Page:The Chicago Martyrs (1899).pdf/21

 Rh You certainly don't believe it. Therefore force will have to decide—or do you know of any other way?'

"'So you are organizing a revolution?'"

"It was shortly before my arrest, and I answered: 'Such things are hard to organize. A revolution is a sudden upswelling—a convulsion of the fevered masses of society.'

"We are preparing society for that, and insist upon it that workingmen should arm themselves and keep ready for the struggle. The better they are armed the easier will the battle be, and the less the bloodshed.

"'What would be the order of things in the new society?'

"'I must decline to answer this question, as it is, till now, a mere matter of speculation. The organization of labor on a co-operative basis offers no difficulties. The large establishments of today might be used as patterns. Those who will have to solve these qestionsquestions [sic] will expediently do it, instead of working according to our prescriptions—if we should make anything of the kind; they will be directed by the circumstances and conditions of the time, and these are beyond our horizon. About this you needn't trouble yourselves.'

"'But, friend, don't you think that about a week after the division, the provident will have all, while the spendthrift will have nothing?'

"'The question is out of order,' interfered the chairman; 'there was nothing said about division.'

"'Prof. Wilcox: 'Don't you think the introduction of Socialism would destroy all individuality?'

"'How can anything be destroyed which does not exist? In our times there is no individuality; that only can be developed under Socialism, when mankind will be independent economically. Where do you meet today with real individuality? Look at yourselves, gentlemen! You don't dare to give utterance to any subjective opinion which might not suit the feelings of your bread givers and customers. You are hypocrites (murmurs of indignation); every business man is a hypocrite. Everywhere is mockery, servility, lies and fraud. And the laborers! You feign anxiety about their individuality; about the individuality of a class that has been degraded to machines—used each day for ten or twelve hours as appendages of the lifeless machines! About their individuality you are anxious!'"

Does that sound as though I had at that time, as has been imputed to me, organized a revolution—a so-called social revolution, which was to occur on or about the 1st of May to establish Anarchy in place of our present "ideal order?" I guess not.

So Socialism does not mean the destruction of society. Socialism is a constructive and not a destructive science. While capitalism expropriates the masses for the benefit of the privileged class; while capitalism is that school of economics which teaches how one can live upon the labor (i. e., property) of others; Socialism teaches how all may possess property, and further teaches that every man must work honestly for his own living, and not be playing the "respectable board of trade man," or any other highly (?) respectable business man or banker, such as appeared here as talesmen in the jurors' box, with the fixed opinion that we ought to be hanged. Indeed, I believe they have that opinion! Socialism, in short, seeks to establish a universal system