The Labor enquirer., 1886-11-06

Con1nuatlon OF samuel flelQens great
speech before Judge Gary.
Fortunes are made, and l will tell you
how it is done, in Pickwickian wav.
The Chicago Tribune, In its New Years
issue of 1885, believe, drew attention
to the production of the means of hui
man use and necessity in the city of
Chicago during the previous year. 1t
carefully estimated the cost of the raw
material, the cast of machinery, the
rent of buildings, the interes of money,
and the wages paid to employees. 1t
went into different lines of production,
and, summing up, the result was this :
That in years time each man working
as a wage laborer in the city Of Chicago
had added to the ealth Of this city
by whomsoeyer it was possessed makes
no diferenceS2,674 in year. The av-
era2e wages paid for that average pro-
duct of each worker was $457-a little
more than one-si1th.
And yet the political economists of
the free trade and the protective schools
were asking: why is it that we have
overproduction ?" You compel a man
to ork and produce S2,764 worth of
goods and you give him $457 to buy
them with, and you ask: "Why is it
that we have overproduction ?" and why
is it that our warehouses are full of
goods and our workshops have to shut
up and our workmen are turned out on
the highway because there is nothing to
do. What is this tending to? Let me
show the change of condition as shown
in Boston in forty years. Charles
Dick ems, man of acute perceptions,
visited this country forty wears ago. and
he said that the sight of bsggar in the
streets of Boston at that time would
have created as much CONSERVATION as
the sight of an angel with a drawn
sword.
A Boston paper in the winter Of 1884 y
stated that there were some quarters in
Boston where to own a stove was to be a
comparative aristocrat. The poor p3o-
pie who lived in the neighbornood paid
a certain sum of money to rent the holes
on the TOD of the stove that belonged to
the arlstocrats You see the change. and
there is this comparative change to the
working classes of that city, and IN
every CITY in the Union. 1t is noted
fact that within the last twenty ofthlrty
wears the farms Of this country have
been gradually going out of the posses
sion of the actual cdltivators until to-day
there is little more than quarter of tn
actual cultiyators of farms IN this conn-
try who are renters; and within twenty
wears in the states of Iowa and Illinois
the mortgages on farms have increased
33 per cent. Is it not enough to make
any thinking man ask if there Is not
something wrong somewhere? Possibly
it would be an wered yes. A man has
night to inquire whether there Is some
thing wrong or not, but "for Gods sake
don't think that Socialism will do it any
good, or if YOU do we will hang you 1t
is all right to think, but we will punish
YOU for your conclusions"
Parsons in his testimony repeated
what he had said on the haymarket, on
the night of May 4, when he stated that
this was an American question, because
the patriotic tricksters who have been
telling the people to worship the Amer
lean flag while they quietly put their
hands in their pockets and robbed them
they have said that this is merely
European question. 1t is an American
Question, and the close contact OF na-
tions, cemented bv the facilities Of CIVIL
ization, is bringing all the questions that
effect one people to effect all over the
world What effects the European Ia
borer and his employer effects the Amer
lean laborer and the American en-
plover, and the relationship Is the same
between the two classes. In the winter
of lss4-5 .O20 American girls OF IA and
l6 were driven from their homes oV the
shutting down of the Connecticut Mills
and they were compelled to walk
through the bleak New Eogland hills
and find refuge in houses or haV-stacks'
and numbers Of them und"uotediY
found their way to lives of shame. ana
| say here and now that the man VINO
can look upon such conditions as these
and not know that society is bringing
itself to the verge of a crisis which is
terrible to think of is blind; and the
man who can look upon suffering ike
this and not feel stirred to do something
to change such conditions, has not got
ANYTHING In his heart but the heart o.
the tiger, hungry for his prev.
Inthis city of Chicago children are
working at very tender ages Golni
home one very cold night in the winter
of 1884, two little girls ran uD to me and
begged of me to 60 home with them.
asked them why. They said: "A man
down there has been offering us money
It was 2 O'Clock at night and showing
stod than where they had been
40 late. They said: ave have been
working in such a store" Children
babies turned out from their moth ers