IN MEMORSAM 
 BERNARD MOSES 
 
Hi 
 
 
KING MAMMON 
 
 AND THE 
 
 HEIR APPARENT 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE A. RICHARDSON 
 
 ' Ye cannot serve God and Mammon 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 COPLEY SQUARE 
 
 1896 
 
COPYRIGHTED, 1896, 
 
 BY 
 GEORGE A. RICHARDSON. 
 
 All Rights Reserved. 
 BERNARD MOSES 
 
 ARENA PRESS. 
 
TO the Spirit of Moral Progress, dormant in the heart of the ex- 
 treme conservative, fiercely energetic in the heart of the earnest 
 reformer, but dominant, actively or passively, in the life of every human 
 being; a Guiding Spirit which has transformed man's brutal condition 
 of the past into the better condition of the present ; which now compels 
 the highest type of this changing creature, in subservience to the inward 
 monitor, to treat his dogs and horses more kindly and justly than he 
 once treated his sons and brothers ; and which, it is to be hoped, will 
 transform the same being by future modifications into a creature still 
 more closely approaching that ideal of mental power and moral perfec- 
 tion which the developing comprehension of humanity in every age and 
 country deifies, this book is reverently dedicated. 
 
 887319 
 
o .. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. King Mammon and His Realm 9 
 
 II. The King's Granaries 20 
 
 III. Some Rights and Wrongs 36 
 
 IV. Devil take the Hindmost 47 
 
 V. The Worship of Our Ancestors 64 
 
 VI. The Roots of the Upas Tree 82 
 
 VII. Mental and Moral Treadmills 95 
 
 VIII. Dead Men's Tyranny 109 
 
 IX. Earth from a Distance 119 
 
 X. Six Feet of Earth for a Grave 136 
 
 XI. The Supremacy of Egotism 156 
 
 XII. From Poverty to Wealth 180 
 
 XIII. King Mammon's Nightmare 228 
 
 XIV. Enchanted Wealth 296 
 
 XV. The Land of Noahme 323 
 
 XVI. The Link Between Two Generations 340 
 
 XVII. Looking on Both Sides - t 385 
 
 XVIII. The Right to Earn a Living 406 
 
 XIX. The Duty of an American Citizen 429 
 
 Appendix 449 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KING MAMMON AND HIS REALM. 
 
 " For 'all human things do reqiiire to have an Ideal in them ; to have 
 some Sojil in them, as we said, were it only to keep the Body unputrefied. 
 And wonderful it is to see how the Ideal or Soul, place it in what ugliest 
 Body yoii may, will irradiate said Body with its own nobleness ; will grad- 
 ually, incessantly, mould, modify, new-form or reform said ugliest Body 
 and make it at last beautiful, and to a certain degree divine ! Oh, if you 
 could dethrone that Brute-god Mammon, and put a Spirit-God in his place! 
 One way or other, he must and will have to be dethroned.' 1 '' 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 IN the closing decade of the nineteenth century, reck- 
 oned from the earth-visit of a forgotten Christ, Mammon 
 is King of the civilized world. You, my reader, need no 
 presentation to the King. You have faithfully served 
 him ; so have I. Neither of us two may have achieved 
 high rank in the King's service ; possibly neither has bent 
 the knee in that servile adulation which is the surest means 
 of securing the royal favor : yet we have both honored 
 Mammon. Out of that continued reverence will come 
 servility, and out of servility degradation. Let me whis- 
 per to you before it is too late : King Mammon is a 
 tyrant / 
 
 Tyranny in this free land of America, did you say? 
 Tyranny under our Declaration of Independence, our 
 
 9 
 
10 KING MAMMON. 
 
 venerated Constitution, our starry flag, our privileges of 
 the ballot, of free speech, of assemblage ? These are 
 forms, Reader, baubles, trinkets, playthings, with which 
 infantile humanity has been amused under other names 
 since men left records of their life-work. There is no 
 freedom, except the freedom of the human heart and 
 mind from the service of Mammon ; for wealth is naught 
 but power, and power unlimited has ever been the tyrant's 
 conception of heaven for him on earth. When all men, 
 Reader, seek to own and dominate this little fragment 
 of universe named earth, think you that freedom can exist 
 among them? Mammon laughs at such conception of 
 his power. 
 
 Mammon is a tyrant, Reader ; so are you and I tyrants. 
 For we are loyal subjects of the King ; and found you 
 ever a courtier under kingly tyranny who was not as 
 great a tyrant when he possessed the power ? In Mam- 
 mon's realm, some are courtiers and many serfs, \tyou 
 be one of Mammon's princes, consider not that by your 
 rank you may escape his tyranny. Do not his favored 
 courtiers perish every day in faithful allegiance to their 
 lord ? Yet what real profit and reward have these hon- 
 ored subjects secured at last from their King ? They have 
 toiled in his service during a feverish existence, slavishly 
 obedient to his commands ; they have collected with in- 
 finite trouble into great storehouses many scraps of earth 
 that Mammon prizes ; they have guarded these stores by 
 day and dreamed of them by night in servile devotion ; 
 they have worn out body and brain and life in protecting 
 the treasures : yet what reward did they receive at the 
 end of this life service ? Did they get more for their faith- 
 ful labor than the paltry food and clothing that conferred a 
 beggar's comfort upon their slavish existence? Having 
 enslaved other men by the commands of the tyrant, were 
 they not themselves enslaved by his power ? Think you 
 
KING MAMMON. II 
 
 that any man escapes tyranny in the service of Mam- 
 mon ? 
 
 And, Reader, if you be a serf in this realm of Mammon, 
 do not flatter your foolish self with the idea that tyranny 
 dwells only in the hearts of kings and courtiers. Do not 
 think for a moment that lack of power means the absence 
 of tyranny. Do not cheat yourself with the belief that 
 because Mammon has not honored you, a nobler spirit 
 dwells in your own breast than those which animate 
 other tyrants raised above you. Do not suppose that 
 hating tyrants is the same as hating tyranny. One tyrant, 
 like you and me, may hate another and both remain slaves 
 to their impulses ; but only those human beings who are 
 emancipated by their love of freedom among other men 
 can themselves be free. Do not believe that mere 
 poverty drives out tyranny from the human heart. The 
 beggar is a despot in beggarly possessions. 
 
 Whether, then, you be serf or courtier, Reader, whether 
 your life-station under Mammon's sway gives you power 
 over other men,' or whether you feel no power in your 
 ownlbands, but only hatred of some being possessing 
 power that dominates your own life-work remember that 
 tyranny is a thing which comes out of your own heart 
 and mind. The King whom you honor and serve is only 
 the embodiment of your own instincts. The tyranny of 
 Mammonism is your own inner life, given power and 
 turned against you. The despotism of Mammon is the 
 despotism of his subjects, emanating a little here, a little 
 there, and aggregating finally into a power that is crush- 
 ing its creator as petty tyrants have been crushed by 
 aggregated tyranny since man wrote history. Would 
 you dethrone this tyrant? Then first tear out his image 
 from your own heart. Destroy the despot's power there, 
 and all will be well ; but think not that Mammon's forms 
 of government can be improved by other Mammonism. 
 
12 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Havejyou, O Reader, not helped to build for this tyrant 
 the stately structures described in this secret bulletin from 
 his court ? 
 
 Stealthily and persistently has the power of the King 
 been extended, and now in the heart of every capital city 
 of the world, where the golden cross of Christ is reared in 
 shameless mockery of His humble teachings, a palace has 
 been built for Mammon's occupancy. In material and 
 decorative effect, the palaces of the King are various ; but 
 in their ground plans and general development, these 
 stately edifices are identical. The structures are of vary- 
 ing extent, but the foundations always follow the lines 
 of a Greek cross with arms extended to the four points of 
 the compass. Every wing of the palace is entered through 
 a great archway, and the interior comprises a vast apart- 
 ment in each of the four arms, and a fifth in the center, 
 subdivided into smaller sections and containing at the 
 center the king's throne. Inscribed above the arched 
 outer entrances to these apartments of Mammon's castles 
 appear strange legends, sometimes in one language, 
 sometimes in another, for they are the foundation prin- 
 ciples upon which the King claims a divine right to rule, 
 and must be understood by all from whom he would have 
 reverence. 
 
 Over the southern division, which is a temple of 
 worship, ornamented with high pointed arches, and 
 illuminated by a softened light from the narrow, stained 
 windows, appear bold letters curving above the emblem 
 of the cross and forming the text : The poor ye have al- 
 ways with you. Passing beneath the archway the devotee 
 in Mammon's temple finds himself in a church massive in 
 its architecture, rich in its ornamentation, magnificent in 
 the salary of its pastor, lucrative in the rent of its pews, 
 highly observant of social rank and decorum, forgetful of 
 the teachings of genuine Christianity, and false in its inter- 
 pretation of life duties and eternal justice. All sorts of 
 doctrine within the limits of the Christian faith are set 
 forth in this temple of worship, for Mammon is tolerant 
 of all religions that conflict not with the divinity of riches. 
 All minor heresies he will excuse, provided that prayers 
 be regularly offered for his continued power and glory, 
 
KING MAMMON. 13 
 
 and sermons be frequently preached from the text above 
 the outer archway. 
 
 The eastern wing of the palace is a hall of legislation, 
 filled with a sample group of the millions outside the 
 King's castle, who send delegates here to confer with him 
 and ascertain his pleasure. They are termed the law- 
 makers of that portion of the King's domain in which the 
 castle is located, and they are manufacturing laws of the 
 people, by the people, for the people, under the super- 
 vision and careful direction of the King, who spends 
 much of his time in this part of the palace, and fills his 
 place with a trusty courtier when he is compelled to be 
 away. He has more faith in legislators, than in scientists 
 or priests, though he welcomes all kinds of subserviency. 
 Inscribed above the archway to this hall are the words, 
 Laissez faire. Many of the legislators are not versed in 
 languages or history, and their conception of the exact 
 meaning attached to this phrase by King Mammon is not 
 very clear, but they interpret it to mean that they shall let 
 him alone and, in dutiful accordance with this theory, 
 they proceed to act in obedience to his edicts, without 
 interference with his plans. The King is well satisfied 
 with his body of lawmakers, and nearly every part of 
 their work bears the golden seal of his approval. 
 
 The northern hall of the castle is noisy with the hum 
 of machinery and alive with an army of busy workers. 
 It is the department whence the King issues his bulletins 
 to the people. Like the creeds of the church, there are 
 issued here a thousand different names and styles of pub- 
 lication, often assailing one another after the saintly fashion 
 of the priesthood, but all giving due honor to King Mammon 
 and all publishing in bold letters at the head of their col- 
 umns, the inscription which Mammon has selected for the 
 archway to this hall, and which apparently reads : The 
 freedom of the press must and shall be maintained. En- 
 twined with the letters of this inscription, however, is a 
 curious border of characters like the picture-writing of the 
 ancient Egyptians, which has a meaning that is not sus- 
 pected by the common people. One or two archaeologists, 
 good for nothing except such worthless employment, have 
 deciphered the characters, and they assert that the real 
 meaning of the entire inscription is : "The freedom of 
 the press (to publish what it is paid for) must and shall 
 
14 KING MAMMON. 
 
 be preserved. This department is also frequently favored 
 by the King's visits, for its facilities enable him to com- 
 municate frequently with many subjects who do not often 
 appear at the palace. When he has no special edicts to 
 make known through the agency of this department, he 
 directs that articles shall be prepared reciting the growth 
 of liberty and equality, the comfort and progress of the 
 people compared with their former condition, the perfec- 
 tion of existing institutions and the national glory that is 
 before the people. Strict orders are issued by the King 
 that nothing is to be published of his own power and 
 glory, but that the country and the people are to receive 
 much consideration from the writers. King Mammon 
 does not encourage biographers. In the fourth hall of 
 the castle, on the western side, seats are arranged to 
 accommodate a vast number of people, for it is a lecture 
 room where science, politics, and art receive the attention, 
 of eloquent and talented speakers in the King's behalf. 
 There is a tripartite inscription above this arched entrance, 
 each portion appropriate to one of the three topics 
 of discussion to which the hall is devoted. First appears 
 the scientist, in The survival of the fittest ; then comes the 
 politician with, Our country right or wrong ; and finally 
 the artist, declaring that, Wealth and art are inseparable. 
 The King's scientist teaches that the laws of nature and 
 not the laws of man control all social conditions and social 
 progress ; that man is but a bubble on the sea of life, 
 tossed about by the great evolutionary forces surround- 
 ing him. If he survives the destruction that everywhere 
 threatens him, his survival is the "survival of the fittest " ; 
 if he goes down under adversity and complains that laws 
 might be made better and men happier, he is assured 
 that nature and not man is responsible for his trouble. 
 The politician expands his chest with mock patriotism, 
 wraps the flag of his country metaphorically around him 
 any flag is satisfactory to King Mammon and proceeds 
 to expatiate upon its glorious institutions, the bravery 
 and intelligence of its men, the beauty and virtue of its 
 women, the freedom and equality of its institutions, and 
 the achievements and triumphs of the past. These dis- 
 courses are very pleasing to the King, and very soothing 
 to his subjects. The art lecturer has much to say of the 
 whichness of the what, of optimistic and pessimistic 
 
KING MAMMON. 15 
 
 thought expressed in poetry and sculpture, in architecture 
 and painting- ; of the ideals of life, the aspirations of the 
 soul, of truth to nature and fidelity to art. Neither the 
 King nor the people comprehend the exact meaning of 
 these artistic ideas, but Mammon encourages art and 
 encourages lectures to prove to the people that all is for 
 the best ; that life is still a poem, although the metre may 
 be at times irregular ; and that when our minds develop to a 
 conception of the pure and the beautiful things that exist 
 on every side of us, if we could only see them, we shall 
 then achieve an ethereal happiness on earth inferior only 
 to the joys of heaven. It is sometimes comforting to 
 believe in things that we do not understand. 
 
 The space at the intersection of the arms of the cross, 
 beneath the dome of the building, is occupied by what 
 the people term courts of justice. These surround the 
 throne of the King, and it materially expedites his govern- 
 mental affairs to have the courts so located, for any 
 failure in this branch of government to carry out his plans, 
 would be a serious obstacle to their final success. In 
 and about the courts, large numbers of talented young 
 men are trained under the watchful eyes of the King's 
 courtiers in the proper interpretation and application of 
 the edicts that have been promulgated by the King and 
 formulated under his direction by the lawmakers. These 
 apprentices in the art of making laws, after a proper ser- 
 vice in the courts, and after there giving some proof that 
 they comprehend the principles upon which the King's 
 government is based, are usually transferred to the east- 
 ern hall and delegated to lead in the work of framing new 
 edicts for the guidance of the people. When they have 
 shown that in both capacities they are faithful to the in- 
 terests of Mammon, they are returned to the central court 
 and placed upon the judicial bench for life. 
 
 The throne of Mammon rises high in the center of this 
 inner hall. At a little distance it seems built solidly of 
 masonry and capable of withstanding the ravages of time, 
 to an infinite degree ; but a closer investigation that has 
 been made by a few curious observers, undismayed by 
 the King's presence, proves that the material of which it 
 is composed is nothing but books bound in sheepskin. 
 Those at the base of the throne contain all the ancient 
 edicts of the King's ancestors, and at the top some bright 
 
l6 KING MAMMON. 
 
 new volumes fresh from the King's lawmakers record his 
 own decrees. The books are cunningly laid and bound 
 like bricks into a wall, and the throne is as strong and 
 durable as it can be made of such perishable material ; 
 but there is already a sign of decay at the bottom, and a 
 mouldy smell now and then attracts the attention of those 
 who are quick to note approaching decomposition. Every 
 book that has gone into the structure of the King's throne 
 has been indelibly stamped on its outer surface with the 
 words, Private rights are a perpetuity, the regular repeti- 
 tion of these words giving the work the appearance of or- 
 namentation. At the back of the throne, above the King's 
 head, the same inscription is embroidered in large letters 
 with red tape, and is surmounted by the King's arms, 
 wrought in sealing wax, and representing a hand grasp- 
 ing a model of the earth, under which the word Forever is 
 inscribed. The King's crown is a band of parchment, 
 soiled with the lapse of time, but studded with priceless 
 jewels that are now almost separated from the frail ma- 
 terial which holds them in place. Across the front are 
 wrought in diamonds the two words : Esto perpetua. 
 
 Thus according to this secret information, King Mam- 
 mon's court is established," and the courtiers who swarm 
 within its walls vociferously deny that he is a tyrant. 
 They have not felt his displeasure. They have never 
 suffered from his decrees. None of the terrors and tor- 
 ments of his reign have hitherto fallen upon their exist- 
 ence. And so are these courtiers satisfied with the King's 
 reign and loudly praise his name. My lord of England, 
 sailing idly in his yacht through Sicilian waters or dally- 
 ing with the fish and game on his British estates, or per- 
 haps inspecting his newly-acquired and extensive tracts 
 of land in far away America, does not believe that Mam- 
 mom is a despot. Neither does his wealthy and honored 
 French neighbor, with whom he used to quarrel ; for both 
 were born princes of the realm of Mammon, and are still 
 high in favor. Neither do the young American cousins 
 of these nobles the Princes of Real Estate, the Dukes of 
 
KING MAMMON. I/ 
 
 Transportation, the Earls of Manufacture, the Barons of 
 the Mines, and the Knights of Commerce find aught to 
 denounce in the decrees of Mammon. The courtier is 
 ever subservient to the ruler while his favor is retained. 
 
 The King can rely upon the faithful allegiance of his 
 courtiers ; but in recent years, among the lowly subjects 
 of his realm, who have seldom appeared at court, and 
 who have never felt the delusive happiness of his favor, 
 there have arisen portentous mutterings of discontent, 
 and the head of Mammon has lain uneasy, like other heads 
 that wear the crown. He remembers that among the 
 strange old traditions of his family there is narrated a tale 
 of an ancestor whose throne in ancient Rome was beaten 
 down and destroyed, and the records of whose reign were 
 almost obliterated by a sea of fire and blood that swept 
 over his dominions. Although but little given to studying 
 the stale and worthless legends of the past, the King's 
 courtiers also remind him that once again the throne of 
 his ancestors was destroyed after it was reestablished, 
 and the fierce Gallic blood effaced new records of kingly 
 tyranny by the destructive methods of Robespierre and 
 Danton. These tales of a past which has been little re- 
 garded for many years, and which is now almost for- 
 gotten by many who surround the court of Mammon, are 
 whispered nervously by a few, and, like the story of the 
 demons to the mind of childhood, the tales of Rome and 
 France create a fear in the hearts of Mammon's courtiers, 
 and they dread the threatened storm. 
 
 The plebeian subjects of King Mammon are in habits 
 and appearance a motley throng. Diverse in language, 
 in religion, in learning and intellect, in manners and 
 customs, they are alike in the one thing only, that all 
 must pay a tribute to the King and his court. 
 
 The labor and the lot of Mammon's serfs are various. 
 Some produce with hand and some with brain ; some toil 
 
1 8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 faithfully and diligently at the task allotted to their lives, 
 hoping some day to become courtiers ; while others, in- 
 different alike to the praise and blame of Mammon, refuse 
 to do his will except under severe compulsion, but still 
 the surplus production of all the idle and the industrious, 
 the vicious and the moral, the stupid and the intelligent 
 is, by a series of gradual transformations, eventually 
 dumped together into the storehouses which the King has 
 established and placed in charge of his favorites, the Lords 
 of the Realm the wealth-peerage of the world. Under 
 some conditions and in certain parts of Mammon's do- 
 minions, where his power. has not yet become fully 
 established, a portion of the serfs may, by prudent self- 
 denial and a proper subserviency to the King, approach 
 the dignity of courtiers ; and these see before them, on the 
 one hand, the power and honor that will be theirs if they 
 can enter Mammon's court and secure the knightly dis- 
 tinction. On the other hand, by contrasting their own 
 condition with that of other subjects who have not found 
 favor with the King, and over whom his sway has become 
 absolute, they realize the depths of tyranny into which 
 they may be plunged should they be supplanted in his 
 court, deprived of their knightly emblems, and cast down 
 to labor again in the serfdom from which they rose, and 
 thus be compelled to resume the struggle among toiling 
 millions who never expect to see the court of Mammon, 
 or reach the peerage save by some unforeseen occurrence 
 or hazardous endeavor. These fortunate serfs, who have 
 hoped for knighthood and the favor of the King, while 
 blinding their eyes to his tyranny and closing their ears 
 to the complaints of their unfortunate fellow-creatures 
 who are at the King's mercy, are debating among them- 
 selves concerning the future, and considering whether 
 they shall assist their discontented fellow-subjects in the 
 revolt against the tyranny of Mammon's court, which may 
 
KING MAMMON. 19 
 
 be turned against them if they permit it to exist, or whether 
 they will continue to seek the King's favor and harden 
 their hearts to the wrongs and the suffering. 
 
 Very strangely, the revolt against Mammon has not 
 arisen among those who suffer most severely from his 
 tyranny. There is a paralysis of life, and hope, and 
 resistance under the extremity of oppression and childish 
 familiarity with wrong. Some recent troubles and in- 
 cipient rebellion against the King in the domains of his 
 Dukes of Transportation arose, not because those subjects 
 had yet suffered the full extent of Mammon's power, but 
 because they see the conditions to which others, less fort- 
 unate, have been subjected ; they note the continued 
 extension of the King's tyranny ; and they have deter- 
 mined to contest the further establishment of his power. 
 Now and then other factions of the serfs revolt ; and the 
 Barons of Coal and Iron have had their share of such 
 conspiracies, although no general rebellion has occurred 
 against the King. But the bitter murmurs become louder ; 
 the discontent is more boldly voiced ; the King's courtiers 
 are shown but a scanty reverence ; and it is feared that 
 the subjects of Mammon contemplate a violent resist- 
 ance to the authority by which they have hitherto been 
 controlled. Let us arm these discontented hosts with 
 the weapons of truth and justice, intelligence and reason, 
 in the new warfare against tyranny, for brute force alone 
 never yet righted a single wrong. 
 
20 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE KING'S GRANARIES. 
 
 " The Burden-Sloane wedding to-day represented an outlay of somewhere 
 near $1,000,000. There were gTiests by the train load, and special trains 
 at that. George Vanderbilt, the bride's bachelor uncle ; Mr. and Mrs. 
 F. IV. Vanderbilt, Dr. Seward Webb, the whole Shepard contingent, the 
 H. McK. Twomblys and William K. Vanderbilt were there. Leaving 
 the Vanderbilt contingent and taking a look at the others, there were Mr. 
 and Mrs. Orme Wilson, Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mr. Moses 
 Taylor, a young fellow worth $40,000,000 who is expected to marry into 
 the Vanderbilt family one of these days ; Robert Goelet (worth $25,000,000), 
 Ogden Goelet, chum of the Prince of Wales ; Mr. and Mrs. Elbridge 
 Gerry, Eugene Higgins ; and many others. 
 
 " The bride's trousseau represents a small fortune, or somewhere about 
 $45,000. The wedding dress was made by Worth, or rather by Jiis sons. 
 It is of heavy satin, ivory colored, trimmed with point lace, thirteen inches 
 wide, Bretonne pattern. The train is round and eleven feet long. 
 
 "Mrs. Sloane, the bride's mother and William H. Vanderbilfs daughter, 
 is worth somewhere near $20,000,000. The bride has two uncles who have 
 somewhere near $80,000,000 worth of this world's goods, and a half-dozen 
 who have $15,000,000 or so. The parents of the groom are both million- 
 aires, and besides this his grandmother left him $1,000,000 in his own 
 right." San Francisco Bulletin, June 6, 1895. 
 
 WEALTH centralization, unjustly controlled or entirely 
 uncontrolled, is a danger which now threatens the govern- 
 ment of nearly every civilized nation of the world, and 
 which, in the minds of some thoughtful observers, even 
 threatens to destroy civilization itself. 
 
 Even this extreme view of the danger embodied in the 
 present condition of society is not an absurdity, when we 
 reflect upon the evidences of ancient civilization existing 
 in the ruins of the old world, and contemplate the bar- 
 barism of the Middle Ages which succeeded that early 
 period of man's development. Whether the internal dis- 
 sensions of a people can or cannot destroy the civiliza- 
 tion they have developed by years of progress need not 
 
KING MAMMON. 21 
 
 be discussed at present, for it is enough to know that 
 governments may be wrecked and warring factions sub- 
 stituted for a peaceful, industrial society when wrongs of 
 property instead of rights of property are maintained in 
 the laws enacted for or by the people. 
 
 Colossal fortunes have been accumulated in the United 
 States during the past fifty years ; and as the country 
 grows older, the centralized wealth and the power that 
 invariably accompanies its possession, rivals the central- 
 ization of the old world, in some respects, and exceeds 
 it in others. Mammon still retains Baron Rothschild as 
 his prime minister, but the actual concentration of wealth 
 into the large fortunes of the United States is greater than 
 the wealth centralization of Europe, although the old 
 world retains the largest fortune. An official of the 
 United States Census Office after a careful compilation 
 gives the following statistical result : 
 
 " Twenty per cent, of the wealth of the United States 
 is owned by three one-hundredths of one per cent, of the 
 population ; seventy-one per cent, is owned by nine per 
 cent, of the families, and twenty-nine percent, of the 
 wealth is all that falls to ninety-one per cent, of the 
 population." 
 
 Expressed in other terms, this statement means that 
 if we suppose a population of 10,000 people, having a 
 wealth of $10,000 and an average wealth of one dollar 
 each, under the conditions thus expressed, three citizens 
 own $2,000 and 9,997 citizens the remainder of $8,000. 
 That is, the wealthy, as thus classified, control an average 
 individual wealth of $666^3, while the average posses- 
 sions in the lower class is 82*^ cents. Consequently, 
 according to the theories advanced by King Mammon's 
 lectures, those of the upper class have, on an average, 
 about 810 times the intelligence, the industry, the persist- 
 
22 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ence, and the self-denial that are possessed in the same 
 average way by the plebeians. The estimate of the family 
 wealth shows that, under a similar supposition, 900 fami- 
 lies own $7,100 and the others, comprising 9,100 families, 
 own $2,900. The average wealth of the aristocracy is 
 about $7.88 per family, and the average wealth of the 
 plebeians is about 32 cents; consequently, according to 
 the theories of wealth distribution commonly accepted, 
 the members of the first class have about 25 times the 
 amount of social merit, in a general way, that can be 
 assigned to the second class. 
 
 Another statistician estimates that the average annual 
 income of each of the richest one hundred Americans can- 
 not be less than $i, 200,000, and probably exceeds $i, 500,- 
 ooo. Where such vast amounts of wealth and wealth- 
 increase are embodied in single fortunes estimates made 
 upon them are, like estimates of the wealth of society and 
 the amount of coin in circulation, more or less uncertain 
 but still approximately correct, at least sufficiently so to 
 justify thoughtful consideration. Estimates and compari- 
 sons made by the newspapers of New York city indicate 
 that in 1855 there were twenty-eight millionaires in that 
 city, while by 1892 the number had increased to eleven 
 hundred and three. A man possessing a fortune of one 
 million of dollars is scarcely considered wealthy as fort- 
 unes are now estimated, and yet one million of dollars is 
 really a vast power and product, and represents the re- 
 sult of an astonishing quantity of labor. 
 
 Has the reader ever considered what it means to be the 
 possessor of wealth amounting to $100,000,000? Let us 
 translate the rows of ciphers with the insignificant little 
 figure and the dollar sign at the left into something more 
 intelligible. A laboring man in any country with $5,000 
 worth of property to his credit free of incumbrance, is 
 comfortably situated as the world wags to-day, yet twenty 
 
KING MAMMON. 23 
 
 thousand men a small army each possessing this 
 amount, have together no greater wealth than one man 
 with one hundred millions. Fifty thousand men with 
 $2,000 each have the same aggregate amount. If the 
 owner of $100,000,000 should be compelled to produce 
 his fortune by labor at the average rate of $10 in every 
 twenty-four hours, he would only have $365,000 at the 
 end of a century, and he would have to live about 27,400 
 years before he could thus accumulate his wealth, al- 
 though average humanity would consider $10 per day 
 very satisfactory as an income. If the owner of such a 
 fortune should buy land with it at the average price of 
 $20 per acre, he would then control a tract as large as the 
 State of New Jersey. If he bought suits of clothes at $10 
 each, they would clothe nearly one-sixth of the population 
 of the United States, or keep one man in clothes at the 
 rate of $100 per year for the next ten thousand centuries. 
 If he bought flour at $4 per barrel he would have enough 
 to meet the annual consumption of one-third of the people 
 in the United States, or to feed one man for 25,000,000 
 years. If the wealth were transformed into silver 
 dollars and stacked in a single pile it would reach out- 
 ward from the surface of the earth more than 175 miles 
 far beyond the supposed limits of the atmosphere. 
 Tipped over upon the earth, the stack of silver would 
 reach across the State of California. Given two horses, a 
 wagon and his own two hands, the owner would require 
 years to collect his silver dollars as they lay in line 
 along the earth and to merely gather them into a central 
 heap. 
 
 And yet there are men who see no wrong and no dan- 
 ger in the present methods of controlling and continuing 
 such fortunes ! If such be the nature and extent of a fort- 
 une of one hundred millions of dollars, what shall we say 
 of the fortunes of two hundred or two hundred and fifty 
 
24 KING MAMMON. 
 
 millions that are likely to represent the wealth of the 
 largest accumulations of this century ? Such power is not 
 merely the absolute control of a fortune, it is the dictator- 
 ship of an empire. 
 
 Tabulated results by competent and disinterested sta- 
 tisticians, writing only for reference, show that in 1890 
 the wealth of the United States was estimated at $66,000,- 
 000,000. Its population at that time being 63,000,000, 
 the average wealth of each person was $1,047.62. There 
 are now at least 1,600 persons who are each worth $5,- 
 000,000 or more. Careful estimates indicate that in this 
 country there are not less than 30,000 persons each of 
 whom possesses property valued at more than $500,000, 
 and all of whom possess an aggregate wealth of $36,250,- 
 000,000, leaving to all the other inhabitants of the country 
 an aggregate wealth of $26, 750,000,006. That is, 30,000 
 people in the United States own considerably more than 
 half its wealth and, on an average, one person in every 
 two thousand persons owns more wealth than all the 
 others together. 
 
 Figures are dry ; it is not necessary to pursue them fur- 
 ther to comprehend in a general way the fearful inequali- 
 ties of wealth distribution that have arisen in the Republic, 
 even at this early stage of its progress. The belligerently 
 conservative reader who believes firmly in the perfection 
 of established institutions, -will now begin to inquire : 
 "Well, what do you propose to do about it? Do you 
 expect to rob these people of great wealth and give it to 
 the idle and vicious, who do not succeed in the world be- 
 cause they make no effort ? " 
 
 In this chapter nothing will be proposed ; but an effort 
 will be made to indicate that wealth centralization exists 
 to a dangerous degree and that, if unchecked, the condi- 
 tion will almost inevitably destroy the present govern- 
 ment of the United States. It may be shown that such 
 
KING MAMMON. 25 
 
 disproportionate centralization of wealth is unjust and un- 
 necessary, and whatever shall be proposed will, it is hoped, 
 be founded upon justice and equal rights, as all genuine 
 reforms must be, and will rob no man of one dollar nor 
 deprive him of a single moral right or privilege to which 
 he is justly entitled. 
 
 Let us proceed with our inquiry into the actual distribu- 
 tion of those comforts that are generally believed to make 
 life worth living. We need only to use our eyes. On the 
 streets of any large city we can see the magnificent pal- 
 aces of the rich, each of which has cost enough to give a 
 year of comparative rest and comfort to a thousand poor 
 men's homes, in which the bread for the morrow is earned 
 by the toil of to-day. Sometimes the marble palace is 
 occupied by gay revelers " who toil not, neither do they 
 spin," and yet are decked in silks and satins, laces and 
 diamonds, the value of which would be fortunes to the 
 workers crowded closely together in the grimy tenements 
 owned by the occupants of the palace, but located at a 
 distance from their luxurious habitation, and in a quarter 
 where the necessities of a badly balanced social existence 
 crowd human beings together like sardines in their little 
 tin case. The wines and the flowers on a single table in 
 the palace often cost more than a hundred industrious and 
 frugal laborers are able to accumulate in a year's applica- 
 tion to their labor service. Sometimes the palace is closed 
 and silent, unoccupied and useless except as the home of 
 a few servants left in charge, while the socially worthless 
 existence of its owners is droned out at a summer resort 
 or in travel. Such are the idle rich, harmless, thought- 
 less, save in following the daily round of folly that has 
 become to them a life-work ; free from responsibility, 
 knowing little of their fellow-creatures or of human exist- 
 ence outside the circle of what they term society, and 
 serving no useful purpose whatever in the economy of 
 
26 KING MAMMON. 
 
 either man or nature. Their religion is the doctrine of 
 the "four hundred," and their prophets are Ward McAl- 
 listers. Their subsistence and their luxury have been 
 granted to them as a perpetuity by the millions of busy 
 workers surrounding them. 
 
 In another quarter of the city amidst the banks and 
 great business establishments we find the predatory rich. 
 Sometimes their occupation is a business that is to be 
 transformed into a monopoly as soon as possible by driv- 
 ing weaker competitors to the wall ; sometimes it is a 
 mere juggling with millions, after the fashion of a faro 
 bank, in which one may lose and the other win, or a 
 thousand deluded victims be fleeced, but in which the 
 world is not really made one whit better, or wiser, or even 
 wealthier. It is a greedy struggle for wealth among the 
 greatest gamblers the world has ever seen, and as much 
 worse than ordinary gambling as the stakes are larger. 
 Great energy, immense mental resources, and talents fit 
 to command the armies of Bonaparte are often found 
 among these pirates of finance, and it is pitiable to see 
 such wealth of brain and will power so absolutely wasted. 
 If the "bulls and the bears" of our great cities could 
 destroy one another in their wealth struggles, society 
 would be the gainer. 
 
 The folly of society is that it regards all rich men either 
 with veneration, or with detestation, or with absolute in- 
 difference in a moral sense, according to the prejudices 
 or associations of the individual observer. Distinctions 
 must be drawn. The rich man who has developed his 
 wealth by improving production, or in any way making 
 two blades of grass grow in place of one, is a benefactor 
 of the human race, no matter how great his wealth. On 
 the other hand, the idle, luxurious profligates, who con- 
 trol what they have never earned, and the ravenous 
 beasts of prey who afflict society in speculative life, and 
 
KING MAMMON. 2/ 
 
 rob their fellow-creatures by gambling operations delib- 
 erately planned, whatsoever the name, are worse in 
 their evil and dangerous effects upon our country than all 
 its criminals and paupers. Let it not be forgotten that 
 society is benefited by every producer, either by hand or 
 brain, and injured by every idler that it supports, and by 
 every man whose energies are devoted to preying upon 
 his associates without developing something that will 
 support mental or physical life. The rich idler and the 
 greedy speculator are more detestable in an honest view 
 of society than the voluntary pauper and the criminal ; 
 for society supports all of them, and can compel from 
 poverty and vice in its jails and asylums a slight return 
 from useful effort, while the idle and the predatory rich 
 are fed and clothed luxuriously with absolutely no return. 
 
 No man has an honest claim upon existence if he will 
 not work when he has the ability and the opportunity. 
 When this doctrine of human duty is applied as rigor- 
 ously to the rich as it has been to the poor, society will 
 have made progress towards justice. 
 
 As to contrasted conditions, the story is an old one. 
 Before Christ came upon earth, Plato wrote: "Any 
 ordinary city, however small, is in fact two cities, one 
 the city of the poor, the other the city of the rich, at war 
 with one another." In every modern city men still can 
 be found who own block after block of buildings on land 
 that is often more valuable than the stately structures 
 reared above it, and of greater worth than if it contained 
 the richest gold mine. The possessors of this wealth con- 
 trol it absolutely, but in many instances they have never, 
 by either mental or physical effort, produced one jot or 
 tittle of the property which society concedes to them. In 
 the same city we shall find men of greater intelligence, 
 energy, and industry, and equally meritorious in other 
 respects, who are apparently in every way more deserv- 
 
28 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ing of reward than their wealthy neighbors, and yet who 
 suffer the ills of poverty, or at least enjoy a condition far 
 below that of wealth. " Chance ! " the reader will 
 exclaim. We shall see later on whether the doctrine of 
 chance will apply ; at present we are dealing with con- 
 ditions. 
 
 It is common observation that one man has wealth 
 enough for thousands, and another but a precarious ex- 
 istence. In the United States, owing to the comparatively 
 brief period during which the country has been populated 
 by the whites, the extremes of social condition are not so 
 noticeable as they have become in Europe, where time 
 has emphasized class distinctions. Under the Stars and 
 Stripes the rich are, indeed, very rich, but, except in the 
 great cities, the poor of the United States are not such 
 rats of poverty as infest the old world. The typical 
 European laborer plods at his task so long as God gives 
 him sunlight, and his family work with him or at separate 
 tasks as necessity demands. The only exception to this 
 labor-rule of life is the inability of extreme youth or age. 
 The united efforts of the family provide only the necessi- 
 ties of life and none of its comforts, nor any surplus with 
 which to provide for the infirmities of old age. Like the 
 plough horse of a cruel master, the laborer must toil till 
 he breaks down with the weight of advancing years, and 
 then public charity will provide a bare maintenance ; for, 
 although we are still barbarians in many respects, we 
 are at least civilized to the extent that we do not condemn 
 our worn-out slaves to immediate death when age or in- 
 firmities put an end to their usefulness. Poor men are in 
 that respect treated better than horses. 
 
 Those European laborers who have been so fortunate 
 as to escape to America from these conditions have hith- 
 erto found a place where there was an opportunity to 
 live, and move, and breathe, without paying tribute to 
 
KING MAMMON. 29 
 
 the established owners of earth for an opportunity to pro-* 
 duce wealth, because on every hand, and especially in 
 the unsettled western portions of the country, there ex- 
 isted a vast domain of public land, which has been to some 
 extent a check upon the exactions of earth monopolists 
 and a relief from the crowding of population. Natural 
 opportunities were thus afforded to the man without means 
 or resources save his own two hands, and a safety-valve 
 provided for popular discontent. The settlement of this 
 country has now been pushed to the Pacific Ocean, how- 
 ever, and all the valuable lands, with but few exceptions, 
 have gone under private ownership. Much of the land 
 is not used, being held for speculative purposes ; but, so 
 far as the moneyless citizen is concerned, it affords no 
 opportunity, for he must usually give up in interest or 
 rent all the surplus of his production beyond what is nec- 
 essary for his own sustenance. 
 
 The lot of the laboring farmer and laboring employe 
 in the United States is still happy and prosperous com- 
 pared with that of the same classes in Europe, but the 
 truth is becoming every day more evident that social 
 conditions in this country are fast approaching those of 
 Europe. We already have the great fortunes and the 
 tyranny inseparable from great wealth on the one hand, 
 with the idleness, luxury, and aristocratic tendencies which 
 are the natural sequence of the continued control of great 
 wealth. On the other hand, we have the grinding poverty 
 of the slums and- sweat-shops in the great cities, and the 
 danger that when our population increases and monopoly 
 becomes extended, when opportunities for independent 
 effort become lessened and the power of the wealthy 
 classes more firmly established, the United States will be 
 the same discouraging, God-forsaken home for a poor 
 man that is now offered in the older countries whence 
 poor men migrate. 
 
30 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Once let the condition of a non-producing, luxurious 
 aristocracy become engrafted firmly upon this country 
 by the lapse of time and the neglect or ignorance of the 
 people, without intelligent legislation to check its power, 
 and the condition of those who produce the food and 
 shelter of the nation, and the luxuries for the idlers, will 
 gradually sink to the dead level of the unambitious labor- 
 life that now exists in Europe. 
 
 When the tendency toward aristocracy that now exists 
 in the United States reaches its final development, one 
 class of people will inherit wealth and power for genera- 
 ation after generation, in the same families ; and another 
 class will inherit poverty and hard work, under the direc- 
 tion of those above them in social rank and privilege, 
 with fewer and fewer chances of rising above their orig- 
 inal position, and of transforming their social condition, 
 as the country becomes older, population denser, and so- 
 ciety grouped into rank and class by the progress of suc- 
 cessive generations. 
 
 Under the present progress, the transmission of cen- 
 tralized wealth is developing a large class of luxurious 
 idlers in the United States, the wealth aristocracy of the 
 republic, who inherit privilege as their humbler asso- 
 ciates inherit poverty. In the natural development of the 
 present social condition, undisturbed by changes in the 
 principles upon which it is based, the child of a man who 
 has been a laborer for wages all his life will also be a la- 
 borer in the same way ; his children will be laborers for 
 wages ; and not one of them will have a fair prospect in 
 life for advancement commensurate with effort, nor real 
 opportunities other than those of continual work under 
 another man's inherited power and privilege, with inade- 
 quate leisure for self-improvement, with little ambition 
 for energetic effort, with no real expectation of rising 
 above his half-servile condition, and with nothing but 
 
KING MAMMON. 31 
 
 the empty name of a freeman to distinguish him from 
 the slaves of fifty years ago. 
 
 This servile condition, except where it has been alle- 
 viated by the struggles that have already been made by 
 organized labor against the tendency toward wealth dom- 
 ination, and by the invention of machinery, has been the 
 history of European nations, and it will be the inevitable 
 result in our own country unless its causes are understood 
 and removed. 
 
 There is no virtue in republican institutions that will 
 protect us from such a condition, for the power of wealth 
 exists independently of the form of government. Titles 
 are not a necessity to aristocrats. England may abolish 
 her House of Lords and may even remove the titles of no- 
 bility ; but if the wealth now controlled by that nobility 
 or by the later commercial peerage is untouched, the power 
 will remain and the Lords can laugh at the Commons. 
 If an individual controls two hundred million dollars' 
 worth of property, it makes little difference, as a social 
 result, whether we address him as Mr. Astor or your 
 Grace, and whether he resides in New York city or in 
 London. 
 
 Wealth transmitted from generation to generation de- 
 velops aristocracy ; and mere titles and forms of govern- 
 ment have but little to do with it. 
 
 America will have an aristocracy unless its progress 
 be restrained, as surely as acorns produce oaks, and 
 that aristocracy will control its government just as the 
 power of wealth has always done where it has been 
 permitted to concentrate. We cannot fossilize wealth 
 and poverty side by side and maintain our government 
 as a genuine democracy free from class privileges. If 
 our people were ignorant, it might be done for a time, 
 and they would believe that wealth has a divine right to 
 reign, as their ancestors believed that kings had to rule ; 
 
32 KING MAMMON. 
 
 but the common schools have made the laborer a giant, 
 and the greatest danger now is that he will use his strength 
 too recklessly and, like the blind Samson, pull the social 
 structure down upon himself. 
 
 It is evident from the perturbed condition of the labor- 
 ing classes in every civilized country, that the greater in- 
 telligence and wider information spread among them in 
 late years, by the increased dissemination of newspapers, 
 magazines, and cheap publications in book form, are hav- 
 ing their natural effect in stimulating inquiry into the 
 rights and wrongs of society. Men no longer accept as 
 self-evident justice the fact that they are poor and other 
 men rich, simply because they find the wealth so distrib- 
 uted. Men no longer believe that an all-wise and all- 
 beneficent Creator constructed the social and political in- 
 stitutions of this world exactly as they found those con- 
 ditions to exist when they were placed on earth. Men do 
 not entirely accept the idea that some are born to rule 
 by wealth, any more than they now accept the other doc- 
 trine of tyranny, that the king reigns by divine right. 
 A dim suspicion is forcing its way through the minds of 
 plodding humanity, that a wrong exists when a thou- 
 sand children are born, perhaps within a day's time, one 
 to be reared in luxury, and to become the sole possessor, 
 without an effort, of one hundred millions of dollars, 
 while the others, by the accident of birth under unjust 
 social conditions, are condemned to a life of labor under 
 the wealth power of their fortunate contemporary. 
 
 Hitherto men have believed, because they have been 
 taught, that all poverty is the result of a lack of thrift, of 
 energy, of brains, of endurance, or, at least, of good fort- 
 une ; that all wealth is the just reward of diligence, pru- 
 dence, sagacity, and self-denial. Now these men begin to 
 comprehend that thousands obtain great wealth without 
 ever having possessed or exhibited the virtues that are sup- 
 
KING MAMMON. 33 
 
 posed to produce it, and that millions of men, able and 
 willing to work, are brought to the verge of starvation, 
 not by their own neglect, but for lack of opportunities to 
 honestly maintain their own existence by their own labor. 
 
 The doctrine that wealth distribution is due entirely to 
 natural causes inherent in the varying natures of men, is 
 now frequently repudiated. Few men, perhaps, have 
 analyzed social conditions with care enough to determine 
 the exact nature of the wrong, or to say exactly how and 
 why social institutions are unjust, but when they feel the 
 terrible effects and the heavy burdens embodied in the 
 industrial depression, they know that injustice exists, and 
 they denounce the condition, although they may not 
 understand its cause. 
 
 The great danger to society in the twentieth century 
 will be unintelligent resentment against wrongs that are 
 not understood. When men try to correct social evils, 
 without clearly understanding the nature of their rights 
 and without observing the limits of justice, the result is 
 civil war, succeeded by a new condition of society no 
 better than the first, because men quarrel over evil effects, 
 without removing the evil causes. The fearful outbreak 
 of a tyrannized populace in the French Revolution is an 
 example of the revolt of men made desperate by an unjust 
 social condition, but without conception of its real causes. 
 The result of that eruption, in which God was denied and 
 reason enthroned, in name only, was merely the blood- 
 thirsty destruction of lives and the waste of wealth, fol- 
 lowed by the reestablishment of the essential causes 
 which produced the revolution, and which may again 
 bring a rapid visitation of popular wrath upon France 
 under the republic, as they did under the monarchy. 
 The French Revolution was a war upon effects only. 
 
 The great railroad strike of 1894 in the United States, 
 in which thousands of men violated law and order by 
 3 
 
34 KING MAMMON. 
 
 forcibly occupying railroad property and obstructing the 
 progress of trains, and during which millions of people 
 sympathized with the objects of the strike in its incipience, 
 and until it began to degenerate into murder and the 
 reckless destruction of property, is another instance of 
 the prevailing custom of trying to remove wrongs by fight- 
 ing their effects instead of removing their causes. 
 
 It is important that social problems shall be freely dis- 
 cussed and carefully considered, for that strike and the 
 great sympathy extended to the strikers by the people, 
 are premonitory symptoms of revolution. The coming 
 revolution may be by ballots or by bullets, but in one 
 form or the other it will certainly be effected, and upon 
 the intelligence and education of the people in these 
 social questions, will depend its character. There exists 
 among the people of this country a bitter discontent with 
 political and social institutions, and there can be but' one 
 of two results reform by ballot or attempted reformation 
 by blood. 
 
 England is in even a more unsettled social condition, 
 and the people are inquiring why they toil that idle aris- 
 tocracy and wealth-profligacy shall exist. There is a 
 growing disposition to revolt against the power and 
 privileges of the wealth-aristocracy and land monopo- 
 lists of the British Isles, and the social crisis may occur 
 there before it does in America. 
 
 During the industrial depression beginning in 1893, 
 social revolution probably approached nearer in the United 
 States than many supposed, for in such periods a spark of 
 wrong can be easily fanned into a flame of resentment ; 
 but with the return of activity in business and opportun- 
 ities for employment, the bitterest discontent will be tem- 
 porarily allayed, and the crisis postponed. That crisis 
 when men will demand what they believe to be justice, 
 peaceably, if they can, forcibly, if they must can only 
 
KING MAMMON. 35 
 
 be delayed ; for we shall have other periods of depression 
 in business and destruction of opportunities in labor that 
 will turn men into famished wolves ready to devour and 
 destroy. 
 
 If the people will carefully and intelligently consider 
 the nature of the conditions by which they are surrounded 
 and will be guided by the dictates of reason in the pursuit 
 of justice, the present movement will result in the grandest 
 triumph for liberty and equal rights the world has ever 
 known ; but if, on the other hand, they permit their 
 actions to be controlled by ignorance, envy and hatred 
 towards those who have become the custodians of wealth 
 and the manipulators of wealth-power ; if they seek 
 merely to destroy and not to reform ; if they deal not 
 justice to the millionaire as well as to the pauper, no 
 attempt at social transformation can result in anything 
 but social disorder and possibly the horrors of civil war. 
 Social revolution may advance civilization or it may 
 retard it. If there be genuine progress, intelligence must 
 reign. 
 
 Let the discontented subjects of King Mammon inquire 
 not what they have the power to do, but what they have 
 the right to do, if they would secure justice and equal 
 privileges. Unintelligent and unfair action will lead them 
 into the quicksands of anarchy. 
 
36 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SOME RIGHTS AND WRONGS. 
 
 " Citizens, yon are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some 
 of you have the pcnuer of command, and these he has composed of gold, where- 
 fore also they have the greatest honor ; others of silver, to be auxiliaries ; 
 others again, who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen, he has made of 
 brass and iron ; and the species will often be preserved in the children. 
 But as you are of the same original family, a golden parent will sometimes 
 have a silver son, and a silver parent a golden son. And God proclaims 
 to the rulers as a first principle that if the son of a golden or silver parent 
 has an admixture of brass and iron, then Nature orders a transposition 
 of ranks." PLATO. 
 
 No belief is herein expressed in either the justice, or the 
 benefits, or the possibility of an absolutely equal distribu- 
 tion of wealth. The social problems are, as treated in 
 this volume, how to give men equal opportunities, or at 
 least some approach to equal opportunities ; how to pre- 
 vent wealth-tyranny, just as we would try to prevent all 
 other forms of tyranny ; how to break up the luxurious 
 idleness and the predatory viciousness of certain rich 
 men ; and how to lessen the ignorance, and vice, and 
 destitution of the lower levels, and to remove at least a 
 portion of the enforced idleness of men who want work 
 and cannot find the opportunity of working. In a word, 
 both ends of the social scale must be attacked and in- 
 justice destroyed wherever we can find it. Society, in 
 self-protection, must give the rich idler a chance to work, 
 and give the man who has been carrying his blankets in 
 search of labor a fair opportunity of doing likewise. If 
 society neglects this plain duty, nature compels us you 
 and me and all others who are so fortunate as to possess 
 fair opportunities to support not only the poor fellows 
 
KING MAMMON. 37 
 
 who want work and cannot find it, but the rich fellows 
 who are cursed with so much money that they either 
 dawdle out their lives in useless vanities or else domineer 
 as tyrants over their associates. The workers must sup- 
 port the workless, and there is no escape from this neces- 
 sity. 
 
 Thousands of men do not believe there is any injustice 
 in the extremes of wealth and poverty. To these people, 
 wealth, no matter how great, is the just and appropriate 
 reward of effort and good-fortune ; poverty, no matter 
 how squalid, nor what its nature, is the equally just penalty 
 for the neglect of opportunities or the absence of good- 
 fortune. Such people recognize no effect of human laws 
 in producing the rich and the poor, but place all the re- 
 sponsibility on nature ; or, if they be inclined toward 
 religion, they devoutly attach the responsibility to the 
 fiats of Almighty God and piously consider that His pur- 
 poses are too deep and inscrutable for their comprehen- 
 sion. According to the ideas of such thinkers, "When 
 some men become rich and others remain poor, it is be- 
 cause they are differently constituted, or because they 
 have different luck, and there is no governmental injustice 
 whatever involved in such conditions." 
 
 This doctrine of wealth and poverty is very commonly 
 accepted, and assertions like that quoted are invariably 
 followed by the declaration that, "if all the wealth were 
 equally divided in any nation or in the world, within a 
 single hour after the division it would commence to 
 concentrate, on account of the natural differences in 
 humanity. Some men would save and accumulate ; 
 others would waste and suffer." Like all other deceptive 
 fallacies, this theory of wealth-distribution is partly true. 
 When applied to the life of an individual, comprising an 
 average period of about thirty-five years, it is nearly cor- 
 rect. We all know that when men are given the same 
 
38 KING MAMMON. 
 
 opportunities, some will gather wealth and others suffer 
 poverty, because of innate differences over which society 
 has no control. But when the same theory is applied to 
 the life of a nation instead of the life of an individual, 
 and is made to account for the wealth possession that has 
 existed in a period of from one hundred to one thousand 
 years, it becomes one of the most cruel falsehoods that 
 ever cursed humanity and defeated justice. 
 
 Right here, then, the man who believes that the laws of 
 nature and not the laws of man control wealth centraliza- 
 tion as it now exists, should note that his conclusions 
 are approved so far as a single generation of humanity is 
 concerned ; but that they are denied if it be meant that 
 natural laws alone produce the social conditions which 
 have arisen under the succession of many generations 
 and developed into the wealth distribution that now exists 
 all over the civilized world. 
 
 The truth of this statement may be proved later on ; it 
 is necessary at present to investigate some of the wrongs 
 and dangers of our social condition. 
 
 Another class of men who have devoted casual thought 
 to social progress admit that there is something wrong 
 in wealth possession and control, but they believe that 
 nothing can be done to equalize or tend to equalize the 
 distribution. "We always have had, and we always 
 shall have the rich and the poor," say these people, " and 
 it is useless to struggle against nature." There is some 
 truth in this belief, but it is not all truth. So long as 
 humanity struggles for existence by individual effort and 
 competition, there must always be great difference in 
 the wealth of men, and justly so ; but it does not fol- 
 low from this truth that, even under the competitive 
 system, by which all our social progress is accomplished, 
 there should be such tremendous inequalities of wealth 
 distribution as now exist. Some inequality of wealth as 
 
KING MAMMON. 39 
 
 the reward of effort justly results from the varying efforts 
 and ability of different men ; but all inequality does not 
 result in that way, and the really baneful effects of 
 wealth control are due to an entirely different cause, 
 which is solely the result of defective human institutions, 
 and which can be rectified by changes in our laws. The 
 great danger and the essential wrong of wealth central- 
 ization lies in the fact that a social condition based 
 upon its existence builds up a tyranny over the people 
 and deprives them of liberty and equal rights, just as surely 
 as the government of any Czar or Sultan. Great power in- 
 evitably goes with great wealth, and it is quite as dan- 
 gerous to the liberties of the people who entrust wealth 
 power absolutely in the hands of a few for any great 
 length of time, as it would be to place the actual edicts 
 of government under the absolute control of the same 
 number of men for an indefinite period. Some wealthy 
 men are actuated by a higher sense of justice than the 
 average of humanity, just as some absolute rulers have 
 been characterized by justice and benevolence ; but when- 
 ever wealth concentrates the power exists, and when a 
 bad man happens to hold the power by owning the 
 wealth, he becomes a tyrant. It is no more safe for the 
 people of the United States to permit the continued exist- 
 ence of fortunes of from fifty to two hundred millions of 
 dollars than it would be for them to establish a body of 
 dictators to formulate our national legislation at their 
 own pleasure, for in either event the people will eventu- 
 ally rise in rebellion against the tyranny and iniquity of 
 the condition. The state legislatures of the Union and 
 our congressional halls are now surrounded at every ses- 
 sion by the emissaries of wealthy men and wealthy syn- 
 dicates, who are employed to secure legislation bene- 
 ficial to class interests, or to defeat other legislation that 
 is inimical to some millionaire's schemes. 
 
40 KING MAMMON. 
 
 The government of our great cities is a mass of corrupt 
 influences wielded by the few who control their wealth, 
 and the municipal officials are frequently puppets under 
 the control of unseen masters whose golden threads move 
 mayor and councilmen to the right or left, according to 
 the plans by which the Mammon princes expect to sub- 
 due the people. 
 
 Bribery by payment of money, bribery by the exchange 
 of votes for different kinds of class legislation, under the 
 technical name of " log-rolling," and bribery by the ten- 
 der of official position control our legislation in what we 
 call Free America. 
 
 For incidents substantiating the corrupt influence of 
 money in legislation we have only to scrutinize the daily 
 papers and associate with "practical politicians," who 
 have entered politics for money just as they would enter 
 any other business. The people understand these un- 
 fortunate conditions, and their comprehension of the evil 
 is what causes the despairing cry: "What is the use of 
 voting ? " The session of congress during the summer of 
 1894 revealed a condition that is truly startling. When 
 concentrated wealth in the form of great trusts appears 
 in the halls of national legislation to demand tribute of 
 the people, is it not time to protest? 
 
 There is an argument, popular with thoughtless people, 
 that honest men should be elected to office, and that 
 when such men are selected, all will be well. 
 
 The dangerous condition of legislative methods does 
 not result from exceptional personal dishonesty. All 
 legislative bodies are merely samples of the people who 
 elect them, and they are not usually any less scrupulous 
 or any more dishonest than their constituents. Such 
 assemblages always have contained and possibly always 
 will contain some honest and some dishonest men, but 
 the average of humanity and the average of legislative 
 
KING MAMMON. 4! 
 
 bodies are quite as honest now and probably more so 
 than at any time in the past. So far as this country 
 is concerned, the excessive corruption of the present 
 day is due to the phenomenal increase and concentra- 
 tion of wealth during the past fifty years, and the pas- 
 sive condition of the people who have allowed them- 
 selves to be enchained by a tyranny that is new in this 
 country, though old in the world. Our legislative bodies 
 are to-day surrounded by a multitude of pecuniary temp- 
 tations that scarcely existed during the early days of the 
 republic. Subjected to the same influences, the legislators 
 of the past would have been quite as corrupt as our own 
 thieves, and, no doubt, grosser villains ; but there was then 
 not so much available lucre in the hands of a few per- 
 sonages with which to control them. Great fortunes 
 and wealthy combinations appear on every hand now, 
 where they scarcely existed when the first congress 
 assembled. The "sack " is now opened wherever public 
 action occurs in a way to materially affect moneyed 
 interests, and the rights of the people are thus sacrificed, 
 not because humanity in general, or even the legislators, 
 have become more dishonest than they used to be, but 
 because the insidious power of the wealth-tyrant that 
 this country has permitted to grow into a vigorous exist- 
 ence, is now beginning to stifle the liberties of the people. 
 The Czar and the Sultan issue direct edicts to enforce 
 their tyranny ; wealth simply buys what it wants, and 
 the result to the people is the same. 
 
 The great trust or syndicate is a modern evolution of 
 wealth power that now excites the strongest resentment 
 among the people. It is a Frankenstein's demon, which 
 they have created themselves, but which now threatens 
 to destroy them. When the first corporations were estab- 
 lished and when men laughed at the idea of successful as- 
 sociation in that way, the trust could not be foreseen in 
 
42 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the dim future. So, in the light of the present, it is dif- 
 ficult to penetrate the mists ahead of us and determine 
 what will be the evolution of the trust. 
 
 Individuals have made corporations ; corporations have 
 become trusts ; what will trusts become ? ' That problem 
 will not be discussed here. It is evident, however, that 
 the trust is not the primary evil from which the people 
 may expect the danger of the future. If the people 
 throttle the trusts and destroy them, they have merely 
 destroyed one manifestation of wealth power without free- 
 ing themselves from the power itself. It makes little dif- 
 ference to a people desiring freedom, whether their legisla- 
 tion be purchased by one man or a combination of men, 
 so long as the concentrated wealth under the control of 
 one or a few exists to purchase it. 
 
 The tyranny of trusts is only one effect of the many bad 
 conditions that arise out of immense wealth under the 
 unrestricted control of a few persons ; and it is only one 
 means of enforcing the unjust and unnatural power that 
 its possession confers upon them. We may destroy every 
 trust that now exists, and a new development of wealth 
 power will arise to torment and oppress the people. If 
 a tree bears bad fruit, cut it down ; but do not imagine 
 that real relief from such trees can come from gathering 
 the fruit every year when ripe, and burying it under a few 
 inches of soil. 
 
 The power of wealth to control and limit the opportuni- 
 ties and acquirements of the people is the essence of ex- 
 
 1 " Call the combination a partnership and it is all right ; call it a cor- 
 poration and it is barely tolerated ; call it a trust and it is a crime ; yet 
 the difference is only in manner. . . . Under George III., statutes were 
 enacted in England making it a penal offense for any number of persons 
 above five to associate either by covenant or partnership for dealing in 
 bricks, coals and other commodities. This was due to the belief that 
 combinations raised prices, repressed competition and monopolized busi- 
 ness." See "Ten Years of Standard Oil Trust" in Forum, vol. 13, 
 page 303. 
 
KING MAMMON. 43 
 
 isting danger, and the almost absolute extinction of a 
 poor man's natural rights the ultimate result of that 
 power. The extent to which tyranny is inflicted at any 
 given period of the world's history is never fully realized 
 by the people then existing. Fifty years ago, when ne- 
 groes were slaves, most people did not regard slavery as 
 an insufferable wrong, but only as a ''peculiar institu- 
 tion," and only the more intelligent of the negroes felt 
 the iniquity of their own subjugation, except, perhaps, 
 when they were flogged. Five hundred years ago, when 
 all women were slaves, this particular form of the " pe- 
 culiar institution " was not regarded, even by the women, 
 as .being very objectionable. Some men are tyrants and 
 others are tyrannized in all ages of the world without 
 either class understanding the position it occupies, simply 
 because men do not usually think, and because in primi- 
 tive existence tyranny seems right. If any man had lived 
 from the dawn of civilization in this world till the present 
 time, seeing the rise and fall f nations, the growth of 
 arts, sciences, and intelligence, and the gradual struggle 
 from darkness toward the^ light, he would comprehend 
 something of the rights and wrongs of social existence 
 without much further investigation and reflection. But 
 instead of possessing this vast experience in the world's 
 history man comes upon earth without knowledge of its 
 previous condition ; he is usually in possession of his 
 faculties for a period much less than the allotted term of 
 three score years and ten ; he can obtain a knowledge 
 of the world only from the dim records of history, from 
 the things which he sees surrounding him, and from such 
 reasoning powers as Nature may have bestowed upon 
 him ; he is often thoroughly absorbed by the cares of pro- 
 viding for his own subsistence and progression, or in pro- 
 tecting those naturally dependent upon him ; and finally 
 he dies, frequently without having devoted a serious 
 
44 KING MAMMON. 
 
 thought to the nature of his environment and the justice 
 or injustice of the social conditions under which he exists. 
 Millions of men have come into the world and gone out 
 of it in this way, supposing that social institutions as 
 they found them, no matter how defective at that period, 
 were nearly if not quite the best that humanity would 
 ever attain, accepting the world as they found it, and 
 leaving it without ever having suspected that they either 
 inflicted gross and brutal wrongs upon their associates, or 
 suffered them at the hands of other men. Man is born with 
 no knowledge of any other existence, and the tendency 
 of his developing mind is to believe that social institutions 
 are right because they exist and because he knows of 
 nothing different. He is taught that society is justly 
 organized, or he conceives without investigation that such 
 is the case. Designing men who may have greater intel- 
 ligence than he sometimes keep down inquiry by posi- 
 tively asserting that what injustice is palpably evident 
 exists in the laws of nature and not in the laws of man. 
 The temporary inhabitant of earth toils without thinking, 
 accepts the conditions of earth as he finds them, and so 
 passes out of existence, although enough of rebellion 
 against iniquity and of pity for human sorrow is mani- 
 fested, little by little, to make what we consider improve- 
 ment in social conditions. 
 
 No man who is born to-day without having wealth be- 
 stowed upon him can possess a fair opportunity in life, 
 obtain equal rights at his inception, or live under just 
 conditions. 
 
 In this thought is embodied what apparently constitutes 
 the great wrong in social conditions. 
 
 Let us make a comparison. Suppose that twenty-five 
 men are shipwrecked upon an island far out in the Pacific 
 Ocean. The sailors came there without their own consent 
 by the compulsion of Nature or Providence, just as men 
 
KING MAMMON. 45 
 
 are born upon earth. The castaways proceed to appro- 
 priate the land and natural wealth of the island and es- 
 tablish regulations whereby each of the twenty-five con- 
 trols absolutely some portion, and all united control the 
 entire island and its products. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Nature or Providence again wrecks 
 a ship and sends twenty-five more victims of the storms 
 to seek existence on the same shores, stranding them as 
 before without their own volition. 
 
 The newcomers expect a share in the benefits of the 
 land they enter, but when they explore the island they 
 ascertain that they have absolutely no privileges. 
 
 The land and its products have been appropriated by 
 their predecessors, under a system which leaves no op- 
 portunities to other unfortunate sailors, and those who 
 reached the island last become the slaves of those who 
 preceded them, because they have no means of securing 
 an independent existence. 
 
 That island is a symbol of earth to-day. The child of 
 a poor man is a shipwrecked sailor stranded on the shore 
 of life. In every civilized nation he finds the land appro- 
 priated, distributed, and controlled by his predecessors. 
 He finds the products of the soil as moulded by the hand 
 of man into buildings, machinery, tools, food, and cloth- 
 ing, or money as a representative of all, stored in abun- 
 dance all around him, but tribute must be paid for a place 
 in which to set the infant's cradle. The poor man's child 
 must pay rent to the rich man's child for land to cultivate, 
 and interest for tools to use, before he can have any 
 opportunity for independent exertion ; and before he can 
 possess aught to pay with, he must work for those who 
 have monopolized the earth, and must permit his wages to 
 be fixed by the competition of millions of other men newly 
 arrived by birth under the same conditions. Those who 
 will sell their labor to the fortunate possessors of earth for 
 
46 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the least remuneration -receive employment, and under 
 these restrictions all can strive for what advancement 
 they can secure, the condition being continually aggra- 
 vated by the constant arrival of new men by birth, and 
 ameliorated by the departure of those whom death calls 
 away, and by the inventions and discoveries that increase 
 the power of labor to produce life-sustenance. 
 
 "Nonsense ! " my reader will probably exclaim ; "these 
 sons of poor men concerning whose condition you com- 
 plain, eventually become heirs to the earth themselves, 
 when their forefathers die, and thus leave it to the genera- 
 tion which succeeds them, so there is no injustice." 
 
 The poor man's child never becomes an heir to any part 
 of earth, and his relation to society is essentially that of 
 slavery from which, in a country having great resources 
 and a comparatively sparse population, he may easily 
 work out his freedom, but in which he usually remains in 
 life servitude where the monopolization of opportunities 
 for existence has become more extreme. 
 
 There is no monopoly so great, no trust so gigantic, no 
 power so tyrannical as the social combination which ex- 
 ists in every country of the civilized world, and which 
 says to every penniless little immigrant from the shores 
 of that mysterious country whence all humanity comes : 
 "You must toil as we direct, or you shall starve. Land 
 you have none ; wealth you have none ; rights you have 
 none. The earth with all there is upon it is absolutely our 
 own, and unless you labor under the conditions that we 
 may impose, you shall not exist." 
 
KING MAMMON. 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DEVIL TAKE THE HINDMOST. 
 
 " Even the best of modern civilizations appears to me to exhibit a condi- 
 tion of mankind "which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even pos- 
 sesses the merit of stability. I do not hesitate to express the opinion that if 
 there is no hope of a large improvement of the condition of the greater part 
 of the human family ; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the win- 
 ning of a greater domain over nature which is its consequence, and the 
 wealth which follows upon that domain are to make no difference in the 
 extent and the intensity of want with its concomitant physical and moral 
 degradation among the masses of the people, I should hail the advent of 
 some kindly comet which would sweep the whole affair away as a desirable 
 consummation" THOMAS H. HUXLEY. 
 
 THE ideas of competition and individual effort are at 
 the basis of society in all parts of the civilized world in the 
 nineteenth century. That is, although we have business 
 partnerships under varying methods, designated as firms 
 and corporations, and matrimonial partnerships, (in 
 which business is very frequently the controlling motive,) 
 and occasionally a movement among a few enthusiastic 
 theorists to inaugurate social co-operation on a limited 
 colonial scale, there exists no really great or general 
 partnership amongst all the people of any nation, where- 
 by they labor either equally or in proportion to the ability 
 of each for the common good and share either equally or 
 in proportion to their needs from a common fund of 
 wealth. A savage tribe in which the individuals hunt 
 their game and gather their fruits by general effort into a 
 common stock, from which each afterwards draws his 
 personal supplies, is a simple example of co-operation. 
 
 When each savage of the tribe hunts and fishes for 
 himself, regardless of what the others secure, their social 
 
48 KING MAMMON. 
 
 existence is an example of competitive effort. Each sys- 
 tem has advantages and disadvantages that may be briefly 
 noted, although a comparison of the merits and demerits 
 of communism and competition would alone require a 
 volume larger than this book. 
 
 Co-operation is economical, for the units of that form 
 of society do not purposely obstruct or interfere with one 
 another's efforts, nor hinder progress that is sure to result 
 in the general good. When our savages hunt co-oper- 
 atively, they do not purposely frighten the game away 
 from one another, but all assist harmoniously in capturing 
 it. While, on the other hand, competition lacks this 
 advantage, it is, nevertheless, a keen spur to effort and 
 progress. When a man feels that his own unaided efforts 
 must win his success and comforts, or protect him from 
 want, he thinks and he works. He is carried forward by 
 a fierce energy that could never stimulate him under co- 
 operation, but he is continually set back in all his efforts 
 by the adverse struggles of other men animated by the 
 same fears and desires that urge him onward. Under 
 competition the savage often frightens away the game 
 he desires but cannot take himself, rather than see his 
 opponent capture it. Men existing under a co-operative 
 system would probably become less selfish but more 
 indolent. Under competition, their characters have dis- 
 played energy, activity, shrewdness, selfishness, and 
 greed. 
 
 Except in isolated and limited communities where 
 enthusiasts have temporarily established co-operative 
 colonies, all civilization has been accomplished under 
 competition, either among individuals or among tribes ; 
 and individual competition existing for generation after 
 generation has undoubtedly had its effect in developing 
 the shrewd, active, daring, an 1 greedy natures that form 
 such a preponderance of humanity. 
 
KING MAMMON. 49 
 
 Edward Bellamy, by glimpses of life in the Twentieth 
 Century, revealed in "Looking Backward," presents an 
 interesting view of national co-operation. 
 
 To some people this picture of co-operation is attractive ; 
 others, preferring the boisterous struggle of individual effort 
 and the excitement attending the prospect of great success 
 accompanied by the dread alternative of dismal failure, 
 are repelled ; still others believe in the benefits but not 
 in the present practicability of co-operative society. 
 
 Extended discussion of nationalism is in the present, 
 perhaps, comparatively useless, for the promised land is, 
 probably, still far away from us, and we are actually liv- 
 ing in the nineteenth century, with a dangerous social 
 problem before us, which has been developed under com- 
 petition and which must, apparently, be solved under the 
 same system of human effort. 
 
 There can be no immediate change from competition 
 to co-operation, for social evolution is never accomplished 
 in that way. 
 
 Society is now progressing under competition, and it 
 must so continue in the main for many years. 
 
 Having agreed to test the justice of such propositions 
 as are advanced in this book by the competitive creed, 
 the author will now inquire : What does every man re- 
 gard as just conditions under competition? The natural 
 and usual answer, accepted by all who have sense enough 
 and pluck enough to struggle, is expressed in the common 
 saying : "A fair field and no favors." 
 
 Every man should have an equal opportunity. 
 
 Give no man any advantage. 
 
 If competition be a race, give every man, when pos- 
 sible, an equal start. 
 
 If life be a battle, see that every warrior is armed equally 
 for the fray, and let the dazzling sun shine directly in the 
 eyes of none. 
 4 
 
5O KING MAMMON. 
 
 Regard life just as you would view a tournament, and 
 do not clap your hands for a victor who is armed and 
 mounted, and who, therefore, vanquishes an opponent 
 guarded only by nature's naked fists. 
 
 Every creature inspired with genuine manliness of the 
 militant type is willing to say: ''I will struggle for 
 prosperity on the bosom of Mother Earth and accept my 
 chances and my fate in competition with every other 
 man in the race of life, if I have a fair start and an equal 
 opportunity to secure my share of wealth and comforts 
 of earth that should belong to us all. 
 
 " I want merely justice. 
 
 "If my competitor is better equipped by nature for the 
 struggle than I am, or if he be more fortunate under fair 
 opportunities, I regret my deficiency and my bad luck; 
 but I must acknowledge that, under such circumstances, 
 if injustice exists, it is in the laws of nature, whereby some 
 men are made stronger and some better than others, and 
 not in the laws of man. He who wins in a fair struggle 
 of this kind is entitled to the rewards of victory." 
 
 The motto of men engaged in competition is : " Devil 
 take the hindmost ! " It is a sad condition for the weak- 
 lings and a cruelly wasteful condition for all. 
 
 It would seem that men are nearly good enough and 
 wise enough to provide a better system of human e'ffort 
 and social order, but, nevertheless, competition remains. 
 During the progress of any generation, the energetic, the 
 far-seeing, the frugal, and the fortunate man accumulates 
 a certain degree of wealth. 
 
 His idle, wasteful, improvident or unfortunate neighbor 
 may or may not have enjoyed a more comfortable exist- 
 ence, but he lives from hand to mouth and dies without 
 a penny. 
 
 Humanity recognizes this result under competition as 
 being just and quotes the admonition : "He who doth not 
 
KING MAMMON. 51 
 
 sow, neither shall he reap." Men of phenomenal sa- 
 gacity, whose entire life efforts are devoted to money- 
 making, sometimes accumulate immense fortunes. Their 
 methods are frequently rapacious and unscrupulous, if not 
 positively dishonest ; but, so long as their acts are not 
 illegal, society consents and even applauds, for millions 
 of poorer men would do the same things, if they could, 
 to earn money, and society can never be any better or 
 wiser than the units that compose it. 
 
 When, however, it is well understood that a man's 
 actual production of wealth in an ordinary lifetime cannot 
 amount to more than the value of a few thousands of dol- 
 lars beyond what he consumes, as statistics based upon 
 the surplus wealth of society will prove, and when it is 
 quite positive that his actual wealth production cannot 
 even remotely approach the vast fortunes of from twenty 
 to sixty millions of dollars that have been frequently 
 aggregated within recent years, the exact justice of this 
 kind of success may be questioned. 
 
 Its justice will not be disputed here, however, for such 
 phenomenally rapid wealth accumulation is due more to 
 defective morality and to defective laws of other kinds 
 than to the evil principles that have been selected for in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 We are now considering the opportunities in general 
 that men have for success, and not the special energy, 
 skill, or chicanery by which some succeed at the expense 
 of others ; so, for the present we will admit that society 
 is right when it applauds the success of a man who has 
 heaped up millions of dollars, evidently at the expense 
 and loss of his associates. 1 
 
 1 Ruskin's classification of the qualities that make and lose wealth is 
 more comprehensive and less favorable to the usual argument indors- 
 ing our existing conditions. He says : " In a community regulated only 
 by laws of demand and supply, and protected from open violence, the 
 persons who become rich are, generally speaking, industrious, resolute, 
 
52 KING MAMMON. 
 
 We will consider that any man is entitled to all the 
 success he can achieve, no matter how great, provided 
 he does not actually violate our laws, and we will call 
 that success competitive justice. Compared with a 
 humbler struggle, this success is like that of a trotting 
 horse which is in some mysterious manner transferred 
 from the beginning to the end of. a mile track in one second 
 of time. Everybody familiar with horses and mile tracks 
 knows that a trick has been perpetrated and that the horse 
 never honestly won ; everybody conversant with men and 
 money knows that millionaires like Jay Gould never justly 
 and equitably acquired their fortunes ; but the defects 
 that cause these evils are mainly in speculative human 
 nature and not in laws under which other men had the 
 same opportunity to accomplish what Gould did, if they 
 had possessed the requisite shrewdness, so, for the sake 
 of concentrating attention on the essential wrong that is 
 now being attacked, the lesser wrongs of bad government 
 based on weak humanity, which permits the existence of 
 gigantic gambling operations under the name of specula- 
 tion, will be ignored. 
 
 Let Jay Gould, then, as the type of many of his class, 
 both dead and living, retain his wealth. Honestly or dis- 
 honestly, it was acquired under fair competition, for its 
 possessor was poor when he began the struggle and a 
 multi-millionaire when it terminated. If other men gam- 
 bled with Gould and were beaten, they are mere whining 
 novices to complain. If he swindled his associates, they 
 
 proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, sensible, unimaginative, insensi- 
 tive and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely fool- 
 ish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, 
 the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvi- 
 dent, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open 
 thief, and the entirely merciful, just and godly person." The author 
 might well have added among the causes which produce riches, the one 
 which made him wealthy, that is, the accidental possession of a rich 
 father. 
 
KING MAMMON. 53 
 
 should have jailed him ; but if they neglected to enforce 
 laws against crime, they have no right to complain 
 because criminals become wealthy. Under competition 
 some men will achieve success by exchanging property 
 and overreaching their fellows, while others will lose in 
 making the same efforts. The result is not injustice where 
 men consent to such exchanges, as all do in life, and suc- 
 cess is the survival of the fittest. Misery and suffering of 
 all kinds result from the struggle, but that is on account 
 of the system of life-effort under which we exist. It is 
 because men fight instead of help one another. They 
 hunt their game competitively instead of co-operatively. 
 If all of us unite in accepting our motto of "Devil take 
 the hindmost," nobody must object if that industrious per- 
 sonage reaches out occasionally to seize some unlucky 
 straggler ; for it is the straggler's own fault or his own 
 misfortune when he falls behind. Society at present will 
 not complain seriously of a Jay Gould because he is in the 
 front ranks of its financial army, for he worked his way to 
 the front by his own persistent efforts, and had no better 
 opportunities than other men at the beginning, nor desires 
 more greedy than those of the average man. Equal 
 wealth, or even approximately equal wealth, under life- 
 competition is not possible, and it would not be just even 
 if it were possible ; for men must and should receive re- 
 wards for great effort and great ability, and they are 
 entitled to whatever good fortune falls to their lot. In- 
 equality is the morality of competition. 
 
 Equality of wealth, however, and equality of opportu- 
 nity in the struggle to secure wealth, are two different 
 things. Equality of wealth is a bauble that men would 
 fling away even if they possessed it. Equality of oppor- 
 tunity is a priceless treasure that men will fight and die for 
 if they do not receive it freely. Under the competitive 
 system, before any man can justly claim equal wealth, 
 
54 KING MAMMON. 
 
 he must prove, at least, that he makes equal effort with 
 other men, even if we consider that justice requires us to 
 leave out of consideration all natural difference of ability 
 between contestants, and to accept the charitable theory 
 that all men who make equal effort should receive equal 
 reward, no matter what variations in productive power 
 exist. It is obvious that men do not make equal efforts 
 for pecuniary success in life, and, therefore, until a co- 
 operative system can be evolved that will satisfy human- 
 ity and supersede competition, there can be no near ap- 
 proach to equality of wealth. Equality of opportunity, 
 however, is merely an expression of fair conditions that 
 ought to exist in every contest, no matter whether it be a 
 game of marbles between schoolboys, a fight between 
 pugilists, or the struggle of life under competition. The 
 nature of social relations is embodied in the declaration 
 that equal wealth is absolutely inconsistent with competi- 
 tion for wealth, but that competition for wealth is abso- 
 lutely inconsistent with justice without equal opportuni- 
 ties. Let us see whether equal opportunities really exist. 
 Our typical Jay Gould has joined the great majority 
 beyond the dark river, and his fortune remains on earth, 
 bequeathed entirely, we will assume, to two sons, although 
 his family was really larger. The effort and ability that 
 were exerted in the accumulation of that fortune did not 
 emanate from these young men, but did emanate from 
 Jay Gould, who is now dead, who is affected in no way 
 by the affairs of earth, and who, consequently, retains no 
 earthly rights and no claims whatever to the direction or 
 distribution of the fortune. When the young men re- 
 ceived this wealth they became its possessors, but not its 
 producers. They were not even accumulators. Beyond 
 whatever assistance they may have given Jay Gould in 
 acquiring it, they had absolutely no natural rights of pos- 
 session, except the eaual right of all associated with them 
 
KING MAMMON. 55 
 
 under the same government ; for a special right can be 
 justly acquired only by production, or, at most, by ac- 
 cumulation through self-effort. At the same time these 
 heirs were born, perhaps a thousand other infants saw 
 the light for the first time within a limited territory sur- 
 rounding these favorites of unjust law, and they inherit 
 nothing but two hands each and the strength to use them. 
 Under the theory of competition, all must seek their sub- 
 sistence and produce wealth. Justice demands that they 
 shall have "a fair field and no favors ; " but are such equi- 
 table conditions bestowed upon these competitors ? With 
 the millions of inherited wealth, which the two heirs have 
 not produced any more than have the thousand youths 
 who inherit nothing, the fortunate successors can buy 
 millions of acres of the most productive land, in which 
 every one of the thousand youths should have a natural 
 inheritance, and thereafter the two may say : "We own 
 the earth at least a very large slice of it and if you 
 paupers wish to exist on it, pay us tribute." The tribute 
 is paid in the form of rent, and the thousand men serve 
 the two and maintain them in idleness and luxury, if that 
 life be their choice. 
 
 The two heirs may buy bonds of the United States with 
 the millions they gained without effort, and thereafter 
 reap a princely income from the mere interest, while 
 every one of the 65,000,000 of people in the country con- 
 sents to place under the absolute control of two men a 
 large body of wealth that should rightfully be the heritage 
 of all. When these conditions are plainly before our eyes 
 on every hand, can we truthfully say that our govern- 
 ment is just, that it is based on equal rights, and that we 
 are giving to all our people fair opportunities ? I think 
 not. It is always difficult to deal exact justice, but it 
 seems, in the first place, that Jay Gould should have had 
 no power to designate any heirs. It is enough to permit 
 
56 KING MAMMON. 
 
 individual control of so vast a fortune during one lifetime 
 without extending the wealth-domination into another. 
 In the second place, the total amount of specially in- 
 heritable wealth should be limited, either by a percent- 
 age of the fortune or by a fixed amount as a maximum, 
 and within that limit the courts should have set over to 
 each person who could show any real claims upon the 
 estate as successor, an amount also limited by a maximum. 
 Nearly all of the vast estate should have gone into the 
 public treasuries as inheritance to all survivors to be 
 apportioned by lessening taxation upon them, and thus 
 serving as a reward and stimulus to genuine competition. 
 Under such conditions, Jay Gould's sons, instead of be- 
 coming either money-tyrants or luxurious idlers, would 
 be launched into life with a small but equitable financial 
 assistance, and, therefore, they would become genuine 
 instead of purely fictitious competitors, and carve their 
 own way in the world or fail in the attempt, like other 
 people, without the unfair assistance of another man's ac- 
 cumulation. If we are to compete in life, let us have fair 
 competition. 
 
 No matter what form we suppose the wealth represented 
 by fifty millions of dollars to take, let it be land, bonds, 
 machinery, or railroads, it is always a tremendous power 
 in the hands of the possessor. The fact that a man pos- 
 sessing very moderate wealth, provided he handles it 
 judiciously, need never labor a day in his lifetime, is one 
 of the most common evidences of its power. Giving a 
 few heirs fifty millions of dollars and then putting them 
 into competition with a thousand other human beings 
 having nothing is like compelling the multitude to fight 
 with naked fists against one another and against the 
 favored few armed with Catling guns. It is an unjust 
 condition, because it compels unarmed men to struggle 
 against others to whom society has given arms and armor 
 
KING MAMMON. 57 
 
 for the fray. If life is to be a battle, let us all enter the 
 arena with advantages and oppoitunities as nearly equal 
 as it is possible for human laws to make them. 
 
 It is not right, nor is it fair, to give to one man a Win- 
 chester rifle, to another a child's tin sword, as weapons, 
 and then compel them to become gladiators in an unequal 
 contest. It is not just, in the race for prosperity, to con- 
 struct for one man a railway and give him a locomotive 
 and a palace car, while his unfortunate fellow-creature 
 is compelled to run barefooted over a rough roadway 
 strewn with broken glass. 
 
 Yet these things are what society does whenever it 
 permits unrestricted succession to wealth. The inequali- 
 ties of nature are great enough, sad enough, bitter enough, 
 to break the heart of despairing man without his bearing 
 the additional injustice of artificial discrimination. 
 
 The continuance of inheritance under the present laws 
 and the neglect of the disinherited classes, is not merely 
 unjust as a matter of abstract investigation, but, like all 
 other social injustice, it is a very great danger to existing 
 governments on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 The United States during the last thirty years has been 
 approaching with fearfully rapid progress the crisis that, 
 sooner or later, invariably arises from the fossilization of 
 wealth by succession. Several pustules indicate the de- 
 velopment of a terrible disease. We have sweat-shops, 
 Coxey armies, vast railroad strikes, curses upon Pullmans, 
 and discontent everywhere. A millionaire has been 
 charged with saying, "The public be damned ! " In the 
 heat of the railroad strike of July, 1894, thousands of 
 laborers thought, if they did not say, " Damn the gov- 
 ernment ! " The United States government is seriously, 
 if absurdly, charged with using military power to aid 
 wealth against labor. One ordinarily pacific newspaper, 
 during the great strike of 1894, published the opinion 
 
58 KING MAMMON. 
 
 that the world would be better off if a bullet were sent 
 through George M. Pullman's heart. A "pillar ''in a 
 western church remarked that if he could have his way he 
 would blow open with dynamite every bank in the city 
 where he lived and distribute the money among the poor. 
 Such incidents are only straws, but thousands of them 
 gathered here and there and everywhere among the surg- 
 ing mass of humanity that forms this great nation, show 
 which way the tide is setting. 
 
 The laboring classes dread the establishment of a money- 
 power such as already exists in Europe, where serfs and 
 aristocrats are side by side, and they will fight the danger. 
 The laborers and farmers are restless and irritable, and 
 there is but little hope of avoiding trouble, except by 
 social education and progress before it is too late. 
 
 Two of the worst tendencies of the present condition 
 are, on the one hand, the debasement and corruption of 
 poor men as citizens and voters, and, on the other, the 
 development of aristocratic ideas among the wealthy. 
 The poor man is gradually losing that brave spirit and 
 independence that should characterize the citizen of a 
 republic. He realizes that in wealth-power he is a mere 
 cipher compared with his neighbor who is high in the 
 councils of King Mammon. "Money rules," he says, 
 and so he gives up the effort to direct legislation by 
 voting. By and by, when his patriotic spirit is entirely 
 gone, he will sell his vote for a few dollars, because he 
 thinks it is a valueless commodity to him, and useless as 
 a means to control or resist the power of wealth. This 
 is the inevitable result of comparative poverty surrounding 
 great wealth. Unless the lower classes are raised above 
 debasing influences, their condition steadily becomes 
 worse, till it is ripe for such horrible deeds as characterized 
 the bloody French Revolution. At the other end of the 
 social scale, aristocracy develops with the pride of 
 
KING MAMMON. 59 
 
 birth, social rank, and riches. The son who inherits 
 great wealth and who receives it without the slightest 
 personal effort is not to blame for imagining that 
 he must be better than the common herd surrounding 
 him. Is he not the pampered favorite of society ? Do 
 not all men decree by their laws that he may live in 
 luxury without labor and that other men shall give him 
 service and subsistence? The man who commands 
 every luxury without effort, and who sees other men 
 toiling patiently to secure what he can lavishly throw 
 away, is either very wise or very foolish if he does not 
 conclude from the evidences before him in the treatment 
 which he receives from his associates, that he is some- 
 thing better than the common clay. Ordinary intellects 
 under such circumstances become puffed with pride, and 
 all the essential characteristics of an aristocratic class de- 
 velop as soon as wealth is obtained without effort. The 
 man who makes his own money and who rises from 
 poverty to affluence, be it ever so great, never becomes 
 an aristocrat, for he always retains a certain amount of 
 sympathy, even if he be hard-hearted and grasping, for 
 men who have to strive as he did in laying the foundations 
 of his fortune. Aristocracy and the contempt of wealth 
 for poverty develop only with inherited fortunes, and 
 those feelings will die with inheritance, for the man who 
 has had to accumulate his fortune by his own efforts will 
 never sneer at another man who is compelled to do the 
 same thing. 
 
 The daughters of wealthy Americans have been se- 
 verely criticised in many shallow newspaper articles within 
 the past ten years because they have married scions of 
 the European aristocracy, and thus secured titles. 
 
 A more careful consideration of the subject would have 
 proved to the writers that these young women, instead 
 of merely making an effort to become aristocrats by pur- 
 
60 KING MAMMON. 
 
 chasing a title, as the editors apparently supposed, were 
 really aristocrats in every sense of the word before they 
 married noblemen, for the continued possession of wealth 
 by inheritance in any family is the essence of aristoc- 
 racy. 
 
 The daughters of our millionaires realize that all they 
 lack as aristocrats is merely the outward distinction or 
 empty title to set off their position from the lower social 
 ranks, so they proceed to obtain the mere emblem of a 
 title by marriage with some European pauper prince, who 
 is in pursuit of an heiress because he knows that a title 
 without a fortune to support it is a species of bogus aris- 
 tocracy only comparable to the one-sided existence por- 
 trayed in the ancient doggerel, which asserts with mock 
 modesty that a prince without a principality is 
 
 " Like a fork without a knife, 
 Like a man without a wife, 
 Like a ship without a sail, 
 Or a shirt without a proper length." 
 
 The heiress knows that a title is all that is required to 
 put her on a plane level with the European aristocrat, so 
 she buys the appellation of " My Lady " in foreign lands, 
 just as her father and brothers buy legislation and political 
 distinction in the home market. 
 
 In American politics, both these bad tendencies, toward 
 an aristocracy of wealth on the one hand, and toward 
 a degraded, poverty-pinched existence on the other, are 
 readily discernible, in spite of the evident and undisputed 
 fact that our standard of living and our rate of wages have 
 increased in the last fifty years. The poor man feels that 
 he can do little in politics against money, so he loses in- 
 terest. If a thievish proposition is made to appropriate 
 public funds, he thinks that because he pays little or no 
 taxes it cannot injure him as an individual, so he encour- 
 ages governmental waste and corruption, regarding every 
 
KING MAMMON. 6 1 
 
 attack on the public treasuries, no matter how nefarious, 
 as a method of putting money into circulation, and favor- 
 ing it because some of the money may reach him by 
 affording employment. In some of the states the prisons 
 are not self-supporting because the laboring classes object 
 to what they call the competition of prison labor, and, 
 therefore, society supports the convicts in idleness, while 
 they might be compelled to earn their own subsistence. 
 
 The laborers are -right, however, so long as wealth is 
 so unjustly distributed; but with a more equitable appor- 
 tionment, instead of objecting to prison labor, they would 
 feel that they themselves were supporting the convicts in 
 idleness by taxation, instead of compelling somebody else 
 in possession of the wealth to do so, as under existing 
 conditions. 
 
 The prevalence of these ideas, so destructive to genuinely 
 sound government, ought to be enough to convince any 
 thinker that no republic can long endure that does not 
 remove the cause of such unpatriotic and suicidal conclu- 
 sions and efforts among the masses. The idea cannot be 
 too positively enunciated that our government cannot 
 continue as a democracy when our people become divided 
 into permanent classes of the rich and the poor. While 
 the patriotism of the laborer is thus being obliterated by 
 the necessities of existence, a similiar process destroys all 
 love of country in the rich man's mind. The millionaire 
 either enters politics predatorily to secure what legislation 
 or personal distinction he desires, or else he ignores legis- 
 lation when it is not directly to his interest to purchase 
 it, feeling that his monopoly of wealth is so great that he 
 can despise ordinary governmental changes. The grad- 
 ually developed result is that the poverty-stricken 
 wretches of the lowest grades sell their votes, and the rich 
 buy legislation for their own class interests, till finally 
 there comes a day when men revolt and grim war is 
 
62 KING MAMMON. 
 
 waged to readjust unnatural conditions and partially re- 
 store human rights. 
 
 The fact that in every election throughout the United 
 States the employes of wealthy men and wealthy corpor- 
 ations are induced to vote as their employers may direct ; 
 that votes are secured and controlled by thousands among 
 the lower classes by the use of money, often being bought 
 outright at a fixed price per vote ; that legislators are 
 bribed by money and official advancement ; that courts 
 are believed to be in many instances under the control 
 and dictation of wealth ; and that, however wrongfully, 
 thousands of voters believe that the financial legislation 
 of Congress is dictated by wealthy men, shows how deeply 
 the cancer is eating into our political institutions, and 
 how it will ultimately destroy them unless its ravages 
 are checked. Whenever the people of the United States 
 believe that their influence as voters is no longer felt in 
 legislation, and that one man with millions can control 
 the votes of thousands who have no money, they will 
 begin to meditate upon the power of numbers and brute 
 strength, and whenever the bad conditions are thoroughly 
 developed, they will proceed to shoot, or hang, or guillotine 
 the man who possesses millions and appropriate his wealth 
 to pay the cost of civil war. 
 
 The incipient stages of this condition can already be 
 observed throughout the country, when men say, with a 
 bitter contempt for the politcal institutions that once 
 evoked so much pride, that it is useless to vote ; that no 
 matter what party is in power, the money and the political 
 bosses rule ; that honest legislation for the interests of the 
 people in general cannot be obtained ; and that, if changes 
 be made, a new set of plunderers will be more rapacious 
 than the old set, for the latter have been partially satiated. 
 
 Of course these political evils, so far as they now exist, 
 are exaggerated by .the discontented citizens, and many 
 
KING MAMMON. 63 
 
 of them, by permitting purely imaginary evils to seem real 
 to them, become what are known as " calamity howlers, " 
 who live, apparently, in chronic dread of immediate dis- 
 aster, and who believe that nearly every man in public 
 life is a thief. 
 
 Little sympathy need be expressed for this class of men, 
 for they reflect upon social problems no more seriously 
 than their careless, light-hearted associates, who never 
 apprehend a danger till it is upon them. 
 
 Faith should exist in the vigorous intellect and progres- 
 sive power that characterize the American people. 
 
 It is probable, even if our people neglect the problem 
 of wealth-adjustment so long that civil war is inevitable, 
 that they will, nevertheless, carry the banner of equal 
 rights triumphantly through the struggle, as they did 
 through the great rebellion, and maintain the great good 
 that already exists in our political institutions, which, 
 after all that can be said in denunciation, are, nevertheless, 
 in advance of those still maintained by the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 There is real danger ahead, however, for the young 
 social giant of the western world, born amid the stormy 
 times of 1776. 
 
 The wealth-child, tossed upon his shoulders in the 
 happy pride of conscious strength, has become an Old Man 
 of the Sea in his latter progress, while around his feet the 
 slimy, threatening, poisonous reptiles of want and degrada- 
 tion threaten to overwhelm him should he sink beneath 
 the increasing burden that he bears. 
 
 Do the people of the United States realize the dangers 
 to our great republic that exist when want and misery see 
 unmerited wealth and luxury easily within their grasp ? 
 Let our people hearken to the discontent. 
 
64 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE WORSHIP OF OUR ANCESTORS. 
 
 " Three deceased ancestors must be -worshipped, three must be reverenced 
 before the rest. These three ancestors of a man may claim the discharge of 
 their twofold debt from the fourth in descent" -INSTITUTES OF NARADA. 
 
 NOTHING but the realization of what are now merely the 
 socialistic dreams of idealists can ever accomplish abso- 
 lute equality of wealth in society, and nothing is further 
 from the intention of the writer than the idea of urging 
 plans that would only seem visionary and impractical to 
 the great body of our population. No matter how ideally 
 perfect the social creations of Edward Bellamy and kindred 
 souls, existing since the days when Utopia was revealed 
 to and ridiculed by slowly progressing humanity, may 
 appear to certain minds impressed by the vast economy 
 of co-operation, the actual realization of those ideals lies 
 far in the future how far, we can only guess. The 
 progress of civilization apparently tends in that direction, 
 but in all social evolution there is a slow and painful ad- 
 vance, step by step, sometimes backward, but eventually 
 in the direction toward which the forces developed by 
 nature tend to drive men. These forces now appear 
 ready to impel the human race out of the fiercest warfare 
 of competition into the more peaceful methods of co-op- 
 eration, but between the two conditions lies an unknown 
 waste of dangerous pitfalls and obstructions that humanity 
 at its first attempt may not surmount. If society ever 
 reaches the other side, it will be by the careful avoidance 
 of those pitfalls, one by one, and by the attack of each 
 obstacle singly. There will be no marvelous transition 
 
KING MAMMON. 65 
 
 to a promised land, and if we ever accomplish general 
 co-operation it will be by the slow, successive stages by 
 which all social development is effected. With the ad- 
 vocacy of theories of social co-operation, therefore, this 
 consideration of social growth will have nothing to do at 
 present. We need some modification in our laws that 
 will serve as a link in the chain of evolution by which the 
 human race is to ascend to higher levels something that 
 appeals to practical men something that is feasible to- 
 day. In suggesting modifications in our laws as remedies 
 for social evils, the test of justice will be invited, and it 
 will be demanded also, that justice shall be the test of 
 social institutions as they now exist. Mere imaginary 
 expediency can never be a safe guide in formulating laws, 
 for the history of the human race shows that a general 
 conception of justice is the only permanent basis for 
 maintaining an agreement between men. Invoking 
 justice, it cannot be maintained, for instance, that William 
 Waldorf Astor should be the owner of a fortune supposed 
 to be worth one hundred millions of dollars, which he 
 never produced and never even accumulated by any 
 effort of his own, and that John Smith, a worthy but 
 penniless gentleman of the same city of New York, who 
 has apparently equal claims upon that amount of prop- 
 perty in having done nothing whatever to acquire it, 
 should possess absolutely nothing, and, besides that un- 
 fortunate condition, should not have even a fair oppor- 
 tunity to acquire wealth. Dame Nature's laws in some 
 instances do not appear to be just any more than those of 
 man, but this particular iniquity is not hers. The fowls 
 of the air and the beasts of the forest seek their subsist- 
 ence and their comfort unfettered by such conditions. 
 Each takes from the hand of Nature what the season pro- 
 vides, and all receive exactly the same opportunities for 
 "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." They have 
 5 
 
66 KING MAMMON. 
 
 equal access to the benefits of life, and equal exposure to 
 its reverses. Man in a purely savage state is unfettered, like 
 the lower animals. No one monopolizes his surrounding 
 territory or its wealth. Save for the penalties of savage 
 warfare, he is free from tribute, and in the wild existence 
 of the woods and plains he captures game and gathers 
 berries without paying over a portion to any lord of the 
 realm. In such a life no man pays rent for the privilege 
 of existence to another man whose life-work has not been 
 a development of the wealth he claims; but this is not 
 true of our boasted civilization and liberty of the nine- 
 teenth century. It is undeniable that the peaceful ex- 
 istence of the savage, as distinguished from his warfare, 
 is blessed with more of justice and equal rights than our 
 present civilization can bestow, so far as the rights to 
 property are concerned. All savages had, or could have 
 had, enough for comfort without unremitting toil ; but all 
 who exist in London or New York to-day cannot secure 
 comfort even with constant toil, nor can they secure op- 
 portunities to work when they desire. The records of the 
 sweating system and the condition of tenement houses 
 abundantly noted in recent publications is evidence of 
 the wide existence of a condition like that described in 
 the following paragraph from a report of the New York 
 Sanitary Aid Society on conditions in the Eleventh 
 Precinct : 
 
 "The investigations reveal a state of affairs than 
 which nothing more horrible can be imagined, and which, 
 although perhaps equaled, cannot be surpassed in any 
 European city. To get into these pestilential human 
 rookeries you have to penetrate courts and alleys reeking 
 with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accu- 
 mulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions 
 and often flowing beneath your feet. You have to ascend 
 rotten staircases which threaten to give way beneath 
 every step, which in some cases have already broken 
 
KING MAMMON. 67 
 
 down, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and lives of the 
 unwary. Walls and ceilings are black with the accretions 
 of filth which have gathered upon them through long 
 years of neglect. It exudes through cracks in the boards 
 overhead and runs down the walls ; it is everywhere. 
 
 "The rooms are crowded with sick and dirty children. 
 Often several families occupy the same apartment. One 
 of the inspectors reports twenty-five persons in three so- 
 called rooms, of which two are mere closets without win- 
 dows or openings to the hall. Here is a family of father, 
 mother, and four children, taking in fourteen boarders and 
 living in three rooms. There are fifteen people of all 
 sexes and ages in two little rooms, a great portion of 
 which is in addition taken up with old rags and refuse. 
 One of the directors discovered parents, three children, 
 and fifteen geese living in a filthy cellar. Another visited 
 a room which had actually not been cleaned or white- 
 washed for five years, where the ceiling was tumbling 
 down in pieces, one of the children being in bed from 
 severe wounds on the face and shoulder inflicted by the 
 falling plaster. Here were found a woman and five small 
 children who were actually starving, having eaten nothing 
 for two days ; there a woman but two days after confine- 
 ment being ejected by an inhuman landlord." 
 
 Neither this description of the condition of some of 
 those who do not accidentally happen to own a hundred 
 millions of dollars' worth of property, nor the following 
 from a writer in the Chicago Tribune of January i, 1893, 
 is likely to convince many people that opportunites for 
 existence are being equalized under civilization : 
 
 " About five minutes' walk from the city hall in New 
 York is the most densely-populated section of the earth. 
 From 225,000 to 500,000 people to the square mile are 
 packed in tenement houses which cover from sixty to 
 ninety percent of the ground space in each block. There 
 are not only the four and five-story houses fronting the 
 street, but another row built inside the first and separated 
 from it by a few feet, then in the middle space another 
 square building packed with humanity from top to bottom. 
 
68 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Within the area of Mulberry, Hester, Baxter, Canal, Lud- 
 low, Essex, and East Broadway streets are hundreds of 
 sweat-shops. Not only the coarser goods, but the finer 
 grades of women's underwear, cloaks, and men's clothing 
 are made there. 
 
 " That underwear which you buy so much cheaper than 
 you could make it at home, probably comes from a sweat- 
 shop, and could you see the conditions under which it is 
 made, you would shudder at the bare thought of having 
 it touch your skin, That ready-made suit which seems 
 so cheap and pretty, probably served as a bed for the 
 filthy, diseased wretches who made it. I know that rep- 
 utable firms deny that their goods are made by sweaters. 
 The wholesale firms in New York are insulted at the bare 
 imputation of such a thing ; yet they admit that the work 
 is given to contractors, and they don't know where it is 
 done. I found those same contractors running sweat- 
 shops in Essex and Baxter streets. Under the impression 
 that our guide was a boss himself they told him what 
 firms they worked for and where contracts could be ob- 
 tained. One of the worst places visited was a fourth- 
 story attic, where six men and two women lived and 
 worked. They were making coats for a firm which has 
 branch houses in Minneapolis and in every city of any 
 size in the country. 
 
 "Nearly all of the tenements are four or five stories 
 high. The ground floor of the outer building will be oc- 
 cupied by a store of some sort. The other floors have four 
 flats on each floor and two rooms to each flat. The outer 
 room is ten by twelve and has two windows. The inner 
 room has no window, and measures four by six. In a 
 two-room flat of this sort it is a common thing for six or 
 eight grown people to live and work, not to mention an 
 average of four or five children to every family. These 
 buildings, facing the street, get some sunlight and such 
 air as filters down the crowded streets. 
 
 "Then remember that back of this outer building is 
 always one and sometimes two inner buildings. In these 
 inner buildings people actually live and work and rear chil- 
 dren without seeing daylight from one end of the year to the 
 other. They keep lamps burning all day. A faint twi- 
 light on a summer's day is the nearest approach to day- 
 
KING MAMMON. 69 
 
 light that their habitation ever knows. One water faucet 
 and waste pipe in the hall does service for every four 
 families. The closets are always in the crowded court- 
 yard, and all fuel must be carried up by hand. 
 
 " In the two days and a half we visited fifty-eight build- 
 ings and saw the dwelling places of more than a thousand 
 families. Breathing the foul air, in addition to the physical 
 exertion involved in climbing and descending five-story 
 buildings, left me in a state of prostration from which I 
 did not recover for several days. After it was over I 
 understood better -why no woman and but few men had 
 ever made anything like a thorough investigation of the 
 system. Filth and wretchedness, the desperate struggle 
 for existence, and the absolute lack of anything approach- 
 ing home life, combine to make a picture which seems to 
 be burned into the memory of any one who has seen it. 
 The little children are the most pathetic sight of all. The 
 bad conditions, instead of killing out the race, seem only 
 to encourage reproduction. The alleys, courtyards, cellars, 
 and streets fairly swarm with children. 
 
 " ' They die like flies in the summer time/ said our 
 guide, ( and the undertakers make special rates for the 
 summer traffic in the tenement district.'" 
 
 Such destitution as these writers describe, and such as 
 every one familiar with great cities knows to exist, is not 
 caused by any general lack of wealth or deficiency of pro- 
 duction. 
 
 Indeed, the saddest fact is that in periods of depression, 
 when all that sustains life is most abundant and cheapest, 
 there is always the greatest suffering among the poor on 
 account of the scarcity of employment. 
 
 Do we not all remember the industrial armies marching 
 in rags toward Washington, and propounding to their 
 fellow-men the almost unanswerable enigmas recorded in 
 the following lines : 
 
 " Why is it that those who produce food are hungry ? 
 Why is it that those who make clothes are ragged? Why 
 is it that those who build palaces are houseless ? Why is 
 
70 KING MAMMON. 
 
 it that those who do the nation's work are forced to choose 
 between beggary, crime, or suicide, in a nation that has 
 fertile soil enough to produce plenty to feed and clothe 
 the world ; material enough to build palaces to house 
 them all ; and productive capacity, through labor-saving 
 machinery, of forty thousand million man-power, and 
 only sixty-five million souls to feed, clothe, and 
 shelter ? " 
 
 When it is remembered that for every case of destitu- 
 tion a thousand comforts can be found where they are 
 not needed, such inquiries cannot be classed as imperti- 
 nent. It cannot be supposed that such conditions are 
 caused by natural laws, nor can we charge that they are 
 the work of God. 
 
 The condition is not a new one ; it is as old as civiliza- 
 tion. But because it is old, shall we, therefore, admit 
 that it is necessary and unavoidable ? 
 
 Slavery was older than history, but men have abandoned 
 the direct form of it. 
 
 Wife-ownership existed in society for centuries, but it 
 is steadily giving way to better family conditions. 
 
 The extreme power and tyranny of wealth, and the ex- 
 treme degradation of poverty, have always been a feature 
 in the history of the race since wealth was accumulated ; 
 but are we to concede that men become no better and no 
 wiser ? We need to scrutinize our own habits and customs 
 and social institutions. 
 
 In treating of this subject, its nature necessarily compels 
 a writer to discuss with scant reverence what are termed 
 the " sacred rights of property." 
 
 In doing so the reader who is firmly impressed with 
 the idea that all property rights and transfers are justly 
 established, is asked to withhold his conclusions till the 
 wealth problem is completely discussed. 
 
 Sometimes we believe certain things and do other 
 
KING MAMMON. /I 
 
 things, merely because they have become established as 
 customs. 
 
 We often accept religious and social and political ideas 
 in this way, without genuine investigation, merely be- 
 cause we have been accustomed to them, or because 
 our early associations have been connected with them. 
 
 How frequently does the boy at twenty-one approve 
 the politics of his father, and the girl at eighteen the 
 religion of her mother ! Do we usually make a careful 
 and thorough investigation of the nature and tendencies 
 of important social institutions, or do we accept them as 
 having been tried and proved by our predecessors to be 
 the best possible institutions for our needs ? Many, very 
 many of us, it is to be feared, are ultra-conservatives, 
 and one of the greatest obstacles to social progress is 
 conservatism, for it make cowards of us all. 
 
 The Houssa negroes, according to Herbert Spencer's 
 Sociology, have a saying that is an appropriate motto for 
 the extreme conservative. It is " Because same ting do 
 for my father, same ting do forme." 
 
 The intensely conservative man thinks that what is, 
 must be ; that civilization has nearly if not quite reached 
 its complete development ; that if things are wrong in 
 a few particulars, they will right themselves somehow ; 
 that the rich may be too rich, but there's no way to pre- 
 vent great riches ; that the poor may be too poor, but there 
 will always be poverty ; that if the world has wagged for 
 centuries under such conditions, it will probably continue 
 .to wag ; and that as the wealth problem, according to his 
 conception, does not concern him directly (for the ultra- 
 conservative is usually neither very poor nor very rich), 
 he would rather not think about it. 
 
 The conservative x is a great stickler for existing law 
 
 1 " Human beings, like patients, would rather endure well-known 
 pains, with which they have become familiar, than take the chances of 
 
?2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 and order, custom and precedent. He is terrified by a 
 proposition to make a radical change of any kind. If a 
 new law is to be enacted, he would make it a very little 
 at a time. If an old law is to be abolished, he would 
 destroy it piecemeal. If his grandfather put on his coat 
 in a certain way, the conservative would like to continue 
 the custom in the family. When his conservatism is 
 mingled with conventionality, it is a matter of very great 
 importance with him to wag exactly as the rest of the 
 world wags only a little behind it. If his neighbors all 
 go to bed at exactly nine o'clock, he deems it a necessity 
 for him to do precisely the same thing, and he would 
 rather be dead than to have the reputation of thinking or 
 saying or believing anything that his associates consider 
 queer. 
 
 The conservative has a value in society, and imparts to 
 it a certain desirable stability, but he is not the stuff out 
 of which reformers are made, and but little can be said 
 in his favor when a change in social institutions is needed, 
 except to compare him to a brake upon the wheels of the 
 car of state to prevent a dangerous rate of progress over 
 rough ground. When his conservatism becomes so ex- 
 treme that he will not listen to the pleas of progres- 
 sionists, and when he persistently turns his face toward 
 the past instead of the future, the only simile that ade- 
 quately describes him is the rough political assertion of 
 some of our campaigns, that he resembles "a jackass 
 hitched the wrong way between the shafts of a cart, and 
 braying denunciations because the progressive combina- 
 tion is not a success." 
 
 The conservative worships his ancestors. Perhaps 
 he does not do so consciously, but he feels a perpetual 
 
 a first-rate operation. They prefer a few timid efforts and those at 
 long intervals, slowly attempted and deliberately carried out to secure 
 their recovery." M. REYBAUD. 
 
KING MAMMON. 73 
 
 reverence for whatever is well established or time- 
 honored, and a corresponding distrust for anything- con- 
 trary to what he and his fathers have practiced. If he 
 positively knew, as the popular acceptation supposes the 
 Darwinian theory to assert, that his remote ancestor was 
 a monkey, the ultra conservative would immediately 
 conclude that because his ancestor was ancient, he must', 
 therefore, have been a very respectable monkey, and 
 perhaps in many respects superior to himself. 
 
 Men of the conservative temperament so assiduously 
 and so reverently gaze at the vanishing past, that they 
 tumble helplessly into the pitfalls of the present. We 
 are surrounded by these dangers now ; let us hope that 
 the reverence with which we view time-honored insti- 
 tutions will not blind us to the necessities of a change. 
 The tools and the fabrics of ancient existence are not 
 those our condition now demands. We have outgrown 
 many customs of antiquity, yet still some of them linger. 
 Our wives and daughters have worn jewels in their ears, 
 not because these really add to their comfort or beauty, 
 but because a savage ancestor, somewhere in the dark 
 ages before history was written, with a savage's idea of 
 personal adornment, hung rings or sticks from her ears, 
 and the custom has descended to the ladies who still 
 follow it. Is it not probable, therefore, that we shall find 
 in our social institutions many barbarous customs surviv- 
 ing far beyond the limits to which they should have 
 been extended, just as the word "obey," as a pledge for 
 the wife, has been retained in marriage ceremonies in 
 significance of the time when woman was absolutely 
 man's slave ? 
 
 Instead of worshiping our ancestors and the social 
 institutions they have bequeathed to us, after the fashion 
 of extreme conservatism, the rational course in justice to 
 ourselves is to scrutinize all their acts, and customs, and 
 
74 KING MAMMON. 
 
 laws, and traditions with the utmost suspicion. Without 
 being unduly disrespectful to my ancestors, some of 
 whom may have been very worthy people, I must say 
 that, although I have no personal knowledge of their 
 character and accomplishments, there is every reason to 
 believe that, in general, they were like those of other 
 people, a succession of brutal savages, whose brutality 
 increased with their antiquity. 
 
 Indeed, we have very little real reason for claiming 
 that we are civilized at the present moment, for civili- 
 zation is only a relative condition. We have some reason 
 for thinking that we are not quite such savage, stupid 
 beasts as Caribs, for instance ; and we may feel certain 
 that we know more and treat one another more justly 
 than did our forefathers a thousand years ago ; but 
 whether we are now really civilized or not that is the 
 question. 
 
 On that particular feature of the nineteenth century, 
 what will the people two thousand years later think and 
 write concerning us ? Will they classify us as barbarians, 
 or between the two eras will there intervene a period of 
 social degeneration and a rise from which the people of 
 the year 4000 will regard our condition as an ancient 
 civilization rivaling their own ? It is useless to speculate 
 on the dim future, but we know at least this much : 
 Our social institutions are continually changing, and they 
 are no more stable now than they were five hundred 
 years ago when our half-barbarous forefathers existed, or 
 when, before the dawn of history, their ancestors lived in 
 caves and chased the mammoth. Our civilization is not 
 yet effected, and we are not really civilized in the sense 
 that civilization is complete, but only in the sense that 
 we have progressed from the condition of our ancestors, 
 have learned many things which they did not know, 
 have demanded many things which they did not think 
 
KING MAMMON. 75 
 
 necessary, and have abolished as unjust many practices 
 which they did not think wrong. 
 
 Our natural condition is that of transition. The things 
 that we may approve to-day, our successors may de- 
 nounce to-morrow, and he who seeks to maintain by 
 force a decaying social institution against the natural 
 forces that tend to destroy it, as thousands of laws and 
 customs have already been destroyed in the past, is 
 merely endeavoring unwittingly to inflict upon the social 
 structure a spasm such as convulsed this country when 
 slavery gave way before advancing thought. 
 
 Do not forget that, if our savage ancestor l was like 
 other savages, sometime in the four hundred thousand 
 years of man's probable occupancy of earth he was a 
 cannibal, devouring the enemy he had conquered ; he 
 was a child-murderer, destroying his own offspring lest 
 its existence give him trouble ; he was a parricide, putting 
 his own mother to death when the infirmities of age 
 interfered with her usefulness. 
 
 Under the same progress which is still going on, he 
 ceased to murder his family and to eat his neighbors 
 when he quarreled with them, but he, nevertheless, sold 
 his own daughter to another savage for a slave, obtained 
 his own slave wife or wives in the same way, and com- 
 placently made slaves of all others whom he could sub- 
 ject to his power, possibly because it was more profitable 
 for him to enjoy the results of their servile labor than 
 to enjoy their cooked flesh, perhaps because he became 
 morally better then, as we do now. As a religious 
 savage, he conceived it his duty to flay a captive alive 
 and to dance before his deity wrapped in the bleeding 
 skin of his victim. 
 
 In the arts of war he exulted in the facility with which 
 he could remove the heads of his victims, when dead, and 
 
 1 Herbert Spencer's " Principles of Sociology." 
 
76 KING MAMMON. 
 
 eventually, as a matter of convenience to himself, their 
 scalps. His enemies, when reduced to subjection, were 
 designated by such enduring marks of remembrance as 
 the removal of ears, noses, teeth, and fingers. 
 
 Eventually his refinement developed to such an extent 
 that he merely killed his neighbors when they disagreed 
 with him about matters of property, and reserved the* 
 arts of torture for those persistent associates who refused 
 to be religious in his way and according to his improved 
 ideas. His progressive ideas in regard to slavery are 
 noteworthy. 
 
 At first he believed that anybody whom he could re- 
 duce to servitude was rightfully his slave his wife, his 
 father, or his enemy. Later on, he was content with 
 holding his wife and his servants as partial slaves. 
 Finally, he concluded that slavery could only apply right- 
 fully to people whose skins were colored differently from 
 his own. Thus we come to negro slavery ; and does it 
 not seem astounding, regarding slavery as we now do, 
 that only a little more than thirty years ago there were 
 millions of slaves in the United States, and that thousands 
 of our own white blood, both North and South, boldly 
 defended its existence and denied that it was wrong? I 
 
 Does it not seem to us now, even at this brief period of 
 one generation later, that it is a disgrace upon humanity 
 that Abraham Lincoln should have been compelled by the 
 opposing strength of public opinion to battle so bravely 
 for human rights, and to gravely inquire, as he did in the 
 
 1 " In the light of the present day, when slavery no longer exists in the 
 land, when speech is absolutely free, in and out of Congress, it is hard 
 to believe that during the Presidency of Mr. Van Buren, and under the 
 Speakership of Mr. Polk, the House of Representatives voted that . 
 ' every petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper, touching or 
 relating in any way or to any extent whatever to slavery or to the aboli- 
 tion thereof, shall on presentation, without any further action thereon, 
 be laid upon the table, without being debated, printed or referred.' " 
 JAMES G. ELAINE. 
 
KING MAMMON. 77 
 
 following extracts from his speeches, whether slavery is 
 right or wrong ? 
 
 "Is slavery wrong? That is the real issue. It is the 
 eternal struggle between these two principles, right and 
 wrong throughout the world. They are two principles 
 that have stood face to face from the beginning of time ; 
 and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the com- 
 mon right of humanity, and the other the divine right of 
 kings. It is the same principle, in whatever shape it 
 develops itself. It is the same spirit that says : * You 
 work, and toil, and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter 
 in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king 
 who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and 
 live by the fruit of their own labor, or from one race of 
 men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the 
 same tyrannical principle. 
 
 " I have said that I do not understand the Declaration 
 to mean that all men were created equal in all respects. 
 They are not our equal in color ; but I suppose that it 
 does mean to declare that all men are created equal in 
 some respects ; they are equal in their right to ' life, liberty 
 and the pursuit of happiness/ Certainly the negro is not 
 our equal in color, perhaps not in many other respects ; 
 still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his 
 own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other 
 man, white or black." 
 
 Do not our martyred Lincoln's words sound some- 
 what like the absurd inquiries of the rabble in Coxey's 
 army that we have already quoted ? And if we substi- 
 tute the words ' ' wealth tyranny " for slavery or slave 
 tyranny in the extracts from his speeches, substituting for 
 the word "color" the word "ability," will not the brave 
 words of our dead President bring home to us a stern and 
 thoughtful sense of the wrongs that society is still perpe- 
 trating, even though we have abandoned cannibalism and 
 infanticide and negro slavery ? Are we so enraptured with 
 the glories of the past that we cannot see the wrongs of 
 the present, and shall we deny the existence of those 
 
78 KING MAMMON. 
 
 wrongs on the rostrum and in the pulpit and in the press, 
 just as Lincoln's opponents denied the wrongs of negro 
 slavery ? 
 
 It is to be feared that the conservative will again unite 
 with those who have selfish interests in maintaining 
 wealth tyranny, just as he joined those who fought for 
 slave-tyranny, in our civil war ; but every appeal should 
 be made to the dormant spirit of progression, and every 
 remonstrance urged against his fatal habit of reverence 
 for the past and distrust of the future. He should con- 
 sider the slavery of woman, and how from a mere beast 
 of burden, as she was held by our ancestors, her condi- 
 tion has been gradually alleviated by an awakening sense 
 of justice coincident with man's developing intelligence, 
 until now the actual dawn of a complete emancipation 
 can be perceived. 
 
 Our conservative should remember that men of his 
 class laughed in derision only a few years ago at any 
 serious proposition that woman should ^te, or that she 
 had a natural right to vote. Yet the world moves in 
 spite of conservatism, and a portion of the republic 
 already permits women to vote, and other portions are 
 preparing to do the same thing, while "woman suffrage" 
 scarcely meets with serious opposition. 
 
 The disinterested conservative of to-day will ridicule, 
 and the man whose personal interests are directly af- 
 fected will abuse the reformer who demands the eman- 
 cipation of wealth-slaves, precisely as the same factors 
 of society forty years ago denounced the abolitionists of 
 negro slavery. 
 
 Yet the slaves of King Mammon will also become free, 
 for their cause is just, and in the end justice will prevail. 
 In the eyes of the Southern slave-owner, the abolitionist 
 was a demon who would rob him of his wealth and de- 
 prive him of the rights of property, and this demon was 
 
KING MAMMON. , 79 
 
 held up for universal execration in the slave-holding com- 
 munity, and denounced as the most utterly debased of 
 all creatures. 
 
 It is ever thus with men when their selfish personal 
 interests are attacked. The slave-owners resisted bitterly 
 and violently the onward progress of society, but the doc- 
 trines of the abolitionists triumphed, for they were right, 
 and our social direction is ever onward and upward, away 
 from the gross brutalities of our early existence. 
 
 History will now repeat itself in a new contest over the 
 rights of property, but it is to be hoped that no appeal 
 will be made to the horrible adjudication of civil war. In 
 the coming struggle, the abolitionists of 1860 will become 
 the " anarchists " of 1900, l for this term of opprobrium will 
 be applied to all who demand important changes in what 
 are now considered the absolute rights to property, 2 ex- 
 actly as slave-ownership was considered an absolute right 
 fifty years ago. In the progress of the anti-slavery agita- 
 tion, people who had no direct interest in the maintenance 
 of slavery, at first regarded the abolitionist as a harmless 
 fanatic ; the slave-owner considered him a dangerous 
 fanatic. So, in the new crusade against slavery by wealth- 
 power, the men who first demand emancipation will be 
 denominated harmless anarchistic or socialistic enthus- 
 iasts by those who have no immediate personal interests 
 involved in the agitation, and dangerous anarchistic 
 demons by those whose power and privileges must be 
 
 1 " In truth it required no small degree of moral courage to take posi- 
 tion in the ranks of that despised political sect forty-five years ago. 
 Persecutions of a petty and social character were almost sure to follow, 
 and not infrequently grievous wrongs were inflicted, for which, in the 
 absence of a disposition among the people to see justice done, the law 
 afforded no redress." JAMES G. ELAINE. 
 
 2 Rev. George D. Herron, the author and lecturer on Christian Social- 
 ism, one of the least aggressive forms of progressive thought, was pub- 
 licly denounced as an anarchist in San Francisco in April, 1895, by a 
 Dr. Brown, whose ancient slave-driving instincts would still lead him to 
 repress free speech. 
 
8O KING MAMMON. 
 
 invaded by new laws. The monopolists of earth and 
 earthly opportunities will abuse those who oppose the 
 perpetuation of their privileges as viciously as the slave- 
 holders denounced the early abolitionists of the under- 
 ground railway, and they will assert that he who ques- 
 tions the justice of our present laws relating to the distri- 
 bution of property is a traitor to his country and a foe to 
 law and order. 
 
 It is sufficient for the present to remember that no real 
 alleviation of existing wrongs can be achieved except 
 through law and order and the peaceable expression of 
 the will of the majority. 
 
 With the destructive knights of the torch and the bomb, 
 this book has naught to do. Its author was born in this 
 country of ancestors reared for generations in the spirit 
 of American institutions. He is proud of the record his 
 country has already inscribed in the pages of history by 
 obliterating the tyrannical dogmas of a barbarous past, 
 and he honors the brave spirit of the American people 
 too much to remain silent when they are drifting steadily 
 in a current that can lead only to destruction. Mental 
 and moral agitation, the accomplishment of justice, the 
 right of free speech, and peaceful government by the 
 majority are all that the writer desires or demands. If 
 he cannot show that all his claims are founded on justice 
 and equal rights, he asks neither sympathy nor support 
 from any man for the cause he advocates. Yet the 
 friends of liberty must demand that no voice calling for 
 reform, however radical, shall be drowned in a storm of 
 denunciation amid the howl of " anarchist." 
 
 Let us approach the question of the rights to property 
 boldly and frankly, with no weak subservience to the 
 past and no unmanly fears of the future. Let us con- 
 stantly inquire: Is it right is it just? When, after 
 mature deliberation, we can clearly answer those ques- 
 
KING MAMMON. . 8l 
 
 tions, let us hold fast to what is just " though the heavens 
 fall," for in the maintenance of justice only can there 
 be abiding government and permanent social prosperity. 
 As this republic could not exist half slave and half free, 
 so it cannot exist with a race of wealth aristocrats ruling 
 a race of serfs. With justice at the foundation and prog- 
 ress under just laws, our government may survive; but 
 whenever an unjust institution is permitted in society 
 and allowed to develop, it terminates in blood and de- 
 struction. The seeds of evil deposited by one generation 
 of men ripen into Dead Sea fruit to be gathered by their 
 successors. Humanity is now about to gather one of 
 these bitter harvests for which the seeds were planted a 
 thousand years ago. What will that harvest be ? 
 6 
 
82 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ROOTS OF THE UPAS TREE. 
 
 " That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of 
 the dead ; that those who exist not can have no use nor rights in it ; no 
 authority or power over it ; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or 
 burden its use to another, which comes to it in their wvn right, and by the 
 same Divine beneficence ; that a preceding generation cannot bind a suc- 
 ceeding one by its laws or contracts, these deriving their obligation from 
 the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, 
 another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and 
 contracts these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation cau make them 
 plainer ; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can 
 control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms, 
 also, pregnant with salutary consequences. The laws of civil society, indeed, 
 for the encouragement of industry, give the property of the parent to his 
 family on his death, and in most civilized countries permit him to give it by 
 testament to whom he pleases. And it is also found more convenient to 
 suffer the laws to stand on our implied assent as if positively re-enacted, 
 until the existing majority repeals them ; buf this does not lessen the right 
 of that majority to repeal whenever a change of circumstances or of will 
 calls for it. Habit alone confounds civil practice with natural right." 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON. 
 
 IN order to discuss the social problem of wealth-con- 
 ditions on a plane that will free it from the charge of 
 sentimentality, and reduce it to the simplest possible form 
 of human rights, we will discard from consideration all 
 ideas of charity, benevolence, religion, or any other feel- 
 ing that might call down mercy for the poor man. All 
 that will be demanded for him is justice and fair oppor- 
 tunities in the contest. Equality of wealth is not claimed 
 for any man in these pages, but equality of opportunity 
 is surely justice to which he is entitled. Let us now see 
 whether in the race of life, he runs in a fair field with no 
 favors granted to other men. 
 
 Under just laws the evil results of wealth concentration 
 
KING MAMMON. ' 83 
 
 by the competitive system of modern social life would 
 not become very serious or dangerous were those condi- 
 tions not fixed, transferred, and perpetuated by the lapse 
 of time and the changes in population. If at any period 
 of the earth's history, and in any country, we place any 
 number of men at work with free access to the advan- 
 tages of earth as a home, they will labor in various ways, 
 with different habits and degrees of intelligence and in- 
 dustry. In the accumulation of wealth and the means of 
 comfort, some will naturally and justly achieve a greater 
 prosperity than others. This statement of an evident 
 truth constitutes the standard argument of those who 
 oppose or ridicule any attack on the injustice of existing 
 wealth-distribution. A frank admission of this truth is- 
 thus stated, for this book is not written to excite ignor- 
 ant prejudice, but" to stimulate thought and discussion. 
 When men commence life with equal opportunities and 
 contest for success, some will inevitably and justly so 
 far as justice can be obtained under competition become 
 richer than others. In the average existence of one gen- 
 eration, perhaps thirty-five years, or even in twice that 
 period, the differences in wealth-accumulation will not 
 ordinarily become oppressive or dangerous and destruc- 
 tive to government, for absolute equality of wealth is not 
 necessary to an equitable condition under competition, 
 and not really desirable even if it were possible. In a 
 single generation the wealthy people do not become idle 
 and profligate, nor the poor such miserable rats of servile 
 poverty as now exist in the slums of every city. The 
 richest man will still remain a worker, and the poorest 
 man will not have prepared a bomb with which to an- 
 nihilate the other. If, then, a single generation could 
 exist under competitive principles without necessary injus- 
 tice, and if every other generation, under the same con- 
 ditions, could live out a fair competition, and, finally, if 
 
84 KING MAMMON. 
 
 after the lapse of many generations every country in the 
 world has arrived at a condition of such frightful and 
 evident injustice that men are being driven to riot and 
 murder and rebellion on account of it, the essential wrong 
 at the foundation must exist in the links which connect 
 one generation with the next ; for if injustice does not 
 exist in the competition of any generation separately 
 wherein all the individuals possess equal opportunities, 
 it must exist in whatever connects those generations, by 
 which unfairness enters at the beginning of every new 
 contest. We will search, therefore, in the laws of suc- 
 cessions for the principles upon which they are based, 
 and examine the methods by which the wealth accum- 
 ulated by one generation is transferred to the next. 
 
 It is scarcely conceivable that any intelligent person, 
 unbiased by motives of personal loss or gain, after reflect- 
 ing on the nature of our present laws of succession, can 
 doubt that they embody the unfairness which is the 
 principal cause of the dangerous wealth-conditions that 
 are within our power to modify by legislation, and that 
 the essential wrong of an aristocracy, domineering over 
 an humbler and greater body of apparently equally de- 
 serving people, is to be found in the unjust principle, 
 which has usually received the sanction of civilized 
 society in all its recorded history, by which the ancestor 
 who has accumulated wealth names his successor and 
 delivers his possessions to one or a few survivors, inde- 
 pendently of any efforts which the latter may or may not 
 have made in the acquisition of the property which they 
 receive by his bequest. 
 
 Transmitted in this way, there is a tendency for the 
 original fortune to increase as an aggregate within the 
 family limits, and to become fixed as a family posses- 
 sion ; for, if the heirs, who are usually the direct descend- 
 ants, inherit, as they naturally do, the money-making 
 
KING MAMMON. ' 85 
 
 instincts or talents of the ancestor, the family estate in- 
 creases in value from generation to generation, gaining 
 volume like a snowball as it is pushed forward. 
 
 Many fortunes, it is true, have been dissipated by 
 spendthrift heirs, and by division under bequests ; but 
 immediate or even rapid distribution is not the natural 
 and usual tendency, for the accumulating ancestor almost 
 invariably feels a pride in his fortune and desires to leave 
 it in a body if possible, so that it may be a monument to 
 his superior abilities ; and the natural laws of heredity 
 often carry money-making and money-saving instincts 
 down through many generations in one family. 
 
 The families of the Rothschilds and the Astors are 
 notable instances of this kind, and the fact that large for- 
 tunes are transmitted from generation to generation in 
 every civilized country, although many fortunes are dis- 
 sipated, is proof of the tendency of wealth to fossilize 
 without further comment. 
 
 The inequitable and wasteful distribution of wealth by 
 profligate heirs is almost universally regarded as beneficial 
 to society. People would rather see a great fortune broken 
 up by wasteful heirs than to see it perpetuated ; but so 
 inconsistent is average human nature of the unreflective 
 sort, that many of those who approve this distribution, 
 will denounce methods that are far more equitable and 
 beneficial than the extravagance and vicious habits of 
 spendthrift heirs. 
 
 In the law of successions lies the root of the wealth 
 evil. Where else can it be ? If the conditions of natural 
 competition not modem competition are just, as nearly 
 every one believes, there is nothing unfair in the condi- 
 tions of the struggle till competitors drop out of the con- 
 test by death, and others are substituted by birth and in- 
 heritance ; yet in spite of this assumed fairness every 
 country in the world eventually reaches the same dis- 
 
86 KING MAMMON. 
 
 astrous condition of the very rich and the very poor, with 
 aristocracy and pauperism, and where men who cannot 
 find an opportunity to work for mere bread view with the 
 murderous instincts of the savage heart of destitution the 
 luxury of another man who never in his life did an honest 
 day's work in productive effort of any kind. 
 
 The succession of generations and the manner in which 
 property rights are transferred are the principal causes 
 which breed the evil. Nearly every man whose selfish 
 interests do not distort his judgment will acknowledge the 
 injustice of the result of transmitted fortunes, but few, it 
 is believed, have noted the equal injustice of the cause, 
 for the nature of inheritance has not frequently been 
 analyzed. It can hardly be disputed that under any 
 possible form of government based on the competitive 
 system which men can establish (excepting the limitation 
 or prohibition of wealth accumulation, a course really 
 destructive of free competition), if inheritance be permitted 
 in the form that now exists, great fortunes involving a 
 monopoly of earth will inevitably ensue ; the very rich 
 and the very poor will be brought into fierce opposition 
 long before the density of population compels a merely 
 animal struggle for existence ; and the government will 
 go down under internecine strife unless temporizing meas- 
 ures can allay the ill-feeling of the disinherited. 
 
 There is no escape from this result. This being the 
 status of our wealth problem, what can we do ? One 
 thing ought to be evident : Any governmental principle 
 that we adopt must be approximately just in order to 
 secure a permanent prosperity or genuine progress. Pub- 
 lic good cannot arise from public wrong at its foundation. 
 Evil seeds will produce evil fruit. If the converse of this 
 proposition be true, that evil fruits are developed from 
 evil seeds, no additional argument should be necessary to 
 convince an unprejudiced reader that he will discover 
 
KING MAMMON. S; 
 
 something wrong in the law of successions, for the evil 
 fruits are to be found on every hand. 
 
 After deliberate thought, the writer is convinced that 
 the system of bequest and inheritance that prevails in 
 every civilized country is radically unjust and productive 
 of tyranny, and that it develops the principal conditions 
 of which the moral sense of society now complains. 
 
 No person in whom there exists any genuine love of 
 fair play can compare the condition of a boy who inherits 
 a fortune of one hundred millions of dollars with the con- 
 dition of a thousand other children taken at random from 
 the people surrounding him, remembering that as children 
 they have not produced what their ancestors have accumu- 
 lated, be it much or little, and remembering that if they 
 compete with one another for success in life they should 
 justly have an approach to equal opportunities at the 
 start, and then say that such a condition and such strife 
 are just ; that all of those children really have fair oppor- 
 tunities, considering life as a contest ; that every child is 
 in possession of his natural rights ; and that all exist as 
 God or nature intended that they should exist. We all 
 know there is unfairness in any contest of that kind. 
 We would not permit our horses to run in a race where 
 one possessed all the advantage of position at the start. 
 Even boys playing a game of ball or marbles would rebel 
 and become "anarchists" under conditions so grossly 
 unjust. 
 
 We will commence our investigations by inquiring in 
 the first place, what natural right any man has to become 
 an heir. Does the son or other descendant of a wealthy 
 ancestor, or does any other survivor, possess any natural 
 or just claim to the property of the decedent to the ex- 
 clusion of his fellow-creatures ? Society has at various 
 times in different countries granted a legal right some- 
 times absolute, sometimes secondary, to the legal right of 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 the ancestor to bestow his wealth upon certain persons 
 recognized as heirs and preferred as successors ; but, after 
 discarding all considerations of labor and reward, it can 
 be conclusively denied that any person has a natural or 
 just claim upon society for this preference. The only just 
 claim that any man can have upon property is from what 
 we call production, which is only transformation by the 
 application of labor ; for there is never any absolute pro- 
 duction in the sense of bringing something into existence 
 that did not exist before. A man can make a plow, but 
 he cannot make the chemical elements that enter into the 
 material which composes it, so his production is only a 
 transformation. 
 
 Hence it can be proved that unless any person has pro- 
 duced or assisted to produce the fortune which he expects 
 to inherit, he has no better right to it, in a moral sense, 
 than any other survivor, for in attempting to establish 
 justice in society, we cannot permit the mere question of 
 consanguinity to affect our verdict. 
 
 My father may have been a murderer, but society does 
 not attach blame to me on account of his acts ; therefore, 
 if my father happens to have accumulated a million of 
 dollars, why should society permit me to claim the credit 
 and take the entire amount, regardless of my own efforts 
 and success, on account of the same kind of relationship ? 
 
 When man enters this world, by his mere presence upon 
 the planet, if any attempt is to be made at equitable 
 government, he justly acquires the natural right to freely 
 use earth in all its multiplicity of forms, observing and ad- 
 mitting similar rights in every other man. He has an equal 
 right with all others to the use of natural wealth surround- 
 ing him, and a better right than all others to that definite 
 portion of the earth to which his labor has been applied. 
 If we except the mere exchanges of property rights, I can 
 conceive of no just method by which any man can estab- 
 
KING MAMMON. -89 
 
 lish a special claim to what he has not produced by his 
 own efforts. I do not understand wherein any person can 
 establish a just claim to succeed to the property of another 
 person by inheritance, when his own efforts have not pro 
 duced the wealth. 
 
 No matter what position may be taken concerning the 
 justice or expediency involved in the accumulation of huge 
 fortunes by monopolies and speculation ; no matter if we 
 concede that gambling is fair among gamblers, and 
 the successful gambler entitled to what he wins ; no 
 matter if we concede that every great fortune is accumu- 
 lated justly, still it must be denied that the son of another 
 man who has produced or accumulated wealth by the 
 fairest methods, has any just claim upon that wealth, un- 
 less his own efforts have entered into the production of it ; 
 for any other theory is an acknowledgment that certain 
 men should reap where they have not sown, should ex- 
 pect a substantial reward from idleness and social worth- 
 lessness, and should require society to set them up as some- 
 thing better than ordinary mortals, who must work before 
 they eat. 
 
 By long-established custom the heir apparent imagines 
 that he possesses some natural claim upon the property 
 of his ancestor, and often feels aggrieved, as though he 
 were treated unjustly, when the dying man disinherits 
 him at the final moment, even if he has in no way aided 
 in producing the fortune he desires. The disappointed de- 
 scendant is right in feeling injustice, but the injustice that 
 really exists is not the imaginary injustice that he thinks 
 he feels. 
 
 As one of the great social group remaining after his 
 ancestor's death, he is entitled to his equal share of the 
 specialized property that was left behind ; but otherwise 
 the disinherited offspring expecting the reward of another 
 man's exertions is not defrauded of anything whatever 
 
QO KING MAMMON. 
 
 that could be or ought to be his by the inexorable decrees 
 of justice, for he is only one of the many who should 
 inherit the earth as other men lose the power to use it by 
 the decrees of death. No man has any natural right or 
 equitable ground for claiming anything that he has not 
 produced, beyond the equal right that is possessed by 
 every other man to occupy and use earth and its products. 
 No man can justly establish an exclusive claim to an 
 inheritance, and every edict of society providing for 
 special inheritance is a wrong perpetrated upon the body 
 of the people. 
 
 Where the will of the state is permitted to operate in 
 the case of distant relatives, who have had no intimate 
 personal association with the decedent, and who receive 
 a large fortune without having known the owner, this lack 
 of equity becomes very apparent. 
 
 The following account of a fortune inherited in this way 
 recently appeared in the newspapers of California : 
 
 " More like a romance reads a narrative of real life, in 
 which the parties interested are Contra Costa and Alameda 
 County people. Many years ago one Dan O'Keefe of 
 County Cork, Ireland, took passage on a man-of-war 
 bound for the East Indies. The lad was about 16 or 18 
 years of age, and was seized with a love of adventure and 
 a desire to amass a fortune. He evidently accomplished 
 both, for, unknown to his family during life, it turned out 
 that at his death he left a fortune of five million sovereigns, 
 that for the last eight years has been seeking for heirs. 
 As near as can be ascertained with regard to this young 
 man's career, the fortune had been accumulated through 
 trading in diamonds and opium. 
 
 " English lawyers in London, England, have been 
 searching the world over for the relatives of this dead mil- 
 lionaire, and letters finally reached the O'Keefe family of 
 Contra Costa County. Four of the brothers John, Dennis, 
 Dan, and Jerry reside in Alameda County, while a sister, 
 Mrs. P. Roche, lives near our town of Concord, in Contra 
 Costa County. So far they have proved themselves the 
 
KING MAMMON. 1 
 
 nearest of kin, first cousins, and Mrs. P. Roche has rec- 
 ollections of her kinsman leaving his Irish home to seek 
 his fortune. 
 
 "The property is drawing interest at the rate of half a 
 million dollars yearly, and the fortune now figures up a 
 total of some thirty millions of dollars. " Concord Sun. 
 
 Whether this narrative is exactly correct or not in details 
 is immaterial, so far as the logic of the circumstances is 
 concerned. The essence of the story is that a man ac- 
 cumulates a fortune on one side of the earth, which neces- 
 sarily represents not his own production, but the con- 
 centrated production of a vast number of other men as 
 well as himself. At his death the control of this great 
 wealth is transferred to a few people on the other side of 
 the earth, who never knew its possessor, who never 
 assisted in any way to produce the fortune, and whose 
 sole claim to inheritance is the mere accident of relation- 
 ship through a common ancestor, which occurred inde- 
 pendently of any volition of their own. 
 
 The absurdity of this kind of wealth distribution be- 
 comes very apparent in a case like the one narrated in the 
 statement here quoted, but the real nature of the transferral 
 would not be altered if the heirs had been children of the 
 dead man, instead of cousins, provided they had not as- 
 sisted in the actual production or accumulation of the 
 fortune. The essential thought involved is that, whereas 
 it would be unjust to hang a child because its father was 
 a murderer, or imprison it because he was a thief, so it is 
 unjust to permit a child to set up any special claim to its 
 father's fortune merely because he happened to be a 
 wealthy man instead of a thief or a murderer. The child is 
 not responsible for the crimes of the parent, and is not 
 rightfully credited with the rewards of the parent's worldly 
 success or distinction. Society has already rejected the 
 idea that the son of a ruler is entitled to the same power, 
 
Q2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 but it has not given up the notion that the son of a wealthy 
 man is in some way entitled to the fortune his father has 
 accumulated. 
 
 Having thus roughly sketched the fallacious ideas that 
 are embodied in the views of an expectant heir, we will 
 postpone a more thorough discussion of the principles 
 they involve, and briefly consider the position and rights 
 of the ancestor who expects to bequeath property at his 
 death. Nearly every man who at first considers the ethics 
 of successions will say : "I believe that I have a moral, 
 as well as a legal, right to dispose of my property exactly 
 as I please at my death. " We shall investigate this ques- 
 tion, and it is to be hoped that every reader will approach 
 the subject with an honest desire to reach the truth and 
 evolve principles of justice and equity ; for on no other 
 basis can peace be maintained and society protected from 
 warring factions. 
 
 In the first place, society does not, even now, recog- 
 nize an unrestricted right in a decedent to transfer his in- 
 dividual possessions, for in some nations and states he 
 may not absolutely disinherit his direct descendants. The 
 principle is slightly recognized in the present, as it has 
 been very distinctly in the past, that the power of mak- 
 ing bequests is not an absolute right that belongs to the 
 individual, but is merely a privilege conferred upon him 
 by society, in order to provide a convenient method of 
 succession. 
 
 If we believe that men should have equal opportunities 
 in the struggle for existence, when they are associated 
 under one government, and if we are prepared to concede 
 to other men what we demand for ourselves, we must 
 deny all right in any man to bequeath anything whatso- 
 ever. For what moral right has any man when he aban- 
 dons the world and resigns by force of stern necessity 
 his interests therein, to interfere with the progress of the 
 
KING MAMMON. 3 
 
 survivors, by transferring those interests to one or a few, 
 when that transfer will immediately and necessarily pro- 
 duce unjust conditions among them by giving to a favored 
 class wealth which they have not produced, and to which 
 they are not entitled ? When I inquire for this moral right, 
 or social reason, for the privilege that has been granted, 
 I demand for humanity justice and equal rights, not an 
 expression of individual desires born of natural love and 
 affection. 
 
 What right, I say, not what desire, has any man to inter- 
 fere in the competition between his children and the chil- 
 dren of other men in the surviving generation by bequeath- 
 ing to his own progeny the vast power of a fortune? 
 The battle for success is not between the dead and the 
 living, but between the living alone ; and if government 
 is to survive, we must continually effect justice between 
 the men who continue to inhabit the earth. 
 
 Even brutalized humanity does not permit a dog-fight 
 under such unfair conditions, yet our boasted civilization, 
 with its supposed triumphs of justice, condemns posterity 
 to a battle for existence in which at the outset some are 
 equipped with fortunes and others hampered with abject 
 poverty. 
 
 Paternal love causes nearly every man to think that as 
 he would like to leave a large fortune to his children if 
 he possessed one, so he ought to be willing to permit 
 another man who actually possesses such wealth to be- 
 queath it as he sees fit. That is a wrong conclusion, be- 
 cause it is based, not upon the principle of fairness or 
 justice, but upon the parental instinct of protection to off- 
 spring which is common to all the mammalia, and is dis- 
 played in equal perfection by the she-wolf when guard- 
 ing her litter. Even granting the idea that the parental 
 principle of affection must be recognized, there still re- 
 mains the fact that the poor man has a natural affection 
 
94 KING MAMMON. 
 
 for his children, and would see them started fairly in the 
 world when he leaves it, without unjust discrimination 
 against them. 
 
 If, however, men would arrive at any solution of social 
 troubles, they must discard the bias of self-love and love 
 for other people, and continually inquire: "What is 
 just?" It will not do to say : "This act is right because 
 I would like to do it, and am willing that other men shall 
 do the same thing." The same false reasoning would 
 sanction theft and murder, and reduce society to anarchy. 
 When the act men like to do is in itself unjust, the result 
 of its continuance is accumulated injustice and social 
 wrongs that eventually transform men into maddened 
 brutes. Society is continuing a wrong by permitting the 
 individual power of making bequests. To realize that 
 wrong, we have only to imagine that our present wealth 
 centralization shall increase, till one man owns the entire 
 wealth of the nation, the others renting or borrowing of 
 him as their necessities compel them to do ; and that 
 he then bequeaths his wealth dominion to successors. 
 Would not such a condition be an absurdity ? Yet, if it 
 is right for a man to bequeath one dollar, it is right for 
 him to bequeath the entire wealth of the nation, provided 
 that he can subject it to his control. 
 
 The only doctrine that can be reasonably maintained is 
 that men are merely life-tenants on earth, and that when 
 they die all their rights cease. The ancestor has no 
 moral or natural right to name his successor, and the heir 
 expectant has no such right to succeed to the fortune, no 
 matter what be the existing relationship, unless he can 
 show the right of a producer. Succession to wealth is 
 purely a matter for society to determine in accordance 
 with justice to all its members. 
 
KING MAMMON. 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MENTAL AND MORAL TREADMILLS. 
 
 " The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a 
 certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infini- 
 tude of silence. The phenomena of matter and force lie within his intel- 
 lectual range, and as far as they reach, we will at all hazards push our 
 inquiries. But behind, and above, and around all, the real mystery of 
 this ttniverse lies unsolved. . . . Fashion this mystery as you will . . . 
 but be careful that your conception of it be not an unworthy one. Invest 
 that conception with your highest and holiest thought, but be careful of 
 pretending to know more about it than is given to man to know" 
 
 JOHN TYNDALL. 
 
 THE philosophical reader, especially if he be conten- 
 tious, will object to the expression, natural rights, which 
 occurs frequently in some portions of this work. The 
 French writers of the Revolution, basing their theories on 
 an imperfect knowledge of history, assumed that the so- 
 cial institutions of that era had degenerated from a sup- 
 posed State of Nature in which they were pure and just. 
 Man's "natural rights" were those which he possessed 
 in this fictitious condition, and of which, it was presumed, 
 he had been deprived by tyranny. This usage of the 
 phrase has been justly ridiculed, and the theory of man's 
 previously happy condition in a State of Nature long 
 since abandoned, so a few words explanatory of the 
 phrase as here used are necessary. 
 
 The words "natural rights" do not form a very ac- 
 curate expression of thought, for they may indicate some 
 imaginary rights conferred by nature upon man, or they 
 may mean certain privileges that he ought to possess, 
 but which he does or does not possess according to the 
 tenor of the governmental and social regulations by which 
 
96 KING MAMMON. 
 
 he is controlled. As to the first meaning, I agree with 
 the objectors to the theory of natural rights in failing to 
 discover any morality in the laws of Dame Nature, or any 
 disposition on her part to discriminate between what hu- 
 man beings term right and wrong, for "the rain falleth 
 upon the just and upon the unjust," and the light of 
 heaven shines to assist the demons of evil as clearly and 
 steadily as to aid the purer spirits of mercy and benevo- 
 lency. In the struggle of life, among all her creatures, 
 Nature invariably crowns, the strongest in its entire adap- 
 tation to environment, without the least regard for what 
 men call mercy or justice. In this sense of assumed 
 privileges conferred by nature on human existence, the 
 phrase " natural rights" has no significance, for nature 
 never conferred aught but a battle to the death for mere 
 existence upon any living thing. The real significance 
 of the expression as it is here used is in contradistinction 
 to artificial rights, or legal rights, or acquired rights ; 
 that is, natural rights are those which the law may or may 
 not recognize, but which the individual ought to possess 
 were his condition made to conform to the ideas of 
 justice ordinarily accepted and enforced by his fellow- 
 men. Thus, in relation to the female sex, civilized hu- 
 manity is beginning to admit that while women have in 
 comparatively few places acquired social and political 
 rights equal to those legal rights possessed by men, yet 
 they really have a natural right to a free existence 
 and to an unrestricted opportunity to labor as seems best 
 to them, to acquire and hold separate property, and to 
 exercise the privilege of the ballot. In saying this, men 
 do not ordinarily believe or contend that nature has con- 
 ferred upon either men or women the right to vote, but 
 that the ideas of justice acknowledged by the community, 
 or its moral sense expressed in other things, urges that 
 woman ought to exercise a privilege that is now denied 
 
KING MAMMON. 97 
 
 to her by the laws. The terms moral right or ethical 
 right are apparently preferable to the expression that has 
 been used so frequently, but as the phrase selected is im- 
 material when its meaning is understood, the good old 
 formula of natural rights will be retained in these pages. 
 
 As the nature of our ideas of right and wrong, of justice 
 and injustice, is involved in subsequent investigations, a 
 brief consideration of the origin of ethical perceptions may 
 not be inappropriate here. An examination into the 
 nature of what people name morality will soon convince 
 the untrammeled thinker that, when the absolute and un- 
 deviating dicta of religious doctrines accepted %s the fiat 
 of a Deity are discarded, the foundations of morality, 
 including what we term justice, are built upon shifting 
 sands, and that the ethical edifice which it pleases human 
 beings to construct thereon is at any moment liable to be 
 ingloriously tumbled into fragments. Having only one 
 brief lifetime at my disposal, I do not intend to become 
 involved in the mystical haze and speculative uncertain- 
 ties that surround all philosophical investigations into 
 the ultimate nature of right and wrong. The man who 
 is not prepared to enter into centuries of unprofitable dis- 
 cussion should admit that, whenever we attempt to pro- 
 vide or discover some unvarying or absolute standard 
 by which humanity can for all time determine that one 
 thing is right and another thing wrong, that one act is 
 just and another unjust, the only possible result will be 
 mental confusion and the conclusion that the exact deter- 
 mination of human duty is a problem akin to the deter- 
 mination of the circumference of a circle when its diameter 
 is known. Men endlessly approximate to the solution of 
 each problem, but will the exact truth ever be known in 
 either case ? 
 
 When, therefore, some thinkers attempt to lay down 
 absolutely fixed principles defining right and wrong, thus 
 7 
 
98 KING MAMMON. 
 
 striving to evolve ideas that will perpetually guide strug- 
 gling humanity in the broad way of justice ; and when 
 other cynical commentators on these doctrines ridicule 
 their lofty pretensions, and by comparisons between the 
 struggles of men and the struggles of brutes for existence, 
 indicate that no right but the right of strength really exists, 
 and that, however we may disguise the actual condition 
 of humanity by sentimental rhetoric, natural rights are a 
 myth, both classes seemingly ignore the law of progress 
 by which all human ideas and institutions are continually 
 changed. 
 
 It is trutf that the human intellect becomes confused in 
 attempting an exact determination of the principles of 
 morality, and that no absurdity is greater than the at- 
 tempt of the moralist who would formulate unchangeable 
 doctrines for the guidance of the human race ; but it is 
 also true that new ideas of morality are continually being 
 developed by progressive humanity, and former notions 
 of right and wrong changed to suit the more modern con- 
 ceptions of duty. No matter whether one group of phil- 
 osophers endeavor to analyze these ideas and to deter- 
 mine them by rigid boundaries, or whether another sect 
 ridicule such attempts under the assumption that right 
 and wrong can never be discriminated, the people move 
 continually onward, without regard to philosophical 
 doctrines or even plain consistency, changing their ideas 
 of justice from year to year, and evolving new rights and 
 wrongs every century. 
 
 It is quite true that Nature cares not a straw whether 
 men eat microbes, whether microbes eat men, or whether 
 men eat men. Man in his savage state is almost equally 
 indifferent, except that he universally objects to being 
 eaten. His moral sense does not revolt at the idea of 
 killing and eating his fellow-creatures. Cannibalism is 
 to him a duty, and the moral satisfaction which some of 
 
KING MAMMON. 99 
 
 our ancestors may have felt in devouring their neighbors 
 was probably quite as strong an emotion as the pleasure 
 that some of us experience in the present age by reliev- 
 ing the necessities of the deserving poor. What seem to 
 modern humanity the crimes and brutalities of the past 
 were then duties. When the father destroyed his own 
 child, the act was not considered wrong, for the accepted 
 theory at that time made the child its father's property, 
 without any individual rights, and he might, if he saw fit, 
 destroy it as remorselessly as he would burn the stick of 
 wood he had procured for his fire. Cannibalism and in- 
 fanticide were transferred from the schedule of rights to 
 the black list of wrongs, but ethical ideas still held the 
 woman, whether wife or daughter, as a slave a thing to 
 be bought and sold, treated as a beast of burden, and 
 beaten like a horse or a dog for any rebellious spirit. 
 
 Those savage ideas have been modified by the lapse 
 of time, but at least one-half of the men now living in 
 the United States still cannot think that woman is a hu- 
 man creature, entitled to the privilege of directing her 
 own efforts as absolutely unrestricted as those of a man 
 under like circumstances. 
 
 It is only a few years since the ideas of educating 
 women, of permitting them to transact business in their 
 own names and rights free from slavery to the husband, 
 and of entering trades and professions hitherto monopo- 
 lized by men were ridiculed and denounced. 
 
 It is evident that all these men of the past and present, 
 regarding woman either as an absolute slave, or merely 
 as a being not entitled to the same political and social 
 privileges that a man exercises, have usually been per- 
 fectly sincere in their convictions. Men held women as 
 slaves in the past, and they object to any further privi- 
 leges being extended to the female sex in the present 
 because their ideas of right and wrong, of justice and in- 
 
IOO KING MAMMON. 
 
 justice, develop slowly, their political and social institu- 
 tions at any period of race history being no better than 
 the men themselves, and not because they wilfully vio- 
 late their moral sentiments from a consciously selfish 
 motive. During the existence of female slavery in the 
 past, even the women did not consider their condition 
 unjust, and they were quite as complacent when bought 
 and sold for property as they have been since that time. 
 The same conservative satisfaction with existing condi- 
 tions is noticeable among many women in the later 
 movements toward a complete emancipation of the sex. 
 The last two centuries have evolved the general belief 
 that slavery is wrong. In ancient history every person 
 is either a master or a slave, and man has no conception 
 of equal rights. At this day among the rising genera- 
 tion a conception of the mere possibility of slavery is 
 formed with difficulty, so great has been the change in 
 human thought and feeling. A little girl reading " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin" within the last decade said : " Mamma, is 
 it true that the negroes were slaves, or is this book only 
 a story ?'*' It is difficult even for people of mature under- 
 standing, living only thirty years since the War of the 
 Rebellion terminated, to comprehend the mental condi- 
 tion of able thinkers like John C. Calhoun, Jefferson 
 Davis, and Alexander H. Stephens, when they gravely 
 maintained that slavery was a divine institution, or to un- 
 derstand how the Declaration of Independence could have 
 been signed one hundred years ago without a blush of 
 shame by men who owned slaves, and who afterwards 
 adopted a section of the Constitution which placed side 
 by side in the two great documents of our country's early 
 history these two inconsistent statements : 
 
 "We hold these truths to be self-evident : that all men 
 are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Crea- 
 
V 
 
 KING MAMMON. IOI 
 
 tor with certain unalienable rights ^tjha^arnong; th 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happvness. "' 
 
 these are 
 
 " No person held to service' or labqn; *ir, O^'Q sjatfe^' -un- 
 der the laws thereof, escaping- ifrtosanfetrie?,' shall', 'iw' con- 
 sequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged 
 from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on 
 claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be 
 due." 
 
 The sentence from the Declaration means liberty for 
 white men, and the section of the Constitution describes 
 the kind of liberty which the whites proposed to bestow 
 upon the blacks. When the patriots who founded the 
 government of the United States could thus demand liberty 
 for themselves and inflict slavery upon the negro, whom 
 they apparently regarded as a mere animal and not as a 
 man, it is not to be wondered that the progressive thinker 
 should not greatly reverence the deeds and institutions 
 of his ancestors, and should, regard with contempt the 
 idolatrous worship of the conservative for established in- 
 stitutions and precedents. The cold-blooded, unsympa- 
 thetic habit of regarding the negro as property as# thing 
 like a dog or a horse, incapable of human rights is so 
 repugnant to our sense of justice in its recent develop- 
 ment, that judicial decisions embodying the status of the 
 slaves, although regarded at that time as a perfectly equi- 
 table exposition of just laws, impress us now with a feel- 
 ing of disgust for the tyranny of such opinions and of con- 
 tempt for that conception of human duty. The people of 
 to-day will not admire the kind of justice enunciated in the 
 following decisions ' from various courts on human rights 
 involved in slavery, during its history in this country. 
 
 " A contract to seta slave free on a certain day, on 
 certain conditions, whether made with the vendor on sale 
 and purchase of the slave, or with the slave himself, is 
 
 1 Selected from M'Clellan's " Republicanism in America." 
 
IO2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 an executory contract' for 1 emancipation, and a specific 
 performance of it cannot be enforced by the slave in a 
 comi of law or 8qvilty./'- : i 3 Arkansas, p. 399. 
 
 "A conveyance of lauu' and slaves in trust to allow the 
 slaves to occupy the land and receive the profits thereof, 
 and of their labor, is void." 18 Georgia, p. 722. 
 
 "A bequest of freedom to a slave is void, in consequence 
 of his incapacity to take under the will." 21 Alabama, 
 P. 237- 
 
 "A bequest of slaves, with a provision by which they 
 may be supported without working like other slaves, is a 
 violation of the policy of the State and void." 3 James' 
 Equity, North Carolina, p. 141. 
 
 "Slaves in Virginia were real estate in 1777, and de- 
 scended to the eldest son." i Munroe, Kentucky, p. 25. 
 
 A frank consideration of these historical facts should 
 teach us that if there exists any such thing as absolute 
 right or absolute justice in human conduct, the nature of 
 that morality is beyond our comprehension and its inves- 
 tigation similar to our imperfect conceptions of matter, 
 space, and duration. Indeed, we may select any idea or 
 any fact in the universe of thought or human knowledge 
 from which as a starting-point to project our minds in 
 the search for what we call truth, and, sooner or later, 
 we reach the incomprehensible. In space we reach the 
 idea of something which perpetually recedes when we 
 attempt to establish a limit, and in which our minds are 
 lost in the vain attempt to penetrate or comprehend 
 fathomless abysses, from which we return to our rela- 
 tively minute surroundings with a queer, puzzled sense 
 of our own incapability and weakness. Considering 
 matter, we evolve the idea of divisibility and pursue it 
 downward to what we name atoms ; yet we fail to really 
 understand how anything which is at first theoretically sus- 
 ceptible of infinite division becomes in the end either the- 
 oretically or actually indivisible. Leaving the infinitely 
 small and attempting the infinitely great, we consider an 
 
KING MAMMON. 103 
 
 illimitable space that is not comprehensible to our under- 
 standing, and suppose it to be filled with an equally illimi- 
 table body of ether that is not perceptible by our senses, 
 and which is not really within our comprehension more 
 than light to an entirely isolated race of men born blind, or 
 the odor of musk to a vegetable, or sound to a man without 
 hearing and who is without associates to describe the phe- 
 nomenon. 
 
 Abandoning the mysteries of matter for the mysteries 
 of time, we project our mkids far into the dim re- 
 cesses of the past and again into the misty vistas of the 
 future, failing, on the one hand, to conceive anything 
 but an eternity, and, on the other, to really grasp 
 the idea of an existence or duration which has neither 
 beginning nor end. We grant to ourselves, in the 
 first place, the mental ability to follow the stream of 
 time or cross the ocean of space in any direction and to 
 any point or date, however greatly it may be removed 
 from us, yet when our minds reach the station assigned, 
 there is always something beyond ; and, at the end of our 
 ineffectual investigations, the really earnest searcher for 
 truth is compelled to admit that he cannot be sure, with 
 the limits set to his mental conceptions, whether the uni- 
 verse, as he beholds it, is an illusion and " the baseless 
 fabric of a vision," or whether the world about us has a 
 real existence outside of our own minds, and the portion 
 which we see and understand is only a minute fragment 
 of the greater world which would be revealed to us if 
 our sense perceptions and our understanding were de- 
 veloped so as to make known to us the numberless hidden 
 mysteries that surround our existence. The universe of 
 the earth-worm or that of the blind fish of the Mam- 
 moth Cave, perceived by the limited sense development 
 of these creatures, is plainly not the universe conceived 
 by human beings. The world revealed to civilized man 
 
104 KING MAMMON. 
 
 is not exactly the world perceived by his savage an- 
 cestors. What, then, would the universe become if hu- 
 man beings possessed thirty senses instead of five, or 
 even if they possessed a sixth sense ; and, on the other 
 hand, what would it become to a man deprived of his 
 five senses without destroying his life ? The great prob- 
 lem of the real nature of the universe, and the questions, 
 what is man? whence does he come? whither does he go? 
 are not easily answered. The reverence and humility 
 with which a really great rr>an approaches such subjects 
 are grandly displayed in the words of the distinguished 
 scientist prefixed to this chapter. It is often genuine 
 wisdom to understand when to acknowledge that we do 
 not know. 
 
 Let not weak humanity, therefore, become foolishly 
 dogmatic in the declaration of eternal verities, for we 
 know not. There may be neither matter nor motion 
 except in our own illusions, and there may be a thousand 
 realities surrounding us which we, poor earth-worms of 
 a larger growth, are unable to perceive or comprehend. 
 Thus it is in our conceptions of justice. 
 
 Of absolute or ultimate justice between men we can 
 form no real conception, for our minds are limited by 
 the slow development and progress of the race, as the 
 sense-perception of an animal is limited by its position 
 in the scale of existence from the infusoria to man. To 
 some of our ancestors cannibalism was right ; to others, 
 farther advanced, cannibalism was wrong, but slavery 
 and infanticide were right ; to men existing in the final 
 decade of the nineteenth century all these former customs 
 of the human race appear wrong. May it not be true 
 that some of the customs which appear entirely just to 
 men of the present will seem vicious, cruel, and barbar- 
 ous to their descendants ? 
 
 The candid thinker will be forced to admit, after a care- 
 
KING MAMMON. IO5 
 
 ful consideration of history, that in the past men have 
 never had more than a dim comprehension of justice, which 
 has brightened as they approached the present, but which 
 is, almost certainly, still enveloped in the mists that sur- 
 round an imperfect understanding in its development from 
 a condition akin to the mind of a brute to a finality which 
 may approach to the perfection of a God. The justice of 
 to-day is not the justice of yesterday, and it will not be 
 the justice of to-morrow. I Justice is a sentiment which 
 depends upon the progress of the race ; and, as any 
 human being will regard it from the moral condition of 
 his own development, no rules can be deduced from 
 investigations into ethical principles that can ever be of 
 value as a guide to humanity, for our ideas of right and 
 wrong will change as we progress, and our habits and 
 customs, our other social institutions, our governments 
 and our religions will change with them. The justice of 
 the past is made up of exploded doctrines and abandoned 
 ideas. The justice of the future is a mystical heaven that 
 may be seen dimly in visions by the prophets of to-day ; 
 but this heaven on earth is no more comprehensible to the 
 masses than the docility of the modern carriage-horse was 
 perceptible to his three-toed prehistoric ancestor. The 
 justice of the present is merely that average condition 
 of the human intellect to which men have been brought 
 in their onward progress, and by which they judge their 
 
 1 Few writers on social questions display as much conception of the 
 real power of moral progress as Winkelblech " Carl Mario " one of 
 the fairest and most comprehensive thinkers upon modern conditions. 
 Benjamin Kidd in " Social Evolution " attributes to religion the power 
 that effects social transformations. In the ordinary definitions of 
 religion and morality, however, the former is merely the effect of the 
 latter, and it changes with the developing intellect and morality of the 
 people. The gods of every race of human beings are creatures and not 
 creators. Somewhere in his great work Buckle wrote, " In what maybe 
 called the innate and original morals of mankind, there is, so far as we 
 are aware, no progress." Morality is difficult to define ; but if human 
 beings of the present are more moral than gorillas or tigers, Buckle's 
 observation is not true. 
 
106 KING MAMMON. 
 
 social relations and pronounce them either good or 
 bad. 
 
 Men, if we may suppose that the progress of humantiy 
 tends upward, have inflicted and defended wrongs in the 
 past, because they did not know those wrongs existed ; for 
 to their deficient intelligence and moral sentiment, wrong 
 was right. Periodically in the lives of nations a time 
 comes when the minds of the people cease to admit that 
 some principle is right, and out of this doubt grows the 
 conviction that it is a wrong. 
 
 New ideas are born, and, like all births, the inception 
 of new life brings pain. Spasms marked the transition in 
 France when the divine right of king and nobles became, 
 in the minds of the people, a diabolical wrong. 
 
 Convulsions in the United States thirty years ago almost 
 destroyed the nation, when its people ceased to think that 
 slavery was right for the black man and that only whites 
 were justly entitled to freedom. Discontent and disturb- 
 ance among the people invariably accompany these 
 changing thoughts and herald the approach of that out- 
 ward transformation in their declarations of justice, 
 denoted by a change of social institutions. 
 
 Year by year, slowly and steadily, the real change goes 
 on in the minds of the people, transforming their ideas of 
 right to a conception of wrong, till a day comes when 
 they feel that the political and social institutions they 
 have accepted from their ancestors and revered as the 
 acme of justice are really the enunciation of injustice. 
 
 Entertaining this opinion of social progress and the 
 nature of justice, I shall avoid all attempts to analyze 
 the moral sentiments or to indicate any conception of the 
 real attributes of political and social justice. Any effort 
 of that kind would inevitably be barren of immediate 
 influence, because it would merely represent the writer's 
 conception of justice, and would be neither, absolute 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 justice nor the average conception of justice entertained 
 by humanity of the present. 
 
 Truth, it is said, lies at the bottom of a well. Absolute 
 justice, therefore, which is merely a portion of the illimit- 
 able, eternal, and unknown truth that forms man's environ- 
 ment, is to be found in the same place, and when curious 
 investigators lean over the well-curb and peer curiously 
 downward to discover the real nature of justice, they see 
 merely their own reflections upon the surface of the water, 
 while absolute justice remains concealed in its depths. 
 The greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century has 
 not really discovered justice in his treatise bearing that 
 name, but the well into which his mental vision was pro- 
 jected has thrown back only the image of Herbert 
 Spencer's mind. 
 
 Such is now the inevitable result of those investigations, 
 and the future seems likely to be equally barren. The 
 slow progress of the race continually brings into our 
 minds new and better ideas of human duty, and a clearer 
 comprehension of the adaptation of earth to our needs ; but 
 of the real mystery the absolute nature of man and his 
 environment, and the absolute justice to which his con- 
 duct should conform we know nothing. The endless 
 discussions of mental and moral philosophy leave us at 
 the end of two thousand years' consideration of these prob- 
 lems in quite as much doubt concerning the verities of 
 man's origin, existence, environment, and destiny as ever 
 vexed the minds of the first heathen philosophers. Re- 
 garded as mental gymnastics, the discussions maybe use- 
 ful ; they bring into every mind kindly toleration for every 
 belief, and they are the natural result of man's longing 
 for universal knowledge ; but as a means of improving his 
 condition or contributing to the real progress of the race, 
 they are barren of result. In the language of Macaulay, 
 we are walking on a treadmill whenever, by the ordinary 
 
IC8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 methods of logic, we inquire "what is the highest good, 
 whether pain be an evil, whether all things be fated, 
 whether we can be certain of anything, and whether we 
 can be certain that we are certain of nothing." We 
 revolve in our minds a thousand times the same inquiry 
 and the same argument, but our investigation eventually 
 terminates with the same uncertainty. 
 
 Whenever man has tried to estimate the infinite by the 
 finite, he has been compelled, sooner or later, to lay down 
 his measuring rule, no matter how great its length in terms 
 of human ability, and to confess at last the impossibility 
 of his undertaking. Therefore, in the ethical discussions 
 contained in this volume, there will be no attempt to 
 formulate undeviating principles for the guidance of hu- 
 manity. There will be no appeals to a mystical and 
 unreal justice of the future, but merely a comparison 
 between the different social institutions of the present, 
 showing wherein some of those we maintain are incon- 
 sistent with that spirit of fairness or justice which we have 
 already applied to others. Social institutions are never 
 changed evenly all along the line, and as our forefathers 
 of the Revolution inconsistently declared that all men 
 should be free and independent, while at the same time 
 they owned slaves, so it will be found that the people of 
 the present day are equally inconsistent in maintaining 
 tyranny in one place while they deny identically the 
 same principle in another. The only appeal will be to 
 that sense of right and duty which men now usually 
 recognize as fit to govern their actions, a feeling which 
 will confer upon every human being ultimately the 
 "natural right "to a more equitable existence than has 
 ever been conferred in the dark history of the past. 
 
 Man's natural rights have their origin in the mind of man 
 himself, and his conception of them will change from 
 century to century ; but the very practical and well estab- 
 
KING MAMMON. IOQ 
 
 lishcd fact remains, in spite of this shifting, changing 
 uncertainty as to the real nature of his rights, that at any 
 period in his career, for those particular privileges which 
 he then considers natural rights, he will fight like a demon 
 and shed the last drop of his heart's blood. Of their 
 origin he may be uncertain, but of their existence he feels 
 quite sure. The determination of these rights, according 
 to ideas commonly accepted in the present advancement, 
 involves a comparison of existing institutions and prin- 
 ciples sanctioned by the approval of civilization, for men 
 often admit in one instance a principle which they deny 
 in another, following the absurd example deduced from 
 the early history of this country. The same inconsistency 
 exists in the declarations and institutions of the present ; 
 and the appeals which the writer expects to make will urge 
 men to apply to all social institutions the doctrines of 
 right and wrong which they have already, in recent years, 
 applied to a portion of them. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DEAD MEN'S TYRANNY. 
 
 " Can the poor man cultivate the earth for himself ? No ; for the right 
 of the first occupant has become the right of property. Can he gather the 
 fruits which the hand of God ripens on the path of man ? No; for like 
 the soil, the fruits have been appropriated. Can he draw water from a 
 spring enclosed in a field ? No ; for the proprietor of the field is the owner 
 of the fountain. Can he, exhausted by fatigue and without a refuge, lie 
 down to sleep upon the pavement of a street ? No ; for there are laws 
 against vagabondage. What, then, can the unhappy man do ? He will say: 
 ' I have hands to work with, I have intelligence, I have youth, I have 
 strength ; take all this and in return give me a morsel of bread? But 
 even here the poor man may be answered, ' I have no work to give you? 
 What is he then to do ? " Louis BLANC. 
 
 EVERY man who bequeaths property is a tyrant on his 
 
 death-bed. 1 The aggregate tyranny of men in their dying 
 
 1 A Virginia colonel, who died about twenty-five years ago, in Amelia 
 
1 10 KING MAMMONc 
 
 moments has caused more misery throughout the world 
 than all the oppressions of its political rulers, for when 
 unavoidable hunger and cold afflict human beings within 
 the sight of unearned comfort and plenty, do not these 
 beings suffer the tortures of the damned ? Yet, while inflict- 
 ing the tyranny of the death-bed over surviving humanity, 
 men have been almost uniformly praised for possessing 
 the highest virtues in thus providing a store of wealth for 
 direct posterity. The edict of the death-bed is uncon- 
 scious tyranny, and sorrow instead of anger must be the 
 feeling which it merits from the demands of progressive 
 justice. Society will outgrow this form of wrong as it has 
 already abandoned the horrors of cannibalism and slavery, 
 but man's innocence of intentional wrong and his imperfect 
 conception of human duty do not lessen the inevitable 
 afflictions that follow his unconsciously evil acts. The 
 slavery of the disinherited to the masters of wealth suc- 
 cession, with all the degradation, among the masters, of 
 idleness, pride, profligacy, cruelty, and corruption, and all 
 the degradation of ignorance, coarseness, brutality, re- 
 sentment, and destructiveness among the slaves, may be 
 observed at the present time in every civilized nation quite 
 as distinctly, in spite of the ameliorating effects of educa- 
 tion and progress toward democratic government, as in 
 the history of negro slavery in the United States. The 
 essential feature of negro slavery on the part of the slave 
 was the inheritance of subjection and the absence of op- 
 portunities ; on the part of the master, it was the inherit- 
 ance of power and privilege, unearned by any efforts of 
 
 county, demanded, under penalty of cutting off from all his possessions, 
 that his widow have him put in an open coffin in a clump of woods near 
 the house, and leave him there for six weeks. Every morning and even- 
 ing of that time she was to come to him and brush his hair and whiskers. 
 Luckily the colonel shuffled off his mortal coil in the middle of a very 
 cold winter, so he "kept." His widow was able to carry out his wishes, 
 therefore, and came into all his property. Current Newspapers. 
 
KING MAMMON. I I I 
 
 his own. If some men had not been born slaves and 
 others born masters, slavery would have extinguished 
 itself. If some men were not born slaves and others 
 born masters under the doctrines of heredity and suc- 
 cession that are still maintained, the world would not 
 be in a ferment of excited thought with impending re- 
 volution, peaceful or bloody, in every civilized nation. 
 In the advanced ranks of humanity, it is now universally 
 denied that the king's son shall be king, independent of 
 his own qualifications, merely because his father held that 
 power. In England and Germany the thrones are already 
 shaking, and it is only the fact that the power of the 
 sovereign has been closely restricted that prevents the 
 immediate transition to democracy. Similarly, in con- 
 sidering the wealth-power of the world, it will soon be 
 denied that the son shall possess wealth because his father 
 did, irrespective of his own ability and efforts. It will 
 also be denied that the son of a poor man, whose poverty 
 may or may not have been due to lack of energy and ability, 
 shall on that account inherit not only the poverty of his 
 ancestor, but the lack of opportunities for his own efforts, 
 and subjection to unmerited power conferred upon those 
 who have succeeded to wealth. It cannot be too fre- 
 quently repeated that the wealth-successions of the present 
 mean aristocracy among a portion of the people ; that 
 aristocracy among a portion means serfdom among the 
 remainder ; and that a society composed of masters and 
 slaves, no matter how that condition be established, can 
 develop only discontent and warfare. A few men can- 
 not own the earth and leave other inhabitants free citizens. 
 The accident of birth is no justification for the claim of 
 property. Our tyranny may be unconscious wrong, but 
 if God holds men responsible for the wrongs that have 
 been inflicted in the past, heaven will not be densely 
 populated by our ancestors. 
 
112 KING MAMMON. 
 
 So far as the ancestor is concerned, his rights, natural, 
 though not legal, terminate at the grave. When he is 
 done with this world, no matter what disposition is made 
 of his property, the result cannot affect him. If he leaves 
 a palace, it may be blown up with dynamite and he loses 
 nothing. If he leaves a ship, it may be sunk or burned 
 and he does not suffer. His wealth may be given to one 
 or given to all, or absolutely vaporized in the form of 
 what is named destruction, and the result affects him not 
 a particle. A dead man has no rights. The ancestor 
 cannot justly control the disposition of his property one 
 instant beyond his own existence, nor rightfully transfer 
 it when he regards his dissolution as immediate and in- 
 evitable. No descendant has any special or exclusive 
 right to the wealth of decedents, beyond a right that may 
 have arisen from his own efforts in producing such wealth, 
 or from the natural claims of helpless infancy, acknowl- 
 edged by the higher types of the brutes as well as by man. 
 In all the history of successions, one or the other of these 
 privileges has been acknowledged by society. The an- 
 cient rule made the descendants natural successors ; the 
 modern laws make the ancestor a dictator beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 Efforts have been made to compromise or balance 
 these conflicting claims, but in all of the laws heretofore 
 enacted, the doctrine has been approved, that if one man 
 can gain possession of any part of the earth and establish 
 a claim to it, equitable or inequitable, among his con- 
 temporaries, the future right of use or occupancy of that 
 particular portion of the earth does not exist anywhere 
 outside of that man or his blood relatives or his legatees. 
 Theoretically, his possession might be the United States 
 of America at a period when he was the sole inhabitant, 
 and his descendants or legatees at the present time could 
 legally own the entire territory in spite of the existence, 
 
KING MAMMON. 113 
 
 needs, and rights of nearly seventy millions of other people 
 inhabiting the same territory with them after the death of 
 the original claimant. Practically, the doctrine of wealth 
 heredity involves the control of large portions of every 
 city in the civilized world by men who never did anything 
 to entitle them to such power, and who owe their position 
 to the accident of birth. Their ancestors happened to 
 secure tracts of land which became valuable by the pro- 
 gress of society and the existence and needs of other men 
 bom after their decease, and the descendants retain pos- 
 session of them as though equitable or inequitable relations 
 of the present exist between the men of the past, dead and 
 mouldering in their graves, and not between the sentient 
 human beings of an actual earth-occupancy. The real 
 question of property-rights is not what any ancestor, dead, 
 dusty, and forgotten, may have done to acquire a claim 
 to any portion of earth, but what the proposed successors 
 of the present owners are doing, or are likely to do, to 
 establish a just control for themselves among their con- 
 temporaries. The origin of all existing land titles is to be 
 found in theft, so far as history reveals, and how many 
 times that form of wealth was stolen, or how many robber- 
 owners existed before history was written, only the mys- 
 terious Spirit of the Universe can determine. The lands 
 of Europe were taken by robber-hordes, and the lands 
 of America were stolen from the Indians, the Indians, 
 themselves, probably, having dispossessed other races 
 existing before them. The origin of titles need not con- 
 cern us; for no title to earthly possessions, whether justly 
 or unjustly acquired, can rightfully extend beyond the 
 existence of its owner or be transmitted to a successor. 
 It matters not whether our ancestors were thieves or 
 honest men ; the earth must be equitably devoted to the 
 uses and objects of existing human beings, and this prin- 
 ciple extends not only to land, but to all other forms of 
 
114 KING MAMMON. 
 
 wealth into which land has been transformed. Whenever 
 we admit that self-effort is the foundation of a just claim 
 to wealth, the doctrine of wealth succession becomes a lie. 
 Believing those doctrines of succession to be not only 
 unjust, but their continuance a danger to society in its 
 present status, the author has selected wealth-heredity 
 as the indefensible point in the present privileges of 
 property, for it can be defended only by assuming that 
 whatever a man owns once he owns forever. The reader 
 will desire to know, however, what principle can be sub- 
 stituted for those now recognized in the distribution of 
 the property of decedents. Exact justice is beyond 
 human laws, but we can, at least, adopt laws not so 
 grossly inconsistent and unfair as the present statutes 
 relating to successions. If the dying man has no right 
 to dictate the use of any part of earth beyond his exist- 
 ence, we should abolish the privilege of bequest. If the 
 descendants, or other relatives, have no right of succession 
 beyond what is developed by their own efforts or assist- 
 ance in producing the wealth abandoned by the dead man, 
 that fact should be taken into consideration by society in 
 determining the distribution. The power of determining 
 the future use of a fortune should rest neither with the 
 dying man nor with his relatives, for society in general 
 is concerned in the result. Neither the tyranny of the 
 dead nor the false claims of the living should be recog- 
 nized. Mere consanguinity should count for nothing. 
 Friends often assist decedents during their lifetime more 
 than distant relatives help them. The succession of in-- 
 dividuals in any way to great bodies of unearned wealth 
 should be prevented by restrictions upon its transmission 
 from one generation to the next under the form of private 
 ownership, and what is essentially the accumulation of 
 public effort should go back to public control at the ex- 
 piration of every lifetime. 
 
KING MAMMON. 115 
 
 Accordingly the privilege of making wills should be 
 abolished, and a maximum limit should be set, first on 
 the aggregate amount of wealth in one estate to which 
 individual heirs might succeed ; second, to the amount of 
 wealth that any one person might inherit from that estate. 
 Within these limits, the decree of a court should make the 
 distribution of inheritable wealth in accordance with the 
 written testimony of the dead man, left in place of a will, 
 and the oral testimony of survivors relating to the merits 
 of any claims in the estate. Practically, the courts of the 
 United States are already approaching this view of suc- 
 cessions, except in limiting the individual succession, for 
 the wills of wealthy decedents, under the pleas of tech- 
 nical invalidity, undue influence, and insanity, are so 
 frequently broken that they have ceased to be really much 
 more than testimony concerning the dead man's ideas of 
 an appropriate distribution of the property. The deci- 
 sions of juries and courts in wealth-successions are now 
 involved in a chaos of inconsistency which will become 
 worse instead of better until new principles are estab- 
 lished. 
 
 All wealth beyond the inheritable limit set by law 
 should escheat to public ownership in this country to 
 the United States government. Every large fortune in 
 the nation, like those accumulated by Gould, Vanderbilt, 
 Rockefeller, or Astor, is made indirectly by minute con- 
 tributions from the life-efforts of every other inhabitant 
 of the country, for without the existence of those people 
 no such fortunes could be possible. It seems just, there- 
 fore, that at the expiration of a Rockefeller's existence, 
 the fortune thus stored by the people and placed under 
 his control, should go back to its real producers, to be 
 used in meeting governmental expenses, rather than 
 descend to individuals who have no real claims upon its 
 possession, and whose luxurious use of wealth breeds all 
 
Il6 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the vices of aristocracy and the envy and ill-will of those 
 not receiving such special favors of wealth obtained with- 
 out effort. 
 
 Owing to the fact that the children of moderately 
 wealthy families usually assist their parents in the pro- 
 duction of the family fortune, the entire obliteration of 
 inheritance would be unjust, for the right of a producer 
 to life-possession should be maintained and protected, no 
 matter where it exists. The evil of our present laws is 
 that they protect the possessions of men who do not pro- 
 duce anything by either mental or physical effort, and 
 extend the control of wealth beyond the just limits of a 
 lifetime. All that the dying man can justly claim is pos- 
 session till his death and the right to testify relative to the 
 assistance he has received in the production of the for- 
 tune. All that any survivor can justly claim as a special 
 right is the wealth that he has produced by his own 
 efforts. It rests with the community, therefore, to deal 
 justly with the distribution and to claim what is not 
 equitably to be placed under the absolute control of spe- 
 cial successors. 
 
 As nearly every man expects to leave some property at 
 his death, it may seem absurd that any writer should 
 gravely ask men to restrict their own privileges by 
 abolishing bequests, but all transformations in society are 
 accomplished by moral changes in the minds and hearts 
 of the people. A hundred things which the people of 
 preceding eras considered right, are denounced as wrongs 
 by the people of the present. Primitive man is an 
 unmitigated tyrant who loses his tyranny as the centuries 
 roll by. He has retained the "tyranny of the sepul- 
 cher " to the present, but even that will disappear, like the 
 privilege of entail, which was only a more conspicuous 
 form of the same tyranny. 
 
 The confusion of thought in the consideration of sue- 
 
KING MAMMON. 117 
 
 cessions, and the contradictory emotions that it evolves, 
 are due to the fact that every man in a continuous line of 
 descent is both ancestor and heir. Standing in the midst 
 of time, he can look backward at the generations that 
 have preceded him, and forward at those to come. He 
 inherits from those before, he bequeaths to those who 
 follow. If he would comprehend his natural rights, his 
 duties, and the rights of other men to the end that justice 
 shall be accomplished, and social reforms be instituted, 
 let him give up forever the idea that he must dictate the 
 disposition of his life-possessions when he departs from 
 earth. Let him view society and form his judgment of 
 its rights and wrongs when, as an adult, he enters the 
 lists in competition, and not when he has completed his 
 race, whether successful or unsuccessful, and is leaving 
 those lists forever. Let him look backward when he com- 
 mences the contest of life to see whether the generation 
 preceding him has permitted him to achieve a fair opportu- 
 nity for success, and let him look forward to his success- 
 ors and inquire whether his own acts will leave to them 
 the justice that he demands for himself. Let him re- 
 member that as a dead man he can retain no further 
 rights in this world, and let him cease his unjust attempts 
 to control the disposition of his property after he is gone 
 by binding his survivors with a will. Let him consider 
 what he would like the world to be when he comes into 
 it, and not what personal favors he would like to bestow 
 as he goes out. We cannot be tyrants during our exist- 
 ence and leave good government and safe and equitable 
 institutions behind us. Every man must choose between 
 the retention of tyranny to gratify his own wishes on his 
 deathbed, at the risk of leaving dangerous social condi- 
 tions surrounding his offspring, and a voluntary relin- 
 quishment of the privilege of making bequests, for the 
 sake of just laws and a stable government. It maybe 
 
IlS KING MAMMON. 
 
 better, especially under the present social conditions, to 
 leave to the children of affluent parents, limited wealth 
 and less dangerous surroundings, for in certain social 
 crises wealth ceases to be a protection and poverty be- 
 comes a shield. The guillotine has touched even the 
 neck of royalty. 
 
 Even if bequests are not entirely abolished, they should 
 nevertheless be limited, and closely limited, too ; for no 
 trifling with wealth by any slight taxation of incomes or 
 inheritance will allay the fever that is already excited in 
 the veins of the people. The taxing of inheritances, com- 
 menced fifty years ago and developed by increasing rates, 
 would have kept down the denunciation of injustice ; but 
 it is too late for merely palliative measures. If no radical 
 reforms be accomplished by legislation, it is to be feared 
 there will be radical reforms without legislation at least 
 without legislation until after the real reforms are effected. 
 Much good can be accomplished by the limitation of 
 bequests, even if the power of designating the special 
 successor is not taken away from the decedent, and a 
 severe limitation, enforced by an approving sentiment 
 from the people, will gradually remove the dangerous 
 aspects of our present centralization. The exact max- 
 imum limit of inheritance is not a matter of prime im- 
 portance, and can easily be established whenever people 
 admit generally that limitation is just. 
 
KING MAMMON. 119 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EARTH FROM A DISTANCE. 
 
 " Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as 
 the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption 
 of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all 
 tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a 
 property in the generations "which are to follow. The parliament or the 
 people of 1688., or any other period, had no more right to dispose of the 
 people of the present day, or to bind or to control them hi any shape what- 
 ever, than the parliament or the people of the present day have to dispose 
 of, bind, or control those who are to live an hundred or a thousand years 
 hence. Every generation is and must be competent to all the purposes 
 which its occasion requires. It is the living and not the dead that are to 
 be accommodated. Wlien man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease 
 with him ; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this 
 world, he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its gov- 
 ernors, or how its government shall be organized or how administered. 
 Those who have quitted the world, and those who are not yet arrived in it, 
 are as remote from each other as the utmost stretch of mortal imagination 
 can conceive; what possible obligation then can exist between them, what 
 rule or principle can be laid down, that two nonentities, the one out of exist- 
 ence, and the other not in, and who never can meet in this world, that the 
 one should control the other to the end of time ? " THOMAS PAINE. 
 
 THE complexity of social phenomena is confusing to 
 those who attempt to trace cause and effect in the multi- 
 plicity of transactions in modern life. Public thought on 
 the relation of money to national welfare is an illustra- 
 tion of this condition. The effect of new machinery in 
 first throwing men out of employment and afterwards 
 increasing the wealth of society and the demand for labor 
 is another problem often confusing in the same way. 
 Too frequently we cannot see the forest for the trees, and 
 we cannot perceive that the surface of quiet water is a 
 curve because we see so little of it at one time. 
 
 When we stand within a few feet of some huge public 
 building, towering hundreds of feet above us, the very 
 
120 KING MAMMON. 
 
 nearness prevents us from obtaining a clear perception 
 of its form and nature, and we must see it from a distance 
 if we would comprehend its general shape. 
 
 So it is with social problems. We must begin with a 
 few men instead of a multitude, and we must place our- 
 selves at a distance from earth, so that we shall not be 
 like the man who is unable to tell what a crowd is doing 
 because he is hemmed in the midst of it. 
 
 Let us imagine, therefore, gentle reader, that you and 
 I are transported far into the blue ether, and released 
 temporarily from all the selfish personal interests, bias, and 
 prejudice that are usually a part of existence on the planet 
 we have left behind us. The world revolves beneath us 
 now, and as an aid in our experiments we are armed with 
 a superhuman power of placing men on earth and remov- 
 ing them as we see fit for the purposes of investigation. 
 
 In the first place, therefore, let us rid the earth of exist- 
 ing humanity, with all its laws and customs, for they are a 
 queer patchwork of right and wrong established and modi- 
 fied little by little as the race progressed in its develop- 
 ment, and what has thus been established cannot be a 
 criterion. 
 
 Death, then, to the present inhabitants of earth, and 
 destruction to all their institutions. Off they go from the 
 face of earth as though a huge sponge had washed the 
 helpless mites into the ocean. 
 
 Now we will populate the earth with new men at our 
 own will and in our own way. Those whom we place 
 upon earth will not be our relatives, nor our friends, 
 nor even our countrymen. They will be men full-grown 
 and prepared to immediately participate in the struggle 
 for existence. For the present we will omit from human 
 nature the helpless period of infancy, and for our con- 
 venience, by the supernatural power with which we have 
 been invested, we will compress the years of man's 
 
KING MAMMON. 121 
 
 natural life into the duration of a few moments. Under 
 such conditions the men whom we place upon the whirl- 
 ing planet will be creatures that can appeal only to our 
 sense of justice and not to our sympathy and self-interest, 
 for, remember, we are creating them and removing them, 
 without being' concerned in their progress in any way, 
 except to give each and all of them fair opportunities in 
 the game of life. 
 
 Earth is, in our imagination, now absolutely free from 
 human beings and from traces of their former occupancy. 
 We place upon the globe a single man, who is, neces- 
 sarily, so far as human rights are concerned, the sole 
 proprietor. His title to the earth, whatever it may be in 
 its real nature, is undisputed. He builds a rude house, we 
 will suppose, and gathers some wild fruit. Now we will 
 give him a companion by placing another man in the 
 same vicinity. Immediately upon doing this, we have 
 made trouble in the world, for both men cannot be ab- 
 solute in the control of earth at the same time, and when- 
 ever their fancied interests conflict, a struggle will ensue. 
 Neither man may have any "natural rights" in the sense 
 of a definite decree of nature, for nature apparently 
 cares but little for morality. Nature is absolutely in- 
 different to human rights or any other kind of rights, 
 and so are men in their earliest development of savage 
 conditions. If our two men contend with one another 
 in a savage state, the stronger will simply dash out 
 the brains of the weaker and become again supreme. 
 But, sooner or later, there comes a time when the units of 
 human life begin to inquire whether they cannot agree 
 upon some rules that will effect a compromise of con- 
 flicting interests and prevent the destruction of continual 
 warfare. Thus government is instituted, and then arise 
 what have been termed natural rights, for some principle 
 of fairness to each of those who agree to the compromise 
 
122 KING MAMMON. 
 
 must be embodied in it, or the individuals who instituted 
 the government will go back to the primary brute condi- 
 tion of perpetual strife and the survival of the fittest in 
 actual warfare. 
 
 What, therefore, are the natural rights, so far as they 
 relate to property, that should be held by each of the men 
 we have created, if governmental principles are to be 
 established to supersede, to a certain extent, the absolute 
 reign of King Might ? Has the first man who appeared 
 upon earth acquired by prior occupancy an unlimited 
 right to the entire planet and all that he finds upon its sur- 
 face, so that he can justly hold that monopoly after the 
 second man appears, or does he justly exercise a mon- 
 opoly only while he is sole occupant, and does the new- 
 comer acquire, by the mere fact of his presence, an 
 equal right with the first man in all the natural advan- 
 tages of earth as a home ? In some respects the inquiry 
 appears trivial, but the answer which society makes to it 
 lies, at the foundation of nearly all the property rights that 
 now exist. It will lead to the question of whether men 
 have or have not justice on their side when they appro- 
 priate the earth absolutely and exclusively for themselves 
 and their direct descendants, merely because they happened 
 to be born first, and hence to occupy earth sooner than 
 other men. Recurring to the condition of our two men 
 who are attempting to establish a basis for fair govern- 
 ment, I am willing that my reader shall judge for him- 
 self their rights and wrongs, but I think he will inevitably 
 conclude that mere priority of occupancy can never es- 
 tablish a just right to the earth or any part of it, for if we 
 concede that the first of our two men has acquired any 
 such right, then the second man becomes his slave ; for 
 he must serve the first before he can have an opportunity 
 for existence. Right based merely upon priority of occu- 
 pancy, then, is a claim that slavery is just. In addition 
 
KING MAMMON. 123 
 
 to this, there is no comparative merit whatever nor human 
 effort involved in being born, so far as the individual thus 
 brought upon earth is concerned, and on that account, he 
 can claim nothing on account of prior occupancy alone. 
 Men do not come into the world because they wish to go 
 there, nor do they strive for that result, but they appear 
 on account of causes which are entirely independent of 
 their own volition and beyond their control. 
 
 No credit and no blame, therefore, attaches to any man 
 because he came into the world sooner or later than his 
 fellow, even if the difference in time amounts to a thou- 
 sand years, and hence there can be no such thing as a 
 just appropriation of any part of earth by priority of 
 occupation by birth, for the element of superiority of 
 knowledge or effort which backs such claims in the com- 
 petition of life is entirely absent. There can be neither 
 competition nor right of appropriation attaching to men 
 in being born, because no power, no volition, no con- 
 trol over the beginning of existence is possessed by them. 
 
 Men have to come into the world whether they wish to 
 do so or not, so they can claim no credit for priority of 
 birth and establish no rights from that fact. So, in the 
 little problem before us, it seems fair that when the second 
 man appears in the world, no matter whether he arrives 
 ten seconds or ten years after the first, he immediately 
 acquires by his mere presence and existence an equal 
 right with the first in all that part of the earth to which 
 the labor of the primeval inhabitant has not been applied. 
 When the first man has worked to gather his berries or to 
 build his hut, he thus acquires a better right to them than 
 that of his companion, but their rights are and must be 
 absolutely equal in all of earth that is unchanged by labor ; 
 for any other supposition would subvert justice by making 
 one the slave of the other. Without labor neither can 
 have any better right than the other to earthly possessions, 
 
124 KING MAMMON. 
 
 and mere occupancy can establish no just claim for either ; 
 but the instant that one of these human beings works 
 upon any definite portion of his surroundings to improve 
 it for his use, that instant he acquires a superior and 
 exclusive right to its possession, which any disinterested 
 observer capable of comprehending self-evident truth, 
 would assist him to maintain and defend. 
 
 Thus these two inhabitants of earth exist, and the 
 natural rights of each can be perceived so easily by a can- 
 did and unprejudiced observer, that they are almost self- 
 evident. When, however, do those rights terminate? 
 There can be but one reply, for such rights relate to man's 
 life on earth alone. Before man's appearance on earth he 
 possessed no rights of any kind in its substance, and he 
 can retain none when he departs. 
 
 Human rights of all kinds perish with their possessor. 
 Granting that each of our two men has constructed a 
 house, is it conceivable that he could justly place one 
 man of a succeeding generation in absolute control of it, 
 or debar another man from occupying it by any con- 
 tinuance of his own right beyond his own lifetime? We 
 will create more men and investigate, but first the earth 
 must be cleared again and a new generation of ten men 
 established. W r hen these arrive upon the planet they find 
 earth, air, and water ready to afford them sustenance, and 
 perhaps they discover a few huts and implements left by 
 their two predecessors. What are the natural rights of 
 the ten men? Are they different because there are ten 
 men instead of two, or because the earth was occupied 
 before they came ? Who now ought to control the land, 
 the air, the water, and the former possessions of earlier 
 inhabitants ? It is self-evident that the conditions are not 
 changed except by an increased population. The ten men 
 have equal rights to use all that nature provides for them 
 and all that is left behind by the former generation, includ- 
 
KING MAMMON. 125 
 
 ing the tools and huts of their two ancestors, because the 
 rights of the primeval inhabitants expired at their death, and 
 the rights of the successors begin equally. The private, or 
 special, or exclusive right of each man, as distinguished 
 from his equal or general right, can begin only when he has 
 produced something by transforming its original condition 
 by the application of his own labor. Exchanges may be 
 made later on, but the primary right is derived from the 
 application of labor. 
 
 Suppose that our ten men by mutual consent agree 
 that each shall take and use a certain definite part of the 
 earth's surface, and shall thereafter seek his subsistence 
 from that portion alone. The arrangement is equitable, 
 and if the ten men are fair samples of existing humanity, 
 it would be the only feasible plan under which they could 
 peaceably exist. Now that the distribution of their ter- 
 ritory is accomplished, however, one of the men dies. 
 
 What are the natural rights of those involved in the 
 occurrence ? Has the dying man a right to select his suc- 
 cessor in the one-tenth interest that has been set over to 
 him by the division, or, if he has built a house, has he any 
 moral or natural right to designate the man who shall 
 occupy and use it after his death? We will permit him 
 to use that power and note the result. If one of our ten 
 men should be very amiable and popular, and live to old 
 age, as good-natured men frequently do, the existence of 
 such a privilege would by successive deaths and succes- 
 sive bequests to this individual lead to the queer result, 
 after eight men had perished, of two men inhabiting the 
 earth under what we assumed to be equal rights, and 
 with equal efforts and ability, yet one of them owning nine- 
 tenths of the world and the other only one-tenth. This 
 result is exactly the kind of demonstration that modern 
 society is making of the supposed equal rights that lie at 
 the foundation of our institutions. 
 
126 KING MAMMON. 
 
 I do not believe that any man of those ten inhabitants, 
 or any of the real inhabitants of earth, possesses a natural 
 right to bequeath, and he cannot be invested with any 
 such privilege without destroying the equal rights of the 
 survivors. No man, when he dies, can even rightfully 
 decree the disposition of the house that he has built ; for 
 if, in expectancy of death, he has the natural right to be- 
 queath it to any person, he has the same right to withhold 
 it from all persons. 
 
 Therefore, if nine of our ten men should become 
 misanthropes and declare at death that no survivor or 
 successor should possess their houses, the sole inhabitant 
 of earth then remaining would eventually find himself 
 surrounded by ten houses, with the privilege of occupying 
 only one, and, if that should accidentally be destroyed, he 
 would be the sole proprietor of earth, and yet homeless 
 in the midst of unoccupied homes. 
 
 In the problem of our ten men, if the dying man has 
 no right to bequeath his possessions, and cannot do so 
 without inflicting injustice, what are the rights of the 
 survivors when he dies ? After the first man's death there 
 remain nine survivors, and there can be no reasonable 
 doubt that each man owns so far as man can own one- 
 ninth of the earth. They are equal heirs to all the pos- 
 sessions of those who leave the world before them. In 
 establishing this elementary consideration of inheritance, 
 I purposely leave out of view all relationship, love, and 
 friendship, because the existence of government cannot be 
 based upon those sentiments. Justice between man 
 and man independent of blood affinity is the only safe 
 rule in modern civilization, and the sole question is : 
 "What is best for men to do in order to maintain equal 
 rights ? " In our own republic, if this inquiry is not made 
 and no solution afforded, men will eventually destroy one 
 another in a physical instead of a mental effort to de- 
 
KING MAMMON. I2/ 
 
 termine their natural rights, quite as ferociously and far 
 more expeditiously than they have ever done in the past. 
 Parental affection, while it is one of the strongest senti- 
 ments of human nature, is yet common to all animals of 
 the higher types, and it is no more fit to be made the 
 basis of property-rights than the sexual passion or the 
 greed of the miser. The distribution of the property of 
 decedents is not a matter of charity and affection, but a 
 question involving justice. For centuries men have shed 
 tears around the deathbed, and those tears have blinded 
 them to the bitter wrongs perpetrated in the name of 
 institutions which they deemed beneficent, if not divine. 
 Whenever justice is sacrificed on the altar of the affections, 
 the world suffers. Inheritance is not a mere matter of 
 respect to the dead nor a deferential execution of the dead 
 man's wishes. If the dying man is blind to justice by his 
 love for his children, the children are also frequently as blind 
 by affection for the parent. The execution of his wishes 
 to the letter is often considered a duty, even where those 
 requests are unreasonable. Two questions bearing upon 
 these relations need consideration. Has a dying man 
 any right to have his desires executed, and have the sur- 
 vivors any right to refuse or to limit those requests ? 
 I say, emphatically, that the earth must ever be controlled 
 by the desires of those who survive in it, and not by the 
 wishes of those who are dead. 
 
 In the case of earth's ten inhabitants, still before us, 
 the dying man possessed no perpetual control over his 
 tenth interest nor in the productions of his labor, but only 
 possessed a right to use them during his lifetime. Having 
 no right to them beyond his life, he could not delegate 
 to any other man powers and rights that he did not 
 possess at the instant of his death. When a human being 
 dies, no other person can justly acquire any claim to the 
 estate, except by the conceded right to existence in help- 
 
128 KING MAMMON. 
 
 less infancy, by the right which enables him to participate 
 in the estate through the previous application of his own 
 labor, or by the equal right that all survivors under the 
 same governmental institutions possess. All disposition 
 of the property held by decedents is the sole province of 
 the survivors ; not of a few survivors, but of all who are - 
 associated under the same government. Thus, in the 
 progress of our ten earthly inhabitants, the dying man 
 abandons all claims, and the just settlement of his estate 
 is to be determined by the nine survivors not by himself. . 
 
 If the labor of any other man forms a part of the wealth 
 left behind, he has a special claim upon the estate to that 
 extent, but under no other circumstances can he have 
 more than an equal right with his associates in the prop- 
 erty of any decedent. 
 
 Whenever any transaction becomes of such a nature 
 that it serves to treat any man's right to property as a 
 perpetuity and to link it absolutely from one generation 
 to the next in defiance of the natural rights affected in 
 that way, it is contrary to the public good and dangerous 
 to the stability of society. 
 
 We will restore our ten men to earth again and after- 
 wards admit another. What are the natural rights of the 
 new-comer ? Because the ten have appeared first, and 
 because they have made a division of earthly advantages 
 among themselves, is this man arriving later to be ex- 
 cluded from every opportunity for existence ? Or, suppose 
 we admit ten men after the first ten have occupied and 
 apportioned the earth. Have the first ten all the natural 
 rights to property, and the others none? 
 
 Only a distorted and diseased mind, dwarfed by pre- 
 judice, can doubt that the rights of all are equal, except 
 where labor has been applied. When any number of 
 men arrive by birth they have equal rights with the ten 
 original inhabitants in all that nature provides for their 
 
KING MAMMON. I2Q 
 
 comfort. Simple and self-evident as this principle appears 
 when presented in this elementary form, it is entirely dis- 
 regarded in the laws of every civilized country in the 
 world at the present time. New men arrive on earth 
 every day, little men, it is true, helpless infants in their 
 mothers' arms, and they are able to secure not even the 
 shadow of equal rights, nor any interest whatever in the 
 natural advantages and opportunities that earth affords. 
 Slavery is their lot, unless some ancestor has left them 
 estates. 
 
 When these little people approach manhood and begin 
 the struggle for existence, they find the land appropriated 
 and held under private ownership. They find all the 
 buildings and tools provided and left behind by the pre- 
 vious inhabitants controlled and monopolized, so that they 
 have literally no interest in earth, nothing to eat, and no 
 place in which to rest, unless they first bargain with the 
 men who have deprived them of their natural birthright. 
 
 Before these new inhabitants can till the soil, they must 
 rent it of another man. In order to obtain tools they 
 must hire them, and both land and tools must usually be 
 secured from people who inherited them, and whose nat- 
 ural right to them is, therefore, no better than that of the 
 disinherited men who must pay for their use. Handi- 
 capped in the race of life in this way, harassed and 
 hindered by injustice, robbed by the necessity of paying 
 land rents and interest for hired money to the favored 
 class who have never earned it, is it wonderful that in 
 every old and densely-populated country of the world, the 
 man who is born in poverty remains poor all his life ? 
 
 Is he likely to secure wealth or even comfort when he 
 is compelled by the tyranny of inheritance to support by 
 his own labor the wealthy idlers who are parasites upon 
 his existence? 
 
 Let us now give to our ten inhabitants an imaginary 
 9 
 
130 KING MAMMON. 
 
 intelligence greater than they have hitherto possessed. 
 Having allotted the earth among themselves in equal 
 shares, and lived a good life, they feel that death is 
 approaching. Each man knows that a new generation 
 will people the earth, and we will suppose that, in 
 some way, it matters not how, he knows the people who 
 are to succeed him, and has a favorite among them. Ac- 
 cordingly, as death approaches, each of the ten gathers 
 into his rude dwelling the wealth he has accumulated, 
 and posts a notice on the door, declaring that all his wild 
 land, all his cultivated land, and all his various labor pro- 
 ducts shall be owned and controlled by one specified 
 individual of the coming generation. Death then claims 
 the ten ancestors, and the successors, numbering one hun- 
 dred men, come upon the scene, prepared to enjoy their 
 equal rights. Will they not be astonished to discover the 
 ten notices posted by their predecessors, whereby ten of 
 their number inherit the entire earth, according to the ex- 
 isting theory of bequests, and the ninety other men are 
 compelled to dance around the edges of the estates thus 
 absolutely bequeathed, in the vain effort to find where 
 equal rights begin and where they terminate ? 
 
 Would you, my reader, under such circumstances, rec- 
 ognize the decree of the ancestors as being just, or would 
 you claim that, as one man among a hundred, you must 
 have an equal opportunity to live and prosper with every 
 other man ? 
 
 "But," the objector will reply, perhaps honestly, per- 
 haps dishonestly, for all kinds of motives, selfish and 
 unselfish, will influence men when the privilege of be- 
 queathing property is attacked, "all this kind of illustra- 
 tion and reasoning is sheer nonsense, for men do not 
 come into the world in this way by twos, and tens, and 
 hundreds. " 
 
 Very true ; generations do not live and die as absolutely 
 
KING MAMMON. 131 
 
 separate and distinct entities. Men are born and men die 
 every day, and the generations are to a certain extent 
 intermingled, but these facts make no real difference in 
 the nature of the wrong, and merely tend to obscure it, 
 so that men do not at first perceive its real extent and 
 significance. The essential fact remains, notwithstanding 
 the intermingling of generations, that at a period in the 
 progress of society one hundred years later than any 
 date that may be selected for observation an entirely new 
 population inhabits the earth, or any country that may be 
 chosen as an example. Some of these new people have, 
 in the meantime, inherited the most desirable portions of 
 whatever division of earth has been selected for investiga- 
 tion, and these heirs retain possession and absolute con- 
 trol of their wealth and of the natural opportunities to 
 acquire wealth under the absurdly unjust principle of 
 bequests, which enable them by the tyrannical decrees 
 of their forefathers to domineer in idle luxury over those 
 unfortunates who have inherited nothing either in wealth 
 or opportunities from preceding generations. By the 
 gradual and indefinite succession of generations in this 
 way and the unjust method of transmitting property rights 
 from ancestor to heirs, the aristocracy and the serfdom 
 that have always existed in every country after the lapse 
 of a few centuries of stable government, and which are 
 already beginning to develop in the United States from 
 the same causes, are inevitably evolved. 
 
 The only differences between our supposed condition 
 of men on earth and their real condition are : 
 
 First That the actual number of men is much greater 
 than the supposed number, and they are divided into 
 nations instead of uniting in the occupancy of the entire 
 earth. These facts do not affect any deductions we make 
 from the inspection of our ten inhabitants, for just prin- 
 ciples established among ten people will remain just 
 
132 KING MAMMON. 
 
 principles when applied to ten millions, for mere numbers 
 cannot change right to wrong. The division of earth into 
 countries need not produce any confusion of ideas, for, so 
 far as government is concerned, each country is a little 
 earth for which separate and distinct laws can be made. 
 
 Second That consanguinity exists in the real world 
 between men of the same generation and between men 
 of different generations. In the world that we populated 
 and depopulated by an imaginary supernatural power, 
 our human beings were not related, but succeeded one 
 another spontaneously, or as we directed their existence. 
 In the real world the development of new existence is 
 quite differently arranged ; but is there any real variation 
 so far as the principles of justice are concerned? Those 
 principles of right and wrong between man and man on 
 which the stability of society must eventually depend are 
 not affected by mere relationship. Right is right and 
 wrong is wrong between men, whether they be father and 
 son, or brothers, or merely strangers. 
 
 Property rights cannot be justly based upon consan- 
 guinity, and blood connection alone confers no merit 
 upon a claimant ; for, so far as his own efforts are con- 
 cerned, consanguinity is purely an accident The father 
 may be prudent, far-seeing, energetic, and abstemious, but 
 these wealth-producing attributes do not entitle the son to 
 inherit his wealth, for each man ought to be the architect 
 of his own fortune. No matter how wealthy the father 
 may be, the only rights the son can justly claim, except on 
 account of helplessness, are the equal right as one of the 
 community and the special right that arises from the appli- 
 cation of his own labor. To give any man wealth merely 
 because his father happened to be wealthy is neither more 
 wise nor more just than to hang another son because his 
 paternal ancestor was a murderer, or to imprison him 
 because the latter was a thief. 
 
KING MAMMON. 133 
 
 Property rights cannot be justly conveyed by the trans- 
 mission of blood. The real reason why sons often have 
 justly a special interest and right in their fathers' estates 
 is not from the mere fact that they are sons and of the 
 same blood, but because in family association they assisted 
 in the production of the wealth which remains in their 
 fathers' possession. Their right, therefore, is not different 
 in its real nature from that possessed by any other person 
 who has assisted in the production of the same wealth, no 
 matter whether relationship exists or not. Children usually 
 imagine that consanguinity confers upon them some special 
 right to the estates of their parents, but the real rights 
 which they possess come to them only through their own 
 efforts and production. Even the most thoughtless ob- 
 server cannot fail to note that the position of the child 
 who abandons home at the age of ten years is, so far as 
 rights to the property of the parents are concerned, quite 
 different from that of the son or the daughter who faithfully 
 assists them in the development of home wealth ; and a 
 little careful reflection will develop the truth that it is 
 invariably personal effort and not consanguinity that 
 establishes any just special claim to the property held by 
 our ancestors. 
 
 Third That the results of personal effort by members 
 of one generation are frequently mingled with the results of 
 like effort by men of a preceding or succeeding generation, 
 and that society imposes on the individuals of one genera- 
 tion the care and sustenance of certain individuals of the 
 next, and decrees, not quite successfully, that members 
 of the expiring generation during their waning hours shall 
 be protected by their direct descendants. Thus we have 
 the institution of the family and its special co-operation 
 or partnership between ancestors and descendants. The 
 helplessness of infancy and the helplessness of old age 
 constitute the onlv real difference between the world of 
 
134 KING MAMMON. 
 
 our ten men and the world as it exists, so far as property 
 rights are concerned. Men do not come upon the earth 
 twenty-one years of age, strong and active, and they do 
 not usually disappear in the same physical condition. 
 There is the appealing weakness of infancy, the second 
 childhood of senility, and the mutual loving protection 
 that usually exists within the family circle between parents 
 and children, which in its perfect development is one of 
 the noblest sentiments of human nature. The institution 
 of the family is really a sort of partnership in property 
 existing between men of successive generations, in which 
 blood connection is usually involved, but in which it is 
 not an essential feature, for in many cases, by formal and 
 informal adoption, the partnership is effected independently 
 of consanguinity. Were it not for this partnership existing 
 between men of different generations, by which ancestors 
 assist descendants during infancy, and descendants pro- 
 tect ancestors in old age, and by which both frequently 
 cooperate in producing wealth, there could be no serious 
 denial of the equity expressed by an equal distribution 
 of the wealth of all decedents among all national survivors, 
 supposing that to be practicable ; for, under such circum- 
 stances, no man would have a better right than another 
 to any estate left behind by the man who disappeared from 
 earth. But, owing to the fact that the property rights of 
 one generation are mingled with those of the next, there 
 never can be more than an approach to exact justice in the 
 distribution of inheritance, for the state will, necessarily, 
 have to settle conflicting claims. The rights of the people 
 in general to the wealth acquired and possessed solely by 
 the dead man during his lifetime, will have to be distin- 
 guished and separated from those claims to wealth produced 
 by the living in which special rights exist ; and the division 
 of the property should be based upon these principles. 
 The existence of these family relations and the com- 
 
KING MAMMON. 135 
 
 munity of family effort complicate the solution of the 
 problem of inheritance, but they in no way affect the truth 
 of the propositions that the ancestor has absolutely no 
 right to bequeath his wealth, and the descendant no right 
 to specially claim what he has not acquired or produced 
 by his own effort. The same conditions are involved in 
 actual life that present themselves in the simple exist- 
 ence of our supposed world, except that the people must 
 distinguish and separate their general or equal rights in 
 the wealth of ancestors from the special partnership rights 
 involved in the institution of the family. 
 
 With these principles in view, approximate if not exact 
 justice can be accomplished ; and as human decrees are 
 never exactly just, a slight variation one way or the other 
 will not distress society. Whenever the minds of people 
 settle firmly on the idea that men shall not reap unless 
 they sow ; that a knight must win his spurs before he 
 wears them ; that no man shall possess and control wealth 
 unless he has acquired it by his own mental or physical 
 labor, then, and not till then, will the dangerous features 
 of inheritance be removed, and society rest upon safer 
 principles of property rights than those which now en- 
 courage the development of the destructive bomb and 
 torch, insurrection, rebellion, and the annihilation of exist- 
 ing government. If our imaginary view of an earth pop- 
 ulated under different conditions from those surrounding 
 us shall contribute in even a remote degree to the establish- 
 ment of truth and justice, our journey to the clouds, from 
 which we must now return, will not have been time 
 wasted. 
 
136 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 SIX FEET OF EARTH FOR A GRAVE. 
 
 " To drop a man in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and tell him he 
 is at liberty to walk ashore, -would not be more bitter irony than to place a 
 man "where all the land is appropriated as the property of other people and- 
 to tell him that he is a free man, at liberty to work for himself and to en- 
 ioy his own earnings" HENRY GEORGE. 
 
 SUPPOSE, my reader, that in a little earth inhabited by 
 a thousand people, the entire land surface, amounting to 
 one hundred square miles, has been divided into four hun- 
 dred farms of one hundred and sixty acres each, and is 
 owned absolutely by four hundred persons, while the six 
 hundred people comprising the remainder of the popula- 
 tion are landless. Suppose that you are born into such a 
 world, without any traditional golden spoon to bear you 
 company in that interesting portion of your existence, 
 and that when you arrive at years of discrimination, if 
 not of discretion, you find the land surface of the little 
 earth entirely monopolized by those who happened to get 
 there first by the same method that you entered the world. 
 Do you think that your condition and future prospects 
 under the shadow of that social land-trust or combination 
 would be particularly enviable, or that you could be very 
 proud of your rights as a citizen or inhabitant of that 
 imaginary earth ? 
 
 Suppose that the landowners should conclude that all 
 the other people ought to be regarded as trespassers, and 
 having erected barbed wire fences around their property 
 they should politely request you and your landless asso- 
 ciates to step outside the boundaries of their estates, do 
 
KING MAMMON. 137 
 
 you really have any very clear idea where you would take 
 up your future residence under such circumstances ? 
 
 Your supposed condition brings to mind that of some 
 tramps in a western city during the winter of 1894. 
 
 Heavy storms had driven the impecunious classes into 
 the city, and some of them being vicious they were con- 
 sidered a dangerous nuisance, so the mayor recommended 
 in the following language that the " saloons be closed at 
 midnight, when their patrons will thus be turned into the 
 streets, and if they have homes they will go home ; if they 
 have no homes, the police will arrest them and drive 
 them out of the city." 
 
 It does not seem quite right to drive a man from place 
 to place with policemen's clubs, simply because he has no 
 home ; and it is probable that my well-fed and comfortable 
 reader, placed under these real circumstances, or under 
 the supposed circumstances that have been described, 
 would complain of injustice, and would, doubtless, incite 
 some kind of a rebellion among the landless six hundred 
 and against the four hundred monopolists. Rebellion in 
 real life on the real earth always arises sooner or later out 
 of such a condition of land monopoly, which, as will be 
 proved hereafter, is not any peculiar monopolization, but 
 only one form of the universal wealth monopoly that is 
 the bane of civilization. It may be predicted, with little 
 doubt in the mind of a man conversant with social insti- 
 tutions, that, unless the evil tendency in that direction is 
 corrected in the United States, it will eventually produce 
 a rebellion as a perfectly natural fruition. On this account, 
 it may be worth while for every citizen to pause for a few 
 moments in his mad scramble for wealth and devote a 
 little thought to ascertaining whether any man has a nat- 
 ural right of access to any greater quantity of land than 
 society is supposed to embody in the universal heritage 
 of "six feet of earth for a grave," even this landed estate 
 
138 KING MAMMON. 
 
 being materially lessened in some instances by burying 
 men in trenches. 
 
 The nature of land tenures, land being the most promi- 
 nent and persistent form that wealth can assume, is at the 
 bottom of nearly all the burning social problems that are 
 being discussed, and the question may as well come di- 
 rectly home to every man in this form : 
 
 "Does any man naturally and justly own land to which 
 he has acquired a legal title in any way, his ownership 
 being a perpetuity either in his hands or in the hands 
 of successors to whom he transfers his rights, or is his 
 land tenure merely a lease from the community, who are 
 the real owners at any given instant, or from all humanity 
 of the past, present, and future, who are the owners in a 
 more general sense ? " 
 
 That is the question for every man to answer before he 
 can have any basis established from which to reach final 
 conclusions in property rights. Every man must decide 
 in his own mind this question before he can either accept 
 the theory that our deeds justly as well as legally convey 
 land to any man "his heirs and assigns forever." Every 
 man will, doubtless, understand that land is now held 
 under private ownership in every civilized country ; but 
 the question is not what is custom or law, but whether 
 the practice of treating land as private property is just or 
 unjust, and whether human misery from tyranny is pro- 
 duced by the system. We are liable to suppose because 
 we find land owned and controlled in this way when we 
 arrive at an age which enables us to observe and compre- 
 hend such things, that it was always thus, and that the 
 system must be right because we never knew of any other. 
 When we remember, however, that millions of men have 
 come into the world and gone out of it profoundly con- 
 vinced during their entire existence that such customs as 
 cannibalism, infanticide, human sacrifices, wife-slavery, 
 
KING MAMMON, 139 
 
 and all other kinds of slavery, were entirely right and 
 perfectly consistent with the religion and morality of the 
 age in which they were practiced, it may not be to our dis- 
 credit as presumably intelligent occupants of the world 
 in its more advanced stages, if we frankly and deliberately 
 investigate some of the institutions that our forefathers 
 have handed down to us, with the idea of ascertaining, if 
 possible, whether they are really any more consistent with 
 justice and morality, as we understand those terms, than 
 some customs that we have already discarded, or whether 
 they are now really adapted to the general welfare of so- 
 ciety. We should remember that society outgrows its 
 institutions just as a boy becomes too big for his clothes, 
 and that in a metaphorical sense the past is strewed with 
 cast-off garments. 
 
 It is not my purpose to enter very minutely into the 
 land question, my conception of its nature being very 
 different from that usually entertained among students of 
 the problem, but, the land question being a special form 
 of perpetuated monopoly, it is interesting to trace its 
 ramifications in the early writings of Herbert Spencer, 
 embodied in his Social Slatics, and in the works of our 
 American reformer, Henry George, who is now at war 
 with Mr. Spencer l because the latter has apparently de- 
 cided to sacrifice human rights on the altar of Mammon. 
 The essential evil of private or perpetual ownership is 
 that when all the available, or useful, or fertile land in 
 any country is apportioned among its people under pri- 
 vate ownership, the earth will continue turning around 
 every twenty-four hours. Meanwhile men will go out of 
 the country by death, and other men come into it by 
 birth, just as if the land remained accessible to the entire 
 people under common ownership. In about seventy-five 
 years later than any date which may be selected, the 
 1 See " A Perplexed Philosopher," by Henry George. 
 
140 KING MAMMON. 
 
 people who then live in that country will be a new people, 
 for those who agree in the present or who agreed in the 
 past to distribute the land, will have died and returned to 
 dust. Some of the new men will have land, gained, prob- 
 ably, by inheritance, a few of them will own vast tracts 
 of farming land, and others will possess smaller but infin- 
 itely more valuable tracts in the great centers of popula- 
 tion. Many of the new population, sometimes on account 
 of their own characteristics, but often from the mere differ- 
 ence in ancestry, will possess neither land nor anything 
 they can exchange for land. They will be confronted at 
 their birth by the agents of the most gigantic of all mo- 
 nopolies the private absorption and absolute individual 
 control of land, from which is derived all other wealth. 
 Society has established a system by which inheritance 
 and disinheritance are handed down to future generations, 
 side by side, without any justice in its methods. 
 
 In the United States our land laws have met the exigen- 
 cies of the present very satisfactorily, and homesteads 
 have been popular with the people, but these laws will 
 provide for the future no better than any other laws estab- 
 lishing private ownership. Great trouble will result if the 
 present system remains intact long enough for land to be- 
 come thoroughly appropriated and monopolized among a 
 denser population. 
 
 The history of water-rights in California is a curious 
 record of changes in the nature of ownership within 
 a brief period. When the territory was obtained from 
 Mexico and received its first settlers from the United 
 States, the water of the flowing streams was supposed to 
 belong equally to the people under the doctrine of ripa- 
 rian rights, each occupant of the banks having the right 
 of use, but no right of pollution or diversion. 
 
 When gold was discovered, on this account the pres- 
 ence of a large body of water in an auriferous channel 
 
KING MAMMON. 141 
 
 was an obstruction to mining, and its diversion and use 
 among the surrounding hills and ravines ^ benefit, so 
 laws were adopted, permitting the right of private appro- 
 priation under certain formalities in which priority of 
 appropriation and use involving labor were the cardinal 
 principles. 
 
 Diverted into ditches and canals throughout the gold- 
 producing region, the waters of the streams, once re- 
 garded as the property of all, thus became private prop- 
 erty, which was sold at a varying price for a quantity 
 designated as a miner's inch. A substance that had for- 
 merly been regarded as the property of everybody, quite 
 as much so as air, was therefore sold by measurement like 
 land or cloth. 
 
 Finally, after the shallow places were exhausted by 
 mining, and the extensive orchards of the state were 
 planted, the demands for water to be used in irrigation 
 became so urgent that the people went back again to a 
 species of public ownership under laws providing for the 
 condemnation and purchase of private water-rights by 
 the people associated in irrigation districts, in which the 
 water again became public property. 
 
 People usually regard the nature of ownership in air 
 as being somewhat different from ownership in water, 
 and vastly different from the ownership of land. The 
 difference is only apparent, however, for if a man should 
 occupy a piece of land to which society had given him a 
 title and should fill three bottles, one with air, another with 
 water, and a third with earth from his premises, his right 
 to one is exactly as complete or as incomplete as his 
 right to another. When the amount of water is infinitely 
 great compared with the needs of the people, as in the 
 Mississippi River or the ocean, it is held as public property, 
 just as the air is held, but when limited by location and 
 demand it has been subjected to private ownership like 
 
142 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the land. The entire surface of the United States was 
 originally public property like the waters of the great 
 lakes and streams, but it has been reduced to private 
 ownership by the operation of the various distributive 
 laws. Public ownership now exists only in comparatively 
 barren portions of the country and in certain parks and 
 reservations retained by the people collectively. The 
 tribes of Indian Territory, however, follow the universal 
 custom of uncivilized people in regarding the land as 
 something absolutely incapable of private ownership, and 
 therefore, the individuals of these remnants of the former 
 inhabitants occupy their land merely as tenants. All 
 the native tribes of America were deeply impressed 
 with the idea that the land they occupied belonged to pos- 
 terity quite as much as to the occupants at any period. 
 Instances have been noted where this idea was so strong in 
 the minds of savages that they refused to sell their lands to 
 the whites on the ground that they could not dispose of 
 the rights of future members of the tribe. These features 
 of the land question are trite to those who have investi- 
 gated the subject, and they are here mentioned only to 
 show that air, water, and land are essentially the same 
 in their nature so far as human rights in them are con- 
 cerned. Land and water have both been held and are 
 now held under private ownership, and air is really held 
 in the same way, but its nature is such that it cannot be 
 monopolized so as to oppress anybody. Theoretically, 
 a man's property under the name of a square mile of 
 land, is a spherical pyramid, its apex in the center of the 
 earth and its base at the outer limits of the atmosphere, 
 although the colossal pretensions of those who believe 
 in the doctrine of a divinity and a perpetuation of rights 
 to land, may contend that the sides of their pyramid are 
 prolonged infinitely into space. As the possession of a 
 few billions of miles more or less in that direction will 
 
KING MAMMON. 143 
 
 not cause much trouble in society, however, we will not 
 proceed to discuss that portion of the assumed rights to 
 landed estates. 
 
 This pyramidal property, however, if it be of any value 
 to men, contains air above the land, and both air and 
 water in the surface soil, so that earth, air, and water are 
 necessarily held together inseparably by any la'nd title. 
 There is no difference whatever in the ethics of man's 
 possession of these three elements, for when he has land 
 he possesses all. If the private ownership of one is 
 wrong, the other two are held quite as unjustly. 
 
 The theory of the land reformers is that the entire land 
 surface of any country should remain the property of the 
 whole people, and that it should, if allotted, be distributed 
 in the hands not of owners, but of tenants, who would pay 
 their rents to the public, either in the form of special land 
 taxes, or by regular rent payments into the public treas- 
 uries, instead of to private landlords. Thus all who exist 
 at any particular instant are supposed to have absolutely 
 equal rights of use in the land, air, and water, and every 
 person actually in possession becomes the tenant of the 
 community. 
 
 The land question is here described only in a casual way 
 in order to develop and expose what seems to be a strange 
 fallacy in the conceptions of many vigorous thinkers 
 who have written of the rights to property. In a preced- 
 ing chapter has been illustrated the absurdity of the an- 
 cient idea that mere occupancy by previous birth can 
 give to any man the exclusive right to any portion of the 
 earth that has not been transformed by the application of 
 his labor. The reader's attention is now directed to the 
 almost universal belief among the foremost thinkers of 
 the age, that rights to land are in their nature very different 
 from rights to buildings and other improvements, and to 
 
144 KING MAMMON. 
 
 all kinds of personal property, such as machinery, money 
 and cloth. 
 
 Briefly stated, the ideas of these writers are that, while 
 land can never be justly held as private property, sub- 
 ject to the absolute disposal of the owner in every way, 
 all kinds of improvements and personal property can, 
 nevertheless, become subject to private ownership and 
 transfer by gift, sale, and bequest without the develop- 
 ment of social wrongs. In the minds of these thinkers 
 there exists a similarity or identity between air, water, and 
 land, by which all are unfit for private ownership ; but 
 there exists a radical difference between these three ele- 
 ments and the infinite number and variety of developed 
 products of human labor by which the latter can justly 
 become private property and be rightfully bequeathed. 
 
 Are these writers correct in their conclusions ? It may 
 seem pretentious to question the deductions of thinkers 
 like John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Henry 
 George, but in defense of inquiry, the latter has forcibly 
 said, "we, too, are men," although we may not be phil- 
 osophers. Let us inquire and think independently. In 
 the first place we will note the conclusions of this class 
 of reasoners. Mr. Mill says in reference to land tenures : 
 
 ' ' When the ' sacredness of property ' is talked of it should 
 always be remembered that any such sacredness does 
 not belong in the same degree to landed property. No 
 one made the land. It is the original inheritance of the 
 whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of 
 general expediency. 
 
 "When private property in land is not expedient, it is 
 unjust. It is no hardship to any one to be excluded from 
 what others have produced ; they were not bound to 
 produce it for his use, and he loses nothing by not shar- 
 ing in what otherwise would not have existed at all. 
 But it is some hardship to be born into the world and to 
 find all nature's gifts previously engrossed, and no place 
 left for the new-comer. To reconcile people to this, 
 
KING MAMMON. 145 
 
 after they have once admitted into their minds the idea 
 that any moral rights belong to them as human beings, 
 it will always be necessary to convince them that the ex- 
 clusive appropriation is good for mankind on the whole, 
 themselves included. But this is what no sane human 
 being could be persuaded of, if the relation between the 
 landowner and the cultivator were the same everywhere 
 as it has been in Ireland. 
 
 " Landed property is felt even by those most tenacious 
 of its rights, to be a different thing from other property ; 
 and where the bulk of the community have been disin- 
 herited of their share of it, and it has become the exclu- 
 sive attribute of a small minority, men have generally 
 tried to reconcile it, at least in theory, to their sense of 
 justice, by endeavoring to attach duties to it, and erect- 
 ing it into a sort of magistracy, either moral or legal. 
 But if the state is at liberty to treat the possessors of land 
 as public functionaries, it is only going one step further 
 to say that it is at liberty to discard them. The claim of 
 the landowners to the land is altogether subordinate to 
 the general policy of the state. The principle of property 
 gives them no right to the land, but only a right of com- 
 pensation for whatever portion of their interest in the 
 land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of. 
 To that their claim is indefeasible. It is due to land- 
 owners, and to owners of any property whatever, recog- 
 nized as such by the state, that they should not be dis- 
 possessed of it without receiving its pecuniary value. 
 This is due on the general principles on which property 
 rests. 
 
 "When the property is of a kind to which peculiar 
 affections attach themselves, the compensation ought to 
 exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent. . . . To me it seems 
 almost an axiom that property in land should be inter- 
 preted strictly, and that the balance in all cases of doubt 
 should incline against the proprietor. The reverse is the 
 case with property in movables, and in all things the 
 product of labor ; over these, the owner's power both of 
 use and of exclusion should be absolute, except where 
 positive evil to others would result from it ; but in the 
 case of land, no exclusive right should be permitted in 
 any individual which cannot be shown to be productive 
 of positive good." 
 
146 KING MAMMON. 
 
 These extracts from the writings of Mr. Mill will 
 sufficiently indicate the position he occupied on the land 
 question. He evidently considered land unfit for private 
 property and radically different from all the movable or 
 immovable products of man's labor. According to his 
 theory, a man could justly own a house or a machine, 
 but not a farm. Notwithstanding this idea, however, 
 Mr. Mill would compensate owners for what they cannot 
 justly own, and even pay them something additional for 
 special damages to their affections. This idea of owning 
 the value of land and not owning the land itself is so 
 queer that we may suspect a fallacy in the author's 
 reasoning, but not being critics for amusement we will 
 let that oddity pass, merely noting that he thinks men 
 can justly own anything but land. 
 
 In Social Statics, one of the early publications of 
 Herbert Spencer's series of books, the author boldly and 
 vigorously enunciates the rights of man and defines their 
 limitations with a freedom from timidity and subservience 
 to wealth that is in strange contrast with his more 
 recent writings. Under the heading of "The Right to the 
 Use of the Earth," he says : 
 
 " Given a race of beings having like claims to pursue the 
 objects of their desires given a world adapted to the 
 gratification of those desires a world into which such 
 beings are similarly born, and it unavoidably follows 
 that they have equal rights to the use of this world. For 
 if each of them ' has freedom to do all that he wills 
 provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other/ 
 then each of them is free to use the earth for the satis- 
 faction of his wants, provided he allows all others the 
 same liberty. And conversely, it is manifest that no one, 
 or part of them, may use the earth in such a way as to 
 prevent the rest from similarly using it ; seeing that to 
 do this is to assume greater freedom than the rest, and 
 consequently to break the law. 
 
 "Equity, therefore, does not permit property in land. 
 
KING MAMMON. 147 
 
 For if one portion of the earth's surface may justly be- 
 come the possession of an individual, and may be held 
 by him for his sole use and benefit, as a thing to which 
 he has an exclusive right, then other portions of the 
 earth's surface may be so held ; and eventually the whole 
 of the earth's surface may be so held ; and our planet 
 may thus lapse altogether in private hands. Observe 
 now the dilemma to^ which this leads. Supposing the 
 entire habitable globe to be so enclosed, it follows that if 
 the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who 
 are not landowners have no right at all to its surface. 
 Hence, such can exist on the earth by sufferance only. 
 They are all trespassers. Save by the permission of the 
 lords of the soil, they can have no room for the soles of 
 their feet. Nay, should the others think fit to deny them 
 a resting-place, these landless men might equitably be 
 expelled from the earth altogether. If, then, the assump- 
 tion that land can be held as property, involves that 
 the whole globe may become the private domain of 
 a part of its inhabitants ; and if, by consequence, the 
 rest of its inhabitants can then exercise their faculties 
 can then exist even only by consent of the landowners ; 
 it is manifest, that an exclusive possession of the soil 
 necessitates an infringement of the law of equal freedom. 
 For, men who cannot 'live and move and have their 
 being ' without the leave of others, cannot be equally 
 free with these others. 
 
 "Passing from the consideration of the possible to that 
 of the actual, we find yet further reason to deny the rec- 
 titude of property in land. It can never be pretended 
 that the existing titles to such property are legitimate. 
 Should any one think so, let him look in the chronicles. 
 Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of 
 superior cunning these are the sources to which those 
 titles may be traced. The original deeds were written 
 with the sword, rather than with the pen ; not lawyers, but 
 soldiers, were the conveyancers ; and for seals, blood 
 was used in preference to wax. Could valid claims be 
 thus constituted? Hardly. And if not, what becomes 
 of the pretensions of all subsequent holders of estates so 
 obtained? Does sale or bequest generate aright where it 
 did not previously exist? Would the original claimants 
 be nonsuited at the bar of reason, because the thing 
 
148 KING MAMMON. 
 
 stolen from them had changed hands? Certainly not. 
 And if one act of transfer can give no title, can many ? 
 No ; though nothing be multiplied forever, it will not pro- 
 duce one. Even the law recognizes this principle. An 
 existing holder must, if called upon, substantiate the 
 claims of those from whom he purchased or inherited his 
 property ; and any flaw in the original parchment, even 
 though the property should have had a score of inter- 
 mediate owners, quashes his right. 
 
 "Not only have present land-tenures an indefensible 
 origin, but it is impossible to discover any mode in which 
 land can become private property. Cultivation is com- 
 monly considered to give a legitimate title. He who has 
 reclaimed a tract of ground from its primitive wildness, is 
 supposed to have thereby made it his own. But if his 
 right is disputed, by what system of logic can he vindi- 
 cate it ? 
 
 " It does indeed at first sight seem possible for the earth 
 to become the exclusive possession of individuals by some 
 process of equitable distribution. 'Why/ it may be 
 asked, ' should not man agree to a fair subdivision ? If 
 all are co-heirs, why may not the estate be equally ap- 
 portioned, and each be afterwards perfect master of his 
 own share ? ' 
 
 " To this question it may in the first place be replied, that 
 such a division is vetoed by the difficulty of fixing the 
 values of respective tracts of land. Variations in produc- 
 tiveness, different degrees of accessibility, advantages of 
 climate, proximity to the centres of civilization these, 
 and other such considerations, remove the problem out of 
 the sphere of mere mensuration into the region of impos- 
 sibility. 
 
 " But, waiving this, let us inquire who are to be the allot- 
 tees. Shall adult males, and all who have reached 
 twenty-one on a specified day, be the fortunate individ- 
 uals? If so, what is to be done with those who come 
 of age on the morrow? Is it proposed that each man, 
 woman, and child shall have a section ? If so, what be- 
 
KING MAMMON. 149 
 
 comes of all who are to be born next year ? And what 
 will be the fate of those whose fathers sell their estates and 
 squander their proceeds? These portionless ones must 
 constitute a class already described as having no right to 
 a resting-place on earth as living by the sufferance of 
 their fellow-men as being practically serfs. And the 
 existence of such a class is wholly at variance with the 
 law of equal freedom. 
 
 "Until, therefore, we can produce a valid commission 
 authorizing us to make this distribution until it can be 
 proved that God has given one charter of privileges to one 
 generation, and another to the next until we can demon- 
 strate that men born after a certain date are doomed to 
 slavery, we must consider that no such allotment is 
 permissible. 
 
 "But to what does this doctrine that men are equally 
 entitled to the use of the earth, lead ? Must we return 
 to the times of unenclosed wilds, and subsist on roots, 
 berries, and game ? Or are we to be left to the manage- 
 ment of Messrs. Fourier, Owen, Louis Blanc, and Co. ? 
 
 ' ' Neither. Such a doctrine is consistent with the highest 
 state of civilization ; may be carried out without involv- 
 ing a community of goods ; and need cause no very 
 serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change 
 required would simply be a change of landlords. Separ- 
 ate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock owner- 
 ship of the public. Instead of being in the possession of 
 individuals, the country would be held by the great cor- 
 porate body Society. Instead of leasing his acres from 
 an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them from 
 the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent of 
 Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or de- 
 puty agent of the community. Stewards would be public 
 officials instead of private ones ; and tenancy the only 
 land tenure. 
 
 "No doubt great difficulties must attend the resumption, 
 by mankind at large, of their rights to the soil. The 
 question of compensation to existing proprietors is a 
 
150 KING MAMMON. 
 
 complicated one one that perhaps cannot be settled in 
 a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the 
 parties who originally robbed the human race of its heri- 
 tage, we might make short work of the matter. But, un- 
 fortunately, most of our present landowners are men who 
 have, either mediately or immediately either by their 
 own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors given for 
 their estates, equivalents of honestly-earned wealth, be- 
 lieving that they were investing their savings in a legit- 
 imate manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the 
 claims of such, is one of the most intricate problems that 
 society will one day have to solve. But with this per- 
 plexity and our extrication from it, abstract morality has 
 no concern. Men having got themselves into the di- 
 lemma, by disobedience to the law, must get out of it as 
 well as they can ; and with as little injury to the landed 
 class as may be." 
 
 The opinions of these writers are repeated here with- 
 out entire approval, for it seems to me they have viewed 
 the rights of men dimly through a glass obscured by their 
 unconscious subservience to and acceptance of existing 
 customs. It will be observed that Mr. Spencer absolutely 
 denies the right of private property in land, but admits 
 that compensation to existing possessors who either pur- 
 chased lands themselves or inherited it from ancestors 
 who had purchased it with the proceeds of labor, would 
 be justice. The plain inference from his writings is that 
 he conceives that no man can justly acquire ownership 
 in land, but that any man can acquire an absolute right 
 of property in anything that is the product of his own 
 exertions, for instance, a tool or a garment. Mr. Spencer 
 does not deny the right of property in general, but only 
 the right of property in land, for he opposes socialism 
 and communism, and distinctly asserts that a right of 
 private property exists and must be maintained. 
 
 The author of Progress and Poverty, whose writings 
 have attracted greater popular attention than those of the 
 
KING MAMMON. I 51 
 
 other authors on the land question, is very positive and 
 explicit in his views. In the work just mentioned he 
 says : 
 
 "What most prevents the realization of the injustice of 
 private property in land is the habit of including- all the 
 things that are made the subject of ownership in one 
 category, as property ; or, if any distinction is made, draw- 
 ing the line according to the unphilosophical distinction 
 of the lawyers, between personal property and real estate, 
 or things movable and things immovable. The real and 
 natural distinction is between things which are the produce 
 of labor and things which are the gratuitous offerings of 
 nature. 
 
 "A house and the lot on which it stands are alike prop- 
 erty, as being the subject of ownership, and are classed 
 by the lawyers as real estate. Yet in nature and rela- 
 tions they differ widely. The one is produced by human 
 labor. The other is a part of nature. The essential 
 character of the one class of things is that they embody 
 .abor, are brought into being by human exertion, their 
 existence or non-existence, their increase or diminution, 
 depending on man. The essential character of the 
 other class of things is that they do not embody labor, 
 and exist irrespective of human exertion and irrespec- 
 tive of man ; they are the field or environment in which 
 man finds himself; the storehouse from which his needs 
 must be supplied ; the raw material upon which, and 
 the forces with which his labor alone can act. . . . 
 
 " The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear 
 as their equal right to breathe the air it is a right pro- 
 claimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot 
 suppose that some men have a right to be in this world 
 and others no right. . . . 
 
 "Whenever the people, having the power, choose to 
 annul land titles, no objection can be made in the name 
 of justice. There have existed men who had the power to 
 hold or to give exclusive possession of portions of the 
 earth's surface, but when and where did there exist the 
 human being who had the right. 
 
 "The right to exclusive ownership of any thing of human 
 production is clear. No matter how many the hands 
 
152 KING MAMMON. 
 
 through which it has passed, there was, at the beginning 
 of the line, human labor some one who, having procured 
 or produced it by his exertions, had to it a clear title as 
 against all the rest of mankind, and which could justly 
 pass from one to another by sale or gift. 
 
 " But at the end of what string of conveyances or grants 
 can be shown or supposed a like title to any part of the 
 material universe ? To improvements such an original 
 title can be shown ; but it is a title only to the improve- 
 ments, and not to the land itself." 
 
 These extracts from Progress and Poverty are sup- 
 plemented by the following from A Perplexed Philoso- 
 pher, in which Mr. George exposes the insincerity and 
 inconsistency of Mr. Spencer's later utterances on the 
 land problem : 
 
 "Property not property in the legal sense, for that 
 may be anything which greed or perversity may have 
 power to ordain ; but property in the ethical sense 
 is that which carries with it the right of exclusive own- 
 ership, including the right to give, sell, bequeath, or 
 destroy. 
 
 "To what sort of things does such right of ownership 
 rightfully attach ? 
 
 "Clearly to things produced by labor and to no 
 other. . . . 
 
 "The ethical right of property is so perfectly clear as to 
 be beyond all dispute. It springs from the right of each 
 man to use his own powers and enjoy their results. And 
 it is a full and absolute right. Whatever a man produces 
 belongs to him exclusively, and the same full and ex- 
 clusive right passes from him to his grantee, assignee, 
 or devisee, not to the amount of eighty or fifty or any- 
 other percentage, but in full. . . . 
 
 "Compensation [for the abolishment of land titles ] im- 
 plies equivalence. To compensate for the discontinuance 
 of a wrong is to give those who profit by the wrong the 
 pecuniary equivalent of its continuance. Now the state 
 has nothing that does not belong to the individuals who 
 compose it. What it gives to some it must take from 
 others. Abolition with compensation is, therefore, not really 
 
KING MAMMON. 153 
 
 abolition, but continuance under a different form. . . . 
 That confusion alone gives plausibility to the idea of 
 compensation for refusal to continue wrong, is seen in 
 the fact that such claims are never put forward in behalf 
 of the original beneficiaries of the wrong, but always in 
 behalf of the purchasers. ... All pleas for compen- 
 sation on the abolition of unequal rights to land are ex- 
 cuses for avoiding right and continuing wrong." 
 
 Mr. George, therefore, differs from the two other authors 
 here quoted by denying the right of landowners to 
 compensation if land titles shall be abolished and land 
 thus become nationalized ; and as a method of procedure 
 he has very persistently urged the single land tax, which, 
 under his theory, would operate as a means of compelling 
 all landowners to pay rent in the form of taxes to the 
 community, thus installing the community as owner, 
 and reducing private owners to tenants. In its real 
 nature the single land tax does not differ from the actual 
 abolition of land titles, except in being a more gradual 
 method of appropriation. It cuts the dog's tail off an 
 inch at a time instead of at one blow. 
 
 Mr. Spencer and Mr. George both begin with a clear 
 statement and abundant proof that land cannot justly 
 remain private property, and multitudes of people now 
 agree with them in this conclusion ; but they differ on 
 the question of compensation to existing owners, Mr. 
 Spencer approving the idea of compensation and Mr. 
 George positively denying it, while neither philosopher 
 is able to make a clear and convincing argument for his 
 side of the question. For instance, if a man can really 
 have no right of ownership in land, why should society 
 pay "him for something that he has not got, that he never 
 had, and that he never can have ? On the other hand, 
 if John Smith, a citizen of the United States, pays this 
 government for one hundred and sixty acres of land, 
 clears it, fences it, cultivates it, and makes his home 
 
154 KING MAMMON. 
 
 upon it by his own exertions, or if John Smith as a laborer 
 saves $5,000 from his earnings and purchases a piece of 
 unimproved land with his money, and either the single 
 land tax or land nationalization be then effected and the 
 value of his land destroyed, so far as he is concerned, it 
 is likely that it will require more than the arguments of 
 the single-taxers to convince people that Smith has been 
 fairly treated. The fact that Mr. George has been con- 
 stantly compelled in almost every chapter of his writings 
 to iterate and reiterate that his theories do not apply to 
 improvements on land, but to the land itself, no matter 
 if ijt be a small spot of ground covered by one of Chicago's 
 high buildings, and that Mr. Spencer has been compelled 
 to advise paying money to people for something that he 
 says they cannot own, shdlild convince both these writers 
 that some of their assumptions in regard to the rights of 
 men and the nature of property must be fallacious. 
 
 As Professor Huxley has hinted to these authors, men 
 either own or do not own both land and cabbages. When 
 we deny all rights of ownership in land, and then offer 
 compensation for what a man cannot own, or deny com- 
 pensation in cases where denial is obviously unfair, 
 there must be a fallacy in reaching our conclusions. 
 
 It is claimed, therefore, that the writers herein men- 
 tioned, who are the leaders of a host of followers drawing 
 similar conclusions from the circumstances of land occu- 
 pancy, have only perceived a portion of the real truths 
 underlying what are called the rights to property, and 
 that the errors at the basis of their arguments lead to in- 
 consistency at the close, by which the brightest intellects 
 making the same assumptions at the beginning, are un- 
 able to draw really satisfactory conclusions at the end. 
 In the first place, we can positively deny what they ap- 
 parently regard as self-evident, that a difference exists in 
 the nature of the rights involved in' the possession of land 
 
KING MAMMON. 155 
 
 as distinguished from the possession of other things, and 
 we can also deny that any moral right whatever exists 
 by which a man can claim any kind of property in the 
 sense that it is an exclusive possession and at the same 
 time a perpetuity. We may contend that any man's 
 right to his land is quite as perfect as his right to the coat 
 he wears or the house he occupies, all being acquired by 
 the same methods, but that no man's right in anything 
 whatever can extend beyond his lifetime or be justly 
 converted into a succession. It may be proved to un- 
 biased minds that man is merely a tenant under a life 
 lease, and that earthly possessions are not property, in 
 the usual significance of that word, but a usufruct. 
 
 All that is desired of the reader is careful attention to 
 the reasons to be adduced for these conclusions, and a 
 fair consideration of the whole problem. The people of 
 the civilized world ought to be too intelligent at the close 
 of the nineteenth century to continue to ridicule and revile 
 free speech, no matter how radical its conclusions, pro- 
 vided it be temperate and peaceable. 
 
 Property is an institution established for the supposed 
 benefit of man, and human creatures are not on earth 
 solely to do reverence to their own handiwork. There is 
 nothing sacred about the so-called rights of property, for, 
 like all other human institutions when carried to an ex- 
 treme, these rights have become wrongs. We need to 
 remember that wealth was produced for men ; not men 
 for wealth. 
 
156 KING MAMMON. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF EGOTISM. 
 
 So man, the moth, is not afraid, it seems, 
 To span Omnipotence, and measure might 
 That knows no measure, by the scanty rule 
 And standard of his own, that is to-day, 
 And is not ere to-morroiv's siingoes down. 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER. 
 
 BEFORE we commence our investigation of the rights of 
 property, let us consider what is meant by owning a 
 thing. If anything be my property, in the complete 
 sense of the word, I am supposed to have the right to use 
 it, sell it, or give it away during my lifetime, and at my 
 death to transfer it by bequest to my successor, thus ex- 
 tending my right absolutely to him, and giving him the 
 power to extend it to his successor, so that, so far as other 
 men not in this line of succession are concerned, the 
 original possessor's right becomes a perpetuity, just as if 
 he had continued to live on through succeeding genera- 
 tions, instead of dying and continuing his rights in the 
 person of his heir. The essence of absolute ownership is 
 perpetuity ; the theory, if there be any real theory con- 
 nected with this subversion of human rights, being that 
 when a man acquires earthly possessions, they are his or 
 his successor's (which amounts to the same thing, so far 
 as the rights of other men are concerned) for all succeed- 
 ing time, so long as men shall inhabit the earth. 
 
 The writers whose names are mentioned in the preced- 
 ing chapter believe that a man can thus rightfully own 
 what are known as improvements and personal property, 
 but that he cannot own land, if justice be maintained. 
 
KING MAMMON. 157 
 
 Before we consider these points, let us again get away 
 from the earth, out among the clouds, where we can look 
 back upon its surface from a distance and note the con- 
 ditions at one comprehensive view, without being con- 
 fused by a multitude of details. 
 
 What is the earth ? It is apparently a huge ball nearly 
 eight thousand miles in diameter, the surface composed 
 partly of land and partly of water, and enveloped by the 
 gas we call the atmosphere. On and in its crust we may 
 find thousands of different substances, composed in vary- 
 ing proportions and combinations of a few elementary 
 forms of matter of which one of the most common is the 
 metal called iron. The mineral termed water is separable 
 into oxygen and hydrogen, and these united again in the 
 right proportions will make water. Water cooled becomes 
 ice ; heated it becomes steam and apparently vanishes 
 into nothing. So with iron ; a solid at ordinary temper- 
 atures, it reddens by heat, becomes a liquid, finally vapor- 
 izes and seemingly disappears. All nature, composed of 
 varying elements, exists in these three forms, or would so 
 exist under certain physical conditions, for air becomes 
 a liquid and a solid under extreme cold and pressure. On 
 the earth appear various forms of life, plants and animals, 
 of whom man has reached the highest development, as 
 we understand that term. Their bodies are composed of 
 the same elements that exist in the globe on which they 
 live. "Dust thou art, to dust returnest," is literally true 
 of all life, when dust means the substances of which the 
 planet is composed. 
 
 All life buds, grows, ages, decays, and dies with much 
 of similarity and connection all along the line, from the 
 lowest to the highest. Note, however, that in all the 
 transformations of animate and inanimate nature that 
 involve the countless and often mysterious changes going 
 on in this world, not one atom is taken away from the 
 
1 58 KING MAMMON. 
 
 planet and not one atom added to its mass. When ice 
 becomes water and water steam, and steam becomes 
 separated into its constituent elements, the world has lost 
 nothing and gained nothing. After all the incomprehen- 
 sibly numerous mechanical and chemical changes that have 
 been wrought by nature and by art on the surface of the 
 planet in the last ten thousand years, it is incontestable and 
 unthinkable that its weight can be either increased or di- 
 minished one grain from these causes. So of the forces of 
 heat, light, and electricity ; they are convertible one into 
 the other, and the absolute amount of energy of each or 
 all (if there be more than one force, in reality, assuming 
 different forms) can never be lessened or increased. So 
 far as man is concerned, there is no such thing as the 
 creation or the destruction of either matter or force. 
 There never was a truer thought than the assertion that 
 man brings nothing into the world and can take nothing 
 away. 
 
 The same conditions are probably true of life. The 
 strange principle of organized growth and development, 
 which appears nearly as mysterious in a plant as in a 
 human being, may be, and in all probability is, an emana- 
 tion of some great life-reservoir existing in the universe, 
 (just as the lamp before me is throwing off and making 
 perceptible for a moment a small portion of the universal 
 store of heat and light,) neither increasing by its existence 
 the absolute quantity of what we name life, nor lessening 
 it by what we call death. Discarding this speculation at 
 present as useless, however, we can be absolutely cer- 
 tain that all of man's efforts on earth accomplish neither 
 creation nor destruction, but merely transformation. 
 
 What, then, is production, for which so much has been 
 claimed as a foundation for man's rights ? It is merely 
 this much : man appears on earth for a few years, incon- 
 ceivably brief compared with its habitable existence, hav- 
 
KING MAMMON. 159 
 
 ing no power whatever over his coming or his going. 
 Relatively he is the insect of a day. Forced thus upon 
 the planet, and protected during a helpless period by the 
 instincts of his predecessors, he proceeds, when he arrives 
 at the age of able effort, to make himself as comfortable, 
 morally, mentally, and physically, as the circumstances 
 will permit during his brief occupation of earth. In 
 carrying forward these self-protective efforts, he neces- 
 sarily applies his labor to various portions, relatively 
 minute, of the planet on which he exists, and thus effects 
 slight transformations, which are termed the products of 
 his labor. Nothing whatever that he is said to produce 
 is really more than some small fragment of the world 
 surrounding him, modified in some way by his exertions 
 to adapt it to his desires. 
 
 Thus, if one man clears a small spot of ground and 
 plants therein a garden ; if another fells trees, cuts logs 
 and with them builds a house ; if a third digs copper or 
 iron to make a weapon, or laboriously finishes a bow and 
 arrows, each has merely transformed a small part of the 
 earth surrounding him to suit his needs, and there is no 
 real difference in the nature of their labor or in the rewards 
 which justice will attach to it. The trees which the man 
 felled to make his house are quite as much a part of the 
 earth as the soil is which the man cleared and stirred when 
 he made his garden ; and the copper used by the third 
 man in making his weapon is surely as much a constitu- 
 ent of the planet as any so called "land " that has vexed 
 and puzzled the minds of these philosophers for a century. 
 So far as natural rights are concerned, it is quite certain 
 that in the supposed case here described, any reader or 
 any number of readers will at once concede that the man 
 who has occupied his bit of land and made his garden has 
 quite as perfect a right to undisturbed use and exclusive 
 possession as do the men who have made houses and 
 
l6o KING MAMMON. 
 
 weapons. The application of labor in any one or all of 
 these instances has conferred upon the laborer all the rights 
 which can justly accrue to him on account of his exer- 
 tions, and, so far as rights are concerned, the men are not 
 differently situated because one took land and the others 
 something else. 
 
 The essential truth embodied in the condition of man's 
 existence is that everything he possesses is a part of the 
 earth and indestructible, so that in its real nature nothing 
 differs from land, so far as human rights are concerned. 
 Labor cannot exist alone, but must be applied to some 
 definite portion of the earth's mass, for even our own 
 bodies are composed of the earth. Thus a wooden house 
 is merely earth transformed into trees by nature and into 
 boards by man. A brick or stone building is only a por- 
 tion of earth-crust moulded or carved into a form suitable 
 for man's needs. Air and water are quite as much a part 
 of earth, as land, trees, and men. The most complicated 
 piece of machinery ever constructed is merely parts of 
 earth, in the form of metals usually, shaped with infinite 
 toil to accomplish man's purpose, just as his farm is 
 another portion of the globe modified by clearing, and 
 digging, and fertilizing to gratify his desires in another 
 way. A gold coin is a small fragment of the same earth 
 modified by changes in its form and substance to suit 
 his convenience. Trace anything silks and satins, dia- 
 monds and pearls, the object-glass of the Lick telescope, 
 or the rarest violin of Cremona's workshops back to its 
 origin, and you will find nothing but a transformation in 
 what is essentially land in all its real characteristics. 
 Nothing whatever is produced that is not some part of the 
 earth's crust or atmosphere adapted by man to suit his 
 needs or his pleasure, in the same way that he transforms 
 by patient efforts the bit of earth which he calls his lot or 
 his farm. Sometimes the apparent value of the labor in 
 
KING MAMMON. l6l 
 
 the transformation exceeds the apparent value of the 
 earth in the product, as in the machine ; sometimes the 
 value of the earth in the product exceeds that of the labor 
 immediately involved, as in the coin ; but in neither case 
 is the nature of man's relations to earth or his rights 
 therein changed, for labor expended on one part of earth 
 is entitled to its reward quite as much as labor bestowed 
 upon another portion, and many bits of land exist upon 
 which the cost of labor expended by its present owners 
 far exceeds the real value. 
 
 If it be not already sufficiently clear that a fallacy exists 
 in the assumption that a more exclusive right exists in the 
 tenure of a house than in the possession of a farm, we 
 will again suppose a case of human effort. 
 
 The inhabitants of Mexico and those of California dur- 
 ing its history preceding the annexation to the United 
 States, built their houses of large sun-dried bricks, bulky 
 and fragile, which they called adobes. In an imaginary 
 world peopled by ten of these Mexicans, five men select 
 spots of ground and each sets to work to clear his land, 
 planting therein, according to the customs of their fore- 
 fathers, a crop of beans and red peppers. The other five, 
 somewhat emulous of Joaquin Murietta, live in caves, and 
 pursue a life free from systematic toil. According to our 
 philosophical writers, there can be no special or exclusive 
 rights to land, so the five bandits maintain their equal 
 rights by traversing the gardens of their associates at their 
 own sweet wills, undismayed by the protests of the oc- 
 cupants. Finally, the beans and peppers being safely 
 harvested and winter approaching, the Mexican farmers 
 decide to build houses after the fashion of their race. 
 Accordingly, each procures water, mixes the dirt in his 
 garden, from which he had lately removed the bean-vines, 
 and proceeds to mould it into bricks, dry them in the sun, 
 
 lay them upon one another, and thus construct a house. 
 ii 
 
l62 KING MAMMON. 
 
 When the houses are completed, every Mexican has 
 gained a special and exclusive right, according to the land 
 theorists, by which he can now exclude the Joaquins 
 from the land built into its walls by the process of mixing 
 and moulding, though all his former mixing and mould- 
 ing when the same land lay in the form of a little farm 
 could avail him nothing nor justly bar out trespassers. 
 A sudden change takes place, however, for before the 
 builders can occupy their houses, an earthquake throws 
 all the walls down again, a violent storm of rain dissolves 
 the imperfectly hardened adobes, and, presto, change ! 
 away vanish the magic special-rights to the mystical Mex- 
 ican mud, and back again justly come the disciples of the 
 famous Mexican bandit to maintain their equal-rights, in 
 a manner that is nearly as confusing as some of the argu- 
 ments on the land question which have been quoted, and 
 about as consistent as the present attitude of Herbert 
 Spencer and Henry George toward each other. 
 
 Is it not manifestly absurd from these comparisons to 
 suppose, as so many writers have done, that man's rights 
 . in the possession of land are any different from his rights in 
 anything else that he develops or transforms by his labor? 
 Is it not evident that when he clears or cultivates a bit 
 of land, the application of his labor is exactly the same 
 ethical process involved in building a house or making 
 a tool? Reduced to its final analysis, any of these acts 
 is merely the transformation of a small part of earth by 
 man's labor to adapt it to his purposes. If he has any 
 right to one, he has the same right to all, because they 
 are identical in their nature. It is true that man has only 
 an equal right in the unimproved land, or land to which 
 his labor has not been applied, but it is also true that he 
 has only an equal right in the material of which the tool 
 and the house are constructed until he has labored upon 
 them, all instances merely being illustrations of the gen- 
 
KING MAMMON. 163 
 
 eral truth, that man has originally no special right to any 
 part of the earth, any more than he has to the air, to the 
 light of the sun, to the ocean, or to the forces of gravita- 
 tion and electricity. 
 
 If, therefore, man's rights to houses, tools, money, and 
 all other forms of wealth, including land, are exactly iden- 
 tical, what follows ?^A11 must be justly susceptible of 
 private ownership in the complete sense of the term, or 
 all must be as the writers herein quoted conceive land to 
 be ; that is, absolutely incapable of being owned as prop- 
 erty in the full meaning of that word. It will be observed 
 that land and all other things that men find of use to them 
 are here classed as wealth, instead of separating the earth 
 into the absurd classes of land and wealth according to 
 the habit of the political economists, who have continually 
 dwelt on the fallacy that there is a real distinction 
 between earth lying flat, as in a field, and earth trans- 
 formed into a tree and the tree into a house. The only 
 consistent thought is that the earth is man's home, and 
 all of it, from the centre to the limits of the atmosphere, 
 including the light and heat that fall upon it from the 
 other heavenly bodies, constitute man's wealth. Mon- 
 opoly of one portion is quite as wrong as monopoly of 
 another portion, and the land nationalists and single-tax 
 advocates are only attacking a single manifestation of 
 injustice because it is more prominent than other forms. 
 It is quite true, as the writers on the land question have 
 asserted, that land cannot justly be held as private prop- 
 erty, but it is also quite true that absolutely nothing else 
 on the face of the globe can be owned justly as property 
 in the complete sense of perpetuity. 
 
 The reason why such ownership cannot exist is that 
 all of man's rights, equal or unequal, real or imaginary, 
 arise from the possession of his own body ; for without 
 that he is nothing so far as earthly life is concerned. 
 
164 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Therefore, as he cannot have either property in or pos- 
 session of his own body beyond the brief period of his 
 existence, so he cannot justly claim any right whatever 
 to any control or direction of any part of earth after or at 
 the termination of his existence. There can be no actual 
 property without the element of perpetuity, and as man 
 has not a perpetual lease of life, so he can have no per- 
 petual lease of wealth, e ; ther in his own name or in the 
 names of successors appointed by himself. 
 
 So far as the individual is concerned, whether it be the 
 beggar who stood at the gate of Dives, or Caesar conquer- 
 ing the known world, he can absolutely own neither the 
 pin with which he binds his rags into the semblance of 
 a garment, nor the vast region over which he holds 
 despotic sway. Matter is indestructible. It can neither 
 be increased nor lessened by the hand of man. We poor, 
 struggling mites upon the small fragment of the universe 
 that we name earth, appear on its surface for an hour, 
 a day, a year, or at most a century of the illimitable 
 eternity extending on each side of our brief existence ; 
 we devote our puny efforts to effecting some trivial 
 changes in the form and nature of certain minute portions 
 of the infinity of matter extending in all directions 
 beyond our vision and beyond our comprehension ; we 
 live out our ephemeral existence, too frequently, with 
 our thoughts centered in ourselves, as though we were 
 God's universe ; and finally we die and our bodies return 
 to the earth whence they proceeded : but during all our 
 residence here, and notwithstanding all the efforts and 
 triumphs that gratify our silly vanity, we bring absolutely 
 nothing into the world and we take absolutely nothing 
 away. 
 
 What astounding supremacy of egotism, then, for any 
 man to contend that he perpetually owns any part of 
 the world in which he is placed merely as one among 
 
KING MAMMON. 165 
 
 millions of predecessors and millions of followers ! What 
 absurdity of self-deification for him to assert his right 
 to establish a perpetual claim to the earth by attempting 
 to bequeath any portion of it to any survivor, no matter 
 if the labor of his insignificant and ephemeral existence, 
 which was a necessity to his own life and comfort, has 
 been applied to some small fragment of the planet over 
 which he would establish the petty tyranny of his 
 absolute control ! 
 
 Do other men who follow us have no rights in the 
 natural fragments and the modified fragments of the 
 planet which all men inhabit, and which we are com- 
 pelled to leave behind us at the stern command of Death ? 
 When man is thus a slave to Nature and dies obediently 
 at her command, does he possess any right born of a 
 motive higher than the egotism of supreme selfishness 
 to dictate the disposition of any part of earth beyond 
 his life and occupancy ? Did other men who preceded 
 him as sojourners on earth have the right to declare 
 before they left it what parts of it in land and other 
 wealth he should not use, and to limit his freedom by 
 imposing restrictions from their own brief existence, no 
 better and no greater than his own ? Can men perpet- 
 uate their rights to any part of earth when they cannot 
 perpetuate their own bodies or their own existence ? 
 
 I think we must say no if we would speak truth. 
 The philosophical writings of Locke, Mill, Spencer, and 
 George, with the scores of commentators they have 
 evolved, have revealed but a portion of the truth. They 
 have halted at the private ownership of land and have 
 denounced it as an evil without perceiving that land- 
 ownership is only the most noticeable form of the great 
 monopoly of the earth involved in the power of mak- 
 ing bequests or other privilege of individual succession. 
 They have failed to inquire what is the cause of land- 
 
166 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ownership, and they have failed to observe that no com- 
 plete ownership of land ever existed till the privilege 
 of bequeathing it to a successor was acquired and ex- 
 ercised. They have ignored the fact that a perpetuity 
 of existence is a necessary element in a perpetual 
 right, and so they have fallen into endless discussions 
 over the titles to land and the taxation and compen- 
 sation of owners, under the false assumption that land 
 rights are different from other rights of possession and 
 use. Our philosophers should postpone their debate 
 until they depart from earth and unite in the eternal ex- 
 istence of the future that is supposed to lie beyond death. 
 Earth is surely not the place for everlasting private 
 ownership by the power of substitution, but we are 
 taught that in the world to come, after the brief probation 
 of earthly existence is terminated, there will be an 
 eternity of joy or misery. To the political and social 
 institutions of that world, then, let us relegate the doc- 
 trines of perpetuity, for when life-use becomes an eternal 
 use, perhaps the exclusive and everlasting control by a 
 favored few of those things necessary to our comfort or 
 happiness may not become the same injustice there that 
 it is on earth. One philosopher of the future existence 
 may achieve an eternal possession of a furnace within 
 the realms of his Satanic majesty, and another by a 
 more satisfactory earthly record may accomplish the per- 
 petual control of a golden harp. The impulses they have 
 given to the progress of humanity by their daring and 
 vigorous attacks upon the greatest social wrongs, 
 certainly entitle them to a perpetuity of comfort in that 
 world if they will abandon their somewhat unreasonable 
 claims to a perpetuity of possession here. 
 
 Man's real rights in the earth, then, in spite of the phi- 
 losophers and of merely human laws, are a usufruct. He 
 is a tenant of earth holding possession under a life-lease 
 
KING MAMMON. l6/ 
 
 which he must relinquish immediately and absolutely 
 when he is summoned by the Angel of Death. His right 
 is the right of use. He has an equal right with every 
 other man to use any part of the earth to which the labor 
 or use of no other existing man is applied, and he has a 
 better right than any other man or all men to the use of 
 such portions of the earth as he has transformed by his 
 own efforts to accomplish his desires ; but he has no per- 
 petual right in anything, for his right to use the earth 
 expires with his own life, and he cannot justly name his 
 successor in the life-lease, nor delegate his expiring 
 rights to another, any more than other tenants whose 
 terms of occupancy are drawing to a close. He cannot 
 transmit his right of use under the expectancy of death, 
 because the right of using and the power of using are 
 both extinguished with his life, and a new tenant must 
 make new terms with the owner. 
 
 That owner at any given instant is the entire popula- 
 tion inhabiting any portion of the earth and associated 
 under some form of government as a nation. In a more 
 general sense, and in the most perfect significance, the 
 owner is the entire number of people who inhabit that 
 portion of the earth from the time when King Might first 
 concedes a few privileges to Queen Right, on through the 
 ages of its history, in the development and progress, per- 
 haps, of many nations, to the time when human existence 
 on the planet shall become extinct. Man as an individ- 
 ual has but a temporary existence, and the rights of indi- 
 vidual man must, therefore, also be temporary. It is abso- 
 lutely impossible to effect justice in any other way, for no 
 governmental plan that does not recognize these facts is 
 based upon the actual condition and progress of human 
 life. Man, the individual, may equitably exchange his 
 life lease for the lease of another during its existence ; but 
 when that lease is about to expire, and when conscious- 
 
1 68 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ness of that fact impels him to an attempt to select the 
 next occupant, or if he and a proposed successor conspire 
 to defraud society of its rights by attempted evasions of 
 these cardinal principles of right and wrong, the survivor 
 who thus attempts to reap what he has not sown, by be- 
 coming a monopolist of earth and usurping the rights of 
 his fellow-creatures, should be held accountable to society 
 for his crime like any other criminal. 
 
 The land question, which now has so many enthusias- 
 tic students in all parts of the world, which is a burning 
 issue in England, and which has already been vigorously, 
 though I believe unfairly, attacked in New Zealand, 
 where some of the most radical ideas of recent years 
 have been pushed to the front, is merely a portion of the 
 great problem of human rights, and it cannot be solved 
 justly or effectively by the methods that have been advo- 
 cated. It is folly to assert, as the single-tax men do, that 
 men who have monopolized certain highly useful portions 
 of the earth, in the form of buildings, machinery, clothing, 
 and food shall pay no taxes upon their possessions to 
 assist in defraying the common expenses of association 
 and organized protection, while other men who happen 
 to have monopolized another part of earth called land, or 
 who may have even applied their labor to it, and thus 
 fitted it for the uses of humanity quite as honestly and 
 effectively as any man ever "produced" anything on 
 earth, must lose the value of what they justly possess by 
 the short-sighted methods of the land hobbyists. 
 
 The land agitators are right in denouncing the evils of 
 property in land. They believe that no community can 
 justly confer land upon an individual as property ; for as 
 a country increases in population, the land becomes sub- 
 ject to the control of a few, and the many are debarred from 
 using it in productive efforts except by paying rents and 
 thus maintaining an idle class of non-producers as land- 
 
KING MAMMON. 169 
 
 lords. They believe that the individual, who can neces- 
 sarily live but the few years of an ordinary lifetime, can 
 never justly become more than a tenant of the land he 
 occupies, and that the real owner must be the community 
 of which he forms a part. Thus the individuals of the 
 community come and go by birth and death, but the 
 community itself never dies so long as earth remains 
 habitable. 
 
 The land reformers are right in these conclusions. No 
 man and no body of men at any period or any instant in 
 the history of a nation can justly own its land. The land 
 is not even absolutely owned by all the people who inhabit 
 the country at any specified time ; they are individually 
 life-tenants, and their aggregate rights are never greater 
 than mere tenancy. If, therefore, they would do justice 
 one to another and to their posterity, they must accept 
 this view of life and its rights and duties. There can be 
 no such thing as ownership of land except by the entire 
 body of people who will have inhabited the planet from 
 the beginning of human life till its final extinction. We 
 may say, if we are devout, that God owns the earth, and 
 that man, the individual, is His tenant, rather than the 
 tenant of the entire human race ; but this conclusion will 
 not alter the essential thought that we are individually 
 tenants and not owners, and that the results of our efforts 
 are mere possession and not property. Any system of gov- 
 ernment which ignores these facts will develop injustice 
 and tyranny in its institutions as surely as night follows 
 day, for every new generation feels the wrongs of inherited 
 monopoly more bitterly, till finally the social structure 
 breaks into pieces under the strain of unnatural conditions. 
 
 Whenever man regards earth solely as his habitation ; 
 whenever he formulates laws merely for his own brief ex- 
 istence, regardless of those who succeed him ; whenever 
 he forgets that his life is but a span, and that other men 
 
I/O KING MAMMON. 
 
 his children and the children of his neighbors will 
 immediately follow in his footsteps ; whenever his thoughts 
 are entirely bound up in his own little selfish existence, 
 disregarding the life that is to succeed his own, and car- 
 ing not whether he leaves equitable conditions for the 
 survivors, just so surely will he leave to his heirs not alone 
 a heritage of wealth, but also one of danger, in which the 
 bitter curses of outraged humanity fall upon the corrup- 
 tion and injustice by which misery and destitution are 
 brought face to face with idleness and luxury under con- 
 ditions which are a mockery to any just distribution of 
 rewards and punishments. The rich man eventually be- 
 comes rich because his father was wealthy ; the poor man 
 remains poor because he is one of the " lower classes" 
 and cannot rise when social conditions become petrified. 
 Any man who regards either the entire earth or his 
 country as property owned by the people who inhabit it 
 at any given instant, and who believes that the land he 
 may possess is his property forever, to be controlled arbi- 
 trarily by himself and his successors nominated by be- 
 quests, is preparing to lay the foundations of injustice that 
 will in after years bring misery and want to somebody's 
 children, and perhaps to his own. Whenever the control 
 of land is perpetuated in families by the customs of inheri- 
 tance it develops into a monopoly more grinding and 
 exasperating than all other monopolies which have cursed 
 human existence. When we apportion the land of any 
 country under private ownership, transmit it by inheri- 
 tance, and permit new men to be born without inheri- 
 tance, there is immediately created a progressive evil by 
 which are developed a race of monopolistic landowners 
 and a race of serfs. There will be little justice in politi- 
 cal methods until men learn to consider the rights of those 
 who are to succeed them as earthly tenants, and until 
 they learn to control to a certain extent their selfish, short- 
 
KING MAMMON. I/I 
 
 sighted desires for absolute dictation on their deathbeds 
 of what they are pleased to term their own. Every man, 
 presumably, loves his children and would leave them a 
 heritage. The weakness of this position, however, lies 
 in the fact that men usually labor merely to leave a heri- 
 tage of wealth, and not a heritage of safe government 
 under just conditions and equal opportunities. When 
 wealth takes wings, and heirs are reduced to penury, they 
 will be compelled to struggle against the unfair conditions 
 that oppress every poor man to-day, while under a better 
 social system, comparative poverty would be but a slight 
 drawback, since reasonable effort would bring comfort to 
 any man. Just laws and a safe government are more 
 likely to confer happiness upon posterity than great in- 
 dividual wealth by inheritance, which can only exist in 
 the midst of injustice. 
 
 What is the real nature or essence of private owner- 
 ship in land? If a community occupying a body of land 
 in which all its members are supposed to have equal 
 rights, allots the territory equally, or at least fairly and 
 acceptably among its members, and thereafter accords to 
 each a better right in his allotted portion than any other 
 man or all the others can have to that part, the plan em- 
 bodies no injustice among the original body of men. 
 Ethically it is not different from the satisfactory and 
 equitable division of game killed in the chase by common 
 effort. Practically such a division may be the most con- 
 venient and satisfactory as well as profitable means of using 
 the land. The mere division of the land into small por- 
 tions under separate management does not effect the real 
 wrong of private ownership or property, for the original 
 members of the community retain their rights as well 
 under a division as when the land is held in a common 
 tract, according to the methods of the Indian tribes. 
 
 The real trouble begins when new men are born, 
 
172 KING MAMMON. 
 
 for when all the land is allotted the immigrants by birth 
 have no opportunities, except those of mere chanty and 
 sufferance till some ancestor dies. If every man's oppor- 
 tunities were equitably affected by the departure of pre- 
 decessors to the land of shadows, there would still be 
 little real hardship, for deaths as well as births are con- 
 tinually occurring. But the system of successions now 
 steps in and confers upon a favorite in the rising gener- 
 ation all the wealth, be it ever so great, of the progenitor 
 in the departing generation, and thus injustice is effected 
 and class conditions instituted and fostered by an absurd 
 idea of wealth transmission. No such thing as the private 
 ownership of land ever existed till the privilege of bequeath- 
 ing it was accorded, and when that privilege shall be taken 
 away, absolute ownership will go with it and men will 
 be reduced to their natural and rightful position of life- 
 tenants. Property does -not really exist till the idea of 
 perpetual ownership by means of a successor is em- 
 bodied in the privilege of making a will, which is equiva- 
 lent to declaring, "This wealth is mine forever, no matter 
 whether I am in the world or out of it." The instant a 
 man has no power to name his successor, when death 
 approaches, that instant he becomes again the life-tenant 
 of land held by the community, which says to him : 
 "You may use this land during the period of your exist- 
 ence according to the rules we shall adopt in the form of 
 law, but your tenure is merely a life lease. Whenever 
 you die, your rights in it and the privileges we have ex- 
 tended to you will cease, and we shall then make new 
 arrangements concerning its occupancy. You shall not 
 name the successor in its occupancy, for he is our ten- 
 ant, not yours." 
 
 The land problem is merely a simple and noticeable 
 form of the greater and more general wealth problem or 
 earth problem, involving man's relations with the celes- 
 
KING MAMMON. 173 
 
 tial body he inhabits, just as the circle, with its compar- 
 atively simple relations and universal occurrence, becomes 
 the first of the conic sections to receive mathematical 
 investigation, while the more complex curves are sub- 
 jected to a later inquiry. As the circle is one form of the 
 ellipse, and as the square is one form of the parallelo- 
 gram, so is the right to land only one form of the univer- 
 sal principle which must ultimately control the right of 
 men to use and enjoy any portion whatever of the earth. 
 Humanity will discover ere many years, even if the 
 truth be not acknowledged at the present time, that the 
 succession of the king's son to the throne of his ances- 
 tors, a principle which we have already discarded and 
 denounced as a tyrannical absurdity unworthy of main- 
 tenance by an intelligent and liberty-loving people, is 
 not a whit more absurd or more tyrannical than the prin- 
 ciple that is still maintained by which the son succeeds 
 (in some countries with his father's consent, in other 
 countries without it) to the land or other wealth pos- 
 sessed by his progenitor. Kingly ascendency is a power, 
 and wealth is a power. We have abolished the succes- 
 sion so far as the kings of barbarism are concerned ; but 
 we have retained it as a means of perpetuating the family 
 power of financial kings developed in the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 Sooner or later the just principle must be recognized 
 that in no case, political or financial, can the dying man 
 delegate his powers and rights to a successor. Grover 
 Cleveland is now the President of the United States, hav- 
 ing powers that are delegated to him by the people of 
 his country. By virtue of those powers he has absolute 
 control of the White House as a financial privilege, and 
 the power to nullify a law of Congress as a political priv- 
 ilege. If Grover Cleveland should die before the expira- 
 tion of his term of office, and on his deathbed should re- 
 
174 KING MAMMON. 
 
 quest or command that some particular individual shall 
 succeed him in these privileges, would there not arise a 
 howl of execration from the throats of the multitude ? 
 
 Yet the principle by which the President is not per- 
 mitted to name his successor is not different in its nature 
 but only in its extent from the grander principle which 
 extends throughout all human institutions, by which is 
 affirmed the absolute right of the living to control what- 
 ever portion of the earth they inhabit, free from the de- 
 crees of dying men, and free from the unjust transmission 
 of privileges which can only be held by the original 
 possessor for a limited period, terminated either by the 
 expiration of a few years, or by the duration, at most, of 
 his own existence. 
 
 The land reformers see only a portion of the evils 
 which confront the progress of society. Land monopoly 
 is, as they say, a thousand times more oppressive 
 than all the modern combinations of capital, for it in- 
 volves the absolute possession and exclusive control by 
 individuals of all those desirable spots in every country 
 which become, on account of favorable location, the 
 great centers of trade and manufacture, worth thousands 
 of dollars to the square foot of surface, and more valua- 
 ble than the richest gold mines for revenue. Land does 
 not mean merely the extensive and often unprofitable 
 tracts far from great centers of consumption, but also the 
 most valuable lots in the hearts of the great cities. How- 
 ever persistent the land reformers may have been in their 
 attacks upon this evil, and however great the good they 
 may have accomplished in stimulating thought upon 
 these important questions, they have, nevertheless, failed 
 to observe that behind the land tenures, as a cause for 
 the present monopoly, exists the universal principle of a 
 perpetual ownership through the power of successions. 
 Private ownership of lands came into existence as an 
 
KING MAMMON. 175 
 
 effect of the power to bequeath a possession ; let the 
 community reclaim its land by abolishing the power of 
 the individual to transfer land to a successor. Guillotine 
 Succession and thus destroy Private Ownership. When 
 the power of bequeathing land is gone, the possessor is 
 transformed from an owner to a life-tenant, and the land 
 becomes again community property. The private owner- 
 ship of land, like the monopolization of wealth of all kinds, 
 has been created and fostered by individual inheritance, 
 and the right way to correct the evil is to destroy what 
 causes it by reversing the unjust process by which land 
 monopoly was developed. The principles of succession 
 embody the real causes of the evils so noticeable in the 
 land question, and no satisfactory conclusions can be 
 evolved from its consideration, without discussing the 
 rights to the control of wealth as embodied in be- 
 quests. A remarkable instance of the inevitable failure 
 which may be expected from attempts to solve a problem 
 by the application of wrong principles, can be observed in 
 the recent writings of Herbert Spencer and Henry George, 
 wherein each demolishes a portion of his opponent's 
 theories without being able to convince fair-minded 
 readers that his views are correct. For it is obviously 
 neither right nor safe to continue the system of land 
 monopoly that exists ; it is equally obvious that to com- 
 pensate existing owners would really only transfer their 
 monopoly to something else deemed valuable by men ; 
 r.nd it is no less clear that land nationalization without 
 compensation or the single land tax would be an injus- 
 tice to all landowners not inheriting their property, and 
 an unjust distinction between those who happened to 
 possess land and those who controlled some other form 
 of wealth. Had either of these writers gone behind the 
 private ownership of land, concerning which so much 
 has been written, he could not have failed to attack the 
 
176 KING MAMMON. 
 
 basal wrong of successions, for the fallacy which perpet- 
 ually afflicts their reasoning is the assumption that land 
 differs radically from other forms of earthly possessions, 
 and that everything else in the form of wealth can be 
 justly transmitted as a perpetuity. 
 
 Let us, then, re-establish the principle that land is com- 
 munity property and the possessor a life-tenant by com- 
 pelling the reversion to the public of all landed estates on 
 the deaths of their possessors. If there be equities that 
 demand adjustment with those survivors who surround 
 the deathbed, let us deal justly and even mercifully with 
 those who might under existing conditions have been 
 successors ; but let us be guided by the principle that no 
 man is entitled to anything unless it is the product of his 
 own efforts, and that he can have no valid claim upon 
 wealth produced in any other way, except through his 
 equal right with other men as one of the community. 
 Compelling in this way a surrender of private control over 
 land and the issuance of a new title by the community, 
 let us adopt such laws as will prevent its being held out 
 of use for speculative purposes when men are so plentiful 
 and opportunities so scarce, for the present destruction of 
 rights to use the earth in this special form is one of the 
 greatest evils of modern civilization. 
 
 There will be time enough to elaborate a plan for ac- 
 complishing this more general access to land when public 
 sentiment demands that justice shall be done. When 
 William W. Astor can absolutely control a large part of 
 New York City, and the Duke of Westminster a larger 
 part of London, while the value of the land and buildings 
 is given, not by the moral, mental, or physical efforts of 
 the possessors, nor by any act whatever, good or bad, of 
 theirs, but by the mere existence, desires, and efforts 
 of their surrounding fellow-creatures, above whom Mr. 
 Astor and the Duke are installed as taskmasters and 
 
KING MAMMON. 1/7 
 
 wealth-dictators, governing all who inhabit those portions 
 of the earth controlled by them and requiring of the oc- 
 cupants tribute ; when society grants to these favored 
 sons of Mother Earth the additional power of naming suc- 
 cessors in tyranny to rule other people after them ; when 
 such palpable, unreasonable, and grossly unnatural 
 wrongs exist among a reading, thinking, and fairly intel- 
 ligent people, it would seem that no man with a spark of 
 the heavenly fire of justice in his nature can refrain from 
 the denunciation of such iniquity and a vigorous effort to 
 destroy it. One thing is certain : awakening intelligence 
 will not long continue a system under which the Dutch- 
 man who, according to some of the school histories, 
 once bought Manhattan Island of its Indian inhabitants 
 for a value equivalent to twenty-four dollars, might have 
 placed the city of New York, by the assistance of a few 
 descendants and a few wills, absolutely under the owner- 
 ship of a single heir. The absurd and outrageous theory 
 of land tenures by which a man may get all he can, keep 
 all he gets, and then transmit his claim to a successor 
 among those who follow him, thus empowering him to 
 live idly and luxuriously off the proceeds of the labor of 
 his less fortunate associates, and to repeat the transfer of 
 his monopoly at the end of his own existence, till, event- 
 ually, the many pay tribute to the few for the mere op- 
 portunity to live, and breathe, and work on God's foot- 
 stool, cannot be maintained much longer before the 
 advancing thought of thousands who are now sharply 
 inquiring why they have no privileges and opportunities. 
 Aristocracy with titles in Europe, and aristocracy without 
 titles in the United States will soon have to answer why 
 men claim the divine right of kings to reign by succes- 
 sion, and by what authority they propose to transmit the 
 power to other men. 
 
 Among the mountains of California the student of 
 12 
 
1/8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 sociology may any day see a rude and imperfect picture 
 of man's earthly existence in the growth of one of the 
 giant sequoias which have attracted to their shrines of 
 wonder pilgrims from all parts of the world. Towering 
 four hundred feet toward the heavens, the huge tree, 
 thirty feet in diameter at the base, is so vast in its dimen- 
 sions that no conception of its actual form can be gained 
 except by viewing it from a distance. If we scan the 
 crevices of its outer bark or scrutinize the divisions of its 
 withered foliage in herbariums, our knowledge, however 
 minute, will not give to us an adequate conception of the 
 tree itself. So with the earth of which the great tree is 
 a symbol. If we delve among the trivial minutiae of 
 earthly life, dissecting this fragment of social existence, 
 and comparing those minute observances of human cus- 
 toms embodied in the hair-splitting practice of the 
 courts, the grand picture of human life and earth itself in 
 their reality will not be revealed to us any more than a 
 clear view of the great sequoia can be obtained by search- 
 ing the pores of its bark with a microscope. 
 
 The history of the sequoia is also like the history of 
 earth, for in the early period of its existence the young 
 giant developed nothing in the form of life transmission 
 from its own substance. It was barren like the earth 
 amid the ancient epochs of its history. There came a 
 time, however, when new life appeared from the bosom 
 of the sequoia, and a time when life developed upon 
 ear th seeds among the branches of the forest giant, man 
 in his early existence on the planet he inhabits. Among 
 the swaying boughs of the great tree thousands of small 
 burrs appear types of the social groups into which man- 
 kind forms. Within the little burrs, millions of tiny seeds 
 maintain life and secure development from the great body 
 of the tree, just as man derives his sustenance from the 
 bosom of Mother Earth. Finally, the little seeds of forest 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 life, like the little men of a more diversified existence, 
 complete their allotted period of connection with the 
 great life reservoir. The opening burrs assume a brownish 
 tint in the sunbeams that fall upon them, the tiny seeds 
 within their cells darken with advancing age, the folding 
 partitions of their little home turn slowly backward in the 
 drying air, and each little seed is launched outward on an 
 uncertain journey by the rough breath of the autumn 
 wind. What future is to be allotted to the tiny seed which 
 thus drifts down from the high boughs of the great tree, 
 none can tell. We only know that it may contain life, 
 but its future we cannot predict. Perhaps it may become 
 the initial point of a grand progress and existence, per- 
 haps it may have within itself no germ of development, 
 and possibly it may perish in an unfortunate environ- 
 ment near the base of the great column whence it pro- 
 ceeded. As the little seed of the sequoia buds, lives, 
 grows, develops, and, finally, at the termination of its 
 career, begins a new and mysterious progress, so the 
 little earth-seeds which we call men exist during the brief 
 period of a human lifetime, and at its close they are 
 launched into the vast universe surrounding them to 
 achieve can any one reveal what? Is it a new life for 
 the man and the seed, or is it extinction ? 
 
 When we reflect upon the helplessness of earthly exist- 
 ence, how we came here without any volition of our 
 own ; how we await the summons of death with no 
 power whatever to prolong our own lives or the existence 
 of those we love ; how, with all our civilization and our 
 boasted intellectual development, we cannot even com- 
 prehend the life-principle of the little flower crushed be- 
 neath our feet, nor tell whence its life really came nor 
 whither it goes ; how our minds become tired and con- 
 fused with a sense of their own imperfections when we 
 attempt to project our thoughts throughout the universe 
 
ISO KING MAMMON. 
 
 and to really comprehend the idea of illimitable space 
 and eternity of duration when we attempt in this way 
 to measure the infinite by the finite, to say how many 
 miles in the distance across God's universe, or how many 
 centuries in the existence of the matter of which the earth 
 is formed, or how much real proprietary claim a sequoia- 
 seed has in the tree which bears it, or a man can obtain 
 in his earthly home when we have thought of all these 
 things with an honest desire to know all we can of truth, 
 ought we not humbly and reverently, realizing our absurd 
 arrogance, to lay down forever all claims to property in 
 the despotic and unreasonable sense in which men have 
 desired that unjust privilege, and to abandon entirely the 
 tyrannical idea that the future as well as the present is 
 ours to control ? 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 FROM POVERTY TO WEALTH. 
 
 A man is the "whole encyclopedia of facts. 77ie creation of a thousand 
 forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, Amer- 
 ica lie folded already in the first man. . . . Every man takes care that his 
 neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that 
 he do not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his 
 market-cart into a chariot of the sun. R. W. EMERSON. 
 
 IN this chapter will be presented as briefly as may be 
 consistent with clearness, a survey of those changes in 
 property rights and methods of succession that have pre- 
 ceded the era in which we live, the special object being 
 to explain those mental and physical conditions that have 
 underlain the methods of transferring property from one 
 generation to the next in different stages of civilization. 
 Necessarily, within the narrow limits of this book, such an 
 effort cannot be a history of property and inheritance, for 
 
KING MAMMON. l8l 
 
 that would involve the history of the human race and of 
 civilization, requiring- many volumes for its adequate dis- 
 cussion. Neither can it be a treatise on actually existing 
 laws of succession, for the laws relating to bequests and 
 inheritance in all parts of the civilized world are the most 
 artificial and complex of all legal dicta, 1 and are so ca- 
 pricious in their details, even where the general principles 
 are identical, that their investigation becomes a notoriously 
 difficult and vexatious pursuit for the law student, exas- 
 perating to all but the mere plodder. The nature of the 
 work herein attempted will be rather a comparison of life 
 in the present with the earlier progress of the human race, 
 and an effort to express clearly the origin of the principles 
 now established in our laws connecting the rights of the 
 living with the privileges of the dead, so that the busy man 
 who cannot find the time necessary for special investiga- 
 tions, may, if he desire, easily comprehend the general 
 nature of the inquiry and verify its results by further re- 
 search. 
 
 It is a cardinal principle of all true education that it 
 
 1 " Successions involve two of the most important classes of cases aris- 
 ing constantly and uniformly in all civilized human societies. One is 
 the right of a person by an act or other instrument, to dispose of his 
 property after his death ; the other is the right of succession to the same 
 property, in case no such post-mortuary disposition is made of it by the 
 owner. The former involves the right to make last wills and testaments ; 
 and the latter the title of descent and the distribution of property ab in- 
 testato." JUDGE STORY. 
 
 " We find one nation basing the rights of inheritance upon those of 
 primogeniture, another dividing the inheritance, some equally, others 
 unequally, amongst the male and female issue ; others again amongst 
 the issue equally, to the exclusion of the females ; and in Malabar and 
 Canara we find the females inheriting to the exclusion of the males. 
 Some nations acknowledge succession by right of representation and the 
 right to inherit by the order of proximity. The diversity upon this sub- 
 ject that prevails amongst different nations is still greater when we come 
 to deal with collateral successions, and the arbitrary character of the 
 rules is still more obvious. It is impossible to reduce the canons of in- 
 heritance, which are recognized as the law of any country, to any gen- 
 eral or leading principle without assuming some maxim not necessarily 
 or not naturally connected with such canons." Grady's "Hindoo 
 Law." 
 
182 KING MAMMON. 
 
 must proceed from the known to the unknown. Accord- 
 ingly, let us look immediately around us in the present. 
 In the civilization of the nineteenth century, its material 
 conditions, involving the vast wealth of society with the 
 immensity and diversity of production, transportation, and 
 exchange, are familiar to all observers. The social and 
 governmental institutions by which this vast aggregate 
 wealth is directed and transmitted are not, however, ex- 
 cept by minds trained to legal and scientific investigation, 
 usually the subject of much reflection. These will repay 
 investigation. At the basis of the whole social fabric built 
 up in this country of people associated and united more or 
 less rigidly in such organizations as the church, the labor 
 or trade union, the fraternal society, the partnership, the 
 corporation, the school district, the county, the city, the 
 state, and the nation, with its great contending political 
 parties, exists the modern family, the smallest but most 
 important type of government, since upon the institution 
 of marriage and the nature of the family depend nearly 
 all other forms of social life and social morality. 
 
 The family is based upon sexual relations, and radically 
 upon the fact that men do not come into the world like 
 little fishes, each ready to begin the struggle for existence 
 without further protection, but that in the human race the 
 helplessness of infancy necessitates the protection of the 
 parent, thus developing a system of powers, duties, and 
 responsibilities between husband and wife, parent and 
 child, involving the government of the family. The 
 family government in the United States, like other forms 
 of government and power of all kinds, has been deprived, 
 by altruistic development, of many early despotic features. 
 The husband as head of the family is still a species of 
 dictator, entitled to nearly absolute control of the property 
 acquired jointly by the matrimonial partners, but his 
 wife's equal interest in the community property is recog- 
 
KING MAMMON. 183 
 
 nized, although it is not adequately guarded, and she has 
 no means of protection from the bad management that 
 is often incidental to an incompetent husband's supreme 
 direction of their possessions. The wife now possesses 
 the right to hold separate property in her own name, and 
 to bequeath it at her death. In some states she can trans- 
 act business in her own name and retain individually 
 its profits. 
 
 The children born under this peculiar alliance are slaves 
 to their progenitors until the sons reach the age of twenty- 
 one years and the daughters the age of eighteen. By law 
 and custom the head of the family is made responsible to 
 the community for the maintenance of his offspring dur- 
 ing helpless infancy, and also responsible to a certain 
 extent for injuries which his child-slaves may inflict upon 
 others. Yet, while the children are slaves, the rights of 
 the parent over the child he has brought into the world 
 are not unlimited in the modern civilization. Within cer- 
 tain limits the parent may castigate or otherwise punish 
 his unruly offspring, but if what the majority of the peo- 
 ple consider extreme brutality be exhibited in this punish- 
 ment, society will interfere and punish the father as it 
 would any other culprit. Recent changes in the spirit of 
 family government are noticeable in the restricted powers 
 of the school teacher, who being theoretically in the place 
 of the parent, formerly used the rod very severely with 
 the approval of public sentiment. That approval is 
 now slowly being withdrawn, and the use of corporal 
 punishment, except, perhaps, as the ultimate means, of 
 controlling savage instincts, dormant or active in the mind 
 of every child, is being abandoned in the public schools. 
 
 At the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, according to 
 sex, the slave-children are emancipated, having, theoreti- 
 cally, by the service of their later years, compensated 
 their progenitors for the labor of rearing them in the help- 
 
1 84 KING MAMMON. 
 
 less period of their early existence. Thereafter the chil- 
 dren are no longer members of that family in a legal 
 or governmental sense, for society imposes upon them 
 no further restraints. Any wealth produced by them be- 
 comes their own instead of the property of their parents, 
 and except for the usual and natural ties of affection, they 
 are set absolutely free from the laws of the family till they 
 become by marriage a party in a new government of this 
 kind under the relationship of wife or husband and parent. 
 Having thus theoretically cancelled by service their 
 obligations to their progenitors, the children are absolved 
 from further legal obligations to the parent, and the par- 
 ent is released from all further legal responsibility for the 
 acts of the children. 
 
 If the death of the wife occurs, the surviving husband 
 retains absolute control and possession of the property 
 held jointly during his life, but she may bequeath her 
 separate property. When the husband dies, the surviving 
 wife retains her half of the community property and he 
 bequeaths his own half to her or to others, as he may de- 
 sire. If the husband fails to make a will, the state provides 
 a rule of succession to the property that might have been 
 bequeathed by which the property, after reserving one-third 
 to the surviving wife,is divided according to consanguinity, 
 first among descendants, second among ascendants, and, 
 after them, among collaterals under rules in which the 
 assumption is that children are the natural successors to 
 all wealth accumulated by their intestate progenitors, and 
 that so long as any human beings can be found who are 
 related by blood in any way, however remote, to the 
 decedent, their rights of succession exclude all others, 
 no matter what connection may have existed between 
 them and the decedent. Finally, when the succession of 
 consanguinity fails, the property escheats to public owner- 
 ship. 
 
KING MAMMON. 185 
 
 This in general is the government of the family in this 
 country at the present time, and the least knowledge of 
 history will enable any person to understand that its des- 
 potism has been greatly modified within comparatively re- 
 cent years. The slightest observation of recent legislation 
 will also show that the transformation of family govern- 
 ment and the further emancipation of its subordinate 
 members are still going on. Our social institutions, based 
 on the nature of the family, are no more stable in the pres- 
 ent than they have been in the past, and the despotic 
 powers of the head of the family are being more and more 
 restricted every year, just as the similar powers of kings 
 and queens in the larger social government have been 
 restricted. It is generally known that not so very many 
 years ago the husband's power over the wife, with the ap- 
 proval of public sentiment, extended to flogging her for in- 
 subordination ; at the present time society often meditates 
 the flogging of wife-beaters and will scarcely permit the 
 incensed parent to flog his child with any considerabe 
 severity, no matter what the provocation may have been. 
 Similarly, a steady progress has been made toward con- 
 ferring upon the wife social privileges of every kind ex- 
 actly equal to those of the husband, and at the session of 
 nearly every legislature in the United States some change 
 in existing laws is suggested or enacted, embodying pro- 
 gress in this direction. 
 
 Remembering these recent transitions in family govern- 
 ment, let us now investigate the nature of the family as 
 it appeared in ancient history. The human race has pre- 
 served records of its history, more or less complete and 
 authentic, during a lapse of time estimated somewhat 
 differently by careful investigators, but covering a period 
 of from five thousand to seven thousand years, and ex- 
 tending from the present far back into the history of an- 
 cient Egypt before the pyramids were built. The com- 
 
1 86 KING MAMMON. 
 
 parison between the ancient and the modern family can 
 be made by selecting from any country of the ancient 
 civilization ; but as the Roman family embodied the ideas 
 of the past in their most distinctive type, and as its records 
 are more complete than others, it will best serve for the 
 example of older ideas of family rights and duties. The 
 Roman family comprised, in its distribution of power, 
 rights, and duties, only an absolute dictator and his slaves. l 
 The head of the family, usually the oldest male in a direct 
 line of descent, was a little king, controlling with tyranni- 
 cal privileges the possessions, the occupations, and even 
 the lives of his subjects, who comprised his wife or wives, 
 his children, his grandchildren or other descendants, and 
 his servants, cattle, and dogs, all being, so far as the pos- 
 session of individual rights of control were concerned, his 
 abject slaves. Sons were not emancipated by age, but 
 were subject to the control of the father till he saw fit to 
 confer upon them their liberty. During this period of 
 servitude the parent was entitled to control and use all 
 that they might produce, and he could sell their services 
 to another man. Daughters were similarly subject to the 
 father till their marriage, when they became the slave- 
 property of their husbands. The identity of the wife was 
 completely merged in that of the husband, and she had, 
 as an individual, no rights whatever, except the right of 
 existence ; and there is good reason for believing that in 
 the early history of the family, even this privilege was 
 placed at the disposal of the husband. The father in 
 early Roman history was invested with the power of 
 punishing his son to the final extreme of death, and in- 
 stances of its infliction are recorded, although this savage 
 idea of parental rights gave way before the later develop- 
 
 1 A text of ancient Hindu law reads : " A wife, a son, and a slave 
 are alike incapable of property ; the wealth which they may earn is reg- 
 ularly acquired for the man to whom they belong." 
 
KING MAMMON. l8/ 
 
 ment of Roman civilization. T The children, young or old, 
 till emancipation, possessed no rights of contract even 
 in marriage, and the father could select for his son a wife, 
 or give his daughter in marriage, and there was no eva- 
 sion of his decree. In the later Roman civilization, these 
 arbitrary powers of the parent were greatly modified by 
 advancing thought, as our own laws are now being trans- 
 formed, but the record of Patria Potestas descends to us 
 in sharp contrast with the modern conception of a correct 
 family government. 
 
 It is obvious that from the time when men believed 
 that a father could rightfully kill a son in order to control 
 him, and sell a daughter if it suited his personal wishes, 
 to the present era, when sons and daughters frequently 
 almost control their parents, a great change has occurred 
 in the nature of family government. It is reasonable, 
 also, to conclude (as we can see the change still going on) 
 that this progress will be projected far into the future of 
 the human race ; and, finally, to infer that similar changes 
 were going on long before the records of the ancient 
 Roman family were inscribed in its national history and 
 before those people, or any other human beings, preserved 
 records of their past. 
 
 Of the existence of mankind on earth as regarded by 
 modern science, it is evident that recorded history reveals 
 but a small fragment. Where civilized man now exists, 
 his prehistoric ancestor has left among the bones of mam- 
 mals extinct long before any history was written, rude 
 
 1 " In the forum, the senate, or the camp, the adult son of a Roman citi- 
 zen enjoyed the public and private rights of a person; in his father's 
 house he was a mere thing; confounded by the laws with the movables, 
 the cattle and the slaves, whom the capricious master might alienate or 
 destroy, without being responsible to any earthly tribunal. The majesty 
 of the parent was armed with the power of life and death ; and the ex- 
 amples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and 
 never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome beyond the time 
 of Pompey and Augustus." EDWARD GIBBON. 
 
188 KING MAMMON. 
 
 drawings of the animals he hunted and of himself pursu- 
 ing them, a naked savage living apparently on game and 
 fish. Where the finest modern machinery now whirls in 
 complex movement, the men who lived before history 
 was written have dropped the flint tools and weapons of 
 early existence in quantities so great that the prehistoric 
 life of human beings in great numbers cannot be denied, 
 and these relics are found in places so remote from modern 
 industry that only an immense period of time between 
 past and present life can explain the location of such 
 implements. 
 
 How long man has lived on earth it is impossible to 
 prove, for none can know what the age of the earth may 
 be in a condition fit to sustain human life. It is certain, 
 however, that many thousands of years must have elapsed 
 since the ancestors of the men and women clothed in 
 worsteds and silks, who now ride in palace-cars, were 
 naked savages trapping foxes and spearing fish to de- 
 vour in their den-like caves. 
 
 In establishing the antiquity of man, it is exceedingly 
 important that we shall possess an accurate definition of 
 what really constitutes the genus homo, and at what par- 
 ticular stage in his progress he becomes worthy of that 
 appellation. Man of the nineteenth century in the United 
 States is not the man who carved his image on the mam- 
 moth tusk of La Madeleine ; and man of that period was 
 not what man must have been a thousand centuries before 
 that time. Similarly, man of the present is not what man 
 of the future will be. Taking any point in the existence 
 of the human race and tracing its history backward into 
 antiquity, we find the creature in mental and moral char- 
 acteristics becoming continually more and more like the 
 brutes whom he kills and devours. Pursuing a contrary 
 direction and approaching the present, we find that every 
 century raises man higher and higher above his surround- 
 
KING MAMMON. 189 
 
 ings. Neither the origin of man nor his destiny is, in 
 the mind of the real thinker, solved, and he still inquires 
 what was man millions of years in the past and what will 
 he become millions of years in the future. 
 
 A frequent estimate of the period of man's existence on 
 earth as a tool-using animal, is 400,000 years. Hitherto, 
 all popular conceptions of the duration of life on the earth's 
 surface have proved to be, when more accurate informa- 
 tion became ascertainable, absurdly brief, and it is not 
 improbable that eventually we shall be compelled to ex- 
 tend our estimate of the period of man's earthly existence 
 into millions of years. Time is long ; and while man pro- 
 gresses rapidly under certain conditions, he may have 
 remained nearly stationary in civilization for centuries 
 under less favorable circumstances for development. 
 
 So far as history teaches, the foundation of every civil- 
 ization is a barbarous condition of the race. Beyond that 
 fact written records teach nothing, but every scrap of 
 information obtainable from the observation of human 
 development indicates that before the early barbarians 
 wrote history they had already progressed by minute 
 changes for thousands and perhaps millions of years. 
 Modern thought regards every social organization wher- 
 ever situated, and however rudimentary its form, as re- 
 sembling in its nature a plant, having within itself the 
 principle of development and change, of growth and decay, 
 according to its nature and environment. All societies, 
 wherever and whenever existing, whether they be Dig- 
 gers of California, Bushmen of Australia, ancient Egyp- 
 tians, Greeks and Romans, or Hindus and Englishmen 
 of the nineteenth century, are organizations constantly 
 changing with greater or less rapidity according to their 
 environment and the period of their growth, and subject 
 at any time to calamities that may involve their destruc- 
 tion. We know from written history that the people of 
 
IQO KING MAMMON. 
 
 the United States to-day are not what the inhabitants were 
 in 1776 in social habits, customs, and beliefs; we know 
 that the English people are not now what their ancestors 
 were when the Norman conqueror subdued England, and 
 we know that they were not then what the inhabitants of 
 the country were when it was first known to the Romans. 
 In a similar way we know that the Greeks of Plato's day 
 were not the Greeks of the Homeric period, and that the 
 Jews of the present, are not such Jews as followed their 
 flocks and herds in the barbaric pastoral life described 
 in the early chapters of the Bible. 
 
 In pursuance of this line of thought, it is only reason- 
 able to conclude, although we can never know the fact 
 from human records, that the men who first inscribed the 
 history of their deeds or the traditions of their fathers, 
 were not, in social characteristics, like their ancestors 
 who existed ages before their time, for it is conclusively 
 proved that man has existed on earth thousands of years 
 before written history was produced. Furthermore, if 
 we consider the social existence of the very lowest tribes 
 of human beings now known, it is reasonable to conclude 
 that their condition, however brutish and undeveloped, 
 when first discovered and thus made known to more 
 civilized men, was not the identical condition under which 
 their own ancestors lived ; for in no part of the ascending 
 scale of human existence can we truthfully deny the law 
 of progress. 
 
 No matter how low and ignorant and brutal the condi- 
 tion of such savages may have been when discovered, if 
 we may judge their previous history by what we positively 
 know of other human development, the same race must 
 have once been in a condition even lower and more brutal. 
 
 The conclusion is almost forced upon us, therefore, that 
 all social organizations may be regarded as plants, not 
 identical in species, but allied with one another, growing 
 
KING MAMMON. 191 
 
 in different locations and under different circumstances. 
 Some have only recently sprouted from whatever uncer- 
 tain origin it may please religion or speculative science, 
 or both combined, to ascribe to them ; others have devel- 
 oped leaves, blossoms, and fruit. How long they will con- 
 tinue to grow and blossom and bear, we know not ; for 
 we cannot understand all the laws' that control their 
 growth, and of the complete life-history of such plants 
 we have no records. Eventually, however, it is quite 
 certain that either by the casualties of struggling growth, 
 or by the ultimate unfitness of earthly environment, they 
 will decay and perish. 
 
 The thought is also unavoidable that every society, 
 like every plant, must pass through its successive stages 
 of development from an early condition, wherein its in- 
 dividuals are scarcely distinguishable in their manners 
 and customs, ideas and instincts from the brutes surround- 
 ing them, to those later conditions which comprise such 
 wisdom and charity and humanity as are developed in 
 the present civilization, and, consecutively, to that further 
 condition far in advance of the nineteenth century, when 
 the people of this age may become the barbarians, and 
 when their descendants will look back at our habits, and 
 beliefs, and social institutions, the more comprehensive 
 thinker with a pitying, sympathetic tolerance for strug- 
 gling humanity and a curious scientific interest in our 
 history : the narrow-minded creature, solely of the age 
 in which he lives, with a bitter aversion toward the dis- 
 carded forms of the past, a blind adoration of the ancient 
 institutions that have been retained, and an unreasoning 
 opposition towards any new developments for the life 
 still in advance of the human race. It can scarcely be 
 doubted, in the light of present information, that the 
 ancestors of all civilized races passed through the succes- 
 sive stages of development now indicated by the exist- 
 
IQ2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ence of savage tribes, who have already emerged from 
 lower conditions, and who, if undisturbed by more 
 powerful races, would gradually make further advance- 
 ment towards our own civilization. 
 
 The belief is irresistible from these data, that the an- 
 cestors of every people now existing on the face of the 
 globe, at one time lived in a condition approximating to 
 that of wild animals, and involving a life supported by 
 the spontaneous products of nature obtained by gather- 
 ing fruits, catching fish and molluscs, and hunting game. 
 Life was perpetuated by sexual relations not really differ- 
 ent from those now displayed among the higher types of 
 the brute mammalia, in which males and females of this 
 savage existence were entirely devoid of the modern 
 aversion to sexual relations between individuals closely 
 connected by ties of blood. The whole social condition 
 of mankind in that period may be estimated in the ex- 
 pression that peaceful humanity resembled deer, and 
 warlike humanity tigers. ' It is only necessary to refer to 
 the actual sexual relations existing in many savage tribes 
 when first discovered, to the history of ancient Egypt, 
 Greece, and Rome, 2 and to portions of the Hebrew rec- 
 ords 3 to comprehend how closely the ancestral humanity 
 of which we have written records approaches this early 
 condition. Even in recent years we can note the slow 
 growth of an aversion to the marriage of first cousins, 
 and see clearly that no such aversion existed in the past. 
 
 Under such a system of indiscriminate cohabitation 
 
 1 1 understand that some advanced thinkers are loath to accept these 
 conclusions, but they cannot be rejected unless we are prepared to 
 assume that the lowest savages known to civilization were created in the 
 exact condition in which they were discovered, and that the universal 
 law of progress did not apply to their previous social condition. 
 
 2 " In Egypt, the marriage of brothers and sisters was admitted without 
 scruple or exception ; a Spartan might espouse the daughter of his 
 father, an Athenian that of his mother ; and the nuptials of an uncle 
 with his niece were applauded at Athens as a happy union of the dearest 
 relations." EDWARD GIBBON. 
 
 3 Leviticus xviii., 27. 
 
KING MAMMON. 193 
 
 and reproduction, it is evident that paternity is indeter- 
 minate, just as it is among domestic animals roaming at 
 large ; and accordingly in many rudimentary forms of 
 society we find that descent from one generation to the 
 next either is or has been traced in the female line 
 for the very good reason that no other method is origin- 
 ally possible. Sometimes traces of the former custom 
 remain in the language long after the sexual relations 
 that caused it have been abandoned. The elimination 
 of sexual relations between individuals in a direct line of 
 descent appears to be the first development toward the 
 family, but their retention indiscriminately among those 
 of the same level of descent continues, the individuals 
 being related in various ways or not related, according 
 to modern systems of consanguinity, but all being re- 
 garded in their own system as brothers and sisters, each 
 having a mother and regarding all the males of the older 
 grade as fathers. Thus, under such a system, all the men 
 and women of one grade are husbands and wives and at 
 the same time regarded as brothers and sisters, each 
 having one mother but many fathers. Every male in any 
 grade is in theory the son of all the men above, and the 
 father of every child in the grade below. 
 
 The modern aversion to these primitive sexual relations 
 between consanguineous associates is one of the advances 
 in morality that the race has accomplished. Observa- 
 tion of the ill-effects involved in transmitting life from 
 a father and mother nearly related may have effected the 
 change in sentiment ; and like other changes the transition 
 is still going on. Ultimately it will involve a strong 
 feeling of duty, not now generally existing, that every 
 child has a right to be well born, and that the evil effects 
 of consanguineous marriages are only one form of a thou- 
 sand other ills that are. inflicted upon an innocent pos- 
 terity by the sins and the ignorance of the parents. Men 
 
194 KING MAMMON. 
 
 are now changing their ideas every day about sexual re- 
 lations, and so their ancestors changed theirs in the past. 
 Hence, in this line of progress, we next find the aban- 
 donment of sisters as wives. In a later stage, the broth- 
 ers, real or assumed, of savage association, possess one 
 or more wives in common, but they obtain them from 
 other tribes, and the moral principle of not taking a wife 
 from within the small family tribe becomes firmly estab- 
 lished, a species of marriage exchange being arranged 
 between contiguous tribes, whereby each obtains its 
 women from the others, the males remaining with the 
 tribe where they were born and the females invariably 
 leaving it on their marriage and becoming identified with 
 the tribe of the husband or husbands. Indiscriminate 
 sexual relations of men with women not related to them 
 afterward became transformed, probably by the develop- 
 ment of the affections, into forms more or less resembling 
 the monogamic marriage of our present civilization. Noth- 
 ing is more evident in the study of early institutions than 
 the fact that no such sentiment as love (beyond the parental 
 instinct or the sexual passion) exists in the savage's mind, 
 and he being incapable of the thought or feeling, it found 
 no expression in his social institutions. 
 
 Humanity in its early social forms is in all parts of the 
 world found organized into little groups of people allied 
 by ties of blood, descended either actually or theoretically 
 from a common ancestor, and headed by a chief, who is 
 ordinarily selected for a leader by the males of the group. 
 Such a group may be termed a great family, inasmuch as 
 it comprises a number of men related with one another 
 and possessing wives and children under the very lax 
 sexual relations of such social development ; but the 
 Latin word gens applied in Roman history to a later form 
 of this social organization is a brief expression that is 
 often used to designate the little family tribe of primitive 
 
KING MAMMON. IQ5 
 
 society. In various forms of development and transition 
 the gens has been observed in the social structure of 
 nations in all parts of the world. After the abandon- 
 ment of sister-marriage, the usual features of its organiz- 
 ation are : a membership composed of males allied by a 
 common descent ; the establishment of a chief by selec- 
 tion or descent'; an obligation of its members not to 
 marry in the gens ; common property and common 
 inheritance by all members of the gens in everything 
 possessed ; a common name for all members ; provisions 
 by which strangers could be adopted into the gens ; and 
 religious ceremonies common to the organization, usually 
 embodying ancestor worship. 
 
 The features most striking in this early organization 
 are the obligation, invariably reached sooner or later in 
 the development of the gens, by which marriages among 
 its members are prohibited, every man, whether he has 
 one wife or many, or whether wives are communal in the 
 gens, being required to procure her from another tribal 
 family ; the absence of any private rights of ownership, 
 their land being the common property of the gens, and 
 personal effects the common property of the family with- 
 in the gens ; and, finally, the existence of a common 
 name by which all members of the gens were known, 
 each being further distinguished by a qualifying addition 
 to the tribal appellative. 
 
 In America the Iroquois exhibited a fine development 
 of this tribal organization, being organized into numerous 
 gentes, which were again grouped into somewhat larger 
 organizations, then into still larger tribes, and finally into 
 a confederacy. If they had remained undisturbed by the 
 whites, the process of political development would have 
 doubtless gone on till they formed a powerful Indian 
 nation under a monarch. Everything that is known 
 about the organization of the Aztec government indicates 
 
196 KING MAMMON. 
 
 that it was formed by the consolidation of such tribes, 
 the process having been extended farther under a more 
 highly developed civilization than the Iroquois achieved. 
 Abundant evidence of the early tribal organization still 
 exists among the poorer classes of Mexico and is pre- 
 served in their traditions. Mexico to-day is an associa' 
 tion of clans developed to about the status of the clans 
 of early Scottish and Irish history, characterized by all 
 their fierceness, jealousy, tyranny, and vindictive pas- 
 sion ; acknowledging the absolute supremacy of tribal 
 leaders or family heads ; and occupying in their haciendas 
 lands corresponding to those of the ancient Roman gens 
 or the tribal possessions of the Iroquois. It is the con- 
 dition of a primitive race whose early religion and social 
 customs have been thinly veneered by the forms of Chris- 
 tianity and the outward semblance of a republic, but in 
 which the habits and customs, the inner religious faith, 
 the family life, the sexual relations, and the ethical ideas 
 all indicate the imperfect and incomplete transition from 
 the forms of social life that have been described. The 
 Mexican governor is a barbarous chief, the judge is a 
 petty despot who rewards and punishes without con- 
 ception of equity, the marriage relation is only one 
 degree removed from indiscriminate tribal sex relations, 
 and men who are not relatives owe to one another no 
 duties, barring theft and murder. 
 
 The early history of Greece and Rome shows plainly 
 the organization of this family group, and its effects ex- 
 tended far down into the history of their civilization. In 
 more modern Europe, the clans of Scotland and the septs 
 of Ireland, countries famed in song and tradition for 
 the Mc's and the O's, as remnants of the common gens 
 names, were relics of the condition which existed univer- 
 sally in earliersocial history. ' The patriarchal family of the 
 
 1 " The collective ownership of the land by groups of men either in 
 
KING MAMMON. 197 
 
 Bible is the pastoral form of a more highly developed gens 
 than the savage organization. Going back into the his- 
 tory of Egypt and Assyria, the same community of family 
 property can be recognized after the destruction of other 
 features of gens organization, it existing side by side 
 with descent in the female line, and to some extent with 
 the marriage of sisters, all relics of a savage past surviv- 
 ing in the midst of a well-developed civilization. In 
 Hindustan all the essential features of the gens survive 
 to this day, and its traces can also be found among the 
 Chinese. 
 
 The village community of India, another form of which 
 is now perishing in Russia, is a developed form of the 
 gens applied to agriculture. The German mark, traces 
 of which still survive in Europe, was an expiring form of 
 the same social organization giving way before the de- 
 velopment of wealth. The village community of India, 
 under which the possession of wealth has been adjusted 
 for many centuries, is a group of people, not necessarily 
 confined to a village, but inhabiting a district of several 
 thousand acres resembling in its extent what are termed 
 townships in the United States. The inhabitants of this 
 district usually live in a small town, but the village 
 community is the people and the entire territory they 
 possess. The community comprises a number of fami- 
 lies usually allied by ties of blood, each living in a sepa- 
 rate household, but closely associated in a village near 
 the lands they cultivate, which are occupied and used as 
 common property. Within the household, property rights 
 are common in the family ; within the community the 
 rights to land are common to all members, and its use is 
 apportioned among the families of the community, a 
 
 fact united by blood-relationship, or believing or assuming that they are 
 so united, appears to have once been the primitive or early condition of 
 every nation " Sir Henry S. Maine in " Early Institutions." 
 
198 KING MAMMON. 
 
 right of use, being guaranteed to all, and the apportion- 
 ment being made by general agreement or by authority 
 delegated to a chief. The Russian community, which 
 has now given way before the universal advance of pri- 
 vate ownership tinder the development of wealth, was a 
 very similar social organization, the inhabitants of the 
 village assembling once in every three years to re-dis- 
 trict their lands among the families. r To arrive at the 
 structure of these village communities from the savage 
 gens, we have only to imagine a people like the Iroquois 
 already organized into the gens, and even into a confed- 
 eration, abandoning gradually their life of hunting, fish- 
 ing, and roaming, and substituting for it an existence by 
 tilling the soil. At the time America was discovered, ag- 
 riculture had already appeared among the Iroquois in the 
 cultivation of maize ; and had their progression been un- 
 disturbed by invasion, it would have developed into 
 forms of life more or less resembling the village commun- 
 ity, when the growth of population and the arts stimu- 
 lated agriculture and lessened the opportunities for hunt- 
 ing. 
 
 It seems evident from these instances of social organ- 
 ization, that men have become allied into families, fami- 
 lies into groups of kindred, wherein strangers might be 
 adopted, and these groups into tribes and confederacies 
 from which nations and national government were 
 evolved. In the early stages of this social evolution, when 
 property was extremely limited, no such thing as a will 
 was known. The idea of wealth in the ancient family 
 and in the larger family group, was that of communal 
 
 1 " In the Hindu Joint Family everything is common. No member 
 can say where he has rights separate from the others. In the House 
 Community of Croatia, Dalrnatia, and Illyria, the land is communal, but 
 there is private property in movables. In the true Village Community the 
 land is only held partly as community property. The people live in sep- 
 arate houses, and are on the verge of private property." MAINE. 
 
KING MAMMON. 199 
 
 possession. Land was communal in the gens, and per- 
 sonal property communal in the family. Distinct from 
 this subordinate idea of wealth, however, was the idea 
 of authority. Over each gens ruled a chief whose will 
 was law so long as he continued in that position ; and 
 over the family ruled its head, usually the oldest male, 
 whose will within his jurisdiction was also supreme. 
 Society among savages was normally militant, the head 
 of the family being a captain, the chief of the gens a col- 
 onel, and the great chief of the tribe a general, all being 
 officers who did not personally own the possessions 
 under their control more than the officers of a modern 
 army own its cannon and camp stores, but who were 
 authorized by the people to direct their movements in 
 war and to adjust their differences in peace. To com- 
 prehend the development of social institutions, it is often 
 necessary to remember the distinction between authority 
 and ownership. 
 
 In the family, the eldest son usually succeeded to the 
 father's position at the head on the death of the latter, 
 unless there were important reasons for altering the suc- 
 cession, just as the heir to the throne succeeds in an he- 
 reditary monarchy, which is merely the application of the 
 ancient family idea to a larger government. The old- 
 est son succeeded, not as owner of the family wealth, 
 but as leader, a position for which he was theoretically, 
 and often actually fitted by age and experience in the 
 practical duties of life. Under the universal law of the 
 gens prohibiting marriages within its limits, each son was 
 compelled to seek a wife or wives from a neighboring 
 gens, and each daughter to marry into another family 
 tribe, if she married at all. Thus the daughters went out 
 of every gens and became members of those into which 
 they married, while the sons remained within the original 
 organization and brought their wives to it. As all land 
 
200 KING MAMMON. 
 
 was communal in the gens, there arose in this way, after 
 the institution of marriage outside the gens, the necessity 
 of barring descent of wealth through females, because by 
 their removal from the gens at marriage they would 
 inevitably transfer the communal wealth from one gens 
 to another, which was contrary to the savage theory of 
 wealth possession. From this condition undoubtedly 
 arose the system of descent through males alone, which 
 succeeded the earlier tracing of descent through females, 
 and which is so entirely different from modern ideas of 
 consanguinity, tracing through both males and females. 
 Under the name of agnatic kindred, descent through 
 males formed a prominent feature in the Roman laws. 
 While that system of descent absolutely prevailed in 
 Rome, it is evident that the people had recently emerged 
 from the primitive tribal condition, and, like all other 
 human beings, they retained the custom of succession 
 long after it had lost its real significance and use. The 
 singular persistence of customs beyond the time when 
 they are actually needed, or when they serve any useful 
 purpose, is illustrated by the survival to some extent of 
 primogeniture in England long after it has been aban- 
 doned in other parts of the world. 
 
 The communal principle of the gens and family is 
 illustrated by the emancipation and inheritance of sons in 
 the Roman family. The son was freed by the power of 
 his father, but thereafter was incapable of inheriting any 
 portion of his father's possession, the inheritance being 
 confined to the unemancipated sons. Rightly considered, 
 the emancipation of a son was the budding of a new 
 family from the parent stock. The unemancipated son 
 was the soldier-slave of his father, but, nevertheless, he 
 possessed his acknowledged right to an interest in the 
 communal wealth if he remained in the family. On the 
 other hand, if he chose to give up communal family 
 
KING MAMMON. 2OI 
 
 relations, he might, on emancipation, become the head of 
 his own family, but he was forever cut off from further 
 rights in the little communal group he had abandoned. 
 
 In every country the traces of extinct social institutions 
 have survived in the systems of succession, the best 
 example being found among the Hindus, who have, in 
 a peculiarly unprogressive way, retained their early insti- 
 tutions almost unchanged. When the English people 
 took possession of Hindustan, wills were unknown among 
 its inhabitants. Since that time testaments have been 
 slowly introduced, but the faithfulness of the race to its 
 early institutions does not readily give way. The com- 
 munal property of the Hindus has already been described. 
 Their family organization is patriarchal in its nature. The 
 father is a leader, and the wives and children are his subjects, 
 apparently his slaves, but really existing in the communal 
 possession of all property. Fathers and children, or even 
 grandchildren, sometimes work together for generations, 
 holding communal property without any division. Instead 
 of initiating new families, as the Romans did by emanci- 
 pating a son, the Hindus accomplish the same thing by 
 a partition of family property whenever the needs of 
 their existence may require it, or at the demand of some 
 member either at or before the death of the father. 
 Women in the Hindu family are exclusively dependents, 
 having the right of maintenance but not of inheritance, 
 the property being divided equally among the sons, who 
 are charged with the support of the females. Notwith- 
 standing this condition of the woman, however, she has, 
 under the name of stridhdna, exclusive control of gifts 
 from her husband or near relatives, although her earnings 
 are a part of the common fund. The form of the Hindu 
 family is greatly due to the religious faith of its members, 
 which involves the worship of ancestors in a form some- 
 what more rigorous than that manifested by other conser- 
 
2O2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 vatives of this country. The futurity of every Hindu is 
 supposed to be endangered by the torments of a hell 
 called Put, from which he must secure exemption by 
 the birth of a son, who will redeem him from eternal 
 suffering, partly by the mere fact of his birth and existence, 
 partly by performing certain ceremonies after the father's 
 death. Sons are accordingly in greater demand in Hin- 
 dustan than among other people, in France for instance, 
 and when the natural succession fails, artificial sons are 
 created to fill the vacancy and perform the funeral rites. 
 To accomplish this, the fiction of making a son by adop- 
 tion is universally established, by which the son of some 
 other person, usually a relative of the man without male 
 offspring, is transferred into the latter's family, so that the 
 terrors of Put may be extinguished. The theory of adop- 
 tion is a change of paternity. It is done by the consent 
 of the real parent, and can only be effected when a man 
 is without male issue. The religious idea involved in 
 the transaction is that the Hindu owes a debt to his 
 progenitors, presumably for their having produced him, 
 which can only be extinguished by the birth of a son, 
 real or fictitious. Among the Hindus the word son 
 applies to all male descendants, and the word parent to 
 all progenitors. All the features of their social system 
 show that it is the survival, somewhat developed, of 
 tribal and family relations such as existed among the 
 American Indians, and such as appear to have been at 
 the foundation of social institutions in every part of the 
 world. 
 
 The Mohammedan laws of succession are more highly 
 developed than those of the Hindus, and in the restraints 
 they impose upon both the power of the testator and the 
 succession of the natural heir they are in advance of the 
 usual laws adopted by Christian nations ; for, on the one 
 hand, the vindictive father cannot entirely disinherit his 
 
KING MAMMON. 203 
 
 child, and, on the other, the rebellious child, devoid of 
 filial duty, cannot succeed to all of his father's property 
 regardless of the latter's wishes. The principles of this 
 law bear comparatively few traces of ancient institutions, 
 and they are founded upon the following passage from 
 the Koran : 
 
 "God hath thus commanded you concerning your 
 children. A male shall have as much as two females ; 
 but if they be females only, and above two in number, 
 they shall have two-thirds parts of what the deceased 
 shall leave ; and if there be but one, she shall have the 
 half; and the parents of the deceased shall have each of 
 them a sixth part of what he shall leave if he have a child. 
 But if he have no child, and his parents be his heirs, then 
 his mother shall have the third part ; and if he have 
 brethren, his mother shall have a sixth part, after the 
 legacies which he shall bequeath, and his debts shall be 
 paid. Ye know not whether your parents or your children 
 be of greater use to you. This is an ordinance from God, 
 and God is knowing and wise. Moreover, ye may claim 
 half of what your wives shall leave if they have no issue ; 
 but if they have issue, then ye shall have the fourth part of 
 what they shall leave, after the legacies which they shall 
 bequeath and the debts be paid ; they also shall have the 
 fourth part of what ye shall leave in case ye have no issue ; 
 but if ye have issue, then they shall have the eighth part 
 of what ye shall leave after the legacies which ye shall 
 bequeath and your debts be paid ; and if a man's or a 
 woman's substance be inherited by a distant relation, and 
 he or she have a brother or sister, each of them two shall 
 have a sixth part of the estate ; but if there be more than 
 this number, they shall all be equal sharers in a third part, 
 after payment of the legacies which shall be bequeathed, 
 and the debts without prejudice to the heirs. They will 
 consult thee for thy decision in certain cases : say unto 
 them, God giveth you these determinations concerning 
 the more remote degrees of kindred. If a man die with- 
 out issue, and have a sister, she shall have half of what he 
 shall leave, and he shall be heir to her in case she leave 
 no issue ; but if there be two sisters, they shall have be- 
 
204 KING MAMMON. 
 
 tween them two-third parts of what he shall leave ; and 
 if there be several, both brothers and sisters, a male shall 
 have as much as the portion of two females." 
 
 These teachings are not in appearance the slowly 
 transformed social customs of ancient races, but the 
 work of one of the ablest lawgivers (so far as laws; can 
 really be given) that ever existed. Enunciated at the 
 early period of Mohammed, his doctrines are a credit to 
 the intelligence of the Prophet, for, except in their prefer- 
 ence for males, they provide a tolerably just distribution 
 of property among survivors of the same family. Under 
 the Mohammedan laws based on the Prophet's teaching, 
 claims against the estate are paid in nearly the same 
 order usually approved in the United States, funeral ex- 
 penses coming first, then ordinary debts, and finally leg- 
 acies within prescribed limits. All kinds of property are 
 inherited alike. Private property exists except in the 
 limitation of making wills. When he is in health, a man 
 can give away his property to the exclusion of his natural 
 successors, if he desires to do so, but deathbed gifts are 
 not lawful beyond one-third of the clear residue of the 
 estate after payment of funeral expenses, and are not 
 binding upon lawful heirs beyond that amount. All leg- 
 acies in excess of this proportion are invalid unless con- 
 firmed by the heirs after the death. Acknowledgments of 
 debts in favor of an heir on the deathbed are void, and 
 any gift made in contemplation of death is treated as a 
 legacy, conveying one-third of the residue, but no more. 
 A man can give away all his property when in health, 
 and it is valid. If he gives it away when he is sick and 
 afterwards recovers his health, the gift is valid. But if 
 he dies in consequence of the sickness, the gift applies 
 only to the amount he is permitted to bequeath, and the 
 remainder goes to his heirs. By permission of the heirs, 
 
KING MAMMON. 2O5 
 
 legacies of any amount can be made, and when no heirs 
 exist, the whole estate can be bequeathed. 
 
 The Romans, at the time their unreliable early traditions 
 were first preserved in the form of history to be handed 
 down to men of a later era, were apparently a people who 
 had reached a development similar to that of the Aztecs 
 when Hernando Cortez interfered with the natural devel- 
 opment of that race by his invasion. These Romans 
 were slightly modified savages, having the capacity and 
 conditions necessary for rapid development, and they 
 advanced far more rapidly, it is probable, than the Aztecs 
 would have done had they remained unconquered by the 
 Spaniards. In the earliest periods of Roman history the 
 people were associated into clans or gentes, very similar 
 to those small tribal organizations of aggregated families 
 which existed under another name among the Iroquois. 
 If all the males of a modern family bearing the same 
 name and related, however distantly, could be collected 
 into one place and compelled to live near one another in 
 a communal association, with their wives and children, the 
 result would express the idea that should be entertained of 
 the gens, whether among savages now existing or among 
 the ancient people of Europe and Asia. Where these 
 pages are written there still exist remnants of the gentes 
 into which the Diggers of California were organized, each 
 having its defined territory, its elected chief, its com- 
 munal property, its ancestor worship, and its slight dif- 
 ferences in language from other gentes formed in adja- 
 cent territory. In a mere fragment of one of these family 
 tribes still remaining, the succession to the position of 
 chief is a matter of serious discussion among the few 
 remaining members, for the present leader is feeble. The 
 Diggers and the far superior Iroquois were both much 
 below the advancement reached by the ancient Romans 
 in their earlier history, so far as industrial progress is con- 
 
206 KING MAMMON. 
 
 cerned ; but in governmental conceptions, the Roman 
 gens was identically the same social organization that 
 existed among the Indians. 
 
 In all the early history of the Romans, no such thing 
 as a will was known, and the small amount of wealth 
 accumulated by the barbarians was communal in their 
 tribes and families, progressing downward from genera- 
 tion to generation, within the gens primarily, as one or- 
 ganization, and within the family secondarily, as an- 
 other. The head of the family was its leader, and its 
 women and children were slaves. Infanticide was com- 
 mon when children were not desired, and women were 
 beaten and otherwise abused worse than domestic ani- 
 mals are in the present age. But little wealth existed, 
 and individual or distinct rights of property, except per- 
 haps in trifling articles of personal contrivance, were not 
 recognized. Every member of the gens was supposed 
 to divide his possessions with any other member if the 
 latter needed the gift. Between these little tribes war 
 often existed, and the fraternal feeling usually exhibited 
 in the family tribe was in sharp contrast with the treach- 
 erous, vindictive, bloodthirsty spirit displayed toward 
 strangers. Man's feelings in that age were expressed 
 in a tiger's protection of its whelps, and a tiger's destruc- 
 tive instincts toward everything not possessing its own 
 blood. 
 
 Under such a system, the family possession of land 
 and other wealth continued indefinitely, and new mem- 
 bers merely took their natural places, or if there were 
 divisions, the principle of equal rights among male off- 
 spring, or males in the order of consanguinity, was rec- 
 ognized. 
 
 The first wills introduced in Rome were merely the 
 transfers to successors of positions involving powers and 
 duties without regard to wealth, for the idea of property 
 
KING MAMMON. 2O? 
 
 was scarcely recognized in the transaction. The family 
 was a little government, and the head of the family was 
 its king, controlling all his descendants, old and young, 
 and thus superintending the management of the com- 
 munal possessions. In every monarchy the succession 
 to the throne is a great question that agitates the minds 
 of the people when the established line fails ; and so, in 
 the little monarchy of the ancient family, nearly the 
 same the world over, the leader who reached old age 
 without male issue must provide a successor in that case 
 or in any other when the regular succession became in- 
 advisable or impossible. Out of such circumstances 
 arose the first wills, which were made in early Rome 
 only when no heirs existed. These wills were executed 
 and the succession passed with great solemnity before 
 the death of the testator, probably in many cases before 
 he was even dangerously ill. They were also irrevoc- 
 able, and the entire transaction was apparently the abdi- 
 cation of a little family monarch in favor of a particular 
 successor, by and with the consent of the people he gov- 
 erned. At first the idea of property was scarcely con- 
 nected with the Roman testament, but in the final civil- 
 ization of that people the will became secret and revoc- 
 able, assuming the modern form of giving wealth at the 
 death of the testator. 
 
 The early principle of appointing a successor was con- 
 tinued in the Roman laws long after the idea of power 
 had lessened by civilization and the idea of property had 
 increased, for the later laws always recognized the doc- 
 trine that the heir was a successor under the theory an- 
 nounced in the saying that ( ' the king never dies. " Under 
 the Roman law the person who became the dead 
 man's heir, was in a legal sense the dead man -brought to 
 life for another existence. The heir was a " universal 
 successor," and, if he accepted the position, was com- 
 
208 KING MAMMON. 
 
 pelled to pay all the lawful debts against the estate, even 
 if they amounted to more than its value. After consider- 
 able wealth developed among the Romans, with its in- 
 variable accompaniment of private ownership, and when 
 wills became firmly established as a means of disposing 
 of that wealth by gifts at the death of the owner, the heir 
 seems to have been what our modern laws term an exe- 
 cutor, who, under the Roman methods, received as his 
 compensation for settling the estate, the somewhat un 
 certain value of whatever might be left after he paid the 
 debts and distributed the bequests, instead of receiving 
 his compensation in the form of a fee, according to the 
 modern system. As wealth accumulated under the 
 Roman civilization, the original nature of the will as a 
 mere transfer of leadership was transformed gradually 
 into a method of giving away wealth at death, and in 
 its final development among that people, the privilege of 
 making wills became very similar to our modern system 
 of legacies, the Roman law furnishing the basis for 
 modern statutes. Deathbed gifts in Rome were, how- 
 ever, finally limited to three-fourths of the estate, be- 
 cause the decedent who made too many and too liberal 
 bequests might not be able to secure the heir-executor or 
 "universal successor" to distribute the property, for 
 under the compulsory payment of debts regardless of the 
 amount inherited, the heir's position was frequently 
 not desirable, and bequests were invalid unless a succes- 
 sor to the dead man would take the property, pay the 
 debts, and execute the bequests. 
 
 The remants of the ancient savage organization of the 
 family tribe clung to the laws of Rome far into its civili- 
 zation, for the emancipated son, originally cut off justly 
 from participation in a communal family, because by 
 emancipation he himself was made capable of becoming 
 the head of another family, was, long after the develop- 
 
KING MAMMON. 209 
 
 ment of private property, still deprived of all inheritance, 
 notwithstanding the reason and the justice of the disin- 
 heritance had passed away with the decline of communal 
 property and the development of wealth. Finally, the 
 inconsistency was obliterated by a change in the laws 
 making emancipated sons capable of inheritance. 
 
 The principles of inheritance among the Romans were 
 those usually derived from the structure and theory of the 
 ancient family and the gens of associated families. So far 
 as wealth was concerned, in all cases before wills were 
 developed, and in cases of intestacy afterwards, the wealth 
 held exclusively in the family under the direction of its leader 
 went, first, to the direct male descendants not emancipated ; 
 second, to the nearest agnatic kindred, or relatives de- 
 scended with the deceased exclusively through males from 
 a common ancestor ; third, to the gentiles, or members of 
 the little family tribe in which all bore the same surname, 
 the principles being based upon the ideas that property is 
 at first communal in the family and then communal in the 
 aggregation of families constituting the gens, with the 
 additional idea that when daughters marry they are cutoff 
 completely from the original family to become a portion of 
 another family and of another gens, so that no inheritance 
 can pass into another family tribe through the blood of 
 females. During their barbarous condition, the line of de- 
 scent among the Romans was through males exclusively, 
 females being dependents ; but in their final civilization 
 the rule of inheritance made no distinctions in age or sex 
 among descendants and eventually included emancipated 
 sons among heirs, thus showing the decay of early institu- 
 tions. The principle of primogeniture as applied to prop- 
 erty in the period succeeding the Middle Ages formed no 
 part of the Roman idea of succession to wealth. 
 
 In their earliest history the Greeks of the Homeric period 
 appear in a nearly savage condition and were associated 
 14 
 
210 KING MAMMON. 
 
 into little tribes of bloodthirsty marauders, 1 remarkably 
 like the gentes under which the Iroquois were organized, 
 and having the same characteristics of common property, 
 external marriage, and a common name based either upon 
 an actual or an assumed descent from a common ancestor. 
 The little states of ancient Greece undoubtedly arose from 
 the consolidation of neighboring clans, as the Aztec 
 government was formed by the union of distinct tribes. 
 The tribes of the Iroquois were ready to develop into a 
 similar condition when the discovery and colonization of 
 America stopped their further progress. 
 
 In early Athenian history, the descent of property to males 
 exclusively was a cardinal principle, the direct descend- 
 ants being the preferred successors, and the women 
 held as dependents. The succession went to males even 
 if the women who survived were more closely related to 
 the dying man. The perpetuation of the family in name 
 and power was at the basis of their laws, and, as among 
 the Romans, the adoption of sons, where a natural heir 
 did not exist, was not only a privilege, but a duty. As 
 among the Hindus of to-day, this ceremony virtually 
 engrafted a scion of another stock into the broken family 
 tree that it might continue to bud and bear fruit. The abso- 
 lute dependency of the Grecian women is illustrated by 
 the fact that when a husband die'd, his widow had the 
 option of returning to her former guardian or of remaining 
 with her children, but in neither case could she retain 
 control of any family wealth. Still the females were pro- 
 
 1 Describing ancient society, Sir Henry Maine says : " The scene 
 before us is that which the animal world presents to the mental eye of 
 those who have the courage to bring home to themselves the facts 
 answering to the memorable theory of natural selection. Each fierce 
 little community is perpetually at war with its neighbors, tribe with 
 tribe, village with village. The never ceasing attacks of the strong upon 
 the weak end in the manner expressed by the monotonous formula 
 which so often recurs in the pages of Thucydides, ' they put the men to 
 the sword, and the women they sold unto slavery.' " 
 
KING MAMMON. 211 
 
 tected and had the right of maintenance, for when the 
 succession went to the male heirs according to the an- 
 cient rules, the females otherwise unprovided for were em- 
 powered to demand marriage of their nearest male relative 
 or to compel him to settle upon them a dowry proportioned 
 to his means. When bequests were introduced in the time 
 of Solon, who probably only formulated in the law a cus- 
 tom already established, the power of bequeathing could be 
 used only when the testator had no male heirs, and even 
 then it was valid only when the legatee was forced to marry 
 one or more of the female descendants. The principle 
 involved, like that embodied in the early Roman will, was 
 the idea of providing a successor in the leadership of 
 family government. The nature of Grecian ideas of inher- 
 itance can be observed in the present laws of the Hindus, 
 which have been preserved among that strange people, 
 almost stationary in their civilization, from a remote an- 
 tiquity. The succession in both instances is merely the 
 progress of the communal family, growing at one end 
 while it perishes at the other, and maintained, if possible, 
 by the fiction of adopting sons when the natural succes- 
 sion fails. 
 
 Among the Hindus, whose village communities, or 
 agricultural gentes, have already been described, the an- 
 cient principles of inheritance still survive. The sons 
 succeed equally to the possession of the family wealth on 
 the death of the father, the eldest obtaining a few heir- 
 looms in honor of his position as head of the family, and 
 the women are treated as dependents having the right of 
 maintenance. The theory of Hindu wealth being that 
 of a family possession in which all members of the family 
 have by the mere fact of existence a communal right, 
 with the additional right of partition and separation under 
 certain circumstances, it will be at once seen that under 
 such principles modern wills are an impossibility. When 
 
212 KING MAMMON. 
 
 natural successors are lacking, the Hindu supplies the 
 deficiency by adopting a son instead of naming an heir in 
 a will ; and this act, performed with great ceremony, does 
 identically the same thing originally accomplished in 
 Greece and Rome during the lifetime of the testator with 
 equal ceremony by means of the ancient will. The Hin- 
 dus never had wills, because their form of adoption suf- 
 ficed to provide new family members when the natural 
 line of descent failed ; and for some reason, perhaps the 
 enervating effect of a warm climate, they have retained 
 their ancient religion, with its reverential worship of the 
 ancestor, and have never developed into the greedy, 
 bustling accumulation of wealth under private ownership 
 characteristic of western civilization. 
 
 In China the laws and customs of inheritance are very 
 similar to those of the Hindus, involving the worship of 
 ancestors as a duty devolving upon the eldest son on the 
 death of his father. The family organization extends to 
 members of all ages, the males having control of the 
 property and the females being dependents, although the 
 mother is revered, and practically is given much control 
 of the family possessions. The partition of family wealth 
 is often made during the life of the father. When no divi- 
 sion occurs till his death, the partition, if made at that time, 
 gives to the eldest son the leadership of the family, the obli- 
 gation of worshiping at the ancestral tablets, and the duty 
 of providing for his surviving mother. In compensation 
 he receives certain heirlooms and also twice the portion 
 of wealth allotted to each of his brothers. Unmarried 
 daughters have the right of dowry on marriage. When the 
 family property is small it is often held in common for sev- 
 eral generations. Adoptions occur as among the Hindus, 
 and there exists the same dread of dying without a son to 
 burn incense and perform other ceremonies for the father's 
 welfare in the next world. The primitive organization of 
 
KING MAMMON. 213 
 
 families in the gens is still to be observed in China, and the 
 nature of inheritance is in accordance with those early in- 
 stitutions. Their land is still held under the public own- 
 ership characteristic of the tribal organization, and public 
 rents or taxes are collected for its use without the existence 
 of any absolute private ownership. 
 
 The Bible, in its early history of the Hebrew race, 
 furnishes interesting indications, although no connected 
 history, of similar principles of succession among the 
 families of a gens. The eldest son among the ancient 
 Jews had a double portion, corresponding to the present 
 custom among the Chinese, and it is probable that this 
 favor and his succession as head of the family constituted 
 the birthright mentioned in Genesis. The story of Zelo- 
 phehad's daughters * furnishes, however, the clearest indi- 
 cation of social developments of that day among the 
 Jews. Zelophehad died, leaving five daughters but no 
 sons. The daughters came before Moses as the chieftain 
 of the federated tribes, petitioning that they should re- 
 ceive a " possession among the brethren of their father/' 
 The lawgiver thereupon directed that the daughters 
 should receive this possession, and established a plan of 
 inheritance passing the wealth of decedents, first to sons, 
 second to daughters, third to brothers, fourth to uncles, 
 fifth to the nearest kinsman beyond these degrees. There 
 was more trouble, however, over these ancient probate 
 proceedings, for the leaders of the gens to which the 
 daughters belonged, afterwards came to Moses and com- 
 plained that if the inheritance descended to the daughters 
 it would pass to another tribe when they married, which 
 was evidently, from their remarks, contrary to Hebrew 
 custom and all previous ethics, as it disturbed and made 
 inequitable the allotment of tribal possessions. Moses, 
 accordingly, to avoid these difficulties, decreed that the 
 
 1 Numbers, chapters xxvii. and xxxvi. 
 
214 KING MAMMON. 
 
 daughters of Zelophehad, and all other daughters receiv- 
 ing an inheritance thereafter, should marry within the 
 tribe of which they were members, instead of following 
 the usual custom of marrying into another family group. 
 The five sisters, following these directions, then married 
 their cousins, and the new era in the Hebrew law of 
 inheritance was established. The story indicates the 
 existence of family clans, each with communal property, 
 descent and leadership in the male line, dependency of 
 women and obligation to marry outside the clan. The 
 decree of Moses was a step forward, changing the primi- 
 tive rule to another in favor of woman's rights. Had the 
 lawgiver been a conservative, he would have rebuked 
 the daughters of Zelophehad when they made their re- 
 quest, and would have given the property to the male 
 collaterals in accordance with the good old laws of every 
 race of barbarians whose records have been investigated. 
 The only surprising circumstances connected with the 
 change thus recorded is that the people of the aggregated 
 tribes omitted to denounce Moses as an anarchist, an in- 
 convenience which he escaped owing, probably, to the 
 general impression that the new social doctrines emanated 
 from the Lord. 
 
 The history of ancient Egypt, deciphered from the pic- 
 ture-writing of that people, l reveals the same indications 
 of early conditions, the children of these ancient families 
 being regarded as partners in the family possessions from 
 the instant of their birth. The eldest son, or in some 
 instances the eldest daughter, for the condition of women 
 in ancient Egypt seems to have been unusually favorable, 
 ordinarily succeeded the father as head of the house, but 
 wealth was held by the leader in trust .for the entire 
 family, and the preference extended to the eldest was 
 merely as leader and not as owner. The wealth of the 
 1 See " Primitive Civilization " by E. J. Simcox. 
 
KING MAMMON. 215 
 
 family formed a common fund for the equal advantage ot 
 all members, and the mother of the family was accorded 
 an unusual power in directing the use and expenditure of 
 the family possessions. The early system of the Egyp- 
 tians was very similar to present customs among the 
 Hindus, but later in their civilization wills were intro- 
 duced and executed with the solemnity usually attached 
 by the ancients to such transfers, six witnesses being re- 
 quired to attest them. The little that is known of the 
 ancient institutions of Chaldea and Assyria indicates that 
 the social customs of these nations and their ideas of pro- 
 perty and succession were nearly identical with those of 
 the Egyptians. The two most noteworthy characteristics 
 of the latter people in this respect were the practice of 
 marrying sisters, which was very common, and many in- 
 dications in their records that they had traced descent in 
 the female line. The early customs of a savage existence 
 must have descended far into their civilization, there 
 forming some of the strangest anomalies discoverable in 
 history. 
 
 The development of successions in antiquity having 
 thus been traced, some consideration is due to the long 
 period succeeding the downfall of ancient civilization, 
 which is termed the Middle Ages. In the later stages of 
 this period applied to European history, primogeniture is 
 the feature which characterizes the descent of property 
 under the feudal system, and the practice of entailing 
 estates is another peculiarity unknown in its extreme 
 features alike to the ancient and to the modern civiliza- 
 tion. The student of social progress will have little 
 doubt that both these customs formulated into laws were 
 gradual transformations of the ancient idea of family and 
 tribal government, but the exact nature of that transfor- 
 mation has been the subject of much discussion. By the 
 principle of primogeniture the eldest son succeeds to all 
 
2l6 KING MAMMON. 
 
 land at the death of the father, the other children inherit- 
 ing merely their shares of personal property. Under the 
 ancient system all sons were supposed to have an equal 
 right in the family wealth, and all members of the gens 
 an equal right in the tribal possession of land. At first 
 there appears no connection between these principles of 
 the ancient family and primogeniture, the latter appear- 
 ing radically and strangely different, but the transition 
 may be indicated. 
 
 In all ancient history and in all the customs of savage 
 tribes, leadership, when hereditary, as it invariably was 
 in the family, went first to the eldest son. In the exist- 
 ence of savages and barbarians, where the normal con- 
 dition is war, leadership is everything and property noth- 
 ing. In our modern industrial civilization, leadership is 
 nothing and property everything in the normal condition 
 of peace. Hence we fail to comprehend the spirit of the 
 past on account of our associations in the present. When 
 the roving barbarians whose descendants now inhabit 
 western Europe swept over that territory, conquering the 
 earlier inhabitants and subjecting them to feudal rule, it 
 is evident that they were aggregations of tribes very 
 similar to those formed among the Iroquois, who had 
 perfected governmental relations to the extent of forming 
 a confederacy of large tribes, each composed of numerous 
 smaller organizations. These European barbarians had 
 advanced beyond the Iroquois in the arts, but their govern- 
 ment was still similar, for the researches in early German 
 history indicate a condition like what has already been 
 described as existing in Greece and Rome. During their 
 period of migration, it is to be remembered that they 
 were constantly marching and fighting. Even after they 
 had settled upon the conquered lands and apportioned 
 them among the little tribes or gentes and the greater 
 tribes forming their organization, the constant warfare 
 
KING MAMMON. 2 1/ 
 
 was still maintained, and the traditional emblem of the 
 feudal ages to this day is a warrior cased in iron armor 
 and strutting to battle with sword in hand. 
 
 In such a condition of society, leadership and organiza- 
 tion become so prominent as to subordinate everything 
 else, including wealth. We have only to imagine an in- 
 vasion or a civil war in the United States, to realize what 
 a vast change the militant spirit and the necessity of fight- 
 ing effects. To conquer the invaded territory it was 
 necessary for the feudal tribes to organize and unite under 
 a military system that would enable them to join forces 
 against their enemies. Out of this necessity must have 
 developed the feudal system under which every man 
 except the chief of the aggregated tribes had a superior, 
 and every man except the merely subordinate members 
 of the family unit in this aggregation had inferiors. The 
 nature of the feudal organization was identical with that 
 of a modern army, and it was organized for the same 
 purpose. There were a chief and sub-chiefs like the gen- 
 eral and his colonels, with duties that the inferior must 
 perform at the command of the superior, and the duty of 
 protection on the part of the chief to those under him. 
 If we can imagine the tribes of the Iroquois in North 
 America organizing and marching southward to conquer 
 the Aztecs or to dispossess other Indian nations, the 
 necessities of such a movement would inevitably lead to 
 a feudal system. 
 
 The wealth of the feudal system still remained com- 
 munal ; but to maintain their military organization it was 
 necessary that the superior should direct the selection of 
 his subordinates, to secure prompt obedience as in the 
 modern army. Accordingly, in the distribution of the 
 conquered lands, the chief whether styled count, mar- 
 quis, or duke at the head of a confederacy was em- 
 powered to allot feudal land tenures among his subordin- 
 
2l8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ates, representing in his own powers the entire people, 
 and requiring duties from the subordinate officers, who 
 represented in a similar way the people of their own 
 smaller tribes as a colonel represents a regiment. The 
 supreme leader was not regarded as the owner of the 
 territory occupied by the confederacy, however, any 
 more than the queen of England is now really believed 
 to be the actual owner of English lands ; but in his posi- 
 tion as leader he represented the rights of the entire 
 people. 
 
 Accordingly the lands were distributed to the tribal 
 chiefs as representatives of their clans, and at first they 
 held at the pleasure of the superior and were required to 
 perform military duty at his command. This was all 
 that was ever contemplated by the organizers of the feudal 
 system, but the descendants of the early barbarians found 
 changed conditions, and the feudal system changed with 
 them. Later on the feudal tenures were held for life, and 
 the family principle of the eldest son's succession as fam- 
 ily leader was applied to the command of the tribe, from 
 which it has been extended to descent in all the royal 
 families of Europe. As the condition of Ishmaelitish war 
 gave way to the arts of peace and the development of 
 wealth, the condition which caused the development 
 of the feudal system led to another which caused its 
 decay. Feudalism was made by war and rapine ; it was 
 unmade by peace and industry. Instead of military 
 duties, therefore, the subordinate chieftain, when war 
 partially ceased, was required to pay to his superior a 
 part of the produce of the land occupied by his clan, or a 
 sum of money as rent for its use. No less than eighty 
 different forms of feudal rents have been enumerated, 
 from a merely nominal value to one nearly equal to that 
 of the land itself. This change in the nature of the ser- 
 vices rendered for feudal tenures was coincident with a 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 change going on among the people. They were aban- 
 doning constant warfare for the arts of peace. Their 
 castles on the crags were gradually deserted that more 
 convenient locations for industrial pursuits might be oc- 
 cupied. Murder and rapine, as the most honorable pur- 
 suits in which gentlemen could engage, according to the 
 feudal code of ethics, gradually seemed a trifle less hon- 
 orable in their estimation. Frequent association between 
 adjacent clans slowly removed that brutal spirit univer- 
 sally characteristic of undeveloped human beings, which 
 leads man to hate every idea different from his own 
 notions, and detest every other human being not like 
 him, or not of his own contemptibly insignificant little 
 political and religious clan. 
 
 In a word, the people ceased fighting to some extent 
 and went to work. Out of this work arose wealth, and 
 out of the wealth cam the changed nature of their feudal 
 leaders. In war they were generals. In peace they 
 became owners. The whole social system was in a state 
 of rapid transition when the industrial arts were ex- 
 changed for the arts of war, and private rights to wealth 
 were slowly substituted, by divisions within the families 
 and the clans, for the earlier communal system. When, 
 therefore, the idea of communal property was being 
 abandoned everywhere, it is not strange that the com- 
 munal ownership by the whole people in a district gov- 
 erned by a chief should be gradually transformed into an 
 ownership by the chief personally and absolutely. When 
 comparative peace superseded constant war, leadership 
 became nothing and ownership everything ; hence we 
 find the man who entered the feudal system at its be- 
 ginning as an officer in command, coming out of it in the 
 form of his descendant at the close with the rights of an 
 owner. In the transition from common to private 
 ownership every man acquired a private right in what he 
 
220 KING MAMMON. 
 
 controlled, and the feudal leaders were no exceptions to 
 the general rule. 
 
 During this transition the right of the feudal proprietor, 
 at first held at the pleasure of his superior and afterwards 
 for life, became eventually hereditary. From rendering 
 merely military service at first, he finally paid rent. As 
 the desire for leadership gave way to the universal desire 
 for property, he was invested with a right of naming a 
 successor in the ownership of wealth, the privilege being 
 gradually extended till at the present time in England, 
 where the change from the feudal system has been most 
 gradual, the power of making bequests is unrestricted. 
 
 Out of the feudal system developed the theory and 
 practice of entail, which under the modern conception of 
 human rights appears one of the strangest customs that 
 ever existed. Theoretically, under its power the man in 
 control of a tract of land could originally establish its 
 continued possession in the hands of his natural succes- 
 sors in any line of descent, usually bestowing it on the 
 eldest sons of the family, thus securing a control of it 
 over unborn generations to perpetuity. The successive 
 descendants had the right of occupancy and use, but 
 were merely tenants and could neither sell the land, mort- 
 gage it, nor give it away, nor at death do anything but 
 abandon it and allow the next successor to take his place. 
 Regarded as wealth, the land under this entail remained 
 the property of the dead man, and his descendants in 
 the established line were tenants for life, no other peo- 
 ple on the face of the earth having any rights whatever 
 in its use. 
 
 Entail arose out of the military relations between sup- 
 perior and subordinate in the feudal system. The suc- 
 cession to the possession of a feud became a very impor- 
 tant matter for determination under that system, and tem- 
 porary appointments by the superior soon became changed 
 
KING MAMMON. 221 
 
 by collusion between superior and inferior into the 
 principle that the direct line of eldest males should suc- 
 ceed to the powers. By grants from the superior power, 
 theoretically representing the community, the right of 
 succession devolved on an established line of heirs. 
 Originally this was intended to confer merely the position 
 of leader, but by the transition from communal to private 
 rights, the privilege of succession thus engrafted upon the 
 community became the absolute control of wealth. Apply- 
 ing to wealth a custom that had been applied originally 
 to mere military organization, the possessors of landed 
 estates who emerged from the feudal system proceeded 
 to send them down to succeeding generations bound un- 
 der one of the most absurd methods that human ingenuity 
 ever contrived. The result of entails is described in the 
 following extract from Lord Bacon, which appears also 
 in Blackstone's '' Commentaries : " 
 
 "Children grew disobedient when they knew they could 
 not be set aside ; farmers were ousted of their leases made 
 by tenants in tail, for, if such leases had been valid, 
 then under color of long leases the issue might have been 
 virtually disinherited ; creditors were defrauded of their 
 debts, for, if a tenant in tail could have charged his estate 
 with their payment, he might also have defeated his issue 
 by mortgaging it for as much as it is worth : innumerable 
 latent entails were produced to deprive purchasers of the 
 lands they had fairly bought ; of suits in consequence of 
 which our ancient books are full ; and treasons were en- 
 couraged, as estates tail were not liable to forfeiture 
 longer than for the tenant's life. So that they were justly 
 branded as the source of new contentions, and mischiefs 
 unknown to common law ; and almost universally con- 
 sidered as the common grievance of the realm. But as 
 the nobility were always fond of this statute, because it 
 preserved their family estates from forfeiture, there was 
 little hope of procuring a repeal by the legislature, and, 
 therefore, by the contrivance of an active and politic prince 
 a method was devised to evade it." 
 
222 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Entail by will of the decedent, as it existed for many 
 years succeeding the feudal system, was the trans- 
 fer of a right, originally supposed to belong to the com- 
 munity, to an individual, by which he was enabled to 
 dictate from another world the disposition of the estate he 
 once occupied on earth. The injustice of thus restrain- 
 ing the natural rights of the living by the arbitrary decrees 
 of the dead, led to so much trouble and produced so much 
 palpable unfairness to all affected by the condition of the 
 entailed estate, that the severity of the principle is now 
 modified to such an extent, even in conservative England, 
 that a decedent cannot generally tie an estate with such 
 restrictions for a longer period than the lives of persons 
 in existence at his death and for twenty-one years there- 
 after, which is surely still too great a power if we con- 
 cede that a man ought to be willing to loosen his hold on 
 this world and let other people regulate its affairs when 
 he can no longer live in it. Entail once existed in nearly 
 all parts of Europe, but its last traces survive in English 
 laws. 
 
 France abolished entail by the Code Napoleon, substitu- 
 ting a species of entail by the state, which distributes 
 nearly all landed estates equally among the children, re- 
 gardless of wills, and has thus subdivided the lands of that 
 nation into absurdly small tracts. Spain rid herself of 
 the incubus by an act of the Cortez. Entail was acknowl- 
 edged in the early settlement of the United States, but 
 gave way under the attacks of men like Jefferson, along 
 with much other tyranny, before the advancing thought of 
 our early national existence. Primogeniture, as a fossilized 
 specimen of antiquity, still clings to the English laws in 
 a provision for the succession of the eldest son to land 
 when the decedent fails to make a will. There is no 
 longer any reason for its existence except the absurd con- 
 servatism of the English people. In the United States 
 
KING MAMMON. 223 
 
 primogeniture has been abolished in all parts of the 
 country. The English system of inheritance, which now 
 applies only to cases of intestacy, is merely a survival of 
 the ancient family idea of succession to leadership among 
 savages, giving preference to males and preference to age 
 among direct descendants. 
 
 At one time, under its rules, the ancestor never could 
 inherit by any possibility from his descendant, but the 
 law has been changed so that now parents are not ex- 
 cluded by collaterals. Side by side with this relic of an- 
 cient succession to power, exists a survival of the real an- 
 cient succession to wealth in the custom of gavelkind, by 
 which, in a limited district, the old tribal custom, unaffected 
 by military organization, has descended to the present in 
 the form of an absolutely equal division of wealth among 
 sons. The most prominent features of the feudal system 
 of succession comprised in primogeniture and entail have 
 disappeared from Europe only in recent years, Scotland 
 abandoning them since 1847, when half the land of that 
 country was entailed, Portugal abolishing an inalienable 
 right of primogeniture for three generations in 1863, and 
 Sweden and Denmark rescinding such laws in 1869. Some 
 traces of the' custom still cling to Germany, but they are 
 disappearing. 
 
 It will be seen from this review of successions, that in all 
 parts of the world, so far as the record is ascertainable, 
 the development has been nearly the same. Social organ- 
 ization from the chaos of a brutally savage existence first 
 appeared in the form of a family group in which the sex- 
 ual relations were not restricted by modern ideas of mar- 
 riage, conjugal fidelity, and consanguinity. In that con- 
 dition every human being has, theoretically, one mother 
 and many fathers. Every woman has many husbands, 
 and every man many wives. All the tribal people of 
 approximately the same age are brothers and sisters, and, 
 
224 KING MAMMON. 
 
 relationship with the father being indeterminate, descent 
 is in the female line. 
 
 The organization of the gens or family tribe is afterwards 
 effected with the requirement of external marriage, and 
 as all females thus leave the tribe in which they are born, 
 descent is traced exclusively through males, although 
 under such relations of the sexes paternity is necessarily 
 a fiction. In all these early transitions, but little wealth 
 existed, except in the possession of land and the use of its 
 natural products. The succession to personal effects was 
 equally in the family, and the possession of land was always 
 equally in the little tribe of connected families. Families 
 and clans multiplied and were aggregated into confeder- 
 acies, which formed the basis of the nations that have 
 since developed from them. 
 
 Wealth in early society was extremely limited and in- 
 variably communal. No such thing as a private and ex- 
 clusive right of possession and transfer at death existed. 
 Wills were first used to provide an artificial succession to 
 the office of leader when the natural succession failed, and 
 were executed before the death of the testator, whose act 
 was essentially the abdication of his throne. l The produc- 
 tion of wealth due to the industrial arts and the cessation of 
 war transformed society by lessening the importance of 
 the mere leader and exaggerating the powers of the owner. 
 Under the development of wealth and private ownership, 
 leaders were gradually transformed into owners, and the 
 
 1 Wills were at first oral, as were also gifts of lands, and were only 
 morally binding on the survivors. Origen and other fathers of the early 
 Church credited Noah with having made a will, and in the fourth cen- 
 tury the Bishop of Brescia declared all those heretical who denied 
 Noah's division of the world to his three sons by will. The oldest 
 known wills are those of Egypt. Both oral and written wills not infre- 
 quently contained imprecations on those who should neglect them. 
 
 The earliest written will in existence is that of Sennacherib, which 
 was found in the royal library of Koyunjik. Westminister Review. 
 
KING MAMMON. 225 
 
 will, from a method of succeeding to a position implying 
 powers and duties without ownership, became transformed 
 into its modern form of a gift conveying wealth and ex- 
 ecuted after the death of the testator. Private ownership 
 has in modern civilization superseded the ancient com- 
 munism of the clan, and the old doctrine of an absolutely 
 equal succession of male heirs, holding the women as de- 
 pendents, has given way to the modern idea of permitting 
 the testator to distribute his wealth at his own pleasure 
 when he dies, although the privilege is restricted to some 
 extent in nearly every part of the world, notably under 
 the Mohammedan law and the Code Napoleon, which 
 affects the laws of the State of Louisiana in this country. 
 
 The existence of primogeniture applied to wealth was 
 a variation from the regular development in successions, 
 and arose first out of the military organization of the 
 clans for conquest, which exaggerated the power of 
 leaders, and afterwards out of the development of wealth 
 and private ownership, which left those leaders, when the 
 feudal system decayed, in absolute possession of the lands 
 which they had originally merely governed as the repre- 
 sentatives of their people, and which they transmitted as 
 wealth in succeeding years under the ancient theory of 
 leader-succession. The condition of Mexico and the 
 South American countries, in which there exists a prepon- 
 derating element of the native Indian races, furnishes in 
 the present a tolerably correct picture of the feudal sys- 
 tem after military service gave way to the payments of 
 fees. It is true that in material improvements these so- 
 cieties are vastly in advance of the feudatories of Europe. 
 The people have Winchester rifles and Catling guns in- 
 stead of swords and armor, but except in these mere 
 accessories their social life and government are of the mid- 
 dle ages. The latter is a military despotism, democratic 
 only in form, and characterized by all the violence, the 
 15 
 
226 KING MAMMON. 
 
 tyranny, the cruelty, the instability, the dishonesty, and 
 the constant warfare that were striking features of Europ- 
 ean life in its barbaric period. In spite of governmental 
 forms, the government officials of these countries are 
 generals and the common people are serfs, a condition 
 which merely illustrates the truth that it requires a good 
 people to make a good government, and that men must 
 be civilized before their institutions. 
 
 The history of successions since the development of 
 private ownership, has been a constant struggle between 
 the supposed rights of the children or other heirs to suc- 
 ceed absolutely to the wealth of the ancestor, and the 
 asserted right of the owner to control the same wealth up 
 to the last moment of his existence and to distribute it 
 among successors named by himself to take possession 
 after his death. On the one hand, the right of inherit- 
 ance is urged ; on the other, the right of making bequests. 
 At the present time, the dead man is king^but there are 
 many social signs that a more rational and equitable 
 system of succession than any that has prevailed since 
 the existence of private ownership will now develop. 
 The exact line of future progress cannot easily be indi- 
 cated, but it seems probable that in many countries the 
 development of future successions will be through a 
 co'nstantly increasing taxation of inheritances and be- 
 quests, till eventually the principle of control by the 
 whole people and not by either the decedent or his des- 
 cendants will be recognized in some form similar to the 
 plans advocated in these pages. 1 One thing is certain : 
 
 1 The French Chamber of Deputies, after four weeks' debate, recently 
 adopted an inheritance tax bill. In some cases it takes 20 per cent of 
 an inheritance. This is only in cases where the inheritance is a gift. 
 Lineal descendants get their estates by paying from i# to 4 per cent 
 of the amount inherited. The lowest rate is on estates of $2,000 or 
 less. When a husband inherits from his wife, or a wife from her hus- 
 band, the tax is 9 per cent on fortunes of more than $400,000, with re- 
 duced rates for small estates. If a brother inherits from a sister, or a 
 
KING MAMMON. 22? 
 
 neither the principle of successions nor any other human 
 institution has reached its final development. There 
 will be further changes to make our laws conform more 
 perfectly with the altered condition of society, and we 
 have only to determine what those changes shall be. 
 The things we consider right to-day, we denounce as 
 wrongs to-morrow, and all laws and other social insti- 
 tutions must conform to our progressive morality. Those 
 who would hopefully regard the future can do no better 
 than to consider the words of a recent writer^ whose pa- 
 tient scientific investigation of early laws and customs 
 sheds much light upon the real nature and progress of 
 society : 
 
 " Since the advent of civilization the outgrowth of prop- 
 erty has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its 
 uses so expanding, and its management so intelligent 
 in the interests of its owners, that it has become on the 
 part of the people an unmanageable power. The human 
 mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own crea- 
 tion. The time will come, nevertheless, when human 
 intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and 
 define the relations of the state to the property it protects 
 as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of 
 owners. The interests of society are paramount to in- 
 dividual interests, and the two must be brought into just 
 and harmonious relations. A mere property career is 
 not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the 
 law of the future as it has been of the past. The time 
 which has passed away since civilization began is but a 
 fragment of the past duration of man's existence, and 
 but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution 
 of society bids fair to become the termination of a career 
 of which property is the end and aim ; because such a 
 
 sister from a brother, the state claims 14 per cent. An uncle or a 
 nephew has to pay 16 per cent. Very distant relatives, strangers, ec- 
 clesiastical or charitable institutions are required to part with 20 per cent. 
 3~"The power of free testamentary disposition implies the latitude 
 ever given in the history of the world to the volition or caprice of the 
 individual." HENRY SUMNER MAINE. 
 
 (7 
 
228 KING MAMMON. 
 
 career contains the elements of self-destruction. Demo- 
 cracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in 
 rights and privileges, and universal education, fore- 
 shadow the next higher plane of society to which expe- 
 rience, intelligence, and knowledge are steadily tending. " 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 KING MAMMON'S NIGHTMARE. 
 
 Socialism, communism, and anarchism are rife throughout Europe. 
 It may be that a universal and inevitable change of the social frame is at 
 hand. But that only enhances the gravity of the crisis in England, and 
 makes it more necessary, if possible, to have wisdom, not the reckless ma- 
 lignity of factions or revolutionary fanaticism at the helm. 
 
 GOLDWIN SMITH. 
 
 The struggle between Socialism and our Government reminds me of the 
 fable of the Goblin and the Peasant. A Peasant had in his hiit a Goblin 
 who did him no harm, and did him even much good ; but he hated him 
 and wanted to drive him out or destroy him. He chased him, he hit at 
 him, biit instead of breaking the GoblhCs skttll, he broke his own furniture. 
 At last, in his blind fury, the Peasant set fire to his house, in the hope to 
 burn and so surely to kill his enemy. The hut became a heap of ashes, and 
 when he left it in his cart, chuckling at the thought of having at last got 
 rid of his enemy, he discovered the Goblin sitting behind him and laughing 
 in his sleeves, quite happy and quite comfortable. W.LlEBKNECHT/raafcr 
 of the German Socialists. 
 
 THE restriction of bequests and inheritance advocated in 
 these pages will be denounced by conservatives under 
 the contemptuous epithet of "socialistic notions," es- 
 pecially by those who have not made a careful study of 
 social phenomena. On the other hand, the extreme 
 radicals who are satisfied with nothing less than the com- 
 plete destruction of competition and private ownership 
 will also sneer at the same propositions, because they 
 will not accomplish the changes socialists hope for. 
 Whether an attack on wealth heredity is socialistic or 
 not depends upon the real nature of socialism ; and be- 
 
KING MAMMON. 229 
 
 fore a decision is rendered on that point, it is well to in- 
 vestigate briefly a movement among the people to which 
 the attention of observant thinkers in all parts of the civ- 
 ilized world has recently been directed. We shall obtain 
 our definition of socialism at the end of our inquiry in- 
 stead of at the beginning. 
 
 A general conception of socialistic ideals may be gained 
 from a study of the air-castles constructed by able writers 
 of the past and present, whose broad conceptions of 
 human life and duty enabled them to evolve from their 
 own minds what seemed to them a happier condition 
 for humanity than the unequal and relentless struggle of 
 competition, with its extremes of wealth and poverty, its 
 destitution surrounding abundance, audits frequent waste 
 of human effort and life sustenance in the presence of 
 starvation. Socialistic pictures of the "kind described by 
 Edward Bellamy in Looking Backward are older than 
 Christianity, and have been traced by some writers as far 
 back into ancient history as the existence of Phileas of 
 Chalcedon, six centuries before the Christian era. Plato's 
 Republic is the earliest socialistic writing that is easily 
 accessible. These features of the work were probably 
 written to show the philosopher's idea of a perfect govern- 
 ment, and they describe a communal life in which neither 
 rich nor poor exist, and where there is a perfect equality 
 of careers. In some respects the mind of Plato was far 
 in advance of his time in the conception of social insti- 
 tutions, but in others he was bound by the convictions 
 common to that period. In his ideal community he pro^- 
 vided munificently for public education and gave to 
 woman absolute freedom to enter all kinds of occupa- 
 tions, a liberty which she has not yet acquired; but, on 
 the other hand, he established a communal marriage re- 
 lation of the sexes, toward which society is making no 
 approach, and which has really been left far behind us 
 
230 KING MAMMON. 
 
 among other characteristics of an almost purely animal 
 existence. In Plato's day women were property, and as 
 all property was to be communal under his system, it 
 would have been illogical, under that idea, to permit any 
 monopoly in the use and enjoyment of the female sex. 
 The children of his ideal republic were under charge of 
 the state, there was no family organization, and the in- 
 crease of population was controlled by restricting births. 
 
 Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England in the 
 reign of Henry VIII., about four hundred years ago, an- 
 nounced the discovery of his " island of Utopia, which 
 conteyneth in breadthe in the middel parte of it (for there 
 it is brodest), CC miles." Since then " Utopian " has be- 
 come a word in frequent use to condemn a proposition 
 as chimerical ; but there were many things in the wonder- 
 ful imaginary island created by Sir Thomas, that, al- 
 though not then in existence, have since become verities 
 by the progress which his prophetic mind foresaw. Like 
 the earlier philosopher's republic, Utopia had an ideal 
 government in which that bugbear of the early socialists, 
 "the rich and the poor," was completely destroyed, and 
 under which the people lived comfortable, contented, and 
 happy in the equal possession of wealth and the equal 
 division of labor. 
 
 The Utopia was written in Latin, but was translated into 
 English of the style quoted here shortly after its original 
 publication. Sir Thomas More was a man of great 
 breadth of intellect and generous emotions, so he could 
 not help being dissatisfied with the barbarous age in 
 which he lived. His picture of Utopia is the enunciation 
 of that dissatisfaction expressed as plainly as the author 
 dared to write in that period of intolerance and brutality. 
 In describing Utopia, More satirized England. It was a 
 happy island, where all were comfortable without being 
 either rich or poor. All shared wealth alike, and there was 
 
KING MAMMON. 231 
 
 no inducement for sordid crime and no severe laws. 
 The idler was controlled by a provision that " no meat 
 be given him until he have wrought out his forenoon's 
 task." The social conditions were well regulated, for 
 "there be neither wine taverns, nor ale vaults, nor any 
 occasion of vice or wickedness. A commonwealth is 
 nothing else but a great household." 
 
 The contempt for wealth was so great that "whomso- 
 ever for any offence be infamed, by their ears hang rings 
 of gold, upon their fingers they wear rings of gold, and 
 around their necks they wear chains of gold," all these 
 being signs of infamy. Gems and precious stones in 
 Utopia were mere toys for children to play with, "so 
 when a little more grown in years and discretion, per- 
 ceiving that none but children do wear such toys and 
 trifles, they lay them away of their own shamefacedness, 
 even as our children, when they wax big, do cast away 
 puppets. Children that had cast away their pearls and 
 precious stones, when they saw the like sticking upon am- 
 bassador's caps, dig and push their mothers under the sides 
 saying, ' Look, how great a lubber doth yet wear pearls 
 and precious stones." 1 
 
 Slavery existed in Utopia as a punishment for crime, 
 and as a condition in which those who came to the island 
 from other countries were placed during voluntary resi- 
 dence. Those who were sick of incurable diseases were 
 encouraged to commit suicide, or to be killed by their 
 own consent, although they "caused none to die against 
 his will." In social and industrial economy, particularly 
 in suggesting the subdivision of labor as now actually 
 applied in all great manufacturing establishments, the 
 mind of Sir Thomas More was centuries in advance of 
 the era in which he lived. In a barbarous age, under 
 the half-savage government of a monarch who eventually 
 beheaded More because his conscience would not permit 
 
232 KING MAMMON. 
 
 him to sanction all the king's ambitious and lascivious 
 desires, this philosopher of a period when Indian tribes 
 were the only inhabitants of America, was able to see 
 far enough into the moral future of the race to understand 
 that it is better to prevent crime by education and early 
 training than to punish it after the evil condition exists, a 
 sentiment that is only understood by a portion of the 
 civilized human race at the present time. At a time when 
 nations were ready to go to war under any pretext, how- 
 ever unjust, he was able to announce for the Utopia of 
 the future, which everybody can now see, a social condi- 
 tion wherein war is never entered on except for some 
 gross injury, and the glory of a general is in proportion, 
 not to the number but the fewness of the enemies whom 
 he slays in gaining a victory. Best of all, he could see in 
 the future, pictured in the mind of every good and great 
 man, the time, not yet reached by humanity even in this 
 country as a perfect conception, when no man ought to 
 be punished for his religion, for "a man cannot make 
 himself believe anything he pleases." It is said that Sir 
 Thomas preached better than he practiced in the matter 
 of religious toleration, for he was an ardent Roman 
 Catholic to whom the newly-born Protestant faith was 
 not reverence to the God whom he felt it his duty to pro- 
 tect ; but, whether consistent or inconsistent, his mind 
 was like a great electric search-light shining among a 
 group of tallow-dips. Its rays have reached four hundred 
 years in advance of the power which sent them forth, 
 and how much farther into the future they were pro- 
 jected, we know not ; for the progress of the human race 
 is not yet completed. 
 
 More than a century later, Sir Francis Bacon, another 
 of the really great men whose thoughts have been directed 
 to the problem of a better adjustment of earthly condi- 
 tions, wrote his New Atlantis. Thomas Campanella, a 
 
KING MAMMON. 233 
 
 Dominican friar, gave to the world a description of his 
 City of the Sun, in the same period. Other imaginary 
 societies were described by authors not so well known in 
 history, whose creations are of little interest now except 
 to the curious inquirer incited by a special interest in those 
 subjects. The word communism has usually been applied 
 to all these early plans of organizing social effort, and 
 while their methods vary to some extent, a general idea 
 of the theories underlying them can be gained from the 
 principles announced in Morelle's Basiliade, published in 
 1753. The author was strongly impressed with the idea 
 of a " perfect state of nature," so commonly entertained 
 in that period under the theory that civilization was a 
 degenerated social condition, and his book was the im- 
 aginary history of a people who divested themselves of 
 civilized conditions to return to natural perfection. Private 
 ownership he regarded as the mother of all crimes. His 
 social formulas were as follows : 
 
 1. Nothing in society shall belong to any one in parti- 
 cular, nor be the private property of any person, except 
 such things as shall be required for actual use, either in 
 supplying personal wants, or in creating immediate pleas- 
 ure, or what may be wanted for daily labor. 
 
 2. Every citizen shall be regarded as a public person 
 supported and maintained at the public expense. 
 
 3. Every citizen shall contribute his share towards what 
 is necessary for the public good, according to his strength, 
 talent, and age. For this purpose his duties shall be reg- 
 ulated in conformity with the laws of distribution. 
 
 Up to the troubled times of the French Revolution, the 
 communistic ideas were embodied in the form of imagin- 
 ary societies, it being dangerous for an author to openly 
 attack existing institutions, and the frank advocacy of 
 such ideas could result . in nothing but ridicule and dis- 
 grace even if their advocate escaped the dungeon. The 
 
234 KING MAMMON. 
 
 communistic idea, however crude and undesirable it may 
 seem in any plan that has ever been ideally presented, or 
 attempted in actual experiment, has, nevertheless, at- 
 tracted the favorable consideration of some of the greatest 
 men who have ever lived. The records attached to the 
 names of Plato, Sir Thomas More, and Lord Bacon are not 
 those which will be affixed to the evanescent memories of 
 most human beings, and the real thinker, knowing this 
 truth, regards the socialistic idea reverently, in view of 
 the evils of our present existence, even if he does not 
 regard it hopefully as a means of speedy relief, or assent 
 to the conclusions of its ardent advocates. Ebenezer 
 Elliott described the communist in the following lines, 
 which reflect the opinion still widely entertained of the 
 character of men who have advanced such theories : 
 
 What is a Communist ? One who has yearnings 
 
 For equal division of unequal earnings. 
 
 Idler or bungler, or both, he is willing 
 
 To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling. 
 
 History, however, disproves the assertions of the Corn 
 Law Rhymer, for the men who have most ably and per- 
 sistently advocated principles involving more or less of 
 the communistic idea, have been, indisputably, sincere 
 philanthropists, interested in the general welfare and pro- 
 gress of humanity, rather than in any selfish personal in- 
 terests, and not actuated by any desire to reduce humanity 
 to a common level that they as individuals might profit 
 The motives of all who have urged socialism or com- 
 munism with any intelligence or ability have invariably 
 been pity for human suffering and hatred of the tyranny 
 arising from great inequality in wealth. Robert Owen 
 could have been a millionaire had he desired a large for- 
 tune, for he possessed great business talents ; but he pre- 
 ferred to expend $300,000 in trying to improve the condi- 
 tion of his fellow-creatures. St. Simon threw away a 
 
KING MAMMON. 235 
 
 fortune and reduced himself to poverty in the same vain 
 efforts. Horace Greeley was deeply imbued with social- 
 istic ideas, yet the people of the United States will not 
 regard him as one who desired to thrive by the losses of 
 his fellow-creatures, for his whole life disproves such 
 calumnies. The real mental and moral condition of the 
 great socialists has been one of too little instead of too 
 great selfishness. Endowed with a more selfish nature, 
 they would have exhibited more cynicism and distrust of 
 human nature, and having those not altogether undesir- 
 able habits of regarding other men, they would not have 
 displayed that sublime faith in the rectitude and capabili- 
 ties of average humanity which has so frequently led 
 them into their mad attempts to effect an immediate 
 partnership among all their fellow-creatures. 
 
 About one hundred years ago, when the phenomenally 
 iniquitous condition of class rule and tyranny in France 
 resulted in the fearful scourge which temporarily ob- 
 literated distinctions of rank, a swarm of communistic 
 writers appeared in that country. Their teachings were 
 a modified form of the older communistic ideas, not 
 usually so harsh or rigid in the equality demanded, and 
 to these and later teachings the word socialism is now 
 applied, the term not being used in this sense till 1835. 
 Previous to that time communism was the expression 
 used to designate the social plans here described. At the 
 present time, the word communism appears to be going 
 out of use to describe such social theories, and is giving 
 way to the more recent term. 
 
 The writings of Rousseau Jean Jacques, as Carlyle 
 in crabbed mood designated him were one means of 
 developing and concentrating the rebellious spirit of the 
 French people upon their wrongs in the era preceding 
 their terrible revolt Rousseau described conditions then 
 existing and compared them with what he supposed had 
 
236 KING MAMMON. 
 
 been the progress of civilization, instead of describing an 
 ideal community as his predecessors had done. His history 
 of civilization was, however, largely ideal, for he was one 
 of the innumerable millions who have believed that some- 
 where in the dim vistas of the past, if men could only see 
 clearly, there could be found an existence happier by far 
 than the miserable present. At the beginning of the In- 
 stitutes of Narada, the Hindu Justinian, writing in the 
 fifth century of the Christian era, occur the following 
 observations : 
 
 "When mortals were bent on doing their duty alone 
 and habitually veracious, there existed neither lawsuits, 
 nor hatred, nor selfishness. The practice of duty having 
 died out among mankind, lawsuits have been introduced, 
 and the king has been appointed to decide lawsuits, 
 because he has authority to punish." 
 
 This philosophy of Narada expresses the same hoary 
 fallacy that afflicted Rousseau's views of life and that 
 haunts the minds of half the people in existence to-day. 
 Like the brilliant French writer, they think the world 
 grows worse instead of better, and thus worship the im- 
 aginary virtues of the past instead of hopefully regarding 
 the developments of the future. One hundred years ago 
 Rousseau expressed in powerful language the spirit of his 
 age and gave utterance to the awakening thoughts of 
 millions in whose changing minds the real rebellion against 
 class rule was being effected. It was the period that 
 gave to this country the Declaration of Independence and 
 the burning words of Jefferson and Thomas Paine, with 
 their uncompromising hatred of artificial inequality, 
 oppression, and class favoritism. A remarkable parallel 
 exists between the social and political agitation of a cen- 
 tury ago in Europe and America, and the very similar 
 discontent that now exists among the people of these 
 
KING MAMMON. 237 
 
 nations. When Rousseau's books were published, the 
 real revolution had already been effected in France, for 
 he merely expressed better than other men what the 
 changed minds of the people already thought. Similarly, 
 the real revolution of this period is already far toward its 
 completion, for the minds of the people in their conception 
 of human duty are greatly changed, and are still changing 
 every day. If the revolution in sentiment is resisted by 
 bitter and selfish obstructionists, instead of being guided 
 and wisely directed by sincere patriots, it may result in 
 armed contests like the revolutions of one hundred years 
 ago ; but if a fair and free expression be given to the senti- 
 ment of the people and the truth recognized that a change 
 of social institutions, sooner or later, is inevitable, the 
 revolution of the twentieth century will be a peaceful 
 modification of political and social conditions and advan- 
 tageous to all our people. 
 
 Rousseau was the apostle of liberty and equality. With 
 innumerable contemporaries in Europe and America, he 
 assisted to break down the ancient idea of heredity in 
 government, according to which some men were born to 
 rule, irrespective of any natural qualifications for ruling, 
 and other men were born to serve them in the capacity 
 of slavish subjects. 
 
 He was not formally a socialist, for he did not 
 attempt plans for the equal distribution of wealth and 
 labor, but he assisted in destroying the idea of a divinity 
 in political and social privileges on account of birth. He 
 voiced the demand that the people should make their own 
 laws and levy taxes upon themselves, instead of being 
 under the dominion of an aristocratic class who paid noth- 
 ing toward the expense of social organization, but lived 
 like leeches upon the body politic. The fundamental 
 idea of socialism is equality, and the men who preached 
 the doctrines of Rousseau did more to further its real 
 
238 KING MAMMON. 
 
 progress than did those who advocated equality of prop- 
 erty while class rule and tyranny existed. Rousseau be- 
 lieved that the inequality of wealth should be constantly 
 checked by laws giving better opportunities for accumu- 
 lation to the poor ; he advocated public education ; he 
 held the rights of property sacred ; he opposed the aboli- 
 tion of inheritance ; and he believed in taxation that would 
 throw the heaviest burden upon the rich, with some 
 scheme of land reform that would prevent its monopoli- 
 zation. 
 
 The writings of St. Simon, published after the great 
 revolution, were an advance from the crude communistic 
 thought of the earlier period. He was a bold, original 
 thinker and a philanthropist who sacrificed his position in 
 the French nobility to his fidelity to the principles he 
 advocated. With the characteristic traits of the typical 
 Frenchman, he believed that a revolution in the social 
 world would occur the instant that men read his plans for 
 a better adjustment. His moral creed was that all should 
 labor for the development, material and moral, of the 
 class most numerous and poor a very good doctrine, but 
 one seldom observed, even by those making a specialty 
 of moral teachings. St. Simon commenced the teaching 
 of modern socialism by declaring that the lower classes 
 had been first in a condition of abject slavery ; then 
 under serfdom ; finally, under the modern wage system, 
 in a condition that is only mitigated serfdom. He 
 attacked the principle of heredity in wealth, and urged the 
 entire abolition of hereditary successions, and^their rever- 
 sion to the state. The doctrine of property rights de- 
 manded by the St. Simonians was embodied in the say- 
 ing : "From each according to his capacity; to each 
 capacity according to its work. " Capital they regarded 
 as a fund accumulated by the joint efforts of the com- 
 munity and not as the property of the capitalist. They 
 
KING MAMMON. 239 
 
 advocated the ownership of land and capital by the state, 
 and thus developed the foundations of the modern social- 
 ism that has been urged so strongly in Germany ; but the 
 most distinctive feature of their creed was their denuncia- 
 tion of inheritance. 
 
 Charles Fourier's socialistic plans, produced contem- 
 poraneously with the St. Simonian doctrines, attracted 
 great attention in France early in the present century. 
 His scheme was a purely artificial transformation of 
 society by its organization into groups of from 600 to 
 2,000 people occupying a square league of land, in the 
 centre of which was to be erected a magnificent com- 
 munal dwelling, similar to a great hotel, surrounded by 
 other buildings for use in such industrial arts as the in- 
 habitants of the tract might conduct. Fourier's character- 
 istics were the prominence which he gave to the econom- 
 ical features of communal effort in manufacturing and 
 in domestic life, and he showed what a vast saving is 
 accomplished when aggregated effort replaces individual 
 labor. Reasoning from observation of the intense ac- 
 tivity displayed by men in hunting and other sports, he 
 endeavored to provide plans for making work pleasant in 
 communal life. He would arbitrarily divide society into 
 three classes, capitalists, laborers, and men of talent 
 giving to each class a definite portion of the social wealth. 
 It is evident that all such ideas involving sudden social 
 transitions are necessarily barren of any immediate 
 practical results ; nevertheless, many of the economi- 
 cal results foreseen by the penetrating mind of Fourier 
 have already been accomplished under competition by the 
 aggregation of capital and the subdivision of labor. 
 
 Later in the century, about the year 1848, Louis 
 Blanc denounced the crude, radical ideas of the early 
 communists and also the doctrines of the St. Simonians, 
 proposing instead of them his own schemes of social 
 
240 KING MAMMON. 
 
 organization. Blanc's idea was to provide co-operative 
 industrial associations to carry on various manufactures 
 in competition with private capital. As he occupied a 
 prominent position in the provisional government of 
 France, he was allowed to test his plans in actual opera- 
 tion. The government subsidized fifty-six industrial 
 associations under his plan, but they all failed. While 
 moderate in -some of his demands, Louis Blanc was, in 
 his socialistic division of wealth, the most radical of re- 
 formers, for his formula is : "From all in proportion to 
 ability; to all in proportion to needs." Justice, under 
 these doctrines, does not give to each according to effort 
 or ability, and the strong must in some cases do more 
 labor than the weak for a less reward. 
 
 In England, Robert Owen, whose name is well known 
 to the people of this country, was a contemporary of 
 Fourier. Owen was a shrewd, practical business man of 
 great executive talent, whose phenomenal capacity for 
 organization distinguished him from other socialists. 
 Owning cotton mills at New Lanark, Owen, having the 
 temperament of a philanthropist, became impressed with 
 the miserable existence of his employes, which was then 
 the universal condition of the laborers of Europe. He 
 gave them better dwellings at cost ; he provided stores 
 where they might obtain goods at the lowest prices ; and 
 he afforded opportunities for them to lay by savings and 
 invest them. He reduced the day's labor to ten hours, 
 and at one time, when business was depressed, he main- 
 tain-ed his laborers, though unemployed, at an expense of 
 7,000. Owen believed that vice and crime are diseases 
 resulting from the impoverished and brutalizing surround- 
 ings in which men are placed, and he constantly appealed 
 to their better nature, making efforts to raise them by 
 improving their environment. One of his theories was 
 that "every county should provide a farm for the employ- 
 
KING MAMMON. 241 
 
 ment of the poor, and, if circumstances permit, a manu- 
 factory connected with it, to enable the poor to support 
 themselves. u "Competition," he said, "is the cause of 
 many vices ; association will be their corrective. That 
 the heart is corroded with selfish ambition, that the ener- 
 gies are stimulated by unworthy vanity, is due entirely 
 to the present organization of society." He advocated 
 socialism, and owing to his successful plans for factory 
 improvement, he received much respectful attention. At 
 one time Parliament almost decided to seriously investi- 
 gate his methods, and noted people from all over Europe 
 visited his factory. His ideas were strongly in conflict 
 with the intense conservatism of England, and he came 
 to America seeking a more favorable field for his social 
 operations, and founded a colony at New Harmony, 
 Indiana. It failed, as all institutions do that are far in 
 advance of average human development, and Owen said 
 of its result : "The last experiment has made it evident 
 that families trained in the individual system, founded as 
 it is on superstition, have not acquired those moral qual- 
 ities of forbearance and charity for each other which are 
 necessary to promote full confidence and harmony among 
 all the members, and without which communities cannot 
 exist." Returning to England after the failure at New 
 Harmony, Owen continued his experiments at the expense 
 of his fortune, and his last organization at "Harmony 
 Hall" was broken up when he was eighty years old ; but 
 he advocated his doctrines to the close of his long life. 
 
 The theories of socialism received much sympathy and 
 encouragement in the writings of Thomas Carlyle, John 
 Ruskin, and John Stuart Mill, three of the greatest 
 thinkers in the recent history of England. The Lake 
 Poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were also 
 in their youth strongly imbued with the socialistic faith. 
 In our own country, the history of Brook Farm shows 
 16 
 
242 KING MAMMON. 
 
 how the minds of able men who afterwards became 
 famous were attracted by the delusive idea of building 
 beautiful and stately social structures from the imperfect 
 and unsubstantial materials of ordinary human nature. 
 
 The teachings of the writers whose names have been 
 noted in these pages, with the swarm of lesser authors 
 attending them, constitute the theoretical socialism of 
 the past. It will be observed that all the plans suggested 
 by these socialists were merely social and economic 
 changes to be effected by voluntary association and co- 
 operative effort based on free will and the consent of all 
 who participated. The socialists of the past did not pro- 
 pose to change the forms of government by the will of the 
 majority, and make men socialists whether they desired 
 socialism or not ; but the socialists of the present are of a 
 very different type, or rather they find public sentiment 
 more tolerant of their ideas, and are thus enabled to 
 extend them farther than their predecessors could push 
 their plans. Theoretical socialism of the present is 
 aggressive. It proposes to transform monarchies into 
 democracies, and these into social-democracies based on 
 the equal ownership of capital, or wealth used for repro- 
 duction in all its forms. The movement has commenced 
 in all parts of the civilized world, but its ablest advocates 
 and principal writings have emanated from Germany in 
 the last thirty years. It is incorrect, however, to suppose 
 that the new socialism spreads and extends outward from 
 any point like waves on the surface of water. The 
 socialistic thought arises in the minds of the people all 
 over the world at about the same time, owing to the 
 condition of their civilization, and it is a product of the 
 brain-power of each individual. Right or wrong in its 
 theories and methods, it develops spontaneously among 
 the people of every nation, and those short-sighted oppo- 
 nents who propose to prevent the immigration of social- 
 
KING MAMMON. 243 
 
 ists by some kind of legal wire-netting around national 
 boundaries, merely expose their ignorance of social 
 development by making absurd suggestions. Modern 
 socialism is already a prominent form of public thought 
 in every country of Europe, and in the English colonies 
 of Australia and New Zealand. Until a very few years 
 ago, the United States was supposed to be free from this 
 movement, but the People's Party, now quite a strong 
 political movement, especially in the western part of the 
 country, is clearly socialistic in the doctrines it sustains, 
 and is nearly in line with the European movement, 
 although not consciously so. 
 
 So extensive is the literature of this new movement, 
 that mere histories of its development now require twice 
 the space of this volume. Yet the actual principles in- 
 volved are few, and they do not require lengthy consider- 
 ation to be understood in a general way. Some of the 
 socialistic works, the Capital of Karl Marx in particular, 
 which is called the Bible of Modern Socialism, display 
 profound historical research and much learning, but they 
 are so insufferably tedious that much of their usefulness 
 as a means of propagating the socialistic idea must be 
 lost in the verbosity. While there is some variation in 
 the theories and methods of the different schools of 
 modern socialism, the essential nature of the movement, 
 wherever found, is that of a vigorous attempt to destroy 
 capitalistic competition of all kinds, and to substitute for 
 it the public ownership and operation of all means of 
 production, transportation, and distribution by political 
 action and the agency of the law. It will at once be 
 seen that the new socialism is vastly different in its 
 methods from the old doctrine. The former depended 
 exclusively upon voluntary association, and no man need 
 be a practical socialist unless he desired to and joined a 
 colony. The latter depends upon the number of votes 
 
244 KING MAMMON. 
 
 it can control, and whenever it can secure a working 
 majority, it proposes that the minority shall become 
 practical socialists, whether they like socialism or not. 
 There is nothing wrong in this political method, more 
 than what occurs in all political action, but the condition 
 shows that while the old socialism was a mere toy with 
 which men amused themselves, the new socialism is a 
 weapon with which they propose to hew down opposition 
 if they can. 
 
 To thoroughly understand the real causes of this vast 
 undertaking of the socialists, much consideration and 
 reflection are necessary. Under the existing productive 
 system, developed mainly in the last century, and more 
 particularly in the last fifty years, the manufactures of 
 every civilized nation, instead of being effected in small 
 establishments scattered over a wide area, under many 
 different employers each having a few workmen, are 
 now concentrated into huge establishments, each under 
 the dominion of a capitalist or a company of capitalists, 
 employing an army of laborers, subdividing the mechani- 
 cal processes, owning a complex and expensive system 
 of machinery, and reducing by these economical advan- 
 tages the cost of production to such an extent that every 
 small establishment within the field of competition is 
 driven to the wall and crushed out of existence. Simi- 
 larly, small merchants acting as distributors are crushed 
 out of existence by greater ones, and great railroad sys- 
 tems absorb the smaller lines. In every branch of pro- 
 ductive human effort, the tendency of the nineteenth 
 century has been to consolidate the business into great 
 plants having a few extremely wealthy owners, a vast 
 accumulation of machinery, wherever it can be profitably 
 used, and an army of laborers at wages under a system 
 of subdivided effort. The small blacksmith and wagon- 
 making shop has become the great factory sending vehi- 
 
KING MAMMON. 245 
 
 cles to all parts of the world ; the village shoemaker 
 shops are gone, and in place of them are a few great shoe- 
 factories selling their products wherever civilization 
 exists ; the small butcher gives way to Philip Armour ; the 
 little store is abandoned before the progress of the Mar- 
 shall Fields ; the teamsters are absorbed in a few great 
 railway systems, controlled by the Goulds and the Hunt- 
 ingtons. The small towns, owing to the impossibility 
 of small manufactures, are killed out or kept from grow- 
 ing, and wealth and population concentrate in the great 
 cities, where the valuable land, the buildings and the 
 machinery in fabulous values drift into the possession of 
 great capitalists, who manage this surplus wealth of the 
 nation and conduct its enterprises. 
 
 On the other hand the workman's relative power and 
 importance as a social unit compared with that of his 
 employer has been steadily diminished by this process. 
 Under the old system, the laborer, by economy and en- 
 terprise, could easily become an employer, and the one 
 was so little removed from the other in station that a 
 bond of sympathy existed constantly between them. 
 Now the laborer is as far removed from the employer in 
 any great modern establishment as the pauper is from 
 the prince, and instead of sympathy, antagonism exists. 
 As a result of this lessening of his individual power, the 
 laborer has been impelled by the universal tendency to 
 concentrate, and he has accordingly united with his fel- 
 lows in great labor organizations, to be wielded as a 
 single body like the great railroad system or manufactur- 
 ing combination. Trusts are denounced on the one 
 hand, and labor unions on the other ; but the opponents 
 of both might as well denounce the water of the Miss- 
 issippi for finding its way to the Gulf. Both trusts and 
 unions are products of a natural process as unavoidable as 
 the formation of salt crystals when sea-water is evaporated. 
 
246 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Modern socialists claim that this process of concentra- 
 tion is still going on, and that it will go on in spite of 
 any legislative efforts to prevent further concentration. 
 They believe that ultimately the concentration of capital 
 will become so extreme and the laborers so bitterly dis- 
 contented under the difficulties attending periods of de- 
 pression, when large numbers of men are thrown out of 
 employment, with no other means of earning a subsist- 
 ence than their narrow line of factory duties, and with 
 no demand for their limited special skill, that in the final 
 result the whole capitalistic system of competition will 
 be overthrown. The supposed transition is to occur 
 either gradually or suddenly, according to the maturity of 
 the socialist's mind (the older he is the slower the process), 
 and the wealth of the country is then to be converted 
 into a common fund for productive effort under the equal 
 ownership of the people, the laborers being transformed 
 into salaried employes of the socialistic government. 
 Some theorists include in this socialistic effort the culti- 
 vation of the land, and others do not, but the socialism 
 ordinarily proposed includes the public control of every 
 means of production, transportation, and distribution. 
 
 Under such a system, private ownership could not 
 exist except in the possession of personal property of 
 small value for immediate use. Land, buildings, rail- 
 roads, manufacturing establishments, stores of all kinds, 
 and the whole system of exchange would become public 
 property and be controlled by agents of the people. 
 Rent, interest, and profit, the three terrible Gorgons of 
 the socialist's mind, would no longer exist. Except for 
 foreign exchange, coin would be of no use in such a 
 community, and there would be neither a gold nor a sil- 
 ver party, labor checks being substituted for the metals. 
 There would be no private business in renting property, 
 buying and selling, lending money, manufacturing or 
 
KING MAMMON. 247 
 
 transporting-, and the entire able-bodied population would 
 be placed under the necessity of doing some kind of 
 mental or physical labor as productive work for an ap- 
 proximately equal share in the results of aggregated 
 effort. 
 
 Absurdly visionary as these vast plans appear to the 
 man who considers them for the first time, they are seri- 
 ously considered and advocated in one form or another 
 by a large percentage of the people in every country 
 of Europe, and similar doctrines are developing quite 
 rapidly in America. In Germany, the modern socialistic 
 movement is based upon the writings of Ferdinand 
 Lassalle and Karl Marx, both bitterly opposing capitalism 
 and both of the Jewish race, which has hitherto always 
 been characterized by a special fondness for the very 
 things these apostles of socialism denounced. Thirty 
 years ago, when the socialistic writings of Lassalle were 
 placed in the hands of the workingmen of Germany, the 
 older socialism of the French and English writers, the 
 idealism of Fourier, Blanc, St. Simon, and Robert Owen, 
 was apparently dead and the people were torpid. At first 
 the teachings of this writer appeared to have no effect, but 
 when the capitalistic system developed and the phleg- 
 matic Germans had plenty of time to consider his theor- 
 ies, the movement gathered headway after the death of 
 Lassalle in the duel which closed his career. The theories 
 of Lassalle and Marx have been termed Scientific Social- 
 ism, because, instead of merely constructing an ideal 
 communistic society based on their own conceptions, 
 these modern writers first review the history of the past, 
 and then consider the present condition of our industrial 
 institutions with the object of determining what the next 
 development in that progress will be. These later theories 
 might well be termed Evolutionary Socialism, for, like" 
 other branches of modern thought, the theoretical social- 
 
248 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ism of the present applies the idea of gradual develop- 
 ment to society and its modes of industry. Concerning 
 the developments of the future, the scientific socialists 
 may be right or they may be wrong, for men at best are 
 very unreliable prophets, but Marx and Lassalle have 
 recorded the industrial history of the past with infinite 
 labor and much knowledge of the laws of social develop- 
 ment. At the time they wrote, their ideas were based 
 upon a much wider and deeper information of econom- 
 ical progress than their adversaries possessed. 
 
 Lassalle charges that the present capitalistic system 
 of production is unjust to the laborer, who works for a 
 mere subsistence in periods of average prosperity, and at 
 every unfavorable fluctuation in the industrial world, is 
 thrown into want and compelled to endure hardships by 
 lack of employment. His view of wages and the wage- 
 system was so utterly hopeless that he believed the la- 
 borer was absolutely precluded from ever improving his 
 condition and that all the wealth the laborer produced 
 beyond a mere subsistence was immediately transferred 
 to the capital of the employer, the tendency of wages 
 being constantly to sink to a point merely sufficient to 
 afford the laborer existence. He thus regarded every 
 workman as a slave toiling to develop a huge fund of 
 surplus wealth in the hands of the capitalist, that accu- 
 mulation being made up of the small portions of which 
 each laborer was robbed in the industrial process. 
 
 Karl Marx's thoughts followed similar lines, dealing 
 mainly with the employment of labor by capital, in great 
 manufacturing industries. He claims that justice de- 
 mands for the laborer all that he produces, whereas, 
 under the competitive system of the present, every lab- 
 orer engaged in prosperous production pays over to his 
 employer a surplus on every day's work, which thus in- 
 creases the capital and robs the workman of that portion 
 
KING MAMMON. 249 
 
 of his earnings ; for Marx insists that the laborer is en- 
 titled to all he produces, and should not be subjected to 
 this capitalistic tax rent, interest, or profit which the 
 socialist denounces as robbery. He does not term the 
 capitalist who gains by one of these methods a robber, 
 and he evinces no class animosity nor envy of wealth, 
 but he regards capitalists and laborers as being alike help- 
 less under the competitive system and unable to avoid its 
 evil results. Marx's great treatise on capital is a cool, 
 scientific discussion, as tedious and unfeeling as the ordi- 
 nary rule of arithmetic for extracting the cube root. His 
 book even contains mathematical formulae, demonstrat- 
 ing to the satisfaction of his followers, that no other re- 
 sult can happen from the competitive system than the 
 ultimate reduction of all wages to a mere sufficiency for 
 existence, and the aggregation of all surplus wealth 
 above that in the form of capital. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that modern socialism is not the 
 philanthropic ideas of tender-hearted reformers like the 
 older socialists, but it is a political movement pressed for- 
 ward by men who firmly believe that they are subjected 
 to unjust conditions. If the modern movement should 
 be successful in securing majorities, it would attempt to 
 transform governmental institutions in accordance with 
 the socialistic idea, and compel the minority to conform 
 to the new methods of human effort, no matter how 
 bitterly they might detest them. As Dr. Schaffle says, 
 modem socialism "is primarily a question of the 
 stomach," and it is pushed with energy by no inconsid- 
 erable number of men who feel that their own interests 
 are being damaged by existing social methods, and who 
 ardently desire a change. The development of socialism 
 is heralded by Herbert Spencer as ' ' The Coming Slavery, " 
 and many other individualists regard the socialistic nation 
 as a possibility equally despotic and mechanical in its 
 
250 KING MAMMON. 
 
 nature with the ancient Spartan military socialism under 
 the laws of Lycurgus. 
 
 In Germany, the progress of socialism has been marked 
 by a rapid advance since 1870. In a recent article, Herr 
 Liebknecht, the leader of the party in the Reichstag, gives 
 a hint of their present methods in the following words : 
 
 " Of course, when we have a village-meeting we do not 
 give a lecture on Marx's 'Capital,' but we speak about 
 the villagers' economic and social situation, about the 
 debts of the small peasants, the wages of the agricultural 
 laborers, the misery in which they both have to live, and 
 the reason why. We show the working and action of 
 capitalism, how capital destroys property, the property of 
 all those who have to live on their handiwork ; how prop- 
 erty is in a state of constant warfare, how small properties 
 are devoured by big properties, the small farms by the big 
 farms ; how of the five and one-half millions of soi-disant 
 landed proprietors in Germany according to the later pub- 
 lished statistics, half a million at the utmost have still 
 real property of their own, and how the others are pro- 
 prietors only in name, who will soon disappear, swept 
 away by the crushing power of capitalism. And if we 
 succeed in getting the ears of our hearers, we win them." 
 
 Thirty years ago the socialists of Germany numbered 
 only 7,000 men. In 1895 the party contained nearly 
 2,000,000 electors ; that is, men above twenty-five years 
 of age. It is called the party of the discontented in Ger- 
 many, and the socialists do not object to the name. 
 They have secured the advocacy of nearly one-fourth of 
 the voting population of the country for their claims, and 
 they appear to be steadily progressing. The socialistic 
 movement means the destruction of the monarchy with 
 the absolutism of the days of Bismarck, and the establish- 
 ment of a democracy ; after that there will be as much 
 socialism in the new institutions as the people are prepared 
 for, and no more. 
 
KING MAMMON. 2$ I 
 
 France in recent years has had no commanding leader 
 or writer in socialistic thought, and the socialists of that 
 republic are divided into four parties, two of which may- 
 be better classed as anarchists. The great body of French 
 socialists are termed Collectivists, and they believe that 
 a social revolution is unavoidable ; but, like the German 
 socialists, they wish to form, out of the fragments of the 
 present system, another organization in which all wealth 
 will be nationalized and all competition dead, where 
 everyone will work according to his ability and receive 
 according to his needs. The number of these socialists 
 of France was between one and two millions in 1888, but 
 they do not form a very compact body. The Collectivists 
 are cool-headed reformers who accept whatever small 
 advantages they can secure as fast as they can obtain 
 them, and do not wait for the whole social fabric to be 
 destroyed that a suitable preparation may be made for 
 their own form of government. Another more radical 
 but less numerous body of the French socialists, the 
 Guesdists or Impossibilists, are obstructionists in their 
 tactics, harassing the government perpetually with re- 
 quests, petitions, and public denunciation by means of 
 pamphlets, and they refuse to seek or accept minute or 
 moderate changes. 
 
 In England there exists a strong socialistic movement 
 which aims to abolish the hereditary powers of the peer- 
 age, and convert the monarchy into a democracy as a. 
 preliminary move to further progress. The English con- 
 tributions to socialistic thought have recently become the 
 most valuable essays published anywhere in the world. 
 The Fabian Society is an association of talented and 
 thoroughly educated men and women who devote a por- 
 tion of their time and means to educating the public in 
 the real nature of socialism, and the history and present 
 tendencies of industrial life. The Fabians are in the front 
 
252 KING MAMMON. 
 
 rank of socialistic progress, for they clearly understand 
 that all really beneficial and permanent social changes 
 must be very slowly accomplished, and that the genuine 
 socialism is not the accomplishment of a brief revolution 
 announced by a vote of the people, but the slow changes 
 accomplished in men and their institutions by the pro- 
 gress of centuries. The recent utterances of Professor 
 Goldvvin Smith, prefixed to this chapter, on the develop- 
 ment of this new movement in Europe, and especially in 
 conservative England, indicate the apprehension with 
 which many thinking men regard the future. 
 
 It was supposed until within the last few years that the 
 United States offered no field for the development of 
 socialism, but the fallacy of a belief in the efficacy of 
 mere governmental forms is once more exploded by the 
 rapid rise of the People's Party, based on socialistic 
 ideas, independent of any connection whatever with the 
 European organizations, and with members generally 
 quite ignorant of the ideals of the Old World. The more 
 radical but smaller organization of the Socialist Labor 
 Party is also busily circulating pamphlets and books con- 
 taining the socialistic thought in various forms. The 
 movement commenced in America later than in Europe, 
 because there was less crowding among the people here, 
 and less discontent on account of our greater opportuni- 
 ties ; but now that it has begun, the socialistic progress 
 will probably go on more rapidly in America than in 
 Europe, for there are fewer obstructions in the way, and 
 the people are trained in older political parties to co- 
 operate. In Europe the democracy must be accomplished 
 before any further progress can be made ; in America the 
 democracy is already here, and from that point the people 
 can go on toward whatever improvements in their 
 national life they may be capable of understanding and 
 appreciating in their present development. 
 
KING MAMMON. 253 
 
 Having thus accomplished a brief survey of that theo- 
 retical socialism of the present, which exists only in the 
 minds of its advocates, and which is proposed as a remedy 
 for all the governmental ills of the future, it may be well 
 to inquire what the real socialism of the future is likely 
 to be, or whether any form of socalism can exist. To 
 really gain a comprehension of the probable future, we 
 must study the past and the present. The essential 
 nature of socialism, as advocated in all the plans de- 
 scribed here, embodies assistance to one another and 
 cooperation as a substitute for the universal opposition 
 of competitive effort. Competition has been the ruling 
 force of human existence on earth, for in our earliest 
 history of the race, there was competition, fierce and 
 bitter, between families and tribes, and, in our later pro- 
 gress, competition between individuals. Yet there never 
 was a time when human beings did not blend a degree of 
 socialism with the fierce contests of brute existence, and 
 thus soften the hardships of a purely animal life. There 
 is no such thing as absolutely pure competition, except 
 among the lower animals and the plants in their struggle 
 for existence. 
 
 Observe a grove of young pines on the hillside. They 
 are densely set, all apparently full of life-blood green, 
 thrifty, and each determined to push its head vigorously 
 toward the blue sky and the sunlight. Go again to the 
 grove, and we shall find some of the competitors weaken- 
 ing, slight tinges of yellow appearing in their leaves, 
 slenderness and delicacy characterizing their bodies, and 
 their thin, feathery heads scarcely on a level with their 
 sturdier neighbors' dense plumes. Another year will leave 
 the weaklings in the shadow of their stronger comrades, 
 deprived of the sun's bright rays and warmth, chilled at 
 the top and choked at the root, starved all along the 
 drying body, and crushed out of existence by their more 
 
254 KING MAMMON. 
 
 thrifty rivals. Still another year will show the starvelings 
 dead, decaying, and on their way to earth as food to 
 further strengthen the "survival of the fittest." Such is 
 competition absolutely unalleviated ; and in the animal 
 world above the lowest orders it does not exist, even among 
 brutes and brutal men, for there is always the socialism 
 that is found between parent and offspring. 
 
 Existing under pure competition, men would say to 
 their fellow-creatures, as it is conceivable that brute-like 
 man once actually said in his habits and customs : "It 
 is not my responsibility nor care whether you live or die. 
 You may be my neighbor, or my friend, or even my rela- 
 tive, but you must provide for your own necessities and 
 die when you can no longer do so. I shall seek only my 
 own welfare and my own existence." Under such com- 
 petition neither the human race nor the higher animals 
 could exist, for there must be a degree of socialism even 
 among brutes. In the human family under the pure com- 
 petition of pine-tree existence, the race could not survive, 
 for parents would neither protect helpless infancy, nor 
 sons and daughters assist aged parents. 
 
 The rigid doctrines of competitive existence, if now 
 applied to the higher animals or to man, would exter- 
 minate them. There is socialism a real and genuine 
 socialism even among brutes, and its earliest develop- 
 ment is in the parental instinct. Little fishes " sink or 
 swim, live or die, survive or perish" without any protec- 
 tion or assistance from the parent ; but little birds and all 
 other higher types of animal life are protected by the ten- 
 derness of the socialistic idea, displayed in the self-sacri- 
 ficing devotion of one or both of the parents. With brain 
 development and progress in the scale of animal existence 
 this unselfish feeling grows and expands. From eating 
 one another and slaughtering their own children, human 
 beings have arrived at a condition wherein they some- 
 
KING MAMMON. 255 
 
 j 
 
 times feel like helping one another to live, and lilce sav- 
 ing and protecting other men's children as well as their 
 own. 
 
 The care of the Aged and infirm is one of the earliest 
 developments of genuine socialism. Applied rigorously, 
 the competitive creed would announce to the decrepit 
 man or woman, even if a parent : "It is not my busi- 
 ness whether you live or die, for life is a struggle in which 
 the strongest survive. You will have to perish when you 
 can no longer support yourself. " The lowest races do 
 not protect the helpless members of their tribes and fami- 
 lies, and the solicitude now displayed by civilized human 
 beings in the care of the infirm is not a primary condi- 
 tion, but a growth that has occupied centuries in its de- 
 velopment, and which will almost certainly still continue 
 long after the writer and the reader of this book have 
 fallen into dust. 
 
 The truth is that modern civilization is already far on 
 its way to the realization of the only socialism under 
 which the human race will ever be permanently organ- 
 ized. The real socialism of all time past, present, and 
 future is the growth of humanized feelings and the sense 
 of duty and responsibility toward our fellow-creatures, 
 regardless of any apparently selfish worldly gain to our- 
 selves, and not the barren speculations of philanthropists, 
 however good and wise, nor the complex systems of com- 
 munistic government evolved in the minds of reformers 
 as a prescribed method of securing justice and making 
 men happy. It is the change that has been going on 
 steadily in the minds and hearts of the people every cen- 
 tury since man appeared on earth, under which the in- 
 tensely brutal selfishness of his early existence gives way 
 to higher and better feelings of human duty, and the orig- 
 inal cpnception that life-effort should be all for self 
 becomes slowly transformed into the belief that our real 
 
256 KING MAMMON. 
 
 work must eventually become each for all. Our hospitals 
 and almshouses are purely socialistic institutions em- 
 bodying the growth of this ethical id&a. In all fairness, 
 under the competitive creed, why should I be taxed to 
 keep some pauper alive and comfortable ? Let him die 
 when he can no longer live by his own exertions, and let 
 me retain my property. Such must be the logical con- 
 clusion of pure competition ; but no civilized nation will 
 now tolerate such ideas, so the sick and impoverished are 
 maintained at public expense in charitable institutions, 
 which are established by taxation on the exact basis of 
 the extreme socialistic demand: " From each according 
 to his ability ; to each according to his needs." Millions 
 of people are thus socialists in this genuine socialism 
 without knowing the nature of their faith, and they in- 
 dorse in one particular the very ideas which they deride 
 in another. 
 
 In a recent political speech made in the State of Cali- 
 fornia by a fairly intelligent and successful attorney, the 
 speaker at the beginning of his address denounced the 
 socialistic tendencies of the age. Near the close of his 
 speech, however, he praised the public-school system of 
 his state and advocated the provision at public expense 
 of free text-books for all pupils, a plan that has been fre- 
 quently suggested of recent years, the books now being 
 printed by the state and supplied to the parent at cost. 
 The public schools of California are supported mainly by 
 a tax upon all the wealth of the entire state, and are abso- 
 lutely free. Hence, although the speaker did not seem 
 to understand the real nature of the question, the schools 
 of California are socialism unadulterated, and he was 
 absurdly proposing the socialistic provision of free text- 
 books at the close of his speech, after having bitterly 
 denounced " socialists and anarchists" at the beginning. 
 All free public schools supported by general taxation are 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 socialistic institutions, and the supplying of free text- 
 books a measure that is very likely to become a law 
 in California in the near future is a socialistic measure ; 
 for all people pay taxes in proportion to their wealth, sup- 
 posed to represent their productive ability, and use the 
 schools in proportion to their needs ; the man with the 
 largest family having the right to send all his children, 
 even if he does not pay a cent of taxes. Similarly, our 
 public roads, maintained by taxing wealth, and often 
 used more by poor men than by rich men, are socialistic 
 institutions. All state, city, and national property in 
 buildings, parks, roads, canals, water-works, street-car 
 lines, wharves, and bridges, constitutes the foundations of 
 a future socialism to become much more extensive. The 
 post-office department in the United States is partially 
 socialistic. We use it according to our needs, but we 
 pay according to our ability only to the extent of a deficit 
 in its revenues. Were the post-office absolutely free, it 
 would constitute radical socialism. This book was par- 
 tially prepared in a socialistic library, containing about 
 one hundred thousand volumes, which the people of the 
 state purchased in proportion to their ability as taxpayers, 
 and which the same people use in proportion to their 
 desires. 
 
 Mutual life insurance and the astonishing develop- 
 ment of the innumerable fraternal and protective organiza- 
 tions existing in all parts of the United States, constitute 
 additional instances of similar social ideas tending to- 
 ward universal co-operation and away from the original 
 idea that every man is to live for himself alone. Imper- 
 fect as these organizations undoubtedly are, and marred 
 by the selfish acts and motives that still afflict their mem- 
 bers as well as all other human beings, they, neverthe- 
 less, mark a progress, and the ideal of a future social- 
 istic state may well be that of a perfect mutual life insur- 
 17 
 
258 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ance association embodying all the people, or a truly fra- 
 ternal society comprising an entire nation. Who can 
 say, positively, that a people who have already within 
 a few centuries evolved free schools, free libraries, free 
 roads, and mutual life insurance, to say nothing of the 
 various forms of municipal socialism, may not go farther 
 and by degrees reach the ultimate condition of a grand 
 socialistic state, in which all labor in proportion to their 
 ability, and all receive in proportion to their misfortunes 
 or sickness ? 
 
 Yet it is well not to be deceived by the evidence of 
 progress, for development in the future will be, as in the 
 past, accomplished a very little at a time. The real so- 
 cialism is now, and will ever be, a slow growth and not 
 a sudden transformation. Those who hope or fear that 
 the socialistic state will be brought suddenly into being 
 will be disappointed, for whenever it becomes necessary 
 for socialists to formulate new plans instead of merely 
 objecting to old ones, they will find themselves unable to 
 agree upon anything more than minute changes in exist- 
 ing conditions entirely acceptable to the majority. Hu- 
 man institutions, like the human beings out of which 
 they arise, will be socialized one at a time. It is custom- 
 ary to look upon all the people of a city, a state, or a na- 
 tion, as being about equally civilized ; but the truth is 
 that they constitute a motley group of savages, barbarians, 
 and comparatively enlightened human beings, standing 
 side by side, dressed in the same clothes, and scarcely 
 distinguishable from one another in outward appearance, 
 yet having minds and hearts as different from one an- 
 other as the souls of Attila and Jesus Christ, or the minds 
 of Thomas More and the king who beheaded him. 
 One man has feelings and instincts and prejudices that 
 belong to the dark ages of early race existence, so we de- 
 nounce him as a brute and proceed to imprison or exter- 
 
KING MAMMON. 259 
 
 minate him. Another has emotions and aspirations that 
 in their development are centuries in advance of those 
 surrounding him, so he is supposed to be insane, or vis- 
 ionary, or impracticable, or a dangerous disturber of so- 
 cial order. The man who is either much behind or much 
 before the average sentiment of his age on account of 
 unfortunate heredity, is apt to have a sorry time of life. 
 Misunderstood and reviled on all sides, comprehending 
 neither his associates nor himself, he suffers without sym- 
 pathy, and endures a lonely existence in spite of the mul- 
 titudes associated with him, resembling in one condition 
 a solitary mammoth among a herd of tame elephants, or 
 in the other a Herbert Spencer searching for appreciation 
 and sympathy among the great lizards of the reptilian 
 age. Owing to this diversity in the progress of human 
 nature, very few of us pass from one stage of advance- 
 ment to another at the same time, and sudden transfor- 
 mations in the real nature of social institutions are, there- 
 fore, an impossibility, although their outward forms may 
 be considerably modified in sudden changes. The social- 
 istic agitation that is going on in the world is humaniz- 
 ing and educating. It is compelling people to think. It 
 is harmless, and it will not, unless repressed by foolish 
 authority, do more than to assist in accomplishing that 
 desirable gradual progress from the brutal existence of 
 our dark past to the brighter and better life before the 
 human race. 
 
 Incidentally, along with this modification of the selfish 
 feelings, have occurred at times practical co-operative 
 efforts that need mention to complete the view of social- 
 ism. Our modern family, so far as husband, wife, and 
 minor children are concerned, is an imperfect socialistic 
 organization. The ancient family, and the family tribe 
 that we have designated as the gens, were communal in 
 their nature. One form of ancient socialism applied to 
 
260 KING MAMMON. 
 
 land may be found in the Bible, where the Hebrew year 
 of Jubilee was established to provide for a redistribution 
 of the lands among the people. No matter who the pos- 
 sessors of the land might be, under this Jewish socialism, 
 at the end of fifty years it was to be again divided among 
 the descendants of the original occupants grouped into 
 families. The laws of Lycurgus established a peculiarly 
 hard and despotic form of socialism in Sparta over eight 
 hundred years before Christ, but it was essentially a 
 military organization, and no more a genuine socialistic 
 development than somewhat similar features in a modern 
 army. 
 
 Since the extinction of the old communal existence in 
 the tribe, with competition between tribes, and the sub- 
 stitution of competition between individuals by the devel- 
 opment of wealth and private ownership, culminating in 
 the abolishment of slavery or serfdom and the establish- 
 ment of the wage-system, the attempts to practically 
 conduct socialistic effort in the midst of competition 
 have usually been failures. Robert Owen's unsuccessful 
 experiments and those of Louis Blanc have already been 
 noted. A number of small communistic societies have 
 existed in the United States for years, but their records 
 are of little political value, though intensely interesting 
 to the social student. Charles Nordhoff, after a careful 
 study of these associations in 1874, found that about five 
 thousand actual communists then existed in the United 
 States, comprising seventy-two communities established 
 in thirteen states. They owned 150,000 acres of land, 
 and were in the aggregate worth about $12,000,000, held 
 absolutely as community wealth, or approximately $2,400 
 per communist. As a financial result, this statement is 
 favorable to the communists, for the average wealth of 
 each person in the United States at the date of the last 
 census was only about $1,000. Commenting on this 
 
KING MAMMON. 261 
 
 accumulation, their historian says: "It is not an exag- 
 geration to say that this wealth has been created by the 
 patient industry and strict economy and honesty of the 
 owners, without a positive desire on their part to accumu- 
 late riches, and without painful toil." 
 
 Of these societies, the Icarians are of French origin, 
 the Shakers and Perfectionists principally Americans, and 
 the others Germans, the latter people seeming to be more 
 naturally adapted to communistic life of that form than 
 any others. In religion, the Icarians reject Christianity, 
 their religion being merely the communistic idea ; at 
 Bethel and Aurora the people regarded the essence of all 
 religion as unselfishness ; and Mr. NordhofT describes the 
 other communists as possessing deep religious convic- 
 tions, neither narrow nor intolerant. The Icarians forbid 
 celibacy, and ordinary sexual relations are maintained in 
 some of the colonies. The Shakers and Rappists are 
 celibates, maintaining their numbers by adopting children 
 and initiating new men. The Shakers regard celibacy 
 as essential to communism, but the Perfectionists under 
 John Henry Noyes, long maintained the institution of 
 communal marriage, till a strong adverse sentiment 
 among their competitive neighbors compelled them to 
 discontinue the custom. All these communists were 
 usually found to be apparently contented, comfortable, 
 and happy, in the quiet, monotonous life they had chosen, 
 but it seemed to their investigator that this contentment 
 arose mainly out of the peculiar adaptation of each 
 member to their life, and not so much in the real adapta- 
 tion of that life to the restless people in the bustling 
 world surrounding the Colonies. The colonists were 
 usually unable to retain children raised among them, the 
 temptations of the outside world proving very attractive 
 to the young folks, in spite of the dangers and possible 
 misery to be found in it. These forms of socialism, 
 
262 KING MAMMON. 
 
 while they are interesting experiments, are not really 
 important, for they do not and cannot progress, and they 
 form no considerable part of that great onward march 
 of humanity which tends continually to make men help 
 instead of hinder one another and thus evolves slowly 
 the only real socialism of heart, mind, and hand. 
 
 ANARCHISM. 
 
 The anarchists are numerically a small and compara- 
 tively unimportant part of modern social agitators ; but 
 the startling crimes that have been committed by the 
 destructive exponents of this strange creed, and the 
 mysterious, and, to most minds, incomprehensible nature 
 of their belief, gives to them an interest far beyond their 
 real influence as social factors. Anarchism, as literature, 
 has its origin in the writings of William Godwin, who 
 published his work on " Political Justice" at London in 
 1798. This English anarchist expressed his opinion of 
 existing institutions in the following language : 
 
 "Let us fairly consider for a moment what is the 
 amount of injustice inflicted in the institution of aristo- 
 cracy. I am born, suppose, a Polish prince with an in- 
 come of 300,000 per annum. You are born a manorial 
 serf or a Creolian negro, attached to the soil, and trans- 
 ferable by barter or otherwise to twenty successive lords. 
 In vain shall be your most generous efforts and your 
 unwearied industry to free yourself from the intolerable 
 yoke. Doomed by the law of your birth to wait at the 
 gates of the palace you must never enter ; to sleep under 
 a ruined, weather-beaten roof, while your master sleeps 
 under canopies of state ; to feed on putrefied offals, while 
 the world is ransacked for delicacies for his table ; to 
 labor without moderation or limit under a parching sun, 
 while he basks in perpetual sloth ; and to be rewarded at 
 last with contempt, reprimand, stripes, and mutilation." 
 
KING MAMMON. 263 
 
 The extract above quoted merely expresses the author's 
 hatred of injustice, but in the following selection from his 
 book the characteristic ideas of the anarchists are expressed. 
 
 " Mankind will never be, in an eminent degree, virtuous 
 and happy till each man shall possess that portion of 
 distinction, and no more, to which he is entitled by his 
 personal merits. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally 
 the interest of the oppressor and the oppressed. . . . 
 This is not an equality introduced by force or main- 
 tained by the laws and regulations of a positive institu- 
 tion. It is not the result of accident, of the authority of 
 a chief magistrate, or the over-earnest persuasion of a few 
 enlightened thinkers ; but it is produced by the serious 
 and deliberate conviction of the public at large. It is one 
 thing for men to be held to a certain system by the force 
 of laws and the vigilance of those who administer them ; 
 and a thing entirely different to be held by the firm and 
 habitual persuasion of their own minds. Equality of con- 
 ditions cannot assume a fixed appearance in human 
 society till the sentiment becomes deeply impressed as 
 well as widely diffused, that the genuine wants of any 
 man constitute his only just claim to the ultimate appro- 
 priation and the consumption of any species of com- 
 modity." 
 
 At the. time Godwin wrote, the word anarchism was 
 not applied to social doctrines, the word anarchy being 
 used in an entirely different sense. The ideas of self- 
 government and individualism, which are the distinctive 
 features of the anarchist's belief, pervade all his writings, 
 so that he is clearly an anarchist in all but the name. 
 
 Proudhon, the famous French writer who was re- 
 peatedly jailed on account of his fierce denunciation of 
 existing institutions, and who commenced his book with 
 the conclusion at the beginning, charging that " Property 
 is robbery and the proprietor a thief," assumed the modern 
 name about the middle of the present century by writing 
 as follows : " I have just given you my serious and well- 
 
264 KING MAMMON. 
 
 considered profession of faith. Although a firm friend of 
 order, I am (in the full force of the term) an anarchist." 
 He denounces both property (by which he means ab- 
 solute private ownership) and communism, and declares 
 for individual possession as the necessary condition for 
 social life. In his peculiar style he declared that " Property 
 is the exploitation of the weak by the strong. Commu- 
 nism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. Com- 
 munism is oppression and slavery." It will thus be seen 
 at once that little sympathy exists between the anarchists 
 and the socialists, except in their detestation of existing 
 conditions. Indeed, when Herbert Spencer writes of 
 the " Coming Slavery," his thoughts are essentially those 
 of an anarchist, though he is not usually ranked as such, 
 because he is not at warfare with society. He is an 
 extreme individualist, however, very jealous of supposed 
 infractions of personal liberty, and a believer in the ulti- 
 mate self-government of human beings, all of which are 
 ideas and feelings characterizing the anarchists. 1 
 
 Owing to the savage crimes that have been committed 
 by some of the anarchists, the impression is very preva- 
 lent that they are low, ignorant, brutal men, whose hands 
 and voices are raised against society in extreme selfish- 
 ness and malignance. Such is not the case. All anar- 
 
 1 " That form of society toward which we are progressing, I hold to be 
 one in which government will be reduced to the smallest amount possi- 
 ble, and freedom increased to the greatest amount possible one in 
 which human nature will have become so molded by social discipline 
 into fitness for the social state, that it will need little external restraint, 
 but will be self-restrained one in which the citizen will tolerate no in- 
 terference with his freedom, save that which maintains the equal freedom 
 of others one in which the spontaneous co-operation which has devel- 
 oped our industrial system, and is now developing it with increasing 
 rapidity, will produce agencies for the discharge of nearly all social func- 
 tions, and will leave to the primary governmental agency nothing beyond 
 the function of maintaining those conditions to free action, which make 
 such spontaneous co-operation possible one in which individual life 
 will thus be pushed to the greatest extent consistent with social life; and 
 in which social life will have no other end than to maintain the complet- 
 est sphere for individual life." HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
KING MAMMON. 265 
 
 chists are men of great natural intelligence, and, usually, 
 of considerable education. In fact, a dull, or stupid, or 
 shallow intellect cannot comprehend the creed of anar- 
 chism, and it is, at first, difficult to grasp thoroughly, even 
 by a powerful mind, if it be not already trained in that 
 line of thought. 
 
 At the head of the French anarchists stands iLlisee 
 Reclus, the great geographer and scientist, whose name 
 in this capacity, as Dr. Jekyll, is revered throughout the 
 civilized world,, while in his other self, personating Mr. 
 Hyde, he becomes an anarchist of the most pronounced 
 and uncompromising type in theory, though he is in 
 practice a kind-hearted, benevolent man, who would not 
 consciously destroy a fly. Reclus thinks the destruc- 
 tive anarchists who have been hanged are noble creatures, 
 dying for the sake of their principles ; while nearly all the 
 rest of the world outside of his creed regards the same men 
 with horror and detestation. He is the son of a Protes- 
 tant minister, and a highly-educated man of refined and 
 gentle manners. During the war of the rebellion he was 
 a staunch friend of the union against the continuance of 
 slave power, and he is an anarchist because of that same 
 hatred of tyranny operating in other directions. In the 
 French insurrection of 1871 he was involved in revolt, and 
 his life was saved only by the petitions of other great 
 scientists, such as Darwin and Wallace. He is an ad- 
 mirer of the French and the American revolutions of one 
 hundred years ago, and hopes for something similar in the 
 present to sweep away what he considers the tyranny of 
 capitalistic power. 
 
 Prince Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist, is a warm 
 friend of Reclus, and they agree perfectly in their social 
 theories. Kropotkin is also a scientist of the modern 
 evolutionary type, and one of the foremost thinkers of his 
 age, contributing frequently to current publications of a 
 
266 KING MAMMON. 
 
 high standard. He has with characteristic clearness and 
 decision given his own explanation of the anarchist creed, 
 which will be quoted here as one of the best existing 
 comments on that belief. Kropotkin says in regard to the 
 meaning of the name they have chosen : 
 
 "It is the no-government system of socialism. 
 
 "In common with all socialists, anarchists hold that the 
 private ownership of land, capital, and machinery has had 
 its time ; that it is condemned to disappear ; and that 
 all requisites for production must and will become the 
 common property of society, and be managed in common 
 by the producers of wealth. 
 
 "They maintain that the idea of the political organization 
 of society is a condition of things where the functions of 
 government are reduced to a minimum and the individual 
 recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfy- 
 ing, by means of free groups and federations freely con- 
 stituted, all the infinitely varied needs of the human being. 
 As regards socialism, most of the anarchists arrive at its 
 ultimate conclusions, that is, at a complete negation of 
 the wage system and at communism. In political organi- 
 zation, they arrive at the conclusion that the ultimate aim 
 of society is the reduction of the functions of government 
 to nil that is, to a society without government, to an- 
 archy." 
 
 Concerning the economical and political belief of the 
 anarchists, the author says : 
 
 ' ' The anarchist claims to be an evolutionary thinker. He 
 considers society as an aggregation of organisms trying 
 to find out the best ways of combining the wants of the 
 individual with those of co-operation for the welfare of 
 the species. He believes that the two most prominent, 
 although often unconscious tendencies, throughout our 
 history were : a tendency towards integrating our labor 
 for the production of all riches in common, so as finally 
 to render it impossible to discriminate the part of the 
 common production due to the separate individual ; and 
 a tendency towards the fullest freedom of the individual 
 
KING MAMMON. 267 
 
 for the prosecution of all aims beneficial both for himself 
 and for society at large. 
 
 "Therefore, in common with all socialists, the an- 
 archist says to the political reformer : ' No substantial 
 reform in the sense of political equality, and no limitation 
 of the powers of government, can be made as long as 
 society is divided into two hostile camps, and the laborer 
 remains, economically speaking, a serf to the employer/ 
 But, to the Popular State Socialist, we say also : ' You 
 cannot modify the existing conditions of property with- 
 out deeply modifying at the same time the political 
 organization. You must limit the powers of government 
 and renounce Parliamentary rule. To each new econo- 
 mical phase of life corresponds a new political phase. 
 Absolute monarchy that is, court-rule corresponded to 
 the system of serfdom. Representative government 
 corresponds to capital-rule. Both, however, are class- 
 rule. But in a society where the distinction between 
 capitalist and laborer has disappeared, there is no need 
 of such a government ; it would be an anachronism a 
 nuisance. Free workers would require a free organization, 
 and this cannot have another basis than free agreement 
 and free co-operation, without sacrificing the autonomy 
 of the individual to the all-pervading interference of the 
 State. The no-capitalistic system implies the no-govern- 
 ment system.' 
 
 " It is not a mere coincidence that Herbert Spencer has 
 been brought to conclude, with regard to political organi- 
 zation, that the form of society towards which we are pro- 
 gressing is one in which government will be reduced to 
 the smallest amount possible, and freedom increased to 
 the greatest amount possible. When he opposes in these 
 words the conclusions of his synthetic philosophy to those 
 of Auguste Comte, he arrives at very nearly the same 
 conclusions as Proudhon and Bakunin." 
 
 With regard to the injustice of the present social system, 
 which is peculiarly exasperating to the anarchists, Prince 
 Kropotkin says : 
 
 "When a rich man spends a thousand pounds for his 
 stables, he squanders from five to six thousand days of 
 
268 KING MAMMON. 
 
 human labor, which might be used, under a better social 
 organization, for supplying with comfortable homes those 
 who are compelled to live now in dens. And when a 
 lady spends a hundred pounds for a dress, we cannot but 
 say that she squanders at least two years of human labor, 
 which again, under a better organization, might have 
 supplied a hundred women with decent dresses, and much 
 more if applied to a further improvement of the instru- 
 ments of production. . . . When millions of days of labor 
 are spent every year for the satisfaction of the stupid 
 vanity of the rich, so many millions of workers have been 
 diverted from the manufacture of those useful instruments 
 which would permit us to decuple and centuple our 
 present production of means of subsistence and of re- 
 quisites for comfort. 
 
 "Three quarters of all the acts which are brought every 
 year before our courts, have their origin, either directly or 
 indirectly, in the present disorganized state of society, 
 with regard to the production and distribution of wealth 
 not in the perversity of human nature. As to the relatively 
 few anti-social deeds which result from anti-social inclina- 
 tions of separate individuals, it is not by prisons, nor even 
 by resorting to the hangman, that we can diminish their 
 number. By our prisons we merely multiply them and 
 render them worse. By our detectives, our " price of 
 blood," our executions, and our jails, we spread in society 
 such a terrible flow of basest habits and passions, that he 
 who would realize the effects of these institutions to their 
 full extent, would be frightened by what society is doing 
 under the pretext of maintaining morality. 
 
 " If all our children all children are our children 
 received a sound instruction and education and we have 
 the means of doing so ; if every family lived in a decent 
 home and they could under the present high pitch of pro- 
 duction ; if every boy and girl were taught a handicraft 
 at the same time he or she receives a scientific instruction, 
 and not to be a manual producer of wealth were considered 
 as a token of inferiority ; if men lived in closer contact 
 with one another, and had continually to come into con- 
 tact on those public affairs which now are invested in the 
 few ; and if, in consequence of a closer contact, we were 
 brought to take as lively an interest in our neighbors' 
 difficulties and pains as we formerly took in those of our 
 
KING MAMMON. 269 
 
 kinsfolk then we should not resort to policemen and 
 judges, to prisons and executions. The anti-social deeds 
 would be prevented in the bud, not punished, and the few 
 contests which would arise would be settled by arbitra- 
 tion." 
 
 Reclus and Kropotkin are fine types of the philosophic 
 or scientific anarchists, who hate tyranny and pity what 
 they consider the wrongs of their oppressed fellow-crea- 
 tures, yet who do not attempt or advise the immediate 
 violent destruction of the competitive social system to make 
 room for their ideals. The greatest apostle of destruction 
 was Michel Bakunin, the father of Nihilism, who, in a 
 speech made at Geneva in 1868, announced the new creed 
 in the following language : 
 
 " Brethren, I come to announce to you a new gospel, 
 which must penetrate unto the very ends of the world. This 
 gospel admits of no half-measures and hesitations. The 
 old world must be destroyed and replaced by a new one. 
 The lie must be stamped out and give way to the truth. 
 It is our mission to destroy the lie ; and to effect this we 
 must begin at the very commencement. Now the begin- 
 ning of all those lies which have ground down this poor 
 world in slavery is God. For many hundred years mon- 
 archs and priests have inoculated the hearts and minds of 
 mankind with this notion of a God ruling over the world. 
 They have also invented for the people the notion of 
 another world, in which their God is to punish with eter- 
 nal torture those who have refused to obey their degrad- 
 ing laws here on earth. This God is nothing but the per- 
 sonification of absolute tyranny, and has been invented 
 with a view of either frightening or alluring nine-tenths 
 of the human race into submission to the remaining tenth. 
 If there were really a God, surely he would use that light- 
 ning which he holds in his hand to destroy tftose thrones, 
 to the steps of which mankind is chained. He would, 
 assuredly, use it to overthrow those altars where the truth 
 is hidden by clouds of lying incense. Tear out of your 
 hearts the belief in the existence of God ; for as long as 
 
2/0 KING MAMMON. 
 
 an atom of that silly superstition remains in your minds, 
 you will never know what freedom is. When you have 
 got rid of the belief in this priest-begotten God, and when, 
 moreover, you are convinced that your existence and that 
 of the surrounding world are due to the conglomeration of 
 atoms, in accordance with the laws of gravity and attrac- 
 tion, then, and then only, you will have accomplished the 
 first step toward liberty, and you will experience less diffi- 
 culty in ridding your minds of that second lie which 
 tyranny has invented. The first lie is God. The second 
 lie is right. Might invented the fiction of right in order 
 to insure and strengthen her reign that right which she 
 herself does not heed, and which only serves as a barrier 
 against any attacks which may be made by the trembling 
 and stupid masses of mankind. Might, my friends, forms 
 the sole groundwork of society. Might makes and un- 
 makes laws, and that might should be in the hands of the 
 majority. It should be in the possession of those nine- 
 tenths of the human race whose immense power has been 
 rendered subservient to the remaining tenth by means of 
 that lying fiction of right before which you are accustomed 
 to bow your heads and to drop youi arms. Once pene- 
 trated with a clear conviction of your own might, you 
 will be able to destroy this mere notion of right. And 
 when you have freed your mind from the fear of a God, 
 and from that childish respect for the fiction of right, then 
 all the remaining chains which bind you, and which are 
 called science, civilization, property, marriage, morality, 
 and justice, will snap asunder like threads. Let your own 
 happiness be your only law. But in order to get this law 
 recognized, and to bring about the proper relations which 
 should exist between the majority and minority of man- 
 kind, you must destroy everything which exists in the 
 shape of state or social organization. So educate your- 
 selves and your children that, when the great moment 
 for constituting the new world arrives, your eyes may not 
 be blinded by the falsehoods of the tyrants of throne and 
 altar. Ourf^rst work must be destruction and annihilation 
 of everything as it now exists. You must accustom your- 
 selves to destroy everything, the good with the bad, for if 
 but an atom of this old world remains, the new will never 
 be created. According to the priests' fables, in days of old 
 a deluge destroyed all mankind ; but their God specially 
 
KING MAMMON. 2/1 
 
 saved Noah in order that the seeds of tyranny and false- 
 hood might be perpetuated in the new world. When you 
 once begin your work of destruction, and when the flood of 
 enslaved masses of the people rises and engulfs temples 
 and palaces, then take heed that no ark be allowed to res- 
 cue any atom of this old world, which we consecrate to 
 destruction. " 
 
 Bakunin's creed is a queer, crazy, terrible belief, only 
 possible, in the exact form here illustrated, to the mind of 
 a Russian or a Frenchman, for these races are nearly alike 
 in their methods of thought and manner of expression, 
 and it is probable that far back in ancient tribal organiza- 
 tion their origin was identical. Even in the minds of these 
 people such fearful imprecations on society could not be 
 formulated except when under the influence of the peculiar 
 Russian civilization, with its strange compound of great 
 intelligence among a few, dense, brutal ignorance among 
 the many ; extraordinary liberty in the mir, tyranny un- 
 bearable in the national organization ; communism in the 
 village, despotism and private ownership in the palace. 
 Unequally developed social conditions, with the argu- 
 ments of Siberian exile and the knout, produce unnatural 
 thoughts when applied to better surroundings, but per- 
 fectly natural thoughts under such exasperating conditions. 
 It is not to be wondered that there was one Bakunin in 
 Russia, but only that there were not a million. At Bern, 
 the same year, he addressed the following fierce language 
 to the people : 
 
 "Your beautiful civilization, ye gentlemen of the west, 
 which you flout in the face of us barbarians of the east, 
 is based on the compulsory servitude of the immense 
 majority of the human race, which is condemned to a 
 slavish and almost bestial existence, in order that a very 
 small minority may live in luxury. The monstrous in- 
 equality in the conditions of life is due to your West 
 European system of civilization. This degrading state of 
 
272 KING MAMMON. 
 
 things cannot last much longer, for the manual laborers 
 are determined to look after their own interests in future. 
 They have decided that in future there shall be only one 
 great class instead of two ; that everybody shall have 
 equal advantages for starting in life ; that all shall enjoy 
 the same privileges and support, the same means of 
 education and bringing up; finally, that every one shall 
 have the same advantages from his labor. ... I detest 
 communism ; it is the denial of freedom, and I do not 
 like to picture to myself any human being without free- 
 dom. I oppose it because it concentrates and absorbs all 
 the forces of society, and because it places all property 
 and capital in the hands of the state. In demanding 
 the abolition of the state, I also wish for the annul- 
 ment of the law of inheritance, which is nothing but an 
 institution brought into life by the state, and a consequence 
 of its principles. Give all children from their very birth 
 the same means of support and education. Then grant 
 to all grown-up people the same social standing and the 
 same means of supplying their wants by their own labor, 
 and you will see that the inequalities, which are now 
 looked upon as being quite normal, will disappear, for 
 they are merely the result of the difference made in the 
 condition of development. You can even improve na- 
 ture by destroying the present social organization. For 
 when you have succeeded in making everything and 
 everybody equal, when you have equalized all the con- 
 ditions of development and labor, then many crimes, 
 miseries, and evils will disappear." 
 
 Alluding to the destructive theories of anarchism, 
 Bakunin said : 
 
 " When it becomes evident that a person cannot be more 
 severely punished for the assassination of his sovereign 
 than for the murder of a mere comrade, then the people 
 will comprehend that it is quite as just to kill a man 
 guilty of the abuse of power, as to execute a poor beggar 
 who has been tempted by hunger to commit murder. 
 Society of to-day, gangrened though it be, has, to a cer- 
 tain extent, understood this, for Damiens-executions are a 
 thing of the past, and in all legislations, regicide is now 
 
KING MAMMON. 273 
 
 assimilated to mere homicide. Soon we shall see the 
 authors of these so-called crimes enjoying the greatest 
 consideration among us. The old world will have had 
 its time. On its ruins, the poor and oppressed will take 
 each other by the hand, and the true disciples of Christ, 
 that grand Nihilist, will smile when they remember the 
 parable of the poor man in Abraham's bosom refusing 
 a drop of water to the rich man in hell and saying : 
 1 Thou hast had thy time, now it is mine ! ' 
 
 "Then there will arise a new generation, generous- 
 hearted and independent, and all mankind will be happy. 
 The children of our children will be forced to begin our 
 work anew ; but the evils of the future will be less mon- 
 strous than those which we now deplore, just as these in 
 their turn are less trying and odious than those to which 
 our ancestors were subjected. And thus, from struggle 
 to struggle, and after centuries of combat, mankind will 
 finally attain perfection and become what is called God. 
 To arms, then, brethren, and follow me to the conquest 
 of this Godhead." 
 
 This language, to the people of our great western re- 
 public, sounds insanely horrible, and it must be connected 
 with the tyranny which is mainly instrumental in causing 
 it to be thoroughly understood. A pamphlet issued from 
 secret presses, hidden from the despotic government of 
 Russia, during the extreme Nihilist movement, indicates 
 in the following extracts how and why men threatened 
 to destroy all government and to reduce infernal order to 
 chaos : 
 
 "The standard of public morality in Russia has already 
 sunk so low that we tremble for the future of our country. 
 Bribery is common throughout the government service, 
 and has even found its way into the Senate. The na- 
 tional treasury is robbed, and national property is dis- 
 tributed right and left to the unworthy favorites of the 
 government. If we were to relate all, it would disgust 
 and tire our readers. We repeat that such a state of things 
 cannot exist much longer. . . . What is the use of com- 
 
2/4 KING MAMMON. 
 
 plaints that people are hanged for the mere expression of 
 political opinions contrary to those of the government ? 
 What is the use of crying for help in the streets when we 
 are attacked and ill-treated by the police ? Nobody stirs 
 nobody protests. . . . These savages hang our friends, 
 who are an honor to Russia ; who love liberty, and who 
 devote their lives to the propagation of humanitarian and 
 fraternal ideas. . . . You blame us and get frightened when 
 we happen to kill one of these rascals. Why, then, do 
 you remain silent when we are kept for years in prison 
 without trial, separated from our parents, our wives, 
 and our children, whom we have to abandon to their 
 fate, and often without means of subsistence. We are 
 
 foaded to madness and entombed alive in the mines of 
 iberia, and yet you all cry out when you see Menzen- 
 stoff fall dead in the street. ... Do not be surprised at these 
 political assassinations, but rather be astonished that 
 they are not more frequent. 'Unfortunately for our 
 cause, the majority of Nihilists are too humanitarian, 
 and hence incapable of carrying out many necessary 
 measures." 
 
 Thus, it will be seen, there are two types of the anar- 
 chist, one in whom hope for the future predominates over 
 hatred of the present, and another in whom intense 
 loathing for existing injustice and inequality suppresses 
 every other feeling. In the destructive anarchist, love of 
 liberty has run mad. Philosophic anarchism, separated 
 from the insanely destructive ideas which a few adherents 
 preach and practice, is an elevated and beautiful concep- 
 tion of social order existing without compulsion among 
 human beings, who to conform to that existence must be 
 raised far above all merely brutal tendencies and instincts 
 into a mental and moral condition nearly perfect, so that 
 each governs himself and shapes his actions in the enjoy- 
 ment of absolute liberty without wronging in the slight- 
 est degree any other human being. It is not a licentious 
 creed that would remove all restraints upon the wicked 
 that they may commit crimes with impunity, but a reli- 
 
KING MAMMON. 275 
 
 gion whose God is perfected human nature, and whose 
 enthusiastic devotees are animated by a sublime faith in 
 the object of their devotion, which leads them to con- 
 stantly urge that all men will eventually govern them- 
 selves without laws, and then do right because it t's right, 
 without the intervention of laws, policemen, judges, 
 prisons, and hangmen. The more enthusiastic anarchists 
 believe that even now people would be better and happier 
 if many of our laws were blotted from the statute books. 
 Noting this phase of the belief, a recent writer ' says : 
 
 "Anarchists believe there should be no government ; by 
 which they mean no government by physical force ; no 
 government to prevent persons from thinking, saying, or 
 doing what they should be free to think, say, or do ; no 
 government for the encouragement of those who invade 
 what should be the rights of others, with the protection of 
 such invaders ; no government to authorize a few to 
 monopolize what should be the opportunities of all ; no 
 government to compel persons to do what they should be 
 free to refuse to do, what it is not necessary for the good of 
 all that they should do ; no government in favor of one 
 class as against another class ; no government to enrich 
 the idle by impoverishing the industrious. They believe 
 there should be no government that interferes with 
 wholesome individual liberty and wealth-producing ex- 
 ertion. But they believe in well-ordered society, in which 
 the wise, the just, the good will rule by precepts, princi- 
 ples, and examples, in which healthful public opinion 
 will utter and morally enforce everything needful for re- 
 straint or encouragement. They believe in government, 
 but not government by physical force for the injury of 
 all, or, to use a common expression which means the 
 same, for unjust purposes. They believe in self-control 
 and mutuality." 
 
 Of the philosophic anarchists the same author again 
 writes : 
 
 1 Hugh O. Pentecost " Sociology." 
 
2/6 KING MAMMON. 
 
 11 Anarchists do not fight with bombs, but with books ; 
 not with pistols, but with pens. They are not thugs ; 
 they are thinkers. Not powder, but persuasion is their 
 weapon. Not by cannon, but by convictions, do they 
 hope to win." 
 
 Following out their lines of thought, the scientific anar- 
 chists urge that society has already progressed beyond 
 the need of many laws that were once deemed necessary. 
 For instance, laws once regulated the styles of clothing, 
 the prices of bread, meat, and beer, and even the rates of 
 wages. Combinations of all kinds to change wages were 
 made a felony, and both employer and employes were 
 punishable. The anarchists claim that their principles 
 have been observed in the abandonment of these foolish 
 laws, and they maintain that many of our present laws 
 are equally foolish and injurious, and that they also can 
 easily be abandoned. 
 
 In regard to social conduct, the anarchists contend 
 that public opinion already restrains all kinds of offensive 
 individual behavior in public and private assemblages, 
 where only the ordinary rules of social intercourse con- 
 trol people, and they think the same principle of socially 
 ostracising offensive persons would control them in 
 other cases more effectually than laws do. For instance, 
 it is an anarchist theory, believed by many people who 
 are not anarchists in other respects, that society would 
 be better off if all laws for the collection of debts were 
 repealed, and debtors placed squarely upon their personal 
 honesty, with the certain penalty, under such circum- 
 stances, of a complete loss of social position and recog- 
 nition, to say nothing of business credit if they proved 
 recreant to the trust. The anarchist believes that all 
 force-government is necessarily evil. If he is a conser- 
 vative anarchist, he desires that society shall grow peace- 
 ably out of a government by force, with its injustice and 
 
KING MAMMON. 277 
 
 inequality, to a better self-government without the dom- 
 ination of authority. If he is a radical anarchist he 
 proposes in a misdirected enthusiasm to blast society 
 into the happy future with immense charges of dynamite, 
 as a means of advertising his good intentions, and attract- 
 ing the attention of the dormant people surrounding him 
 to the iniquity of the social institutions they maintain. 
 Both the methods of "the book and the bomb" are said 
 to be educational, but they are different kinds of educa- 
 tion ; and the latter form is not highly appreciated by 
 those who have not yet reached the conclusions of the 
 destructive anarchist. 
 
 The consistent anarchist will not vote or otherwise par- 
 ticipate in law-making, for it would be absurd in him to 
 assist in doing what he declares is absolutely wrong. 
 As Mr. Pentecost says, the only thing he really wants to 
 vote for is the abolition of all existing laws. He asserts 
 that even if he were one of a majority, he would not, if 
 he could, impose his will upon another man in the minor- 
 ity. His theory is that every man shall do as he pleases, 
 except that he must respect the same right of self-control 
 in all his associates. When the conflicting desires of 
 men thus associated can be reconciled by a universally 
 correct opinion of right and wrong, then the anarchist's 
 heaven on earth will be complete. 
 
 At present the optimistic anarchist considers earth a 
 hell * which is being slowly modified by the right kind of 
 
 1 Some of Kropotkin's impassioned utterances, more violent than 
 those quoted, are as follows : " Burn the guillotines ; demolish the 
 prisons ; drive away the judges, policemen, and informers the impurest 
 race on the face of the earth ; treat as a brother the man who has been 
 led by passion to do ill to his brother; above all, take from the ignoble 
 products of middle class idleness the possibility of displaying their vices 
 in attractive colors; and be sure that but few crimes will mar our 
 society. The main supports of crime are idleness, law, and authority ; 
 laws about property, laws about government, laws about penalties and 
 misdemeanors ; and authority which takes upon itself to manufacture 
 these laws and to apply them. No more laws! No more judges! 
 
278 KING MAMMON. 
 
 progress ; while his pessimistic associate, believing that 
 its wickedness is unconquerable by pacific measures, 
 proposes to assist Nature somewhat by blowing her hid- 
 eous creation into nothingness and permitting her to 
 commence another attempt at perfection. The anarchist, 
 then, is an extreme individualist, who may be called the 
 negative pole of the current of social thought, while the 
 socialist is the positive pole ; and as extremes meet, so 
 these two classes have a common ground of belief in the 
 economic advantages of co-operative social effort. Their 
 ideas of government are directly opposed to each other, 
 one wanting much government and the other none, but 
 as they agree in denouncing the present capitalistic sys- 
 tem, with its rents, interest, and profits, and also agree in 
 desiring communistic association of labor, the anarchist 
 is often classed as a socialist, without any conception of 
 his real ideas or the nature of his belief on the part of 
 those describing him. The socialist desires to convert 
 the state into a huge communal productive machine, 
 under general laws regulating the hours of labor, prices, 
 system of exchange, and all the minutiae of daily existence 
 on a system of equality ; but the anarchist considers that 
 kind of existence a horribly tyrannical prospect, and pre- 
 fers the present, which he would modify by abolishing 
 laws and governmental officers and by organizing society 
 into communal groups in voluntary association. In a 
 comparison drawn from the principles of physics, social- 
 ism is a solid in which the particles possess an intense 
 attraction and cohesion, while anarchism, in human 
 nature of the present, at least, is a gas in which the par- 
 ticles tend to wander into an infinity of space, free from 
 the control of any other particle. In the present develop- 
 
 Liberty and equality and practical human sympathy are the only effect- 
 ual barriers we can oppose to the anti-social instincts of certain men 
 among us." 
 
KING MAMMON. 2/9 
 
 ment of the human race it is difficult to conceive a society 
 based on the ideas of anarchism, in which more than one 
 anarchist exists at the same instant. To accomplish 
 the ideals of anarchism we need a better human race or 
 else more worlds in which to place men free from inter- 
 ference. 
 
 In spite of its inadaptability to human nature of the 
 present day, there is something grand in the aspirations 
 of scientific anarchism, and something sublime in the 
 faith its adherents exhibit in weak, struggling human 
 nature, slowly shaking off the brute instincts and gross 
 hereditary taints that have come down upon it from the dis- 
 mal shades of the past. Few of us there are who will not 
 hope that in his view of the future the anarchist may be 
 right, and that men of that day may neither think, nor 
 feel, nor act as our ancestors have done in the past, nor 
 as we are doing in the present. 
 
 It is easy for a close observer who will patiently think, 
 to comprehend the apparently unnatural feelings of the 
 destructive anarchists when they deliberately throw their 
 lives away in the perpetration of some crime, shocking 
 with its enormity the whole civilized world, as in the 
 recent assassination of the president of France. Such 
 anarchists are invariably warm-hearted men of strong 
 sympathies, bitter hatred of class distinctions, and intense 
 aversion to the dictation of authority. The whole system 
 of anarchism revolves about the central thought of abso- 
 lute liberty and freedom from the control of any other 
 human being. Having this nature to begin with, and being 
 usually possessed of much intelligence of that reflective 
 kind which always causes men to mature mentally late 
 in life, to be ridiculed in their youth, and sometimes 
 pronounced dullards because they are not imitative, the 
 embryo anarchist is to some extent naturally unfitted for 
 the practical efforts and duties of life as required by the 
 
280 KING MAMMON. 
 
 competitive system, in which a very ordinary intellect, 
 united with imitativeness, adaptability to circumstances, 
 and a prompt and agreeable subservience to authority, 
 is the most efficient factor in securing promotion to 
 that moderate success which most men achieve. The un- 
 fortunate temperament of the natural anarchist, and some- 
 times an equally unfortunate environment, usually causes 
 repeated failures in his early life-efforts under competition, 
 and his keen, reflective intellect seeks for the cause be- 
 neath the mere surface of social conditions usually touched 
 by his shallower, but often more successful, associates. 
 It is not at all difficult for any man who will candidly 
 investigate society to find injustice in the social structure, 
 and when the young anarchist discovers it there, he de- 
 nounces this injustice as the cause of all his suffering 
 and supposed wrongs. He observes the misery of the poor, 
 side by side with the ostentatious luxury of the rich, and 
 with the chivalrous sympathy that always characterizes 
 such stormy, rebellious natures, he immediately becomes 
 the avowed champion of the weaker, and like Don Quix- 
 ote de la Mancha, he is ready to battle with every wind- 
 mill that he finds in his way in order to assist the poor 
 and oppressed of the whole world ; for the sympathies of 
 the genuine anarchist extend to all human beings except 
 those who are in authority. It is not a selfish crusade, 
 for no anarchist has anything but death or imprisonment 
 to expect as punishment if he is arrested, and nothing per- 
 sonally beneficial to gain if he escapes. He is invariably, 
 from his point of view, trying to startle society into a 
 comprehension of the evils in its own existence, in the 
 hope that a change for the better may result in the relief 
 of the downtrodden people of the world as he sees it, and 
 he literally throws his life away to aid what he believes to 
 be a great and just cause. Whether his methods do or do 
 not accomplish what he hopes for, his motives are in 
 
KING MAMMON. 28 1 
 
 many cases the same that led Jesus Christ to the cross ; 
 for, like the Saviour, the genuine anarchist is inspired by 
 an abounding love for humanity, and an intense aversion 
 towards the tyranny and luxury of wealth. His faith in 
 the perfectibility of human nature is his religion, and like 
 many another devotee in the past, he becomes a fanatic 
 who believes that what he is other men may be if they 
 will, and that what average human nature may do some 
 day in the future it can do now. Therefore, being a fa- 
 natic, he sacrifices his life in the supposed interests of his 
 religion, and dull men look on and wonder what strange 
 animal thus chooses to die when he might easily live. 
 The Nihilists who assassinated the Czar of Russia did so 
 knowing that their temerity involved certain death. They 
 made no attempt whatever to escape, and deliberately 
 died for what they believed was the good of humanity. 
 Even the most careless observer of these social phenom- 
 ena ought to realize that when a young, handsome, in- 
 telligent lady of gentle life and breeding, like Sophie 
 Peroffskaya, deliberately sacrifices her life for principle, 
 the circumstance involves something more than mere 
 brutal destruction. 
 
 The beginning of the anarchist's thought and feeling 
 can be experienced by any strongly sympathetic man 
 who views a contest in which the weaker struggles vainly 
 against a tremendous comparative power, and is in the 
 end badly and cruelly defeated. The contest may only be 
 a schoolboy struggle, or even a fight between curs in the 
 street, if the elements of disproportionate strength are not 
 lacking. The sympathetic observer in such cases feels a 
 tide of hot indignation swelling over him, and a fierce 
 desire, sometimes absurdly inappropriate to the apparent 
 importance of the conflict, to seize the victor and punish 
 him adequately to the oppression which he has accom- 
 plished by his superior strength. So the anarchist views 
 
282 KING MAMMON. 
 
 society. All our existence is a contest, and the losers, 
 whatever be the causes of their defeat, often cruelly suffer. 
 Those who from inherent strength or accidental good 
 fortune become successful, too frequently tyrannize over 
 their weaker associates with unnecessary severity. The 
 anarchist, with his bombs and his torch, is really the over- 
 enthusiastic champion of the under dogs in the battle 
 of human existence, and he knowingly fights against tre- 
 mendous odds ; for, like the traditional Irishman and his 
 wife, who were interrupted in the exchange of domestic 
 amenities by a champion of the woman, both the victor 
 and the vanquished in the battle of human life usually 
 turn upon the poor anarchist and crucify him for meddling 
 in the fray. People of the present still enjoy righting one 
 another. Fanatics never accept advice, but if the de- 
 structive anarchists would follow the example of more 
 sensible folk, who never interfere in the domestic quarrels 
 of an Irish family, and would let savage, warring human- 
 ity continue to fight in the struggle of human existence 
 till the race naturally loses more of its brutality by the 
 progress of successive generations, undisturbed by their 
 well-meant interference, the result would in the end be 
 accomplished quite as expeditiously and with less suffering 
 to themselves. 
 
 Every age in this world judges its own people and in- 
 stitutions very differently from the verdict rendered by 
 succeeding ages. Men do not now regard the Spanish 
 Inquisition as other men did when they established it. 
 Flogging one's wife at the present time is not what the 
 same act was five hundred years ago. Death by torture 
 is not now the appropriate means of terminating an exist- 
 ence that it formerly was. Jesus Christ, to the men of the 
 present age, is a being quite different from the one who 
 was scoffed at and reviled, tortured and crucified, by a 
 populace determined to exist under their own ideas of life 
 
KING MAMMON. 283 
 
 and not according to His teachings. There will come 
 a time, perhaps, when, if the records of our present history 
 be preserved, the anarchists of the present, cursed and 
 reviled by their contemporaries, will be regarded then as 
 the sturdy and self-sacrificing pioneers of a new civiliza- 
 tion and a new advance in social morality. Some day, 
 and perhaps not very far in the future, men may regard 
 our own anarchists of Chicago, dying with the cry of 
 "Listen to the voice of the people" upon their lips, as 
 men more to be pitied than blamed, when their real char- 
 acter and the nature of their environment is thoroughly 
 understood, as only the moral light of the future can 
 reveal it. 
 
 The anarchist is a man whose moral sentiments are 
 many years in advance of the average sentiment by which 
 he is surrounded. He judges our social institutions by 
 the ethics of the future instead of the ethics of the present. 
 He shocks and horrifies society because he understands 
 neither its slow growth, nor its habitual conservatism, nor 
 the impossibility of its institutions becoming any better 
 than the men who make them. He does not even under- 
 stand his own nature or comprehend that he is mentally 
 and morally living in the future instead of the present, 
 when the very fact that men generally reject his ideas 
 indicates that he is too far in advance of them. 
 
 If the anarchist understood these truths, he would com- 
 prehend, what it is to be feared that but few people, 
 whether reformers or not, thoroughly understand : that, 
 no matter what form of government or no-government 
 exists in any country, be it China, Russia, England, the 
 United States, or even the ideal anarchist community 
 wherein no laws, judges, and policemen are to be found, 
 the social institutions will inevitably and invariably ex- 
 press the moral sentiments and desires of the majority 
 if not the majority of actual numbers, at least the majority 
 
284 KING MAMMON. 
 
 of power, which, in the final contest for a decision by 
 appeal to brute force, is usually and naturally the majority 
 of numbers. There is a queer assumption apparent in the 
 works of many writers, that some kinds of government are 
 imposed upon the many by the few without the consent and 
 approval of the masses of the people. In the conception 
 of such writers, a despotism is the work of a small, 
 privileged class in a nation, who seize the power and who 
 hold it in tyranny over the common people in spite of 
 their protestations and resistance. We prate of our own 
 "government by the majority " as though it were some- 
 thing peculiar to a republic, and congratulate ourselves 
 that this form of government is essentially different from 
 older types. Prince Kropotkin is evidently impressed 
 with the idea that some countries are not ruled by the 
 majority when he says, "It is becoming understood that 
 majority rule is as defective as any other kind of rule," 
 as though some other kind of government not really the 
 rule of a majority had ever existed, The same fallacy 
 appears in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, one of the 
 greatest thinkers and purest patriots of his age, when he 
 contended that at times it was necessary to fertilize the 
 earth with the blood of tyrants that the seeds of liberty 
 might grow, for he evidently thought that the responsibil- 
 ity for bad institutions devolved upon the few and not 
 upon the many. The same idea is to be found in the 
 writings of a hundred other prominent men, where it is 
 assumed that the expression of public sentiment by vot- 
 ing is something radically different in its nature from 
 more primitive forms of government, so that in contra- 
 distinction it may be called the control of the majority. 
 
 The truth is that all government, however constituted, 
 whether it be despotic or liberal, no matter whether the 
 people do or do not vote, is the government of the ma- 
 jority, and all government must ever be so conducted. 
 
KING MAMMON. 285 
 
 Russia's government is despotic and China's institutions 
 are brutal, because the majority of their people are 
 despotic and brutal. South America's republics do not 
 afford really good government, because the people who 
 live under them cannot make institutions any better than 
 themselves, no matter what the form, and the masses of 
 the people in those countries are still barbarians only 
 recently descended from the undeveloped Indian races. 
 We of the United States complain of corrupt government 
 that we see around and over us, yet those institutions, 
 with all their monopoly, fraudulence, and bribery, are 
 an emanation from ourselves from the majority that 
 rules this country exactly as every other country is ruled. 
 Our legislatures, our municipal boards, and our congress 
 are samples of the people quite as good and no better 
 than the mass of public sentiment that sustains the pur- 
 suit of wealth by methods that a later progress and a 
 more highly developed moral sense among the people 
 themselves will ultimately condemn and abolish. 
 
 The people do not vote in a despotism, but, neverthe- 
 less, they adopt and sustain that form of government 
 themselves ; it is not thrust upon them by any other 
 power than their own wills and their own defective 
 moral sentiments. Tyranny accompanies the institutions 
 of uncivilized races because barbaric man is a tyrant in 
 heart and mind, universally among rich and poor, and he 
 cannot comprehend the principles of liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity. For him, no other government than a des- 
 potism, be it in the form of a republic or a monarchy, is 
 possible ; for he is a brutal tyrant at heart, and he will 
 be a brutal tyrant in his manners and customs, his re- 
 ligions and his laws. The people of every nation have 
 the power of making changes in their institutions, but 
 the tyranny of their ancient savage existence 
 remains with them till the slow development of the 
 
286 KING MAMMON. 
 
 moral sentiments awakens new feelings of duty one 
 to another, and then the habiliments of the past 
 fall away like the lower branches of a great forest 
 tree in its own progress towards the blue sky above it. 
 A cruel, despotic government, characterized by long 
 terms of imprisonment and sanguinary executions for 
 political offenses, is merely the outward sign of a people 
 whose character is the same. The sale and purchase 
 of votes, the bribery, and the influence of money in all 
 the legislation of this country are merely the symptoms 
 of a public sentiment which has made of money a God, 
 and worshiped its accumulation in the press, the pulpit, 
 the home, and the halls of justice. The greed for wealth 
 has been the characteristic feature of modern civilization, 
 and it is finding its natural expression in the social cus- 
 toms and legislation of the people. Whether this wild 
 spirit of accumulation for its own sake can be controlled 
 by more rational ideas remains to be seen, but our laws 
 will only change after a changed sentiment exists among 
 the people, and to that higher sentiment this book ap- 
 peals. 
 
 In every stage of development among every people, a 
 few men exist whose moral sentiment in the feeling of 
 duty toward fellow-creatures, is immeasurably in advance 
 of the usual spirit displayed by their associates. Some of 
 the mysterious principles of heredity doubtless form the 
 unusual development of character, but, whatever be the 
 cause, life for such men is misery. Living in the future, 
 so far as their inner convictions are concerned, they can- 
 not understand the present, and their condition is like that 
 of an average man of the present era would be were he 
 compelled to pass the remainder of his existence among the 
 savage tribes of Africa, and not know that he was morally 
 in advance of those people. No people existing under the 
 same laws are equally civilized. It is useless for the 
 
KING MAMMON. 287 
 
 foremost in ethical development to preach and pray for 
 reforms or changes greatly in advance of the average 
 thought and feeling, for government rests ultimately on 
 physical power, and that power is with the majority, no 
 matter what we may say, or do, or believe. 
 
 Therefore, the people of the present will continue to 
 hang the destructive anarchists and laugh at the scientific 
 theorists, for as an average body of human beings they 
 are not-capable of existing without laws or of governing 
 themselves, and treating one another justly ; and they 
 know it. The great fallacy of the anarchists is their sup- 
 position that the people of any country are any better 
 or any worse for their laws. It is the old, old mistake of 
 substituting effect for cause, and thinking that the con- 
 dition of the people is altogether due to their laws, instead 
 of the nature of the laws being due to the condition of 
 the people. To me the saddest thing in the creed of the 
 destructive anarchist is his unswerving faith in the wor- 
 thiness of the poor, and his extreme hostility against the 
 wealthy and powerful, under the delusion that the few 
 are to blame for tyrannizing the many. He does not per- 
 ceive that the responsibility belongs to all classes, and that 
 the beggar would often be a greater tyrant than the mil- 
 lionaire, if he had the wealth. Nor does he understand 
 that the real reason why men of the present do not co- 
 operate, and why they resent interference (like the Irish- 
 man and his wife) is because they enjoy fighting with 
 one another, and believe fighting is morally correct. Dis- 
 regarding the fact that the worst conditions of the present 
 merely indicate that the people are not so good as they 
 ought to be and will be, the radical anarchist is usually 
 not content with those gradual changes in public senti- 
 ment which constitute the only true reform, and he relies 
 too implicitly on the delusive idea of a sudden transform- 
 ation. 
 
288 KING MAMMON. 
 
 This being the nature of anarchism, is it not evident 
 that propositions seen so frequently now in the press of 
 this country, urging that anarchists should be prevented 
 from migrating to the United States, display an absurd 
 conception of the social question ? Anarchism is devel- 
 oped in every country by the changing thought of its 
 people. It is not imported like salt or sugar from foreign 
 nations ; it comes and will continue to come out of our 
 own people when their most daring pioneers become 
 dissatisfied with existing institutions, and cry for change. 
 Thomas Jefferson expressed many principles of anarchism 
 in his utterances during the early history of this nation, 
 yet he is revered as the father of our democratic institu- 
 tions and the faithful champion of liberty. In the strike 
 of 1894 there were many excited men who, suspecting 
 that the national power was to be used to protect mo- 
 nopolies, began to denounce the government. The real 
 anarchism which the people of the United States need to 
 fear is not any imported European form, but the fierce 
 discontent among our own people, who are beginning to 
 comprehend inequitable conditions and to adopt new 
 ideas of right and wrong, without knowing what they 
 should do to make their social institutions conform to 
 the new moral sentiment. The right way to repress the 
 growth of destructive anarchism of this kind is not by 
 fencing out foreign emissaries and imprisoning men for 
 anything except actual crimes, for such feelings were 
 never yet in all the history of the world repressed or les- 
 sened by brute force, but by adopting gradual changes 
 in our institutions to comply with the changing thought 
 of the people. 
 
 All government is alike in being the dicta of a majority, 
 but the best government is that which frequently and 
 faithfully reflects the real opinion and sentiment of that 
 majority, and which enables the people to quietly and 
 
KING MAMMON. 289 
 
 peaceably express their ever-changing ideas of right and 
 wrong in their social institutions, without being compelled 
 to resort to the savage tactics of armed revolution and 
 brute force. From the beginning of human existence to 
 its termination, the people surge onward, changing day 
 by day their thoughts ; year by year their laws ; century 
 by century their religions and their Gods. x Woe to the 
 poor weakling, imbued with the pride of temporary posi- 
 tion or power, who would stay their progress by an ap- 
 peal to the worn-out and discarded institutions of the 
 past. Let him not try to bind his fellow-creatures with 
 precedents and decisions, ancient customs and paper con- 
 stitutions, inflicting the tyranny of the past upon the prog- 
 ress of the present ; for, be they right or be they wrong, 
 the majority of this people will rule in the future as other 
 majorities have ruled in the past, and obstruction to the 
 popular will means bloodshed. In the education and 
 direction of public sentiment and not in its repression lies 
 the only safety for those in power. 
 
 Such being, in brief, the nature of socialistic theories and 
 
 1 The God of the ancient Hebrews, worshiped 5000 years ago, is 
 quite accurately described in slang phrase as " a holy terror." He was 
 a powerful, vindictive, capricious, bloodthirsty tyrant, who felt neither 
 love, mercy, nor justice. He punished disobedience among his people, 
 of whom he unjustly made favorites, by opening chasms in the earth to 
 kill hundreds of them ; by destroying thousands with a plague ; by send- 
 ing fiery serpents among them. He was a jealous, demon who an- 
 nounced himself as a " consuming fire," and who assisted his favorite 
 people to slaughter men unmercifully, to enslave their women and burn 
 their cities. Three thousand years later this ideal of perfection had 
 greatly improved. Some conception of charity and justice appear in 
 his utterances, but he still maintained a hell in which he proposed to 
 eternally roast those of his creatures who rashly died without believing 
 in his infinite love and mercy. The later progress of 2000 years has 
 still further civilized this originally sanguinary being; but as water 
 never rises higher than its source, so the Gods of the nineteenth cent- 
 ury are no better than the best thoughts and feelings of the nobler men 
 and women who have replaced their savage ancestry. 
 
2QO KING MAMMON. 
 
 ideals, how shall we define socialism ? It assumes many 
 slightly divergent forms of belief, but in all of them social- 
 ism is the antagonist of our competitive life, and in this 
 fact is found its essential nature. Socialism is the de- 
 struction of competition, and the amount of socialism in- 
 volved in any proposed law is measured by the amount 
 of private competitive effort that it displaces, for the in- 
 variable theory of socialism is that people are to labor 
 together as partners instead of working individually as 
 competitors. Judged by this standard, is the abolishment 
 or restriction of bequests and inheritances a socialistic 
 measure ? Clearly it is not ; for it makes all men com- 
 petitors by depriving some of them of the wealth not 
 secured by their own exertions, and placing them under 
 the necessity of exerting their brains and muscles in life- 
 effort. It displaces no competition or individual effort 
 whatever, but it substitutes for the lying and unjust com- 
 petition of the present, in which the heirs of wealth are 
 set against the heirs of poverty, a fairer and more nearly 
 equal struggle in which every individual must attain pros- 
 perity and leisure by his own exertions and not from 
 those of his ancestor. It will not give to men equal 
 wealth for unequal effort the basis of the present objec- 
 tion to socialism nor will it give immense wealth to a 
 comparatively few individuals who have made no effort 
 whatever, as under the present social system ; but it will 
 be a change tending toward fairness in a contest that 
 humanity is not yet prepared to abandon, and tending 
 to teach every human being that social radiance must 
 emanate from his own light and not from the reflected 
 beams of his predecessors, however eminent. 
 
 Something over one hundred years ago progressive 
 humanity in Europe and America attacked and abolished 
 to some extent the heredity of governmental and official 
 power, and in the United States our forefathers established 
 
KING MAMMON. 29! 
 
 a republic instead of a monarchy. In the present move- 
 ment the battle will be fought over again ; but the real 
 kings are money-kings now, and the people will decide 
 whether they shall permit this kind of power to continue 
 in its present hereditary form. It is logical to assume 
 that they will apply to the money-king the same prin- 
 ciples they have already applied to the political-king, and, 
 in the end, neither permit him to name his successor nor 
 permit the accident of birth to designate their future sov- 
 ereigns. The power of the state and the power of great 
 wealth must both be subjected to the control of the 
 people who create them, and not remain under the dicta- 
 tion of individual desires nor the sport of chance. 
 
 The changes proposed in these pages are not socialistic, 
 for they embody only the requirements of fair play and 
 genuine competition between men who are compelled by 
 the nature of our social system to enter into a conflict, 
 and who, therefore, should have equal opportunities of 
 cutting one another's throats. When society shall refuse 
 absolutely, in all cases, to give something for nothing to 
 its individuals, it will be on the high road to genuine re- 
 form. At present we meet the slovenly tramp at the rear 
 entrance to our homes with frowns and suspicion, de- 
 manding that he must work if he would eat, meanwhile 
 permitting our social affairs to fall into such a condition 
 that no work is to be done. Having thus conscientiously 
 performed our social duty in regard to the tramp, we 
 hasten to the handsome doorway at the front to receive 
 with smiles and bows the neatly-apparelled heir, accord- 
 ing to him freely all the vast wealth he has not earned 
 by labor any more than the vagabond whom we kicked 
 away from the other door. That adjustment of the right 
 to wealth and the right to use earth as a home is not con- 
 sistent and not fair. It is not just. It is lying hypocrisy 
 to give all for nothing to the rich man's child, and then 
 
2Q2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 drive the poor man's sons and daughters to lives of desti- 
 tution, crime, and misery, when they ask merely for an 
 opportunity to labor and to use a portion of that earth 
 which is our common home. 
 
 Latter-day socialism is promulgated in many different 
 forms, one of the most frequent being the crude asser- 
 tions of labor-agitators, who see nothing in the problem 
 but capitalists and their employes, and who disregard the 
 great multitude of men not particularly or prominently 
 identified with either class. This agitator heralds an im- 
 mediate transformation of the nation into a great com- 
 munism as a perfectly feasible and happy solution of all 
 the labor troubles. In the minds of such newly-fledged 
 socialists the possession of wealth is the criterion by 
 which they determine personal worth. Like the detest- 
 able sycophants who cringe under men above them, and 
 tyrannize over men below, such socialists are also un- 
 just in judging men merely by their stations. The syco- 
 phant sneers at men in humble station* merely because 
 they are poor ; the radical socialist abuses wealthy men 
 merely because they have property. According to his 
 notions, all but those who perform physical labor are 
 parasites upon society. The employer is a robber to the 
 extent of his profit upon the service of his laborers. Rent 
 and interest are morally wrong, and their collection is no 
 better than theft. The wealthy are responsible for all 
 the social ills, and the poor remain in poverty solely from 
 oppression. An intense bitterness pervades his denuncia- 
 tion of competition, society, religion, wealth, capitalists, 
 and profit, and there is little appeal to any higher mo- 
 tive than mere resentment in this socialistic creed. Such 
 agitators are supposed by some people unfamiliar with 
 radical thought to be insane in their delusions ; and 
 others, unaware of the extent to which such ideas have 
 developed, merely laugh at their denunciations, oblivi- 
 
KING MAMMON. 293 
 
 ous of the real condition of society and public sentiment. 
 It is ignorance on one side set against ignorance on 
 the other, and therein lies the danger. Fortunately the 
 thorough consideration of socialism usually removes the 
 idea that a sudden social transformation is possible, and 
 it also tends to allay the bitter feeling against wealthy 
 men, by convincing the thinker that such evils *as exist 
 are not the fault of classes, but the natural results of 
 a general system of life-effort based upon man's existing 
 moral condition. In contrast with the embittered form 
 of the socialist, equally ignorant and equally unfair is the 
 man who wants no changes and who insists that the 
 hardships of the poor are entirely their own fault. It is 
 easy for him to show that extravagance and vice bring 
 poverty where comparative comfort might exist, and with 
 this superficial view of social effort he rests content, with- 
 out the mental labor of analyzing the nature and results 
 of human effort, the final result of competitive produc- 
 tion, the nature of the great industrial depressions, and 
 the principles that underlie the swarming of men in search 
 of work while wealth surrounds them. 
 
 It is not profitable to discuss at length the advantages 
 and disadvantages of a communistic system which ex- 
 ists only in the hopes of its advocates or the fears of its 
 opponents, for the real socialism of the future, partly in 
 existence now, will unquestionably be very different from 
 all these imaginary creations. It is not possible for any 
 sudden transition to be accomplished, for men must 
 socialize their hearts and minds before they can really 
 socialize their institutions, and a premature attempt to 
 accomplish the latter progress would result in a farcical 
 socialism comparable to the pretended republics of South 
 America and Mexico or to a free public-school system 
 among the Apaches. History proves that all our social 
 institutions are the result of a slow growth among the 
 
294 KING MAMMON. 
 
 people, a bit being added here and another cut away 
 there to meet the approval of changing moral sentiments 
 and economical needs. The people of Europe and 
 America are now fitted for more socialism than they were 
 fifty years ago, but by attempting something far in ad- 
 vance of their own progress, they will merely become 
 involved in internecine strife, and will revert to forms more 
 in consonance with their real nature. Forms of socialism 
 are nothing without the socialistic spirit, and people will 
 need to learn how to co-operate before immediately attempt- 
 ing much further co-operation. In this country the social- 
 istic progress will probably take the railroads under 
 public management as the next step, but the socialis- 
 tic state of the future will be approached very grad- 
 ually, for the simple reason that men become civilized 
 only in that way, and that no progress in social institu- 
 tions can be made faster than the moral development of 
 the majority. The purest socialism is merely the ex- 
 pression of universal brotherly love, and no student of 
 the past can doubt that humanity slowly approaches a 
 realization of that view of human destiny ; but the result 
 can be accomplished only by those infinitely minute 
 changes in the human race, and not by the adoption of 
 mere forms. Socialism will come as rapidly as men are 
 prepared for it, but until they are morally more sociable 
 animals than they are now, they will continue to fight 
 one another, regardless of mere laws and names. 
 
 For these reasons we continue to exist under competi- 
 tion, and we cannot judge the conduct of the present by 
 the morality of the future. If we consent as a people to 
 a complete socialistic life, the continuance of rent, in- 
 terest, and profit will become not only morally wrong, but 
 economically impossible. But if a human being is com- 
 pelled to run a race against his fellow-creature, he must 
 necessarily favor himself and not the other man's inter- 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 ests. Under competition there must exist a right of prop- 
 erty, and that right must apply uniformly to rich and 
 poor. When the laborer who follows Karl Marx's theories 
 of rent, interest, and profit, is prepared to give to an- 
 other man the indefinite use of the last coat he possesses 
 without compensation or even gratitude ; when he is pre- 
 pared at any moment to take into his own home, with- 
 out price, any other man who applies for shelter ; when 
 he will lend to any neighbor the dollar in his possession, 
 for unrestricted use without increase ; when he will agree 
 to labor for any employer and to share in his losses if he 
 be unsuccessful then, and not till then, can he consist- 
 ently denounce compensation for the use of property, 
 which is identically the same in the hands of both rich 
 and poor, both capitalist and laborer, and a just and nec- 
 essary feature of the competitive system. 
 
 The rich and the poor under competition must use prop- 
 erty alike, and be judged by the same standards. It is 
 absurd for laborers to denounce in capitalists the same 
 principles of wealth-control which they put into opera- 
 tion in every transaction of their own lives. The evils 
 of competition are general, and the rich man is not dif- 
 ferent from the poor man except in having more power. 
 The average poor man, plus wealth, and perhaps special 
 ability, becomes the average millionaire. Morally there 
 is no distinction between them, for the demands of la- 
 borers, when they feel power in their hands from success- 
 ful organization, are quite as imperious as any imposed 
 by capitalists. The social question does not alone con- 
 cern the forces ordinarily grouped as capital and labor, 
 and it will be decided mainly by those not entirely 
 identified with either of these classes, who will interfere 
 in the struggle between these two unreasonable and selfish 
 contestants. The capitalist will be taught that he is 
 the life-trustee for the people, and his employe's will be 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 made to understand that in modern society they owe a 
 duty to the whole people that transcends their personal 
 privileges. There is a broader and higher plane than the 
 contest between capital and labor, upon which the so- 
 cial question must be discussed, and as ignorance disap- 
 pears before the spirit of inquiry, all the contestants will 
 take their places upon it. Then the question to be de- 
 cided will not be the adjustment of strikes and lock-outs, 
 but the definition of the rights to property and the right 
 to use the earth. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ENCHANTED WEALTH. 
 
 To whom, then, is this wealth of England wealth ? Who is it that it 
 blesses ; makes happier, wiser, beautifuler, in any way better ? Who has 
 got hold of it, to make it fetch and carry for him, like a true servant, not 
 like a false mock servant ; to do him any real service whatsoever ? As yet 
 no one. We have more riches than any nation ever had before ; we have 
 less good of them than any nation ever had before. Our successful indus- 
 try is hitherto unsuccessful ; a strange success if we stop here ! In the midst 
 of plethoric plenty, the people perish ; with gold walls, and full barns, no 
 man feels himself safe or satisfied. Have we actually got enchanted then ; 
 accursed by some god? THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 IN western Yankee land "hard times" is a unique 
 phrase applied to the industrial depressions which have 
 afflicted modern civilization in all parts of the world at 
 comparatively brief intervals in the last one hundred 
 years, especially since the forces of productive machinery 
 and rapid transportation have been called to the assist- 
 ance of human effort. In recent years a wordy warfare 
 has been waged among the politicians and political econo- 
 mists of every country concerning the causes of such 
 depressions, and almost every kind of political action 
 bearing in any way upon the revenues or financial policy 
 of the nations afflicted with hard times is attacked by 
 
KING MAMMON. 2Q? 
 
 one faction or another as the principal if not the only 
 cause of the disagreeable phenomena. In the United 
 States, free traders and low-tariff advocates denounce pro- 
 tection ; protectionists blame free-trade propositions and 
 tariff reductions ; gold-standard advocates denounce for- 
 mer silver laws ; free-silver partisans denounce a supposed 
 monopoly of gold ; and believers in abundant paper money 
 denounce all the other classes and their methods of reliev- 
 ing hard times. 
 
 One theory is too much production ; another, too little 
 consumption ; a third, too much speculation ; and a fourth, 
 not enough money. One political party proposes to cure 
 the evil with high tariff ; another with low tariff ; a third 
 by issuing paper money ; and a fourth by destroying 
 liquor. The disciples of Henry George view these dis- 
 putants from afar, insisting that they are all wrong, and 
 declaring that the private ownership of land is the real 
 cause of industrial depression. These are samples of a 
 thousand different views held with more or less tenacity 
 and faith by the people of the United States, and it is 
 likely that a similar diversity of opinion exists in every 
 other country afflicted by the same evils. In searching 
 for a cause, nearly all merely casual thinkers neglect two 
 prominent features connected with these disastrous periods. 
 One is, that usually the whole civilized world is similarly 
 affected at any given period, although the extreme depres- 
 sion of the wave may not reach any two distant points at 
 exactly the same time ; the other is, that since the great 
 arteries of commerce formed by steamship and railway 
 lines connect the nations constituting our modern civiliza- 
 tion, those countries are really bound into one vast in- 
 dustrial nation, in which the people differ in government, 
 language, religion, habits, and customs to some extent, but 
 wherein identically the same industrial processes exist, 
 with almost as thorough a system of exchange between 
 
298 KING MAMMON, 
 
 the people as there would be if no boundary lines existed 
 and all were amalgamated under a single government. 
 Remembering that hard times are an industrial depression, 
 and not a political or a religious depression, we need also 
 to bear in mind that the whole civilized world is really 
 bound together by its system of production and exchange 
 into one great industrial nation, and that the industrial de- 
 pression afflicts all parts of that great composite nation at 
 approximately the same time. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible in a structure so complex as 
 modern society that only a single cause shall produce 
 every one of the myriad effects to be noted in the differ- 
 ent localities where industrial depressions exist, but as 
 these great waves of alternate prosperity and adversity 
 sweep at somewhat regular intervals over the entire civil- 
 ized world, their essential features being the same in all 
 parts of it, the theory seems reasonable that a general 
 cause must exist for a phenomenon almost universally 
 the same in its effects over so wide an area at practically 
 the same time, instead of a multitude of lesser causes. 
 
 The real nature of hard times must be studied before 
 seeking for the cause. Many disastrous famines have af- 
 flicted various portions of the world, and their terrible 
 history is still recorded occasionally, although modern 
 civilization has lessened their seventy. These famines 
 have been characterized by some of the phenomena at- 
 tending the industrial depressions, but there is no parallel 
 of conditions. When the famine occurs, food is lacking 
 from the failure of crops, and all that men eat and wear 
 becomes scarce, with high prices for all that is to be con- 
 sumed. Poor people dependent immediately upon the 
 products of the soil they cultivate, sometimes suffer to 
 the extent of starvation. It is the grim specter of want 
 driving human beings to the last extremities in fields that 
 have refused to yield enough to sustain life. 
 
KING MAMMON. 299 
 
 Our industrial depressions are like the famines in the 
 existence of suffering among the poor, but with that 
 similarity the likeness ceases. Amidst what people term 
 hard times, neither food nor clothing is scarce. Every- 
 thing that man needs to eat or to wear is profusely 
 abundant and exceedingly cheap. The farmer's crops do 
 not usually fail, but he is unable to sell them except at 
 prices that scarcely leave him a profit or sometimes 
 involve a loss. Manufacturers complain that they can- 
 not sell their products, and close their factories. Idle 
 men abound, and employment is scarce. Business is 
 stagnated, commercial transactions become unprofit- 
 able, and frequent insolvency results. Lack of profit- 
 able employment compels the thrifty laboring classes to 
 withdraw their savings rapidly from the banks, and the 
 weakest banks suspend payments. Panics usually succeed 
 these suspensions, and the confidence of the people in 
 the solvency of banking institutions is destroyed. Runs 
 upon the savings banks occur ; the banks are compelled 
 by the pressure to call in all their available funds to meet 
 the demands of depositors, and are obliged to refuse to 
 make new loans even on the best of security, although 
 their vaults may be bursting with coin, for fear that their 
 timorous depositors may bring to bear too great a pres- 
 sure. In the business world, nothing seems capable of 
 yielding a profit ; men cannot obtain money to pay their 
 debts, and they say that it is scarce ; investments cease 
 to be made in new undertakings, property of all kinds 
 depreciates in value, and life, to the faithful subjects of 
 Mammon who inhabit this planet, appears to be literally 
 not worth living. The unemployed swarm over the 
 country seeking an honest means of earning a livelihood 
 by labor at first, and gradually degenerating into thieves 
 or beggars, according to their mental and moral charac- 
 teristics, when their necessities become more and more 
 
300 KING MAMMON. 
 
 stringent. In the winter these outcasts from modern 
 civilization seeking shelter from the storms and cold, 
 congregate in the large cities, where they develop into 
 Coxey armies to afflict a wondering, puzzled people with 
 a troubled apprehension of their unpleasant existence, 
 and compel them to develop something like an attempt 
 to remove the worst features of the evil condition. The 
 salient features of an industrial depression in agricultural 
 pursuits are described vividly in the subjoined extract 
 from a letter sent by a young man in the State of Wash- 
 ington to his brother in Connecticut during the recent 
 general prostration : 
 
 "DEAR BROTHER : Times are dull here, and everybody 
 who has work at all is working for small pay. But living 
 is cheap, that is one thing. People are not complaining 
 for cheap eatables. Things are too cheap. Just think of 
 wheat selling for 15 cents a bushel 60 pounds. People 
 are so hard up for cash that they have to sell their wheat 
 for any price. There are ranches down in the Pullos 
 country with from 150 to 200 acres of wheat standing in 
 the field ; can't get money enough for it to pay for cutting 
 and threshing it ; 15 cents won't doit, and the farmers, 
 some of them, have let it go to waste. They haul 
 potatoes to town by the load and can't get 30 cents a 
 hundredweight ; and as for houses, you can get one to 
 live in for nothing ; there are any amount of them empty. 
 Out on the car lines you can get houses to live in free of 
 rent, so that the owner can keep up the insurance ; you 
 can't keep up insurance on empty houses, and sooner 
 than have their houses vacant, they will let you live in 
 them rent free. A trade don't do a person much good 
 here now, and if you are out of work, you have to cast 
 your trade aside and work at anything you can get to 
 do. Great changes have taken place here within the last 
 few years. Men who have been worth money are now 
 without a dollar and working on the railroad for a living. 
 I used to know a preacher, when times were good, who 
 had a good church in the country ; he is a roustabout in a 
 grocery store now. Carpenters, plumbers, and mechanics 
 
KING MAMMON. 301 
 
 of all kinds have to work at whatever kind of work they 
 can get to do, at from $i to $1.25 a day and board them- 
 selves. Carpenters used to get from $3 to $4 a day, but 
 now the best don't get more than $2 to $2.50, and can't 
 get work at these wages more than half of the time. I 
 would sooner live in a country and pay $5 for a fifty- 
 pound sack of flour, and a dollar a slice for ham, than to 
 live where you can get the sack of flour for 50 cents, for, 
 where prices are high, there is money in sight." 
 
 The industrial depression of such frequent recurrence 
 in the last half century is not the picture of starving 
 humanity surrounded by barren fields and blasted crops. 
 It is not the destruction of droughts, nor floods, nor the 
 effect of any unkindness whatever in either God or 
 Nature. It is poverty in the midst of plenty. I It is the 
 
 x The following extracts clipped from the daily press during the winter 
 of 1894-5, are illustrative of the modern depression and its real nature. 
 
 LONDON, MARCH 7, 1895. A plasterer named Taylor, living at Lower 
 Tooting, near London, cut the throats of his wife and six children this 
 morning and then took "his own life. All the family are dead except one 
 child, who is at the point of death. 
 
 The crime was the outcome of the extreme destitution that prevails 
 among many of the working classes. Taylor was a sober, steady work- 
 man, but had been thrown out of work by the remarkably cold weather, 
 which brought all building operations to a standstill. Not being able to 
 provide for his family, his mind became unhinged, and it is evident he 
 determined to kill them and then himself, in order to save all from 
 slowly starving to death. San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 MARCH 6, 1895. President Cleveland, in going to the representatives 
 of the Rothschilds for financial help for this government, has followed 
 an ancient precedent. It is the business of the Rothschilds to help out 
 (for a consideration) nations whose rulers, by their folly or incompetence, 
 have plunged themselves into financial distress. In that business they 
 have become the richest and most powerful family in the world. Chicago 
 Tribune, 
 
 Driven to despair by hunger and cold, James Watson deliberately 
 committed a crime early yesterday morning in order that he might be 
 sent to jail, where he can get food and shelter for a few months at least, 
 At i o'clock yesterday morning he applied at the Central Police Station 
 for a night's lodging and a cup of hot coffee. 
 
 " We cannot take in lodgers here. You must go to the old City 
 Hall," explained Turnkey Hickey. 
 
 " Well, if you will not let me in now, you will have to take me in after 
 a while," said Watson as he turned away from the prison. 
 
 About two hours later Officer John Galloway and Special Officer 
 
302 KING MAMMON. 
 
 picture of barefooted men perishing for food in a world 
 of wealth ; starving for bread among warehouses full of 
 wheat ; shivering for want of a shirt while other human 
 beings, having stores of wool and cotton, scour earth in 
 vain to find purchasers who will buy at a price yielding 
 to the producer a profit. It is a time when poor men pray 
 for work and wages ; when they wear out roads and shoe- 
 leather searching for an opportunity to live ; and when 
 rich men work and worry unavailingly to protect their 
 accumulated stores from depletion, to prevent their 
 business undertakings from failing, and to save them- 
 selves from being involved in the almost universal panic 
 and destruction of property that spreads through the 
 industrial world. 
 
 Hussey were on the south side of Market Street and saw Watson stop 
 in front of O'Brien's dry goods store at Market and Jones Streets. With 
 great deliberation Watson took a heavy brick from his pocket and 
 hurled it through the large plate-glass front of the store. The crash 
 could be heard for two blocks. In a moment the officers were by his 
 side, for Watson made no attempt to escape. 
 
 " Yes, I am the guilty party," he said. " I intended to break that 
 window. Now you will have to take me in. An empty stomach knows 
 no conscience, and that is about the fix I am in." 
 
 The prisoner was charged with malicious mischief. He was taken 
 before Police Judge Conlan and pleaded guilty to the charge. He will 
 be sentenced to-day. Watson is a small man, about 40 years of age. 
 To a Chronicle reporter he stated that he is an upholsterer, but has not 
 been able to secure work, either at his trade or in any other line, for the 
 past three months. 
 
 " I spent all the money I had earned," he said, " and I have lived 
 more like a tramp than a human being ever since. Hunger and cold 
 made me desperate enough to break that window. I could not get 
 shelter in the prison, and I turned over in my head whether I would rob 
 some one or smash a window. I thought that the window would be the 
 best. If I had known that this window was so costly I would have sent 
 the brick through a smaller one. I saw the officers when I threw the 
 brick, and intended they should see me. This is bad business I know, 
 but starving is worse." 
 
 He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment by Judge Conlan yes- 
 terday. The Judge said he was sorry the law forbade him to lengthen 
 the sentence. San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 Thirty-five fortunes have passed through the Probate Court of San 
 Francisco ranging from one million to twenty-two millions of dollars 
 each in value. Chronicle, Dec. 28, 1894. 
 
 The discovery of the emaciated remains of a month-old infant in a 
 
KING MAMMON. 303 
 
 In America the commercial depression is a reproduc- 
 tion of scornful Thomas Carlyle's picture of England, when 
 its condition was "one of the most ominous and withal 
 one of the strangest ever seen in this world : " 
 
 " England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, 
 supply for human want in every kind ; yet England is 
 dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of 
 England blooms and grows ; waving with yellow har- 
 vests ; thick studded with workshops, industrial imple- 
 ments, with fifteen millions of workers, understood to 
 be the strongest, the cunningest, and the willingest our 
 Earth ever had ; these men are here ; the work they have 
 done, the fruit they have realized is here, abundant, 
 exuberant, on every hand of us : and behold some baleful 
 fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, ' Touch it not, ye 
 workers, ye master workers, ye master idlers ; none of 
 you can touch it ; no man of you shall be the better for it ; 
 this is enchanted fruit/ On the poor workers such fiat 
 
 dismal apartment on Oregon street yesterday brought to light a sad 
 story of destitution. The child had starved to death. John Harkins, a 
 longshoreman, is the father of the child, and he is one of the many un- 
 fortunates who are unable to obtain employment. He has the reputa- 
 tion of being an industrious man when he can find anything to do, and 
 is honest. It is known that he has sought employment diligently, but 
 with no success. San Francisco Chronicle, February 22, 1895. 
 
 If we take a survey of mankind in ancient or modern times as regards 
 the physical, mechanical, or intellectual force of nations, we find nothing 
 to compare with the United States in this present year of 1895. Michael 
 G. Mulhall on " The Power and Wealth of the United States," North 
 American Review, June, 1895. 
 
 Baby Rotenbaum is dead. The Rotenbaums were evicted nearly a 
 month ago from No. 94 Pitt street. Max Rotenbaum, the father, is a 
 striking cloakmaker. When they were put upon the streets the child 
 caught cold of exposure. The family found refuge at No. 51 Jackson 
 street. The child, through lack of proper food, grew worse. The union 
 was asked to secure medical aid for it, and a physician was sought. He 
 demanded his pay in advance. The committee which had called upon 
 him offered $i, which was all they had. The doctor contemptuously 
 refused to have anything to do with a $i case. Max Rotenbaum went 
 in despair to the Delancey Street station and begged the sergeant to 
 send a physician to the baby. He was roughly ordered out. Somebody 
 told Rotenbaum that the Board of Health might aid him, and he went 
 there. He was ordered out again. When he got home the child was 
 dead. The Union started an effort yesterday to raise a fund to bury it. 
 New York Morning Advertiser, January 5, 1895. 
 
304 KING MAMMON. 
 
 falls first, in its rudest shape ; but on the rich master- 
 workers too it falls ; neither can the rich master-idlers, 
 nor any richest or highest man escape, but all are like to 
 be brought low with it, and made poor enough, in the 
 money sense or a far fataler one. Of these successful 
 skillful workers, some two millions, it is now counted, sit 
 in Workhouses, Poor-law Prisons ; or have out-door relief 
 flung over the wall to them. They sit there, these many 
 months now ; their hope of deliverance as yet small. 
 In workhouses, pleasantly so named, because work can- 
 not be done in them. Twelve hundred thousand workers 
 in England alone; their cunning right hand lamed, lying 
 idle in their sorrowful bosom ; their hopes, outlooks, 
 share of this fair world, shut in by narrow walls. They 
 sit there, pent up, as in a kind of horrid enchantment, 
 ... an Earth all lying round, crying, Come and till 
 me, come and reap me ; yet they here sit enchanted. In 
 the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest 
 expression, not of anger, but of grief and shame and 
 manifold inarticulate distress and weariness that seemed 
 to say, Do not look at us. We sit enchanted here, we 
 know not why. The Sun shines and the Earth calls ; 
 and, by the governing Powers and Impotences of this 
 England, we are forbidden to obey. It is impossible, 
 they tell us ! " 
 
 When Want and Wealth thus march together, linked 
 arm in arm, over God's earth, are we to wonder if Want 
 shall complain ? Do we not impose upon poverty-stricken 
 wretches, however blameless or blameful their lives may 
 have been, the tortures of Tantalus when useless riches 
 and abject misery are thus mingled? What ails the 
 world when men seem too numerous to obtain food and 
 food too abundant to secure a price ; when thousands of 
 men pray for food to eat, and other thousands pray for 
 men to eat it ; yet, when men and food both appear 
 worthless ? Do not, O reader, turn from this problem 
 with indifferent glance and smile. One day it will call 
 for answer when you cannot pass it by. Hear the Scot- 
 tish seer: 
 
KING MAMMON. 305 
 
 " And now the world will have to pause a little and 
 take up that other side of the problem, and in right earn- 
 est strive for some solution of that. What is the use of 
 your spun shirts ? They hang there by the million un- 
 salable ; and here, by the million are diligent bare backs 
 that can get no hold of them. Shirts are useful for cov- 
 ering human backs ; useless otherwise, an unbearable 
 mockery otherwise. You have fallen terribly behind 
 with that side of the problem ! Manchester Insurrec- 
 tions, French Revolutions, and thousandfold phenomena 
 great and small, announce loudly that you must bring it 
 forward a little again. Never till now, in the history of 
 an Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to grow 
 corn if you will plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin 
 and weave in it, did the mere manual two-handed worker 
 (however it might fare with other workers) cry in vain 
 for such wages as he means by fair wages, namely, 
 food and warmth ! The Godlike could not and cannot 
 be paid, but the Earthly always could. Gurth, a mere 
 swineherd, born thrall of Cedric the Saxon, tended pigs 
 in the wood, and did get some parings of the pork. 
 Why, the four-footed worker has already got all that this 
 two-handed one is clamoring for ! How often must I 
 remind you ? There is not a horse in England, able and 
 willing to work, but has due food and lodging ; and goes 
 about sleek-coated, satisfied in heart. And you say, It is 
 impossible. Brothers, I answer, if for you it be impos- 
 sible, what is to become of you ? The human brain, 
 looking at these sleek English horses, refuses to believe 
 in such impossibility for English men." 
 
 Impossible to understand or alleviate these evils ? Let 
 us see. Years ago I knew an uneducated man of strong 
 natural abilities, who was fond of mathematics. Although 
 ignorant of the processes used in the higher mathematics, 
 and unfamiliar with the ordinary principles of the science 
 beyond the methods of arithmetic, he nevertheless solved 
 many difficult problems, usually supposed to require the 
 application of algebra and geometry, by a process of his 
 own, which he called, in homely phrase, " boiling the 
 20 
 
306 KING MAMMON. 
 
 question down." His plan was to begin the investiga- 
 tion by substituting smaller numbers and simpler relations 
 for those actually involved in the problem ; and by con- 
 tinuing to vary them he gradually progressed to a compre- 
 hension of all the difficulties involved in the question 
 before him. 
 
 May we not apply the process of "boiling down " to 
 the phenomena of hard times ? In modern industrial 
 depressions, the various elements of men and business, 
 laws and money, seem to be linked together in an endless 
 chain, so that if an investigator sets in at any given 
 point to seek an explanation, he is almost certain to chase 
 cause and effect round and round the circle of social 
 phenomena, till at length, dizzy and bewildered with 
 tracing the involved effects of financial operations, tariff 
 changes, land speculations, business failures, great trans- 
 portation systems, and world-disturbing inventions, he 
 arrives at the point from which he started, proving that 
 some particular legislation in his country makes hard 
 times, while another investigator on the other side of the 
 circle, starting from a different point, proves with equal 
 facility that the depression has been produced by exactly 
 opposite causes. In the United States, high-tariff men 
 and low-tariff men thus play hide-and-seek on opposite 
 sides of this curious social circle ; while another portion 
 of the ring, half way between them, is given up to the 
 gold advocates and the silver theorists, who dodge in and 
 out between the component links of their endless chain, 
 chasing dollars of different kinds to the four ends of the 
 earth in the attempt to ascertain how and when and why 
 they make the dreaded industrial crises of the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 In modern life there are such multiplicity and diversity 
 of laws, institutions, occupations, and exchanges that this 
 social problem in its present form, like many another in 
 
KING MAMMON. 307 
 
 the more exact science of mathematics, becomes complex, 
 and it is not surprising that so many contradictory solu- 
 tions are embodied in the theories of social observers. 
 Let us first free the problem of unnecessary factors or 
 elements. There are really only two things involved 
 men and wealth, or rather, men and the distribution and 
 control of the earth they inhabit. The men in a modern 
 society are involved in a thousand complex vocations, 
 the earth is transformed into a thousand curious forms 
 by human effort, and the results are distributed under a 
 thousand different methods of title and transfer ; but the 
 real condition in the industrial depression is that the 
 abounding wealth of society, for no careful observer can 
 deny that society during hard times is really wealthy in 
 the aggregate possession of everything that men con- 
 sume, having been stored with a few of the people as 
 capitalists and placed absolutely under their control, 
 becomes inaccessible to all others who have or have not 
 aided in producing that wealth. These unfortunates 
 consequently suffer during a period when, in the aggre- 
 gate, a large surplus of wealth exists, but in which many 
 individuals, on account of either their imprudence or 
 their misfortunes, retain no share in the possession of the 
 accumulated stores and are debarred from production by 
 the monopoly over the earth exercised by their associ- 
 ates, who are thus placed in a position to deny the out- 
 casts not only an opportunity to work for wages or for 
 a mere subsistence, but finally the opportunity to use any 
 available portion of the earth from which to produce by 
 their own labor their own subsistence. The cause of 
 hard 1 times in this one great industrial nation that mod- 
 ern civilization has evolved, implies, in the first place, a 
 period of intense productive activity during which a large 
 body of surplus wealth is accumulated that becomes 
 greater every year. Ultimately the uselessness of a great 
 
308 KING MAMMON. 
 
 surplus in excess of consumption becomes apparent to 
 individual producers, although not at first to the aggre- 
 gate society, and in consequence the production here 
 and there ceases as the excessive accumulation becomes 
 apparent and the demand fails. From that initial point 
 of industrial stagnation the cessation of industry is rapidly 
 disseminated, the paralysis spreading under the simple 
 law that as individual man can reap no real benefit by 
 converting himself into a mere machine for the produc- 
 tion of bread, thus surrounding himself with a million of 
 loaves stacked up mountain high as the result of his 
 tremendous effort, so aggregate man of industrial society 
 cannot really profit by attempting to do identically the 
 same thing ; and the commercial crisis is merely nature's 
 method of notifying silly human creatures that in the 
 aggregate they cannot make human existence something 
 different from what it really is, nor make human life any 
 happier by foolishly trying to store up food and clothing, or 
 their representatives, in the form of wealth, to be hoarded, 
 and protected, and even worshiped for its own sake. 
 
 The accumulation of wealth in society is an im- 
 possibility .beyond very narrow limits, for it is absolutely 
 useless as a surplus bevond a comparatively small amount 
 when apportioned to each individual, and the inevitable 
 failure and breakdown of industrial effort in hard times 
 is an expression of that impossibility. Our industrial 
 managers and our political economists are intelligent in 
 their methods of production. Andrew Carnegie and his 
 class of manufacturers can tell how to transform crude 
 fragments of the earth into something adapted to man's 
 use. Edward Atkinson and his school of economists, 
 who preach eternal human effort, perpetual machine 
 motion, and cheapness above all things, understand one 
 side of social wealth thoroughly. All these devotees at 
 the shrine of wealth-production can accurately and 
 
KING MAMMON. 309 
 
 truthfully tell how the world has improved in its means 
 of making bread and shirts rapidly, but of some worthy 
 and noble means of using the bread and shirts accumu- 
 lated when the depression stops human effort, they have 
 nothing to say. In their comprehension, the social 
 question is nothing but the best means of making and 
 storing more wealth, and they are oblivious of the real 
 truth underlying all human effort, that if men succeed in 
 heaping food and clothing into a pyramid as wide as 
 earth and as high as heaven, the result will confer upon 
 them nothing but the curse of accumulated inactivity 
 while they are consuming it. The real social question is 
 not, at least in this country, how we shall immediately 
 make more wealth and make it more rapidly, but how 
 we shall use and intelligently and fairly control what we 
 already have, so that the creation of our own brains and 
 ringers shall not become a tyrant to hinder our own 
 efforts and deprive us of liberty. From being our serv- 
 ant, wealth has become our master ; and rich and poor 
 alike serve this tyrant so foolishly and so abjectly that 
 when hard times involve his complete ascendency and 
 their complete subjugation, they bear his kicks and cuffs 
 like whimpering curs beneath the lash, snarling and 
 snapping at one another, but not attacking the real source 
 of their misery. 
 
 To trace these principles of society, let us place man 
 back at the beginning of civilization, with simpler forms 
 of life and a wealth accumulation less complex. Imagine 
 the members of a savage tribe existing by the usual pro- 
 ductive efforts of such people. Their avocations are 
 hunting, fishing, digging roots, gathering berries, and 
 making such rude huts and implements as belong to their 
 grade of development. Their stores of meat and fruits 
 constitute almost their only wealth, except the few rude 
 products of an imperfect handicraft. During a favorable 
 
310 KING MAMMON. 
 
 season, when all the sources of food supply are plentiful, 
 the savages rapidly accumulate the characteristic wealth 
 of their social existence. Their stores of all kinds of food 
 increase, and a portion is dried for future consumption. 
 There is some preparation for the future, but, although 
 there may be tons of acorns ungathered on the trees, and 
 scores of salmon still unspeared in the streams, sooner 
 or later every savage views his increasing stores with 
 a complacent satisfaction, clearly perceiving, unlike civ- 
 ilized man, that wealth which cannot be consumed is a 
 curse instead of a blessing, and refusing to be guided by 
 the economic doctrines of constant work and perpetual 
 production advocated by some modern economists. He 
 looks doubtfully at the interminable world of work they 
 would lay out before him, and inquires, "cut bono />' 
 if that expression happens to be in his language, and 
 thereafter ceases to lay up further supplies of food for 
 worms to eat before he will need to consume it. Having 
 by activity thus acquired a store, the members of the 
 tribe then occupy their time in pursuits more congenial 
 to the mind of a savage than digging roots, and mean- 
 while consume the accumulated provisions. This period 
 of consumption and inactivity is their industrial depres- 
 sion, but its hardships do not exist, because communal 
 possession and use of wealth usually exist within the 
 tribe, and the sources of food supply in the woods and 
 streams are never inaccessible to any savage who may 
 not have a share in the tribal surplus. Poverty of a cer- 
 tain degree is universal among savages, but starvation 
 surrounded by shiploads of food is not characteristic 
 of their social institutions. Gathering and consuming 
 wealth in this way, "over-production" has no terrors 
 for the savage, and his industrial periods of alternate 
 activity and inactivity succeed one another without social 
 disturbance. 
 
KING MAMMON. 311 
 
 Nevertheless, in this simple succession of production, 
 accumulation, and consumption are to be found the 
 real causes of that business paralysis we call com- 
 mercial depression. The condition is so simple that 
 were it not so generally misconceived an apology 
 would be due for any explanation. Over-production 
 among savages is a blessing instead of a curse, because 
 they have unrestricted access to the earth as the parent of 
 all wealth, and practically equal rights in the consump- 
 tion of the wealth already stored. The savage existence 
 is a simple form of society not possible in the present, 
 but valuable in enabling us to understand our own con- 
 dition. Primitive man labors in order that he may eat ; 
 civilized man toils like a work-demon for profit, that he 
 may pile up huge stocks of food and clothing, which he 
 cannot use himself, and which he will permit no other 
 man to eat or wear. Like the fabulous dog in the man- 
 ger, he cannot consume what he has in his possession, 
 and he will let no other human being touch it. Out of 
 such conditions arise hard times. 
 
 Primitive man is happy when, with a full stomach, he 
 knows that a haunch of venison remains in his wigwam to 
 provide for the immediate future. Civilized man is miser- 
 able after he has accumulated a store for the future, 
 because he cannot continually add to his pile and view its 
 perpetual growth. He is Mark Twain's blue-jay, poking 
 acorns through the roof of a house to fill its vast interior, 
 striving desperately to accomplish the useless, if not the 
 impossible, and squalling absurd denunciations of the 
 universe because he cannot accomplish his foolish desires. 
 Production for consumption and for increased facilities in 
 further production is no longer his theory of labor, but 
 production for a magpie's habit of accumulation is the 
 basis upon which he operates. 
 
 The changes which have brought this absurd develop- 
 
312 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ment of wealth-worship into human nature, affecting the 
 writer of these pages quite as much as other men, are the 
 development of private ownership, the division of the 
 earth under that idea of occupancy, and the evolution of 
 the competitive system between individuals. As the 
 variety and extent of human possessions become greater, 
 on account of man's inventions, the simple forms of tribal 
 and family joint possession give way to more definite 
 and rigid rights. In the growth of society, roads are 
 built, separate trades are evolved, land is more regularly 
 cultivated and is reduced to private ownership. Exchange 
 in products develops into the commercial system, requir- 
 ing money to facilitate its numerous transactions. 
 Eventually society arrives at the vast agricultural, 
 manufacturing, and commercial processes of the modern 
 world, with the aggregation of capital as a tool for labor, 
 the wage-system, the rapid invention of machinery, the 
 subdivision of labor, the centralization of industry, the 
 destruction of small, independent, productive effort of all 
 kinds, the complex financial system of banking, and the 
 intricate commercial relations established between all the 
 great nations by which they have become, by the devel- 
 opment of railroads and steamships, a single, compact 
 body of producers and consumers, with counters set up 
 at the merely artificial boundaries of political divisions, 
 over which the people buy and sell. These transforma- 
 tions from the simple savage existence involve wonder- 
 fully complex conditions apparently, but in their real 
 nature they are reducible to a society divided into two 
 great classes as producers one making food, the other 
 shelter. Each class exchanges products with the other, 
 in order that all may obtain the necessities and conveni- 
 ences of life. At a certain period in this industrial history, 
 immediately after a disastrous and destructive war, for 
 instance, food and shelter are scarce in the great indus- 
 
KING MAMMON. 313 
 
 trial nation, and to provide new stores productive effort 
 becomes fiercely energetic. The steam-engines puff and 
 scream; the laborers toil like demons; the "captains 
 of industry " rack their brains for new methods of pro- 
 ducing cheaply and expeditiously ; the heavily-laden 
 cars and steamers bear vast quantities of all that tends to 
 sustain and protect human life, and of much that does 
 not, to a thousand cities of the great industrial nation, 
 with its Englishmen, its Frenchmen, its Germans, and its 
 Yankees, all linked by commercial bonds into a seething, 
 struggling mass of competitive humanity, grinding out 
 and piling up and exchanging all kinds of things to eat 
 and wear. Everybody is apparently making a fortune, 
 big or little, and Mammon dances on his throne. 
 
 Sooner or later the more fiercely the demons toil and 
 the more perfect their machines, the sooner does it occur 
 a change comes over the industrial process. The ware- 
 houses in every city, guarded by the "captains of in- 
 dustry," and prepared for exchange with other captains 
 in hope of that profit which is the end and aim of the 
 business man's life, are full to bursting. Stores of food 
 and shelter mountain high are found wherever the expect- 
 ation of profit has demanded their aggregation. Every 
 captain with a warehouse has abundance of food and 
 shelter, and unless some human being shall use his ac- 
 cumulated store, the ever present worm will devour it. 
 Then these stupid and insanely greedy human beings, x 
 viewing their overflowing warehouses, are finally com- 
 
 1 Paley's famous pigeon comparison is not a bad picture of society. 
 " If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if, instead 
 of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wan ted 
 and no more, you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got 
 into a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the re- 
 fuse, keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps the worst 
 pigeon of the flock ; sitting round and looking on all the winter, while 
 this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it ; and if a pigeon 
 more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 pelled to pause and inquire, as their savage ancestors did 
 under similar circumstances, " cui honor'" but they 
 usually express approximately the same idea by say- 
 ing, "What the deuce are we to do with all these 
 things ? " 
 
 In economical articles, valuable in many respects for 
 careful investigations, Edward Atkinson exposes some 
 fallacies regarding wealth and poverty, and is himself 
 astonished when he finds that "the people of the richest 
 state are always within one year of starvation, within two 
 years of being naked, and within a very few years of being 
 houseless and homeless, unless they work for a living. " 
 His estimates deduced from statistics are undoubtedly 
 approximately correct, and there is not the slightest 
 reason for surprise at the result ; for any great surplus of 
 consumable products used for food and clothing, is now, 
 and will ever be, not only practically useless, but econom- 
 ically impossible. It should not require long rows of 
 figures nor complicated calculations to prove that aggre- 
 gate civilized humanity does not possess more than a 
 year's food or two years* clothing at any time. The real 
 matter for astonishment is why aggregate humanity 
 desires any greater surplus than a year's supply, and what 
 men imagine that they could really do with a continually 
 accumulating product of things to eat and wear. The 
 political economy of the productionists, tending solely in 
 one direction, and with authors blind to all that cannot 
 there be seen, urges that no improvement in social con- 
 ditions can occur except by cheaper production and more 
 
 others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces ; if you should 
 see this you would see nothing more than what is every day practised 
 and established among men." The philosophy of this volume would 
 give to every pigeon (for the present era) whatever he chose to hoard, 
 no matter whether he could eat it or not, but would prevent its trans- 
 mission in a body to some pouter whose principal merit is in his distin- 
 guished appearance, and who ought to be made to scratch for his corn 
 like other birds. 
 
KING MAMMON. 315 
 
 of it. They fail to see that if a man lives by bread alone 
 and has accumulated a thousand loaves, the only benefit 
 to him thus acquired is a change of occupfation ; for instead 
 of making more loaves, he may do something else while 
 his loaves remain unconsumed. Whether he is happier 
 in doing something else depends upon the nature of his 
 new occupation, and upon whether he is compelled 
 to enter it or enters it voluntarily. Similarly, when 
 millions of men are aggregated in society the only real 
 gain to humanity by increased production, however it 
 maybe cheapened and expedited, is change of occupa- 
 tion. When men have accumulated a thousand loaves 
 apiece, they can do something else besides making bread, 
 and practically, in the industrial depression, they are 
 compelled to do something else, whether they wish to or 
 not ; but human happiness is not increased by the change. 
 The loaves of modern society are stored in bulk under the 
 charge of keepers, who are in a position not only to refuse 
 assistance in making more bread for those who have 
 none, but who can also deny the hungry the apparently 
 just privilege of an opportunity to make their own bread. 
 In hard times, society has accumulated many loaves and 
 is rewarded by much leisure, involving a change of occu- 
 pation. That leisure, regulated by intelligent justice, 
 while we are consuming our surplus products might be 
 a blessing, but our social organization and efforts make 
 of it a curse. We are happy while working and miserable 
 when resting ; for our change of occupation among the 
 poor compels men to tramp over muddy and dusty 
 roads and to carry blankets, while they beg first for work 
 and then, in greater degradation, for food. The same 
 leisure among the rich develops a luxurious idleness and 
 extravagance and breeds the fashionable vices that have af- 
 flicted aristocracy in all ages and in all parts of the world, 
 bringing in their train the misery that eventually succeeds 
 
316 KING MAMMON. 
 
 all forms of vice. Rich and poor are alike debased by 
 these extremes of unregulated action and inaction. 
 
 Let men work fang enough and hard enough, mentally 
 and physically, on earth as we now find it, and so surely 
 as night follows day will they accumulate an abundance 
 of wealth that will decay before they can consume it, for 
 do not all things that men eat and wear, or use in any 
 way, rot and perish by advancing age ? When man brings 
 nothing into the world and takes nothing away, how is 
 he individually or collectively to become the gainer by 
 grinding out his own life and health, or even the lives and 
 health of other men in the mad effort to accumulate 
 wealth for its own sake ? When he thus becomes a slave 
 to his own greed and folly as an aggregated body of 
 human beings by attempting these things, Nature steps in 
 to correct his mistakes. 
 
 A change comes over the industrial world we have 
 described. The "captains of industry " in all quarters of 
 the earth, having bursting warehouses and no sight of 
 scarcity or probability of demand for products which they 
 possess only for exchange and profit, realize at last that 
 food must be eaten and clothes worn to be of any real 
 value to the human race, so they cease producing and 
 exchanging what may perish or decay in their possession. 
 The game, the fish, and the roots of a savage existence 
 have in these modern forms of wealth been accumulated, 
 and no man can obtain real benefits till they are con- 
 sumed, so the great mills are closed, the engines cease 
 puffing, the demons of modern industry are driven away 
 from their machines, and Mammon weeps because he 
 cannot subvert the laws of Nature and convert men into 
 mere machines of perpetual motion to manufacture useless 
 wealth for mere profit and possession, and not for 
 rational use and consumption. During the period of 
 general industrial activity the farmer has also been stimu- 
 
KING MAMMON. 317 
 
 lated by Mammon into a vast production of the materials 
 upon which all other production depends, and finds the value 
 of his land enhanced by the apparent facility with which he 
 disposes of products that all seem to want. Once having 
 produced a surplus wealth for society, however, he finds, 
 as a natural consequence, that while that surplus lasts, 
 there is little demand and only low prices for either his 
 products or his land till the surplus is consumed. Mean- 
 while, those laborers expelled from all kinds of productive 
 effort, who have retained little or no share in the possession 
 of the really great aggregate social wealth, soon consume 
 their small stores and find no captains of industry who 
 need their services for wages. Thousands of men have 
 cheap food and clothing to sell, but the discarded laborer 
 has nothing but the use of his two hands to offer in 
 return, and no devotee of Mammon can make a profit on 
 them in production. Land is cheap, but the outcasts have 
 naught to pay, and they find no spot whereon life can be 
 sustained that is not already placed under some man's 
 dominion and held useless even if a thousand other men 
 be starving on its borders. 
 
 Little or no profit being obtainable from exchanges, 
 all means of transportation become comparatively idle. 
 Wagons, instead of carrying produce, are in their sheds, 
 and locomotives are in the round-house. Similarly, 
 money stays at home. The nimble dollar of industrial 
 activity appears and reappears on the stage of life like 
 the members of a mock procession at the theater, where 
 the actors in the front chase one another behind the 
 scenes to add to the apparent numbers of the passing 
 throng by again appearing at the rear. In the industrial 
 depression, money appears to be scarce because, like the 
 wagons and locomotives, it is stored safely when there 
 is no demand for it as a tool or machine or vehicle in 
 making exchanges ; and, as a representative of value, it 
 
318 KING MAMMON. 
 
 is again like the wagons in not being obtainable by peo- 
 ple who have nothing to give for it but labor. The same 
 wagons used in a period of active industry are in 
 the country during a depression, but they are in their 
 sheds out of sight. The same money of business activity 
 is also in existence, but it, too, is out of sight, hoarded 
 in banks and private safes and purses by people who 
 see no opportunity of using it safely for profit till the eco- 
 nomic condition changes. This period of apparent scarcity 
 is the time when the financial reformer wants to create 
 more money ; for Mammon is crazy, the world is out of 
 joint, and in that condition the project of making some- 
 thing out of nothing, although an inconceivable attribute 
 of Deity, does not really seem an impossibility for human 
 beings to accomplish. Thousands, if not millions, of 
 people in this country apparently regard the paralysis of 
 the industrial depression as a thing to be prevented by 
 mere changes in the circulating medium, and they seem 
 persistently oblivious of the fact that if there were no 
 money in the world, or if there were ten million times as 
 much as now exists, the stagnation and suffering from 
 an over-production of consumable articles would produce 
 the phenomena of hard times under competitive civiliza- 
 tion as surely as night follows day. 
 
 The industrial depression is absolutely unavoidable 
 unless we produce less to avoid a surplus. It is a part 
 of competition by which the prodigious effort of all stores 
 an abundant over-supply under the power of a few. The 
 regulation of competitive production is impossible, and 
 the only feasible remedies for the evils of hard times are 
 in the first place to understand their cause ; to know that 
 they are inevitable under our social system; to avoid, so 
 far as possible, the calamity of individually possessing 
 nothing when the crisis occurs ; and to alleviate the dis- 
 tress of those who suffer on account of a condition that 
 
KING MAMMON. 319 
 
 is due to a social system for which all are equally re- 
 sponsible. It is folly to assume that those who have are 
 in no way responsible for the ills that afflict those who 
 have not. It is also dangerous folly, for if the discarded 
 demons of toil become destructive demons, brandishing 
 the torch, who can really blame them, remembering that 
 they are human beings who becoming hungry will not 
 starve in the midst of plenty ? There is the man, here is 
 the earth, and one is denied the simple right of an unob- 
 structed opportunity to produce his existence from the 
 other, yet silly humanity feeds and clothes him by 
 grudging charity rather than accord him justice and the 
 mere right to feed himself by his own efforts. 
 
 Human folly is well illustrated by a story that recently 
 appeared in a valuable little journal I published in south- 
 ern California. It is partially devoted to bee-keeping, 
 and tells of Hans Peterson, who maintained an apiary 
 in that sunny land of flowers. Hans was a Scandinavian 
 who had received little opportunity in his frozen north- 
 ern home to investigate the mysteries of the social and 
 industrial institutions of bees. He was patient and 
 studious, however, and finally learned to manage his 
 little winged workers without suffering greatly by rashly 
 approaching the wrong ends of them. 
 
 "When the season for honey-making commenced, Hans 
 was happy. He had twenty-five hives of bees well 
 located, and they were busily at work. An admirer of 
 productive effort,* he used to lie in the sun and gaze at 
 his bees flying hither and thither in the balmy air of the 
 early California summer, thinking of the stores and stores 
 of golden honey they were accumulating under the im- 
 proved methods of modern bee-industry assisted by 
 comb foundation, subdivision of swarms, and other in- 
 genious contrivances for increasing production. As the 
 bees wandered from blossom to blossom gathering their 
 
 !The Ventura Altrurian, April I, 1895. 
 
320 KING MAMMON. 
 
 little cargoes of sweets, Hans watched them with de- 
 lighted attention, and when the busy insects approached 
 the hive with baskets full of pollen, he blessed their tire- 
 less industry and felt that every day he and they were 
 becoming wealthier. 
 
 "The early summer months sped along in this happy 
 harvesting of earthly products, the bees working harder 
 and harder every day, and Hans watching them more and 
 more intently. Finally, however, as midsummer ap- 
 proached, he noticed a gradual change in their methods 
 of transacting business. His bees were apparently be- 
 coming indolent. Instead of wheeling off through the 
 cool morning air in search of more bee-worlds to conquer, 
 they hung about the entrances to their little industrial 
 homes, or flew lazily away from them a short distance, 
 returning almost immediately with empty baskets and a 
 listless air of ennui that was intensely discouraging to the 
 capitalistic hopes of their young Norwegian owner. 
 Worse even than this indifference to the nobility of in- 
 dustrial effort, a portion of the bees displayed an ill- 
 temper and belligerency that were positively alarming. 
 Ordinarily, while they were busily carrying honey, Hans 
 could approach the hive and examine the sweets they 
 were storing there for him and them without any remon- 
 strance from the bees. Now, however, while some of 
 them seemed to be idling their lives away in what a 
 famous American has termed 'innocuous desuetude/ a 
 portion of the little creatures appeared to become des- 
 perately wicked in their intentions. If Hans approached 
 the hives, where they were pacing angrily back and 
 forth, not apparently gathering an ounce of honey, they 
 would dive at him fiercely with an ominously shrill buzz 
 that betokened all kinds of anarchistic intentions and 
 caused the proprietor to beat a hasty retreat from their 
 unreasonably vicious attacks. When these apparently 
 discontented insects could find nothing more prominent 
 on which to vent their spleen, the unreasonable creatures 
 would seize their associates either another dissatisfied 
 worker, or sometimes one of their lazy companions and 
 then for a little while there would be a veritable insur- 
 rection in front of the hives, the angry bees grappling 
 viciously in the air and rolling over and over in the dust 
 
KING MAMMON. 321 
 
 they had kicked up around their formerly peaceful 
 homes. 
 
 " 'Vot ails der bees? ' thought Hans, and receiving 
 no answer from his inner consciousness after diligently 
 scratching his flaxen poll, he sought information from a 
 number of publications on bee economy that his thoughtful 
 Teutonic mind had provided for an emergency. After con- 
 siderable research, Hans concluded that the general gov- 
 ernment of his bee-colony was not properly administered, 
 so he purchased a number of new queens of different kinds 
 and introduced them one by one into his unhappy little 
 communities. On the introduction of each queen, there 
 was a tremendous disturbance in the society, and a great 
 sizzing and buzzing, accompanied by a sharp contest for 
 sovereignty, after which there was a dead queen but no 
 apparent improvement in social conditions. 
 
 "This experiment having failed, Hans, suspecting that 
 his bees might have exhausted all the raw industrial 
 material available and that new supplies would stimulate 
 them to further exertions, moved his hives into a new 
 location. Arising at midnight when the aristocrats and 
 anarchists of his social groups were all slumbering, he 
 fastened them securely within their little doors and moved 
 the hives into a new location among the choicest honey- 
 plants, where it would seem that no bee of the slightest 
 pretensions to industrial morality could continue to 
 waste his time in unproductive idleness. For a day or 
 two the bees were active in their new home and went 
 about deliberately poking their noses into the new flowers 
 blossoming as the summer advanced, but they brought out 
 no honey and were evidently actuated by mere curiosity 
 and not by any productive desires. 
 
 ' ' When they first sallied forth from the hive, Hans' spirits 
 rose with the hope that he had solved the social problem, 
 but after a few days his wealth-producers all went back 
 to their old habits of rubbing noses and fighting on their 
 front doorsteps, or impudently looking sidewise at the 
 sun without offering to carry an ounce of honey. 
 
 "Hans then began to think that his neighbors' bees 
 must certainly terrorize or at least discourage his own in- 
 sects in the fields where they all sought wealth by competi- 
 tive effort between families, so he made another midnight 
 21 
 
322 KING MAMMON. 
 
 visit to his hives, calked them securely, and, deciding 
 to give the bees all the industrial protection that they 
 could desire, he conveyed them into an adjacent valley 
 surrounded by high cliffs over which no bee from the 
 neighboring swarms had strength enough to convey a load 
 of honey. There was no improvement, however, in the 
 vile manners of his swarms, and Hans was almost in de- 
 spair when the idea of a defective circulating medium oc- 
 curred to his mind, and he concluded that something must 
 be wrong with his bees' honey-bags and pollen-baskets, so 
 that, although the insects were mentally quite willing to 
 continue gathering honey, they were unable to do so be- 
 cause there was a defect in either the quantity or quality of 
 their appliances for making the transfer from the flowers to 
 the hives. Accordingly he bought twenty-five new swarms 
 warranted to possess honey-bags in first-class repair, and 
 smoked all the lazy and quarrelsome culprits out of their 
 once comfortable homes, calling them vagabonds and 
 nihilists, and saying something in choice reversed Swede- 
 English about people not working who didn't eat. The 
 bee-rancher was almost heartbroken, however, to see 
 that new bees with different honey-bags did not work any 
 better than his old ones, and, as a final resort, he sought 
 the valuable advice of experience from an older student 
 of bee-sociology. The first inquiry made by the older bee 
 keeper after hearing his complaint was, ' Did you take 
 the honey out ? ' Hans had not ; he wanted to see a very 
 large accumulation before he disturbed it. ' I guess your 
 bees are eating it, then,' said his mentor, 'and they'll 
 not work any more till you give them room.' " 
 
 Hans was a marvelously stupid fellow, say you, my 
 reader? Well, was he really more stupid than you and I 
 and all other people (including Messrs. Wells and Atkin- 
 son and Mallock), who blindly go on in collective indus- 
 trial effort to store up wealth in our social hive, not re- 
 membering that all wealth is intended ultimately for con- 
 sumption, and that whenever it accumulates in great 
 bodies, the producers must eat it ere they produce more ? 
 Think of these things carefully and then say whether 
 
KING MAMMON. 323 
 
 those writers who preach an eternity of production, neg- 
 lecting meanwhile all that relates to distribution and 
 consumption, are really wiser than the simple-minded 
 Norwegian who attempted to regulate the industry of his 
 bees by the same social methods we are using. Believe 
 me, John Ruskin is right when he says : 
 
 "THERE is NO WEALTH BUT LIFE. Life, including all its 
 powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country 
 is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of 
 noble and happy human beings ; that man is richest who, 
 having perfected the functions of his own life to the 
 utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both per- 
 sonal and by means of his possessions, over the lives of 
 others." 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE LAND OF NOAHME. 
 
 " The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof ; the "world, and they 
 that dwell therein. . . . Woe unto them that join house to hotise, that lay 
 field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the 
 midst of the earth. . . . Break off thy sins by righteousness and thine 
 iniquities by showing mercy to the poor" Bible. 
 
 RECENT historical researches by some of the modern 
 Hebrews, who are inclined to accept a few of the latter- 
 day teachings of the race as embodied in the writings of 
 Ferdinand Lassalle and Karl Marx, have brought to light 
 certain ancient manuscripts supposed to be fragments 
 of the works of Josephus, and to have been omitted 
 from all the editions of that writer's history which have 
 hitherto been published. Like all other ancient history, 
 this newly discovered record is somewhat vague and in- 
 consistent in its details, and perhaps it may not be very 
 reliable in all its particulars, but it at least furnishes some 
 
324 KING MAMMON. 
 
 interesting data concerning the progress of social institu- 
 tions among the Jews, which are not otherwise obtainable. 
 Translated into a peculiar dialect of everyday English 
 as it is, but ought not to be spoken, the story is as follows : 
 
 " When Noah with his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Ja- 
 pheth, descended from the ark to take a look at the 
 surrounding country and the subsiding waters, they 
 searched in vain for a dry rock to sit down upon. On 
 thoroughly comprehending the situation, however, the old 
 gentleman was filled with a consuming sense of his own 
 importance, for he realized that in being the head of his 
 own family and in thus attending the funeral of all the 
 other inhabitants of the earth, who had just been drowned 
 like rats in their holes, he had also become the monarch 
 of a great deal more than he surveyed even from his 
 lofty position on Mount Ararat, and therefore, by pri- 
 ority of occupation and undisturbed possession, he was 
 sole proprietor of the entire earth at least until the boys 
 became of the proper age to imagine that they ought to 
 control the universe. 
 
 " Like thousands of other men among his descendants, 
 Noah was exceedingly proud of being the owner of a 
 vast estate, and he was immediately filled with a very 
 natural desire to perpetuate the lands in his family in a 
 way that would hand his name down to posterity. Acting 
 on this impulse, he gave to his newly acquired estate 
 the name of Noahme, and decided that he would entail 
 the property on the direct male descendants of his eldest 
 son, Shem, who had assiduously courted his father's favor 
 by taking personal charge of the snakes, skunks, and other 
 disagreeable passengers among their cargo of live-stock. 
 
 However, at that time Noah did not know that pro- 
 crastination is the thief of time, this great truth being dis- 
 covered and announced several years later. He found 
 that all the time he had was quite busily occupied in seeing 
 that his consignment of animals was carefully located in 
 situations favorable to the necessities of their existence, 
 and at the same time in giving a patriarchal supervision 
 to the increasing demands of his family. Engrossed with 
 these parental duties, he postponed the formal entailing 
 of his estate, being considerably worried by the rapid 
 
KING MAMMON. 325 
 
 increase and phenomenal voracity of such vermin as 
 fleas and mosquitoes, which had multiplied at a tremen- 
 dous rate after being set at liberty. While occupied 
 with these vexations, and wondering whether he had not 
 made a serious mistake in permitting them to take pas- 
 sage on his boat, and whether life was really worth living 
 in their intimate association, Noah fell sick and died 
 suddenly without making any will. As the lawyers say, 
 he died intestate. 
 
 " After the funeral, at which there was a very large at- 
 tendance, a meeting of the heirs was held to provide fora 
 distribution of the property. All had, at first, great ex- 
 pectations. Shem, however, who was naturally very 
 well adapted to the practice of law, and who entertained 
 a very sincere respect for the authority of established 
 precedents, claimed control of the entire property by 
 operation of the well-defined and established rule of 
 primogeniture, he being the eldest son. He showed con- 
 clusively by certain records preserved in the ark, that 
 such had been the custom of their forefathers, and argued 
 that custom necessarily made not only law but justice. 
 The younger sons, being comparatively ignorant of these 
 well understood social theories, owing to their youth and 
 inexperience, at first debated these points considerably 
 and protested mildly against Shem's claims, inquiring why 
 they had no right to control any of the property, but their 
 elder brother was firm in his position, though very kind. 
 He cited the traditions of life before the flood, showing 
 the young men that the succession of the eldest son 
 had long existed in the very best of families, from time 
 immemorial, and that nobody but vile, rebellious anar- 
 chists from the lowest social levels, filled with a demoniac 
 hatred of their fellow-creatures, had ever questioned the 
 correctness of the principle. The young fellows did not 
 know exactly what an anarchist was, and consequently 
 had to take Shem's word for it, but having, like most 
 other people, a very sincere regard for social customs and 
 the sacred institutions of the past, they did not relish the 
 idea of being considered cranky individuals who enter- 
 tained peculiar notions, so they made no further objection 
 to Shem's desires, and he very kindly, although reserving 
 full power of control, offered to permit them to have free 
 
326 KING MAMMON. 
 
 access to the estate as tenants so long as he lived, and to 
 continue undisturbed in their occupations of gathering 
 fruits and nuts, or chasing certain kinds of animals suit- 
 able to their sustenance, which had by this time increased 
 in numbers to an astonishing degree. He also notified 
 them that the ark was entirely at their disposal in case 
 they desired to enjoy another voyage. 
 
 "The young men were quite well satisfied with this 
 arrangement, for they had free use of the place and did 
 not consider that the mere form of a title made any real 
 difference to them. Ham's wife, however, was a 
 vixen, and on hearing her husband assent to what she 
 considered an unfair distribution, she turned so black 
 in the face that some of her descendants are similarly 
 affected to this day. 
 
 "After this settlement of family property, life went on 
 quite smoothly among the descendants of Noah for many 
 years. The domesticated animals thrived and became 
 more and more numerous, the fruits remained plentiful, 
 and, as there was abundant room for all the people without 
 crowding, there were few disputes. As Shem could not 
 use all the land he claimed, he was more tolerant of the 
 needs of his brothers than those who own large estates 
 usually are. Ham and Japheth did not distress their 
 minds by any great amount of thinking about the merits 
 or justice of the claims established by their elder brother. 
 They had the substance of their desires and did not 
 think it was wise to worry about titles. Although the 
 two younger brothers were satisfied, Ham's wife unfor- 
 tunately persisted in stirring up theoretical discussions 
 occasionally concerning the actual rights that Shem had 
 to the exclusive ownership of the territory he controlled, 
 and thus by degrees she gained the opprobrious name of 
 anarchist, because, foolish woman that she was, she 
 wanted continually to know where her rights came in. 
 These early sociological disputes never extended farther 
 than a mere discussion, for about the time that Mrs. Ham 
 became well advanced in her argument upon the right of 
 property, she was invariably compelled to neglect public 
 duty in order to attend to more pressing maternal obli- 
 gations, for by this time there was a very numerous colony 
 of little Hams in existence, as well as other piggish speci- 
 
KING MAMMON. 327 
 
 mens of the race, who were, even at this early date, begin- 
 ning to creep into the world, with apparently no share in 
 it. On this account, her arguments on the social problem 
 were rarely completed, and were not at all convincing, 
 especially as she was a woman rather hasty in her con- 
 clusions and known to be somewhat violent in temper. 
 
 "Finally, when her incessant repetition of her peculiar 
 views became rather monotonous and annoying, Shem 
 declared that such ideas were destructive of law and order, 
 and contrary to the peace and welfare of society, and that 
 if Mrs. Ham wished to continue to occupy his possessions, 
 she must observe a proper respect for established insti- 
 tutions, and shut up ; otherwise she might, if she pleased, 
 vacate his property. There being no railroad to the moon 
 at that time, Mrs. Ham, who was wiser than the foolish 
 anarchists of a later day, made a remarkably successful 
 effort, for a woman, in holding her tongue. 
 
 "This little embryo anarchy having been suppressed 
 by the strong arm of government, in the proper protection 
 of the true interests of society, there were no other social 
 troubles during the existence of Shem. Mrs. Ham re- 
 mained discontented, but as the government denounced 
 her, and her associates laughed at her when she discussed 
 social questions from her standpoint, she ceased preach- 
 ing the gospel of discontent, and the intricate problem of 
 the proper distribution of earthly opportunities received 
 no further attention. In later life, Mrs. Ham subsided en- 
 tirely into that sphere of domestic duties which all correct 
 moral teaching has shown to be the right place for woman. 
 
 " When Shem died he left two sons Elam and Lud, the 
 other boys having unfortunately died before their paternal 
 ancestor was ready to succumb to the inevitable. During 
 the early existence of these sons, their father, like Noah, 
 had contemplated the entailing of his estate on Elam as 
 the eldest, and after him on the direct line of eldest male 
 descendants, but as the boys grew towards maturity at 
 the age of about two hundred years, he noted that Elam 
 was shrewd, selfish, and grasping, his financial policy 
 apparently being to get all he could and keep all he got. 
 Lud, on the other hand, was a sociable, liberal fellow, 
 who rapidly made friends among all the young cousins 
 scattered about his father's domains, for by this time there 
 
328 KING MAMMON. 
 
 were numerous little Hams and Japheths in the world, 
 public and private sentiment in those days being very 
 strongly in favor of populating the earth and quite dif- 
 ferent in that respect from later social developments. 
 On account of the greedy nature ofElam, Shem was afraid 
 to permit the estate to descend unbroken lest Lud should 
 not receive kind treatment at the hands of his selfish 
 brother if the latter became sole heir. Accordingly, the 
 father abandoned his original intention and made a will 
 dividing the estate equally into two portions, leaving one- 
 half of the earth to each of his two sons. By the provi- 
 sions of this last will and testament, which was prepared 
 and executed with all the solemnity that attaches to the 
 sacred nature of such documents, the entire earth was 
 placed at the disposal of Elam and Lud, while the nu- 
 merous disinherited sons of Ham and Japheth skipped 
 around wherever they were permitted to exist by the 
 more fortunate owners, entertaining a few vague ideas that 
 something was wrong in the world, but entirely unable 
 to show any illegality in the proceedings. The reveren- 
 tial Japheths were usually content with saying that the 
 condition did not seem exactly right, but that as God 
 perhaps intended that it should be that way, they could 
 not question His will. The fiery blood of Mrs. Ham 
 seemed to descend to her children, and as they were not 
 in high favor with the two owners on account of their un- 
 pleasant abruptness of speech and foolish habit of saying 
 what they thought, the young Hams became somewhat 
 embittered and rebellious. They had so much to say 
 about what they called their natural rights, in spite of the 
 abundant proof on every hand that no such things ever 
 existed, and about the injustice of social conditions, that 
 Elam and Lud both decided that the good of society and 
 the protection of the people demanded that proper police 
 and military regulations should be adopted. Accordingly, 
 they established especially friendly relations with some of 
 their cousins who were not imbued with the vile anarchist 
 spirit, destructive of society, peace, property, and good 
 government, and after showing these young men some 
 particular favors, the two proprietors and leaders of the 
 social system of Noahme, assured these well-disposed 
 cousins that if they would contrive to have a few reliable 
 
KING MAMMON. 329 
 
 clubs ready with which to suppress a possible insurrection 
 and soundly punish the ill-tempered descendants of Mrs. 
 Ham whenever the latter failed to show a proper deference 
 to established authority, they would, as peace-officers 
 and worthy, law-abiding citizens not be losers by the 
 transaction. 
 
 "Thus social life in the land of Noahme progressed for 
 many years after Shem's death. The socialists and com- 
 munists and anarchists and cranks for these were the 
 names applied to the bitterly discontented people, com- 
 prising most of Mrs. Ham's descendants and a few of the 
 more belligerent Japheths had much to say in private 
 about tyranny, and equal rights, and freedom, and a lot of 
 other things that they did not understand and could not 
 be made to understand. Public discussion was not 
 fashionable, however, for the Hams and Japheths 
 realized that they were in some danger of having what 
 little brains they possessed knocked entirely out by the 
 newly-organized corps of anarchy-whackers, who were 
 now valiantly attempting to maintain law and order. 
 Many of their other cousins had established relations more 
 or less friendly with Elam and Lud, and their legal con- 
 dition, whether equitable or inequitable, being satisfactory 
 to themselves, they were not inclined to sympathize with 
 the disaffected citizens of Noahme. These more contented 
 and prosperous Hams and Japheths informed their dissat- 
 isfied relatives that if they would accept social institutions 
 as they found them, quit fighting what they could not over- 
 come, be energetic according to their stations in life, and, 
 especially, be respectful and subservient to those above 
 them in social rank, they would thus reap all the reward 
 on earth to which they were really entitled, and a good 
 deal more than they would secure by perpetually struggling 
 against the laws of Nature, which never had produced 
 equality and which never would. Some of the reverential 
 Japheths also kindly admonished them to be patient ; for, 
 even if things did appear somewhat out of joint in this 
 world, they would be completely adjusted in the next. 
 
 "This well-meant advice did not satisfy the more re- 
 bellious spirits of Cush and Phat, who resembled their 
 fault-finding ancestor very much, and these desperate an- 
 archists, mounting a convenient stump, declared vocifer- 
 
330 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ously that Elam and Lud were tyrants for controlling so 
 much property, and that if their brains were hammered 
 out with a rock, the world would be left in a better condi- 
 tion. The entire community was shocked by these horrible 
 assertions, for nearly every member of it knew that if 
 he had been in the place of Elam and Lud, he would have 
 done exactly the same things ; so when the clubs of the 
 newly-organized police force descended on the foolish 
 heads of Cush and Phat, and hammered all the anarchism 
 out of them, there was a general approval in Noahme, 
 and little sympathy was wasted on the offenders. The 
 governmental authorities decided that such vermin should 
 be promptly exterminated, and all the stumps in the com- 
 munity were placed under a strict surveillance. 
 
 "It must not be supposed that these anarchic disturb- 
 ances were of daily occurrence in Noahme. For many 
 years after the suppression of this incipient revolt, the re- 
 lations between Shem's sons and their cousins were quite 
 amicable, although there was considerable envy in a 
 mild, harmless form among the female descendants of 
 Ham and Japheth, when they looked upon the comfortable 
 domiciles provided for Mrs. Elam and Mrs. Lud, and 
 compared those elegant accommodations with their own 
 modest homes. It was also somewhat irritating at times 
 for Mrs. Ham's daughters to hear Mrs. Lud, who was 
 quite proud of her family history, talk about how "our 
 ancestors traced their descent from the ark," and to hear 
 her warn the young Luds not to mingle too freely with 
 common folk. During these years, the lot of those who 
 possessed no estates was not particularly hard or even dis- 
 agreeable. They were permitted to occupy the lands of 
 the two brothers and to pasture domestic animals thereon 
 by paying a very reasonable rent for the privilege. Each 
 Ham or Japheth was expected to return to the owners a 
 share of whatever game, fish, or fruit was obtained from 
 the property. He was allowed most of the milk from the 
 herds and an animal now and then for meat, but no actual 
 ownership of the animals was permitted to the tenants by 
 the owners, for Elam always insisted that such a privilege 
 would be granting entirely too much to people who 
 owned no land. He also showed very plainly that the 
 Hams andjapheths must necessarily accede to any terms 
 
KING MAMMON. 33! 
 
 offered to them, if they wanted to raise cattle, for they 
 had no other pasturage. The surplus wealth resulting to 
 Elam and Lud from these rents was used by the two 
 brothers in their own family consumption, in reward- 
 ing those cousins who assisted them in keeping their 
 houses and grounds in order, and in maintaining the effi- 
 ciency of the force used to preserve social order. 
 
 The liberality that was developed so early in the dis- 
 position of Lud continued with him in later life. He was 
 exceedingly kind to his cousin-tenants, and seldom ex- 
 acted more rent than the comfort of his family required 
 for their adequate support and the necessities of efficient 
 police supervision demanded. It is true that Mrs. Lud was 
 sometimes extravagant in her ideas concerning the proper 
 attributes of a lady in her station, and Mr. Lud was, 
 therefore, compelled occasionally to raise the rent on that 
 account ; but he always did it so pleasantly and with so 
 evident an interest in the welfare of his tenants, that many 
 of the Japheths, who were only slightly discontented, 
 were heard to remark that if Elam were like Lud, the 
 social structure ofNoahme would be about right as it was. 
 This remark was repeated to Phat, who was still sore- 
 headed from the beating he had received while making 
 his stump speech. He snorted contemptuously and grinned 
 with scorn, but said nothing, for the anarchists were 
 wiser then than they had been before or have been since. 
 The kind-hearted young Japheth who spoke to Phat looked 
 puzzled when he saw his friend's scornful expression, and 
 wondered what ailed the man that he could not agree with 
 such obviously correct sentiments. 
 
 "In times of scarcity Lud was often known to remit 
 temporarily the collection of rent, and during this un- 
 favorable period he magnanimously consented to live 
 from the stores his cousins had already accumulated for 
 him, without pressing them when paying rent would be 
 a real hardship. On account of these many virtues he 
 was regarded by his contemporaries as the noblest of 
 human beings, and was generally esteemed in Noahme 
 as a philanthropist. Even the most destructive of the 
 anarchists did not seriously threaten to crack his skull 
 with their rocks, though some of them made wild 
 speeches at their secret meetings in the caves to the effect 
 
33 2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 that Lud represented a social evil, and that they declared 
 death to all tyranny. 
 
 "But the good always die young, and Lud passed 
 away before his brother Elam, leaving neither wife nor 
 children, for typhoid fever broke out in the Lud house- 
 hold, owing to defective sanitation incidental to the 
 times. Before his death he performed an act of sublime 
 benevolence by giving his entire herd of cattle to those 
 cousins who had raised them on his land. When the 
 gift was made known, Lud was hailed as the benefactor 
 of his race by all except Elam, who merely smiled rather 
 cynically. The will of Lud decreed that all the surplus 
 wealth collected from his tenants and accumulated in his 
 hands should be used in securing the services of such 
 cousins as were willing to labor in exchange for it, to 
 build a high stone monument to mark his resting-place. 
 The landed property was all bequeathed to his brother 
 Elam, as Lud felt that it was his duty to retain it in the 
 family. Elam immediately took possession of his new 
 property, and being an excellent financier, one of those 
 characters to whom society is greatly indebted for the ac- 
 cumulation of capital and consequent progress, he im- 
 mediately proceeded to raise the rents up to what he 
 thought the traffic would bear. 
 
 "The work of constructing Lud's monument was com- 
 menced promptly and carried on vigorously by his en- 
 thusiastic and devoted cousins, who were so impressed 
 by the final exhibition of his generosity that they were 
 quite willing to construct the tomb themselves for 
 nothing. They commenced the monument on an ex- 
 tensive scale, in order to bestow all possible honor upon 
 their deceased patron, and by the time the structure was 
 half completed, the stores set aside by Lud for building 
 it were exhausted. Notwithstanding this lamentable 
 condition, however, the laborers still bravely persevered, 
 and ultimately completed the work at their own expense, 
 though it was a tedious process, owing to the fact that 
 their daily subsistence with that of their families was 
 necessarily to be maintained in addition to the work done 
 on the monument. 
 
 " When the great cap-stone of the monument was carved 
 and ready to be hoisted into its place, the workmen pre- 
 
KING MAMMON. 333 
 
 pared to celebrate the day in honor of Lud's memory. 
 Their religious leader had prepared a beautiful discourse 
 on the virtues of charity and benevolence and the beauties 
 of heavenly compensation for earthly wrongs ; their 
 orator was ready with finely- rounded sentences concern- 
 ing Lud's memory as the Father of his People ; and the 
 poet had prepared twenty-one eulogistic stanzas bearing 
 the same burden of praise. In the midst of these prepa- 
 rations, a messenger, one of the clubmen of Elam's 
 brigade, arrived with a communication from the owner 
 of the estate, informing his tenants that if they desired to 
 complete the monument, they must first pay him for the 
 stone they had used from his premises, by returning a 
 fair remuneration in labor. 
 
 The Hams and Japheths were thunderstruck at first, and 
 were disposed to dispute the validity of this claim. They 
 had become so accustomed to take and use whatever 
 they desired from the land, that, although they dimly 
 understood that they were not actually owners, they 
 nevertheless supposed that they were really entitled to 
 such privileges as had been merely accorded to them by 
 sufferance. There was a hasty conference with Elam, 
 and the laborers' orator made a fine argument to the 
 effect that there should be no payment because the stone 
 came from a quarry on his brother's land, and they 
 were merely erecting his brother's monument ; but Elam 
 soon convinced them that they knew nothing about law 
 and government, and that he had absolutely nothing to 
 do with monuments for Lud. As he well expressed the 
 question, it was purely a matter of business. The posi- 
 tion he occupied was that he owned the land, and that 
 if they expected to use it for any purpose whatever, they 
 must pay a reasonable compensation. There was some 
 talk of a contest, but the monument had to be finished, 
 the oration delivered, and the poem read. It was consid- 
 ered that the additional expense was a small matter, so 
 the workmen consented to Elam's demands and went on 
 with their ceremonies, which were long- held in remem- 
 brance in the land of Noahme. 
 
 "As soon as the monument business was transacted 
 on correct principles and everything successfully adjusted, 
 Elam notified his cousins that if they expected to keep 
 
334 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the cattle they had received from Lud-on his land, they 
 would have to divide the profits of the business with him. 
 A contract was arranged on this basis after some com- 
 plaint from the cattle-owners ; but, notwithstanding their 
 dissatisfaction, these cousin-tenants could not but ac- 
 knowledge that Elam was entitled to rent for the use of 
 his land, and that as they possessed none, it was neces- 
 sary to lease land for the support of their cattle. They 
 were so inflated with the idea of having some cattle of 
 their own, that they did not seriously or persistently ob- 
 ject to paying rent for pasturage, although it absorbed a 
 large part of the increase of their herds, which went 
 mainly to sustain the increasing numbers of anarchist 
 fighters that were deemed necessary to preserve social 
 order in Noahme. 
 
 "Elam also introduced a new adjustment of the rates 
 on gathering cocoanuts soon after his exclusive owner- 
 ship began. The tenants had formerly paid the joint 
 heirs four cocoanuts out of every ten they gathered, and 
 this rate having developed into a custom, the people 
 were satisfied. Elam wished to enlarge his corps of 
 social protectors, however, so he notified the tenants that 
 they must pay over six cocoanuts out of ten. There 
 was much complaint among the young and hot-headed 
 cocoanut laborers, and some of the Hams denounced 
 Elam as a monopolist, saying that those who gathered 
 cocoanuts were really entitled to all they produced, and 
 that not one solitary cocoanut out of a million should 
 justly be paid over to anybody. Such speeches as these 
 were always made when the peace officers of the com- 
 munity were enjoying a vacation and giving their clubs 
 a rest during a relaxation from the duties of their respon- 
 sible positions. The wiser heads among the cocoanut men 
 did not entirely approve these rash utterances. They 
 pointed out the fact that Elam unquestionably owned the 
 rest of the earth exactly as they owned their cattle, and that 
 he had the same right to the one that they had to the 
 other. These speakers admitted that there was something 
 puzzling about the matter, and at first it really looked as 
 if the men who gathered the cocoanuts were entitled to 
 them, but it was not logical to deny Elam the privilege 
 of rents if he were entitled to the earth and had a perfect 
 
KING MAMMON. 335 
 
 record of its legal transmission from his ancestors. The 
 hot-heads then proposed that they should quit working 
 for Elam, let him gather his own cocoanuts, and that the 
 laborers should proceed to achieve an independent exist- 
 ence for themselves. This proposition met with great 
 applause till a gray-beard arose and mildly stated that an 
 independent existence would be exceedingly, desirable, 
 but that it would be very difficult to accomplish under 
 the social system that prevailed in Noahme, as there 
 was no means of communication with the moon and no 
 public land on the face of the earth. He advised the 
 rash youths who proposed to carve out a career for 
 themselves, to consider their opportunities a little more 
 closely before they acted decisively and burned their 
 bridges behind them. 
 
 "After considerable further discussion, a wise regard for 
 existing conditions and vested rights prevailed over the 
 tendency toward radical thought, and the cousins went 
 back to gathering cocoanuts at the reduced wages of four 
 cocoanuts out of ten. Their compensation was not very 
 satisfactory, and considerable ill-feeling developed, but 
 they were able to secure increased quantities of nuts 
 by contriving better means of climbing the trees. They 
 were, on 'this account, still quite prosperous, and Elam 
 secured a new lot of heavier clubs for his anarchist 
 fighters, increased their numbers, and employed a por- 
 tion of the men in beautifying the grounds about his 
 residence. 
 
 "The conditions of labor and capital and their future 
 prospects were the subjects of much discussion among 
 the inhabitants of Noahme after this reduction in wages, 
 and the proper course of procedure in case of another 
 reduction involved a great deal of controversy. An 
 irascible, domineering young upstart (several genera- 
 tions removed from Mrs. Ham), with little reverence for 
 established authority, suggested that the cocoanut hands 
 should all unite in a secret brotherhood with signs and 
 grips, passwords, constitutions, and by-laws, so that 
 instead of representing diverse sentiments, the associa- 
 tion would thereafter act as one man. If another 
 reduction in cocoanut percentage were demanded, he 
 proposed that the association should refuse to gather any 
 
336 KING MAMMON. 
 
 nuts at the reduced rates and let Elam and his anarchy- 
 whackers climb the trees themselves or starve at their 
 own pleasure. There was some dissension over the 
 proposed union, and a number of fault-finders suggested 
 that if young Mr. Ham were in Elam's place he would 
 require even more cocoanut-rent than the latter did. 
 Notwithstanding this natural habit of finding fault with 
 the wrong side of human nature, the union was finally 
 perfected by the laborers, and all who joined it agreed 
 that on sufficient provocation they would refuse to gather 
 any more cocoanuts. The organizer of the union wanted 
 a few cocoanuts now and then for his trouble in pulling 
 it together, and this feature of the organization was not 
 very popular. Some of the men who only gathered 
 cocoanuts occasionally refused to join the association on 
 account of the cocoanuts they had to put up from their 
 share in order to keep up the organization, and these 
 low-spirited fellows were regarded with much contempt 
 by the members of the cocoanut union. 
 
 " Finally there occurred a hard season in Noahme. 
 Cocoanuts were scarce. Paying over six from ten for 
 rent meant hard work and not much in it, so the laborers 
 said, and they demanded a better rate. Elam listened 
 to their protests, but he declared that his own revenues 
 were greatly depleted by hard times, and that he was not 
 receiving enough from his estate to maintain his club 
 brigade or to keep his grounds in order, so he declined 
 to make better terms. He addressed a meeting of the 
 laborers at some length and showed Very conclusively 
 that the interests of capital and labor are identical ; that 
 when one suffers, both suffer ; and that the greatest 
 blessing that laborers can have is a great number of 
 cocoanut-trees in the possession of somebody else, with 
 a large crop of nuts ready to be gathered, and to thus 
 afford them employment. He proved clearly that he was 
 not to blame for the fact that there were few cocoanuts 
 to be gathered during this particular season. He regretted 
 sincerely that labor was not able to earn an adequate 
 reward, but capital itself was suffering, and his own prof- 
 its were greatly reduced by the universal depression in 
 the cocoanut business. 
 
 "Strange to say these clear and convincing arguments 
 
KING MAMMON. 337 
 
 produced no effect on the discontented climbers, and 
 they immediately struck. They slid down from the 
 cocoanut trees and held an indignation meeting. The 
 older men were in favor of disturbing nothing that was 
 owned by Elam, but the young radicals declared that he 
 was a greedy monopolist and that every cocoanut tree 
 on his plantation ought to be cut down. A compromise 
 resulted between these extreme views, and the strikers 
 smeared the trunk of every palm that bore nuts at the 
 top with a thick coat of pitch, so that climbing was 
 temporarily impossible, and stuck on it a notice that any 
 disreputable scab who attempted to climb the trees 
 under any pretext would be sunk, like McGinty, to 
 the bottom of the sea. Elam marched his anarchy 
 brigade upon the cocoanut grounds, but the laborers were 
 committing no overt acts, and their greatest crime was 
 apparently refusing to do anything. They had un- 
 doubtedly exceeded their legal rights in smearing pitch 
 on his trees, and the captains of his club-soldiers wanted 
 to punish them severely for this infraction of law and 
 order, but Elam was long-headed, like some of his 
 capitalistic descendants, and mentally sizing up the 
 numbers of those who had organized under the grip-and- 
 password system of human effort, he decided that in the 
 excited condition of public sentiment, violent measures 
 were reactionary. Therefore his soldiers camped and 
 the laborers camped under the cocoanut trees to watch 
 one another starve to death. While this evolutionary 
 process embodying the survival of the fittest and not of 
 the rightist was going on, the riff-raff and scum of the 
 earth, comprising all the degenerate descendants of 
 Noah, who perhaps inherited an undue proportion of the 
 evil instincts which among their ancestors had led to the 
 flood, seized the opportunity afforded by the preoccupied 
 mental condition of the more respectable inhabitants to 
 do a little business on their own account and after their 
 own tastes. 
 
 " They broke into Elam's stores of cocoanuts and de- 
 stroyed them ; they drove all the cattle they could find 
 belonging to either the strikers or their employer over a 
 high cliff into the sea ; they knocked the top off of Lud's 
 monument ; and, finally, they held a great meeting and, 
 22 
 
338 KING MAMMON. 
 
 marching under red and black flags, they took to the 
 woods, leaving the interests of capital and labor in 
 Noahme to adjust themselves without any further assist- 
 ance on their part." 
 
 The remainder of this sequel to the interesting legend 
 of the flood, if any more of it was ever recorded, has 
 been entirely lost probably it was destroyed in the dis- 
 turbed condition of the country while it was under the 
 alternate domination of the warring factions. At any 
 rate we have now no means of ascertaining what final 
 adjustment was made between the supposed interests of 
 the man who inherited the earth and of his distant rela- 
 tives who inherited nothing. Common sense, however, 
 without much display of erudition, ought to indicate 
 to any person living in the nineteenth century, that if 
 the descendants of Ham and Japheth had turned their 
 attention more toward the origin of ownership in the 
 land and cocoanut trees, and less towards the mere divi- 
 sion of the cocoanuts, they would have more readily 
 reached a solution of the problems they were discussing. 
 There is no real difference between the principles which 
 established Elam's control of the earth and those which 
 still give men the privilege of control and dictation. If 
 any man has a right to control the use of one coat pro- 
 duced by his own efforts, it is very difficult to determine 
 why he should not control one thousand coats or one 
 million coats if they be acquired in the same way. There 
 is always the element of a dangerous power, and if men 
 now lived like Methuselah to the age of nine hundred and 
 sixty-nine years, we might have to check their efforts in 
 order to prevent the despotic domination of the Fairs, the 
 Goulds, and the Huntingtons, and thus avoid placing the 
 whole earth under their control ; but nature having limited 
 their existence to a briefer period, that period furnishes a 
 convenient method of avoiding those extremes which in 
 
KING MAMMON. 339 
 
 all things become evils. Benevolence is in moderation 
 a blessing, but immoderately exercised it becomes a 
 curse. Wealth accumulation and transfer within reason- 
 able and just limits are beneficial to society ; but carried 
 to the insane degree of our present institutions and pushed 
 still farther, they will convert human beings into mad- 
 dened brutes. 
 
 The inhabitants of Noahme ought to have objected 
 more strenuously to the disposition of Noah's estate, and 
 they should have contested the wills of Shem and Lud, 
 thus preventing the establishment of Elam's iron-clad 
 monopoly over possessions that he evidently had no better 
 right to control than other men had. They ought to have 
 taken a sensible view of social conditions instead of call- 
 ing Mrs. Ham an anarchist and then quarreling among 
 themselves over the questions of employment and wages. 
 One of Mrs. Ham's distant relatives of the present cen- 
 tury has been heard to remark, with the vixenish accents 
 of contempt which characterized her ill-tempered ancestor, 
 that the laborers might as well try to exhaust the waters 
 of the ocean with a rye-straw as to attempt to cure the 
 ills and right the wrongs of society by means of strikes. 
 She thinks that looking at the mere rate of wages alone 
 is a very narrow, selfish, and inadequate conception of 
 the social problem, not at all more intelligent than the 
 ancient position of the cocoanut strikers. Mrs. Ham's 
 descendant also says that the laborers ought to have long 
 ears attached to them because they are perpetually fight- 
 ing one of the effects of a bad system instead of the real 
 causes. She compares their efforts to an attempt to 
 move a loaded wheelbarrow by lifting at the wrong end, 
 and insists that if they will grasp the handles, it will be- 
 come easily manageable. 
 
 These assertions are repeated here for what they may 
 be worth, without positive approval, for the lady, though 
 
340 KING MAMMON. 
 
 frequently correct in her ideas, is somewhat hasty in her 
 conclusions. It would seem, however, that if the labor- 
 ing classes will repress and discourage lawlessness in 
 their own ranks, and strive by careful study to obtain 
 an intelligent comprehension, sadly lacking among all 
 classes, of the real evils and dangers by which they are 
 surrounded, to the end that those evils shall be corrected 
 peaceably by the ballot and not aggravated by a blind 
 and ignorant appeal to brute force, their prospects for 
 securing real justice and better social conditions will be 
 vastly greater than they can obtain by the mere contin- 
 uance of strikes and boycotts, which never reach the 
 cause of the evil, and which can never result in perma- 
 nent good. If laborers can win in their struggle by strik- 
 ing, they can win more easily by voting. They need to 
 substitute for the family contests now continually going 
 on in our probate courts the intelligent control of estates 
 by the whole people. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE LINK BETWEEN TWO GENERATIONS. 
 
 Meek young men grow up in libraries , believing it their duty to accept 
 views which Cicero, Locke, Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, 
 Bacon, were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books. . . . 
 / had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attractions clear out 
 of my own orbit and made a satellite instead of a system. . . . The one thing 
 in the world of value is the active sotil. . . . Man thinking must not be sitb- 
 diiedby his instruments. R. W. EMERSON. 
 
 THE privileges of the deathbed have been the source 
 of much discussion and dispute ever since enough wealth 
 was developed to make it worth while for men to quarrel 
 over its possession and disposition. The proper disposal 
 of wealth in the possession of a dying man involves a 
 
KING MAMMON. 341 
 
 consideration of the rights to property, and a determina- 
 tion of the real nature of those conflicting claims repre- 
 sented by the decedent on the one hand and his children 
 or other relatives on the other, whom society usually re- 
 gards as heirs. 
 
 Thus, in this country and in England, the dying man 
 is supposed to have a natural right as well as a legal right 
 to dispose absolutely of his wealth by making a will in 
 favor of any person whom he desires to succeed him in 
 the possession of his property. Jurors called into court 
 to try a probate case will assert one after another that 
 they believe that this is the correct principle to govern 
 such cases. Practically, however, in numberless will- 
 contests, the same jurors are giving the lie to their own 
 assertions by verdicts based on the absurd doctrine or pre- 
 tense of insanity and undue influence. If the verdicts of 
 juries in the United States in the last ten years be any 
 criterion, the intelligent observer must conclude that nearly 
 every man who has died possessed of a fortune during 
 that period was either a lunatic or an imbecile. The least 
 eccentricity or apparent injustice in the disposition of an 
 estate among the surviving family members, is now the 
 excuse for a will-contest, in which juries habitually over- 
 rule the dead man's decree in a way that plainly shows 
 the drift of public sentiment, and indicates that the absolute 
 power of bequest is becoming a legal fiction that will 
 be abandoned before many years. At present juries are 
 constantly destroying the power of wills under the pretense 
 that the testator was insane or unduly influenced, notwith- 
 standing the unsentimental facts of such cases usually 
 are that the decedent was a hard-headed business man, 
 shrewd and capable, who had proved his ability and san- 
 ity in the successful management of his property, and 
 who merely proved his selfishness and tyranny in the 
 final disposal of it ! The juries are really striking at the 
 
34 2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 tyranny involved in these deathbed decrees and not at 
 any insanity or incompetency of the testator, and, as all 
 history proves, they are men who in sentiment are slightly 
 in advance of their laws. 
 
 The great Fair will contest now in progress at San Fran- 
 cisco is a fine illustration of the absurd condition of our 
 testamentary laws and of the changing public sentiment. 
 James G. Fair, an ex-Senator of the United States from 
 Nevada, died in San Francisco suddenly on December 28, 
 1894. His estate is supposed to be worth about thirty- 
 eight millions of dollars. His family comprised a son 
 and two daughters, his wife being dead. The deceased 
 also had several collateral relatives. On the day after 
 Mr. Fair's death, a will was filed for probate, which was 
 drawn with extreme care, and which transformed the vast 
 estate into a trust in the hands of four executors, who were 
 to control the property in the interests of the three chil- 
 dren, all of whom were adults, the latter not being given 
 any direct control over the estate. The will essentially 
 entailed the Fair estate upon his children, and thereafter 
 upon the descendants of his daughters, as far as entail is 
 now permitted by our laws, the children of his son being 
 cut off from the succession owing to the fact that he had 
 married an actress displeasing to the parent. The trus- 
 tees of the property were to be paid by fees and legacies, 
 and there were a number of bequests, principally to col- 
 lateral relatives, ranging from $3,000 to $50,000 each, two 
 or three charitable institutions also receiving legacies. 
 This will was dated on September 21, 1894, and it closed 
 with the following section : 
 
 "Twenty-second Believing that I have made a just 
 and equitable disposition of my estate, considering all the 
 circumstances surrounding each and every of the bene- 
 ficiaries named therein, I now expressly declare and pro- 
 vide that, if any one or more of the legatees or devisees 
 
KING MAMMON. 343 
 
 in this will named or provided for, shall at any time com- 
 mence any proceeding to contest this will, the legacy, 
 devise and provision therein bequeathed, devised and pro- 
 vided for shall from that time become void, and I hereby 
 revoke the same ; and neither the court having jurisdic- 
 tion of my estate, nor my said executors and trustees, 
 shall have any authority to distribute, pay or deliver to 
 such legatee or devisee any portion of the legacy or devise 
 to which he or they would otherwise be entitled under the 
 provisions hereof, and the legacy, devise or provision so 
 annulled shall thereupon and on the commencement of 
 such proceeding to contest, fall into and become a part of 
 the rest and residue of my estate to the same extent as if 
 the said legacy, devise and provision had been omitted 
 from this will. " x 
 
 A few days after this will was filed, it was stolen by un- 
 known persons from the County Clerk's office, and secreted 
 or destroyed, only copies remaining. Not long after this, 
 another will, or what purported to be such, was discovered 
 and filed as a later testament, said to have been written 
 by Mr. Fair himself three days after the execution of the 
 first will. The second will was a brief document written 
 with a pencil on legal cap, and it was brought into court 
 framed between sheets of glass to prevent obliteration by 
 excessive handling. This will left the bequests to col- 
 laterals and charitable beneficiaries in nearly the same 
 condition established by the first will, but appointed dif- 
 
 1 In sharp contrast with the principles of entail embodied in the Fair 
 will, is the testament left in Oakland, March 16, 1895,137 Alfred Barstow, 
 a lawyer with a philosophic turn of mind. He left a biographic will ap- 
 pointing his wife executrix and desiring that his estate be distributed in 
 accordance with the laws of the State of California. He refrained from 
 binding his successors in any way and added the following explanatory 
 
 codicil to the testament : 
 
 . LfLj tf,\^~J~A* 
 
 I think no man should have the power to go further than this. 
 
 I do not believe the dead should meddle with the quick. 
 
 When a person is once comfortably dead and laid to rest, let him 
 cease from troubling, and let the living carry on the business of life. 
 
 Very probably the dead one will have all he can attend to if the re- 
 ligious doctors are half right as to the " truths " which they hand out 
 
344 KING MAMMON. 
 
 ferent executors and abolished the trust, permitting the 
 property to go directly to the three children in equal shares, 
 and providing for an immediate payment of $500,000 to 
 the son as a portion of his share pending a settlement of 
 the estate. 
 
 All three of the children opposed the first will in senti- 
 ment, though not in legal action, evidently desiring direct 
 control of the vast property, or fearing that the trustees 
 might absorb its revenues to the financial detriment of 
 the heirs. The newspapers reported that propositions 
 were made to the executors to withdraw the first will on 
 payment of large sums to them by the heirs, and it was 
 stated that all but one of these men were willing to do so 
 under such conditions. No compromise of this kind was 
 effected, however, so a contest was commenced by the 
 son, Charles L. Fair, presumably with the approval of his 
 sisters, who were supposed to have agreed to assist him 
 financially from their income in case he failed to defeat 
 the first will of their father by the second document, al- 
 though the forfeiture clause in the first will was an obsta- 
 cle to their open efforts against it. 
 
 The one aspiration of James G. Fair's life was the con- 
 trol of wealth, and the first will was, evidently, in all its 
 minute details in exact accordance with the well-known 
 characteristics and feelings of the man who executed it, 
 and who thus artificially projected his own existence into 
 the future, as though his bony fingers were reaching out 
 from the sepulcher, still to direct the disposition of that 
 wealth which was to him next to his own life. Parental 
 affection, pure and true, may also have entered into the 
 formation of this will, for his children did not inherit his 
 own care and skill in the management of property, and 
 his son was popularly esteemed a "ne'er-do-well" whose 
 chief object in life was to spend his father's surplus cash. 
 It is likely that in making this will, James G. Fair was 
 
KING MAMMON. 345 
 
 actuated by two motives : the desire of continuing his 
 estate in an unbroken body, invariably the passion of the 
 great accumulator ; and the desire to make his children 
 comfortable and independent for life, without ruining them 
 by the unrestricted possession of great wealth, which he 
 knew they were not competent to handle, and which he 
 preferred to entrust to his business friends as executors. 
 The children were undoubtedly actuated in the contest by 
 the desire of complete control over the property and by 
 distrust of the men appointed to manage it. Hence the 
 whole estate is involved in litigation, between twenty and 
 thirty lawyers being employed, and tremendous efforts 
 will be made to prove that a man who accumulated nearly 
 forty millions of dollars, and who was successfully manag- 
 ing it at the time of his death, was a half-imbecile who 
 made long wills on one day because his friends desired 
 him to do so, only to change them as the whim occurred 
 to him, or at the solicitation of some other person. 
 
 It matters not to the public whether the executors in this 
 case retain control of the estate, whether the heirs obtain 
 the unrestrained privilege of handling it, or whether the 
 score of lawyers employed succeed in absorbing it. It is 
 probable that the result of the trial will distribute the Fair 
 estate about equally in these three directions. The real 
 question for the people of the United States to determine 
 is what moral or equitable right these people have to the 
 estate of James G. Fair beyond the right that accrues to 
 every other citizen of the country. The children were 
 supported in idleness and luxury by Mr. Fair during his 
 lifetime, and the son constantly indulged in luxurious liv- 
 ing to the vexation of his father, who manifested his dis- 
 pleasure in the making of the first will. The executors 
 were business friends of the deceased, who had reaped 
 profit from association with the capitalist, and to whom 
 no special assistance was apparently due. The lawyers 
 
346 KING MAMMON. 
 
 employed in the case are simply a band of legalized plun- 
 derers, who live at the expense of society while prosecut- 
 ing various sides of the great contest, and who fight over 
 the spoils with a personal merit not greater than a dozen 
 wharf-rats would display if society kindly permitted a sack- 
 ful of wheat to be scattered for their benefit. Their posi- 
 tion in the Fair will case is the prostitution of great intel- 
 lect to outrageous social wrong. 
 
 Does society propose to continue a system under which 
 the control of fortunes worth from twenty to two hundred 
 millions of dollars when the accumulator has abandoned 
 earth, is made to depend upon the authenticity of a scrap 
 of paper? Are men like Fair to name their own succes- 
 sors in the control of such wealth, are their wishes to be 
 disregarded by juries when they are obviously unjust, or 
 are the people themselves to determine what disposal shall 
 be made of the wealth, disregarding the pretensions of 
 both ancestor and heir, and doing equal justice among all ? 
 It should be conceivable to the minds of the present gen- 
 eration in this country that the proper disposition of estates 
 should be absolutely in the hands of judges representing 
 the people under equitable laws, and not a contest between 
 the desires of parent and child. A very large portion of 
 every estate like that of James G. Fair should go to the 
 United States government, for there is really no man in 
 any part of the nation who does not contribute directly or 
 indirectly to its accumulation. The remainder should be 
 distributed among individual successors in the most equit- 
 able manner possible, and without giving to any heir or 
 legatee the excuse for riotous living and luxurious worth- 
 lessness as the concomitant of vast wealth unearned and 
 consequently undeserved. 
 
 Having used this famous case as the type of existing 
 conditions, we will now proceed to review some of the 
 theories relating to successions. It is clear that if the 
 
KING MAMMON. 347 
 
 father has the moral right to bequeath, the children have 
 no moral right to succeed, for these are conflicting claims, 
 and one or the other must give way. In England and 
 America the parent holds the power ; in France and some 
 other European countries the power of the children is 
 superior, and the making of a will is a comparatively 
 barren privilege. It is the effort of this book to prove 
 that the right of the people is supreme over both, and that 
 it is now time to exercise that right, however unnecessary 
 its enforcement may have been in the past. Granting the 
 natural claims of helpless infancy, all men associated 
 under one government are otherwise equal heirs to 
 whatever none of them has directly produced or acquired, 
 for they are again in the condition of two or more men 
 who seek the natural products of game, fish, or fruits, in 
 which none has developed a special right by labor. 
 
 In this chapter will be presented some of the ideas that 
 have emanated from the minds of a few great thinkers, 
 not because their thoughts confirm or add the weight of 
 indorsement to the views expressed in this treatise, but 
 because they are interesting in throwing light upon the 
 vexed subject of successions, which have existed in va- 
 rious forms under different conditions of civilization, as 
 we have seen in a preceding chapter, and which have 
 been the subject of almost every conceivable form of 
 legislation. 
 
 Veneration for a great name is a trait in human nature 
 so widely prevalent and so powerful in its influence, that 
 any quotation of Herbert Spencer's language on the rights 
 of bequest may not tend to strengthen the position herein 
 occupied, for Mr. Spencer is one of those writers who ap- 
 parently see nothing wrong or dangerous in the power of 
 making a will. Greatness, however, does not constitute 
 infallibility. Plato possessed one of the greatest intellects 
 the world has produced, yet his thoughts could not rise 
 
348 KING MAMMON. 
 
 above the possession of women as property. Sir Thomas 
 More foresaw many of the improvements of modern civili- 
 zation when he wrote of Utopia, yet he could not foresee 
 the extinction of slavery. The moral progress of man- 
 kind is absolute darkness to all but a few seers who are 
 usually execrated by their contemporaries as Jesus Christ 
 was crucified. Great minds as well as small ones are 
 confined to groveling 1 sentiments, though not in the 
 same degree, by the opinions of their associates and by 
 the habits and customs and beliefs of the age in which 
 they exist, and ideas impressed upon any mind by con- 
 stant association from its infancy cannot be easily 
 effaced by any process of reasoning. Sometimes men 
 evolve a new belief by reasoning, but more often they 
 merely twist their methods of reasoning into a form to 
 substantiate beliefs formed among the early impressions 
 of childhood. Mr. Spencer is entitled to respect as a 
 great thinker, but not to such veneration as would pre- 
 clude an examination of his ideas from a skeptical view. 
 In his recent ethical work entitled Justice, he bases the 
 right of property upon human labor, as he did many years 
 previously in Social Statics. In the new book, however, 
 his assertions concerning the right of property are vague, 
 doubtful, and hesitating, lacking entirely the positive and 
 vigorous tone of the thoughts enunciated in his earlier 
 work, and indicating that the author is either confused by 
 the difficulties that surround the subject of human rights, 
 or unwilling to positively assert conclusions that w r ould 
 be inimical to property interests, and that would inevi- 
 tably provoke the hostility of antagonistic human nature. 
 
 He reasserts in Justice the burden of his thoughts on the 
 land question embraced in Social Statics, by saying : 
 
 "The earth's surface cannot be denied to any one ab- 
 solutely, without rendering life-sustaining activities im- 
 
KING MAMMON. 349 
 
 practicable. In the absence of standing-ground he can do 
 nothing ; and hence it appears to be a corollary from the 
 law of equal freedom, interpreted with strictness, that the 
 earth's surface may not be appropriated by individuals, 
 but may be occupied by them only in such manner as 
 recognizes ultimate ownership by other men, that is 
 
 by society at large But the proposition that 
 
 men have equal claims to the use of that remaining por- 
 tion of the environment hardly to be called a medium 
 on which all stand and by the products of which all live, 
 is antagonized by ideas and arrangements descending to 
 us from the past These ideas and arrangements arose 
 when considerations of equity did not affect land tenure 
 any more than they affected the tenure of men as slaves 
 or serfs ; and they now make acceptance of the proposition 
 difficult If, while possessing those ethical sentiments 
 which social discipline has now produced, men stood in 
 possession of a territory not yet individually portioned out, 
 they would no more hesitate to assert equality of their 
 claims to the land than they would hesitate to assert 
 equality of their claims to light and air. But now that 
 long-standing appropriation, continued culture, as well as 
 sales and purchases, have complicated matters, the dictum 
 of absolute ethics, incongruous with the state of things 
 produced, is apt to be denied altogether." 
 
 In Justice Mr. Spencer apparently avoids the land 
 question, and he also avoids a frank and fearless dis- 
 cussion of the rights to property. In a roundabout, hesi- 
 tating way he intimates that men cannot justly appropriate 
 the surface of the earth under private ownership, but he 
 sees no way of rectifying that injustice except by compen- 
 sating the appropriators for what he must certainly think 
 they ought not to possess. He does not say what real 
 difference he can discover between a small portion of the 
 earth's surface lying in a horizontal section for use as a 
 garden, and the same portion of the earth made into 
 bricks and used as a wall to fence it, or to construct the 
 owner's house when elevated into a vertical section. He 
 
350 KING MAMMON. 
 
 does not inquire how a man's right to the land he occupies 
 differs from his right to the clothes he wears, or whether 
 there is any real difference, or if there be a difference, 
 how long his right to either possession may justly con- 
 tinue. It is evident that Mr. Spencer would rather dis- 
 cuss the rights to property among the Chippeways and 
 Comanches than the same principles among Englishmen. 
 Nevertheless, he does in one place present the glimmering 
 of the truth that all property of whatsoever kind is alike 
 in its real nature, and that there is no real difference in 
 the nature of human rights to land and to other portions 
 of the earth, for he subsequently says : 
 
 'Since all material objects capable of being owned are 
 in one way or other obtained from the earth, it results 
 that the right of property is originally dependent on the 
 right to the use of the earth. While there were yet no 
 artificial products, and natural products were, therefore, 
 the only things which could be appropriated, this was an 
 obviously necessary connection. And though, in our de- 
 veloped form of society, there are multitudinous posses- 
 sions, ranging from houses, furniture, clothes, works of 
 art, to bank notes, railway shares, mortgages, govern- 
 ment bonds, etc., the origins of which have no manifest 
 relation to the use of the earth ; yet it needs but to re- 
 member that they either are, or represent, products of 
 labor, that labor is made possible by food, and that food 
 is obtained from the soil, to see that the connection, 
 though remote and entangled, still continues. Whence it 
 follows that a complete ethical justification for the right 
 of property is involved in the same difficulties as the 
 ethical justification for the right to the use of the earth." 
 
 When he wrote Social Statics Mr. Spencer believed 
 that land was so different in its nature from other forms 
 of property, that it could not be justly held under private 
 ownership. In the preceding paragraph from Justice he 
 evidently perceives that the rights to all kinds of property 
 may be attacked with the same facility as the rights to 
 
KING MAMMON. 351 
 
 land, but he evades the discussion and avoids pushing the 
 investigation of property rights to the only logical result 
 of a denial of perpetuity embodied in successions. In 
 Justice his chapters on the rights to property are a weak, 
 evasive, and half-hearted apology for the supposed rights 
 Of property, entirely unworthy of his pen, for Mr. Spencer 
 is too clear and deep a thinker to fail in tracing out more 
 equitable relations of men to wealth than now exist if he 
 really desired to do so, and to make his thoughts public. 
 In Social Statics the vigor of his assertions is in marked 
 contrast with the uncertainty of his later work. 
 
 Passing on from the rights to property to the rights of 
 gifts and bequest, the author of Justice writes : 
 
 " Complete ownership of anything implies power to 
 make over the ownership to another ; since a partial or 
 entire interdict implies partial or entire ownership by the 
 authority issuing the interdict, and therefore limits or 
 overrides the ownership. Hence, if the right of property 
 
 is admitted, the right of gift is admitted The 
 
 right of gift implies the right of bequest ; for a bequest 
 is a postponed gift. If a man may legitimately transfer 
 what he possesses to another, he may legitimately fix the 
 time at which it shall be transferred. When he does this 
 by will, he partially makes the transfer, but provides that 
 the transfer shall take effect only when his own power of 
 possession ceases. And his right to make a gift subject 
 to this condition, is included in his right of ownership ; 
 
 since, otherwise, his ownership is incomplete 
 
 But while, along with the right of gift, the right of bequest 
 is implied by the right of property, while a man's own- 
 ership may justly be held to include the right of leaving 
 defined portions of what he has to specified recipients ; it 
 does not follow that he is ethically warranted in directing 
 what shall be done by the recipients with the property he 
 leaves to them. Presented in its naked form, the propo- 
 sition that a man can own a thing when he is dead is 
 absurd, and yet, in a disguised form, ownership after 
 death has been largely in past times, and is to a con- 
 siderable extent at present, recognized and enforced by 
 
352 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the carrying out of a testator's orders respecting the uses 
 to be made of his bequests. For any prescribing of such 
 uses, implying continuance of some power over the 
 property, implies continuance of some possession, and 
 wholly or partially takes away the possession from those 
 to whom the property is bequeathed. Few will deny that 
 the earth's surface, and the things on it, should be owned 
 in full by the generation at any time existing. Hence the 
 right of property may not equitably be so interpreted as 
 to allow any generation to tell subsequent generations 
 for what purposes, or under what restrictions, they are to 
 
 use the earth's surface or the things on it 
 
 Strictly interpreted, therefore, the right of gift, when it 
 takes the form of bequest, extends only to the distribution 
 of the bequeathed property, and does not include speci- 
 fication of the uses to which it shall be put." 
 
 Mr. Spencer evidently thinks, judging him by the tenor 
 of this extract, that a man can justly bequeath his pos- 
 sessions, but that he cannot rightfully direct the use of 
 wealth in the hands of the new possessor. He is mani- 
 festly not certain, however, of either of these points, for 
 he hesitates between the two opinions. From his con- 
 ception of human rights, it is little wonder that he finds 
 his doctrines of succession " perplexing," as he acknowl- 
 edges in the subjoined extract : 
 
 "A more perplexing question here arises. Derived 
 though the ultimate law, alike of sub-human justice and 
 human justice, is from the necessary conditions to self- 
 preservation and the preservation of the species ; and de- 
 rived from this as are both the right of possession during life 
 and that right of qualified possession after death implied by 
 bequests in trust for immature children ; a kindred deriva- 
 tion of any further right to prescribe the uses of bequeathed 
 property appears impracticable. Nothing beyond a quite 
 empirical compromise seems possible. On the one hand, 
 ownership of property after death is unwarranted by the 
 ultimate principle of justice, save in the case named. On 
 the other hand, when property has been acquired, per- 
 haps by unusual industry, perhaps by great skill in 
 
KING MAMMON. 353 
 
 business (implying benefit to others as well as to self), or 
 perhaps by an invention permanently valuable to man- 
 kind, it is hard that the owner should be wholly deprived 
 of power to direct the uses to be made of it after his death ; 
 especially where he has no children and must leave it 
 unbequeathed or bequeath it to strangers." 
 
 Then, immediately afterward, in still greater doubt, 
 Mr. Spencer goes back to his first idea of Social Statics, 
 and clings to the notion that the rights to land are 
 essentially different in their nature from the rights to per- 
 sonal property, as the following paragraph will indicate : 
 
 ' ' Evidently a distinction is to be made. One who holds 
 land subject to that supreme ownership of the community, 
 which both ethics and law asserts, cannot rightly have 
 such power of willing the application of it as involves 
 permanent alienation from the community. In respect 
 of what is classed as personalty, however, the case is 
 different. Property which is the product of efforts, and 
 which has resulted either from the expenditure of such 
 efforts upon raw materials for which equivalents (repre- 
 senting so much labor) have been given, or from the 
 savings out of wages or salaries, and is thus possessed 
 in virtue of that relation between actions and their con- 
 sequences, on the maintenance of which justice insists, 
 stands in another category. Such property being a por- 
 tion of that which society has paid the individual for 
 work done, but which he has not consumed, he may rea- 
 sonably contend that in giving it back to society, either 
 as represented by certain of its members or by some in- 
 corporated body, he should be allowed to specify the 
 conditions under which the bequest is to be accepted. 
 In this case it cannot be said that anything is alienated 
 which belongs to others. Contrariwise, others receive 
 that to which they have no claim ; and are benefited, 
 even when they use it for prescribed purposes : refusal of 
 it being the alternative if the purposes are not regarded 
 as beneficial. Still, as bequeathed personal property is 
 habitually invested, power to prescribe its uses without 
 any limit of time may result in its being permanently 
 2 3 
 
354 KING MAMMON. 
 
 turned to ends which, good though they were when it 
 was bequeathed, have been rendered otherwise by social 
 changes. Hence an empirical compromise appears 
 needful. We seem called upon to say that a testator 
 should have some power of directing the application of 
 property not bequeathed to children, but that his power 
 should be limited ; and that the limits must be settled by 
 experience of results. " 
 
 Reserving all comment on these views for the present, 
 we will examine John Stuart Mill's writings on the same 
 subjects. Mr. Mill, as we have shown in a preceding 
 chapter, was like the Mr. Spencer of Social Statics, a firm 
 believer in the doctrine that land ought not to be sub- 
 jected to private ownership. His conception of the right 
 of property is expressed in the following extract with a 
 clearness and positive assertion that is delightfully in con- 
 trast with the timid utterances of Mr. Spencer on the 
 same subject in his recent work : 
 
 "The institution of property, when limited to its essen- 
 tial elements, consists in the recognition, in each person, 
 of a right to the exclusive disposal of what he or she have 
 produced by their own exertions, or received either by 
 gift or by fair agreement, without force or fraud, from 
 those who produced it. The foundation of the whole is 
 the right of producers to what they themselves have pro- 
 duced. To me it seems almost an axiom that property in 
 land should be interpreted strictly, and that the balance in 
 all cases of doubt should incline against the proprietor. 
 The reverse is the case with property in movables, and 
 in all things the product of labor : over these, the owner's 
 power both of use and exclusion should be absolute ex- 
 cept where positive evil to others would result from it ; 
 but in the case of land, no exclusive right should be per- 
 mitted in any individual which cannot be shown to be 
 productive of positive good. To be allowed any exclu- 
 sive right at all over a portion of the common inheritance, 
 while there are others who have no portion, is already a 
 privilege. No quantity of movable goods which a person 
 
KING MAMMON. 355 
 
 can acquire by his labor, prevents others from acquiring" 
 the like by the same means ; but from the very nature of 
 the case, whoever owns land, keeps others out of the en- 
 joyment of it. The privilege, or monopoly, is only de- 
 fensible as a necessary evil ; it becomes an injustice 
 when carried to any point to which the compensating 
 good does not follow it." 
 
 Commenting on the privileges of inheritance and be- 
 quest, this author is equally decisive and explicit in the 
 following paragraphs : 
 
 1 ' If it be said, as it may with truth, that those who have 
 inherited the savings of others have an advantage which 
 they have in no way deserved, over the industrious whose 
 predecessors have not left them anything ; I not only ad- 
 mit but strenuously contend, that this unearned advan- 
 tage should be curtailed as much as is consistent with 
 justice to those who thought fit to dispose of their savings 
 by giving them to their descendants. But while it is true 
 that the laborers are at a disadvantage compared with 
 those whose predecessors have saved, it is also true that 
 the laborers are far better off than if those predecessors 
 had not saved. They share in the advantage, though 
 not to an equal extent with the inheritors. . . . Nothing 
 is implied in property but the right of each to his (or her) 
 own faculties, to what he can produce by them, and to 
 whatever he can get for them in a fair market ; together 
 with his right to give this to any other person, if he 
 chooses, and the right of that other to receive and enjoy 
 it. 
 
 " It follows therefore, that though the right of bequest, 
 or gift after death, forms part of the idea of private prop- 
 erty, the right of inheritance, as distinguished from be- 
 quest, does not. That the property of persons who have 
 made no disposition of it during their lifetime, should 
 pass first to their children, and failing them, to the nearest 
 relations, may be a proper arrangement or not, but it is 
 no consequence of the principle of private property. . . . 
 No presumption in favor of existing ideas on this subject 
 is to be derived from their antiquity. In early ages, the 
 property of a deceased person passed to his children and 
 
KING MAMMON. 
 
 nearest relatives by so natural and obvious an arrange- 
 ment, that no other was likely to be even thought of in 
 competition with it. ... Exclusive individual property 
 in the modern sense scarcely entered into the ideas of the 
 time ; and when the first magistrate of the (family) asso- 
 ciation died, he really left nothing vacant but his own 
 share in the division, which devolved on the members 
 of the family who succeeded to his authority. To have 
 disposed of the property otherwise would have been to 
 break up a little commonwealth, united by ideas, interest, 
 and habits, and to cast them adrift on the world. These 
 considerations, though rather felt than reasoned about, had 
 so great an influence on the minds of mankind, as to create 
 the idea of an inherent right in the children to the posses- 
 sions of their ancestor ; a right which it was not com- 
 petent to himself to defeat. Bequest, in a primitive state 
 of society, was seldom recognized ; a clear proof, were 
 there no other, that property was conceived in a manner 
 totally different from the conception of it in the present 
 time. 
 
 " But the feudal family, the last historical form of patri- 
 archal life, has long perished, and the unit of society is 
 not now the family or clan, composed of all the reputed 
 descendants of a common ancestor, but the individual ; 
 or at most a pair of individuals, with their unemancipated 
 children. Property is now inherent in individuals, not in 
 families ; the children when grown up do not follow the 
 occupations or fortunes of the parents : if they participate 
 in the parents' pecuniary means, it is at his or her 
 pleasure, and not by a voice in the ownership and gov- 
 ernment of the whole, but generally by the exclusive en- 
 joyment of a part : and in this country [England] at least 
 (except as far as entails or settlements are an obstacle) it 
 is in the power of parents to disinherit even their children, 
 and leave their fortune to strangers. More distant rela- 
 tives are in general almost as completely detached from 
 the family and its interests as if they were in no way 
 connected with it. ... The only claim they are supposed 
 to have on their richer relatives, is to a preference, cceteris 
 pan'bus, in good offices, and some aid in case of actual 
 necessity. 
 
 "So great a change in the constitution of society must 
 
KING MAMMON. 357 
 
 make a considerable difference in the grounds on which 
 the disposal of property by inheritance should rest. The 
 reasons usually assigned by modern writers for giving 
 the property of a person who dies intestate to the children 
 or nearest relatives, are, first, the supposition that in so 
 disposing of it, the law is more likely than in any other 
 mode to do what the proprietor would have done, if he 
 had done anything ; and, secondly, the hardship to those 
 who lived with their parents and partook in their opu- 
 lence, of being cast down from the enjoyments of wealth 
 into poverty and privation. 
 
 "There is some force in both these arguments. The 
 law ought, no doubt, to do for the children or depend- 
 ents of an intestate, whatever it was the duty of the 
 parent or protector to have done, so far as this can 
 be known by any one besides himself. Since, however, 
 the law cannot decide on individual claims but must 
 proceed by general rules, it is next to be considered what 
 these rules should be. 
 
 "We may first remark, that in regard to collateral 
 relatives, it is not, unless on grounds personal to the 
 particular individual, the duty of any one to make a 
 pecuniary provision for them. No one now expects it, 
 unless there happen to be no direct heirs ; nor would 
 it be expected, even then, if the expectation were not 
 created by the provisions of the law in cases of intestacy. 
 I see, therefore, no reason why collateral inheritance 
 should exist at all. Mr. Bentham long ago proposed, 
 and other high authorities have agreed in the opinion, 
 that if there are no heirs either in the descending or 
 ascending line, the property in cases of intestacy should 
 escheat to the State. With respect to the more remote 
 degrees of collateral relationship, the point is not very 
 likely to be disputed. Few will maintain that there is 
 any good reason why the accumulations of some 
 childless miser should on his death (as every now and 
 then happens) go to enrich a distant relative who 
 never saw him, who perhaps never knew himself to 
 be related to him, until there was something to be 
 gained by it, and who had no moral claim upon him of 
 any kind, more than the most entire stranger. But the 
 reason of the case applies to all collaterals, even in the 
 
358 KING MAMMON. 
 
 nearest degree. Collaterals have no real claims, but such 
 as maybe equally strong in the case of non-relatives ; and 
 in the one case as in the other, where valid claims 
 exist, the proper mode of paying regard to them is by 
 bequest. 
 
 "The claims of children are of a different nature ; they 
 are real and indefeasible. But even of these I venture 
 to think that the measure usually taken is an erroneous 
 one ; what is due to children is in some respects under- 
 rated, in others, as it appears to me, exaggerated. One 
 of the most binding of all obligations, that of not 
 bringing children into the world unless they can be main- 
 tained in comfort during childhood, and brought up with 
 a likelihood of supporting themselves when of full age, 
 is both disregarded in practice and made light of in 
 theory in a manner disgraceful to human intelligence. 
 On the other hand, when the parent possesses property, 
 the claims of the children upon it seem to me to be the 
 subject of an opposite error. Whatever fortune a parent 
 may have inherited, or still more may have acquired, I 
 cannot admit he owes to his children, merely because 
 they are his children, to leave them rich, without the 
 necessity of any exertion. I could not admit it, even if 
 to be so left were always, and certainly, for the good 
 of the children themselves. But this is in the highest 
 degree uncertain. It depends on individual character. 
 Without supposing extreme cases, it may be affirmed 
 that in a majority of instances the good not only of 
 society, but of the individuals, would be better consulted 
 by bequeathing to them a moderate, than a large pro- 
 vision. This, which is a commonplace of moralists, 
 ancient and modern, is felt to be true by many intelli- 
 gent parents, and would be acted upon much more fre- 
 quently, if they did not allow themselves to consider 
 less what really is, than what will be thought by others 
 to be advantageous to the children. ... A provision then, 
 such as is admitted to be reasonable in the case of ille- 
 gitimate children, of younger children, wherever in short 
 the justice of the case and the real interests of the 
 individuals and of society are the only things consid- 
 ered, is, I conceive, all that parents owe to their children, 
 and all, therefore, which the State owes to the children 
 
KING MAMMON. 359 
 
 of those who die intestate. The surplus, if any, I hold 
 that it may rightfully appropriate to the general purposes 
 of the community. I would not, however, be supposed 
 to recommend that parents should never do more for their 
 children than what, merely as children, they have a 
 moral right to. In some cases it is imperative, in many 
 laudable, and in all allowable to do much more. For 
 this, however, the means are afforded in the liberty of 
 bequest. It is due not to the children, but to the parents, 
 that they should have the power of showing marks or 
 affection, of requiting services and sacrifices, and of be- 
 stowing their wealth according to their own preferences 
 or their own judgment of fitness. 
 
 " Whether the power of bequest should itself be subject 
 to limitation, is an ulterior question of great importance. 
 Unlike inheritance ab intestato, bequest is one of the attri- 
 butes of property : the ownership of a thing cannot be 
 looked upon as complete without the power of bestow- 
 ing it, at death or during life, at the owner's pleasure : 
 and all the reasons which recommend that private prop- 
 erty should exist, recommend pro tanto this extension of it. 
 But property is only a means to an end, not itself the 
 end. Like all other proprietary rights, and even in a 
 greater degree than most, the power of bequest may be 
 so exercised as to conflict with the permanent interests 
 of the human race. It does so when, not content with 
 bequeathing an estate to A. , the testator prescribes that 
 on A.'s death it shall pass to his eldest son, and to that 
 son's son, and so on forever. No doubt, persons have 
 occasionally exerted themselves more strenuously to 
 acquire a fortune from the hope of founding a family 
 in perpetuity ; but the mischiefs to society of such 
 perpetuities outweigh the value of this incentive to ex- 
 ertion, and the incentives in the case of those who have 
 the opportunities of making large fortunes are strong 
 enough without it. A similar abuse of the power of 
 bequest is committed when a person who does the 
 meritorious act of leaving property for public uses, 
 attempts to prescribe the details of its application in 
 perpetuity ; when in founding a place of education (for 
 instance), he dictates forever what doctrines shall be 
 taught. It being impossible that any one should know 
 
360 KING MAMMON. 
 
 what doctrines will be fit to be taught after he has been 
 dead for centuries, the law ought not to give effect to 
 such dispositions of property, unless subject to the per- 
 petual revision ( after a certain interval has elapsed) of a 
 fitting authority. 
 
 "These are obvious limitations. But even the simplest 
 exercise of the right of bequest, that of determining the 
 person to whom property shall pass immediately on the 
 death of the testator, has always been reckoned among 
 the privileges which might be limited or varied, accord- 
 ing to views of expediency. The limitations, hitherto, 
 have been almost solely in favor of children. In England 
 the right is in principle unlimited, almost the only impedi- 
 ment being that arising from a settlement by a former 
 proprietor, in which case the holder for the time being 
 cannot indeed bequeath his possessions, but only because 
 there is nothing to bequeath, he having merely a life in- 
 terest. By the Roman law, on which the civil legislation 
 of the continent of Europe was founded, bequest originally 
 was not permitted at all, and even after it was introduced, 
 a legilima portio was compulsorily reserved for each child ; 
 and such is still the law in some of the Continental nations. 
 By the French law since the Revolution, the parent can 
 only dispose by will, of a portion equal to the share of 
 one child, each of the children taking an equal portion. 
 This entail, as it may be called, of the bulk of every one's 
 property upon the children collectively, seems to me as 
 little defensible in principle as an entail in favor of one 
 child, though it does not shock so directly the idea of jus- 
 tice. I cannot admit that parents should be compelled 
 to leave to their children even that provision, which, as 
 children, I have contended that they have a moral claim 
 to. Children may forfeit that claim by general un worth- 
 iness, or particular ill-conduct to the parents ; they may 
 have other resources or prospects ; what has been pre- 
 viously done for them, in the way of education and 
 advancement in life, may fully satisfy their moral claim ; 
 or others may have claims superior to theirs. The extreme 
 restriction of the power of bequest in French law was 
 adopted as a democratic expedient to break down the 
 custom of primogeniture, and counteract the tendency of 
 inherited property to collect in large masses. I agree in 
 
KING MAMMON. 361 
 
 thinking these objects eminently desirable ; but the means 
 used are not, I think, the most judicious. Were I framing 
 a code of laws according to what seems to me best in 
 itself, without regard to existing opinions and sentiments, 
 I should prefer to restrict, not what any one might be- 
 queath, but what any one should be permitted to acquire 
 by inheritance or bequest. Each person should have 
 power to dispose by will of his or her whole property ; but 
 not to lavish it in enriching some one individual, beyond 
 a certain maximum, which should be fixed sufficiently 
 high to afford the means of comfortable independence. 
 The inequalities of property which arise from unequal 
 industry, frugality, perseverance, talents, and to a certain 
 extent even opportunities, are inseparable from the prin- 
 ciple of private property, and if we accept the principle, 
 we must bear with these consequences of it ; but I see 
 nothing objectionable in fixing a limit to what any one 
 may acquire by the mere favor of others, without any 
 exercise of his faculties, and in requiring that if he desires 
 any further accession of fortune he shall work for it. I 
 do not conceive that the degree of limitation which this 
 would impose on the right of bequest would be felt as a 
 burdensome restraint by any testator who estimated a 
 large fortune at its true value, that of the pleasures and 
 advantages that can be purchased with it ; on even the 
 most extravagant estimate of which, it must be apparent 
 to every one, that the difference to the happiness of 
 the possessor between a moderate independence and 
 five times as much, is insignificant when weighed against 
 the enjoyment that might be given, and the permanent 
 benefits diffused, by some other disposal of the four-fifths. 
 So long indeed as the opinion practically prevails, that 
 the best thing which can be done for objects of affection 
 is to heap on them to satiety those intrinsically worthless 
 things on which large fortunes are mostly expended, there 
 might be little use in enacting such a law, even if it were 
 possible to get it passed, since, if there were the inclina- 
 tion, there would generally be the power of evading it. 
 The law would be unavailing unless the popular senti- 
 ment went energetically along with it ; which (judging 
 from the tenacious adherence of public opinion in France 
 to the law of compulsory division) it would in some states 
 
KING MAMMON, 
 
 of society and government be very likely to do, however 
 much the contrary may be the fact in England, and at 
 the present time. If the restriction could be made practi- 
 cally effectual, the benefit would be great. Wealth, which 
 could no longer be employed in over-enriching a few, 
 would either be devoted to objects of public usefulness, 
 or if bestowed on individuals, would be distributed among 
 a larger number. While those enormous fortunes, which 
 no one needs for any personal purpose but ostentation 
 or improper power, would become much less numerous, 
 there would be a great multiplication of persons in easy 
 circumstances with the advantages of leisure, and the real 
 enjoyments which wealth can give, except those of vanity ; 
 a class by whom the services which a nation having lei- 
 sured classes is entitled to expect from them, either by 
 their direct exertions or by the tone they give to the feel- 
 ings and tastes of the public, would be rendered in a much 
 more beneficial manner than at present. A large portion 
 also of the accumulations of successful industry would 
 probably be devoted to public uses, either by direct be- 
 quest to the State, or by the endowment of institutions ; 
 as is already done very largely in the United States, where 
 the ideas and practice, in the matter of inheritance, seem 
 to be unusually rational and beneficial." 
 
 Quotations are thus freely made from Mr. Mill's chapter 
 on property and inheritance for, while many of his ideas 
 are at variance with those herein expressed, his frank treat- 
 ment of the whole question and his evident desire to 
 ascertain and express the truth entitle his writings to the 
 sympathy even of an opponent. Regarding the right of 
 bequest as a portion of the right of property, he saw no 
 way of consistently interfering with a man's power of 
 making a will by restricting that privilege directly, inas- 
 much as he considered such restriction an attack upon 
 the right of property. Hence Mr. Mill advocated a limita- 
 tion of the amount to be received as a bequest or inherit- 
 ance by any successor, without, apparently, reflecting 
 that such a limitation would be quite as much a restriction 
 
KING MAMMON. 363 
 
 upon the power of bequest as upon the power of inherit- 
 ance, and, therefore, still an interference with the sup- 
 posed right of property and not really different in its 
 nature but only in degree from the entire abolition of the 
 privilege of bequest. The writer had not made a thorough 
 analysis of the rights of property, bequest, and inherit- 
 ance, when he wrote, so he fell into the inconsistency of 
 supposing that a restriction of inheritance such as he de- 
 scribes does not at the same time restrict the right of be- 
 quest and through that the fetich of perpetual ownership 
 that has been worshiped so assiduously and so reverently. 
 Passing on from these famous English writers, we will 
 now examine the thoughts of an American, Judge Edward 
 A. Thomas, of New York, who contributed an article to a 
 periodical I several years ago on the nature of successions 
 and the power of making wills. Judge Thomas is evi- 
 dently a close observer of human nature, and an extensive 
 experience in the courts led him to the conclusion that the 
 unrestricted privilege of making wills often causes great 
 injustice, and that our laws can be greatly improved in 
 this respect. After a brief consideration of the history of 
 wills and the abuses to which the power has been sub- 
 jected, he writes : 
 
 "It has been wisely ordained by Supreme Power that 
 we can take nothing with us when we leave this' earth. 
 To many it appears inexpedient and unjust to permit a 
 man after he has passed to another world virtually to 
 control and direct affairs in this. American institutions 
 are firmly opposed to the entail of real estate. But our 
 lawgivers have not gone far enough. They should, as 
 far as possible, sever a man's connection with earthly 
 affairs the moment that the spirit of life departs from the 
 body. Is it not enough that he has absolute control and 
 enjoyment of his property while living, without affixing 
 to it what may perchance prove a baleful influence after 
 
 1 Forum, December, 1886. 
 
364 KING MAMMON. 
 
 he has ceased to live ? It is right that he should so con- 
 trol and enjoy it during life. He has, however, but a 
 life-interest in it. This is settled by the laws of nature, 
 if not by the laws of man. If this statement is thought 
 incorrect, carry the idea to a final sequence. In England 
 real estate has been entailed without restraint. In sev- 
 eral American States devises are limited to two lives then 
 in being. By this very limitation law-makers to a cer- 
 tain extent stultify themselves. They say that the tes- 
 tator may control it, and again that he may not. They 
 say that he shall have the absolute disposition of it, but 
 immediately restrict that disposition. They interfere 
 with the limit which nature has fixed to his control over 
 it, and attempt to make one themselves. 
 
 " If a man is given the right to dispose of his property, 
 so that what he directs is to be carried out and enforced 
 after his death, why should he be limited at all in that 
 disposition ? Or why should he be limited to less than 
 four, six, or eight lives ? It is only a question of degree 
 or extent. The very fact that it has been found neces- 
 sary to place so firm and so strict a limitation upon the 
 power to dispose of property by will, certainly tends to 
 prove that the principle of disposing of all property in 
 that manner is evil. Otherwise, no limitation would be 
 necessary. If, however, such a power has proved benefi- 
 cent, why not extend it to two, four, or six lives, and 
 so on ad infinitum ? Should this be followed up, the re- 
 sult would be a strange condition of affairs. Our laws 
 upon this subject, as I have before stated, are largely 
 derived from those of England. But with laws that have 
 proved of the highest value to us, others fit only for a 
 monarchy have be^n engrafted on our system of juris- 
 prudence, and with them we have received a mass of 
 prejudices which have retarded our advancement to a 
 more liberal plan. 
 
 " If a parent desires to distribute his property equitably 
 among his children, he can rarely do better than to follow 
 the statutes of distribution. If he does not propose to 
 deal equitably, then he should not be given the power to 
 do otherwise. This might sometimes work a hardship, but 
 laws cannot be enacted which will reach all cases or 
 remedy every evil. They may, however, be so drawn 
 
KING MAMMON. 365 
 
 as to prove beneficent in a majority of instances. There 
 are many reasons for believing that a wise and general 
 law for the distribution of property will better effect this 
 than one which permits each individual to be governed 
 by his own whims, notions, and prejudices. A man is 
 responsible for the care, the health, the education, and 
 the happiness of his children. That responsibility does 
 not cease when they attain majority. He should treat 
 them with strict impartiality. For a mere whim he 
 should not be permitted to favor one more than another. 
 Owing to his good or bad management they are generally 
 what he finds them to be. He has no right to bring them 
 up in comfort and luxury, and then, for some freak, to 
 leave them nearly or quite penniless. Their errors as 
 well as their virtues are frequently attributable entirely 
 to their parents. The child against whom the parent 
 feels most bitterness is often the very one who, in 
 intellect, temperament, habits, and aspirations most 
 nearly resembles that parent himself. 
 
 " It has been presumed that natural affection will guide 
 a man right in the treatment of his children. Such has 
 not proved to be the case. The instances are numerous 
 where a favorite child, or a young and second wife, or a 
 spiritual adviser, or a fit of passion, an unreasonable 
 bias, or merely an old man's fancy, has completely 
 changed the just and natural disposition of property; so 
 numerous, in fact, are they, that they have become the 
 rule rather than the exception. A general statute pro- 
 viding that, except for special reasons, each child shall 
 receive share and share alike, would not only appear to 
 be the most equitable in by far the majority of instances, 
 but would promote family concord and happiness, and 
 would diminish family feuds and litigation to a remark- 
 able extent. 
 
 "In one case, which arose not far from Buffalo, a 
 man, with the direct aid and counsel of his wife, and 
 with the help of two children, had amassed quite a for- 
 tune. They had actually earned more of it than he had 
 himself. But he, thinking to render his name dis- 
 tinguished, decided to establish a school, and when his 
 will was opened, his wife found herself with but a small 
 dower interest ( of which he had not the power to deprive 
 
366 KING MAMMON. 
 
 her), and her sons penniless. In another instance a man 
 engaged as a large manufacturer became seriously em- 
 barrassed financially, but by the skill, sagacity, and 
 assistance of his eldest son, recovered from his difficulties, 
 and finally died a wealthy man. At the examination of 
 his will, it was ascertained that the eldest son was disin- 
 herited. This had been done, not because that son was 
 any richer than some of the others, for he was not. It 
 was so decided for the reason that this son, in choosing a 
 wife, had preferred to suit himself rather than his father. 
 "The laws should be so amended that when a man 
 dies leaving children or their offspring, he shall not be 
 permitted to will away from them the bulk of his estate, 
 but that, after providing for the widow, it shall be equi- 
 tably divided among his descendants. . . . Should the 
 deceased leave no descendants, a far greater liberty in 
 the disposition of his property should be given him." 
 
 Judge Thomas, like nearly every other thoughtful man 
 of the present era, finds something apparently wrong in 
 the absolute power of bequeathing wealth, but he is un- 
 able to free his mind from the ancient idea that a natural 
 right of succession exists in the children independent 
 of any other relations sustained by them to their parents. 
 John Stuart Mill thought that the ancestor's privilege of 
 bequest is sacred, while Judge Thomas has no reverence 
 for the dying man's claim, but worships the presumed 
 right of the descendants to succeed to entire possession. 
 Neither of these writers commenced with a careful con- 
 sideration of the nature of property, bequests, and inherit- 
 ance, so they arrive at opposite conclusions while 
 endeavoring to reach the same ends. Their ideas are 
 valuable and interesting, Judge Thomas, especially, 
 illustrating the abuses to which the making of wills is 
 subject. 
 
 Blackstone's famous treatise on English law furnishes 
 interesting comments on the principles of successions. 
 This learned writer of the eighteenth century, in delight- 
 
KING MAMMON. 367 
 
 fully clear and simple style, has much to say of property 
 and successions, presenting the accepted views of his 
 time without much inquiry into the justice or injustice of 
 established institutions. Concerning property, he naively 
 says : 
 
 " There is nothing which so generally strikes the imag- 
 ination and engages the affections of mankind as the right 
 of property ; or that sole and despotic dominion which 
 one man claims and exercises over the external things of 
 the world, in total exclusion of the rights of any other 
 individual in the universe. And yet there are very few 
 that will give themselves the trouble to consider the 
 original and foundation of this right. Pleased as we are 
 with the possession, we seem afraid to look back to the 
 means by which it was acquired, as if fearful of some 
 defect in our title ; or, at best, we rest satisfied with the 
 decision of the laws in our favor without examining the 
 reason or authority upon which those laws have been 
 built. We think it enough that our title is derived from 
 the grant of the former proprietor, by descent from our 
 ancestors, or by the last will and testament of the dying 
 owner ; not caring to reflect that (accurately and strictly 
 speaking) there is no foundation in nature or in natural 
 law why a set of words upon parchment should convey 
 the dominion of land ; why the son should have the right 
 to exclude his fellow-creatures from a determinate spot of 
 ground, because his father had done so before him ; or 
 why the occupier of a particular field or of a jewel, when 
 lying on his deathbed, and no longer able to maintain 
 possession, should be entitled to tell all the rest of the 
 world which of them should enjoy it after him. These 
 inquiries, it must be owned, would be useless and even 
 troublesome in common life. It is well if the mass of 
 mankind will obey the laws when made, without scrutiniz- 
 ing too nicely into the reason for making them." 
 
 Sir William then proceeds to explain the origin of 
 property as a matter of scientific but not of practical 
 interest, according to the ideas then generally accepted, 
 ascribing individual occupancy as the foundation of the 
 
368 KING MAMMON. 
 
 right, a theory which has been exploded by the investi- 
 gation of early social institutions showing the nature of 
 the family and family clan in early government. Black- 
 stone's thinking is accurate and very clearly and pre- 
 cisely expressed ; but like every other man who has tried 
 to discover a just cause for an outrageously unjust condi- 
 tion, he becomes hopelessly bewildered in determining 
 the nature of rights to property. His mind is too vigor- 
 ous to admit the idea of perpetual ownership, so he dis- 
 misses the whole question by saying that " such disputes 
 savor too much of nice and scholastic refinement." His 
 commentator, Joseph Chitty, is more orthodox in the 
 sacred creed of perpetual ownership than Blackstone, and 
 in a note he disagrees with the latter in the following 
 language : 
 
 "But how or when, then, does property commence? 
 I conceive no better answer can be given than by occu- 
 pancy, or when anything is separated for private use 
 from the common stores of nature. This is agreeable to 
 the reason and sentiments of mankind prior to all civil 
 establishments. " 
 
 Having expressed very liberal and progressive ideas in 
 relation to property, Sir William Blackstone then proceeds 
 to consider successions, and says : 
 
 "The right of inheritance or descent to the children 
 and relations of the deceased, seems to have been allowed 
 much earlier than the right of devising by testament. 
 We are apt to conceive, at first view, that it has nature 
 on its side, yet we often mistake for nature what we find 
 established by long and inveterate custom. It is certainly 
 a wise and effectual, but clearly a political establishment, 
 since the permanent right of property invested in the 
 ancestor himself was no natural but merely a aw? right." 
 
 Chitty's reverence for the gospel of property again 
 causes him to dissent from these conclusions, in a note 
 couched in the following language : 
 
KING MAMMON. 369 
 
 " I cannot agree with the learned commentator that the 
 permanent right of property vested in the ancestor himself 
 (that is for his life) is not a natural but merely a civil 
 right. I have endeavored to show that the notion of 
 property is universal, and is suggested to the mind of man 
 by reason and nature, prior to all positive institutions and 
 civilized refinements. If the laws of the land were sus- 
 pended, we should be under the same moral and natural 
 obligations to refrain from invading each other's property 
 as from attacking and assaulting each other's persons. 
 I am obliged also to differ from the learned judge, and all 
 writers upon general law, who maintain that children 
 have no better claim by nature to succeed to the property 
 of their deceased parents than strangers, and that the 
 preference given to them originated solely in political 
 establishments. The affection of parents toward their 
 children is the most powerful and universal principle 
 which nature has planted in the human breast ; and it 
 cannot be conceived, even in the most savage state, that 
 anyone is so destitute of that affection and of reason, who 
 would not revolt at the position that a stranger has as 
 good a right as his children to the property of the deceased 
 parent." 
 
 In this discussion between the two writers, it will be 
 observed that each ignores productive effort as a factor in 
 property rights, the entire attention of both being con- 
 fined to occupancy and consanguinity. Hence to clear 
 modern thought each will appear partly right and partly 
 wrong ; for the children unquestionably have a 'better 
 moral right than strangers to the extent of their productive 
 efforts in forming the family possessions, but no better 
 right in excess of that from the mere fact of consanguinity. 
 Blackstone's ideas were quite radical on the subject of 
 successions, as the following paragraph will indicate : 
 
 " If a man disinherits his son, by a will duly executed, 
 
 and leaves his estate to a stranger, there are many who 
 
 consider this proceeding as contrary to natural justice ; 
 
 while others so scrupulously adhere to the supposed 
 
 24 
 
370 KING MAMMON. 
 
 intentions of the dead, that if a will of lands be attested 
 by only two witnesses instead of three, which the law 
 requires, they are apt to imagine that the heir is bound 
 in conscience to relinquish his title to the devisee. But 
 both of them certainly proceed upon very erroneous 
 principles, as if, on the one hand, the son had by nature 
 a right to succeed to his father's lands ; or as if, on the 
 other hand, the owner was by nature entitled to direct 
 the succession of his property after his own decease. 
 Whereas the law of nature suggests, that on the death of 
 the possessor the estate should again become common, 
 and become open to the next occupant, unless otherwise 
 ordered for the sake of civil peace by the positive law of 
 society." 
 
 The substance of the arguments for and against be- 
 quests is also mentioned by Lord Chief Baron Gilbert in 
 his "Law of Descents," published in 1792, wherein he 
 states that 
 
 "It has been disputed whether testaments owe their 
 origin to a natural or positive law. But since things 
 (over which the property was first established) are in- 
 tended only for the uses of men in this life, they thought 
 it sufficient to that end to allow the occupier the command 
 of his possessions during his life, but that the manage- 
 ment of what belonged to the dead should be left to the 
 living. l But, on the other side, if we consider that men 
 
 1 The following illustrative cases of the absurd principle involved in 
 the dead man's decrees were cited by H. L.Wayland, of Philadelphia, in 
 a paper read before the American Association of Social Science ; em- 
 bodying views very similar to those expressed in this book : 
 
 A woman left by will certain property " to be used in printing, pub- 
 lishing and propagating the sacred writing of Joanna Southcote." 
 Presently the last member of the sect founded by Joanna died, but for 
 all that the English courts held that the will must be carried out and the 
 property devoted through all time as prescribed by the testator. 
 
 A man left a foundation requiring that each year a sermon be preached 
 in Norwich, England, to the Walloons in Low Dutch. So each year a 
 clergyman who does not understand the language, commits to memory 
 a sermon and recites it like a parrot to bare walls. 
 
 The Duke of Richmond is receiving from the British Treasury as 
 a hereditary pension, ^19,000 a year because of the relationship which 
 his ancestress, Louise Querouaille, stood to the Merry Monarch, Charles 
 
KING MAMMON. 3/1 
 
 are obliged to take particular care of their children, as 
 well as of others allied to them by blood, and that it is not 
 sufficient (for the peace of society) to introduce such a 
 dominion of things as would turn only to present use 
 (since this would create no less confusion than the primi- 
 tive community), it will appear necessary that the con- 
 tinuance of property should not depend on any fixed 
 period of time, but be indefinite, and so pass down and 
 be continued to others. Besides, this privilege is a great 
 encouragement to industry. For men were apt to extend 
 their right to the common productions of the earth too 
 far, and in their wants would easily persuade themselves 
 that no appropriation would deprive them of it ; there- 
 fore, whatever could prevail on them to lay up the fruits 
 of the earth, and prevent that rapine which the want of 
 them produced, must of consequence be highly reason- 
 able ; and what could be a greater motive than, (after a 
 full enjoyment of them in this life,) a free power to dis- 
 pose of them to those whose interest and happiness ought 
 to be our greatest concern ? " 
 
 Recent thought on the testamentary laws of England 
 is expressed by Lady Cook in the following words closing 
 an historical review l of successions in that country : 
 
 "The law which governs the disposal of property by the 
 present system of wills and heirs is defective in many 
 points ; but there are two to which we will confine our 
 attention, because they are so grossly unjust, and are 
 opposed to morality and the general welfare of society. 
 These are primogeniture and the absolute power of the 
 testator to will as it pleases him. Whatever may have 
 been the advantages of primogeniture when military 
 tenures obtained and when lands could not be alienated 
 with the consent of the feudal lord, its existence now is a 
 social anachronism and an evil which should be speedily 
 abolished. Its object is the perpetuation and accumula- 
 
 II. This sum has been paid for over 200 years, $20,000,000 in all. 
 Should it continue for all time ? 
 
 A man in England left an estate, the income of which was to buy 
 fagots to burn heretics. Must future generations use the fund according 
 to his directions ? 
 
 1 Westminster Review, February, 1895. 
 
3/2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 tion of property. . . . When any excess of wealth with 
 some and of poverty with others becomes widespread, it 
 is as certain to produce popular disturbances to-day as 
 in any period of the past. Athens, the first mother of 
 liberty, fell from this cause, which was brought about by 
 a slight change in her laws, giving larger powers to 
 childless testators, and thus encouraging the growth of 
 vast estates. It would be impossible to enumerate the 
 corruptions and economic wrongs that in all countries 
 and at all times have resulted from individual ac- 
 cumulation and possession of extraordinary wealth. 
 Custom has so hardened us since the Conquest that even 
 good men sometimes see no immorality in the law of 
 primogeniture a law which gives the whole of a man's 
 landed estate to his eldest son, and makes paupers of the 
 widow and the other children. ... It is an almost univer- 
 sal axiom that every legal right has its corresponding 
 duty. As the law now allows a sane man to make his 
 will and compels the fulfillment of his wishes after death, 
 it follows that its provisions should neither violate 
 public sentiment nor public decency. There should be a 
 well-defined limit to testamentary power. It should not 
 lie in the dead hand to stab the living. We compel a 
 man to treat his wife and family with humanity before he 
 dies ; we should see, also, that his will accords with this 
 afterwards. But may not a man do as he likes with his 
 own ? We answer No ! not entirely. He should have 
 absolute power over a portion only. He should not be 
 allowed to act against natural claims, against justice and 
 decency, or to prefer those more remote to those that 
 are near. He should not be permitted to beggar his 
 family or any member thereof. ... It should be de- 
 manded that no part of a will shall be valid which may 
 be improperly devised, or in which the whole of a man's 
 family is not duly provided for. In this matter we might 
 take a useful lesson from other countries, for however 
 advanced we may be in some things, we are behind 
 many in this. Mahometan law, for instance, commenced 
 twelve and a half centuries ago, and on this point it is in 
 many respects far superior to ours." 
 
 These extracts present the conflicting theories of prop- 
 
KING MAMMON. 373 
 
 erty and successions usually entertained in one form or 
 another by nearly every man. We will now proceed to 
 analyze the nature of such claims by applying to them 
 the same principles of fairness or justice that men habit- 
 ually apply to other questions in the present era. Men 
 usually concede at the present time that the foundation of 
 special or private rights to wealth exists in the application 
 of labor, by either mental or physical effort, to the thing 
 which is thus claimed. For instance, the people of the 
 United States are supposed to have equal rights in the fish 
 of the ocean washing its shores, within the limits of the 
 national claims. One man may fish there all his lifetime, 
 but he never has anything more than his conceded equal 
 right till he catches one of the finny tribe, when he 
 immediately acquires a special claim to that particular 
 fish, which constitutes the right of property. He eats 
 his fish, and the product of his effort is said to be de- 
 stroyed, although the elements of the food still exist in 
 chemical transformations of no further immediate utility 
 as fish-property to other human beings. Similarly, men 
 in the United States theoretically owned the entire land- 
 surface of the country in common before it was dis- 
 tributed and placed under special rights, and the entire 
 people are still supposed to own all public lands. Under 
 the homestead laws and various other statutes, the lands 
 have been divided and distributed, but the basis of the 
 special rights thus recognized is either direct or indirect 
 labor. Under the homestead law, a man must complete 
 certain improvements on his land before he can acquire a 
 title, his claim thus being established by direct labor ; and 
 in all other cases he must make a payment to the whole 
 people, which is merely indirect labor, since his money is 
 supposed to represent work of some kind. The rights to 
 the land, both equal and special or private, are identically 
 the same as the rights to the fish, and are acquired in 
 
374 KING MAMMON. 
 
 exactly the same way, the only difference being that the 
 fish by immediate chemical transformation loses all further 
 value as soon as it is eaten, whereas the usefulness and 
 value of the land continues in some degree greater or less 
 than its original condition. If the fish were a magic 
 halibut that grew again to its original dimensions immedi- 
 ately after being consumed, so as to have a permanent 
 form and a persistent value, a certain class of thinkers 
 would contend that different rights were involved in the 
 possession of that particular fish from those existing in 
 the possession of other denizens of the sea. 
 
 In our competitive existence, the universal idea of fair- 
 ness is that every man is entitled to whatever results from 
 his own productive efforts. This doctrine is invariably 
 the plea of those who oppose all denunciation of wealth 
 conditions and distribution. "If a man catches fish in 
 the sea of life," say these people, " and if these fish happen 
 to be worth one million or a hundred millions of dollars, 
 where is the wrong ? The men who did not fish or could 
 not fish ought not to blame the successful angler nor try 
 to deprive him of the reward of his efforts." Men now 
 acquire private rights to wealth of all kinds, to land, to 
 fish, and everything else deemed valuable, by the suc- 
 cessful application of their own efforts, and at one time 
 they acquired titles to other human beings in exactly the 
 same way. In the justice of the past, men were supposed 
 to have a private right of ownership in other men, and 
 until recently that portion of generic man denominated 
 woman had no right of ownership in anything whatever. 
 But we will not further discuss these little variations in 
 private rights, although it may not be an unreasonable 
 speculation to surmise that possibly, many years hence, 
 mankind may believe that the unlucky fisherman who 
 throws his line patiently all day is really entitled to 
 something whether he catches it or not, and that the 
 
KING MAMMON. 375 
 
 other unfortunate who is crowded out of all the desirable 
 fishing grounds by his stronger associates, and thus 
 starved into cleaning their fish for the fragments, deserves 
 a better fate than the social fishermen now bestow upon 
 him. 
 
 The real question for society to determine is not so 
 much the acquirement of private rights, as their real 
 nature and continuance. Granting that unequal private 
 rights to wealth in all its forms justly exist as the result of 
 varying human effort and good or bad fortune, the real 
 question is : How long do those rights continue and 
 when do they terminate ? The people of every civilized 
 country in the world declare by their laws that all such 
 rights, with but two exceptions, 1 hereinafter mentioned, 
 are perpetual. That is, if Herbert Spencer catches a fish 
 the constituents of that animal are his forever, and if he 
 secures an acre of land, his right to it becomes a per- 
 petuity in the same way. Both fish and land are parts of 
 the earth to which he obtains a right that theoretically 
 and practically, so far as the relations of other men to 
 him and his agents are concerned, absolutely excludes 
 others so long as men shall exist on this planet and agree 
 to maintain established conditions. 
 
 Mr. Spencer, in the extract previously quoted, says : 
 "Presented in its naked form, the proposition that a man 
 can own a thing when he is dead is absurd." He regards 
 that absurdity, however, as applying only to entail and 
 to the privileges still existing by which a decedent is al- 
 lowed to restrict the use of his wealth in the hands of his 
 immediate successors under the provisions of his will. 
 That kind of restriction Mr. Spencer regards as an absurd- 
 ity, but he is strangely blind to the equal absurdity in any 
 power whatever of controlling the use of wealth at the 
 deathbed. Mr. Spencer cannot conceive that the rights 
 
 1 Patents and Copyrights. 
 
3/6 KING MAMMON. 
 
 of any human being except the dying man and his 
 legatees or other legal successors are involved in any way 
 whatever by the disposition of estates. His thinking is 
 cramped by the narrow idea that equitable private rights 
 are justly transmissible to a successor, and following out 
 this assumption, if some person had long ago acquired an 
 equitable private right among his contemporaries to the 
 land upon which London is built, he would in the name 
 of that " Justice" embodied in his recent work, maintain 
 the claims of the proprietor's descendants or legatees to 
 absolute ownership of the entire estate, disregarding the 
 real fact, which inevitably takes precedence of all " paper 
 constitutions " and Spencerian ideas of justice, that human 
 rights area matter of equity between the living alone, and 
 not between the living and the dead. He also disregards 
 the fact that instead of any man's really owning the earth 
 or any part thereof, the essential truth is that the earth 
 owns him ; for his body, if not his soul, came out of it, 
 and all the absurd human laws ever enacted will neither 
 change his destiny nor prevent him from going whence he 
 came. Instead of being an eternal producer, man is 
 eternally produced in a new form, but rather than admit 
 this truth so humiliating to his egotism, he persistently 
 endeavors to project his power into the future wherein it is 
 impossible for him to project his individual life. He regards 
 that portion of the earth which has temporarily fallen 
 under his dominion during his brief existence, as a thing 
 in which are involved only his own rights and those of 
 his immediate and direct successors. He believes that all 
 other human beings have no just claims whatever in the 
 future to any share in the use of that portion of the earth 
 which has fallen under his authority ; and thus, dominated 
 by these silly ideas, society moves onward. 
 
 Is it any wonder that such a progression leads to 
 catastrophes? The laws of nature express eternal truth, 
 
KING MAMMON. 37; 
 
 and whenever man attempts to subvert them by preten- 
 sions so utterly at variance with all life, from the lowest 
 to the highest, the lie that he thus enunciates in his laws 
 and customs sooner or later brings its own penalty in the 
 destruction of human warfare. 
 
 Judge Thomas seems to perceive that exercising the 
 power of making a will inevitably establishes a perpetuity 
 of possession by means of agents, and merges one man's 
 life into that of a successor in a way that becomes an 
 injustice to direct descendants, although he has not per- 
 ceived, or at least he has ignored, the greater truth that a 
 will defies and disregards the rights of all other survivors 
 who may not be related to the dying man. The effect of 
 testaments may be illustrated by a mechanical experiment. 
 Lay upon a level surface fifty long iron links in a row as 
 though to make a chain. Each link represents a lifetime 
 in a line of descent, and fifty generations are expressed. 
 In order to make a continuous chain, it matters not 
 whether we connect all at once by entail, or whether we 
 connect them one at a time by the forms of a modern 
 will, for the real effect of both is to project the power ac- 
 quired for a lifetime by human effort into the future, and 
 to confer its privileges upon other men who have not 
 made such efforts, thus becoming the source of tyranny, 
 idleness, and social corruption. Entail established the 
 dead man's power over many succeeding generations at 
 once, and theoretically over all. The testament estab- 
 lishes his power over the next generation and appoints an 
 agent to carry it into effect, the control being further ex- 
 tended into the future by other wills. The process is 
 identical in its nature with entail, and many of the evils of 
 the discarded doctrine of property apply to the one still 
 retained. 
 
 The apparent similarity between a gift and a bequest 
 confuses the thoughts of many people when they con- 
 
3/8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 sider these two acts, and it has led Mr. Spencer to argue 
 that a bequest is just because it is only one form of a gift. 
 If, however, the real nature of equitable property is that 
 of a life-lease, as herein argued, it is obvious that the 
 right of gift is justly controllable by the community at its 
 own pleasure and for its own interest. A moment's re- 
 flection will also show that the particular form of every 
 act or the circumstances surrounding it and not its general 
 nature make it either right or wrong. For instance, 
 murder is one form of homicide, but we honor the brave 
 man who protects injured innocence by slaying the per- 
 secutor, while we condemn to ignominious death the man 
 who destroys the life of a human being from motives not 
 pleasing to our moral sense. Any man is accorded the 
 right and is even burdened with the duty of snatching the 
 knife or pistol from the hands of a prospective suicide, 
 and of destroying either weapon if need be to protect the 
 life. Yet these acts, under a different intention or motive, 
 would become assault and theft, and society would inflict 
 penalties. Ordinarily a man may burn his own property, 
 but if it be situated so that the fire necessarily consumes 
 his neighbor's wealth, the deed is arson and society jails 
 him for his presumption. Similarly, if one man owned 
 New York City, it is very doubtful whether society would 
 permit him to expel his tenants and destroy the wealth 
 under the assumption that it was absolutely his own. 
 The circumstances surrounding any act, in the judgment 
 of humanity, make it either good or bad, just or unjust. 
 When a man premeditates homicide from some selfish or 
 vindictive motive, it becomes murder. When he burns 
 his own wealth without a sufficient regard for the rights 
 of his associates, the otherwise harmless act becomes 
 arson. When he gives his wealth to another man at the 
 expiration of his own life, because he knows it will be of 
 no further use to him, the gift becomes a bequest; and 
 
KING MAMMON. 379 
 
 there is quite as much difference between the real nature 
 of the two acts as there is between justifiable homicide 
 and murder, or between burning a handkerchief and 
 setting fire to a house in a crowded city. Gifts are usually 
 considered praiseworthy, and homicide is considered blame- 
 ful ; yet some forms of homicide become praiseworthy, 
 and some forms of gift dangerous and reprehensible. 
 
 Men give away very little wealth during their lives, 
 because they love themselves better than they do other 
 people, and, as Judge Thomas shrewdly observes, they 
 would not often show any great liberality in their wills if 
 they could do anything else with the wealth or better ex- 
 tend their influence in any other way. The genuine gift 
 deprives a man of wealth which he might otherwise use 
 or control, but the spurious gift in the form of a bequest 
 deprives him of absolutely nothing, and all that he gives 
 away is really the property of survivors. The testator 
 does not give up any rights of his own in making the will, 
 but merely sacrifices the rights of a portion of the sur- 
 vivors by arbitrarily designating his own successors. As 
 the intention of the homicide makes his act murder, so 
 the expectancy of death makes the act of the giver a 
 bequest, and the nature of the act is governed by the 
 attendant circumstances and not by the mere assertion 
 that because a man can equitably give away property 
 during his life, he can equitably give it away at his death, 
 which is no more reasonable than the statement that be- 
 cause William W. Astor can rightfully burn his yesterday's 
 newspaper he may also set fire to every building he owns 
 in New York City. 
 
 A modern will does not go into effect until the testator 
 is dead. At the instant his life passes away, his rights go 
 with it, and there remains nothing that can be justly 
 transferred by his power to anybody. Even if the trans- 
 fer is made before his death and in immediate expectancy 
 
380 KING MAMMON. 
 
 of that event, the act has still the nature of a transferral 
 of rights that belong to all survivors and not to the de- 
 ceased. Society should lease wealth for life to the in- 
 dividual and settle the score at the close of his existence. 
 
 The consideration of patents and copyrights is interest- 
 ing in a comparison of these forms of wealth with other 
 property, for in these two kinds of ownership a radical 
 departure has been made from the rigid doctrines of prop- 
 erty. When a man invents a new machine or copyrights 
 a book his moral rights in the mental conception thus 
 evolved and in the arrangement of the ideas expressed is 
 certainly, in all fairness or justice, as complete as human 
 rights can become to anything on earth. A new thought 
 is of all human products the nearest to a genuine 
 creation, and is somewhat different in its apparent nature 
 from the mere physical transformations that are made the 
 basis of property, although a close analysis will show 
 that all are identical in their real nature, notwithstanding 
 the fact that the invention seems to be more genuinely a 
 production. Yet a man acquires a perpetual right or 
 monopoly over a piece of land, while he can acquire only 
 a limited right to the control of the machine he invents, 
 for his patent expires after a few years. Similarly a man 
 can claim only a limited right of controlling the use of his 
 ideas in the form of a book, but if he chooses to devote 
 the same effort to acquiring a pork-packing establishment 
 in Chicago, or developing a gold mine in California, no 
 restrictions are placed upon the perpetuity of his claims. 
 Man and material possessions are, "now and forever, one 
 and inseparable ; " but the same doctrine does not apply 
 to the products of his brain. 
 
 Will some Spencerian philosopher now explain which 
 method is right and which wrong? It is either just to 
 make patent-rights and copyrights perpetuities subject to 
 bequest and inheritance, or it is wrong to permit other 
 
KING MAMMON. 381 
 
 kinds of wealth to be owned and transferred by these 
 expedients to successors. It is not likely that men of the 
 present day will be prepared to admit that the perpetuity 
 of James Watts' claim to the steam-engine, or Elias 
 Howe's right to the sewing machine, appearing in the 
 person of their descendants or legatees, would be exactly 
 an equitable method of adjusting human rights, so it may 
 be that eventually they will recognize the truth that no 
 form of human privilege should have more than a tem- 
 porary existence, and that all rights should terminate at 
 death. Patents and copyrights are now issued for the 
 period of an average lifetime, or less, and are not only 
 equitable, but desirable in their economic effects, while if 
 they were established as perpetuities, they would become 
 unbearable tyranny. 
 
 The curse of perpetuity hangs over all governmental 
 institutions, and in this way the dead past is forever 
 binding the present. To illustrate this idea, we have the 
 Constitution of the United States. It was an agreement 
 made between the people of thirteen little colonies exist- 
 ing more than one hundred years ago on the eastern 
 coast of this country, then about one-tenth of its present 
 size in the area inhabited and containing a population of 
 about three millions. Those people wrangled with one 
 another over the exact nature of their political agree- 
 ment, and were actuated far more by selfish desires in 
 formulating the famous document than by the patriotism 
 usually ascribed to them. When they had completed 
 that patchwork of concessions and compromises, they 
 pronounced their work holy and sent it down to posterity 
 with a provision embodied within it that its binding force 
 could only be changed by a vote of two-thirds the repre- 
 sentation in Congress and ratification by the legislatures 
 of three-fourths of the States. To-day there are seventy 
 millions or more of people living under that Constitution, 
 
382 KING MAMMON. 
 
 yet they cannot legally change it to conform to their 
 desires except by practical unanimity. They are tied 
 politically and socially (so far as tying can really be 
 accomplished by such methods) by the absurd idea of 
 their predecessors, that they could make among them 
 selves a bargain for all time which would express not 
 only their own desires, but the desires of their posterity. 
 The result of this original fallacy is now displayed by the 
 absurd condition of the country in attempting the impo- 
 sition of an income tax. The people as represented in 
 Congress declared that they wanted such a tax. The 
 Supreme Court, by a vote of five to four, declared that 
 under their Constitution the people could not levy such a 
 tax, and the decision of one man controls the course of 
 seventy millions of people in regard to property involving 
 many millions of dollars. Meanwhile the people are 
 discontented, but they cannot change their Constitution 
 nor levy income taxes, if they really desire that form of 
 taxation, without the tedious process of altering the 
 organic law bequeathed to them, a change which involves 
 the control of three-quarters of the states. Meanwhile, 
 suppose that discontent progresses till a majority of the 
 people, or even a large minority, becomes dissatisfied to 
 the extent of revolt. The result, traceable directly to the 
 perpetuity embodied in a "paper constitution," which 
 never did and never will bind men in any country if they 
 find themselves wronged, may be found in the horrors of 
 civil war. The people of the United States need to amend 
 their constitution by providing that all future amend- 
 ments may be adopted or rejected by a direct vote of the 
 people and submitted by a majority vote of Congress. 
 The author of this book is not an advocate of income 
 taxes, but the people must govern themselves and not be 
 governed by their ancestors. Right or wrong, the major- 
 ity of the people in any country will rule, and it is better 
 
KING MAMMON. 383 
 
 that they rule peaceably than by violence. If the people 
 desire income taxes or any other form of legislation, it is 
 suicidal folly to repress or obstruct the expression of the 
 popular will by means of the ancient dicta of the Consti- 
 tution, for that course means, in the end, armed revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 LOOKING ON BOTH SIDES. 
 
 Spiders can spin, Beavers can build and show contrivance ; the 
 Ant lays up an accumulation of capital, and has, for ought I know, 
 a Bank of Antland. If there is no soul in Man higher than all 
 that, did it reach to sailing on the cloud-rack and spinning sea- 
 sand ; then, I say, Man is but an animal, a more cunning kind of 
 brute ; he has no soul, but only a succedaneum for salt. Where- 
 upon, seeing himself to be tridy of the beasts that perish, he ought to 
 admit it, I think ; and also straightway universally to kill him- 
 self ; and so, in a manlike manner, at least, end, and wave these 
 brute-worlds his dignified farewell /THOMAS CARI,YI < E. 
 
 IT is but fair, in treating of the social troubles and the 
 principles of heredity as applied to wealth, to consider 
 the objections that are likely to be urged against the 
 changes that have been advocated in this volume. So- 
 ciety has nothing to gain from blind and bitter partisans, 
 no matter what position they occupy in the discussions 
 now going on in every great nation. We do not need to 
 engender bitter animosities, but we do need to consider 
 what seems right and what wrong in our new social 
 relations, and after such consideration to firmly demand 
 what appears to be the best for permanent good, for 
 otherwise society will inevitably become wrecked and in- 
 . dividual welfare endangered in the general ruin. The 
 man who, in periods like the present, maintains a purely 
 selfish view of his own individual existence, to the extent 
 
384 KING MAMMON. 
 
 of refusing to acknowledge any duty to his fellow-crea- 
 tures, is wise only in his own conceit ; for the penalty of 
 greed and tyranny must, sooner or later, be completely 
 paid. All of us need to look on both sides of the shield. 
 The most complete objection that is urged against in- 
 terference with successions or any other attempt to lessen 
 centralization in wealth comes from the man who con- 
 tends that centralization is in itself a desirable thing and 
 not the evil that popular sentiment imagines it to be. 
 Men who hold this theory are intelligent and usually have 
 an accurate knowledge of recent economic history, 
 whereby they are able to show the progress of our vast 
 industries from their small beginnings. They can show 
 how the immense wealth aggregated in a single great 
 industrial establishment has vastly cheapened production, 
 out of which society receives in some form the resulting 
 benefits of economy. They prove conclusively that a 
 great railroad system is cheaper in operation than many 
 smajl lines under separate ownership, and they show the 
 gain to society in many dollars and cents. They prove 
 to any candid man familiar with business methods that 
 the great trusts and syndicates which now excite the 
 wrath of the more superficial observers by their tremen- 
 dous aggregation of business, are not bleeding the pockets 
 of the people, but are really cheapening production and 
 obtaining their power in that way by driving out weaker 
 and consequently less desirable, because less productive, 
 competition. Even the Standard Oil Company, from the 
 economical view of these advocates of wealth centraliza- 
 tion, is a corporation comprising industrial angels in the 
 form of human beings. These gains in economy are 
 admitted. Some notorious rascality has been connected 
 with the formation of trusts, but the greed and tyranny 
 therein displayed are not greater, except for the magni- 
 tude of the financial operations, than thousands of men 
 
KING MAMMON. 385 
 
 unheard of display in minor business transactions of every- 
 day life. There is no difference between the principles 
 that make the trust and the principles that govern the 
 transactions of a peanut-stand at the street corner, the 
 only distinction being in the extent of the business trans- 
 acted. It is true that all this aggregation of capital has 
 cheapened production, increased wages, shortened the 
 hours of labor, and enabled laborers who call themselves 
 paupers now, to live better than princes could five hun- 
 dred years ago. 
 
 Why, then, do you oppose wealth concentration ? the 
 reader will inquire. Simply because mere wealth is not 
 all of life, and because some of man's aspirations are 
 higher and nobler than a perpetual pursuit of the almighty 
 dollar. If the accumulation of social wealth be all that 
 men desire, their existing social system is a success ; for 
 the vast productive effort of modern society is storing up 
 every year an unconsumed surplus, from which results, 
 in the industrial depression, that harvest of leisure which 
 is the only reward that man can ever gain from increased 
 productive ability, even if he succeeds in combining 
 the chemical elements directly into food, or in converting 
 the wave-power of the ocean into electrical energy, or in 
 immediately converting beds of stone into blocks of 
 bread and cheese. At the end of every existence the 
 individual has used a certain amount of food and cloth- 
 ing, and enjoyed or not enjoyed a certain period of ces- 
 sation from productive effort. That result sums his 
 economical existence. In the period of industrial depres- 
 sion, the rich obtain this cessation from productive effort 
 in the form of stagnated business among the active, and 
 a frivolous leisure in "society" among the idle; while 
 the poor obtain it *in Coxey armies, and in searching the 
 country for work that does not need to be done. 
 
 The otherwise clear reasoners who admire the existing 
 2 5 
 
386 KING MAMMON. 
 
 system are mammon-worshipers. Social existence to 
 them is a matter of dollars and cents. If a system suc- 
 ceeds in storing wealth, the ends and aims of society are 
 secured, according to their theories, no matter what the 
 attendant circumstances may be. The real reason why 
 uncontrolled wealth centralization is an evil, is not 
 because the exceedingly rich man impoverishes his neigh- 
 bors or the people in general, for no such result occurs in 
 society. It is evident that the millionaire consumes but 
 little more than the pauper, and that social wealth in the 
 form of food and clothing is ultimately devoured or worn 
 by the whole people without much distinction in riches. 
 The evil of extreme personal wealth is in the possession 
 of power, for the rich man may be, and often is, a tyrant. 
 It would be cheaper for this nation to abolish its congress 
 and its legislatures in order that President Cleveland, 
 with a vastly increased salary, as dictator of the country, 
 might simply announce its new laws, instead of continu- 
 ing the present expensive and uneconomical method of 
 assembling the people to vote for representatives or on 
 special propositions ; but in spite of the immediate and 
 evident economy, it is not to be expected that the people 
 will desire such a change. It is also not probable that 
 they will continue to permit the power of immense 
 wealth to be placed in the hands of successors who have 
 not earned it, who have not proved their ability to handle 
 it for the real interests of society, and who expect to 
 become dictators in our midst without ever having dis- 
 played any of the talents and principles that should 
 characterize a dictator, granting that in some instances it 
 is necessary or beneficial to have one. The succession 
 to wealth is not particularly an economical question, but 
 one involving the liberties of the people and their right to 
 control property instead of permitting it to control them. 
 An absolute monarch in his immediate cost is cheaper 
 
KING MAMMON. 387 
 
 than a republic, and it is easier and simpler to permit his 
 eldest son to succeed him than to incur the trouble and 
 expense of an election. In a similar sense, Colis P. 
 Huntington, as sole proprietor of an aggregated rail- 
 road system, combining every line in the United States, 
 would unquestionably transact our railroad business more 
 expeditiously and economically than it is now being con- 
 ducted ; but do we really desire to place that much power 
 irrevocably in his hands, and, if we do, are we also will- 
 ing that he shall name his own successor to such power, 
 or that some accidental person bearing the same name 
 shall succeed him ? It is not a question of profit to 
 society, for we have wealth enough, but it is a question 
 of governing ourselves or permitting the wealthy families 
 of the nation to govern us. We must decide whether 
 man was made for wealth, or wealth for man. 
 
 The man who accumulates a great fortune honestly is 
 a benefactor to society. Sometimes he is unintentionally 
 a benefactor, even though he accumulates dishonestly, 
 for he is a check on the spendthrifts by whom the world 
 would be kept poor. Mr. Huntington, for instance, 
 whether honest or dishonest, understands managing rail- 
 roads, and he labors more faithfully every day than either 
 the writer of this book or most of its readers. When he 
 reaches the end of his existence and looks backward, he 
 will see that he has really labored for society, possibly 
 in spite of his own inclinations, and that he has neither 
 consumed any considerable portion of his vast possessions 
 nor obtained the ability to carry them with him into an- 
 other world. In one sense of the word, he will have been a 
 social slave quite as much as any other man. People ought 
 to be willing that Mr. Huntington shall be a great railroad 
 manager, for in the end he is their servant, though he some- 
 times makes himself temporarily their master. He is an 
 economical success, and he is a more efficient manager than 
 
388 KING MAMMON. 
 
 they could select otherwise than by competition ; but his 
 ability is no guarantee that his heir will possess the same 
 qualifications, or that the person to whom he may transfer 
 his power at death may be in any great degree efficient or 
 valuable to society in that capacity or any other occupa- 
 tion involving the control of a great fortune. The pos- 
 sessor of a great fortune accumulated by his own efforts 
 should be regarded as the trustee of the people, selected 
 for that position after having proved his superior ability 
 to fill it by the rigid tests of competition, and authorized 
 to hold it for life ; but it is difficult to perceive any justice 
 or wisdom or even social economy in the idea that he 
 shall be permitted to transfer the trust to another person 
 at his death, who may be entirely incompetent and un- 
 worthy of such public power. Whether the extreme ag- 
 gregation of wealth under individual control is good or 
 evil depends upon the view men take of life. If the sole 
 object of social organization is to produce wealth, then, in 
 the name of productive efficiency and of that wealth-god 
 whom we all adore, let us convert our nation into an 
 army of serfs under a single wealth-owner whose eco- 
 nomic ability is proved to be pre-eminent, and who will 
 thoroughly comprehend how to manage the useless sur- 
 plus of society, even if he do not have the least concep- 
 tion of any other human aspiration. But if the real object 
 of society is to make a happy, contented people, satisfied 
 in busy, cheerful efforts to improve their mental and physi- 
 cal condition, having not only work to do but the desire 
 to do it, hopeful of the future, grateful to whatever mys- 
 terious power they believe controls their destinies, and 
 raised above mere brute existence by tolerant and kindly 
 feelings toward one another, then let us subordinate the 
 mere accumulation and storing of wealth products, which 
 are as worthless as the sands of Death Valley unless they 
 be adapted to and used for human consumption, to a more 
 
KING MAMMON. 389 
 
 rational control and a more equal division of human effort 
 and opportunity. Industrial profits will never compensate 
 men for the loss of liberty and the destruction of self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Society in its present condition may be compared to a 
 train of cars headed by a great locomotive in which the 
 machinery has become disarranged so that the motive 
 power is no longer under control. The train is plunging 
 furiously along its roadway, impelled by a tremendous 
 power and constantly increasing its speed. In the dis- 
 tance, far ahead of the rushing train, the track diverges 
 into two branches. One of these leads into a great valley, 
 quiet and peaceful in appearance, fertile in its wealth 
 resources, and scarcely changing in its level surface from 
 its beginning as far as the eye can reach. The other road 
 winds in and out among hills and narrow valleys, now as- 
 cending to dizzy summits, now descending swiftly into 
 some deep canon into which the light of heaven scarcely 
 penetrates. Traversing this road involves a journey diffi- 
 cult and dangerous at times, but one characterized by con- 
 tinual novelty and a variety of scenery that is lacking in 
 the more uniform surface of the great valley. To a por- 
 tion of the travelers on the moving train the level country 
 appears to be a paradise, and the alternation of hills and 
 valleys a hideous waste. To others among their associ- 
 ates the uniform surface seems dreary and monotonous, 
 while the mountainous region, with all its difficulties and 
 dangers, is to their tastes only pleasantly diversified. Each 
 group disputes with the other concerning the relative ad- 
 vantages of the different regions, and each fears an exist- 
 ence under physical conditions that are detested. Mean- 
 while the locomotive increases its speed, freed from all 
 human control, and the real danger is not in its future prog- 
 ress into the land of co-operation on the one hand, or 
 the land of competition on the other, but in the increasing 
 
390 KING MAMMON. 
 
 momentum which may at any moment hurl the train from 
 its roadbed and involve all the contestants in the catas- 
 trophe of social destruction. 
 
 The plan of subordinating wealth succession to the abso- 
 lute direction of the people is a means of controlling our 
 social progress so that the possession of wealth may be 
 regulated to some extent by the community that produces 
 it. It is the lever with which we will control our unruly 
 locomotive. With the firm establishment of the principle 
 permitting a life possession of wealth and nothing beyond 
 that right, society is prepared either to continue under a 
 more rational competition than now exists or to transform 
 itself gradually by the public absorption of estates, into 
 whatever additional forms of socialism may be of real 
 benefit, as rapidly as human nature and its environment 
 are prepared for the change. 
 
 It should, for instance, be evident to any thoughtful 
 mind that the process of consolidation among railroad 
 companies into the great systems of the United States, 
 which has been going on steadily, owing to the natural 
 laws of competition, destroying the weaker competitors 
 and aggregating the business under the control of a few, 
 in spite of the protests of the people and contrary to the 
 original expectations of the competitors, will continue un- 
 til all, or nearly all, the railroads in the country are prac- 
 tically under one management. At a recent session of 
 Congress, a bill passed the lower house enabling all the 
 railroad companies of the United States to form a great 
 trust, at their own desire, making the United States gov- 
 ernment the trustee, and providing for the regulation of 
 fares and freights by the Inter-State Commerce Commis- 
 sion. 1 If that proposition be carried into effect, it may 
 form the connecting link in the transition of the railroads 
 
 1 See " Steps toward Governmental Control of Railroads," by Carroll 
 D. Wright, in The Foriim for February, 1895. 
 
KING MAMMON. 39! 
 
 from private ownership to State Socialism in its applica- 
 tion to this form of property ; but the great trust would be 
 a very dangerous institution under our present laws and 
 the condition of public sentiment. Railroad regulation by 
 a commission, if its future history follows the lines of the 
 past, would convince the people of the United States, 
 under such a system of transportation, that the railroad 
 owners were controlling the government instead of the 
 government controlling the railroads. With all the rail- 
 roads thus aggregated in a great combination, the rail- 
 road employes would become united in an immense labor 
 organization, against which the power of the govern- 
 ment as trustee would necessarily be turned in case of a 
 gigantic strike. Our national government would thus be 
 placed in the position of directly upholding a gigantic cor- 
 poration, and the extreme irritation that would result from 
 a great strike in which the laborers directly interested 
 would be backed by millions of sympathizers under such 
 circumstances, might precipitate an armed conflict more 
 speedily than even our greatest pessimists expect such a 
 calamity. 
 
 Sooner or later, the railroads of the United States will 
 go into the hands of the people, as naturally and inevi- 
 tably as water flows to the sea, in spite of all that can 
 be done to prevent the change. The only real question is 
 how that change shall be accomplished. Under existing 
 laws the railroads must be bought, or in case of a social 
 crisis they may be confiscated, as the slaves of the Southern 
 people were confiscated. Buying the railroads is no real 
 solution of the problem, for the same monopoly of wealth 
 would still exist in the form of bonds or other possessions, 
 and the mere proposition to buy them is apparently 
 astounding to national financiers. On the other hand, 
 they will not be confiscated except by the summary pro- 
 cesses of armed revolution. The proper solution of such 
 
392 KING MAMMON. 
 
 difficulties, it would seem, lies in an attack upon heredity 
 in wealth. The ownership of railroads vests usually in 
 extremely wealthy men. No matter how much enterprise, 
 industry, ability, prudence, or benevolence has been dis- 
 played by these men in the accumulation or management 
 of their property, the same desirable qualities are not 
 necessarily or even probably inherent in their successors 
 under the present system of successions ; and it cannot be 
 maintained that either the permanent interests of society, 
 or justice to the individual, two things which are always 
 identical in their real nature, demand the continuance of 
 the imperfect methods of the past, which, although at one 
 time adapted to the needs of society, are no longer in 
 consonance with either the spirit of free government 
 or our present economical system. If it is right that 
 the people shall have no voice in the selection of their 
 great railroad kings, then, for the sake of a desirable con- 
 sistency, let us authorize the Justices of the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, who now serve for life, to bequeath 
 their offices to successors when they die, or, in case they 
 fail to bequeath them, let us empower their sons to suc- 
 ceed as judges. 
 
 Wills and inheritance have always been subject to modi- 
 fication, and the means of correcting the real abuses of 
 private ownership are thus easily within reach of the peo- 
 ple, who need to attack the heredity of wealth power as 
 their forefathers of 1776 attacked the heredity of political 
 privileges. It should require no proof to convince any 
 reasoning being that one form of power is as dangerous 
 as the other. 
 
 A common objection to the destruction of wealth suc- 
 cession is embodied in the plea of those who urge that the 
 privilege of disposing absolutely of property at death is 
 a stimulus to human effort, and that men will refuse 
 to labor and accumulate wealth if their privileges are 
 
KING MAMMON. 393 
 
 restricted, the result being that society would become im- 
 poverished and lose the immense advantages of cap- 
 ital. The same objection was made in England when it 
 was proposed to abolish or restrict the privilege of entail, 
 and its fallacy was exposed by the conditions which have 
 succeeded the abandonment of entail all over Europe. 
 Men now work with more energy than ever to accumu- 
 late wealth, in spite of the fact that they can no longer 
 dictate the use of land for generations after their decease. 
 In France the same fallacy is exposed, for the Code Na- 
 poleon so restricts the right of bequest, by requiring almost 
 an equal succession among the children, that the parent 
 frequently declines to make a will ; yet the industry of 
 the French people is not lessened by the restriction in 
 personal privilege. ' When society, by the method of dis- 
 tribution herein proposed, guarantees that every man's 
 children, or others having real claims upon his posses- 
 sions, shall be equitably treated after his death, he will 
 have nothing to discourage industrious effort in that con- 
 dition unless he is a tyrant at heart who desires the privi- 
 lege of dealing out wealth inequitably when its dispo- 
 sition can no longer affect him. The whole idea of with- 
 drawing a stimulus to industry by interfering with the 
 ultimate disposition of wealth is a fallacy, however, when 
 it is applied to a fortune of any great value. The truth is, 
 that except among comparatively poorpeoplethe accumu- 
 lators of wealth are not stimulated by any idea of assist- 
 ance to their descendants, nor even of real benefit to 
 
 1 A great historian after exposing and denouncing the greed and cor- 
 ruption of the European clergy in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, 
 and showing their vast accumulation of wealth in spite of their celibacy, 
 closes his comments with the following words, illustrating the usual fal- 
 lacious belief that men derive happiness from the results of action rather 
 than from the action itself : " Such rapacity might seem incredible in 
 men cut off from the pursuits of life and the hope of posterity, if we did 
 not behold every day the unreasonableness of avarice and the fervor of 
 professional attachment" Hallam's " Middle Ages," Chapter vii. 
 
394 KING MAMMON. 
 
 themselves derived from the possession of wealth. After 
 a moderate amount of wealth represented by a compara- 
 tively few thousands of dollars is accumulated, any man 
 knows that, so far as wealth is concerned, his real inter- 
 ests and the interests of his posterity are as well and often 
 better secured by moderate means than by the control 
 of a great fortune. This is proved by the restrictions that 
 many millionaires throw about their wealth in wills, pur- 
 posely to prevent the use of money in amounts too great 
 for the supposed welfare of their children. It is a com- 
 mon remark among all classes that the possession of 
 great wealth, especially when secured suddenly, often 
 proves to be a curse instead of a blessing, and that the 
 millionaire can derive no real benefit from his wealth after 
 he has acquired it. What, then, is the real motive that 
 animates the accumulators of large fortunes ? 
 
 It is indicated in a conversation said to have occurred 
 with Philip Armour of Chicago. * The continued pursuit 
 of wealth by men who are already wealthy, is not due 
 to any desire of making future provision, either for them- 
 selves or their offspring, but to the fact that they enjoy 
 
 1 " A Chicago journalist one time said to Mr. Armour, ' Why do you 
 not retire ? You have made far more money than you know what to do 
 with. Even if you slept round the clock, money would still come in, 
 more money than what you could use. Why cannot you get out of it 
 all and leave the field to younger men ? Why not give them a chance ? 
 You overshadow everything, monopolize everything in the place, and 
 we have only one great butcher in the place of a thousand little ones. 
 You have made your pile, why not clear out ? ' 
 
 " Mr Armour listened patiently, as he always does, and answered, 'Be- 
 cause I have no other interest in life but my business. I do not want 
 any more money ; as you say, I have more than I want. I do not love 
 the money ; what I do love is the getting of it, the making it. All these 
 years of my life I have put into this work and now it is my life and I 
 cannot give it up. What other interest can you suggest to me ? I do 
 not read, I do not take any part in politics, what can I do ? But in my 
 counting house I am in my element ; there I live, and the struggle is 
 the very breath of life to me. Besides," he added, " I think it is well 
 for me to remain in business in order to set an example to younger men 
 who are coming up around me.'" WILLIAM T. STEAD. 
 
KING MAMMON. 395 
 
 the increase of power and fame that invariably accom- 
 panies the possession of great wealth, and because they 
 would rather conduct their business affairs and speculations 
 than to engage in any other occupation to be found on 
 the face of the earth. Heaven is to them a field of intense 
 activity, and hell is idleness. If any business man who 
 has accumulated a large fortune, will candidly analyze 
 his motives in continuing to do so, and truthfully express 
 his conclusions, they will be found to correspond very 
 closely with Mr. Armour's assertions. The genuine cap- 
 tains of industry pursue dollars as the sportsman follows 
 game for the pleasure there is in the chase and capture, 
 and not for any other supposed benefits to anybody. 
 Nearly all men of this class spend their lives in the 
 pleasure of wealth accumulation, deriving a satisfaction 
 from forming their plans, from putting them into execu- 
 tion, and from receiving and controlling the results ; but 
 beyond this pleasure of plan and acquisition they obtain 
 little happiness from what is generally termed the use of 
 wealth, in affording leisure and recreation. Rest and 
 luxury as pleasures are to these men incomprehensible. 
 Their happiness is in work and action, and they seek their 
 own form of pleasure, no matter what the final results in 
 the disposal of the property may be, although they will 
 retain their hold on it to the last instant of their existence, 
 and control it after death if society will permit them to do 
 so. Such men, although often intending to be the best 
 of husbands, fathers, and friends, will frequently neglect 
 their wives, permit their children to grow up strangers to 
 them, and omit all friendly association, merely because 
 they have no time to spare from the rush of business ac- 
 tivity. They have no more thought concerning the real 
 use of their accumulations than enters the head of the tame 
 magpie which fills its garret-home with all discoverable 
 odds and ends that can be carried thither, and, like the 
 
396 KING MAMMON. 
 
 magpie, their happiness is derived from action and not 
 from its results. 
 
 Other men are not different except in seeking different 
 occupation. One man undergoes fearful dangers and 
 hardships to discover the north pole, regardless of what he 
 will do with it ; another spends his life and ultimately 
 starves in a garret daubing colors upon canvas ; a third sits 
 dumb in reflection and studies the intricacy of some mar- 
 velous invention ; a fourth diligently uses his days and 
 nights in constructing some wonderful bit of poetry ; and 
 the fifth finds a charm that words cannot express in col- 
 lecting bugs. Similarly, the man of business instincts de- 
 rives a satisfaction from his pursuits that he can obtain in 
 no other way, and so long as he is permitted to pursue 
 that happiness and collect his dollars, he will do so regard- 
 less of what is done concerning the future disposition of 
 the product, as the man who collects bugs is not greatly 
 concerned about the ultimate disposition of his cabinet. 
 The idea of ultimate use or enjoyment is not a factor in 
 promoting the industry of the money collector ; he 
 works because he would be miserable if he tried to enjoy 
 his wealth by using it in travel, luxurious living, or mere 
 pleasure-seeking among what he really considers the 
 frivolities of life. The luxurious use of wealth is almost 
 invariably the concomitant of an inherited privilege. 
 
 It is further urged by many that all laws imposing 
 severe restrictions on the right of bequest would be 
 useless from evasions, as wealth would be given away 
 before death. A similar objection can be made against 
 all laws. It is not desirable that any changes whatever 
 shall be made in our laws till a strong moral sentiment 
 involving the majority demands new principles, and 
 under our form of government that majority will have 
 to be gained before any new laws can be recorded. It 
 is true that no law can be enforced unless sustained by a 
 
KING MAMMON. 397 
 
 strong public sentiment, but it is equally true that a 
 strong public sentiment can enforce any laws that are 
 desirable. The writing of this book is an effort to manu- 
 facture public sentiment and not immediately to make 
 laws. When such sentiment is secured in favor of 
 changes, the restrictions will be made as rapidly as the 
 people approve them, and they will then enforce their 
 laws of succession with no more evasion than attends 
 the enforcement of all other laws. 
 
 The idea that the restriction of bequests could be 
 evaded by gifts is at first thought plausible, but the diffi- 
 culty of such evasion becomes apparent on closer exam- 
 ination. In the first place, people are not willing to de- 
 prive themselves of the control of property during health 
 and give it to successors, even if the latter be their 
 children. The propositions are very different, to con- 
 template on the one hand the giving of what one may 
 need, and on the other, the bequeathing at death of 
 what one knows will never be required. Deathbed gifts 
 and other gifts are entirely different in their nature, for 
 there is a sacrifice in the last but not in the first. Be- 
 sides the fact that no human being is usually willing to 
 abandon his control over his own possessions unneces- 
 sarily, the moment of death is uncertain. Children fre- 
 quently die before their parents. If wealth be given to 
 a child and it die before the parent, all surplus value 
 beyond the limit of inheritable wealth would imme- 
 diately revert to the state and be lost to the giver. On 
 account of these conditions, gifts would not prevail 
 more than at present except in case of dangerous illness. 
 If then the validity of gifts were made to depend upon 
 the apparent expectancy of the giver, and if in all cases 
 where an effort to defeat the will of the people could be 
 shown the entire estate reverted to public ownership, 
 there would be few attempts to evade the law under 
 
39$ KING MAMMON. 
 
 such penalty, when supported by a strong public senti- 
 ment. 
 
 The emotional person in whom parental affection pre- 
 dominates over other feelings, may, perhaps, regard the 
 advocate of any serious restriction upon the succession 
 of children as a social monster who would deprive 
 widows and orphans of the only protection left to them 
 after the death of their natural protector, and who, by 
 permitting wealth to escheat to the state, would place it 
 in the possession of those who cared nothing whatever 
 for the dead man. To many kind-hearted people there 
 seems something outrageously harsh to the children in 
 any plans restricting inheritance. The best answer to 
 these ideas is an imaginary case. 
 
 A certain family comprises the husband and wife, pos- 
 sessing community property worth $1,000,000, and hav- 
 ing three children, two sons and a daughter. Under 
 one form of existing laws, the husband at death may 
 bequeath $500,000, and his wife retain her one-half of 
 the communal property. If he die intestate, the wife 
 will retain her communal half, and will inherit, in addition 
 to that portion, one-third of her deceased husband's interest, 
 the other two-thirds being divided equally among the 
 children. The head of the family is a choleric gentle- 
 man, who in old age has become exceedingly irascible. 
 His youngest son is a "chip from the old block," and 
 resents domineering manners. After a sharp conflict with 
 parental authority and some disrespectful language ad- 
 dressed to his sire, this son leaves home at the age of 
 twenty years and disappears. Soon after this occurrence, 
 the father falls sick, makes his will, and dies. The doc- 
 ument disinherits the offending son, and bequeaths $500,- 
 ooo to his elder brother. The daughter receives merely the 
 dying man's blessing and a few keepsakes, for it is under- 
 stood that she is to become her mother's legatee. The 
 
KING MAMMON. 399 
 
 mother, hearing nothing from her runaway son, makes a 
 will entirely in her daughter's favor, but the latter, falling 
 in love with a young man, as her mother did before her, 
 marries him against the maternal wishes. The result 
 is a hasty change of the will in favor of the elder son, 
 a sudden death, and the absolute disinheritance of two 
 children, whose worst faults were those of being ex- 
 tremely self-willed, like their progenitors. We will not 
 trace the case any farther to see whether the disinher- 
 ited son and daughter contested the will ; to ascertain 
 whether or not they proved that both of the parents were 
 insane or subject to undue influence ; to discover how 
 many attorneys were employed in the trial ; nor even to 
 calculate what small fraction of the estate was left after 
 the lawyers collected their fees and paid the expenses. 
 It is sufficient to note that the whole condition of modern 
 will contests is one of absurdity. 
 
 There are numberless cases approaching more or less 
 closely in their circumstances this supposed instance. 
 Between heirs and ancestor there is necessarily a conflict 
 of interest. If the succession is established in a fixed line, 
 and bequests are abolished, heirs become undutiful. If 
 the power of making bequests is absolute, parents become 
 tyrannical. All laws hitherto adopted have approached 
 one or the other of these extremes, and the only equitable 
 course is to adjudicate between the conflicting interests, 
 exactly as if no relationship existed, and to determine 
 the rights to property by independent and disinterested 
 decisions, which is the method that is herein proposed. 
 This method of providing for successions is also con- 
 nected with the restriction of fortunes that may be 
 acquired by descent. Suppose, for instance, that a law 
 abolishing bequests and limiting inheritance, restricts 
 the total amount of wealth that can be inherited from a 
 single decedent to $300,000, and also restricts the amount 
 
400 KING MAMMON. 
 
 inheritable by a single person to $200,000. Such a law 
 applied to the preceding case, would, in the first place, 
 prevent the father from arbitrarily disinheriting his son. 
 All he could do at death would be to file his testimony 
 in relation to the estate, and recommend, if he desired, 
 that a distinction should be made between the son who 
 remained at home and the one who went away. Perhaps 
 he might desire that, of the $300,000 of inheritable wealth, 
 the son at home should receive $200,000, and the daughter 
 $100,000 ; but if, on hearing further testimony, the court 
 were convinced that these desires of the father were unjust, 
 it would peremptorily order the estate distributed in an- 
 other way, either making an equal division among the 
 children, or apportioning it, for example, by giving the 
 elder son $150,000, the daughter $100,000, and the 
 younger son $50,000. This personal distribution of the in- 
 heritable wealth having been made, the surplus of $200,- 
 ooo from the father's estate would go into the public treas- 
 uries. On the death of the mother, the same process would 
 be repeated. There could be no arbitrary or unreasonable 
 disinheritance, but on the other hand any serious neglect 
 of filial duty, or failure to assist in family wealth-produc- 
 tion, would subject the child to the just penalty of loss in 
 the inheritable portion of the estate. Ordinarily the dying 
 statement of the parent would be regarded as the best 
 evidence, but if heirs appealed from its statements, it 
 would not then be necessary, as now, to make a sham 
 contest on the absurd grounds of insanity and undue 
 influence, auction which is even now well established in 
 the courts, and which is transforming the whole nature of 
 probate decisions. By varying the amount of inheritable 
 wealth, unearned fortunes could be liberally or closely 
 limited, and held entirely within the power of the people, 
 according to their needs from time to time. Under such 
 a law, there would be no injustice to the heirs of wealthy 
 
KING MAMMON. 4<DI 
 
 parents, for they would receive far more wealth than they 
 usually earn, even if the inheritance were limited very 
 closely ; and in the distribution of property involved in 
 small estates among the families of the great body of the 
 people, there would be no real change from the present 
 laws, except that the decree of a court after the hearing 
 of testimony would supersede the declarations of the will 
 and the present decrees based upon it. 
 
 Will any candid reader after comparing the two systems 
 of distribution here described maintain that the restriction 
 of inheritance involves injustice to successors? Is not 
 that restriction, instead of injustice, a check upon the 
 tyrannical power of the dying man ; a check upon the 
 unreasonable expectations of heirs to receive great fortunes 
 without producing them ; a check upon the neglect of 
 parents by their offspring; and, finally, a check upon 
 that strong tendency toward the development of an aris- 
 tocracy that is now discoverable in this country ? 
 
 If we are to express sympathy for disinherited children, 
 let us remember the thousands and the millions who 
 come into the world, inheriting nothing but rags and 
 poverty sometimes not even a name. They are not 
 willful intruders upon our domains, for no desires of their 
 own placed them on earth, to harass by their hungry 
 cries, or anger by their bitter threats, its more fortunate 
 occupants. What shall we do with them ? Humanity is 
 not willing to follow Dean Swift's advice and serve roast 
 baby at the banquets of the privileged class, as the most 
 economical solution of the difficulty, but we can only 
 take our choice between a few methods of procedure. We 
 can destroy the outcasts ; we can make slaves of them ; 
 we can support them in idleness as beggars tramping 
 from door to door ; or we can do right and afford them a 
 fair opportunity to maintain their own existence by their 
 own labor. It is not charity, but merely justice to de- 
 26 
 
402 KING MAMMON. 
 
 clare this principle. As human beings, and not mere 
 brutes, we have no moral right to monopolize the oppor- 
 tunities of earth as a home, while other men suffer amidst 
 plenty in the hands of their associates because they are 
 debarred from the privilege of earning their own living. 
 ^Esop's fable of the "Dog in the Manger" is a story that 
 the disinherited are reading to us every day, for the wealth 
 of society is not consumed, and we can neither produce 
 more ourselves, nor will we let other men produce it for 
 their own consumption. 
 
 The solution of the land question would be embodied 
 in the control of inheritance, for, at the death of every 
 owner, all lands in his possession would have to pass 
 again through the hands of the public for redistribution 
 instead of being tied up as now, under a perpetual mo- 
 nopoly. All titles to land should date absolutely from the 
 last decree of the Court making a distribution at the death 
 of the owner, and the destruction of the ancient principle 
 of heredity in occupancy would, in the future, prevent 
 such absurd doctrines of property as are involved in the 
 famous lawsuit of Myra Clark Gaines against the city of 
 New Orleans, in the contest brought by the heirs of 
 Anneke Jans to recover the ground covered by Trinity 
 Church, and in the French Spoliation claims, under which 
 the descendants of people who lived two generations in 
 the past claim damages of their associates in the present, 
 because their ancestors were presumably injured by our 
 ancestors. The records of land titles, under such a 
 change, would become useless in a legal sense after the 
 death of every owner and the distribution of the property, 
 for the new title by the authority of the whole people in 
 existence in the nation would rightfully supersede all the 
 decrees of dead men, and become the only foundation 
 for a man's claim to possessions not immediately derived 
 from his own exertions. 
 
KING MAMMON. 403 
 
 The destruction of aristocracy is another great benefit 
 that would unquestionably arise from the proposed meas- 
 ures. It has already been indicated that inherited wealth 
 is the cause of the formation in society of a small privi- 
 leged class, whose members look down- with contempt 
 upon the herds of plebeians surrounding them, and who 
 imagine that in the mysterious future a special heaven 
 is set apart for people of their ancestry, education, and 
 culture. 
 
 Wealth aristocracy is really the only kind of aristocracy 
 that ever existed in the world. Hallam explained its 
 development when he wrote : 
 
 "But the essential distinction of ranks in France, per- 
 haps also in Spain and Lornbardy, was founded upon the 
 possession of land, or upon civil employment. The aris- 
 tocracy of wealth preceded that of birth, which indeed is 
 still chiefly dependent upon the other for its importance. 
 A Frank of large estate was styled a noble ; if he wasted 
 or was despoiled of his wealth, his descendants fell into 
 the mass of the people, and the new possessor became 
 noble in his stead. In these early ages, property did not 
 very frequently change hands and desert the families 
 who had long possessed it. They were noble by descent, 
 therefore, because they were rich by the same means. 
 Wealth gave them power, and power gave them pre-emi- 
 nence. . . . The possessors of beneficiary estates were 
 usually the richest and most conspicuous individuals in 
 the estate. Their sons now came to inherit this emi- 
 nence ; and as fiefs were either inalienable, or at least not 
 very frequently alienated, rich families were kept long in 
 sight ; and, whether engaged in public affairs, or living 
 with magnificence and hospitality at home, naturally 
 drew to themselves popular estimation." 
 
 Sir Henry S. Maine also pertinently alludes to the origin 
 of aristocracies in the following language, referring to 
 the ancient Celts : * 
 
 "Whatever else a chief is, he is before all things a rich 
 
404 KING MAMMON. 
 
 man, not, however, rich, as popular associates would 
 lead us to anticipate, in land, but in live stock in 
 flocks and herds, and before all things in oxen. In the 
 later Greek literature we find pride of birth identified 
 with pride in seven wealthy ancestors in succession. 
 You are well aware how rapidly and completely the aris- 
 tocracy of wealth assimilated itself in the Roman state to 
 the aristocracy of blood. In ancient Ireland, Bo-Aire 
 was literally the 'cow nobleman/ and he became an 
 aristocrat after getting rich by raising cattle." 
 
 Somewhere in his famous work on American institutions, 
 DeTocqueville alluded to the hatred with which our people 
 would regard the formation of an aristocracy. The time 
 has now come in which they will have to choose between 
 the continuance of an aristocracy in their midst and the 
 destruction of unlimited succession to wealth, which is 
 the cause of that aristocracy. It is absurd to speak of aris- 
 tocracy as though it were merely a thing of the future, 
 for it is already here except in name. Its members do 
 not assume titles, but titles do not constitute an aristocracy, 
 for it is merely a privileged class based upon the succes- 
 sion to unearned wealth and retaining the power that 
 inevitably accompanies that possession. Its political 
 and social privileges are secured indirectly instead of 
 being formulated in our laws, for wealth is the only basis 
 that any aristocracy ever had, the poverty-stricken noble- 
 man of Europe to-day being an insignificant creature fit 
 only to marry an American heiress. Viewed from any 
 standpoint, moral, political, or economical, the existence 
 of wealth-heredity is a curse. It debauches the men and 
 women of its own class with idle luxury and false ideas 
 of life. It embitters the poor by contrasts with their own 
 condition and the perpetual spectacle of the successors 
 to wealth obtaining something ^for nothing, and then 
 demanding a different morality for other human beings. 
 It fastens upon the community a swarm of parasites who 
 
KING MAMMON. 405 
 
 in their social inanities and tawdry shams of existence 
 are a greater nuisance than the equally worthless tramps 
 that afflict the lower portions of the social scale. By 
 luxurious existence, as an illustrative instance, these heirs 
 compel some human creature or creatures to labor for 
 two thousand days making a piano stool, when a more 
 just distribution of the wealth of society would have given 
 the workmen leisure to construct a large number of 
 cheaper piano stools for themselves. Aristocracy is de- 
 cay in the heart of society, and ultimately it weakens the 
 whole structure or permeates it with the nasty rottenness 
 discoverable in England among the idle sons of that no- 
 toriously profligate class of privileged heirs. The develop- 
 ment of the same things in our own country, where those 
 people who habitually mistake forms for realities, have 
 believed that all patriotic and wise legislation was com- 
 pleted by the adoption of our Constitution, is inevitably 
 leading us to that condition described by Carlyle in his 
 sorrowful, scornful words : 
 
 "We have an aristocracy of landed wealth and com- 
 mercial wealth, in whose hands lies the law-making and 
 the law-administering ; an aristocracy, rich, powerful, 
 long secure in its place. . . . Mammonism, as we have 
 said, at least works well ; this goes idle. Mammon- 
 ism has seized some portion of the message of Nature 
 to man ; and seizing that and following it, will seize 
 and appropriate more and more of Nature's message. 
 But Dilettantism has missed it wholly, ... A High Class 
 without duties to do is like a tree planted on precipices ; 
 from the roots of which all the earth has been crumbling. 
 Nature owns no man who is not a martyr withal. Is 
 there a man who pretends to live luxuriously housed up ; 
 screened from all work, want, danger, hardships, the 
 victory over which is what we name work ; he himself 
 to sit serene, amid down-bolsters and appliances, and 
 have all his work and battling done by other men ? And 
 such man calls himself a noble-man ? His fathers worked 
 
406 KING MAMMON. 
 
 for him, he says ; or successfully gambled for him : here 
 he sits ; professes not in sorrow but in pride, that he and his 
 have done no work time out of mind. It is the law of the 
 land, and it is thought to be the law of the universe, that 
 he, alone of recorded men, shall have no task laid on him, 
 except that of eating his cooked victuals and not flinging 
 himself out of the window. Once more I will say, there 
 was no stranger spectacle ever shown under this Sun." 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE RIGHT TO EARN A LIVING. 
 
 On the other hand be this conceded : Where thou findest a Lie that Is 
 oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished ; 
 they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think -well, meanwhile, In 
 what spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with headlong, selfish violence ; 
 but in cleanness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity . Thou 
 wouldst not replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice 
 of thy own were ; the parent of still other Lies ? IVliereby the latter end 
 of that biislness were worse than the beginning, THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 HAVING thus described some of the social benefits that 
 may be expected from the discontinuance of heredity in 
 its application to wealth, a fair consideration of the subject 
 demands that this treatise shall also discuss some of the 
 great evils of the present that it will not affect. In the 
 first place, the inevitable penalties that are inflicted upon 
 all men by their own ignorance can never be avoided 
 except by greater individual wisdom. It needs no argu- 
 ments to show that innumerable men are lazy, vicious, 
 improvident, and incompetent in the performance of their 
 life-labor, no matter whether they begin it poor or rich. 
 The unfairness often embodied in the discussion of these 
 features of human effort exists in the fact that one class 
 of writers habitually describe the idleness and profligacy 
 of the rich, while the opposing class persistently direct 
 
KING MAMMON. 407 
 
 attention to the improvidence or indolence of the poor, 
 each ignoring the truth that is embodied in the state- 
 ments of the other. Devils cannot be suddenly trans- 
 formed into angels by any process known to human in- 
 genuity, and the expectations of many reformers that great 
 immediate changes in the nature of society can be effected 
 by alterations in its institutions, which are only the out- 
 ward expression of the inner man, will inevitably be 
 doomed to disappointment. Notwithstanding this fact, 
 however, the inner man continually changes while his 
 social institutions remain established as they were by men 
 of different morality, thoughts, and feelings in the past. 
 Man outgrows his institutions, especially his laws, and 
 from this fact and not from the expectation of radically 
 improving the nature of society, are the changes proposed 
 which are herein advocated. The social discontent is a 
 dial revealing to any intelligent observer that the hands 
 of our great national timepiece are pointing at twelve 
 while the bell strikes ten, and the machinery needs change 
 and regulation. Our social institutions are not in accord 
 with the new sentiments of the people and the new indus- 
 trial conditions, and until they correspond with the present 
 forms of public thought, there will be trouble. After 
 they are made to agree with that thought, the moral tone 
 of society will not be really much better on account of 
 its change in the laws, for the real improvement is already 
 accomplished in the minds and hearts of the people ; but 
 the adoption of laws in accord with public sentiment will 
 again bring general satisfaction till men once more pro- 
 gress beyond the institutions that have been adopted, and 
 consider wrong what was formerly believed to be right. 
 
 No changes are here advocated with the expectation that 
 they will make poor men industrious, temperate, and 
 provident ; or that they will make of rich men those per- 
 fect human beings, who should always be invested with 
 
408 KING MAMMON. 
 
 power over their fellow-creatures, when that power 
 must be exercised. It is easy to depict folly and vice in 
 half-brutal human nature, but it is nobler to encourage 
 the aspirations of that nature to something better and 
 purer than its present condition. We do not need to 
 blame the rich for the condition of the poor, nor falsely 
 attribute all the sufferings of the unfortunate to their own 
 individual acts. Really beneficial changes will improve 
 all classes in their social relations, but let not the Mammon- 
 worshiper suppose that social benefit is to be measured 
 by money alone. It is to be found in health, peace, and 
 brotherly regard for our associates ; in happy industry and 
 the absence of a bitter hatred between distinct classes ; 
 in freedom from our inward burning in the presence 
 of injustice, and from the haunting fear that our associates 
 may at any moment be converted into destructive enemies. 
 
 It is not a question of how all men shall become rich. 
 They do not need to become rich, and a great nation 
 composed exclusively of rich men would be no happier 
 than the present people, even if its existence were possible. 
 We have too much talking and writing of money and 
 wealth, and too little consideration of human rights, and 
 opportunities, and liberty, and happiness. 
 
 When we view the social question as one not giving 
 the poor man wealth, but permitting him the right of an 
 opportunity to earn wealth, there will be less denunciation 
 of robbing the rich to divide wealth among the poor. 
 When we judge the condition of those possessing extreme 
 wealth by the standard of the owners' personal exertions 
 and efforts, as we do the condition of the poor man, it 
 will be discovered that abolishing wealth heredity robs no 
 human being of anything whatever. The object that has 
 been kept in view in preparing this consideration of the 
 social question, is not the advocacy of imaginary pana- 
 ceas, but the concentration of public thought upon those 
 
KING MAMMON. 409 
 
 features of our social system which belong to the decay- 
 ing work of the past, and which are not in consonance 
 with the spirit of the present. It is an effort to divert 
 public attention in this country from the fallacious ideas 
 of securing real progress by worshiping a Silver God 
 in the place of a Gold God, or hailing either Free Trade or 
 Tariff as the Redeemer of mankind. No deliverance from 
 danger can be obtained by humble reverence to Mam- 
 mon in any form. 
 
 The changes in the principles of inheritance that have 
 been proposed would only correct evil tendencies at one 
 end of the social scale by destroying the power and cor- 
 ruptive influence of great bodies of unearned wealth in 
 the hands of incompetent and irresponsible possessors, 
 who disturb by their existence in that capacity the equi- 
 librium of the whole social structure. The proletarian, 
 however, the man who has neither wealth nor employ- 
 ment, and who knows not where to find them, will not 
 find his condition improved by the mere destruction of 
 unearned fortunes ; for, if the earth be completely con- 
 trolled under private ownership, it matters little to the man 
 who has nothing and no place to lay his head, whether 
 the world he inhabits be in the possession of one man or 
 one million men, except, perhaps, that the first condition 
 might seem preferable, because he could then fight on an 
 equal footing for a right of use. In the second case, pre- 
 sented in the existing condition of society, he is helpless, 
 for he cannot fight the many, even if the alternative be 
 starvation. What, then, shall be done for the man for 
 whom society affords no labor in return for wages ; no 
 labor as an absolute slave in return for his living ; nor 
 even an opportunity to labor for himself and to maintain 
 his own existence ? With competition as the directing 
 principle of our social existence, it has been shown, and 
 the history of this century apparently proves, that indus- 
 
410 KING MAMMON. 
 
 trial depressions are absolutely inevitable, and that aggre- 
 gated man can no more prevent the cessation of activity 
 that results from an over-production than individual man 
 can prevent it under the same circumstances, and no, 
 more than he can prevent the loss of appetite when he 
 eats, or the sense of fatigue when he labors. No laws, 
 whatever they may accomplish in other respects, can 
 prevent the industrial depression so long as the competi- 
 tive system is maintained, and so long as society produces 
 more than it consumes, for the depression is essentially 
 the condition of a man who has made five pairs of boots 
 for his own use, and who objects to making more until he 
 needs them. 
 
 A complete socialism would evidently remove all the 
 objectionable features of this period of inactivity, and trans- 
 form it from a curse into a blessing, by the distribution of 
 leisure ; but complete socialism is not for the people who 
 now inhabit the United States, although faith in the 
 progress of human nature will indicate that it may be for 
 their remote descendants. All history proves that the 
 genuine socialistic feeling has been a slow growth from 
 the early brutis~h life of the human race a growth which 
 is going on now, and which will probably continue into 
 the future, so that our more humane successors, if no 
 catastrophes occur, or if the ascending progress be not 
 arrested, may be able to substitute the principle of assist- 
 ing one another in all things, for the good old savage 
 doctrine of fighting everything that is different from our- 
 selves, which we still believe in and practice to a consid- 
 erable extent. It is possible that more than half the 
 journey -to a nearly general and practicable socialism, 
 measuring time from the earliest records of written his- 
 tory, has already been accomplished by the civilized 
 nations ; for the savage spirit of warfare is disappearing, 
 and the equally savage spirit that delights in the competi- 
 
KING MAMMON. 41 I 
 
 tive industrial struggle will also disappear if the race 
 continues upward. Enthusiasts overrate the extent of 
 these changes, however, and by many the socialistic era 
 is seen near at hand, in spite of the ignorance, the selfish- 
 ness, the envy, and the greed which any observer not 
 endowed with the socialist's faith in weak human nature 
 can observe on every hand, even without striving to 
 uncover either his neighbor's faults or his own. All these 
 rapacious semi-savages of the present must be transformed 
 by the progress of new generations into animals more 
 genuinely humane and reasonable, into creatures more 
 brotherly and tolerant, before the ethics of a real socialism 
 will be so generally acknowledged as to make universal 
 co-operation among the people either acceptable or 
 feasible. 
 
 Possibly we might adopt socialistic forms, as Mexico 
 has adopted a republican form of government; but it 
 would be a sham socialism, just as Mexico's government 
 is a sham republic in its real nature a military despo- 
 tism corresponding to the institutions of Europe in the 
 Middle Ages. The mere existence in this nation of two 
 ancient clans at the present time, under the names of the 
 Roman Catholic Church and the American Protective 
 Association, with all the old clan feelings of intolerance 
 and opposition against one not of the same tribe, ought 
 to be a sufficient indication that the people of the present 
 have still far to travel in their moral progress before 
 reaching a fraternal future. The real nature of this antag- 
 onism is not at first perceived, and savage clan hostility 
 appears in the contest under the names of patriotism by 
 one and religion by the other. The zealous Roman Cath- 
 olics, formed into a clan by the efforts of the priesthood, 
 under the barbarous methods of the Middle Ages, all work 
 for one another and against everybody outside the clan, 
 just as their ancestors of European history did when the 
 
412 KING MAMMON. 
 
 clan organization bore a clan name and was headed by 
 chiefs instead of priests. The amount of clan-spirit and 
 subserviency to leadership is measured by the amount of 
 ignorance and consequent lack of development from the 
 brutal existence when it was morally wrong for any man 
 to kill his clansman, 1 but perfectly right to kill the mem- 
 ber of another clan, to steal his wife or deprive him of his 
 other property. The more intelligent Roman Catho- 
 lics, especially those who have been educated in the 
 public schools and accustomed to fraternal organizations, 
 institutions which merely bring them into contact with 
 other clan members, have retained comparatively little 
 of the narrow, intolerant spirit that once characterized all 
 men. The ignorant Catholic, unemancipated from the 
 savage doctrines of the past, thinks that it is his duty to 
 obey his clan-chief, in the form of the priest, to assist a 
 fellow-clansman, and to regard with distrust and opposi- 
 tion, if not with actual hatred, all who are not members 
 of his clan and consequently "Good Catholics." That 
 feeling is a relic of barbarism surviving amidst more 
 highly civilized social ideas, and the real corrective that 
 should be applied is not the organization of other clans, 
 but the civilizing influences of education and association. 
 The existence of this clan spirit among Roman Catholics 
 has recently evoked the same feeling among non-mem- 
 bers of that faith, who are now organized into another 
 ancient clan and bound into a brotherhood to make 
 political war on Catholics, thus fighting the devil with 
 fire and turning civilization backward. There is little 
 real encouragement in the present attitude of the Ameri- 
 
 1 " There was no brotherhood recognized by our savage forefathers 
 except actual consanguinity as a fact. If a man was not of kin to 
 another, there was nothing between them. He was an enemy to be 
 slain, or spoiled, or hated as much as the wild beasts upon which the 
 tribe made war. It would scarcely be too strong an assertion that the 
 dogs which followed the camp had more in common with it than the 
 tribesmen of an alien and unrelated tribe." SIR HENRY MAINE. 
 
KING MAMMON. 413 
 
 can Protective Association, for it embodies more of class 
 antagonism than of genuine patriotism in its present 
 ideas. If its members will devote less attention to keep- 
 ing Roman Catholics out of office, and more thought to 
 the real nature of the evils represented by the clannish 
 spirit of that church, they will discover that it is a condi- 
 tion which is not to be eradicated by forming other clans 
 of the same kind, but which may be gradually removed 
 by education and by firm, reasonable, and open warfare 
 against intolerance. We need to restrict the immigra- 
 tion of any people who imagine that this country exists 
 for their particular clan and not for the whole popula- 
 tion, and we need to extend the public-school system by 
 converting it into a more effective weapon against the 
 intolerance of all clans. Education in the public schools 
 should be compulsory upon rich and poor and upon the 
 children of all religious faiths. Isolation and ignorance 
 made the antagonism of clans in the past, and isolation 
 and a one-sided secular education, equivalent to igno- 
 rance, are making the religious clans of the present. 
 When young people are compelled to associate with one 
 another day after day in the schools, it is impossible for 
 religious fanaticism to completely poison their minds 
 with the teachings of a narrow intolerance. When they 
 hear all sides of every question, as one day they will in 
 the free schools of this country, the future population will 
 not be governed by the clan spirit, and not be controlled 
 by the ignorant reverence for leadership that dominated 
 the past and still influences the present. Intelligently 
 directed, the new movement in opposition to intolerance 
 may accomplish much good, but it must rise above the 
 narrow channel to which the present thought is confined. 
 In the meantime, what of the man who hungers in the 
 midst of plenty and starves while other human beings 
 smother in the wealth that society has produced ? Can his 
 
4H KING MAMMON. 
 
 condition be alleviated in spite of competition ? Pure 
 competition would insist that he shall die when he can 
 no longer exist by his own efforts, but we are now social- 
 ists to the extent of denying that extreme theory. If the 
 erring or unfortunate man be sick, we send him to the 
 public hospital ; if he become insane, we tenderly care for 
 him, although knowing his malady is incurable, instead 
 of taking the purely economical and apparently only 
 reasonable competitive course of putting him out of his 
 misery, out of our way, and out of existence at the same 
 time. Yet, in spite of these brotherly duties now imposed 
 upon society by public opinion, instead of the absolute 
 neglect of the sick and insane which once expressed the 
 social feelings of the race, men still contend that they 
 owe no duties to the fellow-creature who finds the natural 
 opportunities of earth monopolized under private owner- 
 ship, and for whom there exists no present need as a pro- 
 ducer in exchange for wages. In a period of depression, 
 when thousands tramp the country unable to find employ- 
 ment, we extend charity grudgingly or liberally to those 
 in actual want, and by private or public alms and indis- 
 criminate giving, we increase the evil instead of lessening 
 it, racking our brains meanwhile to know what shall be 
 done with such crowds of people without homes or useful 
 employment. The more rapidly improvement is made in 
 our industrial methods, the richer society becomes, and 
 the greater the production the longer will be the idle 
 period of consumption. Hence the curse of industrial 
 depression will become more frequent and the idle men 
 more numerous in such periods the faster we increase 
 our material prosperity, so long as our present methods 
 of industry remain in operation. Any hope for the future 
 that is based on the fallacy that the increased and increas- 
 ing production of wealth will itself solve the problem, 
 regardless of distribution and use, will prove as barren of 
 
KING MAMMON. 415 
 
 results as the conceptions of a man who would retain the 
 existing system of wealth control under absolute individ- 
 ual possession and then ameliorate the existence of human- 
 ity by converting the earth itself into magical stores of 
 food and clothing, perpetually reproduced as they are con- 
 sumed, without any effort whatever from human beings. 
 The unemployed man who suffers from that condition 
 does not need charity, but he does need justice. It may 
 be admitted in advance that he is not economically pru- 
 dent, and that in many cases his habits may have been 
 vicious. He may have been improvident, or, in an 
 industrial sense, incompetent. He may have been a 
 drunkard or even a criminal. Yet, notwithstanding the 
 previously bad record of many soldiers in the great Coxey 
 armies of the world, they are still entitled to justice. If 
 these defects in human nature, from which introspection 
 will teach us that no man is wholly free, must deprive a 
 human being of the privilege of existing by his own efforts, 
 let us, to be entirely consistent, destroy every man for 
 whom there exists no place in which he can labor either 
 for himself or in return for compensation from another 
 human being. Every man, no matter what his past his- 
 tory may have been, if we are not prepared to put him 
 out of existence for his misdeeds, has a moral right to an 
 opportunity to labor for his own subsistence. Along with 
 that right goes the corresponding duty of performing that 
 labor, and the social creed herein advocated would grant 
 the right and impose the duty on all society. The will- 
 fully idle rich and the willfully idle poor need to be com- 
 pelled to perform their share of the social labors, and the 
 man who is willing to work should not be forced to beg 
 or steal in order to exist, nor to support the others in idle- 
 ness. A high-spirited young laborer recently remarked 
 in discussing the scarcity of employment, that he would 
 commit highway robbery before he would beg, and where 
 
416 KING MAMMON. 
 
 the genuine manly feeling of independence exists, his 
 assertion will be applauded. 
 
 Self-preservation ultimately extinguishes all feelings of 
 right and wrong in the human breast, but we cannot plead 
 that stern doctrine in defense of the tyranny that is in- 
 flicted on those men who want work and approach starva- 
 tion in the midst of plenty. The characteristic feature of 
 the modern depression is a superabundance of wealth 
 and the existence of want in the midst of it. 
 
 Progress, if these views be correct, must be along the 
 lines of public improvements prudently conducted in 
 times of industrial depression, and the public funds for 
 this purpose should be derived so far as possible from the 
 vast estates that otherwise become dissipated by the 
 frivolities of the idle rich. It is better to control the sur- 
 plus wealth of society in this way than to permit it to 
 generate by family descent the teachings of Oscar Wilde 
 and his class in our midst. There are millions of miles 
 of muddy and dusty roads to reconstruct ; there are thou- 
 sands of acres of swamp lands to drain or fill ; there is 
 endless work of all kinds to do that is better for human 
 beings than that idleness wherein the devil in human 
 nature gains ascendency over its better instincts and feel- 
 ings. The gospel of useful employment needs to be 
 preached among both rich and poor. 
 
 What right have we as intelligent and fair-minded human 
 beings to blame the voluntary tramp for not working, 
 when we permit and even encourage the formation of 
 another class of tourist tramps, owing their existence to 
 unearned wealth, who, sooner or later in the line of de- 
 scent, consider work degrading, just as the tramp of the 
 barns and hedges considers it disagreeable? The truth 
 needs to be told over and over again, that he who works 
 not, whether pauper or prince, is a parasite upon society. 
 Holding a mere claim upon the results of other men's 
 
KING MAMMON. 417 
 
 efforts is not production, and the collection of William 
 W. Astor's immense rents from inherited lands and build- 
 ings, although legally permitted, is not morally or equi- 
 tably any more defensible than the doctrine of other 
 parasites who insist that the "world owes them a living," 
 by which they mean a living without labor. This senti- 
 ment is expressed without any hostility toward Mr. Astor, 
 or toward any other man who is in the possession of 
 inherited estates, but it is a truth that needs to be im- 
 pressed upon the minds of all who would honestly seek 
 better principles for the future than those which control 
 the present. No personal responsibility or blame attaches 
 to any man for existing laws, which are simply the result 
 of conditions that had the universal approval of preceding 
 generations. 
 
 There is already, in the discussion of the social question, 
 too much factional bitterness expressed by people who, 
 on one side, magnify the vices and folly of the "prole- 
 tarian " and denounce him for his often unreasonable de- 
 mands, and on the other by advocates of the poor as a 
 class who see in the rich man only a demon of avarice 
 and extortion. Rich and poor should be regarded, to 
 some extent, as slaves of the economical system they 
 have developed, borne down and crushed under their 
 accumulation, ready to destroy one another over its pos- 
 session, yet all actually consuming at the end of existence, 
 approximately equal quantities of the food and warmth 
 which are alone capable of consumption. Extremes of 
 wealth and poverty are both degrading in their nature. 
 The busy rich man becomes dwarfed in all conceptions 
 of life outside of the mere aggregation of capital. The 
 idle rich become voluptuous, profligate, or effeminate. 
 The busy poor are confined solely to the necessities of 
 working, eating, and sleeping without real mind-progress ; 
 and the idle poor become the mere brutes that infest vol- 
 27 
 
41 8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 untary trarnpdom in all parts of the world. Were not 
 some control of wealth distribution beneficial to all, it 
 could not be consistently advocated ; for there will be no 
 solution of the social problem from the habit of regarding 
 it solely as a matter of dollars and cents. 
 
 The evil conditions of the industrial depression consti- 
 tute the really dangerous problem that is before civiliza- 
 tion. In a period of industrial activity, the condition of 
 the laboring classes, while far from being the ideal of a 
 philanthropist, is still not unfortunate, and the comforts 
 they enjoy in this country are vastly greater than laborers 
 ever before experienced in any part of the world. The 
 familiar assertion that "the rich are becoming richer, and 
 the poor poorer, " in its literal sense is not true. While 
 civilization progresses, while the brutal savage becomes 
 humanized, and morally and materially develops into what 
 we of the present moment denominate civilized man, as 
 though that development were perfected, society contin- 
 ually becomes richer. In the early history of the race, 
 almost no wealth beyond a day's or a week's food, a 
 scanty supply of clothing, and a rude shelter exists for 
 future sustenance, and the small stock is communal prop- 
 erty. Man is a tool-making animal, however, and 
 thence comes wealth. In all his subsequent life, extend- 
 ing over century after century, his history is the record 
 of inventions and the economical and social changes 
 effected by them. In the nineteenth century he has 
 subdued the forces of nature by the contrivance of 
 machinery and improved methods of industry so that one 
 hour of his time accomplishes more productive results 
 than one hundred hours of his savage ancestor's labor. 
 Man is inevitably rich in the present, therefore, compared 
 with any period of his past existence, and the farther 
 back we go in the history of any nation the poorer its 
 people become ; for proceeding in that direction we reach, 
 
KING MAMMON. 419 
 
 sooner or later, a savage existence. The improvements 
 in material conditions within recent years have been 
 elaborately proved in statistical researches by writers like 
 Edward Atkinson, but a mere consideration of the nature 
 of social progress should teach anyone that the people of 
 every civilized nation are now richer than their more 
 savage ancestors were, which is equivalent to saying that 
 they, in general, have now better and more abundant 
 food, better clothes, better houses ; and, producing these 
 things more easily than their ancestors could, they also 
 possess more leisure from productive labor than more 
 ancient people had. When trees are transformed into 
 finished lumber entirely by machinery, we have better 
 houses for all classes than when the same work was done 
 by hand. By similar inventions applied to spinning and 
 weaving, all men of the present wear better clothes than 
 those of the past, and by improvements in agriculture 
 and transportation they have more abundant food. These 
 improvements have also given men more leisure by 
 shortening the hours of labor. Comparatively poor men 
 to-day enjoy luxuries that could not formerly be obtained 
 by the wealthy. l The luxury and profligacy of the rich 
 in Greece and Rome were in some forms astounding, yet 
 their houses lacked the ordinary convenience or apparent 
 necessity in this age, of a chimney or other flue. In 
 England, when America was discovered, the mansions 
 of the rich contained usually no glass windows, and the 
 houses of the poor were more uncomfortable than a 
 modern cow-stable. It is not necessary to produce 
 
 1 " In those times," says a writer about the year 1300, speaking of the 
 age of Frederick II., "the manners of the Italians were rude. A man 
 and his wife ate off the same plate. There were no wooden -handled 
 knives, nor more than one or two drinking cups in the house. Candles 
 of wax or tallow were unknown ; a servant held a torch during supper. 
 The clothes of the men were of leather unlined. The common people 
 ate flesh but three times a week. A small stock of coins seemed riches." 
 HENRY HALLAM. 
 
420 KING MAMMON. 
 
 statistics to show the increase of wealth among the people, 
 or to prove that all classes have gained in that respect. 
 Any man of forty or fifty years can remember when the 
 laborer's or the farmer's children in this country were 
 usually expected to go without shoes in pleasant weather, 
 unless upon some special occasion, while at the present 
 time a barefooted child would attract as much attention 
 as the sudden appearance of an extinct saurian. The 
 third chapter of Macaulay's " History of England, " which, 
 in real value, exceeds all the remainder of his works, 
 shows how the same changes went on in the British Isles, 
 providing wealth where poverty formerly existed, and de- 
 veloping new desires among the people for every want 
 which they became able to supply. 
 
 The truth appears to be that the aggregate wealth of 
 society, or its wealth proportioned to numbers, becomes 
 continually greater ; that as society becomes richer, some 
 of its individuals necessarily hold much larger fortunes 
 than before ; and that some of the poor remain the same 
 miserable rats of destitution which have been found in all 
 periods of the world's history under individual competi-- 
 tion. The average condition of the people becomes more 
 luxurious, and the wealthier among the founders of the 
 United States government did not live so comfortably as 
 many of the railroad employe's engaged in the strike of 
 1894. 
 
 Such historical facts ought to be candidly admitted 
 by all who earnestly desire a solution of the social prob- 
 lem, and not merely to excite class hostility. In the 
 agitation of the labor question, intense and unreasonable 
 selfishness has been displayed by the labor organizations 
 and by capitalists. Both have assumed that no other 
 human beings were concerned in the results of their in- 
 dustry, its continuance or cessation, than the employer and 
 his employes. The capitalist has discharged his laborers, 
 
KING MAMMON. 421 
 
 no matter what their numbers, summarily without regard 
 to the opportunities for other employment, or the unfor- 
 tunate condition in which large numbers of unemployed 
 men might be placed. The laborers are organized in 
 associations tyrannical and intolerant when they have 
 power, shutting other men out of opportunities to learn 
 their trades, dictating the management of the employer's 
 business whenever they have the opportunity of doing so, 
 and denying other men the right to labor when they will 
 not work. Both contestants are narrow in their views of 
 social life. The capitalist exhibits no patriotic sentiments, 
 and no desire for anything but the protection of bayonets, 
 while he controls his vast wealth to suit his own pleasure, 
 as though no other human being existed in the world. 
 The associated laborers of a particular trade want a mo- 
 nopoly of the employment in which they are engaged, with 
 all the profit it will afford paid over in the form of wages, 
 and they do not concern themselves about any other 
 social evils than those which they believe to relate to 
 their form of employment. 
 
 Their disputes with capitalists are on both sides purely 
 a selfish contest, in which, so far, has appeared no in- 
 dication of a real patriotic desire for social improve- 
 ment. The condition of the average laborer in the 
 United States is comfortable, except in a period of 
 depression, and, compared with the life of laborers in 
 the past, it is luxurious. He often saves no more 
 than laborers formerly did, but he lives more expen- 
 sively, and compared with the ancient laborer, he is an 
 aristocrat. The industrial depression is his only real 
 hardship, and its dangers would be greatly lessened if 
 he were a thrifty economist, like the capitalists whom he 
 sometimes denounces. He needs to know that "hard 
 times " in the modern industrial world are as inevitable as 
 winter or death, and a reasonable prudence should dictate 
 
422 KING MAMMON. 
 
 that he lessen some of his expenditures during the period 
 of prosperity in order that the inevitable stagnation may 
 not find him at the disadvantage of having neither work 
 nor money. 
 
 It is a stale truth, although one apparently not be- 
 lieved, that when man has completed his life journey, 
 his actual consumption of the products of human labor is 
 limited to what he ate and wore, whether he be a million- 
 aire or a beggar. In spite of this self-evident proposition, 
 neither millionaire nor beggar apparently accepts it as 
 truth, for the one clings to every dollar of his possessions as 
 though it were a part of his life, and the other often alludes 
 to the rich man as though he were some rapacious demon 
 who swallowed carloads of meat and bread at a mouth- 
 ful, or wore out a thousand suits of clothes in a single 
 day. James D. Fair at his death left an estate worth 
 nearly forty millions of dollars, but although he controlled 
 this immense fortune, he worked harder than many poor 
 men and consumed only a small quantity of food and. 
 clothing. Leaving out of account the idlers in society 
 among the tourist tramps of aristocracy, and discarding 
 the tramps of the corresponding ragged aristocracy at the 
 other end of the social scale, who are all parasites, the 
 wealth produced by social effort is consumed nearly 
 equally by the workers all along the line, from the wage- 
 worker to the active, energetic millionaire employer. 
 Rich men, who are endowed with a tremendous energy 
 and executive capacity, by their intense effort and skillful 
 management probably produce a thousand times what 
 they consume, and leave it in the world for the consump- 
 tion of other men when they die. The only wealth that 
 is consumed inequitably is that absorbed by the idle 
 people of the two aristocracies comprised in the voluntary 
 tramps and the useless successors to fortunes earned by 
 other people. 
 
KING MAMMON. 423 
 
 The real question, therefore, is not the improvement 
 of the laborer's condition during periods of activity, but 
 the protection of his interests in the period of depres- 
 sion, in which, if he be prudent, he will, first of all, com- 
 mence to assist himself by reserving in his own title a 
 portion of that surplus wealth that must, sooner or later, 
 cause the depression he deplores. If he rids society of 
 the two idle classes that have been described, he and 
 other workers then consume about equally, according to 
 their appetites and rough usage of clothes, all that is pro- 
 duced, either during the period of active work or in the 
 enforced idleness of the depression, so there is nothing in 
 the social condition for him to complain of, granting that 
 the two classes of idlers disappear, except the mere con- 
 trol of wealth in the form of the power to direct its use in 
 production. Considering wills and inheritance abolished, 
 it is emphatically true that the men who succeed under 
 competition are the very best industrial managers that 
 society can procure. They work like demons, they are 
 economical, prudent, sagacious, and the result is that such 
 a fund of wealth is accumulated by their successful man- 
 agement that society is nearly smothered in its own riches. 
 Society is wonderfully energetic in its production and 
 wonderfully idiotic in its theories of distribution and com- 
 sumption. As a means of production, men can do no 
 better than to continue under the leadership of the Cap- 
 tains of Industry, for they know how to command, and 
 upon the efficiency of the commander depends to a great 
 extent the success of the army ; but when it comes to the 
 other question of use and distribution, something else 
 besides the mere cumulative instinct of the business man 
 is needed. The mere capitalist concerns himself exclu- 
 sively with dollars, and other human aspirations are to 
 him nothing. He would hold his money absolutely in 
 his possession during life and cling to it beyond his death. 
 
424 KING MAMMON. 
 
 He would convert the whole earth into manufactured prod- 
 ucts and sell them to the inhabitants of Mars regardless 
 of his earthly companions if he could retain the proceeds 
 in the form of a fortune. The correct principle, there- 
 fore, to apply to this valuable servant but hard master, 
 is to give him a life-lease of his possessions and collect 
 the rent at the end of his existence, before he turns it 
 over to some person who has phenomenal capacities for 
 mismanagement, instead of the executive skill which led 
 to the accumulation of the fortune. 
 
 The provision of public employment in periods of de- 
 pression will involve some difficulties, but they are not in- 
 superable. The principal danger to avoid will be the with- 
 drawal of men from other avenues of employment in order 
 to enter the public service. To avoid this, wages would 
 have to be established at a lower figure than the usual 
 rates afforded by competitive industry, but still sufficient to 
 afford comfortable maintenance. The series of internal 
 improvements thus conducted should be in charge of the 
 national government, so that the work could be easily 
 distributed in a way to avoid the concentration of too many 
 of the unemployed class at any particular point. Con- 
 nected with these operations should be a compulsory 
 system of labor, whereby the voluntary tramp, who 
 thinks the world owes him a living without work, could 
 be compelled to do something more useful than inflicting 
 his presence upon a suffering public in all parts of the 
 country. The details of such a system need not be elabo- 
 rated, for necessarily they would be greatly the result of 
 experiment, but there is nothing apparently impossible in 
 such plans. The idea is not paternalism in government, 
 but it is simply justice to the individual and self-protec- 
 tion to society. If the unemployed do not work, society 
 feeds them in one form or another within its borders, 
 either in its jails, or hospitals, or free lunch-houses, or from 
 
KING MAMMON. 425 
 
 door to door, so that even if we take the cold-blooded 
 economical view of the problem, embodied in dollars and 
 cents, it is better that these men shall do useful labor of 
 some kind, and be out of that idleness which breeds mis- 
 chief, than to be tramping over the nation from house to 
 house, sinking into vice and crime, and humiliating the 
 pride of every true American in the institutions of his 
 country. 
 
 Toward these two results work for the idle rich, and 
 work for the idle poor with fair opportunities and justice 
 for all, the efforts embodied in this volume have been 
 directed. If the results of the future correspond with the 
 history of the past, conservatism will compel the progress 
 to be very slow ; but very gradual reform will not be det- 
 rimental if it be sufficiently rapid to prevent the col- 
 lision of belligerent factions. The lines of advance seem 
 at present to be in the direction of taxing inheritance. 1 
 In California a small tax was recently levied on collateral 
 inheritances, and the estate of Leland Stanford is now 
 engaged in litigation over its payment. At the legislative 
 session of the same State in 1895, a bill restricting in- 
 heritance to $500,000 was introduced, but was withdrawn 
 without consideration. The bar association of Illinois 
 has recommended that individual inheritance be limited 
 to $500,000. Judge Lyman Trumbull, while these pages 
 have been in preparation, has incorporated the idea of 
 limiting unearned wealth in the form of inheritance 
 among the new political doctrines that he desires to see 
 
 1 Both houses of the Illinois Legislature have passed a bill to tax in- 
 heritances above $20,000 I per cent. It is expected that the law may be 
 attacked in court on the ground of lack of uniformity. It makes a dis- 
 tinction between a person who inherits $20,000 and those who inherit 
 less or nothing. 
 
 It is finally settled that Jay Gould's estate foots up $73,224,567. The 
 sum of $6,000,000 in the form of inheritance tax was paid into the State 
 Treasury under protest. There seems to be one point at which a multi- 
 millionaire may be put in a corner and made to pay taxes San Francisco 
 Bulletin, June 18, 1895. 
 
426 KING MAMMON. 
 
 advocated. All these suggestions of a changing public 
 sentiment are less radical than those which have been 
 here presented, but all public movements proceed slowly, 
 and we must be content if the movement is in the right 
 direction. 
 
 Of many other subsidiary advances, connected to 
 some extent with the particular progress here advocated, 
 there is not room to speak. Whenever any material 
 change is made in our laws relating to property and em- 
 ployment with a view to improving social conditions, a 
 severe restriction of foreign immigration will have to 
 accompany the transformation. In this country, at the 
 present time, we cannot safely attempt to form a 
 social paradise of advanced civilization and then invite 
 invasion by the debased, the ignorant, the clannish, and 
 the unreasonable of other nations. The theory that this 
 country is an asylum for the oppressed of all nations is not 
 even moral in its real significance. What we need to do for 
 the oppressed of all nations is to keep them outside our 
 borders till our people can have time to breathe and settle 
 their family quarrels. One earnest, patriotic example of 
 progression in human rights and equality in this country 
 will be worth more to the oppressed of all nations as a 
 stimulus to their own efforts than all the doubtful asylums 
 we can now offer. In the recent Asiatic war, Japan did 
 China a valuable service by defeat, and the United States 
 will do the laboring classes of all countries the greatest 
 good by compelling them to stay away from this country 
 until more equitable social relations are established. 
 One country of the modern civilization, justly reformed 
 in its social institutions, is worth more to laboring human- 
 ity than all the asylums earth has to offer. 
 
 Education is the never-failing theme of reformers since 
 the days of Plato. The education of the saloons is the 
 form that is now most prominent in the United States, for 
 
KING MAMMON. 427 
 
 in number they exceed the school-houses. Compulsory 
 education in the school-houses and compulsory restriction 
 of education in the saloons by means of laws based on the 
 intelligent methods adopted in Scandinavia, eliminating 
 the profit of the saloon-keeper and the attractiveness of 
 the saloon, will be steps in the right direction. When the 
 state provides money for free education in the school, it 
 has the right to compel attendance in order that its future 
 citizen shall receive the benefit ; and when the education 
 of the saloon is contrary to public interest, the right of 
 control and repression should be promptly exercised. 
 Compulsory education of all, rich and poor, religious and 
 non-religious, in the public schools up to the age of fifteen 
 years would do more to remove the intolerance of ancient 
 clan-spirit from the nation, and to form a homogeneous 
 people free from aristocracy, prejudice, and the spirit of 
 A. P. A. -Catholicism than all other progress except the 
 destruction of heredity in wealth. 
 
 Coincident with this change should occur reformation 
 in the electoral privilege, in which intelligence, familiarity 
 with our language, and good character should be requisites 
 for voting. When the citizen is given the opportunity of 
 education he should be made to regard its possession as a 
 duty, and if he is mentally unfit to acquire a rudimentary 
 knowledge of the language, the government, the history,' 
 and the social spirit of his country, he should be debarred 
 from equal participation in its affairs. When women are 
 given the privilege of the ballot in the United States, or 
 even before that time, the progressive patriot will desire 
 to see a public examination held for all who desire the 
 privilege of voting, in which the applicants, whether 
 natives or foreigners, will furnish proofs not only of moral 
 character, but of their ability to comprehend the spirit 
 of American institutions. Ignorance and vice are bad 
 qualities in the voter, no matter whether the individual is 
 
428 KING MAMMON, 
 
 born in this country or out of it ; no matter whether 
 they are the attributes of a man or a woman. De Tocque- 
 ville would have been a more desirable American citizen 
 after a residence of one day in the United States than 
 some other Frenchmen after a residence of fifty years, 
 and he knew more about the real nature of our country 
 than nineteen-twentieths of our native inhabitants. Intel- 
 lect, education, and morality, and not birthplace, property, 
 or sex should be the tests for acquiring- the right to vote. 
 Such women as George Eliot or Annie Besant would im- 
 mediately make better citizens and better voters than four- 
 fifths of the present voting population of the United States. 
 Many native-born voters are so stupid and morally indif- 
 ferent to the duties of citizenship that their votes are in- 
 variably controlled by bribery in one form or another. It 
 is, of course, the old story of defective human nature, but 
 we need to move in the right direction to counteract the 
 evil, instead of falsely assuming that a man's birthplace 
 or the length of his residence in our country fits or un- 
 fits him for voting. A fool or a rascal born here will 
 never be fit to vote, and a fool or a rascal born in some 
 other country cannot be made into a good citizen by any 
 period of residence, however extended. 
 
 We need to set more value on morality and ability as 
 social factors, and less upon mere sex, origin, religion, or 
 heredity. It matters not whether the individual as a citi- 
 zen is a man or a woman, an American or a European, a 
 Jew, a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, or an Agnostic ; but it 
 does matter whether he displays mentally and morally 
 some conception of duty as an American citizen, and some 
 freedom from the savagely intolerant ideas that are the 
 bane of ignorance wherever found. 
 
 Polish the units of humanity by attrition during early 
 life in the public school, and rich and poor, native and 
 foreigner, Christian and Jew, Roman Catholic and Prot- 
 
KING MAMMON. 429 
 
 estant, rubbed together in natural contact, will lose many 
 of the hideous excrescences, in the forms of superstition, 
 bigotry, pride, arrogance, servility, and intolerance, so re- 
 pulsive to a noble mind. The sorts of social leaders and 
 of social laborers thus brought into the competition of the 
 public school on their own merits in early life, would 
 come out of it with a genuine appreciation of the divine 
 truth embodied in a warm-hearted Scotchman's sturdy 
 words, a truth despised by the universal tyranny of early 
 race existence, respecting nothing in God or man but 
 power ; a truth ignored in too many sermons of past and 
 present ; but still a truth honored by the noblest minds 
 to-day and destined to become the Spirit of the Future 
 heralded by Robert Burns when he wrote 
 
 " For a' that, and a' that, 
 
 Our toils obscure, and a' that ; 
 The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man's the gowd for a' that." 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE DUTY OF AN AMERICAN CITIZEN. 
 
 " Be brave, be jttst, be pure, be true in word and deed ; care not for your 
 enjoyment, care not for your life ; care only for what is right. So, and 
 not otherwise, it shall be well with yott. So the Maker of you has ordered, 
 whom you will disobey at your peril." JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 
 
 COINCIDENT with the celebration, in 1895, of the birthday 
 of this country, comes the expression of current thought 
 concerning public duty or patriotism, enunciated in towns 
 and cities by thousands of speakers, and appearing in in- 
 numerable newspapers prepared by thousands of writers, 
 as appropriate comment upon the national anniversary. 
 
430 KING MAMMON. 
 
 Nothing more clearly illustrates than do these recent 
 utterances on the Fourth of July the approaching conflict, 
 perpetually consummated among our ancestors, and per- 
 petually renewed by their descendants, between the 
 struggling forces of radically progressive thought and 
 those of conservatism. Two types of thought are ex- 
 pressed by the writers and speakers who have on this 
 day of patriotism considered the history and present 
 condition of the nation. These classes, each consoli- 
 dated for simplicity into the form of an individual, present 
 the picture of two men standing squarely back to back, 
 the one pointing to the past, the other to the future, each 
 telling of what he sees. 
 
 One is a conservative who honors with absurd enthusi- 
 asm the institutions of this country adopted one hundred 
 years ago ; who glorifies in servile reverence the names 
 of its early founders ; who shows in detail the growth of 
 the country in area, wealth, and population since the era 
 of the Revolution ; and who invokes for the future a con- 
 tinuance of the same political and social methods that 
 have been accepted since our government was instituted. 
 The other is a progressionist, looking steadfastly toward 
 the future, the same being in character and temperament, 
 though not in intellect, education, and moral development, 
 as the progressionist of preceding ages. He admits that 
 some triumphs over ignorance and poverty and tyranny 
 have already been accomplished by his forefathers, but 
 having ascertained these truths from a comprehensive 
 study of the past, he turns his face resolutely in the 
 opposite direction and says " Onward." 
 
 Thereafter will these two men, the one looking to the 
 past the other to the future, diverge in social and political 
 thought more and more widely, for men can never yield 
 implicit honor to the social institutions of their forefathers 
 if they would continue, as their ancestors have done, to 
 
KING MAMMON. 431 
 
 make such institutions better. It is well to understand 
 and appreciate the improvements that have been accom- 
 plished by the patriots of other ages, but when that ap- 
 preciation degenerates into a blind, unreasoning ancestor- 
 worship, impressing us with the belief that our civilization 
 is perfected, and that all social improvement has been 
 completed by the men who have preceded us, the habit 
 of conservatism becomes a degrading form of sentiment 
 not really higher or nobler than the fetich-faith of the 
 African savage. The men of the present who refuse to re- 
 main bound by the ideas and moral perceptions of other 
 human beings who preceded them on earth will separate 
 politically from the extreme conservatives and proceed to 
 develop new social principles and methods as the real 
 patriots of every other age have done. 
 
 Patriotic thought defined by the mind of the conserva- 
 tive, and patriotic thought as it exists in the mind of the 
 progressionist, are two very different things. The one 
 teaches that a true patriot will maintain unmodified all 
 the existing institutions of his country because they were 
 established by the patriots of a preceding era, and that 
 the quantity of patriotism in every man's nature is meas- 
 ured by the amount of unquestioning reverence he dis- 
 plays for those principles already established in the laws 
 of his country and handed down by preceding generations. 
 Conservative patriotism is mainly characterized by the 
 patriot's thinking and saying nothing about the equity of 
 social relations for three hundred and sixty-four days in the 
 year, and by his participating for one day in the stereo- 
 typed forms of celebrating the Fourth of July, with its fire- 
 crackers and flags, its patriotic songs and brass bands, 
 and its reading of a Declaration very appropriate to the 
 particular forms that tyranny assumed one hundred years 
 ago among a people dead and buried. Conservative 
 patriotism loudly declaims with great enthusiasm an ora- 
 
43 2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 tion replete with allusions to the really great men the 
 truly brave and patriotic spirits of the past whose pa- 
 triotism did not consist in devoutly admiring the patriotic 
 deeds performed in the century preceding their own ex- 
 istence, but in earnest efforts to improve the social insti- 
 tutions of their own day, and to ameliorate the condi- 
 tion of their contemporaries. Conservative patriotism 
 reveres heroes, but is not heroic. It vociferously ap- 
 plauds the past performance of public duty, but contains 
 no suggestion that we of the present have any higher 
 duties to perform than merely those of sitting still and 
 admiring the patriotism of dead men who were the pro- 
 gressionists of a preceding era. 
 
 Such conservative patriotism is the form that is enunci- 
 ated in the words of a famous American x who delivered 
 an address in Chicago on the natal day of the Republic to 
 twenty thousand people, when he said : 
 
 " In America no one is born to power ; no one is assured 
 of station or command except by his own worth or use- 
 fulness. It has long been demonstrated that the phi- 
 losophy of Jefferson is true Working men of 
 
 Chicago, let me adjure you to be faithful to the acts, tradi- 
 tions, and teachings of the fathers. Make their standard 
 of patriotism and duty your own." 
 
 It would be difficult to concentrate into brief utterance 
 a greater quantity of absurd thought than untrammeled 
 investigation will expose in these assertions, honestly 
 uttered by the eminent speaker, and honestly approved 
 by a very large portion of the people in this country. Its 
 expression is an illustration of the force of habit, custom, 
 and the perpetual tendency to accept sound for sense. 
 In the first place, as these pages have shown, many 
 people are continually born in America to "power, station, 
 
 i William McKinley. 
 
KING MAMMON. 433 
 
 and command " by succession to wealth, and only the 
 stupid subservience to the survival of ancient ideas pre- 
 vents us from seeing the wrong condition, just as the 
 same subservience once prevented men from seeing the 
 wrong in succession to political supremacy. In the 
 second place, it is undeniable that men succeed every 
 day to wealth-positions to which no "worth or useful- 
 ness" of their own entitles them. In the third place, 
 we are now and have long been conducting our social 
 and political institutions directly contrary to Thomas 
 Jefferson's philosophy, 1 for we are governed, not by our 
 own constitution, but by the constitution which men 
 made one hundred years ago, tying the hands of future 
 generations, meanwhile, with ropes of straw so that the 
 constitution might not be changed readily to accommo- 
 date the interests of those who should live under it. We 
 are also permitting dead men to control the living in a 
 way that is directly opposed to the spirit of Jefferson's 
 teachings, although the application of his philosophy made 
 in this volume may not have occurred to him in that 
 form when he attacked the privilege of entail. In the 
 fourth place, the student of history can only say, God 
 pity those people who remain faithful to the "acts, 
 traditions, and teachings" of their fathers, and who 
 " make their standard of patriotism and duty " the gauge 
 with which to measure the moral conceptions of the 
 present or the future. Do the American people desire the 
 civilization of the Chinese and the Hindus, stagnated 
 under the worship of their ancestors ? Do they approve 
 to-day the standard of patriotism and duty by which the 
 men who established this government recognized slavery 
 in the Constitution, preached its divinity in the pulpit, 
 defended its morality in the forum, declared its justice 
 on the bench, and developed its degrading iniquities in 
 
 1 See Appendix. 
 28 
 
434 KING MAMMON. 
 
 their own homes ? If men of preceding centuries had 
 accepted standards of the past as gauges for the present, 
 the Anglo-Saxon race would now be tribes of naked 
 savages entertaining no higher sentiments of social duty 
 than those which filled the minds of the American Indians 
 whom we have displaced. 
 
 The people of every age must develop their own 
 morality and they will inevitably do so in spite of absurd 
 directions to make the defective standards of preceding 
 ages their own. 
 
 The same imperfect conception of the real condition 
 of the American people is displayed by a recent writer " 
 for a periodical intended for circulation among the culti- 
 vated minds of America, presumably the leaders of 
 advanced thought. This author reflects the complacent 
 conservative sentiment that our ancestors have accom- 
 plished about all the progress of which human beings are 
 capable, by the assertions expressed in the following sen- 
 tences : 
 
 "The fact that we have no royal family, no hereditary 
 nobility, in this country, is one that we delight to pro- 
 claim as the chief glory of our political system. Here 
 all citizens have equal rights and privileges, incentives 
 and opportunities." 
 
 Such expressions illustrate the almost universal habit 
 of accepting forms for realities and of repeating common 
 assertions without independent thought and investigation. 
 Because the wealthy families of this country, already 
 well established as an aristocracy under the principle of 
 succession to wealth-privilege, do not bear the mere 
 empty and useless titles of Prince, Duke, or Marquis, 
 this writer, like the ostrich with his head covered, believes 
 that sufficient protection from the danger of privileged 
 
 1 Henry King in Chautauquan for July, 1895. 
 
KING MAMMON. 435 
 
 classes is guaranteed. When we remember that the 
 power of controlling unearned wealth has been the basis 
 of every aristocracy that ever existed, and that it is not 
 the title but the wealth which has always given to aris- 
 tocracy its power, its tyranny, its luxury, and its vice, 
 the complacent assertion here quoted becomes an uninten- 
 tional insult to the intelligence and patriotism of the 
 progressive American. The people of this country do 
 not have equal rights and privileges, incentives and 
 opportunities, and they never can possess them till the 
 ancient savage doctrine of succession to the position of 
 owner is abolished as well as the other custom of succes- 
 sion to direct political power. 
 
 The people may not generally acknowledge these truths 
 at present, but they will be admitted sooner or later, for the 
 unearned and unmerited power involved in succession 
 to fortunes is doomed by rapidly developing moral senti- 
 ment. The intense conservatives who desire nothing 
 but the retention of existing conditions, and who dread 
 any kind of a change, may derive temporary consolation 
 from reading of Mark Twain's visit to the court of King 
 Arthur, where the Yankee, fearful that his auditors "might 
 put this and that together," remarks of a rash assertion 
 made by him in the presence of some conservatives of 
 the fifth century as follows : 
 
 "I worried over that heedless blunder for an hour and 
 called myself a great many hard names, meantime. But 
 finally it occurred to me, all of a sudden, that these 
 animals didn't reason ; that they never put this and that 
 together ; that all their talk showed that they didn't know 
 a discrepancy when they saw it. I was at rest then. " 
 
 The man who dreads rapid public action in the present 
 day may also rest, for there is much doubt whether the 
 animals of the present era will know a discrepancy when 
 
436 KING MAMMON. 
 
 they see it, or abandon their contests over the different 
 kinds of money to be used, or the exact amount of tariff 
 to be levied, long enough to thoughtfully consider real 
 conditions. Most of them are not searching for dis- 
 crepancies but are looking for money. According to 
 Mark's philosophy, deduced from his association with 
 King Arthur's people, 
 
 " Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to 
 observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his 
 people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts 
 worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should 
 have proposed to divert them by reason and argument 
 would have had a long contract on his hands. For 
 instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men 
 without title and a long pedigree, whether they had 
 great natural gifts or acquirements or hadn't, were 
 creatures of no more consideration than so many animals, 
 bugs and insects ; whereas, I had inherited the idea that 
 human daws, who can consent to masquerade in the 
 peacock shams of inherited dignity and unearned titles, 
 are of no good but to be laughed at." 
 
 And, for another instance, a large portion of the exist- 
 ing people of this country (of which portion the Connecti- 
 cut Yankee who went to King Arthur's court may be one) 
 have inherited the idea that American institutions are 
 greatly superior to European institutions because our 
 aristocracy has no titles nor heraldry, and only a short 
 pedigree corresponding with the age of the country. They 
 have inherited the idea that the title of a duke and not the 
 power of controlling a dukedom constitutes aristocratic 
 privilege. Having this absurd conception of class pri- 
 vilege, the people of the present worship the shadows of 
 equal rights instead of their substance, and are only a little 
 more rational than the grown-up children who worshiped 
 v 'peacock-shams" in the days of King Arthur. The man 
 who attempts to disturb the comfortable habits of con- 
 
KING MAMMON. 437 
 
 servatism in either the ninth or the nineteenth century 
 has, indeed, taken a large contract on his hands. 
 
 Yet it is well to inquire what sort of men patriots have 
 been and what the real patriotism of the present must be. 
 In English history we have Hampden, Pym, and Crom- 
 well, men whose memories are now cherished as those 
 of true friends to their country. Yet their patriotic deeds 
 consisted of active and persistent opposition to the exist- 
 ing political and social institutions of the age in which 
 they lived. Their creed was the " gospel of discontent," 
 and they were progressionists who bitterly contested the 
 divine right of barbarous institutions to repress human 
 liberty. They were not the conservative patriots of their 
 period, for these were represented by the adherents of 
 tyrannical Charles I. 
 
 Before the American Revolution, Washington and 
 Jefferson were subjects of the English king, yet their 
 patriotism was not displayed in the conservation of exist- 
 ing laws and social institutions. They were rebels 
 turned against what they believed to be tyranny in the 
 established laws and government of their country. 
 Instead of looking backward at the deeds of Pym and 
 Hampden, they looked forward to emancipation from 
 such tyranny as had escaped the attacks of the earlier 
 patriots. Abraham Lincoln as a citizen of this country 
 did not raise his eyes in blind adulation to the institu- 
 tions formulated by Washington and Jefferson, and did 
 not accept the Constitution of the United States as 
 infallibly correct in all its provisions because other 
 patriots wrote it. He did not refuse to see the evils of 
 slavery because many of the early patriots were slave- 
 owners, and because the Constitution established sla- 
 very as one condition of "free" institutions. Abraham 
 Lincoln never went through this nation proclaiming con- 
 servative patriotism in the style of the customary oration 
 
43 8 KING MAMMON. 
 
 on the Fourth of July, with his eyes bandaged so that he 
 might not see the actual evils by which he was sur- 
 rounded. 
 
 The conservative teachers define patriotism as rever- 
 ence for existing institutions, and they would enshrine 
 for worship every stale and worn-out tradition and cus- 
 tom of a barbarous ancestry. Conservatism has preached 
 lies in all ages of the world, and has taught from the 
 theory that the law of progress was suspended when the 
 conservative reached earth. The true patriot has never 
 been a conservative. The real love of country has 
 always been a sincere desire in the minds and hearts of 
 its foremost thinkers for more liberty, greater equality, 
 and better morality ; and, furthermore, for that departure 
 from the precedents established by our more savage 
 ancestry, by which those improvements can alone be 
 effected. Patriotism means progress, and the real tyrants 
 of every age are the men who in the name of country 
 inflict the barbaric institutions of preceding ages upon 
 other men whose development of mind and moral sense 
 has prepared them for better laws and customs, and who 
 instinctively revolt against institutions that to their im- 
 proved perceptions seem no longer endurable. The real 
 patriot is inevitably cursed and reviled during the era in 
 which he lives, and honored by succeeding generations ; 
 for he is a man somewhat in advance of his associates 
 in moral thought, detested by undeveloped contempo- 
 raries who do not understand him, but honored, sooner 
 or later, by all who in the moral progress of society 
 eventually reach the stage to which he had previously 
 arrived. Jefferson was execrated by many of his asso- 
 ciates. The memory of Thomas Paine is still a horror 
 to the timorous mind of the religious conservative, yet 
 Paine was as sturdy a patriot as Jefferson, though his 
 nature was not so nobly pure and tolerant. Abraham 
 
KING MAMMON. 439 
 
 Lincoln was bitterly denounced and finally assassinated. 
 In the future progress of this nation, therefore, let not 
 the true patriot the man whose memory will be revered 
 one hundred years later suppose that his declarations 
 will be received with the honor their merit deserves. 
 Such tribute of contemporary appreciation and praise for 
 the genuinely patriotic thought has never been accorded 
 in history. Cromwell was hated by the Cavaliers, Wash- 
 ington by the Tories, Lincoln by the Copperheads ; and 
 the patriots of the future will also suffer denunciation by 
 the same kind of people, a century behind the progress- 
 ionists in their moral and social instincts. There can be 
 no patriotism without fighting social wrongs, and the 
 patriot must be content to wait for future generations to 
 unanimously approve his motives. 
 
 If then we would be patriots equal in spirit if not in 
 ability to the great men who have preceded us, let us 
 do even as they did. Let us not gaze in servile admira- 
 tion at the patriotic work already established in social 
 institutions, but let us inquire what improvement 
 remains to be accomplished by our efforts. So long as 
 men shall exist there will still remain new work for 
 patriots to do, for perfection is not obtainable on earth. 
 Human institutions were not perfected when we arrived on 
 earth ; they will not be perfect when we shall have gone. 
 The real duty of the patriotic citizen is not to blindly con- 
 tend for the maintenance of established institutions, but to 
 thoughtfully and earnestly inquire whether those institu- 
 tions are equitable, and to lend his assistance in their mod- 
 ification according to the moral light that may have been 
 given to him, for only thus can he work in consonance with 
 the universal law of progress. Every habit and custom 
 of the human race (of which our laws and governments 
 are merely the formal enunciation, all depending upon 
 the intellectual and moral condition of the social units) 
 
440 KING MAMMON. 
 
 has been developed and modified or even abandoned as 
 the race progressed toward its destiny. Social growth 
 toward its highest point, whatever that may be, is not 
 suspended during the lives of those people now in exist- 
 ence. It is probable that social institutions one thousand 
 years in the future will be morally and materially as 
 different from our own as ours are different from those 
 maintained by the barbarous Europeans of the eighth 
 century. We must be progressionists, therefore, whether 
 we desire progress or not, and it is better to wisely assist 
 the onward journey than to foolishly obstruct it. 
 
 It will be observed by the thoughtful reader, who has 
 followed the argument thus far, that the essential prin- 
 ciples which the author desires to establish are two : the 
 right of every human being to a fair opportunity to labor 
 in order that he may produce his own sustenance, and 
 the wrong involved in all claims to wealth that are not 
 based upon some form of productive effort. These prin- 
 ciples involve the denunciation of bequests, inheritance, 
 and aristocracies, whether the latter be found among 
 parasitical princes or paupers, for there is little difference 
 in the moral responsibility of demanding something for 
 nothing, whether that thing be obtained by the wheat, 
 gold, or card gambler ; the idle successor to some other 
 man's accumulations transferred at his death ; the chival- 
 rous highwayman who makes a traveler surrender his 
 purse and returns his watch with a bow ; or the nuisance 
 of our lowest levels, who will beg before he will steal, 
 and steal before he will work. All are parasites upon 
 the social body, and the only real difference between the 
 various classes is that some of them excite intense 
 irritation, while others do not. Yet the actual harm to 
 society that is inflicted by the existence of the tramp or 
 the highwayman is probably much less than the injury 
 inflicted by a great gambler in the stock exchange, or by 
 
KING MAMMON. 44! 
 
 one of the remarkable young men who in England in- 
 herit much idle time with their fortunes, and use it in 
 studying Oscar Wildeism. 
 
 Every argument that can be made for the existing sys- 
 tem of wealth succession must be founded either upon the 
 absolutely unjust and selfish desire of prolonging our con- 
 trol of wealth beyond the grave, or upon the theory that 
 human beings are entitled to obtain something for nothing 
 by receiving what they never produced, and thereafter 
 retaining that result of other people's exertions in the form 
 of a power and possession that confers upon the successors, 
 to the extent of its value, a species of domination over 
 their fellow-creatures', and especially over those who hap- 
 pen to be poorer. Men may not be immediately prepared 
 to admit the injustice involved in both of these claims, but 
 it is only a matter of time and careful consideration when 
 our existing relics of tyranny in the ancient family govern- 
 ment will be entirely abandoned. Under the light of 
 modern ideas, the absurdity of wealth succession, like the 
 other absurdity of political succession, becomes so conspic- 
 uous when thoroughly exposed, that it is certain to give 
 way before the same moral influences that destroyed the 
 tyranny of the other condition. 
 
 At the present time, society is involved in the inconsist- 
 ency of crediting the heir with all the desirable remnants 
 of his ancestor's existence, and not of charging him with 
 its undesirable features. The heir succeeds to all the net 
 wealth of the decedent, but if the latter should unfortu- 
 nately leave behind him merely a parcel of debts, society 
 does not require the successor to pay them. Now it 
 would seem to any reasonable being, that if the heir has 
 any moral right to succeed to his ancestor's wealth, he is 
 also morally bound to pay that ancestor's debts, no matter 
 whether the latter leaves any property or not. There can 
 be no such thing as a right without a corresponding duty, 
 
44 2 KING MAMMON. 
 
 according to our present conception of such things. Simi- 
 larly, if the testator has any right to bequeath his wealth 
 to a survivor, and that survivor the right to retain the be- 
 quest, there also exists the duty on the part of the testa- 
 tor of bequeathing his debts to somebody when he dies, 
 and the duty on the part of the legatee of promptly pay- 
 ing them. If we are to continue to have successors in 
 their application to wealth, let them be "universal succes- 
 sors " in even a more rigid sense than existed under the 
 Roman laws; for, if the life of every individual is to be 
 continued in the person of a successor, let us continue 
 responsibilities as well as privileges. Nature, expressing 
 eternal truth, is more consistent in her laws of heredity, 
 for in them the bad and the good go down honestly to- 
 gether, and the condition is not the gigantic lie that men 
 have established in their laws. 
 
 Political action in the United States is rapidly taking the 
 form of an investigation of the causes that underlie indus- 
 trial depressions and the attendant social evils of which 
 men are now complaining. Because many of these evils 
 are as old as history the superficial observer, who so fre- 
 quently asserts that "human nature is the same as it was 
 two thousand years ago,'' dismisses the whole problem 
 as one merely involving a selfish agitation, not seeing the 
 development of moral sentiment that is involved in the 
 social discontent. Millions of human beings have suffered 
 and even starved in preceding ages under the beneficent 
 rule of our ancestors which deprived them continually of 
 rights that we now consider sacred. At every step the 
 unsuccessful man was oppressed or neglected under the 
 universal customs of savage or barbarous life, without 
 any conception existing in the minds of his associates that 
 they owed to their unfortunate fellow-creature any duty 
 except, perhaps, that of not actually murdering him. The 
 wrong of not affording men fair opportunities has always 
 
KING MAMMON. 443 
 
 existed, but in the minds of our ancestors that wrong was 
 right, and humanity of the present only dimly perceives 
 evil in conditions which men of the future will denounce 
 as bitterly as we now condemn slavery. 
 
 In their moral perceptions the men of the present are 
 like the blind from birth who receive sight for the first time, 
 their physician being the progress of the race. They are 
 greatly dazzled by the unfamiliar rays, and many whose 
 eyes are not yet opened, still contend that any social pro- 
 vision by which the unfortunates may be permitted to 
 earn a living instead of starving in the good, old barbarous 
 fashion, is contrary to a correct theory of government and 
 tending toward what they call paternalism. Others per- 
 ceive the injustice by which men are denied the right to 
 earn their own living in the midst of abundant social 
 wealth, but the flood of light has confused them to such 
 an extent that they are likely to destroy the social fabric 
 in their efforts to remodel it. Changes in the money of 
 the nation are demanded, and people rank themselves as 
 silver men, gold men, or even paper men, as though a 
 myriad of additional yardsticks or that many more pound 
 weights would really tend to equalize human opportuni- 
 ties or affect the rights of men in the planet they inhabit. 
 The people of the United States have served Mammon so 
 assiduously that money in their minds seems to be the 
 cause of wealth instead of its result, and men made for 
 coin, instead of coin for men. All political problems are 
 worthy of consideration, but it should be evident to any 
 person who studies the problems discussed in this book, 
 that no matter how the people of the United States change 
 their tariff, whether they absolutely bar out foreign prod- 
 ducts or admit them free ; no matter whether they have 
 for money, gold, silver, or paper ; whether they have all of 
 these materials in unlimited quantities, so that every in- 
 dustrious man with opportunities could soon obtain a mil- 
 
444 KING MAMMON. 
 
 lion of depreciated dollars, or whether they abolish all 
 kinds of money, and exchange their productions without it ; 
 no matter whether they bar out every foreigner from our 
 shores, or admit all, including the Chinese ; no matter 
 whether the people own the railroads, or the corporations 
 own the people ; the truth still remains that men will 
 continue to come into the world and go out of it by birth 
 and death. Some children under the present system will 
 be born to inherit wealth which exists independently of its 
 mere representative and measure in the form of money, 
 and others will inherit rags and poverty and their own 
 two hands, for the use of which no adequate opportunity 
 is given to them to carve out a noble human existence. 
 Wealth and opportunities for making wealth become mo- 
 nopolized by human greed, the inevitable over-production 
 of insane human effort is succeeded by the equally inev- 
 itable cessation from activity in the industrial depression, 
 and the world is filled with discontent because men have 
 imagined that human happiness is to be secured by the 
 mere accumulation of those things we eat and wear. The 
 new progress of society will not be accomplished by de- 
 manding more tariff, more trade, more money, or more 
 wealth in any form that a mysterious creative power has 
 conferred upon weak humanity, for there exists no balm 
 for social irritation except in thinking more and more of 
 human rights and less of human wealth. Internecine 
 war to the death is before our people unless they attain to 
 higher ideals than the worship of gold and silver and pa- 
 per money. 
 
 To justly conceive the real nature of society, let us 
 average the ages of all people now existing in this nation, 
 and consider that they were all born at the same instant 
 and are now thirty-five years of age. Consolidate all the 
 ancestors of these people, who have lived since the dawn 
 of civilization, into a single individual who died just 
 
KING MAMMON. 445 
 
 thirty-five years ago, when we, his children, as average 
 existing humanity came into the world. As children of 
 the dead past, we are naturally and justly equal heirs, 
 but to some the dying father has given wealth and lux- 
 ury ; to others of his children, rags and poverty. With 
 this general view of human existence on earth as the 
 basis, now make a proper allowance for individual efforts 
 and the real nature of the human family, and decide, my 
 reader, before you close this volume, whether, in your 
 inmost heart, you feel that social institutions of to-day 
 are just. In its final analysis, the question for every 
 man to determine is whether Adam, as the historically 
 first occupant and owner of earth, had any right to leave 
 that property to "his heirs and assigns forever," in the 
 language of our deeds, those heirs being embodied in 
 only a few of his many descendants, or whether all the 
 people from time to time own it equally, so far as mere 
 succession is concerned, as entirely distinct from produc- 
 tive effort. Silly as such a question will appear to intelli- 
 gent men in that form, they have really been for years 
 approving the doctrine that Adam and his delegated 
 representatives, or other successors, have justly a perpet- 
 ual control of this planet, no matter what inconvenience 
 its other inhabitants may suffer on account of such claims 
 transmitted by heredity. 
 
 Will the people of the United States carefully consider 
 the real nature of property and the doctrine of heredity 
 that is now applied to it? Will they lead the world in 
 another declaration of independence, and establish the 
 principle that there shall no longer exist heredity of 
 wealth, as their forefathers declared that there should no 
 longer exist heredity of political privilege and power ? 
 Will they firmly establish the later doctrines of the rights 
 of man that are being trampled under the feet of King 
 Mammon, or will they permit the continuance in this 
 
446 KING MAMMON. 
 
 country of institutions that can only produce among us 
 the same disheartening, God-forsaken condition of cor- 
 rupt aristocracy and class rule that have existed in every 
 European nation ? The people must answer from their 
 moral consciousness ; if they remain tyrants at heart, we 
 shall still retain tyranny in our social institutions. Our 
 people can do justice if they will. 
 
 One stern fact should be impressed on all, be they rich 
 or poor : The only possible result of a continuance in 
 our present wealth conditions, with their tendency toward 
 the creation of hereditary aristocracy, will be civil war, 
 the destruction of lives and property, and the wasteful 
 and inequitable distribution by the sacrifices to our war- 
 god of the vast fortunes that are now being accumulated. 
 Such has been the usual record of history, and we can- 
 not comfort ourselves with the hope that similar conditions 
 will not produce that result in our own country. We 
 cannot maintain a perpetual lie in our social institutions 
 and expect good to come of it ; for, sooner or later, 
 nature sets things right again by a spasm of self-adjust- 
 ment. If there be no change in the nature of our laws, 
 to afford a relief for the rapidly developing bitterness of 
 discontent, it may burst forth any day under the excite- 
 ment of special aggravation, into the calamity of violent 
 revolution, attended by the tramp of armed men, the 
 flames of burning houses, the din of battle, the horrors of 
 life-destruction, and all the fearful privations and suffer- 
 ing that appal the stoutest heart when every man's 
 neighbor becomes his deadly foe. With renewed busi- 
 ness activity, which now seems to be rapidly developing, 
 there will be less discontent among the people, but the 
 nation will suffer other industrial depressions in the 
 future. Meanwhile, let us consider. Is it not wiser and 
 better and safer to leave to all children who may succeed 
 us in the control of our earthly home, the heritage of 
 
KING MAMMON. 447 
 
 just, and therefore safe government, wherein all may 
 enjoy fair opportunities and equal rights, with the assur- 
 ance, so far as men can provide, of a comfortable and 
 happy existence, than it is to bestow upon a few of them 
 the heritage of great wealth, with all its manifold dan- 
 gers, and upon the others a heritage of poverty and sub- 
 jection that may convert them into destructive social 
 wolves clutching at the throats of their keepers ? The 
 people of this nation have for thirty years been absorbed 
 in sordid devotions ; will they now think of social wel- 
 fare and of duty to their fellow-creatures ? 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THE annexed extract from a letter addressed to James 
 Madison embodies the substance of Thomas Jefferson's 
 ideas upon the rights of men in society. In that period, 
 even his daring mind feared to announce them in public 
 lest they should be misunderstood, and they were usually 
 expressed in private letters to his friends. It is a curious 
 commentary on popular intelligence that the doctrines of 
 Jefferson, whom we all justly revere, should bear a very 
 close resemblance to the ideas of the modern anarchists 
 whom we so bitterly condemn. Although Jefferson's 
 nature was one of the purest and grandest ever given to 
 man, no anarchist that ever threw a bomb hated tyranny 
 more than the famous author of the Declaration. It is 
 quite possible too, that if his attempts to free this country 
 from English domination had been less successful, he 
 would have died exactly as anarchists do now. It is one 
 thing to be a rebel against society ; it is another thing to 
 be a successful rebel. 
 
 CAN ONE GENERATION BIND ANOTHER ? 
 
 PARIS, SEPTEMBER 6, 1789. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 The question whether one generation of men has a 
 right to bind another, seems never to have been started 
 either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a 
 question of such consequences as not only to merit de- 
 cision, but place also among the fundamental principles 
 of every government. The course of reflection in which 
 we are immersed here, on the elementary principles of 
 29 449 
 
450 APPENDIX. 
 
 society, has presented this question to my mind ; and 
 that no such obligation can be so transmitted, I think 
 very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which 
 I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in 
 usufruct to the living ; that the dead have neither powers 
 nor rights over it. The portion occupied by any indi- 
 vidual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and 
 reverts to the society. If the society has formed no rules 
 for the appropriation of its lands in severalty, it will be 
 taken by the first occupants, and these will generally be 
 the wife and children of the decedent. If they have 
 formed rules of appropriation, those rules may give it to 
 the wife and children, or to some one of them, or to the 
 legatee of the deceased. So they may give it to his 
 creditors. But the child, the legatee or creditor, takes it, 
 not by natural right, but by a law of the society of which 
 he is a member, and to which he is subject. Then, no 
 man can, by natural right, oblige the lands he occupied, 
 or the persons who succeed him in that occupation, to the 
 payment of debts contracted by him. For if he could, he 
 might during his own life eat up the usufruct of the 
 lands for several generations to come ; and then the lands 
 would belong to the dead, and not to the living, which 
 is the reverse of our principle. 
 
 What is true of every member of the society, individ- 
 ually, is true of them all collectively ; since the rights of 
 the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of 
 the individuals. To keep our ideas clear when applying 
 them to a multitude, let us suppose a whole generation 
 of men to be born on the same day, to attain mature age 
 on the same day, and to die on the same day, leaving a 
 succeeding generation in the moment of attaining their 
 mature age, all together. Let the ripe age be supposed 
 of twenty-one years, and their period of life thirty-four 
 years more, that being the average term given by the 
 bills of mortality to persons of twenty-one years of age. 
 Each successive generation would, in this way, come 
 and go off the stage at a fixed moment, as individuals do 
 now. Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these 
 generations during its course, fully and in its own right. 
 The second generation receives it clear of the debts and 
 incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so 
 
APPENDIX. 451 
 
 on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the 
 earth would belong to the dead and not to the living 
 generation. Then, no generation can contract debts 
 greater than may be paid during the course of its own 
 existence. At twenty-one years of age, they may bind 
 themselves and their lands for thirty-four years to come ; 
 at twenty-two, for thirty-three ; at twenty-three for 
 thirty-two ; and at fifty-four, for one year only ; because 
 these are the terms of life which remain to them at the 
 respective epochs. But a material difference must be 
 noted between the succession of an individual and that 
 of a whole generation. Individuals are part only of a 
 society, subject to the laws of the whole. These laws 
 may appropriate the portion of land occupied by a de- 
 cedent, to his creditor rather than to any other, or to his 
 child, on condition he satisfies the creditor. But when 
 a whole generation, that is, the whole society, dies, as 
 in the case we have supposed, and another generation 
 or society succeeds, this forms a whole, and there is no 
 superior who can give their territory to a third society, 
 who may have lent money to their predecessors, be- 
 yond their faculties of paying. 
 
 What is true of generations succeeding one another at 
 fixed epochs, as has been supposed for clearer conception, 
 is true for those renewed daily, as in the actual course of 
 nature. As a majority of the contracting generation will 
 continue in being thirty-four years, and a new majority 
 will then come into possession, the former may extend 
 their engagement to that term, and no longer. The con- 
 clusion, then, is, that neither the representatives of a 
 nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly 
 engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own 
 time, that is to say, within thirty-four years from the date 
 of the engagement. 
 
 To render this conclusion palpable, suppose that Louis 
 the XIV and XV had contracted debts in the name of the 
 French nation, to the amount of ten thousand milliards, 
 and that the whole had been contracted in Holland. The 
 interest of this sum would be five hundred milliards, which 
 is the whole rent-roll or net proceeds of the territory of 
 France. Must the present generation of men have retired 
 from the territory in which nature produces them, and cede 
 
452 APPENDIX. 
 
 it to the Dutch creditors ? No ; they have the same rights 
 over the soil on which they are produced, as the preced- 
 ing generations had. They derive these rights not from 
 them, but from nature. They, then, and their soil are, 
 by nature, clear of the debts of their predecessors. To 
 present this in another point of view, suppose Louis XV 
 and his contemporary generation had said to the money- 
 lenders of Holland, "Give us money, that we may eat, 
 drink, and be merry in our day ; and on condition you will 
 demand no interest till the end of thirty-four years, you 
 shall then, forever after, receive an annual interest of fif- 
 teen percent." The money is lent on these conditions, is 
 divided among the people, eaten, drunk, and squandered. 
 Would the present generation be obliged to apply the prod- 
 uce of the earth and of their labor, to replace their dissi- 
 pation ? Not at all. 
 
 I suppose that the received opinion, that the public debts 
 of one generation devolve on the next, has been suggested 
 by our seeing, habitually, in private life, that he who suc- 
 ceeds to lands is required to pay the debts of his predeces- 
 sor; without considering that the requisition is municipal 
 only, not moral ; flowing from the will of the society, which 
 has found it convenient to appropriate the lands of a dece- 
 dent on the condition of a payment of his debts : but that 
 between society and society, or generation and generation, 
 there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of 
 nature. 
 
 The interest of the national debt of France being, in fact, 
 but a two-thousandth part of its rent-roll, the payment of 
 it is practicable enough ; and so becomes a question merely 
 of honor or of expediency. But with respect to future debts, 
 would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in 
 the constitution they are forming, that neither the legisla- 
 ture nor the nation itself, can validly contract more debt 
 than they may pay within their own age, or within the term 
 of thirty-four years ? And that all future contracts shall be 
 deemed void, as to what shall remain unpaid at the end of 
 thirty-four years from their date? This would put the 
 lenders, and the borrowers also, on their guard. By reduc- 
 ing, too, the faculty of borrowing within its natural limits, 
 it would bridle the spirit of war, to which too free a course 
 has been procured by the inattention of moneylenders to 
 
APPENDIX. 453 
 
 this law of nature, that succeeding generations are not 
 responsible for the preceding. 
 
 On similar ground it may be proved, that no society can 
 make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. 
 The earth belongs always to the living generation : they 
 may manage it, then, and what proceeds from it, as they 
 please, during their usufruct. They are masters, too, of 
 their own persons, and consequently may govern them as 
 they please. But persons and property make the sum of 
 the objects of government. The constitution and the laws 
 of their predecessors are extinguished then, in their natural 
 course, with those whose will gave them being. This 
 could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no 
 longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, natu- 
 rally expires at the end of thirty-four years. If it be en- 
 forced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right. 
 It may be said, that the succeeding generation exercising, 
 in fact, the power of repeal, this leaves them as free as if 
 the constitution or law had been expressly limited to thirty- 
 four years only. In the first place, this objection admits 
 the right, in proposing an equivalent. But the power of 
 repeal is not an equivalent. It might be, indeed, if every 
 form of government were so perfectly contrived, that the 
 will of the majority could always be obtained, fairly and 
 without impediment. But this is true of no form. The 
 people cannot assemble themselves ; their representation 
 is unequal and vicious. Various checks are opposed to 
 every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of 
 the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal inter- 
 ests lead them astray from the general interests of their 
 constituents ; and other impediments arise, so as to prove 
 to every practical man that a law of limited duration is 
 much more manageable than one which needs a repeal. 
 
 This principle, that the earth belongs to the living and 
 not to the dead, is of very extensive application and con- 
 sequences in every country, and most especially in 
 France. It enters into the resolution of the questions, 
 whether the nation may change the descent of lands holden 
 in tail ; whether they may change the appropriation of 
 lands given anciently to the church, to hospitals, colleges, 
 orders of chivalry, and otherwise in perpetuity ; whether 
 they may abolish the charges and privileges attached on 
 
454 APPENDIX. 
 
 lands, including the whole catalogue, ecclesiastical and 
 feudal ; it goes to hereditary offices, authorities, and juris- 
 dictions, to hereditary orders, distinctions, and appella- 
 tions, to perpetual monopolies in commerce, the arts or 
 sciences, with a long train of et celeras; and it renders the 
 question of reimbursement a question of generosity and 
 not of right. In all these cases, the legislature of the day 
 could authorize such appropriations and establishments 
 for their own time, but no longer ; and the present holders, 
 even where they or their ancestors have purchased, are in 
 the case of bona fida purchasers of what the seller had no 
 right to convey. ^ * * * 
 
 THE END. 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 A Stirring Drama of liter-limes. 
 
 flary 
 Holland Lee 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 MARGARET SALISBURY. 
 
 The setting of the story is vivid and picturesque, bridg- 
 ing the period of our Civil war, and its touches upon New 
 England and Virginia life are full of local color, provincial 
 phraseology and dramatic power. The tale opens with a 
 description of Three Oaks, a fine Virginia estate, the fate 
 of whose owners is curiously interwoven with the three 
 gigantic trees from which the place receives its name. 
 Mrs. Lee strikes the note of heredity firmly, and the most 
 tragic complication of her plot hinges upon the unlawful 
 use of hypnotic power. The world of books is far too 
 poor in well-told stories of our war, to accord anything 
 less than enthusiastic welcome to this latest comer, so full 
 of rich detail and striking scenes both North and South, 
 and so winning in the even, impartial temper with which 
 the sad struggles of the great Rebellion are incidentally 
 set forth. It will attract that great army of readers which 
 turns to books for amusement and distraction. 
 
 " Margaret Salisbury " is the brave and loyal heroine of a 
 stirring drama of the Civil War. Her love story is a sad one 
 and long in telling, but it affords the author opportunity to intro- 
 duce pictures of Southern life in anti-bellum days and some 
 startling episodes of army times. The sympathetic interest of 
 the reader will be aroused by a succession of unusual incidents. 
 Public Opinion, Washington, D. C. 
 
 North and South, their people and principles, are the text of 
 the book. The slavery question is treated from an unprejudiced 
 standpoint. The Negro, Yankee and Southern characters are 
 lifelike under skilful moulding. As a love story it is pure, sim- 
 ple, strong and pathetic. The American Newsman, New York 
 City. 
 
 " Margaret Salisbury " is a story of the war, and is charm- 
 ingly told. Its heroes are of the real kind who believe what 
 they profess because they were born to believe so. The story is 
 enlivened by a vein of rather exquisite humor and toned up by 
 clean, pure and healthy sentiment, altogether furnishing a most 
 entertaining tale of heroic times. Kansas City Journal. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
A Bundle of New Books. 
 
 Isfeui Booh of Social Chought. JUST PUBLISHED. 
 
 B.O. Flower 
 
 The Social 
 Factors at Work 
 in the Ascent of 
 Man 
 
 Rev. 
 
 Minot J. 
 
 Savage 
 
 A New World, a 
 New God, a New 
 Humanity 
 
 The New Relig- 
 ious Thinking 
 deals only with 
 Verities 
 
 Price, paper, 25 cents ; doth, $1.00. 
 
 The New Time : A Plea for the Union of 
 the floral Forces for Practical Progress. 
 
 This new work, by the author of " Civilization's In- 
 ferno," deals with practical methods for the reform of 
 specific social evils. The writer does not bind together a 
 mere bundle of social speculations, that would seem to 
 many to have only a remote and abstract relevance to 
 everyday life. He deals with facts within every one's 
 knowledge. * The New Time " brings its matter di- 
 rectly home to every man's bosom and business follow- 
 ing Bacon's prescription. 
 
 It is published especially to meet the wants of those 
 who wish to apply themselves to and interest their friends 
 in the various branches of educational and social effort 
 comprised in the platform of the National Union for Prac- 
 tical Progress ; but, from its wide sweep of all the factors 
 in the social problem, it will also serve to introduce many 
 readers to a general consideration of the newer social 
 thinking. 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $r.oo. 
 
 The Irrepressible Conflict between 
 Two World=Theories. 
 
 Five lectures dealing with Christianity and evolutionary 
 thought, to which is added " The Inevitable Surrender of 
 Orthodoxy." By the famous Unitarian divine, advanced 
 thinker and author of "Psychics: Facts and Theories." 
 Mr. Savage stands in the van of the progress of moral, 
 humane and rational ideas of human society and religion, 
 which must be inextricably commingled in the new think- 
 ing, and a stronger word for moral and intellectual free- 
 dom has never been written than " The Irrepressible 
 Conflict." We are now going through the greatest revo- 
 lution of thought the world has ever seen. It means 
 nothing less than a new universe, a new God, a new man, 
 a new destiny. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 Fiction : Social, Economic anb Reformatiue. 
 
 E. Stillman 
 Doubleday 
 
 A story of the 
 Struggles of 
 Honest Industry 
 under Present 
 Day Conditions. 
 
 Charles S. 
 Daniel 
 
 A. Story of the 
 Transformation 
 j)f the Slums 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.25. 
 
 JUST PLAIN FOLKS. 
 
 A novel for the industrial millions, illustrating two stu- 
 pendous facts : 
 
 1. The bounty and goodness of nature. 
 
 2. The misery resulting from unjust social conditions 
 which enable the acquirer of wealth to degenerate in 
 luxury and idleness, and the wealth producer to slave him- 
 self to death, haunted by an ever-present fear of starva- 
 tion when not actually driven to vice or begging. It is an 
 exceedingly interesting book, simply and affectingly told, 
 while there is a vast deal of the philosophy of commun- 
 ism in the moralizing of Old Bat. All persons interested in 
 wholesome fiction, and who also desire to understand the 
 conditions of honest industry and society-made vice, 
 should read this admirable story. 
 
 Price, paper, 5^ ents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 AI : A Social Vision. 
 
 One of the most ingenious, unique and thought-provoking 
 stories of the present generation. It is a social vision, and in 
 many respects the most noteworthy of the many remarkable 
 dreams called forth by the general unrest and intellectual activ- 
 ity of the present generation. But unlike most social dreams 
 appearing since the famous " Utopia " of Sir Thomas More, 
 this book has distinctive qualities which will commend it to 
 many readers who take, as yet, little interest in the vital social 
 problems of the hour. A quiet humor pervades the whole vol- 
 ume which is most delightful. 
 
 The brotherhood of man and various sociological and philan- 
 thropic ideas, such as the establishment of a college settlement 
 and the social regeneration of Old Philadelphia, are a few of 
 the topics discussed in " Ai," a novel by Charles Daniel, whc 
 calls it " A Social Vision." It is alternately grave and gay; ark 
 the intellectual freshness reminds one constantly of Edward 
 Everett Hale's stories, with which " Ai " has much in common. 
 This is a clever book, and, what is much more important, one 
 whose influence is for good. Public Ledger. 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 A Sequel to "Looking Bachuiarb." 
 
 Rabbi 
 Solomon 
 Schindler 
 
 Civilization 
 under National- 
 ism in the 
 Twenty-Second 
 Century 
 
 YOUNG WEST. 
 
 Price, cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cents. 
 
 The author of " Looking Backward" and others did a 
 good work in introducing to the general reader many ideas 
 which had been discussed for a long time by the best 
 scientific writers of our day, but which were and are un- 
 fortunately removed from popular sympathy through the 
 strictly scientific character of the literary vehicles in which 
 they appeared. But the author of " Looking Backward," 
 probably on account of the limited compass of his book, 
 has not given in detail a description of all the social con- 
 ditions of the brighter future which is to witness the tri- 
 umph of altruism. He has merely whetted the appetite of 
 the reader, but he has not satified his hunger. Young 
 West" (the son of Julian West) will indirectly answer all 
 these questions. Describing his own eventful career from 
 his first awakening to consciousness to his age of three- 
 score and ten, the hero of the book will picture life in its 
 various phases, as it will be acted out by a citizen of the 
 United States of America in the twenty-second century. 
 
 The book is intended primarily to answer the many 
 questions which are asked about the practical workings of 
 nationalism and socialism. 
 
 A Stirring Story of the TJIar. 
 
 Helen H. 
 Gardener 
 
 Price, cloth, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cents. 
 AN UNOFFICIAL PATRIOT. 
 
 This is a story of the Civil War, but it is the first story 
 of its kind that has appeared in our literature. It deals 
 with a phase of the war entirely new in fiction. It is a 
 departure from all Helen Gardener's previous stories, and 
 is perhaps the strongest piece of work she has produced. 
 The Boston Home Journal says : "Is in many ways the 
 most remarkable historical novel of the Civil War which 
 has yet appeared. The story is filled with strong dramatic 
 incidents, and there is a bit of charming romance. Mrs. 
 Gardener has produced a book that will take very high 
 rank in the historical literature of the War of the Rebellion ; 
 for although presented in the form of a novel, its historical 
 value cannot be questioned." 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 Che Latest Social Uision. 
 
 Byron A. 
 Brooks 
 
 Richmond, Va. 
 Star 
 
 Chicago Times 
 
 Review of 
 Reviews 
 
 Lyman Abbott's 
 Paper, The 
 Outlook 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 Banner 
 
 Price, paper, 50 cents ; cloth, $1.25. 
 EARTH REVISITED. 
 
 The New Utopia, " Earth Revisited," is the latest social 
 vision, and in many respects the most charming work 
 of this character which has ever appeared. In it we see 
 the people, the state and the church under true civilization, 
 and the new psychology is introduced in such a manned 
 as to interest students of psychical research. 
 
 Here are a few press opinions : 
 
 " As a story, it is very interesting." 
 
 " Worthy of consideration for its study of the social and other 
 questions involved." 
 
 " The story is written in an autobiographical form and pic- 
 tures the social, industrial, religious and educational America of 
 1992. As a work of fiction the volume embodies in a fanciful 
 way a view expressed in the closing words : ' To live is to love 
 and to labor. There is no death.' The style is clear and direct." 
 
 " Mr. Brooks is an earnest man. He has written a religio- 
 philosophical novel of life in the coming century. The hero of 
 this story has lived the life of the average man and at length, 
 when he finds himself dying, he wishes that he might have a 
 chance to live his life over. The wish is granted and he is born 
 again on the earth a century later. Social and scientific and 
 religious evolution have in a hundred years contrived to make an 
 almost irrecognizable world of it. Human nature is changed ; 
 altruism is fully realized; worship has become service of man; 
 the struggle for wealth and social rank has ended. Mr. Brooks' 
 book is worth reading by all sincere people, and in particular 
 by those interested in Christian socialism and applied Christian- 
 ity." 
 
 " If you should happen to pick up Byron A. Brooks' ' Earth 
 Revisited ' and read the first chapter, the chances are that you 
 would follow the story on to the end, even if you had other 
 things on hand spoiling for your attention. Summed up, 
 ' Earth Revisited ' is a wild though delightful story, short 
 enough to be filled from end to end with throbbing interest and 
 long enough to fully round off the things that are introduced." 
 
 For sale by all newsdealers, or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
From the press of the Arena Publishing Company. 
 
 A Bibelot for Booh-Louers. 
 
 Walter 
 Blackburn 
 
 Harte 
 
 " Motley's the 
 only wear." 
 
 Price in handsome cloth, $1.25 
 
 MEDITATIONS IN MOTLEY: A Bundle of 
 Papers Imbued with the Sobriety of Midnight. 
 
 This is a bundle of papers written in a vein of delightful 
 humor, and filled with those sober and fantastic specula- 
 tions that appeal to all those lovers of literature who have 
 discovered among the older humorists some of the most 
 agreeable philosophers of their time. 
 
 " Meditations in Motley" is a book for the fireside or 
 outdoors ; for gray days or sunshine ; for solitude or 
 society. It will take its place among those books handy 
 at one's elbow which one instinctively reaches for as one 
 sinks into a cosy armchair in a snug corner and abandons 
 one's self to the seductions of meditation and firelight 
 and perhaps a pipe of tobacco. 
 
 The papers are on the most various topics, and throw 
 light on literature and social questions without touching 
 directly the essay in criticism or sociology. " Meditations 
 in Motley " is a book that tumbles out of every category. 
 It is a book of its own kind as all who know the writer's 
 work can anticipate. The style of the essays reminds the 
 reader occasionally of the older English humorists, but 
 there is added a suggestion of French sparkle and wit and 
 vivacity and lightness of touch. 
 
 Che History of a iBreat Social Experiment. 
 
 Dr. John T. 
 Codman 
 
 The History of a 
 Great Social and 
 Intellectual 
 Awakening 
 
 Price in handsome cloth, $2.00. 
 
 BROOK FARM. Memoirs, Historic and Per- 
 sonal. 
 
 A complete history of the famous Brook Farm experi- 
 ment has been one of those books which demanded writ- 
 ing to complete the most interesting era of American 
 literature and social thought, and at last we have a volume 
 that covers the whole ground adequately Dr. John 
 Thomas Codman's " Brook Farm : Memoirs, Historic and 
 Personal." Dr. Codman is one of the few surviving 
 members of the Brook Farm community, and his work 
 has, therefore, the special value of intimate personal 
 knowledge of the inner workings of the scheme and of the 
 character and personalities of the group of famous men 
 who were interested in it. The book will have an im- 
 mediate claim upon the interest of all students of American, 
 literature, and of social thought everywhere. 
 
 For sale by all newsdealer s< or sent postpaid by 
 
 Arena Publishing Co., Boston, Mass. 
 
YB 06840 
 
 
 
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 xzMl*. 
 
 887319 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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