heir way, they knew the opposition, the persecution,
the hardships that would meet them, but proud and unafraid they
started on their march onward, ever onward. Now that idea has become
a popular slogan. Almost everyone is a Socialist today: the rich
man, as well as his poor victim; the upholders of law and authority,
as well as their unfortunate culprits; the freethinker, as well as
the perpetuator of religious falsehoods; the fashionable lady, as
well as the shirtwaist girl. Why not? Now that the truth of fifty
years ago has become a lie, now that it has been clipped of all its
youthful imagination, and been robbed of its vigor, its strength, its
revolutionary ideal--why not? Now that it is no longer a beautiful
vision, but a "practical, workable scheme," resting on the will of
the majority, why not? With the same political cunning and
shrewdness the mass is petted, pampered, cheated daily. Its praise
is being sung in many keys: the poor majority, the outraged, the
abused, the giant majority, if only it would follow us.

Who has not heard this litany before? Who does not know this
never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that
it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters.
But I insist that not the handful of parasites, but the mass itself
is responsible for this horrible state of affairs. It clings to its
masters, loves the whip, and is the first to cry Crucify! the moment
a protesting voice is raised against the sacredness of capitalistic
authority or any other decayed institution. Yet how long would
authority and private property exist, if not for the willingness of
the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen. The
Socialist demagogues know that as well as I, but they maintain the
myth of the virtues of the majority, because their very scheme of
life means the perpetuation of power. And how could the latter be
acquired without numbers? Yes, power, authority, coercion, and
dependence rest on the mass, but never freedom, never the free
unfoldment of the individual, never the birth of a free society.

Not because I do not feel with the oppressed, the disinherited of the
earth; not because I do not know the shame, the horror, the indignity
of the lives the people lead, do I repudiate the majority as a
creative force for good. Oh, no, no! But because I know so well
that as a compact mass it has never stood for justice or equality.
It has suppr