Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
The cowardly "Reds," as we have seen, want a violent revolution and
constantly preach it to the discontented as boldly and openly as they
dare. But they want America's workingmen to take all the risk and do all
the work, and they go on with their frantic agitation in the hope that
American labor will some day organize a great "general strike" and try
to turn it into a revolution to overthrow the United States Government.
Naturally, therefore, the Socialists get excited whenever any great
labor strike is on, and they stand as tempters whispering the word
"revolution" into the ears of the strikers. Sometimes they get their
suggestion that the strike be turned into a revolution before the
strikers' minds by a hypocritical pretense that they are afraid that
what they so much long for is likely to happen. Debs, the Socialist
Party's presidential standard-bearer, is a past master in this art of
suggestion through a pretense of feeling concern, and during the steel
strike of 1919 he even tried to "start something" of this kind from
behind the bars of his jail. Thus in the form of an interview, sent as
a "special to the 'New York Times,'" which published it September 24,
1919, he got off the following hypocritically inflammatory comment on
the steel strike from his place in the Atlanta Federal Prison:
"'I fear that much violence will result from the strike. Then we
have the potentiality of other unions to consider, for many of
them, including the miners, who have a crisis coming within a short
time themselves, as well as the railroad men of the country, who
have already made demands--these workers and others may be drawn
into the great steel struggle before it is over, and while I do not
believe that a prearranged general strike will be called, yet I
fear the results of great excitement over possible killings like
those we read about in the papers of today, and it is possible that
in the heat of passion men may lay down their work and be swept
into a revolution with cyclonic fury.
"'Anything is possible as an outcome of the present situation,'
continued the prisoner, 'and should a general strike or revolution
occur it would be the outcome of too great pressure being brought
to bear upon the men who, in a state of unrest and industrial
uncertainty, have reached a highly inflammable condition that might
burst out spontaneously.'"
"Honest" Bill Haywood, one of the foremost Socialists of the time,
admitted as far back as the early part of 1912, in a speech at Cooper
Union, New York City, that the Socialists were conspirators against the
United States Government.
The Socialist Party of America, ever since its birth, has been reviling
and attacking the Government of the United States with a view to
overthrowing and destroying it. Is it possible that such an organization
is not engaged in a conspiracy against our country?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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