American Minute with Bill Federer: Labor Day, Railroad Strike & Eugene Debs, founder of the Socialist Party of America

To appreciate Labor Day, one needs to know the history preceding it.

At the time the United States was founded, most people were farmers or worked in trades, such as:

Then, the Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century.

Coal was mined in Britain, but mines kept filling up with water.

Scottish inventor James Watt came up with an invention to pump water out of mines – a steam pump.

Steam was soon harnessed in the early 19th century to not just power pumps, but railroad steam engines, steam boats, and textile manufacturing machines.

This led to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively.

European manufactured products were imported into America.

Soon, Americans built factories.

Originally, there was no Federal Income tax.

The Federal government was financed primarily from:

EXCISE TAXES on items like salt, tobacco, liquor;

and

TARIFF TAXES on imports from European factories.

Tariff taxes made European products more expensive, motivating consumers to buy products manufactured in America.

Most of America’s factories were located in Northern states.

The tariff taxes that helped the Northern states hurt the Southern states, as the South was predominately agricultural and had few factories to protect.

At one point, nearly 90 percent of the Federal budget came from tariff taxes collected at Southern ports.

This fueled animosity between the states leading up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the North passed even more tariff taxes which successfully allowed Northern factories to grow enormous.

Manufacturers produced items like clothes, glass, dishes, and farm tools for a fraction of the previous costs.

Machines freed women up from tedious daily tasks, such as hand-weaving thread, hand-sewing cloth, and hand-washing clothes.

Instead of carrying water from a well, pumps and pipes brought water directly into homes.

New ways of making stronger iron and steel led to the building of bridges, skyscrapers, steamboats, and mining machinery.

Railroads began taking people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation, opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity.

Inventions and advances in manufacturing made more goods available at cheaper prices.

This resulted in Americans experiencing the fastest increase in the standard of living of any people in world history.

Factories had a continual source of workers from the millions of immigrants, who not only got a job, but learned the language and trade skills.

President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty in 1886 to welcome immigrants.

Immigrants were anxious to assimilate, learn the English language, and swear allegiance to their new country.

“Rags-to-riches” stories became a popular literary genre, where hard work, honesty, and strength through adversity led to success.

Immigrants were not a financial burden on the government, as there were no government welfare programs.

Extended family members, churches, and individuals giving charity, provided the welfare net.

No one was forced to work in factories, nevertheless, laborers began to organize for better working conditions.

Some immigrants brought with them from Europe socialist and anarchists ideas and exacerbated labor tensions to further their larger goal of tearing down the capitalist system in order to set up a socialist economy.

Organizing flyers were written in the English and German languages.

In May of 1886, a peaceful protest in Chicago near the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. turned into the Haymarket Riot.

A peaceful protester threw a dynamite bomb at the police.

The blast and subsequent violence resulted in seven police officers and four civilians killed, along with dozens wounded.

To commemorate the incident, they chose May 1st to be an annual International Workers Day.

Another incident was a railroad strike in 1894.

An ideal factory setting was created by George Pullman, who founded the Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company just outside of Chicago, Illinois.

Pullman saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them houses in a safe little village around the factory, with rent deducted from paychecks.

To save them the trouble of traveling to the markets, he set of stores on site.

Workers were paid company “scrip,” similar to food stamps, which were redeemable at the company-owned grocery stores.

It was thought to be a utopian workers’ community.

It worked well for over a decade until something happened.

There was a nationwide economic depression in 1893 and orders for railroad sleeping cars suddenly dropped off.

To keep the company afloat, George Pullman had to make cuts in wages and lay off hundreds of employees, though, for the time being, rent and groceries stayed the same price.

Some immigrants from Europe spread Karl Marx’s idea of a class-struggle.

Employees were distraught, as they had grown completely dependent on the company.

Some employees walked off their jobs, demanding higher pay and lower rents, being unaware that the reason for the cuts was that the company needed to stay in business during the national economic crash.

A leader of the strikes was Eugene V. Debs. A high school drop out, Debs got a job cleaning grease from freight engines.

He was promoted to locomotive fireman and rose in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fireman. He briefly served as a Terre Haute city clerk and one-term Indiana state representative.

When the nation experienced the financial crisis, Debs agitated and organized a strike of railroad workers in 1894.

Soon, railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars.

There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars, destroying an estimated $80 million worth of property in 27 states.

A New York Times editorial, July 9, 1894, called Debs “a lawbreaker at large, an enemy of the human race.”

“Debs’ Rebellion” became a national issue when it interrupted the trains delivering mail.

President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 U.S. Army troops to break up the strike.

More violence erupted, and two men were killed.

Debs was arrested for mail obstruction and put in prison for six months, where he “ravenously” read Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.

President Grover Cleveland thought it might improve his chances of getting re-elected in 1894 if he appeased workers with a national “LABOR DAY.”

He intentionally did not chose May 1st as it was the anniversary of the bloody Chicago’s Haymarket Riot and the “International Workers Day.”

Instead, Grover Cleveland chose the FIRST MONDAY in SEPTEMBER.

Strike-organizer Eugene Debs went to prison, and Grover Cleveland lost the election.

Socialist progressive demands to redistribute wealth led to the passage of:

Eugene Debs and the rioters were defended by the attorney Clarence Darrow.

Darrow later defended evolution in the Scope’s Monkey Trial.

After six months in prison, Eugene Debs was released and founded the Social Democracy of America (1897), the Social Democratic Party of America (1898) and the Socialist Party of America (1901).

Debs ran five time for U.S. President on Socialist Party of America ticket. As he won zero electoral votes, he opposed to the electoral process.

When World War I started, Eugene Debs urged resistance to the draft.

One of those who followed Debs’ call to be a draft-dodger was Roger Baldwin, who later founded the A.C.L.U. to help defend those who were accused of being a communist agitators.

Roger Baldwin wrote:

“I am for socialism … I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.”

In 1918, Debs was charged with ten counts of sedition and sentenced to ten years in prison.

In protest of his sentence, unionists, anarchists, socialists, and communists marched in support of Debs in a May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio.

The peaceful parade broke out into Antifa-style violence — the May Day Riots of 1919.

When Debs’ attorney asked for a Presidential pardon, Woodrow Wilson wrote “denied” across the paperwork, and stated:

“While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them …

This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.”

The next President, Warren G. Harding, also did not pardon Debs, and the White House released the statement:

“There is no question of his guilt … He is … a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and affording excuse for those with criminal intent.”

In 1979, Bernie Sanders produced a documentary praising Eugene Debs. He hung a portrait of Debs in the City Hall of Burlington, Vermont, and dedicated a plaque to him in his Congressional office.

After Vladimir Lenin organized the Bolshevik Revolution overthrowing Russia’s government, he formed the Communist International in 1919.

This persuaded some members of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party of America to break off and form the Communist Party USA.

The Communist Party USA ran candidates for U.S. President every year from 1920 till they decided to support Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, as Roosevelt had allied himself with the U.S.S.R.’s Josef Stalin.

Chicago’s statue dedicated to the police officers who were killed in the 1886 Haymarket Riot was blown up on October 6, 1969, by Bill Ayers and Eric Mann’s militant group “Weatherman Underground” during their Days of Rage.

The Haymarket statue was rebuilt, only to be blown up again by the Weatherman Underground on October 6, 1970.

Weatherman member Bill Ayers later helped launch the political career of a young Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.

Bill Ayers stated:

“I am a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist … Maybe I’m the last communist who is willing to admit it … The ethics of communism still appeal tome. I don’t like Lenin as much as the early Marx.”

Weatherman member Eric Mann helped train Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matters.

Cullors stated in 2015:

“Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers … We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.”

In America, laborers worked hard for wages with which they could buy trucks, houses, cars, boats, guns, and other personal possessions.

They could also be moved upon to give of their possessions to those in need, which is called charity.

In socialist countries, labors were forced to work hard, but could own no possessions. The government took them all away.

People with no possessions have nothing with which to be charitable.

Socialists believe that when the government finally finishes taking away everyone’s possessions, then the world will arrive at a imagined ideal utopia called communism.

The term “communism” comes from the Latin word “communis,” meaning everything held in common.

There will be no private ownership of anything. There will be no privacy. People will not even have control over their own children.

The government will control everything, on both production side and consumption side.

In 1971, John Lennon and his second wife, Yoko Ono, co-wrote the song “Imagine,” with socialist-themed lyrics: “Imagine no possessions … And no religion too.”

The term “socialism” was coined by French political philosopher Henry de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) as the opposite of the “individual.”

Use of the term socialism was popularized by mid-to-late 1800s by European theorists, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leon Trotsky, and Antonio Gramsci, where power is taken away from individuals and concentrated into the hands of the state.

During Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, “socialism” became identified as a distinct transition phase between capitalism and communism.

The most opportune time to transition is in crises.

Marx and Friedrich Engels explained (Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 318):

“Conspirators by no means confine themselves to organizing the revolutionary proletariat (working class). Their business consists in … spurring it in to artificial crises …

For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organization of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution.”

The term “capitalism” is the where individuals, with their own money, or capital, could invest and have a business providing goods or services – the production side.

Individuals could then earn a profit which they could decide how to spend – the consumption side.

Karl Marx wrote in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, Part IV:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation.”

Lenin considered socialism as the transition phase from capitalism to communism, stating:

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

Karl Marx explained:

“The theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”

Author Ayn Rand wrote:

“There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end:

communism proposes to enslave men by force; socialism – by vote.

It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.”

Unions did help to bring about:

Henry Ford’s Motor Company was one of the first to implement these benefits.

A story circulated that Henry Ford met a Yemeni sailor at port and told him about auto factory jobs that paid five dollars a day.

The sailor spread the word, leading to chain migration from Yemen and other parts of the Middle East.

Whether Ford actually did this, perhaps to counter growing union strength, is unverified, but it is a fact that large numbers of Middle Eastern Muslims began immigrating to Dearborn, Michigan, and worked in the auto industry.

Unions were anti-immigrant, as cheaper labor of immigrants undercut their wages.

As unions grew in size, another situation developed, where top leadership tended to hold values different than rank-and-file union workers.

Many members supported the Second Amendment, traditional marriage, biological definitions of sex, and protection of the unborn, yet some in union leadership funneled union dues to support candidates who advocated opposing views.

One of the unanticipated consequences of workers’ benefits improving was the increase cost of doing business.

Companies, in order to stay competitive in the increasingly global marketplace, had to find ways to lower costs, which meant replacing jobs with “automation” and “out-sourcing.”

After World War II, America helped rebuild Germany and Japan with new factories.

These overseas factories, with their cheaper labor costs and newer machinery, produced items for less and took a larger part of the global market.

They hired lobbyists to push for lowering tariffs so they could bring less expensive products in, gaining a competitive advantage over American factories.

Issues that increased the cost of doing business in America included:

As American-made products became more expensive in comparison to foreign-made products, consumers bought fewer of them, resulting in American factories needing fewer workers.

“Squeeze the sponge and the water goes out” – as manufacturing costs in America rose, manufacturers moved with their jobs to other countries.

To personalize this, if you needed gas for your car, and the gas station on your side of the street sold it at $4.50 a gallon, but the station on the other side of the street sold it for just $1.99 a gallon, would you cross the street?

Just as water seeks its own level, individuals and businesses are motivated to save money.

Bringing jobs back to America is as simple as making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.

But coalescing the political will in Congress is an uphill battle.

Another by-product of companies leaving the country was their loss of patriotism, creating what became termed “globalists.”

Globalists are patriotic only to the bottom-line on their financial statements.

Additionally, socialist political strategies include intentionally raising unemployment rates so more unemployed workers will sign up for welfare benefits.

Once unemployed workers become dependent on government benefits and entitlements, they are inclined to vote for the candidates who promise to continue them.

Tragically, for some political strategists, more unemployment means an increased voter base.

If entitlements are threatened, some are even inclined to be organized into revolutionaries.

Socialist thinker Friedrich Engels wrote (London: W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 1976; Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844):

“Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labor.

This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists.

In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom.”

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushschev reportedly told Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture, in 1959:

“We won’t have to fight you; We’ll so weaken your economy, until you fall like overripe fruit into our hands.”

Among American workers, union membership since 1950 has declined from 50 percent to currently less than 12 percent.

Instead of addressing the need to attract manufacturers, with their jobs, back to America, many unions have focused their efforts to increase membership by recruiting from other occupations, such as government, education, medical professionals, sports, service industry, and retail.

Warning American workers of the hidden danger of “social justice” movements, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had spent 11 years in Union of Soviet Socialist Republics labor camps, stated, June 30, 1975:

“I … call upon America to be more careful with its trust …

Prevent those … who are attempting to establish even finer … legal shades of equality — because of their distorted outlook … short-sightedness and … self-interest – from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road …

… They are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat …

I call upon you: ordinary working men of America … do not let yourselves become weak.”