be became a captive, he tells them of the pleasures of his youth; he tells them, as they listen to the Numidian lion's roar, that tomorrow it will feast and satisfy its hunger upon them, "Yesterday I met in the arena a gladiator, and I killed him. I thought of the time when I was a child on the hills of Thrace, of a little boy that belonged to a neighbor, and who shared with me my humble meal as we tended our separate flocks on the hillsides, and when I lifted the cowl of the gladiator that I had killed, I found that it was the comrade of my youth. Why should it be that we should struggle? Why should it be that we should fight? Why should it be that we should kill each other for the amusement of the Roman nobles?" And I say now, in an era in which there is an intense struggle for existence among the class that has no money or property, that it is a struggle for the amusement of the property nobles. The children that play together in the streets of Chicago and the villages that dot this continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, will grow up and engage in a life and death struggle for existence, for the amusement and for the benefit of nobody but their masters, the American nobles. I say, my friends, as you draw the line tighter and tighter, the conflicts that are going on and will go on between these men, will array them against their masters. If I can say anything in the interests of humanity, in the interests of liberty, equality, and fraternity, I would say it now. Take heed, take heed! The time, my friends, is not far off. The swift process of reduction of the masses into a condition of depravity and degradation, as is evinced by the number of men out of employment, shows us clearly where we are going. We cannot deny it. No thinking man, no reasoning man, no friend of his kind, can ignore the fact that we are going rapidly on to a precipice. If I call a halt, I consider that in the interest of humanity. I make no threats. I have never made any threats. I have merely spoken and told the people what was the natural result of present existing conditions. I tell them now that I do not advise any man to commit any act which would render himself liable to the law or to punishment; but I say to those who have the means of existence in their possession, that there may come a time when the people will no longer be crowded together, when the rate, as Mr. Grinnell has said, will come out of their holes. I would ask you to read Victor Hugo, read in that grand work, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the description of the vermin that crawled out of the Latin quarter. Unpleasant as these are, they are human beings. Look at the result of the degradation that the masses had been brought to, and at the time of the French Revolution of 1789. They knew nothing. They only knew the blind rage of an enraged tiger to kill something—to destroy something, when their condition had become so desparate that life was no longer desirable and death had no terrors. It is a lesson of history. No man ever willfully throws his life away.
It is not probable that there will be any revolt in America, that there will be any rebellion in any country under the sun, until the time has come when the people can no longer live. They will never do it until then. It is for society to think; it is for them to compare. It will not do for a man to look around at his little home, his own hearthstone, and imagine how comfortable he is, and think because of that, that everything is lovely and everything is safe. It is not. Outside are the men who are suffering; men with
