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Show THE INSANE IDEA OF PROPERTY. This world Is not governed by tho people that aro on It at all. It Is governed gov-erned by tho people that aro dead. What is tho Constitution of tho United States, that everybody runs up against whenever they want to do anything that Is worth doing? It is a document that was adopted in 1779, and tho peo-plo peo-plo that made it aro dead and havo been dead a long time. What aro our laws? Some of them are said to run back so far that tho memory of man can go no farther, that Is, thoy wero made by barbarians. Tho churches aro govorned In tho same way, by Calvin and Wesley and others who aro dead and gone. And property is controlled by dead people, by tho wills of dead men. If you want to bo really powerful and control tho world, there Is only ono thing for you to do, and that is to die! Everybody says that men aro rea. sonablo creatures. Aro they? Oh, no. If thoy wero, thoy would not go Into an employment agency and pay two dollars for tho prlvllego of having a master, when slave-owners used to pay a thousand dollars for a slave. Take another fancy notion, that tho bettor class of our citizens live in lino houses, and that tho worst element live in tho poorer districts. Aro people who do nothing except to llvo by tho schemes that they havo devised for taking the' products of tho laboring man away from him, tho better class of pooplo? No. Tho people who make things, who produco things, who lead useful lives aro tho better class of people. Look at tho lnsano Idea people have of property. If starving thousands should take possesion of a piece of land to which a man had a paper title, hundreds of their own brothers (who would bo starving if thoy wero not in tho pay of tho stato) would go out and shoot those starving people down, be-causo be-causo this land is another man's property. prop-erty. Property is so much moro valuable val-uable than human lives! Could anybody any-body conceive of a worse stato of things if society had been organized by lunatics? That Is what I mean by a topsyturvy topsy-turvy world! HUGH O. PENTECOST. o |
