Sixth Illustration: Standing at attention for civilized cannibals:
Consider a moment the recent war between Christian Russia and pagan Japan, a war for the capitalist control of Manchuria, the working class of course doing the fighting—as usual.
It is well-known that the economic interests of the pagan Japanese capitalists in Manchuria inspired the Japanese statesmen to the recent war with Russia. The Christian Russian capitalists had precisely the same sort of inspiration for the war. Here are presented some facts to be considered by the spiritual followers of Christ who presume to scorn the “sordid materialism of the ‘unsaved’ pagan Japanese”:
(1) For years preceding 1903 the Christian Tsar and the Christian Empress and many of their Christian friends had opposed the threatening war in Manchuria.
(2) In 1903 the Royal Timber Company was organized to scoop up many millions of dollars in profits to be made out of the vast lumber forests in the Yalu River valley “secured” from the pagan Corean government.
(3) In 1903 the Tsar and the Empress and many of their friends joined the Royal Timber Company, taking stock to the amount of many millions of dollars.
(4) Having become involved in Corea as capitalists with economic interests to be protected, the Tsar, the Empress and their friends immediately and completely reversed their position on the question of war—vigorously favored the war which now seemed to be necessary to protect their Yalu River lumber interests. It now, of course, became perfectly clear that “the kingdom of Christ could be advanced among the heathen”—on the point of the bayonet.
Hence the two years of butchering of brothers by brothers—who were duly informed that they were “enemies.”[[170]]
It seems barely possible that the 47,387 Japanese soldiers who were killed in that war could have no proper appreciation of the Tsar’s spiritual motives in promoting the war; but, on the other hand, during the war 320,000 sick and wounded were sent from Manchurian battlefields to Japan. These, while nursing their festering wounds and their wasting health, had some leisure to have explained to them the somewhat elusively spiritual element of a Christian war inaugurated for “Jesus’ sake” and the protection of a saw-mill enterprise.
This terrible war lasted two years. But it would certainly have closed in six months because of lack of funds—if Christian business men and gentle, “cultivated” Christian women of the world had refused to lend money to the two sleek groups of official brutes in Japan and Russia who were forcing hundreds of thousands of humble working men into Manchuria to slaughter one another. Just charge up twenty-four months of that ferocious blood-spilling—charge it, not only to the Christian barbarians the Tsar and his friends, and the un-Christian Mikado and his pagan capitalist friends, but also to the civilized, fur-lined, orthodox savages of Western Europe and of the United States who were so wolfishly eager for unearned incomes in interest on war bonds that they were willing, by lending money to fan the flames of war,—willing to foster wholesale murder, willing to wet the earth with working class blood and tears—willing thus to sink their industrial tusks deep into the quivering flesh of the toilers of Japan and Russia. Always there is a reason.
At one time in the war Japanese statesmen offered interest-bearing, Japanese national bonds for sale in San Francisco. There was instantly a swinish scramble by lily-fingered Christian ladies and gentlemen of that city to buy those pagan blood-wet bonds; the bonds were thus purchased immediately—with the unblushing promptness of greed. The offers of cash vastly exceeded the amount of the bonds offered. And now these “leading Christian citizens,” having thus stuck out their tongues in scorn at the Christ of Peace, having thus given the loud laugh of contempt for the noble sentiment of the brotherhood of man,—these eminently respectable cannibals by means of their bond purchases having adjusted their scornful lips to the veins of the far-away working class of Japan—are satisfied; and for a generation they will suck and tug—like beautiful tigers at the throats of common work horses—will suck the industrial blood of the working class they despise.
This blood-sucking process will be called “business.”
The blood they suck will be called “interest.”
These gilt-edged cannibals will continue to be called “the very best people of San Francisco.”
Their occasional contribution to Christian missionary work in Japan will be called “splendid generosity.”
Their “views” on the “harmony of capital and labor” will be quoted in many capitalist newspapers as “sound advice.”
And, strangely enough, these smooth murderers—particeps criminis—will actually go unhung, such is the irony of the present order.
And these distinguished abettors of international assassination will—with crafty thoughtfulness—occasionally visit the armories and barracks in San Francisco and carefully flatter the working class militia and the working class “regulars,” flatter them into the folly of standing guard for those who despise and betray and bleed the working class of the whole world.
Brothers, will you be tricked to the trenches, march in the mud, murder your class and bleed yourselves for such as these? Will you stand at “attention” for these international leeches? What about loyalty to your own class?
Concerning these international bond-buying leeches the Reverend Dr. Walter Walsh writes:[[171]]
“By the very condition of its existence international capitalism has no country—save Eldorado; no king—save Mammon; no politics—save Business.... Mammon worshippers of all nations forswear every allegiance whensoever and in whatsoever part of the world it clashes with their allegiance to capital and interest; that heterogeneous and polyglot crowd of millionaires, exploiters, money-lenders, gamblers ... or the adoring circle of political women who worship them—being moved by no other consideration than profit and loss.... By the transference of its investments from native to foreign countries capitalism ceases to be national ... this bloated order of capitalism.”
The English philosopher, Frederic Harrison, hands these international profit-gluttons the following compliment:[[172]]
“Turn which way we will, it all comes back to this—that we are to go to war really for the money interests of certain rich men.... All this is very desirable to the persons themselves. But it is not the concern of this country to guarantee them these profits, privileges and places. It would be blood guilt in this country to enforce these guarantees at the cost of war. The interests of these rich and adventurous persons are not British interests; but the interests of certain British subjects. And between their interests and war and conquest, domination and annexation—how vast is the gulf.”
“War seldom enters but where wealth allures.”—Dryden: “Hind and Panther.”
“Gold and power the chief causes of war.”—Tacitus: History, Book 4.
“A great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle [patriotism] alone.”—George Washington: In a letter to John Bannister, April 21, 1778.
“Let the gulled fool the toils of war pursue
Where bleed the many to enrich the few.”
—Shenstone: “Judgment of Hercules.”
“When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who are the sufferers.”[[173]]
Seventh Illustration: The American Cossack.[[174]]
“The man on horseback” has always typified despotism. He means “Silence!” to all opposition. He is the assassin of discussion and the destroyer of democracy. Historically he has usually been the ambitious general usurping political powers and becoming an autocrat. He has always been dreaded by all who have worked for the progress of freedom. “The man on horseback” has ceased to be a myth in America. He has been recreated by the Neros of American capitalism whom he proudly serves for rations and flattery, the pet of the “captains of industry.”
The Tsars of Russia have used the Cossack and recommend him to all the rulers of the world.
The American Cossack has been on duty for several years in some parts of the United States. He is shameless, dangerous, effective. He will probably be multiplied by thousands, in numbers, and by infinity, in insolence,—within the next ten years—in the United States. He must be understood—by the working class. Here is a sample:
In the anthracite coal strike of 1902, 145,000 humble miners whose average income was $1.29 per day, struggled for a few pennies more for their toil with which to feed and clothe themselves and their families. In that strike the following brave deed was done by a mounted militiaman, an American Cossack, in the service of the tyrants who own the vast stores of anthracite coal.
A mounted militiaman, armed with a modern rifle and a powerful revolver, a double row of cartridges and a club in his belt, rode pompously through the street of a mining village, bravely daring the unarmed toilers and heroically glaring at the humble women and the helpless little children at the cabin doors. Ready—with him fed, petted, armed, mounted and brutal—the capitalists were ready, ready though the capitalists themselves were a hundred miles or ten thousand miles away. That AUTOMATIC TUSK of the capitalist class was on duty. Suddenly he cried out to an old man, a “mine helper,” on strike, an old veteran of the Civil War: “Halt!”
Then, pointing down the dusty road, “the man on horseback,” the American Cossack, said to the hungry old man: “March! Git! Damn you, git! Right down that road right now—and keep marching—straight ahead of me! Mind you—I’ll be right behind you, you damned lazy scoundrel! Walk pretty—damn you! If you make a mis-step or even look side-wise, I’ll put a bullet through you! Now march!”
The march began at once. Thus this well-dressed, well-mounted, well-armed young working man, an American Cossack, rode hour after hour—for half a day—a few steps behind the weary old wage-slave, a veteran of the Civil War,—on and on in the hot sun for many weary miles, down the Susquehanna River (in the direction of Gettysburg). Finally, after the long march, the noble hero on horseback called out to the old hero on foot, “Halt! Do you see that trail over yon mountain? Yes? Well, now, you damned old cheap skate, you scratch gravel over that mountain—quick, too! And let me tell you one thing—if you ever show your damned skinny old face in the anthracite coal region again, we’ll shoot you like a dog. Now, you old gray-headed —— —— ——, git up that mountain—git up that mountain and out of sight or I’ll shoot you. Go!”
Wearily the old Union veteran climbed the mountain. When he finally got away from his noble tormentor he sat down to rest—and think—to think of “our free country.”
Long ago that old gray man—when in his excitable youth—had marched proudly under the “Stars and Stripes” on gory battlefields, risking all, all, to defend “his country,” and his dear “Old Glory.” Once, he told me, the flag was reddened with his own blood.... But now “Old Glory” mocked him. Captains of industry, capitalists, industrial Caesars, had captured the flag and with devilish craftiness used that same flag to defend their industrial despotism. Sons and grandsons of veterans of the Civil War were now shrewdly flattered and bribed into the ignoble rôle of Russianizing America. Sons and grandsons were becoming Cossacks, and they cursed his gray hairs for demanding of American capitalists a few more pennies a day for ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed women and children in the dismal homes of the miners.... A cursing Cossack wearing khaki and flying the flag virtually spat in the old veteran’s face.
“A cold-blooded organization that [Pennsylvania] State Constabulary.”[[175]]
When Decoration Day comes, when the Fourth of July is to be celebrated, when “patriotic” displays are to be made—at such times—bankers, big business men, politicians and statesmen—many of these—should put on black masks, wrap themselves in black flags, and sneak (blushingly, if possible) down into dark cellars and stay there during the celebration—with their memories crowded with soldiers, widows and orphans brutally wronged,—with their memories crowded with congresses corrupted, treasuries looted, lands stolen, charters, privileges and “good things” shamelessly raped from the unseeing public while brave but deluded working men agonized on bloody battlefields.
And on such days the working class should shout less and think more. “The man on horseback” should have some special thought.
And the working class are thinking today more than ever before. And, thinking, they begin to see that hand-clapping, fife-playing, drum-beating and buncombe from a prostituted orator are neither freedom nor justice, nor even the sign of such; but are, rather, just what Mark Twain called them[[176]]—a “bastard patriotism.”
The motive of the young men who voluntarily join the army or the militia is possibly, in many cases, a good motive. Perhaps they do not see the tricks of the string-pullers behind the scenes, the powerful motives of the industrial masters behind the curtains. It is not always easy for the young man to realize that he is to be used to punish the half-nourished, pale-faced working class baby that vainly tugs weak-lipped at the withered and milkless breasts of the ill-fed, ill-clothed, discouraged working class mother. However, the cheap rôle of the armed protector of industrial parasites is becoming more and more clearly understood, and consequently more and more disgusting to the entire working class—including both the militia and the regulars themselves. Light is breaking in the toilers’ mind. The hideous business of standing ready to bayonet the millions of men and boys and women and girls whose lives are made up of meanly paid drudgery—this vile business is rapidly sinking below the level of contempt. Strong young fellows in the army and the militia and the navy incline more and more to line up with their own class, the working class, and refuse to assassinate their brothers who are struggling for a few pennies advance in wages.
They see the trick.
Some of the militiamen resigned in the anthracite coal strike of 1902, resigned when they realized that they were being used simply as watchdogs for industrial masters who were cheating even the little ten-year-old boys in the coal-breakers, cheating even these little fellows whose fingers, worn through the skin, were bleeding on the coal they sorted with their hands.
That was in Republican Pennsylvania.
Not long ago when the street railway union men were on strike in New Orleans some of the militiamen, with splendid contempt and defiance, threw their rifles down on the cobblestones rather than obey orders to shoot their old neighbors who were struggling for a larger share of life.
That was in Democratic Louisiana.
Workingmen, both Democrats and Republicans, begin to see the trick.
Thousands of young men desert—and thousands more would like to desert—the United States army every year. They cannot stand the snubs and sneers of their “superior officers,” and the contempt now increasingly felt by the working class for the armed handy man serving as a fist for the ruling class.
So many young men in America understand the working class soldier’s disloyalty to his own class that the Department of Murder now has much difficulty in keeping the ranks full. The Government now has to tease and coax young men to join the army and the navy. In the autumn of 1907, the capitalist press began to discuss boldly the necessity of conscription for filling the ranks of our standing army, the European plan of forcing young men to assume the rôle of armed flunkies. But just as the capitalist papers began to discuss and commend compulsory military service, the panic, the hard times, broke upon the country; hundreds of thousands were suddenly thrown out of employment. Instantly the Government and the capitalist papers ceased discussion of conscription, knowing well that thousands of jobless men could easily be recruited to save themselves from rags and hunger. At the same time Congress advanced the pay of regular soldiers—while millions of toilers were out of work, millions were reduced to “part time,” millions had their wages cut: the destroyers’ wages were advanced, but the producers’ wages were cut down.
These facts made millions think. Thinking whets the edge of the working class mind. This sharpened mind cuts through the noisy mockery and the glittering sham of capitalist patriotism.
The workers wake. They see the trick.
Volunteers?
“The British volunteer army is in reality recruited to the extent of 80 per cent. by the peril of starvation. The yearly average of desertions from the British Regular Army is 7,000.”[[177]] The writer of the present volume has heard of young men volunteering for the American Regular Army who enlisted in the fall and deserted in the spring, some of them doing this even three times.[[178]] The capitalists would not hire them and they were too proud to beg. They “wintered” in the army. But they despised the whole thing.
They see the trap.