They will be only too
pleased to be able to say that we, by our own confession, are merely
restless and negative; that we are only what we call rebels and they call
cranks. But it is not true; and we must not concede it to them for a
moment. The model millionaire is more of a crank than the Socialists;
just as Nero was more of a crank than the Christians. And avarice has
gone mad in the governing class to-day, just as lust went mad in the
circle of Nero. By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity,
capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller "I am a rebel."
I should say "I am a respectable man: and you are not."
Our Lawless Enemies
But the vital point is that the confession of mere rebellion softens the
startling lawlessness of our enemies. Suppose a publisher's clerk
politely asked his employer for a rise in his salary; and, on being
refused, said he must leave the employment? Suppose the employer knocked
him down with a ruler, tied him up as a brown paper parcel, addressed him
(in a fine business hand) to the Governor of Rio Janeiro and then asked
the policeman to promise never to arrest him for what he had done? That
is a precise copy, in every legal and moral principle, of the "deportation
of the strikers." They were assaulted and kidnapped for not accepting a
contract, and for nothing else; and the act was so avowedly criminal that
the law had to be altered afterwards to cover the crime.
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