Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 — John Shaqi
Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906Various
Philosophy
Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906
Various
Anarchism -- Periodicals
The working people are beginning to recognize this. It is also beginning
to dawn upon them that they will have to be their own liberators. They
have the power to refuse their material support to a society that
degrades them into a state of slavery. This power was already recognized
in 1789, when, at the French National Convention, Mirabeau thundered:
"Look out! Do not enrage the common people, who produce everything, who
only need to fold their arms to terrify you!"
The General Strike is still at the beginning of its activity. It has
gone through the fire in Russia. In Spain and Italy it has helped to
demolish the belief in the sovereignity of Property and the State.
Altogether the General Strike idea, though relatively young, has made a
deeper impression on friend and foe than several million votes of the
working people could have achieved. Indeed, it is no joke for the
pillars of society. What, if the workers, conscious of their economic
power, cease to store up great wealth in the warehouses of the
privileged? It was not difficult to get along with the would-be labor
leaders in the legislative bodies, these worthy ones, experienced
through the practice of manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder,
rapidly develop into good supporters of the existing conditions.
Now, however, the workingmen have entered upon the battlefield
themselves, refusing their labor, which has always been the foundation
of the golden existence of the haute volee. They demand the possibility
to so organize production and distribution as to make it impossible for
the minority to accumulate outrageous wealth, and to guarantee to each
economic well-being.
The expropriateurs are in danger of expropriation. Capitalism has
expropriated the human race, the General Strike aims to expropriate
capitalism.
A new and invigorating breath of life is also felt in this country,
through the formation of the "Industrial Workers of the World." It
awakens the hope of a transformation of the present trade-union methods.
In their present form they serve the money powers more than the working
class.
* * * * *
+Robert Koch+, the world-renowned scientist, who was awarded the Nobel
prize in recognition of his work in the direction of exterminating
tuberculosis, delivered a lecture at Stockholm at the time of receiving
the mark of distinction. In the course of his speech he said: "We may
not conceal the fact, that the struggle against tuberculosis requires
considerable sums of money. It is really only a question of money. The
greater the number of free places for consumptives in well-equipped and
well-conducted hospitals, the better the families of these are
supported, so that the sick are not prevented from going to these
hospitals on account of the care of their relations; and the oftener
such places are established, the more rapidly tuberculosis will cease to
be a common disease."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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