The truth about socialism

by Allan L. Benson

To settle the question of slavery, which, never for one moment, during all of those intervening years, was anything but a curse even to the white working class.

And, what is chattel slavery? Merely a method of appropriating the products of the labor of others. Who were interested in maintaining it? Certainly not the working class, no member of which ever owned a slave. The capitalist class of the South was interested in it, because its holdings were agricultural, and slave labor was well adapted to agricultural undertakings. The capitalist class of the North was not interested in maintaining chattel slavery, because the investments of Northern capitalists were chiefly in industrial undertakings, for which black slave labor was not well suited. Yet, the North never seriously objected to slavery, as such. Men like Wendell Phillips, who did object to slavery, as such, were mobbed in the North. If the North, like the South, had been, so far as the great capitalists were concerned, an agricultural country, there is no reason whatever to suppose that the North would not have been in favor of chattel slavery. What the North most objected to was the effort of the South to extend slavery into new states, as they were admitted. The Southern aristocracy, in this manner, sought to prevent the loss of its hold upon the government. The Northern capitalists also desired to gain control of the government. When the addition of new free states stripped the South of its political supremacy, the South went to war. The North resisted the attack to save the Union.

Remember, that is why the North went to war—to save the Union, which had been attacked. It was not to free the slaves and end slavery. We have this upon the authority of no less a man than Lincoln. Lincoln once sent word to the South that if it would permit him to put one word into a peace-treaty, he would let the South put in all the others. The one word that Lincoln said he wanted to put in was “union.” Lincoln was opposed to slavery, but he was not so much opposed to it that he wanted to fight about it. It was only after the South had fought Lincoln almost to a standstill that he rose above the Constitution and destroyed an institution that was not even mentioned in the Constitution—much less prohibited by it.

That is what the Civil War was about—chattel slavery.

Something that would not have existed if men had not first existed who wished to ride upon the backs of others.

Something that would not have existed if the representatives of the ruling class who drafted the Constitution had not been eager that it should persist.

Something that never for a moment benefited the working class.

Yet, the working class fought the war—on one side to preserve slavery for the benefit of others; on the other side to maintain a union under which white men and black men alike are always upon the brink of poverty.

Seven hundred thousand men followed the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars—to bloody graves. Not one of them would have been killed in war if the common people of each section had ruled each section. The common people never owned slaves. They did well if they owned themselves.

And now we come to the Spanish-American War. We believe it was fought to “free Cuba.” We believe it was fought to “avenge the Maine.” Don’t take too much for granted. Even Senator Nelson, of Minnesota, declared in the United States Senate in 1912 his belief that the war with Spain was fomented by Americans who held large interests in Cuba. He also declared his belief that the Sugar Trust was trying to foment another revolution for the purpose of bringing about annexation and thus ridding itself of the 80 percent. tariff that is now levied upon American sugar.