Lucy E. Parsons

The Moving Inspiration of Our Age

November 15, 1911

“The Trial a Farce,” The Agitator

Our comrades [the Haymarket Martyrs] sleep the sleep which knows no awakening, but the grand cause for which they died is not asleep nor dead: It is the live, inspiring issue of every land and clime where the ray of civilization has penetrated. It is the moving inspiration of our age, the only question worth struggling for: the question of how to lift humanity from poverty and despair.

This question is the swelling tide of our age. It is useless for the ruling class to stand on the shore of discontent and attempt to force this tide back to its depths of poverty, for it swells up from the hearts of the people. And though they should erect gallows along all the highways and byways, build prisons and increase armies, the tide will continue to rise until it overwhelms them in a worldwide revolution. This is the lesson of history.