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America, it has been the oriflamme of liberty, the sign of labor's emancipation from its slavery.'
"Here the new flag was unfurled and grandly waved from the improvised rostrum of salt-barrels. Then the speaker continued:
"'Again and again has this symbol been baptized in the blood of the people, struggling with their rulers, until its crimson folds, dripping with the tears and blood of freedom's martyrs, appeal in mute but overwhelming power to the lovers of liberty everywhere, to pledge again undying devotion to liberty, fraternity, equality. Here, as everywhere, labor is degraded by poverty and held in hereditary servitude to that wealth which it creates. Our American rulers differ not one whit from the despots of all other lands. They all fatten upon the miseries of the people; they all live by despoiling the laborer. The boundary lines, flags, customs, and languages of the nations of the earth may differ, but the poverty, misery, and degradation of the useful class -- the producers of the world's wealth -- proceed from one and the same cause -- the subjection, the enslavement of the producers. Through force and fraud the cunning, cruel, and unprincipled few became possessed of what by natural right is the common heritage of all. Government, with its constitution and man-made laws, and all the machinery to sustain and enforce it, became a necessity for the protection of the usurpers. Anarchy, the natural law, was overthrown and this fair earth was converted into a slave-pen -- all for the frivolities, pastime, and licentiousness of the privileged class."
"In a similar vein 'the better classes,' ingeniously invented for popular discussion by the Union League Club, were attended to, and then the speaker wound up by saying:
"'But the powerful, the privileged, are not in the least disturbed by argument, protest, or petition. They have but one answer to all appeals -- force. By force and fraud they gained their power; by force and fraud they maintain it. Morality, pity, reason are all alike lost upon those who rob and enslave their fellow-beings. They answer argument with misrepresentation; they practice charity but deny justice, and answer demands for liberty with starvation, prisons, and steel. What shall be done with those social monsters, these
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