People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1895 — IS THERE NO PITY? [ARTICLE]

IS THERE NO PITY?

UNEQUAL CONTEST BETWEEN man 4nd MACHINE. Million 1 Wit host Work —The Strong Devour the Weak —Will the Worker* Always Submit?—An Address by Robert U. IngersoU. From.tile Chicago Express: Invention has filled the world with competitors, not only of laborers, but of mechanics —mechanics of highest skill. Today the ordinary laborer is, for the most part, a peg in the wheel. He works with t3|e tireless —he feeds the insatiable. When the monster stops, the man is out of employment —out of bread. He has not saved anything. The machine that he fed was not feeding him —the invention was not for his benefit. The other day I heard a man say that it was almost impossible for thousands of good mechanics to get employment, and that in his judgment the government ought to furnish work for the people. A few minutes later I heard another say that he was selling a patent for cutting oiit cloth, that one of the machines would do the work of twenty tailors and that only the week before he had sold two to a great house in New York, and that over forty cutters had been discharged. On every side men are being discharged and machines are being invented to take their places. When the great factory Bhuts down, the workers who inhabited It and gave It life, as

thoughts to the brain, go away, and It stands there like an empty skull. A few workmen, by the force of habits, gather about the closed doors and broken windows and talk about distress, the price of food and the coming winter. They are convinced that they have not had their share of what their labor created. They feel certain that the machines Inside were not their friends. They look at the mansion of the employer—but have nothing themselves. The employer seems to have enough. Even when employers fail,, when they become bankrupt, they are far better off than the laborers ever were. Their worst is better than the toiler’s best. The capitalist comes forward with his specific. Heiells the workingman that he must he economical —and yet, under the present system, economy would only lessen wages. Under the great law of supply and demand every saving, frugal, self-denying workman is unconsciously doing what little he can do to reduce the compensation of himself and his fellows. The slave who did not wish to run away helped fasten chains on those who s did. So the saving mechanic is a I certificate that wages are high enougp. Does the great 'aw demand that evary worker should live on tne least passiDie amount oi bread? Is it his fatje to work one day that he may get enough food to be able to work another? la that to be his only hope—that and de^th? Capital has always claimed and still claims the right to/ combine. Manufacturers meet and determine prices, even in spite of the grfeat law of supply and demand. Have the laborers the same right to consult? and combine? The rich meet in thji bank, club house or parlor. Workingmen when they combine gather in the street. All the organized forms iof society are against them. CapitaJ/has the army and the navy, the legislature, the judicial and executive depa *tments. When the rich combine it is for the purpose of “exchanging ideas When the poor combine it is a “co nspiracy.” If they act in concert, if the} r really do something, it is a “mob.” If they defend themselves it is treason. How is it that the rich can control tjpe departments of government? In this country the political power is equally divided among men. There are cei/tainly more poor than rich. Why /should the rich control? Why should/ not the laborer combine for the purpose of controlling the executive, the/legislative and judicial departments ij Will they ever find how powerful tpe y are? A cry comes from the oppreped, the hungry, the downtrodden, / rom the despised, fAm men who desmair and women who weep. There a ire times when medicants become revolutionists —when a rag becomes a/ banner, under which the noblest aijLd the bravest battle for right. How /‘are we to settle the unequal contest/ between man and machine? Will tme machine finally go into partnership with the laborer? Can these forces lof nature be controlled for the benefit) of her suffering children? Will extravagance keep pace with ingenuity? will the workmen become intelligent fcnough and strong enough to become Abners of machines? Will these giantslthese Titans, shorten or lengthen thepours of labor? Will th&y make leisure* for the industrious or wjjl they nlake the rich richer and the ppor poorer* Is man involved in the “general Sterne” of things? Is -there no pity, n > mercy? Can man become intelliger t enough to be generous, to be just, o: ’ does the same law of facta control him as controls the animal or vegetable world? The great oak steals the sui light from the smaller trees. The sti >ng animal devours the weak—everytl ng at the mercy of beak, and claw, i id hoof, and tooth—of hand,-

and ciuo, ana Dram, ana greea—inequality, injustice everywhere. The poor horse standing in the street with his dray, Overworked, overwhipped and underfed, when he sees other horses groomed to mirror, reglistening with gold and silver, scorning with proud feet the very earth, probably indulges in the usual socialistic reflection; and this same horse, worn out and old, desAriAd bu hia master, turned into the dusty road, leans his head on the topmost rail, looks at the donkeys In the field of clover, and feels like a nihilist. In the days of cannibalism the strong devoured the weak —actually ate their flesh. In spite of all laws that man has made, in spite of all advances in science, the strong, the heartless still live on the weak, the unfortunate, the foolish. True, they do not eat their flesh or drink their blood, but they live *on their labor, their self-denial, their weariness and want. The poor man who deforms himself by toil, who labors for his wife and children through all his anxious, barren, wasted life —who goes to the grave without ever having a luxury—has been the food of others. He has .been devoured by his fellow men. The poor woman livipg in the bare and .lonely room, cheerless and fireless, sewing night and day to keep starvation from her child, is slowly being eaten by her fellow men. When I take ipto consideration the agony of civilized life —the failures, the anxiety, the tears, the withered hopes, the bitter realities, the hunger, the crime, the

humiliation, the shame —I am almost forced to say that cannibalism, after all, Is the most merciful form in which man has ever lived upon his fellow man. It is impossible for a man with a good heart to be satisfied with this world as it is now. No man can truly enjoy even what he earns —what he knows to be his own—knowing that millions of his fellow men are in misery and in want. When ■we think of the famished, we feel that it is almost heartless to eat. To meet the ragged and shivering makes one * alipost ashamed to be well dressed and warm —one feels as though his heart was as cold as their bodies. In a world filled with millions and millions of acres of land waiting to he tilled, .where one man can raise the food for hundreds, yet millions are on the edge of famine. Who can comprehend the stupidity at the bottom of this truth?

Is there to be no change? Are the laws of “supply and demand," invention and science, monopoly and competition, capital and legislation, always to be enemies of those who toil? Will the workers always be ignorant enough and stupid enough to give their earnings to the useless? Will they support millions of soldiers to kill the sons of other workingmen? Will they always build temples and live in huts and dens themselves? Will they forever allow parasites and vampires to live on upon their blood? Will they remain the slaves of the beggars they support? Will honest men stop taking off their hats to successful fraud? Will industry, in the presence of crowned Idleness, forever fall upon its knees — and will ther lips unstained by lies forever kiss the robber’s and imposter’s hands? Will they understand that beggars cannot be generous, and that every neauny man must earn me ngut to live? Will they finally say that the man who has had equal privileges with all others haS no right to complain, or will they follow the example that has been set by their oppressors? Will they learn that force, to succeed, must have thought behind it, and that anything done, in order that it may succeed, must rest on justice?

Fred Peitzmeier, a convict serving a life sentence for the murder of Officer Graves at Ottumwa, hanged himself In his cell at Fort Madison, lowa. The jury in the Jacob Alexander Schroyer murder trial at,Bloomington, 111., were unable to agree upon a verdict and'were discharged. They were out seven days. Several years ago Mat Riley, a burglar, escaped from the jail at Aurora, 111. He was recaptured Thursday by Sheriff Burke, having Viifcured back into Kane county. Miss Pearl Daum, while attending a religious revival at Evansville, Ind., was fatally stabbed by. George Ruhright, a maniac. . “ •vJudge Stone of Ishpeming, Mich, sentenced James Guinan, better known as “Gid,” to twenty years’ imprisonment for burglary. The jury at San Francisco in the case of R. H. McDonald, charged with embezzlement of Pacific bank funds, returned a verdict of acquittal. The Jury in a former trial failed to agree. At Coldwater, Mich., Edwin H. Cozier was sentenced to five years Toil,assault to commit murder; Earl Broughton, eight years’for burglary, and Alfred Bedford, six years for burglary. It develops that the recent trouble with Apaches at Ciburu, Ariz., was occasioned by an attempt by Sheriff Thompson of Globe with a posse to enter the reservation to arrest Indians who attempted to take stores from a ranch whose occupants were absent. R. W. S. Burton, said to have been a minister in the Christian Church, is under arrest on a charge of selling in Belleville, 111., a team of horses and a buggy which he had rented in Metropolis.