t to the fray? Will their wealth be spent
for the purpose--will they build colleges and churches to teach you,
will they print papers to herald your progress, and organize political
parties to guide and carry on the struggle? Can you not see that the
task is your task--yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute?
That if ever it is carried out, it will be in the face of every obstacle
that wealth and mastership can oppose--in the face of ridicule and
slander, of hatred and persecution, of the bludgeon and the jail? That
it will be by the power of your naked bosoms, opposed to the rage of
oppression! By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and merciless
affliction! By the painful gropings of the untutored mind, by the feeble
stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad and lonely hunger of
the spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by heartache and
despairing, by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by money paid for
with hunger, by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated
under the shadow of the gallows! It will be a movement beginning in the
far-off past, a thing obscure and unhonored, a thing easy to ridicule,
easy to despise; a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of vengeance and
hate--but to you, the working-man, the wage-slave, calling with a voice
insistent, imperious--with a voice that you cannot escape, wherever upon
the earth you may be! With the voice of all your wrongs, with the voice
of all your desires; with the voice of your duty and your hope--of
everything in the world that is worth while to you! The voice of the
poor, demanding that poverty shall cease! The voice of the oppressed,
pronouncing the doom of oppression! The voice of power, wrought out of
suffering--of resolution, crushed out of weakness--of joy and courage,
born in the bottomless pit of anguish and despair! The voice of Labor,
despised and outraged; a mighty giant, lying prostrate--mountainous,
colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant of his strength. And now a
dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling with fear; until suddenly
he stirs, and a fetter snaps--and a thrill shoots through him, to the
farthest ends of his huge body, and in a flash the dream becomes an act!
He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered, the burdens
roll off him--he rises--towering, gigantic; he springs to his feet, he
shouts in his newborn exultation--"

And the speaker's voice broke suddenly, with the stress of his f