Politics and Anti-Poverty

William T. Croasdale

[Reprinted from The Standard, Vol.2, 26 November, 1887]

The party now known as the united labor party polled at the late election nearly 75,000 votes in the state of New York. Though this is a large vote for a new party in its first campaign in behalf of a principle new in our politics, it is, nevertheless, true that it fell far below the party's expectations. The more than 68,000 votes cast for Mr. George in this city the year before had been confidently counted on as a nucleus of the new party's growth. Looking back, enlightened by our recent experience, it seems singular that we allowed ourselves to rely so implicitly on that vote as a basis for calculation. We have never known by whom it was cast . Though the number of enrolled members of the party was much larger this year than last, it never included an eighth part of the 68,000 votes of the previous year . For aught we know to the contrary, an actual majority of those voting for George in 1886 may have been members of the old party organizations. A republican or a democrat could then vote for our candidate and still account himself a good member of his own party, he having scratched but one name on its ticket in a local contest in which party lines were not closely drawn. Furthermore, the new party entered the canvass this year with full knowledge of the fact that it had deliberately thrown away the five thousand or six thousand votes of the socialists, and with a suspicion, since verified by experience, that , while it was heartily supported by many of the leaders of organized labor and thousands of members of labor organizations, the sympathies of those wedded to old methods had been alienated.

These facts, now so apparent , were forgotten in the heat and enthusiasm of a contest that was all aglow with the hope inspired by a great principle. That principle, and the hope inspired by it, remain, and they sustain us in the disappointment that we have experienced of expectations founded on false premises. They also cause us to rejoice that we took the action that drove out the socialists and deprived us of full support based on mere class prejudice. We now have a party built upon a rock and its upbuilding henceforth must be sound and enduring. The cardinal article in our creed is the declaration that the land of the country belongs to the people in common and that private possession is a privilege granted by society, for which the holder should pay a full and exact equivalent into the public treasury. The party therefore aims "at the abolition of a system which compels men to pay their fellow creatures for the use of God's gifts to all , and permits monopolizers to deprive labor of natural opportunities for employment." Those of us who now constitute the new party see that the enforcement of this simple rule of equity will solve the labor problem and abolish involuntary poverty. It will enrich the community, giving it the enormous values that the community creates through the mere growth of population. It will put an end to the monopolization of land by speculators, and render it unprofitable for any man to hold land for any other purpose than use, thus throwing open to labor and capital all unused natural opportunities now held idle by speculators. It will relieve industry and enterprise of the fines and burdens now laid upon them by a system of taxation that discourages and punishes the creation of wealth ; for the ground rents now taken by private individuals, in return for no service rendered to society, when once turned into the public treasury, will vastly exceed in amount the total sum now gathered by a vexatious and profligate mixed system of direct and indirect taxation.

As incidental to and a part of the new system, the platform declares against the further alienation or farming out of the peoples governmental powers, and demands that the federal government shall issue all money without the intervention of banks , and take absolute control of the railway and telegraph systems, and that our municipalities shall supply their inhabitants with water , light and heat in short , the platform demands for the community that which the community, as such, receives as a free gift from God, and the values that it creates, leaving to each person absolute freedom in possession of whatsoever is created by his individual skill or exertion. This is our remedy for social wrongs , and we see clearly that labor, unfettered by taxes and free to employ itself, will never work for wages lower than it can earn by self-employment, and that capital , shut out from the opportunity to bury itself in the ground or hide itself in land and mortgages , will be eager to co-operate with labor on just terms.

Seeing all this plainly, and clearly asserting the absolute control by the individual of the product of his own labor, the Syracuse convention deliberately denounced the un-American idea of state socialism, and at the same time declined to commit itself to the nostrums so long urged by ignorant though well meaning men. It announced the one and only sufficient remedy, and merely recommended as measures of relief, pending the application of the true remedy, legislation tending to reduce the hours of labor, to prevent the employment of children of tender years, and so on. It also - "since the ballot is the only means by which in our republic the redress of political or social grievances is to be sought" - demanded the adoption of the Australian system of voting.

That a party standing on such a platform should have polled more than 70,000 votes in its first state campaign is a most remarkable and encouraging fact. That a platform looking to the ballot as the sole means by which redress of grievances is to be sought , and drawing the line with such positive clearness between public rights and functions and individual rights and liberties should not merely repel but enrage socialists and anarchists, was to be expected. That a platform which relegates to a subordinate place the great mass of incongruous measures advanced for years in the name of the wage workers should at first fail to attract leaders of organized labor, is not to be wondered at. Hence, there is no just cause for surprise in the facts now apparent that the socialists made alliances with the capitalists to defeat our ticket and that many of the labor organizations, as such, did nothing for it.

Yet all of this gives assurance of our party' s solid growth in the future. It is purified as though by fire from all taint of socialism. It is relieved of the appearance of a class organization appealing to class prejudices rather than to the reason and conscience of all honest men. It is none the less truly a labor party, for it proposes a radical and final solution of the labor problem, but it does not propose to elevate one body of men by putting others down. This fact has been made plain to thousands of wage workers who, while acknowledging the usefulness of trade organizations in resisting or palliating existing evils, see that they offer no other prospect than that of a perpetual contest between classes whose true interests are identical . Thousands of such men have not only voted with us, but they will henceforth be busy in propagating the new idea among their companions and shopmates. And with them have voted other thousands of business and professional men who have overcome some prejudice against a title that is a misnomer in order to vote for principles that assure the promotion of the general welfare.

The party is, then, in better position than ever before to appeal to the intelligence and moral sense of all fair minded men. It can afford to accept no accessions, it can make no alliances that are not such as to advance its main idea. To it the proposal to abolish all taxes on industry or its products and substitute in their stead a single tax on land values is not merely a cold economic proposition, but the enforcement of a great moral principle that will accomplish and guarantee that equality promised in the Declaration of Independence and the objects recited in the preamble to the constitution of United States.

On the other hand, our party cannot afford to fall into the pit that the prohibitionists and the greenbackers have fallen into. In order to propagate its principles it must not segregate itself from human kind and cease to be a factor in public affairs. It must lend active assistance to every effort to advance any of the principles to which it is committed. There now appears to be no doubt that the monstrous bribery and corruption of the late election will cause a serious effort to pass a bill establishing the Australian system of voting in this state. Perhaps, as a preliminary to that, a committee will be appointed to investigate the cost of holding elections under the existing system in this city. Our people should most cordially co-operate in such a movement.

Again an effort will doubtless be made in congress this winter to authorize the building of telegraph lines by the post office department . This is one of our measures, and we should not only assist the effort by petitions, but watch carefully the action of members of congress from this state on the question. We must, while holding fast to our principles, fight for each step forward and make our strength the sure dependence of every man who seeks to strike a blow at monopoly or vested wrong.

As to how that strength may best be utilized next year, my own mind is not yet clear, but my impression at present is that it would be folly to name a presidential ticket. For us there is little, if any, choice between the old parties, but in the din of this final conflict between them any appeal to reason, any advocacy of principle, would be lost. Our fight, it seems to me, should be concentrated on legislators and congressmen. In the present condition of politics half a dozen men may easily hold the balance of power in the house of representatives. They would there find plenty of men eager to fight some form of monopoly, though not ready to attack that parent of all others - the monopoly of land. At the polls, too, we should find allies not now with us. All sincere free traders begin to see that tariff tinkering is a picayune business unworthy of the efforts of brainy men and incapable of exciting popular interest or enthusiasm. Such men are rapidly acquiring the courage of their convictions, and the moment that they do so and begin to advocate the abolition of custom houses, they will recognize their duty to propose an alternative for tariff taxation. Though some of them still fall back on an income tax, theoretically fair, but practically impossible to collect, the more advanced among them see, with Thomas G. Shearman, that the one alternative to tariff taxation is a land value tax. Thus, by a different path, guided by economic considerations only, they arrive at the same conclusion that we have reached, and become, for a time at least , our natural allies.

Our party, while maintaining its own high purpose, must not hold itself so far aloof from all not yet educated to its idea that it will refuse their aid so long as we are both advancing toward the same end. We want first of all to transfer all taxation to land values and relieve industry and its products from existing burdens. He who aims at this is with us for the present , even though he frankly tells us that he will part company with us when we propose to increase the rate of taxation to the full rental value of land. Merely because of this prospective difference we have no right to reject assistance in the first step of our great reform. The new party must maintain itself in a position to take advantage of all opportunities to advance its principles. That is the only reason for its existence. Those of us who left old parties to join in this effort did not do so because we desired to form a new party as a thing desirable in itself. We have rather reluctantly taken up the burden, because we saw that the old parties had neither the ability nor the disposition to grapple with the new and grave problems that have arisen since their habits of thought and prejudices were formed, and that there was, therefore, nothing else to do but to form a new party that would offer an adequate remedy for the evils that threaten the state and menace society. We have been accustomed to have our votes, our voices or our pens count for something in public affairs, and we wish to still hold a place in the arena ready to strike a blow at monopoly whenever it shows its head. This, I think, should be the attitude of our party as a whole.

The republican party was the outgrowth of the anti-slavery agitation, but for years it refused to acknowledge its parent. The most sensible of the abolitionists joined it, however, though it only proposed to restrict the growth of slavery, and rather went out of its way to declare that it would take no steps toward the extirpation of the system where it already existed. We all know the result. It became, in time, permeated with hatred of chattel slavery, and when opportunity came it overthrew the system at a single blow. In its earlier days any proposition to liberate the slaves without compensation to their masters would have been rejected with indignation by the great mass of republicans. It may be that we shall have for a time to listen with patience to the advocacy of the imposition of the single tax on mere economic grounds and number in our ranks men who would indignantly protest against taxation to the rental value as "confiscation," which, despite its innocent etymology, has come to be a word of evil omen. I hope this may not be so, but nevertheless we must face all possibilities in attempting to forecast the future.

Should such be the case, we shall not be without a great moral helper and an inspiration to high purposes, such as the true abortionists in the republican ranks had in the anti-slavery society. Our Anti- poverty society has all the zeal, enthusiasm and directness of purpose that marked its predecessor in the work of emancipation. It will ever hold aloft the pure white banner of the new crusade, and looking neither to the right nor the left, march forward toward that final victory which alone will satisfy its high purpose and emancipate all men from the injustice that now enslaves them. It is the custodian and defender of the very heart of our creed. For it there can be neither hesitation, fear nor the shadow of turning. It has taken the cross of the new crusade and set its face toward the promised land. It is the chosen defender of the faith that all of God's children are the equal heirs to their Father's bounty, and that the sweeping away of the obstacles interposed by ignorance and greed will restore the disinherited to their own and open wide the doors for the coming of God's kingdom on earth, where His will shall yet be done as it is in heaven.

Whatever the mutations of politics, and however much of dross may even yet come to be mingled with the pure gold of our principles, the Anti-poverty society must remain the soul and conscience of our movement, ever spurring it to nobler endeavor and always checking its impulse to yield to the temptation of immediate success ignobly won. The society must spread and grow. It should permeate this great city, and branches should spring up in every city, town and hamlet in our land. It must be the missionary force of our movement, and the prospect before it is an alluring one, for it preaches anew the glad tidings received eagerly of old, and it finds that this gospel to-day bears the stamp that proved its genuineness in the beginning; that is, the common people hear it gladly. Never before was the need of the devotion and enthusiasm that has marked the Anti- poverty society from the beginning of its existence so great as now, and happily, never before was its zeal so unflagging and its hope so high.