THE WORKINGMEN'S MEETING
I have told you, my dear Heinrich, that I have latterly attended, and even spoken at, a number of meetings of the workingmen of this city. I have just returned from one of the largest I have seen. It was held in a great underground chamber, or series of cellars, connected with each other, under an ancient warehouse. Before I retire to my couch I will give you some description of the meeting, not only because it will enable you to form some idea of the state of feeling among the mechanics and workmen, but because this one, unfortunately, had a tragical ending.
There were guards stationed at the door to give warning of the coming of the police. There were several thousand persons present. It was Saturday night. When we arrived the hall was black with people--a gloomy, silent assemblage. There were no women present; no bright colors--all dark and sad-hued. The men were nearly all workingmen, many of them marked by the grime of their toil. Maximilian whispered to me that the attendance was larger than usual, and he thought it indicated that, by a kind of instinct, the men knew the great day of deliverance was near at hand.
The president of a labor organization had taken the chair before we came in. As I walked up the hall I was greeted with cheers, and invited to the platform. Maximilian accompanied me.
A man in a blouse was speaking. He was discussing the doctrines of Karl Marx and the German socialists of the last century. He was attentively listened to, but his remarks aroused no enthusiasm; they all seemed familiar with the subjects of his discourse.
He was followed by another workman, who spoke upon the advantages of co-operation between the employers and the employed. His remarks were moderate and sensible. He was, however, answered by another workman, who read statistics to show that, after a hundred years of trial, the co-operative system had not extended beyond a narrow circle. "There were too many greedy employers and too many helpless workmen. Competition narrowed the margin of profit and hardened the heart of the master, while it increased the number of the wretchedly poor, who must work at any price that would maintain life." [Applause.] "The cure must be more radical than that." [Great applause.]
He was followed by a school teacher, who thought that the true remedy for the evils of society was universal education. "If all men were educated they could better defend their rights. Education meant intelligence, and intelligence meant prosperity. It was the ignorant hordes from Europe who were crowding out the American workingmen and reducing them to pauperism." [Applause. I
Here a rough-looking man, who, I inferred, was an English miner, said he begged leave to differ from the gentleman who had last spoken. (I noticed that these workingmen, unless very angry, used in their discussions the courteous forms of speech common in all parliamentary bodies.)
"A man who knew how to read and write," he continued, "did not command any better wages for the work of his hands than the man who could not." [Applause.] "His increased knowledge tended to make him more miserable." [Applause.] "Education was so universal that the educated man, without a trade, had to take the most inadequate pittance of compensation, and was not so well off, many times, as the mechanic." [Applause.] "The prisons and alms-houses were full of educated men; and three-fourths of the criminal class could read and write. Neither was the gentleman right when he spoke of the European immigrants as 'ignorant hordes.' The truth was, the proportion of the illiterate was much less in some European despotisms than it was in the American Republic." [Applause from the foreigners present.] "Neither did it follow that because a man was educated he was intelligent. There was a vast population of the middle class, who had received good educations, but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they derived it from their daily newspapers." [Applause.] "The rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, practically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. If these men had not been able to read and write they would have talked with one another upon public affairs, and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subjugation; they were chained to the chariots of the Oligarchy; and they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright morning and found it was the Day of Judgment." [Sensation and great applause.]
Here I interposed: