The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West

by Walter A. Wyckoff

“That,” said the Citizeness, “is a significant sign of the times. I have rarely seen words which indicate more clearly the growing frame of mind of the capitalists. They are beginning to wake up to the fact of danger. Oh, yes, when it begins to be a question of self-preservation they show signs of some knowledge of the actual situation! But just see how foxy they are. Mr. —— does not tell his fellow-employers to treat their men well because they ought to, and he doesn’t talk any foolishness about the interests of labor and capital being identical. He knows better than that. He knows perfectly well that the men in the employ of his corporation are wage-slaves. He knows it a good deal better than most of the men themselves know it. And what he is telling his fellow-capitalists, who are beginning to feel alarm over the situation, is this, that in all their treatment of their men they must make a point of disguising from them their real condition of servitude. Keep them in servitude, of course, but by all possible means keep them in ignorance of it, for the greatest danger to the existing order of things lies in an awakening of workingmen, and already there are signs of such an awakening, and ‘the times’ are, therefore, ‘anxious.’”

Tumultuous applause followed this sally. It expressed the prevalent thought as no word of the afternoon had done. “Capital conspiring to maintain the existing bondage of labor—growing anxious at symptoms of dawning intelligence among its slaves, and disclosing, in a moment of unguarded anxiety, its real spirit through a feigned one!” “What clearer proof of the truth could be asked?” men seemed to say, as they looked eagerly into one another’s faces, and kept on applauding.

Before the noise subsided the Peddler again had gained the floor. He harked back to his original theme of “education,” and was showing its applicability to the situation from the new point of view.

“The greatest obstacle to Socialism,” he exclaimed, with some vehemence, “is the brute ignorance among ourselves, the working-classes. And the greatest bulwark of the cruel, crushing, competitive anarchy under which we suffer and die is this same ignorance of the workers. It is not organized capital that blocks the way of Socialism, for organized capital is unconsciously hastening the day when all capital will be organized under the common ownership of all the people. It is the dead weight of poor, blinded, befooled wage-slaves which hangs like an incubus about the neck of Socialism. It is through this that the truth must make its way, and will make its way, until workingmen at last awake to an acceptance of that which so long has been striving with them to get itself accepted.

“But alas! alas! how slow the process is! And through what density of ignorance and indifference and prejudice must the light shine!

“Sitting in the street-car beside me, as I rode down this afternoon, was a workingman whom I know well. I invited him to come to this meeting with me. I told him that we were going to talk about matters which concerned him deeply. And what did he say? Why, he laughed in my face, and said that he did not see much sense in talking about such things, and that he preferred putting in his Sunday afternoon at the ‘mat-in-ee,’ and having a good laugh. Poor, miserable wretch! working like a galley-slave through the week, and caring for nothing on his day of rest but an extra allowance of sleep, and then further forgetfulness of his daily lot in the crowds and the lights and the illusions and heart-breaking fun of the cheap theatres. All that remains for him then is to go home drunk, and get up the next morning to the twofold hell of his common life.”

It was growing dark within the hall, and the meeting was quietly adjourned until the next Sunday. But the members were slow in leaving. They formed into small groups, and went on discussing earnestly the topics of the afternoon, as they stood among the benches, or moved slowly toward the door.

The street-lights were burning with flickering, dancing effect through the falling snow, and under them great crowds of working-people came streaming through the wide-open doors of the theatres, swarming upon the pavements and in the street-cars, well-dressed, and quiet in the pre-occupation of pleasure-seekers homeward bound, and not a little impatient for early transportation.

I walked alone in the direction of the lodging-house. Deep is the spell of real conviction, and the thoughts of these working-people, all alive with belief, were passing warm and glowing through my mind. That there are multitudes of workers who are looking earnestly for a better social order, and who intelligently and firmly believe in its possibility, I had known, but never before had I felt the inspiration of actual contact with them.

And the fascination of their point of view! “A world full of want and misery and cruelty, by reason, most of all, of the wasteful war of competition between man and his brother man in the wilderness of anarchical production in which the people blindly wander; while over against them, awaiting their occupation, is a promised land of peace and plenty, where poverty and want, and their attendant miseries and tendencies to moral evil, will be unknown, if men can but be induced to cross the Jordan which separates lawless competition from intelligent and provident co-operation.”