The Commonwealth. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1911-1914, 1912-09-06

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YOU can honor his memory is TO bC true
to yourself
DO not take my word for it. | appeal
to YOU TO assert your own mental in
tcllcct; | appeal to your moral stamina
to your manhood and womanhood, to
stand erect and face the issue. You
have everything to gain, you have nothing
to lose but your chains. Anyone can
be in the majority. anyone can drift with
the tide.
The Pathfinders.
In every age of the worlds history
there have been a few men and a few
women who have had convictions and
courage, who have dared to stand erect
alone. to assert themselves and to accept
the consequences of their acts. They
have written their names in inimitable
letters in the history of mankind. They
were the pathfinders in the wilderness,
the cvangels of civilization, the heralds
of the dawn. They paved the way TO
better conditions of human kind. They
have made this earth a habitable globe.
We are under great obligations to them
for what they did to make possible what
we now enjoy. We can only discharge
our obligations to them by doing what
lies in our power in the interest of those
who are to come after us.
No man loses who is true to himself.
II your job goes you go. You lose that
to find yourself. You sacrifice the re-
spect of your neighbors to keep your
own until you can have both. Carl
Marx was afraid to be popular; he
couldn't afford to pay the price or his
selfrespect. Here is an example worthy
of emulation.
Depend upon yourselves, develop your
own capacity for clear thinking, your
own self-reliance. Listen for just Il
moment and you will hear your heart
throb the forward march. If your
former friends desert you you will be
better off than you were before. You
your self respect You can face the
world without tremor of fear. This
is worth making the effort to achieve
and when you have achieved it and when
you have got the spirit of this great
movement it will course in your veins
and throb in your heart 1t will surge
know why the social revolutionist is
never weak. Il. ge discouraged, never
complains, knowing, as he does, that the
movement of which he is living and
pulsating part, is in alliance with the
eternal forces of evolution. That every
defeat develops his latent power. In
every defeat he grows strong and though
he may be defeated thousand times,
he arises triumphant, presses on step by
step with absolute faith in himself, in
his comrade until at last the hour shall
strike when evolution shall be capped
with revolution and this system of wage
slavery goes down as chattel slavery
went down; capitalism disappears and
the working class stands forth enamel
pated at last.
There are some people who fear to Of
fend what is known as public opinion
before they venture an utterance with
out feeling the public pulse. They want
to be certain that they are in the ma
iOrity. Allow me to observe that if
live long enough to be in the majority
and to be satisfied to remain there,
will be quite certain that I have over
lived myself. These same people who
are unthinking for the most part, are
content with things as they are, as they
have been and as they will be; they
haven't studied the economies, the poll
tics, the sociology of this period. They
do not know that underlying human So
ciety there are great productive forces
and in certain stages of their develop
ment outgrow the bounds which contain
them and they are gradually rent asun-
der. The old disappear and the new
evolves and we then have a new social
system and new civilization. These
are the underlying laws of social devel-
opment and they never can be suspended.
The same forces that brought the CAPT
talist system into existence are now OPP
Grating to overthrow it. All of the
forces of modern society are working
for socialism. The capitalists themselves
are doing their utmost to hasten the end
of their own system. They steadily cen
tralize to enlarge their power and as
they centralize to destroy their COM
petitors they furnish Us with recruits.
Not only this; in exact proportion as
they centralize we. the workers, organize,
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