The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-10-07

homie power of the owners of the | means of production and distribu- tion unless the workers organize what is just as essential to the owners of the machinery of produc tion and distribution namely their labor. And it is quite within the bounds of possibility that such a general organization might be used for the express purpose of securing political action of a definite sort by the workers, as it is so frequently and so universally done by employ CTS. In fact is has been done alrea- dy in other nations, and many will recall the occasion in Belgium when organized labor to secure universal suffrage resorted to general strike.
 Most of us however live in world of myth, and are quite bewildered by the political activities which are in evidence around us. The politici- ans even when spokesmen for de- finite and powerful interests which intend to effect their designs come what may, will affect the loftiest motives and speak and act appar- ently on the highest plane of moral 1 ity and humanitarianiSm. They per vert the truth which insists that men act from motives acquired by their economic interest as directly | inspired by their economic environ 1 ments, and the most successful po- 1 litician is the person who can arouse in the mentality of the masses an l ideal and perverted conception of an environment which is not theirs. We cannot rise above the economic plane. That is the gravitating force that makes the ideal unreal, and the real ideal, and politics itself re- presents at all times the interests of some economic interest which is not lost in the mazes of idealism, but knows it's economic needs. Essen tially has this been the case with the propertied classes. They have as a matter of fact made business the keynote of politics and the high est praise of a legislative body con- trolling government is that it gave a business administration.
 We might point out in this con- nection the immense ramifications of the economic interests in all po' litical functions. How dollar diplo- macy has been the basis of all diplo- macy, and how the machinery or national governments moved when financial, commercial and industrial interests so dictated is too well know and will be immediately real ized without any cases being cited. The associations which the great in- dustrial interests have maintained with the legislators or this country have been searching and shrewd. It did not need the stolen letters of Standard Oil or the notorious reve- lations of Colonel Mulhall and the probe of the Lobby investigation committee to show this.
 Complaint is made that these various actions are class legislation, class action and class decisions. And ;, they are. Nor is there any means whereby they can be overcome while there are classes, exploiting and ex- plotted or employing and employed and there are class antagonisms Class antagonisms have existed in every age wherein there were classes, and the more precise is the division between the classes, also and positively the greater will be the antagonisms which will prevail between them. In no place does this antagonism manifest itself so defi- nitely as in the political activities
 just as long as those are open tc such classes, but there has been constant effort upon the part of one to limit the political activity and freedom of the other in favor o1 itself. There is such thing as the economic instinct of the individual
 in society, but it's expression is only to be discovered in collective action
 because for the most part it IS be
 ing constantly in the exploited lndl
 vidual either perverted or suppress
 sed.
 From this it can be understood how difficult is the position of the politician who endeavors to answer ], the call of "all his constituents" ) and the interesting dexterity of the
 more nimble of these mental gym nasts can be the better appreciated when the impossibility of their tasl 3 is fully understood.