Kansas City’s Caroline Lowe was a school teacher, president of the Kansas City Teachers Association, who joined the Socialist Party in 1903 and was active in organizing Kansas and Missouri miners. A leader of the drive for women’s participation in the Party, in 1911 she became head of the Socialist Woman’s National Committee. On the left., at age 40 she would get a law degree and became a lead defense attorney for I.W.W. and Socialist militants facing persecution, helping to defend Bill Haywood and many others. Here she remarks on the fear of the ruling class and the mettle of the prisoners.

‘Whom the Gods Would Destroy’ by Caroline Lowe from Workers World (Kansas City). Vol. 1 No. 15. July 18, 1919.

“WHOM THE GODS WOULD DESTROY, THEY FIRST MAKE MAD.” Trite, but true, isn’t it?

With the penitentiaries and jails al-ready crowded with conscientious men and women, political and industrial prisoners who are innocent of any crime–another group was herded into the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth yesterday.

Had the guards been absent from the group, the young men might have been a carefree, happy bunch of boys starting out for a holiday. Laughingly they told good-bye to their friends–conscious of the righteousness of their cause; secure in the knowledge that already actions of the Peace Conference has vindicated them, and that the future will justify them in full.

Like hundreds of others, these boys will take advantage of their isolation to study and further prepare themselves for more efficient work in the class struggle. While their friends rebel and protest against the incarceration of these splendid young men, both prisoners and friends realize its true significance and rejoice in it.

Abject fear animates the actions of the ruling class, when it rushes frantically hither and thither shouting “sedition, traitor,” persecuting, arresting, convicting hundreds, perhaps thousands of honest American citizens who are known to be good, capable, efficient members of society.

The imprisoned men and women are not the sole nor even the chief sufferers. When millions of honest people are intimidated and brow beaten until they dare not breathe a word of opposition to the tyrannical power, then millions of protestants are awakened and millions of revolutionists are created. So all hail the fear-driven oppressors who are forced to dig their own graves, and to bury with them the slave ridden system they strive to perpetuate.

The class conscious worker goes serenely–yes joyously, on with the work of emancipation from this system, waves a cheery goodbye to comrades who are marching away under guard, hastens back to his own appointed task, wondering “who next?” Perhaps he–but what matter? The inevitable is near at hand. The new day is dawning. The East is red with the newly risen sun. Russia, Austria, all Europe is aroused to the call of freedom–England, Italy, France are answering the call. Canada is astir with it. Our own beloved country, blinded as it has been by lying historians and deluded by false prophets, is opening its eyes and looking about with a new understanding of life.

Perhaps the thing most needed to shake America free from the stupefying influence of a corrupted and debauched leadership, is oppression–and yet more brutal oppression. Whatever be the way that leads to the light, gladly we enter upon it; whatever be the price, happy are we to pay it.

We are one with the revolutionists of all time. We revolt with the oppressed of all lands. We rejoice in the victories of the past and welcome the deliverance of our land from the bondage of American plutocracy.

Greetings! To the newly imprisoned group, to big Bill Haywood and our many comrades in Leavenworth; to Gene Debs and Alexander Berkman and numerous other comrades confined in Atlanta, Georgia, reputed to be the vilest Federal penitentiary in the U.S.; to Elizabeth Baer in Philadelphia; to Kate O’Hare, Emma Goldman and the little Italian comrade in Jefferson City; to Marie Eque and Louise Oliverthal in Cannon City; to Flora Foreman at McAlister; to the hundreds of unknown comrades in the unknown jails and penitentiaries throughout the nation. Your sacrifice is not in vain. You are breaking the fetters that bind the human race.

The Workers World, published weekly in Kansas City, Missouri during much of 1919 was a mix of regional and national working class news, international socialist events, and the growing fights within the Socialist Party. It was one of many left-wing Socialist Party journals inspired by the Russian Revolution to emerge. Edited alternatively by future Communist Party leaders James P Cannon and Earl Browder, The Workers World ceased publication in November, 1919 as writers and readers moved on to build the Communist movement and its early parties.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/workersworld/n15x-jul-18-1919-workers-world-G.pdf