Agitator

“ A notorious agitator, backed by adventurers who would ruthlessly sacrifice country to party, and perhaps both to money or gain, was about to undo in a day what had been accomplished by years of bloodshed and suffering. ”

“ Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy, who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think that, in such a case, to silence the agitator and save the boy, is not only constitutional, but withal a great mercy. ”

“ It is true also that the agitator—no matter what he may be agitating—is always sure of his market; a circumstance which made that most conservative of chancellors, Lord Eldon, swear with bitter oaths that, if he were to begin life over again, he would begin it as an agitator. ”

“ The late Archbishop of Canterbury spoke derisively of agitators. The Rev. Stewart Headlam asked whether "Paul, and even our Lord Himself, were not agitators." Mr. Headlam might have asked, where would the Archbishop be but for that superb, irrepressible agitator Luther? The agitator is a public advocate who speaks when others are silent. Mr. C. D. Collet, of whom I here write, was an agitator who understood his business.
Agitation for the public welfare is a feature of civilisation. In a despotic land it works by what means it can. ”

“ You come here, stirring up the men--a union agitator, or whatever you are--and you know that the first idea of these people, when they do break loose, is to put dynamite in the shafts and set fire to the buildings! ”

“ Then, again, the Irish are great agitators; the Jews are great agitators; there are good and bad agitators. (Applause.) But, brothers, I’ll tell you who is the greatest agitator in this country ... the greatest agitator is injustice. ”

“ Usually hot-headed sympathizers with the cause of labour agitation are the principal advisers at such a time. We remember, and the trolleymen certainly do, that at the critical juncture several summers ago, when a final decision was to have been rendered by the striking trolleymen, an agitator from Bridgeport not only agitated, but nearly managed to turn the balance toward an irreparable break in negotiations. ”

“ Every paper that speaks the truth of him is publicly hooted at; everybody who opposes him is pelted with the hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary. A good grievance is started, and hunted everywhere. People join in the cry, the Agitator leading off and [Pg 53] shouting the loudest. The grievance is run off its legs; but another and another soon follows, till there is a regular pack of them. The country is in a continual ferment, and at last rises. Riots ensue; but the Model Agitator is the last person to suffer from them. He excites the people to arm themselves for the worst ”

“ Anyhow, the man was mad, rushed raving on to the platform at the Astronomical Congress talking about Lovely Woman and the cow that jumped over the moon. That damned agitator Pierce, who used to be in the Flying Corps, was in the hall, and made a riot and carried the crazy fellow off in an aeroplane. That’s the sort of thing you’ll have happening all over the place if these ignorant fellows are allowed to do just as they like. ”

“ The most vigorous exertions ought to be made, in order to identify and convict every local agitator, and to this purpose, most of the miserable creatures who were brought to town on Thursday, should be applied. ”

“ These ringleaders and agitators may be divided into two clearly defined classes. The one includes the men who are energetic and possess, but only intermittently, much strength of will, the other the men, far rarer than the preceding, whose strength of will is enduring. The first mentioned are violent, brave, and audacious. They are more especially useful to direct a violent enterprise suddenly decided on, to carry the masses with them in spite of danger, and to transform into heroes the men who but yesterday were recruits. ”

“ The agitators felt that in some way the masses would win, the constable's club would wait on the bayonets, and the militia would sway with the voters for the poor and against the rich; therefore a striker might knock a peaceful laborer on the head with impunity. ”

“ These representatives were called agitators, a name which in those days signified simply agents. The degradation of the term in our own time into a synonym for political busy-bodies must not mislead us, nor blind us to the dignified patience, under extreme provocation, of this irresistible body of disciplined men. ”

“ In the overwhelming majority of cases, these forces at the present time shed their blood in the cause of restricted local work, but under the circumstances we are discussing, occasions would constantly arise for transferring a capable agitator or organiser from one end of the country to the other. ”

“ What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true. Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation. Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that they should be free. ”

“ Conditions are such there that no outside agitation is necessary to make trouble.”
“But the agitators are there. They’re an element and you have ignored it. Mr. Banneker, do you consider that you are dealing fairly with this paper, in attempting to commit it to an inflammatory, pro-strike course?” ”

“ Industrious as they were, the agitators were too closely identified with France to be popular, and it was not till the end of the war that the middle and working classes as a whole began to lend them a favourable ear. In the meantime, they were regarded by the Government as infinitely more powerful than they really were, and for thirty years they worked in constant danger of imprisonment or transportation. They had been depressed, in common with Whigs like Fox and Grey, by the ferocity of the French mobs. ”

“ Agitation-meetings blaming the executive were held about the country, at which, when he heard of them, my Lord Clare expressed his amazement, ingeniously stating in public that he was astonished at the mildness of the Viceroy in not severely punishing the agitators. Such a hint was not lost upon his amateur colonels and military magistrates. They began to exhibit renewed examples of vigorous zeal, destroying property at pleasure, searching houses for arms, treating the inhabitants with such brutality that women fell into convulsions and brought forth children before their time. ”

“ Ways to Lead an Uprising at Mass Meetings It can be carried out by means of a small group of guerrillas infiltrated within the masses, who will have the mission of agitating, giving the impression that there are many of them and that they have popular backing. Using the tactics of a force of 200-300 agitators, a demonstration can be created in which 10,00-20,00 persons take part.
The agitation of the masses in a demonstration is carried out by means of sociopolitical objectives. ”

“ In this action one or several people of our convert movement should take part, highly trained as mass agitators, involving innocent persons, in order to bring about an apparent spontaneous protest demonstration. They will lead all of the concentration to the end of it. ”

“ With them he fences heroically and causes a sufficiency of clatter and noise. He is in deadly earnest and will brook no rivals. Parties within parties are formed, and the energies which should be directed towards fighting opponents are absorbed in combat within the society.
There is another element of disaster which now and then gains ascendancy in the community of reformers. It is the professional agitator, the parasite who will speak for or 121 against a principle according to the economic advantage which one side or the other may offer. ”

“ Under such conditions, with the proper direction of our endeavors, you will increase your forces tenfold, and each hundred of agitators will leave after them a trail in the form of an organized apparatus functioning as yet unsatisfactorily, awkwardly, but still existing. ”

“ To persons of a certain education the agitators sought to prove that the general economic situation was desperate, that it was the duty of every conscientious citizen to help the people in such a dilemma, and that the first step towards the attainment of this devoutly to be wished consummation was the limitation or destruction of the uncontrolled supreme power. On the whole the agitators had very little success, and not a few of them fell into the hands of the police, several of them being denounced to the authorities by the persons in whose interest they professed to be acting ”

“ The inauguration of such a feature might cause our agitators to be annoying and importunate for a time. The greater the consideration shown, the sooner would the agitators be laughed at and discouraged by their comrades. ”

“ Agitation for twenty or thirty years for some single concession was like the economy of ancient Egypt, where the labour of an entire generation was expended to raise a pyramid. And the agitators came out of the contest like soldiers from a long campaign, unfit for any other work and indifferent to the ordinary means and methods by which a people become prosperous. If the conflict could be brought to a close by a fierce encounter in arms it was not too high a price to pay for permanent peace. Letters from soldiers to the Nation were not unfrequent. ”

“ The quarrel that the world has with its agitators is that they do really agitate. People express this by saying that the men are dangerous or have bad taste. The epithets vary with the age. They are intended127 to excite public contempt, and they embody the aversions of society. In a martial age the reformer is called a molly-coddle; in a commercial age an incompetent, a disturber of values ”

“ These classes of agitators and the followers of agitators exist and have always existed here as well as in Russia and elsewhere; and they are put in the front when they ought to be suppressed and sent to the rear or out of sight. They are apt to be abnormal in vanity, and stop at nothing to obtain notoriety. Those of them who are soft and emotional become crazed with mental dwelling on one subject, with the excitement of political speaking and the applause and criticism they receive ”

“ That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, ‘These agitators are stirring up a223 feeling of dissatisfaction among working-men, and they should be suppressed,’ will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment.... That the army of the discontented is gathering fresh recruits day by day is true ”

“ That the daily bread and home comforts of tens of thousands of men depend on the secret and irresponsible decision of a little knot of agitators, sending out their verbal and often ambiguous written orders by a walking-delegate or two, is one of the monstrosities of Strikes often witnessed in the United States. The laborers sometimes do not know even the causes of the strike. ”

“ In our own land, even granted that there are a hundred thousand ”red“ agitators, or say a quarter of a million––and we have no real belief that this is so––what are these in a population of one hundred and five millions? Are the ninety and nine sane, moral, law abiding men and women going to allow themselves to be stampeded into ruin by a handful of criminals and lunatics?
“‘We do not for a moment believe it. These agitators and incendiaries have a sort of maniacal impetus that fills the air with dust and noise and alarms the credulous. ”

“ John Clifford, who are among the most active public men in recent history, all have lived to a ripe old age. And even if we turn to the more democratic class of agitators, who have spent the greater part of their lives in popular (or perhaps I should say unpopular) agitation, often having to undergo great strain and hardship in constant travelling and speaking in all sorts of conditions and seasons, do we not find the same testimony? ”

“ No term is too strong in condemnation for those persons who endeavour to arouse an agitation among a class of people so short-sighted and so ready to turn against their own benefactors and their own interest. I am credibly informed that one of these agitators, immediately after the Bishop of Gloucester's unfortunate but harmlessly intended speech at the Gloucester Agricultural Society's dinner—one of these agitators mounted a platform at a village meeting and in plain language incited and ad [Pg 382] vised the labourers to duck the farmers! ”

“ The men were thrown out of employment; they could not work if they desired to, because there were no cars and no means of carrying away the product of the mines. The consequence was, they would meet together, and these matters were discussed. Agitators would go among them. The better class of men were overruled, and the more violent agitators carried the day, and it resulted in a strike and demand of an increase of twenty-five per cent. in the rate of wages, at a time when everything was depressed, and it was so preposterous. ”

“ It is urged that the organizing worker cannot be made to leave the job because the job is his property and it is all that he has."
As to "The Remedy":—
"It is obvious that the violent strike methods adopted by the I.W.W. type agitators, which only incidentally, although effectively, tend to improve camp conditions, are not to be accepted as a solution of the problem. ”

“ The chief agitators of the League, who have—not unnaturally considering the favours showered upon them in the past—a high sense of their own importance...–Times.
With no comma after unnaturally the first thought is that the agitators not unnaturally consider; second thoughts put it right; but second thoughts should never be expected from a reader.
Simultaneously extensive reclamation of land and harbour improvements are in progress at Chemulpo and Fusan.–Times. ”