UCSB LIBRARY and rreedom Tlxe Voice and Pen of Eugene V./ Debs WKile mere is a lower class I am in it; While mere is a criminal class I am of it; While mere is a soul in prison I am not free. Published by PHIL WAGNER St. Louis 1916 "5 r ,, Introduction I think if I had been asked to name this work that comes to us from the rare mind and tender heart of 'Gene Debs, I would have called it "The Old Umbrella Mender/' It was this tragic, touch- ing tale that I first read in the manuscript; and it is the memory of this that will always return to me when I think of } the book. It is the perfect paint ing from the artist's brush the sculptured monu- ment from the master's chisel that makes one lowly, loyal soul to live forever in the hearts of humanity's lovers. Not but that every line in the book is a treasure, and every sentiment brought forth an appeal to all that makes for justice, and equality, and freedom; nor will it detract from, but rather add to, the beauty and inestimable value of the entire collection if others, likewise, carry with them the image and memory of the old umbrella mender, as they travel with Debs the struggling, storm-tossed way of Labor and Freedom. HENRY M. TICHENOR. St. Louis, March 1, 1916. MISCELLANY I THE OLD UMBRELLA MENDER. Coming Nation, March 1, 1913. It was on a cold morning late in November last, just after the national election, and I was walking briskly toward my office. A stiff wind was blowing and a drizzling rain was falling. The threads in one of the ribs of my umbrella snapped asunder and the cover flew upward, as it has a way of doing, and I was about to lower my disabled shower-stick when I ran slapdash into an old itinerant umbrella mender with his outfit slung across his back and shuffling along in the opposite direction. He had noticed the ill-behavior of my umbrella. It snapped from its bearing even as he had his eyes upon it. Perhaps it under- stood. Anyway he had not a cent in his pocket and he had not yet breakfasted that cold and wet November morning. He was about 65. His clothes had evidently weathered many a storm and besides b^ing worn and shabby were too light for that season. Over- coat he had none. Nor gloves, nor overshoes. Mine embarrassed me. His hat had been brushed to a standstill. His shoes were making their last stand and a pro- truding toe, red with the cold, seemed to hare been shoved out as a signal of distress. The outfit of the old fellow, carried on his back, 10 LABOE AND FREEDOM. was sorry enough to fit his general makeup, and if he had offered himself for sale just as he stood, including his earthly belongings and his immortal soul, he would have found no bidder nor brought a cent. The face of the old umbrella mender lighted up with a kindly smile as he commented on the strange conduct of my umbrella in slipping a cog just as he happened to come along. I asked him by what evil magic he did the trick and he laughed in a half-hearted way just to be polite, but it was plain that he had long since forgotten how to laugh. As we stepped into the shelter of an adjoining store he sat down on the steps and drawing a threaded needle from beneath the lapel of his thin and faded coat, he began to sew the cover back into its proper place. His fingers were red and numb. A discolored nail partly hid a badly bruised thumb. He had difficulty in doing this bit of sewing, and it plainly distressed him. His eyesight was failing and his fingers were stiff in the joints. Yet he strove eagerly and intently to master their dumb protest. And he hoped, as he remarked, that he would be able to make an extra bit of money to provide himself with a pair of specta- cles, now that favorable weather had set in for his trade. Poor human soul, I thought to myself, as I looked down upon the weatherbeaten brother at my feet! A vagabond dog among his kind would LABOR AND FREEDOM. *i fare better than this worn-out old umbrella mender in a civilized human community. The warm clothes I had on made me uncom- fortable as I saw him sitting there in rags mend- ing my umbrella. The overcoat I wore made me ashamed of myself. Every time the umbrella mender looked up out of his rags I winced. What crime had he committed that condemned him to go through the world in tatters to be lashed by the merciless blasts of winter and tormented by hunger -pangs, and of what rare virtue was I pos- sessed that entitled me to wear the best of clothes and eat the choicest food ! Dared I call him brother? And could I call him brother without insulting him? These were the reflections that agitated my mind and troubled my heart. "Good morning!" was the cheery greeting of a man who passed on the sidewalk, calling me by name. The old umbrella mender fairly started at the mention of my name. He had just completed his bit of sewing and the threaded needle fell from, his fingers. "Excuse me!" he said timidly, "is this Mr. Debs?" "Yes," I answered. "Eugene V. Debs?" "Yes, brother." "Thank God," exclaimed the old umbrella mender as he fairly bounded to his feet and seized 12 LABOR AND FREEDOM. my extended hand with both of his. There were tears in his eyes and his face was flushed. "Of course I know you now/' he went on. "This is your home and I have often seen your picture. But this is the first time I have ever seen you and if it hadn't been for your umbrella snapping just as I came along, I would have passed you by and the chances are that I never would have seen you. God must have tipped off your um- brella to give me a stop-signal." "Say, Gene," he continued, still holding me with both hands, "I am pretty well down, ain't I ? " About all in and making my last stand before shuffling off." "But eay, Gtene, I never scabbed. Look at these hands! I'm an old rail and I followed the busi- ness for twenty-seven years. I broke and ran a freight train most of that time. Never got a passenger run because I was too active on griev- ance committees and called a firebrand by the of- ficials. I wouldn't stand for any of their dirty work. If I'd been like some of ? em I'd had a passenger train years ago and been saved lots of grief. But I'd rather be a broken down old um- brella-fixer without a friend than to be a scab and worth a million." A gleam of triumph lighted up his seamed and weatherbeaten countenance. "Did you belong to the A. R U. ?" I asked. "Did I?" he answered with peculiar and assur- ing emphasis. "I was the first man on our di- vision to sign the list, and my name was first on LABOR AND FREEDOM. 13 the charter. Look it up and you'll find me there. My card I lost in Ohio where I was run in as a vag. The deputy that searched me at the jail took my card from my pocket and I never saw it again. It was all I had left. I raised a row about it and they threatened to lock me up again. I was told afterwards that the deputy had scabbed in the A. E. U. strike." "Did I belong to the A. K. U. ? Well, I should say I did and I am proud of it even if they did put me on the hummer and pull me down to where I am today. But I never scabbed. And when I cross the big divide I can walk straight up to the bar of judgment and look God in the face with- out a flicker." "We had the railroads whipped to a standstill," he said, warming up, "but the soldiers, the courts and the army of deputy United States marshals that scabbed our jobs were too much for us. It was the government and not the railroads that put us out, and it was a sorry day for the railroad men of this country. Mark what I tell you, the time will come when they will have to reorganize the A. R. U. It was the only union that all could join and in which all got a square deal, and it was the only union the railroad managers ever feared." And then he told me the melancholy story of his own persecution and suffering after the strike. His job was gone and his name was on the black- list. Five jobs he secured under assumed names were lost to him as soon as he was found out. 14 LABOR AND FREEDOM. Poverty began to harass him. He picked up odd jobs and when he managed to get a dollar ahead he sent it to his family. His aged mother died of privation and worry and his wife soon followed her to the grave. Two boys were left, but what- ever became of them and whether they are now alive or dead, he could never learn. The old fellow grew serious and a melancholy sigh escaped him. But he was not bitter. He bore no malice toward any one. He had suffered much, but he had kept the faith, and his regrets were at least free from reproach. He was a broken down old veteran of the in- dustrial army. He had paid the penalties of hia protest against privately owned industry and the slavery of his class, and now in his old age he was shuffling along in his rags toward a nameless grave in the pottersfield. Had he been an obedient corporation lackey ; had he scabbed on his f ellow- workers ; had he been mean and selfish and cold-blooded, he would have been promoted instead of blacklisted by the cor- poration and honored instead of hounded by so- ciety. His manhood and self-respect cost him dear- ly, but he paid the price to the last farthing. Hia right to work and live, his home, his family and his friends were all swept away because he refused to scab on his fellowmen. The old umbrella mender stood before me proud and erect and looked me straight in the eyes as he finished his pathetic story. The shabby clothes he wore were to him capi- LABOR AND FREEDOM. 15 talist society's reward of manhood and badge of honor. There was something peculiarly grand about the scarred old veteran of the industrial battlefield. His shabbiness was all on the outside, and he seemed transfigured to me and clad in garments of glory. He loomed before me like a forest-mon- arch the tempests had riven and denuded of its foliage but could not lay low. He had kept the faith and had never scabbed! THE SECRET OF EFFICIENT EXPRESSION. Coming Nation, July 8, 1911. The following was written for the Depart- ment of Education of the University of Wis- consin, under whose direction there is being conducted an investigation of the subject of "Distinguished Contemporary Orators or Lec- turers With special reference to fertility and efficiency of expression. What is the key to their ability as masters of language? What school subjects, or what kinds of training have entered into their lives that have given them power to express themselves effectively ?" The secret of efficient expression in oratory if secret it can properly be called is in having some- thing efficient to express and being so filled with it 16 LABOR AND FEEEDOM. that it expresses itself. The choice of words is not important since efficient expression, the result of efficient thinking, chooses its own words, moulds and fashions its own sentences, and creates a dic- tion suited to its own purposes. In my own case the power of expression is not due to education or to training. I had no time for either and have often felt the lack of both. The schools I attended were primitive and when I left them at fourteen to go to work I could hardly write a grammatical sentence ; and to be frank I am not quite sure that I can do so now. But I had a re- tentive memory and was fond of committing and declaiming such orations and poems as appealed to me. Patrick Henry's revolutionary speech had first place. Robert Emmet's immortal oration was a great favorite and moved me deeply. Drake's "American Flag" stirred my blood as did also Schil- ler's "Burgschaft." Often I felt myself thrilled un- der the spell of these, recited to myself, inaudibly at times, and at others declaimed boldly and dra- matically, when no one else was listening. Everything that was revolutionary appealed to me and it was this that made Patrick Henry one of my first heroes; and my passion for his eloquent and burning defiance of King George inspired the first speech I ever attempted in public, with Patrick himself as the theme. This was before the Occi- dental Literary Club of Terre Haute, Ind., of which I was then a member, and I still shudder as I recall the crowded little club-room which greeted me, and feel again the big drops of cold sweat standing out LABOR AND FREEDOM. 17 all over me as I realized the plight I was in and the utter hopelessness of escape. The spectacle I made of myself that evening will never be effaced from my memory, and the sympa- thetic assurances of my friends at the close of the exhibition did not relieve the keen sense of hu- miliation and shame I felt for the disgrace I had brought upon myself and my patron saint. The speech could not possibly have been worse and my mortification was complete. In my heart I hoped most earnestly that my hero's spiritual ears were not attuned to the affairs of this earth, at least that evening. It was then I realized and sorely felt the need of the education and training I had missed and then and there I resolved to make up for it as best I could. I set to work in earnest to learn what 1 so much needed to know. While firing a switch- engine at night I attended a private school half a day each day, sleeping in the morning and attend- ing school in the afternoon. I bought an encyclo- pedia on the installment plan, one volume each month, and began to read and study history and literature and to devote myself to grammar and composition. The revolutionary history of the United States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered above them all. A thousand times since then I have found inspiration and strength in the thrilling words, "These are the times that try men's souls." Here I should say, for the purpose of this writ- 18 LABOR AND FREEDOM. ing, that from the time I began to read with a serious mind, feeling keenly as I did my lack of knowledge, especially the power of proper expres- sion, both oral and written, I observed the structure and studied the composition of every paragraph and every sentence, and when one appeared striking to me, owing to its perfection of style or phrasing, I read it a second time or perhaps committed it to memory, and this became a fixed habit which I retain to this day, and if I have any unusual com- mand of language it is because I have made it a life-long practice to cultivate the art of expression in a sub-conscious study of the structure and phras- ing of every paragraph in my readings. It was while serving an apprenticeship in a rail- road shop and in later years as a locomotive fire- man and as a wage worker in other capacities that I came to realize the oppressions and sufferings of the working class and to understand something of the labor question. The wrongs existing here I knew from having experienced them, and the irre- sistible appeal of these wrongs to be righted deter- mined my destiny. I joined a labor union and from that time to this the high ambition, the con- trolling purpose of my life has been the education, organization and emancipation of the working class. It was this passionate sympathy with my class that gave me all the power I have to serve it. ~i felt their suffering because I was one of thew and I began to speak and write for them for the same reason. In this there was no altruism, no self-sacrifice, only duty. I could not have done LABOR AND FREEDOM. 19 otherwise. Had I attempted it I should have failed. Such as I have been and am, I had to be. I abhorred slavery in every form. I yearned to see all men and all women free. I detested the idea of some men being ruled by others, and of women being ruled by men. I believed that women should have all the rights men have, and I looked upon child labor as a crime. And so I became an agitator and this ruling passion of my life found larger expression. In the clash of conflict which followed and the trials incident to it I grew stronger. The notoriety which came in consequence enlarged my hearing with the people and this in turn demanded more efficient means of expression. The cause that was sacred to me was assailed. My very life and honor were on trial. Falsehood and calumny played their part. I was denounced and vilified. Everything was at stake. I simply had to speak and make the people understand, and that is how I got my train- ing in oratory, and all the secret there is in what- ever power of expression I may have. In reading the history of slavery I studied the character of John Brown and he became my hero. I read the speeches of Wendell Phillips and was profoundly stirred by his marvelous powers. Once I heard him and was enthralled by his indescribable eloquence. He was far advanced in years, but I could see in his commanding presence and mellow and subdued tones how he must have blazed and flashed in the meridian of his powers. At about the same time I first heard Robert G. 20 LABOR AND FREEDOM. Ingersoll. He was in my opinion the perfect mas- ter of the art of human speech. He combined all the graces, gifts and powers of expression, and stood upon the highest pinnacle of oratorical achievement. Robert G. Ingersoll and Wendell Phillips were the two greatest orators of their time, and proba- bly of all time. Their power sprang from their passion for freedom, for truth, for justice, for a world filled with light and with happy human be- ings. But for this divine passion neither would have scaled the sublime heights of immortal achievement. The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence. No man ever made a great speech on a mean subject. Slavery never inspired an immortal thought or utterance. Selfishness is dead to every art. The love of truth and the passion to serve it light every torch of real eloquence. Had Ingersoll and Phillips devoted their lives to the practice of law for pay the divine fire within them would have burned to ashes and they would have died in mediocrity. The highest there is in oratory is the highest there is in truth, in honesty, in morality. All the virtues combine in expressing themselves in beau- tiful words, poetic phrases, glowing periods, and moving eloquence. The loftiest peaks rise from the lowest depths LABOR AND FREEDOM. 21 and their shining summits glorify their hidden foundations. The highest eloquence springs from the lowliest sources and pleads trumpet-tongued for the chil- dren of the abyss. Wendell Phillips was inspired by the scarred back, the pleading eyes, and the mute lips of chat- tel slavery and his tongue, eloquent with the light- ning of Jehovah's wrath, became an avenging flame to scourge the horror of slavery from the earth. Denial of one's better self seals the lips or pol- lutes them. Fidelity to conviction opens them and truth blossoms in eloquence. The tongue is tipped with the flame that leaps from the altar-fire of the soul. Ingersoll and Phillips were absolutely true to their convictions. They attacked monstrous evils and were hated and denounced. Had they yielded to the furies which assailed them they would have perished. But the fiercer the attacks upon them the stauncher they stood and the more eloquent and powerful they became. The truth fired their souls, flashed from their eyes, and inspired their lips. There is no inspiration in evil and no power except for its own destruction. He who aspires to master the art of expression must first of all consecrate himself completely to some great cause, and the greatest cause of all is the cause of humanity. He must learn to feel deeply and think clearly to express himself elo- quently. He must be absolutely true to the best there is in him, if he has to stand alone. 22 LABOR AND FREEDOM. Such natural powers as he may have should be cultivated by the study of history, science and lit- terature. He must not only keep close to the peo- ple but remember that he is one of them, and not above the meanest. He must feel the wrongs of others so keenly that he forgets his own, and re- solve to combat these wrongs with all the power at his command. The most thrilling and inspiring oratory, the most powerful and impressive eloquence is the voice of the disinherited, the oppressed, the suffering and submerged; it is the voice of poverty and misery, of rags and crusts, of wretchedness and despair; the voice of humanity crying to the infinite; the voice that resounds throughout the earth and reaches heaven; the voice that awakens the con- science of the race and proclaims the truths that fill the world with light and liberty and love. JESUS, THE SUPREME LEADER. Coming Nation (Formerly Progressive Woman), March, 1914. It matters little whether Jesus was born at Naz- areth or Bethlehem. The accounts conflict, but the point is of no consequence. It is of consequence, however, that He was born in a stable and cradled in a manger. This fact of itself, about which there is no question, certifies conclusively the proletarian character of Jesus LABOB AND FREEDOM. 23 Christ. Had His parents been other than poor working people money-changers, usurers, mer- chants, lawyers, scribes, priests or other parasites He would not have been delivered from His mother's, womb on a bed of straw in a stable among asses and other animals. Was Jesus divinely begotten? Yes, the same as every other babe ever born into the world. He was of miraculous origin the same as all the rest of mankind. The scriptural account of his "immacu- late conception" is a beautiful myth, but scarcely more of a miracle than the conception of all other babes. Jesus was not divine because he was less human than his fellowmen but for the opposite reason that he was supremely human, and it is this of which his divinity consists, the fullness and perfection of him as an intellectual, moral and spiritual human being. The chronicles of his time and of later days are filled with contradictory and absurd stories about him and he has been disfigured and distorted by cunning priests to serve their knavish ends and by ignorant idolaters to give godly sanction to their blind bigotry and savage superstition, but there is no impenetrable myth surrounding the personality of Jesus Christ. He was not a legendary being or an allegorical figure, but as Bouck White and others have shown us, a flesh and blood Man in the ful- ness of his matchless powers and the completeness of his transcendent consecration. To me Jesus Christ is as real, as palpitant and 24 LABOR AND FREEDOM. pervasive as a historic character as John Brown, Abraham Lincoln or Karl Marx. He has persisted in spite of two thousand years of theological emas- culation to destroy his revolutionary personality, and is today the greatest moral force in the world. The vain attempt persisted in through twenty centuries of ruling class interpolation, interpreta- tion and falsification to make Jesus appear the divinely commissioned conservator of the peace and soother of the oppressed, instead of the master proletarian revolutionist and sower of the social whirlwind the vain attempt to prostitute the name and teachings and example of the martyred Christ to the power of Mammon, the very power which had murdered him in cold blood, vindicates his transcendent genius and proclaims the immor- tality of his work. Nothing is known of Jesus Christ as a lad except that at twelve his parents took him to Jerusalem, where he confounded the learned doctors by the questions he asked them. We have no knowledge as to what these questions were, but taking his lowly birth, his poverty and suffering into account, in contrast with the riches of Jerusalem which now dazzled bis vision, and in the light of his subsequent career we are not left to conjecture as to the nature of the interrogation to which the inquisitive lad subjected the smug doctors in the temple. There are but meagre accounts of the doings of Jesus until at a trifle over thirty he entered upon his public "ministry^' and began the campaign of agitation and revolt he had been planning and LABOR AND FREEDOM. 25 dreaming through all the years of his yearning and burning adolescence. He was of the working class and loyal to it in every drop of his hot blood to the very hour of his death. He hated and de- nounced the rich and cruel exploiter as passion- ately as he loved and sympathized with his poor and suffering victims. "I speak not of you all; I know whom I have chosen/' was his class-conscious announcement to his disciples, all of whom were of the proletariat, not an exploiter or desirable citizen among them. No, not one ! It was a working class movement he was organizing and a working class revolution he was preparing the way for. "A new commandment I give unto you : That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another/' This was the pith and core of all his pleading, all his preaching, and all his teach- ing love one another, be brethren, make common cause, stand together, ye who labor to enrich the parasites and are yourselves in chains, and ye shall be free ! These words were addressed by Jesus not to the money-changers, the scribes and pharisees, the rich and respectable, but to the ragged undesirables of his own enslaved and suffering class. This appeal was to their class spirit, their class loyalty and their class solidarity. Centuries later Karl Marx embodies the appeal in his famous manifesto and today it blazes forth in letters of fire as the watchword of the world-wide revolution : "Workers of all countries unite : you 26 LABOR AND FREEDOM. have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to gain." During the brief span of three years, embracing the whole period of his active life, from the time he began to stir up the people until "the scarlet robe and crown of thorns were put on him and he was crucified between two thieves/' Jesus devoted all his time and all his matchless ability and ener- gies to the suffering poor, and it would have been passing strange if they had not "heard him gladly." He himself had no fixed abode and like the wretched, motley throng to whom he preached and poured out his great and loving heart, he was a poor wanderer on the face of the earth and "had not where to lay his head." Pure communism was the economic and social gospel preached by Jesus Christ, and every act and utterance which may properly be ascribed to him conclusively affirms it. Private property was to his elevated mind and exalted soul a sacrilege and a horror; an insult to God and a crime against man. The economic basis of his doctrine of brother- hood and love is clearly demonstrated in the fact that under his leadership and teaching all his dis- ciples "sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had nxed." and that they "had all things in common." "And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to liouse, did eat their meat with gladness and single- ness of heart." This was the beginning of the mighty movement LABOR AND FREEDOM. 2< Jesus had launched for the overthrow of the empire of the Caesars and the emancipation of the crushed and miserable masses from the bestial misrule of the Eoman tyrants. It was above all a working class movement and was conceived and brought forth for no other pur- pose than to destroy class rule and set up the com- mon people as the sole and rightful inheritors of the earth. "Happy are the lowly for they shall inherit the earth." Three short years of agitation by the incompar- able Jesus was sufficient to stamp the proletarian movement he had inaugurated as the most formid- able and portentous revolution in the annals of time. The ill-fated author could not long survive his stupendous mischief. The aim and inevitable outcome of this madman's teaching and agitation was too clearly manifest to longer admit of doubt. The sodden lords of misrule trembled in their stolen finery, and then the word went forth that they must "get" the vagabond who had stirred up the people against them. The prototypes of Pea- body, McPartland, Harry Orchard, et. al., were all ready for their base and treacherous performance and their thirty pieces of blood-stained silver. The priest of the Mammon worshipers gave it out that the Nazarene was spreading a false religion and that his pernicious teachings would corrupt the peo- ple, destroy the church, uproot the old faith, dis- rupt the family, break up the home, and overthrow society. 28 LABOR AND FREEDOM. The lineal descendants of Caiaphas and Judas and the pharisees and money-changers of old are still parroting the same miserable falsehood to serve the same miserable ends, the only difference being that the brood of pious perverts now practice their degeneracy in the name of the Christ they betrayed and sold into crucifixion twenty centuries ago. Jesus, after the most farcical trial and the most shocking travesty upon justice, was spiked to the cross at the gates of Jerusalem and his followers subjected to persecution, torture, exile and death. The movement he had inaugurated, fired by his unconquerable revolutionary spirit, persisted, how- ever, through fire and slaughter, for three centuries and until the master class, realizing the futility of their efforts to stamp it out, basely betrayed it by pretending conversion to its teachings and rever- ence for its murdered founder, and from that time forth Christianity became the religion, so-called, of the pagan ruling class and the dead Christ was metamorphosed from the master revolutionist who was ignominiously slain, a martyr to his class, into the pious abstraction, the harmless theological di- vinity who died that John Pierpont Morgan could be "washed in the blood of the lamb" and countless generations of betrayed and deluded slaves kept blinded by superstition and content in their pov- erty and degradation. Jesus was the grandest and loftiest of human souls sun-crowned and God-inspired; a full-stat- ured man, red-blooded and lion-hearted, yet sweet LABOR AND FREEDOM. 29 and gntle as the noble mother who liad given him birth. He had the majesty and poise of a god, the pro- phetic vision of a seer, the great, loving heart of a woman, and the unaffected innocence and simplicity of a child. This was and is the martyred Christ of the work- ing class, the inspired evangel of the downtrodden masses, the world's supreme revolutionary leader, whose love for the poor and the children of the poor hallowed all the days of his consecrated life, lighted up and made forever holy the dark tragedy of his death, and gave to the ages his divine inspir- ation and his deathless name. SUSAN B. ANTHONY: A REMINISCENCE Socialist Woman, January, 1909. Twice only did I personally meet Susan B. Anthony, although I knew her well. The first time was at Terre Haute, Indiana, my home, in 1880, and the last time shortly before her death at her home at Rochester, New York. I can never forget the first time I met her. She im- pressed me as being a wonderfully strong charac- ter, self-reliant, thoroughly in earnest, and utterly indifferent to criticism. There was never a time in my life when I was opposed to the equal suffrage of the sexes. I could 30 LABOR AND FREEDOM. never understand why woman was denied any right or opportunity that man enjoyed. Quite early, therefore, I was attracted to the woman suffrage movement. I had of course read of Susan B. Anthony and from the ridicule and contempt with which she was treated I concluded that she must be a strong advocate of, and doing effective work for, the rights of her sex. It was then that I de- termined, with the aid of Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, the brilliant writer, who afterward became her biographer, to arrange a series of meetings for Miss Anthony at Terre Haute. In due course of time I received a telegram from Miss Anthony from Lafayette announcing the time of her arrival at Terre Haute and asking me to meet her at the station. I recognized the distinguished lady or, to be more exact, the no- torious woman, the instant she stepped from the train. She was accompanied by Lily Devereaux Blake and other woman suffrage agitators and I proceeded to escort them to the hotel where I had arranged for their reception. I can still see the aversion so unfeelingly ex- pressed for this magnificent woman. Even my friends were disgusted with me for piloting such an "undesirable citizen" into the community. It is hard to understand, after all these years, how bitter and implacable the people were, especially the women, toward the leaders of this movement. As we walked along the street I was painfully aware that Miss Anthony was an object of derision and contempt, and in my heart I resented it and LABOR AND FREEDOM. 31 later I had often to defend my position,, which, of course, I was ever ready to do. The meetings of Miss Anthony and her co- workers were but poorly attended and all but bar- ren of results. Such was the loathing of the com- munity for a woman who dared to talk in public about "woman's rights" that people would not go to see her even to satisfy their curiosity. She was simply not to be tolerated and it would not have required any great amount of egging-on to have excited the people to drive her from the com- munity. To all of this Miss Anthony, to all appearance, was entirely oblivious. She could not have helped noticing it for there were those who thrust their insults upon her but she gave no sign and bore no resentment. I can see her still as she walked along, neatly but carelessly attired, her bonnet somewhat awry, mere trifles which were scarcely noticed, if at all, in the presence of her splendid womanhood. She seemed absorbed completely in her mission. She could scarcely speak of anything else. The rights and wrongs of her sex seemed to completely possess her and to dominate all her thoughts and acts. On the platform she spoke with characteristic earnestness and at times with such intensity as to awe her audience, if not compel conviction. She had an inexhaustible fund of information in re- gard to current affairs, and dates and data for all things. She spoke with great rapidity and 32 LABOR AND FREEDOM. forcef illness ; her command of language was re- markable and her periods were all well-rounded and eloquently delivered. No thoughtful person could hear her without being convinced of her honesty and the purity of her motive. Her face fairly glowed with the spirit of her message and her soul was in her speech. But the superb quality, the crowning virtue she possessed, was her moral heroism. Susan B. Anthony had this quality in an emi- nent degree. She fearlessly faced the ignorant multitude or walked unafraid among those who scorned her. She had the dignity of perfect self- reliance without a shadow of conceit to mar it. She was a stern character, an uncompromising per- sonality, but she had the heart of a woman and none more tender ever throbbed for the weak and the oppressed of earth. No leader of any crusade was ever more fear- less, loyal or uncompromising than Susan B. An- thony and not one ever wrought more unselfishly or under greater difficulties for the good of her kind and for the progress of the race. I did not see Miss Anthony again until I shook hands with her at the close of my address in Rochester, but a short time before she passed to other realms. She was the same magnificent wom- an, but her locks had whitened and her kindly features bore the traces of age and infirmity. Her life-work was done and her sun was set- ting ! LABOR AND FREEDOM. 33 How beautiful she seemed in the quiet serenity of her sunset ! Twenty-five years before she drank to its dregs the bitter cup of persecution, but now she stood upon the heights, a sad smile lighting her sweet face, amidst the acclaims of her neighbors and the plaudits of the world. Susan B. Anthony freely consecrated herself to the service of humanity; she was a heroine in the highest sense and her name deserves a place among the highest on the scroll of the immortals. LOUIS TIKAS LUDLOW'S HERO AND MARTYR. Appeal to Reason, September 4, 1915. "And now that the cloud settled upon Saint Antoine which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence nobles of great power all of them; but most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner. . . . The mill which had worked them down was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and plowed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger. It was prevalent every- where. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon the poles and lines; hunger was patched into them with straw and rags and wood and paper; hunger was repeated in every modicum of fire-wood that the man sawed off; hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausagre-shop, in every 34 LABOR AND FREEDOM. dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; hunger was shred into atoms in every farthing of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. "Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offense and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and night- caps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild- beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring or inflicting." A Tale of Two Cities. In these ghastly colors Charles Dickens painted the picture of poverty and its starving victims in France on the eve of the French revolution, and yet, "every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather took no warning." Then the storm broke and the pent-up furies were unleashed ; the day of reckoning had come at last and the crimes of the centuries, inflicted without mercy upon the long-suffering people, were wiped out in the hearts' blood of their aristocratic and profligate oppressors and despoilers. The bloody revolution of a century and a quarter ago in France fills uncounted pages in the world's history, but its terrible warning to the lords of mis- rule and despoilers of the people has been in vain. Today as ever the greed and avarice of the ruling class blind them to their impending fate and drive them to their inevitable doom. In the state of Colorado in "our own free Amer- ica" the conditions that make for savage and bloody LABOR AND FREEDOM. 35 revolution are ripening with incredible rapidity and the lurid handwriting of fate is already upon the wall, but the Rockefellers and their capitalist cohorts, stricken blind as the penalty of their in- satiate greed, are unable to see it. That the monstrous crime of Ludlow, the fiend- ish destruction of the tented village, the wanton killing of the homeless, hunted, hopeless victims half-clad, famishing, terror-stricken and defense- less bludgeoned, bullied, shot down like dogs, and their wives and suckling babes roasted in pits be- fore their eyes that this appalling massacre, with- out a parallel in history, did not infuriate the suf- fering and persecuted victims of capitalism's worse than satanic ferocity, fire their blood with the tiger- thirst for revenge, and drench the despotic and shameless state with blood is one of the miracles of patience and submissiveness of the exploited, downtrodden, suffering masses. The tragic story of Ludlow, the hideous night- mare of the infernal regions of the Rocky (feller) Mountains written in the violated wombs of shrieking- mothers and the spattered life-drops of their murdered babes has yet to be traced on his- tory's ineffaceable pages. The blood of the twenty- three innocents who perished there will be the holy fount of the writer's inspiration whose fire- tipped pen will give to the world this tragic and thrilling epic of the embattled miners in the moun- tain ramparts of Rockefellerado. In the story of Ludlow, Louis Tikas, the in- trepid leader, the loyal comrade, the noble-hearted 36 LABOR AND FREEDOM. Greek who fell the victim of gunmen-brutes in mili- tary uniform while pleading that the women and children be spared, takes on the robes of deity and joins the martyrs and heroes of history. The rifle- butt that crushed his noble head and silenced his brave and tender heart gave his soul to the causo he loved and his name to the ages. The lion-hearted Greek is at rest, but the cause he lived and died for goes on forever ! Louis Tikas was educated, cultured and refined, a graduate of the University of Athens; yea, he was more than that, he was a MAN! His heart was true as his brain was clear; he followed the truth and he loved justice; he sided with the weak and ministered to the suffering, even as his elder brother had in the days when other pharisees cruci- fied the Son of Man for loving his despoiled and despised fellow-men. Loy,is Tikas made Ludlow holy as Jesus Christ made Calvary! He was the loyal leader of the persecuted colony ; the trusted keeper of the tented village. He was loved by every man, woman and child, and feared only by the fanged wolves and hyenas that threat- ened to ravage the flock. Strong as a giant yet gentle as a child; utterly fearless yet without bravado, this great and loving soul cast his lot with the exiled slaves of the pits and kept his vigil over the defenseless women and children of the village as a loving mother might over the fledglings of her brood. Is it strange that they loved him, trusted him, LABOR AND FREEDOM. 37 and that in the hour of their deadly peril they looked to him to shield them from their brutish ravishers ? In this tragic hour Louis Tikas measured up to the supreme stature of his noble manhood. He knew his time had come and with a smile upon his lips and without a tremor in his sinews, he faced his cruel fate. He asked no quarter for himself, but only begged that mothers and babes be spared; and with this touching plea upon his lips and the love of his people in his soul and beam- ing from his eyes, he was struck down by the hired assassins of the Arch-Pharisee and passed to mar- tyrdom and immortality. THE LITTLE LORDS OF LOVE. Progressive Woman, December, 1910. The children are to me a perpetual source of wonder and delight. How keen they are, how alert, and how comprehending ! The sweet children of the Socialist movement the little lords of light and love keep my heart warm and my purpose true. The raggedest and dirtiest of them all is to me an angel of light. I have seen them, the proletarian little folks, swarm- ing up out of the sub-cellars and down from the garrets of the tenements and I have watched them with my heart filled with pity and my eyes over- 38 LABOR AND FREEDOM. flowing with tears. Their very glee seemed tragic beyond words. Born within the roar of the ocean their tiny feet are never kissed by the eager surf, nor their wan cheeks made ruddy by the vitalizing breezes of the sea. Not for them the flotsam and jetsam upon the social tides are the rosy hours of babyhood, the sweet, sweet joys of childhood. They are the heirs of the social filth and disease of capitalism and death marks them at what should be the dewy dawn of birth, and they wither and die without having been born. Their cradle is their coffin and their birth robe their winding sheet. The Socialist movement is the first in all history to come to the rescue of childhood and to set free the millions of little captives. And they realize it and incarnate the very spirit of the movement and shout aloud their joy as it marches on to victory. The little revolutionists in Socialist parades know what they are there for, and in our audiences they are wide awake to the very last word. They know, too, when to applaud, and the speaker whi, fails to enthuse them is surely lacking in some vital element of his speech. At the close of a recent meeting in a western state the stage was crowded with eager comrades shaking hands and offering congratulations. My hand was suddenly gripped from below. I glanced down and a little comrade just about big enough to stand alone looked straight up into my eyes and said with all the frankness and sincerity of a child : LABOR AND FREEDOM. 39 "That was a great speech you made and I love you ; keep this to remember me by." And he handed me a little nickle-plated whistle, his sole tangible possession, and with it all the wealth of his pure and unpolluted child-love, which filled my heart and moved me to tears. In just that moment that tiny proletaire filled my measure to overflowing and consecrated me with increased strength and devotion to the great movement that is destined to rescue the countless millions of disinherited babes and give them the earth and all the fulness thereof as their patrimony forever. The sweetest, tenderest, most pregnant words ut- tered by the proletaire of Galilee were: "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." THE COPPOCK BROTHERS: HEROES OF HARPER'S FERRY. Appeal to Reason, May 23, 1914. "O, patience, felon of the hour! Over thy ghastly gallows-tree Shall climb the vine of Liberty, With ripened fruit and fragrant flower." So wrote William Dean Howells, then a rising young poet and author in Columbus, Ohio, in November, 1859, on the eve of John Brown's ex- ecution at Charleston, Va. In the month before. on the night of October 16th, John Brown, at 40 LABOR AND FREEDOM. the head of twenty-one men, sixteen of whom were white and five black, marched on Harper's Ferry and delivered the attack that sent his body to the gallows and his soul to immortal glory. The heroic blood of old Brown himself flowed in the veins of all his twenty-one intrepid young followers. There was not a coward among them. Three of them were Brown's own sons and two others were near relatives. Brown was fifty-nine; his adjutant general twenty-four. All his followers were young men, some of them barely of age. When Colonel Eichard J. Hinton, who followed John Brown in Kansas, heard of the intended raid on Harper's Ferry, he said to Kagi, the stripling adjutant general:" "You'll all be killed." "Yes, I know it, Hinton," was the ready reply, "but the result will be worth the sacrifice." Kagi was said to resemble "a divinity student rather than a warrior," and when taunted by an adversary, he answered, "We will endure the shadow of dishonor, but not the stain of guilt." "These words of John Henry Kagi," wrote Hinton, "expressed the spirit of John Brown's men and, in an especial sense, the character of the young and brilliant man who fell riddled with bul- iets into the Shenandoah. Thirty miles below, the blood-tinged stream flowed through the lands of his father's family." Spartan souls were these who inarched on Har- per's Ferry that fateful night, there to strike a blow at the cost of their lives that was destined to LABOR AND FREEDOM. 41 make Harper's Ferry more famed than Waterloo a blow that was to emancipate a race and change abruptly the whole current of American history. ''Down the still road, dim white in the moon- light, and amid the chill of the October night, went the little band, silent and sober." The twenty-one young heroes who followed old Jo 1m Brown on that historic night were of the exalted type that Emerson described : "When souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and motive without selfishness." It is related that when Garibaldi was organizing his army of liberation in Italy, he was asked what inducements he had to offer to new recruits. Promptly the rebel chieftain answered: "Poverty, hardships, battles, wounds, and victory !" That was all Captain Brown had to offer his devoted followers, with crushing defeat instead of victory at the end, and yet they enlisted with a zeal that could not have been surpassed if the world's most coveted prizes had been their prom- ised reward. Think of the utter abnegation, unselfishness and loftiness of purpose of that valiant little band who marched deliberately into the jaws of hell that October night to break the fetters of a despised and alien race ! How many of their detractors and persecutors were animated by motives so pure and exalted ? No wonder that Victor Hugo protested so elo- quently, albeit in vain, against John Brown's ex- ecution. 'Think of a republic," he indignantly 42 LABOR AND FREEDOM. exclaimed, "murdering a liberator !" and when the bloody deed was done the illustrious Frenchman flung back the prophetic challenge: "The time will come when your John Brown will be greater than your George Washington." Among Brown's men in the attack on Harper's Ferry there were two Quaker brothers, Edwin and Barclay Coppock, stalwart young abolitionists from Iowa, whose unfaltering devotion to the cause, he- roic self-sacrifice and tragic death constitute one of the most thrilling and inspiring chapters in American history. Edwin, the elder brother, was captured with his leader and shared his fate on the gallows. Barclay made good his escape with Owen Brown, to be killed later as a lieutenant, while recruiting a regiment for the war which had then actually be- gun. Edwin and Barclay Coppock were born of Quaker parents near Salem, Ohio, Edwin on June 30, 1835, and Barclay on January 4, 1839, so that Edwin was 24 and Barclay not quite 21 when the attack was made on Harper's Ferry. Salem was at that time the center of abolition- ism in that section. It was settled by Quakers and they were strongly anti-slavery in sentiment. The headquarters of the "Western Anti-Slavery Society" was located here, and here also was pub- lished the "Anti-Slavery Bugle," official organ of the movement, of which Benjamin S. Jones, Oliver Johneon and Warren E. Robertson were editors They waged uncompromising warfare against slav- LABOR AND FREEDOM. 43 ery, attacked the United States constitution as it was then being interpreted, and denounced the churches that would not corne out openly in favor of abolition. They were called "Disunion Aboli- tionists," "Covenanters" and ''Infidels." But noth- ing daunted, they demanded the unconditional surrender of the slave power. During one of the annual conventions held at the Hicksite Friends' church in Salem and in the midst of a violent speech that was being delivered against the encroachments of slavery on Northern soil under the fugitive slave law, an excited man entered with a telegram in his hand and announced breathlessly that the four o'clock train, due in thirty minutes, had aboard of it a southern man and his wife and a colored slave girl as a nurse. It was at once proposed that they proceed to the depot in a body and meet the train on arrival. The meeting was hastily adjourned. Intense en- thusiasm prevailed. They marched to the depot cheering as they went and when the train pulled in they boarded it, took the slave girl without pro- test from her master and mistress and marched back to the hall with her in triumph. The liber- ated girl was christened Abby Kelly Salem, in honor of Abby Kelly Foster, one of the speakers at the convention, and the city of Salem. The girl grew up to splendid womanhood and was high- ly esteemed by all who knew her. The old town hall, still standing, is where many an anti-slavery meeting was held in that day. The most stirring and eloquent appeals were made in 44 LABOR AND FREEDOM. this old meeting house by such noted abolitionists as William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury, Horace Mann, John Pierpont, Gerrit Smith, Fred Doug- las, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Owen Lovejoy, Abby Kelly Foster, George Thompson of England, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Collyer, John P. Hale and many others. The walls of the old town hall resounded daily and nightly with the patriotism and love of free- dom of Quaker Salem. It was in this atmosphere and under the in- fluence of these impassioned teachings that the Coppock brothers, sons of a nearby Quaker farmer, grew up to young manhood. It had been in- grained into their very nature that all men were created equal and that slavery was a crime against God and man, and with this conviction they re- solved to shoulder their muskets and go out and fight to liberate the slaves. The family moved to Iowa in the meantime and it was here that these young Quaker enthusiasts first met John Brown, who was then waging his warfare against slavery in the free soil conflict in that state. From now on their die was cast. They would follow the grim old chief to victory or death. It proved to be death for them both and when it came they met it with a calmness and resignation possible only to the loftiest hero- ism. Barclay Coppock was barely twenty years of age at the time of the attack on Harper's Ferry. His LABOE AND FREEDOM. 45 escape was almost a miracle. A heavy reward was offered for him dead or alive. After weeks of the most intense privation and suffering, lying con- cealed in the brush during the day and moving chiefly by night, he picked his way back to the family home at Springdale, Iowa, The governor of Virginia issued a requisition for his return, which was not granted. The young men at Spring- dale and that vicinity organized to protect young Coppock and served notice on the Virginia officers who were on his track that ''Springdale is in arms and is prepared at a half hour's notice to give them a reception of 200 shots." In the following spring Barclay returned to Salem and here again the Virginia authorities re- newed their efforts to capture him. But Barclay, now among his old neighbors and friends, defied them. He sent word to the officers in pursuit of him as to where he might be found, but they wisely refrained from attempting to take him. It was at this time that Barclay was a guest of the Bonsall family of Salem, the elder Bonsall being one of the leading abolitionists of that day. Charles Bonsall, his son, who still lives at Salem, knew the Coppock brothers well and has a distinct recollection of Barclay's stay at his father's home. "During Barclay's sojourn at our home," writes Charles Bonsall in a personal letter, "a detective of Salem heard of his being in our neighborhood and boasted of his intention to arrest Barclay and se- cure the reward there was on his head. Barclay heard of the boast and wrote a letter to the de- 48 LABOR AND FREEDOM. tective informing him that he might select five other men and he would meet them all single- handed and alone at any point outside the city that he might name, and they could have the privilege of capturing him and securing the reward. The detective did not undertake the job. . . . Bar- clay Coppock never knew what fear was. When a boy in his teens he often went to the woods and slept alone all night on the ground, under the trees, from the sheer love of adventure. He was the best shot with his eight-inch Colt I ever saw. On one occasion, in his uncle's woods south of Salem, with his revolver, he shot a grey squirrel from a big oak tree and put two more balls through its body before it reached the ground. His nerves were as calm and steady in a fight as in his sleep, and while with us his trusted "navy" was always strapped under his coat, while in his coat-pocket he carried a small pistol ready for any emergency at close quarters. It would have been impossible to capture him alive/' Barclay Coppock's escape and the execution of his brother but intensified his hatred and horror of slavery. He was now thoroughly aroused and in- tent upon plunging anew into the fight. Return- ing to Iowa, and convinced that civil war was now inevitable, he prepared actively for the conflict. "Now comes one of those remarkable facts of su- per-epochal history," continues Bonsall, "which go to show that when revolutionary periods focalize, revolutions in public sentiment are brought about in almost a twinkling. In the spring of 1861, just LABOR AND FREEDOM. 47 about one year from the time the United States Government was offering a reward of one thousand dollars for Barclay Coppock, dead or alive, the same government lifted its hat and humbly bowed to him, and begged him to accept a first lieuten- ant's commission in Company C, Third Kansas volunteers. He accepted the coin mission and at once proceeded to organize his company. Captain Allen of Ashtabula of the same company., came to Salem to recruit volunteers and the writer,, to- gether with half a score of other abolition boys, en- listed in Coppock's company. . . . Soon after Lieutenant Coppock was on his way from Spring- dale to Fort Leavenworth to join his regiment there. The rebels in Missouri, hearing of his com- ing, burned the railroad bridge across the Little Platte river near St. Joseph, and the train carry- ing the troops was precipitated into the river in the darkness of night and brave Lieutenant Cop pock was killed in the wreck." Thus perished, still in his boyhood, as heroic a heart, as noble a soul, as ever gave up his life in the cause of freedom. Had he been spared he would without doubt have become one of the famed heroes of the war of the rebellion. Edwin Coppock was executed from the same gal- lows as his old chief, but two weeks later. His trial, like that of Brown, was a farce. Conviction, sentence and execution of all of Brown's men that were captured was a foregone conclusion. While awaiting the execution of his sentence, 48 LABOR AND FREEDOM. Edwin wrote to Mrs. Brown,, wife of his dead leader : "I was with your sons when they fell. Oliver lived but a very few moments after he was shot. He spoke no word, but yielded calmly to his fate. Watson was shot at ten o'clock Monday morning and died about three o'clock Monday afternoon. ' , . . . After we were taken prisoners he was placed in the guardhouse with me. He complained of the hardness of the bench on which he was ly- ing. I begged hard for a bed for him, or even a blanket, but could obtain none. I took off my coat and placed it under him and held his head in my lap, in which position he died without a groan or struggle." In a letter to friends in Iowa, under date of No- vember 22d, three weeks before his execution, he wrote : "Eleven of our little band are sleeping now in their bloody garments with the cold earth above them. Braver men never lived ; truer men to their plighted word never banded together." Rigidly true to their convictions were all these young heroes. Not one showed the white feather in the last hour. Serenely and without a quiver each of them met his cruel fate. John Brown had trained up his men in the strictest discipline. Not a drop of liquor was al- lowed in his camp. Tobacco was tabooed. Profane language was forbidden. These men weir in deadly earnest and their as- ceticism attested their single-hearted fidelity to LABOR AND FREEDOM. 49 their cause. They were profoundly convinced that slavery was a national crime and that it was their patriotic duty, at whatever cost, to wipe that insuf- ferable stigina from the land. And who shall say that they were not right; or that they forfeited their brave lives in vain ? A few days before the gallows claimed him., John Brown wrote to his family, "I feel no conscious- ness of guilt and I am perfectly certain that very soon no member of the family will feel any possible disposition to blush on my account." The Coppock brothers were typical of all the brave young abolitionists who banded together to strike a blow that rocked this nation as if Jehovah in his wrath had laid hold on it. Quaker lads, "grave, quiet, reserved, even rustic in their ways," they lived bravely up to their convictions and sealed their devotion to the cause of freedom with their precious young life blood. The noble character of Edwin Coppock is re- vealed in the following pathetic letter written to his uncle on the eve of his execution. There is no bitterness in his heart at the last hour. Like the great Galilean who also perished for sympathizing with the lowly and oppressed, he was calm and re- signed in the presence of his fate. Like all such souls he was gifted with prophetic vision, as his letter shows : Charleston, December 13, 1859. Joshua Coppock: My Dear Uncle I seat myself by the stand to write for the first and last time to thee and thy dear family. Though far from home and over- taken by misfortune, I have not forgotten you. Tour generous hospitality towards me, during my 50 LABOR AND FREEDOM. short stay with you last spring, is stamped in- delibly upon my heart, and also the generosity bestowed upon rny brother who now wanders, an outcast from his native land. But thank God, he is free. I am thankful it is I who has to suffer instead of him. The time may come when he will remember me. And the time may come when he may still further remember the cause in which I die. Thank God the principles of the cause in which we were engaged will not die with me and my brave com- rades. They will spread wider and wider and gather strength with each hour that passes. The voice of truth will echo through our land, bring- ing conviction to the erring and adding members to the glorious army who will follow its banner. The cause of everlasting truth and justice will go on conquering and to conquer until our broad and beautiful land shall rest beneath the banner of freedom. I had fondly hoped to live to see the principles of the Declaration of Independence fully realized. I had hoped to see the dark stain of slavery blotted from our land, and the libel of our boasted freedom erased, when we can say in truth that our beloved country is the land of the free and the home of the brave; but that cannot be. I have heard my sentence passed; my doom is sealed. But two more short days remains for me to fulfill my earthly destiny. But two brief days between me and eternity. At the expiration of those two days I shall stand upon the scaffold to take by last look of earthly scenes. But that scaffold has but little dread for me, for I hon- estly believe I am innocent of any crime justify- ing such punishment. But by the taking of my life and the lives of my comrades, Virginia is but hastening on that glorious day, when the slave will rejoice in his freedom and say, "I, too, am a man, and am groaning no more under the yoke of oppression." But I must now close. Accept this short scrawl as a remembrance of me. Give my love to all the familv. Kiss little Joey for me. Remember me to aH my relatives and friends. And now fare- well for the last time. From thy nephew, TCDWTN COPPOCK. Two days later the slave state of Virginia hung Edwin Coppock by the neck until he was dead. The gallant John E. Cook went to the scaffold with him. The account says : "After the cap had been placed on their heads, Coppock turned toward Cook and stretched for- LABOR AND FREEDOM. 51 ward his hand as far as possible. At the same time Cook said, 'Stop a minute where is Edwin's hand?' They then shook hands cordially and Cook said, 'God bless you.' The calm and collected manner of both was very marked. . . . They both exhibited the most unflinching firmness, say- ing nothing, with the exception of bidding fare- well to the ministers and the sheriff." More than half a century has passed since John Brown and his faithful followers gave up their lives to set the black men free, but history has yet to do them justice. Some day the hatred and prejudice will all have died away and then these men, summoned to the bar of enlightened judg- ment, will be crowned as the greatest heroes in American history. THE SOCIAL SPIRIT. Appeal to Reason. We need to grow out of the selfish, sordid, brutal spirit of individualism which still lurks even in Socialists and is responsible for the strife and con- tention which prevail where there should be con- cord and good will. The social spirit and the so- cial conscience must be developed and govern our social relations before we shall have any social revo- lution. If there are any among whom the social spirit 52 LABOR AND FREEDOM. should find its highest expression and who should be bound fast in its comradely embrace and give to the world the example of its elevating and human- izing influence, it is the Socialists. They of all others have come to realize the hardening and bru- talizing effect of capitalist individualism in the awful struggle for existence and it is to them a cause of unceasing rejoicing that they live at a time in the world's historic development when the very conditions which resulted from this age-long struggle forbid its continuance and proclaim its approaching termination. The rule of individualism which has governed society since the days of primitive communism has effectually restrained the moral and spiritual de- velopment of the race. It has brought out the baser side of men's nature and set them against each other as if the plan of creation had designed them to be mortal enemies. Typical capitalists are barren of the social spirit. The very nature of the catch-as-catch-can encounter in which they are engaged makes them wary and suspicious, if not downright hateful of each other, and the latent good that is in them dies for the want of incentive to express itself. The other day I saw two such capitalists shake hands. It was pitiable. Their hearts had no part in the purely perfunctory ceremony. They hap- pened to meet and could not avoid each other. And so they mechanically touched each other's reluctant hands, standing at right angles to each other for L