Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-02-22

the immediate object Of obtaining .
larger share in the larger product Of
modern industry, and with the ultimate
object of obtaining absolute, common,
undivided possession of the whole ma
chinery Of production. They plainly
saw that organization for the first
purpose must finally end in the over
throw of the wage system.
Such was Socialism at its birth, and
such to-day is still Socialism. Socialism
Is the labor movement and the labor
movement is Socialism. And any man
who advocates labor organization is,
consciously or unconsciousy, under this
or that name, a Socialist. His object is
to place the social powerful power, in
dustrial and political in the hands of the
wealth producers and such is precisely
the object of the man who, boldly calling
himself Socialist, proclaims the self
evident truth that this power, when at
last vested in its rightful owners, will
inevitably be used for the abolition Of
wagedom.
Now, it is customary to say that Social
ism in this country is a foreign import
alton. lnasmuch as the European race
itself, with its own wage system, is
foreign importation, that is truism.
The wage system is as inevitably pro-
ductive of Socialist thought and move.
ment, regardless of climate, latitude,
longitude, race, or color, as the applica.
ton of steam to motor is productive of
motion. But, fol the further inform.
alton of those VINO may not know it,
may state here that st. Simon, the
French founder IF modern Socialism,
was first induced to a study of social
problems by the radical utterances of
Thomas Jefferson and other founders Of
the American Republic, for the establish
ment of which he fought by the side of
Lafayette That the ideas which he form
ulated did not, until lately, impress
! themselves 80 universally upon the
American mind as they did at an earlier
period upon the European, is plainly
owing to the fact that the wage system
| itself was not, until lately, as extensive
here as in the Old World. The economic
conditions of the far West-as | have
already intimated-were for time
essentially favorable to alfanarchist,
half capitalist system of industrial life.
But, in the older States of the Union,
where the wage system had reached the
European stage of development, the
Socialist spirit was at work with no less
energy than in the most advanced
centers of thought and agitation on the
other side of the Atlantic.
shall, in this brief review, pass over
! the early attempts of labor to organize
for the purpose of obtaining some of the
benefits of machinery in the form of
shorter hours and higher pay; move
ments in which the Yankee girls of 1895
and subsequent years played prom
inent part. But, as early as 1929, a
workingmen's ticket was nominated in
New York upon platform from which
the following extracts are made:
Resolved, That the first approprja.
ton of the soil to private and exclusive
possession is eminently and barbarously
unjust;
" That it is substantially feudal in its
character, inasmuch as those who re-
ceive enormous possessions are lords, and
! those who receive little or nothing are
vassals;
THAT hereditary transmission of
wealth on one hand, and of poverty ON
the other, has brought down to the pres.
ent generation all the evils of the feudal
system; and that this, in our opinion,
is the primary source of all our calami-
! ties.
Was not this Socialism, pure and
simpler
Surely, at that time, ST. Simon was
unknown here; Proudhon had not is-
sued his formula, Property is Rob-
berry :" Louis Blanc's Reorganization of
Labor" did not exist Lassalle was four
years old, and Karl Marks Capital
could not yet be criticized by Gunton.
And, by the way, what of George7
Where is he, what figure does he cut by
the side Of this declaration of principles,
issued by the workingmen of New York
in 1929?
On the first day Of the election the
workingmen's ticket was SO far ahead Of
all others that panic ensued among the
capitalists, who Immediately dropped
their political differences and united on
one set of "boodlers.' Then, as in 1886.
society was saved"
Twenty years passed, curing which a
number of trade unions were established
and considerable agitation was carried
on for the shortening of the workday to
ten hours. Then came, in 1916, the New
England Workingmen's Association,
among the founders of which figured
those American thinkers who had been
strongly impressed by the intellectual
movement of France. | shall name few
of them: Wendell Phillips, William
Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, Albert
Brisbane and-I am sewy ID say--ths
renegade Chas. A. Dana. A constitu-
ton was adopted, the preamble of which
is suggestive:
Whereas we, the mechanics and
workingmen of New England, are con-
| WINGED by the sad experience of years