_Revolt_
The struggle to do away with injustice; the battle-cries of the
new army which is gathering for the deliverance of humanity.
A Man's a Man for a' That
BY ROBERT BURNS
(Scotland's most popular poet, 1759-1796)
Is there, for honest poverty,
That hangs his head, and a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by,
We daur be puir, for a' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Our toils obscure and a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp--
The man's the gowd for a' that.
What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin-grey and a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine--
A man's a man for a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
Their tinsel show and a' that,
The honest man, though e'er sae puir,
Is king o' men for a' that.
Ye see yon birkie, ca'ed a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a' that;
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,
His riband, star, and a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks and laughs at a' that.
A king can make a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, and a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, and a' that,
Their dignities and a' that,
The pith o' sense and pride o' worth
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that)
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that--
It's coming yet, for a' that,
When man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that.
BY THOMAS JEFFERSON
(President of the United States and author of the Declaration
of Independence, 1743-1826)
All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The
general spread of the light of science has already laid open to
every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not
been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted
and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of
God.
A Vindication of Natural Society
BY EDMUND BURKE
(British statesman and orator, 1729-1797; defended the American
colonies in Parliament during the Revolutionary War)
Ask of politicians the ends for which laws were originally
designed, and they will answer that the laws were designed as a
protection for the poor and weak, against the oppression of the
rich and powerful. But surely no pretence can be so ridiculous;
a man might as well tell me he has taken off my load, because
he has changed the burden. If the poor man is not able to
support his suit according to the vexatious and expensive
manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as
great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in
a state of nature?...
The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor,
and it is no less obvious that the number of the former bear a
great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business
of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury
of the rich, and that of the rich, in return, is to find the
best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the
burdens of the poor. In a state of nature it is an invariable
law that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labors.
In a state of artificial society it is a law as constant and
invariable that those who labor most enjoy the fewest things,
and that those who labor not at all have the greatest number
of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and
ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when
we are told it which we actually see before our eyes every day
without being in the least surprised. I suppose that there
are in Great Britain upwards of an hundred thousand people
employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal mines; these
unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they are
buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe
and dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered
from it; they subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of
fare; they have their health miserably impaired, and their
lives cut short, by being perpetually confined in the close
vapors of these malignant minerals. An hundred thousand more at
least are tortured without remission by the suffocating smoke,
intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and
managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us
that two hundred thousand innocent persons were condemned to so
intolerable slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers,
and how great would be our just indignation against those who
inflicted so cruel and ignominious a punishment! This is an
instance--I could not wish a stronger--of the numberless things
which we pass by in their common dress, yet which shock us when
they are nakedly represented....
In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and
those too but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race
of mankind drudge through life. It may be urged, perhaps,
in palliation of this, that at least the rich few find a
considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of the
many. But is this so in fact?...
The poor by their excessive labor, and the rich by their
enormous luxury, are set upon a level, and rendered equally
ignorant of any knowledge which might conduce to their
happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil society!
The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel
oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life
bringing worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could
possibly inflict on those below them.
The Antiquity of Freedom
BY WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT
(American poet and editor, 1794-1878; author of "Thanatopsis")
O freedom! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crowned his slave
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from heaven.
Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon deep,
And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,
Have forged thy chain; yet, while he deems thee bound,
The links are shivered, and the prison walls
Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.
BY LORD BYRON
(English poet of liberty, 1788-1824; died while taking part in
the war for the liberation of Greece)
Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?
By their right arms the conquest must be wrought?
Concerning Moderation
BY LAFCADIO HEARN
(A writer of Irish and Greek parentage, 1850-1904; became a
lecturer on English in the University of Tokio. Japan's ablest
interpreter to the western world)
Permit me to say something in opposition to a very famous and
very popular Latin proverb--In medio tutissimus ibis--"Thou
wilt go most safely by taking the middle course." In speaking
of two distinct tendencies in literature, you might expect me
to say that the aim of the student should be to avoid extremes,
and to try not to be either too conservative or too liberal.
But I should certainly never give any such advice. On the
contrary, I think that the proverb above quoted is one of the
most mischievous, one of the most pernicious, one of the most
foolish, that ever was invented in the world. I believe very
strongly in extremes--in violent extremes; and I am quite
sure that all progress in this world, whether literary, or
scientific, or religious, or political, or social, has been
obtained only with the assistance of extremes. But remember
that I say, "With the assistance,"--I do not mean that
extremes alone accomplish the aim: there must be antagonism,
but there must also be conservatism. What I mean by finding
fault with the proverb is simply this--that it is very bad
advice for a young man. To give a young man such advice is
very much like telling him not to do his best, but only to do
half of his best--or, in other words, to be half-hearted in
his undertaking.... It is not the old men who ever prove great
reformers: they are too cautious, too wise. Reforms are made by
the vigor and courage and the self-sacrifice and the emotional
conviction of young men, who did not know enough to be afraid,
and who feel much more deeply than they think. Indeed great
reforms are not accomplished by reasoning, but by feeling.
[Illustration: OUTBREAK
KÄTHE KOLLWITZ
(_Contemporary German etching; from the "Peasant-cycle"_)]
[Illustration: THE LIBERATRESS
THÉOPHILE ALEXANDRE STEINLEN
(_French illustrator, born 1859_)]
The First Issue of "The Liberator"
(_January 1, 1831_)
BY WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON
(America's most ardent anti-slavery agitator, 1805-1879.
The following pronouncement marked the beginning of the
anti-slavery campaign)
I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but
is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as Truth,
and as uncompromising as Justice. On this subject I do not
wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No!
Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm;
tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the
ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the fire into which it has fallen--but urge me not to use
moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest--I will
not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single
inch--and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough
to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the
resurrection of the dead.
Working and Taking
(_From the Lincoln-Douglas debates, 1858_)
BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN
That is the real issue that will continue in this country when
these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles, right
and wrong, throughout the world. They are the two principles
that have stood face to face from the beginning of time. The
one is the common right of humanity, the other the divine
right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it
develops itself. It is the same spirit that says "you toil and
work and earn bread and I'll eat it."
Address to President Lincoln
BY THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION
(_Drafted by Karl Marx_)
When an oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders, for
the first time in the annals of the world, dared to inscribe
"Slavery" on the banner of armed revolt; when on the very spot
where hardly a century ago the idea of one great democratic
republic had first sprung up, whence the first declaration of
the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to
the European revolution of the eighteenth century, when on that
very spot the counter-revolution cynically proclaimed property
in man to be "the corner-stone of the new edifice"--then
the working classes of Europe understood at once that the
slaveholders' rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general
holy war of property against labor; and that for the men
of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past
conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the
other side of the Atlantic.
Boston Hymn
BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
(American essayist, philosopher and poet. The two stanzas following,
which may be said to sum up the revolutionary view of the subject of
"confiscation," are taken from a poem read in Boston on Emancipation
day, January 1, 1863)
Today unbind the captive,
So only are ye unbound;
Lift up a people from the dust,
Trump of their rescue, sound!
Pay ransom to the owner
And fill the bag to the brim.
Who is the owner? The slave is owner,
And ever was. Pay him.
Battle Hymn of the Chinese Revolution (1912)
(_From the Chinese_)
Freedom, one of the greatest blessings of Heaven,
United to Peace, thou wilt work on this earth ten thousand
wonderful new things.
Grave as a spirit, great as a giant rising to the very skies,
With the clouds for a chariot and the wind for a steed,
Come, come to reign over the earth!
For the sake of the black hell of our slavery,
Come, enlighten us with a ray of thy sun!...
In this century we are working to open a new age.
In this century, with one voice, all virile men
Are calling for a new making of heaven and earth.
Hin-Yun, our ancestor, guide us!
Spirit of Freedom, come and protect us!
The Revolution
BY RICHARD WAGNER
(It is not generally recalled that the composer of the world's
greatest music-dramas, 1813-1883, was an active revolutionist, who
took part in street fighting in the German Revolution of 1848, and
escaped a long imprisonment only by flight. The following is from his
contributions to the Dresden _Volksblätter_)
I am the secret of perpetual youth, the everlasting creator of
life; where I am not, death rages. I am the comfort, the hope,
the dream of the oppressed. I destroy what exists; but from the
rock whereon I light new life begins to flow. I come to you
to break all chains which bear you down; to free you from the
embrace of death, and instill a new life into your veins. All
that exists must perish; that is the eternal condition of life,
and I the all-destroying fulfil that law to create a fresh, new
existence. I will renovate to the very foundations the order of
things in which you live, for it is the offspring of sin, whose
blossom is misery and whose fruit is crime. The grain is ripe,
and I am the reaper. I will dissipate every delusion which
has mastery over the human race. I will destroy the authority
of the one over the many; of the lifeless over the living;
of the material over the spiritual. I will break into pieces
the authority of the great; of the law of property. Let the
will of each be master of mankind, one's own strength be one's
one property, for the freeman is the sacred man, and there is
nothing sublimer than he....
I will destroy the existing order of things which divides one
humanity into hostile peoples, into strong and weak, into
privileged and outlawed, into rich and poor; for that makes
unfortunate creatures of one and all. I will destroy the order
of things which makes millions the slaves of the few, and
those few the slaves of their own power, of their own wealth.
I will destroy the order of things which severs enjoyment from
labor, which turns labor into a burden and enjoyment into a
vice, which makes one man miserable through want and another
miserable through super-abundance. I will destroy the order of
things which consumes the vigor of manhood in the service of
the dead, of inert matter, which sustains one part of mankind
in idleness or useless activity, which forces thousands to
devote their sturdy youth to the indolent pursuits of soldiery,
officialism, speculation and usury, and the maintenance of
such like despicable conditions, while the other half, by
excessive exertion and sacrifice of all the enjoyment of life,
bears the burden of the whole infamous structure. I will
destroy even the very memory and trace of this delirious order
of things which, pieced together out of force, falsehood,
trouble, tears, sorrow, suffering, need, deceit, hypocrisy and
crime, is shut up in its own reeking atmosphere, and never
receives a breath of pure air, to which no ray of pure joy ever
penetrates....
Arise, then, ye people of the earth, arise, ye sorrow-stricken
and oppressed. Ye, also, who vainly struggle to clothe the
inner desolation of your hearts, with the transient glory of
riches, arise! Come and follow in my track with the joyful
crowd, for I know not how to make distinction between those
who follow me. There are but two peoples from henceforth on
earth--the one which follows me, and the one which resists me.
The one I will lead to happiness, but the other I will crush
in my progress. For I am the Revolution, I am the new creating
force. I am the divinity which discerns all life, which
embraces, revives, and rewards.
Cry of the People
BY JOHN G. NEIHARDT
(Western poet and novelist, born 1881)
Tremble before your chattels,
Lords of the scheme of things!
Fighters of all earth's battles,
Ours is the might of kings!
Guided by seers and sages,
The world's heart-beat for a drum,
Snapping the chains of ages,
Out of the night we come!
Lend us no ear that pities!
Offer no almoner's hand!
Alms for the builders of cities!
When will you understand?
Down with your pride of birth
And your golden gods of trade!
A man is worth to his mother, Earth,
All that a man has made!
We are the workers and makers!
We are no longer dumb!
Tremble, O Shirkers and Takers!
Sweeping the earth--we come!
Ranked in the world-wide dawn,
Marching into the day!
_The night is gone and the sword is drawn
And the scabbard is thrown away!_
Woman's Right
(_From "Woman and Labor"_)
BY OLIVE SCHREINER
(South African novelist, born 1859. In the preface to this book one
learns that it is only a faint sketch from memory of part of a great
work, the manuscript of which was destroyed during the Boer war)
Thrown into strict logical form, our demand is this: We do not
ask that the wheels of time should reverse themselves, or the
stream of life flow backward. We do not ask that our ancient
spinning-wheels be again resuscitated and placed in our hands;
we do not demand that our old grindstones and hoes be returned
to us, or that man should again betake himself entirely to
his ancient province of war and the chase, leaving to us all
domestic and civil labor. We do not even demand that society
shall immediately so reconstruct itself that every woman may be
again a childbearer (deep and overmastering as lies the hunger
for motherhood in every virile woman's heart!); neither do we
demand that the children we bear shall again be put exclusively
into our hands to train. This, we know, cannot be. The past
material conditions of life have gone for ever; no will of man
can recall them. But _this_ is our demand: We demand that,
in that strange new world that is arising alike upon the man
and the woman, where nothing is as it was, and all things are
assuming new shapes and relations, that in this new world we
also shall have our share of honored and socially useful human
toil, our full half of the labor of the Children of Woman. We
demand nothing more than this, and will take nothing less.
_This is our_ "WOMAN'S RIGHT!"
Ladies in Rebellion
BY ABIGAIL ADAMS
(Wife of one president of the United States, and mother of
another. From a letter to her husband written in 1774, during
the session of the first Continental Congress)
I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And in
the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for
you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies, and be
more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.... If
particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are
determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves
bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.
A Doll's House
BY HENRIK IBSEN
(Norwegian dramatist, 1828-1906. A play which may be called the
source of the modern Feminist movement. In the following scene
a young wife announces her revolt)
NORA:--While I was at home with father, he used to tell me his
opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others, I
concealed them, because he wouldn't have liked it. He used to
call me his doll-child, and played with me as I played with my
dolls. Then I came to live in your house--
HELMER:--What an expression to use about our marriage!
NORA (_undisturbed_):--I mean I passed from father's hands into
yours. You settled everything according to your taste; and I
got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to--I don't know
which--both ways, perhaps. When I look back on it now, I seem
to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I
lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have
it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It is your
fault that my life has been wasted.
HELMER:--Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you are.
Haven't you been happy here?
NORA:--No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to
me. But your house has been nothing but a play-room. Here I
have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa's
doll-child. And the children, in their turn, have been my
dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as
the children did when I played with them. That has been our
marriage, Torvald.... And that is why I am now leaving you!
HELMER (_jumping up_):--What--do you mean to say--
NORA:--I must stand quite alone, to know myself and my
surroundings; so I can't stay with you.
HELMER:--Nora! Nora!
NORA:--I am going at once. Christina will take me for tonight.
HELMER:--You are mad! I shall not allow it. I forbid it.
NORA:--It is no use your forbidding me anything now. I shall
take with me what belongs to me. From you I will accept
nothing, either now or afterwards....
HELMER:--To forsake your home, your husband, and your children!
You don't consider what the world will say.
NORA:--I can pay no heed to that. I only know what I must do.
HELMER:--It is exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest
duties in this world?
NORA:--What do you call my holiest duties?
HELMER:--Do you ask me that? Your duties to your husband and
your children.
NORA:--I have other duties equally sacred.
HELMER:--Impossible! What duties do you mean?
NORA:--My duties towards myself.
HELMER:--Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
NORA:--That I no longer believe. I think that before all else I
am a human being, just as much as you are--or at least I will
try to become one.
A Girl Strike-Leader
BY FLORENCE KIPER FRANK
(American poetess, born 1886)
A white-faced, stubborn little thing
Whose years are not quite twenty years,
Eyes steely now and done with tears,
Mouth scornful of its suffering--
The young mouth!--body virginal
Beneath the cheap, ill-fitting suit,
A bearing quaintly resolute,
A flowering hat, satirical.
A soul that steps to the sound of the fife
And banners waving red to war,
Mystical, knowing scarce wherefore--
A Joan in a modern strife.
Comrade Yetta[A]
[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.
BY ALBERT EDWARDS
(The story of an East Side sweat-shop worker who becomes
a strike-leader. The present scene describes a meeting in
Carnegie Hall)
Yetta stood there alone, the blood mounting to her cheeks,
looking more and more like an orchid, and waited for the storm
to pass.
"I'm not going to talk about this strike," she said when she
could make herself heard. "It's over. I want to tell you about
the next one--and the next. I wish very much I could make you
understand about the strikes that are coming....
"Perhaps there's some of you never thought much about strikes
till now. Well. There's been strikes all the time. I don't
believe there's ever been a year when there wasn't dozens here
in New York. When we began, the skirt-finishers was out. They
lost their strike. They went hungry just the way we did, but
nobody helped them. And they're worse now than ever. There
ain't no difference between one strike and another. Perhaps
they are striking for more pay or recognition or closed shops.
But the next strike'll be just like ours. It'll be people
fighting so they won't be so much slaves like they was before.
"The Chairman said perhaps I'd tell you about my experience.
There ain't nothing to tell except everybody has been awful
kind to me. It's fine to have people so kind to me. But I'd
rather if they'd try to understand what this strike business
means to all of us workers--this strike we've won and the ones
that are coming....
"I come out of the workhouse today, and they tell me a lady
wants to give me money to study, she wants to have me go to
college like I was a rich girl. It's very kind. I want to
study. I ain't been to school none since I was fifteen. I
guess I can't even talk English very good. I'd like to go to
college. And I used to see pictures in the papers of beautiful
rich women, and of course it would be fine to have clothes like
that. But being in a strike, seeing all the people suffer,
seeing all the cruelty--it makes things look different.
"The Chairman told you something out of the Christian Bible.
Well, we Jews have got a story too--perhaps it's in your
Bible--about Moses and his people in Egypt. He'd been brought
up by a rich Egyptian lady--a princess--just like he was her
son. But as long as he tried to be an Egyptian he wasn't no
good. And God spoke to him one day out of a bush on fire. I
don't remember just the words of the story, but God said:
'Moses, you're a Jew. You ain't got no business with the
Egyptians. Take off those fine clothes and go back to your own
people and help them escape from bondage.' Well. Of course, I
ain't like Moses, and God has never talked to me. But it seems
to me sort of as if--during this strike--I'd seen a BLAZING
BUSH. Anyhow I've seen my people in bondage. And I don't want
to go to college and be a lady. I guess the kind princess
couldn't understand why Moses wanted to be a poor Jew instead
of a rich Egyptian. But if you can understand, if you can
understand why I'm going to stay with my own people, you'll
understand all I've been trying to say.
"We're a people in bondage. There's lots of people who's kind
to us. I guess the princess wasn't the only Egyptian lady that
was kind to the Jews. But kindness ain't what people want who
are in bondage. Kindness won't never make us free. And God
don't send any more prophets nowadays. We've got to escape all
by ourselves. And when you read in the papers that there's a
strike--it don't matter whether it's street-car conductors or
lace-makers, whether it's Eyetalians or Polacks or Jews or
Americans, whether it's here or in Chicago--it's my People--the
People in Bondage who are starting out for the Promised Land."
She stopped a moment, and a strange look came over her face--a
look of communication with some distant spirit. When she spoke
again, her words were unintelligible to most of the audience.
Some of the Jewish vest-makers understood. And the Rev. Dunham
Denning, who was a famous scholar, understood. But even those
who did not were held spellbound by the swinging sonorous
cadence. She stopped abruptly.
"It's Hebrew," she explained. "It's what my father taught me
when I was a little girl. It's about the Promised Land--I can't
say it in good English--I----"
"Unless I've forgotten my Hebrew," the Reverend Chairman said,
stepping forward, "Miss Rayefsky has been repeating God's words
to Moses as recorded in the third chapter of Exodus. I think
it's the seventh verse:--
"'And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my
people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason
of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;
"'And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the
Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land unto a good
land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.'"
"Yes. That's it," Yetta said. "Well, that's what strikes mean.
We're fighting for the old promises."
"New" Women
BY OLIVE SCHREINER
(See page 240)
We are not new! If you would understand us, go back two
thousand years, and study our descent; our breed is our
explanation. We are the daughters of our fathers as well as our
mothers. In our dreams we still hear the clash of the shields
of our forebears, as they struck them together before battle
and raised the shout of "Freedom!" In our dreams it is with us
still, and when we wake it breaks from our own lips. We are the
daughters of these men.
Bread and Roses
BY JAMES OPPENHEIM
(In a parade of the strikers of Lawrence, Mass., some young
girls carried a banner inscribed, "We want Bread, and Roses
too!")
As we come marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill-lofts gray
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing, "Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."
As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men--
For they are women's children and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes--
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread, but give us Roses!
As we come marching, marching, unnumbered women dead
Go crying through our singing their ancient song of Bread;
Small art and love and beauty their drudging spirits knew--
Yes, it is bread we fight for--but we fight for Roses, too.
As we come marching, marching, we bring the Greater Days--
The rising of the women means the rising of the race--
No more the drudge and idler--ten that toil where one reposes--
But a sharing of life's glories: Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses!
The Great Strike[A]
[A] By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.
(_From "Happy Humanity"_)
BY FREDERIK VAN EEDEN
(The Dutch physician, poet and novelist has here told for
American readers a personal experience in the labor struggles
of his own country)
About forty of us were sent as delegates to different towns to
lead and encourage the strikers there. The password was given
and a date and hour secretly appointed. On Monday morning, the
sixth of April, 1903, no train was to run on any railway in the
Netherlands.
Sunday evening I set out, as one of the forty delegates, on the
warpath. I took leave of my family, filled a suitcase with
pamphlets and fly-leaves, and arrived in the middle of the
night at the little town of Amersfoort, an important railway
junction, to bring my message from headquarters that a strike
would be declared that night in the whole country. Expecting
the Government to be very active and energetic and not unlikely
to arrest me, I took an assumed name, and was dressed like a
laborer....
I stayed a week in that little town, living in the houses of
the strikers, sharing their meals and their hours of suspense
and anxiety. There was a dark, dingy meeting-room where they
all preferred to gather, rather than stay at home. The women
also regularly attended these meetings, sometimes bringing
their children, and they all sought the comfort of being in
company, talking of hopes and fears, cheering each other up
by songs, and trying to raise each other's spirits during the
long days of inaction. I addressed them, three or four times
a day, trying to give them sound notions on social conditions
and preparing them for the defeat which I soon knew to be
inevitable. I may say, however, that, though I was of all the
forty delegates the least hopeful of ultimate success, my
little party was the last to surrender and showed the smallest
percentage of fugitives.
I saw in those days of strife that of the two contending
parties, the stronger, the victorious one, was by far the
least sympathetic in its moral attitude and methods. The
strikers were pathetically stupid and ignorant about the
strength of their opponents and their own weakness. If they had
unexpectedly gained a complete victory they would have been
utterly unable to use it. If the political power had shifted
from the hands of the Government to those of the leading staff
of that general strike, the result would have been a terrible
confusion. There was no mind strong enough, no hand firm
enough among them to rule and reorganize that mass of workers,
unaccustomed to freedom, untrained to self-control, unable to
work without severe authority and discipline. Yet the feelings
and motives of that multitude were fair and just--they showed
a chivalry, a generosity, an idealism and an enthusiasm with
which the low methods of their powerful opponents contrasted
painfully.
Every striker had to fight his own fight at home. Every evening
he had to face the worn and anxious face of his wife, the sight
of his children in danger of starvation and misery. He had to
notice the hidden tears of the woman, or to answer her doubts
and reproaches, with a mind itself far from confident. He had
to fight in his own heart the egotistical inclination to save
himself and give up what he felt to be his best sentiment,
solidarity, the faith towards his comrades.
I believe no feeling man of the leisure class could have gone
through a week in those surroundings and taken part in a
struggle like this without acquiring a different conception of
the ethics of socialism and class war.
For on the other side there were the Government, the companies,
the defendants of existing order, powerful by their wealth,
by their routine, by their experience, and supported by the
servility of the great public and the army. They had not to
face any real danger (the strikers showed no inclination to
deeds of violence), and the arms they used were intimidation
and bribery. The only thing for them to do was to demoralize
the striker, to make him an egoist, a coward, a traitor to his
comrades. And this was done quietly and successfully.
Demoralizing the enemy may be the lawful object of every
war--the unavoidable evil to prevent a greater wrong; yet in
this case, where the method of corruption could be used only
on one side, it showed the ugly character of the conflict.
This was no fair battle with common moral rules of chivalry
and generosity; it was a pitiful and hopeless struggle between
a weak slave and a strong usurper, between an ill-treated,
revolting child and a brutal oppressor, who cared only for the
restoration of his authority, not for the morals of the child.
What Meaneth a Tyrant, and how he Useth his Power in a Kingdom
When he hath Obtained it
(_From "Las Siete Partidas"_)
BY ALFONSO THE WISE
(A Spanish king of great learning; 1226-1284)
A tyrant doth signify a cruel lord, who, by force or by craft,
or by treachery, hath obtained power over any realm or country;
and such men be of such nature, that when once they have grown
strong in the land, they love rather to work their own profit,
though it be to the harm of the land, than the common profit of
all, for they always live in an ill fear of losing it. And that
they may be able to fulfil this their purpose unencumbered,
the wise of old have said that they use their power against
the people in three manners. The first is, that they strive
that those under their mastery be ever ignorant and timorous,
because, when they be such, they may not be bold to rise
against them, nor to resist their wills; and the second is,
that their victims be not kindly and united among themselves,
in such wise that they trust not one another, for while they
live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse
against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be
kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive
to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings,
which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm
that it may never come into their hearts to devise anything
against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever
striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise;
and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their
land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do
trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to
foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the
land, who serve from oppression.
An Open Letter to the Employers
BY "A.E." (GEORGE W. RUSSELL)
(This remarkable piece of eloquence, published in the Dublin _Times_
at the time of the great strike of 1913, is said to have completely
revolutionized public opinion on the question. The author, born
1867, is one of Ireland's greatest poets, and an ardent advocate of
agricultural co-operation)
Sirs:--I address this warning to you, the aristocracy of
industry in this city, because, like all aristocracies, you
tend to grow blind in long authority, and to be unaware that
you and your class and its every action are being considered
and judged day by day by those who have power to shake or
overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in
poverty today is making our industrial civilization stir like a
quaking bog. You do not seem to realize that your assumption
that you are answerable to yourselves alone for your actions in
the industries you control is one that becomes less and less
tolerable in a world so crowded with necessitous life. Some of
you have helped Irish farmers to upset a landed aristocracy
in the island, an aristocracy richer and more powerful in its
sphere than you are in yours, with its roots deep in history.
They, too, as a class, though not all of them, were scornful
or neglectful of the workers in the industry by which they
profited; and to many who knew them in their pride of place and
thought them all-powerful they are already becoming a memory,
the good disappearing with the bad. If they had done their duty
by those from whose labor came their wealth, they might have
continued unquestioned in power and prestige for centuries to
come. The relation of landlord and tenant is not an ideal one,
but any relations in a social order will endure if there is
infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which
qualifies life for immortality. Despotisms endure while they
are benevolent, and aristocracies while "_noblesse oblige_" is
not a phrase to be referred to with a cynical smile. Even an
oligarchy might be permanent if the spirit of human kindness,
which harmonizes all things otherwise incompatible, were
present....
Those who have economic power have civic power also, yet you
have not used the power that was yours to right what was wrong
in the evil administration of this city. You have allowed
the poor to be herded together so that one thinks of certain
places in Dublin as of a pestilence. There are twenty thousand
rooms, in each of which live entire families, and sometimes
more, where no functions of the body can be concealed, and
delicacy and modesty are creatures that are stifled ere they
are born. The obvious duty of you in regard to these things
you might have left undone, and it be imputed to ignorance or
forgetfulness; but your collective and conscious action as a
class in the present labor dispute has revealed you to the
world in so malign an aspect that the mirror must be held up to
you, so that you may see yourself as every humane person sees
you.
The conception of yourselves as altogether virtuous and wronged
is, I assure you, not at all the one which onlookers hold of
you.... The representatives of labor unions in Great Britain
met you, and you made of them a preposterous, an impossible
demand, and because they would not accede to it you closed
the Conference; you refused to meet them further; you assumed
that no other guarantees than those you asked were possible,
and you determined deliberately, in cold anger, to starve out
one-third of the population of this city, to break the manhood
of the men by the sight of the suffering of their wives and the
hunger of their children. We read in the Dark Ages of the rack
and thumbscrew. But these iniquities were hidden and concealed
from the knowledge of men in dungeons and torture-chambers.
Even in the Dark Ages humanity could not endure the sight of
such suffering, and it learnt of such misuse of power by slow
degrees, through rumor, and when it was certain it razed its
Bastilles to their foundations. It remained for the twentieth
century and the capital city of Ireland to see an oligarchy of
four hundred masters deciding openly upon starving one hundred
thousand people, and refusing to consider any solution except
that fixed by their pride. You, masters, asked men to do that
which masters of labor in any other city in these islands had
not dared to do. You insolently demanded of these men who were
members of a trade union that they should resign from that
union; and from those who were not members you insisted on a
vow that they would never join it.
Your insolence and ignorance of the rights conceded to workers
universally in the modern world were incredible, and as great
as your inhumanity. If you had between you collectively a
portion of human soul as large as a three-penny bit, you would
have sat night and day with the representatives of labor,
trying this or that solution of the trouble, mindful of the
women and children, who at least were innocent of wrong against
you. But no! You reminded labor you could always have your
three square meals a day while it went hungry. You went into
conference again with representatives of the State, because,
dull as you are, you knew public opinion would not stand your
holding out. You chose as your spokesman the bitterest tongue
that ever wagged in this island, and then, when an award was
made by men who have an experience in industrial matters a
thousand times transcending yours, who have settled disputes
in industries so great that the sum of your petty enterprises
would not equal them, you withdraw again, and will not agree
to accept their solution, and fall back again on your devilish
policy of starvation. Cry aloud to Heaven for new souls! The
souls you have got cast upon the screen of publicity appear
like the horrid and writhing creatures enlarged from the insect
world, and revealed to us by the cinematograph.
You may succeed in your policy and ensure your own damnation by
your victory. The men whose manhood you have broken will loathe
you, and will always be brooding and scheming to strike a fresh
blow. The children will be taught to curse you. The infant
being molded in the womb will have breathed into its starved
body the vitality of hate. It is not they--it is you who are
blind Samsons pulling down the pillars of the social order.
You are sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry.
There was autocracy in political life, and it was superseded
by democracy. So surely will democratic power wrest from you
the control of industry. The fate of you, the aristocracy of
industry, will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land if
you do not show that you have some humanity still among you.
Humanity abhors, above all things, a vacuum in itself, and your
class will be cut off from humanity as the surgeon cuts the
cancer and alien growth from the body. Be warned ere it is too
late.
God and the Strong Ones
BY MARGARET WIDDEMER
(Contemporary American poet)
"We have made them fools and weak!" said the Strong Ones:
"We have bound them, they are dumb and deaf and blind;
We have crushed them in our hands like a heap of crumbling sands,
We have left them naught to seek or find:
They are quiet at our feet!" said the Strong Ones;
"We have made them one with wood and stone and clod;
Serf and laborer and woman, they are less than wise or human!----"
_"I shall raise the weak!" saith God._
"They are stirring in the dark!" said the Strong Ones,
"They are struggling, who were moveless like the dead;
We can hear them cry and strain hand and foot against the chain,
We can hear their heavy upward tread....
What if they are restless?" said the Strong Ones;
"What if they have stirred beneath the rod?
Fools and weak and blinded men, we can tread them down again----"
_"Shall ye conquer Me?" saith God._
"They will trample us and bind!" said the Strong Ones;
"We are crushed beneath the blackened feet and hands;
All the strong and fair and great they will crush from out the state;
They will whelm it with the weight of pressing sands--
They are maddened and are blind!" said the Strong Ones;
"Black decay has come where they have trod;
They will break the world in twain if their hands are on the rein--"
_"What is that to me?" saith God._
_"Ye have made them in their strength, who were Strong Ones,
Ye have only taught the blackness ye have known:
These are evil men and blind?--Ay, but molded to your mind!
How shall ye cry out against your own?
Ye have held the light and beauty I have given
Far above the muddied ways where they must plod:
Ye have builded this your lord with the lash and with the sword--
Reap what ye have sown!" saith God._
The Weavers
BY GERHART HAUPTMANN
(German dramatist and poet, born 1862. The present play is a wonderful
picture of the lives of the weavers of Silesia, driven to revolt by
starvation. Moritz, a soldier, has just come home to his friends)
ANSORGE:--Come, then, Moritz, tell us your opinion, you that's
been out and seen the world. Are things at all like improving
for us weavers, eh?
MORITZ:--They would need to.
ANSORGE:--We're in an awful state here. It's not livin' an'
it's not dyin'. A man fights to the bitter end, but he's bound
to be beat at last--to be left without a roof over his head,
you may say without ground under his feet. As long as he can
work at the loom he can earn some sort o' poor, miserable
livin'. But it's many a day since I've been able to get that
sort o' job. Now I tries to put a bite into my mouth with this
here basket-makin'. I sits at it late into the night, and by
the time I tumbles into bed I've earned twelve pfennig. I put
it to you if a man can live on that, when everything's so dear?
Nine marks goes in one lump for house tax, three marks for land
tax, nine marks for mortgage interest--that makes twenty-one
marks. I may reckon my year's earnin's at just double that
money, and that leaves me twenty-one marks for a whole year's
food, an' fire, an' clothes, an' shoes; and I've got to keep
up some sort of place to live in. Is it any wonder that I'm
behind-hand with my interest payments?
OLD BAUMERT:--Some one would need to go to Berlin an' tell the
King how hard put to it we are.
MORITZ:--Little good that would do, Father Baumert. There's
been plenty written about it in the newspapers. But the rich
people, they can turn and twist things round--as cunning as the
devil himself.
OLD BAUMERT (_shaking his head_):--To think they've no more
sense than that in Berlin!
ANSORGE:--And is it really true, Moritz? Is there no law to
help us? If a man hasn't been able to scrape together enough to
pay his mortgage interest, though he's worked the very skin off
his hands, must his house be taken from him? The peasant that's
lent the money on it, he wants his rights--what else can you
look for from him? But what's to be the end of it all, I don't
know.--If I'm put out o' the house.... (_In a voice choked by
tears._) I was born here, and here my father sat at his loom
for more than forty years. Many was the time he said to mother:
Mother, when I'm gone, the house'll still be here. I've worked
hard for it. Every nail means a night's weaving, every plank a
year's dry bread. A man would think that....
MORITZ:--They're quite fit to take the last bite out of your
mouth--that's what they are.
ANSORGE:--Well, well, well! I would rather be carried out
than have to walk out now in my old days. Who minds dyin'? My
father, he was glad to die. At the very end he got frightened,
but I crept into bed beside him, an' he quieted down again. I
was a lad of thirteen then. I was tired and fell asleep beside
him--I knew no better--and when I woke he was quite cold....
(_They eat the food which the soldier has brought, but the old
man Baumert is too far exhausted to retain it, and has to run
from the room. He comes back crying with rage._)
BAUMERT:--It's no good! I'm too far gone! Now that I've at
last got hold of somethin' with a taste in it, my stomach won't
keep it. (_He sits down on the bench by the stove crying._)
MORITZ (_with a sudden violent ebullition of rage_):--And
yet there are people not far from here, justices they call
themselves too, over-fed brutes, that have nothing to do all
the year round but invent new ways of wasting their time. And
these people say that the weavers would be quite well off if
only they weren't so lazy.
ANSORGE:--The men as say that are no men at all, they're
monsters.
MORITZ:--Never mind, Father Ansorge; we're making the place
hot for 'em. Becker and I have been and given Dreissiger (_the
master_) a piece of our mind, and before we came away we sang
him "Bloody Justice."
ANSORGE:--Good Lord! Is that the song?
MORITZ:--Yes; I have it here.
ANSORGE:--They call it Dreissiger's song, don't they?
MORITZ:--I'll read it to you.
MOTHER BAUMERT:--Who wrote it?
MORITZ:--That's what nobody knows. Now listen. (_He reads,
hesitating like a schoolboy, with incorrect accentuation, but
unmistakably strong feeling. Despair, suffering, rage, hatred,
thirst for revenge, all find utterance._)
The justice to us weavers dealt
Is bloody, cruel, and hateful;
Our life's one torture, long drawn out:
For lynch law we'd be grateful.
Stretched on the rack day after day,
Hearts sick and bodies aching,
Our heavy sighs their witness bear
To spirit slowly breaking.
(_The words of the song make a strong impression on Old
Baumert. Deeply agitated, he struggles against the temptation
to interrupt Moritz. At last he can keep quiet no longer._)
OLD BAUMERT (_to his wife, half laughing, half crying,
stammering_):--"Stretched on the rack day after day." Whoever
wrote that, mother, knew the truth. You can bear witness ...
eh, how does it go? "Our heavy sighs their witness bear" ...
what's the rest?
MORITZ:--"To spirit slowly breaking."
OLD BAUMERT:--You know the way we sigh, mother, day and night,
sleepin' an' wakin'.
(_Ansorge has stopped working, and cowers on the floor,
strongly agitated. Mother Baumert and Bertha wipe their eyes
frequently during the course of the reading._)
MORITZ (_continues to read_):--
The Dreissigers true hangmen are,
Servants no whit behind them;
Masters and men with one accord
Set on the poor to grind them.
You villains all, you brood of hell----
OLD BAUMERT (_trembling with rage, stamping on the
floor_):--Yes, brood of hell!!!
MORITZ (_reads_):--
You fiends in fashion human,
A curse will fall on all like you,
Who prey on man and woman.
ANSORGE:--Yes, yes, a curse upon them!
OLD BAUMERT (_clenching his fist, threateningly_):--You prey on
man and woman.
MORITZ (_reads_):--
Then think of all our woe and want,
O ye who hear this ditty!
Our struggle vain for daily bread
Hard hearts would move to pity.
But pity's what you've never known,--
You'd take both skin and clothing,
You cannibals, whose cruel deeds
Fill all good men with loathing.
OLD BAUMERT (_jumps up, beside himself with excitement_):--Both
skin and clothing. It's true, it's all true! Here I stand,
Robert Baumert, master-weaver of Kaschbach. Who can bring up
anything against me?... I've been an honest, hard-working man
all my life long, an' look at me now! What have I to show for
it? Look at me! See what they've made of me! Stretched on the
rack day after day. (_He holds out his arms._) Feel that! Skin
and bone! "You villains all, you brood of hell!!" (_He sinks
down on a chair, weeping with rage and despair._)
ANSORGE (_flings his basket from him into a corner, rises, his
whole body trembling with rage, gasps_):--And the time's come
now for a change, I say. We'll stand it no longer! We'll stand
it no longer! Come what may!
Alton Locke's Song: 1848
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY
(See pages 78, 84, 223)
Weep, weep, weep and weep
For pauper, dolt and slave!
Hark! from wasted moor and fen
Feverous alley, stifling den,
Swells the wail of Saxon men--
Work! or the grave!
Down, down, down and down,
With idler, knave, and tyrant!
Why for sluggards cark and moil?
He that will not live by toil
Has no right on English soil!
God's word's our warrant!
Up, up, up and up!
Face your game and play it!
The night is past, behold the sun!
The idols fall, the lie is done!
The Judge is set, the doom begun!
Who shall stay it?
BY G. BERNARD SHAW
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter
with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the Rich is
Uselessness.
BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL
(American lawyer and lecturer, 1883-1899)
Whoever produces anything by weary labor, does not need a
revelation from heaven to teach him that he has a right to the
thing produced.
Labor
(A parody upon a poem by Rudyard Kipling; author unknown. The
poem is frequently, but incorrectly, attributed to Mr. Kipling)
We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us still unfed,
Tho' there's never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest,
And you lie on crimson wool;
For if blood be the price of all your wealth
Good God, we ha' paid in full!
There's never a mine blown skyward now
But we're buried alive for you;
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew;
Go reckon our dead by the forges red,
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth
Good God, we ha' paid it in!
We have fed you all for a thousand years,
For that was our doom, you know,
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike of a week ago.
You ha' eaten our lives and our babies and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share;
But, if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God, we ha' bought it fair!
The Two "Reigns of Terror"
(_From "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"_)
(America's favorite humorist, 1837-1910)
There were two "Reigns of Terror," if we would but remember it
and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the
other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the
other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon
ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but
our shudders are all for the "horrors" of the minor Terror,
the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror
of swift death by the axe, compared with life-long death from
hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? What is swift
death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the
stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by
that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught
to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly
contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror--that
unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been
taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
(Quoted by special permission of Harper & Brothers.)
In Trafalgar Square
(_From "Songs of the Army of the Night"_)
BY FRANCIS W. L. ADAMS
(See page 219)
The stars shone faint through the smoky blue;
The church-bells were ringing;
Three girls, arms laced, were passing through,
Tramping and singing.
Their heads were bare; their short skirts swung
As they went along;
Their scarf-covered breasts heaved up, as they sung
Their defiant song.
It was not too clean, their feminine lay,
But it thrilled me quite
With its challenge to task-master villainous day
And infamous night,
With its threat to the robber rich, the proud,
The respectable free.
And I laughed and shouted to them aloud,
And they shouted to me!
"_Girls, that's the shout, the shout we will utter
When, with rifles and spades,
We stand, with the old Red Flag aflutter,
On the barricades!_"
The Orator on the Barricade
(_From "Les Miserables"_)
BY VICTOR HUGO
(See page 182)
Friends, the hour in which we live, and in which I speak to
you, is a gloomy hour, but of such is the terrible price of
the future. A revolution is a toll-gate. Oh! the human race
shall be delivered, uplifted and consoled! We affirm it on this
barricade. Whence shall arise the shout of love, if it be not
from the summit of sacrifice? O my brothers, here is the place
of junction between those who think and those who suffer; this
barricade is made neither of paving-stones, nor of timbers,
nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a
mound of sorrows. Misery here encounters the ideal. Here day
embraces night, and says: I will die with thee and thou shalt
be born again with me. From the pressure of all desolations
faith gushes forth. Sufferings bring their agony here, and
ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are
to mingle and compose our death. Brothers, he who dies here
dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a grave
illumined by the dawn.
Europe: The 72nd and 73rd Years of These States
BY WALT WHITMAN
(The European revolutions of 1848-49)
Suddenly out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le'pt forth half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags, its hands tight to the
throats of kings.
O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots' lives!
O many a sicken'd heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.
And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his
simplicity the poor man's wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laugh'd
at in the breaking,
Then in their power, not for all these, did the blows strike
revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorn'd the ferocity of kings.
But the sweetness of mercy brew'd bitter destruction, and the
frighten'd monarchs come back;
Each comes in state, with his train--hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.
Yet behind all, lowering, stealing--lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminable, head, front, and form,
in scarlet folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this--the red robes, lifted by the arm,
One finger, crook'd, pointed high over the top, like the head
of a snake appears.
Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves--bloody corpses of
young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes
are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits--and they are good.
Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets--those hearts pierc'd
by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with
unslaughter'd vitality.
They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death--they were taught and exalted.
Not a grave of the murder'd for freedom, but grows seed for
freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the
snows nourish.
Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering,
counselling, cautioning.
Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.
Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready--be not weary of watching;
He will return soon--his messengers come anon.
The Dead to the Living
BY FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
(German revolutionary poet, 1810-1876. Part of a poem written after
the uprising of 1848, in Berlin, when the people marched past the
palace-gates with their slain, and compelled the king to stand upon
the balcony and take off his hat to the bodies)
With bullets through and through our breast--our forehead split
with pike and spear,
So bear us onward shoulder high, laid dead upon a blood-stained bier;
Yea, shoulder-high above the crowd, that on the man that bade us die,
Our dreadful death-distorted face may be a bitter curse for aye;
That he may see it day and night, or when he wakes, or when he sleeps,
Or when he opes his holy book, or when with wine high revel keeps;
That always each disfeatured face, each gaping wound his sight
may sear,
And brood above his bed of death, and curdle all his blood with fear!
Free Speech
BY SIR LESLIE STEPHEN
(English essayist and critic, 1832-1904)
I, for one, am fully prepared to listen to any arguments
for the propriety of theft or murder, or if it be possible,
of immorality in the abstract. No doctrine, however well
established, should be protected from discussion. If, as a
matter of fact, any appreciable number of persons are so
inclined to advocate murder on principle, I should wish them to
state their opinions openly and fearlessly, because I should
think that the shortest way of exploding the principle and of
ascertaining the true causes of such a perversion of moral
sentiment. Such a state of things implies the existence of
evils which cannot be really cured till their cause is known,
and the shortest way to discover the cause is to give a hearing
to the alleged reasons.
BY WENDELL PHILLIPS
(American anti-slavery agitator, 1811-1884)
If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it
crack.
The Mask of Anarchy
BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(English poet of nature and human liberty, 1792-1822, whose
whole life was a cry for beauty and freedom. He died in obloquy
and neglect, and today is known as "the Poets' Poet")
Men of England, Heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty mother,
Hopes of her, and one another!
Rise, like lions after slumber,
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew,
Which in sleep had fall'n on you.
Ye are many, they are few.
What is Freedom! Ye can tell
That which Slavery is too well,
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.
'Tis to work, and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell:
So that ye for them are made,
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade;
With or without your own will, bent
To their defence and nourishment.
'Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak:--
They are dying whilst I speak.
'Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye.
'Tis to be a slave in soul,
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.
Real Liberty
BY HENRIK IBSEN
(See page 241)
Away with the State! I will take part in that revolution.
Undermine the whole conception of a state, declare free choice
and spiritual kinship to be the only all-important conditions
of any union, and you will have the commencement of a liberty
that is worth something.
Christmas in Prison
(_From "The Jungle"_)
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
(See pages 43, 143, 194)
In the distance there was a church-tower bell that tolled the
hours one by one. When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying
upon the floor with his head in his arms, listening. Instead
of falling silent at the end, the bell broke out into a sudden
clangor. Jurgis raised his head; what could that mean--a fire?
God! suppose there were to be a fire in this jail! But then he
made out a melody in the ringing; there were chimes. And they
seemed to waken the city--all around, far and near, there were
bells, ringing wild music; for fully a minute Jurgis lay lost
in wonder, before, all at once, the meaning of it broke over
him--that this was Christmas Eve!
Christmas Eve--he had forgotten it entirely! There was a
breaking of flood-gates, a whirl of new memories and new
griefs rushing into his mind. In far Lithuania they had
celebrated Christmas; and it came to him as if it had been
yesterday--himself a little child, with his lost brother and
his dead father in the cabin in the deep black forest, where
the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the
world. It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania, but
it was not too far for peace and good-will to men, for the
wonder-bearing vision of the Christ-child.
But no, their bells were not ringing for him--their Christmas
was not meant for him, they were simply not counting him at
all. He was of no consequence, like a bit of trash, the carcass
of some animal. It was horrible, horrible! His wife might be
dying, his baby might be starving, his whole family might be
perishing in the cold--and all the while they were ringing
their Christmas chimes! And the bitter mockery of it--all this
was punishment for him! They put him in a place where the snow
could not beat in, where the cold could not eat through his
bones; they brought him food and drink--why, in the name of
heaven, if they must punish him, did they not put his family in
jail and leave him outside--why could they find no better way
to punish him than to leave three weak women and six helpless
children to starve and freeze?
That was their law, that was their justice! Jurgis stood
upright, trembling with passion, his hands clenched and his
arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance.
Ten thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice--it
was a lie, a sham and a loathsome mockery. There was no
justice, there was no right, anywhere in it--it was only
force, it was tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and
unrestrained!
These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them
was the beginning of his rebellion, of his outlawry and his
unbelief. He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its
far sources--he could not say it was the thing men have called
"the system" that was crushing him to the earth; that it was
the packers, his masters, who had bought up the law of the
land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the seat
of justice. He only knew that he was wronged, and that the
world had wronged him; that the law, that society, with all its
powers, had declared itself his foe. And every hour his soul
grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of
defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.
Robbers and Governments
BY LEO TOLSTOY
(See pages 88, 110, 148)
The robber generally plundered the rich, the governments
generally plunder the poor and protect those rich who assist in
their crimes. The robber doing his work risked his life, while
the governments risk nothing, but base their whole activity
on lies and deception. The robber did not compel anyone to
join his band, the governments generally enrol their soldiers
by force.... The robber did not intentionally vitiate people,
but the governments, to accomplish their ends, vitiate whole
generations from childhood to manhood with false religions and
patriotic instruction.
"Gunmen" in Israel
(_From "A Sociological Study of the Bible"_)
BY LOUIS WALLIS
We saw that the great revolt under David was put down by the
assistance of mercenary troops, or hired "strong men," and
that by their aid Solomon was elevated to the throne against
the wishes of the peasantry. In the Hebrew text, these men of
power are called _gibborim_. They were among the principal
tools used by the kings in maintaining the government. It was
the _gibborim_ who garrisoned the royal strongholds that held
the country in awe. In cases where the peasants refused to
submit, bands of _gibborim_ were sent out by the kings and the
great nobles. Through them the peasantry were "civilized";
and through them, apparently, the Amorite law was enforced in
opposition to the old justice.
Hence the prophets were very bitter against these tools of the
ruling class. Hosea writes: "Thou didst trust in thy way, in
the multitude of thy _gibborim_; therefore shall a tumult arise
against thy people; and all thy fortresses shall be destroyed."
Amos, the shepherd, says that when Jehovah shall punish the
land, the _gibborim_ shall fall: "Flight shall perish from the
swift ... neither shall the _gibbor_ deliver himself; neither
shall he stand that handeth the bow; and he that is swift of
foot shall not deliver himself; ... and he that is courageous
among the _gibborim_ shall flee away naked in that day, saith
Jehovah."
"Gunmen" in West Virginia
("_When the Leaves Come Out_")
BY A PAINT CREEK MINER
(Written during the terrible strike of 1911-12)
The hills are very bare and cold and lonely;
I wonder what the future months will bring.
The strike is on--our strength would win, if only--
O, Buddy, how I'm longing for the spring!
They've got us down--their martial lines enfold us;
They've thrown us out to feel the winter's sting,
And yet, by God, those curs can never hold us,
Nor could the dogs of hell do such a thing!
It isn't just to see the hills beside me
Grow fresh and green with every growing thing;
I only want the leaves to come and hide me,
To cover up my vengeful wandering.
I will not watch the floating clouds that hover
Above the birds that warble on the wing;
I want to use this GUN from under cover--
O, Buddy, how I'm longing for the spring!
You see them there, below, the damned scab-herders!
Those puppets on the greedy Owners' String;
We'll make them pay for all their dirty murders--
We'll show them how a starveling's hate can sting!
They riddled us with volley after volley;
We heard their speeding bullets zip and ring,
But soon we'll make them suffer for their folly--
O, Buddy, how I'm longing for the spring!
FROM ECCLESIASTES
Surely oppression maketh a wise man mad.
Political Violence
(From an Anarchist pamphlet published in London; author unknown)
Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the
possibility of better things makes the present misery more
intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic
struggles to improve their lot; and if these struggles only
result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation. In
our present society, for instance, an exploited wage worker,
who catches a glimpse of what life and work ought to be, finds
the toilsome routine and the squalor of his existence almost
intolerable; and even when he has the resolution and courage
to continue steadily working his best, and waiting until new
ideas have so permeated society as to pave the way for better
times, the mere fact that he has such ideas and tries to spread
them, brings him into difficulties with his employers. How
many thousands of Socialists, and above all Anarchists, have
lost work and even the chance of work, solely on the ground of
their opinions. It is only the specially gifted craftsman who,
if he be a zealous propagandist, can hope to retain permanent
employment. And what happens to a man with his brain working
actively with a ferment of new ideas, with a vision before
his eyes of a new hope dawning for toiling and agonizing men,
with the knowledge that his suffering and that of his fellows
in misery is not caused by the cruelty of fate, but by the
injustice of other human beings,--what happens to such a man
when he sees those dear to him starving, when he himself is
starved? Some natures in such a plight, and those by no means
the least social or the least sensitive, will become violent,
and will even feel that their violence is social and not
anti-social, that in striking when and how they can, they are
striking, not for themselves, but for human nature, outraged
and despoiled in their persons and in those of their fellow
sufferers. And are we, who ourselves are not in this horrible
predicament, to stand by and coldly condemn those piteous
victims of the Furies and Fates? Are we to decry as miscreants
these human beings who act with heroic self-devotion,
sacrificing their lives in protest, where less social and
less energetic natures would lie down and grovel in abject
submission to injustice and wrong? Are we to join the ignorant
and brutal outcry which stigmatizes such men as monsters of
wickedness, gratuitously running amuck in a harmonious and
innocently peaceful society? No! We hate murder with a hatred
that may seem absurdly exaggerated to apologists for Matabele
massacres, to callous acquiescers in hangings and bombardments;
but we decline in such cases of homicide, or attempted
homicide, as those of which we are treating, to be guilty of
the cruel injustice of flinging the whole responsibility of
the deed upon the immediate perpetrator. The guilt of these
homicides lies upon every man and woman who, intentionally or
by cold indifference, helps to keep up social conditions that
drive human beings to despair. The man who flings his whole
life into the attempt, at the cost of his own life, to protest
against the wrongs of his fellow-men, is a saint compared to
the active and passive upholders of cruelty and injustice, even
if his protest destroys other lives besides his own. Let him
who is without sin in society cast the first stone at such an
one.
The Bomb
BY FRANK HARRIS
(The English author, born 1855, author of "The Man Shakespeare," has
in this novel told the inside story of the Haymarket explosion in
Chicago in 1886. The following passage describes the treatment which
the strikers received from the police)
A meeting was called on a waste space in Packingtown, and
over a thousand workmen came together. I went there out of
curiosity. Lingg, I may say here, always went alone to these
strike meetings. Ida told me once that he suffered so much at
them that he could not bear to be seen, and perhaps that was
the explanation of his solitary ways. Fielden, the Englishman,
spoke first, and was cheered to the echo; the workmen knew
him as a working-man and liked him; besides, he talked in a
homely way, and was easy to understand. Spies spoke in German
and was cheered also. The meeting was perfectly orderly
when three hundred police tried to disperse it. The action
was ill-advised, to say the best of it, and tyrannical; the
strikers were hurting no one and interfering with no one.
Without warning or reason the police tried to push their way
through the crowd to the speakers; finding a sort of passive
resistance and not being able to overcome it, they used their
clubs savagely. One or two of the strikers, hot-headed, bared
their knives, and at once the police, led on by that madman,
Schaack, drew their revolvers and fired. It looked as if the
police had been waiting for the opportunity. Three strikers
were shot dead on the spot, and more than twenty were wounded,
several of them dangerously, before the mob drew sullenly away
from the horrible place. A leader, a word, and not one of the
police would have escaped alive; but the leader was not there,
and the word was not given, so the wrong was done, and went
unpunished.
I do not know how I reached my room that afternoon. The sight
of the dead men lying stark there in the snow had excited me to
madness. The picture of one man followed me like an obsession;
he was wounded to death, shot through the lungs; he lifted
himself up on his left hand and shook the right at the police,
crying in a sort of frenzy till the spouting blood choked him--
"Bestien! Bestien!" ("Beasts! Beasts!")
I can still see him wiping the blood-stained froth from his
lips; I went to help him; but all he could gasp was, "Weib!
Kinder! (Wife, children!)" Never shall I forget the despair in
his face. I supported him gently; again and again I wiped the
blood from his lips; every breath brought up a flood; his poor
eyes thanked me, though he could not speak, and soon his eyes
closed; flickered out, as one might say, and he lay there still
enough in his own blood; "murdered," as I said to myself when I
laid the poor body back; "murdered!"
(_As a result of this police action, the narrator goes to the
next meeting of the strikers with a bomb in his pocket._)
The crowd began to drift away at the edges. I was alone and
curiously watchful. I saw the mayor and the officials move
off towards the business part of the town. It looked for a
few minutes as if everything was going to pass over in peace;
but I was not relieved. I could hear my own heart beating,
and suddenly I felt something in the air; it was sentient
with expectancy. I slowly turned my head. I was on the very
outskirts of the crowd, and as I turned I saw that Bonfield
had marched out his police, and was minded to take his own way
with the meeting now that the mayor had left. I felt personal
antagonism stiffen my muscles.... It grew darker and darker
every moment. Suddenly there came a flash, and then a peal of
thunder. At the end of the flash, as it seemed to me, I saw
the white clubs falling, saw the police striking down the men
running along the sidewalk. At once my mind was made up. I put
my left hand on the outside of my trousers to hold the bomb
tight, and my right hand into the pocket, and drew the tape.
I heard a little rasp. I began to count slowly, "One, two,
three, four, five, six, seven;" as I got to seven the police
were quite close to me, bludgeoning every one furiously. Two or
three of the foremost had drawn their revolvers. The crowd were
flying in all directions. Suddenly there was a shot, and then
a dozen shots, all, it seemed to me, fired by the police. Rage
blazed in me.
I took the bomb out of my pocket, careless whether I was seen
or not, and looked for the right place to throw it; then I
hurled it over my shoulder high in the air, towards the middle
of the police, and at the same moment I stumbled forward, just
as if I had fallen, throwing myself on my hands and face, for
I had seen the spark. It seemed as if I had been on my hands
for an eternity, when I was crushed to the ground, and my ears
split with the roar. I scrambled to my feet again, gasping.
Men were thrown down in front of me, and were getting up on
their hands. I heard groans and cries, and shrieks behind me.
I turned around; as I turned a strong arm was thrust through
mine, and I heard Lingg say--
"Come, Rudolph, this way;" and he drew me to the sidewalk, and
we walked past where the police had been.
"Don't look," he whispered suddenly; "don't look."
But before he spoke I had looked, and what I saw will be before
my eyes till I die. The street was one shambles; in the very
center of it a great pit yawned, and round it men lying, or
pieces of men, in every direction, and close to me, near the
side-walk as I passed, a leg and foot torn off, and near by
two huge pieces of bleeding red meat, skewered together with a
thigh-bone. My soul sickened; my senses left me; but Lingg held
me up with superhuman strength, and drew me along.
"Hold yourself up, Rudolph," he whispered; "come on, man,"
and the next moment we had passed it all, and I clung to him,
trembling like a leaf. When we got to the end of the block I
realized that I was wet through from head to foot, as if I had
been plunged in cold water.
"I must stop," I gasped. "I cannot walk, Lingg."
"Nonsense," he said; "take a drink of this," and he thrust
a flask of brandy into my hand. The brandy I poured down my
throat set my heart beating again, allowed me to breathe, and I
walked on with him.
"How you are shaking," he said. "Strange, you neurotic people;
you do everything perfectly, splendidly, and then break down
like women. Come, I am not going to leave you; but for God's
sake throw off that shaken, white look. Drink some more."
I tried to; but the flask was empty. He put it back in his
pocket.
"Here is the bottle," he said. "I have brought enough; but we
must get to the depot."
We saw fire engines with police on them, galloping like madmen
in the direction whence we had come. The streets were crowded
with people, talking, gesticulating, like actors. Every one
seemed to know of the bomb already, and to be talking about it.
I noticed that even here, fully a block away, the pavement was
covered with pieces of glass; all the windows had been broken
by the explosion.
As we came in front of the depot, just before we passed into
the full glare of the arc-lamps, Lingg said--
"Let me look at you," and as he let go my arm, I almost fell;
my legs were like German sausages; they felt as if they had no
bones in them, and would bend in any direction; in spite of
every effort they would shake.
"Come, Rudolph," he said, "we'll stop and talk; but you must
come to yourself. Take another drink, and think of nothing. I
will save you; you are too good to lose. Come, dear friend,
don't let them crow over us."
My heart seemed to be in my mouth, but I swallowed it down. I
took another swig of brandy, and then a long drink of it. It
might have been water for all I tasted; but it seemed to do me
some little good. In a minute or so I had got hold of myself.
"I'm all right," I said; "what is there to do now?"
"Simply to go through the depot," he said, "as if there were
nothing the matter, and take the train."