restless and negative; that we are only what we call rebels and they call
cranks. But it is not true; and we must not concede it to them for a
moment. The model millionaire is more of a crank than the Socialists;
just as Nero was more of a crank than the Christians. And avarice has
gone mad in the governing class to-day, just as lust went mad in the
circle of Nero. By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity,
capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller "I am a rebel."
I should say "I am a respectable man: and you are not."


Our Lawless Enemies

But the vital point is that the confession of mere rebellion softens the
startling lawlessness of our enemies. Suppose a publisher's clerk
politely asked his employer for a rise in his salary; and, on being
refused, said he must leave the employment? Suppose the employer knocked
him down with a ruler, tied him up as a brown paper parcel, addressed him
(in a fine business hand) to the Governor of Rio Janeiro and then asked
the policeman to promise never to arrest him for what he had done? That
is a precise copy, in every legal and moral principle, of the "deportation
of the strikers." They were assaulted and kidnapped for not accepting a
contract, and for nothing else; and the act was so avowedly criminal that
the law had to be altered afterwards to cover the crime. Now suppose
some postal official, between here and Rio Janeiro, had noticed a faint
kicking inside the brown paper parcel, and had attempted to ascertain the
cause. And suppose the clerk could only explain, in a muffled voice
through the brown paper, that he was by constitution and temperament a
Rebel. Don't you see that he would be rather understating his case?
Don't you see he would be bearing his injuries much too meekly? They
might take him out of the parcel; but they would very possibly put him