social ad-
vantage as it has hitherto been of mere individual profit ;
and, so far, this is the only method of industry of which
that can be truly said.
CHAPTER IV
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
During the period of the domestic system of produc-
tion in Europe occurred the first European coloniza-
tion of that portion of an American continent which
has since become the greatest industrial power in the
world the United States. The English settlements,
begun on ihe Atlantic Coast, had progressed until by
the time of the industrial revolution in Britain in 1760,
they had about four millions of people. The defeat of
the French in the struggle for dominance of the New
World left these colonists free to work out their 'des-
tiny in a country of almost illimitable extent. They
were to accomplish their national growth, to unite,
to control the politics of an even greater domain than
was then spread out before them. The last vestige of
the former European control was to disappear in the
elimination of the Spanish influence in the West.
They were to spread from ocean to ocean and ere a
century and a half had passed to aspire to the domin-
ion of the entire continent and to have already fastened
the tentacles of their capitalistic class upon the Orient.
The United States is the child of the Industrial
Revolution. Jts birth is almost coincident with that
of the steam-engine and the factory system. It is a
thoroughly bourgeois product and it has shouted the
gospel of the bourgeoisie and proclaimed the virtue and
n
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 73
vices of that regime more loudly than any other people.
It has proclaimed itself to be the leader of human lib-
erty and progress by virtue of a revolution made in
the names of ideals of liberty. In reality its revolu-
tion was made in terms of money and trade. It was
carried through with the most pompous announce-
ments of human liberty which hardly veiled the real
designs of its instigators. It denied its professed
theories at its very inception by the proclamation of
human rights and the acceptance of chattel slavery.
The cynicism of that first treason to its publicly ad-
vertised theories has persisted in its people until the
"mocking devil" in their blood has become a by word
among the nations.
Its inhabitants, of religious stock, and filled with
the calvinistic interpretation of the scriptures, have
produced a civilization in which life and property are
more insecure than in any other portion of the civilized
world. Its declarations of individual liberty have led
to the institution of a most remarkable system of social
and industrial tyranny. Time has laughed at its proc-
lamation of the abolition of classes and has brought it
about that two classes in the community eye one an-
other with vindictive hatred and the country trembles
upon the verge of the most colossal labor war. Its
original inhabitants, frugal and law abiding, would not
recognize their descendants in the fierce, keen eyed,
calculating race which has made the country conspicu-
ous for wanton waste and extravagance, and has re-
duced the administration of law to a matter of social
and political influence.
Within a century and a quarter the vast national
domain, which seemed inexhaustible, has been taken
74 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
from the masses of the people. A slum proletariat
has been created. All the advantages which the pos-
session of a new country, free from feudal traditions,
gave the original founders of the republic have been
lost. A purse-proud oligarchy without any social ob-
ligations has come into existence. It has destroyed all
the guarantees of freedom and independence which the
fathers fondly thought secured them from the evil lot
of the European. From an isolated, petty-bourgeois,
republic, America has developed into a great modern
state, in the circle of high finance, in the grip of the
greater bourgeoisie, under the heel of the money
power, with a proletariat as unsettled and as revolu-
tionary as any in Europe. The next step for the United
States, as for the remaining nations in the modern civ-
ilization, is the social revolution.
The British colonists who constituted the first really
important settlement on the American continent
brought with them the methods and ideas of the do-
mestic system of industry. The economic organization
and the tool of the early part of the seventeenth cen-
tury were theirs by right of inheritance. Thus the
earlier American system was largely a facsimile of
that of the British Isles prior to the great industrial
revolution of 1760. The agrarian system of the South
was, on the other hand, a product of the surviving
English feudalism. The great planter was the lord of
the manor and ruled somewhat after the feudal fash-
ion. The planter's house was the social centre as well
as the centre of political influence. The fact of slave
labor and the cultivation of large estates under a sys-
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 75
tern of slavery, together with the existence of numbers
of poor whites, who were not of the same class as the
great planters, constituted another reason for the al-
most absolute sway of the Southern landed class. In
the North the commercial and industrial class, which
was then in a rudimentary stage, was the master.
The Northern leaders of public opinion and the domi-
nant class in church and state were therefore essen-
tially bourgeois. Their English antecedents had been
bourgeois. This fact affected the estimation in which
they were held by the British landholding and aristo-
cratic classes. These latter always persisted in regard-
ing the North as inferior and nearly one hundred years
after the Revolutionary War, when North and South
were engaged in mutual srtife, English society main-
tained that the party of the South was the "gentle-
manly party." The differences in occupation and in the
economic milieu of the two classes, moreover, laid the
foundation of those differences which were to culmi-
nate, one hundred years after the industrial revolution
in England, in the conflict already mentioned.
At the time of the Revolution therefore the forms
of industrial activity may be briefly classed as agricul-
tural, conducted in the North by free farmers, and in
the South by the lords of the negro slaves. There was
little differentiation in occupation, for farming consti-
tuted the staple work, just as under the domestic sys-
tem everywhere, and such additional trades as were
carried on, for the most part, monopolized the time
which was not taken up with husbandry. Even so,
there had been a marked industrial progress noticea ; jJe
in the colonies prior to the Revolution. The shipbuild-
ing trade had developed to such an extent that the ships
76 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
of the colonies were by no means unfamiliar objects
on the high seas and smuggling was a recognized oc-
cupation. The iron industry, which was still in its ear-
liest infancy, had yet been born, and there was laid the
foundations of the industrial system which, given
modern machinery, was destined to entirely alter the
social structure of the community. The spinning
wheel and the hand loom had come over with the
original colonists and the domestic needs were sup-
plied by the women of the household. Sheep had been
early introduced and the woolen trade prospered.
Cotton goods were also manufactured and there was a
beginning of the iron manufacture. In fact, during the
latter part of the colonial period there had been such
a development of manufactures under the domestic
system that the British capitalists, who regarded the
colonies as a field for exploitation, had passed numer-
ous acts limiting the commerce of the country and forbid-
ding the exportation of manufactured articles.
The condition of the people was much the same as
across the ocean, except that the squire and the parson
were not so powerful, so that it must have seemed a
veritable paradise to English villagers who suffered
under that double tyranny. But the same narrow-
mindedness and the same deference to local authority
prevailed. The life of the workers under the industrial
system, generally termed domestic, has been described
by Engels in the following terms: "So the workers
vegetated through a passably comfortable existence,
leading a righteous and peaceful life in all piety and
probity." The same description will apply to the in-
habitants of the Northern colonies in the period pre-
ceding the Revolutionary War, particularly with re-
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 77
spect to piety, for they were, for the most part, de-
voted to some of the many religious expressions in
church life of the Puritanism of the seventeenth cen-
tury, which are generally classified under the name of
Protestant Dissent. The probity was not, however, so
conspicuous, for the merchant class was devoted to
smuggling, and, like their English progenitors of Bris-
tol, did a lively trade in the carrying of slaves, although
this trade had been given practically as a monopoly to
court favorites.
The relation of master and servant prevailed. The
proletariat, as we know it to-day, did not exist, and
the subordinate position of those who worked for
wages was accentuated by the survival in the colonies
of the old system by which rates of wages were fixed,
and a long and servile apprenticeship was necessary
to the practice of any one of the independent handi-
crafts. The tyranny of the system was to a certain
extent mitigated by the fact that there was always the
wild back country to which the actively discontented
and the stronger could always betake themselves and
establish a habitation, after fierce conflict with the
dangers of the wilderness and the aboriginal tribes.
Such was the aspect of industrial life in the colonies
when the dawn of the great industrial revolution broke
in England. Henceforth the quiet progress of the colo-
nies was to be rudely disturbed. War was to break out ;
the form of government was to be changed. The free
farmers and the followers of domestic industry were
to be chased the length of a continent for a hundred
years and finally to be run to the ground and destroyed.
Their descendants were to be the slaves and handmaids
of the greater industry which had not appeared but
78 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
which was slowly growing in the womb of the do-
mestic system and only needed the fullness of time and
the quickening touch of the industrial revolution to
bring it to life.
The historic fiction that the Revolutionary War
was caused by the imposition of the Stamp Duty and
by the particular form of taxation adopted by the
British government has long since been discarded by
those who have carefully examined the causes of the
Revolution. These were admirable points on which
to make the fight but the fundamental causes were
deeper and involved the necessities of the bourgeois
class in the colonies. The growing industries of the
country were limited and cramped by the legislative
enactments of the British government. Act after act
was passed forbidding exportation of certain manufac-
tured goods and aimed at the preservation of the carry-
ing trade for British shippers. Laws against the trade
of smuggling were passed and partially enforced. But
these grievances, harrowing as they afterwards be-
came in the speeches and pamphlets of the revolution-
ary fathers, were but lightly denounced, until the
growth of the industrial revolution in England pointed
out to the patriotic lovers of liberty on this side of the
Atlantic a readier means of making money and acquir-
ing power. For this, independence was~necessary. The
commercial and industrial classes, the speculators in
land values, the shippers and the incipient manufac-
turers could not hope to achieve the position which
they craved under the control of parliament and the
domination of the court, the landed aristocracy, and the
growing merchant class of Great Britain. Besides these
main causes there were unquestionably a number of
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 79
subsidiary reasons which had great effect upon the
minds of the young in particular. Among them may
be noted the lack of political and social opportunity
which the perpetuation of the colonial system shut
out from the lawyer and ambitious young politi-
cian of the United States. Certain social factors, such
as irritation with the superior airs of the British offi-
cials and the arrogant tone of London society towards
the colonies, undoubtedly played their part and ranged
the ambitions and intellects of the young men against
the British government and in support of the manu-
facturers and merchants, of whom the latter were at
that time by far the more important.
The Revolutionary War was essentially a class
war; history, as taught in the public schools, notwith-
standing. There never was any great enthusiasm for
it among the rank and file of the working people. It
is very doubtful whether the mass of the people were
really in active favor of the war and, according to the
historians, it is pretty evident that at no time did an
actual majority favor independence.
The close of the war, however, found the new
American bourgeoisie in full possession of the field and
ready to develop their power. They had not suffered
particularly in the conflict, the great burden of which
had been borne by the common people. In fact the
commercial classes had actually benefited, for the gov-
ernment gave them security in the collection of the
debts which the other part of the community had been
obliged to incur during the progress of the war. A
government was needed to carry out the demands of
this class and the form of Confederation which pre-
vailed at the close of the war was too unwieldy and of
80 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
too little value to be really effectual. In place of the
loose agglomeration of communities, which existed
under the Articles of Confederation, a federal consti-
tution was necessary to the interests of the budding
capitalism. It has been said that the delegates to the
constitutional convention were brought together not
for the purpose of devising some ideal form of govern-
ment but to make such a "practical plan as would meet
the business needs of the people." The upshot of the
constitutional convention was that a document was
framed, which, in the words of one historian, McMaster,
had the result that "all who possessed estates, who were
engaged in traffic or held any of the final settlement
and depreciation certificates felt safe." The victory
had been gained and the final result was complete and
unmistakable triumph for the merchants and the finan-
ciers, such as then existed. The manufacturers were
to have the advantage of a tariff law and a compromise
was arrived at with the Southern planter element
which permitted the continuance of the slave trade
until 1808.
So the commercial and industrial masters were
firmly planted in the saddle, but the circumstances
were not yet propitious for the creation of a proleta-
riat of the modern type, though but one year was to
elapse before the factory system had been established
on the soil of the United States. Political independence
did not by any means at first spell industrial inde-
pendence. The new machinery, with which the in-
ventive genius of the pioneer inventors in Great Britain
had endowed the capitalistic class in that country, was
not procurable in the United States and the country
was in a state of industrial vassalage. The new bour-
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 81
geoisie looked with hungry and covetous eyes across
the Atlantic, where their brother bourgeois were rap-
idly breaking up the old fashioned form of industry,
and were driving the domestic industry out of exist-
ence. The English bourgeois were well aware of the
advantage which the possession of these new tools of
production conferred upon them, and they were un-
willing to give the secret to others, so that they had
passed the most stringent acts of parliament against
the exportation of the new machinery. The Amer-
icans tried by every means in their power to obtain
possession of this essential secret. They advertised for
men used to the English machinery and the advertise-
ment caught the eye of one, Samuel Slater, who knew
the new tools by heart, and who crossed the Atlantic
to place his knowledge at the service of the United
States capitalists. In 1790 he erected at Pawtucket the
first factory in the country and endowed America with
the modern system. So rapidly did the new system of
production progress that by 1814 the American manu-
facturer had actually improved upon the model of his
English predecessor and a factory was erected at Wal-
tham, Mass., in which all the processes from the raw
to the finished article were carried on. By 1815 the
textile industry of the United States had passed into
the factory system, and the old domestic system, as
the dominant mode of manufacture, was practically
extinct. Then began the employment of women in the
factory. There was precisely the same objection to
the taking of work in the factory on th' part of the
American women as there had been in England, and
extra inducements in the shape of pay had to be of-
fered before the women and children of the commu-
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
nity were handed over to the factory owners. But
the machine owners had the economic power and the
history of the women and children of the community
henceforward may be briefly summarized as a constant
surrender to the industrial lords. The early days of the
factory system of the United States do not, however,
seem to have been disgraced by the cruelties of the
English system. This is not to be explained on the
grounds of any greater humanity on the part of the
employers on this side of the water, but was due largely
to the sparse population which made the obtaining of
employes difficult, except under fairly good conditions,
and to the existence of the back country, which always
afforded a desperate remedy in the event of life growing
unbearable in the settled districts. In 1793 the cotton
gin, invented by Eli Whitney, gave a great impetus
to the cotton trade and, while it increased the power
of the South to such an extent that it made it the
dominant factor in the community for many years, it
stimulated the textile industry, for, without this inven-
tion, it would have been impossible to have supplied
the machines with the material which they required.
Everything conspired to develop the machine industry.
Even the European wars, with the consequent em-
bargo, necessitated a development of manufacture and
the war of 1812, which was followed by the imposition
of a tariff for the payment of the debt incurred by that
conflict, encouraged the factory system.
In 1825 the Erie Canal was completed and changed
the course of immigration, and steamers began to ply
on the Mississippi a little earlier, facts which had a
considerable influence in giving the Northeast part of
the country an advantage over the Southern, which,
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 83
later on, was to prove very important in the determi-
nation of the contest between the two sections of the
country.
The progress of the country in industry and manu-
facture was henceforth constant and there is no need
to pursue it further here. The iron and steel industry
developed, and in 1840 the discovery that bituminous
and anthracite coal could be employed in the blast fur-
naces instead of charcoal gave a great impetus to this
branch of industry. Still even in 1840 the development
of organized industry had made comparatively little
way, for Harriet Martineau, in her list of the occupa-
tions followed by women in America, enumerates only
teaching, needlework, keeping boarders, working in
cotton mills, type setting and domestic service. A
list of the present occupations followed by women, in
connection with the greater capitalism and its ramifi-
cations would show how much greater progress has
been made by the industrial rulers since the Civil
War than before it. The explanation is to be found, of
course, in the existence of the vacant lands and the
frontier, and affords proof that the proletarian has been
unwillingly forced into this industrial system and that
he has only succumbed to his present wage slavery
under the compulsion of the hardest economic tyranny.
With the entry of the country into the modern sys-
tem there came also the unavoidable penalty in the
shape of the commercial crisis. Great Britain had just
had her first taste of the trouble that was to be perma-
nently attached to the new industrialism and which
was at intervals to cause havoc and waste, as though
by war. In 1815, at the close of the Napoleonic wars,
the first crisis caught her. Owing to the backward de-
84 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
velopment of international trade at that time she had
the trouble all to herself, but, in 1819, the United
States felt the pinch owing to over-speculation in the
new factories. Six years after another crisis made it-
self felt in England but passed this country by, it being
then in the high tide of the boom which was to break
disastrously twelve years afterwards and was to in-
volve both Great Britain and the United States in the
worst panic and period of financial depression which
had occurred up to that time. Concerning the relations
of Great Britain and the United States in the period
' preceding the crisis of 1837, Mr. H. M. Hyndman says,
in "Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century":
"Now, however, became apparent the close con-
nection of the English commercial and financial mar-
kets with those of tha United States, which, then and
ever since, has rendered it inevitable that an industrial
or financial crisis in the one country should more or
less seriously affect the other. At this time, 1836-1839,
the United States were still, economically speaking,
a dependency of Great Britain, though more than sixty
years had passed since the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. North America, in fact, stood to England in
much the same relation that the Australian Colonies do
now. The Great Republic supplied the Lancashire mills
almost exclusively with cotton, as Australia now sup-
plies Bradford, Huddersfield and oth'er cities with
wool. In like manner also the United States, both as
a Federal Government and as independent States
looked to this country for loans to develop their im-
measurable resources."
It was an era of wild cat banking and when the
fevered period of credit passed and coin was called for
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 85
al the banks in the country suspended specie payment
and more than fifteen hundred banks failed.
Another trade crisis which occurred in England in
1847 also made itself felt in this country, but in 1857
the United States had so far progressed on the road to
industrial independence that we were able to prove our
worth as a modern, industrial and progressive nation
by inaugurating a crisis of our own, concerning which
Mr. Hyndman, in the work above mentioned, says :
"America had the honor of commencing the worst
crisis of the century." This author says: "A report
published at the commencement of 1857 stated that the
year 1856 had given results of which the past afforded
no example. Enormous advance had been made in
the cultivation of new territories, the produce of har-
vests, the extension of factories, the exploitation of
mines, the exports and imports, the carrying trade,
shipbuilding, the railway returns, the spread and im-
provement of cities" had developed at an incredible
rate. The banks were lending beyond reason and the
stocks which had been bought speculatively in the ex-
pectation of another rise filled the warehouses. Then
came the withdrawal of deposits, and the hoarding of
gold and silver, with the result that the crash followed
and fourteen great railways suspended payment.
The object of Hamilton in pushing the federal sys^
tern to success was undoubtedly "the creation of a
class of manufacturers running through all the states
but dependent for prosperity upon the federal govern-
ment and its tariff." Such being the case conflict could
not be avoided with those classes which were not en-
gaged in manufacturing and were not directly or indi-
rectly dependent upon the manufacturing interests and,
86 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
as a matter of fact, these interests were by no means
predominant, even in the North Atlantic States, at
first. The commercial class was the chief economic
class, even in these 'districts, and the members of the
commercial class, together with the Southern planters
and the frontiersmen, who were taking up the new
lands and founding new communities, were by no means
always in accord with the rising industrial class.
Hence the whole international political life of the coun-
try was involved in a tariff fight, and the question of
the kind of tariff, or no tariff at all, was the burning
political question for many years. The tariff of 1816,
which was imposed to pay the cost of the war with
England in 1812, was largely in favor of the manufac-
turing class, for it imposed a duty of twenty-five per
cent ad valorem on cotton and woolen goods and spe-
cific duties on iron. In the iron industry Great Britain
had gained already considerable advantage from the
fact that in that country the use of coke had been sub-
stituted for charcoal, with a resultant cheapening of
the product. It was not until about 1840 that the
United States by the use of anthracite coal, placed the
iron industry on a satisfactory footing, and removed
the seat of that industry from the forest localities to
the regions where iron and coal were found in close
conjunction. An attempt to employ the tariff for
barefaced class purposes found its expression in what
was known as the "American System." This has been
thus described : "The tariffs of duties on imports were
to be carried as high as revenue results would approve;
within this limit, the duties were to be defined for pur-
poses of protection, and the superabundant revenues
were to be expended for the improvement of roads,
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 87
rivers and harbors and for every enterprise that would
tend to aid the people in their efforts to subdue the
continent Western farmers were to have
manufacturing towns at their doors, as markets for
the surplus which had hitherto been rotting on their
farms; competition among manufacturers was to keep
down prices; migration to all the new advantages of
the west was to be made easy at national expense."
(See U. S. Hist, and Const, by Alexander Johnston).
Needless to say that this sort of protection was much
opposed by the South which saw in it merely a scheme
to increase the power of the Northern commercialists
and manufacturers. The dissatisfaction of that district
still further increased when the tariffs of 1824 and 1828
showed an upward tendency in the imposition of du-
ties. A reduction of the tariff under Andrew Jackson
was effected in 1833 and, although there was an at-
tempt made to return to a protective tariff in 1842, the
frontier and the South had the better of the tariff matter
until the Civil War. The interests of these sections
were obviously in favor of a low tariff. At one period
when the Southern planters feared an invasion of their
practical monopoly of the supply of raw cotton and the
possible loss of a portion of the British market they
were content to allow such tariff as would enable the
North to remain a steady customer for raw materials
for their mills and factories. When this danger was
passed, however, they reverted to their old antagonism
to the tariff, since it was to their interest to maintain
their slaves as cheaply as possible and, as the dealers
in a practical monopoly, they were not benefited by the
imposition of duties.
The westward tide of American migration also had
88 ' THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
a profound effect upon the politics of the country. The
opening of the great waterways increased the facilities
of transport to such an extent that the 240,000 sq.
miles of inhabited country in 1790 had expanded into
633,000 sq. miles in 1830 with an average population
of 20.3 to the sq. mile. However, even this migra-
tion westward was increased tremendously by the in-
troduction of the steam railroad. In 1829 the first
steam engines were imported from England and the
speed with which railroad construction followed has
had no parallel among other peoples. In 1830 twenty-
three miles of railroad were built which had increased
to 1,098 in 1835 and to almost two thousand in 1840.
In 1856 there were in the United States 24,195 miles
of railroad as contrasted with 8,297 miles in Great
Britain, and these American roads had been construct-
ed at little more than one-fifth of the cost per mile of
those of the latter country. The effects of this rail-
road construction upon the growth of the country have
been thus described by the author cited above :
"If the steamboat had aided western development
the railroad made it a freshet. Cities and states grew
as if the oxygen of their surroundings had been sud-
denly increased. The steamboat influenced the rail-
way, and the railway gave the steamboat new powers.
Vacant places in the states east of the Mississippi
were filling up; the long lines of emigrant wagons
gave way to the new and better methods of transport ;
and new grades of land were made accessible. Chi-
cago was but a frontier fort in 1832, within half a
dozen years it was a flourishing town with eight steam-
ers connecting it with Buffalo, and dawning ideas of
its future development of railway connections. The
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 89
maps change from decade to decade as mapmakers
hasten to insert new cities which have sprung up. Two
new states, Arkansas and Michigan, were admitted
(1836 and 1837). The population of Ohio leaps from
900,000 to 1,500,000 and that of Michigan from 30,000
to 21.2,000 and that of the country from 13,000,000 to
17,000,000 between 1830 and 1840."
The great mass of this migration was in the years
just mentioned, composed of people of American na-
tivity. The European immigration was not important
until a later period. The greatest number of Euro-
pean immigrants in any one year prior to 1847, was
one hundred thousand in 1842, but this fell again to
less than fifty thousand in the following year and did
not rise until 1847, when it reached 250,000. This new
European immigration was composed of the very
flower of the working class of the Northern European
countries. The immigrants were largely radical in
their tendencies, for the failure of the Chartist move-
ment in Great Britain and of the Republican disturb-
ances on the Continent had sent to this Republic men
imbued with radical and revolutionary opinions who
sought in the great Republic the political liberty which
had been denied them in their own lands. American
politics were not long in feeling the different attitude
of the new electorate. The American immigrants into
the West had come either from slave states or from
states bordering upon them and their attitude towards
the slavery question was by no means markedly hos-
tile. As pioneers and largely debtors of the Northern
commercialists, their sympathies had been against fed-
eralism and they had supported the anti-industrial
party, at least to a considerable extent. This new im-
90 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
migration, however, was composed for by far the
greatest part of men who were violently opposed to
slavery, as an institution, and who had no sentimental
considerations for the South. They came in with
their savings, and the land burst into wealth under
the touch of their fructifying labors. They pushed
forward the construction of the railroads, they broke
the prairie and produced incredible quantities of food
products, so that the country became a great source of
supply for the millions of Europe. When the Crimean
War broke out, the United States sold enormous
quantities of wheat to the British, and as the victory
of the Free Trade Party in England had paralyzed
the wheat growing industry of that country, America
was relied upon more and more to furnish the neces-
sary food supplies. This brought the capitalism of the
country more and more into connection with the capi-
talism of Europe and made the United States part of
the great world financial system. It became subject
to the same fluctuations of trade as the lands with
which it traded and, as we have seen, in 1857 itself
precipitated a crisis which had profound effects upon
the condition of trade in Europe.
Thus, at first, slowly, but more rapidly as the eco-
nomic forces came into play with ever increasing in-
tensity, this country, which had begun its existence as
a scanty agricultural settlement on the edge of a wil-
derness, was being drawn into the circle of the great
capitalistic powers. Like its own pioneers who were
debtors to the small American capitalists of the At-
lantic coast, the new American capitalism was heavily
in debt to European and, particularly, to English capi-
talists. The sums advanced for the building up of the
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 91
country had been for the most part borrowed abroad,
and this also was a fact of no slight importance to the
development of the United States.
The proletariat of the United States had not yet
really come into existence although, with the growth
of trade, this new apparition also began to show itself.
\Yhen the development of industry reaches a certain
point the proletariat shows itself, as a baby, weak and
rather incapable, it is true, and yet as a baby with a
temper, who screams and fights and is generally
whipped into something like temporary subordination.
There were a number of strikes even quite early in
American history, such as that of some sailors in 1803,
shoemakers in 1805, tailors in 1806, hatters in 1819,
and others of a similar sort. The strikes were, how-
ever, comparatively insignificant affairs, and were
much closer in resemblance to the journeymen strikes
of the old system of industry than to the great pro-
letarian movements of the greater industry of the pres-
ent day. As the factory system developed and indus-
try became more thoroughly organized, the labor
movement took on more definite shape, and trades
unions began to be formed. The advent of Robert
Owen in 1824 had no inconsiderable part in awaken-
ing the working class agitation. In 1825 a labor paper,
called "The Workmen's Advocate," was published and
was followed by others in the principal cities. In the
early thirties there were sufficient organized workmen
to constitute themselves into the General Trades
Union of the City of New York, and in 1832 the mer-
chants and shipowners of Boston formed an organiza-
tion to oppose the unions. These Boston employers
declared against "the pernicious and demoralizing ten-
92 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
dency of these combinations and the unreasonableness
of the attempt, in particular, where mechanics are held
in so high estimation and their skill in labor so lib-
erally rewarded." They agreed to refuse to employ
any journeyman belonging to a union and to boycott
any employer who did not live up to this agreement.
In 1835 a number of strikers were tried for conspiracy,
and one of the great achievements of this early labor
agitation was the abolition of the legislation which
had rendered possible these conspiracy proceedings.
Hours of labor, which were inordinately long, being
twelve, thirteen and even fourteen in the textile
industry, were shortened and numerous other reforms
were instituted by the first labor movement. Its effects
have thus been summed up by A. M. Simons in his
pamphlet entitled "Class Struggles in America":
"It is to these working class rebels that we owe to a
larger degree than to any other cause not only our
public school system, but abolition of imprisonment
for debt, the mechanics' lien law, freedom of associa-
tion, universal suffrage, improvement in prison admin-
istration, direct election of presidential electors, and
in fact nearly everything of a democratic character in
our present social and political institutions. Yet so far
as I know no historian has even given them the least
credit for securing these measures. On the contrary
every effort is made to make it appear that these privi-
leges were handed down as gracious gifts by a benevo-
lent bourgeoisie.
"For the working class directly, they succeeded in
shortening hours and improving conditions in many
directions. They even brought sufficient pressure to
bear upon the national government to compel the en-
EARLY INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 93
actment of a ten-hour law and the abolition of the old
legislation against trades unions which had made labor
organizations conspiracies."
With these achievements the early labor movement
in the United States sinks into obscurity. The free
lands did for the American labor movement very much
what they had done for the English Chartist move-
ment. They afforded a refuge for those discontented
spirits who found conditions intolerable and who would
have constituted the active elements of revolution. As
long as any man with sufficient force could go out into
the wilderness and there by his own efforts make at
least a rough and independent living the chances for
really effective labor organizations were comparatively
slight. The discovery of gold in California no doubt
deprived the Eastern working class of bold and daring
leaders, as the subsequent history of labor in that
State shows. But, more than all, the minds of men
were occupied with the preliminary stages of the gi-
gantic conflict between North and South which was
so soon to culminate in civil war.
CHAPTER V
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD
The American Civil War has been too often regarded
as purely a war of sentiment, one in which the moral
question was supreme, and which was brought about by
the persistence of the South in the maintenance of a sys-
tem abhorrent to the human conscience. The North
has regarded itself, and has come to be generally con-
sidered, as the champion of human rights, the Federal
soldiers, as the heroes of a moral campaign, and the
Proclamation of Lincoln as a new charter of human lib-
erties, enunciated solely in the interests of a down-trod-
den humanity and thus, as a document whose signifi-
cance is for the most part purely ethical.
As a mattter of fact, there are few wars in which
the economic motive is more easily discernible, in which
material considerations stand out more clearly, and of
which the results rest more solidly upon economic
necessities.
This does not imply that moral enthusiasm was lack-
ing, or that thousands of young men did not go to the
front inspired with the most pure and holy ideals re-
specting their work ; such a conclusion would in face
of the obvious facts be simply absurd. It does mean,
however, that beneath the glamor thrown over the strife
by the pamphlets of the abolitionists, and the perfervid
94
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 95
enthusiasm of moral reformers and pulpit orators, there
were certain hard, invincible, economic antagonisms,
which had to be determined by the victory of one or other
of the opposing parties. It was, as a matter of fact,
the old struggle between the landholding and the com-
mercial classes in a new form, and with the complete
victory of the latter, the last obstacles in the way of
the industrial progress of the United States were swept
aside, and the free course of economic and industrial
development was assured over the whole of the vast
new domain.
The insincerity of the eighteenth century agitation
for equality can be easily discerned from the fact that
the United States, the first country to incorporate the
new ideas in a constitution, at the same time maintained
intact the institution of slavery, and gave it constitu-
tional recognition. "Class-privileges were cursed, race-
privileges blessed.'' The bourgeoisie had based its revo-
lution upon the declaration of liberty and equality for
the human race; the rights for which they demanded
recognition were elementary human rights, "Rights of
Alan," an expression to which the victors in the struggle
against British reaction had pledged their open allegiance
in the words of the Declaration of Independence.
It could not be expected that such a contradiction
as that between this grandiloquent declaration of liberty,
and the perpetuation of slavery would be likely to escape
the notice of the morally acute, so that from the begin-
ning there were those who detected the absurdity of the
continued existence of slavery among a free people, and
who consequently set on foot an agitation against the
institution. The high ground taken by these men, sub-
sequently termed abolitionists, is the moral justification
96 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
of the anti-slavery movement and the Proclamation,
but as a matter of fact these men had but little to do
with the actual result. They were flouted, ill-treated
socially and actually persecuted, even in the Northern
States. Their moral propaganda was made to serve the
purpose of those whose interests were far from ethical,
but were in fact very material. Ethical ends were,
as a matter of fact, subserved by the change, but not^
it will be observed, as the consequence of a moral cam-
paign.
Still there was even in the infant days of the Re-
public, a feeling among observant people that the em-
ployment of slaves was not economically sound. Thus
Franklin in his "Peopling of Countries" maintained that
slave labor was relatively more expensive than free,
a condition which would appeal much more strongly to
the average business man or manufacturer than all the
rhetoric of a Phillips or a Garrison. There was much
general discussion of a similar nature at that time, upon
the question of the comparative economic value of the
two classes of labor, but this did not concern itself with
moral or philosophical views respecting the slavery, wage
or chattel, of human beings in general.
It is not within the scope of our present task to ex-
amine the various arguments put forth during the course
of this discussion, but it may be said that if computa-
tion is made of the actual amount of capital invested
in slaves, in the care and housing of slaves, and the
slight returns of slave labor as compared with those of
modern free labor, where the wage-worker toils under
the strain of the competitive system, it will be readily
seen that there was no lack of economic argument to
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 97
serve as a material backing for the ethical doctrines of
the moral campaigners.
There was moreover a natural division between the
northern and the southern sections of the country, which
originated in very ancient and fundamental caste dis-
tinctions. There was little in common between the two
systems of slavery, wage and chattel, save that both were
exploiting systems, both extorting values from those
who actually produced them, and there was still less
sympathy between the human representatives of the
two systems. On the one hand, we had the supercili-
ousness, the arrogance, the sensitiveness and at the same
time the domineering insolence which have always typi-
fied the agrarian, the aristocrat; on the other hand, the
keenness, the skill in solving material and, particularly,
economic problems, and the frugality of the commer-
cialist, all his obviously vulgar economic virtues with his
hardly more lovable vices.
It could not be well avoided that people of such in-
compatible natures living in states of society so pro-
foundly diverse, would, in the course of time, run coun-
ter to each other, for no single country could continue
to exist thus divided against itself.
John Quincy Adams is perhaps the most prominent
statesman from whom we can gather the feeling of the
leading classes of the North during the early part of the
century. This cold, calculating man, could not be said,
even by his most devoted adherents, to have been im-
pressed with any great moral wrongs in slave-holding
itself, as an institution, and in fact his attitude towards
the abstract question of chattel slavery is fully shown
by his refusal to co-operate with Canning in any steps
looking to the putting down of the slave-trade. At the
98 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
same time he agitated persistently for the abolition of
slavery in the United States, and in 1835 presented pe-
titions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Co-
lumbia. His efforts were evidently purely political, as
distinct from humanitarian, and he is thus an excellent
exponent of the ideas held by the dominant classes of
the North. His views of the means by which slavery
was to be abolished are particularly worthy of note,
for the question was ultimately solved in accordance with
his plan, as an act of war. Thus as early as 1836 he
said "From the instant that your slave-holding states
become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, from
that instant the war-powers of the Constitution extend
to interference with the institution of slavery, in every
way in which if can be interfered with, from a claim
of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to a cession
of the State burdened with slavery to a foreign power."
And on April 14, 1842, he said again: "Not only the
President of the United States, but the Commander of
the Army has power to order the universal emancipation
of the slaves."
Besides the social and class differences which placed
a gulf between the dominant economic classes of the two
sections, the continued political ascendancy of the South
in national politics, up to a period immediately preced-
ing the war itself, was a source of annoyance to the
northern manufacturers. It interfered with their de-
signs of building up great productive industries. The
staple productions of the South were raw materials,
the products of slave-labor applied to the soil. Protection
which was deemed, and, in fact, was, absolutely essential
to the maintenance of these infant industries, in face of
the tremendous output of the British factories, and the
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 99
fierce commercial zeal shown by the British trader, was
thus always more or less abhorrent to the Southern
planter. Thus the North always inveighed against the
apathy of the South, and the presence of a succession
of well-bred and dignified statesmen, with family tra-
ditions and a culture born of generations of transmitted
power, inspired the self-made men, the pushing, eager
merchants and the restless manufacturers with ill-con-
cealed dislike and contempt. No one can study the poli-
tics of the period antecedent to the Civil War without
being impressed with this incessant struggle, depending
as it did upon no particular ethical difference, but evi-
denced, for the most part, by a natural and mutual dis-
like based upon the most obvious and baldest material
considerations.
It will be observed that even in the North there was
much sympathy for the Southern slave-holders on the
part of the wealthy merchants and the professional
classes. When the war actually broke out the same
feeling was felt by the aristocratic and upper middle as
well as the professional classes of Great Britain. This
sympathy was in itself a survival of feudal times. The
Southern was considered as "the gentlemanly party,"
and, hence, the privileged classes, whether abroad or at
home, for the most part, united in its support' and gave
it social, if not political, prestige. In fact, as is well-
known, but for the energetic interference of those classes
in England which were economically in the same position
as the anti-Southern party in the North the Confederacy
would have received recognition, if not active support
The clerical element, too, which has always shown that
its kingdom is not of this world, by its continual support
Itttt. THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
of reactionary and incompetent political causes, was not
backward in its approval of the South and slavery.
By a sort of irony the growth of the machine industry
which was destined ultimately to overthrow slavery, and
by the destruction of its economic utility to destroy the
class which found in it its basis and reason for existence,
first stimulated the institution. It forced upon it a
much more extensive and rapid growth than it would
otherwise have attained and endowed the planters with
great wealth at the same time as it contributed to their
political ascendency. Had it not been for this, centuries
might have passed before the real evils of slavery would
have been discovered by those ardent philanthropists who
could view unmoved the horrors of modern commercial-
ism, and not feel even a transient pang of pity for the
victims of the mine and the loom.
These economic and social reasons were in themselves
sufficient to have caused a conflict between the represen-
tatives of the two opposing systems. An armed truce
was the most permanent and satisfactory solution which
coud have been hoped for under the circumstances, and
the persistent agitation of the abolitionist would easily
have broken that. Mutual suspicion and hatred were en-
gendered between the two sections of the country, and
these feelings linger even till to-day among those who
cherish bitter memories of the war-time. But the grow-
ing power of the North and the fast-increasing pre-
ponderance of the manufacturer in national affairs might
in the course of time have impressed itself even upon
the mind of the unregenerate South and means might have
been discovered which would have prevented the actual
outbreak of hostilities and the forcible spoliation of the
owners of slaves. But the fact that the great western
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 101
domain was still unoccupied, raised a political question
which rendered necessary a settlement by the sword.
The struggle between North and South resolved it-
self into a struggle for the possession of the vacant
lands. If the South could succeed in establishing itself
upon the new soil, its political supremacy was, for the
time being, assured. If it could not do so it was neces-
sarily and unavoidably doomed. To the North, however,
the occupation of uncultivated lands by the South,
meant not only political inferiority for several genera-
tions at least, with an ever-hostile Senate. It implied,
in addition, a non-development of internal trade, for
there is but slight demand for commodities in a system
which involves the creation of great holdings cultivated
by slaves, devoted almost exclusively to agricultural
pursuits, self-contained and self-supporting in an ob-
solete sort of patriarchal way, consuming few commodi-
ties, and offering no incentive to the development of
agriculture and the modern system. Wherever the free
farmer went was the possibility of what is known as
progress, of a continually increasing demand for com-
modities; where the slave-owner established himself
there was stagnation, caused on the one hand by the
existence of a servile population whose wants were very
elementary, and on the other hand, by the existence of
a luxurious and arrogant landed aristocracy, whose very
existence depended upon the maintenance of things as
they were.
But the South was particularly in need of new ter-
ritory. The system of cultivation was unscientific and
careless in the extreme; such as might be expected at
the hands of a mass of alien slaves who had no personal
interest in results. It was managed by a body of land
102 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
owners, secure in possession and eager to extort from
the soil all the produce which their crude methods of
culture were able to cause it to yield. Under the cir-
cumstances, it is evident that actual economic necessities,
as well as political exigencies, required the South to en-
deavor to push its territories into new lands and to intro-
duce its system of latifundia to the as yet untouched
soil of the West.
But in carrying out this policy the South was con-
fronted not only by the implacable hostility of the North-
ern manufacturer, but by its own incapacity and the
weakness of its system. The great estates, the distin-
guishing mark of the system of slavery, stood like little
islands in the midst of a colored population, which, though
ignorant, had all the natural yearnings for a condition
of relative freedom. The poor whites, the plebeians, were
despised as not belonging to the aristocratic privileged
class, and being different in education and knowledge
of the world, were only effective as warriors, who, as
results showed, fought excellently in a retainer-like way
for their feudal superiors.
The great wave of immigration which poured into the
United States from Europe during the forties and fifties,
and which included some of the very best and most
eager blood of the northern nations passed by the sleep-
ing and fettered South, rolled wave after wave to the
West, occupying the ground upon the possession of which
the sole hopes of slavery depended, and fresh and enthu-
siastic from their struggles for liberty in the Old World,
helped to swell the cry for freedom in the New.
In spite of all its pride and caste and exclusive-
ness, its undoubted bravery, and its unwearying political
struggle, it must have been easy to see, comparatively
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 103
early in the fight, that the South was actually doomed,
not on the moral but on economic grounds, not because
slavery was wicked, but because the economic fact was
against it.
And so matters proceeded. The contest in the mean-
time became more and more intense until recrimination,
abuse, and even personal encounters in the National
Capitol marked the growth of passion and the final sepa-
ration of the contending groups into irreconcilable par-
ties. Then it was that the ethical question became a
means of agitation, a goad to stir the masses to action
by the same formula which has been employed from
time immemorial the appeal to patriotism and to reli-
gious sentiment. The abolitionist was no longer re-
garded as merely a crazy fellow, he became, quite un-
consciously to himself, a useful propagandist, an im-
ps ssioned machine for the proclamation of the gospel
of the interests of the northern manufacturer. The
threats of coming conflict drew opponents of the South
gradually into one homgeneous party. The abolitionist
by degrees developed into a useful politician and to-
gether with those who were more obviously the repre-
sentatives of the tendencies and ambitions of the North-
ern manufacturers, and the great trading interests
formed a compact and well-organized party which, by
the election of Lincoln to the Presidency, showed its hold
upon the country and the inevitability of Southern de-
feat.
The election of Lincoln signified the triumph of the
manufacturers, and hence of the modern progressive
state ; the defeat of agrarianism and the victory of com-
mercialism. Henceforward mere sectionalism would be
less and less a political influence, and the small producer
104 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
woul gradually discover that his path to success was
seriously impeded or altogether cut off. State rights
would come to lose their significance. A new society
would be formed in which new antitheses would show
themselves. In short the contest between agrarian and
commercialist which lay at the root of the Revolution in
Europe and to a large extent the Revolution in this
country was about to be completely determined on this
continent. Just as the American bourgeoisie by virtue
of local advantages had been enabled to win a more de-
cisive victory over the representatives of the feudal sys-
tem, and reaction then had been the fortune of the Euro-
pean bourgeoisie, so by virtue of his victory in the Civil
War, the American greater capitalist was to have a
wider power and a less circumscribed field of operations
than had fallen to the lot of those of his kind in Europe.
With the actual fighting there is no need of our
troubling ourselves. The story of the campaigns and the
engagements, the fictitious glory and the real sordidness
may all be found for the looking. It may be stated
generally, however, that if the war had an economic
origin, its termination was in accordance with the domi-
nant economic tendency. The industrial resources of
the North, its wealth and its population gave that sec-
tion from the very start an advantage which the chivalry
and loyalty of the forces of the Southern Confederacy
found it impossible to offset. The fight which the South-
erners did maintain, however, was a remarkable testi-
mony, not so much to the personal gallantry of the sol-
diers, for personal bravery is so universally the posses-
sion of all nations that discrimination in that particular
is worse than futile, but rather to the homogeneity of
the system which was abolished by the results of the
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 105
war. Loyalty to state rights, the sanction of the South-
ern action, meant in a larger degree than is usually sup-
posed loyalty to local magnates, for the old relations of
baron and retainer had necessarily been perpetuated to
some extent in a country where land constituted the chief
source of wealth, and claim to social distinction rested
primarily upon the possession of broad acres and do-
minion over the bodies of men.
As compared with a modern commercial community
where the mutual relations of men with one another are,
for the most part, money relations, the older system pos-
sesses certain advantages, of which the purely senti-
mental are not the least. Hence, the South maintained
the unequal conflict with a persistent energy which has
won unstinted admiration and when it succumbed it did
so merely in the face of material resources and an in-
vincible economic power against which it was impossible
for it any longer to contend. The close of the war saw
the southern system completely overcome for it had spent
itself in the struggle, had used up all its material, and,
having no means of obtaining more, was forced to capitu-
late.
As regards the working classes in the Civil War,
there is no question as to the side which received their
sympathy and support. In the South which was, as has
been pointed out, a feudal community, the vassals fol-
lowed their lords to the field. Such loyalty is universal
in that form of society. In the North however the mas-
ses of the working people, who had no economic interests
to subserve and looked at the question from a merely
ethical or political standpoint, were enthusiastically and
unanimously Federal in their sympathies.
Even outside the country the same feeling pervaded
106 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
the working classes of the continent and in England.
In Lancashire, which suffered more acutely than any
other place outside the United States, owing to the short-
age of the cotton supply, the working-class sentiment
was enthusiastic against the slavery party. The English
working men sent a message to President Lincoln con-
gratulating him upon the Emancipation Proclamation
to which he replied "Under the circumstances I cannot
but regard your decisive utterances upon the question
as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which has
not been surpassed in any age or country." There was
no doubt in the minds of the European democracy, that
is, the European working class, as to the rights of the
matter, and indeed we find more than one conspicuous
officer in the service of the North afterwards taking a
prominent part in radical politics in Europe.
With regard to the progress of the laboring class in
the United States, the war put an end to the labor agi-
tation for all the efforts of the strongest minds were de-
voted to one end, the termination of the struggle at the
earliest possible time. But the agitation for shorter
hours did not altogether cease and the formation of
unions continued. Thus in 1861 the Car Drivers of
New York formed what they called a benevolent asso-
ciation, and in the next year the Boston United Laborers'
Society came into existence, as well as a much stronger
and more important body, the Garment Cutters' Asso-
ciation of New York. Strikes broke out in 1863, notably
among the ships' carpenters who demanded a daily wage
of three dollars. In 1861 the Cigar Makers' Interna-
tional Union was organized. In 1865 the Journeymen
Tailors formed a national association, as well as the
Bricklayers and Masons. But in 1866, when the war
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 107
was at an end, the spirit of trades unionism appeared to
take possession of the country, and a vehement agita-
tion in favor of an eight hour law sprang up. The war
had therefore merely acted as a slight interruption of
the skirmishing which was to last for many years spread-
ing into an ever widening area and affecting larger and
larger bodies of men, the unceasing and irreconcilable
conflict between the capitalists and the workingclass.
The opportunities for making money which were
presented by the war were not neglected by the specu-
lators and those who were more interested in growing
rich than in any political or social question. While the
soldiers died like flies at the front, the trader in the rear
piled up immense fortunes by the swindling of the gov-
ernment and in shady contracts. It was an era of stu-
pendous fraud, such fraud as had up to then never been
known, for never before had the opportunities been
so great. It is unnecessary to specify particular in-
stances, they will occur to any one who is familiar with
the ways of army contractors. The stock exchange was
manipulated in the most shameless and unpatriotic man-
ner, gambling in gold was a favorite sport of the specu-
lators, and behind the march of armies there could have
been distinguished the orgies of those who were playing
fast and loose with the destinies of the country in the
shameless race for wealth. After the war was over
the politician entered blindly upon the game of robbery,
and prostituted the victory to the lowest of party ends.
If there was any doubt about the reasons of the war from
the northern side before the war began there need not
have been any when it had terminated. The victors,
the only real victors in the struggle, were by no means
long in claiming their own. It was the triumph of the
108 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
greater capitalism, and the greatest capitalism meant to
have all the glory and what is more to the point, the
booty. The war tariff which had at first been imposed
for revenue purposes was continued after peace was
finally settled for the distinct purpose of building up the
greater industry. The war party became the party of
the tariff, and has ever since remained so. No appeal
was too low. The most inflammatory speeches were
made even by responsible statesmen, and international
hatred was sedulously cultivated to the end that the
tariff might be kept up. Even the war itself was ex-
ploited for many years until the story became stale by
the repetition and a generation which had grown up
since its battles were fought refused to be carried any
further by the old slogans.
It remains to note two or three important steps in the
development of industry which marked this period and
pointed the way to greater achievements and a still
further broadening of commerce and manufacture than
had been reached as yet. In 1860 the petroleum oil
business was started, and within one year two thousand
oil wells were sunk in Pennsylvania alone, and it was
established as an oil state. In 1861, on October 25th,
the Pacific Telegraph Line between St. Louis and San
Francisco was completed. In March, 1865, the first
zinc manufactured in the United States was made at
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1866, the Atlantic Cable
was laid, and in 1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia.
Five years of war had done more to advance the
manufacturing interests of the country than many years
of peace. The land was never again to be the same.
Starting out as a farming community with an admixture
of small traders and manufacturers with a firm belief
THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD 109
in the ability of the lowest to rise to the highest posi-
tions in the State, with no great social distinctions and with
an equality as regards the distribution of wealth, such
as had perhaps never been seen in the history of the race
since the days of tribal communism, it had undergone
a revolution compared with which the mere abolition of
the slave was a trivial matter. Henceforward it was to
be an industrial community, an industrial community
which organized its industry on a large scale. The
differences in material wealth were to become so great
as to be unbridgable. The small manufacturer was to
have but little opportunity of ever becoming his own
master. Great combinations were to become the rule,
and the law which had formerly been interpreted in
terms of the small bourgeois society was to be wrested
from its original sense so as to suit the new community,
and a revolution effected by a few decisions of the Su-
preme Court was to mark the change. The Civil War
was not only a war for the unity of the country, it was
a revolution, a social and economic revolution as regards
its effects, it was the 1848 of America.
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM
The Southern States had succumbed and the ques-
tion of chattel slavery had been for ever laid to rest.
Upon the ruins of the destroyed feudalism, the new
victors were to erect a new industrialism, more terri-
bly cruel, and not less a slavery than that which had
been displaced. The bourgeois class, with its wonted
hypocrisy, was to enfranchise the negro by force of
arms, and afterwards to watch his disfranchisement
with approval, when his vote was more likely to be a
menace than a protection.
In place of the black slave the new industrialist was
to substitute the white child, and the cry of agony
from the flogged white free child was to take the place
of the whimper of the beaten negro. Great factories
were to arise throughout Georgia and the Carolinas
where the worst features of the early English factory
system were. to be reproduced, and the corruption in
political circles was to render any legal effort to rem-
edy the conditions more or less futile. The Northern
victors were to come in with their capital and to intro-
duce the machine industry on a large scale. The vast
natural and industrial resources of the South were to
be uncovered and by swift steps the backwardness and
cpnservatism of years were to be abolished. The sol-
110
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 111
diers of the conquering North, who battered their way
into the stronghold of feudalism were only repeating
an old story; they, as their progenitors in Europe,
were only paving the way for the new industrialism.
The factory was to be substituted for the manor house ;
the mine and the foundry for the open country and
the field ; the lash of competitive industry for the lash
of the overseer. A labor question was to arise. The
negroes in spite of their increased numbers were to be
steadily refused political power. An absentee capital-
ism was to take the place of the old residential land-
lordism and the South was gradually to be brought
into the dominant system. The lands were wasted in
the Southern States, the crops were unsown or de-
stroyed, property of every sort was rendered practi-
cally valueless by the close of the war, yet such is the
power of human society to recreate and to supply in
excess of its own needs, that before long the Northern
conquerors were in fear of the result of a coalition be-
tween the Southern small farmers and small traders
with those of the West, and dreaded the possibility of
a Democratic victory which would endanger the sta-
bility of the new greater capitalism.
It was this new capitalism which had really profited
by the war. All the struggle and suffering of the
common soldier and those dependent upon him had
had this result that there had at last come into ex-
istence that class of greater capitalists in the United
States which already existed across the water. The
economic system took a bound forward as the result of
the Civil War. Henceforward the individual was to
have less opportunity of acquiring that independence,
the chances of which had really, in his eyes, constitu-
112 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
ted the chief charm of the Republic. The power of
accumulating independent wealth and the opportunity
to do so, which are the essential conditions of an indi-
vidualistic democracy, were to be henceforth taken
from the inhabitants of this country and the way made
clear for the establishment of an irresponsible oligar-
chy, which under the cloak of law and the constitu-
tion, practically maintains its position by a paid judi-
ciary and a hired legislature. In its final effects the
Civil War did much more than abolish slavery, it abol-
ished that which had always been known as Amer-
icanism. The essentially American features were
henceforth to be swamped in a flood of particularly vul-
gar international capitalism. The federal troops whose
return from the war had brought joy to so many lovers
of freedom who saw on their banners only inscrip-
tions of liberty were to constitute the bodyguard and
protection of the new greater capitalism and were to
shed the blood of American workingmen in the streets
of American cities within twelve years of the close of
the conflict. The new Capitalism was the victor. And
Wendell Phillips, Horace Greeley and others, whose
intellect and sympathy had contributed to the success
of the Northern arms, broke their hearts in vain pro-
test against the power which they had called into
being.
While the armies were suffering and dying in the
front there had arisen a powerful and rich class which
had made fortunes out of the war, some legitimately,
others by methods which would be condemned even
by the ordinary business man. War in itself is a
stimulus to industry. The destruction of commodities
calls perpetually for their renewal and the sudden de-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 113
mand for many thousands of articles, uniforms, small
arms, shoes, etc., stimulates production on a large
scale. The necessity of supplying these needs brought
into being a better organized factory system than had
hitherto been seen, and the cotton and woolen indus-
tries in particular received a tremendous impetus.
Large fortunes would, therefore, have been made had
the contracts of the government been honestly filled,
and the armies supplied with what was actually or-
dered. But as a matter of fact, the war was conspicu-
ous for the corruption of those who took government
contracts. The most outrageously inferior and actually
worthless articles were supplied to the troops by these
patriotic capitalists at whose service the troops, who
suffered death and disease owing to their corrupt
manipulations, were afterwards to be placed. The
manipulation of the tariff and criminal blockade run-
ning made great fortunes for others of the new capital-
ism. The traders appeared to consider the army as
just so much material for profit making and proved
the truth of the oft repeated maxim that there is no
patriotism in trade. The industrialists made large
profits by the tariff and the demands of the war, and
the financial class found, in the floating of the war
debt, an opportunity for the making of great wealth.
The period of politics succeeding the close of the
war was a veritable Walpurgis-Nacht of swindle and
corruption. The representatives of the victors settled
down on the government like a swarm of locusts and
proceeded to devour. It would be vain to attempt to
catalogue the political crimes and the endless pecula-
tions of the successful Republican politicians. The
reputations of even the highest officials were smirched.
114 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
The Whiskey Ring and the Credit Mobilier were only
conspicuous instances of what was exceedingly com-
mon. The era of rings and combinations supervened
and in the matter of the Erie Ring we have the first
well authenticated instance of what has since become
far too common, the corruption of justice and the in-
fidelity of the judiciary. The Credit Mobilier, a Con-
struction Company of the Central Pacific Company,
engaged in wholesale bribery, and the naval strength
of the country was scandalously below that which it
should have shown in proportion to its cost. Repre-
hensible as were the methods of those, who might be
termed the irregulars and bashi-ba-zouks of the Re-
publican army, the manouevres of the regular forces
amounted to little else save the protection and devel-
opment of the party of the greater capitalism. There
was one danger which the new capitalism feared in
politics and that was the combination of the small in-
dustrials with their fellows of the South and West.
Such a combination would have been too much for the
greater capitalism at that particular period. It was
necessary therefore that the Southern States should
not easily come back into the Union as Democratic
States. A political power had to be constructed in the
South which would offset the formerly dominant slave
owner power. The newly liberated negroes were to be
enfranchised so that they might uphold the govern-
ment of the greater capitalism. Lincoln had seen the
growth of the great corporations during the war and
had prophesied that the next trouble would arise in
connection with this new phenomenon. On his death,
Andrew Johnson, whose sympathies were very largely
with the smaller men, was left as the legatee of Lin-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 115
coin's policy and this he endeavored to carry out in a
somewhat blundering and tactless fashion. But the
admission of the Southern States was just what was
not wanted by the greater capitalists. When they
found in Johnson an opponent to their policy they
flouted him in every way and repeatedly passed acts
over his veto. All the professed respect of the capi-
talistic class for the head of the nation proved to be
just so much humbug when that class was confronted
by a President who did not at once perform its will.
The Freedman's Bureau Bill passed in this way in 1866
was ostensibly directed at the preservation of the
negro ex-slave from cruelty at the hands of his former
masters. In reality it resulted in the manipulation of
the negro vote in favor of the Northern party, by po-
litical adventurers from the North, who, being practi-
cally in control of the new state governments, created
out of the negro votes, indulged themselves in the
most shameless thievery at the expense of the South-
ern States. The; Reconstruction Acts divided the
country into military districts and practically abol-
ished the pardon of the President, in that it disfran-
chised all who had held offices in the Confederate
service during the war. It could not be expected that
the Southerners would sit down to be dominated by
their old slaves and, as the military forces of the gov-
ernment prevented an appeal to open violence, they
accomplished by means of the Ku-Klux-Klan, a se-
cret organization, the destruction of the reconstructed
governments. It must be remembered also that the
vagrancy laws of the South, which were aimed at driv-
ing the negro population back to work on terms agree-
able to the Southern planter, gave the Northern manu-
116 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
facturers a colorable, if hypocritical, ground of inter-
ference. Johnson was pursued by every imaginable
means and an attempt to impeach him on the flimsiest
grounds was made. By a skilful use of the press and
other means of influencing public opinion, the greater
capitalists, although unsuccessful in their impeachment
proceedings, aroused such hostility against Johnson
that he was no longer a political possibility.
There has seldom been a party with more glorious
opportunities for the achievement of political ends
than the Republican Party. It was practically free
from criticism during the first and most important
years of its rule. It had the country completely under
its control, and it manipulated affairs in the interests
of its economic supporters more shamelessly and un-
blushingly perhaps than any party ever did. It used
the war for years as a means of political advantage
and kept alive sectional hatred by appeals to the pas-
sions aroused by the conflict in the interests of fac-
tional strife. In fact so much use was made of the
war as a political weapon that only in the present
generation has there arisen an electorate to whom it
makes no further appeal and which cannot be led far
on purely sectional sentiment. Even the war tariff was
found to be insufficient for the grasping needs of the
greater capitalism and the industrialists demanded
concession after concession that the whole country
might be placed under a burden for the sake of the
developing industrialism. This tariff policy naturally
affected Great Britain more than any other country
as she was at that time the chief exporting country
and the old slumbering hostilities were awakened
again and again by the Republican Party as a means
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 117
of stirring up the masses to support the high tariff
policy. And yet with all its corruption and fraud,
with its hypocritically false patriotic gush, the Re-
publican Party was the only possible political party
during this period. Its mission was the consolidation
of the power of the greater capitalists. It was in the
name of the Republic to destroy the Republic and to
establish the oligarchy. In the transformation of the
Democratic republic, which the men of fifty years ago
honestly believed was theirs, to the travesty on de-
mocracy which exists to-day, the Republican Party has
had the great and really indispensable share. It has
been the chosen instrument of the greater capitalism
for the achievement of its purposes. In all this tre-
mendous work it has produced no statesmen since the
death of Lincoln to whom the term "great" can be ap-
plied. In fact it has displayed an almost inexplicable
lack of conspicuous talent and it has accomplished its
ends rather by the degradation of politics and the
wholesale corruption of officials than by conspicuous
gifts of political organization.
While the politicians were extending the power of
the greater capitalism and were making the laws and
the judicial decisions conform to the actual economic
facts, the greater industry which lay at the base of all
this economic activity was literally leaping along the
route of its 4 estmv - The most dazzling transforma-
tions, the most complete revolutionary changes in the
methods of production occurred during the period of
which we write. In a period of less than thirty years
the modes of economic production in the fundamental
industries were changed. The introduction of the Bes-
semer steel process and the substitution of coke for
118 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
coal and charcoal had so affected that industry that the
manufacture of steel has run far ahead of that of iron.
The production of steel which was less than twelve
thousand tons in 1860 had increased to more than five
millions of tons in 1890. In that year the United
States production of steel outstripped that of Great
Britain and the latter power was compelled to surren-
der the leadership in the steel industry. The great im-
petus in the development of the steel industry was the
marvellous expansion of the railroad industry. In the
eight years succeeding the war, more than thirty thou-
sand miles of road had been constructed, and the branch
lines and small systems which had had an independent
existence prior to the war were beginning to assume
the form of the great railroad systems as we see them
to-day. The transcontinental road was completed and
now the greater capitalism of the East had at its dis-
posal the market of the entire country. The rapidly
filling lands to the West were to be traversed by lines
of railroad and the farmers and settlers made practi-
cally the bond slaves of the great transportation com-
panies. Other industries arose in connection with the
great railroad industry, among which may be particu-
larly mentioned that of packing. That which is now
one of the greatest and most tyrannically administered
forms of capitalistic activity, owed its origin to the in-
vention of refrigerator cars. The telegraph which had
been in operation prior to the war was now made of
general use and the Atlantic cable, which was com-
pleted in 1866, served to bring the capitalist class of
this country into much closer connection with that of
Europe. With the laying of the Atlantic cable and the
extension of the telegraph to San Francisco, the en-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 119
tire continent was in communication with the heart of
modern capitalism and the international capitalism had
really found itself. The better instruments required
by the new capitalism with its tremendous amount of
routine work were discovered in the invention of the
typewriter and the telephone which have now become
such necessary adjuncts to the carrying on of business
that without their aid the bulk of the work required by
the modern system could not be performed. The fac-
tory system underwent great modifications, and the
textile industries, the manufacture of boots and shoes
and other similar trades in which the modern factory
modes of production had taken the place of the older
handicraft, were organized and their machinery un-
derwent a process of development which increased
their productive powers almost incredibly. The sew-
ing machine, which, on its invention, had been regarded
as a beneficent design to mitigate the labors of hard-
worked housewives, was converted into an instrument
of torture, and has rendered possible the institution
and the perpetuation of that system which under the
name of "sweating" has provoked much eloquent de-
nunciation and has furnished a splendid theme for the
sensational writer. Throughout the whole field of in-
dustry the changes took place and the demands of the
great industrialists for still more rapid production of
commodities stimulated invention so that the number
of patents applied for increased to such an extent as
to give the country a universal reputation for me-
chanical ingenuity.
The concentration of industry was a result of the
development of the market and the improvement 'in
the machines. How marked that concentration was
120 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
may be seen from the figures published by the U. S.
Government in the last census returns on "Manufac-
tures," from which it appears that, in the period here
considered, the number of establishments in thirteen
leading industries decreased from 13,616 to 11,617, in
spite of a great increase in population and an unques-
tionably vastly increased demand for the articles manu-
factured. Combined with the diminution of the num-
ber of actual manufacturing plants, we find necessarily
a notable improvement in their effectiveness and a
striking application of machinery to uses, hitherto un-
dreamed of, together with an economy in production,
which made use of much that had up to that time been
wasted, an economy also which was extended to the
saving of labor power and the consequent expense in
every possible way. The result has been the formation
of an army of tramps and unemployed. Even in the
best times the reserve army of labor is not fully occu-
pied, but when there is retrenchment in manufacturing,
owing to the overcrowding of the market, the unem-
ployed question becomes very pressing and the horde
of tramps grows into a matter of national concern.
This unemployed and tramping host is directly the
product of this concentration of industry and is the
penalty which must be paid by the community for the
monopolization of the instruments of production by
a small and ever diminishing number of people. Every
new machine introduces a small revolution into the
lives of groups of working people so that those who
are unable to accommodate themselves to the new con-
ditions are flung out of the system and are driven to
vagabondage and crime. A certain small percentage
of such people as are not able to accommodate them-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 121
selves to the society in which they find themselves as
well as to such changes as the exigencies of that so-
ciety require are to be found in every stage of human
progress. In the earlier periods of American history
they had been accounted for by the back country and
the free land. The unemployed and the unemployable
as far as they then existed had made a living from the
soil and had succeeded in establishing themselves by
means of migration, where they had failed in the or-
ganized society into which they were born. But this
vent for the thousands who were continually driven
out by the encroachments of the machine and the or-
ganized industry was fast being closed. The free land
was being taken up rapidly. The railroads were being
endowed with it wholesale. Private corporations of
all descriptions were plundering the magnificent prop-
erty of the masses of this country and corrupt law
courts and legislative assemblies were setting the seal
of their approval upon the most colossal piece of rob-
bery. Besides the formation of a pauper proletariat
and a numerous criminal class, by the revolutionary
operation of the modern machine industry, the num-
bers of this class were constantly augmented by the
addition of the small manufacturers and traders who
werje continually being driven to the wall by the
greater industry. These latter were crowded into the
ranks of the unskilled proletariat and found it impossi-
ble to extricate themselves from the ruin which hurled
them from their apparently secure position in times of
crisis and commercial depression. They were con-
fronted by forces over which they had no control. They
were unable to purchase the machinery necessary for
profitable production; they had no knowledge as to
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
how the game of modern trade is played for they were
not in the circle of the high finance; they could not
command politcal influence. In fact the cards were
stacked against them from the start and the small pro-
ducer was doomed as a permanent factor directly the
great industry was established. There was then a con-
stant fall of small producers and traders into the ranks
of the proletariat and the formation of a slum proleta-
riat composed of the broken industrial proletariat and
this smaller middle class. The growth of this proleta-
rian class was noted by Henry George in the eighties
and the connection between the monopolization of the
public domain and the rise of this class did not escape
his notice, in fact he laid too much stress upon the
coincidence of the two phenomena. The extent of the
concentration of industry may be gathered from the
following quotation from Carroll D. Wright's "Indus-
trial Evolution of the United States." Mr. Wright
may be taken as an enthusiastic admirer of the evolu-
tion of the greater industry and an enthusiastic apolo-
gist for it. He says :
"There were 1,091 establishments engaged in the
manufacture of cotton in 1860 with an average product
of $106,033 and an average of 4,799 spindles per estab-
lishment. In 1890 there were 905 establishments with
an average product of $296,112, and an average of 15,-
677 spindles, an increase of 179 per cent in the product
and of 227 per cent in the number of spindles per
establishment. During the same period (1860-1890)
the aggregate capital invested in the industry increased
from $98,585,269, to $354,020,843, or 259 per cent, and
the value of product from $115,681,774 to $267,981,-
724 or 132 per cent. The decrease in the number of es-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 123
tablishments and increase in the value of product, as
well as the increase in the size of the average estab-
lishment, indicate the extent to which the industry has
been concentrated in fewer and larger establishments/'
The effects of this sort of concentration applied to
every department of production were not long in mak-
ing themselves felt. With the displacement of large
numbers of men there came in also the greater em-
ployment of women. The factories and the sweat
shops, besides other avenues, called increasingly for
the employment of women who were not organized
and whose wages corresponded with the lower standard
of living. Even this labor was not cheap enough for
the employers and still cheaper labor was continually
sought and imported. The new system made the
greatest inroads upon the marriage-life of the commu-
nity and by driving the woman into the factory and
other places of employment not only reduced the pay
of the husband but paved the way for the break-up of
the family and brought about that uncertain condition
of matrimonial relations on which prelates expatiate so
earnestly. The numbers of married women employed
steadily increased as did also the numbers of children
and within thirty years of the close of the Civil War
the question of child labor had reached a point where
some drastic solution was necessary for it had placed
this country in a most backward and indeed disgraceful
position as far as the treatment of its children was con-
cerned.
The above and other equally embarrassing social
problems were presented as a result of the period of
commercial development in the period succeeding the
Civil War. They are inherent in the present industrial
124 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
system and every country in which that system is
prevalent is confronted by them. The rapidity of the
transformation here, however, and the unsystematized
modes of life enabled them to get a grip on the coun-
try which cannot readily be shaken off. The state sys-
tem which had been apparently well suited for a more
rudimentary and democratic community proved to be of im-
mense service to the dominant industrialists in the ex-
ploitation of the masses. The influence of wealth in a
locality of comparatively sparse population and lim-
ited area will easily be seen, and, corrupt as the House
at Washington has been, its political morality is purity
itself compared with the degree of civic virtue to be
found in the legislatures of the various states. A sys-
tem of rings and bosses to carry out the political wishes
of the dominant class was called into being and whole
communities were in the grip of political spoilsmen.
Boss Tweed of New York was only a conspicuous ex-
ample of the sort of men who were in control of cities
and states. Much indignation has been spent upon the
political robbers, but inquiry has seldom been pushed
far enough to lay bare the financial interests in whose
behalf these politicians manouevred. For, every politi-
cal boss is merely the agent of some respectable firm
or corporation which is achieving its economic objects
by this prostitution of the law. And in the period now
under consideration the capitalistic concerns took a
new guise which made their political work more easy
and protected themselves more effectually. The capi-
talistic firm developed into the capitalistic corporation.
The corporation is the negation of the principles
upon which the claim to individual ownership of capi-
tal is based. The members of the corporation, the
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 125
stockholders, do not necessarily have anything to do
with the work which the corporation undertakes to do.
They employ an agent, a man working for wages, a
manager, who transacts their business ; they share the
dividends of the profits produced by the business. In
this instance, the capitalist ceases to even pretend to
be a producer, he becomes a capitalist per se, and ob-
viously has no claims upon the wealth produced by
the community other than the claim which the law al-
lows him by virtue of the invested capital. He cannot
even invest his money as he likes and take the chances
of the market, for he is obliged to submit to the will
of the majority of the stock in the corporation even
when the actions of tb majority stockholders may
threaten to ruin him. L nore than one case the ma-
jority stockholders have wrecked a road and repur-
chased it on terms "ruinous to the interests of the mi-
nority." The vast amounts of money which such cor-
porations have been able to acquire has given them an
overwhelming influence in American life and has pro-
voked a very marked hostiHty on the part of the small
producers who have been quite unable to compete with
them. Banking and railways had early offered the
best opportunity for corporate activity and the first
corporations of this country were instituted in con-
nection with these pursuits. But in the period with
which we are concerned industrial production had so
far developed and offered such an excellent field for
capitalistic exploitation that the corporation method
was extended to productive industry and a beginning
was made of those great industrial combinations which
a little later were to make the corporation look like a
belated and elementary form of organization. Hence-
126 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN . .
forth the power of the greater capitalist was practi-
cally invincible. This development of the corporation
methods of industrialism called into being a new class
of lawyers and legislators whose special business was
the organization of the corporations and the provision
of such legislation as would be most favorable to their
interests. The power of corporate wealth was exer-
cised mercilessly, as those who had the control of such
wealth could make or unmake the career of the lawyer
or the legislator, and those two forms of activity form-
erly honorable, sunk consequently, in the public esti-
mation until it is questionable whether any two classes
of occupations have less public respect than those of
law and politics. On the other hand the greater capi-
talists themselves retained but little respect for those
whose services they were able to procure so easily and
who would violate the fundamental canons of their pro-
fessional ethics in the pursuit of gain. The attitude
of the industrial magnate towards the politician is il-
lustrated in the following .statement of Mr. Andrew
Carnegie, which is taken from his little book entitled
"An American Four in Hand in Britain." Mr. Car-
negie says: "When there is no really great work to
be done, when the conflict between feudal and demo-
cratic ideas ends, as it is in fact coming to an end,
and there is no 'vestige of privilege left from throne
to knighthood, only vain, weak men will seek election
to Parliament, and will stand ready to do the bidding
of the constituencies, as our agents in Congress do."
Here Mr. Carnegie, in a probably unpremeditated
fit of frankness, states what he conceives to be his
idea of the value of the politician, the liberating of the
community from feudal rule, that is the putting of the
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 127
industrialist capitalist in the saddle and then the ac-
complishment of the will of that industrial capitalist.
Vain, weak men are all that are needed for such a task.
That is true, and the industrial victory has been
marked by the dominance of politicians with just those
attributes. Little real statesmanship is required for the
continual piling up of tariffs and the corruption of
a judiciary.
One of the results of the era of corporations was to
be seen therefore in the marked deterioration of the
personnel of the bar and of the politicians. There was
no longer any real fight for principles and the com-
mercialization of politics was complete. The process
of industrialization had been carried to such an extent
that the avenues of public expression were also indus-
trialized, and church and university surrendered
equally with the bar and the political platform. The
vulgarization of the learned professions had set in in
earnest.
The concentration of great masses of population in
the large cities also tended to increase the power of the
industrial lords. These cities were a product of the
system and they lived by the system and tended to the
strengthening and the aggrandizement of those who
controlled the system. No longer was the great stream
of immigration diverted into the waste lands of the
continent where the farmer hewed out a home for him-
self and began the settlement of a healthy and vigorous
country stock. On the contrary the incoming herds
fresh from the European fields were crowded more and
more closely in the great cities where their numbers
kept down the price of labor and their votes, bought
and sold by the new political bosses, were made to
128 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
serve the purposes of their masters. Thousands worked
in gangs on the construction of the new railroads,
other thousands gathered in the mining camps and the
colliery districts or developed the fast growing steel
industry in the filthy hells of Pennsylvania. And each
new tide of immigration represented a less well organ-
ized and well developed people. The European na-
tions were forced to compete in a sort of Dutch auc-
tion against one another for the benefit of the greater
capitalist. Their labor force increased the profits of
the industrial masters, their votes went to maintain
him in power and to protect him against the ven-
geance of the small industrialist whose world was
slipping away.
This new industrial organization, however, was not
accomplished without the intervention of the commer-
cial crisis. Twice during the period the trade of the
country was interrupted and the whole industrial ma-
chinery thrown out of gear by the sudden stoppage of
the wheels of industry.
As has been pointed out, the investments in Amer-
ican railways in the period succeeding the Civil War
were simply colossal. Between 1867 and 1873 about
two billions of dollars had been expended in the con-
struction of railroads of which "nearly one-half was
represented by mortgage bonds. Hyndman points out
that the Germans had invested very largely in these
railroad securities, and on the occurrence of a money
panic in Austria, endeavored to realize on them. This
precipitated a panic in the United States, the results
of which are described as follows by the author already
Deferred to :
"Throughout the whole of the United States it
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM ' 129
seemed as if some great disruption had occurred. There
was a glut in every department of trade and almost it
may be said in every warehouse. Mills, factories and
workshops of every kind were closed in the West as
well as in the East, or worked short time. The almost
universal suspension of work on the new railways
threw tens of thousands of laborers out of work, while
the old railways only made such betterments as were
absolutely indispensable. The influence upon the iron
and steel trades and upon the iron and coal mining in-
dustries was felt immediately. Thousands of men were
unavoidably dismissed in these departments, and from
a third to a half of the workpeople of the Eastern States
were said to be without employment. The number of
actual 'tramps' during the winters of 1873 and 1874
was placed as high as 3,000,000 out of a population of
40,000,000. When to these are added the numbers who
starved quietly at home, the proportion of workless
persons to the entire population seems something
prodigious."
The failure of many railroads followed and the
country was in a wretched state for some time. The
business tide, however, closed over the loss, and the les-
sons of the crisis were speedily forgotten. But the con-
tributions made to the class of the submerged proleta-
riat were permanent. The laborers who lost their grip
never recovered it in many cases, and went to form
that human wreckage of which economists take so littk
account. Thousands of small traders were destroyed
as well as small manufacturers and the ranks of the
proletariat were swollen by their advent.
Between this crisis and the long depression of trade
in the early eighties the development of electricity as
130 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
a means of lighting and propulsion took place, and the
energy required in production was still further re-
duced. The output was so improved by the new in-
dustrial instruments that the productive power of
American industries had increased 58 per cent during
the decade, while the number of workers employed had
only increased 33 per cent.
It became increasingly evident that the new or-
ganization of industry was no better for the working
class than the preceding system. It had brought the
proletarian class into existence, it had caused the de-
velopment of an elaborate system of production, but it
could not protect itself against the ravages of the com-
mercial crisis and the intermittent depressions which
the system itself rendered inevitable. It stripped the
country in its demand for labor during periods of in-
dustrial prosperity and when the demand slackened
flung back its slaves upon the world helpless and de-
prived of the power of making a livelihood. Besides
this it ground to death the small producers and petty
capitalists who endeavored with their slender resources
to stand up against it.
It must not be supposed that these latter were not
speedily made aware of the fate which was destroying
them. They endeavored to stem the tide of the greater
capitalism by means of politics. Their recognition of
Andrew Johnson as a champion has been already
noted, and the fate which befell that unfortunate op-
ponent of the dominant Republican clique has been de-
scribed. Horace Greeley again in 1872 took up their
cause and went down. The farmers, in the meantime,
had formed an organization under the name of the
"Patrons of Industry" and as a political party called
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 131
the "Farmers' Alliance," won a number of political
victories. This afterwards developed into the Populist
Party, of which more later. The farmer class and the
debtor class generally, however, had little compre-
hension of the trend of political and economic events
and confined their energies to attempted tinkering with
the money system, as appeared in the formation of the
Greenback Party, and to denunciations of the corpora-
tions, one of the effects of which was the legislation
known as the Interstate Commerce Act, and the so-
called Anti-Trust Law.
The proletarian, who was now a distinct factor in
the industrial life, had not, however, as yet taken to
politics as a weapon. He was chiefly engaged in the
formation of trades unions and such organizations as
would enable him to contend against the employer in
the shop. There were, however, faint tendencies ob-
servable towards political action even in the early
stages of the trades union movement, as in 1870, when
the National Labor Union undertook to form a political
party with an indistinct and unintelligent platform.
The period was one, on the other hand, of organization
and struggle on the economic field.
The tendency towards economic organization which
was discernible prior to the Civil War and which was
interrupted by that struggle was very noticeable at
the close of the conflict. Almost immediately trades
organizations sprang up and the years between the
close of the war and the crisis of 1873 were filled with
efforts on the part of the working class to improve its
economic position. Then came the crisis and with it,
as usual, the destruction for the time being of all con-
structive work on the part of the working class. Too
132 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
glad to get any work, the proletarians were obliged
to accept what was offered and organization was sus-
pended. When the great industrial machine began to
right itself, however, and trade prospects looked bright-
er, the American proletariat began to struggle for
better opportunities. In one sense, however, this did
not mark an advance, for the first numerous striken
between 1873 and 1876 were rather efforts to regain
the economic position occupied before the crisis than
to improve the conditions of the working class beyond
the point hitherto reached.
The energetic enterprise shown by these pioneers
of labor struggle in this country was very remarkable.
Strikes occurred everywhere. The men, though un-
organized, seemed determined to fling themselves on
the enemy and took the chances of war almost des-
perately. In the cotton and woolen mills of Massa-
chusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the strikers
simply struck and then sought admission to the as-
semblies of the Knights of Labor afterwards. No less
than thirty thousand miners were out at one time.
The employers on their part were not slow to avail
themselves of the peculiar instruments of capitalistic
warfare. The lockout and the black list came into play
against the strike and the boycott and all the ma-
chinery of the pure and simple trades unionism was
brought forthwith into play. It was an elementary
period of industrial development and the cruder weap-
ons had a better chance of accomplishing something
than they have ever had since. It was during this
period of the economic fight that the absurd devotion
of the working class to the strike and boycott really
began. Another reason for the confinement of the pro-
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 133
letariat to these means of advancing its interests lies
in the fact that there was at that time no properly or-
ganized proletariat with any conception of its class po-
sition and its class aims. The trades union contests of
this era were not strictly speaking proletarian strug-
gles. They were the struggles of individuals who were
individually discontented with their economic position
and had banded themselves together to better it. One
fact is, however, very noticeable, that the men who a
few years before would have gone to the frontier were
no longer doing so, the frontier was being eliminated;
behind them, the bridges were broken down, the same
conflict threatened on the shores of the Pacific as on
the shores of the Atlantic. The last refuge of the
American working man was destroyed. If he were to
secure anything like decent conditions he could no
longer do so by running away from society. Society
held him fast. His only chance was to turn and face
his employer.
To men who had only a few years before been
fighting the bloodiest war of the century physical con-
flict did not perhaps seem so dreadful as it has since
done to their successors. These early trades unionists
at all events did not hesitate to give desperate battle
to the authorities and in more than one instance to
inflict defeat on the forces sent against them. The
great Railroad Strike of 1877 is a case in point. The
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad had declared a reduction
of wages by ten per cent. The scale of pay for railroad
men was so low that it was only with the greatest
difficulty that they were able to maintain themselves
and families. This threatened reduction was more than
they could endure, and, practically unorganized, as they
134: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
were, they struck. The strike began at Martinsburg,
West Virginia, by the crew of an engine spontaneously
leaving work, and spread with such enthusiasm that in
the course of three days, the entire Eastern railroad
system was paralyzed. Other workers joined in the
movement and a great spontaneous upheaval of labor
followed. Some militia fraternized with the strikers,
but others stood firm and the regulars were sent for.
In Baltimore the troops fired repeatedly into the
crowds. In Pittsburg the troops fired into the people
who thereupon turned and attacked the militia so tha't
the latter were driven away and chased into a round-
house, but succeeded in escaping the next day.
These first attempts at rebellion were crushed by
the military forces and the working class subsided for
the time being into apparent tranquility. But how lit-
tle reliance could be placed in the continuance of ac-
quiescence in the rule of the new greater capitalism
was evident in 1880, when a large number of strikes
occurred. The agitation for the eight-hour day now
began to assunie large proportions and the Knights of
Labor appeared as the champions of that demand. The
Knights of Labor was a secret organization, in its in-
ception, and was a curious admixture of labor organi-
zation and a sort of free masonry. An air of mystery
surrounded its earlier history and it did not attain any
real importance until during the first five or six years
of the eighties. Its declarations have a certain flavor
of the complaint of the smaller middle class of that pe-
riod as the declaration of principles refers to "the
alarming aggressiveness of the power of money and
corporations," phrases which might have been easily
uttered by a representative of the Farmers' Alliance.
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 135
The demands made by the organization will have a
very familiar ring in the ears of the modern American.
They are such as have been made by almost every re-
form association of modern times the Referendum,
the creation of labor bureaus, and laws providing for
special inspection of places of employment and ma-
chinery. Some of the claims of the earlier American
labor movement were revived by them such as the
claim for indemnification for injuries received in the
course of employment, a principle which the courts
have practically nullified, by their interpretation of
the doctrine of contributory negligence. Other old
demands were for a regular weekly pay day and for
a lien for mechanics. The secrecy of the order was
abolished in 1881 at Detroit, and from that date began
its real growth though it was still a small organization
in 1885. In 1886 it had reached the height of its power
and began henceforward to decline. Its decay was in
part due to its inefficient and cumbersome methods of
organization and in part also to the dishonesty of its
officials, who set themselves to profit by the finances
of the order as soon as it became strong. The subse-
quent career of some of these leaders point to the ex-
istence also of considerable political corruption in the
ranks of the order itself. Still with all its faults the
Knights of Labor might, in capable and intelligent
hands, have proved a very successful proletarian or-
ganization. Its methods were such that the working
class as a whole might have found in it an opportunity
for the expression of their desires and ambitions and
its progress might have been indicative of the intel-
lectual political progress of the working class. Such,
however, was not the destiny of the Knights and like
136 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
too many attempts at working class agitation, it has
disappeared, leaving only an unpleasant memory.
It was succeeded by a new organization which has
been since known as "The American Federation of
Labor." This organization was purely economic in its
purposes. It was an imitation of the English trades
union movement. It regarded employment as a con-
tract between labor and capital. It did not have any
revolutionary ideas as to the relations between the two
factors in production. The owner of labor power and
the owner of capital were in its eyes each possessed of
commodities which each wanted to sell on the best
terms possible. The matter then became a subject for
bargaining and the term "collective bargaining" has
indeed been applied to these united efforts on the part
of labor and capital to arrive at a mutual understand-
ing. The organization was by crafts, each craft having
its local and national organization, and being, in a great
measure, independent of other crafts and depending
for success upon the power which it could individually
bring to bear upon the capitalist. Naturally the most
highly skilled crafts were able to obtain the best terms
and had an advantage in dealings of this sort and these
formed what was called both in the United States and
Great Britain an "aristocracy" of labor. These craft
divisions were favored by the employing class as they
tended to keep the workers apart and cultivated differ-
ences and distinctions within the ranks of labor. Under
the old gild system, when the economic condition was
almost static, such distinctions might have survived
and, as a matter of fact did survive but under the
highly fluid state of labor in the present system, where
the skilled labor of to-day becomes the unskilled of
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 137
to-morrow, they are simply absurd. The result was
that the old methods of the strike and the boycott were
again and again resorted to, and the working class was
driven, by its method of fighting into minor disturb-
ances and collisions with the authorities in which they
had only their bare hands to oppose to the weapons
of the military. The capitalist class was firmly en-
trenched in the economic position from which the
forces of the trades union were unable to dislodge it
and, in addition, the capitalist class possessed a weapon
in politics of which it did not hesitate to make use and
such advantages as the trades unions did attain were
rendered practically valueless by means of a hired leg-
islature and a dependent judiciary.
One of the most remarkable facts in connection
with this movement was the blindness of the trades
union leaders to the value of the political weapon.
The movement was, as we have said, based upon the
English trades union movement and the latter had
studiously abstained from politics. But this plan of
campaign had arisen from the peculiar conditions in
England. The defeat of the Chartist Movement, which
was a political working class movement, necessarily
revolutionary in its character, and based upon the hy-
pothesis of a physical force triumph had filled the
working class with despair of obtaining any advantage
by political effort. They had therefore fallen back on
the pure and simple method and endeavored to accom-
plish by means of the strike and boycott what they
had failed to gain by revolt. Certain peculiar eco-
nomic conditions had given the pure and simple trades
union an initial advantage in Great Britain and the
fact that the working class was not in possession of
138 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
the ballot still further increased the energy and en-
thusiasm which they showed for the trades union
movement. But triumphant, apparently, as the British
pure and simple union was, it carried with it its defects,
and as soon as the working class became endowed with
the franchise the agitation for political working class
action arose. The British workingman had been
obliged to accept such conditions as he had and to
make the best of them. The American pure and sim-
ple trades unionist, on the other hand, threw away the
advantage which the possession of the ballot gave
him, and under the cry of "no politics," bred in the
unions a brood of the most loathesome and corrupt
petty politicians. But the American Federation suc-
ceded the Knights of Labor, and soon rose to be the
most important labor movement in the country.
An agitation for an eight hours' day marked the
year 1886. It had been developing for some time, but
reached its culmination in that year. In connection
with that eight hour day agitation we get the affair
of the Chicago anarchists, so-called. The eight hours'
movement had developed a very pronounced form in
Chicago. At one of the meetings a bomb was thrown
by some unknown party among a body of police who
were dispersing an open air gathering. A number of
men were arrested and charged with complicity in the
bomb throwing. Some of them were hanged, others
imprisoned. It is admitted that these men were lit-
erally railroaded to the scaffold and to prison. Seven
years afterward a governor of Illinois examined into
the manner in which the trial had been conducted and
after a close examination of the testimony and the
circumstances connected with the trial, released the
THE RISE OF THE GREATER CAPITALISM 139
men in prison and expressed his conviction that the
trial had been unfair. This is the general impression
at the present day even in conservative circles. The
press, however, worked up a most violent prejudice
against the men throughout the whole country and
there is little question that the whole affair had a very
bad effect upon the labor agitation at that time and
for some considerable time afterwards. It may also
be stated that it had a distinct tendency to interfere
with the sympathy which a certain section of the
American working class was beginning to have with
the anarchist movement.
In Europe the working class international move-
ment, under the name of the "International," had broken
into two sections, one of which was dominated by
socialistic ideas and advocated the use of parliamentary
means in the futherance of the interests of the work-
ing class and the other by anarchistic ideas. The an-
archistic faction refused to recognize the political
weapon, but based their campaign upon the use of the
strike and boycott and physical force. Both of these
factions had their adherents among the working men
of this country and prior to the Chicago affair, the
anarchist propaganda had considerable support. In
fact, it will be seen that the methods of the American
Federation of Labor were in their essence anarchistic
for the mere element of physical force is not what con-
stitutes anarchism but the refusal to employ political
action. One of the most disgusting features of the
whole Chicago matter was the inexcusable and pitiful
cowardice displayed by many leaders of the working
class as exemplified in prominent trades unionists.
The socialist wing of the International had also es-
140 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
tablished an agitation and propaganda in this country
and before the close of this period had entered upon a
political campaign. Its first efforts were naturally
feeble and gave no indication of the power which was
in the course of the next decade to be manifested by
this element. But weak, as it was, it had been begun,
and the United States as a new capitalistic country was
beginning to exhibit the same political as well as in-
dustrial phenomena of other countries in which the
modern system was prevalent.
Thus at the close of the period succeeding the
Civil War, we find that the capitalistic class had thor-
oughly entrenched itself, that the working class was
playing a losing game and was not receiving anything
like a proportionate share of the product of the new in-
dustry, that politics and law were corrupted and em-
ployed in the service of the new capitalism and that
the working class was beginning to have some glim-
merings as to the actual condition of things and was
slowly awakening to a recognition of the class war.
CHAPTER VII
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM
Following the period just described, we come to
another, in which the psychological tendencies of the
newly developed, but speedily omnipotent commercial
and industrial classes, made themselves apparent. Legis-
lation, the administration of justice, and national policy
very soon bore witness to the power of the new idea.
The old faiths which had suffered grievously in the early
part of that period which immediately succeeded the Civil
War were attacked more fiercely, so that the merest
remnants remained of that vigorous Americanism which
had exercised so profound an influence over the youth
of the country and which had been the very symbol of
individual liberty and democracy in government. Inter-
nal politics on the legislative side responded rapidly to
the new tendencies but not more rapidly than did the
law courts, so that strange and hitherto unheard of ap-
plications of ancient legal remedies were employed in a
fashion which left no doubt of the intention of the jurists
to interpret the law in terms of the new conditions.
Never has the effect of the influence of economic facts
upon legislative and judicial forms been more evident.
Just as the industrial development in this country pro-
ceeded more rapidly than in others by virtue of the
entire newness of the conditions and the freedom from
141
142 THE ^ISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
artificial restraints, so the necessary legislation and legal
decisions were more easily obtained here than elsewhere.
The possession of the political machinery by the greater
capitalists and the dependence of the judiciary upon
politics gave the commercial revolutionists control of
the avenues of expression. The capitalization of the
press and its employment by the same agencies was an-
other very important factor in bringing about the same
result. Practically all the channels through which force
could be employed were in the hands of this class at the
beginning of this period and the ease with which success
was achieved tends to show the thoroughness of the
preparations which had been made to render it complete.
It is not too much to say that in this period a revolution
was accomplished which, for scope and magnitude, prob-
ably transcends any revolution of which we have knowl-
edge. No merely political revolutions can be even com-
pared with it. The industrial revolution which in the
short space of twenty-five years converted England from
a country in which the domestic industry was dominant
to a modern machine-industry community is, probably,
unless we except Japanese development, the only other
instance of so sudden and complete a change. But it
took many years for Great Britain to modify her politi-
cal and juristic systems sufficiently to render them the
best expressions of the new economic realities, whereas,
it required but a very short time to convert the Senate
into a body recognized as the supporter of the commercial
and industrial lords and to make the House of Repre-
sentatives but a large committee for the registering of
decrees to carry out the mandates of the same masters.
The government of the country was henceforward to
be carried on in the name of those interests which were
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 143
sufficiently powerful to set the machinery in motion.
That collectivism which follows unavoidably in the train
of concentration of industry did not show itself as a col-
lectivism supposedly benefiting the whole community.
State socialism to which this industrial development has
given so great an impetus on the continent of Europe
made but little headway here. Such collectivism as there
was consisted in the collectivism of a class against so-
ciety. The great capitalists pooled their interests and
directed their united force to a campaign of public plun-
der. The tariff laws, sufficiently stringent already to
make the United States conspicuous throughout the
world as the champion of excessive duties, were made
severe and comprehensive to a degree which has ren-
dered them practically prohibitory. The exploitation of
the country fell into the hands of fewer and fewer great
capitalistic concerns, and its growing wealth and popu-
lation made it an ever richer field for the predatory.
And when the amount of wealth produced under the new
system bade fair to choke the channels of distribution in
this country, the demands of the manufacturers and com-
mercialists for foreign markets brought a new idea into
American foreign politics. So that the country which had
been hitherto self contained and which had framed all its
foreign policy upon the notion of its inviolabity and in-
dependence and its freedom from the embroilments of
foreign powers, leaped into the arena of international
strife, and in a few weeks added an empire to its pos-
sessions and became a great modern imperial power,
having subject under its sway so-called inferior peoples,
who could never in the very nature of things become
citizens of the Republic.
This new period began, appropriately enough, with
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
a crisis, one of those inevitable breakdowns which serve,
much as war does, to clear the air and to eliminate num-
bers of the unnecessary. The crisis of 1893 displayed
itself in the first place as a financial crisis, though it
was followed by an industrial collapse which showed
plainly that unrestricted competition was still productive
of its old effects, and that republican institutions and a
hight tariff afforded no security against those maladies
which have so grievously afflicted the peoples of all
modern countries.
For several years trade had been dull. A depression
had succeeded the crisis of the eighties. This, though less
acute than the more famous crisis of 1873, had still affected
the industrial system badly, and the expected rally had
been long postponed. A Democratic President had been
elected, but no improvement having manifested itself a
Republican revival had followed and this again having
failed to achieve the impossible, another reaction had
taken place and a Democratic president again occupied
the chair. Things had been going amiss in Europe, and
Great Britain in particular was feeling the ill effects of
the depression. The Argentine Republic and South
Africa were the favorite fields for investment. But the
returns had proved by no means up to the expectations
of investors, and firms which had invested heavily in se-
curities in these countries began to feel the strain. In
1890 the firm of Baring Brothers, one of the most in-
fluential in the financial world, could not make headway
and succumbed. There was a panic, then, a stiffening,
due chiefly to the security of the Bank of England, and
its efforts to minimize the disaster, and the worst was
tided over. But the effects were widespread and this
country felt them in the dislocation of business and gen-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 145
eral distrust. On June 26th, 1893, it was announced
that India had stopped the free coinage of silver. The
effect was felt at once in the silver-producing states.
Colorado and other states in which the mining of silver
was an important industry shut down their mines, and
thousands of people were face to face with actual want.
Then came a series of bank failures, particularly in the
South and West. The degree in which those portions
of the country were effected appears in the fact that out
of 301 bank suspensions, ninety-three per cent occurred
in them. Distrust was general, hoarding set in on a large
scale and recourse was had to clearing house certificates.
Then, the worst passed, but a long period of depression
followed marked by a most noticeable falling off in immi-
gration, the existence of unusually large numbers of un-
employed, and all the strange psychological and political
vagaries which mark such periods of economic distur-
bance. The outcry against the financiers, which had made
itself heard in the crisis of the seventies, became louder,
and the People's party, which in 1892 had polled over
a million votes had by 1896 persuaded the Democratic
party to adopt the anti-gold platform. This was the last
great battle in which the small producers and the debtor
class on the one hand were brought into direct conflict
with the dominant capitalism and the money lords. The
latter relying upon their industrial vassals who could
find no point of contact between themselves and the
smaller middle class, which furnished the intellectual and
political force of the silver movement, defeated the silver
forces, and the now thoroughly victorious greater capi-
talism was able thenceforward to pursue its course with-
out any further fear of disturbance from that class of
debtors and small producers. Political history in this
146 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
country since that time has been but the pursuit of the
flying relics of a formerly sufficiently formidable force
and the strengthening of the positions occupied by the
victors. There has been no further need of a distinct
campaign against the power of the middle classes.
Economic events have proved too strong for them, they
have no longer any real political significance. Such po-
litical and juridical action as has been required has been
rather directed against the advances of a more per-
manent and dangerous class, the proletarian.
It will be seen therefore that the economic and po-
litical effects of this crisis were not substantially differ-
ent from those of preceding occurrences of a similar
nature. If they were more obvious, and if the greater
capitalism was able to take more complete advantage of
the situation than heretofore, it was simply because the
point to which industrial evolution had proceeded had
made it more feasible to monopolize its advantages, and,
if political effects were more apparent, it was just be-
cause the new organization of industry had rendered pos-
sible the more complete organization of political power.
The effects upon the community at large, if more striking,
were similar to those of preceding crises.
Thus the elimination of numbers of middlemen and
small producers has always been the essential character-
istic result of industrial disturbance. On the other hand
the reinforcement of the working class by those better
equipped who had fallen into its ranks owing to the ac-
tion of the crisis and the feeling of rebellion engendered
in the minds of numbers of the working class by their
sufferings and privations tended more and more to the
building up of a self-conscious working class movement.
Just in proportion as the greater capitalism made greater
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 147
progress than heretofore by reason of the crisis of 1893,
the phenomenal growth in power of the proletarian was,
at least, equally noticeable. The crisis of 1873 produced
an active working class movement, that of 1893 stimu-
lated and informed it. Defeated economically and com-
pelled to submit to conditions against which it had con-
tended with increasing spirit, its wages lowered, its or-
ganisations much depleted and in some cases disrupted,
it still kept its aim before it, and at the conclusion of
the depression was ready to take the field again and to
enter upon a more vigorous campaign for its demands.
The working class is the one constant factor. It is not
possible to dispose of it. The crushing of its members
under the weight of exploitation only serves to amalga-
mate its forces as a pebble walk is solidified by tamping.
Such gains as it makes stimulate its ambitions, awaken
its energies, and drive it to seek still further successes
at the expense of its natural and implacable enemy. The
two forces, the organized capitalists and the organized
laborers must face one another on both the political and
economic fields. The crisis of 1893 made the lines of
the respective armies more distinct and showed to many
of those who had not hitherto perceived what was im-
pending, the real social and political significance of mod-
ern industrial life.
, This period was marked by the growth of a new form
of industrial organization which had had a very important
effect upon the politics and commercial enterprise of the
nation and which appears destined to be a still more
important factor in future. This phenomenon is classed
under the general name of "trusts" and although much
condemnation has been directed against it, it appears to
be as simple and logical a development of industry as
148 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
any of the other forms with which industrial evolution
has made us familiar. The Standard Oil adopted it first
by the device of combining various corporations so as to
form one monopoly as early as 1882. The essential and
distinctive quality of the trust consists in this a trus-
teeship is devised in such a way that the organization and
concentration of the powers of various distinct corpora-
tions is effected without impairing the individual ex-
istence of the separate corporations. This may be con-
sidered as the most restricted sense of the trust. Tes-
timony as to the spread of this particular form of organi-
zation may be had from the following remarks of John
Moody, whose "Truth About the Trusts" is perhaps the
most complete and reliable work upon the subject. He
says:
"In the usage of to-day the term 'Trust' is applicable
to any act, agreement, or combination believed to possess
the intention, power or tendency to monopolize business,
interfere with trade, fix prices, etc. It will be noted that
this embraces those enterprises which are popularly be-
lieved to have this intent, power or tendency, and not
merely those which have by demonstration been shown to
be possessed of such power.
"By this definition we see that not only are consoli-
dations of former competing plants to be looked upon as
Trusts, but all large businesses which possess or are be-
lieved to possess the foregoing characteristics are trusts,
whether made up of one plant or a hundred, and whether
actually possessing monopolistic features or not. Thus,
franchise corporations and groups are Trusts, railroad
aggregations are Trusts, possessors of exclusive powers
or privileges of any sort, as well as mere producers on
a large scale must be looked upon as Trusts. If there is
OLIGAQCHY AND IMPERIALISM 149
any qualification at all in the public mind as to the cor-
rectness of Mr. Dodd's definition, it is merely that the
thoroughgoing trust must be characterized by largeness.
Very small corporations, even if they possess monopolies
are not popularly called Trusts."
This trust phenomenon is really a product of econo-
mic conditions since 1898, at which time the industrial
depression which had set in with such intensity in 1893
subsided, and a period of buoyant optimism supervened,
produced by a succession of good harvests and the popu-
lar enthusiasm and confidence which followed upon the
termination of the Spanish War. The development of
railroad industry had, up to this time, absorbed the bulk
of invested capital, but the development and practically
complete organization of the railroad system had closed
this avenue for investment and railroad stocks in large
quantities at low prices were no longer available. The
field for the investment of money, released by the feel-
ing of security and the impetus given by the revival of
prosperity, was discovered in industrials, and the ener-
gies of promoters were directed to the organization of
industrial enterprise as outlets for capital seeking in-
vestment. The Financial Review of 1900, speaking on
this point says:
"The extreme industrial activity engendered a feeling of
great confidence, very propitious to the creation and multiplica-
tion of new industrial enterprises. Easy money in the early
months caused by a congestion of currency at this centre, ma-
terially aided the movement. The result was the formation and
flotation of industrial undertakings of enormous magnitude and
in unparallelled numbers. In every industry, in every line and
branch of trade, great consolidations and amalgamations were
planned, and in most cases carried into effect. It was the great
opportunity of the promoter and he was not slow to avail him-
150 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
self of it. Seeing in any given trade a large number of separate
businesses or manufactories, his effort was to merge them to-
gether in one large corporation, insuring partial or complete con-
trol and giving at least the appearance of monopoly."
This tendency to the amalgamation of industry and
the formation of great industrial combinations was due
as much to a recognition of the deficiencies of the com-
petitive system and its ill effects upon the producer as
to a desire to find new and profitable fields for invest-
ment E. S. Meade in his "Trust Finance" sums up the
matter very clearly in the following paragraph :
"All things considered, it is not difficult to understand why
the regime of free competition was productive of manifold hard-
ships to the manufacturer. Competition might be considered as
the life of trade, but at the close of the last industrial de-
pression it was regarded as the death of profits. It was highly
desirable from the manufacturer's viewpoint to stop or at least
abate this struggle which benefited nobody save the consumer,
* * * The producers were tired of working for the public.
They desired a larger profit without such an effort to get it, and
they wished to have that profit available for distribution and
not locked up in a plant and equipment. In 1898 and 1899 the
time was ripe for a change. Men were weary of competition and
the era of combination was gladly welcomed."
But while the organization of the Trusts made un-
doubtedly for economic advantage, and while the bal-
ance was unquestionably in favor of the new system,
there were other effects which were very disturbing.
Thus the concentration of the almost incredibly large
masses of capital rendered the existence of the smaller
firms so precarious as to be practically hopeless, and the
outcry which was raised by the sufferers found its ex-
pression in jeremiads in the press and in a helpless po-
litical indignation which exhausted itself in the cry,
"Down with the Trusts," but which was futile against
OLIGARCHY AXD IMPERIALISM 151
the tremendous financial forces ranged on tne side of
the new organizations.
The extent of these financial forces may be seen from
the following figures revised to January 1st, 1904, by
Air. Moody in the work already referred to. It must be
observed that since that time the organization has pro-
ceeded even more rapidly and the powers of the trust
magnate have been correspondingly increased. The
Trusts of which Mr. Moody takes account are as fol-
lows: 318 important industrial trusts controlling ap-
proximately 5,288 plants have a capitalization of $7,-
246,342,533; 111 important franchise trusts, owning
1,336 plants, have a total capitalization of $3^735,456,071 ;
great steam railroad groups, owning 790 plants, have a
total capitalization of $9,017,086,907, and allied steam
railroad systems, having 250 plants and a capitalized
value of $380,277,000. The total value of all the trusts
at the time at which the computation was made was $20,-
379,162,511.00. (Now estimated at 30 billions.)
The rapid organization of such colossal industrial
enterprises could not fail to have a most profound effect
upon all departments of national life, and the corrupting
power of great sums of money used without stint or
compunction by those who had immediate pecuniary
interests to serve was soon made evident. An era of
corruption and debauchery set in much as had occurred
subsequent to the Civil War, and the judiciary and the
legislatures were exposed to the full force of the attack
of corporate wealth. This descent of the trust organ-
izers and controllers into politics was followed by re-
sults which do not reflect any credit upon the honesty
and stability of legislative and judicial bodies in demo-
cratic communities where the standards are almost ex-
THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
clusively money standards, and where neither the social
position nor the financial standing of those who are
charged with the control of affairs is sufficient to sup-
port them against temptation. The history of this pe-
riod of prosperity is a long tale of official misconduct
in almost every branch of governmental activity, mu-
nicipal, state and national. An era of what is simply
and cynically termed "graft" set in and the press teemed
with revelations of official iniquity. Even the ordinary
magazines made a special point of detailing the opera-
tions by which the municipalities were robbed of their
utilities, and showed to their own financial advantage
and the interest of their purchasers the methods em-
ployed by industrial organizers in their efforts to make
their organizations supreme. These revelations, while
stimulating occasional outbursts of indignation and fur-
nishing professors, clergymen and severely sober jour-
nals with opportunities for rhetorical and high flown
denunciation, produced but little effect upon the commu-
nity at large. They were regarded as natural and una-
voidable concomitants of the system, and, in the general
prosperity, were contemplated with equanimity. Now
and again, an unusually bold piece of villainy would
create a sensation, but, if the feelings engendered by
such occurrences were analyzed, it would probably be
discovered that admiration of the powers of the success-
ful promoter was at least as marked as indignation against
a public wrong.
The same rampant speculation as had marked earlier
experiments in economic organization, the same wilful
lack of foresight, the same criminal misstatement of
the purposes and possibilities of new enterprises, mani-
fested themselves. Plants were bought up at ridiculously
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 153
high prices or enormous sums were expended upon the
destruction of concerns which refused to enter the com-
binations. Inflation and the watering of stocks served
to conceal the amounts of the profits made by these
means and many of the new concerns rested upon the
flimsiest and least substantial of foundations. But in
spite of many sinister forebodings the prosperity which
had begun with the Spanish War persisted. The suc-
cession of good harvests and the movement of money
tended to keep confidence and prices high. The latter
indeed rose so that the cost of living was very materi-
ally increased, and the purchasing power of the better
paid working class was in reality little greater if, in-
deed, it was in some cases as great, as it had been during
the period of depression. But work was fairly constant,
and as wages came in with regularity there was little
grumbling. The Republican party, the natural cham-
pion of the new industrial movement, held its place in
the preferences of the artisan class and the second at-
tempt of W. J. Bryan, the candidate of the united Demo-
cratic and Populist elements to gain the presidency was
repulsed more severely than its predecessor. An out-
break of war in South Africa between Great Britain and
the Boer Republics still further stimulated the demand
for staple commodities, and gave an increasing impetus
to American trade. To all appearances the country was
entirely prosperous, yet its industrial and financial in-
stitutions were experiencing a series of convulsions, and
the entire system was being modified, indeed transformed.
The new industries fell into the hands of a diminishing
group of men who exercised an increasing amount of
power, the oligarchy which had been foreshadowed even
before 1893, was fast being realized, and had become
154 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
an accomplished fact. Henceforward the political ten-
dencies of governmental centralization were to be more
strongly marked than hitherto. The individualism of
the state system began to be a serious obstacle in the
path of political and economic progress, and it became
only a question of time when the more complete com-
mercial and industrial organization would be mirrored
in a more complete political organization. The centrali-
zation of industry must necessarily find an expression
in the centralization of governmental power. The ques-
tion thereupon arose, at least by inference, as to which
of the governmental organs was to be the representa-
tive of this centralization. There are two departments
of the government, each capable of fulfilling that func-
tion. The senate by its limited numbers, its recognized
role as the representative of the power of organized
wealth, and its vast political influence might serve as an
active executive committee of the economically powerful ;
or the President by virtue of his position as the nominal
head of the State might act in the same capacity. So
there was outlined a struggle between the President and
the Senate which has already shown signs of increasing
intensity, and which may conceivably, within a very
short period develop into the most important incident in
the unfolding of American political history. The in-
congruity between a closely knit and highly organized
economic system and a loosely connected bundle of indi-
vidual states, any one of which may at any time seriously
hamper and interfere with the economic organization,
is so obvious that the permanence of the system cannot
be seriously considered. The difficulty of course lies in
so arranging the power of the units that the national
economic system is not interfered with. But this be-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 155
comes increasingly intricate in proportion as the develop-
ment of industry transcends the limits of the individual
states, and great enterprises come into existence whose
ramifications and the extent of whose interests bring
them into contact with the state legislatures at so many
points. All sorts of impediments have arisen, therefore,
to the development of the greater industry, but -ft, with
a confidence born of security, has succeeded in using even
these factors in its service, and by a discreet use of cor-
ruption funds ever increases its hold upon the various
political systems of the individual states. This method
is however costly, uncertain, and unsatisfactory, and there-
fore the cry for federal control arises, or for the federal
supervision of transportation and other industries which
overlap diverse sections of the community. Such "con-
trol" is under present circumstances a mere euphemism,
for the economic forces are so far in control of the po-
litical that any claim on the part of the federal executive
or the federal judiciary to exercise a controlling influ-
ence over its master savors rather of opera bouffe than
of reality. It cannot be said that any of the measures
which have been supposed to exercise a deterrent influ-
ence upon the growth of economic organizations or to
supervise their actions has been able to effect what was
expected of it. Economic force is more powerful than
legal enactment, and economic force lies unmistakably
on the side of the industrial oligarchy.
An incident in the course of the development of this
greater industry has been the establishment of a strong
foreign policy, and the acquisition of territory outside
and beyond the former limits of the country. The rap-
idly developing industry, the greater mutual dependence
of the powers owing to the ramifications of business re-
156 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
lations, and the jealousies and opportunities for strife
engendered by the clash of the interests of the dominant
national capitalists made it imperative upon the govern-
ment of this country that it should have greater influ-
ence with foreign powers, and this, of necessity, rendered
the construction of a sufficiently formidable navy essen-
tial. The idea of a strong navy which would be em-
ployed outside the country met with much opposition
from those Americans who still maintained the inde-
pendence of this country of foreign embroilments, but
a dispute with Great Britain with respect to the conduct
of that power in Venezuela furnished an admirable ar-
gument to the advocates of the greater navy policy. The
navy was needed to uphold the Monroe Doctrine, and
is not the Monroe Doctrine as essentially American as
free speech, a free press and liberty of contract? So
the building of the new navy proceeded, and a new
and very lucrative industry was founded for the private
capitalists who built the ships on contract and caballed,
intrigued, and corrupted to obtain these contracts on the
best terms possible. The profits on the building of the
navy were absorbed by private firms. The opportunity of
creating a great national shipbuilding plant was lost,
and the country became dependent for its sole effective
offensive arm upon a few great firms which in their
turn were dependent upon or interested in the power-
ful steel interests. It must be remarked that the de-
velopment of the steel industry and the organization
of that industry which rendered possible the produc-
tion of cheap steel were necessary conditions prece-
dent to the building up of the new navy and hence
in the last instance the national navy became a product
of and dependent upon a small but exceedingly pow-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 157
erful group of capitalists, who were now practically
compelled to look for foreign markets for their sur-
plus products. The acquisition of the Philippine
Islands gave these capitalists an immediate interest in
affairs in the Orient which was now, under the leader-
ship of Japan, showing signs of an awakening and
promised to be a fine field for commercial exploitation.
A war between Japan and China,, in the settlement of
which the United States took an active part, was fol-
lowed by a rising against foreigners in China and by
massacre and pillage at the hands of a certain sect of
fanatics termed "Boxers." This rising led to the ac-
tive interference of the leading western powers for
the purpose of securing peace, and the United States
co-operated with these powers in the employment of
troops in the land of another people thousands of
miles away. Since that time difficulties with outside
foreign powers have been not infrequent. Turkey,
Germany, San Domingo and Morocco have all
had distputes with this country. In the opinion of the
governments of more than one European country the
Monroe Doctrine has been employed as a means of
aggression rather than as a protection of the minor
American nationalities against European attack. How-
ever, the entry of the United States into the group of
great nationalities, whose commercialists and manu-
facturers are engaged in active competition for the
possession of the world's markets, is now an assured
fact. The demand for a stronger navy still continues
and the demand for a greater army to keep pace with
the navy is made with such insistence. The mili-
tary resources should, it is constantly urged, be made
to represent at least some reasonable proportion to
158 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
the financial and commercial resources of the country.
This actual and prospective increase in military power
is all the more conspicuous from the fact that there is
not the slightest danger of any attack being made
upon the soil by an external enemy. Such increase is
in pursuit of a policy of extending American commerce
by armed force where it is required. There are signs
also that the same increase in the military forces may
be directed against the possibility of civil discord aris-
ing from the eternal labor troubles. A new measure
of Congress making all able bodied citizens ipso facto
members of the militia would appear to support this
idea and the well known dislike and denunciation of
the militia by the trades unions tend to point the same
moral. At all events, under the new commercial and
industrial oligarchy, the military resources of the coun-
try have been unquestionably strengthened and the
tendency to- invade what were formerly regarded as
foreign spheres of influence has been more strongly
marked. There is a striking enthusiasm for what is
popularly termed recognition of American influence
abroad, in other words for that importance in interna-
tional affairs which is called "prestige" among the Eu-
ropean powers and which rests fundamentally upon
armed force.
There is a still more evident growth of the idea
that the chief object of American foreign policy is to
secure the best markets for American products and to
advance the interests of industrial and financial mag-
nates. All of these phenomena point to the influence
of the trader and manufacturer in politics and show
that the mainsprings of the international policy of
the United States are to be sought in the interests of
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 159
the greater capitalism. The trust has succeeded in
establishing itself directly in the Department of State.
The pressure of the commodity ever drives its makers
to find new fields for its disposal. This is the essen-
tial fact of political and social life in the United States.
The proprietors of commodities find themselves pos-
sessed of more than they can get the full benefit of
under the social conditions of a democratic republic,
and hence they seek alliances in communities where
ostentation and social prestige bring more immediate
advantages. They are dragged socially and econom-
ically into the current of international politics, the
great game in which rank and tradition are such im-
portant factors. They take their vast wealth into Eu-
ropean society, acquiring thereby social importance,
and make conections which render the country they
represent a world-power. The international impor-
tance of the American wealthy class rests not only
upon their ownership of actual wealth, but upon
their additional control of the armed resources of the coun-
try. Just as the new oligarchy has succeeded in fasten-
ing its grip upon the material resources of the country
and hence upon the political power it has grown pro-
portionately in influence abroad. The tribute rendered
to the power of the United States by the foreign press
and potentates is in reality the recognition on the part
of the economically and politically powerful in Europe
of the wealth and political power in the United States
of those who belong to the same class as themselves.
It cannot be forgotten, moreover, that the country by
its rapid development of its wealth producing re-
sources no longer occupies the subordinate economic
position which it once held. It is no longer dependent
-1GO THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
upon capital from the outside. The growth of the
syndicates in strength and influence has rendered the
funds at the disposal of the lords of finance much more
accessible than hitherto. The preponderance of wealth
gives this government a growing influence which is
only prevented from making itself still more apparent
by the lack of organization of its military resources
upon anything like the same scale as has been accom-
plished in European countries. How far this military
organization will be discovered to be necessary is a
question at once suggested by the occupation of the
Philippine Islands whose proximity to Asia and con-
sequently to the very center of international rivalry
has drawn the United States willy nilly into the strug-
gles of the Powers. That the commercial interests of
this country are estimated to be very closely bound up
with the development of the Orient is obvious from
the anxiety displayed by the government with refer-
ence to interference in the Chinese troubles, in spite of
the denunciations of those American statesmen and
journalists who regarded the movement as being on
the one hand a departure from traditional policy and
on the other as involving possibilities which it would
be the part of the discreet to avoid.
The crisis of 1893 produced strange psychological
aberrations in certain sections of the working class as
well as in that portion of the debtor and farming class
which saw in free silver and the populist platform the
solution of their troubles. The latter propaganda was
attended with a fanatical devotion as unusual as it was
ridiculous. A sort of semi-religious, semi-hysterical
socialism not unlike that which had manifested itself
on the continent of Europe, in France particularly, in
OLIGARCH-Y AND IMPERIALISM 161
the early forties made itself evident, and the "Burning
Words" of Lammenais were re-echoed more or less
feebly, on this side of the Atlantic by impassioned ad-
vocates of the new doctrine. But beside the mort-
gaged farmers, there was a great mass of unemployed
which suffered privation owing to the dislocation of
trade. Impatience with their lot grew more and more
marked among the inhabitants of the West, whose
frontier life had made them more disinclined to sub-
mission than their eastern fellows. The attacks of the
free silver preachers had impressed upon the popular
imagination that the government was to blame. There-
fore they determined to display their poverty to the
government. Hence arose the memorable exodus from
the West to the East which was popularly known
as the march of Coxey's army. As a matter of fact
there were three such armies presided over respect-
ively by Coxey, Kelly and Fry. On their march East
they behaved, on the whole, with considerable restraint
although incidents of violence and the forcible seizure
of trains were not absent. It is testimony, however,
to the general good faith of the major portion of this
army that whenever work presented itself it was
greedily seized by its members, and only a tatterde-
malion remnant ever reached Washington. As a dra-
matic exhibition of the poverty of the unemployed it
was a complete failure, and can only be considered
as an example of the vagaries which haunt men's
minds in times of economic stress, a species of hys-
teria produced by their desperate circumstances, and
liable, under extreme conditions, to produce strange
and even terrible results. In some respects the march
of these western unemployed will bear comparison
162 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
with the famous march of the Marseillais, the cir-
cumstances alone were different. There was the same
fanaticism, the same ignorance of actual conditions,
the same fiery impatience. It is interesting at least to
observe the marked independence of the western la-
borer, for this is a factor which must certainly be taken
into consideration, in any estimate of the positive
fighting qualities of the American proletariat.
A much more important event was the American
Railway Union Strike of 1894. Eugene V. Debs had or-
ganized this union in 1893. It was intended to off-
set the use of the blacklist by the railway managers
who were said., and in fact, at a subsequent inquiry were
shown, to have taken concerted measures to prevent
obnoxious workingmen from obtaining employment.
The Railway Union was intended to embrace all
classes of railway workers, and probably would have
succeeded in forming what is known as an industrial
union of the railroad employes had time been afforded
for complete organization but, as events turned out, it
early became involved in a strike of very great impor-
tance. This strike had its origin in a dispute which
was connected only indirectly with the railroad industry.
The Pullman company, which had made what was re-
puted to be a model town for its workmen, had a contro-
versy with the latter owing to the fact that it had re-
duced wages twenty per cent and had adopted meth-
ods of management which were regarded by the men
as high handed and intolerable. A committee waited
upon the company and demanded that the old scale
of wages be restored, whereupon the members of this
committee were discharged by the Pullman Company.
Four thousand of the Pullman employes were mem-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 163
bers of the American Railway Union and this body
took up the cause of these men and required that the
Pullman Company should arbitrate its differences with
the men. The Pullman Company replied that there
was nothing to arbitrate and the American Railway
Union decided that its members should not handle any
trains to which Pullman cars were attached. The strike
which followed was in the beginning completely suc-
cessful. At the end of five days all the roads running
out of Chicago were at a standstill. This result was
accomplished without violence and by absolutely
peaceful means, very strict orders having been issued
at the beginning of the strike against illegal conduct
on the part of the men. Then all at once disorder
broke out. The city of Chicago was full of rough and
desperate characters whom the depression of trade
had deprived of occupation, and these men were ready
to take part in any disturbance. The beginning of
rioting has been attributed to the Railway Man-
agers' Association. It would not be easy to fix the
blame, but there is little doubt that it could easily
have been prevented by the exercise or ordinary po-
lice precautions. Obstruction of the mails followed
and the fact that the Federal government would have
to interfere to secure the transportation of its mails
became evident. Then the suggestion was made that
the Federal courts be applied to for the issuance of a
\vrit of injunction. This process was to take the place
of regular criminal proceedings against the perpetra-
tors of unlawful acts. President Cleveland ordered
Federal troops to proceed to Chicago in spite of the
protest of the Governor of Illinois, who declared him-
self perfectly competent to maintain order within his
164 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
jurisdiction. The troops were sent under the law of
April, 1871, the portion of the law upon which Presi-
dent Cleveland relied being as follows : "In all cases
where insurrection, domestic violence, .... or
conspiracies in any state shall so obstruct or hinder
the execution of the laws thereof or of the United
States, .... or wherever such insurrection, vio-
lence or conspiracy shall oppose the laws of the United
States or the due execution thereof, .... it
shall be lawful for the President, and it shall be his
duty to take such measures by the employment of the
land or naval forces of the United States ....
as he may deem necessary for the suppression of such
insurrection." Under the circumstances, there can be
little question with respect to the technically correct
position of President Cleveland. If the mails were
interfered with their uninterrupted transit must be se-
cured. The real malefactors, who had instigated the
the mischief, and who had in all probability directly
provoked the disorder reaped the benefit of their
schemes and the forces of the Federal government
were henceforward employed in crushing the strike in
the interests of the employing class and the dominant
oligarchy.
The success of such a formidable rising of the
working class, particularly in the unsatisfactory con-
dition of trade and the general disarrangement of
financial affairs, could not have failed to embolden
the restless proletariat. In the West, at all events,
where the strike had its inception, and where the
masses may be said to have been actively sympa-
thetic wtih the strikers the results of a successful
strike might easily have been detrimental to the grow-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 165
ing greater capitalism. It was therefore very neces-
sary in the eyes of the authorities that the strike
should be put down. Besides, the intervention of the
Federal government in such matters was distinctly in
line with the development of political and industrial
tendencies as they have been displayed in the course
of the history of the United States. It showed the
intention of the oligarchy to concentrate its political
and military resources for the defense and advance-
ment of its interests; it also showed the intention of
the government to employ the armed forces in the de-
fense of the employing classes and proved that the
governing class thoroughly appreciated the approach-
ing class-war and was ready to resort to the final
measures pursued by the class in power to perpetuate
that power. The fact that unusual measures were
taken by the dominant class and its instrument, the
government, shows that the conditions were recog-
nized as unusual and that the strike of the American
Railway Union was regarded as exceptional both in
the scope of its operations and the possibilities which
might flow from it. It is noticeable moreover that the
troops dispatched upon the plea that the mails were
being interfered with, were sent to the stockyards dis- \
tricts, which places, though undoubtedly interesting^
are not supposed to be a rendezvous for mail cars. It
it noticeable also, as showing the dictinctly class trend
of the government action, that during the Pullman
strike, President Cleveland selected as special counsel
for the government Mr. Edwin Walker, the general
counsel for the General Managers' Association, rep-
resenting twenty-four railways, which, according to
Mr. Henry George, Jr., were being operated "in utter
166 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
'defiance of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law." But an
even more unjustifiable action than the use of the mil-
itary is to be found in the novel and peculiar use of
the injunction, a purely equitable remedy, for the pur-
pose of putting down strikes. On July 10th Debs was
arrested on the charge of obstructing the mails and
interfering with interstate commerce. The case was
never brought before a jury. The Federal court, how-
ever, employed the injunction. It issued what is known
as an "omnibus" restraining order, in which Debs and
others were specifically named and "all persons." This
restraining order was served personally on some of the
defendants and a general notice given by reading the
order to a crowd of strikers and by posting copies of it
on freight cars and telegraph poles. Debs was ar-
rested for contempt of this order and sentenced to im-
prisonment for six months. Habeas Corpus proceed-
ings were instituted in the Supreme Court in which
the plea was made that the equity court had no right
to issue an injunction which would deprive the accused
of the right to trial by jury. The Supreme Court,
however, upheld the decision of the Circuit Court.
The value of this decision was speedily seen by those
who were occupied in attending to the interests of the
greater capitalists and the so-called "blanket injunc-
tion" became quite a familiar concomitant of labor dis-
putes. It will be observed that the Federal courts
have been most frequently appealed to in all of these
cases. The Federal judiciary has in fact become the
most effective instrument not only for interpreting the
law in favor of the great corporations, but also, as in
this instance, for manufacturing law in their special
behoof. What was done in Chicago in 1894 was dupli-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 1(>7
cated in the Coeur d'Alene district of Idaho in 1899.
In the course of industrial disturbances in this district
a concentrator mill was blown up. It was charged
that this was the work of some person or persons on
the union side of the conflict. No proof of this, how-
ever, has so far been forthcoming. The fact that the
Idaho militia was at that time in the Philippines was
made an excuse by the mine owners for sending a peti-
tion to the Secretary of War for the despatch of
United States troops. These were sent under the com-
mand of General Merriam, who proclaimed martial
law. This general proceeded to arrest and confine per-
sons without any warrant of law and actually issued
a proclamation to the effect that the mine-owners
were not to give employment to any miner who did
not hold a permit from the military authorities. Ha-
beas Corpus was suspended and the men were confined
in a cattle-pen with straw for a bed and no privacy.
The food, according to some, was furnished in cattle-
troughs, according to others, in tin pails from which
it was taken by hand. There is no doubt that many
indefensible cruelties and tortures of a minor descrip-
tion were practiced on the prisoners, while under the
guard of the Federal troops. These occurrences, which
were followed by others of a similar character, gave
rise to an intense feeling of dislike, of the military
among the masses of laboring people. Even the Span-
ish war with its victories and, one might have sup-
posed, consequent popularity of the military, was in-
sufficient to stay the evidences of hatred which the
populace, or at least that portion of it which is in-
cluded under the term organized labor, began to feel
for the uniform. Trades unions passed resolutions
168 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
forbidding their members to join the militia of the
separate states. The absence of the genuine artisan
from the ranks of the militia becomes more and more
marked. As the class feeling developes there arises a
complete disseverance between the working-class and
the representatives of the physical force side of the
government.
But this conflict between the labor organizations
and the greater capitalism did not have that invig-
orating effect upon the former which might have been
reasonably expected. On the other hand, the oligar-
chy which swayed the political and busines world
mirrored itself in the labor organizations. The ten-
dency which was noted in the previous decade per-
sisted and developed itself even more strongly. The
depression in trade which filled so large a portion of
this period had caused the trades organizations to
show a marked falling off in power and influence.
Such is always the effect of economic crises and hard
times. The recurrence of industrial prosperity, on the
other hand, showed itself in a wonderful growth in
the trades unions. But it is undeniable that this ac-
tivity in trades union circles produced no adequate
effect upon the position of the working class. The
share of product which went to the laborer ever di-
minished. The liberties taken by the courts and the
military as already described showed that the influence
exerted by the laboring class upon the government
was of the slightest and that their enormous numeri-
cal strength was more than offset by the wealth of
the dominant class. The reasons for this condition
of things appears to lie in the characteristics of the
American labor movement as it had been developed in
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 169
the course of economic evolution of the country. There
had been from the beginning, as in England, to a very
great extent, a failure on the part of the union leaders
to grasp the significance of the struggle in which they
were involved. The failure to see the significance
of the labor movement resulted in the precipitation of
conflicts in which the working class was confronted
with the certainty of defeat. Issues also upon which
a straight and uncompromising fight between the op-
posing classes might have been successfully waged
were shirked. Thus much needless suffering was in-
flicted and slight enthusiasm engendered. The fact
was that the trades leaders, even the best informed of
them, were continually haunted by the notion of con-
tract. The two necessary factors of production were
in their estimation placed in juxtaposition, in eternal
antithesis like the ends of a see saw. One, however,
could not gain any permanent advantage over the
other. The individual capitalist was considered by
them to be necessary to the existence of the working-
man. They, even the strongest of them, were thus de-
prived of the enthusiasm and confidence which a grasp
of the class war would have given them. Without this
support their policy was wavering, indecisive and,
though of temporary value, in a few trades, only effi-
cacious up to a certain point, and impotent to prevent
the returns to labor continually diminishing in ratio
to the growth in wealth and the increase in the amount
of invested capital. Besides, the prospects of reward
held out by the political managers of the greater capi-
talism to successful labor leaders had filled some of
the most ambitious and capable with the resolution of
gaining place and position for themselves independent
170 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
of the advancement of the generality of the class to
which they belonged. Many labor leaders became
little better than freebooters, selling their followers
in the interest of rival capitalists, turning from this
side to that in the war which rival capitalistic concerns
waged against each other, according to the price of-
fered for their services. They were mere condottieri
selling their modern equivalent of the sword, the
power of organizing and leading men, to the highest
bidder. A brisk trade was done in union labels and
other devices of a simliar character. Blackmail was
levied. In fact, in the very ranks of labor itself there
was a group of corrupt manipulators whose nefarious
activities may be compared with those of the fraudu-
lent army contractors operating in the Spanish War.
It became more and more evident that the morals of
the dominant capitalism were rinding their reflection
in all sections of the community. A period of apathy
in the ranks of labor naturally supervened. Strikes and
lockouts were, of course, as common as before; the
struggle, inevitable in the very nature of things, con-
tinued. But local and sectional influences were
stronger than the general impulse. The ill-regulated
and ignorant, but at the same time generous, en-
thusiasms of the 80's had waned, and the all pervad-
ing cynicism which had greeted the victories of the
Spanish War with a perceptible sneer in spite of the
official applause found its counterpart in the attitude
of the masses of the laboring classes. Though the
numbers of men enrolled in the unions grew with won-
derful rapidity in the period of revived prosperity,
there was none of that early abandon of belief in the
power of the working class which had marked the
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 171
earlier phases of the trades union movement. Lead-
ers were stronger than ever before, the paper force of
the organizations was greater, but the spirit was lack-
ing. The crushing weight of the triumphant oligarchy
weighed down the hopes of the toilers. On the one
hand, their great industrial lords held arrogant sway,
and the bulwarks of American liberty fell before them
so easily, so bewilderingly easily that the masses of the
toilers educated in the public schools to an absolute
belief in the stability of the institutions of the country
felt hopeless in face of the aggressions. On the other
hand, the small bourgeoisie which was as much op-
posed economically to the advance of the oligarchy as
the working class itself was bankrupt in character as
well as in purse. Noisy demagogues with a talent for
advertisement but with no ability for leadership oc-
casionally appeared but succumbed to the money force
of the oligarchy or wearied the ears of the populace
with incoherent and useless complainings. The work-
ing class itself was devoid both of leadership and of
enthusiasm. The oligarchy was in complete and al-
most undisputed possession of the field.
Though the official representative of the laboring
class, the trades union movement, was in such a de-
plorable condition, the class war still found its expo-
nents in the socialist movement. This movement has
been referred to in the preceding chapter. It was
then in its incipient stage. With the progress of the
decade under consideration it developed both in num-
bers and in the virility and definiteness of its propa-
ganda. The increase in its voting strength was
marked. Thus from a vote of a little over two thous-
and in 1888 it attained a vote of nearly forty thousand
172 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
in 1896. But the progress of the movement was
actually much greater than appears from the consid-
eration of the mere vote. Organization had been ef-
fected, speakers trained, an English press established
and vast amounts of literature, largely translations
from the socialist literature of the continent of Eu-
rope, widely distributed. The Socialist Labor Party
was the name of the socialist organization in the fore-
front of this, as it may be termed, missionary period
of socialism. The apathy, the dishonesty and the in-
capacity of the trade union movement, as it has been
described did not escape the notice of these keen ob-
servers of social phenomena. The Socialist Labor
party, then, naturally and logically enough, proceeded
to attack the trades unionism of the day. The Social-
ist Labor party went even so far as to inaugurate a
form of trades unionism antagonistic to the dominant
pure and simple English type of unionism. This ac-
tion, however, precipitated a schism in the ranks of the
Socialist Labor party. A new party called Social
Democratic, after the German socialist organization,
was formed. Its leading exponent was Eugene Debs,
whose connection with the strike of the American
Railway Union has already been noted. After a short
period this Social Democratic party coalesced with
the dissatisfied element of the Socialist Labor Party
and formed a new organization, under the name, So-
cialist Party, which was more successful, politically, than
its predecessor.
This in the very hour of triumph of the greater
capitalism the enemy was developing its strength.
Small and numerically insignificant as it was the capi-
talistic forces were not slow to recognize its poten-
OLIGARCHY AND IMPERIALISM 173
tialities. The press teemed with attacks upon the so-
cialists and the pulpit, ever the ready servant gf ty-
j^anny, supplemented the efforts of the press. Such is
the free advertisement which the spirit presiding over
the progress of humanity always provides and, in pro-
portion as the attacks were absurd in their violence,
the interest of the public increased, and socialism, in-
stead of being considered as an amiable weakness to
which emotional people and raw foreigners were par-
ticularly prone, received very general recognition. This
does not imply that there was any particular grasp or
understanding of the socialist movement. On the con-
trary, the views advanced both by advocates and op-
ponents were at this particular period more marked
by crudity and feeling than by knowledge and percep-
tion. Still the point had ben reached when socialism
could be discussed, as, at least, a possibility. 'Thus
both socialists and their opponents began to speculate
upon a time when the laboring class, tired of the inso-
lence of the oligarchy and the incompetence of the
trades union movement, might direct its attention to
the new propaganda.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION
It is very obvious that the economic supremacy of
the greater capitalist class, as already described, could
not have failed to produce the most profound effects
upon American life and manners. In the preceding
stages of the economic growth of this country, as in-
deed of all others, we find that the prevailing economic
system has produced its effect upon the population in
their social and political relations. The economic en-
vironment and the individual citizens are, in fact,
practically inseparable; they are mutually dependent.
The merging of nationalities in this country affords
an example of the working of this influence of eco-
nomic environment upon the individual. Vast num-
bers of immigrants arrive here, the representatives of
all the races, and latterly in particular of the races
which have shown marked aesthetic qualities. It will
be noted, however, that the United States derives no
apparent aesthetic advantage from the admixture. The
song is choked in the throat of the Italian; the taste
of the Frenchman does not improve the taste of his
adopted country; on the other hand it becomes vul-
garized by the prevailing vulgarity. The reign of the
oligarchy has been conspicuous for its corruption and
vulgarity. The dominance of the petty bourgeois was
174
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 175
indeed dreary enough but it had a sort of heartiness
to recommend it. Crudity of taste and Little Bethel,
the distinguished marks of the lower middle-class,
both in this country and Great Britain are sufficiently
annoying. Compared, however, with the modern
crude worship of money and power and the base imi-
tation of the worst vices of the European rich they
are almost venial. The material advance of the United
States was more conspicuous both for intensity and
rapidity than that of any other country. The mate-
rial results of this advance, too, under circumstances
which did not allow of the growth of a sufficiently well
organized proletariat, were more conspicuous. Ex-
travagance and ostentation among the rich reached
such a pitch that the American millionaire class be-
came a jest and by word for ostentatious vulgarity
among the riotous lords of other countries. Tasteless
and coarse expenditure such as was never before seen,
not even when the cotton lords of Manchester ex-
changed their clogs for patent leathers and adorned
their vivid drawing rooms with the manners of the
slums, became the rule. The problems, incident upon
the creation of great cities and a consequent slum pro-
letariat, which beset other countries now began to
press upon this land. Withal, there was but little pub-
lic spirit with which these evils might be combated.
Just as the masses had succumbed with almost incredi-
ble readiness to economic tyranny they also bent the
knee with meekness to the political tyranny which nat-
urally succeeded the economic. The economic fact
again mirrored itself in the political. Concentration
of political power became an unavoidable concomitant
of the concentration of economic power. The contest
176 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
between the Senate and the President proceeded. The
local governments of the individual states soon showed
their impotence to deal with conditions which tran-
scended the frontiers of their respective sovereignties.
Thus the demand for Federal control and Federal inter-
ference grew in intensity as the necessity became ob-
vious. The smaller capitalists, increasingly subjected
to economic pressure succumbed, and at the beginning
of the twentieth century were unable to offer even the
futile resistance which they had made a decade be-
fore. The proletariat had not yet found itself politi-
cally, but it became more and more clear that it had
a role to play, if the country was to have any relief
from the growing tyranny gradually imposed upon it
through the concentration of economic power.
The war with Spain had been conducted during the
presidency of William McKinley. He had come to be
associated in the minds of large numbers of people
with the politics of the great trusts. He was in fact
the protege and political instrument of Mark Hanna,
who may be safely considered to be the ablest politi-
cian produced by the greater capitalism to the present
time. His grasp of the situation is seen in the fact
that he comprehended the necessities of the greater
capitalism and at the same time was keen enough
to detect the enemy with which it must come in con-
tact. He foresaw, as few or perhaps none of his col-
leagues did, that the despised socialist agitation rep-
resented a growing threat to the domination of the
greater capitalist and that the adoption of the tenets
and policy of that agitation by the working class as
a whole would bring about the downfall of that power
which had been so skillfully and elaborately construct-
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 1
ed. The death of McKinley, at the hands of an as-
sassin who foolishly considered that in this way he was
avenging the wrongs of the people, prepared the way
to power for a new man. With the advent of Theo-
dore Roosevelt to the presidential chair much of the
political strength of the greater capitalism was lost.
The death of Hanna shortly afterwards was another
blow to the dominant class. The government was the
poorer for the lack of a real directing force and the
departure of a sagacious statesman who really under-
stood what was expected of him and what were the
real purposes of American politics at the time of which
we are writing. Mr. Roosevelt developed strange and
incomprehensible ethical tendencies. He appears to
be of the belief that government can be carried on by
the application of copybook maxims. He is a sort of
protestant minister, who finding himself in a posi-
tion of power endeavors to rule a nation in terms of
the pulpit. He has won enormous popularity owing
to his possession of personal qualities which appeal
to the masses and by his denunciation of the very ob-
vious evils which arise from the concentration of
wealth and the supremacy of the greater capitalism.
He has not seen, however, that each epoch of social
evolution has the "defects of its qualities" and that
the evils which he deplores are inseparable from the
existence of the greater capitalism. The facts as well
as the fates are, however, against him and the logic
of events is fast reducing him to the position which
he is entitled to occupy, and which will, in the course
of time, make the Roosevelt legend one of the most
peculiar and sadly humorous episodes in American
history. But with all his lack of comprehension as
178 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
to the real significance of the part which he is ex-
pected to play he may seriously and permanently af-
fect the position of the country particularly in its for-
eign relations. He has a fixed idea of the importance
of the share which the United States is destined to have
in the history of the world. He seeks the recognition
of the country as one of the Powers. His term of of-
fice has been' signalized by the most flagrant depart-
ures from the old American idea of isolation. Here,
indeed, the economic facts have obliged to a certain
extent at least the adoption of the new policy. The
development of the greater capitalism coupled with
the ramification of high finance long ago rendered ob-
ligatory the entrance of this country into the circle of
the Powers. Thus the very existence of the greater
capitalism implied in itself the recognition of interna-
tional capitalism and, what was not yet so clearly ob-
served, also the recognition of the identity of the in-
terests of the proletariat in the two hemispheres. The
one of necessity implied the other. As the more fully
developed organization of capital also brought about
a more complete organization of labor so also the in-
ternationalization of capital of necessity implied also
the internationalization of labor.
A curious twist moreover was given to an old
American doctrine by the more recent economic de-
velopments. The Monroe Doctrine, which had been
approved, partly on sentimental grounds by the peo-
ple of this country at the time of its adoption, had
been spoken of as a bulwark against the invasion of
the weak American republics by powerful European
monarchies. It was now to be used for the purpose
of securing the exploitation of the Central and South
UNi
PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 1T9
American doctrine by the later economic detailists of
the United States. A notable instance of the more
recent attitude of this country to the smaller re-
publics on this continent is to be found in the treat-
ment accorded to Colombia at the hands of Mr. Roose-
velt. In 1902 an act was passed which authorized the
President to negotiate for the property of the Panama
Canal Company and for the control of so much of the
territory of Colombia as the canal traversed. Colom-
bia being dilatory in the matter of coming to an agree-
ment, the State of Panama, under influences easily
inferable from the circumstances, seceded. Forthwith
President Roosevelt recognized the independence of
the State of Panama, and forbade the Republic of
Colombia to take any military steps to restore the re-
volted state to the union, and, having sent warships,
actually landed marines, for the purpose of preventing
any interference with the secession of the State of
Panama. It has been pointed out that this action of
the President was in flat violation of the treaty be-
tween the United States and the State of Colombia in
1846, by which the United States "guaranteed the
rights of property and sovereignty possessed by Co-
lombia over the territory of Panama." This behavior
which would have probably been called treachery
under other circumstances less pressing than those
which confronted President Roosevelt, finds its sanc-
tions in the necessities of that portion of the capitalists
which holds the possession of the canal across the
Isthmus essential to its interests. The same attitude
with repect to the smaller republics has been ob-
servable on other occasions. Thus, the troubles which
have arisen with respect to Venezuela have been
180 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
largely provoked by the manipulations of the Asphalt
Trust, a malodorous association, which, after having
been involved in numerous scandals with municipali-
ties in this country, endeavored to obtain the assist-
ance of the Federal government for its operations in
Venezuela. In Santo Domingo this country has un-
dertaken to accept certain responsibilities and to ex-
ercise certain rights of patronage which must of ne-
cessity result in the domination of the smaller repub-
lic by the United States. There is no question that
the recent attitude of the United States to the smaller
republics has had the effect of greatly alarming them.
One result of the growth of the greater capitalism in
the United States and its resultant policies has been
undoubtedly the growth of a feeling of antagonism
on the part of the minor states and of an apprehensive-
ness that this country must be regarded rather as a
menace than as a protection to the free American
States. That these results have followed quite un-
avoidably from the new economic conditions is unde-
niable, but it is equally undeniable that they have
profoundly modified the old American conception of
things. The Monroe Doctrine from a general "hands
off" declaration to the world has come to mean "hands
off for everybody, except ourselves." That this new
attitude has not been without its effects upon the Eu-
ropean Powers is sufficiently obvious. Germany,
whose commercial and colonizing enterprise has been
particularly marked in Argentina and Brazil, resents
the modern application of the Monroe Doctrine, and
there is little doubt that much of the irritation ob-
servable in the relations of the two countries is due to
the rigid insistence upon the inviolability of the soil
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 181
of this continent from European invasion. The inter-
vention of the United States, however, in disputes be-
yond her frontiers, and the evident desire of the politi-
cal magnates that the country should be a "world-
power" appears in contrast with the isolation doctrine
apparently involved in a strict interpretation of the
Monroe Doctrine. Thus, though the United States is
fully prepared to employ the Monroe Doctrine for the
purpose of maintaining her exclusive suzerainty in
this hemisphere, and of extending her power over the
smaller, and, as time may show, subject peoples, she
is not by any means prepared to confine her political
activities and ambitions to this hemisphere. Hence
this country becomes more and more involved in the
disputes of other countries. The results of recent
American foreign policy have been summarized as fol-
lows by an English organ of the greater capitalism:
"The principal underlying fact is the alteration which
has taken place in the international position of the
United States. It has definitely and deliberately
emerged from the self-centered seclusion which consti-
tuted the ideal of Washington and Jefferson and as-
sumed its rightful place among the great controlling
organizations of the world." (London "Standard,"
19th Feb., 1906). It is the boast of the admirers of-
President Roosevelt that he brought peace out of the
Russo-Japanese War, a conflict between Russia and
Japan for the control of the Oriental trade. Our en-
voys at Algeciras in 1906 busied themselves at a con-
ference to settle the respective claims of Germany and
France to precedence in the exploitation of Morocco.
Armed intervention in China along with the military
representatives of other powers launched us upon a
182 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
sea of fresh complications in the Orient. The desire
to be a colonizing power with foreign possessions led
to the conquest and annexation of the Phliippines.
The result of the military changes of the last few
years has been thus briefly summarized by Henry
George, Jr. : "We have Germanized our army on the
general staff principle, have increased the number of
our regulars and, incidentally, incorporated our mili-
tia as practically part of them." The same tendencies
as were to be observed at the beginning of the reign
of the moneyed oligarchy still prevail, and must pre-
vail because the vital necessities of the dominion class
are interested in their prevailing.
But while the luxury of the members of the domi-
nant oligarchy has become a national scandal, and
the efforts of the politicians to secure a position for
the country among the Powers have been at once lu-
dicrous and painful, the corruption in politics has been
perhaps the most appalling of all the evils which the
victory of the greater capitalism has brought in its
train. The magazines and principal periodicals and
newspapers of the country all through the earlier
years of the twentieth century have been filled with
accounts of the debauchery of the legislatures and
municipal governments. The most elaborate details
of the various agencies employed by the servants of
these capitalistic interests were fully and completely
described, but it is much to be doubted if the publica-
tion of these facts achieved any actual results. The
community appeared to be paralyzed in face of an
enemy against whose advances none of the ordinary
precautions of politics were of the slightest avail. The
specialization which has been so marked a feature ot
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 183
the industrial life of the country was manifest also in
the matter of political corruption. It is probable that
there has never been a governing class in any country
at any time which has commanded as effective ser-
vice as the great American corporations and trusts.
The zeal and ability of the politicians and managers
employed by these institutions entitle them to the
highest position in the rogue's gallery of politics. To
their unscrupulous cunning and cynical knowledge of
the weaknesses of men, particularly in a country
where money is the only mark of distinction, they
added readiness of resource and audacity of conduct.
Their achievements are in their way as interesting and
remarkable as are the deeds of the hired bravos of the
Middle Ages or the Barry Lyndons of a later date.
There is no opportunity here save to glance very
briefly at some of the most conspicuous fields of their
enterprise. There will be no difficulty experienced in
following the details, however, for there is no lack of
material. The monthly magazines exploited the wick-
edness of the ruling class and coined money out of the
exposure of the degradation of the community and the
machinations of organized capital. A sort of pride in
the wickedness of their oppressors seems to have per-
vaded the people. The popular view of the matter
was for the most part cynical, coupled with a certain
wonder on the part of the old and more ethical Amer-
icans that such abominations could go unpunished and
the country still maintain its existence. Public moral-
ity, in the political sense, ceased to be even expected.
It is true that clumsy malefactors were occasionally
detected and made to serve as public examples, not
for their wrong doing, but because of their imprudence
184 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
and lack of astuteness. Everybody knew that the cor-
porations and great money powers bought or forced
the mass of undetected senators, congressmen and
members of the state legislatures to do their will. The
more sagacious recognized that there are discreetly
hidden paths by which the forces of the plutocrats
move to the conquest of the capitols whether in
Washington or the individual states. The cynical
asked why it should not be so. The power of organ-
ized wealth was during this whole period the only ef-
fective force in the community. No other power could
even compare with it either in self confidence or in
actual ability. The term "organized wealth" but fee-
bly expresses the motive force of this conquering
power. The men who had acquired this wealth or for
whom it had been acquired and who controlled it
moved as implacably as has the Muscovite foreign pol-
icy since the days of Peter the Great. Necessity
compelled them willy-nilly to extend their powers.
Great leaders, as many of them undoubtedly were,
born organizers and directors of men, indomitable in
their purpose and unlimited in their ambitions, they
were compelled to spend their energies on the further
accumulation of wealth and the building up of power
which under the circumstances could not be called
other than vulgar, and which, for its perpetuation,
demanded the destiuction of civic virtue. This, in-
deed, having been already sapped by the petty larce-
nous proclivities of the petty bourgeois was in no con-
dition to withstand so gorgeous a suitor. An inquiry
into the management of the great life insurance com-
panies revealed the fact that the Republican party had
received contributions to its political funds from the
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 185
three principal companies the New York Life, the
Equitable, and the Mutual. These contributions had
been placed by the several managements of these com-
panies without any notification to the policy holders
whose money was thus expended without their con-
sent. This is no place to examine the question of
ethics as regards the relations of the directorates of
these companies with their policy holders. It is enough
to point out that the officers of the companies regard-
ed the Republican party, the party of the greater cap-
italism, as primarily the protectors of the funds of the
companies. Mr. Geo. W. Perkins, chairman of the
finance committee of the New York Life Insurance
Company, justified the payment of such contributions
to political parties upon the grounds that "they be-
lieved that the integrity of our Bassets was thereby pro-
tected." It is evident therefore that the Republican
party was regarded by financial leaders as the politi-
cal protector of the great financial interests. It is ob-
vious also that breaches of law on behalf of the great
corporations were regarded leniently by the govern-
ment as is shown in the case of Paul Morton, for a
time Secretary of Navy. He, when traffic manager
of the Topeka, Atchison and Santa Fe Railway, had
confessedly broken the law against discriminating
rates by giving rebates. This fact did not, however,
affect his position as cabinet minister, nor did it inter-
fere with the continuance of his friendly political re-
lations with President Roosevelt. In fact the Presi-
dent rejected the advice of special counsel for the De-
partment of Justice that contempt proceedings should
be instituted against Morton, and the counsel there-
upon resigned. The use of free railroad passes both
186 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
by members of Congress and members of the various
state legislatures is very common, almost universal in
fact, although the Interstate Commerce Commission
has interpreted the law as forbidding the issuance of
free passes to anyone. The effect which the financial
power may have even over the Federal government is
shown in the fact that the powder trust has the gov-
ernment practically by the throat. The following
statement was recently made to a sub-committee of
the Senate committee on appropriations: "This great
country is wholly dependent in peace and war upon
the gigantic trust that has an absolute and exclusive
monopoly of the manufacture of all the powder that
the government requires for offensive and defensive
use." This is but one and very insignificant example
of the power exercised by these aggregations of capi-
tal. Against their attacks the government appears to
be practically helpless. Every legislative enactment
is vitiated by the antiquated and indeed practically
obsolete doctrines of property and contract, and the
law is interpreted by the courts in terms which were
applicable to earlier and elementary communities but
are incompatible with the present condition of eco-
nomic and social development.
The corruption of the state legislatures by the same
forces as have operated to destroy the virtue, never too
exalted, of the national government, is carried out by
practically the same forces. In the individual states
the great corporations are able to achieve their
purposes more easily and more thoroughly than in the
federal government. The limited area and the fact
that certain specific capitalistic interests are in control
of certain localities render the work of the organ-
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 187
izers of the capitalistic forces all the more simple. In
some localities the railroad interest is supreme, and
every department of the state government is practi-
cally under the control of this interest from the gov-
ernor to the merest justice of the peace. Both houses
of the legislature, the supreme court and the subsidiary
courts, in fact the entire machinery, move at the bid-
ding of the corporation in power. This is irrespective
of the particular party which happens to occupy the
seat of political authority at any given time, for the
agents of the corporations carry on their work in spite
of any artificial differences which political parties may
set up in order to absorb the public interest and to
draw away the attention of the electorate from the
real points at issue. Sugar interests, railroad interests,
Standard Oil, copper interests and a host of other great
capitalistic interests dominate entire localities and im-
pose their will upon the community. To add to the
incubus, the municipalities are likewise controlled by
minor trusts and monopolies which are no less severe
in their demands and corrupting in their influence than
are the larger interests which control the national and
state governments. As a matter of fact, the majority
of these smaller state and municipal corporations are
mere offshoots and dependencies of the larger na-
tional and, in the cases of the sugar trust and Stand-
ard Oil, at least, international concerns. Among these
smaller corporations may be mentioned those con-
trolling the electric and gas-lighting of cities, the tele-
phone service, the water-supply, sanitary reduction
works and other enterprises of like character. Besides
these may be enumerated contracting firms having a
monopoly of street making and the erection of public
188 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
buildings, large firms conducting staple industries in
certain localities, such as mining companies and large
manufacturers of textile fabrics and other commodities
requiring the employment of numbers of men, women
and children and consequently having dependent upon
them a host of retail dealers, saloon keepers and other
small tradesmen.
The tyranny of the transportation and irrigation
companies presses hard upon the farmers and fruit-
growers in the rural districts and their brother monop-
olies press the middle class, storekeepers and others in
the towns to the wall. The smaller manufacturers and
tradesmen whose economic competition with the trust
and larger capitalistic concerns is hopeless, also feel
the strain. Hence the demand has arisen from these
classes that the community should acquire those prop-
erties which are tersely but erroneously termed "pub-
lic utilities." As early as the populist movement a
demand was made by the farming class for the nation-
alization of the means of transportation. By the be-
ginning of the present century the cry for state and
municipal ownership of the "natural monopolies" had
developed a very considerable volume of public senti-
ment, and it became obvious that the tendency to a
sort of bourgeois collectivism would have a very
marked effect for a time at least upon American poli-
tics. It will be noted, however, that this movement
was in no sense revolutionary or even novel. The
rights of property were carefully guarded by its mid-
dle class instigators. Thus, although the property of
the great monopolistic corporations in control of the
aforesaid "public utilities" was held subject to char-
ters, which had been almost uniformly violated there
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 189
was little talk about preventing the companies from
operating further under the terms of charters which
they obviously did not respect. Such a course would
have been considered an invasion of property rights,
as generally understood, and as property-holders, even
small property-holders, they could not afford to jeop-
ardize their position. Moreover, the courts, as the
creatures of the dominant corporate forces, could not
have been found to warrant any such drastic proceed-
ings. There is little question, too, that the greater
capitalists would not oppose a limited amount of pub-
lic ownership carried out with due deference to vested
interest. This because the investment of their surplus
capital in government and municipal bonds would
bring them a rate of interest which they could not
afford to despise in view of the falling rate of interest
on invested capital due to the development of industry.
Besides, the public ownership contingent in politics
being composed of the middle and subjugated class
have neither the political ability nor the vital energy
necessary for the accomplishment of the task which
they have undertaken. The brains of the smaller mid-
dle class have already been bought by the greater capi-
talists. Talent employed in the service of the chiefs
of industry and finance can command better prices
than can be obtained in the uncertain struggle for
economic standing which members of the middle class
have to wage. The road to professional and political
preferment lies through the preserves of the ruling
oligarchy whose wardens allow no one to pass, save
servants in livery. Every material ambition of youth
is to be gratified in the service of the oligarchy which
shows, generally, an astuteness in the selection of tal-
190 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
ent that would do credit to a bureaucrat or a Jesuit.
Under these circumstances it is not strange that the
middle class has an ever increasing difficulty in find-
ing the force and talent necessary to maintain its
fight. The representatives gathered at conventions
which seek public ownership as a remedy will as a
rule be found to be men past middle life, who have
failed in their personal fight in life. In addition to
these, who are in a great number of cases lawyers in
search of clients and influence, the farming element is
represented. These farmers wish to compel the rail-
ways to lower the rates and thus enable them to dis-
pose of their crops the more readily. It will be ob-
served that this farming element contemplates no at-
tack upon the present system of property or the pres-
ent legal conceptions of contract. The farmers are sat-
isfied, as far as human beings are ever satisfied, with
existing conditions, if the transportation and irriga-
tion monopolies cease to press them too hard. They
will not tolerate an attack upon property notions be-
cause they are themselves owners of property; they
have but little sympathy with the labor movement,
because they are themselves employers of labor. In
the number of the active advocates of the public own-
ership party there are also to be found a sprinkling
of trades union leaders who are seeking political no-
tice or who are naturally anxious to ally themselves
with the class immediately above them. It will be
noted, however, that the great masses of the working
class hold themselves aloof from these middle class
demonstrations from an instinctive feeling that these
matters are of small concern to them. The instinct is
correct.
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 191
An interesting commentary upon the value of
the "public ownership" agitation is furnished in the
letter of resignation sent by Joseph Medill Patterson,
Commissioner of the Board of Public Works of Chi-
cago, to Mayor Dunne of that city in March, 1906.
In the course of that letter Mr. Patterson says: "I
used to believe that many of the ills under which the
nation suffers and by which it is threatened would be
prevented or avoided by the general inauguration of
the policy of public ownership of public utilities, but
my experience in the Department of Public Works
has convinced me that this policy would not be even
one-fourth of the way sufficient." He says further,
as showing the recognition in the mind of an honest
bourgeois official of the cogency of actual facts : "Ap-
plication to the state attorney evolved the fact that
our present laws passed in the interest of capital
make it no offence for capital, i. e. the privileged few,
to steal from the community, i. e., the unprivileged
many I realized, soon after I took office
that to fight privilege under the present laws would
be a jest. The cards were stacked in its favor from the
start; the dice were loaded and are loaded against
the community. Hence of the insignificant little bit
that I accomplished not one tithe of a tithe could have
been accomplished through the law." Crude as are
the above statements they are none the less valuable
on that account. The lesson learnt by the ex-Commis-
sioner of Public Works must be learnt by students
of politics and economics and by the leaders of popular
movements before any real progress can be made to-
wards the solution of the problems presented by the
growth of the greater capitalism.
192 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
The rule of the industrial lords has not only prac-
tically destroyed the middle class, but the working
class has found itself powerless to cope with the on-
slaughts of organized capital. In spite of the enor-
mous increase in the national wealth, the working
class during the last decade lost in economic position,
and again, as in the preceding epoch, the trades or-
ganizations were unable to prevent the decline in rela-
tive material wellbeing. The census returns make
clearly evident the loss which has been sustaind by
that class during the forty years since the close of the
Civil War, the period during which the greater capi-
talism has practically imposed its rule upon the nation.
In those forty years the values of manufactured pro-
ducts increased from $1,885,861,676 to $13,039,279,566.
In the same period the amount paid in wages rose from
$378,878,966 to $2,330,578,010. Wages therefore at
what may be called the practical beginning of the
greater capitalism in this country represented about
thirty per cent of the value of the product, and at the
end of forty years, during the greater part of which
time an active trades union agitation has been carried
on, they represented about seventeen per cent of the
total product. So that under what is after all the only
valid standard of comparison, the American laborer
has actually lost ground. When we compare the actual
average wage of forty years ago with that received at
the present day, the differences will be found to be
slight and the advantage in favor of the workingman
of to-day largely illusory. Thus, the average wage in
the decade ending 1870 was $377 ; in the decade ending
1880, $346 ; in the decade ending 1890, $445, and in the
decade ending 1900, $436. Against the apparent rise
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 193
in wages must be set off an increase in the prices of
staple commodities, which was most severely felt at
the close of the decade 1890-1900 and thereafter.
House-rent, butcher's meat, sugar, flour, and other
staples all rose in price, some of them very consid-
erably. At the present time, therefore, the lot of the
American proletariat is by no means relatively sat-
isfactory. Briskness of trade and the consequent com-
parative regularity of employment have contributed to
conceal the actual conditions with which the proleta-
rian will be confronted upon the inevitable ebb of
prosperity. The position of the American worker has
moreover suffered deterioration in other respects.
In spite of the enormous increase in the national
wealth which rose from $65,000,000,000 in 1890 to
$90,000,000,000 in 1900 the evils which are continually
associated with a low grade economic development
have actually grown in our midst. In the twenty
years from 1880 to 1900, child-labor had increased fifty
per cent, so that there are at least 1,700,000 children
in the country engaged in gainful occupations. Con-
servative estimates of a more recent date place the
number at more than two millions. About 125,000
young boys are employed in Pennsylvania, chiefly in
the mines. In the same state 4,000 girls are at work
and fifty per cent of these under thirteen years of age
are engaged in labor all night. In Georgia the condi-
tions of child labor in the textile factories are worse
than the same conditions were in Lancashire seventy
years ago, and there does not appear to be any public
sentiment in that community to which an appeal can
be made. There are no less than 5,000,000 women at
work in the United States, of whom 2,000,000 toil in
194 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
factories and mills. The employment of women,
which has been a constant phenomenon since the es-
tablishment of the machine industry and the growth
of the greater capitalism has assumed proportions
which are at the present time really threatening. The
American male proletarian grows less and less able
to maintain his family. This fact is tending to the
abandonment of families by their male heads and a
steady increase in the number of abandoned families
as well as to a growing disinclination on the part of
men to take upon themselves the burden of the married
state. The married proletarian is obliged to call upon
the assistance of his wife and children. So far has
this state of things proceeded that it has been actually
suggested that a solution of the problem of poverty
for the working class might be found in the employ-
ment of both husband and wife in remunerative toil.
All this is in spite of the fact that American industries
are most carefully protected against competition with
the "pauper labor of Europe." The intensity of mod-
ern labor too requires an increasing sacrifice of the
reserve vital resources of the individual worker so that
the age limit of employment tends ever lower. A
proletarian has fewer chances of obtaining employ-
ment after he has reached the age of forty than here-
tofore, and in some industries, notably the steel in-
dustry, men of thirty-five do not easily find work. Sav-
ings bank deposits are frequently taken as a criterion
of the conditionof the working class and the greatly
increased amounts of such deposits are considered as
testimony to the prosperity of that class. This theory,
however, though long disputed by the exponents of
the proletariat, has received a severe blow recently
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 195
at the hands of a practical expert. J. Hansen Rhoades,
President of the Greenwich Savings Bank of New
York, says in the Financial Supplement of the New
York Times for 1896: "The huge deposits in the u sav-
ings banks of the State of New York indicate a sus-
pension of development in building and the holding
of money for the time being as well as a disposition
to use the banks for investment on good interest."
He also speaks of the "constant and increasing pres-
sure on the part of that portion of the public well able
to take care of their own property to open accounts
with the savings banks." From the proletarian stand-
point, the following statement from the New York
"People" is to the same effect: "The large amounts of
deposits is no evidence of the workingman's pros-
perity. Originally the savings bank was the working-
man's bank. To-day the oft repeated claim that the
large savings bank deposits are an evidence and meas-
ure of working people's prosperity is a myth." The
futility of the trades union movements as at present
conducted in so far as that movement undertakes to
advance or even to maintain the position of the work-
ing class is practically established. The proletarian
has been whipped from pillar to post, in spite of his
unions, which have, in many respects, been actual im-
pediments to him, since they have operated in some
measure to conceal from him the fact that he is losing
ground. The machine industry in the hands of the
greater capitalism has so far economically vanquished
the laboring class in this country. The political and
material advantages of accumulated wealth have been
too much for the proletarian. It must be candidly ad-
mitted, too, that the latter has by no means done as
196 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
well as he might have done, even with all the odds
against him. The working class has so far produced
few leaders worthy of the name, and such as have
stood out from the rank and file have in many cases
shamelessly and unconscionably abandoned their work
and have accepted political preferment even if they
have not taken actual money from the hands of the
enemies of their class. The history of organized labor
in the United States has so far, it must be confessed,
shown little superiority to that of organized capitalism.
It is in both cases a sordid and dreary tale, and, in the
case of organized labor, is unrelieved to a disappoint-
ing degree by the heroism and sentiment which have
played such a conspicuous part in the labor movements
of other countries. The cynicism of a civilization based
on cash seems to have found its way into the bones of
both capitalist and proletarian. The lingering remains
of sentiment are apparently confined to those members
of the smaller middle class who still persist in surviv-
ing with all the odds against them.
The weakness of this latterday trades unionism is
apparent in the fact that the employing class now felt
itself sufficiently strong not only to defend itself
against the actions of the unions, but also to commence
aggressive operations against the organized labor
movement. An organized agitation sprang up in favor
of the "open shop." This term is applied to the prin-
ciple of allowing trades unionists and non-unionists
to work together without discrimination. Such was
the politic language in which the demands of the em-
ployers were framed, but it is obvious even to a casual ob-
server of social phenomena that such a condition of
affairs would have resulted in the extinction of the
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 197
unions and would have placed organized labor com-
pletely at the mercy of the employers. The latter made
a plea of individualism and the right to make separate
contracts with individual workmen. The petty bour-
geois and reactionary character of the "open shop"
movement is clearly seen in this fact. As we shall
see later the greater capitalists had a much more
sagacious view of the situation created by modern
conditions. The chief organization made for the pur-
pose of advocating and righting for the "open shop"
principle was called the National Association of Man-
ufacturers. To supplement the work of this another
organization called the Citizens' Industrial Association
was afterwards formed. This second organization was
made for the rough work of actual conflict with the
unions and consisted of associations of employers
formed for purposes of mutual protection and encour-
agement and to render more easy the furnishing of
financial aid required during times of strike and stress.
To what length this organization, which is more gen-
erally known as the "Citizens' Alliance," would ven-
ture to proceed may be seen from a glance at its ac-
tivities in Colorado. Its immediate success may be
learnt from the report of David M. Parry, President of
the organization, in November, 1904. In this he stated
that within the year one thousand factories had opened
their doors to workmen without regard to their mem-
bership in unions. All over the country, and in the
West, particularly, this association made itself felt.
It won some victories and might have accomplished
more, had it not been for the general cowardice and
lack of real organizing force of the class from which
it originated and of which it was the representative.
198 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
As it is, in spite of some local victories the organiza-
tion does not appear to have the element of real
strength. Trade jealousies and the fear on the part
of retailers and small manufacturers lest they should
offend numerically large bodies like the trades unions
and earn their ill will have had considerable influence.
Besides this movement could not escape the very es-
sential drawback of all petty bourgeois movements
that its membership is made up of individuals in a per-
petual state of economic competition with each other.
All these factors have conspired against the perma-
nance of the Citizens' Alliance movement. Perhaps
another and most important reason why the Citizens'
Alliance will be found wanting in effectiveness as an
ally of the capitalistic regime consists in the fact that
wherever it has gained any particular headway, the
result of its efforts has been to drive the workingclass
into independent class politics. Nothing that produces
such an effect can be regarded with any favor by the
employing class and the strenuous activities of the
Citizens' Alliance are not likely to meet with much
favor at the hands of those who are occupied in fur-
thering the interests of the oligarchy. However,
apart from the actual value of the Citizens' Alliance as
a fighting organization, the mere fact of its creation
as an active and aggressively offensive force, is proof
of the contempt into which the tactics of the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor had brought the working
class economic movement.
Another sign of the determination to give battle
to the trades unionists is to be seen in the organization
of "strike-breakers" or "free companies" as the}'- are
sometimes called after their medieval prototypes.
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 199
These consist of bands of men regularly organized to
proceed to any part of the country where their services
may be demanded to take the places of men on strike.
They are, in one sense, workingmen, but they are,
generally speaking, a low variety of the proletariat.
They are ready to sell their labor for the use of the
capitalist against the recognized fighting force of the
working class. There are said to be two bureaus in
New York for the registration and organization of
strike breakers. They have been thus described by
a journalist: "Numbers of the adventure loving men
are well to do, among them are some of really good
education: as a class they average high as men to be
depended upon to take risks and obey orders. Most
of them are glad to leave good employment when a
call comes, for the love of adventure irresistibly draws
them." (Saturday Evening Post, November 5th, 1904).
When the above was written, the statement was made
that there were fifteen thousand men enrolled in New
York who were ready to take strike-breakers' pay. It
is very doubtful if any reliance can be placed upon
these figures. On the contrary, there is every reason
to think that they are grossly exaggerated. With re-
spect to the character of the men engaged in this oc-
cupation, they are by no means the fire-eating para-
gons so graphically described. On the contrary, they
are for the most part incompetent and degenerate
ne'er-do-wells, whose presence, under the protection of
the police and militia, only serves to make a show of
activity in the works where they are employed. That
there are desperadoes and ruffians in their ranks to
whom murder is not by any means detestable is true
enough. It is also unquestionable that there is a cer-
200 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
tain proportion of good workmen whom the cupidity
and stupidity of the leaders of the trades unions have
compelled to "scab" for very livelihood's sake. In
the formation of strike-breakers' organization, the
capitalists have taken advantage of the weaknesses and
sins of the present trades union movement. Other-
wise such a project would have been impossible of
accomplishment, even to the limited degree in which
it is now being carried on. Twenty years ago, as has
been seen, the capitalists hired mercenary bands of
Pinkertons to achieve their purpose in times of strike
withal ; now an attempt is being made to supply the
enemies of the industrial proletariat from the ranks
of the industrial proletariat itself, and to crush labor-
ers organized under proletarian auspices by means of
laborers organized under capitalistic control. One of
the most notorious leaders of the "strike-breakers,"
Farley, has declared that during the nine years that
he has been in the strike-breaking business, he has
had from thirty to forty thousand men on his payroll.
No particular reliance can, however, be placed on these
statements. How far the strike-breaking enterprise is
a practical success must necessarily be merely sup-
position except to those actually engaged in its organ-
ization, and they are not likely to disclose its secrets.
It is evident, however, that any such organized attempt
to supply the places of strikers must tend to make the
operation of a strike confined to one craft or to a single
locality all the more difficult, especially when coupled
with the existence of a vast chronically unemployed
mass which necessity drives to "scab" if assured 01
sufficient protection from the onslaughts of strikers.
Besides these active fighting agencies against
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 201
trades unionism, the capitalistic organizations also de-
vised an intelligence bureau for the purpose of spying
upon and keeping in touch with the leaders and plans
of the trades unions. One company for example call-
ing itself "The Corporation Auxiliary Company" un-
dertook to provide men for the purpose of gaining ac-
cess to the unions and practicing espionage in the
interests of the employers.
All this aggressive action on the part of the capi-
talists did not fail to affect seriously the power and
effectiveness of the pure and simple trades unions.
Their value as a defensive means was much impaired
and such reputation as still remained to them as offen-
sive weapons was practically destroyed. Vast num-
bers of men during 1903 and 1904 returned to work
under the conditions of the "open shop." In one case,
that of the International Harvester Company at Chi-
cago, seven thousand men went back beaten after a
strike. In the car shops of the Pullman Company two
thousand men agreed to accept a cut of from ten to
twenty per cent. About the same time the Inland
Steel Company, the Illinois Steel Company, the Re-
public Iron and Steel Company, and the concerns in
the Chicago Metal Trades Associations succeeded in
cutting wages, although the cost of living, as has been
already pointed out had advanced considerably. About
the same time the Carnegie Steel Company at Pitts-
burg issued an order to. its superintendents instructing
them not to give employment to men under thirty-five
years of age in some departments, and fixed the age-
limit at forty in others. A curious example of the
perhaps unconscious flunkeyism of the scientists with
respect to the requirements of the industrial capi-
202 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
talists is to be found in the fact that a year or two
thereafter a certain Dr. Osier, a doctor of medicine of
considerable repute, declared that forty years marked
the practical limit of human usefulness. This remark
finds a curious echo in Bernard Shaw's ridiculous
statement in "Man and Superman" that every man
over forty is a scoundrel. The Carnegie Company may
therefore claim to have the support of both physician and
satirist.
The fact that the trades unions had practically doubled
their members between the years 1900 and 1904 had
apparently no effect in stopping the force of the at-
tack. An interesting example of the speed with which
the courts respond to the needs of the capitalist class
is seen in the decisions of the Supreme Court of the
states of Illinois and Wisconsin to the effect that every
agreement for the exclusive employment of trades
union members is void. The bench was quick to take
cognizance of the claims of the doctrine of the "open
shop"as soon as it became apparent that its supporters
could show any positive gains.
It will be remarked that while the greater capital-
ism derived such benefits as could be obtained from
the losses of the trades unions in their struggles with
the organizations and associations already mentioned,
its chiefs were much wiser in their generation than the
petty bourgeois who opposed the trades union move-
ment. They recognized in the trades unions a force
which they might use to their own advantage by the
employment of proper diplomacy. The susceptibilty
of the trades union chiefs to flattery and in some cases
to corruption suggested a remedy superior to the use
of force and disruption. It was obvious that labor
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 203
organization in some form or other was an absolute
necessity against which it were folly to contend. To
disrupt a labor organization, to get the "open shop"
even, did not touch the fringe of the question. The
men would certainly organize themselves afresh, for
their association in daily toil imposed upon them the
necessity of such organization. The idea that men
were employed as single and individual units was the
crassest stupidity contradicted by the very organiza-
tion rendered necessary by the machine organization.
The greater capitalism, with all its articulations and
ramifications, its development as a social entity, its
subjugation of the individual pants to the necessities
of the organism, had been compulsorily brought into
being as the result of economic forces. The chiefs,
therefore, of the greater industry could well under-
stand the necessity of labor organization. They were
well content to have labor organized but it was their
aim as statesmen of the capitalistic system to see that
such organization of labor was subsidiary and inci-
dental to the organization of the greater capitalism.
To persuade the labor movement that it could work
alongside of and in conjunction with the capitalist
organizations was a feat worthy of the genius of the
greatest of the capitalist leaders. The individual mer-
chant or manufacturer could not afford to take this
view. His existence was threatened by the great
combinations. They, by virtue of their wealth, their
superior equipment, their national orgainzation and
their influence and association with the transportation
monopolies, which enabled them to secure a discrimi-
nation of rates in their favor, were forever impinging
upon the smaller individual producers. The latter were
204: THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
ground between the upper and nether millstones. They
could not afford the loss involved in a protracted
strike and any gam on the part of their laborers
implied a devouring of that small margin of profit
which was constantly threatened by the encroachments
of the corporations. The greater capitalism proposed
to accelerate the work of destroying the individual
small producers and traders with the help of the
trades unions.
A tendency had been noticeable for some time on the
part of the trades unionists and great capitalists nota-
bly in the railroad and coal industries, to come together
and make an agreement with respect to wages and
hours. The employers were thereupon assured of im-
munity from strikes and the disturbance of their busi-
ness. The particular craft also which profited by this
agreement could always plead its contract with the em-
ployer as an excuse for not coming to the assistance
of other crafts which might be involved in a dispute
with that particular employer. The principle of "col-
lective bargaining," it will be observed, brought much
power to the trades union chiefs and at the same time
tended to break down the wall of antagonism which
naturally exists between the employing and the work-
ing-class. From this point there was but a step to
closer association between the lords of capitalism and
the leaders of the labor organizations. Hanna had the
boldness and the ability to take the step and by form-
ing a joint society of laborers and capitalists to involve
the latter with the former and to prevent the devel-
opment of the warfare which threatened the country
by their continued antagonism. To this end he or-
ganized the National Civic Federation, a body in which
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 205
representative capitalists and trades union leaders held
joint conference. Its object as stated by Hanna was
to create a better feeling between employer and em-
ployed and to prevent industrial warfare. This, if
carried out, would on the one hand result in the sub-
ordination of the trades union movement to the great-
er capitalism, and on the other the prevention of what
Hanna particularly dreaded, the formation of an inde-
pendent political labor movement. A notable result of
this action has been the tendency on the part of the
chief political representative of the greater capitalism
to intervene in labor disputes. President Roosevelt,
for example, brought pressure to bear in the settlement
of the great coal-strike. When in the spring of 1906
another coal strike was threatened, he wrote a personal
letter to John Mitchell, the leader of the miners, and
based his interference upon the ground that Mitchell
was a member of the Civic Federation. Trades union-
ists and capitalists met at the same table and hostili-
ties were apparently smothered in social intercourse.
It is obvious however that the losers by this were the
trades unionists who were subjected to much loss of
dignity. They perhaps found some compensation in the
association for there seems to have been a sort of epi-
demic of snobbery among the union leaders at that
period. As a matter of fact the National Civic Fed-
eration was the most deadly and insidious foe that
manaced the labor movement. All the active opposi-
tion of the various organizations heretofore examined
becomes insignificant in comparison with the danger to
an honest and free development of the proletarian or-
ganizations which lay in the flattery and seduction of
its chiefs. The effect of this amalgamation of trades
206 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
unionism with the greater capitalism has been thus
described by a very competent and clear observer of
labor phenomena:
"The corrupting and deadening influence of the Civic Federa-
tion alliance is spreading like a cankering sore ever into new
fields. It is now plainly evident that the only road to preference
and power within the American Federation of Labor lies through
the capitalist-controlled channels of the Civic Federation. It is
a spectacle unique in the annals of labor. Never before were
the politics of the organization of labor determined around the
mahogany tables of the master class." ("Plain Words to Social-
ists" "Industrial Worker," March, 1906.)
There can be little question that the maintenance of
these semi-official relations with the greater capitalism
must in the long run tend to emasculate and destroy the
force of the labor-movement. An injury is thus inflicted
upon the working class, which is in the position of a liti-
gant whose advocate is indulging in independent friendly
approachment with the enemy. Social development,
which requires the free play of all social and economic
forces, is impeded. Of course, the institution of the Civic
Federation met with the approval of the ethicists and the
Falklands of the present day. These people are like
Falkland, anxious to maintain an artificial status quo,
and this cannot and, indeed, ought not to be maintained.
The result would be a permanent oligarchy resting on a
basis of proletarian retainers. The great mass of the
working class, denied admittance to the favored and pam-
pered unions, would be in much the same position as
were the Roman farmers and artisans when the forma-
tion of the latifundia and the employment of slave labor
on a large scale had deprived them of their landed pos-
sessions and their ability to make a living as free work-
men. It is clear that no social progress is involved in
THE PERIOD OF COTRUPTION 207
such a condition of affairs. A hard and fast "industrial
feudalism" of the kind here suggested would result in
national deterioration and decay. That there is a ten-
dency on the part of the younger generation of Ameri-
can greater capitalists to regard themselves somewhat in
the light of members of the Roman aristocracy is be-
yond question, and that the popularity of the works of
Nietzsche in that class has contributed to as well as fur-
nished evidence of that state of mind appears to be very
probable. Given an exceedingly wealthy and politically
powerful class, on the one hand, and on the other hand an
organized proletariat whose leaders are willing and able
to prostitute the working class movement in the interests
of that wealthy class, and are at the same time eager to
advance their own material and political well-being, and
it will be readily seen that the conjunction of such pheno-
mena is very threatening, not only to the future develop-
ment of social and personal liberty in the country, but
also to the liberties of the citizens at the present time.
The future of the United States as a democracy rests in
the hand of the working class. The middle-class has,
as has already been shown, failed to hold its own, and is
incapable of further serious struggle. Unless the organ-
ized working class keeps up a ceaselessly persistent fight,
the liberties which are supposed to be the necessary con-
comitants of a democracy must be swept away.
As an example of the results of this inefficient and
truckling trades union policy, the behavior of the domi-
nant faction of capitalists in the State of Colorado may
be mentioned. In each one of the periods of capitalistic
development in the United States, some conspicuously
illegal and outrageous attack has been made upon organ-
ized labor. In each one of these instances the safe-
208 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
guards which the law and the constitution have wrapped
around the individual citizen have been torn away, and
the members of labor organizations left at the mercy of
their enemies. In the case of the Chicago labor troubles
in 1887, which culminated in the hanging of several
prominent agitators in behalf of an eight hour day, the
principle of trial by jury was violated, and the illegality
was so notorious that a subsequent Governor of Illinois
released such of the convicted men as still remained in
prison. In the American Railway Union strike of 1894,
the principle of trial by jury was altogether denied, and
new and strange legal means were employed to secure
the conviction and puishment of the leaders of the work-
ing class. But in Colorado in 1904, the most elementary
human rights were altogether disregarded, and men were
subjected to outrages unheard of, except in a state of ac-
tual war, and only then, under conditions hardly com-
patible with the usages of modern warfare.
In the Colorado troubles a conspicuous part was taken
by the Citizens' Alliance, and a brief outline of its ac-
tions will afford an illustration of the daring and bru-
tality of that organization when circumstances combine
to give it a position of power. A strike of miners and
smelters occurred in that state. The Citizens' Alliance
which was composed of the dominant capitalistic inter-
ests, railroads, mining and smelting, together with rep-
resentatives of the "respectable" classes generally un-
dertook to employ its social and financial resources in
crushing out the strike. The whole political force of the
state was at its disposal. These it employed in such a
fashion as to nullify law, and to raise the question which
almost passed into a slang expression, "Is Colorado in
the United States?" Independent mine owners who em-
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 209
ployed union labor and acceded to the demands of the or-
ganization were driven out of business. The militia was
called out without the least excuse and employed in the
most brutal fashion. The property of individual citi-
zens and of trades unions was destroyed forcibly and
without any process of law; domiciles were invaded and
searched without warrant; attacks upon the virtue of
the wives and daughters of the union men occurred ; men
were thrown into prison without warrant of law and kept
there without charges being filed against them; citizens
were forcibly placed on trains and deported from the
state under military escort; they were set down miles
from anywhere and compelled to walk for refusing to
abandon their unions; they were enclosed in bull-pens
and tied to posts; prisoners were not even brought to
trial, but were dismissed at the whim of the Citizens'
Alliance without any chance of legal remedy for the out-
rages to which they had been subjected ; officials were de-
prived of their offices by force and substitutes put in
their places ; judges who opposed the Citizens' Alliance,
endeavored to set the machinery of the law in motion
against these illegalities were driven off by mobs of
militia and armed rapscallions. When the conflict was
over and the unions had been crushed an attempt was
made in some instances to substantiate the charges
against the members of the unions, but in every case the
prosecution failed miserably, and in very few instances
did a trial take place. It is a striking commentary upon
the condition of trades unionism throughout the country
that these outrages could continue unavenged. With all
its numerical force, the labor movement of the United
States showed its lack of the essentials of solidarity and
its incompetence. It must ever remain a disgrace to the
210 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
American labor movement that these Colorado miners
suffered these outrages and indignities. No more com-
plete commentary could be written upon the recent man-
agement of the trades union movement than the simple
story of the reign of the Citizens' Alliance in Colorado.
Besides, it will hardly be controverted that the tame-
ness shown at the annual conventions of the American
Federation of Labor, taken in conjunction with the lack
of spirit displayed in the Colorado affair, are evidences
of tendencies to decay in that body.
Among other factors which had their influence in
disheartening the trades union movement, in its pure
and simple form, may be noted the famous Taff Vale
decision in England. This held the funds of a union liable
for damages inflicted upon an employer by members of
a union during a strike. The effect of this has been so
marked that an effort has been made to offset it by fresh
legislation in the British Parliament. A law suggested
will be directed to the taking away of a right of action
for the recovery of damages sustained by any person or
persons by reason of the action or actions of a trade
union. Although, the Taff Vale decision has, up to the
present not been followed in this country there remains
an ever present dread on the part of the unionists that it
may become American law, and it is easily seen that
under our system of government such a decision cannot
be by any means so easily remedied as under the Brit-
ish system of parliamentary supremacy.
The ill-feeling between the unions and the militia
has continued to grow, and the recent employment of
the "citizen soldiery," particularly during 1903, has in-
creased the dislike. This tendency to conflict between
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 211
unionists and militiamen has made itself felt in states as
wide apart as Pennsylvania and Texas.
But with all the failure of the trades union move-
ment, the working class shovyed an ever increasing ten-
dency to enter the field of independent politics, and to
shift the centre of conflict from the economic to the po-
litical field. This tendency was precisely the opposite
of that contemplated or desired by the industrial lords.
Hanna, writing in the National Magazine for January,
190-i, made use of the following words: "The menace
of to-day, as I view it, is the spread of the spirit of so-
cialism one of those things which is only half under-
stood, and which is more or less used to inflame the popu-
lar mind against the individual initiative and personal
energy which has hitherto been the very essence of Ameri-
can progress." That this apprehension was justified ap-
peared in the following November, when over three hun-
dred thousand votes were polled for Eugene V. Debs as
presidential candidate of the Socialist Party. This party
had succeeded in establishing a propaganda of very con-
siderable scope and effectiveness throughout the country.
Its papers increased in number and influence, and the
reprints of German and English socialistic writings which
had formerly furnished the chief literary material of the
movement were augmented by matter of home produc-
tion bearing more closely upon distinctly American con-
ditions. Speakers multiplied, and the last vestige of for-
eign initiative vanished. Formerly the movement had
been distinctly exotic ; now a noticeably indigenous move-
ment began to make itself obvious. This American
movement is more vigorous, and in some senses more
extreme than any which has hitherto appeared in Europe.
The American conditions have naturally produced this
212 THE RISE OF THE AMERICAN PROLETARIAN
result. The vestiges of European feudalism still neces-
sitate a certain "liberalism," and afford a neutral ground
which can be occupied at least temporarily by the work-
ing and middle-classes. In this country, liberalism has
had its day, and its ineffectiveness and self-destruction
are very obvious. There is no middle ground, the work-
ing class is obliged to lock horns with the greater capi-
talism. Directly this condition arises, we are face to
face, not with democratic reform, but with social revo-
lution. The invasion of the field of politics by working-
men who intend to possess themselves of the government
in order to carry out an economic programme which
necessitates the continual dispossession of the capitalists
of that which they have hitherto considered to be law-
fully their own implies the overthrow of the present sys-
tem revolution in short. Herein is the very important
distinction between what may be called the reform and
the socialist movements. The former attacks the power
of the greater capitalist, but attributes it to illegality.
It would enforce the laws and thus, as it thinks, restore
the pristine virtues of the American democracy. This is
in fact the basis upon which nearly all latter day jour-
nalists and magazine writers who endeavor to supply
the popular demand for attacks upon the greater capital-
ism base their arguments. The Socialist however de-
nounces the entire body of law upon which the modern
state rests. He considers it to be founded upon obsolete
and worn out notions, false conceptions, in short, of so-
ciety. These arose under conditions differing entirely
from those which prevail to-day. So that to-day, as in
the latter part of the eighteenth century, there is a con-
flict between two distinct and incompatible views of
law and society. These views must necessarily clash.
THE PERIOD OF CORRUPTION 213
There is no need to abolish the law which established
itself upon the economic necessities of the founders of
the Republic. It has already been abolished. It suffered
the death penalty at the hands of the greater capitalism
as those who trusted in its efficacy are compelled to ad-
mit. The Socialist movement, which is merely the po-
litical expression of the aspirations of the working class
is therefore the product of the material conditions which
have developed the greater capitalism. It is thus a
natural phenomenon and not as the opponents of the
dominant greater capitalism as well as the middle class
writers and politicians endeavor to convey an artificial
and imported agitation. It will be remarked that in Great
Britain where the socialist movement was for many
years exotic, there has been of late a very marked ten-
dency in the same direction as in the United States.
The labor vote at the last English elections amounted
to about the same as the presidential vote at the last gen-
eral election in this country. We may therefore consider
it a probability, a certainty indeed, that the Socialist vote
will continue to grow, and that the proletarian movement,
whose feeble beginning have been traced in the preced-
ing pages will assume an ever increasing and finally
dominant importance in the politics of the country.
OF '
UNIVEFT
OF
ANCIENT SOCIETY
A Revolutionary Book Which Proves that Wealth and
Poverty Are NOT Natural and Necessary
But a Passing Incident in the History
of the Human Race.
The wage system, under which the capitalist takes
all the earnings of the wage worker except a bare
living, is very new. In most countries it is less than a
hundred years old; even in England, where it first
started, it is only two or three hundred years old.
Before it was the feudal system, where most of the
people were serfs, working on land belonging to a
lord, and giving the lord most of what they earned in
return for permission to stay on the land. But that
system started not much more than a thousand years
ago.
Before that was the system of chattel slavery, where
those who did the work were the personal property
of the owning class, and could be flogged, tortured or
killed if they did not labor in a way to satisfy their
masters. But that system is only a few thousand years
old. What happened before that?
Not long ago there was a very simple and conclu-
sive answer to this question. It was that Adam was
created exactly 4,004 years before the Christian era,
so that there was no time before the beginning of
slavery to account for.
But the study of the rocks that make up the earth's
crust has within the last fifty years proved beyond a
doubt that man has lived on the earth for a million
years, perhaps much longer, but at least this length
of time.
11 ANCIENT SOCIETY
How did men live through all those countless years ?
It is a great question, and in answer to it a great book
has been written.
There is just one American who is recognized by the
universities of Europe as one of the world's great
Scientists. That American is Lewis H. Morgan, and
his title to greatness is found in a book first published
thirty years ago. Its title is : Ancient Society ; or, Re-
searches in the Lines of Human Progress; From Sav-
agery Through Barbarism to Civilization.
There had been previous studies of the life of man
before the days of written history, but Morgan's work
revolutionized this science as completely as Darwin's
works revolutionized biology or Marx's "Capital" revo-
lutionized economics.
The underlying principle of Morgan's book is the
law of historical materialism familiar to International
socialists, namely, that always and everywhere the way
people have supplied themselves with food and the other
necessities of life has determined their way of living and
their way of thinking.
Recognizing this principle, Morgan divides the va-
rious stages of human development, according to the
development reached in industrial arts, into savagery,
barbarism and civilization. Again he subdivides sav-
agery into its lower, middle and upper status, and di-
vides the period of barbarism in the same manner. The
first part of the book is taken up with this classification,
and with a study of the arts of life as developed in the
various social stages.
Part II of the book is on the Growth of the Idea of
Government. It is a clear, simple, fascinating story of
the little groups of equals which were the first expres-
sion of man's social life on earth, ages before the idea
ANCIENT SOCIETY ill
of property or of ruler and ruled had taken root. And
it tells of the causes which finally brought about radi-
cal changes in these groups, and prepared the way for
a State to guard the interests of the rising ruling class
and keep the working class in subjection.
Part III tells of the Growth of the Idea of the Fam-
ily, and it is the classic statement of a long series of
vitally important facts without which no intelligent
discussion of the "Woman Question" is possible. It
traces the successive forms of marriage that have
existed, each corresponding to a certain industrial
stage. It proves that the laws governing the relations
of the sexes have constantly been changing in response
to industrial changes, and thus explains why it is that
they are changing still. It shows the historical reason
for the "double standard of morals" for men and
women, over which amiable reformers have wailed in
vain. It points the way to a cleaner, freer, happier life
for women in the future, through the triumph of the
working class. All this is shown indirectly through his-
torical facts; the reader is left to draw his own con-
clusions.
Part IV tells of the Growth of the Idea of Property,
and is more distinctly related than any other portion of
the book to the usual propaganda of socialism. The
greatest obstacle to the spread of socialist ideas is the
dull, hopeless conviction on the part of the mass of
toilers that things always have gone on about as now
with rich and poor, owners and workers, exploiters and
exploited, and that therefore they probably will go on
so till the end of time. But this is a terrible mistake,
or rather it was a mistake. It has been so thoroughly
disproved that to repeat it now is a damnable lie. Here
in this closing part of Morgan's work are the facts
which prove it to be a lie.
Morgan's Ancient Society was published thirty years
ago. A generation of scientists have fought over it,
and the author's position has been sustained at every
essential point. But the book has not yet been read by
the class to whom it means the most, the class of those
who live by their work.
Iv ANCIENT SOCIETY
The price has always been four dollars a copy, a price
no laborer could afford to pay. Consequently the book,
while famous among European scholars, has been un-
known among American workingmen.
The copyright has now expired, and a socialist co-
operative publishing house is publishing a new edition,
from new plates, at a price which is not intended to
bring in profits, but to give the widest possible circu-
lation to the book.
There are 586 pages, in type like that used in this
circular. The paper and binding are equal to that in
our edition of Marx's Capital, the style of which has
given universal satisfaction. We have fixed the retail
price at $1.50. But our co-operative stockholders get
the usual discount, that is to say, they buy the book
at 90 cents postpaid, or 75 cents if they pay the cost of
transportation.
To introduce the book at once to the widest possible
circle of readers we are making a special offer that sur-
passes any we have ever before been able to make :
For $1.50 we will mail Morgan's Ancient Society and
will also send the International Socialist Review for
one year. The price of the Review alone is a dollar a
year, with no discount even to stockholders. This
combination offer is open to stockholders and non-
stockholders alike. There is no profit in filling orders
at this price, but there is any amount of propaganda in
it. You will think so when you have read the book.
Extra copies of this leaflet will be mailed free to any
one who will promise to distribute them. Don't ask
for more than you can put where they will probably be
read.
CHARLES H. KERR. & COMPANY
(Co-Operative)
264 Kinzie Street, Chicago
CAPITAL
A Critique of Political Economy
By KARL MARX
The Chicago Daily News of Feb. 12, 1907, says:
At last, after a lapse of years which is fairly
astounding, the American reading public is to have
its opportunity of reading the complete theory of
Karl Marx as elaborated by Frederick Engels, and
the first volume, containing the stated theory of
capitalist production, appears as the first of four
thick crown octavos. The translation is in the
main that of Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling
from the third German edition, but, in order to make it
fully authoritative, it has been revised and amplified from
the fourth German edition by Ernest Untermann. The
well-known German title, "Das Kapital," appears in Eng-
lish as "Capital: A Critique of Political Economy," this
specific volume being designated as "The Process of Cap-
italist Production." Of the style preserved in the transla-
tion into English too much can hardly be said. It is un-
usually bright and interesting, with evidences of humor
and good-natured satire on nearly every page. Consid-
ering that it is a most serious treatise on political econ-
omy, "the dismal science" of Carlyle, and that it appeared
originally in German, not a language which lends itself
to a sprightly treatment of ponderous topics in most
hands, the result is readable to a degree. The novice may
therefore approach one of the most influential works of
modern times without fear of being put to sleep by either
the manner or the matter. For the rest, the print is large
and unworn, the paper good and the book as compact as
its size permits. The publishers deserve all praise for their
enterprise.
Volume I, described in this notice, was published in De-
cember, 1906. Volume II, "The Process of Capitalist
Circulation," translated by Ernest Untermann, is in press
as this pamphlet is being printed, and should be ready
about April 15, 1907. Price, $2.00 per volume, including
postage.
Two Books By Karl Marx
The Civil War in France. By Karl Marx, with an
Introduction by Frederick Engels. Paper, 25 cents.
On the 28th of May (1871), the last of the combatants
of the Commune were crushed by superior numbers on
the heights of Belleville, and two days later, on the 30th,
Marx read to the General Council of the International
the pamphlet in question, in which the historical signifi-
cance of the Paris Commune is presented in short, power-
ful, and in such incisive and, above all, such true phrases
as have never again been equaled in the whole of the ex-
ttnsive literature on the subject Engels' Introduction.
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. By
Karl Marx. Paper, 25 cents.
This is a history of the revolution of 1848 and the events
from that time to 1851, when Louis Napoleon, by the
famous "coup d'etat," established himself as emperor of
France. Marx shows the economic causes and the con-
flicting class interests underlying the events related by
conventional historians. These two works by the great-
est of socialist writers are unique in the light thrown on
the struggles of the new-born proletariat of Europe
against superior force, and they are full of lessons for
the coming conflict. Moreover, Marx's method of deal-
ing with history and current events in these works is
the best possible introduction to the essential socialist
principle of historical materialism.
The Landmarks of Scientific Socialism (Anti-Dueh-
rrng). By Frederick Engels. Translated by Aus-
tin Lewis. Cloth, $1.00.
The Anti-Duehring is a polemical writing by Enge'.s,
and although not generally known among English-speak-
ing Socialists is in many respects the most valuable of
Engels' works. It is the reply of the great student to a
book issued by a university teacher, Eugene Duehring.
This writer fancied that he had discovered a new brand of
socialism, which differed in essential respects from the
scientific socialism of which Marx and Engels were the
exponents. Engels traverses the theories propounded by
Duehring and in order to confute them is obliged to state
the scientific socialist position. This is what makes the
book so useful and indeed fascinating to the socialist stu-
dent It contains passages of the utmost value. Engels'
clarity of reasoning is nowhere more apparent than
in this volume. The light which he sheds upon the
theories of Marx and himself is illuminative of much
which must of necessity be obscure to those who
are only familiar with the better known socialist
works. This particular translation, and it is the
only English translation, has aimed at presenting
Engels' positive theories and to that end much
of the somewhat savage polemical writing has been omit-
ted. The book is improved thereby, as much of this writ-
ing is evanescent and a real detriment to the work as a
whole. In it the philosophical basis of socialism receives
a consideration which can not be obtained elsewhere. The
dialectic philosophy which it is so hard for the average
English reading student to become acquainted with is ex-
pounded. The treatment of economics and the exposition
of the surplus value theory are masterly. Never has the
socialist case appeared so strong as in this discussion.
The Ancient Lowly: A History of the Ancient Work-
ing People from the Earliest Times to the Adop-
tion of Christianity by Constantin. By C. Osborne
Ward. Cloth, two volumes, 690 and 716 pages.
Each, $2.00. Either volume sold separately.
Before written history began, society was already di-
vided into exploiting and exploited classes, master and
slave, lord and subject, ruler and ruled. And from the
first the ruling class has written the histories, written
them in accordance with its own interests and from its
own point of view.
To arrive at the real story of the life of the oppressed
classes in ancient times was a task of almost incredible
difficulties. To this work Osborne Ward gave a lifetime
of diligent research, and his discoveries are embodied in
the two volumes entitled The Ancient Lowly. He has
gathered together into a connected narrative practically
everything pertaining to his subject in the published liter-
ature of Greece and Rome, including in his inquiry many
rare works only to be consulted in the great European li-
braries. But he did not stop here. Many of the most
important records of the ancient labor unions are pre-
served only in the form of stone tablets that have with-
stood the destructive forces of the centuries and the author
traveled on foot many hundreds of miles around the Medi-
terranean Sea, deciphering these inscriptions.
Perhaps the most startling of his conclusions is that
Christianity was originally a movement of organized labor.
The persecution of the early Christians is shown to have
arisen from the age-long class struggle between exploiters
and exploited. And the most dangerous thing about the
book from the capitalist view-point is that the author does
not merely make assertions ; he proves them.
The Universal Kinship. By J. Howard Moore, In-
structor in Zoology, Crane Manual Training High
School. Cloth, $1.00.
Mark Twain writes : "The Universal Kinship has fur-
nished me several days of deep pleasure and satisfaction.
It has compelled my gratitude at the same time, since it
saves me the labor of stating my own long-cherished opin-
ions, reflections and resentments by doing it lucidly and
fervently for me." ,
Send for The Universal Kinship. It may do the same
things for you. It is a work on evolution by a thorough
student of biology, who, by a strange coincidence, is also
a master of literary style.
Jack London says : "I do not know of any book deal-
ing with evolution that I have read with such keen in-
terest. Mr. Moore has a broad grasp and shows masterly
knowledge of the subject. And withal the interest never
flags. The book reads like a novel. One is constantly
keyed up and expectant. Mr. Moore is to be congratulated
on the magnificent way in which he has made alive the
dull, heavy processes of the big books. And then, there is
his style. He uses splendid virile English and shows a
fine appreciation of the values of words. He uses always
the right word."
Eugene V. Debs says : "It is impossible for me to ex-
press my appreciation of your masterly work. It is sim-
ply great, and every Socialist and student of sociology
should read it. I have carried it in my grip over the past
few thousand miles and its essence is in my heart, and it
has been a source of genuine inspiration to me."
Xv v l 1V
f o^
UNIVERSITY J
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