The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 08 (of 12): Dresden Edition—InterviewsIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 08 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Interviews
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
I am satisfied that the defendant Fielden never intended to harm
a human being. As a matter of fact, the evidence shows that he
was making a speech in favor of peace at the time of the occurrence.
The evidence also shows that he was an exceedingly honest, industrious,
and a very poor and philanthropic man.
_Question_. Do you uphold the Anarchists?
_Answer_. Certainly not. There is no place in this country for
the Anarchist. The source of power here is the people, and to
attack the political power is to attack the people. If the laws
are oppressive, it is the fault of the oppressed. If the laws
touch the poor and leave them without redress, it is the fault of
the poor. They are in a majority. The men who work for their
living are the very men who have the power to make every law that
is made in the United States. There is no excuse for any resort
to violence in this country. The boycotting by trades unions and
by labor organizations is all wrong. Let them resort to legal
methods and to no other. I have not the slightest sympathy with
the methods that have been pursued by Anarchists, or by Socialists,
or by any other class that has resorted to force or intimidation.
The ballot-box is the place to assemble. The will of the people
can be made known in that way, and their will can be executed. At
the same time, I think I understand what has produced the Anarchist,
the Socialist, and the agitator. In the old country, a laboring
man, poorly clad, without quite enough to eat, with a wife in rags,
with a few children asking for bread--this laboring man sees the
idle enjoying every luxury of this life; he sees on the breast of
"my lady" a bonfire of diamonds; he sees "my lord" riding in his
park; he sees thousands of people who from the cradle to the grave
do no useful act; add nothing to the intellectual or the physical
wealth of the world; he sees labor living in the tenement house,
in the hut; idleness and nobility in the mansion and the palace;
the poor man a trespasser everywhere except upon the street, where
he is told to "move on," and in the dusty highways of the country.
That man naturally hates the government--the government of the few,
the government that lives on the unpaid labor of the many, the
government that takes the child from the parents, and puts him in
the army to fight the child of another poor man and woman in some
other country. These Anarchists, these Socialists, these agitators,
have been naturally produced. All the things of which I have spoken
sow in the breast of poverty the seeds of hatred and revolution.
These poor men, hunted by the officers of the law, cornered,
captured, imprisoned, excite the sympathy of other poor men, and
if some are dragged to the gallows and hanged, or beheaded by the
guillotine, they become saints and martyrs, and those who sympathize
with them feel that they have the power, and only the power of
hatred--the power of riot, of destruction--the power of the torch,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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