The Labor enquirer., 1884-03-08
ABUNDANT PROOF.


sistance. Depend upon that. ....
ABUNDANT PROOF.
= The agitation carried on by the Social
lists of the world during the past twelve
months has had results which cannot be
computed. The capitalistic press Of
America Is greatly interested in the cub
iect. The interest is bred of desire to
suppress the doctrine and check its
growth. Party lines are ignored in the
attempts made by the mouthpieces OF
capital to stamp out the progress of the
people in the understanding of social and
political science. Republicans and dem
ocrats, free-traders and protectionists, all
the different factions and rings of the
politicians and capitalists are united
upon the platform of suppressing the
education of the masses. Is this not
proof that these despoilers of labor fear
the results of this education u? Can any
sound-minded laborer want stronger ev-
idence that his hope lies through Social
Ism than that the hirelings of capital are
arrayed with all their power against Its
advance? Or do you make an exception
in this case, and believe that your ene-
mics are solicitous for your welfare and
desirous to benefit you, when they cry
down the men who are in your ranks
and whose teachings your reason tells
you are in your interest?
Decide these questions as you may,
there are breakers ahead. If you will
pause for moment and think-I do not
ask you to pour over statistical docu-
ments-you will see the results of the
past twenty years, under the competitive
system. And what do you see? What
does your judgment tell you lies in the
future?
Can you not plainly see that the con-
dition of the toiler grows daily more
wretched and distressed? Do. not your
opportunities to maintain yourself and
family grow less with each turn of the
year, and are not your boasted liberties
as American citizens becoming more far
cical with each return of the ball-box
season? Has not the employing class,
the capitalists, seized every means of
production, ease and comfort which the
inventive genius of the century has pro-
duced, and instead of such things being
the blessings to humanity they should be,
have they not been converted into q
curse to nine-tenths of the people Z
This latter is proposition that some
times startles the amateur thinker in the
ranks of the reformers themselves; but
give it out as an undeniable truth that,
under the present competitive system,
the inventions of this great century
have been curse to the producing
people, and investigation will prove the
correctness of the declaration. Under a
cooperative system everything which
would tend to tighten the exhaustive
ness of toll and increase the power to
produce would prove blessing to hu-
humanity at large.
There are scores of instances to be
cited showing that the condition of the
producer is steadily and rapidly growing
worse, and everybody but he seems to
fully realize it, though the majority
of those who record passing events try
to mislead him.
Now, with these facts before you; with
the knowledge that next year will find
you in more deplorable condition than
you are now; that each revolution of
the planet sinks you lower and lower,
will you continue to stand aloof with
folded hands and not make one effort to
save your posterity, if not yourself, from
absolute slavery7
Hesitate as You may, blindly ignore
the truths of the present and the proph-
ecies of the future as long as you will,
the struggle is coming. Human endur-
ance can hold out but little longer. Call
me Crank anarchist" what you will,
I tell you now, as would if it were the
last utterance of my life, the question of
one class usurping the power to rule over
another, to rob and starye it, will have
to be fought out, and that before the
world is many years older. No words of
mine can hasten or delay the final strug-
gle. 1t must come in the natural order
of things, and, fellow-laborers, 1t is your
duty to prepare to meet the, inevitable.
This is no time for talk, it is the hour for
work, quick, decisive work; but II you
want proof of what is stated in this arti-
Gle, you have but to look around you
with unprejudiced and clear, sight, and
you will find it sbundantly. !