em. (Applause). They are the ones who have the force, who have
the power.

Why are these standing armies and navies; and, more than that, the
militia building their armories in every great city in the United
States? Are they there for a foreign foe or are they there to shoot
strikers and workingmen when the time shall come? (Loud applause). Are
they there to protect the people from China and Japan and England, or
are they there to protect property against the poor? (Loud and
prolonged applause).

What is a lockout in a factory or mill when they call it famine and
want and hunger and cold, to do their work? Is that force, or is it
peace and quietness and gentleness, and the Golden Rule?

What are the policemen, what are the officers of the law, what is the
machinery of government directed against the workingmen, holding all
the resources of the earth in the power of a few and compelling the
money to go to those few for the means of life? Isn't this force?

What is the blacklist? Is it anything but force that drives children
into the factories, that drives women into factories, and compels men
to work with defective machinery for long hours and poor wages? Is it
anything but the force of starvation and want that has always been
used by the owners of the earth to make the poor do their bidding and
their will?

The force is there. It is not with the weak. The weak have never had
the strength or the opportunity to use the force. And when here and
there some man like the McNamaras and others--I don't need to mention
them alone, excepting that I want to live to see the day that justice
will be done to them (loud applause)--here and there when they reach
out blindly to meet force with force, call it blind if you will, call
it wrong if you will; I have never counseled it or advised it, perhaps
because I am not brave enough; it is not for me to say; but call it
blind, call it mistaken, call it what you will; but the fact will ever
remain that men who do it never do it for their own mean personal ends
but because they love their fellowmen. (Loud applause). And long ago
it was written down that "Greater love hath no man than this, that he
who would give his life for his friend." Some day, I say, it will be
understood, and some day the world will understand that they and Wood
who was indicted from the other side for an attempt to charge
something to labor that labor was not guilty of, and all of these
other indictments growing