"Braun shudders at the thought because the men who are now urging this change—the Industrial Workers of the World—are displeasing to him. They are not good party socialists. Mabel don't like them because they tell unpleasant truths about the crooks in her organization. I don't like them personally, either, because they are just as narrow-minded as Isadore, and I guess some of them are as crooked as any of the trade-union leaders. But the idea is bigger than personalities. You mark my words, Yetta, industrial unionism is going to be a bigger issue every year with the working-men. It's going to win. And the outcome of industrial unionism is the General Strike and Insurrection.
"Isadore pooh-poohs the idea of bloodshed. The social revolution is going to be a kid-glove affair. He will admit the possibility of sporadic riots. But the great victory is to be won at the voting booths. Justice is to be enthroned by ward caucuses and party conventions. Victor Berger instead of Dick Croker. The central committee instead of Tammany Hall. He really believes this, but it is based on two suppositions, both of which seem to me very uncertain. First, reason is to conquer the earth and the great majority is to vote reasonably—that is, the Socialist ticket. Second, the grafters and all the contented, well-fed, complaisant people are going to resign without a struggle.
"I don't think they will. They may not have the courage to defend their privileges themselves. But bravery, the fighting kind, is one of the cheapest things on the human market. Our government buys perfectly good soldiers for $13.50 a month. The privileged class always has hired mercenaries to defend their graft and I think they will in the future. They've already begun to do it with their State Constabulary in Pennsylvania. Read about how the French capitalists massacred our comrades after the Paris Commune. That was only thirty years ago. I don't see any reason to hope for a very startling change in their natures.
"And then is reason going to rule the world—the cold intellectual convictions that Isadore means? I doubt it. The great movements in the world's history have come from passionate enthusiasms. Take the Reformation, or the English Commonwealth, or the French Revolution. Not one man in ten of all the actors in those crises were what Isadore would call reasonable. Reason is powerless unless it is backed by a great enthusiasm. And if we have that, we can turn the trick quicker with a general strike and insurrection than we could by voting.
"This question of violence or peace is a thorny one. We've got to separate what we would like to see from what seems probable. Bloodshed is abhorrent. But it is pretty closely associated with the history of human progress. Before the great Revolution the mass of the French people were in the very blackest ignorance. They've had a century of revolution and bloodshed, and to-day they are the most cultured nation in the world. The same thing is happening to-day in Russia. We read in the papers of assassinations and executions and insurrections. It means that the intellect of a great people is coming to life. And the mind of our nation has got to be shaken into wakefulness, too. We've got to learn new and deeper meanings to the old words justice and liberty. I'd like to believe we could learn them in school, by reading socialist pamphlets. But all the race has ever learned about them so far has been in battle-fields and behind barricades. I hate and fear bloodshed. I believe it's wrong. Just as you said you thought it was wrong to lie. But I love liberty more.
"And there's one other point: Until we learn these lessons, we've got to see our strong men and women cut down by tuberculosis, we've got to stand by and watch a slaughter of innocent babies that makes Herod's little massacre look like a schoolboy's naughtiness. The socialists don't like the word 'violence.' The reality is in the air we breathe. The landlord wracks rent out of the poor by violence—no amount of legal drivel can hide the fact that every injustice of our present society is put through by the aid—on the treat—of police. The whole force of the state is back of the grafters. It's violence that drives people into the sweat-shops, that drives the boys to crime and the girls to prostitution. And all this deadly injustice will go on until we've learned the lessons of justice and liberty. Let us learn them as peacefully and legally as possible, but we must learn them. Blood isn't a nice thing to look at, but it isn't as unspeakably horrible as the sputum of tuberculosis."
"What you are saying is rank anarchy," Braun protested.
"I've told you a hundred times you can't scare me by calling names. 'Anarchy' is just as much a word of progress as 'Socialism.' I think you've got the best of it when it comes to a description and analysis of society and industrial development. But the Anarchists have got you backed off the map in the understanding of human motives and social impulses.
"I'm an optimist, Yetta, about this social conflict. I don't think it matters much what form people give to their activity. The important thing is not to be neutral. The thing that is needed is a passion for righteousness. Once a person sees—really sees—the conflict between greed and justice, and enlists in the revolution, it doesn't matter much whether he goes into the infantry or cavalry or artillery. I see in society a ruling class growing fat off injustice, a great, lethargic mass, indifferent through ignorance, and a constantly growing army of revolt. Anybody who doubts the outcome is a fool. History does not record a single year which did not bring some victory for Justice. But a person's equally a fool—I mean you, Isadore—who tries to prophesy just how the war will be conducted. There isn't any omniscient general back of us, directing the campaign. The progress towards victory is the result of myriad efforts, uncoordinated, often conflicting. It is entirely irrational—just like evolution. The anthropoidal ape, sitting under a prehistoric palm tree and picking fleas off his better half, did not know how—through the ages—his offspring were going to become men. Even with our superior intellects, our ability to study the records of the past and guess into the future, we cannot presage the steps of the progress. The directing force is the instinctive common sense of life. It's a more mysterious force than any theological God. It's always on the job, always pushing life through new experiments, through 'variations' to the better form.
"All evolution has been a history of life struggling for liberty. It was a momentous revolution, when the first tiny animalcule tore itself loose from immobility, when it conquered the ability to move about in quest of food and a larger life. And so one after another life conquered new abilities. It's abilities, not rights, that constitute liberty. Think how many fake experiments life made before it turned out a man. The same process is going on to-day. You can't crowd life into a definition. Justice is being approximated, not because of one formula. The victory will come not because the people accept one theory, but because of thousands and thousands of experiments. And the ones that fail are just as much a part of the process.