IN THE FIRE OF THE HEART
 
 IN THE FIRE OF 
 THE HEART 
 
 BY 
 RALPH WALDO TRINE 
 
 Author of 
 
 In Tune with the Infinite, What All the World's 
 
 a-Seeking, Character-Building 
 
 Thought Power, etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 McCLURE, PHILLIPS <£• CO. 
 
 MCMVI
 
 Copyright, 1906, by 
 McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 This little volume deals with certain facts and forces in 
 connection with both our individual lives and our common 
 social life. It deals with the latter first. It will have 
 principally three types of readers. The first, that large 
 class of open and fair-minded people who love justice and 
 honour, who believe in the great principle of equal oppor- 
 tunities for all and special privileges for none, who believe 
 that one great class of people are not to be used simply as 
 a grist for another class, who believe that there is nothing 
 just, or wise, or safe, much less common-sense, in per- 
 mitting a social and political state where there are little 
 groups of men and families grown so enormously rich 
 and powerful that their very riches and privileges and 
 excesses become a menace to their own welfare, as well as 
 to that of the people at large and to the very State itself. 
 
 The second, tliat class, perhaps comparatively small, 
 possibly already much larger than we realize, whose mem- 
 bers have been so long schooled in privilege on their own 
 part, or from their ancestors, or from their associations, 
 that they come actually to believe that they in some way 
 are better than the rest of the people, that somehow it was, 
 or is intended, that they be sort of custodians of the welfare 
 
 v
 
 vi Preface 
 
 of oilier and less favoured people, and that they become 
 dispensers of bounty to them in the degree that it will not 
 affect their own accumxdations, or ease and proprietary 
 standing. By them the book will be strongly criticised, but 
 their criticisms will be honest, the same as their pre- 
 judices are honest. 
 
 The third will be the class — though the readers of the 
 book from this class will be very small — who by fair 
 means and fold, chiefly foul, and dishonest, and devilish, 
 manipulate to get the great natural properties that should 
 be owned by and administered for the welfare of all the 
 people into their own hands for their own personal and 
 excessive enrichment, who debauch and poison as they go, 
 who are criminals in practice and many at heart, though 
 eminently "respectable" and smooth and suave and 
 plausible in their methods, and ivho strike out vigorously 
 and viciously at everything that would present truthfully 
 and impartially the forces that are at work in our social 
 state, and that would seem to disturb or menace or curtail 
 their privileges and their methods; who own a portion 
 of the public press for the direct and deliberate promotion 
 of their ends, or who in one form or another influence or 
 control sufficiently some other portions — though not all 
 by any means — as to have it belittle and belie any and 
 all attempts to present true conditions and feasible remedies 
 to the people. The book will be criticised by them, con- 
 demned even as being something given to exaggerating 
 sonditions or dangerous to the social order — there are 
 numbers of expressions and forms that form sort of
 
 Preface vii 
 
 stock phrases that are always ready and at pens point 
 for this purpose. The major portions of the criticisms 
 and statements from those of this class will be falsehoods — 
 deliberate and vicious — and the interesting part of it is 
 that they know they are such, even while they are uttering 
 them. 
 
 It perchance may not be unwise or amiss to say that 
 those of the class first mentioned, as well as that portion 
 of the public press that is not owned or controlled, or 
 whose policies are not shaped by, or their cues taken from, 
 the forces of greed and privilege and public debauchery, 
 but that stand true to the higher manhood and for the 
 higher public welfare, while they will agree with and 
 sanction the general purpose of the little book, will not 
 agree with the author in all particulars. Nor is such 
 to be expected. 
 
 Again, it may not be amiss to say by way of foreword, 
 that on the part of those or rather many, in the Academic 
 world, the little book will not be accepted, on the ground 
 of its being not "scientific," or "scholarly" {or orthodox ?) 
 but "popular." The author wishes to acknowledge at once 
 this criticism, and to state most frankly that he has not 
 aimed to make it academic, or technical, or orthodox, 
 but that he has deliberately aimed to make it a simple, 
 concrete little volume along the lines with which it deals, 
 "popular," in the sense of its being for that splendid 
 great "common people" that has made this, as well as 
 every nation of importance and power in the world's 
 history, and upon whose welfare all depends; and who,
 
 viii Preface 
 
 moreover, are now getting such awakenings, as well as 
 facts and forces into their possession, as will yet save 
 and redeem the nation, and with it their own great 
 common interests. 
 
 Sunnybrae Farm 
 Croton Landing, N. Y. 
 November 1, 1906 
 
 College professors moan because no one reads their bloodless and 
 wordy books on economics, but economics when dealt with straight 
 from the shoulder by men who know the facts is to-day more popular 
 than the most popular fiction, more interesting than the most inter- 
 esting travels, better selling than any other form of literature. This 
 is significant. The American people are gathering facts for future 
 action. They want to be absolutely sure before they act, and then, 
 get from under. — From a Current Exchange.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. With the People : A Revelation 3 
 
 II. The Conditions that Hold among Us 16 
 
 III. As Time Deals with Nations 83 
 
 IV. As to Government 92 
 
 V. A Great People's Movement 100 
 
 VI. Public Utilities for the Public Good 117 
 
 VII. Labour and Its Uniting Power 188 
 
 VIII. Agencies Whereby We Shall Secure 
 
 the People's Greatest Good 235 
 
 IX. The Great Nation 289 
 
 X. The Life of the Higher Beauty and 
 
 Power 316
 
 IN THE FIRE OF THE HEART
 
 I 
 
 WITH THE PEOPLE: A REVELATION 
 
 i\ DREAM, or a vision, or fancy, I know not; but it 
 seemed to be amid surroundings unknown before and 
 yet it seemed very like this world. But there was a 
 difference — to travel one had in thought but to see 
 one's self in a desired locality, or in the presence of the 
 desired person, and he was there. 
 
 It seemed to be where one could look for a long dis- 
 tance, yet it was not a hill, and men and women were 
 coming and going. It seemed to be neither day nor night, 
 for one could discern no sun nor moon, neither were 
 there stars, and yet it was light. 
 
 And I heard heavy trampings as of men clad in 
 coarse nailed boots. I looked and presently I beheld the 
 form of a man, but bent, and he looked closely to the 
 ground before him as he walked. Though he seemed 
 tired, weary, and as if he would be glad to lie down and 
 sleep for a thousand years, yet he seemed to be hurrying 
 along as if he might be late to something. In his hand he 
 carried a pail. 
 
 And as I looked I saw others, and still others. Some 
 were coming, some were going. All seemed encased in the 
 same coarse garments, many were weary, and all seemed 
 bent toward the ground and all were hurrying along. 
 
 [3]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 And as I wondered pityingly — for pity seemed to 
 pervade all things then — there appeared before me one 
 who seemed to come to satisfy my questionings. He 
 was not one of those I was looking upon, although it 
 seemed as if at one time he might have been. His face 
 was as if at sometime he had known great suffering, 
 but there was now a look of strength and compassion, 
 there was such beauty in his face that I wondered at it 
 all. Moreover he seemed to know all things and my 
 thoughts as quickly as I knew them myself. I was about 
 to make inquiry of him when he approached nearer 
 and said: "These are of a company numbering many 
 millions upon the earth who do its heaviest and most 
 important work. Were they not to go to their work daily 
 the industries of the world would stop, and great suffering 
 and privation would result." Why do they seem so eager 
 I thought, and why are they bent so to the ground? 
 
 ''Their work is heavy. Their hours are long. They 
 have but little time with their families, for they must 
 work diligently and faithfully while work lasts, for 
 later on work stops and for some, for weeks, and for 
 some, for months, there is no work, and their pay were 
 they to work every day in the year is not enough to keep 
 them in comfort." 
 
 But why I thought, and I contemplated the vast 
 millions made from industry even in my country every 
 year, is their pay so small ? 
 
 He smiled; it seemed to be a pitying smile, but he 
 did not answer my thought, and I knew not at the time 
 why he smiled and said nothing. 
 
 [4]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 While I was meditating upon all this I heard a great 
 commotion as if outside of great gates, and I heard 
 voices and the cries of excited men by the score. My 
 companion said, " These are men out of work. A few 
 are to be taken to-day, though it will be scarcely one 
 from a score, and the others will tramp on as they have 
 for many weary days to other works." 
 
 Scarcely had the noise subsided and the eager 
 multitude of men gone on its way when I heard excited 
 and angry shouts. I looked and beheld a man not yet 
 in the prime of life. His face was haggard and white 
 and as he ran he was followed by a crowd of shouting 
 and excited men and boys. I heard a dull sound and 
 then I saw a stone fall to the ground and one corner of it 
 was wet and very red. I saw the man stagger and fall 
 forward, and from the back of his head blood flowed. 
 A woman rushed from the crowd. " It's John, I feared 
 the look in his eyes this morning." She kissed the white 
 face and with her lower skirt wiped the bruised and 
 bleeding head. And the child she carried in her arms 
 looked on in wonder. 
 
 Then I heard the clang of a gong and horses 
 hoofs striking the hard pavement, and as the rapidly 
 gathering crowd separated I noticed that the man's 
 form was very thin. My companion said: " Long out of 
 work and with hungry mouths to haunt him, he has 
 stolen bread. It's common.' 
 
 And I saw — I knew not whence they came or 
 whither they went — a large company that seemed to be 
 neither men nor women for they were not grown, nor 
 
 [5]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 were they erect. They did not seem to be children, for 
 they had neither children's faces nor movements. 
 "These were children," said my companion, "put to work 
 before their time. Some are old and broken now, and 
 though still young, are scarcely able to keep up in the 
 race, and from them a brood still worse will come." 
 But there are not so many, I ventured. "In your country 
 alone there are at this moment nearly two million." 
 God, Heaven and Hell, I cried, if — 
 
 "Wait," he said, and before he had spoken his thought 
 I heard a commotion as of doors breaking open, and 
 under lurid lights and amid strains of coarse quick 
 music I saw bedraggled and flushed faced and harsh 
 voiced women that were pushing and pulling one another, 
 and when one fell others seemed even with vile words 
 to kick and beat her. With a sense of horror, I thought, 
 What is this ? 
 
 "This is a low dance hall. They are fighting for a 
 brute of a man." I heard the same music and the same 
 noise and revel from other places. I looked and saw 
 place after place of the same type. So many, I said, 
 and how came they here ? "In this section are over a 
 thousand to-night and there will be to-morrow; the 
 ranks are always full. They start in different ways and 
 from many different places." I looked at a group with 
 whom were still traces of refinement. The faces were 
 some marred, but the hair of some had great beauty 
 in its colour. "These," he said, "were employed in large 
 and well-known stores and establishments at wages so 
 small that when food was gotten, all was gone. They 
 
 [6]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 struggled for a while, many bravely, but they grew 
 weary when they could make no headway, for the 
 grace, the attraction, the fire and the dreams of youth 
 were with them. Men were ready to give them money. 
 For a while they found the way less hard and dreary. 
 They never dreamed of these places; but all find their 
 way here in time." All? I said. "Sometimes a rough 
 black wagon carries a rudely stained box out through a 
 long street and through a gateway edged with drooping 
 trees, and some are spared these resorts." Then I 
 became conscious again of the sights and ounds about 
 me. 
 
 So horrible it all seemed, that I said, cursed be greed 
 and those that — "Lightly," he said, "a wealthy owner 
 of one of the large establishments in which some of 
 these were at one time employed, has built a most 
 beautiful chapel in one of our large churches and has 
 just had it dedicated to Christ. In all charity he is most 
 liberal." I sat musing but I could not comprehend. Then 
 anger seemed to vie with reason, when I was brought 
 again to myself by the sound of horse's hoofs hurrying 
 by. They drew a strange looking wagon. It was followed 
 by two rattling carriages that were drawn by poorer 
 looking horses. In the first was a gentle looking woman 
 and with her were three children. In the second were 
 women who looked something like those that were in the 
 places about us, but they seemed to be of a more gentle 
 type. "I said," volunteered my companion, "that some- 
 times a rudely stained box is carried out through a long 
 street, and some are spared these resorts. She was so 
 
 [7]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 gentle and beautiful and was filled with such compassion 
 and kindness. So young, only in the early twenties. The 
 care of the family fell largely upon her, but she was 
 never strong and by and by she fell weary. Then kind 
 gentlemen helped her, though they received more than 
 they gave. She went away for a time, but her help never 
 failed to reach the little home. By and by she returned, 
 but all hands were raised against her, and her fine sensi- 
 tive spirit could not stand before it. Again she went 
 away and soon the White Plague came to be her com- 
 panion, but it did not stay with her long. She seemed 
 not to care, nor had she any fear. From her savings 
 a letter carried each fortnight the same old help to the 
 little home, until two days ago, from a public institution, 
 where even with a sad and sweet smile she left it, her 
 body with a little envelope enough to bury it, was sent 
 back to her mother's home." And as I thought of her 
 bravery, her goodness, and her youth, then "All hands 
 were raised against her" rang in my ears and anger 
 seemed to seize me. "It is the way of the world," he said, 
 *'but few are wise enough or themselves stainless enough 
 to unders and.' But we all have our failings and none 
 are perfect, I volunteered. I wept and found relief, then 
 involuntarily I cried, Jesus and Mary Magdalene. 
 "Jesus was wise and full of compassion, and more, 
 his own life was without error." 
 
 And as I pondered and repeated to myself his words, 
 my companion seemed to be forgetful of my presence 
 and stood looking out into the space before us, while a 
 strange expression covered his face. I looked at him but 
 
 [8]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 said nothing. Presently and without any other move- 
 ment, even of the head, he placed his hand upon my 
 forehead and said, "yonder!" My surroundings seemed 
 changed and it was not as on the earth. I looked and 
 beheld a company in very white garments and in their 
 midst was one who seemed as if she had come a long 
 distance, for she walked as if weary, and as she turned 
 her face I saw that it was sad, and yet not sad, for joy 
 was in it. 
 
 And two were leading her by the hand and they 
 went along a path that was very bright and that 
 became brighter as they went. And there walked beside 
 them one whose form was not that of a woman and 
 He was clothed with a greater light. I wondered upon it 
 all and when I perceived again I saw that some were 
 seated and others were reclining as on a bank. Then 
 He whose form was not that of a woman bent over 
 and kissed the forehead of the one; and I saw Him no 
 more. 
 
 Looking again I could no longer distinguish from 
 the others the one that had been led. And I thought 
 — she must be rested now. And immediately they 
 seemed to be joined by hosts of others, and among them 
 were little children and young men and maidens, but 
 I saw no aged there. I must have slept, for when I re- 
 called my surroundings my companion was taking 
 his hand from my forehead and as he did so I heard 
 him say, "They are returning." I looked and saw the 
 strange looking wagon and the two rattling carriages 
 as they retraced their course along the road. "And her 
 
 [9]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 mother never knew it," said my companion. "And may 
 she not until she is welcomed and cared for by the one 
 who was welcomed and cared for to-day, and then to 
 know will not hurt her." I am grateful for this revelation, 
 I said. Would that all could have witnessed it. "All," 
 he replied, "who, imperfect themselves are prone to 
 judge or condemn another. Henceforth you shall be a 
 better man." Amen and amen, I shouted, and so loudly 
 it seemed as the whole city must hear. Then I thought, 
 but I did not feel ashamed. 
 
 I heard a low rumble, the grinding as of iron upon 
 iron, a sudden jerking sound. A crowd quickly gathered. 
 A woman rushed through it and bore something from 
 the track. There was blood upon the track. The form 
 was limp and blood trickled down upon her dress- 
 Pale and trembling, she bore it through a door, the 
 entrance to a long dark passageway. My companion 
 said : "To-morrow they will cart it away to the Potter's 
 Field. He was such a bright lad, and of great promise." 
 But the father ? I said, "He is away to his work." But the 
 father's work ? "You do not understand," he said, and 
 again he smiled. But surely, I persisted, there should 
 be no Potter's Field in a country such as this. "In your 
 own great city," he said, "one in every ten is buried in 
 the Potter's Field. This year many thousands will be 
 hauled there. It is the last indignity the poor fight against 
 but the living must have bread and they cannot help it." 
 The crowd still looked at the blood upon the track, 
 but the car had moved on. 
 
 What a place, I thought, for a child to play, for the 
 [10]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 street was not wide, and it seemed to be very dirty and 
 it was very hot, and many teams were going and coming, 
 and through them cars that seemed never to end their 
 clanging, were threading their way. The noise and now 
 and then the smells were something frightful. "Look 
 about you" he said. I looked and in the one block there 
 were over a hundred children at play. Why do they 
 play here ? Why do they not go to the parks, and to the 
 prairies about the city, and out into the country ? And 
 again he smiled and said nothing. The air was close 
 and it seemed as if we were in some strange place under- 
 ground where there was no light nor air, only noise 
 and commotion and smells indescribable. 
 
 And I saw a little cortege similar to the one we had 
 seen before but it was longer as it threaded its way 
 along. "Another victim of the plague." The plague ? 
 " The White Plague. This time it is a mother. She 
 worked until a few days ago. Last year the father went 
 with it and two children. Three are left. In the same 
 tenement over a dozen have gone with it in a third as 
 many years. This is its home. These houses, these rooms 
 were built for it. From here it spreads itself throughout 
 the city. Three times as many take it here as in other 
 parts." I said, Why have they not houses with more 
 light, more air, more open space ? And again he smiled, 
 and said nothing. It seemed as if my brain were on fire 
 and I longed for full breaths of pure air. "We must 
 change," said my companion, and turning he led the 
 way. 
 
 There was the mingling of sounds as if pieces of fine 
 [11]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 metal were striking one another in the air; and out from 
 under the shade of wide-spreading trees and along a 
 smoothly paved road a low hanging carriage rolled, 
 almost without noise. In it were four men. All looked 
 so comfortable, so big, and so well-to-do. Hope 
 seemed to seize me and I said, if only these men knew 
 of the conditions we have been witnessing, they would 
 go to their relief. My companion listened, but he did not 
 seem to share in my enthusiasm, and at the time I knew 
 not why. "One," he said, "is owner of the mills from 
 which you saw the coarsely booted and clothed men 
 with pails in their hands coming and going, the men 
 whose wages enable them to live only in the most meagre 
 comfort if they work every day in the year which they 
 never do. Very large sums are saved by closing the mills 
 for a portion of each year and even when they are run- 
 ning, some work always on part time only." 
 
 "His companion on the seat with him is owner of 
 works where many hundreds of children and many 
 women are employed. Though others manage the works 
 for him, they have machinery which children can tend 
 that saves a million a year over what adult labour would 
 cost. It is very hard and exacting work for the little ones 
 and many come out of the works crippled or stunted 
 and deformed for life, but it is a great saving for the 
 owner! 
 
 "The other is very rich and prominent, the owner of 
 many apartment houses as he calls them, in the portion 
 of the city we have just been visiting. Tenements and 
 lung-blocks those who live in or near them call them. 
 
 [12]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The Honourable Joseph, his friends and charitable insti- 
 tutions know him as. Slimy Joe his tenants and those 
 who have close dealings with him, call him ! 
 
 "The fourth is a man who has never worked at all. 
 He inherited properties worth many millions. Managers 
 attend to these and collect his incomes. Among them 
 are many extensive railroad properties. His father was 
 known as the great corruptionist. His managers follow 
 in his father's practices. He is a lavish spender and 
 loves sport. Though large and strong looking, he is 
 never well." 
 
 But all the rich are not like these, I volunteered. 
 "By no means," he replied. "These are only the parasitic, 
 the low down rich, those whose God, whose religion, 
 whose life is greed, and who know no more. But their 
 name is legion, though they are never happy, never 
 at peace." 
 
 The people, the people, I cried, musing on the great 
 inequality that seemed to haunt me. "The people are 
 a fool. They do not think. They have little imagina- 
 tion, scarcely enough to know their power. But some 
 day" — and a strange light passed over his face and he 
 seemed filled with great emotion, but did not finish his 
 thought. Presently he continued, "A large hospital that 
 many of the rich help support was destroyed some days 
 ago, and a large charity ball is being given to help 
 rebuild it. They are on their way to it now. A little later as 
 you look in upon it you will see women, wives and daugh- 
 ters of these, and others, clad in garments costing almost 
 fabulous prices, and decked with jewels and gems 
 
 [13]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 sufficient in value to feed and clothe the portions of 
 the city we have just been in for years. I will point 
 out to you a young man who has recently come into 
 possession of over thirty millions, who has never done 
 a useful day's work in his life and who perhaps never 
 will. I will point out to you a lad of but twelve years 
 who upon his father's demise will fall heir to properties 
 worth over a hundred million, all made from values 
 created by the people of the city where his properties 
 lie. Among those whom you will see to-night you will 
 notice many most vulgar in their excessive display, and 
 others gross and vulgar in their appearance, for excessive 
 wealth makes gluttons and abnormals of many. And 
 when you see the haughty, self-important air on the 
 part of many, remember it is merely one of the weak- 
 nesses of human nature to which the excessively rich are 
 easy victims, and that it will be more or less balanced 
 by the presence of many admirable and sensible people, 
 who will be there to-night. There are few of the very 
 rich and none of the excessively rich that do not pay 
 heavy penalties for their abnormal hold on life, the 
 same as the excessively poor. In this they are alike. 
 Rejoice that you are of neither and use the knowledge 
 you have gained for the good of both. With the com- 
 mon people their redemption lies." 
 
 I thought on the times when to my questions he smiled 
 and said nothing, and then I seemed to understand 
 clearly. 
 
 "With the people," repeated my companion, 
 as he touched his hand upon my head. I seemed 
 
 [14]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 for a while to be absorbed, yet not in thought. 
 Presently I perceived that I was alone, when 
 a strange fascination took possession of me, 
 and it holds me still. "With the people." "With the 
 people." 
 
 [15]
 
 II 
 
 THE CONDITIONS THAT HOLD AMONG US 
 
 W E should be a very great and a uniformly prosperous 
 people. As a nation we have had advantages and oppor- 
 tunities that have never been equalled perhaps, by any 
 people thus far in the world's history. We have been 
 free from the cast systems and certain progress strang- 
 ling customs of the old world countries; we have enjoyed 
 from the beginning practically full civil and religious 
 liberty; we started free from that dreary, grinding, 
 hopeless, drink-impelling poverty, that is the bane and 
 the curse of so many of the old world countries; we have 
 had almost universal free educational opportunities 
 for our boys and our girls, for our young men and our 
 young women, and even for the older when they have 
 so chosen. Our natural products from soil, and stream, 
 and mine have been almost fabulous in their returns. 
 
 We should be a uniformly free and happy and pros- 
 perous people. But we are not uniformly free, neither 
 happy nor prosperous. These statements may seem to 
 some the product of a mind ill at ease, or given to 
 misstatement or to exaggeration. Shall we see ? 
 
 For all practical purposes, we do individually as well 
 as collectively, enjoy civil freedom. But he who is not 
 economically free, is in a slavery of the most haunting 
 and endeavour-crushing type. 
 
 [16]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 And over ten millions of our people are in a state of 
 chronic poverty at this very hour — almost one out of 
 every seven, or, to make full allowance, one out of every 
 eight of all our people are in the condition where they 
 have not sufficient food, and clothing, and shelter to 
 keep them in a state of physical and mental efficiency. 
 And the sad part of it is that large additional numbers, 
 — numbers most appalling for such a country as this, 
 are each year, and through no fault of their own, drop- 
 ping into this same condition. 
 
 And a still sadder feature of it is, that each year in- 
 creasingly large numbers of this vast army of people, 
 our fellow-beings, are, unwillingly on their part and in the 
 face of almost superhuman efforts to keep out of it till 
 the last moment, dropping into the pauper class, - 
 those who are compelled to seek or to receive aid from 
 a public, or from private charity, in order to exist at 
 all — already in numbers about four million, while 
 increasing numbers of this class, the pauper, sink each 
 year, and so naturally, into the vicious, the criminal, 
 the inebriate class. In other words we have gradually 
 allowed to be built around us a social and economic sys- 
 tem which yearly drives vast numbers of hitherto fairly 
 well-to-do, strong, honest, earnest, willing and admirable 
 men with their families into the condition of poverty, and 
 under its weary, endeavour-strangling influences many 
 of these in time, hoping against hope, struggling to the last 
 moment in their semi-incapacitated and pathetic manner 
 to keep out of it, are forced to seek or to accept public 
 or private charity, and thus sink into the pauper class. 
 
 [17]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 It is a well authenticated fact that strong men, 
 now weakened by poverty, will avoid it to the last before 
 they will take this step. Many after parting with every- 
 thing they have first, break down and cry like babes 
 when the final moment comes, and they can avoid it no 
 longer. Numbers at this time take their own lives 
 rather than pass through the ordeal, and still larger 
 numbers desert their families for whom they have 
 struggled so valiantly, — it is almost invariably the 
 woman who makes her way to the charity agencies. 
 The public and private charities cost the country during 
 the past year as nearly as can be conservatively arrived 
 at, over $200,000,000. 
 
 Moreover, a strange law seems to work with an 
 accuracy that seems almost marvellous. It is this. Not- 
 withstanding the brave and almost superhuman strug- 
 gles that are gone through with, on the part of these, 
 before they can take themselves to the public or 
 private charity for aid, when the step is once taken, 
 they gradually sink into the condition where all initia- 
 tive and all sense of self-reliance seems to be stifled or 
 lost, and it is only a rare case now and then that they 
 ever cease to be dependent, but remain content with 
 the alms that are doled out to them, — practically never 
 do they rise out of that condition again. Talk with 
 practically any charity agent or worker, one with a 
 sufficiently extended experience and you will find that 
 there is scarcely more than one type of testimony con- 
 cerning this. And as this condition gradually becomes 
 chronic and endeavour and initiative and self-respect are 
 
 [18]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 lost, a certain proportion then sink into the condition 
 of the criminal, the deseased, the chronically drunk, 
 the inebriate, from which reclamation is still more 
 difficult. 
 
 There are reasons for these conditions coming about, 
 and one reason chief among them all, that we shall 
 consider most fully in its proper place. First, however, 
 let us look still more minutely into the conditions of the 
 type we have been considering that we may have before 
 us facts sufficient in number and in power to impel us 
 to an examination of the causes which have brought 
 about these conditions. 
 
 As has been stated, there are at the present time over 
 ten million of our fellow-beings living in a state of 
 poverty, that is, without sufficient of food and clothing 
 and shelter to keep them in a first-class condition even 
 as animals are kept, — to keep them in a state of effi- 
 ciency to compete in the struggle for work; and when at 
 work, the rush and the strain in many centres has 
 become so great, and the competition for even a mere 
 livelihood so keen, that no one can afford to be even for 
 the shortest period, in anything but a state of full and 
 complete efficiency. 
 
 The above estimate is based, among others, upon the 
 careful estimates made by Mr. Robert Hunter, in that 
 late and very admirable book," Poverty,"* and has been 
 formulated from a very wide range of statistics and facts 
 and observations. Moreover, as this estimate has been 
 made only on the basis of the distress which manifests 
 *Macmillan & Company, New York and London. 
 [19]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 itself, such as pauper burials, yearly evictions, the num- 
 bers applying for public charity, the vast armies out of 
 employment for some portion of the year, it must be 
 most clearly evident that there is a very large additional 
 number who are in great need, many in dire distress, 
 who suffer keenly but bear it bravely, and suffer and 
 struggle on, without its ever becoming evident to the 
 world. 
 
 After stating that in 1903, 20 per cent of the peo- 
 ple of Boston were in distress; in 1897, 19 per cent 
 of the people of New York State; in 1899, 18 per 
 cent of the people of the New York State; in 1903, 
 14 per cent of the families of Manhattan were 
 evicted; and every year 10 per cent (about) of those 
 who die in Manhattan have pauper burials, — facts 
 taken directly from city and state statistics, and the 
 pathos and tragedy and suffering they stand for so 
 plainly evident, Mr. Hunter goes on to say: "These 
 figures, furthermore, represent only the distress which 
 manifests itself. There is no question but that only part 
 of those in poverty, in any community, apply for charity. 
 I think anyone living in a Settlement will support me 
 in saying that many families who are obviously poor — 
 that is, underfed, underclothed, or badly housed — 
 never ask for aid or suffer the social disgrace of eviction. 
 Of course, no one could estimate the proportion of those 
 who are evicted or of those who ask assistance to the 
 total number in poverty ; for whatever opinion one may 
 have formed is based, not on actual knowledge, gained 
 by inquiry, but on impressions, gained through friendly 
 [20]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 intercourse. My own opinion is that probably not over 
 half of those in poverty ever apply for charity, and cer- 
 tainly not more than that proportion are evicted from 
 their homes. However, I should not wish an opinion 
 of this sort to be used in estimating from the figures of 
 distress, etc., the number of those in poverty. And yet 
 from the facts of distress, as given, and from opinions 
 formed, both as a charity agent and as a Settlement 
 worker, I should not be at all surprised if the number 
 of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other 
 large cities and industrial centres, rarely fell below 
 25 per cent of all the people." 
 
 Speaking of unemployment,* and when one's wage is 
 about a "living wage," that is, sufficient to keep him 
 and his family in fair condition, providing he loses no 
 time whatever, we can easily see what unemployment 
 even for a very short period must necessarily mean. Mr. 
 Hunter says: "The figures of unemployment, although 
 very imperfect, show that the evil is wide-spread, even in 
 times of prosperity. . . . In the last census (that of 1900) 
 the number found to be unemployed at sometime during 
 the year was 6,468,964, or 22.3 per cent of all the work- 
 ers over ten years of age,engaged in gainful occupations. 
 Thirty -nine per cent of the male workers unemployed, 
 or 2,069,546 persons, were idle from four to six months 
 
 * At this present time — a period of unusual commercial and indus- 
 trial activity — less than the average number are out of employment. 
 But with our present methods, this dreaded and hard condition, that 
 has in the aggregate affected millions among us, is liable to repeat 
 itself at any time. Any fair dealing, therefore, with the economic 
 conditions of the nation cannot omit a consideration, or at least a 
 mention, of these conditions. 
 
 [21]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of the year. These figures are for the country as a whole, 
 for all industries including agriculture. In manufactur- 
 ing alone the unemployment rose to 27.2 per cent of all 
 the workers. In the industrial states of the East and 
 North the percentage of unemployment is larger than 
 for the country as a whole. The Massachusetts census 
 for 1895 showed that 8,339 workmen were unemployed 
 continuously during that year, and that 252,456 persons 
 were irregularly employed. This means that over 27 
 per cent of all persons covered by the inquiry were idle 
 some portion of the year. That this is not exceptional 
 is shown by the Massachusetts census for 1885. At that 
 time over 29 per cent of the workmen were irregularly 
 employed. In other words, the annual wages of more 
 than one workman in every four suffered considerable 
 decrease by reason of a period of enforced idleness, 
 extending in some cases over several months. In the 
 industrial towns, such as Haverhill, New Bedford, and 
 Fall River, the irregularity of employment was even 
 greater. In these towns from 39 to 62 per cent of the 
 workmen were idle during some part of the year." 
 
 That very large numbers of workers, heads of fami- 
 lies, receive for their work an insufficient amount to 
 keep themselves and their families in comfort as well 
 as in a state of efficiency, is a well-ascertained fact. Very 
 large numbers are not receiving what is known as a 
 "living wage." That there are those who do receive 
 enough to keep themselves and their families in com- 
 fort, but who fail to do so, either on account of intem- 
 perance, or bad management, or misfortune of some 
 
 [22]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 kind, or through lack of an ordinary good management, 
 or by reason of some other cause or causes, is undoubt- 
 edly true, and to deny it would be entirely useless. That, 
 on the other hand, there are vast numbers who are re- 
 ceiving a wage insufficient even by the utmost economy, 
 good management and self-denial, to keep themselves 
 in a state of comfort and efficiency is most abundantly 
 true. Were this number very small instead of being of 
 such enormous proportions, it would be a menace to 
 the highest welfare of the country as well as a disgrace 
 so great as to demand that its causes be ascertained and 
 eradicated. 
 
 It would be a very hard matter, as can readily be 
 seen, to establish a necessary or "living wage" that 
 would be such for all portions of the country, because 
 living expenses in some sections are necessarily con- 
 siderably higher than in others. We can approach, 
 however, to an average necessary wage by ascertaining 
 what good authorities, as well as careful investigators, 
 have practically decreed as a necessary wage in various 
 employments as well as sections of the country. John 
 Mitchell has said, in his book on " Organized Labor " : 
 " For the great mass of unskilled workingmen, . . . 
 residing in towns and cities with a population of from 
 five thousand to one hundred thousand, a fair wage, a 
 wage consistent with American standards of living, 
 should not be less than $600 a year. Less than this 
 would, in my judgment, be insufficient to give to the 
 workingman those necessaries and comforts and those 
 small luxuries which are now considered essential." 
 
 [23]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 It has been shown by the Massachusetts Bureau of 
 Statistics of Labor (1901) that $754 a year is required 
 for a family of five persons to live on. An able official of 
 one of the largest New York City charities states that as 
 a result of his observations two dollars a day, or about 
 $624 a year, is necessary for a family of five in New York 
 City. Without going farther into the matter this would 
 establish an average necessary wage of about $659 a 
 year. And while this may be greater than necessary, as 
 it undoubtedly is for some localities, it is not too high 
 an amount for many others. 
 
 In the light of this it will be interesting as well as 
 valuable to see what in various localities, as well as lines 
 of work, the actual wages received are. The census of 
 1900 shows that the average yearly earnings of each of 
 5,308,406 persons engaged in manufacturing was 
 $437.96. The previous census, that of 1890, showed that 
 it was $444.83 per worker. This slight difference, the 
 census bureau says: "was only an apparent one, due 
 partly to the exclusion of high-salaried foremen and 
 managers from the returns of the census of 1900, partly 
 due also to the more complete returns of the lower-paid 
 labour in the south. 
 
 The following table (the census of 1900) subdivides 
 the census compilation for a number of cities as follows : 
 
 Average No. Average 
 
 wage-earners, yearly wages. 
 
 The 10 largest cities 1,412,831 $489 
 
 154 next largest 1,599,033 445 
 
 Outside these cities 2,294,279 400 
 
 5,306,143 
 
 [24]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 For this number of wage-earners, a little over five mil- 
 lion, the average wage therefore, was in round numbers, 
 $445. 
 
 Dr. Peter Roberts says that the average yearly wage 
 in the anthracite coal district is less than $500, and that 
 about 60 per cent of the workers receive less than $450. 
 The Federal census for 1900 states that 11 per cent of 
 the male workers, over 16 years of age employed in the 
 New England cotton mills, received a rate of pay amount- 
 ing to less than $6 a week,— about $300 a year. This, it 
 must be noted, was their rate of pay, that is, what they 
 would have earned had they worked every day in the 
 year, hence not the actual wage received. 
 
 In the Middle States nearly a third of all the workers 
 are receiving a rate of wages less than $300 per year, 
 and in the Southern States, considerably over half — 
 59 per cent — are receiving less than this amount. 
 When the time that they cannot work is taken out, we 
 can readily see what this amount means. In many cases 
 it means at least one fourth less in actual wages re- 
 ceived. In the shoe-making industry less than $300 
 a year is received by 51 per cent of unskilled work- 
 ers, in the Central States by 80.3 per cent, and in the 
 Middle States by 87 per cent of this same class of 
 workers. 
 
 Testimony was presented before the Industrial Com- 
 mission showing that the 150,000 track hands working 
 on the railroads of the United States received wages 
 ranging from 47| cents a day for the South to $1.25 a 
 day in the North. The highest wage they would receive 
 
 [25]
 
 In tlie Fire of the Heart 
 
 then would be about $150 a year for the South, and a 
 little less than $375 for the North. Testimony was given 
 by the same witness that these wages were also paid to 
 the carmen and shopmen in the North and South, num- 
 bering about 200,000 men. Before the same In- 
 dustrial Commission, testimony was given that the 
 wages of the street-car employees ranged from $320 to 
 $460 a year. 
 
 From this we are able to get some idea of what the 
 needs of some millions in the country are compared to 
 what they are able actually to receive to meet these 
 needs. And then when sickness comes, or death, or 
 accident, or misfortune of any type as well as being 
 temporarily thrown out of employment, which is many 
 times a misfortune of the gravest moment, we can readily 
 see what distress and uncertainty must result. Certainly 
 we need brought about in the nation a condition that 
 gives an economic and industrial state which guaran- 
 tees at least a fairly decent living wage and a 
 regularity of employment to the great hosts who to- 
 day are denied them. This, indeed, is fundamental. 
 I can scarcely resist here the impulse to quote an- 
 other paragraph or two from Mr. Hunter's admirable 
 work : 
 
 " Among the many inexplicable things in life, there is 
 probably nothing more out of reason than our disregard 
 for preventive measures and our apparent willingness 
 to provide almshouses, prisons, asylums, hospitals, 
 homes, etc., for the victims of our neglect. Poverty is a 
 culture bed for criminals, paupers, vagrants, and for 
 [26]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 such diseases as inebriety, insanity, and imbecility; and 
 yet we endlessly go on in our unconcern, or in our blind- 
 ness, heedless of its sources, believing all the time that 
 we are merciful in administering to its unfortunate re- 
 sults. Those in poverty are fighting a losing struggle, 
 because of unnecessary burdens which we might lift 
 from their shoulders ; but not until they go to pieces and 
 become drunken, vagrant, criminal, diseased, and 
 suppliant, do we consider mercy necessary. But in that 
 day reclamation is almost impossible, the degeneracy 
 of the adults infects the children, and the foulest of our 
 social miseries is thus perpetuated from generation to 
 generation. From the millions struggling with poverty 
 come the millions who have lost all self-respect and 
 ambition, who hardly, if ever, work, who are aimless 
 and drifting, who like drink, who have no thought for 
 their children, and who live contentedly on rubbish and 
 alms. But a short time before many of them were of 
 that great, splendid mass of producers upon which the 
 material welfare of the nation rests. They were in 
 poverty, but they were self-respecting; they were 
 hard-pressed, but they were ambitious, determined, 
 and hard working. They were also underfed, under- 
 clothed, and miserably housed, — the fear and dread 
 of want possessed them, they worked sore, but 
 gained nothing, they were isolated, heart-worn and 
 weary." 
 
 It is true, as can be readily established, that during 
 the past few years there has been on the whole an in- 
 crease of wages, — though by no means in all cases, — 
 [27]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 but at the same time through various other combina- 
 tions of economic causes there has been an increase in 
 the prices of the various commodities as well as actual 
 necessities of life, many of which have been enormous 
 and out of all keeping with whatever advance there has 
 been in wages. Under the title, " Wages and the Cost of 
 Living," the following paragraph appeared in the Arena 
 for November, 1903. " The special pleaders for corpora- 
 tions and trusts have made a great deal of capital out of 
 the fact that between 1897 and 1901 the wages in New 
 York City have in sixteen trades risen from an average 
 of $2.78 to $2.91 a day, and this fact has been broadly 
 heralded through Great Britain as an argument in 
 favour of protection and monopoly. But these special 
 pleaders for plutocracy fail to mention another fact, 
 and one which entirely changes the nature of the case. 
 They fail to state that during this period the cost of 
 living in the Empire City increased 10 per cent above 
 the increase in wages, while since 1901 the cost of living 
 has steadily risen. Dun's Agency places the increase 
 at over 33 per cent. "And according to the Dun Mercan- 
 tile Agency report on March 1, 1906, the cost of living 
 for the entire country was then the highest it has been 
 during the thirty years it has kept a record. This coupled 
 with the uncertainty of employment in so many lines of 
 work, that is, the necessaiy non-employment during a 
 certain number of weeks in the year, works in many 
 cases, as we can readily see, almost untold hardships. 
 
 We are still considering this vast army of over ten 
 millions in our country who are living in poverty in the 
 
 [28]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 face of our great apparent prosperity, much of which is 
 indeed apparent when the facts are carefully looked 
 into. There has been of late years a great prosperity, 
 but confined so generally to such a small group, or to 
 such small groups of people, that its force is to a great 
 measure lost when considered in connection with the 
 great mass of the people. 
 
 The number of propertyless persons, that is, tenants, 
 in a state or country, is many times a good criterion of 
 the real standard, or rather the diffusion of its prosperity. 
 The census returns for 1900 show that 8,365,739 fam- 
 ilies, or 54 per cent do not own the homes in which 
 they live, that is, they are continually paying rent. Those 
 owning and occupying mortgaged homes were 2,196,- 
 375 ; while those living in homes that were wholly and 
 actually their own were 4,761,211, or but 31 per cent 
 of the total number of families in the country. Of course, 
 the number of families owning their own homes is much 
 smaller in the cities than in the smaller towns. In several 
 of our larger cities, probably 99 per cent of the wage- 
 earners do not own the homes in which they live, but 
 are each year paying out, sometimes as much as 40 per 
 cent of their earnings, in rent. I have seen it estimated 
 that the amount paid in rent and in interest on mortgag- 
 ed homes is at least two billion dollars per year, — less 
 the amount paid in taxes, — and this vast amount is 
 annually transferred into the pockets of 10 per cent of the 
 population, the rent paid for property used as homes only. 
 
 The last Federal census shows the following percent- 
 age of homes rented in the various cities, enumerated : 
 [29]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Boston 81.1 
 
 Chicago 74.9 
 
 Cincinnati 79 . 1 
 
 Fall River 82.0 
 
 Holyoke 80.6 
 
 New York (Manhattan) 94. 1 
 
 Philadelphia 77.9 
 
 In 160 cities, of at least 25,000 inhabitants each, the 
 average number of tenants is seventy-four in every 
 hundred. 
 
 Professor J. G. Collins, a statistician who had charge 
 of some of the inquiries of the census of 1890, estimated 
 that only about 10 per cent of the population of the 
 country were landlords, and that these owned and con- 
 trolled somewhere near 90 per cent of the nation's 
 total land values. 
 
 The idea I think quite generally prevails that the 
 great agricultural population of the nation is in a gener- 
 ally prosperous condition, and that there are but few 
 who do not own the farms upon which they live and 
 which they till. Certainly it is natural to suppose that 
 such is the case. The total number of farms in the United 
 States is 5,737,372, supporting a population of about 
 28,000,000 people. Mr. George K. Holmes, a very cau- 
 tious and careful investigator, has shown that on the 
 basis of the census of 1890, over 34 per cent of our 
 farmers are tenants, and an additional 18.6 per cent 
 have their farms mortgaged. Accordingly over one-half 
 of the farmers of the country have only a partial owner- 
 ship in their farms or are propertyless. 
 
 When we consider the great numbers of families 
 [30]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 whose wages or incomes are scarcely sufficient to keep 
 them above continual want, or in other words, above the 
 poverty line, and then only when they are working 
 every work-day of the year, we can see what havoc is 
 wrought when any extra calls are made or burdens 
 thrown upon them, when sickness or accident comes, or 
 death takes place, either on the part of the breadwinner 
 or in his family. When one is receiving just a living wage, 
 or as in so many cases, less than a living wage, it means 
 untold hardship when any of these come. This un- 
 doubtedly is one of the great agencies that keeps a large 
 number of this great army in poverty. 
 
 The frightful killings and maimings that are continu- 
 ally going on in connection with our railroads and var- 
 ious other large industries, — and we are the most back- 
 ward country in the world in our gross neglect in com- 
 pelling greater safety and care, — is also responsible for 
 untold hardship and suffering. To show how dangerous 
 and uncertain the work of a railway employee is, 
 the following facts will indicate. The Interstatej Com- 
 merce Commission for the year 1902 reported among em- 
 ployees 53,493 injured or killed, among passengers 7,028, 
 other persons, 12,729, with a total of 73,250. These 
 figures are indeed, scarcely believable. And in the 
 previous year, out of every 399 employees, one was killed, 
 and one out of every 26 was injured. The trainmen, — 
 engineers, firemen, conductors, brakemen, etc., are the 
 greatest sufferers. Among these one was killed for every 
 137 employed, and one was injured for every eleven 
 employed. It is indeed difficult to believe that in this 
 [31]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 day and age such slaughter, and much of it so unneces- 
 sary, is permitted to go on year after year : and strange 
 as it may seem the railroad owners or managers resist, 
 and resist most powerfully, practically every attempt 
 that is made to compel them to adopt various, and 
 many times well known, safety devices. 
 
 The Accident Bulletin issued by the Commission for 
 the three months ending March 31, 1906, shows the 
 total number of casualities to passengers and employees 
 to be 18,296 (1,126 killed and 17,179 injured). In closing 
 the Bulletin says: 
 
 " The most disastrous accident reported in the present 
 bulletin — a collision, causing thirty -four deaths and 
 injuring twenty -four — was due to the striking failure 
 of the train-despatching system. A telegraph operator 
 at a small and lonely station, who had been on duty all 
 day and more than half the night, fell asleep, and on 
 awaking misinformed the train despatcher as to what 
 had occurred while he was asleep. It is pertinent to 
 observe that the block system repeatedly advocated by 
 the Commission, is the true means that ought to be 
 adopted for such distressing disasters as that reported 
 in Accident Bulletin No. 19, just made public." 
 
 " These injuries to railway workmen are more serious 
 than at first appears, for very few of the men who are injur- 
 ed are over thirty-five, and most of them are in the twen- 
 ties. This period — between twenty and thirty-five — is 
 the most important period of a workman's life. Itis the time 
 when he is of utmost value to his family, since the children 
 are still too young to take up the support of the family. 
 [32]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "The responsibility of the railroads for poverty, re- 
 sulting from injuries or casualties, is of three kinds at 
 least. First: In many cases they overwork their em- 
 ployees. Dr. Samuel McCune Lindsay says: 'Emer- 
 gencies frequently occur due to accidents or condition 
 of weather when men may be required to work contin- 
 uously from twenty to thirty hours, and, in exceptional 
 cases, men have been continuously at work in train 
 service for thirty-six hours.' Second: Many railroad sys- 
 tems have resisted and violated the law compelling them 
 to put on automatic couplers, and they are now fighting 
 the introduction of the block system, both of which 
 improvements are designed to prevent accidents and 
 injuries. Third : In case of accidents, ' company ' physi- 
 cians and lawyers hasten immediately to the place of 
 the accident, and, if possible, persuade the workmen to 
 sign contracts by which they agree, for some small 
 immediate compensation, to release the company from 
 any further liability. I have known many, many cases 
 where workmen have, for a few dollars, signed 
 away their rights to sue when their injuries have been 
 as serious as the loss of a leg or arm. In the seventeen 
 years ending June 30, 1902, 103,320 persons were killed, 
 and 587,028 injured by the railway industry."* 
 
 Of the anthracite regions, Dr. Peter Roberts, who has 
 made a very careful study of the industrial and social 
 conditions there, says : " Nearly half the employees have 
 no provision for either the incapacitated through acci- 
 dent or for the maintenance of widows and orphans 
 ♦"Poverty"— Robert Hunter, p. 38. 
 
 [33]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 when death befalls those who provide for them in this 
 hazardous calling. Many operators display generosity 
 worthy of emulation ; others manifest criminal indiffer- 
 ence to the sufferings of employees and their families 
 because of accident. . . . To leave these men to the 
 mercy of overbearing operators in case of injury and 
 death is unworthy of the civilization of the century in 
 which we live. " 
 
 From these facts and figures we can see what a large 
 number of semi -incapacitated, and in case of the death 
 of the breadwinner what a large number of practically 
 dependent people are thrown each year upon the pub- 
 lic for support, or who have to accept the condition 
 of the pauper. We have much to learn from the German 
 system in this respect. As a result of statistics gathered 
 in connection with its splendidly growing insurance 
 systems, — for old age, accident, sickness, infirmity, — 
 it has made an effort to find out who is responsible for 
 the suffering, and to demand accordingly compensation 
 for the injured. In other words it has fixed not upon the 
 individual, who is many times entirely helpless in re- 
 gard to the matter, but upon industry and upon society 
 the responsibility for much of its poverty and attendant 
 suffering. It found that 80 per cent of all accidents in in- 
 dustrial lines were due to the "professional risks" of 
 industry itself, and as a consequence the industries of 
 that nation must bear the cost of these accidents,* 
 and not the workingmen themselves. How differ- 
 ent from our almost barbarous conditions in this respect. 
 ♦"Workman's Insurance Abroad" by Dr. Zacher, 1898, Berlin. 
 [34]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Certainly the criminal negligence of the railroads 
 as well as other great lines of industry in this terrible 
 and to a large extent preventable slaughter, — at the 
 cost of slightly reduced dividends only, is indeed 
 appalling, and is equalled only by the stupid negligence 
 of the public in allowing it to continue. A change will 
 come, however. 
 
 Sickness means far more to the wage-earner than to 
 any other class, and for two, if not indeed for more, 
 reasons. In the first place the loss of the wage if it be 
 the wage-earner, or the increased expenses if it be one 
 of his family, means immediate hardship where there 
 is no reserve power, as in such large numbers of cases 
 where one is receiving just a living wage there cannot 
 be; and in the second place, the care and attention that 
 can be secured are not at all equal to those that can be 
 had by the more well-to-do. Especially is this true when 
 so many hundreds of thousands are compelled to live 
 in the types of tenements landlords are permitted to 
 extract their rent from. But this is again the result of 
 our general economic condition, for people would not 
 live in these, — some would, but very, very few, — if 
 their incomes or wages permitted them to live in quarters 
 any better. 
 
 These conditions to a great extent are responsible 
 for that slowly devouring, subtle, but most deadly 
 modern plague among us, — tuberculosis, sometimes 
 called the " Great White Plague. " It will in this twelve- 
 month claim in New York City alone not less than 
 fifteen thousand of its people, in the United States not 
 [35]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 less than one hundred and fifty thousand, in the world 
 over a million. And yet it to a very great extent is an 
 entirely preventable disease. Social and economic 
 conditions far below what they might be are to a very 
 great extent responsible for its never diminishing pre- 
 valence. Of it Mr. Hunter,* who has had perhaps as 
 great opportunities for observing its growth and its 
 methods as anyone not directly connected with the 
 medical profession, says: "It is a needless plague, a 
 preventable plague. It is one of the results of our in- 
 humane tenements; it follows in the train of our in- 
 humane sweatshops; it fastens itself upon children and 
 young people because we forget that they need play- 
 grounds and because we are selfish and niggardly in 
 providing breathing spaces; it comes where the hours 
 of labour are long and the wages small; it afflicts the 
 children who are sent to labour when they should yet 
 be in school ; the plague goes to meet them. It is a brother 
 to the anguish of poverty, and wherever food is scant 
 and bodies half clothed and rooms dark, this hard and 
 relentless brother of poverty finds a victim. . . . 
 
 "The extent of the White Plague is one of the best 
 tests of a high or low state of society; in many ways it 
 is the truest and most accurate of social tests. The 
 number of its victims will indicate the districts in which 
 sweat-shops flourish, and the streets in which the double- 
 decker tenement, the scourge of New York, is most 
 often found. Where the death rate from the plague 
 is greatest there ignorance prevails; drunkenness is 
 
 * " Poverty," page 164. 
 
 [36]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 rife; poverty, hunger, and cold are the common mis- 
 fortune. . . . 
 
 "Tuberculosis is more common in the cities than in 
 the country. The death rate from this disease in the 
 cities of over twenty-five thousand inhabitants is about 
 twice that of the rural districts of the state. The tene- 
 ment districts suffer much more from the disease 
 than do the well-to-do districts. In Paris the death rate 
 is three times as great in the poorest quarters as it is 
 is in the well-to-do quarters. In Hamburg the propor- 
 tion is almost the same. In the First Ward, near the 
 Battery in New York City, fourteen times as many 
 people die from tuberculosis, in proportion to popula- 
 tion, as in a certain ward adjoining Central Park. 
 Obviously it is a plague which exists much more among 
 the poor than among the rich. . . . 
 
 " The disease is one which affects especially residents 
 of the tenements and the workers in certain trades, as, 
 for instance, printers, tailors, bookkeepers, dressmakers, 
 bakers, cigar-makers, potters, stone-cutters, file-grinders, 
 dyers, wool-carders, etc. 
 
 "To know why these classes of people are affected, 
 let us for a moment consider how the disease is spread. 
 A person having consumption can, it is said, expectorate 
 in a day seven billions of germs or bacilli. These germs 
 or bacilli are the only cause of the disease. The sputa 
 or expectorations from the diseased lungs dry and after- 
 ward become a pulverized dust which is blown about 
 through tenements, theatres, street cars, railway trains, 
 offices, and factories. In fact, the infection is dissemi- 
 
 [37]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 nated wherever tuberculosis sputum becomes dry and 
 pulverized. The germ is killed by sunlight and lives 
 but a short time in the open air, but it will live for months 
 in darkness or in places artificially lighted. . . . 
 
 " Tins dry, pulverized dust is the most important of 
 the means of spreading tuberculosis throughout all parts 
 of the city, so that, I do not doubt, a consumptive of the 
 sweat-shop, spraying the garments he sews by sneezing 
 or coughing, may convey to some delicate lad or girl in a 
 far-distant part of the country or in a wealthy part of 
 the city the disease which the sweat-shop has given him. 
 A virulent cause of consumption is the spray discharged 
 from the nose, lungs, or mouth of the consumptive 
 invalid. As before mentioned, those near the person 
 suffering from tuberculosis are very likely to contract 
 the disease. Children playing about on the floor, kissing 
 or embracing the diseased mother or father, taking 
 the milk from a tuberculosis mother, so often contract 
 the disease that the mass of people have an almost un- 
 shakable belief that it is inherited. Eminent physicians, 
 however, say that the disease is not inherited. . . . 
 It is cheaper in every way to cure a consumptive in a 
 sanatorium than it is to let him die in a hospital or in a 
 public institution of some kind, but to let him die in a 
 hospital or institution of whatever kind is cheaper than 
 to let him die in his tenement. What we are doing now 
 is just the wrong thing. . . . It is unquestionably 
 the duty of society to care for the victims of this disease. 
 It is a social disease. Society is responsible for its con- 
 tinuance. . . . 
 
 [38]
 
 In the Fire of tlie Heart 
 
 "It will be stamped out when the humane work of 
 the Tenement House Department and the Health De- 
 partment of this city, and of every other city, is vic- 
 torious over opponents; when there is established in 
 the mind of everyone that vital principle of an ad- 
 vanced civilization, namely, that the profits of individ- 
 uals are second in importance to the life, welfare, 
 and prosperity of the great masses of people. It will 
 disappear from that community which demands the 
 destruction of an insanitary tenement regardless of in- 
 convenience to individuals and which also demands that 
 there shall be no dark and windowless rooms within its 
 boundaries under any condition whatsoever, as a result of 
 any plea, or as a favour to private interests great or small." 
 
 Certain tenements as well as workshops become in- 
 fected with the disease. We have heard of the "Lung 
 Block" and also of the "Ink Pot" in New York, both 
 with their frightfully large numbers of deaths from 
 tuberculosis. Mr. Ernest Poole, in describing the condi- 
 tions in this latter tenement, says : " It has front and rear 
 tenements five floors high, with a foul, narrow court 
 between. Here live one hundred and forty people. 
 Twenty-three are babies. Here I found one man sick 
 with the plague in the front house, two more in the rear 
 — and one of these had a young wife and four children. 
 Here the plague lives in darkness and filth — filth in 
 halls, over walls and floors, in sinks and closets. Here 
 in nine years alone twenty-six cases have been reported. 
 How many besides these were kept secret ? And behind 
 these nine years — how many cases more ? 
 
 [39]
 
 In the Fire of tJie Heart 
 "Rooms here have held death ready and waiting for 
 years. Up on the third floor, looking down into the 
 court, is a room with two little closets behind it. In one of 
 these a blind Scotchman slept and took the plague in 
 '94. His wife and his fifteen-year-old son both drank, 
 and the home grew squalid as the tenement itself. 
 He died in the hospital. Only a few months later 
 the plague fastened again. Slowly his little daughter 
 grew used to the fever, the coughing, the long, sleepless 
 nights. The foul court was her only outlook. At last 
 she, too, died. The mother and son then moved away. 
 But in this room the germs lived on. They might all have 
 been killed in a day by sunlight; they can live two years 
 in darkness. Here in darkness they lived, on grimy walls, 
 in dusky nooks, on dirty floors. Then one year later, 
 in October, a Jew rented this same room. He was taken, 
 and died in the summer. This room was rented again 
 in the autumn by a German and his wife. She had the 
 plague already, and died. Then an Irish family came in. 
 The father was a hard, steady worker, and loved his 
 children. The home this time was winning the fight. 
 But six months later he took the plague. He died in 1901. 
 This is only the record of one room in seven years. " 
 
 Professor Koch, who a little over twenty-two years ago 
 discovered the cause of tuberculosis, says in an inter- 
 view on the subject: "In all other infectious diseases 
 we attack infection at its source; cases of small-pox, 
 of leprosy, of diphtheria, of plague, are isolated, but 
 cases of tuberculosis in their last stages, the most deadly 
 
 [40]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 stage of the most deadly disease of all, are still allowed 
 throughout Europe to spread further infection broad- 
 east in the midst of their already destitute families. 
 This fact does not yet seem to be learned. When it is, 
 and when we have these homes for the hopeless cases 
 adjoining every'- city, then tuberculosis will pass from 
 the midst of us." Again, he says: "It is not cruelty to 
 isolate these cases; it is the truest and highest kindness. " 
 
 I have dwelt at length upon this great " White Plague " 
 — consumption — because its prevalence and its non- 
 abatement are so directly caused by social and industrial 
 conditions that the individual himself is powerless to 
 escape, and which only a united public action can end. 
 There are public spirited and earnest people in some of 
 our states, however, who are already aroused to the im- 
 portance of this great, and, to a large extent, unnecessary 
 evil, and who are already beginning to put into operation 
 agencies that promise much for its amelioration. Much, 
 however, must be done; and a great part must be along 
 the lines of better social and industrial conditions under 
 which so many millions of our people live. 
 
 Did space permit we could also consider at length 
 the diseases resulting to workmen from various types 
 of employment, for some are in time inevitably health- 
 breaking, and some are invariably most deadly. But 
 generally for those who are striken through these em- 
 ployments, no provisions of any type are made, and when 
 no longer strong or capable the worker is thrown out 
 upon himself. Unable in his weakened or diseased condi- 
 tion to find other employment, he many times becomes a 
 
 [41]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 public charge. "Parasitic" employments, with no 
 further responsibilities for those whose health they 
 undermine, are all too common in this day of 
 enlightenment. The public must demand greater pro- 
 tection from and responsibility on the part of these. 
 Mr. John Graham Brooks, in his admirable work, 
 " The Social Unrest, "* has spoken most strongly of that 
 frightful list of striken labourers that are now thrown 
 back upon themselves or their families with recompense 
 so uncertain and niggardly as to shock the most primi- 
 tive sense of social justice. Speaking of what comes under 
 the head of accident injuries in connection with the 
 progress of German insurance, Mr. Brooks further 
 says : " Previous to the accident insurance in Germany it 
 was thought that there might be thirty or forty thousand 
 injuries due to machinery that would be covered by the 
 insurance. The first investigation showed three times 
 this number; when the investigation became more 
 complete, six times the number . . . Most civilized 
 communities outside of America have already made 
 the same acknowledgment by framing new laws that 
 mark an era in a juster social legislation. " 
 
 Switzerland came first in 1881, then Germany, 
 Austria, Norway, England, France, Italy, and Den- 
 mark. They have all taken definite steps along the lines 
 of the securing of justice in this matter of industrial 
 accidents. The United States, the nation above all 
 others that one would naturally think had greatest cause 
 for taking such a step, has as yet done practically nothing. 
 
 * Macmillan and Company, New York and London 
 [42]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Undoubtedly lack of regular employment, sickness 
 or weakness, combined with the receiving of a mere living 
 wage, which leaves no opportunity to meet any emer- 
 gency successfully, is responsible for the great propor- 
 tion of the poverty and resultant pauperism that is in 
 existence in our own as well as in so many other coun- 
 tries to-day. The uncertainty and darkness that the 
 combination brings into the lives of millions of other- 
 wise strong, honest, hard-working, and withal deserving, 
 people, is almost indescribable. We make it hard for 
 many a man to be honest and independent and self- 
 respecting, and when with all his magnificent struggles 
 he eventually goes under, we throw the role of the 
 criminal or the pauper upon him and those dependent 
 on him. 
 
 We have the rush and strain in so many lines of work, 
 the boom and then depression, men rushed and driven 
 and then no work. There is no time for culture and ad- 
 vancement while the rush and strain is on, and the 
 uncertainty of existence — to meet one's honest obliga- 
 tions, and many times the search for work when un- 
 employment comes, leaves no time for culture or ad- 
 vancement, or even for the normal enjoyment of life, 
 which should be in any enlightened country at least 
 the portion of every endeavour. I think one of the saddest 
 and most unjust features of our present day life is the 
 contemplation of the thousands of thousands who are 
 working from early to late year after year merely to get 
 bread and clothing and shelter for the next day's work — 
 nothing more, lives void of all art, learning, rest, or hope. 
 
 [43]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Think what a loss it means to even an average standard 
 of citizenship. Think what it means for the future. 
 Think what a thing human life on this basis has 
 become, compared to what it might and should be. 
 
 I have an infinite respect for that great body of labour 
 striving in the face of such great odds to remain diligent, 
 honest, self-sustaining, fighting continually to retain 
 their places as self-supporting members of the commun- 
 ity, and to give whatever opportunities they are capable 
 of giving to their children — this vast army of heroes, 
 heroes in the common life, the highest type there is. 
 Many of them, however, on account of sometimes 
 shabby clothes and a less prosperous appearance, are 
 looked down upon by many more well-to-do and better 
 kept, but who in a similar test would fall far below them 
 in the measure of heroism. It is of this great army that 
 Mr. Hunter speaks as follows: "In the same cities and, 
 indeed, everywhere, there are great districts of people 
 who are up before dawn, who wash, dress, and eat 
 breakfast, kiss wives and children, and hurry away to 
 work or to seek work. The world rests upon their 
 shoulders; it moves by their muscle; everything would 
 stop if, for any reason, they should decide not to go into 
 the fields and factories and mines. But the world is so 
 organized that they gain enough to live upon only when 
 they work; should they cease, they are in destitution and 
 hunger. The more fortunate of the labourers are but a 
 few weeks from actual distress when the machines are 
 stopped. Upon the unskilled masses want is constantly 
 pressing. As soon as employment ceases, suffering stares 
 [44]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 them in the face. They are the actual producers of 
 wealth, who have no home nor any bit of soil which 
 they may call their own. They are the millions who 
 possess no tools and can work only by permission of 
 another. In the main, they live miserably, they know 
 not why. They work sore, yet gain nothing. They know 
 the meaning of hunger and the dread of want. They love 
 their wives and children. They try to retain their self- 
 respect. They have some ambition. They give to neigh- 
 bours in need, yet they are themselves the actual chil- 
 dren of poverty. . . . The necessities for maintaining 
 physical efficiency are very different from those essential 
 to mere living. A Hottentot, a Lazzarone, or a vagrant 
 may live well enough on little or nothing, because he 
 does not spend himself. The modem workman demands 
 a far higher standard of living in order to keep pace with 
 intense industrial life. Physical efficiency, not mere ex- 
 istence, is to him vital. His necessities are necessities! 
 It is a terrible word, for "Necessity's sharp pinch" is 
 like that of a steel vise. There is no give to it. Necessity 
 is like flint or granite. It is irresistible. It cannot be 
 shuffled with nor altered. If physical efficiency is an 
 absolute and vital necessity to the workman, so to him 
 are certain necessities for maintaining that physical 
 efficiency. The fundamental thing in all this is that 
 every workman who is expected by society to remain 
 independent of public relief and capable of self-support 
 must be guaranteed, in so far as that is possible, an 
 opportunity for obtaining those necessaries essential 
 to physical efficiency. Such a standard is the basis of 
 
 [45]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 almost everything; for, unless men can retain their 
 physical efficiency, they must degenerate. To continue 
 in poverty for any long period means in the end the loss 
 of the power of doing work, and to be unable to work 
 means in the end pauperism. " 
 
 There is a very direct connection between uncertainty 
 of employment and increased vagrancy and increased 
 crime, especially theft and those things pertaining 
 thereto. This is always noted in connection with any 
 unusual industrial depression, and also in lesser degree 
 in connection with the closing down of any particular 
 work or works. We allow to be built up an economic and 
 industrial system that makes it hard and next to im- 
 possible for a man to be honest, self-supporting, and 
 therefore self-respecting, and then punish him for it. 
 
 Several years ago, the case of a workman and his 
 connection with the Associated Charities in Boston 
 came under my observation. He was a strong, splendid 
 type of man, driver of a team in connection with one 
 of the large lumber firms. One day in handling a load 
 of heavy timbers, through some mischance, his shoulder 
 was dislocated and he was laid up for some weeks. His 
 family consisted of a wife and three children, one of 
 them a babe. They lived in three neatly kept small 
 rooms in a section of low-priced tenements. As soon as 
 his little reserve power was exhausted, in order to keep 
 above want, they had to apply for aid to the Charity 
 Organization. When he was finally capable of resuming 
 work, it was found that his place had been filled by 
 another. I have known this man to get up and be out of 
 [46]
 
 In the Fire of tJw Heart 
 
 his house long before light, and with practically nothing 
 for breakfast, regularly day after day for several weeks, 
 in his vain endeavour to find work. Wherever he could 
 get track of any possibility of work, he was there early 
 among those seeking the same. He was not a shiftless 
 man, caring little whether he had work or not, but a 
 strong, sober, earnest man, who felt the responsibility 
 of the family dependent upon him. This weary, fruitless 
 search for work, is a tale that is repeated over and 
 over every day in any large centre. 
 
 Sometime ago it was my privilege to sit with a friend, 
 a Municipal Judge in the Borough of Brooklyn, as he 
 despatched his daily round of cases. There were num- 
 bers whose troubles could be traced directly to a lack 
 of regular employment. Among them was an unusually 
 strong, splendid looking man, of about middle age, a 
 blacksmith by trade. His work had been chiefly in con- 
 nection with the handling the large forge pieces that 
 form part of the work of various machine-shops. 
 Through some shifting of forces — he was not a man 
 who drank — he was thrown out of work. The weary, 
 fruitless search for work and the increasing want — 
 notwithstanding his splendid physical build he was a 
 sensitive man — enabled depression finally to take strong 
 hold of him, and after struggling with this for some days 
 he finally one evening got his bottle of poison and quietly 
 lay down on the kitchen floor to end it all. He was 
 found before the end came, was resuscitated, and the 
 next day was taken before the Municipal Judge on the 
 charge of attempted suicide. It was indeed pathetic to 
 [47]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 see this splendid looking man, dejection and quiet 
 written in every movement and on every feature, care- 
 less now as to what disposition would be made of him, 
 having no choice now as to whether it was confinement or 
 freedom. Fortunately he was before a Justice of unusual 
 type, one who used his office primarily for the good he 
 could do to that weary and never ending round of fellow 
 creatures that came before him daily. That same day 
 agencies were put into operation to help the man find 
 work — the only thing needed — and thus restore him 
 as nearly as possible to his family and to his former 
 independent position. 
 
 How frequently men drop on the streets of the cities 
 of this, in many respects, great nation, from hunger, in 
 addition to that greater number of men and women 
 who suffer quietly and unknown to the world, in a 
 country where there is plenty for all a thousand times 
 over. They prefer hunger and starvation to theft or 
 begging, and thousands upon thousands prefer it to 
 becoming a pauper. Such are indeed heroes of the high- 
 est mould. 
 
 We must learn that the duty of our industries is not 
 done with the payment of just a living wage. Compensa- 
 tion must be adequate to enable something to be laid 
 by for the emergency that comes to every individual 
 and to every family. 
 
 There is a necessary and there is an unnecessary 
 
 poverty. The former is that that comes about through 
 
 intemperance, shiftlessness, laziness, depravity. This 
 
 I suppose will always be with us. There is no power that 
 
 [48]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 can shield men or women from the penalties or the 
 inevitable results of the violation of natural and moral 
 laws. There is on the other hand, and it is unhappily 
 the very great portion of it all, an unnecessary poverty. 
 The great bulk of the vast amount of poverty in the 
 country to-day, as well as that in every other country 
 is of this unnecessary type. It results through no fault 
 of the individual, in fact through agencies that the in- 
 dividual as such cannot cope with and cannot escape. 
 It is due to certain social and industrial evils and wrongs 
 that a truly great or even self-respecting nation cannot 
 continue to permit. We must find and put an end to the 
 causes that deliberately make paupers out of the 
 citizens of a great and free nation, and then turn around 
 and take care of them out of the public funds. 
 
 An industrial system that takes out of a man all the 
 vitality and energy and good there is in him and then 
 throws him out and onto the public as a public charge, 
 is not of a high order, and as it is not necessary it cer- 
 tainly cannot much longer be permitted. We must 
 make provisions for old age. When vast numbers are 
 receiving merely, and still other vast numbers not even, 
 a living wage, and can scarcely keep even with the daily 
 demands of life, how then, broken and helpless — many 
 long before their time — can they expect to live, self- 
 supporting, and in even the crudest form of comfort, 
 in their later years. We must learn from Germany and 
 other countries, and take up the matter of old age 
 pensions. We must make provisions for old age and for 
 the helpless outside of pauperism, this in addition to a 
 [49]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fairer living wage. A noted writer has recently said that 
 the whole matter resolves itself into the matter of fair 
 wages and regular employment. Then too we must 
 stop killing as well as injuring the breadwinners in such 
 wholesale numbers, or if not, then industry must be 
 compelled to make just and full and quick recompense 
 to those that through this agency become dependents. 
 Prof. Edward D. Jones, speaking of the fairer wage, 
 says : " The necessity for higher wages is based upon the 
 observation that, in the purchase and sale of labour 
 upon the market, all the necessary and legitimate costs 
 of producing labour are not provided for in the wages 
 received. Such transactions are not complete economi- 
 cally, and do not meet the claims of social justice. 
 Fair wages must include more than enough to support 
 the labourer while working, and must cover compensa- 
 tion for seasons of idleness due to sickness, old age, 
 youth, lack of work, or other causes beyond the control 
 of the labourer." 
 
 We are still considering the actual conditions that 
 exist in a country supposedly very great and uniformly 
 prosperous. In the United States to-day there are over 
 four million paupers. The average person would scarcely 
 believe that in New York in the year 1897 over 29 
 per cent of the people and in 1899 over 24 per 
 cent of the people found it necessary to apply 
 for relief. And yet, these figures given by the State 
 Board do not include the relief rendered by the trade 
 unions, various small clubs, circles, and committees, 
 nor the relief given by individuals. During the year 1903 
 
 [50]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 in Boston, more than 20 per cent of the inhabitants 
 were rendered aid by the public authorities alone, and 
 in addition to these it is estimated that during that year 
 336,000 persons were aided in private institutions, such 
 as hospitals, dispensaries, asylums, etc., and these are not, 
 except by duplications, contained in the above figures. 
 Estimating that these figures are correct as published, 
 it will be found that the number of people in the State 
 of New York in distress and requiring aid in 1897, and 
 the number in Boston in 1903 equalled proportionately 
 the number of those in poverty in London. 
 
 The Charity Organization Society in New York 
 finds that from 43 to 52 per cent of all applica- 
 tions for aid need work rather than relief. The 
 United Hebrew Charities in the same city say the dis- 
 tress and poverty among their people is due mainly 
 to the inability to find opportunities to become self- 
 supporting. This applies not only to New York, but 
 equally well to Chicago and to various other cities. 
 There is then a direct connection between irregularity 
 or lack of employment and pauperism, the same as 
 there is a very direct connection between irregularity 
 or lack of work and vagrancy. If so large a proportion 
 of those applying for aid need work rather than relief, 
 nearly or practically one half, then it certainly is en- 
 cumbent upon society to provided a solution of the 
 problem. Want and a lack of regular employment 
 precede both poverty and vagrancy more often than 
 they follow it. 
 
 There is also a very direct connection between want 
 [51]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and an adequate means to supply it and drunkenness. 
 It is the cheerless, dreary condition in men's lives, in 
 the lives of both men and women, that is responsible 
 for the great bulk of intemperance that we find. Under- 
 fed, underclothed, cold without sufficient heat, no hope, 
 despondency, this is the chief road to intemperance and 
 degeneracy. Were we to know all the facts we would 
 find that drink precedes but rarely. Poverty precedes 
 more often than it follows. The great evil of intemper- 
 ance which is the bane in the lives of such vast numbers 
 of working people in this country, as in England, and 
 every country where it has reached similar proportions, 
 is to a vast extent due to the dreary and hard and under- 
 fed and hopeless conditions in so many hundreds of 
 thousands of lives. Cold without sufficient heat, a 
 desire to get away from, to forget the dull, weary hope- 
 lessness. Wise, indeed, was the Bishop of the English 
 Church when he said, " If I lived in the slums I should 
 be a drunkard, too." 
 
 Dr. Henry van Dyke, preaching the baccalaureate 
 sermon at one of our leading universities some time ago, 
 gave utterance to this same great truth when he said: 
 " There are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let 
 intemperance be for us the type of all, because so many 
 of the others are its children. Drunkenness ruins more 
 homes and wrecks more fives than war. How shall we 
 oppose it ? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions 
 and make laws against it. But I do say that we can never 
 really conquer the evil in this way. The stronghold of 
 intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men 's 
 [52]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life 
 beautiful and happy and full of interest. " But the lives 
 of this vast army of men and women that we are con- 
 sidering, those continually in or continually face to 
 face with want, are not beautiful, neither are they happy 
 nor full of interest. They should be; they could be. 
 
 Mr. Arthur W. Milbury, Secretary of the Industrial 
 Christian Alliance, has said : " I have had a long and in- 
 timate personal experience with the class of men referred 
 to, and I give it unhesitatingly as my testimony that 
 not many men are ' lazy ' in the sense in which this word 
 is commonly used. I have dealt with thousands of such 
 men and have almost invariably found them willing and 
 anxious to work. I know that a great many people en- 
 gaged in charitable enterprises have much to say about 
 lazy people, but I am inclined to think that it is not so 
 much laziness that is at fault as the efforts so many of us 
 make to put square pegs in round holes. All men are 
 not born with the same energy and the same intelligence, 
 and what might be called laziness in me might be called 
 superhuman energy in other men. In this institution, 
 we do not put at chopping wood or shoveling coal, if 
 we can possibly help it, the man whose only occupation 
 in life has been that of bookkeeper or clerk and who 
 has never had any hard physical labour. We endeavour, 
 as far as possible, to put men at the work they are best 
 fitted for. Perhaps this is one reason why our experience 
 leads us not to consider laziness as prevalent a vice as 
 some other people. " 
 
 The conditions that surround the lives of the children 
 [53]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of any country, especially the play-life, constitute a 
 very great factor in determining the immediate future 
 conditions of that country. In the early days of the 
 American nation the fields, and all that this conveys, 
 were the playgrounds of the children. As the city began 
 and grew the Common was given them in place of the 
 fields; this was succeeded many times by the small 
 yard of the home. But as the cities have grown and land 
 has become more valuable, and population denser and 
 continually denser, the children have been gradually 
 pushed out into the streets, until in Greater New York 
 for example, the street and all that that means is the 
 chief playground for not less than half a million children. 
 Tins is also true, to a greater or less extent, of certain 
 portions of every great city in the country, — the street 
 with its noises and all of its dangers, its dust and its 
 dirt, and many times its stifling atmosphere, as well as 
 all of its moral dangers, is the playground of at least 
 seven million of our children to-day. After saying that, 
 "The younger criminals seem to come almost exclu- 
 sively from the worst tenement-house districts," an 
 eminent authority even many years ago gave before a 
 New York Legislative Committee, testimony as follows : 
 "By far the largest part, 80 per cent at least, of 
 crimes against property and against the person are per- 
 petrated by individuals who have either lost connection 
 with home life, or never had any, or whose homes have 
 ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable 
 to afford what was regarded as ordinary wholesome 
 influences of home and family. " 
 [54]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 It is the life in the streets of the large city where the 
 needs of the children seem to have been so generally 
 forgotten, that develops as Mr. Jacob A. Riis has so 
 authoritatively said, "dislike of regular work, physical 
 incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of 
 adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, 
 and untrained will, carelessness of the happiness of 
 others. " 
 
 Such are the baneful influences that surround 
 the lives of these almost unbelievably large numbers 
 of our quickly coming men and women, a number so 
 large as soon to constitute the determining factor in 
 the nation's life. 
 
 For one to realize that there are hungry people, and 
 even among the children, who especially need proper 
 and sufficient nourishment to insure fully developed 
 and enduring bodies as well as brains, to realize that 
 there are the hungry and the chronically hungry, re- 
 sulting from poverty, in a country of such supposedly 
 universal prosperity, is at first almost startling. It was 
 estimated during a recent winter — at a period of more 
 than ordinarily average prosperity that there were more 
 than seventy thousand children in New York City who 
 arrived at school hungry. I have seen attempts made 
 to deny this, but so far there have been no successful 
 ones. When asked his opinion as to the correctness of 
 this statement the City Superintendent of Schools said: 
 "With regard to Mr. Hunter's statement, I beg leave 
 to say that a statement of this kind must necessarily 
 
 [55]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 be an estimate and only approximately correct. Mr. 
 Hunter, however, has had unusual opportunities for 
 forming a judgment in this matter and I should think 
 that he would be more likely to underestimate than to 
 overestimate the number. " It is the opinion of the 
 Superintendent himself, that there are hundreds of 
 thousands of children in the city schools who cannot 
 study because they are always hungry. Commenting 
 upon this same matter at about that time, an editorial in 
 one of our most influential New York daily papers said : 
 " The fact that seventy thousand children go to school 
 hungry is established. . . . They say the people 
 of England are deteriorating because many of them live 
 in a constant state of half-starvation. ... If 
 conditions are not changed, the next five years will find 
 the number of half-starved children in New York 
 doubled. These conditions will put 100,000 children in 
 Chicago on half rations, and they will create a starving 
 population in every city of this marvelously prosperous 
 country. . . . It is not a part of the common lot 
 of life. There is no excuse for anyone starving in the 
 United States. Destitution is a removable calamity. It 
 is a political and economic disease. A correct system of 
 government and a correct enforcement of proper laws 
 will remove it. " In addition to this army of underfed 
 children in our schools, there are undoubtedly very 
 large numbers of the underfed among those who are 
 not in the schools at all. 
 
 The number of children not in our schools is perhaps 
 much larger than the average person has any conception 
 
 [56]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of. A careful estimate in connection with New York 
 City, shows that fourteen out of every hundred of all 
 children of eleven and twelve years of age, over twenty- 
 five out of every hundred of all children of thirteen 
 years, and more than fifty out of every hundred children 
 of fourteen years of age are not in attendance at the 
 public schools. I have no facts of a similar nature that 
 pertain to other cities, before me, but I dare say that 
 in some cases at least, perhaps many, the numbers 
 would be quite as large. 
 
 Our modern life is becoming so intense, and the strug- 
 gle for existence is becoming, especially in some centres, 
 so keen and so sharp, that no one growing into manhood 
 aid womanhood can afford to enter upon the stage of 
 activity in anything but a thoroughly first-class and 
 sound condition, both mentally and physically. Each 
 should have an equipment of only the very best in a 
 country supposed to be among the best. Nevertheless 
 there are at this present hour over 1,700,000 boys and 
 girls under fifteen years of age at work in our mills and 
 our mines and various industrial establishments and 
 works of all types. At this point space does not permit 
 of any enumeration of the conditions under which vast 
 numbers of these children of from five to fifteen years 
 of age are working, nor any detailed enumeration of the 
 broken condition of so many of them so long before 
 their time, sometimes even before they have entered 
 upon young manhood and womanhood. 
 
 The cotton mills of the South, many owned or con- 
 trolled by wealthy Northern capitalists, have of recent 
 [57]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 years brought about a condition of child slavery that 
 was scarcely surpassed by a similar condition in England 
 during its darkest period of child labour so many, many 
 years ago. The greed for gain when it once takes 
 possession of a man is never satisfied, and the only 
 way many times to protect the helpless from the brute 
 for society itself to stretch forth its strong mandatory 
 arm. 
 
 In addition to the almost unspeakable evils resulting 
 to the child himself and later to the man and woman, 
 is the competition that this army of over 1,700,000 child 
 workers throws out against adult labour, and especially 
 is this a matter of no small import when there are con- 
 tinually such large numbers of men and women out of 
 employment as we have already noted. Greater profits 
 is the one and practically absolute cause, for in this age 
 of modern machinery the children can many times be 
 hired for a third of the man's normal wage. 
 
 In view of the facts presented in that much discussed 
 and very suggestive and valuable book, "The Present 
 Distribution of Wealth in the United States, " published 
 sometime ago, by Mr. Charles B. Spahr, we can scarcely 
 cease wondering that our Federal Bureaus have not 
 even before this made an effort to find the present drift 
 of matters in this respect in the country. Mr. Spahr's 
 findings revealed the fact that even so far back as 1890, 
 considerably over one-third of the families in the United 
 States, or 41 per cent, are entirely propertyless : that 
 seven-eighths of the families hold but one-eighth 
 of the national wealth: and that on the other hand, 
 
 [58]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 one per cent of the families own more than the entire 
 remaining 99 per cent. 
 
 Another suggestive way of presenting the matter is 
 that the "wealthy" and "well-to-do" classes, that is, 
 1,500,000 families hold in wealth over $56,000,000,000, 
 while the remaining "middle" and "poorer" classes, 
 that is, 11,000,000 families, own but $9,000,000,000, 
 and of course, in this latter number of families are not 
 included the 41 per cent of the families that are 
 entirely property less, which, as is apparent, would 
 greatly swell the inequality. 
 
 Other estimates including those of Mr. George K. 
 Holmes, an expert statistician employed on the census, 
 revealed facts of a very similar nature. 
 
 These are indeed not only significant but most 
 portentous facts, and if the above are the facts as far 
 back as 1890, they have undoubtedly been accentuated 
 with great force since then, for there has been no decade 
 in our entire history in which so many great private 
 fortunes have been built up or have been added so 
 powerfully to as that between 1890 and 1900, and since. 
 A well-known man in the financial world in reviewing 
 some of our present day conditions has recently made a 
 statement to the effect that it is only a matter of simple 
 mathematics to ascertain the day, and that only a few 
 years away, when ten men will be practically owners of 
 the United States. He has indeed much basis, in view 
 of present conditions and the present trend of matters, 
 for this statement. 
 
 The fact of the matter is that in face of the great and 
 [59]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 unprecedented growth of wealth in the United States, 
 resulting in large measure from its youth and wonderful 
 natural resources and opportunities, the increase has 
 been so unequal that the vast millions have flowed into 
 the pockets of the few, while the few millions have gone 
 to the lot of the many. The rich have grown richer at a 
 rate and to a degree that is almost astounding, and 
 while it is not true that the poor have on the whole grown 
 poorer, it is true that the increase going to their lot has 
 been so exceedingly small in comparison — in some 
 cases not even sufficient to be noted at all — that prac- 
 tically the same effect has come about. In other words 
 the increase in general prosperity and of those at the 
 upper end has been out of all proportion to that of the 
 great labouring and middle class. The masses of the 
 people are not getting their just relative increase. Were 
 it not at the risk of dealing too much with statistics and 
 figures, it would be most interesting to calculate and 
 consider the total amount of wealth created each year 
 or each decade, and the amount of it that actually goes 
 to the great mass of the producers of that wealth. 
 
 A Fabian Tract says that there are about one million 
 rich men in England who do nothing, hence live on the 
 labour of others. The vast tracts of land that in great 
 estates, sometimes even in large cities (over 600 acres 
 in the heart of London is held by a single individual), 
 that are held by rich or titled families, and thus kept 
 away from the people to whom the land should rightly 
 belong or for whose benefit it should be used, is un- 
 doubtedly one of the great causes of the great inequality 
 
 [60]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of conditions in Great Britain. I have passed partly by 
 one estate in North Britain, eighteen miles wide and a 
 hundred miles long. There are numerous estates of 
 vast numbers of square miles each, even comprising 
 whole villages where no single dweller owns the house 
 in which he lives, nor can he even drive a nail in it 
 without permission. 
 
 In view of the above facts it is interesting to note 
 the following, a conversation between the well-known 
 author of that widely circulated little book, "Merrie 
 England," and one of the subjects, a working-man 
 subject, of the King. The title of the chapter in which 
 it occurs is, "Who Makes the Wealth, and Who Gets 
 It?" 
 
 "Now, John, what are the evils of which we com- 
 plain ? Lowness of wages, length of working hours, un- 
 certainty of employment, insecurity of the future, low 
 standards of public health and morality, prevalence of 
 pauperism and crime, and the existence of false ideals 
 of life. 
 
 " I will give you a few examples of the things I mean. 
 It is estimated that in this country, with its population 
 of thirty-six millions, there are generally about 700,000 
 men out of work. There are about 800,000 paupers. 
 Of every thousand persons who die in Merrie England 
 over nine hundred die without leaving any property 
 at all. About eight millions of people exist always on 
 the borders of destitution. About twenty millions are 
 poor. More than half the national income belongs to 
 about ten thousand people. About thirty-thousand 
 
 [61]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 people own fifty-five fifty-sixths of the land and capital 
 of the kingdom, but of thirty-six millions of people only 
 one and one-half millions get above $15 a week. The 
 average income per head of the working classes is about 
 $85 a year, or less than twenty-five cents a day. There 
 are millions of our people working under conditions 
 and living in homes that are simply disgraceful. The 
 sum of crime, vice, drunkenness, gambling, prostitu- 
 tion, idleness, ignorance, want, disease, and death is 
 appalling. . . . To what are the above evils due ? 
 They are due to the unequal distribution of wealth, and 
 to the absence of justice and order from our society. 
 
 "Political orators and newspaper editors are very 
 fond of talking to you about ' your country.' Now, Mr. 
 Smith, it is a hard practical fact that you have not got 
 any country. The British Islands do not belong to the 
 British people; they belong to a few thousands — cer- 
 tainly not half a million — of rich men. " 
 
 The poverty and wretched conditions in London and 
 other large centres in Great Britain is indeed very 
 great in its proportions, but we in the United States are 
 rapidly approaching it in many centres, and in some, 
 according to all available facts and statistics, we have 
 reached it already. Sometime ago a well-known English 
 philanthropist and sociologist, who was travelling in 
 this country studying the conditions of the working 
 classes, publicly declared while in Washington, as the 
 result of his investigations that there are worse places 
 in that city than the worst quarters of London. 
 
 Said Jacob A. Riis : " I am not easily discouraged. 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 But I confess I was surprised by the sights I have seen 
 in the national capital. You people of Washington have 
 alley after alley filled with hidden people whom you 
 don't know. There are 298 such alleys. 
 
 " They tell me the death rate among the negro babies 
 born in these alleys is 475 out of a thousand before they 
 grow to be one year old. Nearly one-half! Nowhere I 
 have ever been in the civilized world have I ever seen 
 such a thing as that. "* 
 
 The luxury on the one hand and the poverty on the 
 other, and it has been the history of the world that 
 where the former has grown great the latter has grown 
 great also and as a consequence, that we find in the 
 American nation to-day, and within a period so com- 
 paratively short, is simply enormous in its proportions. 
 While in this country we are not labouring under the 
 caste system that exists in England, and has there become 
 almost as fixed and pronounced as it has been for untold 
 generations in India for example,we are already feeling 
 a similar bearing and power on the part of the very rich, 
 both as families and as individuals, and some such state 
 is now as for some time past it has been, in process of 
 rapid formation in this country. 
 
 Sometime ago I noticed the definition that an eminent 
 writer gave to the word loafer, and as nearly as I can 
 recall — a loafer — one who works not himself but 
 lives on the work of others, either as a gentleman, or 
 as a tramp or a beggar or a pauper — both classes are 
 kept through the support of others. 
 ^Washington Times, Dec. 16, 1903. 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The upper and lower ends are borne by the great 
 middle classes, — and the growth and increase of the 
 upper tends continually to increase the number of the 
 lower — These great extremes result primarily from the 
 unequal distribution of the profits resulting from the 
 handling of earth's products. This is the reason of the 
 one per cent of the families owning already more than 
 the remaining 99 per cent. 
 
 It is from this that the " smart " set comes, sometimes 
 called the " brainless " set, sometimes the " thoughtless. " 
 The maker of the fortune, the father or the grand- 
 father, many times made from the most common clay 
 stuff, but with an ability in manipulating, in accumulat- 
 ing, sometimes with a working knowledge of scarcely 
 one of the ten commandments, was the one who did 
 the work; and the descendants become dwellers in 
 idleness, and worse than idleness, for the old gentleman 
 has helped them onto the backs of other people and from 
 this position they refuse politely to descend, and will 
 remain there until the people bring about a different 
 set of conditions on the one hand, or until idleness and 
 luxury, so many times descending into vice, has sapped 
 the vitality and the common level is found again. It was 
 John Stewart Mill who pointed out the following facts: 
 
 " When men talk of the ancient wealth of a country, 
 of riches inherited from ancestors, and similar expres- 
 sions, the idea suggested is, that the riches so trans- 
 mitted were produced long ago, at the time when they 
 are said to have been first acquired, and that no portion 
 [64]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of the capital of a country was produced this year except 
 so much as may have been this year added to the total 
 amount. The fact is far otherwise. 
 
 " The greater part in value of the wealth now existing 
 in England has been produced by human hands within 
 the last twelve months. A very small proportion indeed 
 of that large aggregate was in existence ten years ago; 
 of the present productive capital of the country scarcely 
 any part, except farmhouses and factories, and a few 
 ships and machines, and even these would not in most 
 cases have survived so long, if fresh labour had not been 
 employed within that period in putting them into 
 repair. 
 
 "The land subsists, and the land is almost the only 
 thing that subsists. Everything which is produced 
 perishes, and most things very quickly. 
 
 " Capital is kept in existence from age to age, not by 
 preservation, but by perpetual reproduction. " 
 
 A great deal of very bad sense and a lack of discrimi- 
 nating thought is shown at the present day in an in- 
 discriminate vituperation of the rich, as if all were of 
 the same class. It is by no means true. They cannot be 
 indiscriminately classed together nor spoken of in the 
 same category any more than various types of business 
 enterprises, those that though large are straightforward 
 and honourable, and those that seem to be the very 
 epitome of hell in their methods. 
 
 Among the rich are some of the finest and noblest 
 types, and most valuable in the social structure. More- 
 over, it seems to me that there should be not only no 
 
 [65]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 indiscriminate vituperation, but none at all. Whatever 
 blame there is should rightly rest upon those sitting 
 quietly by and allowing a system of social and economic 
 injustice and inequality to be built up that enables a 
 few to become so enormously and so drunkenly rich 
 that even they themselves and their descendants suffer 
 from the effects of it, and on the other hand millions of 
 men, women, and children are reduced to a life of con- 
 tinual poverty and misery through this very inequality 
 that we permit. This in face of the fact that the demands 
 of the people could be made for an economic and in- 
 dustrial justice in a manner so convincing and so com- 
 pelling that no bodies or groups of men or families, 
 however powerful they may be, however drunk with 
 gain and influence, or however skilled in methods of 
 manipulation, could do anything other than listen to 
 and heed these demands. 
 
 Not hostility to the rich, a foolish as well as dangerous 
 proceeding, but a fully prepared and determined and 
 never-ending hostility to a political and industrial 
 system that permits a few to become so excessively 
 rich, and hence such unequal and such rapidly grow- 
 ing dangerous conditions. It is not their fault but ours 
 if we permit these conditions to continue. They are 
 doing only what large numbers of those who condemn 
 them would do under similar circumstances. 
 
 It is a beautiful little village of 3,000 people. The 
 public Common was a joy and a pleasure to all; 
 rich in flowers, in grass, in trees, in birds and song. 
 Sometime ago several influential families turned and 
 
 [66]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 now pasture their cows in it. The people through neg- 
 ligence permitted it. The owners of the cows are now 
 using a great abundance of very rich cream. But for the 
 people the joy of the Common is gone. Sometime the 
 people will awake and the cows will be driven from the 
 Common and forever. Their ■ owners will never take 
 them out of their own accord. They have grown to love 
 cream dearly. 
 
 The system is now at fault, and must be changed even 
 for the safety and perpetuity of the nation, as well as 
 the welfare of the great mass of the people. As it is now 
 the great proportion is simply a grist for the few. 
 
 Bishop Potter of New York has recently said : " The 
 growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, wasteful and 
 wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to be, has 
 been matched step by step by a deepening and deadening 
 poverty, which has left whole neighbourhoods of people 
 practically without hope and without aspiration. " 
 
 In The Churchman of June 4, 1904, occurred the 
 following paragraph: "Some startling facts were pre- 
 sented at the conference of the C. A. I. L. (The Church 
 Association for the Advancement of the Interests of 
 Labour) by its tenement-house committee. Out of 512 
 families investigated by Dr. Daniel, of the New York 
 Infirmary for Women and Children, one in a little less 
 than eight lived in rear houses, though these have been 
 legally forbidden for years; two-thirds (377) lived in 
 houses with dark halls; only forty in houses where the 
 halls were really light. But one of the houses could be 
 reported as in really good condition; 222 were in moder- 
 
 [67]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ately good repair; 255 dirty and out of repair. The 
 earnings of these families averaged $3.81 a week, and 
 of this they paid almost exactly half, $1.85, for rent. 
 The number of persons in a family averaged 4.26, so 
 that there was left, after paying rent, forty-six cents for 
 each person for food, clothing, heat, light and the rest. " 
 
 We make poverty and then bountifully supply, or 
 attempt to supply, relief for it to the sad, sad numbers 
 who despite their most diligent and heroic efforts are 
 cast into it. It is indeed a sort of " benevolent feudalism. " 
 It has been said and so truthfully, that the rich and pow- 
 erful will do anything for the poor but get off their backs. 
 
 The munificence of our charities and relief works is 
 in one sense a most beautiful feature of our country's 
 civilization. In another sense it is one of the most 
 horrible shames, in that it registers, and still counte- 
 nances the great mass of the poverty among us, only a 
 small fraction of which is necessary. We spend annually 
 in charity and relief — public and private — over 
 two hundred million dollars, and the demands are con- 
 tinually in advance of the ways of meeting them. The 
 demand for relief always keeps considerable in advance 
 of the supply — such is the testimony of Prof. Amos 
 G. Warner in his able book " American Charities. " 
 But with it all we have not yet learned the far greater 
 economy of prevention over cure, or attempted cure, 
 in addition to the frightful amount of suffering and 
 misery and degradation that such a system brings to 
 such vast numbers. The following partial illustration 
 may be suggestive. A few years ago in Glasgow there 
 
 [68]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 existed a frightful death rate among the people of a 
 certain portion of the city. The municipal authorities, 
 more quick to act for the people than in similar cases 
 among us, examined into the conditions, found the 
 causes, and demolished the houses in that immediate 
 section and erected new tenements to take their places. 
 The death rate was reduced from fifty-five per thousand 
 to a little over fourteen per thousand. A slum immedi- 
 ately adjoining still had a death rate of fifty-three per 
 thousand. Here stood two groups of dwellings housing 
 practically the same class of people, one having a death 
 rate of a little over fourteen to every thousand and the 
 other a death rate almost four times as great. But for 
 this common-sense action, this frightful and unneces- 
 sary death rate would have kept up year after year, 
 and charity and relief would have been taxed both in 
 money and in energy to a far greater extent than the 
 amounts of money and energy that were required to 
 make the surroundings of these people decent, and as 
 becomes a civilized community. 
 
 The following paragraphs are filled with truth con- 
 cerning this matter of charity and relief : " In its origin 
 charity sprang from the noblest feeling — that sympathy 
 with others which prompts us to relieve suffering. The 
 impulse to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter 
 the homeless, is wholly creditable. But the modern 
 machinery of public and private charities, supported 
 by taxation or by private funds given out of a sense of 
 obligation, is abominable. 
 
 "All statistics of charitable organizations show that 
 [69]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the real trouble with the great majority of the people 
 who seek relief, is lack of work. At least 75 per 
 cent of those who are assisted by private charity 
 or public institutions are able and willing to work, if 
 only they could find employment. And the remaining 
 25 per cent, including the children, the sick, etc., is 
 indirectly the result of the same conditions of lack 
 of work or low wages. Because of inability on the 
 part of parents to make provision for their children, the 
 orphan asylums and industrial homes are overflowing. 
 Because of distress brought on by insufficient nourish- 
 ment, or by living in unhealthy tenements, the hospitals 
 are crowded. Because the sick are poor they must look 
 for free medical attendance instead of employing a 
 physician. So with practically all the objects of charity. 
 Directly or indirectly the need for help arises from the 
 fact that workers are not able to support themselves 
 by their labour. . . . Those who have worked the 
 hardest at charities know how hopelessly inefficient and 
 insufficient they are. Charity fails, and always must fail 
 to accomplish its aims, because it concerns itself with 
 surface symptoms and not with fundamental causes. 
 
 "Since charity cannot stop anyone from shutting 
 people out of work, it cannot do anything to alleviate 
 or abolish the evils arising from want of work. When it 
 pretends to do so, it is a fraud used to soothe the vic- 
 tims of partisan laws into silence. 
 
 "The rich are generally well aware of all this — so 
 they charge their own indifference to their God, and say 
 that Jesus said, ' The poor ye shall have always with 
 
 [70]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 you. ' Jesus never said anything of the sort. He said, 
 'The poor ye have with you always and whensoever 
 ye will ye may do them good ' (Mark 14, 7) ; that is, 
 may abolish their poverty and the causes of it, too. I 
 commend to those religious persons the last four verses 
 of Revelation. "* 
 
 And while I think the author of these paragraphs 
 is in the main right, I think he speaks somewhat too 
 generally in regard to the motives that actuate many rich 
 people who give to charity, for I know many are ani- 
 mated by motives of the highest and noblest type. And 
 until they can see their way to spend a portion of their 
 means and energy in a far wiser and more effective 
 way — in an endeavour to bring about more just and 
 equitable conditions in the social and industrial life 
 of the country, may they not cease the good work they 
 are doing. 
 
 Then so far as the practical effects of charity upon 
 those who are its recipients, the following testimony 
 of Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell, is quite thoroughly 
 in keeping with the testimony of practically all ex- 
 perienced workers and observers in this field of charity. 
 Mrs. Lowell says, " Whatever exception you may have 
 encountered, you know that the rule is that those who 
 receive relief are or soon become idle, intemperate, 
 untruthful, vicious, or at least quite shiftless and im- 
 provident. You know that the more relief they have 
 as a rule ; the more they need. You knew that it is 
 destructive to energy and industry, and that the taint 
 
 *From " Free America," by Bolton Hall. 
 [71]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 passes from generation to generation and that a pauper 
 family is more hopeless to reform than a criminal 
 family. " 
 
 Our efforts must be to deal not so much with charity 
 and relief, as with the causes that make such vast 
 amounts of charity and relief necessary. It is simply 
 astounding, our willingness to let things go on as they 
 are and then care for the unfortunate millions who 
 fall in their struggles against such tremendous odds. 
 
 We allow our municipal and state representatives — 
 who thereby become representatives of the great 
 moneyed and corporate interests — to give over fran- 
 chises for the use of great public utilities that should be 
 used for the people and with millions upon millions 
 in value, to the personal and private uses of little groups 
 of men, without asking in most cases even a dollar in 
 compensation and then we tamely accept poor ser- 
 vice, high charges, many times disgusting and almost 
 inhuman treatment. They give it. We accept it. We 
 accept it even as if we did not know better and as if it 
 were something we had to submit to, rather than be- 
 cause we choose to. Thus we make them increasingly 
 rich and daring and unscrupulous, so that out of their 
 enormous profits, wrung from the constantly increasing 
 needs of the people, they are enabled to build up great 
 corruption funds, to maintain strong and powerful 
 lobbies to influence all legislation in their favour, to kill 
 all that may be adverse, in other words all that may be 
 for the interests of the people. In this way they have 
 gone on and on, getting many times by direct purchase 
 
 [72]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 of the votes of the members of our city councils and of 
 legislators, additional properties that by all laws of 
 common-sense as well as the most crude laws of justice, 
 should belong to, should be managed by and for the 
 people. Some day, and before long now, we will wonder 
 at the asinine qualities that we American people have 
 displayed in this respect. 
 
 Little wonder then that the business and propertied 
 classes have grabbed and are still grabbing everything 
 in sight, as well as appropriating to themselves the 
 machinery of government. They will continue to do 
 this as long as the people permit it. 
 
 These agencies, eminently "respectable," though 
 many times rheumatic and gouty, whence spring the 
 greatest forces of corruption in the country, are already 
 gnawing at the very vitals of the nation's welfare, as 
 well as at its safety and perpetuity. The nation of free- 
 men is already in danger. The mutterings of the great 
 discontent are already most clearly audible even to the 
 most indifferent and unconcerned. Of these all think- 
 ing men and women are most keenly aware. The 
 nation cannot remain in safety, but must retrograde 
 and this splendid example of free institutions and free 
 men and women must be counted abortive unless a 
 movement and a very pronounced and determined and 
 unceasing movement is quickly made to beat back the 
 advance of the sleek, cunning, conscienceless bands, 
 whose motto is greed and whose method is corruption. 
 It is carrying a blight, withering and deadening to free 
 institutions, into every quarter that it touches. 
 
 [73]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 " If the King of Mexico has any gold, " said Cortez, 
 as he and his followers stood clamouring at the gates of 
 Montezuma, " let him send it out to us. For I and my 
 companions have a disease of the heart which is cured 
 by gold. " 
 
 Sometime ago that very keen observer, matchless 
 thinker, and great lover of justice and of men, hence, 
 of his country's welfare, Henry George, gave utterance 
 to the following; most significant words :* 
 
 " The evils arising from the unjust and unequal dis- 
 tribution of wealth, which are becoming more and 
 more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not 
 incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring 
 progress to a halt. . . . 
 
 "The poverty which in the midst of abundance 
 pinches and imbrutes men, and all the manifold evils 
 which flow from it, spring from a denial of justice. 
 In permitting the monopolization of the opportunities 
 which nature freely offers to all, we have ignored the 
 fundamental law of justice — for, so far as we can see, 
 when we view things upon a large scale, justice seems 
 to be the supreme law of the universe. But by sweeping 
 away this injustice and asserting the rights of all men to 
 natural opportunities, we shall conform ourselves to the 
 law — we shall remove the cause of unnatural inequal- 
 ity in the distribution of wealth and power, 
 substitute political strength for political weakness ; and 
 make tyranny and anarchy impossible. . . . Our 
 primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. . . . 
 
 * "Progress and Poverty," p. 541 (1900). 
 
 [74]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 It is this that turns the blessings of material progress into 
 a curse. It is this that crowds human beings into noisome 
 cellars and squalid tenement-houses; that fills prisons 
 and brothels ; that goads men with want and consumes 
 them with greed; that robs women of the grace and 
 beauty of perfect womanhood; that takes from little 
 children the joy and innocence of life's morning. 
 
 "Civilization so based cannot continue. The eternal 
 laws of the universe forbid it. Ruins of dead empires 
 testify, and the witness that is in every soul answers, 
 that it cannot be. It is something grander than Benevo- 
 lence, something more august than Charity — it is 
 Justice herself that demands of us to right this wrong. 
 Justice that will not be denied ; that cannot be put off — 
 Justice that with the scales carries the sword. 
 
 " Can it be that the gifts of the Creator may be thus 
 misappropriated with impunity ? Is it a light thing that 
 labour should be robbed of its earnings while greed 
 rolls in wealth — that the many should want while the 
 few are surfeited ? Turn to history, and on every page 
 may be read the lesson that such wrong never goes un- 
 punished; that the Nemesis that follows injustice 
 never falters nor sleeps! Look around to-day. Can this 
 state of thing continue? May we even say, "After us 
 the deluge ! " Nay ; the pillars of the state are trembling 
 even now, and the very foundations of society begin to 
 quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The 
 struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, 
 is near at hand, if it be not already begun. " 
 
 Thoughtful and fearless men are in increasingly 
 [75]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 large numbers raising the warning voice. Shall we listen 
 briefly to some types of these warnings ? The following 
 paragraph is from the editor of one of our prominent 
 magazines : 
 
 " With the waning of religious faith comes the wor- 
 ship of wealth and the attendant evils of extravagance, 
 ostentation, false pretence, envy, and wide-spread dis- 
 content. That nation is in a bad way, indeed, when it is 
 notoriously true that the mass of its citizens will do 
 almost anything to get money, and are able to do almost 
 anything by means of money, to ignore or violate the 
 laws, to laugh at decent opinion, to override popular 
 rights, and to trample on the poor. The United 
 States is not yet in such a lamentable case, our land 
 still abounds in honest men and unspoiled women, but, 
 with the unparalleled growth of private fortunes and 
 the spirit of wanton display, with the increase, on the 
 other hand, of misery and wretchedness, we are rapidly 
 approaching the danger line where millions of our 
 miserable poor may well cry out to thousands of our 
 prodigal rich: — 'How comes it that you have so much 
 while we have so little ? How can you justify this shame- 
 ful squandering of wealth when you see us, your 
 brothers, toiling in factories and sweat-shops, starving 
 in tenements, and wasted by disease ? ' 
 
 The following is a type of recent independent pulpit 
 utterance. Speaking first of the enormous sums expended 
 annually in charity in the United States it continues : 
 
 "This colossal sum is about equally divided among 
 public relief, private giving and the charities of the 
 
 [76]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 churches. How much good does it do ? Is it merely an 
 anaesthetic to benumb the poor, lest they cry too loud ? 
 Can wisdom and virtue eliminate the conditions that 
 make charity necessary? 
 
 " The true philanthropist is the good steward — the 
 man who labours, plans, executes the honourable busi- 
 ness enterprises of this world. He who opens the doors 
 of steady employment, pays an honest, living wage, by 
 his foresight and skill frustrates 'panics,' 'depressions' — 
 this is the true philanthropist. His business enterprises 
 are a blessing to the community. 
 
 "Then, again, there are those whom Jesus lashes 
 like scorpions — men who lay burdens on men's shoul- 
 ders grievous to be borne, and do not as much as touch 
 them with their little finger! There are those who, 
 having a giant's strength, are using it like a tyrant — 
 promoting monopolies that oppress the people, con- 
 trolling the necessities of life — beef, sugar, oil, coal — 
 and thus use their business positions as did the old 
 barons their castles — places for plunder. This kind 
 of social wrong makes poverty and prepares for social 
 revolution. Jesus commends justice to all such. If 
 parasites and plunderers were abolished, there would be 
 very little need of philanthropy." 
 
 Said a well-known Bishop at a Chamber of Commerce 
 dinner recently, at which many prominent million- 
 aires were seated: "The people, the great common 
 people, are suspicious that some great corporations and 
 masses of wealth are protected, or their interests ad- 
 [77]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 vanced in ways that are inconsistent with the rights of 
 the people. 
 
 "They may have no material grounds for their 
 suspicions, but they are suspicious, and so are many of 
 you. 
 
 "I am not so afraid of the rich man in politics as I 
 am of the poor and weak man in politics, and the rich 
 man outside. 
 
 " Civilization cannot go on where there is mutual 
 suspicion, and prosperity cannot go on long while the 
 people feel or think that the reverence for law by which 
 property is safeguarded is not upheld. 
 
 "The massing of great wealth in corporations has 
 come to stay, but neither our sympathies, nor the risk 
 to great properties, nor the curtailment or loss of our 
 properties can reconcile us to any dallying with the 
 rights and liberties of the people. " 
 
 Sometime ago an able and well-known contributer 
 to various English and Continental periodicals, one 
 whose work has made his residence for sometime past 
 in various capitals, and now residing in London, spoke 
 as follows : 
 
 " What you have to deal with in America is snobbery. 
 We have here in London a host of American women who 
 have shaken the democratic dust of America off their 
 feet forever, and who are nightly to be seen at the royal 
 opera, their heads covered with tiaras and coronets, 
 giving themselves all the airs and presumptions of 
 sybaritic queens, and who think it a disgrace to talk of 
 America. Yet their fortunes were made in the American 
 
 [78]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 mines and the American railroads, and without the 
 American labourer they would this moment be living in 
 the backwoods, on the remote plains, or on some obscure 
 street of New York, unheard of, unobserved and un- 
 known. Snobbery is undermining American institutions. 
 . . . Within a short period of twenty years your 
 rich American snobs have made of New York, Wash- 
 ington, and Chicago antechambers of London and Paris. 
 . . . As for American women marrying English 
 lords, I have this to say: the women who bring their 
 fortunes here are bringing them to bolster up a decadent 
 world. ... I predict an invasion of broken-down 
 lords of all grades in the near future, until at last there 
 will not be a fortune left in America of any consider- 
 able size that will not pass to the favour of men resid- 
 ing in England or on the Continent. 'Come what may,' 
 said an Englishman to me not long ago, ' we are bound 
 to possess the wealth of the American millionaires in 
 the long run, through the American women.' ' 
 
 We have dwelt at great length upon the dark side of 
 the picture, because it is so essential that we see this side 
 fully and that we see it at once. But there is another side, 
 and that not without a great deal of brightness. Were 
 we in the condition of the people of Russia up to the 
 present time for example — without a voice in the affairs 
 of government — then we would indeed be in a bad way. 
 With the forces we have been considering already so 
 fully intrenched and so skilled in their methods, there 
 would indeed be no hope. But the battles for political 
 [79]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 emancipation were waged and won, as King John and 
 others, were they living, would so vividly recall, many 
 years ago. We are a body of freemen with political 
 rights, and the final deciders of what the conditions in 
 the nation shall be. This gives us our hope and our 
 power. With this we can gain and we shall gain, in- 
 dustrial and economic freedom, justice, and equality. 
 This is the power with which we shall drive to the back- 
 ground, the forces that have been making a byword of 
 freedom, equality and justice. 
 
 We have cause to be grateful by virtue of the newness 
 and power of the country. What has been almost the 
 cause of our undoing shall yet be the means by which 
 we shall be saved. We have political freedom. We 
 have full religious freedom, full independence of 
 Church and State. We are free from the cast systems 
 that constitute the bane of so many old world countries. 
 We have it growing among us, but it is not fixed and 
 can yet be broken by an aroused and determined peo- 
 ple. Our reputation is somewhat sullied but in the 
 main yet good. Labour is uniting, learning, growing; 
 self-seeking and unscrupulous leaders are being discov- 
 ered and thrown out. We have an educational system 
 that is splendid in its quality, and that can yet be made 
 to include all, even those that need it most, within its 
 scope. The masses of the people of all types are becom- 
 ing profoundly dissatisfied with present conditions. 
 They are inquiring into their causes, and where this is, 
 there is hope. It tells also much of the future outcome. 
 A Roosevelt, a Folke, a La Follette is recognized in his 
 
 [80]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ideas of and demands for a more equal justice, and is 
 rewarded by the confidence of the people into a position 
 of still greater responsibility. 
 
 The past several months even have witnessed a great 
 stirring among the people — among others an examina- 
 tion into the infamous methods of the Gas Trusts in both 
 New York and Philadelphia. So infamous had they 
 become and so brazen in satisfying their ever increasing 
 and insatiable appetites for larger and ever larger profits 
 wrung from a great common need of the people, that 
 public opinion was finally compelled to rise up and say, 
 So far and no farther. 
 
 The people of another great city have registered their 
 protest against the methods of another public service 
 concern that has for years been taking millions upon 
 millions of toll from them, and with a service in most re- 
 spects the most abominable. They have asked why half- 
 a-dozen or more men should every twelvemonth receive 
 their millions, while the people should receive practical 
 insult at their hands. They have voiced their protest so 
 strongly and in such a common-sense and practical man- 
 ner that the blood-sucking tentacles of the already over- 
 fed and bloated creature are now being withdrawn. 
 Other localities are taking lesson from this and are rising 
 up against any further granting of enormous wealth- 
 creating franchises to individuals, or if so, for nothing 
 but very short periods, and then not without compensa- 
 tion full and complete. 
 
 Likewise revelations in connection with various other 
 public and semi-public service concerns and the methods 
 [81]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of still other large business concerns have been coming 
 to us with startling import during even the past few 
 months. 
 
 And just as soon as sufficient numbers of our people 
 take enough interest in the public welfare, — which means 
 always their own welfare to a far greater degree than 
 many are given to realize, and thereby become conversant 
 with the actual conditions that are fast crystallizing 
 about us and the agencies that are at work in their sly 
 and subtle manner bringing them about, then the forces 
 will be engendered that will take the Republic to that 
 eminent and true position, that by the grace of God 
 and the awakened common-sense of the people, we 
 believe it shall yet attain. 
 
 [82]
 
 ni 
 
 AS TIME DEALS WITH NATIONS 
 
 1 IME has a strange way of dealing with nations and 
 with men. Its great clock ticks unerringly on. It seems, 
 in a sense, to be merely the sentinel of a great and im- 
 mutable system of Law. 
 
 When the nation gets sufficiently sick and diseased 
 it dies as does the individual. Its hour is struck off with 
 an unerring precision. From that instant the process of 
 disintegration sets in to crumble and consume the 
 body, the structure that so shortly before held the spirit. 
 
 It would be useless and indeed foolish to say that 
 there seem to be great immutable laws that govern and 
 that determine the life, the ways, the fate of nations. 
 If history means anything it means this, and he who 
 will may read. These same laws exist to-day and as has 
 occurred will occur again under like or similar 
 conditions. 
 
 So clearly has history written her pages that he who 
 will may go at once to her oft repeated forms, and read 
 with a quickness and clearness that no man can mis- 
 understand. It is always in substance — that great 
 privilege and wealth and oppression have been the cause 
 of the gradual undermining and the final fall and dis- 
 integration of all the earlier states that have flourished 
 
 [83]
 
 In the fire of the Heart 
 
 and that have passed. They failed to realize the im- 
 mutability and the precision of the laws that govern 
 men and nations. Moreover, no nation or no man has 
 ever been rich enough or powerful enough to change or 
 to escape the accuracy of their workings. There are 
 those who thought it, and for a time their efforts have 
 seemed to be successful, but at the right moment they 
 have been crushed and powdered, even as the rock has 
 crushed and has powdered the shell of the egg; and as 
 long as time endures this story will be repeated in the 
 life of every nation and every individual that does not 
 stop to learn the writing. 
 
 "Every civilization," said the late Henry George, 
 "That has been overwhelmed by barbarians has really 
 perished from internal decay." Elaborating upon this, 
 he has said :* " He would have been a rash man who, 
 when Augustus was changing the Rome of brick to the 
 Rome of marble, when wealth was augmenting and 
 magnificence increasing, when victorious legions were ex- 
 tending the frontier, when manners were becoming more 
 refined, language more polished, and literature rising to 
 higher splendours — he would have been a rash man 
 who then would have said that Rome was entering her 
 decline. Yet such was the case. 
 
 "And whoever will look may see that, though our 
 civilization is apparently advancing with greater rap- 
 idity than ever, the same cause which turned Roman 
 progress into retrogression is operating now. 
 
 " What has destroyed every previous civilization has 
 
 * " Progress and Poverty," p. 525. 
 [84]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth 
 and power. This same tendency, operating with in- 
 creasing force, is observable in our civilization to- 
 day. . . . 
 
 " To turn a republican government into a despotism 
 the basest and most brutal, it is not necessary formally 
 to change its constitution or abandon popular elec- 
 tions. It was centuries after Csesar, before the absolute 
 master of the Roman world pretended to rule other 
 than by authority of a Senate, that trembled before 
 him. . . . 
 
 "Where there is anything like an equal distribution 
 of wealth — that is to say, where there is general patriot- 
 ism, virtue, and intelligence — the more democratic 
 the government the better it will be; but where there is 
 gross inequality in the distribution of wealth, the more 
 democratic the government the worse it will be; for, 
 while rotten democracy may not in itself be worse than 
 rotten autocracy, its effects upon national character 
 will be worse. To give the suffrage to tramps, to paupers, 
 to men to whom the chance to labour is a boon, to men 
 who must beg, or steal, or starve, is to invoke destruc- 
 tion. To put political power in the hands of men em- 
 bittered and degraded by poverty, is to tie firebrands 
 to foxes and turn them loose amid the standing corn; 
 it is to put out the eyes of a Samson and to twine his 
 arms around the pillars of national life. . . . 
 
 "A corrupt democratic government must finally 
 corrupt the people, and when a people become corrupt 
 there is no resurrection. The life is gone, only the carcass 
 
 [85]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 remains; and it is left but for the plowshares of fate to 
 bury it out of sight. 
 
 "Now this transformation of popular government 
 into despotism of the vilest and most degrading kind, 
 which must inevitably result from the unequal distribu- 
 tion of wealth, is not a thing of the far future. It has 
 already begun in the United States, and is rapidly going 
 on under our eyes. 
 
 " In theory we are intense democrats. The proposal to 
 sacrifice swine in the temple would hardly have excited 
 greater horror and indignation in Jerusalem of old than 
 would among us that of conferring a distinction of rank 
 upon our most eminent citizen. But is there not growing 
 up among us a class who have all the power without any 
 of the virtues of aristocracy? We have simple citizens 
 who control thousands of miles of railroad, millions of 
 acres of land, the means of livelihood of great numbers of 
 men; who name the Governors of sovereign States as 
 they name their clerks, choose Senators as they choose 
 attorneys, and whose will is as supreme with Legisla- 
 tures as that of a French King sitting in bed of justice. 
 The undercurrents of the times seem to sweep us back 
 again to the old conditions from which we dreamed we 
 had escaped. 
 
 " Whence shall come the new barbarians ? Go through 
 the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, 
 even now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning 
 perish? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle 
 fires and be turned into cartridges ! 
 
 "Everywhere the increasing intensity of the struggle to 
 [86]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 live, the increasing necessity for straining every nerve 
 to prevent being thrown down and trodden under foot 
 in the scramble for wealth, is draining the forces which 
 gain and maintain improvements. . . . 
 
 " But as sure as the turning tide must soon run full 
 ebb; as sure as the declining sun must bring darkness, 
 so sure is it, that though knowledge yet increases and 
 invention marches on, and new states are being settled, 
 and cities still expand, yet civilization has begun to wane 
 when, in proportion to population, we must build more 
 and more prisons, more and more almshouses, more and 
 more insane asylums. It is not from top to bottom that 
 societies die; it is from bottom to top. 
 
 " But there are evidences far more palpable than any 
 that can be given by statistics, of tendencies to the ebb of 
 civilization. There is a vague but general feeling of dis- 
 appointment; an increased bitterness among the work- 
 ing classes ; a wide-spread feeling of unrest and brooding 
 revolution. . . . What change may come, no mortal 
 man can tell, but that some great change must come, 
 thoughtful men begin to feel. The civilized world is 
 trembling on the verge of a great movement. Either it 
 must be a leap upward, which will open the way to ad- 
 vances yet undreamed of, or it must be a plunge down- 
 ward, which will carry us back towards barbarism." 
 
 That very careful and able philosopher and economist, 
 Professor Lange, has said: "We may show a hundred 
 times that with the success of speculation and great 
 capitalists the position of everybody else, step by step, 
 
 [87]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 improves; but so long as it is true that with every step 
 of this improvement the difference in the position of in- 
 dividuals and in the means for further advancement also 
 grows, so long will each step of this movement lead 
 towards a turning point where the wealth and power of 
 individuals break down all the barriers of law and morals 
 and a degraded proletariat serves as a football to the 
 passions of the few, until at last everything ends in a 
 social earthquake which swallows up the artificial edi- 
 fice of one-sided and selfish interests. . . . The state 
 becomes venal. The hopelessly poor will just as easily 
 hate the law as the over-rich despise it. Sparta perished 
 when the whole land of the country belonged to a hun- 
 dred families; Rome, when a proletariat of millions 
 stood opposed to a few thousands of proprietors, whose 
 resources were so enormous that Crassus considered 
 no one rich who could not maintain an army at his own 
 expense. ... In mediaeval Italy also popular free- 
 dom was lost through a moneyed oligarchy and a prole- 
 tariat. . . . It is characteristic that in Florence the 
 richest banker finally becomes an unlimited despot, and 
 that contemporaneously in Genoa the Bank of St. 
 George in a measure absorbed the state." 
 
 Again he says : " The present state of things has been 
 frequently compared with that of the ancient world be- 
 fore its dissolution, and it cannot be denied that signifi- 
 cant analogies present themselves. We have the im- 
 moderate growth of riches, we have the proletariat, we 
 have the decay of morals and religion ; the present forms 
 of government all have their existence threatened, and 
 
 [88]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 the belief in a coming general and mighty revolution is 
 widely spread and deeply rooted." 
 
 It was the eminent historian, the late Professor 
 Mommsen, who said: "Riches and misery in close 
 league drove the Italians out of Italy and filled the pen- 
 insula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful 
 silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to 
 Italy; whenever the government of capitalists in a slave 
 state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's 
 fair world in the same way. . . . All the arrant sins 
 that capital has been guilty of against nation and civiliza- 
 tion in the modern world remain as far inferior to the 
 abomination of the ancient capitalist states as the free 
 man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; 
 and not until the dragon seed of North America ripens 
 will the world have again similar fruits to reap." 
 
 Said Emerson : " As long as our civilization is one of 
 property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked 
 by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick, there will be 
 bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our 
 mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with 
 all doors open and which serves all men." 
 
 The eminent economist, Professor Smart, of Glasgow, 
 makes a most suggestive statement in the following: 
 " But when machinery is replacing man and doing the 
 heavy work of industry, it is time to get rid of that an- 
 cient prejudice that man must work ten hours a day to 
 keep the world up to the level of the comfort it has 
 attained. Possibly, if we clear our minds of cant, we may 
 see that the reason why we still wish the labourer to 
 
 [89]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 work ten hours a day is that we, the comfortable classes, 
 may go on receiving the lion's share of the wealth these 
 machines, iron and human, are turning out. " 
 
 It is the great common people that has made and that 
 has been the backbone of every nation, and as long as 
 its interests are guarded and as long as the tendency is 
 towards an ever greater equality of opportunities for 
 all, so long is a nation safe. But as soon as extremes of 
 wealth and poverty begin to manifest themselves, and 
 privilege grows, resulting in still greater inequality in 
 the distribution of wealth and power, that moment the 
 destructive force begins its work — a force that grows 
 by what it feeds upon, an evil that will never correct 
 itself, and that, unless it be checked by the great common 
 people, will carry the nation to destruction. Oppression 
 and evil is its own destroyer. 
 
 It is the labourer with his vine-clad cottage, and suf- 
 ficient of those things that make for peace and happiness 
 and content in the life of a normal human being, it is 
 a uniformly prosperous common people, that consti- 
 tutes the really great nation, and not a few castles 
 with their hordes of hirelings about them. 
 
 In addition to those nations that have been mentioned 
 that have flourished, that have grown great and that 
 have declined, we might mention still nation after nation. 
 We might go back to Egypt, to Assyria, to Babylon, 
 and to the other earlier civilizations, but we find the 
 same cause in all. The law is immutable in its workings. 
 Absolute, seems to be the word. The larger Justice will 
 not be denied. She may seem to delay, she may seem 
 
 [90]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 even at times to take no account, but in her own good 
 way and time she strikes, and when she strikes it is with 
 a terrible vengeance. As she is with nations, so is she also 
 with men. 
 
 How can we hope then that this civilization, this na- 
 tion shall escape, any more than those that in their day 
 were as great, as proud and apparently enduring, if 
 by common consent the same forces are at work that in 
 time spelled destruction to those that have preceded us ? 
 
 I 91 J
 
 IV 
 AS TO GOVERNMENT 
 
 1 HERE havebeen many able disquisitions on the theory 
 and the functions of Government, and it would be inter- 
 esting did space permit, to examine in detail into some 
 of the best of these. Much, however, that has been said, 
 though it might have pertained to a greater or less 
 extent to the time or times in which it was said, does not 
 pertain to our present time. It is the same with this as 
 with a great deal of the earlier theological discussions, 
 vast amounts of which have proved to be so inconse- 
 quential that we pay no attention to them at present and 
 find that they have been of value only in a single respect 
 — in that they have helped lead the way to the few real 
 things that we are finding to-day constitute the basis of 
 the true Religion. 
 
 It is also evident that a theory of Government that 
 pertained to us Saxon people, say two hundred or three 
 hundred years ago, and fitted the degree of evolution and 
 life we had attained to then, is not a theory that would 
 pertain to us, or that we would even for an instant think 
 of accepting in total at the present time. 
 
 It can also be truthfully said that for a thinking, 
 growing, aspiring people, some of the methods and 
 principles in vogue in our own nation even fifty years 
 
 [92]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ago we cannot, we should not, and as evidences on every 
 hand indicate, we no longer honour nor do we counte- 
 nance in the year 1906. A growing, progressive life 
 demands that we keep ourselves up to the mark that is 
 the truth of to-day, and that we be careful that old 
 forms do not crystallize about us either in religion or in 
 government, forms that will tend to make us satisfied 
 with anything but the vivid, vital truth that will reveal 
 itself to us to-day and to-morrow and to-morrow, if we 
 are ever on the alert to recognize it. 
 
 It is so easy to hold on to the old shells, thinking that 
 there is in them something of value, long after the life has 
 departed from them and truth with all its goodly train has 
 moved on, giving joy and blessings to those hat are keeping 
 pace with her, while we fondly cling to the worthless thing. 
 
 The crying error of the time is that we stand in awe 
 of government and forget that we are government. 
 Everything that is enacted in the nation, or in any of at 
 all similar constitution, is enacted by the people through 
 their chosen representatives acting for their interests; 
 or by the consent of the people, in that these representa- 
 tives act for corporate and moneyed interests, through 
 party machines and platforms and manipulators. 
 Where the people should be supre me, manipulators and 
 moneyed interests working through parties and through 
 City Councils and Legislatures are supreme. Lobbies 
 and manipulators and bribed or directly bought coun- 
 cilmen and legislators are only the tools of the moneyed 
 interests. This is at the bottom, it is safe to say, of at 
 least nine-tenths of all our present political corruption; 
 
 [93]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 for the manipulator, the ward-heeler, the lobbyist, the 
 saloon keeping councilman, the venal state legislator, are 
 only the tools of these "interests. " The latter are the 
 principals, the former merely the agents through which 
 they work to obtain the privileges — the natural rights 
 and properties of the people — through which they make 
 their royal millions. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that at those periods when 
 corporations and private business has been most venal, 
 political corruption, either municipal or state, has been 
 the most open and brazen and black. Yet the principals 
 have been our respectable business men, founders 
 sometimes of our wealthiest and later on aristocratic 
 and exclusive families. They, I repeat, have been the big 
 thieves working through these agencies. 
 
 Lately the political corruption of some of our large 
 cities has been traced and exposed by Lincoln Steffens in 
 a series of articles in one of our leading magazines, and 
 later republished in book form under the title, "The 
 Shame of the Cities. " In one of his articles entitled 
 " Enemies of the Republic, "* Mr. Steffens has this to say: 
 
 "Every time I attempted to trace to its source the 
 political corruption of a city ring, the stream of pollution 
 branched off in the most unexpected directions. 
 It flowed out of the majority party into the minority; out 
 of politics into vice and crime, out of business into 
 politics, and back into business. . . . We are all of us 
 on the wrong track. You can't reform a city by reforming 
 a part of it. You can't reform a city alone. You can't re- 
 
 *McClure's Magazine for April, 1904. 
 [94]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 form politics alone. . . . The corruption of our 
 American politics is our American corruption, political, 
 but financial and industrial too. 
 
 "Our political corruption is a system, a regularly 
 established custom of the country, by which our political 
 leaders are hired by bribery, by the license to loot, and 
 by quiet moral support, to conduct the government of 
 city, state, and nation, not for the common good, but 
 for the special interests of private business. Not the 
 politician, then, not the bribe taker, but the bribe giver, 
 the man we are so proud of, our successful business 
 man, he is the source and the sustenance of our bad 
 government. The captain of industry is the man to 
 catch. His is the trail to follow. " 
 
 We as a nation would hold up our hands in horror 
 even at the thought — we are so intensely democratic — 
 of any titled person, and through such right, even though 
 he be of the highest type and one imbued with the high- 
 est sense of public welfare and justice, ruling over us 
 even for a limited time. But the large moneyed interests 
 have gotten us so used to it that we seem to think 
 nothing of having large and important portions of our 
 public affairs in the hands of the lowest type of our 
 citizenship, and allowing them to do most important 
 portions of our governing for us. We seem to be fully 
 satisfied that they be our rulers, for in some centres 
 and at times it amounts to this. It is through them 
 that we pass over annually the many millions of 
 wealth that go to their principals, and accept in 
 return, meagre and many times disgraceful and 
 
 [95]
 
 In the Fire of tlie Heart 
 
 disgusting types of public service that many times, 
 or to speak more accurately, that generally, give to 
 the public. 
 
 Such has been the origin of the wealth of many of 
 our enormously rich and well-known families, and 
 they are now becoming so intrenched as to become a 
 very distinct menace to the public welfare. It is only 
 by a socialized people that their power can now be 
 broken. 
 
 Of corruption in the government of our municipali- 
 ties, Andrew D. White as ar back as 1890 had this to 
 say: " Without the lightest exaggeration, we may assert 
 that, with few exceptions, the city governments of the 
 United States are the worst in Christendom, the most 
 expensive, the most inefficient, and the most corrupt. 
 No one who has any considerable knowledge of our own 
 country and of other countries can deny this. 
 
 " The city halls of these larger towns are the acknowl- 
 edged centres of the vilest corruption. They are absolute- 
 ly demoralizing, not merely to those who live under their 
 sway, but to the country at large. Such cities, like the 
 decaying spots on ripe fruit, tend to corrupt the whole 
 body politic. As a rule, the men who sit in the councils 
 of our larger cities, dispensing comfort or discomfort, 
 justice or injustice, beauty or deformity, health or dis- 
 ease, to this and to future generations, are men who in no 
 other country would think of aspiring to such positions. 
 Some of them, indeed, would think themselves lucky 
 in keeping outside the prisons. Officials entrusted with 
 the expenditure of the vast wealth of our citizens are 
 
 [96]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 frequently men whom no one would think of entrusting 
 with the management of his private affairs, or, indeed, 
 of employing in any capacity. Few have gained their 
 positions by fitness or by public service; many have 
 gained them by scoundrelism ; some by crime."* 
 
 The same can be said of various members of our state 
 legislatures. These are the types of men that most of our 
 great corporate interests work through. Some are put 
 there deliberately and directly for this purpose. Should 
 anyone have any doubt of this, let him become thorough- 
 ly acquainted among other things with the history of the 
 principal railroad in the states, say, Michigan, Penn- 
 sylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts. 
 
 The great common people have everything in their 
 hands when they once fully realize it. They must come 
 forward and make politicians and the moneyed interests 
 know their power. They must take over and back to 
 themselves the power that they have gradually allowed 
 to be usurped by the politician, the political leader, for 
 these enormously fat and gorged concerns and individ- 
 uals. 
 
 A people with that great weapon of freedom — the 
 franchise — are invincible in the expression of their 
 preferences and their demands when they present an 
 intelligent and united interest, if it be done before special 
 privilege with its great accumulations of wealth and 
 power has grown too great and too cunning and too 
 corrupting. When we take into consideration how vastly 
 
 *The Forum, December, 1890. 
 
 [97]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 the great common working people out-number the privi- 
 leged classes, something over a hundred to one, then we 
 must wonder that greed and graft and vast and un- 
 scrupulous wealth have been able to attain to the pro- 
 portions they have already attained in our midst. But the 
 reason abounds ; and later we shall consider it fully. 
 
 Certainly one of the great central facts of government, 
 one of the greatest fundamental principles of a govern- 
 ment of freedom and intelligence, is the insuring of 
 equal 'privileges for all and special privileges for none. 
 This we had nominally, at least in the nation, but in 
 reality a very small fraction of this proposition is true 
 to-day, and we are witnessing its departure from among 
 us to-day more rapidly than ever before. If this con- 
 tinues at the rate it has been going on during the past 
 twenty years or so, and at the rate it is going on at present 
 it will be but a short time, and within the experience of 
 many now living, until it will be that the " equal privi- 
 leges and opportunities for all " will have been swallow- 
 ed up completely by the special privileges and the con- 
 sequent vast accumulations of the few. 
 
 Life in no country can be happy or prosperous or at all 
 satisfying where special privilege reigns and one great 
 class is produced that becomes simply a grist for another 
 class. The loss to citizenship is so enormous, and its 
 influences are so deadly that the entire nation becomes 
 so thoroughly diseased politically and socially and its 
 foundations are so quietly undermined, that before it is 
 realized the nation is already in its decline, under the 
 workings of the same mighty compelling laws that have 
 
 [98]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 never yet faltered nor delayed in decreeing the fate of 
 nations. Each for all and all for each was the mandate 
 that was written in the beginning, and as long even as 
 time endures, it will brook no change nor will it permit 
 the slightest modification. 
 
 [99]
 
 V 
 A GREAT PEOPLE'S MOVEMENT 
 
 1 HE greater part of really important legislation is at 
 present for the benefit of the great corporate and 
 moneyed interests. Henceforth the greater part of it 
 must be for the people — the great common people 
 that has made this, and every country, and upon 
 whose welfare ultimately all depends. We shall have 
 the management of the nation's affairs in our own 
 hands just as securely and just as quickly as we really 
 so elect. There must be more of the people's men in 
 our municipal, our state, and our national assemblies. 
 A rich operator in Robert Owen's time, held, in con- 
 nection with his fellows, that they could not afford 
 to dispense with child labour because that would drive 
 business out of England. The "maudlin sentimental- 
 ism of those who knew neither business nor human 
 nature," they pronounced all legal interference with child 
 labour. Yet he, according to his own admission, had 
 been making in the cotton business 200 per cent in yearly 
 profits. So the cries will go up to-day when the people be- 
 gin to redeem the country and its resources for their own 
 common use. The slightest movement that aimsatcheck- 
 ing the enormous profits that are being reaped from the 
 resources that should belong to the people in common, is 
 [100]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 even now being met with that same cry. The number of 
 labour disturbances during the past few years and to-day 
 is in part, and among other things, the measure of dissat- 
 isfaction with the present monopolistic system. It does 
 not bring justice to labour. This, all thinking and right- 
 feeling men are realizing, and realizing all too keenly. 
 
 It was a great people's movement in connection with 
 the "Corn Laws" in England, in Cobden's time, that 
 brought about a peaceable revolution, in place of what 
 would have easily been a revolution of another type. 
 
 We are to have among us a revolution, a great and a very 
 clear-cut revolution, but a great people's movement in- 
 sures that it will be an evolutionary revolution, a peaceable 
 revolution, but no less marked and telling, in fact, far 
 more telling than any blood revolution can possibly be. 
 
 In an intelligent and a determined political action on 
 the part of the common people lies our safety ; it is along 
 this path that we must move. United labour is beginning 
 to recognize this. It was but a short time ago that it 
 was carefully avoided by organized labour, and its efforts 
 were more along what is commonly known as mutual 
 benefit lines, and this apart from all thought of any type 
 of political action. And it is along these lines that the 
 trust and combination and corporate interests wish 
 even now it would be kept. What a power, wisely directed, 
 this great and splendid body can become. It in itself, 
 if sufficiently discreet and sufficiently patriotic in its 
 desires and in its ways of voicing them, is sufficient, 
 through the great balance of power that in a united 
 form it can hold, to bring about practically any type 
 [101 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of public administration it may desire. "In political 
 action " is getting more and more to be the watchword 
 of united labour. This, notwithstanding the fact that 
 that part of the public press justly called the " capital- 
 istic press," that endeavours to make the public believe 
 otherwise, is the great good that is being accomplished 
 by an intelligent Labour Party in Australia and New 
 Zealand, and from there are coming many instructive les- 
 sons that we here can most profitably study. New Zealand 
 has been described as a country without a millionaire, 
 without a pauper, and without a strike. The common 
 people, including labour, is simply compelling fair oppor- 
 tunities for all, a common-sense justice, and as a result a 
 fairer share of those gifts and resources of the country that 
 are intended for all. One of the best known of New 
 Zealand's legislators, Hon. W. P. Reeves, in connection 
 with their purposes has said : " It is the unconcealed 
 object of our social legislation to make democracy consis- 
 tent and possible — to create conditions out of which 
 such threatening extremes of wealth-ownership cannot 
 grow. " 
 
 Money as a force in legislation, used as it is, some- 
 times almost like water by the great capitalistic concerns 
 in their carefully studied direct and indirect ways, in 
 the bribery and debauchery of public officials, is an evil 
 of such a wide-spread nature that it must be corrected 
 by the people. The complaint is now so frequently 
 heard, that the people do not get a fair show. It is true; 
 but it is also true that it is our own fault that we do not. 
 If we look as carefully to elections and appointments 
 [102]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 as the great moneyed interests do, then that complaint 
 will forever lose its force. This is a most vital fact for 
 our great farming communities to learn, almost as much 
 or even more, than any other portion of our people, 
 because in some respects and in some sections conditions 
 with them have at times become well-nigh intolerable. 
 We must recognize once and for all the fact that govern- 
 ment is always as good as tne people demand it should 
 be. " No King, no veriest tyrant ever ruled except by the 
 will of the people. Because the popular will has been 
 ignorant and evil, states have been evil. " I think in the 
 following paragraphs that clear. thinking and far-seeing 
 statesman, the late Ex-Governor Altgeld of Illinois, 
 has given us some wonderfully clear and thought- 
 compelling statements along this line. In an address 
 before the American Railway Trainmen, at Galesburg, 
 Illinois, he said : " If our institutions are to undergo great 
 change, it is vital that the men of America, and not the 
 money, should direct the change. Money may be a 
 blessing as a servant, but it is a curse as a master. 
 Money never established republican institutions in the 
 world. It has no natural affinity with them, and does 
 not understand them. Money has neither soul nor senti- 
 ment. It does not know the meaning of liberty, and 
 it sneers at the rights of man. It never bled on the battle- 
 field in time of war, and it never voluntarily sought 
 the public treasury in time of peace. . . . Men in 
 time acquire the nature of those things which absorb 
 their lives. Unconsciously and invisibly they undergo a 
 change until those things which occupy their daily 
 [103]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 thoughts seem actually to circulate in their veins. 
 Consequently in all countries, in all ages, and among 
 all peoples, it has been found that as a rule the possessors 
 of great wealth were not the patriots. On the contrary, 
 they seemed to care little what flag floated over them, 
 provided it was a flag that would give them a bayonet 
 with which to protect their gold. The men who in the 
 late war left their millions of hoarded treasure and 
 shouldered a musket to fight for the Union were as 
 scarce as the camels that have passed through the eye 
 of the needle. The soldiers' cemeteries of patriotic dead 
 are filled with men who when alive had to struggle for a 
 living. It is the great masses of the people who defend 
 the government in time of war, and who bear its burdens 
 in time of peace, and these alone know the full value 
 of free institutions. It is therefore important that the 
 destinies of our government should be shaped by this 
 class, and they can be relied upon to do justice to 
 capital. They appreciate the fact that capital is not only 
 a convenience, but may be of the greatest possible use to 
 man when properly directed. While money may have 
 done a great injustice to the masses, the masses have 
 never done an injustice to money. 
 
 " Now, how will you meet these problems ? Standing 
 as individuals in the presence of mighty combinations 
 you will be crushed and there will be no hope for you 
 or your children. I can see no other course for you than 
 to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, intelligently 
 and patriotically. A great force never holds itself in 
 check, whether in the phenomena of nature, in politics, 
 [104]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 in government, or in religion. Only a counter or resisting 
 force will check it. If concentrated capital shall meet 
 with no checking influence, or force, then republican 
 institutions must come to an end, and we will have but 
 two classes in this country, an exceedingly wealthy 
 class on one hand, and a spiritless, crushed, poverty- 
 striken labouring class on the other. The hope of the 
 country depends upon having a number of forces that 
 will counterbalance or check each other. And in this con- 
 nection let me suggest to you that the world has pro- 
 gressed to a point where intelligence will always defeat 
 brute force, and any method of contest that involves 
 violence belongs to a bygone age. The modern methods 
 of warfare in society are of an entirely different character. 
 You complain sometimes that you do not get a fair show, 
 that capital controls legislation, that by selecting the can- 
 didates for the judicial offices, it in many cases controls 
 the courts and that the same is true in the execution of the 
 laws. But you have yourselves largely to blame. . . . 
 It has happened frequently in the past in this State and 
 in other States that you wanted legislation which you 
 thought was necessary and just, and you supported men 
 for the legislature whom you believed were honest, but 
 who, as soon as they received their certificate of election, 
 crept up the rear stairway to the office of some corpora- 
 tion and tendered their services in the hope of obtaining 
 some financial or other advantage. Did you afterwards 
 spot those men as being unworthy of your confidence ? 
 Not at all. Their chances for public preferment were 
 just as good thereafter as they were before. Again, cor- 
 [105]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 porations have for many years looked after the matter 
 of selecting judges, especially of the federal courts. They 
 realized the fact that the construction of the laws is even 
 more important than the making of laws, and to have a 
 friend on the bench is much more important than to 
 have a lawmaker at the capitol. It is asserted that for 
 a quarter of a century no man has been appointed to 
 the federal bench unless he was either a corporation 
 lawyer or was known to hold views which made him 
 satisfactory to those interests, and when these judges 
 afterwards distorted the law and usurped powers to 
 assist corporations and smite you, they were not neces- 
 sarily corrupt. They were simply giving force to pre- 
 judices which they had imbibed during their former 
 association with corporate influences. It has never hap- 
 pened in this country that you or any other organization 
 of labour men or of farmers sent a delegation to wait upon 
 the President in reference to the appointment or re- 
 jection of any particular man to any judicial office. 
 You have not looked after your interests and you have 
 no right to complain if you are discriminated against 
 under these circumstances. Every man who seeks office 
 in this country will need your support, and once let 
 him understand that you are capable of acting intelli- 
 gently and standing together, and that you insist on be- 
 ing honestly dealt with, and you will see a great change. 
 Fall in with what is the spirit of the times. Practise 
 intelligent combination. Move along the lines of law 
 and of justice and practise foresight and you will be 
 able to right almost any grievance. 
 [106]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 " In conclusion let me say that you and the labouring 
 men of this country are more interested in maintaining 
 republican institutions than any other of our people. 
 You are more interested in making the stripes and 
 stars stand for free institutions than any other people 
 in this country. Wealth has always courted aristocracy 
 and bowed to monarchy. It is manhood alone that is 
 interested in liberty and in maintaining those con- 
 ditions under which the greatest possible opportunities 
 are opened to every citizen of the commonwealth. 
 You cannot leave your children millions to squander. 
 It is therefore important for you to endeavour to leave 
 them a country in which intelligent and honest effort 
 will be properly rewarded and in which the labourer will 
 not only be worthy of his hire, but will have open to 
 him and to his posterity all of the fields of honour and 
 the paths of glory." 
 
 A nation such as this depends solely, for its welfare 
 as well as for its perpetuity, upon the hearts and minds 
 and ambitions of its people. With these crushed and 
 traduced by monopoly and the despoiler, the nation is 
 doomed and even the corporate interests themselves 
 will in time be torn to pieces, 
 
 To trace the long fight for political freedom which 
 those before us had to undergo, shows us how hopeful 
 and how advantageous our position is. Had we not 
 political freedom and the right of the ballot in face of 
 these rapidly growing concentrations of evil among us, 
 our position would be well-nigh hopeless. As it is we 
 cannot be other than masters of this critical situation 
 [107]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 if we come but speedily to a realization of the great 
 forces that lie within our reach, and if we use them as 
 intelligent freemen. The great battle that must now be 
 wao-ed is the battle for economic freedom, for equal 
 opportunities, for justice in working conditions, for 
 justice in legislation and administration. 
 
 He who owns or controls that upon which others 
 depend owns and controls them. The fundemantal issue 
 at stake is justice and equal opportunities, a more equal 
 justice in the distribution of the results of labour, and 
 a using for all the people o those great natural common 
 resources that are now being grabbed and monopolized 
 and used for the enrichment of the few. 
 
 How strange our position is, could be revealed by an 
 estimate of the millions upon millions in the form of 
 natural franchises that we allow to be taken from us 
 each year, and that are making so enormously rich the 
 few men and families that have become so self -conceited 
 as they roll in this wealth, and then to make a com- 
 parison of the immense preponderance of the voting 
 power of the people over this relatively small number — 
 millions compared to the thousands. But they have been 
 making this their business. Very quietly, while the 
 masses of the people have been going about their own 
 private affairs, they have been getting possession of and 
 diverting to their own coffers these immensely valuable 
 concessions, and which have grown more enormous 
 in their profits as the country has grown in population 
 and the needs of the people have increased. While the 
 people have been farming the farms, this small privileg- 
 [108]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ed class, as an able writer has recently put it, has been 
 "farming the farmers." They have acted upon the prin- 
 ciple that he enunciates in speaking of their methods 
 as follows — do not fool yourself while there are other 
 people to fool. The way to succeed is not to work, but 
 to work the workers; not to farm the farms, but to farm 
 the farmers. 
 
 And how even now money is trying to blind the eyes 
 of the people to prevent them from seeing clearly and 
 taking back to themselves these great resources, can 
 be seen on every hand. But the hour has struck and we 
 are on the move. The day to hesitate or to delay is 
 passed. Revelations have been coming so rapidly of late, 
 and facts so momentous in their import are becoming 
 so clear, that we could not turn back even if we would. 
 Every law of human nature and human development 
 cries out against it. And although concentrated wealth 
 and power may exert every influence to climb and to 
 stifle the idea of greater equality and justice, the 
 thoughts and the voices of men of genius and insight 
 are up, and the great common people are hearing them 
 over and over again giving voice and sanction to their 
 own thoughts and rapidly forming conclusions. 
 
 Attempts to do something for men by philanthropy 
 to take the place of what is taken away from or what is 
 denied them, will fail. And they ought to fail. No manip- 
 ulations of this sort will ever take the place of justice. 
 Justice is the absolute law, and it will compel obedience 
 to itself sooner or later. The enlightened people — the 
 people of the great nation want and will demand con- 
 [109]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ditions of such a nature that they can build with the 
 builder's satisfaction and pleasure their own art 
 museums and libraries and institutions of learning. 
 Not benefactions, but what by right belongs to one. 
 What belongs to labour and the citizen by moral right 
 shall be made so in fact by legal right. Nothing short 
 of this in the end will satisfy. 
 
 " Social service," and schemes for" social betterment " 
 are good, and praiseworthy in their place, but they will 
 never be accepted as taking the place of those more 
 essential things that are the rightful inheritance of the 
 people, nor should they. 
 
 " The separation between the owners of fixed capital 
 and the labourer has long been noted; but with vast 
 federated plants, managed by hired intermediaries, 
 it is unavoidable. There will be brave attempts to meet 
 the difficulty by alluring philanthropies, by 'doing 
 something for the workingmen.' If merely philanthropic, 
 these will fail as they deserve. Benevolent schemes 
 that bear the slightest taint of charity have at last got 
 the contempt of the intelligent wage-earners. 
 
 "Importunate, and never again to be silenced, their 
 demand is that they get their benefits, not as gifts or 
 favours, but as recognized rights. Philanthropies are a 
 dangerous substitute for honest wage payment, shorter 
 working time, and increased influence over the con- 
 ditions of the labour contract. What may be called the 
 Great Bluff of our time is to put gratuities and bene- 
 factions in the place of justice. There is no donation, 
 however gaudy, that can fill the place of justice. The 
 
 nioi
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 attempt of the ruling class to do this is the oldest trick 
 in history. It was the opinion of a Roman emperor, 
 'Magnificence in gifts may deceive even the gods.' 
 The crowd could then be quieted by the brutalities 
 of a pageant, the butcheries in the arena, by fleets of 
 stolen grain scattered among the people, as a Tammany 
 heeler scatters gifts and personal kindnesses before the 
 election. We are at least civilized so far that we de- 
 mand more decorum, and a certain humanizing of our 
 largesses. They must bear the image of charity and 
 good-will to men. They must be educational, artistic, 
 and in all ways incentives to good morals and religion. 
 
 " Now it would be both untrue and offensive to deny 
 that these later bounties are vast improvements upon 
 the free circus of Caligula. No wise man would check 
 a generous instinct of any multi-millionaire. The books, 
 pictures, churches, and schools take their places among 
 the welfare institutions of our time. They are influences 
 which deserve the honest and grateful approval of 
 the public. 
 
 " Yet when this tribute to good motive and good re- 
 sult has been paid, the story is not finished. We are 
 hoodwinked, unless we see that there ought to be, and 
 possibly may be, a still better way than this to acquire 
 individual and social morality. The sturdy self-respect 
 in any community that should build its own church, 
 school, library, dispensary, — paying every honest bill 
 as it goes, — would show an exhilarating superiority 
 before which everyone of us would hasten to pay respect. 
 We must be grateful to our princely givers, but the 
 [111]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 mistake would be fatal to accept this method of splendid 
 subsidies as a finality. What we really want is the 
 ability and the instructed will to pay our own bills, even 
 if the pace of our civilization halts a little." * Excellent, 
 and nothing in the quotation more suggestive so to 
 speak, than the last phrase — "even if the pace of our 
 civilization halts a little." Why should we be proud of 
 mere largeness and rapidity? especially as it does not 
 benefit the great masses of the people, but only the few, 
 the very small fraction. But upon closer examination 
 the fact will reveal itself, that excessive wealth is of real 
 value to no man, and especially when gotten by means 
 so manifestly unfair and so morally unjustifiable, as 
 the great portion of excessive wealth is gotten to-day. 
 Give me neither riches — great wealth — nor poverty, 
 will ever be the desire of the truly wise, but give me 
 that comfortable amount that is conducive to the high- 
 est, the noblest, the most useful, and consequently, the 
 most happy life. 
 
 Justice, not gifts, not charity. 
 
 There is a spirit in the American people, in all Saxon 
 people, that rebels against the proffer of gifts and 
 charity as an equivalent for what rightly belongs to 
 them. This spirit can be neither changed nor broken 
 until at least the present unequal distribution of wealth 
 grows to such an extent, that it results in the concen- 
 tration of the greater portion of the wealth and resources 
 of the nation in so few hands, that the poverty of the 
 people becomes so great, that the spirit of freemen is 
 
 *"The Social Unrest," by John Graham Brooks, p. 203. 
 [112]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 so broken that they sink to the position of paupers and 
 public wards. 
 
 Said Mr. Lecky, recently, in speaking of the pros- 
 perity of nations and their causes as indicated by history : 
 "Its foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in com- 
 mercial integrity, in a high standard of moral worth, 
 and of public spirit, in simple habits, in courage, up- 
 rightness, and a certain soundness and moderation of 
 judgment which spring quite as much from character 
 as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of 
 the future of a nation, observe carefully whether these 
 qualities are increasing or decaying. Observe especially 
 what qualities count for most in public life. Is character 
 becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men 
 who obtain the highest posts in the nation, men of 
 whom in private life, and irrespective of party, com- 
 petent judges speak with genuine respect? Are they 
 of sincere convictions, consistent lives, indisputable 
 integrity? . . . It is by observing this moral cur- 
 rent that you can best cast the horoscope of a nation."* 
 
 This social unrest that has been vaguely witnessed 
 during the past few years, increasing yearly, has gradu- 
 ally brought the people to a definite point of view and 
 to a definite knowledge of facts. Evolution indeed has 
 been doing its work in spite of the rapid aggressions of 
 the immensely rich, over against which has been set the 
 slowly moving discernment of the people. For a long 
 time there was unrest coupled with a sort of groping 
 in the dark, a failure to understand the full significance, 
 
 * 'The Political Value of History," by W. E. R. Lecky. 
 [113]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 let alone the causes of this great unrest. Back of it all, 
 however, has been thought, in addition to feeling, on 
 the part of the people, quickened and intensified at 
 times by most bitter experiences, until now a new mental 
 activity is born, and it is being quickened by the posses- 
 sion of some clear-cut and wonderfully significant facts. 
 A little time now spent in the careful study and elabora- 
 tion of methods, and the great battle for social, industrial 
 and economic freedom is fully on, and greater than this 
 and one fraught with a greater moment, no battle has 
 ever been waged perhaps in the entire history of civili- 
 zation. 
 
 Says Benjamin Kidd, in the closing pages of his very 
 able work, " Social Evolution " : " We see that, under all 
 the complex appearances our Western civilization 
 presents, the central process working itself out in our 
 midst is one which is ever tending to bring, for the first 
 time in the history of the race, all the people into the 
 competition of life on a footing of equality of oppor- 
 tunity. In this process the problem, with which society 
 and legislators will be concerned for long into the 
 future, will be how to secure to the fullest degree these 
 conditions of equality, while at the same time retaining 
 that degree of inequality which must result from offering 
 prizes sufficiently attractive to keep up within the com- 
 munity that state of stress and exertion, without which 
 no people can long continue in a high state of social 
 efficiency. For in the vast process of change in progress 
 it is always the conditions of social efficiency, and not 
 those which individuals or classes may desire for them- 
 [114]
 
 In the Fire of tJie Heart 
 
 selves, that the unseen evolutionary forces at work 
 amongst us are engaged in developing. . . . 
 
 "Nor is there any reason why the great social 
 development proceeding in our civilization which has 
 been but feebly and inadequately described in the 
 preceding chapters, should be viewed with distrust by 
 those of more conservative instincts amongst us who 
 profess to have at heart the highest interests of humanity. 
 The movement which is uplifting the people — neces- 
 sarily to a large extent, at the expense of those above 
 them — is but the final result of a long process of organic 
 development. All anticipations and forebodings as to 
 the future of the incoming democracy, founded upon 
 comparisons with the past, are unreliable or worthless. 
 For the world has never before witnessed a democracy 
 of the kind that is now slowly assuming supreme power 
 amongst the Western peoples. To compare it with 
 democracies which held power under the ancient em- 
 pires is to altogether misunderstand both the nature of 
 our civilization and the character of the forces that have 
 produced it. ... The fact of our time which 
 overshadows all others is the arrival of Democracy. But 
 the preception of the fact is of relatively little importance 
 if we do not also realize that it is a new Democracy. There 
 are many who speak of the new ruler of nations as if he 
 were the same idle Demos whose ears the dishonest cour- 
 tiers have tickled from time immemorial. It is not so. 
 Even those who attempt to lead him do not yet quite 
 understand him. Those who think that he is about to 
 bring chaos instead of order, do not rightly apprehend the 
 [115 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 nature of his strength. They do not perceive that his 
 arrival is the crowning result of an ethical movement 
 in which qualities and attributes, which we have been 
 all taught to regard as the very highest of which human 
 nature is capable, find the completest expression they 
 have ever reached in the history of the race." 
 
 Such indeed is the opinion of many other clear and 
 disinterested thinkers in addition to that of the able 
 author of "Social Evolution." A great people's move- 
 ment to bring back to the people the immense belong- 
 ings that have been taken away from them, and to 
 prevent a continuance of this from now on, is the supreme 
 need of the time. Slowly and almost gropingly we have 
 been leading up to it, but the incentive is on, the knowl- 
 edge underlying its cause is increasing and never so 
 rapidly as of late. There is no power now that can stop it 
 or even materially hinder it any more than human power 
 can hinder or prevent the workings of any of nature's 
 great laws. It is indeed most glorious to be alive, to 
 witness and to have a hand in the culmination of this 
 new order of life that all the centuries have been leading 
 up to. 
 
 [116]
 
 VI 
 PUBLIC UTILITIES FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD 
 
 IT is strange how long and how heavily we allow our- 
 selves to be fleeced, or robbed, by custom. Because we 
 commence a thing in a certain way, is many times the 
 reason we continue it in that way long after it could be 
 changed to our great advantage. Because we began that 
 way we are still living and acting under the delusion that 
 great public utilities, the value of which is caused by all 
 the people in common, instead of being managed by, and 
 for the benefit of the people, should be managed for the 
 private benefit and the enrichment of an individual or little 
 groups of individuals called companies or corporations. 
 It is a delusion something akin to the belief, which, 
 according to Charles Lamb, so long held sway among 
 the Chinese when the savour of roast pork had been 
 accidently discovered through the burning down of 
 Ho-ti's hut, that, in order to cook a pig it was necessary 
 to set fire to a house. By and by, however, they found 
 that that method was not only crude and wasteful, but 
 also uncertain in its results. But until a Chinese sage 
 came forward and invented a rude type of gridiron 
 which, according to Lamb's interesting dissertation, was 
 the forerunner of the spit and the oven, no one had ever 
 thought of a pig being roasted without the burning 
 [117]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 down of a hut, or were it for one better circumstanced, 
 a house. They, therefore, had to follow the only method 
 they knew. With us, however, in connection with the 
 supplying of certain great common needs it is different; 
 for there are other methods of which we already know, 
 that indeed have been known and have been in success- 
 ful operation in other countries far more progressive 
 in this regard than we, for more than a score and in 
 some cases, for more than two score of years. The only 
 excuse I can see is that in having begun in a very crude 
 and thoughtless and expensive way, we have not been 
 bright enough, or energetic enough as yet, to find and 
 adopt a more common-sense and satisfactory way. 
 
 At one period in the development of our national and 
 municipal life there may have been a reason for allow- 
 ing these common necessities to be dealt with by private 
 individuals or private companies. There may have been 
 a good or at least a satisfactory reason for this method 
 when our proportions were small and our needs were not 
 so great and not so complex, when it meant giving over to 
 individuals not such vast amounts that should be used 
 for the advantage of all the people, and when the oppor- 
 tunities for getting these great advantages away from 
 the people through political corruption and debauchery 
 were not so great as they are to-day. So there may have 
 been a reason in the beginning, but the basis for that 
 reason has now passed. This method may have been 
 even right at one time — though this in common with 
 many I question — it is no longer right now. And the 
 fact that we are beginning now to think so rapidly along 
 [118]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the lines of a saner and a better way indicates that the 
 method in vogue so long has more than seen its day. 
 Nevertheless, although our awakening has been tardy, 
 our advance will be rapid. 
 
 It is the people — the people in common — that make 
 valuable those enormously rich franchises that have 
 been given over to individuals for their private en- 
 richment, in the form, to deal first with the city — of 
 light and heat and transportation and telephone privi- 
 leges, not to mention the various other ones at present. 
 It is not only the people, but to state it still more con- 
 cretely, it is the very needs of the people that give them 
 their enormous values, and it is through these that their 
 enormous profits are secured. If this be true, why then 
 should not these great interests be conducted by and for 
 the benefit of the people, instead of by and for the enrich- 
 ment of a few private individuals ? Especially as under 
 our system of enormously rich gifts to these individuals 
 or groups of individuals, and their conducting these 
 enterprises with no thought of the public welfare but with 
 the one thought of the greatest amount of profit for them- 
 selves, first, last, and all the time, we have been having 
 for years and are still having along these lines as poor a 
 service with the highest costs, and the greatest amount 
 of evil and abuses, as any country in the entire world. 
 
 As long, moreover, as any of the utilities that are public 
 necessities and that from their very nature should be 
 conducted by and in the interests of the people, are 
 allowed to be run for private gain, this condition of 
 affairs will continue to exist. 
 
 [119]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 With all our progress along other lines, it is almost 
 universally understood that the conduct of our muni- 
 cipal affairs in the United States has been among the 
 most backward and costly and degraded and unsatis- 
 factory of any in the entire civilized world. 
 
 In the conduct of these affairs we are far behind all 
 such countries as Germany, England, France, Norway, 
 Sweden, Belgium, not to go through almost the entire 
 list of civilized and progressive nations. It seems to me 
 clearly evident that from the very nature of the case 
 we cannot do violence to the principle — " That which 
 the people collectively create they should collectively 
 own," without suffering this as a result. Moreover, 
 we shall never reach the highest state in municipal or 
 even in state or national administration, until we recog- 
 nize and act upon the principle — what the people 
 can do best for themselves, that, through their agent, 
 the government, they should do. They should not, there- 
 fore, permit purely governmental functions to be seized 
 and to be exploited by individuals and corporations. 
 
 There must, therefore, not only be blows struck that 
 will forever put an end to the giving over to individuals 
 of these great common properties of the people, but 
 there must also be, to use the words of one of our fore- 
 most American editors,* "The recovery to the people 
 of all franchises belonging to the people, but diverted 
 from public to private uses, by the purchase of corpora- 
 tions and individuals, corruptly working through state 
 and municipal legislatures. " 
 
 * Henry Watterson — The Louisville Courier Journal. 
 [120]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 To our present method is to be attributed the almost 
 unbelievable amount of graft and bribery and corruption 
 that has become so rampant among us of late and that 
 has been steadily swelling in its volume during the pass- 
 ing of the years. " Nothing, " says one editor of another 
 of our foremost papers, " has conduced so greatly to 
 graft and bribery 7 in municipal and state affairs as the 
 fact that franchises of enormous value for public utilities 
 are to be obtained by favour of certain officials. Give the 
 streets back to the city and this element of corruption 
 is at once eliminated. " Continuing — it was an editorial 
 on the significance of the great and splendid vote recent- 
 ly given by the people of Chicago in their determination 
 to drive from their midst all further domination on the 
 part of the Rapid Transit Companies, their determina- 
 tion to come into complete possession of their transit 
 facilities and to conduct them for their own benefit — 
 the writer said : 
 
 " What Chicago has done New York can do, though 
 on the very day the Western city scored its victory we of 
 New York were called upon to face a defeat. The same 
 agencies that waged war on Judge Dunne and what he 
 stood for killed the Elsberg Bill in the New York Legis- 
 lature ; and though that measure — designed to prevent 
 any more scandals such as the gift of the people's Subway 
 to August Belmont — had the endorsement of ever} 7 New 
 York civic organization interested in the cause of good 
 government, and was openly opposed only by theBelmont 
 combination and the unrepresentative Rapid Transit 
 Commission, it was beaten in the Senate at Albany. 
 [121]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 " The triumph in Chicago and the disaster in New 
 York simply mean that though a legislature may be 
 influenced to favour special privilege at the expense of the 
 people, the people themselves can neither be bought by a 
 corrupt lobby nor driven by bosses working for their 
 peculiar interests. " 
 
 If we take entirely away from private gain those great 
 public service utilities, then we at once strike the axe at 
 the roots of the larger share of the source of our political 
 corruption and debauchery for which, especially in 
 municipal matters, we stand as the most notorious 
 nation in the entire world. As lovers of free institutions 
 and of ordinary public honesty and decency, this end 
 alone, is of sufficient importance to demand of us such 
 a course, to say nothing of the enormous gains otherwise. 
 The fact that both city and state legislation is so domi- 
 nated by great accumulated wealth and by corporations, 
 especially public service corporations, indicates that our 
 prevailing methods are not healthy, and that this great 
 menace to free institutions, and to a government for 
 and by the people, should be speedily removed. 
 
 A matter of such vital importance to the national and 
 individual welfare as the public ownership and control 
 of all public utilities is worthy of a most detailed con- 
 sideration, more than we shall be able to give it in so 
 limited a space. It is to become, as it is so rapidly be- 
 ginning now, one of the paramount questions in the 
 policies of the American nation. 
 
 I think there is perhaps no better way of proceeding 
 to a consideration of the argument in favour of such a 
 [122]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 method of supplying our needs and necessities than by 
 considering first, what has been accomplished in this 
 line in the municipalities of other countries, and with 
 what results. Many times a long and detailed argument 
 that a certain thing cannot be done, is best met by 
 showing that it already has been or is being done, and 
 most successfully. 
 
 On account of the general characteristics and con- 
 ditions there being probably more nearly akin to our 
 own, shall we look in the direction of Great Britain 
 first. 
 
 I think we cannot do better at this point than con- 
 sider some facts as presented by Mr. John Martin,* 
 whose statistics in connection with Great Britain are 
 vouched for by the British Imperial Board of Trade. 
 These facts and figures I shall give exactly as they were 
 presented by Mr. Martin himself, f After speaking of the 
 various small beginnings along these lines that we have 
 made here, he continues, " Driven to desperation by the 
 cobra-like voracity of the lighting trust, New York is 
 erecting a plant to light its streets and public buildings 
 (nothing for private consumers yet), and so is begin- 
 ning to toddle like a babe in those paths of business 
 thrift in which we shall see that European cities have 
 been running like athletes for decades. 
 
 * Mr. Martin was formerly a member of the Hackney Borough 
 Council, London. He is now a resident of New York, where he is 
 well-known as a writer and an authority on Municipal Problems, and 
 as an effective worker along the lines of clean politics. 
 
 t Proceedings of the Annual Conference on Good City Government, 
 held by the National Municipal League at New York, 1905. 
 
 [123]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 " How different has been the record abroad ! We are 
 thirty years behind the cities of Great Britain and Ger- 
 many. And from the beginning they were more business- 
 like than we are even now. To them it would seem the 
 height of economic folly to forbid a city to supply electric 
 light to householders and to allow a private monopoly 
 to retain its extortionate prices for them while the mu- 
 nicipality sought relief by multiplying wires and dynamos 
 for itself. The 355 localities of the United Kingdom and 
 the numerous German cities which own and run electric 
 lighting plants, hold the monopoly in their districts. 
 Competition being, in the nature of the case, impossible, 
 the city holds the field. 
 
 "The same with the gas-works in the two countries. 
 Thrifty business management requires that somebody 
 shall hold a monopoly, and political sense requires that 
 that somebody shall be the city itself. . . . 
 
 " No less that 260 cities — Great Britain — supply 
 their whole population with gas-light and power. . . . 
 They charge on an average, taking large and small, those 
 distant from and those near to coal fields all together, 
 sixty-four cents a thousand cubic feet for gas. Therefore 
 the consumer is benefited, for the private companies, 
 on an average, taken in the same way, charge a little over 
 seventy cents. What they would charge were they not 
 held in check by municipal competition Cousin Jona- 
 than could tell John Bull. 
 
 " Has the taxpayer been mulcted to make up ? No, 
 indeed. The net revenue has been 7 per cent on the 
 capital, and, if anything, the taxpayer had been too well 
 [124]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 cared for. In Manchester he received $350,000 last year 
 to help to pay for the schools, etc., the price of gas being 
 sixty cents; in Leicester he got $190,000 with gas at fifty- 
 six cents, and in the other places lesser sums in propor- 
 tion to their size and the success of the management. 
 
 " And the workman ? He has not been forgotten ; for 
 everywhere he gets slightly higher wages than he would 
 from a private corporation and somewhat more generous 
 treatment with respect to hours and holidays. 
 
 "Electric lighting tells the same tale. While I am 
 writing this there comes a return compiled by the London 
 County Council showing that the fourteen local authori- 
 ties in the metropolitan district which supply electric 
 light, sell it at an average of slightly less than eight cents 
 a kilowatt hour, nearly 20 per cent less than corpora- 
 tions charge in adjacent districts, and nearly half as 
 much as submissive New Yorkers pay. And yet, after 
 paying all expenses and the interest on the debt they had 
 a surplus of $1,244,515. Clearly they understand the 
 notion of thrift in production; they do not regard every 
 city department as a spending agency. 
 
 " Space fails me to tell the details of the electric light 
 works of the 323 local authorities in the United King- 
 dom with their approximate capital of $150,000,000, 
 and of the numerous similar examples in Germany. 
 Their success is sufficiently indicated by the fact that 
 after the most virulent attacks have been made on them 
 in the last four years, supported by a group of corpora- 
 tion representatives from America who went as kindly 
 missionaries to point out to Britishers what a terribly 
 [125]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 wicked mistake their municipalities were making, after 
 a long investigation by Parliament and a vigorous de- 
 fence by the highest and most influential administrators 
 in the Kingdom, not only has there been no cessation of 
 municipal activity, but it is steadily increasing. Mean- 
 while the corps of anxious Americans who thought they 
 could fool the slow-witted Britishers into the adoption of 
 American ways, have been sent home routed and label- 
 led 'Physician, heal thyself.' 
 
 "Still more remarkable, especially to those belted 
 Spencerians who piously believe that a government is 
 congenitally incapable of managing a business enter- 
 prise, must be the record of the street railway achieve- 
 ments abroad. For a change of air, let us leap the North 
 Sea and travel to Berlin. 
 
 " Berlin's most illuminating experience has been with 
 her street railways. In 1898, in order to get the lines 
 electrified, the city granted a charter for twenty-one 
 years, with these provisions included: 1. Workmen to 
 have a ten-hour day. 2. Waiting-rooms at transfer sta- 
 tions to be erected and to be kept warmed and lighted. 
 3. Uniform fare for the whole length of each line to be 
 2.38 cents. 4. Eight per cent of the gross profits, plus 
 half the net profits over 12 per cent on the old capital 
 and 6 per cent on the new capital, to be paid to the 
 city. 5. At the end of the lease all the lines and the 
 rolling stock to become the property of the city. 
 
 " Please bear in mind these terms, made by a govern- 
 ment of taxpayers, when we consider, later, the action 
 of the New York Rapid Transit Commission. 
 [126]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "Berlin's bureaucracy is as able and honest as any 
 in the world, and it worked as well as officials ever can 
 to keep the corporation to the terms of its bargain. In 
 addition, an association of citizens was formed to watch 
 and fight. But even then the trouble involved in protecting 
 the citizens from the universal tendency of franchise 
 corporations to evade their obligations was so harassing 
 that after a few months this council of taxpayers decided 
 that no more franchises should be granted, and that the 
 city should enter the railway business. A short strategic 
 line which happened to be obtainable was bought, 
 other lines were built, and now the government is an 
 active competitor and is ready to take advantage of 
 every franchise as it expires. . 
 
 "No less than 162 localities in Britain have shown 
 ability, enterprise and foresight enough to take over and 
 manage their own street-car lines. Among them are 
 London, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham, 
 Hull, Newcastle, Nottingham, Halifax, Leeds, Sheffield, 
 Aberdeen, Brighton, Dundee, Yarmouth, Belfast and 
 Rochdale. All of them are so well satisfied with the 
 results in lower fares for the passenger, better conditions 
 for the workman and profits for the taxpayers, that 
 no party is even in existence which advocates the re- 
 surrender of any system to a private corporation. The 
 mere whisper of such a proposal would be a request 
 for political execution and burial. . . . 
 
 " London owns the surface lines both north and south 
 of the Thames. Those on the north side, in a fit of 
 lukewarmness, when for one term the Progressive and 
 [127]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Moderate parties were evenly balanced, and to the 
 present regret of the population served by them, are 
 leased for operation to a corporation on terms remun- 
 erative to the government, but obstructive to improve- 
 ment. The city has electrified its lines; the corporation 
 refuses to follow suit. So much for that superior cor- 
 poration enterprise of which we hear ad nauseam. 
 
 " During the eight years of municipal ownership 
 these returns have been secured. On the lines worked 
 by the council, 44 per cent of the passengers pay one- 
 cent fares, 43 per cent pay two cents, 8 per cent three 
 cents, 4 per cent four cents, and, to compensate for the 
 99 per cent of the passengers who pay less than our 
 straight five-cent rate, just one poor soul, who wishes 
 to travel the whole length of the line, has to pay six cents. 
 
 "In those years, despite the increases of wages, the 
 annual holidays and the day's rest per week given to 
 employees, the street railways have contributed $1,465,- 
 000 to the general city treasury, $1,670,000 in reduction 
 of the debt on the lines, $330,000 as a renewal and 
 reserve fund for the southern system, $450,000 for taxes 
 on the southern system during the last six years, and 
 $630,000 in reduction of debt from proceeds of sale of 
 horses, etc. " 
 
 In addition to the extremely low fares that are paid 
 in German cities for street-car service, and with far 
 better and cleaner and more up-to-date cars than we 
 have — with a rare exception here and there — there 
 is this noticeable difference. There the number of seats 
 each car contains is posted in clear and artistic form 
 [128]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 in the interior, and each seat has its number just above 
 it. As soon then as all seats are taken no more passen- 
 gers are permitted to enter, but a sufficient number of 
 cars is run to provide a seat — that which the payment 
 of a fare always implies — for every man, woman and 
 child. It makes a difference whether a matter is con- 
 ducted for the comfort and convenience of its patrons 
 or for the deliberate purpose of extracting from them 
 the last possible penny, giving many times in return an 
 accommodation that we, had we the civic pride and the 
 sense of justice that we — and I had almost said, above 
 all people — should have, would not put up with more 
 than the number of days absolutely required to bring 
 about the change. 
 
 Compare the German citizens' two-cent fare and his 
 guaranteed seat and clean and artistic accommodations 
 with our five-cent fare, even if for half a dozen blocks, 
 with our many times rattling cars, sometimes even junk 
 when they are bought, and our almost equal chances 
 that for this excessive fare we will get in exchange a 
 strap to hang onto in common with a number of people 
 standing equal to or sometimes greater than the number 
 that the management deigns to accommodate with seats, 
 and all the discomfort this means on entering or leaving 
 the car. Many times merely room to stand upon a plat- 
 form is all they will permit us to have, and for a fare that 
 is at least twice as high as it should be even for the best 
 sitting accommodations. 
 
 They are thirsty lesches, these owners and managers 
 of our public service corporations. But it is because we 
 [129]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 permit it. Their blood-sucking propensities seem never 
 to be satisfied nor do they decrease, but by virtue of a 
 great natural law they are ever on the increase. And 
 again, because we permit and stand it. 
 
 There, one finds almost without exception, vestibuled 
 cars for the protection and comfort of their motormen. 
 This portion of their citizenship is looked after the same 
 as all others. But here it is scarcely ever that the manage- 
 ment of the roads adopts this plan voluntarily, and 
 when the demand of ordinary decency and fairness takes 
 a measure to the legislature compelling it, the com- 
 pany's representatives are there with their money and 
 their lobby to defeat it in common with practically 
 every measure looking to the comfort and welfare and 
 safety of those the public service corporation is supposed 
 to serve. 
 
 The winter just passed but one was a frightful one in 
 the amount of suffering these men had to undergo, and 
 who for the most effective service as well as for the public 
 safety, should be kept always at their best. In New York 
 City alone it caused the death or resulted in the under- 
 mining of the health of many a poor fellow. They are 
 sometimes scorpions, these owners and managers of our 
 public service corporations, for they sting to the death 
 in their excessive and unchecked greed for gain. But we, 
 the common citizens, are not free from guilt; for in- 
 directly we also had a hand in this frightful amount of 
 suffering that resulted more than once in death, and 
 that brought sadness and want to those dependent upon 
 their breadwinner; for we are dwellers in a country of 
 [130]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 democratic institutions where the people are responsible 
 for the conditions that prevail among them. 
 
 In the matter of the municipal ownership and manage- 
 ment of public utilities, we have heard much of late 
 of Glasgow, and not without reason. The people of 
 Glasgow have stood among the most fearless and the 
 most successful in managing for themselves their public 
 utilities. It has been a long time since the franchise 
 grabber has been able to exploit the people there. The 
 people of Glasgow, strange to say, prefer to keep for 
 themselves the millions of dollars their public utilities 
 return each year, instead of handing them over to a little 
 group of capitalists, foreigners many times, and whose 
 only interest is to take from the city the largest amount 
 of tribute it can exact. For over thirty-five years, or since 
 1869, Glasgow has owned its own gas-works. As a result, 
 its people pay fifty-three cents per thousand feet for gas. 
 Its municipal electricity is supplied at five and one-half 
 cents per kilowatt hour. All the markets are owned by 
 the city. Private slaughter-houses were abolished many 
 years ago and the city is now supplied by three central 
 establishments. From Lake Katrine in the Trossachs 
 it brings its splendid water supply. The Water Depart- 
 ment also supplies hydraulic power. 
 
 In addition to its hospitals, its parks, its art galleries, 
 museums, libraries, botanic gardens, art schools, techni- 
 cal schools, etc., it has also its winter gardens, its free 
 concerts, facilities for golf and other games, gymnasia 
 and playgrounds for the children. It has also homes for 
 the children of widows and widowers; it has depots for 
 [131]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 the supply of sterilized milk to poor children. "It," 
 says Robert Donald, editor of the London Chronicle, 
 "was the persistency of Glasgow that broke down the 
 private telephone monopoly in Great Britain, encourag- 
 ed other municipalities to establish their own system, 
 and has now led to the complete nationalization of the 
 whole service." 
 
 Speaking of Glasgow's municipal tramways, Mr. 
 Donald says : " It will be interesting to state the effect of 
 municipal ownership, and to explain the policy which 
 guided the City Council. The company — as all private 
 enterprises must do — kept mainly in view immediate 
 profits. Like most British companies, it pursued a nar- 
 row policy. The keynote of the municipal system was 
 service, giving the best possible to the citizens. The 
 municipality operated the roads in the interest of all. 
 It greatly lowered the fares, banished all advertisements 
 from the cars, made the names of the routes and desti- 
 nations conspicuous, opened up new routes and linked 
 up new districts. It also considered its employees. With- 
 out a contented staff there cannot be a perfect service. 
 So the drivers and conductors were dressed in new uni- 
 forms, their wages were increased, their hours reduced. 
 The citizens had the feeling of personal possession when 
 they patronized the cars, which display the city's arms 
 and its motto — 'Let Glasgow Flourish.' Civic patriot- 
 ism asserted itself later on, when the displaced franchise- 
 holders started a competing service of omnibuses, which 
 failed to get support and soon disappeared. . . . 
 
 " The fares in Glasgow are one cent for a stage of a 
 [ 132]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 little over half a mile, and over 30 per cent of the pass- 
 engers travel this short distance, and bring in nearly 17 
 per cent of the receipts. For an average of two and a 
 third miles, the fares are two cents, and close on 61 per 
 cent of the passengers travel this distance and contri- 
 bute 66| per cent of the receipts, so that 91 per cent of 
 the total number carried pay two-cent or one-cent fares. 
 Only 6.31 per cent travel for three cents. . . . Less 
 than one per cent of the 189,000,000 passengers last 
 year paid five cents or more. . . . 
 
 " The Glasgow tramways are managed by a Committee 
 of the City Corporation, which holds frequent meetings 
 and reports regularly to the City Council. It consists of 
 twenty-eight members, who appoint sub-committees for 
 supervising different departments. It obtains the sanc- 
 tion of the Council for its actions. The Council might be 
 regarded as the legislative authority, and the Committee 
 as the executive. 
 
 " From a financial point of view the Glasgow under- 
 taking has been remarkably successful. . . . Last 
 year's accounts indicate the healthy financial condition of 
 the tramways. The total receipts, for instance, amounted 
 to $3,624,255, the operating expenses to $1,684,100 — 49 
 per cent of the revenue. The net receipts showed a gross 
 return on the capital outlay of 17.46 per cent. . . . 
 The accounts of the department are examined and audi- 
 ted by independent professional accountants. The ac- 
 counts are published with elaborate detail, showing the 
 smallest item of expenditure worked out to percentages 
 and comparisons with previous years. 
 [133 1
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "The Tramway Department, as I have indicated, 
 generates its own electric power, the total cost of which 
 is less than one cent per kilowatt hour. 
 
 "The Tramways Committee delegates considerable 
 power to its general manager, who is responsible for the 
 staff who form part of the permanent civil service in the 
 city. Politics does not influence appointments, and pro- 
 motion is by merit. . . . 
 
 " With liberal depreciation and reserve funds to meet 
 renewals and obsolescence, with a redemption fund 
 which liquidates the original capital of the undertaking 
 in thirty years, which is at the same time maintained 
 in an efficient condition out of revenue, the City Corpora- 
 tion is more than doing its duty to the next generation. 
 Lower fares for long distances should be easily possible 
 in the near future, and there is a prospect that the 
 average fare will come down to one cent. A universal 
 one-cent fare irrespective of distance could then be 
 adopted. " 
 
 Here then we have a municipal enterprise which 
 after paying its annual interest, making its payments 
 into the sinking fund for the redemption of its capital, 
 allowing for depreciation and reserve fund, paying 
 its local tax assessments — for it makes the same con- 
 tribution to local taxation as if it were a private concern 
 — and which although carrying over nine-tenths of its 
 patrons for one-cent and two-cent fares, will at the end 
 of thirty years — between nineteen and twenty years now, 
 pay for itself entirely without one cent of cost to the 
 people or to the municipality. Moreover, from the very 
 f 134]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 beginning, it has been more up-to-date than any privately 
 owned system. 
 
 There is indeed quite a contrast between the sturdy 
 common-sense and business sagacity of our Scotch 
 brethren and the way we allow ourselves to be fleeced in 
 connection with practically all of our public utilities and 
 the type of service that even then we accept. 
 
 Is it any wonder then that so many thinking men 
 among us are now realizing so keenly the stupid folly 
 and lack of business management among us in this 
 respect ? And is it any wonder that at the close of the 
 recent election in Chicago, resulting in the demand of her 
 people for the municipalization of her transit systems, 
 that a man of such business insight as Mr. Andrew 
 Carnegie should send to the newly elected Mayor the 
 following message as he is reported to have sent: Tell 
 Judge Dunne not to stop until every public utility that can 
 be made the subject of private monopoly has been placed 
 under the control and operation of the city. Chicago 
 is still in its infancy. It has scarcely yet begun to grow. 
 For some additional concrete facts shall we take 
 a glance at Liverpool's transit systems. In this we have 
 no less an authority than Mr. C. R. Bellamy, General 
 Manager of the Municipal Street Railways of Liverpool. 
 Some time ago Mr. Bellamy gave an address before 
 the National Convention on Municipal Ownership and 
 Public Franchises, held under the auspices of the New 
 York Reform Club. In opening, he showed how the 
 accommodations on his roads were doubled during the 
 rush hours, and although he had a population of but 
 [135]
 
 In the Fire of ifie Heart 
 
 700,000 to deal with, the fan-shaped form of the city of 
 Liverpool became, he said, terribly congested night and 
 morning, and the traffic was quite as difficult to conduct 
 as in any other city. 
 
 "In Great Britain," continued Mr. Bellamy, "the 
 municipalities have largely concluded that local tram- 
 way management should be taken up in the common 
 interest and worked entirely for the common good, 
 treating it as a necessity in the same category with water 
 and artificial light. . . 
 
 " All objections to municipal trading are based on the 
 surmise that it is fraught with danger to the community, 
 and will end disastrously; but an ounce of fact is worth 
 a pound of opinion. 
 
 "In 1897, a company rented the tramway lines which 
 belonged to the municipality under an expired lease of 
 seventeen years. The service was inadequate, the fares 
 were high, and there were loud complaints as to the con- 
 ditions of labour of the employees. It was felt that me- 
 chanical should supersede horse traction, that the system 
 should be largely extended and fares reduced, and the 
 company not being willing to make these changes, 
 negotiations were opened resulting in the purchasing 
 of the stock and shares of the company. 
 
 " It was at once arranged to scrap the entire under- 
 taking and to adopt electric traction, and within three 
 years of its acquirement the whole of the sixty-eight 
 miles of track were reconstructed, together with forty 
 miles of additional new track, which were equipped 
 with 400 regular cars. 
 
 [130]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "The total carrying capacity was quadrupled, the 
 fares reduced by nearly one-half, the wages of the em- 
 ployees largely increased and their hours of labour re- 
 duced, and they were all supplied with uniform clothing. 
 
 "It was a bold movement, and was considerably 
 criticized, but the response of a grateful public to the 
 facilities afforded made it at once evident that the suc- 
 cess of the new scheme was assured. " 
 
 Here, then, is a system which in addition to making 
 its annual contribution to local taxation, putting by a 
 regular fund for the redemption of its capital, allowing 
 for depreciation, keeping itself in the highest state of 
 efficiency, has nearly doubled its earning capacity within 
 a period of five years, although raising its employees' 
 wages and shortening their hours of work, and is giving 
 its patrons a most up-to-date service and accommoda- 
 tions, charging a fare of two cents within the city limits, 
 and a fare of four cents on beyond the city limits, and 
 that in a few years will entirely pay for itself without one 
 cent of expense to a single citizen or to the municipality. 
 As soon as this period is up, then a still greater reduc- 
 tion of fares can, and in all probability will, be made; 
 for such is the policy of these municipally owned and 
 managed utilities. Another fact should be mentioned in 
 connection with this system — one person, employee 
 or passenger, was killed the previous year in every 
 13,000,000 people carried. They also, as in connection 
 with all municipally owned and managed utilities, had no 
 expensive legal and court proceedings to compel private 
 owners to carry out their agreements with the city. 
 [137]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 We coukl go into hundreds of other cities in Great 
 Britain, in Germany, in Belgium and other continental 
 countries, as well as into Australia and New Zealand; 
 but in all we would find the same general facts and con- 
 ditions, varying slightly in detail simply by reason of 
 varying local conditions. 
 
 Now in all fairness I ask, if the people in the cities of 
 these countries can save for themselves the returns from 
 these wonderfully rich properties, aggregating hundreds 
 of millions annually, instead of allowing these vast 
 amounts to flow into the pockets of a few already overly 
 rich individuals, why cannot we American people do the 
 same ? If we cannot then we must admit that we are less 
 capable in business management and in the matter of 
 self-government than they. This we can scarcely believe, 
 especially when in some respects we have proved ourselves 
 even more capable. I cannot believe that in these matters 
 we are any less capable, or that we will show an inferior 
 ability when we are sufficiently alert and determined. 
 
 The reply is made, if we had the honesty in municipal 
 administration that they have in England, in Scotland, 
 in Germany and the various other countries where such 
 splendid municipal ownership results are obtained, then 
 we could safely travel along the same lines. True, but the 
 municipalities in these countries did not always have this 
 characteristic, but they have attained it by simply going 
 about it to attain it. They made the start which in a 
 very definite way has led them to such splendid results. 
 This is the stock argument presented against the mu- 
 nicipal ownership and management of public utilities, 
 [138]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and that it is a strong argument is held, and very honest- 
 ly held, by large numbers of people. It is an argument, 
 the only argument really worthy of consideration, but 
 an argument not without an answer. We had better 
 keep as we are lest we get into conditions still worse, 
 it is said. But this latter is no argument, and it has no 
 truth even as a statement; for taking it all in all it is 
 absolutely impossible to have conditions in this respect 
 worse than they are when we consider the uniformly 
 excessively high charges and the generally poor and inad- 
 equate service, and the thousands of unnecessary killings 
 and maimings that form the total for each year. With this 
 must be combined the great amount of political corrup- 
 tion and debauchery that passes every year, and coupled 
 with it all we must not refuse to take account of the 
 yearly additions of the millions to the wealth of these 
 little groups of already excessively rich men, many of 
 whom are thoroughly unscrupulous in their dealings 
 and in their entire outlook, as is all too clearly evidenced 
 by the methods they have been and are continually 
 using in furthering their ends, and in getting control of 
 still larger amounts of the people's properties, so that 
 they have become a menace to free institutions and to 
 the welfare of every man, woman and child in the nation. 
 Matters, I repeat, by no stretch of the imagination, 
 could be any worse than they are, unless in connection 
 with the taking over of these utilities for our common 
 use, we cut loose from all common-sense in our methods 
 of procedure and business management, which I am 
 sure we are not liable to do. 
 
 [139]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The present amount of political corruption and graft 
 in our city administration is, I am inclined to think, one 
 very great argument, when we look at it in an all round 
 way, for taking from private exploitation the manage- 
 ment of these public utilities; for then the responsibili- 
 ties at City Hall will become so great that we, the indi- 
 vidual citizen, will be compelled to give the amount of 
 time and study and attention to municipal affairs that 
 we should be giving, for it is on account of this lack that 
 these public service corporations have been able to have 
 seated in our city councils the men that they have been 
 able to make their deals with, and who, for considera- 
 tion, have been handing over these public properties for 
 their private enrichment. This is the great evil that we 
 must now quickly face. It is the sore that has been grad- 
 ually rotting and festering and gradually enveloping the 
 very vitals of our entire social body. Men's abilities and 
 real qualities assert themselves in the degree that responsi- 
 bilities are placed upon them. So with something per- 
 sonal enough and large enough and inspiring enough 
 for our splendid common citizenship to work for, as this 
 great movement and all that it carries with it must be, 
 and especially if we strike for it at once without delays 
 or dickerings, and without any more millions being 
 handed over or any further alienation of properties and 
 rights, we would quickly make a splendid beginning in 
 purging our social body of this rapidly growing and 
 vigour-sapping disease. And when we begin to experience 
 the direct personal results that will follow, then I am 
 sure that we will never stop until we have put com- 
 [140]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 pletely by the old, and into full and complete operation, 
 the new. 
 
 Hand in hand with the extension of this movement 
 must go the continual extending and perfecting of our 
 Civil Service system, making it continually stronger in 
 its requirements for admission, with perhaps continually 
 greater leeway along the lines of dismissals for proven 
 incompetency, and if the management in making re- 
 movals cannot appoint except from the duly qualified 
 lists, there will be but little chance for the political 
 machine methods gaining control, or even extending 
 themselves materially. By a wise and judicious exten- 
 sion of such a system, hand in hand with the growth of 
 municipal ownership, the machine elements would be 
 compelled gradually to disappear. 
 
 There can be no argument that the financial burden 
 in connection with these undertakings would be too 
 great for our cities to assume, because under wise and 
 judicious management no additional burdens need be 
 assumed, and these enterprises can be taken over and 
 improved and extended just as they have been in the 
 cities of Great Britain and of Germany already noted, 
 and can be made to pay for themselves out of their own 
 earnings without involving a burden of a single dollar 
 upon any individuals or upon any municipality. 
 
 But this entire matter of municipal ownership is 
 nothing new nor startling even with us ; it is in fact merely 
 an extension of the municipal ownership methods that 
 we already have, including municipal water supplies 
 — practically all of which are now or soon will be under 
 [141]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 complete municipal ownership and management. So 
 our fire departments, our street-cleaning departments, 
 our parks, and our public schools. Are these and others 
 that could be mentioned not managed more economically 
 and satisfactorily and more uniformly for the public 
 welfare than if they were left to private enterprise ? 
 Who is there bold enough to say at all seriously, that 
 any of these public utilities should be turned over to 
 private enterprise ? But to be supplied at satisfactory 
 rates and in an all round satisfactory manner with 
 lighting and heating facilities — gas and electricity — 
 street-car and telephone facilities, etc., is just as impor- 
 tant, for they are just as much necessities as those 
 already mentioned. 
 
 And even in the matter of the now rapidly crystallizing 
 municipal ownership movement, we are not without 
 precedent and not without some very telling results. 
 Chicago for example, for over fifteen years has owned 
 and operated one of the largest electric lighting plants 
 in the country, with which she lights her streets and pub- 
 lic buildings. At one time she paid $125 a year for 
 an arc-light. She is able to make her own light for about 
 $54 per lamp. She has been doing this despite the 
 fact that she has not been furnishing the private con- 
 sumer with light. And on account of the fat-pursed 
 private concerns, her city lighting plant, which has al- 
 ways been a menace to the private gas and electric com- 
 panies, has been fought and hampered by them at every 
 movement. Aldermen they have elected and Mayors 
 they have controlled have crippled and starved it. 
 [142]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 Notwithstanding this corporate hatred and intriguing 
 and this official treachery, it has grown, has served the 
 city splendidly, and has saved it large sums every year. 
 It has therefore demonstrated what even under the most 
 adverse circumstances can be done, and furnishes a 
 basis upon which the city will now speedily build a true 
 electric lighting system, which will supply all her people 
 with light and so will save vast sums for them each year 
 also. With the passing of the private concerns will pass 
 the great amount of debauchery and corruption they 
 have been responsible for in the city's municipal ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 It should also be stated in connection with Chicago's 
 lighting undertaking that, during the period it has been 
 in operation, something over fifteen years, in addition to 
 doing her municipal lighting for about one-half of what 
 private concerns would demand, it has in this short 
 period of time entirely paid for itself, is now the property 
 of the city without any cost to it, and is now in position 
 to reduce still lower the cost of its lighting. And a short 
 time ago both houses of the Illinois legislature heard 
 so plainly the demand of the people along the lines of 
 the municipalizing of their public utilities, that a bill 
 was passed allowing the city of Chicago to maintain gas 
 and electric lighting plants, and to pay for them — 
 whether bought or built — by issuing interest bearing 
 certificates to be redeemed out of the earnings of the 
 properties for which they pay, thus not affecting in 
 the least the city's general revenues or rate of 
 taxation. Chicago will be very proud in the coming 
 [143]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 years to have the honour of being sort of a forerunner in 
 this great municipal ownership movement that will 
 eventually inciuae every city of importance in the land. 
 And we can well afford to give her this honour, for by 
 her example and experience other cities will be en- 
 couraged and helped. 
 
 When in addition to the few millions the street-car 
 companies of Chicago have been taking from the people 
 in profits each year, several millions in addition are 
 saved to the people in their gas and electric lighting 
 bills, they can well afford even financially to bear with 
 becoming grace this honour. 
 
 But the best thing about it all is that we are now on 
 the move. It has taken us a long, long time to get 
 started. But we have another characteristic, that, when 
 we once start we are capable of moving rapidly. When 
 the time comes that all public utilities are managed by 
 and for the benefit of those to whom they belong, as 
 they will be, and sooner I am inclined to think than 
 many of us even now realize, we will then wonder that 
 our bump of common-sense and business insight in 
 connection with these matters did not mature more 
 early. The price we are paying for this delay is certainly 
 something enormous. 
 
 So far as the question of right in the people's taking 
 over and managing these utilities for their own benefit 
 is concerned, it is scarcely worthy of consideration, for 
 we all know that it exists. Almost a hundred forms of 
 private ownership in the form of tolls, etc., have gone. 
 We can proceed by way of direct purchase, mutual 
 [144]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 agreement in regard to price, if it is found advantageous 
 to buy the private companies out. The more that can be 
 done in this way the better. Then we can proceed by 
 way of condemnation proceedings, through the right 
 of eminent domain. It is a recognized principle in govern- 
 ment that the right or desire of the individual is always 
 subservient to the public good. If I own a particular 
 piece of property and though I may think very highly 
 of it, if a street is to be opened that will be for the public 
 benefit, or if a railroad owned even by private individ- 
 uals is to be constructed, or a public building erected, 
 the portion of the property required is taken, or all, if 
 all is necessary, and I am given compensation for it 
 according to its real value, and not in accordance with 
 whatever estimate of its value I may be pleased to place 
 upon it. Here is something to be noted when these public 
 properties are taken over to be managed for all the 
 people — they will be taken at their real values, not at 
 any fiat values, and a shrinking in values to the tune of 
 many millions will be witnessed. The people are always 
 pre-eminently fair in matters such as these. They will 
 want to pay for every dollar of real value taken, but they 
 will not pay the prices that the companies, almost with- 
 out exception, will ask. The millions in watered stocks 
 will be of no value to the people as they are of no value 
 to them now, but on the contrary, are the cause of their 
 parting with many a hard earning dollar. We will pay 
 and willingly pay every dollar any property is worth, 
 but we should not pay a dollar more than its real value 
 calls for. 
 
 r 145 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 An instructive lesson along this line comes from Lon- 
 don. Various water companies, some dating even from 
 the Middle Ages, were able to retain their gr ; p upon the 
 city until, through the progressive action or tne London 
 County Council, to which the city owes much of its 
 modern people's movement programme, determined to 
 take them entirely out of private hands. The old com- 
 panies were dispossessed and the entire water supply 
 was put under the management of the Metropolitan 
 Water Board. An arbitrating board was appointed, 
 consisting of some of the ablest engineers in Great 
 Britain. Their finding was that the city should pay a 
 sum equal to about 60 per cent of the amount asked for 
 them by the old companies. The result was the saving 
 to the people of a little over $10,000,000. It will not be 
 an impossible task for similar boards composed of 
 skilled men who thoroughly understand the matters 
 they are brought together to pass upon, to estimate in 
 a similar manner the real values of the various utilities 
 we shall be taking over here. 
 
 It seems scarcely necessary in view of the facts we 
 have already considered pertaining to the results that 
 have already been achieved along municipal ownership 
 lines, to attempt to say anything further in its favour. 
 The mere enumeration of some of the things already 
 accomplished, with their splendid results to the people, 
 should speak and does speak more loudly and persua- 
 sively than any array of arguments that could be gotten 
 together. 
 
 It is not, fortunately, a matter of experimenting. We 
 
 r 146 1
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 know from what has already been done what the results 
 under wise and careful management must be. The fact 
 as we have already noted that all privately owned and 
 managed companies are actuated by the one motive, the 
 largest possible gain, makes it absolutely impossible for 
 the people to be served and benefited as they should be; 
 nor will they ever be until these public utilities are con- 
 ducted primarily for the benefit of the people. An edi- 
 torial in the Boston Herald, sometime ago, contained 
 the following telling and true sentences: "No public 
 benefit is ever to be expected of corporations organized 
 for gain, which are so powerful that they feel able to 
 make the law or to defy it. No good to the consumers of 
 products can be hoped for from a monopoly which be- 
 gins by the creation of fiat-capital. Having eliminated 
 competition, it will certainly squeeze out of the people 
 every dollar that can be extorted, regardless of justice 
 and indifferent to suffering, even to the verge of pro- 
 voking popular revolution. They will proceed to control, 
 by means they well understand, legislation, administra- 
 tion and judicial tribunals. The people have no rights 
 they feel bound to respect." 
 
 In view of these facts we have really no choice in the 
 matter. It is purely a matter of justice, a clearly written 
 duty — that which is intended to serve all the people in 
 common should be so managed that all the people are 
 served. As it is, the millions are exploited by the few 
 hundreds, and worse, for in many cases they are plainly 
 plundered by them. And all these years we have been 
 quietly submitting to it and acting as if we knew no bet- 
 [147]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fcer. We have been learning very rapidly of late, however. 
 
 The issue is becoming so clear cut, and so many able 
 and well-known men are now coming forward with ring- 
 ing and inspiring declarations in favour of this great 
 movement that is now on foot among us, that an entire 
 volume could be quickly compiled from these declara- 
 tions alone. 
 
 Note the following extract from a letter in response to 
 an invitation recently sent out by the Municipal Owner- 
 ship League of New York: "Unless, indeed, it be the 
 fact that — as some have recently cynically intimated — 
 'New York is practically insane,' its citizens will soon 
 quite irresistibly demand the definite adoption and the 
 genuine execution of the policy of municipal ownership 
 (and municipal operation) of all these conditions and 
 instrumentalities, the efficient administration of which, 
 in the general interest, is at once absolutely essential to 
 the prosperity and safety of the city, and, not otherwise to 
 be preserved from the abuses and perversion inevitably 
 incident to their exploitations as the private property of 
 a profit-mongering and stock-gambling monopoly." 
 
 The following also in response to a similar invitation : 
 " New York voters have tired of the stock-jobbing gas 
 combination which charges exorbitant rates for a mis- 
 erable, inadequate service, and which boldly decrees 
 that our streets shall be constantly torn up rather than 
 allow the providing of pipe galleries in the subways, 
 which might give opportunity for the rights of the public 
 to be asserted. They are tired, too, of giving away scores 
 of millions of the city's property to the Subway company 
 [148]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 to become a tax-free asset of the Rothschilds. ... I 
 believe that the great majority of our citizens hold the 
 supplying of light and transportation to be as much pub- 
 lic functions as the veins and arteries are functions of the 
 body. For these public functions to be exercised as private 
 interests and with private profits as their chief end is a 
 condition of mediaeval anarchy which no possible com- 
 bination of politicians will, for much longer, be able 
 to uphold. " 
 
 So conservative and able a business man as ex-Gover- 
 nor Douglas of Massachusetts in one of his late messages 
 to the Massachusetts Legislature, had this to say in 
 regard to the matter we are considering : " I recommend 
 legislation giving to cities and towns wider powers in 
 the conduct of business which derives its profit from the 
 necessities of the community. The powers already 
 granted have proved the economy and wisdom of the 
 conduct of such business by the community itself. . . . 
 
 "In many cases of privately owned public service 
 corporations the rates, fares and prices charged are too 
 high. The public is entitled to reasonable charges for the 
 services of these monopolies. It will be far more likely 
 to obtain service at reasonable prices if it has the right 
 to do business on its own account. 
 
 "When a public service corporation is giving good 
 service at fair rates it is not likely to be disturbed. When 
 its rates and prices are unreasonable, it should, in the 
 interest of the public welfare, be disturbed. 
 
 "It is not disputed that, as a rule, private corpora- 
 tions conduct their business more economically than 
 [149]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 do public corporations. It is, however, disputed that the 
 public usually obtains the benefit of this economical 
 management. In most cases, therefore, the publicly 
 owned and operated waterworks, sewers, gas and elec- 
 tric lighting plants have given the public cheaper and 
 better service than have the privately owned concerns. 
 
 " For these reasons, I ask the Legislature to give every 
 reasonable facility to those municipalities which desire 
 to conduct their own public service utilities. 
 
 "Appreciating the difficulties of obtaining good 
 business management and economical production by 
 municipalities, I urge you, when making laws for muni- 
 cipal ownership, to so frame them that the evils of politi- 
 cal management will, so far as possible, be eliminated. 
 With proper legislation it should be possible to obtain 
 Most of the benefits without any of the evils of privately 
 owned and operated public service corporations. " 
 
 Of course, it is not to be expected that at first the 
 results will in every case be all that are looked for by the 
 most sanguine. Some mistakes will be made. But this 
 is one of the ways in which greater ability in the conduct 
 of these enterprises will be grown. And then we already 
 have such splendid examples to learn from. It will un- 
 doubtedly require careful and wise business management 
 to obtain in all cases the highest results. 
 
 I think another paragraph from ex-Governor Douglas's 
 inaugural address may not be amiss here : " If, when 
 guarded by as careful and wise legislation as is possible, 
 certain municipalities should fail in their attempt to 
 give better and cheaper service to the public, it will be 
 [150]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 because the citizens of these municipalities do not insist 
 upon having their municipal plants conducted in a 
 businesslike manner. The principle of municipal owner- 
 ship is sound. In cases where unsatisfactory results are 
 produced the fault is usually to be found in a laxity of 
 administration. I believe that every such franchise 
 taken over by the public relieves the people from pos- 
 sible exaction, practised for private profit. With the low 
 rates at which municipalities can borrow and the elimi- 
 nation of dividends, the rates must be inevitably lowered, 
 and the people become alone responsible for the efficiency 
 of the service. " 
 
 So far, in this part, we have dealt entirely with the 
 matter of the public ownership and management of 
 those utilities that pertain especially to our cities. The 
 number of people is rapidly growing among us who are 
 also asking why we should not have a national and state 
 ownership and management or control of those public 
 utilities that pertain to all the people, the same as this 
 principle is being extended in Great Britain and various 
 Continental countries, so as to include telegraph, express, 
 telephone, railroad enterprises, and thus secure for the 
 people better service and lower rates as the people in 
 these other countries are enjoying. There is no reason 
 why this should not to a judicious extent come about, and 
 that it will, is as certain as that the principle of muni- 
 cipal ownership will eventually so grow and extend 
 itself as practically to include every city in the nation. 
 
 The principle of state and national ownership and 
 control will grow and extend itself a little more tardily, 
 [151 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 but its eventual growth and triumph is just as certain. 
 The beginnings will be made in connection with the 
 managing of the municipal utilities for the benefit of the 
 people, and as it is seen what gains will result from these, 
 the demand for its extension so as to include all the 
 "natural monopolies" that are now operated purely for 
 private gain will continually increase. If this can be 
 done in other countries and so successfully, as is now 
 being done, then it can be done here, unless again in 
 this, we are willing to be classed as incompetents as 
 compared with our British and Continental brethren. 
 And if it can be done so successfully and to the great 
 gain of the people in one line, then it can be done also 
 successfully and to the gain of the people in lines of a 
 more or a less kindred nature. 
 
 Here again, fortunately, we do not have to deal with 
 any matters of theory or speculation merely. For years 
 the United States Government has conducted a great 
 public utility for its people, and during all the years it 
 has been in operation it has given them a service in- 
 comparably better than that of any private company or 
 companies even by the wildest stretch of the imagination 
 would have been, and at prices a mere fraction of what we 
 would be now paying as a necessary tribute to corporate 
 greed. We can, through this splendid government ser- 
 vice, send a message by postal card or a much longer one 
 by letter to practically any portion of the entire world 
 for a two-cent fee or a five-cent fee. Now, in all fairness I 
 ask, what would be exacted for this service if this public 
 necessity were under the control of private companies? 
 
 [152]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Judging from their charges in other things — express, 
 telegraph, freight, can we reasonably expect that the 
 one would be a fee of less than five cents, or the other 
 less than ten ? That is even for the shorter foreign ser- 
 vices, with still an additional fee for the longer distances. 
 In addition to the low fees we now pay, compared to 
 what we would pay under private management, we get a 
 service that is as prompt and efficient as it can reason- 
 ably be made. Dependent upon private concerns, our 
 mail matter would be carried at their convenience. 
 At first competition in connection with some of the 
 routes would insure us against the worst of service, but 
 later on when the various concerns through mutual self- 
 interest had pooled their interests or had consolidated 
 into one huge monopoly, then we would be practically 
 at the mercy of this concern, the same as millions of 
 people all over the country are at this very hour at the 
 mercy of other concerns of a similar public nature. 
 We appreciate too much our one-cent and two-cent fees 
 for domestic postal card and letter, with the large lee- 
 way we have so far as amount is concerned in connec- 
 tion with the latter. 
 
 Then the conveniences we have for small merchan- 
 dise many times allows us to save ourselves from the 
 demands of the privately owned express companies 
 when the element of distance enters. We should be 
 paying them still more were it not for the benign and 
 restraining influences the Post-Office Department exerts 
 over their calculations. I have before me the report of 
 the New York post-office for the year ending June 30, 
 [153]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 1905. It shows a net profit for this period of twelve- 
 month, of a little more than $10,000,000. Quite a neat 
 sum to go into the pockets of private individuals did 
 we allow private concerns to attend to this necessity 
 for us, the same as we allow them to attend to other 
 necessities of a similar nature. This neat net profit 
 would be much larger, however, for their charges 
 would be in practically all cases higher than we are 
 now paying. And by virtue of paying their employees 
 less, and giving an inferior type of accommodation for 
 the people, their operating expenses would be less, and 
 therefore, their profits still greater. 
 
 In addition to this item of $10,000,000 in net profit 
 for a single year, I think quite as significant a matter 
 is the fact that on the day the report was made, twenty- 
 six new sub-stations — for the people's greater con- 
 venience — were opened, one with a force numbering 
 sixty-six. Private companies do not increase their operat- 
 ing expenses for the peoples' greater convenience, ex- 
 cept as self-interest may dictate, that is, when a com- 
 peting company makes additional accommodations for 
 the convenience of the people a method of securing 
 additional business. This also is interesting : " One 
 hundred additional clerks who have served their 
 time as substitutes were added to the regular staff to- 
 day. . . . An additional hundred substitute clerks 
 have also been appointed to take the places left vacant 
 by those promoted. This makes two hundred appointed 
 from the new eligible list." 
 
 All in all it is not a bad showing so far as clear-cut 
 [154]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and clean business methods are concerned, in addition 
 to the neat business balance. Rather a stiff argument, 
 isn't it, to present to the attention of those who argue 
 that a great and complex service of this kind cannot be 
 conducted as economically and as advantageously for 
 the people by the government as by private concerns ? 
 I wonder how much of an extension of the free rural 
 delivery service that is now coming to the convenience 
 of millions in the country and rural districts, who es- 
 pecially, need greater conveniences, there would be if 
 private concerns were fattening upon this great public 
 utility, pardon me — were performing this service for us. 
 How about the revelations in connection with the 
 irregularities and dishonesty in the Post-Office Depart- 
 ment that came to the public knowledge some months 
 ago, I hear it asked. There were irregularities and there 
 was corruption. The very fact, however, that we heard 
 so much of it and the fact that the perpetrators of it 
 were arraigned and brought to justice, argues well for 
 such government ownership and administration. More- 
 over, I venture this assertion, that the aggregate of 
 losses sustained by the public through this agency, have 
 not equalled one thousandth part of the amount of 
 debauchery and corruption that would have resulted 
 were this public service utility allowed to be in the hands 
 of private individuals or companies, and therefore run 
 from beginning to end for private gain. I also venture 
 this statement, that all the losses sustained through 
 dishonesty and fraud in our government Post-Office 
 Department, from the first year of its operation down 
 [155]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 to the present time, have not equalled — to be conserva- 
 tive — one five thousandth part of the amounts that the 
 profits of private management would have taken from 
 us, to say nothing of the uniformly inferior type of 
 service furnished, compared to that which we have been 
 and are enjoying. 
 
 Can any one present what would be regarded as any 
 reasonable argument, and one that would be accepted 
 by any number of reasonable and thinking men, why 
 the government cannot carry for us our express packages 
 through the medium of a parcels post, and attend to our 
 telegraph and telephone needs, as successfully as it 
 now attends to our postal needs, and the same as other 
 people through their central governments are having 
 done for them with a better service and at much lower 
 rates than they were able at any time to get from their 
 former private companies ? Certainly no one of these is as 
 difficult and as complex as the service the government 
 is already performing for us. And to take these over 
 simply as extensions of the department already in opera- 
 tion would be by no means a difficult task. Those who 
 are familiar with the parcels post in Great Britain for 
 example, and its nominal "peoples " charges, compared 
 to the tribute levied by our express companies, appre- 
 ciate what this change will mean. The absurdity of a 
 minimum express charge here being twenty-five cents! 
 It would make an Englishman's or a German's or a 
 Belgian's blood boil to have such a tribute levied upon 
 him, with no other reason than for the purpose of lining 
 the pockets of a few already wealthy company owners. 
 [156]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 What would they say to such as this for example: A 
 few weeks ago through the breaking of some minor 
 parts of a cultivator I was compelled to send to the 
 factory for new pieces. The cost of the parts was a dollar 
 and twenty-five cents. The bulk was less than half a 
 cubic foot, or perhaps equal to that of an ordinary 
 pasteboard shoe box. The distance was about a hundred 
 and fifty miles. The tariff levied by the express company 
 was seventy-five cents. The time taken to bring the 
 parcel was considerably more than twice the length 
 of time it could have been carried and delivered in. 
 The company or companies could have carried such a 
 parcel for a charge of twelve to twenty cents and made 
 a handsome profit. 
 
 And then when the service is poor or careless, in addi- 
 tion to being excessively high in its charges, there is no 
 recourse for the people, for public service companies 
 have no ethical sense that would lead them to any 
 amicable settlement when the shipper suffers either 
 great inconvenience or loss. He has no recourse except 
 to take the matter into the courts, which does not pay 
 unless the amount involved is large, and even then he is 
 subjected to delays and dodges of almost every con- 
 ceivable type. It is the policy of such corporations never 
 to pay out a cent unless it is utterly impossible for them 
 to find any way of avoiding it. 
 
 Here is another concrete example of a frequent type 
 
 of private corporation methods. Some time ago I had 
 
 sixteen hundred young fruit trees shipped from a point 
 
 a few miles south of Rochester, New York, to a point 
 
 [157]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 thirty-four miles from New York City to the north. 
 It was a lot of specially selected, high-grade trees. 
 The nature of the goods was known to the railroad 
 company. The cases were labelled — perishable, with- 
 out delay, do not allow to freeze. It was in early 
 November. The time in which they could have been 
 carried handily with a service organized for the peo- 
 ple's convenience and welfare would have been a period 
 of not more than five or six days. They were on the 
 way between fourteen and fifteen days. The last 
 two or three days of their transit they encountered an 
 intensely cold and stormy period. Though ready to 
 plant them so as to have them in readiness for an early 
 pushing out in the Spring, I was compelled to heal them 
 into the ground for the winter, not knowing until Spring 
 would tell, whether they would come out of the ground 
 in a normal or in a damaged condition. Large numbers 
 proved to be damaged and a block of several hundred 
 had to be thrown out entirely. The various inconven- 
 iences and losses incident upon this were, after the 
 lapse of several months, put into the form of a letter 
 with an offer to accept a very reasonable settlement, 
 provided it were made promptly, and sent to the claim 
 agent of the railroad. The amount was considerably less, 
 taking all things into consideration, than the damage 
 really sustained. In the course of several months several 
 letters passed. I finally received the announcement — 
 final, the agent indicated — that a careful and thorough 
 examination of the case had been made, and that they 
 would decline my offer as they found themselves not 
 [158]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 liable, for another road into whose hands they had given 
 the freight, had carried it, they found, as long a period 
 as they. Though prefering otherwise, an effort to secure 
 justice can now be had only by taking the matter into 
 the courts. But this is simply an example of but one type 
 of inconvenience and loss that thousands upon thousands 
 of people are being put to every year, in addition to 
 charges in practically every case higher than they should 
 be, because we are sufficiently stupid as to continue to 
 allow private concerns to get possession of and create 
 many times into a monopoly, the public service that 
 should be conducted by the people through their agent, 
 the government, for the benefit of the people. 
 
 Another concrete case by way of a personal experi- 
 ence was that of another road in taking seventeen days 
 to carry some goods from a point twelve miles out 
 of Boston to the same destination — thirty-four miles 
 north of New York City. I dare say there is scarcely a 
 reader of these lines who has not had similar experiences 
 with the privately owned corporations that abound in 
 the country. I suppose if all could be chronicled, especi- 
 ally with all the adjectives and all the feelings that 
 escaped at the time, books could be quickly compiled 
 that would form a very large public library. 
 
 The people of other countries have for years been 
 taking all these utilities, such as express, telegraph, 
 telephone, railroads, etc., out of the hands of private 
 control and monopoly and through their central govern- 
 ments are supplying themselves with these services in 
 practically every case greatly to their advantage. We 
 [159]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 are at least a quarter of a century behind them. Outside 
 of the United States over two-thirds of the railroad 
 mileage of the world is owned and operated by the 
 governments of the various countries. Ours is almost the 
 only great country now in the world that does not own 
 and operate the telegraph lines. Those who are acquaint- 
 ed with the telegraph service in Great Britain know and 
 appreciate the fact that there they can send messages 
 for twelve cents to any part of Great Britain, for which 
 the charges here would in no case be less than twenty- 
 five cents, and sometimes would reach as high as forty 
 and fifty cents for the same distance covered. In addition 
 to this one is furnished there with a much more con- 
 venient service both at the point of sending and in the 
 matter of delivery, for it has all the conveniences of the 
 Postal Department with which it is connected. The fact 
 that our minimum telegraph charge is twenty-five cents 
 is quite as ridiculous as that our minimum express 
 charge is also twenty-five cents. 
 
 In Great Britain the history of the telegraph under 
 government ownership has been one of continual en- 
 largement and development with the thought of the 
 widest and best possible service for all the people, and 
 with the least possible charges. The result is that it has 
 become a great public convenience serving all classes of 
 the people. The charges here under private ownership 
 are absolutely prohibitive for such uses as are made of 
 it there by all the people in common. 
 
 There was a great fight made on the part of the pri- 
 vate companies to retain their grip upon it when the 
 [ 160 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 telegraph service was taken over by the government. 
 Many arguments were used, and similar to many en- 
 countered here, against the government doing the same 
 in connection with these same general utilities. The 
 private owners and those in any way allied with them 
 and influenced by them, were fairly bursting with rea- 
 sons why the government should not perform these ser- 
 vices. Among them — It was not the government's bus- 
 iness to telegraph; the rates would be higher; it would 
 not be as progressive in its management as the private 
 companies ; there would be a deficit to be met ; the use of 
 the telegraph would be less; there would be less of a 
 stimulus to invention, and hence, new improvements; 
 it would be an arbitrary and unjust interference with 
 private rights for the government to invade the field 
 of private business, etc., etc. In spite of these and their 
 arguments, and in spite of every effort made by the 
 private companies to impede and to prevent the move- 
 ment, the telegraph system of England was bought by 
 the government and made a part of the postal system 
 in 1870. 
 
 As to the results in this case, they have been formulated 
 by a very able authority as follows:* "The immediate 
 results of public ownership were: First, a reduction in 
 rates of one-third to one-half; second, a vast increase 
 of business and work done by the telegraph, doubling in 
 the first year after the transfer; third, a great extension 
 
 * The late ex-Governor Altgeld, of Illinois, was a most competent 
 and earnest advocate of the principle of both municipal and national 
 ownership and control of all public service utilities and all "natural 
 monopolies." 
 
 [161]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of lines into the less populous districts, so as to give the 
 whole people the benefit of telegraphic communication ; 
 fourth, large additional facilities by opening more offices, 
 locating offices more conveniently, and making every 
 post-office a place where a telegram may be deposited ; 
 fifth, a considerable economy by placing the telegraph 
 service with the mail service, under single control, thus 
 avoiding useless duplications in offices, etc.; sixth, a 
 marked improvement in the service, the aim of the post- 
 office being good service, not dividends; seventh, a de- 
 cided gain to employees in pay, in shorter hours and in 
 tenure of office ; eighth, in unprecedented advantages to 
 the press for cheap and rapid transmission of news at 
 the same time freeing it from the pressure of a power 
 that claimed the right to dictate the views and opinions 
 it should express; ninth, the development of business 
 and strengthening of social ties, such as ties of kinship 
 and friendship ; tenth, the removal of a great antagonism 
 and the cessation of the vexations and costly conflict 
 it had caused between the companies and the people. 
 
 "These were the immediate results. Now, after a 
 quarter of a century of use, the following further results 
 are noticeable: First, a further reduction of nearly one- 
 half in the average cost of a message; second, while the 
 population increased only 25 per cent, the telegraph 
 business has increased 1,000 per cent; third, a six-fold 
 extension of lines and a fifty-fold increase of facilities; 
 fourth, a steady policy of expanding and improving the 
 service, adopting new inventions, putting underground 
 hundreds of miles of wire that formerly ran over houses 
 [162]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and streets, etc.; fifth, a systematic effort to elevate 
 labour, resulting in a progressive amelioration of the 
 condition of employees in respect to wages, hours, 
 tenure, promotion, privileges, etc.; sixth, satisfaction 
 with the telegraph service, even on the part of conser- 
 vatives who objected to the change before it was made." 
 
 Gaining valuable knowledge and experience in con- 
 nection with this great national public utility, Great 
 Britain is taking under government ownership and 
 management her entire telephone system — a portion 
 of which was taken some years ago. The people are 
 already great gainers, and I dare say the government will 
 carry out the same plan of greatly extending and making 
 more convenient for the people this great public utility 
 also. 
 
 Can we not see a very great similarity between this 
 government owned and administered utility — Great 
 Britain's telegraph system — and our own government 
 owned and administered postal system ? Are not the 
 constantly increasing facilities for the ever greater 
 convenience and accommodation of the people, the suc- 
 cessful business administration, the uniformly low 
 charges in our system closely akin to the above detail 
 of results in connection with Great Britain's national 
 telegraph system ? 
 
 And as important even as are these results is the fact 
 that this makes one less great source of puolic bribery 
 and corruption and debauchery ; for the fact that private- 
 ly owned companies have gained control of most of our 
 public service utilities, and their efforts to retain and to 
 [163]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 continually increase the scope of their holdings is the 
 greatest source of our notorious political corruption. 
 
 As has been the history and results of our government 
 postal system, Great Britain's government telegraph 
 system, so have been in a general way the history and 
 results of the government owned and controlled railroads 
 of Germany, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, and many 
 other countries that have brought or that are bringing 
 under government ownership and management their rail- 
 roads. 
 
 A recent number of Officio, Corre yondence ( Berlin ) 
 contained an important article in regard to present 
 European policies of railway management. The move- 
 ment is now determined toward nationalization of rail- 
 ways, especially in Germany; Austria is now aiming 
 at the same consummation. 
 
 "Germany," says the writer, "which has the most 
 extensive system o railways of all European countries, 
 has decided at last upon making an end of the remnant 
 of private railways. By the law of December 7, 1905, 
 the purchase of the Palatinate railways, 450 miles in 
 length, by the Kingdom of Bavaria, has been provided 
 for. There now remains only the railway from Lubeck 
 to Buchen, which is but seventy-five miles in length, 
 and whose acquisition, for the sake of a unified system 
 of railway management, is very desirable. Rumours 
 relative to the purchase of this line have been afloat on 
 the German stock exchanges during the past year, but 
 they have been mostly devoid of foundation. . . . 
 
 "In Austria it is anticipated that in the near future 
 [164]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 the oldest and most extensive private railway, the 
 Kaiser Ferdinand Northern Railway, 1,036 miles in 
 length, will be transformed into a line managed by the 
 State. It is no longer any secret that the Austrian half 
 of the Hapsburgian Empire is endeavouring to obtain a 
 purely state system, such as already exists in the Hun- 
 garian half. Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, 
 Sweden, and Norway have already carried out the 
 nationalization of their railways. The idea of a state 
 system of railways has, however, met with most success 
 during the past year in Italy. Twenty years ago public 
 opinion was so strongly against the state management 
 of railways that even the railways already belonging to 
 the State were leased to private companies. In February 
 and April, 1905, however, the Italian Parliament de- 
 cided upon a system of state-railway management. 
 Since July 1, 1905, over 6,300 miles have been taken 
 over by the State. The purchase of further lines is being 
 negotiated, especially the Adriatic network, but no 
 result has yet been arrived at. After the experiences 
 which Italy has gained, especially in the year 1905, of 
 private railway management, there can be no doubt 
 that the State will remain victor in the struggle for the 
 possession of the lines." 
 
 No one agency, perhaps, has so contributed to the 
 growth of corruption, lawlessness, and privilege, has 
 stifled competition and all chance of justice as between 
 dealers as well as justice to shippers and buyers of all 
 types, and contributed to political corruption in both 
 our state legislatures and in our national legislature as 
 [165]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 our privately owned and controlled railroad systems. 
 For years we have been trying to get ahead of or to keep 
 even with these abuses, and with what results, anyone 
 familiar with the records of our Interstate Commerce 
 Commission, or familiar with the powerful, and up to 
 the present time, almost uniformly successful efforts 
 on the part of the railroads to defeat and escape all 
 public efforts to make them reasonably fair and just 
 and to have them stop their open and villainous disre- 
 gard of the laws, will fully comprehend. 
 
 If the same efforts that have been spent, and in great 
 part vainly, in the various attempts to make the railroads 
 of the country simply law abiding and decent in the 
 conduct of their affairs and in their treatment of the 
 public, if these efforts I repeat, had been spent in 
 evolving plans in getting them into operation under 
 government administration, we could to-day be standing 
 at least near the point of advancement that other coun- 
 tries that are so far ahead of us have made. 
 
 Though it will perhaps be one of the last of our great 
 public utilities to come completely under government 
 ownership on account of the powerful private interests 
 that will in every possible way oppose it, nevertheless 
 it is one of the most important from the standpoint 
 of the great common welfare. And while we have been 
 spending time trying to regulate them and to secure 
 some little measure of justice from them, to say nothing 
 of our charges being higher than those in any other 
 modern country in the world, other countries have 
 solved this problem by going boldly forward and ad- 
 [1C6]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 ministering their railroads for the people's and for 
 the great public benefit, the same as we shall find that 
 we shall do eventually. And while at the present state 
 of affairs it is well that still greater efforts at control 
 and regulation be made, at the same time we shall lose 
 much if in the meanwhile we are not putting forth efforts 
 looking to the time when this great public necessity 
 utility be taken under government ownership and con- 
 ducted in the interests of all the people. 
 
 Announcement has recently been made that the Court* 
 has approved of proposed additional subway routes 
 in New York City, aggregating nineteen in number and 
 costing some $450,000,000. It is to be seen whether the 
 Rapid Transit Commission will again deliver the 
 people's rights and tremendous future properties over 
 to a band of traction financiers, agents of foreign capi- 
 talists, the Rothschilds, or whether they will have a 
 sufficiently strudy stamina to resist these agencies, 
 and will have the brains to find a method or methods 
 whereby these can be built, owned, and controlled by 
 the great city itself. The people have to considerable 
 extent already been aroused to the iniquity perpetrated 
 in connection with the subway already built, an iniquity 
 that will reveal itself in greater proportions, as a rapidly 
 increasing intelligence along these lines becomes more 
 and more the possession of the people. I think, more- 
 over, they will scarcely sit quietly and witness a repeti- 
 tion of such methods. Boards and Commissions of the 
 same nature in the various and numerous cities of other 
 
 *The Appellate Division, the Supreme Court. 
 [167]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 countries can find the brain power and a sufficient fer- 
 tility of resources to hold such properties for the people, 
 and some very legitimate questions will be asked, if 
 it becomes apparent that they cannot be found by 
 members of this commission, as also by similar commis- 
 sions here. The decision of the Court approves the routes 
 of the subway system as laid out on paper by the Rapid 
 Transit Commission, but a legal point never suggested 
 before, and " which, " as a writer in a leading New York 
 paper* says, "may upset the financial calculations of 
 the Rapid Transit Commission," is pointed out by the 
 Court in its opinion. Continuing, the writer of the article 
 says: "the vote of the people in 1894 that subways 
 should be constructed with public funds renders it 
 questionable, say the judges, if it is 'permissible by 
 law ' to build them with private capital, as contemplated. 
 'Upon which question/ says the opinion significantly, 
 'because not before us, we express no opinion.' Chief 
 Justice O'Brien, who writes the opinion, gives as one of 
 the most weighty reasons for attaching a condition to 
 the complete approval of the system, that such a course 
 might preclude the possibility of building a municipally 
 owned and operated system." Following are his own 
 words : 
 
 " By the adoption of the proposed plan and the practi- 
 cal monopolizing of all the city's streets, wedded to a sin- 
 gle scheme of transit construction or management, the 
 people are practically forever excluded from asserting 
 and exercising the right, which has much of reason and 
 
 * New York American, July 13, 1906. 
 [168]
 
 In the Fire of tJie Heart 
 argument In its support, to wit: to own and operate their 
 municipal subways. 
 
 " It may be that in a year or a few years the vast ma- 
 jority of the people of this greater city, in their enlightened 
 judgment, will demand the construction and operation 
 of their own transportation facilities. . . 
 
 So free have public service corporations been in the 
 use of money in bribing and corrupting public officials 
 to get the people's public property into their own hands, 
 that there comes a time when even they have to pay the 
 penalty in having to part with a greater amount of their 
 profits than they would voluntarily pay. They have 
 created such a debauched condition in some city coun- 
 cils and state legislatures that their first offers of two 
 thousand or five thousand dollars for votes in connec- 
 tion with some particular measures, have so emboldened 
 the members as time has passed, that they have de- 
 manded as high as fifty thousand and even more, for 
 votes in connection with other measures. Sometimes 
 we hear the managers of corporations complaining that 
 they are held up, blackmailed, by councilmen and 
 legislators. Their methods have instituted such foul- 
 ness and venality that sometimes in the end it does 
 amount to this. They have themselves to blame. The 
 more bold have been known at times to pay with checks ; 
 those more cautious and wary pay with money; the 
 still more cautious and wary give dividend paying stocks 
 in the company or some allied company, and pledge 
 in addition their continued political safe keeping to the 
 member, and others adopt still other methods. 
 [109]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 There are those who get elected to our city councils 
 and state legislatures for the sole purpose of making 
 deals with these corporations, and getting out of the 
 office in this way the largest amounts they can get. 
 Corporations then again, have their own particular men 
 elected, with whom they have made a deal before elec- 
 tion, or with whom there is the understanding that they 
 command their services after their election. 
 
 Some corporations are known to have in city councils 
 and state legislatures a member whom they support 
 and pay to look regularly after their interests. Some- 
 times to disarm suspicion a very good type of citizen — 
 whom they judge weak on the itchy palm side — is 
 induced to accept nomination, his election is secured 
 by them, and he is then manipulated according to their 
 interests. Political machines do the same. Once in a 
 great while they get fooled by not rightly calculating 
 their man. Such was the case when the machine in St. 
 Louis promoted the selection of Joseph W. Folk for 
 the office of Circuit Attorney. Mr. Folk at the time said 
 substantially that if elected he must have a free hand, 
 and that he would conduct the affairs of the office in his 
 own way. They thought he was merely talking. Some, 
 for their error in calculation in this case, are now serving 
 good penitentiary time. While speaking of Mr. Folk, I 
 think it may not be uninteresting to note some of his 
 findings when the bills of the old score were one day 
 finally presented for redemption. The following is from 
 a public address delivered at an important centre of the 
 state of which he is now Governor: 
 [170]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "For another franchise $250,000 in bribes was paid 
 to the members of the preceding assembly. This fran- 
 chise was afterward sold for $1,250,000, but the city 
 received not a cent. Twenty-three of the twenty-eight 
 members of the House of Delegates took bribes of $3,000 
 each for this franchise. Seven members of the council 
 obtained from $10,000 to $17,500 each for their votes. 
 One councilman was given $25,000 to vote against the 
 franchise and afterward accepted $50,000 to vote in 
 favour of it. He returned the $25,000 to the man who 
 gave it to him, saying he did not believe he could 
 'honestly' keep it without 'earning' it by giving his vote 
 in accordance with the terms of purchase. Upon re- 
 flection he likewise sent the $50,000 back, with the hope 
 of getting more. He finally voted for tne ordinance with 
 the expectation and under promise of obtaining $100,000 
 for his vote. His friend, the promoter, disappointed him 
 by leaving the city early the next day without paying him. 
 More in sorrow than in anger the official tracked the 
 promoter to New York, ana after mucn aifhculty suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining $o,000, out not untn tne promoter 
 had him sign a certificate oi cnaracter saying, 'I have 
 heard rumours in St. Louis that you paia memoers of the 
 assembly for their votes. I wan„ to say vxxat I am in a 
 position to know, and I do know *^at you are as far 
 above offering a bribe as I am above receiving one.' 
 This was literally true, as the official had taken bribes 
 right and left, and the promoter had boodled on a gigan- 
 tic scale in getting his bill through the municipal as- 
 sembly. Seven members of the council, elected to serve 
 [171]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the people at a salary of $300 a year, were paid a regular 
 salary of $5,000 yearly to represent corporate interests. 
 A lighting bill was bribed through the House of Dele- 
 gates for $47,500. The bargain was made right on the 
 floor of the House. The money was given to one of the 
 members, and after the meeting they met in the home 
 of one of their number, where the 'pie' was cut and the 
 money divided. . . . Nineteen members of another 
 House of Delegates obtained $2,000 each as bribes for 
 their votes on still another franchise. 
 
 " Men would run for a seat in the municipal assembly 
 with the sole object of making money by the prostitution 
 of their position. The scheme of corruption was systema- 
 tic and far-reaching. The people were careless; the 
 public conscience was asleep. These city legislators 
 went on without hindrance. They devised a scheme of 
 selling the water-works, which belonged to the city, for 
 $15,000,000, the works being worth about $40,000,000. 
 They planned to get $100,000 apiece for their votes 
 on this. The proposed sale failed, because of a wise 
 provision of the city charter forbidding unconditional 
 alienation. Then their gloating eyes fell on the old 
 court house with the gilded dome. They thought of 
 selling that. They hoped to obtain $100,000 apiece for 
 their votes on this. Then they concluded to sell the 
 Union Market, but the market men had considerable 
 political influence. With this and the sum of $20,000 
 they raised and paid the members they succeeded in 
 stopping the sale. Then came the exposure. Now some 
 of these representatives are fugitives from justice in 
 [172]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 foreign countries: others have turned State's evidence; 
 the remainder have faced juries, and eighteen of these 
 givers and takers of bribes have received sentences 
 ranging from two years to seven years in the penitentiary. 
 . . . These conditions are the outgrowth of the 
 commercialism of our times. " 
 
 Various public service corporations are known to 
 contribute very liberally to one or the other political 
 party in campaign funds. Usually it is the dominant 
 party in either state or city according as their needs lie. 
 Sometimes to be on the safe side they are large contri- 
 butors to the campaign funds of both parties. Their 
 profits taken directly from the people's pockets are gen- 
 erally so enormous that they can afford to do this, in 
 addition to maintaining large corruption funds for 
 definite action later on. 
 
 That there are others — and the numbers now are very 
 large — who realize these facts is evidenced by the 
 following expression from the editor of a leading maga- 
 zine: "The chief agencies of corruption, bribery, and 
 debauchery of the legislative, executive and judicial 
 departments of government, as has been shown time and 
 again, are found in the public service corporations which 
 operate natural monopolies or those utilities in which 
 all the people are interested. To destroy this fountain- 
 head of political corruption and to give to all the people 
 all the benefits flowing from the operation of public 
 utilities or natural monopolies, the city, state and nation, 
 or the people, should own and operate them for the 
 good of the community at large. " 
 [173]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 This also even though longer, from one of the sanest 
 and keenest observers of our social and political affairs, 
 and formerly governor of one of our leading states: 
 "Private monopolies furnish the hand that bribes by 
 day and bribes by night, that pollutes everything it 
 touches, and the existence of corruption in our cities 
 and in our state and national governments furnishes the 
 strongest argument in favour of wiping out all private 
 monopolies, for it will give the people back their govern- 
 ment. The great question in America to-day is how to 
 restore republican government, which has been destroyed 
 by the corporations. They control not only the local 
 city governments, but they control the state govern- 
 ments and the national government. They decide what 
 the Legislature may and may not do, what Congress 
 may and may not do; they determine the policies of 
 political parties, and they have destroyed the vitality 
 of both political parties. 
 
 " Only a few weeks ago the Chicago Inter-Ocean and 
 the Chicago Record-Herald, two of the most influential 
 Republican papers in America, lamented the decadence 
 of the House of Representatives at Washington and 
 declared that Congress had practically abdicated its 
 functions to the monopolies; that great public questions 
 were no longer discussed upon their merits, but were 
 decided arbitrarily by the majority, and the decision 
 was not the result of investigation and discussion, but 
 was the arbitrary dictation of the lobbyists. 
 
 "A mere change of party administration signifies 
 nothing so long as the same slimy hands control the 
 [174]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 policy of government. We had two such changes, and 
 their history was written with the dirty fingers of the 
 exploiters. We need a change of policy. Instead of being 
 owned the people must he the owners, instead of being 
 lambs to be shorn they must be masters of the fold. 
 Our industries and our great public utilities were built 
 with the money and the industry and the genius of the 
 American people, but they have passed out of the hands 
 of the people who made them and are now controlled 
 by manipulators, controlled by bankers, by brokers, 
 by speculators. 
 
 "These men do not build railroads. They do not 
 build factories; they do not build cities; they do not 
 create anything; they simply grab what other people 
 have created. As a rule, they are mere birds of prey, 
 tearing the flesh of the men and women who work with 
 their hands, eating the vitals of the men and women 
 who do the work of the land and who made civilization 
 possible on this earth. 
 
 " No republic can endure that remains in the clutches 
 of these birds of prey; they use government as a con- 
 venience in the process of exploitation, extortion and 
 robbery. It is among the newly made and corrupt rich 
 that we find the spirit of snobbery and flunkeyism that 
 apologizes for republican institutions. It is the monopo- 
 lists who demand the restriction of free speech and of 
 a free press. They not only plunder the people, but they 
 would rob them of their liberties. . . . 
 
 "If there were no other reason why the peo- 
 ple should own the monopolies than that it will 
 [175]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 give them back their government, that reason is in 
 itself sufficient." 
 
 The difference in the policies and the management 
 of the various public service utilities in those countries 
 where they are moving, and so successfully, along the 
 lines of public ownership and operation, or manage- 
 ment, and the prevailing policies and methods of 
 management among us should I think be noted. In 
 case of the former, the best and the most up-to-date 
 service, with a minimum of cost to the people is the 
 policy. Not the making of large dividends, but using 
 what would otherwise be larger profits for the greater 
 convenience and better accommodation of the largest 
 number of people at the lowest reasonable cost. In case 
 of transit, for example, municipal or state, the opening 
 up of sections and properties in new and outlying dis- 
 tricts, thus affording desirable and real homes to large 
 numbers of people who otherwise would be compelled 
 to remain as tenants in the already densely populated 
 portions, because unable economically to reach the 
 districts where they can have real homes of which they 
 may become owners. It is the welfare of the people, of 
 the largest numbers of the people, that is continually 
 sought after. And what do we find here ? We find these 
 utilities, with a minor exception here and there, organiz- 
 ed and managed with an eye single to the largest 
 dividends that can be extracted from the people, and 
 many times large dividends even on stock watered to 
 two, three and even four times its real value, a proceed- 
 ing, in my judgment, criminal in its nature and that 
 [176]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 should not much longer be permitted. Then on top of 
 all this, after giving the vast sums we are continually 
 giving to those private individuals and companies by 
 way of franchises and privileges, the use of streets, 
 highways, etc., we are struggling continually to have 
 them, deal not honourably and fairly with us, but to be 
 even decent in their charges and service and general 
 treatment of their patrons. We have many times to 
 fight legally and against the ablest legal talent that our 
 combined contributions enable them to employ, to 
 secure the most elemental rights, and many times the 
 most ordinary forms of decency in treatment. The 
 above is true in regard to practically all public service 
 corporations, true of all natural monopolies of munici- 
 pal, state, or national character. How much better the 
 public welfare could be served if these utilities were in 
 the hands of the people moving always and directly 
 along the lines of their own best interests. 
 
 There are exceptions. In numbers of our smaller 
 places the service is all that could be expected from the 
 profits received, that is, all that could be expected under 
 private ownership. During the past year, a well-known 
 citizen of Australia, President of the Federated Council 
 of the Chamber of Commerce of Australia, in visiting 
 Chicago, spoke quite at length concerning their own 
 methods along these lines and the methods in other 
 countries compared to our own methods. The following 
 are two or three brief paragraphs from what he had to 
 say concerning his observations: 
 
 "In Australia all public utilities are owned by the 
 [177 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 state or municipality, that includes the telephones, 
 the telegraphs, the railroads, the street railways and 
 the water- works. Under public ownership we have con- 
 structed some of the greatest water- works in the world. 
 
 "We, in Australia, have become firmly convinced of 
 the principle that municipal ownership of public utilities 
 means their administration for the people with the 
 simple object of securing the most benefits for the 
 smallest price. 
 
 " The truth of our theories seems to be demonstrated 
 here in Chicago, where the people have to ride in dog 
 boxes that are a disgrace to humanity. Do you suppose 
 that our people in Sydney, or any other Australian city, 
 would stand for any such coops for a minute as Chicago 
 folks are compelled to ride in ? Why, if any attempt 
 were made to run such cars along our streets, the people 
 would be up in arms in an hour and jam mass meetings 
 50,000 strong."* 
 
 What he would say were he to speak in a similar 
 manner of his observations and findings in New York, 
 it is by no means difficult to imagine. 
 
 A right good concrete illustration of the point im- 
 mediately in hand, comes f om Milan, Italy. Prior to 
 1897 the street railways were owned by a corporation 
 which paid to the city a lump sum of $200,000 a year. 
 "Fares were high, service was poor, employees were 
 overworked and underpaid; and the public was treated 
 pretty much as the New York public is treated — like 
 cattle." But thanks to municipal ownership in con- 
 * Chicago Record Herald, October 26, 1905. 
 [178]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 nection with this utility, the city owns the tracks and 
 has a supervising control over its entire railway system. 
 It now receives an annual income of $600,000, and 
 one of the most valuable lessons for us, perhaps, is the 
 following : — During two hours each day the fare on 
 the street railways is the equivalent of one cent ; during 
 the balance of the day it is the equivalent of two cents. 
 And the operating company, which has a twenty year 
 contract, is able to declare right good dividends from its 
 share of the annual arnings of $1,500,000. Since the 
 city has owned its street railways line, fares have been 
 reduced as above, service has been vastly improved, 
 employees hours have been reduced and their time 
 made more regular with a guaranteed rest of four days 
 in each month, while at the same time their wages 
 have been increased. Thus the people of Milan, the 
 second city in the country, have the satisfaction of 
 knowing that they have one of the best street railway 
 systems of any city in the country — this satisfaction 
 itself a valuable asset of the people. Isn't it really about 
 time that we " progressive " American people began to 
 sit up and take note? 
 
 The owners of these public service utilities find a way 
 in spite of all efforts against it to make them monopolies, 
 and the people are then at their mercy. A safe and sane 
 principle is this, if in connection with anything there is 
 a monopoly or the possibility of a monopoly, then the 
 people should own and control that monopoly. It then 
 becomes a benefit to all alike and an injury to none. 
 It doesn't enrich the few while it helps economically to 
 [ 179 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 enslave the many, as at the same time it abounds in 
 corruption and helps undermine and paralyze republi- 
 can institutions. Why shouldn't the people, as many 
 are asking now, through their agent, the government, 
 own and develop the coal fields, upon the product of 
 which practically all are dependent. Why shouldn't we 
 get our coal cheaper, at a more uniform price, and free 
 from the inconvenience and distress that result from 
 the frequent disturbances between employer and em- 
 ployee? This is something that would influence in a 
 very direct way the economic, and hence the entire wel- 
 fare of every man, woman and child in the country. 
 Isn't it a saner and a more common-sense principle that 
 all be able to obtain this necessity at the great saving 
 that it could be obtained at, and at a steady and uniform 
 price, than that it be allowed to be monopolized by the 
 few who have become already unduly rich, and who are 
 free to exact from the people whatever tribute they may 
 see fit, even to the extent of causing great suffering and 
 not infrequently even death ? 
 
 The principle that thoughtful men everywhere are 
 beginning to recognize as a sound and common-sense 
 principle is this, that all natural monopolies be brought 
 under government ownership and control, municipal, 
 state, or national, according to the nature of each, and 
 so be administered for the direct benefit of all the people 
 in common, in distinction from their being grabbed 
 and cornered and through corruption and debauchery 
 and venality monopolized for the over-enrichment of 
 the few. Under the head of natural monopolies would 
 [180]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fall such utilities as pertain to dwellers in the city, such 
 as water, gas, electricity, transit, etc., and those that 
 come under the head of state and national ownership 
 and control, such as the postal service, the telegraph, 
 the telephone, the express, the railroads, the coal fields, 
 the oil fields, and mines of sufficiently important types. 
 Can any argument, that will stand a thorough and all 
 round examination, be put forth why these great public 
 necessity utilities should not, in some way, be held and 
 administered for the common good of all the people ? 
 
 The principle of public ownership is sound — the 
 ownership of those utilities, that from their nature 
 become or may become monopolies, or of those utilities 
 that from their nature derive their values from the 
 common needs of the people. 
 
 Whether now or as time passes it may be practicable 
 or advisable that all such utilities come under public 
 ownership and control, is something that can be deter- 
 mined only by the people in a reckoning with the condi- 
 tions in each particular locality and in each particular 
 case. But there is a principle thoroughly safe as well as 
 sound that should be put into immediate operation in 
 every state, namely, that each locality have the right 
 — by statute, as it has the natural moral right — to 
 purchase, or to construct and own, and to operate or 
 control such of its utilities, as at any time it may decide 
 upon. And any legislator who sees fit to oppose, or who 
 dares record his vote against any enabling measure 
 of this nature, gives evidence, with possibly a rare ex- 
 ception, of his subserviency to certain agencies that do not 
 [181]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 represent the people, or of his anticipation of such 
 subserviency, and these are the men who, as we get a 
 little more stamina in the recognition of and the per- 
 formance of our duties as citizens of a progressive and 
 advancing nation, will be quickly read out of public life. 
 
 If a private company is giving a good service at a 
 reasonable cost, and is decent and honourable in its 
 methods and in its dealings with the public, there may 
 be no reason, and in large numbers of cases there will 
 be found no reason for interfering with it. But, where 
 such is not the case the city should have the right even 
 for the protection to say nothing of the welfare of its 
 people, either to bring such concern to terms, or to 
 throw it out of business entirely. The fact of the city 
 having such right, will, of itself act as a tremendous 
 protection, and the chances are that such right would 
 have to be exercised only now and then as occasion 
 might demand. In regard to this principle I think all 
 fair and unbiassed minds cannot fail to agree. Numer- 
 ous examples could be given of how this principle has al- 
 ready worked. Following is a case of how it works when 
 there is an actual worker behind the works. I quote from a 
 recent issue of a leading New York paper,* an editorial 
 with the heading, " Cleveland's Lesson to New York. " 
 
 "What an intelligent Mayor can do with a traction 
 monopoly is illustrated by the news from Cleveland. 
 Cleveland had a merger of a number of street-car com- 
 panies with a watered capitalization like that of the 
 Interborough-Metropolitan. But Cleveland also had a 
 
 * The New York World, July 21, 1906. 
 [ 182]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Mayor, Tom Johnson, who had been in the street- 
 railroad business and knew all about its costs, possibili- 
 ties and profits. 
 
 "Instead of doing business with himself in his dual 
 capacity of Mayor and railroad man, Tom Johnson 
 acted only for the people of Cleveland. He threatened 
 that if the traction monopoly did not make better terms 
 with the people he would have their routes paralleled 
 with three-cent-fare lines. Rather than fight the munici- 
 pality the traction monopoly now offers to sell seven 
 tickets for a quarter, to give universal transfers and to 
 build what extensions Mayor Johnson may direct. 
 
 " The way to simmer down a monopoly is to threaten 
 it with competition at a reasonable price and to bring 
 it thus to terms. That is the opportunity New York 
 has with its new subways. One subway w T ith a three- 
 cent fare would force the traction monopoly to reduce 
 its fares or to lose all competitive business. If this new 
 subway had branches to Queens County and Brooklyn 
 it would compel the Brooklyn Rapid Transit and the 
 Interborough merger to exchange free transfers or they 
 would lose the Interborough business. " 
 
 This shows what can be done by a man who has 
 actually at heart the interests of his fellow-men, who 
 has in his brain structure a certain quality we designate 
 by the term stamina, and who is honest and straight- 
 forward in his general make-up. Moreover, a man who 
 thus serves his city in a fearless and an honourable way, 
 serves not it alone, but his example is an inspiration 
 whose bounds may know no end. 
 [183]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The fact that practically all of our cities, and even our 
 larger ones, are still in their infancy, shows how careful 
 and how zealous their people should be in the disposition 
 of their public utilities, for the values of these will, as 
 time passes, increase to tremendous proportions. 
 
 On account of these natural monopolies being grabbed 
 and monopolized for the enrichment of the few, and 
 therefore not administered for the common good of all 
 the people, the two greatest evils among us as a nation 
 have gradually come about. The one lies in the great 
 inequality in the distribution of the wealth of the country, 
 in that we have the few thousands of the overly and 
 sometimes criminally rich, over against the millions 
 of the poor and resulting in the almost unbelievable 
 conditions we have already noted. If you will search 
 carefully you will find that practically all the great 
 fortunes now held by individuals or families have been 
 built up through the ownership and control, or the 
 monopoly, of these public service utilities or these great 
 natural monopolies. Look carefully and see if this is 
 not true. Once in a while you will find an exception, a 
 minor exception, but so rarely that the other becomes 
 pre-eminently the rule. 
 
 To these as the new generation comes along, we owe 
 our continually increasing numbers of the " idle rich, " 
 some of whom — both men and women — have never 
 been known to do an honest day's work in their lives. 
 They live and fare sumptuously, they roll in wealth, 
 and all the time, as John Steward Mill has pointed out, 
 they are being supported by the daily toil of others. 
 [184]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 It is they who become in time eligible to the lists of the 
 400. Gradually they come to believe that they are made 
 of a different type of clay from those about them, that 
 they were made to be served and supported by others, 
 and so also their children. In this way many become 
 " smart " and foolish and gradually prepare the way for 
 their decendents either immediate or remote, to become 
 degenerates or linked with degenerates, through whom 
 the ability to live longer through the support of others, 
 becomes dissipated. It is they who lose the respect of 
 the great common people, and when this is once lost 
 something is lost that no amount of wealth or supposed 
 station will ever compensate for. This is true as every 
 sane person will realize, not of all, by any means, but 
 it is true of very many. 
 
 The second great evil lies in the vast amount of bribery 
 and corruption and debauchery that has come about 
 in public and political life, the riding over the rights 
 of the people that these agencies have brought about, 
 and that will eventually mark the downfall of our very 
 institutions if not speedily checked and eradicated. 
 It is in this way that the liberties of the people in all 
 nations that have flourished and then either perished 
 or degenerated, have been undermined. Civilizations 
 perish through internal decay, not through outside agen- 
 cies. Such has been the rule with scarcely an exception. 
 
 A detail of the political intrigues of the companies 
 
 and corporations in their manipulations of the people's 
 
 representatives in city councils and in state and national 
 
 legislatures for their own private business ends, would 
 
 [185]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fill volume after volume. Most people are now familiar 
 with it in some form or another. We ean see how handi- 
 capped are the forces for reform and for representative 
 government in struggling against company and corpora- 
 tion rule and its accompanying corruption. The fact 
 that great private wealth so dominates legislators is 
 proof in itself that it is not healthy. When, therefore, 
 these great sources of private wealth that belong by 
 right to the people are taken possession of and run in the 
 interests of the people, we shall then witness a gradual 
 letting go of the grip of this monster. Those industries 
 gigantic in monopoly should be taken first, and the 
 others as they become so. 
 
 The way organized labour has been of late turning to 
 this government ownership idea and also to political 
 action, argues well for the strides we shall soon be mak- 
 ing along this line. 
 
 We must get away from the idea that we are to be 
 governed. The people must govern. It is not only their 
 right, but their duty. If the people do not govern, then 
 the exploitation of the many by and for the gain of the 
 few will inevitably follow even as it is going on to-day, 
 and as has always happened when the people them- 
 selves have not ruled. Not only as a common-sense 
 principle of self-interest, but a sense of safety for the 
 common- wealth, pure patriotism itself, demands that 
 without undue delay these great public service utilities 
 and these great natural monopolies be owned and con- 
 trolled in the only way they should be, for the interests 
 of all the people in common. 
 
 [186] 

 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 The wealth that is created by the common needs of 
 the people or by the continually growing life of all the 
 people should belong to all the people. By moral right 
 it belongs to them, and without undue delay that 
 which belongs to the people morally must be made to 
 belong to them legally and by custom. 
 
 As this movement increases among us, "commissions" will be ap- 
 pointed by those interested in retaining their grip on the properties 
 from which they are deriving their annual millions, to go abroad to 
 "study," and "investigate," the municipal and State ownership 
 movement in other countries. They will be sent to those countries 
 where the people are gaining so much and are so continually extending 
 their operations along these lines. They will be so selected that the 
 "majority reports" will be unfavourable to the public ownership 
 methods as applied to the United States. Men more or less prominent 
 will also be sent or will go as individuals and will cable back, or will 
 send back, for publicity purposes, similar opinions. As time passes we 
 will probably witness much along this line. My suggestion is, in each 
 case make a little investigation of the matter in order to find what con- 
 nection the authors of such reports and such messages have with certain 
 interests, or, note the life of the authors of such reports and such 
 messages, and see what influences have shaped or are shaping his 
 prevailing trend of thought. 
 
 [187]
 
 VII 
 LABOUR AND ITS UNITING POWER 
 
 i\ GREAT people's movement is now the only power 
 that will save and redeem the nation. I think there is no 
 more significant factor in the getting ready for this great 
 purpose than the splendid companies of men that are 
 bringing themselves together in our Labour Unions and 
 Brotherhoods and Federations. And among them is, it 
 must be said, some of our princely citizenship. 
 
 I know that there are various opinions held in re- 
 gard to the purposes and even the good of our labour 
 unions. This can be said, however, and without any 
 fear of successful contradiction, that those who know 
 most of them and what they have accomplished, and 
 most of the business and labour world in general, realize 
 the splended results they have already achieved and the 
 equally important work that is yet before them. Cer- 
 tainly upon their wise and intelligent growth and devel- 
 opment depends much that will make for the highest 
 welfare of our coming institutions. 
 
 I know that there are those who have doubted even 
 the right of labour combining in this way, to say nothing 
 of the expediency of it. It is not only right and expedient, 
 as I view it, that labour should so organize, but it is also 
 absolutely necessary that it do so, necessary not only 
 [1881
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 for its own good and welfare, but also for the good and 
 the welfare of the very nation itself. 
 
 It has been the history of labour that what it has 
 gained for itself — and it has gained much — it has 
 gained entirely through its own efforts. 
 
 Those who are at all acquainted with the conditions 
 of labour in times past, and especially prior to the present 
 century, know out of what a condition of bondage it 
 has gradually lifted itself. It was at one time in that 
 condition in which it had literally no rights that were 
 considered as belonging to human beings. Before con- 
 sidering the matter farther it is interesting to note that 
 in the industrial world, the captains of industry — the 
 employers, had this same fight for liberty and for justice, 
 and they are now, mark you, not such a great ways 
 ahead of that larger class called wage- workers. 
 
 Concerning this an eminent authority has said: "In 
 ancient times, particularly in the Roman and the 
 media? val world, a manufacturer or merchant, though 
 his ships might cover the inland seas, though thousands 
 of men might be doing his bidding, yet he had no voice 
 in the government, was not considered fit for a gentle- 
 man and patrician to associate with, had no voice in 
 making the laws that should govern him, nor in deter- 
 mining what taxes he should pay; he was plundered 
 indirectly by means of taxation, and when this did not 
 suit the purpose of dissipated and rapacious officialism, 
 he was plundered directly. To be born a patrician, to be 
 a member of the priesthood, or a successful military 
 chieftain, entitled a man to rule. The man who supplied 
 [189]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the world with necessaries had no social or political 
 standing, and this continued to be so throughout the 
 M iddle Ages — continued to be so in most all Europe till 
 toward the end of the last century, and is to a great ex- 
 tent still the case in Russia and in the Turkish provinces 
 of Europe. ... In England the employer acquired 
 his rights earlier, and has for sometime had a voice in 
 the government. But even in England the much praised 
 Magna Charta was not for the benefit of either employer 
 or workman, but simply of the nobility — the idle, 
 who, by reason of the accident of birth, were enabled to 
 appropriate the labour of others." 
 
 Continuing and speaking also of the early conditions 
 of the wage-workers, he says: "But, upon the whole, 
 the employer in his struggles for justice is not a century 
 in advance of the class we to-day call the wage- workers, 
 and they, the labourers, were in ancient and later times 
 practically all slaves. To be sure, we catch here and 
 there, in ancient literature, a phrase about the labourer 
 being worthy of his hire, put wnen we examine into the 
 actual condition of the toiling masses we are forced to 
 treat such utterances as the emanations ot fancy, for 
 not only was the labour of the mass at the aosolute dis- 
 posal of the master, but practically, and in every-day 
 experience, their lives were also. True, there was in 
 most countries a law providing that the master should 
 not kill his slave, but if the master did so he generally 
 went unwhipped of justice. This continued to be the 
 condition, with slight exceptions, throughout all Europe 
 down to near the beginning of this century. For un- 
 [1901
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 numbered centuries they were absolute slaves, belonging 
 to individuals; then they belonged, as it were, to the soil, 
 and were known as serfs and, in time, in England they 
 may be said to have belonged to the county or shire. 
 . . . It is true there were in some European cities 
 organizations of skilled workmen, who enjoyed not only 
 their freedom, but some advantages that may be said to 
 have been ahead of their time; but, as compared with 
 the great mass of the common people, they were so 
 insignificant in number, and their situation was so ex- 
 ceptional that we need not consider them further than 
 to call attention to the fact that they developed the 
 technical skill of their members, and enforced sobriety 
 and honourable conduct, while by means of their meet- 
 ings and discussions they became, in a measure, educat- 
 ed, and thereby reached a much higher plane than was 
 otherwise possible, and they thus wielded a powerful 
 influence for good. . . . 
 
 "In 1360, during the reign of Edward III, it was 
 provided by law that if a labourer refused to work for 
 the wages fixed by law or by the justices of the county, 
 or if he went outside of the county he was to be brought 
 back by the sheriff, was to be imprisoned, and was to 
 have the letter 'F' branded with a hot iron upon his 
 forehead in token of his falsity. If he sought by any 
 manner to increase the rate of wages, he was to be im- 
 prisoned. . . . From that time on, for four cen- 
 turies, the legislation in England is of uniform kind, 
 prohibiting by imprisonment all meetings of workmen, 
 and providing that the justice should fix the wages to be 
 [191]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 paid in their county; that if any labourer refused to work 
 for the wages fixed by the justices, he was to be put in 
 the stocks; if any labourer was found idle and did not 
 apply himself to work, he was to have the letter 'V 
 branded with a hot iron upon his cheek, and was to be 
 sold into slavery for two years, his children likewise to 
 be sold, and if either he or they ran away they were to 
 have the letter ' S ' branded on the cheek with a hot iron, 
 and were to be sold into slavery for life, and were to be 
 fed on bread and water, and it was provided by law 
 that they were to be made to work by beating, by chain- 
 ing, etc., and if they ran away again they were to suffer 
 death. Children that had worked at husbandry till they 
 were twelve years old, were forbidden ever to attempt 
 to do anything else; other children were required to 
 follow the occupation of their parents or be imprisoned. 
 It is hard to conceive of a condition of the labouring class- 
 es that could be much worse than that of the English 
 during these centuries." 
 
 And so far as the length of the work-day was con- 
 cerned, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in 1562, 
 the following statute was enacted: "All artificers and 
 labourers being hired for wages by the day or week shall 
 betwixt the midst of the months of March and Septem- 
 ber be and continue at their work at or before five of 
 the clock in the morning and continue at work and not 
 depart until betwixt seven and eight of the clock at 
 night, except it be in the time of breakfast, dinner, or 
 drinking; and all such artificers and labourers between 
 the midst of September and the midst of March shall 
 [192]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 be and continue at their work from the spring of the 
 day in the morning until the night of the same day, ex- 
 cept in the time of breakfast and dinner. " 
 
 So much then for the early conditions of both employer 
 and wage-worker. We come on down then to our own 
 time. As the employer class became fully emancipated 
 they began to take matters into their own hands, and 
 in their relations with those who worked for them and 
 who were the absolutely essential factor in their business 
 and who helped make their profits, they had the entire 
 say. They paid what wages they chose. They laid down 
 the conditions under which those working for them did 
 their work. The labourer had practically nothing to say 
 regarding anything. The employers were organizing 
 among themselves; they were getting stronger, and as 
 a rule, it can be truthfully said, more dictatorial. The 
 wage-workers then began to take heed. They began to 
 see what was to be gained through organization, through 
 co-operation. They realized that they had grievances of 
 various types, that they were not getting as a rule a 
 fair share in the profits of the enterprise in which they 
 were as necessary a factor as the element of capital 
 and its management. They also realized that as in- 
 dividuals they had absolutely no way of making any 
 of their wants or grievances known, and that for in- 
 dividuals to act in these matters was not only futile 
 but unsafe for the one or ones so acting. Then organiza- 
 tion and the uniting of the wage-workers in the form of 
 the labour union came into being. 
 
 In reply to the question, " What originally were the 
 [ 193 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 conditions and facts which seemed to make necessary 
 the combinations of workmen called ' labour unions,' 
 and which justify their present existence?" an officer 
 of one of our larger labour organizations gave the follow- 
 ing reply : " To describe accurately such conditions and 
 facts would require many volumes dealing with social 
 conditions, social injustice, special privilege, all over the 
 world. The specific fact which made labour unions neces- 
 ary was this : Wealth was produced as a result of a combi- 
 nation of labour and of intelligent direction. The direc- 
 tion, otherwise the employer, was in absolute control, fix- 
 ed wages, treated the employee as he saw fit. The employ- 
 ers were also united in their social relationships, their 
 mutual interests and in other ways. The employees, the 
 workers, were isolated ; they had no union, working from 
 dawn till dark made social intercourse impossible. The 
 unions of workers were formed for the same reason that 
 the union of States in this country was formed — namely, 
 to give to the individuals forming the union the greater 
 strength that comes from united action, to give them 
 the dignity that comes with escape from a servile con- 
 dition, to give them the power enabling them to obtain 
 for themselves fair wages, involving comfort and educa- 
 tion for their families and leisure for mental improve- 
 ment for themselves. " 
 
 Said the President of the American Federation of 
 Labour in a recent address before the New York Board 
 of Trade and Transportation : " The very concentration 
 of wealth and its possession is potent organization, and 
 unless the wage-earners, the workers, combined their 
 
 [ 19 *]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 efforts in unions of labour, their condition to-day would 
 be such as to shock the mind even in contemplation. 
 That any hope for material improvement, moral ad- 
 vancement, or higher ethical consideration is possible 
 without the organizations of labour, few now seriously 
 believe. " 
 
 This is quite in keeping with an utterance of former 
 Governor Washburn, of Massachusetts, when he spoke 
 as follows: "The fact that there is unrest and dissatis- 
 faction when man is confined to unremitting toil is one 
 of the brightest and most healthy omens of the times. 
 It is an indication that his better nature is struggling 
 for emancipation ; it is a hopeful sign of finer and nobler 
 manhood in the future. Such efforts for improvement 
 should never be discouraged, but always encouraged. " 
 
 So much then for the right, the expediency, and the 
 necessity of the wage-worker organizing and uniting 
 for protection and for mutual self-help. 
 
 The labour unions have committed errors of course, 
 they are committing them to-day, and plenty of them. 
 Counts of many various types can be made against 
 them. Enemies of or those unfriendly to union labour 
 could, I dare say, compile very long lists of errors and ex- 
 cesses of various kinds. Friends of and those sympathetic 
 to union labour could compile also a similar list. But 
 this is only natural, for in the early and formative days 
 of any movement this is practically always true; there 
 is indeed scarcely an exception. No movement or 
 system, especially one involving such complex and such 
 difficult matters to deal with and men in such various 
 [195]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 stages of development, can start in a fully perfected 
 form, nor is it to be expected. Once it was urged in 
 England that men should not be given their political 
 freedom until they were fully prepared to use it rightly, 
 and until there was no danger of their ever abusing it. 
 This course seemed plausible and reasonable to those 
 advocating it; to it Lord Macaulay replied, " If men are 
 to wait for freedom until they have become good and 
 wise in slavery, they will wait forever. " 
 
 In a similar vein and speaking directly of organized 
 labour, the Springfield Republican has said: "Viewed 
 philosophically, it is inevitable that a riot of inexperience 
 and inefficiency should characterize the early stages of 
 labour's organization. No state of society is ever inaugu- 
 rated with people already perfected for its coming. . . . 
 Republican institutions were not deferred on earth until a 
 people were found entirely capable of running perfect re- 
 publics. Democracy did not await the advent of a popula- 
 tion already fully trained in the arts of self-government. 
 All these things come, and the people most concerned 
 have to develop up to them. Such is the lesson of history- 
 Labour-unionism came also, and, in the same way, its 
 adherents have had to discipline themselves by experi- 
 ence in the best methods of organization and conserva- 
 tive management. On the whole, taking into considera- 
 tion the enormous increase of unionism, it is no more 
 than fair to say that it is constantly gaining in equili- 
 brium and sanity." 
 
 The unions and their leaders have been learning 
 rapidly in these matters. Generally speaking, the older 
 [196]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the union the more conservative and quiet and at the 
 same time firm and effective is it in its methods and its 
 dealings. In other countries, in England for example, 
 where the unions are a great deal older, they have even 
 long ago worked through and out of the rash and tem- 
 pestuous stages, the stages where so many counts could 
 be made against them, and have reached the position 
 that the unions in America have been gradually working 
 their way towards. Here, as there, it has been a long, 
 hard road to travel, it has meant fight and defeat, and 
 at times apparent rout along with the battles won, the 
 experience gained, the advancement made — the pres- 
 ent priceless possession. It has meant brave sufferings 
 many times not only on the part of the wage-workers, 
 but also on the part of their families. It has meant at 
 times, the facing of great uncertainty. 
 
 I think it should be said that from the managers of 
 capital, labour has learned some of its worse features 
 and excesses. I think it can be truthfully said that with 
 all the excesses and violations of law on the part of union 
 labour in times passed it has never, taking it all in all, 
 equalled the amount of disregard for and violation of 
 law that organized capital has been guilty of. It has been 
 more open and awkward in its methods, perhaps, while 
 organized capital in addition to being in many cases also 
 glaringly open, has worked in a subtile and silent way 
 under cover. The latter is more skilled, it may be said, 
 and hence more apt in these matters. 
 
 But out of this long and at times apparently clumsy 
 struggle, union labour in this country is also attaining a 
 [197]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 position where it is exerting a great and powerful good, 
 not only for its own and for the public welfare, but also 
 for organized capital, if the latter is wise enough to 
 openly and freely recognize its power and its purposes. 
 
 In connection with the final settlement of the great 
 strike in the anthracite fields some time ago, there were 
 among others two utterances to me very significant and 
 worthy of a wide reproduction. Judge Gray, chairman 
 of the Arbitration Commission, said : " Unless my judg- 
 ment is at fault and my faith unfounded, the labour 
 unions will soon have passed through their period of 
 trial and tribulation and will emerge on a bright and 
 sunlit plain, where true American character, the fruit of 
 American liberty, will illustrate the worth of our in- 
 stitutions. Purging themselves of every anti-social and 
 unworthy element, recognizing in others the rights they 
 claim for themselves, with malice towards none and 
 charity towards all, subordinate to law, with a full sense 
 of their appeal to the public opinion of the country, as 
 our fathers made their appeal, they will be unheld in 
 the time to come by employers, as powerful coadjusters, 
 in the maintenance of American ideals of free govern- 
 ment among men." 
 
 Much of the energy of labour unions up to the present 
 time has been directed towards the securing of a larger 
 wage and of a shorter workday, and in some cases 
 towards both. It is quite natural that at first this should 
 be true. But with this gained to a greater or less extent, 
 there comes a time and it has now come, when it must 
 push out into a larger and more general field. These 
 [198]
 
 In the Fire of tlie Heart 
 
 gained, and with more time for council and intercourse, 
 and with a greater recognition of its power and its stand- 
 ing, it is more able now to move upon a broader and 
 still more telling plain. The union and the federation has 
 also been an excellent means of training in reason as 
 against crankery, in moderation as against rashness 
 and hot-headness, in short for a broader and more sub- 
 stantial and effective citizenship. A very discriminating 
 writer, in speaking along this line, has said: "If we 
 omit certain unions in the more corrupt cities, where 
 the leaders learn bad habits by imitation, and are too 
 frequently bought and sold, there is at the present mo- 
 ment in this country no more powerful influence to 
 train men for citizenship than the influences at work 
 in the best and strongest labour organizations. This is 
 true of the Federation ; it is true of separate unions like 
 the printers, trainmen, iron-moulders ; many of the 
 longshoremen, and cigar-makers. 
 
 "But especially do these older and stronger unions 
 learn to check dangerous and revolutionary opinions. 
 . . . As the trade union strengthens, its influence 
 against turbulent and revolutionary projects steadily 
 increases. The only agency that will prevent the spread 
 of this conservatism is the fatuous obstinacy which 
 insists upon defeating completer labour organization."* 
 
 The time has come it seems to me when organized and 
 
 federated labour must move, and move in a very effective 
 
 and telling way along the lines of political action. Not 
 
 that the union or the federation as such, as an organiza- 
 
 * John Graham Brooks in " The Social Unrest " Chap. xii. 
 
 [199]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 tion, must so act, for this all along it has steadily avoided 
 and undoubtedly most wisely. There would be pitfalls 
 innumerable for it, did it adopt or attempt to adopt 
 such a course. Nor would anyone of judgment advo- 
 cate the membership of the union or federation as such 
 affiliating with any par icular party. To be inde- 
 pendent in party action, here as in the rest of our 
 citizenship should be, as it is getting more and more 
 to be, the great fact; then for organized labour to work 
 along the lines of educating its membership in the lines 
 of policy and legislation that gives or that keeps for the 
 great common people, of which the wage-worker is 
 such a large and powerful factor, larger rights and 
 fairer opportunities and more just conditions, as dis- 
 tinguished from the privileged classes by whom the 
 chief portion of the machinery of government is now 
 dominated and controlled, and in whose interests the 
 larger share of legislation is now enacted. And so far 
 as the immediate demands and the welfare of organized 
 labour is concerned, it seems to me that the time has now 
 come when this is the effective and the telling method of 
 work, also the orderly and the peaceable, hence, the 
 most satisfactory. 
 
 It is undoubtedly in the matter of strikes and the 
 almost innumerable things that accompany them that 
 union labour has suffered most in its reputation, and to a 
 greater or less extent in its standing. Whether this part 
 of its life could have been lived better or not is of no im- 
 portance so far as the present consideration is concerned. 
 The one concern at present is — the lessons that are 
 [ 200 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 to be learned from the past use of this weapon. Un- 
 doubtedly there are many and very important lessons 
 to be learned; undoubtedly many have been learned. 
 That strikes have been too frequently called, and 
 especially the sympathetic strike, that others have been 
 called rashly and without sufficient preparation, and 
 without a sufficient consideration of the chances of 
 success beforehand, that others have been too frequently 
 called under a poor or ineffective, or self-seeking leader- 
 ship, is undoubtedly true. The abler leaders and the 
 better and more intelligent members have now come to 
 the position where they recognize that the strike and its 
 attendant circumstances is to be considered only as a 
 weapon of last resort. The disposition, reached partly 
 through very great losses, is now to conciliate, to adjust 
 grievances and differences if any possible way can be 
 found without a resort to the strike. The history of 
 strikes, those lost as well as those won, has brought 
 home to the intelligent and capable and unself-centred 
 leader and union member some very clear-cut facts 
 such as the following: that a strike should not be al- 
 lowed to be called by a walking-delegate, or by any 
 power outside of a full and complete vote of the union ; 
 that the union should move slowly and with every 
 possible degree of fairness ; that it should be thoroughly 
 organized and ready for the strike; that it be under the 
 direction of a thoroughly able and honest and proven 
 leader; that it be sure that its demands or its grievances 
 are thoroughly just and sufficiently important to pay 
 this price for their attainment or their adjustment; 
 [201]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 that it has come to pass that public opinion is the court 
 or the power that finally decides whether the strike 
 be successful or whether it end in failure; therefore, 
 in addition to the necessity that the demands be thorough- 
 ly just ones, that there be no violence or rioting. 
 True, owners and managers of capital — as well as 
 sympathizers — have provoked or have deliberately 
 planned violence and rioting, as they probably will 
 in other cases yet to come, but by forbearance and 
 patience the public can in practically all cases eventually 
 be shown its source, and it will render its verdict ac- 
 cordingly. The very fact that this method has some- 
 times been deliberately resorted to, to help weaken or 
 break a strike, is itself a powerful and quiet commentary 
 upon the influence and the power of public opinion as 
 the determining factor in a strike. 
 
 How keen the really able labour leader is in regard 
 to the importance of no violence emanating from the 
 organization in time of strike is shown partly by the 
 following words of John Mitchell, spoken in connection 
 with the anthracite coal strike, and not for its effect upon 
 the public but in earnest council to the miners : " If you 
 want to spoil your own cause and lose every sacrifice 
 you have made for yourself and your families, give way 
 to your temper and commit some violence. Just a few 
 outbreaks like this and the public good-will, to which 
 we must look in last resort, will fail us and we shall de- 
 serve to lose it. " A leader of the keen insight of John 
 Mitchell, understands all too thoroughly what the ele- 
 ment of violence, emanating from the organization at 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 a critical period of the strike, would mean in its effect 
 upon public opinion. This, however, is not exceptional 
 council, but it has grown to be that which is common 
 on the part of the able, experienced, and efficient labour 
 leaders. 
 
 The very large number of strikes that are prevented 
 through the influence and the clearer councils of the 
 abler leader and his subordinates, is probably not 
 realized by the one not intimately acquainted with 
 organized labour. The following letter by the very able 
 general secretary of the Garment Worker's Union, 
 Henry White, is also indicative of much that is going 
 on at present: 
 
 " Mr. — foreman of — informs me that your only 
 reason for calling out the men was that he refused 
 to continue in his employ two men laid off for incom- 
 petent work, and that even your business agent ad- 
 mitted that the work of the men was imperfect. If 
 such is the case, your action in withdrawing the men 
 was not justified. This office, as well as the National 
 Union, is opposed to forcing upon an employer men 
 whose work is not suitable. It is just that sort of thing 
 that creates needless opposition to the union, and causes 
 no end of trouble. Your union is the only one that would 
 make such a demand. Where members are made to 
 believe that they cannot be discharged, no matter what 
 they do, they become careless, and the poor workman 
 falls back upon the protection of the union. The em- 
 ployer has got to sell the goods, and he assumes the risk, 
 consequently he alone can be the judge as to the quality 
 [203]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 of work. As long as he pays the union scale and does not 
 discriminate against active members, that is all you can 
 expect of him. 
 
 " Now I trust you will not place us in a position where 
 the General Executive Board will have to decide against 
 you." 
 
 I know there are employers who have become very 
 bitter against organized labour. I know also that some, 
 at times have had to meet some very exasperating 
 things from the unions. This I think is owing in great 
 part to two causes : the feeling of power that has come 
 to labour since the unions have become a force that must 
 be reckoned with; and again on account of the sort of 
 transitional period through which both employer and 
 worker has been passing, where we have reached the 
 end of the period where the employer has had practically 
 everything to say in connection with the works and the 
 conditions of labour, and where he is now loath to admit 
 that the portion of his establishment, the portion as 
 necessary as his capital, his management, and his ma- 
 chinery — the workmen — can have anything to say 
 regarding any feature of his works. But the day has 
 come when the wise owner or manager is he who openly 
 and even cheerfully recognizes this. There are those 
 who have taken this view of the matter, have acted 
 accordingly, and are even now glad that this changed 
 condition has come about. They are managing in such 
 a way that great good is resulting to them as well as to 
 their workmen. 
 
 The day of " my business " has passed ; the day of " our 
 [204]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 business" has arrived. The new industrial era that we 
 are now entering upon is the one in which there shall 
 be more consultation and more friendly co-operation 
 between employer and employee; and where if this 
 method is entered upon freely and with a fuller and 
 more sympathetic recognition of each other's rights, 
 and of the amenities due from each to the other, very 
 great mutual gains will be made. 
 
 The one important factor that must now be looked 
 for by owners of large enterprises and by companies, 
 is men as managers who are keen enough to recognize 
 the advent of this new era, and who are large enough to 
 meet and to deal with labour upon this new basis. It is 
 after all but an indication of the possession of a good 
 degree of modem business ability. Speaking along this 
 line a very able Eastern railroad president said some 
 time ago : " To assume that we have got to go on spas- 
 modically fighting the unions, is tactless and unintelli- 
 gent. The truth is that the kind of man who is not strong 
 enough to work with organized labour has not the quali- 
 fication for his position. It is silly for powerful corpora- 
 tions to say, ' We will deal with the individuals, not with 
 representatives of unions.' Organization of labour has 
 got to be recognized as such, and dealt with as such, 
 and the problem now is to get men with the qualities 
 and capacities to do this." 
 
 Mr. Darrow, one of the miners' counsel, in speaking 
 
 before the anthracite commission, spoke possibly more 
 
 strongly though not more truly in the following. Mr. 
 
 Henry D. Lloyd, also counsel, had just pointed out the 
 
 [ 205]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fact that the commission could hope to bring no peace 
 to the anthracite fields that could be in any way per- 
 manent unless it provided for agreements with the union. 
 Mr. Darrow, speaking in regard to the recognition of 
 the union, said : " You can do just as you please about 
 recognizing the union. If you do not recognize it, it is 
 because you are blind and you want to bump up against 
 it some more; that is all. It is here. It is here to stay, and 
 the burden is on you and not upon us. There is neither 
 the power nor the disposition in this court, I take it, to 
 destroy the union. It would not accomplish it if it 
 could, and it certainly could not if it would. And if these 
 wise business men, with the combined wisdom of busi- 
 ness gentlemen and the agents of the Almighty, cannot 
 see the union, they had better blunder along still a few 
 more years, and possibly after a while they will know it 
 is here and recognize it themselves." 
 
 I know there is still a great deal of unsettled opinion 
 regarding strikes and lockouts, regarding arbitration, 
 and especially compulsory arbitration. All who are 
 familiar with it, however, are agreed that there is one 
 form of arbitration that is unique in that it leads all 
 other forms. It is what has come to be known as the 
 " joint agreement." It might be more accurately spoken 
 of as a form of conciliation than as a form of arbitra- 
 tion; or still more accurately, perhaps, as a form of 
 working agreement between employer and employed. 
 Its basis is, that once so often, according to agreement, 
 accredited representatives of both employer and work- 
 men meet in a joint session to consider, to discuss, and 
 [206]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 to draw up a set of agreements that shall be the basis 
 of the year's or the period's work. The very fact that 
 labor is organized and is capable of sending responsible 
 representatives to such a meeting makes the "joint 
 agreement " possible. Otherwise it would not be possible. 
 The "joint agreement" is pre-eminently the highest 
 type of arbitration, for it is arbitration from within. 
 The features that mark its high value are many. First 
 are its educational features, in that it makes both em- 
 ployer and employed acquainted with each other's points 
 of view, with each other's needs as well as desires; it 
 leads to a better understanding between employer and 
 workmen, probably the greatest need in our modern in- 
 dustrial world. And if entered into heartily it has the 
 tendency of creating an active sympathy between the 
 two. This in itself will in time lead to a continually 
 increasing mutual respect and mutual helpfulness. 
 Again, agreements thus voluntarily made are far more 
 apt to be kept, and more easily and conscientiously 
 than in case of conditions imposed from without, and 
 which in almost every case are bound to contain some 
 features distasteful and onerous to one party or the 
 other. Again, it is simply a recognition of a purely com- 
 mon-sense and practical method that is recognized and 
 used in practically every other avenue in the business 
 world. Finally, I think it can be said, that there can be 
 no effective relations and no lasting peace between 
 employer and workmen until the agreement is recogniz- 
 ed as the common-sense and fair method of procedure, 
 and is entered into in a whole-souled manner and with 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the purpose and intention on the part of both inter- 
 ested parties of living fully up to the agreement. 
 
 The " joint agreement " is not a new method of con- 
 ciliation or a new method of procedure as between 
 employer and employed, but in some fields it has been 
 used for many years, and in most all cases with thorough- 
 ly satisfactory results. It can therefore be spoken of 
 from the standpoint of its actual achivements. It is of 
 later years, however, that it has been coming into a 
 more general and into a continually increasing use. 
 This fact is undoubtedly an evidence of its effectiveness 
 and value. 
 
 There is so much testimony to be had in regard to its 
 effective and satisfactory results that it would be in- 
 teresting to consider much of it did space permit. The 
 manager of one of the largest stove manufactories in 
 the country has said of the agreement : " We have tried 
 it a dozen years and it has settled all questions on this 
 subject for us. Its best trait is that, as it works, it trains 
 the men to see the limits within which they can get 
 advantages. It makes the men more conservative and it 
 makes us more considerate." 
 
 Mr. John Graham Brooks, in "The Social Unrest" has 
 dealt with the joint agreement in a very effective way. 
 At one place he says : " To keep agreements voluntarily, 
 is a much higher discipline than to do it under force. 
 For many years unions have actually kept contracts 
 when employers have genuinely and heartily co-operated 
 with the joint agreement. 
 
 "There is no such convincing proof of this as the 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 fifteen years' trial between masters and men in the 
 Boston Building Trades. The agent of the employers, 
 W. H. Sayward, who brought about this agreement, 
 conducting it with growing success for eighteen years, 
 allows me to say that under it scores of strikes have 
 been prevented, millions of money saved, and the most 
 delicate questions, like the limitation of output 
 and apprentices, the use of the boycott, the conflicts 
 between different unions, and the sympathetic strike, 
 are now so far understood as a result of this education 
 that they are no longer feared." 
 
 Mr. Sayward's testimony, in part, is as follows : " My 
 experience has convinced me that labour thoroughly 
 organized and honestly recognized is even more im- 
 portant for the employer than for the workmen. It makes 
 possible a working method between the two parties 
 which removes one by one the most dangerous elements 
 of conflict and misunderstanding." Speaking farther, 
 Mr. Sayward said: "that either for the building trades 
 or other lines of work, these intricate and involved 
 matters will not take care of themselves; they cannot 
 safely be intrusted to one of the interested parties alone : 
 both parties must have equal concern, must act jointly, 
 not only in their own interests, but, in effect, in the inter- 
 ests of the community." 
 
 If at anytime differences do arise under the joint 
 agreement, or if they arise when it is not in use and 
 trouble seems iminent, then conciliation or voluntary 
 arbitration is the next sensible step. It is safe to say that 
 there is scarcely a case where the strike or the lockout 
 [209]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 need be resorted to if there is an eminent spirit of fairness 
 on both sides. Conciliation and fairness. A looking at 
 the matter from the standpoint of the other, a pocketing 
 of pride to gain something larger and fairer and more 
 satisfactory in the end. A getting away from pure fool 
 obstinacy and allowing a spirit of openness and fairness 
 to assert itself and lead to what will prove to be a wiser 
 course and a better end. The workmen to be fair and 
 to be sure they are making no unjust demands, not 
 hasty but considerate of the probable difficulties that 
 lie in the employer's way. Employer to pass rapidly 
 beyond the foolish and inane period where "this is 
 my business and I will conduct it absolutely to suit 
 myself, " " I will not be dictated to " ; " there is nothing 
 to arbitrate. " The public is pretty well tired now of 
 " there is nothing to arbitrate," and popular disapproval 
 will soon call a halt upon this puerile obstinancy unless 
 owner or manager finds sense enough to abandon it 
 himself. All that is needed to prevent precipitated labour 
 troubles — strikes and lockouts — is for the men in 
 overalls and the owners or managers of industry to 
 grow sufficiently large as to enable them to throw away 
 their prejudices and meet as they meet in other things, 
 on the common-sense platform of fraternity and human- 
 ity. Each must manifest the spirit of open fairness, and 
 the more fully this is done the more smoothly and 
 pleasantly and satisfactorily will the negotiations run. 
 President John Mitchell has given this bit of testimony : 
 " I have never seen in my experience a strike that could 
 not have been averted if the employers and the men who 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 work had met in conference before the strike was started. 
 
 " I have said on many occasions that I was opposed 
 to strikes, opposed to lockouts, opposed to industrial 
 turmoil; that I favoured peace, but always with the 
 qualification that it must be an honourable peace. There 
 will never be peace between the men who work and 
 those who employ men to work unless that peace guar- 
 antees to each side that which is its proper due. " 
 
 Herman Justi, Commissioner, Illinois Coal Operators' 
 Association, has said: "With scarcely an exception, 
 every strike that has taken place in our time, even where 
 there has been bloodshed and destruction of property, 
 has finally been settled in friendly council. " 
 
 Speaking then of the plan of the Coal Operators' Asso- 
 ciation in their method of joint agreements with their 
 men which have been in operation for a great many years, 
 Mr. Justi says : " Our plan is to prevent these senseless 
 and costly strikes, and the many differences and disputes 
 arising between master and men which seem to place 
 them in the attitude of enemies to each other, are settled 
 in the same manner in which the most destructive 
 strikes are finally settled, viz: by meeting in friendly 
 council, where we try self-control long enough to enable 
 us to say: 'Come, let us reason together.' This is, 
 practically, all there is of the plan pursued in the coal 
 mining industry of Illinois, and of this plan to prevent 
 strikes and to promote harmony and good feeling it can 
 be said, at least, that it is the fairest thus far offered. " 
 
 But what a commentary upon the experience of the 
 past twenty or twenty-five years to know that finally 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 practically all strikes are settled by the very means that 
 could have prevented their ever occurring had more 
 real ability or, to speak more plainly, more plain ordi- 
 nary common-sense prevailed on one side or the other, 
 or on both. 
 
 As soon as it becomes apparent that employer and 
 workmen are unable to adjust their differences through 
 conciliation or voluntary arbitration, then by the ordi- 
 nary course, the strike on the part of the one, or the lock- 
 out on the part of the other, is resorted to. What the 
 results sometimes are, when this method assumes con- 
 trol, all are thoroughly conversant with. Upon the public 
 the chief burden is then thrown. It has always seemed to 
 me that right at this point it is the privilege and the duty 
 of the public to have its say. I know that many labour 
 men, and among them some eminent labour leaders, 
 hold a different view. To deprive labour of the power to 
 strike they believe, and honestly, would be to take from it 
 one of its most effective weapons. I would not deprive 
 labour of its power to strike; and the more thoroughly 
 and closely labour is organized the greater does this 
 ability become. There is probably no one who believes 
 more thoroughly in the good that is to result both to 
 worker and employer, as well as to the public at large, 
 from a continually growing and developing organiza- 
 tion of labour. But the larger good must always be kept 
 in mind, and when the calling of a strike or the instituting 
 of a lockout becomes the supreme necessity, then the 
 principle of compulsory arbitration is undoubtedly a 
 sound one, even as it has proven so completely to be, 
 [212]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 much that we hear to the contrary notwithstanding, in 
 New Zealand, in Australia, for example. 
 
 Were employer and workmen the cnly ones concerned 
 in the matter of compulsory arbitration then it would 
 present a somewhat, in fact an entirely, different aspect. 
 But even then I should thoroughly believe in the prin- 
 ciple, when the strike or the lockout would appear the 
 only way of adjusting the differences. Men or groups of 
 men in the mad, the fighting condition, are not as cap- 
 able of adjusting difficulties as fairly — and there can 
 be no lasting peace unless mutual fairness enters — as 
 an able and impartial body of men selected for this 
 purpose. And the enormous losses entailed upon both 
 sides when the strike is at all long drawn out, are, it 
 seems to me, thoroughly ill-advised. The ability to 
 strike enables the workers to bring their difficulties or 
 grievances to the point where, were it not strong enough 
 to possess this ability, it would be in a most deplorable 
 condition. 
 
 Two men have a difference. The time was when, 
 worked up by rage into a fury — thoroughly mad, 
 one species of temporary insanity — they took their 
 bludgeons and pounded away at the skulls of each other. 
 We have grown. When two men have a difference they 
 are not allowed to go into the street and bludgeon one 
 another, or deal with one another in the manner of even 
 the modern fisticuff manner. The public has long ago 
 decreed that they take their differences in an orderly and 
 common-sense way before a man or a body of men, 
 more calm and reasoning, and hence more capable of 
 [213]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 determining the right of the matter at issue. This is our 
 method, the method that we have found far better than 
 the former brute method. There is no one of average 
 intelligence who would even think of appearing in 
 public to advocate a return to the earlier methods. In 
 this, however, the public is scarcely disturbed, or at 
 most but a few persons, and then for but a few moments 
 at most. Fisticuffs are ordinarily not lengthly affairs. Is 
 there not a thousand times more reason for compelling 
 this same sane, common-sense method when it comes to 
 the disputes not of two men, but of two groups of men 
 that may last for days or even for many weeks, and 
 where the entire community is endangered as to life or 
 limb, where it is inconvenienced, and all of its natural 
 and normal relations demoralized, where it is subjected 
 at times to tremendous losses, and where sometimes for 
 weeks it is compelled simply to remain quiet and look 
 on at these two groups struggling without reason be- 
 cause each is animated by the desire for the questionable 
 glory of saying "we beat" ? I am not saying that "we 
 beat" is always the animating principle on the part of 
 the contending parties. That in some cases it is, that in 
 many cases it is, is all too evident, and sometimes when 
 a struggle of this kind has been entered upon, with the 
 greatest of reasons, it has frequently occurred that as the 
 the conflict became extended the "we beat" business 
 became the controlling principle. The strike or the 
 lockout is too much a matter of vital public concern 
 to enable it to be used upon the slightest pretext on the 
 part of groups of hot-headed men. I say hot-headed 
 [214]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 advisedly because, were it not true of one side or the 
 other or of both, then a less crude and bungling and a 
 more common-sense method of settlement not only 
 could, but would be found. 
 
 There was perhaps a justification, or at least a reason 
 for the bludgeon and the pommeling method of settle- 
 ment of differences between the two men. In order to 
 reach the period of the "reason method," this period had 
 to be passed through. There was also the same justifica- 
 tion or reason for the strike and lockout method in the 
 disputes between two groups of men. This crude method 
 was also at first natural. We have too much common- 
 sense in other matters, and in matters of a very kindred 
 nature to allow it farther to be said that this method is 
 any longer necessary or even natural. We become so 
 accustomed to certain conditions that at times we do 
 not move on as rapidly as is well for us. 
 
 I beg to repeat the statement that when the strike or the 
 lockout is resorted to, there is a distinct threefold loss, to 
 the worker, to the employer, to the public. Am I right ? 
 Some months ago witnessed a strike in Chicago, and it 
 terminated rather to the disadvantage, if anything, of the 
 side that called it. Here are a few facts taken at random 
 from a general summary made immediately after by the 
 Chicago Tribune: Duration in days, a hundred and 
 five; number of garment workers originally involved, 
 seventeen; total number of teamsters eventually in- 
 volved, four thousand six hundred and twenty; persons 
 killed in strike violence, twenty-one; persons injured 
 (reported by police), four hundred and fifteen; police 
 [215]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 and deputy sheriffs on strike duty, five thousand seven 
 hundred; cost to city and county for extra police and 
 extra deputy sheriff protection, four hundred and six 
 thousand five hundred dollars; loss to teamsters in 
 wages, and cost to unions for strike benefits, one million 
 fifty thousand dollars; cost to employers, (wages and 
 lodging of strike-breakers and protection of wagons), 
 two million dollars; shrinkage in wholesale, retail and 
 freight business (estimated), six million dollars. Here 
 then the cost to the unions was a trifle over a million 
 dollars, to the employers, two million, while the public 
 had to pay to the tune of between six and seven million 
 dollars, besides shouldering all the exasperating in- 
 conveniences and a compulsory witnessing of all the 
 diabolical happenings that were thrown in its way. 
 
 If this virtual defeat for the unions was caused, as it 
 is claimed, by incompetent or self-seeking leadership, 
 so much the worse for the unions that permitted such 
 leadership to hold sway and to lead them into such 
 positions where defeat was almost a foregone conclusion. 
 How long will it take organized labour to learn its lessons 
 along this score ? 
 
 You will recall that in the summer of 1900 there was 
 a street-car strike in St. Louis. The side in error, the 
 side chiefly to blame in this strike, was the company, 
 and when it was ended the chief defeat was also on its 
 side. In this strike the loss to the men in wages was a 
 trifle less than half a million dollars ; the loss to the com- 
 pany in fares, in operating, and in damage to cars and 
 plant was two million dollars; the loss to the city in 
 [216]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 business alone, to say nothing of loss in extra police 
 and deputy sheriff needs, was thirty million dollars; 
 there were fourteen killed, seventy injured by bullets, 
 a hundred and fifty injured otherwise. Here then is a 
 loss — in money alone of thirty million dollars on the 
 part of the public compared to a combined loss of a little 
 less then two and a half million dollars on the part of 
 the company and its workmen. Who shall say that the 
 right or even the duty on the part of the public in this 
 case is not of a very clear-cut and certain nature. 
 Under the head "The St. Louis Strike Folly" an edi- 
 torial in the Boston Daily Globe at the conclusion of the 
 strike spoke as follows: "This strike was begun inno- 
 cently enough on May 8th. On that day 3,500 men stop- 
 ped work. It was a fight on the part of the company to 
 destroy the labour union, and because the company has 
 succeeded in compelling 300 union men to go back to work 
 and leave the union, and moreover succeeded in import- 
 ing more than 3,000 men to run its cars day and night, 
 it calls this a 'victory.' A few such 'victories' as this 
 scattered over this continent would create a general 
 civil war, in which victory would finally poise at the 
 point of the federal bayonet. For a corporation to call 
 a settlement forced by such conditions 'victory' is a 
 libel on the English language. Yet the unions, animated 
 by the same spirit that possesses the company, claim a 
 Victory,' too. 
 
 " No, this is not 'victory,' in this day when reason and 
 the moral sense are supposed to have superseded the 
 gun and the bludgeon. It is defeat, dismal defeat for both 
 [217]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the company and the men. The only victory is found 
 in the agreement of both sides to resume their old re- 
 lations, forgive and forget old scores and begin all over 
 again to be reasonable human beings. If anybody can 
 conceive a victory after such disgraceful proceedings, 
 where does it come in for the 700,000 people of the town 
 who have been inconvenienced for nearly two months 
 and whose losses in business are reckoned at $30,000,- 
 000? How many taxpayers of St. Louis will feel like 
 calling this a victory by and by, when the costs have 
 to be settled ? 
 
 " This strike has had some features that are liable to 
 sadly demoralize the calculations of corporations who 
 fancy that the victory is won as soon as they succeed 
 in hiring men to take the places of the strikers. This was 
 the case in St. Louis. The company has ' broken the 
 back' of the strike, but in breaking that back it was 
 at the same time depleting its treasury so rapidly that 
 it was forced to make an agreement with the strikers 
 in order to save itself from impending ruin. 
 
 " Such a strike as this ought never again to be possible 
 in this country. It cost the company over $1,500,000 in 
 fares alone for its 'victory.' It cost the men $500,000 in 
 wages. It brought disgrace upon a supposed civilized 
 American city. The fierce boycott has been the cause 
 of cowardly murders and assaults upon women. It has 
 engendered bitterness among families and friends that 
 will rankle for many years to come. And all for what ? 
 In order that somebody might finally be able to boast 
 of a victory. Now both parties have fought to a stand- 
 [218]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 still, and both, maimed, crippled and disgraced, have 
 been forced to an agreement which each calls a 'victory ?' 
 How childish and how unworthy of intelligent men! 
 Arbitration could have easily settled all this when it 
 began. Now nothing is settled, except the fact that both 
 sides have virtually been defeated. When will men ever 
 learn anything from these sad experiences ? " 
 
 To say that it is advisable longer to allow two groups 
 of men to engage in such a disruption of public order 
 and decency, throwing this enormous expense upon the 
 shoulders of the general public, simply because one 
 party or the other, and generally the one least in the 
 right, is so bull-headed, or so lacking in ordinary brain 
 capacity as well as in business insight as to be incapable 
 of adjusting these difficulties without a resort to such 
 clumsy and brutal methods, seems to me to be almost 
 an insult to the most ordinary degree of public intelli- 
 gence. I don't think there is an average of one person in 
 fifty who, cognizant of all the facts, really believes that 
 it is either advisable or possessing even the qualities of 
 ordinary common-sense. What a commentary then upon 
 the lack of initiative or movement on our part to allow 
 this method with all its attendant horrors, and with 
 practically nothing in its justification, still to be employ- 
 ed. Especially is this true when there is already a clearly 
 demonstrated better method. 
 
 Sometime ago Carroll D. Wright, then United States 
 Commissioner of Labour, in an article in the North 
 American Review gave some of his findings in connec- 
 tion with an investigation of the matter of strikes in the 
 [219]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 United States since 1880. Between 1881 and 1900 there 
 were about twenty-three thousand strikes, which would 
 be an average of more than a thousand a year. Nearly 
 fifty-one per cent of all these strikes were successful, 
 thirteen per cent succeeded partly, while the remaining 
 thirty-six per cent failed. Over six million employees 
 were involved and were out of work for a longer or a 
 shorter period. Their loss owing to idleness was nearly 
 two hundred and fifty-eight million dollars. The loss 
 to their employers was about a hundred and twenty- 
 three million dollars, or a little less than one-half the 
 loss to them. 
 
 I have given just the losses from a monetary stand- 
 point, and to the two parties engaged in these industrial 
 wars. The still greater losses to the public at large, not 
 only from a monetary standpoint, but in almost innum- 
 erable ways otherwise, can be imagined by the aid of 
 the detailed statistics relating to the two strikes already 
 mentioned. 
 
 One of the concluding observations by Mr. Wright 
 in this article is abundantly worthy of notice: "It is 
 recognized now that labour conflicts grow out of increas- 
 ing intelligence. The avoidance or adjustment of such 
 conflicts must be the result of increased intelligence. 
 Fools do not strike; it is only men who have intelligence 
 enough to recognize their condition that make use of 
 this last resort. With increased intelligence they will 
 look back upon the strike period as one of development; 
 and when they shall have accommodated themselves to 
 the new conditions, and when employers shall have recog- 
 [220]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 nized the increased intelligence of their employees, 
 these matters will be handled in such a way as to prevent 
 in the future a repetition of incidents like those which 
 are chronicled in the statistical history of the strikes 
 of the last twenty years. " 
 
 It is generally the case, in the majority of strikes 
 always the case, that the loss to the workers, who are 
 far less able to stand it, is considerably greater than that 
 sustained by the employers. The latter, moreover, 
 have a way of making the public finally pay their losses, 
 in addition to the still heavier losses that are always 
 thrown upon it. Certainly the word dense is quite ap- 
 plicable to the public unless we take some lessons from 
 this great array of happenings that has come to pass, 
 and unless we now move speedily along the path of an 
 insistence upon compulsory arbitration in that class 
 of cases where no other method of settlement but open 
 industrial warfare is able to be reached by employer 
 and workmen. It seems to me there can be no shadow 
 of a doubt in regard to this when it comes to strikes in 
 connection with any public service industry, or any- 
 thing where the inconvenience or loss to the public is 
 specially great. 
 
 I think there is no better way of terminating this 
 very brief examination of the points that seem to favour 
 a compulsory arbitration plan in those cases that are not 
 or that apparently cannot be settled through mutual con- 
 cessions or by conciliation, with the result that the matter 
 is thrown onto the public in the form of an open war- 
 fare, than by a very brief consideration of New Zealand's 
 [221]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 arbitration court methods. From that portion of the 
 world we got our Australian ballot-system that has 
 proved to be better than anything we had to compare 
 with it. We can get still other things of good value there, 
 the same as still older nations are from time to time 
 getting things of good value from us. 
 
 The New Zealand law was drawn up by Hon. William 
 P. Reeves, former Minister of Labour, after a most 
 careful study of the arbitration methods of various 
 other countries. It was passed after considerable dis- 
 cussion and not without opposition, on its merits, some- 
 thing more than ten years ago. Organization is, it might 
 be said, the keynote to the working of the law. Em- 
 ployers and workmen are expected to form organizations 
 on the assumption that all interests are best promoted 
 by the organization of labour. The act, therefore, cannot 
 be invoked by or against workmen not organized in 
 unions, though employers may be sued singly. Very 
 briefly summarized the chief points of the law are, 
 "First, the privilege of securing voluntary arbitration 
 quietly; and, second, voluntary arbitration failing, the 
 law forces publicity and compels reference to a concili- 
 ation board and obedience to the law's awards. The 
 parties in dispute go first before the local board of 
 conciliation, there being six of such boards in all, and 
 from there, if unsettled, the appeal can be made to the 
 final court of arbitration sitting for the whole country. 
 . . . The boards and court are composed equally 
 of chosen representatives of both employer and em- 
 ployed. A guarantee of ability, experience, dignity and 
 [222]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 entire disinterestedness is expected to be secured by the 
 appointment of a judge of the Supreme Court as presi- 
 dent of the court of arbitration. It is a suggestive fact 
 that every precaution is taken that the proceedings 
 shall be cheap, expeditious and non-technical. Its im- 
 mediate value inheres in the fact that the industry goes 
 on uninterruptedly while proceedings are pending. " 
 
 In a letter which appeared in the New York Evening 
 Post sometime ago, Mr. Edward Tregear, then Secre- 
 tary for Labour in New Zealand, in reviewing various 
 statements that have gained circulation here regarding 
 the failure of this arbitration court method in New 
 Zealand, says: "Compulsory arbitration (as it has 
 been nicknamed) is so far from being a disastrous failure 
 that it is here considered a pronounced success. Only a 
 revolution could displace it. Last session an amending 
 act was passed whereby the Boards of Conciliation 
 (which have no power of enforcing their recommenda- 
 tions) were practically set aside in favour of the Court 
 of Arbitration that can enforce its awards with all the 
 powers of the Supreme Court. . . . Here, then, 
 as answer to calumnies set abroad by interested persons, 
 we have the spectacle of the people of a colony, after 
 seven years' experience of compulsory arbitration, 
 approving and reapproving its principle. Our nearest 
 colonial neighbour, New South Wales, sent one of its 
 leading judges across to us to investigate the working 
 of our act on the spot. As a result, that colony has just 
 passed a compulsory arbitration act of a more drastic 
 character than ours, for there are no Boards of Con- 
 [223]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ciliation provided for New South Wales. South Aus- 
 tralia and Western Australia have similar legislation on 
 our model. Strange that, if we have failed, our near 
 neighbours are so blind as to follow us into the pit into 
 which we floundered in 1894. . . . 
 
 " In regard to the relations between employer and 
 employee being strained, may I ask whether good feeling 
 is promoted by strikes, lockouts, picketing, Pinkerton's 
 detectives, etc. ? Compulsory arbitration certainly has 
 not strained this feeling. Last session of Parliament 
 the Right Hon. Mr. Seddon, who is Minister for Labour, 
 as well as Premier, declared to the House of Represen- 
 tatives : 'There has never been a better feeling between 
 employers and employed than at the present moment, 
 . . . So far as my power of observation goes, class 
 bitterness is almost unknown in New Zealand, and 
 most kindly feelings exist between employer and em- 
 ployed. " 
 
 He then proceeds to consider the general outlook of 
 the country, also the fact that years ago they were told 
 that the effect of labour legislation would be to " drive 
 capital out of the country. " In answer to this he shows 
 that during the period between 1894 and 1902 for ex- 
 ample, capital instead of spreading its wings for flight, 
 had extended its operations so that the number of men 
 employed had more than doubled, and that the total 
 trade of New Zealand during this period had nearly 
 doubled in volume. 
 
 Organized labour stands at one of the most critical 
 periods in its history at the present time, in this country 
 [224]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 at least. And, although I believe it is coming through 
 successfully, it nevertheless will receive some strong 
 knocks and will suffer some severe and entirely un- 
 necessary set backs, unless some of its worst practices, 
 or rather those of some of its members and sections, 
 are quickly eradicated. Flushed with pride undoubtedly 
 in attaining to the degree of power and recognition it 
 has so far attained to, the members of some groups 
 of organized labour, especially in the larger cities, are 
 already showing marked symptoms of severe attacks 
 of the " swelled head, " and their conception of their 
 rights is getting so fine that the rights of those employing 
 them and of the general public, are now so minimized 
 that they have become of almost microscopic propor- 
 tions. Especially is this true in those lines of work where 
 the public is concerned rather than the employer of 
 labour in works. And, when organized labour, "The 
 Union" becomes a shield for incompetent or shirking 
 workmen, or backs them in giving a wholly inadequate 
 day's work for a good high wage, or in carelessness of 
 the rights and amenities due to others, or a reasonable 
 care of their belongings, or when it becomes too techni- 
 cal, or too fine in its rules and its methods and its general 
 programme, then it will alienate an intelligent and 
 otherwise sympathetic public, so that its losses will 
 quickly begin to balance its gains, and it will by its own 
 foolhardiness, set a limitation to its advance and pro- 
 gress, that otherwise could not be set. If the animating 
 motive is continual getting, with thoughts only of " us " 
 and "ours" with no adequate return, and no sense of 
 [225]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 its relationship with the great public welfare, then it 
 will soon fall into the pit of arrogance and pure self- 
 seeking without due consideration of the rights of others, 
 rebellion against which was the very thing that brought 
 the labour organization into existence. A permanent 
 organization or institution cannot be built upon any 
 such basis. 
 
 A "labour trust " is just as obnoxious to the great com- 
 mon people, as is a capitalistic trust and they will stand 
 for one no more than they will stand for the other, and 
 moreover they will in time find a method of putting 
 down and out of business the one, the fame as they 
 surely will the other. And again, if browbeating be- 
 comes too dominant a factor, if terrorism, and murder, 
 and kindred villianous methods become too frequent 
 or habitual, and too fully condoned by organized labour 
 in efforts to coerce other equally honest and worthy men 
 who cannot see their way to sanction all their methods, 
 or still others who are too brave or too manly to sit 
 idly by and see their families driven and pinched by 
 want, then also a suicidal blow will be struck that will 
 be a tremendous hindrance to what would otherwise 
 be a more gradual but a permanent growth. The methods 
 of the brute are used only where brains are not equal 
 to the task it is desired to accomplish. In this way 
 many of the strongest and best men in the labour ranks 
 will be turned against it, and will in time become a most 
 powerful element backed by the great public sympathy 
 to be reckoned with. Better grow a little more slowly, 
 and in accordance with just and righteous laws, and 
 [226]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 hence more surely and permanently, than to try the 
 short-cut methods, for in this way many get swamped 
 and tremendously delayed, while others never " arrive. " 
 Those of the policies and methods above described 
 become a sore upon the great body of splendid, hon- 
 ourable labour, which can illy afford to condone or stand 
 for such methods; and personally, I don't believe it 
 will very much longer, nor even countenance them. 
 
 Does this seem like plain speaking ? The only excuse 
 to be offered, if indeed any excuse were necessary, is 
 that it is spoken by one of the truest friends that labour 
 has, and friends don't snivel, neither do they fawn 
 and having no ulterior ends to gain, there is no need 
 for reticence in relation to truth, nor for lying. 
 
 I believe the time is rapidly approaching, and it may 
 be indeed immediately upon us as some signs seem to 
 indicate, when labour is going to push squarely into the 
 sphere of political action, even as the great masses of 
 the people are moving along the lines of political action, 
 unhampered as never before, because of more open 
 vision, by political machines, or dictated to by notorious 
 old hacks as party bosses. 
 
 The day has already arrived for this in England ; and 
 to-day — the results of the late election — we see a 
 splendid body of over fifty labour members in Parlia- 
 ment, and if even fairly wise and discreet in their actions, 
 as I fully believe they will be, their numbers will con- 
 tinue to increase, and there will be a strong party right 
 in Parliament thinking and working directly for the in- 
 terests of the great common people, not so hopelessly 
 [227]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 impotent, so far as actual accomplishment is concerned, 
 as have been most of the political parties there during 
 the last decade or more. I have long thought, looking 
 at the numbers of the one and of the other, that the 
 time had nearly come in Great Britain for the doing 
 away of the House of Lords, and substituting in its 
 place shall we say, a House of Labour. But, things 
 move sometimes in a most indirect way, and it may be 
 that through this the beginning of a long needed 
 labour and people's movement, this result in effect 
 would be brought about. 
 
 Who knows but that one of its greatest needs, perhaps 
 the greatest need it has to-day, will be served by this new 
 movement — that England and Scotland and Ireland 
 will more rapidly be freed from the centuries old curse 
 of landlordism, and that the land now so held will be 
 nationalized or in some wise method be brought back 
 to the use of the people. The Labour Party in co-operation 
 with the progressive wing of the Liberal Party, should 
 be able to bring about this sorely and long needed end. 
 
 And then if, speaking along general good lines, this 
 combination could give to Great Britain a new, a better 
 and broader universal public-school system, something, 
 I do not hesitate to say, akin to our own, or better still, then 
 they would at once be dealing with one of its greatest de- 
 linquencies and one of its greatest and most pressing 
 needs. In this way numbers of other ailments, resulting 
 directly from one or the other of these, or from both, 
 would begin to be healed without any other special 
 direct treatment. The excessive amount of drinking 
 [228]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 among the working classes, and among both men and 
 women, the bane and the curse of this phase of British 
 life to-day, and now almost universally recognized as 
 such, would begin at once to be on the decrease. It 
 comes primarily from the vacancy, the hopelessness, the 
 want and the despair in the lives of these vast numbers 
 of Britain's population that have been induced directly 
 or indirectly by these two causes, probably as much or 
 more than by all other causes combined. And, speaking 
 along the same line, who knows but that the splendid 
 Socialist body in the German Parliament to-day, already 
 numbering between seventy and eighty members, and 
 steadily increasing in numbers and in influence, will have 
 as its essential or primary mission, the freeing of 
 Germany of what royal and the privileged classes have 
 evidently neither the brains nor the inclination to throw 
 off, even for the relief of millions of people, the monstrous 
 military system, under which it labours year after year. 
 
 I think this new Labour Party in England as it grows 
 will give its aid also in dealing more humanely, 
 honourably and hence in a more statesman-like-ship 
 manner with India. 
 
 And to labour in politics in this country I would say, 
 remember a fact accentuated by the fact of Britain's 
 high and enviable position as regards cleanliness in 
 politics, that we of the United States, notwithstanding 
 our inclination to think otherwise, are among the lowest 
 of the low in this respect, especially in our municipal 
 politics. And remember that this condition has come 
 about because we as a people have so allowed commer- 
 [229]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 cialism and large moneyed interests to take from us and 
 convert to themselves such valuable properties that their 
 greed for more has become so insatiable that no man who 
 fills public office to-day, municipal, state, or national, is 
 sure to escape their blighting and benumbing influences. 
 Hence, be careful in your nominees and in men to whom 
 you give your political support. A direct or an indirect 
 gift, depending upon whether at any particular centre 
 these agencies composed of our "successful" and "re- 
 spectable" fellow citizens, are bold and brazen in their 
 methods, or very plausible and smooth and cunning — 
 a direct or an indirect gift, to repeat, of fifty thousand 
 or a hundred thousand or more dollars, is a very sore 
 temptation to a man in moderate circumstances, or to a 
 poor man. The essential thing is to have men of known 
 and proven integrity. Better a man of less culture, or 
 even more liable to errors in judgment, than one subject 
 to the money bags of the " successful " and " respectable " 
 despoiler, the arch enemy of American institutions and 
 of American citizenship to-day. 
 
 Another point I will suggest, hoping it will be received 
 in the spirit in which it is given: Be not displeased or 
 dissatisfied, if those you elect, or those to whom you give 
 your support, do not vote favourably for every labour bill 
 that is proposed. Labour's welfare, and the welfare of 
 any class or portion, must be always subservient to the 
 general welfare. Class legislation is always in time 
 unsatisfactory and destructive in its results. Class legis- 
 lation emanating from labour alone, would be but 
 slightly preferable if any to that emanating from capital 
 [230]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 alone. Only as the general good is guarded and fostered 
 and advanced will that of any class or portion be really 
 and permanently conserved. Here is an inestimable 
 service that lies in the power, if it lies in the heart, of 
 labour to render itself and the nation. 
 
 There is indeed a prophetic insight in the words of 
 the " Good Gray Bard of Democracy, " words that were 
 written by Walt Whitman nearly forty years ago: 
 "I expect to see the day when the like of the present 
 personnel of the governments — Federal, State, muni- 
 cipal, military and naval — will be looked upon with 
 derision, and when qualified mechanics and young men 
 will reach Congress and other official stations, sent in 
 their working costumes, fresh from their benches and 
 tools and returning to them again with dignity. The 
 young fellows must prepare to do credit to this destiny, 
 for the stuff is in them. " 
 
 The following are a few characteristic words from a 
 speech to his constituency by an able member of the 
 British Labour Party, who has served with great ability 
 in Parliament before, and who in spite of much strenuous 
 opposition was re-elected at the recent election by a 
 majority of something upwards of ten thousand votes. 
 " The working class, professional men and shop- 
 keepers are all struggling — some few to make a com- 
 petence, but the great majority to earn a livelihood. 
 Millions are steeped in poverty whilst millions more are 
 but one degree removed from it. While the useful classes 
 toil and suffer, the owners of land and capital, and the 
 schemers and gamblers of the Stock Exchange, are 
 [231]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 heaping up untold wealth. Whilst the poor die for lack 
 of the barest necessaries of life, the rich revel in a riot 
 of excess. Great accumulations of wealth menace our 
 liberties, control the great London organs of the press, 
 lead us into wars abroad, and poison the wells of public 
 life at home. Landlordism and capitalism are the upper 
 and nether millstones between which the life of the 
 common people is being ground to dust. 
 
 " My one object in politics is to aid in creating the 
 public opinion which will sweep away the causes which 
 produce poverty, vice, crime, drunkenness and im- 
 morality, and introduce an era of freedom, fraternity 
 and equality. This ideal state cannot be reached at one 
 step, but much can be done to mitigate some of the grav- 
 er evils arising out of our present system of wealth pro- 
 duction. The immediate object of the Labour Party 
 is to create a driving force in politics which will overcome 
 the inertia of politicians in regard to social reforms, and 
 give the nation a strong, true lead along the paths 
 which make for national righteousness. To see that 
 children are properly fed and cared for, that the able 
 are given an opportunity to work, and that comfort is 
 brought into the life of the aged, are objects worth 
 striving for. These things lie outside the domain of 
 ordinary party politics, but they must be attended to 
 if the nation is to be saved from decay; and should I 
 again be returned as your representative, it will be my 
 main concern to see that they are attended to. 
 
 " As a Democrat, I am opposed to every form of heredi- 
 tary rule, and in favour of conferring full and unfettered 
 [232]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 powers upon the common people. In this connection I 
 include women as well as men. " 
 
 I think it is peculiarly fitting that an utteranee of 
 Lincoln close this part:* 
 
 " In my present position I could scarcely be justified 
 were I to omit raising a warning voice against the ap- 
 proach of returning despotisms. It is not needed nor 
 fitting here that a general argument should be made in 
 favour of popular institutions, but there is one point 
 not so hackneyed to which I ask a brief attention. It 
 is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, 
 if not above, labour in the structure of government It 
 is assumed that labour is available only in connection 
 with capital; that nobody labours unless somebody else 
 owning capital somehow by the use of it induces him to 
 labour. But capital is the fruit of labour and could never 
 have existed if labour had not first existed. Labour is the 
 superior of capital and deserves much the higher con- 
 sideration. No men living are more worthy to be trusted 
 than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined 
 to take or touch aught which they have not honestly 
 earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political 
 power which they already possess, and which, if surren- 
 dered, will surely be used to close the door of advance- 
 ment against such as they and to fix new dis- 
 abilities and burden upon them until all of liberty shall 
 be lost. " 
 
 Prophetic words, spoken of all who labour, and also 
 words which show Lincoln's matchless faith in the 
 
 * In Message to Congress, December 3, 1861. 
 [233]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 great common people. He came from them, he knew 
 them, and he loved them. Can anyone have a doubt 
 as to where he would stand in connection with the great 
 and pressing questions that are immediately before us ? 
 
 [ 234]
 
 VIII 
 
 METHODS WHEREBY WE SHALL SECURE 
 THE PEOPLE'S GREATEST GOOD 
 
 11 OW can we, as a people, get the machinery of govern- 
 ment back into our own hands ? How can we meet and 
 battle with and defeat the combination which great 
 moneyed, corporate interests have made with the 
 political machine, the combination that has already 
 well-nigh throttled democratic or representative govern- 
 ment in the nation ? We have seen by illustrations per- 
 haps almost too prolific, how the people's will is thwarted, 
 how their desires are disregarded, and how they have 
 literally to fight their chosen representatives in order 
 to prevent them from selling out their interests com- 
 pletely to the agencies already mentioned. 
 
 We need now a new and more comprehensive appli- 
 cation of the term, traitor, so that it includes in its scope, 
 the one who, as a chosen and supposed representative 
 of the people and hence of the country, for gold or for 
 whatever gain, conspires with the enemies of his people, 
 and sells to them his people's interests, as hundreds of 
 our representatives, municipal, state, national have 
 done in one form or another the past twelve months, 
 the same as for many years that are gone. They will 
 r 235 1
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 continue to do so and in greater numbers and to greater 
 extent as each year passes, unless we as a people begin 
 in some effective and common-sense way to attend 
 diligently to our own affairs in government. This is 
 not a mere putting together of words, nor a false charge, 
 nor an idle, thoughtless statement, but a hard, cold, 
 though exceedingly unwelcome, fact. 
 
 We must take it out of the power of men to make 
 traitors in civil life, which are far more destructive 
 and disastrous to the people's and therefore to the 
 nation's welfare, than the occasional traitor that ap- 
 pears in time of war. I had almost said this tendency 
 must be checked, but the hard, cold facts demand one 
 instead to say, this condition that is actually among us, 
 sucking the very life-blood from the body of freemen, 
 must be speedily checked and driven from out the land, or 
 the dissolution of the nation is to be the inevitable result, 
 in addition to the humiliation attendant upon this con- 
 dition, and also the great losses we have already sus- 
 tained and will sustain to a continually increasing degree. 
 
 Our governmental institutions to-day, not in theory 
 perhaps, but as they actually exist, are neither demo- 
 cratic nor representative. This no thoughtful, clear- 
 seeing man at all acquainted with existing conditions 
 will even attempt to deny, however great may be his 
 desire to do so. It is not necessary here to ask, Why is 
 this so ? This we have gone into both directly and in- 
 directly, to almost a wearying extent already. The ques- 
 tion is, How shall we get back in fact, and in actual 
 practice and results, to what government among us 
 [236]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 is in theory — the government and institutions upon 
 which we so pride ourselves? 
 
 A serious shortcoming in our institutions has de- 
 veloped itself, a shortcoming which could scarcely 
 be foreseen in the beginning. We must halt now to make 
 the necessary changes and repairs, or the entire ma- 
 chinery will be wrecked, adding another huge junk 
 pile to the wrecked and worn-out machinery of nations 
 that once were great, but whose people were unable 
 or illy inclined to see and grasp .the meaning of new 
 times and conditions, and arouse themselves sufficiently 
 to master them instead of suffering themselves to be 
 brought to a gradual ruin by them. A change now is 
 essential, a repairing of the machinery. 
 
 We must take a long step and get back to, or move 
 forward to, actual representative government. Representa- 
 tive, is here a better word perhaps than democratic. 
 The New England town-meeting still in active opera- 
 tion in hundreds of New England towns and villages, 
 and a similar method in vogue in many of our newer 
 western states, is perhaps the best concrete example 
 of the latter. You who have had part in or who have 
 attended such a meeting or meetings, know how each 
 year the voters of the town or village meet at the duly 
 appointed time and place, and initiate, discuss, vote 
 upon and adopt such measures, make such appropria- 
 tions, select such men to carry out their programme 
 as they decide is necessary or advisable for the coming 
 year. You appreciate most fully how impossible it is 
 with such a method to sell out the interests of the people 
 [237]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of the village or town, because the people are there to 
 attend to their own business and to look after their 
 own interests. This method works just as effectively 
 and as safely now for the interests of the people as it 
 did a hundred years ago, or when it was first instituted, 
 and the reason is apparent on the face of it. Those who 
 are acquainted with its effective workings, would like 
 to see it extended to all our villages and towns through- 
 out the country, the same as it is being adopted here 
 and there in various parts of our thriving newer western 
 states. Because it has such a thorough common-sense 
 basis, it works as well in practice as in theory. It is 
 better than representative government. It is pure 
 democratic government. 
 
 It is the principle upon which the institutions of a 
 great nation can most safely be built. But when it comes 
 to the larger units, the large city, the state, the na- 
 tion, then its application becomes more difficult, if 
 not entirely out of the question. As nearly as we can 
 approach to it, however, is the best government; and 
 in these larger units we have in theory an ideal system, 
 in that we select men to represent us at seats of govern- 
 ment, municipal, state, and national. We, however, 
 have not completed the system. The result is that our 
 theoretical representative government has become in 
 practice thoroughly and notoriously — with a proper 
 allowance of exceptions of course — misrepresentative. 
 In other words our system has developed, or has given 
 evidence of some most serious shortcomings, and I 
 admit, shortcomings such as could not fully be foreseen 
 [238]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 in the beginning, but such as have made it what it has 
 become, in some respects, the laughing stock of coun- 
 tries whose machinery of government is supposed to be 
 far less representative than our own. And what we of this 
 generation and those of the generation rapidly coming 
 upon the stage of action are called upon to do, is to recog- 
 nize the exigencies of the time and amend or complete 
 what to-day is far from what it must be made to be. 
 
 Let the State Legislature be an example of both 
 municipal and national legislative bodies. The chief 
 failure or weakness of any particular session of any 
 legislature is that it fails to do certain things that the 
 interests of the people require, and it does various other 
 things that are diametrically opposed to the interests 
 of the people, whose representatives, its members are 
 chosen nominally to be. Now the chief reason that is 
 at the bottom of this two-fold failure has been gone 
 into so fully in previous pages that it is unnecessary 
 to make useless repetition here. But the point is, that 
 in connection with the acts of these nominal representa- 
 tives of the people, the people have practically no 
 recourse, in other words they are absolutely at the mercy 
 of their agents. We act in a way that no business man, 
 even for an instant, would think of acting in connection 
 with his agents, or in a way that if he did so act, his 
 business would be irrevocably ruined and in many cases 
 in less time that it would take to describe the process. 
 
 Now, one feature in connection with which it is 
 essential that we immediately repair the machinery of 
 our government is, that we have the power, and the 
 [239]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 quick and ready power to initiate whatever measures 
 a sufficient number of people feel the public interests 
 require. Another feature is, that we have the power to 
 veto whatever measures our chosen representatives, 
 or supposed representatives, may enact, that a sufficient 
 number of the people feel are opposed to the public 
 welfare. These are two principles, fundamentally com- 
 mon-sense and essential in order to perfect the running 
 machinery of our government. 
 
 In our system of representative government as it has 
 worked out to the present time, the people — the source 
 of power and in whose hands all power should reside — 
 have lost, to all intents and purposes, the ability of 
 having their desires or wishes put into force. We delegate 
 power to men and hold them in no way responsible to 
 us for the use of that power, and with the tremendous 
 prices large corporations, many of them fattened off 
 of the people's properties, are able to and do pay, we 
 expect men, many of them entirely irresponsible be- 
 cause chosen by these interests for the direct further- 
 ance of their ends, to work for our interests and for the 
 public welfare. 
 
 We do what no business management would consent 
 to or even think of doing, unless he were deliberately 
 inviting the disruption or the certain annihilation of 
 his business; and it requires only the most ordinary 
 course of reasoning and especially when reinforced 
 by the lessons that are in such vast numbers being 
 thrust into our faces, to know that the continuance of 
 our representative system without a safeguard for re- 
 [240]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 tention of power on the part of the principals, will mean 
 continued unsatisfactory and humiliating conditions 
 and tremendous losses, and the eventual dissolution of 
 every semblance of desirable government. In other 
 words we have come to a weakness, a breakdown in 
 our machinery of government, which could not be 
 fully anticipated by those who gave us our splendid 
 beginnings of government; and which, let it be said, 
 if we have but half the wisdom they displayed, we will, 
 without delay and at whatever cost be about repairing 
 or remodelling, and we will bring it up to the develop- 
 ment and to the needs of the times. 
 
 Now in what simple practical manner can we bring 
 these two essential provisions into our respective 
 spheres of government ? Fortunately we do not have to 
 theorize in regard to the matter at all; a system has 
 already been initiated and has been in effective use for 
 many years already. From a nation that of all nations 
 has the most ideally representative government, be- 
 cause the most democratic in its essence, Switzerland, 
 we have a system that has been in successful operation 
 for many years, hence thoroughly tested, and that has 
 worked equally well in other countries where it has 
 been put into operation, as also in several common- 
 wealths in our own country. 
 
 It is through the principle of Direct Legislation, by 
 means of the Initiative and Referendum, that we can 
 get the machinery of government back into our own 
 hands, and establish a truly representative system 
 of government among us. 
 
 [241]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "The Referendum started in 1830 in the Canton of 
 St. Gall, the Initiative in 1845 in the Canton of Vaud. 
 Since those dates the two institutions have marched 
 in a triumphal tour through the Swiss Republic until 
 they have been adopted in the Federal Constitution. 
 It is not too much to say that within these few years, 
 Switzerland has been converted from a nest of oligar- 
 chies, entrenched behind vested interests, into the 
 model Democratic Republic." 
 
 The Initiative means the proposal of a law or statute 
 by the petition of a certain percentage of voters. 
 
 The Referendum means a vote by the people on any 
 law passed by the legislature, or on a law proposed 
 by the Initiative. 
 
 The two are referred to many times under the term 
 Direct Legislation, or sometimes characterized as 
 "guarded representative government." 
 
 As a thoughtful writer has said: "Direct Legislation 
 is simply an application of the fundamental principles 
 of agency recognized in every court of law in the civilized 
 world, viz: That an agent must hold himself at all times 
 subject to the command and approval of his principal. 
 One employing an agent to manage his business ex- 
 pects him to do as he is directed in its conduct. If he 
 is not willing to do this he may be discharged by the 
 principal. The employer retains the power of instant 
 veto, not having to wait until the end of a specified 
 term, during which his property might be mortgaged, 
 sold or given away." 
 
 In reply to the question — What is the Popular 
 [242]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Initiative? in an able Symposium in The Arena* the 
 answer is: 
 
 "The Popular Initiative is the right of a certain 
 percentage of the voters, usually five or ten per cent, to 
 propose a law, ordinance or constitutional amendment 
 for action by the legislature or decision at the polls, or 
 both. 
 
 " Under what is considered by many as the preferable 
 form, the measure which is petitioned by the requisite 
 number of voters, goes to the proper legislative body, 
 which may adopt or reject it, amend it, pass a substitute, 
 or refrain from any action in reference to it. If the 
 legislative body does not enact the measure as petitioned 
 for, or if it takes adverse action in any form, the said 
 measure together with the amendment, substitute or 
 other action of the legislative body goes to the electorate 
 for final decision at the polls. 
 
 "In Oregon a somewhat different form is in use. 
 Here, on the petition of eight per cent of the voters filed 
 with the Secretary of State, the bill or constitutional 
 amendment included in the petition is submitted to 
 the people at the next general election, and if the ma- 
 jority of those voting on the question vote Yes, the 
 Governor announces that fact by proclamation, and 
 
 * The Arena Magazine has taken a very great and commendable 
 interest in the matter of Direct Legislation. Its able editor has had 
 a body of well-known men, also interested in the same matter, prepare 
 for the June number (1906) a Symposium on the Initiative, and for 
 the May number (1906) a like Symposium on the Referendum. 
 Knowing its policies, that it is a magazine with a purpose, and that 
 these articles have been prepared for the purpose of the greatest pub- 
 licity and influence, the author feels free to quote somewhat fully 
 from them. 
 
 [243]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 from that date it is the law of the state without further 
 question." 
 
 In answer to the question, as to why the Initiative 
 is needed now to preserve a government of, for and by 
 the people in the United States? the answer is: "With- 
 out the Initiative the legislature can block the will of 
 the people by refusing to act. By the Referendum the 
 people can veto legislative action when it goes wrong. 
 When through timidity, conservatism, corruption or 
 the pressure of private interest in any form, the legis- 
 lative body neglects or refuses to pass a law or ordinance 
 desired by the public, action may be secured through 
 the Initiative. 
 
 "In many other instances during recent years the 
 people have expressed their desire for legislation and 
 their representatives have made anti-election pledges, 
 but after they were elected they came under the in- 
 fluence of the lobbyists and the representatives of public- 
 service corporations and other privileged interests, when 
 they have been false to their trust and have deliberately 
 violated their pledges. By the Popular Initiative the people 
 can secure needed legislation in a peaceful and orderly 
 way, in spite of corrupt influences that have thwarted the 
 voters and defeated the interests of the community." 
 
 In reply then to the question, What is meant by 
 the Referendum ? * 
 
 "The Referendum means the referring of a law or 
 ordinance or any specific question to the people for 
 decision at the polls. A vote on a law or ordinance may 
 
 * The Arena May, 1906. 
 
 [244]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 be taken, not for the purpose of decision, but merely to 
 secure an accurate and definite expression of public 
 opinion. This is a quasi-Referendum or public-opinion 
 vote, such as is in use in Illinois; also in some cities, such 
 as Chicago and Detroit. The Referendum also means 
 the right of the people to demand the submission of 
 an enactment or measure to the voters for decision; 
 and it is also used to designate a statute or constitutional 
 amendment securing this right. In Switzerland, during 
 the greater portion of the last fifty years, the Referen- 
 dum has been a part of the constitutional law of the 
 republic. When a law is passed, if a certain per cent of 
 the voters, say five, eight or ten per cent, within sixty 
 or ninety days of the passage of the law petition that 
 the people have the right to pass on the measure, the 
 enactment is held in abeyance until the electorate has 
 voted on the question." 
 
 In answer to the question — Does it take from the 
 people's representatives any just rights that belong to 
 them, or in any way limit their legitimate exercise of 
 power, and also to the question — Would legislators 
 be expected to oppose the Referendum ? The reply is : 
 
 " The Referendum takes from the people's representa- 
 tives no power that justly belongs to them. The legis- 
 lators are the agents and servants of the people, not 
 their masters. No true representative has a right or a 
 desire to do anything his principal does not wish to 
 have done, or to refuse to do anything his principal 
 desires to have done. The Referendum merely prevents 
 the representatives from becoming mis representatives 
 [245]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 by doing, through ignorance or dereliction, what the 
 people do not want, or neglecting to do what the people 
 do want. 
 
 "A legislative body may depart from the people's 
 will because it does not know what the people's will is 
 or because the pressure of private or personal inter- 
 est, contrary to the public interest, overcomes the 
 legislators' allegiance to the people's will. In either case 
 the Referendum is the remedy and the only complete 
 remedy ; the only means whereby real government by the 
 people may be made continuous and effective. 
 
 "No reason exists why any honest legislator should 
 oppose it. But legislators who put the interest of cor- 
 porations or other private interest above the public 
 interest might naturally be expected to oppose the 
 Referendum. . . . All legislators who have been 
 corrupted or who desire to be corrupted by public- 
 service corporations and privileged wealth will oppose 
 the Referendum. All legislators who are looking for 
 graft and who are ready to sell out or betray their con- 
 stituents will oppose the Referendum, for it takes from 
 them the power to effectively rob the people and sacrifice 
 the interests of the public for private gain or the power 
 and place that corrupt wealth is ever ready to aid its 
 own tools in securing. These false or misrepresentatives 
 of the people and persons who do not believe in a popular 
 or truly democratic government are opposed to the 
 Referendum. " 
 
 In answer to the question as to why it is imperatively 
 demanded to-day ? the article concludes : 
 [246]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 "The Referendum is imperatively demanded be- 
 cause there has arisen in our midst in recent years a 
 powerful plutocracy composed of the great public- 
 service magnates, the trust chieftains and other princes 
 of privilege who have succeeded in placing in positions 
 of leadership political bosses that are susceptible to the 
 influence of corrupt wealth. ... In this manner the 
 government has become largely a government of 
 privileged wealth, for privileged interests, by the law- 
 lessness of the privileged ones and their tools, with the 
 result that the people are continually exploited and 
 corruption is steadily spreading throughout all the 
 ramifications of political life. Against these evils the 
 Referendum is a powerful weapon. It brings the govern- 
 ment back to the people, destroying corruption and the 
 mastership of the many by the few. 
 
 " The Referendum is the surest and swiftest method 
 of checking the aggressions of the great corporate 
 interests that have captured our legislative bodies, 
 from city council to national Congress. It is the funda- 
 mental reform before the American people. " 
 
 Here is a simple, an effective and a fully demon- 
 strated weapon with which we can strike the necessary 
 blows. It is a practicable and attainable method because 
 it cannot be made an issue of parties and politics. It 
 cannot be made a football of political parties, because 
 it is something in connection with which all men really 
 agree. It is a principle that is almost axiomatic in its 
 truth, and such principles are not subject to dispute. 
 And moreover, so far as dominant parties at least are 
 [247]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 concerned, no Republican who believes with Lincoln, 
 in " a government of the people, by the people, and for 
 the people, " will dispute its wisdom or oppose its adop- 
 tion and use. And no Democrat who believes with 
 Jefferson that "governments are Republican only in 
 proportion as they embody the will of the people aad 
 execute it, " and " government is more or less republican 
 in proportion as it has in its possession more or less of 
 this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens." 
 And as is evident, no new party that has arisen or that 
 may arise, working for the people's greater interests 
 than they are able to be persuaded the two dominant 
 parties as at present constituted are working for, will 
 oppose the adoption and application of such a principle. 
 Moreover, there is no leader ( no party ) sufficiently 
 foolish, however great his natural desire might be to do 
 otherwise, as to array himself against such an axiomatic- 
 ally sound principle of truly representative government 
 as to oppose it, when its advocates once get it squarely 
 before the people as an issue to be acted upon. 
 
 It seems to me also that those who have various 
 desires and plans for the betterment of governmental 
 institutions, however ideal their conceptions and plans 
 may be, can and will unite upon such a common-sense 
 and practical agency through which effective strides can 
 be made that will pave the way, and that in time will 
 lead to the realization of such hopes and such plans. 
 
 From the very nature of the principle of direct or 
 guarded legislation that we are considering, it would 
 almost seem that specific arguments in its favour were 
 T248] 

 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 unnecessary. It may not come amiss, however, to give 
 briefly an enumeration of some of those most evident, 
 or a sort of summary, of those suggested or hinted at 
 in the foregoing pages of this chapter. 
 
 First and foremost as must be evident to all who 
 have more or less of an intimate knowledge of conditions 
 as they actually exist among us to-day, is the fact that 
 as a matter of pure self-preservation of our form of 
 government, and thereby our interests, this amending, 
 this completing of our political system is necessary. 
 It has become essential to the proper working of repre- 
 sentative government. Without this power held in reserve 
 by the people, we make our chosen representatives who 
 would otherwise be honourable men, intent and deter- 
 mined upon the people's interests, the prey of these 
 same nefarious influences for all time to come, or, on 
 the other hand, we make these supposed chosen repre- 
 sentatives whose candidacy is managed by these same 
 interests and who have us elect these, their own agents, 
 for them, practically masters of all our common posses- 
 sions, with a free hand to betray our welfare into the 
 hands of these interests. In other words, Direct Legisla- 
 tion is essential to representative government in complex 
 or large communities, essential to the realization of 
 anything approaching true democracy. "It is simply 
 a common-sense application of the principles of agency, 
 affording the principal his proper rights of veto, con- 
 struction, control and discharge. Direct Legislation 
 means control of your servants instead of letting your 
 servants control you." 
 
 [249]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 From this, then, follows naturally the fact that bribery 
 and the corrupt and venal lobby will, to a great extent, 
 be done away with, or they will be so diluted that the 
 results will be practically the same. Where $50,000 
 would buy the necessary number of councilmen, or 
 legislators to buy the passage of a measure, the briber, 
 the agent of the " interests" could not with this amount 
 or any amount buy 50,000, or 5,000, or any large number 
 of citizen voters to vote for or to pass a measure against 
 their own interests. Such a thing is scarcely conceivable. 
 The " interests" then are not going to pay their good 
 money to men who cannot "deliver the goods," and 
 under this system they cannot deliver the goods, because 
 they would not have the final say in regard to the 
 matter at issue. Rings and bosses will lose their hold 
 and their business. Franchise grabs and blackmailing 
 bills will in time disappear because in case of the former, 
 the people will be able to see to it that their properties 
 are retained for their own use and welfare, and in case 
 of the latter the people can always be appealed to with 
 the assurance that justice will be compelled. The 
 following paragraph from a former distinguished Judge 
 and a man who knew well the methods of the boss, the 
 machine, and the " interests, " is most appropriate here: 
 
 "The fierce commercialism of the age, which has 
 tended to enthrone the dollar and enslave the man, has 
 lowered the standards and has covered the land with 
 corruption until corrupt concentrations of money, 
 wielded by unscrupulous men, have acquired such a 
 complete control of the governments, national, state 
 [250]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and municipal, that the people are almost helpless. 
 Laws destructive to their interests are passed through 
 bribery, and laws necessary for their protection are 
 kept off the statute book by bribery. To meet this new 
 and unfortunate condition it is necessary that the people 
 be given the power in certain emergencies to legislate 
 direct, either by a popular vote to put specific acts 
 upon the statute book, or to declare certain specific 
 acts already on the statute book to be null and void. 
 This would destroy the business of bribery, because it 
 would render the fruits of bribery worthless. No corpo- 
 ration would buy a legislature or a city council if the 
 acts of that legislature or council could be nullified by 
 the people. 
 
 "This system has worked marvellously well where 
 it has been tried. . . . It is not a question to speculate 
 about. It is not a chimerical idea. It is simply a question 
 of self-preservation. " 
 
 And the following from Governor Folk when the 
 people of Missouri were finally aroused and determined 
 to free themselves from most debasing and well-nigh 
 intolerable conditions, is more than suggestive. 
 
 "Vote for the Initiative and Referendum, a system 
 that will be the death blow to corruption, and the only 
 true remedy for bribery. Why elect me unless I am given 
 the proper tools ? " 
 
 While on the one hand the application of the Initia- 
 tive and Referendum * would have a very telling effect 
 
 * Ellweed Pomeroy, President of the National Direct Legislation 
 League, is one of the highest authorities in the country on this sub- 
 ject. He has made an exhaustive study of its workings in the Swiss 
 
 [251]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 upon the party boss and the machine, upon the star 
 chamber, "arranging" methods through which almost 
 every phase of legislation must pass, it would also 
 on the other hand call into public life in many cases a 
 higher grade of men, for the higher the plane politics 
 are upon, the better the men that are naturally attracted 
 to it. This is the general rule ; the exception occurs in case 
 of the occasional brave and earnest man who sees the 
 well-nigh intolerable conditions in political affairs around 
 him, and who without thought of self and without count- 
 ing the cost, sets about in an endeavour to end them. 
 
 It will promote thought and discussion and a greater 
 intelligence on the part of all people in connection 
 with all public measures. As it is, the average citizen, 
 good citizen if you please, has no part in the dis- 
 cussion nor in the forming of conclusions in legis- 
 lative matters ; he has no method except in some 
 cumbersome and roundabout and generally ineffective 
 
 government, and has been a most indefatigable worker for its adop- 
 tion here. He has during the past ten years or so discussed its merits 
 before popular gatherings in many different states, before schools and 
 colleges and before many educational and civic bodies ; and it is 
 perhaps no more than just to say at no small loss to himself, for he is 
 a business man and for most business men their time is money. He 
 has at no period been more deeply interested in the movement for 
 which he has stood than he is to-day. 
 
 In a biographical sketch of him by the editor of one of our current 
 exchanges, the writer says : " He belongs to a group of thoughtful 
 young Americans and to a band of thoughtful workers who reflect the 
 spirit of altruism, or co-operation and brotherhood, as opposed to the 
 spirit of commercialism, greed, and egoism that is struggling to estab- 
 lish an oligarchy or plutocracy under the mantle of republican institu- 
 tions, as the di Medici family subverted free institutions and 
 established a despotism under the garb of a republic in Florence dur- 
 ing the Renaissance." 
 
 His address is Ellweed Pomeroy, A.M., East Orange, N. J. 
 
 [252]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 way of making his desires or his protests regarding 
 matters of legislation known. With this simple 
 and effective direct instrument in the hands of 
 good citizens, their interest in good government 
 and in all measures of public concern and welfare 
 would revive, and by reason of the healthy stimulation 
 it would receive, it would give birth to a new type of 
 patriotism that would redeem and carry our institu- 
 tions long strides towards what they are yet to be. And 
 its influence upon the youth of the land, as they in turn 
 come into the field of action, it is easy to forsee. 
 
 It would strengthen our respect for law, instead of 
 our growing disrespect for it, because then its enact- 
 ment would emanate "from the mind, the conscience, 
 the abiding will of the sovereign people," instead of 
 legislators, "some of whom," says an editorial in the 
 New York Independent, " are wise men, some of whom 
 are good men, many of whom are fools, and not a few 
 of whom are scoundrels." 
 
 It will separate issues from men, thereby fostering 
 intelligent discussion and keeping real issues fairly 
 before the people. As important a feature as any in 
 its favour is the fact that it is the remedy, the reform, 
 the amending, the completing of our governmental 
 institutions along the lines of least resistance, which is 
 a most important feature in connection with practical 
 politics and in connection with political growth and 
 continual higher political attainment. 
 
 We have considered, though in very brief form, the 
 reasons or arguments in favour of direct or guarded 
 [253]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 legislation. What are the arguments against it ? I have 
 never seen more than two that are really worthy of con- 
 sideration. One is, that the people will make mistakes. 
 The other is that they will abuse this power. 
 
 As to the former, we will readily grant the truth of 
 the assertion. The people will make occasional mis- 
 takes, and they will be apt to make more mistakes at 
 first than they will later on with more experience and 
 with such increased intelligence in connection with 
 matters of public policy as this educative process will 
 bring about. That no system is wholly perfect will be 
 most readily admitted by all. But the real, the vital 
 question is, will the people make as many mistakes 
 working directly for their own Interests, as the mis- 
 takes made — and that mistakes are sometimes made 
 by the people's representatives will be admitted and 
 freely perhaps by all — by these representatives, 
 combined with the frightful wrongs and injustices 
 that are frequently perpetrated under our present 
 irresponsible representative system, where bribery 
 and graft and public debauchery have become so wide- 
 spread and so general on account of this weakness in 
 our system, as to make us the laughing stock of practi- 
 cally every other civilized country in the world, Russia 
 possibly excepted. The people know their own desires 
 and aims and their own business better than it can be 
 known by any number of representatives, even though 
 they might be uniformly wise and honest. 
 
 The man who is afraid to trust the people when it 
 comes to attending to their own affairs, has something 
 [254]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 radically wrong in his mental make-up, or has some- 
 thing under cover that will not stand the scrutiny of 
 honest and honourable men. Watch him. 
 
 We must, moreover, get over the idea that matters 
 of government are deep and intricate and complex 
 matters. When it comes to attending to their own affairs 
 on the part of the people, there is nothing intricate or 
 complex, or there is nothing as intricate and complex 
 as would at first thought seem. But things are made 
 or are made to seem, intricate or complex, by the pro- 
 fessional politician, by the paid agents, and at times the 
 paid attorneys of thieving or stock juggling corpora- 
 tions or privilege seeking or law defying corporations, 
 combines and agencies of the various types that are 
 continually at work. 
 
 So much then for the argument that the people will 
 make mistakes. 
 
 As to the other argument above noted — that the 
 people will abuse this power, the testimony in an over- 
 whelming abundance is, that it is entirely unfounded, 
 that it has no basis in actually demonstrated fact. This 
 argument that the people will abuse this power which 
 is not borne out by the facts, but which has on the 
 contrary been wholly disproved by such facts as we 
 have up to the present time, brings us to the enuncia- 
 tion of one of the strongest possible reasons for the 
 Initiative and Referendum, namely, that the very fact 
 of the people having this power reserved in their 
 own hands and without having to have recourse 
 to it at all, prevents in many cases, questionable 
 [255]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 or baneful legislation, and on the other hand compels 
 legislation that would not many times be enacted were 
 it not that the people hold this compelling power. The 
 holding of this power indicates, and makes all too 
 plainly evident to the people's representatives and to 
 those who would debauch and buy them, that the 
 people hold in their own hands the final power, and 
 their legislators cannot be bought successfully without 
 the buying of the people, which on the very face of it 
 is impossible. 
 
 Direct Legislation amendments have already be- 
 come a part of the constitutions of several of our pro- 
 gressive newer western states. One state has had the 
 Referendum as a direct constitutional amendment 
 since 1898. It has never yet, however, been driven to 
 the necessity of making use of it. " It remains, just the 
 same, a ' flaming sword ' in the hands of the people, con- 
 stantly reminding the unscrupulous lobby and the 
 designing ' boss ' that there is a reserve power which, 
 when the occasion demands, can and will be brought 
 into requisition." Where the proposal of Direct Legisla- 
 tion has been brought squarely before the people to 
 receive their sanction or their veto, it has in almost 
 every case been adopted by an overwhelming vote. 
 It was adopted in one state by a vote of over five to one. 
 It has been made part of the charter law already in a 
 few cities, and in every case so far — state and munici- 
 pal — it has given good results ; in many cases results 
 that could not possibly be accomplished in any other 
 way, or by any other at present known way. 
 T256]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 A Direct Legislation Amendment went before the 
 people of the State of Oregon at the general election of 
 1902, and was adopted by an overwhelming majority. 
 This was just ten years from the time agitation for it 
 was first begun. The essence of this new provision may 
 be said to be as follows, contained in the opening sen- 
 tence of Article IV, Section I : " The legislative authority 
 of the State shall be vested in a Legislative Assembly, 
 consisting of a Senate and a House of Representatives, 
 but the people reserve to themselves power to propose 
 laws and amendments to the constitution, and to enact 
 or reject the same at the polls, independent of the 
 Legislative Assembly, and also reserve at their option 
 the power to approve or reject at the polls any act of the 
 Legislative Assembly." As to the numbers required to 
 make effective this power held in reserve by the people, 
 eight per cent of the legal voters of the State have the 
 power to propose or initiate laws, constitutional amend- 
 ments, etc., and five per cent may demand a referendum 
 on any act or acts passed by the Legislature when their 
 petitions are filed within ninety days after the adjourn- 
 ment of the Session during which they were enacted. 
 
 During even the comparatively short time that the 
 people of the State of Oregon have had this amendment 
 incorporated into their constitution as has been well 
 said, " it has proved a field of dragons teeth to the Oregon 
 machine politician. " Through the possession of this 
 they have already secured that now essential measure 
 for political decency and political progress, a Direct 
 Primary Election Law, than which there is nothing 
 [257]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 more effective to put political bosses and machine 
 politicians out of business. In a late number of The 
 Review of Reviews is a very suggestive article by a 
 resident of the State of Oregon, giving a review of the 
 methods used to bring this amendment about and 
 some of the results already evident.* The following 
 brief paragraphs are taken from it: 
 
 "The initiative and referendum amendment was not 
 an end in itself, but a means to an end. It provided, first 
 of all, a way by which the constitution could be amended 
 in any particular within a reasonable time by the people 
 acting in their legislative capacity. Those who were 
 responsible for bringing forward the amendment had 
 in mind several important reforms whose enactment into 
 law they believed would be made possible only by this 
 means. 
 
 " One of the reforms for which the amendment was 
 intended to prepare the way was a primary-election 
 system of nominating State, county, and local officers. 
 So strong was the demand for this reform that in the 
 campaign of 1902 both of the leading political parties 
 pledged themselves to secure its enactment by the Legis- 
 lature. The question of the popular election of United 
 States Senators was also a most practical one in Oregon, 
 in view of the various legislative " hold-ups " chargeable 
 to the old constitutional method of choosing Senators, 
 and as early as 1901 a bill was passed providing for a 
 popular vote for United States Senator. The People's 
 
 * Oregon as a " Political Experiment Station, " by Joseph Shafer, 
 The Review 0} Reviews, August, 1906. 
 
 [258]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Power League, however, which had fathered the initia- 
 tive and referendum, resolved upon the enactment of 
 a thoroughgoing primary law that should include, as 
 an organic feature, the nomination and election of 
 Senatorial candidates. So a bill was drawn up and 
 presented to the people at the general election in June, 
 1904, which was passed by a great majority. 
 
 " On the 20th day of April, 1906, the primary law was 
 employed for the first time in nominating candidates 
 to be voted on at the regular election in June, and it is 
 not too much to say that by its means political methods 
 in Oregon have been revolutionized. To a remarkable 
 extent, old political leaders who had shown undue 
 devotion to private or corporation interests were elimi- 
 nated, while the great parties vied with each other in the 
 effort to bring out candidates whom the public could 
 trust. 
 
 "The way in which this formidable list of subjects 
 was dealt with is highly creditable to the Oregon elector- 
 ate. . . . In no case was there indifference; every- 
 thing points to the fact that the ordinary voter studied 
 the questions proposed, made up his mind before going 
 to the polls, and voted independently on all the proposi- 
 tions placed before him. The measures have provoked 
 a vast deal of discussion; indeed, it may be said that for 
 a number of months past the people of Oregon have all 
 been more or less actively engaged in the business of 
 legislation. The educational benefits incident to the 
 system are bound to be very important. With a change 
 in the initiative law perfecting the method of distributing 
 [259]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 copies of proposed measures to the voters, there is no 
 reason why every farmers' club, labour union, and 
 lyceum in the State cannot become in effect a miniature 
 legislative assembly. In this way the interests of all 
 sections and all classes of the people are bound to receive 
 attention; measures will be proposed for submission to 
 the local representatives and others to go before the 
 people at the general elections. 
 
 " But, with all this political activity, there is no evidence 
 of dangerously radical tendencies. The people want 
 to make their government as perfect as possible, but 
 are not disposed to hurry the process unduly. The recent 
 election, indeed, revealed in a striking manner their 
 conservative disposition. 
 
 " In conclusion, we remark among the Oregon people 
 a genuine joy at the discovery of their political capabili- 
 ies. Representative government is good, but there is 
 an exhilaration in direct participation in law-making, 
 the interest is sharpened, the intelligence is quickened 
 moral susceptibilities are aroused. The Oregon people 
 are convinced that in the double form of government, 
 partly representative and partly direct, they have dis- 
 covered the true solution of the problem of self-govern- 
 ment in our American States. " 
 
 Another agency that is going to tell strongly in the 
 redemption of our present political methods is, indepen- 
 dence in party action. The time has about passed when 
 a sort of blind, senseless, fanatical allegiance to party 
 is going to dominate men as it has in the past. Thought- 
 ful men everywhere are beginning to realize the stupid 
 [260]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and more, the moral criminality, of such allegiance. 
 One reason that the low party machines, as well as those 
 of the higher grade, have been able to be built up with 
 all their damnable characteristics, is that good men and 
 thoughtful men and patriotic men have not in sufficient 
 numbers rebuked their party managers and defeated 
 them in their questionable and dishonourable doings, 
 and have not rebuked the selection of questionable or 
 venal or notoriously unfit men by defeating them at the 
 polls, thereby pushing home a lesson to the party boss 
 or party managers that would be of telling effect, that 
 would be of real service to the party. And when a 
 sufficiently large number of men make it clearly under- 
 stood that they will give unqualified support to that 
 party which in every case puts up the best man for 
 public office, and which stands honestly and squarely 
 for measures of the best public policy, then we will see 
 a great difference in the standards of men nominated 
 for public office, and in the methods of political party 
 management. 
 
 " In our country we fool the people with some pretend- 
 ed differences between one party called the Republican 
 and another called the Democratic." So says an Ameri- 
 can writer in dealing with the agencies that have made 
 the governments of Australia and New Zealand so 
 truly representative of the people's welfare. 
 
 This cry to loyalty to party is generally an emanation 
 from some old hack of a party boss many times dis- 
 solute and dishonest and criminal, both at heart and 
 in practice — an emanation, directly from him, or 
 [261 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 through some of his equally dissolute lieutenants, to 
 hoodwink and to hold the members to the party under 
 his or their joint domination, in order that at the right 
 time they may deliver the goods — the people's in- 
 terests — to those with whom they are in league. That 
 the people have not seen through this method and have 
 not recognized this fact in such larger numbers long 
 before this, is a most astounding fact. But eyes are now 
 open, and minds are now alert and discriminating, 
 and the death knell of those parasites upon the body 
 politic, of these scorpions in their deadly sting, and the 
 methods of the moneyed interests in their dealings with 
 them, are being understood more clearly every day and 
 every month 
 
 Says a writer in The Springfield Republican: "In- 
 dependent voters, after all, are every year more numer- 
 ous in this country. In Massachusetts and Rhode 
 Island there were some 50,000 men who, after voting 
 for a Republican candidate for president, were capable 
 of voting for a Democratic candidate for governor. In 
 Minnesota there were at least 50,000 more of the same 
 sort, and they did business on election day. It is dis- 
 crimination of this sort that will make the republic 
 live forever, if anything will." 
 
 Let us see how it sometimes works as it now exists. 
 An election is approaching and nominations for certain 
 offices are to be made. The directing officers or the 
 agents of certain leading public service corporations, 
 etc., want always to be on the safe side and want to be 
 sure that "safe, sane, and conservative" men are 
 [262]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 nominated. At the appointed time and place a con- 
 ference is held between them and the party boss or the 
 party managers, — the party that is dominant or that 
 seems the more likely to carry the particular election. 
 Then if there is doubt in regard to this, the party boss 
 or the party managers of both parties are "seen," and 
 arranged with. The " interests " care no more whether 
 the men to be elected are members of one party or 
 members of another party than they care whether 
 they belong to one or another religious denomination. 
 
 If the business interests that are liable to be affected 
 have nothing of special importance before them just 
 then, they in turn are " seen " by the party boss or party 
 managers to ascertain if the candidates about to be 
 selected are agreeable to them, in order that the 
 party have their support, etc., etc., and the ticket is 
 made accordingly. If it is a locality where this type of 
 machine politics has been in operation for some time 
 and where the party managers are of the ordinarily 
 low type and have a sufficiently certain hold on affairs, 
 then men of like character are the natural nominees, 
 those whose subserviency is a matter not open to 
 question. If conditions are different, then a very re- 
 spectable type of man, but always "safe, sane, and 
 conservative," such as we find for some reason watching 
 out most carefully for the " interests " business for them, 
 is the natural type of candidate. But whichever the 
 type selected according to the exigencies of the case, 
 as the campaign advances the " loyalty to party " cry 
 is continually to be heard through the various agencies 
 [263]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and methods employed and with which we are now 
 so familiar. Then on election day we march up to the 
 polls to be plucked by this machine management that 
 will sell us and our interests out at the first opportunity, 
 or by this contemptible combination of machine politics 
 with the " interests." I do not say this is true in every 
 case. In many of our smaller towns and villages there 
 may be simply traces of this, in some cases none at all. 
 But wherever it is of sufficient importance you may 
 be sure that matters are "taken care of." Moreover, 
 there is not a city of any considerable size in the country, 
 and there is not a state where this has not been, or is 
 not now going on. This is the combination that has 
 brought the corruption and bribery and debauchery 
 into politics that is now undermining our very institu- 
 tions of government. 
 
 And what are we going to do about it ? I'll tell you 
 what we are going to do about it. We are going to change 
 our method of nominations, and change it in such a way, 
 that the boss, the machine, in their combination with 
 the " interests " are going to have their feet knocked 
 from under them. A system of direct nominations by 
 the people whereby they can ballot for their own candi- 
 dates after much the same plan as they now ballot 
 at regular elections, will soon enable us to select our 
 own candidates for public office, thus making it harder 
 for the combinations to be made whereby we are con- 
 tinually being sold out, sometimes so openly and so 
 brazenly, or in cases where it is not this, then making 
 it harder for combines and trusts and public service 
 [204]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 corporations to secure such favouring legislation as en- 
 ables them to become monopolies, stifling all honest com- 
 petition, ruining thousands of businesses, moving up and 
 keeping up prices of necessities to suit their own ad- 
 vantage, and always in advance of whatever advance 
 comes in wages to the wage-earner, the professional 
 man, and to all outside the combination. 
 
 The caucus and the nominating convention as it has 
 become to-day, is the starting point of all that is corrupt 
 and venal and vile in our American politics. 
 
 It is the stronghold of the boss and with this in his 
 possession he controls elections and legislation, spreads 
 corruption as suits his ends, and makes merchandise of 
 government. Through it he has well-nigh destroyed 
 popular rule, and through him the people have at each 
 election, with an occasional exception here and there, 
 been given merely the choice of two evils. It is only 
 through the destruction of the present system that the 
 power of the boss and his machine can be destroyed, 
 for it is through it that he thrives and carries on his 
 impudent business. 
 
 Several states have already enacted tentative, or 
 more or less effective, primary election laws, not perfect, 
 but being amended and made better as each opportunity 
 for betterment manifests itself. Minnesota, Wisconsin, 
 and Illinois are among these states. As they have so far 
 worked out the following may be said to contain the 
 chief details: 
 
 "Hold the primaries of all parties on the same day, 
 under the control of the regular election officials. Do 
 [265]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 all the voting at primaries from the regular registration 
 lists. Let candidates for office get their names on the 
 primary ballots by petition only — five or ten per cent 
 of the voters in the district of the office-seeker belonging 
 to his party. Let each man vote for the ticket he chooses, 
 and let him vote for but one ticket. Require each candi- 
 date to set forth in his petition for a place on the primary 
 ballot his policy as to the office he expects to fill and as 
 to no other office. Let the candidate of each party who 
 receives a plurality of the votes cast by his party in the 
 primary for the position which he seeks, be the party 
 nominee for this position. As a matter of right, let his 
 name go on the official ballots for the general election. " 
 With such a system it is evident that no party boss 
 could dictate nominations, and without this power 
 he could control neither patronage nor subsequent 
 legislative action, for he is able to dictate these solely 
 through the dependence of candidates upon him. 
 Newly elected officers could then look to the people for 
 their instructions and not be compelled to receive their 
 directions from the party boss and his machine. And so 
 far as the voters are concerned, " each voter would have 
 set up before him in every primary election, and later 
 at the general election, definite, intelligent statements 
 as to the policies which would be carried out in this or 
 that office by the candidates who sought his suffrage. 
 National, state and local issues would not be mixed 
 together. If such a system were in force no people would 
 have to submit to the shame of accepting the marionette 
 of one boss or another. No machine could fatten on 
 [266]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 officially protected vice, or on the sale of legislation. 
 The government would be as good as the people, no 
 better, no worse. ' ' 
 
 Here then is a simple, a practical, and an effective way 
 whereby we can battle with, undermine and wrest the 
 control of government from this combination that has 
 been steadily and systematically perverting all our forms 
 of government for years. 
 
 Direct Nominations by the people, and direct legisla- 
 tion by the people through the Initiative and Referen- 
 dum will give us back our government. 
 
 They are not ends, merely means of ends. But they 
 are the weapons, the strategic weapons, if you please, 
 that must be gained in order to fight successfully the 
 great battles that are now on, for almost before we have 
 realized it the revolution has already begun. 
 
 As it is, fighting with these forces of mammon and 
 corruption, or this combination between the two, it is 
 like an army, a large army, if you please, moving out 
 with wooden swords and wooden guns against oppos- 
 ing forces, much smaller it is true and but a small 
 fraction in numerical strength when compared to the 
 greater army, but entrenched behind fortresses of great 
 strength and of systematic building and every individual 
 armed with the most up-to-date patterns of machine 
 guns, with which the entire oncoming army can be 
 mowed down before it can get even to their entrench- 
 ments. We must have these weapons or lose in the great 
 fight. How shall we secure them ? for they constitute 
 the key to the whole situation. Clearly they will not 
 [267]
 
 In the Fire oj the Heart 
 
 come to us through the initiative action of any political 
 party as such, that is until forced by the people. We 
 will secure these measures, these weapons, through the 
 action of groups of determined men throughout all our 
 states, who will band themselves together in Leagues, 
 known as Direct Nomination, Direct Legislation, 
 People's Power Leagues, or whatever name or names 
 they may see fit to work under. They will formulate 
 the issues, with no small expense both as to time 
 and as to means, they will carry on an educational 
 campaign, and later, reinforced by the support of the 
 people, they will take their bills to the various legislatures. 
 They will compel whatever members may choose or 
 whatever members may dare to oppose them to show 
 their colors, that the people may know who their natural 
 enemies, their betrayers are. If then a sufficient number 
 of members is bought off by the combination in the 
 first meeting of the Legislature before which their bills 
 are brought, they will profit by the knowledge of the 
 methods employed to defeat them, they will go back to 
 their campaigns and to the people with a renewed 
 energy until the voice of the people will speak in such 
 uncertain tones that even the lowest of the combination 
 tools will not dare do anything but listen. Thus rein- 
 forced they will go back to the next meeting of the 
 Legislature into which they have in the meantime put 
 men who will fight from within, and after another hard 
 fight, or possibly even another in some cases, these 
 weapons will be secured and put into the hands of the 
 people. 
 
 [268 J
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 We can spend years in desultory warfare with in- 
 effective or inadequate weapons. With these weapons 
 we can make an effective, a telling, and a conquering 
 fight, taking one after another the citadels of the en- 
 trenched interests opposed to the public and the people's 
 welfare, the citadels of monopoly and of corporation 
 greed, all of them resulting from the combination of 
 the " interests " with the political boss and the political 
 machine. With these weapons we will be moving and 
 continually moving, not merely marking time. With 
 power in our own hands through the possession of these 
 weapons, instead of a much talked of and boasted 
 power that has become merely an empty shell, while 
 the real power is in the hands of the almost insignifi- 
 cantly small numbers who are using it for their own 
 purposes, we will stand as a body of freemen holding 
 the franchise in their own hands, should stand. 
 
 Now here is a programme, simple and effective it seems 
 to me, that we can begin at once to put into operation 
 to bring to an end this intolerable situation that has 
 gradually come about among us. If anyone has a 
 better, simpler, more effective programme, I am willing 
 to yield at every point where its really superior features 
 can be established. I do not mean for some ideal state 
 in the bye and bye, but I mean as a force to set into 
 operation in a practical and telling way now, that we 
 may be up and doing those things that will lead to the 
 ideal state that will be established by our doing now, 
 to-day, what there is to do, and to-morrow the same, 
 and to-morrow. I am an "opportunist" in that I be- 
 [269]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 lieve that the way to attain is to take hold with the 
 clearest insight we can command, of the thing that needs 
 to be done and that can be done to-day, letting that 
 lead to the next thing that will in turn develop itself 
 from it, and this into the next, until in time the foreseen 
 goal is reached. To see an ideal state, and to sit and do 
 nothing until that ideal state is developed and we are 
 in it, or because it cannot be attained all at once, is 
 entirely contrary to all natural law of which we so far 
 at least, have any tangible knowledge. 
 
 With these agencies of political power in our hands 
 we will then be in a position to move along the lines 
 of political and economic advancement untrammelled. 
 We can then take each step and secure each change for 
 political and economic betterment just as quickly as 
 we see such step or such change to be desirable. 
 
 We could then institute as several of our progressive 
 states in keeping with some of the more progressive 
 European countries are instituting, or have instituted 
 — the Recall. By means of it when a public 
 official shows himself too subservient to the will or to 
 the interests of public-service corporations, trusts, 
 combines, etc., or shows too fully a disregard of the 
 expressed will of the people, or violates too fully his 
 anti-election pledges, he can, upon petition of a stipu- 
 lated number of voters, providing it is sustained by a 
 majority of voters when referred in a regular manner 
 to them, be recalled and retired and a true representa- 
 tive of the people's interests be selected in his place. 
 This is a principle long recognized and long established 
 [270]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 in the business world. No business man would against 
 his will continue in his employ an agent incompetent, 
 or a thieving, dishonest agent. We are certainly 
 capable of exhibiting as much ordinary common-sense 
 in matters of government where such tremendous 
 interests are at stake, as we are in matters of ordinary 
 business. 
 
 It wouM end the public careers of men, quite a little 
 list in our New York State Legislature, for example, 
 who have been there, some for years, in the direct 
 service and in the direct pay of corporations that are 
 filching the people of the State for their own gain, and 
 whose methods, whose influence, and whose subser- 
 viency to these interests are more detrimental and more 
 destructive to the people's interest and the interests of 
 the State, than the acts of thousands whom we call 
 criminals in our state penitentiaries to-day. If this 
 volume were given to personalities, this list in the New 
 York Legislature could be given. Those in the Legis- 
 latures in other states, as well as in the Councils of 
 various large cities will come to the minds of those 
 at all conversant with these matters. 
 
 Then the election of United States Senators by the 
 direct vote of the people, such as practically all are now 
 convinced, is not only desirable but necessary, can be 
 brought about in a comparatively short time, and this 
 great stronghold of monopoly in our national govern- 
 ment can be taken. With it can be retired some of the 
 various members that will readily come to the mind of 
 every reader at all conversant with public affairs, that 
 [271]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 are very carefully watching and upholding even with a 
 grim defiance of the public the interests of the " inter- 
 ests. " The following is from an editorial in one of our 
 leading New York City papers : 
 
 "The free and intellectual inhabitants of the State 
 of New York are supposed to have two representa- 
 tives in the United States Senate. As a matter of fact 
 a New York express company has one representative 
 in the United States Senate; a very rich family of railroad 
 owners has the other representative in the Untied States 
 Senate, and the people are not represented there by so 
 much as a white kitten. Nice, popular representation, 
 isn't it ? Under the circumstances you can hardly wonder 
 that no effort is made to protect the people's interests 
 when corporations are concerned. " 
 
 And what could be said of a United States Senator 
 from a very small state who could be described quite 
 accurately as an arch enemy of the American people's 
 interests. What could be said also of a member of the 
 Senate from another small state, as also of certain others 
 from states not so small ? 
 
 The possession of these agencies would enable us 
 to bring about more easily and more quickly a change 
 that the movement now world-wide along the lines of a 
 truer democracy, along the lines of an increasing power 
 in the hands of the sovereign people, is demanding, 
 namely, that all Federal judges and all important 
 officers now receiving their positions by appointment, 
 be made elective at the hands of the people. It is quite as 
 necessary that laws and statutes be construed by repre- 
 [272]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 sentatives of the popular will of the people, as that the 
 laws and statutes be enacted in the beginning by this 
 same agency. Here is a change in a feature of our 
 government that we must now be giving attention to. 
 
 The possession of these weapons would enable us to 
 bring about an effective income tax, or an effective 
 inheritance tax, or an effective act limiting, for the great- 
 er public good, the accumulations, with constant addi- 
 tions thereto, the vast private fortunes that will become 
 in time as menacing and as poisoning to the greater 
 public welfare, as they have proved to be in all times 
 past. That we must be about this matter in some states- 
 manlike and eminently fair manner is now clearly 
 evident to large portions, and perhaps it is not too much 
 to say, to the majority of thinking men who are more 
 interested in the public welfare — true patriots there- 
 fore — than they are in their own selfish personal gain. 
 A wise measure along these lines, moreover, cannot illy 
 effect even the possessors of these vast accumulations 
 for excessive wealth is of no advantage, or rather of no 
 real benefit, to any man nor to his descendants. 
 
 If we cannot in all cases get at a just basis in the 
 distribution of the products of labour, or in the gains 
 from those properties whose great increase in values is 
 caused by the life and the toil of all the people, then we 
 will have to get at the matter also from the other end. 
 Not the interests of a few individuals, able and shrewd 
 I admit, but the welfare of all the people, must be the 
 motto of a really great and continually progressive 
 nation. That we will be able to find a fair and a just 
 [273]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 basis upon which we shall build such action, I am 
 confident. 
 
 It is perhaps not unwise to say that we must get the 
 agencies of government so into our own hands by these 
 direct methods that we can put an effective end to the 
 gambling and predatory methods of Wall Street, not to 
 any methods that are honourable and legitimate and 
 commendable, but to those that are hellish in their 
 nature and whereby tribute is levied upon every man, 
 woman and child in the nation in order that a few 
 buccaneers may add still more to their already ungodly 
 and illegitimate gains. Their methods enable them to 
 reach out into every state and every city and every hamlet 
 in the nation to gather in their tribute and their toll. 
 
 Many of our clearest thinking men are realizing 
 that the time has come that a Federal Bureau of Cor- 
 porations be established, so that all companies, cor- 
 porations, trusts, etc., doing in any way an inter- 
 state business get their charters and articles of incorpora- 
 tion from the Federal government, and be strictly subject 
 to its scrutiny and regulations. On the basis of certain 
 fair but adequate requirements, those companies and 
 corporations designing to do a business unfair, unlaw- 
 ful and illegitimate, could be weeded out. The present 
 stock watering methods now used so freely and so 
 openly employed by practically all large companies 
 and corporations, and all methods designed to give 
 inflated or fictitious values to their stocks, could then 
 be suppressed and could be dealt with in a systematic 
 and satisfactory manner. 
 
 [274] 

 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The possession of these weapons will enable us as an 
 intelligent and a determined people, to bring about 
 such regulations or limitations in the methods and 
 aggressions of our great modern trusts and combines 
 as become monopolistic in their methods or oppressive 
 and therefore destructive to the individual citizen's 
 welfare. We could then counterbalance in an effective 
 way the skilful work of the representatives of these 
 agencies that have become intrenched in our various 
 Halls of Legislation. We could counterbalance the 
 efforts of these representatives of the "interests," 
 as they obstruct and fight from within every measure 
 that is designed to protect the people and the public 
 from the aggressions of such of these as are dishonourable 
 and law defying or law breaking in their practices, as 
 well as blighting and corrupting in their influences. 
 We could also in time, and quickly in some cases, 
 cause a complete political extinction to become the lot 
 of the representatives of these interests. 
 
 I would not be understood as opposed to any of those 
 interests that are honourable and above board in their 
 methods; or opposed to the advancement of those in- 
 terests that are not opposed to the greater public in- 
 terests. Large corporations and large combinations of 
 capital can accomplish results that are unquestionably 
 of great public benefit. Those that are honourable in 
 their methods should in no way be hampered. I do not 
 believe on the other hand that they should be unduly 
 favoured for they are abundantly able to take care of 
 themselves. When, however, they secure their favours 
 [275]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and their advantages at the terrific price that in the end 
 must be paid by the individual citizen and the public 
 welfare, then I say we cannot, without intelligent and 
 effective protest, sit by and complacently permit these 
 blighting influences longer to ply their trade. Because a 
 man is very wealthy it does not follow that he is a criminal, 
 though many are. That a corporation is large and 
 successful is no sign that it is dishonourable or criminal 
 in its methods. Very many, however, are. Those that 
 are honourable in their methods should be given 
 every respect and every aid up to the point that this 
 respect and this aid is not detrimental to the interests 
 of others and to the public welfare. From those that 
 are not we should not only withhold respect and aids of 
 every kind, but we should find an orderly and effective 
 method not only of checking their aggressions, but if 
 they persist in such methods then, of putting them out 
 of business completely. Are we as a people intelligent 
 and determined enough to do this ? Other people are. 
 I believe we are also. When the people are sufficiently 
 united and determined these matters are not so complex 
 and difficult of attainment, as they in the ordinary 
 course of events and under a half-hearted method of 
 procedure, appear. But before a people of the right 
 temper these forces of corporation and privilege will 
 listen and will seek cover, and when they are once on 
 the run they are among the greatest of cowards. Ordin- 
 arily they will not stand in a square and open fight, but 
 when routed they are liable to pop up again in the most 
 unexpected ways. They must be continually watched. 
 [276]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 I think the author of the following paragraph, from 
 a recent number of The Outlook, reads aright the signs 
 and the temper of the times: 
 
 " The people do not resent wealth, but they do resent 
 predatory wealth. They would not despoil their neighbour 
 of any property honestly acquired; but they would 
 despoil him of the power to monopolize any of the 
 avenues of trade or to control any of the functions of 
 government. To compel plutocracy to act decently is 
 not enough; they wish to destroy plutocracy and re- 
 establish democracy — perhaps I should say to establish 
 for the first time in the world's history, a democracy of 
 industry. And they are quietly but none the less eagerly 
 asking, What next? . . . Not the regulation but 
 the overthrow of monopoly is the popular demand." 
 
 It should be the purpose of a wise and liberty loving 
 people to afford every encouragement and protection 
 to each and every honest and legitimate business, be it 
 large or be it small. In this there should be no discrim- 
 ination. But when through bribery and the debauchery 
 of public servants, and when through the securing of 
 unwarranted favours they are detrimental to practically 
 every other interest, or when by technical evasions or 
 delays in the process of existing laws under the guid- 
 ance of skilled legal talent, or when through contemp- 
 tuous disregard or open and apparently fearless viola- 
 tions of existing laws, or when by virtue of the confisca- 
 tion of vast amounts of the people's property, companies, 
 corporations, vested interests, trusts and monopolies 
 become so great, so contemptuous of the people's rights, 
 [277]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart, 
 
 of the state, and of the entire public welfare, then it is 
 the plain duty of a worthy, fair-minded and liberty 
 loving people who have or who can have the full agencies 
 of government in their own hands, to come forward 
 and as one man to cry out, thou thief, thou briber and 
 dcbaucher, thou criminal black in your law defying 
 and law breaking methods, thou despoiler of other 
 men's goods, thou robber of even widows and de- 
 pendent children, thou traitor to the public welfare, so 
 far and no farther. 
 
 Let every vested interest be protected, but let every 
 smaller interest be protected also in like manner. Let 
 no favouritism be shown whereby one class of interests 
 is able to cripple, crush and kill any other interest. 
 
 There is no danger of the American people, unless 
 trifled with too long and unless goaded to the last ditch 
 of desperation, manifesting any undue hostility to any 
 vested interests, and certainly none to any that are 
 honourable and straightforward in their methods; and 
 is there a man living who would think or who would be 
 bold enough to proclaim that hostility should not be 
 shown to all that are not ? It is only an ignorant, or a 
 weakly or foolishly self-complacent, or an already 
 conquered people, though perchance ignorant of the 
 fact, that will not arouse itself to a sufficient hostility 
 to put an end to an economic slavery of such type, and 
 that unless ended will have as its final end a complete 
 political slavery. 
 
 We have this interesting and farcical condition that 
 has come about among us, interesting were it not so 
 [278]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 notoriously bold and brazen and so degrading and 
 destructive in its results — A body of rich men individu- 
 ally and collectively conspire for their own greater and 
 quicker enrichment, deliberately to violate some fully 
 established law. Many times then through certain other 
 influences they set into operation they are not even 
 molested, or if so they many times go scot free. If, 
 however, they are tried and convicted they are let off 
 with a paltry fine — $5,000 or $10,000, or in rare cases 
 $25,000. An employee of one of these corporations has 
 filched from his employers a few hundred or a few 
 thousand dollars, or another has filched from the city 
 or state. He is promptly arrested, speedily tried and 
 sentenced to the penitentiary for a term ranging say 
 from two to twenty years. Now why not fine him a 
 certain small percentage of what he has filched. Is it 
 five thousand ? Make him pay over five hundred of it 
 and call the matter ended ? In other words, what effect 
 or rather what deterrent effect, has a fine of five thou- 
 sand or twenty-five thousand or a million dollars where 
 millions are gained on the part of the managers and 
 proprietors of trusts and large corporations, through 
 their criminal violations of established law? If it is 
 right that the small filcher whom we call criminal be 
 sent to State's Prison, then there is the same right 
 and all the greater reason that these criminals who 
 filch under the most cold-blooded and deliberate 
 methods their millions, who hamper or destroy thou- 
 sands of businesses, who undermine the very foundations 
 of law, of order, of free institutions, then I say there is 
 | 27<) ] 

 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the same right and all the greater reason that these be 
 sent to State's Prison, or that they be fined so heavily 
 that it results in a virtual confiscation of their entire 
 business, or both. We should not be at all chary about 
 talking of " confiscation " when it comes to dealing with 
 criminals. We must, as a people, speedily get the ma- 
 chinery of government — the law making and inter- 
 preting power — so into our own hands through the 
 simple and direct methods already enumerated, that 
 we can put a speedy end to this travesty on justice and 
 order. 
 
 I do not believe in condemning any man. My own 
 errors and shortcomings forbid that. So to a greater or 
 less extent do those of every man. It is only an all -wise 
 and a faultless being that is capable of judging or con- 
 demning; only on the part of such would it be at all 
 consistent. But such a being I believe would find no 
 place in his mind or in his heart for condemnation. 
 And understanding so well the frailties of human nature, 
 in all his judgments he would be most lenient. But 
 when a certain order of society is established that men 
 may live harmoniously and mutually advantageously 
 together, certain forms must be established and obed- 
 ience to them must be compelled. 
 
 We must drive the money-changers from the Temple 
 even as the Christ drove them in His day. In connection 
 with all the frailties of human nature He was supremely 
 charitable. The only ones He ever judged harshly or 
 ever really condemned so far as we have any record at 
 least, were those who bound burdens on other men's 
 [280]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 backs, who never raised even a finger to make them 
 lighter, who sought ever to gain advantage at another's 
 disadvantage, who oppressed or who robbed the people. 
 When we put forth the restraining hand to hold in 
 check or to drive completely out of business men who 
 rend and tear the flesh from other men, simply that 
 they may gorge themselves, not that they need food, 
 then we will manifest somewhat the wisdom and in- 
 sight that was manifested by Him, who understood so 
 fully our common human nature that He was all com- 
 passion and forgiveness for all save those who oppressed, 
 who made burdens heavier, who sought for advantage 
 to another's disadvantage. 
 
 I know it is a fascinating game, this financial game. 
 I also know well that great law of life, that we grow 
 into the likeness of those things we habitually contem- 
 plate. As is one's dominating thought, so his life becomes. 
 As within, so without — simply the direct law of cause 
 and effect. I therefore know that the game with some 
 natures becomes so fascinating and so irresistible that 
 they are carried to depths and extremes that they never 
 even contemplated at the start. To reach out and gain 
 an additional million now and then that he does not 
 earn, but by hook and crook, by gaining or taking some 
 manifestly unfair advantage, by a contemptuous de- 
 fiance, or by a brazen, open violation of law, or by a 
 process of indirect murder, as many a million among 
 us has been gained — and the greater shame upon us 
 as a people — becomes fascinating and well-nigh irre- 
 sistible. But where men are absolutely incapable of 
 [281]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 exercising self-restraint, but are given to excesses and 
 crimes that are not only detrimental to society, but are 
 destructive to the very forces that hold society to- 
 gether, then it is clearly our duty to deal with such men 
 by way of restraint the same as we restrain the lesser 
 criminal. The point is simply this — we must stop 
 recognizing men and groups of men who are engaged 
 in these practices as among our "successful and repre- 
 sentative " citizens. We must look upon these "rich men 
 without moral sense consumed by greed, devoid of scruples 
 and utterly contemptuous of the rights of the people," 
 as the oppressors, as the law-breakers, as the criminals 
 that they actually are. We must deal with them by way 
 of restraint in exactly the same manner as we deal with 
 all other types of criminals. It is only by treatment 
 such as this that we can hope to cope with this type, 
 this most dangerous type of criminal that has become 
 so rampant and so bold and so brazen among us. Just 
 as sensible to attempt to kill an elephant or retard his 
 progress with a pop-gun and its attendant paper wads, 
 as to try to head off or to keep even with the corrupt 
 and criminal practices that these men and federated 
 groups of men are constantly operating under, by 
 meeting to them the penalty of a fine, either nominal 
 or heavy. 
 
 In addition to the possession of these weapons, one 
 of the most significant features of the way the people 
 will win out in the great battles that are now on for a 
 clean, a truly representative, and a continually 
 advancing government, is the type of young men that 
 [282]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 are now coming into the field of 'political action both as 
 voters and as men who will stand for and who will be 
 elected to public office. Here lies one of the most en- 
 couraging and significant features or facts of the times. 
 Already in some sections they are throwing out their 
 battle lines, and some of the old time and hitherto 
 secure bosses and machine managers are fighting with 
 a desperate chance to retain their hold. Some are 
 already down and out, others are rapidly on 
 the way. What has occurred at a few points 
 already is enough, as I have heard it aptly put, 
 to drive the old time apostle of "regularity" to drink 
 or to suicide. Some of the old time bosses and machine 
 managers as well as machine wards are already believ- 
 ing in their vague superstitious bewilderment that the 
 methods of Hell have broken loose and have crossed the 
 border, and others that Hell even is crazy. They are 
 asking, what next ? and wondering where the next blow 
 will fall. 
 
 To the young man who will consent to stand for or 
 who will aspire to public office, I would say, be suffic- 
 iently wise and far-sighted as not to aim for or not to 
 stop at the politician's stage. You will have to dirty 
 your fingers continually, and you will have to lower 
 your ideals and your whole trend of life if you do, you 
 will have to associate with and have as your constant 
 and many times unwelcome companions dirty and 
 selfish and scheming men. You will take your orders 
 from a boss, you will become subservient to him. He 
 will keep you as long as he and his like have use for 
 [283]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 you. Association and like trends of thought will in time 
 mould you into his likeness. You may sink to his level 
 and in time become a boss — a parasite now rapidly 
 becoming despicable in the public estimation; but the 
 chances are that you will get so far and no farther. You 
 will thereby set your own limitations, and in latter 
 years you will confess that your life is a disappointment, 
 as it will indeed be to your family and to all of your trur 
 friends. 
 
 If the stuff is in you then I beg of you to strike for 
 the higher ground. If the stuff is in you, you may reach 
 the statesman stage, but you will reach it only by never 
 making a deal whereby honour is sacrificed, and by being 
 far-sighted enough and brave and resolute enough to 
 stand and to stand uncompromisingly for such measures 
 of public policy and such methods of party management 
 as are always for the people's greatest good. 
 
 If then the stuff is in you, if you are wise and resourceful, 
 you needn't bother so much about retaining the people's 
 support, about retaining hold on your position. The 
 people will attend to that. We need more such men. 
 We need more such young men that the people find it 
 a pleasure and a duty to support. We need more such 
 young men to come from our farms, which contain 
 to-day one of the most interesting and promising sets 
 of young men in the entire world. We need more such 
 young men from our workshops and from all the ranks 
 of labour. We need more such young men to come from 
 our colleges and universities. We are able to recognize 
 such men when they are really to be found. 
 
 284]
 
 In the Fire of tlie Heart 
 
 It is interesting and somewhat amusing to see how 
 even old-time bosses of his own party as well as kindred 
 types of men in all grades of publie office and in party 
 management, those who would have downed and who 
 would have knifed him a hundred times in the past if 
 they could have found the way, are now, as state and 
 congressional campaigns are coming on again, rushing 
 to the support of President Roosevelt and " the policies 
 for which he is standing" — trying in the majority of 
 cases to crawl in under his tent folds. "According to 
 the desires of President Roosevelt," "for the sake of 
 the policies for which President Roosevelt stands," 
 etc., etc. The following from a circular recently issued 
 by the leader of an Assembly District, in the Borough 
 of Brooklyn, is quite typical: 
 
 " We believe it to be the duty of every man who has 
 the Republican party's interest at heart, and who de- 
 sires to aid the cause for which President Roosevelt and 
 the national and State administrations stand, to put 
 forth every effort to elect executive members, county 
 committeemen, and State delegates who will support 
 the — organization as at present constituted under the 
 leadership of — " 
 
 There is nothing that so takes hold of men, that so 
 challenges their admiration, that so compels their re- 
 spect and their support as downright honesty of purpose, 
 as a courage that compels a man to stand firmly or to 
 drive on until he accomplishes what an upright soul 
 that will make no compromise with dishonour compels. 
 Such men compel the support of the people that lesser 
 [285]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and compromising and timid men continually seek. 
 Does this not give us hope for the future of our country 
 and institutions ? Does it not give us renewed faith in 
 our old human nature that we have so many times 
 questioned ? Does it not give us a renewed faith for the 
 future of the race? 
 
 And to speak fully and frankly what one observes 
 and feels — the great admiration and love the millions 
 among us feel for Mr. Bryan, and entirely irrespective 
 of any party names or lines is because they recognize 
 in him also a brave and an honest man, and a man with 
 a heart primarily of love. A man so endowed will stand 
 always for the people's interest and welfare. A man 
 who so stands is a man of the statesman stature. 
 
 One day, several years ago, a certain congressman 
 visited President Roosevelt in the interests of a well- 
 known man, quite prominent in State politics, whose 
 activities in connection with certain postal contracts 
 made it probable that he would be indicted for bribery 
 or conspiracy, or for both. In order that there be no 
 misunderstanding in regard to his position, President 
 Roosevelt followed up their interview with the following 
 letter. 
 
 "( Personal.)" 
 "White House, Washington, October — , 1903. 
 "My dear Congressman: 
 
 " The statement, alleged to have been made by the 
 
 inspector that I ' ordered ' the indictment of , 
 
 or anyone else, is a lie, — just as much a lie as if it had 
 
 been stated that I ordered that anyone should not be 
 
 [286]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 indicted. My directions have been explicit, and are ex- 
 plicit now. Anyone who is guilty is to be prosecuted 
 with the utmost rigour of the law, and no one who is not 
 guilty is to be touched. I care not a rap for the political 
 or social influence of any human being when the ques- 
 tion is one of his guilt or innocence in such a matter as 
 the corruption of the Government service. 
 
 " I note what you say, that the circulation of this re- 
 port about me may alienate the support of many of 
 
 's friends from my administration. Frankly, I 
 
 feel that anyone who would believe such a story must 
 be either lacking in intell gence, or else possessed of 
 malignant credulity. If anyone is to be alienated from 
 me by the fact that I direct the prosecution of Republi- 
 can or Democrat, without regard to his political or 
 social standing, when it appears that he is guilty of 
 gross wrongdoing, — why, all I can say is, let him be 
 alienated. 
 
 "If District Attorney has anything which should 
 
 be known to the Attorney-General or to me as regards 
 this suit, I should be delighted to see him. But, frankly, 
 I have not the slightest desire to see him if his visit is 
 to be in the interest 'of the welfare of the party,' or 
 of my 'success.' In a case like this, where the crime 
 charged is one that strikes at the foundations of the 
 Commonwealth, I should hold myself unfit for this 
 office if I considered for one moment either my own 
 welfare, or the interest of the party, or anything else 
 except the interests of justice. Respectfully, 
 
 " Theodore Roosevelt. " 
 [287]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Why do I cite this ? It will give to young men an in- 
 dication of qualities that compel the confidence and the 
 support of the people; with such qualities subserviency 
 to party boss and party machine, subserviency to low 
 politician methods are made unnecessary. It will offer a 
 suggestion as to one reason why President Roosevelt 
 occupies the position he o-day occupies; also why it 
 can be so truthfully said that he is the only people's 
 President we have had since Lincoln's time. It is with 
 scarcely an exception the limitations that a man sets 
 to himself that determine the level to which he will 
 
 rise. 
 
 Again to the young man entering or contemplating 
 entering political life — If you have contemplated 
 employing the methods first enumerated and stopping 
 at the politician stage, then think again and be wise 
 and keep out altogether. Stay in the workshop, on the 
 farm, at your business, your profession, and have there- 
 by a more satisfactory life, and a life of more value to 
 your fellow-men than it would be if you entered politics 
 on this basis. If, however, you have the material in you 
 and a determination sufficient to measure up to the 
 stature of the statesman, then, for God's sake go into 
 political life, and stay in if you ~an, as long as a well- 
 rounded life will permit. You could do no nobler thing. 
 
 [288]
 
 IX 
 THE GREAT NATION 
 
 1 HERE never has been, and from the very nature of 
 human nature there never can be a truly great nation 
 where one class of people rule, and another class or the 
 other classes are ruled. The great nation is that alone 
 in which the people rule, where through their agent — 
 the state or government, they attend to their own affairs, 
 and where they do not allow others to attend to their 
 affairs for them. Government must be thoroughly 
 representative or those in power will gradually get the 
 agents of administration and of production so under 
 their control, and will so use them for their own gain 
 and their continually increasing powers, that in time 
 the very liberties of the people will be stolen away. 
 
 Of late, we have been having some very direct revela- 
 tions of the actual conditions of government in Russia, 
 where a group of eminently " respectable and high-born 
 gentlemen," among them no less than an august com- 
 pany of Grand Dukes, have for many years been direct- 
 ing the affairs, in a sense ruling this nation of consider- 
 ably over one hundred million people. Some own as 
 high as a dozen or more palaces, all splendidly or even 
 sumptuously equipped, with annual incomes reaching 
 into the millions. This all comes from the people of 
 [289]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 Russia, chiefly the working people. What their condition 
 is, late events have also revealed to the world, and more 
 clearly than ever before. The hopeless state of inef- 
 ficiency that this governing class has kept the nation 
 in, and has prevented it from rising out of, the whole 
 world now knows. To think that their greed and rapac- 
 ity and general debauchery would become so great 
 that through habit they could not keep their hands off 
 of a large and splendidly equipped hospital train, that 
 was starting on its journey during the late struggle with 
 Japan, to give whatever aid it could administer to the 
 wounded and suffering soldiers who in their ignorance 
 were fighting primarily to put more money into the 
 pockets of their rulers! This splendidly equipped train 
 was completely looted and filled with cord wood before 
 it had hardly gotten fully under way, at the instigation 
 or at the connivance of those in authority. But the people 
 of Russia, I hear it said, have not yet attained their 
 freedom and so are not able to prevent other men ruling 
 over them notwithstanding the state of affairs that such 
 a system means. Very true, but there is another truth 
 perhaps even more significant for us. There have been 
 nations where the people have fought for and have won 
 their freedom, but where through lack of due vigilance, 
 and by reason of the growing and in time mastering 
 greed of privileged and excessive wealth, their liberties 
 have been stolen away, and their country, of which 
 they were formerly proud, has through the inevitable 
 resultant internal decay fallen into the hands of the 
 despoiler. The greed for gain becomes so powerful that 
 [290]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 unless the great common people find some way of check- 
 ing or controlling it, those that become mastered by it 
 will pillage the very liberties of their country as quickly 
 as they will loot a hospital train. Recent developments 
 in our own nation, even within the last twelvemonth, 
 have clearly demonstrated that there are among us, 
 men of otherwise high standing, eminently respectable, 
 in learning, in church standing, in society, but who 
 have gotten so under the drunken sway of the greed for 
 gain that they would not only loot a hospital train, but 
 also a funeral train were the prospective inducements 
 sufficiently large, and were the chances of not being dis- 
 covered at it of a sufficiently rosy hue. This may be plain 
 speaking. But a man who will cause or connive at death 
 for gain, and many a death has been caused by the schem- 
 ing, the cunning and the depredations of some of those 
 we term financiers, even within the past few months, 
 is indeed worse in his depredations than the one who 
 will despoil the dead. 
 
 "The law of disintegration and destruction never 
 sleeps and only eternal vigilance can check it. Every age 
 brings its own dangers, and those that come stealthily 
 are frequently more fatal than those that come with a 
 mighty noise. . . . Instead of an armed foe that 
 we can meet on the field, there is to-day an enemy that 
 is invisible, but everywhere at work destroying our 
 institutions; that enemy is corruption. It seeks to direct 
 official action, it dictates legislation and endeavours 
 to control the construction of laws . . . The flag 
 
 [291]
 
 In the Fire of tJic Heart 
 
 has been praised at champagne dinners, while the very 
 pole from which it floated was being eaten off by cor- 
 ruption, and republican institutions were being stabbed 
 to the vitals. A new gospel has come among us, accord- 
 ing to which It is" mean to rob a hen roost or a hen, but 
 plundering thousands makes us gentlemen.'" 
 
 As there can be no great nation without government 
 by the people, so there can be no great nation without a 
 continual vigilance on the part of the people. Vigilance 
 is the price that must ever be paid for continued liberty- 
 Equal advantages and opportunities for all, which is 
 fundamental in any great nation, without active vigi- 
 lance on the part of the people will be quietly and craftily 
 changed into privilege for the few to be enriched through 
 the toil of the many. And as wealth increases wealth, 
 and power increases power, we can readily see how 
 privilege and its concomitant, oppression, has in time 
 spelled destruction to so many former states. 
 
 The fact that we have so much to read from history 
 and so clearly and so repeatedly, makes me so full of 
 hope that there is to come among us a people's move- 
 ment that is to redeem and save this nation. And cer 
 tainly there is now no power of any other nature that 
 can do it. Moreover, this movement must not be unduly 
 long delayed, for concentrated wealth and privilege 
 are growing with such gigantic strides that every year, 
 or now, even every month of delay, on account of their 
 continually growing entrenchments, makes the people's 
 task more and more difficult. 
 
 The great nation, putting it in another form, is that 
 [292]
 
 In the Fire of the [leart 
 
 in which the people realize the fact that they are not 
 separate from or apart from government, but that they 
 are government. It is indeed strange where this is not a 
 part of the active consciousness of the people, what 
 a little group of men and families is able to do in gaining 
 control of the agencies and necessities upon which the 
 welfare or even the very life of the people depends. 
 And nothing has been more clearly and more repeatedly 
 demonstrated in the history of nations than the fact 
 that he who owns or controls that upon which others 
 depend, owns or controls them also. It is possible for 
 there to be a nation of slaves without the word slave 
 or any word of a kindred nature ever being used. The 
 more shrewd and cunning the owners, the more careful 
 will they be to see that no word or sign or mark describ- 
 ing the actual condition of those owned or controlled 
 be used or even hinted. 
 
 Where the people are keen and alert as to who and 
 what they are in relation to government, or rather what 
 government is in relation to them, there will be found a 
 people who see to it that every opportunity is given 
 to those who aim to do right. Such a people will see 
 that among the great mass of their toilers, upon whose 
 sturdy welfare and good keeping the very welfare and 
 ability of the nation to progress, or to continue even 
 to exist at all, depends, there are not untold thousands 
 who are working from early to late year in and year out, 
 getting merely or barely enough for each day's work 
 to provide them with food and clothing and shelter 
 that they may be on hand for to-morrow's work, and 
 [ 293]
 
 In t.' 1 " Fire of the Heart 
 
 to-morrow's and to-nabrrow's — lives devoid of all learn- 
 ing and art and leisure and hope, those elements that 
 are so essential to any life that is not the life of the 
 slave. This does not conduce to that intelligent and pro- 
 gressive and happy citizenship that makes for a real 
 nation of freemen. 
 
 The great nation is again, that in which the agents 
 of production, and especially those that come under the 
 head of natural monopolies, those things upon which all 
 the people depend, are owned and administered as 
 nearly as is possible by their agent, the state, and so 
 administered for the good and the welfare of all, and 
 are not permitted to be monopolized by the few for their 
 own enormous enrichment, and therefore, at the expense 
 of the great mass of the people. It is the private owner- 
 ship or control of these as we have seen, that has per- 
 mitted the growth of our enormously rich men and 
 families that are becoming so intrenched that they are 
 now becoming a menace to the very life of a nation of 
 freemen. It is some of these, not all by any means, that 
 have allowed themselves to become so drunken in their 
 greed for an ever-increasing gain that they have resorted, 
 and are to-day resorting, to such practices of criminality 
 and dishonour that they have won for themselves, and 
 deservedly, the term, 'the low-down rich. ' And lam in- 
 clined to think that as the people get a still greater 
 insight into their methods the application of this term 
 or terms of a similar nature, to them, will be a continual- 
 ly increasing one. But men who gain their riches by 
 these methods are never happy. From the very nature 
 [294]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 of the laws that govern human life they never can be- 
 Therefore, to save these from their drunken frenzied 
 folly, will be an act on the part of the people that will 
 not deprive them of anything that will take away any 
 really valuable belongings, but will be doing a kindly 
 service for them as well as for the people, by seeing that 
 these great common belongings are held and used as such. 
 
 The great nation again, is not that where through 
 this unnatural use of these common belongings we have 
 a small class of rich and powerful men living in their 
 castles with great hordes of hirelings or dependents 
 about them. This is something in regard to which 
 history's lesson is most clearly written. 
 
 The nation with which we are dealing is, again, the 
 one quick to see its weaknesses, also the danger of 
 running into and working in ruts, or remaining in ways 
 that were once advisable and reasonable, but where 
 the time has long since passed for it to continue in these 
 ways, and where a continued growth and advancement, 
 to say nothing of its even holding its own, demands that 
 it keep up with the process of evolution and growth that 
 is ever working to lift the minds and the hearts of men, 
 and hence their relations, to continually higher planes. 
 
 It is also the nation that is alive and keen to the lessons 
 that can be learned from other nations and peoples. 
 Many times the younger nations where great concentra- 
 tions of wealth with its debauchery of the agencies of 
 government on the one hand, and its oppression on the 
 other, have not yet gotten a foothold, and which there- 
 fore are filled with men and women of lofty purpose 
 [295]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 and ambitions for a nation better than has yet been, have 
 commendable features that the older ones can adopt and 
 adapt to their own institutions with great advantage. 
 
 The welfare of the great nation depends above all 
 things, perhaps, upon the general intelligence of its 
 people, and the more general and wide-spread this 
 intelligence the greater, the happier and the more endur- 
 ing the nation. That it cannot be an intelligence and 
 education on the part of the few, while ignorance or a 
 lack of intelligence holds among the larger numbers, 
 has been shown most clearly in connection with nations 
 that were once among the great, but that are not now 
 known except in history, or that have fallen from their 
 place among the ablest to a position among the back- 
 ward and the unimportant. 
 
 Free and open educational opportunities for all, for 
 the poorest as well as the richest, is undoubtedly the 
 best road to a general diffusion of intelligence among 
 the people. It is possible to have wide-spread educational 
 facilities and still for there to be whole armies of children 
 numbering into the thousands of thousands or into the 
 millions, who, on account of carelessness or greed or 
 incapacity on the part of parents or other causes, are 
 deprived until it is too late, of what should be the privi- 
 lege, and more, the right, the sacred right, of every child. 
 
 The state must see to it more carefully than it does, 
 that attendance at school, or some adequate means of 
 education, be made more carefully and more generally 
 compulsory than it now is. 
 
 That army of nearly two million child labourers from 
 [ 296 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 five to fifteen years of age, that are this very day toiling 
 in our mills and sweat-shops and t factories and mines, 
 must be relieved that they too may have the equipment 
 in mind and in body sufficient to enable them to enter 
 upon the plane of life's activities with opportunities 
 somewhat equal to the other millions of the same ages. 
 
 We have an excellent free educational system in the 
 United States; but it is to a great extent and far more 
 perhaps than we realize, offset by this denial of oppor- 
 tunity to this great army of rapidly coming citizens 
 who most of all need these opportunties to enable them 
 to have anything like a fair chance in their struggles for a 
 self-supporting competency, or even for existence at all. 
 
 Greed for gain, and clearly illegitimate gain, will 
 prove triumphant and will stifle the higher promptings 
 of the nation's heart, unless we compel every man 
 running a parasitic business or enterprise to be decent. 
 
 " To what purpose then is our ' age of invention ' ? 
 Why these machines at all, if they do not help to lift 
 care from the soul and burden from the back ? To what 
 purpose is our ' age of enlightenment, ' if, just to cover 
 our nakedness, we establish among us a barbarism that 
 overshadows the barbarism of the savage cycle ? Is this 
 the wisdom of the wise ? Is this the Christianity we boast 
 of and parade in benighted Madagascar and unsaved 
 Malabar? Is this what our orators mean when they 
 jubilate over ' civilization ' and ' the progress of the 
 species ' ? 
 
 " And why do these children know no rest, no play, no 
 learning, nothing but the grim grind of existence ? Is it 
 [297]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 because we are all naked and shivering? Is it because 
 there is sudden destitution in the land? Is it because 
 pestilence walks as noonday? Is it because war's red 
 hand is pillaging our storehouses and burning our cities ? 
 No, forsooth! Never before were the storehouses so 
 crammed to bursting with bolts and bales of every 
 warp and woof. No 3 forsooth! The children, while yet 
 in the gristle, are ground down that a few more useless 
 millions may be heaped up. We boast that we are leading 
 the commercialism of the world, and we grind in our 
 mills the bones of the little ones to make good our 
 boast. 
 
 What avail our exports, our tariffs, our dividends, 
 if they rise out of these treasons against God ? All gains 
 are losses, all riches are poverties, so long as the soul is 
 left to rot down. ... "* 
 
 There are golden opportunities for earnest men and 
 women to enter upon a determined work in every- 
 one of our states until conditions along these lines in 
 everyone of them are what they should be. Magnificent 
 work has already been and is being done on the part of 
 many; the help of more, those who have a singleness of 
 purpose that does not stop even in the face of defeats 
 until the thing is done, is solely needed. 
 
 But outride of this great army of children at work at 
 that important period when they should be getting 
 their equipment for life's work and duties, many times 
 at the expense of great bodily injury as well as intellect - 
 
 * "The Hoe-Man in the Making," Edwin Markham, in the Sep- 
 tember (1906) Cosmopolitan. 
 
 [ 298 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ual and moral, there are almost unbelievingly large 
 numbers that are in school but very little, and still 
 others that are there none at all. Every child in school 
 until a certain age or until a sufficient equipment to meet 
 the ordinary duties of life is reached, should be the na- 
 tion's motto. 
 
 It is also eminently fitting that something be said of 
 the quality of the education it is proposed to make 
 compulsory attendance upon universal. To come at once 
 to the point in mind and briefly — training of the 
 intellect alone is not sufficient; we shall remain a long 
 way off from the ideal until we make moral, humane, 
 heart-training a far more important feature of our 
 educational systems than we have made it thus far. We 
 are advancing in this respect, but we have great advances 
 yet to make. Kindness and consideration, sympathy and 
 fraternity, love of justice — the full and ready willingness 
 to give it as well as to demand it, the clear-cut compre- 
 hension of the majesty and beauty that escapes into the 
 life of the individual as he understands and appropriates 
 to himself the all-embracing contents of the golden rule. 
 The training of the intellect alone at the expense of the 
 " humanities" has made or has enlarged the power of 
 many a criminal, many a usurper of other men's homes 
 and property, many an oppressor, and has thereby added 
 poison and desolation to his own life as well as to the 
 lives of those with whom he has come in contact and 
 who have felt his blighting and withering influence. 
 It is also chiefly from those without this training, that 
 that great body of our fellow -creatures which we term 
 
 [299]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 the animal world, receive their most thoughtless and 
 cruel treatment, and perhaps from among none more 
 than among the rich and fashionable. 
 
 I think there is another feature in our educational 
 systems that we would do wisely to give more attention 
 to. In a nation of free institutions, more attention could 
 wisely be given to systematic and concrete instruction 
 in connection with the institutions of government, and 
 in connection with this a training in civic pride that 
 sees to it that our public offices are filled with men of 
 at least ordinary honesty and integrity, men who re- 
 gard public office as a public trust worthy the service 
 of their highest manhood, rather than with those whose 
 eye is single to the largest amount of loot and graft that 
 comes within the range of their vision and the reach 
 of their hand. Such a system would in time spell the 
 end of Tammany Hall — a Democratic organization 
 in New York City, whose chief object is to make politics 
 a cover to divert the largest possible sums of money 
 from the people of the City of New York to line the 
 pockets, and in great abundance, of those in control 
 of the body of loot. It would in time spell the end of the 
 Republican rings and Halls whose object and purpose 
 is identically the same in every city where they have 
 been able to gain control, as well as the Democratic 
 rings in cities other than New York. The methods of 
 the rings of the one are equally black with the methods 
 of the rings of the other; where the motives are the 
 same the resultant action is the same. 
 
 Our educational methods are developing. In edu- 
 [300]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 cational work are some of our noblest, our foremost 
 men and women. There is an element of the practical, 
 the useful, that is now sort of remodelling our earlier 
 methods. It has always seemed to me that not only in 
 our public schools but in our colleges and universities, 
 it is possible to get as great a degree of training from 
 branches that are in themselves useful, that will be of 
 actual use later on, as out of those that are used for their 
 training value only. The element of the useful, not at 
 the expense of the training, but combined with it, 
 should be, I think, and is coming to be, the marked 
 feature of our developing educational methods. 
 
 The bread and butter problem will be the problem 
 of practically all in our common or public schools to- 
 day. There probably will not be one in a thousand 
 whose problem it will not be. To make our educational 
 systems so that they will be of the greatest 'practical 
 aid to all as they enter upon life's activities should, it 
 seems to me, be one of our greatest aims. That our 
 college courses can be improved to at least from twenty 
 to forty per cent, along this same line I am fully 
 persuaded, in addition to the saving of considerable 
 valuable time for those who, contemplating professional 
 careers, will afterwards have to spend a considerable 
 period in years in professional schools. 
 
 When we consider that not more than one tenth of one 
 per cent of those in our common schools ever get as far as 
 the college or university, we can see how important it is 
 that every child be guaranteed what the law of the most 
 ordinary justice demands, that he or she have the benefit 
 [301]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 at least of what will enable him or her to enter upon the 
 stage of young manhood and young womanhood free 
 from such tremendous handicaps with which so many 
 are entering upon it to-day. 
 
 The great nation is a religious nation. In order that 
 it be truly religious it is necessary that there be no 
 recognized or established religion, that there be no re- 
 lation, or rather connection between Church and State. 
 
 It is so easy to confound particulars with essentials. 
 The essential, fundamental principle, indeed the sum 
 and substance of all true religion is — The consciousness 
 of God in the soul of man. To come into the conscious 
 living realization of the fact that the Spirit of Infinite 
 Life and Power that is back of all, working in and 
 through all, the life of all, is the life of our life, that there is 
 no life and no power outside of it, and that in it " we live 
 and move and have our being " — to live and to act 
 always in this thought and this realization, is the re- 
 ligious life. Without it one may belong to a thousand 
 churches, or subscribe to the creeds of infinite varieties 
 of man-made religious systems, but without this, one 
 cannot be in the religious life. To dwell consciously and 
 continually in this Life, and thus allow it to manifest 
 through us, is love to God. To recognize it as the life 
 of every other being, manifesting in different stages of 
 Divine unfoldment, gives us the best basis for love of 
 the fellow-man. This marks also the difference between 
 the getting and the giving religion, for it is true in re- 
 ligion that we can get only as we give, the same as is 
 the law in regard to happiness. 
 [302]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The people of the great nation is a patriotic people; 
 it is an intensely patriotic people. I read from the dic- 
 tionary a definition of "patriotic" — " one who loves his 
 country, and supports its interests." Through lack of 
 discrimination we have done great violence to the word 
 patriotism in the past. In its name many foolish things 
 have been done. Most unpatriotic and most ungodly 
 things have been done in its name, though many times 
 innocently done. We have allowed ourselves to be swayed 
 by the politician's patriotism, by the capitalist looter's 
 patriotism, by the demagogic, self-seeking, self-consti- 
 tuted labour leader's patriotism. They all spring from 
 the same common ground — self-seeking at the expense 
 of everything that is conducive to the highest public 
 welfare. As a people, however, we are gaining wonder- 
 fully in discriminating power. As a consequence a new 
 order of patriotism is coming into being and among us. 
 What was at one time confined to the few brave, indepen- 
 dent- advanced men, is now becoming common among 
 the people. We are finding that the elements of justice 
 and righteousness, fraternity and godliness, have a 
 very direct relation to, or rather, that patriotism has a 
 very direct relation to them. War, war and the flag, 
 were at one time supposed to be the only agents with 
 which patriotism was linked. To hurrah for the flag and 
 to be eager to go to the front when the war bugles sound- 
 ed, or were likely to sound, was for a long period a 
 prevailing idea of patriotism. It may still be a way in 
 which patriotism may be manifested. 
 
 The people are learning the real cause of many wars, 
 [303]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 indeed the great majority of them — the bull-headed- 
 ness or pig-headedness, the incapacity on the part of 
 those having to do with affairs ; and again, the throwing 
 of an entire nation into war by large and powerful 
 though unscrupulous financial interests solely for gain. 
 These two agents are responsible for the great bulk, 
 indeed for nine out of every ten, of all modern wars, 
 even as they have been for all time past. Men are 
 beginning to realize that instead of having anything 
 to do with this type of war, patriotism lies in refus- 
 ing absolutely to aid or abate it and in using one's in- 
 fluence in a similar way among one's neighbours more 
 blunt and with less power of discernment. When we 
 reach a point where the large body of citizens see to it 
 that these men and their agents — for the large financial 
 interests of the unscrupulous type almost invariably 
 work through agents many of whom they place or have 
 the people place in public positions — when I repeat, 
 the larger body of citizens see to it that these men and 
 their agents are kept out of public office and relegate 
 them to the subordinate place where they rightly belong, 
 then we will witness the full birth of an entirely new 
 and a higher order of patriotism that is soon to be 
 dominant among us. 
 
 The highest patriotism that I know is that which 
 impels a man to be honest, kind, hence thoughtful in all 
 his business relations and in his daily life; that impels 
 him to the primary and to give attention to those fea- 
 tures of our political institutions that are of even greater 
 consequence than his casting his vote on election day; 
 [ 304 ]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 that impels him to think and to be discriminating in his 
 thought; that enables him to be not afraid to point out 
 and denounce the pure self-seeker and his demagogic 
 ways, be he in public life, in the ranks of high standing 
 financiers, or in the ranks of organized labour, or in the 
 ranks of the common life. The man whose motto is not 
 " My country, be she right or be she wrong, but always 
 my country"; but, "My country, be she always in the 
 right, and if not in the right then God give me the wis- 
 dom and the courage to work as a patriot to help bring 
 her into the right, and then may she have every God- 
 given aid that she may prevail." Such is the patriot. 
 A continually and rapidly growing number of such men 
 are appearing among us. Thus patriotism is witnessing 
 the new birth. 
 
 It is this patriotism in the common life that is of the 
 high quality. Men who are industrious and honest in 
 their work; who are faithful to whatever tasks are im- 
 posed upon them ; who are as eager to give justice as to 
 demand it; who are working industriously and intelli- 
 gently in order to take care of themselves and those 
 dependent upon them, and thus remain self-supporting 
 members of the community; who remain brave and sweet 
 in their natures and who abide always in faith in face 
 of the hard or uncertain times that come at sometime or 
 another and in some form or another into the lives of 
 everyone of us; who are jealous of their country's 
 honour, and of the administration of its internal affairs, 
 for in the life of the nation as in the life of the individual, 
 all life is from within out, and as is ihe inner so always 
 [305]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 will be the outer. These I repeat, are the men and these 
 are the conditions that are giving birth to that new and 
 that higher order of patriotism that is now coming 
 among us, and that is to take captive the hearts of men. 
 That wars in the past have been, and even at the 
 present time are too frequent, all thinking men and 
 women are agreed. That they are in the great majority 
 of cases entirely inexcusable, and that there is and should 
 be very little use for military forces if any, outside of 
 purposes of defence, the highest and most intelligent 
 portion of our citizenship thoroughly believes. And so 
 far as effectiveness is concerned it has been proven time 
 and again, that a citizen soldiery is the finest in the world. 
 Neither vast bodies of men drawn off from creative and 
 productive enterprises and made into a professional 
 soldier class, nor bodies of hirelings, but men who are 
 citizens of intelligence and training, and who stand 
 with the ear ready for the call to arms when there is 
 just cause for their hearing this call, such are the intelli- 
 gent, such are the brave and the daring, such are the 
 most effective. Men will not fight effectively for the 
 little price in money they are paid. They will not fight 
 effectively for the glory of another, nor will they fight 
 effectively for a mere tract of land. But where homes 
 are and institutions that they love and revere and care 
 for, then men will fight with all that triumphant intelli- 
 gence and all that indomitable daring that it is possible 
 to call forth. With a citizen soldiery ready at the just mo- 
 ment to come from the mine, the mill, the counting-house, 
 the farm, thousands of thousands or millions strong, 
 [306]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 why should there be a vast professional soldiery, a 
 great non-producing class kept primarily for the glory 
 and to do the bidding of a ruling class, but supported 
 almost entirely by the great common people, that is 
 true of the foolhardy military systems of various Euro- 
 pean countries to-day ? Then think of the women and 
 children by the thousands working in the fields by the 
 side of horses and oxen, and then these vast armies of 
 non-producers, and for whose benefit ? Royalty, privilege, 
 capitalism in government always depend upon the mili- 
 tary arm for their support and at times even for their 
 continued existence. When their demands become too 
 great, however, and too much dead or dead-beat timber 
 is thrown before the car of progress, then even the sol- 
 diery itself throws down its arms and goes back to the 
 ranks and to the cause of the people whence they came. 
 
 The only excuse for the present gigantic military 
 systems that are in existence to-day is that out of the 
 ruling classes there have not yet come men of sufficient 
 brains and wisdom, to meet similar men from other 
 nations, and come to a sane and common-sense under- 
 standing regarding their relations. From the people as 
 democracy grows, and whether it take the name or not, 
 are coming men and forces that will yet break this 
 hellish monstrosity to a thousand pieces and will send 
 these millions of men back to the mills, to the farms, 
 back to the homes that they may be as they should be, 
 producers and equal sharers in the support of their 
 country. 
 
 No, it's intelligence and something to fight for that 
 [307]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 constitutes the effective in distinction from the ineffec- 
 tive army or navy. Reference has been made in this part 
 to Russia and the condition of her people — the result 
 of allowing one class to attend to the affairs of the others 
 in matters of government. This gives us the basis for 
 an observation regarding her army and navy in view 
 of somewhat recent events. Her navy was larger and 
 supposedly superior to that of Japan, her adversary; 
 but the larger portion of it soon littered the bottom of 
 the sea, and it went there because of the superior in- 
 telligence and hence ability of a people whose govern- 
 ment aims to make intelligence the common possession 
 of the people. Her army was virtually defeated in every 
 engagement, chiefly through the lack of ability on the 
 part of its officers — for the higher ability cannot be grown 
 on such soil — and through the lack of intelligent and 
 hearty service on the part of her common soldiery. 
 And this because men who are denied opportunities 
 for the growth of intelligence and who have no homes* 
 but who pay excessive tolls and taxes and fees to others, 
 can have neither the power nor the spirit of those who 
 have such opportunities and who have homes. But the 
 deliverance of these, the patient Russian people, out 
 of the hell which results when the people allow 
 themselves to be ruled instead of taking the manage- 
 ment of their affairs into their own hands, is near 
 at hand. 
 
 Through the treatment the people of Russia 
 have received in their efforts to obtain the most 
 ordinary rights of men, and after exhausting every 
 [308]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 hope of peaceable methods, they have now declared war 
 to the hilt and the great Revolution is on. There will now 
 be no settlement and no end until Bureaucracy, Czarism 
 and "Holy Synods" are relegated to the place it is a 
 wonder they were not relegated to years ago, and a free 
 and delivered people will stand as the representatives 
 of a new nation. The same forces in power in govern- 
 ment that would deny freedom, or that would take 
 freedom from the people, strangle all vitality and life 
 even from the church, so that it becomes a curse and 
 a drawback instead of a blessing. 
 
 Can it be that because a man is born a ruler he is 
 born without brains, or without brain power sufficient 
 to read and appreciate the writings that history has so 
 often placed in letters of blood before the vision of the 
 world ? 
 
 Or can it be that he is born or that he grows to man- 
 hood without powers of discernment sufficient to enable 
 him to discern the purposes and the methods of a self- 
 constituted Bureaucracy, composed partly of a body 
 of parasitic Grand Dukes and others of a similar order, 
 which they deliberately plan in their selfish arrogance and 
 greed to surround him with that he may not know the 
 limits of patience and the temper of his people even when 
 respect on their part is turning to hatred, and hatred 
 so intense that it finally demands his extinction ? Can 
 it be also that the former become so steeped in their 
 own methods of corruption and oppression that they 
 have not discernment enough to know when their end 
 is nearing and their destruction is close at hand ? Or is 
 [309]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 this the price they finally pay for so continued and so 
 brutal a disregard of all laws of justice and equity 
 and humanity? 
 
 " And the struggling masses must suffer through the 
 greed of their rulers, who talk patriotism, but never 
 draw a sword themselves in defence of their country." 
 But, it is said, suppose the ruler went to the front and 
 harm or death befell him, what then for the country ? 
 Nonsense, there isn't the King or an Emperor ruling 
 to-day whose place could not be filled, if he fell on the 
 field of battle, most ably by a hundred or a thousand 
 men from his own country, and in many cases it must 
 be truthfully said, more ably. 
 
 How often also do those that in legislative halls of 
 whatever nation talk and vote for war, go to the front 
 themselves? Probably not one in 1,000. Were those 
 who instigate or who vote for it compelled to go, war 
 would be most infrequent. So often those that talk the 
 loudest of partiotism in its ordinary sense, are the 
 greatest of cowards. Hasten the day, which should have 
 come long ago, when no war can be declared except 
 through a Plebiscite of the People. 
 
 So far then as the soldiery of a nation is concerned, 
 let the interests of all the people be equally taken care 
 of, let there be institutions founded upon justice, upon 
 equal opportunities for all and special privileges for no 
 man, let there be homes and sentiment encircling these 
 homes, and the keeping up of a large military system 
 becomes but a fool's dream. There will come from 
 such a people a citizen soldiery more intelligent, more 
 [310]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 brave and determined, and therefore more effective, 
 than can ever come from any professional fighting 
 class, and at a cost not a hundredth part as great. 
 
 Take sentiment from the battle-field and you take its 
 chief source of heroism away. The people of homes and 
 of just institutions are a people of sentiment. Upon 
 every cartridge-box and upon every rifle and upon every 
 field piece of such a soldiery the word "Invincible " 
 could most rightly be stamped. But of such people and 
 such soldiers let it be said to you, unscrupulous financial 
 jugglers, Kings and Emperors and Grand Dukes, beware, 
 for the people are now beginning to know your tricks. 
 They know that "me and mine," and the ever-ready 
 mockery of a trumped up patriotism is written all over 
 you, and that had you your way, you would continue 
 to make dog soldiers out of great bodies of your fellow- 
 men, you would feed their bodies to the vultures and 
 leave their families to weep in sorrow and cry for bread, 
 that you might add to your already excessive and dis- 
 honourable gain, and continue to live in luxury even to 
 your own moral and physical deterioration and destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 The great nation again is the nation where that most 
 important class in its make-up, that upon which it 
 depends more than upon any other, that that forms so to 
 speak the backbone of its organism — the farming 
 community — grows and prospers, and has its interests 
 looked after and looks after its own interests more and 
 more. It is to my mind the most natural and normal 
 life there is, and the one — as a general statement — 
 [3111
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 that is or that can be made the most happy, and the 
 most satisfactory, and in honour second to none. 
 
 There is already a growing tendency, and I believe 
 that it will be and should be a continually increasing 
 tendency, for young men of ability and ambition to 
 remain on the farm, instead of leaving it for supposedly 
 superior callings, that is unless the inclination or the 
 aptitude lies so pronouncedly along a different line as 
 to make another course abundantly advisable. 
 
 Go then to the school, the college, the university, the 
 agricultural, the horticultural school, — and with this 
 superior equipment, — go then back to conduct a supe- 
 rior type of farm.The outlet for your abilities will be equal 
 to those abilities, both there and as occasion may arise. 
 The possibilities of soil cultivation and all things allied 
 to it under more careful, more scientific, intensive meth- 
 ods, are hardly even dreamed of to-day, notwithstand- 
 ing the great strides that have been made during the past 
 dozen years or so. And our legislative halls, State and 
 National , have never called so loudly as they are calling 
 to-day for men of such make-up as will yet come to them 
 from these superior types of farms. Nothing to my mind 
 could contribute more abundantly to the welfare of the 
 country than the coming of increasingly large numbers 
 of these into our legislative halls. There is perhaps no 
 class that has suffered economically more from special 
 privilege and maladministration, in short — injustice — 
 during the past two or three decades. In no better way 
 could these abuses be more effectively ended. In no way 
 could a better balance be secured and preserved in all 
 [312]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 matters of legislative policy and in all matters of national 
 conduct. May there be more organization, an ever- 
 increasing intelligence, more interest in public affairs, 
 and an ever greater determination to have a more equal 
 share in the latter, on the part of this, the most impor- 
 tant of our citizenship. 
 
 The great nation is again the nation in which the man 
 of great natural executive or financial ability finds con- 
 tentment in a smaller amount of possessions for himself, 
 and the larger contentment and satisfaction and joy in 
 using that unusual ability in the service of, for the benefit 
 of, his city, his state, the nation. The wonder is that more 
 are not doing this already. What an influence a few such 
 men could have, what results they could accomplish, 
 what real riches they could bring into their lives through 
 the riches they would bring into the lives of multitudes 
 — What gratitude would go to them ! 
 
 As men continue to see the small satisfaction there is 
 in the possession of great ability of this nature, and in 
 the possession of great wealth when divorced from an 
 adequate or even from an abundant connection with 
 the interests and the welfare of their fellow-men, and as 
 they catch the undying truth of the great law of life 
 as enunciated by One who though He had not even 
 where to lay His head was greater than them all — He 
 that is greatest among you shall be your servant — then 
 they in company with all men will be the gainers. 
 Think what could be accomplished in the nation along 
 the lines we have been considering in this little volume 
 by a company of such men devoted to such ends. 
 [313]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 A change is coming and very rapidly. The time has 
 already arrived when we will no longer look upon the 
 possession of mere wealth or the ability to get it as de- 
 serving of any special distinction, and especially when 
 the means adopted in its acquirement are other than 
 those of absolute honour and rectitude. 
 
 How significant are the following observations from 
 the New York Outlook: 
 
 " Those who have fallen most completely under the spell 
 of fortune-hunting, and have been consumed by the fever of 
 a pursuit which dries up the very sources of spiritual life, can 
 no longer be blind to the fact that when great wealth ceases to 
 be associated with character, honour, genius, or public respect, 
 it is a very shabby substitute for the thing men once held 
 it to be. There are hosts of honourable men of wealth, and 
 there are large fortunes which have been honourably made; 
 but so much brutal indifference to the rights of others, so much 
 tyrannical use of power, so much arbitrary employment of 
 privilege without a toucli of genius, so much cynical indiffer- 
 ence to human ties of all kinds, so much vulgar greed, have 
 come to light, . . . that the lustre has very largely gone 
 and wealth, as a supreme prize of life, has immensely lost 
 in attractive power. There are hosts of young men who are 
 ambitious to be rich, but who are not willing to accept wealth 
 on such terms; the price is too great, the bargain too hard." 
 
 Men of exceptional executive and financial ability, 
 raise yourselves to the standing-point of real greatness 
 and use these abilities to noble purposes and to undying 
 ends instead of piling a heap of things together that 
 you'll soon have to leave and that may do those to whom 
 it will go more harm than good. The times are chang- 
 ing, mankind is advancing and ascending to higher 
 [314]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 standing places, and it will be but a short time when 
 your position if maintained as at present will be a very 
 ordinary one or even a very low one in the public esteem 
 — and so will be your memories. 
 
 The Bishop of Exeter voices a well-nigh universal 
 human cry at present when he says : 
 
 Give us men ! 
 
 Strong and stalwart ones: 
 Men whom highest hope inspires, 
 Men whom purest honour fires, 
 Men who trample Self beneath them, 
 Men who make their country wreathe them 
 
 As her noble sons, 
 
 Worthy of their sires, 
 Men who never shame their mothers, 
 Men who never fail their brothers, 
 True, however false are others: 
 
 Give us Men — / say again, 
 Give us Men ! 
 
 [315]
 
 X 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE HIGHER BEAUTY AND 
 POWER 
 
 1 O be at peace. To be happy. To live in contentment. 
 To have a satisfying and harmonious — a success- 
 ful life. This echoes the longing of perhaps every normal 
 person. The fact that it so echoes a universal longing, 
 indicates, to me at least, that it should be the natural, 
 the normal life. In order to live a harmonious life there 
 must be something to be in harmony with; and here as 
 I view it is the great secret of life and its successful and 
 satisfactory fulfillment. 
 
 That there is a Spirit of intelligence and of love in 
 the universe, no normally constituted mind, and one 
 that has lived at all near the higher revelations that 
 may have come to it, can for a moment doubt. There is 
 a Power, beneficent if worked in harmony with, that 
 pervades and through the channel great and definite 
 systems of law, governs the universe and all that is in it. 
 Every decade we are discovering new laws and forces, 
 and the latter seem to be all the time finer and finer in 
 their nature. This is perhaps on account of the process 
 of evolution so developing, so unfolding us, that we are 
 getting nearer and nearer to the essence, the inner 
 nature — the soul of things. 
 [316]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 What was the actual beginning of things no man 
 knows. Nor is it essential or important that we do know. 
 But in the beginning, as now was Being, self-existent 
 and all-pervading — the Spirit of Infinite Life and 
 Power that is back of all, working in and through all, 
 the source, the life of all. This seems to be a self-evident 
 fact — Infinite Being projecting itself into ex-istence, 
 therefore the spirit, the substance, the life of all there is. 
 Various terms or names are used by different minds; 
 but to me this Infinite Being is God. To know this as 
 our source, the very essence of our being and from 
 which or from whom we can be cut off, can separate 
 ourselves, only to our detriment, is to recognize our- 
 selves as spiritual beings; it is to be born into the spiritual 
 life, and the spiritual life is the life eternal. Thus we 
 come to know God in the degree that we realize that in 
 Him we live and move and have our being. In the de- 
 gree that we live in the realization of this truth, does 
 this spirit of Infinite Life and Power reveal itself to our 
 consciousness more and more, and it is in this way that 
 we grow and unfold in the spiritual life. 
 
 It is through great systems of law, definite and im- 
 mutable, that God or Infinite Being works. To know 
 these laws and to live, to work in harmony with them 
 brings peace and harmony; wilfully to violate them 
 brings inharmony and struggle and suffering. They 
 all work together for good. To live in harmony with 
 them can bring us only good. To fail to recognize or 
 wilfully to violate them brings necessarily the opposite 
 of good, namely evil. Evil has its origin properly speak- 
 [317]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 ing not in God, but from a violation of the laws, shall we 
 say, the ordinances of God. 
 
 To realize that in essence, though not in degree, we 
 are one with the life of God, and then to open ourselves, 
 our minds and our hearts, so that a continually increas- 
 ing degree of the God life can manifest itself to and 
 through us, is to understand more and more and to 
 come into a continually greater harmony with the laws 
 under which we live and which permeate and rule in 
 the universe with an unchangeable precision. It is 
 through our non-recognition of the life that is in us and 
 the laws by which all things are governed, in other 
 words, living out of harmony with the laws under which 
 it is decreed we must live, that inharmony and evil 
 with its consequent pain and suffering and despair 
 enters into our lives. There are those who have lived so 
 fully in the realization of their essential oneness with 
 the Divine Life, that their lives here have been almost 
 a continual song of peace and thanksgiving. 
 
 As individuals — expressions of Being projected into 
 existence — we are given the power of choice. We can 
 choose to open ourselves so fully to the realization of 
 the Source of our life and open ourselves so fully to its 
 imflux that we will find the attributes of this life mani- 
 festing, incarnating themselves more and more in our 
 lives, so that in time we take on more and more the 
 wisdom, the insight and the powers of this Life. In this 
 way we are gradually changed from the natural to the 
 spiritual, from earth-men to God-men, thus fulfilling 
 the undoubted purpose of our being — divine self- 
 [318]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 realization, and the returning to that from which we 
 came. Coming as babes, returning as fully grown spirit- 
 ual beings, gaining our experience in contact with this 
 material world through the agency of the material body 
 and for some purpose of which we do not yet know, 
 but that shall be revealed to us in due process of time- 
 What it is, cannot concern us materially now. This will 
 come when we are ready for it. To know the laws under 
 which we are living and to bring our lives into an ever 
 completer harmony with them is what concerns us now. 
 Step by step in this as in all things. 
 
 But to know God's laws is first to know the life of 
 God in us. To live then in harmony with these laws 
 and thus to reap the results that follow naturally and 
 unerringly from this course, is the part of the wise. To 
 separate ourselves from the life of God, to lose there- 
 fore the guiding wisdom that is its attribute, to fail to 
 live in harmony with these laws, and to be battered and 
 buffetted about as is invariably the result of the violation 
 of law, until through this hard process we are finally 
 driven into harmony with the laws of God, is the part 
 of the unwise, the fool. The laws will have obedience and 
 there has never been a man or a woman powerful 
 enough or rich enough or unique enough to violate them 
 without suffering sooner or later the inevitable results. 
 Many have sought to do so but have learned their lesson in 
 sorrow, in anguish, in humiliation. We go voluntarily and 
 of our own accord, or we are pushed and taught through 
 suffering. God will have obedience. To know God is to 
 know His laws; for His laws are written in the heart of man- 
 [319]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 By dwelling continually in this life of God we come 
 into that condition where we are led more and more 
 by the Divine guidance, where the Divine wisdom and 
 power and life so manifest and illumine our being 
 and through this our understanding that we know more 
 and more to do the right thing at the right time; and 
 for such, to know is to do.* 
 
 While the end of life is not attained through intellec- 
 tual processes alone, the mind, the intellect neverthe- 
 less is a means to this end. It is through the mind that 
 the connection is made between the human and the 
 Divine. It is through thought operating through the 
 channel of the mind that we are able to realize and keep 
 our connection with Infinite Being, our source. It is by 
 virtue of the mind, working through the brain, that we 
 are connected with the material, physical universe. 
 The body is material, physical. Every particle of it, 
 through the food we take, is from the earth and the air 
 and to the earth and the air every particle of it finally 
 returns. 
 
 To realize that the body is not the self, but the in- 
 strument by which the self is temporarily related to, 
 and made able to manifest and live in a material world 
 for the purpose of experience, growth, development, 
 is a great aid in arriving at the realities of life. The folly 
 then of giving supreme attention to it and the things 
 
 * For suggestions as to the method of entering into this higher 
 realization, as also for a much fuller portrayal of its results in every- 
 day life, the reader is directed to the volume by the same author 
 entitled, "In Tune with the Infinite, or, Fullness of Peace, Power, 
 and Plenty." 
 
 [320]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 that pertain to it. To give it sufficient attention to en- 
 able it to become the clearest, the soundest, the most perfect 
 instrument that it can be made and kept for the real 
 self to use, is the part of wisdom, for it is the true middle 
 ground. 
 
 Now, why all this, I hear it asked, in a book of this 
 nature? In order to get a basis in religion, in phil- 
 osophy, in reality, for life, for the individual life; and 
 as is the individual life so is the national life, never 
 higher, never lower. As Dr. Patton, formerly president 
 of Princeton University once said to a class of young 
 graduates : 
 
 "Religion is the goal of culture, and the educated 
 man must stand in some relation to God. He must 
 have some philosophy of human life, some theory of 
 society." And as Milton has said: "There is nothing 
 that makes men rich and strong but that which they 
 carry inside of them. Wealth is of the heart, not of the 
 hand." And as Mazzini once said: "Where there is no 
 vision the people perish." 
 
 The chase for the material has of late years become 
 so great and so absorbing, whether by fair means or 
 foul, that it has become one of the notorious features 
 or characteristics of the time. And while I believe the 
 heart of the people, and the heart of the nation is sound, 
 by virtue of the vastly superior numbers of splendid, 
 honest, unpurchasable and high-minded men and 
 women among us, both old and young, a strong material- 
 istic tendency is nevertheless a marked characteristic 
 of the time. As there is perhaps no greater truth in 
 [321]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 connection with human life than — As a man thinketh 
 in his heart so is he, and also, that we grow into the 
 likeness of those things we most habitually contemplate, 
 and also that all life is from within out, for as is the inner, 
 so always and necessarily will be the outer, it becomes 
 clearly apparent how essential that the right centre or 
 basis of life be established. We hear it often said, and 
 said in the most well meaning way, that the physical, 
 the material, is the basis of life. Now I would put it in 
 another way, a safer and I think a truer way. The spirit- 
 ual is the basis and the end of life, and the physical, 
 the material, is the channel through which it manifests 
 and works and unfolds and masters. The latter is not 
 to be despised or slighted, but to be used, to be wisely 
 used, but to be subordinated to its proper place. Thus 
 it becomes a great blessing and helper rather than a 
 hindrance and a curse. To have an abundance of the 
 world's goods is good if rightly used, but to make the 
 accumulation of material things the chief object of life 
 can end only in disappointment. Such have but a 
 pinched and stunted life which is unsatisfactory and 
 empty of joy to themselves, and except by way of 
 warning is of but little if any value to the world. 
 
 Each one must find a centre for life from which all 
 radiates, or, putting it in another way, a basis, a founda- 
 tion upon which all else is built. Such a centre or such a 
 basis, one that is true and satisfactory, is earnestly 
 longed for by myriads of people. An instinct for the 
 religious life is born in practically every human soul. 
 So many great chunks as the years have passed, have 
 [322]
 
 In tne Fire of the Heart 
 
 fallen away from our theological systems, and as many 
 chunks are still continually falling away from them 
 that it is hard or well-nigh impossible for an earnest, 
 mentally honest man to find any satisfactory or even ac- 
 ceptable basis for the religious life there. Such in com- 
 mon with all others will find that the uniform teaching 
 of all the most inspired teachers in the world's history, 
 whatever the religion or system of belief has been, is 
 that the essence, the suostance of all true religion is, 
 the Consciousness of God in the soul of man. The ration- 
 al basis for this I have endeavoured to point out in the 
 early pages of this chapter. " In Him we live and move 
 and have over being. " In what a homely, splendid way 
 John Tauler has put it in the following: 
 
 "I have a power in my soul which enables me to perceive 
 God: I am as certain as that I live that nothing is so near to 
 me as God. He is nearer to me than I am to myself. It is part 
 of His very essence that He should be nigh and present to 
 me. . . . And a man is more blessed or less blessed in 
 the same measure as he is aware of the presence of God." 
 
 "God made us for Himself, and our hearts are rest- 
 less until they repose in Him," was St. Augustine's 
 way of putting it. " The only death to be feared 
 is unconsciousness of the presence of God," said 
 Paracelsus. "That the Divine Life and Energy 
 actually lives in us is inseparable from Religion," 
 was the keynote to the philosophy of that most 
 spiritual of philosophers, Fichte. "An insight into the 
 absolute unity of the Human Existence with the 
 Divine is certainly the profoundest knowledge that man 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 can attain," said he again. It was the most inspired 
 who has yet lived among us who said: " Neither shall 
 they say, Lo here ! or, Lo there ! for, behold the King- 
 dom of God is within you. " And again: " Seek ye first 
 the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all 
 these things shall be added unto you." It was He 
 who gave the substance of the moral law and therefore 
 the essence of religion as — Love to God and love to 
 the fellow-man. 
 
 To me love to God is this dwelling continually in the 
 conscious living realization of the essential oneness of 
 our life with the Divine Life — Seeking to have no 
 other will than that the Divine will may manifest to and 
 may work through us. How significant then — " Thou 
 wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed 
 on Thee, " and also " In all thy ways acknowledge Him, 
 and He shall direct thy paths. " How truly in the light 
 of this truth does Fichte say that the expression of the 
 constant mind of the truly religious man is this prayer : 
 " Lord ! let but Thy will be done, then is mine also done; 
 for I have no other will than this — that Thy will be 
 done." And how thoroughly in keeping with — "Thou 
 wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on 
 Thee," is his thought in the following: 
 
 "Whatever comes to pass around him, nothing appears 
 to him strange or unaccountable — he knows assuredly, 
 whether he understand it or not, that it is in God's World, 
 and that there nothing can be that does not directly tend to 
 good. In him there is no fear for the future, for the absolute 
 fountain of all blessedness eternally bears him on towards it; 
 no sorrow for the past, for in so far as he was not in God he 
 [324]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 was nothing, and this is now at an end, and since he has 
 dwelt in God he has been born into light; while in so far as 
 he was in God, that which he has done is assuredly right and 
 good. . . . His whole outward existence flows forth, softly 
 and gently, from his Inward Being, and issues out into Reality 
 without difficulty or hindrance. " 
 
 Love to the fellow-man is the realization of the fact 
 that we are all parts of the one great whole, that the 
 source and essence of life in each is essentially the same, 
 that love is the established law of life, and that the law 
 will have obedience or it will strike its punishment upon 
 all who do violence to it. 
 
 "He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death," 
 said the Master Teacher, and this is simply the enun- 
 ciation of the law that's written deep in the universe 
 and immutable in its workings. 
 
 "All beings are the fruits of one tree, the leaves of one 
 branch, tne drops of one sea. Honour is for him who loveth 
 men, not for mm who loveth his own," says the Persian. 
 
 Truly we are all parts of the one great whole, and one 
 can't suffer or have injustice done him without all 
 sharing in that suffering and none more than the author 
 of that injustice. 
 
 It was by virtue of His perceiving so clearly the laws 
 in relation to human life that are so immutable in their 
 workings that enabled and prompted Jesus to give 
 anew to the world an epitome of the laws relating to 
 all human relations when He said, "And as ye would 
 that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." 
 It is what is ordinarily termed the Golden Rule. I 
 have never seen any wiser or more suggestive com- 
 [325]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 mentary upon it than the following, by the late Hon. 
 Samuel Milton Jones*: 
 
 "As I view it, the Golden Rule is the supreme law of life. 
 It may be paraphrased this way: As you do unto others, 
 others will do unto you. What I give, I get. If I love you 
 really and truly and actively love you, you are as sure to love 
 me in return as the earth is sure to be warmed by the rays of 
 the midsummer sun. If I hate you, illtreat you and abuse you, 
 I am equally certain to arouse the same kind of antagonism 
 towards me, unless the Divine nature is so developed that it 
 is dominant in you, and you have learned to love your 
 enemies. What can be plainer. The Golden Rule is the law of 
 action and reaction in the field of morals, just as definite, just 
 as certain here as the law is definite and certain in the domain 
 of physics. I think the confusion with respect to the Golden 
 Rule arises from the different conceptions that we have of 
 the word love. I use the word love as synonymous with 
 reason, and so when I speak of doing the loving thing, I 
 mean the reasonable thing. When I speak of dealing with my 
 fellow-men in an unreasonable way, I mean an unloving way. 
 
 *Mayor Jones of Toledo was to my mind one of the most significant 
 men politically that our country has yet known. A man who believed 
 in actually adopting the law of life as enunciated in the Golden 
 Rule as a basis for personal action and for the administration of 
 public affairs. A man who used public office only for the highest 
 public good. A man whom the people therefore so trusted that, 
 running as an independent candidate against the candidates of the 
 two dominant political parties, he was able to pole a vote of nearly 
 17,000 out of a total voting number of 24,000. It is rather sig- 
 nificant, isn't it ? — and this against the combined and determined 
 efforts of the machines of both political parties, both local and state, 
 and in face of the united opposition of all the newspapers and cor- 
 porations in the city, and not a few of the "eminently respectable 
 people. " So far as his influence upon the political future is concerned, 
 as it will be, even as it is being already, carried into activity by 
 younger men who are coming into the field of political action, it is 
 unquestionably true that no greater or more valuable man has ever 
 come from or been associated with the State of Ohio. 
 
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 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 The terms are interchangeable absolutely. The reason why 
 we know so little about the Golden Rule is because we have 
 not practised it. " 
 
 Yes, what we term the Golden Rule is an absolute 
 law of life, and it will have obedience through the joy, 
 and therefore the gain it brings into our lives if we 
 observe it, or it will have obedience by the pain and 
 the blankness it drives into our lives if we violate it. 
 As we give to the world so the world gives back to us. 
 Thoughts are forces, like inspires like and like creates 
 like. If I give love I inspire and receive love in re- 
 turn. If I give hatred I inspire and I receive hatred. 
 The wise man loves; only the ignorant, the selfish, the 
 fool, hates. 
 
 It is the man who loves and serves who has solved 
 the riddle of life, for into his life comes the fulness, 
 the satisfaction, the peace and the joy that the Law 
 decrees. He it is who is the wise man. 
 
 The man who has no sense of service to his fellow- 
 man, whose idea is primarily gain for himself, whether 
 honourable or dishonourable, is the supreme fool in life 
 by virtue of his ignorance leading him into the violation 
 of a law that condemns him to a pinched, a stunted, 
 sunless, joyless life. 
 
 "If the gatherer gathers too much," says Emerson, "na- 
 ture takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; 
 swells the state but kills the owner. Nature hates monopolies 
 and exceptions. " 
 
 We do well when we remember this — one can 
 never do an injury to another without in some form 
 [327]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 or another suffering for that injury himself. Why ? It 
 is so written in the Law of the Universe, that's all. And 
 we do likewise well to remember — one can never do 
 a real loving, unselfish, kindly act without deriving a 
 benefit from such act himself; and if at any time there 
 are apparent exceptions to this it is, I believe, because 
 our limited vision does not enable us to see the total 
 relationship of human actions. 
 
 "No man in the world ever attempted to wrong 
 another without being injured in return, — some way, 
 somehow, sometime. The only weapon of offence that 
 nature seems to recognize is the boomerang. Nature 
 keeps her books admirably; she puts down every item, 
 she closes all accounts finally, but she does not always 
 balance them at the end of the month."* 
 
 As the life of a man is of more value to him than the 
 house in which he lives, so the possession and growth 
 of the faculties that enable him to enjoy the things that 
 pertain to and that spring from the inner life are of 
 more value to him by way of bringing him happiness 
 and contentment than any possible accumulation of 
 material things. Wealth is good — as a means to com- 
 fort; good as a servant, never as a master; good as a 
 feature, never as the chief end of life. 
 
 One of the most pitiable sights that I know is the 
 way some very rich men die; several such deaths have 
 transpired during even the past year. Let the following 
 serve as the type of many. A man has made gain — 
 
 * From that excellent little booklet " The Majesty of Calmness," 
 by William George Jordan. 
 
 [328]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 money-getting — the chief object of his life. In time, 
 shall we say through nature's abhorrence of abnormal- 
 ities, the greed for gain becomes his master and dries 
 up his very powers of enjoyment of the finer things 
 in life. He accumulates a hundred million, with all 
 the care and worry that keeping this invested to the 
 best advantage means. He is of but little use to the 
 world, and through the dwarfing of the finer qualities 
 of his life and the drying up of his powers of enjoyment 
 he has become so also to himself. He dies. Three months 
 after he has gone his name is scarcely ever heard, 
 except perhaps in some long drawn out or bitterly fought 
 will contest. His end is like that of a dog. In short, 
 many a dog, faithful and intelligent and useful, has been 
 more genuinely mourned and longer and more grate- 
 fully remembered. And then if it is true, as I believe 
 it must be, that we commence in the other form of life 
 exactly where we leave off here, taking with us only 
 what we have gained by way of soul growth and 
 spiritual unfoldment, but not one cent, not one cent, 
 and having, moreover, no further control over any ma- 
 terial possessions, how poor, how pitiably poor is such 
 a life. Contrast it with this as an ideal and a purpose 
 for a life: 
 
 "I am primarily engaged to myself to be a public servant 
 of all the Gods, to demonstrate to all men there is good -will 
 and intelligence at the heart of things and ever higher and 
 yet higher leadings. These are my engagements. If there be 
 power in good intentions, in fidelity, and in toil, the north 
 wind shall be purer, the stars in heaven shall glow with a 
 kindler beam that I have lived. " 
 
 I 329 1
 
 In the Fire of Hie Heart 
 
 And what a life was the life of this man Emerson who 
 deliberately chose this as his part. And what an in- 
 fluence while he lived, and truly for all time to come. 
 Not three months, nor three centuries can forget his 
 name or cease to bless his memory. 
 
 Another whom success in the sense of excessive gain 
 develops pride and an itchiness for ostentatious show 
 builds a mansion — a home ? costing four million dol- 
 lars, thinking also that it will be a sort of monument to, a 
 reminder of himself. Within fifty years, or within even 
 a much shorter space of time, it may be the possession 
 of a Barnum and the home of a good up-to-date circus. 
 Such is the security of a man's hold upon material 
 possessions. And how few seem to be able to stand suc- 
 cess and remain good, healthy, sensible, normal men. It 
 seems strange that so seldom can a man become success- 
 ful as to either wealth or power without taking on, 
 mentally at least, the strut of the turkey-cock. A really 
 great man, however, is always immune from this affection. 
 It is rather as Pope said: 
 
 Of all the causes which conspire to blind 
 Mans erring judgment, and mislead the mind, 
 What the weak head with strongest bias rules, 
 Is Pride — that never-failing vice of fools. 
 
 The law seems to be absolute in that " whosoever shall 
 exalt himself shall be abased ; and he that humbleth him- 
 self shall be exalted." Nature seems to abhor an 
 abnormally developed pride, snobbery, too marked a 
 consciousness of superiority. And to the — I am holier 
 [330]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 than thou feeling — she applies always the brand, 
 Hypocrite, and she burns it deep. 
 
 Another makes the accumulation of material things 
 the chief object of his life, rising from humble circum- 
 stances, possessing unusual abilities, but giving but an 
 infinitesimal amount of these abilities to his city or 
 his state, both badly in need of such service ; but rather 
 conspiring with their enemies to make special privileges 
 for a few greater, to secure acts alienating valuable 
 properties from the people of his city and state, to avoid 
 a just share of taxation, thereby defrauding and throw- 
 ing greater and unjust burdens upon all of his fellow- 
 men, except upon those equally dishonest and contempt- 
 ible in this practice of tax-evasion. His life here closes 
 considerably before a normal and well-rounded life 
 should close, and on quitting he directs that prac- 
 tically the entire results of his life work go to a couple 
 of young grandsons, not yet in their teens, in order 
 that the family name and business be preserved. 
 " Every man," said Marcus Aurelius, " is worth 
 just so much as the things are worth about which 
 he busies himself. " The business may be preserved 
 or it may tumble into ruin. Nature deals so in 
 mockery when a man fancies he can have a con- 
 trolling hand in the final actual disposition of his 
 material possessions. The family name may be 
 preserved and it may be raised even to a higher 
 esteem, or it may be preserved in the records of an 
 inebriate asylum. A man can have an actual say 
 only in regard to his own life, but never in regard to 
 [331]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 the life of any other. Not by ambition and gain 
 alone for self but, 
 
 "By labor, incessant and devout, to raise earth to heaven, 
 to realize, in fact, the good that as yet exists only in idea — 
 that is the end and purpose of human life; and in fulfilling 
 it we achieve and maintain our unity each with every other 
 and all with the Divine." 
 
 Many a rich man's son has found the handicap of 
 great riches too great to allow his making even a decent 
 success of life ; the incentive which nature seems to have 
 decreed as a healthy and strength-developing stimulant 
 has been neutralized by the burden which an over-rich 
 father has dumped upon him. "Ungirt loins, unlit lamps, 
 unused talents, sink a man like lead. Doing nothing is 
 enough for ruin. " Many a daughter of the unduly 
 rich has found her associations as also her training 
 or lack of training of such a nature that undue pride 
 or a false ambition has taken possession of her, robbing 
 her of one of the chief charms of womanhood, and a 
 designing or worse than empty marriage has fallen to her 
 portion. Surely wealth is of the mind and the heart and 
 not of the hand. And the man who makes as his life work 
 only gain for self and who fails to recognize his inexor- 
 able relations with his fellow-men, fails completely in 
 getting from life what he thinks he'll get; for he finds 
 that what he gains turns to a greater or less extent to 
 ashes in his hands, and what he bequeaths to his descen- 
 dants is far below what it might be, — he or she who 
 is at all worthy of receiving such bequest would rather 
 it be a few millions less and be accompanied with a 
 [332]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 name of honour and a memory to be revered than 
 that it come with the tremendous handicap it many 
 times comes with. 
 
 As we come to a fuller appreciation of these facts 
 and of the laws of human life and relations that will 
 not be denied, then more and more will " we measure 
 the degree of civilization not by accumulation of the 
 means of living, but by the character and value of the 
 life lived." 
 
 Now I have said, nor would I say ought against wealth. 
 I believe in wealth — sufficient for all the legitimate 
 comforts of life ; and I believe in it so thoroughly that I 
 plead for a state wherein it can become the portion of a 
 much larger number than has ever yet been known. 
 And while I do not share in the belief that our time is 
 necessarily more materialistic than other times have 
 been, I do realize and most keenly that the economic 
 conditions during the past few years have produced a 
 class of men so materialistic in their entire outlook, 
 so insatiate in their greed for ever larger gain, so drunk 
 with opportunity and power that they would pull the 
 very pillars of the state to the ground if a united and 
 determined people did not come forward and say, 
 so far, and no farther. It is against the aggressions of 
 these and the abuses we have permitted them to give 
 birth to and fatten upon, the aggressions of these against 
 the welfare of their fellows, against the economic and 
 political institutions of the nation, that we must battle 
 for some time to come with an alertness, with a determin- 
 ation and a bravery that can know no defeat. 
 [333]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 In the fire of the heart, and with a mind calm and 
 determined and with malice towards none, must these 
 great battles for the redemption of this nation be fought. 
 And as excessive wealth is of no real value to any man 
 nor to his descendants, but becomes more often a veritable 
 curse, and as it makes its possessors a menace to the 
 very welfare of the nation and to the welfare of every 
 man, woman and child in the nation, we will be doing 
 a twofold service through such warfare and subse- 
 quent vigilance in saving its possessors and its would-be 
 possessors from their own folly, as well as conserving 
 our own common interests. It's the middle ground that 
 carries with it the satisfactory solution of life. Excesses 
 have to be paid for with heavy and sometimes with 
 frightful interest. 
 
 Life, the life of everyone has its perplexities, its 
 problems, its struggles and its work to be done. Human- 
 ity is brave and there are but few who do not stand up 
 like men and women, some almost like very Gods to 
 the end. It certainly should be the aim of each to throw 
 no hindrance in the path of any fellow-being, to make 
 no load heavier; but rather to lend the hand whenever 
 we can. 
 
 Oh the skies are blue and a ribboned road 
 
 Shall the •pilgrim's heart beguile : 
 Yet hurry not so fast with your load, 
 
 For there is many a mile. 
 And it's here a friend and there a friend 
 
 To bear your hand a while : 
 But none will go to the journey's end, 
 And few will stay the mile. 
 [334]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 And in connection with the problems and perplexities 
 and apparent losses that come and that must be met 
 as the days hurry away, I believe without a question 
 of a doubt, that the time will come when we will see the 
 part that each thing has had to play in our lives and we 
 will give thanks that it came just as it came. I believe, 
 moreover, that a sort of an inborn universal feeling of 
 this nature is a reason why humanity is brave. 
 
 A hope that never wearies, a faith that defies defeat, 
 an attitude of mind that compels gladness, will help us to 
 stand like men until we realize this glad culmination. And 
 if one would find the easier way it lies in the ever conscious 
 realization — " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace 
 whose mind is stayed on thee." 
 
 I suppose it is natural for each to find or to form for 
 himself some sort of creed. Here is mine at least as it 
 comes to me to-day; perchance it may contain some 
 little suggestion for another: 
 
 To live to our highest in all things that pertain to us; to 
 lend a hand as best we can to all others for this same end ; 
 
 To aid in righting the wrongs that cross our path by 
 pointing the wrong-doer to a better way, and thus aid 
 him in becoming a power for good ; to remain in nature 
 always sweet and simple and humble, and therefore 
 strong; 
 
 To open ourselves fully and to keep ourselves pure 
 and clean as fit channels for the Divine Power to work 
 through us; to turn toward and keep our faces always 
 to the light; 
 
 To do our own thinking, listening quietly to the 
 opinions of others, and to be sufficiently men and wo- 
 
 [335]
 
 In the Fire of the Heart 
 
 men to act always upon our own convictions; to do 
 our duty as we see it, regardless of the opinions of others, 
 seeming gain or loss, temporary blame or praise; 
 
 To play the part of neither knave nor fool by attempt- 
 ing to judge another, but to give that same time to 
 living more worthily ourselves; to get up immediately 
 when we stumble, face again to the light, and travel on 
 without wasting even a moment in regret; 
 
 To love all things and to stand in awe or fear of noth- 
 ing save our own wrong-doing; to recognize the good 
 lying at the heart of all people, of all things, waiting for 
 expression, all in its own good way and time; 
 
 To love the fields and the wild flowers, the stars, the 
 far-open sea, the soft, warm earth, and to live much 
 with them alone, but to love struggling and weary men 
 and women and every pulsing living creature better; 
 
 To strive always to do unto others as we would have 
 them do unto us. 
 
 In brief — to be honest, to be fearless, to be just, to 
 be kind. This will make our part in life's great and 
 as yet not fully understood play truly glorious, and we 
 need then stand in fear of nothing — life nor death; for 
 death is life. 
 
 Or, rather, it is the quick transition to life in an- 
 other form; the putting off of the old coat and the 
 putting on of a new; a passing not from light to dark- 
 ness but from light to light, according as we have lived 
 here; a taking up of life in another form just where we 
 leave it off here; a part in life not to be shunned or 
 dreaded or feared, but to be welcomed with a glad and 
 ready smile when it comes in its own good way and 
 time. 
 
 THE END 
 
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