watching the scene. Its face is expressive of horror. Another child, evidently a little older, is stretched on the floor, face downward. At the door is standing a patrolman in full uniform. He is talking with a captain of police, who has rushed on the scene with drawn revolver. The patrolman with hand upraised says: "It's all right, Captain, he's got a union card."
You may think my remedy drastic; but, honestly, do you
think that any remedy could be too drastic for an infamy such
as this?
Here, as everywhere, the salvation of the world rests upon you, the workers of hand and brain. I took up half this book telling how the capitalist press lied about one man; you said, perhaps, that I liked to be in the "limelight"; anyhow, I was only one writer-fellow, and it didn't matter to you what the newspapers did to a writer-fellow. But now I make my appeal for yourself, for your wives and your children. I have shown you how this knavish press turns the world against you; I have shown how it turns you against yourself—how it seduces you, poisons your mind, breaks your heart. You go on strike, and it plays upon your fears, it uses your hunger and want as weapons against you; it saps your strength, it eats out your soul, it smothers your thinking under mountain-loads of lies. You fall, and the chariot of Big Business rolls over you.
These men who own the world in which you struggle for life—what is it that they want? They want power, power to rule you. And what is it that you want? You want power to rule yourself. Between those two wants there is eternal and unending and irreconcilable war—such is the class struggle, and whether you will or not, you take your part in it, and I take mine. I, a writer-fellow who wants to write the truth, appeal to you, the laboring fellows of hand and brain, who want to read the truth, who must read the truth, if civilization is not to perish. I cry to you: "Help! Help against the lying, kept press!"
I cry to you for the integrity of your calling, for the honor and dignity of Journalism. I cry to you that Journalism shall no longer be the thing described by Charles A. Dana, master-cynic of the "New York Sun," "buying white paper at two cents a pound and selling it at ten cents a pound." I cry to you that Journalism shall be a public ministry, and that you who labor in it shall be, not wage-slaves and henchmen of privilege, but servants of the general welfare, helping your
