Nome industrial worker., 1908-02-21

LII d RlOTlOuS pTOSFoSS TUT uutOlu dSCs to come.
 All this glorious achievement to- ward Truth could not have beer accomplished but for Freedom. You can not bind down the limbs and have them develop. You can not pen uI any species of animal and have il evolve anything from captivity but degeneration and it is as true of the mind as of the body. There can be no evolution upward and onward save where Freedom is. You can no more bind the mind and have it develop than you can bind the arm and have it develop. You can no more develop morals and strength of will and ot thought for another than you can eat and exercise and develop muscles and strength for another. This is the truth; this is really and literally Gods truth, for it is contradicted nowhere. It has always been true. It is part of the harmony'of the universe.
 You will applaud this so long as it remains general statement, but you will shrink from the application of it.. But until the human thought is ready to accept it fully and completely there can scarcely be beginning in the true evolution of the human souL
 The whole warfare of man has been for Freedom. All of history worth the having is the history of the strug gle for Freedom. Of what account are the wars of the roses or the strug- gle of dynasty against dynasty, or monarch against rival? The pity of it is that so many men were always found brainless enough to die for their masters. But the real progress of the world, the real course of history, is the struggle of the submerged masses against these masters; the struggle against special privilege imposed by the few upon the many, by law and government and force of arms. This has been the worlds history and this is the worlds history today. And that struggle is founded in the primeval truth that man must eat to live and he must have leisure to think :; that he has the right to eat and the right to have leisure to think. This is the struggle, and whether you like it or not you must enlist upon one side or the other. This struggle is a part of the evolution of the human mind, and it can never end till there be freedom in all things, everywhere.
 The shield which I would give into your hands today is Truth, the truth that there must be change change in the institutions of men as well as in the elemental mountains and that he who advocates changes, who attacks the existing order of things, is more likely to be right than he who would hold them as they are. The sword that l would put into your hands is freedom, freedom not only for you and me, but for all men to work out their own destinies in their own way. Freedom not only of body but of mind. Freedom not only of speech but of thought. Freedom not only in labor but in the whole struggle for existence. If ever you are put face to face with a problem, examine on which side it falls toward freedom, and choose that side. You can never be wrong in aiding freedom; can never be right in opposing it.
 I want to tell you as an eternal truth that there is no subject which is not better discussed than sup pressed. If a thought be true you can not jail it; you can not kill it; you can not suppress it. It will spread by persecution and live by attack, for the Truth never has been and never can be obscured. If the thought be untrue, the best and safest and quickest way for it to reach oblivion is to discuss it fully and freely in the open air and in the open light of freedom of thought and free dom of speech. care not what the subject is. I care not who the man is. So long as it is peaceable discus sion, there is no subject which man. kind should be by force and authority vented from discussing-even though the subject be folly and error. You lose more in violating the sacred principle of free thought than you gain in plotting out some body $ absurdities, or what you may think to be absurdities. You can not know whether the distasteful subject oi today may not be the truth. of to- morrow.
 I desire to insist to you that there Is no good obtained by restraint o1 peoples natural inclinations, or by forcible regulation of their habits, which is half so good as freedom itself that the logic of the universe