The Second Clause

This takes me to the second clause of the three clauses of the Preamble that I proposed to take up with you, the last two of which are, as I stated in opening, pivoted upon the first which I have just demonstrated. The second clause” I shall read it again” is as follows:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.

In a way, this clause also stands proved by the figures on this poster, together with the obvious conclusions that flow from them. Whatever the interests may be of a class whose material welfare steadily towers up, and the interests of the class whose material welfare, and all that thereupon depends, sinks perpendicularly and in even tempo with the former’s rise, as illustrated by these figures—whatever these two sets of interests may be, they can have nothing in common. The relations between these two sets of interests are not even the relations of two, though opposing, yet supplementary forces, such as physics tells us of. They are the relations between the vampire and the victim, whose blood it drains” and such relations surely establish nothing in common. Of all one-sided relations, these relations “take the cake and the pie.” Indeed, people who prate about the “mutuality," the “brotherhood,” the “identity” of interests of the capitalist, or employing class, and the working class, demand of the workingman that for which they would spank their own children if they believed it possible. They want of you that you believe it possible to divide an apple between two men in such a way that each shall have the bigger chunk. An impossibility!

If the workingman produces four dollars and the capitalist takes two, there are only two left to the workingman; if the capitalist takes three, the workingman has to put up with one; if the capitalist appropriates three and a half, there is nothing but fifty cents left to the workingman. Inversely, if the workingman hangs on to a whole dollar, the capitalist’s share is reduced to three; if the workingman pushes forward and keeps two, there are but two left for the capitalist; should the workingman preserve three, the capitalist would have to put up with one; and should the workingman “divide” in such a way that he “takes and holds” all that he produced, my capitalist will have to go to work. In other words, he would cease to be a capitalist.

Now, then, the figures on this poster quite clearly illustrate the law that underlies the capitalist system of production. That law does not aid the workingman to preserve an increasing share of his product; it aids, aye, it requires the capitalist to intensify his plunder increasingly. His chunk must be ever thicker, ever and correspondingly thinner must be the workingman’s slice. No common interest there! As far as this aspect of the clause which I have just read is concerned, it is too obvious to require further proof. But weightier sense and meaning, meaning and sense of more immediate, practical pith and moment lie imbedded in that clause.

It is an inevitable consequence of the falsehood regarding the hand-in-hand prosperity of capitalists and workingmen that their relations are mutual, and, consequently, that they stand upon a footing of equality. Of course, if the two are getting along swimmingly, they must be peers, even if it be conceded that their peerage may be of different rank. Down from that parent falsehood, set afloat by the capitalist professors, politicians and pulpiteers, and zealously carried into the ranks of pure and simple unionism by the labor lieutenants of the capitalist class, a long line of descent of increasingly insidious and practically pestiferous falsehoods may be traced. The ancestral falsehood of the hand-in-hand progress of capitalist and workingman begets the son-falsehood of the equality of workingman and capitalist; the son-falsehood begets the grandson-fraud of “contracts"; and you will see how the grandson-fraud litters a prolific progeny of its ilk to labor’s undoing.

What is a “contract"?

I am not going to give you any Socialist definition of the term. The term has nothing to do with Socialism. It is a term the meaning of which has grown up with the race’s experience. The definition I shall give is the law book definition. It is the definition accepted and acted upon in all the courts of equity.

A contract is an agreement entered into by two equal parties; a contract is an agreement entered into between peers; a contract is an agreement entered into by two freemen. Where the parties to a thing called a contract fall within these categories, they are said to be of contracting mind and power, and the document is valid; where that which is called a contract lacks any of these essential qualities, especially if it lacks them all, the thing is null, void and of no effect; it is a badge of fraud of which he is guilty who imposes the contract upon the other.

Let me illustrate:

Suppose that some Minneapolis agent of a lecture bureau, anxious to secure my invaluable services as a speaker for this evening, had written to me in New York, asking for my terms; and suppose I had answered that I would come for $500. He would have written back wanting me to come down a peg or so. I would have replied. Suppose that after considerable chaffering I had agreed upon $400 and he had yielded, whereupon a document would have been drawn up reading somewhat like this:

John Jones, party of the first part, and Daniel De Leon, party of the second part, have mutually covenanted and agreed that the party of the second part will deliver an address in Minneapolis on the 10th day of July, and the party of the first part will pay the party of the second part for his services the sum of $400 in U.S. currency.

This document being signed would be a contract. If on the appointed day I came, delivered the goods, and John Jones failed to pay me, I would have a just cause of action against him for breach of contract. If, on the other hand, I failed to put in an appearance, he could sue and recover damages from me on the ground of my breach of contract. Whatever people may think of the steepness of my price, the contract would stand. It would stand” why? Because both he and I were free to accept or reject; neither of us acted under compulsion; we were both free agents.

But now suppose that, instead of writing, he came down to New York, rushed into my office, whipped a Colt’s horse pistol out of his hip pocket, cocked and held it with the muzzle an inch from my head, and said: “Sign this!” laying before me a sheet of paper containing this legend:

John Jones, party of the first part, and Daniel De Leon, party of the second part, have mutually covenanted and solemnly agreed and bound themselves as follows, to wit: that the party of the second part will deliver an address in Minneapolis on the 10th day of July, and the party of the first part will pay the party of the second part for his services the sum of five cents, which sum of five cents the party of the second part hereby, acknowledges to be a liberal payment for his services, the said sum being agreed upon after a friendly and mutual understanding between the said party of the first part and the said party of the second part.

Would I sign? Why, of course, I would! I would sign above, below, to the right, to the left. I would never stop signing. I would keep on signing like a “moving picture,” until that pistol was removed from its close proximity to my temple.

That is the situation of labor when it signs “contracts.”

Now, say that he, John Jones, returns to Minneapolis with (he “contract” in his pocket, and a glow of righteous, patriotic contentment on his face. Say he hires a hall, prints and circulates posters announcing the meeting and address, and inserts advertisements in the papers; say he even pays the bills, and does not cheat in that also. The day of the meeting, the hour arrives” but not I. The hall fills” but not with me. Hour upon hour passes” whoever else may be there, I am absent. The audience storms at him; calls him names; insists upon and gets its admission moneys back. Say that, indignant at my “breach of contract,” John Jones were to institute a suit for damages against me.

What would happen?

He would be thrown out of court for a swindler, he might even be prosecuted for “assault with intent to kill.” That “contract” is null, void and of no effect; it is a badge of fraud of which he is guilty; it is all that because I was not free, because he held me under duress.

Exactly so with the workingman who signs “contracts"; exactly so with the capitalist who extorts them.

The workingman does not stand upon a footing of equality with the capitalist; he is not of contracting mind and power with the employer. The latter holds over him the whip of hunger that the capitalist system places in the hands of the master, and with the aid of which he can cow his wage slave into acquiescence.

Why, among themselves, and even in their public utterances, when anger throws them off their guard, the apologists for capitalism blurt out the fact that “only the lash of hunger” can keep the workingman in the treadmill. At the bar of man and of justice the “contracts” that labor signs are null, void and of no effect.

And yet what do we see? The spectacle is of such daily occurrence that it has assumed the nature of a “system,” of a deliberate maneuver, indulged in by employers jointly with their labor lieutenants to paralyze the labor movement; aye, worse yet, to give it the aspect of a rat pit.

This is the way it works. Say I am a railroad magnate. I make my “schedules” or contracts, not with all my employees together, but with each craft separately” and there cannot be too many autonomous crafts among them to suit me. Incidentally, let me call your attention to the circumstance that the A. F. of L. is steadily disintegrating its national and international unions into autonomous crafts. Its candle holders endeavor to make much out of some few exceptional instances, in order to make it appear that “the A. F. of L. itself is steadily becoming industrialist.” The increasing volume of jurisdictional feuds tells the opposite tale. As I proceed you will be able to appreciate the meaning of the absolute craft autonomy tendency that manifests itself in the A. F. of L. But to return.

I make my separate contract with each of the separate crafts engaged on my railroad line” and there cannot be too many of them to suit me. My contract with my locomotive engineers is drawn up to expire, we shall say, on April 15; my contract with my switchmen is drawn up to expire on September 3; my contract with my firemen is drawn up to expire, say, on January 21; my contract with my trainmen is drawn up to expire, say, on November 30” and so forth, down the line of as many crafts as pure and simple unionism splits my workingmen into, and it can’t split them into too many for my comfort. Each separate craft being tied up with a separate contract, expiring on a separate date, I have the industry at my mercy.

Say that, “contract” or no “contract,” obedient to that underlying law of the capitalist endless screw, that economic law that neither capitalist nor his class can rein in, that relentless economic law which dictates their conduct in their wrestlings with one another and that causes the capitalists to interpret these contracts to suit themselves” say that my switchmen are driven to rebellion and strike. What do I do? I telephone to my chief labor lieutenants” the presidents, grand chiefs and superlative secretaries of the national unions” and, simultaneously, I touch the button and set the press agoing, both the capitalist newspapers and the labor papers, so called, edited by the pupils of the Civic Federation. My labor lieutenants hasten to respond to my call. Like blackbirds, they hie themselves to the scene from the four quarters of the compass. And then, to the orchestration of: “Infamous men, they have broken their contracts! Scandalous men, they have violated their sacred agreement!” and more to this effect from the press that I have set agoing, and that causes every old woman of both sexes and of all ages to look askance at my striking switchmen as so many serpents under the grass” to the tune of that artificial concert my national labor lieutenants fall to work. They do not turn their attention to the men on strike; the contract-breaking miscreants are below the contempt of my virtuous labor lieutenant. They call around them the men in the other departments” engineers, firemen, conductors, etc.-and with the aid of their understrappers, the local skates, address them in this language:

“Behold yonder sinks of iniquity! They have broken their contracts! It is a wonder the lightning of heaven does not come down and blast them. Surely the bones of the patriotic founders of this Republic are rattling in their graves at the discovery that there can be such lawless men encumbering this soil of freedom. Look at `em! They broke their contracts! Surely you will not do the same? Surely you will not be so base! Surely you will be true!”

And the men thus addressed cross their arms over their manly chests, and bowing low to the Goddess of Contract, that has been conjured up before them for the occasion, make answer:

“Not we! We shall be loyal to our word. We shall respect our agreements. We shall not break our sacred contracts!”

Which, translated into English, means” “We shall scab upon our fellow wage slaves.” And they do! And thus we have seen union locomotive engineers scabbing it upon union firemen, and union firemen scabbing it upon union brakemen, and union brakemen scabbing it upon union switchmen, down the line; and we have seen all of these jointly scabbing it upon union trolleymen and upon all manner of other union men on strike by transporting either the militia and military to dragoon the workers into submission, or the hungry unemployed to take the places of the men who went out. Thus we have seen union molders scabbing it upon machinists; union machinists scabbing it upon union elevator men; union cigarmakers upon waiters; union waiters upon brewers; union brewers upon glucose workers; union teamsters upon carpenters; union bricklayers upon cement workers; union soft coal miners upon hard coal miners” and so down to the very last and least of the craft organizations, and all against each.

It is a fact, deep with significance, though it seems to escape the observation of superficial observers, that it is not the unorganized scab who breaks the strikes, but the organized craft that really does the dirty work; and thus each craft when itself involved in a strike fights heroically, when not involved demeans itself as arrant scabs; betrays its class” all in fatuous reverence to “contracts” !

Only the other day we had a glaring illustration of this disgraceful performance in the city of New York, when the men on the Belmont Interborough struck for living conditions, and Gompers, together with the other lackeys of the Belmont Civic Federation, ably assisted by their local sub-lackeys, such as Mr. Morris Braun of the Gompers International Cigarmakers’ Union No. 144, howled down the men on strike as contract breakers, revoked their charters as “unworthy of unionism," proclaimed directly to Belmont that “the men had done wrong,” and meekly begged his pardon for the sinners.

Still another and even more pathetic instance was that of the strike of the New York newsboys, to whom Hearst had raised the price of his paper. These little tots, who by their very appearance herald in the open the merciless cruelty of capitalism even against the defenseless child; underclad, underfed, undershod; deprived of the innocent joys of childhood that are so essential to the building up of the future man; stunted in schooling; prematurely thrown into the temptation of vice; walking, running, yelling monuments of capitalist cannibalism” these waifs walked before Typographical Union No. 6 and asked for support, for the support of men many of whom were fathers themselves and who, had they struck with the boys, certainly would have insured them victory. Did they?

“An oath, an oath, I have an oath in heaven, Shall I lay perjury upon my soul?”

asks the scoundrel in Shakespeare.

“A contract! A contract! We have a contract in the pocket of our master Hearst! Shall we lay breach of contract upon our conscience?" asked the craft union compositors. Of course they wouldn’t! They slobbered over the boys their “sympathies"; they bestowed upon them all the sweet words that butter no parsnips” and the boys went down in defeat.

It should be here added, although a digression, that when a year or so later the identical typographical union had its strike against the Sun, those bearded men went down upon their knees before the identical boys whom they had left ill the lurch, and implored their support. Let the fact be recorded as all evidence of the inherent nobility of the human heart, and in honor of childhood” the ever-renewing promise that human feeling and human instinct shall not perish from the earth — that when appealed to, the boys returned evil with good, and helped the printers fight their strike. It was a pure breath of industrialism.

And in Chicago, during recent months, what was the spectacle presented there? We saw the garment workers valiantly, with drums beating and colors flying, march to the fray. They fought bravely and were beaten off the field. Thereupon the teamsters put on war paint and fell to in support of the routed garment workers. They, too, fought with the desperation of heroes, and went down. Possibly after them some third division of labor may take the field to avenge the cause of the teamsters, after these went down in the attempt to avenge the garment workers after their fight was lost!

Do you know what would happen to the general who, in face of the embattled foe, instead of concentrating his forces for the fray, were to send first one small division into the field of battle; wait until that was annihilated; then send a second small division; again wait until that was routed; and then send a third, likewise to be wiped out, until his whole powerful army was demoralized and took to flight? Do you know what would happen to that general? He would be grabbed by the neck, courtmartialed and shot in the back for treason.

Now I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet; yet, concluding from the facts that are thronging to the bar, I venture the statement on this 10th day of July, 1905, that the day is nigh when the working class of America will court-martial the Gomperses, the Mitchells, the Stoneses whose generalship is sacrificing the army of labor—court-martial them for treason to the working class.

Thus we trace, in direct line of descent from the ancestral falsehood concerning the mutuality of relations between the employing class and the working class, a long genealogy of fraudulent principles, culminating in “contracting” the working class into paralysis, and the crop of evils that flow therefrom. Falsehood can only breed falsehood, and falsehood’s spawn is evil; inversely, evil can be sired and damed by falsehood only. In the framework of the capitalist social system, the working class and the employing or capitalist class have nothing in common. The principle is a beacon on the track of labor’s march to emancipation; the contrary principle is a false light that lures to social wreck.