XVIII
THE SERVICE OF THE AWAKENER
In most of its present activities in the United States the I. W. W. is pretty exhaustively described by the word "Shocker." It startles the preoccupied by its new and unwonted approach. Like the stroke of a suffragette's hammer upon plate glass, it gets instant attention from every one within hearing.
I heard a man justify himself for personal rudeness on this ground: "I have a weak voice, and if I don't say disagreeable things, nobody will listen to me." The voice of the I. W. W. is not weak, but the society to which it speaks is deaf with a good deal of apathy and indifference. Only the very strident note will reach it. Every step toward larger justice or social protection seems possible only after some shock to the conscience or to the emotions.
We were deaf as adders to the truth about our city politics until a troop of muckrakers shouted the facts in our ears. We have at last begun to deal timidly with the "white slave traffic," though scarcely daring yet to put the deeper facts into words. Such depths of consenting hypocrisy have so long screened it from fearless investigation, that we cannot yet make a regulation that even touches the heart of it. Society has assented to it; found it "necessary" and then used prostitution to protect the virtue of favored classes until the evil has grown into the very structure and tissue of society. The stripped results are now fright-
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