y in its
ultimate purpose, as it ought to be, and as for immediate concessions in
the way of legislation by capitalist representatives and more favorable
working conditions, you workingmen have only to poll two million
Socialist votes this fall, and you will get those concessions freely and
you will not get them in any other way. You will not frighten, you will
not move the great corporations by dividing your votes between the
republican and democratic parties. It doesn't make any difference which
of these two parties wins, you lose! They are both capitalist parties
and I don't ask you to take my mere word for it. I simply ask, my
brothers, that you read and study the platforms for yourself. I beg of
you not to have an ignorant, superstitious reverence for any political
party. It is your misfortune if you are the blind follower of any
political leader, or any other leader. It is your duty as a workingman,
your duty to yourself, your family, to quit a party the very instant you
find that that party no longer serves you; and if you continue to adhere
to a party that antagonizes your interests, if you continue to support a
system in which you are degraded, then you have no right to complain.
You must submit to what comes, for you yourself are responsible.

Let me impress this fact upon your minds: the labor question, which is
really the question of all humanity, will never be solved until it is
solved by the working class. It will never be solved for you by the
capitalists. It will never be solved for you by the politicians. It will
remain unsolved until you yourselves solve it. As long as you can stand
and are willing to stand these conditions, these conditions will remain;
but when you unite all over the land, when you present a solid
class-conscious phalanx, economically and politically, there is no power
on this earth that can stand between you and complete emancipation.

As individuals you are helpless, but united you represent an
irresistible power.

Is there any doubt in the mind of any thinking workingman that we are in
the midst of a class struggle? Is there any doubt that the workingman
ought to own the tool he works with? You will never own the tool you
work with under the present system. This whole system is based upon the
private ownership by the capitalist of the tools and the wage-slavery of
the working class, and as long as the tools are privately owned by the
capitalists the great mass of workers will be