… so Jurgis became suddenly aware of the voice, trembling, vibrant with
emotion, with pain and longing, with a burden of things unutterable, not
to be compassed by words. To hear it was to be suddenly arrested, to be
gripped, transfixed.
“You
listen to these things,” the man was saying, “and you say, ‘Yes, they
are true, but they have been that way always.’ Or you say, ‘Maybe it will
come, but not in my time—it will not help me.’ And so you return to your
daily round of toil, you go back to be ground up for profits in the world-wide
mill of economic might! To toil long hours for another’s advantage; to
live in mean and squalid homes, to work in dangerous and unhealthful place;
to wrestle with the specters of hunger and privation, to take your chances
of accident, disease, and death. And each day the struggle becomes fiercer,
the pace more cruel; each day you have to toil a little harder, and feel
the iron hand of circumstance close upon you a little tighter. Months
pass, years maybe—and then you come again; and again I am here to plead
with you, to know if want and misery have yet done their work with you,
if injustice and oppression have yet opened your eyes! I shall still be
waiting—there is nothing else that I can do. There is no wilderness where
I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them;
though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system,—I
find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets
and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized
and predatory GREED! And therefore I
cannot rest, I cannot be silent; therefore I cast aside comfort and happiness,
health and good repute—and go out into the world and cry out the pain
of my spirit! Therefore I am not to be silenced by poverty and sickness,
not be hatred and obloquy, by threats and ridicule—not by prison and persecution,
if they should come—not by any power that is upon the earth or above the
earth, that was, or is, or ever can be created. If I fail to-night, I
can only try to-morrow; knowing that the fault must be mine—that if once
the vision of my soul were spoken upon the earth, if once the anguish
of its defeat were uttered in human speech, it would break the stoutest
barriers of prejudice, it would shake the most sluggish soul to action!
It would abash the most cynical, it would terrify the most selfish; and
the voice of mockery would be silenced, and fraud and falsehood would
slink back into their dens, and the truth would stand forth alone! For
I speak with the voice of the millions who are voiceless! Of them that
are oppressed and have no comforter! Of THE DISINHERITED of life, for whom
there is no respite and no deliverance, to whom the world is a prison,
a dungeon of torture, a tomb! With the voice of the little child who toils
to-night in a Southern cotton mill, staggering with exhaustion, numb with
agony, and knowing no hope but the grave! Of the mother who sews by candle-light
in her tenement-garret, weary and weeping, smitten with the mortal hunger
of her babes! Of the man who lies upon a bed of rags, wrestling in his
last sickness and leaving his loved ones to perish! Of the young girl
who, somewhere at this moment, is walking the streets of this horrible
city, beaten and starving, and making her choice between the brothel and
the lake! With the voice of those, whoever and wherever they may be, who
are caught beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of GREED! With the voice
of humanity, calling for deliverance! Of the everlasting soul of Man,
arising from the dust; breaking its way out of its prison—rending the
bands of oppression and ignorance—groping its way to the light!”
The speaker paused. There was an instant
of silence, while men caught their breaths, and then like a single sound
there came a cry from a thousand people.—-Through it all Jurgis sat still,
motionless and rigid, his eyes fixed upon the speaker; he was trembling,
smitten with wonder.
Suddenly the man raised his hands, and silence
fell, and he began again.
“I
plead with you,” he said, “whoever you may be, provided that you care
about the truth; but most of all I plead with working-men, with those
to whom the evils I portray are not mere matters of sentiment, to be dallied
and toyed with, and then perhaps put aside and forgotten—to whom they
are the grim and relentless realities of the daily grind, the chains upon
their limbs, and lash upon their backs, the irion in their souls. To you,
working-men! To you, the toilers, who have made this land, and have no
voice in its councils! To you, whose lot it is to sow what others may
reap, to labor and obey, and ask no more than the wages of a beast of
burden, the food and shelter to keep you alive from day to day. It is
to you that I come with my message of salvation, it is to you that I appeal.
I know how much it is to ask of you—I know, for I have been in your place,
I have lived your life, and there is no man before me here to-night who
knows it better. I have known what it is to be a street-waif, a boot-black,
living upon a crust of bread and sleeping in cellar stairways and under
empty wagons. I have known what it is to dare and to aspire, to dream
mighty dreams and to see them perish—to see all the fair flowers of my
spirit trampled into the mire by the wild beast powers of life. I know
what is the price that a working-man pays for knowledge—I have paid for
it with food and sleep, with agony of body and mind, with health, almost
with life itself; and so, when I come to you with a story of hope and
freedom, with the vision of a new earth to be created, of a new labor
to be dared, I am not surprised that I find you sordid and material, sluggish
and incredulous. That I do not despair is because I know also the forces
that are driving behind you—because I know the raging lash of poverty,
the sting of contempt and mastership, ‘the insolence of office and the
spurns.’ Because I feel sure that in the crowd that has come to me to-night,
no matter how many may be dull and heedless, no matter how many may have
come out of idle curiosity, or in order to ridicule—there will be some
one man whom pain and suffering have made desperate, whom some chance
vision of wrong and horror has startled and shocked into attention. And
to him my words will come like a sudden flash of lightning to one who
travels in darkness—revealing the way before him, the perils and the obstacles—solving
all problems, making all difficulties clear! The scales will fall from
his eyes, the shackles will be torn from his limbs—he will leap up with
a cry of thankfulness, he will stride forth a free man at last! A man
delivered from his self-created slavery! A man who will never be more
trapped—whom no blandishments will cajole, whom no threats will frighten;
who from to-night on will move forward, and not backward, who will study
and understand, who will gird on his sword and take his place in the army
of his comrades and brothers. Who will carry the good tidings to others,
as I have carried them to him—the priceless gift of liberty and light
that is neither mine nor his, but in the heritage of the soul of man!
Working-men, working-men—comrades! open your eyes and look about you!
You have lived so long in the toil and heat that your senses are dulled,
your souls are numbed; but realize once in your lives this world in which
you dwell—tear off the rags of its customs and conventions—behold it as
it is, in all its hideous nakedness! Realize it, realize it! Realize that out upon the plains of Manchuria to-night two hostile
armies are facing each other—that now, while we are seated here, a million
human beings may be hurled at each other’s throats, striving with the
fury of maniacs to tear each other to pieces! And this in the twentieth
century, nineteen hundred years since the Prince of Peace was born on
earth! Nineteen hundred years that his words have been preached as divine,
and here two armies of men are rending and tearing each other like the
wild beasts of the forest! Philosophers have reasoned, prophets have denounced,
poets have wept and pleaded—and still this hideous Monster roams at large!
We have schools and colleges, newspapers and books; we have searched the
heavens and the earth, we have weighted and probed and reasoned—and all
to equip men to destroy each other! We call it WAR, and pass it by—but
do not put me off with platitudes and conventions—come with me, come with
me—realize it! See the bodies of men pierced by bullets, blown into pieces by
bursting shells! Hear the crunching of the bayonet, plunged into human
flesh; hear the groans and shrieks of agony, see the faces of men crazed
by pain, turned into fiends by fury and hate! Put your hand upon that
piece of flesh—it is hot and quivering—just now it was a part of a man!
This blood is still steaming—it was driven by a human heart! Almighty
God! And this goes on—it is systematic, organized, premeditated! And we
know it, and read of it, and take it for granted; our papers tell of it,
and the presses are not stopped—our churches know of it, and do not close
their doors—the people behold it, and do not rise up in horror and revolution!
“Or
perhaps Manchuria is too far away for you—come home with me then, come
here to Chicago. Here in this city to-night ten thousand women are shut
up in foul pens, and driven by hunger to sell their bodies to live. And
we know it, we make it a jest! And these women are made in the image of
your mothers, they may be your sisters, your daughters; the child whom
you left at home to-night, whose laughing eyes will greet you in the morning—that
fate may be waiting for her! To-night in Chicago there are ten thousand
men, homeless and wretched, willing to work and begging for a chance,
yet starving, and fronting in terror the awful winter cold! To-night in
Chicago there are a hundred thousand children wearing out their strength
and blasting their lives in the effort to earn their bread! There are
a hundred thousand mothers who living in misery and squalor, struggling
to earn enough to feed their little ones! There are a hundred thousand
old people, cast off and helpless, waiting for death to take them from
their torments! There are a million people, men and women and children,
who share the curse of the wage-slave; who toil every hour they can stand
and see, for just enough to keep them alive; who are condemned till the
end of their days to monotony and weariness, to hunger and misery, to
heat and cold, to dirt and disease, to ignorance and drunkenness and vice!
And then turn over the page with me, and gaze upon the other side of the
picture. There are a thousand—ten thousand, maybe—who are the masters
of these slaves, who own their toil. They do nothing to earn what they
receive, they do not even have to ask for it—it comes to them of itself,
their only care is to dispose of it. They live in palaces, they riot in
luxury and extravagance—such as no words can describe, as makes the imagination
reel and stagger, makes the soul grow sick and faint. They spend hundreds
of dollars for a pair of shoes, a handkerchief, a garter; they spend millions
for horses and automobiles and yachts, for palaces and banquets, for little
shiny stones with which to deck their bodies. Their life is a contest
among themselves for supremacy in ostentation and recklessness, in the
destroying of useful and necessary things, in the wasting of the labor
and the lives of their fellow-creatures, the toil and anguish of the nations,
the sweat and tears and blood of the human race! It is all theirs—it comes
to them; just as all the springs pour into streamlets, and the streamlets
into rivers, and the rivers into the ocean—so, automatically and inevitably,
all the wealth of society comes to them. The farmer tills the soil, the
miner digs in the earth, the weaver tends the loom, the mason carves the
stone; the clever man invents, the shrewd man directs, the wise man studies,
the inspired man sings—and all the result, the products of the labor of
brain and muscle, are gathered into one stupendous stream and poured into
their laps! The whole of society is in their grip, the whole labor of
the world lies at their mercy—and like fierce wolves they rend and destroy,
like ravening vultures they devour and tear! The whole power of mankind
belongs to them, forever and beyond recall—do what it can, strive as it
will, humanity lives forthem and dies for them!—And you, working-men,
working-men! You have been brought up to it, you plod on like beasts of
burden, thinking only of the day and its pain—yet is there a man among
you who can believe that such a system will continue forever—is there
a man here in this audience to-night so hardened and debased that he dare
rise up before me and say that he believes it can continue forever; that
the product of the labor of society, the means of existence of the human
race, will always belong to idlers and parasites, to be spent for the
gratification of vanity and lust—to be spent for any purpose whatever,
to be at the disposal of any individual will whatever—that somehow, somewhen,
the labor of humanity will not belong to humanity, to be used for the
purposes of humanity, to be controlled by the will of humanity? And if
this is ever to be, how is it to be—what power is there that will bring
it about? Will it be the taks of your masters, do you think—will they
wrtite the charter of your liberties? Will they forge you the sword of
your deliverance, will they mashal you the army and lead it to the fray?
Will their wealth be spent for the purpose—will they build colleges and
churches to teach you, will they print papers to herald your progress,
and organize political parties to guide and carry on the struggle? Can
you not see that the task is your task—yours to dream, yours to resolve,
yours to execute? That if ever it is carried out, it will be in the face
of every obstacle that wealth and mastership can oppose—in the face of
ridicule and slander, of hatred and persecution, of the bludgeon and the
jail? That it will be by the power of your naked bosoms, opposed ot the
rage of oppression! By the grim and bitter teaching of blind and merciless
affliction! By the painful gropings of the untutored mind, by the feeble
stammerings of the uncultured voice! By the sad and lonely hunger of the
spirit; by seeking and striving and yearning, by heartache and despairing,
by agony and sweat of blood! It will be by money paid for with hunger,
by knowledge stolen from sleep, by thoughts communicated under the shadow
of the gallows! It will be a movement beginning in the far-off past, a
thing obscure and unhonored, a thing easy to ridicule, easy to despise;
a thing unlovely, wearing the aspect of vengeance and hate—but to you,
the working-man, the wage-slave, calling with a voice insistent, imperious—with
a voice that you cannot escape, wherever upon the earth you may be. With
the voice of all your wrongs, with the voice of all your desires; with
the voice of your duty and your hope—of everything in the world that is
worth while to you! The voice of the poor, demanding that poverty shall
cease! The voice of power, wrought out of suffering—of resolution, crushed
out of weakness—of joy and courage, born in the bottomless pit of anguish
and despair! The voice of Labor, despised and outraged; a mighty giant,
lying prostrate—mountainous, colossal, but blinded, bound, and ignorant
of his strength. And now a dream of resistance haunts him, hope battling
with fear; until suddenly he stirs, and a fetter snaps—and a thrill shoots
through him, to the farthest ends of his huge body, and in a flash the
dream becomes an act! He starts, he lifts himself; and the bands are shattered,
the burdens roll off him; he rises—towering, gigantic; he springs to his
feet, he shouts in his new-born exultation—”
And the speaker’s voice broke suddenly,
with the stress of his feelings; he stood with his arms stretched out
above him, and the power of his vision seemed to lift him from the floor.
The audience came to its feet with a yell; men waved their arms, laughing
aloud in their excitement. And Jurgis was with them, he was shouting to
tear his throat; shouting because he could not help it, because the stress
of his feeling was more than he could bear. It was not merely the man’s
words, the torrent of his eloquence. It was his presence, it was his voice:
a voice with strange intonations that rang through the chambers of the
soul like the clanging of a bell—that gripped the listener like a mighty
hand about his body, that shook him and startled him with sudden fright,
with a sense of things not of earth, of mysteries never spoken before,
of presences of awe and terror! There was an unfolding of vistas before
him, a breaking of the ground beneath him, an upheaving, a stirring, a
trembling; he felt himself suddenly a mere man no longer—there were powers
within him undreamed of, there were demon forces contending, age-long
wonders struggling to be born; and he sat opposed with pain and joy, while
a tingling stole down into his finger tips, and his breath came hard and
fast. The sentences of this man were to Jurgis like the crashing of thunder
in his soul; a flood of emotion surged up in him—all his old hopes and
longings, his old griefs and rages and despairs. All that he had ever
felt in his whole life seemed to come back to him at once, and with one
new emotion, hardly to be described. That he should have suffered such
oppressions and such horrors was bad enough; but that he should have been
crushed and beaten by them, that he should have submitted, and forgotten,
andn lived in peace—ah, truly that was a thing not to be put into words,
a thing not to be borne by a human creature, a thing of terror and madness!
“What,” asks the prophet, “is the murder of them that kill the body, to
the murder of them that kill the soul?” And Jurgis was a man whose soul
had been murdered, who had ceased to hope and to struggle—who had made
terms with degradation and despair; and now, suddenly, in one awful convulsion,
the black and hideous fact was made plain to him! There was a falling
in of all the pillars of his soul, the sky seemed to split above him—he
stood there, with his clenched hands upraised, his eyes bloodshot, and
the veins standing out purple in his face, roaring in the voice of a wild
beast, frantic, incoherent, maniacal. And when he could shout no more
he still stood there, gasping, and whispering hoarsely to himself: “By
God! By God! By God!”
[excerpted from “THE JUNGLE” by UPTON SINCLAIR; 1904-05, published
1906;
an American writing about the suffering of the common people under the
exploitative practices of American capitalists and their political henchmen]
