Capitalism Destroys Lincoln's Ideal As Nations Toilers Continue to Struggle
Capitalism Destroys Lincoln's Ideal As Nations Toilers Continue to Struggle LAS I week brought the annual 1 return of ceremonies venerating the memory of Abraham Lincoln. What was Lincoln's...
...Heretofore there have been feeble protests against conditions, but they are rapidly assuming almost revolutionary proportions...
...There is plenty to provide for all...
...But this is not all...
...First by new machines and scientific management, then by the industrial crisis and the closing of industries...
...First, the "Fight for Work and Relief" which we outlined on this page last week...
...His savings, his farm, his animals and his took more and more pas«ed out of his hands...
...The values they produce do not go to them but are taken by others...
...Here are a few...
...Why...
...So every section of Lincoln's "mixed class' is either reduced to •tark want or remnants of it cling to slender and uncertain jobs and incomes...
...The war ended...
...Every group of this class is sinking to lower levels ot lite...
...The usurer and tax collector swarmed like vultures over the countryside...
...The World War and high prices for farm products seemed to give Lincoln's "mixed class" reasonable security...
...He warned the masses against the social philosophy of the planter South which would destroy this "mixed class" ideal of self-producers till all ot liberty is lost...
...Our so-called banking system is a high-powered machine gun wherewith legalized robbers collect at regular intervals twice the value of their loans...
...A sixth...
...And what are the members of Lincoln's "mixed class" thinking now...
...A hungry belly hasn't much conscience and no pride in the existing order of things...
...The former self-producing farmer is becoming a par.ah...
...A few have most of it...
...The discovery of%o!d in Alaska and South Africa, rising prices of farm products, increasing value of farm lands, and better marketing facilities brought some measure of contentment...
...In the decade that followed into the Fall of 1929 there was a continuous decline in the living and income of the farmer section of the "mixed class...
...I he tormer "free" worker is becoming a beggar dependent upon the hateful charity of the super-rich...
...A seventh...
...A third...
...i •> This is the end of Lincoln's philosophy of a producing mixed tlass working for themselves, "taking the whole product to •«d living in fancied security...
...Because they "work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other...
...Industrial and finance capital has taken the place* of slave-owning capital...
...Lincoln's hope has expired in futility...
...Patient for years in measureless suffering, they are expressing their anger in letters to their "representatives" at Washington...
...The class that owns is the most miserable failure in all history A Socialist Commonwealth must take over their mismanaged power and privileges and end this frightful tragedy...
...For a time Lincoln's "mixed class" lived under the illusion that it was free and independent...
...What has happened to this class of self-producers...
...This revolt is spreading like a prairie fire...
...The New York Times presents a cross section of these letters...
...The "free" wage worker could not merge into the mixed dass" because that class itself was robbed and facing destitution, borne twelve millions of "free" workers with their families are now outcasts «n the civilization they helped to build...
...Slave-owning was destroyed'in 1865...
...Instead of an enduring and independent "m i x e d class" ruling the republic a handful of great masters of capital and finance rule...
...They were the "mixed class," those who "neither work for others nor have others working for them...
...A fifth...
...Think of it—a people hungry and ill-clad, surrounded by good things to eat and warm clothing to wear which they cannot buy because some human parasites have been hiding gold...
...The tens of millions in need must have enough to live...
...The militia of this state will not fire to lull when called upon to suppress these disorders...
...The starvelings must learn,to demand the surrender of the natural resources, the banks and the industries to the people, to be their collective possession and to operate them for the welfare of all...
...The crash that followed in October of that year brought a rapid and continuous descent of the producing farmer into an abyss of despair...
...What was Lincoln's philosophy ? It is recorded in his message of December 3, 1861...
...Another...
...Supporting their mastery over us are the tens of millions of ballots by which farmers and "free" workers gave the government to these masters...
...A fourth...
...Planter capital was destroyed...
...There is no reason why a single human being should be in need of food, clothing and shelter...
...It fought the rising capitalist and banking class of the East...
...The present lame-duck Congress is the laughing stock of the country...
...Into their possession have come the great industries, the richest natural resources, the railroads and banks and the utilities empire...
...He'would have had them form the permanent basis of society...
...A new hope, a new program adapted to new conditions, must replace it...
...The farms, the tools, the savings, the industries and the jobs are in the grip of the great masters of corporate capital and the banking oligarchy...
...Lincoln believed that the "free hired laborer" was not a permanent fixture in society as he could rise to a place in this "mixed class...
...Sixty-eight years have passed into history...
...From South Dakota: There . has got to be a change for the better soon, or an awful lot of people will be ready to scrap the Constitution and everything else...
...He believed in the frontier equality of the producing farmer, mechanic and laborer...
...Then came the locust yeajrs of the eighties and nineties...
...The great agricultural states will be compelled to use means to relieve the situation without Congress...
...It was defeated...
...Organize the millions for determined demands upon the legislative bodies in all the states...
...The great valley that Lincoln knew is strewn with human wreckage...
...In the meantime, Lincoln's "free hired laborer" was being hurled out of the places of employment...
Vol. 15 • February 1933 • No. 7
