Industrial Workers of the World

The Law and the Prophets

"A wise man must not obey the law too well" - Emerson.

The law is one of the great means of superstition, by which the people are exploited and enslaved.

The law is ruled by fear.

Fear always and everywhere is the result of ignorance and error. People generally fear what they don't understand. The workers fear the law because they don' really undersand the law. The workers are tought from their infancy, in the schools, from the pulpit and press, that the laws of the land are for the protection of the weak against the strong, and that without the law, lawless men would indulge in rape, murder and anarchy.

Yet, in spit of all this, facts go to prove that men if left alone are a great deal better than the law. It is perfectly right and legal to "inform and scab" yet the great majority of men think twice before they do these acts.

For "scabs" and "informers" are always looked upon as human refuse.

Under the present capitalist society, there is an economic need for the law for the capitalist and ruling class. The law is always conservative and a bar to human progress.

The law is ruled by the most ignorant.

The rulers say to the workers: "You must obey our laws," but the workers say, "Your laws grind us down and keep us poor." But never mind the workers are told "You must obey, otherwise we will recruit workers from the working class, to keep the workers in subjection, by means of the soldiers and police."

The law is against all real social reform. Almost any revolutionary speeech or writing can be distorted into "sedition".

Why the law does not do it, simply becauste the rulers do not feel strong enough to suppress it that is all.

With the law the working class have nothing to do.

We are concerned with the organisation of industries.

We are not concerned by law ruled by fear, but with "freedom" which is the aquirement of knowledge.

We are not concerned with the clauses in any Act of Parliament, or the technical points of any law, but how to produce the economic means of life with the least possible energy, so that we may have time for the esthetic joys of life, art, literature and philosophy.

More particularly, we of the I.W.W., are concerned with the management of industries; not with ruling men.The law has as its prophets all the dull, stupid and ignorant men of all time.

The only way to reform society is to break and defy the law.

The greatest men of all times, from Socrates to Emerson, have either been charged with law breaking or have councelled "Defy the law".

Our present day law makers are from amongst the most ignorant and shallow of men. There are men in Parliament who have never read a serious work in their lives who have not a idea above a seat in Parliament, or a soul above a vote.

Yet these men make the laws, and, what is sadder, the workers think they have to go to abey these silly and immoral laws.

Law makers always act against the working class.

Every Labor politician in the state voted for those fine clauses in the Arbitration Act; in many instances voted that their own fellow unionists should go to jail if they dared to strike.

Labor Minister Dodd (an ex-union secretary) called out the police to break the horse drivers' strike. So much for law makers.

Are we anarchists? Of course we are.

Compare the teachings and sayings of Tolstoy, of Kropotkin, and of Godwin, with the speaches of inpudent pounders like Lloyd George, or with glatent and bombastic persons like Mr. Scadden, or with the pre-election speeches of intellectual nincompoop like Mr Andrew Fisher, and judge for yourselves who has the best and noblest ideas of social reconstruction, the law makers or the law breakers.

The I.W.W. must always be an illegal organisation, and use illegal means, because generally, illegal means are winning tactics.

Breaking the law should afford every member of the I.W.W. the keenest intellectual enjoyment.

M. Sawtell Direct Action 1 July 1915