War, Labor, and Debt [pp. 82-87]

WAR, LABOR, AND DEBT.
WAR, LABOR, AND DEBT.
We.KYME, mechanics, laborers;
men of the plow, the loom, and the anvil; men of active brain, anid muscle
and sinew; you, the great wealth creators, the great debt payers of the nation; you who carry upon your broad
shoulders all that makes a country glorious, noble, illustrious, to you we
would now appeal in this sad hour of
our national agony. Men of toil, you
control the destinies of your country;
you compose the great millions who
wield the irresistable power of the ballot-box. You are the huge ninety-five
per cent. of the people who move the
machinery of trade and commerce.
To you alone, the five per cent. who
hold one-half the capital of the country look for such employment of that
capital as will enable them to live an
idle life through your labors. They
lend, and you pay them interest; your
sagacity and perseverance, and neverceasing toil, have turned dreary deserts into splendid cities, and the hum
of industry which four years ago was
rolling over the broad bosom of our
then happy and prosperous domain,
from the great lakes to the Gulf of
Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Rocky
Mountains, was of your creating; and
to you, the great working classes, the
agricultural, the manufacturing, the
capital-creating portion of this once
thriving nation, belongs the glory of
making the reputation it enjoyed.
But alas! what a change is now
seen. WAe are wading knee-deep in
blood, surrounded with the most horrible scenes of civil war; a war more
atrocious, more fiendish, cruel, barbarous, than was ever witnessed in any
country claiming to belong t: civilization. Deeds are committed'by northern men, educated in homes of refinement, which, when history enters her
record of these acts-a record which
will live as long as humanity exists,
the great world will stand aghast at
the picture, and moralists will ask if
religion, charity, common morality and
the Bible, are all a myth.
But the evil of war, and that most
cursed of all wars, a civil war, is here.
The hands of the people are deeply
dyed in the blood of each other, and
added to the physical and mental horrors of so terrible a visitation, we are
being pecuniarily ruined, as a nation.
Men of toil, do you understand what
the pecuniary ruin of a nation is? It
is that change which takes the little
all, the savings of the poorer classes,
from their pockets, and transfers it into the pockets of the rich. It is the
depletion of the last surplus dollar
from the limited store of the great
ninety-five per cent. of the masses, and
the transfer of the same into the already plethoric pockets of the small
five per cent. of the nation. It is the
abstraction of the luxuries of the
working classes, nay, the abstraction
of the actual necessities of the working classes, for the benefit of the nonproducers, that they may riot and luxuriate out of the results of the toil of
the poor man, who earns his bread according to God's law, by the sweat of
his brow.
[Aprik