Dwelling Place of Light, the — Volume 3 by Winston Churchill
page 9 of 170 (05%)
page 9 of 170 (05%)
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steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive
trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar, flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone. "And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?" "Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds, putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England, among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism." "The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear. "The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism --betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was an |
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