It is not the jester who speaks in these words, it is the truthteller. Until the humbling lesson is learned by those addressed, all the gnawing miseries of this social disease will go on as of old.
This special evil is but one of many whose roots have reached such depths in our society that traditional palliatives, like many of our charities, do not even touch them. With all our enormous expenditure against crime, did it ever stalk among us with more effrontery in the United States than at the present moment?
It looks as if suffering or successive shocks alone could compel us to deal greatly and adequately with these evils. We do not even heed industrial and economic wrongs unless stunned and frightened into action. There were evils in Southern lumber camps quite unbelievable until I. W. W. "agitators" called attention to them.
But for these disturbers, we should apparently have looked on unconcerned while textile managers cut wages because the state had wisely lowered the working hours. A progressive social legislation should not be defeated by private decision in that manner. The consequences are far too serious for private determination. If a wage-cut which was so certain to involve social danger is necessary, it should at least have adequate public explanation. The end to these secret and absolute decisions, in which the public is intimately concerned, cannot come too soon. If I. W. W. tactics help to face these issues, their "agitators" then become educators and as such deserve approval.
In many other ways, they startle a too impassive
