Oh, that all the workers of Chicago would back up the teamsters and garment workers by throwing down their tools and quitting work! Twenty-four hours of such a strike would bring the masters to their knees. But they have too many unions and too many leaders for this, and so they must fight it out to the bitter end. In the meantime the evolution of the injunction is making for Socialism. Nothing more clearly shows that the labor question is also a political question and that to conquer their exploiters the working class must build up the Socialist party and capture the powers of government. What’s the Matter with Chicago? _Chicago Socialist, October 25, 1902_ For some days William E. Curtis, the far-famed correspondent of the Chicago _Record-Herald_, has been pressing the above inquiry upon representative people of all classes with a view to throwing all possible light upon that vexed subject. The inquiry is in such general terms and takes such wide scope that anything like a comprehensive answer would fill a book without exhausting the subject, while a review of the “interviews” would embrace the whole gamut of absurdity and folly and produce a library of comedy and tragedy. Not one of the replies I have seen has sufficient merit to be printed in a paper read by grown folks, and those that purport to come from leaders of labor and representatives of the working class take the prize in what would appear to be a competitive contest for progressive asininity. The leader, so-called, who puts it upon record in a capitalist paper and gives the libel the widest circulation, that Chicago is alright, so far as the workers are concerned, that they have plenty and are prosperous and happy, is as fit to lead the working class as is a wolf to guide a flock of spring lambs. It is from the wage worker’s point of view that I shall attempt an answer to the question propounded by Mr. Curtis, and in dealing with the subject I shall be as candid as may be expected from a Socialist agitator. The question is opportune at this season, when the “frost is on the pumpkin,” and the ballot is soon to decide to what extent the people really know “What is the matter with Chicago.” First of all, Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like all other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation. The Illinois Central Railroad Company selected the site upon which the city is built and this consisted of a vast miasmatic swamp far better suited to mosquito culture than for human beings. From the day the site was chosen by (and of course in the interest of all) said railway company, everything that entered into the building of the town and the development of the city was determined purely from profit considerations and without the remotest concern for the health and comfort of the human beings who were to live there, especially those who had to do all the labor and produce all the wealth.