Page:Shall Freedom Die.pdf/6

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4
SHALL FREEDOM DIE?

WHEN the true history of this decade shall be written in other and less troubled times; when facts now hidden come to light in details now rendered vague and obscure; truth will show that on some recent date, in a secluded office on Wall Street or luxurious parlor of some wealthy club on lower Manhattan, some score of America's kings of industry, captains of commerce and Kaisers of finance met in secret conclave and plotted the enslavement of millions of workers. Today details are obscured. The paper on which these lines are penciled is criss-crossed by the shadow of prison bars; my ears are be-set by the clang of steel doors, the jangle of fetters and the curses of jail guards. Truth, before it can speak, is strangled by power.

YET the big fact looms up, like a mountain above the morning mists; organized wealth has conspired to enslave Labor, and—in enforcing its will—it stops at nothing, not even midnight murders and wholesale slaughter. It has laughed at law, subverted popular government local, state and national, and spread a network of protected villiany from coast to coast.