He is still so very humble.
He is, under the wage-system, forced to obey orders all his life in the factory, the shop and the mine. He is thus habitually so obedient that he will obey any order. He prides himself on his obedience. Under orders he will even plunge a bayonet into the breast of his fellow workers—in the interest of the capitalist class. He forgets the thousand wrongs thrust into his weary life and into the life of his class.
He does indeed forget.
He is still in a dull, dumb slumber.
But he is beginning to rouse from the slumber of meekness—from the social damnation of brainless obedience.
He is beginning to study the history of his own working class; and therefore he is rousing, waking, rising.
Following are some additional short paragraphs on the history of the working class from books by distinguished writers and teachers. It is hoped that these quoted paragraphs will induce further working class study of working class history. These passages confirm the main points of this lesson. (See Chapter Twelve, Suggestion 4.)
Professor Lester F. Ward (Brown University):[[340]]
“Still, the world has never reached a stage where the physical and temporal interests have not been largely in the ascendant, and it is these upon which the economists have established their science. Self-preservation has always been the first law of nature and that which best insures this is the greatest gain.... All considerations of pride or self-respect will give way to the imperious law of the greatest gain for the least effort. All notions of justice which would prompt the giving of an equivalent vanish before it....”
Thus wrote Sir Henry Maine:[[341]]