I Welcome Disorder

When confined to the need of defense
      I welcome disorder in the field of
      work!
Why cry "Peace, peace!" when there is
      no peace?
When the very air gluts with the clash of
      interests?
Until my opportunities for making goods
      shall equal thine,
Until you cease shading the sunlight of joy
      from my life,
Until you stop siphoning the flow of my
      efforts into your corrupting coffers,
Until you release your grip from my throat
      and let me breathe the air of freedom—
The freedom to live, laugh, love and be
      happy in my own way,
So long as my way does not barricade
      your right to your way,
I shall raise the hue and cry—
I shall startle the dreamless slumbers of the
      spoilers of Toil!
Under present vogues, industrial peace
      means humiliation, slavery, death!
It means the gelatinous bones of our babes
      shall be molded into money for mau-
      rauders,
That the mothers and daughters of Toil
      shall be driven to shame as the price
      of subsistence,
That mud from the wheels of the wealthy
      shall scornfully splash in our faces
And blind our eyes to the splendor of our
      own work, which they enjoy,
And the squallor of our own environs,
Of the meanness of our own estate.
It means that I may work only when you
      let me,
And you let me only when you may take
      more than you give.
It means that I cannot look into your eyes
      with the frankness of friendship,
For how can the flowers of friendship grow
      in the gloom of dependence?
How can love linger in the lap of luxury
      and share its joy with bitterness and
      woe?
So long as idleness and privilege revel in
      unearned ease
I shall raise the hue and cry,
I shall shriek into your unwilling ears,
I shall shout with a fanatic's voice until
      your deadened conscience is aroused
      to sensibility,
I shall clank my industrial chains until you
      are driven to remorse and restitution;
And then I shall take you in my arms as a
      lost brother returned to the home of
      righteousness,
Where you may know the joy of owning
      only what you earn,
Where you may feel the dignity of a useful
      worker with no spurred loafer goading
      him beyond his strength and reaping
      no gain for its expense,
Where you shall give measure for measure,
Where you shall be no man's master or no
      man's menial.
I shall work with you in making the king-
      dom of heaven on earth,
Where the art of free fingers may equal
      the dreams of Aladdin,
Where even the meanest who wills may,
      without let or hindrance, make material
      comforts in plenitude,
Where the plague of money madness will
      not deaden the conscience or sear the
      soul.

The sunshine of peace can gladden our
      hearts only when the blackened clouds
      of injustice roll away.
Pleasing progress ordains that the fashion-
      ers of the world's wealth shall not bow
      in meek assent to the power of privilege;
And nature says the under dog in the fight
      may bark, bite, bruise, damage, hurt,
      tear, injure, lacerate, aye, even kill if
      necessary!
The end indeed justifies the means, and
the cause of the workers is defensible
      indeed.
Therefore, for those who toil and tire,
Who work and sweat and produce,
Who are denied the fulness of their efforts,
I have no protesting frown when they
      strike, vote, fight, appeal, struggle,
      contest, agitate
For the right to life, liberty, property,
      happiness,
Be it by individuals, by mobs, by unions,
      by brigades, by armies;
Or strive with bluster or passivity or em-
      battled warfare,
With winning words or moral suasion or
      abuse or satire or argument or lies or
      truth,
With fists or clubs or ballots or bullets or
      cannon or dynamite
To throw off the deadly load of industrial
      spoliation.
Think not we dare not when we do not.
It is war, and war is hell, and hell is disorder,
And disorder is the boiling of the industrial
      caldron that purifies.
It is death to those who falter, to those
who hesitate, to those who are weakest;
And the world's story says the workers
      were weakest because less bloodthirsty.
The robbed were never so desperate as
      the robbers.

Ah! brothers and sisters, are we eter-
      nally to have a clash of arms, a clash
      of classes, a clash of interests?
How I pray and plead for the milder means.
How I appeal to the man in men, to leave
      off the cruelties of the beast.
How I urge that, tho the ravaging storms
      of violence may purify the air for a
      time, they leave ruin and desolation
      behind.
And that justice and freedom radiate social
      warmth for every human heart.
How 1 insist that reason and patience and
      persistence, like growing plants that
      move brave boulders, may displace
      the rudest wrongs.
How I strive to show that as warmth from
      the sun brings forth flora brilliant with
      beauty and ladened with nourishment
      from most repellant soilure,
So may the glow of love and kindliness and
      gentility
From even the bitterest of enmity, the most
      unyielding grudge, the greatest ani-
      mosity, compel
A sense of justice as tough as oak,
A sympathy as balmy as a summer breeze,
A fellowship as strong as the ebbing tide,
A friendship as tender as a mother's love.

But—
When milder means cannot avail,
When stubborn oppulence persists in
      ignoring the rightful meed of Toil,
The blame for turmoil must rest,
As the fall of the angels, upon the powers
      of darkness;
And then, when within the realm of
      defense,
With open arms I welcome disorder in the
      field of work!
November, nineteen two.