capitalist legislation, bayonets, machine-guns, policemen's clubs,
professional strike-breakers and armed Pinkertons--these are the
things the capitalist class is dumping in front of the tide of
revolution, as though, forsooth, to hold it back.

The capitalist class is as blind to-day to the menace of the
revolution as it was blind in the past to its own God-given
opportunity. It cannot see how precarious is its position, cannot
comprehend the power and the portent of the revolution. It goes on
its placid way, prattling sweet ideals and dear moralities, and
scrambling sordidly for material benefits.

No overthrown ruler or class in the past ever considered the
revolution that overthrew it, and so with the capitalist class of to-
day. Instead of compromising, instead of lengthening its lease of
life by conciliation and by removal of some of the harsher
oppressions of the working-class, it antagonizes the working-class,
drives the working-class into revolution. Every broken strike in
recent years, every legally plundered trades-union treasury, every
closed shop made into an open shop, has driven the members of the
working-class directly hurt over to socialism by hundreds and
thousands. Show a working-man that his union fails, and he becomes a
revolutionist. Break a strike with an injunction or bankrupt a union
with a civil suit, and the working-men hurt thereby listen to the
siren song of the socialist and are lost for ever to the POLITICAL
CAPITALIST parties.

Antagonism never lulled revolution, and antagonism is about all the
capitalist class offers. It is true, it offers some few antiquated
notions which were very efficacious in the past, but which are no