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EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER THOMAS MILLS. ,A,. M., v 
 
 "The evolutionary law of advance is first the slightest variation, and 
 then that is repeated and repeated until it becomes the fixed form of the 
 new life. The day of great things is a day of disaster. The day of small 
 things is the birthday of destiny." 
 
 "Wise statesmanihip asks for small things and gets them, and thus 
 makes substantantial advance in the world's progress. Political folly asks 
 for the growth of a thousand years in an alternoon, and not only does not 
 get what it seeks but loses the good it might have had." — From the address 
 on The People's University. 
 
 CHICAGO: 
 
 CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, 
 
 1898. 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 I want you to listen to me. That is the reason why I 
 have spoken. That is the reason why I am writing. 
 Whether you Hsten or not I cannot help speakin^^, neither 
 can I bring myself to think that the things I cannot help 
 saying are not worthy of your heeding. Having spoken 
 to those who were able to hear m.e, I have revised the 
 stenographic reports of these addresses, hoping that oth- 
 ers might read who had not heard. I am a believer in the 
 greatness of the future. I believe that the race I belong to 
 will yet realize here on this earth all things pure and good 
 and beautiful. I believe that the good and pure and beau- 
 tiful are already ours, for any one of us, just so far as we 
 strive to hasten their coming for us all. If these ad- 
 dresses and essays in any way help you to help along this 
 coming of purity and goodness and beauty, then I shall be 
 glad that I have both spoken and written to you. 
 
 WALTER THOMAS MILLS. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY CLUB. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE McA. MILLER, 
 
 CHANCELLOR OF THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY. 
 
 The People's University Club is a branch of the work of 
 the People's University. The People's University was chartered 
 in order to carry into operation plans proposed by Walter 
 Thomas Mills. These plans provide for a general organization 
 to promote the establishment of local co-operative schools, and 
 at the same time to direct the organization of local clubs for the 
 extension of the study of social and economic topics. 
 
 At Hopkins Park, 111., the university is endeavoring to aid 
 in the establishment of such a school, and the Handel Hall meet- 
 ings are a part of the general plan for local clubs for the purpose 
 of economic study. 
 
 Membership in the club does not mean that the person 
 joining is thereby committed to any doctrines or theories of any 
 sort, or to bearing any responsibility for its management in any 
 wav 
 
 The only speaker has been Mr. Mills, and the only work 
 of the club has been the holding of these meetings, where the 
 public has been given an opportunity to hear these addresses. 
 No resolutions are ever passed. No voting is ever done. No 
 committees are ever appointed. No business of a parliamentary 
 character is ever undertaken. 
 
 The club has been supported by a ten-cent collection taken 
 from Sunday to Sunday, and voluntary contributions made by 
 friends of the speaker for the support of his work. In this way 
 all the expe,nses of the club have been provided for. and a con- 
 siderable surplus turned over to the promotion of the work of 
 
10 ••'■./ INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 thd Co-bperatw^/Schgdl. As to the support of the speaker, his 
 work is entirely without remuneration. He works on the same 
 footing as his associates, and for his regular share of the joint 
 products of all the workers connected with the university, both 
 at the Farm School and at the settlement on South Halsted 
 street in Chicago. 
 
 As to the success of these University Club meetings it is 
 difficult to speak. No one who has not been present to feel the 
 resistless power, the volcanic enthusiasm, the unusual devotion 
 to public ends which have so strongly marked both the speaker 
 and the throngs which have crowded the hall, for forty-five con- 
 secutive Sundays, to listen to his message can be made to un- 
 derstand the force and power of these meetings. No printed 
 page can reproduce the face and tone and gesture, or the humor, 
 the disgust, the joy, the horror, the faith, the despair, the deter- 
 mination, the fearful calm, the tumultuous storm which alter- 
 nately possessed the man who was born an orator, is a trained 
 scholar, has even in his young manhood twenty years of actual 
 experience on the platform, and with regard to whom those of 
 us who know him well can truthfully say that but one passion 
 possesses and fills his dauntless spirit, that of love for his race. 
 If no printed page can report these things concerning the 
 speaker, by simply printing the words he has spoken, neither can 
 any words of description adequately describe how the contagion 
 of every emotion and the echo of every sentiment from the 
 speaker possessed, enthused, enraged, calmed, inspired, stirred 
 into tremendous cheering, broke out into sobbing, and crystal- 
 ized into the most exalted patriotism in the hearts of those who' 
 heard him. 
 
 The more than ten thousand people who listened to him at 
 Battery D, when the space at Handel Hall was known to be too 
 narrow for the multitude which it was certain would wish to 
 hear his address on "Judicial Conspiracy as a Factor in Politics," 
 listened and cheered and wept and resolved, as if but one spirit 
 possessed them all. 
 
 These meetings were undertaken with no local organization 
 to support them, nor any funds for the necessary expenses. 
 Mr. Mills simply advertised to speak, and having spoken once 
 kept speaking. The people having heard him once kept coming. 
 His listeners were men and women of all classes and faiths and 
 conditions in life. Professional men, merchants, salesmen, me- 
 chanics, the well-to-do, the helplessly poor, not infrequently a 
 tramp from the street; just as frequently a great employer or a 
 millionaire from the boulevards. They were thoughtful and 
 
INTROULCTORV. II 
 
 capable people, representing every portion of the city, and from 
 neighboring cities and towns for many miles around. Faces 
 from Pontiac, Joliet, Wheaton, and Waukegan became familiar 
 to regular attendants, and extended the parish of this remark- 
 able preacher of political righteousness. 
 
 Mr. Mills is a man of marked personal characteristics. He 
 is bitterly hated by some who know him a little. He is ardently 
 loved by those who know him well. He is incapable of malice. 
 He cannot carry in his heart a grudge. But he is determined, 
 fearless, a hard fighter for his convictions. Not once in all his 
 life has he failed a friend. Not once in his life has he pursued 
 an enemy. 
 
 I am aware that I am speaking strongly. I am one of his 
 friends. I have known him for many years. I knew him when 
 he was a popular lecturer, fresh from college, petted, and flat- 
 tered and praised — but he v/as not spoiled. I knew him when he 
 was rich and prosperous, but he spent sparingly for himself, and 
 was bountiful beyond his means to others. I knew him when 
 under pressure of circumstances beyond his control he was over- 
 taken by financial disaster. I was intimately associated with 
 him, and knew how patiently he bore from day to day the mis- 
 understandings of which he was the victim, and the condemna- 
 tion which w^as showered upon him. I saw his courage rise 
 greater than his misfortunes, and have found his manhood un- 
 harmed by his poverty. I knew with how great a struggle he 
 surrendered the things which most men cherish, and devoted 
 himself without reserve and unhindered by any personal con- 
 sideration, to the work in which he is now engaged. 
 
 But his critics say he is ambitious. He is. I know of no 
 one whose ambitions are greater. But his ambitions are not 
 for himself. He is accused of being a puritan in his tastes and 
 habits. He teaches no doctrine he does not practice, and he is 
 absolutely without the petty vices which disgrace and discredit 
 so many men. But he is so genial and joyous that his prac- 
 tice no less than his words inspire his associates with the con- 
 viction that selfmastery is the gladsome as well as the normal 
 way of life. 
 
 Dr. John Henry Barrows said of him: "If a young man 
 cannot go to college, he ought at least to hear Mills make a 
 speech." Luther Lafiin Mills said of him: "He is more nearly 
 another Wendell Phillips than any other man of this genera- 
 tion." Ex-Gov. John P. Altgeld said of him: "He is one of 
 the most remarkable men in America." The Great English Car- 
 dinal Manning, at his official residence in London, at the close 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 of a two hours' interview, said to Mr. Mills: "Your plans are 
 wise and your purpose more worthy than any other, saving only 
 the way of life itself." 
 
 The secret of his platform power is easy to find. It is his 
 high purpose, his personal qualities, his genial manner, his 
 boundless earnestness, his indomitable will, his unconquerable 
 hope, his physical constitution of iron, his limitless industry, 
 his exhaustless fund of information, his faultless logic, his pathos, 
 his simple, plain Anglo-Saxon speech, his marvelous originality, 
 his simple habits, his habitual self-denial, his perfect self-pos- 
 session, his naturalness, his clarion voice, sounding with abso- 
 lute distinctness, like a bugle call, to the furthest limit of the 
 greatest throng, and finally, with all and crowning all, his great 
 and tender heart, hot with passion because of the social wrongs 
 against the helpless, whom he loves. These are the gifts and 
 the qualities of the man, and these are the sources of his power. 
 
 I have written thus of the author of the following lectures, 
 and of the People's University Club, and of the Farm School 
 because I believe in them all. I am sure that if giving -some 
 idea of the meetings where these addresses were delivered, and 
 of the speaker who delivered them, any single reader shall read 
 them with more attention, separate from the marked personality 
 of the author; or if I shall win for him another listener at 
 future addresses, or shall place one single student under his 
 care, then I shall have made an important contribution to the 
 cause of humanity; and added somewhat to the brightness of 
 the dawn of the new day, w^hose light already glints all faces 
 which are turned toward the morning. 
 
EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS 
 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE UNEMPLOYED. 
 
 It is difficult to think of a more serious question than 
 what shall be done for the unemployed, and yet I am to 
 ask you this afternoon to think together with me for a 
 little while about a harder question. If the unemployed 
 are unable to find a place where by their labor they may 
 provide themselves with a livelihood, what shall be the 
 chance for the children of the unemployed? If the man 
 who has already come to the years of maturity is crowded 
 out, what is to be the future of the young lives which are 
 crowding in upon us out of another world? There is no 
 place for their fathers, where shall we find a place for 
 them? 
 
 The time once was when the boy in the country could 
 any time when employment was scarce on the farm turn 
 to the village or to the larger town, and not only provide 
 for himself but better his chances in the world. This cen- 
 tury commenced with only one out of nineteen of our 
 citizens in cities and towns, and it is closing with fully 
 one-half the population in cities and towns, and the other 
 half confidently expecting to come to town in a few days. 
 
 The time was when the boy in the East, when the old 
 farm had grown too small for further division, could go 
 West and grow up with the country ; or if he was a vil- 
 lager in a New England town and there was no room in 
 his father's store, he could start a store of his own in a 
 rising village of the West, and speedily come to wealth 
 and power. 
 
 The time was when the educated were so few, and the 
 
 13 
 
14 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 demands for their services so great, that lo be a scholar 
 meant to find employment in the professions, and the 
 learned professions ever stood with wide open doors for 
 those who were able to learn the lessons and do the tasks 
 of these more difficult undertakings. 
 
 But the country is crowded as well as the city. The 
 West is crowded as well as the East, and the unemployed 
 in the professions is becoming quite as serious a matter 
 as the unemployed in the commonest ranks of toil. 
 
 A hundred years ago the family was the industrial, 
 social and commercial unit. The greater share of a man's 
 wants wxre things that pertained to provisions for his fam- 
 ily, and the family by their joint labor produced for their 
 own use the things for their own consumption. The old 
 home was a rambling sort of place out on the country 
 side, away from the city and its strife. It nestled on the 
 hillside, it was at the crossing of roads, it was a farm, a 
 shop, a home, a barn-yard, a factory for making food, and 
 clothes, a nursery for children, and sometimes even a 
 church and a school. The food for the family was grown 
 on the farm. The furniture for the household was made 
 on the farm. The clothing for the backs of the family 
 was taken from the backs of the sheep, and the sheep and 
 the spinning-wheel and the loom and the tailor shop and 
 the dressmaking business was all a part of the farm. In 
 the summer time the raw materials were taken out of the 
 land, where the farmer and his children toiled together, 
 and in the winter time they manufactured boots and shoes 
 and clothes and furniture, enlarged their buildings, com- 
 pleted the all-round life which belonged to the family, al- 
 most sufficient in itself in the efifort to provide for its own 
 wants. There was little to sell, and little occasion for 
 selling. 
 
 In an old labor document published one hundred and 
 nineteen years ago I recently read of a New England 
 farmer who was writing then on the subject of hard times. 
 Some one had affirmed that hard times had been the re- 
 sult of extravagance in the households of the people. 
 They were buying too many things. And his answer 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE UNEMPLOYED. 15 
 
 was, that whatever might be true of others, his family 
 had not expended in excess of $10.00 each year for a long 
 time in the purchase of all things for family use. All else 
 of food and clothing and shelter, of necessity and of lux- 
 ury alike, had been produced in the household shop and 
 on the household farm. In those days, to be sure, there 
 were no millionaires. Not even were men ambitious to 
 become millionaires. Neither were there tramps. If men 
 WQve poor it was because they were thriftless, indolent, 
 or unfortunate. If men were comfortable they were 
 housed and fed and provided for by the skillful industry of 
 their own hands. There was death, there was misfortune, 
 there was accident, and of course there was poverty, but 
 there was no monopolizing of the earth and its opportuni- 
 ties. There was no disinheriting of the unborn, with all 
 the chances of livelihood possessed and cornered before 
 life was given to the child who first learned that it was 
 alive a hundred years ago. 
 
 What destroyed the independent, self-employed, self- 
 directing industry of a hundred years ago? The machin- 
 ery of that old industry was rude and simple. A single 
 worker could use the tools, and a single family could con- 
 sume the products. But the new tools came, and the 
 boys and girls looking for employment found their way 
 into the manufacturing town. The little country shop 
 was ruined. The shop was here, the store was over there. 
 The shopman found that the store could sell what he pro- 
 duced cheaper than it was possible for him to make it. 
 There was no margin left for work in his shop on which to 
 support himself and family. The country shop was closed 
 up, and the worker, looking for employment, followed 
 the product from the country store back to the place 
 where it was produced and found employment in the 
 great factory where the competing product came from. 
 In shoes, in iron, in wood work, in clothing, in the thou- 
 sand things which men produce and use, one after an- 
 other, the household industry failed, the tools were put 
 away. The populations of the country farm, home and 
 shop were scattered. They found employment in the 
 rising factory town. The great factory had destroyed the 
 
l6 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 small shop. The small shopman had become the employe 
 of the factory town. He no longer owned his own shop, 
 he no longer worked with his own tools, he no longer 
 lived in his own house, had his own garden, and was no 
 longer attached to the place of his childhood. A thou- 
 sand things that had been dear and beautiful in his life 
 dropped away, lost their meaning and their influence. He 
 was working with another man's tools, he was working 
 under terms prescribed by the other man's interest. He 
 was living as a tenant in another man's house. At home, 
 and at toil, he was subject to the caprice or the necessity 
 of another man's life. Workers thus subjected to the new 
 conditions sought to protect themselves by association, 
 and the labor unions sprang into being in America. But 
 the small shop has gone, and the factory town has taken 
 possession of the factory business, and the factory toiler 
 is the victim of the factory system. 
 
 Just what has taken place in the department of manu- 
 factures is beginning to take place in agriculture and in 
 commerce. When the- employe in the factory town un- 
 dertook by organization to obtain for himself a larger 
 share of the products of his labor the merchant and the 
 farmer took sides with the manufacturer and against the 
 toiler. But now the bonanza corporation farm and the 
 department store are bringing the same bitter experience 
 to the merchant and the farmer as the manufacturing la- 
 borer has borne for years. The small shop was destroyed 
 by the great factory. The small store is doomed by the 
 department store. The small farm cannot endure the 
 competition of the corporation set to work in agriculture. 
 Two years ago the Protective Retailers' Association 
 in Chicago undertook by combination to thwart the work 
 of the department store, but the department store has con- 
 tinued to grow, it has added new buildings, new floors in 
 old buildings, it has even added manufacturing, it is ex- 
 tending its lines, it is taking possession of the field. And 
 the retail store on a small scale which protested against 
 this destruction of the family store by the department 
 store, ow^ned and managed by a corporation, is going out 
 of business, is standing vacant. The children in the fam- 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE UNEMPLOYED. IJ 
 
 ily that owned it have gone to live with relatives, the wife 
 has gone to her mother, the protesting merchant is a clerk, 
 
 or a tramp. 
 
 Two vears ago in Toronto, Canada, an mdignation 
 meeting was held by the small merchants. They told the 
 story of the certain ruin which was coming to them. How 
 the small store was ovsned and managed by the head of a 
 family, how he sold his goods to his immediate neighbors, 
 how he aided them, talked with them, knew them, gave 
 them credit, shared their losses, but out of these services 
 gathered a living for himself and family. They told the 
 storv of how the department store had come, how a young 
 girl,' wanting spending money, was selling goods in com- 
 petition with the head of a family, how the small store 
 feeding a family was obliged to compete with a young girl 
 working for spending money only, how the department 
 store capitalized the girl's labor, put her in a central sta- 
 tion, put exhaustless funds back of her, surrounded her 
 with a measureless stock of goods, cut down the prices, 
 made it impossible for the small store with a family to 
 support to do business in competition with this great 
 institution. The indignation meeting was on Friday night. 
 On Saturdav night the greatest department store of the 
 citv went up in flames. On :Monday the press of the city 
 said what had been on everybody's lips from the hour of 
 the burning, that the building had been set on fire by 
 some one wrought to a frenzy by the indignation of the 
 ruined traders. But the smoke that curled above the 
 ruins had not died away when work was commenced 
 again on larger plans and for a larger store, to continue 
 the business at the old stand, and to continue the slaugh- 
 ter of the small dealers. 
 
 If the country shop can be restored and the factory 
 town destroyed, possibly the department store could be 
 overborne and the small store still given a chance. Biit 
 the countrv shop cannot be restored, the small store is 
 doomed. The \Vorld has outgrown both of then:; and 
 what is true of them is equally true of the farmer. Large 
 capital, perfect equipment, scientific processes, smallest 
 possible expenses — apply these things to agriculture and 
 
l8 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 the farmer is ruined. These things are being applied to 
 agriculture, and its ruin is inevitable. It has been 
 proven beyond doubt that in the Central Western States 
 it is impossible to produce beef, or wheat, or wool, and 
 sell them in the market for a sum sufficient to pay the 
 cost of production. This is not an exception of a gen- 
 eral rule, it is the rule itself. This is not true in a poor 
 year, it is the general average ; it is no longer possible to 
 produce these things and sell them for enough to cover 
 the cost of their production. 
 
 How will a small farmer provide for his living, for his 
 children, for their education, for the things which women 
 and children care for, if he cannot even provide the cost 
 of his own labor. Condemn idleness as you will, there is 
 many a farmer who would find it more profitable than in- 
 dustry, there is many a farmer whose losses are to be 
 measured not by his negligence nor his idleness nor his 
 indolence, but by his industry. He has lost, not because 
 he has not toiled, but because he has. He is ruined, not 
 because he has undertaken too much, but because he has 
 undertaken the commonest tasks, has continued to do at 
 a loss the things he had formerly done at a profit. 
 
 Here is a farmer. He has a wife and three children. 
 His children are in school, there are musical instruments, 
 a library, the usual periodicals, there are clothing, and 
 food, the church and the school, the expenses of main- 
 taining and providing for all the things which come to an 
 ambitious and capable family. From whence is he to pro- 
 vide these things? From the returns of his own labor on 
 his own land. And when in the market he sells these pro- 
 ducts and counts the cost of production, before he can 
 make a sale sufficient to provide for his home there must 
 be put on to the price of the things he sells a sum sufli- 
 cient to cover all these expenses. The cost of living for 
 his family is to him a part of the cost of producing on his 
 farm. 
 
 ^ But take another farm. There are fifty thousand acres 
 in it, and within all its borders is not a woman, nor a c hild, 
 nor a church, nor a school. There are no public roads 
 even, there is nothing that hints of civilization. There 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE UNEMPLOYED. IQ 
 
 are barracks for the men in the time of seeding, and of 
 harvest. What are the costs for production on such a 
 farm? The old-fashioned farming must provide for at 
 least a thousand families on fifty thousand acres of land 
 managed on the old plan, but here is fifty thousand acres 
 of land without a family to be cared for, without a s:hool 
 to be supported, without a church to be constructed, Vvdth- 
 out a teacher to be fed, without a preacher to be cared for, 
 without a musical instrument to be kept in tune, without 
 a periodical to be paid for, without a book to be pur- 
 chased, without a thing which ministers to the better and 
 higher life of man. The one that can produce the most 
 and do it the cheapest will possess the market. The cor- 
 poration farm can produce the most, can do it the cheap- 
 est and does possess the market. What becomes of the 
 old-fashioned farmer? What is the fate of the women and 
 the children? Where must the church and the school go 
 to? What must become of the civilization built on the 
 small shop and the small store and the small farm as the 
 basis of its support? 
 
 I rode sixteen miles in the Sacramento Valley past the 
 side of a single field, and on the other side of me was 
 another wheatfield just as long and just as large. There 
 were no fences, no houses, not even cottages for the 
 workmen. Wild geese threatened the growing wheat. 
 Patrols rode on horseback carrying a rifle, firing into any 
 flock of geese which attempted to settle in the fields to be- 
 gin the work of destruction. These wandering patrol- 
 men watching the geese, they and the geese were the only 
 population. In the spring time the seeding was done 
 with great machinery, in the harvest time a huge machine 
 clipped ofif the heads of the grain, threshed it, winnowed 
 it, sacked it. It only remains to add a machine to grind 
 it and bake it and eat it, and the whole circle will be com- 
 plete by a single going over of the ground. W^hen they 
 plow these fields a gang of eight plows mounted on 
 wheels drawn by sixteen mules starts in the morning away 
 from the sunrise, and drives steadily onw-ard without a 
 turn or stop until midday, when they camp and feed, and 
 drive back again in the afternoon, and the day's work is 
 
20 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 over. In all this vvork there is but one man, and sixteen 
 mules. He walks up and down the line of the mules, 
 swinging his whip, breaking prairie, and the ten com- 
 mandments. What can a small farmer with his narrow 
 fields, with his small planting, with his petty undertak- 
 ings, and his family to support, what can he do com- 
 peting with corporations operating on lines like these? 
 
 Think in another line for a moment. From the man- 
 ual training schools the young graduates have been 
 caught up and hurried away to the shops, and have been 
 given the positions of superintendents over the men who 
 learned their trades pounding away in the shops. The 
 scientific workman is at a premium in the great factory. 
 The scientific workman is the coming master of agricul- 
 ture on the corporation farm, as he is already of manufac- 
 tures in the corporation shop. There is not one place 
 where the single individual with the tools he can use, the 
 land he can cultivate, or the materials he can work upon 
 on any farm or in any shop or in any store — there is not 
 one single place where the single-handed worker standing 
 alone working for himself and family — there is no place 
 where such a worker stands to-day able to secure a bare 
 existence where a corporation cannot follow him, put into 
 the enterprise perfect organization, plenty of capital, 
 scientific management, and gather dividends for stock- 
 holders where the single-handed worker can gather only 
 crusts for himself and little ones. The agricultural schools 
 of _ the country are turning out their graduates, but the 
 scientific farmer is not re-enforcing the small farmer. He 
 goes from the schools to be a superintendent of a corpo- 
 ration farm. A single orchard in Michigan has thirty- 
 two thousand peach trees. A single orchard in Missouri 
 has seventy-five thousand trees. A single orchard in Con- 
 necticut has fifty thousand trees, — all owned by corpora- 
 tions. No farms, no homes, no schools. Simply the fac- 
 tory system applied to the orchard. Where is the small 
 fruit-grower going along with the rest? 
 
 Do not misunderstand all this. I am not condemning 
 machinery, I am not complaining at organizations, I am 
 not objecting to the market. The world only turns one 
 
THE CHILDREN OF THE UNEMPLOYED. 21 
 
 way, I could not turn it back by trying, I am not going to 
 try I do not want the old New England, I do not want 
 the small shops. I am not anxious for re-establishmg 
 the small farm, nor even the small store, notwithstandmg 
 all the sorrow which its destruction mvolves. ihere is 
 no use trying to rebuild it, its day is over, it can never 
 come back any more. I am not contending that organi- 
 zation is wrong, I believe it is necessary. 1 am not con- 
 tending that labor-saving machinery is a misfortune, i be- 
 lieve it is a blessing. I am not complaining because prop- 
 erty is held sacred. I would have it more sacred rather 
 than less so. I am only contending that the most sacred 
 thin- in all this world is a human being. I am in favor ot 
 eoin^ forward, not backward, of completing the new, not 
 attempting to rebuild the old. I only complain because, 
 in the factory, on the farm, and in the store, not that dol- 
 lars are made sacred, not that property is made of high 
 consideration, but that the motive running through them 
 all is for dividends, is for profits, is for the accumulation of 
 wealth, is for the possession of things. When the new 
 dav comes to us, when the new light falls into all places 
 that are dark, when the new joy fills all the hearts that 
 are sad, we shall have organization, we shall have ma- 
 chinery, we shall have wealth. They will not be less sa- 
 cred than now, they will be more sacred. They will be 
 dearer then than now, because then they will not be used 
 to destroy men, they will not be used to destroy society, 
 they will not be used to manufacture millionaires and 
 tramps, they will not be used to make beggars and crimi- 
 nals Then property will not be less sacred than now, it 
 will be more sacred, but it will not be so sacred as a hu- 
 man life. ^ ., ^ , ^ 'J. • ^u 
 
 An ancient teacher took a little child and set it m the 
 midst of them (here Mr. Mills called up a small boy and 
 stood with his hand on his head, continuing). An an- 
 cient teacher called up a little child and set it m the midst 
 of them, that his disciples might learn from the helpless 
 child who stood in the midst. I believe that all contracts 
 are binding. I believe that all deeds should be respected. 
 I believe that all mortgages have authority. I believe in 
 
22 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 property, I believe that man should keep faith with his 
 fellowman ; but when any contract, any mortgage, any 
 institution which society builds, any document which 
 man can execute, when these things involve the robbing 
 of childhood, the pitiless destruction of the little ones, 
 then the throbbing heart in this child's breast is more 
 sacred, more divine, and the obligation to protect it and 
 secure it from harm a more serious consideration than 
 all things else combined. 
 
THE UNEMPLOYED. 
 
 Two weeks ago we discussed the subject of "The Chil- 
 dren of the Unemployed." To-day we will study for a 
 while the problem of the unemployed themselves. I shall 
 not take any time in endeavoring to prove that there are 
 capable, honest, worthy people, both men and women, 
 anxious to earn a living, and absolutely unable to secure 
 an opportunity to do so. There are people still who con- 
 tend that if there are unemployed it is the fault of the un- 
 employed themselves, that the problem of the unemployed 
 is one of changing the character of the people who are out 
 of employment, that those of us who are able to find em- 
 ployment and to care for ourselves have met every obliga- 
 tion in the matter in caring for ourselves, that the unem- 
 ployed can have no claims against us. It is another state- 
 ment of the old doctrine, "each man for himself," and a 
 contention that when each man is for himself those who 
 are unable to take care of themselves are unable to do so 
 solely because of their own faults, not because of the 
 faults of others, not because of social misadjustments 
 rather than because of individual shortcomings. But the 
 people who take this view are so ignorant of the general 
 social questions, that we have not time enough to give 
 them a sufficient amount of instruction on this occasion 
 to enable them to understand what shall be said further 
 on, or else the trouble is not one of ignorance, but of de- 
 liberate and hardhearted misstatement. 
 
 The time was when all men found employment. Once 
 when each man was working for himself with the rude 
 tools of primitive life, when the natural wages of labor 
 were the total products of the laborer, and again, under 
 slavery, the only way the owner could secure the benefit 
 
24 
 
 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 of the slave's labor was to keep him at work. The round 
 of production was large, the social unit and the plantation 
 were largely identical. Whatever the slave produced the 
 master could consume, or waste, and so while all the 
 trades were carried on by slaves organized on great plan- 
 tations, and the products of their labor beyond their bare 
 existence belonged to their masters for their masters' 
 waste or use, there could be no large class of the unem- 
 ployed. 
 
 But slavery is dead. Men no longer buy and sell 
 their brothers in the market. They only buy and sell the 
 products of their brothers' toil. Whenever the buying 
 and selling proves unprofitable production ceases and the 
 laborer starves. To say that the unemployed are respon- 
 sible for their idleness is to say that the unemployed are 
 responsible for maintaining a profitable m.arket for the 
 products of their labor. The unemployed have no voice 
 in the market, no power to control it, no ability to fix its 
 prices, no share in determining the nature of the product, 
 or the use to which it shall be devoted. The men who 
 manage the market are rarely producers. Alternately 
 through the years the market rises and falls, revives and 
 fails, a rebuilt and a broken market. These run through 
 the years, and while the men who manage the market, 
 or who suppose they are managing it, are unable to keep 
 a steady demand for the product of labor, they treat 
 with contempt for idleness the very men whose employ- 
 ment depends upon the maintenance of a market which 
 the merchant pretends to manage, but the worker cannot. 
 
 Labor-saving machinery has come into the world. 
 V>y it the productiveness of labor has been multiplied 
 many fold. But under the slave system the share of the 
 worker was not the amount of his product, but the share 
 which would barely cover such physical existence as 
 would make it possible for him to keep to his task. Under 
 the iron law of wages no better provision is made for the 
 worker, for that law is that wages tend to diminish to the 
 lowest point where the worker shall still be able to sur- 
 vive. Under slavery, and under the wage system, the 
 share of the laborer was not, and is not, the amount of 
 
THE UNEMPLOYED. 25 
 
 his products. It is only such a share as ^vill keep him in 
 working condition. Under the slave system employment 
 was regular, provision was perpetual. But under the 
 wage system, under the operation of machinery wages 
 are paid only while the wheels turn. The wheels can 
 move onlv while the market lasts. While he works he 
 is paid sufficient to keep him alive and at his task. When 
 the machine stands still the worker may starve. He can- 
 not work until the machine starts, he cannot start the 
 machine. Who is responsible for the n.achine standing 
 still? Who shall be able to move its wheels in such a 
 way that they may never be obliged to stop while men 
 and women, anxious to toil, are compelled to starve? 
 
 Before any two workers can possibly exchange their 
 products in the market under the present system it is nec- 
 essary for both of them first to convert their products 
 into cash, and afterwards each may make such pur- 
 chases as he may desire; therefore the possibility of in- 
 dustry is bound by the volume of the money actually in 
 existence and available for business. Whatever changes 
 the volume of money as related to the volume of pro- 
 ducts disturbs the basis on which the products of labor 
 exchange for each other in the market, and whatever dis- 
 turbs that relation m.ust necessarily bring confusion to 
 business and put a brake on the wheels of industry. But 
 worse than this, when debts are made or when present 
 products are paid out in one direction for future products 
 to be paid back in the other, and when the measure by 
 which repayment is made has been so changed as to in- 
 volve the payment of either a larger or smaller share of 
 the products of labor than was required to create the 
 debt in the first place, again a wrong is done, business is 
 disturbed, and a brake is on the wheels of industry. Wise 
 men do not contend that the restoration of money will 
 solve all the problems and turn aside all the evils under 
 which society suffers. But it is contended that to cut 
 of? one-half of the source of money supply has seriously 
 deranged all business aflfairs by multiplying the exchange 
 value of all debts, taxes, street car fares, fixed charges 
 of every sort, as measured against all products of labor. 
 
26 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 But under the wage system, under high tariff and un- 
 der low tariff, under protection and under free trade, un- 
 der the gold standard and the double standard, the busi- 
 ness crisis has arisen, stagnation has occurred to trade, 
 the wheels of industry have been stilled. Men have 
 starved, not because they were unwilling to toil, but be- 
 cause depending on the market the market had broken 
 and the opportunity to earn a living had been taken away 
 from them. It is not exactly correct, but it is near enough 
 for the sake of argument, to say that one-half of the pro- 
 ducts of labor goes to the laborer in wages, and the other 
 half in payment of interests, rents and profits. In this 
 connection it is quite possible that some man has indi- 
 vidually and wilfully done some wrong thing. I insist 
 that the real fault is not with the man, not with the cor- 
 poration, not with the individual, nor anywhere but with 
 the system by which society organizes its market, not for 
 the purpose of directly securing the welfare of all the 
 people, but profits for a portion of the people. If the 
 worker is able to buy back only one-half of his products, 
 who shall buy the other half? The employer and those 
 who belong to the employing classes are the only pur- 
 chasers left, but they cannot use the other half, they are 
 not numerous enough. Exchange must stop when the 
 purchase stops. Under slavery the producing slave-own- 
 er, under the feudal system the feudal lord was usually a 
 producer of many things. He could waste, consume, de- 
 stroy in riotous living in a single banquet the products 
 of many months of toil, and these products would have 
 been the direct results of the toil of his gangs of slaves. 
 
 But under our system the producer produces but one 
 thing. The great shop that turns out pig iron if there is 
 no market for pig iron, if the wage workers can furnish 
 a market for only one-half, the owners cannot get to- 
 gether and use up the other half of the pig iron in riotous 
 living. They could not wear it for ornaments, they could 
 not use it at a banquet, they could not make use of it in 
 providing luxurious apartments for their dwellings. It 
 is not possible for them to so extend their own living ex- 
 penses that they could use one single ton of pig iron as 
 
THE UNEMPLOYED. 27 
 
 the result of such a purpose. The only way the managing 
 producer of pig iron can convert his pig iron into a ban- 
 quet is to first send it through the market. If he could 
 get it through the market he could keep his shop going. 
 If he cannot get it through the market and keep his shop 
 going, neither can he get it through the market in such 
 a way as to convert it into the means of riotous and 
 wasteful habits. When he cannot sell what he produces 
 he must stop his machinery, he must close his shop, he 
 must wait for his profits, his workers must wait for bread. 
 The workers can buy but one-half, the employer could 
 buy the other half, but he can not use it. therefore he will 
 not buy it. What shall we do with this surplus product 
 that the shop produces that the workingmen cannot buy, 
 that the capitalist cannot use? 
 
 There are a variety of answers. One is, that the sur- 
 plus rises not from our own shops, but from the products 
 of foreign labor sold to us in a market not sufficiently 
 protected by a tariff wall. But the trouble is that our 
 own shops inside the wall produce twice as much as our 
 own workers inside the wall are able to buy. If not able 
 to buy the surplus of our own shops, if the products of 
 our own shops are sufficient to break our own market, ex- 
 cluding the foreign importer may postpone the day of 
 the disaster, but it cannot avert it. 
 
 Another answer is, we are to seek a foreign market for 
 the surplus of our goods. How shall we sell these goods 
 in a foreign market? Exchange them for the products 
 of foreign workers. What shall be done with the pro- 
 ducts of the foreign workers for which we exchange our 
 0)\vn product? Bring them back here. If s<o, w.ho s'hall 
 buy them? What advantage to th'e country to simply ship 
 the products of our labor abroad and leave tsliem tiliere? 
 But the answer is, that we will ship our wheat to England, 
 and England will ship her jack-knives back to this coun- 
 try. American laborers can buy, we will say, one-half the 
 wheat. Englis'h laborers, we will say, can buy one-half 
 the jack-knives. How shall the Englishman find a mar- 
 ket for his jack-knives? How shall the American find a 
 market for his wheat? In-ternational trade will convert 
 
28 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 Amierican 'wheat into English jack-knives. But vi^-ho sihall 
 buy the jack-knives? The American laborer has ex- 
 hausted his purdhasing power when he has bought the 
 half he has already purchased. Can he buy it easier, now 
 that the wheat wihich he could not buy has been converted 
 into jack-knives? But the capitalists will take the jack- 
 knives. But they cannot use them. If each one carried a 
 'hundred jack-knives in his pocket there w^ould still be a 
 surplus, unsalable and glutting the market. In England 
 the same thing is true with American wheat. The English 
 w^orking-man has exhausted his purchasing power when 
 he has bought one-half of his own products. How sihall 
 he still be able to buy because international exchange has 
 converted the 'half 'he oould not buy into something else? 
 There is absolutely no way by which tihe worker's share 
 of .the products of 'his labor shall be less than the whole of 
 what he produces, and yet the occasional crash, the' break- 
 ing of tihe market, the closing of the shop and the disaster 
 of the unemployed still be averted. The market breaks 
 because productive power and purchasing power do not 
 correspond. When all the men shall be able to produce 
 to their full capacity, and buy to the full measure of their 
 ability to produce, the breaking of the market, the de- 
 struction of business, the army of the unemployed may be 
 discontinued. 
 
 How sihall we manage this? What is the solution of 
 this problem? There are other solutions than those we 
 ihave suggested, but w*hen we ask for a solution we must 
 have sometihing in view. To some the problem of the un- 
 employed is a question of maintaining t'he public order. 
 To others providing for the comfort of all the workers. 
 I do not believe that either of these is a sufifi'cient solution 
 of the problem. When peace is provided, though men 
 continue to starve, the problem of the unemployed is 
 solved from tJhe standpoint of the standing army. We 
 are not any longer asked to maintain soldiers to fight 
 Canada or whip ^lexico, or to -meet a foreign war. It is 
 to maintain the peace in our own great industrial centers. 
 What with? With a gatling gun. But suppose the army 
 of the unemployed, starving in their despair, grow frenzied 
 
THE UNEMPLOYED. 29 
 
 in their grief and ask for bread and refuse ar.y longer to 
 die outside the granaries crowded with wheat sprouting 
 and rotting while it waits for a market? Suppose disorder 
 s'hould arise, suppose tihe gatling gun should be called into 
 play ? Suppose the last life 'has been swept out of existence 
 and the peace of death 'has silenced the disorder which 
 arose from the army of the unemployed? Is the grave- 
 yard a sufficient solution? Is a deaiih charge the only 
 answer? It is the answer of the suicide, it is the con- 
 fession of failure. The gatling gun may kill the unein- 
 ploved, it cannot solve Ohe problem of their employment. 
 
 Suppose, again, the granaries were opened, that the 
 \Vheat was poured -out, that the bakers were set to work, 
 that bread was thrown in the way of every one . Suppose 
 the relation between what a man does and what a man 
 has s'hould be broken, and abandoned, and forgotten. 
 Suppose all that slhould happen. Does it settle anything? 
 To be sure, men will not starve while tihe granaries last, 
 but to be .sure again, eating without working will be a 
 disaster not less terrible to the real interests of mankind 
 than working without eating 'has already been fonnd to be. 
 The real difficulty lies further back than simply feeding 
 the hungry, or clothing tJhe ragged. The relationsliip be- 
 tween -what a man does and what he possesses has been 
 broken by the wage system ; for those who do not, have, 
 and those who do, have not. 
 
 Any solution of the problem of the unemployed which 
 gives uneamed to the toiler, as the present system' gives 
 unearned to others, will be a solution which mav save the 
 individual from starvation, but it cannot save society from 
 disaster. The most serious charge against the present 
 condition of things is not. after all, that it clothes the 
 bodies of men with rags, and leaves their stomachs unfilled 
 with food. The saddest thing of all is that it fills their 
 hearts with hatred, that it debars them from an intellectual 
 and social life, tfhat even when employed it onlv provid-es 
 for a man a livelihood on the basis of a beast. No solution 
 of the problem of the unemployed is sufficient which 
 maintains the peace with a gatling gun. or secures the 
 comfort even of those who sufifer now by giving bread 
 
30 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 instead of bullets. No solution will be sufficient wliic'h 
 does not provide that the benefits of machinery 
 shall accrue, not to those who toil not, but to those who 
 do ; that its presence shall come not to turn out of employ- 
 mant one company of people by increasmg" the productive 
 ability of another company of people, nor to compel all 
 toilers to have no security even for their daily bread save 
 the chances of a market about which there i-s but one 
 absolute certainty, and tihat is, that sooner or later it mdrst 
 break, and break again, and break again. The solution of 
 this problem must involve that labor-saving machinery 
 shall first of all save labor, save the laborer. His hours 
 must be shortened, 'his s'hare of the products must be 
 increased. He must be his own employer, ^he must be a 
 part owner of his own tools, he must be his awn landlord. 
 Industrial democracy will make him his own boss. When 
 a comfortable physical existence has been secured, may 
 the time hasten when instead of seardhing the world ixxmd 
 for an impossible market for an unsalable surplus, he may 
 find his surplus in leisure for the cultivation of his mind, 
 for the possession of the best graces of this human life of 
 ours, for living an intellectual and a social Hfe, for having 
 a man's share in the things that belong to a main's life. 
 This will be seeking first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness, and then all other things a hundred fold 
 more abundant to all men will be speedily added. The 
 demand of the worker after all, is for leisure, not foT labor; 
 is for books, not. for bread. It is for a man's sfhare, not for 
 a beast's provisions. To have some share in winning a 
 victory so splendid is an ambition wortjhy of the most 
 splendid manhood. 
 
JUDICIAL CONSPIRACY AS A FACTOR IN 
 
 POLITICS.* 
 
 The changes in the industrial and commercial life 
 during the past century have been more marvelous in their 
 forims tihan during any oth-er dozen cenituries in Ohe history 
 of the world. Laws enacted and institutions w'hich were 
 created to protect life and property under old indAJsitrial, 
 commercial and social conditions must be S'O changed that 
 t<be new s-ocial and industrial life may conform to tihe new 
 forces at work in industr}- and commerce, and at the 
 •same time preserve the common rights and provide for 
 the common welfare of us all. To-morrow is forever the 
 child of yesterday. New institutions are forever born out 
 of old ones. The world's new life is forever the saime old 
 life, only it has seen the new morning of its resurrection. 
 The man -w^ho entertains contempt for what was is dis^ 
 qualified from 'having any safe and proper s'hare in build- 
 ing what ought to be. Whoever entertains contempt for 
 our past cannot be trusted to determine our future. Who- 
 ever despises the institutions which are cannot be trusted 
 to build the institutions which ought to be. The future is 
 only one of the past yesterdays. It is onlv when the old 
 form, insufficient to meet and deal with present life, per- 
 sists in outliving its usefulness that we must combine to 
 change it, becaaise we have seen the picture of t(he more 
 splendid life which is to be. * 
 
 Whoever ignores the authorities of society as estab- 
 lished and the officers of her law as administered, no mat- 
 ter how far these may fall short of justice, is not qualified 
 to write the new laws nor to administer the n^esv institutionis 
 
 • This address was delivered at Battery D. in response to a petition of- 
 ficially signed by more than one hundred labor organizations and reform 
 clubs, including alLorganizations of the sort in the city of Chicago. 
 
 31 
 
32 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 when liands otyh'er than bheir own have made thiem possi- 
 ble. The reformatiion of our laws, the building of new 
 social usag-es, the establis'hmen't of new indusitrial institu- 
 tions 'which shall conform bo the marvelous mechanical 
 and commercial advancement of recent 3'ears is an under- 
 taking tioo vast and serious to be attempted m violence, 
 in passion or in 'hatred. Government has a right to exist 
 because society has a right to provide for its own defense 
 and to provide for the common welfare of its citizens. 
 Government has no rigiht bo exist unless it exists ex- 
 clusively for the purpose of defending the rights of all and 
 providing for tihe general welfare of all. But when gov- 
 ernment, coming into existence for that reason, fails bo 
 render that service, it forfeits its right to be. 
 
 The Declaration of Independence was no wild piece 
 of oratory, and it has taught the world that government 
 only has the right bo exist in order that the common right 
 and the common welfare of all people may be provided 
 for. But w*hen conspiracy takes the place of the law, 
 when crime and riot take possession of the agency by 
 which civil society sibould be protected, then treason is 
 in possession of the forms of society, and patriotism miust 
 come forward with reforms. 
 
 Government miust conform bo present conditions. It 
 is said that if you plant an acorn in a vase one of twO' 
 things will 'happen. The tree will die or the vase will 
 break. Government is bo society as t/he vase is to the 
 acorn. It is there for its protection and it iS' there for its 
 good, but it must yield with the growing life of the acorn 
 or it must be broken in pieces. Government is like the 
 bark upon a great tree, placed there for its protection. 
 Within its*embrace flows the sweet sap that feeds the new 
 life of the growing forest, but the bark must grow with the 
 tree or it will be broken asunder. 
 
 Governiment is as a mo'tiher carrying in her own life the 
 'highest authoritative expression of the life of the race, 
 carrying in her bosom the seeds of a new life, preseniting 
 the highest embodiment of tihe world's best life, regarding 
 w'hich she fondly cherishes as the dearest -hope of her life, 
 the hope that bhat new life will be nobler than her own. 
 
JUDICIAL CONSriRACV. 33 
 
 And the old must forever bring forth the new or both 
 the mouhcr and her child must die together. 
 
 Loyalty to the old means that it shall fulfill its relation 
 tot'hen-ewjor the days that are have claims upon us as well 
 as th€ memories of the days that are gone. Govemniemt 
 has a right to exist because it protects and defends, but 
 when the agencies of the law are used unfairly it becomes 
 the duty of society not to entertain contempt for law, not 
 to organize disorder, not to attempt to kill out the old, but 
 wit>h the march of eternal righteousness within their hearts 
 to build, and build for a certainty, the new life struggling 
 for the betterment of mankind. I would not liave you 
 understand that I am contending for an attack on govern- 
 ment. I am contending for obedience to t'he law. 
 
 But governments are composed of men, of parties, of 
 conventions, of congresses, of cabinets. The personal 
 ambition of those in power is forever on the side of per- 
 petuating the old, and resisting tjhe new. To keep what 
 they 'have is safe; for them to yield to what the new life 
 demands may mea'n personal or partisan disaster. Not 
 from courts and cabinets, but from .the life of the multi- 
 tudes, has come the inspiration and t'he pOAver of every 
 great advance. Neither those in office nor those who in 
 the struggle have risen to office have been tihe real l3uilders 
 of new civilizations. In all great contests the men who 
 were the burden bearers at the beginning have had small 
 share in the hafvest of spoils in the day of victory. The 
 spirit of self-seeking may perpetuate the old. It is for- 
 ever certain that the world's advances shall be undertaken 
 at least in the spirit of self-surrender. 
 
 In the administration of government as organized in 
 this country it is in the legislative department where ne«\v 
 reforms are brought into being and power. It is the duty 
 of the court to enforce what is written on the statutes. 
 The merciful judge has but scant opportunity for the play 
 of his mercy. The laws are not enacted bv the fudges. 
 The facts are not of his creation. He finds the law when 
 he eomes to his place, and he finds the facts there sub- 
 mitted, and it is the idlest sort of business to hate a judge, 
 and re-elect again and againa legislature which perpetuates 
 
34 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 and authorizes the laws that the hated judg^e must oarry 
 out, and continue to complain at the things wihioh the 
 hated judge has done. 
 
 He is set to do certain things. He did not write the 
 laws, he did not make the facts. If the new life has created 
 new conditions to which the old law does not apply, if the 
 new law 'has -not yet been wTitten, the authority of the 
 court may be invoked to do great injustice, and the just 
 judge may be made the instrument of public infamy. Why 
 complain at the court and elect again and again leg-islative 
 assemblies to perpetuate old laws that cannot be applied, 
 to administer remedies that cannot cure? The fault is by 
 no 'means that of the court, nor is it the fault of tihe legis- 
 lation It is tihe fault of the people who perpetuate the 
 assemibly, which perpetuates the law, which enforces a 
 public or a private wrong in t'he name of justice. If unwise 
 laws are enacted, if injustice is done through the cburts by 
 the authority of a vicious statute, we are too likely to hate 
 the judge, and to continue voting for the party in power, 
 which alone 'has tihe authority to dry up the sonrces of 
 the wrongs concerning which we complain. 
 
 By judicial conspiracy as a factor in politics, I do not 
 mean the conspiracy of judges to misinterpret laws, not- 
 withstanding that may be so'metimes done. I dO' not 
 mean the connivance of the courts in the unlawful punish- 
 ment of the innocent. I mean the conspiracy of cliques, or 
 parties, or factions, or corporations, to use the la-w as it is 
 on the statutes to destroy in politics a political opponent, 
 or to suppress in politics an unwelcome agitation. As' the 
 initiative in every reform must look to tihe legislative de- 
 partment to embody its demands in law, so the last stroke 
 of every old abuse, the last resort of everv^ old wrong, is 
 in this misuse of the courts to compass and destroy the 
 new life knocking at the door and demanding place and 
 power. 
 
 I stiall review to-day a number of historical instances, 
 that we may know that the mo'st recent use, for partisan 
 and private ends, of the civil law is an old weapon, and 
 that I may enforce the plea I m.ake wit'h. yo>u to strive not 
 for the destruction of the courts, not even to complain at 
 
JUDICIAL CONSPIRACY. 35 
 
 their wrongs, but to stand together peaceably and at all 
 cost, to take possession of the machinery of th>e la.\v, to 
 correct its abuses, and to enforce justice by t'he authority 
 of the same court which to-day is so frequently used to 
 rob us of our liberty and to protect the robbers of society. 
 
 The authority of the law must not be questioned. In 
 the day of our victory we shall use its power in our own 
 defense. 
 
 It is not worth while to complain at the standing army. 
 In tthe day of our victory it will defend our government, 
 and will enforce for us against all comers the authority of 
 the law which our hands shall write on the new statutes 
 commanding obedience to t^he world's new life. 
 
 Government may be likened to a mig'hty ironclad. 
 Her power is used against us. It is used to protect the 
 old. It is used to suppress the new. It is used to defend 
 the robber. It is used to turn the toilers into tramps. 
 What shall we do? Strive to destroy it? Or by the 
 authority of our citizenship at the ballot box take posses- 
 sion of her decks and use her power to defend the c'ham- 
 pions of humanity against the worshipers- of dollars? I 
 plead for peace, for obedience to the courts, for a defense 
 of their authority, but for agitation, for free discussion, 
 for information, for argument, for the ballot. I would 
 that no man sihould be less brave. Be brave enough to 
 die, if need be, starving in a garret or strangling at a 
 hangman's hand. But speak. Speak fairly. Speak truly. 
 Speak in defense of the helpless. Speak for t'he o^^rborne. 
 Speak for the new life. Speak for the authority of the law. 
 Capture the lawmaking power, capture the courts, make 
 them your own. They will be used against .}X)u with 
 increasing vigor under ever\^ conceivable excuse, under 
 every misinterpretation of law, as the result of eve^y 
 possible conspiracy. The enemies of social justice would 
 welcome disorder: that can be answered with a gatling 
 gun. But there lives among them no man with lips so 
 eloquent tiliat can find an ans-wer for the helpless, toiling, 
 pitiful pleading of those who, dying of hunger, beg for an 
 opportunity to toil for bread. 
 
 Neither would I wish that any man should have less of 
 
36 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 •honor. Never in the world's history was there sudh'an 
 opportunity for genuine greatness. I want you to belong 
 to the heroes and the martyrs of yO'Ur race. I want you 
 ■to listen while 1 call the roll of the names of some of tho'se 
 ■whose ranks I want you to join, whose spirit, purpose and 
 heroism I want you to emulate. I want you to learn how 
 the agony of each new birth-pang in the world's advance 
 has made sacred so^m'e prison cell, has made light some 
 ■darkened dungeon, lias made glorious the instruments of 
 torture. 
 
 In r\^m'mg these I want you to bear in mind that I am 
 begging you to fall in line and add another link tO' the 
 chain. I shall not name the name of a single c'0<ward. I 
 s'hall not name the name of a single man who taught, one 
 way and acted another. I shall not name the name of a 
 single man who taught anything but obedience to t^he law. 
 Listen. Socrates was the greatest teacher of his century. 
 That broad-brained character in his small school gathered 
 about him the brightest minds of his time, a company of 
 young men, and by his instruction, ;he made them the 
 teachers of the western world. He trained them and in- 
 spired them. And yet this man, whose genius has given 
 the foundation of philosophy, who^se voice was more 
 powerful than any other to bring light and life, who 
 brought forth ithe foundation of law, of statesmansthdp and 
 made the teachers of the higher life for the western world, 
 w'as fhimself accused, tried, condemned and compelled tO' 
 drink the hemlock to his death under tlhe charge of cor- 
 rupting the youth. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the mO'St splendid religious 
 character of all. Stop a minute. Do not tell me I am 
 comparing Jesus of Nazareth to any modern reformer. I 
 aqi noit doing that. I am comparing the men who sent 
 Jesus Christ to crucifixion to the men who by tlie same 
 spirit have hounded the footsteps of every other refo^rmer, 
 both before and after tjhe unequaled career of that splendid 
 Nazarene. Listen. Jesus of Nazareth was the most 
 splendid -religious character of all history. His sym- 
 pathies 'were as wide as the earth. His compassion 
 reached every class of men. His sympathies extended tO' 
 
JUDICIAL CONSPIRACY. 37 
 
 every race, to every clime, to all classes. The publican, 
 the soldier, the ju<lgc, the tax gatherer and tdie \vo.nian 
 who was a sinner felt the quality of his mercy, kiiow tiie 
 mabchless tenderness of liis great heart. Jesus of Naz- 
 aretJh'was the most splendid religious character of all tihe 
 years of all the centuries, but he was arrest^ed, tried, foiuid 
 guilty and sent to the cross under the charge of blasphemy. 
 
 St. Paul stood on the border land of Asia. He heard 
 a voice and saw a vision beckoning, "Come O'ver into 
 ^Macedonia and help us." He went. No stouter hearted, 
 no clearer brained, no mightier champion of goodness and 
 rig'hbeousness ever walked the streets of the eternal city. 
 But he was arrested, tried, condemned and executed as a 
 public enemy. 
 
 Lat'i>mer and Ridley! I stood by the side of the monu- 
 ment in Oxford which marks the place where they were 
 burned. But the flame that lit the fagots that tortured 
 them made a light in Great Britain that made the life of 
 the Anglo-Saxon race lighter and broader and better. 
 
 Sir Thomas ]\Iore was a conspicuous defender of tihe 
 old church. He conscientiously disagreed with Henry 
 VHI. He defended the old religion. ^ He stood by the old 
 church. He was as loyal to Catherine as he was to iiis 
 owm pure 'heart. Sir Thomas More refused to recognize 
 as a legitimate successsor of the prince he had s-erved the 
 child of Anne Boleyn. He was the author of Utopia. 
 Scorn it as you will, laugh at it as you may, in Utopia Sir 
 Thomas IMore anticipated before the middle -of the six- 
 teenth century every single step in political advancement 
 and social progress that has been achieved in all t'he years 
 of struggle froni the sixteenth century down to this after- 
 noon. He refused to recognize the cthild of Anne Boleyn 
 as the legitimate successor of tihe prince he ser\^d, but 
 he brought forth a brighter philosophy and a more 
 splendid statesmanship. In the bright philosopliy of his 
 heart, in the fidelity of his life, he was the strongest- 
 brained and truest-^hearted man of his generation. But he 
 was deprived of his life as a public enemy — bchead-cd for 
 treasoii to the state. 
 
 John Bunyan was a jail bird as well a^ lh<- author of 
 
38 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 t'be matchless allegory which glorified the scene of his' in- 
 carceration, Bedford jail. He made it impossible to wri'te 
 the story of English literature or to follow 'the current of 
 the religious ideals of the generations since, except we 
 s'topto mention Bedford jail. 
 
 In 1638 Oliver Cromwell took ship in London as a 
 passenger for America, but, by order of t/he privy council 
 of the reigning prince, his departure v/as prevented and 
 ■he was compelled to remain. But, two years later, he 
 became a member of parliament and commenced his long 
 career, which culmmated in his becoming t'hc master of 
 the English people. He made the law of England stronger 
 than the voice of any English prince. In the arrest of 
 Oliver Cromwell Vv^as hidden the redemption of the Britis'h 
 nation from the reign of a lawless tihrone. 
 
 In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson 
 avers as one of the grounds of complaint that tbe power 
 to arrest and to unfairly try the revolutionary agitator was 
 one of the grounds upon which the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence was based. If to unfairly arrest and unjustly try 
 a revolutionary agitator was ground for writing the Dec- 
 laration of Independence, the modern examples of unjust 
 arrests and of unfair trials are proper ground for feeling 
 discomtemt and for reorganizing the authorities- of tihe gov- 
 erniment and taking possession of the powers and the au- 
 t'horities of the -state. 
 
 Among the men whose friendship I have learned to 
 prize, and w'hose life and splendid character I sball always 
 admire, was a brave old man who spent seven years of his 
 early manhood in a penitentiary under a conviction; for 
 theft. His offenise had been rendering assistance to a 
 black man on ihis way to liberty. The law was on the 
 statutes, its violation was not disputed, but his conviction 
 converted the judge and the jury, dhanged the views of the 
 prosecutor, miade an abolitionist out of his warden, and 
 his keeper. His presence in prison made the gloomy walls 
 of a penal institution the scene of a reformation far-reach- 
 ing in its results, resistless in its power. T refer to George 
 Thompson, for twenty-five years after his liberation' a mis- 
 sioiniary among the blacks of Africa. I knew 'him in. his old 
 
JUDICIAL CONSPIRACY. 39 
 
 age. His career is over, but being dead he s-hall speak on 
 forever in tllie splendid courage o^ his unselfisih life. 
 
 John 13ro\vn was guilty, as aharged. The authority of 
 the law was unquestionable, but the world had outgrown 
 the institutions againsft which he offended. The infamy 
 of t^he scaffold and the deathless fame of the hero stand 
 together at tihe parting of the ways between t'he outgroAvn 
 institutions of the past, and tihe new life of the better day. 
 
 What is the lesson of all this? First of all, it is a lesson 
 of hope. The courts are always the last resort of an old 
 abuse. Judicial conspiracy will attempt to silence agita- 
 tion only when the old wrong can defend itself by no other 
 means. The imprisonment of agitators, the practice of 
 government by injunction is 6n the part of the powers 
 which resort to its use a confession of the fact that they 
 are already vanquished in every other field. 
 
 These old abuses own the laws, they own the legisla- 
 tures, they own the cabinets, they own the courts, they 
 own the ofificcrs of the law, they own nearly all the prop- 
 erty, they own everything in the United States worth hav- 
 ing except six million and a half of voters. 
 
 They are beaten in every field save at the ballot-box, 
 and one more rally will beat them there ; they will abandon 
 the ballot-box and appeal to the courts, which they own ; 
 their appeal to the courts is a confession of defeat in every 
 other contest. 
 
 Sometimes the contest is with the sword, and then the 
 place of honor is on the field of battle. Sometimes the 
 contest is with the voice, and then the place of honor is 
 on the forum. Sometimes the contest is with the printed 
 page, and then the place of honor is with the pen. Some- 
 times the contest is in a misused court, and then the place 
 of honor is in the penitentiary. The pitying would be use- 
 less. Let the law go a little further, and let these aggrega- 
 tions go a little further and the place of honor will not be 
 outside but inside the penitentiary walls. There is but one 
 thing to do that patriotism and wisdom commend, and 
 that is to speak, to agitate, to teach, to organize, not for 
 violence, but for thought ; not for destroying, but for 
 building ; not for disorder, but for peace. Sacrifice time 
 
40 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS, 
 
 and labor and place, and strike for the place of power and 
 keep struggling, stepping forward and striving and vot- 
 ing and organizing until the places of influence and 
 power from ocean to ocean, from the Canadian borders 
 to the gulf, shall be in the hands of the tribunes of the 
 people, and the robbers of society shall be out of place 
 and power. 
 
BIMETALLISM. 
 
 In discussing the subject of bimetallism to-day I am 
 very sure that we are discussing a subject that we are all 
 of us interested in. Bimetallism is simply a term be- 
 longing to the general financial warfare that is going on 
 in this country at this time. It refers to the use of both 
 gold and silver, on exactly the same footing, as money 
 metak. By money metal we do not mean a metal which 
 is, or may be, made into money, but we mean a metal 
 which, by virtue of its own existence, is given a right 
 under the law to be made into money. Money is made 
 of nickel. But no man having nickel has the right to 
 say that that metal, and that only, shall be made into 
 money. We have money made out of copper, but no 
 man has a right to demand that his particular supply 
 of copper shall be made into money. By the use of the 
 term money metal it is understood, not that dollars may 
 be made out of it, but that the metal itself shall be en- 
 dowed with authority under the law that whenever its 
 owner shall bring it to the mint and ask that that piece 
 of metal shall be made into money he shall have the 
 right under the law to have it done. Bimetallism gives 
 that right to both silver and gold. The gold standard 
 gives that right to gold only. 
 
 Nearly all of the questions that are raised with re- 
 gard to the use of silver may be just as readily raised 
 with regard to gold. People tell us that silver is mined 
 with less labor now than it used to be, but the fact is 
 that improvements in the machinery and the discoveries 
 of the mines liave more extensively reduced the cost in 
 labor in producing new gold than in producing new 
 silver. It is said that the government ought not to be 
 
 41 
 
42 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 asked to take a piece of silver, whether it wishes to or 
 not, and make that into a piece of money. That is the 
 point in the controversy. It is beheved by bimetallists 
 that the government — that is, the people — does wish to 
 have silver coined into money, and they resent the 
 wrong of the gold syndicate in defeating the public will. 
 Gold has that right. We ask that silver shall have it 
 also. Whoever has a sack of gold may have it coined, 
 or if he has a sack of gold he may offer that in payment 
 of debt and have it weighed up and it will be taken by 
 its weight at its coinage value, not because the creditor 
 is obliged to take it, but because it is understood that 
 all the man has to do is to offer his gold at the mint and 
 he may get coins for it. Now, that is exactly what was 
 true with regard to silver. During all the years of our 
 country's history there never was a time down to 1873 
 but that a man if he had a piece of silver he had all the 
 powers of money, because under the law it had the au- 
 thority vested in the hands of its owner, should any one 
 refuse to accept it at its coinage value, to have it coined 
 at that value. In 1873 ^ piece of silver big enough to 
 make a dollar was worth three cents more than a dollar 
 was, and as a result they were not then coining silver 
 dollars. What the government was really doing at that 
 time was taking the silver and with it buying the gold 
 any paying interest on its public securities in gold. That 
 is, saving the premium that silver bore over gold by 
 making its payments in gold. 
 
 We are told by a large number of men that during all 
 the years of our country's history down to 1873 there 
 was only a small number of silver coins actually coined, 
 and we are asked to believe that because of that there 
 was no demand for silver money, and that people would 
 not use silver any way, and that it dropped out of coin- 
 age because there was no demand for it. This ought 
 to be borne in mind first, that a large sum of money was 
 coined into half dollars, which during nearly all of that 
 time were_ an unlimited legal tender, and that during 
 all of the time, whether it was coined into half dollars, or 
 coined into dollars, or not coined at all, the metal 
 
BIMETALLISM.^ 43 
 
 itself, based on itself, under the law always had the 
 right to be coined, so that a piece of silver as big as a 
 silver dollar was never once in the history of the country 
 prior to 1873 worth less than a dollar. The gold might be 
 worth a little more, the silver might be worthalittleaiiore, 
 but the unlimited demand which the government offered 
 for both for coinage made it certain that the silver or gold 
 in a dollar could never be worth less than a dollar. If 
 there was a variation in gold or silver it was always 
 above their coinage value, for never one or the other 
 fell below its coinage value. 
 
 Another thing ought to be borne in mind in this 
 connection, and that is this: That during all the years 
 of our country's history down to 1846, there were no 
 silver mines in the United States. If you will go over 
 the old States, New England, New York, Rhode Island; 
 Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa, 
 South Carolina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Geor- 
 gia, of all of those vStates, none of them had any silver 
 mines, none of them have any silver mines now. The 
 only silver State prior to the Mexican war in this coun- 
 try was the State of Missouri. Mr. Carlisle, in a gov- 
 ernment report running through all the States, says that 
 the tital product of silver in all the United States for all 
 the years of the history of our country down to 1846 
 amounted to onlv one hundred and fifty thousand dol- 
 lars. Now, if during all this time only that number of 
 dollars' worth of silver was produced in this country, the 
 coinage by far outran the production that was produced 
 largely in' Missouri alone, and was produced in connec- 
 tion with the lead mines. They found the silver along with 
 the lead, and the lead was m'ined, and in getting out the 
 lead they got out the silver also. 
 
 The silver m.ines of this country came to us with the 
 Mexican war. When the Mexican war was over it took 
 some time to get under way, and the mining of silver had 
 hardly gotten under way when the Civil War came on. 
 If it is said that before the demonetizing of silver little 
 silver was coined, the answer is, that for seventy-five 
 years under the reign of the constitution there was more 
 
44 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 silver coined in the United States than was produced 
 in the United States. 
 
 But listen! To say that the v^^hole number of dollars 
 coined, and the whole number of half dollars coined, and 
 the whole volume of silver bullion produced in the coun- 
 try made up the volume of silver for business purposes, 
 is not true. During all the time until within the more 
 recent years foreign coins were a legal tender tmder the 
 law of this country. Silver came to us from other coun- 
 tries, came in the coins of other countries. The Spanish 
 milled dollar, the direct antecedent of the Mexican dol- 
 lar, scorned and despised, was the first legal tender un- 
 der the constitution, was really the standard of values 
 under the first coinage law. But silver coins of other 
 countries being legal tender in this country, and circu- 
 lating widely in this country, really did the business of 
 the country for more than half a century. A man was 
 telling me recently, who had a contract for grading on 
 the building of the Illinois Central Railway, that he uni- 
 formly paid the men wdio worked for him in silver dol- 
 lars, and not a single silver dollar that was used was an 
 American coin. They were foreign coins without ex- 
 ception. He said that he remembered distinctly look- 
 ing them over to find an American coin, and notwith- 
 standing repeated efforts to do so, was never able to get 
 hold of one. The silver was foreign silver. The coins 
 were foreign coins. America coined little silver, she 
 produced less, but her use of silver was not in the slight- 
 est degree measured or controlled by the amount she 
 coined. But the point in the argument is this. Not that 
 there was a large number of dollars coined, not that 
 there was a great quantity of foreign coins introduced, 
 but that silver, coined or uncoined, always had the right 
 to be coined, and at the very hour that coinage was 
 finally denied, silver, coined or uncoined, as bullion, was 
 worth three cents on the dollar more than gold, coined 
 or uncoined, was worth, either as bullion or money ; and 
 that both gold and silver, coined or uncoined, were given 
 all the rights of money in the American market. 
 
 Now, again. The argument for the double standard 
 
BIMETALLISM. 45 
 
 is this. Money, according to the gold standard people, 
 money is simply a stamped commodity. I do not believe 
 that money is a commodity, stamped or unstamped. I 
 believe that the essential idea in money is not conmiod- 
 ity, but authority. Money is the government's author- 
 ity determining the ratio at which commodities shall 
 exchange for each other, — not itself the commodity. But 
 while I do not believe that money is a commodity, let us 
 admit for the sake of the argument that money is sim- 
 ply a stamped commodity. It is the argument of these 
 men that the government is simply to coin the money; 
 that is, put the stamp of the government on each piece 
 of metal after the same manner in which you get the 
 stamp of the city's authority on a half-bushel measure 
 by taking it to the city hall. When you have done so 
 no man can raise any question as to the genuineness of 
 your measure. So in the same way the gold standard 
 men contend that the government simply measures the 
 amount of metal and puts the government stamp on the 
 back of it as a guarantee that wherever this stamp shall 
 appear that shall be evidence that the coin is genuine ; 
 that is, that the piece contains a certain quantity of the 
 commodity. Now, I do not believe that at all. I be- 
 lieve that money is not in the coin, but in the authority 
 shown by the stamp that the coin wears. I do not be- 
 lieve that the value of a deed to a piece of land is meas- 
 ured by the value of the paper that the deed is written 
 on, but I do believe that the value of the deed is meas- 
 ured by the value of the things certified in the substance 
 written on the paper. I do mot believe that the ware- 
 house receipt has its value determined by the value of 
 the yellow paper that the receipt is written on, but in 
 the value of the things there certified, and so with re- 
 gard to money. The value of the money is not in the 
 piece of paper, nor the piece of metal, gold or silver, or 
 copper, on which the certificate of the government is 
 stamped, but the. value of money is in the thing that is 
 there certified. That is my judgment with regard to 
 the money question. It does not exist as a commodity, 
 but as a certificate of the authority of the government 
 
46 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 determining the ratio at which commodities shall ex- 
 change for each other. Exchanging a commodity for 
 money is only one-half of the process. The purpose of 
 money is never complete until a commodity goes out 
 of itself into money, and out of money into some other 
 commodity. Money does not exist for any value which is 
 in itself, but for the sake of making convenient the ex- 
 change of values, resting not in money, but in other 
 things. Things of value ought not to be subject to 
 money. J\Ioney ought to be subject to the other things 
 in v.iiich alone real values rest. 
 
 But let it be granted for a moment that the other 
 side of the question is correct, and that the function of 
 the mint is that of simply stamping a certificate of weight 
 and fineness in order to determine its commodity value, 
 then all other lines of business are carried on with a 
 view of having the values of all the other things ex- 
 pressed in values of gold, or both gold and silver, pro- 
 vided both circulate on terms of equality. Now, if that 
 be true, here is a difficulty. I am the producer of wheaL 
 and corn. Before I can do business with my neighbor 
 I must either convert the wheat and corn into actual 
 gold and silver, or I must exchange it into something 
 else using the terms of gold and silver, and the gold and 
 silver actually in existence available for business pur- 
 poses will determine the scale of the prices of the wheat 
 or corn, or whatever I and my neighbor are producing 
 together. Now, if you use only gold you must convert, 
 'uhen, all of the property, all of the business of the coun- 
 try, either into gold, or into the terms of gold. If we 
 use both gold and silver, we have simply doubled the 
 source of supply from which Vv^e get the metal out of 
 which we can have the means into which we can convert 
 the products of our labor, and instead of having only 
 one resource, we have two. And instead of being sub- 
 ject to all the fluctuations of either silver or gold we 
 bring a balance between the two, and then our standard 
 is the average that shall lie between them both. If gold 
 goes up in value as measured in commodities, then all 
 commodities must go down in value as measured in 
 
BIMETALLISM. 47 
 
 gold. If gold alone shall have the right to go to the 
 iiunt and be coined into money, then every fluctuation in 
 the price of gold affects prices of all other sorts of com- 
 modities in the market. If gold goes up, they must 
 come down, and if gold comes down, they must go up. 
 The man who can corner and retire gold, for to put gold 
 into a vault and lock it up is as surely taking it out of 
 business for the time being as though it were lost in the 
 sea — whoever can corner or retire gold can directly and 
 injuriously afTect the price of every other possible com- 
 modity. Notice that this argument is all based on the 
 contention of the gold men, that money is a stamped 
 commodity. If, then, their position is true, then under 
 the gold standard, if gold goes up everything else must 
 come down. If it comes down everything else goes up. 
 But if we have the two standards, if gold goes up silver 
 is coming down and we can do business with silver, and 
 commodities will stay where they are until gold comes 
 back a.cfain. If silver goes up we can measure business 
 in terms of gold, and commodities will be stable in price. 
 But if you have only one, whenever that breaks, prices 
 break — and when prices break ruin follows. On that 
 basis it would be better to have both gold and silver, for 
 then we can modify, if we cannot cure, these fluctuations 
 which injure business more than anything else which 
 can possibly be named. 
 
 But, on the other hand, I do not believe that money 
 is a stamped commodity. I believe that money is the 
 authority of the government for the discharge of a 
 credit. Let us see where the money comes in, and v.here 
 the power of the money as a legal tender comes. If 
 confidence is all that is required your private check will 
 answer. If it is simply a matter of confidence a thirty 
 days' note is just as good. If Mr. McKinley and Mark 
 Hanna will succeed in restoring confidence, and the con- 
 fidence abides forever, then we will need neither gold 
 nor silver, but simply thirty-day notes, provided the 
 confidence is sufticient, and its lasting qualities do not 
 fail us. But the trouble is, thirty-day notes are not legal 
 tender. Some man may refuse to take our thirty-day 
 
48 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 notes. Confidence, even though it be restored, may be 
 lost in some one of us, if not in lis all. When the thirty- 
 day note is refused and the demand made for money 
 ■which the law shall recognize, the creditor may dem^and 
 legal tender. The free coinage of gold makes gold, with 
 or without coinage, the sole basis of legal tender. Bi- 
 metallism would give the same authority to both gold 
 and silver. That legal tender power which resides in 
 money is there not because of the inherent qualities of 
 gold or silver. It is in gold because, having free access 
 to the mints, the authority of the United States flag is 
 carried with the stamp it bears. The free coinage of sil- 
 ver would give the same authority of the same flag that 
 whosoever shall carry that authority shall be proof 
 against any sherifif, shall have authority to stop in the 
 road any constable that comes to take his goods. Here 
 is a constable coming with an execution to take posses- 
 sion of your span of horses. The United States govern- 
 ment says that gold shall be the money. It says now it 
 shall practically be the only money. The United States 
 government says that gold shall be the money. The 
 State of Illinois says that any man who can put up some 
 of this money in sufificient quantity may stop the consta- 
 ble. The constable is coming for your horses. What 
 right has the constable to come and get your horses? 
 The right is on a piece of paper he has in his hand. 
 What is that piece of paper? It is a command from the 
 sheriff of the county. What has the sheriff command- 
 ed him to do? To get your horses. What for? For the 
 purpose of settling a judgment that has already been put 
 on record in the county court. Is he going to take your 
 horses? Yes. By what authority? By the authority of 
 the government as expressed in the order of the sheriff 
 to come over and get your team. Now, you want to 
 stop him, I contend that if a piece of paper is good 
 enough to bear the command of a county sheriff to come 
 and get my horses, a piece of paper is good enough to 
 bear the command of the United States government that 
 the sheriff has got to stop and let the horses alone. This 
 is right, is it not? I do not see how you can possibly 
 
BIMETALLISM. 49 
 
 dispute that. Suppose in this country it was once en- 
 acted that executions should be printed on tin, there 
 would be an added price on tin right away. Suppose 
 it should be enacted that in this country commitments, 
 executions for crime should be all engraved on plates of 
 gold. Do you suppose that any one would stand up and 
 say, then, diat the authority of a sheriff to hang a man 
 came from the gold, not from the command of the court 
 inscribed on gold, but which would have the same au- 
 thority if written on parchment paper, or if inscribed on 
 a piece of steel? The authority of the government to 
 send a sheriff after my goods is based on the same ne- 
 cessity which authorizes the same sheriff under a differ- 
 ent order from the same court to come after my life.- If 
 the court authorizes the sheriff to come after my goods 
 and compels me peaceably to submit unless I discharge 
 some obligation there involved, it must provide also 
 some way by which I can discharge that obligation, and 
 the method by which it stops the sheriff is based in the 
 same governmental authority by which Jt first ordered 
 him to come. If the order which sends him after me 
 or my goods may be written on paper and authorized by 
 a county court, certainly the authority of the United 
 States government, written on paper or stamped on lead, 
 would be sufficient to stop the sheriff's coming, should 
 the government so elect. The gold standard contention 
 is that what Uncle Sam has to say is not of so much im- 
 portance as the stuff he uses to say it on. JNIy conten- 
 tion is that whenever Uncle Sam gets ready to say a 
 thing, whether it is said on greenback paper, whether it 
 is said through the United States court, or whether it is 
 said by the standing army, it would be well* to listen. 
 If Uncle Sam should make up his mind to say that a 
 dollar should be printed on both gold and silver, we 
 would have just that much more raw material on which 
 to print the dollar. 
 
 Does anybody anywhere contend that there is 
 enough raw material in gold alone on which to print all 
 the dollars that we need? Is that any share of Mr. 
 Gage's policy? Is that proposed anywhere in this coun- 
 
50 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 try that the only dollars in circulation shall be gold dol- 
 lars? No one proposes that. Mr. Gage's proposal now 
 IS that the United States government shall proceed to 
 iss'ue seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars in 
 bonds. What for? To retire the greenbacks. What 
 for? To get the greenbacks out of the way. Out of 
 whose way? Out of our way. They are so far out of 
 my way now that I cannot get hold of any of them. 
 Who is it that does not want the greenback around? Is 
 there any man of us seriously suffering because we have 
 so many greenbacks we cannot stand it? Is there any 
 man of us, — is there any man of us who has been using 
 the greenbacks to rob the United States treasury of its 
 gold ; is there any man of us who is anxious to use the 
 greenback for that purpose? If the United States treas- 
 ury would pay in either gold or silver, would there be 
 any man in the United States of America who could use 
 the greenback to rob the treasury of gold? Is it not only 
 because the United States government insists through 
 Mr. Gage and Mark Hanna and Brother McKinley and 
 Wall Street and Ichelheimer, and the balance of the po- 
 litical fellows down at Wall Street, — is it not true that 
 the reason why these men are fighting to get the green- 
 back out of the way and to substitute a United States 
 bond in its place is, and solely is, because they can use 
 the United States bond with which to organize national 
 banks? 
 
 Is it not true that they propose to take the non-in- 
 terest bearing United States government note, — that is 
 whac the greenback is, — and substitute for it an inter- 
 est-bearing note, so that the people of the United States 
 can have the privilege of paying interest on notes then 
 instead of having non-interest bearing notes as now? 
 And then, instead of having their non-interest bearing 
 notes, as legal tenders, with which to transact busi- 
 ness as now, they will be able to get the new bank- 
 note that shall be based on the new interest-bearing note 
 only by borrowing it from the bank, and which shall not 
 be a legal tender. Is it not true beyond all possible ques- 
 tion that it is their plan to reorganize the finances of this 
 
BIMETALLISM. 5 1 
 
 country on the basis of giving us a large volume of paper 
 money? Does not that simple purpose — plead guiiiy to 
 this ciiarge — that every man who asks :or the gold stand- 
 ard alone knows that there is not gold enough in Ameri- 
 ca on which to print the money necessary to do the busi- 
 ness with? \'ery well. If it is not printed on silver, 
 then, Brother Gage, what is it to be printed on? Paper. 
 \>ry well. The gold man tells us that he wants a hun- 
 dred-cent dollar, and 'Mr. Gage proposes the buying up 
 of the silver in circulation at its market value, and that 
 the seven hundred and fifty millions of bonds shall be 
 reduced in their volume so far as the silver in circula- 
 tion shall be found sufficient to settle the account on the 
 gold basis. Mr. Gage, why do you propose to take away 
 the silver dollar? Because the business men of America 
 are opposed to a fifty-cent dollar. Mr. Gage, when you 
 have taken the fifty-cent silver dollar away from us, 
 what do you propose to put in its place? A national 
 bank-note. How much is the stuff worth that a national 
 bank-note is printed on? About one-tenth of a cent. 
 He proposes to take a dollar, the raw material of which 
 is worth fifty cents, and to give us a dollar in which the 
 raw material is worth a tenth of a cent. 
 
 All money is a promise to pay. Under any proper 
 conception of money, money is in your hand only as 
 some valuable commodity has gone out of your hand, 
 and the money in your hand is a promise either that 
 the commodity you have parted with, or some other 
 commodity of li^'e value, shall come back to you. Mr. 
 Gage's paper dollar, you say, is a promise to pay gold. 
 But gold itself is prized only because it carries with it a 
 promise, a promise to pay, not some thing that can be 
 stored away in the vault, but some thing of use or 
 l^eauty. Money is always such a promise. But, admit 
 that gold is the final fulfillment of the promise to pay. 
 Nothing can be more absurd than such an admission. 
 Nothing can be more ridiculous than such a claim. But 
 let it be admitted, gold is the final fulfillment of the 
 promise to pay. And Gage's paper money, directly or 
 indirectly, promises to pay gold. But his paper is in 
 
52 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 our hands to circulate. It is based on the gold idea. 
 What gold? The gold that we have not got. 
 
 The old bank, the old wildcat bank, said there was 
 not both gold and silver enough to do the business with, 
 that for every coined dollar, gold or silver, we needed 
 two dollars for one in paper currency in order to do the 
 business, and so the old State banks were chartered and 
 went into business, and said that for every dollar in coin 
 they would lock in their vaults they would send out 
 three dollars in paper, and they circulated the three dol- 
 lars in paper against the one dollar in- the vault, and by 
 and by they circulated the one dollar that was in the 
 vault. But there were three dollars printed against the 
 one dollar that was in the vault. And the man who had 
 one of the three dollars came one day and said he wanted 
 his dollar, and he carried away the dollar that was in the 
 vault, and there were two other paper dollars out in cir- 
 culation with no dollar in the vault back of them. Busi- 
 ness went on in that way for a little while, until there 
 was a general breaking up of the banking system. And 
 it was found that the one dollar in the vault was insuffi- 
 cient to back the three dollars out of the vault. Wliat 
 kind of a system will yours be, with one hundred mill- 
 ions of gold in the United States treasury, if two billions 
 of dollars shall be put into circulation, every one of 
 which shall have a claim against some one of those dol- 
 lars? The business of the country conducted on the 
 gold basis with the bankers' paper to circulate among 
 the people and the gold locked up in the bankers' vaults, 
 instead of giving us thirty-three and one-third cents 
 against every dollar, will give us from five to eight cents 
 against each dollar that circulates. 
 
 And Mr. Gage's proposition involves a promise to 
 pay a gold dollar with only eight cents to pay it with. 
 And he says we are in favor of dishonest money, and 
 we are opposed to the things that are necessary to re- 
 store prosperity in the country. He asks us to stav by 
 the gold standard and to retire the silver dollar, because 
 under the gold standard there is only fifty cents of gold, 
 commodity value, in the silver, commodity value, re- 
 
BIMETALLISM. 53 
 
 quired to bear the stamp of an American dollar. He 
 asks lis to retire the fifty-cent dollar, to substitute for 
 it a paper dollar which intrinsically is worth, say, one 
 cent, 'jut which is a promise to pay gold, and for which 
 purpose there is only eight cents on the dollar of gold 
 in sight with which to make payment. At best, that 
 would be retiring a fifty-cent dollar in behalf of a ten- 
 cent dollar, for in every such dollar there would be ten 
 cents of value to back it, and ninety cents of prosperity 
 wind required to float it. That is too little real value, in- 
 trinsic or representative. It requires too little value and 
 too much wind, not to mention the nature of the odors 
 that the wind may bear with it as it comes to us, for if 
 the old system that put thirty-three and one-third cents 
 back of each paper dollar was a wildcat proposition, 
 Mr. Gage's proposition is a polecat proposition. 
 
 But the silver in the mines belongs to the rich mine- 
 owner. Is he going to give it to us because the govern- 
 ment is V. illing to coin it for us? I hope not. Wliat 
 possible benefit is it to me to have the rich mine-owner 
 have his silver coined into dollars? It costs fifteen cents 
 on the dollar in one of the mines in Colorado to get the 
 gold out of which to make gold dollars. Shall we aban- 
 don the coinage of gold because there is eighty-five cents 
 profit on a dollar to this rich gold miner? For of course 
 there is no advantage to us in having gold money, be- 
 cause, you know, eighty-five cents on the first profit of 
 handling the gold dollar the first time goes to the rich 
 mine-owner, and we want to beat him out of that eighty- 
 five cents. What possible advantage canit be to me to 
 have gold dollars coined, inasmuch as eighty-five cents 
 of the dollar goes to the rich mine-owner? It is not of 
 as much advantage to me as it would be to base all dol- 
 lars on the products of all labor, and that is going to be 
 the thing one of these days, but that is not the question 
 now. The gold standard makes the prices of other com- 
 modities fluctuate as does the price of gold. Bimetal- 
 lism would strike an average between gold and silver 
 and split the difference between all fluctuations between 
 the prices of gold and silver as related to the prices of 
 
54 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 all Other commodities. But sometime the right to de- 
 mand money because we have gold, or the right to de- 
 mand money because we have silver, and the measure of 
 all values by gold alone, or by both silver and gold to- 
 gether, shall cease ; and w^hoever has strength and is 
 ready to labor shall have the opportunity to do so, and 
 the value of all the products of labor, the scale on which 
 all commodities shall exchange against each other, shall 
 be determined, not by the relation of any given article 
 to gold, or to gold and silver both, but by the ratio which 
 shall obtain between every separate commodity and the 
 average value of all other commodities in the market. 
 That will be a scientific money. That money no power 
 can corner. That is what we could call the multiple 
 standard. The double standard is better than the single 
 standard, the multiple standard is best of all. As be- 
 tween gold and silver I am in favor of both, but the day 
 is speedily coming when the power of one article to ex- 
 change for another shall not be limited by its ability 
 to first convert itself into gold, or silver, but shall be 
 subject only to the requirement that real and genuine 
 value shall be in and of itself. But you say between the gold 
 and the silver we will stand for the gold standard. That 
 means to give eighty-five cents to the gold mine-owner. 
 If you can stand giving the gold mine-owner eighty-five 
 cents on the dollar, I presume we could stand giving the 
 silver mine-owner fifty cents on the dollar. If it is a rea- 
 son for not coining silver that the mine-owner profits, 
 it is likewise a reason for not coining gold. 
 
 How are we going to get a silver dollar into circula- 
 tion? How will it benefit us? The silver dollar goes 
 into circulation by being paid into circulation. If we 
 open up the silver mines and start to mining and coining 
 new dollars out of silver, every time they pay for any- 
 thing they will go into circulation. If you open the 
 mines and go to digging silver you will have to put men 
 down in the mines. They will be paid with the silver 
 they dig. ^ If we had elected Mr. Bryan to be President 
 of the United States, and it is true that the government 
 m its executive department has the authority to start 
 
BIMETALLISM. 55 
 
 the free coinage of silver any hour that it chooses, the 
 United States mints would have been running at full 
 force at this time. What would have been the resuU? 
 ^^hree hundred thousand working men would have gone 
 to the Rockv Mountains and have gone to work. They 
 would have been earning at least three dollars a day, and 
 a millioji dollars a day,— a million dollars a day of the 
 new silver dollars,— would have been paid mto cnxulation 
 in settling the wage w^orkers' accounts. The unemployed 
 men who are starving and committing suicide on the 
 streets of Chicago to-day, instead would have been m 
 the Rocky Mountains digging silver out of the moun- 
 tains and putting silver into circulation by the payment 
 of wages. How can that affect me? You are a shoe- 
 maker, and want to sell shoes. The men who have been 
 svalking around on the streets of Chicago have not been 
 furnishing a good market for shoes. Send some of these 
 fellows out to the Rocky Mountains and set them to 
 work and there will be a demand for shoes, and there 
 will be a demand for clothes, and there will be an order 
 for a million pairs of shoes, and there will be families left 
 behind for whom the breadwinner has been unable to 
 earn a dollar for months and months together, and there 
 will be shoes for those little children, and shoes for the 
 barefooted women, and the shoemaker who expects to 
 stay in Chicago and make fine shoes will find a dem.and 
 for his shoes, and the silver dollar that is first paid Into 
 circulation by paying the wages of the miner, will be 
 paid, and paid again, and it will be brought dov;n to 
 Chicago that way. 
 
 Yes, but that doesn't help the farmer. What does 
 the farmer do with what the farmer raises? He lets it 
 stay in his cribs and rot. What will the employment of 
 men that will give us a new million of dollars in one 
 place every twenty-four hours do? That million of dol- 
 lars will pay wages to-day, it will be spent four times to- 
 morrow, it will be spent a dozen times the next day, and 
 when it gets down here to Chicago, it will go round, and 
 round, and round. The million dollars that is paid out 
 at the Rocky Mountains in wages is paid once there, and 
 
56 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 paid over and over again a thousand times after it leaves 
 the place where it was first brought into existence, and 
 every time it starts it eases the pressure, it relieves the 
 suffering, it gives new employment, and enables men 
 once more to stand on their feet and be men among 
 men. Let's see. We said that new dollar was paid a 
 thousand times. Then it created a thousand dollars in 
 trade, it settled a thousand accounts, it found employ- 
 ment for a thousand productive efforts. It did the work 
 of a dollar a thousand times. But it is claimed that the 
 first time it did the work of a dollar out at the mine the 
 miner made fifty cents on the transaction, and we are 
 calmly asked to surrender the use of the dollar in nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine transactions in ord-er to pre- 
 vent the miner from making a half dollar in the single 
 transaction where he touches the money at its start. 
 
 These farmers are everlastingly growling. Why don't 
 they send their grain to Europe? They are sending it 
 abroad, while we are starving at home. It was true in 
 Ireland that Ireland was never more fruitful and the 
 resources of the island were never greater than during 
 the very years of the measureless suffering and the awful 
 starvation of her people. We stood over in this coun- 
 try and held up our hands in horror that Great Britain 
 should stand so close to Ireland and ship away her grain 
 and leave the Irishman to starve. But what Great Brit- 
 ain did for Ireland on a small scale so many years ago, 
 she is doing for the United States at this very hour. 
 Yes! Our grains are cheap enough, so the foreigner is 
 able to buy, and while he buys at the lowest price we 
 starve for the lack of the price, when the price is cut 
 half way in two. A friend of mine down on the South 
 Side last Wednesday told me that the day before he 
 had purchased down on South Water Street berries, thir- 
 ty-five cents for sixteen-quart crates. He said three 
 years ago the Michigan fruit farmers around the neigh- 
 borhood of St. Joseph were sending to the city of Chi- 
 cago about eighty thousand crates of fresh fruit every 
 morning, and it was sold from eighty cents to ninety 
 centy and one dollar a crate. Now, and last year, the 
 
BIMETALLISM.^ 57 
 
 daily shipments fell down to fifty thousand crates. The 
 population of Chicago had gone up, there were more 
 people to buy berries than ever before. The volume of 
 the shipment had nearly been cut in two, and the price 
 had gone from one dollar down to thirty-five cents a 
 crate. Three years ago, when eighty thousand crates 
 were coming to us every new day, they were sold out 
 in the market, and the merchants were coming down in 
 the evening to buy, and there was no fruit left to be 
 sold. They are bringing now fifty thousand crates, and 
 in the evening the rotting, wasting fruit unpurchased is 
 left on the dock down by the lake, with nobody to come 
 and carry it away. 
 
 What are we going to do for the farmers and the 
 fruit growers? Remonetize silver. Let a million a day 
 of new money come from the Rocky Mountains paid 
 into circulation, not from Wall Street loaned into circu- 
 lation. Let new dollars, the creation of American labor 
 through the American mint, and from the American 
 mine eive us the new American dollars that can come 
 down into the market in such a way as to give us a re- 
 storation of normal prices-. The people out of employ- 
 ment will go into employment. The fellow over in Mich- 
 igan can sell his strawberries. The fellow over in Mich- 
 igan, having sold his strawberries, will give a man a job 
 making some clothes, and there will be a market for 
 cloth. Then there will be a demand for wool, and the 
 old sheep in the barren places of the earth will wake up 
 and bleat for joy. How will it benefit me? I am a 
 farmer raising corn. I sold corn last winter for twelve 
 cents a bushel, and it was hard work to get the twelve 
 cents. Now, if we recoin silver the silver mine-owner 
 will beat us on the matter, because the bullion is not 
 worth so much out of the dollar as in the dollar. Silver 
 as a commodity has gone down with all other commodi- 
 ties. Gold as a commodity has climbed, not because 
 it was yellow, not because it was soft, not because it 
 could be divided into small quantities, not because it 
 cost more to produce it, because it does not cost as 
 much. Gold has climbed up when every other thing has 
 
58 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 climbed down. If silver shall be put side by side with 
 gold, gold will come down out of the air, and silver will 
 climb up out of the ground. What will happen? Cloth, 
 iron, corn, wheat, days' works, will climb up out of the 
 hole along with silver, and the corn will be worth more 
 in dollars just in proportion as the dollar is worth less 
 in corn. The corn and the wheat and the cloth and the 
 iron will come back side by side along with the silver. 
 
 In the State of Illinois we raise corn, in the State of 
 Colorado they dig silver and gold. In Colorado they 
 must close the silver mine, and dig gold only. The price 
 of the gold goes up, the price of the silver is less. The 
 farmer is unable to sell his products in the West, and 
 instead of having Rocky Mountain prices for his pro- 
 duct it must be abnormally low. What is going to hap- 
 pen to this farmer? With the restoration of the price of 
 corn, restoration of the price of cloth, of pig iron, what 
 advantage is it to me to have silver recoined? Because 
 it will double the value of silver? No, but because it will 
 double the value of what my labor produces at the same 
 time it doubles the value of the miners' products. 
 
 But, Mr. Mills, bimetallism is dead. When did it 
 die? When did the funeral take place? Bimetallism can 
 never divide the country again. It doesn't need to. 
 Once is enough. The country is divided on that issue,- 
 and can never be divided on any other issue until that 
 question is settled. 
 
 Why not immediately make a stroke for the estab- 
 lishment of a money system based on labor, and not on 
 metal? Because the battle is on. The question is before 
 the house, and it is treason to the fight of humanity to 
 raise any other question until this question is settled. 
 Ah! But there is a possibility of voting in small par- 
 ties. Let us vote with the small vote and fight our way 
 to a hearing. Wait! Map out any program. Name any 
 object you may have in view. Organize your small 
 party. Join it and go to fighting for it. By the time 
 you have a million men in your party there will be some 
 other question for which we are to demand that you are 
 to abandon your large party and organize another small 
 
BIMETALLISM. 59 
 
 one, and when you have raised that party again, to 
 strength but not to victory, then go clear back to the 
 beginning and begin again. 
 
 Listen a minute! What would you think of me if I 
 vva'S a farmer 'hauling in hay, and I woukl go out to the 
 field and get a load of hay and bring it half way and pitch 
 it off into the ditch, and then go back for another load? 
 You would say, if you were a reasonable man, you would 
 drive your first load into the barn. Yes, but I want to 
 get it all in, and every load must start from the field. 
 It is not a question of the wisdom of making a small 
 start with a new load when your wagon is empty, it is a 
 question of common-sense that the load we have on rnust 
 never be abandoned or ditched or forsaken until it is 
 put into the barn where it belongs. 
 
 What has been the history of the fight for bimetal- 
 lism? We have been twenty-five years fighting for it. 
 How far have we got along? Just to the point where 
 once in American politics we have had the house divid- 
 ed. Why not be brave enough to go to the ballot-box 
 and vote' for a small party? For all the years of my 
 life I never voted with a national party that won. Why 
 not go and vote with the small party? Stand up for a 
 principle and be counted. That is why I am standing 
 for bimetallism this afternoon. For twenty-five ^ years 
 the silver cause has been laughed at, lied about, its de- 
 fenders persecuted and scorned in America. Have we 
 had this fight for twenty-five years, and now, when the 
 morning of the day of victory comes to us, shall we 
 throw away our banner or take it on to the White House 
 and fix it there forever? Ah, but you are not consistent, 
 Mr. Mills. You tell us in one breath that you believe in 
 municipal workshops. I do. You tell us you believe 
 that all money ought to be printed on paper. I do. I 
 believe that with all my heart. But, then, why in the 
 world do you not go and fight for that? For the simple 
 reason this other fight is on hand, and I am going to 
 finish the fellow I have by the throat now. 
 
 (A question from the audience: ''If the government 
 would issue greenbacks, fifty dollars per capita, and use 
 
6o EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 those greenbacks to buy out the banks and start banks 
 on national paper currency, what would be the result?") 
 Mr. Mills, continuing: The answer is this: We are on a 
 march, and the march is nearly over. And the fifty dol- 
 lars greenbacks per capita proposition is not inscribed 
 on the banner that is leading now. To attempt to re- 
 organize in the face of the enemy is to give them a 
 longer lease of life, and to defeat ourselves on the issues 
 that are involved, and I want to say that deliberately, — 
 postpone forever the opportunity to secure either bi- 
 metallism, or paper money, or anything else but a gall- 
 ing despotism which will stand for a thousand years on 
 American soil. I tell you we have pressed the gold ring 
 to the last ditch. 
 
 We did not make the issue ; if I had made it I would 
 have made it on another plan. If I had been consulted 
 I would have had the great battle come on in another 
 place. But I was not consulted. I am simply a citizen 
 in the United States of America, and the voice of des- 
 tiny has spoken. The issue has been made up, lines 
 have been drawn. I will do anything I can do for any 
 co-operative enterprise that can be started by any com- 
 pany of people anywhere. I am giving all my waking 
 hours to try to build on the voluntary basis an opportu- 
 nity for men with their own tools on their own soil and 
 in their own shops to create their own livelihood with- 
 out dependence upon any money, metal, paper, or any- 
 thing else. I will do anything I can do anywhere. I will 
 cross the continent if need be, to help any other, if he 
 can solve the problem, — I would walk across the conti- 
 nent if need be to help, if I could in that way, help any 
 one to solve the problem of the public employment of 
 idle labor. There is not one company of reformers in 
 the city of Chicago that I will not clasp hands with and 
 help to the last measure of my strength. But, my broth- 
 ers, to push any one issue into the field, to divide the 
 silver forces and start a warfare among themselves, is to 
 give the victory forever to Mark Hanna and his asso- 
 ciates; while we cover ourselves with rags, and doom 
 our children to hopeless penury forever. 
 
SOLOX, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 
 
 The subject this afternoon is Solon; Solon, the aiicient 
 law-giver. Solon was an ancient example of a mod^^rn 
 reformer. He was a Populist born out of due season. It 
 was live hundred and ninety-four years before Christ that 
 Solon was^made the Archon, the ruler of Attica. Attica's 
 chief city was Athens, and the country lying round about 
 Atjhcns pri'or to the coming of Solon had been placed in a 
 position of very great distress. The property of all the 
 agricultural districts was under mortgage, the evidence of 
 the mortgage was a stone pillar set up on the land, with the 
 name of the man wdio .had imade the loan engraved on the 
 pillar. W'ben there was no land with which to secure their 
 debts the law permitted the attachment of t)he person. A 
 person could borrow money, and pledge in security his 
 own body. It was not only "possible to take the land, 
 take all the personal property, and take the person of the 
 debtor himself, but it was also possible to attach his 
 family and sell both his wife and his dhildren into bondage 
 along -with himself. In Athens public sales of At'henian 
 citizens; throughout Attica the sales of the bankrupts who 
 'had been unable to meet the obligations they had assivmed 
 had converted these citizens of Attica into slaves. They 
 •had been taken captive and sold into bondage and trans- 
 ported into other lands. The burden of tJhe debts had 
 become so great that their payment had become an im- 
 possibility, and when the officers were sent out to take 
 possession of the lands under foreclosure they were met 
 ■with resistance, and when the officers were sent to 
 attach the bodies of the people they were met with re- 
 sistance, also. General disorder as well as despair had 
 taken possession of all Attica. 
 
 6x 
 
62 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 Solon belonged to a family of the aristocratic portion 
 of AtJhens. He traced his lineage back to some of the 
 Greek kings. He was able to be in sympathy with the 
 wealthy classes, notwithstanding the fact that his parents 
 and his relations 'had been on the side of 'the masses of the 
 people. Both the rich on the one .hand, and the poor on 
 the other, clamored for m.aking Solon the Archoin of 
 Attica. He entered upon the duties of his ofhce, to dis- 
 appoint the rich men because he did so much for the poor 
 people, and the poor people on the O'tiher hand because 
 ;he did not do more. He entered upon the duties of his 
 office with his country given over to disorder, in a condi- 
 tion -where it was not possible to enforce the laws, and 
 where men refused any longer to be sold into slavery. 
 Armed resistance met tlhe officer wherever he went, and 
 disorder and chaos, and distress were characteristic of the 
 whole land. 
 
 He immediately declared that all farm mortgages 
 sihould be cancelled, and that land should be made free. 
 He argued that whoever owned the land under the feet 
 of other men practically owned the other men. He de- 
 clared that the emslavement of the free citizens of Athens 
 had been a wrong, that the only way by which that wrong 
 could be corrected was by cancelling all the debts based 
 on mortgage claims covering all the lands of Attioa. In the 
 same way he argued, and in the same way he acted, with 
 regard to all that body of debts which were secured by the 
 pledge of the debtor's person, and cancelled those as well. 
 When he had done this it was no longer possible to en- 
 force the collection of a debt if the basis of its security 
 was land, for the land was free. The marble stones that 
 stood throughout Attica had been broken down and their 
 authority had been annulled. The land under the feet 
 of the citizens of Attica was free, and the farmers were 
 free. If the debts had been repudiated these men had 
 been emancipated. 
 
 The same thing was true with regard to the debts 
 claimed against the bodies of men. When there was a debt 
 the security of which rested againsit a man's person and the 
 law proposed to attach Ms person and sell him into slavery 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 63 
 
 the debt was cancelled and the man was made free. But 
 tJhat was not all. He assessed the property of Attica and 
 created a fund with which he sent across the waters to the 
 foreign lands and purchased the Athenians who in other 
 days had been sold into bondage, and placed them once 
 more on Attic soil, where they might listen again to the 
 strong, sweet, marvelous accents of the Attic tongue. This 
 was the work of Solon. Those who had fallen under the 
 bondage of debt 'were purchased back out of their foreign 
 bcyidage by a tax laid on the property of Attica. The 
 land of Attica was free, the men of Attica were free, but 
 all debts which were either against the man, or the soil 
 under the man, were declared null and void once and for- 
 ever. 
 
 He n)Ot only did tfhis, but he went further. The volume 
 of money 'had something to do with the distress. The 
 piopulations and business interests had outgrown the 
 volume of money, and in order to ma-ke the remaining 
 unpaid debts more just he reduced the weight of the metal 
 in the money by about twenty-seven per cent. The full 
 body of every debt that laid claim to the land, or to the 
 man, and twenty-sevem per cent, of all other debts were 
 cancelled as the first step in the reform. The rich man 
 cried out against this. The poor man cried because he had 
 not been given larger opportunities. The rich on the one 
 hand, and tihe poor on the other, both disclaiming, dis- 
 crediting this great reformer, clamored in his ears and 
 found fault with his work, until Solon, who had brought 
 back from the foreign lands those wlio had been exiled 
 under the operation of the old laws, found it necessary for 
 him himself to become an exile. 
 
 Is there anything corresponding between the condi- 
 tions which prevailed in Attica, and made Solon the great- 
 est of the law-givers, and the conditions which prevail here 
 to-day? Remember, this work of Solon made him famous. 
 The years passed by, and out of the institutions which he 
 created Attica's democracy came to be. The institutions, 
 the laws, the philosophy, the literature, the marvelous 
 language of Attica, its poetry, its songs, its sculpture — out 
 of tihe institutions which grew out of tlie reforms which he 
 
64 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 carried on came the body and the strength gi Grecian 
 
 greatness. But Solon was not alone in insisting on the 
 fr-eedom of the soil or the infamy of the bondage of an 
 unpayable debt. 
 
 Possibly a greater law-giver than Solon, certainly a 
 man who commenced with a people as helpless, as dis- 
 orderly, as 'hopeless, as were the Athenians in the time of 
 Solon taught the same things. I refer to Moses. He 
 started with a eompany of slaves so disorderly, so im- 
 moral, so cowardly in their life that it was impossible CA^en 
 to use the generation he himself belonged to, and it was 
 necessary 'to dweli in a wilderness unftil that generation 
 should pass away, and until those w^ho in Egypt had felt 
 on their backs the sting of the slave-driver's lash had 
 finally died in the wilderness, and their children born in 
 .the wilderness should come as a population which shoul4 
 carry on the effort to possess the new land and build a new 
 s'tate. And stranded in the wilderness, this man, with 
 the open sky above ^him, and the great multitudes of the 
 wandering, (helpless and defenseless exile slaves. and the 
 ohildren of slaves around him, devised ne<\v institutions for 
 die new land which should build in Palestine the ancient 
 republic, wihere no poverty should be, where no slave 
 should be, and where liberty first of all was establisihed 
 down on the ground among men, where poetr)% and litera- 
 ture, and philosophy, and religion should be supreme. 
 This Moses who created the institutions that made Pales- 
 tine one of the teachers of our race, declared that no debt 
 s'hould outlive the generation that created it, and not once, 
 but many times, put into the fixed institutions of Judea 
 tha't once in fifty years the debts that lay against the land 
 and the debts that lay agins^: the people,- and tilie debts that 
 lay claim against the industry of his race, sihould be de- 
 clared null and void, and that if any family had lost its in- 
 heritance In lands and the old household had passed Into 
 other hands, In fifty years, When the generation whilcih 
 had lost It 'had Itself passed away, then the children In the 
 family to w^hlch It was given In the first place should re- 
 inherlt It and repossess It. Moses, the greatest law-giver 
 of the ancient Asiatic republic, and Solon, tilie greatest 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 65 
 
 law-giver of the European races, joined together in de- 
 claring that t)hat debt which should outlive tilie generation 
 w'hich created it is by right, and ought to be, null and void. 
 But let us tJhink for a little tini'e with regard to our 
 situation ihere. Are there no mortgages covering the 
 property of this country? Are there any stone pillars set 
 up on the farms of this country signifying tiliat the title of 
 Hhe land is based, not in the man who occupies it, but in 
 some other man? The loan companies and farm mort- 
 gage s}'ndicates have spread riieir work out over t?he Mis- 
 sissippi Valley and have covered the industry of this coun- 
 try with a mortgage that has practically foreclosed and 
 taken possession of it all. Tdie farmer that is out of debt 
 is an exception, and the farmer who is in debt is in debt 
 •under a contract wiherein he contracted to do one thing, 
 anxl 'Under tihe law is required to do another thing. It is 
 stated .that among the processes by which the ancient 
 citizens of Attica became indebted and the lands mort- 
 gaged were wrongs. The historian does not attempt to 
 tell us what they were. W'hat they were we do not know, 
 but it is insisted that back of the debt that Solon repudi- 
 ated was a claim that tliere was a great wrong which as 
 a matter of fair play between man and man demanded its 
 repudiation. Any debt outliving its generation is itself a 
 wrong. But suppose I lend you a horse, I come to you to 
 get my horse back again. You can pay a debt of that 
 sort, because you have something to pay with. You have 
 the horse. Again, yoti borrow a horse from me, and 
 while you have the horse away I get the law changed, and 
 •when you come back to pay the debt, instead of being 
 contented with one horse I demand two. But you have, 
 nor have liad, but one. Has anything of that sort taken, 
 place ill this country? Tihe debts that represent the farm 
 •mortgages generally represent one horse tiliat was bor- 
 rowed, and from t<hree to four horses are required to make 
 the payment under the law. INIeasured in what labor can 
 produce, measured in the value of our toil to-day, the 
 debts that cover the American land, and the American 
 people, are in no proper sense a payment which the debtor 
 ever engaged to pay. He engaged to pay certain sums 
 
66 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 when both gold and silver had free access to the mints of 
 this country, .and tihe value of a dollar was detenmined by 
 tihe labor necessary to dig either gold or silver out of the 
 ihills out of which to make the dollar. But silver was 
 demonetized, tihe mints were closed against the silver and 
 t)he mines were shut down. The source of supply for 
 money was made smaller by half. The purchasing power 
 of each separate dollar was made larger, and whereas 
 horses sold for one hundred dollars then, they sell for 
 thirty or forty dollars now. Whereas cotton sold for 
 twenty cents then, it sells for five now. Whereas wool sold 
 for forty cents then, it does not sell at all now. Whereas 
 men were able to earn from two to three dollars a day 
 with tiheir labor then, they are unable to secure employ- 
 ment at any price now. What do you mean by meeting 
 obligations? Pay back hour for hour the labor values 
 that you borrowed. Pay back head for head the cajttle, 
 Jhorses, sheep. Return all that you obtainied, no m.ore, 
 no less, for the man or the generation who makes a debt — 
 that is just. But the law has been so changed that the 
 demand against the mortgaged property of America 
 to-day is not a demand for a return of what was borrowed, 
 but a demand for more than was borrowed. That is not 
 just. He promised to do one thing. He is required by a 
 change in the law to do a 'dififerent and a more difficult 
 thing. There has been connivance to defraud. The claim- 
 ant must s'how clean hands. To deny his claim is not 
 repudiating a just debt. It is very justly repudiating the 
 last act in a colossal servitude. It is denying the use of 
 tihe court to enforce a crime against the very persons for 
 whose protection the court itself was created. But these 
 debts have not only been increased by law so that the 
 claim is m^ade for more than is promised, but they are 
 shifted for payment to the new generation who never 
 made any promises at all. 
 
 The proposition is made in New York for the organiza- 
 tion of a new company which dhall loan money to the 
 farmers at a lower rate of interest. The law now permits 
 the paym'ont of six or seven or eig^t per cent. It is pro- 
 posed to so lower the rate of interest on farm mortgages 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 67 
 
 tlmt 'the farm'cr who cannot now pay eight per cent, on 
 the old miortgage may be able to pay four per cent, on a 
 new one. But is it not perfectly clear that if he cannot pay 
 ■eight per cent, interest, without the principal, it will be 
 equally impossible for hiim to pay four per cent, with the 
 principal? Any reform w*hich still leaves no provision for 
 the payment of the debts, the retirement of the principal 
 so that interest may cease, is not sufficient. We insist on 
 the payment of debts, not the everlasting payment of in- 
 terest on debts wihioh can n^ver be paid. This is what to 
 do: Where the debts can-not be paid any way, go into 
 bankruptcy, and -where there is any possibility of paying 
 the debt, let it be provid-ed for according to the third act of 
 Solon, not by reducing the -weight of the metal which is in 
 the coin, but by restoring to the silver of our everlasting 
 hills the rights of our mints. 
 
 W'hat are the conditions in this laud of ours? We will 
 go on with the foreclosing, s'hall we? Here in-tili-e city of 
 Chicago Hettie Green, the great, popular, strong-hearted, 
 public-spirited, good, patriotic stateswoman and Chicago 
 citizen — Hettie Green came here the other day to fore- 
 close four millions of Chicago mortgages. Four millions 
 of Chicago mortgages, and the smallest mortgage in the 
 list for twenty-five thousand. No mortgage for fifty or 
 seventy-five dollars. No pawn-shop transaction t)here. 
 No house and lot deal involved in this. It is not the poor 
 working-man she is after. She deals with the large fellows. 
 The sensible, hard-headed business ^men. She is coming 
 to deal with the men who knew better than to vote for 
 Bryan and the free coinage of silver. She is coming to 
 deal with the men who voted for McKinley for fear if they 
 did not vote for McKinley they would not be able to pay 
 the interest on their mortgages. They voted for Mc- 
 Kinley. They have sent McKinley to the White House, 
 and Hetti-e Greenihas arrived to send th-em to hades, along 
 with the rest of us. When the business interests of the 
 'city of Chicago, represented by four millions of mortgages, 
 the smallest one in the list for twenty-five thousand, go to 
 protest for foreclosure it means that the people who are 
 able to borrow twenty-five thousand dollars, not th-e riflf- 
 
68 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 raff, the ragged fellows, tihe men who did not know any 
 better than to vote for Bryan, it means t/hat the large 
 fellows are going to fall into the isam-e maelstroim and be 
 overwhelmed by the same tide which has smitten the rest 
 of us. It is not only true with regard to the debts here 
 in tihe city of Chicago; it is equally true tihroughoiit the 
 country. There is farm land in Illinois to-day that the 
 plowshare 'has not touched, and will not toucih in this year 
 of our Lord (or the other fellow), 1897. I am inclined to 
 think that the year 1897 is not the year of our Lord, after 
 all, and that His year is not going to come until 1898 or 
 1900. There is land in Illinois that the cultivator will not 
 touc'h, there are s'liops in Illinois in which a wheel will not 
 turn, there is raw material in Illinois that will spoil while 
 waiting for some one to add his labor and make it more 
 valuable. And none of these things are in possession of 
 the riff-raff. 
 
 I was riding into the city the other day and noticed a 
 freight-car coming towards the city. I noticed it was in 
 a general sort of dilapidated condition, almost as way- 
 worn as a Republican campaign promise. I wondered 
 what was the matter that a great railway 'company sho'uld 
 •undertake to do business witn such cars, and soi I set 
 myself to examining the freight cars. I passed at least a 
 thousand cars, and but one single car in all the list had any 
 fresh paint on its sides, and that was one with two boards 
 painted, just added in the repair shops, while the balance 
 of the car, tho'ugh sadly needing it, was unpainted like 
 tlie rest. They w^ere not cars waiting for repairs, they 
 were cars out on the track doing service for the railways of 
 t'his country, rotten and falling to pieces for want of care. 
 I commenced to look at the houses, and I rode from some- 
 where down about 40th street to the Polk street depot 
 without seeing one single, solitary 'house with any fresh 
 paint on it along the way. Go down along the streets in 
 any direction and see how the windows are being broken, 
 see 'how desertion and ruin is visiting Chicago. Dr. Hillis 
 said it was because the socialists have made it the center 
 of tiheir propaganda. Dr. Hillis, listen a minute! The 
 fellows who are in a position to put paint on these deserted 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 69 
 
 houses, to put business into these warehouses, and to put 
 paint and repairs on our cars are not the men who voted 
 for William J. Bryan. These men of affairs voted for Mc- 
 Kinley. He tells us it is because workingmen are making 
 this a center of agitation until the great and leading fam- 
 ilies of Chicago have gone down tx) live along the Jriudson. 
 I suppose Che way for workingmen to fix Chicago so it 
 will be all right is to keep still. Let us keep st'.il, and then 
 maybe Yerkes will abandon his palace on the Hudson and 
 come back to live with us. I wonder if it would not be a 
 good scheme, anyway, for us to abandon all agitation in 
 Dhe United States, and then maybe Astor might come back 
 from Great Britain and consent to be a citizen of the coun- 
 try he has so long disgraced. I wonder if it would not be 
 a good idea for us to close up the public schools and to 
 stop studying public questions, anyway. Dr. Hillis, if 
 you will provide some way by which we can get the mort- 
 gages off our 'houses we wall provide some way to- put the 
 paint on. Dr. Hillis, if you will provide some way by 
 which the hungry can be fed, and the ragged can^ be 
 clothed, not in charity, but by 'honest toil, wt will under- 
 take to furnish plenty of "leading families" for Chicago, 
 whose appreciation of fine art w'ill not be lim.itec' to the 
 arts as taught in Fagin's school. Dr. Hillis, your leading 
 citizens \Vhose abandonment of Chicago you lament ihave 
 been leading citizens in that they have led their fellow 
 citizens to the pit and they have fallen in, while these 
 leaders of yours 'have walked round the deadfall they set 
 for others and have gone to build their palaces on the 
 Hudson. 
 
 Solon was a great and wise man, but he did not have 
 to deal with the Rothschilds. Solon taxed the people at 
 home and sent abroad and brought back the exiles, but 
 they did not have any institution in Solon's time by which 
 the' citizens of Attica could be the slaves of a foreigner 
 and still stay at-home to do his work. We have a new in- 
 stitution now. No danger of our being sold in the market 
 arid transported to Europe to black Mr. Rothsc'hild's 
 shoes. He uses our services and enforces our bondage 
 in another way. The British gold syndicate, with its 
 
70 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 headquarters at our own great banks, collects from other 
 nations millions of interest each year, and lays tribute on 
 our nation along with the rest. And every woman toiling 
 in .a sweat shop, every miner digging in t/he earth, every 
 toiler in the pineries of the 'mountain side, every black man 
 in tihe Southern cotton field or field of sugar cane, every 
 helpless boy — these are simply evidences of American 
 bondage to an international gold syndicate tihat created 
 our debt through crime, and enforces it through processes 
 which .are brutal, inhuman, and outrageous beyond com- 
 parison. If these men would only come over here and 
 come to our own doors and ask for the bread from our 
 children's mouths, ask for th-e clothing off their backs, 
 ask for possession of our lands, and our houses, tihat pos- 
 session would never be given- tlhem; but they stay abroad, 
 they send their agents to Washington, where by legisla- 
 tion, secret, infamous and criminal, they change the stand- 
 ard of America, they multiply our debts^ they possess 
 'themselves of our securities, and then they turn loose, not 
 a company of British red coats to take possession of the 
 living of our children and rob us of our own, they tunni 
 looseonthe possessions of America the mortgage, and the 
 mortgage secured and protected by our own officers. What 
 is the use of sending an English red coat over here to rob 
 an American, so long as a Yankee officer will do it right 
 here at home? What is the use of bringing a foreigner 
 to do a foreigner's work when our own citizens are tum- 
 bling over eaoh other in their haste to make connection 
 with the foreign money power and obtain an opportunity 
 to rob by law their helpless countrymen? What is the 
 use of European authorities sending soldiers over here to 
 use their railways owned over there, owned over there, 
 operated over .here, when they can use, under the authority 
 of Grover Cleveland, thcisoldiers of Uncle Sam? 
 
 Now, seriously, what is to be done in the midst of a 
 combination of oircum'Stances like this? Shall we declare 
 that the land shall be free, as Solon declared that it should 
 be free? Shall we demand tihat men once more shall be 
 free men, without regard to the man who has a mortgage 
 on 'his body, or a claim against his children? Shall we 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 7I 
 
 demand again that the law that promotes the selling of a 
 woman and her children into bondage shall not be re- 
 peated in America? That no American shall be sold into 
 foreign bondage, or wihat is the same thing, be permit'ted 
 to toil only to send his products abroad for the use of 
 foreigners? This is my answer to all this. Either the con- 
 ditions which are ripening for disaster will be speedily 
 clianged in America, or the mutiny which met the ancient 
 Greek will meet the American officer and the disorder that 
 spread over Attica will bring confusion worse confounded 
 in America. What do you advise? This is what I advise: 
 Maintain the peace at all cost. What further? Go to the 
 ballot box on next election day and send frooi every ham- 
 let in the United States of America representatives to our 
 State Legislatures and to our National Congress who 
 will strike for the restoration of that money under which 
 our obligations were created. Are you standing here 
 to-day to say that Solon was a wise man? The conditions 
 under which he operated are similar to the ones under 
 w'hioh we are suffering now, and therefore to repudiate is 
 wisdom? No. I am contending that Solon was a wise, 
 just, patriotic man. That question I do not need to argue. 
 It is the verdict of the twenty-five centuries which have 
 followed him. \\'hen you speak of our City Hall you call 
 •the Aldermen over there Solons. Of course you do it in 
 contempt, not for Solon, but for the Aldermen. Only the 
 other day I picked up a newspaper, and it said the Solons 
 at Springfield were doing so and so. Twenty-five cen- 
 turies since the days of Solon the human race has been 
 struggling with the problems which he solved, and each 
 one of them has written down as the greatest la^w giver of 
 them all the name of that man who said the land must be 
 free and the -men must be free, and that foreign bondage 
 must cease once and forever. I\Ir. Mills, are you willing to 
 say again, here and now, that in America the land ouglit 
 to be free? Yes, every inch of American soil ought not 
 only to be free now, but to remain free forever. Are you 
 willing to say that in America whenever any obligation 
 involves the bondage of a man and his family that that is 
 slavery, and that slavery shall not be permitted in Amer- 
 
72 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 ica since Lyman Trumbull wrote that splendid passage 
 into the American Constitution, that neither slavery nor 
 involuntary servitude sihould be permitted here forever? 
 When an obligation unfairly created makes of the debtor 
 a slave that slavery is the crime of crimes, and there can 
 be no defense for slavery in any form? My answer is 
 straight and sharp and short. Yes'. Let tdie people and 
 tihe land beneath the people be forever free, and slavery, 
 w^hether the fruit of war or pillage or mortgage or bonds, 
 slavery of any form or for any cause, is forever the crime 
 of crimes. Then shall we cancel all the debts? No. 
 What then? Do what Solon did, and let the volume of 
 the money catch up with the population of America. Do 
 this. Give us the free coinage of silver in America at the 
 ratio of sixteen to one, and then if any foreign syndicate 
 /has its agents buy up the silver mines and close them 
 down, then nationalize the gold and silver mines of 
 America, and under the direction of the American Gov- 
 ernment employ the idle labor of America and dig new 
 dollars out of the Rocky Mountains and pay dollar for 
 dollar every dollar we owe. One thing is absolutely cer- 
 tain. When Abraham Lincoln consented to the national 
 debt ihe gave his consent to the obligation looking wist- 
 fully to the Rocky Mountains. When General Grant was 
 President of the United States he sent a message to Con- 
 gress urging the building of a mint in Chicago for the 
 coinage of silver dollars two >"ears after the secret ''crime 
 of '73" had destroyed .silver. General Grant proposed 
 what I am talking about here now, and Lincoln had it all 
 in mind \\'<hen he consented to the national debt. They 
 gave us a debt five dollars in bonds for one in service. We 
 deny no just obligation. We will settle for tihe sake of 
 peace, paying five dollars for one — we will submit to any- 
 'tihing, just so payment s'hall be possible. But they shall 
 not maiitiply again these charges and so fix these debts 
 in perpetuity that neither we nor our children after us 
 shall be able to pay forever, and then through interest 
 charges make both them and us their bondsmen to the end 
 of .time. Show us a way out, not for the payment of in- 
 terest only, but for the disciharge of both principal and 
 
SOLON, THE ANCIENT LAW GIVER. 73 
 
 interest, for bot'h must be within our ability to pay or 
 •neither is binding. So reasoned Lincoln when he con- 
 sented to the debts. So reasoned Grant when he planned 
 for a speedy payment. So reasoned Solon when he made 
 Attica free. So Freedom shall be ours. 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 
 
 To-day we are to speak on The Folly a-nd Crini'e of 
 Anarchy. I do not wish to be understood as having any 
 share at all in ^nrnking any attacks upon any company of 
 men because of any philosophy which they believe in, or 
 any economic views which are th'eirs. This address this 
 afternooin is 'not an attack upon tihe m^en who believe in 
 the doctrines of philosophical anardhy. This address this 
 afternoon is .not an attack upon anybody, but I could 
 hardly say it is not an attack upon anything. I am not a 
 philosophical anarchist -myself, nor an ananchis-t of any 
 other variety. Here is one proposition which I under- 
 stand is quite generally believed among philosophical 
 anarchists. No government can govern a man as well 
 as that man can govern himself. I believe the tim'C is 
 going to come some time — ^^and I am doing all I can to 
 'hurry that tim.e along — ^^when a man s'hall dO' that w-hich 
 is good in his own eyes, and doing that whicih is good in^ 
 'his own eyes will not be bound to the autho-rity of any 
 other 'man. I believe that no man can govern a^notiher as 
 well as that man can govern himself, if he wall. W'hat if 
 he won't? I know quite a large number of people ^viho 
 won't. 
 
 Civil authority exists for miaintaining the peace, for the 
 organization of common interests, and possibly for that 
 organization upon a coercive basis. That coercion will 
 finally cease, and the function of governm'ent will be more 
 largely adm'inistratlve, .not merely coercive, I firmly be- 
 lieve. That the time will co.me when the gatling gun and 
 the policeman's club will oeas'e to be the most appropriate 
 symbols of authority I firmly believe, and that instead of 
 the s'word and the spear, the plowslhare and the pruning 
 
 74 
 
THE I'OLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 75 
 
 'hook will come to be the instruments of man's most hon- 
 orable activity. So far as 1 am able to study tih-e situation 
 myself, there is no form of anarchy that 1 have ever heard 
 about, or read about, or listened to, that it was possible 
 for me to give my consent to. The term anarchy means 
 no 'head. Anarchy is the opposite of arahy. "En archy ho 
 logos," those are the first words in the gospel, according 
 to St. John, in tihe Greek, "In the beginning was the 
 word." An, no; archy, beginning; an-archy, no begin- 
 ning. The word used there as the beginning is the same 
 term which we used a few days ago wlien w^e were speak- 
 ing together here about Solon, the ancient law giver, who 
 was the Archon of Attica. Archon is derived from the 
 same word. He was t!lie governor, the ruler, the principal 
 citizen of Attica, and the term Archon, the beginning, the 
 head,^he starting point, the seat of power, came to mean 
 government, and, An-ardion, no government; so anarchy 
 -means the opposite of govermnent; means no head, no 
 ■starting point, no plan. That is the simplest statement 
 that can be made, I think, with regard to the real meaning 
 of the term anarchy. 
 
 But we ought to bear in mind that tihe derivation of a 
 word does not always determine just exactly whata word 
 means ; sometimes it means one thing in its derivation, but 
 means quite a dififerent tihing in its use. Som.etimes a word 
 which is a word of contempt grows to be a word of honor, 
 and sometimes 'words of honor, by some misfortune, grow 
 to be terms of discredit. The term Christian is such a 
 term as that. It was given to the followers of tihe Nazarene 
 in contempt, and they bore the name first in scorn. The 
 word was not used at first, when Jesus was here on earth. 
 It was some years after His crucifixion before those who 
 had been His disciples were called after His name. The 
 New Testament has the word in it only once, and then it 
 says, "They were first called Christians at Antioch," and 
 it is universal opinion, .so far as I am intformed, that they 
 were first called Christians there in contempt. The same 
 was true in regard to the term Methodists, and later tihe 
 Salvation Army. 
 
 There are some men still who regard Christian as a 
 
^6 evolutionarV politics. 
 
 term of reproach, and it is sometimes a serious mistake to 
 call a man such a name as that, but ordinarily men no 
 longer object to being called Christian gentlemen. But 
 when they do object, of course the objection ought to be 
 sustained. But few men who are members of the Meth- 
 odist Church any longer feel any injury is done them when 
 they are called Methodists. Tlhey commenced a hundred 
 years ago to stand up and say they were Methodists, but 
 now the brick-bats have all receded into the background, 
 and it is no longer regarded as a term of contempt to be 
 called a Metihodist. 
 
 Well, in' the same way the term Abolitionist, the way 
 ;tihat word used to be pronounced was abolition-ist (pro- 
 nounced with a prolonged hiss), but after awhile instead 
 of giving tihem banquets, with eggs that had not been 
 properly prepared, and instead of regarding the term as 
 one of reproach, these men came to be regarded as men 
 who had stood bravely in the center of a great fight. I do- 
 not think I will be going very far out of the way if I call 
 attention in this connection to Mr. Blaine's remarkable 
 statement with regard to the Abolitionists. He said, the 
 time was when the abolitionists in tihis country had no 
 prottction in the courts, could in no way appeal to the 
 defense of the law, that to be accused of any crime and be 
 brought before a justice meant sure- conviction ; that to 
 sue a man in the courts and have attention called to the 
 fact that the man w^ho was the plaintiff was an abolitionist 
 •was sure to give the case to the defendant. Now, tihi'S is 
 Mr. Blaine's statement with regard to the positions that 
 the abolitionists once occupied. That term that was such 
 a term of scorn, that brought such a cloud of hateful re- 
 gard that in tlhis land of ours there was no justice for them, 
 no rigthts before the courts— it was only a little while ago 
 that that was true. There an-e men seated here this after- 
 noon who know how true it was. To-day it is equally 
 tri'te; there are -men among us who can be accused of any 
 crime, and convicted and hanged, not because they are 
 guilty, but because they are the friends of the oppressed, 
 and have the hatred of tihe trusts and the combinations 
 •which rob us all. The term abolitionist, which was the 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 77 
 
 term of contempt, by-and-by became the term of honor. 
 Il is barely possible the term anarchist may sometime 
 become the term of honor. 1 stood in a town and saw 
 a curious thing. There were probably twenty-five Uhou- 
 sand people in town who had come to t?he town for the 
 purpose of seeing a Presidential candidate. Down t'he 
 street marched a company of young men, and on each 
 man's back was a great large placard tied with a string 
 and on the card was the word "anarchist," and they 
 traveled up and down the streets of Mt. Vernon tdie day 
 Mr. Bryan was there, and tihe great mass of people who 
 liad heard Bryan called an anarchist, and Altgeld, and the 
 other advocates of free silver called anarchists, s'houted, "I 
 am an anarchist." Well, I am inclined to think that if 
 Altgeld and Bryan are anarchists, eitrher a man of a cer- 
 tain variety will have to move to Europe in a few years, or 
 he must have a more cordial feeling than he does now 
 towards the term anarchist. 
 
 When we speak of these men as anarchists you know it 
 is said as a joke. There are men who are really in earnest 
 who call themselves anarchists, and are glad to bear the 
 name. There are three classes of anarchists, with regard 
 to which I wish to speak this afternoon. 
 
 In the first place, men who disbelieve in the use of 
 force, who sincerely believe that all use of force is wrong, 
 that it is not only wrong, but that it is unwise, and that 
 •every blow that is struck against another sooner or later 
 brings back the blow in some oth'er form ; t\hat every use 
 of violence in the end does more harm than it is possible 
 for it to do good. Men who refuse to use violence against 
 others, and who object to having others use violence 
 against them. Such as these object to the forceful side 
 of government, and in that sense are they anarchists. 
 Tolstoi, the most splendid teacher of them all, standing 
 over against the old wrongs and pleading for tilie new 
 conditions, contends that they cannot be created by might 
 nor power. Tolstoi objects to use of force in any place 
 and in any way, and in that sense Tolstoi is an anarchist. 
 Mr. Ernest Crosby, the son of Dr. Howard Crosby, of 
 New York, a man of splendid ability, a writer who is rarely 
 
78 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 equalled, a reformer in this coiintr}' of ours now, prob- 
 ably the most earnest disciple of Tolstoi in America, was 
 in Chicago a few days ago. Mr. Ernest Crosby does not 
 believe in the policeman's gun or club, the gatling gun, 
 or any use of force anywhere, and as such, of course, from 
 that standpoint -would be counted an anarohist. But when: 
 we talk of amarchists in speaking one to anotlher tdiat is 
 .not what we have in mind. Whafcever anarchy may mean 
 in the dictio'Uarv, that is not what it mean's on the street 
 corner. That is not what men mean when they boast that 
 they themselves are ready for anarchy. 
 
 There are others who contend that those who object 
 to all civil authority may by volimtary asso'ciation accom- 
 plish for society without civil authority all that may be 
 accomplished wath civil authority. 
 
 But these are not the men in mind when we talk about 
 the folly and the crim'C of anarchy. There is another class 
 of anarchists, who do not believe in centralized authority, 
 in the use of force; who do not believe in any foron of gov- 
 ernment that exists anywhere now, who object to all formis 
 of force and all use of violence agimst themselves', who do 
 not hesitate to use any force, resort tO' any violence in 
 order to destroy civil authority as it exists to-day. 
 
 Now, my proposition is this : That the sort of anarchy 
 which not only denies the authority of the bad govern- 
 iment which -we have, but denies the right of any form of 
 govern'ment to exist, no matter how speedily it may put 
 into the background and retire the ofificer whO' uses 
 violence for the iman who comes not as a repressive force 
 but as a builder, I say in regard to that form of anarchy 
 that it is absurd, impossible; as a guide to conduct for a 
 citizen it is wortliles's or it is criminal, not against the old 
 for>ms alone which ought to perish, but against the new 
 which oug^ht to be, as well. This anarchy the old forms 
 can strangle. But the new forms, so far as this sort of 
 anarchy can obtain any following, to that very extent fhe 
 new forms are themselves made impossible. 
 
 Anarchy means no head, no center, no authority. If 
 you want a real good illustration of what anarchy vvonld 
 be where it is not, look around you and notice what it is 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 79 
 
 wh'ore it already exists. It is in full force on nearly every 
 side of us. I want you to sit still and think 'how much 
 anarchy there is in Chicago now, lack of head, lack of 
 management, lack of authority, lack of any fixed, definite, 
 organized w-ay of doing anything. We say we want to 
 protect our lives and our property. We create a company 
 of ofiicers and turn that duty over to t'hem. We want as 
 well to provide for the means of livelihood, to open the 
 way of possible employment to every toiler. Why not 
 organize that field also? The m.'cn who insist upon or- 
 ganizing the police force to break our heads if we grow 
 disorderly, refuse to organize industry tibat by our toil we 
 may create the bread which shall feed tjhe hungry and 
 make disorder practically an impossibility. We contend 
 for the existence of the police force and say that is govern- 
 ment, and to strike at tihe police force, we say that is 
 anarchy. I affirm that to contend for the present disor- 
 ganized, disorderly, headless, planless system, or rather, 
 lack of system, which prevails in the industry and com- 
 merce of" America to-day is anarchy also; and while the 
 man who strikes at the police force is called an anarchist, 
 while the man who objects to the organization of the 
 forces that shall protect the life and property of the com- 
 munity is called an anarchist, I say the man who insists 
 on the perpetuation of a headless, planless scheme, or 
 lack of scheme, for producing the things the people need 
 in order to provide for t]heir livelihood, are industrial and 
 commercial anarchists from top to bottom. 
 
 There is no plan. Where is there a plan ? Last year we 
 planted a good many potatoes, we sold them in Chicago, 
 as I have told you before, for thirteen cents a bushel. 
 Why did we not act wath wisdom? Why plant so many 
 potatoes when we knew they were going to be so cheap? 
 Ah ! but we did not know. Will you introduce me to the 
 *nian who will tell me now w^hat we shall be able to sell our 
 potatoes for this year? The boys are raising some pota- 
 toes again. What price will they get for them? I do not 
 know. Can you tell me who does know, can you tell me 
 of anybody who has the information that will make it 
 reasonably possible for them to make a fairly correct 
 
80 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 guess? The reports 'Come in; yes, but after we have 
 planted them. And after we have not plan^ted them and 
 the reports are in it is too late to plant tihem. Where is 
 the system that will enatble the toilers to know before 
 planting how much there will be a demand for? This year 
 they plant potatoes and the price is \vay down, and they 
 isay, "We made a bad bargain tliis year; next year we will 
 know better, we will plant no potatoes," and the price is 
 'way up, but the supply is 'way do-w.n, and not only in t-he 
 matter of potatoes, but of every other article, the price of 
 the commodity a-nd the volume of the -supply are playing 
 hide and seek with each other, up aod down the black- 
 board. The game is not so bad, but while the sport goes 
 on people go hungry, and hunger is uncomxfortable. 
 
 This is agricultural anarchy, and there are lots of fel- 
 lows who have not got enough of it, and they waM some 
 -more of it. I do not want it any more. But tihere are 
 •men who want t'his aearchy of the potato patch extended 
 to 'the police force. I wish we could have some way, some- 
 how, somewhere, by which, w'hen a man goes intO' the 
 field to work in the spring, 'he may know that if he works 
 (he shall be fed, and if he doesn't, then shall he starve. 
 What is true with regard to these crops is true with regard 
 to everything else. Take any system of business. Do you 
 know there are some steam laundries — I am not attack-' 
 ing anybody on the matter of their wash bills; I am simply 
 saying there is in the city of Chicago to-day no plan, no 
 arrangemiemts by which everybody can be clean. I no- 
 ticed a man on the street just a day or two ago who was 
 inot. Wihat is true with regard to the laundries is true 
 with regard to the bakeries, with regard to the tailor 
 shops, with regard to the shoe shops. All the business, 
 the industry of th€ city of Chicago is simply disarranged. 
 Take t)he matter of machinery. Here in this coimtry 
 to-day it has come to be a time when every invention is a 
 -misfortune for some one. I knto\v a man who never 
 worked at a machine in his life, where several men were 
 at work, that he could not improve it so that it wo-uld 
 displace some one. He is now out of a job, and he said to 
 m'ethat whenever -he 'worked on a machine again, no mat- 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 8l 
 
 ter how -many places where 'he saw an opportunity to put 
 the man off and let the madliin-e do it itself, he 'was going 
 to keep the old nmohine. What did tihat mean? It meant 
 to tie up liis brains, because of the senseless commercial 
 anarchistic condition in which the industry of this coun- 
 try finds itself in connection witih the matter of the use of 
 .machinery. Society is disorganized and disjointed. It 
 does not exist under any plan. The men who work on t(he 
 farm, in tlie sihops, in the stores, down in t(he mines, are 
 working blindly. Busi-ness is not inaugurated ior tilie 
 purpose of making people comfortable. Coal mines are 
 ■not discovered for the purpose of making fire. Coal com- 
 panies are organized for die purpose of getting dividends, 
 and they discontinue the production of fuel the hour that 
 profits discontinue, and -when the hard-handed company 
 of a thousand men over here in the midst of seventy 
 millions of people are thrown out of employment by the 
 closing mines, are they not cold? Yes. Is there fuel? 
 Yes. But t5hey must starve and freeze, although they live 
 in cottages built on the ground which has coal under it. 
 What is the reason why these miners must freeze? In- 
 dustrial anarchy. No plan, no system, no organization. 
 Anarchy, that is what it is. These operators and these 
 miners are commercial and industrial anarchists. I am 
 opposed to that kind of anarchy. But fhere are men who 
 want more of it. Some men want it extended into new 
 fields. They want the courts thrown down. Others want 
 lit continued in the fields wihere it already is, and they want 
 the courts corrupt. They are both the enemies of society. 
 I want organization perfected where it does exist, and ex- 
 tended to all our common interests where it does not exist. 
 I <want to put a civic head on the mining industry. I am 
 no anarchist. I want no more of this confusion and dis- 
 order and distress — this heedless and h^cadless industry. 
 The condition of our business in this country to-day is 
 simply like the plan of the little child who went out to play 
 in the grass and saw a snake, and went into th^' house, 
 crying, "Oh, mamma, t'here is a tail out in the grass run- 
 ning all around, and it isn't fastened on to anything at all." 
 The industry and commerce of America is a tail let loose 
 
82 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 without a head. I want to put a head on this industrial 
 system and this commercial system and bring it into line, 
 and have business organized for the purpose of employ- 
 ing labor, of taking care of the things that need to be 
 cared for, and stop the waste and ruin. 
 
 There are S'till other anarchists, men who in connection 
 with the disordered condition of society take advantage of 
 the fact thait there is no organization by authority of all 
 the people for the benefit of all to create organizations 
 made up of a part of the people for the express purpose of 
 robbing tihe balance of the people. There is the sugar 
 trust, and tihe tobacco trust, and the steel trust, and tlie 
 flour trust, and the coffee trust, and the rubber trust, and 
 all the balance of the trusts, until we find that these co-m- 
 binations of a portion of the' people have practically taken 
 possession of tihe whole field of industry and commerce, 
 not for the purpose of opening up more shops, but for the 
 purpose of shutting down a portion of the sihops already 
 open. Not for the purpose of making some more rubber 
 goods, but for the purpose of making less. Not for the 
 purpose of producing more flour, but compelling us to 
 give more of our labor for less ffour. These trust organi- 
 zations,- 'made up of the few to rob the many, usurp the 
 proper functions of government to rob the very persons 
 for whose protection governments are instituted, and are 
 thus m'ore infamous than tihe common 'horse thief and 
 villain. I am not talking at random. It is not true that 
 these men do these things only with the aut'hority of tihe 
 law. They do them in contempt of the law. It is not true 
 that 'they do them only with 'high-salaried attorneys. 
 They use their 'attorneys, Hessians in this industrial war- 
 fare, when they can use them, and .they use a rifle when 
 they cannot use the attorneys and can use a rifle. 
 
 Let me give you one or two instances in this countr}^ 
 of men who in my judgment are tihe most infamous an- 
 ardhists of t'hem all. Do you know Mr. Mark Hanna? 
 You -have -heard of him. He is a United States Senator, 
 ♦he is President of tihe United States, he is tihe Republican 
 party; Mark Hanna set all the seven-by-nine fellows in 
 the United States, and others who are built on a larger 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 83 
 
 mould, but sold their voices for a consideration ; Mark 
 Hanna set all the purchasable voices and all tdie purchasa- 
 ble newspapers in this country to callino^ the frif nds of 
 the free coinage of silver last fall anarchists. Mr. Hanna, 
 wait a minute, you are the defendier of law and order; you 
 believe in the courts. Mr. Hanna, you believe in the 
 adniiinistration of justice by fixed and recognized au- 
 thority. ]\lark Hanna, when you were in trouble witih the 
 Seamen's Union of the Northern Lakes did you take your 
 cas'C into court? No. Did you take your case before any 
 public tribunal? No.. Did you plead your case at any 
 place where men on both sides could be heard in the pres- 
 ence of their peers? No. What did you do? You organ- 
 ized a company of ruffians. You took a company of cold- 
 blooded murderers anid stood them down on the docks in 
 Cleveland to drive by force, in private war, the Seamen's 
 Union from the docks. I went over to Bricklayers' Hall 
 in this city some years ago on an invitation to speak. I 
 had spoken as well as I could in behalf of the Seamen's 
 Union, when another man w"ho was to follow me came 
 from the audience and said to them to turn around and 
 look up into the gallery. They turned around; then he 
 said to some men who were up in the gallery to stand. He 
 told them to be seated again. Up in the gallery there were 
 thirty or forty men with broken jaws, w^th bruised faces, 
 with broken arm>s in slings. Where was that company of 
 men from in the gallery? From the Chicago River front. 
 Wihat wrong had they been doing? Not any. In what 
 court had they been tried? Not any. By Avhose authority 
 had they been thus punished? The Hanna combination 
 against the Seamen's Union 'had at last reached Chicago. 
 To take some criminal into court? No. To try some case 
 under the law? No. To punis/h these men for some 
 wrong recognized under law and condemned by its au- 
 thority? No. But to go on the docks in Chicago as Mark 
 Hanna had sent them to the docks in Cleveland, by force 
 in private war, to drive these men off the earth with clubs, 
 to throw them into the Chicago River if they stayed in 
 their places, and to break their heads if they dared resist. 
 Who authorized Mark Hanna to wage his private war? 
 
84 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 No one. He did k of his own notion, contrary to law, and 
 in contempt of law. That is the plan of t'he anarchist. 
 Hanna is an anarchist. And yet the men who talked aS' 
 Hanna told t'hcm to talk and wrote as Hanna told tihem to 
 write, and whether they talked or wrote, lied as Hari'na told 
 them to lie, say that I am an anarchist. They say that I 
 am stirring up discontent. Botih statements are untrue. I 
 believe in the law. I am unwilling that either Mark 
 Hanna, or Herr Most, sho/uld hold it in contempt. I insist 
 that neither shall be permitted to make public authority 
 contemptable. I am not stirring up discontent. I am 
 speaking almost exclusively in Chicago. Since tihe com- 
 ing of prosperity the ordinary Chicago man hasn't been 
 able to get enough inside of him to mtake it possible for 
 anyone to stir him up. 
 
 John D. Rockefeller is the builder of a great uni- 
 versity, and is as big an anarchist as Mark Hanna. I used 
 to live down in Ohio. I spent some time in Pennsylvania 
 and Western New York, and happen to be acquainted 
 Avitih some of the facts personally concerning Standard 
 Oil. When Mr. Rockefeller went into business there 
 w'ere eleven oil companies in existence. Now there is but 
 one. What has become of the other ten companies? They 
 have joined Mr. Rockefeller's company. Under what 
 proposition ^ Under the proposition to go d'own its throat. 
 How was all that brought alDOUt? By negotiation? Yes. 
 No question about that. How was it all brought about? 
 By tearing up each other's pipe lines, by tearing down 
 each other's property, by destroying each other's pump- 
 ing stations. The warfare between the eleven companies 
 Vv'a-s carried on by the commitment of every crime known 
 to the statutes. By every crime it is possible for you to- 
 name, and when the Standard Oil Companv had the last 
 man to fight — a refinerv^ man over in Buffalo — 'he used 
 to be a member of a church, but all the ehurch members- 
 joined sides "wit'h the m.en who blew up his refinery in the 
 night. He used to be a Republican, but all the Repub- 
 licans in his neighborhood joined with the "blowing up" 
 fellows. He did not like to be blown up that way. The 
 last time I met him he was chairman of the State con- 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 85 
 
 vention of the People's party for the State of New York. 
 He had a refinery, so tjhey hired a man to blow it up with 
 dynamite. Dynamite! I've heard that word before. 
 Let's see. Dynamite, Rockefeller, Chicafj^o University 
 bonds — I've heard thorn all! The facts were beyond dis- 
 pute. Rockefeller's hired man was conv^icted and sen- 
 tenced and out on bail, and in the meantime the ma-n who 
 had been sentenced bo the penitentiary and was out en 
 bail went down to New York and niarri-ed a girl that bc- 
 longe^d to the. Four Hundred, and the Four Hundred wer^e 
 all there at the wedding — ^it was respectable, for tilicy 
 were all there; he was entirely on the inside. If it had 
 been a labor agitator he -would have served out a part of 
 his sentence before the trial came on. If it had been a 
 labor agitator he would have been sent to jail without 
 any trial. If it had been a man who stood for the people 
 he would have served 'his time right away, but you know 
 'he was not; ihe was a gentleman. He was not on t'lie 
 side of the people; he was on the -side of the oil. He was 
 not on the side of the people who behaved themselves; he 
 was on the side of the people in the blowing-up business. 
 He was not a man experimenting wi-th dynamit'e to find 
 out what it would do and got stretahed by the neck be- 
 cause it accidentally went off ; he was not a man who went 
 out on the streets in anger and was experimenting with 
 a gun that exploded in the wrong place. He was a wealthy 
 man, in partnership with John D. Rockefeller, and was 
 ckting a part of the work that realized the imoney that 
 made the founding of the Chicago University a possibility. 
 He was that sort of a respectable rascal. They would 
 not call him a swindler. They would not dog his tracks. 
 He could not be guilty of a-ny crimes; he was a nice fellow. 
 He was going to marry one of the girls of tlie Four Hun- 
 dred; there was going to be a wedding, and they had it, 
 with a penitentiary sentence hanging over his head. He 
 and -his bride went to Europe and they held up the court 
 and tjhey ihcld up the sentence until he and his bride got 
 back from Europe, and by that time the judge who was in 
 of^ce had becm succeeded by a new judge who knew 
 John D. Rockefeller, "and knew not Joseph," and tihe new 
 
86 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 judge, who had been elected in tthe district where the 
 wrong had been done, opened the case over again, and the 
 fellow did .not go to the penitentiary. 
 
 Question from audience : ''Was tihat Yerkes ?" 
 
 Answer: "No, Yerkes went." 
 
 John D. Rockefeller, a partner in every crime, a 
 s'harer in every robbery that has marked the career of 
 the Standard Oil Company, is still a Sunday school 
 teacher, and instructs the boys on^ the pat'h tdiat leads to 
 ce-rtain prosperity along the pathway of perfect respect- 
 ability. John D. Rockefeller claimts to stand for peace 
 and order and good government. All the contempt that 
 is in that word anardhist, as Rockefeller would use it, all 
 the bitterness that Avas ever connected w^itih it, is all too 
 tame and insipid to apply it to John D. Rockefeller himself. 
 Why try to call him names? I only know the English 
 language, and tihere are not any words in the English 
 language that can do the situation justice. We may as 
 well stop. Joihn D. Rockefeller, pretending to be a friend 
 of society, is its robber. Pretending to talk for tihe 
 authority of the courts, he corrupts the courts. Pretend- 
 ing to be the defender of the authority of civil society, he is 
 'himself a gathering, festering, fearful force in the midst of 
 society, misusing its authority for more purposes than any 
 other man in the United States of America to-day, outside 
 of Mark Hanna himself. But after all, both Hanna and 
 Rockefeller are anardhists only because of tIhe anarcliy 
 wihich lies around them. They are its products, not its 
 producers. I want to extend the civic organization to 
 include the mines and the lakes and the oil fields. Hanna 
 and Rockefeller may have some reason for wisihing to 
 vvithstand sudh an extension of organization. Tlhey rob 
 because of the present anarchy. But why should you 
 defend this industrial anardhy by w^hich you rob not, but 
 by which you are robbed? 
 
 We might give more and more of these illustrations. I 
 say that sudh anarchy is foolish ; it can bring no^ real joy 
 to these men. They cannot enjoy their wealth. They 
 cannot take advantage of the millions that are coming to 
 them. Oh, it is cri-minal; it is manufacturing disorder 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRIME OF ANARCHY. 87 
 
 and discontent tihat now disgraces t^he American flag and 
 may disrupt Am-erican society. 
 
 But there is another company of men, not a large one, 
 and that other company of men are seeking not tlieir own. 
 I believe they are brave and s-trong men, many oi t'hem, 
 who believe that t'he only thing that can be done that will 
 make society any better is to destroy its government. 
 That we 'have gone beyond the possibility of building 
 new imstitutions out of the old ones, and that the old ones 
 have become helpless and hopeless. And they come and 
 9ta.nd on the platform, preaching a doctrine of peace that 
 will be brought about only through disorder. 
 
 My brothers ! Talk about striking, and striking back, 
 and striking hard! Our oppressors have all the gatling 
 guns, and they have the end of the gatling gun that will 
 leave them in safety while they mow us down. Talk about 
 confusion and disorder as the way out! Suppose con- 
 fusion comes, and disorder reigns. Suppose you com- 
 mence the destruction of the great buildings in the city 
 of Chicago to-night, suppose it starts at midnight, and 
 in the morning every tall building is ruined! Suppose 
 that every millionaire in the city is down in the bottom 
 of the lake ; suppose telegraphic and railway connections 
 have been cut off. It is hard to take possession, but sup- 
 pose the mob is in possession! Tell me what possible 
 advantage can com.e. Tell me in what possible way, we 
 shall be'better off then than now. Where is the voice of 
 any man who may then speak loud eno>ugh to be heard, 
 plain enough to be understood, strongly enough to find 
 a following here in the city of Chicago? Oh, how dif- 
 ficult it is to get a dozen men together in the city of 
 Chicago and organize them for doing anvthing to make 
 this wretched cit>' better than it is! How hard it is to 
 gather any company of men or women except they gather 
 to dispute. But, my brothers, wait. We can talk to each 
 other a little bit now. We can explain somehow and to 
 some extent the good we desire and the better things we 
 plead for, but let these buildings come down- in ruins, let 
 the torch go out to set the wooden buildings afire, let 
 disorder run riot for one hour in the city of Chicago, and 
 
88 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 where is tibe man in Chicago that can find anybody to 
 listen to him then? There is no company of men in 
 Chicago who can then organize any co'mpany of men 
 except for mutual destruction. Do not flatter yourselves 
 that in that hour the men who have robbed you will suffer 
 the stroke of your fury. You will merely smite each 
 other. My brothers, there is but one way to save the old 
 flag; there is but one way by which peace and order and 
 social life can be preserved in Chicago and the Mississippi 
 Valley and the world around us. The men who propose 
 to rob society have possession of the gatling guns, and you 
 who talk of disorder, eitiher talk as the foolish advocates 
 of an impossible program or as the paid attorneys of 
 those who have robbed us already and propose to turn' 
 us loose in m-utual butchery because we ask for justice. 
 I have declined to have any share with any business move- 
 'ment in this country that proposes to rob through the 
 name of profits. I have refused to enter into any organi- 
 zation which proposes to perpetuate for one hour longer 
 the infamies and the -wrongs of the outwoi'n competitive 
 wage system of the past. I stand here this afternoon and 
 say that the old program is broken down, and that the 
 old civilization is powerless to heal itself frorh the measure- 
 less disorders under which it suffers; but I come and beg 
 of you to turn your attention, not In the direction of tear- 
 ing down tihe old that is and oug'ht not to be, but get 
 together and understand each other, standing sihoulder to^ 
 s'houlder, and, touching elbows, build t'he new order 
 which ought to be. I spoke these words recently to a man 
 who was threatening disorder and he answered, and in the 
 fury of his 'hatred, he answered : '"'We don't care for the 
 new; the old must be destroyed; by force we cam have 
 possession, and we must have it now. We want control, 
 -and we want it -now." And I answered, if between, the 
 men who control to-day and the men v/ho would seek 
 control by violence, if I m^ust submit to one or the other, 
 if I m«ust be the victim of the deliberate greed of the one 
 or of the deliberate mialice of the other, I would rather 
 be ruled by an anarchist like Mark Hanne than' by an 
 anarc'hist like Herr Most. But T am opposed tO' alltihat 
 
THE FOLLY AND CRlML i)l' a.naklh^.. 89 
 
 company of men. I am opposed to the robber}' which 
 •makes us helpless, and to leadership, sincere or corrupt 
 alike, I am opposed do I'he leadership which is moved 
 more by its hatred for the wrong wiliich is than by its love 
 for the good whidi ought to be. What is needed is not 
 a movement to make society more headless than it is. It 
 should be for an organization, a better organization and 
 a better head. It is not a planless life, but a life that 
 plans, and plans for the purpose of feeding: and clothing 
 the multitudes around us, and opening a sure and certain 
 way before tihem that ohey may be lifted into a man's life 
 of Chinking and loving as well as toiling and having. But, 
 my brothers, down in the midst of the struggle tfliat is 
 going on around us more than all we need the spirit and 
 the patience of the Man of Nazareth, who lived so 
 patientlv, who wrought so earnestly, not that Vhe old 
 might be destroyed, but that the new might be true and 
 strong. I am not'b^re to plead for religious ceremonials 
 or forms, but I am here to say that a profane word never 
 made societv better, that hatred never built any new 
 forms, that love is the only creator, and must be the only 
 reformer. A base and sordid purpose, a hateful heart, 
 can never lead the forces of reform. 
 
 Oh, that the ]\Ian of Xazareth might come once more, 
 might come to live with us, and teac!h us how to live, and 
 bear, and suffer, to wait until the morning of onr in- 
 dustrial resurrection shall give us a new life, a new city, 
 new institutions, new industries, a new^ government, the 
 mainspring of which shall move for the love of all. sfhall 
 ihave no share in the wrongs of any. 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION IN THE 
 MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 It is generally understood that the destruction of the 
 - ncient Roman civilization was brought about by a com- 
 h'ination of two forces. One of these was the savage life 
 which came down from the North by a series of inva- 
 i^ions ; the other was the Christian religion. The new 
 religion was pulling at the heartstrings of the great 
 pagan nation from within its own borders. The North- 
 ern savages broke down the line of its defenses and car- 
 ried on a destructive warfare from without. The one 
 pressed Roman rule forever into narrower limits, and 
 the other undermined the authority of the State within 
 those limits until together by the old savagery and the 
 new religion Roman authority was overthrown. 
 
 It is admitted that these forces were largely re-en- 
 forced by the breaking down of the personal character, 
 the extravagance and the vices of the wealthy classes of 
 Rome, and by the great poverty of the masses. But 
 lying back of these was another force, the one which was 
 really the cause of causes which led to the overthrow. 
 Roman civilization finally perished, not because of the 
 invasions from abroad, not directly because its wealthy 
 fev/ were vicious and its masses poor, but the few were 
 v/ealthy and the masses were poor for some reason, and 
 this was the cause which produced this effect, and that 
 cause was that the ancient Roman mines were exhaust- 
 ed. There was a great contraction of the money. There 
 was the consequent centralization of wealth into the 
 hands of a few people by forces which in themselves 
 were exactly the same forces which vv^e see in operation 
 in the city of Chicago every hour. There was the cen- 
 
 90 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION. QI 
 
 tralization of the wealth into the hands of a few through 
 the conditions resulting from the destruction of the 
 mines, where Roman coin had been obtained. This cen- 
 tralization of wealth in a few hands went on until only 
 eighteen hundred men owned all the property of the civ- 
 ilized world. The result was that this company of men 
 with their measureless possessions, made possible 
 through the centralization of the wealth by the contrac- 
 tion of the contracting currency, beca^ie extravagant 
 and vicious in their habits. The multitudes of the people 
 deprived of their property, compelled to become competi- 
 tors in the market with slave labor, fell below the charac- 
 ter of a slave. Great wealth destroyed the character of 
 the few. Helpless poverty was the destroyer of the mul- 
 titudes. All wealth was for the few who could not defend 
 the State. The defense of Rome depended, like every 
 other land, on the masses of her citizens. But these did 
 not own, nor could they come to own, any share of the 
 nation's wealth. They had been excluded from all rights 
 and privileges under the State. Why should they, how 
 could they, be persuaded to remain the defenders of the 
 very authority which itself had become their sorest op- 
 pressor? The wealthy few could not defend it, the pov- 
 erty stricken masses would not defend it. and the savage 
 men from the north were given practically undisputed 
 possession of the Roman soil, not because of the strength 
 of the disorganized men from the frontier, but because of 
 the collapse of Roman society through the collapse of 
 Roman character, because of forces which are working 
 exactly the same sort of ruin among the American popu- 
 lations at this very hour. Roman authority was finally 
 overthrown, and the ancient civilization utterly de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 At the beginning of the Christian era a larger por- 
 tion of the earth's population lived in cities and towns 
 than at any time since then until now. Five hundred 
 years afterwards these populations had been scattered and 
 the cities were broken and in ruins. The great palaces, 
 not built with wood as our modern cities, with streets 
 that must be renewed everv dozen vears, but with stone 
 
92 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 roads built solidly, the great stone aqueducts that were 
 bringing down the water, and the great stone palaces that 
 stood up in their magnificence and their strength, were 
 all in ruins. If Chicago and New York and Cleveland 
 and Cincinnati were to be subjected to the destructive 
 forces v/hich for five hundred years wrought together to 
 work the ruin of these ancient cities, a single summer 
 would make them uninhabitable, but those ancient cities 
 with their strength, with their beauty, with their pride, 
 with their wealth, with their learning, with their archi- 
 tecture, with their great substantial foundations, through 
 the years ceased to be fit habitations for man. They be- 
 caiTre the centers of disorder, the scenes of contagion, 
 and finally the populations were crowded back into the 
 country again. 
 
 The center and the source of the world's population 
 is said to have been in Asia. Anyway, the tides of in- 
 vading immigration came from the heart of Asia direct 
 into the east and north of Europe. Caesar's Commen- 
 taries were simply his record of his relation to these in- 
 vasions. The tribes with w^hich he fought stood in a 
 curious position. Back of them were the populations 
 of Asia pressing over into Europe to find a footing for 
 themselves, and before them were the Roman lines of de- 
 fense. They stood in the position of invaders as related 
 to the Roman frontier. They were thernselves defend- 
 ing Rome against other invaders to the back of them. 
 Ten successive invasions through the early centuries 
 after the overthrow of Roman authority took possession 
 of southern Europe. Each took possession only to have 
 another crowded close on its heels to drive them onward. 
 During the first dozen centuries of the Christian era ten 
 times over that had taken place. The cities were de- 
 stroyed, authority was at an end, and even the military 
 camps along with the rest had been thrown into ruin. 
 These invaders, gathered into little companies, were 
 striving with the remnants of the populations and with 
 each other in continuous warfare for the possession of 
 tracts of European territory so small that a single pos- 
 sessor could personally manage their defense. 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION. 93 
 
 The Church had come to Rome and taken possession, 
 but the Church was undertaking to carry a burden great- 
 er than it could bear. It stood in the midst of the old 
 forces that were crumbling, gathering its re-enforce- 
 ments out of the new and endeavoring to preserve some- 
 thing from the old. 
 
 Under the old slave organization of industry the one 
 thing which perhaps was the matter of greatest care to 
 the toiling slave was provision for a decent burial. They 
 were driven to their tasks while strong, slain without 
 court or jury when offensive, and vvhether dying by vio- 
 lence or disease were thrown contemptuously into the 
 slave's rotting heap when dead — frequently thrown there 
 while yet alive. The slaves had formed associations to ac- 
 cumulate the savings of a lifetim.e to avoid the infamy of a 
 slave's burial, to buy the small privilege of a decent burial 
 when dead. Early missionaries placed themselves among 
 these slaves and made their burial ceremonies Christian 
 in form. And hence, from' those who were poor and 
 helpless there was a great company of men who had 
 learned to trust in and believe in and strive for the 
 church that had been the agency of their association, 
 and the pov^er that had made secure from disgrace the 
 dead body of a slave. 
 
 When St. Constantine in the midst of a great crisis 
 lifted up the cross, out from beneath the streets of Rome, 
 down from the slave pens, up from the refuse of the 
 earth, from those with no place, no power, no recogni- 
 tion in the world came the men that by their valor made 
 the cross not only the symbol of the Church as it had 
 been, but the symbol of civil authority as it was to be. 
 But the men v.ho in the early years had given their 
 bodies to be burned rather than to abandon their con- 
 victions, the men whose mission had been to the help- 
 less, these men passed away and new generations came. 
 The place of power overshadowed the place of sacrifice. 
 New hands were bearing the old symbol, but no longer 
 in humiliation. When Roman authority was about to 
 fall, by adopting the cross she stayed for a time the fall 
 of her tottering throne. When Roman authoritv fell the 
 
94 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 cross did not fall. It stood in the midst of the confusion 
 of succeeding invasions. The only power that could 
 touch these savage invaders, that could make any ground 
 sacred or any life secure, was that old Church of the 
 early centuries. Whatever may be said of Romanism in 
 other days, whatever charge may be laid against the old 
 Church that still carries the cross, it was then the only 
 place of refuge for that which was pure, or good, or hu- 
 mane for a dozen centuries. 
 
 Why be alarmed if in the midst of all this confusion 
 the Church became half pagan and half Christian? But 
 in the same way that in the Church was the last struggle 
 for the salvation of the old civilization, so also in the 
 Church, half pagan as it was, was found the first 
 forces which made the new civilization possible. The 
 State had been destroyed ; all social and political institu- 
 tions were in confusion. Religion was first made to 
 mean something real in man's life and all other forces fol- 
 lowed into the new forms of the new era. 
 
 The watchwords of the old Monastic orders had been 
 voluntary poverty, obedience and charity. In the ninth 
 century St. Benedict stood in the midst of all the confu- 
 sion of the wrecks of the old forms and of the dead for- 
 malities of a decaying church and while making real the 
 m.eaning of the old watchwords added a new idea to the 
 central doctrines of the Monastery. It was manual la- 
 bor. He shouted in the ears of the idle worshipers — La- 
 bor — Labor — IManual Labor, is prayer. 
 
 Not that men should pray less, but their prayers 
 should be given the form of their daily task. Oh' would 
 that we might see St. Benedict again. Would that in 
 these days of ours, when great enginery is organized and 
 great shops built, not for the purpose of blessing the 
 world's life, but for the purpose of overthrowing each 
 other in brutal competition and to establish the interests 
 of the few to the destruction of the masses — would that 
 some man, with heart kind enough, with wisdom broad 
 enough, with a voice strong enough, might stand to-day 
 in the midst of us and make the maxim of modern in- 
 dustry the maxim of that grand old monk, that labor, 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OI'ERATION. 95 
 
 honest, clean, manual labor is, and ought forever to be, 
 prayer! The man who prays one way and works another 
 is a house divided against itself. The man who stands in 
 the church to worship God, and then goes out on God's 
 earth to toil in such a way as to make the home of God's 
 children disorderly, unclean, poverty stricken and vile, is 
 himself a blasphemer, not a w^orshiper, when he prays, 
 and the enemy of God, and of all the children of God, 
 when he toils. I wish that we might once get the idea 
 fixed in mind that the veil that separated the Holy Place 
 from the Tabernacle of the Congregation in the ancient 
 Jewish services has been torn asunder, and that in the 
 symbolism of the ancient forms w^e are taught that all 
 God's earth is sacred and that all His children every- 
 where are divine, and that He who came to us from a 
 place nearer to the heart of all things than any other 
 messenger w^ho has ever spoken, said, that inasmuch as 
 it is done unto the least of God's children everywhere it is 
 being wrought for Him, and unto Him. If this lesson 
 could be learned over again, and besides the maxims 
 which the Church teaches she w^ould only stand again and 
 repeat the maxim of St. Benedict and teach her worship- 
 ers that .labor, manual labor, is prayer, and he who toils 
 not prays not, and that he who prays not toils not, either 
 v/isely or well, then might all the whole earth become a 
 temple and every daily task an act of worship. 
 
 Well, St. Benedict went forty miles from Rome and 
 hid himself away in a cave. The legend tells us he w^as 
 hidden there for some time before he was discovered. 
 He was alone by himself in the cave, but around the 
 cave where he had hidden himself away from the vio- 
 lence and the disorder and the distress of the world, he 
 covered the rocks w^ith vines, and built about his place 
 the home that should shelter himself and his associates ; 
 with the new idea of devotion in toil, of prayer that 
 should be labor, and labor that should be prayer, came 
 the idea of the new crusade, w'herein the rough and cruel 
 forces which ruled the v/orld should have no share. Tvro 
 thousand movements like his own sprang into being be- 
 fore his generation passed away. In the deserted and 
 
96 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 forsaken places in England, in Holland, in Germany, in 
 Scandinavia, even to Iceland, these missionaries went. 
 Invasions from the North attacked and destroyed the old 
 civilization, but the Benedictine Monks were teachers, 
 were preachers, were missionaries, invaded the North in 
 turn and re-established civilization on the very ground 
 whence its destroyers had come. They built the work- 
 shop, and in it they toiled. They built the temple, and in 
 it they worshiped God. They built the school-house, and 
 in it they taught. They built the fireside, and in it they 
 taught the virtues of humane, clean, honest, civil life. 
 Around those centers of piety, of education, of toil, of do- 
 mestic joy, around those centers of learning, around those 
 centers of industry, gathered the people ; they ultimately 
 built the free cities of Northern Europe. Guizot tells us 
 in his history of civilization that around the shops, built 
 by these missionaries of the middle ages, grew the free 
 cities, and in turn that these free cities became the cor- 
 ner-stones of modern constitutional government in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 Listen to me for a minute! Invasion, corruption, 
 poverty, — the idle that were wealthy, and the poor that 
 were idle because they could not help themselves, these 
 together had destroyed the old civilization. Disorder 
 reigned throughout Southern Europe, the Church ^vas 
 struggling to find herself, to assert her authority on the 
 one hand, and to bestow grace and blessing on the other. 
 Then a company of men did what? They said, ''We will 
 strive no longer for possessions for ourselves." They 
 took the deserted and forsaken places of the earth, they 
 clambered up the mountain side, and in its deserted 
 places they built their village, their shop, their school, 
 and throughout the middle ages in these places learning 
 and service went together. Thirty thousand volumes in 
 the University of Paris at this day are there, every line 
 of which was written in the handwriting of the ancient 
 monks of St. Benedict. 
 
 What did they do? They preserved agriculture, for 
 wherever they went to build their shop and school they 
 cleared away the forests and made them to blossom with 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION. 97 
 
 their productive industry. The secrets and the arts of 
 ancient agricuUure that once made Rome so beautiful 
 and so great came to Hfe again to be preserved through 
 the centuries of darkness by the toil of the men who 
 toiled because they prayed, and prayed because they 
 toiled. 
 
 It was not only true of agriculture, but it was also 
 true with regard to architecture. The men who first 
 studied and taught and made possible the buildings of 
 the Xorth that we wonder at now because of their beauty, 
 were Ben^edictine monks. How the men of America go 
 walking round the ruined fragments of their work that 
 they may see the beauties of the architecture that was 
 made possible by the services of these men. Not only 
 that, but music, and poetry, and literature, what is left 
 to us of the classics, was wrought out in the monastery, 
 and buried away until another generation should come 
 that could finally appreciate it. They founded the great 
 universities of Great Britain and Europe. These men 
 who had forbidden themselves to own property, who had 
 forbidden themselves any personal interests, who had 
 even abandoned their own names in their love for their 
 race and in their devotion to their new ideal, these men 
 built by their services and made possible by their learn- 
 ing every great university of ancient Europe that has 
 come down to us. They were the clerks aTnd lawyers of 
 the time ; no others understood the law. They were the 
 physicians of the time ; no others understood niedicine. 
 
 IMore than that, they cared for the poor. There were 
 never poor laws in England until the time of Elizabeth. 
 There were never poor people famishing for bread and 
 being driven from one station to another until the an- 
 cient monastery had been destroved by Hcnrv VHI., 
 and resulting poverty came in the reign of Elizabeth and 
 made the English Poor Laws neccssarv. It is a curious 
 thing that it should be so, and yet it 'is true. Thorold 
 Rogers, the highest authority now recognized, declares 
 that the Golden Age of the British working-men was 
 back in the days when the monastery was there, and the 
 
g8 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 monk was the teacher, and frequently the landlord as 
 well. 
 
 What about all this? These are some of the services 
 that were rendered. Did not these monasteries fall into 
 corruption? It would be strange if some of them did not. 
 A modern churchman says that these men amassed great 
 sums of property, held it in the name of their brother- 
 hood, administered it as men of rank and power, and 
 therefore they were bad. What modern churchman dares 
 say that? Look at the churches in the city of Chicago. 
 There is wealth enougih put into tall buildmgs and into 
 great spire's and into expensive furniture in the city of 
 Chicago to arm and equip for self-supporting industry 
 e\^ery unemployed man in the city of Chicago if it were 
 used for that purpose. The ancient monk built his re- 
 ligious institution, and farm lands were a part of it. 'Fhe 
 ancient monk wrote out the order of his religious duties, 
 and manual labor was a part of it. He stood in the midst 
 of the days of disorder, with confusion and chaos and 
 cruelty reigning all around him, and in the midst of it 
 and in spite of it all he built institutions that blessed the 
 life of the world. The modern church is itself a part of 
 the power that is damning the generation to which it be- 
 longs. I do not mean to say the church renders no ser- 
 vice. No man can have a greater veneration for the 
 church than I. No man who has felt his way along the 
 movements of the past feels more intensely than I the 
 indebtedness of civilization to the Spirit and power of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. No man can feel more keenly than I 
 the measureless service of the ancient Nazarene, or the 
 measureless travesty on the name of Christ which the 
 ordinary modern church is enacting from day to day. 
 'Oh, the heroism of the old church! The world wel- 
 comed it! There is m.ore power and inspiration to heroic 
 conduct in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews than in all 
 the blaspheming literature that was ever written in all 
 the world combined. There is more enthusiasm, more 
 love for the human race, m.ore power to make society 
 over again in following the simple story of St. Paul in his 
 relation to the forces that were working around him than 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION. QQ 
 
 in th'e nQmc^ and work of any modern aut-hority that 
 scorns Christianity or complains of the ancient church. 
 Call over the names of the men who have been great and 
 strong in human history, and they are men who have 
 loved humanity because tbey have learned flie lesson in 
 the secret of their life's communion with their Maker, 
 and have been able to do the work that they did as toilers 
 because of their lives of prayer. There can be no ques- 
 tion about it. You may go through the list, and the men 
 who have been willing to give their own lives that so- 
 ciety might not perish have been men whose strength 
 has been born, not out of the greed, not out of the am- 
 bitions, not out of the mutual hatreds and suspicions that 
 curse and divide society, but out of the great heart of the 
 living faith that was in Jesus Christ, and has been in 
 every true man, whether he has called himself a church- 
 man or not, from the beginning, and must be till the end. 
 I am not seeking for tags, I do not care whether you call 
 th'is a church, a club, a meeting place — call it what you 
 are a mind to. It is just as sweet by one name as it is 
 by another. I do not care whether you call that man a 
 Baptist, or Presbyterian, or T^lethodist, or Blockhead, 
 call him what you are a mind to, that man who possesses 
 in his own breast the great, strong, tender heart, that 
 will not be cruel, and is afraid to be unjust, who loves the 
 race he belongs to and is willing to suffer for its welfare, 
 that man is a modern edition of the ancient Nazarene, and 
 in him is the life of his Creator. And these men, what- 
 ever they have borne, whatever services they have per- 
 formed, whatever surrenders they have made, whatever 
 associations they have belonged to, whatever misfor- 
 tunes have com.e to them, these men, and these men 
 alone, have been the salt of the earth that has preserved 
 the social Sodom in the long story of human misery and 
 strife. 
 
 What has all that to do with this day? Listen to me 
 a minute! We are standing very near to a repetition of 
 what has taken place once in the history of mankind. 
 The Roman republic was nofe'i2i years old like ours, the 
 Roman republic was nine hundred years old. The Ro- 
 
lOO EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 man republic was finally overthrown, at the first not in 
 form, but in fact. When the Caesars elected themselves 
 to all the offices and performed all the functions of the 
 State, while the name of the republic still went on, and 
 while they bore the names of these elective officers, they 
 really administered a despotism. We are very near that 
 thing now. What is the use of going to Congress as 
 long as Reed is there? What is the use of being a Repub- 
 lican as long as Mark Hanna is himself the whole party? 
 What is the use of being an American citizen, when for 
 twenty-five years in this United States of America we 
 have never had but one opportunity to vote for or against 
 any public question in such a way that our ballot count- 
 ed afterwards for its settlement one way or the other ; and 
 that was last fall. Wliat does our citizeoship amount to, 
 anyway? They tell us that the time was in Rom-e w'hen 
 the offices were put up at auction and sold to the highest 
 bidder. Pretty nearly the same case in America. Who 
 can be a candidate for Congress that will not be a boodler 
 first and a candidate afterwards? Who can stand in 
 authority i-n America to-day under the flag of the brave 
 and the free except he can pay his way into place and 
 power, not by buying t»he voters, but by buying the m^en 
 who own the voters? That is our situation here and noWc 
 We are along the same line and moving in the samie direc- 
 tion. Money made McKinley President, and money 
 made the rulers of ancient Rome, and when money made 
 the ruler then money was the ruler, and when money 
 rules, humanity dies, freedom perishes from the earth. 
 
 What are we going to do about this? Oh, re-enfran- 
 chise humanity. Make the voter mean something. Give 
 him strength, and power, and place. How? I know one 
 way. How? Make all questions of public importance 
 subject to the approval of all the people through the Ini- 
 tiative and Referendum. The man in Americawho is 
 not willing to trust the vote of all the people in this coun- 
 try, is not fit to be in America at all. The man in Ameri- 
 ca who is not willing to submit to a decision of a majority 
 vote of all his fellow-citizens is unworthy to be a citizen 
 at all. In this land of ours money has come to rule, and 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-Or>£RATION.' ;".'.; "^tJI '. 
 
 the money that rules on the one hand suppresses the 
 free voice of independent citizenship on the other hand, 
 lest money may not be permitted to continue to have its 
 way. 
 
 In the United States Senate they have been investi- 
 gating the sugar trust. No they have not. They have 
 been playing horse with seventy millions of people who 
 made them Senators. Mr. Chapman goes to jail for 
 thirty days for refusing to tell the truth about using 
 money to' buy United States Senators. For holding up 
 the hands of the United States government. He served 
 his term, but he did not tell. Very well, then, make it a 
 perpetual sentence. Put him in jail and keep him there 
 until he rots, or tells the truth he knows. Mr. Have- 
 meyer is tried by a jury of his peers, and is found to be not 
 guilty of the thing he acknowledges he did. The sugar 
 trust of the United States of America went openly into 
 Congress and wrote the laws with regard to the tariff 
 and bounties on sugar, and turned around and "held up" 
 every man, woman and child in America that uses sugar. 
 Then the people got angry about it and the Senate ap- 
 pointed a committee. To do what? To show all of us 
 that the United States Senate is not in earnest. Oh. for 
 a breath from the lips of Andrew Jackson straight in the 
 face of that degenerate Senate. 
 
 What shall we do? What has St. Benedict to do with 
 this generation? What has a cowled and hooded monk 
 of the dead past to do with the living present? The heart 
 of the middle ages was hard and cruel beyond measure, 
 but the heart of the closing years of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is as corrupt as the heart of the middle ages was 
 brutal. Listen to me! Word came to me the other day 
 that somebody said I was a thief. When, and how, and 
 where? I had been saying that business was robbery, 
 and notwithstanding this assertion I was once in busi- 
 ness myself. I affirm that while in business T played the 
 game according to rule, 1)ut the rule of the game of trade 
 itself is the rule of the robber, and I was in the midst of 
 it. And so I answered back, it is so. It is so. There are 
 hard things being said about me. My brothers, the worst 
 
1(1.2 ' .Evolutionary politics. 
 
 thing about them all is, a good many of them are true — 
 they are true. But what about it? Shall I go down and 
 drown myself; shall I go hang myself? What shall I do? 
 Suppose I have been a thief, what do you advise a thief 
 to do? (A voice, "Reform.") You advise me to reform? 
 Well, and that is what I am advising you to do. And 
 now, my brothers, I never was so much in earnest in all 
 my life as now. I do advise you to reform, and in order 
 that my advice may be listened to I have tried with all my 
 heart to reform myself. Let us look straight into each 
 other's faces, and before God and each other be honest 
 now. I have been in business, and people lost money? 
 Yes, that is true. That is true. I dealt with other men, 
 and they lost and I gained? That is true, again. "You 
 have the gall to stand up and tell us that?" Yes, I tell 
 you that, and in anguish I tell you that when I tell you 
 so I am telling you the truth. But of the long, bitter, 
 pitiless way of mutual strife between man and man I 
 have had enough of it, and I am done with it, and I am 
 out of that gang and out of that fight and out of that 
 strife for all the days of my Hfe. My brothers! Listen! 
 They say I am a swindler. Who says so? Was it a real 
 estate man? What is the business of real estate? Cor- 
 nering God Almighty's earth and making His children 
 pay tribute for the opportunity of breathing down on the 
 ground. They tell you I am a swindler. Who said so? 
 Was it a lawyer? What is his business? Mr. George 
 McA. Miller said in my presence about a year ago that 
 the legal profession was a legalized conspiracy to pro- 
 tect property in the hands of people to whom it does not 
 belong. I am a swindler. Who said so? Was it a gro- 
 cer? What is his business? Selling powdered marble 
 for flour, sand for sugar, and ground chicory for cofifee. 
 I am a swindler. Who said so? Was it a druggist? 
 .What is his business? Selling plaster-of-paris powders 
 " to kill helpless children in the name of medicine. 
 
 A friend of mine who has an office over on Washing- 
 ton street was formerly a resident of Cincinnati. To his 
 home one evening, while a resident of that city, came a 
 friend, a fellow-worker in the church of which he was 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-Oi>ER^'rit»N.'j ; ' \ , ^ '/.;0V> ', >' ''> 
 
 himself a member. lie was deeply moved. He had 
 come to ask for counsel. He said his business was put- 
 ting soles in children's shoes. In the great factory where 
 he worked his part in the process was putting pasteboard 
 in the soles of shoes for children to wear. He knew the 
 shoes were to be sold to protect the feet of the thousands 
 of helpless little ones. He knew that the snow and ice 
 would be absorbed, not turned away by these pasteboard 
 soles. * 
 
 He knew that the buyers would be paying for pro- 
 tection, but would be buying disaster. Day by day he 
 wrought through the hours of toil preparing ruin for 
 the little people, and each evening he had returned to 
 the bosom of his family, to rejoice in the life and love 
 of his own children, until he said he could not bear 
 the burden of his share in so great a wrong alone any 
 longer. It was the only thing he knew how to do. It 
 was his only opportunity to earn a liveliliood. And yet 
 to earn bread for his own family meant premature death 
 and disaster for the families of others. But what should 
 he do? That was the question regarding which he asked 
 for the Christian counsel of his Christian brother. This 
 shoemaker was entangled in a network of wrong. To 
 stay meant continuance in wrong. To go meant failure 
 to provide for his own house. This shoemaker is not 
 alone in his difficulty. You are every one of you caught in 
 the same snare. Modern trade and commerce is a colos- 
 sal crime, and every beneficiary is a sharer in the guilt 
 of it all. 
 
 My brothers, I stand here and say that organized con- 
 spiracy with crime, that complicity with blackmailing, 
 that theft and robbery, that pasteboard in the soles of 
 shoes and shoddy in cloth of clothes is characteristic of 
 the generation I belong to, and that you belong to. What 
 about it all? This about it all, I have got through with 
 it. For four years I have stood down on the sidewalk 
 and have had no share in it. I have had my share in the 
 work that was going on in the world. I am not afraid to 
 compare my record with that of any one of you. But 
 compared to the record of the Nazarene, held up to that 
 
104 EVOLaxiONARY POLITICS. 
 
 white light that is the only light that lighteth every man 
 that Cometh into the world, and in whose presence alone 
 can any man be really justified, I am silent except to 
 speak in words of grief. When fire and flood and panic 
 had overtaken me and my associates in business I gave 
 up the last dollar in my possession, deeded away prop- 
 erty and assigned claims that were mine to the sum of 
 nearly fifty thousand dollars for the benefit, not of cred- 
 itors, they were to be provided for, but for the benefit of 
 associates in the enterprise which had been overtaken by 
 ruin for no fault of mine. I gave up the last dollar for 
 their benefit. I went down on the sidewalk to take my 
 chances among the toilers, refusing to call another thing 
 mine own, and I stand there to-day. That is the kind of 
 a thief and a swindler that I am. The difference between 
 the kind of thief I am and you are is, that you are in the 
 business yet. God help you to get out of it, and to be free 
 men also. 
 
 Oh, what can we do in this day! I will tell you what 
 we can do. There never was a time in the history of the 
 world when it was so easy to produce food as now. There 
 never was a time when it was so easy to make clothing, 
 to build buildings, as now. I heard Dr. H. W. Thomas 
 speak this morning, and he said the watchword of the 
 new civilization, the one sure remedy of the evils of to- 
 day, w^as to be given us in one single word, co-operation. 
 We can do that. 
 
 Is it possible for men to stand to-day as St. Bene- 
 dict stood a thousand years ago and refuse to have any 
 share in the base and selfish life that lies around them? 
 I think we may. Is it possible for us to give our time to 
 toil, and to study? I think we may. Is it possible for us 
 to give a new ideal to this generation so corrupt, as St. 
 Benedict gave to the generation he belonged to, so cruel 
 and hardhearted? I think we miay. The record I have 
 read from Sunday to Sunday is not a large one. St. 
 Benedict's organization was co-operative. His was the 
 work of a Brotherhood inherently, necessarily co-opera- 
 tive in its character. So is ours. Our figures are small. 
 Our work is humble. We are at the beginning. But our 
 
ST. BENEDICT AND CO-OPERATION. IO5 
 
 growth is steady. Our success is certain, for there are 
 men who do not want to rob each other. There are men 
 who do not wish to live by beating other men. There 
 are men with tender hearts, with genuine manhood, with 
 the springs of the highest virtue and the possibility of 
 the most splendid heroism within their grasp. These men 
 may once more stand together, not seeking their own, 
 but seeking their country's welfare, not striving to pos- 
 sess for themselves, but to accomplish deliverance for 
 those w'ho sit in darkness. 
 
 O Church of God, swing back on rusted hinges thy 
 moss-grown doors once more, and let us enter there to 
 gain the consolation and the strength which Thou alone 
 canst give us! O Master of our lives, Thou Son of 
 God, Thou splendid, matchless Nazarene, come Thou 
 once more, and come Thou soon! Oh come, we plead 
 for bread, and give us the Bread of Life again! Come 
 Thou, and visit us, for we are naked! Come Thou, and 
 feed us, for we are hungry! Oh, come again! Thy mis- 
 sion was to those of a broken heart, and we are broken- 
 hearted. Come Thou, and lift us up, for we are fallen 
 down! Come Thou, and make us Thy Brothers once 
 again, that we, too, may partake of the Divine Nature 
 that was in Thee, and lift ourselves once more to the 
 companionship of the great God and Father of us all, 
 in His tireless struggle for a new Heaven and a new 
 Earth ! 
 
THE WORLD'S DEBTS, OR THE OUTCOME OF 
 UNIVERSAL BANKRUPTCY. 
 
 The subject to-day is, The World's Debts, or the Out- 
 come of Universal Bankruptcy. We were told recently 
 that the greatest item in the com^mercial world was con- 
 fidence, and we 'have laughed at the statement, and I 
 'have repeatedly joined in Che laughter .myself, laughed at 
 the claim that business prosperity depended upon con- 
 fidence, and insisted that cash would be better fhan 
 confidence. That is a very good tihing to say in reply to 
 the affirmation that confidence in prosperity, without any 
 fair basis upon which to base that confidence, will give 
 us prosperity, and yet it is a trutih that tiie greatest factor 
 in our human life is co^nfidence. That faith which en- 
 ables one man to trust another is the basis upon which 
 we build society, establish business, and conduct social 
 and commercial enterprises. Faith in man, whatever 
 may be said about the doctrine of faith in God' — for my 
 own part I cannot understand how the fullness of a man's 
 faith in 'his fellows can ever be realized except we look 
 beyond the things we see and listen to about us, to some 
 great life, to some central thought, to some throbbing 
 heart somewhere, I believe it is everywhere, which we 
 recognize as the Creator, the Father, t-he Builder, and the 
 Ruler of all things. But whatever you may think about 
 mian's faith in God, man's faith in his fellows is the founda- 
 tion of all personal character, is the first step in the 
 achievement of all personal worth. The man who does 
 not believe in the value of his fellows, the man who does 
 not believe in the possibility of good purposes, of good 
 c'haracter, of high armis, of earnest and honest endeavor 
 in anoHher v/ill never be able to believe them pos'sible in 
 
 xo6 
 
THE world's Di:r.TS. 107 
 
 himself, or be able to command his own strength in tilie 
 effort to build them. If we love our brothers we have 
 fulfilled the law, according to the old doctrine, and t-he 
 new. If we believe in each other whom \^'e have s-een, 
 then- tlhere may be some reasonable ground for claiming 
 that we really believe i-n the unseen. But the who believes 
 not in his fcilows, he who sees a thief in every other man, 
 who has no confidence in the sincerity or virtue of his 
 associates, is unworthy of the confidence of his associates ; 
 and no m^atter how bitterly he may resent it, he stands on 
 the ragged edge of the completed wreck of his own per- 
 sonal character. It is true of the individual that only by 
 faith in ihe worth of others is it possible for him to build 
 anything worthy into his own life. 
 
 'W'hile that is true of individuals, it is more true of 
 society. Social organization is impossible except upon 
 the basis of mutual confidence. Political institutions 
 among men who cannot and will not trust each otilier is 
 the dream of a dreamer who dream-ed that he dreamed 
 tha't he dreamed that he dreamed, and had a nightmare 
 instead of a dream. The possibility of building social insti- 
 tutions upon 'mutual distrust is an absurdity, an impossi- 
 bility. Hatred and mistrust go together. If you mistrust 
 another and are unwilling to believe in him, 'hatred comes 
 fast on the 'heels of suspicion, and mutual hatred instead 
 of mutual love. Mutual suspicion and mutual hatred as 
 the characteristics of a great population can only give us 
 the blight, the misery, the misfortune, the disorder, the 
 social ruin which dharacterizes and blackens the life of our 
 race to-day. Until w^e shall be able to believe in each 
 other, until some basis of comfidenice shall be re-estab- 
 lished, until we shall understand that that thing which has" 
 a tendency to destroy man's confidence in his fellow man, 
 is an enemy to society as well as a wrong to the in- 
 dividual, social advancement and political reform will be 
 alike imposisible. And the most terrible indictment 
 againist the system of modern trade and tbc usages of 
 modern indusitry is that it centers each man's interest in 
 'himself, and measures 'his man'hood by that which he 
 can get and possess for himself. Wihile the fact is that 
 
I08 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 each hu'man life finds .the fulfillment of its own highes't 
 Hfe, not in that whiah it may possess for itself, but in that 
 which it may help to create for the blessing of another. 
 Shc'Wiho cares for her children only for t'he services they 
 may render her is unworthy of the name of mobher. He 
 who is interested in his fellows only because he can har- 
 ness them to his chariot and use them for t/he benefit of 
 his interests is unworthy to be a citizen in any State. 
 The real womanhood finds the fulfillment of the most 
 splendid oharacteristics of a wo-man's life in the service 
 s'he renders her children, not in the service she can com- 
 ■mand from them. And the real citizen fulfills the ambition 
 of genuine citizensihip when his life realizes, not returns 
 from others, but services to otihers, thus following in tfhe 
 footsteps of those wiho count all things but as a loss if 
 they stand in the way of the most splendid service for t'he 
 elevation of the race we belong to. Interest in and devo- 
 tion to the welfare of our race, that is the test of real 
 citizenship, and that is tihe measoire of real man'hood. But 
 the system whidh seeks to separate one's interests from 
 another's and to measure one's worth by his career in 
 overcoming others, directly creates mutual suspicion, and 
 cuts from under our feet the very ground on which mutual 
 confidence may securely rest. Co^m/mercial confidence 
 cannot be restored until commercial mutualis/m shall have 
 been established. 
 
 What about tihe debts? A debt comes into existence 
 when one renders another a siervice and puts t'he other 
 under an obligation to render a like service in return. 
 Ddbt comes into existence when you receive something of 
 value from me and promise to return unto me for my 
 use on somie other occasion values that shall correspond 
 to 'the ones you have obtained from me. A man wiio 
 creates a debt and repudiates it is not only doing wrong 
 to the man from whom he receives the service or the 
 'thing of value, but 'he is doing wrong to all his fellows 
 alike. Whoever receives from another and refuses to 
 return is striking a blow directly at the 'mutual confidence 
 which 'must bind a man's life to the Hfe of his fellows, if 
 civil society is to remain with us at all. Whenever great 
 
THE world's debts. ^^9 
 
 oblii^^ations, unpaid and unpayable, have been created 
 and universal bankruptcy has resulted, the umversal wreck 
 of civil society has followed every time sucfti a thing has 
 occurred in human history. When one receives from 
 anouher some small service and there is demanded in^ 
 return a larger one, when one receives from another a 
 o-iven service under the understamling that a like service 
 fs to be returned, and then a larger service is demanded, 
 it is simply another form of the work of the higlmayman 
 and such a claim is never honest, honorable, or just, and 
 ■he 'Who makes it and the laws which involve_ it and the 
 courts which enforce it are alike the enemies of civil 
 society The most serious indictment against the gold 
 standard, against tihe contraction of the sources of cur- 
 reiicv through the gold standard, is in the fact that debts 
 were created under one basis of values, and then payment 
 demanded under another. We have been told that to 
 ehano-e ihe standard of value and pay with a dollar that 
 \\ as easier obtained than the one that was borrowed is 
 repudiation. Tihe answer is, that to loan a dollar and 
 dumand in return a dollar more valuable t^li^m the one 
 that was loaned, is not only repudiation of human right, 
 but it is robbery as well. 
 
 W'hat are the obligations with regard to the payment 
 of debts? What is the real moral relations between man 
 and man which makes repudiation a crime? I think they 
 are like this. We ougiht to trust each otfher, but to simply 
 stand in the pulpit or^on the rostrum and beg of people to 
 believe in each other, and allow industrial and commercial 
 institutions to go on with their work of wreckage, to 
 make direct warfare on the only ground of confidence, is 
 to make of ethics a faree and of politics a comedy of the 
 most infamous varietv. . 
 
 It is quite the habit in discussing right's and duties 
 for men to talk about their natural rig'hts, as though 
 natural rights were one thing and real rights in cm! 
 societv were another. It is quite the usual thing to talk 
 about the rights a man would have on an island all alone, 
 a man separated from everybody else, and to assume 
 •that there he would have a right to do ever>'thiing he 
 
no EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 wiiS'hed fco do. But the moment another man put in his 
 appearanice each one's right would be limited. These 
 political philosophers tell us that in this way, by the in- 
 crease of tihe number of those living together on the same 
 soil and by the mutual surrender of the natural rights for 
 the sake of the advantages of civil society, many natural 
 rights have been surrendered and natural rights limited, 
 and that civil rights have been created in their place. I 
 contend that civil society and civil law has no right to 
 abridge, limit or require the surrender of any natural 
 rigiht t?hat any human being ever had anywhere. I cO'U- 
 tend that civil society is organized to protect men' in the 
 exercise of their natural rights — not to require tiieir sur- 
 remder. I contend that if we are going to find out w<hat 
 man's natural rights are we are to look for him in the 
 place where nature put him, and nature never put a man 
 on an island all alone by himself, w^ith nobody else there. 
 There never was a man born on an island all by himself, 
 with nobody else there. There was always somebody else 
 there. 
 
 Listen! Th-e first cry of the infant in the helples'sness 
 of his bab}-hood, was the assertron^ of a right, eternal, 
 absolute, which no civil law could create ; and whatever 
 civil law sihall abridge or take away is the oppression, not 
 the protection of human life. The little child cries out in 
 its helplessness. The obligation rests upon tlie parent 
 to provide for 'him, not because a bargain was made be- 
 tween the helpless child and his parent, not as a result of 
 a mutual connivance, not as a result of constitutions and 
 laws and courts, but because of the inherent, natural, 
 necessary law of human life, that out of the loins of one 
 generation shall come the life of another ; and that each 
 generation sihall fulfill its highest ideals, not in what they 
 shall achieve for themselves, but in w-hat tdiey shall be- 
 queath to their children after them. In such a society, 
 where rights and duties, born together out of inter-de- 
 pendent, necessary human relationships — for we were 
 born, not outside of society, but inside of society — we were 
 born to be somebody's child, and between the parent and 
 iiis child were inter-dependent relationships, and out of 
 
THE world's debts. Ill 
 
 those relationships came naturally and necessarily both 
 rights and duties. We were born to be somebody's brother, 
 to'^live in some sort of a family, to be citizens under some 
 form of govermnernt, and the right to live in society and 
 have a share in its blessings, to enjoy its protection, have 
 a voice in its organization., carries along with it social 
 obligations as sacred, as binding, as genuine as any 
 doctrine of uhe moral law. Here, then, is my proposition. 
 Whatever law of debts and die payment of debts is to 
 obtain in the courts as a matter of justice, must be finally 
 based, not upon what the courts did yesterday, not upon 
 'What the laiws were a dozen years ago, not upon what the 
 constitution says, not upon what we have been sub- 
 mitting to in other days; it m^ust be finally based on the 
 inherent rightmess of ihe law as tihe expression of neces- 
 sary "human relationships. Let me ask you a question. 
 Here is a man; his name is Jones. He has a son. Jones 
 is in debt; shall he be imprisoned for debt? The old law 
 says, ''Yes, send him to jail, and send his whole family 
 to' jail along with him." Punish the old man because 
 -he does not pay -his debts, and punish all the boys for 
 being born in such a family. That was about the old 
 idea. But we have changed now. The man who would 
 stand up and contend that an execution oug^ht to lie 
 against a young man's property for his father's debt wpuld 
 be laughed out of court. The public debts of the cities, 
 of the States, of the nations, are simply a device by which 
 the men who deal in national securities are shifting the 
 payment of all the debts of all the old Joneses as fast 
 as'tlhey die on to the sihoulders of the young Joneses as 
 fast as thev are born. 
 
 I contend that when I was bom into the world there 
 was reason for the world to be gla'd of it. T was glad of it 
 mvself. I contend that every little prattling boy or girl 
 playing in a dirty back alley in the city of Chicago to-day 
 is a blessing to Chicago, not an incumbrance. I contend 
 tihat each man and woman that lives and breatlies came 
 into existence, not by the connivance of the courts, not 
 by consent of the jurors, not because of deeds, or mort- 
 gages, or bonds. He came down out of the depths of 
 
Zia EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. ' 
 
 the great universe of which we are a part, and struggling 
 out into his own existence found himself walking on this 
 ground of ours endowed by the Creator, who gave him 
 ■his life wioh his share of all the natural resources of all the 
 -earth, and with his share of all the achievements of all 
 the races and generations that had gone before, I came to 
 my inheritance. The dead hand belonged to the grave. 
 The defeats and dis-asters of other days had no right to 
 bind my life, or put a burden on my back to carry. The 
 institutioins, the achievements, the warfares, the victories 
 of other days, whatever they had built, I was the natural 
 heir to it all. And if less than my share of the inventions, 
 the buildings, the roads, the machines, the marts of com- 
 merce, the institutions, the schools, the colleges, the art 
 galleries, the wide fields, the joint products of all the 
 generations that have gone before, if I have been given 
 my Ufe, if you have been given yours, with less than your 
 s'hare of interest in all these, then by some outrageous^ 
 and infamous wrong we have been deprived of our in- 
 iheritance. 
 
 Now, I com-e to this proposition. Time was once in 
 the history of the world when nations went to war with 
 each other. One nation was overborne and became sub- 
 ject to the other; then what happened? The nation that 
 was beaten in battle had a tribute required from it, a 
 sum that each year must be paid to the con<iuering nation ; 
 and tlhe great nations that grew up in ancient history grew 
 great and strong and wealthy through their power to 
 conquer and compel Uhe payment of tribute. But to-day 
 the tribute is gone. Instead of to-day having nations go 
 to war with each other land one nation compelling the 
 other to pay tribute, we have an organization of people 
 standing between all nations, and instead of making one 
 nation a tribute payer to the other nation tlhey stand there 
 and by holding the bonds of both nations make them 
 both tribute payers to themselves. Will anybody tell 
 me what nationality the international, anti-nationai, no- 
 national Rothschild syndicate belongs to? Where is the 
 Rothgdhild citizenship? Where is the gold syndicate's 
 home? What is its postofhce address? Where is the gen- 
 
THE world's debts. XI3 
 
 eration of people it is giving itself to in order to bless and 
 'help? The family of the Rothschilds, their imaiiediate 
 dependents and associates live to-day the most wretched 
 life of any company of men who ever lived. I do not envy 
 them ; 1 have no envy in my heart or hatred for them for 
 the position which they occupy. I only pity them. I am 
 penniless. They are not. j\ly relations to my fellows are 
 genuine and humane. What of theirs? In the city of 
 Chicago wherever I am at night 1 go some three or four 
 blocks in almost any direction and find a welcome, wit'h an 
 open door and the hospitality of the house extended. I 
 live in the city of Chicago like a country school-teacher, 
 boarding 'round among the people, and that is my only 
 home. ^ly personal belongings are at this very hour in 
 half a dozen places in Chicago. I am welcome anywhere. 
 I am glad of that. It fills my heart with a joy that is more 
 genuine, more real than any I ever knew before. The 
 Rothschild family live in great chests and boxes, iron- 
 bound, steel-hinged, ready for flight at any hour. Fly 
 from whom? Fly wihere to? It is the international tribute 
 collector, not from one nation for another, but from all 
 nations alike. I say the family of the Rothschilds, I say 
 that the gold syndicate which is putting rags on flie backs 
 of the masses, which 'has covered the world witth its obli- 
 gations, W'hic'h is coining the heart's blood of the multi- 
 tude of toilers into gold coins to settle their interest pay- 
 ments, wlio have carried on in Great Britain for a bundred 
 years, and in America for a quarter of a century, a system 
 of plunder infamous and outrageous in every detail — I 
 say these robbers of the people are to be pitied by every 
 true-hearted man on the face of t^he earth. They stand 
 down in the midst of society. Whom do they trust? The 
 man that 'has something to mortgage. They stand dowai 
 in the midst of society. \\''''hat is their relation to the 
 balan'ce of the race they belong to? It is t'he auctioneer's 
 red flag. It is -a standing army. It is the policeman's 
 club. It is the corruption of legislatures. It is the de- 
 filement of public ofifices. It is the bribery of courts. It 
 is the robbery of the masses of men. 
 
 But wait! You were speaking about these debts. 
 
114 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 These debts are real and genuine. They are promises to 
 pay. You said a little bit ago that the man who obtained 
 something and refused its return was the enemy of society, 
 because >he was directly warring against the mutual con- 
 fidence upon which social organization must base itself. 
 Yes, but these great national debts have two things that 
 are true with regard to them. One is, they are already so 
 large that they cannot ever be paid, and the other is, that 
 they were created, not by giving value received, but by 
 swindling securities out of the people against whom they 
 are held. 
 
 What are the chances of the United States to pay its 
 debts? If the United States is in difficulty, what about 
 France, what about Russia, -and Great Britain, what 
 about the States of Germany, what about Austria-Hun- 
 gary, what about Italy, what about Portugal, what about 
 Australia? Our debts cannot be paid, and they are worse 
 of¥ than we are. The United States can never pay the 
 public and private indebtedness that is now in existence 
 in this country, and in proof of what I say bankruptcies 
 are more numerous and more disastrous to-day than at 
 any time since the summer of 1893. If the United States 
 cannot pay, w^hat about the other nations? In the United 
 States it is estimated that the public debts, the State 
 debts, the municipal debts, the railroad debts, the other 
 corporation debts, the farmers' debts, the pawn-shop loans, 
 the debts that are in existence in this country, public and 
 private, are estimated to run all the way from twenty 
 billions to as high as forty billions or higher. Forty 
 billions — put it thirty billions. Thirty billions of dollars 
 in debt. What does that mean in this country of ours? 
 It means an average indebtedness for every man, woman 
 '.and child in America of about five hundred dollars. What 
 does that mean in this country? That the first ^^laim 
 against the industry of every family of five people in the 
 United States of America is the payment of one hundred 
 and seventy-five dollars in interes't each year on 'the two 
 thousand and five hundred dollars, their share of thd debts, 
 not to pay the debts, but simply to pay the interest 011 the 
 debts. There are families of five in the city of Chicago 
 
THE WORLDS DEBTS. II5 
 
 who during the last three years have not earn-ed all told 
 one hundred and seventy-hvc dollars a family. But in 
 order to pay the interest, ^simply the interest, not the prin- 
 cipal; in order to pay the interest, and the interest alone, 
 'the average claim against each family is one hundred and 
 seveoty-five dollars. If we cannot pay the interest, and 
 we cannot, for 'we are defaulting on our payments; if we 
 are defaulting at the banks, and we are; if we cannot put 
 the deposits in the Building and Loan Association, and 
 we cannot; we cannot, for we cannot get the money; and 
 if we could we couldn't find the building and loan asso- 
 ciations. About the same thing is true of the banks. The 
 special strength of the banker is usually his very striking 
 personal appearance. And the special embarrassment of 
 •his patrons is his even more striking personal disappear- 
 ance. You don't deposit any more. You can't get any 
 more money for your banker, and you couldn't find him if 
 you could. Under the gold standard w^e cannot pay. 
 What we cannot do there is no moral obligation to under- 
 take to do. That would not be the effort of a moral hero; 
 it would be the work of a driveling idiot. 
 
 My friends, we were once practically out of debt. All 
 that we earned year by year was ours, not to pay on in- 
 terest or bonds tihat were given for other bonds, that were 
 given because w^e could not help but give them, thoug'h 
 we received nothing practically in return for them. If the 
 debts of the world were not enforced, if there were no 
 bonds, if there were no mortgages, if the pow^r of the dead 
 past to mortgage and foreclose on the living present, if 
 that were taken away I can see a great change in the con- 
 dition of things. But it is said that would be repudiation. 
 The men w"ho told us last fall, with long, serious, pale 
 faces, and long, serious, black coats, and long, serious, 
 white neckties, tihat the morality and religion of this coun- 
 try must w^ithstand repudiation, stood in the pulpits while 
 they said those things. Where did these pulpits come 
 from? They are the product of the centuries of the com- 
 bined aspirations of the race for higher things and the 
 selfislh intrigues of the crafty-minded striving to cover 
 ■with respectability the infamy of their own careers by 
 
lib EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 association willi the institutions created by the lofty- 
 minded of ot'her days. One of these forces traces its an- 
 cestry to Jesus and Moses and Abraham. The other to 
 Judas Iscariot. The one built the foundations of the 
 'noblest faitih. The other identified itself with fhe forms of 
 religion only to betray it for a consideration in the hour 
 of its trial. Standing in this pulpit these long-featured, 
 deep-toned defenders of national honor cry out against us 
 as dishonest. They hurl at us a long, hard word, not au' 
 English word, or a Greek word, or a Hebrew word. 
 They use a word which belongs to a language wihicih be- 
 longed to a race which, like themselves, never (had any 
 religion except what they borrowed. They talked Latin; 
 at us. They said we were repudiators. Whence comes 
 this charge of repudiation? From Moses, the law-giver, 
 or from Judas, the traitor? (A voice: 'The traitor.") 
 Moses cancelled all ordinary debts every seven, years. 
 Every fifty years tihe land and the slave went free. We 
 don't ask to cancel them except we pay them in money of 
 the value we promised to pay; but Moses we-nt farther, 
 and declared that to the "end that there be no poverty 
 among you," paid or unpaid, cancel them anyway and 
 set the debtor free. ^Moses seemed to have an idea that 
 bondage in debt was not a good thing for the race, and 
 he built a religion and a state in which the debt-bearing 
 infamy should have no share. Was Moses dishonest? 
 Was he a repudiator? For my part I am a repudiator. I 
 repudiate with limitless indignation the inference of these 
 degenerate sons of an ancient faith who stand in the 
 modern pulpit to proclaim in effect that Moses had no 
 sense of national honor, that the year of Jubilee was a 
 year of national infamy because the people rejoiced over 
 the cancellation of debts they could not pay. In vivid 
 fancy I can walk the streets of a Jewish village at the dawn 
 of the day of deliverance in the glad year of the Jubilee. I 
 hear the glad shout of those who were in bondage. ^ I 
 listen to the sweet melody of the matchless music which 
 hails the coming of the morning of the day of liberty. But 
 what is this strange, discordant croaking which has 
 stopped the shouting and silenced the music in the midst 
 
THE WORLDS DEBTS. 1 17 
 
 of its heart-breaking gladness? It is Hillis, and Gun- 
 saulus, and Moody, and Ingersoll, and Breckinridge sing- 
 ing their ahorus, "that t^he religion and morality of tJic 
 country must withstand repudiation." 
 
 But Moses is not the only authority. Thomas Jeffer- 
 son was our Moses. Tho^mas Jefferson said, among t'he 
 splendid things he did say, that laws, usages, constitutions, 
 could have no force over men longer than for the balance 
 of the generation that enacted them. The old Greek who 
 ■wrote t?he new laws, and then pledged the people never 
 to change them until he should come back again, and then 
 went and destroyed his life so he never could come back 
 again, was as big a farce in' patriotism as perpetual, 
 international bonds are a crime in business. Each genera- 
 tion has a right to be 'heard on its own account. No 
 generation has a right to bind another, and no man has 
 the right to create, or to respect if he does create, an 
 obligation to do what he has no power to do. "You 
 know you can't, but you'll be dam^ned if you don't" is no 
 long-er orthodox either in religion or in politics. If a man 
 makes a debt and can pay and will not, he is a fraud. If a 
 man contracts a debt honestly and sincerely, with ability 
 to pay, and misfortune overtakes him and ruins him and 
 his interests, so that bilk that are held against him he can- 
 not pay; to call that man a fraud is to speak words as false 
 as you are foolisih. Listen! What we are striving to 
 protect is the basis of mutual confidence. To require and 
 compel from one what he can do and has agreed to do 
 confirms and strengthens the confidence of us all in us all. 
 But to condemn and blame a person whose only fault 
 is his misfortune is to confound the innocent and the 
 guilty, and by clamoring for what cannot possibly be got- 
 ten, destroy public confidence in that which is possible. It 
 is permitting the guilty to play the roll of injured inno- 
 cence. It is compelling the guiltless to bear the blame 
 of guilt. Who bears the scorn of public condemnation 
 among us ncnv? Regardless of the cause of the ruin or 
 the character of the men, the tramps and the bankrupts 
 bear fhe shame of the general distress. But the infamy 
 of American commercialism lies not at the door of the 
 
Il8 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 poor, and the robbed, and the unemployed, and the help- 
 less multitudes. It lies at the door of the leaders in 
 ■trade >and the officers of the law who have stripped us of 
 •our clothing, and robbed us of our bread. 
 
 But worse than all this, these debts are not only so 
 large that with the continuance of the gold standard tihey 
 can never be paid, but the means by which they 'have been 
 created were so wrongful that certainly, if this last step, in 
 the long journey of wrong-doing, is to be taken and 
 the gold standard is really to be the standard, tlhen they 
 never oug'ht to be paid. Here is something: of the story: 
 The British debt comes v/ith the Napoleonic wars. 
 The Rothschilds made their first start in great national 
 debts by being present at the battle of Waterloo, and 
 when the battle was over and the French anny had been, 
 destroyed they started for London. There were no cables 
 then. There were no means of communication then. 
 There was a storm at sea, and the Rothschilds people got 
 there long enough ahead of the news to do, what? Long 
 enough to make the report that Napoleon had been vic- 
 torious, that Wellington and his army had been de- 
 stroyed, and that the victorious Frenchman was on his 
 way to the British possessions. English securities drop- 
 ped out of sight, and the Rothschilds and their company 
 of long-armed fellows bought them in for a fraction of 
 their face value. News came next day that Napoleon 
 had been overborne, that Wellington was victorious. 
 
 Napoleon died at St. Helena. He never reached the 
 seat of English power. But England, victorious En- 
 gland, was vanquished none the less. Rothschilds were 
 the victors. Specie payment was resumed and the Roths- 
 childs securities made payable in specie. Silver was de- 
 monetized in 1816 and the Rothschilds securities made 
 payable in gold. The basis of the English debt was not 
 a service, but a steal. To make that debt sacred is to 
 place on a like footing the products of industry and the 
 spoil of theft. Through five generations the toil of the 
 children's children's great-great-grandchildren have 
 been paying interest on a public debt, that there is no 
 intention of ever permitting them to pay up and cancel, 
 
THE world's debts. IXQ 
 
 but only to pay the interest thereon, — on a debt which 
 in the first place represented no service but a midnight 
 steal which deserved imprisonment or death, and not 
 reward. It could have been hardly w^orse for Englishmen 
 had Napoleon captured Great Britain, if only the Roths- 
 childs could have been sent to St. Helena and the sys- 
 tem of international bonds which they devised could 
 only have gone there to perish with them also. 
 
 That was not the case with our bonds. Xo, it was not! 
 Our case was worse. There was a time in this country 
 when it took two dollars and eighty-five cents of green- 
 backs to buy one gold dollar. In order to get these fig- 
 ures easy, suppose we say it took three dollars. It took 
 three dollars to buy a gold dollar. Here is a circular that 
 was found in the study of Dr. Spurgeon in London giv- 
 ing the figures of a certain transaction of an English 
 syndicate with offices in Xew York, doing business on 
 Wall Street, opposite the United States Treasury, in New 
 York. I spent something like a day and a half going 
 over these figures. I tried as well as I could to verify 
 them as to their correctness. Whether this thing took 
 place or not I am not able to say ; I was not there. The 
 claim of this circular was that a company of men with 
 English gold, with a million dollars' worth of gold, came 
 to New York and went into business. What did they do 
 with their gold? They bought two million eight hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand dollars' worth of greenbacks. 
 Put it three millions. Three millions of greenbacks. 
 What did they do with the greenbacks? They went over 
 to the treasury department and bought three millions of 
 United States bonds. What did they do with the bonds? 
 The law said that the interest on the bonds should be 
 payable in gold. It further provided that the interest 
 should be paid a year in advance. They simply went 
 down to another window in the same room and collected 
 seven per cent, interest in gold back on the face of the 
 three millions of bonds which they bought with green- 
 backs, but with one million of gold. In other words, 
 they collected inside of five minutes from the time they 
 took one million and with it bought three millions and on 
 
120 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 it collected seven per cent., or twenty-one per cent, on 
 the original million of gold, paid back in gold. What 
 did they do with the gold? They bought more green- 
 backs, and then more bonds, collected more interest in 
 gold, bought more greenbacks, and then more bonds, 
 collected more interest. They kept at that with- 
 out going off the street until they had, what? Until 
 it got so it only paid them five thousand dollars for going 
 across the street and back. Then they took the bonds 
 that they had and started a lot of United States banks. 
 What could they do with the banks? Deposit the bonds. 
 What then? Draw ninety per cent, of their face back in 
 bank-notes. What then? Go down in the market and 
 swap them for greenbacks, and with the greenbacks buy 
 some more bonds, and keep that up until they made only 
 five thousand dollars in a single transaction, then go 
 back and organize some more banks. 
 
 Now, this circular, which is claimed to have been 
 found in Mr. Spurgeon's office, and which Mr. Spurgeon 
 stated to a gentleman had been left there to interest him 
 in the business, went on to say that in six months from 
 the time of starting with only one million they had fifty 
 millions of United States bonds, they had six millions in 
 gold, besides their bank stock and their bank money. 
 But all I want to give you is the plan in which that 
 transaction was carried through. Now, the United 
 States debt to-day is built on that sort of a transaction. 
 And I say to all the men and women here, when we are 
 willing to pay it in silver dollars, if they will give us an 
 opportunity to turn our unemployed labor to digging 
 silver out of the Rocky Mountains, out of which to make 
 the dollars with which to pay, while we would be willing 
 to do that, I say that even in doing that we are settling 
 a transaction that does not represent a bona fide debt. It 
 represents the most infam.ous swindle of all the cen- 
 turies. The men who call us repudiators because we ask 
 for the settlement with gold or silver either, are them- 
 selves the repudiators of all that is fair between man and 
 man. 
 
 I shall detain you only a few minutes longer. Mr. 
 
THE WORLDS DEBTS. 121 
 
 Mills, are you advocating that the United States should 
 cease paying its interest? No! Shall we not pay our 
 honest debts? Yes, and more yet. I am even in favor of 
 paying this dishonest public debt. I advise every man' 
 and woman here this afternoon who owes anything to 
 give up collateral and stop staying awake nights, and get 
 a good night's rest. You say we cannot pay our debts. 
 You. say that these nations will not pay theirs. I say 
 nothing of the sort. I say that if we will in 1898 send a 
 free coinage Congress to Washington we will put things 
 in this country into a shape by which the United States 
 of America wull be able to dig out of her own mountains 
 the new dollars, and employ the unemployed labor that 
 will pay for every United States bond dollar for dollar, 
 and that the shop shall never shut down until this is done. 
 What then? Then I propose that in the United States 
 of America from this time on each generation shall settle 
 its own bills, and each company of men shall pay their 
 own debts. 
 
 When the Civil W^ar came on and we needed money, 
 and we needed men, we sent out for the men, and if they 
 did not come we sent a squad of men after them with 
 bayonets. And we told a man he was a citizen in this 
 country, under its protection, and Uncle Sam was in 
 need of men, and that whether he wished to go or not 
 he must go, and he went freely and gladly, or he went 
 with the point of a bayonet behind him. But when we 
 needed blankets and clothing and food for the men, and 
 we needed them badly to clothe and feed the men, — 
 when we needed the man we sent after him and com- 
 pelled him to go, — we sent after the dollar, and got down 
 on our knees and begged the fellow who had it to let us 
 take it a few days and we would return it again. The 
 dollar was so sacred that we could not have it until we 
 had borrowed it from somebody. But life was so cheap 
 that we took it, whether or no. In the future. God grant 
 that in the future the men of America will not only be 
 brave enough to go down to the front and fight the bat- 
 tles of their country, but may they be wise enough to 
 compel the wealth of the country to share side by side 
 
122 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 the risks that the manhood of the country is compelled 
 to bear. The most sacred thing on this earth of ours is 
 the men and the women and the children that are here. 
 The dollar has a right to be here because it is our ser- 
 vant. The most sacred thing on earth is human life, and 
 the dollar has no right to be here to make us its slave. 
 
 What will be the outcome of universal bankruptcy? 
 I think it is this : I think the time is coming, and coming 
 speedily, when the unemployed, when the disinherited, 
 when the men without dollars, and with brains, when the 
 men without personal ambition for themselves, but lov- 
 ing their country and their race more than all else, will 
 be able to put human interests above commercial transac- 
 tions, and place the claim of man upon the resources of 
 nature and the consideration of his fellows so infinitely 
 beyond the claims of speculative investments that man 
 shall be the master and all else his servant. It may be 
 that through the universal bankruptcy which threatens 
 us will come the universal emancipation of the race. 
 
 Earth! 
 
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 Civil service reform means changing the methods by 
 which men obtain employment from the government, m 
 carrying the mails, in keeping accounts, m servmg on the 
 police force, the fire department, paving the streets, or 
 in any place where some man is to render service not for 
 some other individual, but for the whole body of society. 
 It has been the custom in this country to have a very 
 large share of all the people who are engaged in public 
 service not elected to ofhce, but appointed to ofhce in 
 the State of New York, down to about the year 1830, 
 nearly all of the county officers, like the treasurer, the 
 sheriff, and the judges, were appointed by the Governor 
 of the State The tendencv has been through the years 
 to enlarge the number of people who were directly elect- 
 ed by the people, and lower the number which were ap- 
 pointed. But the number of people who are direct y 
 voted for or against is only a small fraction of the people • 
 who reallv hold office. It is not the man you vote for 
 but the man who is appointed by the man who helped 
 o-et the man nominated that vou voted for that makes 
 up the larger number of the people who serve society. 
 In our national elections the number of people we vote 
 for are verv few, indeed. We vote for the electors, who in 
 turn vote for the President, but when the President is in 
 office the cabinet officers are not there by election, but by 
 appointment, and then all the postmasters have to be ap- 
 pointed, and all the clerks, who really do the detail work 
 of the man who was appointed to office by the man who 
 was elected to office. ^ . 
 
 AVhen men have been organizing their campaigns tor 
 election to office for a great many years in this country 
 
 123 
 
124 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 they have looked over the Hst of people who were anxious 
 to be in office by appointment, and have endeavored to 
 secure the support of these people who wanted to work 
 for the government, by giving them promises of positions 
 in consideration of special support given themselves, 
 either in securing the nomination, or in securing the 
 election after nomination. This had grown to be so 
 great an evil that in the national elections, instead of 
 great public questions being voted for or against, it was 
 not a question as to whether the tariff should stand or 
 not, it was not a question as to whether this kind of 
 financial policy should be adopted or not, it was not a 
 question as to whether public improvements should be 
 made or not; but the sole question had grown to be who- 
 should hold the cross-roads postoffice in the event of the 
 success of a certain candidate. The matter of these ap- 
 pointments became a matter of such importance, that 
 the Senator who was involved in the discussion of the 
 great questions before the country for settlement neg- 
 lected the great question, with regard to which he must 
 act, involving the welfare of all the people, in order to 
 join in the controversy whether Smith or Jones should 
 have some out of the way postoffice, where somebody 
 had voted for somebody that had placed somebody under 
 obligation to get the Senator into office in the first place. 
 He could not give his attention to the welfare of all the 
 people, but used the power of his office to serve the few 
 who had helped to secure his election for him. 
 
 A Democrat, not a Republican, a Democrat— I wish 
 you would just bear this in mind and never forget it ; the 
 civil service reform movement was the child of a Demo- 
 crat, and the bill that was first passed in Congress de- 
 clanng for the establishment of the civil service reform 
 was introduced by a Democratic Senator from Ohio. 
 This was the purpose: To so manage the appointments 
 for office, that a man once in office bv appointment should 
 not be turned out of office because his party went out of 
 power and out of office. In other words,' the purpose 
 was to separate this great ^multi'tude of officeholders in 
 
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 1 25 
 
 their political interests from the matter of securing a live- 
 lihood. 
 
 When our fathers established the Constitution and 
 determined that there should be in this country three de- 
 partments of government, the effort was made to sep- 
 arate these from each other as far as it was possible. The 
 Legislative to enact, the Judicial to interpret, and the 
 Executive to enforce the law. And in order that the Ju- 
 dicial department, which was to interpret the law, i» 
 order that the interpretation might not be prejudiced, in 
 order that the judge might be above suspicion forever, 
 they said. Lest this judge should use this ofhce in order 
 to secure his personal interests, we must so secure those 
 personal interests when the Justice and the Chief Justice 
 goes over into the United States Court, that he will have 
 no further anxiety as to his livelihood, and that there- 
 fore these judges shall be appointed for life, that their 
 salaries shall be fixed, and that no judge's salary should 
 be made less. Why this arrangement in attempting to 
 protect the justice in the United States Court? The dis- 
 cussions of the time and the law itself prove beyond any 
 possible question that that provision was made in that 
 wav in order that the decisions of the Supreme Court 
 should not depend on the bread and butter question. 
 Whether it was wise or not, whether that was the best 
 way to do it or not, I will not attempt to say. The found- 
 ers of our government, the authors of our Constitution, 
 the builders of the political institutions of this country, 
 declared that if a man was to be absolutely free and un- 
 hampered in his thinking, that thinking must be abso- 
 lutely separated from the bread and butter question. 
 Now, politics had come to a point where this bread and 
 butter question of public employes wa.s everlastingly in- 
 terfering with the political campaigns, caucuses and con- 
 ventions, and they were fighting out the great campaigns 
 where great questions were involved, not fur the sake of 
 settling these questions on their merits, but because of the 
 triumph of a party that would keep them in a job. 
 
 This usage of appointing men to olhce as rewards of 
 political service so interfered with the conduct of cam- 
 
126 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 paigns that it was demanded that some action should be 
 taken to protect the public employe in his position, so that 
 whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, so long as 
 he would do his work, he should not be interfered with. 
 
 The Supreme Court stood where no power could take 
 its living away from it, just so it was proposed to put 
 postmasters and the balance of the civil list where, un- 
 coerced and unhampered, they could give their attention 
 to their duties in of^ce, and not to securing elections or 
 the success of special candidates, in order to furnish spe- 
 cial appointments. Whatever we may say about the wis- 
 dom of the law which appointed a justice on that basis, we 
 may well agree that if you can rob a man of his daily 
 bread you may rob him of his independence at the same 
 time. Regardless of the success or failure which has fol- 
 lowed, the motive that lay back of it, the purpose that jus- 
 tified it, is a purpose so w^orthy that it seems to me no 
 American citizen can question its wisdom or its desirabil- 
 ity for a moment. 
 
 But let us examine for a moment further some of the 
 things that are true in this country. Benjamin F. Butler 
 said, "If the offices are a good thing, why not let all 
 Amiericari) citizens have an opportunity of getting them, 
 and if the offices are a bad thing why insist on a small 
 company of people enduring the burden all of the time?" 
 
 The first serious fight over public appointments was 
 under the administration of Thomas Jefferson. Up to 
 that time the appointments had been made by one admin- 
 istration which had succeeded itself a couple of times, 
 once in Washington, and once in Adams. When Thomas 
 Jefferson came to be President of the United States, Ad- 
 ams discharged men and appointed others up to the very 
 hour when it was time for the new officer to take his place, 
 and then Thomas Jefferson came into office, and began 
 imimediately to reinstate his friends who had been turned 
 out of office, and to discharge from office John Adams' 
 Federals and to substitute Jeffersonian Democrats in their 
 places. There was a loud outcry at the conduct of Mr. 
 Jefferson, and a letter and petition, asking him to cease 
 in this, was prepared and forwarded to him from New 
 
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 127 
 
 Haven. Thomas Jefferson said in reply, "The appoint- 
 ments under the administration are occupied fully, occu- 
 pied by men who belong to another party. Fairness be- 
 tween the men who represent both parties would seem to 
 justify that an equal share of these public and desirable 
 positions should be given to the friends of the new party 
 along with the friends of the old." "And," said ^Ir. Jef- 
 ferson, in language that has been frequently quoted ever 
 since, '"inasmuch as few public officers die, and none re- 
 sign, it is necessary to turn them out of office in order to 
 get the vacancies to fill." 
 
 Andrew Jackson coming into power, again repeated 
 the work of Thomas Jefferson, the patron saint and found- 
 er of the Democratic party. The complaint was made 
 again, but inasmuch as all the men in office were his po- 
 litical opponents, he never stopped his work until all the 
 men in office had become his political friends. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln went into office, and like Jefferson 
 and Jackson, he found the offices occupied by his political 
 opponents, and like Andrew Jackson, he made a clean 
 sweep of the matter, and within a very short time after 
 Lincoln was President there were no Democrats in office 
 anywhere. Beginning with the Lincoln administration, 
 the fight for appointments went on, not between the Dem- 
 ocrats and Republicans alone, but between factions of 
 Republicans as well. When the civil-service law was 
 finally established, it was the custom of the Republican 
 party, of the Democratic p^rty, in all the elections, from 
 the smallest local school district up to the Presidency, to 
 measure out and promise in advance all these different ap- 
 pointments, and the fight for victory was not a light be- 
 tween public measures ; it became imnicdiately a contest 
 to determine which of the two forces, involving the head 
 of the ticket, and a thousand others all down the line, all 
 fighting, not for what they believe about tariff reform, 
 they did not know what the tariff was about ; not for whac 
 they understood about the money question, for they had 
 not studied the money question ; they were fighting for a 
 place somewhere that had a salary attached to it, and 
 were not trying to understand anything else involved in 
 
128 £VOLUTIONAkY POLITICS. 
 
 the fight. The civil-service law said, ''We will appoint 
 commissions. We wil4 have a plan of examinations. W^e 
 will have those men who pass go on the list. We will 
 have men come into the public service, not because they 
 are Democrats or Republicans, but because they can pass 
 an examination." And the effort was made. 
 
 I will not attempt to discuss its success or failure just 
 now, but I wish you to go a step further with me. The 
 civil-service reform law was established in order that the 
 employe in the postoffice, and on the police force, and in 
 the fire department, might feel secure in his place, whetli- 
 er he was a Democrat or a Republican. Why? In order 
 that he could be free in the exercise of his own judgment 
 as an American citizen, his politics and his job should not 
 be tied together. If it is important that the Chief Justice 
 of the United States shall stand in a position where ren- 
 dering his decisions he may not be attacked through his 
 living, if it is important that the postal clerk in rendering 
 his decisions shall stand in a position where his living- 
 shall be secure, it is also equally important that the clerk 
 in Marshall Field's great store, or the gripman on Yerkes' 
 railway system, shall stand in a position where the way 
 he votes shall not interfere with his job. 
 
 When the founders of our government wrote the 
 American constitution, when the advocates of civil ser- 
 vice reform succeeded in their reform, they established in 
 America an idea, and when that idea shall come to its full- 
 ness no man who votes in America, and no woman who 
 votes, — for women w^ill vote as well, when that hour ar- 
 rives, — no man or woman shall stand in a position where 
 the expression of one's judgment at the ballot-box niay be 
 answered by robbing him of his opportunity to earn a liv- 
 ing. It is a matter of serious importance that the boys 
 who carry the mail shall have an opportunity to toil un- 
 hindered and unhampered because they voted for McKin- 
 ley, or because they voted for Bryan, or because they 
 voted for anybody, or because they did not vote at all. It 
 is a matter of more importance, there are more men work- 
 ing on the railways, there are more men working in the 
 mines, there are more men working in the great steel 
 
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. I^g 
 
 plants, there are more men clerking in great stores, there 
 are more farm hands, more street-car men, more builders 
 of sewers, and more pavers of streets, — there are more 
 men in the trades, there are more men who toil for wages, 
 outside of Uncle Sam's employment than those who are 
 there. Listen ! If it is a matter of public importance that 
 civil-service reform shall protect the smaller number who 
 are working for Uncle Sam, it is infinitely of more im- 
 portance that by some legislation the men who are wor'c- 
 ing for Yerkes shall have the same protection. 
 
 Now I raise a question. I stand here and affirm that 
 the thing that the founders of our government wantea in 
 the Supreme Court, I affirm that the thing which the civil- 
 service reformers were feeling after when thev wrote the 
 law, I affirm that the thing which lav back of those things 
 is a thing of the utmost desirability ; but I affirm again that 
 they have led us in the wrong direction, for ever bring- 
 ing us to that end. Now, listen again. What is it that 
 we want to do? We want to separate the personal con- 
 victions of the voter from the personal support of the 
 voter. How is it? This way. A man may vote anv way 
 he chooses, and whether he is working for Uncle Sam or 
 Yerkes, or Field, or anybody else, he shall not lose his 
 living because he so votes, not in order that the individual 
 may not lose his job, but in order that society may not 
 lose the advantage of that individual's unbiased iudirinent 
 at the ballot-box. ^ ' 
 
 Here is a man serving on a jury. A man is being tried 
 for murder. He has sworn to render an unbiased judg- 
 ment according to the facts and the law. He sits and 
 waits while he hears the testimonv, and listens to the ar- 
 gument, and the charge of the judge, and then he goes 
 into the private jury-room and tries to settle an okfpri- 
 yate grudge against the man on trial for his life. He goes 
 into the private jury-room and there attempts to do a 
 favor to the attorney for the defense. If he goes into the 
 jury-room in a position where if he does not decide 
 in the case as his employer wants him to, he loses his job 
 next day, what will be the result? Listen. It is a matter 
 of importance that that man shall not lose his job, but it is 
 
130 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 a matter of infinitely more importance that society shall 
 have his unbiased judgment when he sits as a juror, and 
 his brother is on trial for his life. 
 
 It is important that in the annual election we shall en- 
 able men to vote without the possibility of losing their 
 employment, but it is a matter of infinitely more import- 
 ance that America may have the benefit of the judgment 
 of every American, unbiased, unhampered, and un- 
 coerced. Very well. That is, then, wha^we are feeling 
 after. What is the surest way to get it? Let us once and 
 forever enter a divorce between public offices and public 
 questions. Let the man who goes to the executive office 
 go there on his individual merits as a man, separated from 
 every public question, going simply because he has ability 
 and integrity ; and let every public question go to the di- 
 rect vote of the people, separated from every candidate, 
 and divorced from all appointing power. 
 
 I want a division in politics in Chicago. I want an op- 
 portunity to vote for a mayor in Chicago, not because he 
 is a silver man, not because he is a gold man, not because 
 he is a Democrat, not because he is a Republican, or a 
 Populist, or for any other reason that hitches him to a 
 public question, so that I cannot vote for the man and 
 the measure separate from each ot'her. I want an oppor- 
 tunity to vote for a candidate for Mayor who will be 
 pledged in his campaign that in the event of his election 
 he will follow the instructions of the people, whatever 
 tho'se instructions may be. I do not want any more elec- 
 tions for aldermen on the score that tihey will not give 
 aw^ay any more franchises unless they get pay for them. 
 I do not want any more franchises granted in tihe city 
 of Chicago except all the voters of Chicago s*hall first have 
 an opportunity to vote on that question. I want the can- 
 didates separated from the question, and then, inasmuch 
 as it would not be necessary to vote for a given candidate 
 in order that we may pass a given law, the candidate may 
 stand on his merits,' if he has any — he usually does not — 
 the candidate may stand on his own merits, if he has any, 
 and fhe question, separate from the candidate, may stand 
 on its merits also. What was the plan of the court's inde- 
 
CIVIL SERVICE REFORM. 
 
 131 
 
 pendence established for? To get an unbiased judgment. 
 W'hat is the way to get that unbiased judgment from t/Iie 
 voter as well as the judge? Separate, absolutely and en- 
 tirely, tshe appointing power from the legislative power. 
 This is what we call the Initiative and Referendum: 
 
 William J. Bryan, before the Democratic Committee 
 •on Resolutions, of the Democratic national convention, 
 in its session in Chicago last summer, proposed a plank 
 for the Democratic platform declaring in favor of the 
 Initiative and Referendum. The plank was rejected tlien, 
 it was not a part of that platform, but Mr. Br^'an has been 
 doing some good campaign work since then, and Senator 
 Janes, the dhairman, and the leading Democrats who are 
 still in the Democratic party great enough to believe in 
 the judgment and conscience and character of the Ameri- 
 can people, are to-day to a man committed to putting that 
 plank into the next platform. Listen a mom-ent ! We will 
 not only have laws in this country that will enable the 
 Supreme Court to render its decisions without having its 
 bread and butter taken away from it, but we will have, 
 within the next dozen years in this country, new laws that 
 will enable every American voter to go to the ballot-box 
 and vote for what he thinks, without having his oppor- 
 tunity to earn his living taken away from him. 
 
 I have one word to say to our brothers who ar^ carry- 
 ing on the civil-service reform. We ask for a civil-service 
 reform that will give the man who is on the police force, 
 and the man who is in the post office an opportunity to 
 vote for what -he thinks without losing his job. We de- 
 mand at tihe same tim-e — without being required to trust 
 Mr. Yerkes as our only assurance that it will be done — 
 we demand at the same time, that ever\' toiler on the 
 street railway lines, in every s^hop in America, and on 
 every farm, s\hall have an opportunity to vote what he 
 thinks without losing his job, too. Civil-service reform 
 tliat limits itself to the United States Supreme Court is a 
 farce. Civil-service reform that limits itself to the post- 
 office and the police force is too narrow. Civil-ser- 
 vice reform which protects the man who has a 
 a good job, and gives no protection to the man who 
 
132 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 has a poor one is a farce. Civil-service reform whicli pro- 
 tects the man who 'has a job, and leaves to starve the man 
 who has not, must be succeeded by a civil-service which 
 will place within the reach of every one of us an oppor- 
 tunity to toil, and separate absolutely his place as a 
 worker in a shop from his rights as a voter at the ballot- 
 box. 
 
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP— TWO RIDES FOR 
 
 A NICKEL. 
 
 I believe t'hat municipal questions alone s'hould be up 
 for settlement in municipal elections, and tliat national 
 issues sfhould be the controlling interest in national elec- 
 tions. It is impossible for the City Hall to settle the 
 tariff question. It is not likely that the American Con- 
 gress i'S going to help us in our municipal affairs. So long 
 as national issues are made the question by which 
 municipal elections are determined, so long t'he munici- 
 pality will be subject to a corrupt government. 
 
 It is only once in a life-time that the same question 
 should be in issue In national elections and in local elec- 
 tions, but at t'his time such a condition exists. The most 
 urgent questions of national reform are only other forms 
 of the same issues which are of the first importance in our 
 municipal elections. 
 
 When Mayor Swift was about to act with regard to the 
 ordinance for a four-cent fare Mr. Yerkes, with the breath 
 of the penitentiany still on his garments, wrote to Mayor 
 Swift an interesting communication concerning the rela- 
 tions of the city to the corporations in which Mr. Yerkes 
 is interested. The nature and the source of his letter jus- 
 tify us in characterizing the communication as a message 
 from the penitentiary to the municipality. Just before 
 election the same Yerkes wrote a letter addrcss-ed to his 
 employes. It was posted in tihe shops, it was circulat<?d 
 among the men. It urged them to vote for Mr. McKin- 
 ley. His letter to Mayor Swift is only anofher form of 
 the same argument which he sent to his men. Tlie ques- 
 tion involved in national politics about which he wrote 
 his men is only another form of tlie same question abomt 
 whrch he wrote to the Mayor. It involves the matter of 
 
 »33 
 
134 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. ^ 
 
 Special privileges, of special advantages for the beneifit, 
 •of a few, with measureless wrongs for the many. Mr. 
 Yerkes said in 'his letters — Mr. Swift said in his message 
 vetoing the four-cent ordinance — that the issue was re- 
 pudiatio'u; that neither the city, nor the nation, could be 
 a party to such a wrong. 
 
 Repudiation is a term that has grown familiar, it is 
 an accusation that has been tossed about until we needto 
 look at it and determine w^.hat it is, and who are the parties 
 who are guilty of real or attempted repudiation. The 
 gold standard has cut in two the prices ot all of Hhe 
 products of labor. The average of prices has fallen, and 
 fallen rapidly. There is no way by which this fall in t'he 
 average price can be explained except by the relation of 
 money to business. If tihe volume of money remains the 
 same and the price of flour goes up and I continue to buy 
 flour I have less money with which to buy something 
 el':'e. The demand for the something else slackens, aiid 
 the price of tihe something else must fall. If the price 
 of flour falls I spend less money for flour, and have more 
 money for something else. With more money to make 
 other purchases the demand for the other things increases 
 and their prices are restored. But this fluctuation of prices 
 between the one article and another can in no way affect 
 the general average of prices, for where one article ad- 
 vances another declines, and the average remains sub- 
 stantially 'tihe same. There has been a fall in prices 
 running on through a series of years, a continual decline, 
 not of this article, or that, as measured against another, 
 but the general average of all prices has been going 
 steadily down for twenty-three years. 
 
 Now, when tihe old franchises were granted, when 
 the price of street-car fares was fixed at five cents, the 
 product of a day's labor sold for a dollar t'hat sells for 
 fifty cents now. The products of labor, the price of 
 labor, the dhances of the laborer as related to his ability 
 to produce values and to exchange these values for 
 street-car fares have fallen. It takes twice as many hours 
 to get 'the dollar, but the dollar buys no more rides than 
 formerly. 
 
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP. I35 
 
 We were told in the campaign that the dollar would 
 buy more food, more clothes, more of the things that a 
 laborer buys, and therefore if he produced more to get 
 the dollar no harm was done. But this is not true of 
 taxes, nor debts, nor bonds, nor mortgages, nor street- 
 car fares. When a workingman's wages were higlicr 
 Yerkes and the balance of t/he corporations joined hands 
 and conspired and fought together to give us the gold 
 standard and to hold it ov^r us in spite of ourselves, anil 
 ihey ihave succeeded. We ask for the restoration of the 
 people's money in order tlhat we may restore normal 
 l>rices. and they answer that we must not do so, that it 
 would be repudiation to do it; but the gold standard has 
 cut our prices in two. Let Yerkes cut his prices in two as 
 well. Let the corporations, trusts, and combines take 
 the medicine they prescribe for us. Are they, after all, 
 for repudiation when the obligation means that the level 
 of the prices they are to get sihall stand side by side with 
 the prices they compel us to accept? 
 
 But they answer again that to cut the prices of t'he 
 street-car fares in two would be unlawful, a violation of 
 contracts, would not be confirmed by the courts. Then 
 why not pass the ordinance for a four-cent fare and test 
 the principle in the courts? The principle has been tested 
 before, it has been tested in transportation, it has been 
 tested in passenger rates on the long lines across t'he 
 country. The opposition to the four-cent fare was not so 
 serJous because it involved t/lie loss of a penny. The 
 secret of Yerkes' opposition to the four-cent fare, the 
 reason why the gang that rules and robs us wonld not 
 consent to 'have a penny taken from the five-cent ride is, 
 because they were unvnlling to allow one step to be 
 taken in the direction of justice, lest with the people once 
 thinking along the lines of the wrongs that they have 
 done us, the people would insist, as would be their right 
 and duty to do, either on the correction of the<se wrongs 
 once for all, or on the adjustment of fixed charges where 
 public services are rendered, to correspond witili the rates 
 which the gold stan<]ard has thrust upon everything else. 
 
 But my position is that the whole plan of a private 
 
136 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 frandliise for performing a public service is in'herently and 
 necessarily corrupt. The city of Chicago is a corporation, 
 it is a business body. Of this corporation we are all mem- 
 bers. We were incorporated for the express purpose of 
 providing for the public health, water, streets, lights, 
 police supervision, tran'Sportation, all the things which 
 are necessarily of a public nature, and which involve the 
 interest of us all together; we were incorporated and 
 made a business body for the express purpose of attend- 
 ing to these tihings. 
 
 Let me give yooi an illustration, let me tell you how 
 railroads are built. A railroad is built by a company of 
 'men organizing a company, issuing stock to themselves 
 for which no payment is made. Then the line of the road 
 is surveyed, bonds are issued on the projected line, sold 
 for several times the value of the road, a-nd tllie road is' 
 built. Does the corporation which was incorporated to 
 build and operate the railroad build the road? Not at all. 
 Usually another body called a construction company, 
 composed of a portion of the stockholders, leaving the 
 balance out in the cold, builds the road. The bonds are 
 sold for, say, thirty tlhousand dollars a mile, the road is 
 built for the railroad company by a new corporation com- 
 posed of a small portion of the old corporation at an ex- 
 pense of, say, fifteen thousand dollars a mile, and the 
 members of the new corporation composed of a portion 
 of the old corporation puts the difference, fifteen thou- 
 sand dollars a mile, into their own pockets. What do 
 you think of the relations of a member of the new cor- 
 poration to a member of the old corporation, who has 
 been excluded from the new corporation? Has he been 
 swindled, imposed upon? Is not the nature of snch a 
 transaction necessarily and inherently corrupt? 
 
 Well, the city of Chicago is a business body, it is a 
 business corporation. It was incorporated for the ex- 
 press purpose of doing certain things. Instead of doing 
 tbem a portion of the people of Chicago' turned around 
 and organized other corporations made up of only a 
 share of the members of the original corporation, and 
 these new corporations inside of the original corporation 
 
MUNICIPAL OWNERSHIP. 137 
 
 are furnishing gas, and transportation, not for tihe benefit 
 of all, but to the infinite injury of the most of us, and to 
 very great profit of the few. It is not necessary to prove 
 that tihese corporations are bad, that their managers are 
 false, bhat their stock is watered, that their cars are cold, 
 or that they are slow, or old; the thing itself, the very 
 plan of having one corporation inside of another to do the 
 very things for which the larger corporation was in the 
 first place created is in itself inherently and necessarily 
 corrupt. The relations of these corporations ins-ide of 
 corporations to the general government of the city itself 
 is bad beyond measure. 
 
 In the old American towns there were four forces in 
 each municipal election, the church, the school, the work- 
 shop, and the fireside, and in every town-meeting these 
 four forces were there, and whatever was undertaken was 
 undertaken in their behalf. I do not mean to contend tihat 
 they were always right, that their decisions were always 
 wise. I only insist that t(he forces which represent intelli- 
 gence, piety, industry, and the fireside virtues were the 
 dominant forces in the old American municipality. There 
 are four forces still in our city election. They are not the 
 church, and the school, and the workshop, and the home. 
 These modern masters of municipal life are contracts, 
 franchises, licenses and spoils. A single contractor 
 anxious to get a contract for furnishing poor beef for the 
 poor people in tlhe poorhouse at Dunning 'has more in- 
 fluence in a Cook County election than any preacher in 
 the city of Chicago. 
 
 But it is not my purpose to-day to speak of contractors, 
 of the licenses through which Chicago traffics and black- 
 mails and buys and sells the strength and virtue of her 
 children, nor to discuss the spoils of office. Under its 
 franchise, the private corporation renders a public service; 
 w^hat are its relations to municipal affairs? Tdiree years 
 ago when the boodle council granted a boodle ordinance 
 to a new boodle gas company, and the boodle newspapers 
 and tihe boodle aldermen interested in the old boodle gas 
 trust, which was furnishing gas for the Chicago people at 
 ten times its cost, — when this ordinance was proposed 
 
138 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 there was a great hurrah in the city of Chicago over mu- 
 nicipal misrule, and the effort was made to oust the 
 boodle aldermen by a reform campaign. 
 
 Hyde Park is a prohibition district. Measured by the 
 v/ealth, the stone fronts, the boulevards, the churches, the 
 schools, and its great university, Hyde Park is not ex- 
 celled by any district in Chicago, but Plydie Park, tihe 
 prohibition district, where the good people lived, had a 
 representative in the City Hall who could not have been 
 elected from, the First Ward. Hyde Park was a prohibi- 
 tion district. It had no saloon within its borders, but it 
 was represented in the City Hall by a saloon-keeper. Of 
 course, he could not be expected to be very much in ad- 
 vance of the character of his constitue-nts. Professor 
 Bemis, of the Chicago University, started a campaign to 
 correct the wrong, and to give Hyde Park representation 
 in the City Hall consistent with its elegance and its repu- 
 tation. A public meeting was called. It was widely ad- 
 vertised, the rage of t(he good people was stirred to its 
 uttermost. Plyde-Parkers in the name of good govern- 
 ment, for the sake of a reform administration, swarmed 
 into the building and filled the hall to the fullest possible 
 capacity of — just thirteen dhairs. Why were t(hey not 
 there? Why did they 'have a boodler in the City Hall? 
 The residents of Hyde Park are largely bondholders, 
 stockholders, personally and privately interested in the 
 great corporations. The-s-e corporations must own the 
 City Hall, and the only way to own it is to have a repre- 
 sentative they can buy. Do not understand me as directly 
 attacking the good stockholders of the citv railroads, of 
 ■the gas trust, and of the other corporations, which we 
 have, and which have us. When t(he first franchise was 
 granted the city of Chicago it could not be granted until 
 the proposed corporation was first able to get control in 
 the City Hall, and from that time until this that corpora- 
 tion, and every one which has followed it, has found it 
 necessary in order to be able to manage its own business 
 in its own way to continue to control at the City Hall. 
 When the first framchisie was granted that corporation 
 went into politics, wa? in politics before it was granted. 
 
MUNI<'!i M • 'v* NIK- nil'. 1 j<J 
 
 must remain in politics, and will remain in politics so long 
 as I'he franchises last. 
 
 The demand for two rides for a nickel is directly in 
 th-e line with what all these corporations have been giving 
 us by compelling us to submit to the gold standard; but 
 better than that, it is in the line of bringing these fraur 
 chises into subordination to the public welfare, and when 
 our country studies this question once it will settle tftiis 
 (luestion forever. 
 
 But -Mr. Yerkes insists that 'he must have a five-cent 
 fare in order to pay living wages to his w^orkingmen. 
 What sort of fares would he need to charge in order to 
 s'horten the hours and lengthen the pay sufftcient to make 
 living wages mean an opportunity for the employes to 
 live a man's life? It is the old story of widows and 
 orphans. I presume Mr. Yerkes is himself an orphan, 
 "Wegg was an orphan." 
 
 I know a family in Englewood of seven children. The 
 father is wiuhout employment, a young girl is working in 
 a department store for $3 a week. Of this sum she pays 
 60 cents a week for car fares. The family is living on tihe 
 $2.40 that is left. This 60 cents a Avcek the poor girl must 
 continue to pay in order that the widows and orphans 
 may have divide/nds on stock they own, and in o^rder t>hat 
 the poor workingmen may continue to have starvation 
 wages, whidh Yerkes calls living wages; that is, I suppose, 
 living on the slow starvation plan. These men are already 
 earning better pay than they get, and these companies 
 are payin/g large dividends on watered stock. If it were not 
 for the fact that they so repudiate the truth, so ignore their 
 duties, so wrong their workingmen, they coidd and would 
 pay them better wages now, would shorten their hours, 
 would give them a man's chance, and it could still be 
 done with two rides for a nickel. 
 
 But the last defense of every wrong is that it is a vested 
 right. No man ever talks of vested rights until it is no 
 longer possible to defend an old wrong, and then because 
 the wrong was permitted }esterday it mnst be permitted 
 to-day. The money invested in connection with the 
 wrong of yesterday is vested still, and no right on earth is 
 
1^0 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 sacred when it stands in the way of dividends oai old in- 
 vestments and interest on old bonds. 
 
 A railroad train is rushing across the country, it is 
 covering a thousand miles in its flight. Every switchman, 
 every trackman, every tender of a bridge, through every 
 ;tunnel, down every dizzy mountain side, across every 
 swinging bridge, every brakeman, every conductor, every 
 engioeer, every fireman, every telegraph operator, every 
 moulder in 'tihe s'hops, every workman v/ith his hands 
 stained by toil who touches the train, or opens the way for 
 its passage, carries in 'his hands the life of every man who 
 rides. What right hsiS any man to stand in the midst of 
 •such a combination but to do 'his duty, to fill his place, to 
 help make things go right? But when he comes to 
 wreck and rob, to misplace the switch, to undermane a 
 bridge, to conspire to destroy, he deserves to die. Society 
 is more marvelous than a railway system. The move- 
 ment of the human race involves more than the pass-age of 
 a train. But all the men who walk and speak and strive 
 on all the earth are here to help or hinder, to bless or 
 curse, to build or to destroy. What right has any man in 
 the m'idst of this marvelous thing we call society if he be 
 not here to bless and build? When any document, when 
 any franchise, when any contract of yesterday involves the 
 desolation, involves the poverty of to-day and the desola- 
 tion of to-morrow there are no rights, there can be no 
 rights, vested or unvested. Whatever strikes at t*he wel- 
 fare of the human race is wrong. Whatever protects and 
 extends a wron.sr is a crime. 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. 
 
 In discussing the Department Store I am very anxious 
 that we shall be able to separate ourselves for a little linic 
 from any personal entanglements we may have witili the 
 subject under discussion. It may be that we have a hun- 
 dred people in this hall, every one of whom own depart- 
 ment stores. If that is the case, I hope you will bear m 
 mind that I am not discussing the department store which 
 you particularly happen to own. And the same tiling is 
 true also of the people who own the small stores. If we 
 have two or three hundred people here who are interested 
 in the small stores, I want you to bear in mind that in dis- 
 cussing the department store I am not attacking your 
 store, nor defending it. Only by forgetting these per- 
 sonal interests will it be possible for you to go with me in 
 a careful ^situdy of some of the principles underlying our 
 present troubles, and if possible to discover, if we may, 
 just where we are in a revolution which is leading us some- 
 where, and must land us somewhere. 
 
 I will ask you for a little time to think withme as to 
 some of the things that are true of our capitalistic system. 
 Capitalism does not mean that capital is involved, for 
 there are no cnt-erprises that can be carried oii without 
 capital. Capital is weaMi devoted to the creation of more 
 wealth. Flour out of which you are baking your bread; 
 that is .not capital. It is wealth, but it is not devoted 
 directly to creating more wealth. If you have a suit of 
 clothes which vou are wearing every day, that is wealth, 
 but it is not capit-al, as our tools, and machines, and s'hops, 
 and farm-s are vvhidh are used in creating more wealth. 
 Wheat that is made into bread to be eaten -is not capital. 
 To sow^ it in the ground to bring another harvest makes it 
 
 I4X 
 
142 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 capital. No enlerprlse can go very far without tools and 
 tlic oi;her things airectly iiccussar}- to carry on the eiii-cr- 
 prise. So the capitalistic system does not mean t'iiere is 
 capital Involved. It m'eans that capital is organized and 
 managed in .a certain w^ay. 
 
 I want to call your attention to some of the doctrines 
 which are essentials of capitahsm, and wdioever has any 
 slhare in any business on the capitalistic plan is in some 
 way or other related to some of these doctrines which 
 lie at t'he base of the capitalistic organization. 
 
 The first of these is this: Labor is a thing, a commod- 
 ity, to be bought and sold in the market, like any other ar- 
 ticle in the market. 
 
 Second, That the ruling motive in business is the 
 largest possible return for the smallest possible expendi- 
 ture. 
 
 Third, That in this expenditure nothing is counted as 
 expended except what can be written into the ledger ac- 
 count. 
 
 Fourth, That nothing is to be counted as a return ex- 
 cept what can be made to appear on the other side of the 
 same ledger account. 
 
 I want to say Hhese four things over again, for I want 
 you to have them in mind, and not to forget tliem as I go 
 on with the discussion. Labor is a commodity. The rul- 
 ing motive in business is the largest possible return for the 
 smiallest possible expenditure. In thLs expenditure noth- 
 ing is counted as expended except What can be written, 
 into the ledger account. Nothing is to be counted as a 
 return except w^-hat can be made to appear on l^ie other 
 side of the same ledger account. 
 
 Novv% to all this I object, and, my objections are four, 
 and they run in tihis way. 
 
 First, Labor is not a thin^g. Labor is human life. La- 
 bor is not a commodity. Labor is a living, acting, think- 
 ing, striving man. Labor is not a thing. It is a human 
 life. Labor cannot be bought and «old, except at the same 
 time you buy and sell labor you buy and sell the man who 
 does t!he labor. I want to say that over again. Labor is 
 not a thing, it is .human life. Labor can.not be bought and 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. I43 
 
 sold, except at the same time you buy and sell fhe man 
 whH3 does the labor. 
 
 Second, Business is a kind of labor. It is a part of 
 life. Its motive must not be something apart from life, 
 but it must be the best motive leading to the best life. 
 
 Third, The greatest gifts, the worthiest expenditures 
 cannot be shown on any ledger account. 
 
 Fourt'h, Neither can the best returns for the best hu- 
 man endeavor be made to appear on either side of any 
 ledger. 
 
 I want to read to you a few words from a little book, 
 *'The Product-Sharing Milage." This book is a stand- 
 ard authority with me. I wrote it myself. I want you to 
 listen to some of these paragraphs. Here they are: "In 
 attempting this discussion it is assumed that men are 
 better than things. Things are valuable only as they 
 minister to the wants of men. This is true, whether the 
 thing is an instrument, as an ax or a dollar, or it is' true 
 alike if it be an institution, as a school or a board of trade. 
 It is assumed that all men are men, and that any man is 
 of more value than any thing." Of course, that is a pretty 
 difficult thing to believe. Wq are sacrificing men every 
 hour in order to get more things. What doth it profit a 
 man if he gain all the street railways in Chicago? What 
 doth it profit a man if he gain all the tall buildings in 
 Chicago? \Miat doth it profit a man if he get a long 
 bank account, though any other man should starve for 
 the want of it? What doth it profit a man, no matter how 
 many things he owns and controls — if he lose his own life? 
 What doth it profit a man if in gaining things he sacri- 
 fices, not his own life, but the life of a brother? Here is 
 some more from the book: *Tt is assumed that all men 
 are men, and that any man is of more value than any 
 thing. The only proper test of the value of any social or 
 industrial usage or institution is its effects on men, on all 
 men. If its effects are injurious on the physical and 
 moral well-being of the men who must have to do with 
 it, then it can have no right to exist. That it increases 
 the products of labor and builds great fortunes cannot 
 be considered, if it destroys men. The proudest fortune 
 
144 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 is not so valuable as is the humblest man. No increase 
 in the worth of products can justify a decrease in the 
 v^^orth of men. The purpose of industrial and commer- 
 cial org-anization should not be to produce the greatest 
 wealth for the few, or for the many. It should be to so 
 provide for the physical life as to make possible for all an' 
 intellectual and moral life of the highest order. Leisure 
 and opportunity for study and for social enjoyments are 
 neces'sary for such an intellectual and moral life, and are 
 th.erefore worthier objects, both for the individual and 
 for society, than extensive possessions- or elegant ap- 
 pointments. The merits of the various methods by which 
 the world's work has been undertaken and its products 
 divided must not be determined by a comparison of the 
 number of bushelsi, yards, or pounds' produced by each, 
 but solely by their effects on all the men who have borne 
 the burdens under them." 
 
 It is with this standard in mind that we must study 
 the g^reat economic problems. It is measured up against 
 this ideal that the railway, the private corporation render- 
 ing a public service, the gold standard, bimetallism, the 
 tariff, the school system, every other institution must 
 stand or fall. If it contributes to giving us a wiser, better, 
 truer, stronger, nobler human life, then it may stay. 
 .Otherwise, it has- no right to be. 
 
 I want you to place the department store down in the 
 midst of these considerations, and by this line of thought 
 determine whether it shall be with us and remain with 
 us, or whether we shall derive out of it something better 
 that shall be desirable, or shall we try to destroy it and 
 attempt to turn back to something we did have, but which 
 is now so speedily passing away. 
 
 The department store involves the whole question of 
 labor-saving machinery. If you will stop but for a mo- 
 ment and raise the question of whether labor-saving ma- 
 chinery is a blessing or a curs/e, if you will satisfy your- 
 selves on that question, you will have gotten very closely 
 to the kernel of this whole controversy about the depart- 
 ment store. 
 
 Years ago the time was when men made their living 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. I45 
 
 by main strength, by which we mean mainly by strength. 
 The tools of industry were simple, inexpensive, rude. 
 Each man sowed in his own field with his own hands, 
 and gathered with the sickle his own harvest, threshed it 
 with his own flail, winnowed it in his own fan, and ground 
 it with his own hand mill, baked it in his own oven, and 
 consum-ed it with his own family. So in the same way 
 with regard to food, and fuel, and shelter, and clothing. 
 All of the conveniences and comforts of life that men were 
 permitted to possess and to enjoy were produced with 
 the simplest and the rudest kind of machinerj- and the 
 hardest and most non-productive kind of toil. 
 
 But by and by the rude tool grew into a machine. 
 By and by that division of each man among a dozen em- 
 ployments was changed for the division of each employ- 
 ment among a hundred men. Instead of the same man 
 raising the calf, making shoes out of his skin and wear- 
 ing out the shoes on his own feet, it took fifty-seven men 
 to make the shoes after the skin was off the calf and had 
 passed the tannery. The dividing of the man up among 
 a dozen different employments was succeeded by dividing 
 each employment among a hundred men; the result was 
 that each man working at one simple thing with a ma- 
 chin-e doing most of the work required a great deal of 
 skill on the part of the man who made the machine, but 
 g:ave us a condition where child labor, and woman's la- 
 bor, and the cheapest labor, and the most inefficient labor, 
 could stand by the side of the machine and turn a crank, 
 and leave in the rear most skilled members of society. 
 
 When the machine came into existence along the line 
 of manufactures capitalism came into existen<:e at the 
 same time. In the begimiing a man owned his raw mate- 
 rials, owned his tools, owned his shop, owned himself, 
 used his raw materials with his own tools and labor to 
 produce the things he would use in his own family. There 
 was capital in the tools, but there was no capitalist in 
 control of the tools separate from the laborer. There 
 was no capitalism. There was no definite class of men 
 getting dividends from the ownership of the tools. The 
 man who owned the tools used the tools, and the man who 
 
146 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 produced the product him&elf us-ed the product. But 
 when the machine canine, instead of one man owning all 
 the m-achines, required for his employment, it took a 
 dozen men to own or operate one machine. No one 
 worker could hope to be an owner. Each machine not 
 only becam'e so expensive no single worker could buy it, 
 but m'ost machines w^ere so constructed that no one man- 
 could operate them. One man came to own the 
 machinery, and another company of men to do 
 the work. They w^ere paid wages, and surrendered 
 any claim on the product. The man who owned the ma- 
 chine had full authority to say whether the machine 
 should work or not, and so could say whether the laborer 
 should work or not. And thus he who owned the ma- 
 chine owned the labor, owned the laborer. 
 
 When we turned in on the line of putting the big ma- 
 chines together very soon we struck the big shop. As soon 
 as the great factory town commenced to grow, the coun- 
 try village commenced to disappear. Mr. Smalley said, 
 "The country village has practically disappeared." The 
 old manufacturing center out on the country side, with 
 the shop over there, the small store over there, the har- 
 ness shop over there, vv^ith all these things- gathered iu' a 
 single village, has disappeared and gone. Each is va- 
 cated and deserted, the shingles are ofif the old house, 
 and the grass is growing in the front yard. Once men, 
 and women, and children lived, and had their hopes, and 
 fears, and ambitions-, and attachmients out in the little 
 town, but the little town has gone, the small employment 
 is gone, the father is an employe in the shop when the 
 shop runs, and he tramps, waiting for the return of pros- 
 perity, when the shop shuts down. 
 
 You small mierchants are having your business closed 
 out n-ow, but the toiler in manufacturing enterprises has 
 been drinking to its dregs the same bitter draught that 
 is being crowded down your throat for fifty years. This 
 is the point. The small shop has been doomed, and the 
 small manufacturer has been destroyed. What destroyed 
 him? Labor-saving machinery. Do not tell any one I am 
 opposed to labor-saving machinery. Simply because I 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. I47 
 
 am opposed to using gas to strangle sleepers with, do not 
 say I am opposed to the proper use of gas. I am op- 
 posed to using machinery, simple or complex, great or 
 small, marvelous or rude, for the purpos-e of sacrificino- 
 the m-terests of my fellow men. These men out in the 
 country lost their employm-ent, an<i then they had to be- 
 come employes in the great shops. And when- they went 
 there they said, "We can no longer control the tools The 
 sh.op belongs to another man." They said, "The prod- 
 ucts of our labor belong to another company of men. 
 Ihere is no way by which we can have any share in the 
 products of human toil except by the purchasing power 
 of our wages. Our share in what our labor produces 
 must be measured by what our wages can buy." They 
 said, "There is a way out for us yet. We will combine 
 and organize a trades union, and into that trades union 
 we will get all the men who are doing this kind of labor. 
 We will agree that either a shop must shut up, or the 
 wages must go up." They organized a union, and the 
 great factory that had destroyed the small factory, that 
 had taken the worker out of the small shop, said,' "You 
 must not interfere with our rights." What happened? 
 Every small farmer, and small merchant, every big farmer 
 and every big merchant, took sides with the big manu- 
 facturer and helped to make war on the mechanic whose 
 &mall private shop capitalism had destroyed. 
 
 My brother, if you have a little store some place in 
 Chicago I do not want you to be ofifended. I onlv want 
 you to remember that you have been liattering yourself 
 for years that you are a capitalist, and that your interests 
 lie on the side of the great corporations. And whenever 
 there has been a strike you have said, "We capitalists will 
 not submit to it." \\1iencver a new labor organization 
 has been established you have said, "We capitalists can- 
 not endure this." Whenever Armour, and Pullman, and 
 Rockefeller, and Mark Hanna have been oppressing the 
 men who were helpless without the tools they controlled 
 you have parted your hair in the middle, waxed your mus- 
 tache, come home from your rented store, with its stock 
 bought on thirty days' time, and sat on the doorsteps 
 
14^ EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 of your rented house, and said to every pass'er-by, "We 
 capitalists, me and Armour, we capitalists will not allow 
 our interests to be mt'erfered with." 
 
 When the railway employes said, "You are giving us 
 an extra hazardous life, you are killing more of our mem- 
 bers every year than were slaughtered in the midst of the 
 battle-fields of the Civil War, and while you send us out 
 into the danger, send us out into the night, send us out 
 into the daylight, and out into the sunshine, and out into 
 the storm, you must send us there so rewarded that some 
 fair portion of the wealth that our labor makes for the 
 welfare of all shall com'e back to us im the shape of the 
 purchasing power of our wages." W^hen the railway men 
 said, "We will strike," you replied, "Call out the troops. 
 Scatter the ugly crowd. Turn loose the gatlimg guns, 
 and let the niian' who interferes with business get out of 
 the way." I am only calling your attention to what you 
 have been saying, that is all. But over here onthe south- 
 west side of Chicago the other night was a meeting of a 
 business men's association, gathered together in confer- 
 ence with representatives of the trades unions. They 
 asked the trades unions to combine with them against the 
 department store. The trades unions replied, "Will you 
 enter v/ith us into a mutual arranjgem<ent that if we will 
 combine with you to fight the department' store, you will 
 join with us to sell only the products of union labor?" 
 And the motion was niade to that efifect and the president 
 would not put it. There was a disput/e over it, and finally 
 they got the motion before the house. They called the 
 roll of two hundred names of the small merchants of the 
 southwest portion of Chicago, and out of two hundred 
 names that were called, one hundred and eighty-five of 
 them sat quietly and refused to vote either way. Fifteen 
 people voted for the resolution. The president said, "This 
 seems, after all, to be a meeting of trades unionists." 
 These small merchants are seeing their business taken) 
 away from them. Exactly the same processes that de- 
 stroyed the small shop and built the great factory and 
 made the trades unions, the same processes that left the 
 country village deserted and desolate, are bringing" ruin 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. I49 
 
 to the small stores of the great cities and towns. They 
 are to be left vacant, deserted and desolate. 
 
 It was labor-saving machinery that made the trades 
 unions possible. It was labor-saving niachin'CTy that de- 
 stroyed the old small shop. It is labor-saving machinery, 
 pure and simple, that makes the department store resist- 
 less in its onslaught on the small dealer. When labor- 
 saving machinery destroyed the small shop and the small 
 worker robbed of his tools went on a strike, you said, 
 "Give him the gatling gun." What shall we give you, 
 now that the department store is destroying your business, 
 if you grow restless while you starve? 
 
 I am a wea^-er working at a loom ; I can weave tliree 
 yards of cloth in a day ; I can weave eighteen yards in six 
 days. Fifty years have gone by, and I am a new woman 
 made over once more, and am a weaver still. Fifty years' 
 ago I eould weave eighteen yards of cloth in a week, now 
 on the most recently invented looms I can) weave four 
 thousand and eight hundred yards in the same time. By 
 my self employment in my little shop I could produce 
 eighteen yards of cloth in a week, but if I am to be a 
 weaver in the midst of the roar and rattle of the machiner}' 
 in the great shops where the average product of each 
 worker shall be four thousand eight hundred yards in one 
 week, then I must be in the midst of a great shop. I 
 must be a member of a great organization. The great 
 organization with a great capital, with a large number of 
 laborers under a single roof, makes a single laborer pro- 
 duce four thousand eight hundred yards of cloth now, 
 where the same laborer fifty years ago was able to pro- 
 duce only eighteen. How can the eighteen- yard weaver 
 stand up in the face of the factory so equipped and or- 
 ganized that it produces for each toiler four thousand 
 eight hundred yards in the same time? She cannot do it. 
 
 Is there the same kind of organization connected with 
 the department store? Yes. In order to have a store 
 you must have a place to put your goods. In Chicago, 
 we will say, there are ten thousand merchants. Figure 
 your rents in any way you can, the rents paid by the 
 small dealers in Chicago for any single year would build 
 
130 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 as big a departmient store as' there is' im the city. The 
 secret of the factory is in its marvelous economy. The 
 secret of the departm^ent store is in itS' marvelous econ- 
 omy. There is not a single out-of-the-way-back-alley 
 store in Chicago which is not paying a heavier rent in/ 
 proportion to its business than any department store in 
 the city. 
 
 Listen! The small weaver pushed her loom this way, 
 sent her shuttle through this way, brought it back again, 
 beat the web and woof together with every thread put 
 through, and was able to weave eighteen yards of cloth 
 in ooe week. But you come to the factory where a woman 
 stands in the midst of sixteen looms making revolutions 
 so fast you cannot count them. She just stands there 
 watching to see if a thread breaks, which she ties. The 
 combination of machinery that spreads one woman's 
 work over sixteen automatic looms and sets her there 
 simply to watch for a broken thread as conipared with 
 the one worker on the one machine doing all the work 
 herself makes the difference between the large product 
 and the small. 
 
 Take another step. Not only is that true in the saving 
 of rents, but in advertising. You are living in the twenty- 
 third precinct of the nine hundred thirty-second ward. 
 You have a local paper out there that very few of your 
 neighbors read. If you advertise in it, the rates are high, 
 and but few will read it. If you were to advertise in the 
 great dailies, take any of these large papers with a hun- 
 dred thousand circulation; suppose your little store in 
 the out-of-the-way corner of the city should advertise 
 in it. There is no way by which the people could get 
 where you are, and when they got there they could not 
 buy what they wanted. A department store can put a 
 page in any daily paper, and its advertising in proportion 
 to the business that is reached is not the smallest fraction 
 as compared with the out-of-the-way store that simply 
 sends a boy about the streets distributing hand bills. 
 
 Again, the man who runs a business of his own must 
 be responsible. He must know how to buy, he must 
 know what to buy. He must have the good will of the 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. 15I 
 
 people. He must know how to steer clear of bad bills. 
 What about the department store? One buyer, or one 
 buyer in a group of departments', answers* for th-em all. 
 You, buy a little of this, and a little of the other. They 
 go to the manufacturer and buy all he has. As to buying, 
 it is absolutely impossible for the small dealer to com- 
 ]^are at all with the advantages of the great store, with 
 its trained buyers wdth no other duties than simply to 
 keep track of the m'arkets. 
 
 Again, in the matter of waiting on the customers. In 
 the small store the man who is able to buy must put in 
 his time doing up small bundles. The man who is able 
 to carry the responsibility of a great business must waste 
 his ene'rgies doing the tasks of an errand boy. There is 
 TiO possibility of dividmg the business of a man when 
 there is only one man in the business. In the department 
 store one man trained as a buyer buys for a hundred sales- 
 men. The hundred salesmen, incapable of doing the 
 work of a buyer, and only able to read the tag that is on 
 the goods — that is all they need to know — and with nim- 
 ble fingers be able to tie up the goods, and reach over and 
 come back again, and turn them over and turn back, and 
 reach over and come back some more, and then reach 
 over and come back some more — they do not even need 
 to know how to do up a bundle. They send the goods 
 around to a man who makes up the bundles. They keep 
 him out of sight. He just stands there and wraps, and 
 wraps, and wraps — you see how^ it works. 
 
 Go through the' business in ever}- line; there is not 
 one single place where the economies of business are not 
 all on the side of the department store. 
 
 The customers of the small store are all your neigh- 
 bors and friends. You meet them in various places. You 
 belong to the same club. One of them comes around 
 and asks you to loan him some goods until he can pay 
 for them. You will either go out of business with that 
 man, or you will acconmiodate him. If you do, you wih 
 go out of business. If you do not you will go out. There 
 is no question about it' There are any number of people 
 that are buving of their local merchant when thev want 
 
152 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS 
 
 credit, and are buying down town when they have cash. 
 That is the situation. A large estabHshniient can &ell 
 cheaply, and the large establishni'ent will get the cash, 
 aiTsd you will get the credit if you get anything. You are 
 broken any way. Think of a man going down to a de^ 
 partment store and asking for a dollar's worth of sugar 
 on time. But the credit business itself is' now in the de- 
 partment store when it is worth having at all. There it 
 is. systematized. You are selling goodsi; you have sugar, 
 potatoes, soap, vinegar and tea for sale. You are selling 
 a little of this, and a little of that, and among other things', 
 a man com'es' in and asks you to loan him an account. 
 You loam him the account because if you do not, by and 
 by you will lose your trade, lose your business, and you 
 guess whether he will pay you and act on the guess. But 
 a man goesi over to a department store where credit is 
 given and as'ks for credit. He is referred to the credit 
 man. The credit man has every means of informing him- 
 self regarding the applicant. He takes' his references. 
 He learns where he i& employed. He knows what his 
 incom'C is, and when it reaches' him'. He has at his dis- 
 posal a constable, a justice, and am auctioneer. He 
 knows how to learn all about you, how to keep track of 
 you all the timie, and how to make you pay him if you 
 are able to do so, and he will not give you credit if you 
 are not able to do so. The risks of credit are simply or- 
 ganized out of the credit business. The cost of the or- 
 ganization is added to the price of the goods, and the trade 
 goes merrily on. A single small dealer cannot organize 
 credit. A single small dealer cannot organize a cash busi- 
 ness. A single small dealer cannot save on nents. He 
 must put the best ability that money will buy for him to 
 doing the simplest work that the poorest paid laborer 
 will perform just as well. The triumph of the department 
 store is the triumph of organization, and organization is 
 machinery. It is the problem of labor-saving machinery 
 over again. 
 
 But the wrongs of the deparbm^'nt . store are not in 
 the fact that its more perfect organization makes the de^ 
 strurtioiT of the sm'all shop certain. Tt is that its organiza- 
 
THli DEPARTMEl^T STORE. 1^3 
 
 lion/ is of such a nature that it not omly dcs'troys the small 
 shop outside, but ruins the new workers within^ its walls 
 
 as well. 
 
 Joseph Cook has said a great many foolish thui'gs, 
 1)ut he once said, "That a few years n:ore of the New En- 
 gland factory system would put Lazarus and Dives into 
 New England, and Lazarus would be outside of Dives' 
 gate and his body would be covered with sores.' That, 
 too, is the curse of the department store. 
 
 Fifty years ago the shoemaker lived with his family 
 about him. He had his children, hisi home, his father and 
 mother,.all the associations and benefits and blessings of 
 social and domestic life w^ere his. 
 
 A printer and publisher worked im his owm shop, and 
 circulated his information among his own friends. There 
 is nothing more pitiful in 'all the history of the human 
 race than the terrible way in which the workers have been 
 injured, their personal habitS' made vicious, true manhood 
 degraded, and damned, and ruined by this damnable fac- 
 tory svstem, that buys a man for the smallest wages and 
 works' him for the largest returns, and gives him the gar- 
 ret and the cellar for his home. It overw^orks him when 
 h-e works, and starves him w-hen he doesn't w^ork. It 
 leaves him here to-day. there to-morrow, and somewhere 
 else the next dav. The factory system which goes into 
 the market and buys labor for the smallest price that the 
 most unfortunate man will consenti to take, is putting a 
 premium on misfortune. It takes the most helpless man. 
 and turns adrift the man with a bank account until the 
 bank account is gone, and he begs, and tramps, and like 
 the other, is helpless, too. There is nothing in the long 
 line of the industrial war of the world that is more terrible 
 than the bad habits, bad life, bad character, of these help- 
 less workers. But how can the manufacturing working- 
 man be anything else? Think of the impossibility of his 
 earning a home that he may stay where his children ami 
 his grandchildren are to stay after him, that the associa- 
 tions of his childhood may be the associations of his 
 manhood. That the generation behind him and the gen- 
 eration after him may join hands to touch the springs 
 
154 EVOLUTIONARY I'OLITICS. 
 
 of the highest Hie to his last hour. But the manufacturing 
 laborer has his hon^e here to-day, and is there to-morrow. 
 How many of the printers, bricklayers, carpenters, how 
 many of the nuen ini the trades have lived in many, many 
 different towns! A railroad employe builds a little house, 
 gets it half paid for, (when he has an assignment a hun- 
 dred miles- away, and becomes^ a stranger among stran- 
 gers once more. The pitiless- destruction of the noblest 
 sentiments and the holiest ambitions that a toiler ever 
 ■■ad in his heart, by the system under which he toils that 
 bu3^'s a man for the cheapest price he can be bought for 
 and grinds the life out of him for the largest returns that 
 can be m'easured in dollars, that system* is responsible for 
 ]'iis ruini. That is capitalism. That is the system of the 
 factory town. That is the system of the departm-ent store. 
 I shall speak slowly, but I shall speak in earnest. I stand ' 
 here this, afternooni and declare that of all the brothels 
 that have misled girls', of all the infamies that have black- 
 ened humian character, of all the sources that have helped 
 to damn the human race, there has been no power with ' 
 a grip more strong and a heart more pitiless than the de- 
 partment store. 
 
 You lived in your own store. The store room was 
 below, and bhe family room was upstairs. From each 
 day's business you gathered in the profits w^ith which you 
 provided your daily bread. The children came and went, 
 the high school was a little w^ay ofif, the boys and girls 
 grew to strength, and responsibility. Now your store 
 room is vacant; your business' has gone. You settled by 
 compromise when the sherifif took possession of your 
 place. You came to the departnuent store and asked for a 
 job. They did not have anything that so expensive a 
 man as you could undertake to do. You went on the 
 street to look for employmenit somewhere else, and your 
 little boy a dozen years old got a job in the department 
 store. Your little girl got a job in the department store, 
 and they together come and go under the poisoned breath 
 of a commercial life which measures their strength, their 
 labor, their very virtue by the dollars which are necessary 
 to buy them; a life which knows no value in your children 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. 
 
 155 
 
 which money cannot buy when, it is wanted, or pay for 
 when it is lost. 
 
 Now, what shall we do about it? What shall we do 
 about it? Listen a minrute! I will speak in defense of 
 the trades unions' as long as I have breath to speak. I will 
 speak in defens-e of the small dealer as against the depart- 
 ment store as long as I hav€ breath to speak for him. 
 Listen further! The trades union has been fighting a 
 losing battle for fifty years. Listen! There is no legis- 
 lation that can be put upon the statutes; there are\o 
 courts that can be established; there are no refonn ad- 
 ministrations that can be put in power that shall be able 
 to turn back the tide which has destroyed the small mver- 
 chant and put the great store in his place. 1 do not say 
 that because I love the department store. I do not say 
 what I have said about trades unions because I am sidinfg 
 with the great manufacturer. I am saying it because I 
 want the small merchant to know the truth, and to know 
 it all. I will stand here to-day, and I say it deliberately, 
 to the mam who feels his business going,^ and going, and 
 going, and sees his customers- going to the department 
 store, you have no worse enemy than the man who comes 
 and proposes to tax the little money you have left to or- 
 ganize an army to fight the department store, for if he 
 was a student of this question he would know that that 
 warfare is impossible of victory. 
 
 I am not opposed to labor-saving machiner}- , whether 
 it shows itself in a great steel plant, or shows itself in a 
 great department store. When I first studied this ques- 
 tion, some ten years ago, it was in Philadelphia. I went 
 to Philadelphia, and, like other visitors, I went to the 
 park, I went to Benjamin Franklin's tomb, to Independ- 
 ence Hall, and I went to John Wanamaker's. I walked 
 through the open space in John Wanamaker's great store. 
 I went up the stories piled one above the other. I looked 
 over the arrangement of the different lines of business. I 
 tried to make some inquiry with regard to the processes 
 by which John \\'anamaker had become so strong. I 
 learned that side by side with Wanamaker's agents who 
 had built that great establishment, and filled it with goods 
 
156 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 and organized, under his management, the great company 
 of toilers, there was another company of men now penni- 
 less ; that every brick in' the walls of that great structure, 
 every appointment along every one of its aisles, every 
 pile of goods that stood there, was met with the tears 
 of the broken-hearted competitors who had beetii ruined 
 in their business to make John Wanamaker. I passed 
 through, and around, and through again, and stood at 
 the door wondering at the throngs as they would come 
 and go. I went from there to Brooklyn, and New York, 
 and everywhere I was^ told by the meni of whom I made 
 inquiry that these great stores, that stood story upon, 
 story up into the sky and down into the soil, and were 
 sending out their advertising far and near, bringing the 
 buyers from all portions' of the city and country, were 
 simply building their great business by taking it away 
 from the small dealers everywhere. And yet absolutely 
 it all involves the saving of labor. And whatsoever will 
 save one hour of toil, w^iatsoever will make one burdem 
 lighter, whatsoever will make human comfort demand 
 less of human endurance, that is a good thing, and that 
 is to be welconned. 
 
 The McCormick reaper has come, the Deering binder 
 is here. Improved machinery in agriculture has' come, 
 and it has come to stay. The machine by which typeset- 
 ting has turned the typesetter out of a job has come to 
 stay. It has resulted in destroying the interests of the 
 worker. It is not the fault of the McCormick reaper. 
 It is not the fault of electricity. It is not the fault of the 
 invention. It is the fault of the people. We do not know 
 how to use these modern devices, and we use them for 
 our destruction. The city of Chicago sends, water through 
 its own water mains' for the refreshment of its own peo- 
 ple. The people will do the wisest thing when they take 
 possession of their own streets and upon them place their 
 own tracks, and man them with their own employes, but 
 for the mutual and equal benefit of every one of us, not 
 for the special private profit of any share of us'. 
 
 Ruin has come to the small shop. The farmer and 
 merchant are going to fall in line. They will have visited 
 
THE DEPARTMENT STORE. 157 
 
 on them the same desolation and ruin that has come to 
 the small manufacturer, or they will combine with the 
 small manufacturer, and instead of trying to destroy the 
 department store, will, by the united strength of the peo- 
 ple, build a public market for the benefit of us all, larger, 
 and stronger, and better than the department store, and 
 with which the department store can never compete. 
 
 The only way to beat the private monopoly in the 
 street railways is' for the public to go into the business. 
 The only way to prevent monopoly in the great factory is 
 for the public to go into the business. The public shop 
 where everv man may toil, not for a share, but for all of 
 the products of his labor, will free forever the laborer from 
 the oppression of the private employer. The only way 
 for the small merchant to beat the department store is 
 to stop trying to save himself while he consents to the 
 ruin of the manufacturing workingman and the farm-er. 
 Let it be said, once for all, ther-e is absolutely no way by 
 which you can save yourself and not at the same time help 
 to save others. Work on, if you will, trying to build your 
 little business for the profit of your own, and both you 
 and yours must come to rliin. Stop tn'ing to kill the de- 
 partment store so that you again can make your neigh- 
 bors pav you more for inf-erior goods to the injury of your 
 neighbor' and for vour selfish profit. Join rather in a 
 tight for a public market greater, better, stronger than 
 the department store itself, but in which the benefit shall 
 he mutual and equal for every one of us. 
 
 The private corporation cannot stand when the public 
 its.elf will go into the street railway business. The private 
 factory cannot endure the competition of the public shop. 
 The department store cannot, neither can your little store, 
 stand for an hour in the face of a public market. \\ hich 
 will you do, join in the effort for the co-operative organi- 
 zation of the market, or ha\'% the sheriff take charge of 
 your business? 
 
 Capitalism declares that labor is a thing, a commodity. 
 Co-operation in-sists that the laborer is a man, and that 
 the whole industrial question is a problem of persons, not 
 a question of things. Capitalism thrives on ignorance, 
 
158 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 profits most from those most easily deceived. Co-opera- 
 tion depends on intelligence, can. only interest those who 
 can understand. Capitalism counts nothing as lost or 
 gained which does not appear on its ledger. Co-opera- 
 tion knows that even the ledger, as all things else, de- 
 pends on intellectual and social forces which ledgers can^ 
 not count and dollars cannot buy. Capitalism ruins in 
 mind or heart or purse whoever comes under its power. 
 But co-operative enterprises are winning their way. The 
 co-operative societies of Great Britain are the most mim.er- 
 ous and the most prosperous retailers in the realm. The 
 public market, or the co-operative store, mutual for all 
 who will join in its benefits, the department store cannot 
 destroy. And in these stores young children will not be 
 ofifered to the Moloch of Greed, but full-grown and com- 
 petent men will be doing a man's work for a man's share 
 in the products of his labor. 
 
 David Swing said a little while before he died, with 
 music that is in strange discord with the tin whistle 
 which blows itself on his deserted platform, David Swing 
 said a little while before his death, "The time is coming, 
 and coming soon, when all men will dig their living out 
 of the ground, or they will lie down^ under the ground." 
 I have this to say to the small merchant, and the small 
 farmer, and the small manufacturer: Political economists 
 have taught us all too long that the motive of industry 
 should be private gain. Political economists have misled 
 the thought and heart of manhood too many years al- 
 ready. For whatever institution is to exist here is to be 
 here because it can bless, and not because it will curse. 
 Because it will give us truer, stronger, purer, better men 
 than can be gotten any other way. Whatever institution 
 stands across the pathway of the hig-hest comfort, of the 
 most splendid achievements for society must move out 
 and get out and stay out, for by the might of the eternal 
 God who made us, the earth is His, and the fullness there- 
 of, and v/e will have it for the benefit of all His children. 
 The weakest and the strongest shall share and share alike 
 at the fountain of His bounties. 
 
EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS AND INDUS- 
 TRIAL BONDAGE. 
 
 Educational endowments are funds given to the 
 schools not for the purpose of paying current expenses, 
 the construction of buildings, or for providing the ap- 
 paratus. Endowments are fimds given to the schools the 
 interest on which, only, is to be used for the payment of 
 current expenses, such as teachers' salaries, fuel and the 
 like. It is the purpose of this hour's discussion to call at- 
 tention to the relation of these funds to the question of the 
 higher education, but especially their relations to the in- 
 dustrial classes, who by their poverty are excluded from 
 the advantages of the schools, and who by the system of 
 endowments are required, through payments of interest 
 on college funds, to support the schools, of the benefits of 
 which they can have no share. 
 
 I am ready to admit that when these endowments were 
 first undertaken, say a thousand years ago, there were 
 good reasons, inherent in the industrial situation, for 
 their existence. It was then very difficult to make a liv- 
 ing. I mean, the processes by which the necessities of 
 life were provided w^ere difificult, and the hours of labor 
 necessary to provide for one's comfortable existence were 
 necessarily long and toilsome. Then a woman working 
 twelve hours a day could weave but eighteen yards of 
 cloth in a week. The soil was turned with a wooden plow, 
 or more frequently a spade. The planting, cultivating 
 and harvesting was all done with the rudest tools. The 
 grain was gathered with a sickle, it was threshed with a 
 flail, it was winnowed with a fan, it was ground with a 
 hand mill. A fairly comfortable provision for one's phy- 
 sical existence involved a heavy task upon his physical 
 
 IS9 
 
l6o EVOLUtiONARV POLITICS. 
 
 endurance. If the higher education was to be undertaken,, 
 if the benefits to society to be secured by at least a por- 
 tion of the community having the opportunities for study 
 were to be obtained, then the leisure of the few could 
 only be provided by the longer hours of labor for the 
 many. 
 
 But there was another reason more potent, and for 
 which no generous impulse can find a possible apology. 
 When the schools were established, when the ancient uni- 
 versity, which has grown to be a modern university, first 
 came into being, the feudal system was in force. When 
 the parish school, or the cathedral school grew into an in- 
 stitution for the higher learning there were the castle, the 
 drawbridge, the knight errant, the arrogance of the no- 
 bility, the humiliation of the toiler. Toil was the badge 
 of submission, the mark of degradation, while the pro- 
 fession of the warrior, the function of government, the 
 right to be at leisure, carried with it the privileges of learn- 
 ing. Now, it occasionally happened in those days, as 
 now, that when the Lord put a genius to living in the 
 world he did not always make a genius out of some mem- 
 ber of the wealthy or the privileged classes. These en- 
 dowments of genius born out of the heart of the Eternal 
 struck the hovel of the peasant, and through the ancient 
 church even the lowly were sometimes the beneficiaries of 
 learning. But if the power to see the true, and the beauti- 
 ful, and the good, and to make these speak in verse, in 
 philosophy, and to live in canvas had been given to the 
 poor out of the hand of his Maker, if God made him a 
 genius society, as soon as its stupid intelligence could 
 make the discovery, proceeded to make him a gentleman. 
 In other words, in days of old, as sometimes happens now, 
 the possessor of wealth arrogated to himself not only the 
 earth, but insisted upon a first claim on the genius which 
 could understand its mysteries and reveal its secrets. The 
 ancient gentleman lived by toil, but like the modern gen- 
 tleman, he lived not by his own toil, but by the toil of 
 others. If the genius born in a hoyel was to rank with the 
 aristocrat who claimed for himself not only the products 
 of his brother's toil, but the fruits of his brother's gen*'^s, 
 
EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. l6l 
 
 then he too must be provided an opportunity to Hve with 
 his hands unstained by toil. Hence the endowment, first, 
 in order that leisure for learning might be possible, and 
 secondly, in order that the disgrace of labor might not at- 
 tach to the scholar who was to be the associate of the 
 despoiler of labor. Thus I believe that the endowments 
 came to be for a mixture of reasons, the one worthy and 
 the other unworthy. 
 
 But whatever services the endowment may have ren- 
 dered in the past, it is no longer necessary, neither is it de- 
 sirable. I do not believe the endowment is now necessary 
 to provide leisure for a portion of us by prolonging the 
 hours of toil for the balance of us, because leisure is now 
 within the easy reach of all of us. The endowment could 
 never be justified except that the light of learning could 
 not come except the toiler sacrifice that the student might 
 study. But it is no longer necessary for one man to sac- 
 rifice the intellectual life which is the right of all in order 
 that another may follow a scholarly career. Each man of 
 us, if he will, may now produce his living with a few 
 hours of labor, and w*e may every one of us belong to the 
 leisure classes, not because we live from the products of 
 our overworked brothers, but because providing for our- 
 selves we may still have long hours of leisure, which 
 wise men will devote to intellectual and social purposes. 
 Never in the history of the world was it so easy to produce 
 a living as now. I believe it is also true that it has rarely 
 been so hard to get the living after it was produced. But 
 the getting of what we produce is no fault of productive 
 processes, it is the fault of distribution. Endowments 
 will not help the unjust and faulty system by which we 
 undertake to get our living after our toil has produced it. 
 The remedy is not more endowments, it is in better or- 
 ganization. In the olden time a weaver wove eighteen 
 yards of cloth in a week. Now she weaves two thousand, 
 and with new machinery not yet in place, which it is said 
 will displace one-half of all the weavers in the country, a 
 single weaver may produce in a single week four thousand 
 eight hundred yards of cloth. The average of wheat pro- 
 duction for the workers employed on the great farms 
 
1 62 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 makes a single worker in a single summer produce wheat 
 enough, which, if ground into flour and baked into bread, 
 would furni*sh bread for a family of five people for a 
 period of one hundred and fifty years. Why should we go 
 ragged and hungry when it is so easy to produce food and 
 clothing? Why should one man toil to feed and clothe 
 another when the processes of production are so simple, 
 so easy, so fruitful? Why not each man as a factor in a 
 more perfect organization of industry first feed himself, 
 clothe himself, and then let the others who have been rid- 
 ing on his back, despoiling him of the products of his la- 
 bor, take a turn at feeding and clothing themselves also? 
 Then no endowments will be necessary. 
 
 But the more serious indictment is not that these en- 
 dov;ments can be disposed of, but that they ought to be 
 disposed of, that their presence and their influence is di- 
 rectly pernicious. These endowments still encourage the 
 vulgarity of wealth in its attempt to monopolize learning, 
 to claim for the well-to-do, only, the advantages of high 
 thinking and worthy living. The Omaha bishop who re- 
 cently declared that the source of our discontent was in 
 the over-education of the farmers' boys is a fair illustra- 
 tion. He said the farmers' boys were becoming ambitious 
 to be gentlemen, while they ought to be toilers, ought to 
 be left on the farm, to be suited with the lot to which God 
 had called them. The new civilization gives a new mean- 
 ing to the old term gentleman. The complaint is not be- 
 cause the farmers' boys are too anxious to cease toil in 
 order that they may be gentlemen. It is because the bishop 
 and his associates err in their arrogant and unseemly as- 
 sumption that to be learned means to be idle, to be intelli- 
 gent means to be a robber, to know something means to 
 do nothing. This idea of the dignity of fortunate in- 
 dolence and the wrong of ambitious poverty is insepara- 
 bly connected with the spirit that lives and breathes in the 
 atmosphere of educational endowments. The dignity of 
 labor demands that all shall toil, that the wisest and the 
 best, "the greatest of all shall be the servant of all." To 
 be idle must cease to be the badge of learning. To be in- 
 dustrious must become the mark of a gentleman. In- 
 
EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 163 
 
 dolence for men or women, for any human life, is discred- 
 itable. No gentleman should consent that another shall 
 do ior him the toilsome and disagreeable things incident 
 to his living on God's earth and in the midst of his Fath- 
 er's children. 
 
 Again, these endowments are not desirable, because 
 they make the opportunity to teach at all in the great in- 
 stitutions of learning conditioned on keeping the peace 
 with the enemies of society. The real enemies of society 
 are not the ill-formed, ragged, homeless people. They 
 are not even the corporations, the trusts, and combines, 
 whose existence necessarily involves the hungry and rag- 
 ged multitude. The real enemies of society are forces 
 which have outgrown any occasion for their existence. 
 Forces which make the trust and the combination inevita- 
 ble, and which make the harvest of disaster as certain as is 
 the coming of the seasons. These enemies of society 
 through forms which the laws justifv, with authorities 
 which the courts enforce, organize their life, manage their 
 affairs for the purpose of securing through stocks or 
 bonds or mortgages what the old slave svstem secured 
 through the stinging lash. The old slave 'system fed its 
 victim while he was able to toil, and then sometimes turn- 
 ed him out tQ die. But this modern svstem anticipates the 
 infirmities of age, and cuts off the toiler from the oppor- 
 tunity of living in the midst of his years. How shall an 
 educational institution realize on farm mortgages and 
 not justify the whole system by which the mortgage shark, 
 the bondholder, and the oppressor— not that these men 
 are bad, but that the system is infamous— how shall the 
 educational institution be itself a leech on the bodv politic, 
 and at the same time strive in any wav or to any deg'-ee 
 to relieve society from the forces which are sappin^r it^life 
 blood? 
 
 Under this endowment system wisdom must make its 
 peace with greed. Genius must harness itself to plunder 
 The interests of the Rockefellers who give the endow- 
 ments and the Harpers who realize on the investments are 
 one. Great learning in the schools and great infamy in 
 the market join hands. And when the teacher refuses to 
 
164 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 give his hand he can no longer take, even if forgetting his 
 self-respect he were willing to take, the fruits of commer- 
 cial plunder. As a result of the conditions under which 
 instruction is given on economic topics in this country no- 
 tice the silence of the great schools, except when they 
 speak in defens-e of their great benefactors, regarding 
 every question which affects the industrial interests of so- 
 ciety. Where is Professor Bemis? Why did he lose his 
 place in the Chicago University? How does it happen 
 that in the last campaign the teachers of economics in the 
 great institutions of learning said nothing, or said that the 
 gold standard was wdse? How does it happen that in our 
 great university of the city of Chicago the pages of the 
 daily press rang with their words of approval for the pres- 
 ent order? Why did Henry Wade Rogers of the North- 
 western University ask the good people to vote for the 
 gold standard? Because it was wise? Because it w^as 
 just? Because it was fair to those of us the prices of whose 
 products were cut in two by its operation, while debts, 
 taxes, fixed charges, and interest payments on university 
 endowments remained unchanged? You can find no 
 other answer than the one I give you, than the reason Mr. 
 Rogers himself has given. It would affect — unfortunate- 
 ly for the University — the purchasing powder of the in- 
 terest payments on the University's endowment. So could 
 every man who holds a mortgage, so coiild every man 
 who has a fixed salary, so could every man who gets more 
 than his right while the toiler gets less than is just, con- 
 tinue the defense of the gold standard infamy for the sake 
 of his private income. There is another answer some- 
 times given ; it is that these are the scholars of the coun- 
 try. They are wise. They understand. They are for the 
 gold standard because they know better than w^e. If they 
 do, let them come into the open, let them meet us on the 
 platform. Why do they not silence their intellectual in- 
 feriors? It would be wiser to answer us and expose our 
 folly. 
 
 But again, the endowment is undesirable because self- 
 support is better. Shall we try longer to teach men to be 
 self-respecting, self-reliant, by putting the atmosphere of 
 
EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 1 65 
 
 chronic begg-ary around them during the years of their 
 education? Xo lessons that come out of the dead past, no 
 authority that can be gotten by any diploma ever written, 
 can add so much to the manliness and strength of a hu- 
 man character as a fixed determination on the part of a 
 boy to be his own master, to carry his own burdens, to 
 earn his own living. And this the endowment policy 
 makes impossible. They set a boy to w^ork learning things 
 out of books, and then they build a gymnasium in order 
 to make his blood circulate, in order to give him a strong 
 body, where the young fellow may work a little while 
 each day without the particular disgrace of having done 
 something useful while engaged at his task. The exer- 
 cise necessary to keep one's body strong, if organized and 
 equipped, is sufftcient to feed and clothe and house him. 
 But if it is not, by what possible right, by what principle 
 in ethics, by what sentiment in religion shall you continue 
 to compel the many to forego the opportunity to live on 
 rational lines the full intellectual and social life of a man, 
 in order that a few may have more than a man's chance, 
 more than a fair opportunity in the same field? If the en- 
 dowment funds of the Chicago University were invested 
 in farm mortgages it would place a mortgage of at least 
 $500 on each of the farms of not fewer than twenty 
 thousand farmers. If each farmer's family averaged five 
 members, then for each student now in the university 
 there would be somewhere near one hundred men, women 
 and children deprived of every opportunity for the higher 
 learning, toiling through all the year to meet the coming 
 interest payment, in order that one young man, a stalwart, 
 able-bodied fellow, a master of base«ball, a leader in the 
 foot-ball gang, a toiler in the gymnasium, may have the 
 advantages which might be within the reach of every 
 one of us. 
 
 The educational problem is no longer how to realize 
 on endowments for the benefit of the few who are inside 
 the schools. The educational problem means reaching the 
 darkened and deserted lives of the penniless and helpless, 
 overborne through this very mortgage system, which is a 
 part of the endowment system, which robs the toiler and 
 
l56 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 leaves him in his ruin. Then for the sake of manUness, 
 for the sake of fair play, for the sake of an opportunity for 
 those excluded from the benefits of society, for the sake of 
 the dignity of labor, for the sake of freedom of instruction 
 in the schools, — this is what we ask for, extend the equip- 
 ment, and abandon the endowments of the great educa- 
 tional institutions. I would extend the equipment to in- 
 clude farms, and shops, and gardens, for the direct em- 
 ployment of the labor of both teacher and student in the 
 direct production of their own daily bread. 
 
 I am giving my time to such a school. We are few in 
 number. In March last we commenced our work, almost 
 penniless. Our equipment was very scanty, our resources 
 were very few. But no one can visit the farm school, no 
 one can study the work we are undertaking, where teach- 
 ers and students, alike, toil for their living, and teach and 
 study for the love of it, neither seeking for any reward in 
 leisure and learning, save the reward which leisure and 
 learning itself can offer, — no one can become familiar 
 with our work without being convinced that we are on 
 the road to a splendid success. The objection to our prop- 
 osition more frequently urged than any other is, that 
 teachers will not come to us, but they are coming. The 
 objection urged is that only large salaries can employ the 
 best teachers. Our answer is, large salaries can only em- 
 ploy such teachers as can be bought. There are men who 
 teach who are no longer in the market. The answer is 
 again, teachers are not only coming, but only the best will 
 come. 
 
 And finally, the answer which is absolute. No new 
 thought ever came to the world, no new inspiration ever 
 moved its heart, no new ideal was ever brought into form 
 and being except the teacher who taught the new lesson, 
 the builder who built the new temple, the reformer who 
 wrought out the new life gladly and freely gave himself for 
 the joy of his undertaking. The great teachers of the 
 world have taught without reward. The great students of 
 the past have wrought out their lessons may be in penury, 
 but never in greed. Socrates was a teacher. St. Paul was 
 a teacher. Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher. His church 
 
EDUCATIONAL ENDOWMENTS. 167 
 
 was a school. Then, and now, for those who love wisest 
 and best the glory of humanity which they serve is the 
 only and sufficient reward for their priceless services. 
 
THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY. 
 
 This afternoon I am to speak on the subject of The 
 People's University. The People's University is a char- 
 tered organization under the laws of the State of Illinois, 
 authorized in its charter to do two things. One is, to 
 organize such Clubs as we have here, and the other is to 
 org^anize and establish farm schools-, such a school as we 
 have down at Hopkins Park, and in which I am interest- 
 ed, and of which you all know. The one is in the line of 
 general agitation and education on public, economic and 
 social questions ; and the other is ini the line of organizing 
 and building directly farm schools, where industry and 
 study are to be combined and to go forward together. I 
 wish you to go with me as patiently as you can, while I 
 discuss some of the things that lie around the organiza- 
 tion which we are attempting to carry forward. 
 
 In the first place, it is a most profound conviction of 
 mine that the whole line of our life is organized and man- 
 aged bottomed in wrong motives, that if we succeed we 
 fail, and if we fail we fail. That the real object of human 
 life is not promoted by the ordinary industrial and com- 
 mercial life; but the effect of the industrial and commercial 
 life of this generation is to corrupt the people, is to mis- 
 lead young men and women, is to fill our lives with bit- 
 termesis and mutual hatred. The very ideaS' that our insti- 
 tutions are bottomed on are wrong. The more earnestly 
 a man gives himself to them the worse he is; the more 
 splendidly a man succeeds in amassing a fortune the more 
 bitterly he fails in the realization of the best life. So far as 
 real manhood is concerned, modern commercialism is a 
 stumbling block in the way, it is a most serious burden, it 
 
 i68 
 
THE people's university. 1 69 
 
 is the heaviest to carry, and it brings only disappointment 
 at the end. 
 
 I beHeve that the men who lose fortunes are not more 
 unfortunate than those who gain them. Men who strive 
 for wide acres and strive in vain, closing their lives with 
 barely enough land to cover their dead bodies, have not 
 failed more surely than the men who have obtained broad 
 acres, and have built great shops and factories there and 
 called them their own ; who have organized great com- 
 panies of workers, not to work for the workers themselves, 
 but for them ; not to provide for the workers' own fami- 
 lies, but to provide for them large dividends on large 
 stock investments, which they may spend in careless or 
 liotous living, or let go of when death loosens their grip 
 and they are bound to let go. I believe that the V'ander- 
 bilts and Goulds and Rockefellers are the most conspicu- 
 ous failures of this generation. I believe the coldness and 
 hardness of their hearts, I believe the greed that has ab- 
 sorbed their lives, I believe the bitterness that must neces- 
 sarily take possession of them, I believe that their ability 
 to remain deaf and dumb to the cries of the hungry, the 
 brutality which makes them willing to put themselves in 
 a position where they may not even know of the sufTering' 
 of those whom they rob of the products of their labor, — I 
 believe that these things must be perpetual torment to 
 them. I believe that these men, supposed to be such ex- 
 amples of businiessi sense, are terrible wrecks, nitaking 
 wreckage of everything coming within their reach. I be- 
 lieve that each added contribution to their fortunes is an 
 added cup of bitterness to their daily fare. That is the 
 reason why old Commodore Vanderbilt wept when he 
 died, declaring himself to be poor and needy; and why 
 Rockefeller said the other day that no man was so poor 
 as that man who has only dollars. Whether he believed it 
 or not, I believe it with my whole heart. To succeed with 
 such enterprises as theirs is to cover your clothing with 
 your fellows'' blood, and succeied as a murderer succeeds; 
 he ends the life of another only to make an unending 
 tragedy of his own. 
 
 The things we are all doing day by day are wrong, and 
 
1 70 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 if we Strive and fail there is the disappointment of failure, 
 and if we strive and succeed there is disappointment of a 
 bitterer failure. I believe in the old Moral Law. I be- 
 lieve that the things which are there forbidden, each man 
 out of his own heart ought to forbid himself to do. "Thou . 
 Shalt not kill," is a part of the Moral Law, and the man 
 who kills violates the Moral Law and becomes thereby an 
 immoral man. "Thou shalt not steal" is part of the Moral 
 Law, and the man who steals violates the Moral Law and 
 becomes an immoral man. "Thou shalt not covet" is a 
 part of the same law, v/ritten on the same tables of stone, 
 brought down through the same centuries of the past, and 
 I believe bottomed upon the nature of the life of man. 
 "Thou shalt not covet" is a part of the Moral Law, and he 
 who covets violates the Moral Law and is an immoral 
 man. There are other commands, "Thou shalt not com- 
 mit adultery," "Thou shalt not murder," "Thou shah not 
 lie," and the man who does these things is guilty of im- 
 morality. A business institution that is established with 
 the direct purpose of its existence to realize a covetous 
 purpose is a direct violation of the Moral Law, and the 
 men who are involved in it and have a share in it are im- 
 moral mieni. I believe that the mien who build them and 
 manage them, and from them gather their harvest are im- 
 moral in the same way as if they had broken any other 
 portion of the Moral Law. It is nowhere said if a man 
 steals he is then guilty of the wrong which is at the bot- 
 tom of every other wrong. It is nowhere said that if a 
 man shall murder he is then guilty of the particular wrong 
 which is at the bottom of all other wromgs'. But it i& de- 
 clared that the love of gain is the root of all evil. "Thou 
 shalt not covet" is not only a part of the Moral Law side 
 by side with "Thou shalt not steal," but covetousness and 
 theft are alike immoral, and the covetous man and the 
 thief are alike guilty of immorality, only covetousness is 
 the basic wrong from which all others follow. This covet- 
 ousness that can gnaw at the heart and blight and blast a 
 man's life, and blind his eyes and sear his conscience until 
 he shall be prepared to do every other wrong, — that idea 
 of covetousness which lies at the bottom of all immorality 
 
THE PEOPLE S UNIVERSITY. I7I 
 
 lies also at the bottom of our industrial and commercial 
 system. 
 
 A young man in college is training that he may suc- 
 ceed in life. Succeed in doing what? In becoming able 
 to indulge, he cannot satisfy, his greed. He is to know 
 when to take advantage of a great opportunity. An op- 
 portunity to do what? To gratify his greed. To trample 
 on the Moral Law. It is immoral for an institution to or- 
 ganize itself with the purpose of appealing to that which 
 is immoral in the man. If it is an educational institution 
 it is a corru])tor of the youth. The higher learning must 
 mean training for a higher life. 
 
 There never was an army organized in the history of 
 the world, made up of men whose leading characteristic 
 was greed, that ever fouglit a battle and won a victory 
 that added one single star to the firmament of human 
 achievement. When any nation becomes devoted to com- 
 mercialism it becomes unpatriotic, it becomes sordid, it 
 puts a price on other things, and at last it puts a price on 
 Its flag. It puts a price on other things, and at last puts a 
 price on its civic virtue, brings all social life into the mar- 
 ket, and sells the sermons of the preacher, the services of 
 the priest, the lessons of the teacher, the paintings of the 
 artist, the products of the farmer, the counsel of the at- 
 torney. The very gift of wedlock becomes itself a Dar- 
 g:ain in the midst of the commercialism- that organizes life 
 on the basis of greed, which is the acknowledged basis of 
 our industrial life. 
 
 Now we need in our life a new motive. Labor is bot- 
 tomed on a wrong motive, and business is bottomed on a 
 wrong motive. I wish I could live in a land for a little 
 while where the uppermost ambition of a voung man 
 should be to have a clean body, to put no poison in the 
 blood that visits his young heaVt, to be guilty of no con- 
 duct that should undermine the phvsical greatness, ihe 
 strength of the life his :\Iaker has given him. I wish I 
 could live in a community sometime, somewhere, where 
 the restless, overreaching, overbearing, scheming, cheat- 
 ing life struggle, working to death on the one hand, and 
 starvmg to death on the other, could take a vacation lonc^ 
 
172 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 enough to allow the better side of humanity to speak just 
 loud enough to hear the matchless music of its sweet 
 voice. I wish I could live somewhere, sometime, where 
 men would care more for the things they think than for 
 the things they eat. I wisli, I could live sometime, some- 
 where, where men would care more for the emotions that 
 move their hearts than for the indulgences^ that gratify 
 their passions. I wish I could know men, sometime, 
 somiewhere, who would so appreciate the good and the 
 beautiful, and so strive after the attainm'emt of these, that 
 all greedy, base, selfish considerations should lose their 
 power over man, and let him live for onice the child of 
 his Creator. 
 
 A man goes into business as a workman, or as a man- 
 ager. In either case there is just one motive appealed to, 
 and that is to make something. If he is an employer of 
 labor he must be a capitalist. But, you say he borrows 
 his capital ; yes, but he must have some capital to begin 
 with. And when he goes into the employment of others 
 he immediately puts himself into the position where he is 
 doing what? Giving another man employment in order 
 that he may add to a stock of property already sufficient 
 to satisfy his own real wants. If his real wants are already 
 supplied, why then does he take the risks of business? To 
 satisfy his greed. How large must be his possessions for 
 such a purpose? The universe is all too small. He sets 
 another man to labor. What for? Wages. What for? 
 So he may get his daily bread. What for? In order that 
 he may be alive to-morrow. What for? In order that he 
 may work. What for? To get wages. What for? To 
 buy bread. What for? To get wages, to buy bread, to 
 stay alive, to get some more money, to buy somie more 
 bread, to do some more work, to get some more wages to 
 buy some more bread, to stay alive, to do some more 
 work, to get some more wages, to buy some more bread, 
 to stay alive, to do more work, to get some more wages, 
 to buy some more bread. 
 
 It is reported that Peter Cartwright once said the Illi- 
 nois farmers were engaged in the business of raising corn 
 to feed hogs, to sell the hogs to buy more land to raise 
 
THE people's university. 173 
 
 some more corn to feed some more hogs, to get some 
 more land to raise some more corn to feed some more 
 ho^s, to get soni'e more land to raise some more corn to 
 feed some more hogs. 
 
 I stand here and declare this afternoon that the whole 
 industrial and commercial life of this generation is walk- 
 ing in that endless, meaningless, purposeless wheel of 
 raising more corn to feed more hogs, to get more land to 
 raise more corn to feed more hogs. 
 
 I want conditions to come sometime, somewhere, by 
 which we mav break that vicious circle, and at every turn 
 instead of turning the products back into hogs, we can 
 turn it upward into something that is purer and stronger 
 and nobler for humanity's sake. I believe that it was in- 
 tended bv our Creator that every one of us should live a 
 three-fold life. I do not believe that any man has a right 
 to eat bread in the sweat of any other man's face. I be- 
 lieve it is the duty of every man to eat bread in the sweat 
 of his own face. ' I believe that our hands were given to 
 every one of us, men and women alike, that with these 
 hands of ours we should add as much to the wealth of the 
 world as with our backs and with our appetites we would 
 consume out of the wealth of the world; and whatever 
 man or woman walks among his fellows consuming more 
 than he produces is a robber of society, to the extent of 
 the balance that stands over against him in the account. 
 I believe that these hands were given every one of us in 
 order that by their toil we might provide for a comforta- 
 ble human existence. But as surely as I believe that every 
 man's hands were given him with which to do his own 
 toil, I believe his brains were given him with which to do 
 his own thinking. I can only regard with pity the man or 
 woman who allows somebody else to do their hard work 
 for them, but I must regard with contempt the men or 
 women who allow any other human being to do their 
 thinking for them. Listen ! I believe my head was put on 
 the top "of my body with a view of having the head on top 
 all the time. ' The Lord never would have made a man or 
 woman, and put their heads on top in the beginning, if 
 He had not intended their heads to stay on top of their 
 
174 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 bodies all their lives through. I think it is evident on the 
 face of things, — in order to make a man after the manner 
 of some men,— you would need to reverse that, and put his 
 head down somewhere else and his stomach above his 
 shoulders. 
 
 Over in London a few years ago there was a reform 
 started called The Cab Horse Reform. It was for the 
 purpose of securing for the men who drove the cab horses 
 a wage that would enable them to maintain a living that 
 would correspond with the standard of living provided for 
 the horses. It seems to be an absurd thing that this city 
 should find i-tself in a position where an agitation and re- 
 form was necessary in order to bring the standard of liv- 
 ing for the working man up to the standard of living for 
 the working horse. But when he has as good shelter as 
 the horse, as abundant food, as good medical care, you 
 have provided for two horses, not for a man and a horse. 
 Jn order to make provision for a man and a horse you 
 - need the stable, the blanket and hay and oats and straw, 
 but blankets and hay and oats and straw, clothes, food, 
 and lodging are not a sufificient provision for a man. Man 
 has something higher and better than that, and he who 
 lives to get straw may get a lot of it, he who lives to get 
 food may get a lot of it., He who lives to get shelter may 
 get a roof wide enough to cover a thousand people. He 
 who lives for the things that can be measured and can be 
 worn on the back and can be purchased in the market, no 
 matter how much he gets of it, is simply living the life of 
 a dog or a horse. That which is characteristic of real hu- 
 m,an life is something that a dog and a horse does not 
 kfiow much about. I know, of course, there is affection, 
 between dogs. A friend of mine had two pet dogs and 
 one died, and the other died of a broken heart. A brother 
 of mine had two horses, and when they were separated 
 and one taken out to use, he found the one that was left 
 still fighting for his liberty on his return, so he could join 
 his mate. I knov/ there are attachments among dogs and 
 hors'es, there ane affections amonig the wild beasts that 
 ought to shame this hum.an race of ours, where men and 
 women more readily sacrifice their children to this Mo- 
 
THE people's university. 175 
 
 loch of greed than tigers sacrifice theirs to the enemy that 
 comes to take them away. But still I insist that that life 
 is human life, that thinks as well as feeds, that studies as 
 well as grows, hungers for books and music, can look out 
 into the world of beauty, and gather into its own soul 
 emotions that are worth more to him than any emotion 
 that ever stirred the heart of any miser as he counted his 
 gold. I tell vou, the real human life is one that strives for 
 ideals, that finds its satisfaction, not in feeding the greed 
 that misleads a man, but in feeding the emotions, m the 
 satisfaction of which he becomes allied in his character 
 with the very God who gave him his being in the first 
 place. We are at once demons, and angels. I do not 
 know much about angels, but I believe from what I can 
 learn from mvself and from what I can get from literature 
 and song, from what has been told us of the temptations 
 and trials and triumphs of the past, that the nature of man 
 is alive in two directions. I believe that in him are the 
 passions and appetites which burn with the fire of hell, 
 and to which if he lends his life for a time ruin is unuttera- 
 ble and terrible. At the same time living in the same man, 
 girt about bv the same clothing, speaking with the same 
 voice, looking through the same eyes, listening with the 
 same ears, is a possibility in the life of every one that may 
 sing the songs of splendid triumph that may fill his life 
 with a matchless, glorious joy that can be found not by 
 food, not bv clothing, not by possessions, not by riotous 
 living, not bv a horse's fare even on a large scale. 
 
 Your boy graduates from school. He has studied 
 there long enough to get some little inkling of what poe- 
 try means, of the matchless rhythm with whicli the old 
 poets spoke. To learn something of the marvelous story 
 that prose can never speak. He has felt the emotion that 
 no voice, no literature, no poetry can ever start in the 
 human soul, but only the voice of music can start there. 
 He has just gotten started in the way of som^ething that is 
 intellectual and social, that feeds and satisfies the higher 
 life of man, and then he is out of college and into business. 
 He goes down down at 7 o'clock in the morning, goes 
 home at night, goes to bed. In the morning he goes down 
 
17b EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 town again, goes home at night, goes to bed, to get up in 
 the morning, goes down town, goes home at night, goes to 
 bed. What for? For some more money to buy some 
 more hogs. 
 
 This is my proposition. If a man succeeds in attain- 
 ing all that the ordinary labor organization asks he has 
 only fodder. If a man succeeds in getting all that the or- 
 dinary ambition of an ordinary business man craves he 
 has only fodder. What would a fellow do with Lake 
 Michigan, full of soup, and only able to eat a pint of it? 
 Follow along another thought. Is it possible for us to 
 put the intellectual and social life within the reach of every 
 man, woman and child? I believe it is. I am profoundly 
 convinced of one of two things. Either"this race to which 
 I belong may have for all its members an intellectual and 
 a social life, or back of it there is no beneficent purpose, 
 but a very demon is the father of the human race. I be- 
 lieve that running through the life of this race is benefi- 
 cence. I believe that no man can study the life of plants 
 and flowers, the combinations that are given us in all the 
 things of use, wdthout being driven to the conclusion that 
 a beneficent' heart is in all these things, and that we may 
 be co-workers in the same spirit and to the same end. 
 
 But when we follow that suggestion of universal ben- 
 eficence to the point of doing business we do not find it 
 there. The rain comes down on the just and the unjust, 
 and business prosperity comes to the unjust and skips the 
 just most of the time. 
 
 In this country there are a good number of schools and 
 a good number of shops. In the shop there is no sugges- 
 tion of intellectual life, in the school there is no sugges- 
 tion of industry. 
 
 The school attempts all the time to do nothing which 
 is useful. Is there a way by which that which is entirely 
 business and that which is entirely intellectual may be- 
 come friends again, gather under the same roof? Can the 
 shop and the school, the lion and the lamb lie down to- 
 gether? 
 
 Can we put the idea of patriotism into a company of 
 mien who are going to the workshop in the morning, and 
 
THE people's university. I77 
 
 into the schoolroom in the afternoon? If John Bull 
 should come over here this afternoon with a troop of sol- 
 diers, and undertake to take possession of the City Hall 
 there would be trouble. The presence of the British coat 
 and the presence of the British flag is no more a reflection, 
 — 1 cannot believe that it would be so serious a reflection, 
 — on the honor of America than is the presence of the rag- 
 g-ed coat and the flag of the auctioneer. I insist that to pro- 
 tect and defend the nation's honor means that there is to be 
 no poor, there is to be no disorder, there is to be no slums, 
 and to clean out the American slum is an ambition wor- 
 thier a beneficent purpose, higher and more earnestly to 
 be desired than the whipping of any army organized any- 
 where on the face of the earth. Is there any way by which 
 the generous, patriotic, public-spirited purpose w^hich we 
 insist must forever characterize the soldier can be brought 
 to bear upon the ordinary worker? Is there any way by 
 which the personal, greedy, selfish basis of industry and 
 comm'erce can be so remodeled that every stroke in' the 
 shop shall be service for the community? Is there any 
 Vv-ay by which the work of the schoolroom and the shop 
 can be' married together? It is better to ask that and try 
 to answer it than to live the life of greed and gather the life 
 of failure that may come to us if we fail, and will surely 
 come to us if we succed. It is better to try to do a good 
 thing and fail, than to try to do a bad thing and succeed. 
 There were a great many centuries that free government 
 was fought for before free government was possible. If 
 the fighting of the years of failure never had been under- 
 taken the warfare of splendid success never could have 
 been realized. There were long centuries of strife in the 
 effort to enlarge the tools, so that the necessary toil for 
 producing a living could be lessened, before there was^real 
 success in making them do the drudgery of the human 
 race. If it had not been for the many centuries of failure 
 the one century of success could never have been realized. 
 I will spend the balance of the days I have striving 
 to open the better way. Oh, if but one rift in the clouds 
 could be made, so that the unfaltering and unfailing star 
 of the hope of humanity for the realization of the nobler 
 
lyS EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 life, as it shines forever above me, could comie also within 
 the vision of my fellows. 
 
 What ground have we for belief that an effort of this 
 sort need fail? There are churches that have been in ex- 
 istence a thousand years, three thousand years, five thou- 
 sand years. Pretty old churches. And they have gone 
 through with forms of organization running down 
 through the centuries that involve more difBcult problems 
 than any involved in the management of such a school. 
 The labor unions are undertaking a more serious prob- 
 lem when they try to organize and fix the prices that 
 shall be paid in other people's shops than they do when 
 they build and manage shops of their own. We under- 
 take a greater problem, when we undertake, in the city 
 of Chicago, to organize a movem'ent to destroy the de- 
 partment sfore we already have, or that already has us, 
 than we would undertake if we w^ould try to organize a 
 splendid co-operative store that should be greater and 
 better, and destroy the old by organizing the new, wider 
 and stronger than the department store itself. 
 
 A Methodist preacher said to me, ''Mr. Mills, all this 
 talk about that general co-operative movement is absurd, 
 because men will not want to enter into it. Why, it is so 
 everywhere. Of course, you may get a few ignorant peo- 
 ple, who are poor and helpless ; and because of their help- 
 lessness and their poverty they might consent to enter 
 into an organization where the head of the organization 
 or a committee might say to them go, and they go, but 
 intelligent men will not do it." I replied, "I am sorry to 
 hear you say so. You are a Methodist preacher, are you 
 not?" ''Yes." "Well, Methodist preachers agree to^ go 
 where the Bishop sends them." 
 
 ^ How shall we proceed in this? Organize some large 
 thing? I^ ami am evolutionist. It is not possible to com- 
 mience with the simplest form® of life and follow them 
 through all the stages of development and then be any- 
 thing other than an evolutionist. It is not possible to 
 study human history and follow down through the cen- 
 turies the niev\^ forms growing out of the old ones and then 
 be anything other than an evolutionist. To an evolution- 
 
THE PEOPLES UNIVERSITY. 1 79 
 
 ist faith in instantaneous creation or instantaneous reform 
 is alike impossible. Ihe evolutionary law of advance is 
 first the slightest variation, and then that is repeated and 
 repeated until it becomes the fixed form of the new life. 
 The day of great things is a day of disaster. The day of 
 small things is the birthday of destiny. 
 
 Wise statesmanship asks for small things and gets 
 them, and thus makes substantial advance in the world's 
 progress. Political folly asks for the growth of a thou- 
 sand years in an afternoon, and not only does not get what 
 it seeks but loses the good it might have had. 
 
 No new association was ever born into the world that 
 was not born out of an old association that had gone just 
 before. Each day is born out of the loins of yesterday, 
 and no new fomis of society and no n.ew life to reorganize 
 the industrial and commercial life of the world shall ever 
 come to us but as it grows out of the old. 
 
 I believe we want to make this beginning, not by trying 
 to capture the earth, but to commence with a smalfportion 
 of the earth, begin with that part' of which you have con- 
 trol. I will give you an idea. If you want greed to die out 
 of the life of the world suppose you begin to put it out of 
 your own heart. I know that is a hard program, but I do not 
 belie\-e it is possible for a man to put in his time beating 
 other people six days in the week, and then put in' Sunday 
 with any effect trying to save other people from the dis- 
 position to beat each other. I do not believe it is possible 
 for a man to allow the strength of greed tocontrol his own 
 life, and have any reasonable share in making anything 
 else but greed control the lives of other people. I do not 
 believe it is possible for any man to gather great fortunes 
 to himself, and to be anything other than a robber and a 
 teacher of the lessons of the highwayman to the men who 
 are left peimiless and helpless. I believe when the Lord 
 said to the young man he was to go and sell what he had 
 and then come back and follow Him, that He opened the 
 only door by which it was possible for that young man 
 to get away from the greed which was eating at his own 
 heart: 
 
 The co-operative society can never come until the co- 
 
I bo EVOLb'TlONARY POLITICS, 
 
 Operative man shall first arrive, and when* the co-operative 
 man has been here over night there will be a co-operative 
 society the next morning. In the first place, the people 
 shall have tools and land, but they shall not own' them in 
 such a way that the possession by one shall mean the ex- 
 clusion of another. The landlord has no business taking 
 possession of the Lord's earth. I believe that every child 
 that comes into the world, by the fact that it makes its 
 appearance here by the authority of the Creator of both 
 the heavens and the earth, has a right to be, and has a 
 ri^ht to the use of so much of the natural resources as 
 will enable him to feed and clothe himself; and wherever 
 a child is born that has not that right some power has 
 robbed it of its inheritance, and it is our duty to restore 
 that inheritance. 
 
 I believe that every child that was born^ in this genera- 
 tion is a direct heir of all the wisdom, of all the inventions', 
 of all the achievements tii€ centuries have been able to 
 accomplish, and I believe that he is entitled to it; and to 
 open some way for the disinherited to get what he is en- 
 titled to is the worthiest ambition any man can cherish. 
 So far as I am concerned I am not going to have any 
 share in the further robbery of the unborn. Get tools, 
 buy them. Get land, buy it. There is only one way by 
 which men can be organized and put into a schoolhouse, 
 and that is to build a shop that shall be a schoolhouse. 
 Let an army be organized that shall be a peaceful army, 
 strive to provide for its food and clothing and shelter, and 
 get the young men and women, the old men. who have 
 children, and then by their joint savings, and by the gifts 
 of the other people, get hold of a piece of ground, build 
 the shop and the school, get people into the shop and the 
 school, and make that school an institution that shall fill 
 the young child's life, not with greed, but with a broader- 
 hearted life, that shall love the human race as it loves- 
 itself, and give its time to the redemption of the race we 
 belong to,' from the evils and the wrongs our brothers- 
 suffer from. 
 
 Four years ago I started out on the sidewalk. I have 
 had the same salary that the other fellows- do who hold 
 
THE people's university. i8i 
 
 down the sidewalk. I start-ed out tryirrg to do something 
 along this co-operative line. I went up to Northern 
 ^Michigan, sixteen miles away from the railroad, through 
 a gTeat piece of pine barrens, to where trees stood seventy- 
 five to one hundred feet high. We gathered together 
 there in a little while a company of men and women and 
 children, we cleared the standing trees off from one hun- 
 dred acres of land, we built our log cottages, we started a 
 saw mill and a shoe shop and a few simple industries, 
 to finally discover that we had located in^ the midst of a 
 country that was owned by a great lumbering company, 
 a monopoly that covered all the country around us, that 
 owned the bridges, that controlled the rivers, even owned 
 the streets, that owned every newspaper, owned the 
 courts, owned everything. Out of a town of three hun- 
 dred and fifty houses it owned three hundred of the 
 houses, owned every printing press. Every court officer 
 was an employe of the company, and the company did 
 not believe in co-operative enterprises, did not propose 
 to keep us there, started one attack after another, until 
 the only thing that was left for us to do was to move out. 
 and we moved out. 
 
 We came down here to Chicago with horses and cattle 
 that we had taken up into the woods, nearly dead. We 
 came down to Chicago penniless. We had had one or two 
 years in the woods, raised a splendid crop, a large share 
 of which we could not ship to a market and sell it for 
 enough to pay the freight on it; w^e had to leave it in 
 the woods to rot. W^e got down here w'ithin sixty miles 
 of Chicago, rented a piece of land and went to work over 
 again. We are on rented land still. We have our rent 
 paid for two years in advance, we have a little cluster of 
 houses, we are about seven hundred dollars in debt, 
 we have forty-four people on the ground, we have this 
 club organized here, we have a charter from the State of 
 Illinois, we have a board of trustees, we have a number 
 of people w-ho are interested, we have other men who are 
 coming to us. But no man that comes can get any prop- 
 erty interest among us. And no man can work long 
 enough, no man can stay there long enough to get any 
 
1 82 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 title to one foot of land. He has the use of the land, he 
 has the use of the stock, and the tools, and the opportunity 
 to employ his own labor, and to him, and to him alone 
 belongs the total product of what his own toil shall pro- 
 duce. But be caninot own the ground under another 
 man's feet, nor the tools in another man's- hands. We 
 have some boys and girls down there who among other 
 things are learning self-respect and self-employment. 
 
 I do not know as this is going to succeed. I know 
 that so far as I am concerned the gladdest hours I have 
 ever known are the hours I have been trying to build this 
 ins'titution. Whether it succ-eeds or fails, I for myself 
 have succeeded at least in taking a piece out of my life four 
 years long in which there has not been one single day's 
 work that has' been given for any other purpose than to 
 make it succeed. 
 
 A matter of more gratitude than anything else that 
 has ever come to me has been the patience and interest 
 with which this company of people has gathered here in 
 this hall. I came to you penniless, I cam'C to you ragged. 
 I came with my heart full and my pockets empty. I came 
 to tell you some of the things which I believe, and which 
 I believe with all my heart. For twenty-five Sundays you 
 have gathered here, over and over again, and you have 
 asked me about the school. Where and how you can 
 help the school. I have tried this afternoon to tell you 
 as well as I can the reason why I think we ought to have 
 this school, and to tell you the steps I am taking to carry 
 out the plan. I wish it might be possible for every one of 
 us to have some share. A dozen men came over to the 
 office when I reported that there was a surplus in our 
 club's accounts and urged that the surplus be turned over 
 to the school. And in accordance with these propositions 
 I am going to close by m-aking a proposition to you. 
 
 (The club here voted unanimously by standing here- 
 after to devote all its surplus receipts to the work of the 
 school, and, the prolonged cheering with which the vote 
 was received having subsided, Mr. Mills continued.) 
 
 I stood beside a mighty river, the river of our civiliza- 
 tion. I was looking over the edge of a precipice. Deep 
 
THE people's university. 183 
 
 below me tli^ deep and rapid current of the river hurried 
 on. On its bosom were the wrecks of a miUion Hves. The 
 roar of its machinery, the fury of its forges, the hurr>' of 
 its busin-ess, the strife of its commerce, the bitterness of 
 its social hfe, the teeming millions of the human race in 
 the darkness were hurrying on. I looked the other way. 
 There were green fields, there were the green trees, there 
 was the ripening fruit, there was the peaceful city, there 
 was the laughter of children, but no cry of despair. There 
 were temples of industry, but no prisons. Men both 
 studied and toiled, but there was no place where they 
 were overworked on the one hand and underfed on the 
 other. I saw the new city coming down out of the skies. 
 By the side of its peaceful river, which was the River of 
 the Water of Life, I saw rising the splendid structure of 
 the New Jerusalem. I turned with anguish from the woe 
 that fills the life of the world. I turned with joy to the vis- 
 ion that had been shown me, and I prayed out of a full 
 heart that in some way, somewhere, somehow, I might 
 have some share in drying up the waters of this awful 
 River of Death, and in building the New City with its 
 life and its joy. 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS, DELIVERED AT 
 KANKAKEE, MAY 30, 1896. 
 
 Veterans of the Civil War and my Fellow Citizens ini 
 this republic which the&e veterans fought to preserve: 
 
 In addressing you to-day I shall undertake to con- 
 sider some of the factors which played an^ important part 
 in the civil war, and which, nevertheless, are all too fre- 
 quently overlooked in the study of that terrible event. 
 Among thes'e neglected factors I shall mention the real 
 cause of the civil war, the real traitors of those days, the 
 real force which made victory possible — the private sol- 
 dier, and the wom>en of the civil war. 
 
 Thirty-five years ago, when the nxDise of battle was 
 just beginning and people were looking with amazemient 
 into each other's faces and asking w^iat all this trouble 
 was about, — what various answers' were given! How dif- 
 ferent was the reply made by Abraham Lincoln, and by 
 JefTerson Davis'! How diiTerent was the reply made by 
 the Democratic and the Republican champion of the 
 Union! cause! How different the reply of the Republican' 
 party, the rebuilt, reborn Whig party of Webster, Choate 
 and Clay, and the remnants of that old organization in its; 
 silver-gray complaint against the civil war! 
 
 What caused the war? The abolitionists were hated 
 and blani'ed and persecuted because they had caused so 
 great a disturbance, had brought on so terrible a catas- 
 trophe. You remember when Republicans were not Re- 
 publicans, they were "black" RepubHcans>; and in the 
 peculiar intoniation with which these words were spoken 
 thirty-fiv-e years ago the Northern citizen not a Repub- 
 lican, not in sympathy with the war, expressed his hatred 
 for the people he blamed for making v/ar. 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS. 185 
 
 And yet I am per&uaded that n-cither of thes'C, nor all 
 tof^ether, bore the sole responsibility or cant be held ac- 
 countable in history to be blamed or praised as the lead- 
 infj causes of the civil war. 
 
 There are two forces at work in the world. One seeks 
 not its own, the other seeks nothing else. One serves it- 
 self and worships property, the other serves humanity 
 and worships God. One believes that men are better 
 than things and exalts manhood above "life or death, or 
 height or depth or principality or power, or any other 
 creature;" the other believes that things are better than 
 nven, and that millions of dollars are of more value than 
 millions of people. These forces have been struggling 
 against each other, the one in its long career of oppres- 
 sion and self-aggrandizement, the other in its long career 
 of heroism and self-sacrifice. The civil war was but a 
 spirited passage at arms in this continuous struggle, be- 
 ginning with the life of our race, and bo close only when 
 its men and its institutions shall awake in the perfected 
 likeness of the Son of Man. The civil war did not occur 
 because the men south of Alason and Dixon's line were 
 base beyond their day and generation, nor because the 
 multitude of people north of that line were all self-sacri- 
 ficing, heroic and humane. It occurred because in the 
 world's growth, in the advancemtenft of human interest, 
 the old constitutions, the old forms, the old usages had 
 grown to be a shell with too narrow chambers, within the 
 bosom of which the bursting bud of a new life was strug- 
 gling for the sunlight of a better day. It was the infinite 
 misfortune of the men who fought on the one side of this 
 struggle that their cause was based on old forms, old 
 rights, old constitutions, the sacredness of which must 
 be maintained, though the blight and wrong of measure- 
 less oppression and the agony and ruin of nimiberless 
 human beings should be involved. It was the infinite 
 glory of the other side, the side on which these veterans 
 bore arms, that to them the new life coming was more 
 sacred than the old, which ha^ fulfilled its purpose and 
 was ready to vanish away. The one was ready to main- 
 tain the rights and the forms of society, though human 
 
1 86 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 interest should be sacrificed and human life perish. The 
 Other was ready to sacrifice the form's, the authorities, the 
 constitutions, the usages, no matter how ancient, no mat- 
 ter how strongly fortified, no matter how many mien or 
 measures were on the other side; they were ready to sac- 
 rifice 'even their own lives, in order that the life of the 
 race might move upward unhindered and unharmed. And 
 these two forces — the one struggling to make society 
 safe as it was, and the other to make it what the faith of 
 the world believed it ought to be, crossed each other's 
 paths; the result was the civil war. 
 
 Again, thirty years have been years enough for the 
 passions of the civil war to soibside, for the irritation arnd 
 the hatreds of the awful struggle to loosen their grip upon 
 us, and to enable nien of all sections and parties to look 
 calmly and kindly into each other's faces and be friends. 
 That there were men in every Southern State who vicious- 
 ly and selfishly conspired to destroy our government I 
 do not doubt. That there were real and genuine traitors, 
 and real and genuine patriots who wore both blue and 
 gray is the final word which must be calmly spoken. It 
 was only in passion that we said that a citizen born even 
 in a Northern State who publicly and frankly and every- 
 where avowed his sympathy with his readiness to defend 
 the Southern cause, it was only in passion that we called 
 him a traitor as we sent him through the lines to the side 
 where he belonged. His comvictioms were wrong; 
 it was the verdict of these soldiers then, it is the ver- 
 dict of history forever, that he was on the wrong 
 side, but he was loyal to the side to which he belonged. 
 According to the laws of nations, according to the inter- 
 national law that rules the world, and because of which 
 Grant refused the arrest of Lee, and Davis could not be 
 tried for treason- — because of the law expounded by Glad- 
 stone in his defense of the proposed English recognition 
 of the Southern Confederacy — by the authority of this 
 law, whatever may have been true at the beginning, the 
 men whose armies these veterans' helped to overcome 
 never laid down their arnifs until they had first achieved 
 their military and their civil right to be. 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS. 187 
 
 It is the glory of these veterans, not that they opposed 
 and overbore base and unworthy men, but in the open 
 field, standing face to face with brave men', opposed by 
 skillful leadership, beaten in a hundred fields, under a 
 scorching sun, in a strange land, where pestilence and 
 fever were frequently more fatal than the foeman's steel, 
 nevertheless unfalteringly preserved their courage and 
 their strengt'h until at last they snatched from an army 
 unconquerable in its spirit, unmatched in' its leadership, 
 that victory which gave to these veterans' the victory and 
 the honor which must stand forever. 
 
 But there were traitors in those days, men who were 
 loud in their pretensions of loyalty to a great cause only 
 to betray the cause itself in an overwdielming loyalty to 
 what they conceived to be their personal interests. The 
 boys who from shop, and farm, and counter went to the 
 front, and dared to die that humanity's life might go for- 
 ward, were heroes. But what of the men who sent them 
 there to be clothed in shoddy uniforms, to be fed on 
 wormv rations, to ride in the death charge of battle a 
 horse that had been fitted for the market, not for the 
 battle field? Remember how from every hamlet the brav- 
 est and the strongest and the best freely gave their lives 
 for their countr}-'s life; and how in a great conflict where 
 the vital principle for which the North stood was a con- 
 flict for men above things — that even in this conflict the 
 same government which accepted these men as they came 
 bringing the gift of themselves, and sent them to go oni a 
 march that v/ent through the valley of death, an<l all too 
 frequently the grave itself, was able only to borrow the 
 means to' obtain the bayonets which they carried in the 
 strife. These veterans gave their lives to save a country 
 v.hich was able to obtain the tools with which the desper- 
 ate task was undertaken — not on the basis of the free gift 
 of the patriot — but was' compelled to carry the nation^s 
 honor to the pawn-shops of the market and make a pawn- 
 shop bargain for the things with which to feed and clothe 
 and arm diese men v.hile they gave their lives to save her 
 life. These men- said, **A wrong is in the land, we will die 
 for the rieht," and Lincoln called for money to feed and 
 
l88 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 clothe the men' who offered their lives, only to be an^ 
 sv^ered with an attack from the rear more desperat'C and 
 more mipatriotic, and during the hours of that awful 
 crisis more dangerous than any volleys from across the 
 line. The great heart of the North said, ''Men are bett'er 
 than things. Manhood shall be exalted; slavery, which 
 vests a property right in a human being, and the institu- 
 tions which protect and defend, law or no law, constitu- 
 tion or no constitution, slavery must die." But the con- 
 tractors and money changers^ said, "The great heart of 
 the North is in earnest, she is- struggling in the death 
 throes of a new life, she will pay any price, she will submit 
 to any wrong which we may be able to impose upon her, 
 rather than abandon the one fixed purpose which fills 
 all her life and absorbs all her powers. Now is the time 
 to make a bargain. While others are giving their lives 
 we will look after our things." 
 
 Over the line at the South brave young men were giv- 
 ing everything that State linesi might not be obliterated, 
 and that the integrity of Statehood might be preserved. 
 That was their explanation of the civil w^ar. 
 
 At the front on our side of the line young men were 
 giving up their lives. By the lonely sentry, the forced 
 march, the perilous undertaking of the scout, in the 
 charge and shock of battle — written in words of fire across 
 the sky made black- with the clouds of war, the North 
 answered in a cry terrible in its rage, measureless in its 
 passion, resistless in its determination — manhood shall be 
 exalted! manhood shall be exalted! 
 
 But in the rear of that camp, skirting the commissary 
 department, hoarding and counting its gold, were a com- 
 pany of men who scorned the enthusiasm of the men at 
 the front, and made bargains for themselves at a measure- 
 less loss for our country's treasure, and built countless 
 burdens for the returning soldiers, and their children's 
 children after them, to bear in helpless penury and wrong. 
 Surely there were traitors in those days. 
 
 And then again, in reviewing the civil war I believe 
 that the usual historian, in noting the honorable services 
 of its great leaders, does not sufficiently appreciate the 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS. 1 89 
 
 services of the private soldier. It is well for us to remem- 
 ber that had Lincoln never been, had Grant never com*- 
 nianded an army, had McClellan never dug any trenches, 
 had Sherman never made his victorious march to the s^a, 
 had Jefferson Davis never been' boni', had Robert E. Lee 
 n-ever been- a soldier, had Stonewall Jacksom remained 
 forever a teacher, had no body of assembled legislators 
 ever listened to the eloquence of Robert Toombs, had 
 Alexander Stephens been a blacksmith rather than a 
 statesman, the civil war would have been all the same. 
 The great issues that then arose for settlement the world 
 was ripe to deal with, and deal with them it must. Had 
 the statesmen in our legislative halls and in our executive 
 chaml^ers. had the leaders on every battlefield, had every 
 name that history knows and that the world will remem- 
 ber been stricken from the list,- out of the very ground 
 others would have arisen to undertake the tasks they did, 
 and to win the victories they won. The commanding offi- 
 cer in the civil war rendered great and important services. 
 It is not mecessary to belittle the leader who commanded 
 the charge in order to exalt the brave men who carried 
 their blades of steel to the last ditch, and died with death's 
 grip still holding them by their sides. At the beginning 
 of the civil war the commanders who remained loyal to 
 the North and who had seen military service w^re old in 
 years and ready to retire. When the war was over the 
 railway engineer of the Southern Ohio, and the tanner of 
 Galena, Illinois, and others who were toiling in the ranks, 
 with as great hearts and as great purposes before as after, 
 had risen out of the ranks into positions of leadership, and 
 their names can never be forgotten. 
 
 But the item of most especial credit for Grant and Mc- 
 Clellan and Hancock and Sheridan is' that these leaders 
 rose from among the ranks of men of such metal, such 
 character, such ability, that had all these names and ten 
 thousand others, brave and strong as they, been stricken 
 from the list of soldiers, that still out of the ranks men 
 as brave of heart and strong of mind and as capable of 
 leadership as they, were ready for the tasks they did and 
 able to win the victories they won. 
 
igo EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 It was said of the ten thousand Greeks who accom- 
 panied Cyrus in his rebelUous expedition, made immortal 
 by the narrative of Xenophon's Anabasis, it is said of his 
 te^n thousand Greeks that there was not one in the ranks 
 who was not quaUfied to be a leader. The honor of Xen- 
 ophon was not that in the hour when repeated disasters 
 seemed to overthrow every hope and destroy every pros- 
 pect, that he was the leader of a forlorn hope, but he be- 
 came the leader of ten thousand equals, and as the master 
 of ten thousand miaster mindsi led the way to their de- 
 liverance. 
 
 Sleeping in graves that will never be known, resting 
 in quiet nooks where the vision of their bleaching bones 
 will never fall on mortal eye, perished in the rebel prison, 
 died at their post as lonely sentries in the night, hunger- 
 ing and famishing, burning with fevers and afflicted with 
 infirmities from some hard-fought field, or dying unno- 
 ticed in the Federal hospital, and perhaps unremembered 
 — in the silent, unmarked, unknown, forgotten resting 
 places of a thousand Southern fields are the mortal rem- 
 nants of a whole army of unknown heroes, who like the 
 Greeks with Xenophon were able to command, but in^ 
 stead paid for the life of their country "the last full meas- 
 ure of devotion," and by whose sacrifice alone our nation 
 lives. They were Grants and Lincolns still marching in 
 the ranks. No marble tablet, no roll of honor, no monu- 
 ment of granite, no memorials which sweet voices may 
 sing or eloquent words may speak shall ever be able to tell 
 the story of their honor, or do justice to their memories. 
 
 And, finally, I would mention the women in the civil 
 war. By the women of the civil war I do not mean the 
 hospital nurse, nor the army spy, nor the woman at the 
 front. Their praises have been spoken and their honors 
 told, and many of their names will live in history, ranking 
 along with their brothers who marshaled the armies and 
 fought the battles of the civil war. The women of the civil 
 war whom I have in mind were the old mothers, the 
 young brides, and the waiting maidens, who, excluded 
 from the field of battle, gave more than they who gave 
 themselves. These women of the civil war, real patriots 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS. I9I 
 
 in what they gave, in what they suffered, and in what they 
 did! When these veterans joined the army there was 
 martial music, there were gay uniforms, and there was the 
 story of the camp, there were the honors of the field, there 
 was companionship everywhere. You came down from 
 the farm, out from the counting-room, over from the 
 shop, and while you wrote your name your neighbors, the 
 boys already on record, cheered you on to the deed you 
 did ; but to the wife and mother you were leaving in a lone- 
 ly home, in your absence robbed of its keenest jov, ihere 
 were no uniforms to capture them, there were no camp 
 stories to beguile them, there was no enthusiastic cheering 
 to encourage them — they were separated from each other 
 as well as from their loved ones, and in stout-hearted lone- 
 liness, single-handed and unhelped. they gave more than 
 their own lives for the life of the world^ i\t the front, in 
 camp, there was companionship; on the forced march 
 there were men- before you, behind you, all around you. 
 There were cheers for the flag; even the horrible hazard 
 of war itself had its fascination to capture, to stimulate, 
 and to make you strong. In the hour of strife the clamor 
 of arms, the shouts of the ol^ficers, the burst of shells, the 
 roar of the cannon' — even the shriek of the dying, helped 
 you to forget and to endure the conflict. 
 
 But in some lonely attic chamber, in som'C half-de- 
 serted house, some wife or mother for the long years of 
 that awful conflict waited and toiled and prayed with the 
 agony of a breaking heart, with the courage that would 
 not take back its gift, but had learned the awful truth that 
 where our treasure is there are our hearts also. Living 
 half a life in the weary loneliness of their uncheered toil, 
 they struggled on to do the task at home which made the 
 saving of the nation possible. 
 
 Back at the beginning of my lifetime, the earliest 
 memory of my childhood is a little picture drawn in the 
 Adriondack Mountains. There was a man and his wife 
 and four small children in the yard in front of a hunter's 
 cabin, and in the cradle inside was a little child two weeks 
 old. Something was the matter in the familv. there was 
 strong crying and many tears, and then the man broke 
 
1 92 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 away from the embraces of his wife and children, went 
 hurriedly down the mountain path and disappeared in the 
 distance. That man was my father. Our mother turned, 
 to tell us that he had gone to the war. We could not un- 
 derstand what going to the war meant. We have all lived 
 to learn what it involved. My father was nearly four years 
 in the service. He was in the seven days' fight before 
 Richmond, he was at Antietam, and at Gettysburg, he 
 roasted under the Southern suns, and fretted in the South- 
 ern swamps, and waited in a Federal hospital for the hour 
 of the grand review. He is living still, and is smitten 
 every hour with the infirmities induced by his army ser- 
 vice. But with all the marching and the waiting, with 
 all the strife at the front and with all of the suffering since, 
 I do not believe his service is to be compared with the 
 brave little woman who stayed in the mountain home, 
 who toiled in the field, who kept her children and herself 
 bravely and patiently through the years, until the war 
 being over he not only came back from helping to save 
 the country, but a home had been preserved into which 
 he came, with the social, peaceful forces of our marvelous 
 American life to help to make this land of ours in the years 
 of peace greater and stronger and better than even in her 
 years of w^ar. 
 
 Young men and women ! The men and the women of 
 the terrible war were our fathers and our mothers. Our 
 lives were cast in the mold of their greatness. To-day, as 
 ever, the warfare between the forces which exalt things 
 above men on the one side, and those which exalt man- 
 hood above everything else on the other, still wages. 
 There is not an hour that passes, there it not a field in 
 which men toil, there is not a shop in which we listen to 
 the hoarse music of the mighty machinery, there is not a 
 market in/ which men gather, there is' not a place in which 
 our people assemble, there is not a task that we can un- 
 dertake, where the forward and the backward, the higher 
 and the lower, the baser and the better, are not there and 
 in this everlasting struggle. At Gettysburg there was no 
 fiercer fight between the liberator and the oppressor than 
 goes on every hour, than is undertaken as a part of every 
 
GRAND ARMY ADDRESS. I93 
 
 task in life's daily toil. My prayer for you, my ambition 
 for myself, is to be as good a soldier in my place as these 
 veterans were in theirs. 
 
HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 Adam was the father of the human race, but Adam 
 Smith was the father of pohtical economy. But the young 
 child born from the loins of Adam Smith was misled, cor- 
 rupted, brutalized, not only by his father, but by Malthus, 
 Ricardo, McCullough, John Stuart Mill, and the rest of 
 the Economists. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle sneered at political economy as a 
 philosophy of dirt, and dubbed it the ''Dismal Science." 
 
 Henry George found it, like the prodigal son, coarse, 
 heartless, feeding on husks, living among and promoting 
 the interests of the great commercial hog pastures of the 
 earth. He captured it, transformed it, put a heart into 
 it, and made it stand for men, not dollars, for the welfare 
 of the race, not simply for the creation and accumulation 
 of wealth without a purpose and without a heart. 
 
 I knew him a little, I loved him with a full heart. I 
 loved him for his early career of hardship. A cabin boy 
 at sea, a sailor, a printer's apprentice, a tramp without em- 
 ployment, and without where to lay his head, save in a 
 manger at Sacramento, as the Nazarene had slept in Beth- 
 lehem. 
 
 I loved him for his adventurous spirit. Three times 
 at sea, and once around the world as a sailor before the 
 mast, a gold hunter along the Frazier River, having 
 worked his way around Cape Horn, and all while yet in 
 his teens. I loved him because when he loved a woman 
 who returned his affection. he married her without delay, 
 though he went in debt for his board, borrowed a coat 
 and vest for the occasion. Surely his marriage was at the 
 beginning what it proved to be at the end, a union of two 
 lives for the sake of each other only, and for nO' other 
 
 194 
 
HENRY GEORGE. 195 
 
 reason whatsoever. Twice he enHsted in the service of 
 liberty in behalf of Mexico. He was a patriot at the be- 
 ginning. I loved him because he loved his country, and 
 his countrymen were as much under a Mexican sky. as 
 under our own. 
 
 I loved him for his determination to have his say. 
 The Journal, the Transcript, the Herald, the Recorder, 
 the Evening Post, the Ledger, the State, and the Standard 
 were among the enterprises which he established in order 
 that he might be heard. Over and over again he built a 
 journal that ht might speak to the people, and again and 
 again conspiracy, intrigue having secured control of th^ 
 business, endeavored to control his pen. In Sacramento 
 his paper was more widely read, more influential than 
 any other on the Pacific coast, but he was at war with 
 the Central Pacific. They could turn him out on the 
 street, but instead they offered him large sums to cease 
 his opposition and speak in their behalf. He preferred to 
 go on the street. I love a man who is brave enough to 
 fail himself, rather than to share in the robbery of others. 
 
 \Mien he had v/ritten ''Progress and Poverty," and 
 the author found himself so far ahead of his age that no 
 publisher was willing to undertake the risk of placing his 
 work before the puhlic, undaunted he set the type him- 
 self, worked ofif the first proof sheets, and seconding his 
 thinking with his own manual labor, unrewarded and un- 
 heeded produced a sufiBcient edition to place his thoughts 
 before a small company of thinking men, and the new 
 philosophy wrought the rest. 
 
 I loved him for his tender heart. In the midst of his 
 newspaper enterprises on the Pacific coast he went to 
 Xow York. He had come from the open country of the 
 West. The contrast between the free life of the West and 
 the squalor and suffering of the overcrowded districts of 
 the great city so enlisted his heart, that rest was impossi- 
 ble, that he could not content himself until first some solu- 
 tion could be found, which should provide a possible 
 remedy for the cruel wrongs under which his fellows 
 suffered. 
 
 He did as others have done. He turned his attention 
 
ig6 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 to the study of economics. He went through the dusty 
 volumes only to be told that the student of economics 
 must abandon sentiment; that goodness, that morality, 
 that mercy, that all the better attributes of our human 
 nature have no place, and can have no share in the eco- 
 nomic philosophy. 
 
 Adam Smith had taught that wages depended upon 
 the bounty of the capitalist, that necessarily the amount 
 of money available for paying wages was limited by the 
 volume of capital, that each added worker in order that 
 wages might be possible must divide with those already 
 at the task. 
 
 Malthus taught, again, that population increases by 
 a ratio faster than it is possible to increase production, 
 that each toiler could produce, as toilers multiplied, only 
 a smaller product than when the laborers were fewer. 
 It was the law of diminishing returns as applied to pro- 
 ducts, the law of increasing returns as applied to popu- 
 lations. 
 
 Ricardo taught that rents were the result of the com- 
 petitions of people for possession of the more favorable 
 locations, that as society increased the locations in the 
 great centers of population were made enormously val- 
 uable, not because of the fertility of the soil, not because 
 of mineral or agricultural wealth, but purely because of 
 location, and that rents were the difference between the 
 most desirable and the least desirable locations. And 
 as the populations increased the value of the central loca- 
 tions must continue to multiply, and the least productive 
 and abandoned portions of the earth come into further 
 use. Thus the increasing of populations meant forever an 
 increase of the price that the many, who own no share of 
 the earth, must pay to the few who do own it for the 
 privilege of existence. 
 
 Not out cf the books, not merely out of his splendid 
 intelligence, but from the great heart of the new teacher 
 came his answer. It is forever true that the gray matter 
 under a man's hat is never so near the truth as a warm 
 heart in his bosom. ''Whosoever shall will to do the will 
 of God shall know of the doctrine," is the statement of 
 
HENRY GEORGE. I97 
 
 an old truth, is the statement of a philosophic principle 
 which must forever abide. Henry George's interest in 
 economics was not born out of his love for speculation, 
 out of his keen relish for argument, out of a desire to 
 triumph in a worldwide dispute. He came to the study 
 of his subject with a bleeding heart. He was looking 
 for a way of escape, not for himself, but for those who, 
 in utter helplessness, sat under the gloom of the festering 
 tenements, and 'whose only consolation was found- in the 
 heartless and helpless voice of the dismal science of 
 economics. 
 
 It was in this spirit that he took up the subject of 
 wages. He disputed the positions of Adam Smith. 
 Abraham Lincoln had said, "Labor is the superior of 
 capital, goes before capital, is the creator of capital." 
 Henry George wrought this utterance of the statesman 
 into a philosophic formula. He disputed that capital pays 
 wages, he insisted that the wage-worker produces by his 
 toil all that he receives in wages, and that the returns of 
 the capitalist even, is a share of the products of th-^ toilers. 
 
 He gave his attention to the doctrines of Malthus, 
 not in the impossible form in w'hich it was first stated by 
 Malthus, but he followed it as it passed under the pen of 
 John Stuart Mill. He denied the main ccMention, that as 
 toilers multiply per capita of products must correspond- 
 ingly decline; and he further denied that there is any indi- 
 cation in history, m observation, or in any law of our 
 nature, that there is any probability at any time that the 
 world's population will exceed its resources. ^IcCullough 
 had said that in Ireland there w^ere eight millions of peo- 
 ple, while the natural resources were only suf^cient for 
 the support of four millions, and had contended that Irish 
 suffering was the result. Henry George answered, that 
 in the days when Irish populations had been only two 
 millions, half as many as McCullough contended could be 
 provided for with comfort, the suffering of Ireland had 
 been greater, even, than when the population had become 
 four times as great. He called attention to the fact that 
 possibilities of large families in continuous succession, 
 was a possibility which had never been realized, and about 
 
igS EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 ■which we need not be anxious. He called attention to the 
 fact that succeeding war, famine, and in sparsely settled 
 countries great families, rapidly increasing populations 
 had been the rule. Not so, however, when populations 
 had become dense, provided a reasonable degree of com- 
 fort had been maintained among the people. Malthus 
 had insisted that a population impossible to support would 
 result, except poverty and famine and war and pestilence 
 should come to keep the populations within the limit of a 
 possible support. Henry George answered that every 
 one of these things was speedily followed by an unusual 
 activity of the reproductive processes, by which the earth 
 was again peopled, and that famine and war and pestilence 
 could be no lasting remedy. On the other hand, taking 
 up the old saying, "A rich man has luck and a poor man 
 children," he maintained by an argument that cannot be 
 answered, that sufifering and privation tend directly to in- 
 crease, not diminish, populations. He reversed the fig- 
 ures of Malthus by which Malthus had contended that if a 
 man had two sons and they tw^o each and they two each, 
 that the ratio of increase would be one, two, four, eight, 
 sixteen, thirty-two, by calling attention to the fact that 
 there might be some break in each man having, two sons, 
 but that there never could be a break in the fact that each 
 man had two parents. That was unavoidable, and as each 
 man had two parents the ratio backwards counted in the 
 same way. I had two parents, each of them two, and each 
 of them two, and so on in the ratio running two, four, 
 eight, sixteen. Instead of being placed in a world where 
 the limit of support is made so narrow that there is no 
 room for the people, he insisted that we have no indication 
 in any way or anywhere that the race will ever or could 
 ever exceed the resources which have been provided for 
 its support. 
 
 The theory of wages which made the worker depend 
 upon the capitalist had fallen. The theory of populations 
 which made the existence of any of us depend upon the 
 great poverty of most of us had also fallen. What about 
 Ricardo's rents? The answer was straight and simple. 
 The argument of Ricardo seemed to be unanswerable. 
 
HENRY GEORGE. 199 
 
 The populations had created the rents, but if sp, then 
 rents should belong to the populations which created 
 them. 
 
 His answer to Ricardo was, that the earth belonged 
 to all the people, not to a portion of the people. And if 
 to all the people, if one in this generation shall not oppress 
 and rob another of his own generation, then never shall 
 the living generations be the victims of those already 
 dead. 
 
 Henry George was not only a great economist, but 
 he was a wise citizen. He wanted the earth, he asked for 
 free trade. He wanted the earth, he asked for public 
 control of monopolies. He Avanted the earth, he died in 
 the harness lighting for a three-cent fare. He was wise 
 enough to fight for the small things which it was possible 
 to secure, knowing that in each smaller battle all the issues 
 of the larger conflict were most surely hastening for their 
 settlement. The local issue of a great boss, the local 
 wrong of a great monopoly, the local evils of a misgov- 
 erned city, these were not the questions over which Henry 
 George was contending, and for the sake of which he gave 
 his life. These were simply local indications of a universal 
 disorder, as wide as the race, and involving the welfare of 
 every one of us, and of our children's children forever 
 after us. 
 
 Henry George was a great teacher. The spirit and 
 work of the man was in line with the earth's g^reat teachers. 
 Whatever may be thought of the final acceptance of the 
 Single tax as a sufficient remedy, he has at least taught 
 three lessons which must forever stand: (i) All the earth 
 l^elongs to all the people. (2) Dead men cannot own any 
 ;hare of the earth. (3) What all create all should possess. 
 1 loved him for his early roughing it, for his advent- 
 urous spirit, for his determination to be heard, for his 
 tender heart, for his wis-e philosophy, for his good citizen- 
 ship, for his determination to know no master save the one 
 master passion of his life, s-ervice for his race. 
 
DIRECT LEGISLATION. 
 
 Some time all men will do what is ^ood in their own 
 eyes, and in doing so will at the same time do what is good 
 in the eyes of all. But that day is some time ahead yet, 
 and for the present some one must set the standards for all, 
 and compel the obedience of all, regarding those matters 
 which directly and seriously affect the welfare of all. Who 
 shall fix these standards? Who shall compel the obedi- 
 ence of all? These are the hard questions in the science of 
 politics. 
 
 For my own part, I do not think that it is always clear 
 that the majority always have had and always must have a 
 natural right to rule, whether that means the rule of 
 justice, or the rule of a simple amalgamation of all things 
 ignorant, vicious and immoral. It is true that no king 
 ever had a right to rule viciously, no matter how necessary 
 his single-handed government might have been. It is 
 equally true that majority rule can have no right to enact 
 iniquity into law, and by the voice of the majority of all 
 condemn to infamy the lives of any portion. 
 
 But the real question is not whether might or right 
 ought to rule, but by what means shall the right be deter- 
 mined. The right ought to rule. No one disputes it. 
 But who shall say what is right in ail the mutual relations 
 and interests of society? Once the world believed that 
 might was right. That the right to rule belonged, of 
 right, to the strength whereby rule was possible — much 
 as the business world now holds that one's ability to over- 
 reach another in a trade, of right entitles the business 
 scoundrel to the pillage of his own rascality. So once the 
 power of a long arm and a long head to compel the obedi- 
 ence of others was held, of right, to justify the rule of the 
 
 200 
 
DIRECT LEGISLATION. 201 
 
 ruffian, and to require the loyal obedience of his victims. 
 But the ruffians were numerous, and the earth -was small, 
 and life was dear. Instead of applying their own doctrine 
 of might and right among themselves they compromised 
 their troubles, declared themselves the best class, the noble 
 order, and limited in a way the brutality of their relations 
 to each other, while all together they continued to regard 
 all the earth and the inhabitants thereof as the proper vic- 
 tims of their ambitions and their greed. The world of 
 thought and of conscience now knoiw that superior 
 strength gives no just right either to rule or to oppress the 
 weak. It knows that superior strength is only an added 
 obligation, not an added opportunity to exact service, and 
 that in any other relation might is not right, but wrong. 
 
 But right has a right to rule. The mii^hty have no 
 right to determine what the right is— who has? Intrigue 
 has almost wholly succeeded force— the world is ruled by 
 secret bargains, the nature of which is revealed to the 
 public only after the good or evil has been forever accom- 
 plished. But this secret bargaining is not confined to the 
 interests which involve in a single action the weal or woe 
 of a contineni. In the smallest municipality you must be 
 either on the inside or the outside; for the real rule is for- 
 ever vested with the fellows on the inside. 
 
 We have substituted for the rule of a king the rule 
 of a ring. If they who are strong shall not be authorized 
 to determine for us all what is the right, in order that the 
 right shall be accomplished, shall they who are corrupt un- 
 dertake the task for us? The trouble with the king is and 
 ever has been, that those -who enacted the laws created 
 by the laws special privileges for themselves. They have 
 taken by the authority of the law crown jewels for them- 
 selves, and left in penury the very workers by whose toil 
 the possession of their jewels had been made possible. 
 
 The trouble with the ring is and forever has been, that 
 they who control the machinery of society use that ma- 
 chinery under the authority of the law for the advancement 
 of personal interests, and the creation of private fortunes, 
 to the direct injury of the very poor under whose authority 
 thev themselves have come to place and power. The 
 
202 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 trouble alike with the king and the ring is that one com- 
 pany of people are creating and administering lavv^s for 
 others to obey, and under a system which makes the 
 benefit, both of legislation and administration, fall to the 
 few who rule, rather than to the many who must obey. 
 
 Suppose we try the direct rule of the majority of all — 
 suppose each law of the law-maker and each act of the law 
 executive was directly answerable, and without delay, to 
 the voice of the majority of all. 
 
 Still the law-maker might try to make laws to his 
 own advantage — but suppose he should. The maker has 
 become the whole body of the people, and the more ad- 
 vantages the whole body of the people get for themselves, 
 the better for all — the king and the ring ruled for them- 
 selves — secured their own interests. Let the people try 
 ruling for themselves — secure their own interests. What 
 then? Why, that is what the law is for. The right will have 
 been discovered and will be enforced. 
 
 But will not the majority be tyrants — will not special 
 rights — vested interests which give some of us advantages 
 over the balance of us, be in great danger? Put the ques- 
 tion this way: The king and the ring have taken away 
 from the people by the authority of the law, which the 
 king and the ring have enacted, certain things which God 
 Almighty gave to all the people in the first place. Now 
 under the rule of the people is there not great danger that 
 they, too, under the authority of the laws which they will 
 create, that they, too, will us'e the authority of their own 
 laws to repossess themselves of the stolen property which 
 they find in the possession of this plutocratic fence for 
 thieves known as vested interests? Well, yes, there would 
 be some danger of that, but in consideration of certain ad- 
 vantages we could endure even the great wrong O'f the 
 restoration to the proper persons of the stolen goods oi the 
 centuries of misrule. 
 
 Direct Legislation means that all laws shall be the 
 direct act of all the people. This has been on trial among 
 the Swiss people in some cantons from the beginning of 
 their history, and was then in operation, and no one knows 
 haw far back in the untold story, of that free and progres- 
 
DIRECT LH.iSLATlON. 
 
 203 
 
 sive people. It means that a small percentage of the peo- 
 ple, by petition, can propose a law in the same way that, 
 by petition, under our election laws we may now propose 
 a candidate. And it further means that, by a similar peti- 
 tion, any law enacted by the city council or State Legisla- 
 tion is not law until approved by the people. 
 
 It still further involves the principle of the imperative 
 mandate, whereby an unworthy public officer could be 
 discharged from his place of power, without waiting for 
 a general election to do so. 
 
 Under this rule we could vote for one measure which 
 we want without voting at the same time for some other 
 measure which we don't want. 
 
 We could vote for a plan we want without voting for 
 a candidate we don't want. 
 
 In this wa\ every law would stand on its own merits, 
 and every candidate on his own personal merits. 
 
 Great measures and good men would no longer be 
 slaughtered by bad candidates. 
 
 The rule of the boss would cease forever. Having no 
 power to give away franchises or sell public contracts, or 
 run an office brokerage bureau, his powder, his income, his 
 existence would all go together. 
 
 Corrupt measures could not be enacted. 
 
 Special legislation would cease. Party platforms 
 would cut no figure and the party convention, the mob 
 caucus, the dishonest primary would all go in company 
 with each other and to the same place. 
 
 When self government has achieved this victory, all 
 other questions will fall in line, and hasten to their final 
 settlement. We believe in the rule of the people, we insist 
 that it shall be tried in this country, and to its realization 
 we pledge our best support. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE TEMPLE AND OF THE 
 
 STREET. 
 
 Our life is both universal and individual. All things 
 live and move and have one common single being, and I 
 in the midst of them do also live. What are the relations 
 of my individual life to this universal life of all. I cannot 
 tell. I cannot know. I do not understand the secret of 
 my own small life. How can I understand the secrets of 
 the life universal. And yet this life of mine which I can- 
 not understand I may and do, nevertheless, recognize and 
 cherish as above all other gifts which are mine. 
 
 - May I, in the same way, if not so definitely, recognize 
 and cherish another life outside of and beyond my own? 
 If I cannot understand the universal life of all, may I 
 know as I know myself another self including this small 
 life of mine in the larger life of all? As I may know the 
 fact of my own consciousness, of my own existence, is 
 there also a real consciousness by which some way I feel 
 the throb of a wider life, larger, stronger, fuller than my 
 own, the touch of whose presence makes me realize my 
 oneness with itself? 
 
 And if so, then, what are my relations to this universal 
 life? Am I its slave, or its child? Is he a demon, or my 
 father? Is this all life in which is the swing of a universe 
 my friend or my enemy, or is it true that he simply does 
 not care? What are the relations of my fellows to this one 
 great life? Are they his slaves and I his child? Does he 
 love me and despise them? Can I by any formi "or bargain 
 or ceremony interest this great universal life in my be- 
 half, so that the strength of the universe shall help me 
 and harm another, and at my bidding, or in answer to my 
 prayer? Has this marvelous being made part of His crea- 
 
 204 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE TEMPLE. 205 
 
 tion to be a garden and part to be a place of torment? 
 The one for His flatterers and His favorites, and the other 
 for all the earth besides? Are the natural laws which I 
 observe in full force in all the world around me subject to 
 His will, and may I by strategy or prayer so capture Him 
 that by His will I may reverse the order of things and be- 
 come the master of natural law? 
 
 And then of what importance are all these questions, 
 anyway? What if I do believe that every man's hand 
 is against me, and know that my hand is against every 
 man? \\ hat is the difference, anyway, if I do believe that 
 I am my Maker's pet, and every man made only for my 
 convenience — God's mistake and my victim' ? What has 
 religion, anvway, got to do with the hard and heartless 
 facts of my daily life? That depends altogether on what is 
 meant by religion. In my dictionary religion has to do 
 with the' relations of the fife of one to the life of all, the 
 relations of the life individual to the life universal. Re- 
 ligion is not a matter of myth, or miracle, or tradition, or 
 form, or ceremony. It is simply a question of natural, 
 necessary inberdependen't relations between^ myself and 
 my fellows, between myself and the great universal lif:: 
 which is in all, of all and is all. 
 
 I have not asked a single question in all the foregoing 
 which does not bear directly on these relations and your 
 conception of what is true in these matters — I mean the 
 truths you discover, or think you discover, and take to 
 heart, as the real and certain things of the life you live 
 will determine beyond all question the kind of life you will 
 live. 
 
 •Religion is not a matter of the few in the temples, it 
 is a matter of life, and all men who live have a religion of 
 some sort. That is, there are certain things which they 
 believe about themselves, about each other, and about 
 their relations to the great universal life, on the bosom 
 of whose resistless current all things are moving some- 
 where. 
 
 The religious men with their temples and their books 
 do not more surely, I do not believe they do as surely, 
 believe their confessions and their formulas as do the 
 
206 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 rude, course lives, untrained, and uncontrolled, believe 
 certain fixed things which they do take to heart, and by 
 which they do take heart, and by which they do order 
 their lives for good or ill. 
 
 He who really believes that all men are his natural foes 
 will, in spite of himself, act accordingly. He who really 
 believes that he is his Maker's special favorite will treat 
 liis fellows with contempt, and in keeping with the con- 
 tem.pt which he has attributed to his Maker. 
 
 He who really and.sincerely believes that all men are 
 
 thieves is really and seriously and beyond all question 
 
 (whether stolen goods be found with him or not), he is at 
 
 heart and is sure to be somewhere and in some way, in fact, 
 
 a thief himself. Whoever really believes that every man 
 
 has his price has his own price, and usually not a high one 
 
 for himself. He who believes that all things are working 
 
 together to promote disaster, that goodness is not at the 
 
 center of all life, but at the best indifference is the ruling 
 
 character of the universal life, that man must be made 
 
 of rare stuff, indeed, or he, too, becomes indifTferent to all 
 
 the wrong, and careless of all the good. These are truths 
 
 we cannot deny, and these things are true in the street 
 
 and the market as surely as in the temple and at the altar. 
 
 But reverse all these. Suppose I do really believe that 
 
 all the teeming life of earth and air, and sea and sky has 
 
 one kindly purpose in it, that all the trial and sorrow and 
 
 conflict of the sad story of the years gone by — of the sad 
 
 story which these passing days are telling over again — 
 
 suppose I do really believe that all these are but steps to 
 
 higher things, and that this conviction is so real to me 
 
 that it hangs a rainbow^ over every storm, puts a silver lin- 
 
 • ing on every cloud, sees victory further on in the presence 
 
 of every defeat, can such a faith in no way affect the life 
 
 of such a believer? 
 
 Religion is not a matter of the temple, it is a matter of 
 life. The temple did not give us religion. Religion, the 
 inspiration of a full faith in the general good, has builded 
 every temple which deserved to rise, and sooner or later 
 will destroy every temple which deserves to fall. Jesus 
 Christ built no temples. Was he therefore irreligious? 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE TEMPLE. 207 
 
 Socrates and Paul and the early missionaries of the 
 church of Rome taught in the open streets, and embodied 
 their religion not in brick and stone and iron, but in the 
 real lives they lived themselves, and in the splendid exam- 
 ples they inspired in others. Religion has to do with real 
 life. It is not a matter of poetry, or song, or liturgy, it is 
 not a matter of forms or ceremonies, it is life in perfect re- 
 lations to its fellows, and to the great and kindly purpose 
 shown to us in the great life of nature. 
 
 This religion is the most marked fact in all life, has 
 been the creative factor in all progress. If the new civ- 
 ilization is ever to come, it will come not by the services 
 of those who seek their own. It will come not by the aid 
 of those who hold that existence is an accident and all 
 history but a chance. If the new civilization is ever to 
 come it will come as the glad creation, not of the temples 
 which the old prophets have built, but as the work of the 
 new leaders and teachers, whose faith in the existence and 
 whose confidence in the resistless forces which work to- 
 gether, i:ot to destroy, but to save and build, is to them the 
 source of their inspiration and the secret of their power. 
 
 Hungry men looking for their own dinner will never 
 furnish a sufficient army to conquer the causes which feed 
 us on crusts and clothe us in rags. Only a love for the 
 others who are ragged and cold and hungry, and a love 
 for the good and true as resistless as the unfailing forces of 
 great nature's life, joined to confidence that he who works 
 for righteousness, though he walks through the valley of 
 the shadow of death, can never fail — these are the sources 
 from which have come the heroes and martyrs of every 
 age. 
 
 The life of the people, on a more splendid basis, can 
 never come until the new cause shall be washed white in 
 the tears of anguish, and sanctified in the blood of sacri- 
 fice of the prophets of God, who forever come not from 
 the temples, but up from the dust of the stony streets. 
 
 ^ What difference does it make? St. Paul and Closes 
 said from broken hearts that they were ready themselves 
 to be accursed rather than that Israel should'be forsaken. 
 A socialist member said in the French Chamber of Depu- 
 
208 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 ties recently, — ''You would do well to listen to the voice 
 of men who speak for a cause which they love better than 
 their own lives." The new civilization is coming. It is 
 coming not by the service of those who seek their own 
 welfare. It will come by the service of those who, like 
 the heroes of other days, "Count not their own lives" in 
 the face of the bitter wrongs which curse the race they 
 love, 
 
 1 What is hunger and cold and rags for yourself when 
 fighting in God's army, achieving eternal justice not in 
 hatred for those in error, but filled with the very love of 
 the Eternal for those who suffer, and ranking as His com- 
 missioned soldiers. 
 
 I am saying these things because I want you to know 
 that all the life of the universe is on our side, that in this 
 conflict disaster, defeat, the grave itself are only steps to- 
 ward the universal emancipation. Your life and mine, if 
 hid with God, no power can destroy, no enemy defeat, no 
 disaster overwhelm. Our lives are eternal and invincible 
 in the winning warfare for the good. 
 
HOW GOUGE WENT TO HEAVEN. 
 
 Esquire Gouge was a long, lean man — that is, his body 
 and his soul were lean; his bank account, which was the 
 real man, was fat and comfortable. 
 
 It was a cold day. It was cold for the collector who 
 went after the reiits which were due the good Squire. It 
 was cold for the renters who didn't have the money; — it 
 was decidedly cold for the collector who returned without 
 it. There was a good deal of sufifering from this extreme 
 cold on this particular day, for many renters were penni- 
 less. Many a time tears, entreaties, begging for work, and 
 in some cases dead children were all the collector could 
 get from the defen&eless people, who frankly admitted 
 that they were occupying a dilapidated and filthy portion 
 of the earth, on which the good Squire was claiming rent, 
 and on which they had promised payment. It was a cold 
 day. A terrible gale was coming straight from the north- 
 west, — ^the air was full of snow and hail and the kind- 
 hearted utterances of disappointed landlords. 
 
 Mr. Slinkoff, a Russian who had never been sent to Si- 
 beria (why should he go to Siberia?), was the collector. He 
 had done his best, or his worst, all the day through. He 
 had done every ugly thing his stupid genius could sug- 
 gest to extort money from the helpless renters — that was 
 surely his worst. He had succeeded in getting verv- little 
 money for the good Squire — I cannot tell whether that 
 was better or worse, for of course poor people ought to 
 pay. No personal quality of theirs could so favorably 
 impress the Squire, and those who write books to sell to 
 him, and sermons to read to him, as the reputation for 
 ''good pay;" and what is a renter to live for anyway, 
 if not for a good reputation with the landlord and his 
 
 309 
 
210 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 hani^ers-on? That is better than health or strength, or 
 kindl}- heart, or helpful hand, better than goodness, better 
 than personal virtue for — for the landlord. And this i& 
 ■evident, for the renter may fail in all these if he is good 
 pay, and not fail of a home; in fact that is the case with 
 the good Squire Gouge himself, and with his bookmaker 
 and his' — other friends. 
 
 Do not misunderstand this as applying to business 
 men. It does not. They may discount their paper and 
 renew their obligations, and great ban^ks may organize 
 and ''get great gain" extending ''accommodations" to 
 them at two per cent, a month. This does not apply to 
 such as have credit, but only to the poor who have not. 
 And herein lies the especial fault of the poor who have 
 nothing but their services' to sell, in that they ask for and 
 do not get "accommodations" just as- others do and get 
 them. Not being cunning enough to live in this world 
 by merely buying and selling the services of others, or 
 the products of the services of others; they are under the 
 necessity of bein-g useful themselves, but the fact of really 
 useful service is no ground for credit. Naked usefulness' 
 must not ask for favors which society provides only for 
 luck and cunning. 
 
 Now Slinkofif had had the very hard task of dealing 
 with somie of the poor people who are so rich in nseful- 
 nesis that they canTiot only feed and clothe their more 
 worthy neighbors as they do, but have great intervals^ 
 of timie in which to starve and freeze themselves. They 
 had provided food and clothes and fuel and shelter for 
 their more worthy meighbors, and their wages had been' 
 enough to keep them) living in- order to work, and to pay 
 the rent while so engaged. But now the "season had 
 come" and their more worthy neighbors were hiring 
 people to entertain them, and these useful people were 
 not funny; they could not sing, they could not dance — 
 some of them even objected to providing the indecent ex- 
 posures which some of their more worthy neighbors en- 
 joyed and were willing to pay for. They could not make 
 worthless things; they could not even make faces that 
 would sell. They could only be useful, but they had 
 
HOW GOUGE WENT TO HEAVEN. 211 
 
 already provided all the useful thimgis their more worthy 
 n-eio^hbors would buy. The "sieason" had come— the sea- 
 son when one-half of the world goes to parties, and the 
 other half goes hungry and cold. 
 
 I cannot tell you all the cruel words- that Slinkoff had 
 spoken to the wretched people who were subject to his 
 control, and who tirembled at his' approach; I only know 
 that every wretched condition of their wretched lives w^as 
 made more wretched by his weekly calls; that hungry 
 })cople went supperless to bed becaus-e they could do 
 \vithout a supper, but none could endure a night on the 
 sidewalk with wif-e and little ones; that the deep w^ounds 
 which conscious penury had made, were cruelly torn 
 ag:ain, and made to bleed afresh in the secret inward 
 bleeding of the hearl^ which both strangles nobleness of 
 ])urpos'e and exhausts life's forces. I only know that the 
 conduct of Slinkoff had been^ so despicable that his own 
 cruel words had touched an unsuspected tender spot in 
 his own thick hide, and that he had stopped short off in 
 his heartless work and determined to go to Gouge with 
 a forbidden report of a bereaved and penniless family. 
 The father had gone in search of work; had gone out into 
 the darkness, under the glare of the sunlight, with a 
 heavy heart, and had not returned, knowing that the 
 cupboard was empty and the fire gone out. He was strug- 
 gling somewhere, begging somebody to give him toil, 
 that he might save his little ones afive. His wife had 
 fallen in a fatal sickness because of the hunger and cold 
 she could no long-er bear. The little ones had bundled to- 
 gether in their fright and suffering — the oldest, a boy of 
 a dozen years, had begged for money to save his mother 
 from the awful cold, and had been arrested for begging, 
 his story discredited and himself sent to the lock-up. The 
 father, in despair, had returned to suffer with his little 
 ones empty-handed, to find his wife dead, his child in 
 prison, and Slinkoff in possession of the remnants of his 
 household effects.* 
 
 Slinkoff entered the dingy room which Gouge called 
 
 *An actual occurrence. 
 
21:2 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 his office. There was a really pained expression on his 
 heartless face. 
 
 "Did you bring any money from No. 22 in 6?" said 
 Gou^e. 
 
 "I found there a most terrible thing 
 
 "Shut your mouth!" and silence followed. "When 
 are you going to answer me?" continued the good man 
 who owned the earth in- question. 
 
 "I fovmd " said Slinkofif, "I found " he re- 
 peated and hesitated. 
 
 "You found — you — you lazy lout! What are your 
 instructions?" roared the good Squire, stung to the last 
 measure of endurance by the impudence of his' hired man 
 — and he living in one of the good man's hous'es besides. 
 What would become of the world anyway if renters and 
 hired men were allowed to talk back when you abuse 
 them, especially after they have been properly instructed? 
 
 The good Squire had told Slinkoff when he hired him 
 that the 'first account of poverty which he brought to the 
 office would instantly terminate his valuable services. Said 
 Gouge on that occasion, "You see, Mr. Slinkoff, I am of 
 a peculiarly tender-hearted make-up, and I must never be 
 worried by the tales of woe which the occasional pauper 
 may tell you — keep them to yourself. I do not send you 
 on errands of charity, nor to bring mc information con- 
 cerning the diseases or misfortunes of the whole city^ — 
 you are simply to bring me money, and that is all I send 
 you after. Now mind," said the Squire with great ear- 
 nestness, "the first time you catch yourself bringing me 
 anything else, consider yourself dismissed, and do not 
 wait for m& to tell you so. I am of a sensitive and nerv- 
 ous nature, and it would greatly shock my sensibilities 
 to be obliged to discharge you. So if you cannot keep 
 your mouth shut don't go to work. If you do go to work 
 and ever speak one word to me concerning — concerning 
 such things, let your own words dismiss you: don't an- 
 noy me by further importunities." 
 
 Now these words were plain enough, and yet Mr. 
 Slinkoff had attempted in- the face of these instructions to 
 say that he had not thrown the woman and her children; 
 
HOW GOUGE WENT TO HEAVEN. 213 
 
 into tbe street, solely because the woman had died, and to 
 explain the circumstances which would seem to justify 
 her in doing so, and himself as the agent of the good 
 Squire, in leaving the family still in possession. 
 
 Well, Gouge pointed to the door and lifted his hand 
 to the police alarm. Slinkoff knew its meaning, and has- 
 tened to his narrow quarters to remove the ragged rem- 
 nants of what was once a home, before his successor ;n 
 office could take possession of them under pretense of 
 the non-payment of rents. For he knew the punishment 
 he deserved would quickly follow^ 
 
 That was a stern rule which discharged a faithful ser- 
 vant without a hearing. But then it must be borne in 
 mind that business regulations are necessary; that no 
 large enterprise can be conducted without proper regu- 
 lations, and that if these regulations sometimes occasion 
 hardships, nevertheless in the long run they are both 
 necessary and beneficent. 
 
 But Slinkofif was gone, and Esquire Gouge was alone 
 nursing his wrongs, wath deep pity for his own misfortunes. 
 The gas was burning with an unsteady light. Suddenly 
 the old building seemed to lurch and stagger as if the ter- 
 rific wind were holding it outright in its arms, while it 
 shrieked and howled and rattled in its dilapidated walls 
 as if a thousand demons w-ere laughing at its poverty and 
 rejoicing at its fall. The old building tottered, creaked, 
 shrieked, struggled, and as the tempest passed, still stood 
 clinging to its old foundation. But the dimly burning gas 
 had ceased its burning, and the good Squire, first fright- 
 ened, and then annoyed more than frightened, because 
 the storm had frightened him, let the matter pass unno- 
 ticed. In the morning he was cold and dead — his life had 
 gone out without warning, in the midst of the alternating 
 murmur and blast of the awful storm. Above the de- 
 serted body stood the spirit life for a little, sadly musing 
 on the ruin it had left, and then went its way out into the 
 
 boundless universe. 
 
 ♦ * * 
 
 A weak and frightened old man appeared alone at 
 the ruins of an old wall, and at the remnants of an an- 
 
214 
 
 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 cient tower and gate. He entered and walked along the 
 ruins of what had been the most magnificent street^man's 
 eye had ever seen — the most glorious whence man's rap- 
 tured ear had heard arise the ringing footfall on the 
 golden way, where a city without a hovel, or a slum or a 
 place of evil resort within its borders, had once^ stood 
 with its matchless mansions, its ceaseless music, its 
 sparkling waters and its unfading foliage. But now all 
 was in ruin. The ancient paving had been removed. The 
 jeweled gates had been unhinged, the jaspered walls were 
 broken and overgrown. The lean old man was Gouge. 
 The city in ruins was none other than the New Jerusalem. 
 He stopped before a little shanty built from the scattered 
 ruins, before which swung a creaking sign marked: 
 
 ''St. Peter's Office, Real Estate and Loans, Furnished 
 Rooms." 
 
 Gouge entered through the open door and fixed his 
 startled eyes on Mr. Slinkof¥, who stood before him. The 
 meeting, although in heaven, was not a joyful one. 
 
 "Where — where is my place?" said Gouge. 
 
 ''Your name?" said Slinkofif, "and I will consult the 
 books. I do not think you bought of us, however. Have 
 you lost your way?" 
 
 "Bought of you," said Gouge, "no, I have not bought 
 at all. But I did surely lose my way. I have been a home- 
 less tramp abroad in the universe without where to lay my 
 head for a thousand years. But they did tell me this was 
 heaven, and I have come to rest, for I am weary. Show 
 me my place of rest." 
 
 "Yes," said Slinkofif — "did you wish to rent or buy?" 
 
 "How can I buy," said Gouge, "for I am penniless?" 
 
 "Then give me your references, and where are you 
 employed?" 
 
 'T know of no one who knows me here, and I am not 
 employed at all." 
 
 "Then you are looking for work," said Slinkofif, with 
 *n evil grin upon his ugly face, "what can you do, and 
 where were you 'employed last?" 
 
 "In a real estate ofifioe," the old man' sadly said, "I 
 think I could help you with your rents.'* 
 
HOW GOUGE WENT TG HEAVEN. 215 
 
 "No, no," said Slinkoff, "you would never do, you 
 are too- nervous and too tender-hearted, — and then there 
 is no use in looking for soft snaps, they are all taken. You 
 must do solid, honest, useful work. What can you do?" 
 
 "Alas," said Gouge, "I never did a us-eful thing in all 
 my life, and I am old and weak and weary, I must rest." 
 
 "The same old story," said the agent, "all the world 
 has been pauperized when it comtes to heaven. Mutual 
 dependence and a kindly fraternalism which they sneer at 
 in the other world, they ask for in this without a blush. 
 So it is 'free soup' and a pauper's bed you ask, is it? Well, 
 this is no charity of¥ice. We only do busin-ess here. Move 
 on!" 
 
 "Where?" said Gouge. 
 
 "Move on," said Slinkoff. "You know my meaning," 
 as he reached to the police alarm. 
 
 "Stop a moment," said a kinder voice than Gouge had 
 ever heard. "Does the man complain? It must be that 
 he does not understand." 
 
 Gouge turned his face and saw an old man, yet as full 
 of strength and grace as of the years. His full and snow- 
 white beard, his robes of pure light, his stately, kindly 
 step and his matchless voice commanded and entranced 
 the wanderer. 
 
 Jt was St. Peter. "Come with me," he continued, 
 "and rest a little. I will first answer all the questions 
 rising to your lips, and will then guide you on your jour- 
 ney." 
 
 St. Peter led the way through streets deserted and 
 overgrown, and past palaces broken and in ruins, to ani 
 open space where St. Peter said, "Here still remains a 
 glimpse of heaven as it was." The overhanging trees- 
 were everywhere. The flowers were growing with an 
 exhaustless wealth of fragrance. The birds with music 
 ill their movements as well as voices filled the air. The 
 riv^^er beside which they were seated was clear and spark- 
 ling, and its waters broke along the shore with a strange 
 peculiar music, which charmed away all anxiety and put 
 all weariness to rest. On either side there were long lines* 
 
2l6 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 of palaces in their perfect beauty and children were play- 
 ing- in the streets. 
 
 "It is not surprising," said Peter, ''that you are dis- 
 appointed — that even heaven itself should be in ruins. It 
 was not so when the Master told us of it so long ago. I 
 must tell you all about it. In the first place it is not so 
 S'tramge, after all. All the universe of God is sacred 
 ground. You have grown accustomed to ruined palaces, 
 overgrown gardens, fallen temples and unwholesome 
 tenements in the other world. But the other world is 
 the Lord's as well as this. If you can answer why they 
 are there, that will help to understand why they are here. 
 You must remember that in the other world both the 
 palaces and the ruins of palaces were the works of men, — 
 you must be familiar with the doctrine, that no outward 
 comfort of one person can ever justify an' interference 
 with his personal rights and his personal tastes^and wishes 
 by another. While that was certainly true in the world 
 you came from, it is equally true here. From the cradle 
 of the human race in Asia its Westward path is marked 
 by a line of ruins. The civilization of the Euphrates, the 
 Nile, the Holy Land, of Greece, of Rome, have only 
 ashes to show for their ancient greatness. In Europe 
 the ruins of one day are covered by the growing life of 
 the next. But in the midst of all its greatness, like the 
 greatness of Herod of old, its heart is unclean and its 
 body is covered with sores. The good Master kept back 
 from the life of the world the Western Continent for many 
 centuries. He set the world to praying Thy Kingdom 
 come, and Thy will be done in earth as it is in« Heaven^' 
 And then He gave them the new Continent in which to 
 answer their own prayers. He offered the Sermon on 
 the Mount as containing the principles underlying just 
 society. But the New World idealized the Christ, gave 
 him the first place in literature, music, painting, and 
 S'culpture, and the last place in the every day burdens 
 of the children of men. They enthroned Christ in the 
 forni'S of the church, but they enthroned in the shop and 
 in the market Adam Smith and the rest of the economists, 
 who have no place for any portion of the Sermon on the 
 
How GOUGE WENT TO HEAVEN. 217 
 
 Mount in their theories of wealth. They maintained with 
 vigor for many years the one day of rest, but they Hved 
 with equal vigor oni the six remainin'g days of all the 
 weeks of all the years of the centuries-, an industrial and 
 conmiercial life, the central principle of which was the 
 same old self-seeking which caused the angel's fall in 
 the ancient days, and which built both the palaces and 
 the ruins of the palaces of every civilization which had 
 gone before. They devised new forms of government, 
 but it mattered little whether a prince or a president ad- 
 ministered the affairs of a people so fully devoted to prey- 
 ing upon one another. They contrived all manner of in^ 
 ventions and cunning devices by which the power of man 
 was multiplied. But they could not greatly bless the 
 world by a simple increase of power when that very- 
 power was used in the struggle with each other: for a 
 single prophet, foot-sore and weary, if need be, bearing 
 his staff, was a greater force to bless the world than a 
 whole train load of trained and crafty men, controlling 
 all the devices of the most modern industry, and riding 
 at forty miles an hour, each seeking his own. They 
 prayed, 'Thy kingdom come,' but they did not believe 
 that the m-eek shalk inherit both heaven and earth, and 
 they were determined to possess the earth at all cost. 
 
 "They cani'e from Europe to America, and in two cen- 
 turies reproduced Dives and Lazarus. Only Dives was 
 usually a stock or bond holder absent and unknown to 
 Lazarus, for he never saw his outer gate or knew the 
 companionship even of his dogs. Som<e of them came 
 from America to Heaven with th-e same old spirit in 
 them. They commenced in America with a free conti- 
 nent, and what the}' built you know\ They commenced 
 in Heaven with gardens and palaces, and what the old 
 spirit which covered the earth with ruins has wrought in 
 Heaven you can plainly see. 
 
 "They prayed on earth *Thy kingdom come,' but in 
 their heart of hearts they struggle to possess the kingdom 
 each for himself. How could they unlearn all the old 
 lesson of selfishness by simply changing continents? A 
 European in America, guided by the old spirit, was a 
 
31 8 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 European still. An American in Heaven, gtiided by the 
 same old spirit, was an American still. Well, Heaven is 
 not a prison. It was built for a hom'c, but so absorbed 
 were the average Americans who came to us with the 
 sole idea of gain by trade, that a city without a board of 
 trade, a real estate exchange, a bank, a courthouse, bonds', 
 mortgages, contracts, jails, was to them no home. To 
 them the prayer our Master taught us was made to read, 
 "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Heaven as it is 
 ill earth,' and the prayer was granted. For a New Jeru- 
 salem in the Heavens is possible only for those who try 
 to build a New Jerusalem on the earth. For each of 
 us the New Jerusalem must be let down out of the Heav- 
 ens before it can be realized by us even in the Heavens. 
 
 "It seems to you a hardship that you should be re- 
 quired to pay your lodging in advance. Was not that 
 your own old rule? But you came into this world penni- 
 less; so did your brothers come' into the world below. 
 But you came here weak and worn and weary; they came 
 to you in utter helplessness. You sought a city for your- 
 self, pure, bright and free, and full of rest; but you built 
 for others, dark, dingy, unsanitary, cheerless quarters, and 
 left the helpless there to starve and die, while you sent an 
 agent as helpless as your tenants to worry and annoy, and 
 rob them of their daily bread. To fill a New Jerusalem 
 with men like you, possessed by your old spirit, justified 
 in your own thought, and willing as you yourself sug- 
 gested to be a collector even in heaven, would be simply 
 to make the New Jerusalem an old Chicago. This is 
 what has happened. We must desire the New Jerusalem 
 with all our hearts, we must build it with all our might 
 before we shall ever see it as it is." 
 
 A great crash startled the charmed listener as he sat. 
 There was the noise of many waters about his ears, a curi- 
 ous struggle as of a drowning man. Gouge shook him- 
 self and awoke. He was not in the New Jerusalem, he 
 had not died. He was in the midst of his possessions. A 
 block of old wooden buildings, rickety, ding}^ and dilapi- 
 dated, unpainted, neglected, fallen in ruins, filled v^ith 
 poverty, saturated with sewage, poisoned with escaping- 
 
HOW GOUGE WExNT TO HEAVEN. 219 
 
 .erases, and in every way itmvbolesome and loathsome to 
 the last degree. He v.as standing in the midst of the 
 weary, haggard, toil-worn and forsaken. This was his 
 heaven, the heaven which he had made, and these were 
 liis angels. But there trembled on his lips a n-ew prayer, 
 and there entered into his life a n-ew purpose. He had 
 been to Heaven and brought it back with him. 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 
 
 For the purpose of this discussion we mean by the 
 poor those who belong to any of the following classes : 
 
 1st. Those who are poor because they are helpless; 
 the deformed, the maimed, the bHnd, the sick, who are 
 without relatives or friends who assume their care and 
 bear their burdens for them, — and hence, by virtue of 
 their helplessness they become a public charge, — the help- 
 less po'or. 
 
 2d. Those who for any reason, — it may be sickness, 
 accident, or other misfortune — and they may have been 
 born tired and never got rested, they may have been 
 thriftless or careless, they may have been pushed to the 
 wall in competition, or become utterly discouraged in the 
 contest for bread, — those who for any reason are with- 
 out the means of self support and are indifferent to their 
 condition, — the discouraged poor. 
 
 3d. Those who for similar reasons are without the 
 means of self-support, but whose courage is not broken, 
 and who, notwithstanding their misfortunes still seek an 
 opportunity to toil, and hope for at least a share of the 
 returns of their labor, — the poor who are not discouraged. 
 
 4th. Those who are not penniless, but are without 
 means suf^cient to capitalize their own industry or pro- 
 vide for their own independent maintenance; and hence, if 
 not a public charge, are unduly dependent for their liveli- 
 hood upon the consideration of others, — the poor who' are 
 not penniless. 
 
 There are few of us who belong to the first class. 
 There are comparatively few of us who belong to the 
 second class. There is a larger number who belong to 
 the third, and almost the whole American people belomg 
 to the fourth. 
 
 8@Q 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 221 
 
 There will be no dispute as to the poverty of the first 
 three classes. There ought to be no dispute as to the 
 poverty of the last; that is, the poor who are not entirely 
 penniless, but if the great majority of the American people 
 are poor, the poor problem becomes a matter of more 
 serious consideration than has been usually supposed. 
 For the question, "What shall we do with our poor?" be- 
 comes for the most of us, "What shall we do with our- 
 selves?" 
 
 It is true, that we are all of us dependent upon others. 
 It is also true that these same others are dependent upon 
 us. So long as the dependence in question is one of 
 mutual interdependence between equals, neither party in 
 such a relation need be poor, for such an interdependence 
 is the natural law of our life. It is only when B, and the 
 rest of the alphabet, are so dependent upon A that A can 
 dictate the terms of their mutual relations, while B (and the 
 rest of the alphabet) can do little more than submit, that 
 the condition of the majority is clearly one of poverty, 
 whether they are penniless or not ; for who can be poor if 
 he is not who is deprived even of the possession of him- 
 self? He is placed in a position where it is possible for 
 him to maintain his precarious and imperfect bodily ex- 
 istence only b) the surrender of his own free choice and nis 
 own best judgment to the dominance of another. 
 
 If a person is entirely without money and without 
 property he is certainly poor; but if he is in possession of 
 three or four hundred dollars in money, so far as being 
 able to provide for his own living on a permanent and in- 
 dependent basis he might about as well be penniless. 
 Three or four hundred dollars is not enough to equip a 
 single worker standing by himself for the independent 
 maintenance of himself and family. No matter how in- 
 dustrious he may be, no matter how skillful a workman, no 
 matter how anxious to toil, with three or four hundred 
 dollars he will be able to earn a living only by working 
 for somebody else on conditions which that somebody else 
 shall name, n'nd to which he shall have practically no other 
 alternative than to submit. 
 
 Of these classes of poor people, the first, the helpless 
 
222 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 poor, are entitled to care. They are unable to provide for 
 themselves, they must be provided for by others. Their 
 dependence is not a result of any vvron^ of theirs, it is 
 simply the result of their misfortune. Their poverty is not 
 their disgrace, — their neglect and suffering is everywhere 
 the disgrace of the able-bodied who permit it. It is dif- 
 ficult to conceive of any wrong greater than to treat the 
 utterly helpless as if in some way they were to be blamed 
 and punished for their helplessness. To house them with 
 the vicious and the ignorant and the mentally defective, — 
 to make no distinction between the lazy and the crippled, 
 between the drunken and the maimed, — between those 
 w^ho are poor because they are vicious and those who 
 are poor because they are helpless, is an outrage which is 
 all the m'ore an outrage because committed against those 
 who are defenseless because they are helpless. For these 
 it is clearly the duty of the state to provide homes com- 
 fortable and convenient, and so far as possible to retrieve 
 for them the great misfortune of their helplessness, and 
 that absolutely without disgrace. 
 
 Prof. Graham Taylor declares that the cause of help- 
 less pauperism, which is more prolific than all others, is 
 sickness and death. The bread winner dies, and the de- 
 pendent family is left to suffer. Or, the bread v/inner, 
 through accident or disease, becomes a confirmed invalid, 
 himself dependent, and those who are helpless without 
 him must share his dependence. Sickness and even death 
 may follow dissipation, or a carelessness so great that it 
 amoun-tsto crime; but the dead bread winner is b'?yond our 
 reach, and the blame, which may or- may not belong to him 
 because of his wasted life, ought not to be carried over to 
 the account of the young or old who are helpless without 
 him. There is no tragedy in life more terrible than the 
 one which is daily enacted in all portions of the country, 
 where the family that was able to provide for itself while 
 the bread winner was strong, in his broken strength, or 
 in the loss of life itself, adds to its bereavement of a 
 broken family a blighted and ruined fireside. And there 
 is no grief that can wring a human heart with greater 
 anguish than the terrible knowledge that one's own 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 
 
 223 
 
 Strength is failing, and that the helpless aged who have 
 loved us, or the little prattlers that we love, are to be left 
 uncared for with all the chances of the friendless and help- 
 less in their unnatural struggle for existence. Shall 
 society longer add to the misfortune of their helplessness 
 the infamy of unmerited disgrace? In childhood, and old 
 age, all are helpless. If the natural bread winner which 
 a family provides, fails through sickness or death, or even 
 through his refusal to meet the obligations which the 
 filial or parental relations create, then dependence on the 
 stranger is inevitable. Xo goodness of heart, no kindli- 
 ness of purpose, no element of personal virtue, neither the 
 innocent prattle of childhood nor the ripened and un- 
 stained virtue of the aged,— beautiful as these are, enrich- 
 ing the character and the life of the world as thev must,— 
 these are not riches which can be turned into bread. The 
 infirmity and helplessness of the honest and virtuous aged 
 cannot be separated from the years which crown their lives 
 'With hoary hairs, and these crowns of the useful years 
 ought not to be made the occasion for their disgrace. 
 Clearer still is the claim of the helpless child. Helpless 
 childhood cannot be blamed for its helplessness, it did not 
 ask for Its tiny life, it cannot care for itself, it cannot find 
 the path its unused feet should follow. Its utter ignorance, 
 weakness and innocence is a stronger claim for the kind- 
 liest care than any other that any voice that ever falls on 
 human ears can utter. 
 
 \\ ho can blame a man for being maimed or halt or 
 blind? His misfortune may have resulted from his care- 
 lessness, but is not his misfortune a sufficient punishment 
 for his fault? Who can blame a man for being crippled 
 and deformed, when his deformitv was given with the 
 gift of his life itself? It is a portion of his birthright which 
 he cannot sell. His natural endowments are less than 
 ours; shall we use our greater gifts to disgrace him in his 
 misfortune? 
 
 It would seem that the asking of these questions 
 would be a sufficient answer, that no healthy, honest- 
 minded man could ever propose that the helpless poor 
 should be treated as if the very relief oflered them in their 
 
22-^ EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 poverty should be administered as if a punishment for 
 some fauh not at all their own. But is it true that the 
 poor are cared for as if the very care was taking care to 
 make them miserable? How through the years a man and 
 w^oman toil — not so much that they may have houses and 
 lands, that they may have bank accounts, that they may 
 command services of others, — not so much for any other 
 reason as that they may live together, sharing each others' 
 griefs and creating each other's joys. All that a man hath 
 will he give for his life, but dearer than his life itself is the 
 companionship of those he loves. Through the years an 
 aged couple have toiled together. At every place where 
 hope, or fear, or joy, or sorrow could touch their lives, 
 their lives are one. They are weak, and old, and helpless. 
 All that is left to them out of the s-ervice of the years is 
 each other, and the County Poor House gives them a 
 crust and robs them of each other. What is the striped 
 clothes of a prisoner,, what is the lonely cell of solitary 
 confinement, what is the task of the enforced laborer, 
 •what were execution itself to a criminal, coarse and 
 brutalized, in comparison with the separation of the 
 kindly hearted and helpless aged as enforced in the ordin- 
 ary County Poor House? 
 
 What can be more loathsome to a woman who has 
 sought to keep herself, than enforced companionship 
 with the coarse and vulgar whose misfortunes are the 
 necessary fruitage of their vices? Intemperance and a 
 disregard for the seventh commandment, either in this 
 generation or the ones that have gone before us, after sick- 
 ness and death, are mor-e fruitful of helpless poverty than 
 all other causes combined. Bait with the county's' poor, 
 the woman* whose sole shame is her misfortuime, and the 
 w^oman whose sole misfortune is her shame, sit down- 
 together. 
 
 Again, the County Poor House provides for the in- 
 nocent child, which is its charge, the companionship of 
 the coarsest and vilest products of revelry and dissipation. 
 Thus we mingle the current of new life, pure and inno- 
 cent, which God ever sends from the mysterious and 
 unknown sources of our being, with the cup of life, 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 225 
 
 weakened by every vice and embittered by every wrong, 
 and we wonder that the new hfe grows bitter, too. The 
 pubHc conscience must interfere with this pubHc wrong. 
 The disgrac j, the enforced evil companionship, the need- 
 less separation of old couples, and the -neglect of child- 
 hood, which characterize the care of the helpless poor, 
 must cease, or those of us who know the wrong and let it 
 pass are not the followers of the truest friend the friend- 
 less ever knew. 
 
 Pauperism is frequently a crime, and when it is it 
 should be punished as such. But the dependence which 
 is blameless is as far from the pauperism which is crim- 
 inal as the prattling innocence of your helpless child is 
 from the revelry of the coarsest dissipation. And the 
 treatment which society provides for its helpless and for 
 its dissipated should be as far from each other as is the 
 character of the subjects which it treats. 
 
 And now as to those who are able-bodied, but poor and 
 discouraged, and also as to those who are able-bodied, 
 poor and not discouraged. There are two classes of able- 
 bodied poor; those who are poor and don't care, and those 
 who are poor but have been making, and are making, 
 every possible effort to provide their own support; — just 
 as there are two classes of tramps, those who tramp be- 
 cause they prefer it, and those who tramp because they 
 can't help it. Any plan of treatment for the^e classes 
 must include tlie element of discipline in the one case, and 
 ought to exclude it in the other. If a man has done his 
 best to provide his own support and for any reason has 
 been unable to do so, there can be no reason for treating 
 him in the same manner as one must be treated who has 
 not provided his own support, but has made every effort 
 not to do so. There are some principles, however, which 
 ought to be observed alike in the treatment of both classes. 
 
 They ought not to be given anything. There is no 
 possession which any man can have which is more im- 
 portant to his personal welfare than his self-respect. To 
 be placed in a position where he must become the subject 
 of another's charity is to humiliate him, disgrace him, and 
 rob him of his self-respect in return for bread. Xo 
 
226 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 worthy able-bodied man would willingly ask for charity, 
 and those who find the asking easy ought not to have it. 
 There is no point where suffering becomes more intense 
 than for a man of exalted purpose and a keen sense of 
 personal honor to be compelled to ask the gifts of others. 
 There is no spirit more despicable than that of ready, 
 habitual, unblushing, able-bodied beggary; and those 
 who are able to work and are willing to do so ought not 
 to be compelled, — and those who are able to work but 
 unvv'illing to do so, ought not to be permitted, — to bear 
 the part of beggars. 
 
 They should be provided work. It is claimed by 
 Edward Atkinson that the products of the labor of seven 
 men properly equipped with the modern devices of pro- 
 duction are sufificient to feed a thousand. What is true with 
 regard to feeding men is equally true with regard to 
 clothing and warming them. To house and feed a large 
 number of men, purchasing supplies in markets for that 
 purpose, both wrongs the victim of such charity, and bur- 
 dens the tax payer. But to organize and equip the able- 
 bodied poor for producing directly by their own labor 
 everything needed for their own support would cost but 
 little more as a single investment than is yearly expended 
 in temporary relief. As a matter of economy for the tax 
 payer it is important that those who are unable or un- 
 willing by their own industry to provide for their own sup- 
 port should be organized and equipped and subject to 
 public management in order that by their labor they may 
 be enabled to support themselves, instead of having them 
 supported by the labor of others. 
 
 It is not at all a now suggestion that the penniless 
 should have work rather than bread, but in carrying out 
 this suggestion in the efifort to find labor, it is frequently 
 provided in such a manner as to add to, rather than relieve, 
 the disgrace of public charity. In other words, the motive 
 has not been so much to save the laborer from disgrace 
 as to save the giver from imposition. It is taken for 
 granted that all the hardships of sleeping out of doors, of 
 living on crusts, of tramping through all sorts of weather, 
 are not enough to deter some men from preferring to get 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 
 
 227 
 
 a living in that way to getting it by any honorable em- 
 ployment. And so a pile of stone is provided in a back 
 yard, that whoever "asks for bread will be given a stone" 
 to carry from one place to another— not because the 
 stones need lo be moved, but because labor must be pro- 
 vided,— not to save the applicant from disgrace, but to 
 save the giver from imposition. 
 
 The factories shut down in a great city and multitudes 
 of men are thro-wn out of employment. Quick, certain 
 public relief is necessary; but the tramp comes also, and 
 so every applicant must be given something to do,— not 
 again to save every applicant from disgrace, but to pro- 
 tect the public from imposition. And so men of all sorts 
 of all callings, of all kinds of habits, of all grades of char- 
 acter, are offered soup in a public kitchen, provided they 
 will sweep on a public street, not because the sweeping 
 needs to be done, not because the labor is intelligentlv 
 directed to the end that the city may be clean, not that 
 the men who are doing the sweeping are saved from the 
 further and almost unbearable disgrace of the utmost pub- 
 licity of their misfortune, not that they are given an oppor- 
 tunity to really earn rather than to receive a free gift,— but 
 that the public is given an opportunity to applv the test 
 of a public, unnecessary and unreasonable humiliation 
 to all who shall ask for relief. The motive in almost 
 every instance where labor is furnished is the protection 
 of the public against imposition; and not that the indi- 
 vidual shall save his manhood from disgrace as well as 
 save his body from starvation. 
 
 Relief given to the able-bodied poor ought not to be 
 given in such a way as to leave the person in the same 
 place subject to the same conditions, and likelv to become 
 a permanent applicant for temporary relief. If in ordinary 
 times and under ordinary circumstances one finds it nec- 
 essary to become an applicant for public relief, it is quite 
 likely that if left in the same place and subject to the same 
 conditions h- will find it necessarv to ask again and again 
 for the same sort of relief. 
 
 The able-bodied poor who are so poor as to become a 
 publjc charge are frequently helpless because they are 
 
228 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 vicious. They have been overborne in the contest for 
 bread because first overborne in their conflict with waste- 
 ful personal habits. There is a larger number who have 
 not become a public charge, in- their distress', be- 
 cause they are able to provide a proper siipport, but 
 because they are more willing to suffer in^ their want 
 than to bear the disgrace of public relief. It is impossible 
 to appreciate the number of sensitive and conscientious 
 people who are submitting to slow starvation rather than 
 to the disgrace of beggary. It is in vain to talk to them 
 of temperance, of economy, of a greater industry. Their 
 temperance is already total abstinence from all kinds of 
 costly drinks and from most kinds of food. Their econ- 
 omy is already no expenditure for anything that does not 
 bear on the awful problem of hunger and cold. Their 
 industry is a slavery of toil so constant and so deter- 
 mined that the sense of weariness is never absent from 
 them. They are and have been doing their best, and 
 doing their best in the midst of the competitions which 
 have reduced everything to the basis of profits, and 
 being tmable to procure by their labor both profits 
 for others and a living for themselves, they toil on 
 either in abject misery or in open dependence. Whether 
 the secret of their want is wastefulness or their inability to 
 endure the tasks which are alone provided for them in the 
 labor market — in either case the relief which is necessary 
 is not so much to help them under the conditions where 
 they have fallen, as to remove them to new conditions 
 where they may labor and not fall. 
 
 But in doing these things which should be done for 
 both alike they must be administered on entirely different 
 plans, both for the sake of the poor and for the sake of 
 society. 
 
 The point of greatest need in the case of the one is 
 removal from temptation, and healthful, useful, interesting 
 and enforced labor. If there is any such thing as a crime 
 against society, that person is certainly a criminal who 
 seeks to obtain from society his living with the distinct 
 intention of returning no equivalent for what he receives. 
 This principle is true whether it is to be applied to a specu- 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 229 
 
 lator, a swindler, a gambler, a burglar, or a beggar. The 
 wrong is in the purpose to get something for nothing, 
 and the essence of the wrong is the same in the chances 
 of speculation, in the frauds of the swindler, in the tricks 
 of the gambler, the housebreakings of the burglar, and 
 the daily habit of the habitual able-^bodied beggar. The 
 purpose to protect society must be comprehensive enough 
 to reach and include all of these classes of wrong-doers, 
 the beggar along with the rest. 
 
 If there are in the country forty-five thousand tramps, 
 able-bodied and determined not to work, as Prof. ^Ic- 
 Cook states, then society should make quick and short 
 work with their settled purpose to live off the country, 
 and by the strictest, quickest, sharpest discipline, arrest, con- 
 vict and sentence the whole outfit; — not to a work-house 
 or a jail. That would provide labor under the contract 
 system and involve both a serious outlay on the part of the 
 public and a serious interference wath the market by the 
 sale of their cheap labor products, and would moreover 
 complete then education in wrong-doing, as is too often 
 the case witn the usual criminal. They should be sent 
 to a colony organized on something of the Holland or 
 German plan of Tramp Colonies, and on the basis of com- 
 pulsory residence there. Let their employments be diver- 
 sified, let their hours of labor be few, let the industry be 
 wholesome, let the equipment be complete; forbid abso- 
 lutely the sale of their products in the market, but make 
 the reward of the labor of each the total of the products 
 of his own labor, as nearly as that can be determined, these 
 products to be theirs for their pers-onal consumption, or 
 for distribution among those who may be found to be 
 dependent upon them, — ^iDut in no case let the products of 
 the labor of those unwilling to obtain employment for 
 thcmsel'ves be permitted to come into open competition 
 with the products of those who are so employed. These 
 commitments should not be for six montns, or for a year, 
 or for any definite period. It is stated by Prof. Peabo<:ly 
 that in the tiamp colonies of Germany and Holland not 
 less than twenty per cent, of the convicted and sentenced 
 tramps are restored to the ranks of useful and regular in- 
 
230 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 dustry; while the whole army of the able-bodied and 
 vicious poor under this plan may be immediately taken 
 away from the scene of the temptations which have been 
 the occasions of their fall, and society entirely protected 
 from ♦the grievous annoyance of their continuous appli- 
 cations for assistance. And this is no small matter. It is 
 not a slight thing to leave our loved ones alone and un- 
 protected in a neighborhood haunted by tramps. It is a 
 constant wrong thus to expose them, not so much per- 
 haps because of the awful outrages which are sometimes 
 actually committed as because of the fear whose shadow 
 is never lifted during the long an^ necessary absences of 
 the family's natural protector. It will be seen that the 
 most characteristic thing of all this is the active authority 
 of the State compelling the self-supporting industry of 
 those who are wilfully idle. There should be no profit 
 from such an institution to the State, there should be no 
 temptation to unnecessarily detain the laborers in such 
 an institution, there should be no escape for those con- 
 victed except through their reformation; but of those 
 actually reformed — and the proportion would be large — 
 every effort should be made to assist them in obtaining 
 regular and profitable employment if they prefer to work 
 under the wage system, — or to transfer those who would 
 prefer it, discipline 'no longer' being needed, from the 
 colony organized on the compulsory basis to one largely 
 corresponding in character, but organized altogether on a 
 voluntary plan. 
 
 This brings us to the consideration of the care of the 
 able-bodied poor whose poverty is their misfortune, not 
 their wrong. Their numbers are larger, their family con- 
 nections are more numerous (for the voluntary tramp, but 
 very rarely has any family connections whatever), tho'se 
 who are dependent upon them are both more numerous 
 and more helpless. The especial thing which is to be 
 saved for them is their self-respect. 
 
 In their case all compulsion is to be avoided. They are 
 unable to obtain employment for themselves; they are 
 anxious to work. They are now provided with the follow- 
 ing alternatives: to tramp in an honest search for work 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 23I 
 
 and suffer the loss of everything while those dependent 
 upon them become directly dependent upon society, or 
 to become directly dependent along with the families to 
 which they belong. These should be equipped and or- 
 ganized under the authority of the State on much the 
 same plans as are suggested above, only with the under- 
 standing that the men, and their families, too, who become 
 residents in such a colony, enter because absolutely un- 
 able to obtain any employment elsewhere, or are only able 
 to obtain it on such term's as would lead them to prefer to 
 labor in such a colony under government direction than 
 to submit to any terms offered by any private employer. 
 The advantages of such an arrangement would be very 
 numerous. The fear of actual want would be forever 
 taken away, and able-bodied dependence, with its humilia- 
 tion and its disgrace, -would forever cease. Such an ar- 
 rangement would have an important bearing on the 
 contracts of laborers «with their employers. It is idle to 
 affirm that a laborer is a free contracting party when he is 
 given the alternative to accept the proposals made by his 
 employer or both he and his family sufler for it. This 
 offers at once another alternative. As the matter oi per- 
 sonal suffering for himself or family is not a factor to be 
 considered b} the employer, so it would cease once and 
 forever to be a matter to be considered by the laborer. 
 Just as the employer discusses whether or not it would be 
 profitable for him from a purely business standpoint to 
 cut, or advance, or change, or maintain any scale of 
 wages, and as he may do .this without particularly in- 
 volving the niatter of daily bread either for himself or 
 children, so the laborer would stand as a free contract- 
 ing party actmg solely from business considerations and 
 accepting or refusing the propositions made on the ground 
 of their justice, and would always have the alternative of 
 the full returns of his labor both for himself and family in 
 the voluntary colony provided for the self support of 
 those who are anxious to labor, are unAvilling to beg. 
 and only ask for the opportunity for self-support. 
 
 The advantages of these suggestions then are that the 
 tramp shall at once cease to annoy, to endanger, or to 
 
2y2 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 frighten, or even to be a public burden any longer; that 
 the unfortunate shall be given an opportunity to help 
 themselves by their own industry without the humiliation 
 and wrong of either public or private charities. 
 
 But to all this it is objected that the public cannot give 
 employment to the laborer on the . one hand without 
 adding to the burdens of the tax-payer on the other. Now, 
 this proposition as here made does not involve increasing 
 the burdens of the tax-payer, — to be sure the tax-payer 
 must furnish the plant, but the expense of an original 
 plant by which the dependent may be enabled to provide 
 for themselves is as nothing in comparison with the ex- 
 pense which the tax-payer must also provide for main- 
 taining the same dependents in idleness. 
 
 It is again urged that as a matter of principle society 
 is not bound to give its unemployed work. Well, is so- 
 ciety bound to give its unemployed bread? Whether it is 
 bound to do so or not, that is what it does, and it simply 
 becomes a question whether the wiser manner of pro- 
 viding bread for the unemployed is to give them bread 
 outright, or to give them an opportunity to provide their 
 own bread, inasmuch as the one robs them of their self- 
 respect, and the other cannot fail to ennoble by the sense 
 of self-dependence. 
 
 Again, it is argued that the suggestion leads the 
 people to depend upon the government, whereas their de- 
 pendence should be upon themselves. The penniless poor 
 are now dependent upon the government to save their 
 bodies alive. How would they be any more dependent 
 upon the government should the government decide to 
 save them alive by giving them a chance to feed them- 
 selves instead of setting them up in a row and insisting 
 upon the disgraceful performance of feeding them out- 
 right? But the government in this country is the people. 
 If the people are to depend upon themselves, then their 
 dependence must be directly upon the very parties who 
 are at the same time both thev themselves and the pfovern- 
 ment, they themselves being the government. If the gov- 
 ernment were something aside from the people, if it were 
 not a matter of which every one of us is a part, there 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 233 
 
 might be some reason in saying that the people were not 
 to depend upon their government, they must' depend upon 
 themselves. They are themselves the government, and 
 when they depend upon the government they are depend- 
 ing upon themselves. The only way in which there could be 
 any reason in the use of such language would be with the un- 
 derstanding that depending on the government is depend- 
 ing upon themselves in a united capacity, while by de- 
 pending upon themselves we mean each depending upon 
 himself individually. But industrial organization of any 
 sort means the abandonment of individual dependence 
 to some extent and substituting in the place of depend- 
 ence of the individual upon his own strength, dependence 
 upon the united strength of the industrial body to which 
 he belongs. Now, when it comes to the question of pov- 
 erty, the industrial body upon which our dependence 
 immediately rests is the whole body of the people. Our 
 contention is, that this dependence, inevitable and un- 
 avoidable, is better provided for by providing employment 
 whereby dependents may create their own bread, than 
 by providing bread at the expense of one portiont)f society 
 and at the direct and fearful injury of another portion. 
 
 It is further argued that it is impossible to give these 
 people employment -without bringing the products of 
 their labor into the markets. That would be true if there 
 ■was only one kind of employment; that is, employment 
 in making something to sell. As in the case of com- 
 pulsory residence in the tramp's colony, so in the volun- 
 tary residence of those who seek for employment rather 
 than bread at the hands of society, the rule should be in- 
 exorable, viz. : the products of their labor should be for- 
 bidden the mc.rket. They should be permitted to produce, 
 not for the market, not for competition with private enter- 
 prises, not in any way to make the equipment and plant 
 which society furnishes make them resistless as com- 
 petitors among private industrial enterprises. They 
 should produce for their own consumption; their re-ward 
 should be what they produce. 
 
 It is not true, however, that this provision ought to 
 apply to any articles which have been tfiKcn out c;f tin; 
 
234 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 field of so-called free competition', and are known to be 
 con't-rolled in their production and distribution by trust 
 ors^anizations. Whenever any article is produced by a 
 ti>ust, and 'Controlled by a trust in the market, the object 
 of such an organization always being to limit production, 
 — that is, to prevent production, tha>t is again, and finally, 
 to prevent the employm-ent of more than> a limited number 
 of producers in any line, then society can be under no 
 oblio:ation to protect the interests of such a trust. The 
 private trust has free access to the market. If it refu&es' 
 employment to large companies of producers, and society 
 shall provide employ ment for those added to the unem- 
 ployed by the operation of the trust, it ought as freely to 
 permit the products of such workers in the open' market 
 as it does the trust^ruled products of the same article. 
 
 It is urged that a large portion of the able-bodied poor 
 would apply for labor during the seasons of the year when 
 their employment would be difficult and unprofitable, and 
 would leave the colony as soon as the season should 
 arrive when it would be possible for them to keep them- 
 selves alive sleeping out-of-doors and tramping for food. 
 But the answer is that under this system tramps are not 
 permitted under any circumstances whatsoever; and 
 again, that full authority will be in the hands of the State 
 to regulate when the applicant will be permitted to go as 
 well as the condition under which he is admitted to resi- 
 dence, either in the compulsory or voluntary colony. 
 
 It is again urged that the poor do not want work, and 
 that in the provision suggested society would be providing 
 the very thing -which the able-bodied poor do not want. 
 The answer to this is that there are several millions of peo- 
 ple in this country at this time who are anxiously seeking 
 for employment, or for better employment than they are 
 able to obtain, and that for those who do not want em- 
 ployment the remedy suggested does not depend upon 
 their wishes, but is made compulsory in every case. 
 
 It is urged that this suggestion would deprive the able- 
 bodied poor of the best motive to industry and thrift; that 
 the natural consequence of idleness is suffering, and to 
 provide a \vay of escape so that the idle do not suffer is to 
 
THE PROBLEM OF THE POOR. 235 
 
 put a premium on idleness. But no pro-vision is made 
 for maintaining the idle without industry, but that the 
 multitudes of persons who are now o'btainin.G: an uncertain 
 living in idleness will be compelled at once to abandon 
 their idleness and to become productive workers. Again, 
 the motiv^e of industry which is stronger than any other 
 is the hope for success, and the cause of idleness which is 
 greater than any other is despair. Now, this proposition 
 always opens the way for ne^v hope and always shuts out 
 despair, for no mattet what misfortunes may have be- 
 fallen one the door is open for a speedy return to honor- 
 able self-support. 
 
 Finally, it is urged that it is not good for any com- 
 l)any of people to withdraw from the balance of the world 
 and to attempt to maintain their separate and exclusive 
 Avelfare. It is not so much that one company of persons 
 are separated from another in the matter of personal con- 
 tact which hurts, as not being separated from each other 
 in the matter of personal contact, but at the same time 
 being separated in social, intellectual and industrial in- 
 terests. ]\Ir. Blaine's defense of the early youth of Presi- 
 dent Garfield is in point. 'Sh. Garfield had been poor, had 
 lived on the frontier, had endured privation, but not as 
 compared with those about him. He had never felt the 
 weakness and disgrace of poverty, for in his poverty all 
 those about him were as poor as himself. The poverty of 
 Lincoln and Garfield were not inconsistent with the great- 
 est virtues and with the highest self-respect. Our sugges- 
 tion does not involve separation from the world. Associa- 
 tion and companionship among one's equals under 
 healthful and helpful conditions is fully provided for; but 
 if it did, the separation of the worthy poor from humilia- 
 ting contact v.ith the worthless rich is not a misfortune, 
 but a blessing. 
 
 And non' as to the fourth and last class, the poor who 
 are not penniless. Their need is organization, that is all. 
 Unorganized they are unable to equip themselves for 
 labor, or each working alone, to produce by his own toil 
 his own living. But organized, their joint possessions 
 would readily equip them with the land, the machinery, 
 
2^b EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 and the raw materials necessary to their proper mainten- 
 ance. Tlie problem of their poverty is wholly a problem 
 of organization. With these society need not interfere. 
 They are not now a public charge. Their poverty consists 
 of an undue dependence on those who control the means 
 ■which they must use in order to become producers at "all. 
 Unorganized this dependence must remain. Organized 
 they substitute for this helpless dependence upon their 
 masters a mutual interdependence upon each other. Their 
 joint possessions v^ould equip them for production inde- 
 pendent of thj capitalist. The problem ol their poverty is 
 wholly a proiblem of organization. 
 
 Organization rules. It is the genius of this century. 
 No Oine who succeeds at all can succeed without it. Those 
 •who obtain payments of interest, or rents or profits, and 
 those who wui the prizes of commerce, win these prizes 
 and obtain these payments because they or some one for 
 them have created, or at least control, industrial or com- 
 mercial organizations. There is no other way out for the 
 industrial forces. They must organize. The usual labor 
 organization is an organization simply to control wages 
 by dictating terms to enterprises owned and managed by 
 others. They will be able to secure the whole product, 
 they will be able to save for themselves the losses in ex- 
 change, and the payments now made to capitalists, land- 
 lords and managers only by organizing — not to dictate 
 terms to enterprises owned and managed by other people, 
 but to create, enterprises of their own in which they them- 
 selves shall manage exchanges, own their capital, be their 
 own landlords, and manage their own enterprises, and the 
 workers are ready for such a movement. Every labor 
 organization in existence, and all political movements in 
 which the workers, whether farmers or mechanics, are 
 largely interested, everywhere demonstrate that the most 
 thoughtful and capable workers in all the land are looking 
 for^are feeling after some form of organization by which 
 they can do these very things. The trades unions are not 
 w^edded to the wage system"^. They fight for better wages 
 because no other fighting program has been offered them. 
 The workers do not work for wages because they are 
 
THE PROBLEM Ol' THE POOR. 237 
 
 especially in love with the wage system, or because they 
 prize the guarantee which it provides, that in consideration 
 of their surrendering a large share of their products they 
 shall be guaranteed their possession of the balance. To 
 use the form of expression familiar among the workers, if 
 they could "once get their own hands on their own tools" 
 they /would gladly surrender any claims they may have 
 upon employers, and substitute for these complete re- 
 liance upon themselves. 
 
COLLECTIVE AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP. 
 
 Life begins with a struggle to get possession of one's 
 self. A little child's first struggle is- to possess himself 
 of his hands, his feet; it is learning to walk, to lift, to get 
 the mast-ery over that part of the universe which makes 
 up its feeble personality. But before the strife for the 
 possession of himself has achieved its victory and he 
 holds possession of his physical and mental powers he 
 begins another struggle for the possession and control 
 of at least some part of the universe outside of his own 
 personality. He never raises the question whether it is- 
 appropriate for him to use his hands and feet, they were so 
 evidently intended for his use that he immediately appro- 
 priates them and begins their exercise and development. 
 Never does he question the propriety of taking possession 
 of all the things that lie around him, for every little child 
 so far as he is able to appropriate it and use it owns the 
 earth. In his struggle to possess his hands, his feet, to 
 get in possession of himself, no one rises to dispute hisi 
 right of ownership. But when the struggle for possession 
 reaches beyond his own personality immediately a dis- 
 pute arises and the possession of every inch of ground 
 is hotly contested. If he did not use his own hands no 
 other could use them in his stead. If he does not use 
 Hie o.rticles of value which lie around him outside of him- 
 self there are others striving for their possession. He 
 uses his hands, or they go unused. Things of value out- 
 side of himself he may use, but if he does not some other 
 vrill. It is this possibility of common use of the thing 
 which is not a direct personal attribute which is the occa- 
 sion for the struggle for its possession. No one ques- 
 tions his right to use his hands, but the use of the air, of 
 
 238 
 
COLLECTIVE AND PRIVATE OWNERSHIP. 239 
 
 the sunlig-ht, of the earth, of food, of tools, is> as n'ecessary 
 and the ii'eed to us-e them as evident as the use of his own 
 hands. The difference being that he may us^e his hands 
 by hims-elf, but all other things outside of himself there 
 is the possibility of a use in common and a necessary 
 modification of the right to exclusive possession. Is 
 there any principle running through nature by which 
 we may determine what those things are which appro- 
 priately belong to collective ownership on the one hand, 
 and to private ownership on the other? 
 
 Here is the doctrine of collective and private prop- 
 erty. The core of all ownership is in the right to use. 
 Whatever one may use separately he may own separately. 
 Whatever men must use together they ought to own to- 
 gether. It is admitted on all hands* that the common 
 ownership of the public highway is altogether appropri- 
 ate. From the city of Lancaster, Pa., it is impossible for 
 any one to go outside of town except they pay toll to a 
 private corporation. Private corporations own the high- 
 ways. It is contended that the private ownership of the 
 public highway is not wise. All men must use them to- 
 gether; the wiser way w^ould be that all men should own 
 Them together. The railways are a part of the system, of 
 public highways. In this country the question of the 
 common ownership of the roads had just been- fought to a 
 finish when the railway succeeded the w^agon road in the 
 most important share of travel and transportation, and 
 thos-e who had fought for private possession of the public 
 highways consented to the public ownership of the wagon; 
 roads, but took private possession of the iron highway. _ 
 
 Why should I have a part ownership in the roads in 
 common with all my fellows? Why should my interest 
 in the roads be so vested that it is impossible for me to 
 divert any share of this common ownership to any ex- 
 clusive personal use? Why is it so arranged that a part 
 of my property vested in the public highway shall be 
 so placed that the only way I can get the benefit of my 
 property there placed is by walking or riding along the 
 roads? The highwavs are a matter of common necessity. 
 All men must use them together, and therefore all ought 
 
240 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 to own them togiether, but not in such a way that any one 
 may so us-e his share as- to make the balance in any high- 
 way unavailable for the use of others. If it is necessary 
 that the highways be held in common ownership be- 
 cause I may want to go somew^here and the free use of 
 the highway will be an advantage to me, is it not quite as- 
 necessary that I should be alive and able to travel, have 
 the wherewithal to be kept alive so that I may be able to 
 , travel, as to have the road provided, if bqing able, I should 
 wish to travel? What are the things necessary for pro- 
 viding the neoessary protection and equipment in order 
 that I may be, and remain, alive and able to travel, if I 
 should so choose, these highways of common ownership? 
 I must have clothing. Somebody must have a loom. 
 I must have food. Somebody must have a mill, and a 
 bakery. I miist have fuel; somebody must have a mine 
 and a furnace. I must have shelter; somebody must have 
 a lumber yard, a planing mill. Can I individually own 
 all these things? It i& as' impracticable and impossible 
 as for a single individual to own all the highways. In 
 any mine the machinery which is- necessary to provide 
 for my welfare is sufificient to provide for the welfare 
 of many. The only way this machinery can be used at 
 all is for it to be used for the common benefit. If it is' 
 to be devoted to the use of all, it ought to be subject to 
 the ownership of all. 
 
THE EMPLOYERS OF LABOR. 
 
 In the discussion of labor problems it is quite the habit 
 to consider capital and labor as the two sides of great 
 contending interests. The employer and the capitalist are 
 treated as one and the same, and all questions of lalx)r 
 reform are regarded as presented in the interest of the 
 wage worker only. It is assumed that the employer, he 
 being the capitalist, is the independent master of his o'wn 
 time, that he may come and go as he chooses, and that if 
 in his shops there is overwork, the employment of chil- 
 dren, sub-contracts with sweaters, or any other wrong 
 against the 'wage-worker, — that the employer is both the 
 immediate offender and is solely responsible, that he bears 
 himself no burdens, knows no wants, and feels the pres- 
 sure of no sorrows so stern and terrible as do the laborers. 
 
 Now, this may sometimes be the case, but it is so rarely 
 so that to assume that it is true in the discussion of in- 
 dustrial problems is entirely misleading. There are three 
 parties in production, — not two, — the laborer, the em- 
 ployer, and the capitalist (counting the capitalist and land- 
 lord together). The employer is rarely the capitalist, the 
 laborer is rarely his own employer. On the one hand the 
 laborer asks for wages, on the other hand the capitaHst 
 asks for interest and rents. The laborer seeks to avoid all 
 risks, consents to labor only when his -wages are guaran- 
 teed in advance. The capitalist intends to take none of the 
 risks of business, and consents to bear his share in j)ro- 
 duction only when interest and rents are provided in ad- 
 vance. The laborer must advance his labor and take the 
 risk of obtaining his wages after the labor is performed, 
 but the law extends to him a special protection and tneir 
 payment is made a special claim against the products of 
 
 341 
 
242 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 his toil. But the capitaHst advances no money until his 
 principal and interest are covered by security. 
 
 The employer is a third party. He is something of a 
 capitalist, — he is something o^f a laborer. He does not 
 belong wholly to either class, but he is required to bear 
 alone all the risks of both. Between these two, the guar- 
 anteed capitalist on the one hand, and the guaranteed 
 laborer on the other, the employer, the man who endeavors 
 to organize industry, to manage business, to make pro- 
 duction possible, must stand alone. On the one hand he 
 must guard the interests of the capitalist who has invested 
 with him and be ever ready instantly to answer his calls, — 
 and on the other he must make each separate daily task 
 of every laborer subject to his direction his task as v/ell. 
 Not that he must do it again, but into every task must be 
 a certain admixture of brain and heart, and while each 
 separate laborer thinks and strives over his allotted task, 
 the employer must think and strive for all. His security 
 may prove inadequate and the capitalist may lose his in- 
 vestment. Disaster may suddenly wreck his business and 
 the laborer may lose some portion of his wages, — ^but 
 harm can reach neither the capitalist nor the laborer ex- 
 cept as it first shall have ruined the employer. 
 
 In most States insurance companies are not permitted 
 to enter upon their business until they shall have first estab- 
 lished their abiHty to bear the losses the risks of which they 
 attempt to carry. 
 
 Consider some of the risks -which the ordinary em- 
 ployer must carry, and which he must carry alone. The 
 insurance company assures that a man in good health will 
 complete his natural term oi life. They guarantee against 
 many accidents and contingencies which may arise to 
 shorten the days of the insured. An insurance company 
 assures that a given piece of property will not be de- 
 stroyed by fire during a certain period, but there are 
 many causes which are not altogether preventable and 
 which may cause the destruction of the property, and 
 against these the insurance company carries the risk. 
 
 But an employer; what are some of the things which 
 may arise, which, destroying his business, may work harm 
 
THE EMPLOYERS OF LABOR. 243 
 
 to the capitalist or laborer whose interest or wages he has 
 guaranteed? A change in the market which he could not 
 foresee, a loss at sea, a new invention, a railway strike, a 
 defaulting debtor, a sudden death, a dishonest employe, 
 a disastrous fire, a breaking bank, a change in the laws, a 
 failure in his health, — any of these may occur any day in 
 connection with almost any line of business and may in- 
 stantly call for the reorganization or rearrangement of 
 every detail in a business already so exacting as to have 
 carried the management to the last limit of endurance. 
 Against any of these, against all of these, every employer 
 carries the risk. 
 
 Now, what of the record they make? Insurance com- 
 panies are constantly raising premiums, addin^j new re- 
 quirements, and the insurance laws are all the time being 
 made more stringent in their requirements in order that 
 the single items of a premature death or a disastrous fire 
 may be provided for. Of the number of companies 
 which organize to undertake insurance, the larger share 
 of them all, sooner or later, are overwhelmed in disaster. 
 They have undertaken to carry risks which have proved 
 greater than they have been able to carry. The same is 
 true with the employers of labor. It is estimated that of 
 of the private enterprises which are undertaken, from 75 
 to 95 per cent, of them all, sooner or later, come to bank- 
 ruptcy and failure. And those who do not fail are held 
 on through the years by the most exhaustive personal 
 care and the terrible industry of the responsible employer. 
 
 Who are the overworked? the children bearing bur- 
 dens beyond their years; the mechanic who toils the long 
 hours as he walks the floor in his daily task, — but, above 
 all, the employer who walks the steady round of careful 
 oversight by day, and walks the floor by night overbur- 
 dened by the unutterable anguish of anxiety that never 
 ceases from the hour he consents to be a manager of men 
 until life's la^t task is done. No others bear such burdens 
 as he — no others carry such risks — no others are so 
 thoroughly and so hopelessly the slaves of fortune. His 
 time is not his own. He does not go and come as he 
 chooses. He does not do as he wishes. He does as he 
 
244 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 must. He, too, is a victim of the same system of which the 
 laborer complains. The hours of labor, the prices he pays, 
 the usages of the trade, are all fixed by others, and that by 
 the basest in his line of business, and it is his part to sub- 
 mit or withdraw from the contest. The margin of profits 
 is small, the elements which enter into his enterprise are 
 numerous, there are few of them which it is possible for 
 him to control; the probabilities of coming disaster in 
 spite of toil and care and conscience were never so numer- 
 ous as now. During the recent years the streets have 
 been filled with the unemployed, but the insane asylums 
 have been gathering in their former employers. The 
 brightest mt;n have grown old in their youth, their young 
 heads are sprinkled with gray hairs, their public duties 
 are neglected, their social opportunities are forsaken, — 
 tlieir appreciation of literature, of art, of the truths of 
 science, have been pushed aside for the dull and stupid 
 routine of their thankless task. They have blinded their 
 artistic vision, they have starved their moral and mental 
 faculties, they have silenced their worthy aspirations; and 
 all these they have laid on mammon's altar that they may 
 trv to win where the overwhelming majority are doomed 
 to certain and hopeless disaster. 
 
 It is true that the wage-worker should be guaranteed 
 shorter hours, better pay, and certain employment. It is 
 true that child-labor should be forbidden, that overwork 
 and underpay should cease. But of all the classes who 
 suffer in the world's industrial and commercial warfare, 
 there are none whose burdens are greater than those who 
 attempt to carry on their own shoulders all the chances 
 incident to our living together in society. 
 
 Society ought not to permit her children to toil, nor 
 her full-grown workers to be overtaxed ; but there is no 
 class of workers so misunderstood, so overburdened, so 
 badly treated, nor whose position calls more loudly for re- 
 form than the employers themselves. Guaranteed returns 
 for capital and guaranteed wages for labor and both guar- 
 anteed only by an industrial game of chance must cease. 
 There is a' better basis for industry and commerce than 
 the chances of a game of chance. 
 
SELF-SUPPORT IN SCHOOL. 
 
 The particular thing which seems to be most charac- 
 teristic of the work we are undertaking to do, is the fact 
 that we propose that our students shall at the sanie time 
 pursue their regular studies and provide for their own 
 support. There is no other question in connection with 
 our work which is so often raised as the one regarding 
 the practicability of this proposal. Can a young man 
 work and study at the same time, that is, work enough 
 each dav to provide for his own comfortable livelihood, 
 and study enough each day to make the arrangement 
 worth while? 
 
 There are three points to be considered in answering 
 this question: First, How much work is necessary in or- 
 der to provide a comfortable living? Second, How many 
 hours of study each day are necessary in order to make 
 the effort to study at all a wise undertaking ; and, finally, 
 can a young man of reasonable strength wisely under- 
 take both these hours of labor and hours of study? 
 
 A comfortable livelihood involves food, shelter, cloth- 
 ing and fuel. A capable young man would certainly chop 
 wood enough in a week working five hours each day, to 
 provide his own fuel for a year ; but if he was a part of a 
 company working with machinery which would cost less 
 than one hundred dollars for each worker in the combina- 
 tion, the fuel for a year for each worker could be pro- 
 vided in less than an average of five hours each. It is 
 our plan to make him a part of such a combination, and, 
 therefore, the fuel necessary for his year's supply is easily 
 provided for. 
 
 In the matter of shelter. His room and its furnishings 
 would not represent to exceed two hundred days' work of 
 
 245 
 
246 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS, 
 
 five hours each, but it would provide for his accommoda- 
 tion, or the accommodation of some one else, for a period 
 of at least ten years, which would make twenty days of 
 five hours each for each year to provide his shelter. If he 
 is a member of a combination of young men working to- 
 gether through the years for the purpose of providing 
 their own food and shelter, this is practicable. 
 
 Again, as to clothing. Suppose it takes the products 
 of his labor in the field for twenty days to purchase the 
 raw material for his year's clothing, and ten days longer 
 for their manufacture. That would make thirty days of 
 five hours each devoted to providing his clothing. 
 
 The one thing that remains is food. How long would 
 it take a young man to produce vegetables, fruits, fiour, 
 butter, and eggs, and most of the things which he would 
 use for food, provided he had the lands, tools, orchards, 
 herds, and every other such equipment necessary to em- 
 ploy his labor in their production? It is very difficult to 
 estimate how much time would be required, but it is cer- 
 tainly safe to say that if employed to good advantage for 
 a period of fifty days of five hours each it would be impos- 
 sible for him to eat up during the year the food that this 
 labor would produce. This gives us a total of one hun- 
 dred and one days of employment of five hours each under 
 these estimates, by which it is believed a capable young 
 man can produce his livelihood for a year. But, instead 
 of providing for one hundred and one days of labor ac- 
 cording to these estimates, we have provided in our plan 
 for three hundred days, allowing for holidays and days 
 ofi. 
 
 Of course, if a single individual should set out to work 
 five hours a day he would find it difficult to find an em- 
 ployer who could make use of these hours. If he did find 
 an empl-oyer who could make use of these hours, his 
 wages would be small, and he would need to purchase in 
 the^ market at the highest retail prices all of the things 
 which he would need to use. It would be impossibte, 
 again, for him individually to produce with his own labor 
 all of the different things which he would use, and hence, 
 the necessity of organization for carrying on the processes 
 
SELF-SUPPORT IN SCHOOL. 247 
 
 by which the means of hvehhood are to be produced in 
 the same manner in which we have combined for carry- 
 ing on the studies. It is very seldom now that a young 
 man starts out to get an education without entering into 
 a great combination with other young men, and they to- 
 gedier make possible the securing of instruction, the ad- 
 vantage of laboratories and libraries on a scale which in 
 any single-handed effort would be altogether impossible. 
 It is as reasonable and practicable to combine for the pur- 
 pose of securing the tools and the organization for the di- 
 rect production of their livelihood as it is to combine for 
 securing the tools and the organization for their equip- 
 ment in studv, and this is the peculiar thing in the indus- 
 trial basis of our school organization. Our students work 
 directly on the land and on the raw materials to produce 
 directly for their own use most of the articles of their 
 own consumption ; and they combine together in consid- 
 erable numbers in doing this in order that the equipment 
 may be larger and that their industry may be so organ- 
 ized as to make the production of a greater variety of arti- 
 cles practicable. 
 
 And now as to the hours of study. It is no longer dis- 
 puted by anv one, that good physical conditions are nec- 
 essarv for good intellectual work. Neither is it disputed 
 that five hours a day of reasonable and healthful employ- 
 ment helps in a most important m.anner right physical 
 conditions. If this is true, after the five hours of work 
 is performed, which is allotted to our boys in order that 
 they may produce their living, there still remains the 
 afternoon and evening for intellectual pursuits, and this 
 time is not only saved for them, but they are themselves 
 in the best physical condition possible for the proper use 
 of these hours of studv. 
 
 There are in this country at least five thousand young 
 men who are at this time' working their way through 
 school single-handed, without tools and without organi- 
 zation, and thev rank in their classes with those who do 
 not labor, and thev graduate as a rule in better physical 
 condition and in their life work achieve more marked suc- 
 cess than their associates in school who went to their les- 
 
248 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 sons unhindered — we should say unsupported — by any 
 hours of previous physical exertion. If it is worth while 
 to study at all it is certainly worth while to study when at 
 your best. The five hours of labor required simply puts a 
 man in the position where in the study remaining he shall 
 be able to do his best. 
 
 As to whether it is possible to do both the labor and 
 the study at the same time, there can be no question Ic 
 is not only possible, but it is more healthful, more pro- 
 ductive of strong men, of better scholars, and of a higher 
 order of self-respect to do so than not to do so. 
 
 During the short time that our school has been in op- 
 eration if there is one thing that has been absolutely dem- 
 onstrated, it is that work and study may go together, and 
 ought to go together, that the more than a hundred thou- 
 sand young people in this country who are io-day anx- 
 ious for a higher education have the ability in their own 
 strength and industry, if it be but equipped and organized, 
 to provide for themselves their own livelihood while ac- 
 quirmg for themselves their own education. 
 
 But more important still is the relation of self-support 
 to the matter of self-respect. A very large lumber of 
 the young people who are attending school and are en- 
 deavoring to earn their own way while doing so are in re- 
 ceipt of favors, assistance, gifts of money, tuitions, old 
 clothes, anything to help them in their work. In m.any of 
 them, to some extent at least, there is a habit of depend- 
 ence, the attitude of mind which regards labor as a mis- 
 fortune and an unearned donation as entirely proper, even 
 as an evidence of Providential regard for themselves. 
 Now, labor is not a misfortune. Idleness and the disposi- 
 tion to be idle is a misfortune if it cannot be avoided, and a 
 disgrace if it can be. 
 
 There is no reason why young men or women with 
 healthy bodies should be dependent upon any one else, or 
 anything else, for their support while in study, than their 
 own strength, provided their labor is properly equipped 
 and organized. To organize and equip for this labor is 
 what ought to be proposed ; not free gifts of tuition, or 
 food, or clothes, old or new. This is whcit our school at- 
 
SELF-SUPPORT IN SCHOOL. 24Q 
 
 tempts. While it will give absolutely nothing to any one, 
 it will furnish the opportunity for ablebodied, industrious 
 young people, without gifts, without humiliation, tf) pro- 
 vide directly by their own labor for their own liveliliood 
 while engaged in study ; and the boys who graduate from 
 our school will carry with them the' habit of self-depend- 
 ence, rather than dependence upon others. The special 
 Providence for which they will be grateful will be the 
 Providence which gave them their own strength and 
 made possible the employment of their own labor ; not the 
 gifts of those more fortunate than they among their fel- 
 lows, but the direct gift of their own physical and intellec- 
 tual endowments by their Maker. 
 
 Most men must live lives of toil. All men ought to be 
 industrious, and ought to regard all necessary labor as 
 dignified and honorable. In what other way can these 
 lessons be taught so well as in a school where'labor is re- 
 quired from all, where labor is the one payment for the 
 daily charges which all must pay? Thus labor becomes 
 associated with that which is best, most joyous, most com- 
 mendable in our daily life. It ceases to be drudgerv, it is 
 no longei a slave driver's task. It is at once the glad ex- 
 pression of our bodily life and the means, of its support. — 
 From discussions of the People's University. 
 
GRADUATION. 
 
 There is no time in a scholar's career, provided he is a 
 college man, when life is fuller of enthusiasm, when there 
 . ■ more hope in it, when there is more satisfaction in being 
 a scholar, or at least a student, than when his name has 
 fust been entered and his rank established as a freshman 
 in college There is no time when his life is usually fuller 
 of perplexity, of wonder as to what is to be, or as to how 
 't is to come about, than when the senior year is over and 
 liis diploma is in his hand. At his entering as a freshman 
 lie is just admitted to the school, has just become a part of 
 it, he feels himself as in a place with a career of honorable 
 endeavor and achievement within his grasp. He has grad- 
 uated out of the high school and graduated into the col- 
 lege. As he finishes his senior year he must let go of the 
 old college, and must take hold of something else. The 
 thing he lets go of is to him very tangible. It has been the 
 most real thing in his life ; and all this he is graduating out 
 of and graduating into — nowhere. 
 
 Why should he graduate out of the college, when he 
 has once graduated into it? Why should the school pro- 
 vide for four years of intellectual culture and intellectual 
 life, and make no provision for the senior graduate enter- 
 ing vitally and permanently into the intellectual and social 
 purpose of the old college, to add his life as a new factor 
 in the career of the institution which has done most for 
 liim, and for which he entertains the most sincere afifec- 
 lion? The answer is, that the course in school is a course 
 of training, that real life finds its real satisfaction and ful- 
 fills its real purpose in the strife and struggle outside the 
 schools, and in the stern encounter of life's conflicts. But 
 v/by should life be filled with stern encounters? Why 
 
 2E5o 
 
GRADUATK^V 
 
 251 
 
 should life be a conflict, unless it be with our own foibles, 
 shortcomings, intellectual and social errors? The world! 
 which makes its chief business striving to get and to pos- 
 sess most, can only conceive of the school as a training in 
 the art of getting and possessing. If our conception of 
 life was only changed so that life should fulfill its purpose, 
 not in getting and possessing, but in being, in thinking 
 noblv, m acting humanely, in loving wisely and well, — if 
 real life were only understood to consist, not of the things 
 which we possess, but of the things that we are, then the 
 school career would have a better meaning: and as we 
 change our notion of our life, we must change the notion 
 of the training best adapted for life's preparation. 
 
 The fact is, that for most college men about the only 
 share they have in the world's best intellectual life is the 
 meager share they get while in school and college. If 
 there was some way by which the intellectual life, the so- 
 cial ambitions, the kindly and humane purposes, which 
 are cherished while in college could be projected into the 
 days that are to follow graduation, — if, instead of grad- 
 uating out of the institution they really graduated in some 
 definite and real form into the institution, to find the ful- 
 fillment of life's purpose as well as preparation for it with 
 the old mother college — if such a plan were possible 
 would not multitudes of men who never dream of living 
 scholarly lives, of leading scholarly careers, abandon all 
 thought of achieving mere commercial success, and at- 
 tempt instead social, mental, and moral achievements for 
 themselves and for their fellows as the real purpose and 
 work of all their days? 
 
 We are sure that our experience has demonstrated 
 that the answer to this inquiry must be in the affirmative ; 
 and it has further demonstrated that there is a wav by 
 which each student in an institution may on graduation 
 become a fixed and abiding part of the institution, if he 
 shall so choose. 
 
 Our fields are cultivated, our fences built, our cot- 
 tages constructed, our school work arranged, and our 
 teaching carried on by the very men who are not only 
 builders, but students as well ; and who are every hour 
 
252 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 becoming more interested in the ideals we cherish, in the 
 purposes which have brought us together. When they 
 have graduated from the course of study it will not mean 
 for many of them that they sever their connections with 
 the school and cease to be related to our work ; they need 
 not graduate out of the institution, they may graduate 
 into a fixed and abiding relationship to it, may become a 
 part of its teaching force, or may remain through the 
 years, if they will, specially devoted to science, art, litera- 
 ture, inventions, or any other career consistent with a 
 scholarly purpose. 
 
 Our members come to us for a brief trial. If they 
 prove themselves worthy they are admitted to not less 
 than a four years' course. If, after they have finished 
 their work and have regularly graduated in the course se- 
 lected, they still wish to have a share in the work, in the 
 teaching and thinking and toiling which is necessary for 
 the full life of an industrial educational associa- 
 tion, they may become permanent factors in the 
 life of the institution, and give their lives to make 
 greater and stronger the very institution which 
 it is believed will give greatness and strength 
 to them. In this connection, however, no commercial 
 motive can be appealed to, no career of gain is offered. It 
 is only one of thinking, of loving, of helping to make the 
 race greater and stronger and better, with the assurance, 
 with the satisfaction of being workers together with their 
 fellows in such high endeavor, which must be to all 
 thoughtful students of life a reward greater than any 
 other. — From discussions of the People's' University. 
 
CO-WORKERS. 
 
 Every sort of isolation is a misfortune. No plant 
 grows to maturity and ripens its fruit ready to reproduce 
 itself except it grows in the midst of its fellows. To be 
 taken out of association is to be taken away from one' of 
 the principal sources of its life. Xo man grows to be 
 strong in the real virtues which belong to manhood ex- 
 cept in association with his fellow^s. To separate him from 
 them is to separate him from many of the sources of his 
 life. Not out of the earth and sky alone can he find the 
 sources of his being. Not from the thir>gs that he may 
 feed upon, nor the comforts with which he may surround 
 himseh', can he build his manhood or realize the purpose 
 of his existence. But in association where working with 
 his fellows, all together obtain not only the means of their 
 daily bread, but the sources of each day's life — real life — 
 from companionship with each other. 
 
 A bird's nest built in a swaying bough is exposed and 
 unsteady. It would seem not the surest place for the little 
 fledglings growing there, but it is the place fixed in na- 
 ture, ordained by the instincts of the feathered tribe for 
 the growing of little ones. But the nest alone with its 
 swaying shelter, filled with birds, is the center of a tender 
 interest, and the chirping life grows strong and the mater- 
 nal instinct which sets the little fellows all alive for Iniilfl • 
 ing other nests and tempting other lives to be is not so 
 much from the nest as from the association, the compan- 
 ionship, the home Hfe of which the swaying branch is but 
 the center, rather than the thing itself. Is th'?re anything 
 so home-like, so captivating as such a nest? Is there any- 
 thing more dreary, more desolate, than a deserted nest? 
 The difference between the joy of the one and t'r.o Jesola- 
 
 253 
 
254 EVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. 
 
 tion of the other is not that there are no birds in the for- 
 est, not that no strange isolated bird tramp shall visit the 
 branches. It is that while the nest remains, the nestlin;:s 
 are gone. Companionship is broken, isolation has suc- 
 ceeded association, the hermitage has taken the place of 
 the home. 
 
 A great economy could be realized in the point of 
 nests, places in boughs, and cost in feeding by raising the 
 birds on a kind of wholesale fashion, after the plan of a 
 boarding school. In fact, that is exactly what the board- 
 ing school undertakes. 
 
 But the boarding school furnishes plenty of associa- 
 tion. It is the association of a gang, not of a home. The 
 natural way for raising birds is in a nest, and the natural 
 way is best. The natural way for making human beings is 
 a home, and the home is best. The purpose of a school 
 ought not to be to take the place of a home, it ought to be 
 an ideal home. It ought not to place a student in a posi- 
 tion where he must elect between the fireside and the 
 school house, and if he chooses either he cannot have the 
 other. He ought not to go away to school unless he can 
 take his home with him. He ought not to stay at home 
 unless he can bring the school to his own fireside. 
 
 The association which makes the fledglings into bird,- 
 is the association of a nest, the parent birds, the chirpin'-; 
 and struggling of a fledgling's life. The association which 
 makes a boy into a man, which makes a girl into a 
 woman, is not the association of one boy with many otli- 
 ers, or of one girl with a whole flock of girls ; it is the as- 
 sociation of the fireside, which reaches "backward to th..- 
 oldest, and forward to the tenderest life. The association 
 of a hundred boys with each other — the association of a 
 dozen families with each other, and the fireside associa- 
 tion in the midst of all — between these there is a deep 
 abyss. The school which is organized to put a boy into 
 the hopper, to grind him through the routine, to turn him 
 out at the other end of the mill, to send him on his jour- 
 ney by the next fast freight, has plenty of association, biii; 
 it is the association which wrecks and ruins, which mak ^s 
 
CO-WORKERS. 
 
 255 
 
 selfish and hard-hearted — it is not the association of the 
 fireside, it is not the companionship which is best. 
 
 The home which would organize to get the largest 
 number of children into it, to push them through a brief 
 period of home life with the greatest dispatch, to crowd 
 the old ones out that the young ones may have their place 
 —the suggestion of such a home is as' shocking as the 
 school idea which involves the same thing is unnatural 
 and unreasonable. Ties that are to be established at all 
 should have at least the possibility of permanence. Asso- 
 ciations which are to get their grip on our childhood 
 should liave a possible share at least in all the life tliat is 
 to follow. The parents and grandparents back of us, the 
 children and grandchildren before us, associations with 
 these ties are behind our lives, these are real factors in hu- 
 man life, and these are the ideals which we cherish. The 
 old and the young are with us, our best workers tor re- 
 cruits are those who are bringing with them their friends, 
 their parents, or their children. No crowd of boys, no 
 troop of girls, disassociated from their seniors, separated 
 from the older ones before them, or the little ones toddling 
 after them, is sought for. But simplv a big family with 
 all the ties and associations of each smaller family pie- 
 served, this is what we are working for, and this is what 
 we shall realize. — From discussions of the People's Uni- 
 versity. 
 
IJ^I^r^r 
 
 25th Edition Now Ready 
 
 President John Smith 
 
 The Story of a Peaceful Revolution 
 
 m^ 
 
 By FREDERICK UPHAM ADAMS 
 
 A book does not sell twenty-five editions in a year 
 without a reason. 
 
 In this case there are several reasons 
 
 The people are sick and tired of the misrule of po- 
 litical bosses. The> want something better, and they 
 want it now. 
 
 They have no idea of how a remedy can be applied, 
 but they know they want one. 
 
 " PRESIDENT JOHN SMITH " has a clear and 
 definite idea of what should be done. Every earnest re- 
 former who reads the book feels as if his own ideas had 
 been stated better than he could state them himself. 
 
 That is why he has been recommending " PRESI- 
 DENT JOHN SMITH " to his friends and buying cop- 
 ies to give away. 
 
 We have made the price to suit the times: 300 large 
 pages, 10 cents; i2ior$i.Go; 50 for $3.75; ioofor$7.oo; 
 1,000 tor $67.50. You send the cash ; we pay the postage. 
 
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