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

A thousand times more strong.

By William Ewart Gladstone

(English liberal statesman, 1809-1898)

In almost every one, if not in every one, of the greatest political controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce, whether they affected religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable institution of slavery, or what subject they touched, these leisured classes, these educated classes, these titled classes, have been in the wrong.

The Bad Shepherds

By Octave Mirbeau

(Celebrated French man-of-letters, born 1850. A play, first produced in 1897, with Sarah Bernhardt in the leading rôle, presenting the class-struggle from the point of view of the anti-parliamentarian. At the height of a desperate strike of steel-workers, the leader of the strikers is addressing a secret gathering in a forest, near a religious shrine)

Jean:—You reproach me—and this is the worst charge you bring against me—that I refused the meeting with the radical and socialist deputies who wanted to mix up in our affair, and take the direction of the strike?

Voices:—Yes—yes! Silence! Hear him!