Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/27

Rh may go, there you will find a small party, who own the country, the factories, the railroads, and everything else. In every case this party is backed by hired men, who are prepared to hold their master's position and wealth by force against any who may lay claim to it. This is why in every country the great majority of the people are poor; this is why they are huddled together in dark and gloomy streets. It is for this reason that their clothes are rough and coarse, their minds immature and their bodies ill fed.

It is to this cause we must attribute the poverty and monotony which lays low the life of the great bulk of the people. This indeed we workers of the world are beginning to understand is an international matter in which we may well take part. It is no question of this or that treaty secretly signed by the representatives of the classes who own the various countries of the world. Let those who sign such treaties, see that they are kept, and if they cannot agree about these matters then let them fight. It is not our business. We have a treaty to keep, it has been signed by the blood of our fellow workers in every nation of the world, for there is not one of the governments but it has shown itself ready and over anxious to shoot down the workers directly they begin to think of recapturing the land that has been taken from them.

And these great newspapers, politicians and learned men to whom we look up with such reverence, all of them today are teaching us the virtues of patriotism, and asking us to fight side by side with our soldiers in the trenches. But tomorrow, when we have peace, these same kind people who now can think of nothing but woolen comforts and shrapnel, will be quite well satisfied when the soldier now in the trench is commanded to fire on the crowd of workers outside the factory, whose only sin has been that they loved their country and their kith and kin, so much that they have tried to reconquer some of the wealth of the land for their unhappy brothers.