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Title: Americans! Arouse Yourselves! Author: Lucy E. Parsons Date: September 24, 1905 Language: en Topics: class struggle, working class Source: The Liberator Notes: excerpts
It has not been so many years ago since it was an accepted fact that
this was a middle-class Republic. Hence it was immune against those
upheavals that have in times past disturbed the equanimity of the
“better classes” of Europe. If there are any such persons at the present
time hugging these delusions we would be pleased to have them peruse the
following extracts, taken from an interview with James R. Keene, of Wall
Street fame. He says:
It is my firm conviction that the day is coming when the individual
small merchant will cease to exist. In his place will be millions of
persons working for wages and salaries whereas yesterday and today there
were and are proprietors. In other words, I believe the time is coming
when practically all mercantile and industrial affairs will be conducted
by corporations.
Now, Americans, what are you going to do about this evil wave that is
rushing in upon you and yours like an inundating flood? Are you going to
stand still until it carries you off into the ocean of wage-slavery? Are
there not enough there already struggling for a wretched existence?
Oh, I think I hear you say, “Why, I am going to use the ballot, the
freeman’s weapon, and elect good men to office, who will seize the boa
constrictor-like trusts and control them. Are we not free-born American
citizens?”
Oh, are you, though? Not too much assurance, please. Let us see what
Alton B. Parker has to say. When asked to comment on the admission of
George W. Perkins, vice-president of the New York Life Insurance
Company, that Mr McCall had contributed $50,000 of the funds of the
company to the Republican campaign fund last year, Mr. Parker said:
Yes, I believe I ought to say, now that there is no political excitement
to distract the public attention, that the president of the New York
Life was not the only such contributor. The officers of other great life
insurance companies, such as the Equitable and the Mutual, also
contributed from the policy-holders funds for campaign purposes last
year. What has been proved in the case of the New York Life undoubtedly
would be proved in the other cases. Were there an investigation of
railroad, manufacturing and other corporations, it would be found that
these life insurance officers were not the only corporation officers who
put their hands into the treasury and took out moneys belonging to
widows and orphans to help secure a partisan triumph.
That their acts were unlawful and their purposes corrupt goes without
saying. Such men desire the triumph of that party which will better
serve their personal financial interests and will—for contributions,
past, present and future—continue to protect those interests by lenient
legislation and by pretense at execution of law which shall be tenderly
blind to all their offenses. That party they espouse in the boardroom,
and contribute to it of the moneys they hold in trust, and,
occasionally, a little of their own. . . .
The officers responsible for these raids upon the treasuries of
corporations have received their reward in unfettered management of life
insurance corporations; in unembarrassed raids upon the public through
trusts—condemned by both common and statute law; in refusal to punish
criminally the officers of railroad and other corporations violating the
laws, and in statutory permission to manufacturing corporations to levy
tribute on the people.
There can be no hope of checking the unlawful aggressions of officers of
great corporations so long as they may thus form a quasi-partnership
with the organization for the dominant political party. For, in the hour
when the administration official seeks to punish the offender he is
reminded by the head of the organization of the magnitude of the
contributions of the corporation.
There is, however, something worse, if possible, than the escape of such
offenders from justice. It is the gradual demoralization of voters and
the dulling of the public conscience caused by the efforts to make these
vast sums of money procure the ballots they were intended to procure,
corruptly and otherwise.
Reader, have you read the above carefully? Yes? Then we ask you again:
What are you going to do about it? Forty years ago a wail came up from
the Sunny South that 4,000,000 black slaves were held in bondage. The
eloquent Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and many others
depicted the auction block, the wail of innocent childhood, the anguish
of womanhood who were compelled to do their master’s bidding. It is not
quite so bad in the North today, it is true, but how many of the wage
class, as a class, are there who can avoid obeying the commands of the
master (employing) class, as a class? Not many, are there?
Then are you not slaves to the money power as much as were the black
slaves to the Southern slaveholders? Then we ask you again: What are you
going to do about it? You had the ballot then. Could you have voted away
black slavery? You know you could not because the slaveholders would not
hear of such a thing for the same reason you can’t vote yourselves out
of wage-slavery.
The trusts will not allow you to vote them out of power because they are
the power, as is shown by the interview given above.
All that the master class care for is to rush their “hands” through the
factory grist, get all there is of strength and vitality out of them to
pay interest on their watered stock, and when they are practically
exhausted, then turn them over to the tender mercies of their police, to
be “run in” as vagrants.
This is the fate which awaits many of the middle class and the
wage-class. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to serve
notice on these thieves, and highway robbers, sitting in high places of
“honor” and “trust,” that by the eternal god of justice, and by the
manhood in you, that you will not, in this land of plenty, allow your
children to become the mere hirelings and dependents upon the sweet will
of their children?
Remind them that the sword still hangs upon the wall and the heart still
beats within the man, and that that sword will be unsheathed again, if
necessary, in defense of your rights. Give them to understand that you
will not stand patiently by and see your hard earnings squandered by a
luxuriating class of idlers. If the American manhood will arouse itself
and speak to those fellows in plain language, not to be misunderstood,
they can save themselves, their country and their children, from the
fate of poverty which awaits them.
Will you do it?