The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-06-22
ON SECOND THOUGHT
BIZ JAY e. HOUSE
tFrom Philadelphia Public Ledger.)
More About Class Consciousness.

MOrS ABOUT CIaSS CONSCIOUSNESS
The other day we contributed to
contemporary Journalism three or
four paragraphs bearing upon our
conception of class consciousness and
relating briefly what it had done to
Ed Gleason. The lueubration evoked
the following letter:
Sir-This is just the way apologists
for chattel slavery used to talk about
the infamous agitators who caused
the supplemented slaves to become
conscious of their condition. Some
inventive humorist OF 1850 easily
could have drawn a wholly imagina-
tive picture of contented, Industrious
Sambo. cared for by his beneficent
sessions in his humble cabin~an des-
tined to die happy but for the notori-
Gus John Brown or William Lloyd
Garrison. who put ideas into his head
and spoiled good slave.
Now we erect monuments to Garri-
son ana LoveJoy and you tories throw
bricks at their grandchildren, Os-
valid GarrisonVillard and John Love-
JOY Elliott, who have inherited their
reforming temperament and who are
assailing the evils of wage slavery.
Just as their ancestors did those of
chattel slavery. These people with
inherited idealisn have under eyoiu-
ton Just as much right to their ma
lures as you to your sluggish, half
Witted contcntment with everything
that is. Both types have stood OPP
posed to each other for 500, 900 years.
II your type had always prevailed. we
should still be living in caves and eat
Ing our enemies.
F. OGDEN coRNICK.
AS We have heretofore indicated,
prohaoiy we do not rightly know what
t.
we have never been able to feel it,
ana we cannot understand the lam
guage employed By those who dis
cuss it.
But when it comes to wage slavery,
we are. SO to speak. there. We are a
wage slave; Saving two or three COM
parativeiy brief periods, during which
we assumed the responsibility of
meeting the payroll, We have always
been a wage slave. Probably we shall
always be one.
And every time anybody pities us
with glee.
Say. thirty years age. we We're sit
ting meditatively upon a plow beam,
looking out upon the humble and
oieak environment which circuln-
s9riDeo US. We should have been
plow1ng, but We were just :ned.tati ting.
Our meditations were not concerned
with the fact that we were a ware
slave bound by class TO the wheel OF
poverty. Nothing like that we had
no such conception of our lot. Ne
were wondering how we could GET
hold of twenty-five cents. We wanted
to go to Alex SCOTS dance that night.
The booking fee was TWENTY-FIVE
cents, and We were constitutionally
impecunious.
Now we have no extraordinary gifts,
unless the spending OF money easily
he D11
fled. We are not Industrious nor par
ticularly ambitious. We never studied
by the light of a blazing pine knot.
The pine knot had ceased to be the
insignia of the earnest, ambitious
young man long before we were born.
And the only Zeal use to which we
ever put a smudged lantern was that
Of learning to play poker in the hay
NOW.
Nevertheless, wage slave that we
Joyed about all of the comforts and
Injuries the rich can command, and
we still are enjoying them.
Poor, obscure, unknown and I'M
educated, We have had about every
thing a rich man can have except the
grievouS responsibility of taking care
Of his money and the care ana worry
engendered by Industrial competition
And we have had it without marked
| equipment, unusual striving or extra
ordinary endeavor.
In this fat country the poor fish
who whines about his luck or his
chance isn't worth the dynamite nee
essary to blow him out of the water.
This country is run by capitalists
1t will be SO run as long as it amounts
to whoop in Gehenna.
It is true a good many of the capt.
taiists are worth no more than S. 900
Some of them are worth less.
But they all stand for the capital
istic viewpoint of Individual endeavor
They are all trying, most of them
honestly, to get ahead. to lay up
something for the rainy day, to
achieve q certain degree of financial
security for themselves.
They run the country. and it is
right that they should do so.
They pay the taxes and meet its
overhead.
They are, in the last analysis. re-