Brothers all over the earth, brothers and sisters, you of that silent company whose speech is only in the unknown deeds of love, the unknown devotions, the unknown heroisms, it is to you we speak! Our heart is against your heart; you can feel it beat. Soul speaks to soul through lips whose utterance is a need. In your room alone, in your lonely walks, in the still hours of day and night, we will be with you. We will speak with you, we will plead with you, for these piteous ones. In the evening trees you shall hear the sound of our weeping. Our sobs shall shake in the wind of wintry nights. We are the spirit of those piteous ones, the wronged, the oppressed, the robbed, the murdered, and we bid you open your warm heart, your light-lit soul to us! We will thrill you with the clarion of hate and defiance and despair in the tempest of land and sea. You shall listen to us there also. We will touch your eyes and lips with fire. No, we will never let you go, till you are ours and theirs! And you too, O sufferers, you too shall stay with us, and shall have comfort. Look, we have suffered, we have agonized, we have longed to hasten the hour of rest. But beyond the darkness there is light, beyond the turbulence peace. “Courage, and be true to one another.” “_We bid you hope_!” THIS BOOK. _I give this Book_ TO YOU,— _Man or woman_, _girl or boy_, _labourer_, _mechanic_, _clerk_, _house-servant_, _whoever you may be_, _whose wages are not the worth of your work_,—_no_, _nor a fraction of it—whose wages are the minimum which you and those like you_, _pressed by the desire for life in the dreadful struggle of_ “_Competition_,” _will consent to take from your Employers who_, _thanks to it_, _are able thus to rob you_:— _I give it to_ YOU, _in the hope that you may see how you are being robbed_,_—how Capital that is won by paying you your competition wages is plunder_,_—how Rent that is won by the increased value of land that is owing to the industry of us all_, _is plunder_,_—how the Capitalist and Landowner who over-ride you_, _how the Master or Mistress who work you from morning to night_, _who domineer over you as servants and despise you_ (_or what is worse_, _pity you_) _as beggars_, _are the men and women whose sole title to this is_, _that they have the audacity and skill to plunder you_, _and you the simplicity and folly not to see it and to submit to it_:— _I give this Book to_ YOU, _in the hope that you may at last realize this_, _and in your own fashion never cease the effort to make your fellow-sufferers realize it_:— _I give it to_ YOU,