Essays on Radicalism

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setteled down some where and have a home. When ever I did get a job that suited, some thing always happened. I worked up from common labor to a job on the sheet mill in the Iron mills in Toledo, O., when the works shut down.

After I left home I was not inside a church for near fifteen years. Then in a little town in Montana, where I was working as a cook, a fellow cook wanted me to go to church, and to make application with him to join the Masons. I did not want to go to church, but I did want to go in the Masons, so I cultivated his acquaintence. I did not see how there was any chance of getting into that order, as I had been on the tramp too long; but it gave him the opportunity to urge the church question. I refused till I got tired refusing; then I went more to please him than any other reason. I met the preacher and his wife and was surprised to recieve an invitation to

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meet them in their own home. I was starved for a little social life; but I told them I did not believe in any religion and that we could not harmonize. They insisted and I fell, and inside a year was involved in as bitter a [crossed out: church fight] fight in the church as ever took place on a battle field. The only difference was a difference in weapons. I was on the preachers side; I [underlined: knew] they were all right, but the hard part to understand was that those who were on the other side [underlined: knew] they were right also. No mercy was shown; they ousted the preacher; and I refused to make application for the Masons, because two of the Church officials were Masons. I was not going to pay a hundred dollars or more for the priveledge of associating with them. And my prejudices were getting more and more definite, more intense. I was not prejudiced against christianity as a religion, but against the

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kind of people I always found in Churches.

The next experience bearing on the question of prejudice was when I was in the thick of a big labor fight - it was not a question of labor against capital, but two different factions in one labor organization who were fighting each other. The Radical vs Conservative. I had heard so many times that "Every member of the Industrial Workers of the World ought to be hung", that I got interested in the I.W.W. organization and as I always wanted to get my information at first hand I went among them to investigate and to get acquainted. I found there men like myself, men that had made a supreme effort in life and failed; and instead of blaming them selves for their failure, they blamed society; and they in their turn were blamed for the big fight that was going on. But they did not seem to mind that. I found that the bond was closer between me and them than

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between me and those who would have them exterminated.

At that time I was trying to reorganize the Cooks' and Waiters' Union along new lines, and there, too, I met my old friends - the prejudices between the radical and the conservative elements of society. What makes the study hard lies [crossed out: to] in the fact that there are many [minor?] prejudices between different branches of the radical element, and to understand it at all you must go back as far in history as the story of the Creation as related in the Bible. Then I was surprised to find that the Bible was true; at least founded on truth, even if written by man with man's mistakes and shortcomings. The history of God moulding the Jews, the origin of all of our prejudices, is found there. To understand human nature today we must understand the Bible.

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Because "Apperception," and "the sub concious Ego" are not mentioned in the Bible the Proffessors of Phycology have apparantly overlooked the phycology that is given in the Bible. We have today the same kind of people as were spoken of in Genesis. We find people now who have little or no sense of shame or fear, people who realize their own ignorance and strive to overcome it; people whose appetites and passions are stronger than the fear of the future that impells men to hoard the gold; people who would rather fight for what they want than work for it. Then we see the story of the Garden of Eden reenacted every day. We see people who are given a taste of heaven, only to lose it; we see them striving to get back that which they have lost.

Science says that man is older than The Bible. That can be true, but science has never yet attempted to explain