The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-02-25
Washington Has Come to Personify
the American Republic" Pres. Coolidge

property. These will combine. I'M
der the influence of their common
situation, in which case the rights
of public property and the public
liberty will not be safe in their
hands.
THE purpose of the convention
4 over which Washington presided
was as stated above-to entrench the
colonial capitalists and landlords so
strongly that they could not be dis
lodged by popular protest and revolt.
The purpose of the convention was
no more sinister than the methods
used to put over it's decision as the
law of the land.
The great majority of the popula-
ton was disfranchised. Property
qualifications were required for
voters and the requisite qualifications
were possessed only by the small
minority represented by the delegates
to the constitutional convention.
M cMASTER, in his book with
4V1 the Fathers" says:
OF the mass of unskilled labor
ers, men who dug bitches, carried
loads, or in harvest time helped
the farmer gather in his hay and
grain, 1t is safe to say that very
few, If any, in the course of their
lives cast vote.
The late Woodrow Wilson, in his
History of the American People"
states that:
There were probably not more
than 100000 men who had the right
to vote out of all the 100000 in
habitants enumerated in the first
census. (Taken in 1900
TT will be seen that approximately
L one person in thirty-three was al
lowed to vote on the Constitution.
The men, says Fisher in "Men, Wo-
men and Manners in Colonial Times, !"
averaged one vote to every four or
five persons and:
This disfranchised m jOrity,
which included from three-fourths
to fOur-fifths of the able-bodied
men of the colony, had no more
part or lot in the government than
the women and children.
Washington was one of the prin-
cipal beneficiaries of this condition.
MOT "the weight of his great
L Nname," as Coolidge says, but the
Acknowledgement of all but the colon
ial aristocracy and their hangers-on
together with the wholesale use of
fraud, bribery and corruption before
and during the voting on the consti-
tuition were the deciding factors Gin
securing its adoption by the states"
Washington has come to personify
the American Republic" says Coolidge
and, in view of the circumstances, we
see no reason why he is not entitled
to this dubious honor.
WARE in Pennsylvania, with his
v 100000 corruption fund, Smith
in Illinois with his campaign financed
by public utility magnate who
heads the open shop movement in
that state, Coolidge who fights the
farmers whose early prototypes were
plundered by Washington, Tammany
Hall with its servile smile for the
transit interests and police clubs for
striking mOtormen and needle trades
workers, Chicago with its elections
held in weller of blood and bribery
this is the republic of American
capitalism whose course was charted
by Washington.
n OOLIDGE makes Washington the
~ god of practical business and
practical business is robbing the
workers and farmers. For this rea-
son the Coolidge speech will meet the
approval Of all elements who are
sharing directly, or indirectly in the
distribution of the loot.
Our business as intelligent workers
is to show to our class the implica-
tons of the Coolidge speech and or.
ganize it for the purpose Of putting
an end to robbery which Washington,
as leader in the formation of the
state machinery of American capital
ism, believed in, justified and extend
ed while the ragged and starving VET
Grams of the American revolution
were deprived of all voice in deter
mining what the future form and
purpose of the American government
were to be.