Page:American Syndicalism (Brooks 1913).djvu/253

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SOME DUTIES OF OUR OWN
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we call it, has in some way to be brought nearer to the sources of economic security. The insistence that this should be done and the belief in its possibilities, if society will use the resources at its disposal, have now become a great and passionate faith. Every higher spiritual movement in the politics and religion of our time reflects this faith. It is a service so great and so difficult that no one who can help it is to be outlawed.

For example, we shall never take one enlightened step in reconstructing the futilities of present criminal procedure, until we learn to coöperate in a new spirit with those who have suffered inside the prison. No man on the outside is good enough or wise enough to "represent" them. They should have their own representatives to instruct and guide us by that experience which no outsider ever knows because he has not lived it.

As little do people, economically secure, know the life of the "fourth estate." Our pretence to know it makes our ignorance the more dangerous. These used and ignored masses should also have their own representatives. All attempts to prevent this are now too late. Very imperfectly, but with its own invincible reality, the syndicalist stirring in the world speaks for the weak and neglected many. This part of the message we must understand. We must "recognize" it, as those eager and willing to coöperate with every climbing desire to equalize opportunity in the world. In no other way shall we either teach ourselves or carry help to those who need it.

It can be most confidently set down, that with the whole list of social "remedies"—profit sharing, ar-