Page:The Agitator Volume 2 Issue 04.djvu/1



A SEMI-MONTHLY ADVOCATE OF THE MODERN SCHOOL, INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM, INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

VOL. 2

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." JAY FOX.

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.