But with their thinking apparatus—ah, that is a different story!
Lawson, Caplan, Schmidt
Alexander Berkman
I don’t know of anything more tragic and pitiful than the superstition that “Justice will triumph.” What this metaphysical conception of “justice” really signifies, how it is to be expressed in applicable terms, is impossible to determine in view of the multiplicity of individual antagonisms and class interests.
But somehow we all believe in “justice”; yet the criterion of each is the degree of the attainment of his own purpose.
From time immemorial we humans have been clamoring for “justice,” divine and earthly. Hence our slavery. And Kaiser and Czar both claim justice on their side, and millions are slaughtering each other to attain the particular justice of their respective masters.
In this blessed land of ours, justice is ranked high, and labor is constantly basing its appeals and demands on justice. But perhaps—let us hope—the John Lawson case has somewhat jolted the popular faith in the metaphysical conception, at least so far as it manifests itself in the Colorado courts. It is safe to say that there is no intelligent man in that state who does not know that the stage for Lawson’s conviction had been set long before his trial. He was an intelligent, active agitator. He sought to crystallize the rebellious dissatisfaction of the miners into effective action:—sufficient reason for the Rockefeller-controlled state to eliminate, most emphatically, such an undesirable element.
In Colorado, as well as throughout the rest of the country, most people know that a great “injustice was done Lawson.” What are the people of Colorado doing about it? Not a thing. The cheerful idiot, otherwise known as the good citizen, cares for justice only in the degree in which it affects his own pocket. And the masses of labor who do feel themselves and their cause injured by the railroading of Lawson to prison—they call the verdict a “miscarriage of justice”—applaud Professor Brewster who wired Lawson: “Unbelievable. Counsel friends keep cool. Justice will be done.”
And the people of Colorado remain inactive, in the belief that the Supreme Court, the Governor, or maybe the Holy Ghost will see to it that justice is done.
Yet the Lawson lesson has not been entirely lost. It is possible that it has shed a light that will reflect itself on coming fights between labor and capital. It is more than probable that the lesson has already borne fruit in the more aggressive attitude of labor in some parts of the country. It has helped ever-growing numbers to realize that to expect “justice” in the struggle between labor and capital means to doom the toilers to defeat.