frail sordid and petty absurd and contradictory even grotesque and yet withal shot through with flashes and of something finer and god like with here and there of service and desires for goodness for and sacrifice and with conscience stern and awful at preface times imperious demanding the right � the right nothing more nor less than the right jack london i � contents face ths class thb loi of thb i i a a law how i a the class struggle unfortunately or otherwise people are prone to believe in the reality of the things they think ought to be so this comes of the cheery which is innate with life itself and while it may sometimes be it must never be for as a rule it is productive of more good than harm and of about all the achievement there is in the world there are cases where this has been disastrous as with the people who lived in during its last quivering days or with the of the time of louis xvi who confidently expected the to the class struggle their children or their children s children but never themselves but there is small that the case of perverse here to be considered will end in such disaster while there is every reason to believe that the great change now itself in society will be as peaceful and orderly in its as it is in its present development out of their constitutional and because a class struggle is an and dangerous thing the great american people are unanimous in asserting that there is no class struggle and by american people is meant the recognized and of the american people which are the press the pulpit and the the class struggle the the and the professors are practically of one voice in declaring that there is no such thing as a class struggle now going on much less that a class struggle will ever go on in the united states and this declaration they continually make in the face of a multitude of facts which not so much their sincerity as affirm rather their there are two ways of approaching the subject of the class struggle the existence of this struggle can be shown and it can be shown actually for a class struggle to exist in society there must be first a class a superior class and an inferior class as measured by power and second the must be closed whereby the strength the class struggle and of the inferior class have been permitted to escape that there are even classes in the united states is vigorously denied by many but it is when a group of individuals is formed wherein the members are bound together by common interests which are peculiarly their interests and not the interests of individuals outside the group that such a group is a class the owners of capital with their form a class of this nature in the united states the working people form a similar class the interest of the class say in the matter of income tax is quite contrary to the interest of the laboring class and vice in the matter of tax if between these two classes there be a the class struggle clear and vital conflict of interest all the are present which make a class struggle but this struggle will lie if the strong and capable members of the inferior class be permitted to leave that class and join the ranks of the superior class the class and the working class have existed side by side and for a long time in the united states but hitherto all the strong energetic members of the working class have been able to rise out of their class and become owners of capital they were enabled to do this because an country with an frontier gave equality of opportunity to all in the almost like scramble for the of vast natural resources and in the of which there was little the class struggle or no competition of capital the capital itself rising out of the the capable intelligent member of the working class found a field in which to use his brains to his own advancement instead of being discontented in direct with his intelligence and and of amongst his fellows a spirit of revolt as capable as he was capable he left them to their fate and carved his own way to a place in the superior class but the day of an frontier of a like scramble for the of natural resources and of the of new is past farthest west has been reached and an immense volume of capital for and in the bud the patient the class struggle of the to rise through slow from small the of opportunity after opportunity has been closed and closed for all time has shut the door on oil the american tobacco company on tobacco and on steel after came who triple locked the door these doors will not open again and before them pause thousands of ambitious young men to read the no and day by day more doors are shut while the ambitious young men continue to be bom it is they denied the opportunity to rise from the working class who preach revolt to the working class had he been bom fifty years later the class struggle the poor scotch boy might hav risen to be president of his union or of a of but that he never have become the of and the founder of is as certain as it is certain that some other man would have developed the steel industry had never been born then there exist in the united states all the which go to make a class struggle there are the and working classes the interests of which conflict while the working class is no longer being to the extent it was in the past by having drawn off from 