The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-07-26
BY ROBERT MINOR


then seizes the enemy's possessions
WEAPONS, clothing, food and woman.
In modern times we read of muir
derous" crimes that are more refined.
A foot-pad shoots a wayfarer for pos
session of green paper money; the
money will buy food, clothing, and
woman. Still more refined: Two
guided youths of Chicago crush the
skull of twelve-year-old boy-for the
psychological interest of the exper
ience-since they have no want of
food, clothing or woman. Yet, they
are killing to supply their peculiar
needs.
A trader in the New York poultry
market recently assembled group
of gunner; at his direction they shot
to death a rival merchant. The
poultry monopolist, by proxy, killed
a rival in order to obtain the market
from which he will make profit of
money; and with this he will buy food,
clothing, woman and power. This is
murder still more refined, more highly
organized, more complex. But it is
still in the realm of Murder. The
poultry merchant is a murderer, as
proven by the evidence found in his
squalid little office on the New York
river front.
The Mass-Murderer
In another part of New York, re-
specially removed from the water
front, is towering building of marble,
steel and stone, where sits another
contender for markets. This gentle
man deals, not in 75-cent chickens,
but in $75,O0O,OO0 stocks and bonds.
And he also murders to extend his
market and his profits. But all things
grow more complex as we go up in the
world, and this is the top of the world.
The stock-and-bond king is at the
head of an enormous hierarchy of
traders in steel, oil, cotton, coal, COP
per, grain and all the other como
dities from which profits can be made
with which to supply themselves not
merely with necessities but also with
power of colossal magnitude, and fame,
and the refined debaucheries. This
hierarchy has practically finished
with fighting among themselves for
monopoly of the home market and
for control of the factories, work
shops, mines and railroads, thru
which the wealth is created. The
victors in the home field are recog-
nized, the hierarchy established.
Thru control of the machinery of
production and distribution, this
hierarchy controls completely the life
of the entire American people. Upon
the backs of scores of millions Of wage
workers and working farmers this
hierarchy sits, creating nothing, but
taking from the toiling population all
that is created by their labor except
barely enough to sustain their life and
to keep them in capacity to work
and reproduce their kind.
The Complex System of "Gunmen."
To keep these toiling masses under
control, the oligarchs pool their in
terests in forming a central control
committee under the name of govern
ment," which creates an armed force,
not a ragged crew like the gunner of
the slum poultry market, but highly
disciplined troops and police.
With the products of the labor Of
the working population, the hierarchy
trades and gains its profits and its
power.
But the oligarchy must have always
wider and wider markets in order
to trade off the surplus products OF
the working masses for profit The
home market, even when fairly well
monopolized, is not sufficient to abb
SCRIBE the products of the home popu-
lation. The toilers who made the
products do not receive wages cover
ing the value of what they produced;
therefore they cannot purchase all
that they produced. The oligarchy
must find market outside Of the
home population.