Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the SouthFortune, Timothy Thomas
History
Black and White: Land, Labor, and Politics in the South
Fortune, Timothy Thomas
African Americans -- Southern States; Southern States -- Economic conditions; United States -- Race relations
All over the land the voice of the masses is heard. Organizations in
their interests are multiplying like sands on the seashore. The
fierce, hoarse mutter of the starved and starving gives unmistakable
warning that America has entered upon that fierce conflict of
money-power and muscle-power which now shake to their very centers the
hoary-headed commonwealths of the old world. In _John Swintons Paper_
of a recent date I find the following editorial arraignment of the
present state of "Labor and Capital:"
The cries of the people against the oppressions of capital
and monopoly are heard all over the land; but the capitalist
and monopolist give them no heed, and go on their way more
relentlessly than ever. Congress is fully aware of the
condition of things; but you cannot get any bill through
there for the relief of the people. The coal lords of
Pennsylvania know how abject are the tens of thousands of
blackamoors of their mines; but they grind them without
mercy, and cut their days' wages again whenever they squeal.
Jay Gould knows of the wide-spread ruin he has wrought in
piling up his hundred millions; but he drives along faster
than ever in his routine of plunder. The factory Christians
of Fall River see their thousands of poor spinners
struggling for the bread of life amid the whirl of
machinery: but they order reduction after reduction in the
rate of wages, though the veins of the corporations are
swollen to congestion. The "Big Four" of Chicago, who corner
grain and provisions, and the capitalists here and elsewhere
who do the same thing, know well how the farmers suffer and
the tables of the poor are ravaged by their operations; but
they prosecute their work more extensively and recklessly
than ever. The railroad and telegraph corporations know
that, in putting on "all that the traffic will bear," they
are taking from this country more than the people can stand;
yet their only answer is that of the horseleech....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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