“On Working-Class Political Power. 1908” in “Class Warrior”
On Working-Class Political Power 1908
Speech by Kingsley delivered at the Vancouver Opera House on 19 October 1908, during the 1908 federal election, in which Kingsley stood as the SPC’s candidate in Vancouver Centre.
Kingsley: Socialist
The name of E. T. Kingsley, the Socialist candidate, was the next one to come out of the hat and a wild burst of applause followed.
He brought down the house by saying that this was the first time be had been found in the presence of three lawyers. The taking out of a few stumps by Asiatics was not worth a moment’s attention from people of good sense. There was a greater question. Mankind was torn into two classes. On the one hand was the small class which, as masters, had complete control of the other, or wage slave class. Until this was solved there could be no use in discussing any other. Every avenue of production was under the control of some corporation. Every manufacturer was in favor of free trade which would enable his workmen to get their food a little cheaper, so that he could cut down their wages.
The speaker then proceeded to sketch the condition of the workers from a Socialistic standpoint. The systems which his opponents represented were in their death agonies.
The whole earth was trading in human flesh. The life blood of the working class was being coined into the various products of civilisation.
Mr. Kingsley gave in an able and eloquent manner an outline of the political stand of the Socialist party. He had no condemnation for the masters. It was the slaves who put their necks to the yoke that should come in for the condemnation.
The working classes produced all the tools and the things made by them. Public ownership was of no use until the political power was captured by the working class.
Mr. Kingsley closed by saying that those who did not think that the present conditions were for the best, should go to the polls and cast a vote for the movement for securing the freedom of the working class from wage slavery.
Kingsley’s Address [Detailed Report]
Fallen Among—Lawyers
An apology was first offered by Mr. Kingsley. This was the first time he had been caught in the company of three lawyers. (Laughter.) These gentlemen had been laying particular stress at their meetings upon the Asiatic question. He had heard considerable discussion upon the question of whether a certain gentleman had used Japs to pull up certain stumps on a certain island. He did not regard that as a question worth the attention of an intelligent man when there were so many grave problems before them.
It was this matter of dealing with the instruments of production and converted [sic] them to their proper use, which was the problem the people of Canada and of every other country on the face of the earth must solve, or else hundreds upon hundreds of working people would perish of starvation in the midst of plenty. Never was the power of productive labor so great as it was to-day, and never was the great mass of the people so completely without property. Never were they more insecurely employed. Never was there so much degradation, poverty, vice and crime.
In old England today there were thousands of people so poverty stricken that they were about ready to eat one another, but if they waited until winter there would be so little flesh on these people’s bones that they would not be able to make a meal of the pickings. They had no competition from Japanese in that country. They had been driven down under the heel of that capitalist system which had got the workers of this country by the throat now, and just as sure as this capitalist class would control this country the condition of the people would sink to that of the starving poor of England.
Traffic in Human Flesh
What was the whole world doing to-day but trafficking in human flesh? But the system was reaching its climax. It had attained its highest degree of development. It had had its day. He had no words of condemnation strong enough for the greatest and most grasping corporation on earth, and he insisted that as long as its slaves would meekly bend their necks to the wills of their masters, and would pin their economic faith in the class that ruled and robbed them, those men were no men, they had no part in manhood.
Public ownership of public utilities had been advocated by the speaker who had preceded him. He himself did not believe in public ownership of utilities unless the government was in the hands of the class he represented. While the government was in the hands of lawyers, he would say “Heaven forbid.”
Sarcastically he referred to the candidates’ usual talk—about the happy homes of Canada. That summer he had seen thousands of these “happy homes.” He had seen them carried on the backs of the men of this country. Sometimes the home had consisted of two blankets and a couple of cooking utensils, sometimes it consisted only of a single blanket. Before next winter they would see in Canada, in the United States, in Great Britain and Germany more millions of people in dire poverty than had ever before been recorded in the history of the past. Things were going from bad to worse. Several of those who were now not in the class, the small trader and employee, would go down into the wage slave class.
Brisk Capitalist Rule
“When will you people use your power for the purpose of transferring capitalist property into the common property of the working class and use it for the benefit of that class?” asked Mr. Kingsley.
“Is that not worth fighting for? If you workingmen believe your interests are conserved by the wage system, vote for one of these other candidates, it does not matter which of the three. But if you are not satisfied with this system under which you now live, you must stand with my comrades and myself for the emancipation of the working class from capitalist exploitation. I don’t expect any legal gentlemen to bring us anything on a silver platter. I don’t expect our masters to bring us our freedom. I say if we have not enough sense to kick them off, we deserve to have them straddled upon our necks forever. I know as Socialists we are approaching the period of evolution when the old system of capital is giving way for something more in consonance with the rights of human beings. We shall forge ahead whatever the result of the election may be. Defeat is a word not in our category, because we know the economic pressure brought upon our class in human society will eventually compel that great working class to act in its own defence. With sublime faith in the future we shall keep up this fight, knowing that in the end we shall conquer.”
—“Four Characteristic Addresses,” Western Clarion, 24 Oct. 1908, 1, 4.
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