legislative, judicial, and executive powers being controlled by their
own class, the employers have made the fight against labor political as
well as economic in its character. When the workers have gone on strike
and the employers have not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing
rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of unemployed
workers outside, the natural resentment of the strikers, finding
themselves in danger of being beaten by members of their own class, has
led to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by all the
police and military forces at the command of the government. In many
instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to
violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus
made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state,
no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces
of our class government been used merely to punish lawless union men and
women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the
hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny strikers the
rights which belonged to them, and to protect capitalists and their
agents in breaking the laws. No one can read with anything like an
impartial spirit the records of the miners' strike in the Coeur
d'Alene mine, Idaho, or the labor disturbances in the state of Colorado
from 1880 to 1905 and dispute this assertion.

Most important of all has been the powerful opposition of the makers and
interpreters of the law. A body of class legislation, in the interests
of the employing class, has been created, while the workers have begged
in vain for protective legislation. In no country of the world have the
interests of the workers been so neglected as in the United States.
There is practically no such thing as employers' liability for accidents
to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations
which have been classified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries;
women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage
to the workers in their struggle has been passed, a servile judiciary
has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be
unconstitutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against
the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing
the workers of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizenship.
They have forbidden things whic