The Northwest worker. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1915-1917, 1915-07-22
GIG HARBoR BOY EvOKES
FEATURE" EDITORIAL
WILL DEFY FLAG LAW
DECLARES JUSTICE is NOT
EvEN-HANDED


EvEN-HANDED
A school boy In Gig Harbor has Civ.
en- the patriots" formal notice that
they must mend their ways before he
viii consent to parrot their flag-law
ceremony at school. In letter to
The Tacoma Times, Alden Mckee
writes:
Editor The Times:
notice the legislature guys are
going to make us school kids sal
ute the flag next year and say
"there is justice for ALL
read The Times and I have
read some OF the writings or
President Wilson and Roosevelt.
You all say that our courts are
corrupt and that poor guy don't
stand much show.
It's all right for you fellows to
say there isn't justice but you are
going to make us school kids say
there is.
WE'LL I'm going to balk on the
job. Do you think the school
bosses will lick me or turn me out
of school?
ALDEN MCKEE,
Gig Harbor.
In answer to the above letter the
-r.--, os;tor ryrota q ranly and pript-
ed ii in "big print" running across
the seven columns of the editorial
page. He tries to evade the school
boys logic by saying that Neither
President Wilson, Col. Roosevelt nor
The Times ever has said that all the
courts are corrupt nor that the poor
man stands little show of just treat
ment in any Of them
For the support of the boys argu-
ment it is entirely sufficient to show
that the courts as rule favor men of
wealth. as against poor men; favor
capitalists as against wage-workers.
favor property rights as against hui
Hau IlkulS. Ills lat tiiC SoPieoiDt
editor admits in saying:
PERSONALLY, we believe that the con-
dition is entirely too common and that
certain changes should be made in our
judicial system, changes which would
tend to make the judges more respon-
sive to the call of humanity and less
eager to protect property rights.
1--WE think also, as you evidently do,
that the legislature did a foolish piece
of work in passing law requiring pu-
pills periodically to repeat a formula
supposed to inculcate patriotism.
"But they did pass it, and it now is
law If you balk, as you threaten to
do, you will be law breaker"
Flag Cannot Symbolic Interests
of ALI.
AS a matter of fact the real issue in
such cases as the above is the fact
that school children are required to
subscribe to a formula which menda-
.ciously denies the essential fact OF all
written history, past and present,
namely, that we live in world where
the interests of those who control the
government, who are the government,
for which "the lag"-anywhere-
stands, are identical with the interests
of the exploited workingclass. No
flag can stand at once for both robber
and the robbed.
learned the meaning of that marvellous
key to history presented to the world
in 184S by Marx and Engels, which
reads:
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
"The (written) history of all hither-
to existing society is the history OF
class struggle. Freeman and slave,
patrician and plebian, lord and serf,
guild-master and journeyman, in
word, oppressor and oppressed, stood
in constant opposition to one another,
carried on an uninterrupted, now hid
den, now open fight, fight that each
time ended either in a revolutionary
reconstruction of society at large, or
in the common ruin of the contending
classes. The modern bourgeois
(capitalist-class) society, that has
sprouted from the ruins of feudal So
ciety has not done away with class
antagonisms. 1t has but established
new classes, new conditions of oppres-
sion, new forms of struggle in place
of the old ones"
WHICH CLASS DOES THE FLAG
REPRESENT?
AS the interests of the workingclass
are Numerically opposed to the in
terests of the capitalist-class, how can
the Stars and Stripes symbolic the
interests of both exploited and ex-