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324 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
hires thugs to invade a community and shoot down its
citizens, or upon those who hire him these assassins, or
upon the assassins themselves. Nor are the powerful
punished when they collect a great army of criminals,
drunkards, and hoodlums and make them officials of the
United States to insult and bully decent citizens. Nor
does there seem to be any punishment inflicted upon
those who manage to transform the Government itself
into a shield to protect toughs and criminals in their assaults
upon men and property, when those assaults are in
the interest of capital. Moreover, what could be more
humiliating in a republic than the fact that a governor
who has leased to his friends the military forces of an
entire state should end his term of office unimpeached
These various phases of the class conflict reveal a
distressing state of industrial and political anarchy, and
there can be no question that, if continued, it has in it
the power of making many McNamaras, if not Bakounins.
It will be fortunate, indeed, if there do not arise
new Johann Mosts, and if the United States escapes
the general use in time of that terrible, secretive,
and deadly weapon of sabotage. Sabotage
is the
arm of the slave or the coward, who dares neither
to speak his views nor to fight an open fight. As
someone has said, it may merely mean the kicking of
the master's dog. Yet no one is so cruel as the weak and
the cowardly. And should it ever come about that
millions and millions of men have all other avenues closed
to them, there is still left to them sabotage, assassination,
and civil war. These can neither be outlawed nor even
effectively guarded against if there are individuals
enough who are disposed to wield them. And it is not
by any means idle speculation that a country which can
sit
calmly by and face such evils as are perpetrated by