115. THE MEANING OF SABOTAGE 1

This extract suggests some of the ways that ingenuity and cunning will devise when the situation seems to the workers desperate enough to warrant it.

"Strikes may gain certain advantages for the workers, but sabotage well conducted is sure to bring about the employer's discomfiture. According to direct actionists, sabotage should be as far as possible beneficial to the ultimate consumer, who, in the majority of cases, is a workingman. Workers in the wine and packing industries who refuse to 'wet' wines or who throw away harmful chemicals destined to preserve ephemeral liquids or embalm doubtful meat, cooks who waste so much margarine that this substitute for butter becomes as expensive as the original article, store clerks who refuse to sell a worthless 'just as good' article, insist on giving full weight, substitute truthful labels for those used on 'sales days,' painters who apply the specified coating of paint, etc., are engaged in beneficial sabotage.

"Another kind of sabotage aims at ruining the retailer's trade: bakers may produce bread and cakes unfit for consumption or containing foreign substances; clerks may refuse to show certain goods or call the customer's attention to their defects.

"Individual sabotage may assume a more aggressive form. Sebastien Faure and Pouget delivered recently on the subject of technical instruction as revolution's handmaid an address from which we quote the following extracts:

"The electrical industry is one of the most important industries, as an interruption in the current means a lack of light and power in factories; it also means a reduction in the means of transportation and a stoppage of the telegraph and telephone systems.

"How can the power be cut off? By curtailing in the mine the output of the coal necessary for feeding the machinery or stopping the coal cars on their way to the electrical plants. If the fuel reaches its destination, what is simpler than to set the pockets on fire and have the coal burn in the yards instead of the furnaces? It is child's play to put out of work the elevators and other automatic devices which carry coal to the fireroom.

1 From George Gorham Groat, Organized Labor in America, pages 441-443. The Macmillan Company, New York; 1916. Reprinted by special arrangement with the publishers.

"To put boilers out of order, use explosives or silicates or a plain glass bottle which thrown on the glowing coals hinders the combustion and clogs up the smoke exhausts. You can also use acids to corrode boiler tubes; acid fumes will ruin cylinders and piston rods. A small quantity of some corrosive substance, a handful of emery, will be the end of oil cups. When it comes to dynamos or transformers, short circuits and inversions of poles can be easily managed. Underground cables can be destroyed by fire, water, pliers, or explosives, etc., etc."

Evidently there are two sides to this from the unionist point of view, though but one from the revolutionist's standpoint. This is seen in a discussion of the policy of sabotage as argued by the members of the Commercial Telegraphers' Union, where two different views appear. One runs as follows: "Sabotage can only be worked on a small scale where the individual is in a position to do his work upon his own initiative in a way that no one else is in on his plans. This requires independence of thought and action as well as one chief ingredient nerve. I do not think there are enough commercial telegraphers with nerve to make the plan worth while." To this comes the reply: "Sabotage would fail to bring permanent results, because it is not the weapon of courageous and progressive men. It is on a par with the eavesdropper and stool pigeon of the telegraph companies. A coward's tool to be used in the dark and cannot stand the light of day. Suppose the Western Union did run into an epidemic of 'bulled' and 'lost' messages. Wherein would that help us organize? And that is what we are trying to do."

QUESTIONS

1. Give reasons why the parties to the labor conflict tend to become more reckless and lawless in their tactics.

2. What effect did the varied occupational activities of early women have upon their character and social position?

3. Should married women and mothers undertake anything serious outside the home?

4. Give reasons why women should enter the occupations.

5. Give illustrations of sabotage.

6. Why is sabotage not the weapon of manly and courageous men?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

116. FREE SPEECH 1

I, for one, am fully prepared to listen to any arguments for the propriety of theft or murder, or if it be possible, of immorality in the abstract. No doctrine, however well established, should be protected from discussion. If, as a matter of fact, any appreciable number of persons are so inclined to advocate murder on principle, I should wish them to state their opinions openly and fearlessly, because I should think that to be the shortest way of exploding the principle and of ascertaining the true causes of such a perversion of moral sentiment. Such a state of things implies the existence of evils which cannot be really cured till their cause is known, and the shortest way to discover the cause is to give a hearing to the alleged

reasons.

117. WHAT FREE SPEECH IMPLIES 2

We all believe in freedom of speech, but the question is, do we believe in it when it is disagreeable to us? After all, if freedom of speech means anything, it means a willingness to stand and let people say things with which we disagree, and which do weary us considerably. A good deal of the public discussion on the matter turns on the use of the word "rights." Those who want to speak freely insist on the right of freedom of speech; and, on the other hand, those who wish to restrict speakers talk of the right of the government to carry on war and the right of the government to maintain order, and there we have a deadlock. Each side says it is in the right, and that does not bring us anywhere at all. I think we shall do well to get away from this word "right" entirely, and look at it from another point of view not from the legal point of view, but simply from the point of view of the individual human

1 By Sir Leslie Stephen, English essayist and critic.

2 From Zechariah Chafee, Jr., Freedom of Speech, pages 366-375. Copyright, 1920, by Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., New York. Reprinted by special arrangement with the publishers.

being who wants to speak and the great group of human beings which constitute the society in which he speaks. That is, we have his individual interests and the interests of society at large.

First, we have the individual interest in freedom of speech. "Good," as Emerson says, "does not mean good to eat and good to wear." It means to live our own lives as fully as we can and to bear witness to the truth for which we came into the world. I did intend at this point to quote from Jean-Christophe, by Romain Rolland, but this is one of the proscribed books, for recommending which to his pupils a teacher was dismissed from the New York high schools, and so I will refrain. But instead, I will take a book which was written three thousand years ago, which is fairly safe the Apology of Socrates:

If in acquitting me you should say: "We will not put faith this time, O Socrates, in your accusers, but will let you go, on the condition, however, that you no longer spend your time in this search nor in the pursuit of wisdom, and that if you are caught doing either again you shall die" if, I say, you were to release me on these conditions, I should say to you: "Athenians, I love and cherish you, but shall obey the God rather than you; and as long as I draw breath and have the strength, I shall never cease to follow philosophy and to exhort and persuade any one of you whom I happen to meet. For this, be assured, the God commands; and I believe that there has never been a greater good in the state than this my service to the God; for I do nothing but go about persuading you, both young and old, not to let your first thought be for your body or your possessions, nor to care for anything so earnestly as for your soul." And, Athenians, I should go on to say: "Either hearken to my accusers or not, and either acquit me or not; but understand that I shall never act differently, even if I have to die for it times."

many

That is the individual interest in free speech. Over against that we have to set the social interests - the interest in the safeguarding of the government and the nation from foreign attack, the interest in order, without which all our individual interests would be lost, the interest in moral and decent living, and the interest in the training of the young, which is the main thing that we have to consider here. As between that individual interest and those social interests, it seems easy to conclude that the individual interest should always give way; that, as is often said, freedom of speech

means liberty, not license; that we must not advocate anything that is wrong, anything which interferes with the social interests in order, and so on. But we have to remember that not only do we have the social interest in order, and in the education of the young, and in morals, but that freedom of speech is itself a social interest; that one of the purposes for which society exists just as much as for the maintenance of order is the discovery and the spread of truth.

Another member of the Lowell family, now president of Harvard, said in his report to the Corporation on the subject of freedom of speech, which every Harvard professor can regard as a Magna Charta:

Education has proved, and probably no one would now deny, that knowledge can advance, or at least can advance most rapidly, only by means of an unfettered search for truth on the part of those who devote their lives to seeking it in their respective fields, and by complete freedom in imparting to their pupils the truth that they have found. This has become an axiom in higher education, in spite of the fact that a searcher may discover error instead of truth, and be misled, and mislead others, thereby. We believe that if enough light is let in, the real relations of things will soon be seen, and they can be seen in no other way.

If Americanism means anything, it means free speech, right from the start. The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts to get it, and Roger Williams left Massachusetts, not only because he had his own religious views but because he attacked property rights in land not purchased from the Indians. Thomas Jefferson is usually considered a good American, but he said things about the desirability of rebellion that would make us all shudder. Alexander Hamilton argued for free speech here in New York, and James Russell Lowell called the Mexican War murder. The Abolitionists, men whom we all honor today, believed in Americanism freedom to criticize

the government of their day and the institutions of property of their day, which included a tremendous form of property - the property in negro slaves. I believe in private property myself, but because I believe in it I want to know why it ought to be supported.

And now, for the problem as it affects teachers. There are two views of teaching. One regards teaching as a sort of handing out