“7. The system raises class against class; the voters vote by trade and craft groups instead of on the basis of thought units.
“8. The system strikes a blow at the church and the home.
“9. The system is pyramidal and means highly centralized and autocratic power.
“The soviet system of government can not be defended. It is against the interests of the very men for whom it is supposed to have been established—the laboring man. He is the man most of all who must suffer under any kind of government or system that is wrong. He is the man who would be out of bread within the shortest time. He is the man whose family would be destitute of clothing in the shortest time. He is the man whose family will suffer through disease, famine, and pestilence in the shortest time.
“As it is against the best interest of the laboring man, so it is against the best interest of all the people, and, as a matter of fact, the overwhelming mass of people of this country and all countries is made up of laboring people.
“Finally, the soviet government, as foreshadowed in its constitution, is obviously unjust, unfair and discriminatory. This fact will appear at once to any mind trained to the American manner of thought, which takes the trouble to investigate sovietism, and whatever tendency there may be to approve will disappear with better understanding.”
“Men in high places who have had opportunity to get the facts,” says Mr. Burton, “give their impressions of the experiment:
“WOODROW WILSON, President of the United States.—‘There is a closer monopoly of power in Moscow and Petrograd than there ever was in Berlin.’
“SAMUEL GOMPERS, President of the American Federation of Labor.— ‘Bolshevism is as great an attempt to disrupt the trade unions as it is to overturn the government of the United States. It means the decadence or perversion of the civilization of our time. To me, the story of the desperate Samson who pulled the temple down on his head is an example of what is meant by bolshevism.’
“MORRIS HILLQUIT, International Secretary of the Socialist Party.—‘The Socialists of the United States would have no hesitancy whatsoever in joining forces with the rest of their countrymen to repel the Bolsheviki who would try to invade our country and force a form of government upon our people which our people were not ready for, and did not desire.’