Page:Alexander Jonas - Reporter and Socialist (1885).djvu/33

 than six per cent. for any amount of capital loaned; the law would consider it to be robbery. In another State, the law makes ten per cent. the limit of interest. While the one State considers it robbery to charge ten per cent., the other State allows it; in other words, the latter State legalizes robbery to the extent of four per cent. And thus the Socialists declare that, to amass wealth under the protection of the present laws and institutions to the detriment of those who produced it, is legalized robbery. But I shall ask you another question: To whom did, according to law and right, belong the slaves in the United States a quarter of a century ago?

To the slaveholders, of course.

Just as to-day to the manufacturers, capitalists and monopolists of the present day belong the means of labor, i. e. the factories, the soil, the mines, railroads, telegraphs etc.?

Just so! According to the same "right and laws!"

Exactly. And how was it that long before the civil war many thousands of the noblest minds, men as well as women, who were then cruelly persecuted, but who to-day are highly honored and whose names will be handed down by history to all generations to come, were striving for the legal abolition of slavery? How was it that after a bloody civil war that "divine institution" was abolished, that the "sacred property" of the slave barons was simply confiscated?

Well, to be honest: Because it was a shame and a disgrace to mankind.

And, because it is a shame and the very cause of the intellectual and physical deterioration of mankind, the laws and institutions under which it was possible that the few could despoil the masses of the people by monopolizing all the means of life and labor, should just as well be abolished as the laws sanctioning and tolerating slavery! You see this demand of ours is nothing extraordinary, as the same demands have been made at times gone by. But, I am going a little farther. You ask me whether or not the manufacturers etc. are entitled to the possession of the factories, mines, soil, roads etc.? Did they acquire them by honest means? I say no; for, if you ac-