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WM. M. SALTER,
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1887,
THE GRAND OPERA HOUSE, CHICAGO,
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PRESS OF H. M. SHABAD & CO., :
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reaffirmed by a higher court, and sustained by an almost unanimous
press and by an overwhelming public opinion, still more presump-
tuous must it seem to attempt to speak on the cure for anarchy.*
I take up my task to-day with less confidence than I felt a week ago.
Then it was a question of facts; to-day it is a question of causes and cures,
an immensely greater question. What has led the Anarchists to think as
they do? What has bred the spirit of anarchy in our midst, and how can
we allay and eradicate it? I should be a bold man, to expect to altogether
satisfy either you or myself as to these most involved and complicated
matters.
All the same I shall try!
Anarchy is not mere violence. It has its outcome in that; at
bottom it is a thought. We can punish or repress violence; we must. But
we cannot so easily put down thoughts in men's minds. To change
thoughts, we must use thought. There is only one way to put down an
idea; not by laws, not by soldiery or police, but substituting a larger,
juster, truer idea in its place.
The thought of anarchy is this, you would not have come here this
morning did you not want me to state it fairly,–that wealth in great part
is made by taking the product of the labor of workingmen, and paying
them for it, not what is worth, but what it costs them to live; that govern-
ment exists in great measure to protect this wealth, that it is the organ of
the wealthy class for making themselves secure in the possession of their
wealth, that it is a instrument of injustice rather than justice; that hence,
the only thing the workingman has to do is to put it down, to throttle it.
Once get this line of thought in the minds of workingmen, and agitation
and organization and rebellion and dynamite bombs follow as a matter of
course. Of course, it is understood that I am not speaking of anarchy in
the abstract, nor of little schools of intellectual but bloodless men who
believe that government is born of oppression but will not rise up against
it, nor of refined and amiable dreamers like Tolstoi, who follow Jesus and
will not resist evil, though it be directed against their own wives and
children. I speak of the anarchy that has made itself a force in our midst,
that has made itself heard through the terrific bomb in circles where the
name of Tolstoi is unknown. In speaking of anarchy I mean what every-
body means who speak of anarchy to-day—the views of the seven men,
who according to the sentence, are to be hanged in the County Jail on
the 11th of November next.
*The lecture of the previous Sunday, “What shall be done with the
Anarchists,” was printed in the Open Court, Oct. 20, and subsequently in
a separate pamphlet, together with some editoral comments by the Daily
News.
§ it seemed presumptuous to question the justice of a judicial verdict'
4.
From the speeches of these men at their trial, from the writings of
some of them before that trial, it is perfectly easy to see what their
thoughts and animating motives were.
There is no evidence whatever that they loved violence for its own sake.
It is reported that the Prosecuting Attorney in the trial said that “these
men had no principles—they were common murderers, assassins, robbers”;
if he said it, it was most unintelligent, if not crimnal talk. There can be
no doubt that these men were stung with a sense of injustice—mistakenly,
as I hold, but honestly; what had they to gain by their course, what have
they gained? They spoke with the bitterness of those who feel themselves
wronged or who sympathize with others wronged. They became fanati-
cal, wild. fantastic—underneath it all was a rankling sense of injustice.
We may see this for ourselves by reading almost any one of their speeches.
One of them said, and this he said at the Haymarket, that according to
statistics of the Bureau of Labor at Washington, workingmen were pro-
ducing values to the extent of $10. a day and receiving only $1.15 a day
for their labor. Another summed up certain Statistics in the New Years”
issue of one of our city newspapers for 1885, by saying that according to the
showing each wage laborer had added to the wealth of the city during the
previous year to the extent of $2,764, and had received in wages, on the
average, $457, a little more than one-sixth of the value of what he had pro-
duced. The claim is put in so many words by one, that the capitalist
takes from the laborer all the wealth he creates over and above the cost
of a bare subsistence. Now I will say at once that I do not believe all
this; but the point is that we should try to put ourselves in the place of
those who do believe it, so that we may understand the matter of which
we are talking. These men did not teach this doctrine to themselves;
if we want to find the ulimate responsibility for their actions and the
original incitement to their crimes, we have to go back to Ferdinand Las-
salle and Karl Marx; yes, we have to go back to the most orthodox and
most keen of English political economists—to Ricardo, and before him to
Adam Smith, Ricardo taught what has become the fundamental socialistic
dogma, that labor produces all wealth and, further, the doctrine that
Lassalle designated as the iron law of wages, namely, that wages tend ever
toward that lowest amount that will keep the laborer alive and allow him
to rear children; Marx and Lassalle simply rounded out the Ricardian
system by showing—or rather attempting to show—that wealth was sim-
ply the difference between the wages of workingmen and the real value of
their work, they getting only what is necessary to keep them alive while
they produce—well all that is produced * This is itself a revolutionary
* Rousseau held a somewhat similar view. See John Morley's Rous-
seau. vol. 2—p. 227.
5
theory. According to it, the employing class despoil those whom they
employ; they acquire all that they, the workmen, produce at the cost simp-
ly maintaining them; they get rich just as slave-holders get rich, and the
workingmen are practically slaves, only they are held by their necessities
and not by any formal title in the possession of their masters. This is the
maddening view held by anarchistic agitators, and by many others besides
who do not speak out so plainly. A man who held to such a view would
hardly have a human heart within him, who did not seek to overturn these
relations between the capitalist and the working class.
But when an appeal is made to the government, what does it do?
Nothing, says the Anarchist. It does not right the wrongs of which we
complain, nor try to. Rather, does it perpetuate them. If we, or the
workingmen in general arise to claim what is their own, the government
puts them down. It gives the capitalist a property right in that very
wealth, which workingmen create, and of which they are despoiled. Fielden
asks, “What is Socialism? Taking somebody else's property? No, but
preventing somebody else from taking your property.” There is the
whole thought of these mistaken men in a nutshell. The property of our
wealthy classes is to them stolen property; and they believe workingmen
have a right to reclaim their own. But government—to continue speaking
from their standpoint—protects this stolen property, and says, hands off!
It is simply an instrument of the wealthy class for self-protection. There-
fore they say, Down with it!—and no man of heart and courage, who
thought as they did, could well refuse to say the same. A man, a class of
men, who feel they are robbed, and yet will say or do nothing, hav’nt the
first elements of manhood in them. -
Now I hold the fundamental thought, the very germ, of the Anarchis.
tic agitation to be a gigantic mistake. I dissent from Ricardo himself,
the unwitting and unwilling father of Socialism, as well as from its re-
Cognized conscious exponents, Lassalle and Marx. I have sympathies
with workingmen. I never had them more than now—it is no merit to
have them, no one with a heart and a sense of what human nature is capa-
ble of can help having them; I have had even Socialistic leanings—but I
never was so little of a Socialist, as when a year ago last summer I finished
Marx's famous work of over 800 pages, Das Kapital. Labor does not
produce all wealth; exactly the same amount of exertion may be made,
the same amount of muscular and nervous tissue wasted, in producing
Something that has no value as in producing something that has. The
labor expended on a thing does not give it value; all depends on whether
that thing is wanted, and on how much is wanted—and the determination
of whether a thing is likely to be wanted, and how much, does not ordi-
narily lie with what we call the working class at all. It is not a question
of labor, it is a question of intelligence. A man who comes into a factory
6
or but an hour a day—I take an extreme case—or but once a week, may
decide whether the work of the hands employed there shall have value or
shall not, or shall have more or less value.
This is the function of the employer, the employing class. They are
to decide, taking into account the wants and desires of men, what work
shall be done; how much, of what kind; and then they hire workmen to
do that work—they themselves initiating, the workmen executing. Does all
that is produced, then, belong to the workmen 2 True, they may have done
everything; the employer may not have lifted a finger—all the actual labor
is theirs. Is the product also theirs? I think no intelligent and honest
workingman would say so, if the matter were thus plainly laid before him.
He would only say, it is partly mine, and partly my employers. But for
him, all my labor or much of it might have been in vain; the product of
my hands might be a drug in the market or something that once wanted
is wanted no longer, because something better has taken its place. He
deserves his remuneration, just as truly as I do mime. Now the man who
has once got clearly this insight will never be carried away by the Socia-
listic delusion. If workingmen are the sole creators of value, why
do they not set up for themselves and dispense with their employers?
Why do they not make all industry co-operative? I grant there are often
difficulties in the way of getting tools and machinery and buildings. But
why, when they surmount these difficulties, as they often have, do they
not always succeed ? Because of miscalculation, of mismanagement, of
dissension, isthealmostinvariable answer. No trouble with the work, but
trouble with the direction and management of the work. Co-operative
enterprises fail, when they fail—I do not mean they always do, for I be-
lieve more and more as the intelligence of workingmen is heightened,
that they will succeed,for just the lack of the services which the employer
in ordinary cases renders. The employer's services may be entirely intel-
lectual—he may possibly not be on the scene more than once a year and
may live in another town or another land,-yet, save in the rarest cases,
they are absolutely essential. Could the employees of our railroad com-
panies, our telegraph lines, our great business houses run these undertak-
ings themselves, run them with a profit or even without danger of loss?
How much stock would you take in a bank or a railroad that was man-
aged by the clerks, the book-keepers or the brakemen, the engineers and the
conductors, by all who do the actual physical work? It is absurd on the
face of it that labor creates all value.
Yet when we see this, how changed becomes the whole aspect of the
question I The laborer, the employee gets a share of what he produces,
for that is what his wages amount to, and the employer, the director gets
a share, too; though sometimes it turns out that while the laborer has got
his, the employer has got nothing at all—for he has miscalculated or mis-
7
managed, and if his mistakes were great, he may have to go into banki
ruptcy. Now the government might undertake to say what the fair share
of each class shall be; it might undertake to divide the product accord-
ing to abstract equity. The difficulty would be to say what abstract equity
is, and what it is from year to year or from month to month; so many con-
siderations would have to be taken into account, that the government would
have to possess a sort of practical omniscience to discharge such functions.
Then circumstances might arise in which the product would not be worth.
the labor that had been expended upon it.
If government naturally and justly refuses to exercise these most diffi-
cult and responsible functions, it does so because it believes that on the
whole men will best take care of themselves, and, further that it is better
they should take care of themselves than be taken care of by an outside
power. The government throws on the employer the responsibility for the
worth of his product, instead of assuming it itself, and throws on the
workingman the duty of making his own bargain with his employer. The
government says, it is my duty in the main to give to all classes a free
field,to prevent aggressions of one on another, to secure to all, so far as possi-
ble, equality of opportunity, to make no man rich, no man poor, but to
give every one a chance to do the best possible for himself. Our govern-
ment does not stand one particle in the way of the working classes getting
a far larger share of the product of their labor than they do.
It does not forbid or prevent strikes, it allows them; it could not pre-
vent strikers going to any length, even if, as the result, employers got no
more in compensation for their services than workingmen now get for
theirs. For all our government says or could say, a bank or railway presi-
dent might be forced to content himself with a few dollars a day, and
nearly the whole product of the united industry of all concerned go to their
subordinates. I do not say this in equity should be; but there is no power in
the government to hinder it. The government does not undertake to say
What equity is at all in these private relations, or to enforce it; it does not
hinder unfair bargains now, it could not in the future, if the unfairness
should operate against the employing class, instead of against the work-
ingmen. The government only says to all parties concerned, you shall
not use violence.
If employers should undertake to keep workingmen at work against
their will, whether through Pinkerton's or any other body of men, you
would see how soon the government would step in, and with all the forces
at its command come to the defense of the workingmen. So now, when
striking workingmen—as I regret to say, they sometimes do—use violence
against those who take their places, the government steps in to protect
those assaulted. It is an entire misconception that, as anarchistic agitators
8
urge, the government is always on the side of the employer and against
the strikers. It is against violence, that is all; and a policeman dares
not lift a finger till some outrage or threat of outrage is made by the
strikers. Poor honest Fielden says, when McCormick attacked the in-
terests of his workingmen, the police did not attack McCormick; but
when the tables are turned and the strikers attack McCormick's interests,
the policemen do interfere, therefore the government is on the side of one
class rather than another. Here is total confusion of thought. How
does McCormick or any employer attack his workmen's interests?
By using violence against them 2 By keeping them forcibly at work
against their will? No, but by lowering their wages, or trying to. And
how did workingmen, in this case, attack McCormick's interests? By
demanding higher wages? By trying to make McCormick put up with
lower profits? No, but by smashing his windows, and pounding those
who worked for him. Dolus latet in generalibus.
There isn't one thing in common between the two procedures. Engel
says, “it is impossible for a workingman to free himself by means of the
&allot box, and to secure those things necessary for his existence.” Another
One gays, “Your ballot what is it good for? Can a man vote himself
bread, or clothes, or shelter, or work?” Who ever dreamed that he
could A man is to get his bread and the things necessary for his ex-
istence, by his labor, not by the ballot box. He is to work for his living,
and the ballot is simply the means by which he helps to decide what shall
be the laws under which he works, and who shall be the officers to ad-
minister the laws. To turn the government into a bread-making and bread
distributing machine, is the absurdest of political ideas. But so ample
are the provisions of our laws, that even this absurd idea could be tried,
if a decided majority in the country want to try it. The majority rules in
this country, and no president, or senate, or congress, no wealthy class
or monopolists can hinder it; if the majority want to try a socialisttc
régime, they can do so. But these men, these anarchists — and thereby
they differ from the socialists, pure and simple—will not wait for the ma-
jority, they will not even try to get a majority, they discountenance all
attempts to form a regular political party, and proceed to try to blow up
a government, that they do not attempt to reform. I hold that the govern-
ment should put them down by all the means at its command. Should
disperse all meetings in which they incite to violence, and not allow their
processions, nor the carrying of their flag; the law cannot recognize them
or protect them without stultifying itself, for their offense is against the
wery foundations of law.
Now the way to cure anarchy—one way, at least—is to instruct our
working people. Many come over here with but the faintest idea of what
9
our government is, the main notion being that here they are free to do
about as they please. They should be taught, they can be, and I hold it
would be perfect equity if they were not allowed political functions till
they were taught, or had taught themselves, and were ready to pledge
loyalty to the fundamental methods of our law. Do you doubt that they
can be reached in this way? Well, I ask you have you ever tried to
reach them 2 I confess, to my shame, that the only time I ever attended an
anarchistic meeting was two and a half years ago, in response to an invita-
tion to hear a certain lecture of mine reviewed and criticized by the so-called
American group. There I was treated with perfect courtesy, and I be-
lieve any minister or editor, or public teacher of any sort, who had gone
to their meetings, whether to hear or to speak, would have been treated in
a similar manner. Invitations were sent out to ministers and others
more than once to attend their meetings and join in the discussion; but
such invitations were treated as a joke in the press, and seem to have been
unnoticed by the ministers.
These wrong-headed men were rarely, if ever, sought to be convinced;
they were simply denounced and vilified, and made thereby only the
madder, the wilder and the surer of their case. It is a beautiful parable
of Jesus, that if a man lose but one out of a hundred sheep he will leave
the ninety and nine, and go out into the mountains and seek after the one
that is gone astray. Can a man not go astray in error as well as in sin?
Aye, is not a deluded man more pitiable than a willfully vicious one? Yet
the only instance I remember of a church seeking out the straying an-
archists was that of the Peoples Church, presided over by the large
hearted Dr. Thomas, and then the sheep was not sought out in the moun-
tain thickets, but was invited to bring himself to the vestry of the church,
and he came.
At another time, Jesus spoke of a sheep fallen into a pit on the Sab-
bath day, and of how for all that a man will go and lay hold of him and
lift him out. But it might have seemed profane to many of our church
going people and of our ministers, too, to go off.on a Sabbath day to an
anarchist meeting and attempt to rescue those fallejitºus of error there.
I am afraid even the members of our own Ethical Society would not have
approved altogether a plan I had in mind and should have proposed for last
winter,-bad not the bomb been thrown, to have different representatives
of the workingmen of the city appear before us in a course of Sunday
afternoon meetings and explain their views, so that we might know what
they want at first hand—and among their number, the leader of the An-
archists, August Spies. The trouble is that we—and, I mean, what are
called the respectable classes generally—have not cared very much to in-
struct the workingmen; we have gone our way and have let them go theirs,
10
forgetful that the more favored portion of the community have any guar-
dianship whatever over the less favored portion, and only too ready if any
stray off into the mountains or into pitfalls to let them stay there and hold
them alone responsible. We need more humanity, not chairty nor alms,
but willingness to go out and help clear up the minds of the people; for,
as I implied last Sunday, anarchy is not confined to the Anarchists, but
the predisposition to it is in large classes of workingmen, and it is en-
couraged, wittingly or unwittingly, by eminent teachers of political econo-
my, and you cannot alter it by books or sermons or thundering editorials
or formal lectures like those given here, but only by going out and mingle
ing with the workingmen, perchance by living in their midst. If I were
capable, if I were fitted, I should like nothing better than to try to found
workingmens' clubs in different parts of the city and make them centers
of light and influence in the direction of sound political thought and good
citizenship. Chapels or church-clubs will do little—for workingmen will
not be patronized, they must in large measure form and manage their own
associations and only be incited and aided by any one else. More and
more willthe educated young men of our land, whose culture has not
thinned their blood and made them cynics, turn themselves in these help-
ful directions. Witness the old South courses of lectures on American
history and politics for the future workingman and citizens of our country
in Boston, presided over by Mr. Edwin D. Mead. Witness Toynbee Hall,
that most interesting settlement of Oxford and Cambribge young men
in the east end of London, and the little Ethical Society formed in con-
nection with it, which has debated whether it should not address itself
exclusively to workingmen and workingmen's questions. Witness our
own Dr. Coit—the colleague of Prof. Adler—taking up his abode down in
the working districts of New York and mingling with the utmost freedom
with the working boys and young men of his neighborhood, forming
them into clubs that have already attracted public attention.
“It takes a high-souled man to move the masses,” says Mrs. Browning.
Very true, but there are high-souled young men graduating from our col-
leges every year, and others too, who would have been priests or missiona–
ries in other ages of the world, but who cannot be so now, and who crave
to do real work in the world, work that shall tell on the lives and minds
and bodies of their fellow men.
It is one of the tasks of the Ethrial movement, or of any other honest
movement, whether within or without the church, to find out these men
and to provide ways and means for setting them to work. There is no
love in the human mind for error, let advocates of total depravity say what
they will. Men, workingmen are willing to hear the truth even against
themselves. I believe the simpletruths relating to political economy and to
11
our government which I have already stated would be listened to, and
accepted by the great mass of our workingmen, if clearly and patiently
explained to them, and something would thus be done towards destroying
the very seeds of anarchy. For It is of course understood that I am not
Speaking to-day of a cure for all our social and economic ills, nor attempt.
ing any solution of the general labor question, but only asking, what is a
cure for anarchy, and even should we cure anarchy, we should by no means
thereby solve the social question, we should only settle that it shall be
solved in a peaceful and legitimate manner. What that manner is, I do'
not consider at all to-day.
I have spoken thus far of the education of the workingmen. But
have other classes in the community nothing to do in the matter? Has
government itself nothing to do? I tell you, my friends, there are other
things than the writings of Lassalle and Karl Marx that stir up the spirit
of anarchy in our midst. And if we are going to cure anarchy altogether,
we have got to attend to these things too. Shall I give instances of what
I mean? Well, you all remember the case of Terrence Begley, an inoffen-
sive workingman, shot down by the Pinkerton police a year or more ago,
from his wagon. The coroner's jury found that he was killed by an un-
known person, aided and encouraged by four detectives whose names
were given, and recommended that these persons be held to the grand jury
without bail? Why did the grand jury never indict these men? Why has
never the slightest punishment been visited on them? Does any one doubt
that if the prosecuting attorney of the state had used half as much energy
to find evidence against these men, as he did to find evidence against the
eight anarchists, they or somebody would have been indicted? But no, not
a thing was done, not a thing has ever been done. Why? I care not why.
only say; it is one of the things calculated to impair men's respect
for the administration of justice in our midst, aud to impair men's respect
for the administration of justice, is to sow the seeds of anarchy. Another
instance. Some years ago the socialist workingmen of Chicago elected
two representatives to seats in the City Council. They were proof against
bribery and intimidation, and made themselves troublesome to the corrupt
ring then in existence there. Later, they were re-elected, but by their flag-
rant violations of the ballot box, by fraud and perjury, they were kept
out of their seats—one permanently, the other for twenty-three months out
of the twenty-four of his term of office. The fraud and perjury were either
not considered or were condoned by the courts. It cost the socialists
$1,500 of their hard earned wages to prosecute their case, with such mis-
erable results as I have mentioned. Engel refers to this in his speech at
the trial; it was one of the many things that had helped to make him an an-
archist. If workingmen cannot make themselves heard in the government
12
... if they havn't .# enough to fight in the courts #4 street car lines and
other corporations"don't want them to be heard — they are naturally in-
cited to make thémselves heard outside the government—that is all, crim-
inal as their conduct may be. But who are the first criminals? Those
who teach them to lose respect for the law, those who make the law and
the government a tool for their own interests. I quote from the language
of one of the most respected citizens of Chicago, himself once a member
of our city council, commenting on the widespread impression that a ma-
jority in the council is venal, he says, “The evil is more dangerous than is
generally supposed. The disease really exists elsewhere and is only mani-
fested in the council. In this case the purchaser is the more dangerous
man of the two. He is probably an officer in some moneyed corporation;
is sometimes a member of a fashionable church; stands high in financial
and social circles, and is an influential factor in controlling public opin-
ion.” Now it would sound strange to call such a man an anarchist; and
really this name is too good for him; he is simply an unprincipalled rascal
but he is the breeder of anarchy, and if he and such men as he hopelessly,
controlled the city council, the first thing for honest citizens to do would
be to abolish it. Our own Gen'l Stiles—for whatever he thinks of us, we
think a great deal of him, and he is certainly a conservative citizen—said
to us some years ago, in Weber hall, that much was heard of our “sterl-
ing business men,” our “upright thorough-going merchants,” our “gener-
ous leading citizens,” who donate largely to public charities, but among
these men who are supposed to be pillars in the church and in society, a
great many can be found who for years have been debauching the public
morals. The dangerous classes were supposed to mean gamblers, and
thieves, and the lower class generally, but the really “dangerous classes,”
in his opinion, were those who made crime respectable. Friends, the
charge which the anarchists make against our government, whether muni-
Cipal or national, is that it is a plutocracy. A plutocracy is the most hate-
ful of all governments. If the charge were true, there isn't a man of spirit
who wouldn’t be a revolutionist. I do not say an anarchist, for that is a
different thing. I say, the charge is not true; but also that every man and
every corporation that buys a privilege or a franchise with money or for a
substantial consideration of any kind, so far gives color to the charge,
and is a breeder of revolution, and, as men go, of anarchy too. Look out
gentlemen, there may come a time when your wealth will not secure you,
when, as the cry was in Channing’s time, property will be insecure, law a
rope of sand, and the mob sovereign; you are sowing to the wind now, you
or your children may reap the whirlwind by and by. There is a justice at
the heart of things, and though the mills of the gods grind slowly, they
may grind exceeding fine.
13
That laws are made in the interest of rulers is a saying as old as
Plato. As we survey the history of government, we find an immense deal
to justify it. There is no doubt that until recently the English government
has been ruled by a class, and largely for their own benefit. In the
German government, it is said, that even now wealth has a preponderating
influence. It is our proud boast that our own government is of the people,
by the people, for the people. No class has any chartered right here, but
influences are at work that would tend to revolutionize our government,
as radically if not as violently as any anarchist uprising. When Gov.
Oglesby said, a few years since, that he did not want to go to the U. S.
Senate again, that he could not afford it, that he was too poor; when Mr.
. Jay Gould confessed his methods for controlling legislatures, and said he
did not know how much he had paid for helping friendly men, that he
had had four states to look after, this was in 1873, how many has he now?
and he had to suit his politics to circumstances. When he and the like of
him disdain to buy votes finding it cheaper to buy legislatures; * When
congress itself is paralyzed in the matter of tariff reform, and in the
words of the leading political journal of the land,” cannot act because of
persons more powerful than the public, whom the public does not see, and
who will have taxes kept high that their private incomes may not be re-
duced. When these things can be said, plainly it must be admitted that
influences are already at work to revolutionize our government, and make
it the tool of a class. Any man who loves his country and wishes to see
its laws honored and obeyed, should fight these corrupting influences as
he would fight grim death. These are the influences, that if unchecked, will
destroy our government far more surely than the wildest anarchist plot ever
concocted. These are the influences that breed anarchy; anarchy is but
a disease now on the surface of society; these are some of the most potent
causes; we have to cure anarchy; we have to literally expel the causes
from the body politic. We have to tie, and manacle and ſetter unprincipled
greed, or unprincipled greed.will tie, and manacle, and fetter us. I say
nothing against wealth. I cry with all the force I have against the corrupt
use of wealth, against the readiness to tarnish with the slightest spot the
fair name, the purity of our republic.
Nor is it only through and with the government that we can plant the
Seeds of anarchy. All private injustice tends to make men mad, and to
inflame their minds. Some time ago the business of one of our leading
railroads fell off a little; who suffered first? The stockholders who were
*Report of Committee of New York Legislature, appointed to investi-
gate the management of the Erie R. R., (1873)—testimony of Jay Gould.
*The Wation, 22 Feb., '83, p. 165.
14
receiving their 7 or 8 per cent a year, the high officials, whose salaries ran
into the thousands? No, but the brakemen and the firemen, men who
earned from one to two dollars a day and tried to bring up their families
on it—and all that the 7 or 8 per cent dividends and the salaries of the
officials might be kept up as before. Do you think there was no discon-
tent among those workingmen, no legitimate discontent—and all the worse
because it was sullen and never accomplished anything? I have authen-
tically heard of wealthy church members giving generously to foreign
missions and then evening it up for themselves by cutting down the
wages of the most unprotected of their factory-hands—the girls and the
WOmen. g g g
There can be no doubt that such things tend to embitter and alienate
the workingman and to make him a ready victim to socialistic and anar-
chistic delusions.
One more remark and I am done. Two classes of persons in the com-
munity despair of an honest and just government—the anarchist and the
cynical man of the world. The latter's view is perfectly expressed in an
editorial of one of our own city papers a year and a half ago: “The
charming conservators of public virtne, it said, have often sagely annouced
that the affeetive way to rid the mechanism of corrupt politics is for the
“good men” to attend the party caucuses and participate in the nomi-
nating assemblies. Every virtuous man that has ever acted upon that
sage counsel knows its foolishness—knows that a person unskilled in
the arts of gambling might as well enter the gambling house expecting to
beat the professional black-leg at his own game, as to enter the party cau-
cus expecting to beat the professional politician at his own game,”
That quotation was made in an anarchist paper and with full approval
and endorsement. Such despair is just what the anarchists build on; gov-
ernments will be corrupt anyhow, they say—therefore away with them!
Morally speaking, the anarchist is the honorable man of the two, since so
long as the cynic is comfortable himself, he cares little to what extent cor-
ruption may be raging around him. Now over against all this despair,
let us plant ourselves, firmly, and say, courage! If we will, all the evils
connected with the administration of the government and with our legis-
latures and our courts may be remedied. No malign destiny hangs
over us. There are no insurmountable ills. There are measureless He-
serves of power lying back in the hearts of our people. We can cure
anarchy; we can expel, its causes, we can make our country what our
fathers dreamed it would be. I dare look forward and conjecture a better
fate for my native land than either plutocrats or anarchists would give it.
And if I ever Waver, I reassure myself with Matthew Arnold's words:
“And oh, if nature sinks, as oft she may,
'Neath long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenous for the bright reward.
Still in the soul to admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weakmindedness,
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard,