Must Collectively Own the Machines
We quote from a statement made by J. G. Stokes, the young millionaire, who for several years has been devoting his talent and means to advance the interest of the industrial and producing class. In his statement he said: “It has required a vast amount of accumulated evidence to convince me that it is, and for long has been impossible for the average worker to secure such material things as are necessary for his welfare and advancement, and this in consequence of the exploitation of his labor by privileged persons, who take for their own enjoyment a large portion of the product of his toil.
“I have been long in perceiving clearly that there are two chief economic classes in America, as elsewhere: Those whose poverty compels them to produce more than they require for their own maintenance, and those whose wealth enables them to control and consume more than they produce and more than they render proportionate service in exchange for; that the reward of the former class is invariably less than the value of its product, whereas the reward or income of the latter class is greatly in excess of the value of its product and bears no proportionate relation to the value of the service it renders.
“I have learned but gradually the injustice of the situation which confronts the average worker. Honest and earnest men and women by hundreds of thousands suffer privation and want although surrounded by prosperity and plenty, and owe their sufferings chiefly to the monopolization of the land and of the machinery of production by the few exclusively for the purpose of private gain: access to the land and machinery being denied, unless the workers will produce enough, not merely for their own support, but for the maintenance of the idle and luxurious as well. This is to my mind a great injustice, and one that demands early remedy.”
–courtesy of Tom Giessel
And now today, March, 2018, the dairy coop Agri-Mark provides their farmers with a suicide hotline instead of a better milk price. Consumers have never paid more for food, while farmers have never received so little of what consumers spend. We must reduce this abusive and destructive power of the Big Food monopoly, beginning with Walmart. Break them up!
Note: St. Paul’s Husbandman message is cut in stone above the main entrance of the USDA building in Washington DC, along with two other messages about the importance of agriculture.
