behalf and prove to them when their trial
takes place that we are as true to them as they were to the wage-slaves
in the industrial battle at Lawrence.

_Comrades, this is our year!_ Let us rise to our full stature, summon
our united powers, and strike a blow for freedom that will be felt
around the world!

CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM.

Campaign Speech, Lyceum Theatre, Fergus Falls, Minn., August 27, 1912.

Friends and Fellow-Workers: The spirit of our time is revolutionary and
growing, more so every day. A new social order is struggling into
existence. The old economic foundation of society is breaking up and the
social fabric is beginning to totter. The capitalist system is doomed.
The signs of change confront us upon every hand.

Social changes are preceded by agitation and unrest among the masses. We
are today in the transition period between decaying capitalism and
growing Socialism. The old system is being shaken to its foundations by
the forces underlying it and its passing is but a question of time. The
new system that is to succeed the old is developing within the old and
its outline is clearly revealed in its spirit of mutualism and its
co-operative manifestations.

For countless ages the world has been a vast battlefield and the
struggle for existence a perpetual conflict. Primitive peoples were
compelled to fight nature to extort from her the means of livelihood.
Since the forces of nature have been conquered and nations have become
civilized the struggle of men is no longer to overcome nature but with
one another for existence.

In this struggle which has appealed to the basest and not to the best in
man the cunning few have triumphed and now have the masses at their
mercy. These few are closely allied in, their economic mastery as they
are also in their control of the political machinery. Their money and
their mercenaries controlled the Republican convention at Chicago, wrote
its platform and dictated its nominees, and the same is true of the
Democratic convention at Baltimore.

As for the so-called Progressive convention, it is sufficient to say
that there is no attempt to conceal the fact that it was financed and
controlled by three conspicuous representatives of the plutocracy which
largely owns and rules the land.

Political parties are responsive to the interests of those who finance
them. This is the infallible test of their character and applied to the
Republican, Democratic and Pro