The Masses march 1912 Special children at work
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FACTS AND FICTION BY THE BEST OF THEM THE MASSES A' M ON THLY - MAGAZ I NE DEVOTED TO THE- I NTERESTS OF * THE -WORKING - PEOPLE MAY, 1912 Drawn for The Masses by Alice Beach Winter. “WHY MUST I WORK? y y PRICE 10 CENTS CONCERNING CHRISTIAN CHARITY - - By WILL IRWIN THE DAY OF A MAN - - - By MARY HEATON VORSE NEWS-STAND EDITION
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THE SOCIALIST VOTE THE following are a number of most interesting quotations from an article by Professor Rob¬ ert F. Hoxie, of the Chicago University, on the Socialist vote, in the March number of the Journal of Political Economy. The article is extremely instructive to Socialists and should be read attentively. We should not be above getting points even from a university professor: “The general impression conveyed by a close study of the objective facts of the November election pe¬ riod is that we are at last face to face with a vigorous and effective Socialist movement — a movement which is nation-wide, which is laying the foundation for a permanent structure by building from the bottom of the political system, which is recruiting its main strength in the important civic and industrial centers, and which is growing at a rapidly accelerating rate. It is, however, still too early to speak of this move¬ ment as a potent political power in this country or con¬ fidently to predict its rapid and permanent rise to po¬ litical potency. Should the recent progressive advance continue, a decade will see it seriously challenging the supremacy of one or both of the old political parties. This prospect is now operating as a tremendous stimu¬ lus to Socialist effort. Through it the party group is being rapidly transformed from a speculative sect, preaching a gospel of far-off revolution, to a crusad¬ ing army; and from now on the fighting for immedi¬ ate results will go forward with increasing vigor. “In the November elections the Socialist party con¬ tinued, at an accelerated rate, its conquest of political power. Conservatively estimated no fewer than 642 party members were at this time voted into public of¬ fices of various degrees of importance. This number exceeds by more than one hundred the combined So¬ cialist election successes thus far recorded in the years 1908, 1909, 1910, and in the spring of 1911. The sig¬ nificance of this, result is considerably enhanced when it is understood that in the fall of 1911 no general municipal elections took place in what previous study had indicated to tie the main strongholds of Socialism, and that more than 85 per cent, of these new office¬ holders were elected in States which had heretofore returned few or ho Socialist officials and in munici¬ palities new in the Socialist ranks. “ A significantly larger proportion of the Socialist victories than before zvere the outcome of systematic f organization , agitation, and education / This is proved not only by the analysis of evidence, but by the nature of the campaign itself. In this there was evident a distinct advance in the extent, character, and effective¬ ness of the Socialistic election methods. Not only were the Socialists locally, in the main, more alert and enthusiastic than in previous elections of this kind, but local efforts were more strongly supplemented and sys¬ tematically aided by State and national organizations. An enormous amount of literature was sent out from the office of the national secretary of the party and distributed at campaign meetings, and from house to house. “Another noteworthy change connected with the fall returns concerns the municipal distribution of elected officers. Two points here stand out in relief. First, to a considerably greater extent than before the So¬ cialist victories were won in distinctively large and in¬ dustrial communities; and, .secondly, the elected of¬ ficers, instead of being, as heretofore, prevailingly scat¬ tering, are to a considerable degree massed in particu¬ lar regions and in particular municipalities. “It is evident that the Socialists are developing sin¬ gularly effective campaign machinery, and the notable fact is that this machinery runs in season and out. The Socialist party is destined evidently to repopularize politics, and to compel a revolution in the methods ot their opponents. ' “ Under the circumstances the zuonder is not that the Socialist parly zvon so many victories in the last cam¬ paign, but that it did not zuin more. It is increasingly hampered by the problem of unification and education of its own membership. Socialist sentiment on the whole seems to be gaining ground faster than the party can organize and make use of it. The movement, moreover, is much better organized for the task of conversion than for that of efficient and constructive activity. The party has yet to be judged on its public record. Aside from two or three conspicuous cases it has not been in power long enough to indicate to the public its ability to make good, nor to the workers its ability to make good as a proletarian organisation. The supreme test of the movement is therefore still to come. On the outcome of this test will, in the main, depend the immediate future of the movement as a vT.eal political power.” CONTENTS Cov«*r. By Alice Bench Winter . 1 Co-operation. By Albert Sonnlchsen. ... 2 Eilitoriul.s . 3 The Happy Home. By Alexander Popini 4 What Socialism Stands for. By Dan Irving . 5 What’s Wrons xvith Co-operation? By Louis Untermeyer . 6 Conferring Christian Charity. By Will Irwin . 7 The Day of a Man. By Mary Ileaton Vorse S (Illustrated by Maurice Becker). The Temptation of Jesus. By Chas. P. Pugiian i . 10 Old Pon Allen. H. B. Asquith . 10 Chilli Labor and the Home. By Owen R. Lovcjoy . 11 (Illustrated by. Arnold Goodwin). Germinal. By Emile Zola . 12 (Illustrated by H. ,J. Turner). Schools for Democracy. By Arthur Wal¬ lace Calhoun . 14 The Minimum Wage . 15 Pacts and Interpretations . 10 The Way You Look at It. By Horatio Winslow . 17 The Doctors of Social Ills . IS The Race Menace and the Child. By Fra nk Sin Ill man . . 10 wyypyji lyjj LUJ KJJ U jj PJAUiLCL! *JUJ LUJ LUAUJLUJ1CT @ THE‘MA55ES*PUBLISHING*C0.(g) 150 NASSAU STREET. NEW YORK CITY SUBSCRIPTION RATES Yearly, $1.00 Half Yearly, 50 Cents Bundle Rates Comrades or Locals . 6c. 50 or more Paid in Advance . 5c 5 or more Paid in Advance, per year... 4c. Registered as second-class mail matter, December 27, 1910, at the postoffice of New Yortc City, under the act of March 3, 1879 Advertising Rates 20 cents per agate line. 4 columns to page. P. Vlag, Business Mgr. CO-OPERATION BY ALBERT SONNICHSEN There is a perceptible difference betzveen the life of a famous war correspondent and that of an organiser of co-operative stores , but Son- nichsen of the Macedonian Bandits and other filibustering experiences does not seem to mind it. IS a co-operative store worth while? A good many communities, big and small, seem to be consider¬ ing this question seriously. There are two truthful answers to the one question. To the utilitarian it is safe to say, No. The average retail grocer does not net much over ten per cent, on his gross sales. He is not raising the cost of living on us; the wholesaler, the jobber and the com¬ mission merchant are the guilty ones; they juggle with the margins. And a co-operative store is iust as much at their mercy as the private retailer. To the Socialist the question should be answered with a decided affirmative. I use the word broadly; I don’t mean he who mutters his creed as a ritual and shrieks down birr, who would leave out a word — but this creature is no: likely to seek out new weapons for the struggle; his own is usually empty abuse To me all are Socialists who seek the co-operative common¬ wealth, the industrial democracy, and are willing to use every means to attain it that seems promising. To such I suggest industrial co-operation. Let us review our armies ; I use this analogy for con¬ venience, not to advocate direct action. We have two corps; the industrial brigades, the unions and the po¬ litical brigades, the voters, the Socialist Party. Both are good and necessary. But our whole rear and both flanks are exposed. The industrials are really raising the wages — for 2 some. The Party is really forcing legislation, directly and indirectly. But has either wing ever reduced one capitalist’s private profits by one red centime? Certainly not. We have had higher wages, shorter hours, factory legislation, employers’ liability, etc., etc. But capitalism has not footed the bills. The strike on now in Lawrence, Mass., amply illustrates. Legislation forced shorter hours, and they tried to take it out of the wages. Perhaps the strikers will win; then it will be taken out of the prices. Dividends are not going to drop. But we have all heard that old story. The consumer pays, and the consumer is he who voted the new legislation and he who got the higher wages beside the millions of others not directly con¬ cerned. Our army marches around in a circle and the capitalist does a footstep around our flanks. We need a third army corps: the organized consum¬ ers. Then we, in turn, shall flank the enemy. The capitalist may lock us out as workers and count us out as voters, but as consumers he needs us, every one. The answer is consumers’ co-operation, but with a conscious purpose, with a definite program of action. If only they knew their power in Great Britain, those 2,700,000 heads of families organized as consumers. If only they were class conscious! Even so; they have smashed trust after trust, in an aimless, unscientific sort of way, surprised themselves as they stumble over the corpse of the enemy. Usually they have only struck out in self-defence, as when Sunlight Soap tried to dictate to the Scottish Wholesale and found itself .kicked out of Scotland. Why is there no flour trust in Great Britain? Because the biggest nulls are in the hands of the Manchester Wholesale. But imagine this wonderful machine in the hands of conscious Socialists! If we, as in Great Britain, num¬ bered one-fourth of the total population, 25,000,000 organized consumers, owning and controlling enough industries to supply 11s with the necessities of life! Three years ago the people tried to boycott the beef trust — by starving themselves. A sort of Russian hun¬ ger strike, or the vengeance of the Chinaman who com¬ mits suicide on his enemy’s door step. It did bring prices down a trifle. With a consumers’ packing plant in existence the result might have been more effective and more permanent. Now we have a bread trust in New York, and the bakers’ unions are weeping and gnashing their teeth impotently. Glasgow solved that problem before the trust came; there the consumers own and control the biggest bakery in the world, a plant that could house the Ward bakeries in its stables. Do not these possibilities appeal to the imagination? We must organize as consumers. As consumers we have them at our mercy. But first we must establish our base of supplies; if we are to fight them by re¬ fusing to consume their commodities. Our base of supply is co-operative industry. Therefore, build up your local society, centered about your store. Don’t mind if it doesn’t pay dividends; the chances are that it won’t for many a long day. Persuade your comrades in the next town to do like¬ wise. Push out your ‘organization, from community to community, establishing a store in every center. But be sure you organize first. Then get together again and federate. You will then get your grip on the first of the real exploiters, the jobbers, wholesalers and commission merchants. Soon you can take the aggressive, smashing an un¬ fair shop here, supporting a strike there, making con¬ verts by your deeds. The Socialists are doing it in Belgium; we can do it here. READ THIS SO long as the great majority of mankind live mis¬ erably and unaware of the possibility of any other way of life, just so long an orderly world is impossible. Only when the workers are taught that they have been disinherited and that the world is for all and must be managed for all, can there be any hope of a change. Therefore you must educate. You must be a teacher. You must have tools. We can furnish you with a ost effective tool. We can furnish you for $25.00 a thousand copies of your own magazine, with two pages of local matter, your own cover design, and name. Every additional hun¬ dred .it will cost you $1.25. Local advertising can be made to pay for the cost of the magazine without difficulty. Then you have a magazine of a quality as only can be produced by the Socialist Artists and writers who own and run The Masses, entirely free. You must not miss this chance.
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EDI T O FL I A ,LS . ... ... _ :UJ! .. ..V, • — V.- ... . • ■ • . • . . . 9 LAISSEZ FAIRE THE time-worn policy of Laissez Faire scored another victory on March 26th in Chicago. A jury of their peers decided that the Chicago meat packers were not guilty of “conspiring to restrain trade.” In other words, this jury decided that the meat pack¬ ers did not fix the price of meat or of cattle, and up¬ held the contention of the trust that these matters are decided purely by the law of supply and demand. Within a few hours after rendering this memorable verdict, these boot-lickers of capitalism were wined and dined by the meat packers, while their agents were keeping the wires hot raising the price of the pack¬ ers’ products in order to recoup the cost of defending them against the prosecution. Another significant fact to be remembered about this travesty of justice is that an hour before the ver¬ dict was announced the stock of Swift & Co. jumped 234 points — a rise which may justly be attributed to intelligence secured in advance by telepathic means from extraneous sources. And said the attorney for the packers : “The verdict of not guilty was expected. This jury was the most intelligent jury ever assembled to hear a case in this country. The packers should be left alone to their affairs and should not be harassed any further. There has been an intolerable doubt as to what a corporation engaged in interstate commerce could do.” One of the jurors said: “We considered the evidence brought out, as carefully as though we ourselves had been on trial.” And what have you to say, Mr. American Citizen c Not a word of protest? Not a word of condemnation? We have not heard a word from you. Therefore you too must believe in the policy of Laissez Faire. You too must be one of those who are content to walk through life with bent back and stooping shoulders hoping that before they die their chance will come to be among the parasites themselves. A BOY SCOUT MURDERER WE have again and again, editorially and other¬ wise, commented upon the evil influences of the Boy Scout movement. We told those friends who tried to whitewash the move¬ ment, that “training a child in the handling of mur¬ derous weapons is bound to arouse a bullying and mur¬ derous spirit, no matter how much care may be taken to prevent. The correctness of this judgment is proved by a frightful incident which lias lately occurred in New York City. A group of nine-year-old boys was play¬ ing on a sand-wagon. Twelve-year-old Maitland Jar¬ vis, a member of the McClellan Bov Scouts, which has headquarters in the basement of a church, objected to the manner of play indulged in by these little lads. He ordered them off the wagon, and when they refused to comply, promptly shot and killed one of the little boys who had the temerity to “disobey orders.” He then calmly went and joined his Boy Scout friends, and never even told his parents about the trifling in¬ cident of the killing of the little victim until he was taken out of bed and put under arrest. He then astonished the authorities with a brazen confession of his guilt. He claimed justification be¬ cause the boys had disobeyed his order and ridiculed him, and the only emotion he showed was that of astonishment that fault should have been found with him and that he should have been put into confinement. The coroner and the detectives said : “He is not a boy. He is a young soldier and is fully responsible for his actions.” However, bad as the case may seem, we agree with Mr. Luckhardt, the father of the boy who was killed, that not the Jarvis boy should be indicted, but the movement which created him. Mr. Luckhardt says : “This Boy Scout nonsense puts notions of war, killing and fighting into the children’s heads. There should be no miniature armies of boys. It is absurd.” It is worse than absurd, Mr. Luckhardt. It is crim¬ inal, and we believe that at least some of those who are fostering and promoting the Boy Scout movement understand its true object: To lure, with drums, pa¬ rades, camp fires and outings the children of the work¬ ers from their homes, so that they may be trained as prospective suppressors of the working class. A NEW VICTORY IT is not vainglory when we say that the result of the Milwaukee elections was one of the most im¬ portant victories the Socialists in the United States have won in recent years. Not because they increased their vote by several thousands in face of the most bitter campaign they ever fought; not be¬ cause it took the combined capitalist parties to whip them. But simply because they kept their principles high and maintained an uncompromising attitude. Only too often have the European Socialists been intoxicated with their newly acquired power, and in order to retain that power they have compromised with their enemies. Invariably they had great cause to regret this before long. , It is to be feared that many American Socialists will have to learn this lessen in the same manner. The Milwaukee Socialists did not. In their election the line was clearly drawn, of the Socialists on one side, and the anli-Socialists on the other, and it is certain, there¬ fore, that the entire Socialist vote is a convinced vote. According to early returns of the total vote now cast of 73,372, the Socialist vote of 30,200 is over 41 per cent. — that is to say, in Milwaukee more than 41 per cent, of the voters are Socialists. What a command¬ ing position would be ours if the same thing were true of the whole country ! A MANEUVER THE Common Cause , that excellent advertising medium for the Socialist movement, was started with funds supplied by Catholics. In addition, the Catholics organized the “Militia of Christ,” of which the McNamaras were members. This organization is supposed to serve, through its in¬ fluence with the American Federation of Labor, as a decorative economic background for the Common Cause. They are to develop the Federation into some¬ thing like the Christian Labor Union in Germany and the Yellow Unions in France. We have this informa¬ tion from a very reliable source. I11 addition to this. Father Vaughan was imported from all the way across the pond to deliver a body- blcw to Socialism. A move which secured for us for five weeks every Monday morning a two-column front¬ page advertisement in the metropolitan newspapers. And now the terriers have commenced to bark and make a noise like murder. John L. Bel ford, priest of the Church of the Nativity, Brooklyn, says in his weekly paper, the Nativity Mentor: “The Socialist is busy. He flaunts his red flag and openly preaches his doctrines. His great point of attack is religion. His power is an actual menace to our city. There seems to be no law to suppress or control him. He is more dangerous than cholera or smallpox — yes, he is the mad dog of society, and should be silenced IF NEED BE BY A BULLET.” Why this sudden assault by these exponents of Law and Order? To be sure, as yet capital has not put up a prize purse for the extermination of Socialism. Or is this perhaps merely an exhibition maneuver to show their prospective customers what sort of service they can render when the coin is put up? INDIANAPOLIS MAY, 1912 STRUGGLING on, step by step, in the face of a thousand odds, a caravan plods through a vast desert. There are misfortunes, mistakes — even temporary disasters, but, urged on by the exhor¬ tations of Moses and strengthened by an unfaltering trust, the Israelites march on toward the Land of Promise . Three thousand years and more pass by, and the Drama of Life repeats itself. Flere is the same struggle, the same exhortations, and a far-off but shining Canaan. The caravan, now, is Humanity, and the desert is Capitalism and Economic Brother¬ hood the promised land. All, all are a part of this movement — even those who hate it; even the capitalists and the priesthood, even they are swept along with it ; though striving to retard the march, they are uncon¬ sciously helping it forward in spite of themselves. The caravan is Humanity and Socialism is its van¬ guard — the Socialists are the pioneers, the intrepid scouts a little in advance of the mass. At times a band of these mount an eminence and study the line of march ; and it is these explorers on the heights that catch the first glimpses of the land that is the common goal. So to scan the future, from such a point of van¬ tage, is the task of the approaching national conven¬ tion of the Socialist Party. It is significant in the highest degree; it is no mere private affair of the hun¬ dred thousand party members; it is a racial event, a milestone of advance in the all-inclusive procession of human progress. It recalls the glorious Unity Conven¬ tion of 1901 — also held at Indianapolis, where the So¬ cialist Party came into being. The astounding but logical growth of the Party, in ideas as well as in numbers; its substantiality and con¬ tinually fresh vitality will be manifest in the delibera¬ tions and conclusions of this convention. It will con¬ cern itself not so much with questions of theory as with questions of fact! What must be done by the Party; what must the Party now recommend to the people ; what actual steps must be taken to reach the true Commonwealth that is the end of all our dreams and labors? By the necessity which inheres in any living organ¬ ism to press toward expansion, bigger life, victory in the test with other organisms, the convention will be overwhelmingly impelled to approve the policy and the need of carrying elections as against the mere nega¬ tive policy of a “protest against Capitalism.” Protest is a good and needful thing, but it becomes most valu¬ able when construction and a definite direction arc be¬ hind it. “Revolt in the abstract,” says Chesterton, “is merely revolting” — revolt that has no fixed purpose is like an animal without head or feet : it does not know where to go and hasn’t even the means of going there. The thing we need is a unity of purpose and a join¬ ing of forces in the rush of the campaign. The doubt¬ ers among us, those who now feel that perhaps it would be better not to win elections, will fall into fine, swept in by a resistless enthusiasm for immediate local victories. And so a united party will go to the Amer¬ ican people with a practical yet uncompromisingly So¬ cialist program to which all really democratically- minded radicals may rally. The economic institutions of the country arc to be re- mo aided, and the transitional forms which the conven¬ tion will recommend to the people at large will be dem¬ ocratic, not bureaucratic; simply from the instinctive consciousness that proposals to turn great industries over to the despotic control of boards of a few upper- clerks of Washington departments cannot excite a ripple of feeling, while whole-hearted and truly demo¬ cratic proposals will arouse enthusiasm. So we, the masses of hopeful social-minded Ameri¬ can citizens, look eagerly and with confident hope to the great event of May, 1912, certain that the instinc¬ tive wisdom of the many will into its activities breathe the breath of life — of abounding and strengthening life.
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Drawn for The Masses by ALEXANDER POPJNJ. THE HAPPY HOME DEAR READER, do you know what the above pretty picture is? No? Then I will tell you. It is the Happy Home — one of the millions of Happy Homes which many people tell us that Socialism is trying to destroy. . . . Is it not a beautiful place? Observe the air of sweetness and comfort which breathes over it. See the Mother, oh so happy, saying a fond farewell to the little ones. She has a cape over her shoulder and her hand is at the door. Maybe she is going calling, or to the opera. See the sweet- faced older daughter. Is it not nice for one so young to take care of such a fine baby? She is asking her mother whether it will be better for the baby to have eggs (at 40c. a dozen) or some fresh vegetables (at 5c. an ounce) for supper. And the two boys — how prettily they play among their toys. They will grow up to be splendid men and fine citizens in such clean and healthy surroundings, you may be sure! Is it not too bad of Socialism to try and break up such a Happy Home? LOUIS UNTERMEYER
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MASSES A'MONTHLY'MAGAZINE DEVOTED 'TO'THEi NTERESTS OF -THE ’WORKING 'PEO PLE PIET VLAG, Mng. Ed. & Sec. CHAS. A. WINTERS, An Ed, EUG. WOOD, President INEZ H. GILLMORE, Fiction Ed. H. WINSLOW, L. UNTERMEYER, Asst. Ed’s. HAYDEN CARRUTH, Vice-Pres. )— ■ u, « c-iwOj. wwwu, rresiaent nftiutn ^AKRUltl, vice-rres. — w x-y , THE • MASSES • PUBLISHING CO., • 150 Nassau St.. • NEW • YORK I Vol. III. MAY, 1912 T| SSJr No. VJ WHAT SOCIALISM STANDS FOR SOCIALISM is the only hope of the workers; the only method whereby we can ever hope to see the peoples of the earth living a truly civilized life. Socialism stands for social harmony and well-being; for the elimination of poverty, the sup¬ pression of all tryanny, and the human degradation pertaining thereto. As all roads are said to lead to Rome, so every movement tending to improve the mental, moral and material conditions of man is, or should be, in our hands, a means to this end — the realization of Social¬ ism. Therefore it is that we engage in political action. There are those who invite us to remove all palliative measures from our programme, instead of, as should be the case, making them first steps towards social and industrial reorganization. To such we would say, let the revolution come how and when it may, our predicament will be an awkward one if we have not a trained body of administrators at our disposal ready to take control of the ship of state and to pilot it safely into the Socialist haven. To my mind, one of the first and most important things we have to do is to appeal to the common peo¬ ple to place the system of public education under really democratic control; to see that all children shall be duly supplied with the necessary mental equipment to enable them to understand their true position in society. We must strive to raise the age limit when it shall be permissible for children to leave school ; to enable this to be done without injury to the work¬ ers we must also claim that it is, at the same time, the duty of the community to provide for the proper feed¬ ing, clothing and housing of the children, so that the ■“sound mind” shall have a “sound body” wherein to dwell. No nation can afford to allow its children to grow up mentally and physically weak; every nation’s well¬ being is bound up inevitably in the recognition of the fact that every child born, under normal circumstances, is a valuable asset and must be valued accordingly. At present the capitalist class control our schools and use them in their own interests with considerable ef¬ fect, as we find when we come to deal with the adult in later life with a view of turning them into adher¬ ents of Socialism. Let us recognize this fact, and use our power to wrest this control from their hands and to use the schools in the true interests of the child and of the community. Another matter calling for our immediate considera¬ tion is the question of unemployment. This can best be met by materially shortening the hours of labor all around, so that more people may find employment and men find a rest from profit making and have leisure Written for The Masses. By DAN IRVING for consideration of matters concerning our social well-being. One great means to this end will be found in a vigorous use of our political powers, through the state and municipality alike. The state should at once take upon itself the duty of organizing all unemployed labor co-operatively on useful work for the benefit of the workers themselves and in the true interests of the community. In control, or even partial control, of the machinery of the state we can direct it to this end, and so, by absorbing the unemployed, drive a wedge into the capitalist system of production, which, driven home, will break up that system altogether. As fast as possible we should proceed to take over and place under public control all kinds of monopolies and administer them for the public good instead of for making profit. The only possible way to do this is to capture the machinery of legislation and of adminis¬ tration and to use it to this end. There are some, arrogating to themselves the title of ultra-revolutionists, who argue that measures of the kind here indicated can well be left for the capi¬ talist class themselves to provide. Yet the whole of our experience goes to prove that the contrary is true. Wherever public opinion compels our capitalist legis¬ lators and administrators to make any change in con-- formity with the public demand which our propaganda has created, they take very good care to “queer the pitch” by making a complete travesty of our pro¬ posals; and so emasculate them in course of adminis¬ tration that those whom they were supposed to benefit experience very little, if any, change for the better in their circumstances. As evidence of this, witness our own legislation of recent times, such as the establish¬ ment of labor exchanges, old age pensions, the now infamous “Poor Man’s Budget,” and the more recent spurious insurance bill. This is of course because the capitalist class are conscious that they can use the power entrusted to them by the workers to stave off the social revolution; while, were we Socialists in power, we should use that same power to hasten its incoming. Hence the necessity for Socialists to strive to secure election to every governing body wherever possible, so that they may gain practical experience in the admin¬ istration of national and local affairs and press for¬ ward the realization of all proposals tending to com¬ mon ownership and social use. How otherwise shall we be capable of taking over the affairs of the state when the time comes to do so? Thus may we hasten forward the time of complete emancipation, when the great power of man over nature shall be used, not to enrich the few while the many toil and suffer for a bare subsistence. Men’s lives will then be spent, not in efforts to dominate and plunder each other, but in giving the best within them for the elevation of their kind. To my comrades across the “Herring Pond,” I would urge that they and we alike shall strive for closer union "and consolidation of Socialist forces. While offering co-operation with any party for specific pur¬ poses upon which we are agreed, let us steer clear of any form of alliance with non-Socialist organizations — “labor,” or otherwise. Let us be prepared to use every method which comes to our hand, industrial or political, for the overthrow of the present brutal sys¬ tem. Theoretic differences ought not to keep Social¬ ists apart in separate organizations ; nationally and in¬ ternationally we should form one properly organized party, as against all non-Socialist bodies. Were this so — and surely it might be, with reasonable tolerance for certain differences of opinion which must always exist — we should be in a position to take such action in common against the capitalist foe that the dawn of the new era could not much longer be delayed. 5
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T the very outset let me ex¬ plain that the above piquant title is equivocal, indirect and wholly misleading. It is a glittering bait to catch your wandering attention — serving the same purpose as the flaming electric Chariot Race on Broadway which advertises Somebody’s Foun¬ tain Pens and Anybody’s Automobile. It (the ques¬ tion) is purely rhetorical — being hurled at you in the same spirit as the Life-of- the crowd’s quer} : “What’s the matter with Jones?” . . . And our answer shall be fully as trite as the proverbial one. . . . “What’s Wrong with Co-opera¬ tion?” Nothing. This statement, be it written ever so firmly, is not altogether convincing, standing by itself. It lacks the rhetoric and poetry without which no great fact can be proven — the rhetoric and poetry of figures. There are people who can find beauty and fancy only in books of verse — the wild metaphor and the untamed simile are to them the very essence of Poetry. But there are others who find Adventure in an advertise¬ ment, Life in a ledger and all manner of things startling in Statistics. One of these individuals (a mixture of O. Henry and Chesterton) once said : “When I want real Romance I do not take down a volume of Stevenson — I pick up a time-table!” And so with figures — which have a hundred justifications for themselves. They never lie ; the} illuminate Rea¬ son with a light that is full of clear color; like Truth, they hold a keen mirror for the world’s self scrutiny; and, like Beauty, they are their own excuse for being. Far from being dull, Facts arc the most exciting things in a humdrum existence ; and, though everything else may be prosy, Figures are always, in the highest sense of the word, figurative. For instance, it would be obviously uninteresting were I to say that Co-operation is successful in Eng¬ land. Put baldly thus, it has neither life nor awakens any responsive thrill. But when I add to this the magical charm of figures, and say that in 1777 there was just one co-operative workshop of tailors in the town of Birmingham, that in 1830 there were from 300 to 400 stores and shops scattered throughout Eng¬ land, and that in 1905 (seven years ago) the Roch¬ dale system had almost 1,500 distributive societies with a membership of practically two and a quarter million . . . what new vistas open, what dreams are suggested ! The Fact is unproductive in itself — it has no imagina¬ tive impulse; but add a few figures, and the vast fu¬ ture, with all its promises and the hopes of countless visionaries, is unrolled. Let us look more into the details of this miracle of figures. England has been called the classic home, even the birthplace, of Co-operation, and, from the evidence that may be procured for the asking, it seems to de¬ serve the distinction. It was in Rochdale that a few weavers got together one mid-April day in 1844, and, with the few shillings they had saved and much shrewd arguing, attempted the first practical solution of Co¬ operation. They started with twenty-eight members and a similar amount of pounds. For a while things hung (as the novelists put it) in the balance — compe¬ tition. alien influences, even occasional internal dissen¬ sion threatening to wreck their frail scheme. There is a gap in the records and one finds for the next few years, the most meagre of references to the movement — a hint here, a statement there. Then in 1862, eight¬ Written for The Masses. een years, after, the membership had grown from the little band of twenty-eight to 90,000; the scant one hundred and fifty dollars to a share and loan capital of over two and a quarter million dollars, and 450 stores doing a business of almost twelve millions with a profit of $840,000! Skipping two decades, we see in 1882 that its membership has reached 640,000; its num¬ ber of stores 1,200; its share and loan capital 40 mil¬ lion dollars — having done a business of over sixty-five millions, out of which a profit of more than eleven millions was divided among its members ! The most recent figures to hand are those of the year 1909, where the membership is shown to have passed the three million mark ; distributive stores are no longer put down in terms of figures — “they are now in every important industrial center.” The business for that year was over $600,000,000, out of which a profit of ten per cent. ($60,000,000) was divided among the consumers. ... A highly interesting and significant de¬ velopment of the system occurred in 1863. That year there grew out of the Rochdale System what is known as the English Wholesale Society. The shareholders, and purchasers of this society are the members of the various retail Co-operative societies — and, of course, the profits of the Wholesale are divided among the shareholding societies in proportion to their purchases. Thus (to dip into metaphor) the orange of Co-opera¬ tion is made to yield every drop. This English Whole¬ sale has now attained majestic proportions — it is nat¬ urally both distributor and producer and is, substan¬ tially, a federation of the distributive societies. Be¬ sides doing corn-milling, it manufactures boots, soap, candles, biscuits, confectionery, preserves, lard, under¬ clothing, cocoa, furniture, woolens, flannels, in fact all manner of clothing, tobacco, brushes, starch, printing — and the always suggestive “etc.” The Wholesale alone employs over twelve thousand people, owns five steamships, numerous creameries; has purchasing agencies in every representative country; has its own departments in several of them (a tea plantation in Ceylon being one) and carries on a banking depart¬ ment which had a turnover in 1905 of 450 million dollars. Naturally, a movement of such tremendous import and proportions could not be confined to England alone and other parts of the Empire were not slow to adopt it. A Wholesale Society in Scotland did a business of nearly 35 million dollars in 1905, and then controlled 17 bakeries which alone had a capital of $4,000,000. . . . The account of the swift rise of Co-operation in the other great countries of Europe would be practically a repetition of the above with slightly varied amounts. In France, there are more than 2,500 societies with a Co-operative Wholesale known as the “Magazin de Gros” established in 1906; in Germany, the Socialist Co-operative stores did a total business last year of $408,000,000— in addition to which there are almost 2,000 associations for the purchase of raw material alone; in Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, even Russia (the country of intellectual night) has felt the growing pains of this world movement; while Belgium has, for its size, the most flourishing Co-operative system of them all. Here Co-operation is not alone a business, but is at one time philanthropic and instructive in ac¬ tual execution rather than in sentiment. It not only embodies all the benefits of the best type of Co-opera¬ tives, but allows almost 12V2 per cent, for strictly edu¬ cational purposes ! And America? No one knows precisely. Co-opera¬ tion here has been such a mushroom growth that it is difficult to speak with the slightest authority. No one can lay his hands on any definite figures— every other day we learn that here or there a Co-operative has been formed and is from all accounts highly success¬ ful— but that is all. ... We know, for instance, that there are a group of Finn Co-operatives in towns like Quincy, Fitchburg, Gardiner— seven or eight of them in all — that they do a business of over $150,000 and that they are contemplating forming a Wholesale with Boston headquarters1 In 1905, when a minute reckon¬ ing showed the terrific growth of these organizations in England, we in America had nothing to boast of — there was much talk and planning in the air, but no tangible realities. Even now we can scarcely imagine how greatly and swiftly the movement is taking hold here. Two years ago, for instance, nothing was heard of the Italian Co-operative Societies. To-day they are l vital and permanent organization — in the last year and a half they have a chain of four hundred stores in New England alone ! The American Socialist Co¬ operatives of New Jersey are a comparatively unknown body — yet they have fully twenty-five stores within a radius of 25 miles! Two years ago, some “dreamers” in Springfield, Massachusetts, started a Co-operative store — within a year these “deluded visionaries” de¬ clared a dividend of 13 per cent. ! In Connecticut there sprang up within a year and a half, dozens of such stores — and every week another handful comes to light ! All over the country they are growing into life, rapidly forming Wholesales; expanding, amplify¬ ing . . . For the present, their sum total must be the algebraic X, but it will not be for long that the move¬ ment will be spoken of with any suggestion of mys¬ tery. A greater Club system is a purely secondary step — the times tend more and more to centralization — and there seems little doubt that within five years there will be a National Wholesale whose business will be estimated in millions. It is not a program so much as a necessity— it is Evolution rather than Revolution. . . . For the Co-operative System is the result of a need not a creed — it is logical because every other scheme is irrational. It goes hand in hand with the highest interests and ideals of Socialism. Tt is not perfect; it is subject to the same mistakes as all truly human enterprises — and therefore, it is one of those schemes, which instead of being abandoned, after an initial disappointment, grow beyond the most sanguine expectations. It is only a matter of a very few years when the millions that are the sinews' of this country will learn at last the full force of that hackneyed phrase “In Union there is strength” — and when they do, they will not only vote, work and strike together — they will buy together ! “What’s Wrong with Co-operation?” Frankly, we do not know ; and until some explosive opponent shoots our figures to pieces, we believe that all’s right with it and that part of the world that adopts it. This time, therefore, we shout the title at the unbeliever combatively — it is no longer a question ; it is a chal¬ lenge. “What’s Wrong with Co-operation?” And, like our most successful politicians, “we pause con¬ fidently for a reply.” ... 6
Page 7
WAWT E-D Boys AWoGiftLSj TO O^PCRATE jjj OUJ?*I.FI Pl^OVtlJ NIA'CHINFRY/ jj -Mo Adults I \n £EDi appeY A*V ^ I HAVE a little story in my private repertoire which, until lately, I have used to illustrate how the ex¬ treme stand-pat mind works, or thinks that it works. A certain intellectual woman of the pam¬ pered class, upon learning that a friend had embraced Socialism, looked on him with the expression of Torquemada regarding a heretic. “What!” she ex¬ claimed when she could get her breath. “Why, don’t you know that Socialism is opposed to the basic prin¬ ciples of Christianity?” “Why?” inquired the new- hatched Socialist, meekly. “The foundation of Chris¬ tianity,” she replied, “is ‘charity. How can we have charity in a state where there are no rich and no poor?” I had deemed that a good story until I told it to a clergyman who is himself a Socialist and had had to fight hard battles for his principles. “I don't laugh at that,” he said, “because it is too stale to me. In one form or another, I hear it every day. Father Vaughan has used nearly the same argument, if you call it that, in his series of Lenten lectures. And Henry Van Dyke has said about the same thing.” I suppose that when I considered this remark, startling for its stupid¬ ity, for the inability, which it implies, to see clearly, 1 had over-esti¬ mated the stand - pat . mind. I thought of it again, however, as I stood at the Child Welfare Booth in the Woman’s Indus¬ trial Exhibition, talking to one of the women who has been vainly try¬ ing to stop the slaughter of the innocents by the armies of the Capitalistic Herod. She had been speaking about the farce of the New York factory laws. She was dwelling just then on the 1300 tenement houses in New York which are licensed by law for “home work.” An inspector comes around twice a year and gives attention, close or perfunctory, ac¬ cording to the state of the proprietor’s “pull,” to the sanitary arrange¬ ments. 1 f the building is not too rotten with filth and germs, if the lighting is not too bad, he ap¬ proves of it. With this official approval, children from the cradle up may work at any hours or all hours, and at any work, which suits the fancy or the crying necessities of their parents and guar¬ dians. That is not quite all, however. Only cer¬ tain specified industries, like feather-work, artifi¬ cial flower work, are for¬ bidden in any but li¬ censed tenements. New industries have risen since this beneficent law went into effect. And for these there is no law at all. The children may work anywhere— in a wood¬ shed, a shanty, a tenement room lighted only from an air-shaft, so long as it isn’t a factory. I quote this all from memory ; one doesn’t hold a note-book on a person who is talking with the fervor which this woman put into her voice; but I think that my statement is nearly accurate. Then she picked up from the table a little comic doll which I had seen and admired in a toy-shop window a few days before. It is copied from a famous and popular advertisement, and it is a novelty already assured of success in the market. CONCERNING CHRISTIAN CHARITY By WILL IRWIN Written for The Masses. “I suppose you will see the irony in this when I tell you,” she said. “You like it and I like it. It has a little appeal to your tenderness. But the children like it most of all. At least, those who are fortunate enough to own one. And most of them will never be told in Sunday-.school what the race pays for these little dolls. Let me tell you about it. This is a new industry. It doesn’t come under the regulations. The body is made in a factory, but it is put together and dressed by home work. Take the clothes. It is woman’s work. But any woman who does it must have two helpers, and they are always children, because it wouldn’t pay a grown girl. Babies of five ruin their little eyes and narrow their chests by “breaking” the collars and pulling out the bastings. As far as possible, we have estimated the }u. — “V Drazvn by H. 7. Turner. average weekly earning of the women in this craft. It runs from $4.71 to $5.71 a week. To one who under¬ stands home work this seems rather high wages. Usu¬ ally, a woman working night and day — most of her working hours — cannot earn more than $3.50 a week. The extra money is earned by the children — the poor, squeezed little babies. I can’t take much pleasure in these dolls after knowing how they arc made. Can you ? And the industry is growing with the popularity of the toy. Last Christmas the firm which makes them filled one loft for the holiday trade. Now it has six lofts. By next fall it will have sixty. Figure for your¬ self, if you can, how many children it will have stunted by that time. “This is a patent hair-brush with a rubber back. You see it. The first process is very simple. The worker is furnished with an oval disk of rubber, punctured with tiny holes, and a sheaf of bristles. Her task is to thread a bristle into each of the holes; then she returns it to the factory for the finishing process. It is primitive work, and so very young children can do it — babies from three years up. The average weekly earnings of a full-grown woman in this work are $2.58 to $2.60. The workers would get more were it not for the sub-contractors. They take contracts from the factory and let them out Often they are sublet again. So, while the fac¬ tory pays forty cents a dozen, the workers often get only twenty cents. The manufacturers say that they have this done at home because ‘women cannot stand the work under factory conditions,’ it is so hard on the, eyes. So it is turned over to the eyes of children. These brushes are adver¬ tised as sanitary. Well, being produced in un¬ licensed tenements, the workers are often tu¬ bercular. The rest of the conditions you can imagine.” We are approaching the anecdote with which I began. There are in New York two or three societies, liberally found¬ ed, still more liberally supported, which purport to care for children. Once, when this woman was younger and less ex¬ perienced than she is now, she approached one of the greatest and rich¬ est of these societies with a statement of this home work problem and a request for co-opera¬ tion. The officials were polite but firm. “That is outside of our province,” they said. “Parents know what is best for the chil¬ dren in the home.” You see, this is how we have arranged it in our accumulated wisdom. Get how you can. Then give a little of your gettings that you may enjoy a fine moral emotion and save your own precious soul. When, for example,. you see a poor, wizened child, doomed by the mysterious act of God to poverty and distress, have the District Visitor make a note of it, and on Christmas bring joy into its little life by presenting it with some toy — for example, a doll, dressed by the chokihg, coughing, back-breaking industry of a whole family of other poor little children at the rate of $4.71 a week. So shall your own soul be saved and the basic principles of Christianity maintained. 7
Page 8
THE DAY OF A MAN Written for The Masses. ERRY MUNN opened his eyes first to the familiar cry of Charley the Bouncer’s : “Say, what d’ye all think? That this ’ere’s a rest cure?” And next there fell on his ears the rattle of the elevated train past the lodging-house win¬ dow, and he was conscious of the uneasy stirring of the other men in the room. Some bounded to their feet, wide-awake ; others mut¬ tered in their sleep plaintively or angrily. A giant in the cot next him stretched a pair of hairy arms to heaven in a mighty yawn ; and then conversation — the conversation of men as yet unfed and who have not slept enough — broke forth grumblingly. One man called to another: “Hey, Bill! D’you get your job?” And the other answered: “Hell, no !” The voice of the giant boomed : “Job! There ain’t no jobs lef’ in New York!” On the other side of him the shrill voice of little Dicky Silver, the evangelist, was heard berating Mikey Lennott : “You was drunk again, you know you was. After all Jesus done for you, you was drunk again.” He hopped up and down in front of Mikey like an angry terrier ; who, like an ashamed and embarrassed elephant, towered above him, muttering : “’Twas the sun, Dicky. Honest to God, it was the sun. I didn’t take enough to duck a sparrer.” “You was drunk, an’ you know it,” the little man shrilled. “You say you love Jesus and you get full on me. What’s the good o’ workin’ with things like you? What’s the good of wastin’ my time? Why don’t I let you go to hell, where you was bound when I found you?” The big man could have reached his hand and choked the wind out of the noisy gullet, but he shifted his feet continually, saying: “You’d oughter know how it is, Dicky — not money enough for a square meal, but enough for a drink. You get awful empty. You’d oughter know what it is — walkin’ up an’ down, empty.” This struck a responsive chord in Jerry Munn’s heart. He knew, and most of the rest of them did, what walking up and down empty was. He knew what sickness of spirit comes over the decently paid working¬ man who finds himself out of a job, his money gone. He knew the unsatisfactory and expensive snacks, ex¬ pensive because they fill you so little and leave you with your stomach gnawing, gnawing, and your legs wobbling under you and your head light, and then you get a drink with your next ten cents. It does you good, and the next day you get another, whiskey instead of beer, to quiet your stomach for awhile and make your feet hit steady ground and stop your head from its disquieting lightness ; or if it doesn’t do these things, but makes your head lighter and your legs wobble more, why you don’t care then ; so either way it helps you. “’Twas awful hot yesterday, Dicky,” the voice pleaded on. “You Was Dkunk Again.” By MARY HEATON VORSE J The angry little man cut him short : “An’ you who ain’t got the real cravin’, like I had ! I tell you I was gone with it; in the gutter, I was, an’ pne night Jesus took me by the hand; an’ look at me now, look at me now. ‘No work,’ says you. ‘Nothin’ to eat,’ says you. Why, ain’t you got any faith? Look at me; I bin bounced five times las’ month for Jesus’ sake and He always finds me something else.” He turned around and faced the roomful. “If you only had the faith of a grain of mustard” - “Aw, stow it !” and “Go cut your throat, Dicky !” came from different parts of the room. They didn’t really mind him ; they threw it to him good-humoredly, like elders reproving a child. They respected him, too, in a certain way, being simple men who know a sham emotion from a real one. They would have missed his chattering tongue, for Dicky, Jerry and several others were habitues of Monheim’s lodging house — Beds, 15c.; Single Rooms, 25c. Dicky’s nose was in everybody’s business. He darted around with the fictitious haste of a fox-terrier, but his hand was in his pocket for everybody. He was always hearing of small, temporary jobs and handing them out to whoever he met first. He would beat the town for a half day’s work for a fellow too down and out to do it for himself, and as long as he was with him would spend his time in shrilly-voiced vituperation for not deserving this work he was about to receive. The fellows were always sneaking off to Dicky’s mission, where they would meet with embarrassed laughs, trying to account for their presence by the fact that Dicky was a good sort or that they had been nagged into it. In reality, he bound them together. The flotsam and jetsam of the half-employed often drifted back to Monheim’s to see if Dicky could find some work for them to do, and also to listen to his flood of words of hope and promise of Divine Love, of Heaven to come, and the grace of God — of all those fruits of the spirit, the finest flower beside the love one imperfect creature has for another equally imper¬ fect, that our human race knows. Dicky, with his nondescript face, his impudent, tip- tilted nose, his scraggy neck, up and down which an enormous Adam’s apple perpetually bobbed like cork on the sea of his talk, meant uplift and hope, and sometimes even salvation to these weary men. Catching sight of Jerry, Dicky forgot the sermon that was brewing. “I got you a job at my place for the mornin’, loadin’ carts. Say, Jerry,” he wheedled, coming across to his friend and talking in a low tone, realizing that in such matters delicacy has to be preserved. “Say, come on with me to-night and show Jesus you’re pleased. It won’t hurt you none.” Jerry disliked missions. They disquieted him and made him vaguely unhappy. He agreed, offishly, “All right,” and then added, defiantly: 8 Illustrated by Maurice Becker . “Look-a here, Dicky Silver, it ain’t because you got me a job,” but Dicky was off to the other end of the room, shrilling aggressively his news of the goodness of God. The men were leaving the room, singly and in groups of twos and threes. One man, who had evidently not spent the night in a lodging house before, shook Dicky off with an angry gesture. Jerry could hear the hairy giant telling another man that “he hadn’t never slept in the park yet— he’d sleep in the East River first.” Every man has in him some point where his endur¬ ance breaks; something that he will not do. There’s scarcely a human wreck so degraded that he has not something he will boast about that he can’t stand. One may hear men boast that they will not eat out of an ash-can, that their stomach turns at the thought of horse-meat, and in this hairy monster the park markeef the bottom of the social scale. He growled about it in rumbling tones. It seemed to be to him like a personal enemy lying there in the sweltering heat of city nights. Sleep in the park! Something then would mark him in his own eyes a failure, something would snap in his self-respect; it would be an idee fixe with him. In all the heat of the city, in all his lack of success, he had clung to his night’s shelter in a lodging house as a woman clings to her honor, as a standard bearer to his flag. But once this ideal relinquished, he was a doomed man ; he had suffered hunger, he had put under the craving for drink, not to sleep in a park. It had in his life the place of faithfulness to an ideal ; and perhaps in the final balance of things it is this faithfulness which counts, and not what the ideal may be. The stand¬ ard bearer and the man who would not sleep in the park may be counted, per¬ haps, in the eyes of a Greater Wisdom as sons of one mother. The little evangelist and Jerry Munn left the lodging house together. “Where you been?” demanded Dicky, explosively. “You look like a bo, you do. How d’you expect to get a job?” “I wore my shoes out,” Jerry told him glumly, “trampin’ to Connecticut for work.” “Get any?” “Nothin’ doin’.” “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you get work? You got a good trade; you ain’t a bum.” "Bad times; I ain’t worked but three weeks since last fall The panic hit the buildin’ trust an’ McCarty, he was my boss, he died.” But deep in him Jerry Munn knew that there was more in it than this. Somehow he had lost his grip. Things were looking up; other men got jobs, but he had been refused them so often that he had lost his nerve. He didn’t know how to get work any more, and here his companion hit on a pro¬ found truth. “Bet you don’t know how to ask for a job,” he snapped. “Knowin’ how to get a job is half the battle.” To this Jerry had no answer. He knew very well how he shuffled and hung his head. His bad clothes Sneaking Off to Dicky’s Mission.
Page 9
caused him the same embarrassment that dirty linen and an ill-fitting coat would another man in another walk in life seeking for work. A year ago, when everything was different, he could hold his head up with the rest. Then his brother had taken sick and died and his savings had gone in doc¬ tor’s bills and a funeral. Then the disordered life, with no steady work and poor and irregular food, had sapped away his vitality, seeped it away day by day, bit by bit, until at thirty he was on that vague border¬ land that divides the workingman from the bum. In some dim way he felt that his luck had changed when McCarty had died. He didn’t care very much now; he looked back with placid wonder at the times during the winter when he had raged about the injustice of things. He had asked for jobs then in a way that would have gotten him one had there been work to give, and now the truth of it was that he did not care whether there was a job or not. He had an odd feeling of faintness at the thought of laying bricks day by day, one brick after another, and one brick on another, and the hot sun beating down on him. “I’ll get a steady job in the fall,” he told Dicky, who looked at him sharply. Dicky was a shrewd judge of men. He knew what that vacillating tone meant. “You get a steady job right off, or you’ll be a bum before you know where you are. Look at your shoes — your toes is out ! Look at your coat ; it’s torn ! Can’t you mend? Can’t you get the loan of a brush and brush your clothes off? Can’t you wash, can’t you wash?” he fumed. “Where’s your clothes?” “Soaked,” Jerry answered solemnly. “Why didn’t you come to me? You’re a nice kind of a friend. You let your¬ self go until I’m ashamed to be seen on the street with you.” He dropped his voice, and there was almost tender¬ ness in it : “Say, when I’m through to-night, I’ll round you up something. We’ll get a bath, too.” At his friend’s words a yearning for his former cleanliness flooded Jerry. Once clean again and in decent clothes perhaps his luck would turn ; perhaps he would feel more like working; but during the morning, under the hot July sun, lifting crates into carts, and ever¬ more lifting crates, the little flame of ambition kindled by his friend flickered and died. He wanted to get out of it. He wanted to get away and loaf through the parks in peaceful vacuity. He got only fifty cents for his morn¬ ing’s work. Odd jobs are paid for with surprising irrelevancy to the amount of work done. Now you may get a quar¬ ter for lending a hand for half an hour, now you may do a grilling day’s work for a dollar. They spent a couple of dimes each for dinner, eating their food without speaking, Dicky’s garrulousness for once submerged in material needs. They ate in a stifling place, filled with flies and the clamor of heavy dishes and the strident cries of slovenly waitresses and the smell of hot fat and of hot human¬ ity, but they ate with as much unconsciousness to their surroundings as animals feed. At parting: “You won’t forget this evenin’, Jerry?” asked Dicky. “Say, Jerry,” and he brought his face nearer, “don’t drink nothing. If you start to drinking now before you get your job” - He didn’t finish. At these words a spirit of perversity came over Jerry Munn. What right had Silver to tell him not to drink? He needn’t try to play the master because he had a steady job and his shoes were whole. This was a free country, wasn’t it? He marched deliberately into a saloon, drank a glass of cheap whiskey, and walked out at peace with himself, once more having proved his manhood to himself. Then, comforted by his drink yet with a feeling of repentance, Jerry walked east. He wished now that he had gone into the saloon before Dicky’s eyes and not sneaked in behind his back; he would tell him about it in the evening. He remembered how much more he might have drank — he had a quarter left from his morning’s work — why, he might have gotten full on that; and then the incident dropped into oblivion. In the park in the East Side he sat down in the shade of a dusty tree. The place resounded with the cries of children ; gasping babies in the arms of puny little girls cried fretfully; and above all the city roared and clanged. His back ached with the unwonted heaviness of his morning’s work and he fell into an uneasy doze, the iron voice of the city in his ears. At the other end of the bench sat a woman who was wearily pushing a perambulator with her foot. The child in it looked sickly. The woman was young ana neatly dressed in black. Had she been well-fed she might have been comely. Her blue eyes were very far apart, and they reminded Jerry of someone he had known and liked ; he couldn’t think exactly who. She dropped a child’s toy she held in her listless hand, and Jerry picked it up for her. She thanked him, and as she did so gave him that swift look with which a woman decides what sort of a man she has to deal with, and seeing no harm in Jerry’s face, and being too used to raggedness and misfortune to have it hide the man, she began conversation with him. “I might be workin’ by furs now, but dey tell me he’s got to have air.” She nodded toward the child. She spoke with a slight German accent. “It’s busy season now by furs. He gets awful sick ; they say how it is if he don’t get breast milk off’n me he die sure. You know if you don’t eat good and get air you can’t have no milk. I say to the doctor, ‘If I ain’t workin’ I can’t eat good.’ ” She spoke softly and earnestly, feel¬ ing the sympathy of the man for her and welcoming it. He seemed gentle and kind, and she knew by instinct he was not of those who “get fresh.” She could not know, nor would she have cared had she known, that the sympathy she felt was because her eyes were so far apart like someone Jerry had once known. He puzzled over it as he listened to her talk. The doctor had given her work at the settlement. She ate there at noon. He was awful strict, the doctor, but real kind. “You been out o’ work long?” she asked Jerry with concern. He told her how long and what his trade was. She nodded comprehendingly. “My husban’ is out o’ work long before he die. To¬ day I get my wedding ring back. I don’t tell nobody I pawn my ring. I get me a brass one for fi’ cents.” She felt the need of the simple telling of her secret to someone who could not repeat it. “When I pawn my 9 ring I cry most as much as when my man die.” She turned wide eyes on him, for this strange psychological phenomenon had evidently puzzled her often. “So now to-night I don’t eat. The doctor, if he knew, must get an awful mad on me.” She laughed like a child who was naughty and was glad of it. The rigorous rule of those who would do her good had irked her. She was hardly more than a girl. Her black cotton waist hung from her loosely, the belt of her skirt was too large, and one could see that she must have been plump before the steady under-feeding and misfortune and the care of her sick baby had done their work. She looked at her ring and smiled quietly. “I had to save an awful long time, an’ to-day I couldn’t wait no longer, an’ so it is I am hungry to¬ night.” She made a little indifferent gesture with her hands. It seemed to Jerry that he could not bear to have this woman hungry. She pleased him. His heart felt tender towards her because of the unplaced memory which she had stirred in him. It was long, besides, since he had talked to a young woman, for since his run of bad luck he had not gone among his friends. With an impulsiveness that robbed the gesture of any offense, he took his quarter from his pocket. “Please eat to-night,” he muttered. Red flashed to the woman’s cheek, but Jerry was the most embarrassed of the two. He wanted to beg her not to mind. He wished he had not done it. He stumbled upon the right words. “You look like somebody I used to know,” he faltered. Her sentimental German mind grasped at this, and in a moment she constructed a romance for him, a romance of bereavement like her own. He saw the swift flash of sympathy and pity in her eyes and grew scarlet over his imposture. So with infinite mutual embarrassment the quarter changed hands, and Jerry walked rapidly away. The incident was closed. Without putting it into, words, he felt he could never go back again. He had had some vague desire to see the woman again, but he was miserably and profoundly embarrassed at his little act of gen¬ erosity for the sake of someone he had known so long ago. He drifted further east. The stale, sun-baked, dust-laden air seemed stagnant. He wanted to go where it was fresh and cool. He wished he had stayed in Connecticut and gotten odd jobs tramping. Borne by the desire for air and coolness, he walked out on a pier and sat down near the water’s edge and watched the ferries waddling over the water like huge beetles, and with his eyes followed the tugs plying up and down towing long strings of barges. There was something about them that made him think of Dicky. With a feeling of deep weariness he remem¬ bered that he had to go to the mission and then get the shoes and clothes that were to help him to get a job. Little blue waves danced up and down with a metallic glitter. They hypnotized him into a drowsiness that had nothing to do with sleep. Little brown boys were bathing in the river. Suddenly a shrill cry cut into his numbed brain as with a knife. “Jakey, the tide’s got him; the tide’s got him!” Two youngsters started out after their comrade, hand over hand, wasting their strength. Jerry saw a little black head bobbing up and down and little hands help¬ lessly beating the water in a panic, and he heard the children on the pier clamoring shrilly. Without a mo¬ ment’s hesitation, indeed almost before the little boys had started to the rescue, Jerry had pulled off his worn shoes, slipped his coat from him and dove into the water. He had never been a very good swimmer, but he could swim, and that was enough. There was no question aoout it whatever; he had to save that child. It was a necessity as imperative as hunger. He did it as a man ( Continued on page 18.) And Then the Tide Caught Him.
Page 10
THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS A BIBLE LESSON BY PROFESSOR THE UNION THEOLOGICAL CHARLES P. FAGNANI, OF SEMINARY, NEW YORK HE alternative that Jesus had to confront was this: should the realization of the special relationship that he felt he sustained to God involve privilege, personal privilege, or was he to be unprivileged so far as regards advantages which his brothers, the com¬ mon run of mankind, could not share? He decided to be unprivi¬ leged ; to remain like the rest. This is tremendous in its implications and in its im¬ portance. The Beloved Son, the first-born among many brethren that were to come afterward as the result of his discovery of what a man could be in his relations- to God. triumphs over the temptation to be¬ come a lord of privilege. This is the key to the min¬ istry and life and experience and triumphant work of Jesus Christ. He refused to have personal advantages of any kind. He was one among his brethren and he would not be raised above them and leave them to shift for themselves. The result of this is that it makes Jesus Christ for all time the Champion of Democracy. For democracy means anti-privilege ; equal rights for all and special privileges for none. And democracy is the question of the ages, the great question that is looming up before us in this country now. Jesus Christ triumphed over the temptation to be¬ come a lord of privilege though he feels himself to be the Beloved Son and the Messiah. It is tremendously interesting to realize that it was what we may call the class consciousness of Jesus that enabled him to with¬ stand the Temptation. “Class consciousness”: what does that mean? It means feeling that we are one with our fellows, a big class or a little class. Of course, Jesus’ class was primarily the whole human family, and secondarily the oppressed among them, the lower class, the exploited class. It was class con¬ sciousness that saved Jesus — under God and by faith — from succumbing to the temptation of privilege. He would not take anything that his brothers could not have too. Herein Jesus has for his prototype Moses. What is the supreme glory of the life of Moses? It was the writer of the “Epistle to the Hebrews” who Written for The Masses. discovered it. He says that Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaolrs daughter, preferring to suffer affliction with the people of God. In other words, he would not rise above his own class. He belonged with slaves, and with slaves he would stay in order that he Professor Charles P. Fagxaxi. might liberate the slaves. He would not accept salva¬ tion for himself alone. On another occasion we are told that he said, "If not, blot me out of Thy book”; — that is, “I will not live if my brothers cannot live too. I will not be delivered unless all my slave breth¬ ren can be delivered too.” Moses, the class-conscious hero of the Hebrews, is the prototype of Jesus Christ, who is the supreme class-conscious hero of humanity. Without class-consciousness we cannot be saved. Any man who would receive a salvation that his wife was excluded from, or that his children were excluded from, or that his neighbors were excluded from, would find that that salvation was no salvation at all: it would not be the divine salvation. So interpreted, the baptism and the temptation of Jesus become soul-stirring things to read. Our very blood tingles as we realize what it means to us to follow Jesus. Why is it that democracy has not pre¬ vailed before in the earth? Because with satanic in¬ genuity the lords of privilege have plucked the choic¬ est flowers of democracy when they began to bloom, and have transferred them to the ranks of privilege; leaving the masses without leadership. That is what they tried to do with Moses, to transfer him from the fields of Goshen to the palace of the Pharaoh. And what a plight it would have left those Hebrews in! But Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Suppose someone had tried to get Abraham Lincoln out from among the class of the common people and make him a lord or even exalted him to the level of a respectable English brewer, making him Sir Abraham Lincoln! Just think of it: Sir Abraham Lincoln ! That is the way that privilege has in¬ trenched itself. It has taken the best among the ex¬ ploited and said, “You come with us. You will save us and you will leave the rest on whom we depend unsaved.” And they have done it — they have done it again and again. But the heroes have not yielded, the prophets have not, the seers have not. Would Wil¬ liam Gladstone, the Commoner, have been exalted by becoming Sir William Gladstone or Lord Gladstone or Marquis Gladstone or the Duke of Gladstone? Everything turns on this question of privilege : Chris¬ tianity does and democracy does and politics does. Shall we defend privilege or shall we champion democ¬ racy? And shall our motto be the Christian motto. “Equal rights for all, special privileges for none”? If we so decide, we shall find ourselves in the goodly company of the real followers of Jesus Christ, the Champion of Democracy, the man who could not be tempted. OLD POP ALLEN T was Old Pop Allen, or Ex- Sergeant Robert W. Allen, U. S. A., to be exact, who put us right on the question of working-class tactics. Old Pop is guide, philoso¬ pher and friend of several of us from the silk mills in Paterson, who go to Green¬ wood lake some summers when we have the price. We are all Socialists, and, of course, our shack at the lake is a mighty noisy place of an evening when we get to discussing Direct Action, Anarchism, Single Tax, et al. And then besides Pop can look back and compare the times preceding the civil war with the conditions now. He gets a better perspective from which to view the present awakening of the workers. He is not so apt to be, as we young fellows are, like the man who couldn’t see the forest on account of the trees. Everything reminds Pop of something that happened in 1861, and he uses his regular stock of war stories to illustrate a hundred and one different points as they arise. At first, we are not at all keen on the old man’s war stories. Because, being Socialists, any reference to militarism at all was a challenge. But finally, we began to realize that it not the guns so much, or military trappings, or military phrases that makes the effifficicncy of military forces, it is organization. Men. many men, trained to act quickly and without confusion toward a given end. By R "Once you have the organization,” says Pop, “you can switch from ballots to bullets easy enough. But all the guns in the world are useless without organization.” He says all the routine party work is like soldiers doing police and sentry duty. It always seems rather silly and useless, and more or less irksome, until the time comes when such tasks are really important. “Election days are drill days for the army of the working class,” is one of Old Pop’s stock phrases, and sometimes he adds: “Who ever watched the soldiers drillin’ but what they didn’t want to jine ’em? You just naturally have to be trained for your job.” Sometimes he makes us sore because he does not seem more interested in strikes, or when some leader on the industrial held is unjustly arrested and perse¬ cuted. But he always answers one way and his old eyes blaze with the memory of many a battle-field. “Go to it, boys ! Do all you can, but don’t let the enemy tease you into exhausting yourselves. Wait for the artillery! It’s just over yonder behind the h’ll. All these things are making recruits for you, boys, but don’t lose sight of the main thing. Maybe you think I ain’t sympathetic and alive to the horrors and brutalities of them strikes, but Lord, I am ! You see, I lived in 1861 and I know what you’re up against, and T want you boys to be ready for ’em when the time comes.” And then he would tell many long stories to illus¬ trate — how General So-and-So at the battle of Such- and-Such, coaxed the enemy to attack, in order to gel a flank move on them, and so on. “The battle line is around the whole world, boys! We ain’t got much artillery yet, and the enemy’s intrenched 10 H. ASQUITH Written for The Masses. damn ’em. Milwaukee’s our only big gun in this divi¬ sion, and Lord we’ve got to get a thousand more; yes, and a fleet down to Washington, too — before we be¬ gin to really fight ’em, boys ! “Why, we had all that in i860, and it wasn’t over yet by a long shot, now, were it?” And so on and on, would Old Pop continue. He tells us of the workingman with the capitalist brain down South who said : “What do you all want to come down here and take all our niggers for?” This same worthy being a mountaineer who had never owned anything, much less a slave. And again about the “damn dudes,” as the intel¬ lectuals of that day were called, and the feeling so generally against them at the beginning of the war, and how they later found that all men were much the same under their skin when the real test came, and of the many wonderful friendships that grew after first starting with open hatred on account of the difference in exterior trimming, as it were. And how quick the men were to accuse the officers of cowardice — even of being spies and traitors, when for some reason in connection with the large move¬ ments they did not continually order attacks. And all of these things even after the Federal Gov¬ ernment was in the hands of the political party of that day which had the same relative position to it that our own has now. We all agreed with Old Pop Allen that the main thing now is to recruit and train our organization, and that those who oppose this are not our friends, but our enemies. Let us all chant then in chorus : “Work¬ ers of the world, unite! You have nothing but your chains to lose and you have a world to gain !”
Page 11
CHILD LABOR AND THE HOME Written for The Masses. Illustrated by Arnold Goodwin. By OWEN R. LOVEJOY General Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. Carrying Easter finery from a tenement sweatshop. S e w i n g sacks in his happy home. CONCHETTA is not yet fourteen years old. She has been making the Irish lace collars we see in the large department stores in the city. Some days when she can stay out of school she works seven hours ; even late into the night sometimes, but not always. “My father, he not have so much work always/’ says Conchetta. “I said, ‘I better get the work at home. I will make the lace like the other ladies/ My father don’t want to let me. He said like this, ‘You will get too little money, and you will have to get blind if you make the lace.' But my father he could not get the work; my mother she was sick in the hospital (for six months) ; and my big brother he make eighteen years old, got killed under the derrick, a whole lot of them did on the same job. It was a bad time and so I made the lace for over two years. “I have to leave school all the time to work on this. Oh, but I tell you we’re very poor! And I not make more than twenty-four cents the day. First I used to get twenty-five cents each for the Dutch collars. Now they’re too stingy to give twenty-five cents and I get eighteen cents, and I buy my own cotton. I can make one and a half Dutch collars if I work all the day. I cannot work all the time. I’m always sick — the throat, the cold, my head — see : you have to get blind to make one of those collars. But my father, my sick mother, my little brother (only nine vears old) we must eat.” The history of Child Labor in America will never be written. One can tell the story of little Conchetta, or of little Leo. twelve years old, who sits for nine hours a day in the blinding, choking dust of the coal breaker, pick¬ ing slate from the rushing stream of anthracite, but no pen can write the story of the 1,750,000 children who march in America’s industrial army. Why should it be written? It is after all not the suffering or sacrifice of the child that is the chief consideration — larger problems are involved. lo the statesman who sees the destiny of a civilization written by the finger of the little child ; who realizes that every social institution of which our civilization boasts is measured in accurate terms by our attitude toward child life; who sees that ever}' stumbling block placed in the way of a little child becomes a millstone hanging upon the neck of progress — it is evident that the effect of child labor upon society is a matter of public concern. Whatever the historical causes of its development, we have come to regard the family — one father, one mother, a group of children to be fed, clothed and educated during the years that precede maturity — as the fundamental institution of our civili¬ zation and the glory, thus far, of all social evolution. One of the causes out of which the family grew was the lengthened period of infancy. The evolutionary trend has been to prolong infancy and adolescence, and thus to launch upon society better in¬ dividuals. In many industries the present tendency is to reverse this process. Before the introduction of our present industrial system, the home was the factory, and men and women shared in the manufacture of the articles of con¬ sumption. The consumer was then the producer as well. Undmibtedly children shared in lighter forms of such industry, but the group with which the child worked was most often composed of other members of his own family. Even when the articles produced were for home consumption they had an economic value, although their chief value was that which we to-day regard as accruing from manual training. The transfer of manufacturing from the home to the factory should have re¬ sulted in incalculable gain to the world, for women, no longer under the necessity of being the textile workers, fuel gatherers, and soap makers, should have been set free to put in motion great influences for the intellectual and ethical development of the race. With the rapid utilization of such mechanical devices as shift the heavier burdens from human shoulders to shoulders of iron and steel — leaving the human laborer to guide the machine and increasing the speed of production a hundredfold or more — the father in *he family should have found his earning ca¬ pacity tremendously increased. We might reasonably have prophesied that he could not only singly provide maintenance and secure leisure for himself and the mother, but that together they could prolong the years of education for their chil¬ dren, thus sending them into life better trained than themselves. What we actually find in many industries is the direct reverse. The ignorant, the weak, the inefficient, the little children are profitably substituted for stalwart men. The wife and the child enter wage earning industries, not to assist the father in earning a livelihood, but often to compete and drag his wages down. Even where the factory does not command the industry — even in those indus¬ tries which, having once been taken from the home to the factory, are now being returned by our thrifty ingenuity that, in many large cities, leads the manufacturer to distribute his overhead charges of light, heat, rent, motor power among the miserable tenement dwellers — this fact remains. “Sometime I work way into the night to make the finish,” says Antoinette, as she removes from between her teeth a nut she is cracking for a wholesale health food house. “What I can do? We are many and we are poor, and the landlord must have the rent. I have the sickness in my head and no more I can carry seventy-five pounds nuts on my head.” One of the results of this modern revolution in the problem of wage earning has been a reduction of industrial wages compared with living expenses, from an amount sufficient to maintain the family as a unit to an amount sufficient only to maintain the individual as a unit. We thus develop that exaggerated individualism which seeks ( Continued on page 18.) 11 Knitting cheap caps for bargain hunters. Artificial flowers for Easter mil¬ linery wearers. Finishing collars instead of playing ball. Cracking nuts for a wholesale health food faker
Page 12
GERMINAL n_n ™mtB) Illustrated by H. J. Turner. PRING had come. One day, on coming from the shaft, Etienne felt upon his cheek the first warm winds of April and sensed the good smell of fresh earth, green fields and pure air. The days passed by. In June the wheat fields were already high, showing a light green, contrasting strongly with the more som¬ ber hue of the beet fields. It was one boundless, waving sea whose billows seemed increasing with the growth of vegetation. Along the canal the poplars, with their leafy branches, enhanced the beauty of the scene. Weeds, interlaced with wild flowers, covered the old mine shaft. Etienne had become acquainted with Jouvarine; he lived in the same house. He was a machinist at the Voreaux, who occupied the room next to his, and was about thirty years of age, a slender blonde, with a fine head, covered with splendid hair, and a thin beard. His scantily furnished chamber contained a case of books and papers. He was a Russian, and his reticence in manner gave rise to the suspicion on the part of his fellow-workmen that, with his little gentleman-like hands, he belonged to a higher class; perhaps he was an adventurer or an assassin eluding punishment. But then he had proved to be so friend¬ ly, giving to the children in the alley all the sous from his pockets, that they accepted him as a comrade, re¬ assured by the words “political refugee” which had been circulated, those vague words in which they saw an excuse even for crime. The first week, Etienne had found him reserved, al¬ most fierce. He did not know his history until much later. Jouvarine was the last born of a noble family of Toula. At St. Petersburg, where he had studied medicine, the Socialist rage which carried away all the Russian youths had decided him to become a mechanic, mingle with the people, and so know and aid them as a brother. By that experience he was able to live now, having fled after an attempt on the life of the Emperor. Disowned by his family, without money, he was dying of hunger when the Montson company employed him in an hour of need. He had labored there for a year, a good workman, sober and silent, working alternately day and night, so faithfully that the chiefs pointed to him as an example. Every evening at about nine, when the tap room of Rasseneur was empty, Etienne remained there to talk with Jouvarine. He drank his beer in little swallows while the other continually smoked cigarettes. His thoughtful eyes seemed to follow the smoke, as though in a dream, while his hands fondled a tame rabbit that had the freedom of the house. This rabbit, which he had named Pologne, was greatly attached to him and would stand erect, scratching him with her paws, until he took her up like an infant. “Do you know,” said Etienne, one evening to Ras¬ seneur, “I’ve received another letter from Pluchart.” “Ah,” cried the landlord, standing between his two lodgers. “What does he say?” For two months Etienne had been corresponding with the machinist at Lille, whom he had informed of his engagement at Montson. Pluchart wished him to organize the Montson miners. “He says that the association goes on very well. It seems they are gaining many new members.” “What do you think of the idea?” said Rasseneur to Jouvarine. The latter, who was tenderly scratching Pologne’s head, emitted a cloud of smoke and said calmly : “Foolishness !” But Etienne grew impatient. He wished to form a branch of the International Association of Work¬ ingmen, that famous “International” which had just been established in London. Was not this the coun¬ try for such an effort, where justice would at last triumph? In all parts of the world organizations of this kind were neing established, to secure the lawful demands of the workmen. What a simple yet grand society ; lowest of all the section which represented the commune; above that the federation; then the prov¬ ince which grouped the sections; still higher the na¬ tion ; and above all, humanity, incarnated in a general council where each nation is represented by a corre¬ sponding secretary. In six months they would con¬ quer the world, they would dictate laws to all indus¬ tries, regulating universal labor. “Foolishness,” repeated Jouvarine. “Eve talked that all over. . . . Your Karl Marx is willing that this matter should govern itself and the only concerted effort should be with reference to increasing the wages of workingmen. I do not believe in your ideas. Burn everything; crush the people; annihilate all; and, when nothing remains of this rotten world, a better one will arise from its ruins.” Etienne commenced laughing. He did not always listen to the words of his comrade. This thing of distinction seemed to him futile. Rasseneur, still more practical, and with the knowledge of an experienced man, did not even condescend to become angry. “Then you’re going to attempt to form a branch in Monston, are you?” That was what Pluchart, who was Secretary of the Federation of the North, desired. He particularly dwelt on the assistance the association would be to the miners, if they were to strike. A thorough tie-up of the mines would force the entire working-class to participate in the general strike for less work and more wages. Etienne thought a great deal of the possibility of a coming strike; the affair about tim¬ bering would end badly ; it needed only a very slight act of injustice on the part of the company to arouse all the miners. “The great trouble is the dues,” said Rasseneur in a contemplative tone. “Fifty centimes a year to the general funds, and two francs to the section ; that does not seem much, but I am sure many would re¬ fuse to give it.” “Everything is so dear,” put in Madame Rasseneur, who had entered and was listening with a gloomy air. “Would you believe it, I have paid twenty-two sous for eggs? This cannot last.” This time the three men were of one mind. They spoke one after the other. The owners were rolling in wealth since ’89 while the workingmen died of hunger. The revolution seemed only to have made matters worse. It was absurd to call men free; yes, free to die of hunger. It did not put bread in the cupboard to vote for men who took their ease with¬ out thinking more of the people than they thought of their old boots. “This must end !” repeated Madame Rasseneur, en¬ ergetically. “Yes, yes,” cried all three, “it must end!” Jouvarine was stroking Pologne’s ears, whose nose wrinkled up with pleasure. In a low voice he said: “Increased wages! Why, they are fixed by an in¬ 12 Edited by Albert Sonnichsen. exorable law at the smallest possible figure, just enough to allow the workingman dry bread. If they fall too low, the workingmen die off and the demand for more men causes them to rise again. If they rise too high,, competition brings them down again. It is the equi¬ librium of empty stomachs.” “Listen,” he resumed in his usual calm manner ; “it will be necessary to destroy all non-producers. Yes, even to bathe the earth in blood, to purify it by fire.” “Monsieur is right,” said Madame Rasseneur, who,, in her fits of revolutionary excitement, became very polite. Etienne, in despair at his ignorance, did not wish to discuss the matter further. Fie arose, saying : “Let us go to bed. All this cannot relieve me from getting up at three o’clock.” Jouvarine, witli one last puff at his cigarette, arose,, tenderly placing the rabbit on the floor. Rasseneur closed up the house and they all ascended the stairs in silence, their ears buzzing, their heads swelling with the great questions which had so stirred them. Every evening there was some such conversation in the -bar-room, over the cup which it took Etienne an hour to empty. The more he talked the greater his anxiety became to solve this vexed problem. For a long time he hesitated about borrowing some books from his neighbor, who unhappily possessed little but English and Russian works. At length he procured' from him a few books upon the co-operative system, mere foolishness, as Jouvarine said. Every week he read a paper received by the latter, Le Combat, an anarchist sheet published at Geneva. * In spite of all that he read on the subject, he could not arrive at any definite conclusion as to the value of any of the theories advanced. ****** Toward the middle of August Etienne installed him¬ self with the Maheus. He found that he was better off here than at Rasseneur’s; the bed was not bad. they changed it once a fortnight and the soup was better: he suffered only from a scarcity of meat. But then, for forty-five francs per month he could not expect to have rabbit at every meal. His money helped the family, who managed to get along with very few debts and they evinced much gratitude to¬ ward their lodger. It was at this time that Etienne began to under¬ stand the ideas which had filled his mind. He asked himself all sorts of confused questions — why the mis¬ ery of one? Why the wealth of the other? Why this one under the control of that one, without the hope of ever changing places? His first lesson was to comprehend his own ignorance. So he applied him¬ self to the study of political economy, only to learn its defects. Now he kept up a regular correspondence with Pluchart, through whose instructions he was launched in the Socialist movement. He sent for some books which, the reading being badly digested, served to exalt his views; a book of medicine, 1’ Hygiene dtt Mineur, a treatise on political economy of an incom¬ prehensible technical dryness, and some anarchist pam¬ phlets, which only served to confuse him, in connec¬ tion with a few old newspapers which he kept as a final resort in any discussion that might arise. Jouva¬ rine, however, took some volumes to him, and a work upon co-operation had made him dream for a month of a universal association of exchange, abolishing money, basing upon work the entire social life. Shame of his ignorance was followed by pride ; he was able to think for himself.
Page 13
with the ravishing delight peculiar to a neophyte, his heart nearly bursting with generous indignation against the oppressors. He had not yet made for himself a system from the vagueness of his readings. The prac¬ tical claims of Rasseneur intermingled in him with the distracting violence of Jouvarine, and when he left the inn, where he still spent almost every evening in discussion, he walked away in a sort of dream, par¬ ticipating in the regeneration of the people without its costing one drop of blood or a broken window. Never¬ theless, the means of execution were obscure to him; he preferred to believe that things would solve them¬ selves, for he could not formulate a program of re¬ construction. He occasionally repeated that it was necessary to banish the political for the social ques¬ tion. This was a phrase that he had read and it seemed a good one to use among the miners with whom he lived. Now, every evening they were half an hour later in going to bed. He found himself growing more and more offended by the promiscuity of the alley. Were they beasts to be thus penned up with each other, so crowded together that one could not change his cloth¬ ing alone? “Confound it,” said Maheu, “if we had more money we could have more comforts. It's not human for people to live like this.” Each of the family spoke his or her mind while the oil from the lamp tainted the air of the room, already smelling of fried onions. No, life was not funny. They worked at labor that was worse than a galley slave’s, running the risk of being killed, and then did not earn enough to eat meat once a day. They were obliged to eat sparingly or be devoured by debts and when Sunday came they spent the one day free from labor in a sleep of fatigue. La Maheu broke forth : “The foolishness is when they say it can change, that happiness will come some day. I don’t wish ill of anyone, but there are times when this injustice sickens me.” They were silent. But when old Bonnemort was there his eyes would open in amazement. In his time they did not trouble them¬ selves in that manner; they were born among the coal and dug the vein without demanding the why and wherefore; he now breathed an air which had filled the coal men with ambition. “A good drink’s a good drink,” he murmured. “The chiefs are often scoundrels, but there’ll al¬ ways be chiefs, won’t there? It’s useless to break your own head in finding fault with them.” Immediately Etienne became ex¬ cited. That was just it. Things would change, because the work¬ men were thinking of these things. In olden times the miner lived like a brute, always under ground, like a machine for ex¬ tracting the coal, ignorant of what was occurring out¬ side of the mine. The owners who governed them understood each other. The seller and buyer could eat their flesh, and the coal men were not even aware of it. But from this time on the miner was awake, and he would make himself felt as one of an army of men who would re-establish justice. Had not all citizens been equal since the revolution? They voted together. Why did the workingman remain the slave of the em¬ ployer who paid him? At present the great companies with their machines wiped out everything. They no longer even had the guarantee of olden times. The men of the same trade must at least unite and defen 1 themselves, and, thanks to instruction, there would be an explosion of everything one day. For, look in the alley even — the grandfathers would not have been able to sign their names as the fathers now signed, and the sons knew how to read and write like professors. The increasing knowledge pushed forward, little by little, a rude harvest of men ripening as under the sun. From this moment they no longer stuck, each in his place, throughout his entire existence, but they had the am¬ bition to take the place of the next higher. Why, then, should they not use their fists in becoming stronger? Maheu, though disturbed, remained full of opposi¬ tion. “If you did anything, they’d give you back your livret,” he said. “No, the old folks are right; the miner’ll always have to work with the hope of a leg of mutton, now and then, in recompense. That’s fate, which nothing can change.” La Maheu, who had been silent for some moments, broke out, as if in a dream, murmuring in a low voice: “Still, if what the priests tell us is true, the poor of this world will be rich in the next.” A burst of laughter interrupted her. Even the chil¬ dren shrugged their shoulders. All of them had a secret fear of the ghosts of the mines, but of this belief they were incredulous. They laughed at the empty sky. “Fool!” cried the father. “If the priests believed that themselves they’d eat less and work more to keep a good place for themselves on high. No, when we’re dead, we’re dead.” The wife heaved great sighs. “Ah ! Mon Dieu ! Mon Dieu !” Then all listened to Etienne. Catherine, her chin' in her hand, seemed to drink in with her great, clear eyes every word he uttered as he spoke of his belief, open¬ ing the enchanted future of his social dream. “And there are other thoughts,” said the young man. “Do you need a God and a paradise to make you happy? Are you not able to make happiness for your¬ selves on this earth?” With an ardent voice he spoke of the wasted years. From the gloomy horizon a ray of light shone out at last, illuminating the somber life of these poor people. The constant misery, the overpowering work, the bes¬ tial life, in the end slaughtered for others, all this would disappear at a blow and justice would descend from the sky; that justice which would bring happiness to all men, making equality and fraternity supreme. A new society would spring up in a day in which each would live from work and share in the common joy. The old rotten world would fall in pieces; a young humanity, purged of their crimes, would form a sim¬ ple people of workingmen who would have for a motto “to each, merit according to his worth.” That dream, constantly enlarged and embellished, became so en¬ chanting as to rise higher than the impossible. At first La Maheu refused to listen, filled with an unknown terror. No, no, it was too good; they shouldn’t have such ideas, for it made life seem still worse ; and to be happy they would have to kill every¬ one above them. When she saw Maheu’s eyes shine, 13 During these first months, Etienne was possessed troubled, conquered, she became still more excited, in¬ terrupting Etienne : “Don’t listen, my man. You see he’s telling us sto¬ ries. Do you think the bosses would ever consent to work like us?” But little by little the charm also acted upon her. With imagination awakened, sighing, she entered into the enchanted world of hope. It was so sweet to for¬ get the sad reality for an hour. When they lived like brutes with their noses in the ground, they needed to treat themselves to things which they could never pos¬ sess. But that which compelled her to agree with the young man was her sense of justice. “There you’re right,” cried she. “It would surely be just to possess in our turn.” Then Maheu exclaimed : “Great God ! I’m not rich, but I’d give a hundred sous not to die until I’ve seen all that. What a turn¬ ing upside down ! Do you think it’ll be soon, and how are people to go about bringing it around?” Etienne again commenced to speak. The old society would break up; it could not last longer than a few months. He went into the work of execution more vaguely, mixing up what he had read, but not fear¬ ing before these ignorant people to launch out into explanations which even he did not understand. All the workings were smoothed down into a certainty of easy triumph, which would terminate the misun¬ derstanding between the classes. The Maheus seemed to compre¬ hend, approving, accepting the most miraculous solutions with the blind faith of new believers, eqaul to those Christians in olden times who waited for the coming of a perfect society upon the ashes of the old. Alzire, who understood part of this conversation, im¬ agined this happiness to be a very warm house, where the children played and ate all they wished. Catherine, without moving, her chin always in her hand, never took her eyes from Etienne, and when he became silent she paled and shivered as though with cold. But the mother looked at the clock. “It’s after nine. We’ll never be able to get up to-morrow.” And they arose from the table in despair, their hearts ill at ease. It seemed to them they had been wealthy, and had now fallen back in the mire. Old Bonnemort start¬ ed for work, growling that these stories didn’t make the soup taste better, while the others went up to bed, more sensible to the damp but heavy air of the room. At these evening talks a few neighbors often came in to listen — Levaque, who was excited at the idea of sharing in such happiness; Pierron, whom prudence sent off as. soon as the company was attacked. Zachaire some¬ times appeared ; but politics wearied him. He pre¬ ferred to go down and take a drink at Rasseneur’s. But Cheval, who had become the firm friend of Etienne, was more forcible, wishing blood. He passed an hour with the Maheus every evening, and an un¬ avowed jealousy had sprung up in him on seeing the attitude of Catherine while Etienne was speaking. He feared his comrade had stolen his girl from him. That girl of whom he had soon tired, suddenly became very dear to him when she lived in the same house with another man. Thus Etienne’s influence became enlarged. Little by little he revolutionized the whole alley, while he raised himself in the esteem of his friends. La Maheu, in spite of her defiance in the beginning, treated him with the consideration due a young man who paid his board' regularly, and who drank but little, spending all his spare time over a book. She started his popularity among the neighbors, giving him the reputation of a smart fellow, for which he was annoyed by being con¬ stantly asked to write their letters. He became a sort of man of affairs, charged with the correspondence, consulted by the house-wives, in all cases. So by the first of September he was able to open the books of the famous organization fund.
Page 14
SCHOOLS FOR DEMOCRACY B y ARTHUR WALLACE CALHOUN PRINCIPAL OF SCHOOLS, CLEARWATER, FLA Written for The Masses. E of English speech are wont to maintain that in us self- government is instinctive ; that whatever may be the limitations of “lesser breeds without the law/’ our stock at least bears the divine capacity for democracy. Whether or not we have good ground for invidious comparison with other peo¬ ples, the sober fact remains that even among us democ¬ racy has not been a sweeping success. The forms of democracy have, indeed, been achieved, but the reality is as yet a remote ideal — “the light that never was on sea or land." It is easy to confound universal suffrage with de¬ mocracy. We are apt to think that a free ballot signi¬ fies a free people. The form of self-government looms so large that we know little of the spirit of it. Be¬ cause it is in the people’s power to rule, we jump the chasm and declare that they do rule, forgetful of the .solid fact that unrestricted suffrage is only a clearing of the ground for democracy. “The body without the spirit is dead"; we need a new prophet to breathe Jife into the valley of dry bones. The art of democratic government must be learned ; for it is an art, not an instinct. It must be learned, .and the public school is the place to begin teaching it to the rising generation. This training must be two¬ fold : it must develop the spirit of democracy, and it must impart method; spirit — because democracy is not livingly present as long as nearly every one is pos¬ sessed with the ideal of rising above his class, not that he may help lift it, but that he may assume dominant lordship over men and things; method — because en¬ thusiasm without guidance is futility. Surely it should be a matter of course in America, with its traditions of free government, that the public schools should instil democracy. Yet for some reason — whether owing to the insidious workings of privi¬ lege, or otherwise — there is not wanting a certain op¬ position to such instruction. In a recent battle in Florida, a journal by no means narrow says that a teacher in a state institution “has no right to teach .... democracy, theocracy, or autocracy." Surely non-partisanship with a vengeance! The boasted ideals of free-government are shelved along with the ukase of the czar and the pontifical bull ! The American public school must not teach democracy ! Is this verdict final? Of course we cannot expect the public school to be very far in advance of the spirit of the public, but we can surely demand that it embody in practical form the sentiment for democracy that is certainly abroad, though abroad in a half- • sighted incoherence. When it comes then to the strengthening, through the agency of the school, of the spirit of democracy, how shall we begin? Leaving alone those aspects of school life that already minister to this spirit, let us concentrate our attention on the changes that must come. Chief among these is this: History must be re¬ written. We must put many pedestaled heroes in the closet, and forget their “glory." We must infuse th° class struggle into our text-books, and bring out in relief the progressive triumph of democracy. Strip the halo from the past, and we thereby starve stand- pat conservatism. Teach the realities of history and we beget a generation of open-eyed. Begin if you like with the famous assertion of James T : “No bishop ; no king," and carry it on to its logical expression i 1 to-day’s struggle. 'Democracy invading the church •threatened autocracy on the throne of state. Democ racy having grasped the scepter of political power, turns to the realm of industry, and not unlikely our capitalist friends begin to feel in their heart of hearts, “No king, no capitalist." And so throughout! His¬ tory is ours; not the capitalist’s. Let us use it. Let us not forget the public schools when we aim our at¬ tacks at the outposts of privilege. We can make them, in time, what they ought to be. Not to cover the whole field of possibility for im¬ parting the spirit of democracy, consider, in passing, the ideals developed in the school-child by the very atmosphere of things. It is to be feared that too little of the workday world is allowed to obtrude its noisome presence within school walls. One thing docs intrude : the mercenary ideal of success. Right here we have a right to make a stand. Let us insist that the ideal of personal success shall be somewhat dampered, ana that the schools in their very atmosphere create an idealism of social service. Let our boys and girls know of the miserable children that are toiling for a pittance when they should be at play or in school. Paint the picture in vivid colors and let “the cry of the children" ring through the very school-room. Make real to our children in all its horrors the enormity of our present industrial and social systejn and fill them with the stern determination to consecrate their lives to its transformation. It can be done. Not to-day maybe. We shall have to fight the opposition of vul¬ ture interests, and short-sighted parents, but if we persist, giving “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,’’ the influence cannot but penetrate, and, let us hope, prevail. The schools must develop the spirit of democracy in the hearts of the children ; on that let us insist ; not a raving sentimentalism, but a spirit with eyes and brain, a spirit that knows who, and what, and why; a spirit that can do. And in order that this spirit may function most strongly in the world out¬ side, the school must train it in the methods of demo¬ cratic self-government. Let us acknowledge frankly the steps already taken THE STRIKERS By M. E. BRADLEY Written for The Masses. You have made your shrouds, O Proud and Great. Your graves' are dug; they are deep as Hate. We toiled; our pay was Hunger and Pain. We begged; our portion was disdain. We asked for justice — you gave us jeers. We asked for pity — you gave us sneers. Our starving babes are dear as your own : Their coffins are earth; their dirge a moan. . . . O Proud Oppressor: your shroud is here: Grimly, we weave it with wail and tear. !4 in this direction. Such movements as the George Ju¬ nior Republics are embodiments, to a degree, of our idea. Some schools have already introduced a meas¬ ure of student self-government. Without any precise statistical data on the subject we may hazard the guess that this movement will take hold at the top — college and university — and work downward. The writer has in mind a woman’s college of high standing in which student self-government was adopted recently. Some of the students protested at first, but the regime was inaugurated without much difficulty. At first, juris¬ diction was given over such matters, only, as honesty in examinations, etc., but the hope is that the system can be gradually expanded to cover all student life. Some may be rather dubious as to the possibilities of self-government in the lower grades, but any one that has even a slight acquaintance with Boy Society will be willing to lay odds in favor of its success. We may hope that by the organization of a school congress in which each grade shall have representa¬ tives, many of the trying disciplinary problems will be eliminated. Children will, in general, be willing to make reasonable laws for their own government, and the weight of “public opinion” (school opinion) in favor of their observance should be vastly more cogent than the irritation of a school teacher with nerves frayed by the petty trivialities that conspire to vex many an instructor’s life. It may be that the writer is unduly optimistic regarding a problem of which he has slight knowledge; but he would like to see some more experiments along the lines indicated. In a good school even under the old regime the student body feels a sort of responsibility for school conduct. Only the other day, after a rather severe 1 enalty had been imposed on a high-school boy by the writer, the other boys came in a body with a petition signed by all of them, asking that the penalty be re¬ mitted and specifying the grounds of their action. It was evident that they were uninformed on certain es¬ sential points in the case ; and on being enlightened they immediately acquiesced in the findings of the fac¬ ulty, and the matter dropped, with scarcely a mur¬ mur. Query: Would not that same body of students have been competent to assume original jurisdiction in the case, and would not their verdict have been as just as that of the faculty? It is easy to see what experience in the manage¬ ment of affairs might be gained through a proper measure of student self-government in our schools. Such a system would be a laboratory of applied de¬ mocracy and would afford practice in the use of the instruments of democratic self-rule. It would go far toward making the school what it ought to be — the closest possible approximation to the conditions of real life. Doubtless serious and likewise humorous aspects would develop. We might expect the rise of politi¬ cians, and the influence of “special interests" such as appear among the young. “The menace of privilege" might develop in unforeseen ways. The writer has vivid recollections of his early school days when a certain saloon-keeper’s son, for reasons best known to himself, curried favor by judicious use of pennies; and later when a young daughter of the plutocracy armed herself similarly with brandy-drops. Perhaps the school world is more like the real world than some of us think. It would seem, at all events, that it is in keeping with the spirit of Socialism to extend democracy into the schools. It will be well, as Socialists get control of school boards, to consider the advisability of in¬ troducing the principle of self-government into School Society. Not until the schools become real schools of democracy can they be entitled to the name “public schools" in the fullest sense.
Page 15
THE MINIMUM WAGE AND THE REVOLUTION FREE TO SOCIALIST PARTY MEMBERS This elegant shaving set con¬ sists of a safety razor, seven blades, a fine brush and a box of Colgate shaving stick. We will send this set free if you or your local places a monthly order of at least 20 copies during the cam¬ paign, for which we will charge one dollar monthly. Bear in mind The Masses is rapidly developing into the best national propaganda or¬ gan. It is a good seller and will make money for the local every month. The Set will be sent on receipt of One Dollar The MASSES PUBLISHING CO. 150 Nassau Street NEW YORK This is a special campaign offer and does not alter our regular rate on bundle sub¬ scriptions. More brickbats and other things for the poor deluded fools who are agitating for a minimum wage ! This time it is the editor of a promi¬ nent Socialist weekly who puts down his foot on the minimum wage. He says it will not prevent strikes, nor add to the welfare of the working class, nor offer the slightest solution of the social problem. We did not know that anybody inter¬ ested in the minimum wage agitation had a strike cure up his sleeve. On the contrary, we thought that the people who had won their battle for the mini¬ mum wage would organize better strikes and for bigger rake-offs. And further, he says that once it is in use the dominant class puts up the cost of living. Funny, we never knew them to hesitate in doing so, and they haven’t increased our wages in a dog's age. Lastly, he says that if it is put into effect it somehow gives the government power to force the worker to accept the minimum wage whether he feels like it or not. Then why don’t the German Kaiser start a Minimum Wage League? We are at last beginning to compre¬ hend what George Bernard Shaw meant when he said : “Socialism will come in spite of the Socialists.” For according to this editor, every Socialist who seeks to ameliorate the present condition of labor is “dull.” to speak no worse of him. Yet there is little doubt that if Daniel De Leon were consulted one would find this comrade long since relegated to the lengthy De Leonic list of “labor fakirs.” And the good De Leon himself stands none too well with some of the more radical I. W. W. comrades. And there are com¬ munist-anarchists who will have none of the I. W. W. And still back of these there are doubtless individualist anar¬ chists who are utterly opposed to con¬ certed action of any definite kind. The whole field is filled with well meaning and doubtless sincere persons, who quite honestly and cordially believe that any man or woman who is not ex¬ actly squared up with the one True and Practicable System (and God knows there are almost as many “True and Practicable Systems” as there are ex¬ pounders), that any such person is most likely a deliberate Labor Fakir and must be served at once with plenty of very cold water. This condition exists. If all these ice- bat hurlers are honest, it is bad enough ; if they are dishonest, then we have a nasty mess ahead of us. There is no getting away from the fact that there is a strong movement now to effect the revolution by a gen¬ eral strike. Now, the words “general' strike” T think frighten no intelligent Socialist. There is no doubt that a gen¬ eral strike in Germany, where the So¬ cialist party is held together econom¬ ically and industrially, would prove suc¬ cessful. It the German Social Demo¬ crats wished to capture the government after such a strike the matter could be effected with little confusion. But in America ! Wouldn’t it be jolly in America the morning after the general strike? You can imagine every one of the antagon¬ istic elements of today, from Maine to San Diego, with fanatical devotion feed¬ ing their presses. Each broadside, each news-letter, each handbill would be ac¬ companied by a ten-pound cake of ice to be served red hot to the Labor Fakir who was trying to do something. Is there any one who would escape this mud storm ? I don’t think so. Not even Karl Marx would emerge unsplattered. The rain of slime that is going on now is just a sun shower compared with the cloudburst that would break loose the day after such a revolution. The great day in America is some dis¬ tance off yet — or let us hope so. Let us pray to our joss, or our First Cause, or whatever we believe in, that no one will topple over the present government until there is a united labor class wait¬ ing to set up a new and better one in its place. And the united intelligent labor class is not to be born of twelve hours work a day and a starvation wage. Oppression makes the revolu¬ tionary spirit, but it does not guarantee a successful revolution. Not by a good deal. The revolution is coming, but if luck holds it will be a revolution directed and backed by large, calm, healthy men who know — who are agreed both on what they want and on the way to get it. That is where the minimum wage and the eight hour idea come in. Of course the classic argument is that there’s no use raising wages or lowering prices, because at once if you lower prices then the capitalists lower wages, and if you raise wages then the capi¬ talists raise prices. There is no# way out except to explain surplus value to your shopmates and wait and let condi¬ tions grow worse and worse, and finally capital will fall of its own weight, and the proletariat, thoroughly trained by debating points of order once a month in their locals, will sweep into power and establish the millennium within a week ! Now, it takes more than debating club experience to run a government, and the sooner we find that out the better. We need the experience that can be gained only through wise mu¬ nicipal experiments, loyally supported co-operatives, and Socialist or Socialistic trade unions. We need to be tried in the fire of responsibility. We need to have time to think and we need to be free to think. And we need the crea¬ tion of a great feeling of solidarity, which can be more easily gained by a nation-wide eight hour and minimum wage movement than in any other way. It seems likely that the Minimum Wage bill would do more than merely create a feeling of solidarity. Some optimist might even say that it would actually improve conditions ! is Beating The Trust This camera has vertical and horizontal adjustments and the rack and pinion is of great con¬ venience for rapid and accurate focusing. The woodwork is mahogany, with rubbed finish; metal work nickel-plated, grain walrus cover, spring actuated focusing screen, brilliant finder, automatic grip and piano hinge. The camera is equipped with a rapid rectilinear lens F :8, time and instantaneous bulb and auto¬ matic shutter. Takes film pack or plate. Size of plate 2>Ya by 5/4, bel¬ lows 9 inches long, outside di¬ mensions 2*/\ by 4V2 by 6$4, weight 24 oz. This camera surpasses from every standpoint the $25 trust camera. We have a limited supply which we will send you for $5 with a yearly subscription to The Masses. The Masses Publishing Co. 150 Nassau St. New York
Page 16
THE SAFETY DEVICE BY ELIOT WHITE. Written for The Masses. N the Industrial Exposition, I find the most impressive exhibit the department of safety devices and appliances for factories, railroads and mines. Here is a bolt fitted into the threshold of an elevator, which must be stepped on before the car can be oper¬ ated; this would prevent the fearful accidents of crush¬ ing and maiming from the unintentional starting of the car. Here is a “back-guard” for revolving saws, to keep the workers’ hands from being flung against the whir¬ ring* jigged steel and cut to pieces, when it strikes a knot in the wood. Here is a device to prevent the “racing” of a fly¬ wheel, and its consequent bursting into fragments like a death-dealing bomb, if a belt breaks or some other part of a machine gives way. Here is a lamp automatically extinguishing itself if tipped over, and a device for shutting off gas at its outlet if accidentally blown out. Here again are appliances to insure the safety of railroad workers and travelers — efficient fenders and couplers, guards to keep switches from opening, rails from spreading and the electric current from dealing destruction. And here is a device, invented by a poor miner who knew the perils of his employment at first hand, to prevent the falling of shaft-buckets and their crushing out of the subterranean workers’ lives. One is reminded of the instance of heroism where a bucket-tender saw the rope begin to tear itself loose on its drum, and realizing that the men below would be killed if the bucket reached the bottom of the shaft, he thrust his hand and arm between the gnashing cog¬ wheels, and stopped the furious descent, but not until his arm to the shoulder had been mangled into un¬ recognizable pulp ; and when told he was a brave man, he replied, “I only did my duty.” Ah, yes, behind every one of these humane and beneficent contrivances there stretches a blood-stained path of sacrifice, and if the ear were keen enough it might catch a dread echo of the shrieks and groans from the industrial battlefield, of those wounded unto death by the accidents these appliances in the Exposition were at last devised to prevent. A grim vision indeed it is that suddenly reveals itself here to the visitor, as to a new Dante exploring the Inferno of modern manufacture and transportation, when he realizes the appalling cost at which even such an incomplete assemblage of devices as this was wrought out. He beholds rows upon rows of faces so torn and disfigured that their possessors must henceforth hide their shocking features from the common gaze, a myriad hands shorn into repulsive shapes more like the claws and webbed extremities of beasts and birds, a wide ruin of shattered and amputated limbs that a hurried glance would take to be the wreck of a forest, savagely splintered and hurled to the earth by lightning and hurricane, and ever beyond and beyond, till the very •soul sickens at the ghastly array, ramparts of the man¬ gled, burned or poisoned bodies of strong, skillful men and tender, courageous women, capable of all the in¬ finite reaches of nobility and devotion, and even the pitiful, meager forms of little children gnawed by the clashing steel teeth of the modern Minotaur in the un¬ guarded maze of his machines ! But surely now the better day has dawned, for are not all the perilous wheels, knives and saws, the gases and poisons, that can be prevented from injuring the sensitive bodies of the workers at their thousand indis¬ pensable tasks, now guarded and held in safe bounds by these devices so triumphantly shown at the Expo¬ sition ? Why do you not answer, my masters? Why this turning away from a question which one would think could have no other response than a ringing affirma¬ tive? Still there is no reply, and the questioner - stands amazed until he seems to see a little child with face too old and careworn for her years, come near and pluck his coat, and hear her lisp, “Please, sir, these nice things here costs money — lots of it ! If the mine where my father was killed had had one o’ them bucket checks, he wouldn’t a’ been crusht, and if the machine that my mother had to begin working at had had that kind o’ guard, she wouldn't ’a been slashed and then caught blood-poisoning, and so I wouldn’t a’ had to go to work in the candy factory where my legs get scorched against the hot kettle. But the boss always said these inventions was too expensive jimcracks for common folks.” If such be the truth, that modern Commercialism rates human life too cheap to be worth protecting by such simple contrivances as these, ready to its hand to install, then it stands condemned by every scream and groan of the injured workers as the foul demon to be exorcised from the noble form of industry, that the radiant spirit of Fraternity may enter and quicken it to its destined task of subduing the material world to the service of love and joy. THE SOCIALIZED EFFICIENCY EXPERT TO BE BY RUFUS W. WEEKS. Written for The Masses. HE man on whom we shall have to rely to keep the co-operative commonwealth going when it has been set up is the Efficiency Expert — the F. W. Taylor of thirty or forty years hence, only socialized. For it is idle to assure the cold skeptic, or even ourselves in our less sanguine moods, that after we have abolished that diabolic spur, economic terror, the truly human motives, such as the love of activity, the love of usefulness, and the desire of condemnation, will at once rally and fill the gap. The human material with which the co-operative commonwealth will at first have to do its work will be largely the perverted stuff of the fag end of commercial despotism : and when the lash of poverty and of the fear of poverty vanishes for good and all, the millions who must still drudge will miss the old prick of the bayonet and severally will feel inclined to “soger” and to let the rest do the job, as Washington clerks are said to do now. For though man, outside the Tropics, is naturally active, he just as naturally hates monotony in his activ- BUSINESS Written for The Masses. By RUTH KAUFFMAN LABOR for my own ideal : The never ending bet-on-bet ; I bind each separate wound I feel, Since I must think and act and get. For what withal ? For power, fame Or riches? — I can scarcely know; And yet, years since the Vision came And stayed. I cannot let it go. A race-horse bred, whose nostrils sting, Waiting the starter’s pistoled hand, My nerves leap forth to reach the string, The first before the judges’-stand. To win! What other thing can seem, In any sort of cause, sublime? You poet-painters have your Dream And Sacrifice — and I have mine. ity. At almost all hazards man craves to escape tedium, yet the greater part of factory work must be and must remain monotonous — hence the absolute necessity of highly devised artificial means of creating interest in the minds of the workers. If each man is left to obey spontaneous motives alone, the nation’s effectiveness will sink ; therefore, the millions acting collectively must choose out competent men to devise and to work a system for bringing self-regarding motives to bear on these same millions, individually. These will be mo¬ tives ingeniously fitted to the prevailing human, feel¬ ings about work and about getting ahead of others — motives which will throw a zest into the deadliest routine. The Efficiency Expert of to-day is a part of a ma¬ chine which has but one purpose — to grind out profit for the capitalist; the Socialized Efficiency Expert of that day will likewise be part of a machine which will have but one purpose, though a very different one — the gen¬ eral welfare. The “scientific management” of to-day studies as its sole aim, efficiency in labor. It is there¬ fore really but half scientific, and is therefore irra¬ tional. The “scientific management” of the socialized future will study two aims equally — efficiency in labor, and welfare in labor. Only such a double aim can be truly scientific, since the entire economic process, the entire process of production and distribution has but one rational purpose, which is the economic welfare of the race in the two capacities of producers and consumers. These two welfares, that of men as producers and that of men as consumers, will pull in opposite direc¬ tions unless we have the right social-economic ma¬ chinery to bring them into unison. The two aims must be equally represented in the type of group which in the future will correspond to the corporation of the present. Each of the two interests must have its say in choos¬ ing the boards of direction which are to control the respective great industries; when the people at large acting in their interest as consumers have chosen half the members of such a board of direction, the workers in the particular industry must choose the other half. The board of direction thus constituted for the ex¬ press purpose of studying every question of organiza¬ tion and administration equally from the two points of view of productiveness and of the welfare of the work¬ ers, will find it their first and most vital task to pick out the trained geniuses in socialized efficiency manage¬ ment, who must make good in' the two converse ways at once. Thus will make its appearance a new science, the most important of all the sciences, Euergetics, the science of so organizing work that it shall be carried on well, which means both productively and healthily. This science will be the master guide of the co-operative commonwealth, and its experts will be the most highly paid and most highly honored of the people’s servants. “FIRST LOVE” A Book Review by Horatio Winslow. AMONG the poems that have appeared in The Masses those of Louis Untermeyer have always stood out strikingly. The facility and grace which distinguished them is found at its best in Mr. Untermeyer’s book “First Love” — a chain of lyrics telling a story of passion, betrayal and reconcilia¬ tion. The poems are clever in rhyme and rhythm with a plenty of those little “finesses” of verse which please the layman he-knows-not-why and which the professional writer man views enviously. The best thing about the present collection is the note of music which sings through them all. They are truly “songs” melodious in their arrange¬ ment and suggesting music in their swing. As a whole they are sincere though occasionally the sincerity is eked out with cleverness. But that’s not a mortal sin. The verses are interesting and modern and (thank goodness!) free from the bleak hopelessness of so many modern poems. Sherman, French & Co., of Boston, publish the book and it is sold to all who care to buy for one dollar net. 16
Page 17
THE WAY YOU LOOK AT IT THE AGITATORS EXT, and one of the most popular of our Anti- Socialist Lecturers and propagandists, is old Oscar J. Starvation. He doesn’t talk on street corners — not he. Pie prefers the intimate method. He comes right into the family and pinches the cheeks of the little ones and pokes a lean finger among the ribs of the older ones. “Tighten up your belt,” he says. “You know me. I’m your friend. I'm no doctor stuffing you full of drugs. I'm the original advocate of the cure by stop¬ ping eating. Stop eating long enough and I’ll cure you of the disease called living. Me, why, I’m the friend of all the celebrities. And I’ve known a lot more that would have been celebrities if I could have let ’em alone. But I liked to play with the poor little fellows. “But, my friends, you wouldn’t put these Socialists into office and say good-by to me? Why, what would you do if old Oscar J. Starvation wasn’t hanging around your house nine months out of the year?” That’s the way he electioneers. But a whole lot of people are beginning to break away from him. They say they’re tired of the old man and so they’re voting the Socialist ticket. If that isn’t a mean trick I’d like to know what is. EOUALS ONE POUND OF CURE IT was a pleasant sight to see the fine line of power wagons that made a procession along the curb. And it wasn’t a stylish part of town either, just a very common sort of district with the houses next door to falling apart. But Jigson lived there — Jigson. Of course, you’ve heard of Jigson — Jigson the in¬ ventor. Wonderfully clever man. Chap who got up the adjustable shoestring and made a fortune out of Mullen-Leaf-Fibre-Pants and all that sort of thing. Well, there all the automobiles stood in front of Jigson’s peculiar bachelor apartments. All the swells had climbed and puffed up the narrow stairs just be¬ cause Jigson had made a wonderful new discovery. What was it? Why, the discovery of an absolutely sure way to prevent tuberculosis. All the gang of benevolently inclined wives of pirates and second sons of highwaymen were there to get the latest on this terrible disease. Finally Jigson came out. “The way to prevent tuberculosis,” he began in his high-pitched voice, while everybody gasped, “the way to prevent tuberculosis - ” “Yes,” said old Mrs. Diamonds, holding up her ear trumpet. “The way to prevent tuberculosis, the only sensible way— the only possible way is to abolish poverty and filth.” That remark finished Jigson. Nobody speaks to him now. Of course, what he said was true, but you needn’t think all these people were going to stand idly by and see their jobs taken away from them. No, sir. Why, if you abolished poverty and filth, what on BY HORATIO WINSLOW earth would a woman do whose life work it was to bring cheer to poor people? Served Jigson right. The silly ass! THE KINGS’ KICK S early as 1912 mutterings of discontent had be¬ gun to be heard. No doubt it was the more or less successful ending of the English min¬ ers’ walk-out that precipitated it. At any rate, it was before 1912 had given way to ’13 that the hor- ribie thing happened. Heavens, what a noise the affair made ! Statesmen turned pale. School teachers trembled. Professors of economics became so excited that they could only find relief by counting their fingers. The suspense was so terrible that fourteen people who had moved in the best circles abroad jumped off Brooklyn Bridge and sunk immediately. What was it? It was the strike of royalty for the Minimum Wage. “Why should a millionaire be able to look super¬ ciliously at a king?” said the Kaiser. “He shouldn’t be, aindt it? From now on you don’t get my family or myself to do kaisering or kinging for less as $125,- 000,000 a year mit an allowance of $50,000,000 a year for all der little brinces.” “Exactly,” said George of England, and “Ich auch,” chimed in Franz Joseph. Nobody up to this time had known anything about it, but the kings of Europe had a secret working union going full blast. Every king, kingess and kinglet stepped down from the throne. “But what will we do?” demanded the New York society leaders going into convulsions. “Th-think of the poor fellows who may be r-r-robbed of their titles,” shrieked a fair, pale daughter of the Keyhole Trust. “It doesn’t matter,” said George V, who was the walking delegate for the crowd. “Not a wheel will turn until our demands are granted.” Strange to say, though, all the wheels in the world kept on turning just as before. Every mill, every factory, every store was open for business. Nobody seemed to know whether the king was on his throne or in the pantry. Two weeks passed. “We’ll come back for $100,000,000 flat,” said George. “We don’t want to ruin you.” “Splendid,” said the good people of the world. “We’ll send for you just as soon as we need you.” The kings are out yet. THE TERRIBLY MEEK E all have our rights : it is simply a question of going out and getting them. That is what this ’simple tale illustrates. Once upon a time there was an honest, trusting nature which inhabited a man who stretched some six feet from the bottom of his broken-arched foot to the place where the cowlick would have been if a kindly Providence had not removed all the hair from the top of his head. Every day between seven a. m. and six p. . m. and often far into the after-suppertime this Being bent over a collection of hooks and levers and wheels which was known as a machine and which was owned by the Good Dividends Mill Association. For this work he 17 Illustrated by H. J. Turner. received as much as ten dollars on good weeks and it was very seldom that he earned less than seven. It was lucky that he got so much in his pay envelope because he had a wife and live children, none of whom knew how to live without eating, and so tender¬ skinned that they had to wear clothes all through the cold spells. “Oh, well, it’s all for the best,” he would say cheer¬ ily to himself. “It’s true that we don’t get much, but then I’ve never asked for much.” So things went along very well till the new Super¬ intendent came in. Work piled up harder and harder while wages went down to the freezing point. Also the new Supe introduced a system of docking that was more efficient than any machine in the shop. “It is too much to bear,” said the good-hearted per¬ son. “I’m afraid I shall have to get out and ask for something.” So he went out and asked for more pay. “Impossible,” said the owners of the mill. “The man is crazy.” “At any rate,” persisted the individual with the trust¬ ing nature, “I want enough to live on.” The mill owners grew quite angry. “Ridiculous,” they said. “Moreover, it’s unpatriotic and you’re trying to break up the home.” “Well, then,” said the worker in desperation, “since you won’t concede me anything I demand my rights.” “Oh,” said the chorus of captains of industry, “if you want your rights you shall certainly have them. If you’ll just sit down and wait for a minute we’ll get them for you.” So the honest, trusting person sat down and pres¬ ently received : One Bayonet in the Stomach (Free). One Long, Lingering Week in the Infirmary of the County Jail (Free). And one 6x2 plot of ground in the County’s Bury¬ ing Ground (Free). Moral : Be meek. COMPETITION OMPETITION is a game where you are able to hold something out on the other fellow and win. Winning is a distinguishing trait of all true competition. If the other fellow wins and you lose then it is not competition at all. It is cold¬ blooded robbery or vicious assault. Everybody who has a pair of brass knucks in his right hinder trousers’ pocket and who believes that some day he may yet own a trust or be a high salaried hanger-on of a plutocrat is in favor of competition. But the man who has had a couple of teeth knocked down his throat and whose pocketbook has been nicked is not so sure. As a rule, however, he saves his stand¬ ing in society by saying that he is crazy about com¬ petition, only he wants the real thing instead of the present unfair methods. After saying this he goes out to the nearest pawnshop and tries to get trusted for a blackjack. America has produced some wonderful swindlers and short-change experts by competition. Still there’s a little space left for improvement.
Page 18
t -in- THE DOCTORS OF SOCIAL ILLS - 04; — \} — Iwi tR /l9«a FICKLE REFLECTIONS BY LOUIS WEITZ CHARITY should not begin at home, or any¬ where else. Desire runs on ahead of possibility. Editors can easily appreciate good poetry, being so accustomed to the other kind. Educate and give power to a beast, and he be¬ comes doubly dangerous. Facts are not more stubborn than some children. Gold has opened and silenced more mouths than inflicted torture. Glue never did stick like some workingmen to their slavery. How quickly we slide down the banister of time. If the quality of angels is patience, then the work¬ ingmen are “it.” If my face is my fortune, no wonder I am poor. It will take more than an alarm dock to awaken woman from her age-long slumber. Kicking against fate will merely break your toes. Happiness ought to be marketed, because it will find ready buyers. Being handicapped with stomachs, the workers find great difficulty in winning strikes. After all, there may be some truth in the pre¬ tension that capital and labor are brothers. Broth¬ ers are always fighting eacn other, you know. A cut in wages is the most unkindest cut of all. A denial by a political grafter seems to him to be as good as an explanation. Advertisements have made more reputations than ability. “Business” is an excuse for many barbarous and inhuman performances. Some people ove liberty so much that they won't permit others tc share it. Monthly Cheer- Up 'Bulletin . Be Joyful! Father Vaughan, of England, who eats Co¬ operative Commonwealths alive for breakfast, is with us. This is what he says about the coming Social¬ ist Slate: “ It would be a very house of bondage. “A man would not be able to choose his own occupation. “ He would not be able to employ labor or put by a bit for his old age or for his children. “ Fie could not obey the injunction to multiply his talents.” * ii S * * * Who says the English have no sense of humor ? CHILD LABOR AND THE HOME (Continued from page 11.) to destroy even the mutual interdependence of the home, and instead of crooning to the babies as in for¬ mer years that “Daddy’s gone to get a rabbit skin to wrap the baby bunting in” we now hurl into the won¬ dering eyes of the innocent child the ancient mandate, “He that will not work neither shall he eat!” Even laying aside the effect upon the child, we may readily see from the economic point alone how serious is this tendency to depress wages and to dissolve the home into its constituent parts. One of the Lawrence cotton manufacturers recently, in defending the posi¬ tion of the mill interests, made the naive contention that the low wages paid to unskilled labor in the Law¬ rence cotton mills were due to the fact that these la¬ borers have come in to do child’s work, and are em¬ ployed because the more advanced laws of the Old Bay State are eliminating the little child from the force. No more conclusive acknowledgment could be desired, that our industrial civilization has been en¬ gaged in the construction not of labor-saving machin¬ ery, but of profit-making machinery; that the chief de¬ sideratum in many manufacturing industries is the ad¬ justment of mechanical devices to the least intelligent and the most unfit. It has been charged recently in the report of an Eng¬ lish investigation on Eugenics that the enactment of child labor laws has menaced the English birth rate, because as soon as parents learn that their children can no longer be exploited they cease to bear children. This may be true. It so, it calls for two distinctly im¬ portant considerations. It demands on the one hand that society shall rise to such levels in its considera¬ tion of the value of human life that the dollar mark shall be unlocked from the neck of the child. Better the child unborn than to drag a miserable existence through the conditions that control the childhood of thousands. On the other hand, when society becomes truly civil¬ ized, we shall cease to look upon the poor widow with her helpless children as a burden to the community; we shall cease to dole out a miserable pittance in “charity” which, combined with her slavery in some more prosperous home, will eke out a miserable ex¬ istence for herself and her offspring. We shall look upon the spectacle of a woman scrubbing the floors of an office building night and morning for $22 a month as a more serious menace to our social institutions than the closing of a foreign market. Indeed, a coun¬ try that cheerfully pensions the man who went across the border to shoot another will learn to say to the widow who has gone to the gates of death to bring life into the world, “Your gift to the community is so large and your courage so noble that henceforth in partial reward for your public service, we claim the right to see that your helpless little ones are properly clothed and fed without demanding that you shall either starve or devour them.” That many serious-minded laboring people relate the problems of family life to the problems of industry cannot be denied. On every hand may be seen the growing reluctance of men whose trades are being cap¬ tured by ignorant and inefficient child labor, to bring offspring into a world which cannot promise even sim¬ ple comforts in reward for hard work. In accordance with the economic interpretation of history, the growth of industrial wealth and social comfort are conserved by the same laws that conserve the purity and beauty of the home and throw protecting arms around help¬ less childhood. Society cannot afford to absolve the child from al¬ legiance to the parent, destroying at once his indepen¬ dence and his respect, and reducting “the home” to a mere meeting place where bodies numb with weariness and minds drunk for sleep jostle each other. We can¬ not afford to tell the father to fight with his own child for a job. We cannot afford to say to the man who has gloried in the sweetness and seclusion of his home and in the beautiful lives of his ’children. “This is a luxury you cannot afford.” THE DAY OF A MAN BY MARY HEATON VORSE (Continued from page 9.) and without any conscious thought in his mind. He wasted his strength first as he swam, then realized what he was doing and grew cool again : every latent energy 18 might throw himself from a burning boat, unreflecting in him centered on that little bobbing head that had already gone under once. With a gasp of relief he felt the limp body in his arms, and then two strangling arms were around hi^ neck, and in the water he fought with the child for its life and for his own. People on the pier were shouting, some calling for a boat, others for a rope. He didn’t hear them ; he must keep his own head and that of the child above water or else he would be too late to meet Dicky, and Dicky would think he had gone back on him. That was the only thought he had in his mind — to save the child so that he might keep his appointment with Dicky. Again a wail rang in his ears. “The tide's got me, too ; the tide’s got me !” Those on the wharf shouted : “Get him, Mister; get him!’’ With a mighty effort he managed to propel himself forward in time to catch this child, too, as the tide swept him past. He was still fighting when the boat came — a boat gotten from somewhere — and rowed along¬ side. They took from him one child, but before they could grasp Jerry he sank, letting go of the boy he had last rescued, who grasped with the tenacity of a fright¬ ened animal the oar they held out to him. As the waters closed over Jerry’s head he knew no more. They got him to the wharf and worked over him, wondering who he was and commenting on his heroism, on his appearance, his poor clothes. But for Jerry Munn life was over. He had died as he had lived — because he must; died from the same necessity as he had eaten and drank; died for the same reason ■which had made him quarrel with the man in the park, and offer shame-facedly his mite to the woman with the baby; died for the heroism that lies deep in almost all men — to risk their lives unthinkingly to save another’s. THE FARMER IS AN EXPLOITER BY J. S. HENDRICKS 1 NOTICE in a recent number of The Masses that a Comrade is somewhat in doubt as to whether the farmer is in the exploiting class. The following is my answer to the communi¬ cation in the Open Clinic, if you w'ant it: The American farmer is an exploiter! If not, how wrould he benefit by the private ownership of land and machinery, and the hiring of farm hands? Under present conditions he cannot do otherwise, for he himself is being exploited. When the farmer goes to market with his com¬ modities, the price is established and he takes what he can get. The price is diminished by the numerous middle¬ men and jobbers, -who are non-producers and who would be’ useless to society under a socialized in¬ dustry. When he goes to market to buy the neces¬ saries of life he also pays an additional cost, which goes to keep up the expenses of the same parasites, which of course is legitimate under our present regime. Private ownership (which means exploitation) is all that makes the farmer superior to the wage worker. This is explained in the Declaration of Principles ot the Socialist party, in the third and fourth para¬ graphs.
Page 19
THE RACE MENACE OF CHILD LABOR By FRANK STUHLMAN PAPERS YOU MUST NOT MISS THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN Is the one Socialist paper for women in America. It prepares women to vote right by making them think right. In a few years every woman in the U. S. will be voting. If we want this vote for SOCIALISM, let us be¬ gin our educational campaign TO-DAY. BE¬ GIN IT RIGHT BY GIVING THE WOMEN THE PROGRESSIVE WOMAN TO READ. 50c. a year, 25c. for six months. The Pro¬ gressive Woman Pub. Co., 5445 Drexel ave.t Chicago. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE CALIFORNIA movement and what is being done out there by the Socialist party and by organized labor, then subscribe for the official organ of the State, the CALIFORNIA SOCIAL-DEMO¬ CRAT, an eight page weekly, the best in the U. S. $1 per year. 711 San Fernando Bldg., Los Angeles, Cal. GAA PAA Is the Scandinavian Socialist paper in Amer¬ ica. It contains well-written and caustic arti¬ cles on the gross injustices of “Civilization;” short stories, humor, etc. Besides it gives the labor news from the old countries and accounts of the Socialist movement in general. Sub. rate $1 a year. Published every Saturday at 209 19th avenue, So. Minneapolis, Minn. Send for sample copies. UUS ILM. The only Esthonian newspaper in America. Contributors, best known Esthonian Socialis¬ tic writers. Owing to its singular position, ad¬ vertising in it is especially advantageous. Is¬ sued weekly. $3 a year. Sample copies mailed free. Uus Ilm, 225 East 79th st., New York. WANTED A live Comrade in each city and large town to manage a local Socialist monthly magazine. Address Harry E. Burkhart, 63 Sell St., Johnstown, Pa. WE ’ WILL SEND YOU THE ORIGINAL OF THIS PIC¬ TURE OR OF THE PICTURE ON PAGE 4, “THE HAPPY HOME,” FREE WITH TEN YEARLY SUBSCRIPTIONS. NO TEN DOLLAR BILL COULD EVER BUY A POPINI DRAWING, BUT HE CHEER¬ FULLY GIVES THEM TO A MASSES BOOSTER. BE QUICK. MONEY RE¬ FUNDED IF PICTURES ARE GONE. THE MASSES PUBLISHING CO. 150 Nassau Street NEW YORK THE BUSINESS MAN Pie sorted shards in the breakers 'Till his fingers were bleeding and raw ; He tended the whirling spindles ’Till his dim eyes scarcely saw. All night where the molten bubbles Are blown his sweat must roll, And sometimes it killed his body, And sometimes, alas, his soul. Then a people woke in terror And cried aloud for men. With a past of unmatched glory They would do great deeds again. So standing poised on the bodies Of these fallen little ones, They stretched wide hands to heaven And cried, “Where are our sons?” He answered, the God of Nations, With a sword in His terrible hand, “I gave ye sons for the rearing up Of men to maintain the land. Ye bound them to crosses and slew them, Oh, ye for whom Christ died — Know now that the men ye pray for Are the babes ye have crucified.” — Grace MacGowan Cooke. In his remarkable book, “The Nemesis of Nations," W. Romaine Paterson draws with vivid pen the story of the fall of the great nations of old, all from the same cause, the degradation of the working class. The state was brought about by the centralization of wealth in a limited, non-producing class, until the workers were forced to that terrible condition pictured in the lines of Lanier, “The beasts they hunger and eat and die ; And so do we, and the world's a sty." Paterson tells how these proud na¬ tions, whose workers were degraded, perished from anarchy within and at the hands of the conquering forces of the barbarians in their resistless ad¬ vance in search of subsistence and life. By the past we know the future. In this yet young republic of ours the seeds of destruction are being sown. Of all the forces that sap the life-blood of a race child labor is the most deadly. It is the direst force for the deteriora¬ tion of the nation. Capitalism, in its mad greed for profits, is playing the woman against the man and the child against both in the labor market. It coins the lives and souls of the children into dollars and then calls for more. Capitalism, by forcing women into the labor mar¬ ket, is destroying the home in the pres¬ ent. What chance for making a home and the decent rearing of children has a woman working ten hours a day in mill or factory and doing household tasks in her after time? In a few years she is a drudge of the machine, workworn and weary, a creature “of all sex-graces shorn." Not satisfied with the pillage of the present, capitalism must mortgage the future also. It must have more profits and cheaper labor. Machines are being perfected. Less strength is needed to run them. And capitalism says : “Give us the children.” And they go into the mills, displacing the parents. Wages go down, the standard of living falls; the vitality of the race is weakened. But, never mind, there arc profits! Be¬ cause children are cheap we have the disgraceful spectacle of United States Senators opposing a bill for Establish¬ ing a bureau to investigate child labor. Children are the cheapest, so “give us more children to be turned into profits," says capitalism; and we find Roosevelt and some noted churchmen, staunch henchmen of plutocracy, inveighing against race suicide. Better race suicide than race degradation! Napoleon, in answer to the question, “Who is the greatest woman?" said: “She who has borne the most children." He wanted flesh and blood to kill and to be killed in order to advance his insatiable am¬ bition. Capitalism wants more children as grist for its profit-mills, and when the last possible cent is ground from them to be thrown, maimed of body and soul, out on the scrap-heap of wasted humanity. Even under present laws, somewhat improved within the last decade, the conditions of child life and labor in the large industrial centers are a grave menace to civilization. In the coal- breakers, in the cotton mills, in the glass factories is the terrible toll of the children being taken. The half-formed boy, at the time when he ought to be constitution build¬ ing, is crowded into a germ-laden, un¬ healthy atmosphere, his vitality weak¬ ened and intellectually stunted. As a result, a tremendous percentage of physical and mental derelicts is the product. The girl is taken in the years when she is maturing into womanhood, when the great physiological sex-change of her life is taking place, at the very time when she ought to be living a free and natural existence, for the sake of the future transmission of a healthy life, she is crowded into the dust-burdened, machine-crashing environment, .under a nervous strain that with unceasing work vitiates her sex-system until she is un¬ fit to continue the race. The appallingly high death-rate of infants at birth in the crowded mill towns writes a warn¬ ing that all can read against the conse¬ quences of child labor. What is the future of a race whose fathers and mothers are to come from 19 the ranks of child-workers, exploited, physically and mentally, old before their time, weak-lunged and unfit, shut out by weariness and lack of opportunities from “learning’s light" and so dead of soul that all appreciation of beauty and art is lost to them? The coal mines waste the boys. In the cotton mills of the South and in the factories at Lawrence the souls and the lives of the little ones are woven into the meshes of the cloth. From these comes the broken humanity, the wrecks of what might have been true manhood and womanhood, instead of beings “stunted of heart and brain" to perpetuate; a constant source of the “half-formed" to weaken the race. Capitalism has its dividends now, but unless Socialism redeems this land the day will come when the Goth and the Vandal will beat down our gates (all oligarchies end thus), and the wage- serfs, blood-drained in the wine-presses of plutocracy and spiritless, will strike no blow for defense. Why should they? And America will go the path of the dead nations that perished because they worshiped Wealth instead of Justice. There the poor cried for justice, but. the nations, drunk with arrogance, ground them only deeper in the dust. From their cities, from their mines, as now from ours, rose the plaint and the wail of the hungry and the shelterless. The cry of the children, labor crushed and denied their right to be well-born and well-reared, went toward the skies. One day it reached the throne* of the God of Justice, and “He breathed on the nations and they were not." I WILL MAKE YOU PROSPEROUS Ifyouaro honest and ambitious write me today. No matter where you live or what i your occupation. I will teach you the Real 1 Estnte business by mail ; appoint you Special Representative of my Company in yonrtown; / start you in a profitable business of your own, aud help you make big money at once. Unusual opportunity for men without capital to become independent for life. Valuable Book and full particulars FREE. Write today. NATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE REALTY CO. E. R. MARUKH M403 Mardcn Building President Washington, J>. O. CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS open the way to good Government positions. I can coach you by mail at small cost. Full particulars free to any American citizen of eighteen or over. Write for Booklet F61. Earl Hopkins, Washington, D. C. No progressive housewife can be without a fircless cooker, especially during the summer months. They are economical, sanitary, save time and cook better than an ordinary stove. Put the food in the receptacle, warm it over the gas for about five minutes, then put it in the cooker and leave it until dinner is served. The food will not be overdone or burned, and will taste much better than when prepared by the ordinary method. This beautiful fireless cooker and The Masses for one year for $5.00.
Page 20
SPECIAL- For May Only OFFER NUMBER FOUR. The Life and Writings of Lincoln, the great American of the people, G volumes, and a year’s subscription for “The Masses” for $2.00. The man who was so simple in thought and so big in expression as to originate “of the people, for the people, and by the people” as a definition of his ideal government, is so big that everybody should read what else he had to say. The Life and Writings of Lincoln and “The Masses” for $2.00. off;er number one. The works of Guy de Maupassant, 10 vol¬ umes, and one year’s subscription for “The Masses” for $3.00. You can pay as high as $60 for this same collection of de Maupassant's wonderful stories, but nowhere else can you get them at such a low price as we offer. If you like short stories and love the literature of real life, get the works of this great mas¬ ter of them all. Remember, for 10 volumes of de Maupas¬ sant and a year's subscription for “The Masses,” only $3.00. A SPRING SUIT FREE SEND US TEN "Safe DOLLARS FOR TEN SUBS.AND / ^ i\ ' 1 GET A FINE £4 Hi .-*£ ^ \lr nA? BLUE SERGE SUIT FREE Up We will also send -/i you 30 beautiful pic¬ / 1 tures, 3 for each sub¬ 8 . k scriber. The suits range from 34-36 ^ in size. Be Ow quick before they are all gone. „ _ Ml THE HASSES, 1*§ Naauu Street, \\ « . ^ ^ Nor York City: ^ NO. 20 F#r the inclosed $. please tend me The Masses far . year and your pre- mimm Na . as per adrertiae- Haae . Addraaa . WE PREPAY POSTAGE ON THESE UNEQUALLED OF¬ FERS FOR THIS MONTH ONLY. CLOSING OUT. GET IN BEFORE THEY ARE GONE A few months ago we secured a small number of sets of the works of Maupassant and Hugo, together with the Life and Writ¬ ings of Lincoln. They went like wildfire. Unless we secure a new lot this will he your last chance. OFFER NUMBER SIX. A copy of “War What For,” by George R. Kirkpatrick. The great American book on War. Over 27,000 sold in about one year. The Masses for one year and “War What For” $1. The following offers have never been made, nor will they ever he made again, either hy us or any one else after May 30. Try it anywhere. The book is written from the Socialist's point of view, and presents an entirely new con¬ sideration of the subject. It recites many illustrations and incidents of Business in America to enforce its point of reasonableness and necessity of Business. It shows that under the existing condition Business is obliged to do the things it is condemned for doing, and it argues for the freedom and hon¬ esty of Business that would come under Socialism. It also shows clearly the recent tremendous development of Business to¬ ward the Socialist state, and the inevitable results of these tendencies. It is a book of facts and their logical deductions. No. 17. BUSINESS, by Chas. Ed. Rus¬ sell and ®6c Masses for One Year, $1.75 This is a book that will rouse discussion, a book that hits hard at human foibles. Whether So¬ cialist or non-Socialist, the thoughtful reader will enjoy the keen analysis of motives, fear¬ less criticism and pithy sugges¬ tion. “Socialism and Success” is an important contribution to the literature of Socialism, not only because it presents the subject clearly, in crisp, invigorating style, but because it pleads with Socialists them¬ selves for the best kind of Socialism. It will appeal to an even larger circle than Mr. Ghent’s previous books, “Our Benevolent Feudalism” and “Mass and Class,” which won such wide popularity. No. 18. SOCIAL¬ ISM <SL SUCCESS by W. J. Ghent and Masses for One Year . . . $1.25 OFFER NUMBER TWO. “Les Miserables,” by Victor Hugo, two fine, handsome volumes, and a year’s subscription for “The Masses” for $1.00. Do you know the story of Jean Valjean, the outcast, in “Les Miserables?” If 3rou do, and you haven’t the book, you’ll take this unprecedented offer right away. If you don’t, you are missing the greatest treat of your life — reading the great¬ est novel ever written. “Les Miserables” and “The Masses” for $1.00. No. 5. FOUNTAIN PEN. A beautiful 14 karat Gold Fountain Pen and TnE Masses for one year for $1. This pen is not an ordinary cheap sub¬ stitute. It is what we claim it to be. To prove this we guarantee satisfaction or money refunded. Offer Number Fifteen A COLOSSAL BOOK That is almost the only way to describe Gustavus Myers’ “History of the Supreme Court of the United States.” This refers not so much to its size, though it is a huge vol¬ ume, one of the biggest we publish — more than 800 pages — as to its meaning and the effect it will be bound to have on the life and thought of the American people. GUSTAVUS MYERS is the author of “The History of Great Ameri¬ can Fortunes,” a work to which there has been no reply from even the hired jackals of the capitalist press. Despite the terrible arraign¬ ment of American capitalists in that work, not one libel suit has come out of it. What Myers did for our industrial masters in that series he has now done for our legal masters in this new book. YEARS OF TOIL are represented in this history. The massing of facts, the array of proofs, the countless quotations, the abundance of detail, are aston¬ ishing. The revelations made are even more so. This book is not only a presentation of facts but a study of the Supreme Court in its relation to the class struggle, to the social and economic fabric that has marked each stage of the development of the United States as a nation. Particularly interesting just now is the treatment of the Supreme Court in its re¬ lation to the working class. This remarkable book and The Masses for one year for $2.00 20