Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/44

42 is exactly this subject, however, that is avoided by all our great movements, which are financed by the very people who have captured the wealth of our countries, and who thus produce poverty.

The churches, for example, are engaged for the most part in bitter quarrels among themselves, as to the best correct ceremony by which to show their love of God and humanity. They touch the problem only in sometimes giving to the poor in the name of charity and of God, a little of the wealth which these same poor have produced. But for the law and the brute force behind it, which the churches uphold, this wealth would never have been taken in the first place from those who needed it.

The politician it is perhaps most of all who is anxious to keep the people from noticing and dealing with this greatest of all questions. One of the most useful of the many tricks he has for diverting public attention from the real issue is that which he calls patriotism. We have seen how little his patriotism is worth to us, but it is of great value to him. Sometimes it has to be carried to the extreme of war, and at others it takes the form of a huge sham fight on Tariff Reform and Free Trade, but all the time the politicians of all parties and all countries agree that the poor shall be kept from the wealth they produce.

"Look!" cries the cunning candidate at the election. "Look at the German waiter, he is taking your job—the very bread out of your mouths." And thus we are got to quarrel with our German comrade, as to whether he or we shall have the honor of carrying the dinner up to our master. How much better to shake hands and eat the dinner between us without taking it upstairs at all!

Is it not clear that they would try to keep us quarrelling among ourselves as to which shall have the pleasure of working for and waiting on them, whereas we should be uniting to work for ourselves and one another, and those dependent on us.