The Foyers of Revolt

What should we think of this wave of plutocracy that is sweeping the so-called civilized world? We who work must defend ourselves against these exploiters of public misery. It has always been this way.

The suppliers of the Roman legions were the object of the same justified disapproval. The race of crows which comes to rob the victims after the battle is not extinct, despite the centuries. How slow and difficult is progress! Those who did not go to battle want to have the benefit of victory! It seems that they are blindly trying to justify the saying that the regime's adversaries keep repeating to us: "Democracy, plutocracy."

These were the monstrous abuses of the rich in the Russian empire; it was the shameless speculators who lived off the pain of the mercenaries who caused the wave of savage revolt of which history knows no precedent, which swept like a wisp of straw the throne which seemed the most solid in the world.

Our republic should not gradually turn into a plutocratic oligarchy much more formidable than a personal royalty, because anonymity would protect the most criminal financial brigandages from any sanction.

All these stock market traders, stock traders, propagators of false news, coming from the four corners of the universe getting along, even without speaking the same language, with astonishing ease, should be monitored and made impossible to harm the masses. worker, workers of the hand or the brain. Leaving us at the mercy of this underworld is a crime and imprudence, it is even more: stupidity.

Unfortunately, secret collusion supports, behind the scenes, the worst speculators on public misery because a bone is thrown prey to unscrupulous appetites.

The financiers take refuge in their dungeon and from there successfully play the lucrative little game of the rise of the pound, the dollar and the fall of the franc, the crown or the mark.

But let all these doers beware! Let all these torturers who build or increase their fortune on public misfortune remember that the capitalist regime is nowadays attacked with ardor; let them take care, through their dishonest actions, to precipitate the fall of this regime and to give its adversaries formidable weapons to achieve this end.

Today, in the quietest, most level-headed circles, indignation against shameless stock traders is growing every day. Let our financiers remember that mad sheep are terrible. is that it is easier to make a pacifist an anarchist than a socialist.

In Russia, it was the moujiks who knelt at the feet of the Little Father, and even in front of his simple portrait, who were the most terrible, during the shameful years of this unripe revolution, because they had suffered the most.

Far-sighted financiers, in their own interest and in that of the crowds, must curb their ambitions and their greed; let them put an end to their blood-soaked and suffering-soaked belly. Public vindictiveness could strike them down forever!

Revolutions, history is there to teach us, have always emerged from the difficulties of the material life of the people. The virulence of passions and anger increases when poverty is rife. We are not there yet, in France, but if the practice of shady men who prowl the country and all around continues, we cannot know where things will go.

Our leaders perhaps do not suspect the danger, because they live between Parliament and the Senate and not among the people. Let them therefore mingle, without anyone being able to suspect it, just one day, among all classes of workers, from the most modest laborer to the small employee, to the average civil servant, to the humble craftsman and they will see what feelings animate these beings who suffer more than all others from financial banditry, without ever having the hope of drawing the slightest profit from it.

The leaders of revolutions have only ever succeeded by relying on general discontent. There is no example of a popular uprising provoked by purely rational and philosophical motives. Crowds are far from reasoning. They set in motion under the impulse of hatred, love, enthusiasm; when they are unleashed, nothing can stop them.
In the name of justice, humanity, and even the interests of capitalists and financiers, let all these speculations stop. Let the most greedy eyes open. Let them see the danger that threatens them.

Balsan-Praville.