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AMERICAN SYNDICALISM

power of the year's income is far lower than in the United States. They have for many years been doing it on a scale which most well-to-do people would consider insane or criminal. The propertied classes very generally shuffle and kick at ordinary taxes, but with voluntary devotion millions of working men and women bring hard earned money to support an idea. They are not doing this in spurts of enthusiasm, but with tireless persistency, sustained by a great faith.

I read for a year a socialist paper in which I never saw a single advertisement. Debts were incurred to start it. Deficits followed like a shadow. Asked how they went on with such a load: "Why, we have to give a lot of time free, and beg the rest from comrades. Two in the office work three or four hours a day after their own work is done and never take a cent. One woman has a little money and gives all her time. We have our pious formulas. 'He who quickly gives, gives twice': 'Who gives himself gives better than his coin.' "But no part of our citizenship puts these pieties to more instant or wider use than socialists.

If richer folk were taxed according to their means, one half of that which thousands of socialists in our midst are freely taxing themselves, it would be thought an outrage and a tyranny. The sacrifices to carry on the socialist sheet just mentioned are but a leaf from a thick book. What goes on in that dingy office is only a very tiny sample. In many hundreds of other offices the same story could be told. And yet the sum total of this press activity is itself also but a fraction