Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1900-10-12
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ter will drop no tear and spend no
money on his erstwhile slave. On
facts and premises like these he ar
gued that the condition of the wage
Garner, or rather wage slave, was
wholly bad. Workingmen must hasten
the overthrow of capitalism, as men,
ers. The benevolent or enterprising-
just as you choose to call it-wage
master, who provides his wage slave
with comfortable surroundings, or
even advances wages, is only a faddist
or shrewd schemer, who Is laying
up friendship for a day Of wrath. His
kindness or shrewdness in increasing
the dividend to labor proves nothing.
He may even be a curse in that he
hypnotizes his men and society into a
tolerance of that which is wholly bad.
This man / think fully believed what
he preached. l have found that a
surprisingly large number of his fell
lows believe the same as he does.
Another man, about the same age,
asked me what l thought of those
ideas, and then volunteered these
facts: a." said he, have worked
in a factory since was a boy. l
have no education except what l have
acquired in a general way at my
trade. l have had no better chance
than any other man in my trade. The
majority of the men in my trade have
no homes and are hard up. in five
years have bought and own two
homes"
He is homesteader and landlord.
This has come about not by inherit
ance, but by accumulation. He belongs
to very high-priced trade. He had
what he considered a good reason for
his comparative affluence, and the
want of so many of his equally high
priced co-employes. In the little viii
lage where he works there is one fac
tory, with 100 men. Dependent for
support on these hundred men are six
saloons. He claims that at low es-
innate these cost to run at least SIS
day. If they are run for profit.
and their profit is S. day, then we
have levy on the wages Of these hun
dred men of over 500 a day, or a dol
lar apiece. AS they, as rule, only
work about one-half the year, the tax
is 50 for each working day. 1t was
his theory that the wage Garner is
not compelled to pay that tax.
BY evading paying that tax, he had
acquired two homes. His trade is one
at which men are said to age very
rapidly. This man is forty-one.
would not have guessed him to be over
thirty-three. He is not third party
man. At least he did not so reveal
himself. And l think he wore an
old party badge. His interest and
arugment was purely economic, not
ethical or political. He believes from
his standpoint as wage Garner, that
the real wage slavery is the slavery
to conviviality; the real master is not
the man behind the Office desk, but
the man behind the bar. He believes
with DR.. Hale, that his church alone
could take care of all the poverty in
Boston-not caused directly or indi-
rectly by drink.
These are the arguments of two
schools of thought among American
workingmen. One points to the
squalid tenement houses where fellows
exist, to the army Of tramps in the
times of depression, and to the pau
pers' grave at the end of the journey.
The other points to his cozy home ac-
quired during period covering three
years of depression and two of pros
perity. If the first man is right trade
unions ought to train up generation
Of economic John the Baptists to
preach the overthrow Of the old social
dispensation and usher in the new
day. If the latter is true, the trade
unions ought by every instinct of self
preservation and fraternity to break
bonds that bind men to the bar and
bring them to the gutter, and their
families to the township trustee.