Page:The cry for justice - an anthology of the literature of social protest. - (IA cryforjusticea00sinc).pdf/268

 trust not one another, for while they live in disagreement, they shall not dare to make any discourse against their lord, for fear faith and secrecy should not be kept among themselves; and the third way is, that they strive to make them poor, and to put them upon great undertakings, which they can never finish, whereby they may have so much harm that it may never come into their hearts to devise anything against their ruler. And above all this, have tyrants ever striven to make spoil of the strong and to destroy the wise; and have forbidden fellowship and assemblies of men in their land, and striven always to know what men said or did; and do trust their counsel and the guard of their person rather to foreigners, who will serve at their will, than to them of the land, who serve from oppression.

An Open Letter to the Employers

"A.E." 

(This remarkable piece of eloquence, published in the Dublin Times at the time of the great strike of 1913, is said to have completely revolutionized public opinion on the question. The author, born 1867, is one of Ireland's greatest poets, and an ardent advocate of agricultural co-operation)

Sirs:—I address this warning to you, the aristocracy of industry in this city, because, like all aristocracies, you tend to grow blind in long authority, and to be unaware that you and your class and its every action are being considered and judged day by day by those who have power to shake or overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty today is making our industrial civilization stir like a quaking bog. You