CHANTS COMMUNAL HORACE TRAUBEL LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS CHANTS COMMUNAL CHANTS COMMUNAL HORACE TRAUBEL ALBERT AND CHARLES BONI 96 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK: 1914 LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Copyright, 1904, by Horace Traubel Second Edition Pktet By Rest Vallty Press DEDICATING THESE PAGES Worn with the burdens of rebellious years , Across the sea's scan matching birth with death t Like ships sky sailed that earthward come no more t Love's dreams must vanish down the edge of sight, All spent ahead where life will follow on : Celestial children , soon beyond my reach, Entering the unseen port to wait for me. OPTIMOS In some faces I meet I see vice rampant and virtue veiled, In some faces I meet I see virtue smiling and vice curtained, In vice I know vice, in virtue I know vfrtue, I stretch the boundaries of neither, I stand apart not to judge but to witness : I hold no discourse with fragments, supposing them complete men and women, To each I accord my whole faith and from each I receive in full stream the returning tide. Is it my call to set men apart, good, bad, indifferent ? Is it my part to sentence man for one sin or pardon him for one virtue ? Is it my part to distrust the tree at its roots because its leaves in the fall are dead ? Is it on my palette to color the sun ? Can I pour from my garden-pot rain-falls and sea-drifts ? Back of me are a thousand friendly arms holding me to modest judgment, Before me are as many thousand assurances demanding that I give men, women, myself, time for fulfilment. I have toiled on stony roads, the hot sun overhead, in my heart the northern ice, In the winter's night the snow beat across my face, the north winds ac cused my faith, in my heart the tropic heat. The word you hear from my lips is but an emissary, The word is not me, it but announces me The song I hear from the illustrious woman is not the song of her heart : Underneath the song which the audience applauds I hear the real song framed in her immortal desires. The artist paints his picture, it is honorably hung, it receives the prize of the salon, Is the artist here in this paint and canvas ? Lo 1 as I look tnese vanish, a dim beckoning figure appears, I follow. I would say, do not let this mystery worry you At its heart this mystery is revelation, in its final solution it offers a cup benign, If these things I see are all that is to be seen I too would seek the roadside and dissolve myself in grief, But these things I see are only forerunners, signals, flags, standards raised whose significance is yet to be known, I use them, sec them used, as I eat my dinner at noonday, joyously, not too much dwelling upon it, They are ships to sail me forth, wings for flight, feet for marches, They are lingerings this side, arrested deeds, hesitated heroisms, shamed fears, They hav^ no apologies to offer, they are as truly a part of the perfect whoh as the whole is consistent with itself. As I look out of these windows as I pass where men crowd, where this silent man is alone, As I take solace of degradation and bring to lives condemned eloquent passwords to the future, As I decline to sit on this bench as judge over any man or any object, As I stand not indifferent to any thing nor as a spectator looking at some thing outside myself, As cloud-barriers do not distress me the cloud, my sun its creator, As I am re-born in every person I meet, every event, every starburst, As I can be severely arraigned by myself, never by any other, So do I melt all coined gold into earth-veins again, render all bricks back into clay-beds, return all stones to their quarries, that men may meet men everywhere without interferences So, in all the faces I see, maimed, passion-bruted, hounded, whatever the cursory veils they bear, AH bringing to me my own self again and again, only in other dress, I am recognized, welcomed. THE CHANTS FOREVER FIRST OF ALL, 2 There is no early or late, 6 The boy comes along, 12 Because we love, // The builder sings, 21 The world as it is, 23 Of many voices one voice, 27 God up there somewhere cries, j/ Said the master of men, 36 When the enjoiner is enjoined, 40 The men who cry and keep on, 44 The blood of the martyrs, 49 What is the use ? 5J You, civilization, who are so very big, 59 There is no escape, 64 If justice is impossible, 69 I look defeat full in the face, 7J Of one profit and loss, 78 Swear that you will call out loud, 81 What is all the noise about ? 86 AND THE HEART OF THE MATTER IS HEART, 94 For all the world, 98 When I see how slow you are, 103 The air is close, 109 The storm breaks, 77.5 Clear weather again, 121 When you decide to have it done, Way off somewhere, What is your own, 7^7 What men might be, 142 For the sake of life, 146 Do you not see, dear brother ? 757 After everything else is paid, 755 I have a word to say to you, 707 I am going to laugh, What can I do ? 770 Will you be ready ? 775 I want to be counted, 779 You will say it to yourself, 183 AND IT ALL AMOUNTS TO THIS, IQO THE CHANTS FOREVER FIRS! OF ALL I can wait. The world has waited long for me, I can wait for the world, Justice has waited long for me, I can wait for justice, Love has waited long for me, O such love's love of passion, and I can wait for love, O such love's love of passion ! I can wait, O beautiful assurance I can wait, Wait while things go wrong until they go right, Wait while death seeds life until life seeds death, Wait while men weep until men laugh, I can wait, I can wait, I can wait, And while waiting can love. CHANTS COMMUNAL FORE VER Forever first of all is justice. Is love. Not FIRST the food you eat. Not the clothes you weai OF ALL Not the luxuries you enjoy. But justice. Everything must stand aside for justice. You have a trade and you think your trade comes before justice. You are a man of business and you think that business comes before justice. Yes, before love. You practice a profes sion. Your profession comes before justice. Fatal fal lacy. Justice stands first. Justice precedes all the wit nesses of life. Justice is the only final witness to life. You may satisfy every other claim. But nothing is done for life until justice is satisfied. You have ordered your life. But you have left no room for justice. You have taken all the details into account. But you have not taken the whole into account. You have forgotten or forsworn justice. And justice is forever first of all. Justice is the only thing that takes care of all. Justice speaks the only universal I tongue. Anything short of justice is parley, apology or 1 flight. The human spirit owes itself a supreme debt. The debt of justice. Justice is the common providence. Look for justice. When you see justice you do not see rul ers. You do not see bonds bearing interest. You do not see lands paying rent. You do not see the storekeeper pock eting profits. You see men refusing margins and bounties. You see men refusing to subject other men to their talents. Justice declares that talent shall not buy and sell. It grants talent one privilege. Surrender. Talent does not belong to the individual. It belongs to all. Justice is first of all. It starts man with man on the square. It keeps the race on FOREVER FIRST OF ALL loyal terms with itself. It gives life general not special sanctions. What is best your own is more than best the in- heritance of the race. I cannot separate my personal gifts from the impersonal treasure . From justice. For justice is forever first o] all. I know what the professional logicians say. Justice is not logic. What the preacher says when he faces the money in his parish. Justice is not religion. What the statesmen say in their cabinets. Justice is not politics. And when the doctor is filling me with drugs he says justice is not medicine. And when the painter is paint ing a picture for fame or for money he says that justice is not art. And when the poet has dedicated his verses to a pa tron he says that justice is not song. And when the law yer lies in his brief he says that justice is not law. And when the tradesman hogs his excesses he says that justice is not trade. And when the landlord evicts a tenant he says that justice is not rent. And even when the workman ga thers in his wages he says that justice is not hire. And so we have reduced life to bargain and sale. All are not giv- 1 ing life for life. Each man giving his all for every other] man 's all. But each man is making the sharpest dicker he\ can for life. Getting the most he can get of life for the least he must give of life. And this adjustment is the current ad justment of religion, of art and of law. This is what the world calls logic. This is what the world calls righteous ness. And when I come along cry ing for justice. Weeping for justice. My heart filled with sorrow seeing the lack of justice. Filled with elation seeing the inevitability of just ice. They are all at my heels decrying my logic. The CHANTS COMMUNAL priest is at my heels. The statesman is at my heels. The poet is at my heels. The artist is at my heels. All the sell ers and buyers are at my heels. Even the wagemen, the innocents transgressed \ are at my heels. And I barely escape with my life. And yet justice is forever first of all I am an alarmist for justice. I am an assurer of justice. You come to me bringing tribute. Science comes bringing tribute. A rt comes with its dreams full. Music comes with its lips full. Trade comes with its coffers full. But do you bring justice ? You can learn things and teach things. But can you learn and teach justice ? Reft of justice all life is the strophe and antistrophe of emptiness. Science is empty without justice. I think that you have worked tn vain painting your canvas. For you have not put justice there. And justice alone is what will fill your canvas. And every product of art, and all theory and speculation, and all meta physical learning, must be empty, empty, forever empty, without justice. I do not say justice is logical. But I say justice is justice. I do not say civilization is not civilization. Let it be civilization. I will not quarrel with you about words. But I say that as long as civilization is not justice it might as well be nothing. It is nothing. You think so ciety can be society with half of society forgotten or trespassed. Justice forgets no one. Invades no one. To justice there is no villain. To justice there is no victim. Nor therefore any victor. To justice there is a common soul from which all personal souls emerge and to which all personal souls go for restoration. We are not millions of beings owing many 4 FOREVER FIRST OF ALL debts. We are all of one being owing one debt. This may not be logic. Or religion. Or statecraft. Or science. Or anything the parsimony of the single consciousness can name. But it is justice. A nd justice is forever first of all. Be prac tical. Be practical. Be practical. Say all the lord high gods of the regime. Be as I am, says the religion that dares not. Be as I am, says the art that dares not. Be as I am, says the lover who dares not. And the boss says, Be as I am. And every man on top says t Be as I am. And I am saddest sometimes when I hear even the slave say, Be as I am. And wherever I go I hear voices. And the voices all say, Be as we are. What is it all for? I am to be logical. Be logical, says the world, and collect your rent. Be logical and hoard your gains. Be logical and sing false songs. Yes, paint false pictures. Yes, preach lying ser mons. Be logical. Get on somebody's back. Oppress. Starve. Rend. Murder. Only be logical. Who is to care who is to suffer? Logic will answer for all reproach. Justice would be all right if it was not for logic. But logic supplants justice. Logic is any wrong that exists. Logic is the lie of the liar. Logic is the private greed of trade. Logic is the ship that puts out on the pirate seas. Logic is cruel in the bite of the economic north wind. Logic finds room for all the wrongs. But logic finds no room for the rebel. No room for protest. No room for the sentiment of a universal love. For justice. A nd yet your love is forever first of all. I have thought that justice is the only logic. That the land lords and the money lords and the profit lords 5 CHANTS COMMUNAL are not logical. That the priests and the poets and the sub orners anywhere are not logical. That only the cry er for justice is at last logical. That though my brain may not weigh so many ounces and my body measure so many inches I am built in noble proportions if I am the size and make of justice. That men may not admire me. That men may hate my cry. My cry as I go forth cry ing for justice. But that if I answer the questions of justice logic will endorse my measure and acknowledge the melody of my accent. I am not willing to follow logic into its ambushes. The logic of history is the proprietor. The ascendant owner and the de scendant slave. Somebody always very high up for many somebodies very low down. Logic is the crack of a whip. Logic is the lockout and the strike. Logic is the gun and war. Logic is hate. At least the professors tell us so. Logic perpetuates the antithesis of broadcloth and rags. Logic has two sides to its shield. On the one side overplus and on the other side want. Logic has one foot on a throne and one foot in the gutter. At least the professors tell us so. And their kind of history tells us so. Eut I have thought that justice is the only logic. That justice is forever first of all. THERE IS There is no early or late. There is NO EARLY only now. There is only faith. Do OR LA TE not tell me that faith is all right for the day after tomorrow but is of no use today. Do not tell me that truth is truth but that truth is not imminent. Do not tell me that love is waiting for a right time yet 6 THERE IS NO EARLY OR LATE to come. That love knows. But that love must not act. Knowledge, you say, is for the present. Action is for the future. Do not come to me confessing moral bank ruptcy. I do not ask you to project yourself beyond your dream. But as soon as you have prayed I expect you to leave your closet. Your time for service is near. Your way of life is to live.^ You are on trial with yourself the instant you are born into the faith.V It is losing business for you to wait to be told the crea tive moment in which to act. To schedule yourself. To trick your soul by postponements. You contend that the world is not ready. To faith the world is al ways ready. It is not your place to wait until the world is ready. It is your place to help make it ready. Faith is best faith in the contemporary now. Faith has no anxieties. It carries no watch. It never concerns it self about the hours of the day. To faith all hours are one hour. The hour to speak words. The hour to do deeds. There is no early or late. While you are argu ing with yourself love is betrayed. While you are asking yourself whether your faith asserted today would help your father's fortune. While you are asking yourself whether your faith asserted in society may not hurt its broadcloth. While you are asking yourself whether the time may not come when faith may be faith without threatening industrial values. While you look back. And round you. And ahead. Time is betrayed. And time is faith. When faith takes out its watch you know CHANTS COMMUNAL that it has lost its nerve. When faith consults the time table you know that it is getting ready for retreat. Faith puts off no voyage. Hurries no voyage. Does not miss its cues. Always knows where to go because never going anywhere. Anywhere in territory or time. Just stays about where it happens to be singing its song. Just stays about making the most it can of the immediate call. Do you think faith puts its ear to the ground listening for something far off ? Faith does not need the far off. Does not fear the beyond. It needs today's job. It will meet every tomorrow in the same spirit. Every tomorrow that becomes today finds itself the chosen day of faith. Do you think faith goes inquiring among its friends for good will and counsel ? Do you think that faith is faith because of something that someone else will do for it or ceases to be faith be cause its friends advise delay? Faith is never delay. Delay we call by another name. Cowardice, who knows? Or treachery, who knows? Faith is not something dead in the mind. It is something alive in life. So many of you have come to me with the same question. You agree with me. The commune is so beautiful. It ultimates industry and property. It is the final fruitful bow of promise. But. And that but you build very high and very broad. You take it and keep it ahead of you so that it fills the road. You can not pass. You cannot climb over. And then you sit down in the dust despondently and declare that the ir- THERE IS NO EARLY OR LATE relevant world is not prepared for you. But what have you got to do with the irrelevancy of the world ? I do not ask the world to be prepared. I ask you to be pre pared. And you are not prepared. You have only learned the language of love. You will yet be prepared. You will learn the life of love. When you are prepared you will burn all your ships behind you. You will not be satisfied until you see your last ship gone up in smoke. Until the last supposition of delay and escape is destroyed. You will not wait upon the summons of the world. The world will wait upon your summons. Wait. Forever wait. The world will never summon you. You must summon yourself. You must sum mon yourself in tones that you cannot refuse. There you are, tens of thousands of you everywhere, confirm ing yourselves in the disease of delay. You know where you should go. But you are afraid to start. You hug your professorships. You hold yourselves down tight in editorial chairs. You tie yourselves in double knots to trade. You are lawyers and anchor in the law. Doctors and moor in medicine. Painters of pictures and wrap yourselves in canvas,, You write poems and are lost in a routine of words. Whatever you are that you swear you must continue to be. In spite of your faith continue to be. You know things must change. That we are verging towards the windup of the com petitive regime. But you are continually consulting your clocks and setting their hands back. Like a pet tifogger going into court and sophisticating for delay. 9 CHANTS COMMUNAL For delay. Yet delay is death. No faith can long sur vive the treason of delay. The time will come, you say. The present hour is a little too soon, you say. But to men in your mood the too-soons make up the whole of life. You think there is something in the way. There is nothing in the way that you have not put in the way yourselves. You are in the way. You alone. Nothing else. You are grit? Then you will hurl yourselves out of the way. You will press on. You complain that I ask you to be heroes. I do not. I ask you to be yourselves. You will never be yourselves in this humbug peace. You will only be yourselves in the genuine contests of justice. Delay stagnates. Move ment purifies. You will not be yourselves well profes- sored or well officed or well anything that persuades j j you to put off your departure. You will only be your- (1 selves when once you get your duds on your backs and I] say goodbye to the past. Only then. Why should you masquerade as courtiers ? Why should you continue to hang around the court? Why should you stay in the glitter while your prohibited souls call to you from the outside ? Let me tell you. There is no danger outside. There is danger in the palace. Fly. You hold your heads up in a confident way as if nothing had hap pened. Let me tell you that something ruinous has happened. Something shadowed by the arch of the last tragedy. You have murdered yourselves. You suffer that worst fate of all fates. To be dead while 10 THERE IS NO EARLY OR LATE living. Sentenced to betray life. You have survived your own deaths. There is no early or late. Your eyes are open. You see. But you are silent. Will you speak the word? Or will you bury that unspoken word in your heart and put a gravestone over it ? Are you to be equal to yourself? Or are you to confess that you are smaller than yourself? You saw. Then you listened for voices. You should have been deaf. But you listened for voices. Any man who listens may hear. So you heard. You should have listened for nothing. Then you would have heard one voice. One superb saving voice. Your own voice. But you lis tened for voices. And voices crowded your ears. The church had a voice. And its voice said : Wait. And the state had a voice. And the bank had a voice. And all the professions had voices. And all the stolen incre ments and legislated privileges had voices. And all the voices said : Wait. These eminent voices of retrogres sion. And obscure voices, nameless, numberless, hiss ing and groaning. All were voices. And all the voices said : Wait. There was one little voice in all this bois terous medley that said : Go on. But you did not hear it. And so the waits had their victory. And now you are dead and buried in your own body. And there is a stone over your grave. And there is only one word on the stone. Wait. That word is all that is left to immortalize you. That word is all that is left to tell the story of your battle not too strenuously fought 11 CHANTS COMMUNAL Of your defeat too easily welcomed. Do you not see through your delays, dear brother ? Do you not see that only one thing counts? Faith counts. Nothing else counts. And to faith there is no early or late. THE BOY If it was not for the boys, or for the boy COMES left over in the man, everything would al- ALONG ways remain about where it is. We draw a line up against which we halt the boy. The boy walks straightway over. He does not defy us. He does not hear us. The boy has eye and ear for sights and sounds ahead. But no cries from the past arrest his impatient feet. Every boy brings the youth of the race back again. The hope you have lost your boy re covers. When you say rebellion you say boy. The boy is not a blank wall. He is an open way. You get rid of the boy at your peril. You cannot save your self? The boy can save you. You can go to bed heavy with sleep. He will dream for you. You can go down town and trade swindle for swindle in the greed of the world. He will study and play and be honest for you. The born striker, the boy. Have you ever built a wall so high some boy could not climb it? Have you ever cried a no so deep some boy could not spade below it? Have you ever taught any religion, or any philan thropy, so good some boy could not better it? The rebellion of the boy is the salvation of the man. If injus tice could live in a world of grown men it would feel 12 THE BOY COMES ALONG safe. Injustice fears the cradle. Injustice is not afraid of your brain, your culture, your curiosity or your logic. Injustice is afraid of the boy. The boy dreams. And the boy believes in dreams. Grown men dream, too. But they are less apt to believe in their dreams. The boy tries fact by dream. The man tries dream by fact. That is what makes the man conservative and the boy radical. That is what makes the man the apologist and the boy a menace. The boy is the typical striker. He is up at once for his rights. He thinks neither of fam ily nor society. He thinks only of his rights. He is not a compromiser. He reads rules out of the limit of letter and spirit. Two and two always make four. Ten hours are ten hours. The boy is a democrat. He resents your orders screamed down from some ephem eral elevation. Who is any boss to any boy that any boss should bond any boy to slavish service ? Last year it was the boy in one hundred and forty seven thousand men who went in anger out of the coal mines. This boy called capital to order. There may be ten thousand men to face your problem. What are the ten thousand to do ? They look at their wage checks. They look ahead into the shadows that fall upon a workless man. They may be sullen. But they keep to their work. So the problem remains a problem. So injustice rubs its hands. The boy comes along. He, too, faces the problem. He does not count costs. He does not see 13 CHANTS COMMUNAL the shadows ahead or any shadows behind. He sees only light. Everywhere light. What is any problem to any man who stands in a center of light? The boy is illuminated. He refuses to dicker with conditions. ft I will make a few conditions of my own," he says. He stops work. He will not drive your mules. He will not carry your packages. Your messages. He will not feed your presses. He goes to the men who despond and fortifies their hearts. In the presence of the boy the problem shrinks and disappears. The boy is the born striker. The boy is unreasonable. Yes. But are you proud of the reason of his seniors ? I watch him as he faces his complex life. His rights and re sponsibilities. The boy is quite as well able as his an cients to describe the squares and circles of justice. The boy is not infallible. He is impudent, vain and dogmatic. But the best articles of courage and sacrifice come to the jaded conventions through the boys. The boys make you mad. But they also make you happy. You resent the crudeness if not cruelty of their oppo sition. You glorify their impervious self belief. The only thing in man more important than the boy is well, there is nothing more important than the boy. The dream of philanthropy is the boy at work in the secu lar heart. When you appeal for justice you do not go to the stepping off place and endeavor to trim the joints of old age back to battle again. You appeal to the boys. The old men are deaf and blind. The old men see sunsets and coffins. The boys are alive in all their five 14 THE BOY COMES ALONG senses. They see only dawns and immortality. The old men deal in postponements. The boys are disci ples of right way. The boy makes history without ifs, buts and peradventures. The boy is the blow direct. Jesus untempled the temples with the heat and heart of a boy. Sixty years would have found reasons for treat ing the money changers with a tactful prudence. But thirty years or twenty years saw only the evil and pressed without wait up to its total downfall. The world is still young with Jesus. Jesus was boyhood resisting the invasions of the Hebrew plutocracies. Some men are eternally young. We think the most significant compliment we can pay to old age is to speak of its youth. In a civilized man years accumulate no burdens. Years rather lighten his load. They have taught him how to organize life. They have added power not weight. There is something wrong with any civilization which develops grown men with the boy left out. You might just as well be dead as cease to be a boy. The boy looks round and over everything. He keeps his par ents, his neighbors, his civilization, guessing. He turns short corners. He refuses to do things in regular ways. When you think you have got him on the spot he is somewhere else. When you reach for him far off he stands smiling at your elbow. When you speak of the impossible he goes and does it. When you qualify events by rote and rule he shows you how big events become when they are left to their normal impetus. 15 CHANTS COMMUNAL The boy demands room for life. He accepts all mar gins. He wanders across all borders. The church and the state do not exist for the boy. He acknowl edges religion and natural law. But the institutions ap pal him. He will not respect your police rituals. To maturity all life is watched, restricted and under a con ditional ban. To the boy all guards are waived. The boy acquiesces in none of the contingencies of the stat ute. See life alone, he says. Life can be trusted. Life is entitled to growth. But life will not grow in the county jail. Every man lives ten thousand lives all by himself. Yet he may miss all life if in the ten thousand the boy is not buoyantly superior and triumphant. Bosses dread the boys. So do the kings. So do par liaments. When you get nasty and arrogant with the boys remember your own dreams. You may have killed the boy in yourself. That was your business. Perhaps. But spare the boys in the boys. Let every boy grow to maturity and be the boy still. Let thirty's manhood open into fifty's calm. But save the boy. The real boy is not the boy who dies with boyhood. He is the boy who survives all revolutions of flesh and spirit. Why should not the boy who comes through the cradle outlast the coffin ? Jesus divined the boy when he said, Come little children. Whitman divined the boy when he wrote, There was a child went forth. No boy in Athens was ever younger than the old So crates. I remember that Liebig said that the youngest 16 BECAUSE WE LOVE scholar in his school was Liebig. The boy is enthusi asm. He is chronic fire. His fuel is exhaustless. His light never dims. If you grow cold in faith move up near the boy. Before you surrender consult the boy. The boy will not preach to you about the path of escape. The boy will blaze that path. Did you think the boy was young or old ? I never knew the age of a boy. He may have lived ten or seventy years. The boy does not cosy himself in the comfortable years. He is unconscious of years. The boy is divinely and forever that somewhat in the cosmos which immortal izes its rebel dreams. The boss, the master, the supe rior, does not like this boy. But without this boy social gravitation would find itself annulled. EEC A USE Because we love. Do you suppose that WE LO VE our blows are malign ? That we are fight ing because we love fight? That we derive any pleas ure from negation ? From being hated ? That we are bores because we like to be bores ? That we are look ing for chances to be gratuitously rude and unruly? That we talk on purposely long after we are done? That we refuse to talk when silence is a crime ? That we malevolently quarrel and brawl in the avenues and incidents of experience ? Have we dedicated our lives to this cause in some spirit of light revolt? You do not know the truth. You do not know what is really at the back of it all. Why we are severe with you. 17 CHANTS COMMUNAL How after being severe we go home and weep. How we spend long nights wrestling with you. How we spend longer nights wrestling with ourselves. Can you not see that we would rather say the word that will please you than the word that will give you grief? But we must first of all say the true word. The true word is the only word. And the true word is just as much your word as our word. You may not know it. But it is your word. I swear to you it is your word. God knows we do not start out to speak false words. Words that will irretrievably wound. We must speak words that wound. With mediable wounds we ward off wounds that wound to the death. And this is all because we love. Is it love that makes the present world ? The world of parish interests? Is Parry's love love? Is Rockefeller's love also love ? Is this the best that love can say for itself? I do not say this love is not love. But I say that if this love is love it is not the love my lover speaks. I will destroy such love with a love that is greater than itself. I will impeach such love again with love. I will make it explain. I will call it to ac count. It has been the depository of a trust. How has it acquitted itself of that trust? I will not sully the test with epithets. I will only call this older love to account. I will not convict it by my lips. I will make it convict itself with its own lips. I will not be cruel. I will only call for a report. I will call upon interest for a report. And rent. And profit. Yes, any priv- 18 BECAUSE WE LOVE ilege that transgresses one way in order to benefit an other. Any social compact that goes short with the poor in order to go long with the rich. You will not dare say no. For you will not dare say you do not be lieve in justice. You can only say: This is not justice. And it is there we must fight the issue out. What is justice? You have got to report on justice. Bring wages into court and report on wages. Will high wages bring justice ? Or is justice impossible with any kind of wages? Would a better Parry bring justice or is justice impossible with any kind of Parry ? If all who employ and all who are employed turned saint over night justice would still fall short of justice. Justice is in bond. What will deliver justice? Hate? Love? I say: Love's hand will deliver. A hand that may need to be severe. But a hand that loves. Because we love, I say again. Not love a few. Or love a class. Or some church. Or some petty social or national in terest. Because we love all. For no solution that would not be a solution for all would be a solution for one. As long as we do not solve the trouble for all we do not solve it for one. It will forever recur until the last unit is enclosed in the operation. The law of love is not a law for a parish. A law for one day. It is a law for the whole world. For forever. The law of love could not put one item of social evil under ban or under approval. As if things wrong stood each alone. As if the law of one was not the law of every 19 CHANTS COMMUNAL other. Do you think that profit stands alone in the world? That landlordism stands alone? That Wall street stands alone? That you could march a mob into Lombard street and settle the riddle there alone ? That you could hit out at random and bring down the disease with a single enemy ? Can you isolate a struct ure from its detail ? Can you separate the body from its flesh? So many things need to be done in order that one thing may be done. But they must all be done for the one result. The many things that come from the same root. The things that it will hurt your feelings to have disturbed. But they must be done. They may be done roundabout. They may be done straight to. I think I like to say things straight to. They must be said with love. But they must be said. Eternally said. Said to be understood. I know you declare it is useless. That the thing that we attack is so big. That the thing we attack it with is so little. The big. I concede it. And even the little. I concede it. Yet justice is bigger than big. And injustice is littler than little. And if our unpretentious word is the word of justice it is not awed by the big thing it is to attack. Justice is not weighed in a scale. Or measured by a surveyor. It is not scared when the guns go off. When the millionaire takes account of stock. When someone reports a tumble in the market. Justice, too, has to make a report. But it does not have to make a report in numbers and sizes. It reports in the im mensities of ideas. In the uptides of streams. In the 20 THE BUILDER SINGS ascents of infinite spaces. That is why justice is never dismayed. Why no parade of greatness shakes its claim. Why when all things seem to go against it just ice does not dodge or retreat. Why justice can afford to be generous. To swallow our insults. To have the figures all go against it. To have Standard Oil against it. To have the last issue of bonds against it. Any thing. And may still keep cool. Still keep its faith. Justice can wait. And we can wait for justice. Be cause we love. THE The most potent war is peace. But apol- BUILDER ogy is not the answer of peace. Peace SINGS invites a stern retort. It is out of the stubbornest opposition that order will finally emerge. Justice is order. We are entangled in a system which leaves us to the chance episodes of the seasons. This chaos cannot be perpetuated. Its revel must pass. The soul demands order. Order. Order. Always order. Theft is not order. Only integrity is order. Per cent is the industrial conqueror. But it will not survive the poison of its own success. Nor can an income half bond and half free be fixed. And yet, though we must twist the crooked back to the straight, we do not propose to hate that incident of history which has warped the general will. We will sing at our work. We will repair that which was broken. We will rebuild that which was thrown down. But we will not hate the destroyer. We will sing as we build. And 21 CHANTS COMMUNAL build we will. The children cry to us, and we build. The old men and women cry to us, and we build. The stalwart laborers cry to us, and we build. We take all incomes away in behalf of income. We see all pri vate fortune lapse in a general fund. That is the way we build. For out of the imperfect we will build the perfect. And out of a race of men and women and children maimed and half done we will build a race of men and women and children unmarred and complete. But we will always sing. For the workman who sings can work. Through whatever distress can work. And though the hand of the tyrant is heavy we will not admit that it crushes our faith. And no blow given us will be returned. We will only love and build. And even the lash of the master will be useful. The master will feel its sharp return. For we know that if we could not make use of evil we could not make use of good. For there is no barbarism too stubborn to be turned to the uses of our ideal. I am assailed and bleeding. And yet I do not resent assault. And why should I not bleed ? For I am so intent on the big ackievement ahead that I am not worried by the little deterrents around. The beautiful prospect allures me. The rehabilitated bodies allure me. The happier faces allure me. The good earth cleansed allures me. I see that no man will after this consent to tax any other man or hoard his own work. I see that every man will swear himself into the gen eral service. I see a world in which the only errands 22 THE WORLD AS IT IS are errands of succor. I see a world in which the lips of man have ceased to speak of property. I see a world in which farcical social maxims now celebrated in the orthodoxies of culture have given place to the simple doctrine of universal ownership. And this consumma tion is so surely within sight that I can afford to wait to have it come and can afford to sing as I wait. It is not the man with the ideal who needs to rant and swear and suspect. It is the man who sees only the alien present who may rant and and swear and suspect. For we live in a world in which we cannot be at home. But we are to make this empty world full. For a world full of homeless people is of all worlds emptiest. But when we have accomplished our miracle earth will be home enough for all. And that miracle we will effect. For the builder is building his home. And the builder sings as he builds. THE The world as it is is a world of conflict. WORLD The child born into the world does not find AS IT IS the world its friend. The child finds the world its foe. The world makes it hard for a child to be born. The world makes it harder for a child to live than to be born. The world offers an ominous passage to those who cross its birthline. The world as it is is rich enough for all. And yet the world as it is gives riches to but few. The world is all refusal or all favor. If you catch the world in one humor it will spoil you with its gifts. If you catch the world in another humor it 23 CHANTS COMMUNAL will destroy you with its frosts. Fathers and mothers view their children with alarm. The child is a threat. Love itself is a peril. The world promises you har vests. But few can survive the disastrous springs and summers that precede the harvests. The world sends up prayers for children. But when the children appear the world does not protect them. The world drives children to the treadmill. The world takes the young sters before they have had their playtime and feeds them without remorse to the commercial maw. And the lives of these children are served up to you in interests, rents and profits. The world invites you to a feast. Then the world forbids you to eat. The world calls you a freeman. Then the world forces you to crawl. Man is enslaved to his meals and his clothes. His breakfast threatens his dinner. His dinner his supper. His coat his shoes. The world as it is ties me to a stick in the ground. The world as it is submits me to its vio lent will. I am dead in its life. I fail in its success. Always. Always. The world is afraid of itself. But what does the world after all know of itself? It has never tried itself. It has never given men half a chance. A chance to mature life. To escape social despotism. Man has sight but is not allowed to see. Man is teased with a heritage which he is not to enjoy. The world has upper and lower, superior and inferior, hirer and hired, boss and workman. It lacks the even hand. The world turns its virtues over to dreamland and keeps its vices for everyday. The world has learned how 24 THE WORLD AS IT IS to do things.^ The world has not learned what to do with things when they are done. x^The world has in vented a word with which to insult itself. Pauper. Do you like it? Every time the world finds use for that word it submits to its own whip. That word is always a shadow. It falls across empty tables and de nuded hearts. The world as it is is not believed in. Men ought to love the world. But they distrust the world. They do not know when the world may not play them scamp. The world may be hiding round some corner prepared to knife them. The world may talk them fair and do them foul. The world does not per suade. The world drives. The world is not your boon companion. The world is your master. If the world does nothing to get you on good terms with it. If the world spoils its democracy with prefixes and suffixes. If the world plays to favorites. If the world gives one man too much chance and another man too little. If the world is all over fences. If the world mocks you with the thumb and forefinger of its sup plies and demands. If the world trips your best inten tions. If the world makes it impossible for you to be just to your neighbor or just to yourself. If the world stunts you root and branch. If the world honors trick ery above talent. If the world concentrates in the mill ionaire. What does the world not do but dissipate it self in a cloud of damning contingencies ? The world as it is is a world of negation. It writes its noes and 25 CHANTS COMMUNAL ciphers over your brow. It signs away its titles in a maybe or a perhaps. It surrenders soul and salad to the market. It ties up its own feet and hands. It seals its own lips. It deafens its own ears. It blinds its own eyes. Then it weeps over the ruin of life. The world is destined for order and remains chaos. The plan is stayed. The proposition is not put through. The world's resolution somewhere gets tan gled and postpones itself. The world means to be fair. But the world is an invalid world. The world needs a breath of oxygen. The world was to have undertaken a journey of justice. But the world missed its train and put off its journey. When will the world start? The world as it is keeps all its children at bay. The world has fastened an anathema upon labor. The world has done big things to the ear and little to the hope. The world cries trespass against its children. The world as it is is not a home. It is an incubator. It is an inn. It is anything. But it is not a home. The children are at once made to feel that they are not born into a home. The children are born alien. IThe world as it is is not the open palm. It is the Jclenched fist. The world as it is is not a world. It is a battlefield. It is a black threat. It is potential star vation. The world as it is does not celebrate man. It celebrates property. The world as it is honors prop erty and discredits man. The world as it is gives its degrees to financial prestidigitation. The world as it 26 OF MANY VOICES ONE VOICE is is made uncomfortable for simplicity. It does not stake its fortune on original results. It risks all for the big shows. This world of the mines and the fac tories. This world of the storegirl and the clerk. This world of the trainhand and the roaddigger. This world of purity and prostitution. This world impaling so cial justice. This world as it is scarred all over with contrast, contradiction, cruelty and concubinage. This world as it is sworn to the service of the man on top. As if there could be any top or bottom in a democracy. As if there could be any top or bottom in a world of decent diameters. Look at it. This magnificent mal evolent world. This beautiful brutal world. This world as it is. Our world. This world every inch of it the rock and dirt and moisture of our own hands. This world as it is. OF MANY We are learning a lesson. The lesson VOICES of inviolable unity. The masters have ONE VOICE traded on our quarrels. The one solid asset of mastership is the isolation of the slave. We refuse longer to remain isolated. We have learned to stick together. You can defeat any man who comes to you alone. But when the single man comes to you one hundred and fifty thousand strong you have to lis ten to his appeal. You have so often said no that no has become your habit. But labor is learning not to accept your no as no. It is beginning to see that your no may mean no to you but does not mean no to labor. 27 CHANTS COMMUNAL You have been spoiled by the effectiveness of your ancient weapon. Your weapon was never good. It only seemed good because the opposing weapon was so bad. Now that labor has a weapon with which to meet you your blade has lost its edge. The laborer himself has rather accepted your estimate of labor. And labor has admired your superior clothing and your superior speech and your overdressed women and the sports of your leisure. And so you have felt yourselves con firmed. A change has come. Labor is beginning to realize its majority. It sees that all the fine things you possess and for which it has admired you are but the creation and property of labor alienated to a private from a common fund. And that consciousness has lifted labor out of the dirt. It has inspired labor with a conviction of its right of way. Labor no longer says : By your leave. Labor now says : By my will. Labor no longer fears your anger. Labor is no longer a sin gle man exposed to a tempest. Labor is an army con centrated in a single command. Its inveterate energy must finally prove resistless. Labor is the active source of wealth. That makes labor invincible. Labor handles all the earlier laws. Labor arrives first. You come after. Without labor all would be lost. Without you all would be better off. The values are being inexor ably shifted. You will soon be under the wheel. Once when labor came to you you buttoned your coat and replied : See my attorney. Now labor has its own at torney. Labor says: Treat with my attorney. You 28 OF MANY VOICES ONE VOICE gag. But you treat. Labor has had a long row to hoe. It has hoed well. It has kept the faith. But labor's harvests bring along also their parasitic weeds. These weeds come by the same law as the wheat. But the weeds have threatened the wheat. That is one reason why labor is resolved to remove the weeds. In the long night, when interest and profit and rent deserted, labor kept the torch aflame. And when the day returned, interest and profit and rent returned with it vulgar in self-acclaim. Labor is learning to hold its own. Not a portion of its own. Not a pittance called its own by the powers that have been engaged in exploiting it. Its absolute own. All its own. One hundred per cent. The forces on top are beginning to look worried. They are feeling that in the submerged world of labor something is going on. Something that does not mean well for them. They do not know what that something is. They know that whatever it is it is to be fought to a finish. They know there is some calamity threatened. And they are preparing to meet the dreaded event. Labor, too, knows there is something in the wind. And labor itself does not always know what that some thing is. But labor by an instinct of self-preservation is learning the lesson so far overdue. That lesson may seem inchoate and imperfect. But the elements all ex ist and they are taking counsel of each other. When the time is ripe they will coalesce with such vigor and upon such terms as will permit no doubt to be enter- 29 CHANTS COMMUNAL tained of their purpose. The masters may as well be warned in time. Their one last weapon is effete. La bor has closed up the gap. Do you think that labor is striking for favors? Labor is demanding justice. La bor will take nothing as a gift. Keep your gifts. We ask you to render an account. After all you have been only a steward. We do not acknowledge you beyond your stewardship. And we call in your short loan. You have got to meet us in the open. Not back of closed doors. Not in a distant town. Not helplessly one by one. You have got to meet us where we choose and when as well as where and when you choose. We come to you no longer begging pardon, hat in hand. We come with a demand, our hats on our heads. The office boy can no longer dismiss us. We break a way in to the throne. You have got to hear and you have got to be polite. We are teaching you manners as well as matters. We come to you hundred thousands strong. Our one man is the sum total. The little dago who cannot speak a word of English and who is known by a number rather than a name is the big American who has the power to demand an audience of kings. He sends his idea up to headquarters. And there you have to meet it. We have no apologies to offer for disturbing your peace. You have had that sort of peace long enough. It is a peace that is no peace. Peace without honor is the worst war. You have had the sort of peace which has made all the decisions one way and that one way yours. Now we take you aside 30 GOD UP THERE SOMEWHERE CRIES and say: That will not do. We are no respecters of properties. The properties must take care of them selves. The meanest man takes precedence of the most formidable and magnificent edifice. When the most ignorant and the most obscure workman has a grievance you must hear it. You may shudder. But his voice is as potent as any voice. We have come to you hundred thousands strong. We clamor at your doors. We fill the highways. We crowd you up to the very porches of your heart. The single man's voice is withdrawn. We send you this voice instead. This is the voice of thousands welded for one voice. This is the voice of a new democracy. We are practic ing an art which will compel your respect. You will take your broom and sweep back at the sea. But you will not sweep back at us. When we come you will put your antiquated broom away. We who make of many voices one voice. 7 GOD UP THERE Do not apologize for your SOMEWHERE CRIES client. Do not shuffle and shrink when labor sins. Labor has sinned greatly. La bor will sin some more. Labor hates the half advo cate. It looks to you in the thick and thin of battle. You are to be in the right place at the right time. You are not to come arguing that you should not come. You are not to go to the front and dispute the virtue of war with the acting general. The fight is on and 31 CHANTS COMMUNAL you know your post. You are not to throw down your arms and tell your enemy that you love him. You do love him. Of course. But you are fighting this fight as much for his sake as your own. So you will love him. And you will fight. Labor is not making a de mand based on superiorities or virtues. It is making a demand based on addition, subtraction and division. It is building a demand on the multiplication table. It is not asking for more money because it has six wives or one wife. It is not asking for more money because it has played the good Samaritan. It is not proving that it deserves more money because it observes the ten commandments or obeys the laws of the state. It is willing to rest its case upon the multiplication table. To you who object to sentiment we quote the multipli cation table. We will meet you, the other you, with any weapon of your choice. We will meet you way up where the clouds clash. We will meet you way down where the roots fasten themselves in the soil. We will meet you on the surface of the earth. We will meet you in your parlor, in your office or on the street. We will meet you with an arithmetic or a scripture. We will turn arithmetic into scripture and scripture into arithmetic. Your choice is your own. We will follow where you lead. We will meet you on your field or on our own or on neutral ground. We will meet by your watch. We will meet you with the glove or with plain knuckles. Anyway you choose. Anyway. Any- 32 GOD UP THERE SOMEWHERE CRIES way. And we will lick you. We are going to make mistakes. We are going to be hot. We are going to do you some injustice. We are going to be stern. We are going to use words that overshoot and words that undershoot the mark. We are going to fight you with our fears and with our challenges. We are going to drive you hard and give no quarter. For we are to fight. We are not to take hold and let go. We are going to take hold and never let go. Fight. That is our word. It is a brute word. But we are forced to use it. No other word so well says fight as that word fight itself. And fight it is. We do not fight because we hate but because we love. We do not fight to take away anything from anybody. We fight to give away everything to everybody. Fight. It is a miracled word. Its root is love. Its fruit is love. Fight. Not fist. Not gun. Not knife. None of these are fight. Only love is fight. These destroy. Love saves. Fight. No fool apologies. No mushpotteries. No retreats. No attempts to mend a mistake by surrender. No soft phrases to turn away wrath. Your biggest fist. Your most austere front. Beware of us. When we strike we strike to kill. Not with a weapon of blood. Not to kill your body. Do you think we are out for your body? No. No. We are out for the idea. We will never rest with that idea at large. We will game it. You have tried to make us think we were jealous of your material possessions. That is a mistake. We are jealous of that idea. You will not give up your 33 CHANTS COMMUNAL idea without a struggle. We do not expect an easy fight. But you will give it up. For the forces on our side go back to the elemental laws and forward to the ideal and cannot be frustrated. We will get whipped. But we will fight. And we will get whipped again. But less whipped. And we will fight. And we will get whipped again. And all will seem lost. And the sun will go down on our dismay. But we will fight. And you will hurt us. And we will cry out for pain. And we will be silent for philosophy. But fight on. And that is why finally you will go to the ground. For we can lose everything and still fight. We see nothing but fight. We hear nothing but fight. We dream nothing but fight. Never was such war. War not to the knife. War to justice. War to the ideal. War not to shed blood. War to stop the blood that starva tion sheds. War to stop the wasting blood of the chil dren. War upon luxury. War for life. War for clothes, food, leisure. War without truces. War with out paroles and spies. War direct and cruel. War without malice. War without concession. War of strong men. War that sends its weaklings and word- mongers to the rear. War that does not fight a staunch battle today and beg your pardon for it tomorrow. War that is not for babes and sucklings. War. War. War. When you meet us you meet the greatest army that ever arrayed itself against a crime. It is an army that weeps when it fights. Though it fights. An army 34 GOD UP THERE SOMEWHERE CRIES that would rather pay you a compliment than hurt your feelings. An army to which the business of fighting is hateful. But an army which for this very reason fights harder than ever. An army not bargained for at so much per head. An army which love has sent to the field and which only a superior love can defeat. It will be scared. But it will intrepidly fight. It may be on the point of flying. But it will not fly. This army so full of love. This fight so full of love. Brutal with love. The army of the people. The army of the fight ing democracy. There are feeble advocates among us. But do not let them deceive you. We are not as weak as our weakest corporal. We are as strong as our strongest corporal. Keep out all your guards. You will need them all. For we never sleep. We have some tenderfeet of our own. But they count for noth ing against our veteran hosts. We are liable to be strongest when you think your opportunity has come. We have our grammarians. We do not find much use for them. The people remain. We have the plain people. The people who are unspoiled by the gram marians. The people who fight. The nasty, dirty, narrow people. The ordinary, everyday people. The crowding many who are dragged over rough roads by the scattering few. The people, conservative, slow, lethargic, patient, only dreaming of revolution when every other dream is gone. The people who will not fight until they must but who when they must fight, fight, as Captain Bluntschli says, like the devil. These 35 CHANTS COMMUNAL are left. And these will always return. No matter what the terror of the rout. These will report next day as usual. For the people and this fight are of one stuff. You can only get rid of the fight by getting rid of the people. And so fight is said. Fight. And fight we mean. Fight of many retreats. Fight of more de feats than victories for us. But fight. We expect no victory until the final victory. We only fight. We fight not knowing whether we have won or are whipped. We fight the same fight. We hear the voice ahead. We see the light. We fight on. The voice is silent. The light is gone out. We fight on. That is all we have to do. Fight. We are cowards. We fight on. We are heroes. We fight on. That is all we have to do. Fight. God up there somewhere cries: Fight! Fight down here somewhere cries : God ! SAID THE MAS- Said the master of men: "Keep TER OF MEN off the earth. Keep out of the air. Do not swim in the water. Do you suppose the harvests of the field are yours? Do you suppose that the air is intended for you to breathe? Do you suppose that the water is made to drink? You have a licentious imagination. Why do you suppose I have fenced in the earth? Why do you suppose I charge you a solid rate for the opportunity to live ? Do you believe you have some rights to life which the air, the water, the field, in spite of me, are bound to re- 36 SAID THE MASTER OF MEN spect ? You do not count up your twos and threes. I am a tollgate and you are my toll. I am the gatekeeper of heaven and you must pay me to get in. I am the portal to all the vista of time. Through me you eat, drink and make merry. If you deny me you starve, you thirst, you mourn. But for me life would not live. But for me the earth would be a desert. Useless, am I ? Where did you go to school ? Sixty generations of children have been taught my gospel. As many generations of grown up men and women have suffered and starved to prove me true. I am the taxrate and the tax. Ideas may be true. Dreams may be true. You may have a Hebrew or another Bible that is true. But nothing is so true as my omnipresent assessment. I drain the clouds dry. I take from the earth till its last blossom wilts. I take from the heart of man till its last hope is lost. What could so much prove me true as the length of my arm ? That arm will reach its palm into any pocket, into any estate, into any heart. And when it is withdrawn nothing is left. I live by several names. But these names rightly spelled spell one name. By some I am called rent. By some I am called interest. By some I am called profit. But I neither court nor reject any name. As long as I can accomplish my object I am willing to accept any name and equally willing to go without a name. When it suits my convenience I call myself rent. When it suits my convenience I call myself interest. I never say theft. I say rent and interest. Yes, and profit, too. 37 CHANTS COMMUNAL The people I fool by profit are just as sensitive as the people I fool by rent and interest. They do not mind being fooled. They fool themselves when they get a chance. But they prefer to be fooled in the right way. They like to be fooled gracefully and according to the code. So I have to be perpetually on my guard. For as long as I rob right I am called shrewd and am envied by my victims, who are my fellow robbers. But if I mix my etymology a mob of professors is instantly at my heels threatening my increments. To show you how popular I am with the people I need only remind you of history. The people do not make the laws. But they make the lawmakers. And they always make the sort of lawmakers who protect me in the laws. The people do not own the factories and the stores. But they create the men who hold the titles to the factor ies and the stores. And they always create the sort of men who first of all take care that my berth shall be cheerily fattened. And so on. Now, if the people did not mean me to be exactly what I am the people would refuse to make it possible for me to live just as I do. The people are very good. They provide for me be fore they provide for themselves. They take care that I have enough to eat even while they starve. And enough to wear and to cover my bed even when they are cold. I get my dues whatever happens. You look. You see the people in trouble. They are wor rying over something. You may perhaps imagine that they have children at home without enough food to go 38 SAID THE MASTER OF MEN round. Or that some other domestic tragedy has de veloped. You are wrong. Their grief is all about me. They are afraid they may not be able to do justice to me. They have no money and no work. They ask them selves : What will interest, rent, profit do to get along if I have no money and no work? They see me going to the poorhouse. So they wander wearily about the streets grieving for me. And sometimes they get de spondent and jump into the river or blow their brains out. Just because they would not like any hurt to come to me. For if anything was to happen to disable me the country would go to smash. The farmers all farm their farms for me. Every spindle in every fac tory spindles for me. Every machine at Lynn shoes for me. The stores are conducted for me. The railroads run in furtherance of my estate. The people are my sworn allies. They are my stubborn friends. When my integrity is threatened by some minority of the peo ple themselves I do not need to lift a hand in my own defense. The people do it all. They defend me. They are only too glad to demonstrate their loyalty. When rebellion rebels I simply hold my peace and my usufruct and smile. Thousands of people will die in order that I may live. The clay of this world may red den with carnage. But none of my blood is drawn. When the battle is over I reappear and receive the homage that attaches to my sacred prerogative, I who am interest. I who am rent. I who am profit. But for me the political state, the lord of the land, the lord 39 CHANTS COMMUNAL of the money, the lord of the tool, could not live over a single night. I sit on every hearthstone and wait. I am in at every birth. I am in at every death. My decalogue fixes the social seasons. No one can dodge or postpone me. No one can order life with me left out. No one. I am never premature and I never quit. In all the exigencies of your career, from the cradled start to the coffined finish, I fix the terms of settlement. I am life to you when you surrender and death to you when you revolt. I who am rent. I who am interest. I who am profit." That is what the master of men said. WHEN THE It is God no longer. It is Injunc- ENJOINER tion. IS ENJOINED The air is full of injunction. It is injunction simple, injunction complex. It is injunc tion monosyllabic and injunction polysyllabic. If you want to do a certain thing you are enjoined. If you do not want to do it you are enjoined. The hat you put on your head is enjoined. The love you put into your heart is enjoined. The thought you put into your head is enjoined. Democracy has given way to injunction. Even religion retires before injunction. So thick is the cloud of the interlopers. So thick is the crowd. So thick. The courts are finding some use for themselves. We had long been wondering why we should not abol ish the courts. But if we had no courts who would 40 WHEN THE ENJOINER IS ENJOINED enjoin? We could get along without punishing men for murder and robbery. But we could not get along without enjoining men from the pursuit of liberty. The courts save us from ourselves. Left to ourselves we might get justice too fast. So we submit our souls to the courts. The courts say : Go slow, very slow. The courts say: Don't go at all. For liberty does not seem impossibly far ahead. And we seem dangerously near its protectorate. Liberty would be very perilous for somebody. The somebody with something that does not belong to him. So we must not be allowed to get within hailing distance of liberty. So we cry to the courts: Save us from ourselves. And the courts save us. The courts enjoin. I saw a man who loved him self. I told him he should not love himself. And so he stopped himself in time. I saw a man who loved his wife. Yes, who loved his wife and children. Yes, his family and many families. Yes, many families and all families. This man was surely a madman. Love was capable of making any man mad. The truer his love the madder the man. And madness is a menace to dollars. Especially dollars that are stolen. This is not a world for love. It is a world for dollars. So the court restrains. My madman is enjoined. He is ad monished against love. Love will do for gods, an gels, children and the insane. Nothing but dollars will do for the man. Dollars indeed prove the man. So the court's edict is published. Love slinks shame- 4* CHANTS COMMUNAL facedly back to the nursery. The court is happy. It has saved the race again. Yet the race is never saved but it gets lost again. No sooner have the saviors stopped their business of salvation than the disinte grating devils have resumed their work. After the courts have patched up a legal peace a lawless nether bulge rebursts the faulty dam. The courts are never able to complete their case. They tinker away at it. They get it about where it seems to them to belong. Then the roof falls in or the foundations cave. Then a cyclone breaks across the country. Then some pois oned meat is delivered at the door. Something, any thing, appears to disturb the court's best laid plans. But the court keeps on enjoining. You find an injunc tion under your pillow. You find an injunction by your plate at breakfast. The great newspapers are headlined with injunctions. Injunctions eclipse the sun. We do not pray. We enjoin. He enjoins best who enjoins last. What can you do if injunction will not enjoin? If the injuncted will not be enjoined? What can you do if injunction is laughed in the face? The people are getting quarrelsome. They are laugh ing at your Niagara They threaten to hurl your waters back over the crest of the cliff again. The en- joiner may enjoin. But the enjoined may not stay en joined. Let the courts have a little fun. Let them en joy their sundown prerogatives. Soon the day will be 42 WHEN THE ENJOINER IS ENJOINED gone. Why should capital not have a few delights with which to conclude the epic of its piratical husbandry ? Injunction is its last game. It is the last throw of a dying marplot. It is the final flicker of an expiring flame. Why grudge capital the sweet delay of the in junction ? Stand aside. Give it air to breathe. Its doom is appointed. Injunction is the breath of its departing life. Be generous. Let it die in its own way. Let it fix the terms of its farewell. For now the enjoiner is to be enjoined. The people have risen. The courts are adjourned to the court. The court is the people. The people enjoin. Ten thousand injunctions are dis posed of by one injunction. You have gone on suppos ing there was nothing above the courts. The courts were of final resort. But the people loomed above the courts. We alone are final, said the people. The injunction seems logical as long as the people sleep. But when the people awake the injunction sinks to chaos. Nothing is logical but the people. The courts have assumed that they could get along without the people. The people have proved that the people can get along without the courts. Injunction enjoined ten or a thousand times more than enough. The people were satisfied to stand a little trifling of that sort. The people are slow. Thevj try all expedients before they try the last expediem - But the injunction is enjoined. What are the best oi your courts ? The worst of the people are potentially better than the best of your courts. The courts betray 43 CHANTS COMMUNAL the people. They place themselves as a breakwall be tween the people and justice. The people will discredit and destroy the courts. The courts are in the road. They must go. The political court, like the political state, must die. It is proving itself unable to fulfill the mandate. The courts injunct democracy. But the people injunct the courts. The enjoiner is enjoined. The people who enjoin last are the people who enjoin best. It is Injunction no longer. It is the People. THE MEN WHO A father and his little child CR Y AND KEEP ON were traveling a dark road to gether. The father asked the child: "If something happened to me now if I was killed or disappeared what would you do ? " The child replied : " I would cry but I would keep right on." The great men and women of the world cry but they keep right on. Some people are failures even in their successes. Some peo ple are successes even in their failures. The great souls never admit failure. The great souls never admit suc cess. The great souls are not after failure or after suc cess. We look at the big men and we find they are all of one root. They all seem to come from the same stock. The same raw material. They differ in degrees and particulars but they do not differ in kind. They have the same sincerity. They have the same simplic ity. They are after the same results. You always know 44 THE MEN WHO CRY AND KEEP ON where the great man is likely to be if a certain thing happens. The great man does not default. He does not turn up somewhere else. He is bound to appear on a given spot. The great men are the strong men. The strongest men are the gentlest men. And because the man is gentle he will cry. And because he is strong he will keep right on. And he will cry as only gentle men can cry. And he will keep on as only strong men can keep on. Do you suppose men like to be mis understood? Yet they would rather be misunderstood than be traitorous. They give up your present for your future good will. Or they give up your good will altogether in the interest of your good weal. You may not see that they cry. But they cry nevertheless. In the closet. Away from the public sneer. But you will see that they keep right on. Think how Lincoln must have cried to get those rings round his eyes and those deep lines down his face. But Lincoln kept right on. They said that John Brown smiled when he was exe cuted. When he smiled the scaffold disappeared and was never seen again. But we also know that the gran ite man in his solitude cried for America. Yet he kept right on. No one suspected that he might have turned back if there had been some chance of escape. He did not look for escape. It was his business to keep right on. And he kept right on. In the end we always admire the strong man. He may temporally fret and worry us. CHANTS COMMUNAL He may seem dangerous to our increases and incre ments. He may seem possessed of a malign fanaticism. But he will sternly endure our distrust. He will sur vive our suspicion. We may always think the man's idea wrong. But we will admit that the man is right. For the man who keeps right on has put himself into partnership with moral gravitation. And this is an ap peal to which we must all finally respond. The child said it would cry but keep right on. The child divined more than it knew. You are ridiculed. You turn back. You are fought. You turn back. You stop your clock. You turn back its hands. You apologize to yesterday for today. You are afraid of the issue. Your comrade dies at your side. The bullets fly. Back you go. Why should you press on against such odds? Back you go. You are at the beginning again. Is this home ? The homestead has disappeared. You are lost. You are full of rebellion until the rebellion occurs. Then you are empty of rebellion. You are crazy to pay your bills. The bills are presented. You refuse to pay. You have got your ideas locked up in a desk. You have printed them in a book. You have painted them in a picture. But you have not got them into your heart and your feet. Your very ligaments must become the extract and potency of the ideal. When the drum sounds for retreat how dare you hear ? The battle turns against you. But you will not turn against yourself. Never. The child would cry and keep on, 46 THE MEN WHO CRY AND KEEP ON What has become of the child in you that you would run self-baffled from the field? I do not pray for ideas. I pray for spirit. Ideas may be faithless. Ideas may be disproved by ideas. Ideas may be bought and sold. But spirit is never disproved by anything. You will be tempted but you will not see temptation. You will see only your own guarantees. You can go without meals. You can go without laces back of your win dows and on your skirts. You can go without the opera. But you cannot go without your faith. You can give up everything else and still be rich. But if you give up faith all the rest cannot save you. I do not ask you to rise above your build. I do not ask you to do mir acles. I do not ask you to put two and two together and make them five. I ask you how you can know what your build is until you have put on your roof? How can you know? You think yourself little. But the man who thinks himself little can think himself big. You think yourself weak. The man who thinks him self weak can think himself strong. What is your voice to do to make itself heard on the cryday of our civili zation ? How can it get free from the crowd of voices? Is it to stir about a little and then shrink into a stagnant calm of despair? It may bring you sorrow. It may bring you persecution. The chief thing is that it brings you. Stick to yourself. Cry if you must. But keep on. You have no business with the persecutors and the 47 CHANTS COMMUNAL prosecutors. You must have but one eye. That is for the light ahead. Your faith is far too big for contem porary favor. It misses reward. It finds blessedness. Stand irrevocably by yourself. Do not let the dis turbances of the road dull the pith of your intention. Whatever you are be that thing strong. Not strong in resentment. Strong in affirmation. You will be misinterpreted. They will call you harsh and cruel. The dispossessor will call you a robber. Even the dis possessed will not know you or say "How d'ye do?" though you do his work. Your children will think you queer and your father and mother will cast you out. You will go to a thousand crosses martyred and serene. You will cry, cry, bitterly. Wet the ground with your blood and tears. But you will keep on. You will be weak. But you will keep on. Or strong. But keep on. Or evil. But keep on. Or good. But keep on. What will loss or failure hurt? You will keep on. What will success or fortune help ? You will keep on. I came upon you unawares. There you were weeping to yourself for your sins. But when you saw me you smiled and kept on. What can run short if your faith runs long ? What can tire your feet if your soul does not tire ? What can make you trespass if your heart refuses to invade ? What can turn you into stone if your sympathy melts the very rocks of the hills ? To yourself you are full of grief. To the world you are austere. Back there alone you weep. But before the world your eyes are dried. Yet if the world could look 48 THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS with eyes that are more than eyes it would see you sor rowing for its guilt. You who sorrow but keep on. You who must be cruel. You who being cruel keep on. That is the gospel of the child. You feel its small soft hand in your harder palm. The child that cries but keeps on. The child in you that cries but keeps on. THE BLOOD We worship the destroyer. We de- OF THE spise or at least ignore the builder. MARTYRS When a fi'e of soldiers comes down the street marching to the drum and fife your pulses dilate, your blood thrills and you are creatured into a mood of exalted feeling. But if a file of laborers comes along nine chances out of ten you will say something sarcastic about their clothes and turn from them without interest or expectation. A file of soldiers bent upon war. A file of workmen bent upon a strike. One threatens liberty. The other condones liberty. The soldier with his tuft is holy. The striker with his axe is malign. Watch yourself. Your heart will get away from you. I know you only too well. I know where your heart belongs. I know where your heart goes. But I also know where liberty belongs. Where liberty goes. You look with awe upon a battlefield. Do you not look with as much awe upon your tunnel? Here is an honest battle. A battle with the rocks. Here is a battle without an en- 49 CHANTS COMMUNAL emy. Here is a battle without murder. Here is a bat tle in which no brother takes up his arms against a brother. Yet this battle, too, has its victims. And you look on and think and say nothing. You are non chalant and uninformed. What is the matter? Here is an honest battle. This battle is fought on a fair level of human enterprise. You look down into these holes in the ground and your pulse is undisturbed. You turn round to Broadway, meet a battalion of soldiers, and you become alive with the fire of a martial exaltation. What is the matter? That man is a hero who kills somebody. But the man who ransoms is a slave. We have mistaken murder for manhood and given it a first place in our respect. We have confused labor with degradation and reduced it below the plane of its proper nobility. If you go into our schools and ask the chil dren to tell you the name of a contemporary hero they will tell you that Funston is a hero. No child is so taught that he would think of Debs as a hero. Do you wonder that children grow up able to respond to the drum and fife and unable to respond to the pick and shovel? When the state manufactures emblems it makes them of a military or juridical character. No state has ever yet thought to symbolize itself in the in struments of labor. Yet labor starts all and finishes all. Labor bestows the first rough and the last finesse upon all the art and circumstance of life. No state, no church, no parlor, no anything, would stand for an in stant with labor removed from its foundations. Labor 50 THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS even put your bible on your pulpit. It even put your love into your heart. The very labor that is blasting a tunnel under your metropolis. The very labor whose victims are day by day carried up from these under ground caverns and to their homes in the shadow of a dreadful popular unconcern. Day by day until the cloud is five hundred victims black and dense. The sol dier kills. You pension his wounds. You pension his death. The more he kills, the more ornamental the incidents of his rapine, the more his pension, the greater his renown. The laborer saves. You condemn his wounds. You ignore his death. His family are not made pensioners. They are made paupers. If the event of his death is sufficiently dramatic you put him vaguely in the category of "ten men killed" in the dis play head of the daily papers. Then finis. The sol dier's family reports at the treasury. The laborer's family reports at the poorhouse. That is as far along as justice has got. But justice has not got far along. Justice still defers to medieval ideals. Doubts itself. If justice was justice you would take off your hat to these men. They patiently go into the ground to do you their perilous service. You would regard them with reverence. Their soiled hands and clothes would be come irradiant. You would pay the account. Gladly pay it. Every cent. These martyrs are martyrs in spite of you and in spite of themselves. They are martyrs 51 CHANTS COMMUNAL because of themselves. Their martyrdom is not a mar tyrdom of flummery and decorations. They can expect nothing for their martyrdom. Not even good wages. Not even the kind words of the master. Their mar tyrdom is lowest in form and highest in substance. Their martyrdom is a cry. You are deaf. A picture. You are blind. It is a martyrdom that sleeps in a gar ret and winds up on the poorlist. It is a martyrdom of which history says nothing. It is a martyrdom that has to be satisfied with martyrdom. It gets no honors. The formal plaudits of the world go to the formal mar tyrdoms. The soldier reappears in salons, in halls of legislation, in coats of arms and on the arms of coats. But the laborer he passes into oblivion by the easiest and darkest way. You sun your soldiers. You shadow your laborers. Some men die that you may live. Some on scaffolds. Some on crosses. Some on battlefields. Some in tunnels. Why should not the tunnel be as holy as the cross? What is there about the tunnel which removes it from the prescriptions of your rever ence? You can understand Jesus on the cross. You can understand Savonarola, burned at the stake. You can understand John Brown, executed at Harper's Ferry. Why do you fail to understand this somebody sacrificed in the tunnel ? I do not say that the cross and the stake and the scaffold have tricked you. But I do say that the tunnel has tricked you. Or that you have tricked the tunnel. For if you fail to understand the 52 WHAT IS THE USE? tunnel you deny all martyrdom. You affront the con tinuity of history. For the tunnel belongs to the cross by the same subtle chain of faith that gives the cross to the tunnel. He died humbly crushed underneath a rock. They have brought him out of the ground. His face is pale but satisfied. Your city of millions will not stay in its heavy round to regard his anonymous visage. Yet this unknown man has saved your city. But for him your city could not exist. All labor lies there prostrate in his inert form. Come out of your churches, all of you, and worship here. Leave your creeds behind. This is creed enough. Worship here. Here is religion enough. WHAT IS What is the. use? That's so. Why THE USE? should we prolong this fight? Is the fight not hopeless ? Do we not owe our family an im mediate debt ? What business of ours is the business of the future ? Have we any right to starve the pres ent to feed the future ? Why should we not sharpen our knives and our wits and do what sanguinary execution we can with the conditions that exist? The past has given me an inheritance of struggle. Why should I not pass that inheritance on ? Why should I sweat and bleed and go hungry and cold for the sake of the unborn ? I have suffered long enough. I have submitted to dispossession. I have seen robbery all about me and have not robbed. Why should I not 53 CHANTS COMMUNAL rob ? What but robbery can protect me against the robber ? I have wandered across the earth hungry with a conscience. But what is the use of a conscience if it keeps me hungry ? The table is spread with plenty. I have refused to eat. Why ? I have doubt ed my title. Why should I doubt my title ? Why should I not make my grab ? The world does not admire the hungry man. It admires the man who has proved that he can confiscate. It admires fat necks and bulging bellies. It doffs to the overfed. Who is the overfed ? He is the man with two appetites and no conscience. He is the man who grows tired of ar guments over the rights and wrongs of history. There is no right to a man who goes without his meal. Nor is there any wrong to a man who has plenty. So I am to slice out my share of the universal patrimony. The priests have warned me off. The police have warned me off. The state, the church, the castes, have warned me off. But none of the warners get off them selves. Why should I get off ? Why should I stay out in the cold clad only in a conscience ? Or go about with a stomach empty of everything but its conscience ? What is this nettle that pesters me ? I start into the scramble. It holds me back. I want to swindle. It holds me back. I am determined to take the roses from the cheeks of the children. Others do it. Why should I not do it ? But that nettlesome something or 54 WHAT IS THE USE? other holds me back. I thought if the night got very very dark I could sneak a fortune out of some shadow. But dark as it was my tormentor found and frustrated me. I thought if the day got very very light and the streets very very crowded I might successfully work a flush on the commercial world in the confusing dazzle and hurry. But I felt the sunbeams prick me off my suicidal design. I have murder in me. I have theft in me. Why should I not maim and kill the children ? Why should I not tax the first youth and the last old age of my fellow beings ? Why should I not extract from the returns of toil the soul and sinew of reward? Why should I scruple in a world unscrupulous ? Does it hurt me to see the man that I rob suffer ? Why does it hurt me ? I am a timid adventurer. Why should I pioneer for love in an age of graft? There is nothing villainy does I might not do if I went to work as villainy works and cared as little for the grief of wronged men and women and children as villainy cares. I am at cross purposes with myself. I am hungry to be a scoundrel. I am eager to rob. Why should my faith be loafing round with Buddha and Jesus and Whit man and Morris when it might be busy cutting cou pons off the souls of the poor ? For this is a coupon world. It is a world of the trespasser. The way of the transgressor is velvet. When the factories whistle at seven in the morning the fleeced return to the 55 CHANTS COMMUNAL fleecer. The land always reverts to the landlord. The landlord sells you your own land each day and takes it back without pay before nightfall. The har vest reports to the owner instead of to the man. Civili zation reports everything in profits rather than in souls. Why should I go back on civilization ? Why should I get civilization at odds with myself ? Why should I not conform ? What can the future do for me ? I can do everything for it. It stands beyond. Helpless. It cannot reciprocate. My nest needs feathering. Should I not feather it at your expense ? I can make you pay my debts. Why should I let the chance slip ? You who work in my shop. You who scribble at my desk. You, any of you, who honestly produce. You who run the necessary errands. You who turn the neces sary wheels. I am too much disturbed by your mis eries. Why should I spoil my good dinner for think ing of your bad dinner ? Why should I stay awake nights wondering how my soul can settle the debts of the poor ? Damn my soul. Damn the poor. What business have the poor to their poverty anyway ? Why should I have a loss column on the other side of my ledger ? The world is a world of profit. Why should I not accept the standards of the profit-bearing world ? I know profits are not nice. I know that profit is theft. But theft cannot be wrong. For profit is preached in the churches in the name of God and pro- 56 WHAT IS THE USE? vided for in the legislatures in the name of the state. So profit must be right. How can I expect to survive if I set myself up against the laws of nature and the cus toms of man ? We talk about love. But love is not intended for a world of competition. What can love do for a man who has got to hate all his neighbors to save himself from economic perdition ? What use can love be put to in a musket ? What use has supply and demand for love ? I ask interest what it can do for love and interest replies : " The same thing that love can do for me. I can destroy love." I ask rent what it can do for love, and profit, too, and rent and profit answer : " We can do for love what interest can do for love." I shed fool tears over the woes of the slave. The slave? Who is the slave? I am the slave. The bubble bursts. I might just as well go fast asleep as be honest. Everybody is stealing from somebody. Some steal from everybody. We live in a lawless world ded icated to law. We worship the legislature and blas pheme against gravitation. Justice is gravitation. But of what use is justice in a world of ambushes ? Let me, too, ambush somebody. Let me ambush some body in a sermon. Culture is an ambush. Theft en dows culture. Let me ambush somebody in a poem. I will paint an ambush in a picture. I will sing an ambush in a song. Every factory is an ambush. Every store is an ambush. God does not reign. Jus tice does not govern. Ambush both reigns and gov- 57 CHANTS COMMUNAL erns. What is it that makes the children's faces in America so deathly pale ? What is it that makes the mothers so quickly old? What is it that bends the backs of the fathers? It is ambush. Our civilization has ambushed the peoples. The peoples are decoyed. Why should I undertake to resist a force so tragically po tential ? Throw your children to the ambush. Throw your heart after them. Of what use is the heart ? Your heart is only in the way. Give hell a chance to fire up and get a start. Ambush. Civilization does not say : " Love one another." It says : " Ambush one anoth er." That is the path of safety. The most successful ambusher is regarded as the most civilized man. Am bush lest you be ambushed. Instead of " Do unto oth ers" read "Ambush others before you are ambushed yourself." Am I to be a jack and attempt to stem that tide ? I have resisted long enough. Now let me con form. No one will buy my dreams. No one will buy my love. Let me coin my native clay and trick with hate the opportunities of the market. If the children die well, then they die. What have I to do with any child not born under my own roof? The children themselves are a menace to each other. There are reasons why the parents of every child should hate the parents of every other child. Why should we go about inviting the scorn of the unregenerated ? I give my self up to the nearest stall. Take me. Buy me. Sell me. For cash. For influence. For heaven. For 58 CIVILIZATION, WHO ARE SO VERY BIG hell. For anything. Take me. I am labeled and priced. Take me. What is the use ? YOU, CIVILIZA- You are a big thing, civilization. TION, WHO ARE But why should I be afraid to SO VERY BIG challenge you? You are mak ing a loud noise. You are full of swag and swagger. You are much too big for your size. You are much too little for your name. You have possessed yourself of the earth. But why should I be afraid to challenge you ? Yes, civilization, you do wonderful things. You perform miracles. You invent marvels in mechanism. You have taken the material forces of the universe into your confidence. You have done enough to have done more. You have failed in so much I wonder that you have succeeded in anything. I stand here with my hat off loving your magnificence. I stand here with my hat on hating your shame. You, civilization, you with your loud words. You, civilization, you with your big brute body. Why should I be afraid to challenge you? Why should my soul confess judgment to a sky scraper ? Why should I admit that the biggest thing you can produce in the world outside of my heart is one bit as great as that heart itself ? Why should J flatter civilization ? If I do not like its face why should I not say so ? If I do not like its ways and means why should I amen it in my daily prayers ? Why should 59 CHANTS COMMUNAL I go on monkeying the formula of the market ? The formula of the market is this : Civilization is so big in acres and will sell for so many dollars, therefore civili zation is civilization. Why should I be scared when you quote the railroad against me ? Why should my ideals apologize to the telephone ? Why should all that is big in my soul abase itself to all that is little in the world outside my soul ? That little all which knows no appeal beyond the stock exchange ? Why should I go on swearing the old oaths ? Why should I take up the catch phrases of secular culture and of the church and count them as the ark and covenant of eco nomic revelation ? I am willing to be your fool. I am willing to suffer your disdain. But I will challenge you, civilization. I want to ask you why you have so much money and are so very poor? I want to ask you how you can lock the hungry outside your grana ries and call yourself civilized ? You have talked too long about your manners and your miles. Civilization does not demand quantity. It demands quality. I am not humbled when you tell me how many incomes of a certain size you enjoy. I am barbed with uncomforta ble questions. I demand to know how many lives of a certain kind you live. Until you live all lives up to the standard of the exceptional life your bond is void. Until every child is given a chance to enjoy childhood without the fear of maturity. Until every parent is given a chance to enjoy maturity without the haunting 60 CIVILIZATION, WHO ARE SO VERY BIG dread of the master and of want. Are you, civilization, doing anything to reduce the number of people who suffer your neglect ? Why are your lights so abnor mally white and your shadows so abnormally black? Tell me these things. I do not see that any questions are answered until these questions are answered. And I intend asking these questions until you have answered them in the spirit of a universal providence. They are uncomfortable. They are bitter. You hate them be cause they hurt you. You hate me because they are the rebel progeny of my gestating dreams. Hate me. But I ask them. And you must answer them to the last letter. You have expatriated the darling faith of the race. But you must call it home. I am not afraid to avow myself against all your show. I would give tons of your show for an ounce of your substance. You think that because you are big nothing can happen to you. But the big bad thing can have anything happen to it. And even as to bigness. How big are you if you are an oppressor ? How big are you if the most of men are afraid to go to bed at night because they suspect that you may play them some cowardly turn while they sleep ? How much smaller than small is any immen sity with justice left out ? How much bigger than big is any atom whose miniature circle encloses justice ? Civilization is justice. I am not fooled when you pro fanely testify to the magnificence of your private for tunes. Civilization impeaches the private fortune. It 61 CHANTS COMMUNAL refuses to consider the individual as conclusive in a crowded world. Civilization will admit no private deed. It will acquiesce in no policy by which the mass is betrayed to the individual. I am not afraid of civilization. Civilization, the thing we call civilization, a brazen bastard civilization, came, avowing itself in huge conceit. Civilization came asking questions of the world. I come asking questions of civilization. The world can as easily get rid of civilization as civili zation can get rid of me. You are a big thing, civiliza tion. But you may break of your own mass. Only one thing can save you. Equity can save you. The poor man given enough can save you. Private become public property can save you. The land reverted to the people can save you. Everything for all can save you. Three thousand miles of land cannot save you. Nor as many miles of sea. But a world of free men can save you. Free men. Men refusing ownership. Men rejecting the owner. Children born of free moth ers and fathers. These can save you. The hovel can not save you. The palace cannot save you. Nor va cations in summer. Nor cigars and wines and dinners and dresses. Nor tennis. Nor ease and indulgence. For ease and indulgence are always enjoyed at someone else's expense. These cannot save you. These may damn you. Or they may be the evidence of your dam nation. I asked you how big you were, civilization, and you handed me a pair of scales. But could any man 62 CIVILIZATION, WHO ARE SO VERY BIG by weighing anything find civilization ? You referred me to the astronomer. But the heavens sent me no news. You referred me to the microscopist. But the dust sent me no news. But when you referred me to the heart, the heart sent me news. For the heart sent love. And with love was aroused in man the obscured splendors of his exiled faith. For man has a right to believe that he may exact a full return for the labor of his hand and brain. And a full return is not property but opportunity. Man does not want property. He wants opportunity. He does not ask civilization to pay him dollars and cents. He asks it to give him chances. A man with a million dollars and no chance is as poor as the most abject serf. A man without a dollar and with a chance is the acknowledged heir to all the utilities of the spheres. Civilization, you must learn how to keep every dollar eternally shut. You must learn how to keep every opportunity eternally open. You are a big thing, civilization. But until you have learned the lesson of the shut dollar and the open opportunity you will be big for bad rather than big for good. You are a big thing, civilization. But you are not big enough to survive the lock and bar of your own proscriptions. You are a big thing, civilization. But there is a cry going up from the heart of man that is bigger than the trebled syllables of your braggart creed. You are a big thing, civilization. But we will not let you rest until you have satisfied the last call of the economic providences. You may stop short of 63 CHANTS COMMUNAL your own last word. But you cannot stop short of this demand. The debt is accrued. You must pay. You may hide from the sun. But you cannot hide from this intimate call of the equities. You, civilization, who are so very big. THERE IS There is no escape for you. You have NO ESCAPE got to report. You have got to report to civilization. Civilization is asking you questions which you must answer. You with your millions. You with your thousands. You with your dollar. You have got to report. Civilization is examining its dol lars. It is trying every dollar by a test of justice. It is going back of the reputation of the dollar to the char acter of the dollar. You cannot escape the inqui sition. It is granting no concessions. It is making no exceptions. Property has got to report to the soul. The soul is civilization. We are going to wash every dollar clean. We will wash and wash until it is clean. We suspect every dollar. Every dollar is as bloody as the hands of Lady Macbeth. Property is tangled and mixed with cruelty. We must make property hu man. Property now starves one to feed another. We will have property starve none and feed all. We will not permit one item of value to escape unscrutinized. We will subject all possession to the most drastic in dictment. The first dollar of the poor, the last dollar of the rich, the stolen dollar of the thief, the prayed 64 THERE IS NO ESCAPE dollar of the anchorite, the soiled dollar of the prosti tute, the virgin dollar of virtue, must all come to the same bar, must all be justified in the same court, must all confess judgment to the same tribunal of the heart. There is no escape. You think that you can dodge with your dollars round the chairs of professors in colleges or of editors in sanctums. You think that if you can put your dollars into the prayers of the priest all will be forgiven. You think that if the poet will rhyme your dollars, that if the singer will sing your dollars, that if the painter will paint your dollars, your dollars may es cape the perilous questions. But after the rhyme has been rhymed, after the song has been sung, after the picture has been painted, after the cherished silences have convened, the question still remains, interrogating, forever interrogating, your fortressed fortunes. Every time an injustice appears in a world every dollar in that world must turn back to the heart to report. Some dollars may be sanctioned. Some may be condemned. Some may be forgiven. But all must report. Every dollar in the world must report to the pale face of the child of the courts. Every dollar must report to the overworked men and women. Every dollar must re port to the tenements. Every dollar must report to the table without food. Every dollar must report to labor. Every dollar must turn back to the heart suing for permission to live. But for labor no dollar can ex ist. But for the consent of labor no dollar can loaf. 65 CHANTS COMMUNAL But for labor no dollar can yacht or dine or jewel itself in the leisure of exploitation. There is no escape. You have enjoyed your extras. Now they are being called in. Labor is finding that it has been too generous. It is wondering why it should fatten you with plenty and starve itself. It has been comparing the rosy cheeks of your children with the pale faces of its own darlings. It has been first asking itself a few questions. Now it is asking the same questions of you. It asks you to report on yourself. It demands that you give reasons for your superior increments. Why should they continue ? What did you ever do to create them ? What are you doing to give them vitality ? It calls you home from your indulgences. What can you say for yourself ? No plea of exemption or incompetency will be allowed. No proxy will be recognized. No coun sel. You must put in an appearance. The court is convened to hear you, sick or well. You must answer in the first person. You must plead. This is a court which palliates no default. You dare not pettifog your case. You must set up a defence. You must come here with every dollar and justify its genesis. For this is the court of the industrial democracy. This is the rallying spot of the verities. Every dollar must be checked off with justice. Every dollar that justice cannot check is forfeited. Here you are called. Here you must come. Speak. We listen. Your cities and your fortunes are so big. And the heart is so small. 66 THERE IS NO ESCAPE Yet your cities and your fortunes must win the acqui escence of the heart. With the favors of the heart, which are the favors of justice, withdrawn, your cities are depopulated and your fortunes are ciphered. Dare you call a city without heart big ? Dare you call any single humble man full of heart small ? Come, now, let us hear what you have to say for yourself. Look labor in the face and tell it the truth about yourself. Labor has been very decent with you. It has tolerated your inroads for a long time. It has never flatly re sented your incursions. You have built up kingdoms and plutocracies on the back of labor. You have charged the costs of culture to labor. Every col lege represents an enforced tribute. The avenues of leisure which labor has initiated you have enjoyed. You have charged labor every sort of toll on the very roads which but for labor would never have been broken. Now labor has seen with at least one eye, heard with at least one ear and questions with at least one lip. What have you got to say for yourself ? There is no escape. Labor is not going to borrow the weapons of earthquakes and waterspouts. It is simply going to swarm on its own roads, occupy its own home steads, enjoy its own pleasures, work out the measure and shape of its own will, and leave you to fall in line in the one way that will secure you against annihilation. Labor is not going to destroy anything. It is not go ing to destroy even you. It is going to use everything. 67 CHANTS COMMUNAL It is going to use you. Labor does not say you are useless. Labor says you are useful. And to prove you against yourself labor is going to make use of you. Labor is not going to let you loaf any longer. For la bor has decreed that the loafer shall not loaf. Only the worker shall loaf. Labor says that when you have earned your loaf you shall have it. But you may no longer loaf on the earnings of others. Labor believes that you are deaf and blind. It believes that you have not heard the cries or seen the wretched tenements of the poor. Labor believes that if you knew from what your surfeiting usufruct was derived you would refuse its gifts. So labor will instruct you. The best instruc tion for any doubter is work. He who does work knows what work may mean and what is its due. There is no escape. Come now, you with your yachts and your perfumes, you with your margins and priori ties, you with your lorded lands and palaces. Come, bringing along your dollars. Explain them. Do not leave one dollar behind. You will be required to ex plain them all. This is a court of last resort. You have escaped other tribunals. Here is the everlasting eye. Here is the everlasting ear. Yes, here is the everlasting heart. Call it labor. Call it justice. Call it civilization. I do not care what you call it. This is where the beginningless God begins and the endless God ends. This sacred enclosure, this holy open. This valley of interrogation, this hilltop of question. 68 IF JUSTICE IS IMPOSSIBLE Here the long enchained labor of the world stands free at last demanding your report. There is no escape. IF JUS TICK IS Impossible ? Why is it impossible ? IMPOSSIBLE Why must you surrender without a fight? You have fought? Yes. But you have not fought enough. Do you mean to say that the big fortunes scare you? They should not scare you. They should inspire you. You talk of the impossi ble. What is impossible to the soul ? As long as the soul itself is possible anything is possible to the soul. Does Morgan seem too big for the soul ? Nothing is too big for the soul. The smallest soul must outclass and outsize the biggest fortune. Come, now. I know that you carry vicarious burdens. I know that you are robbed and despised. But you have the soul left. And the soul is invariable and invulnerable. I know that all Rockefeller's booty cannot save civilization. But I know that your soul can save civilization. I ap peal to your soul. Impossible ? Was your mother im possible ? If justice is impossible how did it happen that you were possible ? Do you mean to tell me that when Parry talks the weapons drop out of your hands ? Do you mean to tell me that when Carnegie gives away a library your pulse goes down ? Do you mean to tell me that when Morgan buys a picture the face of your ideal is clouded ? Do you mean to tell me that you confess bankruptcy when Rockefeller talks 69 CHANTS COMMUNAL religion ? What do you mean when you speak of the impossible ? Anything is possible to a man with jus tice in his heart. The arrogant personal fortunes have been possible only because you are sterile. But the instant you fructify the confusing mists will dissipate. The beneficiaries tremble. They exist by your yes. When you say no they resign. Your will has been their way. Your will becomes your own way. It has dallied sacrificially with the impossible. Let the impossible be come the possible in the will of man. Then no for tune will be a menace. Then no fortune will be sworn to the welfare of the castes. The impossible destroys. The possible saves. Impossible? What is possible if this is impossible ? What have you got to do with the impossible, anyway ? Your whole business is with the possible. It is your business to assume that anything, everything, is possible. Is life possible ? Very well, then. Justice is possible. For justice is life. Justice is immortality. Are you to cringe and crawl ? Are you to concede that theft is possible and that honesty is not possible ? Are you to go back to your heart, to your soul, and concede the contention of the ex ploiter? You have soul enough to dream of justice. Have you not soul enough to live justice ? When the dear dreams of men become the one dream of man what becomes of the impossible ? You admit that in justice is possible. But you say that justice is impos sible. Do you say that disease is possible and that 70 IF JUSTICE IS IMPOSSIBLE health is impossible ? You admit that property for the individual is possible. But you say that property for all is impossible. Do you say that an eclipse is possi ble and that the sun is impossible ? You admit that work the egoist is possible. But you say that work the altruist is impossible. Do you say that the foliage of the tree is possible and that the root of the tree is impossible ? Impossible ? Before the trade union the trade union was impossible. And now that you have the trade union the thing that is to come after the trade union is impossible. Why should you say that the morning is impossible because the night is tired ? Why should you toast your enemy as possible and set yourself aside as impossible ? The impossible is burial. The possible is resurrection. The impossible builds no sinew. The impossible sets no table, smooths no bed, raises no children. The impossible is blasphemy. The possible is reverence. Impossible? Do you put up the impossible in place of God? Do you remove gravitation from its throne in the universe and substi tute the impossible ? Do you say of birth : We will have no more birth, we will have the impossible? Do you feel like a stranger with the possible and feel at home with the impossible ? Do the bitter thing. The sweet thing. The thing necessary whatever that thing may be. The impossible thing. The world is always saying: Impossible. But why should you take your 71 CHANTS COMMUNAL cue from the world and say : Impossible ? We are re ducing the area of the impossible. We are every year surprising the protest of the world with new conquests. We explore the unexplorable. We outtelescope the telescope. We see miniatures below the last reductions of the microscope. We revise the codes The possi ble is always knocking at the door of the impossible and refusing to be refused. Impossible ? Do not be lieve it. The same power that makes private property possible is to make a better than private property pos sible. The same law that injustice invokes we invoke. It will not come right until we invoke it right. But when we invoke it right nothing can prevent the enforcement of its decrees. You may work on while you are being served. You may work on while you are being robbed. But you will hope on, believe on, while you work. And you will see that to the man who works nothing is impossible- The impossible is opposed to gravita^ tion. The impossible breaks the strings of your harp. The impossible shreds and patches your unstable vir tues. The impossible is hell. The possible is heaven. The impossible is sterile. The possible is fertile. The impossible starves you and leaves you for dead. The possible perpetually waters you at the root. Impossible ? We are to look the universe straight in the eye and find the whole universe possible. For if justice in the universe is impossible how can you be sure of the uni- 72 I LOOK DEFEAT FULL IN THE FACE verse ? You are going to talk to the people about their welfare. But how can you talk to the people of the im possible ? You who talk to the people of the impos sible might as well say to the people that the universe is dead and that the universe has forgotten the people in its will. / LOOK DE- So you have lost your strike. I am FEA T FULL sorry for you. You are back at your IN THE FACE loom again. You have bowed to the inevitable. You are back with your bitter silent thoughts. You are back with your sore heart. You who are defeated. You whom the masters have whipped into your black stalls. You, the slave workers of the world. You, the master workers of the world. But who says you are defeated ? Your masters ? But the word of your masters is not defeat. Or do you say that you are defeated? If you say you are defeated then you are defeated. If you say you are defeated then I see your bare backs and I hear the whip whistle and I see the blood flow. But if you say you are not defeated then I see you safe from any blow. Who says you are defeated ? You will never hear me say that you are defeated, dear comrades. You may make conces sions. But I will make no concessions. Do you think that when I look at your children I can make conces sions ? Do you think I could look the sun in the face and make concessions ? Could I admit the light of the 73 CHANTS COMMUNAL sun and not admit the light of the soul ? Do you think I could admit that your masters can forever fatten and that the slaves of your masters can forever thin ? Do you think I can admit that the crops will come year after year and that justice will not come ? I admit nothing but man. I admit nothing but man's work. I admit nothing but justice. Do you think I can ad mit hunger and cannot admit surfeit ? Do you think I admit the factory entrance and do not admit the fac tory exit ? Do you think I can admit that slavery can come and that release from slavery cannot come ? I concede nothing. I look defeat full in the face and concede nothing. If I conceded defeat I would con cede eclipse. I would concede death. I do not concede death. Nor do I concede defeat. I know the worst that defeat may be made to mean. But I do not concede defeat. I have seen all the ugliness of defeat. The hunger and thirst of defeat. The chill, the cold, of de feat, t have seen defeat take the pictures off your walls. Take the music out of your house. Take the hope out of your heart. Still I do not concede defeat. Defeat brings you your landlord grown a little bigger. It brings you your moneylord grown a little more ex acting. It puts still more poison at the sources of life. It fills the world with watchers, monitors, censors, tax- gatherers and usurers. Yet I do not admit defeat. How could I admit defeat? If I admitted defeat I might as well draw my last cent from the bank and 74 I LOOK DEFEAT FULL IN THE FACE throw it away. I might as well wipe out the bank. If I admit defeat I might as well go out on your fields and destroy your harvests. What is the use of any thing if any concessions are made to defeat ? Dare you go home to-night and tell your hungry children and overworked wives that you are defeated ? Dare you go back to your loom to-morrow and tell that dumb instrument that you are defeated ? Do you have any notion what defeat means ? Cut your throat with a knife. But do not admit that you are defeated. Jump into the river. But do not admit that you are defeated. Better than that. Do not cut your throat. Do not jump into the river. Stay where you are, starve where you are, but do not admit defeat. Victories are not sums total of victories. Victories are sums total of de feats. A defeat admitted is a burial. A defeat denied is a resurrection. Your masters have sent you to bed whipped. Will you get up to-morrow morning defi ant ? Your temporary report is made to defeat. Your final report is made to victory. You asked for ten per cent. You asked for nine hours. You asked for some thing. You got nothing. That is, nothing except a little stiffening of the fiber. And so you think you were licked. But I tell you that strengthening of the fiber is worth more to you than ten per cent or than nine hours. Defeat ? This world is your world. But you have thrown away the title. And no admitted de feat will pick up that title for you again. But the de- 75 CHANTS COMMUNAL feats that you will not admit will in the hour of your riper courage return you your rejected heritage. You have gone back to your factories admitting that your title is forever lost or that it never existed. Your mast ers go back to their clubs and champagne your defeat up the ecstasies of proprietorial intoxication. Is your factory defeat for good? Is their club victory for good ? Will your looms go on forever weaving a tale of your sorrow ? Will this too little money that maims the worker, will this too much money that maims the boss, go on forever passing its coin across the counters of injustice ? Is this world to be confirmed as a world of barter and bond ? Is this world to be forever a world of shock ? What can you do to remove the elements of disaster ? The private fortune is a testimony of dis aster. You weave in your loom the dreams of social order. Chaos enslaves you to the loom. Order will plan your escape. Only when you go to the loom be cause you want to rather than because you must will that loom with your soul render to society its untram- meled due. Have you returned to your loom admit ting chaos ? The loom may bring you wreck. The loom that weaves defeat. The loom may bring you sunshine. The loom, your soul, that will not concede defeat. Defeat is nothing. Defeat is not loss. It is a pause, a rest, a consultation, anything, but it is not a loss. Defeat only becomes loss when you hand it to your competitor with an apology. To admit de- 76 I LOOK DEFEAT FULL IN THE FACE feat is to confess shame in your fight. But to deny defeat is to renew battle. I concede nothing. Not a cipher. If I conceded anything I would be recreant to the faith by which I live. No man, no power, can de feat me. I can defeat myself. Nothing can defeat me but myself. The master cannot defeat me. But the master can defeat himself. And every time the master violates the canons of generosity and justice he defeats himself. He may feed till he bursts. He is still defeated. No man can defeat any other man. But any man can defeat himself. Do not admit defeat, brother. Do not feel discouraged. I saw you yester day crawl back to your loom. You were loth to go. Because you had hoped that when you went back to your loom you would take justice with you. But you went back without justice. Do not weep, brother. You went back without justice. But you did not go back without faith. I will not believe that you went back without faith. And it is better to go back hun gry with faith than to go back fatfed without faith. And as long as you do not sign your soul away in a sur render of admitted defeat you have that soul left for fu ture contingencies. You are building slow. But you are building right. You are tired. 1 put my arms about you. I cry to you with a strong voice. I cry to you with a heart that is stronger than my voice. I cry to you with a faith that is equal to any defeat. Do you not feel me near? Do you not feel my sustaining 77 CHANTS COMMUNAL touch ? I know a tremendous power is breaking loose within me. A power not my own that buoys you up against disaster and defeat. A power yours, mine, mys terious, overwhelming, magnificent. Do you not feel it about you now in my strong arms as I embrace you ? Do you not feel it now in my lips as I kiss you ? OF ONE PROFIT Everybody belongs to something. AND LOSS Nobody is a loose thread. No body can repeal the universe. You belong to every man. Every man belongs to you. You belong to his tory. History belongs to you. Do you dare come to me boasting of your individual rights ? Have you any right that belongs to you alone? Has anybody else any individual right which he may use against your welfare ? The social chain is continuous. It is end less. Or it is melted again to gas. No man can es cape the universe. The universe can escape no man. If I could anywhere impeach the continuity of history, the dependence of one life on another, the whole fabric of society would fall to pieces. If you could in any way demonstrate the independence of a single atom in the physical world, all the globes of space would fall asunder. They all hang together. Or they are all to gether wrecked. The law of the universe is not the law of one. It is the law of all. Men belong to gether. Values belong together. Labors belong to gether. Products belong together. Labor should not be quoted against labor. Value should not be rated 78 OF ONE PROFIT AND LOSS against value. Result should not be inverted against result. The economic world belongs to unity. It be longs to harmony. Legitimate discord in any one of its strings and the perfection of its melody is annulled. All things in the economic world belong to all men. No thing in the economic world belongs to any man. It is good to get man free of property. It is better to get property free of man. Yet you do not in either case get the one free of the other by separating one from the other. You get them free by confederating them in a mysterious autonomy. For the line from man to property and back again from property to man must nowhere be broken or even mended. It must be able to evocate an infallible succession. What is your life if lived alone ? What is your hermited income ? You use that word society. But how can you speak of society if you live alone in a palace in plenty and sur feit while other men live in huts and starve ? How can you speak of society if you contrive to separate your welfare from the welfare of the tramp ? If you can anywhere break the line that leads from you to the starveling, from your million to my cent, you have de stroyed society. There is only one enemy of society. That enemy is the man who would perpetuate society in fragments. The heart does not legislate for good and bad, for inferior and superior. It legislates for man. It does not legislate for exceptions. It legis lates for the rule. The heart knows no exceptions. 79 CHANTS COMMUNAL The heart sees to the edge of every crowd. It con siders the interest of the last man as well as of the first. You dare to say society and starve any of its children ? You dare to say society while you see so many over shadowed faces in the world ? What does society mean to you ? Your profit? No individual profit is honest. Social profit alone is honest. No gain can come to the individual alone. Gain can only come to the social whole. Gain for one is defeat even for that one. Gain for all is the only victory. You ask me to sympathize with you when your stocks have gone down. Or when your mill yields you less profit. Or when your store is empty. Or when no editor will buy your articles. Or when your land has lorded you off the earth. But why should I sympathize with you ? I could not sym pathize with you without sympathizing against others. That would be blasphemy. Every personal loss is so cial gain. I want you to worry over your losses. I will not worry over your losses. I see what they mean. You do not see what they mean. When you do see you will no longer worry. In the day when the person suffers his final loss, when the last atom of his property slips away, social chaos will have become social order, and no man will worry over the comings and goings of values. You delude yourself. You think your good clothes have nothing to do with my patches. You think your rich meal has nothing to do with my poor grub. You think your overfat has nothing to do with my underthin. You think that heaven has nothing to 80 THAT YOU WILL CALL OUT LOUD do with hell. You arc wrong. You can never cut one loose from the other. You imagine you could somehow balance yourself on the piece of a globe ? That you could float the stars in angles ? You must not cheat yourself with a solar counterfeit. You are playing in dustrial experiments against fire. You are staking prop erty against the law by which it has been evoked. That is why you will fail. You have tried to separate the producer from the thing he produces. You have tried to round a world of contradictions. You have cut your globe in two and tried to run it with their half circumferences in collision. You have tried to show that the healthy child you have raised in your suburban home has nothing to do with the sickly child I have raised down town on food and air too little and too poor to sustain life. But I tell you that that sick child is the other half of that well child. And that they have got to live together as parts of each other. And that neither one can be well alone or sick alone. You have got to make those two lives one life. You have got to rescue those two lives from contrast and restore them to likeness. You cannot send one to hell and the other to heaven and expect either of them to be saved. SWEAR THAT Swear! That is what I say to YOU WILL CALL you. Swear! Do not say yes OUT LOUD and no. Do not yield here and concede there. Do not admit that your case is both true and false. Insist upon your case. Grant its faults. 81 CHANTS COMMUNAL Still insist upon it. The faulty need not be false. Do not apologize for your failures. Do not suffer shame for your mistakes. Do not worry over your bad judg ment. Desert anything else. Stick to yourself. Swear that you will stick to yourself. Swear ! You have ene mies wherever you look. You are tempted. You are paid to conform. The conventional world offers you the bribe of its velvet. The world offers you ease and place. Do you want ease and place ? Or do you want yourself? Swear that you want yourself. That you want your idea. That ease and comfort are all very well. But that something else not so easy and com fortable is better. Swear! Do not tell yourself that you are just the same man going foul as going fair. Do not burden yourself with the consciences of others. Take care of your own conscience. Of course this is a hard task. It is the very hardest task there is. Just to stick to your idea. To stick to it through the muck and slander of every day. To stick to it after every body has gone to bed. To stick to it before anybody is up in the morning. It is a hard job. It is hard work for a man to dig down to his own root. There is no other way of getting there. And to get there is life. Or to try to get there. But to make no effort to get there is death. Swear ! Swear that you will get into good terms with yourself. Swear that whatever may occur to alienate you from your fellows that noth ing can occur to alienate you from yourself. Swear 82 THAT YOU WILL CALL OUT LOUD that you will not subject your unlettered ideals to the thirty-nine articles of an effete social creed. Swear that nothing will persuade you to ignore the pale faces of the men and women and children of overwork. Swear that you will call out loud for justice. Not a piece of justice. Not justice to-day and anything that hap pens to-morrow. Not the justice of any other man. But the justice of your own best dream. Swear ! Swear ! Swear ! I am tired of halfway s. I am tired of jobs left undone. I am tired of apologists. I am tired of sym pathizers. I am tired of diplomacy. I have tried all. All have failed. I have gone to bed sick at heart with all their failures. I have got up next day with the same sick heart. Now I swear that I will key my faith to a firmer note. I will not look right or left. I will look, I will live, straight ahead. I swear that I do not wish to see anything else until I have seen this. I swear that all else is useless until this has been made useful. I have dallied with luxuries. I have postponed my soul. I have taken counsel of riches. I have given honors to position. I have taken the boss at his word. Now I swear that I want no riches and none of the at tentions of riches. And I will not take the boss at his word. I will not take tyranny at its word. I will take only the free man at his word. Only freedom at its word. I would rather have a whole-hearted enemy than a half-hearted friend. I would rather entertain a bad idea with all my heart than a good idea with half 83 CHANTS COMMUNAL my heart. I would rather that capital was all right and labor all wrong than that labor should compromise with half a claim for the sake of peace. I would rather have a world full of honest tyrants than a world full of dis honest courtiers. I would rather have strength than weakness even if all the strength was in the other camp. I want to get rid of all my weak allies. I want to get rid of all the weakness in myself. I want to know what I can depend on, in you and in myself. I would rather have you but few, I would rather have myself but few, and have your few and my few firm, than have a lot of you and a lot of myself gone to pulp in palsying con cessions. Swear ! Do not look in the heavens for stars. Look in yourself. Do not worry looking about for sig nals. You may be your own signal. Your poor wages are a signal. Your wife housekept in slavery. Your children whose youth is left to die at the doorsill of a factory. These may be your signals. The children of the rejected mass. The children whose future is given to disease. The children who come and go in the gut tered and alleyed barbarism of the towns. These may be your signals. The neglected streets of the city. The sordid soiled mills. The too early in the morn ing workman. The too late in the evening workman. These may be your signals. The storms may come. Rain in floods. Wind in tempests fiercely malignant. But your signals are undisturbed. They are earthed and skyed in your heart. Other signals go out. These re- 84 THAT YOU WILL CALL OUT LOUD main. Injustice is a signal. Treachery is a signal. Every overloaded feast is a signal. Every empty table is a signal. Every sunrise is a signal. Every sunset is a signal. The world may eclipse its own hope. You may wanton with your own ideals. But as long as you remain sound at the root the signals are safe. The sacred signals. The signals that outbible bibles. The signals that outchrist christs. Immortal signals. Sig nals rendering dreams true in life and making life true in dreams. Swear ! You have yielded often enough. You have believed the beliefs of others long enough. I now call on you to believe your own beliefs. I now call on you to stake all on the premier issue. You have been too easily led astray. Because little things have gone wrong you have admitted that the big thing may not be right. Because the enemy was capable of making a big noise you have kept silent. Now I summon you to talk out. Talk out loud. Talk out not only for those who may be willing to hear but for those who do not wish to hear. Do not give away all the first and last words. Keep them for yourself. Especially the last words. Do not say yes because you may hurt the feelings of some man dead or some man unborn if you say no. Do not try to be pleasant. Try to be true. No one will ultimately thank you for your sycophancy. Every one will ultimately thank you for the truth. Let us warn the other side. From this day we concede nothing. From this day we will hide, hinder, scatter, 85 CHANTS COMMUNAL obliterate no chapter of the tale. Everything shall be put down. And in words that do not beg. In words that hit and bite. The task is too big and too sacred to be frittered away in the overwrought etiquette of the courts. Let us fight the rest of this fight right on the level. There must no more be an up or down, a right or left. We will remain on the common road. Our fight is the fight for the common road. Swear ! WHAT IS ALL What is all the noise about? Do THE NOISE you think we make this big noise ABOUT? because we love noise itself? We do not love noise any better than you do, dear masters. But we love certain things which a noise big enough may bring to pass. That is why we make the noise. That is why we are getting a big noise now. Dear mas ters, you hear this noise wherever you go. You stuff your ears. You hear the noise. Your sleep may be very deep. Deeper than the soundings of seas. But this noise is very loud. It is louder than the deepest sleep. You may make your life lusty with the counter noise of trade. But this other noise that you do not like outnoises your noise. This noise is a noise for even the deaf to hear. We are sorry for you. How could we help being sorry for you? We are so sorry for you that we are almost tempted to be quiet. But we are so much sorrier for ourselves that we must make the noise. Listen, dear masters. What do you think of our noise ? Does it grind and grumble in your ears ? 86 WHAT IS ALL THE NOISE ABOUT? Docs it lack the beauty and mellifluousness of harmo nic numbers ? Does it cross and clamber and clatter and crash against your tympanums. What do you think of our noise ? This noise so shameless. This noise so blatant. This noise so without sense of pro portion and place. This noise of the common. This noise of every day. This noise of the high road. You do not like to be invaded, dear masters. You sit at your table and this noise breaks in. You have your concerts and soirees. But the noise is noisier than the music and the chatter. What does it mean ? Is no place sacred against its irreverence ? The noise is blasphemy. Your fortune is a temple and this noise breaks in on it. When you attempt to worship this noise violates your silence. You could not even go into your closet and be alone with God. This noise would get in too. This noise that is God. You won der. Through every chink and keyhole, through even the solids themselves, this noise imperturbably presses its decree. I am sorry for you, dear masters. I am far more sorry for you than you are for yourselves. Because I know what is going to happen to you. You do not. But I am so much gladder for the rest than I am sorry for you that I find my sorrow for you some what pale and forlorn. So I go about intruding, I who am the noise you dread. 1 make people listen who do not want to listen. I talk louder than ever to those who deaden themselves against my intervention. I am m CHANTS COMMUNAL the sort of noise that does not come to say pleasant things. I come to disappoint your temporary moods. I am determined to shake up those who are satisfied with themselves. The time will arrive when you will know that silence about the truth is not civilization. You will know that a noise about the truth is the best civilization. I am making that noise. I am not mak ing the noise as ugly as such a noise may be. I am making it as ugly as such a noise must be. I come into your church and interrupt the serene platitudes of the sermon. I enter your editorial rooms and make it hard for you to dictate your paid opinions. I inter lude harshly upon the ruffled verbalisms of the courts. You have supposed I was many things. And you have invented many words to describe me. Yes, even words to curse me. But I am all one noise. One word would describe me. I strike the note of discon tent. When you hear me you may know you are in the presence of rebellion. Dear masters, you are doing everything you know how to suppress me. You try persuasion. You try threat. You try the law. You try injunction. You increase your armies and navies. You cajole the courts. But all these are subterfuges. These do not touch the nerve. So you find that our noise goes on increasing. You wonder. You try charity. You throw a library at me. You come for me with a hospital. You uppercut me with a college. But I remain unharmed. You discuss, this mystifying 88 WHAT IS ALL THE NOISE ABOUT? phenomenon. You ask the church to reply to my noise. The church points to its creed. You ask the state to reply to my noise. The state points to its po lice. You ask society to reply to my noise. Society points to its parlors. But how can my noise be replied to by the evil from which it is a revolt? My noise can only be replied to in one way. By surrender. Flat tery will not reply. Vituperation will not reply. Sur render alone will reply. Do you think, dear masters, that this noise is only a noise ? The noise is the least part of me. My noise alone would not be dangerous to you. It is the silence back of the noise that is dan gerous to you. I think that something in your blood if not in your brain tells you this. The symptoms may disturb you some. But the fact will disturb you more. I do not love a noise any better than you do. Or a fight. Or to excite ill will. Or to seem to be taking any pleasure out of another's life. But the law of my noise is the law of the heart. It is the law of the humanities. If my noise stopped the popular hope would die. If my noise ceased you would have every thing your own way. This would not be good for you. And it would be bad for us. Just as bad as it would be for us to have everything our own way.. So we are noising about the world in order to even up the con trasts. Hear me. Even up. Not even down. That is what our noise came for. That is what must hap pen before our noise disappears. We do not intend 89 CHANTS COMMUNAL to perpetuate the noise. We are only to keep it up as long as it is necessary. We will gladly stop the noise when the cause stops. Gladly. Gladly. Watch and see. Remember, dear masters, that you cannot crucify this noise on any cross. This noise has come into the world to save your souls. It may sleep. But it will not die. You may think it gone. But it will always return to worry you. Tyranny hates this noise. This noise is the one thing which makes it impossible for in justice to granary the harvest of its perfidies. This noise, dear masters, is going to save you in spite of yourselves. It is not going to save you because you alone would be worth saving. Or because anyone alone would be worth saving. But because the race is worth saving. And this noise will save the race. You will find that no one man is secure until all are secure with him. For money will not make you secure. Only justice will make you secure. And this noise that to day so puzzles and often so enrages you is justice. And justice will save your soul. I bring you a great noise, dear masters. You point your telescopes to heaven. But no telescope could divulge to you the se cret of my noise. Do not expect me to be kind to you. I am neither kind nor harsh. I am only just. I am not the noise of revenge. I am the noise of reci procity. I am neither for any one side nor for any other side. I am for all. My noise is not a noise 90 WHAT IS ALL THE NOISE ABOUT? calling anybody to repentance. It is a noise reminding everybody of salvation. My noise is the one way of salvation. I am the voice and matter of the commune. I am the cry and silence of the universal life. You build cities in vain if you do not build them for me. I am the clamor of the underman. How can you build your overman if not on me ? I am the rebel famine is suing its bulletin of warning. I am labor grown to a consciousness of its splendor. In my noise you find labor at last honoring itself. Labor has too long taken itself at your estimate. Now labor is lifted to the realm of an adequate self-respect. That, dear masters, is what my noise means. That is what my noise means, no matter in what form or phrase it comes. Do not mis take me. That noise is a symptom and symbol of res urrection. I have trailed myself laboriously in all the ages through the phrases of the parleyers with words, But I have found that words are only loyal when they report back to life again and ask for orders : And I who am love am the only life, And therefore words must report back to me forever for their consequent realities. 91 CHANTS COMMUNAL Man is reckless of man : The man is wasted in the child, The child is wasted in the man. I do not revolt at your waste of goods, I revolt at your waste of men : You might waste all the goods of the earth if you would but save your men The best of your goods are infinitely useless, The worst of your men are infinitely precious. You call upon me to honor the work of your men : I call upon you to first of all honor your men. I acquiesce in your biggest claims, and then make a claim haughtier than all the rest The claim of the wasted man for restoration. AND THE HEART OF THE MATTER IS HEART You have passed in all the collaterals of love but where is love ? You have brought me love's dresses and love's habits and love's alphabets but have not brought me love, You make wars and bring me wars and call wars love, You rob men of their hope and serve up their hope at your table to blind guests and call your robbery love, You cut loose into classes and prey one class on another and call your preyscathe love : But love brought to love in ways so profane scars the intent of worship : So I who am love will not receive love so tributed with crime : Love so seamed and sored will not pay love's debt. CHANTS COMMUNAL AND THE And the heart of the matter is heart. HEART OF Every other thing in the world must be THE MA TTER put aside until the question of social jus- IS HEART tice is answered. The things that you go to church to hear about must be put aside. The things that the schools teach must be put aside. The things that the painters paint. That the poets sing. That the philosophers and metaphysicians dabble with. All must be put aside until the question of social justice is answered. The church stands with its lips shut and its tongue in its cheek. The poets rhyme. They do not sing. The orators substitute gesture for faith. Governments make for law at the expense of life. All the institutions have become supreme artificers in deceit. The colleges are awed into treachery by their en dowments. Nothing is left but your voice. But my voice. The voice of the unlisted and the non-elect. Will you speak ? Will I speak ? The question must be answered. Must be first answered. For until it is usefully answered every other thing will be useless. Unless it is answered and answered with the one answer of righteousness any other question will finally become unanswerable. No array of languishing beauty. No flamboyant exhibit of art. No hideous phal anx of smoky machinery. No crowding of the palaces and rookeries of cities. No gathering of the lackeys and lacquers of fashion. No appeal from the masses poor to the classes rich. Nothing. Nothing. Will avail as long as the primary question remains unanswered. For the foundations of your buildings are not set upon rock. They are set upon justice. Else there are no foundations. And the founda- 94 HEART OF THE MATTER IS HEART t'wns of art are not in skill or beauty or any superficial trick ery or fantastic sleight of hand. They are in justice. Else there are no foundations. I am tired of hearing the noise that civilization makes about itself. 1 want to test it a lit tle by the silences. By things that are not said. By claims that are not made. I can easily see the froth and fustian. The false luster of counterfeit titles. But I am looking for something more like love and life than appears in the ruffian parade of its virtues. I am a crier up mysterious sound- ways. I am a searcher in the social beyond. I am a dig ger. I tear up dead roots. I plant the seed grains of a more gracious providence. Dig deep cuts into all your proud properties. Dig. Eternally dig. I am mad for the substance of justice. I count upon nothing unless I can count upon justice. I reject everything short of justice. Justice belongs or nothing belongs. The matter has but one signifi cance. And this is the heart of it. Justice is the heart of it. The question whether you can make a living must be put aside for the question whether all men can make a living. You have no right to put yourself first. You must put your self last. You must wait until all others are served. Then you may be served. Society is always calling next. But there is no next. There is no first man. There are no pre ferences. Society provides for all. How is it that all do not have enough ? Because you or you or you insist upon coming first. You attract to yourself the superior gifts. You leave every other man to take his chances with what is left. You seize. Keep. You use social increment for your 95 CHANTS COMMUNAL own merely personal advancement. Yet you ought to know that the world is dead in you until it lives in your life lived for others. This is the first life out of the many lives that you must live. The life that takes others into account . Yes. The life that forgets no one and remembers no one. The life that simply loves. The life that refuses to collect its rent. That refuses to assess and absorb the labor of men. Listen , brothers. That is the heart of my contention. If you hear me cry you will know that is my cry. No matter what my words are that is my cry. Early and late that is my cry. My cry fits into every language. It is in whatever lan guage every hour of every day. That is the whole story , dear brother. The heart of the matter is heart. A II reports must be made to the heart. You are not to report to your trade or profession. You are to report to the heart. Be a clumsy artist if you must. But be a man. Any kind of a mere man is worth more than any kind of a mere artist. if you see anything wrong on the earth you must square your- self with that wrong. Every transgression you see is your transgression. You must square yourself with it. You have charged up a big account. Now you must commence to pay. You have postponed payment long enough. You must pay every cent. You must keep on paying until the entire amount is squared. Though you must give up every thing you have to do it, it must still be done. What becomes of the substance of property when property tries to get along without justice ? There is no inalienable property but jus tice. Property is of no use in the wrong place. All prop- 96 HEART OF THE MATTER IS HEART erty not swathed in justice is in the wrong place. You act as if we were thousands of men living in thousands of worlds. We are less and more. We are one man living in one world. All life that is worth life is contingent upon the affections. Yet commerce is nine tenths fight and hardly one tenth love. How will you square yourself with the affections ? Private property is against love. Square yourself with love. Love is under ban. The land lord threatens love. The money lord threatens love. The profit lord threatens love. Wages threaten love. How can love escape? Square yourself with love. I repeat myself? So I do. But the evil, too, repeats itself. As long as the evil repeats itself I will repeat myself. Let evil go where it may I will follow it. I will make evil uncomfortable to evil. I will harry it until it can stand my whip no longer. I will not use the weapon of evil against evil. I will use the weapon of good. But the weapon of good is not the easiest to bear. It is the hard est to bear. I concede nothing. Let defeat concede. Are you too timid to assert your whole case ? I will assert it for you. I contend for my whole case, Not half my heart. All my heart. It is the case of the heart. I say it over and over again. The heart. The heart. The inexorable claims of the heart. The world belongs to the heart. The heart of the matter is the heart. Nothing else. After the economists have talked and talked the truth. After the fig ures are all in and are honestly counted. After the last ar gument is heard and conceded. After the debate is over and the debaters are gone. After all the evident sayings are said 97 CHANTS COMMUNAL and confirmed in visible letter. Then the heart comes along. And the heart puts in the last word. Yes, the last fact. The humble heart disposes of the arrogant institutions. Yes, you proud institutions. The heart has decided against you. The heart has decided against all your babeled structures. The heart takes everything into account. And the heart crowns the vexed issues with peace. I know what you say. You say reason. But I say heart. The reason can travel as far as its feet can go. But feet can only go so far. But who can set a bound for the heart ? When you collect your commercial margins you set a bound to the heart. When you pay wages or accept wages you set a bound to the heart. But the heart passes out into spaces articulate with revela tion. Into that sphere in whose invisible corridors piracy must lower its last standard. And the heart of the matter is heart. FOR ALL An Englishman wrote a novel in which THE WORLD he prophesied an alliance of the "stars and stripes and union jack against all the world." It is characteristic of the old regime to be against the world. It is always dreaming of conquests, disputes, severances. It is always seeing men in small corners. Men hiding. Men in fear. Races. Sharp boundary lines. One nation sworn against another. It is always seeing man kind in parts rather than in wholes. It is not inclusive. It is exclusive. Against the world. The new regime is not against the world. It is for the world. It is for 98 FOR ALL THE WORLD the whole world. It knows no world with anything left out. War is not the world. Wages are not the world. Slavery is not the world. The stars and stripes are not the world. Nor is the union jack. Nor are stars and stripes and jacks together the world. Love alone is the world. The absorption of the welfare of the individual in the welfare of the mass is the world. The world can never be anything little. It must be something big. Your parish politics are not the world. Nor is the President with his cabinet. Nor is any king with any premier. The world is too big to be juried by a coun try court. And too big to be sequestered between the leaves of a catechism. And too big to be arrogated into an Anglo-Saxon plaything. What would you do with the world after you had choked it into your province ? The world cries to you for help. Then you go and rob the world of itself. Against the world. The world is not against you. Why are you against the world ? What has the world done to you that you should be against it? What has religion taught you? What has the state said to you on the subject? What does trade say? Why are you always against something? Who has taught you the sort of economics which says it is cheap to be against the world ? Who has convinced you that you can afford to be against the world ? What sort of humanity is it you have to talk about? Is that the best thing you can do with your stars and stripes ? With your union jack ? Poor stars and stripes. Poor jack. 99 CHANTS COMMUNAL You might have given them a meaning that is good. But you have preferred to give them a meaning that is evil. You might have made them in favor of the world. You have made them against the world. You might have squared them with the new economics. With the economics which have declared for the eternal peace of the communal equities. With the economics which do not cease at the shores of seas. With the opened doors. With the unshuttered windows. With everything that will tend to bring men together. But you have given out pirate bids. You have closed the seas. You have narrowed life to border lines. You have made it im possible for men to know each other. Just as we are about to get acquainted you slam the door shut in my face. You do not offer treaty. You offer war. You do not offer to smooth away difficulties. You create new difficulties. I hear the tramp of your armies. I see the ships of war on your seas. I read your tariff schedules. I know what you think and what you say about saved races and damned races. Your race is superior and some other race is inferior. Your million aires are superior and the men who make your million aires possible are inferior. You are against the loyalties of the communal faith. You are sworn to private alle giance. To subserve the interests of a fragment instead of the interests of the total. You jostle the earth into your back yard. You exile the big. You cosset the little. That is what you have done with your stars and stripes. With your union jack. You have soiled their 100 FOR ALL THE WORLD beauty. You have covered their general meaning with your local mud. The world might have expected your better self. You give it your worst self. Not your trusted hand. Your knotted fist. The world that you might have been for. The world that you have pre ferred to be against. When will we ever get a world in which the world will not be against itself? When will we get a world in which no man will pull against any other man ? When will we get a world in which we will all pull together ? In which property will not pull against man but in which property and man will pull together? In which the economic verities will possess themselves of the heart ? In which state lines will disappear in favor of universal lines ? In which there will be but one blasphemy? The blasphemy of the man who is against the world ? What is the use of talking? Anything short of this is so much short of civilization. You are against the world. So is Rocke feller. Rather, so is the system which has produced him. We are going to destroy that negation. We say that the time has come in which you have got to array yourself on the side of interracial good will. You can no longer cultivate your field with the tools of the gen eral chest, You can no longer steal your fire from the general flame. You must see that everything belongs to all and that nothing belongs to anybody. You must see that against is robbery and that for is benefaction. You must see that against is murder and that for is 101 CHANTS COMMUNAL rescue. You point us out with scorn. You sneer at our radical propaganda. Well. Let me tell you something about that. You have tried to make clear what you will do and what you will not do. Let me tell you what we propose to do. We may be cranks and fanatics. But when we are in control of this world it will be a world of peace. Not the sort of peace that you speak of now. Not the sort of peace that consists with robbery and is not peace. Not the sort of peace that condones masters treating with slaves. Not the sort of peace that exists by the leave of bosses. Not the sort of peace that aureoles the wage system. Not the sort of peace in the hearing of whose bluster many men cannot find work to do, and other men who work are underpaid, and women and children must miserably piece out a mill requiem of death. My God, no ! When we come to the world offering it gifts it will not be gifts of disaster. Our peace will make government of no consequence and man of every consequence. Will force private property to the wall. Will refuse to put one man over another. Will rebel against the slavery of the tool. Will not be afraid of night lest men steal and of day lest men starve. Will not house people here in palaces and there in holes. Will not give the man who does not work everything and the man who does work no thing. Will get and keep the idlers busy and will reduce the hours of the industrious. Will use the state for universal man or abolish it altogether. That is what our peace will do. It will not sneak round corners 102 WHEN I SEE HOW SLOW YOU ARE upon weak nations or weak men and reduce them to captivity. It will enter into no alliance against anybody. It has learned its lesson well. It is a lesson of un bounded comity. It has no reservations. None of race. For it says all races are one race. None of pro perty. For it says that all property is one property. None of ownership. For it says that the best owner ship is no ownership at all. None of freedom. For it says that freedom is freedom only when all are free. None of bargain and sale. For it says that a system which entertains a thing sold entertains a soul sold and therefore stands annulled. Why should our peace have reservations ? We want to get rid of all the old bars. We know that this task to be done right must be done without equivocation. And it can never be done with out equivocation while any state or any race or any in terest within or without is against any other state or race or interest. For the interests of men when men live in chaos claw and destroy each other. But the interests of men when men live in order coalesce in one effect. For all the world. WHEN I SEE When I see how slow you are to take HOW SLOW care of yourself I wonder why I look YO U ARE to you for results. And then I think the matter over a little more seriously with myself. And then I see that I do not really look to you for re sults. I look to myself for results. I am to leave you to look to yourself. I am to look to myself. That 103 CHANTS COMMUNAL will keep us both busy. That will keep us both hope ful. Do I look to votes for results ? Or to an elo quent sermon ? Or to a prophet ? Or to an economic soothsayer? If I looked outward for results I would get discouraged. I would say : It's no use. I would fritter away my faith. But when I look inside I am always serene. I see my faith there intact holding its own. Whatever the moods, whatever the losses and gains of personal prestige, my faith remains, unshad owed, unshaken, unashamed. So I have got into the habit of appealing from your neglect to my own abound ing belief. I see that it is not my business to count how slow you are to take care of yourself. It is my business to count how quick I am to take care of myself. Election returns come in and come in wrong. Allies desert you. Editors lie. Politicians slander. The heelers count you off the ticket. You do not get into Congress. You are thrown out of a pulpit. You are not invited into parlors. The word of your lips, the thought of your brain, is never popularly welcome. Friends turn away from you. You see business going. You are laid off your job. Money is scarce and gets scarcer. Your clothes are shabby. You do not always have enough to eat. Luxury is prohibited. Your health is impaired. And so on. What is it all for ? You live in an atmosphere of defeat. Your creature life is a wreck. You save nothing from the ruins. Nothing ? Well, nothing but yourself. Nothing but 104 WHEN I SEE HOW SLOW YOU ARE your faith. Perhaps not even your faith. For often a man's faith goes with the rest of things. Life is a failure. The battle is lost. Was it worth while ? You dreamed great dreams. But meanwhile life narrowed. Little by little your earthplan was pared. Does it all pay ? Is life on such a plan worth what it costs ? These are the results. A long row of ciphers. The roof sold over your head. The soles worn under your feet. The heart broken between your ribs. Was it worth the price ? Was it ? Do not answer in your wrath. But answer. Was it worth the price ? Was it worth the price ? An awful question. Addressed not to your stomach but to your soul. Not to your purse but to your love. Was it worth the price ? That depends. When you look for results you are anytime liable to track your proud inventory to a dust heap. What have you got to do with results anyhow ? You have got to do with inspirations. The best, the only, results, are inspirations. The result that is not an inspiration is no result at all. You were looking for results. For street results. For vote results. For preacher results. Well, you got them. They were largely against you. And will be for a long time to come. You are doing for the world what the world needs but does not con sciously want. Until you have convinced the world's want as well as the world's need you have got to be satisfied to see all the assets in the hands of the other people. You are driven back upon yourself. If you 105 CHANTS COMMUNAL have not banked enough in yourself to stand the draughts of many postponements you will be unhap py. But if you prove adequate for all demands you will not care what happens against you in the world outside. For you will always know that the best things are happening for you inside yourself. Then if you have been weeping you will no longer weep. If you have been doubting you will no longer doubt. No ballot box can outvote you. You are never outvoted until you have outvoted yourself. You will often feel distressed. Every sympathetic man is distressed with the social anomalies. But you will never despair. You will learn where to look for results. You will not scan the voting lists. You will not expect your hope to be answered in immediate majorities. A few voices will say yes. The most of men will be deaf. They will not hear you at all. Or they will hear you wrong. But you will keep saying your say. And if you say your say often enough the world will hear you right. That is all you have to do. Why should I cut my throat be cause men do not hear me ? I hear myself. That is enough. I see you robbed. I see that you love your robbers. I am a meddler. I am an alarmist. So I am. Both. You will have to do a lot of meddling on your own account before you gain your proper place in the social order. You have got to meddle with the bosses and the masters. You have got to meddle with the landlords. You have got to kick up a lot of dirt with your angry heels. I hate to see you so slow about 106 WHEN I SEE HOW SLOW YOU ARE your own business. I am often of a mind to stir you up with the flame of a wrathful fire. But I can wait. I will do all I can to rouse you. To make you care. But I will not admit any doubt as to the general result. You could not be slow enough to make me despair. Even if you completely stopped my faith would keep on. Hungering, it would keep on. Thirsting, it would keep on. Ragged, it would keep on. Weeping salt tears, it would keep on. No one seems to care so little for the workingman as the workingman himself. He is faithful to his work. He is faithful to his boss. He is faithful to the formal government. He is faithful to social custom. He is faithless to himself. He is guilty of the crowning disloyalty. Disloyalty to himself. He cares so much about God. He cares so little about himself. Do you suppose God anywhere could be pleased to have you desert yourself to please him? The workman lives in a prison. He resents this pris on. But he makes no attempt to escape. He thinks imprisonment is wrong. But he does not think the prison is wrong. He sees his children starve. But he refuses to see the cause. He blames himself. He blames the boss. But he goes about his work doing every day all he can to perpetuate the system which un does him. The workman lacks in self-respect. He does not value himself. He does not measure himself by adequate standards. Why should he push his knees down into the ground and apologize for his existence ? 107 CHANTS COMMUNAL He has in his bones the substance of final righteous ness. He belongs on the right hand of God and the left hand of God. He belongs where life pursues its holiest processes. I see him as he is. He does not see himself as he is. 1 know he will one day reckon upon the potentialities of his own sinew. To-day he seems not to care. He seems witless of his treasure. He wastes himself upon the lords god of the market. He allows himself to be sunk in ships at sea. He al lows himself to be shot to death in wars. He allows himself to be choked to death in mines. And so forth. All for the glory of money. If it was for the glory of man who would quarrel ? But it is for the glory of greed. It is not a sacrifice of men. It is a sacrifice of slaves. You, the workers of this world, will not always be so slow to care for yourselves. You will know what you contain. You will know what you signify. You will then refuse to slave. You will be more than ever ready to serve. But you will not serve in another man's right. You will serve in your own right. Now you take care of your masters. Then you will take care of yourselves. You will discover that you can best care for others in the right way by first taking care of yourselves in the right way. All should serve. But no one should slave. Who will take care of you if you do not take care of yourselves ? How will you bestow if you do not first absorb ? I do not choose the hour for you to strike. But I say that when the 108 THE AIR IS CLOSE hour is struck you will find my prophecy on the fron tier with its welcome. I can wait. Wait. When I see how slow you are. THE AIR The air is close. I cannot breathe, cries IS CLOSE civilization. Throw open the doors and windows. Let the air in. Civilization is choking with injustice. It has lived too long in the atmosphere of oppression. It has stayed too long in the midst of the crowding multitudes of the dispossessed. Now it calls for room. For the open. For the stars. For free dom. Take down everything that interferes. Take down all walls. Take down incomes. Take down wages. Take down all preferments. Take down your superior clothes. Take down your superior manners. Civilization is gasping for breath. It will die. It will live. Will you kill it ? Or will you help to revive its sinking powers ? The cry is directed to you. Direct ly to you. Whoever you are. The air is close. A storm is near. Something is going to happen. I do not know what. But something. Civilization lies there very ill. Its lungs are congested. Its brain is thick. Its faith wanes. Can it be kept alive ? Can it be re stored to its emoluments ? Can it be led to assert the more inclusive crescendo of humanity? Or is it to be allowed to die here half done? Not only not com pleted. Die in retreat. For lately civilization has not meant advance but retreat. It has not found room 109 CHANTS COMMUNAL ahead. It has done no pioneering. It has been driven back and indoors. It has been confined to a room. It is growing pale and thin. It has called in a nurse. What is to be done ? Every day it cries for room. And every night. Its cry is the cry of the future. Its cry is the cry of the hunted. Take your hounds off. Take your millionaires away. Stop the chase. Take your trusts away. Take your estates away. Make room for civilization. Have you supposed that civilization can exist where there is no room ? Do you think that civilization can prosper in the perpetuated dark ? The air is close. Civilization there on its bed groans and writhes for a chance to live. What have you done ? You have driven it to bay. You have forced it back to the last trench. You have given it no options and refused it all vista. You have left it there to die. You have called in the doctors. The false doctors. They have all prescribed. They have administered drugs. They have added poison to poison. But their wisdom was not wise. It has not brought civilization off its sick bed. The quackeries quacked but would not cure. The patient has not needed your drugs. Your Roosevelts. Your Sunday schools. Your pal liating sciences. The arts of your polite leisure. It has needed only one thing. Fresh air. Always fresh air. Why do you not give it fresh air ? The air is close. I do not think civilization can survive many more days no THE AIR IS CLOSE with things just as they are. There must be some way of getting it free. Some way of getting rid of the ob structing debris. Some way of opening to it the sources of life. Do not bring your colleges. They are of no use. Do not bring the professors and the doctors. Do not bring the editors and the reviewers. Do not bring anyone. First of all get out of the way yourself. Give civilization a chance. Let it alone. If you must bring anybody bring the people. Do not bring the castes. Do not bring the elect. Do not bring influ ence and position. Bring the outlaw. The wage- worker. The failures. Bring the tramps. The un fashionable. Bring the man everybody hates. Bring the cause everybody distrusts. Bring them. But do not bring any preferred person. A storm is well brewed. A storm will soon break. The air is close. I think that is the reason the atmosphere is so thick and civili zation has such a hard time keeping its breath. And I think that if the storm does not break soon civilization will have departed from civilization altogether. For so far it has not lived near enough to its prospectus. It has kept its practice too far aloof from its promise. It has disintegrated. It has permitted its blood to get impoverished. Nothing but a storm can save it. Room for all the fresh air to get in. Room for ideas to move about. Room for love to find itself. If the doctors will only go out perhaps the fresh air will come in. Something must break soon. Walls, fences, roofs. Ill CHANTS COMMUNAL Anything that cribs and confines. Civilization has been fooled and drugged nearly to death. Now let us see what the fresh air can do. Let us see what the storm can do. The air is close. You take great pride in your civilization. But your civilization is a sickly affair. It is like to die and you do not know it. You have made it a plaything. You have made it a tyrant. You have resorted to it as a source of crime. You have made it anti-social. You brag of it as though it was something extra fine. You travel the world over with its stocks and bonds. But after all your civilization is in danger. It is threatened with dissolution. . You have made it too delicate for any weather. Yet it must be prepared to stand any weather. To be eager for any weather, hard or easy. You have got somehow to get it up off its bed. You have got to get it into the open air. You have vitiated it with your injustice. With your private fortunes. With your poor and rich. With your castes. With your universities endowed by robbery. With your charities and your jails. What will you do to meet the storm ? What will you do to make the storm easy for civilization ? For the storm is sure to come. You have built such obstructions in the road that noth ing but a fierce blow will remove them. What will you save from this tragic crash of worlds ? The air is close. I see civilization tossing on its bed. Fevered. Seeing phantoms. Dreaming of broken promises and forfeited 112 THE AIR IS CLOSE ideals. Gasping, grasping, choking, calling. Sick near to death. Delirious. Sick of you. Sick of me. Sick of what we have falsely done for it. Sick of incomes. Sick of wages. Sick of professors and priests. Sick of high and low. Sick of seeing the tiny children go to work. Sick of seeing the hipless and breastless young girls. Sick of seeing the boys tied and manacled be fore the manhood in them has had a chance to root. Sick of the strikes. Sick of seeing the worker de spised and the loafer honored. Sick of official arro gance. Sick of humility. Sick of pride. Sick of the squabbling governments. Sick of seeing everybody quarreling with everybody. Sick of seeing all society at war with all society. Sick. Sick. Do you think that any one little offense has done all this ? That any one little virtue can cure it all ? This sickness is cli matic. It is the sickness of a world with itself. It is planetary. It cannot be cured by any of the ordinary emergency remedies. It is a world trouble and de mands a world solution. Such a crisis is never tri umphantly passed except by a storm. It must be short, sharp and severe. It is cursed before it comes. It is fought against when it arrives. It is glorified when it is passed. The air is close. The patient is calling for rescue. You will rescue the patient. Once men went to rescue what they called a holy sepulcher. You do not need to go anywhere to rescue civilization. You can stay just where you are. Stay with yourself. 113 CHANTS COMMUNAL Commence where you stand taking down the barriers. Get the incubus off the highway. Prepare for the storm. But prepare best for what is to be after the storm. What is the storm ? I cannot tell you. But this I know. I know that the storm is the act of jus tice replacing injustice. Fresh air is justice. Freedom is justice. Do you think that civilization will ever be able to reconcile wages and freedom ? The poor and freedom ? Wages are not justice. No man can be paid freedom in wages. And until men are paid free dom they are not paid justice. They might be paid the full amount in wages and yet wages would not be jus tice. Nothing but justice can get civilization off its sick bed and to its feet. Nothing but justice. Noth ing but the great storm. Nothing but a surmounting and sustaining communism. The air is thick with illu sion and fallacy. The storm will come. Nothing but justice is finally just. Are you afraid ? Do you propose to get under cover and try to evade the issue ? You cannot do it. You have sepulchered the living body of civilization. Do you not hear its cries for help ? You have got to rescue it. You have got to give it air. Get it out under the sky. Give it a chance to breathe. Give it justice for injustice. Give it a whole people for a caste. You have sepulchered the living body of civilization. You are making civilization to mean life. The air is very close. You have got to drag its helpless body from a premature grave. You, whoever you are. Especially you who brag of civiliza- 114 THE STORM BREAKS tion. I, whoever I am. Especially I who am of great faith. The air is close. THE STORM The storm has come. The air was BREAKS very close and still. The omens gathered. It was hard to breathe in the atmosphere of the castes. Men choked and gasped. Truth choked and gasped. Justice was faint and congested. Some thing had to occur. Oppression oppressed too much. Greed was too greedy. Our civilization looked about upon itself wondering what to do. The seers warned us. The old regime, they said, was about to end. End in storm. We were glad. Or we were incredu lous. Or we were contemptuous. But all the while all of us were short of breath. The clouds closed over head. What was on the wind ? Civilization cried for life. There was finally one dead moment of lull and terror. Then we knew that the issue had been sternly drawn. The storm has come. The trees rock to their roots. The palaces are shaken. Fortunes go begging for owners. Estates are looking for their masters. The proudest king becomes the humblest subject. Money has turned beggar. The most certain has become the most uncertain. You were sure of money yesterday. But to-day money is not sure of itself. Riches knock at the door of poverty asking in vain to be let in. Calico ransoms silk. I see that in the storm all are equal. All men are off the same piece of goods. We 115 CHANTS COMMUNAL hurried away from each other yesterday. To-day we hurry together. Nothing is spared. All your sacred properties are scattered. Your pieces of paper called stocks and bonds. Your interests. Your profits. Your rents. Proudly elected gods yesterday. To-day dethroned. Yesterday's revellers to-day's penitents. The army outarmied in the massacre of this storm. The navy wrecked up the rockshores of its own das tardly seas. Priests lost to their religion. Statesmen damned in the perversity of office. God! how the wind blows. Did we reckon up our civilization in fig ures so easily dissipated ? Was its foundation so frail that the first real attack takes it down? We had counted so much upon goods. So little upon men. Of what use are goods to-day? Men alone are now of use. The parlor is no use. The boudoir is no use. Greed is no use. Profit and loss are no use. Men alone are of use. Love alone. In yesterday's delusion we paid court to foliages and forgot roots. To-day in the fury of this storm the roots have been exposed and we know where our worship must be bestowed. That worship so long squandered in churches and kept out of life. That worship so long lavished upon the things made by man and denied to man. That worship abundantly wasted in a world without social unity. The storm is furious. It is flinging values right and left. That which we thought eternal is gone. That which we have not thought much of has brought us strength. The millionaires are the first to go. And 116 THE STORM BREAKS the rulers. And the scholars who know too much to know anything. They go with the first onslaught. And the paupers stay. The superior people are not superior to this storm. They are not even superior to their own inferiority. The fratricidal institutions are gone up in smoke. The plain men and women re main. The everyday nobodies are equal to the peril. The wholesome laborer stands still erect not shirked from his orbit. So the storm is raging. So strong is being sifted from weak. So ephemeral is being sifted from eternal. The storm has come. It is a clearing house. The rich are paying their debt to the poor. Injustice is paying its balance to justice. Now only real ownerships are recognized. In the austerity of this crisis only justified claims are allowed. Dress counts for nothing. Courtesy counts for nothing. Your city house and your country house count for nothing. Your club counts for nothing. This is no palliating court of appeal. This court sits until the last cent is paid. Masks are of no avail. Good Eng lish is of no avail. Manners are of no avail. Your soft skin, your voluptuous body, your dainty sensa tions, are of no avail. This is a rough court. It talks the language of the common. It averages the vocabu lary of the street. It adheres to no elect code of behavior. It just says the say of right. It just balan ces the balance of equity. It just talks straight out the talk of command. I see you feint as if to qualify its 117 CHANTS COMMUNAL decisions. Do you suppose this storm is not to do its work complete ? Do you suppose it will stop before its work is entirely done ? It did not come in a hurry. It was prepared for by all the forces of oppression and of prophecy. But it at last is here and it is full of menace. It came not by catastrophe but by law. It will prevail until the purpose of the law is subserved. By law it will depart. But it will not go until the last enemy is dispersed. It will not leave the field with foes in the rear. It is doing its job with firm hands. Without mercy and without malice. It is not benevo lent at the expense of the innocent. It does not hesi tate to enforce its sentences. It knows that some one must be hurt. You were not sensitive yesterday when so many were hurt in order that you should be spared. Why should we be sensitive to-day because you are hurt in order that all, including yourself, may be spared? That is what the storm is doing for you as well as for all. You do not now see how it is. You do not know what good the whipping is going to do. You only feel the whip. The storm is here. The storm is the whip. You shrink, sting, suffer, perhaps die. But the storm had to come. You perhaps have to die. But the storm comes by appointment. It is fulfilment. And you who have worked so long for your own greed alone were all the time without know ing it working for this storm alone. I do not blame you. But I am trying to explain the storm. The storm is as necessary to you who have prospered as to 118 THE STORM BREAKS those you have dispossessed. The storm. The clear ing. Its fierce syllables appall you. Its inexorable sinews sharpen the edge of wrath. But how could the storm do a clean job of work if we did not suffer? How could it strike a balance as between men and men if up and down, much and nothing, caste and class, were not refashioned sternly in the measure and image of the eternal verities ? We have too long gone on in blindness led by the blind. The storm will open our eyes. Henceforth we must go on with sight led by the prophets. The storm has come. The storm is revela tion. It is teaching me to know myself. To know others. To know how much I belong to them and they belong to me. The storm is sympathy. It is knocking the devil out of me. But it is keeping the god intact. It is showing me how penniless I am own ing everything in a world alone. How more than rich I am owning nothing in a world of lovers. How all my parchment fortune goes up in the first fire. How all my proud incomes are afraid. How all my pov erties are undaunted. How all the stolen cultures tremble for their life. How unlettered wisdom out lasts the recurrent furies of assault. It is taking every thing from me but myself. It is saying to me: You are yourself enough. It is showing me that only when I own myself alone and nothing else can other men own themselves alone and nothing else. And that only in a world in which this adjustment is reached is liberty 119 CHANTS COMMUNAL finally safe. And that only with liberty safe is man safe. For man is liberty. And therefore, that only with liberty safe will the storm subside. That is what the storm is teaching me in the inveteracy of its anger. For it is now plainly to be seen that the storm does not come to violate a law but to remind us that we have broken a law. The law of human comity. The law of life at the root. The law of social order at the root. The law of communal service. We have gone on piling up stone and steel, making babel cities. Now the law complains of our neglect. Now the law asks : Meanwhile what have you done for me ? We have done much for grandeur. Much for aristocracy. Much for rulership. Much for the authority of the great. What have we done for humility ? For democracy ? For obedience ? For those who refuse to exercise au thority ? The law proclaims in this storm its resump tion of the law. It does not make an indictment. It does not reason. It does not browbeat. It comes in the storm. You may die running away or die staying here. The storm will go on. Forever on. And still forever. We arc in the midst of its trial scenes. One chapter after another is being unscrolled. We look for shelter. We struggle and rally for life. The social forms have narrowed to a few native gestures. All the mockeries of fortune and place are swept away in the fury of the floods. The storm means to strip us bare. The storm means that we have got to go naked into the future. Tkat we have got to clothe ourselves in 120 CLEAR WEATHER AGAIN the righteousness of a just regime. I am cowed and sorrowful. I am arrogant and jubilant. I am harried in the wild hour of the chase. The storm center is in me. In you. The tempests, the tides, the flames, drown and flood me, only me. You, only you. I stand in their midst without a weapon. I am cast un shielded into the passion of this storm. It is pitch dark. I careen in the midst of shadows. I do not see a way out. But I know there is a way. And I know that somewhere on the way out I will meet my true comrade and that my true comrade will not deceive me in the beyond. CLEAR WE A TH- Clear weather again. The crisis ER AGAIN was met. Man proved equal to it. The race has come out of it unscathed. Yes, glori fied. The race has shown itself equal to justice. Many of us saw only failure and death. Saw only the storm. Did not see beyond the storm. But the prophets were always there. Their faithful voices could always be heard above the cry of the wind and the crush of de struction. We knew that if the race could survive this storm it could survive anything. For this was not a storm up in the air. It was not a zephyred blow. It was not a flash in the pan. It was a storm at the foundations. It was not a test of foliages. It was a test applied to the very root-stock of social integration. It meant that you could hope for anything. It also meant that you might fear for everything. For it came 121 CHANTS COMMUNAL after many questions as a final question. It came after questions had been shirked or answered wrong. It came as the question that had to be answered right. The storm of yesterday. The storm through which we have come to this beautiful morning. Clear weath er again. Now I know how much the storm had to do with clear weather. How much the evil had to do with the good. How much the millionaire had to do with the communist. How much of my phantasmal self I abandoned with the storm yesterday. How much of my real self I have brought over. Now I see what the storm was for. Why I had to starve. Why I had to be hated. Why I had to be misunderstood. Why my dreams were so slow coming true. Why my friends deserted me and why my enemies became my friends. Why the universe seemed against me. Why as long as I was for myself the universe could not have been against me. Why the work always had to be every thing and why the pay always had to be nothing. Why the people did not hear me. Why it was enough for me to hear myself. Why religion was against the storm. And why art was against the storm. And why the state was against the storm. And why all the great and the powerful everywhere were against the storm. The editors. And the legislators. And doctors who doctored the body. And doctors who doctored the soul. And banks with vast treasures. Why all these were against the storm. And why only the weak were 122 CLEAR WEATHER AGAIN for the storm. The we'ak. The people without money. The people without power. The people without office. The people in the alleys. The people. The children of perpetual hard times. Not enough fed. Not enough clothed. Not enough housed. Why only the weak were for the storm. The weak armed only with ideas. With dreams. With suffering. Armed only with starvation. Why only the weak were for the storm. Why the powerful and the great were against the storm and could not prevent the storm. Why the weak and the obscure were for the storm and brought the storm. Clear weather again. Now I know what clear weather means. And that is why I know what the storm meant. What the days before the storm meant. What it meant for people to be overfed and underfed. What the temporary victories of greed meant. Why the greedy were the first to suffer from greed. Why I sometimes wondered if love had not gone back on love. That is, if the universe had gone back on itself. For the sorrows of social wrong were, so sharp they drove right into the soul. And the soul got to asking ques tions. And the questions of the soul were not always cheerful. But they kept right on asking themselves in all sorts of ways. And the troubles grew. The ques tions were more and thicker. And that was what made the air so close. And that was why the storm came on. And that was why this superb morning has fol lowed the storm. This morning of justice. All of 123 CHANTS COMMUNAL which I did not know at the time. But all of which is now clear to me. Clear to me, and jubilant and satisfying to me, in the miracle and law of a perfect result. Clear weather again. Well, we have had sev eral narrow escapes in getting here. But we have arrived. And we are all safe. Dead or alive we are safe. We have got here with everything and nothing. But we are safe. We are in good health. All the property has been brought along. But all the owners are lost. The debris has been left behind. The mas ters have all been left behind. The slaves have all been left behind. But all the men are here. Every man reports. We call the roll. Nothing we need is miss ing. Not a thing. We are not one item short. Most of the things we were proudest of are left behind. They could not weather the capes. But all the other things proved themselves capable of the ordeal. And here we are, scarred but unhurt. Scarred with the scars of love. With the scars of faith. Yet un touched. Clear weather again. Think of it. You who still doubt always said we could not produce the storm. When the storm came you said we could not live through the storm. Now that we have lived through the storm you say that we have lived for noth ing that was worth living for. Look about. See what you may see. Ask yourself your questions over again. Is not this that you see worth living for? You say you 124 CLEAR WEATHER AGAIN do not want to live in a world of angels. Neither do I. I always feel uncomfortable in the presence of angels. But this is no world of angels. This is a world of men. It is a world of men who are still frail. Who are -still victims of passion. But it is a world in which frailty has a better chance to be taken care of and to take care of itself. It is a world in which passion has a better chance to make peace with law. It is a world in which everything has a better chance to live out its own righteousness and live down its own vil lainy. It is a world in which temptation is strong enough to strengthen but never strong enough to tempt. Do you think this an impossible world? Look again. You see the big things of the old world the little things of the new. You see property very small. You see man very big. You see that the owner gets big as ownership gets small. You see that now property is for the first time sacred. You used to think that the only thing that made property sacred was ownership. Now you see that private property was always profane. Now you see the property of all that used to be the property of one become the prop erty of one by being the property of all. Is this an impossible world? Is justice impossible? In the old days you had to hold on to everything with both hands. But for that nothing was safe. You were always a drowning man. Now you may see that you need to hold on to nothing. Everything is safe. You must hold on to yourself. That is all. Is this an impossible 125 CHANTS COMMUNAL world ? Did you think that men could always live on the line of peril ? Did you think that man was always to be tied to a life preserver ? That he was always to live on in fear ? Going to bed not knowing but that a social cataclysm would before morning destroy him ? Malevolent social forces laying for him in the dark ? His sleep disturbed by dreams of ruin ? His wake disturbed by facts of ruin ? Was man to perpetuate this dynasty of hell ? Look about you once more. See what you may see. Ask yourself whether this world does not offer you an improved suffrage. Clear weather again. Clear weather has brought a new kind of a man. Or the old kind of a man living out a new kind of life. I do not know just what it is. Nor how it is. But I know it is. Every man now sails his own ship. No alien is now at my rudder. Every man lives his own life. He lives no alien life. Now that the storm has cleared away we find that everybody has plenty of room. We find that every man knows there is enough room for all. That no man will now take more room than he needs. All that he needs. But not more. We find that the best way to induce men to live together is to give them a chance to live apart. In the new world of enough room the human spirit is learning how to live. We have got property rights out of the way. We have kept the property but abolished the rights. The storm unsettled wrong in order to settle right. It came out of dark days. It provoked all nature to 126 WHEN YOU DECIDE TO HAVE IT DONE inevitable fury. The elements raged. The ruin seemed complete. There was no visible way of escape. But the prophets still prophesied. And when the destined work was done the sun came out again. We find in the revelation of this morning that no mistake was made. Everything of real value has remained. Noth ing has been lost that we cannot afford to lose. What we have gained is the one treasure to which all other treasures must converge or be worthless. We have gained the chance to live. We betrayed ourselves to property. And property betrayed us to despair. Now we have seen that the man of millions with no chance to live was poor. That the man without a cent with a chance to live is rich. And now that the storm has cleared we see that the social order never had but one task. The task to give people a chance to live. That when it was treacherous to that task it was traitorous to the whole of life. That social order was not order but chaos. And that was why the air grew close upon chaos. And why the storm came after the air got too close for breathing. And why now that the weather is clear again we see that order has been substituted for chaos. That order which exists in the universal chance to live. Clear weather again. WHEN YOUDE- When you decide to have it done. CIDE TO HA VE When you put your resolution IT DONE into unmistakable form. When you show that it would be dangerous to cross your will. 127 CHANTS COMMUNAL Then the old regime will pass away. Then the dreams will come true. Then injustice will apologize and ab dicate. Then and not till then. As long as you are uncertain about yourself . As long as you are not quite sure what you want done. Not quite sure when you want something done. Not quite sure whether it would not be safer to leave things as they are than to risk a change. Not quite sure whether injustice is as unjust as you imagined or whether justice is as just as you supposed. Just so long will Colorado be Colo rado. Just so long will Rockefeller be Rockefeller. Just so long will every man continue to be against every man instead of every man for every man. There is no alternative. This law is the law of life. The law of your will. To be changed only by a succession you yourself will have to prepare and induct. The whole universe of right waiting patiently upon your person al universe of wrong. Waiting. Listening for your word of command. Looking for orders nowhere else. Knowing that no other order needs to be obeyed. You, the workers. You, the makers. The builders. You are expecting some one or some power outside of your selves to provoke economic righteousness. Looking for miracles. Looking for benefactors. Looking for the good man. The good party. Stop right where you are. Waste no more eyesight. All that you look for is within yourselves. All the righteousness. All miracles. All benefaction. You will be your own good 128 WHEN YOU DECIDE TO HAVE IT DONE men. You will make your own good party. When you want eight hours you will get eight hours. They will not be given to you by somebody. You will give them to yourselves. When you want co-operation bad enough to co-operate co-operation will appear. No one will bring it to you on a platter. It will not be left to you in the codicil of a last testament. It will not re quire the mediation of a Carnegie library. It will issue from your own heart. From your own insight. From your own backbone. The world is yours, you who are the workers of the world, you who make the world's good and bad for better or for worse. When will you assert your right to your own ? The castes will not as sert your right for you. You must do it for your selves. When your will at last is will your will will be done. Not you, a few of you. But you, the whole of you. The whole of you who work. The whole of you who build. The whole of you who assume the dirty and clean tasks of the world. Who take the ex tra risks of the world. Who live for the world. Who die for the world. The field is spread out before you. Will you harvest it ? Or will you always look on with out protest and see it gathered by alien hands ? The broad acres are yours. The choked prospect contains the plenty for which you have made the first and last sacrifices of loyal service. I do not say : Take it with violent hands. I say : Do not let it be taken with vio lent hands. I do not claim that you have any right to 129 CHANTS COMMUNAL take it for a few. You have only one right. The right to take it for all. It is not up to the law of gravitation to act. It is not up to the survival of the fittest to act. It is not up to the benefactors to act. Or the churches. Or the colleges. Or boards of chanties. Or any agents. Or any custodians. It is up to you to act. You are gravitation. You are the fit. You will think on and stumble on and despair on and curse on and on and on until you are ready. Then you will hold a last council of war. The last council of war which will also be the first council of peace. Then your orders will go out. Orders imperial in emphasis and purport. No man, no power, will think of diso beying them. Disobedience will be death. They will be orders of love. Orders of the commune. To-day there is mine and yours. And there is war. To-mor row there will be no more mine and yours. And there will be peace. The world will no longer discuss owner ship. It will destroy ownership. The castes have been able to remain castes because you have been una ble to become a class. You, workers, the master-ser vants, the servant-masters, of the fraternal earth. While you have waited and troubled, wondering what it was your right and your will to do, the castes have busily strengthened the formal titles of the elect. But the power of repeal was always in your hands. You could at any time have stopped the alienations of your inheritance. But you were irresolute. You only half 130 WAY OFF SOMEWHERE knew. You only half dared. The eternal laws are ready to aid you. They will throw all their might on your side. All you have to do is to ask. All you have to do is to resolve. Nothing can stand out against you when once you stand in for yourselves. Everything is ready for you. Nothing remains to be contributed by the stranger. Your task is with yourselves. Inside. Your struggle is with your own skepticism. Your own nerve. There is no opposing power anywhere whose genius can shadow even the edge of your affirmation. When you, the workers, decide to have it done. To have social justice. To have communities instead of castes and classes. To ask to own nothing but to ask for the privilege of using everything. To take the lands home. And the stores. And all the properties, what ever their form. Take them all home after the long estrangement. Home to yourselves. When you, the master-servants, the servant-masters, decide to have it done. WA Y OFF Way off somewhere is the social SOMEWHERE paradise. It is not in your own house. It is not in the house next door. It is not in your town. In your country. In your time. It is way off somewhere. Somewhere in events. Some where in the years. In the beyond. You preach of paradise in your churches. But paradise is not in the church. You pass laws for paradise in legislatures. But paradise is not produced by the state. Paradise is 131 CHANTS COMMUNAL always postponed. Always put off beyond. Always seen in the mists. Always approached but never reached. Paradise. Justice. The decent relation of man with man. The first condition of social equity. All put off. Always called. Called by the religions. Called by the teachers. Predicted by the prophets. Yet always pushed away. Always refused. Eagerly answering the summons. Brutally rejected. The para dise beyond. Always way off. Way off. Yet this day is as good as any day for paradise. Why should we be afraid to take current chances ? Why should we be willing to stake everything on the future and nothing on the present ? What is the matter with having para dise here and now ? Do you think you could not stand paradise ? Do you think justice would hurt you or hurt anybody ? Do you think the human race could not immediately size up and out to the dimensions of economic equity ? Why should we skulk in the pre sent ? Why should we apologize ? Why should we be willing to admit that the future is good enough for justice but that the present is not good enough for jus tice ? Justice is good enough and not too good for us. Why should we not be good enough and not too good for justice ? Do you think that the General Slocum is good enough for you but that justice is too good for you ? Do you think that Colorado is good enough for you but that justice is too good for you? Do you think that the insatiable robberies are good enough for 132 WAY OFF SOMEWHERE you but that the communal life is too good for you ? Do you think that when interest and rent and profit make a bed of sorrow for you that bed is good enough for you ? And yet that a bed made for you by justice would be a too easy bed for you ? Do you think that all the maimings and sacrifices of private property mer cilessly assailing you everywhere are proper and due ? And yet that a whole body and a whole soul and a fair outlook upon life is better than you deserve ? Do you think that the half-fed youngsters in the tenements get what they are fit for when they pale away to an early death ? And yet that food enough and play enough and fresh air enough and green trees enough are not fit for the starvelings of the tenements ? Do you think that the workers who do the work of the world are equal to the work of the world but not equal to the re wards of the world ? Do you think that the enslaved motherhood of the world is equal to slavery but is not equal to freedom ? Do you think ? Do you think ? Answer me. Or do not answer me. But think. Put the question to yourself. The question not of the pre sent to the future. The question of the future to the present. It is time we stopped making confessions. It is time we made some claims. Not claims on ac count of the future. Claims for to-day. For this hour. For the street we live in. For the people we kow. For the imminent paradise. You are a profes sor. And you put everything off beyond the college. 133 CHANTS COMMUNAL You are a lawyer. And you put everything off beyond the law. You are anything. You practice any sort of a profession or any sort of a trade. And you put off everything beyond the profession and the trade. You put religion off beyond the church. You put equity off beyond commerce. You put even social honor off beyond society. Always putting off. If you belong to the trade union perhaps you put justice off beyond the trade union. Everybody is putting off. On every pretext. Brave for to-morrow. Afraid of to-day. Heroic for some one else. Cowardly for yourself. Conceding that anything is possible to the future. Doubting if anything is possible to the present. De lay the lord high god omnipotent. Starving. Yet delaying the food. The spirit calls. Yet you delay with the letter. You are learned in nonsense. You quote evolution against haste. Against to-day. In favor of doing nothing yourself. In favor of waiting for to-morrow to do everything. But what will evolu tion do for you if you do nothing for evolution ? Evo lution includes delay. But it also includes hurry. It includes things that retreat and things that stand still. But it also includes that which goes on. Why should you say that the present should not go on ? That only the future should go on ? Am I to be a dead tool of evolution ? Or am I to be a vital factor in evolution ? I say that anything in social justice that is good for the future may be good for to-day. That I am going to try it on to-day. I do not mistrust my own era. My 134 WAY OFF SOMEWHERE own powers. The potency of the immediate event to provide for beautiful results. I am willing to wait. But I am not going to force myself to wait. I am will ing to wait until the land lords and the other lords are dead and gone. But if I can hasten their death and going I am bound to do so. My haste is quite as sig nificant as your delay. I ask for nothing for the future which I do not equally ask for the present. I ask the future to give up nothing which I am not willing to give up now. I, too, see justice way off somewhere arbitrating the destinies of a coming man. But I also see justice very near, in you, in myself, in the everyday of the current chronology, arbitrating the intimate des tines of the life we live. It is a dangerous habit. That of putting off justice. That of seeing the injustice of the particular age we know and of refusing to see that justice is also possible in the particular age we know. Always to say discouraging things about human nature. Always to say that the endowed college will do but that the freed teacher will not do. Always to say that the individual will do but that the community will not do. Always to say that hell will do but that heaven will not do. Always to say that everybody must wait until everybody is ready. Always to say that it is no use trying to be decent to-day but that somewhere way off we may all be decent in the fatness of time. I say no. No. The man who does not honor to-day will not honor to-morrow. If I believed my own heart ut- 135 CHANTS COMMUNAL terly incapable of justice I would not be willing to admit that some other heart a thousand years ahead will be capable of justice. I want justice to start right now, here, with you, with me. I do not doubt but that man even as he is would do decently well with justice. Think of what man has done with blindness and in justice. Then try to think of what he would do with his eyes open and with justice. It makes me giddy with justified expectation. It suffocates me with prom ise. I do not need to go far to get the collateral. I offer man as his own collateral. His own recognizance is enough. After all the delays. After all the apologies and surrenders. Now I offer you man in his own per son. Not the man way off somewhere. The man here. The first man you meet. Any man. You have made one engagement with justice after another. You have broken them all. You were too busy to keep your engagements with justice. You had to instruct classes in a university. You had to play judge in a court. You had pictures to paint. You had sales to make in your store. You had navies to start off on voyages of conquest. All manner of palliating func tions to fulfill. Justice was on the spot appointed. But you did not appear. You sent excuses. Or defaulted without a word. Somehow you have expected other men later on to keep their trysts. But you ask to be pardoned your own cowardly surrenders and neglects. But why should you demand from them what you do 136 WHAT IS YOUR OWN not demand from yourself ? Your time is not way off. It is right here. Your place in evolution is not with men to come. It is with men who have arrived. You cannot borrow righteousness of the beyond. You must set yourself right with the beat of your own heart. Re member your appointment with justice. Not an ap pointment in vague aftermists of history. An appoint ment in the clear noon of your personal career. Be at the place on time. Even ahead of time. Push for ward. Do not drag back. Let justice see that you have faith in justice as incarnated fact as well as in jus tice as a succoring dream. Do not go to justice saying: The time will come. Go to justice saying: The time is here. Do not go to justice saying : A man will come to serve. Go to justice saying: I am here to serve. WHA T IS What is your own you will fight for. YOUR OWN My heart says to you: Yes, fight for it. History says to you : Yes, fight for it. It is not difficult to get this far. But a more baffling problem precedes. What is your own ? What does belong to you ? Are you so clear about that ? Before any other question is answered that question must be answered. Before you can fight for your own you must know your own. And that is where we stumble and fall. That is where we at least doubt and delay. For this very ex traordinary decision is hard to make. The more you think of it the harder to make. To tell exactly what is your own. To separate your own from my own or 137 CHANTS COMMUNAL from any one else's own. Almost anything harder is easy. Yet this is the decision you make offhand. You are deceived by great inherited and environing illusions. You are hypnotized by ancestral and cur rent fallacies. You fight first. Then you investigate. I ask you to reconsider. I ask you to investigate be fore you fight. What is your own ? When I ask you that you smile. Just as if I asked you to repeat your a b c's. Well. Do you really know ? I commit you to the mercies of an honest inquiry. The deeper you get into that inquiry the more complicated it becomes. Why ? Because it is unanswerable. Because the re sult you expect can never be reached. But you think I am wrong. Grant it. I do not ask you to believe I am right. I ask you to investigate. And when you have investigated you will see that I am right. Lots of men have started out on that journey. But they never reached its end. There was no end but the one end. Confession. I do not ask for a premature confession. I wait for your confession. I will give you plenty of time. What is your own ? Where is the outer line upon which your pickets and my pickets salute ? Can you divide the sunlight ? Can you separate the parti cles of the sea ? Can you dissever the atoms of love ? Can you reduce justice to ingredients ? You will fight for your own. But what is your own? What will make you acquainted with your own ? Will chemistry make you acquainted with your own ? Can you find 138 WHAT IS YOUR OWN your own under the lens ? By surveying the heavens ? I think there is only one thing that will make you acquainted with your own. That one thing is love. And what love fails to tell you about you will never be told. I have been happy. And I have let happiness search for what is my own. I have been despondent. And I have let despondency search for what is my own. I have sent ships to sea looking for what is my own. And crowded the railroads with my messengers. And looked for redemption by telegraph. And I have cru cified myself with a professor on my right hand and a priest on my left hand looking for what is my own. I have listened to warnings looking for my own. And have taken counsel of all centers of learning stupefied by dead wisdom. And of all centers of power weak ened by tyranny. And when the prophets have come I have hurried to them. And when the poets came rhyming their way through mazes of callow print I have given their songs the full benefit of every doubt. Al ways looking for what is my own. Always defeated. Always victorious. Never just sure of my own. Yet always sure that something was my own. That some how some day I would find my own. That we would meet and recognize and lose identity in each other. My own to be made flesh in me. I to be made flesh in my own. I have questioned all the authorities. All the custodians of gospels. All the policemen. All the 139 CHANTS COMMUNAL censors. All the voices that persuade and dissuade. All properties and poverties. All mastership and im- potency. Nothing has gone past me unseen. No claimant has spoken unheard. No threats have thun dered and found me irreverent or asleep. I have real ized all that sight and sound could do to take me to what is my own. To bring what is my own to me. But I still stand here with empty hands. With empty hands. But there is just the trouble. What right have I to expect my hands to be full ? There is another thing about me that is not empty. My heart. My hands are empty. My heart is so full. And now I begin to see what the search was all for. It was not for the hands at all. It was all for the heart. For this search was not really a search for property and rights my own. It was for a brother my own. All brothers my own. All men. For the brother my own. And the hands full may be against my brother. Yes, the more nearly full the more nearly against. But the heart full is always for my brother. Is that very brother himself realized in a foreground of practical faith. And I think that is what is my own. That nothing in this universe is my own but that brother. That if I miss that brother I have missed the universe. The universe ceases to exist. You have the secret at last. After all the discoveries. After all the jealousies of possession. After all the quarrels about rights and duties. After successions of religions and dynasties of 140 WHAT IS YOUR OWN rulership. After wars and peaces after wars. After books and prophets and martyrs. After sympathy and hate. After all these. Because of all these. The se cret is out. That there is no thing your own after all. That there is no physical thing your own. That noth ing in all the medley and order of life is just your own. That nothing is just not your own. That somehow the things your own that you have hungered and thirst ed and fought for are not worth while. Would not be worth while if they were your own. Are doubly not worth while not being your own. That the only thing your own cannot be counted up or measured or put into words. That your brother is what is your own. Not a sliver more or less. That everything else made your own is in the way. All the properties and pow ers. All individual prerogative. Dividends, discounts and devils. All in the way. That only one thing is your own anywhere. That love is your own. The love that finds you your brother. The love that sees all men for brothers. Not property and interests and rents for brothers. Only men. Men forever broth ers. All men. Love is what is your own. What is your own you will fight for ? Yes. Long you went not knowing what was your own. You thought prop erty was your own. That power was your own. But that was because you slept. You woke up. Then you passed from your individual nightmare into the glory of the average day. Then you knew what was your 141 CHANTS COMMUNAL own. That only one thing was your own. That love was your own. And now I hear you saying better things of life. You no longer say that what is your own you will fight for. You have lived long enough to revise yourself. You say that what is your own you will love for. Think of it. Revised yourself. What is your own you will love for. WHA T MEN What men might be if they were MIGHT BE allowed to be men no arithmetician could figure and no moralist could guess. The pros pect would baffle all prophecy. It would outfigure all figures. We do not encourage manhood in men. We put the whole of civilization in the way. Look where the man may the path is blocked. Men are permitted. The man is forbidden. You speak of men who are weak. What do you know of weak men and strong men ? The thing has not yet been put to a fair test. We have had half tests. False tests. Show tests. Pious tests of churchmen. Political tests of heelers. Economic tests of tariff mongers. Tests of plutocracy. Tests of trades. Robber tests. Tests of all kinds in the dark. But the honest man test yet remains to be tried. The test in the open. The test out in the sun. Weak men. What makes weak men ? We pride our selves upon our weak men. We do everything to produce the weak men. The strong men are either seduced or destroyed. The strong man is given only one alternative. He can decide to be weak. Then he 142 WHAT MEN MIGHT BE may be left to be honest. He may decide to be strong. Then he must be converted to the class of those who exploit. Our civilization leaves only honesty to the weak. It leaves only robbery to the strong. Is that a basis upon which to build a conclusive brotherhood ? To build literatures and sciences and arts and states and personality ? Is this the test you want to see per petuated ? Can any race long survive the regime of exalted robbery ? Civilization takes good care of men. But it cares nothing for man. What becomes of man while you are taking care of men ? Civilization takes good care of robbery. But it cares nothing for service. What becomes of service while you are taking care of robbery ? Yet all life when life deserves to be called life is rich or poor in the quality of the mutual service of men. Every man serving all he can for every other man serving all he can. Not service given according to returns. Service given according to power. I giv ing with all the power I have to give for you giving with all the power you have to give. Are you afraid to concede man a chance to live this life ? Are you afraid of the result of this test ? Are you afraid to put this seed into the ground ? The seed of this test ? And help it all that help can to fruit? And eat the general fruit in the spirit of human service ? Are you afraid ? Do you shrink from the trial ? What men might be. You have decided so many points offhand against men. Make an experiment the other way. Decide a few 143 CHANTS COMMUNAL points for men. Try a few inferences in their favor. Try them in religion. Try them in politics. Try them in trade. Try them in your parlors. Try them in international relations. Try them in war. Try them in that war worse than war. Try them in commercial peace. Whenever you think mean things about man, try them. Whenever you think yourself a superior person, try them. Whenever you think you should have a preferred chance to live, try them. When you think that art is a great thing and that labor is not a great thing, try them. Try them. Try them. These inferences you have for so long made offhand against men. See if men may not respond. See if men may not respond in man. Men will answer man. When called in the man spirit men will always answer man. Do not take me for a good prophet Try men for yourself. Then you will be your own prophet. You will not need my word to back your word. Your word will be enough for you. For the whole of life will be back of your word. But make the trial. Create the case. Take away all the obstacles. Give man a chance to be free. The man in men The man in your self. What men might be. If you took all obstructive institutions out of the way. If you took the political state out of the way If you took the anti-Christianity of the Christian church out of the way. If you took war out of the way If you took humbug peace out of the way. If you took the military class out of the way. 144 WHAT MEN MIGHT BE If you took the priestly class out of the way. If you took the literary class out of the way. The musical class. The mere painters and the mere orators and the mere showmen of any kind. If you took them out of the way. If you took wages out of the way. If you took the landlord off the land. If you took the store- lord out of the store. If you took the factorylord out of the factory. If you took the boss out of the shop. If you took all who are served without serving out of the way. If you took heaven out of the way and hell out of the way. Yes, if you took God himself out of the way. (It will not hurt God to take God out of the way. For God is never in the way.) If you took all these out of the way. Yes, all these and more than these. If you left no warnings and pitfalls and am bushes in the way of men. Then men would have a chance to be men. Then men would be man. What man might be. But for you, whoever you are. If you did not spend most of the time in all your days putting things in his way. You put your store in his way. You put your profession in his way. You put up fac tories in his way. You put your Democratic conven tion in his way. Your Republican convention. You have got a whole Congress in Washington in his way. A President in his way. You stole the Philippines and put them in his way. You took a shabby fall out of Panama and put it in his way. And so on. And so on. Almost everything you do you do to put it in his 145 CHANTS COMMUNAL way. Suppose you changed your life. Suppose you shifted your principles. Suppose you turned your face towards justice. Suppose you stopped putting every thing in his way. Suppose you commenced taking everything out of his way. Suppose you spent the whole of the rest of your life keeping out of his way. Suppose you stopped always demanding service. Sup pose you commenced always to serve. Would that not give a more auspicious aspect to civilization ? To the average of social behavior ? To your own life ? Would it not make civilization worth while at last ? And all men worth while at last ? Yes. Even you worth while at last ? For then we should know what men might be. What men might be. FOR THE SAKE I am a workman. I have had my OF LIFE troubles. I have been in strikes. I have been out of work. I have had enough to eat and to wear. I have starved and gone about in rags. The average experience of the average workman has been my experience. I have done handsome things and done mean things. I have not always been decent to my employers. My employers have not always been decent to me. We have lied to each other. I have sneaked their work. They have sneaked my pay. I have quarreled where 1 would rather have had peace. I have done my share to make things better. Yes, to make them worse. Yes, to keep them where they are. I am a victim. But I am also a villain. Do not take 146 FOR THE SAKE OF LIFE me for good or bad. I am neither. I am both. Just the workman. Whoever you are you have employed me. I work under a million names but I have really only one name. Whoever you have employed that man is me. The sneak ? That is me. The slave ? That is me. The omnipotently decent laborer ? That is me. You know me. It does not matter in which one of the million names I address you. I address you. I call upon your atoms to assemble. Listen. You think I am fighting a fight for wages. For pay. For a glass more of beer. For better cigars. For costlier clothes. To get rid of rags. Well. So I am. But only incidentally. I am really fighting for life. As long as wages are only wages high wages and low wages are all one. But when wages are life I embody my plaint in a different song. I am fighting for life. I have fought fights for wages. But I have fought my last fight for wages. I have seen that no fight for wages can be the fight of freedom. There is only one fight left. The fight against wages. That is the fight for freedom. The fight for life. Wages can never give life. Ownership alone can give life. Now I fight for the sake of life. All other considerations must retire before the consideration for life. Not for the sake of a house. Nor for luxury. Nor for robbery. Nor for the life of one life built upon the slavery of another life. For the sake of life itself. Life on first prin ciples. Do you think that you have the right to wish 147 CHANTS COMMUNAL to be free and that I have not the right to wish to be free ? Am I to concede freedom to you while you re fuse to concede freedom to me ? Do you think I wish to live in order to have the privilege of living ? It is the other way about. I want the privilege of living in order to live. I would give up everything for the sake of life. Real life. Even give up life itself. Your pocket full asks my pocket empty : " Why should we keep this discussion on the vulgar plane of money ?" Surely. Why ? I can see but one reason. Because pocket full has all the money. We will not insist upon vulgarity after we have justice. We are now on the way to justice. Not on the way to money. On the way to justice. We incidentally say "money." We finally say "justice." Money is not for the sake of money. It is for the sake of justice. Freedom belongs to labor. Now freedom is in one place and labor is in another. Or, rather, freedom is nowhere. For it will always be true that the victor in trespass will equally with the vic tim forever remain in bond. I am not a saint. But I see that my protest is spiritual. I am after spiritual results. Spiritual opportunities. I want to be free to live life on a plan that will afford me the last equality. I do not want to be bigger than anybody else. Or to enjoy more margin. I am not jealous of any man's possessions. But I may be jealous of his opportuni ties. I have been tied down to a spot by wages. Wages have stood over me with a whip. I have been driven to work. Not loved to work. Driven. And 148 FOR THE SAKE OF LIFE no work to which a man goes unwillingly is good work. I am not expecting to scant my work. To make less of it. But I do not want work to make less of me. I do not want wages to make less of me. I am to be first. Always first. Before my stomach. Before pro prietorship. I must be first. For the sake of life. For the sake of poetry. For the sake of the immaterial life that the material life may be made to destroy. Do you think that I am only an animal ? That I only want to be fed and fondled ? Set me out in the desert. But set me free. I want a chance for my body because I want a chance for my soul. I am not a feeder. I am a lover. I am not inanimate dust. I am animate song. Why should you have all the chances of life ? Why should class doors be shut in my face ? I do not de mand the privilege of owning things. I demand the privilege of living life. Living life until life is full. Do you think I quarrel with you because you starve my stomach. Go along. I quarrel because you starve my life. Life is not stomach though stomach is a part of life. Why do I hate wages ? Because wages are in my way. Why do I inveigh against private property ? Because it, too, is in my way. All things must clear all ways for me. What would anybody do for the sake of wages ? Love ? Worship ? Play ? Labor ? Not one thing would be done for the sake of wages. There is not one thing but would be done for the sake of life. Life is what I want. What I must have. As I cannot 149 CHANTS COMMUNAL see life in the round with wages left in it I must clean wages out of life. Not for appetite's sake. Nor for passion's sake. Nor for social prestige. Nor for any extrinsic values. But for intrinsic life. For the per fect organization of experience. For the last prizes of progress. Is life to be forever yours and never mine ? Am I to serve life forever for wages and never to serve it for love ? Is it for life's sake that I am a slave ? That I sink into devastating shadows of economic despair ? Is it for life's sake that the law is against me ? Courts? The clergy ? Is it for life's sake that the markets are quoted on the other side ? That the operas and the concerts and the colleges and flowers in winter and voy ages are weighed against my enfranchisement ? I have tried all the old methods. They have all failed. I de clare now for life. I put everything aside for life. Property. Honors. Wages. All go for life. My re volt is based upon life. Your resistance is resistance against life. That is why you must fail and I must succeed. For life always belongs to life. Life never belongs to wages. To the physical rewards. To ma terial possession. It always belongs to life. Every thing in its way must be assailed. The hosts of the fortressed opposition must be taught the lesson of de struction. Not for the sake of your bellies. Not be cause my old coat is ragged in rebellion. For the sake of life. For the sake of that life of the spirit which is my life as well as yours or is nobody's life at all. Life belongs to life for the sake of life or is not life at all. 150 DO YOU NOT SEE, DEAR BROTHER? The social vista is clouded. Myriad discrepancies have marred the landscape. Have come between life and its perfect expression. All the discrepancies must be dissipated. All discrepancies of property and class which interrupt the free procession of life. For the sake of life. For the sake of life. DO YOU NOT SEE, Do you not see, dear brother? DEA RBRO THER ? You no sooner get your trouble settled but it unsettles again. You beg, borrow and steal peace. But peace will not come to the beggar, the borrower or the thief. It will only come to law. You compromise. You arbitrate. You give some thing to get more. You go to bed happy. The stars are all calm. But the sun in the morning comes up with trouble in its face. Why is your peace never peace ? Why is settlement never settlement ? You are always chasing phantom hopes. The thing you ex pect to happen never happens. It could not happen. You make your appeal to the wrong court. You think that you can hit or miss yourself into the equities. That you can evade the law and appeal to the accident. You have seen what accident can do. It disintegrates. It cannot check your fall. The law upholds. Do you not see, dear brothers ? Your masters are afraid of the law. But they are not afraid of the accident. The ac cidents are all grist to their mill. All money paid by you over their counter. They are willing to trust 151 CHANTS COMMUNAL themselves to chance. They will not trust themselves to law. They can cover the chances. But they can not trap the law. Every chance you are willing to play is a throw on their side of the table. The chance game is a game they love. And it is a game you always lose. But the law plays you fair. The economic law. The law of the brain. The law of the heart. It plays for good. It plays for justice. Dear brothers, you have taken your chances and failed. Every time. Failed. The current commercial code is not a code of chance. It is a code of law. When you play chance against it you find it invulnerable. It remains unhurt after your most angry assault. What can destroy it ? Law. A law bigger than itself. A law consequent. A law without haphazards or peradventures. Intrenched be hind their law the dominant commercial classes may de fy you. Defy you. That is, as long as you come dragging along your hosts of accident and maybe. You are commencing to see that something is the mat ter. After each defeat you arc nearer a realization of the causes of your inefficacy. Your shattered army re tires and reconsiders itself. What is the fight for? Your accidents and your maybes sleep the sleep of de feat and depression. Are you ever to win ? Not by your present method. Not as long as you throw your army of chance up against their army of intrenched law. You have got to mobilize laws against laws. You kave got to learn the law yourself To learn the 152 DO YOU NOT SEE, DEAR BROTHER? better law. The superceding law. And when you hurl the hosts of that law of the modern spirit upon a fortified medieval code you will whip it. Yes, you will rout the disciples and missionaries of the ancient regime. Then. And not till then. Do not imagine, dear brothers, that anybody has anywhere at any time invented the creed against which you rebel. It came by law. By law it will be destroyed. Your trade union is the accident. Your, strike is the chance. Owner ship is the law. It is for the law that you must de clare. Give up everything for the law. For the law will give up everything to you. But chance will give up nothing to you. It gives what it must. What you have the power to take. That's all. You go to your bosses quoting the commentaries of chance. Your bosses smile. They are willing to take chances with you. And you get your palm round the blade of the knife. Chance is starvation. It is low wages. It is the lockout. It is class arrayed against class. Good people and bad people. The four hundred and the masses. Law is a full stomach. Better than that, it is a full heart. Law provides. It is universal. Chance leads always from appeal to appeal. And while this is going on you are paying all the bills. You work not only to pay the costs of your own contest but the costs of the case of the opposition. Chance is expensive. Law is cheap. Chance needs sophistry to sustain it. The law can speak for itself. You have gone on a 153 CHANTS COMMUNAL long time sending out one fallacy to chase another. But your couriers never come back. The hazards of the task are too great. Your couriers are swallowed in the abyss. Dear brothers, think of the chances you have taken. Think of the stakes you have put up. What can you show for it ? You have put up your bodies and souls. You have put up your wives and children. You have put up the prostitute. The jail. What has it done for you ? You might go on planting this seed forever. The fruit would be the same. You are al ways pausing with expedients. When will you go on with solutions ? So much rent is right and so much is wrong. So much interest is right and so much is wrong. So much profit is right and so much is wrong. Well. You thresh out your problems that way. You get your right rent and interest and profit. But have you got justice ? You have had your gamble. And now you stare blankly at the emptiness of your result. The trouble is not with right interest or wrong interest. It is with interest. You can only reduce your trouble by reducing your rent. You can only get rid of your trouble by getting rid of your rent. Right interest and wrong interest are chance. No interest is the law. Property is the law. Private property is the accident. Ownership is the law. Private ownership is the acci dent. As long as you put up one private right against another you are playing a game of chance. But when you prove the private by the general right you are op- 154 AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE IS PAID crating in the domain of law. Do you not see, dear brothers ? Dear brothers, you are hanging round on the outside of things. You are risking on margins. You are toying with fringes of the garment but you do not touch the garment. You chance so much. You law so little. You think that you will get your man half off your back. That if you can get him to put one foot on the ground half your burden will be gone. Half a burden is better than a whole burden. But as long as he holds on you are a victim. Chance says it is not right for all the man to be on your back. Law says it is wrong for any of the man to be on your back. And as long as you appeal only to chance you will be carry ing some of the man. The law alone is your salvation. Chance is war. Law is peace. In every case in which law comes up against chance chance is licked. That is why I am always saying to you : Quote the law. Chance is always some per cent against you. Law is always on your side. You have played the last play of chance. You are still a slave. Now play the play of law. The law will play the game into your hands. Do you not see, dear brothers ? AFTER EVERY- After all other thought then comes THING ELSE the thought of the workman. After IS PAID all other honors are paid his honors are paid. We worry about our yachts. About luxur ies for our tables and our backs. About a trip in sum- 155 CHANTS COMMUNAL mer and the winter's season in town. And after every thing is worried about we worry about the workman. We make everything secure before we make him se cure. He is postponed to the last hour. He is put off until there is nothing else to put him off for. Why should we take him into account ? He more than hon ors every one of our drafts. Why should we honor his ? Indeed, he presents no drafts. He comes with his hat off asking favors. And if we have any favors left after we have given favors everywhere we give what is left to him. We forget him until we have remembered every other claimant. He can have the crumbs. He can have the edges. After the guests have left the ta ble he can come in and make the best of the leavings. He sets the table. He provides for the table. But he must not eat its food. He would not cut a pretty fig ure. His hands are soiled. His coat is creased. He is lacking in manners. We could not let him mingle with the elect. The elect derive all their substance from him. But for him the elect would have no time or chance to study their good manners. But that makes no difference. He is the dog. He may bark outside. But he must not come in during the feast. He has his kennel. He is entitled to the scraps. He may finally be let in to get them or may wait in the yard till they are thrown to him. That is the way we pay our debt to labor. Our first debt. The first debt of all which is paid as the last debt of all. Well, workmen, how do you like it ? I think you must like it pretty well. You 156 AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE IS PAID could stop it any time. You do not stop it. There fore, you must be satisfied. When you present your bill it will be paid. But as long as you hold back the masters will not hunt you up. You are afraid of your own case. If you present any bill at all it is only half a bill and it is presented with an apology. But why should you not present a bill in full ? Not for wages. For the next estate. For ownership. For freedom. For life. For room to move. For decent air to breathe. For decent houses to live in. For decent clothes. For less work for your wives and for your selves. For chances for the children. That's the kind of bill to present. You have had wages long enough. Even fair wages. There is no such thing as fair wages. Wages themselves are unfair. Put in the charge. Put it in in a loud voice. Yes, with strong words. Do not mind the politeness. That may take care of itself later on. They will hear you. The false guests will scatter. You will take their places. Why should you be so in fernally modest ? Why should you go hungry till we are fed ? Why should you shiver till we are clothed ? But for you nobody would be taken care of. Why should you hesitate then to come in with the first peo ple to get your share of the universal bounty ? You need it. It is yours. Take it. Do not take it in bits. Take the whole of it. Do not allow any discounts. It all belongs to you. Let nothing come between it and you. Do you not hear the cries of your children ? Do you not hear the weeping of your wives ? Are you 157 CHANTS COMMUNAL not yourselves weak from want of food ? Do you not worry each night because of next morning and each morning because of next night ? Stop worrying. Take what belongs to you. I have asked you this question : Why do you let yourselves be thrust aside ? Now I ask you another question : Why do you thrust your selves aside ? For after all if the masters pay all bills be fore they pay your bills it is because you have allowed yourselves to be superceded. Why should you have masters anyhow ? Why should you stand aside and allow the masters to take the center of the road ? Why should you get off the sea for his yacht ? Why should you get off the road to let his carriage pass ? Why should you take your children out of school in order to get the children of the castes educated ? Look at your watch. It is getting pretty late. It is time for you to be doing something. When your masters want rent you pay. When they want interest on their money you shake in your boots. When they want profit on their goods you hand over your last cent. Why do you do it ? The rent, the interest, the profit, are yours. Yet you pay it to them. Are you going to be fooled forever? You have got so in the habit of standing aside that now you stand aside for everything. The masters collect their claims so easily that they have no idea of moderating them. Your humility is their in come. The master cries: Slave! and you answer: Here ! The master asks you to abase yourselves. 158 AFTER EVERYTHING ELSE IS PAID You get on your marrows. He does not need to do you any injustice. You do yourselves injustice enough to save him that trouble. He asks you to whip yourselves for him. And you whip yourselves. He hands you every weapon of oppression. And you oppress your selves. You will yet learn to use those weapons on the right back. But you are slow to learn. The school is bitter. Your experience has but one season. Winter. The altitude of perpetual snow. God knows I despise you. God knows I love you. I cry out to you in a loud voice. I persuade you in a piteous voice. I take you in my arms. I try to open your eyes. I hate you with all my hate. I love you with all my love. I want to see you grow as big as yourselves. I want to see you fair enough to be fair to yourselves. I want to wash you clean enough for you to see that the honest dirt on your hands is holy. I want to stop you from standing aside for other people. I want to stop you from standing in the way of other people. You stand aside until everything else is paid. I want to see everything else stand aside until you are paid. Paid ? Yes. But not paid by masters. Paid by yourselves. No man can have any paymaster but himself. Every man may be his own paymaster and payslave. But no man will stand aside while luxury wastes the hallowed substance of his work. That work which is his body. Which is his soul. My brothers, you are wanting in self-respect. That is what's the matter with you. 159 CHANTS COMMUNAL When you have the proper amount of self-respect you will get second to nobody. In this world, in the work of this world, in the justice of this world, there should be no seconds. There should be no firsts and lasts. There should be only souls. The world will not be made up of workers and somebodies else. There will be no somebodies else. The world product will not be divided between profits and wages. When wages get what is due to wages there will be nothing left for ex ploitation. When will wages get the due of wages? When you come into your self-respect. When you know what is yours. When you no longer apologize for what is yours. My God ! Do you not see, my brothers ? The problem is so simple. You are so complex. I see you picking ashes for coal. Begging for food. Beating down each other for j obs. Looking in upon comfort from the outside. Freezing to death in winter. Melting to death in summer. Uneducated. Possessed of work without leisure or of leisure with out work. Afraid of the days. Afraid of marriage. Afraid even of love. All this, brothers mine. And because of what ? Because of yourselves. Will you let this go on any longer ? Swear that you will not. Mirror yourselves in your self-respect. Get a little better idea of your size and shape. Then act as men of such size and shape should act. Go to the masters reciting a new decree. Refuse to be put aside another day. Take your places. Maintain yourselves there. "Go to your masters," I just said. Now I say : "Go 160 I HAVE A WORD TO SAY TO YOU to yourselves." For yourselves are your masters or there are no masters. Let your bill be the first bill in. The full bill. Do not budge until it is paid. What can be paid after your bill is paid ? Nothing. For your bill is the full bill of life. The full bill of the soul. / HA VE A WORD I have a word to say to you, you TO SA Y TO YOU who are the masters and gentle men. Our to-day's yes is not an eternal yes. Our to-day's yes is for to-day. Tomorrow will demand its own yes. We struck. We asked for more wages and less time. You said no. And so we had to fight you for it. We fought. We won. You had to give us ten per cent. You were forced to acquiesce in eight hours. Now we are at work again. Now we are described as being at peace. Do not deceive yourselves. This is not peace. This is truce. Any per cent under one hundred per cent is truce. One hundred per cent alone is peace. We have started out on a long journey. Some of us, some of you, call it a campaign. Anyway, it is a long journey. We have got to stop now and then for rest. These stops are truce. Five per cent is truce. The five per cent grub is not as good as the ten per cent grub. But it is good enough to keep body and soul together. We take what we can get. We compromise. We concede. We admit. We keep ourselves in good humor. But while our bellies are fixed on the truce our souls are fixed on the peace. Peace is far ahead. 161 CHANTS COMMUNAL We see it but dimly. But we see it. When the eyes of the flesh lose it the eyes of the spirit take it up. It shines brighter than any sun. It seems more like mira cle than any dream. But it is there. We are afflicted. We crawl home tired at night. But we see the beacon. It is way off. Lots of us will go wrecked up the shore before the goal is reached. But what of that ? The sacrifice is worth while. Nobody will go because he is afraid to go. Nobody will go because he is anxious to go. Men will go because the light is there. They will go to the light as they go to their meals. Yes, as they go to their sleep. Yes, as they resume life when morning comes again. That is why they will arrive. If the struggle could be lost because men were timid or even because they were heroic it would not be lost or won. Once off on the road we will not retreat. We may occasionally go back. But going back is not retreat. Policy may persuade us back. We are often most dangerous when we go back. Back there is fresh resolution. Back there we counsel together out of your sight and hearing and prepare for a greater ad vance. We are not led astray by false signs. Ten per cent does not dissuade. It does not deceive. We have eyes to see through every ten per cent to another ten. And then we see through all the tens to the hun dred. The hundred is the goal. We go hungry and thirsty for the hundred. We die for the hundred. You find us all along your highways starved and left to rot. Do you go to bed at night confident that rot is 162 I HAVE A WORD TO SAY TO YOU defeat ? You left the deserted corpses on the road. But the idea is going on. Do you think my physical eyes are feasted on the star of the ideal in eras far ahead ? If left to my physical eyes I should have lost my way long ago. It is the idea that sees. It is the idea that is seen. It is the idea that gives truce for truce but insists on the final gage. The final gage is peace. Peace is one hundred per cent. This is all very vulgar. It seems just as if I held a scale before you weighing bellies. And you are spiritual. You ask what wages have to do with happiness. You ask what wages have to do with virtue. You ask what wages have to do with the holier interests of the soul. True. What have they ? And if wealth has nothing to do with happiness, virtue and the soul why do you insist upon appropriating it all ? If men can get along quite as well without wealth as with it, why do you fight tooth and nail to confirm your possessions ? It may not be true that the people who make the beautiful things of the world should enjoy the privileges that result. But it just as certainly is not true that people who do nothing to produce such miracles should rob the general fund. It may be better to give than to receive. But the re- ceiver is much too little apt to remember that it is bet ter to give than to receive. We drive home upon our parasite a few terrible contrasts. We are reminding him that it is better to give ten dollars to the man who has worked hard for them than to receive one dollar for 163 CHANTS COMMUNAL labor that has not been performed. We are reminding him by means of accumulating ten per cents that enough tens make a hundred. We are reminding him that ten may be truce but that it takes the full one hundred to make peace. Now I hear you ask, what is to become of you when the one hundred goes to the others. We have thought that all out. We have not forgotten you. Not at all. You are not to be cast off. You are to be taken care of. Your minor classes are all to be ab sorbed in the one class. We are going to do better by you than you have done by us. When you found no profit in us you threw us out in the road. You con signed us to humiliation and starvation. But there is to be no outside in our philosophy. You will find that done for you which you refused to do for others. Or, rather, you will find that done for you which under your barbarous system no man found it possible to do for another. You take up your slate and convince yourself that the hundred per cent crowds you out. It crowds you out of a place in which you do not belong. But in crowding you out of that place it leaves you where life can be lived on more generous terms. You shudder when I speak of truce. Truce reminds you of battles fought and battles to come. Yet there are worse things than truce. Apathy is worse than truce. Your peace is worse than our truce. I do not say truce is the best thing. I say it is a better 164 I AM GOING TO LAUGH thing. But truce is only the apology. Peace is the deed. We do not ask each other to be ten per cent vir tuous. We ask each other to be virtuous. We do not always expect the hundred per cent. But the hundred is what we are working towards. If you come at me in tending some assault and I protest, how would it sound for you to say : " I will purify ten per cent of my mo tive. But the other ninety per cent you will have to take in the neck"? I suppose I would be forced to submit. Your cards are stacked. Your fists are load ed. I could only take the deal and pay the pool. But after you had with your pernicious ninety per cent fist wrecked ninety per cent of my collar-bone the rest of me would resume the fight. It is upon such agreements that truce and peace may come to terms. It is in such temper that the ten per cents are accepted by the hun dred. The tens are sore from head to foot. But their sores are holy. The tens see nothing, hear nothing, but the hundred towards which they journey. Any per cent under one hundred per cent is truce. One hun dred per cent alone is peace. That is the word I have to say to you, you who are the masters and gentle men. / AM GOING I am going to laugh. Do not misun- TO LAUGH derstandme. Laugh. Why should I make myself miserable fighting this fight ? Do you think that good humor is weakness ? Watch me. See 165 CHANTS COMMUNAL if my good humor concedes anything. Do you not know that the fiercest weapons are concealed in a laugh? I have a whole sea back of my laugh. And my laugh will wreck all the pirates. I am going to be cheerful. I am going into battle with a song on my lips. That will not hurt the battle. It will help me. And for the purposes of this campaign I am doing all I can to help myself. I can destroy ten thousand sneers by one laugh. A well placed laugh will bring down the wall of a city. No iniquity can stand a righteous laugh. Blot out the sun. I will still laugh. And my laugh will put the sun in the heavens again. I do not see why I should keep myself miserable trying to bring about happiness. Why should I not be happy in the pro cess as well as in the result ? Yes, get some of the re sult into the process ? Does it do the result any good for me to go about with a lugubrious visage ? I do not say that you should wear a mask of joy. I say you should be actually joyful. I am. For I see the good time coming. And I am already borrowing upon its collateral. Come now. Why should you bother with grief? You are the owner of untold wealth. You worship an ideal. You dream dreams. You see the new world that we are about to enter. Why should you confess judgment to sorrow ? Let the other fel lows do that. Let that be done by the people who think this world is to continue always to be as it is. Who do not see. the sunrise. Who cannot see round J66 I AM GOING TO LAUGH any corners or over any hills or past any shadows. But we on our side may well be in ecstasy. We should go about our business each day chanting hymns. I would be ashamed to miss the significant optimism of my faith. I would be ashamed to let anybody discover in me the least sign of fatigue, the least suspicion of de spair. I shed no tears over my work. Except, per haps, tears of joy. The task I have in hand is so rich in present dividends that I could not doubt my invest ment. I hate to see a rebel put on a poor face. I say to such rebels : " You belong in the other camp." I like to see a rebel walk with a light foot. Yes, with a heart as light as his foot. Just as if everything was to come true to-morrow. Just as if everything had al ready come true. For to the man with the real stuff in him the ideal is true the minute it becomes his own. No man ever keeps his ideal waiting. He catches up. He keeps up. The real man has no trouble in keep ing up with his ideal. His ideal has a lot of trouble keeping up with him. He sings. He dances. He is happy. Life comes to him with full arms. Death shrinks away. Death hunts the apologists. The apol ogists are the harvest of death. My laugh is a challenge. It will meet an iniquity on any terms. It will confute that iniquity. It will send that iniquity home sore if not dead. The wrongdoers do not always understand. My laugh is uncompromising. It demands its due. It laughs out for the last round. It laughs away the 167 CHANTS COMMUNAL darling trinity of the capitalistic regime. Rent, inter est, profit. It laughs away slavery. My laugh is a question. It is an accusation. It is a conscience. It is that something which disturbs your sleep at night and worries your wake by day. For all its noncha lance its concern tingles you at the roots. As sap is to a tree, as blood is to the body, so is my laugh to my faith. Men come to me wondering if my laugh is dangerous. They find it barbed. They find it an uncomfortable neighbor. They discover that it is a searching and inexorable critic. I sat down and cried and the evil went on. I got up and laughed and the evil hurried away. I can afford to laugh. Laugh is not money in my pocket but it is light in my soul. Weeping made me weak. Laughing made me strong. I laugh private property to scorn. I laugh the million aires out of their increments. I laugh the workmen out of their lethargy. My laugh is the last fact I treat with when I go to bed and the first I deal with when I get up. I may lose other assets. But I will keep my laugh. You may have everything else if you will leave that. I want to show that my laugh is bigger than Rockefeller. Bigger than any single man. Bigger than any single interest. Just as big as all men put together. Just as big as all interests put into one. 1 think some how that the whole material stuff of the universe is small er than my laugh. I think somehow that my laugh was made to teach the material things a lesson. For my laugh is the soul of man made manifest in the destiny 168 I AM GOING TO LAUGH of his love. My laugh will outlast all economic tyr anny and social stratagem. All slaved children and starved parents. All wagemen and tollmen. Weak? Is gravitation weak? Is flame weak when in the fire? Is water weak in the flood? Weak? The sword might be easy. The bullet might be a mercy. But my laugh will try you to the end. I had a choice of weap ons. I chose the laugh. Laughter can do all that weeping can do and can then do more. I do not choose to be cheerful because cheerfulness is a gentle weapon. No indeed. Because cheerfulness is the sternest weap on. The enemy might survive my gravity. But the enemy will never survive my laugh. He might sneak away from my vituperation. But my laugh guards every path of escape. When my laughter has said its say the whole story is told. I had a choice of weapons. I chose cheer. Cheer accounts for so much more than depression. Cheer is so inevitable. It appoints such inflexible alternatives. It cavorts about in such eternal youth. Cheer never suffers from sore feet. It knows no old age. It is never reminiscent. Cheer is always pledged to to-day and to-morrow. Villainy may not keep its engagements with solemnity. But it never tries to escape my laugh. Cheer is philosophy. It foregoes little effects for big. I see that the privateers disdain your tearful chase. But if you watch you will learn that they respect my laughing summons of surren der. Do you know, a laugh gets into the muscle of 169 CHANTS COMMUNAL your arm. It pours along in your veins. It enriches your capacity for thought. It gives your love its crown ing efficacy. Just a laugh. Just a song. Just cheer at the right time and at the wrong time. Nothing can refute my laugh. Nothing can disconcert its imper turbable affirmations. When I came to the parting of the roads I chose for cheer. The sun has been in my path ever since. And I can see heaven ahead. Jus tice. All men with plenty and no man with too much. Cheer. Laughter. My laugh. Laugh with the best hate. Laugh with the best love. No good thing need be afraid of this laugh. But if there is any lurking so cial wrong which thinks it can by cant or by chicanery escape my laugh let it beware. I am close upon it. I quote no useless texts. I strike no useless blows. I offer no useless apologies. I just laugh. Laugh the world justice for its inhumanity. Laugh the world harmony for its discord. We talk of God. I think my laugh and God must be the same thing. Or if they are not the same thing then all the worse for God. I am going to laugh. WHA T CAN What can I do ? I can talk out when I DO ? others are silent. I can say man when others say money. I can stay up when others are asleep. I can keep on working when others have stopped to play. I can give life big meanings when others give life little meanings. I can say love when others say hate. I can say every man when others say 170 WHAT CAN I DO? one man. I can try events by a hard test when others try it by an easy test. What can I do ? I can give myself to life when other men refuse themselves to life. My privileges are never cut off unless I cut them off. My faith is never discounted until I quote it low. What can I do ? I can stop looking at other people and look awhile at myself. I can say loss when you say profit. I can say freedom when you say landlord. I can say principal when you say interest. I can do my best while others do their worst. I can live nearer myself while the others live farther from themselves. I can fight on while others surrender. What can I do ? I can get myself into touch with my ideas. I can gather the fragments of my life together into one co herent life. I can take sides with the poor. I can build on simplicity. I can let others wear broadcloth while I wear rags. I can refuse to condone my own sins. What can I do ? Believe in man. Go without income. Walk on my uppers. Give life one hundred per cent of myself. Not care first what other people think of me. Care first what I think of myself. Not declare against the sins of the world and go on sinning. Stop sinning. Give up property for people. Not stake my private interest against the total human inter est. Not be afraid of slander. Not feel bad when I am misunderstood. Expect to find all my neighbors arrayed against me. Remain contented when no one 171 CHANTS COMMUNAL will come near me. I can starve. I can die. That is what I can do. What can I do ? I have told you. And now you say I call upon myself, I call upon you, to do impossible things. You are wrong. You asked me what I can do. You did not ask me what I will do. I may do nothing to fulfil my program. I may do nothing to justify my philosophy. But the program and the philosophy remain as redoubtable as before. The spirit will succeed though the flesh may fail. I say that property destroys but people save. That your private virtue is useless in a world of isolated men. That the last slave will not disappear till the last owner dies. That proprietorship and poverty go hand in hand. That I would rather live in a poor world with justice than in a rich world with wrong. I say all these things. But suppose I do none of them ? Suppose I let them all pass for words ? Suppose I just keep on trying to have a good time? Looking for ease. Making my peace with the dreary round of present greed. Playing all life down instead of up. Regard ing with nonchalance the suffering of the dispossessed. Forgetting the hut as long as I can maintain myself in the palace. What am I to say to myself then ? What account can I give of myself when my soul is through with talk ? I can talk big any time. But can I live big ? I can talk against profit. But can I live against profit? It is easy for me to put my faith into words. But is it easy for me to put it into deeds ? I do not 172 WHAT CAN I DO? find it difficult to make a show. But I do find it diffi cult to translate language into life. I may be able to do great things while the world looks on and applauds. But what can I do while the world looking on does not applaud or does not look on at all ? I can do miracles when you love me. But what can I do when you hate me ? What can I do ? I can place myself on the spot where no other man will place himself. I can take risks while other men huddle in shelter. You say you can love justice when the weather is good. Can you love justice when the weather is bad ? I do not know what I can do. But I know what I want to do and what I can try to do. What can I do ? I can make a bluff to be faithful. I can keep the standard up. I can talk out in company when it is fashionable to be quiet. I can consent to be a bore. I can do disagree- ble things. I can learn to say no. I can bear with equanimity to have people point at me in the streets as a dangerous outlaw. I can throw away every shred of reputation in order to keep every shred of character. My voice may outcry the noise of the farthest wrong. My daily life may be consecrated to fraternity. What can I do ? I can perhaps do nothing to straighten out other men. But I can do everything to straighten out myself. I can square myself with private property by abolishing it. I can square myself with the law of the individual by squaring myself with the law of the mass. Why should I hope to bask in the sunshine of social 173 CHANTS COMMUNAL plenty ? Why should 1 not shrink into the shadow of social sacrifice ? I have tried to take care of myself by not taking care of others. Why should I not learn to take care of myself by taking care of others ? Are the lessons of my real self too hard to learn ? Am I to grovel in the dust and confess against my faith ? Am I to live in the surfeit of honest starvation or die in the emptiness of a dishonest surplus ? Am I to measure myself with my littlest opportunity or with my biggest opportunity ? What can I do ? Can I do only the things that affect my personal life ? Can I not do the things which contribute to the general life ? Am I to timidly hug the shore when so much remains to be done out in the stream ? What can I do ? Take chances. Go where it calls upon a man's best art to brave the dead ly issues of the destroyer. Tire. Without food. Work without stop. Fight. Die. Is that too much ? You ask me what I can do. Why can I not do that ? Other men have done it. For less reason, too. Why should I not do it? Am I always to shield myself behind shortages and forfeits ? Am I to skulk with fine words ? When I get to heaven will graceful phrases save me ? When I get to hell will decent conduct damn me ? What is all life for if not for death when death is honorable ? What is all death for if not for life when life is necessary ? Steady. Now's for your nerve. Back of you the whole race pushes. Make no mistake. Treachery now may poison the issues of his tory. The lords are all there in front of you. The 174 WILL YOU BE READY? lords of money. The lords of land. The lords of official power. The lords of luxury. The lords ma lignant of the regime we are to obliterate. Steady. No quibble now. No compromise now. No com promise with the enemy. Most of all no compromise with yourself. Steady. Steady. What can I do ? What can you do ? Look at the gathered forces of trespass. Do you not see what you can do ? Do I not see what I can do ? WILL YO U BE Will you be ready ? When the hour READY? strikes will you hear ? Will you be on the right spot ? Will you be there in your own best mood ? What have you done to prepare yourself for the crisis ? If danger appeared. And if the responsi bility fell upon you. Would you be equal to it ? You say you leave that to the great ? That you are to serve in the ranks ? Do not abdicate. You yourself may be the great. Suppose you are found upon the crisis line at the august moment ? Are you to tell the crisis to wait while you go hunting for a deliverer ? I do not care who you are. I call upon you to prepare yourself for greatness. I say that the appeal may come straight to you. You dare not default. And it may come any minute you live. It is your business to be within call. It is your business to be equiped. Crises do not have a habit of looking round for heroes. They happen when and where they choose. And the man who is in the way of the task gets it to do. And if you are the 175 CHANTS COMMUNAL right man when the task comes you do it the right way. And if you are the wrong man you do it the wrong way. And I know your faith. And I know you want to be the right man. And so I warn you. For I see signal fires burning everywhere on every hilltop. And I know that you may any time, in your work or in your play, be called upon to acquit yourself of this solemn responsibility. So I say to you : Be ready. Do not waste a single minute. But be ready. For the lords god, your brothers in distress, may call. And when they call you must answer them according to their need. I am much less bothered when I find another man guilty than when I find myself guilty. What have I done to prepare for the resurrection ? With what personal power am I to meet the new life ? Am I to go to it rich ? Or am I to go to it a pauper ? Am I to go to it with gifts or go to it soliciting alms ? If the crisis came to-morrow in what condition would I be to meet it ? The old theologians used to tell us we should be always ready to die. I say so, too. I say more than that. I say we should always be ready to live. Are we ready without even a moment's notice to live ? Not live for ourselves. Live for our fellows. For under the new dispensation no man may arrange to live his life alone. Lives must be lived together or not be lived at all. A life lived all alone is barren. How near ready are you for the communal life ? For the life of obscure service ? For the life of average greatness ? 176 WILL YOU BE READY? Could you live that life to-morrow if called upon to do so ? Or would you still need your great men ? You have your great men to-day. What are they doing for you ? Why should you expect them to do more for you in the future ? Every man must be his own great man. Will you still lean upon exceptions ? Will you still rely upon masters ? Do you still intend to submit your fate to administrators and authorities ? Do you not possess within yourself the flame of a beatific life ? Are you feeding that flame ? Are you husbanding the treasures which in the turning point of battle, in the crucial hour of peace, would enable you to do men jus tice if their call was addressed to you ? For you must know that the signal of distress is as likely to be flashed your way as any other. I wonder when I see you wasting time. I wonder when I hear you calling your enemy hard names. I wonder why you do not save all that energy. I think you will need it all to get you ready. God is very well. Religion is very well. But getting ready is also well. Perhaps better. Perhaps the very God you worship and the very religion you proclaim could best be worshiped and proclaimed in getting ready for the sacred tryst. You have got so in the habit of serving under masters. You have been the subjects of kings so long. And of parliaments and presidents. And you have such false awe of profes sional men. Of men who talk and write. Of the merely ornamental arbiters of social values. That you 177 CHANTS COMMUNAL imagine that when you pass over the border into the new life the leaders and professors will migrate with you. That you will still be compelled to look to them for the articles of social federation. You deify leader ship. You are afraid to think of heaven as a democ racy. How can any place or event conditioned upon a ruler and upon rules be heaven ? How can you have a social democracy dependent upon exceptional leaders for its existence ? I do not care who you are. You are the chosen man. If you are not the chosen man then no man is chosen. All history is made to keep an ap pointment with you. If you refuse to keep the ap pointment or come to it unprepared history will con fess bankruptcy and the social paradise will remain in complete. Everything depends upon you. You are your own Atlas. Upon your shoulders the social com monwealth must rest. Upon yours alone ? Upon your shoulders as much as upon any. I do not believe you realize the magnitude of your task. I make you the target of my reproach and my appeal. If you heard the summons this minute would you be ready to an swer it ? Not answer it as a follower to a leader. But answer it as one man in the ranks to another man in the ranks. Answer it in competent deeds. For when you cast off upon that untried sea you will sail without a master. You will have your chart. But you will go without orders. You will have no commanders to tell you what to do. You will be expected to know what to do without whip or spur. Will you be ready ? Are 178 I WANT TO BE COUNTED you making the most of the present in the interest of the future ? Are you stiffening your courage ? Are you ripening your wisdom ? Are you better equiped to-day than you were yesterday ? Will you be still better equiped to-morrow ? Is your lamp filled with oil ? Is your brain filled with ideas ? Is your heart filled with love ? When the fateful day comes there will be no time to run for crutches or for asking or an swering questions. All your schooling must be got now. You have dreamed of a world without masters. The only substitute for a world with a master is a world in which every man is his own master. Are you your own master ? When you hear the voice will you ex claim in alarm : " Wait : I cannot see my way ! " Or will you instantly respond in alert tones : "I am here and ready and know what to do" ? / WANT TO I want to be counted. I do not BE COUNTED want to stand out from the rest. I am willing and glad to remain in the crowd. I am will ing to serve and for no one to know me. The hum blest job in the cause is not too proud a job for me. The proudest job in the cause is not too humble a job for me. Here I stand. I am ready. I want to be counted. Come early or come late I shall hear the call. You may raise your voice in my hardest sleep and it will arouse me. Or in the blare of the boister ous day and it will single me out. God is not way off somewhere waiting to be worshiped. God is in the 179 CHANTS COMMUNAL cause. And in the cause I worship God. The count ers are abroad. They go their rounds solemnly enroll ing their allies. I want to be counted. Do you think you would like to be left out? Do you think you would like the list all made up without your name ? We are all alike. We are sauced bad and good. We are as beautiful as a beautiful idea of God and as ugly as an ugly idea of Devil. But in spite of our criss cross each man may count one. I do not want to count more than one. But I want to count all of one. And I want that one to be significant. I want that one to enjoy the full distinction of its universal office. I can make my one mean or I can make it sacred. I can make it a sunburst. I can make it an eclipse. It is up to me to make it conserve the noblest impulse. Why should I quote myself at the lowest figure ? That is not modesty. It is default. I must rate myself high. I must make my rating good. I want to be counted. I want to achieve the victory of that sublime classification. I do not want my name at the head of the list. I am satisfied to have it come anywhere on the list. Only I want it on the list. I want to figure in the assets of the world's love. Life is a failure when it is quoted anywhere else. I do not want to be quoted as dead at the root. I want to be alive all over. And then counted. Counted in the assets of love. Where do you belong, dear brother ? Are you counted for 180 I WANT TO BE COUNTED love ? Are you an enfranchised being awakened to the divinity of the figure one ? Or are you still bound to a stake and ciphered in the nothingness of an indiffer ent heart? I think you, too, want to be counted. Counted for the children of the next frost. Counted for the largest faith. Counted for, not against, the race. Counted on the side of things that move on. Not counted on the side of things that stand still. Counted for the oppressed. Counted for the general joy. Counted for enlargement. Not counted for degenera tion. What does life amount, to if it betrays life? What does life amount to when scheduled for retreat ? The issue is here. You must go ahead or go back. You cannot stay where you are. You have got to make up your mind and venture out upon the historic cur rent. Man is taking account of hearts. Is your heart to be counted ? Is your will to be given to decadence? To be pieced out, one piece for folly and one for faith? Or is your will to be one will anointed for the temple ? If you cannot count one what can you count ? You are void. You have brought yourself as an empty vessel to the feast of the future. You have violated the cov enant. Are you to be only a fraction hovering on the margins of performance ? Are you to stand by and see all things done and you to do nothing ? Are you willing to have this crisis come and you slink away somewhere in some shadow waiting for the storm to blow over ? Rather be counted for reaction. Rather be against the new world. Rather go bravely back than 181 CHANTS COMMUNAL stand still like a weakling or sneak away like a coward. But as for me, count me in the rebel advance. Let me pioneer with the new day. Let me keep on with the stream. Let me be an atom of the plainest earth. Let me be a drop of the commonest water. Let me be an unseen star somewhere in space. But let me be counted. I do not know the next turn of the road. But I know we are near by. And I know that when we make the turn we will see the light. And I intend to keep in with the crowd. My feet may be sore. My eyelids may be heavy. I may be tempted to give up. But I will stick to the pilgrim crowd. I know there are lures in the life we are leaving. But I know there is justice in the life ahead. We lived the life of yesterday for a few. We will live the life of to-morrow for all. We lived the life of yesterday for property. We will live the life of to-morrow for man. We are not asking for more food and clothes. We are asking for more life. Life is what we want. Life full of life until it overflows with life. If we need food to help us to get life then we will have food. But life is what we want. Life for all. Every cup full. No one left to thirst with a deficit. I want to be counted for life. What will give us life ? You do not think money will give life ? Or private property ? Or anything which gives life for a consideration ? Life must be a free gift. The gift of the whole to the whole. The 182 YOU WILL SAY IT TO YOURSELF gift of all to all. Life belongs to all. Scamp and saint ? There is enough of the best life for all. I expect life to retrieve life. I expect under the new arrangement to see the ranks intact. The celestial laggards will all catch up. The stomachs will catch up with food. The brain will catch up with thought. The soul will catch up with dream. No man will go ahead at the expense of the rest. The man who goes ahead will go ahead by the free will and as the delegate of the rest. He will not increase his estate. He will broaden the acres of hie sympathy. But there are some terrestrial things that will never catch up. The interests will not catch up. The profits will not catch up. The landlord will not catch up. The deeds, the mortgages, the liens, the buyings, the sellings, will not catch up. I see the chase. I see the dark road. I know we grope and stumble and are tired. But we grope knowing we are to touch something. We stumble to get up again. We tire only to rest and rest only to start once more. And we are almost at the turn of the road. And when we reach the turn we reach the light. And that is why I want to be counted. YOU WILL SAY You will say it to yourself. IT TO YOURSELF You resent my words. You turn round and walk away. You lock your safe. You snuggle a balance in bank. You regard your store with royal overlordship. What is your own you will fight for. Is your property not your own ? I come to you 183 CHANTS COMMUNAL as a threat. When I come everything is in danger. Values shiver. Possession gets down in the mouth. I know all about it. I do not blame you for your trepidation. For if I do mean anything I do mean some of the things that you fear. But you have yet to learn that you do not need to fear. That I do not come to unsettle values but to settle them. That val ues are unsettled to-day. That I will settle them. But you do not see this now. So you take me not as an inspiration but a menace. I give you fair notice that you are right. I also give you the fairer intimation that you are wrong. You are right when you recognize me. You are wrong when you fear me. I am not going to shut up. I am going to talk on and live on and be still on from forever to forever. But I do not expect to convince you. I am only going to help you to con vince yourself. I am saying disagreeable things. I see easily enough that I am not liked in certain circles. That when profit wants things its own way I am not pleasant to have about. That interest hates to see me coming. That rent scowls and deepens its thrust. That the proud vested tyrannies of the world meet me with angry gaze. But 1 keep on good terms with myself. I am always smiling upon myself. Al ways encouraging myself. And that is all I need. And though my enemies give me a sharp tussle and think they have thrown me I inevitably turn up the next day as strong as usual. Yes. And with the same 184 YOU WILL SAY IT TO YOURSELF questions. And with the same answers. Answers my own to-day. Answers to be yours to-morrow. Do you not see that a man with this kind of faith can wait? My faith has no hunger which it cannot itself feed. No weakness which it cannot itself repair. So it can wait. My faith can wait. I can wait. And say and say again and say once more all the disagreeable words. The devil words to-day that become the divine words to-morrow. The words you hate to hear. The words you forbid. That you try to put into jails and give to the hangman. That visit you any time and any where on whatever untoward occasions. When you are preaching a false sermon. Or praying a mocking prayer. Or writing an editorial bought and paid for. Or singing a song for a patron. The words I am left to say to-day. The words you will be glad to say hereafter. You will long resist me. You will deceive yourself with initial victories. You will find me weak. You will count me only one against a million. You will see the world seem to go on just as it is. One day confirming another. One injustice confirming another. Presidents succeeding Presidents in unvarying medioc rity. Millionaires dead reborn in millionaire children. Starvation handing starvation on. The people inno cently played against the people. Demand and supply cohabited for the production of a blind progeny. The landlord suborning the land. The moneylord suborn ing money. The storelord suborning production. All 185 CHANTS COMMUNAL will seem to go on just as it is. And you who resist me will be fooled. You will say the universe is against me. You will say I am cursed. Or you will in your tenderer moments ask : What's the use ? But all this time I will be keeping on. Doing nothing unusual. Only keeping on. Asleep or awake, keeping on. Compelled to say the say of justice all by myself. Willing to wait until you are shaken up and convinced. Until you will say it to yourself. And say it to your self you will. There are things ahead that will stir you out of your indifference or lethargy or doubt. Give you an immortal awakening. So you will never sleep again. I do not know just what it will be. But some thing. And you will know it when it comes. And then you will understand why I am calm. Why I am not worried by delay. Why I am not defeated by postponements. Why all the big things that seem to be against me do not seem to worry the one little thing that is for me. Why my faith maintains itself against your property. Why my soul maintains itself against injustice. Why I am willing to say words that are thought personally unkind for the sake of a result that is universally sweet. Why I look in your face and see you long before you are able to see yourself. Why you with all your fortified rights doubt and despair. Why I without any right at all am cheerful and confi dent. Why you tremble when one little man with one little voice asks you a question. Why I do not trem- 186 YOU WILL SAY IT TO YOURSELF ble with all the states and churches and political econo mies at my heels. Do you think I am only saying words for myself ? I am saying words for you. I shall say words for you until you say them for yourself. Then I shall cease. Now I am necessary to you. When you recognize yourself for what you are rather than for what you think you are I will become unnecessary. Until then you may expect to meet me anywhere. At all sorts of unpropitiating junctures. When you collect your rents you will meet me. You will meet me when you absorb powers or properties that belong to others. When you pay wages. When you take and spend the profits you think you own. When you visit morgues and survey your dead. When you think you may look without guilt into the starved faces of children. What ever you do while rights and wrongs remain as they are you will meet me. I will not come to say evil things. Hard things. Things to maim you. But true things. Things that but for me would go unsaid. That but for some other me do you think I am the only me ? would go unsaid. You will not live an hour without finding me lurking somewhere in it. Or dream a dream. I am not a shadow. I am a light. But the light is too much for you. Too much for you as long as it comes to you from another. But the light after a bit will come to you from yourself. Then it will no longer be too much for you. This is the thing you leave me to say for you. The thing I do say for 187 CHANTS COMMUNAL you. The thing I will forever say for you. Yet you, too, have an appointment with justice. It seems to be farther off than mine. But you have it. And you will keep the appointment. I say it to you, O beloved. You will yet say it to yourself. The simple man, the man you meet every day and every where, A drop in the stream that passes by your door, The anonymous sap of the earthtree announcing fruit, Lost in the mingling all, averaged in the human lump, Creator creating yet never imprinting his song. 188 AND IT ALL AMOUNTS TO THIS My brother, this is beautiful for us to know : It is beautiful to know that nothing is finally wrong with the world, It is beautiful to know that love may be out of place in the world but that it always has a place in the world, It is beautiful to know that the false things have a true place in the world, It is beautiful to know that the cruel things have a kind place in the world, It is beautiful to know there is nothing in the world however bad but it has a good place in the world, It is beautiful to know that even sorrow has a glad place in the world : O my brother, it is beautiful to know, it is beautiful to know : When everything goes back to its place it is beautiful to know. 189 CHANTS COMMUNAL AND IT ALL And it all amounts to this. That the AMOUNTS world is self deceived. Has thought its TO THIS problems settled. Has dreamed that its villainy is justice. The world is rubbing its eyes. Soon it will be awake. Then the churches will have less to say for themselves. Then the schools will have less to say for them selves. Then the benefactors and the endowers will have less to say for themselves. This world has been so well done it has got burned. It has been so virtuous it has lost all the habits of virtue. It has been so just it has missed the per spective of justice. The world will tell you it is all right. The priests will tell you the world is all right. The poli ticians will tell you the world is all right. The moneymak ers will tell you the world is all right. Even the money- losers^ the rejected workmen of this world, will tell you the world is all right. Everything will tell you the world is all right. Yet the world questions itself again. Goes on suspecting it is wrong. Dreams. Nightmares. Shivers in cold sweats. It is so certain. Yet it is not certain at all. It is so happy. Yet it weeps. Everything is at peace. Yet it has armies and navies to bear witness to peace. It believes in the sacredness of life. A nd then it destroys life to show how true it may be to its own creed. The world is its own victim. It has seized the loose horn of its own di lemma. It has said the little things in a loud voice and the big things in a whisper. This world has had its say about itself. It has never been modest in the proclamation of its own genius. Meanwhile men have fought and starved. This is a world of jobs. One job bids against another. One 190 AND IT ALL AMOUNTS TO THIS job is quoted against another. For this world is not a world of souls. The soul stands by the job hat in hand asking its favor. The world has talked enough about its property. A bout its physical prowess. It has talked until the soul is sick of talk. We know what the world can do for the body. For the belly. For the classes. For society. For greatness. But we do not know what the world can do for the soul. It has denied the soul. It accepts the dirt. For creature returns. All this time the soul has waited, waited, waited. It has been patient. It has uttered no complaint. It has waited for its time to come. I declare that now its time has come. Do not be too sure of your haughty civilization. Do not think that things are too big to be resisted. Civilization is master sophistry. Nothing is big but the soul. Profit is not big. Nor wages. Nor the landlord 's rent. Nor the interest of the money lender. You count these in millions and you say they are big. Of all things in the universe these are smallest. The meanest quibble of a penny virtue is worth more than all your millions of stolen vice. You are so enor mous. You are so enormous you bulge out at all sides with adulterous fat. Civilization with its glutton cheeks and thick neck asks me to crawl on the ground saying it my humblest prayer. But I do not find civilization attractive. Civilization would be all right if its liabilities were not greater than its assets. If we judged it by its assets alone we would do it reverence. But when the bills are all charged up civilization is obliged to go into bankruptcy. It is not without capital. But its substance has been squan- 191 CHANTS COMMUNAL dered. Some of its partners have betrayed it. It has missed its connection with social justice. It has gone along supposing that it might have a rich man made rich by the poverty of the poor. That the poverty of the poor would make no difference. That it was not the business of civili zation to take care of all but to express preferences and hu mors and do erratically what it pleased with the individual. Whims. Flatteries. Luck. Anything but law. Any thing but the universal solvent. Civilization has lived out its competitive life. It has paid the full price of competition. The barbarous price. It goes to bed at night to dream itself into elysium. It wakes up in the morning in the gutter. Is this thing that we see the best thing that civilization can offer for itself? Has it no better collateral than the collateral of theft? We ask civilization: Who is your master? And civilization shows us its rentrolls. It shows us the I owe yous of the borrowers. It brings us tables of interest. It submits to us the profit records of the stores. Such things are our masters, says civilization. It shows us men who write any thing for pay. It shows us artists who will paint any picture for pay. It shows us a man who will make any kind of a shoe for pay. Pay, says civilization ; pay is my master. Women sell their bodies for money, says civ ilization. Women, says civilization, are my collateral. Men buy souls for money, says civilization. Men, says civilization, are my collateral. The children go from their cradles to the factory, says civilization. The children, says civilization, are my collateral. They who do nothing have 192 AND IT ALL AMOUNTS TO THIS the most ease, says civilization. The donothings, says civi lization, are my collateral. I work men to death, says civi lization, and women, and often children : and these, repeats civilization, these are my collateral. O yes ! says civiliza tion : Japan and Russia are at war. Japan and Russia, says civilization, are my collateral. I am a big affair, says civilization : I needed a lot of room for myself, so justice had to go, says civilization. Room, says civilization, is my col lateral. It is true, says civilization, that all men are at loggerheads with all men. But that, says civilization, log gerheads, says civilization, is my collateral. Toll gates, says civilization. Starvation, says civilization. Men who hate their work, says civilization. Luxury and squalor, says civilization. Women the slaves of men, says civilization. Men the slaves of masters, says civilization. Children the slaves of the slaves of slaves, says civilization. Factories. Stores. Chaingangs. Imperialism. Official tyranny and corruption. Jails. Says civilization. All these, says civ ilization, and more than these, and worse than these, the hells below hells, these, these, says civilization, are my col lateral. A re we to stop here ? Is this the end of the journey ? Is the starved child the end of the journey ? Is all this wreckage the end of the journey ? Is hate, rancor, fight, the end of the journey ? Is thievery the end of the journey ? Are sleepless nights and sleepy days the end of the journey ? Is man the enemy the end of the journey ? Are we to stop here ? Stop with social wrong ? Stop just where we are ? Disappear in this trench ? Cut down in the fury of eco- 193 CHANTS COMMUNAL nomic assault? Is this where and how the journey is to end? Is this to be the best the dream of justice can do for man ? God y no ! This is but a beginning. This is a bad end making way for a good beginning. This is the moment of the lapse of eras of force in eras of love. This is the bridgeroad. This is the mysterious archway of the rainbow. This is a juncture of promise and fulfilment. This is the darkest shadow meeting the brightest light. And it all amounts to this. The worst comes before the best comes. A nd it all amounts to this. This is the moment of the lapse of eras offeree in eras of lo-^ "*-* Ll 1 ^ I * ** ' ^ -^ 363180 PS3089 Traubel, H. T? Chants communal. C 191U LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS