Capitalism’s ‘advance’ does not free us. Mary Marcy could be talking about prospects of life for workers today, impoverished by student debt and under threat from AI, as she looks at the future of the young generation facing the machine process of industrialization and immiseration of the middle class under monopolized capitalism of a century ago.

‘What Will Become of Your Children?’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 12 No. 8. February, 1912.

I WAS talking with a widow who runs a large “Rooming House” in Chicago a few days ago and she said:

“I have had a hard life, just work and drudgery all the time, but I can stand anything if only I can give my boy and girl a good education and fit them to earn good livings so they won’t have to work as I have.”

And this is just what you are probably saying, you fathers and mothers the whole world over. You are slaving cheerfully day after day, wearing old clothes and going without the pleasures your weary bodies crave in the hope that your boys and girls may remain in school and enter Life’s work arena armed and equipped to come off victorious in the fierce struggle for existence.

But you have no money or very little money to start your boy in business and the Dun and Bradstreet commercial reports have proven in cold figures that only five per cent of the men or women who go into business ever succeed. That means that ninety-five out of every hundred boys are going to fail—to lose the little capital they invested and find themselves forced to hunt a master and go to work making profits for somebody else.

You and I know that the man or woman who starts a small store has no chance to win out against the big mail order houses who manufacture many of the commodities they sell and who ship in car load lots. They will be unable to meet the prices of their gigantic competitors. It is cheaper to sell shoes, or coats or stoves straight from the manufacturer or the wholesaler than to have them pass through the hands of a middleman and people always have bought and always will continue to buy where prices are lowest.

Professional men and women are no better off. If the many thousands of doctors and lawyers that are graduated from our colleges every year, not more than one fifth of them succeed in making a comfortable living. The fierce competition among newspaper and literary men and women has also brought wages down to the bare cost of living. In the professional world, as elsewhere, the supply of men and women greatly exceeds the demand and the doctors and lawyers are compelled to resort to all sorts of shyster and quack tricks in order to make a hand to mouth existence.

The same story is heard among the skilled workers. The wireless telegraph operators are already trying to organize into a union to protect themselves, their claim being that common seamen are receiving higher monthly wages than the most expert wireless operators.

Molders find their old well-paying jobs taken from them by the machine process. Bricklayers find cement workers encroaching upon their industrial territory. Glass blowers are experiencing a reduction in wages owing to the cheaper method of glass manufacturing by machinery. And from the Department of Agriculture at Washington and from the manufactures of modern farming machinery comes word of thousands of farm traction engines that shall ultimately eliminate nine-tenths of the human labor expended in farming. Even the mines have not been exempt and already machines have been invented that have displaced thousands of workers in the mining industries.

And this is only the beginning. The age of machine production has only begun. Every year will bring further improvements in the methods of production that will abolish the need of human labor power.

And with every improvement in the machinery of production thousands of men, women and children are thrown out of employment. Fewer jobs remain for those who work. More men are forced into the vast army of unemployed; more girls are forced to go out upon the streets to sell their bodies in order to make a living.

This is what your boy and your girl are facing. Look about you. Talk this matter over with your wife, your husband, your neighbors or your friends. Can any one of these give you any guaranty that your son and your daughter shall have a comfortable, an easy and a happy life?

Can any one of these assure you even that they will have a steady job and three wholesome meals a day as long as they live?

Can they find any way under the sun to give you lasting knowledge that your son, unable to get work, shall not become a tramp, a hobo, or a criminal? And what choice is there left for those who have no property and are unable to find work save one of these?

What choice is left for the woman who is unable to find a job, save starvation or prostitution? Have you known any group of men or women who had any hope to offer for the future of your children?

Have you heard the eloquent Republican orator speak on these things? Has the Honorable Democratic Congressman from your district looked these facts in the face?

We know they have not, for this is the task and the promise of Socialism.

And this is why every working class father and mother should join the Socialist party.

The Socialist movement has sprung up in response to the actual daily need of the men and women who work. It is the only answer to those needs.

To those who work, Socialism is the most vital and the most wonderful thing in the world. For the sake of yourself and your children study Socialism and its program. Study Socialist books, read our papers, subscribe to this magazine, for Socialism alone can save and free the working class. And it can only save the workers through the organization and strength of the workers themselves.

Socialism proposes that the workers shall own the mills and mines, the lands and the factories; that every man and woman shall be guaranteed a job while he is able to work, and insurance when he is not, and that every working individual shall receive the full value of his product, without handing over any profits or rake-off to any idling boss!

Can any father or mother who belongs to working class give any intelligent reason why they should not become members of the army of Socialism? No matter how poorly paid or how overworked you may be, there is hope for you and there is hope for your children if you will join forces with the revolutionary working class in their struggle to abolish wage slavery.

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and loyal to the Socialist Party of America. 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 was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v12n08-feb-1912-ISR.riaz-ocr.pdf