No. 1, 
 
 THE IDEAL LIBRARY, November, 1895. 
 
 * * ***-x--*-** * ****** * 
 
 Civilization 
 Civilized 
 
 BY 
 
 STEPHEN MAYBELL 
 
 THE CRUSADE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 DENVER, COLORADO. 
 
 * ******^***lt*** ** 
 Monthly. PriCC lO CclltS. $1 Per Year. 
 
 Entered at tbe Denver, Colorado postoiBce as second-class matter.
 
 
 The Brotherhood of the Co-operative 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 THE Brotherhood of the Co-operative Com- 
 monwealth has been organized with lo- 
 cal branches in every State and Territory 
 save only Alaska, to solve the labor problem, 
 by establishing co-operative industrial plants, 
 and communities to provide work for the un- 
 employed, and to concentrate co-operative ef- 
 fort in one State until said State is socialized, 
 thus presenting to a doubting world, a practi- 
 cal working model of Socialism. 
 
 Washington State has been selected as the 
 first field of its operations, and the work of 
 laying the foundations of a model co-opera- 
 tive town known as "Equality," is well under 
 way. 
 
 For full information as to the Brother- 
 hood, its aims, objects and plans, and require- 
 ments of membership, address the National 
 Secretary at Edison, Skagit County, Wash- 
 ington.
 
 Civilization 
 
 Civilized, 
 
 OR 
 
 The Process of Socialism 
 
 BY 
 
 STEPHEN MAYBELL. 
 
 Copyrighted 1889, by Stephen Maybell. 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 R. A. SOUTHWORTH, 
 429 CHARLES BUILDING, 
 DENVER, COLORADO.
 
 GOOD BOOKS THAT WILL HASTEN THE NEW CIVILIZATION. BUY 
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 THE I^EFERENDUM PRINCIPLE. 
 
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 This is the latest and by far the best work ever issued on the 
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 that reformers cannot possibly unite on any other platform and 
 that if they could, there is not time enough left to educate them 
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 and all reformers are urged to read it and circulate it to the 
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 Order From The Crusade Publishiug Co., Denver, Colorado. 
 
 IVIEI^I^IE ENGLAND. 
 
 A PLAIN EXPOSITION OF SOCIALISM; WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT. 
 By Robert Blatchford. 
 
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 '■'■The world moves." — Galileo. 
 
 >~ Dark Fraud by strange mysterious rites, 
 
 ^ By dungeon, rack, and wheel, 
 
 £9 Ground weak humanity to earth 
 
 Beneath its iron heel. 
 ^ Time hurled its temples to the dust, 
 
 o And Reason cried, "Begone!" 
 
 Your ancient gods are standing still, 
 
 Behold! Tlie world moves on! 
 
 Through weeping ages Murder strode 
 
 Knee- deep — right royally — 
 In human blood, — the King was God; 
 
 Right, the might of robbery. 
 Time hurled throne after throne to earth. 
 
 And Reason cried. " Begone!" 
 Your Kings and Queens are standing still; 
 
 Behold! The world moves on! 
 
 '\ Now, Heaven's Intelligence awakes, 
 
 I Her banners are unfurled, 
 
 ,j To claim her proud inherent right, — 
 
 \ The Guardian of the world. 
 
 J And step by step the nations rise, 
 
 * The truth yet to be won. 
 
 And reason still prepares the way. 
 And still the world moves on!
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, CONTAINING TEN YEAKS OF MY BEST 
 THOUGHT, TO THE LIBERATION OP THE WORLD. 
 
 THE AUTHOR,
 
 CIVILIZATION CIVILIZED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE IDEAL. 
 
 Op what use is that which is so high, so pure, so beautiful, 
 that none save the very few can comprehend or grasp its benefit 
 and beauty? Of what use is the ideal to the millions? 
 
 The ideal is the most powerful, the most potent, of all forces 
 moving humanity. The higher, the sublimer the thought, the 
 greater the effect produced. Though millions grasp not the sub- 
 lime truth expressed, there are those who, standing next in pro- 
 gression, receive its full light, and who in turn reflect it in a 
 sufficiently lesser degree, tempered to meet the conditions and 
 grasp of those below, and those, again, reflect it in a further sub- 
 dued degree to meet those still below, and so on and on down 
 from link to link the force is communicated, and step by step the 
 chain is drawn upward, until each link stands where its prede- 
 cessor formerly stood, — a step in advance cf the past, — and thus 
 have we progress. 
 
 Thus the higher, sublimer, mere spiritual the thought, be it 
 centuries in advance of the comprehension of the mass, its light 
 and force goes scintilating down into the darkness, reflecting 
 from mind to mind, as the sun gleams from atoms to atoms, 
 vitalizing the whole, that which is nearest entering into, and that 
 which is farthest approaching nearer. Thus the holier, fairer 
 our aspiration or dream, the greater the force exercised, the 
 heavier the weight lifted, the more numerous the lives raised 
 nearer and nearer the light. 
 
 Come down with me into this gloomy cellar. How chilling is 
 its mildew-laden atmosphere! What a shudder seizes us as we 
 enter its silence! What an inexpressible feeling of earth chills 
 our marrow, fills our thoughts with shapes of corpses as we 
 inhale its black and fetid exhalations! A feeling of helpless- 
 ness steals over us as we strain our vision into its darkness, and
 
 6 THE IDEAL, 
 
 find that here our organs of sight are useless. As we impulsively 
 reach forth our hands, we feel that we are in the confines of a 
 condition where touch supplants sight, and darkness renders per- 
 ception useless, — the sunless realm of matter through which life 
 struggles and battles its way up. 
 
 As our eyes strive to penetrate the gloom, we dimly perceive 
 a tiny ray which has entered through a minute crevice at the 
 door, — a silvery thread, — within whose beam each little atom 
 floating past gleams and sparkles like a minute star. 
 
 At our feet, in the darkness, lies a common potato, — an 
 insignificant bulb, — long since forgotten, and left to perish, rot, 
 and die. Outside, the great busy world has gone on. Conflicts 
 have taken place, kingdoms have melted, principalities have risen, 
 little men have become great, great men have become little, 
 changes have swept over civilization, astounding events have 
 taken place; while humanity, wondering at the potency of them- 
 selves, dream not of the universe and its infinitude, — dream not 
 that the eternal principle of hope beats, throbs through every 
 particle of this mighty and incomprehensible structure, — thrills, 
 animates all things from the greatest down to the struggling 
 germs of life within the night-clad matter neath our feet. Here, 
 in the gloom of this noisome cellar a struggle has been going on, 
 — a struggle of hope, great as ever animated the world outside,— 
 a struggle involving as important result to the life concerned as 
 ever decided the founding of throne or destruction of empire. 
 Never did hero dare and do, never did people rise and fight more 
 bravely to reach an aspiration than this insignificant bulb, dun- 
 geoned and lying here in darkness. This slender beam of light 
 hath revealed to it an avenue of escape. Cold, numb, death-damp 
 and mildew clinging to its sides, its prayer hath slowly resolved 
 itself into a pale, transparent vine. Slowly but surely it has 
 dragged its weary length over and along towards that little beam. 
 Day by day it has beheld that ray fade, and leave its being hope- 
 less in the grasp of night; felt the clasp of the mildew, 
 and rot pierce its veins with their million talons; the 
 chill and stupor of death paralyze it into vmconsciousness. 
 Again that ray, again it has ^woke, again it has struggled, 
 battled on. An obstacle has intercepted its way; reaching it, it 
 has climbed over and down again, to again struggle on, — on 
 tov.'ards the beam. Gradually it has reached the crevice through 
 which the light penetrates. Softly, v/ithin a brief distance, it 
 lies upon the earth; the crevice is just above it; it raises itself, 
 clinging to whatever it may, and now it reaches the crevice, and 
 springing out into the light, it bursts into vernal leave?, with here 
 and there a blossom, and its hymn of perfume greets the source 
 of light, life, and liberty. 
 
 Even as this struggling vine, down through all the ages men 
 have beheld that same ray piercing into the darkness enshrouding 
 them; and just as that ray has pierced the gloom, man LaS 
 reached up towards it. His path hath ever been up; never once 
 hath he fallen, never once hath he faltered, — no more than the 
 vine in the darkness. Truth from the bosom of the Eternal 
 Btreams down that ray into the darkness of matter, and up
 
 THE IDEAL. 7 
 
 towards it steadily progressess bumanity. 
 
 That ray is the ideal; and the purer, the higher, the sublimer 
 that ray, the greater its accomplishment of good. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 SociALLSM is a plant of growth, not a spontaneous generation, 
 nor product of political combustion; it can only be planted, and 
 can only grow, in a republic. In monarchies there is revolution; 
 in republics, evolution. Socialism marches with thought, not 
 daggers; it brings peace, not war; and acts from the plane of love, 
 not hate. 
 
 It is not an untried theorem, nor a speculative; but is here, is 
 tried, is proven, is successful. In our public libraries, in our 
 public parks, in our public schools, in our public postoffices, we 
 find the idea of socialism; we find public necessities run and 
 controlled by the people. It is not, therefore, a proposition, but 
 a demonstrated remedy. 
 
 Transportation, telegraph, express, and every species of manu- 
 facture, together with all natural necessities of the community, 
 including land, water, air, light, and all pertaining thereto, are as 
 public in their character and nature as are our educati* al and 
 mail departments, and every circumstance that goverr e one 
 certainly governs, or should govern, the other. 
 
 If a public necessity is conducted by private individuals con- 
 trary to the satisfaction and interest of the p)ublic, there is but 
 one remedy, and that remedy is for the public to oivn and 
 to conduct such necessity itself. 
 
 So long as the public refuse to take charge of their own affairs, 
 and allow their affairs to be managed by private interests, it is 
 folly to complain about monopolies, trusts, etc.; for private 
 interest is assuredly attending only to itself, and to expect it to 
 attend to public interest is certainly folly. 
 
 Nationalism is socialism applied to a nation; extend it until all 
 nations are united under the folds of its idea, and you have 
 socialism. Socialism, or the brotherhood of man, is the destiny 
 of the race. Every step the mind of man takes is in that direct- 
 ion. Every invention of labor-saving machinery forces man, 
 nil he or will he, in spite of his ignorance, closer to this issue. 
 Every selfish act merely draws the cord tighter around the 
 strangulating neck of individualism. Individualism — narrow- 
 browed, heavy-bowled, little-eyed, shallow-comprehensioned, 
 self-coDscioned, personal-importanced (keen and sensitive to its 
 own feeling, cold and dead to the conditions and feelings of the 
 many) — stands to-day in posession of the necessities of the race. 
 The part controls what is necessary to tlie existence of the whole, 
 — man;ig6s the necessities of the whole for its contracted 
 ind.viaual desires. 
 
 The race has its artificial as well as its natural necessities. 
 The natural necessities of the whole, a portion of which are land 
 and water, are to-day positively under the control of individual- 
 ism, and are being managed contrary to the well-being of the
 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 whole. Light and air, through their subtilty, elude in a great 
 measure individual proprietorship, which fact alone saves the 
 human rjice from complete extinction; for were it a fact that 
 individualism could control, purchase and sell these necessities, 
 i. e., light and air, even as it does now land and water, the human 
 race would entirely disappear and perish from the face of the 
 earth in less than a century, — would die of asphyxiation, or the 
 lack of a proper quantity of good fresh, pure air and healthful 
 light, which would be denied by their greedy proprietors. 
 
 This animalistic propensity of personalism to grasp the earth 
 and famish the collectivity is admirably described by the Persian 
 poet Hatiz in his couplet upon an avaricious individual, wherein 
 the poet sings: — 
 
 "If the Sun, in his money-safe, instead of money, lay. 
 
 In all the world, none would again behold the light of day." 
 
 We may congratulate ourselves, therefore, that these primal 
 necessities of life, air and light, are not absolutely, as are land 
 and water, upon the shelves and counters, and under the deeds, 
 bonds, and conveyances of individualistic spoliation, and that 
 they are, in a measure, however slight though it be, placed 
 within the reach of the whole, the only real and bona fide 
 proprietor of the world. 
 
 It is to place, then, beyond the control of the part all other 
 necessities of the life and liberties of the whole, both natural and 
 artificial, including land, water, transportation in all its branches, 
 telegraphy, express, finance, manufacture, and agriculture, in- 
 cluding also every other species of collective necessity, and in 
 fact, in a word, to put an end to the elevation of one at the 
 expense and degradation of the whole, — it is for this, and to this 
 end, that we write. 
 
 Socialism has arisen on the horizon of American thought, like 
 another star of Bethlehem, to lead the wise men and women of 
 our land to the advent of a Saviour; not an individual Redeemer, 
 but a collective Redeemer, — redemption of the whole by itself. 
 He said: " My Father is greater than I." This greater means, 
 not personalism, but collectivism. The personal idea is the Son, 
 but the universal idea is the Father. The Son the part, the 
 Father the whole. And the Son (the part) can only receive true 
 greatness through the Father {the whole.) 
 
 If it be the truth, as we have stated, that personal proprietor- 
 ship of air and light would be of such dangerous tendency, then 
 it must be as equally true that personal proprietorship of other 
 necessities of life is of equally dangerous a tendency to the 
 collective life. And it is obvious that this personal proprietor- 
 ship has been the cold and the mildew, numbing and chilling and 
 poisomng the heart of the empire, until ruins upon ruins of 
 civilizations which have descended into immorality and disease 
 present themselves on every hand. My country! such appears 
 self-evident; and if we would insure, not only our liberties, but 
 the very existence of the race itself, we must place all things 
 necessary to the life and liberty of the race under the control 
 and proprietorship of the race, above and beyond the ignorance 
 and hate of limitation. The superiority of nationalism over
 
 SOCIALiaM. 'J 
 
 individualism is as the part compared to the wliole; it is union 
 compared to disunion; while individualism is as a eintxle jud;^- 
 meut against the nation's totality of thought, — the desires ot one 
 against the desires of the entire population. In a final word, 
 individualism is the essential idea of monarchy, — the right of an 
 individual to trample down the rights of the many, — tlie riglit to 
 make wrong. There never was a slave-driver who swung his 
 red-clotted lash against quivering flesh of man but who timed the 
 swish of that lash to the song of his "individual liberty,"— 
 claimed the right, the individual right, to private proprietorship 
 in man, in flesh, blood, and mind, — the liberty of Lucifer! And 
 again, whenever ruin-wrecking, murder-brewirig, convict-breeding 
 rum raises its heavy breath, it voices its royal claim of ^^indiv- 
 idual rigid" to poison the community, — or organize a "League 
 OP Freedom." Freedom for the serpent to nestle itself in the 
 heart of humanity! 
 
 To-day all that is foul in the sun's sight, all which exploits, 
 contaminates, and debauches, all which represents evil, from 
 throne to dive, is based upon individual greed; while all which 
 blesses, comforts, strengthens, and gives life abnegates itself and 
 sinks its ego in the Vv'elfare of the whole. And only the ego so 
 sunk can ever emerge from the waters of the eternal in this 
 baptisement of principle which bestows upon the soul so sunk 
 its degrees of the everlasting. 
 
 Sink the personal in the national! individualism in univer- 
 salism! Individualism is simply limited consciousness. It per- 
 ceives either merely itself alone, or but a small circumference 
 around itself. It is a thing low down in the scale of evolution, 
 and its ruling propensity is to devour. In a word, it is composed 
 mostly of stomach and mouth. Brain it has, but certainly of a 
 primordial degree. Where the organ of benevolence domes the 
 brow of thought, this primal manifestation of consciousness 
 displays but a hollow. Its mission is that of the sponge, — 
 absorption; and as the body upon which it fastens fades, sickens, 
 and decays, this vulture-life fattens and bloats until it dies of 
 gluttony, inanition, and the lack of essential spirit. In Europe 
 it has produced monarchy; in America, monopoly. In Russia it 
 presents its most perfect form, — a personal liberty to imprison 
 and murder a race, — individualism raised completely above the 
 nation or right of the nation, — a part superior to the whole, — 
 absolute despotism. Ay! in Russia individualism proprietorships 
 thought. 
 
 In other countries individualism tramples down the rights of 
 the whole under the form of constitutional monarchy. The con- 
 stitutional part of this kind of monarchy is simply where the 
 whole have restricted individualism to respect certain rights of 
 the whole, and this restriction by the whole is the ouly decent 
 thing about it. In this sort of limited individualism, a choice set 
 of individuals deem it necessary for their individuality to predi- 
 cate certain claims upon the accident of individual birth; or in 
 other words, because their individual ancestors were guilty of 
 certain natural and unnatural crimes, that they, their descend- 
 ants, therefore, have the hereditary or individual right to forever
 
 10 SOCIALISM. 
 
 re-enact the outrages upon the collectivity. This is the beautiful 
 idea of the unevoluted ego; and if you wish to seek a spot where 
 the wnevoluted ego rules, and all idea of collectivism is yet in 
 the seed, go down into the earth, where the light comes not, and 
 there seek a choice collection of individualistic life. Here no 
 collective rights prevail; might is right, and the problem of 
 hunger is quickly solved by the fat eating up the lean. Even so 
 it is with us, in the absence of collectivism. 
 
 No more conclusive proof that the control of our public insti- 
 tutions by individuals is destructive to society's interests, and 
 positively checks evolution, progress, and the very life of the 
 masses, can be adduced than the presentation of the fact that 
 to-day the telegraph corporations have locked up in their vaults 
 valuable invention upon valuable invention, which, if put into 
 operation, would lessen the expense, and in an extraordinary 
 measure improve the telegraphic system now in vogue. Thus 
 these great advantages of progress are kept back and with! i eld 
 from society because of the personal selfish greed of individuals 
 who control these public institutions thus foolishly allowed to be 
 run in the littleness of personal desire, and not in . the greatness 
 of the interest of the human race. 
 
 Individual selfishness refuses to inaugurate these improve- 
 ments because it would not add to its personal profit; refuses to 
 allow the race to progress; refuses to allow the march of mind 
 to proceed; refuses to allow this civilization to advance a step 
 farther! I tell you, men and women of America, if you continue 
 to allow individualism to make idols of itself and slaves of 
 humanity, another Sphinx shall yet again be engulfed in the 
 sands of another desert! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MONAKCHIAL AND REPUBLICAN NATIONALISMS. 
 
 In monarchies, the government and the people are two distinct 
 entities; monarchy being simply individualism controlling 
 collectivism. The more and more individualism controlls collec- 
 tivism, the more and more the despotism. In the dark ages of 
 history, when entire races were held bound in chains, fciggote, 
 and dungeons, we find individuals raised and invested with 
 extraordinary powers, and the collectivity correspondingly 
 depressed. 
 
 In the feudal period, in the monarchial period, and in this the 
 oligarchial period, we find the same situation, viz., individualism 
 raised above and controlling collectivism. In fact, it is the 
 struggle of the ages: individual selfishness, ignorance, and hate 
 against collective universality, wisdom, and love. 
 
 The words "individualism" and "property" are one and 
 synonymous. Individualism is the division of humanity into 
 distinct and separate parts; property is the division of wealth 
 into distinct and separate parts. Individualism and property, 
 therefore, divide humanity, and divide all pertaining to humanity, 
 into laborious, antagonistic, and clashing aspirations. Individ- 
 ualism and property, therefore, represent the division of mankind,
 
 MONARCHIAL. AND REPUBLICAN NATIONALISMS. 11 
 
 and collectivism, the union and consequent harmony of humanity. 
 Hell is disunion, separation, divided interest, divided aim, divided 
 proprietorship, and consequently a condition of curses, hate, 
 confusion, and sulTering; while heaven, its opposite, is its opposite 
 condition, — a united or collectivized interest, aim, proprietorship, 
 order, and power. 
 
 This truth Christ endeavored to impart, and for which individ- 
 ualism crucified him. And until man learns this truth, earth 
 must be a hell. And until man learns that in union he can alone 
 find f rue division, this /aZ.se division, based upon individualism, 
 will continue to inflict him with sorrow, suffering, and death. 
 
 Hitherto almost all law has been conceived by individualism 
 and for individualism. Hardly is there a law to genuinely pro- 
 tect the collectivity. The rights of- individualism and its selfish- 
 ness are everywhere defended, sustained, and preserved; the 
 rights of the whole, of the collectivity, totally disregarded, 
 scarcely contemplated. This is so because individualism has 
 merely comprehended itself apart from the whole, and not 
 comprehended itself as an inseparable indivisibility of 
 the whole. Every aim and desire of man's inmost for his 
 elevation and his expansion is an inseparable indivisibility of the 
 whole, and cannot be attained outside of or antagonistic to the 
 collectivity. 
 
 The whole world's love should be for every child. The whole 
 world's land, water, air, light, and comfort should be the heritage 
 of every mother's little one. Motherhood and fatherhood must 
 learn to extend the same fullness or love which they extend to 
 their individual progeny unto every child. Then shall every 
 mother's child receive the love of every mother, and not as it is 
 now in this individualistic proprietorship of love, each child 
 receiving the love of each child's mother, and — shall I say it? 
 No! I will leave it unwritten. 
 
 In republics the government and the people are one, and all 
 public evils are consequently self-inflictions, — self-impositions of 
 the people. If individualism reigns and ruins in a republic, it is 
 because the people do not understand the very principle upon 
 which their republic is founded; that a republic is collective 
 government, and that collective government should be extended 
 over every public necessity. If collective government is superior 
 to individual government, or monarchy, then collective proprie- 
 torship of the people's public necessities must equally be super- 
 ior to individual proprietorship of public necessities. And this 
 is the only trouble in the American republic. Collective proprie- 
 torship has merely been extended unto government, and individ- 
 ual proprietorship over necessities allowed to remain. Collective 
 proprietorship over government, or a republican form of govern- 
 ment, is the first step and necessary condition for the final and 
 inevitable consequence of a collective control over natural and 
 artificial necessities of the people. And thisMs coming, and must 
 come,, just as sure as wo have a republic, and liberty breeds 
 liberty. 
 
 Circle by circle the tree expands, and circle by circle shall the 
 republic encircle her public proprietorship over banking, railroad
 
 12 MONARCHIAL, AND REPUBLICAN NATIONALISMS. 
 
 telegraph, and by and by over land, water, air, and light. There 
 need be no calaslrophy, no cataclysm, no upheaval, — no one hurt, 
 but every one benefitted. Nothing can stop the physical and 
 mental growth of Uncle Sam. 
 
 In monarchies, if you turn the banks over to the government, 
 you turn them over to a court or monarch; if you turn the 
 railroads, the telegraphs, or the lands or waters over to the 
 government, you turn them over to a court or monarch; but in 
 this American republic, if you turn the banks, railroads, 
 telegraphs, lands, waters, or any other institution over to tlie 
 government, you turn them over to the people, and turn them 
 into a collective proprietorship. Thus monarchial nationalism is 
 but intensifying individualism, while republican nationalism is 
 the abolition of it. Thus the triumph of nationalism in America 
 means the fall of monarchy in Europe. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 
 
 In the beginning the ego recognizes but one self; in the end, 
 it recognizes the whole self. In no manner can the ego recognize 
 the whole self save by an interchange of thought and action with 
 all otiier egoes resolved into one, — into a collectivity. 
 
 If there were naught but individualism, and no collectivism, 
 then individuals could only interchange thought and action with 
 individuals, and never could connect in thought or action with 
 that greater indi\iilual, the nation, which is constituted by all 
 individuals being correlated into one. Surely the philosophy 
 which merely considers the individualities of men as separate 
 units, and which does not recognize man in the concrete, does not 
 recognize but one portion of existence; does not recognize but a 
 portion of the entire fact. The v/elfare of man in the concrete is 
 as important and as necessary a fact as is the welfare of man in 
 the individual; and as the concrete should guard the welfare of 
 the individual, so should liie individual guard the welfare of the 
 concrete, and this he can only perform through a collectivity, 
 and this can only be perfo'-med for him by a collectivity. 
 
 When man rises to this grand truth of guarding himself in the 
 concrete as well as guarding himself in his individuality, he then 
 sinks his individuality in the welfare of the whole, and the whole, 
 returning his devotion, sinks itself in him, and he thus receives 
 nourishment and strength from the whole. Thus the spiritual 
 and physical strength of his country is his. freely to partake of, 
 and to become strong thereby. And so surely as all this is true, 
 just so surely does he lose all this when he refuses to recognize, 
 and but guards merely his own individuality, regarding and 
 considering not the universal side of his nature. 
 
 Thus if man's individual state is to be strong, his collective 
 state must be strong. If his individual state is to be healthy, 
 his collective state must be healthy. If his individual state is to 
 be virtuous, his collective state must be virtuous. If his indiv- 
 idual state is to be free, his collective state must be free; for 
 individual liberty can only be attained through collective liberty.
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 13 
 
 Only can the individual's full powers be free and jnbound 
 in ii nation where the nation is itself free and unbound from 
 individual control of its necessities. The proprietorship of these 
 necessities by individuals is the one great error which enslaves 
 the nation. When the nation is enslaved, all individuals in it are 
 enslaved. Therefore for individuals to be free, all individual 
 control of their necessities must be abolished. 
 
 Individualism foolishly imagines that by individual posession 
 of wealth it is placed above the general condition, und has. 
 secured safety, peace, and liberty. But it has not; for the 
 general injustice which its error infiicts upon society ourrounds 
 it v/ith disease and crime. In vain it surrounds itself with 
 physicians to protect it from a diseased society; in vain it sur- 
 rounds itself with armed officials, police and soldiers, to protect 
 it from a criminalized society. C!ontagion spreads^and crime 
 increases, and the individual proprietor is hastened to his grave 
 by the general contagion. The vultures of law hover round hi& 
 departure, circling round and round his tempting acquirements- 
 as carrons in the air. Looking backward over his individualistic 
 life, he beholds a dark-drawn scene of discordant struggle of 
 unbappiness and unrest. The peace he expected through 
 individual accumulation found no peace for him. Every shadow 
 to him contained a thief; every sound an assassin; friendship to 
 him merely concealed a dark design; and gentle charily appeared 
 but a trick to tap his individual stores. Sounds and outward 
 trappings follow him to his windowiess house; but not one sound- 
 is for him, not one tinsel trapping for him, but for that which hei 
 could not take with him; for it was not his to take. All that he 
 hath taken with him is his narrowness and his shriveledness, and 
 that he hath surely taken, — taken — where? taken with him — 
 for what? Crowds gather along the curbs to behold the cele- 
 bration of his departure. The ragged smile and jest among the 
 multitude, here and there are imprecations. In the carriages are 
 people crape-clad, who ponder behind their crape upon the con- 
 tents of his will. And now a gorgeous monument is reared. 
 But why its inscription? Why ironically satirize the dead? 
 Why not have left the polished stone blank and bare? The 
 wealth he deemed sufficient for his heirs now sinks beneath the 
 quicksands of legal mysteries; orphan and widow are plucked of 
 their legacy, thrown to the contagion and crime of a general 
 heritage. Theft steals in the darkness upon his sepulcher, and 
 his })oor remains are abducted for extortion. Sad, sad denoue- 
 ment! Dark, dark history! Individual proprietorship! this is 
 the story of a prince; but equal in its sadness is the sequel of thy 
 serf. 
 
 Individual accumulations can yield no certain security; for the 
 conditions which individual accumulations create are dangerous 
 to security. Collective proprietorship of wealth and the brother- 
 hood and sisterhood of the nation can only yield a positive and 
 certain security. With the disappearance of individual acquisit- 
 ion, the legal vulture would be gone with hia legal traps and legal 
 pitfalls for the studied absorption of the orphan's and widow's 
 beqest. With the disappearance of individual accumulation
 
 li INDIVIDUAL, AND COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 
 
 would disappear the crime which individual poverty through 
 generations hereditary yields. There being no individual pro- 
 prietorship, the individual would have no object to pilfer; for 
 action ceases devoid of object. The entire wealth of the nation, 
 its opportunities, advantages, sustenance, and all that it possessed 
 to yield strength, comfort, happiness, health, and peace would be 
 for each and for all. Every child would be reared in the moral 
 teachings of the national kindergartens; every avenue of infor- 
 mation, and knowledge, art, and science, open to all; air, light, 
 water, laud, money, and machinery, all, and more, would pour 
 their wealth and released resources into the lap of a common 
 brotherhood. And as the power, strength, order, intelligence, 
 and morality of the race improve, so proportionately diseases 
 would disappear with the low, unhealthy, discordant and 
 destructive conditions concomitant of present individual control. 
 The more individualism refuses to guard the collective side of 
 itself, the less individual liberty will it have; individuals will 
 trample down the rights of individuals, and individuals form with 
 individuals to exploit individuals. In its attempt to individually 
 control the means of subsistence, individualism will find the 
 stronger ahead in the race, and the cunning of the brute ahead 
 of all. Being the brute condition of life, collectivism or society 
 not being abolishable any more than individuahsm, there will 
 still be a collectivism; but it, too, will be bound and controlled 
 by the strong and the lowly cunning, as are the necessities; and 
 individualism will find that in its refusal to recognize and to 
 defend the rights of the whole, it has enslaved and wronged itself. 
 
 All selfishness, all oppression, all injustice, and all government 
 spring from individualism. Individualism is but another name 
 for government. A collectivity or national co-operation is not a 
 government; it is self-control of the whole by itself, and self-con- 
 trol is no government. Self-control being the highest attainable 
 condition of the ego, is therefore the highest form of its liberty. 
 A nation whose collectivity is thus self controlled is a bona fide 
 free nation. Where the collectivities step from under the rule of 
 individuals, and where they assume complete conti'ol of them- 
 selves collectively, and all pertaining to themselves collectively; 
 where they abolish every individual proprietorsiiip, and only 
 recognize themselves as a whole in the ownership of themselves 
 and the ownership of all pertaining to themselves, — they are then 
 in the form and have thus established their collective liberty. 
 
 Individual liberty and collective liberty are one and insepara- 
 ble. 
 
 In a word, whenever a people enter into a perfect copartnership 
 of the whole, and pool their wealth and interest, then all govern- 
 ment from that moment ceases; cheir personal desires and 
 interests being pooled and carried out according to the will of 
 the whole, they have substituted co-operation for government. 
 
 Individual liberty must have, and positively must have, exactly 
 this atmosphere and condition of society for its unfoldment; for 
 environments are molds; and only when the nation is thus freed 
 from individual lust of property, and is therefore self -controlled, 
 can self-controlled men and women be evoluted; and self-con
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 15 
 
 trolled men and women means individual liberty. Thus collective 
 liberty and individual liberty are identical in philosophy, and 
 their cause a unit. 
 
 Individuals must learn and must realize that their life, happi- 
 ness, and liberty are correlated with the whole; that they cannot 
 evolve the higher forms of either of these apart from the whole. 
 This is the great truth of truths; this is the one truth, and the 
 most important truth, yet to be incorporated in our decalogue of 
 practice; this is the truth which underlies the brotherhood of 
 man; and this is the truth which underlies the virtue of love and 
 the value of wisdom. 
 
 Now, then, we would cast a statue. The statue we would cast 
 is individual liberty. We seek a mould or condition; that mould 
 and that condition is popular co-operation, — nationalism. 
 
 What does my individualism need to attain its full stature for 
 the unfoldment of its greatness? It certainly does not need to 
 put the sun in its safe, nor the moon in its pocket; it does not 
 need a mortgage on space and all things therein; nor does it need 
 all the beds in the world, nor all the food in the world, nor all the 
 houses in the world, nor all the hats, garments, tools, machines, 
 food, cattle, horses, and live-stock; nor does it need all the land^ 
 water, light, and air to unfold its individual greatness; although 
 there be certain low, primitive-life manifestations, with certain 
 round, sack-like bodies, fitting close to earth, walking upon 
 hands and feet to fit the closer, with little eyes seeing little 
 things, with mouth protruding earthward, with tusks to rend its 
 brothers, and with grunts for the necessity of others, whose 
 nature deems it otherwise, — whose nature deems that the unfold- 
 ment of greatness lies in the unfoldment of snout, the growth of 
 tusks, and the expansion of abdominal control. 
 
 This thing is not man, but is in man, and predominates his 
 present individualistic civilization. But again we ask, What 
 does my individuality need to unfold it to its highest stature? It 
 needs free and unlimited scope to incorporate within itself all 
 that is necessary to its spiritual and physical life, happiness, and 
 liberty. For this purpose, it needs the establishment of con- 
 ditions of nature and of society wherein it shall enjoy free and 
 unlimited access to whatever is necessary to this end; and the 
 first step to such conditions is the suppression of this thing with 
 the snout and tusks. For the fundamental principle upon which 
 my access to whatever is necessary to me is based, lies in the 
 supremacy of a condition wherein I recognize every other ego's 
 necessary access to the same, and allow to each and to all that 
 which I discover necessary to my own unfoldment. Why is this 
 the necessary condition upon which my opportunity is based? 
 Because, if I refuse others access to the stores of existence, 
 unlimited in their abundance, — an abundance necessitating 
 no fear of exhaustion, and therefore necessitating no need of 
 proprietorshiping, — if I refuse others access to these stores, then 
 I open up these stores to individual control, and make wai* where 
 peace before existed. I waste my life standing between my 
 brother and his necessities, instead of enjoying myself and leav- 
 ing him to enjoy from the exhaustless store as well. And this is
 
 16 INDIVIDUAL. AMD COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 
 
 individual proprietorship of the earth and the earth's fullness. 
 This is what the philosophers, poets, painters, patriots, martyrs, 
 and every noble impulse of mind has endeavored to abolish; this 
 is what individualism has lit her faggots to perpetuate, by 
 burning the devoted bodies of our saints of thought; this is why 
 dungeons have been built into the earth in the endeavor to wall 
 down, to bolt and bar around, and shut out from man the 
 truth of collective proprietorship. Walling in ideas! Endeavor- 
 ing to stop this viewless current of the star's life, — this thing 
 which comes and goes from us upon unseen, unfelt wires! 
 Individual selfishness! still the sea's beat if you can; but you 
 cannot still the resistless beat of thought. Mind is ever in direct 
 connection, and its intelligences penetrate all substances. 
 Thought is a hard thing to catch, — a hard thing to hold, — and 
 let me tell thee, proud City of the Lakes! it is a yet harder thing 
 to hang. It passes from brain to brain, belongs to no one, and 
 suggests these glorious pictures and illuminations of truth from 
 star to star! 
 
 Man must learn and comprehend the laws of association. All 
 that blesses man to-day ke has received through association. 
 Individualism aims to establish might as right; collectivism 
 aims to establish right as might. Collectivism succors the weak; 
 individualism crushes it. Individualism contemplates itself; 
 collectivism contemplates the entirety. Collectivism gives birth 
 to the race, sustains, protects, and unfolds it; individualism of 
 itself produces nothing, protects and unfolds nothing; all the 
 good that it can do is to add itself to the good and thus become 
 better. 
 
 Nationalism is the last and highest step in political economy, — 
 the abolition of individualistic passions and lusts. The next step 
 above it is dazzling to contemplate. 
 
 Individualism has been so deadly and hostile to individualism 
 that collectivism has hitherto but confined its efforts lo prolect- 
 ing individuals from individuals, — from individual hate, rapacity, 
 slander, theft, and murder. It has at length unfolded its many 
 parts into the recognition of collective truths, and with this 
 advanced recognition, collectivism now proceeds to a higher state 
 of protection, and instead of protecting mon singly, it now, 
 through nationalism, proceeds to protect them from each oilier 
 €71 masse, by going to the root of individual conflict, i. e., their 
 private proprietorship of each other's necessities. 
 
 This collective protection at once puts an end to their million 
 private antagonisms growing out of their million private proprie- 
 torships, inaugurates a reign of order, and abolishes this present 
 pandemonium of confusion. The most dibolical acts upon the 
 registers of infamy spring from the private proprietorship of 
 wealth, — individual conflict, murder, poisoning, assassination, 
 midnight and daylight pillage, — all, and worse, have their black 
 roots deep down in private proprietorship. This is the serpent 
 which corrupts and debauches. For individual property man 
 has spotted with blood his hands, and women with sin her soul. 
 Come, collef^tivism! And let the curtain down upon this horrid 
 play.
 
 INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE LIBERTY. 17 
 
 And when the curtain is down upon it, reflect these words in 
 letters of light; from thy stereopticon of reason: — 
 
 Ye who seek liberty and would find it, know, then, that ye can 
 only find your liberty in the liberty of your fellow-men. Ye who 
 seek happiness and would have it, know, then, ye can only find 
 your hapipness in the happiness of your fellow-men; you can 
 only extract happiness from their happiness; and if you would 
 seek to make yourself happy, make others happy. That what ye 
 do unto another, ye do unto yourself. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL — A VISION. 
 
 And I had a vision, — a large plain reaching away into the dis- 
 tance, and a voice said, "Behold!" and I saw the plain covered 
 with people, across whose brows I saw the legend, 
 
 "hate" 
 
 Prom the concourse rose sobs and curses as flames rise from a 
 pit and there were women with babes at famished breasts, and 
 others of horrid ribaldry who joined men in an unspeakable 
 feast, and youths of pale and premature age working out things 
 of terrible import. Virgins bartering virginity, and wrinkled 
 hags merchandising babes. And there were low habitations; 
 places of festering things, whose atmosphere hung thick with 
 putrid germs, where lepers crawled within its shadow and 
 laughed with cavernous jaws. And from vast factories every- 
 where arose great clouds of steam, and dust and heat rising up 
 from countless serfs, who made and made and made, yet who 
 never reached nearer the posession of what they made. Their 
 faces spoke of unutterable sufferings, and across their brows, 
 as across the brows of all, I read the legend, 
 
 "hate" 
 
 From out this scene of wretchedness rose palaces wherein 
 splendor covered up sicknesses and sad unrests; where palsy- 
 stricken, bloated bodies hung round weasened little souls, in 
 which the virtues had long ceased action. And here were 
 churches, for churches are everywhere, and from their spires 
 stood golden pennants also inscribed with the legend, 
 
 "hate" 
 
 And men in robes from alters hurled forth anathemas broad- 
 cast upon the plain. 
 
 And I asked my soul, "what awful place is this?" and my soul 
 answered, " this you now behold is hell, the bottomless pit, the 
 place where eternal strife and disunion reign." 
 
 Then I beheld a demon at my side, a man, a warrior dark, of 
 proud and haughty mein, across whose angry brow the same 
 dread legend ran, and as I gazed into his sneering, rankling eyes 
 a flame swept o'er my brow, before so cool, but now blasted by 
 the presence of him, the Prince of Suffering, for 'twas he. My 
 heart leaped with rage, and I hissed into his very eyes "Fiend." 
 
 He laughed with a sneer, that seemed to rankle my very cen- 
 ter with its poisen, and said to me the words, "Mine own"!
 
 18 HEAVEN AND HELL— A VISION. 
 
 "Liar!" I cried, "I defy thee! I hate thee!" then, too, across my 
 brow, I felt the deadly legend, 
 
 "hate" 
 
 "Ha, ha! thou hatest , dost thou? Well know, then, that there 
 is bub one 'hate,' and that is 'Hate,' and that which hates in thee 
 is me, and that which is me in thee is mine." 
 
 And there came a weeping woman on the plain, in her arms a 
 dead child, and she cried: "Justice, justice! by the memory of 
 this dead child, whom cruel injustice slew, I cry from my soul's 
 depths for 'justice'!" 
 
 And the demon appeared before her and cried: "Nay, cry 
 thou for 'revenge revenge is sweet'!" And at this word the 
 legend in my forehead burned deeper, and a great shout arose, — 
 for revenge is the countersign of hell; — and the demon spake 
 again and asked: 
 
 'fWho slew the child? Who oppresses thee? Is it not thy 
 brothers?" 
 
 And hell with one tongue cried: "It is our brothers." 
 
 ''Then hate thy brother," cried the demon. 
 
 "We do and shall," they cried. 
 
 "Divide, denounce, and disunite!" 
 
 "We will, we will," they fiercely responded. 
 
 "Justice and right loves blood. So kill!" 
 
 And the woman with the starved child muttered between her 
 teeth, "Yes kill." 
 
 And in one of the palaces a rich man stood, his brow stamped 
 with the common mark of all; and at his side stood the demon, 
 and the rich man joyfully embraced and hailed him, ^'Dear 
 friend," and saia: — 
 
 "Thou told us if we did not reap wealth, our fellow-men would 
 starve us. In this race I have won, and they hate me; but my 
 goodly wealth pro ects me, and I can pay hate for hate, with 
 interest." 
 
 "Hate would kill. Why not kill that which hates thee?" 
 whispered the demon. 
 
 And the rich man muttered between his teeth, "Yes kill!" 
 
 And now a great commotion arose in hell, and the vast steam- 
 ing, sweating, factory millions gathered and divided into factions; 
 and certain bands hurled the epitaphs "scab" and "traitor" at 
 their fellows, until the brands upon their foreheads fairly glowed 
 and sparkled, till curses rent tne air, and blood began to flow. 
 
 And again, in other parts, deadly emeutes took place. Servants 
 of the palaces issued forth upon the dangerous throng, and swept 
 them down with diabolical instruments made by the victims 
 for their own destruction; floods devastated the plain, delugeing 
 and drowning; fires consumed innumerable habitations, and tlie 
 shriekes of women and wails of children arose like the sobbings 
 within a tempest. And I said to myself, "This is the end, at 
 last." 
 
 So it seems, yet not so it proved, for I heard a distant harmony, 
 and a silence came, like the cessation of a wind and the very 
 atmosphere stood still. And there before me on the plain, stood 
 an angel, whiter than the stars' white fire, and fairer than iheir
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL — A VISION. 19 
 
 Bweetast flower and as she moved, the fires and floods adjourned; 
 for slie could rule the elements. I heard her say: — 
 
 "Peace!" 
 
 Then raising her hand, like a ray of sunlight through depart- 
 ing storm went forth her words: — 
 
 '•Love ye one another." 
 
 And then again she added; — 
 
 "Look upon thy fellow-man with wisdom, and thou shalt have 
 love. Feel for thy fellow-man with love and thou shalt have 
 wisdom and having wisdom and love, have heaven." 
 
 And a great change came o'er the plain. Prom the people's 
 brows the legend disappeared, and in its place circled a lovely 
 aura; and they cried a'loud: — 
 
 'i We love." 
 
 And as they looked upon each other through eyes of love, lo! 
 each from their former repulsiveness grew beautiful and wise; 
 and their wisdom thus gained through love again reciprocated 
 love until not a trace had remained of all the past in all the 
 plain. 
 
 And across the wide, wide scene, a splendor and a grandeur 
 now arose. But best of all, oh the peace! the peace and strength 
 within the blessed atmosphere. And from my soul came forth 
 these words — 
 
 "Here we live forever; for this is heaven!" 
 
 And yet a sadness came o,er mo and I sighed and asked, where 
 is he, the demon, the unhappy minister of wretchedness, the 
 Prince of Hate, — oh, what of him in this hour of peace?" 
 
 "Ffiar not," she said; "love redeems all. Behold through me, 
 thy demon." 
 
 I looked, and loMhe Angel of Love transparant was; and 
 through her radiance I beheld the demon." But how clianged! 
 
 The brand of hate Avas gone, and on his brow rested a calm 
 more peaceful than the blue depths. The inwardness of exist- 
 ence lay in his eyes, and sweet meditation sat in every feature. 
 His form embodied the power and majesty of the universe. 
 Stately and grand, and eloquent as nature, evidencing will as 
 irresistable, yet as modest as the sleeping child resting uncon- 
 scious. And he spake and said: — 
 
 *'You beheld me the masculine princicle of existance: devoid 
 of love, its feminine; you shall behold the feminine principle of 
 existance devoid of the masculine — of wisdom — of me — see! 
 
 I gazed — heavens! could it be? Her radiance had died away, 
 and where her form once gave out light, now fell shadows for 
 she had sank and became matter devoid of spirit, and upon her 
 brow I read the word "Ignorance". And yet a woman still she 
 was, and conceived, but only brought forth demons devoid of 
 virtue's semblance. Reptiles formed her locks, and her eyes put 
 forth a force that sickened; and I cried: "Oh, take her away!" 
 
 Nay, then! Behold her through vie, as you behold me through 
 her for she is now but love unilluminated and in darkness, the 
 feminine principle of existance devoid of the masculine of Wis- 
 dom. Even as I became Hate devoid of her, she now becomes 
 Ignorance devoid of me. Parted, we become the twin parents of
 
 20 HEAVEN AND HELL, — A VISION. 
 
 hell: Hate and Ignorance. United, we become the twin parents 
 of heaven: Wisdom and Love. Your civilization is but 
 the monarchy of man. Hate reigns. Yon are in hell, and cry 
 for justice with the tongue of hate. Know, then! that hate never 
 yet found justice, that justice consorts only with love; that love 
 can only lead you unto justice, since justice is of wisdom love's 
 eternal other self. Transform your civilization from this 
 monarchy of man into a cooperation of man and woman. For 
 these two principles throughout the universe, everywhere and in 
 evreything, knowing no exception, when united in equality, give 
 light, heat and life, health and power; and when disunited in in- 
 equality, bring darkness, death, and dissolution." Woman's gift 
 is love; man's gift is wisdom. These two are needed equally 
 alike in every department of private and public structure. Ig- 
 norance and hate can only be overcome by the equal recogni- 
 tion of both nature's sexual principles in all things, by and 
 through which the existance of all things alone can exist. 
 
 And a voice said: "Behold them apart!" and I beheld the 
 forms of Hate and Ignorance in the air, and a darkness spread 
 o'er the land, and tempest arose above, below and around me, 
 and fearful lightnings and the thunders, and demoniacle faces 
 flashed before me, and the dark earth gaped and shook with 
 revolution! And as I cried, "Enough!" twin voices whispered, 
 "Behold us one!" 
 
 And a light appeared greater than my limited faculties could 
 embrace, but a peace rested upon me. 
 
 If you are sick, love! If you are envied, hated, and slandered, 
 love! If you are surrounded by enemies, love! If danger and 
 death hiss, dart, and stab you, love! Love will redeem, bless, 
 save, preserve, shelter and crown you with the essential powers 
 of the universe. 
 
 And know that for every man thou hatest, thou shuttest off 
 from thyself just so muchoi the universe — thou separatest from 
 thyself just so i?mc/i of life and eternity; for remember, each is 
 a part of the whole, and to be the whole, thou must include 
 all in thy love. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL ANALYZED. 
 
 Let US take the little we know to comprehend the greater, 
 which we know not. Is there a heaven and a hell? Did you 
 ever contemplate the law of reflex action, by which that which is 
 given is again returned? Everywhere in and around you you may 
 experiment and demonstrate the law. Let us take as an exam- 
 ple — not an illustration, but the thing itself — this thing which we 
 call "the echo." In the echo you may dimly perceive that in all 
 existence there pervades a law which returns "an eye for an eye 
 and a tooth for a tooth," — a law of strict, positive, and inexorable 
 retributive justice. To grasp this truth, we will turn our fac» 
 towards the mountain and cry out: — 
 
 "I am your friend!"
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL ANALYZED. 21 
 
 Back from existence comes the return to ub: — 
 
 "I am y-o-u-r f-r-ie-n-d!" — 
 
 Again we cry out: — 
 
 "I am your enemy !" 
 
 That which we sent forth again returns to us: — 
 
 "I a-m y-o-u-r e-n-e-m-yl" 
 
 Thus our action, be its tone soft or high, low or swift, is re- 
 turned to us; and even were the mountain not there, and were 
 we to raise our voice towards the earth, or up to the seemingly 
 echoless depths of space, and cry out, our echo, though we heard 
 or heard it not, would return to us as faithfully as though we 
 had power to perceive its return; and moreover, it would return 
 to us just as we gave it; nothing added thereto or detracted 
 therefrom, but in the exact measure of our own creation. 
 
 Now from a mountain we shall turn our face towards a child, 
 and see if the echo will return to us from the child, even as from 
 the mountain. A beautiful child stands before us, — a human 
 bud. Its sunny face presents a vision more beautiful to look 
 upon than the mountain, and around its existence is draped even 
 a deeper mystery. We turn upon it a look of hate, — lolupon its 
 fair vision is spread a look of terror, and away deep in the sub- 
 tle mysteries of its being is sinking that look of hate soon to 
 complete its circuit, and return back to us who gave it, through 
 the same eternal principle which in the echo returned us back 
 "friend" for "friend," "enemy" for "eiiemy." 
 
 For every blow given, a blow shall be returned; and every time 
 the child is whipped and turned to tears, the whipper shall be 
 whipped and turned to tears, for as the mountain returns your 
 echo, so shall the child's nature return your echo. Society has 
 been outraging its labor, — beating its mothers, brothers, and sis- 
 ters and lashing its brutes for centuries; and society itself has 
 been lashed and beaten in return for]centuries. For your brother 
 will return your echo even as the mountain, and by the same law. 
 If you smile upon him, he smiles; if you reach your hand, his 
 hand is reached; if you raise it to strike, so even is his raised to 
 strike; if you are cross, he is cross; if pleased, he is pleased; in 
 fact, to strike another is to strike yourself; to be kind to another 
 is to be kind to yourself; and even as in the echo, although you 
 may not perceive the return of that which you gave, you receive it 
 just as you gave it, nevertheless; and the hate wliich you sent 
 forth will return to you, and the love which you gave will come 
 back to you; for it is an immortal part of you, and cannot of 
 itself remain away from itself. 
 
 Let our future civilization be based upon this truth, and all 
 will go well. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LITTLE "Me" OR A CLOSER VIEW OF THE DEMON. 
 
 If every artificial and natural necessity of the people was run 
 and controlled by the people collectively instead of individually, 
 then every situation in society would be a government position, 
 and every man and every woman would be in office, working for
 
 22- THE LITTLE "ME." 
 
 tne government, working for the people, and therefore in reality 
 working for their true self — their self — through the whole. The 
 greater and broader the employer, the greater and broader the 
 conditions of the employee, and this vast republic of ours is the 
 broadest and is the greatest employer that ever employee worked 
 for. It gives to its employees better hours and better pay than 
 ever other employer gave before or gives at present, because of the 
 fact that it is the greatest and it is the broadest source of em- 
 ployment in and of itself in all the world. 
 
 Who is it that would not prefer to be employed by his country 
 than by a petty personal interest? Who is it that would rather 
 work for one than work for all? 
 
 The closer your work is confined to personal or individual 
 interest, the meaner the job and the harder your task-master. 
 The closer your work is identified with the interest of the peo- 
 ple, and the more directly the entire mass is concerned in your 
 labors and is your direct employer, the better the relations 
 around you and the more magnanimous your compensation. 
 While, upon the other hand, the closer and closer the employer 
 becomes your own little "me," the harder and harder becomes 
 the overseer, and you will find that no employer in all your ex- 
 perience ever worked you so long, so hard, and so constant as 
 this "/i," — your own little "7?ie!" 
 
 Under the present condition of this "it" and the "me" running 
 and controlling industry and science, and the "us" and the "we" 
 sitting upon the back seats generally, there are very few govern- 
 ment positions, comparatively speaking. The infinite "us" and 
 the "we" therefore have to toil mostly for this finite "it" and 
 "me" and our conditions and our compensations therefore are 
 finite, little, contracted, and narrow as our finite employers are 
 little, contracted, and narrow. 
 
 If we would therefore, have our compensation and conditions 
 broadened and enlarged, we must broaden and enlarge the em- 
 ployer. We must raise that employer from this "it" and the 
 "me,"up to greater proportions of the republic. 
 
 As we have said, there are very few government or collect- 
 ivity jobs at present, comparatively speaking, because the col- 
 lectivity runs so small a percentage of its own affairs, and there- 
 fore has not jobs enough to go all around; but when the collect- 
 ivity does take hold of its own affairs, then there will be enough 
 government jobs to go all around, and the idle millions will all 
 find work enough for all, and not find ten men's labor crowded 
 upon one, and the other nine forced into v/ant and idleness. 
 Nor will it find marvelous developments standing in abeyance 
 and paralyzed, while willing labor and ready science stand will- 
 ing and ready to bring them forth, but cannot, because, forsooth! 
 of that Machiavelian lie, that stolen purse called "capital" which 
 cries: 
 
 "Wait till '■me' allows you — ';?ie' money bags!" 
 
 This" 'rue' and mc money bags" that comes along, skims the 
 cream off our milk, kindly presents us with the thin remain- 
 der, and unblushingly informs us that if it was not for "it" we 
 could have no milk, have no cow, have no meadow, have no moon,
 
 THE LITTLE "ME." 23 
 
 Bun, nor stars! That "if is the creator! — the God! — the Capi- 
 tal!" And verily it is "the Capital," the capital falsehood- 
 Man is the capital, not money. Man is the creator of capital, 
 and this thing which he hath created creeps up, and like a bug 
 upon a throne, squeaks out "Behold Jehovah. — 'me'.'" 
 
 Poor little egotistical bug! Thy name is "Individualism." 
 We know thee by thy microscopicness; for what is so vain, so 
 little, so conceited, so obtuse to the bigness of the universe, as 
 this little self-bloviated bubble, this little, little, tiny "we"? 
 
 Compare the treatment of the employees of individualism and 
 the treatment of the employees of collectivism. Who is it works 
 its employees fourteen hours per day at fourteen dollars per year? 
 Indivdualisra. Who is it that waves its lash of "discharge" above 
 the trembling head of its living machine, and jealous of its 
 slave's momentary rest or ease, cries: "Work harder, work 
 longer, work stronger, or starve!" Gentle individualism. Who is 
 it that drives the builders of its palaces into huts, dresses the 
 weavers of its robes in rags, feeds the perveyers of its tables upon 
 husks? Kind individualism. Who is it that sets its brother in 
 the hot, hot, scorching harvest-field through the long, long, weary 
 day, and who, when, that brother's sweat has translated its stand- 
 ing sheaves into sacks of precious grain, gives him in pay the value 
 of the straws, and reaching for its gun, calls upon its goodly dog 
 and loudly bellows, "Tramp!" Magnayiimous individualism. 
 Who is it that says "Little children come unto '??ie,' and I will 
 set you in '■me' factory, where I have kindly broke down your 
 parents, and I'D manufacture you, like them into '??ie' bank ac- 
 count?" Christian individualism. Who is it that catching its 
 brother hungry, charges him his birthright for a crust, and calls 
 it "business?" Commercial individualism. 
 
 Who is it that, setting itself upon a throne, sets its brother 
 down in the mud, and cries out to him: "Behold me\ Me, the 
 very illustrious person who owns you! Gaze upon me and die in 
 ecstacy; for the Lord has anointed meV Royal individualism. 
 
 And this poor, little, conceited, vain, dwarfed, egotistical ego, 
 "me" demands to hold the reins of the universe. Our countless 
 concretion of "me's" would settle itself like a fly-speck upon the 
 spectrum of the telescope and shut out our vision of the stars! 
 
 "Individualism!" What a long, long word for such a short, 
 short thing! "Individualism," that claims that itself — the part 
 — is greater than the whole; that the "us" has no right to oivn 
 the land, but that the "?«e" the little floating speck in the sun- 
 beam, has the right, and the sunbeam has no right at all! Claims 
 that the dot is larger than the sun, and a more important factor 
 than the universe! "Individualism," this small thing with the 
 big, big name, that says "ilfe" shall own the land, water, light, 
 and air, the railroads and the telegraphs, the industries and the 
 money; but it would be wrong for the whole to own the land, 
 water, light, and air, the railroads and the telegraphs, the indus- 
 tries and the money. It would be outrageous for the whole to 
 own itself, but right for the "??ie" to own the whole, hy owning 
 its necessities of life. 
 
 Poor little "me!" poor little mote with the big, big greed, we
 
 24 THE LITTLE "ME." 
 
 would not harm thee! No! thou wouldst harm thyself! Thou 
 clutchest too much for thy poor little clutch to get around. The 
 earth is twenty-four thousand miles around, they say, and thou 
 would clutch it all, and clutch us all along with it. But thou 
 must be restrained for thine own good, for thine own elevation, 
 fot thine own evolution into greatness, from thy present mote- 
 ness. 
 
 We, the whole, love thee; for are we not composed of all the 
 '"thees" composed of all the specks, of all the motes, of all the 
 dots? and is not our love greater than the love of thy infinitesi- 
 mal dot? Look out and up from thy little self and behold us all! 
 Is not the earth ours, not thine? And being ours, hast thou not 
 also a rightful share? Wouldst thou have a wrongful share? Re- 
 member, thou art a share of us. And being a share of us, dost 
 thou not perceive that our greatness is thy greatness, our un- 
 foldment thy unfoldment, our happiness thy happiness? And 
 upon the other hand, that our injury is thy injury, that our fate 
 and our cause is thine? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE DEMON AND INDUSTRY. 
 
 The world's ingratitude to labor is the most terrible of its 
 wrongs. Its toilers are ever upon the rack of outrage. The com- 
 pensation it pays industry is misery, low wage, coarse raiment, 
 squalid habitation, and mean sustenance, — a condition the nursery 
 for crime. The burdens of society rest heaviest upon labor, its 
 greatest of benefactors, and curses and lashes are the reward of 
 its goodness. Why should this be? The compensation of that 
 which places a palace above your head, a feast upon your table, 
 a robe upon your back, and furnishes you with every necessity of 
 human effort, is treated with contempt and contumely. It is 
 nothing for the lawyer, politician, general, doctor, landlord, mer- 
 chant, or banker to receive thousands, ay, millions of dollars for 
 their efforts, while but few and far between are the pennies 
 yielded to the toiler. 
 
 I am not for pulling down the high salaries of some becaupe 
 others get low, but my humanity cries aloud for justice! To be 
 president of a nation may be considered great, but mere posi- 
 tion does not make man greater than mankind, ro more than to 
 be upon a mountain-top makes men greater than those in the 
 valley below, truly the position may be greater, but the position 
 is not the man. Fifty thousand dollars a year to a president; a 
 dollar a day to a toiler! The toiler gives his time, attention, 
 mind, body, and effort to his duty; the president gives, can 
 give, no more. The president has been trained, mind and body 
 for his duty; the toiler for his. The president puts forth the 
 peculiar mental and physical action necessary to his task; the 
 toiler, equally so to his; and where is the superiority? The 
 toiler might be removed and the loss unrecognizable; thousands 
 stand ready to take his place. None might fill the measure of 
 his skill; but what of that? The tide rolls on. The president 
 might be removed; millions stand ready to take his place. None
 
 THE DEMON AND INDUSTRY. 25 
 
 might fill the measure of his skill; but what of that? The tide 
 rolls on also. There is no real deserving superiority between the 
 two, yet one receives fifty thousand a year, the other a dollar a 
 day I One studies a while and applies his signature to a few 
 papers, and the imagination of the momentousness of his task 
 overcomes him. The other studies, and studies, and studies, and 
 toils, and toils, and toils; there is little imagination about his 
 task; it is real, real, real! And the reality wears, and deeply 
 wears, and overcomes him, — wears and overcomes him, indeed! 
 Yet one receives fifty thousand dollars a year, and the other a 
 dollar a day! Shame, shame! Yet this is civilization! The human 
 heart, the human mind, should not rest until this wrong be 
 righted. No man should receive fifty thousand dollars a year 
 while one man among sixty millions receives but a dollar a day. 
 It is deemed an unnoticeable affair, common, and in nothing ex- 
 traordinary, for a lawyer to charge one thousand dollars for the 
 effort of a day. If a laborer were to ask twenty, the demand 
 would be considered outrageous, and the demander beyond the 
 pale of consideration. Yet a lawyer acting as a judge will decree 
 and fix the compensation of a lawyer in a case before him, and 
 fix it at hundreds an hour, and declare it the justice he himself 
 would demand. Where is the lawyer's effort more valuable to 
 society than the toiler's? Yet all this is so, and the dance goes 
 on. The lawyer puts you in prison, the general shoots you, the 
 doctor poisons you, the landlord turns you out upon the highway, 
 the banker skins you, and the preacher sends you to hell. For 
 this you give hundreds of thousands a year, — millions! billions! 
 To the toiler— a dollar a day\ 
 
 The toller clothes you from your cradle to your grave; from the 
 storm and the sun he shelters you; soft is the couch he prepares 
 for your dreams; humbly, meekly, patiently, kindly, he wrings 
 from the earth its richness, and places it upon your table; the 
 results of his toil stand between you and the elements; at his 
 touch, your deserts blossom, the hills in your path level, and 
 you journey swift as the lightnings. True science has done its 
 share; but where would science be without hivi. And for this, 
 and more, he receives a dollar a day. 
 
 Ah! but you say he sometimes receives more. Does he? Well, 
 even so, he receives not justice until he receives equal with you 
 all. Ay! equal to your president; for your president is no more 
 than his peer, — his equal, — and he no more than your presi- 
 dent. You may deny this, and point to his defects; but remem- 
 ber, whatever labor is, your society has made it so. Oppression 
 brutalizes. Take the dog, chain it to a stake, it will become fero- 
 cious; let it loose, and it will become gentle, through associa- 
 tion. Throughout civilization you have chained labor. Can you 
 expect gentlemen? 
 
 Civilization? Individualistic civilization? Society suffers for 
 this. Every criminal emotion of the mind, hate, jealousy, envy, 
 avarice, and cruelty, fastens itself upon a special organ of the 
 body, and is the seed of a special disease. At the door of 
 injustice lie the sorrows of us all.
 
 26 THE CHATTEL AND COMPETITIVE SLAVES. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE CHATTEL AND COMPETITIVE SLAVES. 
 
 There are two forms of unpaid or spoliated labor. One is 
 known as chattel slavery, the other as competitive employment. 
 The chattel slave receives its food, covering and shelter directly 
 from and is directly under the physical control or body-proprie- 
 torship of its owner. The results of these two species of slavery 
 are the same, except the body-proprietorshiped or competitive 
 slave, although proprietor directly over its own body, is never- 
 theless indirectly the same bounden tool, the same spoliated serP, 
 as the chattel slave. The competitive employe, instead of being 
 furnished food, covering and shelter directly by the master, 
 receives in lieu thereof a certain amount of money wherewith to 
 purchase the same; and this purchasing of its food, covering and 
 shelter by the competitive slave furnishes it with an illusion that 
 it is paid and that it is free. In supposition and in imaginiitiou 
 this is undoubtedly bo; but in reality, when the two conditions 
 are fairly compared, we find the results of the two systems 
 exactly the same in every particular; and that both systems of 
 slavery return its slaves the same proportional compensation, i. e., 
 food, covering and shelter of the rudest kind, and nothing more, 
 at the end of the task, for the wealth the slave has created. 
 
 Slavery of any species never was, never will be, a respecter of 
 race, color or previous condition, though our Southern chattel 
 slavery hypocritically pretended to confine itself to the color line, 
 and thus brought race prejudice to its aid. Nevertheless, had it 
 not met its fate, and had it arisen to its full ancient proportions, 
 we would in time have witnessed men and women, irrespective of 
 blood auctioned off upon its block. Chattel slavery, throughout 
 time, never respected condition or blood; and men of the highest 
 attainments, men who have rendered themselves famous in 
 history, poetry, science and painting, have been sold like dumb 
 brutes within the market of chattel slavery. 
 
 Competitive employment, like its predecessor, is also no respec- 
 ter of persons; and rent, interest and profit to-day number under 
 its triune ownership the genius, talent, and accomplishment of 
 the country. The competitive slave is not confined to class. 
 Thousands of industrious and assiduous merchants belong to the 
 ranks of competitive slavery. Persons who tax their strength to 
 the utmost and present most praiseworthy displays of humanity's 
 necessities, and who toil and tax their energy daily and yearly, 
 find themselves at the end bankrupt and broken in pocket, mind 
 and body. Often men of vast enterprise equally belong to the 
 innumerable army of competition. Men whose force and creative 
 character construct and build every species of wealth. Napoleons 
 of industry, architects and sculptors of the grandeurs of civiliza- 
 tion, often alike find themselves, as the great majority, gray- 
 bearded, bent and enfeebled, shorn of all natural and artificial 
 necessities. Competitive slavery, we thus readily perceive, is no 
 respecter of persons; and its slaves are not distinguishable 
 through species of occupation, dress, rank or appearance. And 
 resent society, through all its degrees, but presents an unbroken
 
 THE CHATTEL, AND COMPETITIVE SLAVES. 27 
 
 kaleidoscopic view of financial or money slaves, chained to this 
 competitive monster's charriot by the chains of either rent, 
 interest or profit. 
 
 In chattel slavery at the South, there were slaves who dressed 
 well, lived well, and who were engaged at occupations of mental 
 degree, but they were slaves, nevertheless, for all their cage 
 being gilded; and in competitive slavery there are men to-day 
 who live and move in circles called fashionable, who dress in fine 
 linen and siuflfs, live in tine mansions, and dine sumptuosly, and yet 
 who, for all this, are hollow when it comes to freedom — who, for 
 all this, are as peinniless, although assessed as wealthy, as their 
 spoliated brother slave of competition who removes the ashes 
 from their doors. Once in a great while a suicide reveals this 
 fact, but the competitive slaves, from the foundation-toiler to the 
 one who gives orders from the dome, are patient, and toil on like 
 dumb, driven brutes, until they drop in their tracks. 
 
 The cause, therefore, of nationalism — the cause which proposes 
 that the wealth earned by the people in transportation, manu- 
 facture, telegraphy, agriculture, electricity, chemistry, science, 
 art, and the product of every species of human creation shall 
 belong to humanily, to the nation; that competition shall be 
 replaced by co-operation; that competitive slavery must go like 
 its predecessor, chattel slavery; that the people shnll own them- 
 selves — this cause, we assert, is not alone the cause of any one 
 department or class of competitive serfdom, whether it be clad in 
 overalls or broadcloth, but is the cause of each and every Ameri- 
 can citizen alike who knows or who should know, that the great- 
 est good to each is the greatest good to all. 
 
 Nay, there is not one in all the millions but would be directly 
 and immeasurably benefited through the elevation of the whole 
 people. Be it a millionaire a thousand-fold, there can be no 
 good come to either him or her, unless it comes from the good of 
 the race. Anything derived from the people's degradation must 
 eventually prove a curse to its possessor. 
 
 For the millionaires or thousandaires of our country I have no 
 harsh word, no hateful thought. I include every one in my 
 humanity. Every wrong is the result of society, and they who 
 do WTong must suffer; for who can escape himself? The heads 
 of our erroneous system are as much to be pitied as the last in 
 the line. The capitalist's determinate will, tireless energy, large 
 ideas, and superlative force of character would arise to grander 
 tasks- if a higher standard of society prevailed, and would be run 
 in grooves beneficial and not destructive; their talents and their 
 genius would go to their graves amid the tears and lamentations 
 of their country, and their memories be lifted up and ascend 
 upon the incense of the prayers of a race; whereas now they 
 descend, weighted down with the curses and anathemas of 
 miserable milions, which not all the peons of purchasable altars 
 can remove. And certainly there is something in this terrible 
 departure which neither gilt, glitter, nor grandeur can efface; 
 and I would not enter the shadows of eternity with the curses 
 of a people upon viy past for all the wealth of this and all the 
 wealth of all other worlds besides.
 
 28 THE CHATTEL AND COMPETITIVE SLAVE. 
 
 Yes, the nationalization of all natural and artificial wealth is 
 the highest truth for millionaire, as well as pauper, and both 
 alike shall yet perceive and favor the establishment of its truths. 
 
 Individualism or personal proprietorship is the mother and 
 cause of the competitive system. The merchant is pitted against 
 his fellow- merchant, and cut follows cut, until bankruptcy cuts 
 the cutter. The employer is pitted against his fehow employer 
 until he casts his losses upon the toilers under him and lowers 
 their wage. The toiler is pitted against his fellow-toiler until 
 Btarvation^until society is turned into a theater of individual 
 conflict, wherein hate and cunning rule and ruin, until labor, 
 unpaid, unhonored and dispised, is looked upon with aversion 
 instead of pleasure; until a premium is set upon idleness and the 
 millions turn to vice and look upon virtue as a producer of 
 misery. Truth becomes inverted, property worshiped, and its 
 creator, man, discarded, denied, disowned and left to die! And 
 this is the product of your individual competitive civilization! 
 Each for itself and the devil for all. 
 
 The peculiar difference between the chattel and the competi- 
 tive slaves' relationship to their owners is marked in their dif- 
 ferent processes of purchase and sale; the chattel slave of old 
 was put upon the block and bid up, while the competitive slave 
 puts himself upon the block and bids himself down. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE COMPETITIVE SLAVE MARKET. 
 
 We are all familiar with the process whereby the negro was 
 put upon the auction-block and knocked down to the highest 
 bidder; but not quite so familiar, some of us, as to how the com- 
 petitive slave is compelled to bid himself down to be purchased 
 at the lowest bid. 
 
 But here is the picture: Behold a slave market of the com- 
 petitive system. A throng of idle, anxious-looking toilers. In 
 the center a well-dressed citizen, a man-dealer upon the competi- 
 tive plane of man-dealing — a man-purchaser. 
 
 Listen! He says: "Come, I want an employe — me! How 
 low do I hear you offer yourselves? Put yourselves down! 
 There are one hundred of you; I only want one! What do I 
 hear you bid?" 
 
 A slave comes foward, a man of middle age, yet sound in life 
 and limb, and well skilled for the task. He has a wife and 
 little ones to support, he must therefore consider them in his bid 
 — his bid must be high enough to take in their support. He 
 offers himself for the price of "fwo dollars per day." 
 
 "Two dollars a day is bid," says the man-dealer. "Why, this is 
 preposterous! Two dollars per day is outrageous! You must 
 come down lower than that; this is a good job. You 
 can get something to eat and wear out of this job. Thousands 
 would jump at this job. It is a grand opening for a young man. 
 Going at two dollars! Do I hear a dollar and a half?" 
 
 "A dollar and a half," bids a slave, a young man who has but 
 lately married, and who has but himself and wife to support.
 
 THE COMPETITIVE SLAVE MARKET. 29 
 
 "A dollar and a half," cries the man-dealer. "Remember it is 
 your last chance! The rolling mill shut down last week, harvest 
 is over, building is dull, manufacture complains that sales are 
 light, and that the people are not buying their goods. This is 
 your last chance, your last gasp! Get down lower than a dollar 
 and a half!" 
 
 Then a young man, unmarried, and devoid of encumbrances — 
 "encumbrances" is the term wherewith rent, interest and profit 
 designates the family of a poor man; for individualistic selKsh- 
 ness opposed to life, is opposed to families; then this young man, 
 devoid of "encumbrances" — having no wife, no children to sup- 
 port — bids, "owe dollar a day." 
 
 "Ha, ha! now you are coming down to business! One dollar a 
 day!" cries the man-dealer. "But you can get down lower than 
 this. There will be a few more lock-outs next week; a general 
 strike may be ordered along the line; get down if you want to 
 get through the winter. A dollar a dav I am bid; do I hear 
 a half?" 
 
 Then a swarthy-looking man from a far-away land, friendless 
 and alone in a strange country, whose needs are extremely 
 pressing, whom oppression has accustomed to the extremest 
 economy, bids ^^seventy-five cents per day." 
 
 "Seventy -five cents per day ! Now I hear you talk; you are 
 coming down to cents. But you can get down lower than that! 
 You would not get a tenth of that in some countries. Going at 
 seventy-five cents!" 
 
 Then a little yellow man, with receeding forhead and protrud- 
 ing jaw, with his hair plaited down his back into a long, rattish- 
 looking tail, and the corner of whose eyes are relationally perpen- 
 dicular, speaks in foreign accent, saying: — 
 
 "Me catchum job at fifty cents per day : me no wifey, no chillem, 
 no Sunday, — no nothing! Me sleepum floor, eatum rice. — live all 
 same rat! Megot down to Ji/i?/ cent business long ago! Me just the 
 kind slave rent, interest, and profit likee! Me get right down and 
 individual make much money on me. You takum me fiftey cents 
 a day." 
 
 "Gone!!!" cries the man-dealer; "gone at fifty cents a day!" 
 
 Then the wretch with the wife and family, the young man with 
 the young wife, and the unencumbered man walked away out 
 into the streets, past the stores, with their windows temptingly 
 decked and arrayed with the comforts and necessities of life, — 
 comforts and necessities which they and theirs want and need so 
 very, very much. And the competitive shopkeepers watch them 
 going by, and wonder why they do not come in and purchase! 
 Ah! competitive slave and competitive shopkeeper! If ye would 
 only learn, and undo that which divides and puts up its wall 
 between you. 
 
 When the morale of all this is examined into, it will be readily 
 perceived that each slave is put into antagonism with his fellow- 
 slave, that the slaves of each country are not only thus arrayed 
 against the slaves of their respective countries, but that the 
 slaves of one country are thus arrayed in hostile conflict against 
 the slaves of another country, until the barriers of hate are
 
 30 THE COMPETITIVE SLAVE MARKET. 
 
 raised up between man and man, country and pountry, race and 
 race, until the human family view each other as the cause of 
 misery, and denounce each other as objects to be looked upon 
 with jealousy, doubt, distrust, suspicion, and dread. 
 
 Thus when individualistic selfishness, or rent, interest, and 
 profit, and personal proprietorship of collective rights have 
 brought about starvation and suffering, the slaves, not looking 
 into the real and general cause of the condition, fall upon each 
 other like two dogs over one bone, not understanding that 
 which leaves them but one meatless bone to subsist upon. 
 
 Just as long as slave fights slave, race fights race, just so long 
 must they fight hungry, unclad and homeless. And just as soon 
 as they arise to the idea of brotherhood, arise to the idea of 
 collective proprietorship of human necessities and the collective 
 proprietorship of themselves, just so soon will ttiey embrace the 
 fullness and richness of man's own world. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SUPPRESSED WEALTH. 
 
 Show me a man looking for work, and I will show you a man 
 looking to create something beneficial to society. Show me a 
 society so constituted in its relations that it does not and can- 
 not put this man to work creating this "something" tor its bene- 
 fit, and I will show you a society which ignorantly retards its 
 accumulation of wealth. 
 
 The preposterousness of a man having to seek for work! The 
 preporterousness of a society not being arranged so as to afford 
 every person an opportunity to enrich it! O, Individualism! are 
 you not mad, — are you not insane? 
 
 Every man seeking for work is an angel seeking to add unto 
 society's wealth. And to think of the millions thus seeking, and 
 seeking unallowed, to enrich us. Verily, we say unto you, if col- 
 lectivism would reverse this state of affairs, which like a fence 
 stands between the people and their creative powers; would open 
 up every road and avenue to science and labor; would ar- 
 range it to receive these ministers of production with open arms 
 instead of closed gates,— would not society's wealth increase so 
 fast that the total aggregation woi^ld soon amount to millions of 
 millions, until every man, woman, and child would each be more 
 than a millionaire? And where millionaires are now but like few 
 and far between tufts of green along the sands of a moistless 
 desert, each and everyone thus with millions endowed would 
 change the scene of the few and far between tufts into that of a 
 vernal meadow full unto its very fullness. Dream of it! Think 
 of it! If man's full fecundity and goodness could only prevail! 
 
 Civilization has yet to bloom. 
 
 The universal republic has yet to come, — as come it will,— 
 though you preceive neither its coming nor the plant's growing. 
 
 Away in the heart of the primative wilderness of the north we 
 see a race of bronzed savages. 
 
 They bind a broad, flat stone across the foreheads of their 
 young.
 
 SUPPRESSED WEALTH. 31 
 
 They have a superstiton that a low, receding forehead gains 
 admittance to the happy hunting grounds of the Father. 
 
 Perhaps it may; we know not. 
 
 But this we do know; the custom crushes and cripples the in- 
 fant's growing brain, and makes hideous the man. 
 
 This is their error, cruel and blasphemous, yet still their error. 
 
 What the broad flat stone is to the infant's brow, individual 
 proprietorship of the earth is unto the people, — crushing their 
 genius pregnant with the arts and sciences, ever ready to evolve 
 forth peace, plenty, and happiness. 
 
 Occassionally a genius triumphs over rent, interest, and profit; 
 but how oft does rent, interest, and profit triumph over genius, 
 thu3 crushing the flowers that should have decked the brow of 
 civilization! 
 
 O rise, ye slaves! 
 
 Break the bonds of selfishness! 
 
 Unharness genius! 
 
 UNBIND NATURE! 
 
 Free the infant's brow, cast off the stones of savagery, and let 
 the children's foreheads grow! 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 OUTLAWED HUMANITY. 
 
 We can only change laws by rising to higher planes of thought. 
 From the center of the earth upward and outward and still 
 outward, and then downward, back again to its center, all is law 
 and laws. These laws create the physical conditions of nature 
 and society. A law is immutable, and cannot be changed by that 
 which is beneath it. While you remain beneath it, the more you 
 fight and struggle, the more you suffer. While you are beneath 
 it, you] cannot annul it; for you are impotent while you hold this 
 relative position to it. There is only one way to overcome a law, 
 and that is by rising above its conditions, mentally and morally, 
 and thus changing the relative positions of vantage. Thus a law- 
 is only immutable, changeless, and eternal upon the plane of 
 its thought. Upon that plane it is is all-ruling and dominant; 
 while to all that which exists upon the higher plane, this law 
 of the lower is powerless to control. Just now we are governed 
 so by the laws of individualism that we are law and lawed, and so 
 swathed up with laws that we have become veritable law mum- 
 mies. Even if we go into our own public parks, we are informed 
 "to keep off the grass;" if we go along the road until we get out 
 into the wilderness, where we meet Nature in her unmolested 
 moods, and mountains tower above mountains, and men are so 
 scarce that you would not meet one in a day's travel, some little 
 "personality" has got there previously, nevertheless, and fixed up 
 a law for you; and there you read it, nailed to a huge tree:" Tres- 
 passers will be prosecuted according to law." Poor, poor lawed 
 man! Think of it! You, the only man that has probably been 
 there for a week, and you are going to be prosecuted. Then you 
 pass onward, and come to a beautiful stretch of country; for 
 miles and miles it reaches otit. A silver vein of purity glides
 
 32 OUTLAWED HUMANITY. 
 
 through its center. Carpeted with emerald grasses, patterned 
 with wild-tlowers, this virgin land lays before you like a Venus, 
 and you stand breathing in its fragrance and sunlight. You 
 meditate! "Ah! here would be a place for the home of man! 
 I shall live hereV You put up a humble cabin; you wonder if 
 the wild beasts wiW disturb you; you listen! and hear a noise; 
 you look out, — a man stands before you; he has a paper in his 
 hand, and reads to you the laiv. It says: "Move on!" "But 
 why,*' you ask, "move on?" 
 
 "It is the law," replies the man; "all this land belongs to an 
 individual.'^ 
 
 "Does he live upon it?" yo\i murmur. 
 
 "No!" in astonishment; "Tie lives in Europe; never in this coun- 
 try in his life; never saw the land." 
 
 "And what makes it his? What is behind this individual 
 greed?" 
 
 "The law!" 
 
 You wander on. Now you come to a lofty mountain. You 
 meet men with blackened visages. You are informed the moun- 
 tain is formed of coal; that coal extends deep down beneath its 
 foundations. You ask these blackened visaged men, "What do 
 you dig coal for?" They answer: "O, coal is very valuable for 
 steam, heating, and other purposes; just now the collectivity 
 could scarcely do without it." 
 
 "Then the collectivity must pay you well for your hard work in 
 supplying it with so needed an article of comfort and use?" 
 
 "O, no! Bless you! our pay is very, very poor, and our hours 
 long. The people don't employ us; it is individuals who own 
 the mine." 
 
 "How could individuals own the mine, — who gives them the 
 right?" 
 
 "The law!" 
 
 "How much do you get a ton for digging coal for these individ- 
 uals?" 
 
 "O, a few cents." 
 
 "How much do the people have to pay the individuals per 
 ton?" 
 
 "About ten or twelve hundred times as much." 
 
 "Do you think the people could run a coal mine?" 
 
 "Well it don't take much brains, nor much heart either, to run 
 a coal mine; it's no more to run than a post-office." 
 
 You pass onward. Individualism has seized the earth and the 
 bowels of the earth. Now you have crossed the mountain pnd are 
 passing down its side. Down below, nestling there among the 
 hills and above the valley, you catch the white gleam of a silvery 
 lake. Ah! there you can see it is to supply the people who live 
 in the city below with water; far from it, reaching down the hill- 
 sides, along the valley, watering the gardens in its path, reaches 
 a system of huge pipes. 
 
 "What a splendid natural supply to this precious fluid have 
 the people here!" you think. "And what splendid natural ad- 
 vantage of positions for the people!" You will go to the lake. 
 You step towards it; but a sign meets your gaze and proclaims
 
 OUTLAWED HUMANITY, 33 
 
 another law. 
 
 "No person allowed within the radiuB of the fence incloeing 
 our lake!," 
 
 "Per order Lake Grabitub Co. 
 
 Mr. Individual. Presidenf*. 
 
 You sorrowfully pass on. You are now down in the valley near 
 the city; you are in the city; you pause for a moment to rest. You 
 are informed that the spot and that on which you are pausing is 
 an individual's private property. You go out into the road, but 
 personalism is there also, and two hundred pounds of law, armed 
 with badge and baton, and a fine rich brogue, proclaims the 
 Wandering Jew's fiat of individualism to humanity, "move on!" 
 Move on, — out of the resources of land, water, sunshine, and air; 
 out of the comforts and advantages of art and science; out into 
 the roads; out, ay! out of existance! 
 
 Yet you can stay for a few moments longer; you can live a lit- 
 tle while yet; live as the cat allows the mouse to live,— between 
 her playful claws! Yes! You can live a little while longer; you 
 can enter individualism's armies, its criminal element, its prosti- 
 tution, its brutal meniality, its extensive pauper family, its jails, 
 its penitentiaries; and then when worn out at last, as the soul's 
 central purity shrinks from individualism's circumferential 
 wretchedness, it leaves its soiled and violated robes, and another 
 body lies upon the brutal alter of individualistic lust. But 
 what becomes of your poor body? Does individualism attend tC 
 the last sad debt? No! it spurns the ashes of its victim, and tfe^ 
 public, or the collectivism, has to bury the remains. Like fe 
 angel, collectivism comes to perform that which individualisifc 
 has refused. True! comes to late for all save this, but in the 
 future it will certainly come earlier. 
 
 There may be objection raised against nationalism, though not 
 rightly, that it will bind us in more law than we now travail 
 under. I answer, that under the rule of individualism we are 
 under the million and one laws of private employers and private 
 proprietors, each having a distinct code of its own for the guid- 
 ance of those over whom it can law, and that these persons, not con- 
 tent with their own private decrees upon men, women, and child- 
 ren, enter legislatures and have public laws made irr the interest of 
 their private concerns as well, thus piling law upon law until we 
 have a pyramid of jurisprudence such as never people groaned 
 under before. Also, be it said, that many of these countless pri- 
 vate laws are so onerous — for instance "that employees must pur- 
 chase of the companies' stores" — as to amount to outrage and 
 robbery. 
 
 As ninety- nine per cent of our laws are the direct product of 
 individualism, to protect it directly and indirectly in its unnatural 
 posessions, and to preserve its order, and to prevent and to decide 
 the conflicts and bitter antagonisms arising continually because 
 of the endless confusion which it causes, it is plain to be per- 
 ceived that with an end of the reign of individualism there 
 would be a corresponding end of the multitudinous laws which it 
 entails; there would be a simplification of many laws into single 
 aws, and simple justice would prevail where now complexity and
 
 34 OUTLAWED HUMANITY. 
 
 confusion confound. If nationalism were to take the place of our 
 millions of petty personal preprietors and employers, their mill- 
 ions of petty restrictions and so-called legal decrees would cease, 
 and their union of interests bring about a union or singleization 
 of laws. 
 
 The spoliation of industry once abolished by the co-operative 
 equality of nationalism, the principle cause of crime or disease, 
 hereditary or otherwise, would be removed, and crime would 
 disappear in a brief time, and in time completely, bo that the 
 criminal code which makes up a large part of your jurisprudence, 
 combined with the fact that the civil code consists mainly of 
 matters of commercial swindles and dishonesties, all of which 
 together, both criminal and civil, would alike be swept away with 
 the removal of the system which caused and brought them into 
 existance. 
 
 This would be a decrease of law, and a decrease of crime, a de- 
 crease of prisons, and a decrease of insane asj lums such as this 
 world never witnessed before. 
 
 Individualism's laws, then, are behind all this injustice to the 
 many. But what is behind its laws? 
 
 This present structure of civilization and society only endures 
 through the people's respect for it. 
 
 It is not the army, navy, police courts, or senates which confer 
 upon the laws their powers and potency. It is the respect of the 
 people, and the deference rendered by the multitude unto them. 
 This respect once lost, the power of the mightiest throne vanishes 
 into a thing of the past. 
 
 It is not what your progressive reasoner or what your many 
 philosophers comprehend, nor what your books compass, which 
 gives you your form of government, but it is what the people as a 
 mass collectively comprehend. This comprehension is the soul ol 
 your government; that knowledge the limit of your liberties. 
 
 All things considered, the world to-day is not more corrupt 
 than yesterday. On the contrary, it is an honester, fairer, 
 sweeter, and purer world than it ever was before, because it is a 
 wiser world than it ever was; and with this increasing wisdom 
 comes its increasing truth. 
 
 Then why do we behold so much more corruption now than 
 ever? 
 
 Because we perceive more. As our perceptions increase, we 
 behold the surrounding vices and errors which, although afflict- 
 ing us for generations, afflicted us unperceived. With our new- 
 born thought we comprehend, and with that comprehension end 
 them. 
 
 Our new born thought will yet raise us from narrrow personal - 
 ism unto the broader idea of collectivism, and outlawed manhood 
 and outlawed womanhood, nay I outlawed childhood, will yet be- 
 come legal.
 
 A DEAD CHRISTIANITY. 35 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A DEAD CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Nationalism is Christianity pure and simple, in politics, in in- 
 dustry, and in society. It is the real, living, breathing, moving, and 
 acting sermon on the mount, and every christian minister who be- 
 lieves that theory is fit for practice, and who is Christian in his 
 heart as well as his profession, must favor the unity of mankind 
 in all things. And anything which continually with its tongue 
 preaches of the elevation of love above the world, and which con- 
 tinually tolerates and condones the elevation of the world above 
 love, is hypocracy, I care not how high its spires, or how domi- 
 nant, numerous, or wealthy its organizations. It is time we had 
 a living Christianity, which recognizes man as the temple of the 
 living God, and that the earth and its fullness is not the master 
 thereof, but the footstool. Here is your opportunity, ye who be- 
 hove in a live Christianity! A Christ moving, living, breathing, 
 and dominant in the hearts of a people, not a dead Christian- 
 ity, dreaming of a dead Christ, but live Christians, as live 
 Chnsts, scattering the tables of the money-changers in the tem- 
 ples, going down in the poverty-stricken allies of the robbed in- 
 dustrial classes, and raising up its victims. Ay! domg more 
 than all this, inculcating, advocating, and spreading the doctrine 
 of equality as illustrated by the Master in his last and greatest 
 of lessons, wherein he, whom they reverenced, ay! as the Son of 
 the Universal Father, called for water, and, baring his arms de- 
 liberately, washed the feet of those who worshiped him, thus 
 demonstrating in action his principle and belief in the truth of 
 universal equality. It was his last grand object-lesson, and it 
 seems to be the least understood in Christian practice and 
 philosophy. 
 
 Oh ! if Christians would only be Christians, not pagans; would 
 only take their Christianity out of the skies and place it upon the 
 earth; cease their mumblings, mockeries, and incantations! 
 lie the real articlel Take Christianity down from the alters, and 
 put it in the ballot box; bring it into politics, and establish a 
 nationalized system of government. If christians would cease 
 idolatry; let go their mammon, — ah! there's the rub, — let go their 
 paganism? Let go that? You may as well ask hate to let go its 
 cruelty. 
 
 Theory is a corpse, practice is life; add the two, and you have 
 a living being. Christianity is a corpse to-day; it simply theori- 
 zes, but does not practice. A theory which is too high for prac- 
 tice is of no account, and useless to worship. If Christianity is 
 good for anything, it is good for practice; if it is not, then the 
 Liord give us something which is; for a truth which is imprac- 
 ticable is of no earthly account. Oh! the hollow ridiculousness 
 of a landlord, a banker, or any other devotee of mammon, getting 
 down on his knees and rolling up his eyes, beseeching divine 
 favor through Christ Jesus, — through him who said, "Go forth, 
 preach my doctrine, but take nothing with ye; confine thy 
 property to a cloak and a staff." 
 
 Verily, his diciples now go forth — laden with deeds and mort-
 
 36 A DEAD CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 gages, and other kinds of death! grips upon their fellow men and 
 women; ay! upon the little innocents sold upon the London 
 streets for a shilling, upon the bodies of young girls in Boston 
 and New York doomed for the purposes of lust, and upon the gal- 
 lant forms of our country's youth, doomed for the streets, roads, 
 prisons, and potter's fields. Oh ye saints of a "goodness" to be 
 done somewhere else, of a heaven to be, after having skinned 
 men to death! don't you think it is time for Christian common 
 sense to think of a heaven here as well as a heaven "there;" 
 that the here is as precious as the there; that the now 
 is as important as the then; that there is every material in the 
 here out of which to make a heaven; that the wisdom and love 
 which would make you so sweet in the summer-land would make 
 you equally wholesome here; that the place most needing angels 
 is the here; that here is to-day, and that there is to-morrow; and 
 that to-morrow never comes, and of its nature never shall? 
 
 We want the religion of the heaven here: for God is here; this 
 is heaven, and eternity is now. 
 
 We want the religion that weds the spiritual to the material, 
 the principle to the politics, the prayer to the practice, the virtue 
 to the voting! 
 
 This is the true religion and the true salvation,— the salvation 
 of souls as they come unto the world,— by presenting divine con- 
 ditions for little children to come unto. 
 
 This true religion and true salvation abolish the political con- 
 ditions of evil that lead us into temptation, and answer the prayer, 
 "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." 
 
 Patriotism is the first and highest duty of piety, being the 
 removal of the cause of unrighteousness. They who confine sal- 
 vation to souls contaminated by the world's sin, who extend not 
 salvation to the political conditions that contaminate, are guilty 
 of the world's sin. 
 
 The seeking to save after contamination is but curative, while 
 the uplifting of society to the institution of brotherly love is pre- 
 ventative. 
 
 The piety that neglects patriotism, and that leaves the pure 
 child life of the world in evil, makes sinners collectively faster 
 than churches can save individually. 
 
 Christ said, while healing the poverty-stricken, "The works that 
 I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do." 
 We have come after him, and we can do greater works. He 
 healed the victims whom poverty had diseased; we can abolish 
 the poverty producing the conditions which diseased them. 
 
 We want Christianity of the head, also, as well as of the heart. ■ 
 It is a good thing to have our heart overflowing with principle; 
 but our heart can overflow like a double-barreled artesian well 
 and its stream run back into the vastness of waters whence it 
 came and never bring a flower upon earth, if our head does not 
 overflow in sympathetic ideas, plans, resolves, and wills, in 
 conjunction with our Christian feelings. To be a whole Chris- 
 tian, we must bring our Christianity into common life, we must 
 bring it into our home, into our nation. We must bring it into 
 our politics. Not that we must have a church party; for He 
 
 I
 
 A DEAD CHRISTIANITY. 37 
 
 never built a church, but was crucified by a church. His church 
 was in the mind of man, built of living principles, espousing 
 equality, fraternity, and liberty, all of which, with his sweet 
 hands, he practiced, and for which which great advocacy and 
 sweet practice he laid down his life. 
 
 Before His time the church had been advocating his theories, 
 but never practicing. He practiced them, taught their practice, 
 advocated positively that the conditions of heaven be immediately 
 inaugurated on earth. 
 
 "On earth as it is in heaven," was the rule he laid down, — was 
 the life he led. 
 
 I am sure there are no deeds nor mortgages, no death-grips upon 
 the necessities of life, no monopolies, no little babies sold for a 
 shilling, no pawn broker shops, no prisons, no poor-houses, no 
 potter's fields there; and if it was done here on earth as it is done 
 in heaven, there would be none here as well. So long as mind 
 preached of heaven in the abstract, in the far off lands of vapor, 
 and the hereafter, the beast Personalism felt secure in his cita- 
 dels of steeples, altars and choirs, and snuffed the daily incense 
 of the wretches who worshiped the corpse of a truth laying dead 
 upon its alters, — a corpse which, if once endowed with life, if 
 once liberated from its sepulchers and set up a living, breathing 
 reality in the homes, in the industries, in the science, and in the 
 art of the nation, the prayer, "on earth as it is done in heaven," 
 would be realized to the letter. Yes, so long as the churches 
 confined truth to their alters as an aerial theory, and left its prac- 
 tice until after death, the beast Property was satisfied, as it is 
 to-day. But a star arose in the east, and a child came, propos- 
 ing to the churches to add practice to their theory. What a 
 rumpus it made, and what a tragedy it resulted in I 
 
 The religion which Christ preached is called Christianity, after 
 himself, after his name; but that does not express what his re- 
 ligion was, — express his religion's real term. Its real term is, 
 "humanity," — all humanity! not a church, not a society, not a 
 sect, not a word about divinity, — all was intensely human about 
 nim. He entered the temples uporl the sabbath, gathering the 
 wretched poor around him, — stooped-backed, grey-headed slaves 
 of toil, tired looking mothers with their sick-faced babies peeping 
 from ragged robes, people who had heard his kindly words and 
 witnessed his loving deeds, wretched cripples and despised 
 wrecks, they had heard of theory long, but here was practice at 
 last! They had heard of a God in heaven, but here was a God 
 on earth, where Gods are needed, — a man! He carressed and spoke 
 kindly to them, and his love went forth and healed them. They 
 crowded round him and heard the words "on earth as it is done 
 in heaven." They had heard and -believed — pagans as they were; 
 pagans as they are to-day— in the impossibility of heaven upon 
 earth; that heaven is wholly impracticable on earth; that in- 
 justice, cruelty, and hate are natural monarchs of the here; that 
 people should never expect the right on earth, that selfishness is 
 an eternal, unchangeable fixture on earih, and reigns by the 
 natural fitness of earthly things, — a demoniac lie,^a lie upon 
 whose dark neck the Master sat his feet of light, and said, 
 
 2G2!7^H
 
 38 A DEAD CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 "On earth as it is done in heaven." 
 
 Then from the dens of the money-changers, from the landlords 
 and monopolists, came the cry: "He blasphemes; he breaketh 
 the holy day; he cures sick upon the sabbath. He claims man 
 and God to be one; heaven to be but a condition creatable on 
 earth. Crucify him!" 
 
 If this doctrine was to be enacted, what was to become of rent 
 interest, and profit? what was to become of the money-changers, 
 landlords, and monopolists? There certainly could be no such 
 gentry in heaven, and if it was to be "on earth as it is done in 
 heaven," then humanity would be actually rid of these ever-post- 
 poning heaven-over-there-ists. This would never do! So the 
 over-there church rose up and crucified him, then chiseled him 
 out in lovely marble, set him up in a niche and fell down upon 
 its apostolic knees and worshiped him, — the dead Christ! And 
 alas! the worst of it is, they have been crucifying everything 
 which looks like him alive, and worshiping everything which 
 looks like him dead, ever since. In fact, it is a continual crucific- 
 tion for practice, and a continual worship for theory. 
 
 Heaven ever awaits our acceptance here. The sun, the rain, 
 the rich earth, the marble quarries, the mineral veins, the ready 
 forests, the fruitful things, earth's endless bounty, the willing 
 hands of toil, the teemmg brain of genius, the warm, red heart of 
 love, all wait ready to give us paradise. We have but to cease 
 selfishness, but be willing that our brothers and sisters be as 
 happy as ourselves, but be willing that all have their share in 
 God's bounty, and lo, here we have heaven! 
 
 The doctrine that seeks elsewhere what here awaits us is not 
 religion, but sacrilege. Heaven is as desirable here as after 
 death. The drapery of God is as beautiful here as elsewhere. 
 No place is as fitter for heaven than here; no time is better than 
 now. Angels are as bright here as angels elsewhere. Nothing 
 is more divine than a good man; nothing more sacred than a true 
 woman; nothing more heavenly than a brotherhood of love. 
 
 The hour has come for the religion of the here and the now; 
 for the religion of this world; the religion that saves here; the 
 religion that drives the money-changers and dove-sellers from 
 the temple, and that restores the earth to the children of the 
 Lord; the religion that saves the soul and the body; that eaves 
 not after death, but that saves /?'o??i death; the religion of the 
 kingdom of heaven here. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MAGIC LANTERN. 
 
 If the idea of collectivism were to replace the idea of individ- 
 ualism, the idea of nationalism were to replace the idea of 
 personal proprietorship, and if this change of ideas took place 
 in the minds of the people now entertaining the error, a trans- 
 formation would occur in the scenes of society as marvelous as it 
 would be grand. The present pictures of prisons, gibbets, dun- 
 geons, alms-houses, insane asylums, dens of crime, vice, and dis- 
 ease, hovels of poverty, broken-down humanity, sickly children,
 
 THE MAGIC LANTERN. 39 
 
 and wretched women, would fade away like the pictures of the 
 magic lantern, and would be replaced witn pictures of beauty, 
 power, and grandeur. 
 
 Let us change these scenes; let us replace individualism with 
 collectivism; let us put a new view in the slide of the magic 
 lantern of existence. 
 
 Behold! we have here a view of collective proprietorship, or 
 nationalism. The huts and hovels of the toilers have dis- 
 appeared. Where they once unsightly stood is now reared a mar- 
 velous, tremendous, and immense palace, — a palace of a new 
 najesty and beauty. Here statuary abounds, midst wondrous 
 columns, fairy arches, and historical illuminated casements. 
 Here fountains and children play, midst flowers and foliage; dis- 
 tant music flows tremulously, whispering softly of the new 
 harmony. Here are maidens fair, as ever maidens are, but these 
 of a fairness never before, — soul flowers, — incarnations of purity! 
 And here are men, too, not the leering dudes of the past, as were 
 wont to predicate manhood upon deeds and mortgages, but men, 
 erect of limb and with mind stamped upon every feature, whose 
 great repose, whose speech, whose silence, all alike mark them 
 great, and yet as gentle as heaven's idea of men would have men. 
 
 And this palace! Of such wealth, of such splendor! These 
 fair women and grand men,— what of them, pray? Whose is this 
 palace, and who the happy chivalry adorning its vast and charm- 
 ing scene? What miglaty millionaire hath builded this unpar- 
 alleled monument of man's energy and woman's taste, — this 
 choice expression of human power? And who, after it was tnas 
 built and thus adorned, drove the builders and adorners, as usual, 
 out upon the highways to seek their breadless and fireless dens of 
 penury, and then, in his lordliness, through perfumed cards, 
 invited this innumerable retinue of titled noble lords and ladies 
 to enjoy this princely hospitality? "Ay, tell us of this mighty 
 host, these lords and ladies, this palace fair," you cry; and col- 
 lectivism replies: — 
 
 "The proprietor of this vast palace, more beautiful than Solo- 
 mon's, and of scenes more chaste, — this home such as Aladdin's 
 dream unequals, belongs to one more great than was ever proprie- 
 tor before. Ay, the greatest personage on earth! Never was 
 such palace, never such proprietor, previous to this. Who, think 
 you, be it?" 
 
 "Tell us." 
 
 "Know, then, that this proprietor is none other than the people; 
 that these lords and ladies are the persons themselves who 
 builded and who adorned this palace; that its builders and 
 inhabitants are one." 
 
 "What! the people who build palaces inhabiting them? This 
 is a strange situation of affairs! Where are the poor? I see no 
 wretched mendicants before the walls!" 
 
 "Here; — there are no poor." 
 
 "But do not certain good people say: 'Ye shall have the poor 
 with you always'?" 
 
 "Ay! And ye shall have the poor with you always, until you 
 arise to brotherhood. Here you behold brotherhood, — national-
 
 40 THE MAGIC LANTEBK. 
 
 ism! All rich." 
 
 '•What mighty ruins are those I behold in the distance, — that 
 somber and repellant mass of crumbling walls, wherein, here and 
 there, along its frowning front, are narrow casements crossed 
 with massive bars, whose massiveness even in its somber 
 ruin chills and numbs my very marrow, — what castle of sorrow 
 was this?" 
 
 "That was once a penitentiary. In the reign of individual 
 selfishness, it stood the central and principal institution of civili- 
 zation. In the time it flourished, things had so gone from bad to 
 worse, and machinery been perfected to such degree, that labor 
 was in scarce demand, and the people consequently starving." 
 
 "Starving because machinery made plenty?" 
 
 "Ayl for although machinery increased the powers of the peo- 
 ple to produce, machinery was under the proprietorship of indiv- 
 iduals and run for profit, not for the people; individualism 
 starved the collectivity." 
 
 "A nice state of affairs! Were the people sane? 
 
 "Perfectlyl It was a slate of affairs, however, which built the 
 collossal structure whose ruins you behold. 'Tis said that one 
 half the people became prisoners and the other half stood on 
 guard." 
 
 "A prosperous institution, certainly! Did it pay?" 
 
 "O yes! it paid, and the crop of sorrow it yielded was enormous. 
 At length the idea of nationalism arose, and the prisoners and 
 their guards quietly walked out and built the splendid palace 
 which you see. A palace is just as easy to build as a prison, if 
 a people so desire." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The only solution of the problem of land monopoly is the nat- 
 ionalization of land; all other propositions are temporal, and if of 
 any value, lead but to this ultimatum. The great evil of personal 
 proprietorship of land can only be effaced by its restoration to 
 the people, not to a part thereof, or to a class, but to the whole 
 people; not to be divided and to be parceled out to this one or 
 that one, but to be administered upon as a whole, for the benefit 
 of the entire nation. 
 
 And to this complexion it must come at last, and come through 
 the very processes of landlordism itself. Yes; it will come to 
 this, in its turn, as one by one our different private institutions 
 become public departments. The nationalization of transportat- 
 ion, telegraph, telephone, and express lines will prepare the nec- 
 essary conditions for the nationalization of land. 
 
 There can be no justice unless every individual has equal priv- 
 ilege, and there can be no equal privilege where one has land and 
 another has not; and for all alike to have equal privilege in land, 
 good and bad, poor soil and rich soil, near land and far land, there 
 is no other way, nor can be any other way, save by the nationali- 
 zation or collective proprietorship of land. Any other system 
 confers advantage to some, and disadvantages to others; a garden
 
 LAND. 41 
 
 spot to one, and a barren rock unto another; near the market 
 and far from the market to diflferent personalities. Justics means 
 equality unto all men; and justice in land means that all men 
 shall own all lands, and this means collectivism in land, and can 
 mean nothing save this, and this alone. 
 
 Private proprietorship of one man over the earth to the exclus- 
 ion of another is a proposition so utterly unjust, so clearly 
 inhuman, as to seriously reflect upon the common sense of the 
 age. Until the landlord shows me the Almighty's signature upon 
 bis title, I will hold to the belief that his title is a sham. But 
 the landlord has done something, and I am not opposed to him 
 personally; I am only opposed to his sham titles. But the land- 
 lord, like us all, has been taught to believe that the whole has no 
 rights which the part is bound to respect, especially as far as the 
 appropriation of the earth is concerned. In this general scirm- 
 mage to corner the rights of posterity, oppressor and oppressed 
 alike partake in the outrage, as usual. 
 
 Selfishness in landlordism has been evolving and building 
 better than it knew. As science expanded civilization, it also 
 expanded landlordism. Science presented the mechanism fitted 
 for the culture of large tracts of land, and land monopoly pre- 
 sented the large tracts of land fitted for the mechanism; the 
 union of these two gives us to-day a systematized cultivation of 
 land. 
 
 If monopoly had never put its tentacles upon the lands, and 
 aggregated them in the folds of its greed, if land had remained 
 divided up in little holdings, little processes of cultivation would 
 have continued to suggest themselves. 
 
 Co-operation by the holders of these little holdings, and the 
 forming of their many little farms into one farm, would certainly 
 have suggested to science the invention of the present improve- 
 ments, by presenting to her vast unfenced tracts of land to be 
 cultivaied; but where do little holders of land ever present this 
 feature of land to science? and when have they ever done it? 
 No; the nature of little holders of land is to hold their little 
 holdings apart, and hold them apart very hard. So landlordism 
 in man has to be destroyed at its top, at its head, — at land 
 monopoly, — and here in America it shall receive its quietus. But 
 let no landlord be alarmed; he will lose nothing, but be immeas- 
 urably the gainer. For nationalism takes all in, monopolist and 
 landlord, and gives him a better thing than he ever had before. 
 
 When landlordism has reached out and absorbed the lands of 
 the people and become land monopoly, the wholesale landlord, 
 then comes the pinch upon the little holder with his little hold- 
 ing. The monopolist hires upon his vast acres immense num- 
 bers of the landless people, these he divides into special depart- 
 ments, his elaborate machinery is placed in position, and the 
 work begins. Under this combined and concerted effort many 
 branches of industry are concentrated, and at this given point 
 act in unison. Then the landless people behold their kindergar- 
 ten lesson of co-operation, — behold the many united holdings 
 plowed, harrowed, seeded, cut, thrashed, and milled at but a min- 
 imum outlay of effort; the cultivation of an immense tract at
 
 42 LAND. 
 
 scarcely more than the previous cost of the cultivation of a small 
 tract. And the holders of small tracts learn their kindergarten 
 lesson also: that small landlordism has got to go; that it cannot 
 compete with irresistible co-operation. 
 
 But co-operation, though inaugurated thus by individualism, is 
 national in its economy and developes nationalwards. 
 
 As this system of co-operative culture proceeds, the absorption 
 of the land proceeds also; for the greater the monopoly of land, 
 the greater the amount of co-operation applied in its culture. 
 
 This state of circumstances steadily strengthens the larger and 
 weakens the smaller, until at last even immense holdings cannot 
 compete with their yet immenser competitors, and the lesser 
 estates flow into the greater as fluid flows into a vortex; for 
 individualism in its greed ever devours individualism. 
 
 If agriculture were solely in its primitive, petty farm condition, 
 it would not yet be ripe for the scythe of nationalism; but thanks 
 to the ego. the "me," the little self, we have a state of land cul- 
 ture to-day which has arrived at maturity for political adoption. 
 
 In many, many places, land monopolists have immense armies 
 of our people, accoutered with tremendous and wondrous imple- 
 ments of cultivation, farming huge tracts of land, huger than 
 many of our principalities and kingdoms of old, — farms of such 
 immensity that it requires fleets of ships to transport their single 
 product. 
 
 Here we have centralization of farms and of farming. Here we 
 have a system of agriculture designed by selfishness to absorb 
 individual interests, and therefore which must inevitably absorb 
 the individual interest of its designers as well, and become 
 nationalized. For monopolistic systems being co-operative in 
 their economy, they must therefore gravitate to nationalism as 
 they proceed in their course; and landlordism cannot blame any 
 one for its final engulfment in nationalism, since it swallows its 
 own lovely head, and ever gives birth to the very thing which 
 devours itself. 
 
 This is just as it should be, — evil destroying itself and leaving 
 good behind; the light coming out of darkness. 
 
 In the nationalization of such farms as we have mentioned, 
 the economy of their management need not be changed in the 
 slightest detail. All being ready for political adoption, their 
 heads would have simply to report to the interior department of 
 state, and Uncle Sam would take their created wealth, instead of 
 an individual. 
 
 Under this state of affairs, all farming would be carried on with 
 every improved appliance and advantage, and the power of 
 co-operation would extend everywhere, in agriculture and horti- 
 culture, and co-operation would then enrich the people as it is 
 now impoverishing them, — being extended to all, and not, as now, 
 pampering to the insane eelfishness of personalism. We would 
 then have no unhappy husbandmen toiling separately with their 
 divided force fenced apart, scattered, and weakened over a mil- 
 lion petty farms, each alone by himself competing with the 
 co-operation of monopoly, and steadily going to the wall, — each 
 in himself presenting the feature of an individual singly com-
 
 LAND. 43 
 
 peting against the combined strength of thousands organized 
 into unity. 
 
 Under nationalization of land, a divided industry would have 
 no longer to struggle in this present man-killing contest of divis- 
 ion against unity. 
 
 Everywhere the farmer has to face the power of co-operation, 
 — the co-operation of science in labor-saving machinery, the 
 co-operation of lands in continual and uninterurpted stretches of 
 country, the co-operation of individual labors, and the co-opera- 
 tion of transportation. All these advantages he beholds in the 
 hands of his competitor, the land monopolist. He cannot farm 
 without facing and competing with these, unless he proposes to 
 enter savagery and shut himself off from the advantages of 
 civilization. He must either thus shut himself off, or compete 
 and go down, or adopt the nationalization of land, and 
 transform this co-operation of individualism into the co-operation 
 of collectivism. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 AIR, LIGHT, WATER. 
 
 In this reign of personalism, air and light are almost commodies, 
 and as nearly controlled as though they were of less subtle na- 
 ture. You may not be able to controll a thing directly, but you 
 may indirectly, by the control! of something else. The monopo- 
 list cannot bale up air, nor bushel up light, but he can get his 
 tentacles upon other things which effect the cornering, and do 
 the baling and the busheling as effectually as though these ele- 
 ments were of some denser material. Allow me to confine you 
 in a dark, ill-ventilated apartment at my pleasure, and I have a 
 corner on your light and air as far as you are concerned, and I 
 can give you air by the quart, and light by the yard, as it appears 
 to me to suit my "profit on goods." I'll fix light and air for you 
 until you are as pale from the want of light, and as weak from 
 the want of air, as ever personalism made a candidate for the 
 grave. 
 
 Yes! the control of manufacture, which includes all those 
 countless people, old and young even away down in infancy, — for 
 personalism don't object to child murder any more than it does to 
 youth and maiden removal, — does control and bend to its profit 
 the free elements of existence, air and light. Fourteen hours a 
 day with the pandemonium of rattling, clattering machinery in 
 your ears, the odors of friction-scorched oil in your nostrils, a 
 continual sameness of action, and the mind a vacuum, is a splen- 
 did garden for the cultivation of serfs — to raise a progeny of 
 serfs — to stuff the maw of insatiable greed, — the greed not of a 
 man, but of men's individualism. Oh, for a decade of a national- 
 ized manufacture! Oh, for air and light to be taken from his 
 clutch of selfishness! Oh, for this remedy which evolution, intel- 
 ligence, and love offers to the factory slaves of our country. 
 And yet no one can do anything of himself in the premises, save in 
 spreading the gospel of popular co-operation. It is a crime of the 
 whole, for which the whole suffer, and which only the whole can
 
 44 AIR, LIGHT, WATER. 
 
 remove. 
 
 The vast systems of manufacture now administered by pri- 
 vate proprietorship are of national character. Many of these in- 
 stitutions have reached such perfection in their several depart- 
 ments and general direction as to be almost automatic in their 
 running; in fact their proprietors have nothing to do with and 
 know nothing of their business; the people engaged in their 
 several departments run the institutions, devoid of outside di- 
 rection, and all the proprietors do in the premises is to absorb 
 the product, giving the employees for compensation exactly what 
 they give their steam-engines, viz., a certain amount of material 
 to keep them running, and no more. Thus personalism places 
 labor upon equality with its machinery, — virtually refusing the 
 recognition of mind or soul. Yet religion cries not out against it. 
 
 I have said that the proprietors of many of these establish- 
 ments have^ nothing to do and know nothing of their workings; 
 and I want, "then, to know by what right, natural or artificial, it is 
 that an individual takes the product of an establishment, who 
 has had nothing to do with and who knows nothing of its work- 
 ings, and who is as effectually a stranger to it as is the road-agent 
 to the traveler who bids him "good morning," and relieves him of 
 his purse. Verily, a system of industry which is thus conducted 
 by its employees is ripe for nationalization, that its products may 
 be turned to the benefit of the people, who are the deserving 
 factors in the case. Is not this justice? Why shall it not pre- 
 vail? Would not this lessen the needlessly long hours, the dis- 
 honest compensation, improve the healthfulness of the arrange- 
 ments, and free the air and light of dungeoned employees, if 
 manufacture was run for humanity's sake, and not for individual- 
 istic sordidness? 
 
 Water should be nationalized as well as land. This idea of in- 
 dividuals controlling and selling water is on a par with land 
 proprietorship! Wherever there is even municipal control of 
 water, aid cities furnish their own supply, there is general satis- 
 faction; for if the body politic cannot satisfy itself, where, oh 
 where, is that marvelous individual who can? On the contrary, 
 wherever an individual furnishes and controls a community's 
 water, there is the same friction and trouble that are always 
 found wherever individualism has thrown its narrow bands around 
 a public necessity. Filthy condition of the element, slovenly care 
 of its conditions, parsimonious supply, and extortionate charges 
 are a few of the concomitants of private water systems supply- 
 ing public communities, which a spirit of unity and a common 
 understanding upon the part of these communities should not 
 tolerate for a moment. As the idea of nationalism assumes 
 definiie shape in the mind of the people, its control of water will 
 reveal itself in many beautiful and health-giving ways; living 
 streams and fountains will play amid statuary in our thorough- 
 fares and public paths, not based upon the niggardly architecture 
 and furnishings of individualism, but built up of nationalistic 
 character, grand, beautiful, and generous, out of rarest marbles, 
 now confined by the niggardliness of personalism to the silence of 
 their quarries, and all erected by a ready-waiting, seeking indue-
 
 AIR, LIGHT, WATER. 45 
 
 try, now kept idle and unemployed by the same paralyzing errors, 
 which would even debar us of a necessary supply of the fluid 
 itself. 
 
 Under the nationalistic civilization, water would be rendered 
 one of the charms of social home scenes; as it is now one of the 
 principal features of natural scenery. The most beautiful, health- 
 ful, instructive as well as useful appurtenances of refined civili- 
 zation will be formed from it in the coming nation, giving health 
 purity, and pleasure to the people. 
 
 Individualism in a thousand ways shuts us off from the 
 pleasures lying yet unextracted from this element, as it shuts 
 us out from the natural enjoyment of nature's many other re- 
 sources. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 RENT, INTEREST, PROFIT, AND TAXATION. 
 
 The abolition of rent would result in the abolition of an enor- 
 mous degree of poverty; and every person who would love to see 
 the world peaceful and happy devoutly wishes this. The aboli- 
 tion of private proprietorship in land, or the nationalization of 
 land, would result in the annihilation of rent. For one man to 
 have to pay another for the right to a place on the earth is the 
 closest definition of the word "rent" we can reach. This having 
 to pay another for the right to a place on the earth would be 
 swept away by nationalism; the earth would belong to the people 
 not to persons here or there, now or then; not to the few occu- 
 pants in the present, but to all peu'ple, of all places, of all times, — 
 to the human race, — for them and theirs forever. Under national- 
 ism, the earth would be devoted to the good of society; upon it 
 society v/ould place its society palaces, pleasure-grounds, indus- 
 trial buildings, railroads, and other appurtenances necessary, 
 agricultural and horticultural tracts, and every other species ol 
 institutions necessary to a civilized civilization. No merchant 
 would have to break his heart over the gloom of the approaching 
 rent day, no toiler dread it as a pestilence; for rent is not an ex- 
 change of one thing for another, but one thing for nothing. 
 
 An equal exchange or payment for the cost and sustaining of 
 the thing used is a just transaction; but when the payment or 
 exchange continues on and on, over and above the cost and sus- 
 taining of the thing used, that is "rent," — that is something 
 cliarged for nothing recieved. And if you were to stop a man 
 upon the highway, and were to say to him. "my dear sir, will you 
 please give me a dollar?" the man would naturally feel inquisi- 
 tive, and reply, "For what shall I give you a dollar, my dear 
 brother?" and you should reply, '"For nothing," — then an idea of 
 the injustice of the transactian would arise within his mind and he 
 would reply, "This is something for nothing, have you no other 
 reason why I should make this exchange?" And you would mur- 
 mur, "None whatever, my dear sir, save this other slight reason," 
 — drawing his attention to a deadly sand-bag in your hand. Upon 
 this positively convincing explanation, your dear brother would 
 immediately become converted, and exchange with you "some-
 
 46 BENT, INTEREST, PROFIT, AND TAXATION. 
 
 thing for nothing." But the police would be after you next day 
 for a closer examination into the grounds of your exchange idea, 
 and probably the penitentiary would enter into the argument. 
 Yet "rent" upon land is precisely the same thing, and the sand- 
 bag which the private appropriator of land uses in his argument 
 is" starvation and death,"— about as formidable a sand-bag as you 
 could use to convince a landless man of the justice of "rent", or 
 "something for nothing." 
 
 Interest is the same thing over again, — and sand-bag and all, — 
 only another kind of a gentleman, with another kind of sand- 
 bag, demanding the same thing over again, viz., "something for 
 nothing." 
 
 A just exchange is no robbery, — a dollar for a dollar is a just 
 exchange, — but a dollar and a half for a dollar is a half a dollar 
 for nothing, and is a half-dollar given where a half-dollar has not 
 been received, and is therefore something for nothing, — the same 
 as "rent"; for interest is merely "rent" on money, — another kind 
 of sand-club is another man's hand. You may object to this kind 
 of exchange; for in this kind of commerce everything goes all one 
 way, and results in the same inevitable disaster ever attending 
 the person who has the "nothing" end of the commerce. But 
 what are you going to do about it? If you refuse, there is the 
 sand- bag of disaster and death. You must make the exchange 
 under the circumstances. 
 
 The nationalization of money would remedy and abolish inter- 
 est. The government would be the employer and the capitalist, 
 and as the people would be the government, they would really be 
 their own employer and their own capitalist, everything being 
 based on a dollar for a dollar, an hour for an hour and each person 
 receiving only the exact voucher of his individual effort; this en- 
 tire system, therefore, which compels one person to exchange 
 a dollar and a half for a dollar would be abolished, and no 
 one could sand-bag any other person through the compulsa- 
 tion of distress, misery, starvation or death, into giving some- 
 thing for nothing. 
 
 Profit is another gentleman with another kind of sand-bag. By 
 profit we do not mean the just increase which the deserving mer- 
 chant adds upon the price of his goods; for that is merely a por- 
 tion of the labor cost of the article, necessary in our present system 
 of distribution. But we mean an increase of price having nothing 
 whatever to do with the labor cost in the article, either in its 
 manufacture or in its sale, — an increase of price to the consumer 
 above and beyond every species of human effort in the article, — 
 a sum of money demanded from the people for more than was 
 ever paid to the people in the making and selling of it. For in- 
 stance, the man with the sand-bag has a loaf of bread; he meets 
 his brother with the appetite and no loaf of bread, and says to 
 him, "I see you have an appetite and no loaf of bread." 
 
 "Precisely. The two generally go together nowadays." 
 
 "Well, do you want a trade?', 
 
 "What! the appetite for the loaf?" 
 
 "No; I can't take your appetite, or I should take that from you 
 too. I mean trade with me for this loaf of bread."
 
 RENT, INTEREST, PROFIT, AND TAXATION. 47 
 
 "What do you want?" 
 
 "All you have got. Have you any birthright, or anything like 
 that?" 
 
 "No; everything I ever had has been gobbled up long ago." 
 
 "You have some relics upon your back, a pair of summer shoes, 
 I see, and a ventilation hat?" 
 
 "Yes; they ain't worth much, but still they are worth twenty 
 times your loaf of bread." 
 
 "What is that to you? You need bread; you are starving, — 
 (the sand-club), — you give me the duds!" 
 
 "Well, take them, but they will make you twenty loaves." 
 
 "Well, that is my profit on the goods," says the man with the 
 sand-club, and the naked man walks away with the loaf, and the 
 sand-club walks away with nineteen loaves which it gave 
 nothing for. 
 
 Apply this to civilization, and from the gilded pawn-shop of 
 "capital" to the dingy pawn-shop of poverty, from the thunder- 
 ing hissing and fussing huge manufactory of "capital" to the 
 humble work-bench of poverty, from the glittering array and be- 
 wildering display of the mammoth marts of "capital" to the little 
 hand me-down shop of poverty,— all, everywhere, is this man of 
 profit with the sand-bag, standing before his hungering brother 
 until profit, pro^i, profit, piles up this pyramid of injustice, and 
 "man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn! 
 
 This twenty loaves for one would all be done away with, — this 
 sand-bag of poverty, necessity, and its compelling conditions, 
 wherein one must yield to injustice or receive worse, — this all 
 would be done away with in the collective proprietorship of these 
 necessities, wherein none would have the avenues of effort closed 
 to him, wherein every exchange would he based upon cost, and 
 cost would be the only price of a thing; and thus nationalism 
 would do away with profit, sand-bagger, sand-bag, and all. 
 
 Taxation would also be a dead institution under the national- 
 ization of our institutions and there would be no more tax col- 
 lector. Everything being based upon cost, the mail service, the 
 railroad service, the telegraph service, the manufacuring service 
 the agricultural service, the palace service, and every other ser- 
 vice would base its charges upon the actual cost of each thing, 
 including all pertaining to its actual cost; and when the pur- 
 chaser paid for the article, he would pay every real expense at- 
 tending the thing, and that would be the end of it. 
 
 The cost of the article's manufacture, the cost of every depart- 
 ment engaged and pertaining to its manufacture, the cost of the 
 department engaged in its distribution, and all departments per- 
 taining thereunto, and the pro rata of the general national de- 
 partments of the entire nation, would be added to each thing, 
 but no more. No rent, no interest, no profit, no taxes, or tribute 
 to law-lordism, — nothing save the actual, honest just amount of 
 labor in the thing, the just amount which the nation put into the 
 article, and that just amount charged to the consumer. There 
 would be then no tax-oflBce, no tax collector. You would pay for 
 all there was in a thing when you gave the national certificate, 
 and there would remain no other charge against you anywhere.
 
 48 RENT, INTEREST, PROFIT, AND TAXATION. 
 
 This would simplify the present complex complication of things, 
 and the less complexity the less the cost. Taxation would there- 
 fore be, abolished; for a just exchange is not, and cannot be, taxa- 
 tion; and this would be a just exchange, from a pin to a palace. 
 If you examine closely, you will find that a community has to 
 surrender, in order to pay a tax, double the value of the tax in 
 goods. First, they have to part with the exact amount of the 
 tax in goods to get the money to pay the tax; and second, they 
 have to again part with another exact amount of the tax in goods 
 before the person who performed the service receives the goods. 
 Thus before the person receives the one hundred dollars' worth 
 of goods from the community, the community has previously to 
 give to some one else one hundred dollars' worth of goods in order 
 to get the money to pay the tax. They thus have to yield two 
 hundred dollars' worth of goods where only one has been earned. 
 Now who gets this other one hundred dollars' worth of goods? 
 It is certainly not the deserving government employee. This 
 other one hundred dollars' worth of goods goes to the man with 
 the sand-club, who controls and runs the proportional prin- 
 cipal, or money, of your country. Nationalize your society, and 
 your national certificates, and your national system of basing your 
 public institutions upon cost, and not upon rent, interest, or profit 
 and you will find that your taxes, or this second payment for the 
 same debt, ceases. 
 
 Thus common sense and common justice would relieve us of 
 these mysterious misteries, through whose jugglery of error 
 society gives something for nothing and receives the nothing 
 portion of the trade. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE TRIAL, OF THE MILLIONAIRES — A DREAM. 
 
 I HAD a dream. The people of the great republic labored under 
 intense excitement, and congregated in immense gatherings, de- 
 nouncing the millionaires, railroad magnates, telegraph proprie- 
 tors, landlords of vast estates, and trusts of every description. 
 Orators pictured such personages as enemies of the human race 
 and asserted that all such should be seized, tried and con- 
 demned for high crimes and misdemeanors against civilization. 
 The sensation grew more and more intense each moment, until 
 with one accord, and as with a single voice, the enraged populace 
 demanded that the culprits be at once arrested and tried before 
 the court of public opinion, that highest and mightiest of all 
 courts in all lands, and especially in the great republic. 
 
 Immediately a universal clamor arose, the voice of sixty mill- 
 ions enraged people. And all official agents favorable to the de- 
 fendants were immediately voted out, and a complete new set 
 voted in, who were unfavorable to the defendants. And the de- 
 fendants were seized for trial. 
 
 When the day came, the prisoners were brought out before the 
 concourse, — the mightiest jury ever assembled, — a jury consisting 
 of sixty millions of people of all ages and conditions, and of both 
 sexes. The most eminent statesmen, logicians, and thinkers were
 
 THE TRIAL OP THE MILLIONAIRES. 49 
 
 arranged both on the side of the defendants and on the side of 
 the people. 
 
 When all wae ready for proceeding, an agent of the great court 
 arose, and in a loud voice said: — 
 
 "The great court of public opinion is now open and ready for 
 business; the defendants before us are the land, water, transpor- 
 tation, telegraph, light, manufacture, money, and commercial 
 millionaires of every species. Let the case of the prosecution be 
 proclaimed." 
 
 Then a person noted far and wide by the title of "Reformer" 
 arose; and with a countenance fierce and angry, and in a voice 
 loud and denunciatory, addressed the court: — 
 
 "Mighty court of public opinion, I have caused to be brought 
 beforo you the bodies of these well-to-do millionaires. I accuse 
 them of high crimes and misdemeanors against our civilization. 
 There are three counts in our indictment: — 
 
 "1. That they have subverted the liberties of the people. 
 
 "2. That they have appropriated and have posession of the 
 natural and artificial necessities of the people. 
 
 "3. With conspiracy, viz., that they have cooperated with each 
 other, or entered into common relationship with each other, known 
 as monopolies or trusts, for their mutual or individual enrichment, 
 and the better to carry out their complete control of the said 
 natural and artificial necessities of life. 
 
 "Now, most high and mighty court, ye jury of sixty millions of 
 jurors, these are the three distinct counts of our indictment, each 
 and all of which I assert to be high treason against civilization 
 and for which, if found guilty, I demand their execution." 
 
 Then from a knot of wild, red eyed, billioue-looking personages 
 who continually denounce the republic, and assert that the popu- 
 lar ballot is a failure, and that European monarchies are im- 
 measureably superior, there came a cry of "Murder them! mur- 
 der them!" and one of these guillotine-looking personages came 
 forward and said: — 
 
 The only good way to reform a country is the good old way ot 
 our old countries in the dark ages, — brute force. Let us destroy 
 and murder; let us use the torch and instruments of death. 
 Cruelty, bloodshed, and fear were the great engines of ancient 
 progress. Hate is a mighty spirit of progress. Behold Europe! 
 how vast is her unfoldment under the evolution of war! Let us 
 have war, — red, fiery, bloody war! Let us upon a pyramid of 
 ruined homes, whose smoking ashes shall only be extinguished in 
 human blood, establish — establish — a — well, establish — that is, I 
 was going to say — let us establish whatever we will establish upon 
 these bloody, smoking ruins." 
 
 Here the wild bloodthirsty-looking knot cried, "Bravo! bravo!" 
 and several brandished diabolical instruments of torture and 
 murder. 
 
 But the vast multitude seemed not to be enthused, and many 
 cried, "Verily, we are cursed bad enough now, but with such hate 
 and venom as you bring us from your old monarchial idea of 
 things, we would be a thousand times worse;" and a great mur- 
 mur arose against the murderous propositions.
 
 50 THE TRIAI^ OP THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 Then one of the great attorneys for the case of the people aroe© 
 and spake, saying: "These wild would-be life-takers whom you 
 so justly murmur against are the very best evidence we could 
 offer against these millionaires, the defendants. These wild men 
 who have just spoken are the fruit and outgrowth of European 
 individualism, or monopoly. Injustice and cruelty there have pro- 
 duced this their state of mind. Their forefathers have received 
 nothing but hate, fire, cruelty, and murder, and they, poor things! 
 coming to this land, cannot know, think, speak of, or act upon 
 any other than the old plane. True, there are some few of our 
 own people among them, but these are mistaken exceptions of 
 the rule. If monopoly has made such material as these incen- 
 diaries of the old countries, it will surely turn out a crop of just 
 such unamiable people in our own; in fact, it has turned out 
 thousands of just such, and we hold that our entire criminal ele- 
 ment is the direct result of the conditions built, fostered, and 
 projected by these millionaires, the defendants now on trial. 
 
 "We claim that poverty is a mold to shape society sickly and 
 criminal; to shape society ignorant and vicious, to shape society 
 dangerous to both the individual and to itself; that whatever de- 
 bars man of his rights inculcates the instinct of deceit in the vic- 
 tim, and from this deceit the error branches into every species of 
 crime. We claim that this reign of injustice crushes the morality 
 of man, and the virtue of woman, and flowers, in the noxious evil 
 prostitution. We claim that intemperance, and every species of 
 sensual vice, is the outgrowth of this inequality; that temper- 
 ance is equipoise or equality; that this inharmonious adjustment 
 of society and its relations to its natural necessities is inequality, 
 and therefore a society thus constituted must, in the nature of 
 things, become intemperate, passionate, violent, diseased, and 
 prone to unbalanced excitements. And we claim that this pov- 
 erty, crime, prostitution, intemperance, and disease are all the 
 creations of the defendants now before this great bar, and we 
 ask for their condemnation and punishment in accordance with 
 this the true presentation of their guilt." 
 
 As this speaker concluded, the vast jury became animated, and 
 many fell into discussion with their neighbors regarding his ar- 
 raignment. Some thought him severe, others net severe enough, 
 but all thought him truthful, even to his allusion to the wild- 
 eyed bloodites of bloodarian ideas; one of whom now arose, and 
 waving an odd -looking thing which resembled a piece of gas- 
 pipe, around his head, and which caused many timid people ta 
 scatter in every direction, said: "Now, then, comrades, the peo- 
 ple have spoken; let us get down to the killing business. Erect 
 the guillotine! Off with their heads!" 
 
 But a great spirit of justice reigned in the breasts of the people 
 of the great republic, and they answered loudly: "No! We will 
 hear the prisoners first; we will listen to the other side." 
 
 "What!" said the man with the infernal machine, which the odd 
 looking gas-pipe proved to be. "What! do you propose to listen 
 to the other side? If you listen to that, — if you look at both 
 sides, — then you will surely never kill any one!" 
 
 "It is only falsehood which cannot meet contradiction, — which
 
 THE TRIAL. OP THE MILLIONAIRES. 51 
 
 dare not face its opposite. Our cause is truth, and therefore we 
 give justice. We will hear our enemy speak." 
 
 "That is not the justice we gave in Europe, — we killed aristo- 
 crats." 
 
 "And the aristocrats killed you, and the killing business reigned 
 supreme. You forget you are in America. Here there is no in- 
 vidious distinction between the people and the government. Here 
 the people and the government are but two terras meaning the 
 same thing. In your monarchies it is not so; the people and the 
 government are two distinct entities, separate nouns, apart in 
 meaning, sympathy, interest, and personage. In your European 
 monarchies, you have to revolute and overthrow this separate 
 entity which you call the monarchy; and when you have accom- 
 plished this, and established a republic, then you have removed 
 the second person from your politics; then your people and their 
 government become one, a single entity, a unit, not a union of 
 two things, but a single person in itself. This is, and constitutes, 
 a republic. And if there be aught wrong then in such form of 
 poUtical society, that wrong then lies at the door of the people. 
 Anything which teaches otherwise hides the true fact from the 
 people that they are the government and the power; and what- 
 ever hides from the peo]^le that they are the government and that 
 they are the the power keeps the people from acting in the prem- 
 ises. The people of America have not yet arisen to a concious- 
 ness of the greatness of their heritage." 
 
 Then a great shout arose from the people, saying: "We are 
 the people, and govern; we are the power. Nothing can control 
 us without our consent; for we are free to act according to our 
 understanding; and we therefore say. Let the defendants speak." 
 
 Then from amid the millionaires and monopolists came forth 
 an attorney, — a man celebrated for his mental efforts, his deep 
 research, exhaustive arguments, brilliant presentation of ideas 
 and original genius, all of which naturally caused respect and 
 attention. Raising his hand as if asking silence, he turned his 
 grave countenance upon the vast audience, and when it was 
 still, spake: "Americans! the first count in the indictment 
 of my illustrious clients asserts that they have subverted your 
 liberty. If that were fact, if that were possible, and had been 
 accomplished, how comes it that upon the mere assertion of 
 your will we find them your prisoners, — we find them before you 
 in jeopardy, and upon trial? They are few in numbers; you con- 
 stitute millions; and when the lesser controls the greater, it is 
 certainly only through the acquiscence of the greater. 
 
 "It would be as absurd to claim that these few millionaires are 
 the mental superiors of the collective wisdom of sixty millions of 
 people, and through this superior wisdom controlled them, as it 
 would be ridiculous to assert that a few thousand monopolists are 
 the physical superiors of sixty millions. 
 
 "It is therefore, plain that you are neither subjected by the 
 mental or physical force of my clients; and since they could only 
 subject you through either one or the other of these two forces, 
 and neither exists in the case, the charge that my clients en- 
 slave you is certainly groundless, and the first count must there-
 
 52 THE TRIAL OF THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 fore fall, being contrary to reason and to sense. 
 
 "Your society is so constructed that it produces two extremes, 
 — millionaires at one end, and paupers at the other, — so con- 
 structed that it grinds out these two conditions of people as an 
 ill-constructed mill grinds out two conditions of meal,— so con- 
 structed that the right of the individual is sustained to an ab- 
 normal degree, while the right of the whole, the right of the peo- 
 ple as a mass, is scarcely recognized. The right of the individual 
 to control land, water, air, light and labor are everywhere sup- 
 ported, sustained, and protected; but the superior right of the 
 millions collectively to control all of these, not for the 
 benefit of individuals, but for the benefit of the entire 
 individuality, is totally overlooked; disregarded, and held 
 in contempt. Is it, therefore, surprising that individuals 
 thus sustained by the collectivity should rise to abnomal wealth 
 and the collectivity itself sink into poverty? Surely it could not 
 be otherwise. 
 
 "Your continual legislation in behalf of individualism, at the 
 expense of collectivism, I contend, afflicts both extremes, rich 
 and poor alike. A system which encourages, protects, and forces 
 the individual to seize upon the natural resources and rights of 
 society educates, draws out, and unfolds the meaner qualities, 
 grosser and material conditions of the mind, and they who win in 
 this race of spoliation must therefore do so at the expense of the 
 finer and nobler qualities of their being, and thus acquire mater- 
 ial wealth at the cost of spiritual poverty. And although the 
 rich pile up their material wealth mountain high, they must 
 meet the consequences of their error, and thus the kings of your 
 unequal system, though exteriorly clad in splendor, nevertheless 
 at their core are spiritually rotten. 
 
 "And thus I claim that my clients, although they know it not, 
 are the equal sufferers when the internal of the situation is ex- 
 amined. 
 
 "That the poor are equally brutalized through their material 
 impoverishment and vile environments equally as the rich are 
 brutalized through their spiritual impoverishment is axiomatic; 
 the infliction of the one being internally and the other externally. 
 With this I dismiss the first count, that these millionaires hold 
 you in subjection, claiming that the subjection is mutually im- 
 posed by the millions, rich and poor, and that all alike are par- 
 takers of its evil consequences. 
 
 "The second count in your indictment is, that my clients have 
 taken posession of natural and artificial necessities. The first 
 count I denied; this, the second, I acknowledge to be true. But 
 this is not a crime. When and where have you the collectivity, 
 so declared it to be? Have not your entire legislation, teaching, 
 and practice declared it to be legal and legitimate? True, a few 
 certain individual theorists and ahead-of-the-time-ists have pro- 
 claimed it a crime, but as they have based their charges more 
 upon individual denunciation than collective analysis, the innate 
 justice of the people has ever turned from such in the inner con- 
 sciousness of a general guilt. Yes I acknowledge my clients, the 
 millionaires, are guilty of individually appropriating the common
 
 THE TRIAL, OP THE MILLIONAIRES. 53 
 
 necessities of life, of individual proprietorship, of humanity's nec- 
 essaries; but I demand, if my clients are to be jeopardized for bo 
 doing, that all be jeopardized; that the jury itself step into the 
 prisoner's dock, and that we all stand decapitation in common, all 
 alike being individually guilty. 
 
 "But guilty of what? Guilty of the appropiation of life's 
 necessities! And where and how can the law of self-preservation 
 be demonstrated a crime? Nowhere and nohow! Why, instead 
 of being a crime, the appropriation and control of the necessities 
 of life is a commendable virtue, to be honored and applauded by 
 all right-thinking people. 
 
 "But why is the charge then brought? But why the evil? 
 The evil is, that the individual has been compelled to control 
 the necessities of life, — compelled to exercise personal proprie- 
 torship over these things, because the collectivity has failed to 
 act for the whole, of which he is the part, thereby forcing him 
 to act individually in an administration over the necessities of 
 life, thereby making him a victim rather than a culprit in the 
 offense. Therefore, what he has done, and has been forced to do, 
 let the collectivity now do for him and all, as it should do, and so 
 long has left undone. Let the collectivity assume its natural 
 position of proprietor of every necessity of the whole, and no 
 longer force individual conflict, through a discordant condition of 
 the law of self-preservation. Surely then, the jury cannot justly 
 consider as guilt or crime, on the part of my clients, an act the 
 performance of which is a common law of being, — an act forced 
 by the plaintiffs themselves upon the defendants, and an act 
 which it would be the highest virtue of the plamtiffs themselves 
 to imitate, copy, and adopt as a line of conduct. And therefore I 
 conclude, and dismiss this second charge, with these words: 
 Let the people in their collectivism adopt and emulate the very 
 thing in which they charge my clients with crime. Let them, as 
 a whole, and acting for the whole, appropriate, as my clients have 
 done, the necessities of life." 
 
 By this time the excitemeat had become intense, the very 
 breath of the millions of the great court became hushed and still 
 during the silent process of thought. Then an individual who 
 had spent ninety -nine per cent of his effort in attacking and de- 
 nouncing individuals and private characters said, with a demoniac 
 scowl: "These villainous wretches, these thieving millionaires, 
 will get off sure; they should have had no trial. The whole thing 
 appears turning out peacefully. There is going to be no war 
 between us, and no good can come except by and through war. 
 I shall have no chance to distinguish myself as a patriot, and the 
 people will never learn of the love that is in me,— of the self-sac- 
 rificing spirit I am! I really expected to be a great leader of 
 troops and the people's beloved savior; but they appear to be 
 getting along without me, the great unknown, who thirsts to 
 perish as a gory martyr, and to be raised above mankind as a 
 saint of political reform! 
 
 "But if these people get to thinking; if they understand that 
 they are the power; that they need no Moses to lead them out of 
 the wilderness; that there is no great overshadowing power over
 
 54 THE TRIAL, OP THE MILLIONAIRES. 
 
 them save their own ignorance; that everything lies within them- 
 selves,— then, alas! alas! my occupation, my sanguinary role of 
 the great liberator, which I have dreamed of so fondly and so 
 true, is at an end! My occupation is gone!" 
 
 And as he said these words it seemed as though a mighty sigh 
 of relief had swept over the multitude. 
 
 Then the counsel for the millionaires again resumed: — 
 
 "I now take up the third and last count in this unjust indict- 
 ment, viz., that my clients, the millionaires, have co-operated or 
 joined their divided forces, thus demonstrating that co-operation 
 is superior to competition or individual effort. That they have 
 evolved great strength, and acquired vast wealth, through this 
 association of their forces in common, — through this sinking of 
 their individualities into collectivism, — I acknowledge. That 
 they have thus learned that in union there is strength; that they 
 have and are again combining their several many co-operations 
 into greater co-operations known as trusts for still greater accu- 
 mulation of power, I also acknowledge. And I ask you, the peo- 
 ple of this great republic, wherein lies the error, — wherein lies 
 the crime? Is not this the unfoldment by the individual of the 
 greatest of social truths? — the application of the very principle 
 upon which the universe itself is founded, through which it is 
 sustained and endures? Is not the principle of hell disunion, 
 and the principle of heaven union? the first, conflict, the second, 
 order? and are not my clients but the rude pioneers of this great 
 truth? Let envy, malice, and personalism say what it may! Is 
 not the co-operation of parts known as monopolies and trusts but 
 the nebular formations of the coming great planet of national 
 co-operation? True, my clients' co-operation hurts and inflicts 
 the people. When and where does not truth hurt and pain who- 
 ever lives contrary to it? You, the people, are living contrary to 
 co-operation, contrary to its truth; and wherever competition 
 or individualism meets and faces the co-operation of my clients, 
 it suffers defeat and pain. Through this defeat and pain the peo- 
 ple are awakening to a realization i)f the error of individualism, 
 or competition; and thus society is forced as well as educated 
 into a recognition of the fundamental principle of life. 
 
 "Again, I say, let the people, instead of attaching conflict and 
 war upon my innocent and most praiseworthy clients, the mil- 
 lionaires, let them emulate their processes and adopt their admir- 
 rable systems. The same co-operation through which sixty 
 viillioyiaires enrich themselves will certainly enrich sixty mil- 
 lions of people when adopted. And I claim that my clients are 
 not the evil-doers, as this third and last count would proclaim, 
 but that they are benefactors and educators instead; that they 
 are but the agents of social evolution, and receive the full injury 
 and benefit of every truth and error unfolded; that my clients, 
 the millionaires, have faults, have crimes to answer for, as all 
 have crimes to answer for, I acknowledge; and that they have 
 truths, as all men have truths, I have here demonstrated. I now 
 move their discharge, their vindication, and their liberty, and 
 that they be invited to enter the great general co-operation of the 
 whole, which I know you are about to establish, and of which, I
 
 THE TRIAL OP THE MILLIONAIRES. OD 
 
 am sure, they will become valuable adjuncts." 
 
 As these words were spoken the vast jury arose, and with one 
 mighty voice, which shook the very mountains in the distance 
 they proclaimed: — 
 
 "We give the prisoners and ourselves freedom! We give each 
 and all freedom! We co-operate, we nationalize the necessities 
 of life and civilization, and henceforth none shall be pauper, and 
 all shall be the countless millionaire.'' 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 woman's relation to nationalism. 
 
 The feminine principle of existence is represented everywhere 
 by the moral, as the masculine is represented everywhere by the 
 intellectual. The feminine conserves the moral, the masculine 
 the intellectual. Our civilization to-day is almost exclusively 
 masculine, almost wholly intellectual, and therefore almost wholly 
 immoral. This immorality is the result of the subversion of the 
 feminine, or moral, factor of existance, and its subversion must 
 necessarily end in inequality or in confusion, from dome to found- 
 ation of the society, thus constructed. To have a perfect society, 
 its base must be equality, — equality in all things. And to 
 have that, you must have equality in the beginning,— an equal 
 recognition, morally and intellectually, of these two primal 
 factors of life. You must be intelligent and loving enough to 
 recognize these two factors equally, and extend to them equal 
 support, place, and power. Then when there is no prepond- 
 erance, but an equal proportion of ivovian and man in your 
 religious, political, and social relations, there will be a balance, 
 an equilibrium, and rest, — a reign of peace and of unparalleled 
 harmony, which will bring society very quickly to its successful 
 status. 
 
 Whenever a moral proposition is proposed for society to adopt as 
 law, that proposition is the feminine principle moving in 
 politics; whenever the masculine becomes intelligent enough, it 
 perceives and recognizes this moral proposition, this feminine in 
 politics, and adopts it as law. That the masculine is becoming 
 intelligent enough to appereciate the moral, or the feminine, in 
 politics, the recognition of the moral truths of national co-oper- 
 ation by the men of America plainly demonstrates. 
 
 Everywhere, then, throughout the land women should awaken 
 to this, her first grand entree as a principle into goverment. 
 
 National co-operation is purely moral in its idea; iov all of 
 justice is of morality, and all of morality is of love, and all of love 
 is of the feminine principle, whether it be in man or in woman. 
 
 The war, conflict, and competition of nations and indviduals, 
 the suffering, misery, and inhumanity everywhere around us, 
 is resolved into that one single destructive state of mind designa- 
 ted as hate. Hate is that state or condition of mind necessary to 
 outrage, cruelty, and injustice; and there can be no merit reward- 
 ed, no truth recognized, no virtue respected, by a mind under the 
 domination of hate. Hence hate is the very antithesis of justice, 
 and when we come to analize hate, and go down deep into causa-
 
 56 WOMAN'S RELATION TO NATIONALISM. 
 
 ioDB, we find that hate is a state of mind wherein the positive and 
 negative forces are unequal, or in other words, wherein the mas- 
 culine and feminine principles are unproportional, and that hate, 
 the resultant of this inequality, is the seed or cause of disease 
 or disorder, producing all the various forms of evils which man 
 and earth are heir to. 
 
 The full rights of woman can only be recognized in a state of 
 society in whose administration the moral has become as equal a 
 factor as the intellectual, or in other words, where love is recog- 
 nized as equal to wisdom. 
 
 Wisdom, or comprehension on the crude plane of individualism, 
 fails to preceive the love principle, and merely recognizes tihe in- 
 tellectual itself. The result of this one-sided vision, this partial 
 or half illumination of the ego, evolves a one-sided civilization, 
 whose force is expended in much intellectuality, unbalanced by 
 a necessary degree of moral sentiment, and results in construct- 
 ing a civilization of almost physical or masculine nature, whose 
 history is a concatenation of passion, violence, and conflict, whose 
 reformers even propose destruction invarably as remedy for error, 
 and deem war as a panacea, and who are ever ready to assert that 
 destruction must precede construction; that we must destroy the 
 woman to bring forth the child. These destructionists imagine 
 themselves to be anarchists, and so they are termed by the world, 
 but they are not anarchists, but destructionists. Anarchy, or 
 no government, hieans self-control; self-control is not attainable 
 by any passionate process whatever; itevolutes from government, 
 and there must be government during its evolution from govern- 
 ment. You can't make the boy by killing the man, the fruit by kill- 
 ing the tree, the no government by killing the government. You 
 must develop the one from the other, and you must comprehend the 
 process of that development. Nationalism, or natonial co-operation, 
 is that process. 
 
 Everywhere in our civilization we find much masculine ingenu- 
 ity, carefully arranging conditions, circumstance, and situations to 
 success special designs, while but seldom you meet with feminine 
 sentiment or moral aspiration existing hand in hand with this 
 intellecual effort. The masculine preponderates to such an extent 
 in our governing ideas that it almost over whelms and crushes out 
 the feminine in all, save the most primal relation of the dual prin- 
 ciples. It recognizes the feminine to bring forth a race, but re- 
 fuses to recognize it or allow it to bring forth a condition for the 
 happiness of the race, — refuses to accept what the feminine alone 
 can give, moral principle, and proceeds to build the structure 
 of OUT political family upon a purely masculine basis, — a basis 
 which consequently presents a scene of continual competition, of 
 continual destruction, desolation, and untimely death. Every- 
 where you find the masculine denunciator, or the tearer-down; 
 seldom you find the feminine, or constructive, principle. Vo- 
 ciferous applause greets the former, while shrugs and silence 
 greet the latter. This masculine civilization cannot present any 
 other phase than its present one of effort devoid of feeling, of ob- 
 ject devoid of morality, of reason devoid of affection, — a thing all 
 head and no heart. It cannot give a state of affairs beyond or
 
 woman's relation to nationalism, 57 
 
 above its present insanity-mill, wherein each man's hand is raised 
 against his brother in life long conflict, whose unholy strife is 
 innocently termed "buisness," "shrewdness," "smartness," and 
 "brains." 
 
 Nol this masculine civilization cannot present any other phase 
 until its recognition of the love principle in the construction of 
 its society, — a recognition which demands happiness as well as 
 greatness, — a recognition that happiness can only be secured 
 through love, as greatness is secured through justice, — a recogni- 
 tion that woman is as necessary to the administration of a govern- 
 ment as she is to the administration of a family, and that society 
 can nowhere endure, but must lose itself, in the absence of her 
 love. Woman ennobles all that she comes in contact with, and 
 would ennoble governments. 
 
 Nationalism is the feminine principle in politics; it is intuit- 
 ion marching with reason; it is love where it ever should be, — by 
 the side of wisdom. In a word, it is the woman and the man, — 
 dual expressions of the infinite, whose divison is darkness, whose 
 union is life. 
 
 Nationalism then presents the political atmosphere of woman. 
 Her principle brought it into existence, — i. e., love for the race. 
 Her principle will carry it forward. In it woman finds her em- 
 bryo dreams of what should be, and turns to it from what her 
 spirit for ages hath proclaimed should not be. Her desires for 
 the grand, beautiful, sublime, poetic, and harmonious can only 
 be realized in the unfoldment of both the powers of the race, — 
 powers now divided and restrained,— powers, however, which 
 under national co-operation would flow forth in one united, ir- 
 resistible stream. The women of our country, therefore, must 
 put their will and aspiration in this sacred cause. It is woman's 
 opportunity, and both sexes' full future, — a future which estab- 
 lishes truths the fructifying powers of which unfold an evolution 
 which shall yield conditions of more glorious nature than stars 
 have witnessed or mind has yet dreamed. We have heard it 
 put forth that woman's ideas of government should not be joined 
 to men's ideas of government, or government be based upon the 
 ideas of both; that woman is unfitted to partake of many depart- 
 ments of our present "he" government; that she is unfitted to go 
 around collecting "license" from the dens and dives; that she is un- 
 fitted to fight in war; unfitted to carry a killing-machine. Unfitted 
 for war? Heaven forbid her to be! War! the thing which puts one 
 man above another; thecreator of rank; theturnerof men into aut- 
 tomatons;th6 maker of the man on horseback and the millions on 
 foot; the soul, seed, father, and mother of tyranny, — this is war, 
 the child of ignorance and hate. And war is the direct result 
 of this over-preponderance of the masculine, and this unrelative 
 representation of the feminine in each and every department of 
 the social structure. True, you may say, there are departments, 
 that men now occupy which are unfitted for her, and beneath 
 her. Well! if there be such departments, then they are also 
 unfitted for men; for man should not be where woman cannot be; 
 they should be ever side by side, equal in all things, dependent in 
 none. And every thing contrary to these truths shall yet go down 
 before the endless beat of thought upon the shores of error.
 
 58 THE SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 "The social evil!" What a soft sentence, designating with 
 soft phrase this hideous ulcer upon the fair front of humanity! 
 This hideous ulcer, fixed there by the hate and avarice of indiv- 
 idual ignorance! This seal of death upon civilization! 
 
 Ignorant individualism! go build up laws until your earth of 
 jurisprudence mount up to the sun, and you will still find that 
 the volcano you have created beneath will erupt, and vomit up 
 its desolation. You cannot suppress the prostitution overwhelm- 
 ing you, — suppress that which you have planted, nourished, and 
 fed in the breast of poor diseased society. 
 
 Think of it! Woman, the fountain of manhood, being molded, 
 taught, pressed into sale, — into the sale of her body to the lust of 
 individualistic sense! 
 
 Individualistic lust demands that she sell herself that she may 
 live; points to the wretched hovel, squalid, filthy, and repulsive, — 
 points to rags and wretchedness, — points to an empty cupboard 
 and a breadless table, — points to endless, unrequited toil, — 
 points to the hell scenes of spoliated labor, with all their crush- 
 ing associations, — points to a hideousness indescribable; for the 
 voices who have endured it are hushed and incapable of speech, 
 — and cries to the woman of America: "Take this, — ay worse, — 
 or sell your bodies!" 
 
 Look at the condition wherein individualistic control of indus- 
 try has placed women. Behold her in the coarse factories, under 
 the control of masculine avarice, gluttony, and sensualism. Her 
 fine and delicate nature, ruled and employed by the grossest and 
 vilest of passions, offering misery for her industry, abundance 
 and pleasure for her idleness. Vice — putting a premium upon 
 her destruction, and a discount upon her preservation — moulding 
 her, educating her, forcing her into houses of bawd. And then 
 you talk of the suppression of the social evil! Look to the sup- 
 pression of your individual lusts in the establishment of your 
 collective virtues. 
 
 The bawd-house is the companion of the penitentiary. This 
 inhumanity of personal proprietorship over man finds a counter- 
 part in its personal proprietorship over woman. Crime is but 
 disorde r, and injustice is the fountain of your crime. Establish 
 justice,y and disorder or crime dissipates, as the dews of night 
 give wa i beneath the sun. Give woman justice! Give her land, 
 water, ar, light, science, and art, and yoiir prostitution ends; for 
 these things, which are hers, she has not; for individualism has 
 robbed and debauched her equally as it has robbed and de- 
 bauched man. Raise her beyond the power of individualism; 
 give her her rights. Place her upon the plaine of equality, by 
 placing the necessities of her being above the control of avarice, 
 and the future mothers and sisters and daughters of the race will 
 be no more driven, tutored, forced, and crushed into prostitution. 
 
 The roots of the social evil are deep down in the immoral and 
 unjust rules governing industry. This injustice is the source of 
 crime, and crime is hereditary. The criminal treatment of
 
 THE SOCIAL EVIL. 59 
 
 women causes women to give birth to criminals. Bring about a 
 just system of society, and women will give birth to just men and 
 virtuous women. Injustice entails itself. Suppress the entail- 
 ment by establishing equality of all men and all women in the 
 right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This can only 
 be done through a collective proprietorship in the necessities of 
 their being. This is nationalism pure and simple, and the only 
 remedy for the social evil. 
 
 Mothers of the nation, your attention! Divine womanhood, 
 whose pure picture every boy carries in his heart from the tirst 
 infant cry to his last moment, when the eyes glaze and lose their 
 light, you, glorified and deified in the cherished recollections of us 
 all, listen! Look upon the little one slumbering in your arms; 
 think, what shall be its future? Is it a girl? Then look well to 
 the elevation of society's moral tone, for therein lies her safety. 
 Is it a boy? Then look well to the improvement of society's 
 relational institutions; for therein lies his safety. A virtuous 
 girl is not safe among dishonest men, and her honest brother is in 
 danger. The elevation of society is the duty you, dear mother, 
 owe to your dear child. Man is but a series of expressions of the 
 universal life through conditions, and these conditions form the 
 expression and is thy child. Look well to it, dear mother; for to 
 your love I commend these pages. 
 
 The best alas ! have many foes, 
 
 And yet one single friend 
 Proves ever true, through all in all, — 
 
 Proves faithful to the end ; 
 Who'd rather weep that we should smile. 
 
 Who'd starve that we should feast ; 
 Whose happiness springs from oor own. 
 
 Decreased as it's decreased. 
 
 And I had once just such a friend ; 
 
 I feel that even now 
 She's hovering o'er this busy page, 
 
 Laving this busy brow ; 
 Passing her hand along my hair, 
 
 Pressing her kiss divine, 
 Bending o'er her dreaming boy, — 
 
 This angel mother mine. 
 
 Mothers! if your boys and girls now growing up, full of love» 
 hope, and sweet youth's brightest dreams, if they cannot enter 
 the sacred relations of man and wife, and raise children, who can 
 be decently clad, decently fed, decently housed, decently educated, 
 if but only one out of a thousand of such can have these things, 
 and the remainder are to be forced into hovels, dens of vice, half- 
 fed, half clothed, half educated, criminalized, brutalized, and de- 
 based, then the sooner this miserable civilization goes the way of 
 its predecessors the better. If we are to have cities of tenement 
 (holes) houses, crowded as though the earth was not large enough 
 stretching out over the land their low, fetid, disease-breeding 
 scenes, with here and there tall buildings shooting up into the 
 air like poisonous growths in dark places, — if we cannot do better 
 than this; if we cannot have a better republic than this; if this 
 civilization is going to be run merely for the life of a few, and
 
 60 THE SOCIAL, EVIL. 
 
 the death of the many; if decent girls and honest boys are to be 
 treated as soulless things, as machines, as hinds, — then some 
 inspired youth, stung by the devilish lash, writhing beneath its 
 chains, will fire these Ephesian domes, — the cleansing flames will 
 spread until the red tongues of conflagration light up and illume 
 these fanes and minarets of theft, and capital's misguided rule 
 falls amid the crimson terrors of revolt and revolution! . 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SALOON. 
 
 A SOCIETY whose social economy is based upon unjust institut- 
 ions must evolve immoral conditions. Injustice is the mother 
 of vice, as justice is the parent of virtue. A society whose mem- 
 bers can scarcely survive, let alone flourish, where they stand up 
 to the strict letter of the truth; who have to become partakers iu 
 the general errors, more or less, or find themselves driven to the 
 direst necessities, to the extremes of hardship; whose goodness 
 receives but pillage in return; — such a society places a premium 
 on vice, a ban upon virtue, and molds and compels its citizens to 
 emulate the surrounding conditions, to live, to rise, and to rule 
 through them. Thus the citizen's taste for nobler and purer 
 associations deteriorates, and is gradually drawn towards rela- 
 tions congenial to the lower order of things around him, — con- 
 genial to the vitiated scale of morals governing his trade, science, 
 and labor. Thus he cannot bear to enter associations wherein he 
 listens to principles which he feels to be contrary to his society 
 interests. Truth jars upon his ear, and purity seems puerility. 
 He feels the full antagonism of the base, false, and unjust 
 principles which govern those around him and which gov- 
 ern him. Whenever he enters a virtuous and moral institu- 
 tion, he intuitively concludes that such is no place for 
 him; that were he to become inoculated with its ideas and 
 its instincts, he would become impracticable, become unfit 
 for success, unfit for the world— a visionary! He even deplores 
 the amount of virtue within him, and declares that if it were 
 not for it he would succeed much better. So he is careful, and 
 avoids the accumulation of any greater amount than he deems 
 himself inflicted with already; and all places inculcating these to 
 him unprofitable thoughts, are avoided. "So and so were virtu- 
 ous," he says, "and what did they make by it? See what the 
 honest, industrious toiler receives for his virtue? Behold injust- 
 ice everywhere! Don't talk to me of virtue; but tell me how I 
 am going to make my living! I do not propose to do right and 
 live in a den, in rags and penury, for pay. I am going to do as 
 they all do,— get up,— get up above those who do right; live fine 
 and enjoy myself. I will keep out of jail! O yes! it is not that 
 kind who get up, nor that way. Get up by your wits; get up by 
 your standing in with society, and winning at the society game, 
 get up by examining into and understanding this whole system 
 governing the people. Crush out the white spark of truth at 
 your center, hoist the black flag, join the associations, and 
 become a reputable and honored citizen. Yes! none of your vis-
 
 ABOLITION OF THE SALOON. 61 
 
 ionary castles-in-the-air goodness for me. That may do for saints; 
 but saints don't thrive the way we run things nowadays!" 
 
 This is the soliloquy of the looking-forward young man, and 
 this is the soliloquy welling up from this sea of unjust and dis- 
 honest societary conditions building up and sustaining their con- 
 comitant immoral institutions, springing up like noxious, poison 
 growths around us. In such immoral institutions the looking- 
 forward young man finds no purity or morality to endanger his 
 being inoculated by truth, and thereby his success endangered. 
 In such he takes on the thing he is looking for, i. e., the con- 
 tempt of tenderness and feeling; the derision of the finer instinct 
 of being. In such he finds amusements which dull and put to 
 sleep the unprofitable virtue he complains of; and in such 
 relations finds all those attractions congenial to the "practicable" 
 side of his life, which do not unfit or unman him for the strife. 
 The saloon, the saloon is the atmosphere! Sensuality and lasciv- 
 ualityl in this there is a responsive attraction, a relaxation har- 
 monions to the deadly inharmony of his "practicability." And 
 so he seeks the saloon. If he fails in the field he has looked 
 ahead to, here in the saloon is the balm for his broken and dis- 
 appointed hopes, broken and disappointed life,^broken in the 
 struggle which breaks and destroys the buds of human promise 
 as the north blasts and the frosts. Here in the saloon which 
 sprang into life out of the unjust social conditions which wrecked 
 him he now proposes to finish the job. Here in this temple of 
 hate and murder he proposes to immolate the remnants of his 
 lost manhood; here he quafl's the nectar of death, and pours into 
 his bowels the potion of ruin. Ha, ha! what does he care? there 
 is nothing in life for him. He says: "I went into the game; T 
 did my best, — but lost, the same as millions! Everybody canH 
 xvin!" He never dreamed that in a just condition of society — 
 poor fellow! — everybody can win, and would win. And he drinks, 
 and drinks, and drinks! And the saloon thrives, and thrives, and 
 thrives! Thrives as the dark crawling things thrive in the dark 
 night; thrives as death thrives when pestilence is in the air. 
 
 Then when the merchant finds that the contaminated people 
 will not purchase his wares, that his legitimate business is a 
 failure, he casts his eyes around upon the situation and discov- 
 ers that although legitimate business is dull, illegitimate busi- 
 ness is flourishing; that the taste of the public is inclined, under 
 the ruling order of things, to support that which is vicious; he 
 sees the saloon flourishing where the grocer, the baker, the 
 tailor, and hatter ought to be thriving. He finds youth throng- 
 ing the saloon. He dislikes the business; but it is "business," 
 and he, too, must have no idle qualms of conscience. Conscience 
 and "competition" make poor bed-fellows; conscience finds no 
 open door in an unjust society in a state of piracy, where the just 
 go to the wall. He must do as everybody, he says, is forced to do. 
 So he starts a saloon, and he finds it pays; for this is a "saloon" 
 condition of affairs. Then a toiler who has struggled in the 
 unjust relationship of things grows weary of the struggle. He, 
 too, finds that society's condition somehow tempers itself to the 
 saloon. Here he, too, plants his effort. It did not pay to benefit
 
 62 ABOLITION OP THE SALOON. 
 
 Bociety by producing its wealth; but by the sigUB of things it. 
 pays to poison it. He starts a saloon, and society fills it. Then 
 a poor widow with children to support,— what shall she do? 
 Make shirts, — at a loaf of bread a dozen? O individual proprie- 
 torship of industry, what an angel you arel Her womanly 
 instincts are against it, and often in secret ber heart bleeds at 
 her trade, but she must, — must! — or she must make shirts for a 
 loaf a dozen! She keeps a saloon, — a saloon away back in the 
 alleys, out of sight of the great arteries; and to her place go the 
 little children with the cans, and into those homes flows the fluid 
 of hell. The child tastes! first dislikes; then accustoms; then 
 desires; grows up, — up drinking; and a family comes with here 
 and there a boy with a hereditary yearning for the saloon, — for 
 the death. 
 
 And so the saloons spring up here, there, everywhere! like 
 those fungi, dangerous things of quick growth in the shade; for 
 society is in the shade, — the deep shade of error. 
 
 And good men go around and strive to close the saloons, — bless 
 them! Strive thus to save humanity! Strive to build a fire 
 within water! Better try to send Niagara's flood upward and 
 reverse the law of gravity, No! the law is inexorable! The flood 
 of ruin is here, and over and down it must go, so long as the flood 
 continues flowing. Go up to the springs there, friends, up from 
 whence comes this flood of terror, of ruined hopes, of ruined men, 
 women and children, of ruined countries. Turn, turn the waters 
 thei'e aside which feed this holocaust of misery! Put an end there 
 to our unjust and immoral basis of society, which blunts and 
 kills the true instincts of our fellow-men, and draws them, as 
 gravity draws downward, into this stream of drink, of immoral 
 and impure associations. Elevate society by elevating its insti- 
 tutions into condition whereby the brute in man is destroyed, 
 and the angel strengthened; whereby his noble efforts are ap- 
 preciated, honored, called forth; whereby he shall be drawn to 
 pure associations; whereby he shall find success in virtue and 
 triumph in truth; whereby he and everyone can ivin, and none 
 meet disaster; where each and all will be of one family, in one 
 national co-operative circle; where not a "groggery" can exist, no 
 more than a night thing in the sunlight; where just recompensed 
 effort would have its gardens of refined pleasures and its halls of 
 esthetic relaxations, unto whose associations men would be drawn 
 by the harmony of its scenes, with the moral and just relations 
 of their co-operative occupations and professions. In such con- 
 ditions the saloon would pass away, and its orgies sink into the 
 silence. The youth of our country would enter into pure festivi- 
 ties, and this terrible — oh, terrible! — picture of ruined templea 
 would touch UB with pity no more.
 
 THE ABOLITION OF POLITICAL, COKKUPTION. 63 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE ABOLITION OF POLIWCAL CORRUPTION. 
 
 Our present republic is much more monarchial in its make-up 
 than republican. Its President is an entirely superfluous append- 
 age, simply a temporary limited monarch, whose office could be 
 as fully attended toby therchairman of the House of C!ongres8. 
 This would place the position closer to the ballot, and oftener 
 before the judgment of the people. Our House of Congress 
 answers to the House of Commons in England, and our Senate is 
 a complete correspondent to its House of Peers. We call it a 
 Senate after the Roman law-making body, — a body whose history 
 contains nothing to merit the preservation of its name. This so- 
 called Senate is merely our house of American lords, chiefly 
 composed of millionaires; for no one can get to be a national 
 senator hardly who is not a millionaire; it is too expensive, 
 scarcely costing less than from fifty thousand to one hundred 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 These gentlemen with the Roman nomenclature represent ihe 
 ruling individualities of our land. They are really kings, under 
 our present system of society, and exercise kingly power. They 
 are not elected by the people; no plebeian vote besmirches their 
 official robes; none but state officials have voice in their installa- 
 tion, and they stand the chief authorities of the nation, and al- 
 though the most powerful, they are, nevertheless, beyond, above, 
 and out of popular control; and to call a government a representa- 
 tive form of government whose chief authority is above popular 
 control is a sad commentary on the misuse of good, hard English, 
 considering, too, that there is such a word as "oligarchy" in our 
 lexicon. 
 
 In an atmosphere of nationalism, an institution such as our 
 American House of Lords could not exist, the vast monopolies 
 which its senators represent being nationalized; our American 
 lords would be gone, the necessity of their further deliberations, 
 over. And I am certain that my readers will respond that this 
 antique, medieval remnant of popular stupidty should have been 
 removed into the waste-basket of political insanity long and long 
 ago. 
 
 The people must be perseveringly educated up to these facts, 
 eo that the truths of nationalism may leaven their minds. The 
 rising generation should be taught these things; for nation- 
 alism is not of to-day, or of to-morrow, but is an undownable 
 science of popular self-government, which has come to stay until 
 its final perfection. It is a religious duty, which devolves upon 
 every father, and mother, and lover of our country, to steadily 
 spread this gospel of nationalism. 
 
 The United States Senate represents the millionaire end of 
 America, and no other department, — a special and extreme end 
 of society. If one extreme is going to be represented, why not 
 represent the other extreme also; and if we are going to have a 
 House of Millionaires, why not go to the other foolish extreme, and 
 give us a House of Tramps, who shall elect themselves as do 
 their illustrious colleagues? The reader may smile; but why
 
 64 THE ABOLITION OP POLITICAL CORRUPTION. 
 
 not? The one is about as preposterouB as the other. The House 
 of Tramps could do no more than legislate in their own personal 
 favor; and when did ever millonaire forget his duty? 
 
 In fact, the entire legislation, municiple, state, and national, 
 is of an individual nature in effect and interest, rather than pop- 
 ular, and if individualism is in love with itself, the present state of 
 affairs should satisfy it to the extreme of its self-consciousness. 
 
 Nationalism would not only abolish this American house of in- 
 sufferable stuff, our Uuited States Senate, but it would abolish 
 the cause of its existence, i. e., public plunder, by making the 
 private monopolies whose interests it represents public. Thus 
 nationalism would abolish political corruption, or the corruption 
 of our public agents by private interests; because the present 
 private institutions now working the corruption would be trans- 
 formed into public institutions, and the source of the corruption 
 would be thereby destroyed. 
 
 It is private proprietorship that works our present political 
 corruption. Destroy the private proprietorship, and you destroy 
 the corruption. Nationalism, therefore, is the remedy, and the 
 only remedy, for this cancer upon our body politic. The bribing 
 of juries, legislatures, courts, Congress, senates, political con- 
 ventions, the debauchment of the public press, — all would dis- 
 appear with the abolition of private corporationism, — w^ould dis- 
 appear with the destruction of this system of public pillage by 
 individuals, who, singly or organized as a band of legal pirates, 
 actually receive authority by charter from the public to engage 
 in public plunder. 
 
 Thus every charter delivered by the state to private interest to 
 use public property, or to control any public necessity, is a 
 charter by the public, giving themselves into the power of private 
 interests to be used for private interest and its ends. To carry out 
 these private interests in their absorption of the public's wealth, 
 juries, courts, legislatures, senatesj conventions, newspapers, and 
 citizens must be corrupted; and as their public absorption of the 
 public wealth proceeds, the public improverishment proceeds, 
 until the general poverty make the citizens, through dire neces- 
 sity, the helpless victims of their snares. 
 
 Therfore, to reverse all this, we must put an end to each and 
 every control of public necessity by private interest, and have 
 them made public departments. Being made public departments, 
 their economy would be public in its construction and working; 
 and where princely dividends now remain after paying the cost of 
 running, and go to add up the swelling billions of private rapac- 
 ity, the fares, rates, and charges being reduced to the actual 
 cost of the service, these swelling billions would swell no more in 
 their present directions, but swell in the ditrection where they 
 belong, — in the pockets of the people; and these billions in the 
 pockets of the people, and out of the pockets of private cor- 
 ruptionists, the power of the corruptionists to corrupt would 
 cease; for the public would have the wealth, and the corruption- 
 ists would have nothing. 
 
 Thus nationalism contains the remedy for public corruption, 
 and inaugurates a reign of public purity.
 
 THE PERSONAL DENUNCIATIONIST. 65 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE PERSONAL DENUNCIATIONIST. 
 
 Beware of individualism as a reformer. Unable to mentally 
 grasp the whole, it contemplates merely individuals, and proceeds 
 to attribute whatever it declaims against to individuals. It in- 
 wardly believes itself to be the only honest thing in existence, 
 which belief it betrays by its ready denunciation of all around. 
 It seeks its elevation by the pulling down of those around it. It 
 is eloquent in pointing out the faults of men, and dumb in their 
 praise. 
 
 If you inquire the cause of a general evil, it will point to the 
 millionaire, the monopolist and king. Beware of it! for it is but 
 the other end of the millionaire, the monopolist and king; for it 
 attempts but to pull the king from his throne and leave the 
 throne remain, — vacant for itself; attempts but to pull the man 
 down from his place of rule in the system, and to leave the system 
 intact, — intact for itself. 
 
 Individualism as a reformer is simply a personal denuncia- 
 tionist. It brings the truth and philosophy of the thinker into 
 disrepute with its hate and passion, and has caused the world to 
 almost abhor reform, so much has it surrounded reform with its 
 glamour of hate. 
 
 The world needs philosophers and thinkers. Philosophy and 
 thought philosophizes and thinks itself into something higher. 
 But your individualist, your personal denunoiationist, wishes to 
 reform exclusively some other person or persons, and severaly 
 leave alone his own perfection. If every one reformed himself, and 
 were to leave his brother's faults to his brother, with what a 
 bound the world would go up! The personal denunciationist is 
 directly upon the opposite idea, — every one trying to reform some 
 one else, and no one allowing any one else to reform him; a per- 
 fect deadlock in progression. 
 
 Personalism is directly opposite to principle, and principle ends 
 where personalism begins. You can only reform society through 
 ideas, and yourself through love. 
 
 Ideas deal with peoples, and never are confined to persons. 
 So long as we deal in ideas, we are safe and devoid of antagonism; 
 but the moment we enter upon personalities, that moment inau- 
 gurates war, and if continued, must end in death. The person- 
 alist, who denounces men, is simply an envyist, and this explains 
 the proverbiality of such becoming tyrants when given power. 
 Beware of the denouncer of men! for that which lacks charity, 
 magnanimity, forgiveness, pity, hope, sympathy, and kindness, 
 and which substitutes for these hate, suspicion, cruelty, unfor- 
 giveness, slander, and the insinuated self-superiority by the 
 contrast of a brother's asserted defects, is of a dangerous charac- 
 ter to tie to, and society shrinks from such deformers by instinct. 
 Beware of it! for by and by it will denounce you. 
 
 Deformers, or envyists, move upon the plane of hate, and as 
 barnacles fasten themselves to the sides of noble ships, so the 
 personal denunciationist fastens upon noble questions and retards 
 them likewise. Take a body of such and they will proceed to
 
 66 THE PERSONAl^ DENUNCIATIONIST. 
 
 denounce the rest of mankind; then at length they will turn 
 upon themselves and denounce one another, until chaos ends 
 the affair. 
 
 The personalist imagines generally that his personality changes 
 the world. It is not the person, it is the idea, which changes the 
 world, — not the personality of the egotist; his personality gener- 
 ally fastens itself upon the idea as it moves up and he is carried 
 up by it. 
 
 Persons will insist and continue to lay claim to individual 
 ownership of earth, air, light, and water so long as they lay claim 
 to ideas, — something, the highest of all, above ownership. And 
 whoever does so claim to personally own an idea, and to be per- 
 sonally the cause of the world's progress, will lay claim to the 
 world itself, to the exclusion of the remainder, should the oppor- 
 tunity offer. 
 
 Patriotism is defined as the last refuge of a scoundrel; and we 
 would define personal denunciation as the first refuge of an 
 egotist. We want no convolutions, no earthquakes, no holocausts, 
 no fire and sword, revolutions or gore, or men on horseback, nor 
 kings, presidents, leaders, or personalists; but what we do want 
 is the spread of earnest truths by earnest men and women, who 
 will rise above personalism, and, like Christ, work in thought 
 and act for the welfare of the race, with benefit to all and injury 
 unto none. Unless you act from the plane of hate, there need 
 not be any fear of crucifixion nowadays. Upon the plane of love 
 lies safety, power, apid victory. The world has moved since yes- 
 terday, and our faith is strong in the great mass of humanity, 
 whom we turn to, and alone look to, for the recognition of 
 truth. 
 
 Down there in the shadowy places, down in the earth, are war- 
 shaped things, uncanny to look upon, uncanny to meet. Down 
 there, it is uncanny thing against uncanny thing; there, life in 
 its dark side strives to build itself upon destruction and death; 
 there, is one uncanny thing killing another, seeking its life by 
 killing. Around us, and in the air, and down into the sea, we 
 behold the same condition. Everywhere, life seeking to build 
 itself upon the debris of death; and all isfailurel In that concen- 
 tration of existence known as man, a new light breaks in upon 
 this dark side of nature. In that light, be faintly beholds the 
 very cause of existence itself, the very cause of life itself; he 
 finds that life cannot be built from death, though all beneath 
 him, and all around him, are trying to demonstrate otherwise; 
 he finds that life springs from light, and that the essence of this 
 life-yielding light is love; that this essence is at his center, and 
 reveals itself in all things and in all efforts which build him; and 
 he recognizes its absence in all things which destroy him. This 
 he learns gradually, and in time will learn completelj . 
 
 Turning his eyes upward, — up from the warring things beneath 
 his feet and around him, — he beholds the sun. In that, the 
 whole lower relationship of thing to thing is reversed; in that he 
 beholds the broad sheets of glory streaming down from the infi- 
 nite breast upon him and upon all. It hath no enemy, no foe to 
 smite, no thing to kill that it may live! It hath no president, no
 
 THE PERSONAL DENUNCIATIONIST. G7 
 
 king, no favorite eon, no banned child, no great, no small; it en- 
 ters the palace of the rich and the hut of the poor, and 
 ealuteB the beggar's cheek with its mornLng and evening kiss 
 of salutations, yet no more, yet no lesp, than it would 
 salute the cheek of the king. Down from the ekies 
 drop heaven's cleansing tears; down, down they come 
 upon all alike. Nor do they say: "Upon this blade shall we 
 come, yet not upon </iaf blade; upon this man's field shall we 
 pour ourselves, yet not upon that man's field." Yet all around 
 man and all beneath his feet are doing exactly this. Here, the 
 thing says: "Upon this thing shall I look with joy, upon that 
 thing with hate; upon this one shall I pour sustenance, upon 
 that one nothing; this child is my child, that child is not mine; 
 to this person shall I bring life, but to this person death; this one 
 is my brother, that one not my brother!" 
 
 O, let us form ourselves after the sun! Let us be unto aii 
 things one. Let us arise in the morning with not a single 
 feeling in our hearts against anything in existence. Let 
 us wipe every grudge, prejudice, and every animosity from off our 
 slate of consciousness,- wipe it clean, and keep it clean. Then we 
 shall find ourselves becoming as the sun, and partaking of its 
 attributes; then we shall find ourselves taking on a new power; 
 then shall we learn why this pursuit of the things beneath our 
 feet and around us is a failure; that life cannot extract life, nor 
 base life upon the destruction of life and find success; that we 
 must be unlo the earth what the sun and the rain are unto the 
 earth, and unto our fellow man as the glories and tears from 
 above. 
 
 This knowledge carried into individualism and collectivism 
 forms a society of all tor one and one for all; and when inaugu- 
 rated upon earth will cause this planet to so shine forth that our 
 brother intelligences in spheres elsewhere will cry: "Behold the 
 increased glory of yon star!" 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 MORAL, TURPITUDE. 
 
 One of the great weaknesses of the people is their lack of con- 
 fidence in truth; their lack of a firm belief in the triumph of prin- 
 ciple. This is a lack of faith. They will tell you they would vote for 
 principle, but that it cannot win; that they would vote in vain, — 
 would "throw their vote away." This is actually the result of a 
 belief in the supremacy of evil; that evil predominates and will 
 predominate; and that although they prefer principle, still they 
 must be on the side of that which predominates, even if they 
 have to be upon the side and have to vote for the Devil. Thisisthe 
 Chinese idea of belief and action, — a people who believe in God 
 but who worship the Devil, because the latter, they think, rules 
 and predominates. And yet the same pagan idea prevails with 
 the American voter, who tells you he believes your reform idea is 
 right, but that he cannot vote for the right, as he does not wish 
 to "throw his vote away," and so he goes forth and rotes for that 
 which he declares to be the wrong.
 
 68 MOKAL TURPITUDE. 
 
 Surely to vote against truth because it is weak is the depth of 
 moral depravity. The life, health, strength, and growth of the 
 race are grounded in the moral faculties. No reform can come 
 which violates these; no health, no strength, no growth. A 
 people whose hearts rest in the surpremacy of evil; who believe 
 not in the innate goodness of man and woman; whose hope is 
 overclouded in suspicion, forebodings of evil, and gloomy arraign- 
 ment of the future, — are a people sadly in need of that highest 
 faculty of the soul, faith, — that position of the mind which in the 
 physical we denominate courage, — a belief, a confidence, in vic- 
 tory. This lack of faith, this moral weakness of belief in the posi- 
 tive triumph of good everywhere and at all times, past, present, 
 and future, is the error of those people who chill the vitals of 
 progress by their continual sighs that the reign of justice is im- 
 practicable, visionary, Utopian, far away, and therefore useless 
 to think, speak, write, or act upon. All persons evidencing such 
 are spiritually (diseased, — rotten at the center to that degree 
 which they lack in this creative faculty of good, — faith. 
 
 It is faith which alone supports me in the writing of this book, 
 — the confidence in humanity's love of truth. No machine could 
 be invented, no journey started, no action begun, no cause ever 
 carried from conception to fruition, without faith; and he or she 
 who puts doubt upon the accomplishment of truth, upon the 
 establishment of the fair dream of nationalism, stabs it to the 
 vitals with the dagger of darkness. To hush this croaking voice 
 of evil as it throws its prophecies over nationalism, all that is 
 necessary is to bravely face it. Faith is a cultivable virtue, as 
 doubt is a cultivable vice. Faith is confidence in the good; 
 doubt, a confidence in the bad. The grander the cause, the greater 
 the gloom doubt throws around it; for doubt is of evil. Doubt 
 is death, and weakens whatever it touches. Doubt is a coward: 
 faith is courage. Doubt says. "I weaken,— I die!" Faith says, "I 
 live!" And doubt does die, and faith does live. Doubt is decent, 
 faith is ascent; the one failure, the other success. Faith expects 
 good, doubt expects bad. By faith, the plant reaches its arms up 
 to the light, and its feet into the darkness for life, and receives it. 
 Doubt denies the coming of of the morning, and says: "I only ac- 
 cept sight; accept what is here; I believe only in what I see, feel, 
 hear, taste, and smell; I am of the past, not of the future; you 
 speak to me of light, I am of the darkness; darkness is here, 
 therefore there is nothing but darkness ahead. I will accept 
 nothing except I see it"; and doubt cannot see, because it is 
 darkness. Faith pierces the darkness, and within herself be- 
 holds the coming light. She beholds man's true self arising; 
 she beholds the miseries of the race dissipating; her ear catches 
 the distant music; and she feels the inward pulse of the universal 
 love. The mountain of hate falls into the waters of truth, and 
 the spoliation of industry ceases. The earth and its glory be- 
 comes the heritage of its children, and nationalism spreads 
 throughout the globe. 
 
 It took but thirty-seven years to elapse between the organiza- 
 iton of the first "anti-slavery" organization at Boston, and the 
 emancipation proclamation at Washington; and oh, what a
 
 MOKAL. TUKFITUUE. 
 
 chanf^e was therel But during those thirty-seven years, the faith 
 in liberty burned and illumined the heart of Lincoln; from boy- 
 hood to manhood, he had it there always, and lived to behold its 
 realization, though dying for its truth. 
 
 Hail, white faith! Hold up thy lamp above this darkened land I 
 Still prophesy thy truth; for in thy prophecy lies creation! 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PRESENT LEGISLATION THE FAULT OP THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Many people seeking no further than personality lay much 
 blame upon che politicians for the situation as it is. But the 
 blame lies not with the politicians; it lies in the general apathy 
 and erroneous ideas. The kind of politicians we have to-day is 
 the kind of politicians the people through mistaken ideas them- 
 selves create. The successful politician of to-day owes very little 
 to the people. True, their votes elect him. But what of that? 
 Their votes would also elect A, or B,or C, as quickly as they elect 
 him, if either of these were to receive the nomination of the con- 
 vention. The nomination is what he must look to, and that means 
 he must look to the monopolies; for they fix the nomination. 
 Now, then, if the monopolies fix up the ticket of the R. party, and 
 also fix up the ticket of the D. party, and the people unanimously 
 vote either of these tickets, and thus a politician receives office, he 
 considers the monopoly who put him on the ticket as his master. 
 
 If you were to ask this politician why he did not consider him- 
 self indebted or under obligation to the people, he would tell you 
 "that the people did not vote for him, but voted f6r the ticket," 
 and which would be a solemn truth; that the monopolies offered 
 him the office, providing he would serve their interests during his 
 term, and which if he did faithfully, they would again place him 
 on the ticket which they regularly give to the people to vote. 
 Now, then, to expect a man to represent the people who receives 
 nothing from the people, and who would never — could never — 
 even get on the ticket if he stood by the people, and whom the 
 people would vote into the poor-house if the corporations did not 
 put him on their ticket, — I say to expect such a man to stand by 
 the people is to expect something from him which is radically 
 impossible for him to give. 
 
 Yet in the face of these facts we have heard some one say that 
 the people are betrayed by politicians. 
 
 Who has not heard this over and over, again and again? Who 
 has not heard about tricky, designing politicians, public thieves, 
 peculating knaves, false demagogues, selling, bartering the inter- 
 ests, rights, and liberties of the people? Everybody. 
 
 We have heard this, read this, until nauseated. Let us pene- 
 trate into the inwardness of the matter and analyze this universal 
 "whine" about "the people being betrayed." 
 
 Who elect the designing public thieves, these tricky, peculating 
 knaves, these false demagogues? 
 
 The "betrayed" people. 
 
 Who re-elect them, after they have been betrayed by them? 
 
 The "betrayed" people.
 
 70 PRESENT LEGISLATION THE FAULT OP THE PEOPLE, 
 
 Who is it that vote solidly by the millions for whatever a party 
 convention nominates? 
 
 The "betrayed" people. 
 
 Who is it that cry by the hundreds of thousands, "We kno\ 
 you are right, that is the true principle, but if we voted for it ou| 
 vote would be thrown away?" 
 
 The "betrayed" people. 
 
 I am no demagogue, and shall not flatter the people. In thi 
 ruling politicians of America the people behold their coUectiv^^ 
 intelligence reflected as from a mirror; and the reflection is a re- 
 flection in more ways than one. 
 
 The people would fain delude themselves that the fault is not 
 their own; that it is the politicians who are the cause of the evils 
 complained of. How natural it is for an ignorant rascal to blame 
 some one else for his own creation! 
 
 If you want a test of the moral status of the people, — the "be- 
 trayed" people, — open a hall with a dog-tight or man-fight on one 
 side of the street, — fifty cents admission, — and another hall on the 
 other side of the street with a lecture on Nationalism, — admission 
 free, — and determine where the "betrayed" people will most con- 
 gregate. 
 
 Just so long as the people imagine their own fault to be the 
 fault of some one else, and not their own, just so long will there 
 be no improvement. Once reason it into them that they them- 
 selves are to blame, the sooner they will begin remedying the evil 
 — the sooner the people will begin ascending a better plane of 
 action and thought, — the sooner politicians will beconae statesmen; 
 for the people will have become statesmen themselves. 
 
 The only true reform is the elevation of the moral and intellect- 
 ual status of the people, and he or she who thus educates truly 
 elevates, and is the only true reformer. 
 
 Thus the people are wont to lay the responsibilities of the evils 
 of the state to the politicians; and when you ask, "Why then do 
 you not elect honest politicians?" they answer with three deep- 
 dyed falsehoods: 1. There are no honest politicians; 2. Politics 
 makes men dishonest; 3. All men are dishonest. We answer: 1. 
 Society is prolific of honest politicians; that the people hardly 
 ever sustain them; that the people leave the choice of candidates 
 to conventions, and that the agents of monopoly attend to the 
 conventions for them; that the people accept this, and stand it, 
 and vote for the selections so made; that if an honest politician is 
 selected by the monopolies in a convention, it is as a decoy duck, to 
 cover the remaining selections; that when the monopolies select 
 a politician, and the people elect this selection, they elect an agent 
 of the monopolies, — not an agent of their own,— and it would be 
 astonishing if we had political honesty under these circumstances. 
 
 2. "That politics makes men dishonest," we deny. Politics is 
 the science of social government. From its beginning to its end^ 
 its contemplation and associations widen and broaden as it deal^ 
 with numbers and masses. Let the mind be ever t-o low, ever so 
 dishonest, the circle of action, the ideas it must deal with in poliJ 
 tics, are larger than those of private duty; economic questions 
 continually arise and awaken mental action, be it ever so small
 
 PRESENT LEGISLATION THE FAULT OP THE PEOPLE. 71 
 
 And although the very crudest and most primitive species of poli- 
 ticians are elected by our careless people, no matter how rude the 
 material be, how ignorant be the mind elected, that mind broadens 
 and deepens by its political experience. 
 
 3. "All men are dishonest," is the third charge. Even the man 
 who thus proclaims his own iniquity has a right to be answered. 
 The greater his error, the more he should be answered. The most 
 ignorant are the most unfortunate, and need brotherhood most 
 of all. We are all doing the best we are capable of; we would all 
 do better if we knew better. The very denial of this truth proves 
 our ignorance. Truth is life, no matter how dark or thick the 
 circling folds, — there at the center is the white spark of heaven. 
 That spark extinguished, the light of life would be gone, and all 
 would be darkness. Down deep beneath the hate and passion of 
 us all, there is a fair, pure angel climbing up, — climbing upl but 
 pushed back and denied! And ye say "men are dishonest!" How 
 appropriate were the words of the Master: "O ye of little faith!" 
 
 This angel in every individual center would be cherished and 
 appealed to in the conditions of nationalism, — would be drawn up 
 instead of being crushed down, — and this collective and universal 
 spark of love would reign in the breast of every man as it now 
 reigns in the breast of every woman. 
 
 CHA.PTER XXVI. 
 
 BRAINS, NOT BULLETS. 
 
 How shall this come about? How shall nationalism be inaugu- 
 rated in America? How shall the earth, for example, become the 
 property of its real owners, the people'*' 
 
 One writer writes of "the people imperatively demanding a change 
 in the future." Who are the people going to imperatively demand 
 this change of? Who can give the people anything in the United 
 States? Here, everything belongs to the people; the people are, 
 in reality, the only power, the only one to grant any one anything. 
 And if the people ever imperatively demand anything of any one, 
 now or in the future, they will have to demand it of themselves. 
 And a person imperatively demanding a thing from himself is en- 
 tirely superfluous; for if he has the thing, he has it, and there's the 
 end of it; and if he has it not, he has it not, and cannot give it, no 
 matter how he imperatively demands it. The whole truth lies in 
 the fact that the people have yet to simply understand their 
 liberty; and when they do understand, it shall spring from that 
 understanding as the fruit springs from the blossoms. 
 
 Another writes "that the people will revolute with dynamite 
 and steel." But who are the people going to revolute with dyna- 
 mite and steel against? Who are they going to wrest their rights 
 from? Surely a few half-dead property cranks or millionaires, 
 and their sisters, and their cousins, and their aunts, are not going 
 to keep down sixty millions of people! 
 
 What a museum if such were actually the fact! One poor little 
 dyspeptic Shylock sitting upon the apex of a huge pyramid of 
 people, — a pyramid continually crying out: "Oh, will not some- 
 body take from off us this terrible overshadowing power? See
 
 72 BRAINS, NOT BULLETS. 
 
 how it is keeping us down!" Even a one-third witted person 
 without glasses could perceive the absurdity, and would reply: 
 "My friends, you are certainly mistaken; the person you allude to 
 is not keeping you down, — cannot keep you down! It's war avoir- 
 dupois would not exceed the single weight of one of your ordinary 
 selves, while yours collectively is in the neighborhood of hundreds 
 of millions. Do you not perceive the numerical absurdity? The 
 chattel slaves of the South were kept down. Their white brethren 
 North and South held them in subjection by superior armed phys- 
 ical force and numerical strength; but no superior force or numer- 
 ical strength appears in your case. True, I duly perceive this 
 wart sitting upon your apex, but it appears to me as a part of the 
 pyramid you have built up of yourselves. But why not just step 
 from under him? There is nothing outside of yourselves pre- 
 venting you," 
 
 "Nay; we cannot. He is keeping us down, and we imperatively 
 demand a change. We will revolute with blood and steel!" 
 
 "How happens this person thus upon this strange apex?" 
 
 "Because we believed and do believe he has a right to be up 
 there. We all can't be up there, and there is no other way to fix 
 it. We must pay him rent, interest, and profit; and to do this we 
 must get down under him, and m.ust put him on top. Ah, sir! this 
 is a very ancient, sacred, worthy, and honorable pyramid. But 
 we imperatively demand a change, or we'll revolute with blood 
 and steel! Oh, won't some one take him off!" 
 
 Y'et this is exactly as it stands, — this ridiculous societary -pyra- 
 mid, which is crying out against a result the fundamental cause 
 of which it believes in and indorses. The idea of a people revo- 
 luting with fire and steel against themselves! Yet there are 
 philosophers who actually expect a people to rise and overthrow 
 this pyramid which they, the people, build and reverence. The 
 peculiar philosophers of this man-fighting-himself theory are of a 
 pyrotechnical nature, and they simultaneously announce a twin; 
 idea equally as ornamental as its brother, viz., that physical force] 
 should precede the mental understanding of the object to be] 
 attained. To them, blood has the odor of progress; murder, de- 
 vastation, and flames are a hymn ushering in a saturnalia of intel- 
 ligence; and war, red, red-eyed war, is a hallelujah and panacea] 
 for every woe; that peace, plenty, and happiness would flow from 
 the gibbet, and the dying groans of unhappy victims would be the 
 mysterious paeans of peace. 
 
 Such philosophers term themselves "anarchists," perceiving not 
 that tumult, violence, and passion can never establish anarchy or 
 no-government; that tumult, violence, and passion is the very 
 father, mother, brother, and sister of government; that in- 
 ward self-control is the opposite of passion, and must prevail be- 
 fore exterior government ceases.
 
 VOTING SOVEREIGNS. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 VOTING SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 Individualism has steadily suppressed nationalism, through 
 the political "conventions"; in these rings of political vice, indiv- 
 idualism dictates the to-be agents and policy of the government. 
 The convention prints the dictum, and hands it over to the sov- 
 ereigns to vote, which they faithfully do, steadily and surely, year 
 after year, as the coming and the going of the seasons; and the 
 "voting sovereigns" and the politioal convention fit as divinely as 
 ever twin calves fitted. Conceived together, each of itself could 
 not exist alone, twins ! 
 
 The voting "sovereign" of the republic is a strange phenomenon 
 in himself; for they are all /le's. I do not think you could make 
 one out of a she; a she's got more natural common sense. The 
 "sovereign"' is the production of "partyism" ; a fad or craze of 
 our republic, whereby the voters divide into two large herds every 
 national election. Not a principle nor an idea in sight or espoused 
 by either; and yet tremendous meetings and speeches, much 
 music and loud noises, together with firing of cannon, and bom- 
 bastical, fantastical parades, illuminated by fire-works, bad smells, 
 bad whiskey, bad tobacco, and rows go to make up the program. 
 The public press take sides, and represent their respective herds. 
 The more awful the slander and worse the calumy the herds and 
 their herders can assail each other with, the better pleased they 
 seem. 
 
 It is charged by each that the other is about to destroy civiliza- 
 tion, and restore the nation to primitive savagery. Personal duels, 
 street wars, and a general stirring up of the animal passions reign 
 during what they call the "canvass." All investigations of the 
 supposed issues at stake are conducted on the basis of each side 
 endeavoring to prove the other g'ilty of intentional falsehood, 
 and usually tapers into a physical debate. If any independent 
 or rather unpsychologized mind advances an idea which would 
 really benefit, and which could be established at the ballot-box by 
 popular vote, he is pronounced a "crank;" an advocate of some- 
 thing impracticable. Both herds will cease fighting and fuse 
 to defeat a crank." The oddity of it all is, that these 
 two great herds exchange what they call their principles 
 or platforms every eight years, the one taking the platform of 
 the other, and vice versa. What divides them, or keeps them 
 divided, no one knows. It is neither nationality, religion, nor 
 political views; for you are as likely to find all nationalities, 
 religions, and party political views in one party as in the other. 
 
 The drivers of the herds buy a nomination and proceed to drum 
 up the sovereigns. 
 
 A brass band, some fire-works, and stale beer gather them in 
 sufficient numbers, and speaking commences after the following 
 style: — 
 
 "Fellow-citizens!" 
 
 "Hi-yi-yi!" 
 
 "Three cheers for our herd!" 
 
 "'Rah I 'rah! 'rah!"
 
 74 VOTING SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 "Elect 'the ticket,'' or you will be slaves!" 
 
 "We will! we will!" 
 
 (It will be noticed that the sovereigns are supporting their 
 families on a dollar a day, and are thus on a par with the Russian 
 serf. They have scarcely an article of value in the world, and 
 receive in return for their work a hovel to shelter them, rags to 
 cover them, and the coarsest species of fodder to keep the breath 
 in their toilworn bodies.) 
 
 "Will you be slaves?" 
 
 "Never! never!" 
 
 "Then vote as you have always voted, — as you voted last year, 
 and the year before,— as your miserable wretch of a father voted, 
 who toiled and starved, voting the straight ticket. Don't scratch! 
 vote like him, — don't think, don't change, go it blind, — right or 
 wrong, — first, last, and all the time!" 
 
 "Hi-yi-yi !" 
 
 (Great applause by the sovereigns.) 
 
 "Retain your freedom !" 
 
 "We will! we will!" 
 
 "Three cheers for our herd!" 
 
 "'Rah I 'rah! 'rah!" 
 
 If you ask one of the sovereigns whose herd is in power, 
 "What brought your wages down from five dollars a day to one?" 
 he will answer: — 
 
 "Over-production." 
 
 Or because there are too many shoes made, the people are 
 going barefooted; because there is too much flour, the people are 
 going hungry. In a word, the creation of plenty is the reason 
 people have nothing. 
 
 Should you ask one of the sovereigns whose herd is not in 
 power the same question, h"> will answer that it is because his 
 herd is not in power. 
 
 Should you prove to him that his herd advocates and is 
 pledged to enforce precisely the same rule as the other herd, it 
 makes no more impression on him than the same information 
 would if imparted to a rhinocerous in his native jungle. 
 
 No ray of thought can penetrate the mind of a type of the real 
 voting sovereigns. 
 
 He is a fixture. 
 
 One of the herd. 
 
 If you were to ask him what a "coupon" was, he could n't tell 
 wehether it was made of brick or mortar. 
 
 If you were to ask him where the millionaire's five thousand 
 dollars per day comes from, it would be to him an idiotic 
 conundrum. 
 
 If you were to talk about "contraction" and "expansion" of the 
 volume of money, it would be Greek to him. 
 
 But to talk to him of the "Parties," and the word "Party" 
 brings him to life. He'll talk! talk! talk! He'll gesture! gesture I 
 He'll overwhelm you with the history of his party; he'll drown 
 you, dose you, bombard you with words, and talk, and gestures; 
 and talk and words in which you could no more find the trace 
 of an idea than he could find or trace the reason of his condition.
 
 VOTING SOVEREIGNS. 75 
 
 There are voting sovereigns who seem superior to others in 
 intelligence, — who can actually perceive that both parties are one 
 and the same on principle; that no relief will result in th« 
 election of either. 
 
 Yet strange to say, should you ask one of these sovereigns, 
 "Why not vote against both parties?" the answer would be: — 
 
 "Should I vote for principle, I would throw my vote awa) ." 
 
 You might inform him that no man ever threw his vote away 
 who voted for principle; that no man evei threw his life away 
 who died for principle. Yet it would have no effect, — not on one 
 of the voting sovereigns. It would only bring forth more words, 
 gestures, and words, until you would come to the conclusion that 
 nothing under the heavens save a double load of a strong solution 
 of concentrated evolution would ever make an impression upon 
 this plaster-of-Paris-like brain. 
 
 Time only moves him, — removes him. 
 
 The real danger of the republic to-day is its voting sovereigns. 
 
 Your railroad monopolists, your bond-holders, your land-grab- 
 "bers, are not half so dangerous as your voting sovereigns. 
 
 It is they who are the source of their country's evils. 
 
 There is not a wrong to-day that would not be immediately 
 righted were it not for these voting sovereigns. 
 
 It is they who are continually voting to enslave themselves and 
 their fellow-men. 
 
 Their moving and projecting impulses are hate, sectional 
 animosity, religious bigotry, intolerance, class pride, shallow con- 
 ceit, barbarity, savagery, cannibalism, spleen, bile, dyspepsia, 
 jaundice, gall, decay, disease, meanness, greed, idolatry, fraud, 
 crime, theft, gluttony, lechery, debauchery, and constitutional 
 Ignorance. 
 
 Ignorance is the base, misery the column, and fraud the statue 
 crowning this monument of uncivilization. 
 
 There is no need for any of this in a republic where an intelli- 
 gent people can alter all things. 
 
 Thus through the "convention" and the "sovereigns," this 
 beautiful twin-calf institution of our country, individualism has 
 absorbed the lands and waters of the people, until the spoliated 
 whole have but the right of passing along the roads and viewing 
 across fences rich and fertile domains, designed by the Almighty 
 for them, but through this ignorance voted into personalism. 
 That these domains be restored back to the nation to be used by 
 the collectivity, that each may be protected in his right, is the 
 prayer and the duty marked out for nationalism. Ay, it is the 
 prayer of every mother who shrinks from beholding her sons and 
 daughters the future land peons of sordid individualism. 
 
 Under nationalism, the political convention would be unneces- 
 sary; the people through the superior advantages of conditions, 
 being intelligent enough to form their own judgment upon ideas 
 and men, would find it unnecessary to look up to a few obliging 
 individuals, in order to learn who are the proper parties to vote 
 for, and what are the proper principles to advocate; for the voting 
 sovereign ivill vote for anything and advocate anything the con- 
 vention hands to him.
 
 76 VOTING SOVEREIGNS. 
 
 But the voting sovereign is awaking, his forehead is raising, 
 his ears shortening, his jaws less protruding, his teeth shrinking, 
 and his hair descending from him in showers; he is taking his 
 front feet from off the ground, and gradually accustoming him- 
 self to stand erect; the thick callous of fourteen hours a day upon 
 his hands and upon his brain is softening and lessening, and into 
 his mind are penetrating the penetrable truths of nationalism. 
 Society, decrease thy hours of Toil, and increase thy hours of 
 Thought! 
 
 And as for thee, political convention, great centra', sun of 
 political knowledge, which now instructeth us poor benighted 
 sovereigns what to tJaink, and how to vote! we are, alas, soon to 
 behold thy eclipse; great "Common Sense" is preparing to 
 cross thy disk to eclipse thy questionable spark in a mightier 
 illumination, in which thy sovereign discerns that through 
 which he becomes a convention unto himself. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE ABOLITION OP PARTIES. 
 
 Looking forward to the parties of the future, we shall find less 
 of partyism, and more of thought; less of senseless individualis- 
 tic antagonisms based upon geographical or race divisions, and 
 more of ideas. The parties of the future will be parties of ideas, 
 and not of prejudices; the parties of the fyture will be parties 
 based upon the ideas of collectivism versus individualism. Upon 
 the side of individualism will be arranged the kings and would-be 
 kings, the monopolists and would-be monopolists; self-conscious- 
 ness and all pertaining to self will be there marshaled; while 
 upon the side of collectivism will be arranged all that which feels, 
 sympathizes, and considers humanity, and which lives, breaths, 
 and acts for the race. Then we will find the line for the first 
 time clearly and unmistakably drawn, and the evil and the good 
 separated, — self-consciousness upon one side, brotherhood upon 
 the other. Then the reformer and the deformer will reveal 
 themselves; the first the self-conscious individualist; the second 
 the universal-conscious collectivist. The clearer the issue, the 
 quicker humanity decides it, and decides for the right. Selfish- 
 ness will go down when it unmistakably stands forth. Then 
 there will be no more parties, no more division of mankind into 
 herds, but humanity will be as a family. They may then differ 
 in ideas, but it will only result in a conference of thought, in a 
 comparison of judgments. A party is merely individualism 
 carried into numbers, into association of individuals. They are 
 based upon self, personalism,and sectionalism. 
 
 Thought is above parties. It is the maker and breaker of par- 
 ties. Parties cannot harness, govern or restrain it. There is 
 something little, narrow, and clannish about the very name of 
 "party" which repels. Parties are all alike in their partyism, the 
 redeeming point of some being that they partake of a more ad- 
 vanced "idea" than others. As a party crystalizes around an 
 idea, it attempts to bottle up and imprison thought within itself.
 
 THE ABOLITION OF PARTIES. 77 
 
 being superior to matter and continues her flight. 
 
 It a party is of an advanced "idea," and you think up 
 to its "idea," you will find it just as dogmatic and despotic 
 about thinking beyond its idea as its ancient predecessor 
 of an inferior mold. If you continue thinking, you are im- 
 mediately arraigned as "a Utopian dreamer," "ahead of the 
 times," "an impracticable," and it is whispered softly to you that 
 your course will drive away "the sovereigns," "lose us votes;" 
 "we need generalship," "strategy," "policy;" in a word, your 
 thought must stop and bend itself to the establishment of a 
 system by which we, the thinkers, will get rich "individual- 
 ism." 
 
 The very fact that a "party" carefully eliminates everything 
 which proposes to go beyond its idea discovers that a party is but 
 an idea, and that thought, its creator, is its superior, and can 
 never be chained subservient to it. Thought, therefore, is above 
 all parties. God help him who continues thinking, and who 
 expects the gifts and patronage of office from the party which 
 probably his very thought has helped to create. He will be 
 wriggled out into the cold by some more practicable worm. 
 
 Thus parties by their nature are moth-like, brief and ephem- 
 eral. Why? Because upon birth they cut themselves off from 
 that which was and is the source of their existence, and therefore 
 are no sooner born than they begin to corrupt, rot, and die. For 
 thought is the purifier. 
 
 Thought gives to the world an idea. A portion of humanity 
 embrace it, and immediately you have a party; but that which 
 gave the "idea" continues thinking on, and erelong thinks itself 
 clear out and beyond "the party," — grasps a superior truth, and 
 again stands as far in advance as ever. They who can but grasp 
 the "idea," and hardly that, form the party, and there remain 
 until its festering corruption drives them by its very stench 
 again into the pure atmosphere of thought. 
 
 This is the physics of politics. But thought! Ah! that is 
 above your politics, as the sun is absvethe reptiles which its fires 
 have called into brief existence. Politics may be a profession; 
 reform is a philosophy. Thought gives you a form of politics 
 to-day, and to-morrow annihilates that which yesterday it 
 created. Why? Because she has learned of something 
 better. 
 
 The world has never witnessed, and probably never will, a 
 party big enough, wide enough, broad enough, deep enough, 
 nor high enough to afford wing-room enough for thought, unless 
 thought itself shall evolve us to a party comprehending nature 
 and eternity. 
 
 Parties are but the steps of progress; thought the whole con- 
 tinued flight; that which forms the steps; the marvelous archi- 
 tect ever building onward, upward, from the material to the 
 spiritual. Give us thought! With it we'll bind the lightnings 
 to our chariot. With it, the mountains will cleave and open a 
 passage for our feet, the seas turn back their tides, and make 
 way for our throne! With it, we need no wings to lift our matter, 
 no lever to move our weight! Give it us, and you can take your
 
 78 THE ABOLITION OF PARTIES. 
 
 Bun and stare; for with it we yet shall make a day superior to 
 your sun, a night superior to your stars! But give us thought, 
 and from its marvels we'll extract a vegetation whose fruits and 
 balms of appetite will outrival the dreams of your paradise. 
 With thought, we'll wreathe these now capricious skies into tears 
 or smiles as we would have them. The very sources and forces of 
 all these woes which now afflict us, rend, torment, and tear us, — 
 forming the veritable fiends cursing and consuming us, — we'll 
 bend into our ministering angels. For whatever is our enemy, 
 while it governs and guides us, becomes our devoted and most 
 subservient friend when our thought has planted her feet of light 
 upon its neck and assumed her sway above its forces. Thus 
 dynamite destroys ungoverned, and builds when ruled. Give us 
 thought and we'll transform evil into good, disease into health, 
 pain into joy, darkness into light, falsehood into truth, — ay! 
 transform hell itself into heaven; for discord is but undeveloped 
 harmony. 
 
 How mighty is electricity! It molds, shapes, builds, tinges, 
 blends, and transforms. But how much mightier is thought! for 
 to her this subtle magician falls upon its knees and becomes a 
 poor automaton. Let us examine the features of this god. Intel- 
 ligence. Let us take an instance: A score of savages are essay- 
 ing to lift a rock. Another enters with thought, and forms a 
 lever, lifting more than the twenty, and in less time. Another 
 enters with still greater thought, and, dropping some grains of 
 dynamite into a crevice, lifts it almost coeval with bis will, 
 abolishing more labor and more time in the realization of his 
 prayer. 
 
 If this omnipotent and ever-progressive ruler of force contin- 
 ues to expand its powers within man as its every act proclaims, 
 where shall end the measure of its accomplishment? Who shall 
 presume to mark the circle whose lines shall form the limit of its 
 possibilities? What is there to stop this marvel in its march 
 from easting aside our present and ponderous engines of science 
 as the cumbersome and tedious relics of an inferior past, and 
 thus divesting itself of all complications, step naked and un- 
 robed into the sacred mysteries of nature, and grasping omnisci- 
 ent knowledge, with it create, simultaneous with its wish, an 
 Aladdin's palace or a paridice's garden, without labor, contact, 
 travail, or time, and thus crown the full triumph and glory of 
 mind over existence. 
 
 Creeds and parties are fences, corrals, and inclosures which men 
 build around themselves to keep out thought; or they are teth- 
 ers by which men tie themselves as unto a stake, that they may 
 wander around in a barren circle to starve. The absence of 
 thought is a grave. 
 
 Nationalism would abolish parties by making our people one 
 general family. To-day the race for power and place is really 
 the backbone of partyism, — the "ins" and the "outs." National- 
 ism, through the collective administration of agriculture, trans- 
 portation, distribution, and manufacture, would change private 
 employment into public office; snd as all institutions would be 
 government institutions, all effort would be governmental, and
 
 THE ABOLITION OP PARTIES. 79 
 
 all would be working for the government; aud therefore, instead 
 of but a few occupying government positions, all would occupy 
 government positions, and all would be in office. There would 
 then be no "outs," for all would be "ins;" and the principal 
 cause of populor division and the real basis of it would be 
 absolutely destroyed. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE BALLOT AND CONVENTION. 
 
 From the shadows of Europe's palaces, those monuments of 
 personalism and spoliation, a stream of oppressed humanity pours 
 into America to escape this olden reign of selfishness, until Amer- 
 ica becomes the teeming hive of a refugee humanity. Refugees 
 from what? Refugees from the injustice of individual rule. And 
 what have these refugees gained by coming to America? They 
 have simply gained a new country wherein individualism has not 
 yet gobbled up the rights of the whole. But individualism reigns 
 in the new country as in the old, and all that is necessary to bring 
 about the same result in the new as in the old is time; for what- 
 ever owns land, air,and light will, if allowed, own man as well. 
 At present writing the time is about arrived, and the conditions 
 of the new are fast assimilating to those of the old. 
 
 But in the new, collectivism has one resource to restrict individ- 
 ualism which it has not in the old, — one resource though which 
 it can demonstrate its will, and establish institutions placing the 
 whole above the part, and that resource is the national "ballot." 
 With this instrument, humanity can face individualism as with a 
 single voice, and establish the rights of man without the spill- 
 ing of a single drop of blood, or destruction of the smallest de- 
 gree of wealth, or the slightest harm to any individual. But 
 nevertheless, although this physical possibility is enjoyed, the 
 mental unfoldment necessary to its proper use is yet lacking. 
 
 True, this ballot is not yet perfect in its arrangement, but na- 
 tionalism and nationalists will yet remedy its defects so that it 
 shall yet be positively guarded from the ignorance of unevoluted 
 individuality. True, this ballot allows ignorance an opportunity 
 to cheat, humbug, and defeat itself, and should be amended and 
 improved so that the freeman could not enslave himself, — a 
 strange admission of ignorant incapacity, — to put a guard around 
 an instrument of liberty to keep a freeman from enslaving him- 
 self, — an inability to sustain his freedom or to deal with its imple- 
 ments and remain free unless bolstered up and swathed around 
 with preventives. 
 
 However unpleasant such a state of affairs may be, it is the 
 cold, hard fact, — a fact borne out by our political-convention 
 system, wherein the masses either acknowledge their political inan- 
 ition and lifelessness or their mental incapability to form a choice 
 for themselves as to who shall make and execute their laws. The 
 result is, that upon every election, muncipal, state, or national, 
 certain obliging persons meet and call themselves a "convention," 
 and proceed to form a list of persons for the masses to vote for, 
 which list the aforesaid masses duly proceed to obligingly vote
 
 80 THE BALLOT AND CONVENTION. 
 
 for at the time appoiated. 
 
 The ridiculousness of this proceeding is bo apparent that a 
 smile cannot be repressed, — millions of full-grown men gravely 
 voting a list of names not chosen by themselves, but chosen for 
 them! Why not let the choosers of the list of names cast the 
 vote also? — the casting of the vote being merely a physical form, 
 the outside shell of the politicial nut, while the choosing of the 
 list of names to be voted for really forme the precious kernel! 
 
 Ah I but I hear you say "that there are more than one list of 
 names chosen for him to vote." 
 
 Well, I care not how many lists there be chosen for him to vote, 
 a list of names chosen for him is not a list chosen by himself, — 
 selected by his own perception and judgment from among his fel- 
 low -citizens,— and it is therefore an insult to his intelligence, if 
 he has that peculiarity. 
 
 "Political conventions" are the bane of American politics; 
 they lay coiled like a serpent in our public system, and the peo- 
 ple's rights are like birds falling into their snare. In these beauti- 
 ful and obliging associations not only are the people informed 
 whom to vote for, but a set of principles are drawn up for them 
 to espouse, called a "platform," already made and arrainged for 
 them to advocate, and thus the convention, or individualism, not 
 only in reality appoints all the collectivity's agents, but does all 
 the thinking for the collectivity as well. 
 
 If there were no political conventions, or if the people dis- 
 carded them, and placed no person's name on the ticket unless 
 because of fitness, and not because of conventions, and thus 
 choose from their own judgment the name of whosoever they 
 consider best for the position, then the days of political parties, 
 political jugglery, and political conventions would be at an end for 
 once and for aye. 
 
 To-day the purchase of a political convention by personal or cor- 
 porate interests carries with it the purchase of all the voting 
 millions toho vote the list ivhich the convention prepares. 
 
 Upon examination, we find the fault not to lie in the ballot, 
 even as it is arranged at present, but in the ignorant abuse of 
 this great and grand instrument of public opinion. But the pub- 
 lic must learn to have opinions and candidates of its own, and 
 not the opinions and candidates of a convention written up, fixed 
 up, and arranged for them, before a change for the better can be 
 brought about. 
 
 Political conventions have nevertheless at times represented the 
 wishes of the people; but such conventions preformed their good 
 work, and put patriots before the people for suffrage, through a 
 tidal wave of popular demand, a wave of moral and iBtelligent 
 ideas, wherein the people ruled the convention, and not the con- 
 vention the people, demonstrating the fact that the people, under 
 our republican from of government, can even with defective ar- 
 rangements, rule if they so wilk For the present, until we have 
 nationalism established, let the people run the conventions, and 
 not the conventions run the people.
 
 LABOR AND POLITICS. , 81 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 LABOR AND POLITICS. 
 
 The cause of labor is the cause of humanity. Yon cannot sep- 
 arate the two. 
 
 Labor can only remedy its grievances through politics. It 
 must raise its contemplation from its several specialties, from its 
 several trades and industries into which it is divided, up to the 
 general and generic cause of labor as a whole. This can only be 
 done through politics. Labor acting as a trade or in parts is nec- 
 essarily weak and impotent; labor acting as labor, although 
 iinited as a class, is also necessarily weak. 
 
 Every evil which every special branch of labor suffers under is 
 the result of a generic cause, which equally inflicts all branches 
 alike; and for one branch, or for one trade or all trades, to at- 
 tempt to remove this, is an attempt by such to remove a collec- 
 tive evil by the effort of a part or a few parts united. True, tem- 
 porary relief is sometimes achieved by the unaided efforts of 
 these heroic portions; but these temporary reliefs are generally 
 achieved at terrible cost, and generally achieved merely tempor- 
 arily, leaving the general evil to soon again overwhelm the trade 
 or trades in the common infliction. 
 
 In Europe, the monarchial institutions taught the trades-peo- 
 ple that politics was a thing apart from the cause of labor; that 
 the battle of labor was against labor, — against itself; that labor 
 should only organize to deal with the several branches within it- 
 self, — should only deal with contractors, apprentices, and labor- 
 ers or mechanics; that the miseries of labor wholly result from 
 the faults of its individual members; thus perpetuating continual 
 warfare among its competing members. This deceitful teaching 
 of error resulted in labor confining its efforts to individual antag- 
 onisms, and the attraction of its attention and contemplation 
 from the generic causes, which bring about the condition of all 
 alike, and create the very anti-union actions of the very anti- 
 union individuals, who are foolishly deemed the cause of the 
 troubles. 
 
 Thus the monarchial institutions instructed labor to organize 
 exclusively to deal with individuals, and declared that questions 
 of governments and politics were above their business or their 
 affairs. This instruction was also enforced by law, by bayonets, 
 and by dungeons. So to-day we find the same folly transplanted 
 into America, and everywhere in trades organizations politics is a 
 debarred topic, and is declared out of order, — politics, the only 
 path and only way in which mankind can act or think collec- 
 tively. 
 
 Ay! leave politics to the aristocracy, — to individualism, — and, 
 my good people, they will manage it for you. 
 
 The only way for labor to establish any real, practical relief is 
 to comprehend the general evil and the general relief. And the 
 only way for labor to reach that relief is the declaration of its 
 collective comprehension through the ballot. 
 
 An individual can express opinion by speech, motion, or writ- 
 ing. Society can only express opinion through ballot. By bal-
 
 82 LABOR AND POLITICS. 
 
 lot, it informs its agents of its desires, and elects the agents as 
 well. Through these little pieces of paper, it removes a dynasty 
 from power more effectually than through revolution. By ballot, 
 in 1884, it removed a party from power that had been entrenched 
 in the citadel of public office for a quarter of a century. What 
 more positive proof could we have than this of the efficacy of the 
 ballot as far as an instrument for the expression of public opin- 
 ion is concerned? The turning of powerful cliques out of office 
 so long intrenched in power certainly demonstrates that popular 
 opinion reigns in America. Labor, then, should avail harself of 
 this opportunity. Not organize politically as a "labor party," for 
 that is individualism; but do two things, — educate public opin- 
 ion to the consciousness of its wrongs, and change its local de- 
 mands to national issues, whose establishment would bring relief 
 to all alike. But national issues are politics of the strongest 
 kind, and no politics are allowed in regular labor unions. 
 
 Capital whenever wanting aid enters politics, and there is not 
 a large manufacturing concern, railroad, telegraph, water, electric, 
 gas, oil, steel, gold, bilver, or any other heavy private interest, 
 which does not find it needful and profitable— nay, necessary to 
 its existence — to enter politics. Yet labor must not mention pol- 
 itics at its labor clubs, — why? Why, if a monopoly enters politics 
 to elect men whom it nominates at the conventions, so that these 
 men when elected may vote thera a franchise running ninety-nine 
 years to use a public thoroughfare for street-cars, cannot labor 
 also raise the issue to give no franchise for the purpose, unless the 
 franchise contain a clause fijxing the hours of such employees and 
 the rate of their pay? Surely labor could do this much for labor. 
 
 Surely, if every corporation doing public business and 
 receiving public franchises had to consent to labor's 
 terms before they could proceed with business, stocks 
 and bonds would be receiving less of the profits, and 
 labor more. But this would be a reform within the present 
 system, and I do not offer it as a panacea, but merely to 
 show the open road which labor has to right her wrongs by the 
 ballot, if she so chooses. Even under the present system of in- 
 dividual robbery, the glaring inequality of one man receiving a 
 hundred thousand dollars per year and the other a dollar a day 
 could be altered considerably for the better, if labor were to so 
 will it at the ballot-box. 
 
 The condition of the masses of mdustry certainly calls forth 
 anything but admiration or respect for themselves. In CJongress 
 at Washingthn, or in that which they call the loioer house, I find 
 not one representative present of the industrial classes, yet the 
 industrial classes are a power at the ballot-box. How strange 
 they never think of themselves while voting the convention 
 ticket! The upper house, the house of millionaires, it is super- 
 flous to say, like its more plebian neighbor, contains no member 
 of the industrial classes. This situation demonstrates labor's 
 failure to recognize either itself, its political equality, or its 
 power. The future of the industrial masses is not promising, in- 
 deed, unless they awaken unto the truths of nationalism. End- 
 less competition between their numerous numbers, a competition
 
 LABOR AND POLITICS. 83 
 
 which coritinually disunites and destroys their harmonious rela- 
 tions, and causes them to view each other with distrust and sus- 
 picion, and which embroils their individuals and associations 
 often in murder, — all this, combined with the monotony of a too 
 prolonged task, heartless compensation, and general depressing 
 surroundings, serves to give them a peevish ill-humor, and the 
 dangerous tendency to lose themselves in unnatural excitements. 
 This has been our experience during nearly half a century of 
 hard physical labor. Prohibitionists, the most patriotically in- 
 clined of all reformers, would do well to heed this passing hint. 
 In no way could the moral condition of the industrial classes be 
 benefitted more, in no way could intoxication be abolished more, 
 than by elevating the political, social, and industrial conditions 
 of the toilers of our country, through the establishment of a na- 
 tional industrial system, which would yield the toiler an equal 
 share of the nation's wealth. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 NATIONALIZATION THE BETTER WAY — TRADES UNIONS. 
 
 That our state of enforced competition results from individual- 
 ism, and can only be abolished by nationalism, is axiomatic. 
 
 All the evils which trades-people organize to encounter, and 
 vainly struggle against, perpetually as it were, spring from this 
 competitive system which arises from the reign of rampant indi- 
 vidualism, dominant and ignorant. Strikes, boycotts, and other 
 movements of the kind are but temporary in effect, ineffectual 
 ultimately, and in time react, and bring suffering upon their pro- 
 jectors, who become marked men for individualistic hate, both 
 from their disappointed followers, and the deep prejudices of the 
 enemy. 
 
 All which unites humanity is truth. Whatever disunites them 
 is falsehood. Nationalization unites, and makes a common cause, 
 — a movement of an entire nation for the elevation of all. Labor 
 organizations bring feuds, antagonisms, criminations, accusations, 
 condemnations, and often result in deadly divisions of labor, when 
 their announced object is union. 
 
 The situation sought to be overcome by trades unionism is the 
 result of an outgrowth of our ruling national ideas. The masses 
 are in harmony with these very ideas, whose evils are their direct 
 fruit and effects. To battle against these evils in detail or in 
 part is futile, either as trades unions or as individuals. You must 
 reach up to the idea out of which the evils arise, and there you 
 will find, not only its vital part, but its iveakest point as well. 
 Nationalism is the only relief from these evils, and the only pro- 
 cess for industry to adopt to effectually succeed. 
 
 Nationalism is the only process whereby labor strikes as a unit, 
 and not in parts, where there are no "scabs," and noorderings out, 
 but merely the dissemination of the knowledge that Uncle Sam 
 is the best boss in the world to work for, and that he should be 
 the only employer, i. e., the employment of the people by them- 
 selves. 
 
 In a word, while trades unionism combines but several trades,
 
 84 NATIONALIZATION THE BETTER WAY. 
 
 and but a portion of each trade bo combined, and stanos, strug- 
 gling as it were, coldly looked upon by others not in the union, 
 thus undertaking the herculean task of righting national evils, 
 unhelped by the major part of society, nationalism places every 
 species of labor, both physical and mental, an ally in the general 
 cause, and the general public becomes a solid phalanx for the ele- 
 vation of industry standing upon the plane of reason, where the 
 artist and laborer, the union man and the scab, the contractor, 
 boss, and apprentice, become molded as one in the advocacy of a 
 national issue, whose triumph elevates all departments of society 
 and every individual alike, raising the entire mass at once and 
 together. 
 
 Trades unions and all similar combinations of portions of society 
 are associations of individuals seeking protection from individual- 
 ism in unionism. 
 
 Individual selfishness has been crushing individual rights, has 
 been plundering, oppressing, starving, murdering individuals, and 
 the victims have sunk their individualism in collectivism for 
 safety, — safety from personal selfishness, an atrocious monster 
 who bloats upon human misery; a thing whom the more suffer- 
 ing it entails the more demoniac its lusts. Robing itself in the 
 stolen glories of the civilizations it rapes, it revels midst the 
 splendors of art and science, in deadly mockery of their beauties, 
 doomed to fade and perish from its poisonous contact. Its monu- 
 ments along time are the fallen columns of palaces where repiiles 
 crawl in the silence of the ruins it has left. 
 
 And trades unionism endeavors to protect itself from this! — 
 a few thousand weary toilers rallying around the cause of self- 
 protection, self-preservation I But trades unions at best never 
 reach into or deal with causes, and are but as jury-masts at sea, 
 raised over a storm-tossed bark for immediate safety, that it may 
 ride the tempest until the storm be past; but tJiis conflict of the 
 elements of error continues, and the noble civilizations are en- 
 gulfed, and these temporary preventatives are made in vain. 
 
 But nothing is lost; and the failures of the past guard the suc- 
 cesses of the present, and civilizations after civilizations again 
 arise to solve the task. 
 
 Industry cannot protect itself as a part; it must seek its pro- 
 tection, and can only find it in the protection of the whole. It 
 must lay down its banner of labor, and raise the common banner 
 of humanity. No movement can succeed save a movement of the 
 whole. The cause of the whole is irresistible. 
 
 Personal evils are the result of general conditions, and general 
 conditions can only be removed by movements of the whole. 
 Personal liberty is the topmost rung of the ladder. We get there 
 rung by rung; but we must climb. 
 
 We are reaching up to this topmost fruit of the tree of social 
 evolution; but we are not there yet, nor are we capable as a whole 
 of being there, or we would be there; for capability becomes what 
 it is capable of. Before we are capable, we must have a proper 
 respect for each other. We have it not now. Until we do, indi- 
 vidualism must have a master. That master must not be an in- 
 dividual (a king), nor a set of individuals (monopolists). The
 
 NATIONALIZATION THE BETTER WAY. 85 
 
 people as a unit must be their only master. This is nationHlistn 
 pure and simple; and when the people have unfolded into a proper 
 respect for each other, then every band and contr(jl, national or 
 otherwise, fades and dissipates of itself; for dissolution ever dis- 
 solves that which is unnecessary. 
 
 For the cultivation of individualism up to the respect of others, 
 we must have conditions favorable to that cultivation. These 
 conditions we call nationalism, — a state of society where the indi- 
 vidualities of the many unite as one to enforce the real rights of 
 individualism. Yet the word ^^enforce" hardly conveys the mean- 
 ing; for whatever we do by mutual agreement we do freely of our 
 own will; therefore nationalism is the individualism of the whole 
 acting as a unit to evolve the highest condition of the individual 
 as a part. 
 
 No individual can surely object to this, — none who considers 
 the future unfoldment of its own individuality to its highest state; 
 for only in such condition can the personality take on the habili- 
 ments of greatness. We can only find true greatness in the loss 
 of our individuality and the finding of our universality. When 
 our wisdom and our love become universal, then, and not till then, 
 will we find our true selves, and when we have'f-ound that, we are 
 free, and not till then. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 NATIONAL. CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 
 
 Were industry nationalized, trades unionism would cease, be- 
 cause the cause for which it struggles would be achieved, i. e., a 
 just compensation. 
 
 Every work would be conducted as we now find the present 
 national mail department, — conducted by the government, — just 
 as we now find the erection of our national buildings conducted, 
 — just as we now find the numerous species of skilled mechanisms 
 arranged in the building and equipment of the vessels in our 
 national navy-yards, — ay, even better, as the system prevailed. 
 
 The nation erects fine and stately edifices for its agents without 
 the slightest diflBculty, and in nationalism we would all become 
 agents of the nation. It would then erect all our palaces (no 
 hovels). It would furnish all these palaces as it now furnishes 
 its courts, custom-houses, army quarters, post-ofiices, and other 
 edifices, — as it now does for its present employees. And there 
 being no contractor, no profit, no rent, no interest on money, or 
 any other sp^ies of capital's siphonic subtraction from wages, 
 the agent would receive from the nation the full equivalent of 
 his service. The construction would be all time service, directly 
 for the owner (the people), and all the hundred and one absorb- 
 ents who now receive the larger percentage of what the artisan 
 produces would find their apparatus gone, and the artisan receiv- 
 ing his full percentage, there being no institution drawing a 
 single mill from his production. In the present individual con- 
 struction and manufacture of things, there stands between the 
 consumer and the producer, first, the individual capitalist, who 
 takes a goodly portion of the value of the thing created; then the
 
 86 NATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 
 
 landlord, and the lightlord, and the taxlord, and the other lords; 
 then the manufacturer or employer, who takes a goodly portion 
 of the valuej^ then the wholesale dealer, who takes a goodly por- 
 tion; then the jobber jobs his portion out; then the retail dealer, 
 who takes whatever pickings he can extract, for the profit or 
 margin remaining has been rapidly reduced. After this, then the 
 producer receives what is left of the "turkey" which he has so 
 carefully raised from egg to full-sized gobbler; and he finds that 
 after so raising, supporting, and preparing the bird for the feast, 
 cooking it, and serving it up ready for the banquet, he has re- 
 ceived in return for all this, — what? Bones! Nothing but bare 
 bones! True, there may be a little odd piece of gristle left here 
 and there; there may be a small piece of nutriment iu the crevice 
 of a bone or two, — a small piece overlooked, — and this small piece 
 and the bones are what is termed by social scientists, — (come 
 closer, ye partakers of the small piece and the bones; let me 
 whisper the peculiar and mysterious word in your producing ear), 
 — this small piece and the bones are termed by the social scien- 
 tist "tuagfesl" 
 
 The same identical circumstances apply to everything labor 
 now produces under the present individualistic system. Between 
 the producer and the consumer stand the individuals we have 
 enumerated above; and when the produce is sold to the con- 
 sumer, from the price received is deducted the interest of the 
 capitalist, the profit of the manufacturer, the percentage of the 
 wholesaler, and the margin of the jobbers and the retailer. In 
 all this there is added the rents of the individual landlords, the 
 rates of insurance men, interest on mortgages, also the public and 
 private taxes, advertisements, and a multitude of other subtrac- 
 tions, all of which are added up and their total deducted from the 
 price paid bp the consumer. Whatever is left is thrown to the 
 producer. He has about the same thing left generally, — bones, 
 and the small overlooked piece of meat. Sometimes they find this 
 small overlooked piece of meat, and devour that also. Then there 
 is a row! a strike! and trades unions are formed. Formed for 
 what? To demand the small piece of meat. Why not raise up to 
 a greater issue? Why not demand the whole turkey? Why not 
 the labor of these United States inform this individual who sits 
 first at the feast, and who takes the largest slice of the bird and 
 generally all the tid-bits, "Sir, this is not your turkey"? 
 
 Why not say to this individual, "Go sir, and raise turkey for 
 yourself"? 
 
 And as he astonishingly replies: "But you cannot get along 
 without my devouring your turkey. If I don't eaT; your turkey, 
 you don't get my capital. Fll not allow you to raise turkey, sir!" 
 — inform him: "My dear sir, sixty millions of us have formed a 
 corporation. We have pooled our issues and our capital. We 
 have formed a corporation of the whole. This whole will supply 
 us a co-operative currency without interest; hereafter our em- 
 ployer is the whole, and this employer will supply us with, 
 employment, and demand no profit or interest. If you 
 want to eat turkey after this, you will have to go and raise 
 one, or go and make or perform something that is useful
 
 NATIONAL CO-OPEKATIVE CERTIFICATE. 87 
 
 to the nation, — to us, the people and the nation,— then 
 we, the people, will give you our national-currency measurement 
 of your Bervice, and you can exchange its possession then for an 
 equivalent value in turkey. You then perceive, my friend, that 
 the nation, in acting as my capitalist, my employer, and my mer- 
 chant, allows no one to eat my turkey without first in return 
 producing for my turkey my turkey's value in some thing or 
 some service of equal value. True, under these circumstances 
 you receive my turkey from the nation, but the nation has given 
 me in recognition thereof this national certificate of its value, and 
 with this national certificate I can go to any of our great national 
 stores and roceive upon its return the very thing you produced, 
 or any other thing of equal value, except that a very slight in- 
 crease will be added for the purpose of paying the legitimate 
 services of the national stores, which would be very small, for 
 each department is self-supporting, and is based upon actual cost, 
 adding merely to the value of the goods interchanged through 
 these national certificates only the actual cost of handling, which, 
 although small, means a good day's pay for the agents of our 
 national stores, based upon the wage rate of all. As each person 
 is one share of stock in himself in this national corporation, each 
 draws an equal dividend. That equal dividend, therefore, is the 
 standard of wages, or the total production of the nation's wealth 
 per year, divided by the number of hours of all employed in its 
 production." 
 
 Let us continue this suggestive dialogue between these two 
 personages. 
 
 The banker replies: "Then I can only get a turkey of my own 
 by either raising one or doing something equivalent to raising 
 one?" 
 • "Yes, sir." 
 
 "So you are going to run the machine on your own capital, and 
 stop borrowing mine?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "How did you bring this about, — by a strike?" 
 
 '-No." 
 
 "Boycott?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "How are your trades unions getting along, — calling each other 
 'traitors,' as usual?" 
 
 "We have stopped fighting between ourselves, and over bones." 
 
 "Well, I never wanted to hurt anybody. You see, the old 
 mortgage system fixed it so that you raised turkey and got bones; 
 so I saw the point of raising capital and eating turkey! You see 
 I am fat?" 
 
 "O, quite fat, and I am quite lean!" 
 
 "Well, what am I going to do? I have no trade. I understand 
 something of law. If you want to cinch somebody, I'll take the 
 case." 
 
 "We have our real national courts run at cost price. We have 
 no need for lawyers. The nation furnishes all things necessary to 
 decide disputes. As our land, water, air, light, finance, manufac- 
 ture, transportation, express, agriculture, and exchange are all
 
 88 NATIONAL, CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 
 
 collective, and not personal, we have no personal disputes about 
 !ihem. We hardly ever have disputes." 
 
 "Then what am I going to do, if you have no borrowing and no 
 fighting?" 
 
 "You can write?" 
 
 "Yes; turn a pietty fair hand, and run up a column of figures." 
 
 "Well, go to our national bureau of employment; they will ex- 
 amine your qualifications, and set you to work." 
 
 "Workl my dear friend, that is a hard word for me." 
 
 "Then you don't get any turkey." 
 
 "But how about my large building, the bank, and my other in- 
 dividual possessions?" 
 
 "They are yours still, if you do not wish to enter the co-opera- 
 tion of the nation. The nation will issue you its certificates 
 measuring the value of their use. You will receive a very large 
 compensation for a while, as your bank may be used as a national 
 kindergarten for the education of our national babies. But this 
 will not last long, as the national system puts all who seek work 
 to work immediately, and every laborer, mechanic, engineer, 
 architect, and scientist is at present building the national cities 
 of the nation, and as this work proceeds, the superior accommoda- 
 tions of the new will leave the old untenable, and when that 
 comes, your revenue derived from the old structures will cease. 
 You perceive we hurt nobody, force nobody, nor compel any one 
 to do a thing distasteful to him." 
 
 "What about these new cities you are building?" 
 
 "They are based upon the plan of nature and her rivers. Our 
 future cities, under nationalism, will be immense arterial national 
 thoroughfares, with their lesser tributary branches, reaching into 
 our territory everywhere, and tapping our agricultural and man- 
 ufacturing districts everywhere. Thus our population will be as 
 rivers, reaching everywhere, and not as now, isolated in piled up 
 bunches or spots. 
 
 "Our principal thoroughfare, which we have named 'National 
 Aveaue,' will reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Our national 
 engineers have already surveyed the route, — a straight line. 
 There are to be twelve steel tracks, in the center, in the national 
 railroad avenue for our national railroad, giving quick transit 
 along the entire avenue, and carrying us at cost price, at which 
 every one can freely travel, while the operators will have the 
 national pro rata of the annual product per hour per employee, 
 affording time for mental improvement and amusements. The 
 national employees engaged in constructing this road will receive 
 the labor measure of their time in the national certificates. These 
 certificates will be received by the railroad back again, and the 
 same measure of freights and fares given to whoever holds them; 
 they will also be received at every other national department in 
 the same manner; as they represent upon their face the amount 
 of service the holder has performed for the nation, so the nation 
 returns the same amount of service or value as their face denotes. 
 By this national system of finance we will build the great road 
 without a bond, debt, or loan from any individual, without a 
 mortgage or interest; it will all be done directly for the people by
 
 '"!ATE. 
 
 NATIONAL. CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 89 
 
 the hour, or day's work; there will then be no contractor, and 
 therefore no contract protit on the employees. And when the 
 road is done, it will belong to the people, and not to individual 
 capitalists or private bond-holders, — a thing which could not be 
 accomplished through any other means or by any other process 
 than this national system of finance." 
 
 "What are you going to place alongside of thes twelve steel 
 tracks?" 
 
 "I am coming to that. This railroad avenue will be five 
 hundred feet wide; there will be an avenue on each side of this, 
 each respectively five hundred feet wide, forming elegant broad 
 double thoroughfares, adorned by foliage, illuminated by our 
 national electric lights, and flanked by continuous national 
 palaces, within which the corporation shall live, not die, nor linger 
 as they do now, but live!" 
 
 "And the minor streets?" 
 
 "They will be the same, merely more quiet and less in activity 
 to the general arteries, through which will pulsate the full life- 
 wealth of the nation. You will obsere that this national financial 
 system allows full individual liberty, there being no revolting, 
 barbarous compulsion of the individual by the whole; that if he 
 wishes, he can work; and if he does not wish to work, he need 
 not. He merely receives nothing if he produces nothing, and the 
 more he produces or the more service he yields for the nation, the 
 more he receives from the nation, as his certificates signify the 
 exact units he has given. Nothing received, nothing given, is the 
 measure for measure of our national currency." 
 
 O, then I am satisfied if there is going to be a square deal. 
 You see, I am an individualist. I thought you were about get- 
 ting up something which would wipe out my identity, — give no 
 encouragement to my energy; put me on par with a drone, and 
 at the mercy of a board of men who would set me doing some- 
 thing which would be disagreeable to my nature,— in fact, turn 
 society into a sort of moral Sunday penitentiary. I love my free- 
 dom! That is the reason I became a banker; for if 1 did not, I 
 had to become a slave. But now, since a man can do right and 
 remain free, count me in! Are you sure you have no great 
 sachemes in your arrangement, — no president elected by a select 
 body of grave and reverend seigniors, — no wise men of the woods 
 to put a chalk-mark upon somebody's back, and wave them off to 
 the mills, where they take good care to never wave themselves? 
 Have you no Roman senators by some other name, who have 
 risen through the 'I am' to the upper chambers without popular 
 suffrage, but who have gotten there through the 'I am' suffrage, 
 and who look upon popular suffrage (collective expression) as 
 something very erroneous, and who propose to destroy individual 
 egotism by elevating it to a self-elected throne?" 
 
 "No; we have no such ancient stupidisms. All men are gods 
 with us, and all positions are controlled and elected by the people. 
 If we cannot trust our collective wisdom and love, who can we 
 trust? To look to individuals instead of to the collectivity is the 
 ill we are flying from. It is folly to seek to place the individual 
 in any manner above the collectivity. We need the elevation of
 
 90 NATIONAL. CO-OPERATIVE CEKTIPICATE. 
 
 the whole. The parts can only be great through the greatness of 
 the whole. The whole in its greatness is God. Liberty and 
 greatness cannot be given to a people by any one. They must 
 evolve it from themselves, and to do this must rule." 
 
 "Well, then, if you have a collectivism that will not interfere 
 with my individualism by sticking some little 'me' up on a high 
 pole above everybody else, — a collectivism that will allow individ- 
 ual evolution providing it evolutes in reciprocity with the whole, 
 —count me in. I am tired of this man-catching business of mine! 
 I tell you what I will do: I will not go to theemplopment bureau. 
 The bureau is all right for those who need it; I will find my own 
 employment; I am an individualist, upon a higher plane, how- 
 ever. I will go over to the bank, run out the old safe into the 
 back-yard, and start a kindergarten. What do yo think?" 
 
 "Capital idea! But before you go, sit down and eat some 
 turkey." 
 
 "What! eat your turkey?" 
 
 "O, we are all brothers now, and you would do the same to me. 
 I am only too happy to give." 
 
 "All right; and while we are eating, please answer me these 
 questions." 
 
 "Yes; there is nothing like lively thought and pleasant ideas 
 while eating. I believe it helps digestion." 
 
 "What is going to become of the manufacturer, who used to 
 seize upon this same turkey after I had adjourned? But before 
 you answer, take a piece of the breast." 
 
 "Thank you. It is the first time I have had breast in a long 
 while. It is fine!" 
 
 "Yes, very toothsome. I suppose I'll have to fall back on the 
 leg or wing after this change; but then, I am satisfied, — in fact, 
 never was so satisfied in all my life; and I think every man, rich 
 and poor, in all the land, will be satisfied when he comes to under- 
 stand it. But now, then, what will become of the manufacturer?" 
 
 "Well, he will keep on just as he is, if he wishes. But as our 
 national mills get into working order he will discover, not a 
 strike, nor a boycott, nor a trades union manifesto, but he will 
 discover that the national mill-hands are working at treble the 
 shifts of the individual mill-hands, and also at increased compen- 
 sation, which compensation he will find steadily rising, because 
 the individual profit, rent, and interest extracted from the wages 
 of his employees are all added into the wages of the national mill- 
 hand. There being no wholesale jobbers nor retail profit on the 
 sales, he will also discover that the national mill goods sell 
 cheaper. When he discovers these two facts, he will perceive he 
 cannot afford to give his employees the short hours and the long 
 pay of the national mills, nor can his individualistic wholesale, 
 jobbing, and retail handling system compete with the systema- 
 tized handling and the simple distributing principle of the nation- 
 al stores, which do away with the thousand expenses of wholesale 
 jobbing and retailing. Thus he can neither manufacture as cheap 
 nor sell as cheap. And he will also discover that his goods are 
 inferior to those of the national mills. Well-treated labor pro- 
 duces well-treated work. Our friend the individual manufacturer
 
 NATIONAL. CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 91 
 
 will have to close down." 
 
 "Well, Bince we are brothers, I will tell you a secret. It is this: 
 He will Dot be affected in the slightest detail." 
 
 "No?" 
 
 "No! Itave had a drag-net mortgage on his mill ever since it 
 was built. The people are so poor under the present system that 
 they cannot purchase his goods; the dealers are overstocked; he 
 has cut down his employees to their lowest notch (unless his 
 deople can exist on air and debts), and this morning, before I 
 came to dine on your turkey, I dined on his mill. You see, here's 
 the foreclosure." 
 
 "Why, bless me! that is the regular document, — seals, red ink, 
 and 'Know all men by these presents'!" 
 
 "Yes; this is the document, and he is gone! I was in the old 
 system then, you know, and foreclosures were like gathering up 
 the shells on the shore." 
 
 "Yes; but he is all right. His vast experience in the upper de- 
 partments of manufacture is very valuable to our national mill 
 system. In it, every man, of every grade of talent, find more 
 openings than they can fill; for in the national system of industry 
 the demand for labor is always ahead of the supply." 
 
 "Then he will be a happy man; for he was really a good fellow 
 at heart, but the system ground him into an unnatural attitude 
 to those around." 
 
 "Yes; I am afraid there are none of us but would be better if we 
 had better enviornments. We are all good fellows at center, — 
 even the worst of us. Evil conditions have made evil men." 
 
 "But what will become of thewholesaler, who formerly attacked 
 this turkey of yours after our friend the manufacturer got 
 through?" 
 
 "The wholesaler will now find no jobbers and retailers to handle 
 his goods, as all goods will be distributed at our immense national 
 stores, with complete display of each and every variety of fabric, 
 and every species of manufacture systematized into different de- 
 partments, under a general system, as we now find in our mail 
 department. This will decrease present confusion in distribution, 
 and increase the opportunity to the consumer of getting the very 
 species of goods desired, and at such an immensely decreased 
 cost that individual handling of goods will beoutof the question." 
 
 "The clerks of our present individual shops will then be all 
 government employees, I see?" 
 
 "Yes; and their wages will be based by the government statisti- 
 cians, and determined by the yearly production of the nation's 
 wealth being divided by the total hours devoted to its production. 
 Whoever devotes one hour to this accumulation is therefore en- 
 titled to that unit of the total wealth, thus giving each producer 
 the exact amount of his production. This is the basis of our 
 national certificate. The wages, therefore, of our national clerks 
 would be many times greater than at present, and as we do not 
 propose to let any one go idle who ivishes to partake of the gen- 
 eral wealth, we will set every competent person who seeks a 
 clerkship to work, — the hours per day would be, therefore, few, as 
 this system employes everybody, and divides the labor unto all
 
 92 NATIONAL, CO-OPERATIVE CEKTIPICATE. 
 
 ae it divides the wealth unto all who wish to deservingly partake 
 of it." 
 
 "Then these clerks would receive the national certificates, re- 
 cording their unit or hour shares of the common wealth?" 
 
 "Precisely. I see, having been a banker, you comprehend the 
 simplicity and justice of the system." 
 
 "I perceived it long ago, but the people would not have it; they 
 would rather work for us than for themselves, and many a good 
 man they put down for endeavoring to teach them. But there is 
 one thing you must explain, and that is, the justice of this divis- 
 ion of the total wealth to each alike who produce it. I see you 
 have no king, no president, no officer, no superior, — all are with 
 you equals. Nothing can exist and endure save justice, and the 
 people, bless them! will bave nothing which they do not perceive 
 to be justice. Would it be justice to give one man more than 
 another?" 
 
 "If you gave one man more than anorher, that would be in- 
 justice. But in our distribution of the total wealth, we give 
 nothing; we merely arrange it so that whenever an individual de- 
 serves, that individual shall have; so the drone cannot compel his 
 brother unjustly to toil for him. But we also arrange it so that 
 all can help themselves, and the amount they help is recorded by 
 the na'tional certificates they hold." 
 
 "Then one person can have more of the general wealth than an- 
 other. Would this be justice?" 
 
 "Yes; but if he had more, he would have to make it himself ; he 
 could have only that!" 
 
 "Then one could not enrich himself at the other's expense?" 
 
 "Exactly. We must establish this condition before we ascend 
 higher. We must thoroughly establish justice before we can have 
 the reign of love." 
 
 "But would it be justice to only pay the head of a department 
 equal to the foot, — to pay the architect of a building only equal 
 to the excavator, — the hewer of wood and drawer of water?" 
 
 "The very essence of justice. The architect's job is the most 
 attractive and pleasant; it is remunerative in its contemplations 
 and congenial in its surroundings; and why should they who 
 enjoy the most advantageous positions be entitled because of 
 their advantage to receive yet further superior advantage. Would 
 not this be according to the logic of giving the most to those who 
 have the most? If any one ought to receive more than another 
 for his effort, it certainly should be those who performed the 
 most arduous of labor and the most disagreeable task. If you 
 had choice of position, would you not rather take the agreeable 
 job even for less compensation than the disagreeable?" 
 
 "I certainly would. But is not the head more intellectual than 
 the foot; and should not the most intellectual be paid the most?" 
 
 "Why? The brain is no more necessary than the heart; the 
 one is the department of intelligence, the other the department 
 of force; one cannot exist without the other; the building could 
 not stand without the foundation; the head, without the legs; all 
 parts are interactional, and they all should act for a single object, 
 — the good of all, — each part receiving the full strength of the
 
 NATIONAL. CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 93 
 
 whole." 
 
 "Yes; I am now satisfied it requires every effort to make a com- 
 pletness; that every part of the structure is necessary to its 
 entirety; that the entire being should hold each part of itself in 
 equal estimation to have equal and perfect development." 
 
 "That is the idea of nationalism; that is the idea which creates 
 symmetry and harmony of form; it is this which produces beauty 
 and health. And this will produce a beautiful and healthy 
 society." 
 
 "But what will become of our jobbers and retailers under your 
 national system of stores?" 
 
 "Instead of waiting all day long for the poor penniless customer 
 who never comes; instead of counting up their receipts at night, 
 only to find that their rent, light, clerk hire, clothing, food, taxes, 
 and other expenses amount to more than the receipts; instead of 
 retiring dejected and worn out, weary and disheartened, — they 
 Will find themselves in charge of fine departments in our national 
 stores, knowing exactly that in a few brief years their rate of 
 compensation will enable them to hold national certificates of the 
 national wealth, representing enough to enable them to live the 
 remainded of their days in affluence and ease, or in the higher 
 pursuits of mental attainments and mental unfoldment." 
 
 "But if they wished to travel abroad, could they do so on these 
 national certificates?" 
 
 "You, being a banker, understand and can answer that question 
 best yourself." 
 
 "Yes; I merely inquired to find if you understood it. Your 
 national certificates being exchangeable throughout your nation 
 for the value they indicated upon their face for every species of 
 your wealth,they would be gladly exchanged for foreign drafts upon 
 any banking house in the world precisely as any other country's 
 medium of exchange. Of course you are aware that the money 
 of one country is not the money of any other country, and you 
 have to exchange for a foreign draft upon some banking house in 
 the country to which you are going in order to have that country's 
 money when you arrive there. You would have simply to do the 
 same if you wished to travel in foreign lands; you would have to 
 take your national certificates and receive a foreign draft." 
 
 "So then our national certificate would take us over the world?" 
 
 "Certainly. It is not the moneys of countries which^ are inter- 
 changeable; it is merely their commodities." 
 
 "I see; foreign dealers have to purchase our commodities 
 through our form of exchange the same as we do through theirs." 
 
 "Now, then, another question. A friend of mine has a little 
 cottage, which he has toiled hard and long to possess. I know 
 he dotes upon his little home. How will this nationalization of 
 wealth affect his little cottage? Will it take it from him, and be 
 placed in the general co-operation?" 
 
 "No. We take nothing from any one that they really deserve. 
 Whoever builds a home deserves it. Your friend of the little cot- 
 tage could keep his little cottage, if he so chose, and pass his days 
 therein. But this he would hardly be likely to do. We are now 
 erecting immense structures, so arranged that each family can
 
 94 NATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE CERTIFICATE. 
 
 live as exclusive as they could desire. These structures contaiQ 
 the latest devices for the preparation of food and cleansing of 
 g'arments upon a plan impossible except to our nationalization of 
 things. The food and garments are transmitted to the apart- 
 ments through elevators from the departments of preparations. 
 The families, though exclusive /if they so desire it, can enter the 
 general halls and gardens of instruction, amusement, and exercise. 
 There are private and public baths; in fact, every adjunct neces- 
 sary to the real enjoyment of life. We find no obstacle in the 
 creation of these refinements and superior accommodations, as 
 we find thousands only too glad to get an opportunity to make 
 them. The old system lield men back from doing these things; 
 the new system opens up to them full opportunity to surround 
 society with every convenience, comfort, and refinement." 
 
 "What are you going to do with the doctors?" 
 
 "In this condition there will not be much use for doctors; the 
 generation raised in nationalism will have no use for them what- 
 ever. However, until nationalism is thoroughly effected, we will 
 district the territory, and appoint physicians at the same per-hour 
 compensation as all for the number of hours decided upon by the 
 statisticians as a day, or rather what we designate as a shift; there 
 will be a doctor for each shift, so as to give a health-watch during 
 the entire twenty-four hours; they can alternate shifts so the 
 service shall be alike unto all. This shift process and alternating 
 shift will be the prevailing rule, saving that all labor, save that 
 which is extsemely necessary, shall be adjourned for the day at 
 three, p. m., enabling the people to enjoy the remainder." 
 
 "I observe that you set every one to work." 
 
 "Not set them to work, but open the opportunity. Man is a 
 natural-born worker; he cannot remain idle and be contented. If 
 men do not work, it is either because they cannot get it to do, or 
 cannot get the special branch to which they are accustomed or 
 fitted, or because they have become disheartened through unjust 
 compensation. Man is a noble animal; and will treat you nobly 
 if you BO treat him; but he is terrible if wronged." 
 
 "Now, another question, and I believe it is one that will no 
 doubt tax you to your utmost. You say you will rent my sturc- 
 tures until you build your national palaces; you then recognize 
 my proprietorship in the land?" 
 
 '■'No." 
 
 "Then where is my right." 
 
 "In the improvements. Your improvements harm no one. We 
 touch nothing that harms not. Your buildings are beneficial just 
 at present, but may become worthless in the presence of our 
 superior accommodations." 
 
 "Then land monopoly is doomed?" 
 
 "Doomed! We recognize no proprietorship in land. We can 
 nowhere find any basis of title. We find land bought and sold, 
 but that does not prove title. If you had a valuable horse, and 
 you discovered it in the possession of a person who explained to 
 you that his possession was sound and true because he had pur- 
 chased it, you would inform him that the person of whom he 
 purchased could convey no title; a million such persons could
 
 NATIONATi CO-OPEBATIVE CERTIFICATE. 95 
 
 convey no title, as they merely sold that which did not 
 belong to them. The earth belongs to man, for him and 
 his heirs. The idea of attempting to rob the millions unborn of 
 their heritage is the essence of outrage!" 
 
 "Then what are you going to do with the land monopolist?" 
 
 "Let him alone. He can enter the corporation, and become one 
 share of stock if he wishes. If he wishes our national certifi- 
 cates, he can work for the nation, and become the possessor in the 
 degree he works. For this is not the kind of thing through which 
 he can become a millionaire and neither work nor allow others to 
 work." 
 
 "What will you do with the land these individuals claim?" 
 
 "What would you do with the air around you if an individual 
 should tell you to hold your breath, — that it was his air, — 
 hold your breath until you paid him? You would breathe! 
 and that would be your answer. I am not in favor of insane 
 asylums, but there should be some kind of mild infirmaries for 
 such cases, for these unfortunates, who have gone draft on the 
 little me, and who imagine that they own the air or the earth, or 
 a part of them. Such should be bibbed, presented with a huge 
 trough of sops, and sent to play with little globes or marbles the 
 remainder of their days, — precious little dears!" 
 
 "But what will the nation do with land monopoly?" 
 
 "This: the national commissioners will examine into the per- 
 son's case, and if satisfied, will give a full certificate to any subject 
 of earthophobia. This Mr. Doublegall, who is he? Let us see 
 him; let him stand forth, — he who says he owns the earth!" 
 
 "Now, let us return to the subject of individual liberty again; 
 for it is my hobby. You do not propose to make every one work 
 until he is forty -five, and then put him on the shelf to order the 
 others around?" 
 
 "We certainly do not; we mafce no one do anything. The nation- 
 al certificate does that; for if you do not work, you do not get the 
 certificate; and no certificate, jou know, no turkey! But this 
 idea of mafce and /orce is all wrong applied to man. Give man's 
 goodness an opportunity. You need do no more." 
 
 "Yes; I would hardly like anything which said I must work up 
 to a certain age, or said I viust quit after a certain age. I am one 
 of those active fellows who deems himself a mere chicken at sixty, 
 — just getting his tail-feathers. That might be age for the old 
 system, but it is mere babyhood for the new. Why, I think I feel 
 just like starting in, and I am fifty. When human effort is treated 
 right, recognized, and appreciated, we will labor for the pure love 
 of it, and nothing can stop our helping hands." 
 
 "We restrict you in nothing except criminality; we allow you 
 full scope for your individuality, and only restrict you in infringe- 
 ment upon the scope of another." 
 
 "That is what suits me about your national tertificate, — it 
 allows individual liberty. Liberty is sweet. I would not enter 
 heaven if I had to leave my liberty behind. I am a bird of the 
 forest. True, I am environed with disaster; still, I would not 
 accept safety in a gilded cage. But if your heaven contains 
 liberty, then will I gladly enter; for there can be no heaven for
 
 96 NATIONAL CO-OPERATIVE CEKTIPICATE. 
 
 me which does not contain individual liberty." 
 
 "Yes; but you will have to establish collective liberty to get it; 
 you will have to sink your individual selfishness, restore your in- 
 dividual relationship to the whole, and return to the bosom of the 
 common family, to which you belong. Then you will find your- 
 Belf home, and 'there is no place like home.' Let us all come 
 home, — home to our father, Uncle Sam." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 TRUSTS. 
 
 When the cattle-men wish to have the bovines completely in 
 their power, when they wish to have them ready at any moment 
 for slaughter, they gradually close in around the innocently 
 browsing herd, and work the doomed creatures into what is 
 known as the corral. Now a trust is a corral, or trap, into which 
 the innocently browsing public are worked. True, the people 
 are not actually slaughtered, but when every avenue of escape 
 has been closed against them, and they are safely in, then the 
 trust proceeds, and they are shorn like sheep, plucked like 
 geese, squeezed like lemons, skinned like calves, fried out and 
 tried out of every particle get-at-able. Poor, poor browsing 
 bovines! poor sheep, geese, lemons, and calves of the trusts^ 
 why not stop this idiotic state of affairs? You sit down to your 
 supper, and a trust controls the cost of the chair upon which 
 you eit; another, the cost of the eating-tools which you are about to 
 handle; another, the cost of the ceffee in your cup; another, its 
 sugar; another, the delf; another, the table-cloth; another, the 
 salt; another, the flour in your bread; another has corraled 
 millions upon millions of acres, upon which cattle browse, — the 
 very cattle from whence must come your beef, — and so has fixed 
 the cost of the food upon your table; another has fixed the cost 
 of the water in your kettle; and from your boots to your hat, and 
 over and around your body, and thence out over your table and 
 around the room, taking in your stove and all thereon, a trust 
 has placed his net upon, surely controlled, and extracted extor- 
 tion from your rapidly flattening purse, before you could enjoy 
 these advantages of civilization. Go to your couch, and upon 
 the sheets you uneasily slumber a tithe has been levied, — levied 
 upon the blankets, pillows, bedstead, and mattress,— everywhere, 
 and over your dreams as over your wakings, this genie of extor- 
 tion, this brigand of commerce over human necessities, hap stood 
 before every avenue of existence, and cried, "Your money or your 
 life!" 
 
 O America! Why not cast off these bonds, and own yourself? 
 Why not have the nation own and control the necessities of its 
 citizens? Why not put an end to this foot-padding of commerce 
 by trusts, who, wearing the mask of co-operation, stops your stage- 
 coach of progress, and plunders its passengers upon every turn 
 along the road of life? Think to what this will come if permit- 
 ted, and come it must if the system is allowed to prevail. Think, 
 if consolidation upon consolidation of railroads continue, and 
 road continues to be swallowed by road until one vast corporate
 
 TRUSTS. 97 
 
 machine controlled by a/ew individuals prevails, — one vast net- 
 work of rails stretching from hamlet to hamlet, town to town, 
 city to city, everywhere throughout the land, north, south, east, 
 and west, taking in every mountain, every valley, crosssing every 
 streamlet, every river, spreading out over an entire population 
 laying trapped and entangled like struggling flies in its spider-web 
 of steel. Where, O where, then, will be your boasted liberty's* 
 Where, O Where, will be your courts and your con- 
 gresses, your juries and your judges? Where then will be jiour 
 freedom of speech and your license of press? Ay! where then 
 will be your individual liberty in this collective serfdom? Look 
 to it, Americans! — look to it! With a power like this, a net-work 
 like this, around your industries, commerce, science, art, religion, 
 and politics, — then struggle, struggle, struggle, if you dare! You 
 will be in the net. The spider does not allow his victim to strug- 
 gle long. Your thinkers will be driven to the wall, your patriots 
 to digrace, your genius into subserviency, your courts, congresses, 
 into automaton tools; and you, the people, you, the American 
 race, into the poor miserable caricatures of humanity, such as 
 now crawl half naked and less fed within the shadows of the fall- 
 en columns of India's ruins. Robbery brutalizes both robber 
 and victim; and to-day, throughout our land, these ^'trust" repre- 
 sentatives are debauching our sons and daughters with the ill- 
 gotten plunder of their system. 
 
 They are fostering gilded dens of infamy to contaminate our 
 women, and sustaining so-called athletic organizations for the in- 
 culcation of brutality among our men. The two extremes of 
 error meet, and the trust folk embraces the convict folk. Prize- 
 fighting is inaugurated inorder to further criminalize and weaken 
 the great body of our really virtue-loving people. Our daily 
 press teems with sickening accounts of brutal, inhuman conflicts 
 ridiculously termed ''the manly art of self-defense," — as though 
 brutal conflict could be in any degree manly, — until this beastly 
 art of self-defense is so held up before the minds of our dear boys 
 that everywhere the little victims of these villianous teachings 
 are looking forward to brutism instead of manism. The morality 
 of a community once debauched falls an easy prey to slavery; for 
 only can he or she dream or battle for liberty whose mind and 
 whose life is pure. To debauch the minds of the community, 
 therefore, is the aim of the trusts, in order to crush out the spark 
 &f virtue, which, if once aroused, abolishes the scheme of these 
 prize-fighting prostitution manufacturers, and our trust-ridden 
 and our vice debauched land will become free. In touching upon 
 these things, I know the power I have to face; but from it I turn 
 to my country, to the reader who reads this, — you, and your 
 name is "legion,"— you must support this, for in doing so, you 
 support yourself. The opposition is a power, but nothing to your 
 power. Spread these truths over the land, and they shall prove 
 more terrible to wrong than an army with banners. Will you, 
 reader do it? "Yes." 
 
 Note. — Id dealing with this qaestion of trusts, wo do not refer to personal- 
 ities, or condemn individually their personal factors ; for our individuad na-
 
 98 TELEGRAPH MONOPLY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY-. 
 
 The telegraph lines of the nation are to it what the nerves are 
 to the body. It is a piece of crude absurdity for these lines, or 
 public nerves, to be controlled by different individuals for differ- 
 ent objects from different parts of the country, instead of being 
 controlled by one general head, one general brain, and for one 
 single interest, — the nation. 
 
 Being the nerves of the nation, they should belong to it col- 
 lectively, and be controlled and directed from its central execu- 
 tive station at Washington. As these lines are controlled and di- 
 rected at present, our nation resembles the condition of a man 
 whose nerves are not under his brain control; but under the con- 
 trol, as it were, of different conflicting portions of his anatomy, 
 converging and crossing in all directions; and instead of convey- 
 ing the necessary intelligence from the center to the parts of the 
 structure, conveying confused controls from the different parts 
 themselves, producing spasmodic, exhaustive action, convulsing 
 and racking his frame with movements purposeless and contrary 
 to his own volition, — a pandemonium of brain forces scattered 
 through a cataleptic-racked*body. This is the present economy 
 of our telegraphic system. And if it were to be continued, cata- 
 lepsy, private as well as public, would inevitably end the drama 
 of this national man, whose feet, legs, body, arms, and hands are 
 beyond the control of his head, — in fact, who is out of his head. 
 When the industrial departments of American society are govern- 
 mental, as they should be, when transportation and distribution 
 are governmental, as they should be, then Washington will be the 
 central point of general direction of the circumferential depart- 
 ments of construction, and reports from these extremities will all 
 converge and center there, producing the general knowledge nec- 
 essary at headquarters to the working, accomplishment, need and 
 all other information necessary to a united, relational working of 
 the entire structure; then the telegraph, being nationalized, will 
 occupy and serve its national function of conveying, as do the 
 nerves of the body, the intelligences between the executive and 
 
 tares, iaclinations, and thonghts are irresistibly shaped and molded, and we 
 made to act ami embody the ideas of that portion of society into which we 
 are cast, and which we therefore represent, whether high, mediary, orlow; 
 and 1 would as soon confide the truths of this work to the individuals of one 
 class as to the individuals of another; and I expect to meet and to find as 
 much co-operation and as much antagonism from the members of one section 
 as from another. Eveyrwhere in all directions we find the human and the 
 ANIMAL, and neither rich nor poor having a franchise upon_ virtue ; but 
 throughout the entire body politic we find virtue, like gold in our rocks, 
 scattered here and there in seams, and often gleaming forth in the least ex- 
 pected places,— ay, and true pure gold at that. I therefore direct thought 
 only to the system; we are all society; we are all responsible when we con- 
 template ideas, not it or they. We should be the single and only trust, all 
 stockholders, each and every member of this greatnational family of ours in 
 which we are all brothers and sisters. Trusts and their individuals' individ- 
 ual actions are the outcome of the present condition, not the fault 
 OF their proprietors The dying saint, as individuals cruelly stoned him 
 nnto death, feeling and knowing the high truth underlying this, ere hedied ex- 
 claimed: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Acts vii. 60.
 
 TELEGRAPH MONOPOLY. J'J 
 
 productive parts of the social structure; then Uncle 8aiu will 
 cease to have the epilepsy, and find himself moving with an un- 
 derstanding and purpose. 
 
 Under government telegraphy we would have our messages at 
 cost price, as we now do our government mail. The operators 
 would have shorter shifts and better compensation, and telegraphy 
 would ascend immeasurably as an important adjuct of civiliza- 
 tion. Being governmental, one of the powerful factors influenc- 
 ing legislation would then be removed from existance; a vast vor- 
 tex through which flows our public wealth into private coffers 
 would be removed from power, to no longer corrupt our public 
 agents, control elections, and gerrymander returns. The present 
 vast accumulations of millions by telegraph proprietors have all 
 been collected through excessive rates to their patrons. If these 
 rates had been based upon actual cost, the millions which have 
 been thus made would have remained in the posession of the peo- 
 ple. Every telegraph operator shotild be an advocate of the 
 governvieiit telegraph system proposed /te?'eui,because the govern- 
 ment would increase the service manifold, add improved features 
 and more systemized working. This would increase the demand, 
 and open up broader opportunity to the operators, not to men- 
 tion better pay and less hours. Every A merican who loves the 
 future greatness of America should work to his end, — should 
 work for national telegraphy. Under national control, innumera- 
 ble improvements now held in abeyance would be added features, 
 — features now suppressed by the unprogressive "dollar." Every 
 electrician who loves his or her science should lend their enthu- 
 siasm to this issue. Come, Americans! let us Americanize our 
 lightning. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 NEWS MONOPOLY. 
 
 For the individuals who run the press as it is, we have no word 
 of condemnation. They and their press are what the system has 
 made them. In fact, even as it is, we have frequently met with 
 splendid articles in advocacy of collective jjroprietorship published 
 by leading journals, plainly indicating that the writers of the 
 articles stand ready and willing to write for popular control of 
 public necessities whenever the people themselves are ready to 
 patronize the advocacy of their own interests; again plainly indi- 
 cating that the education of the masses up to a clear understand- 
 ing of the idea is all that is necessary in the premises, and not 
 the abuse of individual press proprietors. 
 
 Under the present system of newspaper monopoly, preserved 
 through vast fortunes invested, there can be no independant press 
 in the populous metropolitan centers. An independant newspaper 
 is totally out of the question. True, there may be a large daily 
 in a large city, independent, as far as its individual proprietor is 
 concerned, to a certain limited extent; but the extent of its inde- 
 pendence, even so, is limited indeed, considering the wealthy 
 patronage and corporation advertisements, all of which force the 
 paper in the persuance of these private interests, in the advocacy
 
 100 NEWS MONOPOLY. 
 
 of a line of duty detrimental to the public good. 
 
 In examining into the condition of the press, we remember 
 journal after journal which appeared and disappeared, — journals 
 which entered upon the arena of metropolitan journalism with 
 every augur of success, with seemingly a sufficiency of backing 
 every way discernible, and yet which, after a few brief editions, 
 went down into the bottomless pit of newspaper failures. People 
 who believed in their doctrines and principles, — people who were 
 heart and soul in every idea advocated in their colums, and who 
 were almost fanatical devotees to these ideas, — strange to say, when 
 it came to subscribing for such papers, turned strangely around 
 and subscribed for the blanket sheets of those whom they termed 
 and deemed "the enemy.". Now why was this? Why did they 
 not support the papers of their own ideas, and why thus support 
 the papers of the other side? The reason is simply this: they 
 subscribe for the papers whose editorial principles they detested 
 because such papers contained the telegraphic news of the world 
 and of the country. They must have a viewspaper. The journals 
 of their own ideas were not, and could not be, this. Now why? 
 Because of our individual telegraphic monopoly. The Associated 
 Press dispatches are not available to reformatory journals. Only 
 concerns of immense corporate and individual wealth figuring 
 up into the millions can tap the wires of information and publish 
 its contents to the millions. 
 
 So the reformatory, enterprising press of popular ideas is every- 
 where handicapped at the outset, and doomed to struggle along 
 with few subscribers, and yet fewer advertisers; for business will 
 not advertise where people do not subscribe. And thus it is, no 
 telegraphic news, no subscribers, no subscribers, no advertisers; no 
 advertisers, no reform metropolitan journal; and no reform metro- 
 politan journal, no reform. 
 
 The remedy, and the only remedy, for this state of affairs, 
 whereby this monopoly of news would be annihilated, whereby 
 the poorest paper in the land would receive telegraphic dispatches 
 at the same cost precisely as the richest, whereby the sources of 
 of information would be open to every journal in the land alike, 
 and closed to none, whereby the news would be delivered at cost 
 price, and so become available to the slimmest editorial purse, lies 
 in government telegraphy! Ay, my countrymen, if you would 
 have a free press, you must have a free telegraph system, run by 
 the country, run for the people at cost price, and open to each and 
 all. If you had this, then your struggling reform paper would 
 come out with the daily telegrams in the morning, and your re- 
 form thinker would find his reform journal a ?ietyspaper as well 
 as a reform journal. Then your reformer would patronize his own 
 ideas, advertisers advertise, and our American cities would soon 
 have the freest and most independent press ever published for a 
 free and independent people. 
 
 There is no more powerful engine for good or evil in all the 
 world than the great metropolitan press. If it were only for this 
 one truth alone, if it were only for the freedom of the press from 
 its present monopoly of news through individual wealth, and con- 
 sequent crushing out of advance thought journals, — if it were only
 
 NEWS MONOPOLY. 101 
 
 for this, we repeat, alone, we should have agovernment control of 
 telegraphs ; we should have the infornation of the world con- 
 trolled by the people. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 TRANSPORTAION MONOPOLY. 
 
 As THE telegraph lines are the nerves of the republic, bo 
 the railroad lines are the steel sinews moving its substance; the 
 former for the purposes of conveying intelligence, the latter 
 for the purpose of moving its substance and the people who are 
 the being of the republic. That these two functions are vitally 
 public in their nature for the working of the entire being, and in 
 no vaanneT private, should force its understanding into the dull- 
 est perception. That the telegraph lines or nerves should be 
 controlled by the entire body and managed from one central point 
 of the general intelligence; that the railroads, or national sinews 
 of steel, are also vitally public in their nature for the working of 
 the entire being, and in no manner private; that they should 
 also be controlled by the entire being and managed from one 
 central point of the general intelligence, as the telegraphs, — is 
 also apparent, if the being is ever to move according to rational 
 concert or action, wherein all parts are directed and move from 
 one general identity, yielding the full power and full accomplish- 
 ment of that power, viz, itself, — the being, — the whole. Anybody 
 whose parts act differently from this, whose parts act in antag- 
 onism to its parts act in antagonism to its whole, their real self, 
 such body must of itself go to pieces, dissipate, and finally cease 
 its unity, and its parts also cease their unity, as they merely re- 
 ceive their life from the collective being, which they have thus 
 failed to recognize, strengthen, and assist. This is the analysis of 
 the fall of empires, and the death of nations and their peoples. 
 
 A nation, therefore, should be patterned in its economy after 
 the natural arrangement of man's interior organization. Its sev- 
 eral departments should be thusorganized, and its basis of action 
 be the complete development of each and every portion of itself 
 into a perfect harmony for the good of the whole, in which the 
 good of the parts can only find existence. 
 
 Novv, this must not be mistaken for a simile, metaphor, allegory 
 nor illustration; for it is the thing itself; for man in his concrete 
 or society, is merely himself again in the higher form. 
 
 As the telegraphs are the nerves, and the railroads the sinews 
 of motion, so is money the blood of the nation, and performs for 
 it precsiely the same duty as the blood performs in the individ- 
 ual; and thus, being also vitally generic in its nature for the op- 
 eration of the e^i^zVe being, and in no manner private, it should 
 also be controlled by the entire being, and managed from one 
 central point of the general intelligence, as the telegraphs and 
 railroads. 
 
 Thus the central or governmental point is formed from the col- 
 lective wisdom and love of the being, and animated for its gen- 
 eral good. Thus moved for that end, and for the accomplisment 
 of this, it receives instructions from the parts, and sends instruc-
 
 102 TRANSPORTATION MONOPOLY. 
 
 tioDS from its centralized intelligence through its telegraphs 
 (nerves). These instructions, thus received and thus transmitted 
 are for the purpose of directing the railroads (sinews) in their 
 movements of the body. Thus you have the anatomy of man and 
 his government the same. 
 
 Thus the national telegraphs would direct the movements, and 
 railroads perform the movements, of the general substance of the 
 nation throughout itself to each and every part, conveying intel- 
 ligence and moving substance accordingly everywhere. Thus 
 they would be organized upon the basis of their natural func- 
 tions and for their natural designs. And thus man would make 
 his society as nature has made him the man. Society, pattern 
 thyself by nature. In a nation thus patterned after nature, even 
 as its telegraphs (nerves) transmit instructions, and its railroads 
 (sinews) give motion to its substance, so would its money (na- 
 tional blood) apportion unto each part the exact portion of wealth 
 which that part's individual action called for. Thus the exact 
 degree of effort it put forth for the whole would be returned to it 
 in whatever species of wealth it desired, through the just mea- 
 surement of every portion's effort by this apportional principle of 
 just exchange. 
 
 The money, then, of such a nation so constructed upon the 
 economy of nature would apportion the substance of the nation 
 unto the many parts of itself as the blood of man apportions unto 
 his being his substances; and even as the limb which performs 
 the most effort for the man receives the most sustenance in man, 
 so the part which performed the most effort for this collective 
 society would receive the most sustenance from the collective 
 society; not as it is now, they who perform the least receiving the 
 most, and they who perform the most receiving the least. This 
 would be just apportionment. And the just need not be afraid 
 of justice. Even justice to the bad is a real friend, — an angel, 
 though in disguise. Nor would this work inequality, in the rais- 
 ing up of those who demonstrated through their efforts for the 
 whole that they loved society the best. Love would be elevated 
 and strengthened, instead of hate, as it is now. Nor need any 
 imagine that the weak would go to the wall; for never does love, 
 never does justice, crush the weak; for where these two reign, 
 justice sinks itself in love, and love, knowing no possessions of her 
 own, yields all and ever the most to the weakest, making the 
 weak strong and the strong just. Thus a society so constituted 
 would soon have no weak, but would rapidly unfold a perfect ex- 
 pression of its collective greatness in every individualism of its 
 harmonious circle. 
 
 The same principles being applied to railroads would develop 
 extraordinary results. The immense revenues now flowing from 
 the general public into private reservoirs, impoverishing the 
 people, and not benefiting whatever the individuals who are the 
 reservoirs, but only injuring them, — drawing out tbeir weaker 
 points of character and dwarfing their nobler natures, — would be 
 ended. 
 
 Railroads being run for the nation, and not for profit we would 
 run them, therefore, on the cost principle, and fares and freights
 
 TRANSPORTATION MONOPOLY. 103 
 
 would be regulated not to leave immense margins over the 
 wages and material outlay, nor the conventions, legislatures. 
 Congress, Senates, newspapers, courts, juries, and attorneys fix- 
 ing outlay, but simply the cost of the labor outlay only,— the le- 
 gitimate outley for building, equipping, and running the road. 
 When through nationalization this outlay became the basis of 
 freights and fares, travel and transportation would be within the 
 reach of all; for the freighter and farer would not have added 
 upon hie cost of legitimate charges interest upon bonds, corrup- 
 tion or judicial expenses, press and political purchasing, private- 
 service funds, and immense dividends added thereto upon this 
 unnatural pyramid of these unnatural expenses of this most un- 
 natural system of transportation. 
 
 Again, with railroads as in the nationalization of every public 
 insHtution, all this enormous pyramid of exaction would remain 
 in the pockets of the public, and not flow into the hands of the 
 lew; nor would you find a community, as you find ours to-day, 
 with the labor and trade of the people representing millions in 
 deeds, bonds, mortgages, bills of sale, credit, farms, houses, mater- 
 ials, clothing, and food,— yes, representing, and speaking, and 
 writing, and calling for, and demanding millions upon millions, 
 and scarcely a dollar within sight, sound, or travel, — with a five- 
 cent piece so very, veiy scarce that a darky cannot buy a water- 
 melon in July. Oh, idiotic civilization, why not become civilized? 
 Why not recognize thyself, — the welfare of thy collectivity? 
 
 Behold the thoroughfares of thy great cities; along them, on 
 each side, rent and interest racked shop-keepers. They are each 
 made to pay dear for the use of their premises; yet before their 
 very eyes ply the busy street-cars, raking in thousands upon 
 thousands of dollars from the general circulation, — and using 
 collective property to do it, — and each day those five-cent pieces 
 are exchanged for the public's "twenties," — and each day the 
 public's five-cent pieces are again raked in. 
 
 And so the corporation drag-net continues its unending absorp- 
 tion of the circulating medium, and so the amount of the pub- 
 lic's money is continually kept at zero, and the unpatronized 
 shop-keepers wonder at the dullness, and marvel why people do 
 not buy. Some attribute the dullness to the elections, some to 
 the Fourth of July, some to the crops, some to the weather, and 
 some to the moon. Scarcely any attribute it to the simple, real 
 cause: that the public have no money. 
 
 If these street-car private corporations, using public property 
 for private interest, were to be abolished, and in their place the 
 municipality, stepping in the direction of nationalism, were to own 
 and run these roads, a car absorbing fifty dollars per day out of 
 circulation would be a thing of the past, and not one car would 
 absorb one single cent from circulation, and could be run better 
 and cheaper than ever before. The cars could be run at cost 
 price, and the fares reduced to the amount necessary to pay a 
 good compensation to the employees, whose hours could be re- 
 duced by increasing the number of shifts, and thus reducing the 
 time of these overworked men to the very lowest number of 
 hours allowable at the moment. Thus the public would have
 
 104 TRANSPORTATION MONOPOLY. 
 
 cheap fares, and the employees better pay and hours, and the 
 shop-keepers receive the benefit of the public's loose change, 
 which would flow to their stores in the purchasing of wares. Let 
 the shop-keepers and the employees we have mentioned lend 
 their every aid to bring into fruition this condition of affairs by 
 spreading these truths through the masses. But the street-cars 
 are not the only means of the impoverishment of the multitude 
 by drag-netting the money out of circulation. Private illumina- 
 tion companies, and in most municipalities private water com- 
 panies, perform the same function of paralyzing municipal busi- 
 ness; and when we examine a community, and perceive the vast 
 sums being daily extracted from circulation by these private 
 controls and managements of public necessities, it is really a 
 wonder that there is money enough remaining at any time in 
 circulation to perform the necessary purchasing and business 
 transactions of the people. 
 
 If all light, water, and car departments of our cities were pub- 
 lic properties, as their nature and their urgency demand they 
 should be, and were run upon the cost principle, extracting no 
 more than their real expenses demanded, the business of every 
 city so protected would advance out of this unending and general 
 stagnation, and the idea of nationalism demonstrated to such 
 degree as to be carried onward and upward. 
 
 But if this is so in regard to municipal aflfaire, how much more 
 so does it apply to the gigantic land, water, oil, metal, telegraph, 
 railroad, money, and other vast continental private controls of the 
 country's necessities. In fact, the entire country is in a rat-trap, 
 — caught fast in the toils of those who claim to own its necessities. 
 The way out of this rat-trap is the way we got in. We, the peo- 
 ple, got in through entering the door of private control. We must 
 pass right back from this private control, back to our natural col- 
 lective rights. The way out is easy. All we have got to do is to 
 walk out; for nothing can stop us if we choose to walk out; and 
 in a little while, by the signs on the moon, I am satisfied we will 
 run out. 
 
 Run out — from allowing a few individuals to run railroads, 
 telegraph, and the money of sixty millions of individuals. Run 
 out — from allowing the earnings of sixty millions of individuals 
 to go into the pockets of sixty individuals. Run out — from allow- 
 ing less than sixty individuals to run the President, Congress, 
 Senate, conventions, parties, literature, land, water, oil, gas, 
 electricity, railroads, telegraphs, ships, manufacturing, trade, 
 commerce, banks, mines, and the entire dictionary of nouns of 
 sixty millions of people. 
 
 I should think any people who had the sense of a microbe 
 would run out from such a senseless ape-trap as this, — run — no, 
 jump — out of it ! 
 
 As soon as the people do jump from under it, or run, or walk, 
 or meander, or get from under it by any possible process, they 
 will behold an era not equaled by the fancied future of the up- 
 turned eyeballs of the heaven-over-there-ist; they will behold 
 the full richness and splendor of mother Nature, evolved by the 
 concerted action of a united people, showered upon each and
 
 TRANSPORTATION MONOPOLY. 105 
 
 every child of the people; they will behold such a scene, such a 
 civilized civilization, that there will be little use for "the beauti- 
 ful, the beautiful river." Our paradise-brokers' occupation will 
 be gone. 
 
 Dear reader, let us commune further upon this theme. 
 
 "Can we build national railroads with a system of national 
 finance?" 
 
 "It is the only process whereby you can build a national rail- 
 road. Mexico endeavored to build a national railroad with indiv- 
 idual finance. The result was, she built a portion of the road, 
 which is now heavily bonded to the foreign crpitalists, who fur- 
 nished their individual capital for its construction. The fares 
 and freights are not, therefore, based upon cost, but have to 
 include a heavy interest on these individuals' bonds, whose 
 holders, therefore, actually receive an immense revenue from this 
 national road of Mexico, without trouble or cost to themselves, 
 while at the same time the principal of the debt remains, tbe 
 amount of which principal they will therefore draw over and over 
 again, without decreasing a cent of the original debt; thus, in 
 fact, virtually oivning the road, which road, although termed 
 national, is national, therefore, only in name. 
 
 "To build a national road, let your treasury issue national cer- 
 tificates for time and value received in the construction of the 
 road, and issue them in recognition or vouchment to all who fur- 
 nish such time and material. Then let the treasury again re- 
 ceive back these certificates for freights and fares along the rail- 
 road as it extends its lines. 
 
 "A dollar's worth of freights or a dollar's worth of fares is equal 
 to a dollar's worth of anything, gold, silver, lead, or any other 
 commodity, and would be readily received anywhere; and cer- 
 tainly so, if made receivable by the government for government 
 dues of any kind, and also made legal tender. These certificates 
 in a brief period would soon be received back into the treasury 
 in payment by individuals for freights and fares, and thus the 
 national railroad would in a short time earn and liquidate itself, 
 without the borrowing of a single pound of gold, lead, silver, tin, 
 nickel, or any other species of any individual's metal. 
 
 "Thus you would build a railroad national in deed as well as 
 name, and you would not attempt, as Mexico has attemped, viz, 
 to build a house with another man's bricks, upon another man's 
 land, and then, having put a sign upon it, reading, 'This is my 
 house,' proceed to pay him rent regularly every month for living 
 in what you fondly imagine to be your own house, but what he 
 fondly realizes to be his." 
 
 "Would you destroy these national certificates issued for build- 
 ing the road after they had been received back by the government 
 for freights and fares?" 
 
 "That would be immaterial. You could, if you wished to de- 
 stroy a useful instrument which had built a railroad for you; but 
 if you did not so wish, you could again issue them for the con- 
 struction of other public necessities or institutions, and so keep 
 them being issued out for labor and material, and returned back 
 to the treasury in receipt for services rendered by these institu-
 
 106 TRANSPORTATION MONOPOLY. 
 
 tions to individuals. You would then have in these national cer- 
 tificates a perfect national currency, upon whose current would 
 flow, uninterrupted and unimpeded, the entire wealth of the na- 
 tion, natural and automatic." 
 "Would this also apply to national telegraphs?" 
 "Whatever is truth applies to the whole. Truth is universality. 
 The national certificate of labor is truth,and applies to every part 
 of the nation, — builds, runs, and rules everywhere under civiliza- 
 tion civilized, or nationalization." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 ELECTRICITY. 
 
 Electricity, this great agent of mind, this mightiest of serv- 
 ants, this genie of a greater Aladdin's lamp, is about supplying 
 the race with its inexhaustible force. Genius stands already at 
 her fabled cave of mystery and liberates this long unknown and un- 
 recognized power. 
 
 Illumination, transportation, telegraphy, photography, surgery, 
 horticulture, agriculture, metallurgy, and manufacture throb, 
 pulsate, gleam, and glow in this marvelous current of existece. 
 
 Electric science with every step of her discoveries dissipates our 
 distances and lessens our hallucination of time, drawing men 
 closer and closer in the physical, and suggesting affinitization 
 in the spiritual. Where ponderous, ear-rending mechanism 
 pounded the rocks to release the metal, she, with her irresistible 
 yet unseen current instantaneously separates the ore. Where the 
 smut-begrimed engineer seized the heavy throttle, she cleanly 
 and but softly touches a tiny button, and the heavy steed of seel 
 receives its life, not from a smoking, hissing, fussing steam, but 
 from a noiseless, silent energy. And yet this strange power, that 
 has taken its place at the head of all known forces, which, without 
 fuel or expense, flies with its burden swifter than thebird'sflight; 
 this last and greatest progeny of thought; this seventh daughter 
 of science, which dips her wand down into the impossible and 
 presents miracles until miracles become common, will yet outstrip 
 her past achievements. Your ponderous engines will fade away, 
 un necessitated by her disintegration and reaflfinitizations. Your 
 barren rocks will change into most precious things; agricluture 
 shall cease, — for the earth shall blossom at her touch; manufacture 
 she will render automatic; and your webs she will shuttle in the 
 silent loom of her miseries, unwet by the tears of an imprisoned 
 childhood, unmoistened by the sweat of a dungeoned man! 
 Heaven bless her footsteps! She comes like a friend to relieve 
 us from pain, — latest born handmaid of liberty! 
 
 And to think, O brothers and sisters, that this power bound- 
 less as the depths, and universal as heaven's own love, to relieve 
 the oppressed of earth, — that it, too, is to be the tool of flat-fore- 
 headed iudidivualism, — to think that indidivualism proposes to 
 bottle it up in illumination, telegraphy, transportation, and every 
 other expression of itself, for indidivual profit, and sell it out as it 
 once sold man upon the block until the march of nation's battal- 
 ions cried, "Stop!"
 
 ELECTRICITY. 107 
 
 And so shall it be with electrcity. We shall yet place it above 
 the plane of "profit," high upon the plane of justice, where it 
 shall not be for the egotistical enrichment and glory of the few, but 
 for the welfare of the nation's millions. For in and of itself its 
 character is so superlatively grand in process and expression that 
 it is of the universal, and comes upon the theater of action simul- 
 taneous with nationalistic ideas, and nationalism shall yet adminis- 
 ter upon this most national of the sciences and extend the benefits 
 of its applications and products to the prorietorship of all and the 
 exclusion of none. 
 
 The great public inititutions to which this power is now applied 
 are national in every feature, are collective in every use and nat- 
 ure, and even as they stand to-day could be placed in the hands 
 of a government reciever or controller and suffer not the slightest 
 jar in the machinery or economy of their present arrangement. 
 They would run under government control more smoothly than 
 under indidividual, and receive a greater sustenance through our 
 unitized wealth than they now receive from fragmentary inliuence. 
 
 And this must be, if liberty of thought and limb, individual 
 liberty, or collective liberty, is to longer prevail. For if profit, with 
 its single-visioned prayer, is to be allowed to bend even the light- 
 nings to its lust, it will then wield a wepon such as tyrant never 
 scourged humanity with before, and such as humanity, after hav- 
 ing once allowed it to control, will find itself unable to resist, and 
 history will again repeat the story of a people lost upon the shores 
 of a sea, and existence again have to wait until love brings forth 
 another race, and cries unto wisdom, "Try again." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 OUR COIiLECTIVE MAIL, SERVICE. 
 
 The national mail service of the United States is a standing 
 object-lesson proving the utility, practicability, and undeniable 
 common sense of nationalism. The mail service of our country 
 glides along with as much smoothness and as little friction — yes, 
 less — than the very best private concern in the land. Its ramifi- 
 cations are as numerous as are the railroads and the telegraghs, 
 as intricate and as vast in proportion as any private institution, 
 and there is not one single feature of its management but would 
 apply, and could be applied, to every other necessity of the 
 people. 
 
 The charge that the collective management of collective neces- 
 sities is impracticable, Utopian, or, far-fetched is conclusively 
 answered in this living demonstration of the collective mail ser- 
 vice before us. 
 
 Through this pioneer department of nationalism, our mail is 
 served at cost price, and the entire cost of the department is, or 
 should be, the cost of its service to the people; and our mail 
 should be charged for at the exact outlay attending its distribu- 
 tion, making the entire institution self-supporting, and self-operat- 
 ive, devoid of taxation or tax collector. It is no fault of the de- 
 partment if it is not thus run, but the fault of not comprehending 
 the advantages of the situation.
 
 108 OUR COLLECTIVE MAIL SERVICE. 
 
 Through this collective distribution, not only are we protected 
 from individual extortions, as we find in private controls, but 
 every improvement, every cheapening of outlay, every advantage 
 adopted, immediately cheapens the cost to the people, who share 
 in its every advantage. This is not the case in regard to private 
 controls. In such, the cheapening and the improvements in but 
 very meager degree are partaken of by the public, and but 
 mainly go to swell up the pediculous possessions of those already 
 ridiculoualy rich. 
 
 And I put the question to labor: Does not the liberal hours 
 and pay of the American government in its different branches to 
 its numerous attachees and employees tend, through the laws of 
 sympathy, to liberalize to a considerable degree the hours and 
 the wages in private employment, — example being a powerful 
 thing in and of itself alone? And again: Would not the reverse 
 equally hold as true, were the postal and other institutions now 
 national, private in their control and interest? Would not this 
 have a direct tendency to reverse the present situation, and help 
 to lengthen hours and shorten pay of thousands upon thousands 
 of other toilers? 
 
 No wonder that we hear so much of office-seeking. I do not 
 refer to the political parasites upon public institutions, who 
 draw pay and render no duty, but I refer to the innumerable 
 host of public employees who earn their compensation, and who 
 earn it well, and their name is legion. No wonder, I repeat, is it 
 that office-seeking is almost a mania with our people. Why is it 
 BO? What hidden charm surrounds the public service? Why do 
 you see men surrender lucrative business and fairly good occu- 
 pations to struggle for the few, comparatively speaking, positions 
 or places under our government? The reason is, that it is better, 
 higher, nobler, easier, and more profitable to work for the whole 
 than for a part, just as it is better to work for a corporation or 
 association of persons than it is to work for one single employer. 
 Thus it is that generally we find labor preferring corporation to 
 private employment, and government to corporation, because 
 the greater the employer the better the condition of the em- 
 ployed. 
 
 This instinct of the people to prefer government employment 
 will be, sooner or later, gratified; for there shall yet be a day when 
 each and every person will think and labor only for the whole, 
 and there will be no private or personal employment in all the 
 land, — when every necessity will be national in its character and 
 control, and we will have a nation, not of private interests, but for 
 the whole people, by the whole people. The idea of the collective 
 management of the post-office is the thin point of the collective 
 wedge, and Uncle Sam will soon drive the wedge clean home into 
 every other public necessity.
 
 109 HOW SHALL WE BECOME NATIONALIZEOy 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 HOW SHALL WE BECOME NATIONALIZED? 
 
 The first thing is, the education of the people up to the under- 
 standing of the principle and the truths of co-operation, — the un- 
 derstanding of the whole, the comprehension of the function of 
 the parts, and the function of the parts correlated as one; that 
 the function of the parts is to produce; of the whole, to direct. 
 When they, the people, discern that they are not going to be hurt, 
 but benefited, when </iei/ perceive that </ie?/ are going to get jus- 
 tice, then their mind opens to the search of ways and means to 
 accomplish the idea. Now then, for this education we have the 
 public press, we have literature, and public meetings; and for the 
 ways and means of putting nationalization into practice, we have 
 the public ballot. 
 
 We need to determine the first point of attack upon the enemy's 
 works. Any general would of course, determine a certain point 
 yet, nevertheless, he would be open to change that point of attack 
 if circumstances altered the case. The individual control of gold 
 and silver to-day is the center of the enemy, because gold and 
 silver control the life-blood, or the exchange principle, of the 
 nation. Anything in that direction, therefore, meets with the 
 most vehement individual defense, supported by an innumerable 
 soldiery of ignorant infatuitists, who suffer, yet who would die for 
 what they suffer for. Therefore let us move on some more popu- 
 lar point of action. The railroads and telegraph systems are the 
 first great points upon which we must concentrate our full 
 strength. They must be nationalized. 
 
 The features common to transportation and the administration 
 of its departments naturally quicken public understanding; the 
 plain and simple character of their vast operations ever presents 
 a public study, — and even so with telegraphy as with transporta- 
 tion. Let us send our increasing legions there. Let our apostles 
 harp and harp on the nationalization of railroads and telegraphs; 
 let us elect our agents to the councils of the nation, constituted 
 as it is to advocate and introduce measures therefor. Let us re- 
 veal to the many the vast openings for labor in the national in- 
 auguration of national trunk lines from ocean to ocean, — the en- 
 gagement of engineers, the employment of surveyors, the setting 
 to work of every idle man at living ratea building the road. Let 
 us enlist commercial communities in the general advantage con- 
 sequent on the increased employment of labor, and the increased 
 advantage to their several cities. 
 
 Let the first national road be as superior to anything of the old- 
 fashoned, little, present individual instiutions as the whole is to 
 the part. We ought to have a national railroad from New York 
 to San Francisco, taking freights and fares at cost price, with the 
 wealth of the road running into the pockets of those who employ 
 the road and those who perform the labor on the road, and not as 
 it is now, running into individual bank accounts. Apply the 
 same tactics to the telegraphs. Truth must prevail. The people 
 will soon perceive the idea; the merchant as well as the machanic 
 the capitalist as well as the rest; for all are at heart in favor of
 
 110 HOW SHALL, WE BECOME NATIONALIZED? 
 
 justice if they can be brought to see it. 
 
 We must not propose to buy any existing individual road. We 
 must propose to set the idle millions to work building a superior 
 road of their own. We will get one or two agents elected; we so 
 far will have done nothing as yet, but merely started the ball. 
 Soon we will get two, three, and scores of our agents. We must 
 not abuse them if they are unable to do what they cannot. We 
 will keep on, and as the multitude awaken to the truth, lo, we 
 shall have Congress! In the meantime, let the present post-office 
 and other public employees be inoculated with our elixir of 
 national life. They are now undergoing an object-lesson and are 
 ready to receive the light. In the mean time, vote and advocate 
 for the publicizing of education to its fulness, and every public 
 convenience. Stand against any more use of our public thorough- 
 fares for private prolit. Stand against any re-grant of railroad.or 
 illumination, or water, or any other franchise, to private individu- 
 als. Stand against these bogus so-called national banks who have 
 stolen the livery of heaven to serve individualism with. Demand 
 that the nation shall nationalize money. Reveal to the citizen 
 that sixty millions of people with their total wealth is better and 
 safter to make a deposit with than an individual with a carpet- 
 bag, a sheet of paper, a pen, and a desk. Open the bank of Uncle 
 Sam, wherein you can transact business one day and not the next 
 day find your banker in Canada. Uncle Sam stays and is always 
 at home; is the oldest, the most reliable, and the wealthiest citi- 
 zen, and the only person we should bank with. 
 
 When we have nationalized the railroads and the telegraphs, 
 we will have also nationalized our finance; for you cannot build 
 a public institution on borrowed or private capital. You can 
 build the institution, but you will find that the private capital 
 with which it was built has a death-grip upon it; that you are 
 no better off than renting a private structure; that you have 
 changed rent into interest, and imagine yourself free; that you 
 have painted your house a new color, changed its number, and 
 imagine that you have moved. No; to build a building of your 
 own, you must build it with and out of your own material. For 
 Uncle Sam to build his own railroads and his own telegraphs, he 
 will have to build them with his own money; will have to build 
 these national institutions with the national certificate issued for 
 labor and material, and received back again in freights, fares, 
 and telegraph rates. 
 
 Thus when we have national railroads and telegraphs we will 
 have the national certificate and the national bank. The remain- 
 der will be down-hill running; the first, up-grade. The remain- 
 der will reveal individualism on the stampede. All water com- 
 panies, light companies, and such will circle into the vortex. 
 Street cars will become, first, municipal, then national. The 
 grain of the country, as the railroads are nationalized, will be 
 handled and warehoused in the national warehouses. Nationalism 
 will then have behind it a force of two million of the best-paid, best- 
 fed, best-clad, best-housed, and best-evoluted soldiery the sun 
 ever looked and smiled upon. The nationalization of the rail- 
 roads, the telegraphs, and the banks will give us this army. And
 
 HOW SHALL WE BECOME NATIONALIZED? Ill 
 
 nothing can withstand a well paid, fed, clad, and treated Boldiery, 
 with superior intelligence in their heads and superior love in 
 their hearts. There is nothing in the world that can resist such 
 an army to-day. With this grand national guard we would per- 
 form the last coups d'etat, and the land, and the air, and the 
 light would be declared the republic's. Then up would go your 
 palaces, and into those palaces would enter my country's home- 
 less, HOUSELESS RACE. 
 
 Thus we may skirmish and peter around municipal and other 
 divisions and outposts of the enemy, but the plan of our attack 
 must be to set the people to work, — thus secure an army of the 
 national employed, and proceed upon the enemy's works. The 
 building of national railroads will benefit the individual; the 
 building of national telegraphs will benefit the individual; the 
 establishing of the national bank will benefit the individual. 
 Reveal these benefits to these individuals, and that forms your 
 recruiting policy. Individual benefit will soon draw up an 
 organized army before you. Hammer on the benefit of these 
 special branches of public service; and the more you hammer on 
 them the defter you will become, until, as the smithy at his glow- 
 ing forge, amid the flying sparks of thought your goodly sledge of 
 truth will shape the ready and yielding material before you. 
 Gird up thy loins, and go forth! 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 
 
 The ego in its primal consciousness recognizes, can but recog- 
 nize, naught save its "ego,"— "I am,"— its own existence. As it 
 moves up from that consciousness it becomes conscious of the 
 limited circle or environments around it. The final motive source 
 of its life is attraction. In electricity this attraction is embodied 
 by the negative; in the plant, by absorption; in the beast, by 
 hunger; and reaching up still further on the plane of unfoldment, 
 by man, in his thirst to acquire knowledge or power. 
 
 Thus, in the different degrees or forms of this unfoldment of 
 "attraction" by the ego, it presents the rising steps of its various 
 phases, presented in the forms of absorption, hunger, and the 
 desire to know. 
 
 In the lower form of mind, the comprehension of man alomost 
 resembles the form of hunger, or a beast in search of prey, and 
 thus hunger in the brute is the primordial of the selfishness in 
 the man. This selfishness seeks to devour, to make prey of its 
 environments, land, water, air, light, all of which, in the crude or 
 complex, are the subjects of its hunger, devoid of respect or 
 understanding. Its consciousness expands with its contacts, and 
 its selfishness keeps pace with its expanding consciousness, until 
 its yearnings become Inordinate; and where it was formerly satis- 
 fied with devouring individual rights, it seeks to devour the 
 entire rights of communities. It is then termed "monopoly,"' the 
 highest brute form of the "ego," which displays the nature of a 
 beast seeking to devour the entire community. 
 
 It is the ego in the low form, — a thin^,' having taken on con-|
 
 112 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL, AND SOCIAL. 
 
 BciouBness, yet not reached the point of love, — moving without 
 moral conviction. And this is the photograph of monopoly from 
 its cradle to its grave. 
 
 As this selfishness proceeds monopolizing, it adopts unto itself 
 the ideas of the many, and absorbs and digests them into a 
 single system of its own, thus combining many systems in one, 
 not for the good of the many, but for the gree.d of itself; unfolds 
 into a situation of combined effort and systematized economy, 
 wherein the lesser selfishnesses are engulfed in the greater, and 
 thus on, until the greater at length unfolds a selfishness which 
 finally evolves a system so enormous and so national in its char- 
 acter as to inevitably engulf the very selfishness which de- 
 signed it. 
 
 Let us examine into this process; let us glance at production 
 for a moment. No more the smithy laboriously hammers out his 
 iron shapes. They are made at some gigantic forge by the whole- 
 sale. No more the carpenter slowly hews, saws, chisels, and 
 planes out a house from the forest trees. It is all systematized; 
 an immense mill saws, chisels, and plances out a thousand houses, 
 and he but puts the parts together. Shoemaking, tanning, tailor- 
 ing, weaving, spinning, printing, hat-making, pin-making, dyeing, 
 washing, — all centralized and centralizing into huge establish- 
 ments, chrushing out competition, trampling down the interests 
 of the individual through individuality, — trampling down the 
 interests of thousands of small competitors for the interest of one, 
 — monopolizing, — yet building up an unpralleled system of pro- 
 duction, admirable and marvelous, and ordained in the near 
 future to be transformed into a co-operation of the whole. 
 
 Let us for a moment look into our present individualistic form 
 of commercial distribution, where the soul-absorbing idea is 
 "profit on the goods;" where selfishness puts on a smirk of dignity 
 and calls itself "business." 
 
 Behold a thoroughfare! Along it a thousand shops. One 
 large business house attracts attention. 'Tis said they sell 
 cheaper here; that a thousand concomitant expenses attending 
 production, transportation, sale, and purchase which lesser estab- 
 lishments have to bear is through the immensity of this firm 
 avoided. Where tens purchase elsewhere, thousands purchase 
 here. A thousand lesser establishments must go out of existence. 
 This is centralization or systemization of distribution, — busi- 
 ness monopoly, individualism, absorbing the interest of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Yet the people who denounce monopoly are building up this 
 monopoly. Is the monopolist to be denounced? No! Are the 
 slaves who support this monopoly to be denounced? Nol Be- 
 cause the system it is inaugurating is right, and because they 
 could not help it if they would; for circumstances force them to 
 the cheapest market. They must buy cheap or suffer. 
 
 The democracy of a thousand little store-keepers cry out 
 against this centralization of trade. But centralization marches 
 onward, and one by one, like forest leaves, they decline, ready to 
 fall into this commercial maelstrom. This all means many in one; 
 union; progress toward nationalism. Let this system continue,
 
 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. U3 
 
 and there is but one outlet to the stream, and that outlet opens 
 into government distribution. And it will continue,— continue 
 until that end. And then there will be no more cadaverous, 
 hungry-eved shop-keeper watching to make one hundred percent 
 upon some as equally cadaverous-eyed customer; for profit is a 
 two-edged knife, and, working both ways, cadavers both custo- 
 mer and merchant. But after this comes nationalization. Then 
 we will have no more purse-proud merchant princes of monopoly 
 absorbing the advantages of a system ordained by nature to be 
 national,— nay, universal. Progress will accept the system of the 
 merchant prince, but reject his individual monopoly. There will 
 then be no more one hundred and one thousand per cent; 
 no more poisonous adulterations; no more short weight; for 
 when distribution is nationalized the great truth shall pre- 
 vail, that private interests are subservient and tributary to 
 public benefit, and justice will take the place of business. 
 
 Let us examine transportation. 
 
 From St. Louis to San Francisco, not a half -century ago, 
 thousands — nay, millions — were carrying, hauling, dragging ma- 
 terial backward and forward, — beasts of burden, oxen, horses, and 
 mules, and men, sweating their lives away. 
 
 A railroad from ocean to ocean entered the imagination of man, 
 — imagination! the womb of the soil; the mind's architecture 
 chamber; creation in its nebular condition; that department 
 from whence first emerges things; the creatorial spring! A rail- 
 road spanning the continent was written about, talked about, and 
 then came plans, definite shape, surveys, — a gigantic dream being 
 materialized. Then came the nation's credit. Her stamp upon 
 paper (foolishly given to private parties to build a private road), — 
 this secured the necessarry labor and material. A little while, and 
 the idea became reality, and a transcontinental system of trans- 
 portation reached from deep to deep. Then the iron horse came 
 on, and the crack of the merry stage-man's whip urging his six-in- 
 hand up the steep incline was heard no more, nor the jingle of 
 the prairie schooner's bells upon the slow'trudging mule, and the 
 weary-eyed oxen became but memories. Their occupation had 
 passed; for their many labors had become one, their intersts ab- 
 sorbed in a mightier system of transportation, — a system the 
 very self of centralization, which of its very economy centralizes 
 and centralize until the center has been reached. 
 
 These trunk lines came and absorbed the primal carriers, then 
 began to draw in the branch roads, gradually they take up their 
 weaker neighbors, and now, one by one, the lesser enters into the 
 greater. A little while, and one vast transportation system shall 
 extend its iron sinews over the territory of the republic. Shall its 
 center be an individual interest? or shall its center be Uncle Sam, 
 — the people? A private profit or a public benefit? This is 
 the question, — individualism or collectivism? We have said 
 at the outset that nationalism is universalism local to America. 
 Everywhere the same principle of unification and centralization 
 is at work. But nowhere save in America, in a republic 
 such as ours, can nationalization be consummated. In a mon- 
 archy, an hereditary ring is the government. If you were to turn
 
 114 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 
 
 a railroad over to the government there, you would be simply 
 turning it over to a ring. Here the people are the government. 
 A thing belonging ^o the government here is a thing belonging to 
 the people; and nationalization here is popular proprietor- 
 ship, — a something impossible in a monarchial form of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Tamerlane, the human hyena, marched burning, murdering, 
 and devastating the earth, trampling down tribes and sects, unit- 
 ing them in his single tribe and sect, — a monster of destruction, 
 and yet a builder; a destroyer of thousands of little monster 
 sects; for his great monster sect; a Nemesis on the path of central- 
 ization marching toward the point of universalism. 
 ^ Thus went Alexander, Mahomet, Constantine, Julius Caesar, and 
 in these latter days. Grant, carrying out the eternal fiat, — union, 
 centralization, universalism! 
 
 Thus the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Grecians, Romans, 
 w^ent on and on, in the tribes, principalities, kingdoms, nations, 
 empires, — onward and upward, uniting many into one. Thus 
 Germany waged her many wars. Thus Bismarck as last consoli- 
 dated her many states. Thus went Napoleon, dreaming of his 
 little ambition, thinking not of the mightier and subtler plan, of 
 which he was but one of the innumerable factors, — one of count- 
 less — ay, incalculable — millions! Thus went war, uniting with 
 fire and steel these separate sovereign democracies into division- 
 less federal union. Thus Russia trampled poor Poland under 
 foot. Thus England holds Ireland in her network of power, 
 embraces the antipodes, and from her throne of centralization 
 watches a sun which never sets upon her kingdom. 
 
 Thus through government the spirit of centralization, waving 
 his torch of universalism, cries: — 
 
 Be one in faith; 
 
 One in language; 
 
 One nationality; 
 
 One republic; 
 
 Universal; 
 
 One. 
 
 Continuing in its course, centralization has at last evolved a 
 monarch to whom all monarchs are tributary and all dynasties but 
 agents, — the power behind every throne, the imperial autocrat of 
 the world. And all governments are centralized at last into this 
 single, central power, before whose all-conquering emperor every 
 potentate must pay court. 
 
 This power into which all others have emerged, need I add, is 
 MONEY. Let us examine — analyze — this government of finance. 
 . The subtlest, mightiest, au'd most irresistable lever in the social, 
 political, religious, and industrial fields to-day is finance. 
 
 Finance moves, and your kings declare war; she beckons, and 
 they declare peace. Before her senates kneel, and their electors 
 kiss the hem of her garment, while the countless throng salute 
 her, not with ovations, but with worship. She chooses if fleets 
 should deck the ocean, or lie idle, rotting at their piers; trade ply 
 its busy fingers, or fold its hands in idleness; industry sweats 
 with over-task, or tramp aimlessly on the road. She can murder
 
 EVOLUTION, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL. 115 
 
 millions with her pen. and yet not stain her lily Angers. She 
 shuts her palm, and into its hollow are gathered the homes of 
 multitudes, and forth upon the world go the homeless. Her 
 frowns or her smiles places white or black bread upon your table. 
 She cries unto the kings of the earth, "Bond unto me your peo- 
 ple," and the people forthwith are bonded by national debts. 
 She says to the children of the republic: "You cannot build rail- 
 road, telegraph, water, agriculture, illumination, manufacture, or 
 any other department which shall belong to yourself. You must 
 bond yourselves to me, and let me extract your wealth from you 
 in the form of interest. You must borrow my gold, silver, and 
 their credit to build your public institutions." 
 
 Must we? Yet there are some who dream they can give land 
 to the people by bonding; can change rent into interest, and call 
 it reform, — change the name of ''pig" into "pork," and then dream 
 it to be mutton. A public institution built upon the issuing of 
 bonds is the property of the bond-holder. You cannot have a 
 public institution which shall be really a public property until 
 you have a public, a national, form of finance, — a finance of the 
 people. And this present finance of individuals, like every other 
 individualism, must go,and the finance of our America be nation- 
 alized 
 
 The center of every individualistic monopoly is the individualis- 
 tic form of money. The chief organ in the body of every monop- 
 oly is its financial department. Through this the mind of the in- 
 stitution works. Other departments contain the nerves, muscles, 
 sinews, and frame; but through finance alone the mind of monpoly 
 connects with its body. Touch monopoly in its present individ- 
 ualistic form of finance, and you touch its brain, its very center. 
 
 This is the last lesson of nationalism to be understood, and yet 
 the very first to be applied as we apply nationalism, because we 
 can build no national institution without the national certificate 
 of exchange. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 COULD MONEY BE ABOLISHED? 
 
 Could money be abolished altogether, and society do without 
 it? 
 
 If society were to reach an 'altitude of moral understanding 
 whereby its members perfectly recognized that their own eleva- 
 tion in reality exclusively depended upon their individual effort 
 to elevate society; that such effort singly and alone builds up and 
 enriches the individual, — first, in broadening, deepening his spirit- 
 ual nature; second, in raising and enriching the necessary societary 
 environments; that only through these two mentioned medims 
 can the mind and body of any person expand unto real happiness, 
 wealth, or power here or elsewhere,— then a society composed of 
 persons having reached such altitude of understanding and such 
 morality would have no use for money or proportionlizing prin- 
 ciple in order to apportion their general wealth. Each person of 
 such community would find his labor a labor of love, and would 
 feel just as a mother now feels in her effort for a dearly beloved
 
 116 COULD MONEY BE ABOLISHED? 
 
 child. This sentiment inspiring the effort of all; each pouring 
 out his best energy everywhere for thegeneral wealth, the general 
 wealth would soon reach unparalleled proportions and the pro- 
 rata of each would become more than the boasted indivualistic for- 
 tunes of ancient or modern millionaire. Then the situation would ' 
 become reversed; and as you have beheld brothers or friends stiv- 
 ing to see who would first pay each other's fare upon the cars, 
 you would then behold the dominant aim of man to be to see 
 who would give the most to a brother, not, as now, who will take 
 the most from a brother. Then each person would have the en- 
 tire wealth of society at his back, and the general wealth being 
 so tremendous, none would want for aught. Thus, in such state 
 all distributing or apportionalizing mediums would be superfluous 
 and money would cease its existence. But this would be a reign 
 of love. And man must pass through a reign of justice previous 
 to this, — a school of commercial truth, — a state which he has 
 never yet passed through, or he would now be enjoying the plane 
 of affairs we have above described. 
 
 Justice is as a vestibule to the temple of love, — love's precious 
 condition. We must first establish a just proportionalizing med- 
 ium, whereby each member of society will receive a voucher from 
 society recognizing and declaring the just degree or proportion 
 of the general wealth which the holders are entitled to according 
 to the exact effort they have individually put forth. This 
 establishes a just state of exchange, and through this just state 
 man takes on that higher justice called love, to which justice 
 finally becomes barbarous in comparison. 
 
 But under the present auspieces of individualism's mental and 
 moral depression, — auspiceb wherein individualism's highest aim 
 appears to be to determine how mush it can extract from thegen- 
 eral wealth, instead of how much it can give, — the abolition of 
 money would amount to naught; for were money to be completely 
 abolished suddenly today, and all property placed in common, in 
 our present immoral atcrosphere of understanding, the general 
 wealth so placed would soon melt back again into individual pro- 
 prietorship, and society gain nothing save a change of masters. 
 
 We have said that man at the center is pure, and all that is 
 necessary is to allow him to do right and he will do right. But 
 m;tn is not made in a generation: he is the product of generations; 
 and it requires generations of just conditions allowing man to pur- 
 ify exteriorly before he puts forth his central truth. In the 
 third or forth generation of a just system of exchange, man will 
 cast off the circumferential errors of his previous civilizations, and 
 through his increasing perceptions will clearly perceive the higher 
 truths of the love condition, which by the laws of intellectual at- 
 traction, he will quickly enter. When he does so, after having 
 become fitted for it by passing through the previous period of a 
 just relationship with his fellow-being through a just money, then 
 a "community" wealth and an abolition of money will become 
 a positively established fact; for it will then have become 
 established at the center, or in the mind of every individual. 
 Then the general wealth will remain general, there being hardly 
 selfishness enough to exploit it, and an intelligence developed suf-
 
 COULD MONEY BE ABOLISHED? 117 
 
 ficent enough to defend it, society will not have merely changed 
 masters; but have evoluted through systems,— will have educated 
 itself up to justice, through a just exchange; and once educated 
 up to justice, it will have no further use for its educational 
 instrument, "money," which, like a book once learned, will then 
 be laid aside. 
 
 Thus the natonalization of finance would prepare the necessary 
 condition of society whereby money could be ultimately abolished, 
 — a condition impossible without the previous establishment of a 
 collective instrument of exchange. 
 
 To-day we find that those who produce the wealth are with- 
 out the wealth. This state of affairs could not exist save through 
 some hoscuspocus of exchange, whereby the innocent aboriginal 
 is given a few glass beads for the broad fertile hunting-grounds 
 of his fathers, and through our present system of finance, or 
 money, labor is given a few worthless pieces of shining metals for 
 all the vast wealth which it creates. It is the savage and the 
 glass beads over again, and it is the modern savage standing 
 bereft of his birthright through an unjust exchange over again. 
 It is man that gives gold and silver their value by his use of them; 
 the more he uses them the more their value. The use of gold 
 and silver as an exchange medium by man is the reason of their 
 present value; if man were to cease this use, gold and silver 
 would fall to their commodity value, — about one hundredth of 
 their present price. So the savage gave the worthless beads 
 value (a value which existed merely in his innocent enrapture 
 over their glitter, glow, and color,— which glitter and glow, and 
 cost him his broad acres, and sent him forth homeless), — so we 
 too, poor savages, child-like, exchange our wealth for the glitter 
 and the glow of metals, and find ourselves homeless as our 
 brother savages of the beads. 
 
 This present system of exchange which takes the broad acres 
 of tha red savage and the broad wealth of the white and the 
 black, — this exchange of shining beads and metals for solid wealth 
 and solid lands,— is what we term an unjust system of exchange. 
 But a system of exchange whereby hour is exchanged for hour, 
 equivalent, for equivalent, where beads nor metals cannot rob us 
 unsophisticated Indisns, but are replaced by an honest instru- 
 ment through which an unfare advantage cannot succeed, is what 
 we term a just system of exchange, and which we will analize 
 and fully explain later,— a system which all must comprehend in 
 order to bring about a means whereby, under our present form 
 of affairs, without overturning society, without rout, disturbance, 
 or revolution, but as calmly and as peacefully as the plant 
 unfolds to tree, these institutions can be evoluted into national-
 
 118 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 A TALE, 
 
 Revealing the Instrument through Which our Institutions can be National- 
 ized from the Present Individualism into the Future Collectivism. 
 
 Evolving a Civilization Based upon Justice, Culminating in a Government 
 
 of All for One and One for All— Individual Sovereignty 
 
 and a Perfect Democracy. 
 
 Destroying Landlordism, Shylockism, Law-lord-ism, Pauperism, Rent, 
 Interest, Profit— or Labor Piracy. 
 
 THE PROCESS. 
 
 The seed we do sow 
 
 Will flourish and grow. 
 
 Though falsehood and tempest pursue ; 
 
 And Time shall undo 
 
 The false and untrue ; 
 
 And Truth, like a star 
 
 Through mist and the dew, 
 
 Will light up the darkness below. 
 
 The Homeless, Houseless Vagabonds— The Sage— The Man with the 
 
 Hooked Nose— The Man with the Fat Paunch— The Tramp 
 
 Murderers— The Riot— The People— The Remedy— 
 
 The New Civilization. 
 
 They were tramps. 
 
 They met upon the dusty road, beneath a willow whose 
 branches shaded the silvery waters of a spring. 
 
 They stood, — a weaver, tailor, hatter, shoemaker, and carpenter. 
 
 In the hollow of their- palms they gathered up the waters to 
 quench their thirst, — then drank again to quench their hunger. 
 
 Then spake the weaver, saying: — 
 
 "Friends, you are ragged. My brother the tailor and I weave 
 cloth and make garments. We have traveled one thousand 
 miles seeking a chance to weave and sew. You want clothes. 
 We want to make clothes. What prevents us from covering you 
 with linen and broadcloth?" 
 
 His hearers answered not, but gazed upon the sun, the waters, 
 and the land. 
 
 They thought in silence: — 
 
 "We are ragged. This weaver and this tailor would like an op- 
 portunity to clothe us, yet cannot. What is the matter?" 
 
 Then spake the shoemaker, saying: — 
 
 "Gentlemen, your unproteced feet are bruised and soiled from 
 contact with the I'oads. I am a shoemaker. I have traveled one 
 thousand miles seeking a chance to make shoes for somebody. 
 You want shoes. I want to make shoes. What prevents 
 me from making and you from having?" 
 
 They answered not, but again they thought; — 
 
 "We are shoeless. This shoemoker would make shoes for us
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 119 
 
 What prevents him? What is the matter?'* 
 
 Then spake the hatter: — 
 
 "Gentlemen, you are without hats. 1 have traveled one thou- 
 sand miles to get a chance to make hats. You want hats. I 
 want to make hats. What prevents me from making and you 
 from having?" 
 
 With their idle palms they shaded their eyes from the noonday 
 sun, and answered not, but thought:— 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 Then spake the carpenter, saying: — 
 
 "Gentlemen, you are houseless. No roof protects you. You 
 sleep upon the roads or in the fields. I am a carpenter. I have 
 traveled one thousand miles seeking a chance to build houses. 
 You want houses. I want to build houses. What prevents me 
 from building and you from having?" 
 
 They marveled much; then slowly answered:- • 
 
 "Yes, but to build houses you need the necessary materials. 
 You have them not, neither have we." 
 
 "Materials? Gentlemen, did you say you needed materials?" in- 
 quired a merchant, who, in passing, had heard the remark. "I 
 am a merchant, I have materials of every nature for building and 
 manufacture. If I do not find a market erelong, I shall be 
 ruined. The times are hard. Several large firms have failed. It 
 seems as though no one needed materials for shoemaking, hat- 
 making, clothing, or building. I am delighted to find that at 
 least you need them. Come, give me your order immediately." 
 
 They shook their heads and answered: — 
 
 "Nay. Though we need your msterials, and you need to supply 
 us; though we need to shape your materials, and you need them 
 shaped, — neither can be of advantage to the other." 
 
 The shoemaker gazed at his ragged coat, the tailor at his 
 broken shoes. 
 
 A person approached. His features were darkly browned with 
 out-door toil; he wore a kindly and intelligent expression. He 
 addressed the gathering, saying: — 
 
 "Brothers, do you not hunger?" 
 
 They answered: — 
 
 "Several have not tasted food since yesterday. But why do 
 you ask?" 
 
 "Because in yonder granary I have grain; in my orchard, lus- 
 cious fruits; in my cellars, cool, delcious creams. I am anxiously 
 seeking whoever need these sweet necessities of life." 
 
 They answered: — 
 
 "You anxiously seek; we seek more anxiously. Yet had you 
 ten thousand times as much, and were we, who need, ten thou- 
 sand times as many, your grain must mildew, your fruit must rot, 
 your cream must mold, and we who need must need." 
 
 "What 1" exclaimed the farmer, "can you not take from off my 
 hands this year's produce? I shall be ruined. My barn and 
 house need repairing. Myself and family need clothes, shoes, and 
 other necessities. I am in debt and mortgaged, / shall lose my 
 home. Y'ou say you hunger, — the world hungers. Why should 
 the world hunger and my produce rot,— making me, the producer
 
 120 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 of wealth, a pauper?" 
 
 "Indeed, these are strange times," said the merchant. "Each 
 possesses the other's want; and although we are all in possession 
 of all, we are all in want of all. What is the matter?'. 
 
 By this time a vast concourse had gathered; among them men 
 and women of every clime and nationality. Some were ragged 
 and of soiled garments; others of better form and dress; many 
 appeared as people who had followed the professions for a liveli- 
 hood. All alike bore tsorrowful countenances, and seemed weary 
 and worn. Presently a person of thoughtful expression ad- 
 dressed the multitude, saying: "Yes, comrades, we have every- 
 thing in this fair land, and yet to-day, how^ many of us have trav- 
 eled footsore and weary. I am a civil engineer. I have here the 
 plans and details of a railroad. My friend here," and he Ipointed 
 to a young man beside him, "is a surveyor who would like to sur- 
 vey the lines for its construction. Materials are everywhere in 
 abundance, and you here possess the skill and strength to com- 
 plete and operate the road. I understand that there are many 
 here seeking such employment, and I am sure that there are 
 many of you who understand the several branches of railroad and 
 telegraph construction, and who would like to carry out these 
 plans and surveys, and set to work immediately building the 
 grandest system of railroads and telegraphs the world has yet 
 known. Now, then, railroads being in demand, here is the op- 
 portunity." 
 
 Immediately an immense tumult arose, and the gathering, 
 which had now swelled into a countless sea of people, swayed as 
 a storm at sea, and amid the uproar you could hear the words — 
 
 "I understand the business;" "I understand the work;" "Hire 
 me;" "Engage me; "Give me work;" "Give me a contract;" 
 and the immense throng crushed around the engineer. 
 
 Waving his hand in token of silence, the loud clamors sub- 
 sided, and he said: — 
 
 "Nay good people, I myself am seeking an engagement or con- 
 tract. This being a grand opportunity to build a railroad, ma- 
 terial and labor plenty, and railroads in demand, I thought there 
 might be some one in this vast number to employ me." 
 
 "Bah!" they cried, and with threatening scrowls, drew away 
 from him as he replied: — 
 
 "How can I hire people to build a railroad? Don't you per- 
 ceive I am as insolvent as the old tramp over there?" and he 
 pointed to a mass of dilapidation— "as these well-dressed individ- 
 uals like myself. Our wealth is confined solely to our appear- 
 ance. Is there no one here, then, who can engage my friend the 
 surveyor and me?" 
 
 Then there arose a loud laugh of derision, and an editor, whose 
 paper had failed because his patrons were unable to pay, and one 
 who wrote much on such questions said: "My friend you are 
 looking for capital. Capiral builds railroads, not labor. We 
 represent labor. We can do nothing in the premises." 
 
 "Yes," remarked an electrician who thoroughly understood 
 telegraphy and its several associated branches. "I am here the 
 eame as you all, — tied up for the want of something to do. It ap-
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 121 
 
 pears to me if we were all set to work right here for ourselves, we 
 would soon have each other supplied, and it would not take 
 aquarter of our time to do it, either. But we cannot. It is out of 
 the question, for we have everpthing to do it with but one thing, 
 and that thing is — " 
 
 "Capital!" interrupted a thousand throats. 
 
 And the electrician continued: "Ay, indeed, these are strange 
 times. Each posesses the other^s wants; and although we are in 
 posession of all, toe are all in want of all. You say we only need 
 capital. What is capital?" 
 
 Then from the vast concourse went up the word: — 
 
 "Money 1" 
 
 "Ah, they exclaimed, if we had money! Then we could pur- 
 chase the farmer's food and the merchant's materials, while in 
 turn they could purchase our manufacture. Thus could each ex- 
 change labor for labor, bringing plenty and happiness to all." 
 
 '•Money?" interrogated the farmer. "What is money that it 
 should stand between starvation and food, labor and wealth, hu- 
 manity and happiness. 
 
 "Ay, what is money that it should be your idol, — your god?" 
 added a voice beside them. 
 
 They turned to behold the speaker. There was nothing 
 supremely remarkable in his casaul appearance. Time had 
 slightly touched his plentiful locks. Pain had set her seal of 
 scars upon his front. Progress had molded her presence upon 
 his features. From beneath his spacious brows he looked out 
 upon the vagabonds. As their eyes met, the tramps felt awed by 
 soicething they knew not what. Addressing them, speaking as 
 though in solioquy, he said: — 
 
 "Money? Poor phantom-worshippers. You ask what is money? 
 Know then 'tis the shadow of a reality, — a reality which has de- 
 serted you because of your blasphemous worship of its shadow. 
 O slaves! You have chiseled an idol from out the rocks, and 
 kneeling before it, have proclaimed it creator. Victims of a me- 
 tallic superstition! What has gold or silver more to do with you 
 than other substances? As your deluded sires believed in the di- 
 vinity of kings, even so you, their sons, do now believe in a divin- 
 ity of metals. Here you stand, posessing all and everything 
 necessary to your life and comfort; yet you stand idle, perishing, 
 famishing, — and for what? Nothing, save a rule or measure to 
 measure the exchange of your labors. This measure is but a scale 
 which you have termed 'mills, cents, dimes, and dollars.' You 
 will not stamp this rule or scale upon some suitable material on 
 hand, but like a carpenter insane you cry: "I have the material 
 and skill to build me a house, and need me a rule to work by; 
 but I will fashion my rule on gold and silver, or else not build at 
 all.' And thus you bond God's land, your life, your child unborn, 
 unto some usurer for his metal's loan, and build a house, not for 
 yourself, but for the Shylock, and call it interest." 
 
 The vagabonds listened to this strange utterance with astonish- 
 ment. It seemed to them blasphemous. They shrank away from 
 the stranger with dislike and fear. He had denounced gold and 
 accused them of superstition. They answered: —
 
 122 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 "Nay. We worship not the metal. Money is the great neces- 
 sity. We stamp and base our money upon gold and silver only, 
 simply because they are the scarcest and therefore the most 
 precious of metals," 
 
 "If money is a necessity, and gold and silver are scarcities, then 
 gold and silver are unfitted for money; for that which is nec- 
 essary should never be confined unto that which is scarce," was 
 the answer. 
 
 They laughed, and with derision asked:— 
 
 "Would you have us labor and receive a worthless piece of 
 paper in payment?" 
 
 "Yet you labor and receive a worthless piece of metal in pay- 
 ment," suggested the stranger. 
 
 "But what would redeem a paper money?" they asked. 
 
 "What now redeems your gold and silver?" was the rejoinder. 
 
 They answered not. 
 
 "Is it not labor?" was the suggestion. 
 
 "Yes," they answered. 
 
 "Then, since it is labor which redeems all money, labor should 
 be the basis of all money. You should change this golden rule 
 for a labor rule.'''' 
 
 "Ah! but the metals pay us, and paper does not." 
 
 "Money never pays you; it is but the representative, not the 
 pay. You are never paid until you receive a full equivalent 
 wealth for the wealth you have given. It is this delusion that 
 money pay.s you by WHICH" you are robbed." 
 
 "But we must have a value to measure values. A dollar must 
 be stamped on some material worth a dollar, or otherwise 
 how could it be a dollar?" 
 
 "Would the carpenter's rule be more a rule if made of gold, or 
 less a rule if made of some cheaper material?" 
 
 They answered not. 
 
 "Would the merchant's scales weigh better, or his gill, pint, or 
 quart pots measure better, if made of gold or silver?" 
 
 They snswered not. 
 
 "Then why must this measure be stamped on gold or silver 
 only? 
 
 They answered not. 
 
 "Why should the carpenter's rule be equal in value to the house 
 erected by its scale?" 
 
 They answered not. 
 
 "Why should the material out of which the quart-pot is made 
 be equal in value to the fluid measured, or declare it not a quart- 
 pot?" 
 
 They answered not. 
 
 "Metal- worshippers, you are mad. Money should be the mere 
 tool of manhood and virtue. Behold, you have made manhood 
 and virtue the tools of money." 
 
 "How have we done this?" they inquired. 
 
 The sage turned, and, with a gesture, pointed to the road. 
 There, before them, stood a gorgeous equipage, drawn by a span 
 of shining, well-fed steeds, radiant in gold and silver trappings. 
 Upon the front and rear of the affair sat a driver and footman
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vacs. 123 
 
 clad in livery. Reclining upon luxurious cushions lolled a fat 
 personage clad in linen and broadcloth. The only remarkable 
 features of this personage were a nose hooked like a bird of prey, 
 and two little eyes that looked out at the tramps like two spiders. 
 Turning to the vagabonds, the sage cried aloud: — 
 
 "Behold! the high-priest of your metallic superstition." 
 
 The vagabonds no sooner beheld this personage than tliey 
 bowed very low and reverent; for they perceived him to be a man 
 of great responsibility and influence; in fact, a central pillar of 
 society, religion, order, and law, 
 
 "Gentlemen," softly said the personage, "I think I hear you 
 mention money? You must work to get money. Why don't you 
 work?" 
 
 They lowered their eyes and answered: — 
 
 "We have traveled sir, one thousand miles in search of em 
 ployment. Not finding it, we have become ragged and hungry, as 
 you perceive." 
 
 "Ah, gentleman! What a great thing is my gold and silver! 
 You see you starve without it. It feeds, clothes, and gives you a 
 place to sleep." 
 
 "Nay!" rejoined the sage. "Your gold and silver give these 
 good people nothing, though they give you everything. All they 
 need is a co-operative currency, — a measure to measure the 
 exchange of their labors. Were they to stamp that measure upon 
 their own paper, instead of your gold and silver, your paper 
 bonds and mortgages would become but memories of a past 
 savagery. They would then labor for themselves, and not, as 
 they do now, for you through your metals." 
 
 "Gentlemen!" cried the man with the hooked nose, "this fellow 
 who has just spoken is stark crazy. Just such fellows as he are 
 upsetting Russia, Germany, and Spain, and are trying to blow up 
 the landlords of Ireland. He is against capital, my friends! Why 
 if you listen to him, you will soon lose respect for the sacred in- 
 stitutions of your great-grandfathers. He is a nihilist, a com- 
 munist, socialist, a fenian, a woman-rightist, a land-leaguer, an 
 abolitionist, a free-thinker! 
 
 The tramps shrank away from the sage; for they strongly sus- 
 pected his connection with the Evil One. They were educated 
 to believe in the man with the hooked nose. 
 
 "He's what my friend the great Rothschild calls 'a crazy agita- 
 tor', — a fellow who would drive my gold and silver away from you, 
 and leave you and your poor wives and children to starve and to 
 wander around naked like wild beasts." And the man with the 
 hooked nose wiped a tear from his spider-eyes. 
 
 They scrowled upon the sage, and cried: "Shame, shame, 
 shame!" 
 
 The sage smiled bitterly; for he thought of one who, eighteeu 
 hundred years ago, had overthrown the tables of the money-chang- 
 ers in the temple, and whom ignorance and selfishness 'aad cruci- 
 fied. 
 
 "Gentlemen, you want money? — good heavy, shining gold and 
 silver money? Something that you can see, and feel, and know 
 is real money?"
 
 124 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded VAGS. 
 
 "Yes, yesl" they cried eagerly. "Something that is good and 
 heavy and shining; that we can all feel and see!" 
 
 "Well, here in my strong-box I have good, solid, heavy gold and 
 silver." 
 
 "Ah, ahl" they sighed with delight. 
 
 "When you put your money stamp upon it, it will be money." 
 
 "Yes, yes!" they cried eagerly. 
 
 "But why put their stamp upon it, if it the metal which 
 makes it money? Do you not see that it is their stamp which is 
 money?" interrupted the sage. 
 
 "My friends, he don't understand the great money question!" 
 said the man with the hooked nose. 
 
 "No, no! not him, the crank!" they cried. 
 
 "I will now show you the great money question," he said; "I 
 will take some of my gold and silver out of my strong-box, and 
 you will put your money stamp upon it and make it money, and 
 then I will buy, at my own price, all the grain, fruit, and cream 
 of our good friend the farmer here." 
 
 "But what benefit will that be to these good people, to put 
 their stamp upon your metal and give it power to purchase their 
 wealth?" again interrupted the sage. 
 
 "You don't understand the great money question, my friend." 
 
 "No, no, the crank, — he's crazy!" cried the assemblage, and the 
 man with hooked nose continued:— 
 
 "I will now take some more of my gold and silver out of my 
 strong-box, and you will put your money stamp on it and make it 
 money as before, and I will buy, at my own price, all the materials 
 of our good friend the merchant here." 
 
 "Again I ask what benefit will this be unto these poor people?" 
 interrupted the sage. 
 
 "You don't understand the great money question," was the 
 answer. "I will show you, my friend, how capital feeds, clothes, 
 shelters, and employs labor. I will take some more of my gold 
 and silver out of my strong-box, and you will put on your money 
 stamp as before, and I will have the food, the material and the 
 money." 
 
 "And have these unthinking people completely in your power," 
 added the sage. 
 
 "Now, then, I will set you building railroads, telegraphs, manu- 
 factories, palaces, ships, and other things for me. I will buy up 
 the mines and the lands and the water, and everything for me. 
 And then I will put you all to work, work, work. More work than 
 you want. I will give you ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen 
 hours a day, at a dollar a day, for six good long months, and then 
 I will discharge you, and give you all a good long rest." 
 
 "Ahl" they cried. "But why do you not keep us working all the 
 time?" 
 
 "Because, my friends, you make enough in six months to last 
 the whole year round. You overstock the market, — I have to 
 wait until it is used up before I can work you again." 
 
 "Do you not perceive that the very gold and silver he gives you 
 for your toil you have to again return to }iim for a bare sufficiency 
 of the necessaries of life? that at the end of six months he is pos-
 
 THE vagabonds; ok, the bonded vags. 125 
 
 sessed of all which your labor has produced, together with the 
 gold and silver he has given you, back again in his strong-box?" 
 said the sage. They nodded acquiescence; for they knew only 
 too well the truth of the remarks. The light began to break in 
 upon their toil-stunted brains. They cried: — 
 
 "You have given us but enough for our support during our toil, 
 — the slave's reward. At the end of six months, with six month's 
 idleness staring us in the face, what are we going to do,— you hav- 
 ing everything, and we having nothing?" 
 
 "Ah, my friends," answered the man with the spider-eyes, "you 
 don't understand over-production. I am capital; you are labor. 
 My gold and silver keeps you from starving for six months. You 
 could not expect me to keep you from starving a whole year. Be 
 grateful; be reasonable; be thankful. Read what Economy tells 
 you about bread and water. One dollar a day for six months 
 ought to keep you for one year on bread and water. Economy, 
 my friends, is the great solution of over-production." 
 
 "I cannot perceive how your economy would benefit this com- 
 munity. If each were to save, and at last buy no more hats, 
 clothes, nor shoes, and get down to the quintessence of you idea, 
 and eat but grains of wheat, and, still, furthereconomizing,finally 
 dispense with that, and confine their economical orgies alone to 
 water, — cheap, wholesome, economical water, — water for entree, 
 dinner, dessert, soup and salid, — verily, would not every branch 
 of industry cease, save this one great economical branch of thine, 
 — pumps and wells? Is not the opposite the truth, — that the 
 more they consume the greater the demand for their production; 
 the more a people spend, the more the employment they create, 
 the better the times? Their money thus circulated brings to 
 others, and thus truly to themselves. Strange, indeed, is thy doc- 
 trine, that meanness and sordidness is the foundation upon which 
 society must erect its pillars. Stranger, indeed, thy philosophy, 
 that to starve is to subsist, and yet not more peculiar than to dis- 
 robe me entire, and inform me that you are protecting me from 
 the elements. Yet O Mammon, this you do, and are doing unto 
 the people with thy siphon called capital, the while informing 
 them that the more they make, the less they should eat; or the 
 more a people produce, the less they should consume; or if a 
 people in six months produce enough to last for twelve months, 
 they should study economy, the science of starvation, the remain- 
 ing six," explained the sage. 
 
 "Stop! Stop!" yelled the man with the strong-box. "You will 
 all go crazy thinking on these deep, deep questions. These subjects 
 are for capital, not for labor. Capital is brains, labor is only 
 muscle. Thinking spoils miiscle; brains spoil a workingman." 
 
 "Ah, did they but do a little more of their own thinking, they 
 would enjoy a little more of their own wealth. The greater the 
 nobility of thought, the less the servility of labor. Their ignor- 
 ance is their wrechedness; their hope of redemption, their advanc- 
 ing thought." As the sage uttered these words, a second carriage 
 halted upon the road. Lolling upon its cushions sat a plump, 
 somber, broadcloth-clad individual, with a ponderously developed 
 paunch, fattened with the good things of life. He gazed upon the
 
 126 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 wrechedneBS of the tramps complaceotly, and rolling his fat eyes 
 upward until their whites resembled two hard-boiled eggs, he, 
 from the bottom of his paunch, breathed a sigh redolent with 
 wine, roast chicken, pastry, buttered toast, and fragrant teas, and 
 droning heavily through his nose, addressed the homeless, house- 
 less vagabonds; — 
 
 "Poor, unhappy mortalsl What a blessing it is to known that 
 the poorer we are on earth, the greater the treasures we lay up in 
 heaven; that 'tis harder for a rich man to enter the gates than 
 for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Ah !" 
 
 The man with the strong-box became delighted, and cried: "Yes, 
 yes, my friend; that is the doctrine I These tramps have the best 
 of me; they ought to be satisfied. Here in this lite for a few years 
 / have everything; then they have everything in the next life. 
 What a beautiful doctrine for them, and how hard it is on me, to 
 be sure! But then we must support the rich; for what would we 
 do without the poor?" Here the sacred man again sighed from the 
 bottom of his paunch, and droning through his nose, again com- 
 forted the vagabonds: "Blessed are they who weep. Ah! Blessed 
 are they who suffer. Ah!" 
 
 "Obey them who rule over you!" 
 
 "Verily," cried the sage, "you both have one philosophy, viz., 
 starvation, — bread and water for over-production; rags and an 
 empty stomach for salvation, — a philosophy which neither of you 
 seem to practice, since you both prefer a warm coat and a full 
 body." A dark thought overspread the face of the man with the 
 fat paunch as he replied: — 
 
 "This man is a heretic, an infidel, a disturbing element, a creator 
 of discontent among the masses. There were times when the 
 faithful would compel such as he to regard the souls of others, 
 even did he not regard the safety- of his own." 
 
 "Yes, yes! my sacred friend, we would thumb-screw him into 
 good sense, and break him on the wheel, — ha, ha, ha! yes, break 
 him on the wheel!" And the features of the man with the hooked 
 nose became frightful. 
 
 A shudder convulsed the sage. In the lightnings of thought he 
 saw pictured the mangled form of a murdered sire. There in his 
 brain it stood, — a bloody corpse lasJaed to a wheel; the crushed 
 bones protruding through the lacerated flesh; the face white, 
 calm, brave, yet terrible. Why not make the wheel a sacred 
 emblem, even as the cross? 
 
 The vision was gone. The good man had blessed the tramps, — 
 and leisurely drove away. 
 
 The carpenter gazed after the departing carriage, and slowly 
 said: — 
 
 "I have often thought whether there could be a worse hell than 
 tramping one thousand miles hunting for a chance to live, — an 
 outlaw for the statutory crime of poverty, — with hunger knawing 
 at your breast and suicide at your brain. This has been my hell, 
 I, who have builded a hundred homes, yet who have no place 
 wherein to lay my head. What has plundered me of all the 
 wealth my labor has produced?" 
 
 "Ay!" added the assembled vagabonds; "and what has plun-
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 127 
 
 dered us all?" 
 
 "Gold has plundered you; this gentleman with the hooked noee 
 has received the plunder, and the ignis fatuus of our friend 
 with the fat paunch has made you content with being plundered," 
 answered the sage. As they thought of the vast amount of 
 wealth their years of toil had produced, their scanty recompense, 
 and their present deplorable condition, anger and rage succeeded 
 indignation. Passion darkened their minds. The hyena and 
 tiger lying dormant in their natures awoke, demanding blood. 
 Their fingers clutched like tallons. They eyed the thorat of the 
 man with the hooked nose, — it was white! Their hands trembled, 
 and like the growl of the beast ere it springs, their voices grew 
 hoarse and sullen; then breaking into an angry roar, they cried: 
 "Down with himi down with the thief and robber!" They siezed 
 the horses, and vented their blind fury by beating the inoffensive 
 brutes; they tore the driver and footman from their perch and 
 trampled them under foot; and in a moment the beautiful car- 
 riage, the creation and triumph of tJiei?' labor and science, was a 
 wreck, and the man with the hooked nose a prisoner. 
 
 Thus doth passion ever tear down and destroy, presenting ruin 
 and devastation as a remedy. During the first moment of attack, 
 the man with the hooked nose had touched one of the many wires 
 which hung stretched from pole to pole along the road, and con- 
 veyed a signal to his vast army of retainers or men at arms, who 
 prowled constantly around, and whom the man with the hooked 
 nose fed from a slight portion of his stealings, clad in his livery, 
 and who, therefore, were ready in return to kill and slaughter for 
 him at command. These were the professional tramp murderers, 
 and they carried deadly tools necessary to their trade. Their 
 principal one was a long steel tube, through which they pro- 
 jected a leaden ball. On the end of this tube they had fastened a 
 long, sharp dagger, adapted and arranged for disemboweling and 
 stabbing men, women, and children whom over-prodnctlon had 
 made hungry and hunger had made riotous. In a moment all 
 would have been up with the vagabonds, for the tramp murder- 
 ers knew their duty and were never slow to execute it; but as 
 spreads the tempest and overcasts the heavens, so had spread the 
 news unto the people; as the storm-cloud bursts and hurls down 
 its resistless avalanche, even so rushed the people upon the scene, 
 — a vast, uncontrollable multitude, moving of themselves, im- 
 pelled by curiosity, wonder, impulse, and fury, — an innumerable 
 host, whom over-production and starvation had brought to dis- 
 content. 
 
 For -when a poor man's eon needs, it must be said. 
 Become a convict to obtain his bread; 
 When a poor man's daughter, to obtain a crust, 
 Must fall a victim to a rich man's lust,— 
 Then perish patience ! Angels, shut your eyes! 
 Come, conflagration! light the outraged skies! 
 Let red Nemesis seize the hellish clan, 
 And chaos end the slavery of man I 
 
 With such feelings as these, came the people upon the scene. The 
 sacred man with the fat paunch met the host upon the roadway. 
 They seemed to him a vast flock of sheep who had broken from
 
 128 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded VAGS. 
 
 their corral. He had been their pastor, — called himself "their 
 shepherd," and them "his flock." He tried in vain to turn them 
 backward. He knew full well their united and assembled wrath. 
 He exhorted them as of old. He pictured to them the horrors of 
 perdition should they interfere to save their brethren and attack 
 authority. They were living in a worse hell than he predicted. 
 He ordered them to return to their homes. Alas! they had no 
 homes to return to. Onward they came to release their brethren. 
 The tramp-murderers loaded their tubes with their deadly leaden 
 messengers, which for centures had proved effectual. But starv- 
 ing science had armed starving humanity with a deadlier missile. 
 A poor student in his wretched garret had wrung from nature's 
 secrets a coi^bination outrivaling all previous methods of murder. 
 A youth, — a fair-haired boy, — a white blossom of cycles of pro- 
 gression, with features such as sculptors vainly study to chisel, 
 whose Apollo limbs contrasted strangely with his coarse and rude 
 apparel, rushed to the front. There was a stillness; then from 
 the awful spell the multitude heard from the tramp-murderere 
 the word: — 
 
 "Fire!" 
 
 The youth staggered. A golden curl nestling in front of his 
 spacious brow had fallen to the ground. Quick as the lightning 
 he raised his arm, and with the words "For liberty!" hurled a 
 small glass globe. There was a flash, — a deafening detonation. 
 
 Earth and the firmament leaped, and then — a rain of falling 
 debris— chaos! 
 
 Slowly the vapors rolled aside. Where had stood the tramp- 
 murderers and the youth now yawned a black, unsightly, and 
 smoking chasm, — a reeking hole of death. Murder had devoured 
 itself. 
 
 During all this the sage had looked on, a calm, observant spec- 
 tator. To him it was merely the natural effect or result of a cause: 
 the brutality of the oppressor arousing the brutality of the op- 
 pressed, — that was all. Reflex action: crime destroying crime, 
 error stinging itself; retributive justice! The proclamation of the 
 eternal: nothing endures save truth! 
 
 The man with the hooked nose had escaped the holocaust, r.nd 
 was again a prisoner. The hirelings who had menaced the life 
 of the people were gone; their destruction was self-preservation. 
 Their former master was now a prisoner, defenseless, powerless 
 and menacing nothing; his destruction would be murder. Truth 
 knows no revenge; with her all action ceases with necessity. The 
 tramps turned to the sage, and pointing to their prisoner, asked: 
 
 "What shall be his death? He denounced you, and would have 
 had us break you on the wheel. He has robbed us, starved us. 
 made us wanderers upon the earth. His accursed and inhuman 
 greed hath driven our sons and daughters into crime, our brethren 
 into asylums and prisons, or mouldering in suicide or paupers' 
 graves. Murder and theft are upon his head." And with one 
 accord they cried: — 
 
 "Kill him! kill him!" 
 
 The sage motioned them off. They instinctively obeyed. They 
 knew not why, but they felt in him the master, — Reason. He
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vacs. 129 
 
 Bpako;- 
 
 "Spars che man, but destroy the system. Men are but victims 
 or agents of systems and conditions. He is but a man. His 
 death would alter nothing. One among you, more eelfish and 
 more active than the rest, would rise to take his place. Destroy 
 the system by which he reigned, and no one can take his place. 
 You made his gold and silver a lever to purchase your manhood, 
 then demanded to be purchased. He purchased you, and you 
 complain; rather turn your wrath in upon yourselves, and if you 
 must murder, murder your own ignorance." 
 
 Then turning to the man with the hooked nose, he added: — 
 
 "Go! thy occupation is gone. Thy power to do evil is at an 
 end. The people have awakened. They think. Prom their in- 
 creased intelligence springs their increased freedom. Usurer! 
 depart into the shades of a past perdition." 
 
 The usurer departed. The people had spol'-en. His reign was 
 at an end. 
 
 And now the tramps who had pronounced the sage crazy, de- 
 nounced him, ridiculed him, and sighed in their ecstatic worship 
 for the gleaming metal as it enslaved them, now cried: "Down 
 with the golden calf! Let us have a money of our own, — a money 
 representing the people, — a national co-operative currency. 
 They gathered around the sage, a vast assemblage. Among 
 them were the representatives of many nations, who had fled 
 from European tyranny to better their condition. They had 
 found merely a new land governed by old systems. To them the 
 words "country" and "flag" had no significance. What difference 
 does it make to the slave what soil he tills, or what flag waves 
 above his starvation and bondage? Slavery had ground down 
 their fathers in the old; slavery had ground them down in the 
 new. 
 
 The glass ball of science which had swept away the paid mur- 
 derers of this slavery had cast up little hillocks here and there, 
 and upon one of these stood the sage, amid the people. All eyes 
 were turned upon him. All had heard of his philosophy. First 
 they had persecuted, then disputed, then doubted, then investi- 
 gated, examined, and believed, — no! comprehended. With this 
 comprehension began the dawn of a new liberty. The world 
 everywhere is possessed of as much liberty as it comprehends. 
 No more, — no less. Hail education! The sage spoke: "The pro- 
 vince of passion is to tear down; of reason, to buildup. Yout 
 passion has but harmed you, — ever destroys. With intelligence 
 you could have avoided all this bloodshed and destruction. But 
 your fury of ignorance is done. Your passion hath torn down; 
 your reason must build up. You must build a system wherein 
 man will be the master of money. For whatever controls your 
 money controls your liberty, property, and life." 
 
 There was no empty applause, their hands lay folded on their 
 breasts, their lips moved not; for the subtile and silent process of 
 reason was at work. Then one whose back was bowed and 
 crooked vrith toil, whose work-misshapen hands were hard and 
 callused as the beast's hoof, a builder of marble palaces, who 
 dwelt in a damp and noisome cellar, addressed the sage, say-
 
 130 THE VAGABONDS; OR, THE BONDED VAQS. 
 
 ing:— 
 
 "Citizen, thou who hast shown us the cause of this poverty. 
 Buffering, and crime, tell us, we pray thee, the remedy. Answer 
 UB these questions." 
 
 "You had best depend upon your own reason and experience," 
 he replied; "but, nevertheless, question and I will give you mine." 
 
 "What shall free the people?" 
 
 "A money representing the people. A national co-operative 
 currency." 
 
 "Who shall manufacture this money?" 
 
 "The people, through their agent, the government." 
 
 "What shall be the base of its issue?', 
 
 "Value received by the government." 
 
 "Why"? 
 
 "Any form of money demanding from the people a value where 
 no value has been received by the people is robbery." 
 
 " What is money ?" 
 
 "Money is the exchange-stamp of the government." 
 
 "What is the nature of this stamp?" 
 
 "Its nature is that of a certificate or voucher denoting a degree 
 of value received. The propoeition is, then, that for the govern- 
 ment to issue its money-stamp upon any material to an individ- 
 ual, empowering him to demand a value from the people without 
 itself having first received an equal value from him for the people 
 is ROBBERY. This is the base of our present financial system, — 
 something for nothing. That which gets something for nothing 
 is called "capital.' That which gets nothing for something is 
 called 'labor.' To be right, you must begin right. You must 
 adopt a principle by which not one dollar of the people's money 
 can ever pass from the government into the possession of an in- 
 dividual without him first havinjg honestly earned it. The gov- 
 ernment stamp represents a degree of value. If I can procure 
 that stamp from the government without giving a value equal to 
 its face, with it I can procure something from the people which 
 I have never earned. Only give me enough of these stamps and I 
 can become a millionaire without having earned a dollar," 
 
 "Ah! but if the government places this stamp upon your gold, 
 do you not give us an equal value for all you receive?" 
 
 "No ; I give a metal to which your stamp has given a fictitious 
 and extraordinary value." 
 
 "But why do the millions place their stamp upon this metal of 
 the few?" 
 
 "Because they are possessed of a superstition. They believe the 
 metal has an intrinsic value, and is especially designed to meas- 
 ure and represent the real values of the world." 
 
 "Where do they get such a superstition as this from?" 
 
 "From their savage ancestors, who once wore it through their 
 lips, ears, and noses; who, childlike, prized it for its glitter and 
 color. Our mothers wear it through their ears; our fathers wear 
 it through their brains." 
 
 "What would be a just money?" 
 
 "A just money would be the government exchange-stamp issued 
 for value received, — a national co-operative currency." 
 
 I
 
 THE vagabonds; OR, THK BONDED VAGS. 131 
 
 "Explain the manner of its iesue and circulation." 
 
 "The government is the whole; an individual the part. For 
 any value received by the whole from a part, or by the govern- 
 ment from an individual, a paper measure of that amount would 
 be given. If the value was twenty dollars, a twenty dollar cer- 
 tificate would be given. The base of this money's issue would 
 then be value received." 
 
 "What would cause it to flow from the treasury to the people?" 
 
 "The service of a part to the whole." 
 
 "What would cause it to flow from the people back to the 
 treasury?" 
 
 "The service of the whole to a part, where the people used 
 public institutions, such as mail, telegraph, railroad; thus each 
 person would redeem it for the whole, and the whole would 
 redeem it for each person. Thus it would circulate, distributing 
 wealth from the treasury out among the people, and from the 
 people back into the treasury, even as the blood flows from the 
 heart to the extremities, and back again to the heart. The 
 treasury would then be to the nation what the heart is to an in- 
 dividual, and this currency would become in reality the nation's 
 
 BLOOD." 
 
 The sage continued: — 
 
 "The true government of man is that which is formed after 
 man himself. A nation's currency should perform for its people 
 what the life-current performs for the individual, — should circu- 
 late life and wealth to every part of the structure; for if wealth 
 accumulates in any one part, want must palsy the remainder. 
 Therefore, any form of money which favors one person more than 
 another, or aids the abnormal enrichment of one class and the 
 consequent impoverishment of another, must in time necessarily 
 produce national congestion and death." 
 
 "What would be the amount issued?'' 
 
 "The demand would determine the amount. The necessity 
 would determine the demand." 
 
 "What would stop an over-issue?" 
 
 "An over- issue would be impossible. This money, being issued 
 for value received, could not get in excess of the value in ex- 
 ista7ice. How could you over-issue a thing only issued for value 
 received?" 
 
 "Would it not fluctuate in value?" 
 
 "That would be impossible, being a measure of values, not a 
 value. Values might fluctuate. This measure would simply 
 measure their fluctuations. Butter might go up, or butter might 
 go down; gold, silver, brass, or lead might go up or down, or go to 
 hades: this would fixedly, steadily measure their rise and fall, 
 even as a carpenter's rule measures a board, let it shrink or 
 swell." 
 
 "What effect would it have on gold and silver money?" 
 
 "The law is, decrease of use, decrease of value. If a substance 
 were discovered superior to leather for making shoes, and were to 
 replace leather for that use, leather would become a drug in the 
 market and fall to zero. 
 
 The decrease of the use of gold and silver by sixty millions of
 
 132 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 people for the purposes of money would decrease its value cor- 
 respondingly. The calves who worship the golden calf would be 
 astonished at the wonderful precipitation of their idol by our 
 national co-operative currency." 
 
 "Would it abolish usury?" 
 
 "Money being a necessity, a people who place their money- 
 stamp upon gold and silver must borrow and pay tribute to the 
 owners of these metals for the use and posession of their own 
 stamp. Again money being a necessity, a people who give away 
 the right of placing their money-stamp upon paper to any person 
 or corporation must borrow or pay tribute to that person or cor- 
 poration for the use of their own stamp. This is our present sys- 
 tem of money, — a system fathered by robbery, suckled by igno- 
 rance, and resulting in usury. To abolish usury, stop giving 
 
 AWAY YOUR STAMP, AND YOU WILL, NOT HAVE TO BORROW IT. Re- 
 verse the system. Place your stamp upon your own paper, issue 
 it for value received, and the power to absorb your wealth 
 through your own stamp will end. Then none can be posessed 
 of more money than the market value of the services they have 
 performed, and of which their money would be the true and just 
 representative. Being the representative of value, and not a 
 value, it would, in order to get value, seek labor and science. 
 The safes would open. To-day labor and science are compelled 
 to seek money. The safes are shut. A money which seeks labor 
 and science employs labor and science, hence beautifies and im- 
 proves. A money which labor and science have to seek degrades 
 and disfigures. Labor and science, being sought, rise in value, — 
 beocme elevated. The elevation of labor, the freedom of labor; 
 the destruction of wage slavery, — modern serfdom. Thus the 
 national currency from its nature would be a money to spend, not 
 to hoard. Money should be to spend. Go, white-headed patriarch, 
 ye of the spacious brow, learn truth from the babe. Thy little 
 child, obeying the instinct of its nature, teaches you the true and 
 natural use of money, — to spend. Yet for centuries you have 
 planted hate and murder into the minds of youth, poisoning 
 budding humanity, instilling into fair and sympathetic thought 
 dark maxims of sordid selfishness, teaching thy children to 
 chain their souls and civilization's flight unto a miser's chest of 
 gold. You have cried to the young: 'Save the pence; the pounds 
 will take care of themselves;' and for fear they would not hoard, 
 and inflict usury upon their brothers, you have stamped your flat 
 upon your brutalizing idol, gold, and compelled generations to 
 either hoard or starve. Thus you have made one child a million- 
 aire, and a million children paupers." 
 
 "Would there not be millionaires and paupers under this sys- 
 tem?" 
 
 "A money which sought labor would yield no shave on labor. 
 The power and the motive to hoard being destroyed, there could 
 not be either millionaires or paupers." 
 
 "What effect would it have on land monopoly?" 
 
 "Land and money are the two great necessities. Both should 
 be controlled by the whole. To-day they are controlled by the 
 part. The interest of the whole being superior to the part, every
 
 THE vagabonds; or, thk bonded vach. 133 
 
 necessity and convenience affecting the whole should be posessed 
 and run by, through, and in the interest of the whole. The goal 
 of civilization is universal co operation. This is the great battle. 
 Each morning's sun discovers humanity nearer together. Prom 
 the womb of each night's darkness arises a freer and more united 
 brotherhood. The solution of the problem of civilization is, •ne 
 for all and all for one. One in land, one in money, one in inter- 
 est, one in brotherhood, one in government, one in justice, one in 
 love. Shylockism and landlordism are the same. Destroy the 
 monopoly of money, and you destroy the monopoly of land. 
 Destroy the shave on money, you destroy the shave on labor and 
 land monopoly. The theft of God's domain becomes improfitable. 
 Study this last proposition, and the more you look at it, the 
 bigger it vfiW grow, and the closer the two great questions will 
 become one" 
 
 "Ah! but land touches the question of production; money but 
 touches the question of distribution." 
 
 "Check distribution and you check production. Whatever con- 
 trols the distribution of a people's wealth among them controls 
 the production of their wealth. Any form of money creating a 
 monopoly of money must create a lack of money among the 
 many. The many not having the medium to purchase th© pro- 
 duction, the production accumulates in the hands of the differ- 
 ent producers, the market becomes overstocked, and further pro- 
 duction ceases. Thus the people starve, while the granaries are 
 bursting with grain; the warehouses are filled with clothing, 
 while the people are ragged; the houses are empty, while the 
 people are homeless. Thus the producer becomes idle. Thus 
 the land of the farmer becomes unprofitable, and falls at last into 
 the hands of the money-shark. Thus distribution controls pro- 
 duction. Thus gold absorbs your homes." 
 
 They asked: "Would not the solution of land monopoly be the 
 division of the lands among the people, giving each a farm?" 
 
 "He who advocates the democracy of a million petty farms is 
 traveling towards primitive civilization, — the borders of savag- 
 ery, — fences! A million little farms mean a million little petty 
 interests, primitive antagonisms, divided and laboroue produc- 
 tion. If landlordism is wrong, you cannot lessen that wrong by 
 dividing its proprietorship, by parceling an evil out unto the mil- 
 lions, and thus transforming a greater wrong unto so many lesser 
 evils. No, no! National progress isgreater than your little propo- 
 sitions. We are marching on through centralization towards 
 universalism. A million little farms would mean a million little 
 petty landlords, each even more intolerant, supercilious, arrogant, 
 and grinding to the improvident and unfortunate springing up 
 beneath them than they whom they now cry out against, — the 
 democracy of the Devil. No! Progress is aggregating the lands; 
 shall aggregate the lands. Aggregation of lands is right. In this 
 aggregation we are taught a united and harmonious system of 
 production. It is the selfish monopoly of the advantages and 
 benefits of aggregation which we must throw off, not the aggre- 
 gation. Progress will adopt the aggregated system, — many 
 lands in one. Cast off the monopoly of its benefits, and extend
 
 134 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded vags. 
 
 them unto all. The aggregation of lands, like labor-saving ma- 
 chinery, is at present working you hardship. Through this hard- 
 ship you will be lashed by the scourge of pain at last into a 
 proper comprehension of the problems of labor-saving machinery 
 and the aggregation of lands. Then you will perceive that 
 that which should be a universal blessing has been transformed 
 into a universal curse through individual monopoly. 
 
 "Then you will rise, dispel the monopoly, embrace the system 
 of aggregation of lands, railroads, telegraphs, and manufactures, 
 and extend its blessing unto all. Then your many farms will 
 gradually become one farm, your many factories become one fac- 
 tory, your many stores become one store. Then this grey-headed 
 lie, 'Competition is the life of trade,' will explode, as all lies. Then 
 there will be no cut-throat competition, no toiler trying to 
 cheapen his toil, no tradesmen trying to undersell and starve his 
 neighbor. Then your production will be freed by a just distri- 
 bution, — a just distribution obtained by a just system of money, 
 all and through 'intelligence, the liberator.' " 
 
 "What effect will this system of money have on taxation?" 
 asked one whose property had been rendered unprofitable through 
 taxation. 
 
 "Taxation, interest, rent, and profit on labor are but different 
 species of the same theft. All evils are but one evil; all truths of 
 but one truth. Taxation is robbery." 
 
 "What! they exclaimed, taxation robbery? How could there 
 be a government without taxation?" 
 
 "Under an honest system of money there would be, could be, 
 no taxation," was the rejoinder. "The government is the people. 
 Why should the people pay taxes to themselves f" 
 
 "It, indeed, seems strange and preposterous," they affirmed. 
 
 "If you were in government employ, and had done the people a 
 twenty-dollar service of any nature, the government would give 
 you a twenty-dollar certificate on the people. You would take 
 this certificate to the people and they would cash it in twenty 
 dollars' worth of flour, or any other value you wished. They 
 would then have given you twenty dollars' worth of flour for the 
 twenty dollars' worth of service you rendered to them, would 
 they not?" 
 
 "They would." 
 
 "Then where would the government be in debt or have to raise 
 a tax?" he inquired. 
 
 "Nowhere," they answered, with surprise. 
 
 "Thus the national certificate would not only abolish tax, but 
 tax collector as well." 
 
 "But the stamp upon gold and silver and bank notes is placed 
 upon tbem by the government; and why is there taxation to- 
 day?" asked several. 
 
 "It is because the government has given away its money-stamp 
 to persons and to corporations. It places its stamp upon these 
 materials of individuals instead of upon its own certificates, and 
 must therefore collect tribute or tax in order to regain a sufficiency 
 of its own stamps to transact its own business. When a nation 
 gives away its money- stamp to the owners of metals or to corpora-
 
 THE vagabonds; or, the bonded VAGS. 13o 
 
 tions, it compels the citizen to borrow, and itself to tax. Thus 
 usury and taxation are but dual forms of the same folly. The 
 first — usury — compelling the people to give a value where no 
 value has been by them received; the second — taxation — com- 
 pelling the people to pay a second time for the same service." 
 
 "What effect would this system of money have on railroad, 
 telegraph, and other monopolies." 
 
 "Three millions of tramps idle are so much wealth lost to the 
 nation. This system of co-operative currency would enable the 
 nation to save this wealth, employ these men, enrich and benefit 
 the whole. From the financial heart of the nation would flow 
 national currency enough to set these three million idlemeu to work 
 building the grandest railroad system the world ever dreamed of. 
 The base of these national certificates issued would be value re- 
 ceived; the value received would be the railroad. As though by 
 the wave of a magician's wand, you would behold twelve broad- 
 gauge steel tracks reaching from New York to San Francisco, 
 traversed by a thousand trains of palace-cars drawing a free peo- 
 ple at government cost price." 
 
 "Does this not draw too much on imagination?" 
 
 "Reality is more magnificent than imagination. The magnifi- 
 cence of your present railroad system was created by about ten 
 per cent of your idle labor. Issue national co-operative certifi- 
 cates and set the whole one hundred per cent to work, and you 
 will have one hundred times the magnificence. Your twelve 
 steel tracks could be flanked by a carriage-drive and walk fifteen 
 hundren feet wide from the Atlantic to the Pacific, beautified by 
 luxurient foliage the entire distance, illuminated by the electric 
 light, and probably called National Avenue. Electricity and na- 
 tional certificates go together. National certificates would build 
 you a splendid national telegraph system, and your five million 
 tramps would become gentlemen sending messages at government 
 cost price. Your public institutions would steadily increase on 
 every hand, gradually merging the government into an organiza- 
 tion of all for one, one for all, national co-operation." 
 
 At the conclusion of these remarks, the tramps cried: "Who 
 art thou, that unravels the secret of human misery and happi- 
 ness?" 
 
 But he had gone. The people dispersed from whence they 
 came. The tramps were again alone by themselves. The evening 
 skies reflected in the glassy waters of the spring, and as the 
 tramps reached down to drink they beheld that a strange beauty 
 had been added to their features, for as the spring reflected their 
 features even so their features reflected their minds, now illumined 
 by a divine idea, — the grandest discovery of the cycles, — ^a 
 NATIONAL co-oPERATn'E CURRENCY, through which, and under 
 the present condition, we can proceed to nationalize our public 
 institutions one by one until all are nationalized.
 
 136 A FINANCIAL DRAMA. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 THE FINANCIAL DRAMA — ^A SCENIC HISTORY OP THE DESTRUCTION 
 
 OF America's national co- operative currency. 
 
 Note, — In order to completely conclude oar task, we should fully adviee the 
 reader concerning the history of the destruction of our country's national co- 
 operative money, ■which saved the Union, and defrayed the expense of the 
 emancipation of the slaves, without debt, taxation, ob bonds, and through 
 whose betrayal and dishonor our present national debt was othebwtsb erect- 
 ed ; for it WAS not created by the expense of that war, as some imagine. 
 
 If we leave this untouched, our task would remain in sad shape indeed; for 
 millions of intelligent persons, unadvised regarding these valuable particulars 
 — which have been almost in a measure supprebsed, — unknowingly argue that 
 nationalism cannot succeed, that our national money was a failurei that we 
 must go on bonding the nation forever ; and that there is nothing ahead for 
 the American people save indebtedness. If this is so, then farewell, and for- 
 ever, all hope of nationalizing public necessities; for the people cannot build 
 a collective institution with an individual system of finance, individual 
 finance erect individual institutions, and collective finance erect collective 
 institutions. No institution can be collective with the shadow of individual 
 bonds, mortgages, and interest absorbing its product. Therefore, in order to 
 meet this unlearned and unlettered view, this false and ignorant charge, that 
 our national money ever of itself was a failure, and to reveal where the gross 
 culpability and error belong, we must conclude with this dark drama of the 
 betrayal of our American money. 
 
 We do not claim that politicians were the cause, or the primal factors, or 
 that they, as a class, were responsible; for we know too well that the real 
 fault lay deeply imbedded in the people, who, in their blindness, re-elected 
 and still elect, the actors in this "drama," and thereby indorsB their actions.. 
 There were legions of political patriots who exposed and denounced this 
 drama, who strained every nerve to undo it, but the people stood as stands 
 resistless granite against the ceaseless beating waters, and cast back the gal- 
 lant ^Ebrts of these noble heroes I Scattered are they to-day, disheartened 
 and impoverished ; but their great spirit breaths and sparkles in the fires of 
 truth, be they alive, or be they— no I they can never dioc God bless them, 
 bless them, bless them, each, one, and all ; let no harsh word ever touch their 
 Bacred memories I 
 
 "The truth cannot die. It may fade, it may fall ; but its essence 
 
 Lives like the breath of the flowers, in the earth and the air; 
 Soon in God's time will its bright and its beautiful presence 
 
 Break on the sight of the people, resplendent and fair 
 And men who have lived with unfaltering devotion 
 
 Only for what they believed to be honest and right 
 Yet shall have isles in the midst of the ocean, — 
 
 Isles of the blest, that are lovely with sweetness and light." 
 
 THE dark drama. 
 
 First Act. — Destruction of the Natioii's Money. 
 It was April, 1861. 
 Port Sumter had been fired upon. 
 There was no money in the treasury. 
 Armed men were marching to the front.
 
 A FINANCIAL, DRAMA. 137 
 
 Capital was marching to the rear. 
 
 Men and money were necessary to save the Union. 
 
 The cabinet held a council. The question was, How can w© 
 procure the sinews of war? How shall we raise money? 
 
 The bankers nobly(?) and patriotically(?) offered to loan their 
 paper credit — at a hogging rate of interest. 
 
 The cabinet concluded that the paper co-operative currency of 
 forty millions of people, with thirty billions of weplth, was better 
 than the paper credit of a few financial adventurers. 
 
 So on July 17, 1861, Congress issued $60,000,000 of co-operative 
 currency or demand notes, — honest and genuine currency, — bring- 
 ing joy to the soldiers in the field, and the people at home, and 
 to all, except to the Wall Street financiers, who would have to 
 close up shop and wait until they could hire Congress to strangle 
 this "money of the people." 
 
 What made this demand note genuine money? What made it 
 rise above par, — above gold? — which it did. 
 
 Look and see. 
 
 Here is what it said on its face: — 
 
 : THE UNITED STATES PEOMISES TO PAY THE BEABBR FIVE DOLLARS, : 
 
 : ON DEMAND, payable by the assistant teeasuree of the united : 
 : states at new yobk. 
 
 The reverse side of this money contained these significant 
 words: — 
 
 : BBCEIVABLi; IN PAYMENT FOR-ALL PUBLIC DUES. 
 
 This money, you can see, is genuine money; for the govern- 
 ment which pays it to you receives it for all public dues from 
 you, and thus it is a co-operative and bona fide national currency. 
 
 We will pass on to its strangulation by a venial Congress and 
 the substitution of what to-day is known as the legal tender, or 
 "greenback." 
 
 Wall street looked on the demand note with tearful eyes. 
 There was no money in it for Wall street. 
 
 Something must be done. The nation was about making its 
 own money, and issuing it in payment for services to the people. 
 The nation was borrowing no money from Wall street. 
 
 If such a system as this prevailed, the brokers would be ruined, 
 — would in a few years have to go to work and earn their own 
 living. Surely, something must be done, and done it was, — and 
 done quickly. 
 
 A powerful lobby was sent to Washington, and amid the 
 popping of champagne corks and the fumes of fragrant Havaifes, 
 "the man with the sack" hired the national legislators to arrange 
 a new style of government money, — a kind that instead of going 
 above gold, would go below it; that instead of the people welcom- 
 ing it, the people would shun it, and borrow the banker's gold in 
 preference. Thus was conceived the "legal tender," or "green
 
 138 A FINANCIAL, DRAMA. 
 
 back," or repudiated currency. 
 
 Second Act. — The Legal Tender — Substitution of a Repudiated 
 Currency and Bond System, and the Creation of an Un- 
 taxed Aristocracy. 
 This money was issued during 1862 and 1863, as follows: — 
 
 February 5, 1862 $98,620,000 
 
 February 25, 1862 66,429,324 
 
 March 1, 1862 49,881,927 
 
 March 17, 1862. 44,375.000 
 
 And under the above acts there were also issued: — 
 
 ir, tHR^ J $1,622 
 
 ^"^ lo^-J ••■J 291,260,000 
 
 Here is what this queer currency said upon its face, — what 
 Wall street dictated Congress to place there, — and for what 
 purpose may be easily seen:^ — 
 
 : THE TJNITED STATES PROMISES TO PAY THE BEAEEEITVBDOLLABS [no date]. : 
 
 Not a promise to pay on demand, or on or after a certain date> 
 but an indefinite promise to pay, which if placed upon any private 
 note would make it worthless; and it was thus worded to make 
 it worthless. But witness how the Congressional popular rep- 
 resentatives stabbed this money in the back: — 
 
 : THIS NOTE IS A LEGAIi TENDEE FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE, : 
 
 : EXCEPT DUTIES on imports and interest on the public debt ; and : 
 : is exchangeable foe united states six-pee-cent bonds. : 
 
 What could be plainer than this? The back of this note "gives 
 away" the entire scheme plainer than it can be explained. The 
 scheme was this: not being receivable for taxes, it would depre- 
 ciate and become cheap, then the bankers would buy it up cheap, 
 and exchange it for bonds. Read its words. 
 
 The language clearly shows that the note is made a legal tender 
 to pay all debts except import duties and interest to bond-hold- 
 ers. As much as to say: "This is legal money for the people, — le- 
 gal money to pay off workmen and soldiers with, — but not legal 
 money to pay government dues with. We pay it to you, — the 
 common people, — but don't you pay it back to us. We give it, 
 but won't take it. Neither the government nor the bond-holders 
 will take it. We issue it, but we do not recognize it. We despise 
 it and repudiate it." 
 
 The except depreciated it. Why? Because the retail mer- 
 chant would not receive it from the people for its face. Why? 
 Because the wholesale merchant would not receive it from the 
 retailer for its face. Why? Because the government would not 
 receive it from the wholesaler for imports. 
 
 Now, how was it, in the name of all the miracles, that such a 
 dishonored currency as this "greenback," thus repudiated by the 
 power that issued it, was ever worth one cent on the dollar? 
 
 Because Congress declared it a legal tender, and if you refused
 
 A. FINANCIAL DRAMA. 
 
 139 
 
 to receive it in payment of a debt, the debt was canceled and you 
 forfeited your claim. 
 
 As soon as this Mnco-operative money was issued, it began to 
 depreciate, as was intended. See: — 
 
 Official table, pekpaeed by Me. E. B. Elliott, assistant United 
 States tbeasdeeb, showing the value of the gbeenback oe stabbed 
 dollae at diffebent monthly pehiod3, feom january, 1862, to 
 deceubee, 1861. 
 
 Months. 
 
 Year 
 
 Year 
 
 Year 
 
 1862. 
 
 1863. 
 
 1864. 
 
 67.6 
 
 68.9 
 
 64.3 
 
 96.6 
 
 62.3 
 
 66.1 
 
 98.2 
 
 64.7 
 
 61.4 
 
 98.5 
 
 66.0 
 
 57.9 
 
 96.8 
 
 67.2 
 
 56.7 
 
 93.9 
 
 69.2 
 
 47.5 
 
 86.6 
 
 76.6 
 
 38.7 
 
 87.3 
 
 79.5 
 
 39.-( 
 
 84.4 
 
 74.5 
 
 44.9 
 
 77.8 
 
 67.7 
 
 48.3 
 
 76.3 
 
 67.6 
 
 42.8 
 
 75.6 
 
 66.2 
 
 44.0 
 
 Year 
 
 1S65. 
 
 January.. . 
 Febmary.. 
 
 March 
 
 April 
 
 May 
 
 June 
 
 July 
 
 Angast 
 
 September 
 October.... 
 November . 
 December. 
 
 46.3 
 48.7 
 57.5 
 67.3 
 73.7 
 71.4 
 70.4 
 69.7 
 66.5 
 68.7 
 66.0 
 68.4 
 
 Now, the Wall Street patriots began saving the Union after the 
 fashion of financiers, by buying up $500,000,000 in notes for S300,- 
 000,000 in gold, — or at five for three, — and exchanging them for 
 $500,000,000 six per cent, non-taxable bonds at the nominal cost of 
 sixty cents on the dollar, being a clear steal of $200,000,000, while 
 the nation was in the throes of a deadly civil war, — and the es- 
 tablishment of a privileged aristocracy. 
 
 The business having thus far worked well, it was immediately 
 repeated, only on a larger scale; and on March 3 and June 30, 
 1864, and March 3, 1865, Congress, on these several dates, issued 
 $1,087,311,700 more of five-twenty bonds, with the necessary 
 amount of repudiated depreciating currency to enable the bank- 
 ers to gobble up the bonds, which they did, as the records will 
 show, — gold going up in July, 1864 to 285, and legal tenders or 
 unco-operative currency going dpwn to less than forty cents on 
 the dollar. 
 
 Thus almost the entire series of five-twenty bonds, exceeding 
 the sum of $1,500,000,000, were procured in the neighborhood of 
 fifty cents on the dollar, making a total steal on the whole issue 
 of $750,000,000, while the interest on the bonds each year since 
 1864 have been as follows: — 
 
 June 1, 1864 $82,309,445 
 
 June 1, 1865 114,000,000 
 
 June 1. 1866 169,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1867 176,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1868 168,000,000 
 
 June 1. 1889 153,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1870 150,000,00© 
 
 June 1, 1871 140,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1872 136,800,000 
 
 June 1, 1873 129,500,000 
 
 June 1, 1874 120,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1875 118.000,000 
 
 June 1, 1876 105,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1877 102,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1878 09,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1879 105.000,000 
 
 June 1, 1880 97,124,511 
 
 June 1, 1881 05,754,574 
 
 June 1, 1882 88,877,410 
 
 June 1, 1883 82,508,741 
 
 June 1, 1884 59,160,131 
 
 June 1, 1885 54,578,376 
 
 June 1, 1886 51,386,256 
 
 June 1, 1887 47,000,000 
 
 June 1, 1888 44,715,007
 
 140 A FINANCIAL DRAMA. 
 
 Americans! run your eyes up this eloquent column of millions 
 taken from you each year as interest on a debt worked on you, 
 not through you borrowing money, but through the destruction 
 of your money. Is it not high time you looked into this ques- 
 tion? 
 
 NEARLY THREE THOUSAND MILLIONS OP DOLLARS. 
 
 Thus we have already paid nearly $3,000,000,000 in interest, 
 while the debt, amounting to $1,165,584,656.64 at present writing, 
 remains a legacy to our children. 
 
 Third Act. — The National (so-called) Bank Act — Passed June 3, 
 1864, Surrendering the Sovereign Bight of the Nation to 
 Issue Money unto the Untaxed Aristocracy, the So-called 
 National Bankers. 
 
 One would naturally suppose there was a limit to human greed; 
 that the now established bondocracy would rest content over their 
 unparalleled plunder. But not they. Success made them bolder, 
 and they actually conceived a scheme by which the nation was 
 to manufacture money and give it them free. The scheme was 
 finally consummated and became law under the (so-called) Na- 
 tional Bank Act. 
 
 Free money would almost cause anybody to start a bank. But, 
 alas! this money was not free to the reader, only to the bond- 
 holders; and they appreciated it. For by September 30, 1871, 
 they had in full blast 1,784 money corporations known as (so- 
 called) national banks, and to-day there are in operation some 
 three thousand institutions doing business under the false title 
 of national banks, who are loaning by the treasurer's report of 
 1888, $276,855,203 to the same people who gave them this money 
 free. Of course there is nothing in the money question! 
 
 The money furnished by the government to these institutions is 
 known as national bank notes. They are furnished free under 
 the act of June 30, 1864, which virtually declares that all bond- 
 holders who place their bonds for safe-keeping in the treasury 
 vaults are entitled to receive ninety per cent, of their amount in 
 so-called national bank notes from the government free, should 
 they wish to take out a charter and start a so-called national 
 bank. 
 
 This is a beautiful arrangement for the bondholder, whereby he 
 can draw a double interest on the one capital, and not only run 
 the government, but the farms and everything else worth run- 
 ning. 
 
 The proposition may look queer that the government should 
 pay $900 for the privilege of guarding a $1,000 bond; but Congress 
 has done some stranger things than that since 1861; for instance, 
 the congressional act of 1864 giving the bond-holder his intere«»* 
 in advance. 
 
 Fourth Act.— Contraction — Outlawing All Money except Gold 
 and the Money of the so-called National Banks. 
 
 As the bond-holders held the gold and the national bank notes, 
 the scheme under this act had the simple object in view of ren- 
 dering everybody's else money valueless by legislation, and plac-
 
 A FINANCIAL, DKAMA. 141 
 
 ing the people completely in the power of the national bo-called 
 banks. In order to briner about this result, Congress — having 
 called in previously $133,000,000 small currency, and piled up the 
 bond-holder's' fortunes that amount more, and at the same time 
 contracting the people's currency to that amount — began the bus- 
 Ines of rounding and polishing off the entire scheme by whole- 
 sale contraction. So in February, 1873, the conspirators at Wash- 
 ington demonetized silver, declaring it not a legal tender in sums 
 exceeding five dollars, sweeping $350,000,000 of silver out of circu- 
 lation. 
 
 Again, in January, 1875, the bond-holders, through Congress, 
 struck another blow to create and intensify the money famine, 
 and compel the people to come up and mortgage themselves to 
 the so-called national banks,and on that date passed the Resump- 
 tion Act, ostensibly to resume specie payment, but in reality to 
 further contract the volume of money in circulation, which it ac- 
 complished with a vengeance, for it has piled up in the treasury 
 vaults, and kept from circulation $450,000,0Q0 in gold, silver, and 
 notes, reducing — along with similar causes — the volume of money 
 of the United States from $il per capita (which it was in 186G) 
 down to the insiginficant and insufficient sum of $12 per capita, 
 causing universal bankruptcy and ruin. Thus, conceived in in- 
 iquity, perfected by treachery, and resulting in the present de- 
 plorable condition of the people, these four abominations were 
 brought forth, entailing on the country billions of debt, and on 
 its masses of laboring poor practical serfdom. 
 
 THE BESULT OP CLASS LEGISLATION. 
 
 The following table, taken from the Banker's Journal of New 
 York, will give a somewhat general idea of the magnitude of the 
 wholesale ruin thus wrought to build up the colossal fortunes of 
 a few individuals by drawing this currency from circulation, 
 burning it up, and issuing bonds for it: — 
 
 FAILUKES OF LEADING FIEMS. 
 
 Years. No. of Firms. Liabilities. 
 
 1864 529 $8,566,000 
 
 1865 530 17.575,000 
 
 1866 672 47.3.33.00O 
 
 1867 2,389 86,518,000 
 
 1868 2,167 57,275,000 
 
 1369 2,411 65,247,000 
 
 5870 3,168 76,698.000 
 
 1871 2,915 » ~ 70,698,000 
 
 1872 4,069 121,056,000 
 
 1873 5.183 228,499,000 
 
 1874 5,830 - 159,239.000 
 
 1875 7.740 - 201,060,353 
 
 1876 9,092 - 191,117,786 
 
 1877 8,872 ~ - 190,369,930 
 
 1878 10,478 ~ ~ 234,363,132 
 
 1879 12,654 333,221,042 
 
 78,699 $2,088,776,243 
 
 These failures were caused by reducing the circulating me- 
 dium from $47 per capita down to $12 per capita, through calling 
 in the currency, and exchanging it for bonds.
 
 142 A FINANCIAL DRAMA. 
 
 In order to remove the odium of this drama from politicians as 
 a class, and to place the blame where it rightly belongs, we will 
 conclude by giving the complexion of the members of the Con- 
 gresses who enacted the scenes. Examine, and then behold the 
 kind of agents whom the people elect, and are electing, and then 
 ask yourself whose fault is it, — the politician's or the people's? 
 
 THE COMPLEXION OF THE CONGRESSIONAL ACTORS. 
 
 Bankers and bank stockholders 198 
 
 Lawyers 99 
 
 Merchants 14 
 
 Manufacturers 13 
 
 Physicians 8 
 
 Merchants 
 
 Farmers 
 
 From this table we gain a faint glimpse of the reason of all this 
 legislation, resulting in the enrichment of bankers and the gen- 
 eral impoverishment of the people. 
 
 A PECULIAR ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 The intelligent bonded reader will observe, if he or she will 
 run their bonded eye up the yearly interest column, that the in- 
 terest is decreasing as it descends down to 1888; but if the reader 
 will take the trouble to examine, also into the price of labor at 
 the date when the interest amounted to its largest sum (1867), 
 and the price of labor where the interest amounts to its smallest 
 sum(1888), the reader will clearly perceive that the price of labor 
 has been decreasing in ratio as the interest has been decreasing; 
 the bond-holder can therefore purchase as much labor with his 
 reduced amount of interest of 1888 as he could with his larger 
 amount of interest of 1867. So that when it comes to posession 
 of commodities, which is the real object of his interest, the 
 amount he extracts to-day is the same as in 1867; that the real 
 interest has not decreased at all. 
 
 "O, there is nothing in the money question!" says some one. 
 No? Well, it seems to me rather an important thing to under- 
 stand how individualism can put me and sixty million other me's 
 in debt, where we have never borrowed a dollar, make us pay in- 
 terest, make us pay thousands of millions on the principal, and 
 then make us pay as much labor to settle the balance as though we 
 owed the original sum! 
 
 Bonded ladies and gentlemen, this is our present beautiful in- 
 dividualistic system of finance! I wish to behold it replaced 
 with a national system of finance, and that is why it becomes a 
 duty to reveal its processes and workings, which are so arranged 
 that the less you borrow, the more you owe, and the more you 
 pay, the greater the debt. 
 
 Who are the kings of the world to-day? 
 
 Its financiers. 
 
 Land, light, air, water, industry, science, and art are all tribu- 
 tary and collateral to bonds, stocks, and mortgages.
 
 A PINANOIAL DRAMA. 143 
 
 REVIEW. 
 
 If the readers will exercise merely the slightest scrutiny, they 
 will observe that their own national currency carried on the en- 
 tire expenses of the war ivithout hoiTowing paper credit, gold or 
 silver, without a debtor a bond, and that their country immediately 
 received unparalelled prosperity during this currency's circula- 
 tion; that the destruction of this currency and its depreciation 
 was caused by the nation placing this word "earcepf upon its 
 back, thus dishonoring and refusing to receive for national taxes 
 the very currency which it had paid out for national labor and 
 service; that by thus dishonoring, and consequently depreciating 
 its own money, it gave certain wealthy individuals an opportunity 
 to buy it up as they would so much old junk; that then this wise, 
 wise nation immediately set the printing-presses to work and be- 
 gan PRINTING OFF UnITED StATES BONDS, WHERE THERE WAS NO 
 
 DEBT, AND NO NEED of bonds, there having been nothing bor- 
 rowed,— -began printing United States bonds while the industry 
 and business of the country was running on this national co-op- 
 erative currency, and enjoying through this currency the must 
 prosperous years of its existence, that the nation then called in 
 this national currency, burned it up, and exchanged it for these 
 printed bonds; thus sweeping away what was and should have 
 been its co-operative exchange, causing the hard times which the 
 table of business failures reveal, and building up a national debt 
 OUT OF A DARK AND VILLAINOUS SCHEME, and where the American 
 
 people HAD NEVER BORROWED A DOLLAR. Just think of it! O 
 
 Americans, think of it! 
 
 I know that in metaphysics the pathology of crime is tabooed, 
 but sometimes we have to reveal the disease the better to reveal 
 the remedy. 
 
 Americans, instill into your children a love for their country! 
 Read this dark drama, and read it over again. Give it to your chil- 
 dren, and teach them its history. They must understand it to be 
 free. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," so a great patriot 
 hath said; but a dog may be very vigilant, and eternally vigilant; 
 AND YET be ENCHAINED, and not free. Freedom needs something 
 else besides "vigilance," and that something else is intelligence. 
 Eternal intelligence is the price of liberty, and no people can be 
 free who cannot discern the difference between their own co- 
 operative exchange and a borrowed money; who cannot compre- 
 hend that a national co-operative currency liberates the world 
 from bonds; who can not perceive that the system of individual 
 finance has bonded or mortgaged every dollar's worth of wealth 
 in existence; that there is a bond or mortgage of some kind upon 
 your land, your house, your food, your clothes, and every oc- 
 cassional dollar in your pocket; that this bond or mortgage is 
 steadily extracting your wealth in its silent process of absorption; 
 
 THAT THE WORLD's ENTIRE WEALTH IS LESS THAN THE SUM WHICH 
 
 THE world's ENTIRE BONDS CALL FOR, and that Consequently the 
 world's entire increase of wealth must be consequently, and is 
 consequently, absorbed as interest; that not a thing you have 
 nor a thing the entire community has, but that is according to 
 your laws, courts, and civilized customs, leviable and liable to
 
 144 A FINANCIAL, DRAMA. 
 
 execution under the rules of national, state, and county jurispru- 
 dence governing these bonds; that the police, militia, array, and 
 navy of the world are behind, and are ready at any moment to en- 
 force, at the cost of millions of lives, the payment of interest and 
 principal of those bonds, or the surrender of the w^orld's wealth 
 which secures them. Oh, there's nothing in the money question! 
 Go, ye who think so, and read the statistical work upon the na- 
 tional, state, county, municipal, private, and corporate mort- 
 gages; figure them up, and find out where you and your property 
 stand; and if you understand the commonest rules of arithmetic, 
 
 — IF you UNDERSTAND THAT PUBLIC DEBTS ARE MORTGAGES UPON 
 
 PRIVATE PROPERTY, — you will then understand that the property 
 holders of the United States are mere tenants at will, but over- 
 seers, of the bond-holders, and that the propertyless poor, still 
 below are but bonded serfs. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 Although this is a true citation of events, nevertheless we 
 merely present it as an object-lesson, — not to show up individuals, 
 but simply to reveal the natural results of a system which renders 
 our collectivity a prey to individual selfishness through our indi- 
 vidual system of affairs. To waste our forces, scatter our ener- 
 gies, and fritter away our time in dealing with the iniquities of 
 petty individuals is beneath our purpose. The present system of 
 society presents continual temptations to us all. Dire necessities 
 face us upon all sides, and vile temptations accompany these dire 
 necessities. The evil and the temptation are here, and we fall 
 victim to their snares. It is the abolition of these evils and their 
 temptations which we would deal with; for instead of punishing 
 individuals, we seek only to benefit society. The present system 
 of society is full of traps, lying ready to trip us up, and the best 
 of us are sometimes tripped more or less. Let us not have traps, 
 and then condemn our brothers for falling into them; let us 
 rather remove the traps, — remove the evils, the temptations. 
 Necessity is vacuum, — the center of attraction, — and all alike are 
 impotently drawn and shaped therein. If we, with our present 
 necessities and our present weaknesses, had held the same pred- 
 ilections as the actors in this drama, we, too, would have done 
 precisely the same under identical circumstances. Under the 
 ruling forces of present conditions, the carpenter's son, the sturdy 
 mason, the busy machinist, the honest farmer who does not place 
 the largest apples in the bottom of the bo.x, the engineer, and the 
 architect, — all alike might have done the same thing under ident- 
 ical circumstances which prompted the actors of this drama. 
 
 The Nazarene prayed: "Lead us not into temptation, but 
 deliver us from evil." 
 
 So long as we leave the present system intact; so long as we 
 hold and believe that one man has the right to take that which 
 belongs to another, and to take that also which belongs to all, — 
 just so long will we have this condition of evil which Christ 
 prayed we might be delivered from ; just so long vrill we have
 
 SOCIETY. Ii5 
 
 these numerous and endless temptations which he prayed we 
 might not be led into. Therefore, let us deliver our country from 
 evil, and not lead our people into temptation, and we will have 
 no longer these instances of inhuman rapacity we have instanced 
 in this drama. 
 
 Society works as works a liquor, — the mass itself gradually 
 clarifies, and as the liquor in the course of purification proceeds, 
 down to the bottom drops the dregs, and up to the top gathers 
 the scum; by and by the body of the fluid becomes clean and 
 clear, and entirely separates itself from its lower and upper im- 
 purities. Society is about doing this to-day; and this action of 
 purification of the body of society is nothing more nor less than 
 thitiking ; for thought will inevitably cast out the impurities of 
 the body politic. There therefore is really but one class in society. 
 Its criminal element is not a part of society proper, but merely 
 its dregs and its scum; and these two form, therefore, the two 
 species of our criminal element, — that portion who work crimin- 
 ality through mental processes, and that portion who work crim- 
 inality through physical processes. The first is represented by 
 such as the actors in this drama who live on the surface of 
 society, and the second are represented by the burglars, highway- 
 men, pickpockets, and other gentry who live down at the bottom 
 of society. As the masses take on love and wisdom, they purge 
 themselves of these above-mentioned twin impurities, and become, 
 as it were, clear spirit, — a thing which ferments not, sours not, 
 rots not, but endures as pure life everywhere endures. Therefore 
 we need not bother nor worry ourselves much, either about the 
 dregs below nor the scum above; we have to but simply purify, 
 through pure conditions, the great body of society itself. 
 
 So long as society retains these present immoral and unjust 
 conditions, it will continue to slough off these upper and lower 
 impurities; and if it continues thus, and improves not, then the 
 entire mass corrupts, rots, festers, and dies; for scum and dregs 
 mean death. The upper impurity is cast up from the impurity 
 permeating society. Thus society is responsible for its upper 
 criminal element. The lower impurity is also precipitated down 
 from the impurity permeating society; and thus, again, society is 
 also responsible for its lower criminal element. Thus it is wrong 
 to PUNISH OR TO CONDEMN either the monopolist orthemanipulist, 
 the top or the bottom wrong-doer, — for both are victim8g';nerated 
 and sloughed forth up and down from the central impurity. 
 
 Society! cease condemning or punishing thy sad unfortunates, 
 be they rich or poor, whose errors you are responsible for. Well 
 may you be charitable and forgiving to them both; for their 
 crimes are your own. 
 
 Society! instead of blaming the millionaire and monopolist, 
 blame thyself; instead of correcting them, correct thyself. Blame 
 not, also, the criminals who infest thy lower walk of life; for they 
 too are your own product. Purify thy social relations. Justify 
 thy industrial relations. Equalize thy natural relations. In a 
 word, nationalize thyself, and all pertaining to thyself, and then 
 you will find no criminals on top, and no criminals on bottom; for 
 not being criminal thyself, thou canst not yield criminals. Nation-
 
 MUTUAL BANKING 
 
 BY WILLIAM B. GREENE. 
 
 THIS remarkable work contains a well 
 digested plan for freeing the world from 
 the eurse of money monopoly with its 
 resultant evil, interest taking, without 
 waiting for the co-operation of a majority 
 of the people. It is a white-winged messen- 
 ger of hope and courage to those who have 
 despaired of educating the masses into 
 freeing themselves from the clutch of the 
 money lords. Students of the money 
 question who have not read this wonder- 
 ful work will find in its pages much that 
 will astonish them. Many of their old 
 ideas will be rudely shaken by the invinc- 
 ible logic of the author. To study this 
 book is to finish one's financial education. 
 
 GLAZED PAPER COVERS, POSTAGE PAID. IOC; 20 FOR $1.00. 
 THE CRUSADE PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 DENVER, COLO.
 
 -THE- 
 
 Alliance Library. 
 
 THE SOCIAL QUESTION. 
 
 Paper Cloth 
 
 John Harvey 51 00 
 
 Wealth vs. Commonwealth-H.D. 
 
 Lloyd 1 00 
 
 Civilization Civilized— Maboll.. 10 
 Facts ct Fiction of Life— Gardner fiO 1 25 
 Men, Women and Gods "' uO 1 25 
 .Sldaeology- Treatise Generative 
 
 Life 1 25 
 
 TheRifrhtsof Labor 25 
 
 The I'ullman Strike— Canvorline 25 
 Direct Legislation-J.W. Sullivan 25 
 
 Henry Cadavere . . > 75 
 
 Jesus or Ceesar — Flower 06 
 
 The Wherefore Investig'ating Co. 
 
 L. Waisbrooker 50 
 
 Perfect Motherhood— Waisb'kr 1 00 
 
 Occult Forces — Waisbrooker 50 
 
 Fountain of Life '■ 50 
 
 Sex Revolutions " 25 
 
 Hellen Harlow's Vow " 25 
 
 Things As I See Them— Wayland 05 
 
 Sesame and Lillies— Ruskin 50 
 
 Age of Reason— Paine 25 
 
 Rights of Man— Paine 50 
 
 The Crisis— Paine 50 
 
 Common Sense 15 
 
 Volney's Ruins 50 
 
 Strike of a Sex— Geo. N. Miller. 25 
 After the Sox Struck " 28 
 
 The Irrepressible Conflict Be- 
 tween Two World Iheories . . 50 
 
 Poverty's Factory 25 
 
 If Christ Came to Chicasro 50 
 
 Alliance Songster — Leo Vincent 20 
 
 ($2 per dozen.) 
 Armageddon Songster 35 
 
 RELATING TO FINANCE. 
 
 Labor and Finance Revolution. 1 25 
 
 Brice's Financial Catechism 50 
 
 The Great Red Dragon 50 
 
 Our Money Wars— Leavitt 50 1 25 
 
 The Golden Battle— Donnelly ... 50 
 Bond Holders and Bread Winners 25 
 New Monetary System— Loucks. 25 
 Better Financial System — Ward 25 
 A Scientific Exposure of The Er- 
 rore in our Money System — 
 
 Hobart -. 25 
 
 Philosophy of Price— Dunning. . 25 
 Ten Men of Money Island-Norton 10 
 Sevf>n Financial Conspiracies- 
 Emery 10 
 
 Imperialism in America — Emery 10 
 
 Coin's Financial School 25 
 
 A Tale of Two N ations 25 
 
 Labor and Capital 25 
 
 Money Found— Hill 25 
 
 The Banker's Dream 25 
 
 The Ranker Hypnotized 25 
 
 Mutual B.-mking- tireone 10 
 
 Li'ttoi.M frnni .Jimtowu— Wilson. 25 
 A F'ew Financial Facts— S.S.King 25 
 Money vs. Products— Wilson.. .. 25 
 The Banker's Conspiracy— 25 
 
 ON CO-OPERATION. 
 
 Mutualism— Parsons 10 
 
 Civilization Civilized— Mabell. . 10 
 Washmgton Brown, Farmer- 
 Armstrong 50 
 
 Government Ownership of Rail- 
 roads and Telegraphs as ad- 
 vocated by the F. A. and 1. U. 
 
 H. L. Loucks 25 
 
 Farming Corporations 1 00 
 
 TRANSPORTATION. 
 
 Railways of Europe and .America 50 1 25 
 Government Ownersliip of Rail- 
 roads and Telegraphs as ad- 
 vocated by the b\ A. and I. U. 
 H. L. Loucks 25 
 
 REFORM NOVELS. . 
 
 Main Traveled Road— Garland. 50 1 00 
 A Member of the Third House.. 50 100 
 
 Jason Edwards-drarland 50 1 00 
 
 ASpoilofOtlice— Garland 50 100 
 
 Prairie Folks -Garland 50 1 25 
 
 Congressman Swanson— Post.. . 50 1 25 
 Driven from Sea to Sea— Post ... 50 125 
 vVho Lies?-Blum Alexander .... 50 1 00 
 Just Plam Folks— Doubleday.. . 50 125 
 
 Unveiling a Parallel 50 1 50 
 
 Is This Your Son, My Lord?— 
 
 Gardner 50 125 
 
 Pray You Sir, Whose Daughter? 50 1 25 
 
 An Official Patriot— Gardner 50 1 25 
 
 Esau, or The Banker's Victim- 
 Bland 25 
 
 A Story of Pullmantown— Meyer 25 
 
 Sh.vlock's Daughter 25 
 
 No Enemy But Himself— Hub- 
 bard 1 25 
 
 The Story of a Canon— Hill 50 1 50 
 
 David and Abigail— B. T. Sawyer SO 1 25 
 Wonderful .Vdveiitures on Venus 50 1 50 
 
 Which Way, Sir, The Better 25 
 
 Birth of Freedom 25 
 
 Siegfried. The Mystic— Wheeler. 50 
 The Heart of Old Hickory — 
 Dromgool 50 
 
 Send orders to 
 
 R. A. SOUTHWORTH. 
 
 429 Charles Building, 
 
 Denver, Colo.
 
 The Safest and Best Insurance. 
 
 The Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealtli in- 
 sures its members against accident, sickness, old age, loss of 
 work, )o--s of home, and death. The plan is this : 
 
 To establish all kinds of industrial plants for the produc- 
 tion of the necessaries and luxuries of life, build comfortable 
 homes with all modern conveniences, to provide the best edu- 
 cational institutions, including the kindergarten and manual 
 training, and to lay out beautiful parks an-i pleasure grouads ; 
 in short, to build model co-operative communities, which will 
 be jointly or collectively owned by the entire Brotherhood. 
 Each resident member of these communities will receive equal 
 pay for a day's work, no difference being made in the compen- 
 sation of men and women, or of manual and mental labor ; and 
 we aim eventually to inaugurate the Nationalistic system, in 
 which all will assist according to their ability and receive ac- 
 cording to their needs. 
 
 To secure the necessary funds for carrying out this plan, a 
 colony membership fee of |i6o is charged. By paying this in 
 full, a member receives a paid-up policy, or a colony member* 
 ship certificate. Members wishing to go to the front as pi- 
 oneers in colony building pay. in advance the full fee of |i6o, 
 while those who prefer to retain their present situations, but 
 who would like to provide against reverses, may pay for a 
 colony membership by monthly installments. 
 
 By mean; of the initiative, referendum and imperative 
 mandate, every member has an equal voice and vote in the 
 management, and perfect democracy is thus secured — the 
 members rule. 
 
 President — Rev. Myron W. Reed, Denver, Colorado. 
 Secretary — N. W. Lermond, Edison, Washington. 
 Treasurer— 'iA\'S,'S> Helen M. Mason, Edison, Washington. 
 O ganizer—K^w . George Candee, Toledo, Ohio, 
 Dean—?Y^OY. Frank Parsons, Boston, Massachusetts. 
 Editor — Rev. W. H. Kaufmen, Edison, Washington. 
 Master Workman— <Z\i.K'S,. H. Swigart, Edison, Washington. 
 Distributer— Y.. F. Nolan, Edison, Washington. 
 
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