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possibility. This kind of agitation is what the organized Socialists of all countries—in the United States the "Socialistic Labor Party"—are actively engaged in.
Reporter: So you believe that in spite of the peaceable means you propose to employ, a violent revolution will come in the end?
Socialist: In order to best answer this question I will read to you what the "Socialistic Labor Party" of this country have said in a Manifesto, adopted at their congress convened at Baltimore in December, 1883":
"Organize; make use of the legal institutions of the land; do your utmost to send your own representatives, independent of the old corrupt parties, into the legislative bodies. Make the most of this opportunity to strengthen your organization and to propagate the doctrines you aim at. In one word, leave no practicable method untried, to strengthen yourselves and your cause, and to weaken your enemies. But perhaps you may ask, whether it is possible to accomplish your aims by these means, peaceably?
Fellow workmen! Look around and listen to the teachings of history. History shows, that the privileged classes have rarely, if ever, surrendered their privileges, without forcible compulsion. The history of our own country furnishes a striking example in the late rebellion. And when you look around, what do you see? You see everywhere the employer violate most brutally even the civil rights of the employed; you see, how they compel the workingman to give up his organizations, by threatening him with all the woes of hunger and misery; how they frequently try to sow bloody dissensions among the workingmen themselves, and oppose their just demands with force of arms; you see, furthermore, how in all these excesses, they are supported by a government, that to-day exists only in the interests of the ruling classes, by the police, and when necessary, by the military power. You know how these classes, well trained to all the tricks of political corruption, have always been skilful in the art of falsifying the alleged will of the people, expressed at the polls, and that they surely will employ these sorts of falsification all the more, the more dangerous to their interests the increasing organization of the workingmen becomes; under these conditions, we must expect that our enemies—when they see our power increase in a peaceful and legal way and our victory approaching—will, on their part—just as the slaveholders—become rebels,and that then the time will come for the cause of labor, when that old prime lever of all revolutions,—effective as long as mankind is still in a barbarous state—force must be applied in order to place the working masses in control of the state, which then for the first time, will be the representative, not of a few privileged classes, but of all society."
Reporter: Then you are aiming at bringing about a violent revolution notwithstanding?
