Industrial Relations, you will find the statement proved that peonage
existed in the state of Texas. Out of these conditions springs such a
thing as the I. W. W.--when men receive a pittance for their pay, when
they work like galley slaves for a wage that barely suffices to keep
their protesting souls within their tattered bodies. When they can
endure the condition no longer, and they make some sort of a
demonstration, or perhaps commit acts of violence, how quickly are they
condemned by those who do not know anything about the conditions under
which they work.

"Five gentlemen of distinction, among them Professor John Graham Brooks,
of Harvard University, said that a word that so fills the world as the
I. W. W. must have something in it. It must be investigated. And they
did investigate it, each along their own lines; and I wish it were
possible for every man and woman in this country to read the result of
their investigation. They tell you why and how the I. W. W. was
instituted. They tell you, moreover, that the great corporations, such
as the Standard Oil Company, such as the Coal Trust, and the Lumber
Trust, have, through their agents, committed more crimes against the I.
W. W. than the I. W. W. have ever committed against them.

"I was asked not long ago if I was in favor of shooting our soldiers in
the back. I said, 'No. I would not shoot them in the back. I wouldn't
shoot them at all. I would not have them shot.' Much has been made of a
statement that I declared that men were fit for something better than
slavery and cannon fodder. I made the statement. I make no attempt to
deny it. I meant exactly what I said. Men are fit for something better
than slavery and cannon fodder; and the time will come, though I shall
not live to see it, when slavery will be wiped from the earth, and when
men will marvel that there ever was a time when men who called
themselves civilized rushed upon each other like wild beasts and
murdered one another, by methods so cruel and barbarous that they defy
the power of language to describe. I can hear the shrieks of the
soldiers of Europe in my dreams. I have imagination enough to see a
battlefield. I can see it strewn with the wrecks of human beings, who
but yesterday were in the flush and glory of their young manhood. I can
see them at eventide, scattered about in remnants, their limbs torn from
their bodies, their eyes gouged out. Yes, I can see them, and I can hear
them. I look abov