The Revolutionary Age Vol. I, No. 18 Price Cents Chronicle and Interpretation of International Events Saturday, February 15, 1919 They can Deport Men, but not Ideas. is nerunciously but realized it present seething throughout the world is the result of through the years of war only to find that their masters vous. The workers are restive and Capitalism foreign doctrines and though in some parts of the took advantage of the opportunity to more firmly enable to sooth them. The war has petered out and world there may be reasons for the discontent here trench themselves in their privileged positions. The those who bore its bloody burden are awakening to it is entirely the product of agitation and propaganda war is over, the Hun is no longer at the gate and the the realization that they were duped. All the glowing by sinister forces utterly foreign to these shores! De workers of America are taking a breathing space and port the foreigners and their ideas go with them and looking around.
fire, all the democratic phrases are gone and only the hideous reality remains, the struggle for existence, the we can once more resume our peaceful progress tow; They find that while they have unsparingly labored ards the millineum, we become a nation of potential others have schemed and that all their toil and misery bite of poverty, the quest of a job, the daily grind, presidents and multimillionaires. and bloodshed have resulted in nothing except riches the fear of want. The mirage has vanished and only This cry of Americanization, this movement for an for the few and poverty for the many. They have, the gritty desert sand remains to torment the parched intensive and narrow nationalism, is in reality nothing however, discovered something more. They have belips.
The workers. those who remained behind and bore to realize that they have a community of interest Strike Breaking with the slavery of industry, those who went forward and are complaining about are the same things against suffered in the hell fire of war, are demanding a fulThe arrest of Ime Kaplan, secretary of the Law.
which workers of other countries are protesting.
fillment of the the promises. Not perhaps as yet consrence Strike Committee, on the charge of draft evasion And more than this they are seeing that the Russian nevertheless insistently and the masters, is merely a further instance of how even the Federal workers have found the solution. Dimiy, through lords and rulers of all lands are empty handed. The laws and the legal machinery of the country, to say darkened glasses, they are seeing that the evils which master class is becoming aware that a demand is being nothing of the State laws and machinery, are used for are pressing them down are not the superficial, indimade, that they are unable to fulfill it, and so they the purpose of supporting the master class. The fact vidual, local evils but evils resulting from a state of are nervous. They turn this way and that without that Kaplan was released after a few hours detention society that functions equally in the Seattle shipyards, result and their nervousness turns to irritation.
only serves to strengthen the assumption that the affair the Lawrence mills, the Japanese rice fields, the Eng. Whom the gods would destroy they first inake mad.
was a deliberate frame up for the purpose of injurlish mines.
ing the cause of the workers. If after investigating the During the war the class conscious worker foresaw The unrest is not the result of agitators or of agicase for a couple of hours the authorities can decide many of the developments that are now taking place tation but of conditions. The ideas are not the result that Kaplan had complied with the law, the question and he gave voice to his vision. The jails opened to rrceive him, condemned as a pro German. The hystenaturally arises as to why such investigation was not of agitators so much as they are the result of the fact that the workers have begun to think for themselves.
made prior to the arrest.
ria of war blinded the others of his class, they were The Russian revolution, the struggle in Germany, the silent and Capitalisni smiled. The jails filled, still According to press reports Kaplan was arrested unrest in England, France, Italy, all affect the unrest the voices increased and Capitalism ceased to smile.
while a committee meeting was in progress, and the in America just as the American unrest affects the unNow the war is over and the voices have become men making the arrest also threatened Sam Bramhall, rest in Englend, France and Italy, and the deportation chairman of the Strike Committee, that they were after a roar and the roar has become action. The workers of the agitators only further this unrest.
are seething with dissatisfaction dissatisfaction that him. Bramhall is a man beyond the draft age and it would be interesting to know why the police are after While America is engaged in deporting subjects of the British Empire as alien agitators, England has may at any moment become revolt. The master class him. It would also be interesting to know, provided is nervous and nervousness begets precipitate actior.
gathered together over 200 agitators for deportation Deportations become the order of the day.
the newspaper accounts of the affair are correct, upon English, Scotch what authority the police have the right to threaten and Irish agitators to Britain will the ships that American Capitalism has awakened the fact that him. policeman job is to enforce the law, to make carry the American born agitators to America. Engjailing, men can not stop the spread of ideas. It has arrest if the law is transgressed, not to take it upon is being paraded in England just as Americanit many years to realize this fact and it has himself to threaten individuals. The assumption upon ism is in America. The American agitator is looked only to turn to the deportation of men in which the workers are supposed to respect the law is upon with as much horror by the unthinking British order to accomplish the same result. Jailing men that the law is for the protection of the community. If workers as his compatriot is regarded by the unthinkdoes not succeed in jailing ideas, consequently de this assumption is destroyed, if it becomes clearly ap ing American porting men will result in the deportation of ideas! parent to the workers that the law is only a club with Fifty three men and one woman are already in which is to beat them into submission then the effects The Seattle strike, the Butte strike, the strikes in New York Harbor awaiting deportation. They are will be indeed far reaching.
the textile trades are the results of conditions and the charged with being agitators and the press reports The press gave much publicity to the arrest of Kaptactics adopted by the workers in their struggles with that government officials have a list of over 000 lan as a draft dodger and interspersed the news with the master class are also the result of conditions. The strikes in America are conducted on American lines men and women, also agitators, whom they propose many references to foreigners clearly showing thai tv deport. According to the newspapers the avowed the objective aimed at is to once more divide the workbecause they are confronted with American conditions.
object of the action is to stop the industrial unrest The basic tactics of both the workers and the bosses ers. The war department has officially stated that the that is today spreading throughout America. The are the same the world over but in detail they differ draft is no longer operative and it logically follows prisoners are alleged to be Bolsheviki, Anarchists that it is no longer necessary to carry a registration according to the prevailing conditions.
and members of the or sympathizers of The unrest, the revolutionary movement that is these movements.
Kaplan singled out for examination as to his draft sweeping Europe has its reflex in the American workstatus? Why was he taken away from the Strike Whether this action is a violation of the constituing class, but the American capitalist class also reCommittee at the moment of critical deliberations?
tion of the country, or of the freedom that residents acts to it. period of reaction is here, is developing Did his arrest serve the interest of the 30, 000 workers are supposed to enjoy matters not. The world is at The espionage act will shortly have to present in the throes of the birth of a new order of who are on strike, or did it serve the interest of the be repealed because the war is over but in the meanhalf dozen industrial barons who are responsible for society. The class struggle is actually flaming in is preparing new laws to take its the strike?
action and these deportations are an evidence of the place, laws which will meet the newer developments.
fray. Two opposing classes face each other and The actions of the authorities in this matter require the immigration laws which makes posstruggle for the conquest of power. Capitalism is investigation, not only by the workers of Lawrence, sible these deportations is one of the new laws. These fighting for its existence and these deportations are but, by the workers of the entire country. The masdeportations are the first overt act in the new war part of the struggle. Constitutions and bourgeois ter class makes the laws through its henchmen in the of the capitalists on the workers. Many more acts will guarantees are worthless and legality plays but a legislatures, and what is more important it applies the follow, but the Seattle strike also took on new aspects.
minor role.
The fight made by the western workers was the laws through its control of the police. Bourgeois soCapitalism believes that these agitators menace its first step in repelling the attack. As the struggle beciety rests on the theory that governments and laws existence, it has discovered that prison walls do not comes more intensive both sides will develop new exist for the benefit of the community as a whole, Once this theory breaks down the structure of that methods. The working class is learning rapidly and is allay the menace and so it turns to deportation. Desociety crumbles. The workers have had inany indaily developing new tactics.
portation plays a double part. It gets rid of the agitator and at the same time brands him as something stances of the fallacy of such an assumption and have The reply to the new reaction will probably be that still rentained blind to the real situation but that is no revolutionary propaganda will go underground. Sealien to the soil of Anierica thus fostering in the mind guarantee that they will always remain blind.
cret organizations will function with more power and of the unthinking the idea that the propaganda is also alien to America.
intensity than did the old open organizations which inore than an attempt to utilize all the base passions are now proclaimed. Deportations may go on but the The cry is for Americanization, and Americanization let loose by the war, self glorification, racial prejudice.
has been interpreted by the press, university profes But the war that has enabled the cultivation of these today Class has already grasped the ideas that are revolutionizing the world, the ideas that Russia sors, the pulpit and all the other agencies of reaction ideas has also forever damned them. American soland the German Spartacans have translated into acto mean something altogether apart from the rest of diers have gone to Europe and found out that they tion. Jailing the agitators have spread their ideas, the world. America and Americans are different, were not so much Americans as human beings, sub deportations will simply further the work.
They know nothing of labor troubles, they have no ideas ject to the same feeling and emotions as the millions Ideas cannot be deported. Capitalism can not for the reconstruction society, everybody is content of human beings with whom they fought and the bolster up its tottering power. The march of prowith things as they are, everyone is equal, there are other millions against whom they fought. American gress has decreed that it must go. it is history iron 110 kings in America! All the discontent that is at workers have stifted all their ordinary development must. Let the ships sail!
time the mas The change