deny him his grievance: he works--when he works--for men no
better than himself. He is required, in many instances, to take a part
of his pay in "truck" at prices of breathless altitude; and the pay
itself is inadequate--hardly more than double what he could get in his
own country. Against all this his howl is justified; but his rioting and
assassination are not--not even when directed against the property and
persons of his employers. When directed against the persons of other
laborers, who choose to exercise the fundamental human right to work for
whom and for what pay they please--when he denies this right, and with
it the right of organized society to exist, the necessity of shooting
him is not only apparent; it is conspicuous and imperative. That he and
his horrible kind, of whatever nationality, are usually forgiven this
just debt of nature, and suffered to execute, like rivers, their annual
spring rise, constitutes the most valid of the many indictments that
decent Americans by birth or adoption find against the feeble form of
government under which their country groans, A nation that will not
enforce its laws has no claim to the respect and allegiance of its
people.

This "citizen soldiery" business is a ghastly failure. The National
Guard is not worth the price of its uniforms. It is intended to be a
Greater Constabulary: its purpose is to suppress disorders with which
the civil authorities are too feeble to cope. How often does it do so?
Nine times in ten it fraternizes with, or is cowed or beaten by
the savage mobs which it is called upon to kill. In a country with
a competent militia and competent men to use it there would be crime
enough and some to spare, but no rioting. Rioting in a Republic is
without a shadow of excuse. If we have bad laws, or if our good laws are
not enforced; if corporations and capital are "tyrannous and strong;" if
white men murder one another and black men outrage white women, all this
is our own fault--the fault of those, among others, who seek redress
or revenge by rioting and lynching. The people have always as good
government, as good industrial conditions, as effective protection of
person, property and liberty, as they deserve. They can have what ever
they have the honesty to desire and the sense to set about getting
in the right way. If as citizens of a Republic we lack the virtue and
intelligence rightly to use the supreme power of the ballot so that it

"Executes a f