X.

Whenever in Ireland there has been a revolt of labor it too often finds

arrayed against it the press, the law, and the police. All the great

powers are in entente. The press, without inquiry, begins a detestable

cant about labor agitators misleading ignorant men. Every wild phrase

uttered by an exasperated worker is quoted against the cause of labor,

and its grievances are suppressed. We are told nothing about how

the worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The

journalist holds up a moral umbrella, protecting society from the fiery

hail of conscience. The baser sort of clergyman will take up the parable

and begin advocating a servile peace, glibly misinterpreting the divine

teaching of love to prove that the lamb should lie down inside the lion,

and only so can it be saved soul and body, forgetful that the peace

which was Christ's gift to humanity was the peace of God which passes

all understanding, and that it was a spiritual quietude, and that on

earth--the underworld--the gospel in realization was to bring not peace

but a sword.

The law, assured of public opinion, then deals sternly with whatever

unfortunate life is driven into its pens. I am putting very mildly the

devilish reality, for society is so constituted that the public, kept in

ignorance of the real facts, believes that it is acting rightly, and so

the devil has conscience on his side and that divine power is turned

to infernal uses. What can labor oppose to this federation of State and

Church, of press and law, of capital and physical force to back capital,

when it sets about its own liberation and to institute a new social

order to replace autocracy in industry? Its allies are few. A rare

thinker, scientist, literary man, artist or clergyman, impelled by

hatred of what is ugly in life, will speak on its behalf, and may render

some aid and help to tear holes in that moral shield held up by the

press, and may here and there give to that blinded public a vision of

the Hosts of the Lord arrayed against it. But the only real power

the workers can truly rely on is their own. Nothing but a spiritual

revolution or an economic revolution will bring other classes into

comradeship with them. The ideal labor should set before itself is not

a transitory improvement in its wage, because a wage war never truly or

permanently improves the position of labor. This section or that may,

relatively to its own past or the position of other workers, improve

itself; but capital is like a ship which, however the tide rises or

falls, floats upon it, and is not sunken more deeply in the water at

high tide than at low tide. Whenever any burden is placed upon capital

it immediately sets about unloading that burden on the public. Wages

might be doubled by Act of Parliament, and the net result would be

to double prices, if not to increase them still more. The more the

autocrats of industry are federated the more easily can they unload on

others any burden placed on them.

The value of money is simply what it will purchase at any time. If

the rulers of industry can halve the purchasing power of money while

doubling wages at the command of the State, logic leads us to assume

that wages boards, arbitration boards and the like can only be

transitory in their meliorating effect; and to pursue the attack on the

autocrats of industry by the road of wages alone is to attack them where

they are impregnable, and where, seeming to give way, they are all the

while really losing nothing, and are only fixing the wage system more

permanently on those who attack them. There are fiery spirits among the

proletarians who hope that militant labor will at last bring about the

social revolution, taking the earthly paradise by violence. They believe

that if every worker dropped his tools and absolutely refused to work

under the old system, it would be impossible to continue it. That is

true, but those who advocate this policy slur over many difficulties,

and the relative power of endurance of both parties. They do not, I

think, take into account the immense power in the hands of those who

uphold the present system. Those who might be expected to strike are

not--at least in Ireland--a majority of the population. They would have

far fewer material resources to fall back on than those others whose

interests would lead them to preserve the present social order. It

is clear, too, when we analyze the forces at the command of labor

and capital, that the latter has attached to itself by the bonds of

self-interest the scientific men--engineers, inventors, chemists,

bacteriologists, designers, organizers, all the intellect of

industry--without which, in alliance with itself, revolting labor would

be unable to continue production as before. Labor so revolting might

indeed for a time bring the work of the nation to a standstill; but

unless it could by some means attract to itself men of the class

described, it would not be able to take the helm of the ship of industry

and guide it with knowledge as the holders of economic power have done

in the past. A policy of emancipation should provide labor with a

means of attracting to itself that kind of knowledge which is gained in

universities, laboratories, colleges of science, and, above all, in

the actual guidance of great industrial enterprises. In any trial of

endurance those who start with the greatest intellectual, moral, and

material resources will win.

I do not deny that the strike is a powerful weapon in the hand of labor,

but it is one with which it is difficult to imagine labor dealing a

knock-out blow to the present social order. I believe in an orderly

evolution of society, at least in Ireland, and doubt whether by

revolution people can be raised to an intelligence, a humanity, or a

nobility of nature greater than they formerly possessed. Nobody can

remain standing on tiptoe. After a little time disorder subsides and

some strong man leads the inevitable reaction. In France people revolted

against a decadent monarchy, and in a dozen years they had a new

emperor. In England they beheaded a king as a protest against tyranny,

and they got a dictator in his place who took little or no account of

parliaments; and finally a second Charles, rather worse than the first,

came to the throne. The everlasting battle between light and darkness

goes on stubbornly all the time, and the gain of the Hosts of Light is

inch by inch. Extraordinary efforts, impetuous charges, which seem

to win for a moment, too often leave the attacking force tired and

exhausted, and the forces of reaction set in and overwhelm them. I am

the friend of revolt if people cannot stand the conditions they live

under, and if they can see no other way. It is better to be men than

slaves. The French Revolution was a tragic episode in history, but

when people suffer intolerably and are insulted in their despair it is

inevitable blood will be shed. One can only say with Whitman:

Pale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?

Could I wish humanity different Could I wish the people made of wood and

stone, or that there be no justice in destiny or time?

There is danger in revolution if the revolutionary spirit is much more

advanced than the intellectual, and moral qualities which alone

can secure the success of a revolt. These intellectual and moral

qualities--the skill to organize, the wisdom to control large

undertakings, are not natural gifts but the results of experience. They

are evolutionary products. The emancipation of labor, I believe, will

not be gained by revolution but by prolonged effort, continued month by

month and year by year, in which first this thing is adventured, then

that: each enterprise brings its own gifts of wisdom and experience,

and there is no reaction, because, instead of the violent use of certain

powers, the whole being is braced: experience, intellect, desire, all

strong and working harmoniously, press forward and support each other,

and no enterprise is undertaken where the intellect to carry it out is

not present together with the desire. It requires great intellectual

and moral qualities to bring about a revolution. A rage at present

conditions is not enough.