334 THE CLASS STRUGGLE EDITORIALS 335 EDITORIALS Beginning with this number, The Class Struggle will appear as monthly magazine.
The price per copy will be, as heretofore, 25 cents; annual subscriptions, 00.
The next issue will appear at the end of September and will contain a critical review and all interesting data of the socialist and Communist Conventions to be held during the last days of August and the first days of September in Chicago.
The Socialist Publication Society, the publishers of The Class Struggle, at its last meeting, endorsed the Program and Manifesto of the Left Wing of the Socialist Party of Greater New York, as well as the Declaration of Principles adopted by the National Left Wing Conference held in New York, and pledged its heartiest support to its organization and propaganda work.
They know that the Russian Soviet Government is spending millions in this country, for propaganda, and for the manufacture of guns, bombs and other implements of destruction which have hitherto been regarded as the sole and exclusive property of the ruling class. They know that the Rand School is a hotbed of sedition; that revolt, anarchy and murder are the chief subjects on the curriculum. They know that the Socialist movement has already organized a Red Army that is only waiting for the signal to overwhelm the City of New York as a basis of operation against the rest of the nation. They know that the bombs that caused such tremendous excitement during the first week of May were sent by Bolshevist agitators. They know that the Negro riots in Chicago and Washington broke out because Bolshevik propagandists had been putting ridiculous notions into the heads of the Negro population, telling them that they were human beings, with human rights, under the Constitution of the United States. Haven they discovered that Bolshevik agitators are responsible for the increase in prostitution and venereal diseases, that they are actually fostering sexual promiscuity in order to lower the morale of the American people?
Obviously, it is quite superfluous to summon representatives of the suspect organizations before the august committee, to wring from them a confession of their wrong doings. Particularly since the purpose of the whole investigation is simply to create public opinion in favor of new repressive legislation. The espionage laws that served their purpose during the war are no longer available. It has been found practically impossible to secure convictions against Socialist and radical speakers and writers since talesmen have become more interested in the high cost of living than in the establishment of democracy in Europe.
New laws curtailing the freedom of speech of the dissatisfied, gagging the radical press, proscribing workingmen who speak in favor of strikes and all others who dare to disturb the peaceful harmony that has settled down upon this great land of ours by disaffection and strife must be placed upon the statute books. Laws so rigorous that even the easy going American will protest unless he is effectually scared into submission by the fear of the terrible Bolshevik.
What matters it that the raids upon centers of radical thought failed to produce material of an incriminating nature? The headline readers are convinced that they are the meeting places of desperate characters, and clamor for their extermination. What if the raid on the Soviet Bureau failed to prove that Russian money was financing revolutionary propaganda in the United States? What if the identity of the May 1st bomb plotters, in The Lusk Fishing Expedition We should, of course, take this opportunity to register an indignant protest against the appointment and the activity of the notorious Lusk Committee. But, try as we may, we can feel nothing more serious than a sensation of mild amusement, coupled perhaps with honest amazement at the stupidity and blindness of the gentlemen into whose hands the ruling class of our state has laid the important task of demolishing Bolshevism.
Ostensibly the Lusk Committee was created for the purpose of investigating the radical labor movement, here and abroad; as a matter of fact there remains nothing to investigate. The capitalist class, and those who look at the world through its ready towear eye glasses, has long since come to the conclusion that Bolshevism is the common name applicable to all that is vile, dastardly and horrible in human nature. They know that right here, in our little old United States, dangerous elements are bloodthirstily craving to wrest the power of the nation out of the hands of its super perfect, sublimely idealistic, intensely democratic rulers for the purpose of killing, murdering and butchering every man, woman and child that has no red card in his pocket.