The Workers in American History
BY
JAMES ONEAL
SECOND EDITION
1910
PUBLISHED BY JAMES
ONEAL
831 N. Third Street, Terre Haute, Indiana
Price 25
Cents
TO THE WORKERS OF AMERICA
who are now besieged by
the Powers
that Prey, in the hope that this small
volume will reveal to them how
present
tyrannies came to be and how they may
be overthrown. . . . . . . .
CONTENTS
- The European Background.
- Land Conquests in America.
- White Slavery in the Colonies.
- The White Slave Trade.
- Rebellions of The Poor.
- General Status of the Workers.
- Causes of the American Revolution.
- The Constitutional Convention, A Conspiracy.
- The Aftermath.
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Copyright, 1910
By JAMES ONEAL
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page: [v][View Page [v]]FOREWORD
The object of this book is to place in the hands of workingmen, and those who are in sympathy with their ideals, information that is indispensable for a proper understanding of the problems of today. So far as the writer knows there is no other work published that attempts to trace the historic processes by which the millionaire rulers of America have succeeded to power and wealth greater than any class in history ever possessed. One writer 1 has attempted such an outline, but as his book is a small one and covers a field much larger than my own, the result is a fleeting view that leaves much unexplained. However, as he has in mind a much larger work and as he has devoted years to gathering material for it, I am sure that, with his equipment, it will prove an indispensable work to those who would understand our past.
In this work I have only considered the period from settlement times down to the nineteenth century. This has enabled me to use a great deal of material that could not be used at all in a book of this size had I attempted to include the period following the adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Even as presented the writer is conscious that his treatment of our past history is necessarily fleeting, but to have made it a larger work would have been to publish it at a price that would have restricted its sale among workingmen, and I am more anxious to get the information into their hands than to publish it at a price more remunerative to me.
Some of the statements made in the following pages will come as a shock to those who have absorbed the current views of American history, and yet no important assertion is made without reference to standard authorities. The references will serve as a guide to those who would like to consult the original sources or pursue their investigations
1 Simons, "Class Struggles in America," Chas H. Kerr & Company, Chicago.
page: vi[View Page vi] further. Most of the works quoted may be found in any fairly well-equipped public library.We may briefly summarize the important factors or events that led to the control of government and wealth productive resources by a small class, and their relation to the workers, past and present, as follows:
- The discovery of America followed by the landing of a horde of adventurers drawn by the lure of gold.
- The confiscation of immense tracts of land by foreign princes who gave them to favorites, including in the grants extensive powers of rulership over these domains.
- Luring beggared workers of Europe to the New World with deceptive promises and selling them into temporary slavery on their arrival. Kidnaping whites in Europe and raiding Africa for blacks and selling both in America.
- Enactment by the land aristocracy of penal codes and fugitive slave laws applying to black and white slaves.
- Withholding political privileges from all those not belonging to the property-owning classes.
- Breaking of ties binding the American aristocracy to their brethren of the Old World through the American Revolution.
- The Constitutional Convention, a secret conspiratory body and counter-revolution against poor debtors, representing a usurping minority of aristocrats, who secured by force, fraud and deception a strong government giving them more efficient legislative, police and military power over the workers.
- This ruling class later dividing into the owners of blacks in the South and sweaters of whites in the North, resulting in a struggle that ended by extending the sway of the Northern exploiters to the gulf and to both seas.
- The rise of the labor movement in the first quarter of the nineteenth century gradually extending its organization until today the most advanced of this army challenge the masters of America for control of its wealth-producing and governing powers.
- page: vii[View Page vii]
- The future triumph of the workers by conquering the governing and wealth-producing powers and managing them for the common good of all.
The last three stages mentioned are scarcely considered at all in this work, as they are more familiar to the people today and to review them would make this book a larger one than the author planned. Besides, there are many works accessible to workingmen where these stages are discussed at length.
The writer may here anticipate some criticisms that may be made regarding what is said of Penn, Washington, Hamilton, Madison and other "heroic" figures in American history. Those who profit by the miserable mismanagement of society today use the "great men" of the past as a valuable asset in appeals for support of their rule. The distorted "history" which our school books present has also given us some historical traditions that have no basis in fact. To topple both over and present these men and these traditions in their true perspective is a service in behalf of the sweated millions of today. In this connection we may here quote what Wendell Phillips said of Webster, in 1853, as it applies to this hero worship which is so much cultivated by the masters who rule:
"We seek only to be honest men, and speak the same of the dead as of the living. If the graves that hide their bodies could swallow also the evil they have done and the example they leave, we might enjoy at least the luxury of forgetting them. But the evil that men do lives after them, and example acquires tenfold authority when it speaks from the grave. How shall we make way against the overwhelming weight of some colossal reputation, if we do not turn from the idolatrous present, and appeal to the human race? saying to your idols of today, 'Here we are defeated; but we will write our judgment with the iron pen of a century to come, and it shall never be forgotten that you were false in your generation to the claims of the slave' . . . . We warn the living that we have terrible memories, and that their sins are never to be forgotten. page: viii[View Page viii] We will gibbet the name of every apostate so black and high that his children's children shall blush to bear it." 2
Of course, we do not hold individuals responsible for social or economic evils, but when "great men" profit by oppressive institutions or by their acts add to the abuses and grievances of the workers, we protest against placing them on pedestals to be worshiped as many of them are. They are products of their age and environment and naturally followed courses dictated by their material gains. Their incomes were derived from holding labor in subjection, whether white or black, and establishing laws that enabled them to enforce their class domination against the protests of the laborers.
I have allowed competent authorities to speak as often as possible in the following pages. To do this I have found it difficult to avoid making the book a larger one than I send out. Much interesting material has been sacrificed in this effort, but enough is presented to indicate some of the main outlines and important institutions that form the background of civilization in America.
The writer makes no pretense at literary style and any criticism from this point of view will be lost on him. His observation has been that most bourgeois writers today pen beautiful inanities in flowing English that charm and soothe jaded idlers or suspend the thinking faculties of workingmen. Empty platitudes and "blessed words" are their stock in trade. The writer has no wish to indulge in them. He has tried to deal with some forgotten or suppressed facts of American history, and if what he has written arms thinking workingmen with some knowledge that will render them immune to the arts of vulgar politicians, he will feel repaid for the labor of writing this small volume.
2 Phillips, "Speeches, Lectures and Addresses," Vol. 1, pp. 114-115.
