Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1901-12-27

as CIVILIZATION anu mOIS HiuSouS '""" '"N
slavers of the sons of Ham.
It is not single race, but all races. Wives
and children may not be sold and separated
from parents and husbands, as under the ola
form Of oppression, but wives and children may
60 hungry or die IN attics ana cellars ike
plague-stricken rats
A solitary figure here and there may rise
above their environment, but the mass OF
workers are as surely held to life OF toll and
priyation as if they were sons OF Ham, on
Southern plantation in that bad old day of
Satan when Southern postmasters chucked anti
slavery literature into waste-baskets, and mobs
murdered anti-slavery editors of newspapers.
Wrong meets its new foe with the old weapon
of force. We are now on the skirmish line OF
iniunctions and the exercise of unlawful author
ity by petty tools of long heads and wicked
hands. The opposition will become stronger
and more bitter as the battle for truth and right
wins new adherents, when more people shake
off cowardice of not being free.
Of the several remedies for wage slavery,
Socialism offers the best; or, as see the situa-
tion, Socialism offers the only permanent RENE
dy for wage slavery. All other remedies are
only panaceas. The best argument have to
offer is that the enemy is not making serious
war on any other reform movement. think 1t
was Grant who said he always did what the
enemy did not want done The old slaveocrat
hated the Abolitionist. The Whig was good
fellow, and so was the Douglass Democrat.
To-day, the gold Democrat is a 'bully" fellow.
Bryanism must be headed off and cooperation
of the masses must be suppressed at all hazards.
Cooperation OF all the people will as surely set
the wage slave free as that Lincoln's proclama-
ton, backed by Grants armies, set free the
sons of Ham.
Socialism tells what it will do by what it is,
and it is feared and hated because it invites
the harmonious working together of all classes
of useful people.
The enemy is never dull of apprehension.
The Abolitionist proposed to place black and
white races on an equality only as TO the oppor-
tunity to gain living and be happy. What
hurt the slave holder in the tenderest spot was
the prospect of work at some useful calling.
He would have given up the pleasure of whip
ping slave if only he could have had money
without working for it-money to buy whisky,
run horses and gamble; money for fine build
ings and the fat of the land in food and rain ent
And power-poitical power The lords of the
plantation would also be the lords of the gov
ernment.
Possibly the wage lord would be willing to
WOIK. ne uOtS WOIk. Long hSduS ouu iohS
hands water stock and collect dividends; bar
competition from foreigners in high tariffs; buy
city councils and state Legislatures; influence
courts and constituencies newspaper men; cor
ner farm products; set the price OF labor to the
employe and the price of products to the con-
sumers; control the volume of currency, and so
dodge taxes as to leave the larger share of
taxes to be paid by poor men.
In the old slaveocrat, the refinement of cruelty
was reached when the back of the slave was
gashed with whips. The modern lord is in
barbaric evidence when the strike is on. To
beat strike for higher wages, knowing that
strikes bring untold misery to babes in their
cradles and decrepit old age, say nothing about
the other ages involved in strikes, is, to say the
least, refinement Of cruelty never exercised
by the old slaveocrat, not even when he was
ex-pirate, as was Segree, of Uncle Toms
Cabin.
Our modern lord wants power Che openly
avows his ambition )-power to starve people;
power to run the government; power to bind
men to the modern chariot of commefcialism