_ "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. Tomorrow 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, $42.4l.
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 Hand
Hours Hours
Barley (100 bushels) 9 211
Corn (50 bushels shelled, stalks, husks and
blades cut into fodder) 34 228
Oats (160 bushels) 28 265
Wheat (50 bushels) 7 160
Loading ore (loading 100 tons iron ore on cars) 2 200
Unloading coal (transferring 200 tons from
canal-boats to bins 400 feet distant) 20 240
Pitchforks (50 pitchforks, 12-inch tines) 12 200
Plough (one landside plough, oak beams and
handles) 3 118
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. _