The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest / The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

by Unknown

On a Steamship

By Upton Sinclair

(See pages [43], [143], [194], [274], [403], [776], [803])

All night, without the gates of slumber lying,

I listen to the joy of falling water,

And to the throbbing of an iron heart.

In ages past, men went upon the sea,

Waiting the pleasure of the chainless winds:

But now the course is laid, the billows part;

Mankind has spoken: “Let the ship go there!”

I am grown haggard and forlorn, from dreams

That haunt me, of the time that is to be,

When man shall cease from wantonness and strife,

And lay his law upon the course of things.

Then shall he live no more on sufferance,

An accident, the prey of powers blind;

The untamed giants of nature shall bow down—

The tides, the tempest and the lightning cease

From mockery and destruction, and be turned

Unto the making of the soul of man.

By Thomas Carlyle

(See pages [31], [74], [133], [488], [553], [652])

We must some day, at last and forever, cross the line between Nonsense and Common Sense. And on that day we shall pass from Class Paternalism, originally derived from fetish fiction in times of universal ignorance, to Human Brotherhood in accordance with the nature of things and our growing knowledge of it; from Political Government to Industrial Administration; from Competition in Individualism to Individuality in Co-operation; from War and Despotism, in any form, to Peace and Liberty.