American railroads, mines, and factories exploit, cripple and kill
American laborers on an even larger scale than the British ones. We have
even less laws for the protection of the workers and their children and
what we have are not so well enforced.
No one will deny the ability of America to feed herself. She feeds the
world to-day save that some American workers and their families are
rather poorly fed. The great problem with American capitalists is how to
get rid of the wealth produced and given to them by American laborers.
Where Liberal and Conservative parties are mentioned every American
reader will find himself unconsciously substituting Democratic and
Republican.
It will do the average American good to "see himself as others see him"
and to know that manhood suffrage, freedom from established Church and
Republican institutions do not prevent his becoming an economic slave
and living in a slum.
But we fear that some American readers will be shrewd enough to call
attention to the fact that municipal ownership has not abolished, or to
any great extent improved the slums of London, Glasgow and Birmingham.
It is certain some of the thousands of German laborers who are living in
America would be quick to point out that although Bismark has
nationalized the railroads and telegraphs of Germany this has not
altered the fact of the exploitation of German workingmen. Worst of
all, it would be hard to explain to the multitude of Russian exiles now
living in America that they would have been better off had they remained
at home, because the Czar has made more industries government property
than belong to any other nation in the world.
Even native Americans would find it somewhat hard to understand how
matters would be improved by transferring the ownership of the coal
mines, for example, from a Hanna-controlled corporation to a
Hanna-directed government. There would be one or two different links in
the chain of connection uniting Hanna to the mines and the miners but
they would be as well forged and as capable of holding the laborer in
slavery as the present ones.
Happily the chapter on "Why the old Parties will not do" gives us a clue
to the way out. While the government is controlled by capitalist parties
government ownership of industries does little more than simplify the
process of reorganization to be performed when a real labor party shall
gain control. The victory of such a party will for the first time mean
that government-owned industries will be owned and controlled by all the
workers (who will also be all the people, since idlers will have
disappeared).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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