The Crime of Caste in Our Country

by Benjamin Rush Davenport

The people are not socialistic. They do not believe in the division of property. Men like Dolan, at the Clover Club in Philadelphia, and others of his kind, deliberately libel and traduce the Common People when they pretend to explain the defeat of the Republican party upon the ground of a socialistic tendency in the people of this nation. The lie is apparent by the action of the militia, composed of the Common People, both at Homestead and Buffalo. The people are for law and order.

The poor man’s morals are quite as good or better than the morals of the rich. His home is as sacred, and the slimy serpent of Nihilism is as objectionable in his home as it would be to the millionaire in his palace of grandeur. The little holdings of the poor man, his farm, his tool chest, and his furniture, are his; and he holds the right to own them as dear as Astor holds his right to his property in many hundred houses. The poor man, the Common People, nowhere in this broad Union wants anarchy. He’ll stamp it out, as he did in Chicago, and it is a libel upon him and the nation, for the rich and those who would impose the yoke of “caste,” to attempt to wave the bloody shirt of Socialism by their speeches on this subject.

But this accumulation of property in the hands of the few, to the detriment of the nation, has become so pronounced and overwhelming in its productiveness of evil that, suppose the people should—for they could, by means of an income tax—decree that it should cease. Now, men of a sham and wealthy aristocracy, what would you do about it? You would be obliged to drink your cup of hemlock, as the striker at Homestead was obliged to partake of his draught of defeat.

Gentlemen, who assume to be better every other day in the year, but who realize on election day that your votes are no better, and count for no more, than the laborer’s, mechanic’s, and the poor man’s all over our land, what are you going to do about it? It is a condition so pregnant with possibilities that it should occasion you to take thought. Do not arouse the resentment of your fellow-citizens; poor they may be, but rich in their rights as freemen. By the exercise of their franchise they can make legal that which would demand a division of some of your ill-gotten gains for the support of the Federal Government, thus lightening the taxes upon those who can least afford to pay them.

W. SEWARD WEBB,

Vice-President of the New York Central R. R.

The poor have learned; the workman has been taught by sad experience; the laborer has had it forced down his throat, by the point of the bayonet in the hands of the militiamen, that he cannot hope to win in the battle against capital by strikes or organized labor. Homestead, and the wretched condition of the people there, is fraught with significance, to the laboring man, of the consequences of his ineffectual battle against capital. He knows that to resort to violence, mob law, dynamite, is against the spirit of the people of America. In his heart of hearts his home is as dear to the workman as yours is to you, Mr. Carnegie. He does not believe in anarchy, and the dissolution of law, order, and the morals of the people any more than you do. He doesn’t believe, any more than you do, Mr. Son-in-law Seward Webb, in the destruction of property. He feels oppressed; he feels that the burden has been laid too heavily upon his shoulders; he is irritated at the load he is carrying; no longer will he resort, as the acme of his hopes, to a strike or a labor organization; he has learned in the election of 1892 that the power to correct these evils is his; that on election day, at the polls, he may right these wrongs. Be you warned, who count your millions, that the bandage which has blinded the eyes of the poor, making them fight at shadows, has been removed from their eyes, and that they will make such a vigorous and effectual onslaught upon your cherished bulwarks of bullion that the equalizing process may become so rapid and effectual as to demolish your cherished fortresses of wealth.

It is not to disorganize society; it is not to overturn religion, or resort to Nihilism, that the tendency of the workingman’s mind leans. It is your presumption, arrogance, and overwhelming self-esteem that has offended him. A baby’s finger may touch the spring holding the bar by which is caged the lion. The lion once uncaged, and a hundred men cannot restrain its freedom. A little stream of water, flowing over the top of a dam, might have been stopped by a handful of mud in the hands of a child; increasing, the stream weakens the barrier; the dam has gone, the flood has come.