Los Angeles herald., 1906-09-25
.LIKENS SYSTEM
TO CANN| |BAL|SM
SPEAKER DIGS INTO MUSTY
HISTORY
Socialists Applaud Extravaeant Ut
terances of Little Man With Biz
Head-Rants bout the
"CIass Conflict"

For more than two hours Walter
Thomas Mills, the famous Socialist agi-
tatOr, held forth in Simpson auditorium
last night. While not so heated in his
denunciation of the present system of
society as the average Socialist ranter.
he seemed to satisfy the gathering,
composed largely of Socialists. The ap-
plause was frequent and prolonged,
and even that part of the audience
that had come simply to hear an un-
usual speaker seemed affected by the
deep-toned earnestness of the little
man.
All through his speech he insisted
that there is a class war in society
and seemed unable to see any mutual
interest in the relations of labor and
capital. Mills acquitted both parties
to this war of all responsibility for it's
development. "The workers did not
did not make it. The unions did not
make it, but it made the unions. Arm
les do not make war, but war makes
armies. This industrial war has made
the unions, the Citizens Alliance and
the other organizations on that side
of this horrible and cruel Industrial
war. We inherited it from the past,
and we are not to blame for 1t, but
you have a chance to end it, and if
they will damn you.''
Takes Pessimistic View
From our prospective condemnation
by future children the speaker reverted
to the distant past, to an age ten
thousand years gone, an age of gem
eral cannibalism and savage wars of
determination which he found almost
as terrible as our present day Of mar
ri In
speaker told of how the conqueror in
savage conflict found that he could
get more food by making his van
quished enemy work than by using
him for food at once. And so began
the slave system.
He declared that soldiers never have
existed very long except where there
were slaves. EVERY man who works
does his work in the flickering, glar-
ing light of the gatling gun" This
was one of many exaggerated state
ments heartily applauded by large
part of the audience.
Government by injunction and the
bayonet," the agitator went on, "has
become the fixed policy of the employ
ing class"
From the attitude of the employers,
as he saw it, the speaker reverted to
the condition of the employe, taking
a bNtit'hiS uilSSiAN SiANiOAioi anu PCoSl-
mistic view
1.-The workers are the hired servants
of a hired boss. ana the only way that
boss can hold his job at a salary say
of $4,000 a year is to work the men
under him harder and faster than any
other man that could be got for the
same salary could drive them. Your
child may be forced to work for wages
day after tomorrow. to become the
hired servant of a hired boss, a boss
who can hold his job only by grinding
the life out of your child to satisfy the
stockholders in the company that en-
ploys him."
For a long time Mills clung to the
frightful conditions he pictured labor
working under, and then proceeded to
explain something of what he believed
should be done to remedy all this.
1T is impossible for conflict of in
terests to exist in society and indus
trial war not exist. The war can be
ended only by community Of interests,
a system Of society in which an injury
to one is an injury to all, where benefit
to one is benefit to all, where co-opera-
tion arises"
Tonight Mills will speak again in
Simpson auditorium, and the subject
selected is suggestive. "The Reply to
Bryan" is to be delivered, and it is
manifest that Walter Thomas Mills
has no faith in the program Of the
boy orator of the Platte.