It sought every chance to reduce wages; it had laws passed to forbid
or cripple the workmen in their strikes; and the judges convicted them of
conspiracy, and wrested the statutes to their hurt, in cases where there
had been no thought of embarrassing them, even among the legislators. God
forbid that you should ever come to such a pass in America; but, if you
ever should, God grant that you may find your way out as simply as we did
at last, when freedom had perished in everything but name among us, and
justice had become a mockery.
"The Accumulation had advanced so smoothly, so lightly, in all its steps
to the supreme power, and had at last so thoroughly quelled the uprisings
of the proletariate, that it forgot one thing: it forgot the despised and
neglected suffrage. The ballot, because it had been so easy to annul its
effect, had been left in the people's hands; and when, at last, the
leaders of the proletariate ceased to counsel strikes, or any form of
resistance to the Accumulation that could be tormented into the likeness
of insurrection against the government, and began to urge them to attack
it in the political way, the deluge that swept the Accumulation out of
existence came trickling and creeping over the land.
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