CHAPTER XXIV

Delegate Cannon of Arizona: "I contend that the public ownership of all machinery and land is one of the things for which the Socialist Party is working. If some of the Comrades get up and tell us in Germany they are not working for that, I move that we inform the German Comrades that they are behind the times. The idea of not including the land is nothing more or less than political expediency." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 175.) Delegate Payne of Texas: "I want to know if this convention of this movement which we call the great revolutionary movement is going to go down in history as catering to a small middle class of land owners, or are you going to stand for the great proletarian farming class?" ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention on the Socialist Party," page 181.) Delegate Morrison of Arizona: "Is it possible that we have so far forgotten ourselves, that we will attempt to curry favor with a few capitalist farmers? Why is this resolution here? What is the object of it? What is the purpose of it? Is it to secure votes? Do you hope to deceive some one as to the actual, real program of scientific Socialism? Or are you, in other words, going to lie to the farmers of this country in order to secure their suffrage? Are you going to present something to them that you know is not contained in the Socialist program? Can you afford, as representatives of this great revolutionary party, to do that which in a few years you will be ashamed of? I say no." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 184.) Delegate Goaziou of Pennsylvania: "I know we have in this country a growing movement among Socialists who are wanting votes no matter how they will get them. They are willing to put in appeals to the farmers, appeals to the middle class and appeals to everybody, so that they can get votes." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 209.) Delegate Thompson of Wisconsin: "We know that there is a very large portion of votes of this country on the farm, under agricultural conditions and environment, over forty per cent. Less than thirty per cent of the votes of this country are under industrial conditions. When we get to the point where we want to do something, we must have some way or other of getting these two forces welded together. We can never win out with thirty per cent of the vote. We will have to have at least a substantial majority, and that we cannot have without the farmers." ("Proceedings of 1908 National Convention of the Socialist Party," page 185.) Delegate Victor Berger of Wisconsin: "We cannot have Socialism in this country, if we don't get the farmers in some way. If you try to take away the farms of twelve millions of farmers of this country, you will have a big job on your hands. You might as well try to reach down the moon.... You remember how much effort and how many men it cost England to conquer 30,000 farmers, Boers--Boers, mind you--and now try to take the farms from these 12,000,000 American farmers and you will have about a million times harder job. Besides, they don't need to fight. All they have to do is to stop bringing food to Chicago for six weeks, and Comrade Morgan and the rest of Chicago would be knocked out." ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," page 230.) Delegate Simmons of Illinois: "There is just one thing on earth that I will toady to and that is a fact. And when I meet a fact so big as the farmer question in America, a fact that has in it the future of 12,000,000 of people of the producing classes, without whom we stand no more chance of a Socialist victory in this country than we do of changing the orbit of a comet, and when I face a fact as big as that, I don't try to stand in front of it, and howl empty phrases, in the hope that the fact will get out of the way." ("Proceedings of the 1910 National Congress of the Socialist Party," page 231.)