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increased the hours so that to-day Homestead is a slave pen. Miss Margaret Byington, in her book, "Homestead, The Households of Mill Town," tells the wretched story of poverty and suffering the Homestead workers now endure.
In recent years the masters decided to wipe out the last of the unions and further increase profits by reducing wages. The last great struggle was made in the great tin-plate plant at Elwood, Indiana. This city and others in that vicinity were cities of tariff voters. William McKinley was a great statesman. The people named schools and streets after him. When he was a candidate for President enthusiastic delegations rode in special trains to Canton to pay their homage to "McKinley and tin." He was, in fact, a tin god to these unthinking workers. To-day, after a great and heroic struggle, the masters have beaten the union to pieces, wages have been lowered and McKinley is forgotten in their wretchedness. In the strike at McKees Rocks the men who voted for tariff had to see their children feed out of garbage barrels back of the company offices. What a terrible lesson these men have been taught!
On the other hand, the free trade countries present a spectacle just as bad for the working class. Neither a tariff on or free trade in the wealth we produce for the masters will help the working class. We want to protect human beings, not inert merchandise. The "protection" given the working class by means of Gatling guns and the blacklist is a sinister contrast with the rainbow promises of politicians. It is one big swindle, and the worker who can still be taken in by it should be examined by a specialist in brain diseases to find what form of insanity afflicts him.
What Shall We Do?
There are just two suggestions offered as a remedy for the trust evil. One is to break up the trusts and go back to the stage of fifty years ago, when thousands of small capitalists owned industries in small plants scattered about the country. The other suggestion is to publicly own all the big firms and industries, so that all men, being equal public owners, will come into their inheritance and share in the progress of the ages. To
