 Direct Action. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Steve Brown. Direct Action by Volterine DeClaire. From the standpoint of one who thinks himself capable of discerning an undeviating route for human progress to pursue, if it is to be progress at all, who, having such a route on his mind's map, has endeavored to point it out to others, to make them see it as he sees it, who in so doing has chosen what appeared to him clear and simple expressions to convey his thoughts to others. To such a one it appears matter for regret and confusion of spirit that the phrase Direct Action has suddenly acquired in the general mind a circumscribed meaning, not at all implied in the words themselves and certainly never attached to it by himself or his co-thinkers. However, this is one of the common jests which progress plays on those who think themselves able to set meets and bounds for it. Over and over again, names, phrases, mottos, watch words have been turned inside out and upside down and hindsight before and sideways by occurrences out of the control of those who use such expressions in their proper sense. And still, those who sturdily held their ground and insisted on being heard have in the end found that the period of misunderstanding and prejudice has been but the preload to wider inquiry and understanding. I rather think that this will be the case with the present misconception of the term Direct Action, which through the misapprehension or else the deliberate misrepresentation of certain journalists in Los Angeles, at the time the McNamara's pleaded guilty, suddenly acquired in the popular mind the interpretation forcible attacks on life and property. This was either very ignorant or very dishonest of the journalist, but it has had the effect of making a good many people curious to know all about Direct Action. As a matter of fact, those who are so lustily and so inordinately condemning it will find on examination that they themselves had on many occasions practiced Direct Action and will do so again. Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert and went boldly and asserted it himself or jointly with others that shared his convictions was a direct actionist. Some 30 years ago I recall that the Salvation Army was vigorously practicing Direct Action in the maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble and pray. Over and over they were arrested, fined and imprisoned, but they kept right on singing, praying and marching till they finally compelled their persecutors to let them alone. The industrial workers are now conducting the same fight and have in a number of cases compelled the officials to let them alone by the same direct tactics. Every person who ever had a plan to do anything and went and did it or who laid his plan before others and want their cooperation to do it with him without going to external authorities to please do the thing for them was a direct actionist. All cooperative experiments are essentially direct action. Every person who ever in his life had a difference with anyone to settle and went straight to the other persons involved to settle it, either by a peaceable plan or otherwise, was a direct actionist. Examples of such action are strikes and boycotts. Many persons will recall the action of the Housewives of New York who boycotted the butchers and lowered the price of meat. At the present moment a butter boycott seems looming up as a direct reply to the price makers for butter. These actions are generally and not due to anyone's reasoning over much on the respective merits of directness or indirectness but are the spontaneous retorts of those who feel oppressed by a situation. In other words, all people are, most of the time, believers in the principle of direct action and practicers of it. However, most people are also indirect or political actionists and they are both these things at the same time without making much of an analysis of either. There are only a limited number of persons who eschew political action under any and all circumstances but there is nobody, nobody at all, who has ever been so impossible as to eschew direct action altogether. The majority of thinking people are really opportunist-leaning, some perhaps more to directness, some more to indirectness as a general thing, but ready to use either means when opportunity calls for it. That is to say, there are those who hold that balloting governors into power is essentially a wrong and foolish thing but who nevertheless under stress of special circumstances might consider it the wisest thing to do, to vote some individual into office at that particular time. Or there are those who believe that in general the wisest way for people to get what they want is by the indirect method of voting into power someone who will make what they want illegal. Yet who all the same will occasionally under exceptional conditions advise a strike and a strike, as I have said, is direct action. Or they may do as the socialist party agitators who are mostly declaiming now against direct action did last summer when the police were holding up their meetings. They went in force to the meeting places prepared to speak whether or no and they made the police back down. And while that was not logical on their part thus to oppose the legal executors of the majority's will it was a fine successful piece of direct action. Those who, by the essence of their belief are committed to direct action only are just who, why, the non-resistance precisely those who do not believe in violence at all. Now do not make the mistake of inferring that I say direct action means non-resistance. Not by any means. Direct action may be the extreme of violence or it may be as peaceful as the waters of the Brook of Shiloha that goes softly. What I say is that the real non-resistance can believe in direct action only never in political action. For the basis of all political action is coercion. Even when the state does good things it finally rests on a club, a gun or a prison for its power to carry them through. Now every school child in the United States has had the direct action of certain non-resistance brought to his notice by his school history. The case which everyone instantly recalls is that of the early Quakers who came to Massachusetts. The Puritans had accused the Quakers of troubling the world by preaching peace to it. They refused to pay church taxes. They refused to bear arms. They refused to swear allegiance to any government. In so doing they were direct actionists what we may call negative direct actionists. So the Puritans being political actionists passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine, to imprison, to mutilate and finally to hang them. And the Quakers just kept on coming which was positive direct action. And history records that after the hanging of four Quakers and the flogging of Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston the Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries. That Quaker persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day. Another example of direct action in early colonial history but this time by no means of the peaceable sword was the affair known as Bacon's Rebellion. All our historians certainly defended the action of the rebels in that matter for they were right and yet it was a case of violent direct action against lawfully constituted authority. For the benefit of those who have forgotten the details let me briefly remind them that the Virginia planters were in fear of general attack by the Indians with reason. Being political actionists they asked or Bacon as their leader asked that the governor grant him a commission to raise volunteers in their own defense. The governor feared that such a company of armed men would be a threat to him, also with reason. He refused the commission. Whereupon the planters resorted to direct action. They raised volunteers without the commission and successfully fought off the Indians. Bacon was pronounced a traitor by the governor but the people being with him the governor was afraid to proceed against him. In the end however it came so far that the rebels burned Jamestown and but for the untimely death of Bacon much more might have been done. Of course the reaction was very dreadful as it usually is where a rebellion collapses or is crushed. Yet even during the brief period of success it had corrected a good many abuses. I am quite sure that the political action at all costs advocates of those times after the reaction came back into power must have said see to what evil's direct action brings us behold the progress of the colony has been set back 25 years forgetting that if the colonists had not resorted to direct action their scalps would have been taken by the Indians a year sooner instead of a number of them being hanged by the governor a year later. In the period of agitation and excitement preceding the revolution there were all sorts and kinds of direct action from the most peaceable to the most violent and I believe that almost everybody who studies the United States history finds the account of these performances the most interesting part of the story the part which dents into the memory most easily. Among the peaceable moves made were the non importation agreements the leagues for wearing homespun clothing and committees of correspondence as the inevitable growth of hostility progressed violent direct action developed e.g. at the number of destroying the revenue stamps or the action concerning the T ships either by not permitting the T to be landed or by putting it in damp storage or by throwing it into the harbor as in Boston or by compelling a T ship owner to set fire to his own ship as at Annapolis. These are all actions which our commonist textbooks record certainly not in a condemnatory way not even in an apologetic way though they are all cases of direct action against legally constituted authority and property rights. If I draw attention to them and others of like nature it is to prove to unreflecting repeaters of words that direct action has always been used and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it. George Washington is said to have been the leader of the Virginia planters non importation league he would now be enjoined probably by a court from forming any such league and if he persisted he would be fined for contempt. When the great quarrel between the north and the south was waxing hot and hotter it was again direct action which preceded and precipitated political action and I may remark here that political action is never taken nor even contemplated until slumbering minds have first been aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions. The history of the anti-slavery movement and the civil war is one of the greatest paradoxes although history is a chain of paradoxes. Politically speaking it was the slave holding states that stood for greater political freedom for the autonomy of the single state against the interference of the United States politically speaking it was the non slave holding states that stood for a strong centralized government which secessionists said and said truly was bound progressively to develop into more and more tyrannical forms which happened from the close of the civil war there has been continual encroachment of the federal power upon what was formerly the concern of the states individually the wage slavers in their struggles of today are continually thrown into conflict with that centralized power against which the slave holder protested with liberty on his lips by tyranny in his heart. Ethically speaking it was the non slave holding states that in a general way stood for greater human liberty while the secessionists stood for race slavery in a general way only that is the majority of northerners not being accustomed to the actual presence of negro slavery about them thought it was probably a mistake yet they were in no great ferment of anxiety to have it abolished. The abolitionists only and they were relatively few were the genuine ethicals to whom slavery itself not secession or union was the main question in fact so paramount was it with them that a considerable number of them were themselves for the disillusion of the union advocating that the north take the initiative in the matter of dissolving in order that the northern people might shake off the blame of holding negroes in chains. Of course there were all sorts of people all sorts of temperaments among those who advocated the abolition of slavery there were Quakers like Whittier indeed it was the peace at all costs Quakers who had advocated abolition even in early colonial days there were moderate political actionists who were buying off the slaves as the cheapest way and there were extremely violent people who believed and did all sorts of violent things as to what the politicians did it is one long record of how not to do it a record of 30 years of compromising and dickering and trying to keep what was as it was and to hand sops to both sides when new conditions demanded that something be done or to be pretended to be done but the stars in their courses fought against Cicera the system was breaking down from within and the direct actionists from without as well were widening the cracks remorselessly among the various expressions of direct rebellion was the organization of the underground railroad most of the people who belong to it believed in both sorts of action but however much they theoretically subscribed to the right of the majority to enact and enforce laws they didn't believe in it on that point my grandfather was a member of the underground many a fugitive slave is helped on his way to Canada he was a very patient law abiding man in most respects though I have often thought that he respected it because he didn't have much to do with it always leading a pioneer life he was generally far from him and direct action imperative be that as it may and law respecting as he was he had no respect whatever for slave laws no matter if made by ten times of a majority and he conscientiously broke everyone that came in his way to be broken there were times when in the operation of the underground that violence was required and was used I recollect one old friend relating to me how she and her mother kept watch all night at the door while a slave for whom a posse was searching hid in the cellar and though they were of Quaker descent and sympathies there was a shotgun on the table fortunately it did not have to be used that night when the fugitive slave law was passed with the help of the political actionists of the north who wanted to offer a new sop to the slaveholders the direct actionists took to rescuing recaptured fugitives there was the rescue of Sadratch and the rescue of Jerry the latter rescuers being led by the famous Jared Smith and a good many more successful and unsuccessful attempts still the politicals kept on pottering and trying to smooth things over and the abolitionists were denounced and decried by the ultra law abiding pacificators pretty much as William D. Haywood and Frank Bond are being denounced by their own party now the other day I read a communication in the Chicago Daily Socialists from the secretary of the Louisville local socialist party to the national secretary requesting that some safe and sane speaker be substituted for Bond who had been announced to speak there in explaining why Mr. Dobbs makes this quotation from Bond's lecture had the McNamara's been successful in defending the interests of the working class they would have been right just as John Brown would have been right had he been successful in freeing the slaves ignorance was the only crime of John Brown and ignorance was the only crime of the McNamara's upon this Mr. Dobbs comments as follows we dispute emphatically the statements here made the attempt to draw a parallel between the open if mistaken revolt of John Brown on the one hand and the secret and murderous methods of the McNamara's on the other it is not only indicative of shallow reasoning but highly mischievous in the logical conclusions which may be drawn from such statements evidently Mr. Dobbs is very ignorant of the life and work of John Brown John Brown was a man of violence he would have scorned anybody's attempt to make him out anything else and once a person is a believer in violence it is with him only a question of the most effective way of applying it which can be determined only by knowledge of conditions and means at his disposal John Brown did not shrink at all from conspiratorial methods those who have read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and the reminiscences of Lucy Coleman will recall that one of the plans laid by John Brown was to organize a chain of armed camps in the mountains of West Virginia North Carolina and Tennessee send secret emissaries among the slaves inciting them to flee to these camps and there concert such measures as times and conditions made possible for further arousing revolt among the Negroes that this plan failed was due to the weakness of the desire for liberty among the slaves themselves more than anything else later on when the politicians in their infinite deviousness contrived a fresh proposition of how not to do it as the Kansas Nebraska Act which left the question of slavery to be determined by the settlers the direct actionists on both sides sent bogus settlers into the territory who proceeded to fight it out the pro-slavery men who got in first made a constitution recognizing slavery and a law punishing with death anyone who aided a slave to escape but the free-soilers who were a little longer and arriving since they came from more distant states made a second constitution and refused to recognize the other party's laws at all and John Brown was there mixing in all the violence conspiratorial or open he was a horse thief and a murderer in the eyes of decent peaceable political actionists and there is no doubt that he stole horses sending no notice in advance of his intention to steal them and that he killed pro-slavery men he struck and got away a good many times before his final attempt on Harper's Ferry if he did not use dynamite it was because dynamite had not yet appeared as a practical weapon he made a great many more intentional attacks on life than the two brothers the secretary Dobbs condemns for their murderous attacks and yet history has not failed to understand John Brown mankind knows that though he was a violent man with human blood upon his hands who was guilty of high treason and hanged for it yet his soul was a great strong unselfish soul unable to bear the frightful crime which kept four million people like dumb beasts and thought that making war against it was a sacred a God called duty for John Brown was a very religious man a Presbyterian it is by and because of the direct acts of the forerunners of social change whether they be of peaceful or war like nature that the human conscience the conscience of the mass becomes aroused to the need for change it would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever brought about by political action sometimes good things do come about that way but never until individual rebellion followed by mass rebellion has forced it direct action is always the clamor the initiator through which the great sum of indifferentists become aware that oppression is getting intolerable we have now an oppression in the land and not only in this land but throughout all those parts of the world which enjoy the very mixed blessings of civilization and just as in the question of chattel slavery so this form of slavery has been be getting both direct action and political action a certain percent of our population probably a much smaller percent than politicians are in the habit of assigning at mass meetings is producing the material wealth upon which all the rest of us live just as it was four million chattel blacks who supported all the crowd of parasites above them these are the land workers and the industrial workers through the un prophesied and un prophesiable operation of institutions which no individual of us created but found in existence when he came here these workers the most absolutely necessary part of the whole social structure without whose services none can either eat or clothe or shelter himself are just the ones who get the least to eat to wear and to be housed with them to say nothing of their share of the other social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish such as education and artistic gratification these workers have in one form or another mutually joined their forces to see what betterment of their condition they could get primarily by direct action secondarily by political action we have had the grand the farmers alliance cooperative associations colonization experiments nights of labor trade unions and industrial workers of the world all of them have been organized for the purpose of ringing through the masters in the economic field a little better price a little better conditions a little shorter hours or on the other hand to resist a reduction in price worse conditions or longer hours none of them has attempted a final solution of the social war none of them except the industrial workers has recognized that there is a social war inevitable so long as present legal social conditions endure they accepted property institutions as they found them they were made up of average men with average desires and they undertook to do what appeared to them possible and very reasonable things they were not committed to any particular political policy when they were organized but were associated for direct action of their own initiation either positive or defensive undoubtedly there were and are among all these organizations members who looked beyond immediate demands who did see that the continuous development of forces now in operation was bound to bring about conditions to which it is impossible that life continued to submit and against which therefore it will protest and violently protest that it will have no choice but to do so that it must do so or tamely die and since it is not the nature of life to surrender without struggle it will not tamely die 22 years ago I met Farmers Alliance people who said so Knights of Labor who said so Trade Unionists who said so they wanted larger aims than those which their organizations were looking but they had to accept their fellow members as they were and tried to stir them to do work for such things as it was possible to make them see and what they could see was better prices better wages less dangerous or tyrannical conditions shorter hours at the stage of development when these movements were initiated the land workers could not see that their struggle had anything to do with the struggle of those engaged in manufacturing or transporting service nor could these latter see that theirs had anything to do with the movement of the farmers for that matter very few of them see it yet they have yet to learn that there is one common struggle against those who have appropriated the earth the money and the machines unfortunately the great organizations of the farmers frittered itself away in a stupid chase after political power it was quite successful in getting the power in certain states but the courts pronounced its laws unconstitutional and there was the burial hole of all its political conquests its original program was to build its own elevators and store the products therein holding these from the market till they could escape the speculator also to organize labor exchanges issuing credit notes upon products deposited for exchange had it adhered to this program of direct mutual aid it would to some extent for a time at least have afforded an illustration of how mankind may free itself from the parasitism of bankers and the middlemen of course it would have been overthrown in the end unless it would have so revolutionized by the example as to force the overthrow of the legal monopoly of land and money but at least it would have served a great educational purpose as it was it went after the red herring and disintegrated merely from its futility the knights of labor subsided into comparative insignificance but not because of failure to use the direct action nor because of its tampering with politics which was small but chiefly because it was a heterogeneous mass of workers who could not associate their efforts effectively the trade unions grew strong as the knights of labor subsided and have continued slowly but persistently to increase in power it is true the increase has fluctuated that there have been setbacks single organizations have been formed and again dispersed but on the whole trade unions have been a growing power they have been so because poor as they are they have been a means whereby a certain section of the workers have been able to bring their united force to bear directly upon their masters and so get for themselves some portion of what they wanted of what their conditions dictated to them they must try to get the strike is their natural weapon that which they themselves have forged it is the direct blow of the strike which nine times out of ten the boss is afraid of of course there are occasions when he is glad of one but that's unusual and the reason he dreads a strike is not so much because he thinks he cannot win out against it but simply and solely because he does not want an interruption of his business the ordinary boss isn't in much dread of a class conscious vote there are plenty of shops where you can talk socialism or any other political program all day long but if you begin to talk unionism you may forthwith expect to be discharged or at best warned to shut up why not because the boss is so wise as to know that political action is a swamp in which the working man gets mired or because he understands that political socialism is fast becoming a middle class movement not at all he thinks socialism is a very bad thing but it's a good way off but he knows that if his shop is unionized he will have trouble right away his hands will be rebellious he will be put to expense to improve his factory conditions he will have to keep working men that he doesn't like and in case of strike he may expect injury to his machinery or his buildings it is often said and parrot like repeated that the bosses are class conscious that they stick together for their class interest and are willing to undergrow any sort of personal loss rather than be false to their interests it isn't so at all the majority of business people are just like the majority of working men they care a whole lot more about their individual loss or gain than about the gain or loss of their class and it is his individual loss the boss sees when threatened by a union now everybody knows that a strike of any size means violence no matter what anyone's ethical preference for peace may be he knows it will not be peaceful if it's a telegraph strike it means cutting wires and poles and getting fake scabs in to spoil the instruments if it is a steel rolling mill strike it means beating up the scabs breaking the windows setting the gauges wrong and ruining the expensive rollers together with tons and tons of material if it's a minor strike it means destroying tracks and bridges and blowing up mills if it is a garment worker strike it means having an unaccountable fire getting a volley of stones through an apparently inaccessible window or possibly a brick bat on the manufacturer's own head if it's a streetcar strike it means tracks torn up or barricaded with the contents of ash carts and slop carts with overturned wagons or stolen fences it means smashed or incinerated cars and turned to switches if it is a system federation strike it means dead engines, wild engines, derailed freight and stalled trains if it is a building trades strike it means dynamited structures and always, everywhere, all the time fights between strike breakers and scabs against strikers and strike sympathizers between people and police on the side of the bosses it means search lights, electric wires, stock aids, bull pens detectives and provocative agents violent kidnapping and deportation and every device they can conceive for direct protection besides the ultimate invocation of police, police, militia state constabulary and federal troops everybody knows this everybody smiles when union officials protest their organizations to be peaceable and law abiding because everybody knows they are lying they know that violence is used both secretly and openly and they know it is used because the strikers cannot do any other way without giving up the fight at once nor do they mistake those who thus resort to violence under stress for destructive miscreants who do what they do out of innate cussedness the people in general understand that they do these things through the harsh logic of a situation which they did not create but which forces them to these attacks in order to make good in their struggle to live or else go down the bottomless descent into poverty that lets death find them in the poor house hospital, the city street, or the river slime this is the awful alternative that the workers are facing and this is what makes the most kindly disposed human beings men who would go out of their way to help a wounded dog or bring home a stray kitten and nurse it or step aside to avoid walking on a worm resort to violence against their fellow men they know for the facts have taught them that this is the only way to win if they can win it all and it has always appeared to me one of the most utterly ludicrous absolutely irrelevant things that a person can do or say when approached for relief or assistance by a striker who is dealing with an immediate situation to respond with vote yourself into power when the next election is six months a year or two years away unfortunately the people who know best how violence is used in union warfare cannot come forward and say on such a day at such a place such and such specific action was done and as a result such and such concession was made or such and such boss capitulated to do so would imperil their liberty and their power to go on fighting therefore those that know best must keep silent and sneer in their sleeves while those that know little pray events not tongues must make their position clear and there has been a very good deal of preying these last few weeks speakers and writers honestly convinced I believe that political action and political action only can win the workers battle have been denouncing what they are pleased to call direct action what they really mean is conspiratorial violence as the author of mischief and calculable one Oscar Merringer as an example recently said at a meeting in Chicago that the Haymarket bomb of 86 had set back the eight-hour movement 25 years arguing that the movement would have succeeded but for the bomb it's a great mistake no one can exactly measure in years or months the effect of a forward push or a reaction no one can demonstrate that the eight-hour movement could have been won 25 years ago we know that the eight-hour day was put on the statute books of Illinois in 1871 by political action and has remained a dead letter that the direct action of the workers could have won it then cannot be proved but it can be shown that many more potent factors than the Haymarket bomb worked against it on the other hand if the reactive influence of the bomb was really so powerful we should naturally expect labor and union conditions to be worse in Chicago than in the cities where no such thing happened on the contrary, bad as they are, the general conditions of labor are better in Chicago than in most other large cities and the power of the unions is more developed there than in any other American city except San Francisco so if we are to conclude anything for the influence of the Haymarket bomb keep these facts in mind personally I do not think its influence on the labor movement as such was so very great it will be the same with the present furor about violence nothing fundamental has been altered two men have been imprisoned for what they did 24 years ago they were hanged for what they did not do some few more may yet be imprisoned but the forces of life will continue to revolt against their economic chains there will be no cessation in the revolt no matter what ticket men vote or fail to vote until the chains are broken how will the chains be broken political actionists tell us it will be only by means of working class party action at the polls by voting themselves into possession of the sources of life and the tools by voting that those who now command forests, mines, ranches, waterways, mills and factories and likewise command at the military power to defend them shall hand over their dominion to the people and meanwhile be peaceable, industrious, law abiding, patient and frugal as Madero told the Mexican peons to be after he sold them to Wall Street even if some of you are disenfranchised don't rise up even against that for it might set back the party well I have already stated that some good is occasionally accomplished by political action not necessarily working class party action either but I am abundantly convinced that the occasional good accomplished is more than counterbalanced by the evil just as I am convinced that though there are occasional evils resulting through direct action they are more than counterbalanced by the good nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of benefiting the workers have either turned into weapons in their enemies hands or become dead letters unless the workers through their organizations have directly enforced their observance so that in the end it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway as an example of getting at the tarred end of a law Glantz at the anti-trust law which was supposed to benefit the people in general and the working class in particular about two weeks since some 250 union leaders were cited to answer to the charge of being trust-formers as the answer of the Illinois Central to its strikers but the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any such minor results the main evil is that it destroys initiative quenches the individual rebellious spirit teaches people to rely on someone else to do for them what they should do for themselves finally renders organic the anomalous idea that by massing supinus together until a majority is acquired then through the peculiar magic of that majority this supinus is to be transformed into energy that is people who have lost the habit of striking for themselves as individuals who have submitted to every injustice while waiting for the majority to grow are going to become metamorphosed into human high explosives by a mere process of packing I quite agree that the sources of life and all the natural wealth of the world and the tools necessary to cooperative production must become freely accessible to all it is a positive certainty to me that unionism must widen and deepen its purposes or it will go under and I feel sure the logic of the situation will gradually force them to see it they must learn that the workers problem can never be solved by beating up scabs so long as their own policy of limiting their membership by high initiation fees and other restrictions helps to make scabs they must learn that the course of growth is not so much along the line of higher wages but shorter hours which will enable them to increase membership to take in everybody who is willing to come into the union they must learn that if they want to in battles all allied workers must act together act quickly serving no notice on bosses and retain their freedom to do so at all times and finally they must learn that even then when they have a complete organization they can win nothing permanent unless they strike for everything not for a wage, not for a minor improvement but for the whole natural wealth of the earth and proceed to the direct expropriation of it all they must learn that their power does not lie in their voting strength that their power lies in their ability to stop production it is a great mistake to suppose that the wage earners constitute a majority of the voters wage earners are here today and there tomorrow and that hinders a large number of voting a great percentage of them in this country are foreigners without a voting right the most patent proof that socialist leaders know this is so is that they are compromising their propaganda at every point to win the support of the business class the small investor their campaign papers proclaimed that their interviewers had been assured by Wall Street bond purchasers that they would be just as ready to buy Los Angeles bonds from a socialist as a capital administrator that the present Milwaukee administration has been a boon to the small investor their reading notices assure their readers in this city that we need not go to the great department stores to buy buy rather of so and so on Milwaukee Avenue who will satisfy us quite as well as a big business institution in short they are making every desperate effort to win the support and to prolong the life of that middle class which socialist economy says must be ground to pieces because they know they cannot get a majority without them the most that a working class party could do even if its politicians remained honest would be to form a strong affection in the legislatures which might by combining its vote with one side or another when certain political or economic palliatives but what the working class can do when once they grow into a solidified organization is to show the possessing class through a certain cessation of all work that the whole social structure rests on them that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers activity and that such protests such strikes are inherent in the system of property and will continually recur until the whole thing is abolished and having shown that effectively proceed to expropriate but the military power says the political actionist we must get political power or the military will be used against us against a real general strike the military can do nothing oh true if you have a socialist brand in power he may declare the workers public officials and try to make them serve against themselves but against the solid wall of an immobile working mass even a brand would be broken meanwhile until this international awakening the war will go on as it had been going in spite of all the hysteria which well meaning people who do not understand life and its necessities may manifest in spite of all the shivering that timid leaders have done in spite of all the reactionary revenges that may be taken in spite of all the capital their politicians make out of the situation it will go on because life cries to live and property denies its freedom to live and life will not submit and should not submit it will go on until that day when a self freed humanity is able to chant Swin bird's hymn of man glory to man in the highest for man is the master of things end of direct action The Paris Commune this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this reading by Karl Manchester 2009 The Paris Commune by Voltaireen DeClaire The Paris Commune like other spectacular events in human history has become the clinging point for many legends alike among its enemies as among its friends indeed one must often question which was the real Commune the legend or the fact what was actually lived or the conception of it which has shaped itself in the world mind during those 40 odd years that have gone since the 18th of March 1871 it is thus with doctrines it is thus with personalities it is thus with events which is the real Christianity the simple doctrine attributed to Christ or the practical preaching and realising of organised Christianity which is the real Abraham Lincoln the clever politician who emancipated the chattel slaves as an act of policy or the legendary apostle of human liberty who rises like a gigantic figure of iconoclastic right smiting old wrongs and receiving the martyr's crown therefore which is the real Commune the thing that was or the thing that our orators have painted it which will be the influencing power in the days that succumb our Commune commentators are wont to say and surely they believe that the declaration of the Commune was the spontaneous assertion of independence by the Parisian masses consciously alive to the fact that the national government of France had treated them most outrageously in the matter of defence against the Prussian army they believe that the farce of the situation in which the city found itself had opened the eyes of the general populace to the fact that the national government so far from serving the supposed prime purposes of government vis as a means of defence against a foreign invader was in reality a thing so apart from them and their interests that it preferred to leave them to the mercy of the Prussians to endangering its own supremacy by assisting in their defence or permitting them to defend themselves it is a pity that this legendary figure of awakened Paris is not a true one the Commune in fact was not the work of the whole people of Paris nor of the majority of the people of Paris the Commune was really established by a comparatively small number of able and supremely devoted men and women from every walk in life but with a relatively high percentage of military men engineers and political journalists some of whom had time and again been imprisoned before for seditious writing or acts of rebellion they flocked in from their exile in the neighbouring countries thinking that now they saw the opportunity for retrieving former errors and arousing the people to renew and to extend the struggle of 1848 it is true that there were also teachers artists, designers, architects and builders skilled craftsmen of every sort and perhaps no chapter in the whole story is more inspiring than the description of the gatherings of the workers which took place night after night in every quarter of the beleaguered city previous to the 18th of March and thereafter to such meetings went those who burned with fervour of faith in what the people might and would accomplish and with the radiant vision of a new social day shining in their eyes endeavoured to make it clear to those who listened one almost catches the redolence of outbursting faith that rising of the sap of hope and courage and daring like an incense of spring almost feels himself there partaking in the work the danger, the glorious mistaken assurance which was theirs and yet the truth must have been that these apostles of the commune were blinded by their own enthusiasm deafened by the enthusiasm they evoked in others to the fact that the gross, great, unvoiced majority who did not attend public meetings who sat within their houses or kept silent in the shops were not converted or affected by their teachings we are told by those who should know the survivors among the communeards themselves that the actual number of persons who were aggressive moving spirits in the great uprising was not generally above 2000 the mass of the people were, as they would probably be in this city today under like circumstances indifferent as to what went on over their heads so that the peace and quiet of their individual lives was restored so that the siege of the Prussians was raised and themselves permitted to go about their business if the commune could assure that, good luck to it they were tired of the siege and they longed for their old familiar miseries to which they were in some respect accustomed they hardly dreamed of anything better but as is usually the case when strategic moments arise these same plain, stolid indifferent people who neither know nor care about fine theories of political right municipal sovereignty and so forth see more directly into the logic of a situation than those who have confused their minds with much theorizing likewise, the people of Paris in general when the commune had become an established fact saw that the only consequent proceedings would be to make war economically as well as politically to cut off any source of supply to the national army which lay within the city instead of doing that, the government of the commune anxious to prove itself more law abiding than the old regime stupidly defended the property rights of its enemies and continued to let the Bank of France furnish supplies to those who were financing the army of Versailles the very army which was to cut their throats naturally the plain people grew disgusted with so senseless a program and in the main took no part in the final struggle with the Versailles troops nor even opposed the idea of their entrance into the city probably a goodly number even drew a sigh of relief at the prospect of a return to the smaller evil of the two little enough did they dream that the way back lay through their own blood and that they who had never lifted a hand or voice for the commune would become its martyrs little did they conceive the wild revenge of law and order upon rebellion the satanalia of restored power did they sleep I wonder on the night before the 20th of May when that dark thunder of vengeance was gathering to break many slept well the next night and still sleep for quote then began a murder grim and great end quote a murder whose painted image even after these 40 years have risen and sunk upon it sends the blood shuddering backward and sets the teeth in uttermost horror and hate McMahon placated the streets with peace and sent his troops to make it in the name of that peace Gallifé, an incarnation of hell set his men the example and rode up and down the streets of Paris dashing out children's brains did a hand appear at a shutter the window was riddled with bullets did a cry of protest escape from any throat the house was invaded its inhabitants driven out lined against the walls and shot where they stood the doctors and the nurses at the bed sides of the wounded the very sick in the hospital themselves were slaughtered where they lay such was McMahon's peace after the street massacres the organized massacres at the bastions the stakes of satori the huddled masses of prisoners the grim visitor with the lantern the ghastly call to rise and follow the trenches dug by the condemned in the slippery blood-soaked ground for their own corpses to fall in 30,000 people butchered butchered by the sateless vengeance of authority and the insane bloodlust of the professional soldier butchered without a pretense of reason a shadow of inquiry merely as the gust of insensate rage blew after the orgy of fury the orgy of the inquisition the gathering of the prisoners in cellar-holes where they must squat or lie upon damp earth and see the light daily only for some short half-hour when an unexpellable sun ray shot through some unstopped crevice the shifting of them day and night across the country sometimes in stockyard wagons stifled, starved and jammed together as even our butchering civilisation is ashamed to jam pigs for the slaughter sometimes by dreadful marches mostly by night often with the rain beating on them the butts of the soldier's muskets striking them as they lagged through weakness or through lameness then the detention-prisons with their long-drawn agonies of hunger, cold, vermin and disease and the ever-looming darkness of waiting death follow the tortures of friends and relatives of the communards or suspected communards to make them betray the whereabouts of their friends could they who had seen these things forgive and forget they who had seen ten-year-old children lashed to make them tell where their fathers were women driven mad before the terrible choice of giving up their sons who had fought or their daughters who had not to the brutality of the soldiery after the tortures of the hunt the tortures of the trials solemn farces cat-like cruelties then the long hopeless line of exiles marching from the prison to the port crowded on the transport ships watched like caged animals forbidden to speak the cannon always threatening above them and so drifted away away to exiled lands to barren islands and fever shores there to waste away in loneliness in uselessness in futile dreams of freedom that ended in chains upon the ankles or death on the coral reefs all this was the mercy and the wisdom shown by the national government to the rebel city whose works are the glory of France and whose beauty is the beauty of the world whatever other lesson we have to learn this one is certain the gluttless revenge of restored authority if ever one rebel let him rebel to the end there is no hope so futile as hope in either the justice or the mercy of a power against which a rebellion has been raised no faith so single or so foolish as faith in the discrimination the judgment or the wisdom of a reconquering government whether at that time the essential principle of the independent commune could have been realised or not through a general response of the other cities of France by like action in case Paris had continued to maintain the struggle for some months longer I am not historian enough nor historic prophet enough to say I inclined to think not but certainly the struggle would have been far other far more fruitful in its results both then and later even if finally overthrown had it really been a movement of all those people who were so indiscriminately murdered for it so violently tortured so mercilessly exiled for had it really been the deliberate expression of a million people's will to be free they would have seized whatever supplies were being furnished the enemy from within their own gates they would have repudiated property rights created by the very power that they were seeking to overthrow they would have seen what was necessary and done it had the real communards themselves seen the logic of their own effort and understood that to over set the political system of dependence which enslaves the communes they must over set the economic institutions which beget the centralised state had they proclaimed a general communalisation of the city's resources they might have won the people to full faith in the struggle and aroused a tenfold effort to win out if that again had been followed by a light contagion in the other cities of France which was a possibility the flame might have caught throughout Latin Europe and those countries might now be giving a practical example of the extension of a modified socialism and local autonomy this is what is likely to happen at the next similar outbreak if politicians are so in politic as to provoke the like there are those amongst the best social students who feel sure that such will be the course of progress I frankly say that I cannot see the path of future progress my vision is not large enough nor my viewpoint high enough where others perhaps behold the morning sunlight I can discern only mists blowing dust and moving glooms which obscure the future I do not know where the path leads nor how it goes only when looking backward I can catch glimpses of that long terrible toilsome way by which humanity has gone forward even that I do not see clearly just stretches of it here and there but I see enough of it to know that never has it been a straight undeviating line always the path winds and returns and even in the moment of gaining something there is something lost against the onslaught of nature man collects his social strength and loses there by the freedom of his more isolated condition against the inconveniences of primitive society he hurls his inventive genius compasses land, sea and air and by the very act of conquering his limitations binds fresh fetters on himself creating a wealth which he enslaves himself to produce and this is the path of progress which there was no foreseeing what waits them and what hope is there and what help is there what waits the unknown waits as it has always waited dark, vague, immense, impenetrable the mystery which elures the young and strong saying come and cope with me the mystery from which the old look back saying better to endure the evils that we have than to fly to others that we know not of the old and wise but alas the cold-blooded the mystery of the still unbound strengths of earth, sun and depths the loosing of any one of which may so alter the face of all that has been done that what now we think a guarantee of liberty may become the very chain of slavery as has been the case before with freedoms laboriously won by act and then set down in words for unborn men to abide by and yet it waits are you strong and courageous the unknown invites you to the struggle dares you to its conquering nay it is perhaps your future beloved waiting to reward your daring passion with the fervours of fresh creation are you feeble and timid of spirit bow your head to the ground still you must meet the future still you must go in the track of the others you may hinder them you may make them lag you cannot stop them nor yourself struggle waits abortive struggle, crushed struggle mistaken struggle long and often and worse than all this waiting waits for the devil of inaction when no one does anything when the daring can only move in self-returning circles when no one knows what to do except to endure the ever tightening pressure of intolerable conditions how to better which he knows not when living appears a monotonous journey through a featureless wilderness wherein the same pitiless word useless stares at one from every aimless path seeks to follow in the despairing search for a way out and happier is he who perishes in the mistaken struggle than he who, with a hot and chafing soul but with clear discernment sees that he is doomed to go on indefinitely in submission to the wrongs that are what hope is there that the increasing pressure of conditions may quicken intelligences that even out of mistaken struggle or straight struggle unforeseen good consequences may follow just as out of undeniable improvements in material life unforeseeable ill results are consequent the commune hoped to free Paris and by so setting an example free many other cities it went down in utter defeat and no city was freed there by but out of this defeat the knowledge and skill of craftsmanship of its people went abroad over other lands both into civilised centres and to wild waste places and wherever its art went its idea went also so that the commune the idealised commune has become a watchword through the workshops of the world wherever there are even a few workers seeking to awaken their fellows there are those who have definite hopes those who think they know precisely how overwork and underwork and poverty and all their consequences of spiritual enslavement are to be abolished such are they who think they can see the way to progress broad and dear through the slit in a ballot box I fear their works will have some uncalculated consequences also if they ever execute them I fear their narrowly enclosed view deceives them much climbing a hill is a different affair from voting oneself at the top no matter man always hopes life always hopes when a definite object cannot be outlined the indomitable spirit of hope still impels the living mass to move towards something something that shall somehow be better what help is there no help from outside power no help from overhead no help from the sky pray to it ever so much no help from the strong hand of wise men nor of good men however wise or good such help always ends in despotism nor yet is there help in the abnegation of generous fanatics whose efforts end in deplorable fiasco as did the commune help lies only in the general will of those who do the work to say how, when and where they shall do it the force of the lesson of the commune is that people cannot be made free who have not conceived freedom yet through such examples they may learn to conceive it it cannot be bestowed as a gift it must be taken by those who want it let us hope that those who would have given it bought that much by their sacrifice that they touched the unseeing eyes of the somnambulist proletariat with a light which has made them dream at least of waking end of the Paris commune the interest of the hour should be so generally and so profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their back yard so to speak as the people of the united states are ignorant of the present revolution in mexico can be due only to profoundly and generally acting causes that people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be so is inexcusable it is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you as one interested in every move that you will make to throw off their chains no matter where, no matter how though naturally my interest is greatest where the move is such as appears to me to be most in consonance with the general course of progress where the tyranny attacked is what appears to me the most fundamental where the method followed is to my thinking most direct and unmistakable and I add that those of you who have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of your own being bound first to inform yourselves concerning so great a matter as the revolt of millions of people what they are struggling for what they are struggling against and how the struggle stands from day to day if possible if not from week to week or month to month as best you can and second to spread this knowledge among others and endeavor to do what little you can to awaken the consciousness and sympathy of others one of the great reasons why the mass of the American people know nothing of the revolution in mexico is that they have all together a wrong conception of what revolution means thus 99 out of 100 persons to whom you broach the subject will say why I thought that ended long though that ended last may and this week the press even the daily socialist reports a new revolution in mexico it isn't a new revolution at all it is the same revolution which did not begin with the armed rebellion of last may which has been going on steadily ever since then and before then and is bound to go on for a long time to come if the other nations keep their hands off and the Mexican people are allowed to work out their own destiny what is a revolution and what is this revolution a revolution means some great and subversive change in the social institutions of a people whether sexual religious political or economic the movement of the reformation was a great religious revolution a profound alteration in human thought a refashioning of the human mind the general movement towards political change in Europe and America about the close of the 18th century was a revolution the American and the French revolutions were only prominent individual incidents in it culminations of the teaching of the rights of man the present unrest of the world in its economic relations as manifested from day to day in the opposing combinations of men and money in strikes and bread riots in literature and movements of all kinds demanding a readjustment of the whole or of parts of our wealth owning and wealth distributing system this unrest is the revolution of our time the economic revolution which is seeking social change and will go on until it is accomplished we are in it at any moment of our lives it may invade our homes with its stern demand for self-sacrifice and suffering its more violent manifestations are in Liverpool and London today in Barcelona and Vienna tomorrow in New York and Chicago the day after humanity is a seething heaving mass of unease tumbling like surge over a slipping sliding shifting bottom and there will never be any ease until a rock bottom of economic justice is reached the Mexican revolution is one of the prominent manifestations of this worldwide economic revolt it possibly holds as important a place in the present disruption and reconstruction of economic institutions as the great revolution of France held in the 18th century movement it did not begin with the odious government of Diaz nor end with his downfall any more than the revolution in France began with the coronation of Louis the 16th or ended with his beheading it began in the bitter and outraged hearts of the peasants who for generations have suffered under a ready-made system of exploitation imported and foisted upon them by which they have been dispossessed of their homes compelled to become slave tenants of those who robbed them under Diaz in case of rebellion to be deported to a distant province a killing climate and hellish labor it will end only when that bitterness is swatched by very great alteration in the land-holding system or until the people have been absolutely crushed into subjection by a strong military power whether that power be a native or a foreign one now the political overthrow of last May which was followed by the substitution of one political manager for another did not at all touch the economic situation it promised of course politicians always promise it promised to consider measures for altering conditions in the meantime proprietors are assured that the new government intends to respect the rights of landlords and capitalists and exhorts the workers to be patient and frugal yes that was the exhortation in Madero's paper to men who when they are able to get work make twenty five cents a day and owning five million acres of land exhorts the disinherited workers of Mexico to be frugal the idea that such a condition can be dealt with by the immemorial remedy offered by tyrants to slaves is like the idea of sweeping out the sea with a broom and unless that frugality or in other words starvation is forced upon the people by more bayonets and more strategy than appear to be at the government's command the Mexican revolution will go on to the solution of Mexico's land question with a rapidity and directness of purpose not witnessed in any previous upheaval for it must be understood that the main revolt is a revolt against the system of land tenure the industrial revolution of the cities while it is far from being silent is not to compare with the agrarian revolt let us understand why Mexico consists of twenty seven states two territories and a federal district about the capital city its population totals about fifteen million of these four million are of unmixed Indian descent people somewhat similar in character to the pueblos of our southwestern states primitively agricultural for an immemorial period communistic in many of their social customs and like all Indians invincible haters of authority these Indians are scattered throughout the rural districts of Mexico one particularly well known in much talked of tribe the yaqui having had its fatherland in the rich northern state of Sonora a very valuable agricultural country the Indian population especially the yaquis and the moquis have always disputed the usurpations of the invaders government from the days of the early conquest until now and will undoubtedly continue to dispute them as long as there is an Indian left or until their right to use the soil out of which they sprang without paying tribute in any shape is freely recognized the communistic customs of these people are very interesting and very instructive too they have gone on practicing them all these hundreds of years in spite of the foreign civilization that was being grafted upon Mexico grafted in all senses of the word and it was not until forty years ago indeed the worst of it not till twenty five years ago that the increasing power of the government made it possible to destroy this ancient life of the people by them the woods the waters and the lands were held in common might cut wood from the forest to build his cabin make use of the rivers to irrigate his field or garden patch and this is a right whose acknowledgement none but those who know the eridity of the southwest can fully appreciate the imperative necessity for tillable lands were allotted by mutual agreement before sowing and reverted to the tribe after harvesting for reallotment pastureage the right to collect fuel were for all the habits of mutual aid which always arise among sparsely settled communities were instinctive with them neighbor assisted neighbor to build his cabin to plow his ground to gather and store his crop no legal machinery existed no tax-gatherer no justice no jailer all that they had to do with the hated foreign civilization was to pay the periodical rent collector and to get out of the way of the recruiting officer when he came around those two personages they regarded with spite and dread but as the major portion of their lives not in immediate contact with them they could still keep on in their old way of life in the main with the development of the Diaz regime which came into power in 1876 and when I say the Diaz regime I do not especially mean the man Diaz for I think he has been both overcursed and over praised but the whole force which has steadily developed centralized power from then on and the whole policy of civilizing Mexico which was the Diaz boast with its development I say this Indian life has been broken up violated with as ruthless a hand as ever tore up a people by the roots and cast them out as weeds to wither in the sun historians relate with horror the iron deeds of William the Conqueror who in the 11th century created new forest by laying waste the farms of England destroying the homes of the people to make room for the deer but as edicts were merely compared with the action of the Mexican government to war the Indians to introduce progressive civilization the Diaz regime granted away immense concessions of land to native and foreign capitalists chiefly foreign indeed though there were enough of native sharks as well mostly these concessions were granted to capitalistic combinations which were to build railroads and in some cases did so in a most uncalled for an uneconomic way develop mineral resources or establish modern industries the government took no note of the ancient tribal rights or customs and those who received the concessions proceeded to enforce their property rights they introduced the unheard of crime of trespass they forbade the cutting of a tree the breaking of a branch the gathering of the fallen wood in the forests they claimed the water-courses forbidding their free use to the people and it was as if one had forbidden to us the reins of heaven the unoccupied land was theirs no hand might drive a plow into the soil without first obtaining permission from a distant master a permission granted on the condition that the product be the landlords a small pitifully small wage the workers nor was this enough in 1894 was passed the law of unappropriated lands by that law not only were the great stretches of vacant in the old time common land appropriated but the occupied lands themselves to which the occupants could not show a legal title were to be denounced that is the educated and the powerful who were able to keep up with the doings of the government went to the courts and said that there was no legal title to such and such land and put in a claim for it and the usual hocus-pocus of legality being complied with the actual occupant of the land being all the time blissfully unconscious of the law in the innocence of his barbarism supposing that the working of the ground by his generations of forebears was title all sufficient one fine day the sheriff comes upon this hapless dweller on the heath and drives him from his ancient habitat to wander as an outcast such are the blessings of education mankind invents a written sign to aid its intercommunication and forthwith all manner of miracles are wrought with the sign even such a miracle as that a part of the solid earth passes under the mastery of an impotent sheet of paper and a distant bit of animated flesh which never even saw the ground acquires the power to expel hundreds thousands of like bits of flesh though they grew upon that ground as the trees grow labored it with their hands and fertilized it with their bones for a thousand years this law of unappropriated lands says William Archer has covered the country with Naboth's vineyards I think it would require a biblical prophet to describe the abomination of desolation it has made it was to become lords of this desolation that the men play the game landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates enterprising capitalists seeking investments connived at the iniquities of the Diaz regime I will go further and say devise them the Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles of territory more than the entire state of New Jersey the Tarrasas family in the state of Chihuahua owns 25,000 square miles rather more than the entire state of West Virginia nearly one half the size of Illinois what was the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days compared with this and the peon's share for his toil upon these great estates is hardly more than was the chattel slaves wretched housing, wretched food and wretched clothing it is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be frugal it is of men who have been thus disinherited that our complacent fellow citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin say Mexicans, what do you know about Mexicans? their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence and smoke cigarettes and pray what idea of life should a people have whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them should they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for some other man to lull in it reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him about the easy idleness when the foreman's back was turned I ain't going to do no white man's work for I don't get no white man's pay but for the yakees there was worse than this not only where their land sees but they were ordered a few years since to be deported to Yucatan now Sonora, as I said is a northern state and Yucatan one of the southern most Yucatan hemp is famous and so is Yucatan fever and Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations to that fever and to that slavery that the yakees were deported in droves of hundreds at a time men, women, and children droves like cattle droves driven and beaten like cattle they died there like flies as it was meant they should Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people and the land became pacific in the hands of the new landowners too pacific in spots they had not left people enough to reap the harvests then the government suspended the Education Act but with the provision that for every crime committed by a yakee five hundred of his people be deported this statement is made in Madero's own book now what in all conscious would anyone with decent human feeling expect a yakee to do? fight as long as there was powder and bullet to be begged, borrowed, or stolen as long as there is a garden to plunder or a hole in the hills to hide in when the revolution burst out the yakees and other Indian peoples into the revolutionists promise us our land back and we will fight with you and they are keeping their word magnificently all during the summer they have kept up the warfare early in September the Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 yakees in Sonora about to attack El Anal a week later 500 yakees had seized the former quarters of the federal troops at Pitahaya this week it is reported that federal troops are dispatched to Ponotlan a town in Jalisco to quell all the Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the Madeirist government was to restore their land has been dispelled like reports from Sinaloa in the terrible state of Yucatan the Mayas are in active rebellion the papers say that the authorities and leading citizens of various towns have been seized by the Malcontents and put in prison what is more interesting is that peons have seized not only the leading citizens but still more to the purpose have seized the plantations parceled them and are already gathering the crops for themselves of course it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of Mexico rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds that is about 8 million leaving less than 3 million of pure white stock the mestiza or mixed breed population have followed the communistic instincts and customs of their Indian forebears while from the Latin side of their makeup they have certain tendencies which work well together with their Indian patriot of authority the mestiza as well as the Indians are mostly ignorant in book knowledge only about 16% of the whole population of Mexico being able to read and write it was not within the program of the civilizing regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning in the people's hands but to conclude that people are necessarily unintelligent because they are illiterate is in itself a rather unintelligent proceeding moreover a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil is the source of wealth and they must get back to the land even if their intelligence is limited accordingly they have got back to the land in the state of Morlos which is a small south central state but a very important one being next to the federal district and by consequence to the city of Mexico there has been a remarkable land revolution general Zapata the name has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made peace with Madero then as breaking faith next wounded and killed and again resurrected and in hiding then anew on the warpath and proclaimed by the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender unconditionally and be tried by court-martial who has seized the strategic points on both the railroads running through Morrelos and who just a few days ago broke into the federal district sacked a town successfully at two or three points with the federals blew out two railroad bridges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that they are clamoring for all kinds of action this Zapata the fires of whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero Oaxaca and Puebla as well is an Indian with a long score to pay and all an Indian satisfaction in paying it he appears to be a fighter of the style of our revolutionary Marion and Sumter the country in which he is operating is mountainous and guerrilla bands are exceedingly difficult of capture even when they are defeated they have usually succeeded in inflicting more damage than they have received and they always get away Zapata has divided up the greatest states of Morrelos from end to end telling the peasants to take possession they have done so they are in possession and have already harvested their crops Morrelos has a population of some two hundred and twelve thousand in Puebla reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the land by the peasantry the troops were departing taking horses and arms with them it is they, no doubt, who are now fighting with Zapata in Chihuahua one of the largest states prisons have been thrown open and the prisoners recruited as rebels a great Hacienda was attacked and the horses run off and the prisoners rose and joined the attacking party in Sinaloa a rich northern state famous in the southwestern United States some years ago as the field of a great cooperative experiment in which Mr. C. B. Hoffman one of the former editors of the Chicago Daily Socialist was a leading spirit this week's paper reports that the former revolutionary general Juan Banderas is heading an insurrection second in importance only to that led by Zapata in the southern border state of Chiapas the taxes in many places could not be collected last week news items said that the present government had sent general Paz there with federal troops to remedy that state of affairs in Tabasco the peons refused to harvest the crops for their masters let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and gathered them for themselves the Madeiras have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be inaugurated at once if we are to believe the papers we are to believe Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying five days after my inauguration the rebellion will be crushed just why the crushing has to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear I conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary deputies of such an announcement was really made and some astonished query among his followers what are we to conclude from all these reports that the Mexican people are satisfied that it's all good and settled what should we think if we have read the people not of lower but of upper California had turned out the ranch owners had started to gather in the field products for themselves and that the secretary of war had sent United States troops to attack some thousands of armed men Zapata has had three thousand under arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased who were defending that expropriation if we read that in the state of Illinois the prisoners had driven off the tax collector that the coast states were talking of secession and forming an independent combination that in Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerrilla work from the mountains that the prisoners of Maryland with inhaling distance of Washington city were being thrown open by armed revoltees should we call it a condition of peace regarded as a proof that the people have been oppressed we would not we would say that revolution was in full swing and the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico from last may till now is that the Chicago press like the eastern northern and central press in general has said nothing about this steady march of revolt even the socialist has been silent now that the flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment they call it a new revolution that the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting causes that produce our northern indifference which I shall presently try to explain and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present henchmen the medirists a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the fire they invested some ten million dollars in this bunch in the hope that they may be able to accomplish the double feet of keeping capitalist possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with taxes they want to lend them all the countenance they can till the experiment is well tried so they deliberately suppress revolutionary news among the later items of interest reported by the Los Angeles times are those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many million landlords of Mexico who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles what is the meaning of it simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe and comfortable proposition as it was that for the present they prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves running the risk of actual residents of course it is understood that some of this notable efflux the supporters of Reyes for example who have their own little rebellions in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week are political reactionists scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own hands but most are simply those who know that their property right is safe enough to be the materialist government but that the said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally to themselves if they remain there nor is all of this fighting revolutionary not by any means some is reactionary some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge much no doubt the expression of general turbulence of a very unconscious nature but granting all that may be thrown in the balance the mighty thing the regenerative revolution is the reappropriation of the land by the peasants thousands upon thousands of them are doing it ignorant peasants peasants who know nothing of the jargon of land reformist or of socialists yes that's just the glory of it just the fact that it is done by ignorant people that is people ignorant of book theories but not ignorant not so ignorant by half of life on the land as the theory spinners of the cities their minds are simple and direct they act accordingly for them there is one way to get back to the land i.e. to ignore the machinery of paper land holding in many instances they have burned the records of the title deeds and proceed to plow the ground to sow and plant and gather and keep the product themselves economists of course will say that these ignorant people with their primitive institutions and methods will not develop the agricultural resources of Mexico and that they must give way before those who will so develop its resources that such is the law of human development in the first place the abominable political combination which gave away as recklessly as a handful of soap bubbles the agricultural resources of Mexico gave them away to the millionaire speculators who were to develop the country were the educated men of Mexico and this is what they saw fit to do with their higher intelligence and education so the ignorant may well distrust the good intentions of educated men who talk about improvements in land development in the second place capitalistic land ownership so far from developing the land in such a manner as to support a denser population has depopulated whole districts immense districts in the third place what the economists do not say is that the only justification for intense cultivation of the land is that the product of such cultivation may build up bodies of men by consequence their souls to richer and fuller manhood it is not merely to pile up figures of so many million bushels of wheat and corn produced in a season but that this wheat and corn shall go first into the stomachs of those who planted it and in abundance to build up the brawn and sinew of the arms that work the ground not meanly maintaining them in a half-starved condition and second to build up the strength of the rest of the nation who are willing to give needed labor in exchange but never to increase the fortunes of idlers who dissipate it this is the purpose and the only purpose of tilling soil and the working of it for any other purposes waste waste both of land and of men in the fourth place no change ever was or ever can be worked out in any society except by the mass of the people theories may be propounded by educated people and set down in books and discussed in libraries sitting rooms and lecture halls but they will remain barren unless the people in mass work them out if the change proposed is such that it is not adaptable to the minds of the people for whose ills it is supposed to be a remedy then it will remain what it was a barren theory now the conditions in Mexico have been and are so desperate that some changes imperative the action of the peasants proves it even if a strong military dictator shall arise he will have to allow some provision towards decent proprietorship these unlettered but determined people must be dealt with now there is no such thing as waiting till they are educated up to it therefore the wisdom of the economist is wisdom out of place rather relative unwisdom the people never can be educated if their conditions are to remain what they were under the Diaz regime bodies and minds are both too impoverished to be able to profit by a spread of theoretical education even if it did not require available money and indefinite time to prepare such a spread whatever economic changes wrought then must be such as the people in their present state of comprehension can understand and make use of and we see by the reports what they understand they understand they have a right upon the soil a right to use it for themselves a right to drive off the invader who has robbed them to destroy landmarks and title leads to ignore the tax gatherer and his demands and however primitive their agricultural methods may be one thing is sure that they are more economical than any system which heaps up fortunes by destroying men moreover who is to say how they may develop their methods once they have a free opportunity to do so it is a common belief of the Anglo-Saxon that the Indian is essentially lazy the reasons for his thinking so are too under the various tyrannies and robberies which white men in general and Anglo-Saxons in particular they have even gone beyond the Spaniard have inflicted upon Indians there is no possible reason why an Indian should want to work save the idiotic one that work in itself as a virtuous and exalted thing even if by it the worker increases the power of his tyrant as William Archer says if there are men and this is not denied who work for no wage and with no prospect or hope of any reward it would be curious to know by what motive other than the lash or the fear of the lash they are induced to go forth to the labor in the morning the second reason is that an Indian really has a different idea of what he is alive for than an Anglo-Saxon has and so have the Latin peoples this different idea is what I meant when I said that the mestiza have certain tendencies inherited from the Latin side of their makeup which work well together with their Indian hatred of authority the Indian likes to live to be his own master to work when he pleases he does not crave many things but he craves the enjoyment of the things that he has he feels himself more a part of nature than a white man does all his legends are of wandering with nature of forests, fields, streams, plants, animals he wants to live with the same liberty as the other children of earth his philosophy of work is work so as to live carefree this is not laziness this is sense to the person who has that makeup your Latin on the other hand also wants to live and having artistic impulses in him his idea of living is very much in gratifying them he likes music and song and dance picture making, carving, and decorating he doesn't like to be forced to create his fancies in a hurry he likes to fashion them and admire them and improve and refashion them and admire again and all for the fun of it if you design or a number of objects at a fixed price in a given time he loses inspiration the play becomes work and hateful work so he too does not want to work except what is requisite to maintain himself in a position to do those things that he likes better your Anglo-Saxons idea of life however is to create the useful and the profitable whether he has any use or profit out of it or not and to keep busy, busy to bestow himself like the devil and a holy water font like all other people he makes a special virtue of his own natural tendencies and wants all the world to get busy it doesn't so much matter to what end this business is to be conducted provided the individual scrabbles whenever a true Anglo-Saxon seeks to enjoy himself he makes work out of that too after the matter of a certain venerable English shopkeeper who in company with his son visited the Louvre being tired out of walking from room to room consulting his catalogue and reading artist's names he dropped down to rest but after a few moments rose resolutely and faced the next room saying well Alfred we'd better be getting through our work there is much question as to the origin of the various instincts most people have the impression that the chief source of variation lies in the difference in the amount of sunlight received in the native countries inhabited of the various these are the broadly marked tendencies of the people and business seems spent not only upon fulfilling its own for ordained destiny but upon making all the others fulfill it too which is both unjust and stupid there is room enough in the world for the races to try out their several tendencies and make their independent contributions to the achievements of humanity without imposing them on those who revolt at them granting that the population of Mexico if freed from this foreign busy idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on them with such severity in the last forty years would not immediately adopt improved methods of cultivation even when they should have free opportunity to do so still we have no reason to conclude that they would not adopt so much of it as would fit their idea of what a man is alive for and if that actually proved good it would introduce still further development so that there would be a natural and therefore solid economic growth which would stick while a forced development of it through the devastation of the people is no true growth the only way to make it go is to kill out the Indians altogether and transport the busy crowd there and then keep on transporting for several generations to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an imported population the Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this murderous manner I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to those who materially profited by its extermination but no one who looks forward to the final unification and liberation of man to the incorporation of the several goodnesses of the various races in the one universal race can ever read those pages of our history without burning shame and fathomless regret I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general of the meaning of the Mexican revolution chiefly an agrarian one of its present condition I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the electoral victory of the now ruling power it is not put an end even to the armed rebellion and cannot until it proposes some plan of land restoration and that it not only has no inward disposition to do so but probably would not dare to do in view of the fact that immense capital financed it into power as to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the election it is impossible to say the dailies informed us that in the federal district where there are one million voters the actual vote was less than four hundred and fifty thousand they offered no explanation it is impossible to explain it on the ground that we explain a light vote in our own communities that the people are indifferent to public questions for the people of Mexico are not now indifferent whatever else they may be two explanations are possible the first and most probable that of government intimidation the second that the people are convinced of the uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles in the less thickly populated agricultural states this is very largely the case they are relying upon direct revolutionary action but although there was guerrilla warfare in the federal district even before the election I find it unlikely that more than half of the voting population there abstained from voting out of conviction though I should be glad to be able to believe they did however Madero and his aides are in as was expected the question is how will they stay in as Diaz did and in no other way if they succeed in developing Diaz's some time ability which so far they are wide from having done though they are resorting to the most vindictive and spiteful tactics in their persecution of the genuine revolutionists wherever such come near their clutch to this whole turbulent situation three outcomes are possible one, a military dictator must arise with sense enough to make some substantial concessions and ability enough to pursue the crushing policy ably or two, the United States must intervene in the interest of American capitalists and landholders in case the peasant revolt is not put down by the medirist power and that will be the worst thing that can possibly happen and against which every worker in the United States should protest with all his might or three, the Mexican peasantry will be successful and freedom in land become an actual fact and that means the death knell of great land holding in this country also for what people is going to see its neighbor enjoy so great a triumph and sit on tamely itself under landlordism whatever the outcome be one thing is certain it is a great movement which all the people of the world should be watching eagerly yet as I said at the beginning the majority of our population know no more about it than of a revolt on the planet jupiter first because they are so so busy they scarcely have time to look over the baseball score and the wrestling match how could they read up on a revolution second they are supremely egotistic and concerned in their own big country with its big deeds such as divorce scandals vice grafting and auto races third they do not read Spanish and they have an ancient hostility to all that smells Spanish fourth from our cradles we were told that whatever happened in Mexico was a joke revolutions or rather rebellions came and went about like April showers and they never meant anything serious and in this indeed there was only too much truth it was usually an excuse for one place hunter to get another scalp and lastly as I have said the majority of our people do not know that a revolution means a fundamental change in social life and not a spectacular display of armies it is not much if you can do to remove this mountain of indifference but to me it seems that every reformer of whatever school should wish to watch this movement with the most intense interest as a practical manifestation of awakening of the land workers themselves to the recognition of what all schools of revolutionary economics submit to be the primal necessity the social repossession of the land and whether they be victorious or defeated I for one bow my head to those historic struggleers no matter how ignorant they are who have raised the cry land and liberty and planted the blood red banner on the burning soil of Mexico end of the Mexican revolution