Beware of the “war fever.”
Notice carefully:—Your wealthy employers are not enlisting for the firing line. They are immune from the fool’s fever.
Wait a little before you enlist. Think it over—till week after next.
You are safe—(just think of it)—absolutely safe from death in the next war—if you can keep off the firing line till the “prominent gentlemen” of your community have been on the firing-line for thirty days.
Once again, brother, admit this thought to your brain:—The working class must be the protectors of their own class—always.[[102]]
Section three: Peaceful slaughter—in industry.
Surely it is bad enough to have the workingmen slaughtered while on the battlefield where each is armed and has his heart full of stupid hate for his fellow workingman of some other country. But it is outrageous that men, women, and little children should be killed and wounded by the hundreds of thousands every year in our own country while they are engaged in the useful, peaceful pursuits of industry. Let us briefly consider this matter.
The owner of a chattel-slave worker is careful to PROTECT the chattel-slave from accident, from sickness and from death. The slave-owner buys the slave, buys his whole life, at one purchase; and he is interested, therefore, in having the slave alive and well and sound as long as possible in order to get out of the slave as much labor-power as possible.
But the capitalist employer of the WAGE-slave worker does not buy the wage-earner for life; he buys the wage-earner, the wage-slave, IN SECTIONS; that is, for a month, or a week or a day at a time—eight or ten hours’ labor-power per day. Thus there is no risk for the capitalist if the wage-earner falls sick and dies; he is not responsible for the wage-earner’s health. If the grinding toil ages or sickens the wage-earner it is nothing to the employer of the wage-slaves. There are plenty more wage-slaves eager to sell their labor-power if some get sick or wounded, or die.
Of course it costs the employer, it is expensive to him, it reduces the precious surplus,—it cuts down the profits on the labor-power he buys for wages—to ventilate his factory perfectly, to keep it clean of dust, foul odors and poisonous gases, to arrange safeguards about dangerous machinery in order to protect the wage-earners against accident and sickness. Railway companies, for example, are very slow to provide all possible safeguards to protect employees—simply because it is expensive, cuts down profits, reduces the surplus value. Human life, however, is very cheap under the wage-system. Of course a safety device, a ventilator, might save a human arm or a human life—of a wage-earner; but the life-saving arrangement costs quite a bit of money. A new human arm, another human life (another worker) can easily be found to take the place of the lost arm or the destroyed life—and without extra expense to the capitalist employer. There are plenty of wage-slaves waiting ’round anxious to be hired, and thus a WAGE-slave limb or life can be replaced as easily as a wooden plug or a broken wheel in a machine, and with no such loss as there would be if his workers were CHATTEL-slaves. Thus the wage-slave plan is cheaper—more profitable—and surely more convenient.