The Truth About Socialism
CHAPTER I
TO THE DISINHERITED
I am going to put a new heart into you. I am going to put your shoulders back and your head up. Behind your tongue I shall put words, and behind your words I shall put power. Your dead hopes I shall drag back from the grave and make them live. Your live fears I shall put into the grave and make them die. I shall do all of these things and more by becoming your voice. I shall say what you have always thought, but did not say. And, when your own unspoken words come back to you, they will come back like rolling thunder.
This country belongs to the people who live in it.
The power that made the Rocky Mountains did not so make them that, viewed from aloft, they spell “Rockefeller.”
The monogram of Morgan is nowhere worked out in the course of the Hudson River.
Nothing above ground or below ground indicates that this country was made for anybody in particular.
Everything above ground and below ground indicates that it was made for everybody.
Yet, this country, as it stands to-day, is not for everybody. Everybody has not an equal opportunity in it. A few do nothing and have everything. The rest do everything and have nothing.
A great many gentlemen are engaged in the occupation of trying to make these wrongs seem right. They write political platforms to make them seem right. They make political speeches to make them seem right. They go to Congress to make them seem right. Some go even to the White House to make them seem right. But no mere words, however fine, can make these wrongs right.