And nowadays we have the Socialist and Anarchist agitators,
following the same tradition, possessed by the same dream as the
ancient Hebrew prophets. I have mentioned Emma Goldman; it may be
that the reader is not familiar with her writings, and does not
realize how very Biblical she is, both in point of view and
style. Let me quote a few sentences from a recent issue of her
paper, "Mother Earth", on the subject of our ruling classes and
their social responsibility:
Yes, you idle rich, you may howl about what we mean to do to you!
Your riches are rotten and your fine clothes are falling from
your backs. Your stocks and bonds are so tainted that the ink on
them should turn to acid and eat holes in your pockets and your
skins. You have piled up your dirty millions, but what wages have
you paid to the poor devils of farm hands you have robbed? And do
you imagine they won't remember it when the revolution comes? You
loll on soft couches and amuse yourselves with your mistresses;
you think you are "it" and the world is yours. You send
militiamen and shoot down our organizers, and we are helpless.
But wait, comrades, our time is coming.
Doubtless the reader is well satisfied that the author of this
tirade is now in jail, where she can no longer defy the laws of
good taste. They always put the ancient prophets in jail; that is
the way to know a prophet when you meet him. Let me quote another
prophet who is now behind bars--Alexander Berkman, in his "Prison
Memoirs of an Anarchist", discussing the same subject of
plutocratic pretension:
Tell me, you four hundred, where did you get it? Who gave it to
you? Your grandfather, you say? Your father? Can you go all the
way back and show there is no flaw anywhere in your title? I tell
you that the beginning and the root of your wealth is necessarily
in injustice. And why? Because Nature did not make this man rich
and that man poor from the start. Nature does not intend for one
man to have capital and another to be a wage-slave. Nature made
the earth to be cultivated by all. The idea we Anarchists have of
the rich is of highwaymen, standing in the street and robbing
every one that passes.
Or take "Big Bill" Haywood, chief of the I. W. W. Hear what he
has to say in a pamphlet addressed to the harvest-hands he is
seeking to organize:
How much farther do you plutes expect to go with your grabbing?
Do you want to be the only people left on earth? Why else do you
drive out the workers from all share in Nature, and claim
everything for yourselves? The earth was made for all, rich and
poor alike; where do you get your title deeds to it? Nature gave
everything for all men to use alike; it is only your robbery
which makes your so-called "ownership". Capital has no rights.
The land belongs to Nature, and we are all Nature's sons.
Or take Eugene V. Debs, three times candidate of the Socialist
Party for President. I quote from one of his pamphlets:
The propertied classes are like people who go into a public
theatre and refuse to let anyone else come in, treating as
private property what is meant for social use. If each man would
take only what he needs, and leave the balance to those who have
nothing, there would be no rich and no poor. The rich man is a
thief.
I might go on citing such quotations for many pages; but I know
that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and Bill Haywood and Gene
Debs may read this book, and I don't want them to close it in the
middle and throw it at me. Therefore let me hasten to explain my
poor joke; the sentiments I have been quoting are not those of
our modern agitators, but of another group of ancient ones. The
first is not from Emma Goldman, nor did I find it in "Mother
Earth". I found it in the Epistle of James, believed by orthodox
authorities to have been James, the brother of Jesus. It is
exactly what he wrote--save that I have put it into modern
phrases, and changed the swing of the sentences, in order that
those familiar with the Bible might read it without suspicion.
The second passage is not in the writings of Alexander Berkman,
but in those of St. John Chrysostom, most famous of the early
fathers, who lived 374-407. The third is not from the pen of "Big
Bill" but from that of St. Ambrose, a father of the Latin Church,
340-397, and the fourth is not by Comrade Debs, but by St. Basil
of the Greek Church, 329-379. And if the reader objects to my
having fooled him for a minute or two, what will he say to the
Christian Church, which has been fooling him for sixteen hundred
years?