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AMERICAN SYNDICALISM

ency, either for him or for the party, that he should be there, as that he should be in the Republican Party or the Catholic church. This is not to defame him, but to define him. He is as much out of place on that Board as an orthodox Single Taxer. In his writings and speeches, he represents with extraordinary fidelity the primitive, undisciplined forces in Syndicalism. With epigrammatic skill, he voices this fast emerging and plaintive aspiration which lowlier and ignored masses of working men and women are coming to feel; those without votes; those that no trade union would have for the asking; those who can be shoved aside and "put upon" because they neither speak our tongue nor know our ways—these half bewildered legions become articulate in this agitator who is to that extent educator. They recognize something in him which feeds hungers that in some way have to be fed. It is a craving which no church, catholic or protestant, can satisfy. Its urgency is untouched by religious appeal because the heart of it is economic. No delayed other-worldly appeal will divert it.

The speech or symbol that can reach and rouse them is not meanly to be thought of, nor should any pharisaical arrogance set such an one wholly at naught. It is because this heart of reality is in the movement as a whole, that our problem with the I. W. W. is so beset by perplexities. There is much in its motive to command our respect. In its active striving, there is much with which society will have to coöperate or suffer from its lack of intelligent sympathy. The proletariat, the "fourth estate," or by whatever name