Twentieth Century Socialism Part 36

CAPITALIST REFORM FUTILE

The Congress of the United States has shown its contempt for the interests of labor as plainly and unmistakably as have the other branches of government. The laws for which the labor organizations have continually pet.i.tioned have failed to pa.s.s. Laws ostensibly enacted for the benefit of labor have been distorted against labor.

The working cla.s.s of the United States cannot expect any remedy for its wrongs from the present ruling cla.s.s or from the dominant parties. So long as a small number of individuals are permitted to control the sources of the nation's wealth for their private profit in compet.i.tion with each other and for the exploitation of their fellow men, industrial depressions are bound to occur at certain intervals.

No currency reforms or other legislative measures proposed by capitalist reformers can avail against these fatal results of utter anarchy in production.

Individual compet.i.tion leads inevitably to combinations and trusts. No amount of government regulation, or of publicity, or of restrictive legislation will arrest the natural course of modern industrial development.

While our courts, legislatures and executive offices remain in the hands of the ruling cla.s.ses and their agents, the government will be used in the interest of these cla.s.ses as against the toilers.

OLD PARTIES REPRESENT CLa.s.s RULE

Political parties are but the expression of economic cla.s.s interests.

The Republican, the Democratic, and the so-called 'Independence'

parties and all parties other than the Socialist Party, are financed, directed and controlled by the representatives of different groups of the ruling cla.s.s.

In the maintenance of cla.s.s government both the Democratic and Republican parties have been equally guilty. The Republican party has had control of the national government and has been directly and actively responsible for these wrongs. The Democratic party, while saved from direct responsibility by its political impotence, has shown itself equally subservient to the aims of the capitalist cla.s.s whenever and wherever it has been in power. The old chattel-slave-owning aristocracy of the South, which was the backbone of the Democratic party, has been supplanted by a child-slave plutocracy. In the great cities of our country the Democratic party is allied with the criminal element of the slums as the Republican party is allied with the predatory criminals of the palace in maintaining the interests of the possessing cla.s.s.

TEMPORARY MEASURES DEMANDED

The various "reform" movements and parties which have sprung up within recent years are but the clumsy expression of widespread popular discontent. They are not based on an intelligent understanding of the historical development of civilization and of the economic and political needs of our time. They are bound to perish, as the numerous middle-cla.s.s reform movements of the past have perished.

As measures calculated to strengthen the working cla.s.s in its fight for the realization of this ultimate aim, and to increase its power of resistance against capitalist oppression, we advocate and pledge ourselves and our elected officers to the following program:

GENERAL DEMANDS

1. The immediate government relief for the unemployed workers, by building schools, by reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, by reclamation of arid tracts, and the building of ca.n.a.ls, and by extending all other useful public works. All persons employed on such works shall be employed directly by the government under an eight-hour workday and at the prevailing union wages. The government shall also loan money to States and munic.i.p.alities without interest for the purpose of carrying on public works. It shall contribute to the funds of labor organizations for the purpose of a.s.sisting their unemployed members, and shall take such other measures within its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist cla.s.s.

2. The collective owners.h.i.+p of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, steams.h.i.+p lines and all other means of social transportation and communication and all land.[229]

3. The collective owners.h.i.+p of all industries which are organized on a national scale and in which compet.i.tion has virtually ceased to exist.

4. The extension of the public domain to include mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power.

5. That occupancy and use of land be the sole t.i.tle to possession. The scientific reforestation of timber lands and the reclamation of swamp lands. The land so reforested or reclaimed to be permanently retained as a part of the public domain.

6. The absolute freedom of press, speech and a.s.semblage.

INDUSTRIAL DEMANDS

7. The improvement of the industrial conditions of the workers:

(_a_) By shortening the workday in keeping with the increased productiveness of machinery.

(_b_) By securing to every worker a rest period of not less than a day and a half in each week.

(_c_) By securing a more effective inspection of workshops and factories.

(_d_) By forbidding the employment of children under sixteen years of age.

(_e_) By forbidding the interstate transportation of the products of child labor, of convict labor and of all uninspected factories.

(_f_) By abolis.h.i.+ng official charity and subst.i.tuting in its place compulsory insurance against unemployment, illness, accidents, invalidism, old age, and death.

POLITICAL DEMANDS

8. The extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in proportion to the amount of the bequests and to nearness of kin.

9. A graduated income tax.

10. Unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and women, and we pledge ourselves to engage in an active campaign in that direction.

11. The initiative and referendum, proportional representation and the right of recall.

12. The abolition of the Senate.

13. The abolition of the power usurped by the Supreme Court of the United States to pa.s.s upon the const.i.tutionality of legislation enacted by Congress. National laws to be repealed or abrogated only by act of Congress or by a referendum of the whole people.

14. That the const.i.tution be made amendable by majority vote.

15. The enactment of further measures for general education and for the conservation of health. The Bureau of Education to be made a department. The creation of a Department of Public Health.

16. The separation of the present Bureau of Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor, and the establishment of a Department of Labor.

17. That all judges be elected by the people for short terms, and that the power to issue injunctions shall be curbed by immediate legislation.

18. The free administration of justice.

Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government, in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of industry, and thus come to their rightful inheritance.

FOOTNOTES:

[229] By a referendum vote of the entire members.h.i.+p of the Socialist party in 1909 these three words, "and all land," were stricken out of the Socialist platform.

II

DR. L. EMMETT HOLT

All who practice medicine among children and who study the question of infant mortality statistically are struck with the marked contrast between the death rate of the children of the poor and those of the rich. Clay estimates that in England in the aristocratic families the mortality of the first year is 10 per cent; in the middle cla.s.s, 21 per cent; in the laboring cla.s.ses, 32 per cent. This difference in the infant mortality of the various cla.s.ses is most striking in the case of acute intestinal disease. Halle states that of 170 deaths from this cause investigated in Graz in 1903 and 1904 there were 161 among the poor, 9 among the well-to-do, and none among the rich. It may not be true in adult life, but _in infancy money may purchase not only health, it may purchase life_, since it puts at the disposal of the infant the utmost resources of science, the best advice, the best food and the best surroundings for the individual child. To relieve, or even greatly to diminish, infant mortality these basal conditions of modern city life--poverty and ignorance--must be attacked.