The labor argus. [volume] (Charleston, W. Va.) 1906-1915, 1909-11-18
UNTRUTE1S
Taught the Children in
the Public SCHOOLS of
the Country
Is Scathingly Denounced
by Will j. Rohr in an
Article Containing the
Undeniable Facts.


of no moment to the passing generation,
we are inclined to take different view
1t has to do with what is being taught in
some of-the public schools of this coun-
try. Those selfsame seats of learning
have been held up to view as being the
bulwark of our civilization. This may
have been true in the remote past, but
with the innovation of fads and fances,
the saying loses the greater part of its
meaning.
81 pledge allegiance to my flag and to
the republic for which it stands-one
nation indivisible, with liberty and jus
tice for all, - is the pledge which our
children are asked to take when joining
in what is called the flag drill This
pledge, we want to say, is as meaningless,
without scintilla of truth, as are the
vaporings of John D. Rockefeller, j.
Purp. Morgan, Andy Carnegie, the Van.
derbilts, the Astors, Jimmy Hill, and
scores of other anarchists
We will first have a word to say upon
one part of that Pledge justice for
all. - We at one time heard Emma Gold
man make an address. In all that she
said there was hardly a sentence which
carried quite as much irony ana -casm
as the above quotation, used in the
flag drill. What she said brings to mind
the thought that if we are going to teach
our children, we should at least teach
them the truth, if an all wise Providence
permits them to survive the damnable
methods and conditions that now envelop
the working people, and has surrounded
them in greater measure f1- ;nr past
few years.
Some poor devil helps himself to a
loaf of bread to keep his children from
starving, he is sentenced to Jail; another
takes the offal as thrown out of the back
doors of the -four hundred' and he
gets the same dose. A mother takes a bot
tie of milk to keep the spark of life in a
dying babe, she is sent to the workhousc
man strikes for little more money
and better working conditions for him
self that he may the better provide for
the little ones and the wife at home He
is muzzled with injunctions and thrown
into "bull pens.'' All this and a thou
sand other things, just because '',iustice
for all.''
One of the kings of finance robs mill
ions of their pttance, he is heralded far
and near, benefactor and commended
by the Sodomites.
Another pours millions of gallons of
water into an industrial enterprise, I'M
loads it upon an unsuspecting public gets
away with their money, and is exonerated
through technicalities and the liberal use
of money in the right place; and this is
also "justice for all.''
Nearly two millions of children, under
fifteen years of age, yearly being
ground between the millstones of starva-
ton and daily toll by the bandits and
pirates of Zone national indivisiblc''
'With liberty and justice for all,'
which creates milionaires and billionaires.
and creates a Sodom for the plutocrates
and a Dante s Inferno for the toilers
This may appear to some as having Il
tinge of radicalism streaming through IT.
If it has I want to say, that there are
millions of men and women in this Gone
nation indivisiblc, with liberty and justice
to all, - who are being relentlessly ground
to the uttermost dregs of poverty, and
who, instead of saluting the flag, are
more inclined to weep at the utter base
ness to which the flag is being put by the
exploiters of this great land
With such damnable hypocrites and
| traitors of the people sitting in Judgment
! in the halls of legislation, as Senator
Aldrich and Speaker Cannon (may the
devil get him), and few lesser imps
from the internal region of his Satanic
Majesty, what, if any chance have honest
men and women with them7 They feel
not the pangs of want, they care not for
the starving, they have their hearts of
adamant hitched to wagon of gold, and
as the people are thrown into that chariot.
they grind the lifeblood into a golden
stream for the plutocrats, whose creatures
they are.
Go into the family of the man who
IS honestly endeavoring to. make living
by the sweat of his brow. Ask him what
he does with his paltry hard earned
money. Ask him why he does not receive
more. Ask him why he assumed the care
of wife and perhaps several little chill
dren which the stork left at his door.
The chances are that you will be told
that he got along very nicely until those
past masters Of hypocrisy and canting
falsifiers at the national capital legalized
horrible octopuses that are now sucking
the Ifeblcod from q land that once was