Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin — John Shaqi
Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph ChaplinChaplin, Ralph
General
Bars and Shadows: The Prison Poems of Ralph Chaplin
Chaplin, Ralph
Imprisonment -- Poetry; Prisoners' writings, American; Prisons -- United States -- Poetry
Not because he and his fellows conspired to obstruct the war, but
because they denounced the present order of economic society and
taught the inauguration of a better one, are they still held in prison
more than three years after the signing of the armistice; after the
proclamation of peace and the resumption of trade with all of the
enemy countries; after the repeal or the lapse of the Espionage Act
and the other war-time laws under which they were convicted; and after
German agents and German spies, caught red-handed in their attempts to
interfere with the prosecution of the war, have won their freedom
through presidential pardon.
The most dangerous men in the United States, during the years 1917 and
1918, were not those who were taking pay to do the will of the German
or the Austrian Governments, but those who were trying to convince the
American working people that they should throw aside a system of
economic parasitism and economic exploitation, should take possession
of the machinery of production and should secure for themselves the
product of their own toil. In the eyes of the masters of American
life, such men are still dangerous, and that is the reason that they
are kept in prison.
III.
The culture of any age consists of the feelings, habits, customs,
activities, thoughts, ambitions and dreams of a people. It is a
composite picture of their homes, their work, their arts, their
pleasures and the other channels of their life-expression.
The culture of each age has two aspects. On the one hand there is the
established or accepted culture of those who dominate and
control,--the culture of the leisure or ruling class. This culture is
respected, admired, applauded, and sometimes even worshipped by those
who benefit from it most directly. Civilization--even life itself
seems bound up with its continuance. When the advocates of the
established culture cry "Long live the King!" they are really shouting
approval of royalty, aristocracy, landlordism, vassalage, exploitation
and of all the other attributes of divine right. The world as it is
becomes in their minds, synonymous with the world as it should be. For
them the old culture is the best culture.
On the other hand there is the new culture, comprising the hopes,
beliefs, ideas and ideals of those who feel that the present is but a
transition-stage, leading from the past into the future--a future that
they see radiant with the best that is in man, developing soundly
against the bounties that are supplied by the hand of nature. These
forward looking ones, impatient with the mistakes and injustices of
to-day, preach wisdom and justice for the morrow. So imperfect does
the present seem to them, and so obvious are the possibilities of the
future, that they look forward confidently to the overthrow of the old
social forms, and the establishment, in their places, of a new
society, the embryo of which is already germinating within the old
social shell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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