Swords and Plowshares/Bread and Justice
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In part from the Russian
I
BITTER to eat is the bread that was made by slaves.
In the fair white loaf I can taste their sweat and tears.
My clothes strangle and oppress me; they burn into my flesh, for I have not justly earned them, and how are they clad that made them?
My tapestried walls and inlaid floors chill me and hem me in like the damp stones of a prison house, for I ask why the builders and weavers of them are not living here in my stead.
Alas! I am eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, the tree of others' labor!
II
IS the bread question so low and material?
Are the men so very wrong who claim that, with bread for all who deserve it, paradise would be fairly inaugurated?
To withhold bread is injustice. Is injustice material?
To give bread where it is due is justice. Has justice nothing to do with soul?
Bread is the symbol of justice and righteousness. Honest bread is the staff of life of the spirit as well as of the body.
Justice—plain bread-justice—is the only atmosphere in which a healthy soul of a man or of a people can thrive.
III
DO not talk religion to you, ye men of the world. I say nothing of love or pity or Christianity.
I speak your own language and conjure you in the name of fair play.
You who spurn the man that takes an unfair advantage of his competitors in sport or at the card-table, you are at the same time playing the game of life with loaded dice;
You are forever insisting on any handicap of wealth and rank, however excessive, that you may be able to command, yet you hold up your heads as tho you were honorable.
You force men to pit their broken-down nags against your thoroughbreds, their leaky scows against your steam-yachts and are proud of the show you make!
By your own code you should be expelled from every respectable club, cut by every self-respecting man, and sent for good and all to Coventry.
You have yet to learn that life is a game no whit inferior in its demands on your honor to whist or tennis or the turf, and that you must extend your code to it or be justly ruled off the course.
IV
IS it not enough that you eat the bread of others' labor, but you must despise them as well?
Do you owe them every breath, every comfort, every pleasure, and will you not even pay them with your regard?
Oh, this is infamous, incredible!
You can not long continue to live this lie.
You need fear no rabble, no revolution.
Fear only that you may unwittingly catch a glimpse of the truth.
BITTER to eat is the bread that was made by slaves.
In the fair white loaf I can taste their sweat and tears.
My clothes strangle and oppress me; they burn into my flesh, for I have not justly earned them, and how are they clad that made them?
My tapestried walls and inlaid floors chill me and hem me in like the damp stones of a prison house, for I ask why the builders and weavers of them are not living here in my stead.
Alas! I am eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, the tree of others' labor!
II
IS the bread question so low and material?
Are the men so very wrong who claim that, with bread for all who deserve it, paradise would be fairly inaugurated?
To withhold bread is injustice. Is injustice material?
To give bread where it is due is justice. Has justice nothing to do with soul?
Bread is the symbol of justice and righteousness. Honest bread is the staff of life of the spirit as well as of the body.
Justice—plain bread-justice—is the only atmosphere in which a healthy soul of a man or of a people can thrive.
III
DO not talk religion to you, ye men of the world. I say nothing of love or pity or Christianity.
I speak your own language and conjure you in the name of fair play.
You who spurn the man that takes an unfair advantage of his competitors in sport or at the card-table, you are at the same time playing the game of life with loaded dice;
You are forever insisting on any handicap of wealth and rank, however excessive, that you may be able to command, yet you hold up your heads as tho you were honorable.
You force men to pit their broken-down nags against your thoroughbreds, their leaky scows against your steam-yachts and are proud of the show you make!
By your own code you should be expelled from every respectable club, cut by every self-respecting man, and sent for good and all to Coventry.
You have yet to learn that life is a game no whit inferior in its demands on your honor to whist or tennis or the turf, and that you must extend your code to it or be justly ruled off the course.
IV
IS it not enough that you eat the bread of others' labor, but you must despise them as well?
Do you owe them every breath, every comfort, every pleasure, and will you not even pay them with your regard?
Oh, this is infamous, incredible!
You can not long continue to live this lie.
You need fear no rabble, no revolution.
Fear only that you may unwittingly catch a glimpse of the truth.