The industrial republic: a study of the America of ten years hence

by Upton Sinclair

Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly

Copyright, 1894, Leslie’s Weekly
COXEY’S ARMY ON THE MARCH AND IN WASHINGTON

And also, of course, there will have been processions in the streets, and unemployed demonstrations every day. There will be a Socialist meeting round every corner—all through this period of stress, you are to picture the Socialists working like bees at swarming time. That is the function of the Socialist party all through this crisis, to stir up and organise the proletariat, to make certain that in the crisis the people are not ignorant of the way. They will be heading the hunger-parades, carrying the banners and making the speeches, circulating tracts and five-million-copy editions of the “Appeal to Reason.” They will be polling unheard of votes—in one or two cities they will be carrying the elections, and Socialist mayors will be confiscating street-railroads, and clapping obstructive judges into jail. The Socialist party is a party of agitation rather than administration; but it is of vital importance that it should everywhere exist, as a party of the last resort, a club held over Society. Everywhere the cry will be: Do this, and do that, or the Socialists will carry the country.

So will be ushered in the election campaign and the death-grapple. You will try to beat the people back, as you have done before—but you will not succeed this time. Before this, the people were ignorant—but now they will know. They will have had the whole of the festering ulcer of commercialism laid open before their eyes. You will not be able to blame it on the labour unions, nor on the Rate Bill, nor on Roosevelt, nor on the Negro, nor on the Esquimau. You will not be able to awe the people with any great names, nor to fool them with respectability. They will have been taught to regard the leaders of our business affairs as convicted and unpunished criminals; and if you were to propose such a thing as a “business man’s parade,” you would be greeted with a scream of fury.

You will be utterly terrified at the state of affairs. Credit will be failing, and the business of the country will be holding its breath. You will subscribe a campaign fund of ten—fifteen—twenty millions of dollars—but there will be Mr. Hearst with his extras in a dozen cities, and his twenty million free copies a day, and he will tell how much you are raising and a whole lot more. So there will be committees of safety to guard the ballot—and a few more good campaign cries. There will be frenzied conferences among our political millionaires, and a week or two before election day Mr. Hearst’s opponent—quite probably ex-President Roosevelt—will come out favouring nearly all of his radical proposals, but declaring that they ought not to be carried into effect by a Socialist like Mr. Hearst. Mr. Hearst will reply with his ten thousand and tenth declaration that he is not a Socialist, and has no sympathy with Socialism—a statement which the Socialists, who will not understand in the least the meaning of events, will cordially substantiate. Mr. Hearst will declare that he stands upon a platform of Americanism, and that he seeks only equal rights for all—and therefore Federal ownership of all criminal monopolies.

So election day will come, and Mr. Hearst will be elected; and within the next week the business of the country will have fallen into heaps. Banks will have closed, mills will be idle—there will be no freight, and railroads will be failing. The people of New York will be reminded that if the railroads stop the city will starve to death in a couple of weeks; and so, perhaps even before Mr. Hearst takes office, government ownership of the railroads will be realised.

How will it be accomplished? It is a charmingly simple process—I could do it all myself. Have you ever heard the inside story of how the last coal strike was settled? The operators were standing upon their rights as the persons to whom God in His infinite wisdom had entrusted the care of the property interests of the country; and all winter long the people had been lacking coal. Then suddenly President Roosevelt, who is a master of the art of feeling the public pulse, made the discovery that government ownership of coal mines was about to crystallise into an issue of practical politics. So he sent Secretary Root to see Morgan, and tell him that the coal operators must give in. Morgan saw the operators, and they insisted upon their rights, and so Root went back to Washington, and came again to say that, as Mr. Morgan well knew, the coal roads were doing business in flat violation of the law; and that unless within twenty-four hours they gave their consent to the appointment by the President of a board of arbitration, the whole power of the United States Attorney General’s office would be turned upon an investigation of their business methods. And so the strike was settled in a day.

And in very similar ways will the future problems be settled. There will be similar conferences; and then some fine day a duly-accredited commissioner from the President will travel, say to Philadelphia, and enter the offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad, arch-corrupter of the great Keystone state. The directors of the company will receive him with bows and smiles, and will spread their books before him and his staff, and place themselves and their office at his disposal. He will hear a brief account of the situation, and will then give his orders to the president and other officials of the road: to the effect that schedules are to be continued as previously; that all salaries will remain unaltered until further notice; and that passenger and freight rates are to be dropped to a point where net profits will be wiped out. Then he will shake hands with the directors and thank them for their services in building up the road, adding that their services are now at an end. And that, for all practical purposes, will be the application of Socialism to the Pennsylvania Railroad.