Why? Why all the brutality depicted herein? Why?
The answer is that we are living in an insane social system in which money ranks higher than manhood.
To be more specific the outrages at Everett had their roots in the belief that the men who labor, and especially the migratory and the unskilled element, form an inferior caste or cla.s.s to those who exploit them. The dominant cla.s.s viewed any attempt to claim even the same civil rights as an a.s.sault upon their supremacy and integrity,--this to them being synonymous with social order and civilization. This is always more evident where a single industry dominates, as evidenced by the occurrences at Ludlow, in the coal district, Mesaba in the iron ore section, and Bisbee where copper is the main product. Everett controlled by the lumber interests clinches the argument.
A community dominated by an industry, impelled by a desire for high profits; or under the spell of fear or pa.s.sion, whether justified or not, cannot be restrained by law from a summary satisfaction of its desires or a quieting of its apprehensions. Before such a condition the fabric of local government crumbles and lynch law is subst.i.tuted for the more orderly processes designed to attain the same end. The Everett outrages were no example of the rough and ready justice of primitive communities. The outlaws were in full possession of local government, legislative, judicial, and executive, yet they fell back upon brute force and personal violence and attempted to protect the lumber trust profits by tactics of terrorism.
Insofar as the law can be wielded for their immediate purpose a capitalistic mob, such as these at Everett, will clothe their violence in the form of ostensible legal process, yet often the letter and the spirit of their own cla.s.s-influenced laws will be ruthlessly thrust aside. They want law and order, efficacious, impartial, august, in the eyes of the general citizenry, but they want exemption of their cla.s.s from the rule of the law on certain occasions. Strongly would they deny that all law is cla.s.s law, made, interpreted and administered in behalf of a privileged property-owning cla.s.s, yet the facts bear out this contention.
The conception of impersonal and impartial legalism has been generally accepted along with traditional moral opinion and the naive belief in the excellence of compet.i.tive, individualistic, and unrestrained business. But this historical case has proven, as nothing else could prove, that these bonds are relaxing and the faith and formulas underlying the whole legal establishment are the subject of attack by an increasingly large and uncompromising army of dissenters.
From the developments of the Everett situation one can sense the rising tide of industrial solidarity. It was the unity of the workers that won the great case. It will be the unity of Labor that will win the world for the workers, just as the embryonic democracy of the toilers in its blind groupings has already cracked the sh.e.l.l of the industrial autocracy of the present day.
At present we are at the parting of the ways. There is not sufficient faith in the Law to hold the dying wage system together and there is not a sufficiently clear conception of the solidaric ideal of a new society to bind the rebellious elements to a definite program. So chaos reigns in society and events like those at Everett may be expected to arise until the struggle of the exploited takes on a more constructive form and develops the necessary power to overthrow capitalism and all its attendant inst.i.tutions.
Industrial unionism is the only hope of the disinherited and dispossessed proletariat. It is the voice of the future. It spells at once Evolution and Revolution. Its a.s.sured success means an end to cla.s.ses and cla.s.s rule and the rearing of a race of free individuals.
The strength of the workers is in industry. Every worker, man, woman or child, has economic power. The control of industry means the control of the world.
He who strives to bring the workers closer together so that their allied forces in an industrial organization may overthrow the wage system and rear in its place an Industrial Republic in which slavery will be unknown and where joy will form the mainspring of human activity, pays the highest homage to those who, in order that the spirit of Liberty might not perish from the land, gave their lives at Everett, Washington, on Sunday, November 5th, 1917:
FELIX BARAN, HUGO GERLOT, GUSTAV JOHNSON, JOHN LOONEY, ABRAHAM RABINOWITZ.
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