Chapter VII: Book V: Revolt (1)

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.

KÄTHE KOLLWITZ

(_Contemporary German etching; from the "Peasant-cycle"_)]

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.