Jack London
San Francisco Examiner/November 10, 1904
Great Socialist Vote is Explained by Jack London
Mark Hanna’s Prediction Recalled
One of the World’s Authorities on Socialism Analyzes Campaign Made in Behalf of Eugene V. Debs
The only people surprised by the heavy Socialist vote throughout the United Slates are the Democrats and Republicans. The Socialists knew it all the time. Their campaign is twelve months long and they have a campaign every year, wherefore it was to be expected that they should know what was coming.
However, during the last several weeks of the campaign, the professional politicians began to awaken to something, they knew not what, that was in the air. In a remarkably quiet campaign, when their own rallies and mass meetings were unremarkable for size and enthusiasm, they were astonished at the sight of Debs and Hanford and the rest of the Socialist orators speaking continually to crowded houses.
Nay, the professional, old-party politicians were puzzled. Never in their experience had they witnessed mass meetings with a charge for admission, and it was beyond their imagination to conceive of such mass meetings being jammed to the doors, with overflow meetings taking place in the street and in nearby halls. Yet this was precisely what they witnessed in every large city of the United States when the Socialist candidates passed through.
Mark Ilanna was, possibly, the only old party politician who saw clearly the Socialist trend. “The next great issue this country will have to meet will be Socialism,’’ he said not long before he died.
It was his last political prophecy.
Ever since the 1900 campaign the National Committee of the Republican party, through its paid agents, has been gathering information concerning the strength of the Socialist movement in the United States. At the end of this careful canvass the Republican National Committee conceded 600,000 votes to Debs for the election just past. Full returns will show that the estimate was rather a conservative one.
A table of the Socialist vote in the United States, since the first Socialist ballots were cast, should be of interest.
1888 2,068
1892 21,512
1894 30,120
1895 34,869
1896 36,275
1897 55,550
1898 82.204
1900 98,424
1902 225,903
The most notable thing in connection with the above table is the steady growth of the Socialist vote. Socialism has not arisen in a day, and by the same token it will not subside in a day Whether it will ever subside is a question.
It has fastened upon every civilized country in the world, and in no country has it subsided. Not only that, but in every country it is stronger to-day than ever before, is constantly adding to its strength and constantly gaining a footing in new countries.
The thunder of the guns of the Spanish-American War had not yet died away when the Socialist group were forming in Cuba. No sooner had Japan joined the ranks of the manufacturing nations and begun to build machines and factories, than she found the Socialist organizers in her midst, bombarding the workingmen with pamphlets and speeches. And to-day the Socialists of Japan send greeting to the Socialists of Russia of which the following is an excerpt:
“Dear comrades, your government and ours have recently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic tendencies but for us Socialists there are no boundaries, race, country or nationality. We are comrades, brothers and sisters, and have no reason to fight. Your enemies are not the Japanese people, but our militarism and so-called patriotism.”
There has been nothing mushroom-like in the growth of Socialism in the United States. It has been slow, and steady, and sure. “Once a Socialist always a Socialist,” is the saying, and in truth, backsliding is a rare occurrence. Populism sprang up in a day and died down in a day. It was a mushroom growth. Its roots were not sunk into permanence. It was superficial, a surface issue which attracted a few million people who had been hurt by social wrong but who did not know what it was. They thought it was the gold standard, and they flocked to populism. But there was nothing fundamental to populism, in the very nature of things it could not last, and it perished as it had spawned, in unseemly haste.
But there is something fundamental to Socialism. It is nothing at all, if it is not in its very essence fundamental. It is a revolutionary movement that aims to pull down society to its foundation, and upon a new foundation to build a new society where shall reign order, equity and justice. “The capitalist must go!” is the battle-cry. “The brotherhood of man has waited long enough!”
In the history of man, Socialism is the first movement of men to involve the whole globe. None has been so widespreading, so far-reaching. It is international and world-wide. Compared with it, the supremacy of any ancient people was quite local; likewise the waves of Arabian fanaticism and the medieval crusades to the holy sepulchre. The Socialist movement is limited only by the limits of the planet.
Its banner is blood red (symbolizing the blood of man), and it preaches the passionate gospel of the brotherhood of man. It is an ethical movement as well as an economic and political movement and, one may say, a religious movement as well. It is the politics and the gospel of the common man in his struggle against the uncommon man who has expressed his uncommonness by gathering to himself the wealth of the world.
Behind the Socialist movement in the United States is a most imposing philosophic and scientific literature. It owns illustrated magazines and reviews high in quality, dignity and restraint; it possesses hundreds of weekly papers which circulate throughout the land, single papers which have subscribers by the hundreds of thousands, and it literally swamps the working classes in a vast sea of tracts and pamphlets.
No political party in the United States, no church organization nor mission effort has as indefatigable workers as has the Socialist party. They multiply themselves, know of no effort or sacrifice too great to make for the cause, and “cause” with them is spelled out in capitals.
Let these men tell what they are doing, what is their aim; and the Debs vote will take on greater significance. They are preaching an uncompromising and deadly class struggle. In fact, they are organized upon the basis of a class struggle. The history of society, they say, is a history of class struggles. Patrician struggled with plebeian in early Rome, the nobles and the kings with merchant class at the close of the middle ages, and to-day the struggle is on between the triumphant merchant class and the rising working class.
That the working class shall conquer (mark the note of fatalism) is as certain as the rising of the sun. Just as the merchant class of the eighteenth century wanted democracy applied to politics, so the working class of the twentieth century wants democracy applied to industry, and to this end they organize the working classes into a political party that is a party of revolt.
This working-class, socialist revolt is a revolt against the capitalist class. The Socialist party aims to capture the political machinery of society. With the political machinery in its hands, which will also give it the control of the police, the army, the navy and the courts, its plan is to confiscate, with or without remuneration, all the possessions of the capitalist class which are used in the production and distribution of the necessaries and luxuries of life.
By this it means to apply the law of eminent domain to the land and to extend the law of eminent domain till it embraces the mines, the factories, the railroads and the ocean carriers. In short, the Socialist party intends to destroy present day society, which, it contends, is run in the interest of the merchant or capitalist class, and from the materials to construct a new society which will be run in the interest of the working class. And in that day, say the Socialists, all men will be workers, and there will be but one class, the working class.
This, in short, is the aim of the Socialist party of the United States and of the world. The vote cast for Debs day before yesterday was the tally of the American citizens who have raised the red banner of revolt. It is a working-class revolt against the economic masters of the United States.
How will the masters quell the revolt? That remains to be seen, but the masters must take one thing into consideration — there was never the like of this revolt in the world before. It is without precedent. It is a democratic revolt and must be fought out with ballots.
It is not a strife of lockout and blacklist, strike and boycott, employers’ associations and labor unions, strike-breakers and broken heads, armed Pinkertons and injunctions, policemen’s clubs and machine guns. It is a peaceable and orderly revolt at the ballot box, under democratic conditions, where the majority rules.
My masters, you are in the minority. How will you manage to keep the majority of the votes?
What will you, my masters; what will you?
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