Page:Eleven Blind Leaders (1910?).pdf/12

 misleaders—to drive the harpoon of truth through the rhinoceros hide of a Webster or a Benton. That psychological principle thus enunciated by Wendell Phillips finds its justification in the material fact that men are products of their environments, and that changes in the mode of living of individuals are usually accompanied by changes in their hopes, aspirations and ideas. Guided by this principle, we are called upon, then, not merely to condemn the individuals, but to explain the ideas, of the above-mentioned "leading socialists."

Not one of the eleven men who thus presume to speak in the name of the working class is or has been in recent years an active participant in the daily struggle of the workers in industry. Some of them never had that experience in wage slavery. Two are "millionaire socialists"; one is a teacher in Rockefeller's University; four others are editors (two of the four have been for many years); one is an employer of labor in a small factory; one is a professional novelist and writer; and two are paid attaches of the Socialist Party.

The editor of the Saturday Evening Post says they represent all elements. In justice to fact, he should have added: "All elements except the proletarian—the wage slave proper." And that reminds me of a story, a well authenticated tale of socialist agitation in the West. The incident happened about ten years ago. The scene was a Colorado mining camp; the occasion a socialist mass meeting of "rough necks" and "horny hands"; the speaker a well known "intellectual" and erstwhile "sky pilot" with a white waistcoat and a melodramatic manner. As the hour for opening the meeting arrived, the expectant audience of miners who had assembled from all parts of the surrounding country, watched the curtain rise, and saw that the stage was perfectly dark. Presently a dusky form was seen moving ———