Simmered down, Mr. Roosevelt’s Progressive Party stands simply for this: We are still to have trusts and tariffs, but only such trusts and tariffs as Mr. Roosevelt wants. We are still to have a master class who own all of the industries and a servant class who do all of the work, but masters and servants must conduct themselves as Mr. Roosevelt provides. Masters may still hold out for profits and servants may die for lack of opportunity to work, but so long as Mr. Roosevelt, at Armageddon, is “fighting for the Lord,” what of it? Such is not Mr. Roosevelt’s reasoning, but it might as well be. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson, like all other “radical” politicians, are incapable of rendering any great service to the American people for the simple reason that they do not strike at the great wrong. The great wrong is the ownership, by a small class, of the great class’s means of life. A people who cannot support themselves without asking the permission of others are little more than slaves. We are such a people. “Radicals” who promise, if given power, to free us, only mock us. Such gentlemen are not radicals at all. The word “radical” is derived from a Greek word meaning “root.” A real radical is one who goes to the roots of things. But radicals like Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Wilson go to the roots of nothing. The only way to go to the root of anything is to go to it. Lincoln went to the root of the chattel slavery question. When he had finished, the chattel slavery question was no longer a question—it was a corpse. After wasting years of his life as an anti-slavery “radical” he became an anti-slavery revolutionist and destroyed slavery. Lincoln, during the last two years of his life, became a real radical. A real radical and a revolutionist are but different names for the same thing. The working class is suffering from robbery. The working class has always suffered from robbery. Never has there been a time when a little crowd of grafters were not feeding upon the workers. In the beginning, the working class were held as chattel slaves, the only possible cure for which was the utter destruction of chattel slavery. Then the workers became the serfs of feudal lords, the only possible cure for which was the destruction of feudalism. Now the toilers are robbed by the private ownership of the means of production, the only possible cure for which is the destruction of such ownership and the substitution of public ownership through the agency of government. No tinkering will do. Tinkering could not and did not settle the white man’s or the black man’s slavery question. Nothing but the absolute destruction of the capitalist system can remove the poverty, the ignorance, the crime and the vice that are inevitable products of the system. But do not expect capitalists to remove this system for you. They will not.