Alexander Irvine

“ Jamie did not quite understand when she spoke of the death of hope.
"Spake what's in yer heart plainly, Anna!" he said plaintively.
[Pg 24] "Jamie, we must not blame each other for anything, but we must face the fact—we live at the bottom of the world where every hope has a headstone—a headstone that only waits for the name."
"Aye, dear, God help us, I know, I know what ye mane."
"Above and beyond us," she continued, "there is a world of nice things—books, furniture, pictures—a world where people and things can be kept clean, but it's a world we could never reach. ”

“ Of the million who died four hundred thousand were able-bodied men. The wolf stood at every door. The carpenter alone was busy. Of course it was the poor who died—the poor only. In her three years of married life Anna realized in a measure that the future held little change for her or her husband, but she saw a ray of hope for the boy in the cradle. ”

“ One night I slept under an arch. Next morning I heard the loud sound of factory whistles. Everybody was aroused. Some of the people lying around were going to work there; and I thought I might get a job also, so I followed them. On the way we came to a coffee stall, and as I was nearly fainting with hunger, I stood in front of it to get the smell of the coffee and fresh bread, for that does a fellow a heap of good when he's got nothing in his stomach. ”

“ As they worked near the window, Anna sat in her corner and by the light of a candle in her little sconce made waxed ends for the men. I browsed among the lasts, clipping, cutting and scratching old leather parings and dreaming of the wonderful days beyond when I too could make a boot and sing "Black-eyed Susan." ”

“ They were stirring up the minds of the people. They were not merely making them discontented with conditions, but they were offering a programme of reconstruction—a programme that included a trowel as well as a sword.
The soul of the East Side expressed itself in the Yiddish press, daily, weekly, and monthly, and in Yiddish literature, and in the spoken word of the propagandist whose ideal, though limited in literary expression, made him a flame of living fire. It was this soul of the East Side that drove me against my will to study the relation of politics to the condition of the people. ”

“ I imagined the plow was going nicely in the furrow, for I wasn't conscious of striking any snags or stones, but Anna said:
"A plowman who skims th' surface of th' sod strikes no stones, dear, but it's because he isn't plowin' deep!" ”

“ My Socialist philosophy told me that society was in process of evolution. Democracy at heart was correcting its own evils and like a snake sloughing off its outworn skin. I was part of that process. Reason pounded these things in on me but hate pushed them aside and demanded [246] something else. I wondered that morning whether after all there weren't more reforms wrapped up in a stick of dynamite than in a whole life of preaching and moralizing. ”

“ The hills shivered like the deck of a warship as she discharges a broadside. Franz shivered too. His eyes bulged and he stared, loose-jawed, at the men around us, who laughed at his fright.
The explosion was in our alley; it had torn up the car-tracks like strips of macaroni; it was the salute of dynamite to our soft, flabby muscles, to our white caps and new overalls; it was a stick of concentrated power throwing down the gauntlet to men in the raw. ”

“ The order at Sam's was usually a sixpenny loaf, three ha'pence worth of tea and sugar and half an ounce of tobacco.
There were times when Barney had no work for my father, and on such occasions I came home empty-handed. Then Jamie would go out to find work as a day laborer. Periods like these were glossed over by Anna's humor and wit. As they sat around the table, eating "stir-about" without milk, or bread without tea, Jamie would grunt and complain.
"Aye, faith," Anna would say, "it's purty bad, but it's worse where there's none at all!" ”

“ A careful investigation led me to the belief that, when a man gets out of a job once, he loses just a little of the routine, the continuity, the habit of work, and it is just a little harder to apply himself when he begins again. If a man loses a job two or three times in a year, it is just as many times harder to go on with a regular job when it comes. Lack of regular employment is the cause not only of the physical disintegration, but of the moral disintegration also; so, these men who had been out of employment so often, actually could not stick at a job when they got it. ”

“ I gave God a plowman, but your father says I must chalk half of that to his account. Hold tight the handles and plow deep. We watch the candle and every wee spark thrills our hearts, for we know it's a letter from you. ”

“ Their first child was two years of age when the famine came—the famine that swept over Ireland like a plague, leaving in its wake over a million new-made graves. They had been in their own house for over a year. It was scantily furnished, but it was home. As the ravages of the famine spread, nearly every family in the town mourned the absence of some member. Men and women met on the street, one day were gone the next. Jamie put his bench [Pg 23] to one side and sought work at anything he could get to do. Prices ran up beyond the possibilities of the poor. ”

“ Changes in society are like changes in human character: they must have their origin in the heart and work outward. It is at the heart of things we place our hope and the secret of the social passion to me is the knowledge that I am a coöperator with God.
There comes over me occasionally an idea, as I [292] look into the future, that the fact may become the mockery of the dream. Our temples are built with hands, they are fair to look upon even in the dream, but other builders will come and build on other foundations temples of the soul more fair, more enduring. ”

“ To work for it is the thing. To feel the thrill of a world-comradeship, a world-endeavour, to be in line with the workers and touch hands with men of all creeds, all classes, this is social joy, this is incentive for life! ”

“ Poverty is the mother curse of the ages. No man suffering from her withering, blighting touch can be in harmony with the best. Socialism tackles the master job of abolishing it. Not by any fantastic plan of redistribution but by giving to the creator all that he creates and to the social charges, pensioners and cripples an assurance of life without the stigma of pauperism. ”

“ Soldiers I get, men of the devil-dare kind, to stay with me. They do not come back; they tell that they hear tramp, tramp, tramp of soldiers' feet.
"One night, with the soldiers, I take much wine, for I say, 'I shall be drunk and not hear the guns at night.'
"We drink in our noble hall. Heavy doors are chained, windows barred, draperies close arranged, and the great lamp burns dim. We drink, we sing, we curse God und das Gesindel. 'We ourselves,' we say, 'are gods.'
"Then creeps close the hour for the guns. My tongue is fast and cannot move; my brow is wet and frozen is my blood. ”

“ He is a God spun out of the fertile brain of the materialist. Critics of Socialism assume and herald their own patriotism, their devotion to law and order, but they are usually men who distrust any extension of the functions of the state not directly beneficial to their personal interests.
The Socialists of to-day know that their ideal can not be realized during their lifetime; they are people of vision; they are not saying, "Lord, Lord," but they are bringing in His Kingdom.
The early Socialists met their worst opposition in a corrupt church and their writings were coloured by the conflict. ”

“ Socialism asks for the application of science to the disease of poverty. Science has chained the lightning and harnessed the ether waves, it has filled the world with horseless carriages and is now filling the air with machines that fly like birds. The inventions of the last twenty years are modern miracles but the sunken millions of our fellowmen never speak through a telephone, never ride in an automobile, never send a telegram, never read good books, or see good plays! ”

“ I am forty-seven years of age now, but I have the health and vigour of a boy and I feel that for me life has just really begun. I have but one ambition: it is not wealth, or fame, or even rest. It is to be of service to my fellow-men ”

“ The cure for child labour is justice to the father, and justice to the father is his full share of the good things of life. As long as he has to pay tribute to a horde of non-producers, who have merely invested in his endurance, so long will he be unable to keep his child at school. ”

“ It seems strange to me now that after having tramped the streets of New York with the unemployed and after having shared their misery, disappointment and despair, that I should, as a missionary, have entirely forgotten it, and that after years of experience among them, I should still be possessed of the idea that men of this grade were lazy and would not work if they had it. ”

“ Men fight while their senses last, while their legs keep under them, and at such a moment a blood-thirsty crowd becomes crazed for the accomplishment of something that looks like murder. The injection of the minor prophets made a ludicrous ending of a thing that had at the beginning almost paralyzed me with fear. So the thing ended with the bully of the mess lying prostrate on his back. I was not presentable as a waiter for several days, but inside of an hour everybody on the ship knew what had happened, and for the second time in my life I was hailed as a bruiser. ”

“ In the very advent of my spiritual life I gravitated toward the church. There I added to my faith a theology. A theologian is a fighter—a doctrinaire. Every item of knowledge I got I sharpened into a weapon to confound the Catholics. ”

“ The first part of the meeting partook of the nature of a reception. I watched the proceedings from the most obscure corner I could find. Somebody rapped on the table. The hum of voices ceased, and there stepped out, as the speaker of the afternoon, my friend of the Possilpark Mission, Professor Drummond.
Up to that hour my theology related largely to another world, but his explanation of a portion of Scripture was so clear and so convincing to my simple mind, that I could neither miss its meaning nor avoid its application. The professor was telling us that religion must be related to life. ”

“ Then came the explosion of the bomb on Union Square and we were at once thrown into the limelight. I was on the Square that afternoon.
It was designed to be a mass meeting of the unemployed. The unemployed are not usually interested in any sort of propaganda; the more intelligent of the labour men are, and the Socialists are more so.
So the promoters of the mass meeting for the unemployed were Socialists. It was at this meeting that a police official declared to a man who had the temerity to question him that the policeman's club was mightier than the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ Men and women who had not been in church since they were children have found an atmosphere—a spiritual atmosphere—that has been a distinct help to them during the week. There have been unique examples of this that cannot be recorded or catalogued. If we were padding a year-book, bolstering a creed or attracting men merely to put our tag on them the meetings would have waned long ago, for the class of people who attend are quick to discover undercurrents or ulterior motives. ”

“ The floor of the big dormitory was littered with rubbish—miners' cast-off clothing, shoes, broken lamps, and in a corner there was a junk-heap of broken bedsteads, slats, army blankets and sodden mattresses. We were told to make ourselves "at home." There was room enough and plenty of bedding. All we had to do was to fish for what we needed and put it in order. Everything was red—red with ore that men carried out of the mines on their bodies. ”