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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 2, 1913
Machine Guns Used to Wage War Against Striking Miners of Southern Colorado
From the International Socialist Review of December 1913:
MILITARISM is the heavy fist of the Capitalist class to beat the worker into abject submission. So well do they know the value of machine guns and soldiers that the utmost endeavor is constantly put forth by the Government-the ever-ready Servant of Vested interests, to seduce boys into the ranks of patriotic hirelings. Militiamen and soldiers are working men, hired for a consideration, to shoot and kill other workingmen in the name· of “law and order.”
Brute force, it is evident, is never entirely discarded by the capitalist robber class in their self-assumed right to exploit the worker of the product of his toil. Behind the courts, judges and injunctions, political machinery, class education and superstition, there always lurks the shadow of the big mit and the heavy club-the Military.
The velvet glove only covets the mailed hand.
Where the barons of the middle ages hired his knights and handmen to prey upon and keep in suppression the serfs of the surrounding territory, the coal barons of Colorado, New York and West Virginia maintain their teachers and editors, their preachers and professors, their lawyers, judges and political heelers for the same identical purpose-the robbing of the working class. When these forces fail to work expeditiously then-the honorable Governor is beseeched to call out the National Guard to preserve “law and order.”
The difference between the first exploiter of labor-the man with the knotted club-and John D. Rockefeller the holy, oily Christian philanthropist, is one of degree only. The robbery of the worker is equally complete. The spoils of the idle robber of today is greater than ever. Only the methods have changed.
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