 |
- Transcriber's note: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected -
Vol. I. JUNE, 1906 No. 4
MOTHER EARTH
CONTENTS
PAGE
Mrs. Grundy VIROQUA DANIELS 1
A Greeting ALEXANDER BERKMAN 3
Henrik Ibsen M. B. 6
Observations and Comments 8
A Letter EMMA GOLDMAN 13
Libertarian Instruction EMILE JANVION 14
The Antichrist FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 15
Brain Work and Manual Work PETER KROPOTKIN 21
Motherhood and Marriage HENRIETTE FUERTH 30
Object Lesson for Advocates of Governmental Control ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N—M. 33
The Genius of War JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 36
Dignity Speaks 36
Paternalistic Government (CONTINUATION) THEODORE SCHROEDER 38
Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement MAX BAGINSKI 44
Refined Cruelty ANNA MERCY 50
"The Jungle" VERITAS 53
The Game is Up SADAKICHI HARTMANN 57
10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR
MOTHER EARTH
Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature Published Every 15th of the Month
EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station, New York, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
Vol. I JUNE, 1906 No. 4
MRS. GRUNDY.
By VIROQUA DANIELS.
Her will is law. She holds despotic sway. Her wont has been to show the narrow way Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave, From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave.
"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands The high, the low, in great or little lands. She folds us all within her ample gown. A forward act is met with angry frown.
The lisping babes are taught her local speech; Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech. They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,— In everything the little tots obey.
The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims. They play her games. They sing her holy hymns. They question not; accept both truth and fiction, (The OLD is right, within her jurisdiction!).
Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow. She with contempt or ridicule may cow. They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate, At variance with the program on her slate.
Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown, Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone. With great ado, they publicly conform— Vain, cowards, vain; revolt MUST raise a storm!
The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight, Attempt to live as they consider "right." Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"
In tyranny the Mistress is supreme. "Obedience," that is her endless theme. Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen, Her aid is sought by bosses over men.
Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised. From Ignorance, her bulky body's sized. When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury. But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury.
Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know. So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing. Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring.
A GREETING.
By ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
Dear Friends:—
I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an absence of fourteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;—'tis the twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx—and may be it is a good thing for them that they don't—but you can see that there is an occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving Christians.
It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day; and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning—my first breath of freedom in fourteen years—it seemed to me as if a beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me; beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome; green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!" It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy, and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.
I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I retired from the world, or rather when I was retired from the world—that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth century—at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that is different now—I thought as I left the prison—for have I not been told that the world had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother wouldn't know it again." And that thought made me doubly happy: happy at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in the fond hope that I should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the happiness of my fellow-men.
Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red devils—automobiles you call them—and I have been told about the winged children of thought flying above our heads—talking through the air, you know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps—and here in New York you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and without any ground at all.
These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face only. For as I looked further, past the outer trappings, down into the heart of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of Mammon, enthroned upon a dais of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.
With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond hope of returning into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my feet....
No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real improvement, for this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rational, the less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are. Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends, so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of our civilization.
But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and our civilization?
Simply this:—a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic lie—the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies, slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater nations of the ancient world.
It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men. Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new and happier ways.
And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of Freedom in Brotherhood.
HENRIK IBSEN.
M. B.
I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving currents of life.
A seer has died.
He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society—he found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social foundations—its pillars shook: they were rotten.
The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust, and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their ideals.
In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule. Doctor Stockmann—that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.
"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"—living pictures revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions," "our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing them of the joy of life.
The moralists howled long and loud.
"Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?"
Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.
But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before the craven images that the State and Church have created for the subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves was a nightmare.
His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.
The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is that of the most unprejudiced judge.
What is the result?
We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down. Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.
A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet not without leaving its powerful impress—for Henrik Ibsen stood upon the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes—which, by the way, is the real field of activity of the journalistic profession.
We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy" exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company against the slugging system of the reporters.
Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street—there the reporters made some miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons, of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of the Reds.
"Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked.
One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand, sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means 864 lives in three days."
This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They fled in terror.
Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th. He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the battle of freedom, in your young days?"
"Yes," said Carl.
"If the reports of my men are correct—and I am confident my men are more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet—you were even a Revolutionist?"
Carl Schurz nodded.
"And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?"
"There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily.
The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000 tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary sinner."
No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?
If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they would soon behold this trinity—the thief, the liar, and the hangman.
Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest force—love—must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire father-in-law for marrying his daughter.
Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of their capital!
Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the importance of those that give.
Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!
Again, philanthropy as a money mania—in one instance it feeds the clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.
Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries, maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding sea horses.
Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots. Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity, pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it all.
The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:
"Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.
The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the same voice called:
"Down with America! Up with Anarchy!"
There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.
The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out.
Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however, with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave, and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to Havel, said:
"That's all right, father."
Ben Bansig saved Chicago,—there can be no dispute about that. As to Sercombe, the editor of To-Morrow, he deserves recognition. I suggest that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.
Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter—who, as I can authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel—can console themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.
That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and the dear little piggies grunt!
Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as its helpmates.
The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.
A LETTER.
Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.
Dear Editor:—I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit the story.
It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse—I have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love, honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred institutions, I sent them about their business.
Much as I realize the importance of my articles for MOTHER EARTH, you cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for Earth's sake.
I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts; therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary—the curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment—objects to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening, and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for MOTHER EARTH?
But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my meetings were very successful, and that MOTHER EARTH is being received with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.
After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police, just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority and law."
After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.
I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of MOTHER EARTH, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care and affection.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.
By EMILE JANVION.
AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.
Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be considered as the natural consequence of the latter.
Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character.
Our instruction should be integral, rational, and mixed.
Integral—Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free ensemble, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age.
Rational—Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction God, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection.
Mixed—Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness.
To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance.
To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the pros and cons of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.
That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly.
THE ANTICHRIST.
From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York.
I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight—of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the false mode of seeing,—he demands that no other mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly subterranean form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, must needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the judgment of value is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."
* * *
Let us not underestimate this: we ourselves, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the methods. All methods, all presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men—he passed for an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us—their concept of that which truth ought to be, which the service of truth ought to be: every "thou shalt" has been hitherto directed against us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode—all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible.—In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a picturesque effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our modesty was longest against the taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God——.
* * *
The Christian concept of God—God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the contradiction of life, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal yea! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!
* * *
That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of decadence. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts—they have created no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an ultimatum and maximum of the God-shaping force, of the creator spiritus in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all decadence instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction!
* * *
Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible—the story of God's mortal terror of science? It has not been understood. This priest-book par excellence begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great danger.—
The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man—man is entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The first mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining—he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"—God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium—but of other things also! Woman was the second mistake of God.—"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"—every priest knows that: "from woman comes all the mischief in the world"—every priest knows that likewise. Consequently, science also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his greatest mistake, he had created a rival, science makes godlike; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the thing forbidden in itself—it alone is forbidden. Science is the first sin, the germ of all sin, original sin. This alone is morality.—"Thou shalt not know:"—the rest follows therefrom.—By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one defend one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,—all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man shall not think—and the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all sickness,—nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not permit man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,—what to do!—The old God contrives war, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things, a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, the emancipation from the priest, augments even in spite of wars.—And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,—there is no help for it, he must be drowned!" ...
* * *
—I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the entire psychology of the priest.—The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,—the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,—one must have superfluous time, one must have superfluous intellect in order to "perceive" ... Consequently man must be made unfortunate,—this has at all times been the logic of the priest.—One makes out what has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:—"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised in opposition to science,—in opposition to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is not to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is not to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to suffer.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. A Saviour is needed.—The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"—lies through and through, and without any psychological reality—have been contrived to destroy the causal sense in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A priest's attack! A parasite's attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed—the greatest crime against mankind has been committed. Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation par excellence, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest rules by the invention of sin.—
* * *
I condemn Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To do away with any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it created states of distress in order to perpetuate itself eternally.... The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state of distress!— ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity!—Parasitism as the sole praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,—against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, benevolence of soul, against life itself....
This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,—I have letters for making even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, mean,—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!
BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.
By PETER KROPOTKIN.
IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father—a practical gardener—in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches—it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.
We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry."
It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars—the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry—and of science as well, as I am about to prove—that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.
What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers—not men of science nor trained engineers—have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?
"At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers have invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their inventions—those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only, and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine—not in its drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings—who unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it. Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston; and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there is no room left for naive improvements of that kind. Scientific education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions, and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are combined together—unless integration of knowledge takes the place of the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question. Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.
Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain that specialization must follow general education, and that general education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical education," which means the maintenance of the present division between brain work and manual work, we advocate the education integrale, or complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science—such a knowledge as might enable them to be useful workers in science—and, at the same time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the manual production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, it has been attained; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in our miserably organized society.
The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels, Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue; younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is divided into two sections—the mechanical and the chemical; but as I personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to the education given in the mechanical section. After a five or six years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough knowledge of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected sciences—so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the Technical School fabricated with their own hands, and without the help of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific apparatus—all for the trade—and they received the highest awards for the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were scientifically educated skilled workers—workers with university education—highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so much distrust science.
Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University, and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical skill was prosecuted—according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston—in the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that branch—the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.
In America the same system has been introduced, in its technical part, first, in the Chicago Manual Training School, and later on in the Boston Technical School—the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are also trained in the workshops—but not for one special trade, as it unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and vice versa, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The boys work with the physical instruments, and they study geography in the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room. Some of their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.
The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school.[1] It totally neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must recognize that the Moscow experiment—not to speak of hundreds of other partial experiments—has perfectly well proved the possibility of combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skilled laborer. It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained, notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.
It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of colored cardboard, will not look at the theorem, when it comes in geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers; and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the Kindergarten—German teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of the child is regulated beforehand—has often become a small prison for the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical, chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of the laws of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to make toys themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard. But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know how to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the "lower classes only." They thus do their best to render subsequent learning the more difficult.
* * * * * * * * *
The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only, provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, science, or any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive work—if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and woman, after having reached a certain age—say of forty or more—ought to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good institutions of the early part of his reign.
MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE
By HENRIETTE FUERTH.
(Translated from the German for MOTHER EARTH by ANNY MALI HICKS.)
Knowledge becomes understanding only when its scope includes the origin, the development and the conclusion of things.—Bachofen, "Right to Motherhood."
"THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far removed from its own."
There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,—ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of sex relation.
But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion.
But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits.
And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer sex relations, encompassing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free individual. Then only will it be possible to base these needs and demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and spiritual phenomena.
But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else, subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much talked of marriage bond of to-day,—which is considered the cornerstone of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms, whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples of sex relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of life with its creative and ever recreative force.
"Goddesses enthroned in solitude, Surrounded not by time or place, These are the mothers! About them formed and formless, Eternal stability and endless change In images of all created life."
Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths.
And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child comes to them, with eyes brimming with childlike love and affection, against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which is a form men have given their sex relations, and established from the standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or change.
OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.
By ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N—M.
THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak and the camera—though busy at work while the flames roared around the operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its resistless power—failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco.
Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that they dread to close their eyes in slumber.
While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women—yes, women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick baby down—and that without any justification other than the order of their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities—a natural result of governmental control—hence they are doing all they can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it seemed they else must be burned up—the excuse the soldiers gave for shooting them—and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot wounds.
Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in his possession and refusing to give it up—that the soldiers had plenty is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that they could walk with but difficulty—of their insulting women, and even far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject, "Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity." In this regard the same writer says most truly:
"The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,' according to their own definition of the term."
In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.
These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating militarism—the true name for Governmental Control—to bear these things in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S. inscribed thereon to bring to the surface—like a plaster on a boil—all the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco, following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.
THE GENIUS OF WAR
By JOHN FRANCIS VALTER.
I am the Genius of War. My standard's the Skull and the Bones. I raise my voice—I stamp my foot, And legions rise out of the ground.
Armies advance and retreat, Poisoned, diseased and maimed: All that is left is a grewsome aspect To the moonlight, the ghouls and Me.
All this to a laudable end:— The general has his star; Shylock his four per cent; The contractor's wife a costly gem To enhance her vulgar charms; The mother a harvest of tears; The wife a broken heart; The unborn babe a prenatal curse; While I have my surfeit of blood.
DIGNITY SPEAKS.
"Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law. Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary of the authority of governments. I am supreme.
Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit.
'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself—it enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this accomplished, the man himself is dead.
The Law! See how the timid masses cower at the mere mention of my name. See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature.
The Dignity of the Law!
The Majesty of the Law!
It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd—we must not be disturbed in our orgies.
The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that.
As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that rest upon those to whose care God, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire to emphasize the necessity of wise stewardship.
In the meantime, I exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious profit on my investments.
I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a noble humanitarian.
As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and upon our civilization.
Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain, the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood....
I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven. Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned!
For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible, extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to his own continued mental enslavement.
Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal self-accuser. Were the people—individually and collectively—to sin on a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made idols—were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be.
The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe, I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face—then shall the world behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide."
PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.
By THEODORE SCHROEDER.
(Continuation.)
HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from Wordsworth Donisthorpe:
"They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs, and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies, nor other gentlemen's game, under pain of twelve months imprisonment.
"For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence, and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a goose fourpence.
"Esquires and gentlemen under the estate of a knight shall not wear cloth of a higher price than four and a half marks, they shall wear no cloth of gold nor silk nor silver, nor no manner of clothing embroidered, ring button nor brooch of gold nor of silver, nor nothing of stone nor no manner of fur; and their wives and daughters shall be of the same condition as to their vesture and apparel, without any turning-up or purfle or apparel of gold, silver nor of stone.
"Because that servants and labourers will not nor by long season would, serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the swineherd 6s., a woman labourer 6s., a dey 6s., a driver of the plough 7s. at the most, and every other labourer and servant according to his degree; and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without clothing, courtesy, or other reward by covenant. If any give or take by covenant more than is above specified, at the first that they shall be thereof attained, as well the givers as the takers, shall pay the value of the excess so taken, and at the second time of their attainer the double value of such excess, and at the third time the treble value of such excess, and if the taker so attained have nothing whereof to pay the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment."
Our puritan fathers had the same paternal solicitude as all other tyrants. They made it a crime to disregard the Sabbath, or to deny Scripture, or the truth of Christianity or of the Trinity. In the records of the colony for September 1639 it is written: "For as much as it is evident unto this court that the common custom of drinking one to another, is a mere useless ceremony, and draweth on that abominable practice of drinking healths, and is also an occasion of much waste of the good creatures, and of many other sin," etc. Then it declares that such is a reproach to a Christian commonwealth, "wherein the least evils are not to be tolerated."
In the instructions of the Massachusetts Company to Endicott and his Council, the trade in tobacco is only allowed to the "old planters," "if they conceive that they cannot otherwise provide for their livelihood." It is left to the discretion of Endicott and his Council "to give way for the present to their planting of it, in such manner and with such restrictions" as they may think fitting. "But," it is added, "we absolutely forbid the sale of it or the use of it by any of our own particular (private) men's servants, unless upon urgent occasion, for the benefit of health, and taken privately." In the Records of the Colony of Massachusetts for September 3, 1634, "it is ordered that victuallers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be taken into their houses, under penalty of 5s. for every offence to be paid by the victualler, and 12d. by the party that takes it." "Further it is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly under the penalty of 2s. 6d., nor privately in his own house or in the house of another before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence."
The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against "excess and bravery in apparel" are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all the minutiae of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra "slash," or a needless garniture of "lace." Against this last-named article the zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In 1634 it was ordered "that no person, either man or woman, shall hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of forfeiture of such clothes." In 1636 it was enacted "that no person, after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall any tailor set any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every offence,—provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon garments or linen." Again, three years later, a new edict was launched at this obnoxious material, because "there is much complaint of the excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's estates, and also of evil example to others." The law of 1634 was indeed repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. "We acknowledge it," say they, "to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact rules to confine all sorts of persons"; and so, leaving the wealthier class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for "people of mean condition." It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no one whose estate is not of the value of L200 "shall wear any gold or silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of their persons or estate," "the grand jury and country court of the shire" being judges of the offence.
One provision of the law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature, to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires; provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of (except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great veils, long wings, etc.)." What intolerable tyranny of private surveillance is indicated in the phrase, "what any man shall judge to be uncomely"!
In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of "strong waters" to the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence and prohibition; since, after declaring that "drunkenness is a vice to be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus," it goes on to assert that "any strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken away." But it would seem that "the cause," in the eyes of our Puritan lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law chiefly enacts that none but "vintners" shall have permission to retail wine and "strong water." It is also permitted to constables to search any tavern, or even any private house, "suspected to sell wine contrary to this order." Moreover, no person is "to drink or tipple at unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,"—the "unseasonable" time being declared to be after nine in the evening.
But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved to confess: "It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, that those who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience.
In 1636 one "Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined L5 for slighting the magistrates," etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, "that Robert Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company, under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and L5 for the second." What was the efficacy of the whipping or the "scarlet letter," we are not informed.
Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the protection of a government solicitous for the people's good." Such has always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say, finds many endorsements even to this day.
It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of course according to other people's conception of right. That is precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims of the paternalistic laws above described.
Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by that hollow phrase, "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words: "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man."
AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT.
By MAX BAGINSKI.
TRADE unionism represents to the working man the most natural form of association with his fellow-brother. This medium became a necessity to him when he was confronted by modern industrialism and the power of capitalism. It dawned on him that the individual producer had not a shadow of a chance with the owner of the means of production, who, together with the economic power, enjoyed the protection of the State with its various weapons of warfare and coercion. In the face of such a giant master all the appeals of the workingman to the love of justice and common humanity went up into smoke.
The beginning of modern industry found the producer in abject slavery and without the understanding of an organized form of resistance. Exploitation reigned supreme, ever seeking to sap the last drop of strength of its victims. No mercy for the common man, nor any consideration shown for his life, his health, growth and development. Capitalism's only aim was the accumulation of profits, of wealth and power, and to this moloch everything else was ruthlessly sacrificed.
This spirit of accumulation did not admit of the right of the masses to think, feel, or demand; it merely considered them a class of coolies, specially created, as it were, for their masters' use.
This notion is still in vogue to-day, and if the conditions of the workers at this moment are somewhat better, somewhat more endurable, it is not thanks to the milk of human kindness of the money power. Whatsoever the workingmen have achieved in the way of better human conditions,—a higher standard of living, or a partial recognition of their rights,—they have wrenched from their enemies through a hard and bitter struggle that required great endurance, tremendous courage and many sacrifices.
The tendency to treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this tendency no longer goes unchallenged; it is being met with tremendous opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been comfortably seated on their backs for centuries past.
The first unskilled attempt on the part of the people to gain a clear conception of their position brought out blind hatred against the technical methods of exploitation instead of hatred against the latter.
In England, for instance, the workingmen considered machinery their deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of production, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlightenment has passed.
The first trade-unionistic attempts have met with the same ferocious persecution that Anarchism is being met with to-day. Even as to-day capital avails itself of the strongest weapons of government in its attack upon labor. The authorities were not slow in passing laws against trade unionism and every effort for organization was at that time considered high treason, organizers and all those who participated in strikes were considered aides and abettors of crime and conspiracy, punishable with long years of imprisonment and, in many cases, even with death.
At the behest of Money, the State sent human bloodhounds on the trail of the man who in any way was suspected in participating in the trade-union movement. The most villainous and brutal methods were employed to counteract the growth and success of labor organizations. The powers that be recognized the great force that is contained in organized labor as the means of the regeneration of society much quicker than the workingmen themselves. They felt this force hanging like a Damocles sword over their heads, which danger made them dread the future, and nothing was left undone to nip this force in the bud.
The fundamental principle of trade unionism is of a revolutionary character and, as such, it never was and never can be a mere palliative for the adjustment of Labor to Capital. Hence, it must aim at the social and economic reconstruction of society.
Many labor leaders in this country, who consider their duty performed when they sit themselves at the table of wealth and authority, trying to bring about peace and harmony between Capital and Labor, might greatly profit by the history of trade-unionism and the various economic struggles it has fought.
Only ignorance can account for the birth of such superficial stuff on the labor question as the book of John Mitchell that has been launched upon the market through loud and vulgar advertisement. Nothing could have disproved the fitness of Mr. Mitchell for a labor leader so drastically as this book.
As already stated, the violent attempt to kill trade unionism or its organizations have proven futile. The swelling tide of the labor movement could not be stopped. The social and economic problem brought to light by modern industry demanded a hearing, produced various theories and an extensive literature on the subject—a literature that spoke with a tongue of fire of the awful existence of the oppressed millions, their trials, their tribulations, the uncertainty, the dangers surrounding them; it spoke of the terrible results of their conditions, of the lives crippled, of the hopes marred; a literature that demanded to know why it is that those who toil are condemned to want and poverty, while those who never produced were living in affluence and extravagance.
Well-meaning people have even attempted to prove that Capital and Labor are twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital, and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious child into submission.
Along with the forcible subjection of organized labor, the minds of the people were confused and blurred by the sugar-coated promises of politicians who assured them that the trade unions ought to be organized by the law, and that all labor quarrels ought to be settled by political and legal means. Indeed, legislatures even discussed a few labor-protective laws that either never saw the light of day, or, if really enacted, were set aside or overridden by the possessing class as an obstacle to profit-making. |
|
