Chapter IV.

"What was it blew? Ah whew, ah whew!"

Three green chipmunks have all turned blue!

The elephant smiles a peaceful smile,

And lifts off a tree-trunk sans haste or guile.

"Seize him, seize him! He's stealing our tree!

We're undone, undone," shriek the chipmunks three.

The elephant calmly upraised his trunk,

And said, "Did I hear a green chipmunk?"

* * * * *

"Ah chee, ah chee, ah chee, ah choo!"

"Chippy, you're blue!" "So're you!" "So're you!"

=Philadelphia=, December, 1895.

GERMINAL

(The last word of Angiolillo.)

Germinal!--The Field of Mars is plowing,

And hard the steel that cuts, and hot the breath

Of the great Oxen, straining flanks and bowing

Beneath his goad, who guides the share of Death.

Germinal!--The Dragon's teeth are sowing,

And stern and white the sower flings the seed

He shall not gather, though full swift the growing;

Straight down Death's furrow treads, and does not heed.

Germinal!--The Helmet Heads are springing

Far up the Field of Mars in gleaming files;

With wild war notes the bursting earth is ringing.

* * * * *

Within his grave the sower sleeps, and smiles.

=London=, October, 1897.

"LIGHT UPON WALDHEIM"

(The figure on the monument over the grave of the Chicago martyrs in

Waldheim Cemetery is a warrior woman, dropping with her left hand a

crown upon the forehead of a fallen man just past his agony, and

with her right drawing a dagger from her bosom.)

Light upon Waldheim! And the earth is gray;

A bitter wind is driving from the north;

The stone is cold, and strange cold whispers say:

"What do ye here with Death? Go forth! Go forth!"

Is this thy word, O Mother, with stern eyes,

Crowning thy dead with stone-caressing touch?

May we not weep o'er him that martyred lies,

Slain in our name, for that he loved us much?

May we not linger till the day is broad?

Nay, none are stirring in this stinging dawn--

None but poor wretches that make no moan to God:

What use are these, O thou with dagger drawn?

"Go forth, go forth! Stand not to weep for these,

Till, weakened with your weeping, like the snow

Ye melt, dissolving in a coward peace!"

Light upon Waldheim! Brother, let us go!

=London=, October, 1897.

LOVE'S COMPENSATION

I went before God, and he said,

"What fruit of the life I gave?"

"Father," I said, "It is dead,

And nothing grows on the grave."

Wroth was the Lord and stern:

"Hadst thou not to answer me?

Shall the fruitless root not burn,

And be wasted utterly?"

"Father," I said, "forgive!

For thou knowest what I have done;

That another's life might live

Mine turned to a barren stone."

But the Father of Life sent fire

And burned the root in the grave;

And the pain in my heart is dire

For the thing that I could not save.

For the thing it was laid on me

By the Lord of Life to bring;

Fruit of the ungrown tree

That died for no watering.

Another has gone to God,

And his fruit has pleased Him well;

For he sitteth high, while I--plod

The dry ways down towards hell.

Though thou knowest, thou knowest, Lord,

Whose tears made that fruit's root wet;

Yet thou drivest me forth with a sword,

And thy Guards by the Gate are set.

Thou wilt give me up to the fire,

And none shall deliver me;

For I followed my heart's desire,

And I labored not for thee:

I labored for him thou hast set

On thy right hand, high and fair;

Thou lovest him, Lord; and yet

'Twas my love won Him there.

But this is the thing that hath been,

Hath been since the world began,--

That love against self must sin,

And a woman die for a man.

And this is the thing that shall be,

Shall be till the whole world die,

_Kismet_:--My doom is on me!

Why murmur since I am I?

=Philadelphia=, August, 1898.

THE ROAD BUILDERS

("Who built the beautiful roads?" queried a friend of the present

order, as we walked one day along the macadamised driveway of

Fairmount Park.)

I saw them toiling in the blistering sun,

Their dull, dark faces leaning toward the stone,

Their knotted fingers grasping the rude tools,

Their rounded shoulders narrowing in their chest,

The sweat drops dripping in great painful beads.

I saw one fall, his forehead on the rock,

The helpless hand still clutching at the spade,

The slack mouth full of earth.

And he was dead.

His comrades gently turned his face, until

The fierce sun glittered hard upon his eyes,

Wide open, staring at the cruel sky.

The blood yet ran upon the jagged stone;

But it was ended. He was quite, quite dead:

Driven to death beneath the burning sun,

Driven to death upon the road he built.

He was no "hero," he; a poor, black man,

Taking "the will of God" and asking naught;

Think of him thus, when next your horse's feet

Strike out the flint spark from the gleaming road;

Think that for this, this common thing, The Road,

A human creature died; 'tis a blood gift,

To an o'erreaching world that does not thank.

Ignorant, mean and soulless was he? Well,--

Still human; and you drive upon his corpse.

=Philadelphia=, July 24, 1900.

ANGIOLILLO

We are the souls that crept and cried in the days when they

tortured men;

His was the spirit that walked erect, and met the beast in its den.

Ours are the eyes that were dim with tears for the thing they

shrunk to see;

His was the glance that was crystal keen with the light that

makes men free.

Ours are the hands that were wrung in pain, in helpless pain

and shame;

His was the resolute hand that struck, steady and keen to its aim.

Ours are the lips that quivered with rage, that cursed and prayed

in a breath:

His was the mouth that opened but once to speak from the

throat of Death.

"Assassin, Assassin!" the World cries out, with a shake of its

dotard head;

"Germinal!" rings back the grave where lies the Dead that is

not dead.

"Germinal, Germinal," sings the Wind that is driving before

the Storm;

"Few are the drops that have fallen yet,--scattered, but red and

warm."

"Germinal, Germinal," sing the Fields, where furrows of men

are plowed;

"Ye shall gather a harvest over-rich, when the ear at the full

is bowed."

Springing, springing, at every breath, the Word of invincible

strife,

The word of the Dead, that is calling loud down the battle ranks

of Life!

For these are the Dead that live, though the earth upon them lie:

But the doers of deeds of the Night of the Dead, they are the

Live that die.

=Torresdale, Pa.=, August 1, 1900.

AVE ET VALE

Comrades, what matter the watch-night tells

That a New Year comes or goes?

What to us are the crashing bells

That clang out the Century's close?

What to us is the gala dress?

The whirl of the dancing feet?

The glitter and blare in the laughing press,

And din of the merry street?

Do we not know that our brothers die

In the cold and the dark to-night?

Shelterless faces turned toward the sky

Will not see the New Year's light!

Wandering children, lonely, lost,

Drift away on the human sea,

While the price of their lives in a glass is tossed

And drunk in a revelry!

Ah, know we not in their feasting halls

Where the loud laugh echoes again,

That brick and stone in the mortared walls

Are the bones of murdered men?

Slowly murdered! By day and day,

The beauty and strength are reft,

Till the Man is sapped and sucked away,

And a Human Rind is left!

A Human Rind, with old, thin hair,

And old, thin voice to pray

For alms in the bitter winter air,--

A knife at his heart alway.

And the pure in heart are impure in flesh

For the cost of a little food:

Lo, when the Gleaner of Time shall thresh,

Let these be accounted good.

For these are they who in bitter blame

Eat the bread whose salt is sin;

Whose bosoms are burned with the scarlet shame,

Till their hearts are seared within.

The cowardly jests of a hundred years

Will be thrown where they pass to-night,

Too callous for hate, and too dry for tears,

The saddest of human blight.

Do we forget them, these broken ones,

That our watch to-night is set?

Nay, we smile in the face of the year that comes

_Because we do not forget._

We do not forget the tramp on the track,

Thrust out in the wind-swept waste,

The curses of Man upon his back,

And the curse of God in his face.

The stare in the eyes of the buried man

Face down in the fallen mine;

The despair of the child whose bare feet ran

To tread out the rich man's wine;

The solemn light in the dying gaze

Of the babe at the empty breast,

The wax accusation, the sombre glaze

Of its frozen and rigid rest;

They are all in the smile that we turn to the east

To welcome the Century's dawn;

They are all in our greeting to Night's high priest,

As we bid the Old Year begone.

Begone and have done, and go down and be dead

Deep drowned in your sea of tears!

We smile as you die, for we wait the red

Morn-gleam of a hundred-years

That shall see the end of the age-old wrong,--

The reapers that have not sown,--

The reapers of men with their sickles strong

Who gather, but have not strown.

For the earth shall be his and the fruits thereof

And to him the corn and wine,

Who labors the hills with an even love

And knows not "thine and mine."

And the silk shall be to the hand that weaves,

The pearl to him who dives,

The home to the builder; and all life's sheaves

To the builder of human lives.

And none go blind that another see,

Or die that another live;

And none insult with a charity

That is not theirs to give.

For each of his plenty shall freely share

And take at another's hand:

Equals breathing the Common Air

And toiling the Common Land.

A dream? A vision? Aye, what you will;

Let it be to you as it seems:

Of this Nightmare Real we have our fill;

To-night is for "pleasant dreams."

Dreams that shall waken the hope that sleeps

And knock at each torpid Heart

Till it beat drum taps, and the blood that creeps

With a lion's spring upstart!

For who are we to be bound and drowned

In this river of human blood?

Who are we to lie in a swound,

Half sunk in the river mud?

Are we not they who delve and blast

And hammer and build and burn?

Without us not a nail made fast!

Not a wheel in the world should turn!

Must we, the Giant, await the grace

That is dealt by the puny hand

Of him who sits in the feasting place,

While we, his Blind Jest, stand

Between the pillars? Nay, not so:

Aye, if such thing were true,

Better were Gaza again, to show

What the giant's rage may do!

But yet not this: it were wiser far

To enter the feasting hall

And say to the Masters, "These things are

Not for you alone, but all."

And this shall be in the Century

That opes on our eyes to-night;

So here's to the struggle, if it must be,

And to him who fights the fight.

And here's to the dauntless, jubilant throat

That loud to its Comrade sings,

Till over the earth shrills the mustering note,

And the World Strike's signal rings.

=Philadelphia=, January 1, 1901.

MARSH-BLOOM

(To Gaetano Bresci.)

Requiem, requiem, requiem,

Blood-red blossom of poison stem

Broken for Man,

Swamp-sunk leafage and dungeon bloom,

Seeded bearer of royal doom,

What now is the ban?

What to thee is the island grave?

With desert wind and desolate wave

Will they silence Death?

Can they weight thee now with the heaviest stone?

Can they lay aught on thee with "Be alone,"

That hast conquered breath?

Lo, "it is finished"--a man for a king!

Mark you well who have done this thing:

The flower has roots;

Bitter and rank grow the things of the sea;

Ye shall know what sap ran thick in the tree

When ye pluck its fruits.

Requiem, requiem, requiem,

Sleep on, sleep on, accursed of them

Who work our pain;

A wild Marsh-blossom shall blow again

From a buried root in the slime of men,

On the day of the Great Red Rain.

=Philadelphia=, July, 1901.

WRITTEN--IN--RED[A]

(To Our Living Dead in Mexico's Struggle.)

Written in red their protest stands,

For the Gods of the World to see;

On the dooming wall their bodiless hands

Have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands

Illumine the message: "Seize the lands!

Open the prisons and make men free!"

Flame out the living words of the dead

Written--in--red.

Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb!

Your guns have spoken and they are dust.

But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb,

Have felt the beat of a wakening drum

Within them sounding--the Dead Men's tongue--

Calling: "Smite off the ancient rust!"

Have beheld "Resurrexit," the word of the Dead,

Written--in--red.

Bear it aloft, O roaring flame!

Skyward aloft, where all may see.

Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same;

One is the immemorial shame;

One is the struggle, and in One name--

=Manhood=--we battle to set men free.

"Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead,

Written--in--red.

[A] Voltairine de Cleyre's last poem.

ESSAYS

The Dominant Idea

In everything that lives, if one looks searchingly, is limned the shadow

line of an idea--an idea, dead or living, sometimes stronger when dead,

with rigid, unswerving lines that mark the living embodiment with the

stern, immobile cast of the non-living. Daily we move among these

unyielding shadows, less pierceable, more enduring than granite, with

the blackness of ages in them, dominating living, changing bodies, with

dead, unchanging souls. And we meet, also, living souls dominating dying

bodies--living ideas regnant over decay and death. Do not imagine that I

speak of human life alone. The stamp of persistent or of shifting Will

is visible in the grass-blade rooted in its clod of earth, as in the

gossamer web of being that floats and swims far over our heads in the

free world of air.

Regnant ideas, everywhere! Did you ever see a dead vine bloom? I have

seen it. Last summer I trained some morning-glory vines up over a

second-story balcony; and every day they blew and curled in the wind,

their white, purple-dashed faces winking at the sun, radiant with

climbing life. Higher every day the green heads crept, carrying their

train of spreading fans waving before the sun-seeking blossoms. Then

all at once some mischance happened,--some cut-worm or some mischievous

child tore one vine off below, the finest and most ambitious one, of

course. In a few hours the leaves hung limp, the sappy stem wilted

and began to wither; in a day it was dead,--all but the top, which

still clung longingly to its support, with bright head lifted. I

mourned a little for the buds that could never open now, and pitied

that proud vine whose work in the world was lost. But the next night

there was a storm, a heavy, driving storm, with beating rain and

blinding lightning. I rose to watch the flashes, and lo! the wonder of

the world! In the blackness of the mid-=Night=, in the fury of wind

and rain, the dead vine had flowered. Five white, moon-faced blossoms

blew gaily round the skeleton vine, shining back triumphant at the red

lightning. I gazed at them in dumb wonder. Dear, dead vine, whose will

had been so strong to bloom that in the hour of its sudden cut-off

from the feeding earth it sent the last sap to its blossoms; and, not

waiting for the morning, brought them forth in storm and flash, as

white night-glories, which should have been the children of the sun.

In the daylight we all came to look at the wonder, marveling much, and

saying, "Surely these must be the last." But every day for three days

the dead vine bloomed; and even a week after, when every leaf was dry

and brown, and so thin you could see through it, one last bud, dwarfed,

weak, a very baby of a blossom, but still white and delicate, with five

purple flecks, like those on the live vine beside it, opened and waved

at the stars, and waited for the early sun. Over death and decay the

Dominant Idea smiled: the vine was in the world to bloom, to bear white

trumpet blossoms dashed with purple; and it held its will beyond death.

Our modern teaching is that ideas are but attendant phenomena, impotent

to determine the actions or relations of life, as the image in the glass

which should say to the body it reflects: "_I_ shall shape _thee_." In

truth we know that directly the body goes from before the mirror, the

transient image is nothingness; but the real body has its being to live,

and will live it, heedless of vanished phantoms of itself, in response

to the ever-shifting pressure of things without it.

It is thus that the so-called Materialist Conception of History, the

modern Socialists, and a positive majority of Anarchists would have us

look upon the world of ideas,--shifting, unreal reflections, having

naught to do in the determination of Man's life, but so many mirror

appearances of certain material relations, wholly powerless to act upon

the course of material things. Mind to them is in itself a blank mirror,

though in fact never wholly blank, because always facing the reality of

the material and bound to reflect some shadow. To-day I am somebody,

to-morrow somebody else, if the scenes have shifted; my Ego is a

gibbering phantom, pirouetting in the glass, gesticulating,

transforming, hourly or momentarily, gleaming with the phosphor light of

a deceptive unreality, melting like the mist upon the hills. Rocks,

fields, woods, streams, houses, goods, flesh, blood, bone, sinew,--these

are realities, with definite parts to play, with essential characters

that abide under all changes; but my Ego does not abide; it is

manufactured afresh with every change of these.

I think this unqualified determinism of the material is a great and

lamentable error in our modern progressive movement; and while I believe

it was a wholesome antidote to the long-continued blunder of Middle Age

theology, viz.: that Mind was an utterly irresponsible entity making

laws of its own after the manner of an Absolute Emperor, without logic,

sequence, or relation, ruler over matter, and its own supreme

determinant, not excepting God (who was himself the same sort of a mind

writ large)--while I do believe that the modern reconception of

Materialism has done a wholesome thing in pricking the bubble of such

conceit and restoring man and his "soul" to its "place in nature," I

nevertheless believe that to this also there is a limit; and that the

absolute sway of Matter is quite as mischievous an error as the

unrelated nature of Mind; even that in its direct action upon personal

conduct, it has the more ill effect of the two. For if the doctrine of

free-will has raised up fanatics and persecutors, who, assuming that men

may be good under all conditions if they merely wish to be so, have

sought to persuade other men's wills with threats, fines, imprisonments,

torture, the spike, the wheel, the axe, the fagot, in order to make them

good and save them against their obdurate wills; if the doctrine of

Spiritualism, the soul supreme, has done this, the doctrine of

Materialistic Determinism has produced shifting, self-excusing,

worthless, parasitical characters, who are _this_ now and _that_ at some

other time, and anything and nothing upon principle. "My conditions have

made me so," they cry, and there is no more to be said; poor

mirror-ghosts! how could they help it! To be sure, the influence of such

a character rarely reaches so far as that of the principled persecutor;

but for every one of the latter, there are a hundred of these easy,

doughy characters, who will fit any baking tin, to whom determinist

self-excusing appeals; so the balance of evil between the two doctrines

is _about_ maintained.

What we need is a true appraisement of the power and rôle of the Idea. I

do not think I am able to give such a true appraisement; I do not think

that any one--even _much_ greater intellects than mine--will be able to

do it for a long time to come. But I am at least able to suggest it, to

show its necessity, to give a rude approximation of it.

And first, against the accepted formula of modern Materialism, "Men

are what circumstances make them," I set the opposing declaration,

"Circumstances are what men make them"; and I contend that both

these things are true up to the point where the combating powers are

equalized, or one is overthrown. In other words, my conception of mind,

or character, is not that it is a powerless reflection of a momentary

condition of stuff and form, but an active modifying agent, reacting

on its environment and transforming circumstances, sometimes greatly,

sometimes, though not often, entirely.

All over the kingdom of life, I have said, one may see dominant ideas

working, if one but trains his eyes to look for them and recognize them.

In the human world there have been many dominant ideas. I cannot

conceive that ever, at any time, the struggle of the body before

dissolution can have been aught but agony. If the reasoning that

insecurity of conditions, the expectation of suffering, are

circumstances which make the soul of man uneasy, shrinking, timid, what

answer will you give to the challenge of old Ragnar Lodbrog, to that

triumphant death-song hurled out, not by one cast to his death in the

heat of battle, but under slow prison torture, bitten by serpents, and

yet singing: "The goddesses of death invite me away--now end I my song.

The hours of my life are run out. I shall smile when I die"? Nor can it

be said that this is an exceptional instance, not to be accounted for by

the usual operation of general law, for old King Lodbrog the Skalder did

only what his fathers did, and his sons and his friends and his enemies,

through long generations; they set the force of a dominant idea, the

idea of the superascendant ego, against the force of torture and of

death, ending life as they wished to end it, with a smile on their lips.

But a few years ago, did we not read how the helpless Kaffirs,

victimized by the English for the contumacy of the Boers, having been

forced to dig the trenches wherein for pleasant sport they were to be

shot, were lined up on the edge, and seeing death facing them, began to

chant barbaric strains of triumph, smiling as they fell? Let us admit

that such exultant defiance was owing to ignorance, to primitive beliefs

in gods and hereafters; but let us admit also that it shows the power of

an idea dominant.

Everywhere in the shells of dead societies, as in the shells of the

sea-slime, we shall see the force of purposive action, of intent

_within_ holding its purpose against obstacles _without_.

I think there is no one in the world who can look upon the steadfast,

far-staring face of an Egyptian carving, or read a description of

Egypt's monuments, or gaze upon the mummied clay of its old dead men,

without feeling that the dominant idea of that people in that age was to

be enduring and to work enduring things, with the immobility of their

great still sky upon them and the stare of the desert in them. One must

feel that whatever other ideas animated them, and expressed themselves

in their lives, this was the dominant idea. _That which was_ must

remain, no matter at what cost, even if it were to break the everlasting

hills: an idea which made the live humanity beneath it, born and

nurtured in the coffins of caste, groan and writhe and gnaw its

bandages, till in the fullness of time it passed away: and still the

granite mould of it stares with empty eyes out across the world, the

stern old memory of the _Thing-that-was_.

I think no one can look upon the marbles wherein Greek genius wrought

the figuring of its soul, without feeling an apprehension that the

things are going to leap and fly; that in a moment one is like to be set

upon by heroes with spears in their hands, by serpents that will coil

around him; to be trodden by horses that may trample and flee; to be

smitten by these gods that have as little of the idea of stone in them

as a dragon-fly, one instant poised upon a wind-swayed petal edge. I

think no one can look upon them without realizing at once that those

figures came out of the boil of life; they seem like rising bubbles

about to float into the air, but beneath them other bubbles rising, and

others, and others,--there will be no end of it. When one's eyes are

upon one group, one feels that behind one, perhaps, a figure is uptoeing

to seize the darts of the air and hurl them on one's head; one must keep

whirling to face the miracle that appears about to be wrought--stone

leaping! And this though nearly every one is minus some of the glory the

old Greek wrought into it so long ago; even the broken stumps of arms

and legs live. And the dominant idea is Activity, and the beauty and

strength of it. Change, swift, ever-circling Change! The making of

things and the casting of them away, as children cast away their toys,

not interested that these shall endure, so that they themselves realize

incessant activity. Full of creative power, what matter if the creature

perished. So there was an endless procession of changing shapes in their

schools, their philosophies, their dramas, their poems, till at last it

wore itself to death. And the marvel passed away from the world. But

still their marbles live to show what manner of thoughts dominated them.

And if we wish to know what master-thought ruled the lives of men when

the mediæval period had had time to ripen it, one has only at this day

to stray into some quaint, out-of-the-way English village, where a

strong old towered Church yet stands in the midst of little

straw-thatched cottages, like a brooding mother-hen surrounded by her

chickens. Everywhere the greatening of God, and the lessening of Man:

the Church so looming, the home so little. The search for the spirit,

for the _enduring_ thing (not the poor endurance of granite which in the

ages crumbles, but the eternal), the eternal,--and contempt for the body

which perishes, manifest in studied uncleanliness, in mortifications of

the flesh, as if the spirit should have spat its scorn upon it.

Such was the dominant idea of that middle age which has been too much

cursed by modernists. For the men who built the castles and the

cathedrals were men of mighty works, though they made no books, and

though their souls spread crippled wings, because of their very

endeavors to soar too high. The spirit of voluntary subordination for

the accomplishment of a great work, which proclaimed the aspiration of

the common soul,--that was the spirit wrought into the cathedral stones;

and it is not wholly to be condemned.

In waking dream, when the shadow-shapes of world-ideas swim before the

vision, one sees the Middle-Age Soul an ill-contorted, half-formless

thing, with dragon wings and a great, dark, tense face, strained sunward

with blind eyes.

If now we look around us to see what idea dominates our own

civilization, I do not know that it is even as attractive as this

piteous monster of the old darkness. The relativity of things has

altered: Man has risen and God has descended. The modern village has

better homes and less pretentious churches. Also the conception of dirt

and disease as much-sought afflictions, the patient suffering of which

is a meet offering to win God's pardon, has given place to the emphatic

promulgation of cleanliness. We have Public School nurses notifying

parents that "pediculosis capitis" is a very contagious and unpleasant

disease; we have cancer associations gathering up such cancers as have

attached themselves to impecunious persons, and carefully experimenting

with a view to cleaning them out of the human race; we have

tuberculosis societies attempting the Herculean labor of clearing the

Augean stables of our modern factories of the deadly bacillus, and they

have got as far as spittoons with water in them in some factories; and

others, and others, and others, which, while not yet overwhelmingly

successful in their avowed purposes, are evidence sufficient that

humanity no longer seeks dirt as a means of grace. We laugh at those old

superstitions, and talk much about exact experimental knowledge. We

endeavor to galvanize the Greek corpse, and pretend that we enjoy

physical culture. We dabble in many things; but the one great real idea

of our age, not copied from any other, not pretended, not raised to life

by any conjuration, is the Much Making of Things,--not the making of

beautiful things, not the joy of spending living energy in creative

work; rather the shameless, merciless driving and over-driving, wasting

and draining of the last bit of energy, only to produce heaps and heaps

of things,--things ugly, things harmful, things useless, and at the best

largely unnecessary. To what end are they produced? Mostly the producer

does not know; still less does he care. But he is possessed with the

idea that he _must_ do it, every one is doing it, and every year the

making of things goes on more and faster; there are mountain ranges of

things made and making, and still men go about desperately seeking to

increase the list of created things, to start fresh heaps and to add to

the existing heaps. And with what agony of body, under what stress and

strain of danger and fear of danger, with what mutilations and maimings

and lamings they struggle on, dashing themselves out against these

rocks of wealth! Verily, if the vision of the Mediæval Soul is painful

in its blind staring and pathetic striving, grotesque in its senseless

tortures, the Soul of the Modern is most amazing with its restless,

nervous eyes, ever searching the corners of the universe, its restless,

nervous hands ever reaching and grasping for some useless toil.

And certainly the presence of things in abundance, things empty and

things vulgar and things absurd, as well as things convenient and

useful, has produced the desire for the possession of things, the

exaltation of the possession of things. Go through the business street

of any city, where the tilted edges of the strata of things are exposed

to gaze, and look at the faces of the people as they pass,--not at the

hungry and smitten ones who fringe the sidewalks and plaint dolefully

for alms, but at the crowd,--and see what idea is written on their

faces. On those of the women, from the ladies of the horse-shows to the

shop girls out of the factory, there is a sickening vanity, a

consciousness of their clothes, as of some jackdaw in borrowed feathers.

Look for the pride and glory of the free, strong, beautiful body,

lithe-moving and powerful. You will not see it. You will see mincing

steps, bodies tilted to show the cut of a skirt, simpering, smirking

faces, with eyes cast about seeking admiration for the gigantic bow of

ribbon in the overdressed hair. In the caustic words of an acquaintance,

to whom I once said, as we walked, "Look at the amount of vanity on all

these women's faces," "No: look at the little bit of womanhood showing

out of all that vanity!"

And on the faces of the men, coarseness! Coarse desires for coarse

things, and lots of them: the stamp is set so unmistakably that "the

wayfarer though a fool need not err therein." Even the frightful anxiety

and restlessness begotten of the creation of all this, is less

distasteful than the abominable expression of lust for the things

created.

Such is the dominant idea of the western world, at least in these our

days. You may see it wherever you look, impressed plainly on things and

on men; very likely, if you look in the glass, you will see it there.

And if some archæologist of a long future shall some day unbury the

bones of our civilization, where ashes or flood shall have entombed it,

he will see this frightful idea stamped on the factory walls he shall

uncover, with their rows and rows of square lightholes, their tons upon

tons of toothed steel, grinning out of the skull of this our life; its

acres of silk and velvet, its square miles of tinsel and shoddy. No

glorious marbles of nymphs and fawns, whose dead images are yet so sweet

that one might wish to kiss them still; no majestic figures of winged

horses, with men's faces and lions' paws casting their colossal

symbolism in a mighty spell forward upon Time, as those old stone

chimeras of Babylon yet do; but meaningless iron giants, of wheels and

teeth, whose secret is forgotten, but whose business was to grind men

up, and spit them out as housefuls of woven stuffs, bazaars of trash,

wherethrough other men might wade. The statues he shall find will bear

no trace of mythic dream or mystic symbol; they will be statues of

merchants and iron-masters and militiamen, in tailored coats and

pantaloons and proper hats and shoes.

But the dominant idea of the age and land does not necessarily mean the

dominant idea of any single life. I doubt not that in those long gone

days, far away by the banks of the still Nile, in the abiding shadow of

the pyramids, under the heavy burden of other men's stolidity, there

went to and fro restless, active, rebel souls who hated all that the

ancient society stood for, and with burning hearts sought to overthrow

it.

I am sure that in the midst of all the agile Greek intellect created,

there were those who went about with downbent eyes, caring nothing for

it all, seeking some higher revelation, willing to abandon the joys of

life, so that they drew near to some distant, unknown perfection their

fellows knew not of. I am certain that in the dark ages, when most men

prayed and cowered, and beat and bruised themselves, and sought

afflictions, like that St. Teresa who said, "Let me suffer, or die,"

there were some, many, who looked on the world as a chance jest, who

despised or pitied their ignorant comrades, and tried to compel the

answers of the universe to their questionings, by the patient, quiet

searching which came to be Modern Science. I am sure there were

hundreds, thousands of them, of whom we have never heard.

And now, to-day, though the Society about us is dominated by

Thing-Worship, and will stand so marked for all time, that is no reason

any single soul should be. Because the one thing seemingly worth doing

to my neighbor, to all my neighbors, is to pursue dollars, that is no

reason I should pursue dollars. Because my neighbors conceive they need

an inordinate heap of carpets, furniture, clocks, china, glass,

tapestries, mirrors, clothes, jewels--and servants to care for them, and

detectives to keep an eye on the servants, judges to try the thieves,

and politicians to appoint the judges, jails to punish the culprits, and

wardens to watch in the jails, and tax collectors to gather support for

the wardens, and fees for the tax collectors, and strong houses to hold

the fees, so that none but the guardians thereof can make off with

them,--and therefore, to keep this host of parasites, need other men to

work for them, and make the fees; because my neighbors want all this, is

that any reason I should devote myself to such a barren folly? and bow

my neck to serve to keep up the gaudy show?

Must we, because the Middle Age was dark and blind and brutal, throw

away the one good thing it wrought into the fibre of Man, that the

inside of a human being was worth more than the outside? that to

conceive a higher thing than oneself and live toward that is the only

way of living worthily? The goal strived for should, and must, be a very

different one from that which led the mediæval fanatics to despise the

body and belabor it with hourly crucifixions. But one can recognize the

claims and the importance of the body without therefore sacrificing

truth, honor, simplicity, and faith, to the vulgar gauds of

body-service, whose very decorations debase the thing they might be

supposed to exalt.

I have said before that the doctrine that men are nothing and

circumstances all, has been, and is, the bane of our modern social

reform movements.

Our youth, themselves animated by the spirit of the old teachers who

believed in the supremacy of ideas, even in the very hour of throwing

away that teaching, look with burning eyes to the social East, and

believe that wonders of revolution are soon to be accomplished. In their

enthusiasm they foreread the gospel of Circumstances to mean that very

soon the pressure of material development must break down the social

system--they give the rotten thing but a few years to last; and then,

they themselves shall witness the transformation, partake in its joys.

The few years pass away and nothing happens; enthusiasm cools. Behold

these same idealists then, successful business men, professionals,

property owners, money lenders, creeping into the social ranks they once

despised, pitifully, contemptibly, at the skirts of some impecunious

personage to whom they have lent money, or done some professional

service gratis; behold them lying, cheating, tricking, flattering,

buying and selling themselves for any frippery, any cheap little

pretense. The Dominant Social Idea has seized them, their lives are

swallowed up in it; and when you ask the reason why, they tell you that

Circumstances compelled them so to do. If you quote their lies to them,

they smile with calm complacency, assure you that when Circumstances

demand lies, lies are a great deal better than truth; that tricks are

sometimes more effective than honest dealing; that flattering and duping

do not matter, if the end to be attained is desirable; and that under

existing "Circumstances" life isn't possible without all this; that it

is going to be possible whenever Circumstances have made truth-telling

easier than lying, but till then a man must look out for himself, by all

means. And so the cancer goes on rotting away the moral fibre, and the

man becomes a lump, a squash, a piece of slippery slime, taking all

shapes and losing all shapes, according to what particular hole or

corner he wishes to glide into, a disgusting embodiment of the moral

bankruptcy begotten by Thing-Worship.

Had he been dominated by a less material conception of life, had his

will not been rotted by the intellectual reasoning of it out of its

existence, by its acceptance of its own nothingness, the unselfish

aspirations of his earlier years would have grown and strengthened by

exercise and habit; and his protest against the time might have been

enduringly written, and to some purpose.

Will it be said that the Pilgrim fathers did not hew, out of the New

England ice and granite, the idea which gathered them together out of

their scattered and obscure English villages, and drove them in their

frail ships over the Atlantic in midwinter, to cut their way against all

opposing forces? Were they not common men, subject to the operation of

common law? Will it be said that Circumstances aided them? When death,

disease, hunger, and cold had done their worst, not one of those

remaining was willing by an _easy lie_ to return to material comfort and

the possibility of long days.

Had our modern social revolutionists the vigorous and undaunted

conception of their own powers that these had, our social movements

would not be such pitiful abortions,--core-rotten even before the

outward flecks appear.

"Give a labor leader a political job, and the system becomes all right,"

laugh our enemies; and they point mockingly to Terence Powderly and his

like; and they quote John Burns, who as soon as _he_ went into

Parliament declared: "The time of the agitator is past; the time of the

legislator has come." "Let an Anarchist marry an heiress, and the

country is safe," they sneer:--and they have the right to sneer. But

would they have that right, could they have it, if our lives were not in

the first instance dominated by more insistent desires than those we

would fain have others think we hold most dear?

It is the old story: "Aim at the stars, and you may hit the top of the

gatepost; but aim at the ground, and you will hit the ground."

It is not to be supposed that any one will attain to the full

realization of what he purposes, even when those purposes do not involve

united action with others; he _will_ fall short; he will in some measure

be overcome by contending or inert opposition. But something he will

attain, if he continues to aim high.

What, then, would I have? you ask. I would have men invest themselves

with the dignity of an aim higher than the chase for wealth; choose a

thing to do in life outside of the making of things, and keep it in

mind,--not for a day, nor a year, but for a lifetime. And then keep

faith with themselves! Not be a light-o'-love, to-day professing this

and to-morrow that, and easily reading oneself out of both whenever it

becomes convenient; not advocating a thing to-day, and to-morrow kissing

its enemies' sleeve, with that weak, coward cry in the mouth,

"Circumstances make me." Take a good look into yourself, and if you love

Things and the power and the plenitude of Things better than you love

your own dignity, human dignity, Oh, say so, say so! Say it to yourself,

and abide by it. But do not blow hot and cold in one breath. Do not try

to be a social reformer and a respected possessor of Things at the same

time. Do not preach the straight and narrow way while going joyously

upon the wide one. _Preach the wide one_, or do not preach at all; but

do not fool yourself by saying you would like to help usher in a free

society, but you cannot sacrifice an armchair for it. Say honestly, "I

love armchairs better than free men, and pursue them because I choose;

not because circumstances make me. I love hats, large, large hats, with

many feathers and great bows; and I would rather have those hats than

trouble myself about social dreams that will never be accomplished in my

day. The world worships hats, and I wish to worship with them."

But if you choose the liberty and pride and strength of the single soul,

and the free fraternization of men, as the purpose which your life is to

make manifest, then do not sell it for tinsel. Think that your soul is

strong and will hold its way; and slowly, through bitter struggle

perhaps, the strength will grow. And the foregoing of possessions for

which others barter the last possibility of freedom, will become easy.

At the end of life you may close your eyes, saying: "I have not been

dominated by the Dominant Idea of my Age; I have chosen mine own

allegiance, and served it. I have proved by a lifetime that there is

that in man which saves him from the absolute tyranny of Circumstance,

which in the end conquers and remoulds Circumstance,--the immortal fire

of Individual Will, which is the salvation of the Future."

Let us have Men, Men who will say a word to their souls and keep

it--keep it not when it is easy, but keep it when it is hard--keep it

when the storm roars and there is a white-streaked sky and blue thunder

before, and one's eyes are blinded and one's ears deafened with the war

of opposing things; and keep it under the long leaden sky and the gray

dreariness that never lifts. Hold unto the last: that is what it means

to have a Dominant Idea, where the same idea has been worked out by a

whole and unmake Circumstance.

Anarchism

There are two spirits abroad in the world,--the spirit of

Caution, the spirit of Dare, the spirit of Quiescence, the spirit

of Unrest; the spirit of Immobility, the spirit of Change;

the spirit of Hold-fast-to-that-which-you-have, the spirit of

Let-go-and-fly-to-that-which-you-have-not; the spirit of the slow

and steady builder, careful of its labors, loath to part with any

of its achievements, wishful to keep, and unable to discriminate

between what is worth keeping and what is better cast aside, and

the spirit of the inspirational destroyer, fertile in creative

fancies, volatile, careless in its luxuriance of effort, inclined

to cast away the good together with the bad.

Society is a quivering balance, eternally struck afresh, between these

two. Those who look upon Man, as most Anarchists do, as a link in the

chain of evolution, see in these two social tendencies the sum of the

tendencies of individual men, which in common with the tendencies of all

organic life are the result of the action and counteraction of

inheritance and adaptation. Inheritance, continually tending to repeat

what has been, long, long after it is outgrown; adaptation continually

tending to break down forms. The same tendencies under other names are

observed in the inorganic world as well, and anyone who is possessed by

the modern scientific mania for Monism can easily follow out the line

to the vanishing point of human knowledge.

There has been, in fact, a strong inclination to do this among a portion

of the more educated Anarchists, who having been working men first and

Anarchists by reason of their instinctive hatred to the boss, later

became students and, swept away by their undigested science, immediately

conceived that it was necessary to fit their Anarchism to the

revelations of the microscope, else the theory might as well be given

up. I remember with considerable amusement a heated discussion some five

or six years since, wherein doctors and embryo doctors sought for a

justification of Anarchism in the development of the amoeba, while a

fledgling engineer searched for it in mathematical quantities.

Myself at one time asserted very stoutly that no one could be an

Anarchist and believe in God at the same time. Others assert as stoutly

that one cannot accept the spiritualist philosophy and be an Anarchist.

At present I hold with C. L. James, the most learned of American

Anarchists, that one's metaphysical system has very little to do with

the matter. The chain of reasoning which once appeared so conclusive to

me, namely, that Anarchism being a denial of authority over the

individual could not co-exist with a belief in a Supreme Ruler of the

universe, is contradicted in the case of Leo Tolstoy, who comes to the

conclusion that none has a right to rule another just because of his

belief in God, just because he believes that all are equal children of

one father, and therefore none has a right to rule the other. I speak of

him because he is a familiar and notable personage, but there have

frequently been instances where the same idea has been worked out by a

whole sect of believers, especially in the earlier (and persecuted)

stages of their development.

It no longer seems necessary to me, therefore, that one should base his

Anarchism upon any particular world conception; it is a theory of the

relations due to man and comes as an offered solution to the societary

problems arising from the existence of these two tendencies of which I

have spoken. No matter where those tendencies come from, all alike

recognize them as existent; and however interesting the speculation,

however fascinating to lose oneself back, back in the molecular

storm-whirl wherein the figure of man is seen merely as a denser,

fiercer group, a livelier storm centre, moving among others, impinging

upon others, but nowhere separate, nowhere exempt from the same

necessity that acts upon all other centers of force,--it is by no means

necessary in order to reason oneself into Anarchism.

Sufficient are a good observant eye and a reasonably reflecting brain,

for anyone, lettered or unlettered, to recognize the desirability of

Anarchistic aims. This is not to say that increased knowledge will not

confirm and expand one's application of this fundamental concept; (the

beauty of truth is that at every new discovery of fact we find how much

wider and deeper it is than we at first thought it). But it means that

first of all Anarchism is concerned with present conditions, and with

the very plain and common people; and is by no means a complex or

difficult proposition.

Anarchism, alone, apart from any proposed economic reform, is just the

latest reply out of many the past has given, to that daring, breakaway,

volatile, changeful spirit which is never content. The society of which

we are part puts certain oppressions upon us,--oppressions which have

arisen out of the very changes accomplished by this same spirit,

combined with the hard and fast lines of old habits acquired and fixed

before the changes were thought of. Machinery, which as our Socialistic

comrades continually emphasize, has wrought a revolution in Industry, is

the creation of the Dare Spirit; it has fought its way against ancient

customs, privilege, and cowardice at every step, as the history of any

invention would show if traced backward through all its transformations.

And what is the result of it? That a system of working, altogether

appropriate to hand production and capable of generating no great

oppressions while industry remained in that state, has been stretched,

strained to fit production in mass, till we are reaching the bursting

point; once more the spirit of Dare must assert itself--claim new

freedoms, since the old ones are rendered null and void by the present

methods of production.

To speak in detail: in the old days of Master and Man--not so old but

what many of the older workingmen can recall the conditions, the

workshop was a fairly easy-going place where employer and employed

worked together, knew no class feelings, chummed it out of hours, as a

rule were not obliged to rush, and when they were, relied upon the

principle of common interest and friendship (not upon a slave-owner's

power) for overtime assistance. The proportional profit on each man's

labor may even have been in general higher, but the total amount

possible to be undertaken by one employer was relatively so small that

no tremendous aggregations of wealth could arise. To be an employer gave

no man power over another's incomings and outgoings, neither upon his

speech while at work, nor to force him beyond endurance when busy, nor

to subject him to fines and tributes for undesired things, such as

ice-water, dirty spittoons, cups of undrinkable tea and the like; nor to

the unmentionable indecencies of the large factory. The individuality of

the workman was a plainly recognized quantity: his life was his own; he

could not be locked in and driven to death, like a street-car horse, for

the good of the general public and the paramount importance of Society.

With the application of steam-power and the development of Machinery,

came these large groupings of workers, this subdivision of work, which

has made of the employer a man apart, having interests hostile to those

of his employes, living in another circle altogether, knowing nothing of

them but as so many units of power, to be reckoned with as he does his

machines, for the most part despising them, at his very best regarding

them as dependents whom he is bound in some respects to care for, as a

humane man cares for an old horse he cannot use. Such is his relation to

his employes; while to the general public he becomes simply an immense

cuttle-fish with tentacles reaching everywhere,--each tiny

profit-sucking mouth producing no great effect, but in aggregate drawing

up such a body of wealth as makes any declaration of equality or freedom

between him and the worker a thing to laugh at.

The time is come therefore when the spirit of Dare calls loud through

every factory and workshop for a change in the relations of master and

man. There must be some arrangement possible which will preserve the

benefits of the new production and at the same time restore the

individual dignity of the worker,--give back the bold independence of

the old master of his trade, together with such added freedoms as may

properly accrue to him as his special advantage from society's material

developments.

This is the particular message of Anarchism to the worker. It is not an

economic system; it does not come to you with detailed plans of how you,

the workers, are to conduct industry; nor systemized methods of

exchange; nor careful paper organizations of "the administration of

things." It simply calls upon the spirit of individuality to rise up

from its abasement, and hold itself paramount in no matter what economic

reorganization shall come about. Be men first of all, not held in

slavery by the things you make; let your gospel be, "Things for men, not

men for things."

Socialism, economically considered, is a positive proposition for such

reorganization. It is an attempt, in the main, to grasp at those great

new material gains which have been the special creation of the last

forty or fifty years. It has not so much in view the reclamation and

further assertion of the personality of the worker as it has a just

distribution of products.

Now it is perfectly apparent that Anarchy, having to do almost entirely

with the relations of men in their thoughts and feelings, and not with

the positive organization of production and distribution, an Anarchist

needs to supplement his Anarchism by some economic propositions, which

may enable him to put in practical shape to himself and others this

possibility of independent manhood. That will be his test in choosing

any such proposition,--the measure in which individuality is secured. It

is not enough for him that a comfortable ease, a pleasant and

well-ordered routine, shall be secured; free play for the spirit of

change--that is his first demand.

Every Anarchist has this in common with every other Anarchist, that the

economic system must be subservient to this end; no system recommends

itself to him by the mere beauty and smoothness of its working; jealous

of the encroachments of the machine, he looks with fierce suspicion upon

an arithmetic with men for units, a society running in slots and

grooves, with the precision so beautiful to one in whom the love of

order is first, but which only makes him sniff--"Pfaugh! it smells of

machine oil."

There are, accordingly, several economic schools among Anarchists; there

are Anarchist Individualists, Anarchist Mutualists, Anarchist Communists

and Anarchist Socialists. In times past these several schools have

bitterly denounced each other and mutually refused to recognize each

other as Anarchists at all. The more narrow-minded on both sides still

do so; true, they do not consider it is narrow-mindedness, but simply a

firm and solid grasp of the truth, which does not permit of tolerance

towards error. This has been the attitude of the bigot in all ages, and

Anarchism no more than any other new doctrine has escaped its bigots.

Each of these fanatical adherents of either collectivism or

individualism believes that no Anarchism is possible without that

particular economic system as its guarantee, and is of course thoroughly

justified from his own standpoint. With the extension of what Comrade

Brown calls the New Spirit, however, this old narrowness is yielding to

the broader, kindlier and far more reasonable idea, that all these

economic conceptions may be experimented with, and there is nothing

un-Anarchistic about any of them until the element of compulsion enters

and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic

arrangements they do not agree to. (When I say "do not agree to" I do

not mean that they have a mere distaste for, or that they think might

well be altered for some other preferable arrangement, but with which,

nevertheless, they quite easily put up, as two persons each living in

the same house and having different tastes in decoration, will submit to

some color of window shade or bit of bric-a-brac which he does not like

so well, but which nevertheless, he cheerfully puts up with for the

satisfaction of being with his friend. I mean serious differences which

in their opinion threaten their essential liberties. I make this

explanation about trifles, because the objections which are raised to

the doctrine that men may live in society freely, almost always

degenerate into trivialities,--such as, "what would you do if two ladies

wanted the same hat?" etc. We do not advocate the abolition of common

sense, and every person of sense is willing to surrender his preferences

at times, provided he is not _compelled_ to at all costs.)

Therefore I say that each group of persons acting socially in freedom

may choose any of the proposed systems, and be just as thorough-going

Anarchists as those who select another. If this standpoint be accepted,

we are rid of those outrageous excommunications which belong properly to

the Church of Rome, and which serve no purpose but to bring us into

deserved contempt with outsiders.

Furthermore, having accepted it from a purely theoretical process of

reasoning, I believe one is then in an attitude of mind to perceive

certain material factors in the problem which account for these

differences in proposed systems, and which even demand such differences,

so long as production is in its present state.

I shall now dwell briefly upon these various propositions, and explain,

as I go along, what the material factors are to which I have just

alluded. Taking the last first, namely, Anarchist Socialism,--its

economic program is the same as that of political Socialism, in its

entirety;--I mean before the working of practical politics has frittered

the Socialism away into a mere list of governmental ameliorations. Such

Anarchist Socialists hold that the State, the Centralized Government,

has been and ever will be the business agent of the property-owning

class; that it is an expression of a certain material condition purely,

and with the passing of that condition the State must also pass; that

Socialism, meaning the complete taking over of all forms of property

from the hands of men as the indivisible possession of Man, brings with

it as a logical, inevitable result the dissolution of the State. They

believe that every individual having an equal claim upon the social

production, the incentive to grabbing and holding being gone, crimes

(which are in nearly all cases the instinctive answer to some antecedent

denial of that claim to one's share) will vanish, and with them the last

excuse for the existence of the State. They do not, as a rule, look

forward to any such transformations in the material aspect of society,

as some of the rest of us do. A Londoner once said to me that he

believed London would keep on growing, the flux and reflux of nations

keep on pouring through its serpentine streets, its hundred thousand

'buses keep on jaunting just the same, and all that tremendous traffic

which fascinates and horrifies continue rolling like a great flood up

and down, up and down, like the sea-sweep,--after the realization of

Anarchism, as it does now. That Londoner's name was John Turner; he

said, on the same occasion, that he believed thoroughly in the economics

of Socialism.

Now this branch of the Anarchist party came out of the old Socialist

party, and originally represented the revolutionary wing of that party,

as opposed to those who took up the notion of using politics. And I

believe the material reason which accounts for their acceptance of that

particular economic scheme is this (of course it applies to all European

Socialists) that the social development of Europe is a thing of

long-continued history; that almost from time immemorial there has been

a recognized class struggle; that no workman living, nor yet his father,

nor his grandfather, nor his great-grandfather has seen the land of

Europe pass in vast blocks from an unclaimed public inheritance into

the hands of an ordinary individual like himself, without a title or any

distinguishing mark above himself, as we in America have seen. The land

and the land-holder have been to him always unapproachable

quantities,--a recognized source of oppression, class, and

class-possession.

Again, the industrial development in town and city--coming as a means of

escape from feudal oppression, but again bringing with it its own

oppressions, also with a long history of warfare behind it, has served

to bind the sense of class fealty upon the common people of the

manufacturing towns; so that blind, stupid, and Church-ridden as they no

doubt are, there is a vague, dull, but very certainly existing feeling

that they must look for help in association together, and regard with

suspicion or indifference any proposition which proposes to help them by

helping their employers. Moreover, Socialism has been an ever recurring

dream through the long story of revolt in Europe; Anarchists, like

others, are born into it. It is not until they pass over seas, and come

in contact with other conditions, breathe the atmosphere of other

thoughts, that they are able to see other possibilities as well.

If I may venture, at this point, a criticism of this position of the

Anarchist Socialist, I would say that the great flaw in this conception

of the State is in supposing it to be of _simple_ origin; the State is

not merely the tool of the governing classes; it has its root far down

in the religious development of human nature; and will not fall apart

merely through the abolition of classes and property. There is other

work to be done. As to the economic program, I shall criticise that,

together with all the other propositions, when I sum up.

Anarchist Communism is a modification, rather an evolution, of

Anarchist Socialism. Most Anarchist Communists, I believe, do look

forward to great changes in the distribution of people upon the earth's

surface through the realization of Anarchism. Most of them agree that

the opening up of the land together with the free use of tools would

lead to a breaking up of these vast communities called cities, and the

formation of smaller groups or communes which shall be held together by

a free recognition of common interests only.

While Socialism looks forward to a further extension of the modern

triumph of Commerce--which is that it has brought the products of the

entire earth to your door-step--free Communism looks upon such a fever

of exportation and importation as an unhealthy development, and expects

rather a more self-reliant development of home resources, doing away

with the mass of supervision required for the systematic conduct of such

world exchange. It appeals to the plain sense of the workers, by

proposing that they who now consider themselves helpless dependents upon

the boss's ability to give them a job, shall constitute themselves

independent producing groups, take the materials, do the work (they do

that now), deposit the products in the warehouses, taking what they want

for themselves, and letting others take the balance. To do this no

government, no employer, no money system is necessary. There is only

necessary a decent regard for one's own and one's fellow-worker's

self-hood. It is not likely, indeed it is devoutly to be hoped, that no

such large aggregations of men as now assemble daily in mills and

factories, will ever come together by mutual desire. (A factory is a

hot-bed for all that is vicious in human nature, and largely because of

its crowding only.)

The notion that men cannot work together unless they have a

driving-master to take a percentage of their product, is contrary both

to good sense and observed fact.

As a rule bosses simply make confusion worse confounded when they

attempt to mix in a workman's snarls, as every mechanic has had

practical demonstration of; and as to social effort, why men worked in

common while they were monkeys yet; if you don't believe it, go and

watch the monkeys. They don't surrender their individual freedom,

either.

In short, the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when

and where and how things shall be done. It is not necessary that the

projector of an Anarchist Communist society shall say in what manner

separate industries shall be conducted, nor do they presume to. He

simply conjures the spirit of Dare and Do in the plainest workmen--says

to them: "It is you who know how to mine, how to dig, how to cut; you

will know how to organize your work without a dictator; we cannot tell

you, but we have full faith that you will find the way yourselves. You

will never be free men until you acquire that same self-faith."

As to the problem of the exact exchange of equivalents which so frets

the reformers of other schools, to him it does not exist. So there is

enough, who cares? The sources of wealth remain indivisible forever; who

cares if one has a little more or less, so all have enough? Who cares if

something goes to waste? Let it waste. The rotted apple fertilizes the

ground as well as if it had comforted the animal economy first. And,

indeed, you who worry so much about system and order and adjustment of

production to consumption, you waste more human energy in making your

account than the precious calculation is worth. Hence money with all its

retinue of complications and trickeries is abolished.

Small, independent, self-resourceful, freely cooperating communes--this

is the economic ideal which is accepted by most of the Anarchists of the

Old World to-day.

As to the material factor which developed this ideal among Europeans, it

is the recollection and even some still remaining vestiges of the

mediæval village commune--those oases in the great Sahara of human

degradation presented in the history of the Middle Ages, when the

Catholic Church stood triumphant upon Man in the dust. Such is the ideal

glamored with the dead gold of a sun which has set, which gleams through

the pages of Morris and Kropotkin. We in America never knew the village

commune. White Civilization struck our shores in a broad tide-sheet and

swept over the country inclusively; among us was never seen the little

commune growing up from a state of barbarism independently, out of

primary industries, and maintaining itself within itself. There was no

gradual change from the mode of life of the native people to our own;

there was a wiping out and a complete transplantation of the latest form

of European civilization. The idea of the little commune, therefore,

comes instinctively to the Anarchists of Europe,--particularly the

continental ones; with them it is merely the conscious development of a

submerged instinct. With Americans it is an importation.

I believe that most Anarchist Communists avoid the blunder of the

Socialists in regarding the State as the offspring of material

conditions purely, though they lay great stress upon its being the tool

of Property, and contend that in one form or another the State will

exist so long as there is property at all.

I pass to the extreme Individualists,--those who hold to the tradition

of political economy, and are firm in the idea that the system of

employer and employed, buying and selling, banking, and all the other

essential institutions of Commercialism, centering upon private

property, are in themselves good, and are rendered vicious merely by the

interference of the State. Their chief economic propositions are: land

to be held by individuals or companies for such time and in such

allotments as they use only; redistribution to take place as often as

the members of the community shall agree; what constitutes use to be

decided by each community, presumably in town meeting assembled;

disputed cases to be settled by a so-called free jury to be chosen by

lot out of the entire group; members not coinciding in the decisions of

the group to betake themselves to outlying lands not occupied, without

let or hindrance from any one.

Money to represent all staple commodities, to be issued by whomsoever

pleases; naturally, it would come to individuals depositing their

securities with banks and accepting bank notes in return; such bank

notes representing the labor expended in production and being issued in

sufficient quantity, (there being no limit upon any one's starting in

the business, whenever interest began to rise more banks would be

organized, and thus the rate per cent would be constantly checked by

competition), exchange would take place freely, commodities would

circulate, business of all kinds would be stimulated, and, the

government privilege being taken away from inventions, industries would

spring up at every turn, bosses would be hunting men rather than men

bosses, wages would rise to the full measure of the individual

production, and forever remain there. Property, real property, would at

last exist, which it does not at the present day, because no man gets

what he makes.

The charm in this program is that it proposes no sweeping changes in our

daily retinue; it does not bewilder us as more revolutionary

propositions do. Its remedies are self-acting ones; they do not depend

upon conscious efforts of individuals to establish justice and build

harmony; competition in freedom is the great automatic valve which opens

or closes as demands increase or diminish, and all that is necessary is

to let well enough alone and not attempt to assist it.

It is sure that nine Americans in ten who have never heard of any of

these programs before, will listen with far more interest and approval

to this than to the others. The material reason which explains this

attitude of mind is very evident. In this country outside of the Negro

question we have never had the historic division of classes; we are just

making that history now; we have never felt the need of the associative

spirit of workman with workman, because in our society it has been the

individual that did things; the workman of to-day was the employer

to-morrow; vast opportunities lying open to him in the undeveloped

territory, he shouldered his tools and struck out single-handed for

himself. Even now, fiercer and fiercer though the struggle is growing,

tighter and tighter though the workman is getting cornered, the line of

division between class and class is constantly being broken, and the

first motto of the American is "the Lord helps him who helps himself."

Consequently this economic program, whose key-note is "let alone",

appeals strongly to the traditional sympathies and life habits of a

people who have themselves seen an almost unbounded patrimony swept up,

as a gambler sweeps his stakes, by men who played with them at school or

worked with them in one shop a year or ten years before.

This particular branch of the Anarchist party does not accept the

Communist position that Government arises from Property; on the

contrary, they hold Government responsible for the denial of real

property (viz.: to the producer the exclusive possession of what he

has produced). They lay more stress upon its metaphysical origin in

the authority-creating Fear in human nature. Their attack is directed

centrally upon the idea of Authority; thus the material wrongs seem to

flow from the spiritual error (if I may venture the word without fear

of misconstruction), which is precisely the reverse of the Socialistic

view.

Truth lies not "_between_ the two," but in a synthesis of the two

opinions.

Anarchist Mutualism is a modification of the program of Individualism,

laying more emphasis upon organization, co-operation and free federation

of the workers. To these the trade union is the nucleus of the free

co-operative group, which will obviate the necessity of an employer,

issue time-checks to its members, take charge of the finished product,

exchange with different trade groups for their mutual advantage through

the central federation, enable its members to utilize their credit, and

likewise insure them against loss. The mutualist position on the land

question is identical with that of the Individualists, as well as their

understanding of the State.

The material factor which accounts for such differences as there are

between Individualists and Mutualists, is, I think, the fact that the

first originated in the brains of those who, whether workmen or business

men, lived by so-called independent exertion. Josiah Warren, though a

poor man, lived in an Individualist way and made his free-life social

experiment in small country settlements, far removed from the great

organized industries. Tucker also, though a city man, has never had

personal association with such industries. They had never known directly

the oppressions of the large factory, nor mingled with workers'

associations. The Mutualists had; consequently their leaning towards a

greater Communism. Dyer D. Lum spent the greater part of his life in

building up workmen's unions, himself being a hand worker, a book-binder

by trade.

I have now presented the rough skeleton of four different economic

schemes entertained by Anarchists. Remember that the point of agreement

in all is: _no compulsion_. Those who favor one method have no intention

of forcing it upon those who favor another, so long as equal tolerance

is exercised toward themselves.

Remember, also, that none of these schemes is proposed for its own sake,

but because through it, its projectors believe, liberty may be best

secured. Every Anarchist, as an Anarchist, would be perfectly willing to

surrender his own scheme directly, if he saw that another worked better.

For myself, I believe that all these and many more could be

advantageously tried in different localities; I would see the instincts

and habits of the people express themselves in a free choice in every

community; and I am sure that distinct environments would call out

distinct adaptations.

Personally, while I recognize that liberty would be greatly extended

under any of these economies, I frankly confess that none of them

satisfies me.

Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and

administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly

consistent with Ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting

upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all

compatible with my notions of freedom.

My ideal would be a condition in which all natural resources would be

forever free to all, and the worker individually able to produce for

himself sufficient for all his vital needs, if he so chose, so that he

need not govern his working or not working by the times and seasons of

his fellows. I think that time may come; but it will only be through the

development of the modes of production and the taste of the people.

Meanwhile we all cry with one voice for the freedom _to try_.

Are these all the aims of Anarchism? They are just the beginning. They

are an outline of what is demanded for the material producer. If as a

worker, you think no further than how to free yourself from the horrible

bondage of capitalism, then that is the measure of Anarchism for you.

But you yourself put the limit there, if there it is put. Immeasurably

deeper, immeasurably higher, dips and soars the soul which has come out

of its casement of custom and cowardice, and dared to claim its Self.

Ah, once to stand unflinchingly on the brink of that dark gulf of

passions and desires, once at last to send a bold, straight-driven gaze

down into the volcanic Me, once, and in that once, and in that once

_forever_, to throw off the command to cover and flee from the knowledge

of that abyss,--nay, to dare it to hiss and seethe if it will, and make

us writhe and shiver with its force! Once and forever to realize that

one is not a bundle of well-regulated little reasons bound up in the

front room of the brain to be sermonized and held in order with

copy-book maxims or moved and stopped by a syllogism, but a bottomless,

bottomless depth of all strange sensations, a rocking sea of feeling

wherever sweep strong storms of unaccountable hate and rage, invisible

contortions of disappointment, low ebbs of meanness, quakings and

shudderings of love that drives to madness and will not be controlled,

hungerings and moanings and sobbing that smite upon the inner ear, now

first bent to listen, as if all the sadness of the sea and the wailing

of the great pine forests of the North had met to weep together there in

that silence audible to you alone. To look down into that, to know the

blackness, the midnight, the dead ages in oneself, to feel the jungle

and the beast within,--and the swamp and the slime, and the desolate

desert of the heart's despair--to see, to know, to feel to the

uttermost,--and then to look at one's fellow, sitting across from one in

the street-car, so decorous, so well got up, so nicely combed and

brushed and oiled and to wonder what lies beneath that commonplace

exterior,--to picture the cavern in him which somewhere far below has a

narrow gallery running into your own--to imagine the pain that racks him

to the finger-tips perhaps while he wears that placid ironed-shirt-front

countenance--to conceive how he too shudders at himself and writhes and

flees from the lava of his heart and aches in his prison-house not

daring to see himself--to draw back respectfully from the Self-gate of

the plainest, most unpromising creature, even from the most debased

criminal, because one knows the nonentity and the criminal in

oneself--to spare all condemnation (how much more trial and sentence)

because one knows the stuff of which man is made and recoils at nothing

since all is in himself,--this is what Anarchism may mean to you. It

means that to me.

And then, to turn cloudward, starward, skyward, and let the dreams rush

over one--no longer awed by outside powers of any order--recognizing

nothing superior to oneself--painting, painting endless pictures,

creating unheard symphonies that sing dream sounds to you alone,

extending sympathies to the dumb brutes as equal brothers, kissing the

flowers as one did when a child, letting oneself go free, go free beyond

the bounds of what _fear_ and _custom_ call the "possible,"--this too

Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so. And if you do

some day,--if sitting at your work-bench, you see a vision of surpassing

glory, some picture of that golden time when there shall be no prisons

on the earth, nor hunger, nor houselessness, nor accusation, nor

judgment, and hearts open as printed leaves, and candid as fearlessness,

if then you look across at your low-browed neighbor, who sweats and

smells and curses at his toil,--remember that as you do not know his

depth neither do you know his height. He too might dream if the yoke of

custom and law and dogma were broken from him. Even now you know not

what blind, bound, motionless chrysalis is working there to prepare its

winged thing.

Anarchism means freedom to the soul as to the body,--in every

aspiration, every growth.

A few words as to the methods. In times past Anarchists have excluded

each other on these grounds also; revolutionists contemptuously said

"Quaker" of peace men; "savage Communists" anathematized the Quakers in

return.

This too is passing. I say this: all methods are to the individual

capacity and decision.

There is Tolstoy,--Christian, non-resistant, artist. His method is to

paint pictures of society as it is, to show the brutality of force and

the uselessness of it; to preach the end of government through the

repudiation of all military force. Good! I accept it in its entirety. It

fits his character, it fits his ability. Let us be glad that he works

so.

There is John Most--old, work-worn, with the weight of prison years upon

him,--yet fiercer, fiercer, bitterer in his denunciations of the ruling

class than would require the energy of a dozen younger men to

utter--going down the last hills of life, rousing the consciousness of

wrong among his fellows as he goes. Good! That consciousness must be

awakened. Long may that fiery tongue yet speak.

There is Benjamin Tucker--cool, self-contained, critical,--sending his

fine hard shafts among foes and friends with icy impartiality, hitting

swift and cutting keen,--and ever ready to nail a traitor. Holding to

passive resistance as most effective, ready to change it whenever he

deems it wise. That suits him; in his field he is alone, invaluable.

And there is Peter Kropotkin appealing to the young, and looking with

sweet, warm, eager eyes into every colonizing effort, and hailing with a

child's enthusiasm the uprisings of the workers, and believing in

revolution with his whole soul. Him too we thank.

And there is George Brown preaching peaceable expropriation through the

federated unions of the workers; and this is good. It is his best place;

he is at home there; he can accomplish most in his own chosen field.

And over there in his coffin cell in Italy, lies the man whose method

was to kill a king, and shock the nations into a sudden consciousness of

the hollowness of their law and order. Him too, him and his act, without

reserve I accept, and bend in silent acknowledgement of the strength of

the man.

For there are some whose nature it is to think and plead, and yield and

yet return to the address, and so make headway in the minds of their

fellowmen; and there are others who are stern and still, resolute,

implacable as Judah's dream of God;--and those men strike--strike once

and have ended. But the blow resounds across the world. And as on a

night when the sky is heavy with storm, some sudden great white flare

sheets across it, and every object starts sharply out, so in the flash

of Bresci's pistol shot the whole world for a moment saw the tragic

figure of the Italian people, starved, stunted, crippled, huddled,

degraded, murdered; and at the same moment that their teeth chattered

with fear, they came and asked the Anarchists to explain themselves.

And hundreds of thousands of people read more in those few days than

they had ever read of the idea before.

Ask a method? Do you ask Spring her method? Which is more necessary, the

sunshine or the rain? They are contradictory--yes; they destroy each

other--yes, but from this destruction the flowers result.

Each choose that method which expresses your self-hood best, and condemn

no other man because he expresses his Self otherwise.

Anarchism and American Traditions

American traditions, begotten of religious rebellion, small

self-sustaining communities, isolated conditions, and hard pioneer life,

grew during the colonization period of one hundred and seventy years

from the settling of Jamestown to the outburst of the Revolution. This

was in fact the great constitution-making epoch, the period of charters

guaranteeing more or less of liberty, the general tendency of which is

well described by Wm. Penn in speaking of the charter for Pennsylvania:

"I want to put it out of my power, or that of my successors, to do

mischief."

The revolution is the sudden and unified consciousness of these

traditions, their loud assertion, the blow dealt by their indomitable

will against the counter force of tyranny, which has never entirely

recovered from the blow, but which from then till now has gone on

remolding and regrappling the instruments of governmental power, that

the Revolution sought to shape and hold as defenses of liberty.

To the average American of to-day, the Revolution means the series of

battles fought by the patriot army with the armies of England. The

millions of school children who attend our public schools are taught to

draw maps of the siege of Boston and the siege of Yorktown, to know the

general plan of the several campaigns, to quote the number of prisoners

of war surrendered with Burgoyne; they are required to remember the date

when Washington crossed the Delaware on the ice; they are told to

"Remember Paoli," to repeat "Molly Stark's a widow," to call General

Wayne "Mad Anthony Wayne," and to execrate Benedict Arnold; they know

that the Declaration of Independence was signed on the Fourth of July,

1776, and the Treaty of Paris in 1783; and then they think they have

learned the Revolution--blessed be George Washington! They have no idea

why it should have been called a "revolution" instead of the "English

war," or any similar title: it's the name of it, that's all. And

name-worship, both in child and man, has acquired such mastery of them,

that the name "American Revolution" is held sacred, though it means to

them nothing more than successful force, while the name "Revolution"

applied to a further possibility, is a spectre detested and abhorred. In

neither case have they any idea of the content of the word, save that of

armed force. That has already happened, and long happened, which

Jefferson foresaw when he wrote:

"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become

corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and

better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the

time for fixing every essential right, on a legal basis, is while our

rulers are honest, ourselves united. _From the conclusion of this war we

shall be going down hill._ It will not then be necessary to resort every

moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and

their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole

faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due

respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be

knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier,

till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."

To the men of that time, who voiced the spirit of that time, the battles

that they fought were the least of the Revolution; they were the

incidents of the hour, the things they met and faced as part of the game

they were playing; but the stake they had in view, before, during, and

after the war, the real Revolution, was a change in political

institutions which should make of government not a thing apart, a

superior power to stand over the people with a whip, but a serviceable

agent, responsible, economical, and trustworthy (but never so much

trusted as not to be continually watched), for the transaction of such

business as was the common concern, and to set the limits of the common

concern at the line where one man's liberty would encroach upon

another's.

They thus took their starting point for deriving a minimum of government

upon the same sociological ground that the modern Anarchist derives the

no-government theory; viz., that equal liberty is the political ideal.

The difference lies in the belief, on the one hand, that the closest

approximation to equal liberty might be best secured by the rule of the

majority in those matters involving united action of any kind (which

rule of the majority they thought it possible to secure by a few simple

arrangements for election), and, on the other hand, the belief that

majority rule is both impossible and undesirable; that any government,

no matter what its forms, will be manipulated by a very small minority,

as the development of the State and United States governments has

strikingly proved; that candidates will loudly profess allegiance to

platforms before elections, which as officials in power they will openly

disregard, to do as they please; and that even if the majority will

could be imposed, it would also be subversive of equal liberty, which

may be best secured by leaving to the voluntary association of those

interested in the management of matters of common concern, without

coercion of the uninterested or the opposed.

Among the fundamental likenesses between the Revolutionary Republicans

and the Anarchists is the recognition that the little must precede the

great; that the local must be the basis of the general; that there can

be a free federation only when there are free communities to federate;

that the spirit of the latter is carried into the councils of the

former, and a local tyranny may thus become an instrument for general

enslavement. Convinced of the supreme importance of ridding the

municipalities of the institutions of tyranny, the most strenuous

advocates of independence, instead of spending their efforts mainly in

the general Congress, devoted themselves to their home localities,

endeavoring to work out of the minds of their neighbors and

fellow-colonists the institutions of entailed property, of a

State-Church, of a class-divided people, even the institution of African

slavery itself. Though largely unsuccessful, it is to the measure of

success they did achieve that we are indebted for such liberties as we

do retain, and not to the general government. They tried to inculcate

local initiative and independent action. The author of the Declaration

of Independence, who in the fall of '76 declined a re-election to

Congress in order to return to Virginia and do his work in his own local

assembly, in arranging there for public education which he justly

considered a matter of "common concern," said his advocacy of public

schools was not with any "view to take its ordinary branches out of the

hands of private enterprise, which manages _so much better_ the concerns

to which it is equal"; and in endeavoring to make clear the restrictions

of the Constitution upon the functions of the general government, he

likewise said: "Let the general government be reduced to foreign

concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all

other nations, except as to commerce, _which the merchants will manage

the better the more they are left free to manage for themselves_, and

the general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and

a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few

servants." This then was the American tradition, that private enterprise

manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that

private enterprise, whether individual or co-operative, is equal to all

the undertakings of society. And it quotes the particular two instances,

Education and Commerce, which the governments of the States and of the

United States have undertaken to manage and regulate, as the very two

which in operation have done more to destroy American freedom and

equality, to warp and distort American tradition, to make of government

a mighty engine of tyranny, than any other cause, save the unforeseen

developments of Manufacture.

It was the intention of the Revolutionists to establish a system of

common education, which should make the teaching of history one of its

principal branches; not with the intent of burdening the memories of our

youth with the dates of battles or the speeches of generals, nor to make

of the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history,

to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but with the

intent that every American should know to what conditions the masses of

people had been brought by the operation of certain institutions, by

what means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties

had again and again been filched from them by the use of governmental

force, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation,

complacent indolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government

protected by the label "home-made," but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a

never-ending watchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every

attempt of those entrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of

individual action--this was the prime motive of the revolutionists in

endeavoring to provide for common education.

"Confidence," said the revolutionists who adopted the Kentucky

Resolutions, "is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is

founded in jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy, not confidence,

which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are

obliged to trust with power; our Constitution has accordingly fixed the

limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. * * * In

questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind

him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

These resolutions were especially applied to the passage of the Alien

laws by the monarchist party during John Adams' administration, and were

an indignant call from the State of Kentucky to repudiate the right of

the general government to assume undelegated powers, for, said they, to

accept these laws would be "to be bound by laws made, not with our

consent, but by others against our consent--that is, to surrender the

form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its

powers from its own will, and not from our authority." Resolutions

identical in spirit were also passed by Virginia, the following month;

in those days the States still considered themselves supreme, the

general government subordinate.

To inculcate this proud spirit of the supremacy of the people over their

governors was to be the purpose of public education! Pick up to-day any

common school history, and see how much of this spirit you will find

therein. On the contrary, from cover to cover you will find nothing but

the cheapest sort of patriotism, the inculcation of the most

unquestioning acquiescence in the deeds of government, a lullaby of

rest, security, confidence,--the doctrine that the Law can do no wrong,

a Te Deum in praise of the continuous encroachments of the powers of the

general government upon the reserved rights of the States, shameless

falsification of all acts of rebellion, to put the government in the

right and the rebels in the wrong, pyrotechnic glorifications of union,

power, and force, and a complete ignoring of the essential liberties to

maintain which was the purpose of the revolutionists. The anti-Anarchist

law of post-McKinley passage, a much worse law than the Alien and

Sedition acts which roused the wrath of Kentucky and Virginia to the

point of threatened rebellion, is exalted as a wise provision of our

All-Seeing Father in Washington.

Such is the spirit of government-provided schools. Ask any child what he

knows about Shays's rebellion, and he will answer, "Oh, some of the

farmers couldn't pay their taxes, and Shays led a rebellion against the

court-house at Worcester, so they could burn up the deeds; and when

Washington heard of it he sent over an army quick and taught 'em a good

lesson"--"And what was the result of it?" "The result? Why--why--the

result was--Oh yes, I remember--the result was they saw the need of a

strong federal government to collect the taxes and pay the debts." Ask

if he knows what was said on the other side of the story, ask if he

knows that the men who had given their goods and their health and their

strength for the freeing of the country now found themselves cast into

prison for debt, sick, disabled, and poor, facing a new tyranny for the

old; that their demand was that the land should become the free communal

possession of those who wished to work it, not subject to tribute, and

the child will answer "No." Ask him if he ever read Jefferson's letter

to Madison about it, in which he says:

"Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable.

1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under government wherein

the will of every one has a just influence; as is the case in England in

a slight degree, and in our States in a great one. 3. Under government

of force, as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the

other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence in these

last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is

a problem not clear in my mind that the first condition is not the best.

But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.

The second state has a great deal of good in it.... It has its evils,

too, the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject....

But even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of

government, and nourishes a general attention to public affairs. I hold

that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing."

Or to another correspondent: "God forbid that we should ever be twenty

years without such a rebellion!... What country can preserve its

liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people

preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take up arms.... The tree of

liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots

and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Ask any school child if he was

ever taught that the author of the Declaration of Independence, one of

the great founders of the common school, said these things, and he will

look at you with open mouth and unbelieving eyes. Ask him if he ever

heard that the man who sounded the bugle note in the darkest hour of the

Crisis, who roused the courage of the soldiers when Washington saw only

mutiny and despair ahead, ask him if he knows that this man also wrote,

"Government at best is a necessary evil, at worst an intolerable one,"

and if he is a little better informed than the average he will answer,

"Oh well, _he_ was an infidel!" Catechize him about the merits of the

Constitution which he has learned to repeat like a poll-parrot, and you

will find his chief conception is not of the powers withheld from

Congress, but of the powers granted.

Such are the fruits of government schools. We, the Anarchists, point to

them and say: If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty

taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for

the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution

existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching

whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat. As the fathers said of

the governments of Europe, so say we of this government also after a

century and a quarter of independence: "The blood of the people has

become its inheritance, and those who fatten on it will not relinquish

it easily."

Public education, having to do with the intellect and spirit of a

people, is probably the most subtle and far-reaching engine for molding

the course of a nation; but commerce, dealing as it does with material

things and producing immediate effects, was the force that bore down

soonest upon the paper barriers of constitutional restriction, and

shaped the government to its requirements. Here, indeed, we arrive at

the point where we, looking over the hundred and twenty-five years of

independence, can see that the simple government conceived by the

revolutionary republicans was a foredoomed failure. It was so because of

(1) the essence of government itself; (2) the essence of human nature;

(3) the essence of Commerce and Manufacture.

Of the essence of government, I have already said, it is a thing apart,

developing its own interests at the expense of what opposes it; all

attempts to make it anything else fail. In this Anarchists agree with

the traditional enemies of the Revolution, the monarchists, federalists,

strong government believers, the Roosevelts of to-day, the Jays,

Marshalls, and Hamiltons of then,--that Hamilton, who, as Secretary of

the Treasury, devised a financial system of which we are the unlucky

heritors, and whose objects were twofold: To puzzle the people and make

public finance obscure to those that paid for it; to serve as a machine

for corrupting the legislatures; "for he avowed the opinion that man

could be governed by two motives only, force or interest;" force being

then out of the question, he laid hold of interest, the greed of the

legislators, to set going an association of persons having an entirely

separate welfare from the welfare of their electors, bound together by

mutual corruption and mutual desire for plunder. The Anarchist agrees

that Hamilton was logical, and understood the core of government; the

difference is, that while strong governmentalists believe this is

necessary and desirable, we choose the opposite conclusion, NO

GOVERNMENT WHATEVER.

As to the essence of human nature, what our national experience has made

plain is this, that to remain in a continually exalted moral condition

is not human nature. That has happened which was prophesied: we have

gone down hill from the Revolution until now; we are absorbed in "mere

money-getting." The desire for material ease long ago vanquished the

spirit of '76. What was that spirit? The spirit that animated the people

of Virginia, of the Carolinas, of Massachusetts, of New York, when they

refused to import goods from England; when they preferred (and stood by

it) to wear coarse homespun cloth, to drink the brew of their own

growths, to fit their appetites to the home supply, rather than submit

to the taxation of the imperial ministry. Even within the lifetime of

the revolutionists the spirit decayed. The love of material ease has

been, in the mass of men and permanently speaking, always greater than

the love of liberty. Nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of a

thousand are more interested in the cut of a dress than in the

independence of their sex; nine hundred and nine-nine men out of a

thousand are more interested in drinking a glass of beer than in

questioning the tax that is laid on it; how many children are not

willing to trade the liberty to play for the promise of a new cap or a

new dress? This it is which begets the complicated mechanism of society;

this it is which, by multiplying the concerns of government, multiplies

the strength of government and the corresponding weakness of the people;

this it is which begets indifference to public concern, thus making the

corruption of government easy.

As to the essence of Commerce and Manufacture, it is this: to establish

bonds between every corner of the earth's surface and every other

corner, to multiply the needs of mankind, and the desire for material

possession and enjoyment.

The American tradition was the isolation of the States as far as

possible. Said they: We have won our liberties by hard sacrifice and

struggle unto death. We wish now to be let alone and to let others

alone, that our principles may have time for trial; that we may become

accustomed to the exercise of our rights; that we may be kept free from

the contaminating influence of European gauds, pagents, distinctions. So

richly did they esteem the absence of these that they could in all

fervor write: "We shall see multiplied instances of Europeans coming to

America, but no man living will ever see an instance of an American

removing to settle in Europe, and continuing there." Alas! In less than

a hundred years the highest aim of a "Daughter of the Revolution" was,

and is, to buy a castle, a title, and a rotten lord, with the money

wrung from American servitude! And the commercial interests of America

are seeking a world-empire!

In the earlier days of the revolt and subsequent independence, it

appeared that the "manifest destiny" of America was to be an

agricultural people, exchanging food stuffs and raw materials for

manufactured articles. And in those days it was written: "We shall be

virtuous as long as agriculture is our principal object, which will be

the case as long as there remain vacant lands in any part of America.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we

shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they

do there." Which we are doing, because of the inevitable development of

Commerce and Manufacture, and the concomitant development of strong

government. And the parallel prophecy is likewise fulfilled: "If ever

this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one

of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a

wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface." There is not upon the

face of the earth to-day a government so utterly and shamelessly corrupt

as that of the United States of America. There are others more cruel,

more tyrannical, more devastating; there is none so utterly venal.

And yet even in the very days of the prophets, even with their own

consent, the first concession to this later tyranny was made. It was

made when the Constitution was made; and the Constitution was made

chiefly because of the demands of Commerce. Thus it was at the outset a

merchant's machine, which the other interests of the country, the land

and labor interests, even then foreboded would destroy their liberties.

In vain their jealousy of its central power made them enact the first

twelve amendments.

In vain they endeavored to set bounds over which the federal power dare

not trench. In vain they enacted into general law the freedom of speech,

of the press, of assemblage and petition. All of these things we see

ridden rough-shod upon every day, and have so seen with more or less

intermission since the beginning of the nineteenth century. At this day,

every police lieutenant considers himself, and rightly so, as more

powerful than the General Law of the Union; and that one who told Robert

Hunter that he held in his fist something stronger than the

Constitution, was perfectly correct. The right of assemblage is an

American tradition which has gone out of fashion; the police club is now

the mode. And it is so in virtue of the people's indifference to

liberty, and the steady progress of constitutional interpretation

towards the substance of imperial government.

It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to

liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It

is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations.

It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody

else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do

it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.

It is American tradition that the financial affairs of a nation should

be transacted on the same principles of simple honesty that an

individual conducts his own business; viz., that debt is a bad thing,

and a man's first surplus earnings should be applied to his debts; that

offices and office-holders should be few. It is American practice that

the general government should always have millions of debt, even if a

panic or a war has to be forced to prevent its being paid off; and as to

the application of its income, office-holders come first. And within the

last administration it is reported that 99,000 offices have been

created at an annual expense of $63,000,000. Shades of Jefferson! "How

are vacancies to be obtained? Those by deaths are few; by resignation

none." Roosevelt cuts the knot by making 99,000 new ones! And few will

die,--and none resign. They will beget sons and daughters, and Taft will

have to create 99,000 more! Verily, a simple and a serviceable thing is

our general government.

It is American tradition that the Judiciary shall act as a check upon

the impetuosity of Legislatures, should these attempt to pass the bounds

of constitutional limitation. It is American practice that the Judiciary

justifies every law which trenches on the liberties of the people and

nullifies every act of the Legislature by which the people seek to

regain some measure of their freedom. Again, in the words of Jefferson:

"The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary,

which they may twist and shape in any form they please." Truly, if the

men who fought the good fight for the triumph of simple, honest, free

life in that day, were now to look upon the scene of their labors, they

would cry out together with him who said: "I regret that I am now to die

in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation

of '76 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to

be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and

that my only consolation is to be that I shall not live to see it."

And now, what has Anarchism to say to all this, this bankruptcy of

republicanism, this modern empire that has grown up on the ruins of our

early freedom? We say this, that the sin our fathers sinned was that

they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to

compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be "a

necessary evil", and the moment the compromise was made, the whole

misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments

which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the

free are struck.

Anarchism says, Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will

be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be

free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not

mean abuse, nor liberty license"; and they will define and define

freedom out of existence. Let the guarantee of free speech be in every

man's determination to use it, and we shall have no need of paper

declarations. On the other hand, so long as the people do not care to

exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for

tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of

any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon

sleeping men.

The problem then becomes, Is it possible to stir men from their

indifference? We have said that the spirit of liberty was nurtured by

colonial life; that the elements of colonial life were the desire for

sectarian independence, and the jealous watchfulness incident thereto;

the isolation of pioneer communities which threw each individual

strongly on his own resources, and thus developed all-around men, yet at

the same time made very strong such social bonds as did exist; and,

lastly, the comparative simplicity of small communities.

All this has mostly disappeared. As to sectarianism, it is only by dint

of an occasional idiotic persecution that a sect becomes interesting; in

the absence of this, outlandish sects play the fool's role, are anything

but heroic, and have little to do with either the name or the substance

of liberty. The old colonial religious parties have gradually become the

"pillars of society," their animosities have died out, their offensive

peculiarities have been effaced, they are as like one another as beans

in a pod, they build churches and--sleep in them.

As to our communities, they are hopelessly and helplessly

interdependent, as we ourselves are, save that continuously diminishing

proportion engaged in all around farming; and even these are slaves to

mortgages. For our cities, probably there is not one that is provisioned

to last a week, and certainly there is none which would not be bankrupt

with despair at the proposition that it produce its own food. In

response to this condition and its correlative political tyranny,

Anarchism affirms the economy of self-sustenance, the disintegration of

the great communities, the use of the earth.

I am not ready to say that I see clearly that this _will_ take place;

but I see clearly that this _must_ take place if ever again men are to

be free. I am so well satisfied that the mass of mankind prefer material

possessions to liberty, that I have no hope that they will ever, by

means of intellectual or moral stirrings merely, throw off the yoke of

oppression fastened on them by the present economic system, to institute

free societies. My only hope is in the blind development of the economic

system and political oppression itself. The great characteristic looming

factor in this gigantic power is Manufacture. The tendency of each

nation is to become more and more a manufacturing one, an exporter of

fabrics, not an importer. If this tendency follows its own logic, it

must eventually circle round to each community producing for itself.

What then will become of the surplus product when the manufacturer shall

have no foreign market? Why, then mankind must face the dilemma of

sitting down and dying in the midst of it, or confiscating the goods.

Indeed, we are partially facing this problem even now; and so far we are

sitting down and dying. I opine, however, that men will not do it

forever; and when once by an act of general expropriation they have

overcome the reverence and fear of property, and their awe of

government, they may waken to the consciousness that things are to be

used, and therefore men are greater than things. This may rouse the

spirit of liberty.

If, on the other hand, the tendency of invention to simplify, enabling

the advantages of machinery to be combined with smaller aggregations of

workers, shall also follow its own logic, the great manufacturing plants

will break up, population will go after the fragments, and there will be

seen not indeed the hard, self-sustaining, isolated pioneer communities

of early America, but thousands of small communities stretching along

the lines of transportation, each producing very largely for its own

needs, able to rely upon itself, and therefore able to be independent.

For the same rule holds good for societies as for individuals,--those

may be free who are able to make their own living.

In regard to the breaking up of that vilest creation of tyranny, the

standing army and navy, it is clear that so long as men desire to fight,

they will have armed force in one form or another. Our fathers thought

they had guarded against a standing army by providing for the voluntary

militia. In our day we have lived to see this militia declared part of

the regular military force of the United States, and subject to the same

demands as the regulars. Within another generation we shall probably see

its members in the regular pay of the general government. Since any

embodiment of the fighting spirit, any military organization, inevitably

follows the same line of centralization, the logic of Anarchism is that

the least objectionable form of armed force is that which springs up

voluntarily, like the minute-men of Massachusetts, and disbands as soon

as the occasion which called it into existence is past: that the really

desirable thing is that all men--not Americans only--should be at

peace; and that to reach this, all peaceful persons should withdraw

their support from the army, and require that all who make war shall do

so at their own cost and risk; that neither pay nor pensions are to be

provided for those who choose to make man-killing a trade.

As to the American tradition of non-meddling, Anarchism asks that it be

carried down to the individual himself. It demands no jealous barrier of

isolation; it knows that such isolation is undesirable and impossible;

but it teaches that by all men's strictly minding their own business, a

fluid society, freely adapting itself to mutual needs, wherein all the

world shall belong to all men, as much as each has need or desire, will

result.

And when Modern Revolution has thus been carried to the heart of the

whole world--if it ever shall be, as I hope it will,--then may we hope

to see a resurrection of that proud spirit of our fathers which put the

simple dignity of Man above the gauds of wealth and class, and held that

to be an American was greater than to be a king.

In that day there shall be neither kings nor Americans,--only Men; over

the whole earth, MEN.

Anarchism In Literature

In the long sweep of seventeen hundred years which witnessed the

engulfment of a moribund Roman civilization, together with its borrowed

Greek ideals, under the red tide of a passionate barbarism that leaped

to embrace the idea of Triumph over Death, and spat upon the Grecian

Joys of Life with the superb contempt of the Norse savage, there was,

for Europe and America, but one great animating Word in Art and

Literature--Christianity. It boots not here to inquire how close or how

remote the Christian ideal as it developed was in comparison with the

teachings of the Nazarene. Distorted, blackened, almost effaced, it was

yet some faint echo from the hillsides of Olivet, some indistinct vision

of the Cross, some dull perception of the white glory of renunciation,

that shaped the dreams of the evolving barbarian, and moulded all his

work, whether of stone or clay, upon canvas or parchment. Wherever we

turn we find a general fixup or caste, an immovable solidity of orders

built upon orders, an unquestioning subordination of the individual,

ruling every effort of genius. Ascetic shadow upon all; nowhere does a

sun-ray of self-expression creep, save as through water, thin and

perturbed. The theologic pessimism which appealed to the fighting man as

a proper extension of his own superstition--perhaps hardly that, for

Heaven was but a change of name for Valhalla,--fell heavily upon the

man of dreams, whose creations must come forth, lifeless, after the

uniform model, who must bless and ban not as he saw before his eyes but

as the one eternal purpose demanded.

At last the barbarian is civilized; he has accomplished his own

refinement--and his own rottenness. Still he preaches (and practices)

contempt of death--when others do the dying! Still he preaches

submission to the will of God--but that others may submit to him! Still

he proclaims the Cross--but that others may bear it. Where Rome was in

the glut of her vanity and her blood-drunkenness--limbs wound in cloth

of gold suppurating with crime, head boastfully nodding as Jove and feet

rocking upon slipping slime--there stand the Empires and Republics of

those whose forefathers slew Rome.

And now for these three hundred years the Men of Dreams have been

watching the Christian Ideal go bankrupt. One by one as they have dared,

and each according to his mood, they have spoken their minds; some have

reasoned, and some have laughed, and some have appealed, logician,

satirist, and exhorter all feeling in their several ways that humanity

stood in need of a new moral ideal. Consciously or unconsciously, within

the pale of the Church or without, this has been "the spirit moving upon

the face of the waters" within them, and at last the creation is come

forth, the dream that is to touch the heart-strings of the World anew,

and make it sing a stronger song than any it has sung of old. Mark you,

it must be stronger, wider, deeper, or it cannot be at all. It must sing

all that has been sung, and something more. Its mission is not to deny

the past but to reaffirm it and explain it, all of it; and to-day too,

and to-morrow too.

And this Ideal, the only one that has power to stir the moral pulses of

the world, the only Word that can quicken "Dead Souls" who wait this

moral resurrection, the only Word which can animate the dreamer, poet,

sculptor, painter, musician, artist of chisel or pen, with power to

fashion forth his dream, is =Anarchism=. For Anarchism means fulness of

being. It means the return of Greek radiance of life, Greek love of

beauty, without Greek indifference to the common man; it means Christian

earnestness and Christian Communism, without Christian fanaticism and

Christian gloom and tyranny. It means this because it means perfect

freedom, material and spiritual freedom.

The light of Greek idealism failed because with all its love of life and

the infinite diversity of beauty, and all the glory of its free

intellect, it never conceived of material freedom; to it the Helot was

as eternal as the Gods. Therefore the Gods passed away, and their

eternity was as a little wave of time.

The Christian ideal has failed because with all its sublime Communism,

its doctrine of universal equality, it was bound up with a spiritual

tyranny seeking to mould into one pattern the thoughts of all humanity,

stamping all men with the stamp of submission, throwing upon all the

dark umber of _life lived for the purpose of death_, and fruitful of all

other tyrannies.

Anarchism will succeed because its message of freedom comes down the

rising wind of social revolt first of all to the common man, the

material slave, and bids him know that he, too, should have an

independent will, and the free exercise thereof; that no philosophy, and

no achievement, and no civilization is worth considering or achieving,

if it does not mean that he shall be free to labor at what he likes and

when he likes, and freely share all that free men choose to produce;

that he, the drudge of all the ages, is the cornerstone of the building

without whose sure and safe position no structure can nor should

endure. And likewise it comes to him who sits in fear of himself, and

says: "Fear no more, neither what is without or within. Search fully and

freely your Self; hearken to all the voices that rise from that abyss

from which you have been commanded to shrink. Learn for yourself what

these things are. Belike what they have told you is good, is bad; and

this cast mould of goodness, a vile prison-house. Learn to decide your

own measure of restraint. Value for yourself the merits of selfishness

and unselfishness; and strike you the balance between these two: for if

the first be all accredited you make slaves of others, and if the

second, your own abasement raises tyrants over you; and none can decide

the matter for you so well as you for yourself; for even if you err you

learn by it, while if he errs the blame is his, and if he advises well

the credit is his, and you are nothing. _Be yourself_; and by

self-expression learn self-restraint. The wisdom of the ages lies in the

reassertion of all past positivisms, and the denial of all negations,

that is, all that has been claimed by the individual for himself is

good, but every denial of the freedom of another is bad; whereby it will

be seen that many things supposed to be claimed for oneself involve the

freedom of others and must be surrendered because they do not come

within the sovereign limit, while many things supposed to be evil, since

they in nowise infringe upon the liberty of others are wholly good,

bringing to dwarfed bodies and narrow souls the vigor and full growth of

healthy exercise, and giving a rich glow to life that had else paled out

like a lamp in a grave-vault."

To the sybarite it says, Learn to do your own share of hard work; you

will gain by it; to the "Man with the Hoe," Think for yourself and

boldly take your time for it. The division of labor which makes of one

man a Brain and of another a Hand is evil. Away with it.

This is the ethical gospel of Anarchism to which these three hundred

years of intellectual ferment have been leading. He who will trace the

course of literature for three hundred years will find innumerable bits

of drift here and there, indicative of the moral and intellectual

revolt. Protestantism itself, in asserting the supremacy of the

individual conscience, fired the long train of thought which inevitably

leads to the explosion of all forms of authority. The great political

writers of the eighteenth century, in asserting the right of

self-government, carried the line of advance one step further. America

had her Jefferson declaring:

"Societies exist under three forms: 1. Without government as among the

Indians. 2. Under governments wherein every one has a just influence. 3.

Under governments of force. It is a problem not clear in my mind that

the first condition is not the best."

She had, or she and England together had, her Paine, more mildly

asserting:

"Governments are, at best, a necessary evil."

And England had also Godwin, who, though still milder in manner and

consequently less effective during the troublous period in which he

lived, was nevertheless more deeply radical than either, presaging that

application of the political ideal to economic concerns so distinctive

of modern Anarchism.

"My neighbor," says he, "has just as much right to put an end to my

existence with dagger or poison as to deny me that pecuniary assistance

without which I must starve."

Nor did he stop here: he carried the logic of individual sovereignty

into the chiefest of social institutions, and declared that the sex

relation was a matter concerning the individuals sharing it only. Thus

he says:

"The institution of marriage is a system of fraud.... Marriage is law

and the worst of all laws.... Marriage is an affair of property and the

worst of all properties. So long as two human beings are forbidden by

positive institution to follow the dictates of their own mind prejudice

is alive and vigorous.... The abolition of marriage will be attended

with no evils. We are apt to consider it to ourselves as the harbinger

of brutal lust and depravity; but it really happens in this, as in other

cases, that the positive laws which are made to restrain our vices,

irritate and multiply them."

The grave and judicial style of "Political Justice" prevented its

attaining the great popularity of "The Rights of Man," but the indirect

influence of its author bloomed in the rich profusion of Shelleyan

fancy, and in all that coterie of young litterateurs who gathered about

Godwin as their revered teacher.

Nor was the principle of no-government without its vindication from one

who moved actively in official centers, and whose name has been

alternately quoted by conservatives and radicals, now with veneration,

now with execration. In his essay "On Government," Edmund Burke, the

great political weathercock, aligned himself with the germinating

movement towards Anarchism when he exclaimed: "They talk of the abuse of

government; the thing, the thing itself is the abuse!" This aphoristic

utterance will go down in history on its own merits, as the sayings of

great men often do, stripped of its accompanying explanations. Men have

already forgotten to inquire how and why he said it; the words stand,

and will continue a living message, long after the thousands of sheets

of rhetoric which won him the epithet of "the Dinner-bell of the House"

have been relegated to the dust of museums.

In later days an essayist whose brilliancy of style and capacity for

getting on all sides of a question connect him with Burke in some manner

as his spiritual offspring, has furnished the Anarchists with one of

their most frequent quotations. In his essay on "John Milton," Macaulay

declares, "The only cure for the evils of newly acquired liberty

is--more liberty." That he nevertheless possessed a strong vein of

conservatism, sat in parliament, and took part in legal measures, simply

proves that he had his tether and could not go the length of his own

logic; that is no reason others should not. The Anarchists accept this

fundamental declaration and proceed to its consequence.

But the world-thought was making way, not only in England, where,

indeed, constitutional phlegmatism, though stirred beyond its wont by

the events of the close of the last century, acted frigidly upon it, but

throughout Europe. In France, Rabelais drew the idyllic picture of the

Abbey of Thelemes, a community of persons agreeing to practise complete

individual freedom among themselves.

Rousseau, however erroneous his basis for the "Social Contract," moved

all he touched with his belief that humanity was innately good, and

capable of so manifesting itself in the absence of restrictions.

Furthermore, his "Confessions" appears the most famous fore-runner of

the tendency now shaping itself in Literature--that of the free

expression of a whole man--not in his stage-character only, but in his

dressing-room, not in his decent, scrubbed and polished moral clothes

alone, but in his vileness and his meanness and his folly, too, these

being indisputable factors in his moral life, and no solution but a

false one to be obtained by hiding them and playing they are not there.

This truth, acknowledged in America, in our own times, by two powerful

writers of very different cast, is being approached by all the manifold

paths of the soul's travel. "I have in me the capacity for every crime,"

says Emerson the transcendentalist. And Whitman, the stanch proclaimer

of blood and sinew, and the gospel of the holiness of the body, makes

himself one with drunken revelers and the creatures of debauchery as

well as with the anchorite and the Christ-soul, that fulness of being

may be declared. In the genesis of these declarations we shall find the

"Confessions."

It is not the "Social Contract" alone that is open to the criticism of

having reasoned from false premises; all the early political writers we

have named were equally mistaken, all suffering from a like

insufficiency of facts. Partly this was the result of the habit of

thought fostered by the Church for seventeen hundred years,--which habit

was to accept by faith a sweeping generalization and fit all future

discoveries of fact into it; but partly also it is in the nature of all

idealism to offer itself, however vaguely in the mist of mind-struggle,

and allow time to correct and sharpen the detail. Probably initial steps

will always be taken with blunders, while those who are not imaginative

enough to perceive the half-shapen figure will nevertheless accept it

later and set it upon a firm foundation.

This has been the task of the modern historian, who, no less than the

political writer, consciously or unconsciously, is swayed by the

Anarchistic ideal and bends his services towards it. It is understood

that when we speak of history we do not allude to the unspeakable trash

contained in public school text-books (which in general resemble a

cellar junk-shop of chronologies, epaulettes, bad drawings, and silly

tales, and are a striking instance of the corrupting influence of State

management of education, by which the mediocre, nay the absolutely

empty, is made to survive), history which is undertaken with the purpose

of discovering the real course of the development of human society.

Among such efforts, the broken but splendid fragment of his stupendous

project, is Buckle's "History of Civilization,"--a work in which the

author breaks away utterly from the old method of history writing, viz.

that of recording court intrigues, the doings of individuals in power as

a matter of personal interest, the processions of military pageant, to

inquire into the real lives and conditions of the people, to trace their

great upheavals, and in what consisted their progress. Gervinus in

Germany, who, within only recent years, drew upon himself a prosecution

for treason, took a like method, and declared that progress consists in

a steady decline of centralized power and the development of local

autonomy and the free federation.

Supplementing the work of the historian proper, there has arisen a new

class of literature, itself the creation of the spirit of free inquiry,

since, up till that had asserted itself, such writings were impossible;

it embraces a wide range of studies into the conditions and psychology

of prehistoric Man, of which Sir John Lubbock's works will serve as the

type. From these, dark as the subject yet is, we are learning the true

sources of all authority, and the agencies which are rendering it

obsolete; moreover, a curious cycle of development reveals itself;

namely, that starting from the point of no authority unconsciously

accepted, Man, in the several manifestations of his activity, evolves

through stages of belief in many authorities to one authority, and

finally to _no authority_ again, but this time conscious and reasoned.

Crowning the work of historian and prehistorian, comes the labor of the

sociologist. Herbert Spencer, with infinite patience for detail and

marvelous power of classification and generalization, takes up the facts

of the others, and deduces from them the great Law of Equal Freedom: "A

man should have the freedom to do whatsoever he wills, provided that in

the doing thereof he infringes not the equal freedom of every other

man." The early edition of "Social Statics" is a logical, scientific,

and bold statement of the great fundamental freedoms which Anarchists

demand.

From the rather taxing study of authors like these, it is a relief to

turn to those intermediate writers who dwell between them and the pure

fictionists, whose writings are occupied with the facts of life as

related to the affections and aspirations of humanity, among whom,

"representative men," we immediately select Emerson, Thoreau, Edward

Carpenter. Now, indeed, we cease to reason upon the past evolution of

liberty, and begin to feel it; begin to reach out after what it _shall_

mean. None who are familiar with the thought of Emerson can fail to

recognize that it is spiritual Anarchism; from the serene heights of

self-possession, the Ego looks out upon its possibilities, unawed by

aught without. And he who has dwelt in dream by Walden, charmed by that

pure life he has not himself led but wished that, like Thoreau, he might

lead, has felt that call of the Anarchistic Ideal which pleads with men

to renounce the worthless luxuries which enslave them and those who work

for them, that the buried soul which is doomed to mummy cloths by the

rush and jangle of the chase for wealth, may answer the still small

voice of the Resurrection, there, in the silence, the solitude, the

simplicity of the free life.

A similar note is sounded in Carpenter's "Civilization: Its Cause and

Cure," a work which is likely to make the "Civilizer" see himself in a

very different light than that in which he usually beholds himself. And

again the same vibration shudders through "The City of Dreadful Night,"

the masterpiece of an obscure genius who was at once essayist and poet

of too high and rare a quality to catch the ear stunned by strident

commonplaces, but loved by all who seek the violets of the soul, one

Thomson, known to literature as "B. V." Similarly obscure, and similarly

sympathetic is the "English Peasant," by Richard Heath, a collection of

essays so redolent of abounding love, so overflowing with understanding

for characters utterly contradictory, painted so tenderly and yet so

strongly, that none can read them without realizing that here is a man,

who, whatever he _believes_ he believes, in reality desires freedom of

expression for the whole human spirit, which implies for every separate

unit of it.

Something of the Emersonian striving after individual attainment plus

the passionate sympathy of Heath is found in a remarkable book, which is

too good to have obtained a popular hearing, entitled "The Story of My

Heart." No more daring utterance was ever given voice than this: "I pray

to find the Highest Soul,--greater than deity, better than God." In the

concluding pages of the tenth chapter of this wonderful little book

occur the following lines:

"That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet of

'pauper' is to me the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime

that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a

birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not

receive it, then it is they who are injured; and it is not the

'pauper'--oh! inexpressibly wicked world!--it is the well-to-do who are

the criminals. It matters not in the least if the poor be improvident,

drunken, or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof and clothes, are the

inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does

not provide it freely--not as a grudging gift, but as a right, as the

son of the house sits down to breakfast,--then is the world mad. But the

world is not mad, only in ignorance."

In catholic sympathy like this, in heart-hunger after a wider

righteousness, a higher idea than God, does the Anarchistic ideal come

to those who have lived through old phases of religious and social

beliefs and "found them wanting." It is the Shelleyan outburst:

"More life and fuller life we want."

_He_ was the Prometheus of the movement, he, the wild bird of song, who

flew down into the heart of storm and night, singing unutterably sweet

the song of the free man and woman as he passed. Poor Shelley! Happy

Shelley! He died not knowing the triumph of his genius; but also he died

while the white glow within was yet shining higher, higher! In the light

of it, he smiled above the world; had he lived, he might have died

alive, as Swinburne and as Tennyson whose old days belie their early

strength. Yet men will remember

"Slowly comes a hungry people as a lion drawing nigher.

Glares at one who nods and winks beside a slowly dying fire."

and

"Let the great World swing forever down the ringing grooves

of Change."

and

"Glory to Man in the highest for Man is the Master of Things"

and

"While three men hold together,

The kingdoms are less by three"

until the end "of kingdoms and of kings," though their authors "take

refuge in the kingdom" and quaver palsied hymns to royalty with their

cracked voices and broken lutes. For this is the glory of the living

ideal, that all that is in accord with it lives, whether the mouthpiece

through which it spoke would recall it or not. The manifold voice which

is one speaks out through all the tongues of genius in its greatest

moments, whether it be a Heine writing, in supreme contempt,

"For the Law has got long arms,

Priests and Parsons have long tongues

And the People have long ears,"

a Nekrassoff cursing the railroad built of men, a Hugo painting the

battle of the individual man "with Nature, with the Law, with Society,"

a Lowell crying:

"Law is holy ay, but what law? Is there nothing more divine

Than the patched up broils of Congress,--venal, full of meat

and wine?

Is there, say you, nothing higher--naught, God save us, that

transcends

Laws of cotton texture wove by vulgar men for vulgar ends?

Law is holy: but not your law, ye who keep the tablets whole

While ye dash the Law in pieces, shatter it in life and soul."

and again,

"One faith against a whole world's unbelief,

One soul against the flesh of all mankind."

Nor do the master dramatists lag behind the lyric writers; they, too,

feel the intense pressure within, which is, quoting the deathword of

a man of far other stamp, "germinal." Ibsen's drama, intensely real,

common, accepting none of the received rules as to the conventional

plot, but having to do with serious questions of the lives of the

plain people, holds ever before us the supreme duty of truth to one's

inner being in defiance of Custom and Law; it is so in Nora, who

renounces all notions of family duty to "find herself"; it is so in

Dr. Stockman, who maintains the rectitude of his own soul against

the authorities and against the mob; it should have been so in Mrs.

Alving, who learns too late that her yielding to social custom has

brought a fore-ruined life into the world besides wrecking her own; the

Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman, all his characters are created

to vindicate the separate soul supreme within its sphere; those that

are miserable and in evil condition are so because they have not

lived true to themselves but in obedience to some social hypocrisy.

Gerhart Hauptmann likewise feels the new pulsation: he has no hero,

no heroine, no intrigue; his picture is the image of the headless and

tailless body of struggle,--the struggle of the common man. It begins

in the middle, it ends in nothing--as yet. To end in defeat would be

to premise surrender--a surrender humanity does not intend; to triumph

would be to anticipate the future, and paint life other than it is.

Hence it ends where it began, in murmurs. Thus his "Weavers." Octave

Mirbeau, likewise, offers his criticism on a world of sheep in "The

Bad Shepherds," and Sara Bernhardt plays it. In England and America we

have another phase of the rebel drama--the drama of the bad woman, as a

distinct figure in social creation with a right to be herself. Have we

not the "Second Mrs. Tanqueray" who comes to grief through an endeavor

to conform to a moral standard that does not fit? And have we not Zaza,

who is worth a thousand of her respectable lover and his respectable

wife? And does not all the audience go home in love with her? And begin

to quest the libraries for literary justifications of their preference?

And these are not hard to find, for it is in the novel particularly, the

novel which is the special creation of the last century, that the new

ideal is freest. In a recent essay in reply to Walter Besant, Henry

James pleads most Anarchistically for his freedom in the novel. All such

pleas will always come as justifications, for as to the freedom it is

already won, and all the formalists from Besant to the end of days will

never tempt the litterateurs into chains again. But the essay is well

worth reading as a specimen of right reasoning on art. As in other modes

of literary expression this tendency in the novel dates back; and it is

strange enough that out of the mouth of a toady like Walter Scott should

have spoken the free, devil-may-care, outlaw spirit (read notably

"Quentin Durward"), which is, perhaps, the first phase of self-assertion

that has the initial strength to declare itself against the tyranny of

Custom; this is why it happens that the fore-runners of social change

are often shocking in their rudeness and contempt of manners, and, in

fact, more or less uncomfortable persons to have to do with. But they

have their irresistible charm all the same, and Scott, who was a true

genius despite his toadyism, felt it and responded to it, by always

making us love his outlaws best no matter how gently he dealt with

kings. Another phase of the free man appears in George Borrow's

rollicking, full-blooded, out-of-door gypsies who do not take the

trouble to despise law, but simply ignore it, live unconscious of it

altogether. George Meredith, in another vein, develops the strong soul

over-riding social barriers. Our own Hawthorne in his preface to the

"Scarlet Letter," and still more in the "Marble Faun," depicts the

vacuity of a life sucking a parasitic existence through government

organization, and asserts over and over that the only strength is in him

or her--and it is noteworthy that the strongest is in "her"--who

resolutely chooses and treads an unbeaten path.

From far away Africa, there speaks again the note of soul rebellion in

the exquisite "Dreams" of Olive Schreiner, wherethrough "_The Hunter

walks alone_." Grant Allen, too, in numerous works, especially "The

Woman Who Did," voices the demand for self-hood. Morris gives us his

idyllic "News from Nowhere." Zola, the fertile creator of dungheaps

crowned with lilies, whose pages reek with the stench of bodies,

laboring, debauching, rotting, until the words of Christ cry loud in the

ears of him who would put the vision away, "Whited sepulchres, full of

dead men's bones and all uncleanliness"--Zola was more than an

unconscious Anarchist, he is a conscious one, did so proclaim himself.

And close beside him, Maxim Gorki, Spokesman of the Tramp, Visionary of

the Despised, who whatever his personal political views may be, and

notwithstanding the condemnations he has visited upon the Anarchist, is

still an Anarchistic voice in literature. And over against these,

austere, simple, but oh! so loving, the critic who shows the world its

faults but does not condemn, the man who first took the way of

renunciation and then _preached_ it, the Christian whom the Church casts

out, the Anarchist whom the worst government in the world dares not

slay, the author of "Resurrection" and "The Slavery of Our Times."

They come together, from the side of passionate hate and limitless

love--the volcano and the sea--they come together in one demand, freedom

from this wicked and debasing tyranny called Government, which makes

indescribable brutes of all who feel its touch, but worse still of all

who touch it.

As for contemporaneous light literature, there are magazine articles and

papers innumerable displaying here and there the grasp of the idea. Have

we not the _Philistine_ and its witty editor, boldly proclaiming in

Anarchistic spelling, "I am an Anarkist?" By the way, he may now expect

a visitation of the Criminal Anarchy law. And a few years since, Julian

Hawthorne, writing in the Denver _Post_, inquired, "Did you ever notice

that all the interesting people you meet are Anarchists?" Reason why:

there is no other living dream to him who has character enough to be

interesting. It is the uninteresting, the dull, the ready-made minds who

go on accepting "Dead limbs of gibbeted gods," as they accept their

dinner and their bed, which someone else prepares. Let two names,

standing for strangely opposing appeals yet standing upon common ground,

close this sketch--two strong flashes of the prismatic fires which blent

together in the white ray of our Ideal. The first, Nietzsche, he who

proclaims "the Overman," the receiver of the mantle of Max Stirner, the

scintillant rhetorician, the pride of Young Germany, who would have the

individual acknowledge nothing, neither science, nor logic, nor any

other creation of his thought, as having authority over him, its

creator. The last, Whitman, the great sympathetic, all-inclusive Quaker,

whose love knew no limits, who said to Society's most utterly despised

outcast,

"Not until the sun excludes you, will I exclude you,"

and who, whether he be called poet, philosopher, or peasant was

supremely Anarchist, and in a moment of weariness with human slavery,

cried:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they seem so placid

and self-contained,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their conditions,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania

of owning things;

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands

of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

The Making of an Anarchist

"Here was one guard, and here was the other at this end; I was here

opposite the gate. You know those problems in geometry of the hare and

the hounds--they never run straight, but always in a curve, so, see? And

the guard was no smarter than the dogs; if he had run straight to the

gate he would have caught me."

It was Peter Kropotkin telling of his escape from the Petro-Paulovsky

fortress. Three crumbs on the table marked the relative position of the

outwitted guards and the fugitive prisoner; the speaker had broken them

from the bread on which he was lunching and dropped them on the table

with an amused smile. The suggested triangle had been the starting-point

of the life-long exile of the greatest man, save Tolstoy alone, that

Russia has produced; from that moment began the many foreign wanderings

and the taking of the simple, love-given title "Comrade," for which he

had abandoned the "Prince," which he despises.

We were three together in the plain little home of a London

workingman--Will Wess, a one-time shoemaker--Kropotkin, and I. We had

our "tea" in homely English fashion, with thin slices of buttered bread;

and we talked of things nearest our hearts, which, whenever two or three

Anarchists are gathered together, means present evidences of the growth

of liberty and what our comrades are doing in all lands. And as what

they do and say often leads them into prisons, the talk had naturally

fallen upon Kropotkin's experience and his daring escape, for which the

Russian government is chagrined unto this day.

Presently the old man glanced at the time, and jumped briskly to his

feet: "I am late. Good-by, Voltairine; good-by, Will. Is this the way to

the kitchen? I must say good-by to Mrs. Turner and Lizzie." And out to

the kitchen he went, unwilling, late though he was, to leave without a

hand-clasp to those who had so much as washed a dish for him. Such is

Kropotkin, a man whose personality is felt more than any other in the

Anarchist movement--at once the gentlest, the most kindly, and the most

invincible of men. Communist as well as Anarchist, his very heart-beats

are rhythmic with the great common pulse of work and life.

Communist am not I, though my father was, and his father before him

during the stirring times of '48, which is probably the remote reason

for my opposition to things as they are: at bottom convictions are

mostly temperamental. And if I sought to explain myself on other

grounds, I should be a bewildering error in logic; for by early

influences and education I should have been a nun, and spent my life

glorifying Authority in its most concentrated form, as some of my

schoolmates are doing at this hour within the mission houses of the

Order of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. But the old ancestral spirit

of rebellion asserted itself while I was yet fourteen, a schoolgirl at

the Convent of Our Lady of Lake Huron, at Sarnia, Ontario. How I pity

myself now, when I remember it, poor lonesome little soul, battling

solitary in the murk of religious superstition, unable to believe and

yet in hourly fear of damnation, hot, savage, and eternal, if I do not

instantly confess and profess! How well I recall the bitter energy with

which I repelled my teacher's enjoinder, when I told her that I did not

wish to apologize for an adjudged fault, as I could not see that I had

been wrong, and would not _feel_ my words. "It is not necessary," said

she, "that we should feel what we say, but it is always necessary that

we obey our superiors." "I will not lie," I answered hotly, and at the

same time trembled lest my disobedience had finally consigned me to

torment!

I struggled my way out at last, and was a freethinker when I left the

institution, three years later, though I had never seen a book or heard

a word to help me in my loneliness. It had been like the Valley of the

Shadow of Death, and there are white scars on my soul yet, where

Ignorance and Superstition burnt me with their hell-fire in those

stifling days. Am I blasphemous? It is their word, not mine. Beside that

battle of my young days all others have been easy, for whatever was

without, within my own Will was supreme. It has owed no allegiance, and

never shall; it has moved steadily in one direction, the knowledge and

the assertion of its own liberty, with all the responsibility falling

thereon.

This, I am sure, is the ultimate reason for my acceptance of Anarchism,

though the specific occasion which ripened tendencies to definition was

the affair of 1886-7, when five innocent men were hanged in Chicago for

the act of one guilty who still remains unknown. Till then I believed

in the essential justice of the American law and trial by jury. After

that I never could. The infamy of that trial has passed into history,

and the question it awakened as to the possibility of justice under law

has passed into clamorous crying across the world. With this question

fighting for a hearing at a time when, young and ardent, all questions

were pressing with a force which later life would in vain hear again,

I chanced to attend a Paine Memorial Convention in an out-of-the-way

corner of the earth among the mountains and the snow-drifts of

Pennsylvania. I was a freethought lecturer at this time, and had spoken

in the afternoon on the lifework of Paine; in the evening I sat in the

audience to hear Clarence Darrow deliver an address on Socialism. It

was my first introduction to any plan for bettering the condition of

the working-classes which furnished some explanation of the course of

economic development, and I ran to it as one who has been turning about

in darkness runs to the light. I smile now at how quickly I adopted the

label "Socialist" and how quickly I cast it aside. Let no one follow

my example; but I was young. Six weeks later I was punished for my

rashness, when I attempted to argue for my faith with a little Russian

Jew, named Mozersky, at a debating club in Pittsburgh. He was an

Anarchist, and a bit of a Socrates. He questioned me into all kinds of

holes, from which I extricated myself most awkwardly, only to flounder

into others he had smilingly dug while I was getting out of the first

ones. The necessity of a better foundation became apparent: hence

began a course of study in the principles of sociology and of modern

Socialism and Anarchism as presented in their regular journals. It was

Benjamin Tucker's _Liberty_, the exponent of Individualist Anarchism,

which finally convinced me that "Liberty is not the Daughter but the

Mother of Order." And though I no longer hold the particular economic

gospel advocated by Tucker, the doctrine of Anarchism itself, as then

conceived, has but broadened, deepened, and intensified itself with

years.

To those unfamiliar with the movement, the various terms are confusing.

Anarchism is, in truth, a sort of Protestantism, whose adherents are a

unit in the great essential belief that all forms of external authority

must disappear to be replaced by self-control only, but variously

divided in our conception of the form of future society. Individualism

supposes private property to be the cornerstone of personal freedom;

asserts that such property should consist in the absolute possession of

one's own product and of such share of the natural heritage of all as

one may actually use. Communist-Anarchism, on the other hand, declares

that such property is both unrealizable and undesirable; that the common

possession and use of all the natural sources and means of social

production can alone guarantee the individual against a recurrence of

inequality, and its attendants, government and slavery. My personal

conviction is that both forms of society, as well as many

intermediations, would, in the absence of government, be tried in

various localities, according to the instincts and material condition of

the people, but that well founded objections may be offered to both.

Liberty and experiment alone can determine the best forms of society.

Therefore I no longer label myself otherwise than as "Anarchist" simply.

I would not, however, have the world think that I am an "Anarchist by

trade." Outsiders have some very curious notions about us, one of them

being that Anarchists never work. On the contrary, Anarchists are nearly

always poor, and it is only the rich who live without work. Not only

this, but it is our belief that every healthy human being will, by the

laws of his own activity, choose to work, though certainly not as now,

for at present there is little opportunity for one to find his true

vocation. Thus I, who in freedom would have selected otherwise, am a

teacher of language. Some twelve years since, being in Philadelphia and

without employment, I accepted the proposition of a small group of

Russian Jewish factory workers to form an evening class in the common

English branches. I know well enough that behind the desire to help me

to make a living lay the wish that I might thus take part in the

propaganda of our common cause. But the incidental became once more the

principal, and a teacher of working men and women I have remained from

that day. In those twelve years that I have lived and loved and worked

with foreign Jews I have taught over a thousand, and found them, as a

rule, the brightest, the most persistent and sacrificing students, and

in youth dreamers of social ideals. While the "intelligent American" has

been cursing him as the "ignorant foreigner," while the short-sighted

workingman has been making life for the "sheeny" as intolerable as

possible, silent and patient the despised man has worked his way against

it all. I have myself seen such genuine heroism in the cause of

education practiced by girls and boys, and even by men and women with

families, as would pass the limits of belief to the ordinary mind. Cold,

starvation, self-isolation, all endured for years in order to obtain the

means for study; and, worse than all, exhaustion of body even to

emaciation--this is common. Yet in the midst of all this, so fervent is

the social imagination of the young that most of them find time besides

to visit the various clubs and societies where radical thought is

discussed, and sooner or later ally themselves either with the Socialist

Sections, the Liberal Leagues, the Single Tax Clubs, or the Anarchist

Groups. The greatest Socialist daily in America is the Jewish

_Vorwaerts_, and the most active and competent practical workers are

Jews. So they are among the Anarchists.

I am no propagandist at all costs, or I would leave the story here; but

the truth compels me to add that as the years pass and the gradual

filtration and absorption of American commercial life goes on, my

students become successful professionals, the golden mist of enthusiasm

vanishes, and the old teacher must turn for comradeship to the new

youth, who still press forward with burning eyes, seeing what is lost

forever to those whom common success has satisfied and stupified. It

brings tears sometimes, but as Kropotkin says, "Let them go; we have had

the best of them." After all, who are the really old? Those who wear out

in faith and energy, and take to easy chairs and soft living; not

Kropotkin, with his sixty years upon him, who has bright eyes and the

eager interest of a little child; not fiery John Most, "the old

war-horse of the revolution," unbroken after his ten years of

imprisonment in Europe and America; not grey-haired Louise Michel, with

the aurora of the morning still shining in her keen look which peers

from behind the barred memories of New Caledonia; not Dyer D. Lum, who

still smiles in his grave, I think; nor Tucker, nor Turner, nor Theresa

Clairmunt, nor Jean Grave--not these. I have met them all, and felt the

springing life pulsating through heart and hand, joyous, ardent, leaping

into action. Not such are the old, but your young heart that goes

bankrupt in social hope, dry-rotting in this stale and purposeless

society. Would you be always young? Then be an Anarchist, and live with

the faith of hope, though you be old.

I doubt if any other hope has the power to keep the fire alight as I saw

it in 1897, when we met the Spanish exiles released from the fortress of

Montjuich. Comparatively few persons in America ever knew the story of

that torture, though we distributed fifty thousand copies of the letters

smuggled from the prison, and some few newspapers did reprint them. They

were the letters of men incarcerated on mere suspicion for the crime of

an unknown person, and subjected to tortures the bare mention of which

makes one shudder. Their nails were torn out, their heads compressed in

metal caps, the most sensitive portions of the body twisted between

guitar strings, their flesh burned with red hot irons; they had been fed

on salt codfish after days of starvation, and refused water; Juan

Ollé, a boy nineteen years old, had gone mad; another had confessed

to something he had never done and knew nothing of. This is no

horrible imagination. I who write have myself shaken some of those

scarred hands. Indiscriminately, four hundred people of all sorts of

beliefs--Republicans, trade unionists, Socialists, Free Masons, as well

as Anarchists--had been cast into dungeons and tortured in the infamous

"zero." Is it a wonder that most of them came out Anarchists? There were

twenty-eight in the first lot that we met at Euston Station that August

afternoon,--homeless wanderers in the whirlpool of London, released

without trial after months of imprisonment, and ordered to leave Spain

in forty-eight hours! They had left it, singing their prison songs; and

still across their dark and sorrowful eyes one could see the eternal

Maytime bloom. They drifted away to South America chiefly, where four or

five new Anarchist papers have since arisen, and several colonizing

experiments along Anarchist lines are being tried. So tyranny defeats

itself, and the exile becomes the seed-sower of the revolution.

And not only to the heretofore unaroused does he bring awakening, but

the entire character of the world movement is modified by this

circulation of the comrades of all nations among themselves. Originally

the American movement, the native creation which arose with Josiah

Warren in 1829, was purely individualistic; the student of economy will

easily understand the material and historical causes for such

development. But within the last twenty years the communist idea has

made great progress, owing primarily to that concentration in capitalist

production which has driven the American workingman to grasp at the

idea of solidarity, and, secondly, to the expulsion of active communist

propagandists from Europe. Again, another change has come within the

last ten years. Till then the application of the idea was chiefly

narrowed to industrial matters, and the economic schools mutually

denounced each other; to-day a large and genial tolerance is growing.

The young generation recognizes the immense sweep of the idea through

all the realms of art, science, literature, education, sex relations and

personal morality, as well as social economy, and welcomes the accession

to the ranks of those who struggle to realize the free life, no matter

in what field. For this is what Anarchism finally means, the whole

unchaining of life after two thousand years of Christian asceticism and

hypocrisy.

Apart from the question of ideals, there is the question of method.

"How do you propose to get all this?" is the question most frequently

asked us. The same modification has taken place here. Formerly there

were "Quakers" and "Revolutionists"; so there are still. But while they

neither thought well of the other, now both have learned that each has

his own use in the great play of world forces. No man is in himself a

unit, and in every soul Jove still makes war on Christ. Nevertheless,

the spirit of peace grows; and while it would be idle to say that

Anarchists in general believe that any of the great industrial problems

will be solved without the use of force, it would be equally idle to

suppose that they consider force itself a desirable thing, or that it

furnishes a final solution to any problem. From peaceful experiment

alone can come final solution, and that the advocates of force know and

believe as well as the Tolstoyans. Only they think that the present

tyrannies provoke resistance. The spread of Tolstoy's "War and Peace"

and "The Slavery of Our Times," and the growth of numerous Tolstoy

clubs having for their purpose the dissemination of the literature of

non-resistance, is an evidence that many receive the idea that it is

easier to conquer war with peace. I am one of these. I can see no end

of retaliations unless someone ceases to retaliate. But let no one

mistake this for servile submission or meek abnegation; my right shall

be asserted no matter at what cost to me, and none shall trench upon it

without my protest.

Good-natured satirists often remark that "the best way to cure an

Anarchist is to give him a fortune." Substituting "corrupt" for "cure,"

I would subscribe to this; and believing myself to be no better than the

rest of mortals, I earnestly hope that as so far it has been my lot to

work, and work hard, and for no fortune, so I may continue to the end;

for let me keep the integrity of my soul, with all the limitations of my

material conditions, rather than become the spineless and ideal-less

creation of material needs. My reward is that I live with the young; I

keep step with my comrades; I shall die in the harness with my face to

the east--the East and the Light.

The Eleventh of November, 1887

Memorial Oration[A]

Let me begin my address with a confession. I make it sorrowfully and

with self-disgust; but in the presence of great sacrifice we learn

humility, and if my comrades could give their lives for their belief,

why, let me give my pride. Yet I would not give it, for personal

utterance is of trifling importance, were it not that I think at this

particular season it will encourage those of our sympathizers whom the

recent outburst of savagery may have disheartened, and perhaps lead some

who are standing where I once stood to do as I did later.

This is my confession: Fifteen years ago last May when the echoes of the

Haymarket bomb rolled through the little Michigan village where I then

lived, I, like the rest of the credulous and brutal, read one lying

newspaper headline, "Anarchists throw a bomb in a crowd in the Haymarket

in Chicago," and immediately cried out, "They ought to be hung."--This,

though I had never believed in capital punishment for ordinary

criminals. For that ignorant, outrageous, bloodthirsty sentence I shall

never forgive myself, though I know the dead men would have forgiven

me, though I know those who loved them forgive me. But my own voice, as

it sounded that night, will sound so in my ears till I die,--a bitter

reproach and shame. What had I done? Credited the first wild rumor of an

event of which I knew nothing, and, in my mind, sent men to the gallows

without asking one word of defense! In one wild, unbalanced moment threw

away the sympathies of a lifetime, and became an executioner at heart.

And what I did that night millions did, and what I said millions said. I

have only one word of extenuation for myself and all those

people--ignorance. I did not know what Anarchism was. I had never seen

it used save in histories, and there it was always synonymous with

social confusion and murder. I believed the newspapers. I thought these

men had thrown that bomb, unprovoked, into a mass of men and women, from

a wicked delight in killing. And so thought all those millions of

others. But out of those millions there were some few thousand--I am

glad I was one of them--who did not let the matter rest there.

I know not what resurrection of human decency first stirred within me

after that,--whether it was an intellectual suspicion that may be I did

not know all the truth of the case and could not believe the newspapers,

or whether it was the old strong undercurrent of sympathy which often

prompts the heart to go out to the accused, without a reason; but this I

do know that though I was no Anarchist at the time of the execution, it

was long and long before that, that I came to the conclusion that the

accusation was false, the trial a farce, that there was no warrant

either in justice or in law for their conviction; and that the hanging,

if hanging there should be, would be the act of a society composed of

people who had said what I said on the first night, and who had kept

their eyes and ears fast shut ever since, determined to see nothing and

to know nothing but rage and vengeance. Till the very end I hoped that

mercy might intervene, though justice did not; and from the hour I knew

neither would nor ever could again, I distrusted law and lawyers, judges

and governors alike. And my whole being cried out to know what it was

these men had stood for, and why they were hanged, seeing it was not

proven they knew anything about the throwing of the bomb.

Little by little, here and there, I came to know that what they had

stood for was a very high and noble ideal of human life, and what they

were hanged for was preaching it to the common people,--the common

people who were as ready to hang them, in their ignorance, as the court

and the prosecutor were in their malice! Little by little I came to know

that these were men who had a clearer vision of human right than most of

their fellows; and who, being moved by deep social sympathies, wished to

share their vision with their fellows, and so proclaimed it in the

market-place. Little by little I realized that the misery, the pathetic

submission, the awful degradation of the workers, which from the time I

was old enough to begin to think had borne heavily upon my heart, (as

they must bear upon all who have hearts to feel at all), had smitten

theirs more deeply still,--so deeply that they knew no rest save in

seeking a way out,--and that was more than I had ever had the sense to

conceive. For me there had never been a hope there should be no more

rich and poor; but a vague idea that there might not be so rich and so

poor, if the workingmen by combining could exact a little better wages,

and make their hours a little shorter. It was the message of these men,

(and their death swept that message far out into ears that would never

have heard their living voices), that all such little dreams are folly.

That not in demanding little, not in striking for an hour less, not in

mountain labor to bring forth mice, can any lasting alleviation come;

but in demanding, much,--all,--in a bold self-assertion of the worker to

toil any hours he finds sufficient, not that another finds for

him,--here is where the way out lies. That message, and the message of

others, whose works, associated with theirs, their death drew to my

notice, took me up, as it were, upon a mighty hill, wherefrom I saw the

roofs of the workshops of the little world. I saw the machines, the

things that men had made to ease their burden, the wonderful things, the

iron genii, I saw them set their iron teeth in the living flesh of the

men who made them; I saw the maimed and crippled stumps of men go

limping away into the night that engulfs the poor, perhaps to be thrown

up in the flotsam and jetsam of beggary for a time, perhaps to suicide

in some dim corner where the black surge throws its slime.

I saw the rose fire of the furnace shining on the blanched face of the

man who tended it, and knew surely as I knew anything in life, that

never would a free man feed his blood to the fire like that.

I saw swart bodies, all mangled and crushed, borne from the mouths of

the mines to be stowed away in a grave hardly less narrow and dark than

that in which the living form had crouched ten, twelve, fourteen hours a

day; and I knew that in order that I might be warm--I, and you, and

those others who never do any dirty work--those men had slaved away in

those black graves, and been crushed to death at last.

I saw beside city streets great heaps of horrible colored earth, and

down at the bottom of the trench from which it was thrown, so far down

that nothing else was visible, bright gleaming eyes, like a wild

animal's hunted into its hole. And I knew that free men never chose to

labor there, with pick and shovel in that foul, sewage-soaked earth, in

that narrow trench, in that deadly sewer gas ten, eight, even six hours

a day. Only slaves would do it.

I saw deep down in the hull of the ocean liner the men who shoveled the

coal--burned and seared like paper before the grate; and I knew that

"the record" of the beautiful monster, and the pleasure of the ladies

who laughed on the deck, were paid for with these withered bodies and

souls.

I saw the scavenger carts go up and down, drawn by sad brutes driven by

sadder ones; for never a man, a man in full possession of his self-hood,

would freely choose to spend all his days in the nauseating stench that

forces him to swill alcohol to neutralize it.

And I saw in the lead works how men were poisoned, and in the sugar

refineries how they went insane; and in the factories how they lost

their decency; and in the stores how they learned to lie; and I knew it

was slavery made them do all this. I knew the Anarchists were

right,--the whole thing must be changed, the whole thing was wrong,--the

whole system of production and distribution, the whole ideal of life.

And I questioned the government then; they had taught me to question it.

What have you done--you the keepers of the Declaration and the

Constitution--what have you done about all this? What have you done to

preserve the conditions of freedom to the people?

Lied, deceived, fooled, tricked, bought and sold and got gain! You have

sold away the land, that you had no right to sell. You have murdered the

aboriginal people, that you might seize the land in the name of the

white race, and then steal it away from them again, to be again sold by

a second and a third robber. And that buying and selling of the land has

driven the people off the healthy earth and away from the clean air

into these rot-heaps of humanity called cities, where every filthy thing

is done, and filthy labor breeds filthy bodies and filthy souls. Our

boys are decayed with vice before they come to manhood; our girls--ah,

well might John Harvey write:

"Another begetteth a daughter white and gold,

She looks into the meadow land water, and the world

Knows her no more; they have sought her field and fold

But the City, the City hath bought her,

It hath sold

Her piecemeal, to students, rats, and reek of the graveyard

mould."

You have done this thing, gentlemen who engineer the government; and not

only have you caused this ruin to come upon others; you yourselves are

rotten with this debauchery. You exist for the purpose of granting

privileges to whoever can pay most for you, and so limiting the freedom

of men to employ themselves that they must sell themselves into this

frightful slavery or become tramps, beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and

murderers. And when you have done all this, what then do you do to them,

these creatures of your own making? You, who have set them the example

in every villainy? Do you then relent, and remembering the words of the

great religious teacher to whom most of you offer lip service on the

officially religious day, do you go to these poor, broken, wretched

creatures and love them? Love them and help them, to teach them to be

better? No: you build prisons high and strong, and there you beat, and

starve, and hang, finding by the working of your system human beings so

unutterably degraded that they are willing to kill whomsoever they are

told to kill at so much monthly salary.

This is what the government is, has always been, the creator and

defender of privilege; the organization of oppression and revenge. To

hope that it can ever become anything else is the vainest of delusions.

They tell you that Anarchy, the dream of social order without

government, is a wild fancy. The wildest dream that ever entered the

heart of man is the dream that mankind can ever help itself through an

appeal to law, or to come to any order that will not result in slavery

wherein there is any excuse for government.

It was for telling the people this that these five men were killed. For

telling the people that the only way to get out of their misery was

first to learn what their rights upon this earth were;--freedom to use

the land and all within it and all the tools of production--and then to

stand all together and take them, themselves, and not to appeal to the

jugglers of the law. Abolish the law--that is abolish privilege,--and

crime will abolish itself.

They will tell you these men were hanged for advocating force. What!

These creatures who drill men in the science of killing, who put

guns and clubs in hands they train to shoot and strike, who hail

with delight the latest inventions in explosives, who exult in the

machine that can kill the most with the least expenditure of energy,

who declare a war of extermination upon people who do not want their

civilization, who ravish, and burn, and garotte and guillotine, and

hang, and electrocute, they have the impertinence to talk about the

unrighteousness of force! True, these men did advocate the right to

resist invasion by force. You will find scarcely one in a thousand

who does not believe in that right. The one will be either a real

Christian or a non-resistant Anarchist. It will not be a believer in

the State. No, no; it was not for advocating forcible resistance on

principle, but for advocating forcible resistance to their tyrannies,

and for advocating a society which would forever make an end of riches

and poverty, of governors and governed.

The spirit of revenge, which is always stupid, accomplished its brutal

act. Had it lifted its eyes from its work, it might have seen in the

background of the scaffold that bleak November morning the dawn-light of

Anarchy whiten across the world.

So it came first,--a gleam of hope to the proletaire, a summons to rise

and shake off his material bondage. But steadily, steadily the light has

grown, as year by year the scientist, the literary genius, the artist,

and the moral teacher, have brought to it the tribute of their best

work, their unpaid work, the work they did for love. To-day it means not

only material emancipation, too; it comes as the summing up of all those

lines of thought and action which for three hundred years have been

making towards freedom; it means fulness of being, the free life.

And I say it boldly, notwithstanding the recent outburst of

condemnation, notwithstanding the cry of lynch, burn, shoot, imprison,

deport, and the Scarlet Letter A to be branded low down upon the

forehead, and the latest excuse for that fond esthetic decoration "the

button," that for two thousand years no idea has so stirred the world as

this,--none which had such living power to break down barriers of race

and degree, to attract prince and proletaire, poet and mechanic, Quaker

and Revolutionist. No other ideal but the free life is strong enough to

touch the man whose infinite pity and understanding goes alike to the

hypocrite priest and the victim of Siberian whips; the loving rebel who

stepped from his title and his wealth to labor with all the laboring

earth; the sweet strong singer who sang

"No Master, high or low";

the lover who does not measure his love nor reckon on return; the

self-centered one who "will not rule, but also will not ruled be"; the

philosopher who chanted the Over-man; the devoted woman of the people;

ay, and these too,--these rebellious flashes from the vast cloud-hung

ominous obscurity of the anonymous, these souls whom governmental and

capitalistic brutality has whipped and goaded and stung to blind rage

and bitterness, these mad young lions of revolt, these Winkelrieds who

offer their hearts to the spears.

[A] Delivered on November 11, 1901, in Chicago.

Crime and Punishment

Men are of three sorts: the turn backs, the rush-aheads, and the

indifferents. The first and second are comparatively few in number. The

really conscientious conservative, eternally looking backward for his

models and trying hard to preserve that which is, is almost as scarce an

article as the genuine radical, who is eternally attacking that which is

and looking forward to some indistinct but glowing vision of a purified

social life. Between them lies the vast nitrogenous body of the

indifferents, who go through life with no large thoughts or intense

feelings of any kind, the best that can be said of them being that they

serve to dilute the too fierce activities of the other two. Into the

callous ears of these indifferents, nevertheless, the opposing voices of

conservative and radical are continually shouting; and for years, for

centuries, the conservative wins the day, not because he really touches

the consciences of the indifferent so much (though in a measure he does

that) as because his way causes his hearer the least mental trouble. It

is easier to this lazy, inert mentality to nod its head and approve the

continuance of things as they are, than to listen to proposals for

change, to consider, to question, to make an innovating decision. These

require activity, application,--and nothing is so foreign to the

hibernating social conscience of your ordinary individual.

I say "social" conscience, because I by no means wish to say that these

are conscienceless people; they have, for active use, sufficient

conscience to go through their daily parts in life, and they think that

is all that is required. Of the lives of others, of the effects of their

attitude in cursing the existences of thousands whom they do not know,

they have no conception; they sleep; and they hear the voices of those

who cry aloud about these things, dimly, as in dreams; and they do not

wish to awaken. Nevertheless, at the end of the centuries they always

awaken. It is the radical who always wins at last. At the end of the

centuries institutions are reviewed by this aroused social conscience,

are revised, sometimes are utterly rooted out.

Thus it is with the institutions of Crime and Punishment. The

conservative holds that these things have been decided from all time;

that crime is a thing-in-itself, with no other cause than the

viciousness of man; that punishment was decreed from Mt. Sinai, or

whatever holy mountain happens to be believed in in his country; that

society is best served by strictness and severity of judgment and

punishment. And he wishes only to make his indifferent brothers keepers

of other men's consciences along these lines. He would have all men be

hunters of men, that crime may be tracked down and struck down.

The radical says: All false, all false and wrong. Crime has not been

decided from all time: crime, like everything else, has had its

evolution according to place, time, and circumstance. "The demons of our

sires become the saints that we adore,"--and the saints, the saints and

the heroes of our fathers, are criminals according to our codes.

Abraham, David, Solomon,--could any respectable member of society admit

that he had done the things they did? Crime is not a thing-in-itself,

not a plant without roots, not a something proceeding from nothing; and

the only true way to deal with it is to seek its causes as earnestly, as

painstakingly, as the astronomer seeks the causes of the perturbations

in the orbit of the planet he is observing, sure that there must be one,

or many, somewhere. And Punishment, too, must be studied. The holy

mountain theory is a failure. Punishment is a failure. And it is a

failure not because men do not hunt down and strike enough, but because

they hunt down and strike at all; because in the chase of those who do

ill, they do ill themselves; they brutalize their own characters, and so

much the more so because they are convinced that this time the brutal

act is done in accord with conscience. The murderous deed of the

criminal was _against_ conscience, the torture or the murder of the

criminal by the official is _with_ conscience. Thus the conscience is

diseased and perverted, and a new class of imbruted men created. We have

punished and punished for untold thousands of years, and we have not

gotten rid of crime, we have not diminished it. Let us consider then.

The indifferentist shrugs his shoulders and remarks to the conservative:

"What have I to do with it? I will hunt nobody and I will save nobody.

Let every one take care of himself. I pay my taxes; let the judges and

the lawyers take care of the criminals. And as for you, Mr. Radical, you

weary me. Your talk is too heroic. You want to play Atlas and carry the

heavens on your shoulders. Well, do it if you like. But don't imagine I

am going to act the stupid Hercules and transfer your burden to my

shoulders. Rave away until you are tired, but let me alone."

"I will not let you alone. I am no Atlas. I am no more than a fly; but I

will annoy you, I will buzz in your ears; I will not let you sleep. You

must think about this."

That is about the height and power of my voice, or of any individual

voice, in the present state of the question. I do not deceive myself. I

do not imagine that the question of crime and punishment will be settled

till long, long after the memory of me shall be as completely swallowed

up by time as last year's snow is swallowed by the sea. Two thousand

years ago a man whose soul revolted at punishment, cried out: "Judge

not, that ye be not judged," and yet men and women who have taken his

name upon their lips as holy, have for all those two thousand years gone

on judging as if their belief in what he said was only lip-belief; and

they do it to-day. And judges sit upon benches and send men to their

death,--even judges who do not themselves believe in capital punishment;

and prosecutors exhaust their eloquence and their tricks to get men

convicted; and women and men bear witness against sinners; and then they

all meet in church and pray, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive

those who trespass against us!"

Do they mean anything at all by it?

And I know that just as the voice of Jesus was not heard, and is not

heard, save here and there; just as the voice of Tolstoy is not heard,

save here and there; and others great and small are lost in the great

echoless desert of indifferentism, having produced little perceptible

effect, so my voice also will be lost, and barely a slight ripple of

thought be propagated over that dry and fruitless expanse; even that the

next wind of trial will straighten and leave as unimprinted sand.

Nevertheless, by the continued and unintermitting action of forces

infinitesimal compared with the human voice, the greatest effects are at

length accomplished. A wave-length of light is but the fifty-thousandth

part of an inch, yet by the continuous action of waves like these have

been produced all the creations of light, the entire world of sight, out

of masses irresponsive, dark, colorless. And doubt not that in time this

cold and irresponsive mass of indifference will feel and stir and

realize the force of the great sympathies which will change the attitude

of the human mind as a whole towards Crime and Punishment, and erase

both from the world.

Not by lawyers and not by judges shall the final cause of the criminal

be tried; but lawyer and judge and criminal together shall be told by

the Social Conscience, "Depart in peace."

* * * * *

A great ethical teacher once wrote words like unto these: "I have within

me the capacity for every crime."

Few, reading them, believe that he meant what he said. Most take it as

the sententious utterance of one who, in an abandonment of generosity,

wished to say something large and leveling. But I think he meant exactly

what he said. I think that with all his purity Emerson had within him

the turbid stream of passion and desire; for all his hard-cut granite

features he knew the instincts of the weakling and the slave; and for

all the sweetness, the tenderness, and the nobility of his nature, he

had the tiger and the jackal in his soul. I think that within every bit

of human flesh and spirit that has ever crossed the enigma bridge of

life, from the prehistoric racial morning until now, all crime and all

virtue were germinal. Out of one great soul-stuff are we sprung, you and

I and all of us; and if in you the virtue has grown and not the vice, do

not therefore conclude that you are essentially different from him whom

you have helped to put in stripes and behind bars. Your balance may be

more even, you may be mixed in smaller proportions altogether, or the

outside temptation has not come upon you.

I am no disciple of that school whose doctrine is summed up in the

teaching that Man's Will is nothing, his Material Surroundings all. I do

not accept that popular socialism which would make saints out of sinners

only by filling their stomachs. I am no apologist for characterlessness,

and no petitioner for universal moral weakness. I believe in the

individual. I believe that the purpose of life (in so far as we can give

it a purpose, and it has none save what we give it) is the assertion and

the development of strong, self-centered personality. It is therefore

that no religion which offers vicarious atonement for the misdoer, and

no philosophy which rests on the cornerstone of irresponsibility, makes

any appeal to me. I believe that immeasurable mischief has been wrought

by the ceaseless repetition for the last two thousand years of the

formula: "Not through any merit of mine shall I enter heaven, but

through the sacrifice of Christ."--Not through the sacrifice of Christ,

nor any other sacrifice, shall any one attain strength, save in so far

as he takes the spirit and the purpose of the sacrifice into his own

life and lives it. Nor do I see anything as the result of the teaching

that all men are the helpless victims of external circumstance and under

the same conditions will act precisely alike, than a lot of spineless,

nerveless, bloodless crawlers in the tracks of stronger men,--too

desirous of ease to be honest, too weak to be successful rascals.

Let this be put as strongly as it can now, that nothing I shall say

hereafter may be interpreted as a gospel of shifting and shirking.

But the difference between us, the Anarchists, who preach

self-government and none else, and Moralists who in times past and

present have asked for individual responsibility, is this, that while

they have always framed creeds and codes for the purpose of _holding

others to account_, we draw the line upon ourselves. Set the standard as

high as you will; live to it as near as you can; and if you fail, try

yourself, judge yourself, condemn yourself, if you choose. Teach and

persuade your neighbor if you can; consider and compare his conduct if

you please; speak your mind if you desire; but if he fails to reach your

standard or his own, try him not, judge him not, condemn him not. He

lies beyond your sphere; you cannot know the temptation nor the inward

battle nor the weight of the circumstances upon him. You do not know how

long he fought before he failed. Therefore you cannot be just. Let him

alone.

This is the ethical concept at which we have arrived, not by revelation

from any superior power, not through the reading of any inspired book,

not by special illumination of our inner consciousness; but by the study

of the results of social experiment in the past as presented in the

works of historians, psychologists, criminologists, sociologists and

legalists.

Very likely so many "ists" sound a little oppressive, and there may be

those to whom they may even have a savor of pedantry. It sounds much

simpler and less ostentatious to say "Thus saith the Lord," or "The Good

Book says." But in the meat and marrow these last are the real

presumptions, these easy-going claims of familiarity with the will and

intent of Omnipotence. It may sound more pedantic to you to say, "I have

studied the accumulated wisdom of man, and drawn certain deductions

therefrom," than to say "I had a talk with God this morning and he said

thus and so"; but to me the first statement is infinitely more modest.

Moreover there is some chance of its being true, while the other is

highly imaginative fiction.

This is not to impugn the honesty of those who inherit this survival of

an earlier mental state of the race, and who accept it as they accept

their appetites or anything else they find themselves born with. Nor is

it to belittle those past efforts of active and ardent souls who claimed

direct divine inspiration as the source of their doctrines. All

religions have been, in their great general outlines, the intuitive

graspings of the race at truths which it had not yet sufficient

knowledge to demonstrate,--rude and imperfect statements of ideas which

were yet but germinal, but which, even then, mankind had urgent need to

conceive, and upon which it afterwards spent the efforts of generations

of lives to correct and perfect. Thus the very ethical concept of which

I have been speaking as peculiarly Anarchistic, was preached as a

religious doctrine by the fifteenth century Tolstoy, Peter Chilciky; and

in the sixteenth century, the fanatical sect of the Anabaptists shook

Germany from center to circumference by a doctrine which included the

declaration that "pleadings in courts of law, oaths, capital punishment,

and all absolute power were incompatible with the Christian faith." It

was an imperfect illumination of the intellect, such only as was

possible in those less enlightened days, but an illumination that

defined certain noble conceptions of justice. They appealed to all they

had, the Bible, the inner light, the best that they knew, to justify

their faith. We to whom a wider day is given, who can appeal not to one

book but to thousands, who have the light of science which is free to

all that can command the leisure and the will to know, shining white and

open on these great questions, dim and obscure in the days of Peter

Chilciky, we should be the last to cast a sneer at them for their heroic

struggle with tyranny and cruelty; though to-day the man who would claim

their claims on their grounds would justly be rated atavist or

charlatan.

Nothing or next to nothing did the Anabaptists know of history. For

genuine history, history which records the growth of a whole people,

which traces the evolution of its mind as seen in its works of

peace,--its literature, its art, its constructions--is the creation of

our own age. Only within the last seventy-five years has the purpose of

history come to have so much depth as this. Before that it was a mere

register of dramatic situations, with no particular connection, a

chronicle of the deeds of prominent persons, a list of intrigues,

scandals, murders big and little; and the great people, the actual

builders and preservers of the race, the immense patient, silent mass

who painfully filled up all the waste places these destroyers made,

almost ignored. And no man sought to discover the relations of even the

recorded acts to any general causes; no man conceived the notion of

discovering what is political and moral growth or political and moral

suicide. That they did not do so is because writers of history, who are

themselves incarnations of their own time spirit, could not get beyond

the unscientific attitude of mind, born of ignorance and fostered by the

Christian religion, that man is something entirely different from the

rest of organized life; that he is a free moral agent, good if he

pleases and bad if he pleases, that is, according as he accepts or

rejects the will of God; that every act is isolated, having no

antecedent, morally, but the will of its doer. Nor until modern science

had fought its way past prisons, exilements, stakes, scaffolds, and

tortures, to the demonstration that man is no free-will freak thrust by

an omnipotent joker upon a world of cause and sequence to play havoc

therein, but just a poor differentiated bit of protoplasm as much

subject to the general processes of matter and mind as his ancient

progenitor in the depths of the Silurian sea, not until then was it

possible for any real conception of the scope of history to begin. Not

until then was it said: "The actions of men are the effects of large and

general causes. Humanity as a whole has a regularity of movement as

fixed as the movement of the tides; and given certain physical and

social environments, certain developments may be predicted with the

certainty of a mathematical calculation." Thus crime, which for so many

ages men have gone on punishing more or less light-heartedly, so far

from having its final cause in individual depravity, bears a steady and

invariable relation to the production and distribution of staple food

supplies, a thing over which society itself at times can have no control

(as on the occasion of great natural disturbances), and in general does

not yet know how to manage wisely: how much less, then, the individual!

This regularity of the recurrence of crime was pointed out long before

by the greatest statisticians of Europe, who, indeed, did not go so far

as to question why it was so, nor to compare these regularities with

other regularities, but upon whom the constant repetition of certain

figures in the statistics of murder, suicide, assault, etc., made a

profound impression. It was left to the new historians, the great

pioneer among whom was H. T. Buckle in England, to make the comparisons

in the statistics, and show that individual crimes as well as virtues

are always calculable from general material conditions.

This is the basis from which we argue, and it is a basis established by

the comparative history of civilizations. In no other way could it have

been really established. It might have been guessed at, and indeed was.

But only when the figures are before us, figures obtained "by millions

of observations extending over different grades of civilization, with

different laws, different opinions, different habits, different morals"

(I am quoting Buckle), only then are we able to say surely that the

human mind proceeds with a regularity of operation overweighing all the

creeds and codes ever invented, and that if we would begin to understand

the problem of the treatment of crime, we must go to something far

larger than the moral reformation of the criminal. No prayers, no legal

enactments, will ever rid society of crime. If they would, there have

been prayers enough and preachments enough and laws enough and prisons

enough to have done it long ago. But pray that the attraction of

gravitation shall cease. Will it cease? Enact that water shall freeze at

100° heat. Will it freeze? And no more will men be sane and honest and

just when they are compelled to live in an insane, dishonest, and unjust

society, when the natural operation of the very elements of their being

is warred upon by statutes and institutions which must produce outbursts

destructive both to themselves and to others.

Away back in 1835 Quetelet, the French statistician, wrote: "Experience

demonstrates, in fact, by every possible evidence, this opinion, which

may seem paradoxical at first, that it is society which prepares the

crime, and that the guilty one is but the instrument which executes it."

Every crime, therefore, is a charge against society which can only be

rightly replied to when society consents to look into its own errors and

rectify the wrong it has done. This is one of the results which must, in

the end, flow from the labors of the real historians; one of the reasons

why history was worth writing at all.

Now the next point in the problem is the criminal himself. Admitting

what cannot be impeached, that there is cause and sequence in the action

of man; admitting the pressure of general causes upon all alike, what

is the reason that one man is a criminal and another not?

From the days of the Roman jurisconsults until now the legalists

themselves have made a distinction between crimes against the law of

nature and crimes merely against the law of society. From the modern

scientific standpoint no such distinction can be maintained. Nature

knows nothing about crime, and nothing ever was a crime until the social

Conscience made it so. Neither is it easy when one reads their law

books, even accepting their view-point, to understand why certain crimes

were catalogued as against the law of nature, and certain others as of

the more artificial character. But I presume what were in general

classed as crimes against nature were Acts of Violence committed against

persons. Aside from these we have a vast, an almost interminable number

of offenses big and little, which are in the main attacks upon the

institution of property, concerning which some very different things

have to be said than concerning the first. As to these first there is no

doubt that these are real crimes, by which I mean simply anti-social

acts. Any action which violates the life or liberty of any individual is

an anti-social act, whether done by one person, by two, or by a whole

nation. And the greatest crime that ever was perpetrated, a crime beside

which all individual atrocities diminish to nothing, is War; and the

greatest, the least excusable of murderers are those who order it and

those who execute it. Nevertheless, this chiefest of murderers, the

Government, its own hands red with the blood of hundreds of thousands,

assumes to correct the individual offender, enacting miles of laws to

define the varying degrees of his offense and punishment, and putting

beautiful building stone to very hideous purposes for the sake of caging

and tormenting him therein.

We do get a fig from a thistle--sometimes! Out of this noisome

thing, the prison, has sprung the study of criminology. It is

very new, and there is considerable painstaking nonsense about

it. But the main results are interesting and should be known

by all who wish to form an intelligent conception of what a

criminal is and how he should be treated. These men who are cool

and quiet and who move among criminals and study them as Darwin

did his plants and animals, tell us that these prisoners are

reducible to three types: The Born Criminal, the Criminaloid,

and the Accidental Criminal. I am inclined to doubt a great

deal that is said about the born criminal. Prof. Lombroso gives

us very exhaustive reports of the measurements of their skulls

and their ears and their noses and their thumbs and their toes,

etc. But I suspect that if a good many respectable, decent,

never-did-a-wrong-thing-in-their-lives people were to go up for

measurement, malformed ears and disproportionately long thumbs

would be equally found among them if they took the precaution

to represent themselves as criminals first. Still, however few

in number (and they are really very few), there are some born

criminals,--people who through some malformation or deficiency

or excess of certain portions of the brain are constantly

impelled to violent deeds. Well, there are some born idiots and

some born cripples. Do you punish them for their idiocy or for

their unfortunate physical condition? On the contrary, you pity

them, you realize that life is a long infliction to them, and

your best and tenderest sympathies go out to them. Why not to

the other, equally a helpless victim of an evil inheritance?

Granting for the moment that you have the right to punish the

mentally responsible, surely you will not claim the right to

punish the mentally irresponsible!

Even the law does not hold the insane man guilty. And the born criminal

is irresponsible; he is a sick man, sick with the most pitiable chronic

disease; his treatment is for the medical world to decide, and the best

of them,--not for the prosecutor, the judge, and the warden.

It is true that many criminologists, including Prof. Lombroso himself,

are of opinion that the best thing to do with the born criminal is to

kill him at once, since he can be only a curse to himself and others.

Very heroic treatment. We may inquire, Is he to be exterminated at birth

because of certain physical indications of his criminality? Such

neo-Spartanism would scarcely commend itself to any modern society.

Moreover the diagnosis might be wrong, even though we had a perpetual

and incorruptible commission of the learned to sit in inquiry upon every

pink-skinned little suspect three days old! What then? Is he to be let

go, as he is now, until he does some violent deed and then be judged

more hardly because of his natural defect? Either proposition seems not

only heartless and wicked but,--what the respectable world is often more

afraid of being than either,--ludicrous. If one is really a born

criminal he will manifest criminal tendencies in early life, and being

so recognized should be cared for according to the most humane methods

of treating the mentally afflicted.

The second, or criminaloid, class is the most numerous of the three.

These are criminals, first, because being endowed with strong desires

and unequal reasoning powers they cannot maintain the uneven battle

against a society wherein the majority of individuals must all the time

deny their natural appetites, if they are to remain unstained with

crime. They are, in short, the ordinary man (who, it must be admitted,

has a great deal of paste in him) plus an excess of wants of one sort

and another, but generally physical. Society outside of prisons is full

of these criminaloids, who sometimes have in place of the power of

genuine moral resistance a sneaking cunning by which they manage to

steer a shady course between the crime and the punishment.

It is true these people are not pleasant subjects to contemplate; but

then, through that very stage of development the whole human race has

had to pass in its progress from the beast to the man,--the stage, I

mean, of overplus of appetite opposed by weak moral resistance; and if

now some, it is not certain that their number is very great, have

reversed the proportion, it is only because they are the fortunate

inheritors of the results of thousands of years of struggle and failure,

struggle and failure, but _struggle_ again. It is precisely these

criminaloids who are most sinned against by society, for they are the

people who need to have the right of doing things made easy, and who,

when they act criminally, need the most encouragement to help the feeble

and humiliated moral sense to rise again, to try again.

The third class, the Accidental or Occasional Criminals, are perfectly

normal, well balanced people, who, through tremendous stress of outward

circumstance, and possibly some untoward mental disturbance arising from

those very notions of the conduct of life which form part of their moral

being, suddenly commit an act of violence which is at utter variance

with their whole former existence; such as, for instance, the murder of

a seducer by the father of the injured girl, or of a wife's paramour by

her husband. If I believed in severity at all I should say that these

were the criminals upon whom society should look with most severity,

because they are the ones who have most mental responsibility. But that

also is nonsense; for such an individual has within him a severer

judge, a more pitiless jailer than any court or prison,--his conscience

and his memory. Leave him to these; or no, in mercy take him away from

these whenever you can; he will suffer enough, and there is no fear of

his action being repeated.

Now all these people are with us, and it is desirable that something be

done to help the case. What does Society do? Or rather what does

Government do with them? Remember we are speaking now only of crimes of

violence. It hangs, it electrocutes, it exiles, it imprisons. Why? For

punishment. And why punishment? "Not," says Blackstone, "by way of

atonement or expiation for the crime committed, for that must be left to

the just determination of the Supreme Being, but as a precaution against

future offenses of the same kind." This is supposed to be effected in

three ways: either by reforming him, or getting rid of him altogether,

or by deterring others by making an example of him.

Let us see how these precautions work. Exile, which is still practised

by some governments, and imprisonment are, according to the theory of

law, for the purpose of reforming the criminal that he may no longer be

a menace to society. Logic would say that anyone who wished to

obliterate cruelty from the character of another must himself show no

cruelty; one who would teach regard for the rights of others must

himself be regardful. Yet the story of exile and prison is the story of

the lash, the iron, the chain and every torture that the fiendish

ingenuity of _the non-criminal class can devise by way of teaching

criminals to be good_! To teach men to be good, they are kept in airless

cells, made to sleep on narrow planks, to look at the sky through iron

grates, to eat food that revolts their palates, and destroys their

stomachs,--battered and broken down in body and soul; and this is what

they call reforming men!

Not very many years ago the Philadelphia dailies told us (and while we

cannot believe all of what they say, and are bound to believe that such

cases are exceptional, yet the bare facts were true) that Judge Gordon

ordered an investigation into the workings of the Eastern Penitentiary

officials; and it was found that an insane man had been put into a cell

with two sane ones, and when he cried in his insane way and the two

asked that he be put elsewhere, the warden gave them a strap to whip him

with; and they tied him in some way to the heater, with the strap, so

that his legs were burned when he moved; all scarred with the burns he

was brought into the court, and the other men frankly told what they had

done and why they had done it. This is the way they reform men.

Do you think people come out of a place like that better? with more

respect for society? with more regard for the rights of their fellow

men? I don't. I think they come out of there with their hearts full of

bitterness, much harder than when they went in. That this is often the

case is admitted by those who themselves believe in punishment, and

practice it. For the fact is that out of the Criminaloid class there

develops the Habitual Criminal, the man who is perpetually getting in

prison; no sooner is he out than he does something else and gets in

again. The brand that at first scorched him has succeeded in searing. He

no longer feels the ignominy. He is a "jail-bird," and he gets to have a

cynical pride in his own degradation. Every man's hand is against him,

and his hand is against every man's. Such are the reforming effects of

punishment. Yet there was a time when he, too, might have been touched,

had the right word been spoken. It is for society to find and speak

that word.

This for prison and exile. Hanging? electrocution? These of course are

not for the purpose of reforming the criminal. These are to deter others

from doing as he did; and the supposition is that the severer the

punishment the greater the deterrent effect. In commenting upon this

principle Blackstone says: "We may observe that punishments of

unreasonable severity ... have less effect in preventing crimes and

amending the manners of a people than such as are more merciful in

general...." He further quotes Montesquieu: "For the excessive severity

of laws hinders their execution; when the punishment surpasses all

measure, the public will frequently, out of humanity, prefer impunity to

it." Again Blackstone: "It is a melancholy truth that among the variety

of actions which men are daily liable to commit, no less than one

hundred and sixty have been declared by act of Parliament to be felonies

... worthy of instant death. So dreadful a list instead of diminishing

_increases_ the number of offenders."

Robert Ingersoll, speaking on "Crimes Against Criminals" before the New

York Bar Association, a lawyer addressing lawyers, treating of this same

period of which Blackstone writes, says: "There is something in

injustice, in cruelty, which tends to defeat itself. There never were so

many traitors in England as when the traitor was drawn and quartered,

when he was tortured in every possible way,--when his limbs, torn and

bleeding, were given to the fury of mobs, or exhibited pierced by pikes

or hung in chains. The frightful punishments produced intense hatred of

the government, and traitors increased until they became powerful enough

to decide what treason was and who the traitors were and to inflict the

same torments on others."

The fact that Blackstone was right and Ingersoll was right in saying

that severity of punishment increases crime, is silently admitted in the

abrogation of those severities by acts of Parliament and acts of

Congress. It is also shown by the fact that there are no more murders,

proportionately, in States where the death penalty does not exist than

in those where it does. Severity is therefore admitted by the State

itself to have no deterrent influence on the intending criminal. And to

take the matter out of the province of the State, we have only to

instance the horrible atrocities perpetrated by white mobs upon negroes

charged with outrage. Nothing more fiendishly cruel can be imagined; yet

these outrages multiply. It would seem, then, that the notion of making

a horrible example of the misdoer is a complete failure. As a specific

example of this, Ingersoll (in this same lecture) instanced that "a few

years before a man was hanged in Alexandria, Va. One who witnessed the

execution on that very day murdered a peddler in the Smithsonian grounds

at Washington. He was tried and executed; and one who witnessed his

hanging went home and on the same day murdered his wife." Evidently the

brute is rather aroused than terrified by scenes of execution.

What then? If extreme punishments do not deter, and if what are

considered mild punishments do not reform, is any measure of punishment

conceivable or attainable which will better our case?

Before answering this question let us consider the class of crimes which

so far has not been dwelt upon, but which nevertheless comprises

probably nine-tenths of all offenses committed. These are all the

various forms of stealing,--robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement,

forgery, counterfeiting, and the thousand and one ramifications and

offshoots of the act of taking what the law defines as another's. It is

impossible to consider crimes of violence apart from these, because the

vast percentage of murders and assaults committed by the criminaloid

class are simply incidental to the commission of the so-called lesser

crime. A man often murders in order to escape with his booty, though

murder was no part of his original intention. Why, now, have we such a

continually increasing percentage of stealing?

Will you persistently hide your heads in the sand and say it is because

men grow worse as they grow wiser? that individual wickedness is the

result of all our marvelous labors to compass sea and land, and make the

earth yield up her wealth to us? Dare you say that?

It is not so. =The reason men steal is because their rights are stolen

from them before they are born.=

A human being comes into the world; he wants to eat, he wants to

breathe, he wants to sleep; he wants to use his muscles, his brain; he

wants to love, to dream, to create. These wants constitute him, the

whole man; he can no more help expressing these activities than water

can help running down hill. If the freedom to do any of these things is

denied him, then by so much he is a crippled creature, and his energy

will force itself into some abnormal channel or be killed altogether.

Now I do not mean that he has a "natural right" to do these things

inscribed on any lawbook of Nature. Nature knows nothing of rights, she

knows power only, and a louse has as much natural right as a man to the

extent of its power. What I do mean to say is that man, in common with

many other animals, has found that by associative life he conquers the

rest of nature, and that this society is slowly being perfected; and

that this perfectionment consists in realizing that the solidarity and

safety of the whole arises from the freedom of the parts; that such

freedom constitutes Man's Social Right; and that any institution which

interferes with this right will be destructive of the association, will

breed criminals, will work its own ruin. This is the word of the

sociologist, of the greatest of them, Herbert Spencer.

Now do we see that all men eat,--eat well? You know we do not. Some have

so much that they are sickened with the extravagance of dishes, and know

not where next to turn for a new palatal sensation. They cannot even

waste their wealth. Some, and they are mostly the hardest workers, eat

poorly and fast, for their work allows them no time to enjoy even what

they have. Some,--I have seen them myself in the streets of New York

this winter, and the look of their wolfish eyes was not pleasant to

see--stand in long lines waiting for midnight and the plate of soup

dealt out by some great newspaper office, stretching out, whole blocks

of them, as other men wait on the first night of some famous star at the

theater! Some die because they cannot eat at all. Pray tell me what

these last have to lose by becoming thieves. And why shall they not

become thieves? And is the action of the man who takes the necessities

which have been denied to him really criminal? Is he morally worse than

the man who crawls in a cellar and dies of starvation? I think not. He

is only a little more assertive. Cardinal Manning said: "A starving man

has a natural right to his neighbor's bread." The Anarchist says: "A

hungry man has a social right to bread." And there have been whole

societies and races among whom that right was never questioned. And

whatever were the mistakes of those societies, whereby they perished,

this was not a mistake, and we shall do well to take so much wisdom

from the dead and gone, the simple ethics of the stomach which with all

our achievement we cannot despise, or despising, shall perish as our

reward.

"But," you will say, and say truly, "to begin by taking loaves means to

end by taking everything and murdering, too, very often." And in that

you draw the indictment against your own system. If there is no

alternative between starving and stealing (and for thousands there is

none), then there is no alternative between society's murdering its

members, or the members disintegrating society. Let Society consider its

own mistakes, then: let it answer itself for all these people it has

robbed and killed: let it cease its own crimes first!

To return to the faculties of Man. All would breathe; and some do

breathe. They breathe the air of the mountains, of the seas, of the

lakes,--even the atmosphere in the gambling dens of Monte Carlo, for a

change! Some, packed thickly together in closed rooms where men must

sweat and faint to save tobacco, breathe the noisome reek that rises

from the spittle of their consumptive neighbors. Some, mostly babies,

lie on the cellar doors along Bainbridge street, on summer nights, and

bathe their lungs in that putrid air where a thousand lungs have

breathed before, and grow up pale and decayed looking as the rotting

vegetables whose exhalations they draw in. Some, far down underground,

meet the choke-damp, and--do not breathe at all! Do you expect healthy

morals out of all these poisoned bodies?

Some sleep. They have so much time that they take all manner of

expensive drugs to try what sleeping it off a different way is like!

Some sleep upon none too easy beds a few short hours, too few not to

waken more tired than ever, and resume the endless grind of waking

life. Some sleep bent over the books they are too tired to study, though

the mind clamors for food after the long day's physical toil. Some sleep

with hand upon the throttle of the engine, after twenty-six hours of

duty, and--crash!--they have sleep enough!

Some use their muscles: they use them to punch bags, and other

gentlemen's stomachs when their heads are full of wine. Some use them to

club other men and women, at $2.50 a day. Some exhaust them welding them

into iron, or weaving them into wool, for ten or eleven hours a day. And

some become atrophied sitting at desks till they are mere specters of

men and women.

Some love; and there is no end to the sensualities of their love,

because all normal expressions have lost their savor through excess.

Some love, and see their love tried and worn and threadbare, a skeleton

of love, because the practicality of life is always there to repress the

purely emotional. Some are stricken in health, so robbed of power to

feel, that they never love at all.

And some dream, think, create; and the world is filled with the glory of

their dreams. But who knows the glory of the dream that never was born,

lost and dead and buried away somewhere there under the roofs where the

exquisite brain was ruined by the heavy labor of life? And what of the

dream that turned to madness and destroyed the thing it loved the best?

These are the things that make criminals, the perverted forces of man,

turned aside by the institution of property, which is the giant social

mistake to-day. It is your law which keeps men from using the sources

and the means of wealth production unless they pay tribute to other men;

it is this, and nothing else, which is responsible for all the second

class of crimes and all those crimes of violence incidentally committed

while carrying out a robbery. Let me quote here a most sensible and

appropriate editorial which recently appeared in the Philadelphia _North

American_, in comment upon the proposition of some foolish preacher to

limit the right of reproduction to rich families:

"The earth was constructed, made habitable, and populated without the

advice of a commission of superior persons, and until they appeared and

began meddling with affairs, making laws and setting themselves up as

rulers, poverty and its evil consequences were unknown to humanity. When

social science finds a way to remove obstructions to the operation of

natural law and to the equitable distribution of the products of labor,

poverty will cease to be the condition of the masses of people, and

misery, CRIME and problems of population will disappear."

And they will never disappear until it does. All hunting down of men,

all punishments, are but so many ineffective efforts to sweep back the

tide with a broom. The tide will fling you, broom and all, against the

idle walls that you have built to fence it in. Tear down those walls or

the sea will tear them down for you.

Have you ever watched it coming in,--the sea? When the wind comes

roaring out of the mist and a great bellowing thunders up from the

water? Have you watched the white lions chasing each other towards the

walls, and leaping up with foaming anger as they strike, and turn and

chase each other along the black bars of their cage in rage to devour

each other? And tear back? And leap in again? Have you ever wondered in

the midst of it all _which particular drops of water_ would strike the

wall? If one could know all the factors one might calculate even that.

But who can know them all? Of one thing only we are sure: _some must

strike it_.

They are the criminals, those drops of water pitching against that silly

wall and broken. Just why it was these particular ones we cannot know;

but some had to go. Do not curse them; you have cursed them enough. Let

the people free.

There is a class of crimes of violence which arises from another set of

causes than economic slavery--acts which are the result of an antiquated

moral notion of the true relations of men and women. These are the

Nemesis of the institution of property in love. If every one would learn

that the limit of his right to demand a certain course of conduct in sex

relations is himself; that the relation of his beloved ones to others is

not a matter for him to regulate, any more than the relations of those

whom he does not love; if the freedom of each is unquestioned, and

whatever moral rigors are exacted are exacted of oneself only; if this

principle is accepted and followed, crimes of jealousy will cease. But

religions and governments uphold this institution and constantly tend to

create the spirit of ownership, with all its horrible consequences.

Ah, you will say, perhaps it is true; perhaps when this better social

condition is evolved, and this freer social spirit, we shall be rid of

crime,--at least nine-tenths of it. But meanwhile must we not punish to

protect ourselves?

The protection does not protect. The violent man does not communicate

his intention; when he executes it, or attempts its execution, more

often than otherwise it is some unofficial person who catches or stops

him. If he is a born criminal, or in other words an insane man, he

should, I reiterate, be treated as a sick person--not punished, not made

to suffer. If he is one of the accidental criminals, his act will not be

repeated; his punishment will always be with him. If he is of the

middle class, your punishment will not reform him, it will only harden

him; and it will not deter others.

As for thieves, the great thief is within the law, or he buys it; and as

for the small one, see what you do! To protect yourself against him, you

create a class of persons who are sworn to the service of the club and

the revolver; a set of spies; a set whose business it is to deal

constantly with these unhappy beings, who in rare instances are softened

thereby, but in the majority of cases become hardened to their work as

butchers to the use of the knife; a set whose business it is to serve

cell and lock and key; and lastly, the lowest infamy of all, the

hangman. Does any one want to shake his hand, the hand that kills for

pay?

Now against all these persons individually there is nothing to be said:

they may probably be very humane, well-intentioned persons when they

start in; but the end of all this is imbrutement. One of our dailies

recently observed that "the men in charge of prisons have but too often

been men who ought themselves to have been prisoners." The Anarchist

does not agree with that. He would have no prisons at all. But I am

quite sure that if that editor himself were put in the prison-keeper's

place, he too would turn hard. And the opportunities of the official

criminal are much greater than those of the unofficial one. Lawyer and

governmentalist as he was, Ingersoll said: "It is safe to say that

governments have committed far more crimes than they have prevented."

Then why create a second class of parasites worse than the first? Why

not put up with the original one?

Moreover, you have another thing to consider than the simple problem of

a wrong inflicted upon a guilty man. How many times has it happened that

the innocent man has been convicted! I remember an instance of a man so

convicted of murder in Michigan. He had served twenty-seven years in

Jackson penitentiary (for Michigan is not a hang-State) when the real

murderer, dying, confessed. And the State _pardoned_ that innocent man!

Because it was the quickest legal way to let him out! I hope he has been

able to pardon the State.

Not very long ago a man was hanged here in this city. He had killed his

superintendent. Some doctors said he was insane; the government experts

said he was not. They said he was faking insanity when he proclaimed

himself Jesus Christ. And he was hanged. Afterwards the doctors found

two cysts in his brain. The State of Pennsylvania had killed a sick man!

And as long as punishments exist, these mistakes will occur. If you

accept the principle at all, you must accept with it the blood-guilt of

innocent men.

Not only this, but you must accept also the responsibility for all the

misery which results to others whose lives are bound up with that of the

convict, for even he is loved by some one, much loved perhaps. It is a

foolish thing to turn adrift a house full of children, to become

criminals in turn, perhaps, in order to frighten some indefinite future

offender by making an example of their father or mother. Yet how many

times has it not happened!

And this is speaking only from the practical, selfish side of the

matter. There is another, one from which I would rather appeal to you,

and from which I think you would after all prefer to be appealed to. Ask

yourselves, each of you, whether you are quite sure that you have

feeling enough, understanding enough, and _have you suffered_ enough, to

be able to weigh and measure out another man's life or liberty, no

matter what he has done? And if you have not yourself, are you able to

delegate to any judge the power which you have not? The great Russian

novelist, Dostoyevsky, in his psychological study of this same subject,

traces the sufferings of a man who had committed a shocking murder; his

whole body and brain are a continual prey to torture. He gives himself

up, seeking relief in confession. He goes to prison, for in barbarous

Russia they have not the barbarity of capital punishment for murderers,

unless political ones. But he finds no relief. He remains for a year,

bitter, resentful, a prey to all miserable feelings. But at last he is

touched by love, the silent, unobtrusive, all-conquering love of one who

knew it all and forgave it all. And the regeneration of his soul began.

"The criminal slew," says Tolstoy: "are you better, then, when you slay?

He took another's liberty; and is it the right way, therefore, for you

to take his? Violence is no answer to violence."

"Have good will

To all that lives, letting unkindness die,

And greed and wrath; so that your lives be made

As soft airs passing by."

So said Lord Buddha, the Light of Asia.

And another said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said 'an eye for an

eye, and a tooth for a tooth'; but I say unto you, resist not him that

is evil."

Yet the vengeance that the great psychologist saw was futile, the

violence that the greatest living religious teacher and the greatest

dead ones advised no man to wreak, that violence is done daily and

hourly by every little-hearted prosecutor who prosecutes at so much a

day, by every petty judge who buys his way into office with common

politicians' tricks, and deals in men's lives and liberties as a trader

deals in pins, by every neat-souled and cheap-souled member of the "unco

guid" whose respectable bargain-counter maxims of morality have as much

effect to stem the great floods and storms that shake the human will as

the waving of a lady's kid glove against the tempest. Those who have not

suffered cannot understand how to punish; those who have understanding

_will_ not.

I said at the beginning and I say again, I believe that in every one of

us all things are germinal: in judge and prosecutor and prison-keeper

too, and even in those small moral souls who cut out one undeviating

pattern for all men to fit, even in them there are the germs of passion

and crime and sympathy and forgiveness. And some day things will stir in

them and accuse them and awaken them. And that awakening will come when

suddenly one day there breaks upon them with realizing force the sense

of the unison of life, the irrevocable relationship of the saint to the

sinner, the judge to the criminal; that all personalities are

intertwined and rushing upon doom together. Once in my life it was given

to me to see the outward manifestation of this unison. It was in 1897.

We stood upon the base of the Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square. Below

were ten thousand people packed together with upturned faces. They had

gathered to hear and see men and women whose hands and limbs were

scarred all over with the red-hot irons of the tortures in the fortress

of Montjuich. For the crime of an unknown person these twenty-eight men

and women, together with four hundred others, had been cast into that

terrible den and tortured with the infamies of the inquisition to make

them reveal that of which they knew nothing. After a year of such

suffering as makes the decent human heart sick only to contemplate, with

nothing proven against them, some even without trial, they were suddenly

released with orders to leave the country within twenty-four hours. They

were then in Trafalgar Square, and to the credit of old England be it

said, harlot and mother of harlots though she is, for there was not

another country among the great nations of the earth to which those

twenty-eight innocent people could go. For they were paupers

impoverished by that cruel State of Spain in the terrible battle for

their freedom; they would not have been admitted to free America. When

Francesco Gana, speaking in a language which most of them did not

understand, lifted his poor, scarred hands, the faces of those ten

thousand people moved together like the leaves of a forest in the wind.

They waved to and fro, they rose and fell; the visible moved in the

breath of the invisible. It was the revelation of the action of the

Unconscious, the fatalistic unity of man.

Sometimes, even now as I look upon you, it is as if the bodies that I

see were as transparent bubbles wherethrough the red blood boils and

flows, a turbulent stream churning and tossing and leaping, and behind

us and our generation, far, far back, endlessly backwards, where all the

bubbles are broken and not a ripple remains, the silent pouring of the

Great Red River, the unfathomable River,--backwards through the unbroken

forest and the untilled plain, backwards through the forgotten world of

savagery and animal life, back somewhere to its dark sources in deep Sea

and old Night, the rushing River of Blood--no fancy--real, tangible

blood, the blood that hurries in your veins while I speak, bearing with

it the curses and the blessings of the Past. Through what infinite

shadows has that river rolled! Through what desolate wastes has it not

spread its ooze! Through what desperate passages has it been forced!

What strength, what invincible strength is in that hot stream! You are

just the bubble on its crest; where will the current fling you ere you

die? At what moment will the fierce impurities borne from its somber and

tenebrous past be hurled up in you? Shall you then cry out for

punishment if they are hurled up in another? if, flung against the

merciless rocks of the channel, while you swim easily in the midstream,

they fall back and hurt other bubbles?

Can you not feel that

"Men are the heart-beats of Man, the plumes that feather his

wings,

Storm-worn since being began with the wind and the thunder

of things.

Things are cruel and blind; their strength detains and deforms.

And the wearying wings of the mind still beat up the stream

of their storms.

Still, as one swimming up-stream, they strike out blind in the

blast,

In thunder of vision and dream, and lightning of future and

past.

We are baffled and caught in the current and bruised upon

edges of shoals:

As weeds or as reeds in the torrent of things are the wind-shaken

souls.

Spirit by spirit goes under, a foam-bell's bubble of breath,

That blows and opens asunder and blurs not the mirror of

Death."

Is it not enough that "things are cruel and blind"? Must we also be

cruel and blind? When the whole thing amounts to so little at the most,

shall we embitter it more, and crush and stifle what must so soon be

crushed and stifled anyhow? Can we not, knowing what remnants of things

dead and drowned are floating through us, haunting our brains with

specters of old deeds and scenes of violence, can we not learn to pardon

our brother to whom the specters are more real, upon whom greater stress

was laid? Can we not, recalling all the evil things that we have done,

or left undone only because some scarcely perceptible weight struck down

the balance, or because some kindly word came to us in the midst of our

bitterness and showed that not all was hateful in the world; can we not

understand him for whom the balance was not struck down, the kind word

unspoken? Believe me, forgiveness is better than wrath,--better for the

wrong-doer, who will be touched and regenerated by it, and better for

you. And you are wrong if you think it is hard: it is easy, far easier

than to hate. It may sound like a paradox, but the greater the injury

the easier the pardon.

Let us have done with this savage idea of punishment, which is without

wisdom. Let us work for the freedom of man from the oppressions which

make criminals, and for the enlightened treatment of all the sick. And

though we may never see the fruit of it, we may rest assured that the

great tide of thought is setting our way, and that

"While the tired wave, vainly breaking,

Seems here no painful inch to gain,

Far back, through creeks and inlets making,

Comes silent, flooding in, the main."

In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation

The light is pleasant, is it not, my friends? It is good to look into

each other's faces, to see the hands that clasp our own, to read the

eyes that search our thoughts, to know what manner of lips give

utterance to our pleasant greetings. It is good to be able to wink

defiance at the Night, the cold, unseeing Night. How weird, how

gruesome, how chilly it would be if I stood here in blackness, a shadow

addressing shadows, in a house of blindness! Yet each would know that he

was not alone; yet might we stretch hands and touch each other, and feel

the warmth of human presence near. Yet might a sympathetic voice ring

thro' the darkness, quickening the dragging moments.--The lonely

prisoners in the cells of Blackwell's Island have neither light nor

sound! The short day hurries across the sky, the short day still more

shortened in the gloomy walls. The long chill night creeps up so early,

weaving its sombre curtain before the imprisoned eyes. And thro' the

curtain comes no sympathizing voice, beyond the curtain lies the prison

silence, beyond that the cheerless, uncommunicating land, and still

beyond the icy, fretting river, black and menacing, ready to drown. A

wall of night, a wall of stone, a wall of water! Thus has the great

State of New York answered =Emma Goldman=; thus have the classes replied

to the masses; thus do the rich respond to the poor; thus does the

Institution of Property give its ultimatum to Hunger!

"Give us work," said =Emma Goldman=; "if you will not give us work, then

give us bread; if you do not give us either work or bread, then we shall

take bread." It wasn't a very wise remark to make to the State of New

York, that is--Wealth and its watch-dogs, the Police. But I fear me much

that the apostles of liberty, the fore-runners of revolt, have never

been very wise. There is a record of a seditious person, who once upon a

time went about with a few despised followers in Palestine, taking corn

out of other people's corn-fields, (on the Sabbath day, too). That same

person, when he wished to ride into Jerusalem told his disciples to go

forward to where they would find a young colt tied, to unloose it and

bring it to him, and if any one interfered or said anything to them,

were to say: "My master hath need of it." That same person said: "Give

to him that asketh of thee, and from him that taketh away thy goods ask

them not back again." That same person once stood before the hungry

multitudes of Galilee and taught them, saying: "The Scribes and the

Pharisees sit in Moses' seat; therefore whatever they bid you observe,

that observe and do. But do not ye after their works, for they say, and

do not. For they bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay

them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one

of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen of men; they

make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their

garments: and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in

the synagogues, and greeting in the markets, and to be called of men,

'Rabbi, Rabbi.'" And turning to the Scribes and the Pharisees, he

continued: "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye

devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: therefore

shall ye receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you Scribes and

Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin,

and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, and mercy,

and faith: these ought ye to have done and not left the other undone. Ye

blind guides, that strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! Woe unto you,

Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the

cup and platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Woe

unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited

sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full

of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so ye outwardly appear

righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build the

tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous; and

say 'If we had been in the days of our fathers we would not have been

partakers with them in the blood of the prophets'. Wherefore ye be

witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed

the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers! Ye serpents!

Ye generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell!"

Yes; these are the words of the outlaw who is alleged to form the

foundation stone of modern civilization, to the authorities of his day.

Hypocrites, extortionists, doers of iniquity, robbers of the poor,

blood-partakers, serpents, vipers, fit for hell!

It wasn't a very wise speech, from beginning to end. Perhaps he knew it

when he stood before Pilate to receive his sentence, when he bore his

heavy crucifix up Calvary, when nailed upon it, stretched in agony, he

cried: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"

No, it wasn't wise--but it was very grand.

This grand, foolish person, this beggar-tramp, this thief who justified

the action of hunger, this man who set the Right of Property beneath his

foot, this Individual who defied the State, do you know why he was so

feared and hated, and punished? Because, as it is said in the record,

"the common people heard him gladly"; and the accusation before Pontius

Pilate was, "we found this fellow perverting the whole nation. He

stirreth up the people, teaching throughout all Jewry."

Ah, the dreaded "common people"!

When Cardinal Manning wrote: "Necessity knows no law, and a starving

man has a natural right to a share of his neighbor's bread," who

thought of arresting Cardinal Manning? His was a carefully written

article in the _Fortnightly Review_. Who read it? Not the people who

needed bread. Without food in their stomachs, they had not fifty cents

to spend for a magazine. It was not the voice of the people themselves

asserting their rights. No one for one instant imagined that Cardinal

Manning would put himself at the head of ten thousand hungry men to

loot the bakeries of London. It was a piece of ethical hair-splitting

to be discussed in after-dinner speeches by the wine-muddled gentlemen

who think themselves most competent to consider such subjects when

their dress-coats are spoiled by the vomit of gluttony and drunkenness.

But when =Emma Goldman= stood in Union Square and said, "If they do

not give you work or bread, take bread," the common people heard her

gladly; and as of old the wandering carpenter of Nazareth addressed

his own class, teaching throughout all Jewry, stirring up the people

against the authorities, so the dressmaker of New York addressing the

unemployed working-people of New York was the menace of the depths

of society, crying in its own tongue. The authorities heard and were

afraid: therefore the triple wall.

It is the old, old story. When Thomas Paine, one hundred years ago,

published the first part of "The Rights of Man," the part in which he

discusses principles only, the edition was a high-priced one, reaching

comparatively few readers. It created only a literary furore. When the

second part appeared, the part in which he treats of the application of

principles, in which he declares that "men should not petition for

rights but take them," it came out in a cheap form, so that one hundred

thousand copies were sold in a few weeks. That brought down the

prosecution of the government. It had reached the people that might act,

and prosecution followed prosecution till Botany Bay was full of the

best men of England. Thus were the limitations of speech and press

declared, and thus will they ever be declared so long as there are

antagonistic interests in human society.

Understand me clearly. I believe that the term "constitutional right of

free speech" is a meaningless phrase, for this reason: the Constitution

of the United States, and the Declaration of Independence, and

particularly the latter, were, in their day, progressive expressions of

progressive ideals. But they are, throughout, characterized by the

metaphysical philosophy which dominated the thought of the last century.

They speak of "inherent rights," "inalienable rights," "natural rights,"

etc. They declare that men are equal because of a supposed metaphysical

something-or-other, called equality, existing in some mysterious way

apart from material conditions, just as the philosophers of the

eighteenth century accounted for water being wet by alleging a

metaphysical wetness, existing somehow apart from matter. I do not say

this to disparage those grand men who dared to put themselves against

the authorities of the monarchy, and to conceive a better ideal of

society, one which they certainly thought would secure equal rights to

men; because I realize fully that no one can live very far in advance of

the time-spirit, and I am positive in my own mind that, unless some

cataclysm destroys the human race before the end of the twentieth

century, the experience of the next hundred years will explode many of

our own theories. But the experience of this age has proven that

metaphysical quantities do not exist apart from materials, and hence

humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the

material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to

pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I

mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself), unless, I

say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or

action, is equally a mockery.

I once read that one million angels could dance at the same time on the

point of a needle; possibly one million angels might be able to get a

decent night's lodging by virtue of their constitutional rights; one

single tramp couldn't. And whenever the tongues of the non-possessing

class threaten the possessors, whenever the disinherited menace the

privileged, that moment you will find that the Constitution isn't made

for you. Therefore I think Anarchists make a mistake when they contend

for their constitutional rights. As a prominent lawyer, Mr. Thomas Earle

White, of Philadelphia, himself an Anarchist, said to me not long

since: "What are you going to do about it? Go into the courts, and fight

for your legal rights? Anarchists haven't got any." "Well," says the

governmentalist, "you can't consistently claim any. You don't believe in

constitutions and laws." Exactly so; and if any one will right my

constitutional wrongs, I will willingly make him a present of my

constitutional rights. At the same time I am perfectly sure no one will

ever make this exchange; nor will any help ever come to the wronged

class from the outside. Salvation on the vicarious plan isn't worth

despising. Redress of wrongs will not come by petitioning "the powers

that be." "He has rights who dare maintain them." "The Lord helps them

who help themselves." (And when one is able to help himself, I don't

think he is apt to trouble the Lord much for his assistance.) As long as

the working people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give

them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the

streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers

they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman

bid them "move on"; so long as they go from factory to factory, begging

for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and

foremen, getting the old "No," the old shake of the head, in these

factories which they build, whose machines they wrought; so long as they

consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more

and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized,

cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing

through plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made but cannot

buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so

long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power

outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer,

or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be

delayed. When they conceive the possibility of a complete international

federation of labor, whose constituent groups shall take possession of

land, mines, factories, all the instruments of production, issue their

own certificates of exchange, and, in short, conduct their own industry

without regulative interference from law-makers or employers, then we

may hope for the only help which counts for aught--self-help; the only

condition which can guarantee free speech (and no paper guarantee

needed).

But meanwhile, while we are waiting, for there is yet much grist of the

middle class to be ground between the upper and nether millstones of

economic evolution; while we await the formation of the international

labor trust; while we watch for the day when there are enough of people

with nothing in their stomachs and desperation in their heads, to go

about the work of expropriation; what shall those do who are starving

now?

That is the question which =Emma Goldman= had to face; and she answered

it by saying: "Ask, and if you do not receive, take--take bread."

I do not give you that advice. Not because I do not think the bread

belongs to you; not because I do not think you would be morally right in

taking it; not that I am not more shocked and horrified and embittered

by the report of one human being starving in the heart of plenty, than

by all the Pittsburgs, and Chicagos, and Homesteads, and Tennessees, and

Coeur d'Alenes, and Buffalos, and Barcelonas, and Parises; not that I

do not think one little bit of sensitive human flesh is worth all the

property rights in New York city; not that I do not think the world will

ever be saved by the sheep's virtue of going patiently to the shambles;

not that I do not believe the expropriation of the possessing classes is

inevitable, and that that expropriation will begin by just such acts as

=Emma Goldman= advised, viz.: the taking possession of wealth already

produced; not that I think you owe any consideration to the conspirators

of Wall Street, or those who profit by their operations, as such, nor

ever will till they are reduced to the level of human beings having

equal chances with you to earn their share of social wealth, and no

more.

I have said that I do not give you the advice given by =Emma Goldman=,

not that I would have you forget the consideration the expropriators

have shown to you; that they have advised lead for strikers, strychnine

for tramps, bread and water as good enough for working people; not

that I cannot hear yet in my ears the words of one who said to me of

the Studebaker Wagon Works' strikers, "If I had my way I'd mow them

down with Gatling guns", not that I would have you forget the electric

wire of Fort Frick, nor the Pinkertons, nor the militia, nor the

prosecutions for murder and treason; not that I would have you forget

the 4th of May, when your constitutional right of free speech was

vindicated, nor the 11th of November when it was assassinated; not that

I would have you forget the single dinner at Delmonico's which Ward

McAllister tells us cost ten thousand dollars! Would I have you forget

that the wine in the glasses was your children's blood? It must be a

rare drink--children's blood! I have read of the wonderful sparkle on

costly champagne--I have never seen it. If I did I think it would look

to me like mothers' tears over the little, white, wasted forms of dead

babies--dead because there was no milk in their breasts! Yes, I want

you to remember that these rich are blood-drinkers, tearers of human

flesh, gnawers of human bones! Yes, if I had the power I would burn

your wrongs upon your hearts in characters that should glow like coals

in the night!

I have not a tongue of fire as =Emma Goldman= has; I cannot "stir the

people"; I must speak in my own cold, calculated way. (Perhaps that is

the reason I am allowed to speak at all.) But if I had the power, my

will is good enough. You know how Shakespeare's Marc Antony addressed

the populace at Rome:

"I am no orator, as Brutus is,

But as you know me well, a plain blunt man

That love my friend. And that they know full well

That gave me public leave to speak of him.

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech

To stir men's blood. I only speak right on.

I tell you that which you yourselves do know,

Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,

And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus

And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony

Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue

In every wound of Cæsar's, that should move

The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny."

If, therefore, I do not give you the advice which =Emma Goldman= gave,

let not the authorities suppose it is because I have any more respect

for their constitution and their law than she has, or that I regard

them as having any rights in the matter.

No! My reasons for not giving that advice are two. First, if I were

giving advice at all, I would say: "My friends, that bread belongs to

you. It is you who toiled and sweat in the sun to sow and reap the

wheat; it is you who stood by the thresher, and breathed the

chaff-filled atmosphere in the mills, while it was ground to flour; it

is you who went into the eternal night of the mine and risked drowning,

fire damp, explosion, and cave-in, to get the fuel for the fire that

baked it; it is you who stood in the hell-like heat, and struck the

blows that forged the iron for the ovens wherein it is baked; it is you

who stand all night in the terrible cellar shops, and tend the machines

that knead the flour into dough; it is you, you, you, farmer, miner,

mechanic, who make the bread; but you haven't the power to take it. At

every transformation wrought by toil, some one who didn't toil has taken

part from you; and now he has it all, and you haven't the power to take

it back! You are told you have the power because you have the numbers.

Never make so silly a blunder as to suppose that power resides in

numbers. One good, level-headed policeman with a club, is worth ten

excited, unarmed men; one detachment of well-drilled militia has a power

equal to that of the greatest mob that could be raised in New York City.

Do you know I admire compact, concentrated power. Let me give you an

illustration. Out in a little town in Illinois there is a certain

capitalist, and if ever a human creature sweat and ground the grist of

gold from the muscle of man, it is he. Well, once upon a time, his

workmen, (not his slaves, his workmen,) were on strike; and fifteen

hundred muscular Polacks armed with stones, brick-bats, red-hot pokers,

and other such crude weapons as a mob generally collects, went up to his

house for the purpose of smashing the windows, and so forth; possibly to

do as those people in Italy did the other day with the sheriff who

attempted to collect the milk tax. He alone, one man, met them on the

steps of his porch, and for two mortal hours, by threats, promises,

cajoleries held those fifteen hundred Poles at bay. And finally they

went away, without smashing a pane of glass or harming a hair of his

head. Now that was power; and you can't help but admire it, no matter if

it was your enemy who displayed it; and you must admit that so long as

numbers can be overcome by such relative quantity, power does not reside

in numbers. Therefore, if I were giving advice, I would not say, "take

bread," but take counsel with yourselves how to get the power to take

bread.

There is no doubt but that power is latently in you; there is no doubt

it can be developed; there is no doubt the authorities know this,

and fear it, and are ready to exert as much force as is necessary to

repress any signs of its development. And this is the explanation of

=Emma Goldman='s imprisonment. The authorities do not fear you as you

are; they only fear what you may become. The dangerous thing was "the

voice crying in the wilderness", foretelling the power which was to

come after it. You should have seen how they feared it in Philadelphia.

They got out a whole platoon of police and detectives, and executed a

military manoeuvre to catch the woman who had been running around under

their noses for three days. And when she walked up to them, then they

surrounded and captured her, and guarded the city hall where they kept

her over night, and put a detective in the next cell to make notes. Why

so much fear? Did they shrink from the stab of the dressmaker's needle?

Or did they dread some stronger weapon?

Ah! the accusation before the New York Pontius Pilate was: "She stirreth

up the people." And Pilate sentenced her to the full limit of the law,

because, he said, "You are more than ordinarily intelligent." Why is

intelligence dealt thus harshly with? Because it is the beginning of

power. Strive, then, for power.

My second reason for not repeating =Emma Goldman='s words is, that

I, as an Anarchist, have no right to advise another to do anything

involving a risk to himself; nor would I give a fillip for an action

done by the advice of some one else, unless it is accompanied by

a well-argued, well settled conviction on the part of the person

acting, that it really is the best thing to do. Anarchism, to me,

means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but

a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development

of the individual, as well as the assertion of the individual. It

means self-responsibility, and not leader-worship. I say it is your

business to decide whether you will starve and freeze in sight of food

and clothing, outside of jail, or commit some overt act against the

institution of property and take your place beside =Timmermann= and

=Goldman=. And in saying this I mean to cast no reflection whatever

upon =Miss Goldman= for doing otherwise. She and I hold many different

views on both Economy and Morals; and that she is honest in hers

she has proved better than I have proved mine. =Miss Goldman= is a

Communist; I am an Individualist. She wishes to destroy the right

of property; I wish to assert it. I make my war upon privilege and

authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that

which is proper to the individual, is annihilated. She believes

that co-operation would entirely supplant competition; I hold that

competition in one form or another will always exist, and that it is

highly desirable it should. But whether she or I be right, or both

of us be wrong, of one thing I am sure: _the spirit which animates

Emma Goldman is the only one which will emancipate the slave from his

slavery, the tyrant from his tyranny--the spirit which is willing to

dare and suffer_.

That which dwells in the frail body in the prison-room to-night is not

the New York dressmaker alone. Transport yourselves there in thought a

moment; look steadily into those fair, blue eyes, upon the sun-brown

hair, the sea-shell face, the restless hands, the woman's figure; look

steadily till in place of the person, the individual of time and place,

you see that which transcends time and place, and flits from house to

house of life, mocking at death. Swinburne in his magnificent "Before a

Crucifix," says:

"With iron for thy linen bands,

And unclean cloths for winding-sheet,

They bind the people's nail-pierced hands,

They hide the people's nail-pierced feet:

And what man, or what angel known

Shall roll back the sepulchral stone?"

Perhaps in the presence of this untrammeled spirit we shall feel that

something has rolled back the sepulchral stone; and up from the cold

wind of the grave is borne the breath that animated =Anaxagoras=,

=Socrates=, =Christ=, =Hypatia=, =John Huss=, =Bruno=, =Robert Emmet=,

=John Brown=, =Sophia Perovskaya=, =Parsons=, =Fischer=, =Engel=,

=Spies=, =Lingg=, =Berkman=, =Pallas=; and all those, known and unknown,

who have died by tree, and axe, and fagot, or dragged out forgotten

lives in dungeons, derided, hated, tortured by men. Perhaps we shall

know ourselves face to face with that which leaps from the throat of the

strangled when the rope chokes, which smokes up from the blood of the

murdered when the axe falls; that which has been forever hunted,

fettered, imprisoned, exiled, executed, and never conquered. Lo, from

its many incarnations it comes forth again, the immortal Race-Christ of

the Ages! The gloomy walls are glorified thereby, the prisoner is

transfigured, and we say, reverently we say:

"O sacred Head, O desecrate,

O labor-wounded feet and hands,

O blood poured forth in pledge to fate

Of nameless lives in divers lands!

O slain, and spent, and sacrificed

People! The grey-grown, speechless Christ."

Direct Action

From the standpoint of one who thinks himself capable of discerning an

undeviating route for human progress to pursue, if it is to be progress

at all, who, having such a route on his mind's map, has endeavored to

point it out to others; to make them see it as he sees it; who in so

doing has chosen what appeared to him clear and simple expressions to

convey his thoughts to others,--to such a one it appears matter for

regret and confusion of spirit that the phrase "Direct Action" has

suddenly acquired in the general mind a circumscribed meaning, not at

all implied in the words themselves, and certainly never attached to it

by himself or his co-thinkers.

However, this is one of the common jests which Progress plays on those

who think themselves able to set metes and bounds for it. Over and over

again, names, phrases, mottoes, watchwords, have been turned inside out,

and upside down, and hindside before, and sideways, by occurrences out

of the control of those who used the expressions in their proper sense;

and still, those who sturdily held their ground, and insisted on being

heard, have in the end found that the period of misunderstanding and

prejudice has been but the prelude to wider inquiry and understanding.

I rather think this will be the case with the present misconception of

the term Direct Action, which through the misapprehension, or else the

deliberate misrepresentation, of certain journalists in Los Angeles, at

the time the McNamaras pleaded guilty, suddenly acquired in the popular

mind the interpretation, "Forcible Attacks on Life and Property." This

was either very ignorant or very dishonest of the journalists; but it

has had the effect of making a good many people curious to know all

about Direct Action.

As a matter of fact, those who are so lustily and so inordinately

condemning it, will find on examination that they themselves have on

many occasions practised direct action, and will do so again.

Every person who ever thought he had a right to assert, and went boldly

and asserted it, himself, or jointly with others that shared his

convictions, was a direct actionist. Some thirty years ago I recall that

the Salvation Army was vigorously practising direct action in the

maintenance of the freedom of its members to speak, assemble, and pray.

Over and over they were arrested, fined, and imprisoned; but they kept

right on singing, praying, and marching, till they finally compelled

their persecutors to let them alone. The Industrial Workers are now

conducting the same fight, and have, in a number of cases, compelled the

officials to let them alone by the same direct tactics.

Every person who ever had a plan to do anything, and went and did it, or

who laid his plan before others, and won their co-operation to do it

with him, without going to external authorities to please do the thing

for them, was a direct actionist. All co-operative experiments are

essentially direct action.

Every person who ever in his life had a difference with any one to

settle, and went straight to the other persons involved to settle it,

either by a peaceable plan or otherwise, was a direct actionist.

Examples of such action are strikes and boycotts; many persons will

recall the action of the housewives of New York who boycotted the

butchers, and lowered the price of meat; at the present moment a butter

boycott seems looming up, as a direct reply to the price-makers for

butter.

These actions are generally not due to any one's reasoning overmuch on

the respective merits of directness or indirectness, but are the

spontaneous retorts of those who feel oppressed by a situation. In other

words, all people are, most of the time, believers in the principle of

direct action, and practisers of it. However, most people are also

indirect or political actionists. And they are both these things at the

same time, without making much of an analysis of either. There are only

a limited number of persons who eschew political action under any and

all circumstances; but there is nobody, nobody at all, who has ever been

so "impossible" as to eschew direct action altogether.

The majority of thinking people are really opportunists, leaning, some,

perhaps, more to directness, some more to indirectness, as a general

thing, but ready to use either means when opportunity calls for it. That

is to say, there are those who hold that balloting governors into power

is essentially a wrong and foolish thing; but who, nevertheless, under

stress of special circumstance, might consider it the wisest thing to

do, to vote some individual into office at that particular time. Or

there are those who believe that, in general, the wisest way for people

to get what they want is by the indirect method of voting into power

some one who will make what they want legal; yet who, all the same, will

occasionally, under exceptional conditions, advise a strike; and a

strike, as I have said, is direct action.

Or they may do as the Socialist Party agitators, who are mostly

declaiming now against direct action, did last summer, when the police

were holding up their meetings. They went in force to the

meeting-places, prepared to speak whether-or-no; and they made the

police back down. And while that was not logical on their part, thus to

oppose the legal executors of the majority's will, it was a fine,

successful piece of direct action.

Those who, by the essence of their belief, are committed to Direct

Action only are--just who? Why, the non-resistants; precisely those who

do not believe in violence at all! Now do not make the mistake of

inferring that I say direct action means non-resistance; not by any

means. Direct action may be the extreme of violence, or it may be as

peaceful as the waters of the Brook of Siloa that go softly. What I say

is, that the real non-resistants can believe in direct action only,

never in political action. For the basis of all political action is

coercion; even when the State does good things, it finally rests on a

club, a gun, or a prison, for its power to carry them through.

Now every school child in the United States has had the direct action of

certain non-resistants brought to his notice by his school history. The

case which every one instantly recalls is that of the early Quakers who

came to Massachusetts. The Puritans had accused the Quakers of

"troubling the world by preaching peace to it." They refused to pay

church taxes; they refused to bear arms; they refused to swear

allegiance to any government. (In so doing, they were direct actionists;

what we may call negative direct actionists.) So the Puritans, being

political actionists, passed laws to keep them out, to deport, to fine,

to imprison, to mutilate, and finally, to hang them. And the Quakers

just kept on coming (which was positive direct action); and history

records that after the hanging of four Quakers, and the flogging of

Margaret Brewster at the cart's tail through the streets of Boston, "the

Puritans gave up trying to silence the new missionaries"; that "Quaker

persistence and Quaker non-resistance had won the day."

Another example of direct action in early colonial history, but this

time by no means of the peaceable sort, was the affair known as Bacon's

Rebellion. All our historians certainly defend the action of the rebels

in that matter, as reason is, for they were right. And yet it was a case

of violent direct action against lawfully constituted authority. For the

benefit of those who have forgotten the details, let me briefly remind

them that the Virginia planters were in fear of a general attack by the

Indians; with reason. Being political actionists, they asked, or Bacon

as their leader asked, that the governor grant him a commission to raise

volunteers in their own defense. The governor feared that such a company

of armed men would be a threat to him; also with reason. He refused the

commission. Whereupon the planters resorted to direct action. They

raised the volunteers without the commission, and successfully fought

off the Indians. Bacon was pronounced a traitor by the governor; but the

people being with him, the governor was afraid to proceed against him.

In the end, however, it came so far that the rebels burned Jamestown;

and but for the untimely death of Bacon, much more might have been done.

Of course the reaction was very dreadful, as it usually is where a

rebellion collapses, or is crushed. Yet even during the brief period of

success, it had corrected a good many abuses. I am quite sure that the

political-action-at-all-costs advocates of those times, after the

reaction came back into power, must have said: "See to what evils

direct action brings us! Behold, the progress of the colony has been set

back twenty-five years"; forgetting that if the colonists had not

resorted to direct action, their scalps would have been taken by the

Indians a year sooner, instead of a number of them being hanged by the

governor a year later.

In the period of agitation and excitement preceding the revolution,

there were all sorts and kinds of direct action from the most peaceable

to the most violent; and I believe that almost everybody who studies

United States history finds the account of these performances the most

interesting part of the story, the part which dents into his memory most

easily.

Among the peaceable moves made, were the non-importation agreements, the

leagues for wearing homespun clothing and the "committees of

correspondence." As the inevitable growth of hostility progressed,

violent direct action developed; e. g., in the matter of destroying the

revenue stamps, or the action concerning the tea-ships, either by not

permitting the tea to be landed, or by putting it in damp storage, or by

throwing it into the harbor, as in Boston, or by compelling a tea-ship

owner to set fire to his own ship, as at Annapolis. These are all

actions which our commonest text-books record, certainly not in a

condemnatory way, not even in an apologetic one, though they are all

cases of direct action against legally constituted authority and

property rights. If I draw attention to them, and others of like nature,

it is to prove to unreflecting repeaters of words that _direct action

has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people

now reprobating it_.

George Washington is said to have been the leader of the Virginia

planters' non-importation league: he would now be "enjoined," probably,

by a court, from forming any such league; and if he persisted, he would

be fined for contempt.

When the great quarrel between the North and the South was waxing hot

and hotter, it was again direct action which preceded and precipitated

political action. And I may remark here that political action is never

taken, nor even contemplated, until slumbering minds have first been

aroused by direct acts of protest against existing conditions.

The history of the anti-slavery movement and the Civil War is one of

the greatest of paradoxes, although history is a chain of paradoxes.

Politically speaking, it was the slave-holding States that stood for

greater political freedom, for the autonomy of the single State against

the interference of the United States; politically speaking, it was

the non-slave-holding States that stood for a strong centralized

government, which, Secessionists said, and said truly, was bound

progressively to develop into more and more tyrannical forms. Which

happened. From the close of the Civil War on, there has been continuous

encroachment of the federal power upon what was formerly the concern of

the States individually. The wage-slaves, in their struggles of to-day,

are continually thrown into conflict with that centralized power,

against which the slave-holder protested (with liberty on his lips but

tyranny in his heart). Ethically speaking, it was the non-slave-holding

States that, in a general way, stood for greater human liberty, while

the Secessionists stood for race-slavery. In a general way only;

that is, the majority of northerners, not being accustomed to the

actual presence of negro slavery about them, thought it was probably

a mistake; yet they were in no great ferment of anxiety to have it

abolished. The Abolitionists only, and they were relatively few,

were the genuine ethicals, to whom slavery itself--not secession or

union--was the main question. In fact, so paramount was it with them,

that a considerable number of them were themselves for the dissolution

of the union, advocating that the North take the initiative in the

matter of dissolving, in order that the northern people might shake off

the blame of holding negroes in chains.

Of course, there were all sorts of people with all sorts of temperaments

among those who advocated the abolition of slavery. There were Quakers

like Whittier (indeed it was the peace-at-all-costs Quakers who had

advocated abolition even in early colonial days); there were moderate

political actionists, who were for buying off the slaves, as the

cheapest way; and there were extremely violent people, who believed and

did all sorts of violent things.

As to what the politicians did, it is one long record of

"how-not-to-do-it," a record of thirty years of compromising, and

dickering, and trying to keep what was as it was, and to hand sops to

both sides when new conditions demanded that something be done, or be

pretended to be done. But "the stars in their courses fought against

Sisera"; the system was breaking down from within, and the direct

actionists from without, as well, were widening the cracks

remorselessly.

Among the various expressions of direct rebellion was the organization

of the "underground railroad." Most of the people who belonged to it

believed in both sorts of action; but however much they theoretically

subscribed to the right of the majority to enact and enforce laws, they

didn't believe in it on that point. My grandfather was a member of the

"underground"; many a fugitive slave he helped on his way to Canada. He

was a very patient, law-abiding man, in most respects, though I have

often thought he probably respected it because he didn't have much to do

with it; always leading a pioneer life, law was generally far from him,

and direct action imperative. Be that as it may, and law-respecting as

he was, he had no respect whatever for slave laws, no matter if made by

ten times of a majority; and he conscientiously broke every one that

came in his way to be broken.

There were times when in the operation of the "underground", violence

was required, and was used. I recollect one old friend relating to me

how she and her mother kept watch all night at the door, while a slave

for whom a posse was searching hid in the cellar; and though they were

of Quaker descent and sympathies, there was a shot-gun on the table.

Fortunately it did not have to be used that night.

When the fugitive slave law was passed, with the help of the political

actionists of the North who wanted to offer a new sop to the

slave-holders, the direct actionists took to rescuing recaptured

fugitives. There was the "rescue of Shadrach," and the "rescue of

Jerry," the latter rescuers being led by the famous Gerrit Smith; and a

good many more successful and unsuccessful attempts. Still the

politicals kept on pottering and trying to smooth things over, and the

Abolitionists were denounced and decried by the ultra-law-abiding

pacificators, pretty much as Wm. D. Haywood and Frank Bohn are being

denounced by their own party now.

The other day I read a communication in the Chicago _Daily Socialist_

from the secretary of the Louisville local, Socialist Party, to

the national secretary, requesting that some safe and sane speaker

be substituted for Bohn, who had been announced to speak there. In

explaining why, Mr. Dobbs, secretary, makes this quotation from Bohn's

lecture: "Had the McNamaras been successful in defending the interests

of the working class, they would have been right, just as John Brown

would have been right, had he been successful in freeing the slaves.

Ignorance was the only crime of John Brown, and ignorance was the only

crime of the McNamaras."

Upon this Mr. Dobbs comments as follows: "We dispute emphatically the

statements here made. The attempt to draw a parallel between the

open--if mistaken--revolt of John Brown on the one hand, and the secret

and murderous methods of the McNamaras on the other, is not only

indicative of shallow reasoning, but highly mischievous in the logical

conclusions which may be drawn from such statements."

Evidently Mr. Dobbs is very ignorant of the life and work of John Brown.

John Brown was a man of violence; he would have scorned anybody's

attempt to make him out anything else. And when once a person is a

believer in violence, it is with him only a question of the most

effective way of applying it, which can be determined only by a

knowledge of conditions and means at his disposal. John Brown did not

shrink at all from conspiratical methods. Those who have read the

autobiography of Frederick Douglas and the Reminiscences of Lucy Colman,

will recall that one of the plans laid by John Brown was to organize a

chain of armed camps in the mountains of West Virginia, North Carolina,

and Tennessee, send secret emissaries among the slaves inciting them to

flee to these camps, and there concert such measures as times and

conditions made possible for further arousing revolt among the negroes.

That this plan failed was due to the weakness of the desire for liberty

among the slaves themselves, more than anything else.

Later on, when the politicians in their infinite deviousness contrived a

fresh proposition of how-not-to-do-it, known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act,

which left the question of slavery to be determined by the settlers, the

direct actionists on both sides sent bogus settlers into the territory,

who proceeded to fight it out. The pro-slavery men, who got in first,

made a constitution recognizing slavery, and a law punishing with death

any one who aided a slave to escape; but the Free Soilers, who were a

little longer in arriving, since they came from more distant States,

made a second constitution, and refused to recognize the other party's

laws at all. And John Brown was there, mixing in all the violence,

conspiratical or open; he was "a horse-thief and a murderer," in the

eyes of decent, peaceable, political actionists. And there is no doubt

that he stole horses, sending no notice in advance of his intention to

steal them, and that he killed pro-slavery men. He struck and got away a

good many times before his final attempt on Harper's Ferry. If he did

not use dynamite, it was because dynamite had not yet appeared as a

practical weapon. He made a great many more intentional attacks on life

than the two brothers Secretary Dobbs condemns for their "murderous

methods." And yet, history has not failed to understand John Brown.

Mankind knows that though he was a violent man, with human blood upon

his hands, who was guilty of high treason and hanged for it, yet his

soul was a great, strong, unselfish soul, unable to bear the frightful

crime which kept 4,000,000 people like dumb beasts, and thought that

making war against it was a sacred, a God-called duty, (for John Brown

was a very religious man--a Presbyterian).

It is by and because of the direct acts of the fore-runners of social

change, whether they be of peaceful or warlike nature, that the Human

Conscience, the conscience of the mass, becomes aroused to the need for

change. It would be very stupid to say that no good results are ever

brought about by political action; sometimes good things do come about

that way. But never until individual rebellion, followed by mass

rebellion, has forced it. Direct action is always the clamorer, the

initiator, through which the great sum of indifferentists become aware

that oppression is getting intolerable.

We have now an oppression in the land,--and not only in this land, but

throughout all those parts of the world which enjoy the very mixed

blessings of Civilization. And just as in the question of chattel

slavery, so this form of slavery has been begetting both direct action

and political action. A certain per cent. of our population (probably a

much smaller per cent. than politicians are in the habit of assigning at

mass meetings) is producing the material wealth upon which all the rest

of us live; just as it was the 4,000,000 chattel blacks who supported

all the crowd of parasites above them. These are the _land workers_ and

the _industrial workers_.

Through the unprophesied and unprophesiable operation of institutions

which no individual of us created, but found in existence when he came

here, these workers, the most absolutely necessary part of the whole

social structure, without whose services none can either eat, or clothe,

or shelter himself, are just the ones who get the least to eat, to wear,

and to be housed withal--to say nothing of their share of the other

social benefits which the rest of us are supposed to furnish, such as

education and artistic gratifications.

These workers have, in one form or another, mutually joined their forces

to see what betterment of their condition they could get; primarily by

direct action, secondarily through political action. We have had the

Grange, the Farmers' Alliance, Co-operative Associations, Colonization

Experiments, Knights of Labor, Trade Unions, and Industrial Workers of

the World. All of them have been organized for the purpose of wringing

from the masters in the economic field a little better price, a little

better conditions, a little shorter hours; or on the other hand, to

resist a reduction in price, worse conditions, or longer hours. None of

them has attempted a final solution of the social war. None of them,

except the Industrial Workers, has recognized that there is a social

war, inevitable so long as present legal-social conditions endure. They

accepted property institutions as they found them. They were made up of

average men, with average desires, and they undertook to do what

appeared to them possible and very reasonable things. They were not

committed to any particular political policy when they were organized,

but were associated for direct action of their own initiation, either

positive or defensive.

Undoubtedly there were, and are, among all these organizations, members

who looked beyond immediate demands; who did see that the continuous

development of forces now in operation was bound to bring about

conditions to which it is impossible that life continue to submit, and

against which, therefore, it will protest, and violently protest; that

it will have no choice but to do so; that it must do so, or tamely die;

and since it is not the nature of life to surrender without struggle, it

will not tamely die. Twenty-two years ago I met Farmers' Alliance people

who said so, Knights of Labor who said so, Trade Unionists who said so.

They wanted larger aims than those to which their organizations were

looking; but they had to accept their fellow members as they were, and

try to stir them to work for such things as it was possible to make them

see. And what they could see was better prices, better wages, less

dangerous or tyrannical conditions, shorter hours. At the stage of

development when these movements were initiated, the land workers could

not see that their struggle had anything to do with the struggle of

those engaged in the manufacturing or transporting service; nor could

these latter see that theirs had anything to do with the movement of the

farmers. For that matter very few of them see it yet. They have yet to

learn that there is one common struggle against those who have

appropriated the earth, the money, and the machines.

Unfortunately the great organization of the farmers frittered itself

away in a stupid chase after political power. It was quite successful in

getting the power in certain States; but the courts pronounced its laws

unconstitutional, and there was the burial hole of all its political

conquests. Its original program was to build its own elevators, and

store the products therein, holding these from the market till they

could escape the speculator. Also, to organize labor exchanges, issuing

credit notes upon products deposited for exchange. Had it adhered to

this program of direct mutual aid, it would, to some extent, for a time

at least, have afforded an illustration of how mankind may free itself

from the parasitism of the bankers and the middlemen. Of course, it

would have been overthrown in the end, unless it had so revolutionized

men's minds by the example as to force the overthrow of the legal

monopoly of land and money; but at least it would have served a great

educational purpose. As it was, it "went after the red herring," and

disintegrated merely from its futility.

The Knights of Labor subsided into comparative insignificance, not

because of failure to use direct action, nor because of its tampering

with politics, which was small, but chiefly because it was a

heterogeneous mass of workers who could not associate their efforts

effectively.

The Trade Unions grew strong about as the K. of L. subsided, and have

continued slowly but persistently to increase in power. It is true the

increase has fluctuated; that there have been set-backs; that great

single organizations have been formed and again dispersed. But on the

whole, trade unions have been a growing power. They have been so

because, poor as they are, inefficient as they are, they have been a

means whereby a certain section of the workers have been able to bring

their united force to bear directly upon their masters, and so get for

themselves some portion of what they wanted,--of what their conditions

dictated to them they must try to get. The strike is their natural

weapon, that which they themselves forged. It is the direct blow of the

strike which nine times out of ten the boss is afraid of. (Of course

there are occasions when he is glad of one, but that's unusual.) And the

reason he dreads a strike is not so much because he thinks he cannot win

out against it, but simply and solely because he does not want an

interruption of his business. The ordinary boss isn't in much dread of a

"class-conscious vote"; there are plenty of shops where you can talk

Socialism or any other political program all day long; but if you begin

to talk Unionism, you may forthwith expect to be discharged, or at best

warned to shut up. Why? Not because the boss is so wise as to know that

political action is a swamp in which the workingman gets mired, or

because he understands that political Socialism is fast becoming a

middle-class movement; not at all. He thinks Socialism is a very bad

thing; but it's a good way off! But he knows that if his shop is

unionized, he will have trouble right away. His hands will be

rebellious, he will be put to expense to improve his factory conditions,

he will have to keep workingmen that he doesn't like, and in case of

strike he may expect injury to his machinery or his buildings.

It is often said, and parrot-like repeated, that the bosses are

"class-conscious," that they stick together for their class interest,

and are willing to undergo any sort of personal loss rather than be

false to those interests. It isn't so at all. The majority of business

people are just like the majority of workingmen; they care a whole lot

more about their individual loss or gain than about the gain or loss of

their class. And it is his individual loss the boss sees, when

threatened by a union.

Now everybody knows that a strike of any size means violence. No matter

what any one's ethical preference for peace may be, he knows it will not

be peaceful. If it's a telegraph strike, it means cutting wires and

poles, and getting fake scabs in to spoil the instruments. If it is a

steel rolling mill strike, it means beating up the scabs, breaking the

windows, setting the gauges wrong, and ruining the expensive rollers

together with tons and tons of material. If it's a miners' strike, it

means destroying tracks and bridges, and blowing up mills. If it is a

garment workers' strike, it means having an unaccountable fire, getting

a volley of stones through an apparently inaccessible window, or

possibly a brickbat on the manufacturer's own head. If it's a street-car

strike, it means tracks torn up or barricaded with the contents of

ash-carts and slop-carts, with overturned wagons or stolen fences, it

means smashed or incinerated cars and turned switches. If it is a

system federation strike, it means "dead" engines, wild engines,

derailed freights, and stalled trains. If it is a building trades

strike, it means dynamited structures. And always, everywhere, all the

time, fights between strike-breakers and scabs against strikers and

strike-sympathizers, between People and Police.

On the side of the bosses, it means search-lights, electric wires,

stockades, bull-pens, detectives and provocative agents, violent

kidnapping and deportation, and every device they can conceive for

direct protection, besides the ultimate invocation of police, militia,

State constabulary, and federal troops.

Everybody knows this; everybody smiles when union officials protest

their organizations to be peaceable and law-abiding, because everybody

knows they are lying. They know that violence is used, both secretly and

openly; and they know it is used because the strikers cannot do any

other way, without giving up the fight at once. Nor do they mistake

those who thus resort to violence under stress for destructive

miscreants who do what they do out of innate cussedness. The people in

general understand that they do these things, through the harsh logic of

a situation which they did not create, but which forces them to these

attacks in order to make good in their struggle to live, or else go down

the bottomless descent into poverty, that lets Death find them in the

poorhouse hospital, the city street, or the river-slime. This is the

awful alternative that the workers are facing; and this is what makes

the most kindly disposed human beings,--men who would go out of their

way to help a wounded dog, or bring home a stray kitten and nurse it, or

step aside to avoid walking on a worm--resort to violence against their

fellow-men. They know, for the facts have taught them, that this is the

only way to win, if they can win at all. And it has always appeared to

me one of the most utterly ludicrous, absolutely irrelevant things that

a person can do or say, when approached for relief or assistance by a

striker who is dealing with an immediate situation, to respond with,

"Vote yourself into power!" when the next election is six months, a

year, or two years away.

Unfortunately, the people who know best how violence is used in union

warfare, cannot come forward and say: "On such a day, at such a place,

such and such a specific action was done, and as the result such and

such a concession was made, or such and such a boss capitulated." To do

so would imperil their liberty, and their power to go on fighting.

Therefore those that know best must keep silent, and sneer in their

sleeves, while those that know little prate. Events, not tongues, must

make their position clear.

And there has been a very great deal of prating these last few weeks.

Speakers and writers, honestly convinced, I believe, that political

action, and political action only, can win the workers' battle, have

been denouncing what they are pleased to call "direct action" (what they

really mean is conspiratical violence) as the author of mischief

incalculable. One Oscar Ameringer, as an example, recently said at a

meeting in Chicago that the Haymarket bomb of '86 had set back the

eight-hour movement twenty-five years, arguing that the movement would

have succeeded then but for the bomb. It's a great mistake. No one can

exactly measure in years or months the effect of a forward push or a

reaction. No one can demonstrate that the eight-hour movement could have

been won twenty-five years ago. We know that the eight-hour day was put

on the statute books of Illinois in 1871, by political action, and has

remained a dead letter. That the direct action of the workers could

have won it, then, can not be proved; but it can be shown that many more

potent factors than the Haymarket bomb worked against it. On the other

hand, if the reactive influence of the bomb was really so powerful, we

should naturally expect labor and union conditions to be worse in

Chicago than in the cities where no such thing happened. On the

contrary, bad as they are, the general conditions of labor are better in

Chicago than in most other large cities, and the power of the unions is

more developed there than in any other American city except San

Francisco. So if we are to conclude anything for the influence of the

Haymarket bomb, keep these facts in mind. Personally I do not think its

influence on the labor movement, as such, was so very great.

It will be the same with the present furore about violence. Nothing

fundamental has been altered. Two men have been imprisoned for what they

did (twenty-four years ago they were hanged for what they did not do);

some few more may yet be imprisoned. But the forces of life will

continue to revolt against their economic chains. There will be no

cessation in that revolt, no matter what ticket men vote or fail to

vote, until the chains are broken.

How will the chains be broken?

Political actionists tell us it will be only by means of working-class

party action at the polls; by voting themselves into possession of the

sources of life and the tools; by voting that those who now command

forests, mines, ranches, waterways, mills and factories, and likewise

command the military power to defend them, shall hand over their

dominion to the people.

And meanwhile?

Meanwhile be peaceable, industrious, law-abiding, patient, and frugal

(as Madero told the Mexican peons to be, after he had sold them to Wall

Street)! Even if some of you are disfranchised, don't rise up even

against that, for it might "set back the party."

Well, I have already stated that some good is occasionally accomplished

by political action,--not necessarily working-class party action either.

But I am abundantly convinced that the occasional good accomplished is

more than counterbalanced by the evil; just as I am convinced that

though there are occasional evils resulting from direct action, they are

more than counterbalanced by the good.

Nearly all the laws which were originally framed with the intention of

benefiting the workers, have either turned into weapons in their

enemies' hands, or become dead letters, unless the workers through their

organizations have directly enforced the observance. So that in the end,

it is direct action that has to be relied on anyway. As an example of

getting the tarred end of a law, glance at the anti-trust law, which was

supposed to benefit the people in general, and the working class in

particular. About two weeks since, some 250 union leaders were cited to

answer to the charge of being trust formers, as the answer of the

Illinois Central to its strikers.

But the evil of pinning faith to indirect action is far greater than any

such minor results. The main evil is that it destroys initiative,

quenches the individual rebellious spirit, teaches people to rely on

some one else to do for them what they should do for themselves, what

they alone can do for themselves; finally renders organic the anomalous

idea that by massing supineness together until a majority is acquired,

then, through the peculiar magic of that majority, this supineness is to

be transformed into energy. That is, people who have lost the habit of

striking for themselves as individuals, who have submitted to every

injustice while waiting for the majority to grow, are going to become

metamorphosed into human high-explosives by a mere process of packing!

I quite agree that the sources of life, and all the natural wealth of

the earth, and the tools necessary to co-operative production, must

become free of access to all. It is a positive certainty to me that

unionism must widen and deepen its purposes, or it will go under; and I

feel sure that the logic of the situation will force them to see it

gradually. They must learn that the workers' problem can never be solved

by beating up scabs, so long as their own policy of limiting their

membership by high initiation fees and other restrictions helps to make

scabs. They must learn that the course of growth is not so much along

the line of higher wages, but shorter hours, which will enable them to

increase membership, to take in everybody who is willing to come into

the union. They must learn that if they want to win battles, all allied

workers must act together, act quickly (serving no notice on bosses),

and retain their freedom so to do at all times. And finally they must

learn that even then (when they have a complete organization), they can

win nothing permanent unless they strike for everything,--not for a

wage, not for a minor improvement, but for the whole natural wealth of

the earth. And proceed to the direct expropriation of it all!

They must learn that their power does not lie in their voting strength,

that their power lies in their ability to stop production. It is a great

mistake to suppose that the wage-earners constitute a majority of the

voters. Wage-earners are here to-day and there to-morrow, and that

hinders a large number from voting; a great percentage of them in this

country are foreigners without a voting right. The most patent proof

that Socialist leaders know this is so, is that they are compromising

their propaganda at every point to win the support of the business

class, the small investor. Their campaign papers proclaimed that their

interviewers had been assured by Wall Street bond purchasers that they

would be just as ready to buy Los Angeles bonds from a socialist as a

capitalist administration; that the present Milwaukee administration has

been a boon to the small investor; their reading notices assure their

readers in this city that we need not go to the great department stores

to buy,--buy rather of So-and-so on Milwaukee Avenue, who will satisfy

us quite as well as a "big business" institution. In short, they are

making every desperate effort to win the support, and to prolong the

life, of that middle-class which socialistic economy says must be ground

to pieces, because they know they cannot get a majority without them.

The most that a working-class party could do, even if its politicians

remained honest, would be to form a strong faction in the legislatures,

which might, by combining its vote with one side or the other, win

certain political or economic palliatives.

But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified

organization, is to show the possessing classes, through a sudden

cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them;

that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them

without the workers' activity; that such protests, such strikes, are

inherent in the system of property, and will continually recur until the

whole thing is abolished,--and having shown that, effectively, proceed

to expropriate.

"But the military power," says the political actionist; "we must get

political power, or the military will be used against us!"

Against a real General Strike, the military can do nothing. Oh, true,

if you have a Socialist Briand in power, he may declare the workers

"public officials" and try to make them serve against themselves! But

against the solid wall of an immobile working-mass, even a Briand would

be broken.

Meanwhile, until this international awakening, the war will go on as it

has been going, in spite of all the hysteria which well-meaning people,

who do not understand life and its necessities, may manifest; in spite

of all the shivering that timid leaders have done; in spite of all the

reactionary revenges that may be taken; in spite of all the capital

politicians make out of the situation. It will go on because Life cries

to live, and Property denies its freedom to live; and Life will not

submit.

And should not submit.

It will go on until that day when a self-freed Humanity is able to chant

Swinburne's Hymn of Man:

"Glory to Man in the highest,

For Man is the master of Things."

The Paris Commune

The Paris Commune, like other spectacular events in human history, has

become the clinging point for many legends, alike among its enemies and

among its friends. Indeed, one must often question which was the real

Commune, the legend or the fact,--what was actually lived, or the

conception of it which has shaped itself in the world-mind during those

forty odd years that have gone since the 18th of March, 1871.

It is thus with doctrines, it is thus with personalities, it is thus

with events.

Which is the real Christianity, the simple doctrine attributed to Christ

or the practical preaching and realizing of organized Christianity?

Which is the real Abraham Lincoln,--the clever politician who

emancipated the chattel slaves as an act of policy, or the legendary

apostle of human liberty, who rises like a gigantic figure of

iconoclastic right smiting old wrongs and receiving the martyr's crown

therefor?

Which is the real Commune,--the thing that was, or the thing our orators

have painted it? Which will be the influencing power in the days that

are to come? Our Commune commemorators are wont to say, and surely they

believe, that the declaration of the Commune was the spontaneous

assertion of independence by the Parisian masses, consciously alive to

the fact that the national government of France had treated them most

outrageously in the matter of defense against the Prussian army. They

believe that the farce of the situation in which the city found itself,

had opened the eyes of the general populace to the fact that the

national government, so far from serving the supposed prime purpose of

government, viz., as a means of defense against a foreign invader, was

in reality a thing so apart from them and their interests that it

preferred to leave them to the mercy of the Prussians, to endangering

its own supremacy by assisting in their defense, or permitting them to

defend themselves.

It is a pity that this legendary figure of Awakened Paris is not a true

one. The Commune, in fact, was not the work of the whole people of

Paris, nor of a majority of the people of Paris. The Commune was really

established by a comparatively small number of able, nay brilliant, and

supremely devoted men and women from _every_ walk in life, but with a

relatively high percentage of military men, engineers, and political

journalists, some of whom had time and again been in prison before for

seditious writing or acts of rebellion. They flocked in from their exile

in the neighboring countries, thinking that now they saw the opportunity

for retrieving former errors, and arousing the people to renew and to

extend the struggle of 1848. It is true that there were also teachers,

artists, designers, architects and builders, skilled craftsmen of every

sort. And perhaps no chapter in the whole story is more inspiring than

the description of the gatherings of the workers, which took place night

after night in every quarter of the beleaguered city, previous to the

18th of March and thereafter. To such meetings went those who burned

with fervor of faith in what the people might and would accomplish, and,

with the radiant vision of a new social day shining in their eyes,

endeavored to make it clear to those who listened. One almost catches

the redolence of outbursting faith, that rising of the sap of hope and

courage and daring, like an incense of spring; almost feels himself

there, partaking in the work, the danger, the glorious, mistaken

assurance which was theirs.

And yet the truth must have been that these apostles of the Commune were

blinded by their own enthusiasm, deafened by the enthusiasm they evoked

in others, to the fact that the great unvoiced majority who did not

attend public meetings, who sat within their houses or kept silent in

the shops, were not converted or affected by their teachings.

We are told by those who should know, the survivors among the Communards

themselves, that the actual number of persons who were aggressive,

moving spirits in the great uprising was not greatly above 2,000. The

mass of the people were, as they would probably be in this city to-day

under like circumstances, indifferent as to what went on over their

heads, so that the peace and quiet of their individual lives was

restored, so that the siege of the Prussians was raised, and themselves

permitted to go about their business. If the Commune could assure that,

good luck to it! They were tired of the siege; and they longed for their

old familiar miseries to which they were in some respect accustomed;

they hardly dreamed of anything better.

But, as is usually the case when strategic moments arise, these same

plain, stolid, indifferent people, who neither know nor care about fine

theories of political right, municipal sovereignty, and so forth, see

more directly into the logic of a situation than those who have confused

their minds with much theorizing. Likewise the people of Paris in

general, when the Commune had become an established fact, saw that the

only consequent proceeding would be to make war economically as well as

politically, to cut off any source of supply to the national army which

lay within the city. Instead of doing that, the government of the

Commune, anxious to prove itself more law-abiding than the old regime,

stupidly defended the property right of its enemies, and continued to

let the Bank of France furnish supplies to those who were financing the

army of Versailles, the very army which was to cut their throats.

Naturally, the plain people grew disgusted with so senseless a program,

and in the main took no part in the final struggle with the Versailles

troops, nor even opposed the idea of their entrance into the city.

Probably a goodly number even drew a sigh of relief at the prospect of a

return to the smaller evil of the two. Little enough did they dream that

the way back lay through their own blood, and that they, who had never

lifted hand or voice for the Commune, would become its martyrs. Little

did they conceive the wild revenge of Law and Order upon Rebellion, the

saturnalia of restored Power.

Did they sleep, I wonder, on the night before the 20th of May, when that

dark thunder of vengeance was gathering to break? Many slept well the

next night, and still sleep; for "then began a murder grim and

great,"--a murder whose painted image, even after these forty years have

risen and sunk upon it, sends the blood shuddering backward, and sets

the teeth in uttermost horror and hate. MacMahon placarded the streets

with peace and sent his troops to make it; in the name of that Peace,

Gallifet, an incarnation of hell, set his men the example and rode up

and down the streets of Paris, dashing out children's brains. Did a hand

appear at a shutter, the window was riddled with bullets. Did a cry of

protest escape from any throat, the house was invaded, its inhabitants

driven out, lined against the walls, and shot where they stood. The

doctors and the nurses at the bedsides of the wounded, the very sick in

the hospitals, themselves were slaughtered where they lay. Such was

MacMahon's peace.

After the street massacres, the organized massacres at the bastions, the

stakes of Satory, the huddled masses of prisoners, the grim visitor with

the lantern, the ghastly call to rise and follow, the trenches dug by

the condemned in the slippery, blood-soaked ground for their own corpses

to fall in. Thirty thousand people butchered! Butchered by the sateless

vengeance of authority and the insane blood-lust of the professional

soldier! Butchered without a pretence of reason, a shadow of inquiry,

merely as the gust of insensate rage blew!

After the orgy of fury, the orgy of the inquisition. The gathering of

the prisoners in cellar holes, where they must squat or lie upon damp

earth, and see the light daily only for some short half hour when an

unexpellable sun ray shot through some unstopped crevice. The shifting

of them day and night across the country, sometimes in stock yard

wagons, stifled, starved, and jammed together, as even our butchering

civilization is ashamed to jam pigs for the slaughter; sometimes by

dreadful marches, mostly by night, often with the rain beating on them,

the butts of the soldiers' muskets striking them, as they lagged through

weakness or through lameness.

Then the detention prisons, with their long-drawn agonies of hunger,

cold, vermin, and disease, and the ever-looming darkness of waiting

death. Follow the tortures of friends and relatives of Communards or

suspected Communards, to make them betray the whereabouts of their

friends.

Could they who had seen these things "forgive and forget"? They who had

seen ten year old children lashed to make them tell where their fathers

were? Women driven mad before the terrible choice of giving up their

sons who had fought, or their daughters who had not, to the brutality of

the soldiery.

After the tortures of the hunt, the tortures of the trials, solemn

farces, cat-like cruelties. Then the long hopeless line of exiles

marching from the prison to the port, crowded on the transport ships,

watched like caged animals, forbidden to speak, the cannon always

threatening above them, and so drifted away, away to exile lands, to

barren islands and fever shores--there to waste away in loneliness, in

uselessness, in futile dreams of freedom that ended in chains upon the

ankles or death on the coral reefs--all this was the Mercy and the

Wisdom shown by the national government to the rebel city whose works

are the glory of France, and whose beauty is the Beauty of the World.

Whatever other lesson we have to learn, this one is certain: the

glutless revenge of restored Authority. If ever one rebels, let him

rebel to the end; there is no hope so futile as hope in either the

justice or the mercy of a power against which a rebellion has been

raised. No faith so simple or so foolish as faith in the discrimination,

the judgement, or the wisdom of a reconquering government.

Whether at that time the essential principle of the independent Commune

could have been realized or not, through a general response of the other

cities of France by like action (in case Paris had continued to maintain

the struggle some months longer), I am not historian enough, nor

historic prophet enough, to say. I incline to think not. But certainly

the struggle would have been far other, far more fruitful in its

results, both then and later, (even if finally overthrown), had it

really been a movement of all those people who were so indiscriminately

murdered for it, so vilely tortured, so mercilessly exiled. For had it

really been the deliberate expression of a million people's will to be

free, they would have seized whatever supplies were being furnished the

enemy from within their own gates; they would have repudiated property

rights created by the very power they were seeking to overthrow. They

would have seen what was necessary, and done it.

Had the real Communards themselves seen the logic of their own effort,

and understood that to overset the political system of dependence which

enslaves the Communes they must overset the economic institutions which

beget the centralized State; had they proclaimed a general

communalization of the city's resources they might have won the people

to full faith in the struggle and aroused a ten-fold effort to win out.

If that again had been followed by a like contagion in the other cities

of France, (which was a possibility) the flame might have caught

throughout Latin Europe, and those countries might now be giving a

practical example of the extension of a modified Socialism and local

autonomy. This is what is likely to happen at the next similar outbreak,

if politicians are so impolitic as to provoke the like. There are those

among the best social students who feel sure that such will be the

course of progress.

I frankly say that I cannot see the path of future progress,--my vision

is not large enough, nor my viewpoint high enough. Where others perhaps

behold the morning sunlight, I can discern only mists--blowing dust and

moving glooms which obscure the future. I do not know where the path

leads nor how it goes. Only when looking backward, I can catch glimpses

of that long, terrible, toilsome way by which humanity has gone forward;

even that I do not see clearly,--just stretches of it here and there.

But I see enough of it to know that never has it been a straight,

undeviating line. Always the path winds and returns, and even in the

moment of gaining something, there is something lost.

Against the onslaught of Nature, Man collects his social strength, and

loses thereby the freedom of his more isolated condition. Against the

inconveniences of primitive society, he hurls his inventive

genius,--compasses land, sea, and air,--and by the very act of

conquering his limitations binds fresh fetters on himself, creating a

wealth which he enslaves himself to produce!

And this is the Path of Progress, which there was no foreseeing!

What waits them? And what hope is there? And what help is there?

What waits? The Unknown waits, as it has always waited,--dark, vague,

immense, impenetrable--the Mystery which allures the young and strong

saying, "Come and cope with me"; the Mystery from which the old and wise

shrink back, saying, "Better to endure the evils that we have than fly

to others that we know not of"; the old and wise, but alas! the

cold-blooded! The Mystery of the still unbound strengths of earth, sun,

and depths, the loosing of any one of which may so alter the face of all

that has been done that what now we think a guarantee of liberty may

become the very chain of slavery, as has been the case before with

freedoms laboriously won by act, and then set down in words for unborn

men to abide by. And yet--It waits.

Are you strong and courageous? The Unknown invites you to the struggle,

dares you to its conquering. Nay, it is perhaps your future beloved,

waiting to reward your daring passion with the fervors of fresh

creation. Are you feeble and timid of spirit? Bow your head to the

ground. Still you must meet the future; still you must go in the track

of the others. You may hinder them, you may make them lag; you cannot

stop them, nor yourself.

Struggle waits--abortive struggle, crushed struggle, mistaken struggle,

long and often. And worse than all this, _Waiting waits_,--the long

dead-level of inaction, when no one does anything, when even the daring

can only move in self-returning circles; when no one knows what to do,

except to endure the ever-tightening pressure of intolerable conditions,

how to better which he knows not; when living appears a monotonous

journey through a featureless wilderness, wherein the same pitiless word

"Useless" stares at one from every aimless path one seeks to follow in

the despairing search for a way out. And happier is he who perishes in

the mistaken struggle than he who, with a hot and chafing soul, but with

clear discernment, sees that he is doomed to go on indefinitely in

submission to the wrongs that are.

What hope is there? That the increasing pressure of conditions may

quicken intelligences; that even out of mistaken struggle, frustrate

struggle, unforeseen good consequences may flow, just as out of

undeniable improvements in material life, unforeseeable ill results are

consequent.

The Commune hoped to free Paris, and by so setting an example free many

other cities. It went down in utter defeat, and no city was freed

thereby. But out of this defeat the knowledge and skill of craftsmanship

of its people went abroad over other lands, both into civilized centers

and to wild waste places; and wherever its art went, its idea went also,

so that the "Commune," the idealized Commune, has become a watchword

through the workshops of the world, wherever there are even a few

workers seeking to awaken their fellows.

There are those who have definite hopes; those who think they know

precisely how overwork and underwork and poverty, and all their

consequences of spiritual enslavement, are to be abolished. Such are

they who think they can see the way of progress broad and clear through

the slit in a ballot box. I fear their works will have some uncalculated

consequences also, if ever they execute them; I fear their narrowly

enclosed view deceives them much. Climbing a hill is a different affair

from voting oneself at the top.

No matter: Man always hopes; Life always hopes. When a definite object

cannot be outlined, the indomitable spirit of hope still impels the

living mass to move toward something--something that shall somehow be

better.

What help is there? No help from outside power; no help from overhead;

no help from the Sky, pray to it ever so much; no help from the strong

hand of wise men, nor of good men, however wise or good. Such help

always ends in despotism. Nor yet is there help in the abnegation of

generous fanatics whose efforts end in deplorable fiasco, as did the

Commune. Help lies only in the general will of those who do the work to

say how, when, and where they shall do it.

The force of the lesson of the Commune is that people cannot be made

free who have not conceived freedom; yet through such examples they may

learn to conceive it. It cannot be bestowed as a gift; it must be taken

by those who want it. Let us hope that those who would have given it,

bought that much by their sacrifice, that they touched the unseeing eyes

of the somnambulist proletariat with a light which has made them dream,

at least, of waking.

The Mexican Revolution

That a nation of people considering themselves enlightened, informed,

alert to the interests of the hour, should be so generally and so

profoundly ignorant of a revolution taking place in their backyard, so

to speak, as the people of the United States are ignorant of the present

revolution in Mexico, can be due only to profoundly and generally acting

causes. That people of revolutionary principles and sympathies should be

so, is inexcusable.

It is as one of such principles and sympathies that I address you,--as

one interested in every move the people make to throw off their chains,

no matter where, no matter how,--though naturally my interest is

greatest where the move is such as appears to me to be most in

consonance with the general course of progress, where the tyranny

attacked is what appears to me the most fundamental, where the method

followed is to my thinking most direct and unmistakable. And I add that

those of you who have such principles and sympathies are in the logic of

your own being bound, first, to inform yourselves concerning so great a

matter as the revolt of millions of people--what they are struggling

for, what they are struggling against, and how the struggle stands--from

day to day, if possible; if not, from week to week, or month to month,

as best you can; and second, to spread this knowledge among others, and

endeavor to do what little you can to awaken the consciousness and

sympathy of others.

One of the great reasons why the mass of the American people know

nothing of the Revolution in Mexico, is, that they have altogether a

wrong conception of what "revolution" means. Thus ninety-nine out of a

hundred persons to whom you broach the subject will say, "Why, I thought

that ended long ago. That ended last May"; and this week the press, even

the _Daily Socialist,_ reports, "A _new_ revolution in Mexico." It isn't

a new revolution at all; it is the same revolution, which did not begin

with the armed rebellion of last May, which has been going on steadily

ever since then, and before then, and is bound to go on for a long time

to come, if the other nations keep their hands off and the Mexican

people are allowed to work out their own destiny.

What is _a_ revolution? and what is _this_ revolution?

A revolution means some great and subversive change in the social

institutions of a people, whether sexual, religious, political, or

economic.

The movement of the Reformation was a great religious revolution; a

profound alteration in human thought--a refashioning of the human mind.

The general movement towards political change in Europe and America

about the close of the eighteenth century, was a revolution. The

American and the French revolutions were only prominent individual

incidents in it, culminations of the teachings of the Rights of Man. The

present unrest of the world in its economic relations, as manifested

from day to day in the opposing combinations of men and money, in

strikes and bread-riots, in literature and movements of all kinds

demanding a readjustment of the whole or of parts of our wealth-owning

and wealth-distributing system,--this unrest is the revolution of our

time, the economic _revolution,_ which is seeking social change, and

will go on until it is accomplished. We are in it; at any moment of our

lives it may invade our own homes with its stern demand for

self-sacrifice and suffering. Its more violent manifestations are in

Liverpool and London to-day, in Barcelona and Vienna to-morrow, in New

York and Chicago the day after. Humanity is a seething, heaving mass of

unease, tumbling like surge over a slipping, sliding, shifting bottom;

and there will never be any ease until a rock bottom of economic justice

is reached.

The Mexican revolution is one of the prominent manifestations of this

world-wide economic revolt. It possibly holds as important a place in

the present disruption and reconstruction of economic institutions, as

the great revolution of France held in the eighteenth century movement.

It did not begin with the odious government of Diaz nor end with his

downfall, any more than the revolution in France began with the

coronation of Louis XVI, or ended with his beheading. It began in the

bitter and outraged hearts of the peasants, who for generations have

suffered under a ready-made system of exploitation, imported and foisted

upon them, by which they have been dispossessed of their homes,

compelled to become slave-tenants of those who robbed them; and under

Diaz, in case of rebellion to be deported to a distant province, a

killing climate, and hellish labor. It will end only when that

bitterness is assuaged by very great alteration in the land-holding

system, or until the people have been absolutely crushed into subjection

by a strong military power, whether that power be a native or a foreign

one.

Now the political overthrow of last May, which was followed by the

substitution of one political manager for another, did not at all touch

the economic situation. It promised, of course; politicians always

promise. It promised to consider measures for altering conditions; in

the meantime, proprietors are assured that the new government intends to

respect the rights of landlords and capitalists, and exhorts the workers

to be patient and--_frugal!_

Frugal! Yes, that was the exhortation in Madero's paper to men who, when

they are able to get work, make twenty-five cents a day. A man owning

5,000,000 acres of land exhorts the disinherited workers of Mexico to be

frugal!

The idea that such a condition can be dealt with by the immemorial

remedy offered by tyrants to slaves, is like the idea of sweeping out

the sea with a broom. And unless that frugality, or in other words,

starvation, is forced upon the people by more bayonets and more strategy

than appear to be at the government's command, the Mexican revolution

will go on to the solution of Mexico's land question with a rapidity and

directness of purpose not witnessed in any previous upheaval.

For it must be understood that the main revolt is a revolt against the

system of land tenure. The industrial revolution of the cities, while it

is far from being silent, is not to compare with the agrarian revolt.

Let us understand why. Mexico consists of twenty-seven states, two

territories and a federal district about the capital city. Its

population totals about 15,000,000. Of these, 4,000,000 are of unmixed

Indian descent, people somewhat similar in character to the Pueblos of

our own southwestern states, primitively agricultural for an immemorial

period, communistic in many of their social customs, and like all

Indians, invincible haters of authority. These Indians are scattered

throughout the rural districts of Mexico, one particularly well-known

and much talked of tribe, the Yaquis, having had its fatherland in the

rich northern state of Sonora, a very valuable agricultural country.

The Indian population--especially the Yaquis and the Moquis--have always

disputed the usurpations of the invaders' government, from the days of

the early conquest until now, and will undoubtedly continue to dispute

them as long as there is an Indian left, or until their right to use the

soil out of which they sprang _without paying tribute in any shape_ is

freely recognized.

The communistic customs of these people are very interesting, and very

instructive too; they have gone on practising them all these hundreds of

years, in spite of the foreign civilization that was being grafted upon

Mexico (grafted in all senses of the word); and it was not until forty

years ago (indeed the worst of it not till twenty-five years ago), that

the increasing power of the government made it possible to destroy this

ancient life of the people.

By them, the woods, the waters, and the lands were held in common. Any

one might cut wood from the forest to build his cabin, make use of the

rivers to irrigate his field or garden patch (and this is a right whose

acknowledgment none but those who know the aridity of the southwest can

fully appreciate the imperative necessity for). Tillable lands were

allotted by mutual agreement before sowing, and reverted to the tribe

after harvesting, for reallotment. Pasturage, the right to collect fuel,

were for all. The habits of mutual aid which always arise among sparsely

settled communities were instinctive with them. Neighbor assisted

neighbor to build his cabin, to plough his ground, to gather and store

this crop.

No legal machinery existed--no taxgatherer, no justice, no jailer. All

that they had to do with the hated foreign civilization was to pay the

periodical rent-collector, and to get out of the way of the recruiting

officer when he came around. Those two personages they regarded with

spite and dread; but as the major portion of their lives was not in

immediate contact with them, they could still keep on in their old way

of life in the main.

With the development of the Diaz regime, which came into power in 1876

(and when I say the Diaz regime I do not especially mean the man Diaz,

for I think he has been both overcursed and overpraised, but the whole

force which has steadily developed centralized power from then on, and

the whole policy of "civilizing Mexico," which was the Diaz boast), with

its development, I say, this Indian life has been broken up, violated

with as ruthless a hand as ever tore up a people by the roots and cast

them out as weeds to wither in the sun.

Historians relate with horror the iron deeds of William the Conqueror,

who in the eleventh century created the New Forest by laying waste the

farms of England, destroying the homes of the people to make room for

the deer. But his edicts were mercy compared with the action of the

Mexican government toward the Indians. In order to introduce

"progressive civilization" the Diaz regime granted away immense

concessions of land, to native and foreign capitalists--chiefly foreign

indeed, though there were enough of native sharks as well. Mostly these

concessions were granted to capitalistic combinations, which were to

build railroads (and in some cases did so in a most uncalled for and

uneconomic way), "develop" mineral resources, or establish "modern

industries."

The government took no note of the ancient tribal rights or customs, and

those who received the concessions proceeded to enforce their property

rights. They introduced the unheard of crime of "trespass." They forbade

the cutting of a tree, the breaking of a branch, the gathering of the

fallen wood in the forests. They claimed the watercourses, forbidding

their free use to the people; and it was as if one had forbidden to us

the rains of heaven. The unoccupied land was theirs; no hand might drive

a plow into the soil without first obtaining permission from a distant

master--a permission granted on the condition that the product be the

landlord's, a small, pitifully small, wage, the worker's.

Nor was this enough: in 1894 was passed "The Law of Unappropriated

Lands." By that law, not only were the great stretches of _vacant_, in

the old time _common_, land appropriated, but the occupied lands

themselves to _which the occupants could not show a legal title_ were to

be "denounced"; that is, the educated and the powerful, who were able to

keep up with the doings of the government, went to the courts and said

that there was no legal title to such and such land, and put in a claim

for it. And the usual hocus-pocus of legality being complied with (the

actual occupant of the land being all the time blissfully unconscious of

the law, in the innocence of his barbarism supposing that the working of

the ground by his generations of forbears was title all-sufficient) one

fine day the sheriff comes upon this hapless dweller on the heath and

drives him from his ancient habitat to wander an outcast.

Such are the blessings of education.

Mankind invents a written sign to aid its intercommunication; and

forthwith all manner of miracles are wrought with the sign. Even such a

miracle as that a part of the solid earth passes under the mastery of an

impotent sheet of paper; and a distant bit of animated flesh which

never even saw the ground, acquires the power to expel hundreds,

thousands, of like bits of flesh, though they grew upon that ground as

the trees grow, labored it with their hands, and fertilized it with

their bones for a thousand years.

"This law of unappropriated lands," says William Archer, "has covered

the country with Naboth's Vineyards." I think it would require a

Biblical prophet to describe the "abomination of desolation" it has

made.

It was to become lords of this desolation that the men who play the

game--landlords who are at the same time governors and magistrates,

enterprising capitalists seeking investments--connived at the iniquities

of the Diaz regime; I will go further and say devised them.

The Madero family alone owns some 8,000 square miles of territory; more

than the entire state of New Jersey. The Terrazas family, in the state

of Chihuahua, owns 25,000 square miles; rather more than the entire

state of West Virginia, nearly one-half the size of Illinois. What was

the plantation owning of our southern states in chattel slavery days,

compared with this? And the peon's share for his toil upon these great

estates is hardly more than was the chattel slave's--wretched housing,

wretched food, and wretched clothing.

It is to slaves like these that Madero appeals to be "frugal."

It is of men who have thus been disinherited that our complacent

fellow-citizens of Anglo-Saxon origin, say: "Mexicans! What do you know

about Mexicans? Their whole idea of life is to lean up against a fence

and smoke cigarettes". And pray, what idea of life should a people have

whose means of life in their own way have been taken from them? Should

they be so mighty anxious to convert their strength into wealth for

some other man to loll in?

It reminds me very much of the answer given by a negro employee on the

works at Fortress Monroe to a companion of mine who questioned him

good-humoredly on his easy idleness when the foreman's back was turned.

"Ah ain't goin' to do no white man's work, fo' Ah don' get no white

man's pay."

But for the Yaquis, there was worse than this. Not only were their lands

seized, but they were ordered, a few years since, to be deported to

Yucatan. Now Sonora, as I said, is a northern state, and Yucatan one of

the southernmost. Yucatan hemp is famous, and so is Yucatan fever, and

Yucatan slavery on the hemp plantations. It was to that fever and that

slavery that the Yaquis were deported, in droves of hundreds at a time,

men, women and children--droves like cattle droves, driven and beaten

like cattle. They died there, like flies, as it was meant they should.

Sonora was desolated of her rebellious people, and the land became

"pacific" in the hands of the new landowners. Too pacific in spots. They

had not left people enough to reap the harvests.

Then the government suspended the deportation act, but with the

provision that for every crime committed by a Yaqui, five hundred of his

people be deported. This statement is made in Madero's own book.

Now what in all conscience would any one with decent human feeling

expect a Yaqui to do? Fight! As long as there was powder and bullet to

be begged, borrowed, or stolen; as long as there is a garden to plunder,

or a hole in the hills to hide in!

When the revolution burst out, the Yaquis and other Indian peoples, said

to the revolutionists: "Promise us our lands back, and we will fight

with you." And they are keeping their word, magnificently. All during

the summer they have kept up the warfare. Early in September, the

Chihuahua papers reported a band of 1,000 Yaquis in Sonora about to

attack El Anil; a week later 500 Yaquis had seized the former quarters

of the federal troops at Pitahaya. This week it is reported that federal

troops are dispatched to Ponoitlan, a town in Jalisco, to quell the

Indians who have risen in revolt again because their delusion that the

Maderist government was to restore their land has been dispelled. Like

reports from Sinaloa. In the terrible state of Yucatan, the Mayas are in

active rebellion; the reports say that "the authorities and leading

citizens of various towns have been seized by the malcontents and put in

prison." What is more interesting is, that the peons have seized not

only "the leading citizens," but still more to the purpose have seized

the plantations, parceled them, and are already gathering the crops for

themselves.

Of course, it is not the pure Indians alone who form the peon class of

Mexico. Rather more than double the number of Indians are mixed breeds;

that is, about 8,000,000, leaving less than 3,000,000 of pure white

stock.

The mestiza, or mixed breed population, have followed the communistic

instincts and customs of their Indian forbears; while from the Latin

side of their make-up, they have certain tendencies which work well

together with their Indian hatred of authority.

The mestiza, as well as the Indians, are mostly ignorant in

book-knowledge, only about sixteen per cent. of the whole population of

Mexico being able to read and write. It was not within the program of

the "civilizing" regime to spend money in putting the weapon of learning

in the people's hands. But to conclude that people are necessarily

unintelligent because they are illiterate, is in itself a rather

unintelligent proceeding.

Moreover, a people habituated to the communal customs of an ancient

agricultural life do not need books or papers to tell them that the soil

is the source of wealth, and they must "get back to the land," even if

their intelligence is limited.

Accordingly, they have got back to the land. In the state of Morelos,

which is a small, south-central state, but a very important one--being

next to the Federal District, and by consequence to the city of

Mexico--there has been a remarkable land revolution. General Zapata,

whose name has figured elusively in newspaper reports now as having made

peace with Madero, then as breaking faith, next wounded and killed, and

again resurrected and in hiding, then anew on the warpath and proclaimed

by the provisional government the arch-rebel who must surrender

unconditionally and be tried by court-martial; who has seized the

strategic points on both the railroads running through Morelos, and who

just a few days ago broke into the federal district, sacked a town,

fought successfully at two or three points, with the federals, blew out

two railroad bridges and so frightened the deputies in Mexico City that

they are clamoring for all kinds of action; this Zapata, the fires of

whose military camps are springing up now in Guerrero, Oaxaca and Puebla

as well, is an Indian with a long score to pay, and all an Indian's

satisfaction in paying it. He appears to be a fighter of the style of

our revolutionary Marion and Sumter; the country in which he is

operating is mountainous, and guerilla bands are exceedingly difficult

of capture; even when they are defeated, they have usually succeeded in

inflicting more damage than they have received, and they always get

away.

Zapata has divided up the great estates of Morelos from end to end,

telling the peasants to take possession. They have done so. They are in

possession, and have already harvested their crops. Morelos has a

population of some 212,000.

In Puebla reports in September told us that eighty leading citizens had

waited on the governor to protest against the taking possession of the

land by the peasantry. The troops were deserting, taking horses and arms

with them. It is they no doubt who are now fighting with Zapata. In

Chihuahua, one of the largest states, prisons have been thrown open and

the prisoners recruited as rebels; a great hacienda was attacked and the

horses run off, whereupon the peons rose and joined the attacking party.

In Sinaloa, a rich northern state--famous in the southwestern United

States some years ago as the field of a great co-operative experiment in

which Mr. C. B. Hoffman, one of the former editors of _The Chicago Daily

Socialist,_ was a leading spirit--this week's paper reports that the

former revolutionary general, Juan Banderas, is heading an insurrection

second in importance only to that led by Zapata.

In the southern border state of Chiapas, the taxes in many places could

not be collected. Last week news items said that the present government

had sent General Paz there, with federal troops, to remedy that state of

affairs. In Tabasco, the peons refused to harvest the crops for their

masters; let us hope they have imitated their brothers in Morelos and

gathered them for themselves.

The Maderists have announced that a stiff repressive campaign will be

inaugurated at once; if we are to believe the papers, we are to believe

Madero guilty of the imbecility of saying, "Five days after my

inauguration the rebellion will be crushed." Just why the crushing has

to wait till five days after the inauguration does not appear. I

conceive there must have been some snickering among the reactionary

deputies if such an announcement was really made; and some astonished

query among his followers.

What are we to conclude from all these reports? That the Mexican people

are satisfied? That it's all good and settled? What should we think if

we read that the people, not of Lower but of Upper, California had

turned out the ranch owners, had started to gather in the field products

for themselves and that the Secretary of War had sent United States

troops to attack some thousands of armed men (Zapata has had 3,000 under

arms the whole summer and that force is now greatly increased) who were

defending that expropriation? if we read that in the state of Illinois

the farmers had driven off the tax collector? that the coast states were

talking of secession and forming an independent combination? that in

Pennsylvania a division of the federal army was to be dispatched to

overpower a rebel force of fifteen hundred armed men doing guerilla work

from the mountains? that the prison doors of Maryland, within hailing

distance of Washington City, were being thrown open by armed revoltees?

Should we call it a condition of peace? Regard it a proof that the

people were appeased? We would not: we would say that revolution was in

full swing. And the reason you have thought it was all over in Mexico,

from last May till now, is that the Chicago press, like the eastern,

northern, and central press in general, has said nothing about this

steady march of revolt. Even _The Socialist_ has been silent. Now that

the flame has shot up more spectacularly for the moment, they call it "a

new revolution."

That the papers pursue this course is partly due to the generally acting

causes that produce our northern indifference, which I shall presently

try to explain, and partly to the settled policy of capitalized interest

in controlling its mouthpieces in such a manner as to give their present

henchmen, the Maderists, a chance to pull their chestnuts out of the

fire. They invested some $10,000,000 in this bunch, in the hope that

they may be able to accomplish the double feat of keeping capitalist

possessions intact and at the same time pacifying the people with

specious promises. They want to lend them all the countenance they can,

till the experiment is well tried; so they deliberately suppress

revolutionary news.

Among the later items of interest reported by the _Los Angeles Times_

are those which announce an influx of ex-officials and many-millioned

landlords of Mexico, who are hereafter to be residents of Los Angeles.

What is the meaning of it? Simply that life in Mexico is not such a safe

and comfortable proposition as it was, and that for the present they

prefer to get such income as their agents can collect without themselves

running the risk of actual residence.

Of course it is understood that some of this notable efflux (the

supporters of Reyes, for example, who have their own little rebellions

in Tabasco and San Luis Potosi this week) are political reactionists,

scheming to get back the political loaves and fishes into their own

hands. But most are simply those who know that their property right is

safe enough to be respected by the Maderist government, but that the

said government is not strong enough to put down the innumerable

manifestations of popular hatred which are likely to terminate fatally

to themselves if they remain there.

Nor is all of this fighting revolutionary; not by any means. Some is

reactionary, some probably the satisfaction of personal grudge, much, no

doubt, the expression of general turbulency of a very unconscious

nature. But granting all that may be thrown in the balance, the main

thing, the mighty thing, the regenerative revolution is the

_Reappropriation of the land by the peasants._ Thousands upon thousands

of them are doing it.

Ignorant peasants: peasants who know nothing about the jargon of land

reformers or of Socialists. Yes: that's just the glory of it! Just the

fact that it is done by ignorant people; that is, people ignorant of

book theories; but _not_ ignorant, not so ignorant by half, of life on

the land, as the theory-spinners of the cities. Their minds are simple

and direct; they act accordingly. For them, there is _one way_ to "get

back to the land"; i. e., to ignore the machinery of paper land-holding

(in many instances they have burned the records of the title-deeds) and

proceed to plough the ground, to sow and plant and gather, and _keep the

product themselves_.

Economists, of course, will say that these ignorant people, with their

primitive institutions and methods, will not develop the agricultural

resources of Mexico, and that they must give way before those who will

so develop its resources; that such is the law of human development.

In the first place, the abominable political combination, which gave

away, as recklessly as a handful of soap-bubbles, the agricultural

resources of Mexico--gave them away to the millionaire speculators who

were to _develop the country_--were the educated men of Mexico. And this

is what they saw fit to do with their higher intelligence and education.

So the ignorant may well distrust the good intentions of educated men

who talk about improvements in land development.

In the second place, capitalistic land-ownership, so far from developing

the land in such a manner as to support a denser population, has

depopulated whole districts, immense districts.

In the third place, what the economists do not say is, that the only

justification for intense cultivation of the land is, that the product

of such cultivation may build up the bodies of men (by consequence their

souls) to richer and fuller manhood. It is not merely to pile up figures

of so many million bushels of wheat and corn produced in a season; but

that this wheat and corn shall first go into the stomachs of those who

planted it--and in abundance; to build up the brawn and sinew of the

arms that work the ground, not meanly maintaining them in a half-starved

condition. And second, to build up the strength of the rest of the

nation who are willing to give needed labor in exchange. But never to

increase the fortunes of idlers who dissipate it. This is the purpose,

and the only purpose, of tilling soil; and the working of it for any

other purpose is _waste_, waste both of land and of men.

In the fourth place, no change ever was, or ever can be, worked out in

any society, except by the mass of the people. Theories may be

propounded by educated people, and set down in books, and discussed in

libraries, sitting-rooms and lecture-halls; but they will remain barren,

unless the people in mass work them out. If the change proposed is such

that it is not adaptable to the minds of the people for whose ills it is

supposed to be a remedy, then it will remain what it was, a barren

theory.

Now the conditions in Mexico have been and are so desperate that some

change is imperative. The action of the peasants proves it. Even if a

strong military dictator shall arise, he will have to allow some

provision going towards peasant proprietorship. These unlettered, but

determined, people must be dealt with _now_; there is no such thing as

"waiting till they are educated up to it." Therefore the wisdom of the

economists is wisdom out of place--rather, _relative unwisdom_. The

people never _can_ be educated, if their conditions are to remain what

they were under the Diaz regime. Bodies and minds are both too

impoverished to be able to profit by a spread of theoretical education,

even if it did not require unavailable money and indefinite time to

prepare such a spread. Whatever economic change is wrought, then, must

be such as the people in their present state of comprehension can

understand and make use of. And we see by the reports what they

understand. They understand they have a right upon the soil, a right to

use it for themselves, a right to drive off the invader who has robbed

them, to destroy landmarks and title-deeds, to ignore the taxgatherer

and his demands.

And however primitive their agricultural methods may be, one thing is

sure; that they are more economical than any system which heaps up

fortunes by destroying men.

Moreover, who is to say how they may develop their methods once they

have a free opportunity to do so? It is a common belief of the

Anglo-Saxon that the Indian is essentially lazy. The reasons for his

thinking so are two: under the various tyrannies and robberies which

white men in general, and Anglo-Saxons in particular (they have even

gone beyond the Spaniard) have inflicted upon Indians, there is no

possible reason why an Indian should want to work, save the idiotic one

that work in itself is a virtuous and exalted thing, even if by it the

worker increases the power of his tyrant. As William Archer says: "If

there are men, _and this is not denied_, who work for no wage, and with

no prospect or hope of any reward, it would be curious to know by what

motive other than the lash or the fear of the lash, they are induced to

go forth to their labor in the morning." The second reason is, that an

Indian really has a different idea of what he is alive for than an

Anglo-Saxon has. And so have the Latin peoples. This different idea is

what I meant when I said that the mestiza have certain tendencies

inherited from the Latin side of their make-up which work well together

with their Indian hatred of authority. The Indian likes to _live_; to be

his own master; to work when he pleases and stop when he pleases. He

does not crave many things, but he craves the enjoyment of the things

that he has. He feels himself more a part of nature than a white man

does. All his legends are of wanderings with nature, of forests, fields,

streams, plants, animals. He wants to live with the same liberty as the

other children of earth. His philosophy of work is, Work so as to live

care-free. This is not laziness; this is sense--to the person who has

that sort of make-up.

Your Latin, on the other hand, also wants to live; and having artistic

impulses in him, his idea of living is very much in gratifying them. He

likes music and song and dance, picture-making, carving, and decorating.

He doesn't like to be forced to create his fancies in a hurry; he likes

to fashion them, and admire them, and improve and refashion them, and

admire again; and all for the fun of it. If he is ordered to create a

certain design or a number of objects at a fixed price in a given time,

he loses his inspiration; the play becomes work, and hateful work. So

he, too, does not want to work, except what is requisite to maintain

himself in a position to do those things that he likes better.

Your Anglo-Saxon's idea of life, however, is to create the useful and

the profitable--whether he has any use or profit out of it or not--and

to keep busy, busy; to bestir himself "like the Devil in a holy water

font." Like all other people, he makes a special virtue of his own

natural tendencies, and wants all the world to "get busy"; it doesn't so

much matter to what end this business is to be conducted, provided the

individual--_scrabbles_. Whenever a true Anglo-Saxon seeks to enjoy

himself, he makes work out of that too, after the manner of a certain

venerable English shopkeeper who in company with his son visited the

Louvre. Being tired out with walking from room to room, consulting his

catalogue, and reading artists' names, he dropped down to rest; but

after a few moments rose resolutely and faced the next room, saying,

"Well, Alfred, we'd better be getting through our work."

There is much question as to the origin of the various instincts. Most

people have the impression that the chief source of variation lies in

the difference in the amount of sunlight received in the native

countries inhabited of the various races. Whatever the origin is, these

are the broadly marked tendencies of the people. And "Business" seems

bent not only upon fulfilling its own fore-ordained destiny, but upon

making all the others fulfill it too. Which is both unjust and stupid.

There is room enough in the world for the races to try out their several

tendencies and make their independent contributions to the achievements

of humanity, without imposing them on those who revolt at them.

Granting that the population of Mexico, if freed from this foreign

"busy" idea which the government imported from the north and imposed on

them with such severity in the last forty years, would not immediately

adopt improved methods of cultivation, even when they should have free

opportunity to do so, still we have no reason to conclude that they

would not adopt so much of it as would fit _their_ idea of what a man is

alive for; and if that actually proved good, it would introduce still

further development. So that there would be a natural, and therefore

solid, economic growth which would stick; while a forced development of

it through the devastation of the people is no true growth. The only way

to make it go, is to kill out the Indians altogether, and transport the

"busy" crowd there, and then keep on transporting for several

generations, to fill up the ravages the climate will make on such an

imported population.

The Indian population of our states was in fact dealt with in this

murderous manner. I do not know how grateful the reflection may be to

those who materially profited by its extermination; but no one who looks

forward to the final unification and liberation of man, to the

incorporation of the several goodnesses of the various races in the one

universal race, can ever read those pages of our history without burning

shame and fathomless regret.

I have spoken of the meaning of revolution in general; of the meaning of

the Mexican revolution--chiefly an agrarian one; of its present

condition. I think it should be apparent to you that in spite of the

electoral victory of the now ruling power, it has not put an end even to

the armed rebellion, and cannot, until it proposes some plan of land

restoration; and that it not only has no inward disposition to do, but

probably would not dare to do, in view of the fact that immense capital

financed it into power.

As to what amount of popular sentiment was actually voiced in the

election, it is impossible to say. The dailies informed us that in the

Federal District where there are 1,000,000 voters, the actual vote was

less than 450,000.

They offered no explanation. It is impossible to explain it on the

ground that we explain a light vote in our own communities, that the

people are indifferent to public questions; for the people of Mexico are

not now _indifferent_, whatever else they may be. Two explanations are

possible: the first, and most probable, that of _governmental_

intimidation; the second, that the people are convinced of the

uselessness of voting as a means of settling their troubles. In the less

thickly populated agricultural states, _this is_ very largely the case;

they are relying upon direct revolutionary action. But although there

was guerilla warfare in the Federal District, even before the election,

I find it unlikely that more than half the voting population there

abstained from voting out of conviction, though I should be glad to be

able to believe they did.

However, Madero and his aids are in, as was expected; the question is,

how will they stay in? As Diaz did, and in no other way--if they succeed

in developing Diaz's sometime ability; which so far they are wide from

having done, though they are resorting to the most vindictive and

spiteful tactics in their persecution of the genuine revolutionists,

wherever such come near their clutch.

To this whole turbulent situation three outcomes are possible:

1. A military dictator must arise, with sense enough to make some

substantial concessions, and ability enough to pursue the crushing

policy ably; or

2. The United States must intervene in the interests of American

capitalists and landholders, in case the peasant revolt is not put down

by the Maderist power. And that will be the worst thing that can

possibly happen, and against which every worker in the United States

should protest with all his might; or

3. The Mexican peasantry will be successful, and freedom in land become

an actual fact. And that means the death-knell of great land-holding in

this country also, for what people is going to see its neighbor enjoy so

great a triumph, and sit on tamely itself under landlordism?

Whatever the outcome be, one thing is certain: it is a _great_ movement,

which all the people of the world should be eagerly watching. Yet as I

said at the beginning, the majority of our population know no more about

it than of a revolt on the planet Jupiter. First because they are so,

so, _busy_; they scarcely have time to look over the baseball score and

the wrestling match; how _could_ they read up on a revolution! Second,

they are supremely egotistic and concerned in their own big country with

its big deeds--such as divorce scandals, vice-grafting, and auto races.

Third, they do not read Spanish, and they have an ancient hostility to

all that smells Spanish. Fourth, from our cradles we were told that

whatever happened in Mexico was a joke. Revolutions, or rather

rebellions, came and went, about like April showers, and they never

meant anything serious. And in this indeed there was only too much

truth--it was usually an excuse for one place-hunter to get another

one's scalp. And lastly, as I have said, the majority of our people do

not know that a revolution means a fundamental change in social life,

and not a spectacular display of armies.

It is not much a few can do to remove this mountain of indifference; but

to me it seems that every reformer, of whatever school, should wish to

watch this movement with the most intense interest, as a practical

manifestation of a wakening of the landworkers themselves to the

recognition of what all schools of revolutionary economics admit to be

the primal necessity--the social repossession of the land.

And whether they be victorious or defeated, I, for one, bow my head to

those heroic strugglers, no matter how ignorant they are, who have

raised the cry Land and Liberty, and planted the blood-red banner on the

burning soil of Mexico.

Thomas Paine

To speak of Thomas Paine is to mention in one breath daring tempered by

judgment, courage both mental and physical, foresight and prudence

coupled with unstinted generosity, patience and endurance for the long

race, constancy to the unwon ideal, that superior power over men,

conferred by no extrinsic dictum, typified best perhaps by the

loadstone, which always bursts forth in times of revolution from the

unexpected place, the unbought and the unsought glory of the man who is

a hero because a hero is required and does not measure his services nor

reckon on their reward; not that he underrates himself; (it is as

impossible as it is undesirable that a powerful personality should not

know itself as such) but simply that in the moment of decisions the

value of self is abandoned. So far as any or all of these qualities are

concerned Thomas Paine is a name for them all, in their highest

expression. And one feels in approaching him that there is something

like treason in paying him any but a perfect tribute. Yet such is the

position into which I am forced,--to say less than I should, less than I

would had not words and the art of using them almost failed me.

I do not like lecturers who come before the public with apologies, nor

do I propose to make any; I simply say this to let you know that I shall

feel, perhaps more keenly than any of you, my failure to do Paine

justice. For the half century that his history has been being unmined

from the cellar of calumny and filth that the orthodox had cast upon it,

unmined chiefly by small groups of freethinkers scattered here and there

and spreading his words among men, like the little foxes with the

firebrands going in among the corn, the principal endeavor has been to

establish Paine's reputation as a great reformer in religion. And such

he undoubtedly was. Whoever reads his "Age of Reason" in anything but a

spirit of predisposition against it, must feel this, however much he may

disagree with Paine's criticism, or consider that he has come short in

his constructive philosophy. And it is meet, too, that the book that

cost him most, both before and after death, should be the one selected

for defense. Nevertheless the effect has been rather to lose sight of

what appear to me greater thoughts and acts. For just as the orthodox

have forgotten, so have many freethinkers forgotten, his immense labors

in the field of active struggle against the domination of man by man. It

is true that his mind did not transcend the mental vesture of the time,

and it was all the better in one of his marvelous capacities for

_swinging_ masses of men that it did not. The lonely heralds of the

opening dawn go upon their paths solitary; no matter how much they

desire to draw others with them, they cannot. And had Paine been one of

these that break through the forms of thought such as was Copernicus, or

Kant, or Darwin, he would have been at constant war with himself. Half

his nature would have chosen the lonely path; the other half, the

zealot, the propagandist, would have cried out, they _must_ go with me;

I must do something to make them _go with_ me. Now the secret of Paine's

success was that he was so thoroughly at one with himself, he believed

so utterly what he preached, he had faith, he hoped, and so strongly

that others were drawn to believe and to hope. For spite of all

intellectual pride this is the man whom we love and admire; this is the

man who overcomes us, who gets his way; this man consistent in himself,

who has a remedy for the world's wrongs and hopes _everything_ from it!

From the point of vantage of 100 years' experience it is seen that

Paine's political creed, like his religious one, will no longer fit. But

that does not matter. Neither will ours fit in a hundred years, and none

of us, no, not one, is great enough to foresee where the misfit will

arise. It is not our business to bear the evils of the thrice unborn

upon our necks; nor was it Paine's to bear ours.

Yet while not claiming for him the prophetic gift, it is still true that

he did see the moral patchwork in our constitution, the trouble of 1812

brewing, and the greater trouble of '61-'65.

When he first came to this country he wrote a number of contributions to

the _Pennsylvania Magazine_, in one of which he pleaded justice for the

negro, basing his plea then as always upon the natural equality of man

irrespective of color. Afterwards when the constitution was framed, he

objected that nothing had been done for the negro, and in his letters to

the American people, written after his imprisonment in France, in which

the constitution was caustically reviewed, he cries out again for this

yoked man not yet to be freed for more than half a hundred

years,--foreseeing that nothing good can in the end come from slavery,

that every evil must bring a compensating evil. The soldiers' graves in

the National cemeteries, the thousands of limping, haggard tatters and

rags of white men attest how well Paine foresaw Time's revenges.

In the letter to Washington, partially unjust as it is in view of the

fact that Gouverneur Morris and not Washington was responsible for the

failure to save Paine from prison in France, as we now know, thanks to

Moncure Conway, but which Paine did _not_ know,--in this letter, I

say, will be found the most terrible arraignment of the constitution

ever penned. We who are Anarchists are called traitors for much calmer

talk. Yet here was the man "whose pen had done more for the revolution

than Washington's sword," as his bitterest enemy declared; who believed

heart and soul in the republic, who had given his money and his

substance and taken the chances of his life in battle for it; the man

whose devotion to America could not be gainsaid; this man declared

that the American constitution was the mirror of the most vicious

features of the British constitution, a fecund soil for monopolies

with all their ills. It is we who experience those ills, we who know

what a gigantic tool of oppression the constitution and the cumbersome

machinery of the lawmaking power have become. Yet probably even we do

not feel so keenly as he the fatal blunder; for while we know how it

grinds us in our flesh and souls, rears its prisons and scaffolds for

us, we have had the yoke about our necks always,--while he _had once

seen_ the country free. He had been through all the battle, had fought

his fight and won his victory, only to see it lost through cowardice

of thought. That was indeed bitter; and it is that bitter outcry

against this sacrifice which marks Paine out among most of his time for

influence on future history. The fact that he was the initiator of the

direct movement for political independence in America, in the famous

meeting where Adams, Franklin and Washington all shrank from uttering

the thought heavy upon their souls, is a matter of past history. The

fact that he was the one man in America to write the right thing at

the right time, his voice the wind to sweep the scattering flames

of insubordination and revolt into the conflagration of revolution;

the fact that he proposed and headed with the whole contents of his

purse the subscription to save the army when even Washington was in

despair at the prospect of mutiny and desertion among the soldiers;

the fact that he raised all the feeling possible against the fiction

of divine rights and so got himself hunted out of England; the fact

that he took the most active part possible in aiding the work of the

French revolutionists, which he believed would be the beginning of the

breakdown of monarchy throughout Europe and the building up either

of one universal continental republic or a confederation of sister

republics; the fact that he was the one man in the convention who

dared to stand for the life of Louis the XVI, and thereby got himself

suspected, thrown into prison, and condemned to death--all these facts

are of import in reading the character of the man, and in comprehending

the record of those days when they were making history fast. Yet none

of these has so much influence upon the demands of to-day as the voice

of discontent crying for eternal vigilance, which sounds through these

almost unknown letters. These are the things which it will pay to

reprint in the day when American liberty feels in its tomb the first

stirrings of the resurrection. Did we like Paine believe in God, we

might say "Pray God it may not be far away."

Such are the characters whose historic influence is greatest; they who

hew, and hew hard to the line laid down for them by the events of their

time; yet are not blinded by the stir and roll of things; who see

clearly where the deflection from the line is likely to occur, and where

it will lead; who raise the warning treble that goes shrilling to the

future, startling, waking with its eerie cry custom-dulled ears, and

sodden souls, who start to ask, was it not a ghost of the Revolution? In

that day which may not be so distant as we fear, Paine will be more

alive than ever; he will be watching at a million firesides with the old

keen, strong eyes.

While I have deprecated the fact that the religious reformer has been

exalted to the neglect of the political one, I cannot omit that part of

his life-work so well-known to all, yet never old. The "Age of Reason"

has long been both exaggerated and despised as an iconoclastic work. But

we are indebted to Conway, the greatest of Paine students, who out of

the many biographies he has written has chosen that of Paine to be the

master-piece of his life (and it is a work which any author might be

proud to regard his master-piece), to him I say we are indebted for a

different view of the "Age of Reason."

I know not whether Mr. Conway's own Unitarian bias may not have

influenced him; it is possible. It is possible that his eager search for

positivism may have unconsciously determined his attitude towards the

great hero, and modified his interpretation of Paine's words. I believe

it has; because I believe _that_ is inevitable. I believe we read our

own ideals into other people, and must do so if we think at all. But

making all allowance for the biographer's prejudgment, Conway has still

a magnificent argument for putting Paine in the defendant's position. We

are no longer to view the book as an attack upon religion but as its

defense,--the defense of what is beneficial, permanent, necessary, in

the religious element of human nature against the scribes and pharisees

on the one hand and the philistines on the other. It was the plea for

the redemption of the edifice from the dirt and cobwebs, the protest

against smashing the stones to kill the spiders. The great prerequisite

to the understanding of the "Age of Reason" is an acquaintance with the

literature of that time--especially French literature. The pamphlets,

periodicals, and books are the crystals wherein _the Zeitgeist_ of the

18th century is preserved. Without this acquaintance we cannot realize

how the people continually thought, and what was new and what was old,

what was acceptable and what unacceptable to them. And we shall find by

it that the fashion of sneering popularized by Voltaire, and so

admirably embodied by the _finesse_ of the French language (always a

language of double meanings and hemi-demi-semi-shaded insinuations), the

still more reprehensible habit of deducing immense generals from very

scanty particulars, or in fact contriving the generals first and then

fitting in or suavely waiving the particulars altogether, had so

permeated not only French philosophy, but the heads of the common people

as well, that religion had become almost a byword, a baseless

superstition unaccounted for by, and unnecessary according to, the

all-accepted theory of Natural Law. To defend it, to maintain that there

was something else in it, was equivalent to pleading for the life of the

King before the convention! That was to maintain that there were claims

of the human--after the King had been stripped; this was to say that

underneath the gewgaws and tinsel of religions the undying heart of man,

the man of all the past, had been expressing its noblest aspirations.

And Paine stripped off the tinsel and said, "Put your hand here,--it

beats"; and because he tore the tinsel, the orthodox would have stoned

him; and because he said "it beats," the philosophers would have whetted

the knife. And between the two he stood firm, proclaiming what he

believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do

not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to

the judgments of men; who holds steadfast--steadfast even in

persecution, even to death.

Perhaps there is no more pathetic thing than the last years, the death,

and the burial of Paine. The world would have been poorer had he died

sooner; but to him, to the man, the gun-shot or the guillotine had been

kinder than the unhappy life rejected by the nation he had given all to

free, shunned by political cowards and persecuted by religious

bigots,--even on his death-bed. But though so lonely, so pathetically

lonely, there is something that sends a fine, cold thrill along the

nerves in that strange procession and burial--that poor procession, that

procession of the Hicksite Quaker, the two negroes, the widowed

Frenchwoman and her son. I wonder what sort of day it was; whether the

sun shone or the clouds lowered over the solitary grave on the little

farm, when Margaret Bonneville said to her child, "Stand you there at

his feet, for France; and I will here, for America." I do not know where

the negroes and the Hicksite stood when that august corpse was lowered

to the depths, but there, close, somewhere, stood the unfreed race, for

whom he had vainly plead, and there, close, somewhere, the soul's revolt

at spiritual masters. And from that tomb there went away the scattering

fires, of the risen ghost, the '61 living Paine, the Grand Reality.

Dyer D. Lum

(February 15, 1839--April 6, 1893)

One of the silent martyrs whose graves are trodden to the level by their

fellows' feet, almost before it is seen that they have fallen, completed

his martyrdom one year ago to-night.

There are thousands of such, why then commemorate this one?

Let our answer be that in this one we commemorate all the others, and if

we have chosen his day and name, it is because his genius, his work, his

character was one of those rare gems produced in the great mine of

suffering and flashing backward with all its changing lights the hopes,

the fears, the gaieties, the griefs, the dreams, the doubts, the loves,

the hates, the sum of that which is buried, low down there, in the human

mine.

No more modest a man than Dyer D. Lum ever lived; partly, nay mostly,

indeed, it was inborn, instinctive; but it was also fostered by his

conception of life, which led him to consider self as the veriest of

soap-bubbles, a thing to be dispelled by the merest whiff of wind, so to

speak; and therefore, personal recognition or personal gain as the most

silly, as well as unworthy, of motives. For this reason his works have

often gone where his name did not, and thousands of persons have been

influenced by his logic and his sentiments who never heard of his

personality. Indeed there were some of us who wondered when he died,

what certain labor leaders would henceforth do for a cheap scribe to

furnish them brains.

I have often heard him quote as his motto, both for organization and for

literary effort, the expressive sentence: "_Get in your work._" "Let

fools take the credit if they want it," was the implication of his tone,

and I shall never forget the delightful smile with which he repeated

Charles Mackay's lines, most singularly transposing the author's

meaning: "Grub little moles----." He took an especial pleasure in

grubbing, and smiling when a streak of sunlight fell on some one else.

I have said that this distinguishing characteristic, so fruitful in

results in his later life, was partly instinctive and partly a

philosophic conviction. The instinctive side may be best understood by a

brief sketch of his ancestry. It is generally complained that the

troublesome people who are never satisfied to let society alone, must

necessarily be foreigners; at least they can never belong to the same

nation as we, the good, the respectable. The easy method of laying

everything pestilent to the charge of the foreigner, will not serve a

conservative American against Dyer D. Lum. The first of the Lums to set

foot in this country was Samuel L., a Scotchman, in the year 1732. They

rooted in New England soil, and at the time of the Revolution, Dyer's

great grandfather was a minute-man in the very town, Northampton, where

his own corpse was laid a year ago. On the maternal side the Tappan

family were also revolutionists, and back of revolutionists

Reformationists in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and still back of that,

Crusaders. All this would be important enough and indeed even

distinguishing, were I relating it by way of "gilding refined gold"; but

they acquire meaning the moment we regard them as data for a character.

They are fraught with mysterious symbolism, and he himself becomes a

symbol of the deep-rooted faith of humanity, when we see that

subterranean stream of blood running from Jerusalem through Europe and

across the sea to America. It shows how profound is the well-spring of

devotion to cause in the human heart; through how many centuries the

spirit of rebellion lives. But what, say you, had it to do with his

instinctive modesty? This: _the devotee of a cause is never the devotee

of self_.

Now as to his philosophic convictions, it would be easy to deliver a

whole lecture upon them; and unfortunately his profoundest work on that

subject has not yet been printed. Of course, I can present them but

briefly. I must preface that, as you will no doubt observe later on, his

beliefs were in his own case a plain testimony to their own correctness.

It sounds ridiculous to say that a thing can prove itself; but you will

understand me when I explain that he regarded the conscious life of man,

which includes, of course, his processes of reasoning and therefore his

philosophy, as the merest fragment of him; that this process itself,

which we are wont so fondly to consider as setting us higher than the

brute, is but an upgrowth of our instincts. Man, the race Man,

psychologically as well as bodily, might be likened to a tree, which

every year adds small new growths whose bright green verdure opens to

the sunlight, while below and supporting them quivers the great dark

green mass of the tree, which year after year repeats itself, whispering

in its shadows the old whispers of the centuries. The new verdure would

represent the conscious life and growth of individuals, budding upward

in response to the conditions surrounding them and adding what tiny mite

they may to the experience of the race; but beneath and through, and all

about them rustle the traditions of the dead--dead as individuals, but

living, more potently living than ever, in the great trunk and branches

of unconscious, or instinctive life. And as the shape of the newly

budding leaf, the shade of its green, the length of its stem, its size,

are determined more by the nature of the tree than by surrounding

circumstances, so the philosophy of the individual is determined by the

instinctive life of the race.

The winter of death comes; the individual withers like the leaf; but the

small item of growth that he has added is there, brown and barren though

the twig appear. From him new buds will shoot, though its own leaves

hereafter rustle in the deep green shadows of unconsciousness. As time

passes away useless boughs wither and die, and are stricken utterly from

the life of the race; such are the worthless lives, the abnormal

growths, which no longer add anything either to the beauty or the

service of the whole.

Or, to adopt one of Comrade Lum's own figures, the useless or brutish

elements in man slowly sink down like sediment deposited by the moving

current. Now, in a case where we are able to trace a strain of blood as

far back as this of his, and further are able to look at the conscious

work of the man, and see that the one was the offspring of the other,

modified of course by circumstances, we are able to make the seemingly

absurd statement that the belief proves its own correctness.

Let me particularize concerning this belief. First he was in all his

writings the advocate of resistance, the champion of rebellion. But long

before he had reduced the matter to a syllogism, he was a resistant in

fact. What else could you expect from the Crusader, the Reformationist,

the Revolutionist? It might be said by the people who believe in the

supreme influence of circumstances, that it was his social environment

which made him such--that given the ideal social order and he would

have been as mild a pacificator as Jesus: which is equivalent to saying

that given the outward circumstances and an ear of wheat will grow from

a seed corn.

Lum was the resistant, the man of action; the man who while scarcely

more than a boy, enlisted as a volunteer in the 125th New York infantry

to fight a cause he then deemed just; who being taken prisoner, twice

effected his escape; who sick of the inaction of superiors, while a

third-time prisoner waiting to be exchanged, took his exchange in his

own hands, at the risk of death for desertion, and within a month

re-enlisted in the cavalry, where by sheer force of daring he rose from

private to captain; the man who smashed the idol of the Greenback

movement, sooner than let him betray its voters, reckless himself of the

rebound of hate from the politicians; the man who cast all business

prospects and journalistic hopes aside as so much chaff, when he picked

up the fallen banner of the fight in Chicago, by editing the paper of

Albert Parsons, then in prison and doomed to die; the man who could say

to his well-beloved friend, when that friend asked him whether he should

petition Governor Oglesby for his life, knowing that that petition would

be granted, the man who, under these circumstances could say: "Die,

Parsons"; the man who poor, defeated, dirty, ragged, hungry, could

proudly refuse the proffered hand of the then king of the labor

movement, that king who had kept his kingdom by repudiating the martyrs

of Chicago from the limitless height of one soul over another, answer

"there's blood on it, Powderly"; the man who faced a public audience to

defend the shooting of Frick by Alexander Berkman, a few days after the

occurrence, because he felt that when another has done a thing which you

approve as leading in the direction of your own aspirations, it is your

duty to share the effects of the counterblast his action may have

provoked; the man who seized the unknown Monster, Death, with a smile on

his lips--all of this man was germinating in the child of the pious home

who even when a mere boy had dared Jehovah.

Having "weighed Him, tried Him, found Him naught," he threw the Jewish

God and cosmogony overboard with as much equanimity as he would have

eaten his dinner, and set about finding a more reasonable explanation of

phenomena. In this, as in all other matters, the man of action has a

certain advantage over a pure theorist, which is this: he plunges

immediately into the conflict, he throws the gauntlet, rashly sometimes,

but boldly; he settles the question at once; if there is any suffering

attached to the attempt, he suffers once and has done with it; while the

theorist, the fellow who walks tiptoe round the edge of the

battle-field, dies a hundred times and still suffers on.

My own conversion from orthodoxy to freethought was of this latter sort.

I never dared God; I always tried to propitiate him with prayers and

tears even while I was doubting his existence; I suffered hell a

thousand times while I was wondering where it was located. But my

teacher winked at the heavens, braved hell, and then tossed the whole

affair aside with a joke.

Nevertheless, he did not, as nearly all of our modern image-breakers

have done, deny all religions in their entirety, because he had run a

lance through a stuffed Mumbo-Jumbo. Indeed, the spirit of devotion to

something greater than Self, which will be found as the kernel of every

religion, was so thoroughly in him, or indeed _was_ he himself that

whether he fancied himself _willing_ it or not, his inclinations

directed all his conscious efforts to read the riddle of life into the

channel of Buddhism. I do not know whether he ever accepted its

peculiarly fanciful side or not; but if he did, it was early corrected

by a no less characteristic trait, also an inheritance of the Tappan

family, that of critical analysis. An omnivorous reader, he was always

abreast of the times in matters of scientific discovery; and his

inexorable logic would never have permitted him to retain a creed which

necessitated any doctoring of facts; he rather doctored the creed to fit

the facts and thus evolved a species of modern Buddhism which he called

"Evolutional Ethics," whose principles may be briefly stated as follows:

Man is the continuation of the process of evolution up to date. He is

thus united to all other products of evolution, and is governed by the

same laws. The two factors which determine form in the organic world are

_adaptation_ and _inheritance_; and since evolution is no less a matter

of psychology than physiology, the soul of man as well as the soul of

animals and plants, must be moulded by these factors. That inheritance

tends to crystallize existing forms, while _adaptation_, or the

influence of environment, ever tends to modification of forms, whether

physical or intellectual. That mind as much as body is unconscious, so

far as there is perfect adaptation to surroundings; and that only when

inharmony of the organism with the environment as the result of change

in the latter, arises, can there be _consciousness_. That this

consciousness is a state of pain, more or less sharply defined; and will

continue to increase in intensity until the necessary adaptation is

accomplished, when _as a result_ a feeling of satisfaction or pleasure

will ensue, gradually sinking into the blissful unconsciousness of

perfect harmony. That progress thus demands this stepping constantly up

the rough stairway of pain; and that not even one step is passed until

moistened by the blood of many generations. That the path up the

mountain side is not laid out _by_ us, but _for_ us, and that we _must_

travel there whether it pleases us or not. That the chances are it will

_not_ please us; that our whole lives, in so far as they are conscious,

will probably be one record of never achieved struggle; and that rest

will come only when we descend to the unconsciousness of Death.

Thus he was a pessimist of the darkest hue; and yet he never wasted a

moment's regret on the facts. He watched this passing spectre man,

gliding among the whirling dance of atoms, contemplated his final

extinction with composure, sneered at metaphysicians while he himself

was buried in metaphysics, and cracked jokes either at his own expense

or somebody else's.

The result of all this speculation was the conclusion that man, being a

social animal, must adapt himself to social ends (not determined by him

but for him--unconsciously); that therefore the one who sets himself and

his egotistic desires against the social ideal is the supreme traitor.

He had a peculiar power of expressing volumes in an epithet; and the

epithet he gave to the Egoist was "Dung-Beetle." For the sake of those

who may not be familiar with the insect referred to, I may explain that

a dung-beetle is a sort of bug that exhibits its instincts by rolling a

ball of dung, and who sometimes appears to meditate when he rolls over

the ball that the universe has turned bottom up--because he has.

Now, it is well known that the greater part of the reform

camp--particularly the Anarchistic camp--is made up of Dung-Beetles, I

mean of Egoists; people who declare that the desire for pleasure is the

motive of action, who think a great deal of their egos and don't care a

rap for society. The result was they sharpened their pencils and wrote

scathing editorials denouncing him. To which he answered never a word.

First, because he didn't consider himself worth fighting about; and

second, if he had, he was altogether too good a general to do it. His

opponents were a disputatious sort, who liked nothing better than

argument; he knew what his enemy wanted and _didn't do it_.

But when a question worth discussing arose, then woe to those who had

courted the rapier of his wit, or challenged to duel with the

diamond-tipped dagger of his sarcasm. He could answer columns with a

paragraph.

I do not know whether this philosophy of his had crystallized in his own

mind before he became an Anarchist or not. I believe, however, it had

not; I think it grew along with his other conceptions, being broadened

and corrected, and in turn broadening and correcting his thought in

other channels. But at any rate, fully developed or not, it certainly

influenced his conclusions on economic subjects greatly. True to his

instincts he was always at the front of battle, and when the war closed

his first move was to attach himself to the Greenback party, the first

widespread expression of organized protest against monopoly of the means

of production in America. He still had faith in the saving grace of

politics, and was active enough in the agitation to be nominated for

Lieut. Governor of Massachusetts with Wendell Phillips for Governor. The

fight, which besides being a demand for fiat money, embodied a

short-hour movement, took on a national character; and Dyer D. Lum with

five others, including Albert R. Parsons, was appointed on a committee

to push the matter before Congress. This was in 1880. Six years later,

time and the tide had driven both of them into the great current of

Socialism, and final repudiation of politics as a means of attaining

Socialistic ideals. And here came in the philosophy of the unconscious.

The socialization of industry was the next step up the mountain side,

not because men wished or planned it; but the pressure of surroundings

made it the only possible move; but on the other hand the reactionary,

system-building Socialism advocated by the great master Marx, and all

his train of little repeaters, was seen to be at variance with a no less

marked feature of the evolving social ideal, viz., elasticity, mobility,

constantly increasing differentiation; which is only possible when units

of society are left free to adapt themselves to the slightest changes,

unforced by the opinions of other people who know nothing of the matters

in question, but who, being in the majority (for where is ignorance not

in the majority?) could suppress the free movements of the minority by

enacting their ignorance into laws.

Thus it will be seen that he looked forward to free Socialism as the

industrial ideal; the requirements of that ideal are laid down in his

"Economics of Anarchy."

A few of his caustic sentences may here be quoted:

"The Statist assumes that rights increase in some metaphysical manner,

and become incarnate in half the whole plus one."

"Politics discovers wisdom by taking a general poll of ignorance."

"Every appeal to legislation to do aught but _undo_ is as futile as

sending a flag of truce to the enemy for munitions of war."

"When Caesar conquered Greece, he subjugated Olympus, and the Gods now

measure tape behind counters with Christian decorum."

Lum had faith in humankind. He always trusted the people; the people

that maligned him, the people that injured him, the people that killed

him. When I asked him once why he did not get angry at an individual who

industriously circulated lies about him, he answered with a twinkling

laugh, "For the same reason that I don't kick the house-cat." And yet he

had an abiding faith in that man, and other similar men, to work out the

judgments of the human race, undisturbed by the fact that they let their

only honest leaders die in garrets.

And underneath the speculative philosopher who confused you with long

words; underneath the cold logician who mercilessly scouted at

sentiment; underneath the pessimistic poet that sent the mournful cry of

the whip-poor-will echoing through the widowed chambers of the heart,

that hung and sung over the festival walls of Life the wreaths and

dirges of Death; underneath the gay joker who delighted to play tricks

on politicians, police and detectives; was the man who took the children

on his knees and told them stories while the night was falling, the man

who gave up a share of his own meagre meals to save five blind kittens

from drowning; the man who lent his arm to a drunken washerwoman whom he

did not know, and carried her basket for her, that she might not be

arrested and locked up; the man who gathered four-leafed clovers and

sent them to his friends, wishing them "all the luck which superstition

attached to them"; the man whose heart was beating with the great common

heart, who was one with the simplest and the poorest.

Lum held that evolutional ethics, or Anarchist ethics, in fact, must

take account of both the altruistic and egoistic impulses; that while

determining causes will ever lie in the mysterious realm of the

unconscious life, consciousness may discern the trend of development

and throw in its quota of influence for or against. That in its

endeavor to comprehend the trend of development, it should take fair

account of ancient truths, however enveloped in superstitious husks;

should aim to extract the virtue even in the much mistaken altruistic

doctrines of vicarious atonement and personal abasement; and while

emphasizing the negation of human rulership as destructive of the

possibilities of true growth, at the same time to acknowledge the vain

conceit of self as anything more than a temporary grouping of instinct

developed in beast, in plant, in man; to acknowledge the individual

creature as a sort of mirrored reflection of the cosmos, constantly

shifting, now scintillant, now vague and evanescent, now gone forever as

Death breaks the mirror.

The notion of immortality which grows from such a conception of self is

purged of the old vain conceit. It has been most beautifully voiced in

George Eliot's "Choir Invisible," Mr. Lum's favorite poem; and in the

lines is expressed the last great limitless shadow which engulfs even

this immortality, the blind, tremendous darkness which lies at the end

of all, the sense of the invincibility of which must have lain upon our

teacher's soul when after the last searching, inexplicable, farewell

look into a friend's eyes he went out into the April night and took his

last walk in the roar of the great city--he who should soon be so

silent!

Most of his comrades were surprised. They said: "I never thought Dyer D.

Lum would go alone." But I who know how often and how wearily he said

"What's the use," am sure that that mocking question lay at his heart,

and paralyzed the _will_ to do.

Like Olive Schreiner's stars in the African Farm, the soul about to

depart sees the earth so coldly--all the ages are as one night--and

like them he watches little helpless creatures of the earth come out and

crawl awhile upon its skin, then go back beneath it, and it does not

matter--nothing matters.

Francisco Ferrer

In all unsuccessful social upheavals there are two terrors: the

Red--that is, the people, the mob; the White--that is, the reprisal.

When a year ago to-day the lightning of the White Terror shot out of

that netherest blackness of Social Depth, the Spanish Torture House, and

laid in the ditch of Montjuich a human being who but a moment before had

been the personification of manhood, in the flower of life, in the

strength and pride of a balanced intellect, full of the purpose of a

great and growing undertaking,--that of the Modern Schools,--humanity at

large received a blow in the face which it could not understand.

Stunned, bewildered, shocked, it recoiled and stood gaping with

astonishment. How to explain it? The average individual--certainly the

average individual in America--could not believe it possible that any

group of persons calling themselves a government, let it be of the worst

and most despotic, could slay a man for being a teacher, a teacher of

modern sciences, a builder of hygienic schools, a publisher of

text-books. No: they could not believe it. Their minds staggered back

and shook refusal. It was not so; it could not be so. The man was

shot,--that was sure. He was dead, and there was no raising him out of

the ditch to question him. The Spanish government had certainly

proceeded in an unjustifiable manner in court-martialing him and

sentencing him without giving him a chance at defense. But surely he

had been guilty of something; surely he must have rioted, or instigated

riot, or done some desperate act of rebellion; for never could it be

that in the twentieth century a country of Europe could kill a peaceful

man whose aim in life was to educate children in geography, arithmetic,

geology, physics, chemistry, singing, and languages.

No: it was not possible!--And, for all that, it was possible; it was

done, on the 13th of October, one year ago to-day, in the face of

Europe, standing with tied hands to look on at the murder.

And from that day on, controversy between the awakened who understood,

the reactionists who likewise understood, and their followers on both

sides who have half understood, has surged up and down and left

confusion pretty badly confounded in the mind of him who did not

understand, but sought to.

The men who did him to death, and the institutions they represent have

done all in their power to create the impression that Ferrer was a

believer in violence, a teacher of the principles of violence, a doer of

acts of violence, and an instigator of widespread violence perpetrated

by a mass of people. In support of the first they have published reports

purporting to be his own writings, have pretended to reproduce seditious

pictures from the walls of his class-rooms, have declared that he was

seen mingling with the rebels during the Catalonian uprising of last

year, and that upon trial he was found guilty of having conceived and

launched the Spanish rebellion against the Moroccan war. And that his

death was a just act of reprisal.

On the other hand, we have had a storm of indignant voices clamoring in

his defense, alternately admitting and denying him to be a

revolutionist, alternately contending that his schools taught social

rebellion and that they taught nothing but pure science; we have had

workmen demonstrating and professors and litterateurs protesting on very

opposite grounds; and almost none were able to give definite information

for the faith that was in them.

And indeed it has been very difficult to obtain exact information, and

still is so. After a year's lapse, it is yet not easy to get the facts

disentangled from the fancies,--the truths from the lies, and above all

from the half-lies.

And even when we have the truths as to the facts, it is still difficult

to valuate them, because of American ignorance of Spanish ignorance.

Please understand the phrase. America has not too much to boast of in

the way of its learning; but yet it has that much of common knowledge

and common education that it does not enter into our minds to conceive

of a population 68% of which are unable to read and write, and a good

share of the remaining 32% can only read, not write; neither does it at

all enter our heads to think that of this 32% of the better informed,

the most powerful contingent is composed of those whose distinct,

avowed, and deliberate purpose it is to keep the ignorant ignorant.

Whatever may be the sins of Government in this country, or of the

Churches--and there are plenty of such sins--at least they have not

(save in the case of negro slaves) constituted themselves a

conspiratical force to keep out enlightenment,--to prevent the people

from learning to read and write, or to acquire whatever scientific

knowledge their economic circumstances permitted them to. What the

unconscious conspiracy of economic circumstance has done, and what

conscious manipulations the Government school is guilty of, to render

higher education a privilege of the rich and a maintainer of injustice

is another matter. But it cannot be charged that the rulers of America

seek to render the people illiterate. People, therefore, who have grown

up in a general atmosphere of thought which regards the government as a

provider of education, even as a compeller of education, do not, unless

their attention is drawn to the facts, conceive of a state of society in

which government is a hostile force, opposed to the enlightenment of the

people,--its politicians exercising all their ingenuity to sidetrack the

demand of the people for schools. How much less do they conceive the

hostile force and power of a Church, having behind it an unbroken

descent from feudal ages, whose direct interest it is to maintain a

closed monopoly of learning, and to keep out of general circulation all

scientific information which would tend to destroy the superstitions

whereby it thrives.

I say that the American people in general are not informed as to these

conditions, and therefore the phenomenon of a teacher killed for

instituting and maintaining schools staggers their belief. And when they

read the assertions of those who defend the murder, that it was because

his schools were instigating the overthrow of social order in Spain,

they naturally exclaim: "Ah, that explains it! The man taught sedition,

rebellion, riot, in his schools! That is the reason."

Now the truth is, that what Ferrer was teaching in his schools was

really instigating the overthrow of the social order of Spain;

furthermore it was not only instigating it, but it was making it as

certain as the still coming of the daylight out of the night of the

east. But not by the teaching of riot; of the use of dagger, bomb, or

knife; but by the teaching of the same sciences which are taught in our

public schools, through a generally diffused knowledge of which the

power of Spain's despotic Church must crumble away. Likewise it was

laying the primary foundation for the overthrow of such portions of the

State organization as exist by reason of the general ignorance of the

people.

The Social Order of Spain ought to be overthrown; must be overthrown,

will be overthrown; and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that

direction. The men who killed him knew and understood it well. And they

consciously killed him for what he really did; but they have let the

outside world suppose they did it, for what he did not do. Knowing there

are no words so hated by all governments as "sedition and rebellion,"

knowing that such words will make the most radical of governments align

itself with the most despotic at once, knowing there is nothing which so

offends the majority of conservative and peace-loving people everywhere

as the idea of violence unordered by authority, they have wilfully

created the impression that Ferrer's schools were places where children

and youths were taught to handle weapons, and to make ready for armed

attacks on the government.

They have, as I said before, created this impression in various ways;

they have pointed to the fact that the man who in 1906 made the attack

on Alfonso's life, had acted as a translator of books used by Ferrer in

his schools; they have scattered over Europe and America pictures

purporting to be reproductions of drawings in prominent wall-spaces in

his schools, recommending the violent overthrow of the government.

As to the first of these accusations, I shall consider it later in the

lecture; but as to the last, it should be enough to remind any person

with an ordinary amount of reflection, that the schools were public

places open to any one, as our schools are; and that if any such

pictures had existed, they would have been sufficient cause for

shutting up the schools and incarcerating the founder within a day

after their appearance on the walls. The Spanish Government has that

much sense of how to preserve its own existence, that it would not allow

such pictures to hang in a public place for one day. Nor would books

preaching sedition have been permitted to be published or

circulated.--All this is foolish dust sought to be thrown in foolish

eyes.

No; the real offense was the real thing that he did. And in order to

appreciate its enormity, from the Spanish ruling force's standpoint, let

us now consider what that ruling force is, what are the economic and

educational conditions of the Spanish people, why and how Ferrer founded

the Modern Schools, and what were the subjects taught therein.

Up to the year 1857 there existed no legal provision for general

elementary education in Spain. In that year, owing to the liberals

having gotten into power in Madrid, after a bitter contest aroused

partially by the general political events of Europe, a law making

elementary education compulsory was passed. This was two years before

Ferrer's birth.

Now it is one thing for a political party, temporarily in possession of

power, to pass a law. It is quite another thing to make that law

effective, even when wealth and general sentiment are behind it. But

when joined to the fact that there is a strong opposition is added the

fact that this opposition is in possession of the greatest wealth of the

country, that the people to be benefited are often quite as bitterly

opposed to their own enlightenment as those who profit by their

ignorance, and that those who do ardently desire their own uplift are

extremely poor, the difficulty of practicalizing this educational law is

partially appreciated.

Ferrer's own boyhood life is an illustration of how much benefit the

children of the peasantry reaped from the educational law. His parents

were vine dressers; they were eminently orthodox and believed what their

priest (who was probably the only man in the little village of Alella

able to read) told them: that the Liberals were the emissaries of Satan

and that whatever they did was utterly evil. They wanted no such evil

thing as popular education about, and would not that their children

should have it. Accordingly, even at 13 years of age, the boy was

without education,--a circumstance which in after years made him more

anxious that others should not suffer as he had.

It is self-understood that if it was difficult to found schools in the

cities where there existed a degree of popular clamor for them, it was

next to impossible in the rural districts where people like Ferrer's

parents were the typical inhabitants. The best result obtained by this

law in the 20 years from 1857 to 1877 was that, out of 16,000,000

people, 4,000,000 were then able to read and write,--75% remaining

illiterate. At the end of 1907 the proportion was altered to 6,000,000

literate out of 18,500,000 population, which may be considered as a

fairly correct approximate of the present condition.

One of the very great accounting causes for this situation is the

extreme poverty of the mass of the populace. In many districts of Spain

a laborer's wages are less than $1.00 a week, and nowhere do they equal

the poorest workman's wages in America. Of course, it is understood that

the cost of living is likewise low; but imagine it as low as you please,

it is still evident that the income of the workers is too small to

permit them to save anything, even from the most frugal living. The dire

struggle to secure food, clothing and shelter is such that little

energy is left wherewith to aspire to anything, to demand anything,

either for themselves or their children. Unless, therefore, the

government provided the buildings, the books, and appliances, and paid

the teachers' salaries, it is easy to see that the people most in need

of education are least able, and least likely, to provide it for

themselves. Furthermore the government itself, unless it can tax the

wealthier classes for it, cannot out of such an impoverished source

wring sufficient means to provide adequate schools and school

equipments.

Now, the wealthiest classes are just the religious orders. According to

the statement of Monsignor José Valeda de Gunjado, these orders own

two-thirds of the money of the country and one-third of the wealth in

property. These orders are utterly opposed to all education except such

as they themselves furnish--a lamentable travesty on learning.

As a writer who has investigated these conditions personally, observes,

in reply to the question, "Does not the Church provide numbers of

schools, day and night, at its own expense?"--"It does,--unhappily for

Spain." It provides schools whose principal aim is to strengthen

superstition, follow a mediaeval curriculum, _keep out_ scientific

light,--and prevent other and better schools from being established.

A Spanish educational journal (_La Escuela Espanola_), not Ferrer's

journal, declared in 1907 that these schools were largely "without light

or ventilation, dens of death, ignorance, and bad training." It was

estimated that 50,000 children died every year in consequence of the

mischievous character of the school rooms. And even to schools like

these, there were half a million children in Spain who could gain no

admittance.

As to the teachers, they are allowed a salary ranging from $50.00 to

$100.00 a year; but this is provided, not by the State, but through

voluntary donations from the parents. So that a teacher, in addition to

his legitimate functions, must perform those of collector of his own

salary.

Now conceive that he is endeavoring to collect it from parents whose

wages amount to two or three dollars a week; and you will not be

surprised at the case reported by a Madrid paper in 1903 of a master's

having canvassed a district to find how many parents would contribute if

he opened a school. Out of one hundred families, three promised their

support!

Is it any wonder that the law of compulsory education is a mockery? How

could it be anything else?

Now let us look at the products of this popular ignorance, and we shall

presently understand why the Church fosters it, why it fights education;

and also why the Catalonian insurrection of 1909, which began as a

strike of workers in protest against the Moroccan war, ended in mob

attacks upon convents, monasteries, and churches.

I have already quoted the statement of a high Spanish prelate that the

religious orders of Spain own two-thirds of the money of Spain, and

one-third of the wealth in property. Whether this estimate is precisely

correct or not, it is sufficiently near correctness to make us aware

that at least a great portion of the wealth of the country has passed

into their hands,--a state not widely differing from that existing in

France prior to the great Revolution. Before the insurrection of last

year, the city of Barcelona alone had 165 convents, many of which were

exceedingly rich. The province of Catalonia maintained 2,300 of these

institutions. Aside from these religious orders with their accumulations

of wealth, the Church itself, the united body of priests not in orders,

is immensely wealthy. Conceive that in the Cathedral at Toledo there is

an image of the Virgin whose wardrobe alone would be sufficient to build

hundreds of schools. Imagine that this doll, which is supposed to

symbolize the forlorn young woman who in her pain and sorrow and need

was driven to seek shelter in a stable, whose life was ever lowly, and

who is called the Mother of Sorrows,--imagine that this image of her has

become a vulgar coquette sporting a robe whereinto are sown 85,000

pearls, besides as many more sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds!

Oh, what a decoration for the mother of the Carpenter of Nazareth! What

a vision for the dying eyes on the Cross to look forward to! What an

outcome of the gospel of salvation free to the poor and lowly, taught by

the poorest and the lowliest,--that the humble keeper of the humble

household of the despised little village of Judea should be imaged forth

as a Queen of Gauds, bedizened with a crown worth $25,000 and bracelets

valued at $10,000 more. The Virgin Mary, the Daughter of the Stable,

transformed into a diamond merchant's showcase!

And this in the midst of men and women working for just enough to keep

the skin upon the bone; in the midst of children who are denied the

primary necessities of childhood.

Now I ask you, when the fury of these people burst, as under the

provocation they received it was inevitable that it should burst, was it

any wonder that it manifested itself in mob violence against the

institutions which mock their suffering by this useless, senseless,

criminal waste of wealth in the face of utter need?

Will some one now whisper in our ears that there are women in America

who decorate themselves with more jewels than the Virgin of Toledo, and

throw away the price of a school on a useless decoration in a single

night; while within a radius of five miles from them there are also

uneducated children, for whom our School Boards can provide no place?

Yes, it is so; let them remember the mobs of Barcelona!

And let me remember I am talking about Spain!

The question naturally intrudes, How does the Church, how do the

religious orders manage to accumulate such wealth? Remember first that

they are old, and of unbroken continuance for hundreds of years. That

various forms of acquisition, in operation for centuries, would produce

immense accumulations, even supposing nothing but legitimate purchases

and gifts. But when we consider the actual means whereby money is daily

absorbed from the people by these institutions we receive a shock which

sets all our notions of the triumph of Modern Science topsy-turvy.

It is almost impossible to realize, and yet it is true, that the Spanish

Church still deals in that infamous "graft" against which Martin Luther

hurled the splendid force of his wrath four hundred years ago. The

Church of Spain still sells indulgences. Every Catholic bookstore, and

every priest, has them for sale. They are called "bulas." Their prices

range from about 15 to 25 cents, and they constitute an elastic excuse

for doing pretty much what the possessor pleases to do, providing it is

not a capital crime, for a definitely named period.

Probably there is no one in America so little able to believe this

condition to exist, as the ordinary well-informed Roman Catholic. I have

myself listened to priests of the Roman faith giving the conditions on

which pardon for venal offenses might be obtained; and they had nothing

to do with money. They consisted in saying a certain number of prayers

at stated periods, with specified intent. While that may be a very

illogical way of putting things together that have no connection, there

is nothing in it to offend one's ideas of honesty. The enlightened

conscience of an entire mass of people has demanded that a spiritual

offense be dealt with by spiritual means. It would revolt at the idea

that such grace could be written out on paper and sold either to the

highest bidder or for a fixed price.

But now conceive what happens where a people are illiterate, regarding

written documents with that superstitious awe which those who cannot

read always have for the mysterious language of learning; regarding them

besides with the combination of fear and reverence which the ignorant

believer entertains for the visible sign of Supernatural Power, the

Power which holds over him the threat of eternal punishment,--and you

will have what goes on in Spain. Add to this that such a condition of

fear and gullibility on the side of the people, is the great opportunity

of the religious "grafter." Whatever number of honest, self-sacrificing,

devoted people may be attracted to the service of the Church, there will

certainly be found also, the cheat, the impostor, the searcher for ease

and power.

These indulgences, which for 15 or 25 cents pardon the buyer for his

past sins, but are good only till he sins again, constitute a species of

permission to do what otherwise is forbidden; the most expensive one,

the 25c-one, is practically a license to hold stolen property up to a

certain amount.

Both rich and poor buy these things, the rich of course paying a good

deal more than the stipulated sum. But it hardly requires the statement

that an immense number of the very poor buy them also. And from this

horrible traffic the Church of Spain annually draws millions.

There are other sources of income such as the sale of scapulars,

agnus-deis, charms, and other pieces of trumpery, which goes on all over

the Catholic world also, but naturally to no such extent as in Spain,

Portugal, and Italy, where popular ignorance may be again measured by

the materialism of its religion.

Now, is it reasonable to suppose that the individuals who are thriving

upon these sales, want a condition of popular enlightenment? Do they not

know how all this traffic would crumble like the ash of a burnt-out

fire, once the blaze of science were to flame through Spain? _They_

EDUCATE! Yes; they educate the people to believe in these barbaric

relics of a dead time,--_for their own material interest_. Spain and

Portugal are the last resort of the mediaeval church; the monasticism

and the Jesuitry which have been expelled from other European countries,

and compelled to withdraw from Cuba and the Philippines, have

concentrated there; and there they are making their last fight. There

they will go down into their eternal grave; but not till Science has

invaded the dark corners of the popular intellect.

The political condition is parallel with the religious condition of the

people, with the exception that the State is poor while the Church is

rich.

There are some elements in the government which are opposed to the

Church religiously, which nevertheless do not wish to see its power as

an institution upset, because they foresee that the same people who

would overthrow the Church, would later overthrow them. These, too, wish

to see the people kept ignorant.

Nevertheless, there have been numerous political rebellions in Spain,

having for their object the establishment of a republic.

In 1868 there occurred such a rebellion, under the leadership of Ruiz

Zorilla. At that time, Ferrer was not quite 20 years old. He had

acquired an education by his own efforts. He was a declared Republican,

as it seems that every young, ardent, bright-minded youth, seeing what

the condition of his country was, and wishing for its betterment, would

be. Zorilla was for a short time Minister of Public Instruction, under

the new government, and very zealous for popular education.

Naturally he became an object of admiration and imitation to Ferrer.

In the early eighties, after various fluctuations of political power,

Zorilla, who had been absent from Spain, returned to it, and began the

labor of converting the soldiers to republicanism. Ferrer was then a

director of railways, and of much service to Zorilla in the practical

work of organization. In 1885 this movement culminated in an abortive

revolution, wherein both Ferrer and Zorilla took active part, and were

accordingly compelled to take refuge in France upon the failure of the

insurrection.

It is therefore certain that from his entrance into public agitation

till the year 1885, Ferrer was an active revolutionary republican,

believing in the overthrow of Spanish tyranny by violence.

There is no question that at that time he said and wrote things which,

whether we shall consider them justifiable or not, were openly in favor

of forcible rebellion. Such utterances charged against him at the

alleged trial in 1909, which were really his, were quotations from this

period. Remember he was then 26 years old. When the trial occurred, he

was 50 years old. What had been his mental evolution during those 24

years?

In Paris, where, with the exception of a short intermission in 1889 when

he visited Spain, he remained for about fifteen years, he naturally

drifted into a method of making a living quite common to educated exiles

in a foreign land; viz., giving private lessons in his native language.

But while this is with most a mere temporary makeshift, which they

change for something else as soon as they are able, to Ferrer it

revealed what his real business in life should be; he found teaching to

be his genuine vocation; so much so that he took part in several

movements for popular education in Paris, giving much free service.

This participation in the labor of training the mind, which is always a

slow and patient matter, began to have its effect on his conceptions of

political change. Slowly the idea of a Spain regenerated through the

storm blasts of revolution, mightily and suddenly, faded out of his

belief, being replaced, probably almost insensibly, by the idea that a

thorough educational enlightenment must precede political

transformation, if that transformation were to be permanent. This

conviction he voiced with strange power and beauty of expression, when

he said to his old revolutionary Republican friend, Alfred Naquet: "Time

respects those works alone which Time itself has helped to build."

Naquet himself, old and sinking man as he is, is at this day and hour

heart and soul for forcible revolution; admitting all the evils which it

engenders and all the dangers of miscarriage which accompany it, he

still believes, to quote his own words, that "Revolutions are not only

the marvelous accoucheurs of societies; they are also fecundating

forces. They fructify men's intelligences; and if they determine the

final realization of matured evolutions, they also become, through their

action on human minds, points of departure for newer evolutions." Yet

he, who thus sings the paean of the uprisen people, with a fire of youth

and an ardor of love that sound like the singing of some strong young

blacksmith marching at the head of an insurgent column, rather than the

quavering voice of an old spent man; he, who was the warm personal

friend of Ferrer for many years, and who would surely have wished that

his ideal love should also have been his friend's love, he expressly

declares that Ferrer was of those who feel themselves drawn to the field

of preparative labor, making sure the ground over which the Revolution

may march to enduring results.

This then was the ripened condition of his mind, especially after the

death of Zorilla, and all his subsequent life and labor is explicable

only with this understanding of his mental attitude.

In the confusion of deafening voices, it has been declared that not only

did he not take part in last year's manifestations, nor instigate them;

but that he in fact had become a Tolstoyan, a non-resistant.

This is not true: he undoubtedly understood that the introduction of

popular education into Spain means revolt, sooner or later. And he would

certainly have been glad to see a successful revolt overthrow the

monarchy at Madrid. He did not wish the people to be submissive; it is

one of the fundamental teachings of the schools he founded that the

assertive spirit of the child is to be encouraged; that its will is not

to be broken; that the sin of other schools is the forcing of obedience.

He hoped to help to form a young Spain which would not submit; which

would resist, resist consciously, intelligently, steadily. He did not

wish to enlighten people merely to render them more sensitive to their

pains and deprivations, but that they might so use their enlightenment

as to rid themselves of the system of exploitation by Church and State

which is responsible for their miseries. By what means they would choose

to free themselves, he did not make his affair.

How and when were these schools founded? It was during his long sojourn

in Paris, that he had as a private pupil in Spanish, a middle-aged,

wealthy, unmarried, Catholic lady. After much conflict over religion

between teacher and pupil, the latter modified her orthodoxy greatly;

and especially after her journeys to Spain, where she herself saw the

condition of public instruction.

Eventually she became interested in Ferrer's conceptions of education,

and his desire to establish schools in his own country. And when she

died in 1900 (she was then somewhat over 50 years old) she devised a

certain part of her property to Ferrer, to be used as he saw fit,

feeling assured no doubt that he would see fit to use it not for his

personal advantage, but for the purpose so dear to his heart. Which he

did.

The bequest amounted to about $150,000; and the first expenditure was

for the establishment of the Modern School of Barcelona, in the year

1901.

It should be said that this was not the first of the Modern School

movement in Spain; for previous to that, and for several years, there

had sprung up, in various parts of the country, a spontaneous movement

towards self-education; a very heroic effort, in a way, considering that

the teachers were generally workingmen who had spent their day in the

shops, and were using the remainder of their exhausted strength to

enlighten their fellow-workers and the children. These were largely

night-schools. As there were no means behind these efforts, the

buildings in which they were held were of course unsuitable; there was

no proper plan of work; no sufficient equipment, and little

co-ordination of labor. A considerable percentage of these schools were

already on the decline, when Ferrer, equipped with his splendid

organizing ability, his teacher's experience, and Mlle. Meunier's

endowment, opened the Barcelona School, having as pupils eighteen boys

and twelve girls.

So proper to the demand was this effort, that at the end of four years'

earnest activity, fifty schools had been established, ten in Barcelona,

and forty in the provinces.

In 1906, that is, after five years' work, a banquet was held on Good

Friday, at which 1,700 pupils were present.

From 30 to 1,700,--that is something. And a banquet in Catholic Spain on

Good Friday! A banquet of children who have bade good-bye to the

salvation of the soul by the punishment of the stomach! We here may

laugh; but in Spain it was a triumph and a menace, which both sides

understood.

I have said that Ferrer brought to his work splendid organizing ability.

This he speedily put to purpose by enlisting the co-operation of a

number of the greatest scientists of Europe in the preparation of

text-books embodying the discoveries of science, couched in language

comprehensible to young minds.

So far, I am sorry to say, I have not succeeded in getting copies of

these manuals; the Spanish government confiscated most of them, and has

probably destroyed them. Still there are some uncaptured sets (one is

already in the British Museum) and I make no doubt that within a year or

so we shall have translations of most of them.

There were thirty of these manuals all told, comprising the work of the

three sections, primary, intermediate, and superior, into which the

pupils were divided.

From what I have been able to find out about these books, I believe the

most interesting of them all would be the First Reading Book. It was

prepared by Dr. Odon de Buen, and is said to be at the same time "a

speller, a grammar and an illustrated manual of evolution," "the

majestic story of the evolution of the cosmos from the atom to the

thinking being, related in a language simple, comprehensible to the

child."

20,000 copies of this book were rapidly sold.

Imagine what that meant to Catholic schools! That the babies of Spain

should learn nothing about eternal punishment for their deadly sins, and

_should_ learn that they are one in a long line of unfolding life that

started in the lowly sea-slime!

The books on geography, physics, and minerology were written in like

manner and with like intent by the same author; on anthropology, Dr.

Enguerrand wrote, and on evolution, Dr. Letourneau of Paris.

Among the very suggestive works was one on "The Universal Substance," a

collaborate production of Albert Bloch and Paraf Javal, in which the

mysteries of existence are resolved into their chemical equivalents, so

that the foundations for magic and miracle are unceremoniously cleared

out of the intellectual field.

This book was prepared at Ferrer's special request, as an antidote to

ancestral leanings, inherited superstitions, the various outside

influences counteracting the influences of the school.

The methods of instruction were modeled after earlier attempts in

France, and were based on the general idea that physical and

intellectual education must continually supplement each other. That no

one is really educated, so long as his knowledge is merely the

recollection of what he has read or seen in a book. Accordingly a lesson

often consisted of a visit to a factory, a workshop, a studio, or a

laboratory, where things were explained and illustrated; or in a class

journey to the hills, or the sea, or the open country, where the

geological or topographical conditions were studied, or botanical

specimens collected and individual observation encouraged.

Very often even book classes were held out of doors, and the children

insensibly put in touch with the great pervading influences of nature, a

touch too often lost, or never felt at all, in our city environments.

How different was all this from the incomprehensible theology of the

Catholic schools to be learned and believed but not understood, the

impractical rehearsing of strings of words characteristic of mediaeval

survivals! No wonder the Modern Schools grew and grew, and the hatred of

the priests waxed hotter and hotter.

Their opportunity came; indeed, they did not wait long.

In the year 1906, on the 31st day of May, not so very long after that

Good Friday banquet, occurred the event which they seized upon to crush

the Modern School and its founder.

I am not here to speak either for or against Mateo Morral. He was a

wealthy young man, of much energy and considerable learning. He had

helped to enrich the library of the Modern School and being an excellent

linguist, he had offered to make translations of text-books. Ferrer had

accepted the offer. That is all Morral had to do with the Modern School.

But on the day of royal festivities, Morral had it in his head to throw

a bomb where it would do some royal hurt. He missed his calculations,

and the hurt intended did not take place; but after a short interval,

finding himself about to be captured, he killed himself.

Think of him as you please: think that he was a madman who did a

madman's act; think that he was a generous enthusiast who in an outburst

of long chafing indignation at his country's condition wanted to strike

a blow at a tyrannical monarchy, and was willing to give his own life

in exchange for the tyrant's; or better than this, reserve your

judgment, and say that you know not the man nor his personal condition,

nor the special external conditions that prompted him; and that without

such knowledge he cannot be judged. But whatever you think of Morral,

pray why was Ferrer arrested and the Modern School of Barcelona closed?

Why was he thrown in prison and kept there for more than a year? Why was

it sought to railroad him before a Court Martial, and that attempt

failing, the civil trial postponed for all that time?

=Why? Why?=

Because Ferrer taught science to the children of Spain,--and for no

other thing. His enemies would have killed him then; but having been

compelled to yield an open trial, by the outcry of Europe, they were

also compelled to release him. But I imagine I hear, yea hear, the

resolute mutter behind the closed walls of the monasteries, the day

Ferrer went free. "Go, then; we shall get you again. And then----"

And then they would do what three years later they did,--_damn him to

the ditch of_ =Montjuich=.

Yea, they shut their lips together like the thin lips of Fate

and--waited. The hatred of an order has something superb in it,--it

hates so relentlessly, so constantly, so transcendently; its personnel

changes, its hate never alters; it wears one priest's face or another's;

itself is identical, inexorable; it pursues to the end.

Did Ferrer know this? Undoubtedly in a general way he did. And yet he

was so far from conceiving its appalling remorselessness, that even when

he found himself in prison again, and utterly in their power, he could

not believe that he would not be freed.

What was this opportunity for which the Jesuitry of Spain waited with

such terrible security? The Catalonian uprising. How did they know it

would come? As any sane man, not over-optimistic, knows that uprising

must come in Spain. Ferrer hoped to sap away the foundations of tyranny

through peaceful enlightenment. He was right. But they are also right

who say that there are other forces hurling towards those foundations;

the greatest of these,--_Starvation_.

Now it was plain and simple Starvation that rose to rend its starvers

when the Catalonian women rose in mobs to cry against the command that

was taking away their fathers and sons to their death in Morocco. The

Spanish people did not want the Moroccan war; the Government, in the

interest of a number of capitalists, did; but like all governments and

all capitalists, it wanted workingmen to do the dying. And they did not

want to die, and leave their wives and children to die too. So they

rebelled. At first it was the conscious, orderly protest of organized

workingmen. But Starvation no more respects the commands of workingmen's

unions, than the commands of governments, and other orderly bodies. It

has nothing to lose: and it gets away, in its fury, from all management;

and it riots.

Where Churches and Monasteries are offensively rich and at ease in the

face of Hunger, Hunger takes its revenge. It has long fangs, it rends,

and tears, and tramples--the innocent with the guilty--always. It is

very horrible! But remember,--remember how much more horrible is the

long, slow systematic crushing, wasting, drying of men upon their bones,

which year after year, century after century, has begotten the Monster,

Hunger. Remember the 50,000 innocent children annually slaughtered, the

blinded and the crippled children, maimed and forsaken by social power;

and behind the smoke and flame of the burning convents of July, 1909,

see the staring of those sightless eyes.

Ferrer instigate that mad frenzy! Oh, no; it was a mightier than Ferrer!

"Our Lady of Pain"--Our Lady of Hunger--Our Lady with uncut nails and

wolf-like teeth--Our Lady who bears the Man-flesh in her body that

cannon are to tear--Our Lady the Workingwoman of Spain, ahungered. She

incarnated the Red Terror.

And the enemies of Ferrer in 1906, as in 1909, knew that such things

would come; and they bided their time.

It is one of those pathetic things which destiny deals, that it was only

for love's sake--and most for the love of a little child--who died

moreover--that the uprising found Ferrer in Spain at all. He had been in

England, investigating schools and methods there from April until the

middle of June. Word came that his sister-in-law and his niece were ill,

so the 19th of June found him at the little girl's bedside. He intended

soon after to go to Paris, but delayed to make some inquiries for a

friend concerning the proceedings of the Electrical Society of

Barcelona. So the storm caught him as it caught thousands of others.

He went about the business of his publishing house as usual, making the

observations of an interested spectator of events. To his friend Naquet

he sent a postal card on the 26th of July, in which he spoke of the

heroism of the women, the lack of co-ordination in the people's

movements, and the total absence of leaders, as a curious phenomenon.

Hearing soon after that he was to be arrested, he secluded himself for

five weeks. The "White Terror" was in full sway; 3,000 men, women, and

children had been arrested, incarcerated, inhumanly treated. Then the

Chief Prosecutor issued the statement that Ferrer was "the director of

the revolutionary movement."

Too indignant to listen to the appeals of his friends, he started to

Barcelona to give himself up and demand trial. He was arrested on the

way.

And they court-martialed him.

The proceedings were utterly infamous. No chance to confront witnesses

against him; no opportunity to bring witnesses; not even the books

accused of sedition allowed to offer their mute testimony in their own

defense; no opportunity given to his defender to prepare; letters sent

from England and France to prove what had been the doomed man's purposes

and occupations during his stay there, "lost in transit"; the old

articles of twenty-four years before, made to appear as if recent

utterances; forgeries imposed; and with all this, nothing but hearsay

evidence even from his accusers; and yet--he was sentenced to death.

Sentenced to death and shot.

And all Modern Schools closed, and his property sequestrated.

And the Virgin of Toledo may wear her gorgeous robes in peace, since the

shadow of the darkness has stolen back over the circle of light he lit.

Only,--somewhere, somewhere, down in the obscurity--hovers the menacing

figure of her rival, "Our Lady of Pain." She is still now,--but she is

not dead. And if all things be taken from her, and the light not allowed

to come to her, nor to her children,--then--some day--she will set her

own lights in the darkness.

Ferrer--Ferrer is with the immortals. His work is spreading over the

world; it will yet return, and rid Spain of its tyrants.

Modern Educational Reform

Questions of genuine importance to large masses of people, are not posed

by a single questioner, nor even by a limited number. They are put with

more or less precision, with more or less consciousness of their scope

and demand by all classes involved. This is a fair test of its being a

genuine question, rather than a temporary fad. Such is the test we are

to apply to the present inquiry, What is wrong with our present method

of Child Education? What is to be done in the way of altering or

abolishing it?

The posing of the question acquired a sudden prominence, through the

world-shocking execution of a great educator for alleged complicity in

the revolutionary events of Spain during the Moroccan war. People were

not satisfied with the Spanish government's declarations as to this

official murder; they were not convinced that they were being told the

truth. They inquired why the Government should be so anxious for that

man's death. And they learned that as a teacher he had founded schools

wherein ideas hostile to governmental programs for learning, were put in

practice. And they have gone on asking to know what these ideas were,

how they were taught, and how can those same ideas be applied to the

practical questions of education confronting them in the persons of

their own children.

But it would be a very great mistake to suppose that the question was

raised out of nothingness, or out of the brilliancy of his own mind, by

Francisco Ferrer. If it were, if he were the creator of the question

instead of the response to it, his martyr's death could have given it

but an ephemeral prominence which would speedily have subsided.

On the contrary, the inquiry stimulated by that tragic death was but the

first loud articulation of what has been asked in thousands of

school-rooms, millions of homes, all over the civilized world. It has

been put, by each of the three classes concerned, each in its own

peculiar way, from its own peculiar viewpoint,--by the Educator, by the

Parent, and by the Child itself.

There is a fourth personage who has had a great deal to say, and still

has; but to my mind he is a pseudo-factor, to be eliminated as speedily

as possible. I mean the "Statesman." He considers himself profoundly

important, as representing the interests of society in general. He is

anxious for the formation of good citizens to support the State, and

directs education in such channels as he thinks will produce these.

I prefer to leave the discussion of his peculiar functions for a later

part of this address, here observing only that if he is a legitimate

factor, if by chance he is a genuine educator strayed into

statesmanship, _as_ a statesman he is interested only from a secondary

motive; i. e., he is not interested in the actual work of schools, in

the children as persons, but in the producing of a certain type of

character to serve certain subsequent ends.

The criticism offered by the child itself upon the prevailing system of

instruction, is the most simple,--direct; and at the same time, the

critic is utterly unconscious of its force. Who has not heard a child

say, in that fretted whine characteristic of a creature who knows its

protest will be ineffective: "But what do I have to learn that

for?"--"Oh, I don't see what I have to know that for; I can't remember

it anyway." "I hate to go to school; I'd just as lief take a whipping!"

"My teacher's a mean old thing; she expects you to sit quiet the whole

morning, and if you just make the least little noise, she keeps you in

at recess. Why do we have to keep still so long? What good does it do?"

I remember well the remark made to me once by one of my teachers--and a

very good teacher, too, who nevertheless did not see what her own

observation ought to have suggested. "School-children," she said,

"regard teachers as their natural enemies." The thought which it would

have been logical to suppose would have followed this observation is,

that if children in general are possessed of that notion, it is because

there is a great deal in the teacher's treatment of them which runs

counter to the child's nature: that possibly this is so, not because of

natural cussedness on the part of the child, but because of

inapplicability of the knowledge taught, or the manner of teaching it,

or both, to the mental and physical needs of the child. I am quite sure

no such thought entered my teacher's mind,--at least regarding the

system of knowledge to be imposed; being a sensible woman, she perhaps

occasionally admitted to herself that she might make mistakes in

applying the rules, but that the body of knowledge to be taught was

indispensable, and must somehow be injected into children's heads, under

threat of punishment, if necessary, I am sure she never questioned. It

did not occur to her any more than to most teachers, that the first

business of an educator should be to find out what are the needs,

aptitudes, and tendencies of children, before he or she attempts to

outline a body of knowledge to be taught, or rules for teaching it. It

does not occur to them that the child's question, "What do I have to

learn that for?" is a perfectly legitimate question; and if the teacher

cannot answer it to the child's satisfaction, something is wrong either

with the thing taught, or with the teaching; either the thing taught is

out of rapport with the child's age, or his natural tendencies, or his

condition of development; or the method by which it is taught repels

him, disgusts him, or at best fails to interest him.

When a child says, "I don't see why I have to know that; I can't

remember it anyway," he is voicing a very reasonable protest. Of course,

there are plenty of instances of wilful shirking, where a little effort

can overcome the slackness of memory; but every teacher who is honest

enough to reckon with himself knows he cannot give a sensible reason why

things are to be taught which have so little to do with the child's life

that to-morrow, or the day after examination, they will be forgotten;

things which he himself could not remember were he not repeating them

year in and year out, as a matter of his trade. And every teacher who

has thought at all for himself about the essential nature of the young

humanity he is dealing with, knows that six hours of daily herding and

in-penning of young, active bodies and limbs, accompanied by the

additional injunction that no feet are to be shuffled, no whispers

exchanged, and no paper wads thrown, is a frightful violation of all the

laws of young life. Any gardener who should attempt to raise healthy,

beautiful, and fruitful plants by outraging all those plants'

instinctive wants and searchings, would meet as his reward--sickly

plants, ugly plants, sterile plants, dead plants. He will not do it; he

will watch very carefully to see whether they like much sunlight, or

considerable shade, whether they thrive on much water or get drowned in

it, whether they like sandy soil, or fat mucky soil; the plant itself

will indicate to him when he is doing the right thing. And every

gardener will watch for indications with great anxiety. If he finds the

plant revolts against his experiments, he will desist at once, and try

something else; if he finds it thrives, he will emphasize the particular

treatment so long as it seems beneficial. But what he will surely not

do, will be to prepare a certain area of ground all just alike, with

equal chances of sun and amount of moisture in every part, and then

plant everything together without discrimination,--mighty close

together!--saying beforehand, "If plants don't want to thrive on this,

they ought to want to; and if they are stubborn about it, they must be

made to."

Or if a raiser of animals were to start in feeding them on a regimen

adapted not to their tastes but to his; if he were to insist on stuffing

the young ones with food only fitted for the older ones; if he were to

shut them up and compel them somehow to be silent, stiff, and motionless

for hours together,--he would--well, he would very likely be arrested

for cruelty to animals.

Of course there is this difference between the grower of plants or

animals and the grower of children; the former is dealing with his

subject as a superior power with a force which will always remain

subject to his, while the latter is dealing with a force which is bound

to become his equal, and taking it in the long and large sense, bound

ultimately to supersede him. The fear of "the footfalls of the young

generation" is in his ears, whether he is aware of it or not, and he

instinctively does what every living thing seeks to do; viz., to

preserve his power. Since he cannot remain forever the superior, the

dictator, he endeavors to put a definite mould upon that power which he

must share--to have the child learn what he has learned, as he has

learned it, and to the same end that he has learned it.

The grower of flowers, or fruits, or vegetables, or the raiser of

animals, secure in his forever indisputable superiority, has nothing to

fear when he inquires into the ways of his subjects; he will never

think: "But if I heed such and such manifestation of the flower's or the

animal's desire or repulsion, it will develop certain tendencies as a

result, which will eventually overturn me and mine, and all that I

believe in and labor to preserve." The grower of children is perpetually

beset by this fear. He must not listen to a child's complaint against

the school: it breaks down the mutual relation of authority and

obedience; it destroys the faith of the child that his olders know

better than he; it sets up little centers of future rebellion in the

brain of every child affected by the example. No: complaint as to the

wisdom of the system must be discouraged, ignored, frowned down, crushed

by superior dignity; if necessary, punished. The very best answer a

child ever gets to its legitimate inquiry, "Why do I have to learn such

and such a thing?" is, "Wait till you get older, and you will understand

it all. Just now you are a little too young to understand the

reasons."--(In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the answerer got the

same reply to his own question twenty years before; and he has never

found out since, either). "Do as we tell you to, now," say the teachers,

"and be sure that we are instructing you for your good. The explanations

will become clear to you some time." And the child smothers his

complaint, cramps his poor little body to the best of his ability, and

continues to repeat definitions which mean nothing to him but strings of

long words, and rules which to him are simply torture--apparatus

invented by his "natural enemies" to plague children.--I recall quite

distinctly the bitter resentment I felt toward the inverted divisor. The

formula was easy enough to remember: "Invert the terms of the divisor

and proceed as in multiplication of fractions." I memorized it in less

than a minute, and followed the prescription, and got my examples,

correct. But "Oh, how, how was the miracle accomplished? Why should a

fraction be made to stand on its head? and how did that change a

division suddenly into a multiplication?"--And I never found out till I

undertook to teach some one else, years afterward. Yet the thing could

have been made plain then; perhaps would have been, but for the fact

that as a respectful pupil I was so trained to think that my teachers'

methods must not be questioned or their explanations reflected upon,

that I sat mute, mystified, puzzled, and silently indignant. In the end

I swallowed it as I did a lot of other "pre-digested" knowledge (?) and

consented to use its miraculous nature, very much as my Christian

friends use the body and blood of Christ to "wash their sins away"

without very well understanding the modus operandi.

Another advantage which the botanical or zoölogical cultivator has over

the child-grower, by which incidentally the plants and animals profit,

is that since he is not seeking to produce a universal type, but rather

to develop as many new and interesting types as he can, he is very

studious to notice the inclinations of his subjects, observing possible

beginnings of differentiation, and adapting his treatment to the

development of such beginnings. Of course he also does what no

child-cultivator could possibly do,--he ruthlessly destroys weaklings;

and as the superior intermeddling divinity, he fosters those special

types which are more serviceable to himself, irrespective of whether

they are more serviceable to plant or animal life apart from man.

But is the fact that children are of the same race as ourselves, the

fact that their development should be regarded from the point of how

best shall they serve themselves, their own race and generation, not

that of a discriminating overlord, assuming the power of life and death

over them,--a reason for us to disregard their tendencies, aptitudes,

likes and dislikes, altogether?--a reason for us to treat their natural

manifestations of non-adaptation to our methods of treatment with less

consideration than we give to a fern or a hare? I should, on the

contrary, suppose it was a reason to consider them all the more.

I think the difficulty lies in the immeasurable vanity of the human

adult, particularly the pedagogical adult, (I presume I may say it with

less offense since I am a teacher myself), which does not permit him to

recognize as good any tendency in children to fly in the face of his

conceptions of a correct human being; to recognize that may be here is

something highly desirable, to be encouraged, rather than destroyed as

pernicious. A flower-gardener doesn't expect to make another voter or

householder out of his fern, so he lets it show what it wants to be,

without being at all horrified at anything it does; but your teacher has

usually well-defined conceptions of what men and women have to be. And

if a boy is too lively, too noisy, too restless, too curious, to suit

the concept, he must be trimmed and subdued. And if he is lazy, he has

to be spurred with all sorts of whips, which are offensive both to the

handler and the handled. The weapons of shaming and arousing the spirit

of rivalry are two which are much used,--the former with sometimes fatal

results, as in the case of the nine year old boy who recently committed

suicide because his teacher drew attention to his torn coat, or young

girls who have worried themselves into fevers from a scornful word

respecting their failures in scholarship, and arousing rivalry brings an

evil train behind it of spites and jealousies. I do not say, as some

enthusiasts do, "there are no bad children," or "there are no lazy

children"; but I am quite sure that both badness and laziness often

result from lack of understanding and lack of adaptation; and that these

can only be attained by teachers comprehending that they must seek to

understand as well as to be understood. Badness is sometimes only dammed

up energy, which can no more help flooding over than dammed up water.

Laziness is often the result of forcing a child to a task for which it

has no natural liking, while it would be energetic enough, given the

thing it liked to do.

At any rate, it is worth while to try to find out what is the matter, in

the spirit of a searcher after truth. Which is the first point I want to

establish: That the general complaints of children are true criticisms

of the school system; and Superintendents of Public Instruction, Boards

of Education, and Teachers have as their first duty to heed and consider

these complaints.

Let us now consider the complaints of parents. It must be admitted that

the parents of young children, particularly their mothers, and

especially these latter when they are the wives of workingmen with

good-sized families, regard the school rather as a convenience for

getting rid of the children during a certain period of the day than

anything else. They are not to be blamed for this. They have obeyed the

imperative mandate of nature in having families, with no very adequate

conception of what they were doing; they find themselves burdened with

responsibilities often greatly beyond their capacity. They have all they

can do, sometimes more than they can do, to manage the financial end of

things, to see to their children's material wants and to get through

the work of a house; very often they are themselves deficient in even

the elementary knowledge of the schools; they feel that their children

need to know a great deal that they have never known, but they are

utterly without the ability to say whether what they learn is useful and

important or not. With the helplessness of ignorance towards wisdom,

they receive the system provided by the State on trust, presuming it is

good; and with the pardonable relief of busy and overburdened people,

they look at the clock as school hour approaches, and breathe a sigh of

relief when the last child is out of the house. They would be shocked at

the idea that they regard their children as nuisances; they would

vigorously defend themselves by saying that they feel that the children

are in better hands than their own, safe and well treated. But before

long even these ignorant ones observe that their children have learned a

number of things which are not good. They have mixed with a crowd of

others, and somewhere among them they have learned bad language, bad

ideas, and bad habits. These are complaints which may be heard from

intelligent, educated, and conservative parents also,--parents who may

be presumed to be satisfied with the spirit and general purpose of the

knowledge imparted in the class-room. Also the children suffer in health

through their schools; and later on, when the cramming and crowding of

their brains goes on in earnest, as it does in the higher grades, and

particularly the High Schools, Oh then springs up a terrible crop of

headache, nervous prostration, hysterics, over-delicacy, anaemia,

heart-palpitation (especially among the girls), and a harvest of other

physical disorders which were very probably planted back in the primary

departments, and fostered in the higher rooms. The students are so

overtrained that they often "become good for nothing in the house," the

parents say, and too late the mothers discover that they themselves

become servants to the whimsical little ladies and gentlemen they have

raised up, who are more interested in text-books than in practical

household matters.

Such are the ordinary complaints heard on every side, uttered by those

who really have no fault to find with the substance of the instruction

itself,--some because they do not know, and some because it fairly

represents their own ideas.

The complaint becomes much more vital and definite when it proceeds from

a parent who is an informed person, with a conception of life at

variance with that commonly accepted. I will instance that of a

Philadelphia physician, who recently said to me: "In my opinion many of

the most horrid effects of malformations which I have to deal with, are

the results of the long hours of sitting imposed on children in the

schools. It is impossible for a healthy active creature to sit stiffly

straight so many hours; no one can do it. They will inevitably twist and

squirm themselves down into one position or another which throws the

internal organs out of position, and which by iteration and reiteration

results in a continuously accentuating deformity. Motherhood often

becomes extremely painful and dangerous through the narrowing of the

pelvis produced in early years of so much uncomfortable sitting. I

believe that the sort of schooling which necessitates it should not

begin till a child is fourteen years of age."

He added also that the substance of our education should be such as

would fit the person for the conditions and responsibilities he or she

may reasonably be expected to encounter in life. Since the majority of

boys and girls will most likely become fathers and mothers in the

future, why does not our system of education take account of it, and

instruct the children not in the Latin names of bones and muscles so

much, as in the practical functioning and hygiene of the body? Every

teacher knows, and most of our parents know, that no subject is more

carefully ignored by our text-books on physiology than the reproductive

system.

A like book on zoölogy has far more to say about the reproduction of

animals than is thought fit to be said by human beings to human beings

about themselves. And yet upon such ignorance often depends the ruin of

lives. Such is the criticism of an intelligent physician, himself the

father of five children. It is a typical complaint of those who have to

deal with the physical results of our school system.

A still more forcible complaint is rising up from a class of parents who

object not only negatively, but positively, to the instruction of the

schools. These are saying: I do not want to have my children taught

things which are positively untrue, nor truths which have been distorted

to fit some one's political or religious conception. I do not want any

sort of religion or politics to be put into his head. I want the

accepted facts of natural science and discovery to be taught him, in so

far as they are within the grasp of his intellect. I do not want them

colored with the prejudice of any system. I want a school system which

will be suited to his physical well-being. I want what he learns to

become his, by virtue of its appealing to his taste, his aptitude for

experiment and proof; I do not want it to be a foreign stream pouring

over his lips like a brook over its bed, leaving nothing behind. I do

not want him to be tortured with formal examinations, nor worried by

credit marks with averages and per cents and tenths of per cents, which

haunt him waking and sleeping, as if they were the object of his

efforts. And more than that, and above all, I do not want him made an

automaton. I do not want him to become abjectly obedient. I do not want

his free initiative destroyed. I want him, by virtue of his education,

to be well-equipped bodily and mentally to face life and its problems.

This is my second point: That parents, conservatives and radicals,

criticise the school

1st, As the producer of unhealthy bodies;

2d, As teaching matter inappropriate to life; or rather, perhaps, as not

teaching what is appropriate to life;

3d, As perverting truth to serve a political and religious system; and

as putting an iron mould upon the will of youth, destroying all

spontaneity and freedom of expression.

The third critic is the teacher. Owing to his peculiarly dependent

position, it is very, very seldom that any really vital criticism comes

out of the mouth of an ordinary employé in the public school service:

first, if he has any subversive ideas, he dares not voice them for fear

of his job; second, it is extremely unlikely that any one with

subversive ideas either will apply for the job, or having applied, will

get it; and third, if through some fortuitous combination of

circumstances, a rebellious personage has smuggled himself into the

camp, with the naive notion that he is going to work reforms in the

system, he finds before long that the system is rather remoulding him;

he falls into the routine prescribed, and before long ceases to struggle

against it.

Still, however conservative and system-logged teachers may be, they will

all agree upon one criticism; viz., that they have too much to do; that

it is utterly impossible for them to do justice to every pupil; that

with from thirty to fifty pupils all depending upon one teacher for

instruction, it is out of the question to give any single one

sufficient attention, to say nothing of any special attention which his

peculiar backwardness might require. He could do so only at the expense

of injustice to the rest.

And, indeed, the best teacher in the world could not attend properly to

the mental needs of fifty children, nor even of thirty. Furthermore,

this overcrowding makes necessary the stiff regulation, the formal

discipline, in the maintenance of which so much of the teacher's energy

is wasted. The everlasting roll-call, the record of tardiness and

absence, the eye forever on the watch to see who is whispering, the ear

forever on the alert to catch the scraper of feet, the mischievous

disturber, the irrepressible noisemaker; with such a divided and

subdivided attention, how is it possible to teach?

Here and there we find a teacher with original ideas, not of subjects to

be taught, but of the means of teaching. Sometimes there is one who

inwardly revolts at what he has to teach, and takes such means as he can

to counteract the glorifications of political aggrandizement, with which

our geographies and histories are redolent.

In general, however, public school teachers, like government clerks,

believe very much in the system whereby they live.

What they do find fault with, and what they have very much reason to

find fault with, is not the school system, but the counteracting

influences of bad homes. Teachers are often heard to say that they think

they could do far better with the children, if they had entire control

of them, or, as they more commonly express themselves, "if only their

parents had some common sense!" Lessons of order, neatness, cleanliness,

and hygiene, are often entirely thrown away, because the children regard

them as statements to be memorized, not things to be practised.

Those children whose mothers know nothing of ventilation, the necessity

for exercise, the chemistry of food, and the functioning of the organs

of the body, will forget instructions because they are never made part

of their lives. (Which criticism is a sort of confirmation of that sage

observation: "If you want to reform a man, begin with his grandmother.")

So much for criticism.

What, now, can we offer in the way of suggestions for reform? Speaking

abstractly, I should say that the purpose of education should be to

furnish a child with such fundamental knowledge and habits as will

preserve and strengthen his body, and make him a self-reliant social

being, having an all-around acquaintance with the life which is to

surround him and an adaptability to circumstances which will render him

able to meet varying conditions.

But we are immediately confronted by certain practical queries, when we

attempt to conceive such a school system.

The fact is that the training of the body should be begun in very early

childhood; and can never be rightly done in a city. No other animal than

man ever conceived such a frightful apparatus for depriving its young of

the primary rights of physical existence as the human city. The mass of

our city children know very little of nature. What they have learned of

it through occasional picnics, excursions, visits in the country, etc.,

they have learned as a foreign thing, having little relation to

themselves; their "natural" habitat is one of lifeless brick and mortar,

wire and iron, poles, pavements, and noise. Yet all this ought to be

utterly foreign to children. _This_ ought to be the thing visited once

in a while, not lived in.

There is no pure air in a city; it is _all_ poisoned. Yet the first

necessity of lunged animals--especially little ones--is pure air.

Moreover, every child ought to know the names and ways of life of the

things it eats; how to grow them, etc. How are gardens possible in a

city? Every child should know trees, not as things he has read about,

but as familiar presences in his life, which he recognizes as quickly as

his eyes greet them. He should know his oneness with nature, not through

the medium of a theory, but through feeling it daily and hourly. He

should know the birds by their songs, and by the quick glimpse of them

among the foliage; the insect in its home, the wild flower on its stalk,

the fruit where it hangs. Can this be done in a city?

It is the city that is wrong, and its creations can never be right; they

may be improved; they can never be what they should.

Let me quote Luther Burbank here: he expressed so well, and just in the

tumultuous disorder and un-coordination dear to a child's soul, the

early rights of children. "Every child should have mud-pies,

grasshoppers, water-bugs, tadpoles, frogs, mud-turtles, elderberries,

wild strawberries, acorns, chestnuts, trees to climb, brooks to wade in,

water-lilies, woodchucks, bats, bees, butterflies, various animals to

pet, hay-fields, pine-cones, rocks to roll, sand, snakes, huckleberries,

and hornets; and any child who has been deprived of these has been

deprived of the best part of his education." He is of opinion that until

ten years of age, these things should be the real educators of

children,--not books. I agree with him. But neither city homes nor city

schools can give children these things. Furthermore, I believe that

education should be integral; that the true school must combine physical

and intellectual education from the beginning to the end. But I am

confronted by the fact that this is impossible to the mass of the

people, because of the economic condition in which we are all

floundering.

What is possible can be only a compromise. Physical education will go on

in the home principally, and intellectual education in the school.

Something might be done to organize the teaching of parents; lectures

and demonstrations at the public schools might be given weekly, in the

evenings, for parents, by competent nurses or hygienists. But they would

remain largely ineffective. Until the whole atrocious system of herding

working people in close-built cities, by way of making them serviceable

cogwheels in the capitalistic machine for grinding out rent and profit,

comes to an end, the physical education of children will remain at best

a pathetic compromise.

We have left to consider what may be done in the way of improving

intellectual education. What is really necessary for a child to know

which he is not taught now? and what is taught that is unnecessary?

As to reading and writing there is no dispute, though there is much

dispute about the way of doing it. But beyond that children should

know--_things_; from their earlier school days they should know the

geography of their own locality, not rehearsing it from a book, but by

going over the ground, having the relations of places explained to them,

and by being shown how to model relief maps themselves. They should know

the indications of the weather, being taught the use of instruments for

measuring air-pressures, temperatures, amount of sunshine, etc.; they

should know the special geology of their own locality, the nature of the

soil and its products, through practical exhibition; they should be

allowed to construct, from clay, stone, or brick, such little buildings

as they usually like to make, and from them the simple principles of

geometry taught. You see, every school needs a big yard, and play-rooms

with tools in them,--the use of which tools they should be taught.

Arithmetic, to be sure, they need to know--but arithmetic connected with

things. Let them learn fractions by cutting up things and putting them

together, and not be bothered by abstractions running into the hundreds

of thousands, the millions, which never in time will they use. And drop

all that tiresome years' work in interest and per cent; if decimals are

understood, every one who has need will be amply able to work out

systems of interest when necessary.

Children should know the industrial life through which they live, into

which they are probably going. They should see how cloth is woven,

thread is spun, shoes are made, iron forged and wrought; again not alone

by written description, but by eye-witness. They should, as they grow

older, learn the history of the arts of peace.

What they do not need to know, is so much of the details of the history

of destruction; the general facts and results of wars are sufficient.

They do not need to be impressed with the details of killings, which

they sensibly forget, and inevitably also.

Moreover, the revolting patriotism which is being inculcated, whereby

children learn to be proud of their country, not for its contributions

to the general enlightenment of humanity, but for its crimes against

humanity; whereby they are taught to consider themselves, their country,

their flag, their institutions, as things to be upheld and maintained,

right or wrong; whereby the stupid and criminal life of the soldier is

exalted as honorable, should be wholly omitted from the educational

system.

However, it is utterly impossible to expect that it will be, by anything

short of general public sentiment against it; and at present such

sentiment is for it. I have alluded before to the function of the

statesman in directing education. So long as schools are maintained by

governments, the Statesman, not the true educator, will determine what

sort of history is to be taught; and it will be what it is now, only

continually growing worse. Political institutions must justify

themselves to the young generation. They begin by training childish

minds to believe that what they do is to be accepted, not criticised. A

history becomes little better than a catechism of patriotic formulas in

glorification of the State.

Now there is no way of escaping this, for those who disapprove it, short

of eliminating the statesman, establishing voluntarily supported

schools, wherein wholly different notions shall be taught; in which the

spirit of teaching history shall be one of honest statement and fearless

criticism; wherein the true image of war and the army and all that it

means shall be honestly given.

The really Ideal School, which would not be a compromise, would be a

boarding school built in the country, having a farm attached, and

workshops where useful crafts might be learned, in daily connection with

intellectual training. It presupposes teachers able to train little

children to habits of health, order, and neatness, in the utmost detail,

and yet not tyrants or rigid disciplinarians. In free contact with

nature, the children would learn to use their limbs as nature meant,

feel their intimate relationship with the growing life of other sorts,

form a profound respect for work and an estimate of the value of it;

wish to become real doers in the world, and not mere gatherers in of

other men's products; and with the respect for work, the appreciation of

work, the desire to work, will come the pride of the true workman who

will know how to maintain his dignity and the dignity of what he does.

At present the major portion of our working people are sorry they are

working people (as they have good reason to be). They take little joy or

pride in what they do; they consider themselves as less gifted and less

valuable persons in society than those who have amassed wealth and, by

virtue of that amassment, live upon their employees; or those who by

attaining book knowledge have gotten out of the field of manual

production, and lead an easier life. They educate their children in the

hope that these, at least, may attain that easier existence, without

work, which has been beyond them. Even when such parents themselves have

dreams of a reorganization of society, wherein all shall labor and all

have leisure due, they impress upon the children that no one should be a

common workingman if he can help it. Workingmen are slaves, and it is

not well to be a slave.

Our radicals fail to realize that to accomplish the reorganization of

work, it is necessary to have _workers_,--and workers with the free

spirit, the rebellious spirit, which will consider its own worth and

refuse to accept the slavish conditions of capitalism. These must be

bred in schools where work is done, and done proudly, and in full

consciousness of its value; where the dubious services of the capitalist

will likewise be rated at their true worth; and no man reckoned as above

another, unless he has done a greater social service. Where political

institutions and the politicians who operate them--judges, lawmakers, or

executives--will be candidly criticised, and repudiated when justice

dictates so, whether in the teaching of their past history, or their

present actions in current events.

Whether the workers, upon whom so many drains are already made, will be

able to establish and maintain such schools, is a question to be solved

upon trial through their organizations.

The question is, Will you breed men for the service of the Cannon, to be

aimed at you in the hour of Strikes and Revolts, men to uphold the

machine which is crushing you, or will you train them in the knowledge

of the true worth of Labor and a determination to reorganize it as it

should be?

Sex Slavery

Night in a prison cell! A chair, a bed, a small washstand, four blank

walls, ghastly in the dim light from the corridor without, a narrow

window, barred and sunken in the stone, a grated door! Beyond its

hideous iron latticework, within the ghastly walls,--a man! An old man,

gray-haired and wrinkled, lame and suffering. There he sits, in his

great loneliness, shut in from all the earth. There he walks, to and

fro, within his measured space, apart from all he loves! There, for

every night in five long years to come, he will walk alone, while the

white age-flakes drop upon his head, while the last years of the winter

of life gather and pass, and his body draws near the ashes. Every night,

for five long years to come, he will sit alone, this chattel slave,

whose hard toil is taken by the State,--and without recompense save that

the Southern planter gave his negroes,--every night he will sit there so

within those four white walls. Every night, for five long years to come,

a suffering woman will lie upon her bed, longing, longing for the end of

those three thousand days; longing for the kind face, the patient hand,

that in so many years had never failed her. Every night, for five long

years to come, the proud spirit must rebel, the loving heart must bleed,

the broken home must lie desecrated. As I am speaking now, as you are

listening, there within the cell of that accursed penitentiary whose

stones have soaked up the sufferings of so many victims, murdered, as

truly as any outside their walls, by that slow rot which eats away

existence inch-meal,--as I am speaking now, as you are listening, _there

sits Moses Harman_!

Why? Why, when murder now is stalking in your streets, when dens of

infamy are so thick within your city that competition has forced down

the price of prostitution to the level of the wages of your starving

shirt-makers; when robbers sit in State and national Senate and House,

when the boasted "bulwark of our liberties," the elective franchise, has

become a U. S. dice-box, wherewith great gamblers play away your

liberties; when debauchees of the worst type hold all your public

offices and dine off the food of fools who support them, why, then, sits

Moses Harman there within his prison cell? If he is so _great_ a

criminal, why is he not with the rest of the spawn of crime, dining at

Delmonico's or enjoying a trip to Europe? If he is so bad a man, why in

the name of wonder did he ever get in the penitentiary?

Ah, no; it is not because he has done any evil thing; but because he, a

pure enthusiast, searching, searching always for the cause of misery of

the kind which he loved with that broad love of which only the pure soul

is capable, searched for the data of evil. And searching so he found the

vestibule of life to be a prison cell; the holiest and purest part of

the temple of the body, if indeed one part can be holier or purer than

another, the altar where the most devotional love in truth should be

laid, he found this altar ravished, despoiled, trampled upon. He found

little babies, helpless, voiceless little things, generated in lust,

cursed with impure moral natures, cursed, prenatally, with the germs of

disease, forced into the world to struggle and to suffer, to hate

themselves, to hate their mothers for bearing them, to hate society and

to be hated by it in return,--a bane upon self and race, draining the

lees of crime. And he said, this felon with the stripes upon his body,

"Let the mothers of the race go free! Let the little children be pure

love children, born of the mutual desire for parentage. Let the manacles

be broken from the shackled slave, that no more slaves be born, no more

tyrants conceived."

He looked, this obscenist, looked with clear eyes into this ill-got

thing you call morality, sealed with the seal of marriage, and saw in it

the consummation of _im_morality, impurity, and injustice. He beheld

every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's

name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's

passion; who passes through the ordeal of pregnancy and the throes of

travail at _his_ dictation,--not at her desire; who can control no

property, not even her own body, without his consent, and from whose

straining arms the children she bears may be torn at his pleasure, or

willed away while they are yet unborn. It is said the English language

has a sweeter word than any other,--_home_. But Moses Harman looked

beneath the word and saw the fact,--a prison more horrible than that

where he is sitting now, whose corridors radiate over all the earth, and

with so many cells, that none may count them.

Yes, our Masters! The earth is a prison, the marriage-bed is a cell,

women are the prisoners, and you are the keepers!

He saw, this corruptionist, how in those cells are perpetrated such

outrages as are enough to make the cold sweat stand upon the forehead,

and the nails clench, and the teeth set, and the lips grow white in

agony and hatred. And he saw too how from those cells might none come

forth to break her fetters, how no slave dare cry out, how all these

murders are done quietly, beneath the shelter-shadow of home, and

sanctified by the angelic benediction of a piece of paper, within the

silence-shade of a marriage certificate, Adultery and Rape stalk freely

and at ease.

Yes, for that is adultery where woman submits herself sexually to man,

without desire on her part, for the sake of "keeping him virtuous,"

"keeping him at home," the women say. (Well, if a man did not love me

and respect himself enough to be "virtuous" without prostituting me, he

might go, and welcome. He has no virtue to keep.) And that is rape,

where a man forces himself sexually upon a woman whether he is licensed

by the marriage law to do it or not. And that is the vilest of all

tyranny where a man compels the woman he says he loves, to endure the

agony of bearing children that she does not want, and for whom, as is

the rule rather than the exception, they cannot properly provide. It is

worse than any other human oppression; it is fairly _God_-like! To the

sexual tyrant there is no parallel upon earth; one must go to the skies

to find a fiend who thrusts life upon his children only to starve and

curse and outcast and damn them! And only through the marriage law is

such tyranny possible. The man who deceives a woman outside of marriage

(and mind you, such a man will deceive _in_ marriage too) may deny his

own child, if he is mean enough. He cannot tear it from her arms--he

cannot touch it! The girl he wronged, thanks to your very pure and

tender morality-standard, may die in the street for want of food. _He_

cannot force his hated presence upon her again. But his wife, gentlemen,

his wife, the woman he respects so much that he consents to let her

merge her individuality into his, lose her identity and become his

chattel, his wife he may not only force unwelcome children upon, outrage

at his own good pleasure, and keep as a general cheap and convenient

piece of furniture, but if she does not get a divorce (and she cannot

for such cause) he can follow her wherever she goes, come into her

house, eat her food, force her into the cell, _kill_ her by virtue of

his sexual authority! And she has no redress unless he is indiscreet

enough to abuse her in some less brutal but unlicensed manner. I know a

case in your city where a woman was followed so for ten years by her

husband. I believe he finally developed grace enough to die; please

applaud him for the only decent thing he ever did.

Oh, is it not rare, all this talk about the preservation of morality by

marriage law! O splendid carefulness to preserve that which you have not

got! O height and depth of purity, which fears so much that the children

will not know who their fathers are, because, forsooth, they must rely

upon their mother's word instead of the hired certification of some

priest of the Church, or the Law! I wonder if the children would be

improved to know what their fathers have done. I would rather, much

rather, not know who my father was than know he had been a tyrant to my

mother. I would rather, much rather, be illegitimate according to the

statutes of men, than illegitimate according to the unchanging law of

Nature. For what is it to be legitimate, born "according to law"? It is

to be, nine cases out of ten, the child of a man who acknowledges his

fatherhood simply because he is forced to do so, and whose conception of

virtue is realized by the statement that "a woman's duty is to keep her

husband at home"; to be the child of a woman who cares more for the

benediction of Mrs. Grundy than the simple honor of her lover's word,

and conceives prostitution to be purity and duty when exacted of her by

her husband. It is to have Tyranny as your progenitor, and slavery as

your prenatal cradle. It is to run the risk of unwelcome birth, "legal"

constitutional weakness, morals corrupted before birth, possibly a

murder instinct, the inheritance of excessive sexuality or no sexuality,

either of which is disease. It is to have the value of a piece of paper,

a rag from the tattered garments of the "Social Contract," set above

health, beauty, talent or goodness; for I never yet had difficulty in

obtaining the admission that illegitimate children are nearly always

prettier and brighter than others, even from conservative women. And how

supremely disgusting it is to see them look from their own puny, sickly,

lust-born children, upon whom lie the chain-traces of their own terrible

servitude, look from these to some healthy, beautiful "natural" child,

and say, "What a pity its _mother_ wasn't virtuous!" Never a word about

_their_ children's fathers' virtue, they know too much! Virtue! Disease,

stupidity, criminality! What an _obscene_ thing "virtue" is!

What is it to be illegitimate? To be despised, or pitied, by those whose

spite or whose pity isn't worth the breath it takes to return it. To be,

possibly, the child of some man contemptible enough to deceive a woman;

the child of some woman whose chief crime was belief in the man she

loved. To be free from the prenatal curse of a slave mother, to come

into the world without the permission of any law-making set of tyrants

who assume to corner the earth, and say what terms the unborn must make

for the privilege of coming into existence. This is legitimacy and

illegitimacy! Choose.

The man who walks to and fro in his cell in Lansing penitentiary

to-night, this vicious man, said: "The mothers of the race are lifting

their dumb eyes to me, their sealed lips to me, their agonizing hearts

to me. They are seeking, seeking for a voice! The unborn in their

helplessness, are pleading from their prisons, pleading for a voice! The

criminals, with the unseen ban upon their souls, that has pushed them,

pushed them to the vortex, out of their whirling hells, are looking,

waiting for a voice! _I will be their voice._ I will unmask the outrages

of the marriage-bed. I will make known how criminals are born. I will

make one outcry that shall be heard, and let what will be, _be_!" He

cried out through the letter of Dr. Markland, that a young mother

lacerated by unskilful surgery in the birth of her babe, but recovering

from a subsequent successful operation, had been stabbed, remorselessly,

cruelly, brutally stabbed, not with a knife, but with the procreative

organ of her husband, stabbed to the doors of death, and yet there was

no redress!

And because he called a spade a spade, because he named that organ by

its own name, so given in Webster's dictionary and in every medical

journal in the country, because of this Moses Harman walks to and fro

in his cell to-night. He gave a concrete example of the effect of sex

slavery, and for it he is imprisoned. It remains for us now to carry

on the battle, and lift the standard where they struck him down, to

scatter broadcast the knowledge of this crime of society against a man

and the reason for it; to inquire into this vast system of licensed

crime, its cause and its effect, broadly upon the race. The Cause! Let

woman ask herself, "Why am I the slave of Man? Why is my brain said not

to be the equal of his brain? Why is my work not paid equally with his?

Why must my body be controlled by my husband? Why may he take my labor

in the household, giving me in exchange what he deems fit? Why may he

take my children from me? Will them away while yet unborn?" Let every

woman ask.

There are two reasons why, and these ultimately reducible to a single

principle--the authoritarian, supreme-power, _God_-idea, and its two

instruments, the Church--that is, the priests--and the State--that is,

the legislators.

From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood

of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or

another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical

creeds, runs the undercurrent of the belief in the fall of man through

the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her

natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until

now the Christian Church, with which we have specially to deal, has made

_woman_ the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of _man_. So

thoroughly has this idea permeated Society that numbers of those who

have utterly repudiated the Church, are nevertheless soaked in this

stupefying narcotic to true morality. So pickled is the male creation

with the vinegar of Authoritarianism, that even those who have gone

further and repudiated the State still cling to the god, Society as it

is, still hug the old theological idea that they are to be "heads of the

family"--to that wonderful formula "of simple proportion" that "Man is

the head of the Woman even as Christ is the head of the Church." No

longer than a week since an Anarchist (?) said to me, "I will be boss in

my own house"--a "Communist-Anarchist," if you please, who doesn't

believe in "_my_ house." About a year ago a noted libertarian speaker

said, in my presence, that his sister, who possessed a fine voice and

had joined a concert troupe, should "stay at home with her children;

that is _her place_." The old Church idea! This man was a Socialist, and

since an Anarchist; yet his highest idea for woman was serfhood to

husband and children, in the present mockery called "home." Stay at

home, ye malcontents! Be patient, obedient, submissive! Darn our socks,

mend our shirts, wash our dishes, get our meals, wait on us and _mind

the children_! Your fine voices are not to delight the public nor

yourselves; your inventive genius is not to work, your fine art taste is

not to be cultivated, your business faculties are not to be developed;

you made the great mistake of being born with them, suffer for your

folly! You are _women_! therefore housekeepers, servants, waiters, and

child's nurses!

At Macon, in the sixth century, says August Bebel, the fathers of the

Church met and proposed the decision of the question, "Has woman a

soul?" Having ascertained that the permission to own a nonentity wasn't

going to injure any of their parsnips, a small majority vote decided the

momentous question in our favor. Now, holy fathers, it was a tolerably

good scheme on your part to offer the reward of your pitiable "salvation

or damnation" (odds in favor of the latter) as a bait for the hook of

earthly submission; it wasn't a bad sop in those days of Faith and

Ignorance. But fortunately fourteen hundred years have made it stale.

You, tyrant radicals (?), have no heaven to offer,--you have no

delightful chimeras in the form of "merit cards"; you have (save the

mark) the respect, the good offices, the smiles--of a slave-holder! This

in return for our chains! Thanks!

The question of souls is old--we demand our bodies, now. We are tired of

promises, God is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy. Against it we

bring the charge of being the moral (or immoral) force which lies behind

the tyranny of the State. And the State has divided the loaves and

fishes with the Church, the magistrates, like the priests take marriage

fees; the two fetters of Authority have gone into partnership in the

business of granting patent-rights to parents for the privilege of

reproducing themselves, and the State cries as the Church cried of old,

and cries now: "See how we protect women!" The State has done more. It

has often been said to me, by women with decent masters, who had no idea

of the outrages practiced on their less fortunate sisters, "Why don't

the wives leave?"

Why don't you run, when your feet are chained together? Why don't you

cry out when a gag is on your lips? Why don't you raise your hands above

your head when they are pinned fast to your sides? Why don't you spend

thousands of dollars when you haven't a cent in your pocket? Why don't

you go to the seashore or the mountains, you fools scorching with city

heat? If there is one thing more than another in this whole accursed

tissue of false society, which makes me angry, it is the asinine

stupidity which with the true phlegm of impenetrable dullness says, "Why

don't the women leave!" Will you tell me where they will go and what

they shall do? When the State, the legislators, has given to itself, the

politicians, the utter and absolute control of the opportunity to live;

when, through this precious monopoly, already the market of labor is so

overstocked that workmen and workwomen are cutting each others' throats

for the dear privilege of serving their lords; when girls are shipped

from Boston to the south and north, shipped in carloads, like cattle, to

fill the dives of New Orleans or the lumber-camp hells of my own state

(Michigan), when seeing and hearing these things reported every day,

the proper prudes exclaim, "Why don't the women leave," they simply

beggar the language of contempt.

When America passed the fugitive slave law compelling men to catch their

fellows more brutally than runaway dogs, Canada, aristocratic,

unrepublican Canada, still stretched her arms to those who might reach

her. But there is no refuge upon earth for the enslaved sex. Right where

we are, there we must dig our trenches, and win or die.

This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and

man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a

favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent. toll to the

granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and

the body domination of the State are the causes of Sex Slavery.

First of all, it has introduced into the world the constructed crime of

obscenity: it has set up such a peculiar standard of morals that to

speak the names of the sexual organs is to commit the most brutal

outrage. It reminds me that in your city you have a street called

"Callowhill." Once it was called Gallows' Hill, for the elevation to

which it leads, now known as "Cherry Hill," has been the last touching

place on earth for the feet of many a victim murdered by the Law. But

the sound of the word became too harsh; so they softened it, though the

murders are still done, and the black shadow of the Gallows still hangs

on the City of Brotherly Love. Obscenity has done the same; it has

placed virtue in the shell of an idea, and labelled all "good" which

dwells within the sanction of Law and respectable (?) custom; and all

bad which contravenes the usage of the shell. It has lowered the dignity

of the human body, below the level of all other animals. Who thinks a

dog is impure or obscene because its body is not covered with

suffocating and annoying clothes? What would you think of the meanness

of a man who would put a skirt upon his horse and compel it to walk or

run with such a thing impeding its limbs? Why, the "Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" would arrest him, take the beast from

him, and he would be sent to a lunatic asylum for treatment on the score

of an _impure_ mind. And yet, gentlemen, you expect your wives, the

creatures you say you respect and love, to wear the longest skirts and

the highest necked clothing, in order to conceal the _obscene human

body_. There is no society for the prevention of cruelty to women. And

you, yourselves, though a little better, look at the heat you wear in

this roasting weather! How you curse your poor body with the wool you

steal from the sheep! How you punish yourselves to sit in a crowded

house with coats and vests on, because dead Mme. Grundy is shocked at

the "vulgarity" of shirt sleeves, or the naked arm!

Look how the ideal of beauty has been marred by this obscenity notion.

Divest yourselves of prejudice for once. Look at some fashion-slaved

woman, her waist surrounded by a high-board fence called a corset, her

shoulders and hips angular from the pressure above and below, her feet

narrowest where they should be widest, the body fettered by her

everlasting prison skirt, her hair fastened tight enough to make her

head ache and surmounted by a thing of neither sense nor beauty, called

a hat, ten to one a hump upon her back like a dromedary,--look at her,

and then imagine such a thing as that carved in marble! Fancy a statue

in Fairmount Park with a corset and bustle on. Picture to yourselves the

image of the equestrienne. We are permitted to ride, providing we sit in

a position ruinous to the horse; providing we wear a riding-habit long

enough to hide the obscene human foot, weighed down by ten pounds of

gravel to cheat the Wind in its free blowing, so running the risk of

disabling ourselves completely should accident throw us from the saddle.

Think how we swim! We must even wear clothing in the water, and run the

gauntlet of derision, if we dare battle in the surf minus stockings!

Imagine a fish trying to make headway with a water-soaked flannel

garment upon it. Nor are you yet content. The vile standard of obscenity

even kills the little babies with clothes. The human race is murdered,

horribly, "in the name of" Dress.

And in the name of Purity what lies are told! What queer morality it has

engendered. For fear of it you dare not tell your own children the truth

about their birth; the most sacred of all functions, the creation of a

human being, is a subject for the most miserable falsehood. When they

come to you with a simple, straightforward question, which they have a

right to ask, you say, "Don't ask such questions," or tell some silly

hollow-log story; or you explain the incomprehensibility by

another--God! You say "God made you." You know you are lying when you

say it. You know, or you ought to know, that the source of inquiry will

not be dammed up so. You know that what you could explain purely,

reverently, rightly (if you have any purity in you), will be learned

through many blind gropings, and that around it will be cast the

shadow-thought of wrong, embryo'd by your denial and nurtured by this

social opinion everywhere prevalent. If you do not know this, then you

are blind to facts and deaf to Experience.

Think of the double social standard the enslavement of our sex has

evolved. Women considering themselves very pure and very moral, will

sneer at the street-walker, yet admit to their homes the very men who

victimized the street-walker. Men, at their best, will pity the

prostitute, while they themselves are the worst kind of prostitutes.

Pity yourselves, gentlemen--you need it!

How many times do you see where a man or woman has shot another through

jealousy! The standard of purity has decided that it is right, "it shows

spirit," "it is justifiable" to--murder a human being for doing exactly

what you did yourself,--love the same woman or same man! Morality!

Honor! Virtue!! Passing from the moral to the physical phase; take the

statistics of any insane asylum, and you will find that, out of the

different classes, unmarried women furnish the largest one. To preserve

your cruel, vicious, indecent standard of purity (?) you drive your

daughters insane, while your wives are killed with excess. Such is

marriage. Don't take my word for it; go through the report of any asylum

or the annals of any graveyard.

Look how your children grow up. Taught from their earliest infancy to

curb their love natures--restrained at every turn! Your blasting lies

would even blacken a child's kiss. Little girls must not be tomboyish,

must not go barefoot, must not climb trees, must not learn to swim, must

not do anything they desire to do which Madame Grundy has decreed

"improper." Little boys are laughed at as effeminate, silly girl-boys if

they want to make patchwork or play with a doll. Then when they grow up,

"Oh! Men don't care for home or children as women do!" Why should they,

when the deliberate effort of your life has been to crush that nature

out of them. "Women can't rough it like men." Train any animal, or any

plant, as you train your girls, and it won't be able to rough it either.

Now _will_ somebody tell me why either sex should hold a corner on

athletic sports? Why any child should not have free use of its limbs?

These are the effects of your purity standard, your marriage law. This

is your work--look at it! Half your children dying under five years of

age, your girls insane, your married women walking corpses, your men

so bad that they themselves often admit _Prostitution holds against_

=Purity= _a bond of indebtedness_. This is the beautiful effect of your

god, Marriage, before which Natural Desire must abase and belie itself.

Be proud of it!

Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought

equity anywhere--=Liberty=! Centuries upon centuries of liberty is the

only thing that will cause the disintegration and decay of these

pestiferous ideas. Liberty was all that calmed the blood-waves of

religious persecution! You cannot cure serfhood by any other

substitution. Not for you to say "in this way shall the race love." Let

the race _alone_.

Will there not be atrocious crimes? Certainly. He is a fool who says

there will not be. But you can't stop them by committing the arch-crime

and setting a block between the spokes of Progress-wheels. You will

never get right until you start right.

As for the final outcome, it matters not one iota. I have my ideal, and

it is very pure, and very sacred to me. But yours, equally sacred, may

be different and we may both be wrong. But certain am I that with free

contract, that form of sexual association will survive which is best

adapted to time and place, thus producing the highest evolution of the

type. Whether that shall be monogamy, variety, or promiscuity matters

naught to us; it is the business of the future, to which we dare not

dictate.

For freedom spoke Moses Harman, and for this he received the felon's

brand. For this he sits in his cell to-night. Whether it is possible

that his sentence be shortened, we do not know. We can only try. Those

who would help us try, let me ask to put your signatures to this simple

request for pardon addressed to Benjamin Harrison. To those who desire

more fully to inform themselves before signing; I say: Your

conscientiousness is praiseworthy--come to me at the close of the

meeting and I will quote the exact language of the Markland letter. To

those extreme Anarchists who cannot bend their dignity to ask pardon for

an offense not committed, and of an authority they cannot recognize, let

me say: Moses Harman's back is bent, low bent, by the brute force of the

Law, and though I would never ask anyone to bow for himself, I can ask

it, and easily ask it, for him who fights the slave's battle. Your

dignity is criminal; every hour behind the bars is a seal to your

partnership with Comstock. No one can hate petitions worse than I; no

one has less faith in them than I. But for _my_ champion I am willing to

try any means that invades no other's right, even though I have little

hope in it.

If, beyond these, there are those here to-night who have ever forced

sexual servitude from a wife, those who have prostituted themselves in

the name of Virtue, those who have brought diseased, immoral or

unwelcome children to the light, without the means of provision for

them, and yet will go from this hall and say, "Moses Harman is an

unclean man--a man rewarded by just punishment," then to _you_ I say,

and may the words ring deep within your ears UNTIL YOU DIE: Go on! Drive

your sheep to the shambles! Crush that old, sick, crippled man beneath

your Juggernaut! In the name of Virtue, Purity and Morality, do it! In

the name of God, Home, and Heaven, do it! In the name of the Nazarene

who preached the golden rule, do it! In the name of Justice, Principle,

and Honor, do it! In the name of Bravery and Magnanimity put yourself on

the side of the robber in the government halls, the murderer in the

political convention, the libertine in public places, the whole brute

force of the police, the constabulary, the court, and the penitentiary,

to persecute one poor old man who stood alone against your licensed

crime! Do it. And if Moses Harman dies within your "Kansas Hell," be

satisfied _when you have murdered him_! Kill him! And you hasten the day

when the Future shall bury you ten thousand fathoms deep beneath its

curses. Kill him! And the stripes upon his prison clothes shall lash you

like the knout! Kill him! And the insane shall glitter hate at you with

their wild eyes, the unborn babes shall cry their blood upon you, and

the graves that you have filled in the name of Marriage, shall yield

food for a race that will pillory you, until the memory of your atrocity

has become a nameless ghost, flitting with the shades of Torquemada,

Calvin and Jehovah over the horizon of the World!

Would you smile to see him dead? Would you say, "We are rid of this

obscenist"? Fools! The corpse would laugh at you from its cold eyelids!

The motionless lips would mock, and the solemn hands, the pulseless,

folded hands, in their quietness would write the last indictment, which

neither Time nor you can efface. Kill him! And you write his glory and

your shame! Moses Harman in his felon stripes stands far above you now,

and Moses Harman _dead_ will live on, immortal in the race he died to

free! Kill him!

Literature the Mirror of Man

Perhaps I had better say the Mirror-reflection,--the reflection of all

that he has been and is, the hinting fore-flashing of something of what

he may become. In so considering it, let it be understood that I speak

of no particular form of literature, but the entire body of a people's

expressed thought, preserved either traditionally, in writing, or in

print.

The majority of lightly thinking, fairly read people, who make use of

the word "literature" rather easily, do so with a very indistinct idea

of its content. To them it usually means a certain limited form of human

expression, chiefly works of the imagination--poetry, drama, the various

forms of the novel. History, philosophy, science are rather frowning

names,--stern second cousins, as it were, to the beguiling companions of

their pleasant leisure hours,--not legitimately "literature."

Biography,--well, it depends on who writes it! If it can be made so much

like a work of fiction that the subject sketched serves the purposes of

a fictive hero, why then--maybe.

To such talkers about literature, evidence of familiarity with it, and

title to have one's opinions thereon asked and respected, are witnessed

by the ability to run glibly off the names of the personages in the

dramas of Ibsen, Björnson, Maeterlinck, Hauptmann or Shaw; or in the

novels of Gorki, Andreyev, Tolstoy, Zola, Maupassant, Hardy, and the

dozen or so of lesser lights who revolve with these through the cycle of

the magazine issues.

Not only do these same people thus limit the field of literature, (at

least in their ordinary conversation,--if you press them they will

dubiously admit that the field may be extended) but they are also

possessed of the notion that only one particular mode even of fiction,

is in fact the genuine thing. That this mode has not always been in

vogue they are aware; and they allow other modes to have been literature

in the past, as a sort of kindly concession to the past--a

blanket-indulgence to its unevolved state. At present, however, no

indulgences are allowed; whatever is not the mode, is anathema; it is

not literature at all. When confronted by the _very_ great names of the

Past, which they can neither consign to oblivion, nor patronize by

toleration for their undeveloped condition, names which are names for

all ages, which they need to use as conjuration words in their

comparisons and criticisms, names such as Shakespeare or Hugo, they

complacently close their eyes to contradictions and swear that

fundamentally these men's works _are in the modern mode, the accepted

mode, the one and only enduring mode_, the mode that they approve.

"Which is?"--I hear you ask. _Which is_ what they are pleased to call

"Realism."

If you wish to know how far they are obsessed by this notion, go pick

yourself a quiet corner in some café where light literature readers meet

to make comparisons, and listen to the comments. Before very long,

voices will be getting loud about some character at present stalking

across the pages of the magazines, or bestirring itself among the latest

ton of novel; and the dispute will be, "Does such a type exist?"--"Of

course he exists,"--"He does not exist,"--"He must exist,"--"He cannot

exist,"--"Under such conditions,"--"There are no such conditions,"--"But

be reasonable: you have not been in all places, and you cannot say there

may not be such conditions; supposing--" "All right: I will give you the

conditions; all the same, no man would act so under any conditions." "I

swear L have seen such men--" "Impossible--" "What is there impossible

about it?--"

And the voices get louder and louder, as the disputants proceed

to pick the character to pieces, speech by speech, and action by

action, till, nothing being left, each finally subsides somehow,

each confirmed in his own opinion, each convinced that the main

purpose of literature--Realism--has either been served, or not

served, by the author under discussion. To such disputants

"Literature the Mirror of Man," means that only such literature

as gives so-called absolutely faithful representations of life

as it is demonstrably lived, is a genuine Mirror. No author is

to be considered worthy of a place, unless his works can be at

least twisted to fit this conception. With some slight refinement

of idea, in so far as it recognizes the obscurer recesses of the

mind as entitled to representation as well as the externals, it

corresponds to the one-time development of portrait painting,

which esteemed it necessary to paint the exact number of hairs

in the wart on Oliver Cromwell's nose, in order to have a true

likeness of him.

As before suggested, I do not, when I speak of Literature as the Mirror

of Man, have any such 12x18 mirror in view; nor the limitation of

literature to any one form of it, to any one age of it, to any set of

standard names; nor the limitation of Man to any preconceived notion of

just what he may logically be allowed to be. The composite image we are

seeking to find is an image wrought as much of his dreams of what he

would like to be, as of his actual being; that is no true picture of

Man, which does not include his cravings for the impossible, as well as

his daily performance of the possible. Indeed, the logical, calculable

man, the man who under certain circumstances may be figured out to turn

murderer and under others saint, is hardly so interesting as the

illogical being who upsets the calculation by becoming neither, but

something not at all predictable.

The objects of my lecture then are these:

1. To insist on a wider view of literature itself than that generally

accepted.

2. To suggest to readers a more satisfactory way of considering what

they read than that usually received.

3. To point to certain phases of the human appearance reflected in the

mirror which are not generally noticed, but which I find interesting and

suggestive.

You would think it very unreasonable, would you not, for any one to

insist that because your highly polished glass backed by quicksilver,

gives back so clear and excellent an image, _therefore_ the watery

vision you catch of yourself in the shifting, glancing ripples of a

clear stream is not an image at all! With all the curious elongating and

drifting and shortening back and breaking up into wavering circles, done

by that unresting image, you know very certainly that is you; and if you

look into the still waters of some summer pool, or mountain rain-cup,

the image there is almost as sharp-lined as that in your polished glass,

except for the vague tremor that seems to move under the water rather

than on its surface, and suggest an ethereal something missing in your

drawing-room shadow. Yet that vision conjured in the water-depth is

you--surely you. Nay, even more,--that _first_ image of you, you

perceived when as a child you danced in the firelight and saw a

misshapen darkness rising and falling along the wall in teasing

mockery,--that too was surely an image of you--an image of interception,

not of reflection; a blur, a vacancy, a horror, from which you fled

shrieking to your mother's arms;--and yet it was the distorted outline

of you.

You grew familiar with it later, amused yourself with it, twisted your

hands into strange positions to see what curious shapes they would form

upon the wall, and made whole stories with the shadows. Long afterward

you went back to them with deliberate and careful curiosity, to see how

the figures stumbled on by accident could be definitely produced, at

will, according to the laws of interception.

Even so the first _Man-Images_, cast back from the blank wall of

Language, are uncouth, ungraspable, vague, vacant, menacing--to the men

who saw them, frightful. Mankind produced this paradox: the early

_lights_ of literature were _darkness_!

Later these darknesses grew less fearsome; the child-man began to jest

with them; to multiply figures and send them chasing past each other up

and down the wall, with fresh glee at each newly created shadow-sport.

The wall at last became luminous, the shadows shining. And out of the

old monosyllabic horror of the primitive legend, out of Man's fright at

the projection of his own soul, out of his wide stare at those terrific

giants on the wall who suddenly with shadow-like shifting became

grotesque dwarfs, and mocking little beasts that danced and floated,

ever most fearful because of their elusive emptiness; out of this, bit

by bit, grew the steady contemplation, the gradual effacement of fright,

the feeling of power and amusement, and the sense of Creative Mastery,

which, understanding the shadows, began to command them, till there

arose all the beauty of fairy tales and shining myths and singing

legends.

Now any one who desires to see in Literature the most that there is in

it; who desires to read not merely for the absorption of the moment but

for the sake of permanent impression; who wishes to have an idea of Man

not only as he is now, but through the whole articulate record of his

existence; who would know the thoughts of his infancy and the connected

course of his development,--and no one has any adequate conception of

the glory of literature, unless he includes this much in it--any such a

reader, I say, must find among its most attractive pages, the stories of

early superstitions, the fictions of Fear, the struggles of the

Race-Child's intelligence with overlooming problems. Think of the Ages

and Ages that men saw the Demon Electricity riding the air; think that

even now they do not know what he is; and yet he played mightily with

their daily lives for all those ages. Think how this staring savage was

put face to face with world-games which were spun and tossed around him,

and compelled by the nature of his own activity to try to find an

explanation to them; think that most of us, if we were not the heritors

of the ages that have passed since then, should be staggered and

out-breathed even now by all these lights and forms through which we

move; and then turn to the record of those pathetic strivings of the

frightened child with some little tenderness and sympathy, some solemn

curiosity to know _what_ men were able to think and feel when they led

their lives as in a threatening Wonder-house, where everything was an

Unknown, invested with crouching hostility. And never be too sure you

know just how men will act, or try to act, under any conditions, if you

have not read the record of what they have thought and fancied and done;

and after you have read it, Oh, then you will never be sure you know!

For then you will realize that every man is a burial-house, full of dead

men's ghosts,--and the ghosts of very, very ancient days are there,

forever whispering in an ancient, ancient tongue of ancient passions and

desires, and prompting many actions which the doer thereof can give

himself no accounting for.

There are two ways of reading these old stories; and as one who has

gotten pleasure and profit, too, from both, I would recommend them both

to be used. The first way is to read yourself backward into it as much

as possible. Do not be a critic, on first reading; put the critic

asleep. Let yourself _seem to believe it_, as did he who wrote it. Read

it aloud, if you are where you will not annoy anybody; let the words

sing themselves over your lips, as they sung themselves over the lips of

the people who were dead so long ago,--in their strange far-away homes

with their vanished surroundings; sung themselves, just as the wind sung

through the echoing forests, and murmured back from the rocks; just as

the songs slipped out of the birds' throats. You will find that half the

beauty and the farce of old-time legend lies in the bare sound of it.

Far, far more is it dependent on the voice, than any modern writings

are. And surely, the reason is simple enough: for _it_ was not _writing_

in its creation; ancient literature addressed itself to the ear, always,

while modern literature speaks to the eye.

If once you can get your ears washing with the sounds of the old

language, as with the washing of the seas when you sit on the beach, or

the lapping of the rivers when the bank-grass caresses you some idle

summer afternoon, it will be much easier for you to forget that you are

the child of another age and thought. You will begin to luxuriate in

fancies and prefigure impossibilities; then you will know how it feels

to be fancy free, loosed from the chain of the possible; and once having

felt, you will also understand better, when you re-read with other

intent.

When you are ready for such re-reading, then be as critical as you

please,--which does not necessarily mean be condemnatory. It means

rather take notice of all generals and particulars, and question them.

You will naturally pose yourself the question, Why is it

that the bare sounds of these old stories are so much more

vibrating, drum-like, shrilling, at times, than any modern

song or poem? You will find that the mitigating influence of

civilization,--knowledge, moderation,--creeping into expression,

produces flat, neutral, diluted sounds,--watery words, so to

speak, long-drawn out and glidingly inoffensive. In any modern

writing remarkable for strength, will be found a preponderance of

"barbaric yawp"--as Whitman called it.

Fear creates sharp cries; the rebound of Fear, which is Bravado,

produces drum-tones, roars, and growls; unrestrained Passions howl in

wind-notes, irregular, breaking short off. God carries a hammer, and

Love a spear. The hymn clangs, and the love-song clashes. Through those

fierce sounds one feels again hot hearts.

Those who perceive colors accompanying sounds, sense clean cut lights

streaking the night-ground of these early word-pictures; sharp, hard,

reds and yellows. It is our later world which has produced green

tintings not to be told from gray, nor gray from blue, nor anything from

anything. In our fondness for smoothness and gradation we have attained

practical colorlessness.

If it appears to you that I am talking nonsense, permit me to tell you

it is because you have dulled your own powers of perception; in seeking

to become too intellectually appreciative, you have lost the power to

feel primitive things. Try to recover it.

Another source of interesting observation, especially in English

literature of early writing: this time the eye.

It is admitted by everybody that as a serviceable instrument for

expressing definite sounds in an expeditious and comprehensible manner,

English written language is a woeful failure. If any inventor of a

theory of symbols should, would, or could have devised such a ridiculous

conception of spelling, such a hodge-podge of contradictory jumbles, he

would properly have been adjudged to an insane asylum; and that, every

man who ever contrived an English spelling-book, and every teacher who

is obliged to worry this incongruous mess through the steadily revolting

reason-and-memory process of children, is ably convinced. But Man,

English-speaking Man, has actually--_executed_ such conception; (he

probably executed it first and conceived it afterward, as most of our

poor victims do when they start on that terrible blind road through the

spelling-book). Whether or no, the thing is here, and we've all to

accept it, and deal with it as best we may, sadly hoping that possibly

the tenth generation from now may at least be rid of a few unnecessary

"e's."

And since the thing is here, and is a mighty creation, and very

indicative of how the human brain in large sections works; since we've

got to put up with it anyway, we may as well, in revenge for its many

inconveniences, get what little satisfaction we can out of it. And I

find it one of the most delightful little side amusements of wandering

through the field of old literature, while in the critical vein, to

stray around among the old stumps and crooked cowpaths of English

spelling. Much pleasure is to be derived from seeing what old words grew

together and made new ones; what syllables or letters got lopped off or

twisted, how silent letters became silent and why; from what older

language planted, and what its relatives are. It is much the same

pleasure that one gets from trailing around through the narrow crooked

streets and senseless meanderings of London City. Everybody knows it's a

foolish way to build a city; that all streets should be straight and

wide and well-distributed. But since they are not, and London is too big

for one's individual exertion to reform, one consents to take interest

in explaining the crookedness--in mentally dissolving the great city

into the hundred little villages which coalesced to make it; in marking

this point as the place where St. Somebody-or-Other knelt and prayed

once and therefore there had to be a cross-street here; and this other

point as the place where the road swept round because martyrs were wont

to be burnt there, etc., etc. The trouble is that after a while one gets

to love all that quaint illogical tangle, seeing always the thousand

years of history in it; and so one's senses actually become vitiated

enough to permit him to love the outrages of English spelling, because

of the features of men's souls that are imaged therein. When I look at

the word "laugh," I fancy I hear the joyous deep guttural "gha-gha-gha"

of the old Saxon who died long before the foreign graft on the English

stock softened the "gh" to an "f"!

Really one must become more patient with the "un-system," knowing how it

grew, and feeling that this is the way of Man,--the way he always

grows,--not as he ought, but as he can.

I have spoken of forms: word-sounds, word-symbols; as to the spirit of

those early writings, full of inarticulate religious sentiment, emotions

so strong they burst from the utterer's throat one might almost say in

barks; gloomy and foreboding; these gradually changing to more

lightsome fancies,--beauty, delicacy, airiness taking their place, as in

the fairy tales and folk-songs of the people, wherein the deeds of

supernaturals are sported with, and it becomes evident that love and

winsomeness are usurping the kingdom of Power and Fear,--through all we

are compelled to observe one constant tendency of the human mind,--the

desire to free itself from its own conditions, to be what it is not, to

represent itself as something beyond its powers of accomplishment. In

their minds, men had wings, and breathed in water, and swam on land, and

ate air, and thrived in deserts, and walked through seas, and gathered

roses off ice-bergs, and collected frozen dew off the tails of sunbeams,

dispersed mountains with mustard seeds of faith, and climbed into solid

caves under the rainbow; did everything which it was impossible for them

to do.

It is in fact this imaginative faculty which has fore-run the

accomplishments of science and while, under the influence of practical

experiment and the extension of knowledge such dreams have passed away,

this much remains and will long, long remain in humankind, covered over

and shamefacedly concealed as much as may be--that men perpetually

conceive themselves as chrysalid heroes and wonder workers; and, under

strain of occasion, this element crops out in their actions, making them

do all manner of curious things which the standard-setters of realism

will declare utterly illogical and impossible. Often it is the commonest

men who do them.

I have a fondness for realism myself; at least I have a very wicked

feeling towards what is called "symbolism," and various other things

which I don't understand; but as the "Unrealists," the "Exaggeratists,"

the whatever-you-call-them express what I believe to be a very permanent

characteristic of humankind, as evidenced in all the traces of its

work, I think they probably give quite as true reflections of Man's Soul

as the present favorites.

These early literatures, most of which have of course been lost, were

the embryos of our more imposing creations; and it is a pleasant and an

instructive thing to follow the unfolding of Monster Tales into Great

Religious Literatures; to compare them and see how the same few simple

figures, either transplanted or spontaneously produced at different

points, evolved into all manner of Creators, Redeemers and miracles in

their various altered habitats. No one can so thoroughly appreciate what

is in the face of a man turned upward in prayer, as he who has followed

the evolution of the black Monster up to that impersonal conception of

God prettily called by Quakers "the Inner Light."

Fairy Tales on the other hand have evolved into allegories and

Dramas,--first the dramas of the sky, now the dramas of earth.

Tales of Sexual exploits have become novels, novelettes, short stories,