an Anarchist but from the second number it has been a straight out-and-out Anarchist publication.

A ten-cent publication without advertisements can not properly be called an organ of the working-class. MOTHER EARTH has, however, advocated libertarian principles and fought the fight of the disinherited of the earth to the best of its ability. Anarchists recognize clearly-more clearly, perhaps, than any school of thought-that in the reconstruction of society all classes must be influenced and all classes contribute. Denunciation of the workingclass for submitting to exploitation is as futile as pious appeals to the capitalists to get off their backs. Some men are touched by an appeal to self-interest, others to a spirit of solidarity; so the exploiter, who because of this feeling of solidarity, gets off the backs of workingmen and takes his place in the revolutionary movement contributes his share to the breakdown of capitalism with the conscious revolutionary worker. The ratio may be unequal but it is there and must not be disregarded. It is impossible to liberalize one part of society without doing it to the rest.

Every question of moment that has arisen during the last nine years has been considered and every movement of revolt against constituted authority has been supported by MOTHER EARTH. The rise of the Syndicalist Movement, the assassination of Francisco Ferrer by the Catholic Church and the government of Spain, of Denjiro Kotoku and his comrades by the Japanese government, the unemployed movement here, the Free Speech fights of San Diego, Spokane and other places, together with protests against the European war have all found support and such encouragement as it was possible to give them. Anarchism, is after all more a fluent dynamic force than a definite social state. It destroys old forms and in so far as it does it prepares the way for a new society and is therefore properly speaking a constructive force. The social rebel appears everywhere; in all lands, in many guises. To-day, in the labor movement; tomorrow, in education; the day after, sapping the foundations of the political state; in art, the drama and in all forms of life. Linked with an invisible bond that expresses itself in a spiritual rather than a material form,

the Pougets and Patauds of the labor movement, Ferrer in education, Anatole France in literature, Ibsen in the drama and the countless young artists all work to a common end-a new time where men and women will be really and truly free.

MOTHER EARTH has tried to interpret the ideals, hopes and aspirations of these pioneers, of these dreamers of dreams. It has tried to make articulate the cry of the downtrodden and exploited masses struggling for the means of life, and that of the artist for soul expression, for the two are but different manifestations of the same spirit. It has blundered in some things and has not always shown a tolerance to others. This is natural enough; for revolutionists are people of strong convictions, intense in all they do, and this very quality often makes them dogmatic and intolerant toward those with whom they differ. It has been brave and strong; and when crises like the McNamara earthquake struck the labor movement and so many white feathers were shown, MOTHER EARTH was there strong and smiling at the finish. Again, in the case of the Lexington Avenue explosion of last year it never faltered, never doubted itself. Flamboyant and theatrical, its methods were different from what ours might have been, but it was bold and uncompromising, and none can deny its sincerity.

The past decade has been a stormy period and the struggle MOTHER EARTH has had to maintain itself epitomizes, in a sense, the larger struggle going on throughout the world. It is more than doubtful if the struggle will be moderated as time goes on; on the contrary, it will probably be intensified. To be ahead of the times is the crime of crimes; and MOTHER EARTH will have to struggle to exist. It has fought a good fight against heavy odds and has deserved more than it has received. May it grow and develop, and the flame of liberty lighted nine years ago be kept burning, that it may unite with other flames that will in time illumine the world.

ANARCHISM-The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

S

TO THE FRIEND OF ALL OF US:

MOTHER EARTH

REBEKAH E. RANEY.

IX years ago I made a discovery-the discovery that light and truth and courage and sympathy were to be found in a little monthly magazine, surnamed the same as this galloping ball under our feet. Before then I had read varying periodicals, and I confess I was in that state of gullible receptivity where I really believed the snorting journalists of respectability were taking issue with each other. Credence is both wonderful and terrible. It unmans even woman to face the morrow.

I remember I had only just finished reading Frederick Taylor's series on efficiency when I collided with MOTHER EARTH. You can picture to yourself the shock to my constitution to have the assimilation of so weighty a matter thus rudely interrupted. And that, too, when my digestive apparatus was working overtime along conservative lines. I believed I had come to comprehend fully how it was possible for a man to lift a million or two tons more of pig iron or lead without having the exertion deplete his staying power in the least degree. As my little brain saw it then, the clock was the thing; all leaders were great; and the man who could squeeze the most labor out of a human being in a given time (without harming him visibly) was the real genius of civilization. "As it was in the beginning" it is not always -in the end. That was six years ago.

In the six years gone by, a little parchment messenger known as MOTHER EARTH has come regularly to follow up its initial work of revising my perspective. Its publisher calls it a magazine. I do not regard it in that light. MOTHER EARTH is a friend. Oh, I know it wears a printer's disguise, but in this world we must have some form to be seen at all, so why not type? I often wonder how the circulation in my head kept up its regular gait before I came upon this modest trumpeter of treasonable truth. The point is that I, like many others, never felt the need of particular illumination till I received it. It takes a ray of light to discover the darkness in a room.

MOTHER EARTH contends she has been masquerading in her pamphlet attire for ten years. We believe what she says, but the period of her existence is not the important part. The fact that she exists is what matters, and I for one hail the presence, the promise, the performance of this triumphant sounding-board of ideas as an augury of the day when men will see the folly of pursuing vacuums in order that they may have unnecessary space.

密密

WHAT MOTHER EARTH MEANS TO ME

M

BY DAVID RUDIN.

OTHER EARTH has spirit because it has thought; it has survived because it has an ideal; it grows because it is rebellious-it can never be perfect. It is vigorous, discontented, uncompromising and insatiable. It is unique!

In ten years this prodigy has proven its value if in no other way than in its survival. Any magazine that carries an unyielding message of liberty, an independent spirit of revolt must encounter an allied opposition of persecution, starvation and misinterpretation. MOTHER EARTH knows these ordeals. This indomitable little magazine goes on, breaking through every impediment, spurred on by a vision of social equality and unrestricted freedom.

MOTHER EARTH is and always should be open to the severest criticism. It must evade dangerous pitfalls, it must constantly guard against becoming a dogmatic dictator or an imbecile institution. It will be in a position of either advancement or retrogression-never in a state of mediocre stagnation.

Dedicated as it is to the unpopular cause of a passionate minority, superior as it is to the snare of pretentious success, it will remain faithful to the cause which it so daringly champions.

* *

I

MOTHER EARTH AND LABOR'S REVOLT BY TOM MANN.

TAKE great satisfaction in writing my congratulations to and expressing my admiration for the controllers of MOTHER EARTH. For nine years it has voiced in clear terms the necessity for "working class solidarity," "direct action in all industrial affairs" and "free association." I subscribe to each of these with heart and mind. We have been passing through a long and dreary stage of Bureaucratic Stateism, and we are not out of it yet. Because of it, the European war became an easy affair to precipitate, when the hour arrived that served the purposes of the War Lords, Governments and Bureaucrats.

The condition of Europe to-day, after six months of war, is such that there is much excuse for good honest lovers of freedom to bewail the present and future of mankind. No doubt that there were millions of men and women in Europe, who fearlessly strove for the advancement of mankind; the vast majority of these to-day are either actually engaged in war or are actively supporting the war by their everyday efforts, believing that they are either resisting "barbaric aggression," or are engaged in the defense of Human Liberty and Progress.

Neither the organized Social Democrats of Germany, nor the Socialists or Syndicalists of France, and certainly not the Labor Movement of Britain were equal to the exhibition of international solidarity, when the governments of these countries decided to throw open the hellgates that have fed hatred, savagery, and a desire for maiming and killing on the vastest scale the world has known.

Fate decided that the crucial test should first be experienced by the Germans, and these singularly failed to practice the solidarity they had stood for; how near to being really successful the minority were, who were prepared to face every obstacle rather than identify themselves with Kaiser and Government, it is not yet easy to judge. But we are compelled to know that the real Internationalists of the respective countries were miserably inadequate successfully to initiate the spirit of solidarity.