Lifted straight from the Facebook page of
ANARCHISM:
"As
long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington
to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp
the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers
they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the
policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to
factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the
insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no", the old shake of
the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so
long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year
after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they
cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they
stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which
they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced
but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely
relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or
politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so
long deliverance will be delayed."
From: A LECTURE. Delivered in New York, Dec. 16. 1894. BY VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE.
