Montana news. [volume] (Lewistown, Mont.) 1904-191?, 1905-10-18


to life in the womb of feudalism and
sprang from the medieval system.
Within the span of two centuries
this system has practically reached
the climax of its development, and
the marvellous material progress of
that period exceeds the achieve
ments of all the centuries since the
slaves of Pharaoh built the pyra-
mids.
The rapid Capitalization of cap
ital and the extensive cooperation
of labor mark the high state of
economic development. Indivi-
dual initiative and competitive eff
forts are becoming less and less
possible. The day of small pro-
duction has passed never to return.
Notwithstanding all outcry, trust
and department stores, these great
modern agencies, increase in num-
Der and power. They are the in
evitable outgrowth of the competi-
tive system. The efforts of the
small capitalists to destroy trusts
will prove as fruitless as the efforts
of the workingman to destroy labor
saving machines when first intro
duced in the last century.
Socialists take the ground that
the trust in itself is not an evil. that
the evil lies wholly in the private
ownership and they propose to trans
fer such agencies from private hands
to the COLLECTIVELY, to be managed
and operated for the good of all.
In the last century millions of
workers were exploited of the fruit
of their labor under the institution
of chattel slavery. Work, being
done by hand, ownership of the
slave was a condition necessary to
his exploitation. But chattel slav-
cry disappeared before the march
of industrial evolution, and today
would be an economic impossible
ity. 1t is no longer necessary to
own the body of the workingman
in order to appropriate the fruit of
his labor; it is only necessary to
own the tool with which he works,
and without which he is helpless.
This tool in its modern form is a
vast machine which he cannot af-
ford to buy, and against which the
worker cannot compete with his
bare hands, and in the very nature
of the situation he is at the mercy
of the owner of the machine, his
employment is precarious, and his
very life is suspended by thread.
Then again, the factory and mine
are operated for profit only and the
owner can, and often does, close it
down at will, throwing hundreds,
perhaps thousands, out of employ
ment, who with their families are
as helpless as if in the desert wastes
of Sahara.
The few who own the machines
do not use them. The many who
use them do not own them. The
few who own them are enabled to
exploit the many who use them;
hence few millionaires and many
mendicants, extreme opulence and
abject poverty, princely palaces
and hideous huts, riotous extrava-
gance and haggard want, constitu-
ting social scenes sickening to con-
template, and in the presence of
which the master hand of Hugo
or Dickens is palsied and has no
mission.
The Socialist party is organizing
in every village and hamlet, every
town and city of every state and
territory of the union. 1t is appeal
ing to the people. 1t will neither
fuse or compromise. 1t proposes
to press forward, step by step, until
il conquers the political power and
secures control of government.
This will mark the end of the
capitalist system. The factories
and mill and mines, and railroads
and telegraph and telephone, and