the working people of America going to look on coolly at a
repetition of the Black Friday in Chicago? Perhaps there will also be a
labor leader, a la Powderly, who will be willing to carry faggots to the
stake? Or are they going to awaken from their lethargy, ere America
becomes thoroughly Russified?

INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

+A painting+ from the "good old times" represents two peasants wrangling
about a cow. One holds on to the horns of the animal, the other tightly
clutches its tail, a third figure is in a crouched position underneath.
It is the lawyer milking the cow, while the other two are quarreling.
Here we have the beauty of the representative system. While groups are
bargaining about their rights, their official advisers and lawmakers are
skimming the cream off the milk. Not justice, but social injustice is
the incentive of these worthy gentlemen.

Human justice, and legal representation thereof, are two different
things. One who seeks for a representation places his rights in the
hands of another. He does not struggle for them himself, he must wait
for a decision thereupon from such quarters as are never inspired by
love for justice, but by personal gain and profit.

The working people are beginning to recognize this. It is also beginning
to dawn upon them that they will have to be their own liberators. They
have the power to refuse their material support to a society that
degrades them into a state of slavery. This power was already recognized
in 1789, when, at the French National Convention, Mirabeau thundered:
"Look out! Do not enrage the common people, who produce everything, who
only need to fold their arms to terrify you!"

The General Strike is still at the beginning of its activity. It has
gone through the fire in Russia. In Spain and Italy it has helped to
demolish the belief in the sovereignity of Property and the State.

Altogether the General Strike idea, though relatively young, has made a
deeper impression on friend and foe than several million votes of the
working people could have achieved. Indeed, it is no joke for the
pillars of society. What, if the workers, conscious of their economic
power, cease to store up great wealth in the warehouses of the
privileged? It was not difficult to get along with the would-be labor
leaders in the legislative bodies, these worthy ones, experienced
through the practice of manufacturing laws to maintain law and disorder,
rapidly develop into good