The representative. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1893-1901, 1895-12-11

to us: ''If you can vote public bonds
and public streets and public rights
to private citizens for private profit
can you not vote the same to the pub
lie for public railroads. telegraphs,
telephones, street cars, gas companies
for public profit? Are not the Ameri-
cans as able to do these things as the
English, Germans, French. Swiss,
Russians, and Italians? Washington
would say the corporation would have
no right to complain Of public compe-
tition. DO not they and their prOfes-
sors Of political economy tell us con-
tinually that competition is the life
of trade, and since self-interest is the
law OF life has not the public a self
Interest Of its Own and a eight TO use
it? Your votes elect judges who rule
that strike must by its nature be
violent, and that the workingmen
who order a strike are therefore re-
sponsible for any violence that comes
with it. Why not use your votes by
way of change to elect judges who will
go one step nearer the cause Of the
violence and rule that the capitalist
who cOmpelS his men to strike by cut.
ting them down below a living wage
is responsible for the violence that
comes with the strike and is an access
sorry before the fact to whatever may
happen. [Applause.] How would it
do to elect Judges who would issue in
functions against mOnOpOlstS who
strike, locking up their tanneries or
match factories or sugar refineries or
coal mines to Great famine and make
the people pay famine prices? You
have been electing judges-it is your
votes have done it every time-to kill
the sweatshop, truck store. child-la-
Dor laws, because contrary, these
judges say, to the sacred liberty Of
contract.
There is another end to this poker.
You could, il you would, elect judges
would hold that all contracts made
between employers and employed un-
der the compulSion of starvation are
void, and that the wealth. SO extract
ed must be refunded because the con-
tract was not free. There can come
to the bench any day you choose to
elect them judges who can declare
void all the sale OF monopoly coal. oil,
salt, lumber, iron, at monopoly prices,
and can order the wealth returned to
its real owners-the peOple-because
taken from them by a holdup. You
have been electing judges who have
defeated your attempt to control the
corporations, because they held that
their charters were contracts. When
you elect the right man for attorney
general he will read to you out Of his
Law books that that poker, too, has
two ends, and if you will elect peoples
men judges, he will go before them
and have nine out of ten of these
charters forfeited because the con-
tract has been broken. Nine out Of
every ten gas companies, street rail
ways, steam railroads in the United
Of legal forfeiture hanging over them.
They have done what they ought not
to have done, and left undone the
things which they should have done.
Some wonderful Justice will be done
when the people come in.
AN ENCOURAGING EVENT.
This reception of Debs is the most
encouraging thing that has happened
yet in the labor movement in Amer
ica, and the labor movement is
great, world wide uprising OF the peo-
ple-thc greatest in history. Long
another rise of the people-rising to
esta aolish liberty, fraternity and
equality as the law of industry, as
they already made them the law Of
the republic. The labor movement is
the third great historical crisis of De-
mocracy. The frs t abolished the al
tar monopolist, the second abolished
the throne monopOlist, the third will.
abolish the money-bag mOnopolist.
The first made men equal as brothers
by the fatherhood Of all humanity, the
second made them equal as fellow
citizens, the third. the labor move
ment. will make them equal as CO.
workers in comparative industry, of
all by all for all. This labor move
ment is grand whole, Of which the
social settlements like Hull house in
Chicago and Toynbee hall in Lon don,
the trades union movement, the mu-
nicipalization of larger monopolies in
the cities, the naturalization Of
larger monopolies by the country at
large, labor legislation. the co-opera-
tive movement, the farmers oranges,
are but parts.