William Francis Dunne

“ As in France, where the fall of the Bastile marked the rise of the third estate—the trading and commercial class to power—but was achieved by the bloody sacrifices which the young workingclass laid on the altar of freedom, so in America the revolutionary war, fought by workers and farmers, marks the opening of what appears as an endless lane of opportunity for the exploiters of the masses to consolidate and increase their wealth and power. ”

“ The farmers and workers got nothing from the war for independence. What progress they have made as a class since that time has been made in the face of the most determined resistance on the part of the exploiting class which seeks now to disguise and distort the history of the revolutionary struggle. ”

“ More than that, it is a revolutionary tradition of which the workers and farmers of America are the bearers because it was the oppressed, descendants of the English, Irish, Scotch and Dutch peasantry which had been beggared first by the breakdown of feudalism and on whose backs were laid the unbearable burdens of a rising capitalism, who made up the revolutionary armies, who fought, starved and died for American independence only to be thrown into debtors' prisons and have the felon's brand placed on them when the revolutionary war had ended. ”