_Undoubtedly far more important than the physical conquest over the working class was the conquest over the mind of the working class. Undoubtedly the idea of teaching the slave to be a slave and to be satisfied with slavery and thus make the slave, the serf, the wage-earner, an_ AUTOMATIC _human ox to bear and draw the burdens of the world in brainless obedience and dull humility—undoubtedly that idea has done more solid service in the successes of injustice than any other idea ever born in the brain of tyrants_. The ruling class have always carefully secured the services of many of the world’s ablest men to play Judas to the carpenters—to the working class. Profound men, gifted men, trained men, eloquent men, enjoying the world’s choicest food, blissfully happy with the world’s finest wine, living in homes of comfort and splendor, dressed in softest raiment, many of these have traduced the slave, the serf and the wage-earner without shame. Tho’ the splendid Christ said: “The _truth_ shall make _you free_,” these Judases have taught the working class that learning is a useless or an evil thing for the _working_ people;[335] that the toilers’ poverty is the will of God, that unrewarded toil in this world would reap a “_specially_ rich reward beyond the grave.” These paid and powerful human things, palavering about the “dignity of honest toil,” palavering about the “joy of the hope of good things beyond” (always _beyond_)—these themselves have been practical and careful to take cash-down-good-things for their collect-on-delivery services, careful to take a rich and prompt reward _here_ and _now_ in _this_ world, while at the very same time they were advising and urging the slave, the serf, and the wage-earner to accept unsigned cheques payable in heaven. Always this for the worker: “_Your_ turn will come _next_”—that is, in the next world. Following this vanishing lure, hundreds of millions of toilers have, as it were, walked barefoot on broken glass and lain down in their beds of misery _mentally paralyzed on the subject of justice_. Hundreds of millions of toilers have not only accepted these teachings; but, saddest of all, have been tricked into teaching these same things to their children. Thus it was that almost the entire working class were tamed and trained for many centuries into spineless meekness, into the docility of humility—helpless—policed by prejudice and fear founded on _shrewdly perpetuated ignorance_. “Slaves, obey your masters,” has been taught in a thousand ways for ten thousand years by the stuffed prophets for the profit-stuffed rulers of the robbed and ruined workers of the world.