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Your honor, you are aware of this; you know this to be the truth; you sat and heard it all. I will not make a statement but what will be in accord with facts, and what I do say is said for the purpose of refreshing your memory and asking you to look at both sides of this manner and view it from the standpoint of reason and commonsense.
Now, the money-makers, the business men, those people who deal in stocks and bonds, the speculators and employers, all that class of men known as the money-making class, have no conception of this labor question; they don't understand what it means. To use street parlance, with many of these it is a difficult matter to "catch onto" it, and they are perverse also; they will have no knowledge of it. They don't want to know anything about it, and they won't hear anything about it, and they propose to club, lock up, and, if necessary, strangle those who insist on their hearing this question. Can it be any longer denied that there is a thing as the labor question in this country?
I am an Anarchist. Now strike! But hear me before you strike. What is Socialism, or Anarchism? Briefly stated, it is the right of the toilers to the free and equal use of the tools of production, and the right of the producers to their product. That is Socialism. The history of mankind is one of growth. It has been evolutionary and revolutionary. The dividing line between evolution and revolution, or the imperceptible boundary line where one begins and the other ends, can never be defined. Who believed at the time that our forefathers tossed the tea into the Boston harbor that it meant the first revolt of the revolution separating this continent from the dominion of George III, and founding this Republic here in which we, their descendants, live to-day? Evolution and revolution are synonymous. Evolution is the incubatory state of revolution. The birth is the revolution—its process the evolution. What is the history of man with regard to the laboring classes?
Originally the earth and its contents were held in common by all men. Then came a change brought about by violence, robbery and wholesale murder, called war. Later, but still way back in history, we find that there were but two classes in the world—slaves and masters. Time rolled on and we find a labor system of serfdom. This serf-
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