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Class Warrior: On Workers and Rockefeller. 1905

Class Warrior
On Workers and Rockefeller. 1905

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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 Workers and Rockefeller 1905

Report on a speech by Kingsley in Seattle’s Labour Temple on 17 December 1905, his second visit to the city that year, demonstrating linkages among leftists in the Pacific Northwest and Kingsley’s ongoing influence in the United States following his move to Canada three years earlier.

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.

—“Kingsley Calls Them All Loons,” Vancouver World, 20 Dec. 1905, 9.

1 The “P.-I.” is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, one of the city’s leading daily newspapers at that time.

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