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Class Warrior: On Laws. 1918

Class Warrior
On Laws. 1918

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Notes

table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Foreword
  3. Introduction
  4. Part I: Selected Writings of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1900   On Washington State’s Primary Law
    2. 1903   On Political Action
      1. On Reformism and Electoral “Fusion”
      2. On Trade Unions
    3. 1905   On the Single Tax
      1. On a Journey to Seattle
    4. 1906   On the Arrest of US Labour Leaders and State Power
    5. 1908   On the Socialist Movement and Travels across Canada
    6. 1909   On War
      1. On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    7. 1911   On Property
      1. On the Workers’ Awakening
      2. On Economic Organization
      3. On the Capitalist State
    8. 1914   On the Causes of the First World War
    9. 1916   On Carnage
    10. 1917   On Slavery and War
      1. On War Finance
      2. On the War Effort
    11. 1918   On the Bolshevik Revolution
      1. On Capitalism Getting Rich Quick
    12. 1919   On Control of the State by the Working Class
      1. On Reconstruction
      2. On Collaboration between Labour and Capital
      3. On Wealth
      4. On Gold
      5. On Class War
      6. On the Paris Peace Conference
      7. On Capitalist Civilization
    13. 1921   On the 1921 Canadian Parliamentary Election
  5. Part II: Selected Speeches of E. T. Kingsley
    1. 1895   On the Aims of Socialism
    2. 1896   On Socialism and the Economy
    3. 1899   On American Imperialism in Cuba and the Philippines
    4. 1903   On the Labour Problem
      1. On the Political Organization of Miners in Cumberland
      2. On Stirring the Emotions of His Audience
      3. On Wages, Profit, and Capital
      4. On the 1903 British Columbia Election
    5. 1905   On the 1905 Russian Revolution
      1. On Workers and Rockefeller
      2. On the Mission of the Working Class
    6. 1906   On the Paris Commune
    7. 1908   On Labour and Its Economies
      1. On the Working Class Using Clubs If Necessary
      2. On Working-Class Political Power
    8. 1912   On the Vancouver Free Speech Fight
    9. 1913   On the Vancouver Island Miners’ Strike
    10. 1914   On the Komagata Maru Incident
    11. 1917   On Conscription
      1. On Working-Class Opposition to Conscription
      2. On Conscription and Wiping Out Ruling-Class Laws
      3. On the 1917 Conscription Election
    12. 1918   On the Formation of the Federated Labor Party
      1. On Laws
      2. On Reconstruction
      3. On the Armistice and Postwar Moment
      4. On Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
    13. 1919   On Lenin and Trotsky
      1. On the Belfast General Strike, Unemployment, and the Postwar Challenge to Capitalism
      2. On the Bolshevik Revolution
      3. On the One Big Union
      4. On the Class Struggle
      5. On the Machine
      6. On Capitalism
      7. On the Defeat of the Winnipeg General Strike
      8. On the Machinery of Slavery
      9. On Civilization
    14. 1920   On Mechanization of Production
      1. On the Paris Commune
      2. On the Collapse of Civilization
      3. On the Bankruptcy of the Capitalist System
  6. Part III: The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery
    1. 1916   The Genesis and Evolution of Slavery: Showing How the Chattel Slaves of Pagan Times Have Been Transformed into the Capitalist Property of To-day
  7. Part IV: On the World Situation
    1. 1919   On the World Situation
  8. Appendix
  9. Kingsley’s Speeches
  10. Index

On Laws 1918

Report on a speech by Kingsley at a Federated Labor Party meeting in St. George’s Hall in New Westminster, British Columbia, on 9 March 1918.

Live Mass Meeting in Royal City on Saturday

Under Auspices of Newly-Organized Federated Labor Party Hawthornthwaite, Kingsley and Pettipiece Are the Speakers.

New Westminster, March 10.—Members in the audience remarked that Saturday’s meeting of the F. L. P. in the Royal City was the biggest political gathering of wage-workers they had ever seen there. St. George’s hall was filled with an attentive audience, each of whom received an application for membership blank. Fifty-three of these filled in and signed up for membership in the party that from now on will be the true political expression of the toilers of British Columbia.

E. T. Kingsley

The chairman stated that the next speaker would be E. T. Kingsley, who needed no introduction and it gave him great pleasure to call upon Mr. Kingsley to address the audience.

Mr. Kingsley received hearty applause as he stepped forward to address the audience. He said, in part:

“I am very fond of animals. I have watched the wild animals in the forest and the cattle on the prairie play and gambol and roam about, but I have never noticed any of them driving others to work. I have never known a horse to beg of another horse to put the harness on his back or hook him to a plow (laughter). But the two-legged animal seems to insist on being harnessed and driven (laughter).

“The wage-working animal insists on a system of slavery and the penalty of slavery is work, work, work and keep on working, A mule will work only when he is driven to it by man and the two-legged slave and the mule make a fine team. This slavish condition has come down to us from the countless ages and most of us have not got kick enough in us to get away from it.

Labor Produces All

“There has never been a yard of cloth produced, and there has not been a piece of coal, bread, or lumber produced except by the hand of labor and yet the slave class cannot partake of a particle of food except by the will of the master class.

“Did you ever know of a mine, mill or factory that ever produced a loaf of bread for its owner without turning a wheel. No! And who is it that turns that wheel? The slave! Nothing is produced until the wage-worker applies his mental or physical energy. The mills, mines and factories are worthless so long as man fails to apply his energy, because nothing is produced. Hence the workers are property.

“You are the thing that is owned. You are the thing that makes the bread. You are the thing that makes the machinery of wealth production valuable and yet the owners of that machinery control your every act. The financial columns of the papers are full of figures representing your value to the owning class. When the price of stocks is quoted they are quoting your value to the holders of those stocks.

“Robinson Crusoe did not eat the bread of idleness until Friday came along and was forced to become a slave. Then Friday got busy and caught the fish and cooked it and gave it to Crusoe and after Crusoe ate the good meat he handed Friday the bones (laughter). And the modern wage slave acts just like Friday. He has got to go out and find a master before he can get a job which will enable him to eat and then he gets the bones or the cheap trash.

“Less than 40 per cent. of the inhabitants are engaged in producing the necessaries of life. The other 60 per cent. does nothing but eat up what the 40 per cent. has produced. The 60 per cent. are either doing nothing or are producing ruling-class requisites and performing ruling-class service such as policing, soldiering, selling real estate, banking and doing other things than producing food, clothing and shelter. No wonder there is poverty and distress.

The Political Club

“At one time the slaves were ruled by means of a knotted club. The owners of the club thumped the workers with the club and got them busy. But wise men sprang up and learned how to write and make laws and now we are ruled by laws instead of by clubs. Now and again we get a crack on the head with a club to remind us that there are laws.

“How do they make the laws? They take a piece of paper, write something on it and say, this is the law (laughter). So today men are put in the coop on the strength of a piece of paper. Some of us slaves can read the law, but very few of us can understand it (laughter). We have to hire a lawyer to understand it for us.

“But without the law the master class cannot exist, hence their efforts to retain their henchmen in office.”

—“Live Mass Meeting in Royal City on Saturday,” British Columbia Federationist, 15 Mar. 1918, 1, 3.

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