Haymarket Affair Digital Collection

Illinois vs. August Spies et al. trial evidence book. People's Exhibit 30.
The Alarm (Newspaper) article, "The Property Power," 1884 Nov. 29

3 p.
Introduced Vol. K p. 158, 1886 July 26.
Transcript of article.


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People's Exhibit 30

THE ALARM Nov. 29, 1884.

THE PROPERTY POWER.

Just as long as there is a civil law by which man can hold property just so long will each person use his accumulations as a lever against others and as a deadly weapon against those most unfortunate. Are the American people still so behind that they cannot see that the sole use of property power is to enable those who have it to ride upon those who do not have it? The property power is a lever that meanness alone can acquire and inhumanity alone will use. If all the pains and penalties of destitution were not held up to men by law to force them to hoard up and hide away the goods of this world, they never would do it. Most people had rather face the pain of poverty then to hide away food and cloths and shelter beyond the reach of the needy. If we would but stop to think of the real depravity of the crime of withholding from the hard working needy, and especiially away from their little ones, we would thoroughly damn ourselves for allowing it to continue. Those thousands and tens of thousands of starving shivering emaciated little boys and girls, innocent little bodies who never did or thought a wrong in all their lives, kept in sickly, living tombs, and suffering the tortures of the damned, all for the contemptible excuse that what is withheld from these little sufferers feeds and fattens and polishes off a better class. If there was a shadow of truth in the statement that the freely


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giving of food, shelter and clothing to all, would in the least take away the present luxuries or liberties of the so-called upper classes, then people could more patiently tolerate the present wickedness.

When people wake up to the enormity to the crime of property holding and property manipulating then dynamite will not be too powerful or to quick to express their hatred for those who use or uphold it.

There is no just reason why three fourths of the energy of civilization should continue to be wasted in stealing, hiding, guarding, and manipulating the necessaries and comforts of life. Nor should all this wasted energy be thus wickedly used against the luxuries of life. Why are all the lawyers, legislators, police and armies and navies wasting their time and energy quarreling about which shall be the owner of this, that or the other? No man has the right to be the owner of anything;; but every one should use the energies they do use in producing something, and no man should pay them for what they produce. It is no credit to a man that he spends his energies. If he should stop his energies it would cause him pain. He spends his energies because he has to; he is so created, he can't help it. Therefore, no man should be paid for what he produces; but in all justice to humanity he ought to be killed if he will waste his energies without producing something. The moment you pay a man for


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what he produces he will take that pay and then spend his energies in taking advantage of somebody with it. Down with pay, and dynamite the man who claims it; and hang him who will not let his energies produce something. This is Socialism.

Upon this principle, and this only, can all humanity be raised up, and upon this principle alone can we stop all this quarreling, robbing, starving and throat-cuttting. There is no reason on earth why any living being should have less of the benefits and pleasures of this world than Vanderbilt now possesses. The idea that the world can have no more than there are dollars to every representative is ridiculous nonsense. There isn't money enough in the world to represent the amount of fine combs and tooth brushes that humanity ought to possess. Down with this infernal nonsense that we must measure everything by money. We have no just use for money or for banks, or for brokers, or for insurers, or jailers, or for any other hoodlum classes, who are wickedly wasting the energy of their whole lives. Nothing but an uprising of the peoplw and a bursting open of all stores and store-houses to the free access of the public, and a free application of dynamite to every one who opposes, will relieve the world of this infernal nightmare of property and wages. Down with such wretched nonsense. No rascality or stupidity is sacred because it is old. Down with it!


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