Bars and Shadows | Page 2

among the business interests that the
determination had been reached to rid the country of the organization at
all costs.
Had the chief offense of the I. W. W. consisted in its expressed
opposition to the war, it would not have been singled out for attack.
Many of the peace societies that flourished prior to 1917 were more
outspoken and more consistent in their opposition to war than were the
leaders of the I. W. W. None of these societies, however, had acquired
reputation for championing the cause of industrial under dogs, and for
demanding a complete change in the form of American economic life.
Consequently, in the prosecution, in the sentences, in the

commutations and in the pardons, the anti-war pacifists were treated
very leniently, while the revolutionary I. W. W. members were singled
out for the most ferocious legal and extra-legal attack.
Technically, Ralph Chaplin and his comrades had conspired to obstruct
the war. Actually, they had lined themselves up solidly against the
present economic order, of which the World War was only one phase.
This was their real crime.
II.
Ralph Chaplin was guilty of the most serious social offense that a man
can commit. While living in an old and shattered social order, he had
championed a new order of society and had expounded a new culture.
Socrates and Jesus, for like offenses, lost their lives. Thousands of their
followers, guilty of no greater crime than that of denouncing vested
wrong and expounding new truths, have suffered in the dungeon, on the
scaffold and at the stake.
Not because he and his fellows conspired to obstruct the war, but

because they denounced the present order of economic society and
taught the inauguration of a better one, are they still held in prison more
than three years after the signing of the armistice; after the
proclamation of peace and the resumption of trade with all of the
enemy countries; after the repeal or the lapse of the Espionage Act and
the other war-time laws under which they were convicted; and after
German agents and German spies, caught red-handed in their attempts
to interfere with the prosecution of the war, have won their freedom
through presidential pardon.
The most dangerous men in the United States, during the years 1917
and 1918, were not those who were taking pay to do the will of the
German or the Austrian Governments, but those who were trying to
convince the American working people that they should throw aside a
system of economic parasitism and economic exploitation, should take
possession of the machinery of production and should secure for
themselves the product of their own toil. In the eyes of the masters of
American life, such men are still dangerous, and that is the reason that
they are kept in prison.
III.
The culture of any age consists of the feelings, habits, customs,
activities, thoughts, ambitions and dreams of a people. It is a composite
picture of their homes, their work, their arts, their pleasures and the
other channels of their life-expression.
The culture of each age has two aspects. On the one hand there is the
established or accepted culture of those who dominate and

control,--the culture of the leisure or ruling class. This culture is
respected, admired, applauded, and sometimes even worshipped by
those who benefit from it most directly. Civilization--even life itself
seems bound up with its continuance. When the advocates of the
established culture cry "Long live the King!" they are really shouting
approval of royalty, aristocracy, landlordism, vassalage, exploitation
and of all the other attributes of divine right. The world as it is becomes
in their minds, synonymous with the world as it should be. For them

the old culture is the best culture.
On the other hand there is the new culture, comprising the hopes,
beliefs, ideas and ideals of those who feel that the present is but a
transition-stage, leading from the past into the future--a future that they
see radiant with the best that is in man, developing soundly against the
bounties that are supplied by the hand of nature. These forward looking
ones, impatient with the mistakes and injustices of to-day, preach
wisdom and justice for the morrow. So imperfect does the present seem
to them, and so obvious are the possibilities of the future, that they look
forward confidently to the overthrow of the old social forms, and the
establishment, in their places, of a new society, the embryo of which is
already germinating within the old social shell.
The old culture relies on tradition, custom, and the normal
conservatism of the masses of mankind, The new culture relies on
concepts of justice, truth, liberty, love, brotherhood. Eighteenth century,
Feudal France was filled with the prophecies of a form of society that
would supplant Feudalism. Nineteenth