Section Three: Peaceful Slaughter—in Industry.

Surely it is bad enough to have the workingmen slaughtered while on the battlefield where each is armed and has his heart full of stupid hate for his fellow workingman of some other country. But it is outrageous that men, women, and little children should be killed and wounded by the hundreds of thousands every year in our own country while they are engaged in the useful, peaceful pursuits of industry. Let us briefly consider this matter.

The owner of a chattel-slave worker is careful to PROTECT the chattel-slave from accident, from sickness and from death. The slave-owner buys the slave, buys his whole life, at one purchase; and he is interested, therefore, in having the slave alive and well and sound as long as possible in order to get out of the slave as much labor-power as possible.

But the capitalist employer of the WAGE-slave worker does not buy the wage-earner for life; he buys the wage-earner, the wage-slave, IN SECTIONS; that is, for a month, or a week or a day at a time—eight or ten hours’ labor-power per day. Thus there is no risk for the capitalist if the wage-earner falls sick and dies; he is not responsible for the wage-earner’s health. If the grinding toil ages or sickens the wage-earner it is nothing to the employer of the wage-slaves. There are plenty more wage-slaves eager to sell their labor-power if some get sick or wounded, or die.

Of course it costs the employer, it is expensive to him, it reduces the precious surplus,—it cuts down the profits on the labor-power he buys for wages—to ventilate his factory perfectly, to keep it clean of dust, foul odors and poisonous gases, to arrange safeguards about dangerous machinery in order to protect the wage-earners against accident and sickness. Railway companies, for example, are very slow to provide all possible safeguards to protect employees—simply because it is expensive, cuts down profits, reduces the surplus value. Human life, however, is very cheap under the wage-system. Of course a safety device, a ventilator, might save a human arm or a human life—of a wage-earner; but the life-saving arrangement costs quite a bit of money. A new human arm, another human life (another worker) can easily be found to take the place of the lost arm or the destroyed life—and without extra expense to the capitalist employer. There are plenty of wage-slaves waiting ’round anxious to be hired, and thus a WAGE-slave limb or life can be replaced as easily as a wooden plug or a broken wheel in a machine, and with no such loss as there would be if his workers were CHATTEL-slaves. Thus the wage-slave plan is cheaper—more profitable—and surely more convenient.

You can see that—can’t you?

Of course “it is cruel”—there is no sentiment in such a procedure. But that does not matter, under capitalism: “Business is business”—and “there is no sentiment in business,” we are assured of that by leading Christian business men.

Hence everywhere there is vicious neglect by the capitalist employers in the matter of protecting the health, limb and life of the WAGE-workers, the WAGE-slaves. The wage-system is in this respect far more cruel and murderous than the chattel-slave system. Of course it seems impossible that capitalism is more inhumanly scornful of human life than was chattel slavery. But here following is some evidence to show how the greed for profits under the wage-system results in the slaughter of men, women and children—far worse than under the chattel-slave system, even far heavier slaughter than in actual war, real war in which even wholesale butchery with sword, rifle and cannon means magnificent success.

“It is the common consensus of opinion,” says The New York Independent, “among investigators that industrial casualties in this nation number more than 500,000 yearly. Dr. Josiah Strong estimates the number at 564,000. As there are 525,600 minutes in a year, it may readily be seen that every minute (day and night) our industrial system sends to the grave-yard or to the hospital a human being, the victim of some accident inseparable from his toil. We cry out against the horrors of war.... But the ravages ... of Industrial warfare are far greater than those of armed conflict. The number of killed or mortally wounded (including deaths from accidents, suicides and murders, but excluding deaths from disease) in the Philippine War from February 4, 1899, to April 30, 1902, was 1,573. These fatal casualties were spread over a period of three years and three months. But one coal mine alone in one year furnished a mortality more than 38 per cent. in excess of this.

“The Japanese war is commonly looked upon as the bloodiest of modern wars. According to the official statement of the Japanese Government, 46,180 Japanese were killed, and 10,970 died of wounds. Our industrial war shows a greater mortality year by year.

“But we are all of us more familiar with the Civil War, and we know what frightful devastation it caused in households North and South. It was, however, but a tame conflict compared with that which rages today, and which we call ‘peace.’ The slaughter of its greatest battles are thrown in the shade by the slaughter which particular industries inflict today. Ask any schoolboy to name three of the bloodiest battles of that war, and he will probably name Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Chickamauga. The loss on both sides was:

Killed. Wounded. “Gettysburg 5,662 27,203 Chancellorsville 3,271 18,843 Chickamauga 3,924 23,362 —————— —————— Total 12,857 69,408

“But our railroads, state and interstate, and our trolleys in one year equal this record in the number of killings and double it in the number of woundings....

“But whose interest is it that the lives of the workers shall be ... guarded? The employer class has no material interest in the matter. The worker is ‘free,’ legally, to refuse to work under dangerous conditions. If, economically, he must accept work under these conditions [or starve], that is another matter.”

Another witness sets forth the murderous carelessness of the lives of the workers in modern industry thus:

“In Allegheny County, Pa., including Pittsburgh, 17,700 persons were killed or injured last year in the mills and on the railroads or in some of the workshops of that interesting Inferno. This number has been recorded and reported, and there were, of course, others whose deaths or injuries were not reported.... Life and limb are needlessly sacrificed—hundreds of thousands of lives every decade. This is one of the penalties that we pay for quick industrial success.”

“Quick industrial success” is good, a fine phrase indeed—in the mining industry, for example, in which in the United States from 1889 to 1909 over 30,000 men were killed. If a war were on in the Philippines and 1500 of our men were being slaughtered every year the generals and captains in charge of our forces would be regarded as failures. Yet the captains of industry, in the capitalist administration of the mining industry alone, in the United States sacrifice more than 1500 brave men of the great industrial army every year.

That the modern industry, inspired by insane lust for profits for part of the people rather than by welfare for all the people—that this modern industry is far more deadly than real war on a large scale—this seems impossible. Yet it is not at all an impossibility; it is reality; it is experience; it is fact; it is the savagery of capitalist civilization.

ALL THE PROFIT-MONGERS’ PROUD AND STUPID BOASTING OF THE NOBLE TRIUMPHS OF CAPITALIST “PHILANTHROPY” CAN NOT HUSH THE LOUD-SHOUTING FACT THAT THE SICKLE OF DEATH CUTS DOWN THE TOILERS FAR MORE RAPIDLY WHILE PEACEFULLY ON DUTY IN THE INDUSTRIES THAN IT SLASHES DOWN IN TIME OF WAR ON THE FIRING-LINE AND IN THE MILITARY HOSPITAL—FAR MORE THAN THE RIFLE, SWORD, BAYONET, AND DISEASE COMBINED.

This is true, horrible and important. And because it is true, horrible and important, all doubt concerning the matter should, as far as possible, be dispelled. And, therefore, still more evidence is here offered to make the matter clear.

The eminent publicist, Dr. Josiah Strong, testifies:

“We might carry on a half dozen Philippine wars for three-quarters of a century with no larger number of total casualties than take place yearly in our peaceful industries.

“TAKING THE LOWEST OF OUR THREE ESTIMATES OF INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS, THE TOTAL NUMBER OF CASUALTIES SUFFERED BY OUR INDUSTRIAL ARMY IN ONE YEAR IS EQUAL TO THE AVERAGE ANNUAL CASUALTIES OF OUR CIVIL WAR, PLUS THOSE OF THE PHILIPPINE WAR, PLUS THOSE OF THE RUSSIAN-JAPANESE WAR.

“Think of carrying on three such wars at the same time, world without end.”

Losses from sickness in war and from sickness contracted in industry are, it should be remembered, not included in Dr. Strong’s calculations.

President Roosevelt in his Annual Message of 1907 bluntly stated the facts as follows:

“INDUSTRY IN THE UNITED STATES NOW EXACTS ... A FAR HEAVIER TOLL OF DEATH THAN ALL OF OUR WARS PUT TOGETHER.... THE NUMBER OF DEATHS IN BATTLE IN ALL THE FOREIGN WARS PUT TOGETHER FOR THE LAST CENTURY AND A QUARTER, AGGREGATE CONSIDERABLY LESS THAN ONE YEAR’S DEATH RECORD FOR OUR INDUSTRIES.”

It is inevitable that this slaughter of the toilers both in industry and in war will work rapidly and disastrously against the general blood-vigor of society. Serious and conservative students of the blood-letting and blood-weakening tendencies of capitalistic society are beginning to sound the alarm. The startlingly visible results in British society serve as excellent illustrative material. For more than two hundred years vast numbers of the soundest, strongest British workingmen have been slaughtered or weakened in war; and for more than a hundred years (the era of intense machine production) the British workingmen, women, and children have been cruelly overworked, underfed and ill-clad in the struggle for existence—in the industrial civil war called capitalism. And here are some of the results:

“In Manchester,” says Thomas Burke, “out of 12,000 would-be recruits [for the South African War], 8,000 were rejected as virtually invalids, and only 1,200 could be regarded as fit in all respects.... General Sir Frederick Maurice declared that, according to the best evidence he could obtain, it was the fact that for many years out of every five recruits only two were found to be physically fit after two years’ service.... It was, indeed, a startling fact that 60 per cent. of the men offering themselves for active service were physically unfit.”

Thus the well-known preacher and lecturer, Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, of Brooklyn, New York:

“Many forms of public charity, from a scientific viewpoint, seem a curse, while wars and many industries seem the enemies of the blood of the nation.... The national physique has suffered an incalculable loss. In one factory town [in England] the military commission, examining young men for the South African War, rejected nineteen out of twenty, because of some defect in the eyes or lungs or legs.”

It is to be remembered that many thousands of men who report for examination as candidates for military service are so evidently defective that no formal examination is necessary for their prompt rejection. It is also important to consider the fact that there are many thousands of men who would gladly join the army, but make no application, knowing well, in advance, that they would be rejected as unfit. Thus the statistics showing that a large per cent. of those reporting to the military department as candidates for the service are “rejected on examination,” even these statistics do not fully reveal the unfortunate condition of affairs. In ten of the largest cities of England and Scotland in the year ending September 30, 1907, there were 34,808 applicants for admission to the army. Forty-seven per cent. of these applicants were rejected as physically unfit. Of course, the percentage of rejections would have been far heavier if all had applied who would have been glad to join the army.

The next generation of English working-class people will probably be far more physically defective than the present generation.

In Westham public school (London) it was recently found:

“... That 87 per cent. of the infants and 70 per cent. of the older children were below the normal physique. These were all children of the dockers.

“Neglecting the kindly and assuageable problem of rural poverty, we seem driven to the conclusion that some seven and a half millions of people are at the present moment in England living below the poverty line—a problem which if only definitely realized in its squalid immensity is surely enough to stagger humanity.”

In England, because of the physical decline of the working class, the Government has so much difficulty in finding a sufficient number of sound men to fill the ranks that it has been necessary, since the Battle of Waterloo, to repeatedly lower the physical requirements for enlistment.

Thus do our brothers and sisters of the working class decay—driven to death—in the mills and mines and other industries. And in many parts of the world the fleshless skulls of the toilers slaughtered on the battlefield stare and grin at the present generation of workers decaying, dying in the capitalist industrial warfare. The president of Stanford University, Dr. David Starr Jordan, writes:

“It is claimed on authority ... that the French soldier of today is nearly two inches shorter than the soldier of a century ago.... There [in Novara, Italy] the farmers have ploughed up skulls of men till they have piled up a pyramid ten to twelve feet high.... These were the skulls of the young men of Savoy, Sardinia, and Austria,—men of eighteen to thirty-five, without physical blemish so far as may be.... You know the color that we call magenta, the hue of the blood that flowed out over the olive trees.... Go over Italy as you will, there is scarcely a spot not crimsoned with the blood of France, scarcely a railway station without its pile of French skulls. You can trace them across to Egypt, to the foot of the Pyramids. You will find them in Germany, at Jena and Leipzig, at Lützen and Bautzen and Austerlitz. You will find them in Russia, at Moskow; in Belgium, at Waterloo. ‘A boy can stop a bullet as well as a man,’ said Napoleon; and with the rest are the skulls of boys ... ‘born to be food for powder,’ was the grim epigram of the day.”

This vast crime, this phase of hell for the working class, is well stated by J. H. Rose:

“Amidst the ever deepening misery they [Napoleon’s army] struggled on, until of the 600,000 who had proudly crossed the Niemen for the conquest of Russia, only 20,000 famished, frost-bitten, unarmed spectres staggered across the bridge of Lorno in the middle of December.... Despite the loss of the most splendid army ever marshalled by man, Napoleon ... strained every effort to call the youth of the empire to arms.... THE MIGHTY SWIRL OF THE MOSKOW CAMPAIGN SUCKED IN 150,000 LADS UNDER TWENTY YEARS OF AGE INTO THE VORTEX.... The peasants gave up their sons as food for cannon.... In less than half a year after the loss of half a million men a new army nearly as large was marshalled.... But the majority were young.... Soldiers were wanting, youths were dragged forth.”

President Jordan, quoting Mr. Otto Seek, said:

“Napoleon in a series of years seized all the youth of high stature and left them scattered over many battlefields, so that the French people who followed them are mostly men of smaller stature. More than once in France since Napoleon’s time has the [physical] limit been lowered.”

The ancient Romans, a large robust people, spilt so much of the best blood of the best men in their “glorious” wars that their modern descendants, the Italians, are conspicuously inferior, physically, to their ancient ancestors; comparatively they are stunted. The “glorious” victories of Caesar alone cost more than a million picked men on the battlefield.

These vast, incalculable wrongs thrust into the lives of the working class—will they ever be righted?

Day dawns even now.

The lust for blood and profits will yet be cheated of its victories and victims—in the hastening future.

Our working class brothers in Europe are already rousing and shaking off the cruel spell of the gilt-braided butchers and silk-hatted capitalist statesmen and industrial Neros; the toilers in Europe are learning to seize the powers of government in self-defense,—quietly and legally, of course, but—DEFIANTLY.

We—driven, robbed and despised in the factory; betrayed, buncoed and slaughtered on the battlefield; voiceless in the control of industry, voiceless in the capitalist political party conventions, voiceless in the judiciary, voiceless in state and national legislatures, voiceless in the state and national executive councils, ridiculed by “high society,” scorned everywhere—we also must learn to defend ourselves. We must seize the powers of government and defend our class—everywhere.

Brothers, my American brothers, brothers of all the world,—if you have minds exercise them—for your own class; if you have pride, show it—for your class; if you have loyalty, prove it—for your class; if you have power, use it—use it in self-defense—for your class; if you can climb, why, climb, united with your class altogether—climb out of hell, the hell of capitalism.

Divided, your masters despise you.

United, your masters dread you.

Get together, brothers, and get up off your knees.

Refuse to go to hell—the hell of war.

Refuse to stay in hell—the hell of capitalist industry.

Unite! For peace and freedom—unite!

Form, toilers, form!

Organize!

A solid front on the battlefield—of industry.

A solid front on the battlefield—of politics.

A suggestion: Let each one of a hundred thousand men and women patiently and repeatedly bear light to the brain of one new man or woman each month for two years, and teach each new man to become a teacher of other men and women. Get some good book, a book that burns, a book that kindles a passion for freedom and justice; and lend that book to a new person each month till the book is worn out.

Light a lamp in your neighbor’s brain.

Strike a fire in your neighbor’s heart.

Revolutionize him.

Dare.

Today.

Society is, and always will be—as free as the majority have sense enough and pride enough to make it; or as tyrannical as the majority are meek enough to permit it to be.

Conditions always express the will or lack of will of the majority.

-----

Footnote 67:

See Index: “Desertion,” also “Suicide, startling increase of, in American Army.”

Footnote 68:

Financial History of the United States, Vol. III., p. 245.

Footnote 69:

School History of the United States, p. 423.

Footnote 70:

Quoted in Mead’s Patriotism and the New Internationalism, pp. 18–19.

Footnote 71:

See J. Bloch: The Future of War, a volume of great value, packed with information concerning several different phases of war under present conditions. Published by Ginn and Company, New York.

Footnote 72:

The Making of America, Vol. IX., Special Article, “Army and Navy,” p. 388.

Footnote 73:

Report for 1908, p. 33.

Footnote 74:

See A. Williams: Romance of Modern Mechanics, Chapter 27.

Footnote 75:

McLaren: Put Up Thy Sword, p. 127.

Footnote 76:

The Nation’s Navy, p. 292.

Footnote 77:

Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.

Footnote 78:

Published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York.

Footnote 79:

Published by J. Fisher Unwin, London.

Footnote 80:

Published by The Macmillan Company, New York.

Footnote 81:

Published by Ginn and Company, New York.

Footnote 82:

Arbeiter in Council (Anonymous), pp. 155–56; published by The Macmillan Company, New York. A valuable book.

Footnote 83:

See Bloch: The Future of War; also Morris: The Nation’s Navy, p. 289.

Footnote 84:

The Future of War, Preface, p. XXV., also pp. 9 and 157.

Footnote 85:

Published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York. Italics mine. G. R. K. See pp. 82–83.

Footnote 86:

See Literary Digest, Nov. 9, 1907.

Footnote 87:

See Index: “Insanity in American Army.”

Footnote 88:

The Nation’s Navy, pp. 289–90.

Footnote 89:

The Future of War, pp. 21 and 22. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 90:

Lecture, “The War of the Future,” at Amherst College, Dec. 3, 1909.

Footnote 91:

Quoted in Charles Sumner’s Addresses on War, p. 138.

Footnote 92:

See Scientific American, Sept. 21, 1907.

Footnote 93:

J. F. Haskins, New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser, Feb. 1, 1909.

Footnote 94:

Appleton’s Magazine, April, 1908.

Footnote 95:

The Rough Riders, pp. 202, 209.

Footnote 96:

The Nation in Arms, p. 376.

Footnote 97:

War and Labor, p. 54.

Footnote 98:

But see Professor Mayo-Smith’s Statistics and Sociology.

Footnote 99:

Arbeiter in Council, pp. 150–51.

Footnote 100:

Annual Report of the Secretary of War (William H. Taft), 1907, p. 25. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 101:

Editorial, Oct. 7, 1909.

Footnote 102:

See Index: “Another War.”

Footnote 103:

March 14, 1907. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 104:

World’s Work, March, 1906.

Footnote 105:

Museum of Safety and Sanitation, Bulletin, issued December, 1909.

Footnote 106:

North American Review, Nov., 1906. Emphasis mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 107:

The Forum, Jan., 1905.

Footnote 108:

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 13, 1907.

Footnote 109:

Labor Leader, London, July 17, 1908.

Footnote 110:

C. F. G. Masterman: Contemporary Review, Jan., 1902.

Footnote 111:

The Blood of the Nation, pp. 45–47.

Footnote 112:

The History of Napoleon. Emphasis mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 113:

In an address, “The Biology of War,” May 3, 1909, Chicago.

Footnote 114:

Reference for substance and part of phrasing of this paragraph has been lost.

Footnote 115:

See Index: “Four Historic Events.”

Footnote 116:

See “What to Read,” Chapter Twelve.