752 



UNITED STATES. 



the people. The starving, striking railroad operatives 

 have our deepest sympathy, but the rioters strength- 

 en the cause of the monopolists, and are injuring the 

 cause of the people. 



Citizens, organize. Unite with us and we will 

 redeem the nation from bond, bank, and railroad 

 monopolists by converting every city in this vast, 

 rich, idle country into an active workshop, each acre 

 of its broad land into a farm, every mine into a 

 s jurce of life instead of a potter's field to its work- 

 ers. By order State Council. 



The programme issued by a convention in 

 Baltimore merely contained a repetition of the 

 well-known projects of the European social- 

 ists. It declared that the emancipation of the 

 laboring class can only be accomplished by the 

 action of the laboring class itself; that the 

 struggle for .this emancipation is not one for 

 class privileges and monopolies, but for equal 

 rights and equal duties; that the economical 

 subjection of the laborer to the possessor of 

 the means of labor is the foundation of servi- 

 tude in all its forms, and of social misery, spir- 

 itual debasement, and political dependence; 

 that the economical liberation of the laboring 

 class is thence the great final purpose to which, 

 as a means, every political activity should be 

 subordinate ; that all efforts hitherto directed 

 to this end have failed from a lack of union of 

 the different branches of labor in each coun- 

 try, and from the lack of a real combination of 

 the laborers of all lands ; that the liberation of 

 the laboring class is neither a local nor a na- 

 tional, but a social problem, which takes in all 

 lands in which modern society exists, and 

 whose solution depends on the combined prac- 

 tical and intellectual efforts of the most pro- 

 gressive nations. The " Labor Party of the 

 United States," founded on these principles, 

 therefore demands that all the means of la- 

 bor (land, machines, means of transportation) 

 should become the property of the community, 

 and that, instead of hired labor, should be in- 

 troduced production in common and an equita- 

 ble distribution of the products. It repudiates 

 all connection with the political parties. The 

 reforms which it immediately proposes are: 

 1. Introduction of a uniform day's work, for the 

 present eight hours per diem, and punishment 

 of the parties transgressing; 2. Sanitary in- 

 spection of laborers' workshops, dwellings, food, 

 etc. ; 3. Establishment of a bureau of labor 

 statistics ; 4. Prohibition of speculation in con- 

 vict labor ; 5. Prevention of children under 

 It years of age working in industrial enter- 

 prises ; 6. Free tuition in all educational insti- 

 tutes ; 7. A stringent law for the protection 

 of laborers ; 8. Free justice ; 9. Abolition of 

 conspiracy laws ; 10. Assumption and manage- 

 ment of all telegraphs and commercial roads 

 by the State; 11. Governmental control of all 

 industrial enterprises, and the conduct of the 

 same through free cooperative communities for 

 the benefit of the whole people. The following 

 resolutions read at the Tompkins Square meet- 

 ing, held during the strike in New York, ex- 

 press the same internationalist principles, but 



are aimed more immediately at the corporate 

 companies of the country : 



Resolved, That we consider all legalized chartered 

 corporations, such as railroad, mining, banking, 

 manufacturing, gas, etc., under their present system 

 of operation, as the most despotic and heartless ene- 

 mies of the working classes. 



Resolved, That their acts of tyranny and oppression 

 have been the cause of demoralizing thousands of 

 honest workingmen, thereby driving them to acts of 

 madness, desperation, and crime, that they would 

 not otherwise have been guilty of had they been 

 justly dealt by. 



Resolved, That as these chartered companies have 

 been the primal cause of their miseries and their con- 

 sequences, we hold them morally responsible for all 

 acts of violence that proceed from, and are the legiti- 

 mate results of, their tyranny and oppression. 



Resolved, That we view with alarm the growing in- 

 fluence and power of these corporations over the 

 legislation of State and nation, and believe, if that in- 

 fluence continues, the executive, judicial, and legisla- 

 tive branches of the Government will become totally 

 demoralized, the right of the masses destroyed, and 

 instead of the voice of the people the power of the 

 Almighty Dollar will become absolute and su- 

 preme. 



Resolved, That we do earnestly request and advise 

 all the working classes throughout the country to 

 unite as speedily as possible, for the purpose of form- 

 ing a political party, based upon the natural rights 

 of labor. Let us make common cause against a com- 

 mon enemy, namely, organized capital. 



Resolved, That nothing short of a political revolu- 

 tion through the ballot-box on the part of the work- 

 ing classes will remedy the evils under which they 

 suffer. 



Resolved, That it is the purpose of the Working- 

 m n's party to confiscate, through legislation, the un- 

 justly-gotten wealth of these legalized and chartered 

 corporation thieves, that ure backed by the Shylocks 

 and money syndicates of Europe and this country. 



The following extract from an address to the 

 citizens of St. Louis by the executive commit- 

 tee of the United Workingmen's party of that 

 city seems to require the regulation of wages 

 by law : 



We deem it to the interest of all business men, 

 particularly retail dealers, to use their best endeav- 

 ors to further the passage of an eight-hour law and 

 living wages. The working classes, in times of pros- 

 perity, constitute the great circulating medium of 

 the country. Good times for the mechanic means 

 active industries in the factories and shops, and plen- 

 ty of business to the storekeepers. We ask, in the 

 name of common-sense, if the experience of the past 

 three years has not been sufficient evidence of the 

 damaging effects to business caused by the circulat- 

 ing medium being withdrawn from the many into 

 the hands of the few? Statistics prove that before 

 this strike nearly 4,000,000 toilers were idle in the 

 United States, caused by improved machinery forcing 

 man out of employment, and those who were in 

 forced idleness, through sheer destitution, were 

 compelled to underbid their fellow-workmen until 

 wages paid to those fortunate enough to have work 

 became so low as to make even their case desperate. 

 Hence, using a homely phrase, " the chickens came 

 home to roost." The only persons temporarily ben- 

 efited by this sad condition of things are a class of 

 people so few in number, who mostly spend their 

 fortunes in Europe, that we clearly see the necessity 

 of our merchants increasing the purchasing capacity 

 of the bulk of the population. The cry of over-pro- 

 duction is a fallacy while the millions have reasona- 

 ble wants ungratified. 



Few, if any, questions decided by the Su- 



