Ameringer, Oscar - The Life and Deeds of the Uncle Sam_1920

7/28/2019 Ameringer, Oscar - The Life and Deeds of the Uncle Sam_1920

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The Life and Deedsof Uncle Sam

A LITTLE HISTORYFOR BIG CHILDREN

--BY-OSCAR AMERlNGER

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been men who starved, bled and died for their con-victions, be those convictions religious, economic,&litical or scientific. There always have been menwho cotild look past class interest and nationalboundary lines and behold mankind as one familyand the earth as our common home.-These prophets and seers, poets and savantsform the front rank of the advance guard of mankind.They are the common property of humanity andit. would be folly to maintain that our own countryhas not contributed its share to this precious groupof immortals.In the brief space of one century we have giventhe world Jefferson, Garrison, Wendel Phillips, Lin-coln and Debs.: Indeed for a young people we have been singular-ly .blessed with great idealists but this we must re-member : Idealism without a profound knowledgedf: the forces which move society is an unsafe guide.. 4dealism armed with knowledge can lead a people%o.the portals of heaven. Deprived of knowledge itmay lead them to the very gates of .hell. As a peoplewe are not lacking in idealism but we are woefullylacking in knowledge of history and economics. Thesetwo great branches -of science are the Book withSeven Seals to the average man. If this humble book-let will contribute ever so little to bring the light ofhistoric knowledge to a greater number of my fellowAmericans and thereby widen their usefulness tocountry, race and mankind, I shall be well repaid forthe trouble it may cause me at some future day.

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Life and Deeds of Uncle SatiOscar Ameringel

Economic Detewtinisnt. .:If you are just an ordinary mortal then. youdont. know what economic determinism is., Wel!,it isnt part of a steam turbine. Neither is it a poi-son they put in medicine. Its got nothing to do withalgebra or any other thing where they put an S or0 or H before or after something which you cantmake out. Only scientific men, like myself, know.what it is. Its mighty lucky you ran across this lit-tle book; otherwise you might have heard the term athousand times without knowing any more about itthan a Professor of History. Economic Determinism,brother, is the thing that makes people turn theirnoses in the direction whence they hear the jingle ofeasy money.Great masses of people are not set in motion ina given direction just because somebody doesnt liketheir religion. Wars and revolutions are not foughtbecause some folks would rather have a red and bluethan a black and white flag. Way down at the bot-.tom of every human movement are the selfish mate-rial interests of classes which strive against other.classes in an endeavor to make an easier living. Nowthe easiest way to get a living is to get someone to* get it for you. Hence men struggle continuously tdmake others work for them, or to throw off the yokeof those they work for. The struggle is called theclass struggle. . ,When somebody talks about carrying the .cross,the flag, freedom, -or civilization to other. peop1.e you:


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6drugs, dyes; perfumes, precious stones, silks, rugsand other luxuries enjoyed by the ruling classes ofEurope of that time.About A. D. 1300 roads began to be disturbedby the rise of the Turks, who, being warriors, had theutmost contempt for trade and traders. With thefall of Constantinople in 1453, the transport of lux-uries from India to Europe ended. The loss of thisvaluable trade caused great heart ache among themerchants and their high class customers. They had-sent numerous crusades to the Holy Land to makethese trade routes safe for Christianity. And whenthe crusades failed, the Kiwanis Clubs and Cham-bers of Commerce of that period began to look for awater route to India.

By that time, some wise men had already dis-covered that the earth was round. From this, nav-igators deducted that if they kept sailing toward theeast they would hit India the other way round. Oneof these navigators was Christopher Columbus, whowas grub-staked for the prospecting tour by theKing and Queen of Spain, who were the protectorsof Trade and Faith of their age.Of course, Columbus only braved the dangers ofthe briny deep to bring salvation and delivery from

damnation to the benighted heathen he might runacross. It seems, however, that his missionaryardor was rather uncalled for, because, writingfrom the Brahma group of islands, he informed theking : Their (the natives) conversation is the.sweetest imaginable, their faces always smiling andso gentle and affectionate are they that I swear toyour highness there is no better people in the world.*.

*Thwailes The Colonies gage 23% ,.:


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6 . .-i Two years later he sent another letter to Fer-:

dinand and Isabella in which he called attention tothe prospeit for gold in the Island and to the In-.diahs as.a good source of slave labor. By that timethe sweet conversation and smiling faces of the In-dians must have disappeared because Columbus de-scribed them as a wild people fit for any work, whowill be better than any other kind of slaves.x

The King tumbled and commencing in 1509 40,-000 of the smiling aboriginees found their way toeternal bliss by way of the gold mines of-Cuba.Why America?

When Columbus landed on our shores he did notknow he had discovered a new world and the nativesunderstood too little of geography to tell him bet-ter. So when he asked them if this was India andthey were the Indians they said, sure.Mike and thename has stuck to them ever since.Later on one of my ancestors, America, as Amer-inger is called in Italian, discovered that the landto the west of our coast is. all water, from which he-deducted,that the new country was a country on itsown hook. A German map maker by the name ofWaldseemueller thought Americo was a nice name,as it is, so he slapped it on, but being a little rusty onItalian he spelled it .America. -That is how it cameabout that the,natives of America are called Indians

e. while the foreigners who settled them and theircountry- call themselves Americans. :WHY PEOPLE MJGRA TED TO.. AMERICA.^. ,,The ,Germans. . .

No self-respecting man will .admit that he::comes frdmpoor stock or that he left his native *Old So& Leaflet No. i3~..~-. 2 ,.. L :


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heath because.there werent .enough eating aqples on: the family tree. ..Hence, most of the poor folks,,who .*,came to .America emigrated, to escape religious-persecution. .-I ., It cannot .b,e denied, however, that religious per-.secution .did its fair share in those days to make peo- 1ple seek pea& and eatables among the heathen inthe American wilderness.Germany just,then had gone through a religious: war that had lasted thirty years. The question under.d.iscussion was; Shall priests and nobles togetherrob the working peoplein partnership, or shall the.pobles do the job alone? When the religious ( ?) con-. troversy was ended, Germany-was a howling wilder-ness. More people. were killed, were starved to deathand. died during epidemics than in any other war be-fore or after. (Written before the World War). As .a shining example of what a war really ought to be,.the thirty.years war is the model that. all lovers of,war should pattern after. The Protestant armies.cut down the fruit trees, drove off the cattle, and-burned down the homes of Catholics and the Catholicarmy did the same thing for the Protestants.The population of Germany shrank from sixteen.,to four million. Cannibalism reappeared. The gal-lows had to be guarded to prevent the starving.peo-

:.ple from devouring the .corpses dangling from the,ropes. Mothers hadto be watched. to keep themfrom eating their new born babies.. Where thrivingtowns had been, herds of wild wolves roamed unmo-.lested. The survivors .appease.d. their hunger on._grass, roots, leaves and ,bodies stolen from the grave.*+ yards. Taken all in all, it was. a glorious war and .should serve as an everlasting inspiration to, the up-..holders of militarism.. . ,, :; .,

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Degraded, brutalized, and poverty stricken, themiserable Germans fled from devastated fields andburning homes down the Rhine to Amsterdam wherethey sold themselves to ship captains for the price ofa passage to the new world. Thus the spiritual andworldly rulers drove the people from the Germanfatherland. The Scotch Irish.The next big batch of immigrants came fromIreland-the Scotch-Irish. These people had builtup a flourishing industry in the weaving of wool.Their product came in competition with the woolengoods turned out by English manufacturers. TheEnglish capitalists claimed that they could notcompete against the pauper labor product of Ire-

land. But instead of asking, like gentlemen orAmerican capitalists, for a protective tariff, in .orderto destroy their competitors, they evoked the Brit-ish Parliament to pass measures to close the Irishlooms altogether. When this demand was grantedin 1698, tens of thousands of the Protestant weaversof Ulster deserted their idle looms and came toAmerica. The Plain Irish.Under feudalism the land belonged to the lordand the serfs belonged to the land. When the nobIessold their land, the serfs went with it as part of theimprovement. At times, when there was no work tobe done in the fields of his lordship, the serfs couldwork for themselves in order to procure sufficientgrub and rags to keep .alive and clothed until thebell on the castle called them to work for the lordagain.. The poor devils didnt get much of a livingout of the game, but even the little they got was morethan His Grace, the lord, was willing: to give. So


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when the raising of wool became a paying proposi-tion, the nobility and some of the monasteries turnedtheir land over to the sheep.The dear little sheep didnt need expensivestraw-thatched huts to live in. They were notspoiled by eating bread made of good bran. No ragswere necessary to keep them warm. On the contrarythey raised more all-wool suits on their bodies than.they had use for. Sheep havent got much of a rep-utation for being fighters, but they chased a wholelot of people out of Ireland, who. years afterwards,ai full fledged cops, chased other poor devils off thegrass in Central Park, N. Y.The Puriians.

The largest consignment of Englishmen everloaded on a single ship came over in the Mayflower.In fact, nearly everybody that is anybody in Ameri-ca is a descendant of one of the multitude of firstcabin passengers of the Mayflower. No modernocean grey-hound could hold one-tenth of the peopIethat populated the above barque on its turbulent voy-age to the land of the free and the home of thebrave.The Puritans were Protestant, middle class peo-ple, who had gotten a little the worst of it in theirscrap with the Catholic cavaliers. Being unable to per-secute others on account of their religious belief, theyskipped out to escape religious persecution them-selves.

The Puritans were a pious, bigoted and intoler-ant lot who regarded a chronic spell of blues as thenatural state of man, and who embodied their vine-gar ideas into a set of laws called blue laws.When a Puritan was caught telling a joke hewas soaked in salt water and then buried alive under


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a. 'weepifig ..+$low, wh.ile .th& *bifi&r .who laugBe& &:the joke .was roasted to death first and buried in un-

. hallowed ground afterwards: .:Witch burning was.their only amusement,and when other folks put astop to this practice,- the Puritans invented thethanksgiving dinner. and got even. Nine-tenths of.. the good things told about the Puritans are lies and-*,. the remaining, tenth isnt quite true. :.

The, Puritans are credited with having founded,the:American cradle of liberty. It must have been a.rough piece of furniture ,in their, days judging fromthe body of liberties which was adopted .by theColonial Legislature in 1641. Among other provi--sions it provides there shall be no bond slavery vil-lianage .of captivity amongst us unless it .be, lawfulcaptives .takeri in just wars and such strangers .aswillingly sell themselves or are sold to us. .,Andto clinch these liberties: the. Ideath penalty was pro-vided Ibr any who conspired against our form., ofgovernment. The body of ,liberties also provided.forreligious freedom. Any body. -was free. to worshiphis maker ,inhis own fashion provided it was. done inPuritan church. But when the Quakers. protested

.a. against ,slaverji in -any. form the ,Puritans burned._ holes in their tongues,to purify them,? . .: 1.:. i In extenuatiori of the --Puritans I will say *that _life in New England was hard;.cruel and cold. Hardlife !-makes hard .men and brings .bard .deeds:- -AndI have recited only the mean things about the Pm-i-tans. to keep. their .,descendsnts from bragging toob&med much. -: : : . , .: -WHITE SfiAVERY -. . . . _- .

The story of white:,slavery in Colonial days is so.- contrary to the accepted tradition of the liberty and

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equality af those go.od old times, that I feel compelledto let others tell the tale. Some day some body .willI get pinched again for telling the truth. -In that eventlet them pinch the great historians from whom Ifilched the following data. Most of them are dead

I anyhow with the exception of my friend Jim ONeaIfrom whose valuable book The Workers in AmericanHistory I gathered most of the quotations containedherein.. Jim is editor of the New York Call at. thepresent writing and if an Attorney General canthink of a worse punishment let him try it on Jim.

I The History of our Colonization is the history ofthe crimes of Europe.The ruling classes of Europe regarded theAmerican colonies as a convenient dumping ground: for prisoners of war, rebels, felons, vagrants, unem-ployed and orphans.There were several classes. of these slaves and.,.perhaps the best general description of their servi-tude is given by the historian, McMaster. After de-scribing the status of the black slaves, he s,ays:One step above these slaves were the convictbond servants, or men and women in a state of tem-porary involuntary servitude. These people wereeither political offenders or felon convi&s. Thoseguilty of political offenses, as the Scats. taken, in bat-tle in 1650, the prisoners captured at the battle ofWorcester in !651. Monmouths men in 1685, theScats concerned in the uprising of 1678, the J,aco-bins of 1716, the Scats who went out in, I745,, ,w.ere ofcourse, of this class of offenders ; and during. that, pe-riod, between 1650 and 1745, as many as four thou-sand are known to have been sent over to this,country.The felons formed the great source of supply,, ,1Bancroft History of the United States, Vol. 1, Page 251.

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1 a-.I12:and had been sent over in very considerable numbers.

_- One historian of Maryland declares that up to therevolution, twenty thousand came to that colony andhalf of them after 1750. Another authority assertsthat between 1715 and 1775 ten thousand felons wereexported from the Old Bailey prison in London.

But the indentured servant and redemptionerdid not cease to come when the colonies became theUnited States. Speaking generally, the indenturedservants were men, women and even children, who,unable to pay their passage, signed a contract calledan indenture, before leaving the old world. The nameindenture comes from the practice of tearing a con-tract into two halves, with jagged edges: the masterkept one and the slave the other. This indenturebound the owner or master of the ship to ,transportthem to America, and bound theimmigrant after ar-riving in America to serve the owner, or their assigns,for a certain number -of years. On reaching port theowner or master, whose -servant they then became,soldthem for their passage to the highest bidder, orfor what he could get.The redemptioner, on the other hand, was animmigrant who signed -no indenture .before embark-ing, but agreed with the shipping merchant that afterreaching America he should be given a certain time(generally. a month) in which to find somebody toredeem him by paying the passage money, or freight,as it was called. Should he fail to find a redeemer,within a specific time, the ship captain was at lib-erty to sell him to the highest bidder.When a ship laden with one to three hundredsuch persons arrived the -immigrants, arranged in along line, were marched at once to a magistrate andforced to take an oath of allegiance to the King,. or,


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.13ship to be sold. - If a purchaser was not forthcoming,they were frequently sold to speculators, who drovethem, chained together, some times through the coun-try, from farm to farm, in search of a purchaser.

The contract signed, the newcomer became, inthe eyes of the law a slave, and in both the civil andcriminal code was classed with negro slaves an In-dians. None could marry without consent of themaster or mistress under penalty of an addition ofone years service to the time set forth in the in-denture. They were worked hard, were dressed inthe cast off clothes of their owner, and might beflogged as often as the master or mistress thoughtnecessary. Father, mother and children could be soldto different buyers.3

The London company adventurers were alsoeager to employ child labor in developing the re--sources of the colony. In 1619 its records acknowl-edge the arrival of one hundred children, save suchas dyed on the way and another hundred of twelve-year-old is asked for.3

In 1627 many ships arrived, bringing fourteenand fifteen hundred children, kidnaped in Europeanports, and a few years later thesepious planters sent.a request to London for another supply of friend-less boyes and girles.*

But, bless you, it was all for the good of the poorsouls. An old document, dated Boston, September 26,1642, makes an appeal to Englishmen to stir upsome well minded to clothe and transport over poor

ZMcMaster, The Acquisition of the political, social and in- *,dustrial rights of Man in America, pp 32 to 35.SAbbott, Women in Industry, pp 332-333.Washington, The Story of the Negro,, Vol. 1, i 111.


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14children, boyes and girles, which may be great mercyto their bodies and souls.

The white slave ships were even worse hell holesthan the black slave ships. Black slaves cost money.White slaves were free. 1Moreover the white slaversprovided that surviving relatives of those who diedat sea were held responsible for the debts of the de-ceased.One ship sailing 1730 with 150 immigrants, had

only 13 survivors, another sailed in 1745 with 400Germans, of whom only 50 lived to see America. Stillanother bearing 1500 lost 1100 from death on thevoyage.When land is sighted the wretches sing praise toCod. But the rejoicings soon cease and give way to

cries of despair because parents must sell and tradeaway their children like so many cattle.From 1682 to 1804 the proportion of WhiteSlaves to the whole number of immigrants to the,Pennsylvania population increased until they consti-tuted two-thirds during the last nineteen years.!One historian of Maryland declared that up to the

Revolution twenty thousand came to the Colony andhalf of them after 1750.So you see theres no use being so all fired stuckup because you came from one of the oldest Americanfamilies. lMaybe,the founder of your house enteredEoston on the tail end of a long chain with a sign

hung around his necek saying Last of a job lot.Xarked down from $25.00 to $19.98. Or maybezI%-on~ Old South Leaflet No. 5.Geiser, Retleml~tioriels, pp 52-54.yFaust. The German Element, Vol. I, ~11 70-71.Geiser. RcclemDtioners, IJ 52.!Geiser, Redemptioners, p 20.


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15your great, great, great, great, great grandmother;the one you mention as the colonial Grand Dame,was purchased by a Jamestown bachelor,. for a baleof frost bitten tobacco. The tobacco was a littledamaged, but so was the lady, and a fair exchange isnot cheating.

The Ruling Class in Colonial Times.The aristocracy of colonial days was composedof a motley aggregation of feudal lords, adventur-ers, slave owners and merchants. All these elementshad but one thing in common, namely, to get richwithout working.The English and Dutch governments, anxious tohave their colonies settled, gave liberal land grants

to people who founded settlements or plantations.Adventurers who shanghaied, kidnaped or persuah-ed fifty working people to the new land were usuallygiven sixteen miles. of land on one side of a navigableriver. The whole state of New Hampshire at onetime belonged to one man. In many cases theseland grants were obtained from the royal governoisby the liberal application of bribe money. Underliberal bribes we must not understand the fabuloussums paid in our own times by Senatorial candi-dates to Legislative representatives. A hundred dol-lars handed to the right party, would often bring tothe donor a principality of the size of Rhode Island.

These new country feudal lords called them- .selves patroons. A name that most ,!ikely arosefrom the fact that they patronized the laboring peo-ple who kept them in luxury and idleness.The patroons organized their colonies in royalstyle. Mariy kept up small armies of retainers and


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~. cut-throats. They held court and fought and plun-dered under their own banner. The colonists paidrent for the use of the land. Eesides this, nearlyevery paying industry was declared a monopoly ofthe patroon. Most everything needed by the actualsettlers had to be bought from the patroons and ifthe settlers had anything to sell the patroon saw toit that he was the only buyer in sight. The wealth

\ producers in colonial days suffered neariy as muchfrom oppressive monopolies as they do nowadays.

THE BLACK SLAVE TRADEThe Slave Traders.

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In the year of our Lord 1662, The Company ofRoyal Adventurers trading to Africa, was charteredby his Christian majesty Charles II, by the grace ofGod, defender of faith, etc. The dowager queen andthe duke of York were let in on the ground floor.The purpose of the company was to supply the WestIndies with 3000 African slaves aimually. For somereason the scheme failed and the company sold its.charter in 1672 to the Royal African Company or-ganized for the same purpose by the same Charles II.In 1692 the British Parliament cut into the mo-nopoly of his royal nibs by allowing English mer-chants to trade in African slaves, provided they paid

2.. ten per cent duty on goods exported to Africa:Amer-ican merchants, seeing a good thing, soon clamored. for the privilege to participate in the noble trade.Among those who ,hollered the loudest to be let in,were the liberty loving, God fearing Puritans of theNew England states. Their wish was granted andgentlemen who dealt in black ivory became numer-ous in the northern seaport towns. Soon the slavetraders rose to rank and position. Money dont

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17stink,.says the Frenchman; nbt even when it is madein the slave traffic. From the .influence exerted by theslade trader in church and state we may justly con-clude that he was of as much importanceas the fran-chise grabbing, council corrupting and legislaturebribing, leading citizen of our own times. That theslave traders sat in the front pew in church, lecturedbefore the Y. M. C. A. (if there was one), and wasinterviewed on every question from hookworm to as-tronomy goes without saying. He was the real thingand woe unto him who reflected on the angelic purityof his calling. True, it appears that no one ever ven-tured such a preposterous thing, excepting possibly afew Quakers. But these were ignorant foreigners to-tally bereft of all understanding of ?American insti-tutions.

We are therefore not surprised that sixteen yearsafter the Massachusetts Body, of Liberty was enacteda law was passed which prodded that banishedQuakers who returned should have their ears loppedoff, and for the third offense should have theirtongues pierced with -red hot irons. The followingyear the death penalty was substituted and fourQuakers were hung on Boston Common within twoyears. In 1660 the death penalty was repealed andthe gentle Puritans contented themselves with flog-ging their erring brothers. (Thwaites The Coloniespage 166).

Slavery was never a paying proposition in thenorthern colonies and this fact permitted an earlyrecognition of the ungodliness of the institution. Butwhile there was no money in slavery there was plktityof it in the slave trade. It is therefore only naturalthat we should find condemnation of slavery and ap-


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? ~..,~helr;, ou~,pidiis .an~e~t~~s. .~n?~ortkd the blacli:h&then they didnt dosti because they, had a grudgeagainst them. It


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20tales with the Once upon a time cut out and datesinserted instead.

The cause of the Revolutionary War, as of every, war, revolution, rebellion, reformation, crusade or up-heaval is the same cause that made little Ikey fight:The nickle under the foot.Getting down to brass tacks the causes whichproduced the Revolutionary War can be summed upin one sentence. Interference with the business andindustrial development of the Colonies by the rulingclass of England. These classes regarded the Colo-nies as .their picking and opposed every attempt ofthe American traders, shippers and manufacturers todo a little picking of their own.As early as 1651 a navigation law was enactedforbidding the importation of goods into England ex-cept in English ships.In 1750 Parliament passed an act prohibitingthe erection of any mill or engine for splitting. or, .rolling of iron, or any plating force or any steel fur-nace. It was made illegal to manufacture hats andwoolens in one Colony and sell in another.

Every new restriction placed upon trade of theColonies increased the number of smugglers. Andbecause smugglers were tried in admiralty courtswithout juries there arose a cry for trial by juries.Navigation Laws closed Colonial ports to foreignships. Duties were levied on trade between colonies.in short the British trading classes did all in theirpower to sabotage Colonial Commerce and industry.The tax on rum and molasses aroused the Puri-tan slave traders against the Mother Country be-cause rum and molasses were the legal tender of theblack slave trade. (McMaster History of the Peo-ple of the United States page 15-16).


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However, the greatest blow struck against theinterest of the Colonial better class was the stampact.

The Stamp Act was a tax on white slavery andother forms of servitude. It also sought to regulatethe relationship between masters and servants andto prevent the cheating of the latter by the former.The act provided that the full sum of money or otherconsideration agreed upon between master and serv-ant should be correctly entered on indentures andthe date of signing be given. The penalty for viola-tion of this provision was a forfeit of double the sumor other consideration agreed upon. Master and mis-tress could be sued for the violation of contracts. The .act struck, at the very foundat,ion of the Labor sys-tem of the Colonies. Investments in servants be-came less safe andreturn from the labor noi as cer-tain. The slave drivers and ship masters engaged inthe white.slave trade saw their business and incomejeopardized by the stamp tax and the open shoppersin human chattels became rebellious against the tyr-ant across the sea. (See Hart and Channing Ameri-can History Leaflet No. 21 for full text of StampAct).

Our Revolution of 1776 succeeded because tradeand wealth joined hands with principle and enthu-siasm-a union rate in Revolutions. Northern trad-ers fretted at Englands refusal to allow them directtrade with Holland and the West Indies. VirginiaPlanters, heavily mortgaged, welcomed anything thatwould postpone payment of their debts. So mer-chants and planters joined heartily to get independ-ence. To merchants independence meant only directtrade - to planter cheating of their creditors. (See


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Wendell Phillips Speeches, Lectures and Address-es. Vol. 1, page 373).In other words the employing classes furnishedthe cause, The idealists supplied the powder, andthe workers furnished the cannon fodder.

The Working People of 1774.The workers of that period were not affected bythe Causes that made their masters rebel againstEnglish rule. The tax on tea should have left themcool as a cucumber, for the simple reason that thefree workers were too poor to drink tea, and theslaves and indentured servants didnt get any. Teain those days was about as expensive as champagneand Rhine wine is today. When the working peopledrank tea it was sassafras tea and there was no taxon that kind.

The tax on rum and mol&sses was not on therum and molasses consumed in the homes of theworkers, but on the rum and molasses used in AfricanSlave trade. The trade in black ivory was one ofthe leading industries of the colonies. And the verybest people engaged in it. They used to buy molassesin the West-Indies, take it up to Connecticut and con-vert it into rum. Then they shipped the booze toAfrica and swapped it for slaves. The slaves weretaken to the West Indies, exchanged for molasses andthe molasses was taken to Connecticut. Well, I couldkeep it up all day. It was a kind of a sorry-go-roundof molasses, rum and niggers. The English rulingclass at one time had a monopoly on this trade andthought it was still entitled to a dip-in, after theAmerican slave traders had taken over the industry.Hence the tax on rum and molasses.

No Taxation without Representation, is a


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23. mighty .fine. thing to talk about, ,but to save my giz:zard;I cantsee tihy theworkers of 1774 should have

been SO .unduly exdited about- that ,issue; Nearlyevery colony had. disfranchised the workers by meansof property qualifications.Benjamin Franklin told the story of a man inPhiladelphia who voted because,he owned a mule. Oneday the mule died and the man lost .his vote. AndFranklin asked the. question, Was it the man or the

- mule that voted? More I think about it the more .Iam convinced that the mule is still voting. ,. . ~ Hurrah for Liberty.Trial by jury of your peers is another greatstunt. Only the propertyless toilers of the revoiu-tiqnary period got no chance to serve on juries. Theywere judged by their superiors, mostly without theformality of a jury trial. The slave ownerwas thesole judge and master of life and death over hisslaves. The feudal lords (Patroons) ,had arrogatedto themselves the same rights in regard to their whiteslaves. And the indentured servant could be beaten,tortured, jailed and starved by his masters withoutCourt or. j ury.

Of all the issues that agitated the colonists therewasnt a single one that affected the working peopleany more than the freckles on your nose affect thecourse of, Saturn; All of which did not prevent theworking ,people from going to war and fighting likedemons for the pocket books of their exploiters. Itwas for this propertyless class and the idealists thatall the fine phrases of, the declaration of independ-ence were written.

. -Had the masters of: 1774 .gone to the workers ands&id, Here fellows, take these shooting irons, and


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pepper the red coats over younder. If you fight hardenough and win out, well save ourselves oodles of.money. We wont have to pay that fine of $500,000for smuggling and will be able to keep the land weswiped in the Ohio valley. When victory is ours welllet you cut enough wood on the public land to makeyourselves wooden legs. You also may get free lodg-_ ing in our debtors prison any time you get hard up.Had the masters talked in that strain, the workersmost likely would have taken a sneak towards thetall timber, fetching the guns along for souvenirs.. This kind of chin music dont go with us. Weneed a different gab. But when that bunch of slaveowners, smugglers, capitalists, lawyers and landlordscame before us and recited, We take it to be self-evident that all men are born free and equal, withequal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of hap-piness, we threw our greasy caps in the air andshouted,. thats the dope. Hurrah, for Liberty. Hur-rah for equality. Hurrah for the pursuit of happi-ness. Thats the stuff we are after.

Victory.For seven years the toilers fought, starved andfroze for their masters. They left the imprints of.their bleeding ,feet at Valley Forge and Yorktown.And when the war was over they found themselveshopelessly in debt to the merchants and the usurers,whose battles they had fought. The returning he-roes were thrown into debtors prisons by the scores.It was the fashion then to lock men up in jail the mo-

a ment they were so unfortunate as to owe their fel-lows a sixpense or a shilling.During the war the continental Congress had is-

sued paper money. This currency was called conti-


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nental script. Hence the phrase not worth a conti-i- nental. The soldier in the field received his pay in

continental script. So did the farmers who furnishedhogs, cattle, wheat and corn to the army. The moneyhad depreciated u.ntil it was worth about ten centson the dollar. Every time these patriotic soldiers andfarmers received a paper dollar from the governmentthey could exchange it for a dimes worth of goods.Now money dont stick to the hands of the poorpeople. It would have to be printed on fiy paper orhave barbs on the edges to do that. Gradually the con-tinental script had gravitated towards the strongboxes of the merchants and users. When the bloodywar was over, these gentlemen blandly asked the peo-ple to whom they had paid dimes for dollars, to paythem dollars for dimes.Of course they didnt put it that rawly. Youcant catch flies with vinegar. So the money sharkscalled out the hot air artists and embryo Fourth ofJuly. spielers whose I. 0. U.s they held and told themto go to it. Whereupon this gentry climbed the ros-. trums and elocuted something like this: Surely thisyoung and glorious nation will not enter the stageof history by repudiating its honest debts. Surelythe men who have bled and died that liberty may live,who have fought under the sacred folds of the pallad-ium of freedom fluttering, in the winds of justicekissed by the smiling rays of the golden sun in theshade of the giant pinions of the American eaglewho floats majestically over the land of the free andthe home of the brave, surely the-men who have laiddown their lives as a libation on the altars of theircountry are not the kind to rob poor widowsand orphans of their hard earned savings. If there isa man within the sound of .my voice so base, etc, etc?


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26/ Thats, the ,kind of ,dope,to ,&ing at the .horny

handed sons of ,toil. They take @it like ,puppies taketo milk. What? Rob widows and orphans. I shouldsay.not. We have been there.too.often and know how itfeels. Show us the fellow who wants to rob widowsand orphans: Well, there was one.

.The Shay Rebellion.. The plutes of Massachusetts tried to collect-fivemillion dollars from 90,000 bankrupt farmers by

means of the poll tax, I :This is the meanest tax ever invented. It makesmen like aockefeller and blind beggars pay the sameamount. The hard cash so. collected was to be.-.ex-changed for the script in the claws of.the speculators,dollars for dimes. The farmers didnt-see it thatway,and under Daniel Shay, a veteran of the Revolu-tionary War, they arose in armed rebellion.

It had been all right ,for these minute men,to3ght for the, dollars of the ruling class, but whenthey triedto scrap for the dollars in their own pocketsthe conduct became high treason and. the Massachu-setts militia was called upon to stamp out the re-bellion. :. There was .no money in-the state treasuryto pay the. warriors,. whereupon the patriotic mer-chants and bankers of. Boston, chipped in and- raised.,. the wherewithal. Beats the land how patriotic andliberal some people can get when they see a prospect_ .of getting something for nothing.7. FraIning the Constitution. .. ,The Shay rebellion and. similar risings. of .debtors in other. colonies scared the wits out of thewell-to-do%.

In an instant .public opinian changed complete-ly. Stern patriets who, while all. went. well,.talked of


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t5: 27 .k>;i:the, dangers of baneful aristocracies, soon learned to1:. alk of ,the dangers of baneful democracies. Some-; thing had to be done to keep the rabble in check.Revolting had become respectable during the warand the exploited masses in the pursuit of happinessmight get it into their heads to shake the domestic:exploiters .off their own backs even as they hadshaken off the foreign exploiters from the backs oftheir masters. A strong central government was

necessary to collect debts, public and private. Be-: sides this, the manufacturers were clamoring for aprotective tariff for their infant industries.The ship owners and fishermen wanted bountiesand the merchants were after commercial treaties.Everybody that had something wanted a strong gov-ernment to help them to get more.The farmers and wage workers who had nevergotten anything from this or any other governmentwere opposed to a central government. But nobodycared what they wanted or didnt want.. The first step towards a new government camefrom George Washington. He invited a couple ofgentlemen to his Mt. Vernon home to talk things over.Having done so, they invited more of their kind tomeet at a commercial convention at Annapolis on.September 11, 1787. This convention asked the Con-tinental Congress to issue a call for another meeting.And in February, 1789, this body passed a resolution,saying that it was expedient that a convention ofdelegates from the. several states be held in Phila-lelphia in May for the sole purpose of revising the-Arti&s of. Confederation and report bsck to Con-.gress.. The resolution didnt .-say anything aboutfraining ~$~constitution or adopting a. new form .ofg&&MG&; -...; ;. . ., A::. ., . ; ,,.,: 7: . : . :. ,, : ._ ..


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Pursuant to this resolve the colonies sent theirdelegates to the city of brotherly love. Marys littlehistory lets on as if these. delegates were elected bythe sovereign American voting kings. That isnt true.They.were picked by the legislatures and representednot all of the people, but only some of them and aprecious small some at that. Who came? Slave ownersand their lawyers from the south, merchants, bankers,ship-owners, landlords and their lawyers from thenorth. There were two workingmen in the crowd.One of them was Benjamin Franklin who was eighty-two years old by that time. Sixty years before, hehad been a printer. In the meantime he had becomepostmaster general of the colonies, was the owner ofthe largest publishing house and had acted for someyears as the business agent of the colonial propertyowners at the court of England.

-. The other was Roger Sherman. Once upon a timea shoemaker, but he got converted before it was too-

._.

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late and became a rich lawyer. Besides these twohorny-handed representatives of the toiling massesthere were four farmers. At least they said they.were. Their biographers added the information that they %ere graduates of Yale and had been in England,to receive the finishing touches to their education..From this we may conclude that they were neverkicked off the milk stool by a fly-bitten brindle cow..

From all we can find OUtj the first few days of.the Convention were taken up with such precautiousremarks as pst, keep mum; not a word ; this is onthe.q. t., not so loud, somebody will hear,. etc. After .that;: the fathers of the constitution. closed the doors,pulled down the blinds? chased -the cat out and hunghats over the keyholes.;. Nhat went. .on on the inside :is not precisely known, as the delegates were:pledged~.,


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between -king and- -aristocracy. :The monarch : was.striving to .make his authority isupreme while thenobles sought to curtail-and limit it.

During the. reign.:of Kin-g John of England a.combination of feudal .barons, Ijriests and freemenforced upon this monarch The Great Charter .( Mag-na Carta). This document is popularly sup-posed-to form the coi-nerstonkof Englands freedom.But precious little freedom did it contain for thema.sses. The nobility, clergy, and freemen it bene;fitted, formed but an insignifidant. small minority ofthe population. The masses were .not affected by thegreat charter which conferred the governmentalpower from the one to the.few.

f From now on nobility and clergy shared in thepower .of the monarch. The great council composedof the aristocracy became a .constitutional check onthe power of the king. The first job taken from h.ismajesty was that of tax assessor. Without the con-.sent of the great council he ,could not levy taxes.

By and by thegreat. cohnci: split into two sep-arate bodies, the House of .Lords, composed of-the topnotchers among the priests and- nobles, and the Houseof Commons, representing the rising.capitalist class.

The troubles of the king multiblied and the gov-ernment became a three-cornered affair. Each di-vision became a iheck .on the other two. @The king-couldnt make a move without the consent of the lords,.the lords couldnt .budge -without permission of thecommons and the lords and tiommons couldnt .do athing without the ~s&n35bn-bf.~ the, king. Each partywas3ghting for .~~re:jjo~el.and..in. the end the kinglost theright .to levy ~taxe&%tirely. Later on the Ia&-. making po~~~r:w~~~~gk~t;fkidm.t2le..king and still lateri. .

s.. . .;,


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\ 31,- ._.he even -lost the right:to~,.sx$o. the actions;pf:.-parlia-ment. . :- ... ,:. ;The; one mans ,pG&r ,vvas effectively done away

with. .I. .The sovereign. .monarch ,became a figurehead andEngland *was ruled by the,, House of Lords:composedof the land-owning nobilit.yj :th,e. dignitaries of thechurch, and the House of Commons made up of. thecommercial and industrial. i.nterests.The. essential fact in the -development of consti-tutional development, is the rise to political power ofclasses which. compete .with the. king. and with each

other for the control of thestate.Under this, form. of government the different. gov-erning .bodies act as :checks,.upon.,each other. Eachone mayveto.the ,acts, :of the other- two and since theunanimous consentof. all three is required for the en:action of-laws a small minority can block legislation.In this. manner it may force the .m.a.jority to recognizeits demands.

The majority, of the people.,are+upposed to rulein a democracy. Instead.of a sovereign :king we havethe sovereign, people. _ The ..struggle .jfor politicalaristocrats at-one time &.+-bed, the ,p.owers of the sov-ereign king so .a new. minority composed of...thewealthy, class seeks .to cur,e on& check the .po,wer ofthe sova-eign people. >.,_. ,, * IThe Fbrrqi,l, * ._

At the. time the.Co,nstitutio,n was framed, I&g-land had .a government of. three -heads.King. .;.:..r ,. .:: ,.,-,H.ouse.of Lords. . . . :House of Commons.:;; . . ;. ..,. 1, ,His rnajeqty ha.4 already: Jmt--the veto power.andthe right, to ,appoint, judges,.i:,.~yen.;the house of lords


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was not the influential body it once was. The dom-inant power rested in the house of commons and theboss of the strongest political party in the lowerhouse was practically the uncrowned king of Eng-land. His official t?tie was prime minister. Thisform of government was imported and, after a back-ward revision, adopted by the framers of the Consti-tution.

First the fathers brought the House of Commonsover here and changed the name into House of Rep-resentatives. The people should rule not directly, butthrough representatives, chosen by them. Congressis elected by the people and accountable to the people.If we dont like the record of a congressman we havethe power to oust him when his term is over. A singlerepresentative body, responsible to the voters, is easilyinfluenced by the will of the masses. But in the opin-ion of the aristocratic gentlemen who framed the Con-stitution, rule of the people was a very undesirablething. Therefore they imported the House of Lords andcalled it the Senate of the United States. Unfor-tunately we had no herediiary nobility to choose from,so instead of getting plain lords for the job they se-lected landlords.Senators were not to be elected by the people,but were to be chosen by the legislatures of the dif-ferent. states. In most states the propertyless were

disfranchised. Only property owners could vote andonly big property ovners could be elected to the leg-islature. In Massachusetts for instance, a candidateSor the office of governor had to be a Christian worthfice thousand dollars. This would have shut Jesus.Christ out from becoming governor of that state. Butthese puritans never had a sense of humor nohom.


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In Virginia the candidate for governor had to beworth ten thousand pounds sterling. Only men whoowned a quarter of an acre of land in town or twenty-@-five acres in the country could vote and only bigland owners and slave owners were eligible to sit inthe legislature.Now, as stated before, the senate was not to beelected by the sovereign people. Eig property own-ers elected by littie property owners selected the big-gest one to fill the office of United States Senator.The senate, not elected by the people, was created tobe a check on the House of Representatives electedby the people.Next the fathers imported the king himself. Cer-tainly they didnt call him king, but President.The fact is, the Constitution gave to the Presidenta greater power than was possessed by King George,the Third, of England, against whose tyranny we hadrevolted. In the first place the president was not tobe elected by popuiar vote. The legislature (alwayskeep in mind the class that sits in these bodies) wasto select electors and these in turn would meet in theelectoral college and select the President. This ar-rangement was later on changed and now the federaloffice holders and those wishing to become such,select in convention assembled two men from whichthe dear people may choose. To the President, thusremoved from the will of the people, this Constitu-tion gave the veto power over Congress. It also gavehim the power to appomt the federal judges and thesupreme court judges. These judges we must re-member are appointed for life by one man and can-not be ousted by the people. They are therefore ab- solutely free and independent of the will of the sov-reign people. In fact they are above the people.


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The supreme court later on arrogated to itselfthe power to declare laws passed by Congress un-constitution81.HOW IT WORKS .

Democracy Means Rule of the People by the Major-ities. Here is How it Works.The majority of the sovereign people, let us say,demand a certain law and elect four hundred con-gressmen to pass it. Two hundred and one of these

gentlemen refuse to vote for the law and it is there-fore not passed. Check number one.If on the contrary, the majority in the House ofRepresentatives pass the act demanded by the ma-jority of the people, then the bill is referred to the

United States Senate. Here are ninety-six men elect-ed for a term of six years-a sufficient length of timeto give the dear people a chance to forget. Forty-nineout of the ninety-six senators vote against the bill de-manded by a majority of the people. The bill iskilled. Check number two.

If on the other hand the Senate should pass thebill, then. it is up to one man, the President, to saywhether it becomes a law or not. If it dont suit himhe may veto the act. Check number three.

Should the bill pass both hduses of Congress andreceive the signature of the President, then the Su-preme Court has one more whack at it. If five of thenine judges stick their wobbly old corporation lawyerheads together and say this bill is unconstitutionalthats the end of the poor thing and the ninety oddmillion voting kings may stand on their heads andflap their long sovereign ears for all the good it maydo. Check number four.


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The fathers said, let the people rule, and thenwent after the people in the following fashion:

The will of ninety million people may be vetoedby two hundred and one members of the House ofRepresentatives.

The will of the House of Representatives may bevetoed by forty-nine senators.The will of the senate and house may be vetoed

by one man, the President.And the will of the people and the House of Rep-resentatives and the United States Senate and his ex-

cellency, the President, may be vetoed by five oldcorporation lawyers, who are, as far as popular con-trol is concerned, as far removed from the people,as the man in the moon is removed from the rat ter-rier that barks at him.Kings used to claim that they received theirpower from God Himself. The framers of the Con-stitution couldnt very readily claim the same thingfor this document, especially while the writings ofPaine and Jefferson still lingered in the minds of themasses. But in the course of time their successorssucceeded in canonizing the Constitution. What wasoriginally a scheme to deprive the people of self-gov-ernment was praised to the sky until the dense massesaccepted the constitutional straight-jacket as theermine of popular sovereignty.

The fathers also wisely provided that the Con-stitution once accepted, could only be amended withthe greatest difficulty. It requires two-thirds of thestates to move an amendment and if three-fourths ofthe states vote favorably on the amendment it goesinto force. Hence if a majority in a few ofthe small-est states vote against the amendment, the will of the


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overwhelming majority, possibly nine-tenths of thepeople, is set at naught. That it is not possible inordinary times to change the Constitution, is evidentfrom the fact, that of some twenty-two hundredpropositions for amendment, only nineteen have beenadopted.

The Amends.The Constitution, as drafted by the foundingfathers was not to remain a mere skeleton outline ofa government conceived for the protection of prop-

erty, the sacredness of contract and the perpetuationof the monopoly of rulership by a minority. Whenthe Constitution was submitted for ratification therearose a tremenduous protest. from the mass of thecommon people, who were still under the influenceof the ideas contained in the Declaration of Inde-pendence. There is no doubt it never would have beenratified by the people without the important amend-ments known as the Bill of Rights. These amend-ments were inspired by Thomas Jefferson, who alsowrote the Declaration of Independence along withThomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin. In itsamended form the Constitution was eventually rati-fled but it is important to remember that the rulinginterests of that period were violently opposed to theBill of Rights. And subsequent events will showthat whenever the Bill of Rights stood. in the path ofthe dominant class it was ruthlessly violated with theopen consent and approval of the courts.

When Americans speak of the Constitution, whichby the wa.y few of them have ever read, they usuallyhave the Bill of Rights in mind. And if paper waspower then the Bill of Rights could truly be calledthe bulwark of American liberty for it does not only


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guarantee freedom of speech, press, assemblage andconscience, but also the right to keep and carry armsfor the preservation of these rights.

Here it is:Article 1. Congress shall make no law respecting anestablishment of religion, or prohibiting the freeexercise thereof; or abridging the freedom ofspeech or of the press; or the right of the peoplepeaceably to assemble, and to petition the gov-ernment for a redress of grievances.Article 2. A well-regulated militia being necessaryto the security of a free state, the right of thepeople to keep and bear arms shall not be in-fringed.Article 3. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quar-tered in any house without the consent of theowner, nor in time of war but in a manner to beprescribed by law.Article 4. The right of the people to be secure intheir persons, houses, papers and effects, againstunreasonable searches and seizures, shall not beviolated, and no warrants shall issue but uponprobable cause, supported by oath or affima-tion, and particularly describing the place to besearched, and the persons or things to be seized.Article 5. No person shall be held to answer for acapital or ,other infamous crime unless on a pre-sentment or indictment of a grand jury, exceptin cases arising in the land or naval forces, or inthe militia, when in actual service, in time of war

or public danger; nor shall any person be subjectfor the same offense to be twice put injeopardy of life or limb: nor shall be compelledin any criminal case to be a witness against him-self, nor be deprived of life, liberty or property,without due process of law; nor shall privateproperty be taken for public use without justcompensation.Article 6. In all criminal prosecutions, the accusedshall enjoy the right to aspeedy and public trial,


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39The capitalist method of production sprang up inthe north. This method has one characteristic fea-ture, the desire for profit.Under capitalism, goods are produced for profit.Profits are the difference between the cost of pro-duction and the selling price of the products. To pro-duce cheap and sell high is the one great ideal ofcapitalism. The manner by which goods are pro-duced cheap are low wages, child and woman laborand machinery. But low wages and high prices area contradiction. Lower wages also lower the pur-chasing power of the most numerous class, the wageworkers. This class notonly produces all wealth, itis also the principal customer of the capitalist class.How on earth can people with low wages pay highprices? If, for instance, the shoemaker gets one dol-lar for making a pair of shoes; and the hatmakergets one dollar for making one hat. If then shoes sellfor four dollars a pair and hats for four dollars apiece, then the shoemaker must make four pair ofshoes before he can buy one hat and the hatmakermust make four hats before he can buy one pair ofshoes, while three hats and three pairs of shoes arebenevolently assimilated by the capitalist class. Sincethe wages of these workers are too low to buy theproducts of their own labor, the capitalist has threepairs of shoes and three hats left over.If the products of labor, which the workers can-not buy, accumulate on the shelves of the storekeep-er, then this gentleman stops ordering fresh goods.When no orders come to the factory, that place isshut down and the workers are shut out. When theworkers are shut out their pay stops and they quit.buying altogether and go begging or stealing. Thiscondition is called a panic.


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41because miserable wagon roads and ox teams madetransportation too expensive.

There was but one market to get-the south.American rivers run north and south and furnisheda cheap method of transportation. But, as alreadystated, the south was ,doing business with Englandand was unwilling to pay its American confederatesa dollar and a half for the same goods that could bebought from England for one dollar.

There was but one way by which the southernmarket could be gotten. That way was a tariff highenough to shut out English goods. When this wasproposed in Congress the south squealed. It hassquealed ever since and will squeal for some time tocome. But fox hunting and directing the activity ofthe slaves through the medium of hired overseersdont put the same sharp edge on men as tradingdoes. The southern slave owners were no match forthe sharp New England traders. The first Congresspassed a tariff bill Every subsequent Congress tink-ered with the tariff and put up a little, or down a lit-tle, but mostly up.

The tariff war between the men who make goodsand the people who buy goods, between manufactur-ers and agriculturalists, between north and south,has waged for 150 years. There have been minor is-sues, such as slavery and money issues, but the oneovertowering issue of the last century and a thirdhas been the tariff. What then was the position ofthe workers on this one great question?

The Workers and the Tariff.In the beginning the advocates of a protectivetariff did not claim that it would protect labor. La-bor then had no vote. So what was the use to fool it.


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right enough, it may be heated and then bent or ham-mered into different shapes, but as soon as youquit the heating or hammering, it cools down to hard,inflexible iron again.

More About Wages.Whatevei it costs to produce the labor power of

the worker, under free competition, will be the wagesof the worker in the long run. Labor power is pro-duced with rice, corn, beans, potatoes, kraut, bread,eggs, milk and meat. These things are shoved intothe stomach; are burned up and produce labor pow-er. Just as coal shoveled into a boiler producessteam power.

Horse power is produced by transmitting hayand corn to the interior of a mule. Whatever it coststo produce the horse power of the mule will be theaverage wage of the mule.

The mule gets his pay in keep and the workergets his keep in pay. This being the case the mulesdont worry about the cost of living. Butthe worker,who gets his keep in pay, fools himself continuallywith the rummy idea that by cheap living he canmake his wages go further or that higher wages willbring him on a level with the cost of living. All thisdont bother the mule.Let us say the mule gets twenty ears of corn perday. At one,time his owner fed him more, but it onlymade him fat and, lazy. At another time the bossfed him less and the mule got too weak to pull a load.So the boss settled down to feed the mule whatevercorn was required to produce the mule power. Theamount was twenty ears per day.

If twenty ears cost ten cents, then the wages ofthe mule expressed in money is ten cents per day.


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run the government in their own interests. They hadopposed railroad building, so essential to capitalistexpansion, in the north. They had disc,ouraged man-ufacture, fearing that a great factory populationwould furnish a market for the product of the north-ern farmers, thus raising the cost of feeding theirown slaves. But over and above all, the south had bit-terly opposed a protective tariff demanded by thenorthern capitalists. The tariff, more than any otherfactor, was responsible for the war between the northand the south. Of course Marys little history saysit was the desire of the good northern people to freethe poor slaves from the oppression of the bad south-ern people that brought on this Civil War. ButXarys school history dont explain why abolitionistswere persecuted in the north as much as in the south.It dont explain why Wendell Phillips and WilliamLloyd Garrison were mobbed in the streets of Boston.It dont explain why Lovejoy was lynched in a north-ern town.

If the Republican party or its cleanest, purestand most illustrious exponent, Abraham Lincoln, everadvocated abolition, then all proofs to this effectmust ha.ve been destroyed. On the contrary, the warcame in spite of the most earnest pledges of the gov-ernment of Lincoln that slacery would not be dis-turbed.If the Republican party was in favor of aboli-tion, why then did the northern government furnish-passes to southern slave owners to pass through thefederal lines clear up to 1863 to catch their runawayslaves?How can the war for the abolition of slaverybe explained in face of the fact that the RepublicanCongress passed a joint resolution in 1861, after


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they fought for principles, justice, God, fatherland,the flag of freedom, etc. .Those who felt the necessityof more substantial reasons claimed that they werefighting for their niggers. Poor deluded dupes. Theydidnt have any niggers. Only about 8 per cent of allthe southern people possessed slaves. But men arenot what they are, but what they think they are, anda man who has niggers? on his brain will fight adarned sight harder than the gentleman who has nig-gers on his plantation. The Civil War furnishes am-ple proofs that Karl lMarx was right, eternally right,when he said, The ruling ideas of every period arethe ideas of its ruling class.Did the slave owners go to war too? Sure thing.These gentlement, enjoying exemption from the sordidstruggle for existence, had but .little work for theirbrain and consequently allowed this otherwise ratheruseful organ to sleep. They faced the approachingstruggle with the same stupid bravado that a bullcalf faces a locomotive. What idea did these gentle-men of leisure have about the strength of the north?To them the roaring furnaces, the fire belching mills,the million spindle looms, the miles of shining rails,the heaving iron horses, the modern catacombs ofcoal and metal, the harvesters and reapers, had nosignificance. Living in another age, they dre.amed ofa struggle of muscle and brawn, when in reality itwas a struggle between brute force, and brain andmachine.The war will only last until after breakfast,or at any rate not more than thirty days. Stick acorn cob on a broom handle and poke it at a Yankeeand hell run, are samples of the assinine witticismindulged in by the empty-headed slaveocrats.Under such pleasant circumstances it was only


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by the slave aristocracy. Moreover, this class had nodirect interest in the struggle. At the same time,traders are entirely too sharp to risk their hides forsuch spooks as flags, principles, justice and eternalrights. To give this class something tangible to fightfor, the Confederate Congress repudiated the debtsowed by southern merchants to northern jobbersand manufacturers. Since this total indebtednesswas estimated at between two-fifty and three hun-dred million dollars, we have sufficient reasons whythe southern middle class fought for independence.

This class and the professionals, who stood tothe slave owners in about the same relation as the re-tainers of medieval times did towards the feudallord, furnished most of the officers for the patrioticpoor whites who were the only ones who had nonickles under their feet.2260

A few miles west of Columbus, Ohio, is a pleas-ant wooded hill overlooking the Scioto Valley, CampChase.During the Civil War it wasa prison camp forConfederate soldiers. What kind of a prison camp itwas is testified by the inscription on a huge boulder

which serves as the only monument to the departedboys in grey. It reads, Here lies the remains of2260 unknown Confederate soldiers. Two thousandtwo hundred and sixty human beings is a goodlynumber to be buried without somebqdy going to thetrouble of ascertaining their names.

It must be remembered that these men did notexpire on the bloody battle field. They were notmowed down by the hail of bullets. Camp Chase wasnot a battle ground, but just one of those pleasant,


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cheerful, healthy prison camps northern historiansare so fond of telling about. Within two miles of thecapital of the great state of Ohio, in view of manyChristian .church spires, these poor boys died ofgangrene, lock-jaw and typhoid fever. Died by thedozens every night. And in all the land there was notone single man in authority interested enough tomark their resting place; to write a name on stone orboard over their lonely graves. They were but work-ingmen. Common soldiers fighting the battles of amaster class. Officers belonging to the better classrarely die in prison camps. They are exchanged, pa-roled, or atleast harbored in more sanitary quarters. ,

I have been told by old Confederate soldierswhoat one time were prisoners at Camp Chase, that theynever saw one single commissioned Confederate of-ficer call the roll in the morning to ascertain thenames of the boys that had died during the night.

In peace or war we bear the burdens. Whatever.fame and glory war may bring belongs to our mast-,ers. The workers share is festering wounds, lostlimbs, ruined health, death and massed graves, bear-.ing the inscription Here lie . . . .unknown men.

And yet some people knew and loved these un- 1known men. Scattered over the sunny south fromthe-valley of the Shenandoah, over the knobs of Tenn- .essee, the clay banks of Mississippi, the swanps of jLouisiana and the prairies of Texas, there were thou- ::sands of mothers and thousands of wives who waitedanxiously from day to day, from month to month, .Ifrom year to year for one who never came.Seasons came and seasons went and still with -.lhungry eyes they watched the lonely road for a fig-.$

ure that never turned in the bend. The north wind .)j-4;, .dv&a


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55moaned mid fragrant pines, springtime came laugh-ing in the land, the torrid heat of summers sun burnedori the cabin roof, the wild geese winged their way tothe gulf, squirrels chattered in the burnished leavesand still they waited and waited in vain, and hopedand hoped against hope.

Wives laid awake in the dead of night in lonelyhillside shacks. They listened not to the song of themocking bird calling its ,mate in the moonlit night.They did not hear the southern breeze murmuring inthe magnolia trees. They listened with aching break-ing hearts for footsteps they never heard again.

War is hell. A rich mans war-a poor manshell.

Life and Property.Have you ever heard of General Rockefeller orGeneral Morgan, or Major Carnegie, Captain Vander-bilt, or Colonel Gould? If not, why not? Was notservice in the federal army compulsory? Did not allmen over eighteen and under forty-five years of age

have to pay the blood tax, that is, serve in thesfederalarmy?Oh, no; gentle readers, dispel all delusions onthat subject. The law was so framed that all thosewho could afford the price of a substitute could stay

at home. The Republican party, then as now, the toolof the capitalist class, took good care to protect thevaluable lives of property owners. It was only thelandless, homeless, toolless proletarians that had toserve. It was optional with property owners. Theycould serve if they wanted to. So most of themstayed at home like sensible long-headed businessmen and made hay while the sun shone, while per-


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mitting the miserable workers to pour out their life-blood on southern battle fields.

Mark Hanna, at one time the high-priest of-theRepublican party, was engaged in the wholesale gro-cery business in Cleveland, Ohio, when the war brokeout. As a leading business man he had too manypressing engagements to find time for soldiering. Heconsequently hired a substitute, not for the grocery,but for the war business. And oh, grim humor, twoyears before Mark Hanna died, the Grand Army ofthe Republic elected him honorary member of thatbody. Maybe it was in honor of his substitute.

John D. Rockefeller had just then started on hisoily career. As a rising young business man hefound better things to do than to kill, or what isworse, to be killed. He, too, fought in the stupendousstruggle of the 19th century through the medium ofa substitute.

Pierpont Morgan was twenty-four years oldwhen Lincoln called for volunteers. But althoughMr. Morgans biographers inform us that he was acollege athlete and of splendid physical make-up, he must have been hard of hearing, for Lincolns callnever reached him. Beingof a rather practical turnof mind he entered business by buying condemned -Irifles from the government for $3.50 and selling them ;back to the same government for $22.50 a piece. It iwas a neat transaction for a young man. When the ,authorities finally woke up to the deal, they refusedto pay the patriotic gentleman, whereupon he -promptly brought legal action against the govern- :iment. The Supreme Court of the U. S. finally hand- 2ed down a decision which gave Morgan the full ::.;i,


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60 -the dominant religious denominations, Methodists,Baptists, and Presbyterians, split into two camps.The Mason and Dixon line was not only the dividingline between Capitalism and Slavery, it also dividedreligious organizations into warring factions. Andeach faction attached itself to the ruling class of itssection and became its mouthpiece. defender andabove itsworldly environment.organized church is not an exception; it never risesplain isnt it? Now I dont want to be finicky aboutapologist. Thus we find men who derive their in-spiration from the same bible nreaching slavery inthe south and abolition in the north.

To murder is wrong, everybody will admit that.The good book says, Thou shalt not kill. -Thatskilling. I dont want to go too far. For instance, itmay be all right for a white man to kill a nigger be-cause the Creator has painted one white and the otherblack. Dislike of the other fellows color may be aperfectly legitimate excuse for killing him. At leastthis seems to be the accepted idea of some people..

It also may be allowable for one white man tokill another white man providing the latter is a heath-en. Heathens, as everybody knows, go to hell anyhow,and whether they go there a little sooner or latershould not-make much difference.It may be all right for a white Christian Germanto kill a white Christian Frenchman. It is true thatboth are Caucasians and pray to the same God. Butthey make a different noise about it and there is just,a possibility that God does not like the other fellowsgibberish. But when white Christians, speaking thesame language and worshiping in the same temples,

. kill each other by the wholesale for four -years, thenI say this is going too far.. And when I read, that.,.


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with a chicken leg sticking out from under the lid, ona canvass and then we made a grab for a greasy torchand ran after the prosperity parade, with coal oilsoaking into our scalps. We know now what the tariffhas done to us, how it has protected LIS from the pau-per laborers of Europe. All we have to do is to lookover the wire entanglement around the high protectedsteel mills and watch Stanislaus Slawinsky and Ri-rando Rinaldini fooling away twelve hours per day,seven days in the week, at two per, where we used toget a five spot for a days work.Our good friends, the bosses, kept the pauperlabor product out of the country all right enough,only they brought the pauper laborer over to take ourjobs and our be-lov-ed American standard of living.But dont kick, brother worker, you are not a bit morefoolish than the farmers who voted for a high pro-tective tariff on everything they bought and for freetrade on everything they sold. Get rid of that faraway gaze; that fried chicken leg sticking out of thefull dinner pail, was only a symbol; something tohold up to simples you know. Of course.1 dont thinkwe could lead a donkey all over creation with thepicture of a bale of hay; but thank God we are notmules, but free born independent American working-men.

The last political campaign was fought out on adoughnut. It was a painted doughnut to be sure, butit looked natural as life and below it is said. look atthe doughnut, dont look at the hole. Mr. Taft, onthe recommendation of Mr. Roosevelt, rolled into of-fice on the doughnut rim and left us the hole to di-gest. \I dont know what the next great (?) issue willbe. Most likely the tariff. But one thing is sure-it


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it would be the highest folly to claim that the samerace divided by an arbitrary boundary line would becomposed of devils on the one side and angels on theother. To show how closely related the people of Eng-land and Germany are, it is only necessary to cast aglimpse at their languages. As an illustration let ususe the human body, starting from top down :

Anglo-Saxon Germanhair haarwe augenose naseear ohrmouth mund or maullips lippenchin liinshoulder schulterarm armelbow ellbogenhand handfinger ficderheart hertzlung 1Llngeliver leberknee kniefoot fusssoie soleThese illustrations could be muitiplied a thou-sand times. The language of Shakespeare and Shellyis also the language of Goethe and Schiller with theaddition of Latin words brought to England by theNormans who had learned them from the Romans.Haig, Foch and Hindenburg with their Tommy At-

kins, Pqilus and Boches belong to the same breed. Itwas not a war between good and bad, virtue and sin,


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owning nobility whose members fill nearly all-the highoffices in the diplomatic service. Nevertheless, itmust be said that England has come nearer to ademocracy than any other modern power, our owncountry included.

On the ,other hand Belgium, Roumania and Serviawere much less democratic than Germany and whileKaiser Bill talked a great deal about me and Godthe fact remains that he drew no pay as Kaiser andhis iimperial influence outside. of Prussia was prac-tically nothing. For it must not be forgotten thatGermany was a federation of autonomous states in-cluding one full-fledged republic, the City of Ham-burg. Most of these states made their own laws andoperated their own taxing, railroad and postal sys-tems. The kings of these states had as little poweras the King of England, whjle the cities of Germanyenjoyed for centuries a higher degree of self-govern-ment than the cities of France, England or the UnitedStates. Germany in reality was a mixture of medi-eval autocracy, bureaucacy and democracy. The armywas autocratic ; the civil government was bu-reaucratic; the legislative branches were democratic.The Kaiser was the titular ,head of the army just asour president is the titular head of the Americanarmy. The army itself was officered by the youngersons of the land-owning nobility under the directionof a general staff composed of the same element. _- However, the real powers which determined thepolicy of modern Germany as of every modern na-tion, were the industrialists, bankers and commercial-ists. To say therefore, that the World War was a warbetween autocracy and democracy would be as sillyas to C!aim that fish are fighting each other because

, some are wetter than others. .


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The Real Cause.The seeds of modern wars are industrial and

commercial rivalry, said Woodrow Wilson after hisreturn from Versailles and no greater truth was everuttered by mortal man. Of course, others said thesame thing before, instead of after the war. The So-cialists, for instance, embodied the same thought inthe celebrated and much-maligned St. Louis platformand many of them had gone to ja il long before Presi-dent Wilson had spent fifty bil lion American dollarsand two hundred thousand American boys to learnthe simple truth concerning the cause of modern wars.

If Mr. Wilson had studied history instead ofteaching it, he also would have made the interestingdiscovery that no war was ever fought over principles,ideals, civilization or democracy.Turn back the pages of history and you will findhunters fighting over hunting ground, nomads fight-ing over pasture land, slave owners fighting overslaves to ti ll their fields, feudal barons fighting forland to exploit more serfs, merchants waging war tofree trade routes from robber barons, robber baronskilling each other for the control of land an\3 waterways to levy tributes from the passing caravans, mer-chant cities and merchant states fighting each otherfor the control of trade routes, harbors and marketsto fill their purses. Go back as far as you want toand you always will find the nickel under the foot andthe same noise about justice, freedom, religion, civil;ization, Kulture and democracy.

How Empires Come.And here is another thing you will find; wars

are always getting bigger. The struggle between manand man develops into the struggle between tribe and


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tribe, state and state, nation and nation, until itreaches the point where combinations of nations arefighting combinations of nations. As the world be-comes one market, one pfoductive unit to the whole ofwhich all peoples must have access, this struggle be-comes world war.

It is in the nature of capitalist nations that theymust either expand or perish. England for instance,cannot feed its population from the fruits of its ownsoil. But England has coal, iron, tin and splendidharbors. Following the lines laid down by nationsshe becomes a manufacturing, trading and maritimenation. To find markets for her goods, raw materialsfor her factories and bread for her workers, Englanddeveloped into the greatest colonial power of all time.This development was, and only could be, accomp-.lished by force and at the expense of weaker peoples.Her men-of-war drove Spain and Holland off the sea,forced France out of Canada, cut her off from Louisi-ana and thereby compelled France to sell what is nowthe richest part of the United States.

The course of empire is determined by economicand geographic circumstances. No amount of will orintelligence will make Switzerland a maritime orfishing nation. .No amount of will or intelligence canmake mountaineers of the marsh dwellers of Holland.England has done what she has done because shecould not have lived without doing it. She did notconquer India to bring Christianity to the Hindoosbut to obtain wheat for her hungry mouths. Neitherwas it inherited depravity that made her destroy everyrival and subject every weaker people in her path. Inher struggle for national existence she simply fol-lowed the lines of least resistance, which is but an-other term for economic determinism.


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Germany Enters the Rcxe.What has been stated here in regard to Englandholds equally good for her principal modern rival-Germany. Good, bad or indifferent the German peo-ple are what they are, because they cannot be other-wise. Poverty of soil and severity of climate madethe Germans frugal and hard working. For centuriesthe Roman slave traders invaded Southern Germany

to obtain slaves for Roman estates and these strugglesbetween slave hunter and hunted evolved a profes-sional warrior class in the South of Germany. Formany other centuries Mongolian nomads invaded Ger-many from the east every time there was a droughtwhich destroyed their pastures. Hence the easternborder of Germany is dotted with cities whose namesend with burg as Marienburg, Duenaburg, etc. Burgis the term for a fortified place. It was from thesefrontier forts that the Huns were fought back fromGerman soil and here also developed the warrior castof Prussia, the junkers.

Until the beginning of the 19th century Germanylived principally from agriculture and was practicallyself-supporting. However, the increase of populationgradually forced the German people to seek a liveli-hood by other methods and also in other countries.Tens of millions of her sons and daughters migratedto other lands and fused with other people. Thencame the age of coal and iron. The conquest ofSilesia brought coal. The annesation of Lorraine in1871 gave Germany iron ore. In the same year camethe unification of the thirty odd German states intoone political and economic unit. A tremendous in-dustrial development followed. Soon German mer-chant-men loaded with German goods made their ap-pearance in every harbor. To protect this ever-grow--


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one tried to prevent the others from expanding. Pres-sure was met by pressure. Every concession grantedby a weaker people to one of the powers broughtabout complications that threatened to hurl Europeinto the abyss. The capitalists and concession hunterssearched every nook and corner of the globe for oil,iron, coal, cotton, copper, wheat, meat, markets, har-bor facilities and cheap labor. Industrial and com-mercial rivalry ran amuck. And since every modernnation is governed by its industrialists and commer-cialists the flag followed the trade and the battleshipfollowed the flag. What could not be obtained bytrickery was taken by force. The gain of one was theloss of the other. Bribery, corruption, lying and spy-ing became the principal occupation of diplomats.Armies and navies became toll gatherers, tributecollectors, retrievers and hunting dogs of the all pow-erful industrial classes, Kings, Kaisers and Presi-dents were reduced to National Chamber of Com-merce boosters beating the hinterlands for customersto buy the calico and glass beads of their potentialmasters, the industrialists. All wanted to expand anddid expand, until the terrible pressure exerted uponeach other exploded capitalist civilization.Wilson was right, dead right, eternally right, thecauses of modern war are industrial and commercialrivalry. What a pity this great truth came to himonly as an after thought.

The Keg Blows Up.When war broke out in Europe the dominant feel-ing in this country was one of horror. Isolated andself-contained as we were we could scarcely believethat such a thing could be possible at this stage ofcivilization. The feeling of horror was followed byan inclination to congratulate ourselves for the three


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the aspect of a near bankrupt whom nothing but theintervention of his chief creditor could save from ab-solute bankruptcy. All of which is in accordancewith biblical lore which says: Where a mans purseis, there his heart is also.Heart and Purse.

The purse of our industrialists had gone overthere. Their hearts went over there and being there

Documents

Ameringer, Oscar - The Life and Deeds of the Uncle Sam_1920