The Agitator/Volume 2/Issue 4
THE AGITATOR
A SEMI-MONTHLY ADVOCATE OF THE MODERN SCHOOL, INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM, INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
THE PASSING SHOW
Socialism and Idiots.
The Socialist press joined with the labor and capitalist press in a cowardly denunciation of the McNamara brothers. The California Social-Democrat says:
"That men with the brains of a mosquito could be guilty of playing into the hands of the enemy by violence is inconceivable to a Socialist.
"Socialists hold terrorism in intellectual contempt even in Russia.
"In America, where political action is possible, such methods are beneath contempt.
"That there is one man of the J. J. McNamara caliber capable of such idiotic treason to the labor movement proves that our party has a work to do which must not be evaded or delayed."
The McNamaras are idiots because, alone, they failed to achieve the Social Revolution. The Socialists are profound philosophers in their failure to elect Harriman. If you do not see the logic of this distinction, you are an idiot.
If you refuse to submit, peaceably, to the destruction of your unions, by the insatiable monsters, the trusts, you are an idiot. If in the desperation of your reduction to the depths of poverty and serfdom, you strike back at the thugs, spies and gun men set upon you by the master class, you are an idiot.
You must not do anything upon your own initiative, but listen to the sage advise of the lawyers and preachers of the S. P., elect them to office and bread and freedom will be yours.
You common, mosquito-brained working stiff, what do you know about economics, anyway? Can't you get it through your shallow pate that it is "the historic mission" of the Socialist Party to save you?
How is the S. P. going to do it?
It is going to throw the old parties off your back and climb on itself. And it is because of its hurry to get there that it has become so respectable and law abiding, and joins so ardently in the popular, capitalistic outcry against the McNamaras and all forms of direct action. That is why it is flirting with the A. F. of L. and warning that decrepit body against the wicked direct actionists, hoping to win it over after it has been beaten to the ground by the Trusts.
That the master class have no more fear of the Socialist "victories at the polls" than of the other parties is well attested by the capitalist press. The New York World, in speaking of these "victories," says: "There is nothing to worry about in these Socialist gains, if the old parties will not give good local government they must expect new parties to grow up and get votes."
The Rev. George R. Lunn, the new Socialist mayor of Schenectady, N. Y., immediately upon his election, hastily reassured the shivering capitalist world with these words: "My election does not mean a revolution."
The Journal of Political Economy tells its capitalist readers this pertinent truth: "The average Socialist begins as a theoretical impossibilist and developes gradually into a constructive opportunist. Add a taste of real respectability and he is hard to distinguish from a liberal reformer. It is the same with the movement."
Capitalistic Law and Order.
While the labor leaders are busy repudiating the McNamaras and all acts of violence, the lumber barons of Aberdeen are having men dragged from their hall, blindfolded, taken to the town limits, slugged, and left there to die.
Yet John D., Morgan, nor any of the big guns are rushing into print disavowing their lawless brothers. They are class-conscious. They know that in war all things are fair. They know that laws are made to govern the poor. When the law is not sufficient to suppress them, the masters apply the kind of force that is not legalized by the legislature. They make their own law to fit the particular case they have in hand. That is practical.
The master class has no illusions, no reverence for forms or conventions. Those men in Aberdeen opened up their hall, that had been illegally closed by the police some days previous, and were engaged in putting its contents in order when the police raided them, in violation of every tenet of the law, and dragged them to jail.
They kept them in jail until 12 o'clock at night; then, in a heavy downpour of rain, took them, blindfolded, in an automobile to the city limits, where they beat them up badly and turned them loose.
That was lawlessness of the rankest kind; and most culpable because practiced by those sworn to uphold the law.
No newspaper denounced it, because the newspaper owners are all on the other side. No preacher cursed it, because all the preachers are on the other side. The capitalist-minded working man is silent, because he is an indifferent fool. Everybody is silent except the revolutionist; and he does not denounce it from the standpoint of "law and order." He is not concerned with catch-phrases. He is too wise for that. He knows the bosses do not believe in their own dope, and will break the law when the law will not break the workers. His object in making a noise about the lawlessness of the law enforcers is to awaken the indifferent worker, who is blinded by the theory that all men are treated fairly and equally by the administrators of the law.
He wants this backward fellow slave to know that the virtuous howl for law and order is raised only when a slave, goaded by want and oppression, steps over the legal boundary line, striving thereby to get the justice whicn the code denies him. This sleeping worker is the fellow the revolutionist is after. And when he once gets him awakened the days of the lawless capitalist policemen will be no more.
We will then have peace, for a powerful working class will compel it. We will then have plenty, for an intelligent working class will produce and keep its product. We will then have freedom, for no one wishes to enslave another except to exploit him.
Starving, Humiliated India
They are starving at the rate of six thousand a week. Their best men are in jail, and every newspaper that dared to give a free utterance has been suppressed. Meetings of every kind are forbidden; every friend of the people is being hounded by British spies. And to crown the infamy the puppet King of England went strutting across the sea and declared himself Emperor of these people, who had a high form of civilization when his ancestors were living in holes in the rocks.
Yet India's present oppression and humiliation by the British barbarians is the outcome of an oppression and tyranny and a foolish system of cast that the natives have submitted to and enforced these thousands of years.
Tyranny always begets tyranny. We see our own faults best when reflected from others. It is to be hoped that when the people of India accumulate sufficient power to cast off the British they will also discard the native tyrants and become really free.
We Americans once indignantly cast off the British yoke and forged one with native hands that is galling us today. We are learning the lesson that it matters not who waves the sceptic wand of authority, oppression is still oppression.
Socialists Celebrate Election of First Gun Man.
Grand Junction, Colo.—Grand Junction's Socialist chief of police, S. B. Hutchinson, recently took office and the Socialists of the city presented him with a solid silver star. On the back of the star was engraved, "S. B. Hutchinson, the first Socialist chief of police in the United States, presented by the Grand Junction branch International Socialist party."
I wonder if this cop has a uaion label on his club. If not, the Socialists are neglecting their duty to "organized labor." Besides, what sensation can be sweeter than that one receives from a wallop on the head from a union-made club in the hands of a Socialist policeman.
More Injunction Tyranny.
Judge Wright, of the U. S. Court, has sent a newsboy to jail for selling the Chicago Daily Socialist.
This paper had offended the I. C. railroad by publishing the truth about the shopmen's strike; in consequence of which the learned gentleman had put his ban on it, and sent an orphan boy to jail for thirty days for offering it for sale.
They do no more than that in Russia, only there they have no hypocritical cant about freedom of the press. America is the arch faker among nations.
McNamara Not a Squealer.
Attempts to get the McNamaras to testify before the Federal Grand Jury, now conducting an investigation of the dynamite traffic between the states, failed, utterly. When approached by Oscar Lawler, J. J. replied:
"What are you trying to do? You have been an agent of the government a long time, but whether you are an agent of the steel trust or otherwise, I can state frankly that, so far as I am concerned, I will not confess. Why Should I? Freedom is nothing to me."
SLAVES FEAR FREE SPEECH.
The community that will not allow its humblest, citizen to freely express his opinion, no matter how false or odious the opinion may be, is only a gang, of slaves.—Wendell Phillips.
THE AGITATOR
Issued twice a month, on the first and fifteenth, by The Agitator Publishing Association from its printing office in Home, Wash.
Entered at the postoffice at Lakebay,Wash., as Second Class Matter
Subscription, One Dollar a Year.
Two copies to one address $1.50.
Address all communications and make all money orders payable to The Agitator, Lakebay, Wash.
Articles for publication should be written legibly on one side of the paper only.
The Agitator does not bear the union stamp because it is not printed for profit. But it is union, every letter of it. It is printed and published by unionists and their friends for the economic and political education of themselves and their fellow toilers. Much of the labor is given free. On the whole it is a work of love—the love of the idea, of a world fit for the free.
People are rich, not in the fact of their possessing great wealth, bat in the degree to which they possess freedom.
THE FRISCO BALL
The "Hobos" of Frisco who are after the "whole cheese" and know how to get it, gave a dance, where rags were respectable, for the benefit of The Agitator.
A hundred dollars is the result. We hope The Agitator's friends elsewhere will^be inspired by this splendid effort to arrange some sort of entertainment for it.
TWO NEW FIGHTERS
Comrade Ross Winn, the indefatigable propagandist, has "bobbed up" again as editor and publisher of "The Advance, a Monthly Free Lance;" Sixteen pages of brain stirring stuff that will tear the moss from your mind.
•••
Arther Jensen, well known in Seattle's radical ranks, has started "The Coal Digger," a four page weekly, for the miners in particular, and labor in general. Every miner in the state shud read the "Digger." It digs to the root of economic wrong,
A "REVOLUTIONARY" EDITOR EXPOSED
Editor Freie Arbeiter Stimme,
30 Canal St., New York City:
Comrade Yanovsky—In acknowledging receipt of $11.00 subscribed to the Defense Fund by the subscribers to the Freie Arbeiter Stimme, and thanking you for the same, I beg to state my opinion that you do not seem to realize the fu~ gravity of the case.
Your editorial attitude has been that of one cooly indifferent to the matter. You seem to regard it a3 merely a local affair, quite beneath your editorial attention; and I do not wonder that several of your subscribers are finding fault with you on that account. Your attitude is well illustrated in your answer to Comrade Alexander's inquiry when you write: "The one who understands the fight to be an important one will give. The one who don't won't give," and you advise him not to lose his temper.
Now, I cannot for the life of me see how an Anarchist editor, a propagandist in the cause of freedom, can sit tack in his chair and assume the cool indifference of a bourgois, and advise his justly indignant subscribers to keep cool, while the very liberty that enables him to publish his paper is being ground under the iron heel of governmental tyranny.
You surely must see the importance of holding on to the speck of liberty which enables us to publish our views to the world, and I am sure you do not consciously mean to stand idly by and let others fight to maintain that little liberty, without giving a helping hand. Yet the attitude of indifference you have assumed in this case points directly to that conclusion.
Lest you should by laboring under a misapprehension of the gravity of the case, wihch I really believe you are, I will re-state, briefly, its important points:
I am charged with "publishing matter tending to create disrespect for law.". The subject of the article cited as "criminal" has no bearing on the question. That it happens to be one of those written in relation to the bathing persecutions at Home, is merely incidental. Any issue of The Agitator contains matter that could just as well have been cited. For you can easily see that any criticism of the law or of the courts could be construed as "tending to create disrespect for law," and here lies the profound importance of the case.
If it was merely a local issue with little or no bearing on the broader question of freedom, I should not ask nor expect more than passing notice of it.
It is not my opinion, merely, that this is a vital issue. I submit for your consideration Comrade Jas. F. Morton's article in the Truth Seeker of Oct. 14th, and Theo. Schroeder, attorney for the New York Free Speech League, has pronounced it of so much importance as to suggest that it should be taken to the United States Supreme Court.
Now, if you take the stand that we should not fight the case in the courts, and that I tamely submit to being railroaded to the penitentiary without making any defense, it is. quite another thing, and you should so state it—giving ample argument in support of your position.
Personally, I am quite averse to dealing with the law, and am ready to go to jail for my opinions without annoying the general public with my troubles. But I cannot see the logic of a Revolutionist laying down and submitting to the courts as soon as he is gathered into its meshes. Such conduct would be consistent for a Tolstoyian, but a Revolutionist will never give up the fight.
Besides, this is not a personal matter. It is a country wide issue, and on our conduct of it will depend in large measure the conduct of similar cases in the future.
The Free Speech League believes that every obstacle should be cast in the way of the capitalist opponents of free expression before submitting and that the widest publicity be given every such case, that public attention may be awakened and that what little freedom of speech we have should not be surrendered without a stubborn fight.
I trust that this statement of the case will make plain to you the vital importance of its receiving the serious attention of all lovers of freedom; of all those who have something to say in condemnation of the present system of wage and law slavery that is little by little throttling the workers in its iron grip.
Unless we defend this liberty now all our papers will soon have to pass through the hands of an official censor.
Yours in the Cause of Freedom,
Reply.
You can understand that we would treat your case broad and wide did we really think as you and Morton thinks about it. But that is just the thing—at least for the present—we think it a mere trifle, and we hate to make an elephant out of a fly.
The foregoing answer appeared in the "Letter Box" of the F. A. S., and it reminds me very forcibly of the adage: "None are half so blind as those who will not I see." That's all. I would insult the reader's intelligence to comment further on such a pusillanimous utterance.
This "Revolutionist" dared not publish my letter and meet its arguments. I leave him exposed to the radical world as a "four flusher."
THE McNAMARA AFFAIR.
The McNamaras have been sent to prison. J. B. for life and J. J. for 15 years.
Lincoln Steffens, who brought about the settlement of the case, says:
"The McNamaras think they are fighters in a war, and they are.
"The beginning of the story was at the ranch of E. W. Scripps, on Sunday, Nov. 19. I went there with Clarence S. Darrow, and we talked, all three of us, about everything under the sun, and finally about the McNamara case. Mr. Scripps read a letter about the belief that force and violence are the only weapons Labor has to fight with. We could all see that if this case could be tried so as to develop that theory as a defense, this terrible, true fact could be brought out into the light and dealt with. Some one else suggested that another way to accomplish the same end was to settle the McNamara cases on the basis of a plea of guilty. Such a plea would give us all a chance to assume that a part of organized labor had actually adopted the policy of force."
The day after the confession, he wrote:
"The spirit of wrath which is disgracing this city and this country today is the spirit that moved the McNamara boys to plant the dynamite to blow up the Times building. They also talk of justice, justice for their class, and they belong to a Labor group which not only says but believes that the only way for Labor to get justice is to fight for it by strikes, with dynamite, by force, by war. They are not right, are they? I wouldn't have asked such a question yesterday, but since everybody else is throwing bombs, why shouldn't I throw one, too? Why shouldn't I ask and why shouldn't I ask everybody else to ask himself: Isn't this group right? Isn't force the only way? Isn't the demand of society for revenge upon the dynamiters very like the demand of these men for revenge upon society?
•••
The Executive Council of the A. F. of L. has issued a long statement apologizing for its connection with the McNamara defense, from which we quote:
"The men of organized labor, in common with all our people, are grieved beyond expression in words at the loss of life, and the destruction of property, not only in the case under discussion, but in any other case which may have occurred. We are hurt and humiliated to think that any man connected with the labor movement should have been guilty of either. The lesson this grave crime teaches will, however, have its salutatory effect. It will demonstrate now more than ever the inhumanity, as well as the futility, of resorting to violence in the effort to right wrongs, or to attain rights.
•••
Clarence S. Darrow, chief counsel for the defense, made a statement, part of which follows:
"Whether they were right or wrong, they believed, they were on the fighting line. They were not murderers at heart, but they were destroyers of property. Jim McNamara did not intend to kill anybody, his dynamite broke the gas main. And that is the plight I found him in. He told me the truth about it all. Because he wasn't a murderer at heart I decided to do the best I could to save his life.
"All my life I have tried to be on the side of those who lose in the unequal fight between the rich. and the poor. Here was a man who, whether in the right or wrong, tried in his own grim way to be a soldier on the same side—the side of the poor. I couldn't see him go down without giving him what help I could. I know there are many Americans who will not understand what I have done, who will be able to analyze the spirit in which I did it. I know that I took the only possible chance there was of saving McNamara's life."
PROGRESS AND PROPERTY.
Private property—the possession of things—is the death of progress. The ownership of things enslaves us, they chain us to one place; we become conservatives; we must conserve our possessions.
A rebel has no time or place for property; it is a snare, an unnecessary responsibility; a troublesome obligation; and respectabilities and obligations are two of the subtlest remnants of a rotten, capitalistic moral system.
The surest way to have a thing done is to do it yourself; the quickest way to do away with the sacredness of property is to begin at home.
My books, my furniture, my house, estranges me from him who forgets to whom they belong. Am I then a free man?
We are no better than the religious folks who sing and talk of the home over there; we talk of the good day coming when men shall be free and keep on putting off the day by worshipping at the shrine of sacred private property.
Whenever I sell my time to be able to buy things I can call my own, I add to my responsibilities, I add to the impediments already strewn on the path to freedom.
Who then will buy the books, the pictures, the luxuries I use? As far as possible I will, but I will have no brain-storm in case you think you need them more than I; I shall buy nothing that I cannot afford to lose, that I cannot leave behind, nothing that has not been made possible by the united effort, the united intelligence, the united needs of all—nothing so sacred that I cannot share it with you if you choose to use it.
To have nothing is to have all things, to be free from the possession of things is to be unpossessed.
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.
☙ Laws For The Bauern Ball ☙
To Be Held In Reading's Acadamy
Twenty third and Jackson
Seattle, Dec. 31st.
1. Members are warned that the prosperity and happiness of the colony depends upon their frequent and persistent violation of these laws.
2. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. But ignorance is encouraged, as it is easier to get you in the meshes.
3. No lawyers, juries or witnesses will be permitted in our courts. They cause unnecessary delay, are expensive and often defeat the ends of justice. Our judge knows his business and is up to date. You are guilty if brought before him. You will be arrested on suspicion and convicted beyond reasonable doubt
4. No peasant is allowed to have both hands in his or her pockets at the same time. This law cannot be construed to mean your neighbor's pockets.
5. Adam was tempted with an apple. We have added an orange. If you fall before either, a five cent fine ora half hour in prison for yours, If you carry away the whole show we will send you to the U. S. Senate.
6. You may make all the noise you wish provided it means nothing real. Talk freely about salvation, astronomy and even revolution—in Russion or Borneo, but speak not of atheism, anarchism, socialism, or industrialism; nor of a revolution in this colony. For this is a free community and such talk is treason to our court.
7. Peasants caught spooning will be instantly arrested and shackled with the bonds of matrimony.
8. To embrace a maiden is to marry her. Kissing is also a crime punishable by marriage. Alter marriage it is not a crime to kiss for she is ours; and one can do what he likes with his own.
9. Besides his blessing which is wind, the parson or rabbi who knots you will give a special promism, a ring, which is a sound.
10. What God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Divorce is inmoral and sinful. The only cure for marriage is more marriage. Marry another, marry again.
11. If these laws do not suit you, they suit the judges, police, and parsons who rule over you. So it is all right—for them.
"INTERVENTION!" IS WALL STREET'S CRY
Once more the sword of the United States is suspended over the Mexican people's neck. "The Mexicans are incapable of self-government," say all the adventurers who wish to make millions by exploiting the labor and natural wealth of Mexico.
Madero has promised to hand over to Americans the liberties of Mexico; and, in addition, the land, the woods, the mines, the waters, all Mexico itself. Naturally, the Americans are on Madero's side.
The Mexican people are taking possession of their on country's natural wealth; and this fact, coupled with the revolutionary effervescence now clearly observable, has caused the American speculator to cry to heaven and proclaim that Mexico should be acquired by the United States, at any price.
Madero being naturally weak, as Diaz was, is seeking the aid of the American government, that he may maintain himself in power. To this end it has been necessary for him to agree to the American bourgeoisie's demand for slavery in Mexico. And the compact has been made! To the conscience of the criminal what are the sufferings, the despair and the blood of fifteen millions? Did he not at the very first, sell out the revolution for $20,000.00? He longs to rule—the miserable wretch! and be has been manacling with chains of gold the hands of whoever had it in his power to raise a revolutionary force and stuffing with gold the snout of every man who had the ability to shout a protest. He has been tearing out the hearts of all who some day, might have unsheathed the dagger of a Brutus.
The promises Madero has made to the American speculator can be realized only under a bourgeois peace; a peace of the bayonet and the dungeon; a peace guaranteed by the judge and by the hangman.
Capital needs peace to make its profits and it sees, with the sinking heart of a usurer unable to get his claws into his neighbor's pockets, that peace is more distant than it ever was. Madero is impotent to bring into submission all the elements opposing him. He would play the dictator, the strong man with the hand of iron, and the result is that he is a nutshell floating aimlessly upon a storm-tossed sea. In his despair, in his utter dejection, he begs from the Colossus of the North what the Mexican people will not give him—its support. He does as Diaz did.
The people are not rebelling for the pleasure of rebelling. The revolutionist is not tearing the life out of his enemies for the satisfaction of witnessing a spectacle of bloodshed. The revolutionist applies the torch, but not, as did the Roman emperor, for the sake of enjoying the shifting colors of the flames and following with his eye the black spirals of smoke as they are blown hither and thither by the wind.
The Mexican people are in arms because they must play the game to the finish in order to save themselves and future generations from that economic slavery whence spring all tyrannies. Neither Madero nor any other man can give the people what they need—Bread. They can decree liberty of speech, liberty of assembly, liberty of conscience, etc., etc.; but who can decree the abolition of misery? No one. No one; because it would be a decree at which the rich would laugh. The abolition of misery means the abolition of the rich man's right to retain in his possession the land, the machinery of production and the means of transportation. All this the rich man will not let go of from kindheartedness, but only through being forced.
The people of Mexico, with a judiciousness that does them honor, have come to realize that their salvation—that is to say, the death of misery and the conquest of liberty—does not depend on the establishing a government, but, purely and simply, on laying hands on what the rich withhold and on making the property of a few the property of all. In rising in arms the people of Mexico are exercising a legitimate right; the right of rebelling against all that oppresses them, against all that makes them suffer, against all that is opposed to their development and progress. What right has the American government to intervene in matters that are not its own?
We long for liberty and well-being; we have no desire to be slaves; we wish to be free, and free in an effective manner; and, inasmuch as is because of this the Revolution is prolonging itself—since a true Revolution cannot be brought to a termination within a single year—Mexico's exploiters are now urging their government to hurl itself against human beings who are struggling and sacrificing themselves solely for the betterment and advancement of their lot.—From the Spanish of Richard Flores Magon.
NEW BOOKS.
"Social Forces in American History," by A. M. Simons. (The Macmlllan Co., N. Y., $1.50 net.)
Things have come to a pretty pass in this cold materialistic age when even the beautiful romance called history cannot escape the dissecting table of the realists.
All the guilded American heroes of my schoolboy days have been ruthlessly snatched from their pedastals and dashed in the dirt at my feet by this cruel materialistic historian.
He brazenly tells us that the Boston tea party, "of glorious memory," was organized by a gang of smugglers, headed by Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose business was destroyed when the English Government abolished the tax on tea.
Among numerous other unromantic things he tells us that Washington, the truthful model of my youth, was a land thief, and hints that his patriotic fervor in helping to ferment the revolution may have been influenced by his desire to cover up his stealings. And all I can do by way of defending my heroes is to call names, for he surely has "the goods" on the entire lot.
Well, if I must be disillusioned, I may as well accept my fate as stoically as possible. It is not the first time the veil of romance has been torn from my eyes; and though the operation was painful, I am now thankful.
So I say to you, Simons: Bravo, you have not only done your work completely, you have done it scholarly and well.
It is an omenous sign of the new times when the working class has begun to rewrite history. For this book is really a short history of the United States, written from a working class, or materialistic viewpoint. It has all the earmarks of painstaking study and will be a revelation to everyone who has been feeding from the trough of capitalistic historians.
It cannot be too highly recommended. Every working class library should have it. Every student of working class economics should read it. It majr be obtained through The Agitator.
THE WORKERS' UNIVERSITY.
Books and Pamphlets For Sale By the Agitator Publishing Association.
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| Who Is the Enemy, Anthony Comstock or You? | .20 |
| Vice: Its Friends and Its Foes, E. C. Walker | .15 |
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| The Curse of Race Prejudice, J. F. Morton, Jr. | .25 |
| Freeland; a Social Anticipation, The Hertska | .50 |
| Modern Science and Anarchism, Kropotkin | .15 |
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