the "Industrial Workers of the World." They are not in the least disturbed that we name them "outlaws." If a half of what they say of our present society is true, the "outlaw" is the one heroic figure in our midst.

At the heart of the movement is an impulse and a motive which no one with open mind can really see without respect. The hectoring crudities of the movement are so in evidence, as to blot out what is best in an idealism which we should not lose. To forget that the movement has its idealism is not only to mistake it as a whole, but very wretchedly to bungle in our practical relations with it. Thus far I. W. W. victories have been largely won by the blunders of their enemies. This will continue until we know better what socialism in general really means and why a more giddy and harassing form of it now appears.

If it could become, once for all, clear to us what this means, it would save us from immeasurable ills. The government has taken no one of its ungainly steps in "interference" which was not forced upon it by the vague but importunate pressure of a changing public opinion. No politician has a feather's weight of influence in these interferences, beyond what the atmospheric pressure of this general opinion gives him. The scurviest demagogue can only take advantage of it.

Beginning with transportation; then with larger businesses in closest affiliation with these main arteries of traffic, the public has come to feel that these are social as well as private affairs. Above all, it

has come to feel that they are no longer to be kept as the secret speculative tools of finance.

When Woodrow Wilson said that these were public rather than private, he was merely interpreting the growing collective opinion in this country. Until the more masterful holders of these centers of economic power recognize this and enter with some heartiness into more sympathetic coöperation with the new and altered opinion, both political and industrial friction will increase.

Against the spirit of secrecy and absolutism in this more powerful business management, the protest rises. Its warning comes from all those who would "regulate" these forces. It comes from collectivists, from socialists of every shade, and now, with shrill and mocking challenge, from a new "Order" of the I. W. W. It is a dangerous form of dullness merely to sniff at this latest note of protest. It is a part of something far greater than itself. Roughly, the word socialism stands for this larger thing, but especially about the spirit of this movement, foggy misconceptions still cling. A further appeal must be made to the reader's patience in a brief attempt to illustrate what seem to the writer some errors in interpreting the spirit and motive of the socialist protest and still more in all attempts to understand the I. W. W.

IV

THE PLAGUE OF MISCONCEPTIONS

(I)

WITH cynical hilarity a business friend has just read to me a proposal by Mr. Debs to raise at once "$500,000 for the approaching socialist campaign." "There you have it, like a staged farce. The starved millions, living on the margin of want, are to paint the country red with two million votes for Debs and Seidel. Not a nickel from the big interests, no blackmailing of corporations, but the whole half million subscribed by the starving, downtrodden working class." "And this," he adds, "is but an item. They pour thousands of dollars into Lawrence and a dozen other struck towns at the same time. They have just been buncoed out of a quarter of a million to free the McNamaras. They are paying for costly conventions, hundreds of lectures, and a very expensive press. Doesn't such penury wring the heart?"

In this sportive mood he filled in other features of the comedy, ending with that annihilating phrase— "They must be destitute of humor."

This gentleman had been telling a great deal of truth, but by no means all of it or the most important part of it. These objects of his lampooning are raising far larger funds than he knew. They are doing it all over the world, in countries where the purchasing

power of the year's income is far lower than in the United States. They have for many years been doing it on a scale which most well-to-do people would consider insane or criminal. The propertied classes very generally shuffle and kick at ordinary taxes, but with voluntary devotion millions of working men and women bring hard earned money to support an idea. They are not doing this in spurts of enthusiasm, but with tireless persistency, sustained by a great faith.

I read for a year a socialist paper in which I never saw a single advertisement. Debts were incurred to start it. Deficits followed like a shadow. Asked how they went on with such a load: "Why, we have to give a lot of time free, and beg the rest from comrades. Two in the office work three or four hours a day after their own work is done and never take a cent. One woman has a little money and gives all her time. We have our pious formulas. 'He who quickly gives, gives twice': 'Who gives himself gives better than his coin."" But no part of our citizenship puts these pieties to more instant or wider use than socialists.

If richer folk were taxed according to their means, one half of that which thousands of socialists in our midst are freely taxing themselves, it would be thought an outrage and a tyranny. The sacrifices to carry on the socialist sheet just mentioned are but a leaf from a thick book. What goes on in that dingy office is only a very tiny sample. In many hundreds of other offices the same story could be told. And yet the sum total of this press activity is itself also but a fraction

of the unpaid or poorly paid service which this cause now inspires in the world.

One would think that devotions like these might give some seriousness even to the jauntiest critic. It is not for nothing that great multitudes in twenty different countries work like that. They do not upon principle hold out year after year in spite of perpetual defeats and at such direct and heavy costs except for something believed to be of life and death importance. Many of them pay this price for what they know never can be theirs. On a bench by the Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, I sat one night after a socialist meeting with an old man who had seen about all one could see of service in the Confederate cause. He had for years given himself to build up a socialist sentiment in that community. "I shall not live," he said, "to see even the beginning of it. But it is a great cause." He was one of an army, far greater than the South sent to the field, who know that no extra penny can come to them, but they bring their offerings just the same.

This inner spirit and soul of a great movement is what my business friend did not see. Not seeing it, there was only an occasion for mockery.

It was only an absurdity to this critic that men and women who could give so much money for their cause should claim to have a serious grievance. "What do they want?" he asked. "Their reckless giving is proof enough that they are getting on; otherwise they couldn't give it." He was irritated by the aggressions of discontent which seemed to him stupidly unjustified. "The more they get on," he argued, "the worse they behave."