My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want.
We do not want to find fault with each other,
but to solidify our forces and say to each other:
"We must be together; our masters are joined together
and we must do the same thing."
-Mother Jones
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Sunday May 28, 1905
From the Appeal to Reason: F. D. Warren Compares Roosevelt to Lincoln
In this week's edition of the
Appeal, Fred Warren compares the treatment dished out upon the Teamsters of Chicago by President Roosevelt to the respectful consideration given to the workingmen of New York when they were granted a meeting with President Lincoln on March the 21st of 1864.
The words of President Lincoln still ring true today:
The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations and kindreds.
From the Appeal to Reason of May 27, 1905:
Two Presidents: Lincoln and Roosevelt
Roosevelt and the Chicago Teamsters
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LAST week a committee of the striking teamsters of Chicago called on President Roosevelt at his palatial quarters in the finest hotel in that city.
They had voted for him in the last election, and his repeated reiteration of "a square deal" led them to believe he would listen to their petition.
He read it in silence and then told the Chicago toilers that he knew nothing of the merits of the case. The Daily Tribune reported a conversation between Mayor Dunne and the president. Says the Tribune: "The president was interested in the matter, and showed that he had kept in touch with the situation."
Did the president lie to the workingmen?
After criticising the wording of the petition he coolly turned on his heel, retired to his room(built by these working men), dressed in clothes made by these workingmen, and was driven to the banquet of employers by a workingman, yet he had no word of encouragement for them-no intimation that they would be given a "square deal."
At the banquet were assembled the employing interests of Chicago-there also was Judge Kohlssat, the judge before whom the strikers are being tried, and who issues injunctions against them.
On one side was Mayor Dunne and the chief of police-on the other was Governor Deneen.
Roosevelt went to meet the capitalists-the workers called on the president.
There were no flowers and no music at the first meeting-there were both at the banquet.
Roosevelt discussed the strike at the banquet. He seemed to know all about the merits of the situation.
Says the Tribune: "His first word on the subject (the strike) uppermost in the thoughts of all present brought the great gathering to its feet with cheers and with napkins waving. It was a tacit recognition of the unflinching Roosevelt way of tackling a possibly delicate subject and tackling it hard....Then, with growing sternness of manner he reminded the state and city officials around him that if the menace of the mob"-(the people is always a mob)-"should become more alarming there is the recourse of state authority, which lies behind the city, and finally the authority of the nation behind the state."
"At this intimation," continues the Tribune man, who was present, "that troops are ready at the call of the authorities should the situation get beyond their control, the guests sprang to their feet once more, mounted chairs and shouted themselves hoarse."
Why this hilarity? Did these captains of industry cheer the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the American army, because he proposed to give the working class a square deal? Well, hardly. He told the employers that the rich and poor alike would have to obey the law-and the rich laughed and howled in delight!
They knew the president as they knew Cleveland!
They knew the poor would be compelled to obey the law because there were troops at the beck and call of the employing class.
They remembered the Beef Trust and its defiance of law!
They remembered Chicago in 1894-and they remembered that Cleveland sent the troops-and they remembered that Roosevelt wrote a magazine article in which he endorsed the action of Cleveland-and they knew Roosevelt was still Roosevelt!
That's why they cheered!
------
Lincoln and the New York Workingmen.
-----
FORTY-ONE years ago-to be exact, on the 21st of March, 1864-a committee representing the Workingmen's Association of New York called on President Lincoln and delivered to him a written address. Lincoln replied, not in a stereotyped, formal manner, but with words that burned-words that electrified his hearers-words that have since been largely expunged from his biographies by capitalist publishers. I have quoted them several times in the Appeal, but they never grow old, and I propose to quote a few passages from his message to congress-delivered in December, 1861-which he incorporated in his address to the Workingmen's committee on the occasion referred to above.
I do this in order to give you an opportunity to compare what Lincoln said with what Roosevelt said.
To the workingmen Lincoln replied:
In my present position, I could scarcely be justified were I to emit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.
It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure of the government.
It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless someone else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them into it without their consent. Having proceeded so far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what we call slaves. And, further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer, is fixed in that condition for life.....
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the highest consideration....
A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them.....
Let them (laboring class) beware of surrendering a political power they already posses, and which if surrendered, will surely be used to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all liberty shall be lost.
[Continued the president to the committee which waited upon him:]
The views then expressed...remain unchanged, nor have I much to add. None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and hostilities among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other working people. It should never be. The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside the family relation, should be one uniting all working people of all nations and kindreds.
Conditions, it is true, were different when Lincoln uttered these prophetic words, but they show a deep sympathy with and a thorough understanding of the labor question from the point of view of the toiler.
Roosevelt sees things only through the eyes of the capitalist class.
His whole life has been in that environment, and it is not to be wondered at that he should take the view he does. He understands that it was through the influence of the capitalists that he was elected-and he is true to their interests, just as Buchanan was true to the interests of the slave aristocracy and Cleveland to those of the plutocracy.
The striking workingmen in Chicago are getting just what the great majority of them voted for.
They voted for Roosevelt and they voted for Dunne. They knew these men were representatives of the capitalist class, and when occasion offered would use their power in the interests of that class.
They wold be counted a traitors were they to do otherwise-they would, in fact, be traitors.
The trades unionist only advertises himself a fool when he publicly expresses his hope of any other treatment at the hands of these men.
Suppose, Mr. Striker, that Debs was president and John Collins mayor of Chicago
Would you today be groveling in the dust of humiliation at the feet of the Employers' Association of Chicago-fearing the arrival of the United States troops and feeling the weight of the policemen's clubs?
You know you would not. The power of government would be used in your interest-and your interest is the interest and welfare of your wife and children.
How many more policemen's clubs and how many more soldiers' bayonets will it take to convince you that the Roosevelts and the Deneens and the Dunnes do not see things as you do-that no number of petitions, appeals and addresses will change their attitude, after you have delivered to them the key to your freedom?
Carry home with you tonight Lincoln's immortal words and take them to the ballot box on the nest occasion:
Let them (laboring class) beware of surrendering a political power they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them, till all liberty shall be lost.
Watch your ballot, boys, and vote for the good of your wife and your children and yourself!
F. D. WARREN.
Note: much of the above article was darkened for emphasis with capital lettering added for more emphasis. For ease of reading, we have eliminated the original emphasis and replaced the capital lettering with emphasis.
Ryan Walker's latest cartoon:
Capital rides on the back of Labor by Ryan Walker
~~~~~~~~~~
Fred D Warren
of the Appeal to Reason
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SOURCE
Appeal to Reason
(Girard, Kansas)
-May 27, 1905
(Also source for drawings within article.)
http://www.newspapers.com/...
IMAGES
Abraham Lincoln
http://es.wikipedia.org/...
Capital on the back of Labor by Ryan Walker,
AtR, May 27, 1905
http://www.newspapers.com/...
Fred Warren of the Appeal to Reason
http://en.wikipedia.org/..._(newspaper)
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Battle Hymn Of The Republic - Odetta
As first published in February of 1862:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal";
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
While God is marching on.
-Julia Ward Howe
Dedicate to Phillip and Jacob Hamlin
Uncles who died serving the Union Cause in the civil war.
Philip died at Gettysburg fighting with the Minnesota 1st.
Jacob died at Nashville fighting with the Minnesota 7th.
They came from a strongly abolitionist-Methodist family
of farmers from southern Minnesota.
They were the two eldest of five children, my great grandfather
was the baby of the family.
The Temple and Hamlin families will never forget them.
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