If Marion and his band could rise superior to physical appetites in fighting for thirteen little colonies away off from the great centers of civilization; if the followers of Gomez and the immortal Maceo can march over perilous mountains and through deadly marshes, suffering continually for want of food and drink, and for years swing with almost supernatural skill their deadly machetes against the brutal hordes of Spain, in order to free one little West India isle, then surely we, who see the brutal arm of a united world plutocracy striking down and destroying all that has been bought so dearly by Washington, Marion, and Lincoln, about to enslave the world's home and refuge of freedom for a hundred years, we should not be unwilling to make any sacrifice, take any risks, perform any drudgery.
In defending our country we decide the destiny of the human race. We fight to make seventy millions of people free and eventually to free the world. Ours is the most sublime, the most terrific, the most inspiring of all historic struggles.
In fighting we will take the advice and learn what we can from any source however humble. We will listen to the hygienist, the vegetarian, even to the soup house reformer, if their words will help free us from those chains of poverty that paralyze the arm of the ordinary slave and make him impotent to strike back against his oppressors.
The man who, because he earns his bread by labor, is looked down upon by the companions of his youth and, because of his helplessness and his clothes, is fenced out of respectable society, such a man requires condensed and highly spiced food. He craves wine and beer and whiskey and every condiment and stimulant that can raise his spirits, depressed by failure, disappointment and the slow plodding life that offers no advancement. Continual drudgery, without opportunity for promotion, engulfs man in a gloom uncheered by a ray of hope.
The reformer, the friend of labor, the idealist, the true Christian believe that such victims should not only have the best food and drink, better clothes and better homes, but that they and their children should also have a chance to rise, should never be debarred from opportunities for advancement or for utilizing any talent or genius before discovered or that may hereafter be discovered, that might lift them to a plane of distinction and honor.
We believe in luxury; so much so that we believe every poor man's family should have an opportunity to enjoy all those healthful and normal luxuries which invention and progress have placed within the reach of men. But the greatest of all luxuries, that which is more appetizing than pepper or salt or cinnamon or garlic, that which is more stimulating than beer or whiskey or even champagne, and which must precede in the hearts of the masses the procurement of all these other and lesser luxuries, is that divinest gift of Heaven—hope. Give a man all the other luxuries that the world affords, and take away hope, and his blood thickens, his eye becomes dull, his color heavy and his pulse irregular. But allow him only dry bread in the open air and sunlight by a flowing brook, and give him hope, and his eye flashes, his heart throbs quicken, his face flushes, his muscles harden and all his physical and mental powers are ready for instant application.
We, the Volunteers of the New Democracy, have an abundant supply of this stimulant more powerful than any liquor, more appetizing than any condiment, more soothing than any narcotic, giving power and increased facility without reaction. We have hope. We have faith. We have purpose. We have absolute knowledge that our cause is just. We know that we shall win. We cannot be suppressed. We cannot be put down. The world is ours. WE ARE INVINCIBLE.
NO RAILWAY PASSES.
In starting out to destroy plutocracy, the first thing the average weakling does is to approach some senatorial or congressional tool of the very plutocracy that he thinks he is opposing, and ask him to beg plutocracy for a weapon to fight it with, free of charge. In other words, in opposing the trusts and monopolies, among which the railroad monopoly is one of the most tyrannical and corrupt, he asks for a free railway pass.
The railroad pass is the most corrupting instrument in American politics to-day. It buys for a small price our congressmen and senators, our county and state committees of both the Democratic and Republican parties, our bosses in both parties, our editors, Democratic and Republican, our preachers, Democratic, Republican and Prohibition, and many of our Democratic lecturers and speakers. Even many of our labor leaders make themselves impotent in this great struggle by accepting railroad passes. Our labor statisticians, from the National office in Washington to the smallest State branch, aid in smothering facts and giving life to fiction in order to ride on railroad passes.