SONG OF THE PRINTING PRESS

I am the Printing Press — Anarch of christendom.
Breeder of discontent, fomenter of strife, destroyer of hopes and delusions:
  I am the thunder and the flash bursting palls of sacred superstition —
  The earthquake sundering anointed forms,
  The wind that topples reverent customs,
  The flood that drowns creeds and churches —
  I am the sunlight in which men rear new temples,
  Gain new illusions, fresh hopes, larger ideals.

I am the Printing Press — Dooming authority,
  Unseating gods and kings, plotting revolutions, stirring to rebellion, revealing to slaves the chains that bind them:
  I am the danger of a little knowledge that precedes more knowledge and ripens to wisdom:
  I am the pain and the ecstacy of quickened growth, the bitterness of knowing, the pang of disillusion, the dregs at the bottom of the cup:
  I am that which is clothing right with might.

I am the Printing Press — Time's analyst,
  Sifting, dissecting, assorting, evading or hiding nothing;
  Searching the dark corners, dragging into sunlight the dust of centuries, the slime of lust, the mold of weakness, the debris of ignorance;
  Lending myself to all shams, shames and villainies, to all graces and divinities:
  Culture and crudeness I blazon, faith and doubt unmask, hate and love mingle, pride and humility, prejudice and sympathy uncover —
  I reveal man to himself.

I am the Printing Press — The silver thread
  That binds the human whole:
  I am that Messiah foretold by the prophets.
  Buddha and Jesus were my heralds:
  I am the resurrection and the life, the cross and the circle, regeneration and destruction;
  I am the trinity of pain, knowledge and growth;
  I am the power to roll the stone from the tomb of death and reveal life:
  I shall uncover the secret place of the Grail and cleanse all men
       To drink from the golden chalice.

I am the Printing Press — The means and the end
 Of external progression — the journey out and the return.
  I shall marry the heart to the head of man — wed intellect and sympathy, care and art, purpose and genius, passion and reason, religion and logic, poetry and usefulness, morality and nature:
  I am wearing away the crudities and intensifying the realities — transmuting the primitive instincts to finer perceptions:
  I am fitting man for his new environment:
  I am the prophet of that time when the written word shall be obsolete —
      When men shall speak soul to soul.


A PLEA FOR MAN

I plead for Man —
  Against the Written Word:
  The state and the statute,
  Preamble and resolution,
  Theology and philosophy,
  The fixed belief and the static thought —
  Reason's fumbling clutch, logic's icy touch;
  Against the sorcery of syllables and
  The hypnotism of hyperbole.
  Against all the tomb's tentacles
 I plead for living men.

I plead for Man —
  Against the guns and creeds of Greed
  And the black blindness
  Of orthodox and infidel
  To the law as unbroken as gravity
  That the only gain
  From the commerce of death machines
  Is hate and pain.
  Against the world's darkest hour
  Of the tradesman's triumph I plead for human beings.

I plead for Man —
  Against hell's heresy
  That growth and joy and wisdom
  Must come thru suffering,
  That good lies in the bitterness of strife
  And grief is integral in life;
  That sweets grow in sour and purity in filth
  Or anything of worth accrue to one
  By forcing misery on another.
  Against the exploiter's creeds of Death and Destruction
  I plead for human life.

I plead for Man —
  Against God
  And all his plutocrats and prophets
  And their religions to bind vassals,
  Their morals to promote mediocrity,
  Their dogma of Rights
  To maintain "mine and thine"
  Against the human need
  And the heart's demand.
  Against the glory of God and the gluttony of Greed
  I plead for Man!



SONG OF THE RAILWAY CROSSING

Hear the bells at the railway crossing.
Ding dong, they sound,
If the wind is right,
Above the roar of the hastening train
Of electric cars
Whirling a hundred passengers
From the city to their homes.

It's a dangerous crossing.
The smooth auto road
Bisects it diagonally.
Therefore the warning bells —
Ding dong, they sound,
When the wind is right.

A dozen people a year
Were killed here.
That's why the bells were installed —
Cunning electric automatic bells.
Now the death record
Is reduced to six.

Hear the bells
At the dangerous crossing.
Ding dong, they sound,
Sometimes,
Loud and clear above the wind
And the rushing trains.

Glorious bells!
Six lives a year
They save —
And six are killed.

Four interurban electric tracks
Cross the county road here.
The trolley cars pound along
At thirty miles an hour,
The autos glide at twenty-five.

Last night in the wind and rain
There was a crash!
Only one was killed
And one crippled.

Whose life went out?
Not yours or mine,
Anyone we know?
A. B. Smith.
Never heard of him.
Read the next item.

What are the bells saying?
Ding dong, they talk.
This is their song:
"Cheap skates are we.
We cost a hundred dollars
And save the railroad
And the county the expense
Of obviating a dangerous grade crossing."

"Cheap bells are we,
As cheap as human life.
We save dividends for the company
And every taxpayer Fifty cents."
Ding dong, ring the bells

At the dangerous crossing.
One was killed
And one crippled
Last night.

Not you or me —
Only some stranger.

Taxes are high
And life is cheap.
Ding dong, ring the bells.
Dividends are more than life
And taxes than a cripple!
When the life
Or the limb Is not
Yours or mine.

All the dividends of the world
Were not worth my life,
Or yours.
But the other fellow's —
Ding dong, ring the cheap bells.


THAT LOVE BE BOLD

That Love should be as bold as Hate —
    Audacious, fearless
    For light and joy and freedom,
    As Hate is for darkness and pain;
That Love should dare to seize and hold its own.

For what is all the world's attainment
    If pain with growth and knowledge 
    Keep the pace?
    While crime and hunger stalk
What profit all the piety and grace?

That Kindness be as strong as Cruelty —
    To mold the world
    And have its heart's desire;
    To kill the thought or thing —
Remove whatever bar its way!

For what are all the dreams and ideals
    If love be meek?
    If kindness, thought, and care
    Gain only — patience!
The dream is but a snare if Love be weak.

That Sympathy should outrun Prejudice
   And have its way on earth!
   Nor wait the toilsome centuries'
   Blind and groping growth.
That Sympathy be quick, courageous, true!



A MAN BELIEF

I believe in Man —
In men, women, and children;
In their welfare,
Their freedom from exploitation,
Their opportunity to grow —
Every human being's chance
Freely to develop
His own Individuality
Without hindrance
From Greed.

I believe in Man —
In living, breathing human beings
The "least" or the "worst"
Of which
Is more precious
Than all the minted gold,
Than any state or government,
Or any institution or church
Or property
The sun ever shone on.

I believe in Man —
Every man and every woman
And every child,
The raggedest of whom
Is more to be considered
Than all the railroads
And corporations
And temples and mansions
And riches
In the whole wide world!

I believe in Man —
Whose Present Hour
And chance to live a full life
Now and Here
Is more than all the Gods
And theologies —
More than all the dreams
Of superman
Than all the means and methods
Of Utopia!


SONG OF THE HANGMAN

I am the hangman —
  Paid to strangle boys, men, women —
  Whoever is caught in the snarled meshes
  Of the Big Net
  Threaded of the vengeful penal code,
  Woven by detectives, judges, and lawyers
  On the warp of Poverty.

I am the hangman —
 Hired by the Ladies and Gentlemen 
  Of wealth, piety, position, and culture
  To suffocate their brothers and sisters —
  Because ten thousand years ago
  Marauding herders imposed "the law"
  On conquered peasants.

I am the hangman —
  Who throttles the victims of the Net
  In an obscure corner of a
  Gloomy room in the state prison
  Where the moans and curses
  Will be hushed
  From the delicate ears
  Of wives and mothers.
 
But they hear and feel me!
  Ill-fed mothers embrace me;
  Their unborn babes are mine
  When chance calls;
  In the womb I brand them.
  Vain is your hiding of me —
  All the fearsome and weak are mine,
  Whose passions outrun their mentalities,
  Whose spleens are more developed
  Than their brains!

For I am, the lethal god —
  Whose face is hidden in
  Clouds of red passion.  I am
  The god of the abnormal. 
  I obsess the weak of will
  And possess the perverted.
  Into every open ear I whisper
  "Murder!" I am
  The color red that turns to black —
  And while I live
  No soul evades me!

I am the public hangman —
  Focus of the world's cruelty,
  Cumulous of its hate,
  Sum-total of its fear and ignorance.
  My days and ways and dreams
  Are of blood.
  I am he who kills, kills, kills —
  For a monthly wage
  Paid by the State.

I am the hangman —
  Mercenary descendant,
  Of old Judge Lynch,
  Whose ways were quick, crude, merciful —
  And I, more often than he did,
  Hang the wrong man.
  My ways are refined. I am
  Cold and mechanical — the paid ghoul
  With critical eye for the long tortures
  Of those who wait in the Death Cell.

I am the State's hangman —
  The conscience of every voter,
  His malice and savagery.
  And I am bolder than he, for
  I do what he dare not.
  My blood lust is his —
  My courage is my own.

I am the hangman —
  The State's hired butcher of men.
  I am the avatar
  From dungeons of the Inquisition,
  And ye are the mob that gloated. 
  Long live the lust of blood!
  When my trade is gone
  Men will cease to kill each other.

I am the hangman —
  Who does the work the judge
  Orders but has not the "sand"
  To perform.
  I am the sign of the incapacity
  Of modern people to treat
  The crime of murder intelligently.
  I am the ignorance and stupidity
  Of the Christian mob.


THE DOCTRINE OF RIGHTS

The Doctrine of Rights —
Dogma of intolerable wrongs —
Wrongs to little children, to nursing mothers, to youth of immaturity, to helpless age —
The food stolen from their mouths
And heaped in gluttonous piles around a few greed-blinded inhuman beings —
Billionaires who riot in luxury while millions drudge and pinch and go without —
Wrongs that Men, real men, courageous men with the natural dignity of a Hottentot, the human sympathy of an Apache, the nascent manhood of a wolf or porcupine would never tolerate —
Babes starving by the thousand
Children's lives ground out in mine and mill
Women on the street corners offering their bodies for bread —
And we haggle over Rights!

Under the dogma of Rights —
The greatest wrongs the world has ever known!
No one has a Right to anything
While a child lacks food.
It is avarice and envy
That demand their Rights.
The brave take and leave.

The Doctrine of Rights is a quibble —
A dogma of caste
Artificially dividing
An invertebrate people
Who argue and pass resolutions
While their weaker ones starve
And broken human lives
Litter every pathway —
In a land of Plenty, in a land of Plenty, in a land of Plenty!
In a land where all the necessities and luxuries of life
Are so abundant they choke the warehouses
And the surplus is destroyed.

The state's Rights
The church's Rights
The landlord's Rights
The army's Rights
The prison keepers' Rights
The hangman's Rights
The millionaire's Rights
The exploiters' Rights
The bankers' Rights
The money lenders' Rights
The brokers' Rights
The merchants' Rights
The employers' Rights
The brothel keepers' Rights
The prostitutes' Rights
The wage earners' Rights
The people's Rights
The paupers' Rights —
           Inalienable Rights!

Up and down the christian earth men —
Are we Men? —
Prescribing, discovering, balancing, maintaining, defining, defending, enacting Our Rights!
Bench and bar ransack tombs and tomes
For definitions and precedents
To establish Rights!
While a million shop girls sell their bodies for ribbons and bread —

(Ribbons count more
Than bread
With the woman I
 would love) —

And bread and ribbons so plenty
That the markets are glutted —
While men —
 Men?
Haggle over their Rights!

Prisons, gallows, penal codes, death machines —
Ten hundred thousand
Toiling, slaving, sweating
Night and day — dying! —
In the munition hells
To make fiendish contrivances by which living beings are mutilated and murdered —
To establish and maintain Rights!
Whose Rights? —
Of the cunning, the stronger, the cruel, the heartless;
To rob, cheat, kill, debauch, and exploit
The weaker and the trusting.

All up and down
The christianized parts of earth
Spies and detectives
Are peeping thru keyholes
Of cabinets and bedchambers
To uphold Rights!
And children are dying in the streets
And men are entombed in mines
Youth poisoned and life blackened
In sweatshops —
While we haggle over Rights!

The Doctrine of Rights
Is hell's dogma of servant and master.
Manhood will cast it out
And put decency, courage, kindness — Love!
A bold defiant daring love
In its place.
O have done with the quibbling!
The world needs Men —
The starving children need
Men To feed them
Now!

Next: Personal Privilege and Facets of Truth