To commemorate the Louisiana Purchase a century before, the capitalists of St. Louis put on a festival for themselves and invited the world to attend. Socialists of the city were in no mood to celebrate.

‘St. Louis: The World’s Fair City’ from The Weekly People (S.L.P.). Vol 13 No. 41. January 9, 1904.

St. Louis, Mo., Dec. 27. It has been some time since the readers of The People have heard from St. Louis, but we are still doing business at the old stand, dishing out our only stock in trade, the class struggle.

At present this part of the globe is known as “the World’s Fair City,” because of a money-making scheme that the capitalists have launched here known as the World’s Fair, an enterprise which is supposed to be a celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, i.e., the purchase of a strip of land which was bought from Napoleon Bonaparte by the American capitalist class in 1803. But the working class has not benefited by the purchase. They were being robbed then; they are being robbed now, a hundred years later, only on a larger scale.

If Napoleon could be resurrected and brought out to the World’s Fair grounds he would certainly make startled eyes, for he would behold a sight that would startle him, a sight before which the Pyramids of Egypt pale into insignificance. And who is it that has made such wonderful things possible? The working class. And what have they got out of it? Low wages, high rents, famine prices for the necessaries of life, constant fear of losing their jobs by the competition of the unemployed, and the approaching winter promises to bring with it untold suffering. Already the newspapers have announced that there is a greater demand upon the charity organizations for food and clothing than there ever was before, and the winter has just about begun.

With the aid of the reptile press, the commission merchants got a chance to get rid of their pestiferous rabbits and over-ripe poultry, which they fed to about 30,000 people at the Coliseum on Christmas Day. Add to this that the street car accommodation in the working class district is very bad, and that the unemployed of other parts of the country are flocking into this city in hope of getting a job, only to be disappointed, and you have a faint idea as to the horrible conditions of the working class in the World’s Fair City.

We can hear our sentimental friends setting up the old cry, “You Socialists are wrong in calling the capitalist class a robber class.” Are we? Let us produce the evidence.

Mrs. James Blair, president of the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Fair and wife of Mr. James Blair, first consular of the World’s Fair, recently shocked (?) society by giving a dinner at which the guests appeared in short dresses. According to the newspaper reports, it was a swell affair, and the busy- bodies asked themselves the question: Where did she get the money from? They soon found out. Shortly after the scarcity-of-clothes affair society was shocked once more by a report that appeared in the newspapers, in which Mr. Roberts, law partner of Mr. Blair, accused Mr. Blair of swindling the heirs of the Blow estate, for which he was the trustee, out of many thousands of dollars. Blair was sick at the time, and while yet in the hospital he was indicted by the Grand Jury for forgery.

Mr. Corwin Spencer, a member of the Board of Directors of the World’s Fair, has been accused by the members of the Merchants’ Exchange of trying to corner the December wheat.

David R. Francis, president of the World’s Fair Commission, is a millionaire. “Where did he get his money from? To make a long story short, he got his where the rest of the capitalists got theirs: He plundered it from the working class.

Members of the capitalist class try, and do, swindle each other; but as a class they robbed all they got from the working class. The capitalists can rob the workers because they own the machinery of production, and because they own and control the political power, which, in this State, is being looked after by the Republican and Democratic parties.

The middle class, who expected to reap a harvest out of the World’s Fair, are already meeting with sore disappointment, and failures among them are of daily occurrence. Once upon a time the middle class in this State cut a big figure in politics, but this being a Democratic State, the large capitalist class made it their business to get control of the Democratic machine. Spasmodic efforts have been made by the middle class to regain the political power through the People’s party, Public Ownership party and Allied Third party. But all these movements were only a flash in the pan, and they soon died out, which is but natural, as every political movement is but a reflex of an economic class.

Another class which is an eyesore to the class-conscious workingman is the petit middle class-the men with the small custom tailoring shops, the foot-power dressmakers (of which in this city you will find one in every third block), the two-by-four coal dealers (whose whole stock in trade is not over three baskets of coal and 10 cents’ worth of kindling wood), and all the other small skinners of the working class.

It is amusing to hear these little skinners rant against the trusts. As a rule, their hatred against the working class is in many cases worse than that of the middle and upper capitalist classes. Politically, they are up a tree, and are easily taken in by any passing movement that promises them a reduction in taxes, cheap light and a low-priced license for their old, rickety wagon and their third-handed, broken-down, swayback horse.,

Closely all with this class are these workingmen with middle-class instincts, who have ninety-eight dollars’ worth of stock in a wagon shop, or some other industry, and all those workingmen who slave during the day and do extra jobs at night in order to scrape together a few extra dollars. As a rule, these men entertain the ridiculous notion that if they ever lose their job they will be able to start up some little repair shop and be successful. All of them labor under the mental delusion that some day they will be counted with the large capitalists. Others are renting out their best room, or rooms, as the case may be, and are committing the criminal act of hording their wife and children in a dark kitchen or damp basement. These, people don’t want anything to do with the Socialists, for, as they say, Socialism would destroy their individuality, wreck the home and break up the family (sic). It is to laugh!

Oh, ye defenders of capitalism! Stand up, if you can, and show us one feature of the present system that commends it. Here and there one will meet a stray single-taxer, who will ask you the old, worn-out and silly question: “Can a man live without the land?” All year around they cackle single tax and on election day, if they vote at all, they vote for some middle-class reform.

How about that great body of absolute propertyless and toolless wage slaves? Have they no political party to look after their interest? Yes. The Socialist Labor Party, which is making every effort to organize the working class so that they may seize the public powers and become masters of the state. Once in control of the political power, they can transform capitalist property into working-class property, the same way that feudal property was transformed into capitalist property by the revolutions of the last century. With this end in view, it is carrying on the work of agitation by spreading the doctrine of the Social Revolution (which means the overthrow of the entire capitalist class), through public meetings on the street corners, in halls, and by spreading party literature wherever possible.

There is a Section of the Socialist Labor Party in this city, which, in the last few months, has been very active. Two speakers were sent through the State to plow the ground, and this was followed up by a canvasser for the Party’s paper, The People, with good results.

At the last six open-air meetings, held at the corner of Thirteenth and Franklin avenue on Saturday nights, we sold 212 books and got 22 subs for The Weekly People. At a meeting held at Wallhalla Hall on December 12, with Comrade Veal as the principal speaker, we sold 16 books, collected $7.11, and had 85 people in the hall, and this on a night when the weather was the worst seen here in many years.

At our open-air meetings we had Vaughn and Knight, from Colorado; Pierson and Cox, from Illinois; Gupp and Bilsbarrow, from the Section, as the speakers. They were assisted by the members, who made themselves busy by selling books and soliciting subs. for The People. All of the members did not attend these meetings. Some spent their time boring from within coffin societies, others were at home making a desperate attempt to puff the Social Revolution out of a corncob pipe.

Comrades, fall in line, roll up your sleeves, and get ready for the fray. There will be plenty of work for us all. The capitalist parties have already begun. their campaign. The bogus Socialists, under the leadership (1) of Ex-Deputy Sheriff Hoehn, are having trouble in their camp between the followers of the A.F. of L. and the advocates of the A.L.U. Rumor has it that the labor fakirs are going to float a Union Labor Party. All of which means that there will be something doing, and it is up to you to do your share.

We know that in some cases it is impossible to attend every meeting. Baby may get stomach-ache; your wife may get sick, or your mother-in-law may drop in for supper and announce her determination to stay all night, and, in order to avoid trouble, you must stay at home and make a bluff at entertaining her. Your uncle from the country (him with the mortgaged farm) may visit you, and, as he has come in on an excursion ticket, he has not long to stay, which means that you must grind your teeth and take him around. But these things do not happen every day. You could come around at the least twice a month.

A word to the readers of The People before we close. What are you doing to help the cause? Drop a nickel in the hat at the Commune Celebration! That isn’t enough. You should join the party. Or help us some other way, such as sending a money donation once in a while. Get your shopmates to subscribe for The People, sell literature and help to swell the crowd at our public meetings. Don’t let your German friend, Hans Schneidermier, pass you off with the old, worn-out gag: “Ick kann nicht English lesson.” Sell him some German literature, of which you can get plenty at our headquarters, 307 1-2 Pine street. You tell us that you are a Socialist, but we don’t believe it. We are from Missouri, and want to be shown.

Press Committee, Section St. Louis.

New York Labor News Company was the publishing house of the Socialist Labor Party and their paper The People. The People was the official paper of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), established in New York City in 1891 as a weekly. The New York SLP, and The People, were dominated Daniel De Leon and his supporters, the dominant ideological leader of the SLP from the 1890s until the time of his death. The People became a daily in 1900. It’s first editor was the French socialist Lucien Sanial who was quickly replaced by De Leon who held the position until his death in 1914. Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin, future leaders of the Socialist Party of America were writers before their split from the SLP in 1899. For a while there were two SLPs and two Peoples, requiring a legal case to determine ownership. Eventual the anti-De Leonist produced what would become the New York Call and became the Social Democratic, later Socialist, Party. The De Leonist The People continued publishing until 2008.

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