The First Clause

I consider the first clause pivotal. Does it state a truth? Does it state a falsehood? Is it true that the condition of the working class is one of hunger and want? Or is the contrary statement, heard so often, the correct one? Upon this subject the men engaged in the social question are irreconcilably divided. Deep is the cleft that divides them.

On the one side stand those who were gathered, or were represented, at Chicago. They maintain that the condition of the working class is one of hunger, want and privation; that from bad it is getting worse and ever worse; that the plunder levied upon them mounts ever higher; that not only does their relative share of the wealth which they produce decline, but that the absolute amount of the wealth that they enjoy shrinks to ever smaller quantity in their hands. That is the Socialist position.

Over against that position is the position of our adversaries of various stripes” from the outspoken capitalist down to the A. F. of L.-ite. They assert that the condition of the working class is one of well-being; they claim that from good it is getting better and ever better; they maintain that both the absolute amount of the wealth that the workingman enjoys and his relative share of the wealth that he produces is on the increase; some of them, like the English organ of the New Yorker Volkszeitung Corporation, the Worker of February 5 of this year, go so far in their assault upon the Socialist position as to pronounce “a wild exaggeration” the claim that “the capitalist system filches from the working class four-fifths of all that class produces.”

The two positions are irreconcilable. If the latter be true, or even approximately true, then the other two clauses that I am considering from the Preamble, aye, the Preamble itself, together with the whole work of the Chicago convention, fall like the baseless fabric of a nightmare; contrariwise, if the former; if the Socialist position is true, then all the rest are conclusions that cannot be escaped, and the Chicago convention built upon solid foundation. All, accordingly, centers upon this first clause. Is it true? Is it false? Let us see.

Let me introduce you to this document. You will find it excitingly interesting. It is entitled, as you see, “Uncle Sam’s Balance Sheet.” As you notice, it is full of figures. Be not alarmed by them. I shall need but two of these columns, the last two, for my purpose. I have not cut out the others, in order not to lay myself open to the charge of presenting a “garbled document.” This poster is intended to give, both statistically and pictorially, a convincing presentation of the progress in affluence made by the people of this country.

Let me introduce you a little closer to the document. The columns of figures that you see were not gathered by me; they were not gathered by any Socialist; quite otherwise. This document was issued or circulated by the National Committee of the Republican party during last year’s presidential campaign. Seeing, moreover, that on this first column are given the successive Democratic and Republican administrations that presided over the nation’s destiny during the last fifty years, it is fair to consider that the statistical, aye, also pictorial, presentation of conditions cast upon this canvas, is the joint product of both the ruling parties.

You may ask why I trot be fore you the figures of the foe; why not present you with my own. I shall tell you. If I say, “John Jones is a thief,” the charge may or may not be believed: I would have to.prove it. But if John Jones himself says he is a thief, then I am saved all further trouble. It is a fundamental principle of the law of evidence that a man’s own testimony against himself is the best evidence possible. By tacking that poster before you, I have clapped the highest spokesmen of the capitalist class upon the witness stand. They cannot go back upon their own words. I propose to make them convict themselves.

I must earnestly request you to desist from applauding. The heat in this hall with this vast audience is intense. We must all be anxious to get out as soon as possible. These frequent interruptions by applause only deter the hour of our joint deliverance.

There is one more thing I wish to introduce you to on this document before I take up the figures. As I stated, the document is intended to be a pictorial, besides a statistical presentation of affairs. Let me invite your attention to this picture on the poster’s extreme left. You will notice it is Uncle Sam” but how lean, how hungry, how poor, how shabby, how scraggy he looks! That is supposed to represent the country as It started. Now look at this other picture on the poster’s extreme right. You will notice by the goatee and other tokens that it is still Uncle Sam” but how changed! No longer are his clothes in tatters; they must be of good material because they do not burst despite his immense girth. He has a gay, jaunty appearance; judging from that, from the tip of his hat, the twirl in the feather that surmounts it, and the twinkle in his eye, he is probably on a spree, half overseas” his face shining with the oil of contentment. That picture is intended to symbolize the country today. Now let us find out who this Uncle Sam is” the working man or the idle man, the capitalist. The figures will tell us exactly.

This first column is headed “Product of Manufacture.” It gives, from decade to decade, the value of manufactured goods in the country, from 1860 down to 1900. I shall not read off the figures in detail; they would be too cumbersome to carry in your minds. Nor is that necessary. I shall mention them only in round numbers.

For the decade of 1860 the value of manufactured products amounted to nearly $2,000,000,000 in lump sum.

For the decade of 1870 it amounted to over $4,000,000,000.

For the next decade, 1880, it amounted to over $5,000,000,000.

For the decade following, 1890, it was over $9,000,000,000.

Finally, for the decade of 1900, the value of manufactured products was over $13,000,000,000.

This is a magnificent progression, as you’ will notice. From nearly $2,000,000,000 in 1860, the wealth produced by labor rose steadily, until in 1900 it reached the gigantic figure of nearly seven times as much” $13,000,000,000 ! This, no doubt, indicates a vast increase of wealth with a corresponding potential increase of well-being. So far so good.

But be warned in time. The existence of a good thing is no evidence of its being enjoyed by the working class.

I must right here request you to get your thinking caps ready. Let me take an illustration. Suppose I say that in this hall, with a thousand people, there is $10,000 to be found. That fact alone is no indication as to how that $10,000 is distributed. It may be that, on an average, each one has about $10: It may also be that of that $10,000 I alone have $9,999.99 in my pocket, in which case only a lone copper would be left to straggle in the pockets of the remaining 999 people in this hall.

This first column of the poster informs us what the value is of the goods produced. It does not tell us how that wealth is distributed. It only gives us an idea of the increasing magnitude of labor’s productivity. As to distribution, it is to the next column that we must look; and now make ready for the exciting interestingness that I promised you.

The next column is headed “Wages Paid.” Here also the amounts are summed up from decade to decade. I shall run over them, again in lump.

In the decade of 1860, the total wages paid to the workingman was over $300,000,000.

In the next decade, 1870, the total wages rose $400,000,060” they were over $700,000,000.

In the decade of 1880, they rose by $200,000,000 more, and amounted to over $900,000,000.

In 1890 the increase in the total wages paid was double. The wages paid to the workingman was over $1,800,000,000.

Finally, in 1900, the wages were over $2,300,000,000, or $500,000,000 more than in 1890.

If we take a bird’s-eye view of this wages column, its purpose is obvious. The way the figures are arranged they are meant to convey two ideas” first, that the share of the individual workingman is vast; secondly, that his rise toward affluence is steady and still vaster.

It is expected that when a workingman is told or sees, black upon white, that in 1860 his class received the gigantic pay of over $300,000,000, he feels quite sure that he has a big chunk of that amount. The largeness of the total is intended to act as an opiate on his feverishly pinched purse. And when, black upon white, that initial total is seen to swell and double, from decade to decade, until it reaches the giddy height reached in 1900, then he is expected to be so thoroughly dazed and muddled that he knows not whether he stands upon his feet or his head, and is utterly incapable of thinking. The gigantic wealth, that is supposed to be his, positively crazes him.

Now let us look closer at these figures. From now on until I get through with this poster, I must ask you put your thinking caps on, and keep them tied firmly to your heads.

Whenever figures of wages are presented to you, you must submit them to two tests. Not until you have done so will the figures convey to you any practical information. I propose to submit with you this column of wages to the two tests that I have in mind.

The first test is to ascertain the relative size, or percentage, that the wages bear to the total wealth produced. The test is easy. It merely involves a plain arithmetical calculation. Any fourteen-year-old child should be able to do the sum. Let us apply the test.

The poster informs us that in the decade of 1860 the wages paid were over $300,000,000. It also informs us that the wealth produced by labor during that same period was nearly $2,000,000,000. Applying that arithmetical calculation to the two full sets of figures, we ascertain that the wages were twenty per cent of the wealth produced.

Now we are in possession of a fact. It is not a very cheering fact, but it is a useful fact to know. It is the first fact that conveys practical information. By its light the huge total wage of over $300,000,000 shrinks to its real, its social, dimensions. We now know, from the figures given by the poster itself, that in 1860, out of every $100 that he produced, the workingman got only $20: somebody else got $80; from it we learn that in 1860 the workingman was plundered out of $80 for every $100 worth of wealth that he brought into existence. Immediately a suspicion arises in our minds as to who this fat and festive Uncle Sam must be. But we snuff out the suspicion; twenty per cent of one’s product is not much; indeed, it is very little; but we remember that this is only a start, and that the soaring figures promise progress. Encouraged by this hope, we proceed to test the next decade.

Applying the same arithmetical calculation to the figures given on the poster for the decade of 1870, we again ascertain the percentage of labor’s share” the relation that the increased total wage bears to the increased total production. What we there discover gives such a shock to our nerves that the pencil almost drops from our hands. Remember that in the previous decade the share of labor was twenty per cent; remember also that we were promised progress. The expectation started by the promise justified the hope that we would be getting at least one per cent more. Vain hope! The share of labor, as brought out by the test of the figures furnished by the poster itself, is” eighteen per cent!

A curious progress, this. It is the progress of the cow’s tail - downward. In 1860, the share of labor was $20 out of every $100 worth of wealth that it produced; in 1870, we find its share has gone down to eighteen per cent. In 1860, the plunder levied upon the workingman was $80 out of every $100; in 1870, the plunder, as revealed by the figures furnished by the poster itself, is $82 out of every $100 worth of wealth produced by the workingman.

The suspicion, started in our minds by the revelations in 1860 as to who this stout and lusty Uncle Sam is, revives. But again we suppress it. Our hopes are buoyed up by the consideration that many a babe, instead of immediately growing, is assailed by the whooping cough, measles and bronchitis, and declines, but only temporarily; he rallies quickly, and then grows strong uninterruptedly. That may have been the case with us in 1870. Cheered by these thoughts we rush on to the next decade.

Again we apply that simple arithmetical calculation, now to the figures of the wages paid and the wealth produced in the decade of 1880. The percentage traced by our pencil looks absurd. We must have made a mistake. We go over the sum once more. No mistake. The workingman’s share in 1880 is lower than the twenty per cent that it was in 1860; it is lower than the eighteen per cent that it was in 1870; it is now seventeen per cent!

Arrived at this point, we are no longer able to suppress the suspicion as to who this rotund and jolly Uncle Sam is. Nevertheless, we do not yet lose heart. Still mindful of the promise held out by the poster regarding our progressive affluence we proceed to the following decade.

The same arithmetical calculation is gone through. We compute the ratio of the wages paid in 1890 to the wealth produced in that decade. Lo, a surprise! The decline has stopped, the percentage of labor’s share in 1890 has risen above the percentage in 1880; it has risen above the percentage in 1870; it is now again twenty per cent as it was in 1860.

Thankful for small favors, we look back. Having expected another decline our agreeable surprise almost makes us feel happy. Nevertheless, we wonder where the “progress” comes in.

The figures furnished by the poster itself reveal that we are in 1890 just where we were when we started in 1860. After thirty years of arduous toil; after thirty years, during which the soil of the land was literally drenched with the sweat and blood and marrow of the workingman; after thirty years during which the American working class produced more heiresses to the square inch than the working class of any other country, to purchase European noblemen for husbands; at the end of thirty years during which the working class, as this poster itself shows, produced a phenomenal amount of wealth” at the end of these thirty years the American working class is just where it was thirty years before, the wretched retainer of only $20 out of every $100 worth of wealth that it produced!

This is hardly a progress worth bragging about. It is conservatism of misery. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal in the human breast. Perhaps the long lean years are at last over. Perhaps a brighter day is suddenly to burst upon us, and we are suddenly to make up for lost time so as to look in 1900 like this affluent, well-fed, well-clad, jolly Uncle Sam who, according to the poster, typifies the worker.

And so we apply the test to the figures for 1900, the last ones furnished on the poster. The same arithmetical calculation is resorted to. Woe is us! Our hopes are dashed. The percentage of the share of labor comes down kerslap. It is as low as it ever was” seventeen per cent! The temporary rise in 1890 was but the flicker in a dying man’s eye” the precursor of collapse.

The lie attempted to be given to the Socialist regarding the outrageousness of the plunder that he maintains the working class is subjected to by the capitalist class, rolls down the throat of its utterer. Even making allowance for the value of imported raw material to which the labor of other countries has given value, even making generous allowance for all that due allowance should be made for, the figures to which this poster testifies establish the conclusion that the pittance of one-fifth of its product is a liberal estimate of the share that the working class is allowed to retain.

The first of the two tests, to which these figures of “Wages Paid” must be put, dispels their halo; it exposes a good portion of the naked and hideous reality; it points to the conclusion that, not this lusty Uncle Sam, but that other miserable being at the other end of the poster typifies the American workingman. The second test will establish the fact beyond peradventure.

Let me go once more over the figures on this column of “Wages Paid” so as to refresh your memory. The wages paid in the manufacturing industries are here given as:

Over $ 300,000,000 for 1860; Over $ 700,000,000 for 1870; Over $ 900,000,000 for 1880; Over $1,800,000,000 for 1890; and Over $2,300,000,000 for 1900.

The purpose of such a presentation of the run of wages is obvious. The intention is to convey the idea that the condition of the individual workingman improves; that it has improved gigantically. The presentation of figures in that way is intended to convey the idea that the wages or earnings of the individual workingman have soared upwards—and to convey the idea crushingly. I shall prove to you from the attitude of this witness, whom I have here pinned on the stand, that his purpose is to obtain a snap judgment upon imperfect information; that he is guilty of that worst form of deception which consists in stating a half-truth and suppressing the other half; in short, that he is a swindler.

Keep your thinking caps tight on your heads. Is the fact that in 1860 the output in wages amounted to $300,000,000 and that in 1900 the output ran up $2,000,000,000 more” is this fact enough to warrant any conclusion as to the improved condition of the work- ingman?

Let me illustrate with a simpler instance. Suppose I were to tell you that last month I paid out $10 in wages, and that this month I am paying out $20. I would now be paying out double the amount in wages that I paid out last month. Does that mean that my workingmen are now getting twice as much wages as they did last month? They may” and they may not. Whether they do or do not, depends not merely upon the increased total of the wages paid; it depends upon something else besides. What is that something else? Obviously, the number of men that I employed last month, and the number of men that I employ this month.

If last month I employed only two men, it would mean that their wages averaged $5 apiece; if this month, however, I am employing ten men, then, although the total amount that I am now paying out in wages doubled, the wages of my men would have gone down by over fifty per cent. The total wage may rise mountain high,. and yet the individual wage may decline perpendicularly.

Let us now bring this column of dazzling figures paid out in wages to the touchstone of the principle that I have just elucidated. The first thing noticeable is the total absence from this, or from any of the other columns on the poster, of any statement with regard to the number of men among whom these successive grandiose figures have to be divided. No statement of their number for 1860; no statement of their number for 1870; no statement of their number for 1880; no statement of their number for 1890; no statement of their number for 1900.

The witness on the witness stand is dodging; he is prevaricating; he is perjuring himself. We should need no more than that to know what to do with his case. Nevertheless, I do not propose to convict him by indirection; I propose to convict him explicitly.

The census, furnished by the agents of the identical class that got up this poster, informs us that, in 1870, there were 2,053,966 workingmen employed in the manufacturing industries. The wages paid to them, according to this poster, were $775,584,343. By dividing the total number of workers to whom these wages were paid into that amount we obtain the figure of $377 as the average annual wage for that decade. Stick a pin there.

In the next decade, 1880, when the total wage stated on this poster was $947,953,795, there were according to the census 2,732,595 workingmen engaged in manufacturing. Dividing this figure into that grand total of wages we shall obtain the average wages paid then, and thereby also an idea of the workers’ condition. The figure obtained is $346” $31 less than before! Although the total wage had risen during the last ten years about $200,000,000, the individual wages went down $31!

We proceed to the following, the decade of 1890. For that period the poster gives $1,891,228,321 as the wages paid. The census informs us that that amount must have been distributed among 4,251,535 workingmen. Again dividing this number into the total wage paid to them we obtain $445 as the average wages. This denotes a rise. What these absolute rises amount to, that they vanish like mist before the sun, that they are a snare and a delusion, in fact a cheat” that I shall make clear presently. For the present, sticking closely to the present line of inquiry, we shall consider it an absolute gain.

So considering it, it is legitimate to contrast the gain made by the workingmen with the absolute gain made by the class whom we now know this fat Uncle Sam represents. After twenty years of such toil as I need not describe to you, we find that the wages of the average workingman increased by the giddy amount of $68 a year, or nineteen cents more a day, while the small class that this jolly customer—this rotund Uncle Sam” here represents, progressed during that same period only to the tune of the modest figure of $3,228,883,529” and there were no four million of them among whom to divide that little windfall.

We proceed to the next and last, the decade of 1900, when, according to this poster, the total wages paid were $2,330,578,010, and, according to the census, there were 5,306,143 workingmen engaged in the manufacturing industries. Dividing the latter figure into the former we obtain the average wages received by the workingmen. It was $439” $6 less than in 1890! Take notice” notwithstanding the total amount of wages paid had increased by $439,349,689, the actual earnings of the average workingman decreased by $6!

I stated a minute ago that the average increases in wages credited to the individual workingman are “paper increases,” and I promised to prove it. I shall proceed to do so now.

As we have seen, the wages declined $6 between 1890 and 1900. Nevertheless, the figures actually show that from 1870 to 1900 there is an increase in the average wage amounting to $62 a year. Even if this paltry figure could stand, it would be a mockery. What else but a mockery is an increase of $62 a year, after thirty years of toil, for the class the sweat of whose brow and the marrow of whose bone raised the total wealth during that period by the gigantic figure of $8,806,954,124! It is a tragic mockery.

There is but a step even from the tragic to the ridiculous. 1 shall prove to you that even that paltry $62 increase dwindles down to the proverbial “thirty cents.” The line of argument that I shall now take up is but a subdivision of that second test to which I have been submitting this column of “Wages Paid,” and which has knocked the bottom from under it. The secondary test to which I shall now submit it will smash the remaining fragments. 1 must request you not to drop your thinking caps. You will need them.

You saw how misleading, because insufficient, were all comparisons of wages paid at different epochs, without a simultaneous statement of the number of wage earners, among whom the wages were distributed in the respective periods. I shall now prove to you how such comparisons of wages paid at different epochs, even to the identical wage earner, are also misleading, and given with “intent to deceive,” unless other factors are considered.

Let me begin the argument on this head with an illustration. Say that last year my wages were $1 a day and that this year my wages are $1.25 a day. Is the mere fact that I am receiving in cash twenty-five cents more than last year sufficient premises from which to conclude that this year I am better off by twenty-five cents’ worth of wealth?

Let me help you to the answer by giving you a further illustration. Suppose that last year, when my wages were a hundred cents, the cost of living-rent, food, clothing, the absolutely necessary necessaries of life-was ninety-nine cents. What would follow? It would follow that I had a penny over and above my wants. I could either put that in the savings banks, or invest it in stocks, as we are told that workingmen do extensively.

But suppose further that now, when my wages are one hundred and twenty-five cents, the cost of living has gone up so as to run up to one hundred and twenty-six cents. What is the result? The result is that I am “busted.”

You see the point. He who tells us that our wages have gone up without stating how the cost of living is conducting itself” such a man is attempting a fraud upon us. That, once more, is the case with the witness whom I have nailed on this board. On that subject also he is silent as the tomb. His silence, however, need not leave me in the lurch. I don’t need him. I shall, with your consent, turn you into living statistical columns.

I request all those of you, the women included, who certainly know a good deal on this head” all those of you whose experience it is that the cost of living is now lower than it was twenty or ten years ago, to raise your right hands. I shall request the chairman to count the hands.

I shall now request all those to raise their right hands whose experience it is that the cost of living is now just what it was twenty or ten years ago, no lower and no higher. Kindly raise your right hands, those of you who can testify to that. I shall again request the chairman to count the hands.

I shall take a third poll. Let all those raise their right hands whose experience it is that the cost of living has gone up and gone up perceptibly. Will the chairman count?

From the Atlantic, across and beyond the Mississippi, that is the identical response I have everywhere received from the audiences that faced me. Beginning with rent, the necessaries of life have everywhere gone up. There goes a big chunk” the bulk, probably even more” of that wondrous $62 increase in wages since 1876!

I shall now proceed to knock out whatever fraction may possibly still remain of the “increase.” You have seen that a knowledge of the cost of living is indispensable in order to form a correct idea as to whether an increase in wages means improved conditions. You have seen that there may be an increase in wages and yet no proportional improvement in conditions if the cost of living has increased. Intimately connected with the subject of the price paid for goods is the subject of the quality of the goods. Again let me illustrate before entering upon the subject itself.

Suppose that twenty years ago I paid $10 for a suit of clothes and that that suit lasted me two years, say two winters. Now, suppose again that this year a suit of clothes, that looks as good. lasts me only one year, say one winter. What does that show in point of price? It shows that, whereas twenty years ago a $10-bill furnished me with clothing for two years, now a $ 10-bill furnishes me with clothing for only one year. In other words, if I do not wish to be in rags the second year, the clothing that twenty years ago cost me only $10, now costs me $20. The conclusion from this fact is that “deterioration” of goods spells “increased price.” On the face of things the price has remained what it was; in point of fact it went up.

Now then, both in food and clothing the extent to which deterioration has gone during the last twenty years staggers imagination. The reports of the shoddy turned out by our factories would be incredible were they not so well authenticated. This is a matter of general experience. It is particularly the housekeeper who makes acquaintance with this fact. Inquire from any woman fifty years old today and she will be able to tell you upon the subject tales that are sad. One elderly housekeeper whom I interrogated upon the subject put it this way: “When I married and bought a suit of underclothing for Henry it lasted two years, often longer; now when I get any underclothing I have to start darning the darned thing from the time it is put on.”

Similarly with food. There is hardly an article of food, especially the food that the workingman can afford to buy, that is not adulterated, consequently, that has not deteriorated in quality. Essays galore are cropping up upon the extent to which this baneful practice has gone. These essays show that health is thereby undermined, even if life is not thereby speedily snuffed out. One of these essays of recent date claims that the food adulterations are directly responsible for the death of over 400,000 infants a year; and it traces the sickness and death of thousands upon thousands of adults to the same cause.

Let me quote another authority upon this head. You will find on page 132 of the Congressional Record under date of last December 12, the following passage. It is a passage from the speech delivered by Senator Stewart in the course of the debate on the food bill:

“I do not think the country has any idea of the extent of the poisons that are administered in the food that is sold and eaten in this country. I think it is sapping the foundation of the constitution of our people. If we had to raise soldiers now as we did in 1861 I do not believe that throughout the country we could find as large a percentage of young men fit for hard service as there were at that time.”

The proof of the pudding, in this as in everything else, ever lies in the eating. If wages really increase, and the cost of living does not rise, and the necessaries of life” food and clothing” do not deteriorate; if they remain good or even improve, what must be the result? Obviously the people who enjoy them must be hale and hearty; they must be healthy while they live, and their lives must be long. If, on the contrary, earnings barely increase and that increase is more than eaten up by higher prices and by the deterioration of such necessaries of life as food and clothing, the fact is bound to appear in the condition of the class that is affected thereby.

If you ever are in New York, take a walk in the evening on 42nd Street, or Fifth Avenue where the clubs are located of the Republican and Democratic parties, and of several other capitalist societies. There must be similar clubs here in Minneapolis; they are found in all our large cities, even in some smaller manufacturing towns. Peep through the large pier-glass windows into the gorgeous precincts. You will see grey heads abound. Is it that these gentlemen are prematurely grey? Is it that they are so poorly fed and clad that it has turned their hair? Hardly! I admit that their aged appearance is somewhat to be accounted for by their lives of dissipation, and their covert Mormon practices. Nevertheless, they have reached old age. Such is the good quality of the goods that they consume that all their dissipations and immoral practices do not prevent their reaching old age.

Having taken in that sight, move into the wards which the working class inhabit, and drop into the places where workingmen congregate. Make sure and take along a little pad of paper and a pencil. On that pad jot down a tally mark for every grey head that you come across. You will find few indeed to record. Why, look at this assemblage of workingmen. There is hardly a grey head among them. In an assemblage of half this size, but of capitalists, you would find the grey heads numerous. Among workingmen they are far and few between. Is it that the workingmen are so well-fed and so well-clothed that their hair preserves its color even into old age, and thus conceals their years? Oh, no! The grey heads are few among them because their hair is not given a chance to turn. Long before the season, they have sunk into early graves, the victims of intense toil, aggravated by small earnings, and this in turn aggravated by the adulteration of the goods that alone their earnings can purchase.

An interesting sidelight is thrown upon this subject by the official report recently made to his government by the British consul in Chicago. Speaking of the machinists in particular, he said that if a machinist in the United States is forty-two years of age and out of work, it is difficult for him to get a job; and he proceeds to explain why” said he, if the man has worked as hard as he is expected to, then he is worn out at forty-two; if he is not worn out, then it is a sign that he did not work so hard as he is expected to, and they have no use for him either way.

I wish to furnish one more piece of testimony under this head before I dismiss the subject. The man I am about to quote is not a “fire-brand agitator"; although he often spoke in public, his subject never was of the sort that might tempt a man to exaggeration. It is Huxley, the slow, plodding, accurate scientist. He said that four-fifths of the people die of slow starvation. There may be those among you who are of a statistical turn of mind. If such there be, they may have nosed among the statistics of mortality furnished by the census and other official sources. Such friends of statistical turn of mind may say: “Why, that’s nonsense; a man or two may occasionally die of starvation; but hundreds and thousands of them, impossible! I have seen the statistics on mortality; I have seen the list of diseases; there are consumption, pneumonia, all sorts of other diseases; but I never saw starvation entered among the causes of death.”

People holding such views are in error; in serious error. A man may be dying of slow starvation and not know it. His stomach may be full; he may never have felt the gnawings of hunger; and yet he may be dying of slow starvation. If in summer a man is not properly clad, he is emitting more heat than his system can stand” he is dying of slow starvation; if in winter he is not clad warm enough, he is consuming more heat than his system can afford” he is dying of slow starvation; his stomach may be replete, he may imagine himself well-fed, but if the matter in that stomach is adulterated food, then the organisms that carry the nutrition from the stomach, and spread it throughout the body, find no nutrition to carry, the tissues that are consumed are only partially replaced” that man is dying of slow starvation.

The fact is brought home to him when it is too late; aye, it is concealed from him and from his friends even then. He catches a cold; a robust constitution would cast off the distemper without difficulty; his constitution, however, is not robust; his constitution has long been drained by slow starvation; the slight distemper throws him on his beam ends; it develops into pneumonia; he dies; the physician reports pneumonia as the “cause of death” ” but starvation it was.

And so down the line of consumption, rheumatism, diabetes and most of the other ills plentifully bestowed upon the working class by the “increased wages” that the capitalist class lavishes upon the working class. Because” never lose sight of this fact” it is the identical capitalist class which regulates wages, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, raises the cost of living, and adulterates the goods needed to live on, which, as you saw, is but another form of raising prices.

We are through with the witness. He stands convicted out of his own mouth. The condition of the working class has gone from bad to worse. Not this roly-poly of an Uncle Sam, but that other emaciated being typifies the wage earner of the land.

Some say, and I am of those, that craft or pure and simple unionism has promoted, aye, urged on these wretched conditions. Others, I know, claim that pure and simple or craft unionism is not to be held responsible; they claim that, on the contrary, were it not for pure and simple unionism, conditions would now be even worse. Those who are of this opinion hold that, instead of being decried, pure and simple unionism should be praised for what it does.

Even accepting this, the most favorable summary possible of the work of pure and simpledom, it would follow that pure and simpledom is, at best, a brake to check the downward run of the chariot of labor; it would follow that pure and simpledom not only is utterly incompetent to emancipate the working class, but that it is not even able to prevent decline; that all there is in it is the capacity to slacken or reduce the downward trend of things. Even accepting this most favorable of views, it would be an argument to cast the thing aside.

The mission of unionism is not to act as rear guard to an army defeated, seasoned in defeat, habituated to defeat, and fit only for defeat. The mission of unionism is to organize and drill the working class for final victory” to “take and hold” the machinery of production, which means the administration of the country.

I shall, however, prove to you that pure and simpledom deserves no credit whatever. I shall prove that it is directly responsible for existing evils, that it is an accomplice in capitalist crime, and has become a scourge to the working class.