The Labor enquirer., 1883-09-29
DYNAMITE.
Helen Wilmans Talks Plainly
OF 1t in the Chicago
I Express.
The People, WhOwere Insane, Now
s. Clothed in. Their Right !
Minds.
DYNAMITE.
Cursed. be the Sneak Who Dares
Evade This Question
Say, Amen!

Say, Amen!
Il mingled with large and intelligent
audience last night which had met for
public discussion. One of the speakers
wandered away from the subject and
alluded to Ireland. From that moment
everything else lost interest. Itwas use
less for the chairman to call the people
to order There was one tense thought
pervading the assembly and it would not
be kept down.
Presently man in the back part of
the hall arose. From the first quiver of
his voice and thrillingly electrical effort
of evident repression l knew the audi
ence had found a spokesman, knew
the turbid feeling in all those hearts
would project itself through him in spite
of his effort to keep it back. And it
did.
What" he cried, "shall we smother
the thought that is uppermost out of
cowardice? Do we not know that the
vested rights of the few are the vested
wrongs of the many? Do we not know
that every day and every hour capital
lied iniquity rivits our chains still more
firmly? What are we to do? appeal to
the charity of our bosses? No, never
aside from the folly of such an appeal,
we will see them damned and doubly
damned before we will beg for what is
our own. What then? Cursed be the
sneak who dares evade this question.
Ladies and gentlemen, what then ?"
The audience was breathless. We all
turned in our seats to look at him ex-
cept few of the timid and conservative
who dropped their heads. What the
speaker saw in our faces was the reflex
of his own thought
Stepping forward, the blood coming
and going in his face like. jets of living
flame, his body quivering with the ten
sion of feeling, he said: TThere is but
one word in the language with which to
answer the question | have asked, and
that word is dynamite"
The applause that rent the air was
deafening. Friends, he spoke the truth.
Nihilism is going to solve the question of
one man authority and the god given
rights of kings and rings. What is Mill
ism but the last protest of outraged ma
ture before all is yielded up in death.
What is it but the despairing fury of
that stricken and dying lion-the great
starving, suffering, irrationalized and
animaized people of the world.
And yet, are the people animalized
and irrational in claiming their own :?
Divest your minds of the sanctity of au-
thority. The very authority you respect
so much was gotten first by brute force
and perpetuated by knavery. What is
there in it to be respected? What right,
either human or divine, has Victoria
Guelph to sit upon throne and consume
yearly the products of 100000 toilers? ?
What rights have her children more
than yours and mine to claim exemp-
ton from the common lot of producers
| maintain that no man or woman of able
body and sound mind should be per-
mitted to consume until they have first
produced.
The people are with me in this
thought. have called them irrational
lied and animalized. And so they have
been in bearing wrongs as animals bear
the bit and spur unquestioningl ly.
But they are not so now. They are
divesting themselves Of animalism and
nationality. Thought, reason, a sense of
Justice begins to pervade them and it is
this-colored by the remains of their
old animalhood-an animalhood for
which their keepers are responsible
that NihiIism exists.
"The people are insane, so say the
conservatives. Nay, friends. They have
been insane, but they begin to be clothed
in their right minds at last.
lit ID criminal in these times to be sane,
kbut time will justify our sanity.
John Brown was insane when he at
tempted the liberation of 4,OOO,oOo
slaves. But who so sane as John Brown
to-day?
Success iustifies insanity and makes it
sanity. Just as it justified Washington
the rebel, and converted him into
Washington the hero.
Insanity is the negative pole of sanity,
always wearing upward by slow degrees
from wrong to right; being damned at
first, then tolerated coVertly, then open
", afterwards justified and finally del
fed. 1t proves itself to be the godlike
heroism whose spirit goes marching on
through the, centuries, quickening the
courage of the race and stimulating to
fresh bravery.-Helen Wilmans.
| O,Donnell.