Chapter II: Preface: Justice soothes

Justice heals the wounds and sores in the social body.

Justice strikes down all robbery—illegal and legal.

Justice calms.

Injustice stings.

Injustice burns, irritates—kills sociability and creates conflict.

Injustice prevents brotherhood.

Injustice is unsocial—anti-social—and is thus a social sore.

Injustice, organized injustice, is the soul of all _class_-labor forms of society.

The purpose of all class-labor forms of society is ROBBERY.

The robbed resist—sometimes.

The robbers are ready for resistance—always.

In all _class_-labor forms of society the ruling class always have:

FIRST, AN =ARMED= GUARD—READY:

ready to serve as tusk and fist of the robber ruling class,

ready to suppress protesting chattel-slaves,

ready to suppress protesting serfs,

ready to suppress protesting wage-earners,

ready to defend the class-labor system,

ready to extend the class-labor system,

ready to defy and defeat and hold down and kick the robbed working
class.

SECOND, AN =UNARMED= GUARD—composed of prideless purchasable human things, social chameleons, moral eunuchs, political flunkies—intellectual prostitutes—READY:

ready to make laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to interpret laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to execute laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to cunningly cajole and beguile the toil-cursed working class,

ready to cunningly teach meekness, humility and contentment—to the
working class,

ready to cunningly teach servility and obedience—to the working
class,

ready with grand words to cunningly dupe and chloroform—the working
class,

ready to bellow about “Law and Order” when the unemployed call
loudly for work or bread and when hungry strikers open their lips
in self-defense,

ready “for Jesus’ sake” (and a salary) to glorify war and scream to
the “God of Battles” (also the “God of Peace”) for victory; ready
to baptize wholesale murder and flatter the blood-stained
conquerors; ready to whine and mumble over the shell-torn corpses
of the victims and hypocritically sniffle and mouth consolatory
congratulations to the war-cursed widows and orphans—ready thus to
mock their own ruined victims—for a price; ready to preach—to the
workers—that they must fight like hell to “get a home in heaven.”

Many of my brothers—my betrayed younger brothers—are soldiers: they have been seduced to serve as Armed Guard. They have been deceived. And they are abused. Many of them are even driven insane. Insanity ranks _third_ in the long list of disablements for which our betrayed brothers are dismissed from the service. (Report of the Department of War, 1908, p. 21.) A whole carload of insane soldiers were shipped through Pittsburgh—home from the Philippines—December 11, 1909.

These men are indeed betrayed and abused—and ashamed. They even destroy themselves to hide their shame and escape abuse. TWENTY-SIX TIMES AS MANY enlisted men _committed suicide_ in 1908 as in 1907; AND THIRTY-NINE TIMES AS MANY of them committed suicide in 1909 as in 1907.[1]

More and more the boys in the Army are _disgusted_ with the whole vile business, but as the boys become increasingly sick of the service and would like to run away, the War Department more and more prepares to hold them _like rats in a trap_—just as the Secretary of War _boasted_ in his Report for 1908 (p. 19) that he _now_ finally had “an elaborate system ... almost perfected well calculated to secure swift and certain apprehension and punishment of deserters, and will ... have a marked effect in reducing the crime to a minimum.” Thus the boys are trapped and stung,—and some of them kill themselves.

The working class men _inside and outside the Army_ are confused.

They do not understand.

But they will understand.

AND WHEN THEY DO UNDERSTAND, their class loyalty and class pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast class strength and defend—THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make _demands_—unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club or bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures of the world they will shear the fatted parasites from the political and industrial body of society.

But these things they will not do and _can not_ do till they are _roused_—roused _because_ they understand.

Therefore, I “rise to a point of order”: The most important thing on the program in the politics of the world today is to rouse the working class to realize itself, to be conscious of itself, to see itself and also see distinctly the age-long conspiracy of the ruling class; the first thing is to rouse the working class to unite socially and unite industrially and unite politically and seize all the powers of government in all the world—for self-defense; the supreme business of the hour is to rouse the working class for the crowning victory in the evolution of mankind—for the industrial freedom of the working class, for the peace and the calm born of justice, for the beauty and the glory of the brotherhood of man.

This book is written to help instruct and rouse the working class; and if in some small measure this unpretentious book carries light to the brains of my younger brothers on the big steel battleships, in the barren gloomy barracks, and to my abused and cheated brothers (and sisters) in the mills and mines and on the farms—and thus helps _stir my class to a consciousness of their class and thus helps advance the demand for justice and the demand for a reconstructed, socialized society_, my reward will seem abundant.

GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK.

July 4, 1910.