“On Carnage. 1916” in “Class Warrior”
On Carnage 1916
This article by Kingsley was published in the British Columbia Federationist in June 1916, tracing parallels between the carnage of war and industrial accidents that threaten the lives and well-being of workers on a day-to-day basis under capitalism.
Killed and Maimed in Peace as in War
Annual Toll on Industrial Battlefield Is Simply Astounding: Profit, Pomp, and Power the Underlying Motive of Industry
Figures recently made public by the Interstate Commerce commission at Washington, show that 2531 persons were killed and 43,518 injured by railroad accidents during the three months ending September 30, 1915. It must be remembered that this did not happen “somewhere in France” during times of war, but in the United States during times of peace. And this killing and maiming has been a result of railway operation alone. Just what the grand total of killed and crippled would be if all other branches of industry had made returns, is not known, but it would certainly have attained no inconsiderable proportions, and might have even given the toll of Mars a close run for supremacy as a quarterly report of blood and butchery.
Industrial Casualties
The terrific loss of life and the crippling and maiming incidental to the boasted industrial processes of today, is truly appalling. The magnitude of it is quite sufficient to prompt us to pause and consider whether the achievements of modern industry are worth the terrible price the workers have to pay for its operation. Not only do they pay with their sweat and agony, but with their very lives as well, and all they get out of it is, at the most, but a bare and meagre existence, even if they are fortunate enough to escape being maimed, or killed outright.
There is upon this western continent something like 250,000 miles of railway, equipped with hundreds of thousands of locomotives and millions of cars and the other necessary paraphernalia for the handling of traffic. Outside of the railways the industrial machinery of the continent is the most gigantic and powerful on earth.
Is Worker Any Better Off?
The amount of wealth turned out and poured into the world’s market is almost beyond computation. And yet we may well ask if the average working man is any better off than his ancestor of two centuries ago? Can the worker make his living any easier than his forebear could back in those days when the production of wealth was still a hand process? Does the enormous volume of wealth now turned out by means of this complicated and powerful industrial establishment, conserve any genuine and healthy human purpose? Does the toting of millions of human beings and countless tons of wealth up and down the length and breadth of the earth, really tend to satisfy any legitimate and worthy human need? Does it in any manner lighten the burden of toil upon human shoulders? Does it increase the well-being of the toilers and widen their opportunities to live, to know and to enjoy? Does all of the world’s industrial and transportation power conserve any other purpose than that of gratifying the ambition of rulers and ruling classes to hold the sway of empire over the world’s toilers and revel in the fat that is ground out of their blood and sweat?
And All for “Profit”
Ruling class pomp, power and aggrandizement is the underlying motive of modern industry, and it is for the conservation of such vulgarity that this monstrously brutal and bloody industrial mechanism of capitalist production exists. We know of no other excuse to offer in its defence. That is [sic] conserves any legitimate and healthy human purpose we deny. That a multitude of healthy human beings are sacrificed upon its bloody altar, in order that a savior may arise unto the nostrils of the ruling class God, capital is shown, not only in the record of railway and other industrial accidents, but also in the glorious carnage now going on “somewhere” in various places, in the name of liberty and “an enduring peace.” But that is as it should be, for are we not living under the rule of property, and is not the toiler still brother to the “ex?”
E. T. K.
—Kingsley, “Killed and Maimed in Peace as in War,” British Columbia Federationist, 9 June 1916, 1.
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