Section three: Peaceful slaughter—in industry.
Surely it is bad enough to have the workingmen slaughtered while on the battlefield where each is armed and has his heart full of stupid hate for his fellow workingman of some other country. But it is outrageous that men, women, and little children should be killed and wounded by the hundreds of thousands every year in our own country while they are engaged in the useful, peaceful pursuits of industry. Let us briefly consider this matter.
The owner of a chattel-slave worker is careful to PROTECT the chattel-slave from accident, from sickness and from death. The slave-owner buys the slave, buys his whole life, at one purchase; and he is interested, therefore, in having the slave alive and well and sound as long as possible in order to get out of the slave as much labor-power as possible.
But the capitalist employer of the WAGE-slave worker does not buy the wage-earner for life; he buys the wage-earner, the wage-slave, IN SECTIONS; that is, for a month, or a week or a day at a time—eight or ten hours’ labor-power per day. Thus there is no risk for the capitalist if the wage-earner falls sick and dies; he is not responsible for the wage-earner’s health. If the grinding toil ages or sickens the wage-earner it is nothing to the employer of the wage-slaves. There are plenty more wage-slaves eager to sell their labor-power if some get sick or wounded, or die.
Of course it costs the employer, it is expensive to him, it reduces the precious surplus,—it cuts down the profits on the labor-power he buys for wages—to ventilate his factory perfectly, to keep it clean of dust, foul odors and poisonous gases, to arrange safeguards about dangerous machinery in order to protect the wage-earners against accident and sickness. Railway companies, for example, are very slow to provide all possible safeguards to protect employees—simply because it is expensive, cuts down profits, reduces the surplus value. Human life, however, is very cheap under the wage-system. Of course a safety device, a ventilator, might save a human arm or a human life—of a wage-earner; but the life-saving arrangement costs quite a bit of money. A new human arm, another human life (another worker) can easily be found to take the place of the lost arm or the destroyed life—and without extra expense to the capitalist employer. There are plenty of wage-slaves waiting ’round anxious to be hired, and thus a WAGE-slave limb or life can be replaced as easily as a wooden plug or a broken wheel in a machine, and with no such loss as there would be if his workers were CHATTEL-slaves. Thus the wage-slave plan is cheaper—more profitable—and surely more convenient.
You can see that—can’t you?
Of course “it is cruel”—there is no sentiment in such a procedure. But that does not matter, under capitalism: “Business is business”—and “there is no sentiment in business,” we are assured of that by leading Christian business men.
Hence everywhere there is vicious neglect by the capitalist employers in the matter of protecting the health, limb and life of the WAGE-workers, the WAGE-slaves. The wage-system is in this respect far more cruel and murderous than the chattel-slave system. Of course it seems impossible that capitalism is more inhumanly scornful of human life than was chattel slavery. But here following is some evidence to show how the greed for profits under the wage-system results in the slaughter of men, women and children—far worse than under the chattel-slave system, even far heavier slaughter than in actual war, real war in which even wholesale butchery with sword, rifle and cannon means magnificent success.
“It is the common consensus of opinion,” says The New York Independent,[[103]] “among investigators that industrial casualties in this nation number more than 500,000 yearly. Dr. Josiah Strong estimates the number at 564,000. As there are 525,600 minutes in a year, it may readily be seen that every minute (day and night) our industrial system sends to the grave-yard or to the hospital a human being, the victim of some accident inseparable from his toil. We cry out against the horrors of war.... But the ravages ... of Industrial warfare are far greater than those of armed conflict. The number of killed or mortally wounded (including deaths from accidents, suicides and murders, but excluding deaths from disease) in the Philippine War from February 4, 1899, to April 30, 1902, was 1,573. These fatal casualties were spread over a period of three years and three months. But one coal mine alone in one year furnished a mortality more than 38 per cent. in excess of this.
“The Japanese war is commonly looked upon as the bloodiest of modern wars. According to the official statement of the Japanese Government, 46,180 Japanese were killed, and 10,970 died of wounds. Our industrial war shows a greater mortality year by year.
“But we are all of us more familiar with the Civil War, and we know what frightful devastation it caused in households North and South. It was, however, but a tame conflict compared with that which rages today, and which we call ‘peace.’ The slaughter of its greatest battles are thrown in the shade by the slaughter which particular industries inflict today. Ask any schoolboy to name three of the bloodiest battles of that war, and he will probably name Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Chickamauga. The loss on both sides was:
| Killed. | Wounded. | |
|---|---|---|
| “Gettysburg | 5,662 | 27,203 |
| Chancellorsville | 3,271 | 18,843 |
| Chickamauga | 3,924 | 23,362 |
| Total | 12,857 | 69,408 |
“But our railroads, state and interstate, and our trolleys in one year equal this record in the number of killings and double it in the number of woundings....
“But whose interest is it that the lives of the workers shall be ... guarded? The employer class has no material interest in the matter. The worker is ‘free,’ legally, to refuse to work under dangerous conditions. If, economically, he must accept work under these conditions [or starve], that is another matter.”
Another witness[[104]] sets forth the murderous carelessness of the lives of the workers in modern industry thus:
“In Allegheny County, Pa., including Pittsburgh, 17,700 persons were killed or injured last year in the mills and on the railroads or in some of the workshops of that interesting Inferno. This number has been recorded and reported, and there were, of course, others whose deaths or injuries were not reported.... Life and limb are needlessly sacrificed—hundreds of thousands of lives every decade. This is one of the penalties that we pay for quick industrial success.”
“Quick industrial success” is good, a fine phrase indeed—in the mining industry, for example, in which in the United States from 1889 to 1909 over 30,000 men were killed.[[105]] If a war were on in the Philippines and 1500 of our men were being slaughtered every year the generals and captains in charge of our forces would be regarded as failures. Yet the captains of industry, in the capitalist administration of the mining industry alone, in the United States sacrifice more than 1500 brave men of the great industrial army every year.
That the modern industry, inspired by insane lust for profits for part of the people rather than by welfare for all the people—that this modern industry is far more deadly than real war on a large scale—this seems impossible. Yet it is not at all an impossibility; it is reality; it is experience; it is fact; it is the savagery of capitalist civilization.
All the profit-mongers’ proud and stupid boasting of the noble triumphs of capitalist “philanthropy” can not hush the loud-shouting fact that the sickle of death cuts down the toilers far more rapidly while peacefully on duty in the industries than it slashes down in time of war on the firing-line and in the military hospital—far more than the rifle, sword, bayonet, and disease combined.
This is true, horrible and important. And because it is true, horrible and important, all doubt concerning the matter should, as far as possible, be dispelled. And, therefore, still more evidence is here offered to make the matter clear.
The eminent publicist, Dr. Josiah Strong, testifies:[[106]]
“We might carry on a half dozen Philippine wars for three-quarters of a century with no larger number of total casualties than take place yearly in our peaceful industries.
“Taking the lowest of our three estimates of industrial accidents, the total number of casualties suffered by our industrial army in one year is equal to the average annual casualties of our Civil War, plus those of the Philippine War, plus those of the Russian-Japanese War.
“Think of carrying on three such wars at the same time, world without end.”
Losses from sickness in war and from sickness contracted in industry are, it should be remembered, not included in Dr. Strong’s calculations.
President Roosevelt in his Annual Message of 1907 bluntly stated the facts as follows:
“Industry in the United States now exacts ... a far heavier toll of death than all of our wars put together.... The number of deaths in battle in all the foreign wars put together for the last century and a quarter, aggregate considerably less than one year’s death record for our industries.”
It is inevitable that this slaughter of the toilers both in industry and in war will work rapidly and disastrously against the general blood-vigor of society. Serious and conservative students of the blood-letting and blood-weakening tendencies of capitalistic society are beginning to sound the alarm. The startlingly visible results in British society serve as excellent illustrative material. For more than two hundred years vast numbers of the soundest, strongest British workingmen have been slaughtered or weakened in war; and for more than a hundred years (the era of intense machine production) the British workingmen, women, and children have been cruelly overworked, underfed and ill-clad in the struggle for existence—in the industrial civil war called capitalism. And here are some of the results:
“In Manchester,” says Thomas Burke,[[107]] “out of 12,000 would-be recruits [for the South African War], 8,000 were rejected as virtually invalids, and only 1,200 could be regarded as fit in all respects.... General Sir Frederick Maurice declared that, according to the best evidence he could obtain, it was the fact that for many years out of every five recruits only two were found to be physically fit after two years’ service.... It was, indeed, a startling fact that 60 per cent. of the men offering themselves for active service were physically unfit.”
Thus the well-known preacher and lecturer, Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Brooklyn, New York:[[108]]
“Many forms of public charity, from a scientific viewpoint, seem a curse, while wars and many industries seem the enemies of the blood of the nation.... The national physique has suffered an incalculable loss. In one factory town [in England] the military commission, examining young men for the South African War, rejected nineteen out of twenty, because of some defect in the eyes or lungs or legs.”
It is to be remembered that many thousands of men who report for examination as candidates for military service are so evidently defective that no formal examination is necessary for their prompt rejection. It is also important to consider the fact that there are many thousands of men who would gladly join the army, but make no application, knowing well, in advance, that they would be rejected as unfit. Thus the statistics showing that a large per cent. of those reporting to the military department as candidates for the service are “rejected on examination,” even these statistics do not fully reveal the unfortunate condition of affairs. In ten of the largest cities of England and Scotland in the year ending September 30, 1907, there were 34,808 applicants for admission to the army. Forty-seven per cent. of these applicants were rejected as physically unfit.[[109]] Of course, the percentage of rejections would have been far heavier if all had applied who would have been glad to join the army.
The next generation of English working-class people will probably be far more physically defective than the present generation.
In Westham public school (London) it was recently found:
“... That 87 per cent. of the infants and 70 per cent. of the older children were below the normal physique. These were all children of the dockers.
“Neglecting the kindly and assuageable problem of rural poverty, we seem driven to the conclusion that some seven and a half millions of people are at the present moment in England living below the poverty line—a problem which if only definitely realized in its squalid immensity is surely enough to stagger humanity.”[[110]]
In England, because of the physical decline of the working class, the Government has so much difficulty in finding a sufficient number of sound men to fill the ranks that it has been necessary, since the Battle of Waterloo, to repeatedly lower the physical requirements for enlistment.
Thus do our brothers and sisters of the working class decay—driven to death—in the mills and mines and other industries. And in many parts of the world the fleshless skulls of the toilers slaughtered on the battlefield stare and grin at the present generation of workers decaying, dying in the capitalist industrial warfare. The president of Stanford University, Dr. David Starr Jordan, writes:[[111]]
“It is claimed on authority ... that the French soldier of today is nearly two inches shorter than the soldier of a century ago.... There [in Novara, Italy] the farmers have ploughed up skulls of men till they have piled up a pyramid ten to twelve feet high.... These were the skulls of the young men of Savoy, Sardinia, and Austria,—men of eighteen to thirty-five, without physical blemish so far as may be.... You know the color that we call magenta, the hue of the blood that flowed out over the olive trees.... Go over Italy as you will, there is scarcely a spot not crimsoned with the blood of France, scarcely a railway station without its pile of French skulls. You can trace them across to Egypt, to the foot of the Pyramids. You will find them in Germany, at Jena and Leipzig, at Lützen and Bautzen and Austerlitz. You will find them in Russia, at Moskow; in Belgium, at Waterloo. ‘A boy can stop a bullet as well as a man,’ said Napoleon; and with the rest are the skulls of boys ... ‘born to be food for powder,’ was the grim epigram of the day.”
This vast crime, this phase of hell for the working class, is well stated by J. H. Rose:[[112]]
“Amidst the ever deepening misery they [Napoleon’s army] struggled on, until of the 600,000 who had proudly crossed the Niemen for the conquest of Russia, only 20,000 famished, frost-bitten, unarmed spectres staggered [back] across the bridge of Lorno in the middle of December.... Despite the loss of the most splendid army ever marshalled by man, Napoleon ... strained every effort to call the youth of the empire to arms.... The mighty swirl of the Moskow campaign sucked in 150,000 lads under twenty YEARS OF AGE INTO THE VORTEX.... The peasants gave up their sons as food for cannon.... In less than half a year after the loss of half a million men a new army nearly as large was marshalled.... But the majority were young.... Soldiers were wanting, youths were dragged forth.”
President Jordan, quoting Mr. Otto Seek, said:[[113]]
“Napoleon in a series of years seized all the youth of high stature and left them scattered over many battlefields, so that the French people who followed them are mostly men of smaller stature. More than once in France since Napoleon’s time has the [physical] limit been lowered.”
The ancient Romans, a large robust people, spilt so much of the best blood of the best men in their “glorious” wars that their modern descendants, the Italians, are conspicuously inferior, physically, to their ancient ancestors; comparatively they are stunted. The “glorious” victories of Caesar alone cost more than a million picked men on the battlefield.[[114]]
These vast, incalculable wrongs thrust into the lives of the working class—will they ever be righted?
Day dawns even now.
The lust for blood and profits will yet be cheated of its victories and victims—in the hastening future.
Our working class brothers in Europe are already rousing and shaking off the cruel spell of the gilt-braided butchers and silk-hatted capitalist statesmen and industrial Neros; the toilers in Europe are learning to seize the powers of government in self-defense,—quietly and legally, of course, but—DEFIANTLY.[[115]]
We—driven, robbed and despised in the factory; betrayed, buncoed and slaughtered on the battlefield; voiceless in the control of industry, voiceless in the capitalist political party conventions, voiceless in the judiciary, voiceless in state and national legislatures, voiceless in the state and national executive councils, ridiculed by “high society,” scorned everywhere—we also must learn to defend ourselves. We must seize the powers of government and defend our class—everywhere.
Brothers, my American brothers, brothers of all the world,—if you have minds exercise them—for your own class; if you have pride, show it—for your class; if you have loyalty, prove it—for your class; if you have power, use it—use it in self-defense—for your class; if you can climb, why, climb, united with your class altogether—climb out of hell, the hell of capitalism.
Divided, your masters despise you.
United, your masters dread you.
Get together, brothers, and get up off your knees.
Refuse to go to hell—the hell of war.
Refuse to stay in hell—the hell of capitalist industry.
Unite! For peace and freedom—unite!
Form, toilers, form!
Organize!
A solid front on the battlefield—of industry.
A solid front on the battlefield—of politics.
A suggestion: Let each one of a hundred thousand men and women patiently and repeatedly bear light to the brain of one new man or woman each month for two years, and teach each new man to become a teacher of other men and women. Get some good book, a book that burns, a book that kindles a passion for freedom and justice; and lend that book to a new person each month till the book is worn out.[[116]]
Light a lamp in your neighbor’s brain.
Strike a fire in your neighbor’s heart.
Revolutionize him.
Dare.
Today.
Society is, and always will be—as free as the majority have sense enough and pride enough to make it; or as tyrannical as the majority are meek enough to permit it to be.
Conditions always express the will or lack of will of the majority.
CHAPTER SIX.
Tricked to the Trenches—Then Snubbed.
“On the whole, the patriotism of the average citizen rises and falls inversely with the Income Tax; ...”[[117]]
Imagine J. P. Morgan, rifle in hand, doing picket duty on a dark, sleet-drizzling night. Imagine J. Ogden Armour, George Gould and Thomas F. Ryan with heavy shovels digging trenches, stopping at noon to eat some salt pork, embalmed beef and stale crackers. Imagine Reggie Vanderbilt as a freighter hurrying rations to the front and taking care of six mud-covered horses at night. Imagine the strong younger John D. Rockefeller on the firing line with his breast exposed to the hellish rain of lead from a Gatling gun. Yes, indeed,—just imagine a whole regiment of big bankers and manufacturers dressed in khaki, breakfasting on beans and bacon, then rushing sword in hand to storm a cannon-bristled fort belching fire and lead and steel into their smooth, smug faces—for fifty cents a day.
Brother, when you are ordered to the front just glance around and notice the noisily patriotic gentlemen who keep to the rear—at home where it is safe and delightfully quiet. These patriots in the rear will sweetly say, “See you later!” If you ever get back from the war, they will see you when they flatteringly give you a “welcome home.” Mark you: When war breaks out these “best people” do not say, “Come on, boys, come on—follow us.” Hardly. It is “Go on, boys, go ahead, go right on. We will be with you.” That is, they will be with you as far as the railway station, and after that these “prominent people” will give the “brave boys” absent treatment.
The man in the factory and in the mine is the “hand,” the “hired hand,” of capitalist society; and when he shoulders a rifle for military service he becomes the steel-toothed jaw of capitalist society. Soldiers are to the capitalist class what teeth are to tigers and beaks are to eagles. Soldiers are often called the “dogs of war”; and they are, indeed, the watchdogs of capitalism—with barracks, armories and tents for kennels. Bankers, manufacturers, mine owners and the like despise the very thought of living themselves in the military “war-dog” kennels. Such men can not be tricked to the tents and trenches.
In wheedling young men to join the army and the navy the National Government is hard put to it; must even make fun of the poverty and ignorance of the humble toilers in the industries—and openly sneers at them. Here is a sample of the vile means used by the Government to shame green young fellows into the army and the navy.[[118]]
“WANTED—for the United States Marine Corps—Able-bodied men who wish to see the world....
| “Regular pay | $12.80 |
| “Post Mechanics, fifty cents per day | 13.00 |
| “Total | $25.80 |
“Which is better for a young man who can never hope to travel on his own account: to enlist in the Marine Corps for four years ... where he will be able to see a great portion of the world and perform a loyal duty to his country,—or, to drudge away on the farm, in the shop and various other places, for from ten to fifteen hours per day in all kinds of weather, and at the end of the month or better still, of four years, not have as much clear cash to show for all his hard and wearisome labor as he would have, had he enlisted?... he [the enlisted man] is always clean.”
There you have it, young farmer, young mechanic: the Government throws it right into your teeth—the sneer that as a wage-earner in the shop and mine and on the farm, you are cornered; that with all your toiling and sweating you will always be a “dirty-faced tender-foot” living humbly around the old home place, never having opportunity to see the world you live in; that you can not even hope to travel on your own account, simply because as a wage-earner you don’t own enough of “your” country—you can not get ahead far enough financially—to enable you to do so. If you want to see the world you will have to join the butchers in the service of the rulers. In its effort to tease and trick you aboard its great warships, into the “armed guard” work, your own Government makes fun of your humble income and taunts you for always staying around home like a “sissy boy.” The Government also tells you that your face is dirty and that a military man’s face “is always clean.” The Government’s advertisement just quoted is like the sneer at the soldier’s poverty by that elegant aristocrat, Ralph Waldo Emerson:[[119]]
“Where there is no property the people will put on the knapsack for bread.”
Think of ten million five hundred thousand trained strong men in five European countries ready to leap into the trenches at the word of command. ‘In a war between the Dual Alliance and the Triple Alliance there would be over ten million men under arms, thus:[[120]]
| Germany | 2,500,000 |
| Austria | 1,300,000 |
| Italy | 1,300,000 |
| France | 2,500,000 |
| Russia | 2,800,000 |
| Total | 10,400,000’ |
These would not so much be tricked to the trenches as they would be forced to the trenches. Emperor William of Germany at Potsdam, in November, 1891, addressed the young men who had just been compelled to take the military oath. He said:
“You are now my soldiers, you have given yourselves to me body and soul. There is but one enemy for you, and that is my enemy.... It may happen that I shall order you to fire on your brothers and fathers.... But in such case you are bound to obey me without a murmur.”[[121]]
Think of ten or fifteen million men ready to be forced or tricked to war to do the bidding of rulers whom these big strong men outnumber ten thousand to one; ready to do the bidding of a coterie of parasitic cowards; ready—cheap, weak, humble and contemptible—ready to scramble to the trenches and obey the murderers’ orders: “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! Slay! Slaughter! Butcher!”
That millions of strong men should, like whipped dogs, grovel on the ground before their masters and fight at the word of command—this, of course, is ridiculous; and naturally these millions of meek, weak, prideless, grovelling common soldiers—all over Europe—all over the world—are held socially in supreme contempt by the political and industrial masters of society. But whether the soldier is conscripted, “drafted,” or volunteers to serve, the masters’ contempt is complete.
The soldiers during a war, the workers who support a war, and both the soldiers and the toilers after a war—are held in contempt even by those who praise them most. It will help somewhat in realizing this to make a short study of several actual cases as illustrations. The examples following are, most of them, from English and from American history. In all the illustrations the mocking insincerity of the profit-lusting, long-distance patriot is easily seen.