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102 stabilities, constitutions, courts, judges, will bring applause in any general audience in the United States. This criticism of our "secular sanctities" is not in the least an affair of mobs alone. It speaks openly and unashamed in the books and utterances of scholars and first rate publicists. In nearly three hundred regular socialist periodicals, this defiant criticism has become the habitual reading of some millions of our inhabitants. I have heard a large working-class audience burst into uproarious guffaws at this sentence spoken from the platform: "No society could exist that did not respect its courts of justice." A very able university President recently attempted the defense of our conserving institutions in a popular arena. He was so heckled and worsted that he left the meeting, feeling, as he told me, that "they thoroughly wiped the floor with me."

Any one who thinks these illustrations carry any exaggeration has only to spend some hours on a bundle of this literature which he may buy on the streets in any industrial center of the United States. The lengths to which this challenging goes may be seen in an incident two months ago in a western town. The judge, as he passed sentence for "conspiracy," had spoken gravely of what a court of justice signifies. He allowed the condemned man "a few words in his own behalf," and listened, apparently not much disturbed, to the following:

There are only a few words that I care to say, and this court will not mistake them for a legal argument, for I am not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar; nor the language common to the courtroom.