But labor-saving machinery need not necessarily be regarded as an enemy of labor. That doctrine, which had its origin at the time when a riot in Spain followed the introduction of a machine to make woolens, and which continued until the invention of the sewing-machine, has in this day come to be regarded by all enlightened economists as a nightmare of the musty past. The fact is labor has been aided and benefited by machinery.
Prof. Edison, the great inventor, is authority for the statement that the increase in machinery and inventions during the last fifty years has doubled the wages of workingmen and reduced the cost of the necessaries of life 50 per cent. “For the first time in the world’s history,” he says, “a skilled mechanic can buy a barrel of flour with a single day’s work.” Hon. David A. Wells, in an article in the Popular Science Monthly for October, 1887, treating of the depression of prices since 1873, also demonstrates the fact that the reductions, which he states to be 30 per cent., during the time under his review, are due to inventions. Edison goes still further in his statement with reference to the enhancement of wages. He predicts, rather too glowingly perhaps, that in another generation even “the unskilled laborer, if sober and industrious, will have a house of his own, a library, a piano and a horse and carriage,” with all the comforts that these imply.
Anarchist Spies evidently took no stock in such a condition as the result of new and improved mechanical appliances, for in his early opposition to the inauguration of the eight-hour movement he declared that “for a man who desires to remain a wage slave, the introduction of every new improvement and machine is a threatening competitor.”
I have thus pointed to some facts bearing on strikes and wages because it has since transpired that the Anarchists or Socialists, intent on precipitating the “social revolution,” were the principal instigators of the demand for ten hours’ pay for eight hours’ work, thereby hoping to irritate the employers to determined resistance and the workingmen of non-Socialistic ideas to the point of violence. Past experience was cast aside under their clandestine guidance. While the movement was in its infancy the Socialists, as such, held aloof, but, the moment they saw that it was gaining strength and was likely to involve all the wage-workers in the city, and that eight hours on a basis of reduced pay might be secured, they perceived their opportunity to complicate matters by the introduction of a demand for the old wages with reduced time. This at once threw down the gauntlet. While before they had opposed the movement, they now became active agitators in its behalf and appeared more solicitous about its certain inauguration than they were about its successful ending. Their organs bristled with incendiary language. Their speakers could hardly find words strong enough to fire their auditors in the demand for eight hours. They even got up a procession under the auspices of the Central Labor Union, and, on Sunday, April 25, 1886, paraded the streets with red flags and red badges.
Among some of the mottoes displayed were: “The Social Revolution,” “Workingmen, Arm Yourselves,” “Down with Throne, Altar and Moneybags,” and “Might makes Right, and You are the Strongest.”
The procession massed on the Lake Front. There the leading speakers were loud in encouraging the strike for eight hours. Parsons maintained that “if the demands of workingmen were met by a universal lock-out, the signal would be taken as one of ‘war, and war to the knife.’” Spies declared that “the eight-hour day had been argued for twenty years. We at last can hope to realize it.” Schwab and Fielden were alike emphatic.
The Arbeiter-Zeitung likewise heartily indorsed the movement. In its issue of April 26, 1886, appeared an editorial of which the following is the concluding paragraph:
What a modest demand, the introduction of the eight-hour day! And yet a corps of madmen could not demean themselves worse than the capitalistic extortioners. They continually threaten with their disciplined police and their strong militia,—and these are not empty threats. This is proved by the history of the last few years. It is a nice thing, this patience, and the laborer, alas! has too much of this article; but one must not indulge in a too frivolous play with it. If you go further, his patience will cease; then it will be no longer a question of the eight-hour day, but a question of emancipation from wage slavery.
In the same paper two days later the editor said:
What will the first of May bring? The workingmen bold and determined. The decisive day has arrived. The workingman, inspired by the justice of his cause, demands an alleviation of his lot, a lessening of his burden. The answer, as always, is: “Insolent rabble! Do you mean to dictate to us? That you will do to your sorrow. Hunger will soon rid you of your desire for any notions of liberty. Police, executioners and militia will give their aid.”