Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1891-01-31
SOCIALIST AGITATION IN NEW
YORK CITY.
IL, &, Wiltshire Addresses Mass Meet
ing In the XVII. Assembly District
Competition Has Committed suicide.

/
II. q. Wiltshire spoke at the agitation
meeting held in the 11th New York As.
sembly District last Thursday, AS fol
| lows.
"The chief point for Socialists to hold
to view in presenting the principles
of Socialism to the unconverted is the
pructicubiHty of national cooperation.
The ethics of Socialism are so palpable
that it is almost wasting time TO discuss
them. All will admit that it would be
an eminenty just social system that
would give to every toiler the whole
product of his labor.
The ground that the opponents of
socialism rest their arguments upon. is
either the imposslbllity or the undeslr-
ability of substituting cooperation for
competition in the production of oommo-
| dities.
"As to the first objection it is best
answered by an examination of the
methods now in use by those who con-
troll the machinery of production.
"For instance consider the production
of flour; for certainly if bread is the
staff of life and if we discover that flour
is manufactured no longer comparatively
but co operatively, then we have at
least demonstrated the practlcabillty
of the production of one of the
chief necessities of life without the
assistance of competition. On invesu-
cation we shall find that very great
part of flour sold in this city and in fact
throughout the United States is ground
at the Plttsburg mills, in Minneapolis;
that Mr.. Pilsbury, backed by English
capital, not only controls the great ma
jority of the flour mills in the Northwest
brit thai he also owns the wheat eleva
tors and the water power; that he sells
to the retailers -four at certain fixed
price and requires them to sign con-
tract agreeing to retail the flour at
certain advance on the Pillsbury price.
Thus does the Pllsbury flour syndi-
cate not only dictate to farmers as to the
price of wheat through their control OF
the elevators and warehouses, but they
practically take away that Wanted
pearl of great value, individuality,
from the corner grocery man and make
him simply an agent to distribute flour
rather than free Robin Hood of com.
MERGE who can buy and sell at prices
made by himself as a free agent.
1--WE therefore see that Plllsbury, the
man best qualified to judge as to the
practicability of the elimination of com
petition in the production of flour, has
most positively decided in the affirm
alive.
after considering bread we must ma
turaly consider meat as the next prime
necessity. No one need 90 into any
elaborate discussion of the practicability
of Mr.. Phillip Armour, of Chicago, run.
ming his business without the famed
spur of competition. Has not the Armour
beef combination absolute control Of
the field and is there the remotest pros
pect that competition will ever again be
re.established in the dressed beef bust
ness?
THE next prime necessity would be
sugar and we find monopoly again
triumphant and so on down the list of
articles that constitute the bulk of the
prime necessities of existence. And
wherever monopoly is in control we
find competition dead and buried beyond
the hope of resurrection.
THE practicability of doing away with
competition needs no theoretical de.
monstration when we can find so many
practical examples. To-day the problem
that confronts the bourgeoisie and their
political hrelings, their Shermans
Blalnes and Clevelands, is not How to
stite competition" but How to keep
competition alive" Hence their absurd
antitrust laws and the like.
LAS to the desirability Of doing away
with competition; at present the people
have really nothing to do with the decl-
sion. Rockefeller, Armour q Co. have
decided that they don't desire compet-
ton and therefore the fiat is that com
petition is undesirable. But in reality
the consumers are benefited by the
many savings of consolidation and the
loud squeals that are heard against
trusts come mainly from the " eak ones
of the bourgeOisie, who are being
squeezed into the ranks of the prole-
tariat because they are unable to com.
pete with their more powerful pluto
cratic rivals.
With competition dead already in at
least half our industries and dying in
the other half we cannot but see the
light breaking on the social horizon
which betokens the dawn of the new
era an era when poverty Will be I'M
known and men will be brothers. While
this change in inevitable and will come
about whether humanity wills it or not,
yet it is our duty to assist and to hasten
this evolution.
The Socialist Labor party is the only
party whose platform recognizes both
the inevitability and desirability of the
advent of socialism, it is the party that
you are called upon to support by every
motive that justice, philanthropy and
generosity can summon
NATIONALIST CLUB NO. 3.