THE THIRD REVOLUTION

The publication of this volume is not of Comrade Debs’ seeking. When approached upon the subject several months ago he stated that he did not suppose that he had accomplished enough to make a book, and it was only after much persistent urging that he snatched the time from his busy labors to correct and revise the original proofs of his Writings and Speeches, and the argument he finally yielded to was that this work would multiply his usefulness to the Socialist movement by as many copies as may be distributed.

TheFirst American Revolutionaccomplished the overthrow of the rule of the English King in the Colonies, the extinction of all rule by inheritance, and the abolition of the proprietary charters to privileges in America which had been granted to favorites and legatees of the British Crown. The movement very early established the precedent of the “boycott” of “unfair” products when the Boston Tea Party by strategy boarded the ships of the English merchants and dumped their cargoes into the sea. Nor was the period without its “undesirable” citizens, whose memories loyal Americans delight to revere.

The Civil War, or theSecond American Revolution, accomplished the overthrow of a fundamental principle in the Federal constitution as interpreted by our highest judicial authority, in the Dred Scott decision, and the abolition of a special form of slavery or property in black human beings.

The Socialist Movement, or theThird American Revolution, has for its accomplishment the overthrow of private property in social wealth, machinery and land, and the abolition of the Wage System, a form of general slavery whereby men profit and grow fat out of the hunger-enforced labor, and hence out of thelivesof others.

It is no strain of words to say that in the extinction of Wage Slavery a modified state of war even now obtains, and not so very modified at that. We need not the tinsel and glitterof soldiery, nor the clash and clangor of arms to constitute war, but if we did, was it not but yesterday we heard the tread of troops in Colorado? And today, what is it we hear from the South but a fusilade upon the striking miners of Alabama? And tomorrow may we not hear the ripping, whirring sound the Gatlings and Maxims make?

But aside from the open battle, a struggle far more brutal and inhuman, wages bitterly. The poor are warred upon, plundered and ravished. Our children famish and die at the machines of the Capitalist Class, and our wives, our widows and our daughters are torn from us and prostituted to uses abject and unmentionable. What more do we wish to make it war, and what more must we suffer?

This book, every line of which is a labor of love, is the property of The Third Revolution, and as such is dedicated to the Wage Slaves of the world who smart under the crack of the Hunger Whip.

Bruce Rogers.

Girard, Kansas, August 1, 1908.

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