People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 October 1895 — LETTER FROM DEBS. [ARTICLE]

LETTER FROM DEBS.

SAYS THAT TAGGING IS DEGRADING TO LABOR. Neit Will Come th* Branding Iron—Be Pronounce* the Syctem an Invasion of th* Liberties of American*- —Bedneed to the Level of Cattle. Chicago Daily Press: From time to time plutocratic employers of laboring men spring the question of the advisability of tagging their employes as Western ranchmen brand their steers. These plutocrats claim that the employment of vast herds of human cattle makes it necessary to tag and number them, that their business may be conducted more satisfactorily to themselves; and with an impudence that defies exaggeration they “round up” their cattle and submit to them the propriety of substituting tags and numbers for names. One of the strange features of this scheme of degradation is seen in the fact that the men whom the plutocratic employers propose to tag and number as if they were penitentiary convicts deem it prudent to discuss the subject as if it were a business proposition rather than a shrewdly devised scheme to Ignore their manhood, destroy their individuality as men and citizens, and make labor unspeakably odious. That this is the case, advices from Milwaukee, Joliet and Chicago fully establish. In these localities, where corporations are engaged in iron and steel manufacturing enterprises, and a large number of workmen are employed, the proprietors have unblushingly proposed to tag the men, and the men are discussing the proposition; but so confident are the plutocrats that the men will consent to their own degradation that the tags have been ordered and are ready for use. It is difficult to grasp the ineffable Infamy of this degrading scheme. If it were devised for convicts, galley slaves, criminals transported to penal colonies, it might be regarded as prudent; but that plutocratic employers should suggest the Infamous practice for American workmen is to emulate the policy of the Russian despot, who tags and numbers the victims of his wrath whom he consigns to torture and to death In his Siberian mine. The scheme of tagging and numbering workingmen proposed by the Illinois Steel company and kindred corporations leaves little more to be done to reach the lowest depths of wageslave degradation in the United States. The tagging and numbering infamy accomplished, the branding iron and the iron collar will be in order. Will American workingmen quietly submit to be tagged and numbered? Indeed, will they accept the degradation under any possible circumstances or conditions? Confronted by propositions and preparations to degrade workingmqn to the level of beasts of burden, to the level of "dumb driven cattle,” is it not time for American workiagmen to protest and resist to the death, if required, to maintain their liberty and their manhood, to rescue their home from being numbered as stalls for cattle, their wives from the degrading designation of "dams,” and their children as the progeny of some sire known only by his tag and number? If American workingmen have not abdicated their manhood, if the fires of liberty and high aspirations are not totally extinguished, they will give corporations to understand that at any and every sarclflce they will resist this last and most Infamous Invasion of their rightsand liberties, and that with their wives and children they will go down to honored graves rather than live the tagged and numbered slaves of corporations. EUGENE V. DEBS.