Poor, dumb giant, you could in a breath extinguish your pigmy exploiter, were you only conscious of your overmastering power!
The workers made and operate all the railroads; the capitalists had and have nothing to do with either. They pocket the proceeds on a basis of watered stock and other “stock,” in the form of employes, and then issue fraudulent reports to show on what a small margin of profit they are actually doing business.
In this connection it should be said that the railroads pad their “operating expenses” outrageously to deceive their employes and the general public, and their reports can be shown to be full of duplicity and fraud. They are not required to itemize their “operating expenses” in their reports to the interstate commerce commission; this they only do in the reports of the directors to the stockholders, and an examination of these will disclose the swindle and show how much reliance can be placed in the public reports of private grafters.
Mr. Railway Slave, to resume our interview, you are not in the same class with the “Jim” Hills of the railroads. You don’t visit their homes; nor they at yours. You don’t ride in their private cars and yachts and automobiles. Your wives don’t wear the same kind of clothes and jewelry and move in the same circle with theirs. You don’t join them in their luxuriant travels to Europe when they are received by the crowned heads and other parasites and given a private audience by the pope. You stay at home and sweat and suffer to foot all the bills; they do all the rest.
To sum up: They are in the capitalist class; you in the working class. They are masters; you slaves. They fleece and pluck; you furnish the wool and feathers.
That is the basis of the class struggle.
Upon that basis you have got to organize and fight before you can move an inch toward freedom.
You have got to unite in the same labor union and in the same political party and strike and vote together, and the hour you do that, the world is yours.