Page:Proletarian and Petit-Bourgeois (1912?).pdf/22

20 upon citizenship an ever increasing number of the unskilled must remain aliens, for it is very difficult even for a craftsman to find witnesses covering a period of five years and it is next to impossible for an unskilled laborer to do this.

The separation between the rest of the community and the unskilled laborer is therefore practically complete. His class stands as a permanently outlawed class. He has no part or lot in the existing social system. The occasions when he is interested in the present system are when he comes into collision with it and the officers of the law inflict every indignity upon him and render his necessary migration through the land as difficult and as dangerous as possible.

It will be noted that we are not speaking here of tramps or derelicts, of the social detritus which is continually being thrown off into the fetid pools of professional trampdom and of crime. This derelict or slum element is quite another factor with which we have no present concern. The unskilled laborers referred to are those who do the rough work of the world; who work hard where opportunity for work is afforded; who fill the contract camps and mines, harvest the grain and perform the thousand and one tasks upon which we are dependent, and who form the definite and indispensable substratum of every industry.

The theory in the United States at least is that such employment is permanent only for the unfit; that the best elements graduate out of it into more remunerative toil. The former history of the country goes far to establish that belief. But it is no longer tenable in face of the facts. The appropriation of the public lands, the practical closing of opportunity, the degradation of the crafts in face of the consolidation of industry, all tend not only to shut the avenue of escape for the unskilled laborer but to greatly increase his numbers.

This mass is already beginning to show signs of independent life. It is not waiting to be organized from