(5) Well-paid federal injunction judges, well-paid generals and naval officers (and their widows) are provided with liberal old-age government pensions—to make sure that their last years may be absolutely secured against toil and worry and the humiliation and social damnation of poverty. Now if these well-paid men, receiving salaries of from $2,000 to $12,500 a year for many years,—if these and those they love should be carefully protected against want and worry in their gray old age, then why should not useful industrial workers who serve long and well in the mills and mines and on the farms and railroads for a meagre living where their lives are full of risk—why should not these also be made absolutely secure when the sunset of their lives draws near? Why not?
The present annual cost of our two Departments of Murder—the Army and the Navy—(including interest on war bonds and the loss of the “regular” soldiers’ labor-power, but not including the military pensions) would furnish an annual old-age industrial pension of more than $290 each for one million four hundred and fifty thousand people. You old men and old women of the working class, wouldn’t it give you a feeling of peace and confidence if you were absolutely certain that, after a life of useful labor in the grand army of industry, you, every pair of you, would receive yearly, not as charity, but as a right provided for all, over $580? The lives of many working class men and women are today filled with fear of hunger and rags and shelterless, helpless days when they pass the capitalists’ deadline, the employers’ “age-limit.”
Says the New York World:[[185]]
“The unemployed of New York ask that on Decoration Day there be a service in the honor of the workingmen who have lost their lives at the post of duty. Not much attention has been paid to the suggestion.... These are the legacies which a people devoted to industry have received from an ancestry devoted to war. The heroes most honored in all ages have been warriors, and yet every generation has produced countless examples of devotion and sacrifice remote from the field of carnage.
“More than any other great nation this republic might be expected to glorify the martyrs of industry, whose lives have been as truly for progress as any of those sacrificed in the ranks of armies. There are many dangerous callings in which the risks are as great as those of war. There are hundreds of thousands of working men and women fighting fiercer battles daily than many a soldier ever knew. On the industrial firing line, where no quarter is given to the invalid or the incompetent, courage is not sustained by excitement and passion, and there are no illusions of fame to strengthen the faltering toiler when he comes face to face with defeat and death.
“It is well that we should remember the fine patriotism of our citizen soldiers, but even they were workers before they were warriors. If we would celebrate heroism it is to be found all about us in the humble stations among the men and women—even the children—who toil.”
Think about this matter, carefully, you men and women of the working class. Discuss it with your children and your neighbors.
(6) The owner of a factory, protected by law, by the constitution, by the flag, by the politicians and the soldiers and militia, can “turn down” a skilful, effective wage-earner because his hair is gray, because he is “too old,” is “past the age limit”—even though his old wife starve for support. The “glorious flag” protects even such vile industrial tyranny. The flag that the old man has worshipped, the constitution he defended, and the politicians he voted for—all these are no protection for him. Thus our old industrial soldiers are helpless even though the industrial tyrant spit on their gray beard.
(7) The patriotic militiamen and the “regulars” often say: “We believe in protecting property in time of strikes.”
How much property have you? And what kind of property is it? Is your property in danger? Indeed, was your property even remotely threatened? Do those who own the property you protect actually help you in protecting their property—help you in actual struggles where the lead flies?