The Washington socialist. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1914-1915, 1914-04-16
WIN THE SCHOOLS FOR THE
WORKING CLASS.

WOh hING CLASS.
The evolution of industry has so in
creased the productive powers of labor
that the worker now creates values far
In excess OF what he receives. Were
he to receive all that he produces the |
capitalist would cease to hire him, |
and the full product of the toll of the !
worker would be the property of the |
workers themselves.
II Is the business of the capitalist
class to eternally drive the worker to
ever greater productivity and to so
manage things that the product of this
endless effort on the part Of labor
|shall remain with the capitalist class
In his greed for greater gains the CAPT
tallst fights for low wages and long
hours He gets commissions to in
vestigate the actual necessities of the
working men and women so that he
may determine the more easily just
what Is the least that they can live
on and yet be efficient workers. It
Is all a matter of business with him.
But outside on the street, owing to
the lightning speed of modern indus
try there moves on weary limbs the
army of the unemployed. This ever
growing host, the hopeful, the crushed.
the young, the old, the male and the
female, is the reserve army of CAPT
talism. AS a recruit in the vast army
of despair, have felt keenly its degra-
dation. know at first hand its hun
ger pangs and its long nights of be-
numbing stupor out in the cold The
little that these workers live on is a
part of the insurance premium of cap
italsm. For when the workers on the
job try to get more Of what they pro-
duce or try to reduce the hours of
labor, a sign in the window brings in
swarms of privates from the army of
the unemployed. The places of the
workers who dreamed of lettering
their conditions are soon taken and
the mills of greed grind on relentless
ly.
Why the Workers Are Mentally Blind
SO vast has become the modern in
dustrial process and so intricate the
social arrangements that the working
class with its present brand Of edu-
cation, is dazcd in the presence of it's
own product. Taught to use the intel
lectual weapons of by-gone centuries
and to handle the machinery of today
is it any wonder that the right hand
does not always know what the left is
doing? Never permitted a real glimpse
of the industrial hell that awaits them
is it any wonder that the boys and
girls lose their bearing when they
leave the fools paradise of the school
room and go out into life? Trained to
think the thoughts that the bourgeoisie
wishes them to think they become not
only menace to themselves but to
the whole working class as we'll
Filled with the idea of "going into
business" the boy and girl go into the
factory to get start. There they find
the speeding up process awaiting
them. In some cases, as for instance
in the silk mills, they will find that
they will have to do more work for
less pay than was done twenty years
ago. In the railroad business, in the
stores, in almost every line of human
effort the nerve racking, soul destroy
ing speeding up process is the rage.
Inside the factory walls a feverish
race with power driven machinery,
outside a starving army of despair.
This is the fate of 80 per cent of the
workers who today are in school be-
ing filled with prejudices that will
blind them to their fate.
The bourgeoisie pedagogues tell us
that we should fit the children for
life. For what kind of life, my back
ward-looking friend? Is it not just
possible that we should devote some
time to the fitting of life to the chill
dren as well as fitting the children
for life? Besides can we claim that
binding children to the real facts of
life is fitting them to meet those
facts?
A Most Startling Fact
And the most startling fact of mod
ern life is the class war, a war that
RACES around the entire world between
the employing class and the working
class, a war as pitiless as death,
Kipling, the gifted genius, has seen it
in its horror; London has visualzed
! its grim horror in the Iron Heel. You
cannot pick up paper but there are
notes from the battle field pictures of
machine guns being used against the
strikers, shattered workingmen's resi-
dences, mine guards, detectives, mil
itiamen, thugs, or some other graphic