Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/30

28 blown to pieces by these weapons, it is they who bear the poverty that follows in the wake of war—and all the time the rich grow richer and, if their plan succeeds the Empire grows so great that in the workhouses of the country our veterans weep with joy in reading of our glory!

Thus we see that it is the worker who has the courage to act boldly, but it is the master-class who can courageously think, and so we find the working-class constantly doing great things, but never becoming great itself, because it is merely fulfilling the plans of others, and adding to their splendor.

Great is the power created by the workers who spend their lives in armament factories, but it is power which will be turned against them if one day, being in need of bread (baked by their comrades), they should attempt to take it.

Rich are the palaces the workers can build and furnish with the utmost wealth, but should they attempt to enter them they will meet the bludgeon which they have made for the policeman, and be conducted to the prison they have so substantially built, and locked in by the lock they have so carefully constructed.

The artistic dress made by the hands of ill-paid seamstresses is passed on to grace the figure of some woman in the upper class and to assist her in the belief that she is superior to the workers who created it.

Verily our blessings have become our curses. The more we produce, the greater our courage and endurance, the greater is the power which oppresses us. And why are we in this dilemma? It is because, though we are great in the power of action, we are mighty small and timid in our ability to think.

We have allowed others to plan—and they have done it in the only way we might expect. They have decided that the palaces, the factories, the houses and the land belong to them. This decision they call the law and, as we have seen, scientific force, from the bludgeon to the