a rule we do not look upon this trait in
boy or man as criminal.

Many a hardworking, intelligent American, who from choice or from
necessity is a migratory worker, following his job, never has an
opportunity to vote for state legislators, for governor, for
congressman or president. He is just as effectively excluded from the
actual electorate as if he were a Chinese coolie, ignorant of our
customs and our speech.

We cannot wonder that such conditions prove prolific breeders of
bolshevism and similar "isms." It would be strange indeed if it were
otherwise. We have no right to expect that men who are so constantly the
victims of arbitrary, unjust, and even brutal treatment at the hands of
our police and our courts will manifest any reverence for the law and
the judicial system. Respect for majority rule in government cannot
fairly be demanded from a disfranchised group. It is not to be wondered
at that the old slogan of socialism, "Strike at the ballot-box!"--the
call to lift the struggle of the classes to the parliamentary level for
peaceful settlement--becomes the desperate, anarchistic I.W.W. slogan,
"Strike at the ballot-box with an ax!" Men who can have no family life
cannot justly be expected to bother about school administration. Men who
can have no home life but only dreary shelter in crowded work-camps or
dirty doss-houses are not going to bother themselves with municipal
housing reforms.

In short, we must wake up to the fact that, as the very heart of our
problem, we have a bolshevist nucleus in America composed of virile,
red-blooded Americans, racy of our soil and history, whose conditions of
life and labor are such as to develop in them the psychology of
reckless, despairing, revengeful bolshevism. They really are little
concerned with theories of the state and of social development, which to
our intellectuals seem to be the essence of bolshevism. They are vitally
concerned only with action. Syndicalism and bolshevism involve speedy
and drastic action--hence the force of their appeal.

Finally, if we would understand why millions of people in all lands have
turned away from old ideals, old loyalties, and old faiths to
bolshevism, with something of the passion and frenzy characteristic of
great messianic movements, we must take into account the intense
spiritual agony and hunger which the Great War has brought into the
lives of civilized men. The old gods are dead and men are everywhere
expectantly wa