"The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified for ever."
I received a letter the other day. It was from a man in Arizona. It
began, "Dear Comrade." It ended, "Yours for the Revolution." I replied
to the letter, and my letter began, "Dear Comrade." It ended, "Yours for
the Revolution." In the United States there are 400,000 men, of men and
women nearly 1,000,000, who begin their letters "Dear Comrade," and end
them "Yours for the Revolution." In Germany there are 3,000,000 men who
begin their letters "Dear Comrade" and end them "Yours for the
Revolution"; in France, 1,000,000 men; in Austria, 800,000 men; in
Belgium, 300,000 men; in Italy, 250,000 men; in England, 100,000 men; in
Switzerland, 100,000 men; in Denmark, 55,000 men; in Sweden, 50,000 men;
in Holland, 40,000 men; in Spain, 30,000 men--comrades all, and
revolutionists.
These are numbers which dwarf the grand armies of Napoleon and Xerxes.
But they are numbers not of conquest and maintenance of the established
order, but of conquest and revolution. They compose, when the roll is
called, an army of 7,000,000 men, who, in accordance with the conditions
of to-day, are fighting with all their might for the conquest of the
wealth of the world and for the complete overthrow of existing society.
There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of the
world. There is nothing analogous between it and the American Revolution
or the French Revolution. It is unique, colossal. Other revolutions
compare with it as asteroids compare with the sun. It is alone of its
kind, the first world-revolution in a world whose history is replete with
revolutions. And not only this, for it is the first organized movement
of men to become a world movement, limited only by the limits of the
planet.
This revolution is unlike all other revolutions in many respects. It is
not sporadic. It is not a flame of popular discontent, arising in a day
and dying down in a day. It is older than the present generation. It
has a history and traditions, and a martyr-roll only less extensive
possibly than the martyr-roll of Christianity. It has also a literature
a myriad times more imposing, scientific, and scholarly than the
literature of any previous revolution.
They call themselves "comrades," these men, comrades in the socialist
revolution. Nor is the word empty and meaningless, coined of mere lip
service. It knits men together as brothers, as men should be knit
together who stand shoulder to shoulder under the red banner of revolt.
This red banner, by the way, symbolizes the brotherhood of man, and does
not symbolize the incendiarism that instantly connects itself with the
red banner in the affrighted bourgeois mind. The comradeship of the
revolutionists is alive and warm. It passes over geographical lines,
transcends race prejudice, and has even proved itself mightier than the
Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of our forefathers. The French
socialist working-men and the German socialist working-men forget Alsace
and Lorraine, and, when war threatens, pass resolutions declaring that as
working-men and comrades they have no quarrel with each other. Only the
other day, when Japan and Russia sprang at each other's throats, the
revolutionists of Japan addressed the following message to the
revolutionists of Russia: "Dear Comrades--Your government and ours have
recently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic tendencies,
but for us socialists there are no boundaries, race, country, or
nationality. We are comrades, brothers, and sisters, and have no reason
to fight. Your enemies are not the Japanese people, but our militarism
and so-called patriotism. Patriotism and militarism are our mutual
enemies."
In January 1905, throughout the United States the socialists held
mass-meetings to express their sympathy for their struggling comrades,
the revolutionists of Russia, and, more to the point, to furnish the
sinews of war by collecting money and cabling it to the Russian leaders.
The fact of this call for money, and the ready response, and the very
wording of the call, make a striking and practical demonstration of the
international solidarity of this world-revolution:
"Whatever may be the immediate results of the present revolt in Russia,
the socialist propaganda in that country has received from it an impetus
unparalleled in the history of modern class wars. The heroic battle for
freedom is being fought almost exclusively by the Russian working-class
under the intellectual leadership of Russian socialists, thus once more
demonstrating the fact that the class-conscious working-men have become
the vanguard of all liberating movements of modern times."
Here are 7,000,000 comrades in an organized, international, world-wide,
revolutionary movement. Here is a tremendous human force. It must be
reckoned with. Here is power. And here is romance--romance so colossal
that it seems to be beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. These
revolutionists are swayed by great passion. They have a keen sense of
personal right, much of reverence for humanity, but little reverence, if
any at all, for the rule of the dead. They refuse to be ruled by the
dead. To the bourgeois mind their unbelief in the dominant conventions
of the established order is startling. They laugh to scorn the sweet
ideals and dear moralities of bourgeois society. They intend to destroy
bourgeois society with most of its sweet ideals and dear moralities, and
chiefest among these are those that group themselves under such heads as
private ownership of capital, survival of the fittest, and
patriotism--even patriotism.
Such an army of revolution, 7,000,000 strong, is a thing to make rulers
and ruling classes pause and consider. The cry of this army is, "No
quarter! We want all that you possess. We will be content with nothing
less than all that you possess. We want in our hands the reins of power
and the destiny of mankind. Here are our hands. They are strong hands.
We are going to take your governments, your palaces, and all your purpled
ease away from you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as
the peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your
metropolises. Here are our hands. They are strong hands."
Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider. This is
revolution. And, further, these 7,000,000 men are not an army on paper.
Their fighting strength in the field is 7,000,000. To-day they cast
7,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.
Yesterday they were not so strong. To-morrow they will be still
stronger. And they are fighters. They love peace. They are unafraid of
war. They intend nothing less than to destroy existing capitalist
society and to take possession of the whole world. If the law of the
land permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at the ballot-box. If
the law of the land does not permit, and if they have force meted out to
them, they resort to force themselves. They meet violence with violence.
Their hands are strong and they are unafraid. In Russia, for instance,
there is no suffrage. The government executes the revolutionists. The
revolutionists kill the officers of the government. The revolutionists
meet legal murder with assassination.
Now here arises a particularly significant phase which it would be well
for the rulers to consider. Let me make it concrete. I am a
revolutionist. Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual. I speak,
and I _think_, of these assassins in Russia as "my comrades." So do all
the comrades in America, and all the 7,000,000 comrades in the world. Of
what worth an organized, international, revolutionary movement if our
comrades are not backed up the world over! The worth is shown by the
fact that we do back up the assassinations by our comrades in Russia.
They are not disciples of Tolstoy, nor are we. We are revolutionists.
Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call "The Fighting
Organization." This Fighting Organization accused, tried, found guilty,
and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior. On April 2
he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace. Two years later the
Fighting Organization condemned to death and executed another Minister of
Interior, Von Plehve. Having done so, it issued a document, dated July
29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment of Von Plehve and
its responsibility for the assassination. Now, and to the point, this
document was sent out to the socialists of the world, and by them was
published everywhere in the magazines and newspapers. The point is, not
that the socialists of the world were unafraid to do it, not that they
dared to do it, but that they did it as a matter of routine, giving
publication to what may be called an official document of the
international revolutionary movement.
These are high lights upon the revolution--granted, but they are also
facts. And they are given to the rulers and the ruling classes, not in
bravado, not to frighten them, but for them to consider more deeply the
spirit and nature of this world-revolution. The time has come for the
revolution to demand consideration. It has fastened upon every civilized
country in the world. As fast as a country becomes civilized, the
revolution fastens upon it. With the introduction of the machine into
Japan, socialism was introduced. Socialism marched into the Philippines
shoulder to shoulder with the American soldiers. The echoes of the last
gun had scarcely died away when socialist locals were forming in Cuba and
Porto Rico. Vastly more significant is the fact that of all the
countries the revolution has fastened upon, on not one has it relaxed its
grip. On the contrary, on every country its grip closes tighter year by
year. As an active movement it began obscurely over a generation ago.
In 1867, its voting strength in the world was 30,000. By 1871 its vote
had increased to 1,000,000. Not till 1884 did it pass the half-million
point. By 1889 it had passed the million point, it had then gained
momentum. In 1892 the socialist vote of the world was 1,798,391; in
1893, 2,585,898; in 1895, 3,033,718; in 1898, 4,515,591; in 1902,
5,253,054; in 1903, 6,285,374; and in the year of our Lord 1905 it passed
the seven-million mark.
Nor has this flame of revolution left the United States untouched. In
1888 there were only 2,068 socialist votes. In 1902 there were 127,713
socialist votes. And in 1904 435,040 socialist votes were cast. What
fanned this flame? Not hard times. The first four years of the
twentieth century were considered prosperous years, yet in that time more
than 300,000 men added themselves to the ranks of the revolutionists,
flinging their defiance in the teeth of bourgeois society and taking
their stand under the blood-red banner. In the state of the writer,
California, one man in twelve is an avowed and registered revolutionist.
One thing must be clearly understood. This is no spontaneous and vague
uprising of a large mass of discontented and miserable people--a blind
and instinctive recoil from hurt. On the contrary, the propaganda is
intellectual; the movement is based upon economic necessity and is in
line with social evolution; while the miserable people have not yet
revolted. The revolutionist is no starved and diseased slave in the
shambles at the bottom of the social pit, but is, in the main, a hearty,
well-fed working-man, who sees the shambles waiting for him and his
children and recoils from the descent. The very miserable people are too
helpless to help themselves. But they are being helped, and the day is
not far distant when their numbers will go to swell the ranks of the
revolutionists.
Another thing must be clearly understood. In spite of the fact that
middle-class men and professional men are interested in the movement, it
is nevertheless a distinctly working-class revolt. The world over, it is
a working-class revolt. The workers of the world, as a class, are
fighting the capitalists of the world, as a class. The so-called great
middle class is a growing anomaly in the social struggle. It is a
perishing class (wily statisticians to the contrary), and its historic
mission of buffer between the capitalist and working-classes has just
about been fulfilled. Little remains for it but to wail as it passes
into oblivion, as it has already begun to wail in accents Populistic and
Jeffersonian-Democratic. The fight is on. The revolution is here now,
and it is the world's workers that are in revolt.
Naturally the question arises: Why is this so? No mere whim of the
spirit can give rise to a world-revolution. Whim does not conduce to
unanimity. There must be a deep-seated cause to make 7,000,000 men of
the one mind, to make them cast off allegiance to the bourgeois gods and
lose faith in so fine a thing as patriotism. There are many counts of
the indictment which the revolutionists bring against the capitalist
class, but for present use only one need be stated, and it is a count to
which capital has never replied and can never reply.
The capitalist class has managed society, and its management has failed.
And not only has it failed in its management, but it has failed
deplorably, ignobly, horribly. The capitalist class had an opportunity
such as was vouchsafed no previous ruling class in the history of the
world. It broke away from the rule of the old feudal aristocracy and
made modern society. It mastered matter, organized the machinery of
life, and made possible a wonderful era for mankind, wherein no creature
should cry aloud because it had not enough to eat, and wherein for every
child there would be opportunity for education, for intellectual and
spiritual uplift. Matter being mastered, and the machinery of life
organized, all this was possible. Here was the chance, God-given, and
the capitalist class failed. It was blind and greedy. It prattled sweet
ideals and dear moralities, rubbed its eyes not once, nor ceased one whit
in its greediness, and smashed down in a failure as tremendous only as
was the opportunity it had ignored.
But all this is like so much cobwebs to the bourgeois mind. As it was
blind in the past, it is blind now and cannot see nor understand. Well,
then, let the indictment be stated more definitely, in terms sharp and
unmistakable. In the first place, consider the caveman. He was a very
simple creature. His head slanted back like an orang-outang's, and he
had but little more intelligence. He lived in a hostile environment, the
prey of all manner of fierce life. He had no inventions nor artifices.
His natural efficiency for food-getting was, say, 1. He did not even
till the soil. With his natural efficiency of 1, he fought off his
carnivorous enemies and got himself food and shelter. He must have done
all this, else he would not have multiplied and spread over the earth and
sent his progeny down, generation by generation, to become even you and
me.
The caveman, with his natural efficiency of 1, got enough to eat most of
the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time. Also, he lived a
healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty of
time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is to
say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to get
enough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of the
children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant a
happy childhood of play and development.
And now, how fares modern man? Consider the United States, the most
prosperous and most enlightened country of the world. In the United
States there are 10,000,000 people living in poverty. By poverty is
meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate
shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained.
In the United States there are 10,000,000 people who have not enough to
eat. In the United States, because they have not enough to eat, there
are 10,000,000 people who cannot keep the ordinary 1 measure of strength
in their bodies. This means that these 10,000,000 people are perishing,
are dying, body and soul, slowly, because they have not enough to eat.
All over this broad, prosperous, enlightened land, are men, women, and
children who are living miserably. In all the great cities, where they
are segregated in slum ghettos by hundreds of thousands and by millions,
their misery becomes beastliness. No caveman ever starved as chronically
as they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered with
rottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard and for as
long hours as they toil.
In Chicago there is a woman who toiled sixty hours per week. She was a
garment worker. She sewed buttons on clothes. Among the Italian garment
workers of Chicago, the average weekly wage of the dressmakers is 90
cents, but they work every week in the year. The average weekly wage of
the pants finishers is $1.31, and the average number of weeks employed in
the year is 27.85. The average yearly earnings of the dressmakers is
$37; of the pants finishers, $42.41. Such wages means no childhood for
the children, beastliness of living, and starvation for all.
Unlike the caveman, modern man cannot get food and shelter whenever he
feels like working for it. Modern man has first to find the work, and in
this he is often unsuccessful. Then misery becomes acute. This acute
misery is chronicled daily in the newspapers. Let several of the
countless instances be cited.
In New York City lived a woman, Mary Mead. She had three children:
Mary, one year old; Johanna, two years old; Alice, four years old.
Her husband could find no work. They starved. They were evicted
from their shelter at 160 Steuben Street. Mary Mead strangled her
baby, Mary, one year old; strangled Alice, four years old; failed to
strangle Johanna, two years old, and then herself took poison. Said
the father to the police: "Constant poverty had driven my wife
insane. We lived at No. 160 Steuben Street until a week ago, when we
were dispossessed. I could get no work. I could not even make
enough to put food into our mouths. The babies grew ill and weak.
My wife cried nearly all the time."
"So overwhelmed is the Department of Charities with tens of thousands
of applications from men out of work that it finds itself unable to
cope with the situation."--_New York Commercial_, January 11, 1905.
In a daily paper, because he cannot get work in order to get something to
eat, modern man advertises as follows:
"Young man, good education, unable to obtain employment, will sell to
physician and bacteriologist for experimental purposes all right and
title to his body. Address for price, box 3466, _Examiner_."
"Frank A. Mallin went to the central police station Wednesday night
and asked to be locked up on a charge of vagrancy. He said he had
been conducting an unsuccessful search for work for so long that he
was sure he must be a vagrant. In any event, he was so hungry he
must be fed. Police Judge Graham sentenced him to ninety days'
imprisonment."--_San Francisco Examiner_.
In a room at the Soto House, 32 Fourth Street, San Francisco, was found
the body of W. G. Robbins. He had turned on the gas. Also was found his
diary, from which the following extracts are made
"_March_ 3.--No chance of getting anything here. What will I do?
"_March_ 7.--Cannot find anything yet.
"_March_ 8.--Am living on doughnuts at five cents a day.
"_March_ 9.--My last quarter gone for room rent.
"_March_ 10.--God help me. Have only five cents left. Can get
nothing to do. What next? Starvation or--? I have spent my last
nickel to-night. What shall I do? Shall it be steal, beg, or die?
I have never stolen, begged, or starved in all my fifty years of
life, but now I am on the brink--death seems the only refuge.
"_March_ 11.--Sick all day--burning fever this afternoon. Had
nothing to eat to-day or since yesterday noon. My head, my head.
Good-bye, all."
How fares the child of modern man in this most prosperous of lands? In
the city of New York 50,000 children go hungry to school every morning.
From the same city on January 12, a press despatch was sent out over the
country of a case reported by Dr. A. E. Daniel, of the New York Infirmary
for Women and Children. The case was that of a babe, eighteen months
old, who earned by its labour fifty cents per week in a tenement
sweat-shop.
"On a pile of rags in a room bare of furniture and freezing cold,
Mrs. Mary Gallin, dead from starvation, with an emaciated baby four
months old crying at her breast, was found this morning at 513 Myrtle
Avenue, Brooklyn, by Policeman McConnon of the Flushing Avenue
Station. Huddled together for warmth in another part of the room
were the father, James Gallin, and three children ranging from two to
eight years of age. The children gazed at the policeman much as
ravenous animals might have done. They were famished, and there was
not a vestige of food in their comfortless home."--_New York
Journal_, January 2, 1902.
In the United States 80,000 children are toiling out their lives in the
textile mills alone. In the South they work twelve-hour shifts. They
never see the day. Those on the night shift are asleep when the sun
pours its life and warmth over the world, while those on the day shift
are at the machines before dawn and return to their miserable dens,
called "homes," after dark. Many receive no more than ten cents a day.
There are babies who work for five and six cents a day. Those who work
on the night shift are often kept awake by having cold water dashed in
their faces. There are children six years of age who have already to
their credit eleven months' work on the night shift. When they become
sick, and are unable to rise from their beds to go to work, there are men
employed to go on horseback from house to house, and cajole and bully
them into arising and going to work. Ten per cent of them contract
active consumption. All are puny wrecks, distorted, stunted, mind and
body. Elbert Hubbard says of the child-labourers of the Southern
cotton-mills:
"I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his weight.
Straightaway through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bones there
ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken
thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a
silver dime. He looked at me dumbly from a face that might have
belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn, and full of
pain it was. He did not reach for the money--he did not know what it
was. There were dozens of such children in this particular mill. A
physician who was with me said that they would all be dead probably
in two years, and their places filled by others--there were plenty
more. Pneumonia carries off most of them. Their systems are ripe
for disease, and when it comes there is no rebound--no response.
Medicine simply does not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged,
and the child sinks into a stupor and dies."
So fares modern man and the child of modern man in the United States,
most prosperous and enlightened of all countries on earth. It must be
remembered that the instances given are instances only, but they can be
multiplied myriads of times. It must also be remembered that what is
true of the United States is true of all the civilized world. Such
misery was not true of the caveman. Then what has happened? Has the
hostile environment of the caveman grown more hostile for his
descendants? Has the caveman's natural efficiency of 1 for food-getting
and shelter-getting diminished in modern man to one-half or one-quarter?
On the contrary, the hostile environment of the caveman has been
destroyed. For modern man it no longer exists. All carnivorous enemies,
the daily menace of the younger world, have been killed off. Many of the
species of prey have become extinct. Here and there, in secluded
portions of the world, still linger a few of man's fiercer enemies. But
they are far from being a menace to mankind. Modern man, when he wants
recreation and change, goes to the secluded portions of the world for a
hunt. Also, in idle moments, he wails regretfully at the passing of the
"big game," which he knows in the not distant future will disappear from
the earth.
Nor since the day of the caveman has man's efficiency for food-getting
and shelter-getting diminished. It has increased a thousandfold. Since
the day of the caveman, matter has been mastered. The secrets of matter
have been discovered. Its laws have been formulated. Wonderful
artifices have been made, and marvellous inventions, all tending to
increase tremendously man's natural efficiency of in every food-getting,
shelter-getting exertion, in farming, mining, manufacturing,
transportation, and communication.
From the caveman to the hand-workers of three generations ago, the
increase in efficiency for food- and shelter-getting has been very great.
But in this day, by machinery, the efficiency of the hand-worker of three
generations ago has in turn been increased many times. Formerly it
required 200 hours of human labour to place 100 tons of ore on a railroad
car. To-day, aided by machinery, but two hours of human labour is
required to do the same task. The United States Bureau of Labour is
responsible for the following table, showing the comparatively recent
increase in man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency:
Machine Hours Hand Hours
Barley (100 bushels) 9 211
Corn (50 bushels 34 228
shelled, stalks,
husks and blades cut
into fodder)
Oats (160 bushels) 28 265
Wheat (50 bushels) 7 160
Loading ore (loading 2 200
100 tons iron ore on
cars)
Unloading coal 20 240
(transferring 200
tons from canal-boats
to bins 400 feet
distant)
Pitchforks (50 12 200
pitchforks, 12-inch
tines)
Plough (one landside 3 118
plough, oak beams and
handles)
According to the same authority, under the best conditions for
organization in farming, labour can produce 20 bushels of wheat for 66
cents, or 1 bushel for 3.5 cents. This was done on a bonanza farm of
10,000 acres in California, and was the average cost of the whole product
of the farm. Mr. Carroll D. Wright says that to-day 4,500,000 men, aided
by machinery, turn out a product that would require the labour of
40,000,000 men if produced by hand. Professor Herzog, of Austria, says
that 5,000,000 people with the machinery of to-day, employed at socially
useful labour, would be able to supply a population of 20,000,000 people
with all the necessaries and small luxuries of life by working 1.5 hours
per day.
This being so, matter being mastered, man's efficiency for food- and
shelter-getting being increased a thousandfold over the efficiency of the
caveman, then why is it that millions of modern men live more miserably
than lived the caveman? This is the question the revolutionist asks, and
he asks it of the managing class, the capitalist class. The capitalist
class does not answer it. The capitalist class cannot answer it.
If modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a thousandfold
greater than that of the caveman, why, then, are there 10,000,000 people
in the United States to-day who are not properly sheltered and properly
fed? If the child of the caveman did not have to work, why, then,
to-day, in the United States, are 80,000 children working out their lives
in the textile factories alone? If the child of the caveman did not have
to work, why, then, to-day, in the United States, are there 1,752,187
child-labourers?
It is a true count in the indictment. The capitalist class has
mismanaged, is to-day mismanaging. In New York City 50,000 children go
hungry to school, and in New York City there are 1,320 millionaires. The
point, however, is not that the mass of mankind is miserable because of
the wealth the capitalist class has taken to itself. Far from it. The
point really is that the mass of mankind is miserable, not for want of
the wealth taken by the capitalist class, _but for want of the wealth
that was never created_. This wealth was never created because the
capitalist class managed too wastefully and irrationally. The capitalist
class, blind and greedy, grasping madly, has not only not made the best
of its management, but made the worst of it. It is a management
prodigiously wasteful. This point cannot be emphasized too strongly.
In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the
caveman, and that modern man's food- and shelter-getting efficiency is a
thousandfold greater than the caveman's, no other solution is possible
than that the management is prodigiously wasteful.
With the natural resources of the world, the machinery already invented,
a rational organization of production and distribution, and an equally
rational elimination of waste, the able-bodied workers would not have to
labour more than two or three hours per day to feed everybody, clothe
everybody, house everybody, educate everybody, and give a fair measure of
little luxuries to everybody. There would be no more material want and
wretchedness, no more children toiling out their lives, no more men and
women and babes living like beasts and dying like beasts. Not only would
matter be mastered, but the machine would be mastered. In such a day
incentive would be finer and nobler than the incentive of to-day, which
is the incentive of the stomach. No man, woman, or child, would be
impelled to action by an empty stomach. On the contrary, they would be
impelled to action as a child in a spelling match is impelled to action,
as boys and girls at games, as scientists formulating law, as inventors
applying law, as artists and sculptors painting canvases and shaping
clay, as poets and statesmen serving humanity by singing and by
statecraft. The spiritual, intellectual, and artistic uplift consequent
upon such a condition of society would be tremendous. All the human
world would surge upward in a mighty wave.
This was the opportunity vouchsafed the capitalist class. Less blindness
on its part, less greediness, and a rational management, were all that
was necessary. A wonderful era was possible for the human race. But the
capitalist class failed. It made a shambles of civilization. Nor can
the capitalist class plead not guilty. It knew of the opportunity. Its
wise men told of the opportunity, its scholars and its scientists told it
of the opportunity. All that they said is there to-day in the books,
just so much damning evidence against it. It would not listen. It was
too greedy. It rose up (as it rises up to-day), shamelessly, in our
legislative halls, and declared that profits were impossible without the
toil of children and babes. It lulled its conscience to sleep with
prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities, and allowed the suffering
and misery of mankind to continue and to increase, in short, the
capitalist class failed to take advantage of the opportunity.
But the opportunity is still here. The capitalist class has been tried
and found wanting. Remains the working-class to see what it can do with
the opportunity. "But the working-class is incapable," says the
capitalist class. "What do you know about it?" the working-class
replies. "Because you have failed is no reason that we shall fail.
Furthermore, we are going to have a try at it, anyway. Seven millions of
us say so. And what have you to say to that?"
And what can the capitalist class say? Grant the incapacity of the
working-class. Grant that the indictment and the argument of the
revolutionists are all wrong. The 7,000,000 revolutionists remain.
Their existence is a fact. Their belief in their capacity, and in their
indictment and their argument, is a fact. Their constant growth is a
fact. Their intention to destroy present-day society is a fact, as is
also their intention to take possession of the world with all its wealth
and machinery and governments. Moreover, it is a fact that the
working-class is vastly larger than the capitalist class.
The revolution is a revolution of the working-class. How can the
capitalist class, in the minority, stem this tide of revolution? What
has it to offer? What does it offer? Employers' associations,
injunctions, civil suits for plundering of the treasuries of the
labour-unions, clamour and combination for the open shop, bitter and
shameless opposition to the eight-hour day, strong efforts to defeat all
reform, child-labour bills, graft in every municipal council, strong
lobbies and bribery in every legislature for the purchase of capitalist
legislation, bayonets, machine-guns, policemen's clubs, professional
strike-breakers and armed Pinkertons--these are the things the capitalist
class is dumping in front of the tide of revolution, as though, forsooth,
to hold it back.
The capitalist class is as blind to-day to the menace of the revolution
as it was blind in the past to its own God-given opportunity. It cannot
see how precarious is its position, cannot comprehend the power and the
portent of the revolution. It goes on its placid way, prattling sweet
ideals and dear moralities, and scrambling sordidly for material
benefits.
No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the revolution
that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-day. Instead
of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of life by conciliation
and by removal of some of the harsher oppressions of the working-class,
it antagonizes the working-class, drives the working-class into
revolution. Every broken strike in recent years, every legally plundered
trades-union treasury, every closed shop made into an open shop, has
driven the members of the working-class directly hurt over to socialism
by hundreds and thousands. Show a working-man that his union fails, and
he becomes a revolutionist. Break a strike with an injunction or
bankrupt a union with a civil suit, and the working-men hurt thereby
listen to the siren song of the socialist and are lost for ever to the
_political capitalist_ parties.
Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the
capitalist class offers. It is true, it offers some few antiquated
notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no longer
efficacious. Fourth-of-July liberty in terms of the Declaration of
Independence and of the French Encyclopaedists is scarcely apposite
to-day. It does not appeal to the working-man who has had his head
broken by a policeman's club, his union treasury bankrupted by a court
decision, or his job taken away from him by a labour-saving invention.
Nor does the Constitution of the United States appear so glorious and
constitutional to the working-man who has experienced a bull-pen or been
unconstitutionally deported from Colorado. Nor are this particular
working-man's hurt feelings soothed by reading in the newspapers that
both the bull-pen and the deportation were pre-eminently just, legal, and
constitutional. "To hell, then, with the Constitution!" says he, and
another revolutionist has been made--by the capitalist class.
In short, so blind is the capitalist class that it does nothing to
lengthen its lease of life, while it does everything to shorten it. The
capitalist class offers nothing that is clean, noble, and alive. The
revolutionists offer everything that is clean, noble, and alive. They
offer service, unselfishness, sacrifice, martyrdom--the things that sting
awake the imagination of the people, touching their hearts with the
fervour that arises out of the impulse toward good and which is
essentially religious in its nature.
But the revolutionists blow hot and blow cold. They offer facts and
statistics, economics and scientific arguments. If the working-man be
merely selfish, the revolutionists show him, mathematically demonstrate
to him, that his condition will be bettered by the revolution. If the
working-man be the higher type, moved by impulses toward right conduct,
if he have soul and spirit, the revolutionists offer him the things of
the soul and the spirit, the tremendous things that cannot be measured by
dollars and cents, nor be held down by dollars and cents. The
revolutionist cries out upon wrong and injustice, and preaches
righteousness. And, most potent of all, he sings the eternal song of
human freedom--a song of all lands and all tongues and all time.
Few members of the capitalist class see the revolution. Most of them are
too ignorant, and many are too afraid to see it. It is the same old
story of every perishing ruling class in the world's history. Fat with
power and possession, drunken with success, and made soft by surfeit and
by cessation of struggle, they are like the drones clustered about the
honey vats when the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund
existence.
President Roosevelt vaguely sees the revolution, is frightened by it, and
recoils from seeing it. As he says: "Above all, we need to remember that
any kind of class animosity in the political world is, if possible, even
more wicked, even more destructive to national welfare, than sectional,
race, or religious animosity."
Class animosity in the political world, President Roosevelt maintains, is
wicked. But class animosity in the political world is the preachment of
the revolutionists. "Let the class wars in the industrial world
continue," they say, "but extend the class war to the political world."
As their leader, Eugene V. Debs says: "So far as this struggle is
concerned, there is no good capitalist and no bad working-man. Every
capitalist is your enemy and every working-man is your friend."
Here is class animosity in the political world with a vengeance. And
here is revolution. In 1888 there were only 2,000 revolutionists of this
type in the United States; in 1900 there were 127,000 revolutionists; in
1904, 435,000 revolutionists. Wickedness of the President Roosevelt
definition evidently flourishes and increases in the United States.
Quite so, for it is the revolution that flourishes and increases.
Here and there a member of the capitalist class catches a clear glimpse
of the revolution, and raises a warning cry. But his class does not
heed. President Eliot of Harvard raised such a cry:
"I am forced to believe there is a present danger of socialism never
before so imminent in America in so dangerous a form, because never
before imminent in so well organized a form. The danger lies in the
obtaining control of the trades-unions by the socialists." And the
capitalist employers, instead of giving heed to the warnings, are
perfecting their strike-breaking organization and combining more strongly
than ever for a general assault upon that dearest of all things to the
trades-unions--the closed shop. In so far as this assault succeeds, by
just that much will the capitalist class shorten its lease of life. It
is the old, old story, over again and over again. The drunken drones
still cluster greedily about the honey vats.
Possibly one of the most amusing spectacles of to-day is the attitude of
the American press toward the revolution. It is also a pathetic
spectacle. It compels the onlooker to be aware of a distinct loss of
pride in his species. Dogmatic utterance from the mouth of ignorance may
make gods laugh, but it should make men weep. And the American editors
(in the general instance) are so impressive about it! The old
"divide-up," "men-are-_not_-born-free-and-equal," propositions are
enunciated gravely and sagely, as things white-hot and new from the forge
of human wisdom. Their feeble vapourings show no more than a schoolboy's
comprehension of the nature of the revolution. Parasites themselves on
the capitalist class, serving the capitalist class by moulding public
opinion, they, too, cluster drunkenly about the honey vats.
Of course, this is true only of the large majority of American editors.
To say that it is true of all of them would be to cast too great obloquy
upon the human race. Also, it would be untrue, for here and there an
occasional editor does see clearly--and in his case, ruled by
stomach-incentive, is usually afraid to say what he thinks about it. So
far as the science and the sociology of the revolution are concerned, the
average editor is a generation or so behind the facts. He is
intellectually slothful, accepts no facts until they are accepted by the
majority, and prides himself upon his conservatism. He is an instinctive
optimist, prone to believe that what ought to be, is. The revolutionist
gave this up long ago, and believes not that what ought to be, is, but
what is, is, and that it may not be what it ought to be at all.
Now and then, rubbing his eyes, vigorously, an editor catches a sudden
glimpse of the revolution and breaks out in naive volubility, as, for
instance, the one who wrote the following in the _Chicago Chronicle_:
"American socialists are revolutionists. They know that they are
revolutionists. It is high time that other people should appreciate the
fact." A white-hot, brand-new discovery, and he proceeded to shout it
out from the housetops that we, forsooth, were revolutionists. Why, it
is just what we have been doing all these years--shouting it out from the
housetops that we are revolutionists, and stop us who can.
The time should be past for the mental attitude: "Revolution is
atrocious. Sir, there is no revolution." Likewise should the time be
past for that other familiar attitude: "Socialism is slavery. Sir, it
will never be." It is no longer a question of dialectics, theories, and
dreams. There is no question about it. The revolution is a fact. It is
here now. Seven million revolutionists, organized, working day and
night, are preaching the revolution--that passionate gospel, the
Brotherhood of Man. Not only is it a cold-blooded economic propaganda,
but it is in essence a religious propaganda with a fervour in it of Paul
and Christ. The capitalist class has been indicted. It has failed in
its management and its management is to be taken away from it. Seven
million men of the working-class say that they are going to get the rest
of the working-class to join with them and take the management away. The
revolution is here, now. Stop it who can.
SACRAMENTO RIVER.
_March_ 1905.