The Labor enquirer., 1884-03-01
4 STORM BREWING.
Donn Piatt Ally Defends His
Position In Jehn Swinton's
Paper.
What he Has to Say Concerning
Fruit Canned from the Treeof
knowledge.

have annmber Of private letters, and
1 read public one in your columns re-
monstrating with me for advocating vio-
lence IS the only remedy for WRONGS to
the community by the selfish and un-
principled few.
These good people read me strangely.
did not advocate violence. l do not
advocate anything. think advocacy OF
any sort is q waste s-time and wind.
l feel sorry for the fery-hearted reform
| ers who have missions, and wear their
lives out in advocating reforms. They
are putting their pearls, which took q
deal OF hard labor to accumulate, before
swine. The swine want slop, and it is
aggravating to them to be offered pearls,
and if they do not turn and rend the
man who offers them, there is no truth
| in the divine words of the divine re-
| former who was crucified by swine in IL
lustration of what he said.
What tried to say was merely that a
law existed in the moral world, as in
the physical, which makes evils breed
violence, as miasma breeds storms.
did not say l advised it. 1 hope !
am not such fool. might as well ad-
wise the elements to hurry up the cy-
clone. What might say, or you, or a
thousand of US, would have as much
effect in one case as in the other.
It is the law of our being, as it. is the
law of our atmosphere. When the hour
is ripe, when oppression becomes fntol-
erable and the masses are starving, there
is sudden uprising, and fearful storm
shakes the earth.
1t is longer in coming sometimes than
in others. The conflict between the Ia
boring masses and the aristocracy OF
France ran through thousand years be-
fore it eliminated in that grand revolu-
ton that buried the oppressors and a
goodly number of friends.
To say that Voltaire, Rosseau and
those dreaming pen-drivers of that day
had aught to do with fetching on that
social cyclone, is to stultifiy ourselves.
While 1 write storm is roaring up
the Mac-o-cheek valley. Now, the signal
bureau at Washington has about the
same relation to this atmospheric distur-
bance as the philosophers and reformers
of France had with the revolt that shook
down thrones and buried kings and no.
bles under their ruins.
AS 1 told you, we shall have that sort
of storm here. 1t may be tomorrow,
it may be after you and I are dead and
forgotten. But it is sure to come, and
all the dreaming philosophers who dep
recate and all the hot gospelers who ad'
vocate it had as we'll be out of existence
80 far as they can delay or urge on set,
Ting of the disturbed center.
say it will come, but do not ask it.
or advise it, or pray for it. Nor am ]
silly enough to, asser. that in joining
hands and crying aloud we can avert it
1t can be seen and read in the heavens
that the storm is brewing. The same
miserable relation between capital and
labor that makes abject slaves of the
one, and blind, stupid despots Of the
other, is being introduced arong US
Every day, every hour, the gulf widens
between the very rich and the very
poor. Each hour. as it speeds by. the
chains tighten on the limbs of labol
and millionaires multiply.
| As 1 said, we are a nation of phrase
eaters. All the fruit of the tree of knowl
edge is canned for popular use. While