No. lo. COMMONWEALTH LIBRARY. April, 1S96. 



Monthly, $1 yearly. Commonweallh Co., 28 Lafayette Place, N.Y. 



AN APPEAL TO THE YOUNG. 



By peter KROPOTKIN. 



New Edition. Translated by H. M. Hyndman. 



It is to the young that I wish to address myself 

 to-day. Let the old — I mean, of course, the old in 

 heart and mind — lay the pamphlet down, therefore, 

 without tiring their eyes in reading what will tell 

 them nothing. 



I assume that you are about eighteen or twenty 

 years of age ; that you have finished your appren- 

 ticeship or your studies; that you are just entering 

 on life. I take it for granted that you have a mind 

 free from the superstition which your teachers have 

 sought to force upon you ; that you do not fear the 

 devil, and that you do not go to hear ministers rant. 

 More, that you are not one of the fops, sad products 

 of a society in decay, who display their well-cut 

 trousers and their monkey faces in the park, and 

 who even at their early age have only an insatiable 

 longing for pleasure at any price. ... I assume, 

 on the contrary, that you have a warm heart, and 

 for this reason I talk to you. 



A first question, I know, occurs to you — you have 

 often asked yourself, " What am I going to be ?" 

 In fact, when a man is young he understands that 

 after having studied a trade or a science for several 

 years — at the cost of society, mark — he has not done 

 this in order that he should make use of his acquire- 

 ments as instruments of plunder for his own gain, 

 and he must be depraved indeed, and utterl}^ cank- 

 ered by vice, who has not dreamed that one day he 

 would apply his intelligence, his abilities, his knowl- 

 edge, to help on the enfranchisement of those who 

 to-day grovel in misery and in ignorance. 



You are one of those who have had such a vision. 



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