What can labor oppose to this federation of State and
Church, of press and law, of capital and physical force to back capital,
when it sets about its own liberation and to institute a new social
order to replace autocracy in industry? Its allies are few. A rare
thinker, scientist, literary man, artist or clergyman, impelled by
hatred of what is ugly in life, will speak on its behalf, and may render
some aid and help to tear holes in that moral shield held up by the
press, and may here and there give to that blinded public a vision of
the Hosts of the Lord arrayed against it. But the only real power the
workers can truly rely on is their own. Nothing but a spiritual
revolution or an economic revolution will bring other classes into
comradeship with them. The ideal labor should set before itself is not a
transitory improvement in its wage, because a wage war never truly or
permanently improves the position of labor. This section or that may,
relatively to its own past or the position of other workers, improve
itself; but capital is like a ship which, however the tide rises or
falls, floats upon it, and is not sunken more deeply in the water at
high tide than at low tide.
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