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THE SERVICE OF THE AWAKENER
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indifference among the comfortable, headed the list."

The rebelling spirit of the I. W. W. is at least a wholesome disquieter of this sleep. If we add to this, its own awakening appeal to the more unfavored labor in which its propaganda is carried on, we are merely recognizing forces that are useful until a wiser way is found to do their work. This we have not yet found, neither have we greatly and searchingly tried to find it. So many are our social inhumanities that the rudest upsetting will do us good if the shock of it forces us to our duties.

With much of the purposed motive of the I. W. W. we may also sympathize. The goal at which they aim is one from which every parasitic and unfair privilege shall be cut out. I asked one of the best of them, "What ultimately do you want?" "I want a world," he said, "in which every man shall get exactly what he earns and all he earns;—a world in which no man can live on the labor of another."

It is not conceivable that any rational person should deny the justice and the reasonableness of that ideal. Every step toward it is a step nearer a decent and more self-respecting society. But progress toward those larger equalities is very little helped by stating far off ends. To play imaginatively with ideal perfections is easy to the laziest of our faculties. We are, however, not here in the sphere of poetry, but in the sphere of suggested social reconstruction. Never till we reach the question of means, measures, methods, is there the slightest test of wisdom among those entering upon tasks so formidable. Customs, institutions, and,