Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/171

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VIOLENCE
159

derstood, are rigidly and expressly excluded. Anything which protects the present order is for that reason "wrong." Acts which lead to its undoing are therefore "right." They have a most winning candor in stating their case. Rarely is there any taint of the purposed obscurity over alarming proposals which one sometimes finds among more sophisticated Socialists. Mr. Ettor, who is on the Executive Board of the I. W. W., puts it first in general terms but jovially and without concealment: We also hear it said that our efforts are dangerous. Yes, gentle reader, our ideas, our principles and object are certainly dangerous and menacing, applied by a united working class would shake society and certainly those who are now on top sumptuously feeding upon the good things they have not produced would feel the shock. To talk of peace between capital and labor is "stupid or knavish."

It is as if a Christian asked for peace with sin. Judges, attorneys, preachers and politicians are one and all the paid lackeys of capitalism:—the "kept-crew" hiding "under the silk skirts of Mesdames 'Law and Order,'"—"as desperate and brutal a crew as ever scuttled a ship or quartered a man." With this new classification of sinners, the way is plain. Under these shifting, fugitive terms "right and wrong," the appeal must be to power, "cold, unsentimental power." In further words of Mr. Ettor from the standpoint of accepted law, morals, religion, etc., the capitalists are considered right and justified in their control and ownership of industries and exploitation of labor because they have the means to hire, and have organized a gang that skulks under the name of "Law, Order and