On Workers and Rockefeller 1905

Kingsley Calls Them All Loons: Socialist Leader Asserts That Workers Are Thick-Headed

“You have been robbed. It makes no difference if you never had anything to be robbed of, you have been coolly and plainly robbed, just the same. You ought to have had lots of things, but they were stolen from you before you got them. That is plain.” At least, E. T. Kingsley, socialist, said it was at the temple meeting at Seattle and the P.-I. reports him thus: Mr. Kingsley is “National Organizer of the socialist party of Canada” and feels that he knows.1

His address was thoroughly appreciated by the audience, for when he told them they were “all loons” the applause was enthusiastic. The capitalists were handled without mercy, all except Mr. Rockefeller. He alone was spared. He is not responsible; he just drifted into his money because his employees did not have sense enough to keep it away from his and haven’t even today.

The speaker said workingmen are not worth ten dollars apiece on the average and never were. They have been too busy making the gigantic wealth and fortunes of the country to think of themselves. The workingman makes things faster than he can consume them and some one has got away with the surplus. The finger of circumstantial evidence points ominously toward the capitalist.

You are a carpenter and you make four chairs in one day. Your employer sold three of the chairs for the amount of your day’s wages. Therefore he stole the other chair from you. Wealth is made by the workingman for the capitalist; so the wealth of the country represents the wages that you are not paid. The money with which you are paid was really gotten from you before. The speaker became excited when he reached this remarkable climax and explained to the audience that they were thick-headed to work. He informed them that work is not for men to do, but for mules, oxen, horses and machines.