the "Industrial Workers of the World." They are not in the least disturbed that we name them "outlaws." If a half of what they say of our present society is true, the "outlaw" is the one heroic figure in our midst.
At the heart of the movement is an impulse and a motive which no one with open mind can really see without respect. The hectoring crudities of the movement are so in evidence, as to blot out what is best in an idealism which we should not lose. To forget that the movement has its idealism is not only to mistake it as a whole, but very wretchedly to bungle in our practical relations with it. Thus far I. W. W. victories have been largely won by the blunders of their enemies. This will continue until we know better what socialism in general really means and why a more giddy and harassing form of it now appears.
If it could become, once for all, clear to us what this means, it would save us from immeasurable ills. The government has taken no one of its ungainly steps in "interference" which was not forced upon it by the vague but importunate pressure of a changing public opinion. No politician has a feather's weight of influence in these interferences, beyond what the atmospheric pressure of this general opinion gives him. The scurviest demagogue can only take advantage of it.
Beginning with transportation; then with larger businesses in closest affiliation with these main arteries of traffic, the public has come to feel that these are social as well as private affairs. Above all, it
