You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday November 28, 1914
From the Appeal to Reason: Feudalism has been restored throughout America
An Editorial from today's Appeal to Reason:
Restoring Feudal System in the U. S.
Company Town
FEUDALISM was a condition in which the land was owned by a few and was made the basis of enslaving the workers, who were known as serfs. The Mexican peon of today is a successor of the serf of yesterday. The presence of great bodies on land in America for a time broke up the feudal system. But there are evidences that the gifts of land in great bodies, and the acquiring of land by special interests, is actually restoring feudal condition in America.
For example, the American Federation of Labor at its recent session received a report which indicates feudal conditions in the mining industry:
Land-holding conditions involved in some mining districts have enabled the operators to establish what amounts to a feudal operating system for the mines. They own vast tracts of lands, hundreds and even thousands of square miles in extent, on which the mines are located. The mining companies own and, therefore, control all roads that traverse the land. They own the houses in which the miners live; the villages made up of these miners; the school-houses to which their children must go for mental training; the churches which minister to their spiritual needs; the stores from which they by their clothing, food and other necessities; the post offices where they get their mail, money orders, and conduct their crude banking transactions....The mine operators have the power of eviction. ..They have assumed the police power. They employ armed guards.
Company Scrip
Good only at Company Store.
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This report by inference calls attention to the fact that other industries than mining are affected by land owners. Mining especially is involved. It makes it clear that the wage earner, in fighting for control of the land by those who use the land is fighting his own battles as truly as he is fighting the battles of the farmer.
Feudalism has really been restored throughout America, though with slight variation over the old scheme of things. By capitalizing and bonding manufacture and transportation to include all the property of the country, the big financiers really secured possession of all the land, placing every farmer under tribute to them. When their securities began to crumble the government came to their relief, by making the fictitious values the basis of its own notes, loaned to the banks at nominal interest. Thus the government aided in the work of re-establishing feudalism. And there can be no end to it until these fictitious values are destroyed, and the modern forms of tribute-rent, interest and profit-are made impossible through collective ownership and democratic management of industries.
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[photographs added]
More from the Appeal to Reason of November 28, 1914:
A. F. OF L. for MINERS
by Telegraph to Appeal to Reason.
Company Gunthugs, Colorado
Philadelphia, Pa.-But twice in the twelve days' session of the Thirty-fourth annual convention of the American Federation of Labor did red-hot issues between the American coal barons and the miners boil to the surface.
Once it came when a resolution calling for action against gunmen detectives caused Joseph D. Cannon, delegate from the Western Federation of Miners, to produce before the convention a list of over seven hundred professional man-killers deputized by the sheriff of Huerfano county, Colorado, and show that among these were names of detectives indicted for murder.
Another time it came when the United Mine Workers of America presented resolutions calling upon President Wilson to insist that the coal operators immediately comply with the federal plan of settling and in the event they refuse to have the mines taken over and operated by the United States government.
So unanimous and intense was the feeling of the convention that the resolution passed without discussion for the delegates knew that the executive officers of the United Mine Workers of America were then waiting to take the resolution thus adopted and immediately lay it before the president of the United States in Washington, more as an ultimatum than as a request.
JOHN MURRAY.
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Helpless in Arkansas.
Federal troops are in control of the coal mines in the Arkansas district, and are enforcing what is known as the open shop, which means that the union control is ended by the power of the federal government. The trouble began with violations of the contract with the union, on the part of Franklin Bache, manager of one of the mines, and his withdrawal from the Southwestern Interstate Coal Operators' Association, which embraces all the mines in the central southwest. In an effort to run the mines Bache imported private guards, such as are known as gunmen.
Bache's properties have been damaged by unknown persons. Bache brought suit against various unions for $1,250,000 damages, the case to be heard in the federal courts in January. Pending the hearing, all the funds of the unions in the banks have been seized by the federal authorities. The Bache company was declared bankrupt and the federal court appointed him receiver of the company.
The receiver, Bache, applied for federal troops to enable him to run the mines with non-union men, and the court made application for the troops. In response to the court's action troops were sent as stated above, and the district is practically under military rule.
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[photograph added]
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-Nov 28, 1914
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Company Town
http://jvonkorff.blogspot.com/...
Company Scrip
http://kycoal.homestead.com/...
Company Gunthugs
https://archive.org/...
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Tons with Lyrics - Johnny Cash
You load sixteen tons and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
l owe my soul to the company store.
-Merle Travis
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