“Although the average man feels in his heart that nearly all political and religious conventionalities are dynamic deceits, yet how cautiously he avoids any open display of antagonism thereto? He has not the courage of his opinions. He is afraid to say openly what he thinks secretly. In other words, he is living in a state of subjectiveness—of vassalage. He allows, his brain to be dominated and held in bondage by the brain of another. From his infancy he has been deliberately subjected to a continuous external pressure, especially designed to coerce his understanding in strict accord with prearranged views of moral, political or religious duty.”

“The great mass of men who inhabit the world of today have no initiative, no originality or independence of thought, but are mere subjective individualities, who have not had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideals that they so formally revere.”

“Although the average man has taken no part in manufacturing moral codes and statute laws, yet how he obeys them with dog-like submissiveness? He is trained to obedience as oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall, habituated from childhood to be governed by others.”

“How absurd of men to hurrah over their ‘glorious political liberty' who have not even been able to retain possession of the substantial products of their own laboriousness. After a century of ‘constitutional progress,' ten per cent. of the population are absolute owners of ninety-two per cent. of all property.”

“Free men should never regulate their conduct by the suggestion or dictation of others, for when they do so they are no longer free. No man ought to obey any contract, written or implied, except he himself has given his personal and formal adherence thereto, when in a state of mental maturity and unrestrained liberty. It is only slaves that are born into contracts, signed and sealed by their progenitors.”

“There is no obligation upon any man to passive obedience, when his life, his liberty and property are threatened by footpad, assassin or statesman.”

“The free man is born free, and dies free.”

“It has taken countless evolutionary epochs to make man what he is, the most ferocious hirsute beast of prey that inhabits the caverns and jungles of earth.”

“Friendship is necessary and ennobling, but impersonal despotism is destructive of all dignity and manly virtue.”

All this was written by a man who, according to the publishers' preface, was a rich man. He shows up the existing evil conditions with a ruthlessness that is refreshing. Yet he declares that these things are right. That the rich and powerful should rule—in his own words, that “Might Is Right”; that the only rule to govern, right or wrong, lies in the power to enforce obedience to your will. There is no doubt that he voices the sentiment of wealth the world over, until, as sometimes in the world's history has happened, labor gets temporarily the upper hand, and they whine and whimper about the wrongs they suffer. When this happens they forget that “might is right.” When for the moment labor, enraged at the cruelties inflicted upon it by arrogant wealth, and forgetting in its turn that might is not right, arises in its power and hands back to capital the same kind of treatment it has so freely bestowed upon labor, it becomes extremely meek and cringing; but the moment it again gains power it is as arrogant and intolerable as ever. But the most singular, and at the same time the most deplorable fact in this connection is that labor as a rule hasn't sense enough to recognize the wrongs it is compelled to suffer, until it is too late; but often whoops and hurrahs for the very conditions that cause its misery, and kisses the hand that applies the lash to its already bleeding back.