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The Ohio Wage Slave American Sovereigns (?), Freemen, and Voters Who Have Neither Homes, Work, or Money. Since my last report in the Alarm I have addressed several large mass-meetings of working people in the State of Ohio. Two mass-meetings were held in Canton on Friday and Saturday, February 5 and 6. Canton is a railroad center and manufacturing town of about 20,000 inhabitants, in Stark county, which rates third in the list of the wealthiest counties in the State of Ohio. Nevertheless, right here in the midst of this superabundance of wealth, strong men, their wives and children, are homeless, starving, and freezing. Bear in mind, Canton is located in the third wealthiest county of this State; its soil is unsurpassed; its coal, stone, water, natural gas exists in unlimited quantities and unsurpassed qualities; the climate the most healthy—yet, in the presence of this natural wealth, we find in this little city 200 families of able-bodied men to whom, being compelled to be idle, the authorities have to give charity to prevent them from begging, stealing, or starving! Five hundred other families of strong, healthy men are kept in enforced idleness and receive aid in one form or another from churches, clubs, friends, neighbors, etc. Allowing five persons to a family, we find that Canton, with its 20,000 inhabitants, has 3,500 human beings who have been made mendicants and paupers and are being driven into vagabondage and crime, prostitution and suicide by means of "our" industrial system. Let me give one or two detailed facts with which the writer is personally acquainted. At the iron and steel works in Canton the man who fires six boilers and regulates the steam in them tells me that he is kept spinning like a top for ten to twelve hours each day, doing this work in person, and that the least oversight on his part would cause an explosion of the boilers that would kill at least forty or fifty of the 200 men employed in the mill. For the performance of this exhaustive labor and grave responsibility he receives the sum of 12 1/2 cents per hour! In the midst of the terrible blizzards and snow I saw little 4 and 5-year-old girls, clad in thin and tattered garments, scraping the snow with their fingers among the railroad tracks where engines are constantly switching to and fro, hunting for nuggets of coal which may have dropped from passing trains! While here I read in the capitalistic press of the town that an unemployed workman, driven to desperation, dashed a stone through a plate-glass window in a store on a principal business street, and, waiting till an "officer of the law" arrested him, he gave as a reason that he was out of work, money, and friends, and adopted this plan to keep from freezing and starving to death! But enough. I might add much more, but space forbids. Two very large mass-meetings were held here. The first one was addressed by myself; the second by Comrades Louis Kirchner, of Canton, and Christ Saam, of Cleveland, in German, and myself in English. The utterances of the speakers were loudly applauded. Several new members to the American and German Groups were obtained, besides many subscribers to the Alarm, Vorbote, Freiheit, and Parole. From Canton I went to Massillon, a manufacturing and mining town of about 12,000 population. Here I found one-half of the working people in compulsory idleness, and one-third of the whole number of mendicants living on charity, credit, etc. A large meeting greeted me at this place. For over two hours the most undivided attention was given to the presentation of the causes which make paupers of those whose industry creates all wealth. Owing to the long-continued enforced idleness the "strike" trouble has been solved, viz.: the workers no longer have a chance to "strike." Here is located the celebrated Eussell & Co. harvester and reaper factory and machine foundry, employing several hundred men. Conspicuous on one of the folding doors at the entrance of this capitalistic pen of wage-slaves is posted a large bill, printed in very large letters, to-wit: "Vote for Garfield and Arthur, and our protective tariff and good wages. "Hancock and English are pledged to support a low-revenue tariff, which means little work and low wages, and for the benefit of the cotton aristocrats of the Solid South and British manufacturers." This electioneering bill is eight years old. But it tells its own story. The 1,000 American sovereigns, freemen, and voters at work in this capitalistic slave-pen "took the hint" and acted accordingly. Never was there better practical demonstration of the truth that patriotism is the greatest of all humbugs, a sentiment believed in only by fools and nurtured only by knaves. This factory is "the pride" of this little capitalistic town; it does a large business in steam engines and other machinery. This week two lately invented molding machines have been introduced into the foundry, each of which does the work of twenty molders, rendering their labor superfluous and reducing their wages to zero! Alas for the American sovereign, freeman, and voter, about whom our trades union and other conservative labor organizations prate so much! Eight in this establishment I found "American free-men" who said they were afraid to attend a public meeting of working men for fear of discharge. Freemen indeed! Let me say that my readers must not imagine that Eussell & Co.'s is the only "slave-pen." No, no. All capitalistic institutions are precisely alike in their operations. They all exploit and degrade the wealth-producers. At Navarre, a mining town of 3,000 people, the "skating rink" had been secured for the "Anarchist" speaker to address the people in. This town is located on the Tuscarawa river, in a beautiful valley, through which passes a railroad. The soil of the surrounding country is of unsurpassed fertility; the hills abound in coal, iron, stone, and gas. But to what a sad plight has the capitalistic system of wage-slavery brought the American laborer! A miner tells me that the 500 or 600 miners living here were permitted to work about one-third time the past year. This miner said his family consisted of a wife and three children. His wages the past year amounted to $89.76. Kent was $5 per month; powder for 120 tons of coal which he dug was $15.75; three gallons of oil was $3; sharpening tools was 50 cents; total expense for rent, powder, oil, and tools, $79.25; balance left for foot and clothes, $10.51! This allows less than one-fourth of a cent per day for food and clothes. "Incredible!" you say. Talk of the Chinese, the pauper labor of Europe, but these American sovereigns can discount them. "How did he live?" you ask. Well, in this way. The country round about is the richest farming land in the world. The rich farmers who own it find in these poverty-stricken miners an unfailing supply of cheap labor, paying for odd jobs and a few days' work in the harvest season the sum of 50 cents per day! Sometimes they only give what a hungry man can eat in return for a day's hard work. A miner told me that he had to buy on credit in the year 1884 $5 worth of potatoes from a rich farmer. Last year (1885) he had no money to pay the debt, and told the farmer he would work it out. He worked four days, over twelve hours per day, and finished the job. He asked the farmer to let him have a few bushels of potatoes again on credit, as he had no money, when he was informed that not until he paid what was owing last year could he get any more. The miner replied that he thought his work had paid the debt. The farmer said: "No, sir; you owe me $2.80 yet," and the miner could get no more potatoes. The wage-slaves of America have to pay such high prices for coal that many of them are forced to stint themselves in the use of it, while the miner is freezing and starving also. This is the Legislative district from which Hon. (?) John McBride, labor politician, member of the Ohio Legislature, and President of the "Ohio State Miners' Association", hails. As well might the herd of sheep appeal to the wolves for protection, as for the despoiled workers to look to the statute books for redress. I found hearty greeting in Navarre. The "rink" was crowded, and the brass band, consisting of fourteen instruments performed by miners, regaled the people with some choice selections of music. The meeting was attended by the priest, banker, and lawyer, and none could or would deny the truths of Socialism. A large American Group was formed and many subscribers obtained for the Alarm. From Navarre I went to Mansfield, the home of John Sherman, Ohio's member of the American House of Lords, sometimes called the Senate. Ohio's John has, by strict economy, industry, and sobriety during his term of office the past twenty years, on a salary of $5,000 per annum, amassed a handsome little sum for a "rainy day" during his old age, which amounts to several million dollars. Thrifty, industrious, sober John, you have reaped the reward of the good, the virtuous, and the true! Successful statesman, you have amassed millions out of the stolen product of the American wage-slave, while at the same time making your victim believe that you were his benefactor. But Democrats and Republicans vie with each other in playing the role of the statesman; that is, the manufacture of the coward's weapon, the tool of the thief-statute law! In spite of the air of American "patriotism," now descended to jingoism, which pervades the atmosphere of Mansfield, the streets were lined with American sovereigns in compulsory as elsewhere, idleness, who have not where to lay their weary heads. In Columbus, the Capital of Ohio, made such by the fact that the state "law factory" is located here, we have held three very successful mass-meetings in the city hall, a large and costly structure. The first mass-meeting was held Friday evening, February 12, one on Saturday evening, the third being held on Sunday afternoon in the city hall at 2:30 o'clock. The audiences were quite large and intelligent. They expressed hearty approbation of what they heard, and a large, intelligent, and resolute American Group of the International was organized. Columbus is the place where Ohio's law-factory is located, and in which the politicians of the State are hunting for jobs. Here are to be found many institutions, the offspring of statute law, the most noteworthy of which is the State's prison, or penitentiary. The Legislature, or law-factory, produces and renders penitentiaries necessary, for there must be some place to provide for those outcasts the statute law manufactures. It is estimated by those who ought to know that fully one-half of the wage-workers of this city are out of employment. There was never before such destitution among the people. Able-bodied men seek in vain for an opportunity to work and provide their families with the necessaries of life. On every hand there is unoccupied land, empty houses, and idle machinery, while on every side there is the landless, homeless, starving multitude. What but statute law has disinherited these people? Does not the State Trades Assembly of Ohio deserve the title of capitalistic labor organization when at its recent convention, held in this city, it refused to take eight hours, but instead referred the matter to the Legislature and petitioned the labor robbers to give it to them, "if they please" Meanwhile the capitalistic system extorts its pound of flesh from the quivering heart of the disinherited. The wealth of the wealthy grows constantly; the poverty of the poor increases all the while. The statistics of Ohio, taken from the United States census for 1880, show that in manufactures the invested capital was $47,000,000 larger in 1880 than in 1870, while the number of manufacturing establishments was 2,070 less in 1880 than in the year 1870. On the other hand, the number of wage-workers employed in manufacture in Ohio was 46,407 larger in 1880 than in 1870. Wages were $20 less on the average in 1880 than in 1870. Thus we see the workings of the monopolistic system of interest, profit, and rent in the fact that under the workings of the economic law of capitalism in the State of Ohio in ten years the number of manufactories diminished 10 per cent., invested capital increased 25 per cent., and the number of wage-workers employed was increased 25 per cent., thus reducing the number of the rich but increasing the number of the poor; and while wages decreased profits increased, thus increasing the wealth of the wealthy and the poverty of the poor. This is the working, the unavoidable result of the capitalistic system. What will it lead to? Socialism answers, viz.: The hopeless enslavement and impoverishment of the wage class, who will be forced to take up arms and destroy the domination of the privileged class, putting an end forever to all man-made laws, governments or edicts. The turning of humanity loose, where all will be equally free and freely equal. The free society in which the natural law alone operates; that condition of society described by Thos. Paine, when he declared that all that was needed was the law of reciprocity, common interest providing a common security. It is coming; yes hastening on. The economic forces are at work incessantly, generating the forces of the Social revolution. We can neither retard nor hasten the result, but we can aid and direct its forces. Let us ever be on the alert, for our life, our liberty and happiness are at stake. Vive la revolution Sociale! A. R. PARSONS. P.S. I go to Hocking Valley this week, thence to Jacksonville and. Springfield, Ohio. PDF scan of the original the Alarm article: https://dds.crl.edu/item/54016 |