The Rise of the American Proletarian

An excerpt of a review from The Economic Review, Volume 18:

A TITLE quite as applicable to Mr. Lewis’s production as the one he has chosen would have been, “Rise of the American Monopolist.” He dates this great turning-point in transatlantic history from the Civil War of 1861 to 1865. The successful issue of that conflict left all the trump-cards in the hand of the Republican party, and there, save for the eight years of Mr. Cleveland’s presidentship, they have remained ever since. Mr. Lewis’s explanation is that the Republican party has been the tool of the commercial autocrats. “It was in the name of the Republic to destroy the Republic and to establish the oligarchy.... It has been the chosen instrument of the greater capitalism for the achievement of its purposes.” Little real statesmanship, he adds, is needed for the continual piling up of tariffs and the corruption of the judiciary, and a marked deterioration in the personnel of the bar as well as of the political world has set in with the era of the great corporations. The following figures, relating to trusts in the States, and corrected to January 1, 1904, are quoted from Mr. T. Moody’s Truth about the Trusts:—318 industrial trusts controlling 5288 plants, and 111 franchise trusts owning 1336 plants; while the great steam railroad groups with their allies control 1040 plants. The total capital value of all these trusts is estimated to have exceeded at the date mentioned £40,000,000,000, and to have increased since then by 50 per cent. But that was before the slump of last October. The average wage is said to have fallen from £89 for the decade ended 1890 to £87 108 for the succeeding decade. But the grounds for this estimate are not stated.

A rapid expansion of the industrial system, outpaced by a contraction of control into a few hands (the present writer has heard the number reckoned at less than three figures), is given by our author the first place among the factors which have created the proletarian army. The cadres of that army have been largely filled from the ranks of the smaller manufacturers and trades-people, whom the fight for power has crushed out of an independent existence. The other great recruiting-ground has been, of course, among the immigrants crowding in from the Sclave lands of Eastern Europe and from the Levant, and flooding the cities of America not only with cheaper labour, but with a cruder civilization. Less than its due seems to be assigned to the importance of this element in lowering the status of labor.

Mr. Lewis, writing from the socialist standpoint, yet applies his scourge with a remarkable impartiality. The full force of it descends naturally on the uncrowned monarchs of production and transport. Except for a few contemptuous allusions to the bourgeoisie, the middle classes escape with a few light slashes. But the cowardice and disloyalty to their clients of the trade union leaders provoke him to chastisement with scorpions. Even the rank and file do not escape. “The futility of the trades union movements as at present conducted, in so far as that movement (sic) undertakes to advance or even to maintain the position of the working class, is practically established. . . . The political and material advantages of accumulated wealth have been too much for the proletarian. It must be candidly admitted, too, that the latter has by no means done as well as he might have done, even with all the odds against him. The working class has so far produced few leaders worthy of the name, and such as have stood out from the rank and file have, in many cases, shamelessly and unconscionably abandoned their work and have accepted political preferment, even if they have not taken actual money, from the hands of the enemies of their class... The cynicism of a civilization based on cash seems to have found its way into the bones of both capitalist and proletarian....