Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/27

 lives and limbs for the sake of his ambition, the millions of workers of to-day sacrifice their lives, their health, their happiness, and their families for the sake of a comparatively small number of robbers, and many of them in the vain hope of being able to become robbers themselves at some far distant period. Therefore, you see that it is the system that produces the present condition of affairs, not single persons, and that consequently a permanent improvement could be expected only from the thorough annihilation of the system.

Will you please allow me to repeat to you the notes I have taken so far, in order to see whether I understood you right-in all things you have said. Now then:

You first told me that the Socialist's aim at abolishing "capitalistic production;"

You also said that such production consists in creating commodities by applying immense amounts of capital for the exclusive benefit of a few individuals, or bosses, into whose pockets the entire profit is going;

You further proved to me that the effects of "capitalistic production" are the same the world over; that in all civilized countries, be they republics or monarchies, with a system of either protection or free trade, these effects are equal in all of them;

And you have also shown me to my great surprise from the figures of the census of 1880, that even the United States are not an exception from this rule, the American people seems to be more and more in danger of becoming pauperized and degraded, to being but a mass of wage-slaves—a condition of affairs from which they, according to the nature of things, could not possibly extricate themselves, save very few exceptions.

Am I correct in thus stating your views?

Quite correct.

Well, then, let me ask some other questions: Has not this state of things prevailed at all times of history? Could it possibly be otherwise? Is it not but natural that it should be so?

Not at all, if you mean to imply by the term "natural" that these conditions are invariable, immovably pre-