Housing, savage and civilised (1956)

From the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

“In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilisation especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live."  

Thoreau, Walden, page 25, World's Classics edition (written in 1854).

Black History (1972)

Book Review from the December 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Red and Black, Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History, by Eugene D. Genovese, Allen Lane. The Penguin Press 5.00

This book is a compilation of some eighteen previously published essays by Professor Genovese and, like books of this nature, suffers a bit from disjointedness, even from an occasional contradiction. But it is not this in the book that really bothers us. It is, rather, the Genovese approach to the Marxian method of interpreting history. His opening chapter: On Being a Socialist and a Historian and his concluding essay: On Antonio Gramsci (head of the Communist Party in Italy in the early 1920s; arrested and imprisoned for the last eleven years of his life by Mussolini) should be read carefully as one sees, in starkness, the utter contempt or, at best, condescension of the self-appointed intellectual “Marxist” for the mental potentialities of ordinary working people. To Genovese, leadership—presumably of intellectuals — is certainly the most important factor in educating the working class to the urgencies of Socialism. He approves of Gramsci’s vision of the ideal party:

“A party justifies its historical existence when it develops three strata: (1) a rank-and-file of ordinary men whose participation is characterised by discipline and faith; (2) a leadership, which provides cohesion; and (3) cadres, which mediate morally, physically, and intellectually between the other two.”

Of these strata he stressed leadership:

“We speak of captains without an army, but in reality it is easier to form an army than to find captains. It is surely true that an already existing army will be destroyed if it lacks captains, whereas a group of captains, co-operative and in agreement on common ends, will not be slow in forming an army where none exists.”

But this is not Marxism nor was it really new with either Gramsci or Lenin. It is the sort of theory which Marx and Engels consistently fought against throughout their careers. As far back as 1848, in their Communist Manifesto, they made clear that: “The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.” (Our emphasis). The Marxian case rests, indeed, on the theory that the ideas of man (not merely of leaders) are basically determined by the mode of production and that it is the business of working for wages for an owning class (not the preachments or captaincies of great men) that will cause workers to organise for Socialism.

The foregoing should not discourage the student of Socialism from obtaining the book (if he can afford it). There is much of interest to be gotten from the essays on the blacks in America notwithstanding the incredible misunderstanding of the Marxian method. Genovese, for example, sees American blacks as embracing “genuine ingredients of a separate nationality, even as they form part of a general American nationality … (and that) it is no longer possible to believe that a class can be understood apart from its culture, or that most modern classes can be understood apart from their nationality.” But what, after all, is a nationality? In the final analysis it is a group split into people with rival and conflicting interests. Even in the case of American blacks, where the percentage of capitalists is undoubtedly smaller than usual, the struggle between and within the classes is apparent. Black bourgeois pit themselves against one another as well as against the white bourgeoisie, and against the black (or white) workers they hire. Black workers, on the other hand, must also compete among themselves—as well as with white workers—for jobs.

It should also be pointed out that Genovese does a creditable job in showing the limitations of the economic determinists both of the non-Marxist and professed Marxist varieties. Creditable, that is, to the extent that he does not go overboard himself in an opposite direction. Certainly historians such as Charles and Mary Beard (who were not professedly Marxist) could be categorised as economic determinists and yet their analysis of the factors motivating the South to secede in 1860 was not as “narrowly defined” as he would have it. For the tariff did play a major role in antagonising the cotton planters who had an enormous stake in trade with England, Genovese and even Marx to the contrary notwithstanding. And the Homestead Law was certainly not in the interests of a ruling class that was based largely on latifundia-type labour, a wasteful sort of labour which, together with a one-crop economy, burned up land quickly and helped generate competition between North and South for frontier areas. The spread of homesteading certainly did offer a threat to the South.

Part of the problem of Professor Genovese seems to be his obvious lack of understanding of the basics of a capitalist system. Even his attempt to label the southern slave economy bears this out although he does correctly show that it was certainly not feudal, as so many professed Marxists maintain. Unfortunately, despite his grasp of the form feudalism, he declares that economy to be as different from capitalism as it was from feudalism. In fact the ante-bellum South had a system of plantation capitalism. True, the relationships were not [wage-labour and capital] but, rather, chattel-slave labour and capital (although there were many wage-slaves too). Nevertheless, unlike the classical systems of slavery and of serfdom, production was organised for sale on the market with view to profit. The production of cotton, tobacco, and (following the government’s ban on slave-importation) slaves themselves, was not carried on primarily for the use of the ruling class. A backward and inefficient type of capitalism, yes. But nevertheless capitalism.

Harry Morrison

(World Socialist Party of the United States)

Blogger's Note:

Not sure what happened but this review was a bit garbled in places and there were no corrections in a later issue of the Socialist Standard. It happens.

Pioneers, Oh Pioneers! (1932)

From the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Observer for June 26th gives an extract from their paper of a hundred years ago, which contains the following: —

“The expedition sent out by the American Government in 1820-21 to explore the Rocky Mountains has at length been heard of after an absence of eleven years.

While west of the mountains they fell in with a tribe called the Copper Indians, who receive their name from owning extensive copper mines ; 300 of them, armed with bows and copper darts, attacked the company in day time; a severe action ensued, and only about 30 of the Indians escaped ; the rest were killed or wounded, with a loss of two killed of the company.” (Italics ours.)

Background to Civil Rights in America (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great many—if not most—people make a practice of judging shop merchandise by the display in the window. A policy such as this often leads to confusion, if not error. Much the same might be said for many of those who would analyze the civil rights struggle in America. They concentrate upon the propaganda and personal utterances of spokesmen involved in the struggle and gain an image of the causes, thereby, that is inaccurate to some extent and generally confusing. Slogans such as “Equality”, "Justice”, “Freedom ”, etc. are important in generating enthusiasm among the rank and file membership; they constitute the window display. But if one is to understand the problem it is necessary to get behind the slogans and examine American capitalism and its basic needs. Since the Supreme Court of the United States is a top agency of American capitalism, no better research can be recommended than an examination of their edicts over the years.

The Dred Scott Decision.

Every American school child has been made acquainted with the basic details — if not the underlying significance — of the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s court declared, 5 to 3, that Scott could not be a citizen because he was a Negro and that he was not freed from his original slave status merely because he had twice established residence on soil that was guaranteed free by the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

Whatever the attitude today towards the “morality”, “justice”' and "mercy” of the Supreme Court of 1857, one can be certain that it reflected the prevailing opinions of their time. But more important, they reflected the needs of American capitalism. Southern plantation capitalism was still an important—even if a rapidly deteriorating—part of the United States economy and plantation capitalism operated on a foundation of chattel-slave labour. Chief Justice Taney and his Court were not about to endanger the sanctity of private property nor is it likely that many, aside from an Abolitionist minority, regarded the justices as black-hearted scoundrels.

Even in the North, feeling against the institution of chattel-slavery in the Southern states was not widespread and the Abolitionists were not by any means popular. But they carried on their activities. In Boston, for example, they soap-boxed on the Charles St. mall of Boston Common and they placed posters in Negro neighbourhoods warning the coloured people against conversing with white strangers lest they divulge information that could lead to the capture of runaway slaves. It took the secession of the Southern states from the Union to bring on the Civil War and to end the legal system of chattel-slavery.

“Separate But Equal”

By 1896 American capitalism generally, and Southern capitalism in particular, had new problems. In the North, industry had grown rapidly under the command of the “ malefactors of great wealth ’’—Morgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc. —There was area enough, what with the developing frontier, and wage-labour enough with the deluge of poverty-stricken immigrants, to obviate the need for expansion into the deep South. So the South remained largely a region of small scale, low wage, capitalism. Southern white capitalists had found it advantageous to foster a myth of white superiority and a policy of white supremacy. By keeping Negro labour power generally well below minimum subsistence standards, white labour power was stabilized at a level high enough to satisfy a type of ego that is happy to be “better off" than others, even if considerably below national averages.

The Supreme Court, while not necessarily Southern in sympathy, could reflect the attitudes of American capitalism, generally, and still deliver a verdict on Negro rights consistent with the demands of Southern capitalism of the time. So in 1896 the Supreme Court decided that the State of Louisiana was not in violation of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution when it introduced segregation of Negroes in railway passenger cars. Again in 1908 the “nine old men" decreed that it was entirely constitutional for the State of Maryland to set up segregation in schools. So legalized segregation (“separate but equal") became perfectly natural, normal, moral, and the height of justice in the South and everybody, including such revered Negro leaders as Booker T. Washington, seemed happy at the new development in American democracy. . .

". . . With all Deliberate Speed.”

until 1954, when an entirely new set of circumstances—developed over a period of years and accelerated since the end of World War II—became reflected in a new and opposite Supreme Court decision. In fact, the decision on desegregation in 1954 placed a legal stamp upon a movement that erupted in the wake of a rapidly developing industrialization of the Southland. It is one thing to compel Negroes to take a back seat and refrain from “contaminating” the white man's schools and his pools when the region is pretty much a sleepy backwater. It is quite another problem, however, to segregate the coloured population—particularly the small section with higher educational qualifications and incomes on a par or higher than the vaunted “American standard ”. As big Northern industry moved into the South and as the South became a part of the 20th. century the pressure for “equal rights” under the Constitution reached boiling point and in many instances the lid was blown off in demonstrations, sit-ins, and riots in major cities both South and North.

Not only had it become evident that the “separate’’ Negro facilities, schools, etc. were far from equal, indeed decidedly inferior; it had also become evident to the Supreme Court that the very concept of separateness denotes inferiority and constitutes a violation of the 14th. Amendment, Melville W. Fuller and his Supreme Court of 1896 and 1908 notwithstanding.

But why had the Negro movement reached its present dimensions as late as the mid years of the 20th. century ? Why not in 1900, or in 1920, or 1940? There are those who might infer that Chief Justice Earl Warren's Supreme Court is composed of men of higher moral calibre that the courts of Roger Taney and Melville Fuller. Or perhaps, even, that the moral qualities of the nation are higher today than in 1857 or 1908. Even if we accept that this is true, the question remains; why this should be so at this particular time; All evidence points in one direction. Segregation, except in special instances, is not in the interests of American capitalism today on either the domestic scene or, especially, the international arena. The rapid appearance since World War II of a number of new nations populated and ruled by coloured people has doubtless influenced the conversion of an ardent segregationist such as Lyndon B. Johnson into an outspoken champion of Negro civil rights. And only the more backward states of the Old Confederacy refused to go along with him in November, 1964. For Mr Johnson today represents the interests of the total national capitalist class of America and segregation has now become a positive menace to those interests.

Civil Rights and Emancipation.

Despite the continuing opposition to the Civil Rights Law enacted by Congress in 1964, in parts of the South there seems to be a general compliance. It is but a matter of time until only the most dominant of all discriminations—between workers and capitalists—will remain.

There is no denying the heroism displayed by rank and file Negro and white workers — even children — against fearsome odds. From the “sympathetic” liberals who would have them not ask too much too quickly, from the bigoted and dangerous Birch Society members, Ku Klux Klansmen, and even from Southern “law and order", those who struggle for civil rights find a great many cards stacked against them. But the civil rights groups, themselves, are in a sense reactionary. They organize—for the most part—on the basis of loyalty to America and they demand for Negro workers nothing more than the opportunity to compete equally in the sale of labour-power. They cater to the myth of racialism even to the extent of building an image of a glorious history in Africa. They encourage and foster religious practice among their following. In short, they balance their militancy with the sheeplike propaganda so important to capitalism, and they hide the greater struggle, in which workers of all colours are brothers.

Harry Morrison

(Boston, Mass.).

‘‘America’s 15,000,000 negroes are its single most under developed human resource, and they cannot reach their full potential usefulness until they are thoroughly integrated with the white population. . . . Only when negro and white families can live together as neighbours, when negro children and white children can play together, study together, go to the same church —only then will the negro grow up properly prepared for his place in the world of work."

The Manchester Guardian, (15.5.56).

The Steam Ship (1960)

From the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Transport and the Growth of Industry (5)

Steam did not easily conquer sail. Although potentially the more powerful method of propulsion, it had a hard fight to establish itself. As early as the 15th and 16th centuries, for example, men were investigating steam power. But the idea was defeated by the lack of the necessary metal alloys, steel and so forth. It was the Industrial Revolution, bringing the social need for new techniques, which solved the problem and established the new motive power.

The first application of steam was to the driving of factories and the pumping-out of mines. The early engines were heavy affairs, expensive consumers of fuel and capable of only low horse power. The engineers therefore turned their attention to boats, which with their displacement of water. and ability to carry the heavy engine promised to be a profitable method of applying steam.

In the early 1800's, the Europeans were using a conventional type of vessel which had changed only slowly: the Victory, a first ship of the line, was over 40 years old at Trafalgar. The Americans, on the other hand, were untrammelled by old shipbuilding traditions, had plenty of first class timber and attracted the venturesome and radical mechanics and immigrants. Thus they could improve the style of sailing ships.

After the Napoleonic Wars, immigration to the Americas increased, the bulk of it being carried by the Yankee clipper ships, running the first advertised liner service. The Americans were the leading shipbuilders, with transatlantic cargo boats of 1,200 tons against the British average of about 250 tons. They also built the faster ships, with an increased ratio of length to beam. All this improvement in sail was preparing the ground for the adoption of steam.

The first steam boats, because of their heavy fuel consumption, worked on short river journeys. In the early 19th century, Symington invented a steam boat for use on the new canals, but the canal owners neglected his work. In the United States in 1807, Fulton built a ferry, successfully steam driven. Steam river and harbour boats turned up in odd corners of the earth: in Italy in 1824, Java in 1811, India in 1820, and as packet steamers in the Irish Channel. But it was in expanding America, where the rivers and lakes were the principal method of communication, that the real development took place. Wood was a plentiful—and therefore a cheap—fuel. A fast marine engine was developed to overcome the swift river currents. So successful was this development that by 1833 there were about 300 paddle boats in use in America. In many ways, this concentration on opening the interior led the Yankee shipping interests to lose their supremacy in the development of the Atlantic steam boat.

The Industrial Revolution had made Britain a great iron and machine producing nation; this proved to be a trump card in their bid to regain supremacy in the Atlantic and Pacific. The Americans tried to muscle in, building the Savannha, but this was a half-hearted effort: they later removed Savannha's engines. The 1830s and 1840s saw many types of vessels coming onto the Atlantic, with men like Sam Cunard and Isambard Brunei prominent shipbuilders. British investors were eager to support the steamships—Liverpool and Glasgow, for example, raised some £270,000 in a few days for one of Sam Cunard’s ventures.

Of course, the steamships had their problems, being expensive both to build and to run. The first Cunarder cost some £45 per ton to build, against £15 for every ton of a sailing vessel. The Britannia of 1840 could carry only 225 tons of cargo—and for this needed 640 tons of coal. The steamers could make more runs to a regular timetable, but much of the extra profit which this brought was eaten up by the costs of building and running. This made them concentrate on the busy and more lucrative routes; the British shipowners were always very keen to get the Government mail contract, as the payment was a form of subsidy. The expansion of British commerce sent the steamships on routes other than the Atlantic. Anderson and Wilcox opened the Spanish trade and later, when they got the mail contract to India, formed the famous Peninsular and Orient Line. Regular services were in operation to the principal South American ports—this under the eye of the Admiralty, who were interested in the use of steam for warships.

Indeed, it was the need of the British capitalist class to maintain a large navy to protect their far-flung interests which forced the steady flow of design and skill to be used for both naval and mercantile purposes. In contrast, the European powers lagged behind. North Germany was still a tangle of small states and free cities, with capital in the hands of a few families who were reluctant to take the necessary steps of widening ports and deepening channels. The Dutch were in no better state. It was well into the 1850’s before the French started anything like a regular steamship service.

Sail not Finished

The 1850’s saw the screw replacing the paddle amongst the larger sea-going vessels. Over the previous 40 years there had been great development; engine had become more complex and efficient, using less coal in relation to their increased power. Brunel’s Great Eastern was not typical of the ships of the day, but it was a signpost of things to come. By 1862, Holt had 3,000 ton steamers in operation, whose engines used 2¼ lb. of coal per horse power each hour (to work up a pressure of 60 lb. per square inch). Compare this with the 10 lbs. of coal used in the 1820’s to generate 56 lbs. per square inch.

But sail was by no means finished. Sailing ships were cheaper to run, which made them attractive to the trumping, coasting and whaling trades. It also enabled them to cover the cost of delays in the ports of the newly developed lands, where lack of loading aids and dock construction meant weeks of waiting whilst cargoes were man handled ashore. For this reason, sailing ships were extensively used in the South American fertiliser and chemical trade. They were also used for the Australian immigration trade in the 1860’s, which was denied to the steamships by the lack of coaling stations. It was this run which led the Aberdeen builders to modernise (or Americanise) their design, making the famous ships which often grace calendars and other pictures. Typical of these was the Cutty Sark.

There are few things which catch the imagination of the romantic so much as a clipper at full sail. There are, of course, a number of facts which the romantics overlook. Sailing ships had to be towed out of ports by steam tugs—without this assistance, it was not unusual for them to spend days trying to get out of the English Channel or the mouth of the Elbe. The clippers were difficult to handle and were only kept afloat by the crew's intimate knowledge of sea and sail. Seamen's conditions were poor compared with those on the steamships; it was, for example, quite usual in bad weather for men to be flung overboard from the rigging. The competent crews began to leave the sailing ships and this was one of the factors in their slow decline.

By the 1880's the European powers were able to offer a real challenge to British control of the Atlantic. Germany was united and, expanding, warlike and naval conscious, built large and powerful liners. Belgium was one of the many countries where American shipbuilding money was invested; the Dutch, French and Italians were also in the struggle. The Scandinavians were becoming the Carter Paterson of the sea.

Thus the steamships, like the railway and the motor car, became part of capitalist development, part of the commercial bloodstream in the body of private property. The machine caused the mercantlile powers to overhaul the system of maritime training. This meant the end of the illiterate sea captain and the brutal seamen, their heads full of unwritten sea lore which they passed on by word of mouth. Seamen became like factory workers and, like their landlubber cousins, learned to organise in trade unions to improve their conditions. When they are in demand—as in wartime— they are made much of, but they are often the first to suffer in times of a trade slump.

In sea transport, capitalism has played a typical role. It has developed, organised and divided. The ships, the men who make them and the men who sail in them, have all been changed by it.

Jack Law

The Wild West. The Myth and the Reality. (1956)

From the June 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this rapidly changing world, the form of entertainment indulged in by the majority of the population in the industrialized countries has undergone many changes in the last 50 years. Not only have the forms of dancing, popular music, films and literature changed, but the fictional character also.

There is, however, one familiar figure who has been our constant companion on the screen and bookstall during all these years. In silent “flicks,” talkies, colour, Three-D, Cinemascope, he still remains the same—long, lean and suntanned; with Stetson hat and pistols, his mount well-groomed—our old and ever- popular friend, the Cowboy.

Popular Appeal

To the densely-herded urban masses whose wide-open spaces are confined at best to a small suburban garden (or for the less fortunate, a cactus in a flower-pot), the unrestricted country of the American West has a vast appeal.

It is probably the fictional Westerner’s apparent freedom that is the real attraction. Our celluloid and paper-pulp hero spends his time destroying the forces of evil, be they represented as Indians, rustlers or land-grabbers. He is gallant with the ladies, and never fails to defend or restore legally-owned property. Sometimes he is on the wrong side of the law, forced into this position by some ruthless landowner, or a victim of the financiers' guile. In spite of these lawless trends, however, our hero's basic goodness still shines through. Faced with this dilemma m their hero, the film producers' usual way out is to get him conveniently killed.

Modern man is generally tied down to one job, often tedious and uninteresting. The Westerner is aloof from this. He never seems to be very closely tied to any full-time occupation, even when he dons the uniform of the U.S. Cavalry. To imagine oneself able to undertake any adventure, or punish any infamy, is a wonderful escape from punching the time-clock.

The Western film or story has generally a twofold approach. One shows a desire for justice and for the removal of tyranny. The other depicts violence and. quick action as opposed to thought and reasoned movement. The stories are seldom complicated. The viewer or reader does not have to rack his brain over subtle psychological mysteries or unpleasant social problems. The stories are easy to write and the films cheap to produce. They are ideal products for a mass market.

A Glimpse into the Past

At this point, let us look at the birthplace of these modem legends, and roll back the years.

The term "West" in American history covered each stage of the frontier as it moved towards the Pacific from the early Atlantic seaboard settlements. We take up the story when that frontier had reached the Mississippi River.

It was the Spaniards who first moved up into what are now Texas, New Mexico and California, and explored the Mississippi. They built churches, mission stations and settlements. At the same time the French were moving along the Great Lakes and the rivers from Canada and extending over the plains to the Rockies. A few were priests, but the majority were fur-trappers and traders. These latter mixed freely with the wandering Indian tribes.

The English were the next settlers, consolidating and developing as they went. In time they came to represent a new rising Capitalist class, viewing the New World as something more than just a possession of an overseas absolute monarch.

Francis Parkman who, in 1846, journeyed from Kansas over the Oregon Trail to the foot of the Rockies, mixed with the Indians and noted their habits. In his journal he writes at length about the French trappers and trail-blazers and their inter-marriage with the Indians. He noted something else that was to have a more important effect on history—the settlers' wagons heading for Oregon and California, Mormons striking out into the wilderness to found a new home in Utah, the adventurous seeking the new-found gold. America was in the process of making another frontier.

Expansion

The United States, having purchased Louisiana and secured Florida, was still faced with a foreign power in the south-west. In 1821 Mexico had become independent of Spain, and the lands over the Rio Grande passed to her. Land could be purchased in Texas for 12½ cents per acre, or one-tenth of the price that the U.S. Government charged for land. Within a few years about 20,000 Americans, mostly southerners, moved into Texas. A smaller number travelling by sea had secured land in California.

Mexico had officially abolished slavery, but the newcomers, fresh from the slave-owning south, had no wish to become peasants. Hired labour was rare, so Mexico looked the other way. The rapid changes of Mexican government made the Texans uncertain of the status of their slave property. In 1835, Santa Anna abrogated certain states' rights (this included Texas) and these economic and political struggles led to the Texans' declaring a provisional government. Some 200 of them were besieged and slaughtered in the fortified mission-station of the Alamo, but the siege gave time for the Texans under Houston to form an army and get support from the U.S. Houston avenged the Alamo by capturing Santa Anna and destroying the Mexican Army.

The final result was that the lands north of the Rio Grande were annexed. Five new states were formed in the Union, and all except California were declared slave states. They were, however, too lightly populated and unsuited for one-main-crop agriculture to be affected by that form of property. The growing industrial north did feel, however, that the Mexican War had given more power to the slave-owning south.

The Self-made Man

The rapid expansion of America in the west brought great personal opportunities. A land that had no old-established ruling class flung up its new Capitalists and developers from among those of humble birth. Individualism or, better still, individual property rights became the order of the day.

The man, who through luck and resource, amassed money was a being to be looked up to. Not being tied down with the ideas of aristocracy, making money and not how it was made, was the new Capitalist ethic. The Press slated those who returned from the West to a somewhat less lucrative but probably more secure life in the East Failure was against the nation and the destiny of America.

In the new areas the State machine was weak, and weakened further by the great regard for property. Nothing must stand in the way of the “go-getter." There was little restraining influence on wealth or the way it was secured. Laws tended to be flouted openly when they stood in the way of personal advance.

The Gold Rash

In 1848 gold was discovered in California, and before long the country was over-run with prospectors. Whereas in other areas the settlers followed hunters and turned the land under the plough and spade, in California the principal attraction was gold. Mostly the newcomers came by ship, round Cape Horn, or broke the journey by the short overland route through Panama, but some crossed the continent by waggon, a long and most dangerous journey. Wandering Indians and the hot, arid desert valleys were but two of the problems to be faced. The waggon train scout, Wm. Manley, reported graphically of these emigrants' torments.

San Francisco became the centre of the Barbary Coast and, as was to be expected in a gold-rush community, catered for every vice. At this time in the settlement only two per cent. of the population were women, and to meet the shortage boatloads of ladies of uncertain virtue were sent out from the eastern states and from Europe. The reader can get some idea of the turbulence when he considers that from 1848 to 1856 there were some 1,200 murders and only three official hangings In the San Francisco area, especially as the population only numbered some 20,000. California, not deriving its wealth from the slaves or the soil, developed what was in fact a new financial and Capitalist outlook.

Pike's Peak and Oscar Wilde

Another gold rush started in 1858, when gold was discovered in the Pike's Peak area of Colorado. The same stream of wagons, with some prospectors even pushing their belongings on handcarts, creaked across the plains. It was in this area that Horace Tabor, “the Bonanza King," arose; living in splendour, he even built an opera-house in Leadville. To this flamboyant and noisy setting came, on a brief visit, the prince of aesthetes, Oscar Wilde, who declared the miners to be "Capital fellows, and not at all rough."

One settlement that stands out from all the rest was the Mormon headquarters at Salt Lake City. They built a city in the wilderness after many hardships, a town that in many ways was an example to others springing up at this time. They showed how a group of people with a strong communal sense could accomplish a more stable way of living than the purely individualistic elements.

The War

When the Civil War broke out, the Confederate South counted on support from the Mid-west, principally on the point that these areas had always used the Mississippi as an outlet and the Confederates controlled the sea outlet of New Orleans. The Confederates overlooked the railways : the West could now link up directly with the industrial eastern states, and so the economic grip of “Old Muddy" was broken.

The Pacific States being so far from Washington, there was always the threat of secession from the Union. Representatives from these states had to make a long sea voyage round America; only the hardy and the poor attempted the covered wagon overland route. The North, aware of these problems, speeded up the railway programme. In 1869 the two lines met at Ogden, Utah. The gap was filling in, the wilderness was being conquered.

The Mid-west prospered because of the War, and by the fact that England and the rest of Europe had bad harvests in the 1860s. Industrialization was creating a new market to be satisfied, and exports of foodstuffs increased.

The Coming of the Cowboy

In the vast central area called the Great Plains, settlements were few and far between. Towns sprang up round the mining camps, and it was these places that dominated the scene. The Plains were not considered to be of much use other than for Indians and hunting. They were areas that wagons passed through, but not to settle; the gold and the sunny fertile valleys of the Pacific were the main attraction. Here, on these plains and deserts, was America's last frontier.

Texas and the south-west had always been a cattle-raising country, at least near the Rio Grande, way back in Spanish times. It was in these lands that the Vaquero or Cowboy lived and learned his trade. The Cowpuncher was a man who worked in the railway stockyards as a grader and loader, and later the name was applied to all ranch workers.

As a result of Texas joining the Confederates in the Civil War. she was cut off from the sea and the Mississippi by the Union forces. A surplus of cattle resulted, as there was no market available. Faced with ruin after the war. like so many other cattle-men Joseph McCoy conceived the idea of driving the sellable surplus cattle along the Chisholm trail to Abilene, thence by rail to Kansas and the eastern states. The cattle could live on the herbage that fed bison; it was just a question of linking-up with water courses and holes. This was the commencement of the great cattle-drives that still figure so much in the cinema and magazines.

The increased industrialization of America and Europe led to a need for more and more meat. Profits went up, and it became the age of the cattle kings and the cowboy, owners of great herds like Chisum and Kennedy. This period of the fictional saga was not very long in fact, yet it has provided thrills and entertainment for millions since that time.

By 1871 some 600,000 head of cattle were driven to various points north from Texas, and the idea caught on. Cattle-raising and driving spread right up to Montana.

The cattle kings, like the miners, brought wealth to many small towns, but like them it was sometimes transient; The ranch-workers, miners and settlers who worked hard and were often isolated for long periods tended to get together whenever possible. If they were in a religious mood, then large camp meetings were held, at which fervour and emotions ran riot. At the other extreme, the saloon played quite a part in the growing towns. People who were often without the means to create or study tended to "bust loose" in town. These saloons provided drink and refreshment, women, gamblers, bullies and thugs, and the social get-together.

It is in this cattle age that we find the now almost legendary figures of the West. The sheriffs and bad men, like the Earp Brothers, “Bat” Masterton, Sam Brown, Plummer and Frank Loving, not forgetting the old favourites Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill. Some of these characters would have been better confined to the pathological ward.

The end of the frontier was near, however. At Abilene, T. C. Henry sowed "winter wheat" and it was a success. The plains could now be turned under the plough, and settlers moved in in great numbers. From this arose the struggle between the ranchers and settlers, the battle between the unfenced range and the boundary wire. By the 1880-90s. improved agriculture and grasslands, as well as improved stock and irrigation, won the day. The ever-spreading railways killed the "big drive" and the “Lead Steer." The vast open range was out; it was no longer good business to wander for days looking for grass and water. Output could be increased in a smaller space. The mines also were being grouped into large concerns, and the prospector became a mine-worker. 

The Redskin

It is as well we take a brief glimpse at the original occupant of this land, the Indian. Small in numbers, therefore of no great use to the slave-owner or the farmer and industrialist, he was generally regarded as a form of dangerous vermin. Whatever the Abolitionist may have said about the evils of slavery, or what tears he may have wept over the Negro, he certainly never extended these sentiments to the Indian.

The Redskins' main source of food was the bison, herds of which often covered the plains for miles. The settlers, the railways, sportsmen and Government policy soon reduced the bison to a few thousands. The Government thought this would keep the Indians tied to their reserves, make them devote more of their time to agriculture, and cease their wanderings and tribal warfare. Unfortunately for the Indians, the reserves got smaller and the game for food less and less. People with a Stone Age culture, they found it hard to grasp what was happening. At one time a number of them, so disturbed by the numbers of trains and wagons passing over their land, pathetically tried to go east because they thought everyone had left there. 

Attacks on Indian camps by soldiers were by no means unusual. This is a point that the film moguls generally omit from the typical “western.” In 1876, for example, a Colonel Reynolds attacked a Sioux camp at Powder River and burnt it out, the temperature at the time being 40 degrees below zero. The Indian braves counter-attacked and drove the soldiers away. These incidents caused a great meeting of the Sioux tribe, Cheyennes and Arapahoes on the Little Big Horn, under Sitting Bull and Two Moon. It was this gathering that defeated General Custer, an incident that the ardent Western fan must have seen portrayed many times. Indian risings occurred all the way down to Mexico. Like the Mau-Mau of our own time, the Indian terrorists’ tactics did not tend to improve their position or gain them much sympathy.

The Apache War of 1883-85 is the one in which the famous Geronimo took part. With 35 men and over 100 women and children he engaged 50,000 U.S. troops, 500 Indian scouts and a hostile armed populace as well as the soldiers of Mexico for about 18 months before surrendering.

The last violent uprising came rather late. A prophetic dream and ritual dance having its origin in a Nevada reserve soon spread among the Indians. Some 350 Sioux deserted their Dakota reserve. U.S. cavalry intercepted them and under Hotchkiss guns as protection started to disarm them. A chief began the ritual ghost dance and donned his war-bonnet. The immediate fighting resulted in the deaths of some 200 Indians and 60 soldiers. Thus ended once and for all any attempt by the Indians to get their problems solved by violence. Properly-defined reserves and infiltration into the mass of the population with their many trades and occupations soon left the Indians as living museum-pieces.

The development of America, like the advance of industrialization in Africa and Asia, is one of the principal aspects of Capitalist society. The old tribal organizations are broken up by the unstemmed tide of investment for profit. Capitalism, now more or less universal, likes to look back on some aspect of its earlier days. From the American viewpoint, the glorification of the early West does just this.

One point the magazine and film producers seldom show is that a large land mass was brought under cultivation and development in a fairly short space of time by people who, generally, were far removed from the much boosted and vaunted violence so usual a feature of their films and stories.

Jack Law

Principles — and Practice (1956)

From the June 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

 "It is a matter of historical experience that nothing that is wrong in principle can be right in practice.

 People are apt to delude themselves on that point, but the ultimate result will always prove the truth of the maxim. A violation of equal rights can never serve to maintain institutions which are founded on equal rights."

Carl Schurz, United States Secretary, 1878. Quoted by Howard Fast in the "Last Frontier."

Surviving (2009)

Book Review from the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Selling Your Father’s Bones by Brian Schofield, Harper Press, 2008

This is a fascinating account of the fate of Nez Perce (rhymes with Fez Purse) people of the north west of the USA and their land. It uses the narrative of the desperate 1877 flight from their old homeland in the Wallowa valley towards exile in Canada, as a means to describe the exploitation and near destruction of the West through a particularly rapacious form of capitalism. The industrial pollution (the mile wide purple pit of Butte, Montana, is very memorable) and destructive agriculture are vividly depicted. As a history of a “Native American” group, it is especially useful as it brings the subject right up to date – an annoying feature of books of this nature is the close of the narrative at the loss of political independence, usually deep in the nineteenth century. The contrast between the desolation left after the death of the settler’s dream (the scary empty landscapes of No Country for Old Men) and the relative success of the communitarian Nez Perce rewards the reader with vicarious pleasures and hints towards the very real benefits, both economic and social, which socialism will bring.

Kaz.

The Law of Value and the Dearness of Commodities. by Paul Lafargue (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economic materialism, or to be more exact, economic determinism, which allows us to explain human evolution and which provides a scientific basis for history, and the law of value, the key to the secrets of commodity production, dominate the theoretic work of Marx.

The law of value demonstrates that the value of a commodity is constituted by the quantity of human labour therein incorporated. Allow that, says the Belgian economist, Laveleye, and Marx will prove to you, with his iron logic, that capital is unpaid labour, stolen labour.

The law of value, which culminates in such a frightful conclusion, has been the nightmare of the economists; those amongst them who have any scientific pretensions have take the field to overthrow it. All those who have attacked it have proclaimed, with as much exultation as the “socialistic” intellectuals, who for this ten years past announce from time to time “the decomposition of Marxism”, that they have demolished the law of value, although this does not prevent new combatants, judging incomplete and in vain the wrecking work of their forerunners, from going on the warpath to make mincemeat of it.

The law of value, which has victoriously withstood all the assaults of the economists, alone can explain the general rise in the prices of commodities, the cause of  which has been vainly sought. I will try to demonstrate this.

To propagate communism, to organise the workers in a class party and to struggle for the conquest of the public powers — to study the theoretic work of Marx and to use the two powerful intellectual tools, economic determinism and the law of value, that he has put at our disposal for interpreting historical events and economic phenomena, are yet some of the best ways to honour the memory of the militant agitator and communist thinker.

#    #    #    #

The rise in the prices of commodities is general in the commodity producing countries of Europe and America; it is felt as far as China, which is scarcely beginning to enter capitalist civilisation. This rise is the more extraordinary as a general fall in prices would rather be expected, since, one after the other, industries are using more and more perfect machinery, which, in multiplying tenfold and a hundredfold human productivity, lower the prices of their products.

The dearness of necessaries weighs heavily upon the workers, who, if they do not buy iron girders, electric machines, silken stuffs and other industrial products, live upon bread which should be cheaper, since the production of wheat, which forty years ago, was in France from 14 to 15 hectolitres to the hectare, is to-day, thanks to agricultural progress, from 19 to 20 hectolitres.

Newspapers and magazines inquire into the causes of this disconcerting economic phenomenon. The recognised defenders of capital, without bothering their heads very much, have unearthed the true cause; they declare unanimously that the workers’ higher wages and expenditure for luxuries and holidays let loose the tide of rising prices in the capitalist world. This cream tart has not quite satisfied the economists, who attribute its loosing to gold.

Some say that the quantity of gold serving commercial transactions is insufficient, although it increases every year by half-a-million of francs. Gold being relatively rare, its price, according to the law of competition, should rise, that is to say that the same quantity of gold should buy more merchandise; and it is precisely the contrary; one must give more gold for the same quantity of merchandise.

Others pretend that gold abounds, that the mines of Africa and America have thrown so much of it upon the market, that its price, still according to the law of competition, is depreciated every day and that it is to stop this decline that the Transvaal mining companies are trying to form a trust.

However, during these last sixty years, whatever has been the quantity of gold produced, it has always been immediately and completely absorbed by the needs of commercial transactions, of which the volume increases yet more rapidly than the amount of gold thrown upon the market. The American crisis precisely began by an insufficiency in the quantity of gold that the banks of New York and other cities had at their disposal; and in order to curb this financial crisis, which, as always, preceded the crisis of over-production, it was necessary to import from Europe all the gold available.

Nevertheless, it is in the variations of the value of gold that we must seek for the cause of the general rise in the prices of commodities.

#    #    #    #

Gold and silver, because of their special qualities, have been chosen from all the metals to be monetised and to serve for national and international means of exchange. The capitalist nations thought that once for all their values could be established in the proportion of 1 to 15, that is to say that 1gramme of gold was worth 15 grammes of silver; and it is according to this proportion that they have struck their gold and silver money. For example, a 20 franc gold piece weighs 6.6 grammes, while 20 silver franc pieces weigh 100 grammes. But this legal proportion, guaranteed by the governments of the bourgeois nations, is a lying fiction, as are the institutions and the principles of capitalist society.

Melt down 3 one franc pieces and you will get a little mass of silver weighing 15 grammes; take it to a dealer in precious metals and ask him to exchange it for 1 gramme of gold; he will refuse – he will ask of you 36 grammes of silver for 1 gramme of gold; for at the current rate the kilogram of gold is worth 3,427 francs and the kilogram of silver 95 francs, that is, only one-thirty-sixth as much. And if he knows a little of the history of monetised metals, he will tell you that since 1838 the legal proportion between gold and silver has been real but once: in 1861; and he will add that from 1833 to 1864 the variations of the legal proportion were maintained within narrow limits; but that in 1872 began the fall in the value of silver, and that in 1876 an English commission was appointed to inquire into the depreciation of this metal.

Variations in the Value of Gold and Silver from 1833 to 1908

Years      Gold                           Silver

1833        1 gramme is worth    15gr. 41

1840        1                               15gr. 12  

1852        1                               15gr. 09

1859        1                               14gr. 70

1861        1                               15gr. 00

1872        1                               16gr. 13

1876        1                               18gr. 56

1908        1                               36gr. 07

The values of gold and of silver then, are not fixed quantities, since they have continually varied in the course of three-quarters of a century. Why have they varied?

From 1833 to 1852 the value of silver falls, since one must give 15 grammes and a fraction of silver for one gramme of gold. During the period 1852 to 1859 the mines of Australia and of California had thrown their gold upon the market. An economist said that gold was depreciated by its abundance; however, in 1857 there broke out in the United States a financial crisis, because, as in 1907, there was not enough gold, because there was disproportion between the volume of business and the quantity of money capital necessary for the transactions.

But two years later gold goes up again and one must give 15 grammes of silver for 1 gramme of gold. And from 1872 down to our day the value of silver decreases constantly. During the period from 1872 to 1908, gold and silver have been produced in great quantity: it is then not their scarcity in the market that can have caused their variations in value.

The reasons given by the economists, therefore, cannot explain these variations in value of gold and of silver, which are explainable only by the Marxian law of value.

From 1833 to 1852 only the old gold and silver mines are worked and the methods of extraction remain the same, that is why the values of gold and of silver are about constant. But from 1852 begins the working of the Australian and Californian gold mines, which being very rich, exact less human labour for the extraction of the metal; gold consequently loses value, while silver, which continues to be extracted with the same quantity of human labour, keeps its value. When the Australian and Californian mines become worked out, the extraction of the metal exacts more human labour, the value of gold goes up again and in 1861 gold and silver are at par, that is to say, their values correspond with the legal proportion.

From 1864 on, silver mines of extraordinary richness are worked in the United States and in Mexico and for the same reasons the value of silver falls, while gold keeps its value.

During the course of the last 75 years gold and silver have alternatively lost value, because the metal extracted contained less human labour, as according to Marx’s law, the value of all commodities of capitalist society (wheat, precious metals, boots, cotton stuffs, etc.), is measured by the quantity of human labour that it was necessary to expend in order to produce them.

When in an industry the introduction of a machine reduces the required labour, not only the commodities produced with this machine lose value, but also, the commodities of the same industry that are produced without its aid: for the same reason the quantities of gold extracted in California and in Australia from 1852 to 1859 and the quantities of silver extracted in the United States and in Mexico from 1872 to 1908 have, not alone fallen in value, but have lowered the value of all gold and of all silver circulating in the capitalist world.

The exhaustion of the Australian and Californian gold mines, in rendering mining as costly in human labour as before, caused the value of gold to rise again; the working of the rich gold mines of the Transvaal with the aid of new mechanical and chemical processes, which reduce the necessary labour, together with the employment of Negroes, of Chinese and Hindoos, but very poorly paid, lowers once again the value of gold.

Silver money, which has lost 52.5 per cent. of  its value, since a 1 franc piece is worth but fr 0.475, is no longer employed in international exchange; it is current but in its own country because, like the bank note, it is legal tender and can be exchanged for the gold money, which alone can be employed in international exchange, because gold is the monetary standard of capitalist nations.

But gold also has lost some of its value. The metallurgy of gold has been revolutionised in the Transvaal; it there combines in such a superior manner the resources of mechanics and chemistry that it is profitable even when quartz is treated which contains but a few grammes of gold to the ton. Le Génie Civil (December 28, 1907), describes the great establishment for the working of auriferous quartz in New Kleinfontein which treats 280 tons of quartz per hour, of any grade, with a very reduced staff of “hands”. Steam engines work three dynamos of 500 horse-power, two air-compressors for 75 perforating machines and the extracting machine. The quartz is brought upon an endless transporting band into the “mill-hoppers” of the crushing mill, where 200 stamps weighing each from 620 to 650 kilos crush it at the rate of 5 tons in 24 hours. The mud obtained goes through sieves which contain 400 meshes to the square centimetre; then it is conducted – still mechanically – on to the amalgamating tables. The residue of these tables – again crushed – and the auriferous mercury, are refined. The muddy water in which these mechanical and chemical operations have been conducted, are treated with lime and sodio-potassium cyanide, then filtered upon zinc filings which precipitate the gold. Water plays a preponderating rôle in the new cryosurgical (gold working) industry, which extracts even the largest particles of gold from the quartz that it treats with an extremely reduced staff of hands.

One must, in consequence, give a greater quantity of gold than formerly for the same quantity of other commodities. It is, therefore, not goods that have increased in value, but gold that has fallen in value, because its extraction exacts a less expenditure of human labour.

Translated from Le Socialiste by John H. Halls

The American Civil War (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conflict Defined

The American Civil War was a savage affair. It lasted for four years and it caused the deaths of 600,000 of the young men of America. It wrote such names as Gettysburg, Bull Run and Shiloh into the history of human conflict.

It was a war, we were told, over slavery. If you were humane, liberal and democratic you fought for the North, against slavery. If you were brutal, despotic and contemptuously aristocratic you fought for the South, for slavery. If there are any legends of history which for their own sakes are worth preserving, this is not one of them.

In truth, the Northern States had little use for slavery. Their agriculture produced anything from lumber to livestock, for which they needed workers who were knowledgeable, adaptable and freely moving. Such workers were also needed by the modern industry, which was developing in the North. In contrast, the South, with its warmer climate, raised settled crops like indigo, sugar, tobacco—and cotton. It was profitable to work these crops by ignorant slaves, under a few overseers. This difference in economic needs was at the root of the clash over slavery.

The first negro slaves came to America at the beginning of the 17th century. Before this, workers were employed under indentures—and they moved on to settle new lands when their term expired. This was not a convenient system for the Southern planters, who needed a settled labour force. Even so, they did not immediately use the Negroes as slaves; at first they were treated as indentured servants (although they had no indentures) and when their term ran out they often themselves bought another Negro. (It is interesting that the recognition of this right was the first legal sanction of slavery in America). When the planters realised that the Negroes had no legal rights they dropped the indenture formalities and openly bought and worked them as slaves. This was the stimulus to the West Indian slave mart, with its history of cold-blooded cruelly.

Slavery takes root

When slavery was not economical the white colonists tried to abolish it, but were often prevented by the English slave-running interests. Any anti-slavery movement based on moral grounds, without good commercial reasons, was doomed, as in the State of Georgia, which banned slavery when it was founded only to see the law ignored and evaded. The reason was that the Southern economy was being boosted by the demand from Europe for fresh foods and new materials; cotton was of increasing importance and the planters would not allow it to be disturbed. The invention in 1793 of the Whitney Cotton Gin (which automatically combed and separated the cotton), stimulated production and increased the demand for slaves. The cotton plantations spread from the Old South (Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky) into the Deep South (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi), whose red clay was ideal for this crop. The Old South traded slaves into the new plantations—in 1836 Virginia alone sent 40,000. The Negroes did not like their new conditions—the song Carry Me Back to Old Virginia is the lament of the slave who had been moved from the comparatively genteel Old South to the harshness of the Deep South. This area became heavily dependent on its cotton, and its pro-slavery sentiment became that much more fanatical and its planters that much more brutal. This attitude, although outdated, lingers on in the Southern States. It causes the riots in places like Clinton and Little Rock.

As we can see from a few dry figures, the 17th and 18th centuries saw a remarkable growth in the American Negro slave population. Over the 20 years up to 1671 the white population of Georgia increased from 15,000 to 40,000 and its Negros from 300 to 2,000. In 1760 the North American population was about 1½ million, 300,000 of them slaves; at this time the average slave holding in Virginia was 10 (largest 250). When the war started in 1861 there were about four million slaves in the Confederacy and some 230,000 free Negroes.

It was during the first half of the 19th century that the Southerners’ aristocratic pretensions became so objectionable, with the notion that they represented the gracious, hospitable elements of American society, whilst the Northerners stood for all that was brash and cheap. The uniformity of productive (that is, agricultural) , methods and organisation of property ownership tended to unite the South politically and gave it an important—possibly over-important—influence in American politics. On the other hand the North was comparatively disunited, with many economic factions each having its own functional and property rights. In the 1850’s the Capitalists of the North were stricken by a financial crisis and this, with the usual depression of the workers’ conditions and the greed of the industrialists, strengthened the Southerner’s conviction in his superiority. (The romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott went down well with this conviction!) Inevitably, the white men in the South looked on the Negro as a docile, dim-witted, sub-human; even the poor whites tried to get on the band wagon. Although they lived in appalling poverty on their tiny plots, trying to compete with the big plantations, they had their pride. Their skin—when they washed it—was white; so they could join the pro-slavery chorus.

Slave Empire

If the poor whites had little reason to get on their high horse, the wealthy Southern planters could offer strong justification for their attitude. They had invested good money in their Negroes, which they would lose if the slaves were freed. They wanted to expand the slave-lands into a great empire to take in the new lands in the West, Cuba, Central America and even Brazil. This empire, they thought, would supply the food and raw materials which the developing industries of Europe needed. But the Northern industries also had designs on the West and it was here that the conflict was defined. To win their point, the South rigged their elections, sending numbers of representatives to Congress based on population returns which included slaves who were not allowed to vote. They became more and more aggressive and impatient of the interference from the government. As the quarrel grew fiercer, one compromise after another was tried, but all failed. The Southern States wanted the right to run their affairs as they liked. And they were getting ready to fight for it. 

Jack Law

(To be continued.)

Link to Part II

The American Civil War — II (1959)

From the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part I

No Compromise

Neither side rushed blindly into the American Civil War. North and South made many efforts to compromise on their disputes, but each settlement only flung up more problems, making the war seem more certain.

Louisiana Purchase

In 1803 it was proposed that the Louisiana lands, recently purchased from France, should be recognised as a State of the Union. This proposal roused the jealousy of the New Englanders, not because Louisiana was a slave State but because they feared the addition of a Southern State on the other side of the political balance. This dispute promoted the agreement that free and slave States should be admitted to the Union alternately. This compromise worked well until 1820, when Missouri, a slave State, applied to join the Union. (Indiana. Illinois, and Maine had joined as free States and Mississippi and Alabama as slave States.) Although it meant breaking their agreement, the North bitterly opposed the entry of Missouri, for they were coming to the opinion that no more slave States should be admitted to the Union. This dispute was shelved by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which recognised Missouri as a slave State, but ruled that no slave State should exist north of a parallel 36' 30' N., and that any State south of this line should be allowed to decide its own status.

The Missouri Compromise was broken by the refusal to extend the line across the Continent when California joined the Union, and further trouble developed over the admission of Kansas and Nebraska. These two States were brought into the Union to carry the railways which were pushing into the West. Under the terms of the Missouri Compromise both should have been free States, but in the event only Nebraska was recognised as such. Kansas, whose wild and lawless settlers were violently pro-slavery, was allowed to choose its own status and the whole procedure was legalised by the Kansas/Nebraska Bill of 1854, which finally wiped out the Missouri Compromise.

The first elections in Kansas were chaotic. First, heavily armed Border ruffians from Missouri came into the State and drowned the election in illegal votes. When the pro-slavery candidate was declared elected, John Brown led a counter invasion of Abolitionists. Civil war broke out between the two sides, with each setting up its own government and holding its own elections. In the end, the slavers won, and they passed the most stringent measures to protect their system. Another compromise had failed. 

The Republican Party

Tempers on both sides were now rising fast, aggravated by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This Act allowed Marshalls from the Southern States to arrest runaway slaves, who had previously been granted refuge in the North, and return them to their masters. The dispute over this Act was highlighted by the case of Dred Scott, a runaway slave, who legally contested his return. His case dragged on for years, until in 1857 the Supreme Court ruled that he was a piece of property without the right to sue in Federal Courts and that anyway he had lost his case in the Missouri courts, which had sole authority to deal with it. This decision stung opinion in the North, and the extreme anti-slavery attitude of the Abolitionists became more acceptable. In Boston, Lloyd Garrison had earned from the State of Georgia a $5,000 price on his head for publishing the Abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator. Respectable Northerners, after the Dred Scott case, looked upon Garrison’s paper with a less hostile eye.

Still, the Abolitionists could not win a Presidential election; in 1856 John C. Fremont lost to the Democrat, Buchanan. In truth, the Abolitionists could never fulfil the needs of the North’s rising capitalists. As the railways grew out and the link-up of the Middle West destroyed local prejudices, as the struggle between industry and the Southern landowners became more acute, so opinion in the North became more solid. In 1856 the Republican Party was formed and the Northern capitalists had a political organisation strong enough to counter the aristocratic planters. The Republicans did not at first intend to abolish slavery, or to sharpen the conflict with the South. They wanted to expand American industry, develop the West and control the country’s political affairs. But each successive dispute, and the planters’ notion of their inborn superiority, made civil war seem unavoidable.

Abraham Lincoln

The Bourbon planters were blind to the fact that the South was falling behind economically. Two-thirds of the country’s banking and financial investments were in the North, with Massachusetts alone said to hold more money in her banks than the whole of the Confederacy in 1861. Other estimates put the North's manufactures as worth nearly ten times all the crops of the South, and reckoned the Northern hay crop more valuable than all the Southern cotton, tobacco and sugar. (The planters over-estimated the importance of the world’s demand for cotton right through the war, many Southerners expected Lancashire opinion to force England to declare war on the North). They were convinced of their strength, and America slithered towards civil war, with the feeble President, Buchanan, incapable of doing anything about it.

In 1860 another Presidential election fell due, with Abraham Lincoln representing the Republican Party. There were only 30,000 slave-owning families in the South, with about 10,000 of them large owners. But these were the influences in Southern public opinion and, although Lincoln was plainly moderate in his opinion on the slavery dispute, they had no desire to put political power into his hands. He did not receive one vote south of Virginia (where he polled 2,000). In the border State of Missouri he got just 17,000. In 1856 the cotton States had plainly said that, if the Abolitionist Fremont were elected, they would leave the Union. (There had been several such threats during the past 60 years’ political struggles, not all of them from the South.) The planters recognised that Lincoln’s victory broke their last link with the Union, which they regarded as a collection of sovereign States which they could leave at will. They would suffer no coercion from a central government.

Secession

In December, 1860, South Carolina led the way out of the Union, and by February of the following year Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Texas had joined her in a Confederacy formed at Montgomery, Alabama. Jefferson Davis was the President and Alexander Stephens the Vice-President. Civil War seemed a hardening certainty.

              Jack Law

(To be continued.)

Link to Part III

The American Civil War — III (1959)

From the March 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part II

Preparation and Prospects

As the year 1861 opened the future opponents of the American Civil War stood glowering at each other.

The war was only a few months away, but it was still difficult to descry any clear-cut differences between North and South. The Confederacy’s President—Jefferson Davis—had been strongly Unionist, until he saw control of the Union slipping from the South’s hands. His Vice-President —Alexander Stephens—had opposed secession right until the moment when his own State of Georgia contracted out. There was also confusion on the issue of slavery, many prominent Southerners opposing it, whilst the Lincoln Government had often slated that it had no intention of abolishing it. Perhaps the most famous Southerner to oppose slavery was General Robert E. Lee—the North actually invited him at the start of the war to take command of its forces., but he refused. Especially confused was the Northern State of Maryland, where there was much sympathy for the Confederates. Plenty of Americans thought that the seceded States had taken a perfectly legal and constitutional action and that, whatever military precautions the two sides may take, the quarrel would blow over.

Fort Sumpter Falls

The first important dispute after secession came as each side began to draw up its strength, and was about the possession of military forts and recruitment of manpower. First, the Union Government ordered all the border States to place their troops under Washington’s control. Promptly, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina joined the rebels, as a protest against this attempt at federal coercion. More ominous were the rumblings around the army forts in the Southland.

The Confederates argued that, although the forts were occupied by United States troops, the land on which they stood had only been leased to the Government. Now that the Southern States had left the Union, their occupation by Federal forces was illegal and intolerable. Interest became centred on Fort Sumpter at Charleston, which the Governor of South Carolina had been planning to take over since December, I860. Southern Congressmen warned Lincoln that any attempt to relieve Sumpter would lead to war and sure enough on January 9th, 1861, the steamer, Star of the West, sent to the fort, was fired on and forced to withdraw. An uneasy peace brooded over Fort Sumpter until April, when Confederate General Beauregard, learning of a Union convoy on the way to raise the siege, bombarded it into surrender. Although many other forts had been taken in the South, Sumpter had become an important symbol, and its fall touched off a unifying passion in the Union. It may also be said to have marked the start of the war.

Since February, the South had been seriously preparing its war effort. After Sumpter, Lincoln replied by calling for 75,000 militia, to serve for three months (later altered to three years) and announcing a blockade of every Southern port from South Carolina to Texas. On May 6th the Confederate Congress passed an Act which recognised the existence of a state of war with the Union and shots were exchanged in Virginia and at Camp Jackson, St. Louis. There had been almost a year of increasing tension and bitterness. That was at an end. Hope was finished, too. The world’s first modern war had started, with its savagery and terror.

Prospects

What were the strength, the weaknesses and prospects of either side ? The Northern population was about 22 million; the Southern between 5 and 6 million, plus about 4 million negroes. In 1860 the United States Army had numbered about 16,000; of these, the Southern States had the nucleus of an army in the forces controlled by each State. About 3 million men served in the war in the Union forces, 2 million of them 23 years old or younger—an ideal age for soldiers. On the other hand, the Confederates' smaller population forced them to conscript all men between 17 and 55. When the war opened the volunteers on both sides were numerous, but as the thing dragged on the spirit declined. In the South, poor dirt farmers joined open combat with Confederate patrols and draft officials, whilst in the North, Chicago suffered anti-conscription riots.

The South was full of hope. Although the Act of Secession had cut them off from the new lands in the West, they thought that their raw materials could be traded for manufactures from the growing capitalist powers of Europe. These manufactures, ran the optimistic argument, would compensate for the rebels’ lack of industrial power. Here lay the South’s weakness, for as the agricultural area of the United States, they had left manufacturing to the North. They had next to no factories and what they had were mainly worked by Northerners, who returned to their home States when the war started: this was disastrous to the railway repair shops. The rebels had only one works—at Tredegar, in Richmond—where they could cast a gun or make a marine engine: the States Armouries were deficient, and at the start of the war there were no powder mills. There was hardly any iron and unseasoned wood had to be used in shipbuilding. All of this meant that, among other things, the rebels would not be able to break the blockade which the Union Navy kept on its ports. It also meant that recognition of the Confederacy by the European Powers was a wild dream. But the South was blind to all this; their population may have been only a quarter that of the North, but they had plenty of men who got their living planting and hunting, who were used to horseback and hardened to a spartan outdoor life They could handle guns and, apart from a dislike of organised discipline, were ideal material for soldiers. When the time came, they were to fight hard and tenaciously. The aristocratic pretensions of the South had bred a group of accustomed leaders: men like Lee and Johnston, Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart, all brilliant commanders. Yes, the South was full of hope: one rebel, they said, was worth any ten Yankees.

The Yankees

And the North? Industrially, they had it all. But they needed a machine—the sort to which the 20th century has become accustomed—to change their population of factory and merchanting workers into soldiers. It took them a few years; but in the end they did it, reaching their peak of organisation when Sherman’s troopers blasted their way across the heart of the Confederacy, like any crack Commando brigade. “The Yankees dare not fight,” said many a cocky Southerner at the war’s beginning. The next few years showed that the Yankees could not only fight—they could also march and plunder, and hound an entire army to destruction.

Jack Law.

(To be concluded.)

Link to Part IV

The American Civil War — IV (1959)

From the April 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part III

Victory and what it was worth
Ask that approachable fellow, the man-in-the-street, to name a battle of the American Civil War and he will almost certainly mention Gettysburg; if history was one of his subjects at school he may remember Antretam and Manassas. These battles were all fought in the east, where the more glamorous—if that is the proper word—campaign of the war took place. If the western theatre was less famous, its effect was of greater consequence.

The Campaigns

In the north and the east, around the Potomac river, in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, the two armies grappled for each other's capital city. Washington and Richmond spent an unquiet war in consequence, always afraid of attack and pillage. The early Unionist tactics in this area were notable for their lack of aggressiveness, which allowed Lee and Jackson to gain some spectacular victories. Fortunately for the Union, these victories were rarely pressed home, because of the Confederates’ heavy losses and their shortage of ammunition; they paid dearly for their industrial shortcomings. Lincoln fumed and fretted at his generals and changed them many times, until Grant’s appointment as commander brought a new conception to Northern tactics. Grant kept a constant pressure on his opponents, chasing them and forcing them to battle until in the end he destroyed them.

In the south and the west the vital part of the war was forged and fought. The Union armies moved down the Mississippi river from Missouri, whilst their navy landed troops at the river’s mouth to capture New Orleans. Vicksburg--an important junction of railway and river—was taken after a siege and the Union armies then moved cast through the mountain gaps into Georgia. They captured Atlanta and swept on to Savannah on the Atlantic coast, plundering as they went, and cut the Confederacy in two. Although this campaign earned Grant the leadership of the Union forces, it is General Sherman's name which is always linked with the march through Georgia. His men were a harum-scarum lot. who cared little for the niceties of military dress and discipline. But they could march and fight and destroy, and this they did, through 200 miles of enemy territory. “Sherman's dashing Yankee boys," the song called them, and that was what they were. More than any other their ruthless campaign won the war for the Union. 

Peace and Problems

On April 9th, 1865. General Robert E. Lee, commander of the starving and ragged Confederate army, dressed himself in his best uniform and went out to surrender. Ulysees S. Grant cut a poor figure beside the resplendent Southerner, but there was no hint of spite in the surrender terms which he offered. Washington’s policy was to draw the Southland back into the Union and to rebuild it on a sound economic basis. On April 26th Johnston—in the West—gave up and through May and June the surrenders dribbled on. Jefferson Davis was himself captured at Irwinsvillc. Georgia, on May 10th. From May 22nd to 25th the Northern victory was celebrated in Washington with a mass review of the armies of Grant and Sherman. Abraham Lincoln was not there to take the salute; a month before he had been shot to death in Ford's theatre by the actor John Wilkes Booth, a vain and passionate man, and a fanatical rebel.

Now that the war had been won, what was to happen about slavery? Northern policy had not been consistent. Back in November, 1861, General Fremont had proclaimed his intention of confiscating the property of rebels and setting their slaves free. Lincoln’s government had been elected for its Unionist policy and was uncommitted to abolition of slavery: it found Fremont’s declaration embarrassing and removed him from his command. Two things changed the government’s mind. The early successes of the Confederates strengthened abolitionist sentiment in the North. And it became necessary to draw up a co-ordinated policy on emancipated slaves, for each Union commander was dealing with them in his own way. Amid the chaotic conditions then existing in Washington, Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Emancipation. When the North won, this declaration gave the American Negro the hope of a life free from chattel slavery.

Ku-Klux-Klan

The emancipation measures broke down the plantation system and many Negroes took advantage of this and went to the Northern cities to look for work. The cities were partly unwilling and, anyway, unable to accept these immigrants, and thousands of them died of hunger and cold. Eventually, New York and Chicago eased the problem with their “black reconstruction” schemes. When power was handed back to the Southern States the whites soon look control again and the right of Negroes to vote vanished beneath a blanket of trickery. Prohibitive poll taxes, tests which could prove the most learned Negro to be illiterate and open violence were often used to prevent the black man from voting. We have all heard of the Ku-Klux-Klan, who are said to put three questions to their applicants for membership: “Do you hate Niggers? Do you hate Jews? Have you got three dollars? ” These were —and are—typical of the Southland, still largely carrying on its old agricultural economy with the Negroes and the poor whites barely scratching a living from the earth. The bloodshed and the tearfulness of the civil war was over, but the loud-voiced, colourful, racial-phobia politicians still lorded it over the land of the magnolia.

But the American Civil War did not leave things all unchanged, for it was the first modern war the world has seen and it introduced several things which we have since become familiar with. Grant's strategy of incessant pressure on his enemy was a tactic repeated in World War 1, in the slaughter at Passchendaele and Verdun and at Stalingrad in 1943. There was an official policy of conscription to counteract the large scale desertions from both sides, and an intensive propaganda campaign to sweeten the battering which the civilian population took through the Union blockade, the burning of Atlanta, the looting of the Shenandoah valley, and so on. London and Coventry and other English cities got similar treatment in the last war. And there was the lesson that a modern war is a social tragedy, not to be won by brilliant generals alone. The best commanders fought for the South, but the North had the industrial power and developed the necessary social organisation.

Integration
What of the present, and the future? American industry is expanding into Dixieland and needs the Negro to work in the factories alongside white people. It also requires that Negroes school themselves in the technicalities of modern industry. This expansion of productive and social knowledge is the force—more powerful than any war—which will, to use an overworked word, integrate the black and white American. Knowledge will destroy the Crufts of the human race and their theories of inborn superiority. Society's needs and progress will win. They always have.

Jack Law

(Concluded.)