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WITHOUT INVASION, MEANS AND END OF PROGRESS.
\
BOOL
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ERNEST CROSBY TO HENRY BOOL.
From Rhinebeck, N. Y., Ernest Crosby wrote as follows, on Oct. 31, 1901:
Dear Mr. Boo/—* * There should be some way of classifying seperately Anarchists who approve the use of assassination and those who condemn it. The non-resistant ideal seems to me the only logical one. * Tolstoy does not favor the "abolition" of government, but would abstain from taking part in it, and persuade others to do likewise. He would not "abolish" it except in this indirect way. I have reserved your pamphlet 011 "Liberty" to read on a journey tomorrow. I am specially glad to see Hubbard's article in print. I have an idea that he is not proud of it, altho it is the best he has written.
Later (Nov. 5, 1901) Mr. Crosby writes: You are evidently coming out in flying colors. I should like to have half a dozen copies of your "Liberty" address & a dozen of the Hubbard sheets [in which he says he is an Anarkist]. It is the best thing Elbert ever wrote, and this is saying a good deal.
WITHOUT INVASION, MEANS AND END OF PROGRESS.
being a paper read, by invitation, before
a social circle (with sught revision and addenda)
by
" I have a thing to say, but how to say it t / have a cause to plead, but to what ears?"
ITHACA, N. Y., DEC. 15,1898.
PBK88 OP THJC ITHACA DEMOCRAT,
* r- j f Kt ^ I s>
We will speak out, we ivill be heard, Though all earth's systems crack ; We will not bale a single word, Nor take a letter back.
Let liars fear, let cowards shrink,
traitors turn away ; Whatever we have dared to think That dare we also say.
James Russeix Loweli,.
We are here by invitation to compare views on a recent lecture delivered here. I was loath to accept the invitation till it was made clear to me that I would be the only one to present a certain view point, and as the stream of tendency, just now, in certain quarters, tends in the direction of more artificial government to adjust the inequities of the time, and as I had been asked so many times why I did not take part in what has been called "Peanut Politics," and what my views in ethics, theology, temperance, etc., were, I finally consented to read this hastily prepared paper. I must have considerable temerity in complying, for, "To say what should be said, to only say what should be said, to say it as it should be said" is quite beyond me.
As a nobody I have held my peace in your city for more than a quarter of a century. My day is beyond its meridian. "The night coineth when no man can work." The somebodies of the pulpit, the press, the bar, and the university, have not only kept silent, but it seems to me, are aiding intrenched wrong to strengthen its bulwarks.
This being true, it would be cowardice superlative in me to seem to acquiesce with things as they are by longer withholding my meed of word-effort in the direction sincerity points.
I cannot hope to offer but little, if anything, original in this presentation of the case, and I am liable, too, never to "peep" more, as word-picturing is not my forte.
I hope I ain fully justified in speaking out. Evolution being true, the worm has in it the potentiality of a god, and this is justification enough for one seeking to find himself.
I admit, Mr. Lusk comes from the best governed land on "God's earth to be courteous, I grant even that 4'there are no corrupt politics in New Zealand, the Boss unknown, the people all well satisfied and well-to-do," and all the rest. Still, New Zealand has only the shadow of freedom.
Unsatisfied desire must be i?iy state until the basic principle of liberty be applied to the affairs of men. This insisted upon, humanity's future will be secure. Individual sovereignty is better than any and all kinds of paternalism. Better the dinner of herbs, with right conditions for all than the stalled ox of unearned affluence to the few.
John Hay, before he became McKinley's henchman, struck the bull's eye when he wrote,
"For always in thine eyes, O Liberty,
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved :
And, though thou slay us, we will trust in thee."
The case may be logically rested right here without more ado. Liberty is Alpha and Omega: means and end: the balm in Gilead. The rubbing in of this balm is all that remains to be done, "The application onH," as Captain Cuttle had it.
We must not be impatient. "It takes a hundred years to make a gentleman." It may take a thousand years to inaugurate Liberty among men, but, whether it takes a hundred or a thousand years, "the house of bondage must be come up from."
Belief in liberty is no mushroom-like growth of mine. During the reform debates in the British. House of Commons in the sixties, the Hare scheme of minority representation was supported
by some of the finest minds then in St. Stephens. I was much interested. Some kind of three-cornered voting was eventually inaugurated, I think it was when "Dizzy dished the Whigs." Be that as it may, this parliamentary debate was eternal death to my worship of majorities.
Before this, I had, without thought, accepted the dictum, "The voice of the majority is the voice of God." At this time I read Burke's essay, "The inherent evils of all State governments demonstrated," and as I could not get away from his conclusion, "In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abuse. The tiling—the thing itself is the abuse," I began to think that the voice of the majority was, like as not, the voice of the devil. Still my mind did not grasp the full idea of government by voluntary, individual consent till years afterward. After thirty years of random reading, thinking and observing, I find my feet firmly planted on the rock of individual freedom at the cost of the individual.
Individuality is based in the very nature of things ; thie very lowest organisms exemplify it: we cannot get away from it if we would, and we would not if we could. Who would change his own individuality for that of another? When each minds his own business, not only is he within his right, but he is in harmony with the spheres. Compulsion never yet convinced the child. The compulsion of nature is inexorable: even the child soon learns that fire will burn, and the sooner he learns the better.
For the deformities of artificial government, we have not far to seek. "For ways that are dark, and tricks that are vain" we need only size up our home politicians. I should have to be quite personal, you know, and I refrain ; but if you, who are much nearer the center of practical politics than I, can't fill in the picture, it is because there are "none so blind as they that won't see."
About the only public work that has been done here with economy and vigor, is the Glenwood road, and this was clone by voluntary effort. Remember the east side and west side retaining walls, tumbling down almost as soon as built, and built at excessive cost. What a delectable experience with the streets we have been having this season. What a tale of Bumbledom in bridges could be told by the'knowing ones. The sewers too—the impervious-to-outside-water sewers, have drained away the duck ponds of the Irish Forest City Duck-farmers, so that our highest official had much to do to ward off a damage suit at law for sewer-destroyed duck industry.
See our law-defied snow and ice clad sidewalks, and then lend a hand to form a voluntary public opinion that shall sweep them, and many another nuisance, into the Gehenna of forgotten oblivion.
I am not on the inside of practical politics. What must it be to be inside the charmed circle ? "Tell it not in Gath." I will but lisp Brother Abner's name ; it would be redundant for a ten-' der-foot to do more in this presence. The Alger's and Aldridge's, too, what a happy family of A's, etc., down to the very alphabet's end, and the creators of wealth at the bottom have to pay for all this by bloody sweat.
Shall it be always thus ? Is God above the devil ? Yea, verily must sometime come— liberty, the real stuff, not the hollow mockery.
For stupendous illustration of how not to do it in national affairs I have a booklet for your confidential, not to say prayerful, consideration, copied from syndicate or subsidized press correspondence at that.1
L. F. Ward writes, t"To-day, when mental force is everything and physical force nothing, government is powerless to accomplish the equitable
distribution of wealth. * * * It is utterly illogical to say that aggrandizement by physical force should be forbidden while aggrandizement by mental force or legal fiction should be permitted. It is absurd to claim that injustice committed by muscle should l>e restrained while that committed by brain should be unrestrained.
"Under the system as it now exists the wealth of the world, however created, and irrespective of the claims of the producer, is made to flow toward certain centers of accumulation, to be enjoyed by those holding the keys to such situations. The world appears to be approaching a stage at which those who labor, no matter how skilled, how industrious, or how frugal, will receive, according to the 'iron law' formulated by Ricardo, only so much for their services as will enable them 'to subsist and to perpetuate their race.* The rest finds its way into the hands of a comparatively few, usually non-producing, individuals, whom the usages and laws of all countries permit to claim that they own the very sources of all wealth and the right to allow or forbid its production.
"These are great and serious evils, compared with which all the crimes, recognized as such, that would be committed if no government existed, would be as trifles. The underpaid labor, the prolonged and groveling drudgery, the wasted strength, the misery and the squalor, the diseases resulting, and the premature deaths that would be prevented by a just distribution of products of labor, would in a single year outweigh all the so-called crime of a century, for the prevention of which, it is said, government alone exists. This vast theater of woe is regarded as wholly outside the jurisdiction of government, while the most strenuous efforts are put forth to detect and punish the perpetrators of the least of the ordinary recognized crimes. This ignoring of great evils while so violently striking at small ones is the mark of an effete civilization, and warns us of the approaching dotage of the race."
How beautifully said, and how true, and yet, the dear man wants more "government" to remedy this present-day fashionable thievery. Grapes are not gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles. Bless your soul, Mr. Ward, the sober man does not go to the pump to light his pipe.
The enswathed China woman's foot will remain stunted unless given liberty to grow.
These patent truths are not withheld from the wise and revealed to the babes. The wayfaring man, though a fool, will not err therein, if he will but sit at the feet of scientific method. 44Like causes produce like results." This is the key. and St. Peter, or Jude the obscure, can use it.
In my twentieth year, I was fortunate in reading the following wise words ; hence, from youth up, have I been case hardened against being fed by public pap. I quote from 4'Advice to Young Men" by William Cobbett:
,4Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind, that you have no right to live in this world ; that, being of hale mind and sound body, you have no right to any earthly existence, without doing work of some sort or other, unless you have ample fortune whereon to live clear of debt; and, that even in that case, you have no right to breed children to be kept by others, or to be exposed to the chance of being so kept. Start with this conviction thoroughly implanted on your mind. To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the folly of it, to contemplate a fraud at the least, and, under certain circumstances, to meditate oppression and robbery.
"Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on Whitehall and on Somerset House ; leave the Customs and Excise to the feeble and low-minded ; look not for success to favor, to partiality, to friendship, or to what is called interest : write it on your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions. Think not, neither, of any of those situations where gaudy habiliments and sounding titles poorly disguise from the eyes of good sense the mortifications and the heartache of slaves. Answer me not by saying, that these situations •must be filled by somebodyfor, if I were to admit the truth of the proposition, which I do not, it would remain for you to show that they are conducive to happiness, the contrary of which has been proved to me by the observation of a now pretty long life."
The two leading parties remind me of the wife-beating incident. When the outsider stepped in and began to pummel the husband, both man and wife pitched into him :—and thus will both parties make common cause when their privileges arc in danger. The people are the "pig-skins'' to be kicked from one to another. "A plague on both your houses," should be the cry of the decent.
It is universally admitted that a party once in power soon becomes corrupt. What can we do about it, then, but fight for the high light of equal liberty? Frank Parsons seems to make out a great case for municipal government oversea, but darkness is upon that deep, also. Glasgow is singled out as a paragon. By correspondence with a work-a-day resiaent of that drunken city, many of the rose-colored statements are refuted.*
I suspect that a fly in happy young New Zealand's ointment might be detected without a microscope by a resident therein, somewhat less favored than Mr. Lusk. I have a conservative brother in Victoria. In the very last letter I got from him he states that politics there are a seeth-
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ing mass of unjust conditions and practices. To know the bottom facts, you needs must be a resident of a place. I lived in London for seven years, from '65 to '72, and I know the "great wen" was no land of Beulah at that time.
Since writing the above, I resurrected a published lecture which exposes the imperfections of artificial government in Glasgow, London, Victoria, and that Utopia New Zealand, and also referendum-blessed Switzerland. As I have a copy of this interesting lecture for each of you, I will not quote from it.* I also will ask your acceptance of leaflet proving briefly the utter groundlessness of the fear that no formal government means terror, chaos, and blood.* We claim, with Proudhon, that liberty is the mother of order.
I am now reading Stead's sensational book, (New York City), "Satan's Invisible World Dis- ■ played."
The morbid imagination of a Calvin could not conjure up a worse hell than is there described. With the cumulative facts easily obtained for ourselves, if we are not persuaded that "the thing, the thing itself, is the abuse," we could not be, "though one rose from the dead."
In the social system, the parasite palms itself off as the very life-sustaining fruit it is but devouring. In the business circle, the State-protected banker-financier pulls the string, and the rest have to dance to the tune of supporting him in luxurious ease, or enabling him to pile up untold wealth for his progeny yet unborn, for but little, if any, useful labor of his own.
After two thousand years of life, the Christian world is still straining at the gnat of creed, while the sons of Belial are at the throat of progress with their dastardly deeds of darkness. I am not irreverent. I was reared on the inside of the
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Church Militant; in the shadow of its walls my parents lie buried ; I attended Sunday School three times a Sunday until I was as tall as I am now ; obeying my mother at the age of fifteen I was confirmed by a lawn-sleeved Bishop. I was taught "contentment in the state of life to which it had pleased God to call me." Church and State toryism was the one thing needful to have the young plebeian mind saturated with,you know.
These conservative leading strings were not broken without painfully deliberate process of thought. Mrs. Partington, with her mop, could not keep the tide back.
Voluntary association among equals will insure the man of talent his own, as naturally as water finds its level. Each will go to his own place in the social realm. Free contracts among free men will dissolve in involuntary poverty and crime, even as the sun dissolves the dew. "There is no darkness but ignorance :" freedom is enlightenment. Charity encourages mendicity, and is insulting, till justice be done. The monstrosity of millionaires must become a thing of the past, for with liberty, man will have to earn what he gets. Now, "one man's increment is another man's decrement:" then it will be literally "root hog or die."
Justice to the mechanic is justice to the millionaire. Ill-gotten, unearned-wealth shrivels the soul as alum shrivels the stomach. The nobler instincts of justice are atrophied in the atmosphere of wealthy-poverty, hence the truest kindness will be done to the "perishing upper classes" when the sat-upon, spat-upon class knows its rights, and knowing, dares demand them.
Oh, for the sensitiveness of soul for the possessors of the root of all evil to realize the blessedness of eamership. It would so hasten the time when the burden-bearer of to-day would come into possession of his own, without the stress of fume and fight that seems now inevitable.
It is craven to cry "peace, peace," when there can he no peace as long as the non-producer is on the producer's back.
In the matter of crime prevention, Chaos, even, could not well be worse than the present status.2
The days of "organized hypocrisy" and cunning are surely numbered. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, should now be told, and tested. The sincere thinkers must be ready to blaze the way with "thoughts that breathe and words that burn," or the very "stones will cry out." The would-be authoritarians cry. "Liberty, not license," but who's to be the judge? Given the King, the President, the Priest, the Majority, and liberty is not. Rome one end, reason the other. Absolute authority lie»e, abject serfdom there. The supreme test, liberty without aggression, is the everlasting bed rock principle, King or Majority to the contrary notwithstanding. Observe France with her Dreyfus cases and England with her Maybricks. See the results of repressive paternalism in priest-ridden Spain and know that true progress is in its exact opposite.
"We must be free or die Who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke."
If I am not invading your domain, I am within my right; if I invade, I accept the consequences. If I offend the law of my being, I suffer. The sooner this is instilled into the child's mind, the earlier does he arrive at manhood's height. The more the parent does, the more he may do. Father David may cry, "Would God I had died for thee, my son, my son," but the Absaloms must "work out their own salvation" or be eternally damned.
Pictorial justice is represented with eyes blinded, holaing the scales. Alas! When will even-handed justice be done rather than pictured ? Not till the human units demand it. The blow for freedom must be self-struck if the slave is to be free ; be it ours then to spread the truth in order that the ignorant slave may know the truth shall make him free indeed. The crowd now is following the Will of the Wisp of authoritarianism like children crying in the night.
Christ said, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," and this must be the spirit in going through obloquy and reproach in combating error and tearing the mask from tyranny's visage. "The harvest, indeed, is plenteous, but the laborers are few," and this is the excuse for pioneer effort in equal liberty's cause. You all, doubtless, recognize in my remarks the earmarks of Anarchy.
Apropos of this dreaded word—during the last Presidential campaign, when the trusts and millionaires had to be propitiated, a certain high official of a not distant seat of learning is reported to have said, "Anarchy is madness." I hung my diminished head, for surely, such high authority spoke by the card. I had the hardihood, however, to apply a poetic balm to my lacerated feelings in the following lines :—
*"Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye ;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane ;
Demur,—you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain."
As "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," so, Anarchy, going by that name, need be unsavory only to those ignorant of its meaning. It is sense and not sound we seek.
This being so, I will, with your permission, here quote a summary of Anarchistic principles that will clarify my position more concisely than I can hope to. It is from B. R. Tucker's "Instead of a Book,"* pages 9-18.
We need not be chary of the power of voluntary cooperation in its effectiveness as to public and semi-public affairs.
The franchises and privileges that compulsion, corruption, breach of faith, and ignorance have granted, voluntaryism and intelligence may annul.
Even as things are, with pull and privilege at every step, if I could have the opportunity of selecting one hundred men of this little city with the promise of their hearty voluntary coftperation in taking only what they earned, I nave no doubt but the local aspect of monetary exchanges and the questions of the supply of water, gas and street conveyance could be permanently and justly settled ; and this should not be difficult if we would be satisfied with our own deserts.
But there are no "ifs" about the facts of its actual application here and now. Don't tell! But the Presbyterians of Ithaca are applying the principle of Anarchism in the building of their surely-coming new church, and they are worldly-wise enough not even to ask the voluntary helpers to subscribe to the Westminster Catechism in subscribing to the building fund.
Our home—Several Counties—fire insurance concern in a local yet certain way, is successfully solving the problem of voluntaryism, which is Anarchism.
"The Church of the living God," with all its
branches in this "land of the free," is paddling its own canoe by the practice of the Anarchistic idea—save only in its willingness to allow its property to go, by compulsion, untaxed. But that lapse, however, is quite human, you know. It is trying, too, with rather halting step though, to get "God in the Constitution." I suspect it must feel that good in life-work is the better part.
The Anarchistic Metropolitan insurance companies, in their way, are vital examples of how powerful for good, in large public affairs, voluntaryism is.
B. F. Tracy, and other ex-government officials, are furnishing powerfully practical ammunition for the Anarchists in their United States Casualty Co. for the voluntary protection of property in poor benighted New York, with its thousanas of "the finest" stalking around supporting vice and crime.
The Pinkertons are another illustration of voluntary protection, hired in the open market, and are a vast improvement on the governmental hirelings, for the Pinkertons are not looked upon as fetishes.
The Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers apply this dreaded Anarchism in so far as they build up their colossal corporations by voluntary effort. When they stick at nothing in freezing out smaller and weaker concerns, in ouying up your legislators and in preventing the exploited ones from peacefully combining for their advancement, they throw Anarchy overboard and adopt governmental authority and thievish cunning, which free competition will forever make impossible.
With these and other examples before our eyes, and a perfectly free and untrammeled, unprotected open field, all questions, however large and public, can be, must be solved by this same sign.
This Anarchy should be, by now, respectable, if
great names can make it so. It is not "the offspring of Russian ignorance,'' as a vtenal press reiterates, but the consummate flower of Anglo-Saxon desire for liberty. Burke's essay, from which I have quoted, is the oldest purely Anarchistic book, though Goodwin's good work was only second. Since their time, this penetrating principle has not been without a witness. "The pungent pages of Junius are invaded by it, it sparkles in Paine's brilliant works," it asserts itself in the ponderous tones of Jefferson, and in the inimitable Saxon of Cobbett it crops out. Descendant of Bunker Hill-slain Warren, with Yankee shrewdness, beheld its benignantly vital power. Poet-philosopher Emerson, with his piercing insight, shed 011 it the bright lustre of polished phrase. Quaint and original Thoreau turned apt aphorism to its honor. The sons of William Loyd Garrison assure us he was an anarchist; the Nestor of the New York bar, Charles O'Connor, was of the same belief and refused on that account to be a presidential candidate.
Personalities are transitory, principles are eternal. This benign principle of each man doing what seems right in his own eyes is destined yet to be acknowledged for the community.
The Bourbon shouts, "You are visionaries, you break with the past, you are revolutionists." If we had not a vision of better life conditions, life would be not worth the living, save to mere beasts of burden.
We claim to benefit by the results of history ; we know that sword-force is not, in the long run, as effective as thought-force : passive resistance is our stronghold. How easily your conservative breaks with the past when he steps to the telephone, or turns on the electric light, or steps into an electric or steam car or into his steam heated home. "Why, if we did not break with the past, we would be burning down the house every time we determine to eat roast pig.
Revolution, yes, but by evolutionary means. We have revolutions in every direction but the political 1 here we stalk around in the grave-clothes of our worm-eaten ancestors, and have the effrontery to call ourselves progressive.
The Protestant revolution, if it means anything, means the egoism of private judgment. Within my own memory, Hell itself was a literally eternal fire, where poor sinners, *4Asbestos-like," (as Spurgeon used to put it,) were to everlastingly burn, and yet never be consumed ; and the merely 4'moral man would be cast into lowest hell." I opine all this has undergone a change. I could keep on illustrating : we all know the very truths of science (so called) of fifty years ago, are no more true to-day than the witchcrafts and headless horses of the last century. We have a few Jaspers still with us who act as if the world were flat; but surely, they will, in the nature of things, be soon eliminated.
I have much toleration for those sincerely liberal minded people who have been deterred by the sound of a word from calmly canvassing a principle of justice. Let none approach this question in the spirit of the woman "who would not believe it even if true." The word Anarchy, in use for a half century, has come to stay, and adult minds • need no longer hold aloof or be terrorized by a mere name, but should examine fearlessly the philosophy back of the name. From my young manhood up, I have been in substantial accord with Anarchist thought without knowing it. Until the brutal hangingof Chicago Communists, I had not studied Anarchist literature, but, from then on, I felt bound to know where I was at even if idols had to be shattered. I am free to confess I expected to curse rather than bless the movement. How is this ".terrible" revolutionary goal to be arrived at ? Educate ! Educate ! Educate in the truth.
Discourage absenteeism in land holding.
Promulgate the principle of mutualism in banking, and as soon as enough good men can be got to co-operate, start a mutual bank.
Incessantly favor absolute free trade.
Instill the children of the race with the idea of self reliance. Advise and practice restraint in the breeding of children to supply the ranks of the exploited.
Initiate voluntary effort for the people's weal, and co-operate in the same.
Refuse something for nothing, and render equivalents for value received.
See to it that approval is withheld from the monopolistic claims of inventors.
Encourage the boycott of public reprobation on the invaders of individual rights.
Stand up for the principles of peace and the power of ideas, rather than for brute force and the hell of war.
Help live down the Caste of Class, Help live up the Unity of Humanity. Ring out Puerile Charity, Ring in Virile Justice.
And having done all, stand, knowing that nature's mills grind slow.
Thinking you should be interested in this economic literature, I name some of the writers who have directly and indirectly helped me to matured conviction.
Proudhon
Warren
Andrews
Tucker
"Stirner"
Spooner
Mackay
"Tak Kak"
Green
Bilgram
Yarros
Gordak
WTestrup
Schreiner
Herbert
J. W. Ix)yd
Tolstoi
Spencer
Marx
Bellamy
George
Nietzsche
Goethe
Ruskin
Montaigne
Emerson
Thoreau
Grant Allen
Wallace
Paine
Cobbett
Gronlund
H. D. Loyd
Blunt Mill Whitman
Bakounine Buckle Shelley
Tandy Draper Huxley
Schumm Voltaire Darwin
Kitson Jevons
The writer will gladly loan any of these authors' works to students desirous of knowing the truth ; or, put any in the way of obtaining the books for themselves.
In explanation, I should say that these writers vary in their thought, from the plumb line of Anarchy to the oblique line of State omnipotence. The more forcefully the Force Socialists argued, the more firmly has my mind been grounded in Voluntary Socialism. I have been almost as largely helped to right conclusions by reading the other side as I have by studying the side I ultimately espoused, and I anticipate the same result for every open-minded study of all the bearings of the social movement.
I append the following texts, roughly quoted from memory, as they should be convincingly significant to those who hold the Bible to be the Word of God. A broad reading of the Bible has been an inspiration and help :
4'Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother, usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury."
"If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee thou shalt not be to him as a usurer neither shalt thou lay upon him usury."
"Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase : shall he then live ? He shall not live : he hath done all these abominations, he shall surely die ; his blood shall be upon him."
"Woe upon you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites : for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation."
"God hath made of one blood all nations upon the face of the earth."
"Faith without works is dead. . . . Show me thy faith without thy works and I will show thee my faith by my works."
"If any man will not work, neither shall he cat."
"He that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin."
"Prove all things, hold fast that which is good."
"Cease to do evil, learn to do well."
14Be sure your sin will find you out."
"Ye that speak lies shall not dwell in my presence."
"He that soweth the wind shall reap the whirlwind."
Note A.
"The worthy board of spendthrift Fish Commissioners have aforetime borrowed a boat of a citizen. A Cabinet officer told me this. The boat, to put it extravagantly, might have been worth $2500 when it was thus loaned to the Fish Commission. Then they began. First they asked permission to lengthen the borrowed boat; then to widen it; lastly, could they put a new engine therein ?
" 'Certainly,' said the crafty old sea rover, who owned the .scow.
"And with that the Fish Commission fooled about lengthening, widening, painting and re-engining that old tub until it came back to its owner worth $15000. Such is science and the Fish Commission.
"Let me give you some specimen gems of Government thrift. The Interior Department maintains an outfit of sleuths to discover timber thefts and a further force of law sharps to recover damages for the abstracted forests. This law gang, devoted thus to the recovery of the value of stolen trees, costs in its small aggregate $60.-000 a year. The last report showed that for an even million dollars' worth of timber filched these thunderbolts of jurisprudence recovered only 138,000. Thus the account was made up : Lost, $1,000,000 worth of trees; recovered, $38,-000; cost of recovery, $60,000; total loss, after the recovery is credited, $1,022,000. It would have been wiser to have let the thieves alone with the original $1,000,000 booty.
"Looking over the books for the last year of Harrison's Administration I found such encouraging figures as these: Rush paid $31,000 for garden seeds and then paid over $50,000 to pack them to send away.
"In looking over Rusk's accounts I found a jimcrow town in Indiana where the inspection cost the Government $4800 annually, and the whole value of the meat export for the same period was only $205."—Specimen Buds from Pamphlet Buds of the Authoritarian State, reprinted from San Francisco Examiner.
Note B.
"Congress has passed a bill to pay $379.56 to Moses Pendergrass, of Libertyville, Missouri. The story of the reason for this liberality is pathetically interesting, and is valuable as an illustration of the sort of pickle that an honest man may get into who undertakes to do an honest job of work for Uncle Sam. In 1886 Moses Pendergrass put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail on the route from Knob Lick to Libertyville and Coffman, thirty miles a day, from July 1, 1887, for one year. He got the postmaster at Knob Lick to write the letter for him ; and while Moses intended that bid should be $400, his scribe carelessly made it {4. Moses got the contract, and did not find out about the mistake until the end of the first quarter, when he got his first pay. When he found at what rate he was working he was sorely cast down, and opened communication with the Post Office Department. The department informed him that he must either carry out his contract or throw it up, and that if he threw it up his bondsmen would have to pay the government $1459.85 damages ; so Moses carried out his contract, walked thirty miles every weekday for a year and carried the mail, and received for his labor $4—or, to be accurate, $6.84 ; for the route being extended after his bid was accepted, the pay was proportionately increased. Now, after ten years, a bill has finally been passed to pay to Moses the difference between what he earned in that unlucky year and what he received.
"The Sun, wThich tells this story, says that bills have been introduced in three or four Congresses for Moses's relief, and that committees have repeatedly investigated his claim. It must have cost the government thousands of dollars in labor to pay that poor man his just dues.
"Well, that is the way that governments have to do things. Isn't it appalling?—Harperys Weekly.
Note C.
"The often iterated Press statement 'that after January 1, 1897, Glasgow will not need to levy any taxes on its people, the revenue from public enterprises being sufficient to cover the whole cost of the city government and administration' is a fiction.
"That it is absolutely without foundation is proved by this little piece of paper, which is a receipt for taxes paid in Glasgow for the period from Whit Sunday, 1896, to W^it Sunday, 1897,
Now Whit Sunday falls this year upon June 6th, so that taxes have been paid in Glasgow for 5 months of 1897.
"Now let us look a little deeper into the facts of the case. According to the report issued last June, the tramways in Glasgow wrote off their capital about $89,000, paid 151,000 into a sinking fund and about $45,000 into the city treasury. These figures sound very nice indeed. But it is seriously charged that they were only able to make this showing by falsifying the accounts. In fact, 'Sir John Leng, M. P., told the representative of the Glasgow corporation, when a trial balance sheet was put before him, that it was not at all clear that their claimed profit existed. Indeed he was sure that it did not.' Councillor Mayberry of Glasgow even goes so far as to say the tramways have been operated at a loss.
"The Works Department of the London County Council is yet another example. In 1892 John Burns and his fellow State Socialists obtained' control of this department. True to their State Socialistic principles, they abolished the contract system and undertook all work by direct employment of labor. For a while the story of their success was heralded upon all sides. But lately a sub-committee has been investigating their methods. It now appears that their success existed only upon paper, that the improvements have cost London rate-payers much more than under the contract system, and that these failures have been covered up by false entries upon the books. The late vice-chairman of the committee recently testified that the loss on some works now practically completed, but not yet reported, would amount to £20,000, or about $100,000. These methods of falsifying accounts have been charged against several other British municipalities, including Glasgow. So we should be very circumspect in believing even official returns from such sources. Recollect, the men who make these reports are politicians who hold their jobs only by public sanction. Is it any wonder that they show their work in its most favorable colors, and gloss over, or remain silent about, their failures?
"New Zealand is another Utopia of which we hear much. Five or six years ago a State Socialistic government was elected upon a non-borrowing ticket—a-non-bonds-in-times-of-peace kind of affair. This government inaugurated a lot of reforms, the success of which you have all heard. What you have probably not heard is, that from 1891 to 1895 the debt of New Zealand has been increased about ^"2,250,000, or nearly $2,250,000 a year. The next year i895-'^6 was worse yet, the increase of the one year being over $13,000,-000, or more than for the previous five years put together. How is that for a country the same size as the state of Colorado, and with only about 20 per cent greater population ? But a little increase like that in the public debt can well be afforded there, as we are told, there are no paupers in New Zealand. The $530,000 expended in pauper relief in 1895 was merely a little luxury the people indulged in to give vent to their charitable feelings ! The fact that this sum was nearly $roo,ooo in excess of the sum spent the year before, only shows that that charitable feeling is expanding!
"To show you that there is no security for freedom in the Referendum, I will quote you a passage from the article on Switzerland in the Statesman's Year Book for 1896. First it says that there is perfect religious freedom there. Then it goes on to state, 'The order of Jesuits and its affiliated societies, cannot be received in any part of Switzerland; all functions, clerical and scholastic, are forbidden to its members, and the interdiction can be extended to any other religious order whose action is dangerous to the State, or interferes with the peace of different creeds. The foundation of new convents, or religious orders, is forbidden.' Yet 40 per cent of the population are Catholics. In addition to this they have compulsory education and compulsory military service there. These are nice examples of freedom in the home of the Referendum.—Modern Socialistic Tendencies. A lecture delivered in Denver by P. D. Dandy.
Note D.
"A great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It had its origin in the principles of society, and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence, and reciprocal interest which man has in man, and all the parts of a civilized community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together.
"Government is 110 further necessary than to supply the few cases to which society and civilization are not conveniently competent; and instances are not wanting to show that everything which government can usefully add thereto, has been performed by the common consent of society, without government.
"For upwards of two years from the commencement of the American war, and a longer period in several of the American states, there were no established forms of government. The old governments had been abolished, and the country was too much in defence to employ its attention in establishing a new government; yet, during this interval order ana harmony were preserved as inviolate as in any country in Europe. There is a natural aptness in man, and more so in society, because it embraces a greater variety of abilities and resources, to accommodate itself to whatever situation it is in.
"The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and the common interest produces common security.
"So far is it from being true, as has been pretended, that the abolition of any formal government is the dissolution of society, it acts by a contrary impulse, and brings the latter closer together.
"Formal governments make but a small part of civilized life : and when even the best that human wisdom can devise is established it is a thing more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization—to the common usage universally consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintained—to the unceasing circulation of interest, which passes through its innumerable channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilized man, it is to these things, infinitely more than anything which even the best instituted governments can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual and of the whole depends.
"The more perfect civilization is the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs and govern itself ; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into .society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find by the time that we arrive at what is called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operations of the parts upon each other.
"Man with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of consistency than he is aware of, or than governments would wish him to believe. All the great laws of society are laws of nature. Those of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of individuals, or of nations, are laws of natural and reciprocal interest. They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest of the parties so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may impose or interpose."—Paine*s Rights of Man.
"Perhaps the distinction between the indirect influence of the principles of Society and the direct compulsion of the brutal State will be more firmly grasped when the effects of the application of both methods of regulation on a particular instance are studied and contrasted, Stephen Pearl Andrews uses this luminous illustration :
" 'The highest type of human society in the existing social order is found in the parlor. In the elegant and refined reunions of the cultured classes there is none of the impertinent interference of legislation. The Individuality of each is fully admitted. Intercourse, therefore, is perfectly free. Conversation is continuous, brilliant and varied. Groups are formed according to attraction. They are continually broken up, and reformed througli the operation of the same subtle and all-pervading influence. Mutual deference pervades all classes, and the most perfect harmony ever yet attained in complex human relations prevails. ... If there are laws of etiquette at all, they are mere suggestions of principles admitted into and judged of for himself by each individual mind.'
"Here, pertinently observes Mr. Andrews, we find circumstances which most men, including legislators and statesmen, would have us dread and avoid as invariably and inevitably productive of chaos, confusion, social war, and general demoralization, working out exactly opposite re-suits, presenting a spectacle of ideal order. And he asks:
" 'Suppose the intercourse of the parlor to be regulated by special legislation. Let the time which each gentleman shall be allowed to speak to each la#dy be fixed by law ; the position in which they should sit or stand be precisely regulated ; the subjects which they shall be allowed to speak of, and the tone of voice and accompanying gestures carefully defined,—all under pretext of preventing disorder and encroachment upon each other's privileges and rights, and can anything be conceived better calculated or more certain to convert social intercourse into intolerable slavery and hopeless confusion ? '
"All will unhesitatingly admit the beauty of laissez faire principles in the parlor ; yet few will listen to the proposal to carry them into other branches of social existence, which fact convicts them of pitiful lack of appreciation of the real nature of the phenomena."—Science of Society.
Note E.
"A little investigation of the yearly services of policemen in the city of Boston affords interesting food for thought in this connection. In this city of nearly half a million of 'all sorts and conditions of men' there have been no more than 508 and no less than 310 cases of breaking and entering buildings, in any one year from 1887 to 1892. And in this same city, within the same period, there have been no more than 140 cases of robbery in any one year and no less than 100. But the following remarkable fact is true of each year. From 1,700 to over 2,000 innocent persons—the majority of whom are foreigners and half of whom are minors—are arrested without warrant, purely on suspicion, disgraced by unjust arrest and imprisonment, and then turned loose without redress ! This happens with almost the regularity
of clock work. Read the record as found in the police reports:
Year .... 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892
Arrested on susp'n 1,784 2,266 1,861 1,819 *>943
Discharged . . . 1,778 2,263 I»858 j»8i7 r»929
"But this is not all. In the year 1890, 37,000 people (in round numbers) were arrested with and without official warrant, only 2,000 of whom received imprisonment after trial. In 1891, 41,000 were arrested, only 3,000 of whom received imprisonment. In 1892, 48,000 were arrested, only 7,000 of whom received imprisonment. The average yearly amount of property stolen is $95,-000. To recover this we have an expenditure of $1,170,000—that is, on the assumption that property protection is the chief province of the police.
"Now, considering that there are only about 500 persons each year, in a population of 500,000, wThose property is in danger, and considering that no one of this population of half a million can be assured that he or she will not be one of the 500 bound to be robbed in spite of supporting an expensive police, is it not a legitimate question whether or no protection of property is worth paying for under present conditions?"— The Twentieth Century.
Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe ; There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fullness ; and around, Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear preception—which is truth ; A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Blinds it and makes all error : and 4 7o know" Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed to be without,
Browning,
mim
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fPsychic Forces of Civilization. .