IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS “when cotton was king”, chattel-slavery was a flourishing institution —

Not only the people who profited by the system, but most others — even those who were the sufferers — thought that this was really a “law of nature”, that it couldn’t be otherwise.

Nevertheless, chattel slavery has gone.

But while it lasted this was its essence: Certain human beings were compelled to labor and the wealth which their labor produced went, not to them, but to certain other human beings who did not labor at all but lolled in luxury on the labor of their slaves.

To-day, fellow-sufferers, they tell us that we are free. But are we? If you will think for a moment you will see that we are not free at all. We have simply changed one form of slavery for another. Then it was chattel-slavery, now it is wage-slavery. For that which was the essence of chattel-slavery is the essence of wage slavery. It is only a difference in form. The chattel-slave was compelled to work by physical force; the wage-slave is compelled to work by starvation. The product of the chattel-slave’s labor was taken by his master; the product of the wage-slave’s labor is taken by the employer.

The United States Government has made a study of the wealth producing power of the wage-slaves, and has shown that the average worker produces $2,451 a year. The government has also made a study of wages in the U. S. which shows that the average worker gets $437 a year. This means that the average employer takes away from the average wage-slave $2,014 a year. In the good old days the master took away the wealth produced by the slave in the simplest form; today he takes it away in the form of profits. But in one respect the wage-slave is worse off than the chattel slave. Under chattel slavery the master owned the man and the land; he had to feed and clothe the man.

Under wage-slavery the man feeds and clothes himself. Under chattel slavery it was to the interest of the owner to give the slave work and to keep him from starving to death. Under wage-slavery, if the man goes out of work the employer doesn’t care; that is no loss to him; and if the man dies there are millions of others eager to take his place, because, as I said before, they must either work for him or starve. There is one very striking parallel between the two cases. To-day there are many people who say that this system is divinely appointed — is a law of nature — just as they said the same thing of chattel slavery.

Well, there are millions of workers who 52 say that it is wrong. Under chattel-slavery black workers were robbed; under wageslavery all the workers are robbed. The Socialist Party says that this robbing shall cease; that no worker black or white shall be exploited for profit. And it says, further, that there is one sure and certain way of putting an end to the system and that is by working for the success of Socialism.

But, before I tell you just how Socialism proposes to do this, let me say a word about the Civil War which put an end to chattel-slavery. Now, I know that certain people have taught you to believe that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. But it isn’t true, at all, and only very ignorant people hold that opinion nowadays. If you will read the Emancipation Proclamation carefully you will see that it wasn’t for love of the slave that the slaves were freed. You will see that this was done, “as a fit and necessary war-measure for suppressing said rebellion.” If you will read Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greeley (August 22nd 1862) you will find this sentence: My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” Now I will tell you briefly how “this struggle” came about.

I know that my explanation is not the one which you have been taught. But, no matter; it happens to be true. This was the way of it: In the South there had grown up one system of exploiting the laborer. That was chattel-slavery. The money-Kings of that section whom we will call capitalists, for short, were naturally fond of their own system. In the North the capitalists had another system of which they were equally fond.

That was wage-slavery. The Southern capitalists found that it was necessary to extend their system; so we had the Mexican War, and they got Texas. Then, as fast as new territory was opened they would rush to occupy it with their system and so shut out the Northern system. Of course, the Northern capitalists would try to get their system into the new territory also; so we had the long struggle over Kansas and Nebraska. These two systems were then in open competition and it came to be seen that one or the other had to give in; that both of them couldn’t exist in the same country; that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”; that “this nation cannot exist half-slave and half-free.” Then people began to talk of “the impending crisis”; of “the irrepressible conflict.”

Then, when Lincoln was elected in 1859, the southern capitalists saw that their system was doomed. They wished to preserve it; so they seceded and tried to make of themselves a separate nation in which their system of robbing the worker should be the only one. But the Northern capitalists said, “Nix! Our system shall be the only system.” So they went to war “to save the Union” — for their system of robbing the workers. And that’s the gist of the whole story.

“But”, you will say, “didn’t they go to war on account of John Brown and Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner?” Not on your life, they didn’t. If you will read the newspapers of that time you will see that they tried to 53 lynch Garrison in Boston; they ostracized Wendell Phillips; they sneered at Sumner and damned John Brown. Why, nice, good, Christian people told them they were crazy — just as some of them tell Socialists now — and the anti-slavery orators couldn’t get the use of a church in New York either for love or for money. No, indeed. These men were grand old heroes — but no war was fought on their account. The older system of chattel-slavery simply broke down to make way for the present system of wage-slavery, which pays better. Pays the capitalist, I mean.

Under the old system the capitalist owned the man; today he owns the tools with which the man must work. These tools are the factories, the mines, and the machines. The system that owns them owns you and me and all the rest of us, black, white, brown, red, and yellow. We can’t live unless we have access to these tools, and our masters, the capitalists, see to it that we are separated from what we make by using these things, except so much as is necessary to keep us alive that we may be able to make more — for them. This little bit is called wages.

They wouldn’t give us even that if they thought that we could live without it. In the good old days the chattel-slave would be fastened with a chain if they thought that he might escape. Today no chain is necessary to bind us to the tools. We are as free as air. Of course. We are free to starve. And that chain of the-fear-of-starvation binds us to the tools owned by the capitalist as firmly as any iron chain ever did. And this system doesn’t care whether the slaves who are bound in this new way are white or black. To the capitalist system all workers are equal — in so far as they have a stomach.

Now the one great fact for the Negro in America today is Race Prejudice. The great labor problem with which all working-people are faced is made harder for black working-people by the addition of a race problem. I want to show you how one grows out of the other and how, at bottom, they are both the same thing. In other words, I want you to see the economic reason for race prejudice.

In the first place, do you know that the most rabid, Negro-hating, southern aristocrat has not the slightest objection to sleeping in the same house with a Negro — if that Negro sleeps there as his servant? He doesn’t care if his food is prepared by a Negro cook and handled by a Negro waiter before it gets to him; he will eat it. But if a Negro comes into the same public restaurant to buy and eat food, then, Oh my!, he gets all het [fed] up about it. But why? What’s the difference? I will tell you. The aristocrat wants the black man to feel that he is on a lower level. When he is on that level he is “in his place”.

When he is “in his place” he is liked. But he must not be allowed to do anything to make him forget that he is on this lower level; he must be kept “in his place”, which means the place which the aristocrat wants him to keep. You see, the black man carries the memory of slavery with him. Everybody knows that the slaves were the exploited working-class of the South. That put them in a class 54 by themselves, down at the bottom, downtrodden, despised, “inferior.”

Do you begin to see now that Race Prejudice is only another name for Caste Prejudice? If our people had never been slaves; had never been exploited workers — and so, at the bottom of the ladder — there would be no prejudice against them now. In every case where there has been a downtrodden class of workers at the bottom, that class has been despised by the class that lived by their labor. Do you doubt it? Then look at the facts.

If you had picked up a daily paper in New York in 1848 you would have found at the end of many an advertisement for butler, coachman, lady’s maid, clerk or book-keeper these words: “No Irish need apply.” There was a raceprejudice against the Irish then, because most of the manual unskilled laborers were Irish. They were at the bottom, exploited and despised. But they have changed things since.

Beginning in the seventies [1870s] when Jewish laborers began to come here from Russia, Austria and Germany, and lasting even to our own day, there has been race-prejudice against the Jews. And today when the Italian has taken the place which the Irish laborer vacated — at the bottom — he, too, comes in for his share of this prejudice. In every one of these cases it was the condition of the people — at the bottom as despised, exploited, wage-slaves — that was responsible for the raceprejudice. And it is just so in the black man’s case, with this difference: that his color marks what he once was, and even though he should wear a dress suit every evening and own an automobile or a farm he can always be picked out and reminded.

Now, under the present system, exploiting the wage-slave is respectable. I have already shown you that wherever the worker is exploited he is despised. So you will see that despising the wage-slave is quite fashionable. You may recall the name of the great capitalist who said, “the public be damned.” He was only a little more outspoken than the rest of his class. As long as the present system continues, the workers will be despised; as long as the workers are despised, the black men will be despised, robbed and murdered, because they are least able to defend themselves. Now ask yourself whether you haven’t a very special interest in changing the present system.

Of course, you will ask: “But haven’t white working people race-prejudice too?” Sure, they have. Do you know why? It pays the capitalist to keep the workers divided. So he creates and keeps alive these prejudices. He gets them to believe that their interests are different. Then he uses one half of them to club the other half with. In Russia when the workingmen demand reform, the capitalists sic them on the Jews. In America they sic them on the Negroes. That makes them forget their own condition: as long as they can be made to look down upon another class. “But, then”, you will say, “the average wage-slave must be a chump.” Sure, he is. That’s what the capitalist counts on.And Socialism is working to educate the workers to see this and 55 to unite them in doing away with the present system.

Socialism stands for the emancipation of the wage-slaves. Are you a wageslave? Do you want to be emancipated? Then join hands with the Socialists. Hear what they have to say. Read some of their literature. Get a Socialist leaflet, a pamphlet, or, better still, a book. You will be convinced of two things: that Socialism is right, and that it is inevitable. It is right because any order of things in which those who work have least while those who work them have most, is wrong.

It is inevitable because a system under which the wealth produced by the labor of human hands amounts to more than two hundred and twenty billions a year while many millions live on the verge of starvation, is bound to break down. Therefore, if you wish to join with the other class-conscious, intelligent wage-earners — in putting an end to such a system; if you want to better living conditions for black men as well as for white men; to make this woeful world of ours a little better for your children and your children’s children, study Socialism — and think and work your way out.

Twelve years ago Mark Hanna, the Big Boss of the Republican Party, made a statement which you would do well to consider. After he had made McKinley president, he noticed something that you may not have noticed yourself. He saw that there was no essential difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party. He knew that the same big Wall Street companies supplied the campaign funds for each of them.

He knew that the same money power was buying out the men whom you elected, whether you elected Republicans or Democrats. He saw that very soon you and I and the rest of us, black as well as white, would come to see it too. And he opened his mouth and spake these words:

“The next great political battle in this country will be fought, not between the Republican and the Democratic parties, but between the Republican party and Socialism.”

I will tell you later what that implies. But just now, what I should like you to see is this: that Senator Hanna realized that Socialism was a serious issue. He couldn’t afford to pooh-pooh it. Neither can any sensible person. The Socialist party is the third in point of numbers. It is important.

What do you know of this party? Have you ever read its platform? Read it once, just for the sake of fair play — just to show that you are not afraid to give it a hearing — and you will realize why Mark Hanna paid it such a tribute of respect.

Don’t be a baby any longer and listen to the stale lies which other people tell you about Socialism. Read the Socialist platform and you will understand why some politicians have to tell lies about it just the same as they have to tell lies about you. They lie about it because they don’t want you to know what it really is, just as they lie about you because they don’t want people to know what you really are. Every year they feed you with the same soft mush around election time to help them to ride into power on your votes; then after election they give you Brownsville and lynching bees.

Do you wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the great abolitionist, when he gave up his job as collector of the Port of New York, said that he was sick of the way in which the Republican party was selling you out? The Republican party is always engaged in selling you out — or in selling out the working people of this country. Do you doubt it? Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican Congress has never said a word or done anything about the disfranchisement of nearly three million Negro voters in the South?

Read the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and you will see that the Republican party has always had the power to stop it. But just now I want to get you interested in the one party that strikes at the very root of your trouble and that of every workingman in the country — white and black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro.