ble and frail, sordid and petty, absurd and
contradictory, even grotesque, and yet, withal, shot through with flashes
and glimmerings of something finer and God-like, with here and there
sweetnesses of service and unselfishness, desires for goodness, for
renunciation and sacrifice, and with conscience, stern and awful, at
times blazingly imperious, demanding the right,--the right, nothing more
nor less than the right.

JACK LONDON.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
January 12, 1905.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

Unfortunately or otherwise, people are prone to believe in the reality of
the things they think ought to be so. This comes of the cheery optimism
which is innate with life itself; and, while it may sometimes be
deplored, it must never be censured, for, as a rule, it is productive of
more good than harm, and of about all the achievement there is in the
world. There are cases where this optimism has been disastrous, as with
the people who lived in Pompeii during its last quivering days; or with
the aristocrats of the time of Louis XVI, who confidently expected the
Deluge to overwhelm their children, or their children's children, but
never themselves. But there is small likelihood that the case of
perverse optimism here to be considered will end in such disaster, while
there is every reason to believe that the great change now manifesting
itself in society will be as peaceful and orderly in its culmination as
it is in its present development.

Out of their constitutional optimism, and because a class struggle is an
abhorred and dangerous thing, the great American people are unanimous in
asserting that there is no class struggle. And by "American people" is
meant the recognized and authoritative mouth-pieces of the American
people, which are the press, the pulpit, and the university. The
journalists, the preachers, and the professors are practically of one
voice in declaring that there is no such thing as a class struggle now
going on, much less that a class struggle will ever go on, in the United
States. And this declaration they continually make in the face of a
multitude of facts which impeach, not so much their sincerity, as affirm,
rather, their optimism.

There are two ways of approaching the subject of the class struggle. The
existence of this struggle can be shown theoretically, and it can be
shown actually. For a class struggle to exist in soci