Year: 1869

l VIM ihpoT hoI seCuTe 10 tneluSelSeS our
products in boundless profusion, whilst
those who toll hardest cannot, in many
trades, by constant work, obtain either
proper or sufficient food for their families
and themselves, or decent and wholesome
shelter for the same in our cities and bad
as this state of things is, it is proposed to
make it still worse and by the introduction
OF the coolie serfs to still further grind the
faces of the toilers of this community-a
people so base that in California, where
they are known, all parties, by common
| consent, have in their political platforms
condemned them as totally unworthy of
being made citizens of the United States.
But how can this organized system of
| plundcr be overthrown? We answer: 1t is
by the establishment Of the principles laid
down in our platform. The villainous land
system which we have condemned OF Chi
cago stands in our way, and must be
removed. We must secure the crop to the
hands that raise it, and abolish the tolls
collected by landlords on our food, shelter,
and clothing, for looking on and seeing
others work. We must overthrow the pre-
sent iniquitous money system, and provide
one consonant with the Constitution of the
United States. We must establish the prin-
ciple that the traficker is the servant of the
producer, and not his master, and restrict
by law the gains of all distributors, both of
men and goods. The dignity Of labor has
been asserted by politicians it is for us to
proclaim and secure the. dignity of the
laborer by asserting his prior right to oil
the productions of his toll.


Nothing is more certain than that if we
wish to preserve our republic in its sim
plicity we must make it hot for the knaves
and idlers the British villainous money and
land systems are constantly creating
amongst us. We must advance upon our
democratic educational system, which
claims for all the children of the soil an
equal intellectual chance in life by over
turning the old Norman laws of inhe-
ritance we have imported from Great
Britain, and demanding that something
like material equality shall also be insti-
tutcd amongst us to benefit our descendants.
| Otherwise, money scrfdom will infallibly
| be the lot of hundreds of thousands of the
children of the present generation, and our
present democratic form of government will
| lapse into the mcanest kind of aristocracy-
viz, an aristocracy Of money.


|


In order to effect these changes in land, ,
money, and law, it will be necessary for us
! to collect and organize the entire army of
those who labor. From our Union none
ought to be excluded who can, by their SER
vices to mankind, show n proper title for
admission. The doors must open to all who
can rightly prove that they arc laborers.
| This is not only justice on our part, but the
wisest policy.


We have big job before US. 1t is no.
thing less than to capture Washington-not
with bullets, but with ballots, in 1872.
Whilst we do not propose to draft any
workingman, We propose to accept and en-
courage volunteers to fill up. our ranks.
For four years our standard has joatcd on
the breeze, and our pickcts have already
planted the eight-hour flag on the White
| House at Washington. Our cause resting
on Justice, we cannot eventually be defeated,
but our action in this Congress may tend to
secure its early success. Let us, then,
brethren, bend to the work with willing
minds and cheerful hearts, ready to bear
with one another's intirmitics, and willing
to surrender our individual theories when
they arc Judged incompatible with the gene
raj good.


AN APPEAL TO OPPONENTS.


We would also appeal even to our oppo-
ncnts, and ask of them if there arc not
causes justifying us in the course we are
pursuing. Things cannot much longer go
on as they are. The alarming advance Of
crime in our cities, now commencing to
threaten their dcpopulation, the great and
rapid increase Of paupcrism and misery,
which we attribute to the depression OF
wages, and the legal dcirauding Of the Ia
borers of the community, are rendering
life in them as precarious to the wealthy as
it is distastcful to the poor. 1t is no Won
der, then, that we find in our ranks some
right thinking employers who believe with
us that of ali classes of men workingmcn
have the first and best right to healthy
human existence in the nation.


In conclusion, let us bend ourselves to
our work heartily, chcerily, and with q
will. Our brethren in Europe are at work
also. We ought to be well represented in
their Congress at Basle: The revolution
we arc now engaged in is the revolution Of
the ages. In advancing the general good 1t
will surpass all that has gone before it in
history. 1t is ono which, when secured
land it must be securely, will confer on
those who now oppose us benefits as great
as those which We shall obtain for our
selves it is one whose success we can, with
clear consciences and cheerful hearts, call
upon the great laborer to sanction and
bless and one whose contamination will
confer untold benefits On ourselves, our
children, and on mankind.