It is by and because of the direct acts of the fore-runners of social
change, whether they be of peaceful or warlike nature, that the Human
Conscience, the conscience of the mass, becomes aroused to the need for
change. It would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever
brought about by political action; sometimes good things do come about
that way. But never until individual rebellion, followed by mass
rebellion, has forced it. Direct action is always the clamorer, the
initiator, through which the great sum of indifferentists become aware
that oppression is getting intolerable.
We have now an oppression in the land,--and not only in this land, but
throughout all those parts of the world which enjoy the very mixed
blessings of Civilization. And just as in the question of chattel
slavery, so this form of slavery has been begetting both direct action
and political action. A certain per cent. of our population (probably a
much smaller per cent. than politicians are in the habit of assigning at
mass meetings) is producing the material wealth upon which all the rest
of us live; just as it was the 4,000,000 chattel blacks who supported
all the crowd of parasites above them. These are the _land workers_ and
the _industrial workers_.
Through the unprophesied and unprophesiable operation of institutions
which no individual of us created, but found in existence when he came
here, these workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole
social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe,
or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear,
and to be housed withal--to say nothing of their share of the other
social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as
education and artistic gratifications.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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