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THE OLDEST ANARCHISM 311
dealing out equal justice, one suddenly
sees a feudal
despotism arise, as if by magic, to usurp the political,
judicial, and military powers of a great state, and to
use them to arrest hundreds without warrant and throw
them into "bull pens"; to drive hundreds of others out
of their homes and at the point of the bayonet out of the
state; to force others to labor against their will or to be
beaten ;
to depose the duly elected officials of the community;
to insult the courts; to destroy the property of
those who protest; and even to murder those who show
—
signs of revolt one stands aghast. It makes one wonder
just how far in reality we are removed from barbarism.
Is it possible that the — likelihood of the workers
achieving an eight-hour day which was all that was
wanted in Colorado— could lead to civil war Yet that
is what might and perhaps should have happened
in
Colorado in 1904, when, for a few months, a military
despotism took from the people there all that had been
won by centuries of democratic striving and thrust them
back into the Middle Ages.
Chaotic political and industrial conditions are, of
course, occasionally inevitable in modern society — torn
as it is
by the very bitter struggle going on constantly
between capital and labor. When this struggle breaks
into war, as it often does, we are bound to suffer some
of the evils that invariably attend war. it
Certainly, is
to be expected that the owners of property will exercise
every power they possess to safeguard their property.
They will, whenever possible, use the State and all its
coercive powers in order to retain their mastery over men
and things. The only question is this, must people in
general continue to be the victims of a commerce which
has for its
purpose the creation of situations that force
nearly every industrial dispute to become a bloody con-