THE ALASKA SOCIALIST
Issued by Socialist Publishing Co. at
Fifth & Lacy Streets, Fairbanks, Alaska.
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PUBLISHED THE FIRST AND FIFTEENTH
OF EACH MONTH.
PUBLISHED IN THE INTEREST OF THE
WORKERS OF ALASKA
AND ADVOCATING
POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL ACTION
THE LAWYER AT HIS BEST.
_ i
Not unjustly has the legal profession
f illen into the bad graces of the people.
To a great extent the profession has be
come a trade, and the trade degenerated
to the ignoblest. That this should be so
was to be expected. It is one of the
symptoms of the Time—when an old
social system is passing, and a new is a
borning—when elements, once needful,
are left behind, if not cast off. This is
the fate of the lawyer.
Today, “lawyer” and “shyster” are
almost invertible terms. It was not al
ways thus. Time was when the lawyer,
a jurist, was a paladin of Progress, the
vocal paladin, who expressed the aspira
tions of a revolution in which he was to
be a central figure. That was the time
of the Bourgeois revolution. The Pyms
and the Eliots in England; the Robes
pierres and the Dantons in France; more
recently the Castelars in Spain and the
Mazzinis in Italy; and before them the
Jeffersons, the Madisons, the Henrvs,
the Douglases, the Lincolns were all
lawyers—jurists whose profession was
born of; thrived with; illumined, and
who in turn, were themselves illumined
by the Star of Progress. Today it is sub
stantially otherwise, With the Bourgeois
at the end of his mission, the lawyer has,
as a general tiling, degenerated to an
apologist of what is; where he did not
degenerate even lower yet, to a social
scavenger.
It is at such a social season refreshing
to find a lawyer who seizes the oppor
tunity' offered today for the profession to
vindicate its past glories, and even justify
its existence. This was done by George
Gordon Battle, the jurist who took up,
of his own motion, the case of Cipriano
Castro, ex-president of Yenzuela, in
whom the feudo-capitalist administration
of President Taft has been endeavoring
to violate that great conquest of the
Bourgeois Revolution for civilization—
the right of emigration, imigration, and
re-migration.
Readers of The People are familiar
with the case of Castro. When president
of Venezuela, he remorselessly pilloried
the Dollar Diplomacy of Washington.
The move hurt many a politscal purse.
Castro’s arrival in the United States was
tiezed by the Dollar Diplomats at the
White House to get even with him, inci
dentally also to keep him from disgrac
ing them some more, with some more
revelations, and thus hurting their pirat
ical business ventures in Venzuela. The
Administration endeavored to prevent
Castro from landing. To this end it, at
first, twisted the quarantine laws awry;
and, finding that did not stead, it sought
to close the country’s gates in the face
of Castro upon “international law’ prin
ciples.’’ At this stage of affairs George
Gordon Battle stepped in.
A fauorite manoeuvre with iron-handed
feudal rule was simply to clap in prison
whatever individual menaced its comforts.
The writ of habeas corpus in Hngland,
the fall of the Bastile in France, were
manifestations of awakening Civic virtue.
An\’ person can now, if he have infor
mation of the wrongful detention of a
human being, sue out a writ of habeas
corpus. It is compulsory upon any judge
to sign the same and order the prisoner
to be brought before a court, there to
Ifcive the legality of his detention estab
lish!'1. Such a writ was sued for in
I Castro’s behalf, .and, of course, granted.
The move did its work. Politicals intri
gues were resorted to in order to frus
trate the writ, but accomplished only
one thing—Congress, now on its good
behavior, took a hand, and demanded
from the President all the papers in the
case. No wonder Wssliington despatches
promise the uncovering of ill-smelling
secrets.
George Gordon Battle, the lawyer who
set these wheels in motion, exhibits the
lawyer at his best—and points the path
that the profession is to treat! during the
days when Capitalism, being yet in the
saddle, the virtues of Bourgeois Revolu
tion still have the opportunity to be vin
dicated. —Weekly People.
THE WAGE-WORKER
. By H. I/. G.
We have seen the reaper toiling in the
heat of summer sun
We have seen his children needy when
the harvesting was done,
We have seen a mighty army dying,
helpless, one by one,
While their flag went marching on.
O, the army of the wretched, how they
swarm the city street;
We have seen them in the midnight,
where the Goths and Vandals meet;
We have shuddered in the darkness at
the noises of their feet.
But their cause went marching on.
ft
Our slavers’ marts are empty, human
flesh no more is sold,
Where the dealers’ fatal hammer wakes
the clink of leaping gold,
But the slavers of the present more re
lentless powers hold,
Though the world goes marching on.
But no longer shall the children bend
above the whizzing wheel,
We will free the weary women from
their bondage under steel;
In the mines and in the forest worn and
helpless men shall feel
That his cause js marchiug on.
Then lift your eyes, ye toilers, in the
desert hot and drear,
Catch the cool winds from the mountains.
Hark! the river’s voice is near;
Soon we’ll rest beside the fountain and
and the dreamland will be here
As we go marching on.
—
HE CERTAINLY
WAS CRAZY
Magistrate: “What is this man charg
ed with?”
Officer: “He is charged with being
crazy.”
Mag.: “What is your business my
good man?”
Prisoner: “I am a builder, your
Honor.”
Mag.: “How long have you followed
| that business?” v
j Prisoner: “Forty years, your Honor.”
Mag.: “You must have built a great
many houses in that time. ’ ’
Pris.: “Yes, your Honor.”
Mag.: “Then, I suppose, you are in
very comfortable circumstances?”
Pris.: “No, I am_ penniless your
| Hon or.”
j Mag.: Penniless? You just said that
you have built a great many houses.”
Pris.: “You see it’s this way your
Honor. Other people hired me to build
the houses on land that they bought
from some one else with money they
made off of other workmen, and now
they own the houses that they rent to
workmen.”
Mag.: “Most extraordinary thing I
ever heard of. Crazy! I should he is.
Send him to the lunatic asylum. He
should have been sent there forty years
ago.”—Ex.
READ THE DISCUSSION ON
THE RECALL OF JUDGES AND
FIND OUT WHY THE LAWYERS
;ARE OPPOSED TO THE RECALL.
THE UNFOLDING
OF PRES. WILSON
l_
While the administration’s Currency
bill is epock-marking, in one way, the
remarkable address delivered to Congress
by the President in person on the subject
marks an epoch, in another way.
Two passages the in address deserve
; careful pondering over. They are.
‘ ‘What will it^Drofit us to be free if we
are not to have the best and most acces- ;
sible instrumentalities of commerce ilnd
enterprise?
“If a man cannot make his assets
available at pleasure, his assets of cap
acity .and character and resource , what
satisfaction is it to him to see opportunity
beckoning to him at every hand, when
others have the keys of credit in their
pockets and treat them as all but their
own private possession?”
It matters little to our purpose that
the President is of the erroneops econo
mic opinion that a drastically'lowered
tariff will snap the shackles of industriaj
slavery, the effects of which he seeks to
abolish. It matters little that, justly
considering the Underwood bill as good
as law, the President contemplates in
that the source of freedom. That which
renders the first passage singular is the
recognition of what will it profit a man
to be free without the iustru mentalities
to make his freedom good.
This is Socialist thought. We recall no
bourgeois source in which any language
like it has yet been used, or approaching
to it. Abstract feeedom goes for little,
or nothing, so teaches Socialism. The
instrument of production, the material
instrumentality, is a necessity for free
dom.
Again, it matters little to our present
| purpose that the President is of the er
roneous economic opinion that the need
j ed instrumentality for popular freedom
is money. That which renders the sec
j ond passage singularly remarkable are
three distinct thoughts embedded in
iit.
The first thought is the need of capi
tal for freedom.
The second thought is that the need
ed capital is held by people who treat the
same as their own private possessions.
The third thought is that such private
possession is a social crime.
These are Socialist thoughts. They
are singularly different from the regula
tion bourgeois article. Socialism em
phasizes the need of what is today “capi
tal” for freedom. Socialism emphazises
the fact that the thing necessary for free
dom should be the property of all, but
is today the private possession of a few
who hold it. Finally, Socialism pro
nounces such private ownership a mod
ern crime.
Disengaged from the bourgeois origi
nally superstition and false pretence with
regard to freedom being an abstraction,
the President recognizes it being a con
crete matter, possible only through con
crete means; emancipated from the bour
geois to the bourgeois comfortable sup
erstition that the private ownership of
capital is a sacred tiling, the president
detects criminality in the private poss
ession; absolutely emancipated from the
trammels of bourgeois false teachings to
the effect that the instrumentality where
by to enjoy freedom can be obtained by
whomsoever is “worthy,” the President
point-blank takes the opposite view, to
the effect that the ownership of capital is
| the key to opportunity, and that the
i holding of the key by a few as a private
I possession cancels the assets of capacity
j and character with those who are strip
ped of the key; finally the President’s
position plants freedom squarely upon
i the ground on which it belongs—mater
!
ial power, a power obtainable, not by
prayer, not by wishing, not by formulas,
but by wrenching the keys from the priv
ate owners.
Woodrow' Wilson still bears the ear
j marks of bourgeois economies. Money
is the reflex of the private ownership of
the key for freedom. Money implies
private ownership of the key. liven if
the Administration was to win out in the
money-issuing contest between it and
the Banks, the key to freedom remains
to the sting of private ownership, the
key being the plants of production them
selves.
Martyrologies describe the struggles of
the pure to cast off the sin within
themselves. Many a description on the
list is elevating reading. Few sights
offered by our generation will be as in
teresting watching as the sight of the
strong and healthy mind of Woodrow
Wilson struggling with the sin of bour
geois economics, meeting failure as the
result of the expectations that such econ
omics falsely hold forth, discovering their
falseness and seeking to cast them off.
Whatever the final issue may be—
whether Woodrow Wilson will succeed
to cast off the sin of bourgeois error, or
not, the man deserves admiration, and
applause, and the thanks of the Socialist,
seeing his struggles are confirmations of
Socialism.—Weekly People.
If you are a worker you need
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