Mother Jones was the legitimate attraction at the Miners' union celebration at Central Park yesterday. All the rest was a purely capitalistic graft doled out to the Park management by the Miners' Union. We say graft proposition for the simple reason that universal dissatisfaction was expressed by the union men when they learned that the speaker was to be taken into the ball grounds to speak and that an admission charge was to to be made for the same. This was where the sports were also to take place.
The News has no criticism of the people who handle the park part of the program, but the criticism cannot be too strong on or against union men who grant a franchise of the organized workers to meet at some certain place, then to be grafted in return of the parasite class digging up the premium money. The park proposition appears to be a free and easy beer garden graft run in connection with the street car line.
We assembled here for a purpose. Not so much for pleasure as for instruction. If more would interest themselves in the conditions they could change things so as to have more pleasure. Look around us and we find that every thinker knows that we are face to face with a conflict of the classes. A war at home and a war abroad. An industrial war at home and a commercial abroad. It is the war that will doom the tyrants of the world for the workers are aligning as they have never before. The world's workers, the world's producers, are the ones who produce all the wealth and they are fast learning this.
Look to the conditions and on one side you see the working class and on the other the parasite. Misery on one side and luxury on the other. Now, if I can get you workers to understand that you should stand together, we need not mind about the parasite for we will take care of him.
You assume that you live in a republic, but it is a mistake; you live under the flag of an oligarchy. Your president and congress does not represent the people. They represent the robber class, and do not represent the working class. Mr. Robber take your medicine. (applause). The wealth that I produce is mine and it does not make any difference to me how I am robed. I am opposed to being robbed. Your labor does not only support the parasite class of this country, but extends across the waters to the European aristocracy. You slaves pay in tribute to King Edward every year $5,000,000; you wage slaves pay to the Emperor of Germany the sum of $4,000,000; and you contribute through the system $2,000,000 to the ruler of Austria. A total of $11,000,000. The workers produce all this wealth and while they produce it we do not enjoy it. You do not live in a republic.
Some of you workers would lick the feet of your boss to get a job, and don't you know, that you never owned a job. The other fellow owns the job. The capitalist class own the means of production and distribution and therefore own your job by owning these means of livelihood. In the industries of this country in the last fiscal year the workers produced wealth valued at $800,000,000. You made the machines and then you run them and you fail to receive the fruit of them.
You knock at the door of these places in the morning asking for a job. And let me say we laborers are organizing to take that machine. Now the anxious fellow wants to know at once how are you going to take those machines? How can you pay for them? Let and run them for you? You have given us the bull pen, the bayonet and the scaffold.
We look back to the time of Babylon and see the first triumph of labor. And while the ministers teach you as they do to-day, Jesus said in his time to tear down their houses....
Does the rich class obey law and order? What is law and order? Law and order is the say of the last judge, and that say is in the interest of the capitalist class.
My brothers think. I look to your congress to see how many laws they have passed for the laborers. They passed the Dick bill that makes you a soldier if between the ages of 18 years and 45. You to be forced to align and go tonight and shoot the Butte miners if so directed by the capitalist power (applause).
When I get you fellows lined up I will attend to the other fellow. It is the worker that must be lined up and stand together. You got the eight hour law because your masters were fighting among themselves, and it was this fight of theirs that gave you the law, and you all know it.
You women are as much to blame as the men. You don't think only about an opera, or a dime novel, or something of that kind. I know you. The civilization of today is based upon womanhood, and I beg you women to wake up. Look at the children's condition of this country. Raised to be placed under the wheels of commercialism. Your children raised to continue the work of you slaves who sleep on a pallet of straw and respond to the whistle in the morning; working long hours. Seventy thousand must be taken each year to supply the demand of the child slave market.
Mother Jones at the start of the Children's Crusade.
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Why, my working brothers, the rich class cur dog has a better time than you. A short time ago they had a dog marriage and paid the preacher $100. You never see the prosperity told of by the leader of the gang. But on the tail end of the train you will find him riding in luxury. If he will come with me I will show him a class that he will not claim prosperity for.
When a foreign prince came to this country the congress voted $40,000 to dine him and you workers were looking for an old round steak to put in your jaw. You are told of the full bucket, but all the full bucket you get contains a little bit of bread and a few spoonsful of beans.
I want to call the attention of you Montana people that since '96 wages, according to government statistics, have advance 8 percent, and food stuffs have advance 40 per cent, according to the same report. Therefore, wages have gone down 32 per cent. You workers got no raise. Now, you smart alex, you ask a girl to marry you and you have not even got a job. What difference does it make to you whether you get $10 per day if your expenses to live are $10. Why after you ask the girl to marry you, you have not got enough to pay for a good spree.
They say you miners and workers get drunk and spend your money. You should stop that and put the same in the bank and give the banker the graft off the same.
Talk about drinking; let me say that as long as exploitation makes a profit of 14 cents in a two cent glass of whiskey the drinking will continue. But when we stand aligned as we should we will not be supporting the capitalist system of exploitation. There will not be a Miners' day then, for every day will be Miners' day. We workers are marching on. The conflict is on. Will the workers be ready to meet it? Yes you will. You are learning.
I have faced the capitalist government of today; I have faced the bayonets; I have held your bleeding heads in my lap; what of tomorrow? What of your children? I know the feeling of the power that belongs to yourselves out of your own hands. The capitalist class is disfranchising you all over the country. A Socialist, elected a mayor in Wisconsin, found that he could not hold the office unless he owned property, so he bought some land in a graveyard.
My days are not long on this earth, but I shall continue the fight for your children if you are too bigoted or too cowardly to do it yourself (applause).
Brace up for the fight, and in the words of a patriot, "Give me liberty or give me death." He who will not fight for liberty has no right to liberty. He has no right to enjoy the beauties of liberty.
Women study and read. Let us settle this question of the class struggle without bloodshed. A peaceable solution awaits you for this question.
Go to your homes workers and study the question. Don't go to the saloons, don't go to the gambling rooms, but go to your own firesides and study the question. I thank you. Good-bye.