The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll. Robert Green Ingersoll
another greases the machines, cuts out soles, waxes threads. And what is the result? When the machines stop, three thousand men are out of employment. Credit goes. Then come want and famine, and if they happen to have a little child die, it would take them years to save enough of their earnings to pay the expense of putting away that little sacred piece of flesh. And yet, by this machinery we can produce enough to flood the world. By the inventions in agricultural machinery the United States can feed all the mouths upon the earth. There is not a thing that man uses that can not instantly be over-produced to such an extent as to become almost worthless; and yet, with all this production, with all this power to create, there are millions and millions in abject want. Granaries bursting, and famine looking into the doors of the poor! Millions of everything, and yet millions wanting everything and having substantially nothing!
Now, there is something wrong there. We have got into that contest between machines-and men, and if extravagance does not keep pace with ingenuity, it is going to be the most terrible question that man has ever settled. I tell you, to-night, that these things are worth thinking about. Nothing that touches the future of our race, nothing that touches the happiness of ourselves or our children, should be beneath our notice. We should think of these things—must think of them—and we should endeavor to see that justice is finally done between man and man.
My sympathies are with the poor. My sympathies are with the workingmen of the United States. Understand me distinctly. I am not an Anarchist. Anarchy is the reaction from tyranny. I am not a Socialist. I am not a Communist. I am an Individualist. I do not believe in tyranny of government, but I do believe in justice as between man and man.
What is the remedy? Or, what can we think of—for do not imagine that I think I know. It is an immense, an almost infinite, question, and all we can do is to guess. You have heard a great deal lately upon the land subject. Let me say a word or two upon that. In the first place I do not want to take, and I would not take, an inch of land from any human being that belonged to him. If we ever take it, we must pay for it—condemn it and take it—do not rob anybody. Whenever any man advocates justice, and robbery as the means, I suspect him.
No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use. Everybody knows that—I do not care whether he has thousands or millions. I have owned a great deal of land, but I know just as well as I know I am living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use it. And why? Don't you know that if people could bottle the air, they would? Don't you know that there would be an American Air-bottling Association? And don't you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath, if they could not pay for air? I am not blaming anybody. I am just telling how it is. Now, the land belongs to the children of Nature. Nature invites into this world every babe that is born. And what would you think of me, for instance, to-night, if I had invited you here—nobody had charged you anything, but you had been invited—and when you got here you had found one man pretending to occupy a hundred seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and thereupon you were compelled to stand up—what would you think of the invitation? It seems to me that every child of Nature is entitled to his share of the land, and that he should not be compelled to beg the privilege to work the soil, of a babe that happened to be born before him. And why do I say this? Because it is not to our interest to have a few landlords and millions of tenants.
The tenement house is the enemy of modesty, the enemy of virtue, the enemy of patriotism.
Home is where the virtues grow. I would like to see the law so that every home, to a small amount, should be free not only from sale for debts, but should be absolutely free from taxation, so that every man could have a home. Then we will have a nation of patriots.
Now, suppose that every man were to have all the land he is able to buy. The Vanderbilts could buy to-day all the land that is in farms in the State of Ohio—every foot of it. Would it be for the best interest of that State to have a few landlords and four or five millions of serfs? So, I am in favor of a law finally to be carried out—not by robbery, but by compensation, under the right, as the lawyers call it, of eminent domain—so that no person would be allowed to own more land than he uses. I am not blaming these rich men for being rich. I pity the most of them. I had rather be poor, with a little sympathy in my heart, than to be rich as all the mines of earth and not have that little flower of pity in my breast. I do not see how a man can have hundreds of millions and pass every day people that have not enough to eat. I do not understand it. I might be just the same way myself. There is something in money that dries up the sources of affection, and the probability is, it is this: the moment a man gets money, so many men are trying to get it away from him that in a little while he regards the whole human race as his enemy, and he generally thinks that they could be rich, too, if they would only attend to business as he has. Understand, I am not blaming these people. There is a good deal of human nature in us all. You remember the story of the man who made a speech at a Socialist meeting, and closed it by saying, "Thank God, I am no monopolist," but as he sank to his seat said, "But I wish to the Lord I was!" We must remember that these rich men are naturally produced. Do not blame them. Blame the system!
Certain privileges have been granted to the few by the Government, ostensibly for the benefit of the many; and whenever that grant is not for the good of the many, it should be taken from the few—not by force, not by robbery, but by estimating fairly the value of that property, and paying to them its value; because everything should be done according to law and order.
What remedy, then, is there? First, the great weapon in this country is the ballot. Each voter is a sovereign. There the poorest is the equal of the richest. His vote will count just as many as though the hand that cast it controlled millions. The poor are in the majority in this country. If there is any law that oppresses them, it is their fault. They have followed the fife and drum of some party. They have been misled by others. No man should go an inch with a party—no matter if that party is half the world and has in it the greatest intellects of the earth—unless that party is going his way. No honest man should ever turn round to join anything. If it overtakes him, good. If he has to hurry up a little to get to it, good. But do not go with anything that is not going your way; no matter whether they call it Republican, or Democrat, or Progressive Democracy—do not go with it unless it goes your way.
The ballot is the power. The law should settle many of these questions between capital and labor. But I expect the greatest good to come from civilization, from the growth of a sense of justice; for I tell you to-night, a civilized man will never want anything for less than it is worth—a civilized man, when he sells a thing, will never want more than it is worth—a really and truly civilized man, would rather be cheated than to cheat. And yet, in the United States, good as we are, nearly everybody wants to get everything for a little less than it is worth, and the man that sells it to him wants to get a little more than it is worth? and this breeds rascality on both sides. That ought to be done away with. There is one step toward it that we will take: we will finally say that human flesh, human labor, shall not depend entirely on "supply and demand." That is infinitely cruel. Every man should give to another according to his ability to give—and enough that he may make his living and lay something by for the winter of old age.
Go to England. Civilized country they call it. It is not. It never was. I am afraid it never will be. Go to London, the greatest city of this world, where there is the most wealth—the greatest glittering piles of gold. And yet, one out of every six in that city dies in a hospital, a workhouse or a prison. Is that the best that we are ever to know? Is that the last word that civilization has to say? Look at the women in this town sewing for a living, making cloaks for less than forty-five cents, that sell for $45! Right here—here, amid all the palaces, amid the thousands of millions of property—here! Is that all that civilization can do? Must a poor woman support herself, or her child, or her children, by that kind of labor, and with such pay—and do we call ourselves civilized?
Did you ever read that wonderful poem about the sewing woman? Let me tell you the last verse:
"Winds that have sainted her, tell ye the story
Of the young life by the needle that bled,
Making a bridge over death's soundless waters
Out of a swaying, and soul-cutting thread—
Over