Mary E. Marcy on capitalist appropriation and exploitation of Nature’s water power.

‘Power’ by Mary E. Marcy, Editorial from The International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 11. May, 1916.

It is Power that makes the wheels of industry revolve, that makes trains of cars loaded with food stuffs, cloth and clothing, with fuel and the other necessities of life, to climb the mountain roads and rush down over the plains, to the back gates of our cities to supply the needs of the nations of the earth.

It is Power that digs canals, lifts the steel girders to build bridges that span the rivers; Power that transports men from one land to another, that carries the workers from their homes to their places of employment, that sends the news from one end of the world to another, that lights our cities, carries water into our homes!

Power that removes sewerage and garbage from millions of flats and houses, that builds and weaves, that sows and reaps, that fills our harbors with ocean liners and dots the seas with vessels laden with all the things needed by mankind today! Power!

Steam power, gas explosion and water power united with the brain and hand power of the workers of the world!

It was a great step forward when early man threw the burden from his own shoulders and first hitched his ox and his horse to the plow; when he allowed the water in the mill pond to turn the wheels that ground his grain, when he set aloft a crude windmill to pump his water.

But it was steam power, harnessed to new and gigantic machines, that made the railroads, steamships, modern shops, mills and factories possible. Horsepower and the reaper and binder set free many of the laborers on the farms, so that workers were available for the growing industries in mill and factory. And steam power and the gas engine have taken the jobs of still more farmers during the past few years and sent them toward the industrial centers looking for jobs.

In the old days man worked unceasingly to provide for his own wants and the needs of his family. In the good-days-a-coming, POWER, outside of man, will accomplish all the drudgery of the world’s work. Capitalists today see this and are planning to monopolize the world’s greatest natural power to their own profit.

The REVIEW has received a letter from the Committee of Industrial Relations, Washington, D. C., to this effect. It says:

“An enormous grab at the public wealth has recently been made by big corporations with the help of the United States Senate.

“The Shields Water Power bill, which has passed the Senate and is now in the House of Representatives of Congress, is the worst attempt to get the natural resources of the people into private hands that has been pulled off in years.

“Unless the people back home beat this iniquitous grab in the House of Representatives, the biggest remaining source of public wealth will pass into the hands of private privilege, WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND FOREVER.

“THE BILL WILL GIVE AWAY ALL THE WATER POWER OF ALL THE NAVIGABLE RIVERS IN THE UNITED STATES. Write quickly and protest to your congressman.”

There is only one known kind of natural power that pours and pours and will continue to lavish its strength, ready to be harnessed by the hand of man to fetch and carry at his bidding, to dredge and drain and irrigate, to blast and lift the ore, to push the farm machines, the cars, the ships, to plow and plant, to reap and stack, to thresh and grind and bind! Power to spin and weave, to cut and sew, to feed and kill and pack! Power, in short, which, if controlled by the working class, will ultimately accomplish most of the world’s work and liberate man from excessive and degrading toil.

Water power is the one great natural force that continually renews itself. Water expands and evaporates, is crystalized and condensed, going round and round in a continuous circle of perpetual force or motion.

It IS Perpetual Motion! Nature herself lifts into the heavens, day after day and year after year, oceans of water, to send it tumbling down in springs and rivers and floods to refresh the thirsty earth and to supply sufficient power to carry the BURDEN of the labor of the world. Man has only to stretch out his hand and catch and conquer and harness this fugitive, titanic force.

Here is the Power that shall free man from moling in the mines, shall turn him from prison factories and mills, as the farm machine has partly freed him from the soil.

The Force is here. We have Electricity to transmit it. All we need is the organization of the working class to take control and use this Power in the interests of the people who make things, instead of for the benefit of those who take things.

In private hands the water power of the United States, harnessed and developed, will bring to its owners an almost limitless economic advantage. The capitalist class is depending upon the workers to develop this power, to direct and utilize this power for the benefit and profit of this class. Congress will probably endorse the action of the Senate and give away this greatest of all ungarnered forces- to private individuals.

But it will not be forever. The greatest machine the world has ever invented, run by whatsoever power you will, is still made, operated and controlled by the hands and brains of Labor. Without these hands and brains, machines are but dead lumps of iron and steel; Power is but coal or oil beneath the surface of the earth, or water tumbling down the slopes of mountains in spring and river.

It is the hand of the Worker that guides these things, that directs their force, that utilizes them. And these hands can hold these things, can keep these things whenever they are organized into a working-class union determined to overthrow the wages system.

Congresses and Senates may give; it remains always possible for the organized workers to take back again. Capitalists may own-but it is the workers who operate. The hands of the workers open the throttles and throw the switches. All they need is organization to enable them to take the world for the workers.

Workers of the world- you are at the helm. Your hands are on the levers of the world. Power is yours to command. Organize and you can do all things.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n11-may-1916-ISR-gog-Princ-ocr.pdf