Samuel Peter Orth

“ If a Revolutionary Father could visit his old haunts on election day, he would be astonished at the sober decorum. In his time elections lasted three days, days filled with harangue, with drinking, betting, raillery, and occasional encounters. Even those whose memory goes back to the Civil War can contrast the ballot peddling, the soliciting, the crowded noisy polling-places, with the calm and quiet with which men deposit their ballots today. For now every ballot is numbered and no one is permitted to take a single copy from the room. Every voter must prepare his ballot in the booth. ”

“ In all the multifarious branches of trade capital has its combinations; and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity in the dust. We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism to necessary capital; but men in their haste and greed, blinded by self-interests, overlook the interests of others and sometimes violate the rights of those they deem helpless. We mean to uphold the dignity of labor, to affirm the nobility of all who earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. ”

“ Their countries are mere eddies left by the mighty currents of European conquest and reconquest, backward lands untouched by machine industry and avoided by capital, whose only living links with the moving world are the birds of passage, the immigrants who flit between the mines and cities of America and these isolated European villages. Held together by national costume, song, dance, festival, traditions, and language, these people live in the pale glory of a heroic past. ”

“ Hand-in-hand with this monopolization of the means of production goes the displacement of the dispersed small industries by colossal great industries, the development of the tool into the machine, and a gigantic growth in the productivity of human labor. But all the advantages of this transformation are monopolized by capitalists and large landowners. For the proletariat and the declining intermediate classes—petty bourgoisie and peasants—it means a growing augmentation of the insecurity of their existence, of misery, oppression, enslavement, debasement, and exploitation. ”

“ Labor learned anew that its prosperity was inalienably identified with the well-being of industry and commerce; and society learned that hunger and idleness are the golden opportunity of the demagogue and agitator. The word “socialism” now appears more and more frequently in the daily press and always a synonym of destruction or of something to be feared. No sooner had business revived than the great shadow of internal strife was cast over the land, and for the duration of the Civil War the peril of the nation absorbed all the energies of the people. ”

“ With the free land gone and the cities crowded to overflowing, the door of immigration, though guarded, nevertheless remains open and the pressure of the old-world peoples continues. Where can they go? They are filling in the vacant spots of the older States, the abandoned farms, stagnant half-empty villages, undrained swamps, uninviting rocky hillsides. This infiltration of foreigners possessing themselves of rejected and abandoned land, which has only recently begun, shows that the peasant's instinct for the soil will reassert itself when the means are available and the way opens. ”

“ The workingman has become the critic. Here you have the heart of Socialism. Whatever form its outward aspect may take, at heart it is a rebellion against things as they are. And whatever may be the syllogisms of its logic, or the formularies of its philosophy, they all begin with a grievance, that things as they are are wrong; and they all end in a hope for a better society of to-morrow where the inequalities shall somehow be made right.
In his struggle toward a new economic ideal, the proletarian has achieved a class homogeneity and self-consciousness. ”

“ It is the psychological effect of the capitalist system that is the real enginery of Socialism. It is the class feeling, the consciousness of the workingman that he is contributing muscle and blood and sweat to the perfection of an article whose possession he does not share. This feeling is aroused by the contrasts of life that the worker constantly sees around him. He feels that his own life energy has contributed to the magnificent equipages and the palatial luxuries of his employer. ”

“ During the long term of his Federation presidency, which is unparalleled in labor history and alone is conclusive evidence of his executive skill, scarcely a year has passed without some dramatic incident to cast the searchlight of publicity upon him—a court decision, a congressional inquiry, a grand jury inquisition, a great strike, a nation-wide boycott, a debate with noted public men, a political maneuver, or a foreign pilgrimage. Whenever a constituent union in the Federation has been the object of attack, he has jumped into the fray and has rarely emerged humiliated from the encounter. ”

“ Everything is discussed by everybody; the speeches made by the members in the Reichstag, the opinions of the party editors in their daily editorials, the party finances, everything is freely criticised. The most insignificant member has the same privilege of criticism as the party czars; and the criticism often becomes naïvely personal. No doubt the party patriotism is largely fed by this frank, fearless, aboveboard airing of grievances, this freedom from "boss rule." Every one has his opportunity, and this robs the plotter and backbiter of his venom. ”

“ As one looks back upon the history of the workingman, one finds something impressive, even majestic, in the rise of the fourth estate from a humble place to one of power in this democratic nation. In this rise of fortune the laborer’s union has unquestionably been a moving force, perhaps even the leading cause. At least this homogeneous mass of workingmen, guided by self-developed leadership, has aroused society to safeguard more carefully the individual needs of all its parts. ”

“ The possessor of private wealth can become a capitalist by investing his money in productive enterprise. He then becomes the employer of labor. There are all grades of capitalists, from the master wagon-maker who works by the side of his one or two workmen, to the "captain" of a vast industry that gives employment to thousands of men and turns out a wagon a minute.
The institution of private property is the basis of Socialism because it is the basis of capitalistic production. It places in one man's hands the power of owning raw material, machinery, land, factory, and finished product ”

“ I am not unmindful that behind all this parliamentary activity there is the dim background of hope in the hearts of many Socialists that somehow the wage system will vanish, that competition will cease, that the primary activities of production and distribution will be assumed by society, and that economic extremes will become impossible. In a people of fitful temper and ebullient spirit the doctrine of overturning remains a constant menace. Socialism in Spain and Italy wears a scarlet coat, in Germany a drab, and in England a black. ”

“ It is folly for any class to magnify its needs above those of the rest of society. Civilization and culture embrace the artisan and the artist, the poor and the powerful. Any class interest that clashes with the welfare of society as a whole cannot survive. Socialism is abandoning the tyranny of class war, is being mellowed by class co-operation. Socialists are now claiming that their interests are the interests of society. The social complexion of the party in the countries of its greatest advancement is an indication of this. Many of the party leaders are of middle-class origin. ”

“ The Socialist movement tends toward the latest phase of democracy, which is social democracy; the democracy that has ceased to toy with Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and the other tinsel abstractions of the bourgeois revolutions; the democracy that sees poverty and suffering increase as wealth and ease increase. It is the democracy of the human heart, that cares for the babe in the slums, the lad in the factory, the mother at the cradle, and the father in his old age. Against all these helpless ones society has sinned. ”

“ The Social Democratic Party of Germany fights thus not for new class-privileges and exceptional rights, but for the abolition of class-domination and of the classes themselves, and for the equal rights and equal obligations of all, without distinction of sex and parentage. Setting out from these views, it combats in contemporary society not merely the exploitation and oppression of the wage-workers, but every kind of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against a class, a party, a sex, or a race. ”

“ Property is wrong because it is the exploitation of the weak by the strong; communism is equally wrong because it is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. To this ingenious juggler of paradoxes this was by no means a dilemma. He resorted to a formula that was later amplified into the most potent argument of Socialism by Marx. Service pays service, one day's work balances another day's work, time-labor is the just measure of value. Hour for hour, day for day, this should be the universal medium of exchange. ”

“ I have tried briefly to show that Socialism originated as a class movement, a proletarian movement; that the classes, wage-earner and capitalist, are the natural outcome of machine production; that Socialism is one of the natural products of the antagonistic relations that these two classes at present occupy; that Socialism intends to eliminate this antagonism by eliminating the private employer. I have tried to show also that Socialism is a criticism of the present social order placing the blame for the miseries of society upon the shoulders of private property and competition ”

“ To unite the workers of the nation and their allies and sympathizers of all other classes to this end, is the mission of the Socialist Party. In this battle for freedom the Socialist Party does not strive to substitute working class rule for capitalist class rule, but by working class victory, to free all humanity from class rule and to realize the international brotherhood of man. ”

“ He had been a furious Socialist, an anti-militarist, and defender of the general strike. In the Socialist congress at Paris, 1899, he said: "The general strike has the seductive advantage that it is nothing but the practice of an intangible right. It is a revolution which arises within the law. The workingman refuses to carry the yoke of misery any farther and begins the revolution in the field of his legal rights. The illegality must begin with the capitalist class, if it allows itself to be provoked into destroying a right which they themselves have professed to be holy." ”

“ In every stage of development it has been the constant aim of the capitalist to increase his profits and of the workingman to raise his standard of living.
Marx then declares that, in order to have a capitalist society, two classes are necessary: a capitalist and a non-capitalist class; a class that dominates, and one that succumbs. There have always been these two classes. Originally labor was slave, then it was serf, and now it is free. But free labor to-day differs from serf-labor and slave-labor only in that it has a legal right to contract. ”

“ There is only one way of assuring the continued order and progress of production, the freedom of every individual, and the growing well-being of the workers; it is to transfer to the collectivity, to the social community, the ownership of the capitalistic means of production.
The proletariat, daily more numerous, ever better prepared for combined action by the great industry itself, understands that in collectiveness or communism lie the necessary means of salvation for it. ”

“ This was to be accomplished by class war and social revolution. Marx imparts the zeal of fatalism to his Socialism when he links it to the necessities of nature. By natural law a bourgeoisie developed; by natural law it oppresses the proletarian; by natural law, by the compulsion of inexorable processes, the proletarians alone can attain their freedom. Capitalism becomes its own grave-digger. ”

“ Millions of formerly self-employing workers thus become the helpless wage slaves of the industrial masters.
As the economic power of the ruling class grows it becomes less useful in the life of the nation. All the useful work of the nation falls upon the shoulders of the class whose only property is its manual and mental labor power—the wage worker—or of the class who have but little land and little effective machinery outside of their labor power—the small traders and small farmers. The ruling minority is steadily becoming useless and parasitic. ”

“ There are some things which the state (society) can do better than the individual; like the marshaling of an army or conducting a post-office, and things that are done to counteract the selfishness of individuals, like factory inspection. But there are other things which society cannot do; things that depend on individual effort, like art, literature, and invention. The two fields of state and individual activity merge into each other. Each nation marks its own distinctions. But this is certain: in a democracy the state will do the things which the people want it to do. ”

“ Our machine industry has produced a civilization that is ugly. It is natural that the esthetic and philanthropic members of this society should raise their protest. Ruskin and Anatole France and Maeterlinck and Carlyle and Robert Morris and Emerson and Grierson are read with increasing satisfaction. It is natural that the participants in this death race should utter their cries of alternate despair and hope. Socialism is the cry of the toiler. ”

“ The Socialist Party is a class party which has for its aim the socialization of the means of production and exchange, that is to say, to transform the present capitalistic society into a collective or communistic society by means of the political and economic organization of the proletariat. By its aims, by its ideals, by the power which it employs, the Socialist Party, always seeking to realize the immediate reforms demanded by the working class, is not a party of reforms, but a party of class war and revolution. ”

“ The government did everything in its power to suppress the movement. Every act of oppression popularized the Democracy among the proletarians. The blood of the martyrs bore the usual harvest.
The new empire had been launched amidst the greatest enthusiasm, shared by every one except the discontented workingmen who had so stoutly fought for entire political freedom. The new imperial parliament was thrown open to them because Bismarck had found it necessary to include universal suffrage in the constitution of the Reichstag. ”