But if Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Wilson should make such a promise, they would have absolutely no capitalist support. Mr. Perkins would not be with Mr. Roosevelt. Mr. Ryan would not be with Mr. Wilson. So far as great capitalists are concerned, Armageddon and Sea Girt would look a good deal like a baseball park two weeks after the close of the season.
All the world over, the Socialist party is the only political organization that frankly stands up to the guns and demands the keys. It is the only party that minces no words and looks for no favors from the rich. The Socialist party is avowedly and earnestly committed to the task of compelling the capitalist class to surrender the power with which it robs. And, anyone who believes that power does not lie in the private ownership of industrial machinery need only try to become rich without owning any such machinery or gambling in its products. We Socialists are willing to stake our lives on the statement that if you will transfer the ownership of industry from the capitalist class to the people, those who now constitute the capitalist class will never get another dollar that they do not work for or steal in common burglar or pickpocket fashion. If we are in error about the significance of the private ownership of industry, the transfer of such ownership to the people would not hurt the capitalist class. But the capitalist class evidently does not believe the Socialists are wrong in holding this belief, because the capitalists are fighting us tooth and nail.
Nothing is the matter with this world. Whatever is the matter is with you. You can begin to get results now if you will begin to vote right now. The election of Victor L. Berger to Congress in 1910 threw more of the fear of God into the capitalist class of this country than any other event that has happened in a generation. If fifty Socialists were in Congress, the old parties would outdo each other in offering concessions to the people.
As an illustration of what fifty Socialist Congressmen could do I will relate an incident that took place in Washington in the winter of 1912.
Berger, by playing shrewd politics, had brought about a congressional investigation of the Lawrence woolen mill strike. He had brought to Washington a carload of little tots from the mills—boys and girls—and they had spent the day telling a committee of the House of Representatives of their wrongs. The stories were heartbreaking. Here was a stunted little boy who declared he worked in a temperature of 140 degrees for $5 a week. A young girl—the daughter of a mill-worker—told of an insult offered to her by a soldier and of her own arrest when she struck him. A skilled weaver described the difficulty of keeping life in his four children on a diet of bread and molasses. Every story was different in detail, but all were alike in the depths of poverty that they revealed. The testimony bore heavily upon those who listened, and when the session was suspended for the day the members of Congress hastened quickly from the room.
As Berger walked rapidly toward the door an old man stopped him. Apparently he was a business man, 55 or 60 years old. Certainly he was not a workingman. But he had heard the day’s testimony and he could not remain silent.
“Mr. Berger,” he said, “I have always been against you and all Socialists. I was sorry when I heard you had been elected to Congress. But if you brought about this investigation, as I am informed you did, I want to say to you that if you were never to do another thing during your term, your election would have been more than justified. I hope your people will keep you in Congress as long as you live.”
How many more men would change their minds if there were fifty Socialists in Congress? How many capitalists would change their minds as to how far they could safely go in robbing the people?
Three millions of votes for the Socialist ticket would by no means elect a Socialist president. But they would squeeze out more justice from the capitalist parties than the people have had since this government began.
Moreover, if you want the world during your own lifetime you will have to take it during your own lifetime. It will not do you much good to let your grandchildren take it during their lifetime.