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recognize the divinity which shaped that stupendous result, so I see that hand in the events, by no means circumscribed, now impending over my native land as well as over Europe—the emancipation of my own class. Every government, including our own as now organized, is a conspiracy to enslave labor whether of the hand or brain. Coercion is the basis of his conspiracy, and hence we would overthrow all existing law which fosters and maintains it. Labor will fight, but will only fight in self-defense. The universal depression and suffering and pauperism in Europe, as well as America, is the source of discontent and unrest and is fomenting a political cyclone.' "
"To these views frequently expressed when pressed for his purpose, I would interpose the plea that people would yet administer the corrective for existing evils through machinery of the ballot, as this was a free representative government, and we could not improve upon its form as a medium for the expression of the popular will. To this he would invariably reply, 'the people will attempt to apply the corrective through the ballot and will measurably succeed so far as form is concerned; but, he would add, 'the vested wrongs of the privileged class, although in the hands of a very meager minority, will never be relinquished without coercion, as witness our late civil war. This meager minority will rebel against the vice and vote of the majority of the people constitutionally expressed. They have the example of a wealthy few in Rome who organized a mercenary praetorian guard of 10,000 policemen to overawe the unarmed populace of the capital and held in their pay the rival legions recruited from the plebian classes. Here is where and when the future revolution will be inaugurated. This plutocracy will rebel against the democratic and republican masses and recruit their mercenary police and praetorian guards from the very ranks of the men who will spoliate on both classes.' "
"That is anarchy as taught and understood by A. R. Parsons. I often pressed him for an exposition of the term anarchism as meant and believed by him. He invariably replied in substance that the meaning of philosophical anarchism was the very antipodes of an anarchy as defined and understood by capitalism; that Webster's dictionary gave two meanings—one, without rulers or governors; and
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