The American working class soldiers a hundred and twenty-five years ago were also equally despised by the industrial and political masters of that time. The poor men, the working class men, in Washington’s army after fighting for years, half starved, always in rags, sleeping in wind-swept tents at night, oftentimes shoeless, making bloody tracks in the snow and on the ice as they marched,—these battle-scarred veterans of the working class, after fighting for years in the “great Revolutionary War for freedom,”—these were not permitted to vote for many years after the war. It was not, indeed, till many years after the adoption of the “great” new Federal Constitution of the “free” people that these humble working class veterans were permitted to take part as voters in the government.
This was contempt supreme. Tricked to the “war for freedom”—then, after “glorious victory,” snubbed, as usual.
Of course, this page of “splendid” Revolutionary War history, this bright particular page of unqualified contempt of the so-called “great leaders” for the working class soldiers after the fighting was all over—this page is shrewdly hidden from the working class children in the common schools, the grammar schools and high schools of the United States,—this page is practically suppressed. The working class child in the public school is wheedled into being a blind devotee of the “great” Constitution and an ignorant worshipper of the “great men” who so cordially despised the men of the class to which the child belongs. There is plenty of evidence, however, that these “prominent” and “very best people” of American Revolutionary War times had nothing but political contempt for the working class veterans. President Woodrow Wilson (Princeton University) writes:[[133]]
“There were probably not more than 120,000 men who had a right to vote out of all the 4,000,000 inhabitants enumerated at the first census [1790].”
The political and social contempt felt for the poor men of the times of George Washington is made clear by Professor F. N. Thorpe (University of Pennsylvania) thus:[[134]]
“An unparalleled political enfranchisement [from 1800 to 1900] extended the right to vote, which in 1796 reposed in only one-twentieth of the population, but a century later in one-sixth of it—the nearest approach to universal suffrage in history.”
This same scorn for the thirteen-dollar-a-month men, who do the actual fighting, is seen in one form or another in the more recent American wars. The purse-proud rulers of the present day are so blatant in their expressions of patriotic admiration for the “brave boys” that the following illustrations are deemed worthy of the space required for their presentation—in order that the working class reader may not fail to recognize the mocking hypocrite in the gold-lust patriotic shouters who now decorate their palaces on holidays with “Old Glory.”
Third Illustration: The American Civil War—The Bankers and “Promoters”—and the Boys in Blue:
Thousands of Union veterans have declared: “The American Civil War was a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. We were duped. But we shall never be duped again.” (See Chapter VII., Sections 14 to 16.)
The volunteer Union soldiers who, at Lincoln’s first call, hurried to enlist for the war, understood distinctly that the government would pay them “in gold or its equivalent.” But the soldiers were forced to accept even their puny 43 cents a day in greenbacks containing the famous “exception clause,” which clause destroyed from 20 to more than 65 per cent. of the purchasing power of the money during the war and for years following the war. But the silk-hatted patriots, the “leading citizen” manufacturers, the bankers and the heroic sharks in Congress at the time, these who issued greenbacks and bought Government bonds, these noble gentlemen not only despised the very money they forced the soldiers to take for fighting, but, at the same time, arranged, virtually, for an iron-clad agreement that not only the principal of, but also the interest on, the Government bonds they “patriotically” bought, must be paid in gold.[[135]] Gold for the patriot in business—“rag money” for the patriots in the trenches. At one time, owing to the “exception clause” on the paper money forced upon the soldiers, one gold dollar would buy as much as two dollars and eighty-five cents of paper money. Of course, the soldiers and the “common people” complained loudly. Says a high authority:[[136]]