“It is perhaps of value to quote the language of the most influential of the I.W.W. leaders.

“’You ask me why the I.W.W. is not patriotic to the United States.  If you were a bum without a blanket; if you left your wife and kids when you went West for a job, and had never located them since; if your job never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunk-house, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking-cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if there was one law for Ford, Suhr, and Mooney, and another for Harry Thaw; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic?  This war is a business man’s war and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy.’

“The argument was rather difficult to keep productive, because gratitude—­that material prerequisite to patriotism—­seemed wanting in their attitude toward the American government.  Their state of mind could be explained only by referring it, as was earlier suggested, to its major relationships.  The dominating concern of the I.W.W. is what Keller calls the maintenance problem.  Their philosophy is, in its simple reduction, a stomach-philosophy, and their politico-industrial revolt could be called without injustice a hunger-riot.  But there is an important correction to this simple statement.  While their way of living has seriously encroached on the urgent minima of nutrition, shelter, clothing, and physical health, it has also long outraged the American laboring-class traditions touching social life, sex-life, self-dignity, and ostentation.  Had the food and shelter been sufficient, the revolt tendencies might have simmered out, were the migratory labor population not keenly sensitive to traditions of a richer psychological life than mere physical maintenance.”

The temper of the country on this subject, the general closed attitude of mind which the average man holds thereon, prompt me to add here a few more of Carl’s generalizations and conclusions in this article.  If only he were here, to cry aloud again and yet again on this point!  Yet I know there are those who sense his approach, and are endeavoring in every way possible to make wisdom prevail over prejudice.

“Cynical disloyalty and contempt of the flag must, in the light of modern psychology, come from a mind which is devoid of national gratitude, and in which the United States stirs no memory of satisfaction or happiness.  To those of us who normally feel loyal to the nation, such a disloyal sentiment brings sharp indignation.  As an index of our own sentiment and our own happy relations to the nation, this indignation