THE AGITATOR
THE MINER'S CHANT
The miner sings his doleful chant.
Harken! His last refrain slowly ebbs away as he decends 'neath the earth
In quest of hidden treasures.
Careworn brow, with bent form and muscle tense
He digs, digs, digs,
In rhythm with blow—a malediction!
"Cursed fate to have hunger as a mate—
Cursed fate to seek coal for drone's hearth to warm;
To seek gold and king's coffers fill;
To seek diamonds that fair hands adorn."
Dig, miner. There's no respite!
In somber depths, without hopes he lives,
And his despairing heart cannot sing;
Music in doom has no tuneful ring.
To satiate his master's greed
In the mine he find his grave.
Heed not his curses, heed not his tears;
Sterile hearts shall have their bloom.
Perchance, someday, his chant threatening will become,
And in tones mightier than the sea
His pent-up spirit of revolt shall have full sway, and then—
And then he'll seek the steel
To gain his freedom!
SYNDICALISM: A NEW FORCE IN HISTORY
Socialism was a monumental theory, before it entered the arena of practical politics with Internationale, Marx, the General Federation of German Workingmen and with Lasalle. It has its own world system and philosophy, it has its own ethics, esthetics, and eschatology, and endeavors to form a new frame for the existence of a man as an individual and a citizen.
Syndicalism has no other program than pure selfishness and it does not try to embellish it with any pretenses or make it appear beautiful by smooth words. It is individualistic in all its aims, which are to secure the well being of each of its members, but is socialistic in its methods. It has realized that isolated egotism has no chance of success and that, to force its way through, it must organize the masses. The subordination of the individual to an organization, in which each member cares only for himself regardless of what happens to all the others, seems a paradox, but it is simply modern—the employment of dynamic laws of modern societies. That the Association of Workers does not pretend to believe in even the ghost of an ideal is evident to the most simple minded observer, even to the one who is only slightly superior to the animal world.
A workingman need possess only the most rudimentary intelligence to be able to understand you when you say to him: "The welfare of the community means nothing to you, therefore, stop thinking of it, and devote all your efforts to further your own personal welfare, to get all you can possibly get your hands on. Get all the enjoyment you possibly can out of life, and do so with the least amount of work possible." "Syndicalism" also has a philosophy, as has indeed every movement of the masses; it is a shameless hedonism, but syndicalism teaches and realizes the philosophy of enjoyment as Moliere's M. Jourdani speaks prose—without knowing it.
"Aided by the Capitalists."
When the workers began to organize by trades, the bourgeoisie, who were masters of the law and had control of government and administration, did not understand what was going on. It favored this evolution, it granted the laborers the right to organize and unite, authorized the grouping of the unions into a national organization, placed labor exchanges at their disposal and helped the work financially. I do not blame the bourgeoisie for this. I do not want to say that it would have been able in the long run to refuse to grant the proletariat labor exchanges and subsidies. I only say that the bourgeoisie did not try to oppose syndicalism, because they did not understand what it meant or would eventually lead to.
Historical Comparisons.
What is especially alarming about syndicalism is that it appeared and suddenly manifested itself in the same manner as has done every new force in history. Whether we think of invasions of foreign conquerors, as when the Normans invaded England under William the Conqueror, or the Manchus invaded China, or of the time when the third estate in France overthrew the power of the clergy and nobility in France, the process has ever been the same. It has been the peasants, reckless and fully conscious of their power, who have descended upon those in possession, measured the force of resistance and taken from them what they were no longer able to defend.
It is a fight in which the one who is attacked has everything at stake and in which defeat means absolute annihilation to him, physically and morally. Those who make the attack are absolutely devoid of the inherited, almost sacred, respect for existing institutions, which is the most efficient bulwark of existing society. The most sacred symbols, formulas, rites and sentiments are ridiculed and recklessly thrown over by the assailants. They do not understand them and merely laugh at them. In Rome, they pull the beards of the senators sitting on their chairs of office, they invade the temple, of Appollo at Delphi, they upset the altars, break the statues of the gods and take possession of the treasuries; in Jerusalem they invade the most holy parts of the temple, to which only the High Priest had access; they gallop on horseback through the church of Sophia and tie their horses to the altars, like a roaring, overflowing torrent, they rush into the Tuileries and in their rags, dirty, unkempt, they seat themselves upon the golden throne of King Louis Philippe.
All old sense of value is upset and the new masters establish their own way of valuation according to their ideas. Thus, is the relation of syndicalism towards the State and Society as existing today.—Max Nordau.
THE HE CHICAGO MARTYRS
(A letter read at 24th Anniversary Meeting)
Hulda Potter Loomis and Comrades of the Chicago Open Forum:
As I stand on the majestic heights of A. D., 1911, and look down into the valley of the past I see nothing grander, more noble or inspiring than the lives and death of the men whose memory we honor today.
The thorny path of progress is strewn with the whited bones of the martyrs who have gone to their deaths for the truth that makes men free. It is to the martyrs we must bow for the progress the world has made. Without them human society would stagnate/ degenerate and die. Yet it is the history of mankind that every man or woman with a message of vital importance to the race has been persecuted, burned or hanged.
The Chicago Martyrs were no exception to this general rule. They were born ahead of their time, and because of that they died at the hands of an ignorant age incapable of understanding them. For it is as true today as it has been at any age in the past that the world fears what it cannot understand. The world is especially afraid of a new idea, and in its fear it strikes with the desperation of a coward.
The utter foolishness of attempting to suppress an idea by striking down the innocent messenger who conveys it to the world is quite apparent. It never occurs to the ignorant defenders of status quo that by hanging a man on the gallows they hang his ideas on the stars. And therein lies the grandour of ideas. They flourish under the lash of persecution, they rise to high heaven from the gallows. Anarchism in America dates from the Chicago tragedy, and its propaganda has been profoundly influenced by the judical murder of Nov, 11, 1887.
Our Martyred Comrades went to their deaths calmly triumphant in the knowledge that their ideas would not be buried with them, and as they had devoted their lives to the cause of human freedom—so they gladly died for it.
They loved Liberty more than life—Humanity more than self. They were not for themselves, they were for the race. The miseries of mankind were their miseries. Their sensitive natures felt the palsied hand of oppression when it touched a fellow being at the furtherest confines of the earth. The sorrows of the workers were their sorrows. They hungered with the hungry. They wept for the children torn from the play ground and thrust into the factories to grind out dollars to fill the gluttonous maw of mammon.
The nobility and heroism of their lives is an inspiration, a great poem that awakens our energies and fires us with hope and desires for the achievement of the ideal they died for.
The time is coming when Humanity will do full justice to their memory. When the slavery they heroically fought shall be abolished—when the earth shall be freed from the iron grip of the exploiters—when there shall be no longer slaves and masters—when all will be true workers, sharing alike in the fruits of their toil, and the pleasures and responsibilities of life in one grand brotherhood, their names will be emblazoned in letters of fire upon the dome of the Temple of Liberty.
FROM THE MAIL BAG.
Editor The Agitator—
Fellow Worker: Now that the little Agitator has done great work and enjoyed its first birthday, I must congratulate you and all who worked on it. Hope it will grow a great deal bigger and leave the press every day.
I only wish that I could do more, but you know what can a fellow do out of $11.00 a week, when eggs are 50 cents the dozen and butter 40 cents the pound. Yes, we I. W. W.'s are growing, and I tell you the truth no paper is more read and liked in our hall than the little Fighting Agitator.
Yours for Industrial Liberty,
San Diego, Calif.
Editor The Agitator—
Dear Comrade: I enclose $4.00—one for the renewal of my own subscription, and one subscription each for three of my friends.
I am sorry I cannot do more at present, but I shall always do my best to help that good capitalist fighter, The Agitator; because I find it a well written, intellectual paper that strikes straight at the root of this rotten system.
Yours for the cause of human kind,
Dalzill, Ill.
Editor The Agitator—
Fellow Worker: I have been instructed by Local 326 I. W. W. to send for one yearly subscription of The Agitator.
Kindly accept our appreciation for the work The Agitator Is doing.
Yours for Industrial Freedom,
Prince Rupert, B. C.
Editor The Agitator—
Fellow Worker: Inclosed find one dollar to pay for the subscription for six months for me and my friend to The Agitator, the paper without the husks.
Yours in revolt,
New Orleans, La.
THE INTEMPERANCE OF THE POOR.
Beer is the choloroform that enables the laborer to endure the severe operation of living; that is why we can always assure one another over our wine that the rascal's misery is due to his habit of drinking. We are down on him for it, because if he could bear his life without beer, we should save his beer money—get him for lower wages. In short, we should be richer and he soberer.
IT IS JUST A HABIT.
"I suppose, Eileen," she remarked to the new girl, with feigned indifference, "that you overheard my husband and me conversing rather earnestly this morning, I hope, however, that you did not think anything unusual was going on?"
"Niver a bit, mum. Oi wanst had a husband meself, an' niver a day passed that th' neighbors didn't belave one or th' other uv us would be kilt entoirly."
GET OFF THEIR BACKS.
I sit on a man's neck, I weigh him down, and I demand that he shall carry me; and without decending from his shoulders I assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him.—Tolstoy
RECEIPTS
San Francisco Ball, $100; Caesar and Bernard, $4; Nielson, $2; Jensen, Goldbarg, Pollack, Kremer, Levin, Hull, Connel, Perz, Cole, Ballow, each $1; Local 326 I. W. W. $1.50; Nelson, $1.25; Bailey, Bruning, Christ, Groh, Albers, Muller, each 50c. Hoff, Olson, Linpo, Miller, Ostrom, each 25c.
