table they ought to have, the leisure in their lives they ought to have, the

opportunities in life they ought to have; if you don't want to wait

yourselves,--write on your banner, so that every political trimmer can read it,

so that every politician, no matter how short-sighted he may be, can read it,

"_WE NEVER FORGET!_ If you launch the arrow of sarcasm at labor, _WE NEVER

FORGET!_ If there is a division in Congress, and you throw your vote in the

wrong scale, _WE NEVER FORGET!_ You may go down on your knees, and say, 'I am

sorry I did the act'--but we will say '_IT WILL AVAIL YOU IN HEAVEN TO BE SORRY,

BUT ON THIS SIDE OF THE GRAVE, NEVER!_'" So that a man in taking up the labor

question will know he is dealing with a hair-trigger pistol, and will say, "I am

to be true to justice and to man; otherwise I am a dead duck."

 

* * * * *

 

In Russia there is no press, no debate, no explanation of what government does,

no remonstrance allowed, no agitation of public issues. Dead silence, like that

which reigns at the summit of Mont Blanc, freezes the whole empire, long ago

described as "a despotism tempered by assassination." Meanwhile, such despotism

has unsettled the brains of the ruling family, as unbridled power doubtless made

some of the twelve Caesars insane; a madman, sporting with the lives and comfort

of a hundred millions of men. The young girl whispers in her mother's ear, under

a ceiled roof, her pity for a brother knouted and dragged half dead into exile

for his opinions. The next week she is stripped naked and flogged to death in

the public square. No inquiry, no explanation, no trial, no protest, one dead

uniform silence, the law of the tyrant. Where is there ground for any hope of