Broadsides (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 Excerpt: ...And when the British did not like the American boycott of English tea and tried to send troops to break down that big strike in Boston, then they showed them at Lexington and at Bunker Hill and at Saratoga and finally at Yorktown, what it means to try to break down a strike with the help of soldiers when all the people are armed. A similar example in history we witnessed a few years ago in the case of the Boers. The Boers were only a handful of armed farmers, but it took ten trained English soldiers to every one of those farmers to subjugate them and disarm them. Now the Boers make no more trouble. They would now even stand for Coolie immigration, if they were compelled to do so--because they can not resist any longer. But I will say this: If the American people would accept the Swiss military system or some similar method of arming, in an organized and orderly fashion, every sober and reputable citizen, then this country at once would become the greatest and strongest democracy this world has ever seen. As it is now, we only have the biggest plutocracy and may soon have a monarchy, based upon some "big stick," and the necessity of keeping the great "unwashed" in his place. I predict that if a capitalist congress and capitalist legislature would tomorrow decide that no man is fit to vote who does not pay at least fifty dollars taxes per year--or if they would tomorrow decide that the working class is not fit for the ballot, because the workingmen didn't know how to use it when they had it--then the working class would have to submit to the inevitable. It would have to accept the new condition without resistance as a new decree of God Almighty or of his junior partner, George F. Baer. On the other hand, it is clear that a scientific and s...