The Free American Workers
According to the moral ethics of our capitalist society the owners of the means of life are under no obligation to see that their fellow beings, who do not possess such means, are provided with the opportunity to make a living. When the capitalist cannot make profits out of the labor of the workers he turns them out, cuts off their source of bread without the least compunction. They may starve to death for all he cares. He is not their keeper except while they keep him in fat dividends. When he needs more help he makes the announcement at the factory gate where there are plenty of free Americans anxiously waiting to serve him. They are free Americans—they cost him nothing. That is the only sense in which Americans are free today.
While differing in many respects from previous forms of exploitation, capitalism is no less cruel and merciless. The capitalists own the means by which we live and thus we are ad their mercy in no less degree than were our ancestors in the days of chattel slavery. The kings of old ruled the world with an iron hand, but they had a much smaller world to command than the Industrial Monarchs of today. The wealth of America exceeds that of the entire ancient world, and a few brainy men in New York City control the bulk of it; as cold and unscrupulous a set of men as ever dictated the policies of a nation.
The rulers of old hired thugs to pursue and capture their enemies, had them slugged and cast into prison, framed up evidence and put them through farcical trials before fixed judges who condemned them to imprisonment or death as the order was given above. Wherein does the practice of today differ from that, with the history of Labor's desperate struggles against the armed hirelings of Capital and the slaughter of men, women, and children in the great strikes at Pittsburgh in 1877; and later conflicts in Homestead, Chicago, Lattimer, Cripple Creek, Ludlow, Michigan, West Virginia, and numerous other places where the ruthless slaughter Of workers was looked upon as merely a matter of business? To pursue the analogy further we might glance over the list of recent trials of a socio-political nature where social heretics have been brought before the courts and convicted on perjured evidence and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment by hand picked judges. The jails of the country contains hundreds of such victims, martyrs to the cause Of humanity, men and women who dreamed of a better life than that which capitalism pro-
