Nome industrial worker., 1908-02-21


 their follies is to fill the world with fools; and that just as the infiexible laws of Nature which sometimes seem cruel to us in their relentless appli- cation are in reality the greatest charity and the deepest mercy, so the truest charity to mankind is to leave each in freedom and each to take the consequences of his acts. The same law which permits the Attest to sur vive condemns the weakest to go down and out, and this is precisely as true of moral weakness as of physi- cal weakness The evolution of mind and soul will continue to be retarded until men and women are absolutely free to control their own habits and their own lives.
 The trouble is that few of us have natures courage-I will call it Gods ccurage-to follow Truth to the very end. We hurrah for freedom, and then we enact slavery We are not free in anything in this land of free. dom. We are not free in commerce. We are not free in the use of land or air or water, though more free in the use of air and water than in the use of land. We have not one single item of economic freedom; and as econ omic conditions are bread and butter conditions, they are the very founda- tions of life-the foundation of morals as we'll as of body. You can not get strong and splendid offspring from weak, halfstarved parents. You can not, as rule of breeding, get a strong and healthy mind from a weak and decrepit body. You can not have boys and girls virtuous who begin their pitiful childhood compelled to sell themselves for food Great as has been the progress of mankind, splen- did as have been the achievements of the human race, there is more to be done in the future than ever has been done in the past. The evolution of the body is practically perfected, at least so. long as earthly conditions remain as they now are. But the human mind and the human soul and the human conditions which are to mean that life will be joy to all, are just in the beginning And you are to take part in the evolution; you could not shirk it if you wanted to. At the end of your lives you will either have stepped upward or down ward, and you will have influenced to some degree for good or ill those about you.
 1 repeat to you earnestly that no condition in any society will ever be right which puts the many in servi- tude to the few. l say to you, though it may open to you the door of per secution and unpopularity, champion the cause of the oppressed many. And l repeat-as I would like to repeat many times, so that the most careless listener here could not choose but carry it away with him: When in doubt look which way freedom lies and have the courage to follow that path. This world has never been moved fraction of step by author ity. Force and authority not only have accomplished nothing-abso- lutely nothing-but they have held back the world. Compare Russia to day with the rest of Europe. There is suffering and oppression enough in the rest of Europe, but it is white page compared to the black record of Russia. There men may not speak except as approved by authority. Men may not write or red except as ap, proved by authority. The struggle toward freedom is rewarded with the bloody knout on the backs of the men and the hoofs of the Cossacks' horses in the bosoms of the women. Siberia and the desolate places and the damp dungeons swallow into oblivion those who would dare speak for liberty. Those are the methods of the Bastile, and the Star Chamber, and the In qulsition; and Russia stands today where France, England and Spain stood when the Bastile and the Stal Chamber and the Inquisition pre-. vailed; land of wretchedness and poverty and ignorance, sending uI now and again some martyr, like g meteor in blackened sky, calling the world to witness. And what does the martyr beg for and die for? Free dom. And what is 1t which makes the Europe of today different from the Russia of today? Freedom. Free dom is the food and air and light by which man fourishes physically, mon tally and morally.
 How can I number those martyrs upon whom authority has laid iti hand. crushing out their life because they spoke words for freedom? The