Page:Henry Mulford Tichenor - A Wave of Horror (1912).djvu/28

 really to believe, as they most sincerely do—they and a growing group of labor—that the only recourse they have for improving the conditions of the wage worker is the use of dynamite against property and life?"

Well, I can answer for the Socialist Americans, Mr. Steffens. We propose to tear up root and branch of the accursed "conditions" that you yourself admit are breeding war into the hearts of any men—be they robbed workers, or the robbers themselves. This is the sad part of it all—that you and others cannot or will not discover the Socialist way of production and distribution of wealth.

Jesus saw the thing to do, and taught the brotherhood of man as his social message to the race.

Marx and Engels disclosed the same message, and made it so plain that "the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein."

They taught brotherhood and equal opportunity of use in all the tools that produce and distribute the things we all require.

These tools comprise the land, machinery, mills, mines, factories, railroads, steamships and other means of public transportation, the telegraph and telephone systems—they comprise everything we all need to use in order to provide food, clothing, shelter, education and all the essentials of life.

This is Brotherhood and Salvation in the only sense of the words that amount to anything at all.

Anything else is sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.

This is the only thing that puts an Otis out of commission and makes the deed of a McNamara unheard of.

How?

That's not hard to answer.

Under the present system of class rule, Otis and his class own the tools and own the jobs.