Workmen's advocate., 1888-12-08

ha, Ina, ha, or protectlon-well, l should smile. As for the Govern ment interfering with private en- terprise, they had better try it, and they will soon find out on which side their bread is buttered; let the Gov ernment mind its own affairs, and not interfere with our capital in any manner we choose to use it. The essence of ownership is control, and if we can't control our own capital, the result of our ability, self-sacri- fee and toll, then it's time we had an emperor or dictator of our own selection.
 Edward-I cannot agree with you altogether, for 1 have the French Revolution and several other revolts of the same class in my mind. And if they have done it once they may do it agaln, if hard pressed. Now, what l propose to do, and think it far the safest way, is to issue large quantities of pamphlets and all sorts of literature, made up by our most able sophists, such as yourself, only you must be more discreet, and George, and several others. And then l will have an immense amount of statistics, that will positively prove just what we want, and then we can keep up the tariff boom, and 1t will make no difference to us which party is successful, for so long as we have control of all the means of production we make our own bargain, whatever comes. But l must admit that Henry deserves our eternal gratitude for the gener- alship he has displayed in quashing that incipient revolutionary move ment in New York. That's what l call grand strategy; why, he is a Napoleon the Great and Napoleon the Little combined. l tell you that is a grand scheme of his, the single land tax; it's so captivating and so plausible. and no one knows better than he how to present it with all its Vaccinations. Now, while he and our other agents are leading the people off on this wild goose chase, we can keep right on with our scheme of naturalization. We have got the railroads, we might say, already, and the telegraph and telephone and the oil wells, the mines, furnaces and rolling mills and manufactures will soon follow; and as soon as this has assumed the character of a national trust, we shall then have such immense re- sources and such concentration of administrative energy that we need fear no popular movement of any description, for those we cannot CO., cree we can bribe, and you know our system during the past century has been especially conducive to the for nation of the last named character istic. If it had not been, 1 do not know how we should have got con- trol of the Government machine. Now you will see what am aiming at; we must introduce the new ma chine gradually, and there is no need of antagonlzlng the trades unions or other organizations except those confounded socialists, and we can nulllfy thelr efforts through our control of the public press and such able lecturers as yourself, assisted by the Church. For the trades unions only ask for fair days pay for a fair days work, and for shorter hours, etc. So long as they do not take up the socialist program we are safe, for they do not deny that the price of labor is fixed by competi- ton, and with this new machine of ours we can regulate competition to suit the times. And they have never thought of questioning our right to use machinery to do all our work; as for short hours, well, we will be able to give them as few hours as they want, and before we get through you may he certain they will clamor for more instead of less hours. Why, l have figured it out that in the first five years we use this new machine we shall be able to re- duce the hours of each person we need to employ to 1850 per year, which will be an average of only five hours per day, and they can't kick against that as they are constantly agitating for short hours. And by