Bars and Shadows | Page 4

enterprisers, as spokesmen, as singers,
as seers and prophets. These gifted ones the old order sets out to
win--lavishing upon them gratitudes, favors, rewards; filling their lives
out of the horn of economic and social plenty; teasing their vanities and
gratifying their ambitions; soothing, cajoling, flattering. By these
means the rulers succeed in bringing under their control the strong
thinkers, the capable executives, the sensitive, the talented--all in fact
who are worth buying, and who can be bought for income and for
social preferment, even though they may have been born into the
families of the humblest and most oppressed of the workers.

Most men and women go where income promises and social
preferment beckons. But not all! There are some whose love of justice,
truth and beauty; whose yearning for betterment and increased social

opportunity, outweighs the tempting bait of ease and respectability.
Them the established order smites.
The strength of the old order is measured superficially by the extent of
its control over the means of common livelihood and by the
generalness of the satisfaction or discontent with which the masses
receive its administration. Fundamentally its strength is determined by
the direction in which its life is tending. The structure of the Roman
Empire was apparently sound before it buckled and disintegrated. The
French aristocracy was never surer of itself than in the gala days that
preceded 1789. The old order may undergo a process of gradual
transformation. In that case the change is slow, as it was when
Feudalism gave place to Capitalism in England. Again, the old order
may be exterminated as it was when Feudalism gave place to
Capitalism in France. In one case the masters of life loosens the reins of
power to ease the straining team; in the other case the masters hold the
reins taut till they are jerked from their hands, as masters and team go
together over the precipice.
The strength of the new order, at any stage in its development may be
gauged by the solidarity of its organization, the efficacy of its
propaganda, and the tone of its art. These forms of expression are
necessary to the maintenance of any phase of culture, old or new, and
by the last of the three, the esthetic expression of the culture, its morale
may best be judged. It is for this reason that artists, musicians,
dramatists and poets are so important a part of any order of society.
They voice its deepest sentiments and express its most sacred faiths and
longings. When the time arrives that a new social order can boast its
permanent art and music and literature, it is already far advanced on the
path that leads to stability and power.
VI.
The poems which appear in this volume are a contribution to the

propaganda and the art of the new culture. "Above all things," writes
Chaplin, "I don't want anyone to try to make me out a 'poet'--because
I'm not. I don't think much of these esthetic creatures who condescend
to stoop to our level that we may have the blessings of culture. We'll
manage to make our own--do it in our own way, and stagger through
somehow. . . . These are tremendous times, and sooner or later someone
will come along big enough to sound the right note, and it will be a
rebel note." It is that note which Chaplin has sought to strike, and that
he has succeeded will be the verdict of anyone who has read over the
poems.
Chaplin's work speaks for itself. Some of the poems were written in
Leavenworth Prison and published in the prison paper. Others were
written during the tedious months of the Chicago trial, when the men
were kept in the Cook County jail. Chaplin has had ample time to work
them out. Christmas, 1921, was the fifth consecutive Christmas that he
has spent in prison. The poems bear the impress of the bars, but they
ring with the glad vigor of a free spirit that bars cannot contain.
The reader of Chaplin's prison poems unavoidably makes three mental
comments:
0. When poems so reserved, so vigorous; so penetrating, so melodious,
so beautiful, come from behind jail bars, it is high time that
thinking men and women awoke to the fate that awaits bold
dreamers and singers under the present order in the United States.
0. Men are not silenced when steel doors clang behind them. Free spirits
are as free behind the bars as they are under the open sky. The
jail, as a gag, is impotent. While it may master the body, it cannot
contain the soul.
0. The new order in America is already finding its voice. Although it is
so young, and so immature, it is speaking with an accent of gifted
authority.
Chaplin is