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Class Warrior: On Carnage. 1916

Class Warrior
On Carnage. 1916

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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 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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