Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South

by Timothy Thomas Fortune

I believe in law and order; but I believe, as a condition precedent, that law and order should be predicated upon right and justice, pure and simple. Law is, intrinsically, a written expression of justice; if, on the contrary, it becomes instead written injustice, men are not, strictly speaking, bound to yield it obedience. There is no law, on the statute books of any nation of the world, which bears unjustly upon the people, which should be permitted to stand one hour. It is through the operations of law that mankind is ground to powder; it is by the prostitution of the rights of the masses, by men who pretend to be their representatives and are not, that misery, starvation and death fill the largest space in the news channels of every land.

In New York City—where the intelligence, the enterprise, the wealth and the christianized humanity of the New World are supposed to have their highest exemplification—men, women and children die by the thousands, starved and frozen out of the world! Thousands die yearly in the city of New York from the effects of exposure and insufficient nutriment. The world, into which they had come unbidden, and the fruits of which a just God had declared they should enjoy as reward of the sweat of their brows, had refused them even a bare subsistance; and, this, when millions of food rot in the storehouses without purchasers! The harpies of trade prefer that their substance should resolve itself into the dirt and weed from which it sprung, rather than the poor and needy should eat of it and live.

I have walked through the tenement wards of New York, and I have seen enough want and crime and blasted virtue to condemn the civilization which produced them and which fosters them in its bosom.

I have looked upon the vast army of police which New York City maintains to protect life and so-called "vested rights," and I have concluded that there is something wrong in the social system which can only be kept intact by the expenditure of so much productive force, for this vast army, which stands on the street corners and lurks in the alley ways, "spotting," suspicious persons, "keeping an eye" on strangers who look "smart," this vast army contributes nothing to the production of wealth. It is, essentially, a parasite. And yet, without this army of idlers, life would be in constant danger and property would fall prey not only to the vicious and the desperate, but to the hungry men and women who have neither a place to shelter them from the storms of heaven, nor food to sustain nature's cravings from finding an eternal resting place in the Potter's Field. And, even after every precaution which selfishness can devise, courts of law and police officers are powerless to stay the hand of the pariahs whom society has outlawed—the men and women who are doomed to starve to death and be buried at the expense of society. The streets of every city in the Union are full of people who have been made desperate by social adjustments which prophets laud to the skies and which philosophers commend as "ideal," as far as they go.

One-half the producing power of the United States is to-day absolutely dependent upon the cold charity of the world; one fourth does not make sufficient to live beyond the day, while the other one-fourth only manages to live comfortably at the expense of the most parsimonious economy.

It is becoming a mooted question whether labor-saving machinery has not supplanted muscle-power in the production of every article to such a marvelous extent as to make thoughtful men tremble for the future of those who can only hope to live upon the produce of their labors. The machine has taken the place, largely, of man in the production of articles of consumption, of wear and of ornamentation; but no machine has, as yet, been invented to take the place of human wants. The markets of the world are actually glutted with articles produced by machine labor, but there are no purchasers with the means to buy, to consume the additional production caused by machinery and the consequent cheapening of processes of producing the articles of consumption, ornamentation, etc. When men have work they have money; and when men have money they spend it. Hence, when the toilers of a land have steady employment trade is brisk; when business stagnation forces them into idleness vice and crime afflict the country.

What avail the tireless labor of the machine and the mountains of material it places upon the market, if there are no purchasers? One man at a machine will do as much work in a factory to-day as required the work of fifty men fifty years ago; but the enhanced volume of production can have only one purchaser now where there was once fifty, hence the fitful existence of the one and the desperate struggle for existence of the forty-nine.[15] As iron and steel cannot compete with muscle and brain in the volume of production, so iron and steel cannot compete with muscle and brain in consumption. And, without consumption, what does production amount to? What does it avail us that our stores and granaries are overstocked, if the people are unable to buy? The thing is reduced to a cruel mockery when stores and granaries are over-gorged, while people clamor in vain for clothing and food, and drop dead within reach of these prime elements of warmth and sustentation.

What does it avail us if the balance of trade be in our favor by one, or two, or three hundred millions of dollars, if this result be obtained by the degradation and death of our own people? More; not only at the expense of the well being of our own people, but of the people of those countries in whose markets we are enabled to undersell them, by reason of the more systematic pauperization of our own producing classes.

Competition, it is declared, is the life of trade; if this be true, it is truer that it is the death of labor, of the poorer classes. For Great Britain has established herself in the markets of the world at the expense of her laboring classes. While the capitalists of that country hold up their heads among the proudest people of the world, her laboring classes are absolutely ground to powder. Because of the inhuman competition which her manufacturers have been led to adopt, and the introduction of improved labor-saving machinery, her balance of trade runs far into the millions of pounds, and political economists place their hands upon their hearts and declare that Great Britain is the most happy and prosperous country on the face of the globe. But the declaration is illusory in the extreme. No country can be happy and prosperous whose "mudsills" live in squalor, want, misery, vice and death. If Great Britain is happy and prosperous, how shall we account for the constant strikes of labor organizations for higher pay or as a protest against further reduction of wages below which man cannot live and produce? The balance of trade desire is the curse of the people of the world. It can be obtained only by underbidding other people in their own markets; and this can be done only by the maximum of production at the minimum of cost—by forcing as much labor out of the man or the machine as possible at the least possible expense.

There is death in the theory; death to our own people and death to the people with whom we compete. When a people no longer produce those articles which are absolutely necessary to sustain life the days of such people may be easily calculated.