Though it is evident that there can be no patriotism in men who are doing their utmost to overthrow our government by stirring up class-hatred and inciting rebellion, still most of the citizens of our country have never realized the extent to which Socialists ridicule and despise patriotism and abhor its very name. "The Call," September 25, 1912, in answering the charge that Socialism undermines patriotism, says: "So it does, and is proud of it, if by patriotism is meant that mawkish sentiment which causes a man, for the sum of $15 a month, to go out and get himself killed in defense of a country of which he owns not a single foot and can never hope to own any. If a wage slave is paid only enough to live on, anyhow, what difference to him does it make whether his boss is a Britisher or a Chinaman?" The Socialists often succeed in stirring up violence during strikes to develop the spirit of revolt; then, when it becomes necessary for the state to protect the lives and property of its citizens, the lovers of rebellion and disorder do their utmost to incite hatred and contempt against the soldiers who are sent to preserve order. On February 10, 1912, there appeared in "The Call" an article which reads as follows:
On May 6, 1919, millions of New Yorkers enthusiastically welcomed the 77th Division of our soldier boys on their return home from the battle-fields of Europe. Glowing descriptions of the celebration appeared in nearly all the papers of the Metropolis. A contemptible account, however, was published the next day in "The Call," showing the scornful spirit of the Socialists toward the millions of American troops who made so many sacrifices for their country in the late war. The article in "The Call" runs as follows:
The hypocritical Socialists at one moment plead for universal peace, the desire of nations, and at the next for class hatred. They are trying to ruin our domestic peace and to expose us to the ravages of lawlessness and crime. By fostering contempt for soldiers and other guardians of the peace, they not only make it harder for them to fulfil their duties, but prevent many from joining the army and navy for the defense of our country against foreign and domestic foes. Our country at present is well able to defend itself against foreign attacks, but if our domestic enemies continue to sow the seeds of discord and class hatred among our fellow citizens, it will surely fall, for no nation that is divided against itself can stand. From the very fact that "The Call" of February 10, 1912, dared to publish the following article, showing the intense hatred of its author for the Stars and Stripes, our national emblem, the reader can judge for himself whether the thousands of unoffended subscribers have the faintest spark of patriotism in their hearts:
Not alone do the members of the rank and file of the Socialist Party attack the Star Spangled Banner, but even its foremost leaders are guilty of the same offense. "The Comrade," July, "Have you a drop of blood in your veins? Has your manhood rotted into cowardice? Wake up and take your place in the class struggle. For the desecration of the flag your leader is in jail. What flag? The flag of the capitalist class--the flag that floats over the bull pens of Colorado. The wholesome truths he stamped upon its stripes are your shame and your masters' crime. Rally to the red flag of international Socialism, the symbol of the proletarian revolt." The people, we are told, would enjoy equal rights. The government could not refuse to grant work to any qualified person applying for it. Suppose the members of some trade, the carpenters, for example, displeased with the wages they were getting, should apply for other work and stick to it until the government was forced to grant their demands. Other craftsmen, seeing how easily the carpenters had won their strike, would imitate their example. Thus would occur derangements of the intricate wage scale--which had occupied the attention of the country for so long a time and been adopted only after the greatest difficulty--causing great discontent and jealousy, while the economic losses through successful strikes would raise the prices of commodities, bringing on a general fever of discontent. A further source of trouble would be the problem of determining what wages should be paid to shirkers and those incapable of working with efficiency. Would wage courts decide the value of their services? If so, how many thousands of such courts would be required? If not, would state officials or poli It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine justly and accurately the wages of eminent specialists, physicians and persons whose important services the state could not afford to lose. If very high wages were awarded them, the poorer classes would take offence at the prospect of a rich class once more rising with power to suppress them, as many do at the present time. If low wages were paid to eminent specialists, they would neglect important pursuits and vocations to the detriment of the nation's welfare. Even if they received moderately high wages, other persons of the same profession would become offended at the government's refusal to grant them like salaries and would line up with the enemies of the Socialist state. Even under the most favorable circumstances, the fifth wage-system would produce two classes, the comparatively rich, and the comparatively poor, a condition repugnant to Socialists. The forcing of women to work, in accordance with Socialistic doctrines, would arouse opposition to the new government. The husbands, fathers and sons of the women would be displeased with the wretched way in which their homes would be kept and their meals prepared. A further source of tremendous discontent in the Socialist state would be the prevalence14 of political corruption to a far greater extent than under the present system. For there would be a far greater throng of state employes than now, and there would be an immense number of people trying to get permissions, privileges and exemptions of every description. With human nature unchanged, but with the opportunities for deals and bribery greatly multiplied, political corruption would greatly increase. Another important cause would be in operation. Socialism is spreading anti-religious and atheistic doctrines, loosing men and women from their moral restraints. With dishonesty thus increasing, acceptors of bribes would not only be more common in the Marxian state, but the average number of their offences would increase; for since opportunities of collecting large single sums would be rarer than at present, owing to abolition of the capitalist system and the small amount of wealth possessed by individuals, dishonest politicians would naturally endeavor to enrich themselves by granting corrupt favors to a larger number of people. The reader himself can picture the condition of The Socialist state would contain many persons who by soapbox orators and revolutionary authors were led to believe that police, soldiers and courts would disappear. These persons would be greatly discontented when the Socialist government still hedged them in by retaining the old system for the preservation of law and order, or, as in Russia, greatly increased the restraint on their liberty by means of immense numbers of Red Guards, heavily armed and noted for cruelty. Or if these were taken away, the state would feel the enmity of all its better citizens who realized the need for guardians, police, soldiers and courts, to protect them from the crimes of the lawless. Under the Socialist regime there would be atheists, fighting as in Russia, Mexico, France, Italy and Portugal for the propagation of their doctrines, while in opposition to them would be millions of believers, defending themselves from the attacks of the enemies of God. Any concession granted by the state to one of these parties would arouse the enmity of the other. So, too, there would be a rapidly growing faction in favor of free-love, as well as one opposed to it, and as each party would be extremely powerful, and use every effort to defeat its opponents, there would be great strife and discontent. The Socialists in power in Europe, whether "moderate" or extremely radical, have made millions of enemies by imprisonments, executions, suppression of free speech, the gagging of the press, the withholding food, etc. Would these things happen in our country if the Reds gained control? There is every reason to believe that the Socialist Government would become exceedingly unpopular here as in Russia, owing to a great increase in crime; for to say nothing of the criminal offences occasioned by the prevalent discontent of the citizens, the atheistical and anti-religious doctrines of the Revolutionists, by continuing to undermine the faith of the people in the existence of God and by leading them to disbelieve in the rewards of heaven and the punishments of hell, would very seriously interfere with the beneficent effects of several of the most excellent preventives of crime. With discontent, jealousy and crime reigning supreme in the state from its very birth, many who had hoped for the success of Socialism would become utterly disgusted with its absolute failure and would long for the re-establishment of the old order. We must remember, too, that the very persons who would discover that they had been deceived by their Socialist teachers would be the very same people who are now taught by the same teachers to find fault with everything under the sun. It would, therefore, be a terrible day for the new state when the embittered rank and file of the Revolutionary Party fully realized the total failure of Socialism. The Socialist state would then have millions of enemies, recruited from the Socialist Party itself, as well as from the ranks of those who had always opposed Socialism. Not alone would these enemies be far more numerous than those who oppose our present form of government, but their wrath and anger, wrought to fever heat by the many causes we have enumerated, as well as by the mistakes of the Marxian rulers, would urge them to commit deeds of violence that have never yet been conceived even by the "bomb squad" of the revolutionary I. W. W. Rebellion against the new government would be the order of the day, and the Socialist state would not long endure. It would crumble to pieces, and the poor workingman, in the midst of anarchy and the total destruction of industry, would deeply regret having listened to the crazed imaginations of silver-tongued fanatics. Lincoln Eyre's cables from Russia, received by the "New York World" when this book was in type, more than corroborate the picture drawn in this chapter of the "perils to workingmen" from any attempt to put the economic fallacies of Socialism into practice. In the first place, according to Eyre's cable of February 26, 1920, printed in the "World" of February 28, 1920, all the blood and violence inflicted on Russia have failed to establish real Communism there. Through courtesy of the "World" we give, in part, Eyre's statement as to this, from the cable just mentioned:
In the second place, not alone has there been failure to destroy capitalism and equalize possessions, but new class distinctions and "new aristocracies" have arisen. We quote Eyre on this point from the same issue of the "World," February 28, 1920:
Thirdly, "Communist" Russia already has her "ruling class," as privileged and as distinctly marked off from the ordinary day-laborer as in any "bourgeois" republic. We quote Eyre as to this from the same article:
The observant reader will also have gathered from the extract just given that, fourthly, the "ruling class" of Communist Russia is much more distrustful of the "common people" than any class in the United States, Great Britain or France would think of being. Thus the lords and lordlings of the "proletarian dictatorship" barricade themselves in "citadels," behind "barriers of bayonets and machine guns," while "sentries guard the doors" to keep out "visitors." What would we poor "bourgeois" Americans think if our wealthier inhabitants and public officials kept "common citizens" out of range by such a display of infantry and artillery? Fifthly, despite all the gush about a "workingmen's" republic in Russia, that country is now absolutely helpless under the yoke of the most absolute autocracy the world has seen in a long while. As to this we quote Lincoln Eyre's cable, dated February 25, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920. Eyre says:
We shall return to this astounding conscription of labor a little further on. It is referred to here merely to show who actually does the "ruling" in the widely advertised "labor" government of Russia. Eyre continues:
Thus horrible butcheries are no longer necessary because no one longer dares to resist. All liberty, all self-government, all self-initiative have been crushed in the iron vise of dictated policy. This is the case, as Eyre says, "twenty-seven months after the social revolution gripped the nation in a clutch of steel that never has been relaxed since." Is not such mental, moral and spiritual death a greater calamity than physical death? Sixthly, the common people, crushed under this experimental Socialist Juggernaut, are starving to death. In the article last cited, in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
Seventhly, craving for food is one of the things which make it impossible to shut out the food speculator, whose extortion at least helps to prolong life. As Eyre says:
Eighthly, the common people are nearly as cold as they are hungry. In the cable printed in the "World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:
In the ninth place, disease stalks through the land, hand in hand with cold and famine. The article just cited contains the following by Eyre:
In the tenth place, "labor" in Russia, the real "working class," is conscripted, enslaved under military discipline, and "exploited" under an incredible system of military court martial--a degradation of workingmen by the Socialist tyrants of Russia which no form of modern "capitalism" has dreamed of since human slavery was abolished. On this subject Eyre says, in the "World" of February 27, 1920:
Is this the kind of thing which Hillquit's Socialist gang of would-be labor "exploiters" would lure America's liberty-loving workingmen into by calling them "slaves" in their present dignified situation as self-governed and self-reliant freemen? On December 13, 1919, the presidents and secretaries of the 113 national and international unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor met at Washington, D. C., with the
We cite this here to put the freedom of self-determination, practiced by the great progressive body of American labor, in vivid contrast with the abject slavery which the Socialists of Russia are now imposing upon the labor of that country. Lincoln Eyre's statement of the labor situation in Russia is confirmed by Trotzky himself, as we learn from the "New York World" of February 28, 1920, as follows:
No doubt these "qualified workmen" are what we call "skilled workmen." Here we have, in its naked reality, the "deliverance" from "wage-slavery" which the crazy Socialists of all schools have so long been preaching to the laboring freemen of America. How would the millions of labor's noblemen in the American Federation of Labor like to see Debs, Hillquit and Victor L. Berger cracking the whip over them after the fashion of Lenine, Trotzky and Zinovieff in Russia? Notice the "capitalistic" language of Trotzky: "We"--the tyrannical, exploiting drones in the Kremlin--"must feed these workmen and guarantee them the minimum food ration." Do not the "workmen" produce the food? Then why do they not take it and cut the throats of these drones? Is not this the Socialist doctrine we are taught by our American theorists, who froth at the mouth over the alleged "wage-slavery" of American workmen who rear intelligent families in comfortable homes and maintain the independence and self-initiative of American freemen? In the eleventh place, we notice that the workmen of Russia, as a reward for complete slavery under military conscription and courts martial tribunals, are guaranteed nothing but this "minimum food ration" and a possibility of being able to buy enough additional food out of their wages to postpone starvation. The last-mentioned possibility is described for us by Lincoln Eyre in his cable in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920, where, it must be remembered, he is speaking of the most-favored workmen, in the big cities. He says: "Nobody in Russia relying wholly upon 'Sovietsky' food--food handed out through official agencies--gets enough to eat except soldiers, a small percentage of heavy workers and high Soviet officials. Ordinary factory workers seldom receive as much as 60 per cent of their alimentary requirements through the Government. The remainder they must buy at fantastically high prices from speculators. And though they themselves, in collaboration with central dictatorship, fix their own wages, they never earn enough to cover the swift-climbing cost of living. If this is the plight of the workers, that is, of the ruling class, the ghastliness of the situation confronting the less favored elements of the population may well be imagined." Is it in irony that Eyre speaks of these "workers" as "the ruling class"? What are the real workmen in Russia but victims of this cruel experiment of tyrannizing Socialist "intellectuals"? We remark next, in the twelfth place, that the Soviet system of food distribution, wholly unequal and thus anti-communistic, has resulted in dividing the Russians into eight classes, each category having a special card defining its special ration. The account of this is given by Lincoln Eyre in a cable dated March 9, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of March 10, 1920, from which we take two sentences:
The affect of these distinctions may be gathered from the following instance given in the article just cited:
In the thirteenth place, we note that the Russian Socialist tyrants give the workmen, in exchange for their labor, pieces of paper run off from printing presses which seem almost to have solved the problem of perpetual motion. The workmen are wise if they spend this fiat money daily for whatever it will bring in food, for its value will collapse utterly when the dictatorship bursts, leaving the country financially prostrate, without credit or means of exchange. This is one of the greatest bunco games ever practiced upon workingmen. Eyre describes it in a cable dated March 3, 1920, and published in the "New York World" of March 4, 1920, from which we quote:
Only to minds financially insane or criminally degenerate could such a system seem "sane and logical." Their carefully kept store of gold shows that the Bolshevist dictators are not insane but criminal. They understand their game, which is that of bunco-steering to "exploit" labor on the largest scale the world has ever seen. Honest paper money is a promise to pay, for value received, in gold, silver or good merchandise. If this form is used by these frauds, it is with the deliberate intention of repudiation, the possibility of payment being also destroyed by the floods of the stuff turned out. If the paper given is not a promise to pay, it is circulated simply through the tyranny of men who by threat of punishment or starvation force workingmen to exchange a day's labor for a bit of food and a piece of paper. In either case the labor exploiters in the Kremlin exact from Russia's workingmen, in The worthless character of the paper money, which the workmen nevertheless have to take and spend to keep soul and body together, is shown by the fact that the peasants refuse it. In his cable printed in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says that "the peasant twenty miles outside of Moscow ... has more food than he can eat, more clothes than he can wear," yet "refuses to sell his products for money except that proportion of them that he is compelled to turn over to the Soviets at a fixed price. In private trading," Eyre continues, "he will take in exchange for his foodstuffs only manufactured articles, clothing and other things he needs." Thus the peasant is fortunate in that he lives on land where he can at least raise enough to eat; whereas the "proletarian," in whose behalf the Socialists pretend to have made the Russian revolution, is most of all victimized by it. The reason why the Bolshevist dictators are now conscripting Russian labor seems evident. These pick-pockets have finished exploiting the Russian aristocracy and "bourgeoisie," squeezed them dry, and squandered what they stole. The only game left to them now is to exploit labor to the limit and appropriate the profits. Two other features of this thimble-rigging arrangement complete the exposure of the most inhuman scheme to exploit labor which the world has seen for centuries. One of these shows us, in the fourteenth place, that the rascals Lenine and Trotzky, are actually inviting "foreign capital" to form a partnership with them in their exploitation of Russian labor, under promise to turn over to this outside "capital" a good share of the "profits" to be wrung by labor conscription out of the sweat of Russia's brow. The invitation to "foreign capital" to join hands with the Bolshevist dictatorship, under promise of good profits and guarantees of security was made by both Lenine and Trotzky through interviews granted to Lincoln Eyre. Through courtesy of the "New York World" we have quoted the propositions of these "friends" of Russian labor near the close of Chapter XV of In the fifteenth place, we have the dreadful fact that Russian labor is enslaved by a Socialist autocracy not for the sake of promoting peace but for the sake of promoting war. In our last chapter we quoted the statements of Zinovieff to Lincoln Eyre that the Third Internationale would never give up its purpose to make the whole world Bolshevist. Eyre also found the belief general in Russia that so long as the Socialists retain power, any peace made by them with the outside world will only be a short truce in which to prepare for another war. He says, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of February 27, 1920:
Again, in his cable printed in the "New York World" of March 4, 1920, Lincoln Eyre says:
Who but the long-suffering Russians would endure the hopeless fate imposed by Socialism on Russian labor? The workingmen were conscripted by Trotzky's armies. They won victories, but these have not freed them. Returning from the front they are conscripted for labor armies, to work as they fought, under military discipline, subject to court martial and death if they rebel. Yet this military toil will not free them. They slave under the pistols of the commissaries only to get themselves economically equipped for a new war against their "capitalistic" neighbors, and in this war the workingman, if he can still walk, will be conscripted to go to the front again. Should he survive this, must he begin the same round over again? But why not strike against this slavery? Russian labor does not dare to strike. Tender-hearted Socialism has made the labor strike a crime in Russia. Says Lincoln Eyre, in a cable dated March 11, 1920, and printed in the "New York World" of March 13, 1920:
With this utter collapse of Socialist theories and professions in Bolshevikiland, we need not wonder that, according to a cable in the "New York Times" of March 2, 1920, the French National Socialist Congress adjourned at Strasbourg, March 1, 1920, "after voting down by more than 2 to 1 a motion to ally the Socialists of France with Lenine and Trotzky." According to the same cable, "The pleaders for the Third Internationale, formed at Moscow, were answered by the reply that the beautiful doctrines enunciated there had been thrown aside by Lenine and Trotzky and that any one who believed in real Socialism would be a fool to get behind the leaders of Soviet Russia." Is it now in order for our American Bolshevists, Gene Debs, Morris Hillquit (alias Hilkovitz) and Vic Berger, solemnly to inform us that Russian Bolshevism never was Socialism, nor anything like it, but only a base counterfeit? And will they also inform us that Lenine and Trotzky are unprincipled adventurers and cold-blooded blackguards who have hidden behind the mask of Socialism to blackjack a great people and filch a wealth they never did a day's work to accumulate? When our American wavers of the Red Flag try to hide their shipwrecked theories behind a repudiation of Bolshevikiland, we shall have to remind them of their many, many utterances jubilantly assuring us that "Bolshevism is Socialism in practice." A specimen will do, taken from one of the books published by the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a "part of the Socialist Party" of the United States piloted by Debs, Hilkovitz and Berger, which we quote as cited on page 34 of the "Outline of the Evidence Taken Before the Judiciary Committee" of the New York Assembly:
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