PART II.—The Advantages of National Ownership.
First would be the stability and practical uniformity of rates now impossible, as they are subject to change by hundreds of officials, and are often made for the purpose of enriching such officials. State and federal laws have had the effect of making discriminations less public and less numerous, but it is doubtful if they are less effective in enriching officials and their partners, although it may be necessary to be more careful in covering tracks. That they are continued is within the cognizance of every well-informed shipper, and are made clear by such cases as that of Counselman and Peasley, now before the United States Supreme Court. Counselman and Peasley—one a large shipper and the other a prominent railway official—refused to testify before a United States grand jury upon the plea that to do so might criminate themselves; the federal law making it a criminal offence to make or benefit by discriminating rates. Counselman had been given rates on corn, some five cents less per hundred pounds than others, from Kansas and Nebraska points to Chicago.
The outrageous character of this discrimination will appear when we reflect that five cents per one hundred pounds is an enormous profit on corn that the grower has sold at from eighteen to twenty-two cents per one hundred pounds, and that such a margin would tend to drive every one but the railway officials and their secret partners out of the trade, as has practically been the case on many western roads. Doubtless such rates are sometimes made in order to take the commodity over a certain line, and there is no divide with the officials; but the effect upon the competitors of the favored shipper and the public is none the less injurious, and such practices would not obtain under national ownership, when railway users would be treated with honesty and impartiality, which the experience of half a century shows to be impossible with corporate ownership.
Referring to the rate question in their last report, the Interstate Commerce Commission says: “If we go no farther than the railroad managers themselves for information, we shall not find that it is claimed that railroad service, as a whole, is conducted without unjust discriminations.”
“If rates are secretly cut, or if rebates are given to large shippers, the fact of itself shows the rates which are charged to the general public are unreasonable, for they are necessarily made higher than they ought to be in order to provide for the cut or to pay the rebate.”
“If the carrier habitually carries a great number of people free, its regular rates are made the higher to cover the cost; if heavy commissions are paid for obtaining business, the rates are made the higher that the net revenues may not suffer in consequence; if scalpers are directly or indirectly supported by the railroad companies, the general public refunds to the companies what the support costs.”
The Commission quotes a Chicago railway manager as saying: “Rates are absolutely demoralized and neither shippers, passengers, railways, or the public in general make anything by this state of affairs. Take passenger rates for instance; they are very low; but who benefits by the reduction? No one but the scalpers…. In freight matters the case is just the same. Certain shippers are allowed heavy rebates, while others are made to pay full rates…. The management is dishonest on all sides, and there is not a road in the country that can be accused of living up to the interstate law. Of course when some poor devil comes along and wants a pass to save him from starvation, he has several clauses of the interstate act read to him; but when a rich shipper wants a pass, why he gets it at once.”
From years of ineffectual efforts on the part of State and national legislatures and commissions to regulate the rate business, it would appear that the only remedy is national ownership, which would place the rate-making power in one body with no inducement to act otherwise than fairly and impartially, and this would simplify the whole business and relegate an army of traffic managers, general freight agents, soliciting agents, brokers, scalpers, and hordes of traffic association officials to more useful callings while relieving the honest user of the railway of intolerable burthens.
Under corporate control, railways and their officials have taken possession of the majority of the mines which furnish the fuel so necessary to domestic and industrial life, and there are but few coalfields where they do not fix the price at which so essential an article shall be sold, and the whole nation is thus forced to pay undue tribute.
Controlling rates and the distribution of cars, railway officials have driven nearly all the mine owners who have not railways or railway officials for partners, to the wall. For instance, in Eastern Kansas, on the line of the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Company, were two coal companies, whose plants were of about equal capacity, and several individual shippers. The railway company and its officials became interested in one of the coal companies, and such company was, by the rebate and other processes, given rates which averaged but forty per cent. of the rates charged other shippers, the result being that all the other shippers were driven out of the business, a part of them being hopelessly ruined before giving up the struggle. In addition to gross discriminations in rates this railway company practised worse discriminations in the distribution of cars; for instance, during one period of five hundred and sixty-four days, as was proven in court, they delivered to the Pittsburg Coal Company, 2,371 empty cars to be loaded with coal, although such company had sale for, and capacity to produce and load, during the same period, more than 15,000 cars. During the same time this railway company delivered to the Rogers Coal Company, in which the railway company and C. W. Rogers, its vice-president and general manager, were interested, no less than 15,483 coal cars, while four hundred and fifty-six were delivered to individual shippers. In other words, the coal company owned in large part by the railway and its officials was given eighty-two per cent. of all the facilities to get coal to market, although the other shippers had much greater combined capacity than had the Rogers Coal Company.
During the last four months of the period named, and when the Pittsburg Coal Company had the plant, force, and capacity to load thirty cars per day, they received an average of one and a fourth cars per day, resulting, as was intended, in the utter ruin of a prosperous business and the involuntary sale of the property, while the railway coal company, the railway officials, and the accommodating friends who operated the Rogers Coal Company, made vast sums of money; and when all other shippers had thus been driven off the line the price of coal was advanced to the consumer.
On another railway, traversing the same coal-field, the railway or its officials became interested in the Keith & Perry Coal Company—the largest coal company doing business on the line—and here the plan seems to have been, in addition to the manipulation of rates, to starve other mine operators out, and force them to sell their coal to the Keith & Perry Company, by failing to furnish the needed cars to those who did not sell their coal to the Keith & Perry Company at a very low price.
When the Keith & Perry Company had a great demand for coal, such parties as sold the product of their mines to that company were furnished with cars, but for the other operators cars were not to be had, such cars as were brought to the field being assigned to such parties as were loading to the Keith & Perry Company, because that company furnished the coal consumed by the locomotives of the railway.
One operator, after being for years forced in this way to sell his product to the Keith & Perry Company, or see his several plants stand idle, has, in recent months, been obliged to build some seven miles of railway in order to reach four different roads, and thus have a fighting chance for cars, although all these railways are provided with coal mines owned by the corporations or their officials.
In Arkansas, Jay Gould, or his railway company, own coal mines and the coal is transported to the neighboring town at low rates, and there is an ample supply of cars for such mines; but the owners of an adjoining mine are forced to haul their coal some eighteen miles to the same town in wagons, as the rates charged them over Mr. Gould’s railway are so high as to absorb the value of the coal at destination.
Not only are individuals thus oppressed, but for reasons which only the initiated can fathom there are seemingly purposeless discriminations against localities, as shown in the following extract from the Coal Trade Journal of March 25, 1891.
“Capt. Thomas H. Bates, before the railroad committee of the Colorado Senate, said: The Grand River Coal & Coke Company mine their coal in Garfield County, about fifty miles west of Leadville, and all they sell in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo, has to be hauled through Leadville. At Leadville the individual consumer has to pay $7.00 per ton for this coal, while in Denver, with an additional haul of 150 miles, the coal from the same mines is delivered to the individual consumer for $5.50 per ton. The Colorado Coal & Iron Company produce all the anthracite coal sold in Colorado. It is mined at Crested Butte, which is 150 miles nearer Leadville than Denver, yet this coal is sold in Leadville for $9.00 to the individual consumer, while the same coal is hauled 150 miles farther, and sold to the individual consumer for an advance of twenty-five cents per ton over the Leadville price, and is sold in Denver for $7.10 per ton in carload lots.”
With the government operating the railways, discriminations would cease, as would individual and local oppression; and we may be sure that an instant and absolute divorce would be decreed between railways and their officials on one side, and commercial enterprises of every name and kind on the other.
There are but three countries of any importance where the railways are operated by corporations permitted to fix rates, as in all others the government is the ultimate rate-making power: these are Great Britain, Canada, and the United States; and while the British government exercises a more effective control than we do, there are many and oppressive discriminations, and complaints are loud and frequent, and English farmers find it necessary to unite for the purpose of securing protection from corporate oppression, as is shown by the following from the Liverpool Courier of January 29, 1891.
LANCASHIRE FARMERS AND RAILWAY RATES.
After the counsel given them yesterday by Mr. A. B. Forwood, of Ormskirk, it may be expected that the Liverpool District Farmers’ Club will be on the watch for tangible evidence of their grievances against the railway companies…. Under certain circumstances competition operates to the advantage of the public, and rival carriers are constrained to convey goods from place to place at moderate charges; but where a company is not held in check, the tendency is for rates to advance. In many cases, too, special interests of the companies are promoted at the expense of localities, and even individuals are subjected to the wrong of preferential charges. (There are no complaints in Britain that these discriminations are practised for the purpose of enriching the officials.) Hence the necessity for the Railway Commission to regulate the magnates of the iron road, who when left without restraint pay little regard to interests other than those of their shareholders.
Although Mr. Acworth fails to mention this phase of English railway administration, it would appear that the evils of discrimination are common under corporate management in Great Britain, and that they are inherent to and inseparable from such management; and that the questions of rates, discriminations, and free traffic in fuel can be satisfactorily adjusted only by national ownership, and if for no other reasons such ownership is greatly to be desired.
The failure to furnish equipment to do the business of the tributary country promptly is one of the greater evils of corporate administration, enabling officials to practise most injurious and oppressive forms of discrimination, and is one that neither federal nor State commission pays much attention to. With national ownership a sufficiency of cars would be provided. On many roads the funds that should have been devoted to furnishing the needed equipment, and which the corporations contracted to provide when they accepted their charters, have been divided as construction profits or, as in the case of the Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and many others, diverted to the payment of unearned dividends, while the public suffers from this failure to comply with charter obligations; yet Mr. Dillon informs us that the citizen commits an impertinence when he inquires why contract obligations, which are the express consideration for the exceptional powers granted, are not performed.
Another great advantage which would result from national ownership would be such an adjustment of rates that traffic would take the natural short route, and not, as under corporate management, be sent around by the way of Robin Hood’s barn, when it might reach destination by a route but two thirds as long, and thus saving the unnecessary tax to which the industries of the country are subjected. That traffic can be sent by these round-about routes at the same or less rates than is charged by the shorter ones is prima facie evidence that rates are too high. If it costs a given sum to transport a specific amount of merchandise a thousand miles, it is clear that it will cost a greater sum to transport it fifteen hundred; and yet traffic is daily diverted from the thousand mile route to the fifteen hundred one, and carried at the same or lower rates than is charged by the shorter line. It is evident, that if the long route can afford to do the business for the rates charged, that the rates charged by the shorter are excessive in a high degree.
Under government management, traffic would take the direct route, as mail matter now does, and the industries of the country be relieved of the onerous tax imposed by needless hauls. Only those somewhat familiar with the extent of the diversions from direct routes can form any conception of the aggregate saving that would be effected by such change as would result from national ownership, and which may safely be estimated as equal to two and a half per cent. of the entire cost of the railway service, or $25,000,000 per annum.
With the government operating the railways there would be a great reduction in the number of men employed in towns entered by more than one line. For instance, take a town where there are three or more railways, and we find three (or more) full-fledged staffs, three (or more) expensive up-town freight and ticket offices, three (or more) separate sets of all kinds of officials and employees, and three (or more) separate depots and yards to be maintained. Under government control these staffs—except in very large cities—would be reduced to one, and all trains would run into one centrally located depot; freight and passengers be transferred without present cost, annoyance, and friction, and public convenience and comfort subserved, and added to in manner and degree almost inconceivable.
Economies which would be affected by such staff reductions, would more than offset any additions to the force likely to be made at the instance of politicians, thus eliminating that objection; such saving may be estimated at $20,000,000 per annum.
With the nation owning the railways the great number of expensive attorneys now employed, with all the attendant corruption of the fountains of justice, could be dispensed with; and there would be no corporations to take from the bench the best legal minds, by offering three or four times the federal salary; nor would there be occasion for a justice of the Supreme Court of Kansas to render a decision that a corporation chartered by Kansas for the sole purpose of building a railway in that State has the right and power under such charter to guarantee the bonds of corporations building railways in Old or New Mexico, and shortly after writing such decision be carted all over the seaboard States in one of the luxurious private cars of such corporation. Under national ownership such judges would pay their travelling expenses in some other way, and be transported in the ordinary manner, and not half as many judges would travel on passes. There are many judges whose decisions any number of passes would not affect; but if passes are not to have any effect upon legislation and litigation, why are congressmen, legislators, judges, and other court officials singled out for this kind of martyrdom? If the men who attain these positions remained private citizens, would passes be thrust upon them?
Although the reports of the Victorian Commissioners show, in detail, all the expenditures of railway administration, yet not one dollar is set down for attorneys’ salaries or for legal expenses, and it is presumed that the ordinary law officers of the government attend to the little legal business arising, and yet judging from reports made by Kansas roads, the expenditures of the corporate owned railways of the United States for attorneys’ salaries and other legal expenses, are at least two per cent. of the entire cost of operating the roads, and yearly aggregate some $14,000,000, all of which is taken directly from railway users, and is a tax which would be saved under national ownership, as United States district attorneys could attend to such legal business as might arise. This expenditure is incurred in endless controversies between the corporations, in wrecking railways, in plundering the shareholders, in contending against State and federal regulation, in manipulating elections and legislation, and in wearing out such citizens as seek legal redress for some of the many outrageous acts of oppression practised by the corporations. Once the government was in control, these lawyers would be relegated to some employment where they would do less harm, even if not engaged in a more honorable vocation than that of trying to defeat justice by the use of such questionable means as the control of the vast revenues of the corporations place in their hands.
Is it possible that the railway companies can legitimately use anything like $14,000,000 yearly in protecting their rights in the courts?
The president of the Union Pacific tells us that: “The courts are open to redress all real grievances of the citizen.”
There is probably no man in the United States better aware than is Sidney Dillon that no citizen, unless he has as much wealth as the president of the Union Pacific, can successfully contest a case of any importance in the courts with one of these corporations which make a business, as a warning to other possible plaintiffs, of wearing out the unfortunate plaintiff with the law’s costly delays; and failing this do not hesitate to spirit away the plaintiff’s witnesses, and to pack and buy juries—retaining a special class of attorneys for this work—the command of great corporate revenues enabling them to accomplish their ends, and to utterly ruin nearly every man having the hardihood to seek Mr. Dillon’s lauded legal redress, and when they have accomplished such nefarious object, the entire cost is charged back to the public, and collected in the form of tolls upon traffic. Laws are utterly powerless to restrain the corporations, and Mr. Dillon tells us how easy it is to evade them by pleading compliance, when there has been no compliance, and then having the expert servants of the corporation swear there has been.
With the government operating the railways, every citizen riding would pay fare adding immensely to the revenues. Few have any conception of the proportion who travel free, and half a century’s experience renders it doubtful if the pass evil—so much greater than ever was the franking privilege—can be eliminated otherwise than by national ownership. From the experience of the writer, as an auditor of railway accounts, and as an executive officer issuing passes, he is able to say that fully ten per cent. travel free, the result being that the great mass of railway users are yearly mulcted some $30,000,000 for the benefit of the favored minority; hence it is evident that if all were required to pay for railway services, as they are for mail services, the rates might be reduced ten per cent. or more, and the corporate revenues be no less, and the operating expenses no more. In no other country—unless it be under the same system in Canada—are nine tenths of the people taxed to pay the travelling expenses of the other tenth. By what right do the corporations tax the public that members of Congress, legislators, judges, and other court officials and their families may ride free? Why is it that when a legislature is in session passes are as plentiful as leaves in the forest in autumn?
The writer, as an executive officer of a railway company having authority to issue passes, has, during a session of the legislature, signed vast numbers of blank passes at the request of the legislative agents of such company, and under instructions of the president of the corporation to furnish such lobby agents with all the passes they should ask for. No reports of passes issued are made either to State or federal governments, or to confiding shareholders, and should such reports be asked for, by State or nation, in order to measure the extent of this evil, the Sidney Dillons would rush into print and tell us it was a piece of impertinence for any citizen (or the public) to inquire into the extent of or the manner in which the corporations dispensed their favors. The only way to kill this monster is to put the instruments of transportation under such control as only national ownership can give. Laws and agreements between the corporations have been proven, time and again, wholly ineffective even to lessen this great and corrupting evil.
In every conceivable way are the net revenues of the corporations depleted, and needless burthens imposed upon the public, but one of the worst is the system of paying commissions for the diversion of traffic to particular lines, often the least direct. The more common practice is to pay such commissions to agents of connecting lines where it is possible to send the traffic over any one of two or more routes, and the one which may, by the payment of such commission, secure the carrying of the passenger (or merchandise) may be the least desirable, and the one which would never have been taken but for the prevarications of an agent bribed by a commission to make false representations as to the desirableness of the route he selects for the confiding passenger.
This is but one of many phases of the commission evil, another being that these sums are ultimately paid, not by the corporations, but by the users of the railways, and but for the payment of such commissions the rates might be reduced in like amounts. Aside from commissions paid for diverting passenger traffic great sums are paid for “influencing” and “routing” freight traffic, and these sums, while paid to outsiders, or so-called brokers, are frequently divided with railway officials. When the writer was in charge of the transportation accounts of a railway running east from Chicago, it was a part of his duties to certify to the correctness of the vouchers on which commission payments were made, and he became aware of the fact that one Chicago brokerage firm was being paid a commission of from three to five cents per hundred pounds on nearly all the flour, grain, packing house, and distillery products being shipped out of Chicago over this railway, no matter where such shipments might originate, many of them, in fact, originating on and far west of the Mississippi River; and when he objected to certifying to shipments with which it was clear that the Chicago parties could have had nothing to do, he was told, by the manager, that his duties ended when he had ascertained and certified that such shipments had been made from Chicago station. From investigations instituted by the writer, he soon learned that some one connected with the management was deeply interested in the payment of the largest sums possible as commissions.
The corporations have ineffectually wrestled with the commission evil, and any number of agreements have been entered into to do away with it; but it is so thoroughly entrenched, and so many officials have an interest in its perpetuation, that they are utterly powerless in the presence of a system which imposes great and needless burthens upon their patrons, but which will die the day the government takes possession of the railways, as then there will be no corporations ready to pay for the diversion of traffic. National ownership alone can dispose of an administrative evil that, from such data as is obtainable, appears to cost the public from $20,000,000 to $25,000,000 per annum.
[10]Mr. Meany, in his Sun article, summarizes six causes for the diminution of railway dividends and remarks: “It is unnecessary to dwell at any great length upon the first five mentioned reasons, but too much could not be said on the sixth. It is now nearly seven years since James McHenry of London (and New York, Pennsylvania & Ohio Railway litigation fame) openly charged railway managers, in an interview published in the Sun, with criminal collusion in the matter of securing extraordinary privileges and unapproachable contracts with their several corporations for favored fast freight lines, express routes, bridge companies, etc., etc., in all the benefits of which such managers shared to a very great extent. On that occasion Mr. McHenry was promptly cried down. Would he be cried down to-day?”
As a rule, American railways pay the highest salaries in the world for those engaged in directing business operations, but such salaries are not paid because transcendant talents are necessary to conduct the ordinary operations of railway administration, but for the purpose of checkmating the chicanery of corporate competitors. In other words, these exceptionally high salaries are paid for the purpose, and because their recipients are believed to have the ability to hold up their end in unscrupulous corporate warfare where, as one railway president expressed it, “the greatest liar comes out ahead.” With the government operating the railways, there would be no conflicting interests necessitating the employment of such costly officials whose great diplomatic talents might well be dispensed with, while the running of trains, and the conduct of the real work of operating the roads, could be left to the same officials as at moderate salaries now perform such duties, and consolidation of all the conflicting interests in the hands of the government will enable the public to dispense with the services of the high priced managers now almost exclusively engaged in “keeping even with the other fellow,” as well as with the costly staffs assisting such managers in keeping even, and the savings resulting may be estimated at from $4,000,000 to $5,000,000 per year.
Government control will enable railway users to dispense with the services of such high priced umpires as Mr. Aldace F. Walker, as well as of all the other officials of sixty-eight traffic associations, fruitlessly laboring to prevent each of five hundred corporations from getting the start of its fellows, and trying to prevent each of the five hundred from absorbing an undue share of the traffic. It appears that each of these costly peace-making attachments has an average of seven corporations to watch.
Referring to traffic associations, and their vain endeavors to keep the corporations within sight of commercial ethics, the Interstate Commerce Commission says: “But the most important provisions of the law have not so often been directly violated as they have been nullified through devices, carefully framed with legal assistance,—here is one of the places where the high-priced lawyer gets in his work—with a view to this very end, and in the belief that when brought to legal test the device hit upon would not be held by the courts to be so distinctly opposed to the terms of the law as to be criminally punishable.” In this connection, it is well to remember what Mr. Dillon tells us of the ease with which the laws can be evaded.
With national ownership the expenditures involved in the maintenance of traffic associations would be saved, and railway users relieved of a tax that, judging from the reports of a limited number of corporations of their contributions towards the support of such organizations, must annually amount to between four and five million dollars.
Of the six hundred corporations operating railways, probably five hundred maintain costly general offices, where president, treasurer, and secretary pass the time surrounded by an expensive staff. The majority of such offices are off the lines of the respective corporations, in the larger cities, where high rents are paid, and great expenses entailed, that proper attention may be given to the bolstering or depressing the price of the corporation’s shares, as the management may be long or short of the market. So far as the utility of the railways is concerned as instruments of anything but speculation, such offices and officers might as well be located in the moon, and their cost saved to the public. The average yearly cost of such offices (and officers) is more than $50,000, and the transfer of the railways to the nation would, in this matter alone, effect an annual saving of more than $25,000,000, as both offices and officials could be dispensed with, and the service be no less efficient.
Moreover, with the nation owning the railways, the indirect but no less onerous tax levied upon the industries of the country, by the thousands of speculators who make day hideous on the stock exchanges, would be abrogated, as then there would be neither railway share nor bond for these harpies to make shuttlecocks of, and this would be another economy due to such ownership.
Railways spend enormous sums in advertising, the most of which national ownership would save, as it would be no more necessary to advertise the advantages of any particular line than it is to advertise the advantages of any given mail route. From reports made by railway corporations to some of the Western States, it appears that something over one per cent. of operating expenses are absorbed in advertising, aggregating something like $7,000,000 per year, of which we may assume that but $5,000,000 would be saved, as it would still be desirable to advertise train departures and arrivals.
A still greater expense is involved in the maintenance of freight and passenger offices off the respective lines, for the purpose of securing a portion of the competitive traffic. In this way vast sums are expended in the payment of rents, and the salaries of hordes of agents, solicitors, clerks, etc., etc. Taking the known expenditures, for this purpose, of a given mileage, it is estimated that the aggregate is not less than $15,000,000 yearly, all of which is a tax upon the public, that would be saved did the government operate the railways.
Under government control, discriminations against localities would cease, whereas now localities are discriminated against because managers are interested in real estate elsewhere, or are interested in diverting traffic in certain directions; again, under corporate management, it is for the interest of the company to haul a commodity as far as possible over its own lines (with the government owning all the lines this motive will lose its force), and thus traffic is forced into unnatural channels. For instance: much of the grain from Kansas should find its way to foreign markets via the short route to the Gulf, the distance to tide water by this route being less than half what it is to the Atlantic, yet so opposed to this natural route are the interests of the majority of the corporations controlling the traffic associations, which now dictate to the people what routes their traffic shall take, that the rates to the Gulf are kept so high as to force the traffic to the Lakes and to the Atlantic; and as all the railways leading to the Gulf have lines running eastward, the much lauded corporate competition fails to help out the citizens of Kansas, who are subjected to the domination of the new tyrant denominated a “traffic association.” With the nation operating the railways, all this would be changed, and localities favorably located would be able to reap the benefits which such location should give, and should such a condition ever obtain, the farmers of western Iowa will not then ship corn to the drouth-stricken portion of Kansas for fifteen cents per one hundred pounds, while the Kansas corn grower, living within seventy-five miles of the same market, is charged ten cents per one hundred pounds for a haul one eighth as long. By such rates the railways force the hauling of corn from Iowa to western Kansas, and then force the corn grower of central Kansas to send his corn eastward, the result being two long hauls, where one short one would suffice; but then the corporations would have absorbed less of the substance of the people.
Another, and an incalculable benefit, which would result from national ownership, would be the relief of State and national legislation from the pressure and corrupting practices of railway corporations which constitute one of the greatest dangers to which Republicaninstitutions can be subjected. This alone renders the nationalization of the railways most desirable, and at the same time such nationalization would have the effect of emancipating a large part of the press from a galling thraldom to the corporations.
With the nation operating the railways, we may have some hope that rates will be reduced by some system resembling the Hungarian zone which has had the effect of diminishing local passenger rates about forty per cent., resulting in such an increase of traffic as to greatly increase the revenues of the roads; the average of rates by ordinary third-class trains being about three fourths of a cent per mile, and one and a half cents per mile for first-class express trains.
In Victoria, the parcel or express business is done by the government railways, and the rates are not one half what they are with us when farmed out to a second lot of corporations. Space does not permit the discussion or even the statement of the many salutary phases of government control, as developed in the various countries of Europe, and it is not necessary, as there are abundant reasons to be found in conditions existing at home, for making the proposed change. By far the most menacing feature of continued corporate ownership is the power over the money markets which it places in the hands of unscrupulous men, any half dozen of whom can, at such a time as that following the failure of the Barings, destroy the welfare of millions, and plunge the country into all the horrors of a money panic. Whether it be true or not, there are many who believe that a small coterie, who had information before the public of the condition of Baring Brothers and that a block of many millions of American railway securities held by that house were being (or soon would be) pressed upon the market, entered into a conspiracy for the purpose of locking up money and thereby depressing prices in order to secure, at low cost, the control of certain coveted railways. The railways were secured, and there is not much doubt that they had been lying in wait for such a critical condition of the money markets to accomplish this purpose, which still further enhances their power for evil. With the railways nationalized, not only would there be no temptation for such nefarious operations, but the power of such men over values would be greatly lessened, if not wholly destroyed, as there would be no railway shares for them to play fast and loose with, and as money, instead of being tied up in loans on chromos representing little but water, would seek investment in bona fide enterprises, their operations would have little influence, and would certainly have no such baleful power over the industries of the country, as their ability to affect the value of railway shares—on which such immense sums are now loaned on call—gives them, they being able by locking up a few millions when the money market is in the condition, which obtained at the time of the Baring collapse, to force the calling of loans and the slaughtering of vast numbers of the shares, carrying the control of the railways they covet. If only for the purpose of divesting “The dangerous wealthy classes” of this frightful power, national ownership would be worth many times its cost, and without such ownership a score of manipulators are soon likely to be complete masters of the republic and all its industrial interests; hence, the question reverts to the form stated in the opening of this paper: Shall the nation accept as a master a political party that may be dislodged by the use of the ballot, or shall the republic be dominated by a master in the form of a score of unscrupulous Goulds, Vanderbilts, and Huntingtons, who cannot be dislodged, and who never die?
Assuming that $30,000 per mile is the maximum cost of existing railways—as is shown in The Arena for February,—and that there are 160,000 miles, it would give a total valuation of $4,800,000,000; but that there may be no complaint that the nation is dealing unfairly with the owners of much water, it will be well to add twenty-five per cent. to what will be found to be the outside value of the railways when condemned under the law of eminent domain, and assuming that $6,000,000,000 of three per cent. bonds are issued in order to make payment therefor, and it involves an interest charge of $180,000,000, to which add $670,000,000, as the cost of maintenance and operation, and $50,000,000 as a sinking fund, and we have a total annual cost, for railway service, of $900,000,000 as against a present cost of $1,050,000,000 ($950,000,000 from traffic earnings, and $85,000,000 from other sources of railway revenue) resulting in a net annual saving to the public of $150,000,000 to which must be added the other various savings which it has been estimated would result from government control, and which, for the convenience of the reader, are here recapitulated, namely:—
| Saving from consolidation of depots and staffs, | $20,000,000 |
| Saving from exclusive use of shortest routes, | 25,000,000 |
| Saving in attorneys’ salaries and legal expenses, | 12,000,000 |
| Saving from the abrogation of the pass evil, | 30,000,000 |
| Saving from the abrogation of the commission system, | 20,000,000 |
| Saving by dispensing with high priced managers and staffs, | 4,000,000 |
| Saving by disbanding traffic associations, | 4,000,000 |
| Saving by dispensing with presidents, etc., | 25,000,000 |
| Saying by abolishing (all but local) offices, solicitors, etc., | 15,000,000 |
| Saving of five-sevenths of the advertising account, | 5,000,000 |
| —————— | |
| Total savings by reason of better administration, | $160,000,000 |
It would appear that after yearly setting aside $50,000,000 as a sinking fund, that there are the best of reasons for believing that the cost of the railway service would be some $310,000,000 less than under corporate management.
That $6,000,000,000 is much more than it would cost to duplicate existing railways, will not be questioned by the disinterested familiar with late reductions in the cost of construction, and that such a valuation is excessive is manifest from the fact that it is much more than the market value of all the railway bonds and shares in existence.
Mr. John P. Meany, in the Railway Review of February 7, 1891, says: “It is safe to assume that the market valuation of the entire $4,500,000,000 of railroad stock in existence, would not average more than $30 per share, or, say $1,350,000,000 in all,” and in his Sun article he states that fully $500,000,000 of this stock is duplicated, so that the “live” stock outstanding is really but $4,000,000,000, which at $30 per share would have an aggregate value of $1,200,000,000. Mr. Meany also states that there are duplications of bond issues amounting to some $300,000,000 leaving the live outstanding bonds at $4,500,000,000 and many corporations failing to pay interest, some issues are selling as low as 12 per cent. of par, making it safe to call the average market value of bonds 90 per cent. of their face value, and their aggregate value would be $4,050,000,000, to which add value of “live” capital stock, $1,200,000,000, and the total market value of bonds and stock is, $5,250,000,000, being at the rate of $32,800 per mile for the 160,000 miles in operation.
After many years of familiarity with the turgid and obscure statements issued by American railway corporations, and which are usually of such a character that the more they are studied the less the shareholder knows of the affairs of the corporation, it is very refreshing to read the report of the Railway Commissioners of any one of the Australasian colonies, where every item of expenditure is made clear, and where words are not used for the purpose of misleading.
The last Victorian report shows this new and sparsely settled country as able to borrow money with which to build national railways, at three and one half per cent. per annum. How many American corporations are able to borrow money at such a rate? This saving in the interest charge directly benefits the public, and is due to national ownership, and a like saving will be made by the nationalization of American railways.
This report also shows that while the country is so rugged that in many cases the gradients are as great as one hundred and thirty feet per mile, and the cost of labor and supplies more than here, the roads are operated at less cost, as measured by the expense per train mile, than in the favored regions of the United States. The Kansas City, Fort Scott, and Memphis Railway is, admittedly, one of the best managed and most economically operated railways in the West, and with an abundance of very cheap coal;[11] low gradients and running more trains than do the Victorian railways should be operated much more cheaply, yet the cost of operating this road, as measured by the cost per train mile,—and this is the best possible criterion of economy in operation,—is one third greater than on the government owned railways of Victoria.
An excellent measure of the efficiency of the management is the number of casualties, as proportioned to the number of passengers carried and men employed, which is very great in such countries as Russia, Roumania, and Portugal; but in Victoria, and other Australian colonies, the proportion is far less than in the United States, more attention being given to the adoption of such safety devices as interlocking switches, etc., and all the stations and crossings are provided with gates, and otherwise better guarded than with us, where the corporations are much more intent upon paying dividends than in serving the public, or in saving life and limb, while on the government-operated railways of Victoria, the management devotes its attention—with a due regard to economy,—to the convenience, comfort, and safety of railway users, and employees having no bond or share holders to provide for. In the United States one of the useless traffic associations pays its chief umpire nearly as much as Victoria pays her entire commission.
Those desirous of entering the railway service of Victoria are subjected to such a rigid examination as to qualifications and character, that but little more than one third are able to pass the ordeal, and a high standard of excellence in the personnel of the service results; when these servants are disabled or worn out by long service, they are pensioned or given a retiring allowance, and this system tends to reduce the inclination to strike, as a man who has been years in the service will long hesitate before he forfeits his right to a provision of this kind.
All the Australian reports and accounts which have come under the observation of the writer, are models of conciseness and clearness, and show that there is nothing inherent in railway accounts rendering it necessary that they be made obscure and misleading.
Neither in the Australian reports nor in the colonial press is there the least evidence of discriminations against individuals or localities, and this one fact is an argument of greater force in favor of national ownership than all that have ever been advanced against it.
WHERE MUST LASTING PROGRESS BEGIN?
BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
To the calm observer there is nothing more impressive in society to-day than the varied and multitudinous associations for the amelioration of human poverty, ignorance, and crime; and nothing more depressing than the seeming immense waste of force scattered in these innumerable directions with results so intangible and undefined. From all the discussions we hear in the halls of legislation, and on the popular platform, on the relations of capital and labor, finance, free trade, land monopoly, taxation, individualism, and socialism, the rights of women, children, criminals, and animals, one would think that an entire change must speedily be effected in our theories of government, religion, and social life, and so there would be if a small minority, even, honestly believed in these specific reforms. But alas! our reading minds are yet to be educated into the first principles of social science; they are yet to learn that our present theories of life are all false. The old ideas of caste and class, of rich and poor, educated and uneducated, must pass away, and the many must no longer suffer that the few may shine. Our religion must teach the brotherhood of the race, the essential oneness of humanity, and our government must be based on the broad principles of equal rights to all. A religion that seeks to make the people satisfied in their degraded conditions, and releases them from all responsibility for its continuance, is unworthy our intelligent belief, and a government that holds half its people in slavery, practically chained where they are born, in ignorance, poverty, and vice, is unworthy our intelligent support.
The object of all our specific reforms is to secure equal conditions for the whole human race. The initiative steps to this end are:—
1. Educate our upper classes, our most intelligent people, into the belief that our present civilization is based on false principles, and that the ignorance, poverty, and crime we see about us are the legitimate results of our false theories.
2. They must be educated to believe that our present conditions and environments can and will be changed, and that as man is responsible for the miseries of the race, through his own knowledge and wisdom the change must come. To-day, men make their God responsible for all human arrangements, and they quote Scripture to prove that poverty is one of His wise provisions for the development of all the cardinal virtues. I heard a sermon preached, not long ago, from the text: “The poor ye have always with you,” in which the preacher dwelt on the virtues of benevolence and gratitude called out on either side. Poverty, said he, has been the wise schoolmaster, to teach the people industry, economy, self-sacrifice, patience, and humility, all those beautiful virtues that best fit the human soul for the life hereafter. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Thus the lessons of submission and content have been sedulously taught to oppressed classes, in the name of God, with fair promises of heaven to come.
The rich must be taught that they have no right to live in luxury while others starve. The poor must be taught that they, too, have inalienable rights on this green earth, the right to life, liberty, and happiness, and to the fruits of their own industry, and it is the imperative duty of each class to concede the one and demand the other. The apathy and indifference of the masses in their degraded conditions are as culpable as the pride and satisfaction of the upper classes in their superior position.
As the only hope for the lasting progress of the race and a radical reform in social life lie in the right education of children, their birth and development is the vital starting-point for the philosopher. A survey of the various unfortunate classes of society that have hitherto occupied the time and thought of different orders of philanthropists, and the little that has been accomplished in our own lifetime, to go no farther back, gives very little encouragement for this mere surface work that occupies so many noble men and women in each generation. In spite of all our asylums and charities, religious discussion and legislation, the problems of pauperism, intemperance, and crime are no nearer a satisfactory solution than when our pilgrim fathers landed on Plymouth Rock, in search of that liberty in thought and action denied in the old world. The gloomy panorama of misery and crime moves on, a dark picture in this young civilization.
If we would use the same common sense in the improvement of mankind that we do in the ordinary affairs of life, we should begin our work at the foundations of society, in family life, in parenthood, the source and centre of all these terrible evils whose branches we are trying to lop off. A family living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as possible, merely to afford them a shelter until the new home was built. And all our special reform work to-day is but patching the old, until with a knowledge of the true laws of social science we can begin to build the new aright. There is much surface work we must do in reform, for decency’s sake, but all this patching up of ignorant, diseased, criminal, unfortunate humanity is temporary and transient, effecting no radical improvement anywhere. The real work that will tell on all time and the eternities, is building the new life and character, laying the foundation-stones of future generations in justice, liberty, purity, peace, and love, the work of the rising generation of fathers and mothers at this hour. Those of us who have long since passed the meridian of life, can give you the result of our experience and researches into social science, but with the young men and women of this hour rests the hope of the higher civilization which it is possible for the race to attain through obedience to law. The lovers of science come back to us from every latitude and longitude, from their explorations in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, from their observations of the planetary world, bearing the same message. “All things are governed by law,” while man himself who holds in his own hand the key to all knowledge and power seems never to be in unison with the grandeur and glory of the world in which he lives. The picture of struggling humanity through the long past is not a cheerful one to contemplate. What can be done to mitigate the miseries of the masses? This thought rests heavily and with increasing weight on the hearts of all who love justice, liberty, and equality. The same law of inheritance that hands down the vices of ancestors, hands down their virtues also, and in a greater ratio, for good is positive, active, ever vigilant, its worshippers swim up stream against the current. Could we make all men and women feel their individual responsibility in the chain of influences that tell on all time, we could solemnize in our own day such vows for nobler lives as to make this seeming herculean work light as the wings of angels. If, henceforward, all the thought, the money, the religious enthusiasm dedicated to the regeneration of the race, could be devoted to the generation of our descendants, to the conditions and environments of parents and children, the whole face of society might be changed before we celebrate the next centennial of our national life. Science has vindicated our right to discuss freely whether our ancestors were apes; let it be as free to ask whether our posterity shall be idiots, dwarfs, and knaves, and if not, by what change, if any, in our social institutions, such wretched results may be avoided. Gatton in his work on “Heredity,” says our present civilization is growing too complicated for our best minds even to grasp, and to meet successfully the issues of the hour, humanity must be lifted up a few degrees, as speedily as possible. And where must this radical work begin? The best hope for the progress of the race in political, religious, and social life lies in the right birth, education, and development of our children. Here is the true starting-point for the philosopher.
Let the young man who is indulging in all manner of excesses remember that in considering the effect of the various forms of dissipation on himself, his own happiness or danger, he does not begin to measure the evil of his life. As the high priest at the family altar, his deeds of darkness will inflict untold suffering on generation after generation. One of the most difficult lessons to impress on any mind is the power and extent of individual influence; and parents above all others resist the belief that their children are exactly what they make them, no more, no less; like produces like. The origin of ideas was long a disputed point with different schools of philosophers. Locke took the ground that the mind of every child born into the world is like a piece of blank paper; that you may write thereon whatever you will, but science has long since proved that such idealists as Descartes were nearer right, that the human family come into the world with ideas, with marked individual proclivities; that the pre-natal conditions have more influence than all the education that comes after. If family peculiarities are transmitted to the third and fourth generation, the grandson clothed with the same gait, gesture, mode of thought and expression as the grandfather he has never seen, it is evident that each individual may reap some advantage and development from those predecessors whose lives in all matters great and small are governed by law, by a conscientious sense of duty, not by feeling, chance, or appetite.
If there is a class of educators who need special preparation for their high and holy duties, it is those who assume the responsibilities of parents. Shall they give less thought to immortal beings than the artist to his landscape or statue.
We wander through the galleries in the old world, and linger before the works of the great masters, transfixed with the grace and beauty of the ideals that surround us. And with equal preparation, greater than these are possible in living, breathing humanity. Go in imagination from the gallery to the studio of the poor artist, watch him through the restless days, as he struggles with the conception of some grand ideal, and then see how patiently he moulds and remoulds the clay, and when at last, through weary years, the block of marble is transformed into an angel of light, he worships it, and weeps that he cannot breathe into it the breath of life. And lo! by his side are growing up immortal beings to whom he has never given one half the care and thought bestowed on the silent ones that grace his walls. And yet the same devotion to a high ideal of human character, would soon give the world a generation of saints and scholars, of scientists and statesmen, of glorified humanity such as the world has not yet seen. Many good people lose heart in trying to improve their surroundings because they say the influence of one amounts to so little. Remember it was by the patient toil of generations through centuries that the Colossus of Rhodes, Diana’s Temple at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Pyramids at Egypt, the Pharos at Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens at Babylon, the Olympian Zeus, the seven wonders of the world, grew day by day into enduring monuments to the greatness of humanity. By individual effort the grand result was at last achieved. So the ideal manhood and womanhood, so earnestly prophesied, will become living realities in the future. Remember it took three hundred years to build an Egyptian pyramid. Allowing four generations to a century we have twelve generations of men who passed their lives in that one achievement. Was not the work of those who first evened the ground and laid the foundation-stones as important as of those who laid the capstones at last? Let us, then, begin in our day by the discussion of these vital principles of social science, to even the ground and lay the foundation-stones for the greatest wonder the world is yet to see,—a man in whom the appetites, the passions, the emotions are all held in allegiance to their rightful sovereign, Reason. The true words and deeds of successive generations will build up this glorified humanity, fairer than any Parian marble, grander than any colossal sculpture of the East, more exalted than spire or dome, boundless in capacity, in aspiration, limitless as space.
MY HOME LIFE.
BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS.
It has been suggested to me that an article descriptive of my ways and doings at home might be acceptable to readers of this journal; and it has furthermore been proposed that I should write the said article myself. There is a straightforward simplicity of purpose about this proposition which commends it to me. Also, it has the recommendation of being quite novel.
As a rule, the person whose home life is to be made the subject of an article is “interviewed” by a gentleman of the press, who cross-examines the victim like an old Bailey counsel, and proceeds to take an inventory of his furniture, like a bailiff.
Now, it seems to me that the conditions under which such a visit is paid and received are radically unsatisfactory. The person interviewed must be more or less uncomfortably self-conscious, and one cannot help doubting whether the interviewer ever succeeds in seeing his subject and his subject’s surroundings in exactly their normal dishabille. It would ask more than Roman virtue not to make the best of one’s self and one’s house when both were sitting for a portrait; and difficult as it is to look natural and feel natural in front of a photographer’s camera, it is ten times more trying vis-a-vis of a reporter’s note-book. As for the temptation to “pose,” whether consciously or unconsciously, it must be well-nigh irresistible. For my own part, I am but too certain that, instead of receiving such a visitor in my ordinary working costume, and in a room littered with letters and papers, I should have inevitably put on a more becoming gown, and have “tidied up” the library, when the appointed day and hour arrived. Not, however, being put to this test, I will do my best to present myself literally “At Home,” and in my habit as I live.
Westbury-on-Trym is a village in Gloucestershire separated from Clifton by about a mile and a half of open down, and distant about four miles from Bristol terminus. It lies in a hollow at the foot of two steep hills, one of which is crowned with the woods of Blaise Castle, and the other with a group of buildings consisting of the parish church, a charming little Gothic structure known as “The Hall,” and the national schoolhouse. The church is a fine perpendicular edifice of considerable antiquity, with a square tower surmounted, in true West of England style, by a small turret, having a tiny Gothic spire at one corner. The parishioners are proud of their church, and with justice. It contains some good stained-glass windows, two interesting mediæval monuments, and an exceptionally fine organ. “The Hall” is quite modern, having been built and endowed, in 1867, by a generous parishioner. The large room seats three hundred people, and is fitted up with an organ as large and beautiful as that in the church close by. Village concerts, penny readings, Lent lectures, charity bazaars, and the like are held here. The building also contains a reading-room and a small library for the use of the working classes. My own first attempts at public reading were made on this village platform, twenty years ago.
A little river flows through the valley, and is crossed by a single bridge in the lower part of the village. This is the Trym,—an untidy Trym enough, nowadays,—opaque, muddy, and little better than a ditch. Yet it was a navigable river some centuries ago, and, according to tradition, was not unknown to trout. On leaving the village, it takes a southwesterly course through a pleasant bottom of meadow lands, and thence between wooded slopes and a romantic “Coombe,” much beloved of artists, till it finally empties itself into the Avon, not far from the mouth of that tidal river.
There are still some remains of a building at the foot of Westbury Hill, which in olden times was second only in age and importance to the church,—namely, “The College.” This “College” was a religious house, founded as far back as A.D. 798, and probably rebuilt some five centuries later by that famous merchant and public benefactor, William Canynge, of Bristol, who died there as Dean of the College, and was buried in the church. Twenty-five years ago, when I first made its acquaintance, this “College” (a large modernized building with corner turrets) still presented a stately front to the road. At the back was a square bell-tower covered from top to bottom with ivy, and a spacious garden shut in by high walls. It was then a boy’s school, and the big garden used to echo with shouts and laughter on summer evenings. The bell-tower is the most ancient part of the building, and according to local tradition, a subterranean passage leads from the cellarage in the basement to the church on the hillside above. The story is likely enough to be correct; for a passage of some kind there certainly is, and it leads apparently in the direction of the church. A working-man who, with some three or four others, had once tried to explore it, told me several years ago that, beyond the first few yards, the tunnel was completely blocked, and the air so foul that it put the lights out. Whether any subsequent attempt has been made to force a passage, I do not know; but the whole place is sadly changed since the time when I used to cast longing glances at the old green tower from the lane that skirted the garden wall, wishing that I might some day get permission to sit in a corner under a shady tree on the other side of that wall, and sketch the tower. The school has long since broken up for good, and boys and masters have gone their ways. The old house, after standing vacant for years, was bought at last by a little local builder, who ran up a row of smart shops in front of the old turreted façade; let off the house itself in lodgings to poor families; and re-sold the old bell-tower to the village blacksmith. The garden wall being pulled down on that side, the tower now stands at the end of a row of new cottages, forlorn and solitary in the midst of alien surroundings, a forge and anvil in the basement.
As regards the “great houses” of the place, Westbury-on-Trym enjoys a curious monopoly of handsome private mansions. These mansions—spacious, finely built, each standing in its own park-like grounds—were built for the most part by wealthy Bristol merchants during the two last centuries—men of wealth, who needed to reside within an easy drive of the city, and who were content to amass great fortunes without also desiring to become land-owners. The Bristol merchants of the present day no longer care to live so near their business. Railways and steamers enable them to go farther afield; and so the fine old houses of Westbury, Henbury, Redland, Shirehampton, Brislington, and other parishes round about the great commercial centre, have gradually passed into the possession of a class of moneyed gentry who, having neither trade nor land, are attracted by the fine climate and beautiful scenery of this part of England. Some few of these old mansions are renowned for the valuable collections of paintings and other works of art which they contain; as, for instance, at Blaise Castle, there is a fine series of specimens of the old masters purchased at the close of the great war during the first quarter of the present century by Mr. Harford, grandfather of the present owner; a series which comprises a fine Guido, several specimens of the Caracci, Salvator Rosa, etc. At Kings-Weston Park, we find the family portraits of the de Cliffords purchased, together with the very fine old house built by Vanbrugh in the time of Charles II., by the late owner, Philip Miles, Esq. At Leigh Court, the gallery, with its famous Leonardo, is known throughout Europe, while many other art treasures are to be found in the possession of private owners round about the neighborhood.
It is not to be supposed that the writer and subject of this present paper resides in semi-royal state in one of these magnificent old houses. On the contrary, she lives, and has lived for more than a quarter of a century, with a very dear friend, in a small, irregularly built house, which together they have from time to time enlarged and improved, according to their pleasure. That friend—now in her eighty-seventh year—used, in days long gone by, to gather round her table many of the wits and celebrities of fifty years ago; but for her, as for myself, our little country home has been as dear for its seclusion as for the charm of its neighborhood.
The Larches stands, with some few other houses of like dimensions, on a space of high-level ground to the eastward of the village. It is approached by a narrow lane, beyond which lie fields and open country. Having at first been quite a small cottage, it has been added to by successive owners, and is, consequently, quite destitute of external or internal uniformity. My own library, and the bedrooms above it, are, for the present, the latest additions to the structure; though I hope some day to build on a little room which I shall not venture to call a museum, but which shall contain my Egyptian antiquities and other collections.
The little house stands in one acre of ground, closely walled in, and surrounded by high shrubs and lofty larch trees. It is up and down a straight path in the shade of these larch trees that I take my daily exercise; and if I am to enter into such minor particulars as are dear to the writers and readers of “At Home” articles, I may mention that a dial-register is affixed to the wall of a small grape-house at one end of this path, by means of which I measure off my regular half-mile before breakfast, my half mile after breakfast, and the mile or more with which I finish up my pedestrian duties in the late afternoon. To walk these two miles per diem is a Draconian law which I impose upon myself during all seasons of the year. When the snow lies deep in winter, it is our old gardener’s first duty in the morning to sweep “Miss Edwards’ path,” as well as to clear two or three large spaces on the lawn, in which the wild birds may be fed. The wild birds, I should add, are our intimate friends and perennial visitors, for whom we keep an open table d’hôte throughout the year. By feeding them in summer we lose less fruit than our neighbors; and by feeding them in winter we preserve the lives of our little summer friends, whose songs are the delight of ourselves and our neighbors in the springtime. There are dozens of nests every summer in the ivy which clusters thickly around my library windows; and we even carry our hospitality so far as to erect small rows of model lodging-houses for our birds high up under the eaves, which they inhabit in winter, and in which many couples of sparrows and starlings rear their young throughout the summer.
We will now leave the garden, and go into the house, which stands high on a grassy platform facing the sunny west. We enter by a wooden porch, which, as I write, is thickly covered with roses. As soon as the front door is opened, the incoming visitor finds himself in the midst of modern Egypt, the walls of the hall being lined with Damascus tiles and Cairene woodwork, the spoils of some of those Meshrabeeyeh windows which are so fast disappearing both in Alexandria and Cairo. In a recess opposite the door stands a fine old chair inlaid with ivory and various colored woods, which some two hundred years ago was the Episcopal chair of a Coptic bishop. The rest of the hall furniture is of Egyptian inlaid work. Every available inch of space on the walls is filled and over-filled with curiosities of all descriptions. On one bracket stand an old Italian ewer and plate in wrought brass work; on another, a Nile “Kulleh” or water bottle, and a pair of cups of unbaked clay; on others again, jars and pots of Indian, Morocco, Japanese, Siût, and Algerian ware. Here also, are a couple of funerary tablets in carved limestone, of ancient Egyptian work; a fragment of limestone cornice from the ruins of Naukratis; and various specimens of Majolica, old Wedgewood, and other ware, as well as framed specimens of Rhodian and Damascus tiles.
If my visitor is admitted at all, which for reasons which I will presently state is extremely doubtful, he passes through the hall, leaving the dining-room to his right and the drawing-room to his left, and is ushered along a passage, also lined with lattice-work, through a little ante-room, and into my library. This is a fair-sized room with a bay of three windows at the upper end facing eastward. My writing-table is placed somewhat near this window; and here I sit with my back to the light facing whomsoever may be shown into the room.
Sitting thus at my desk, the room to me is full of reminiscences of many friends and many places. The walls are lined with glazed bookcases containing the volumes which I have been slowly amassing from the time I was fourteen or fifteen years of age. I cast my eyes round the shelves, and I recognize in their contents the different lines of study which I have pursued at different periods of my life. Like the geological strata in the side of a cliff, they show the deposits of successive periods, and remind me, not only of the changes which my own literary tastes have undergone, but also of the various literary undertakings in which I have been from time to time engaged. The shelves devoted to the British poets carry me back to a time when I read them straight through without a break, from Chaucer to Tennyson. A large number of histories of England and works of British biography are due to a time when I was chiefly occupied in writing the letterpress to “The Photographic Historical Portrait Gallery,”—a very beautiful publication illustrated with photographs of historical miniatures, which never reached a second volume, and is now, I believe, extremely scarce. An equally voluminous series of histories of Greece and Rome, and of translations of the Greek and Latin poets, marks the time when I first became deeply interested in classic antiquity. To this phase also belong the beginnings of those archæological works which I have of late years accumulated almost to the exclusion of all other books, as well as my collection of volumes upon Homer, which nearly fill one division of a bookcase. When I left London some six and twenty years ago to settle at Westbury-on-Trym, I also added to my library a large number of works on the fine arts, feeling, as every lover of pictures must do, that it is necessary, in some way or another, to make up for the loss of the National Gallery, the South Kensington Museum, and other delightful places which I was leaving behind. At this time, also, I had a passion for Turner, and eagerly collected his engraved works, of which I believe I possess nearly all. I think I may say the same of Samuel Prout. Of Shakespeare I have almost as many editions as I have translations of Homer; and of European histories, works of reference generally, a writer who lives in the country must, of course, possess a goodly number. Of rare books I do not pretend to have many. A single shelf contains a few good old works, including a fine black-letter Chaucer, the Venetian Dante of 1578, and some fine examples of the Elizabethan period. I soon found, however, that this taste was far too expensive to cultivate. Last of all, in what I may call the upper Egyptological stratum of my books, come those on Egypt and Egyptian archæology, a class of works deeply interesting to those who make Egyptology their study, but profoundly dull to everybody else.
Such are my books. If, however, I were to show my visitor what I consider my choicest treasures, I should take down volumes which have been given to me by friends, some now far distant, others departed. Here, for instance, is the folio edition of Doré’s “Don Quichotte,” on the fly-leaf of which he signs himself as my “ami affectueux;” or some of the works of my dear friend of many years, John Addington Symonds, especially “Many Moods,” which he has dedicated to myself. Or I would take down the first volume of “The Ring and the Book,” containing a delightful inscription from the pen of Robert Browning; or the late Lord Lytton’s version of the Odes of Horace, in which is inserted an interesting letter on the method and spirit of his translation, addressed to me at the time of its publication. Next to this stands a presentation copy of Sir Theodore Martin’s translation of the same immortal poems. To most persons these would be more interesting than other and later presentation volumes from various foreign savants—Maspero, Naville, Ebers, Wiedemann, and others.
I am often asked how many books I possess, and I can only reply that I have not the least idea, having lost count of them for many years. Those which are in sight are attired in purple and fine linen, beautiful bindings having once upon a time been one of my hobbies; but behind the beautiful bindings, many of which were executed from my own designs, are other books in modest cloth and paper wrappers; so that the volumes are always two rows, and sometimes even three rows deep. If I had not a tolerably good memory, I should certainly be very much perplexed by this arrangement, the more especially as my only catalogue is in my head.
I fear I am allowing myself to say too much about my books; yet, after all, they represent a large part of myself. My life, since I have lived at The Larches, has been one of ever-increasing seclusion, and my books have for many years been my daily companions, teachers, and friends. Merely to lean back in one’s chair now and then—merely to lean back and look at them—is a pleasure, a stimulus, and in some sense a gain. For, as it seems to me, there is a virtue which goes out from even the backs of one’s books; and though to glance along the shelves without taking down a single volume be but a Barmecide feast, yet the tired brain is consciously refreshed by it.
Although the room is essentially a bookroom, there are other things than books to which one can turn for a momentary change of thought. In yonder corner, for instance, stands an easel, the picture upon which is constantly changed. To-day, it will be a water-color sketch by John Lewis; to-morrow, an etching by Albert Dürer or Seymour Haden; the next day, an oil painting by Elihu Vedder, or perhaps an ancient Egyptian funerary papyrus, with curious pen-and-ink vignettes of gods and genii surmounting the closely written columns of hieroglyphic text.
For, you see, I have no wall space in my library upon which to hang pictures; and yet, I am not happy, and my thoughts are not rightly in tune, unless I have a picture or two in sight, somewhere about the room. In the corners, hidden away behind pedestals and curtains, a quick eye may detect stacks of pictures, ready to be brought out and put on the easel when needed. On the pedestals stand plaster casts of busts from antique originals in the Louvre, the Uffizzi Gallery, and the British Museum; and yonder, beside the arched entrance between the ante-room and the library, stands a small white marble torso of a semi-recumbent river god which I picked up years ago from amid the dusty stores of a little curiosity-shop in one of the small by-streets near Soho Square. It is a splendid fragment, so powerfully and learnedly modelled, that no less a critic than the late Charles Blanc once suggested to me that it might be a trial-sketch by a pupil of Michael Angelo, or even by the master himself. Curiously enough, this little masterpiece, which has lost both arms from below the shoulders and both legs from above the knee, was wrecked before its completion; the face, the beard, the hair and the back being little more than blocked out, whereas, the forepart of the trunk is highly finished. On the opposite side of the archway, in an iron tripod, stands a large terra-cotta amphora found in the cellar of a Roman villa discovered in 1872, close behind the Baths of Caracalla.
As I happened to be spending that winter in Rome, I went, of course, to see the new “scavo,” and there were the big jars standing in the cellar, just as in the lifetime of the ancient owner. I need scarcely say that I bought mine on the spot.
It is such associations as these which are the collector’s greatest pleasures. Each object recalls the place and circumstances of its purchase, brings back incidents of foreign travel, and opens up long vistas of delightful memories. For me, every bit of old pottery on the tops of the bookcases has its history. That Majolica jar painted with the Medici arms, and those Montelupo plates, were bought in Florence; those brass salvers with heads of Doges in repoussé work were picked up in a dark old shop on one of the side canals of Venice. The tall jars, yellow, green, white, and brown, with grotesque dragon mouths and twisted handles, are of Gallipoli make, and I got them at a shop in an out-of-the-way court at the top of a blind alley in Stamboul.
I have said that there are reasons why an intending visitor might, perchance, fail to penetrate as far as this den of books and bric-à-brac, and I might allege a considerable number, but they may all be summed up in the one deplorable fact that there are but twenty-four hours to the day, and seven days to the week. Time is precious to me, and leisure is a thing unknown. If, however, the said visitor is of congenial tastes, has gained admittance, and finds me less busy than usual, he will, perhaps, be let into the secret of certain hidden treasures, the existence of which is unsuspected by the casual caller. For dearer to me than all the rest of my curios are my Egyptian antiquities; and of these, strange to say, though none of them are in sight, I have enough to stock a modest little museum. Stowed away in all kinds of nooks and corners, in upstairs cupboards, in boxes, drawers, and cases innumerable, behind books, and invading the sanctity of glass closets and wardrobes, are hundreds, nay, thousands, of those fascinating objects in bronze and glazed ware, in carved wood and ivory, in glass, and pottery, and sculptured stone, which are the delight of archæologists and collectors. Here, for instance, behind the “Revue Archeologique” packed side by side as closely as figs in a box, are all the gods of Egypt,—fantastic little porcelain figures plumed and horned, bird-headed, animal-headed, and the like. Their reign, it is true, may be over in the Valley of the Nile, but in me they still have a fervent adorer. Were I inclined to worship them with due antique ceremonial, there are two libation tables in one of the attics ready to my hand, carved with semblances of sacrificial meats and drinks; or here, in a tin box behind the “Retrospective Review,” are specimens of actual food offerings deposited three thousand years ago in various tombs at Thebes—shrivelled dates, lentils, nuts, and even a slice of bread. Rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, amulets, mirrors, and toilet objects, once the delight of dusky beauties long since embalmed and forgotten; funerary statuettes, scarabs, rolls of mummy cloth, and the like are laid by “in a sacred gloom” from which they are rarely, if ever, brought forth into the light of day. And there are stranger things than these,—fragments of spiced and bituminized humanity to be shown to visitors who are not nervous, nor given to midnight terrors. Here is a baby’s foot (some mother cried over it once) in the Japanese cabinet in the ante-room. There are three mummied hands behind “Allibone’s Dictionary of English Authors,” in the library. There are two arms with hands complete—the one almost black, the other singularly fair,—in a drawer in my dressing-room; and grimmest of all, I have the heads of two ancient Egyptians in a wardrobe in my bedroom, who, perhaps, talk to each other in the watches of the night, when I am sound asleep. As, however, I am not writing a catalogue of my collection, I will only mention that there is a somewhat battered statue of a Prince of Kush standing upright in his packing-case, like a sentry in a sentry-box, in an empty coach-house at the bottom of the garden.
It may, perhaps, be objected to my treatment of this subject that I have described only my “home,” and that, being myself, I have not described Miss Edwards. This is a task which I cannot pretend to perform in a manner satisfactory either to myself or the reader. My personal appearance has, however, been so fully depicted in the columns of some hundreds of newspapers, that I have but to draw upon the descriptions given by my brethren of the press, in order to fill what would otherwise be an inevitable gap in the present article. By one, for instance, I am said to have “coal-black hair and flashing black eyes”; by another, that same hair is said to be “snow-white”; while a third describes it as “iron-gray, and rolled back in a large wave.” On one occasion, as I am informed, I had “a commanding and Cassandra-like presence”; elsewhere, I was “tall, slender, and engaging”; and occasionally I am merely of “middle height” and, alas! “somewhat inclined to embonpoint.” As it is obviously so easy to realize what I am like from the foregoing data, I need say no more on the subject.
With regard to “my manners and customs” and the course of my daily life, there is little or nothing to tell. I am essentially a worker, and a hard worker, and this I have been since my early girlhood. When I am asked what are my working hours, I reply:—“All the time when I am not either sitting at meals, taking exercise, or sleeping”; and this is literally true. I live with the pen in my hand, not only from morning till night, but sometimes from night till morning. I have, in fact, been a night bird ever since I came out of the schoolroom, when I habitually sat up reading till long past midnight. Later on, when I adopted literature as a profession, I still found that “To steal a few hours from the night” was to ensure the quietest time, and the pleasantest, for pen and brain work; and, for at least the last twenty-five years, I have rarely put out my lamp before two or three in the morning. Occasionally, when work presses and a manuscript has to be despatched by the earliest morning mail, I remain at my desk the whole night through; and I can with certainty say that the last chapter of every book I have ever written has been finished at early morning. In summertime, it is certainly delightful to draw up the blinds and complete in sunlight a task begun when the lamps were lighted in the evening.
And this reminds me of a little incident—too trivial, perhaps, to be worth recording—which befell me so long ago as 1873. I had visited the Dolomites during the previous summer, not returning to England till close upon Christmastime, and I had been occupied during the greater part of the spring in preparing that account of the journey entitled “Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys.” Time ran somewhat short towards the last, as my publishers were anxious to produce the volume early in June; and when it came to the point of finishing off, I sat up all through one beautiful night in May, till the farewell words were written. At the very moment when, with a sigh of satisfaction, I laid down my pen, a wandering nightingale on the pear-tree outside my library window, burst into such a flood of song as I have never heard before or since. The pear-tree was in full blossom; the sky behind it was blue and cloudless; and as I listened to the unwonted music, I could not help thinking that, had I been a pious scribe of the Middle Ages who had just finished a laboriously written life of some departed saint, I should inevitably have believed that the bird was a ghostly messenger sent by the good saint himself to congratulate me upon the completion of my task.
THE TYRANNY OF NATIONALISM.[12]
BY M. J. SAVAGE.
It is a somewhat curious task to which I find myself set. To go on with it may be to lay myself open to censure on the part of the “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.” What would have been thought of the famous Davy Crockett, if he had fired his gun after the coon had said, “Don’t shoot, for I will come right down”? But the Rev. Francis Bellamy “comes right down” before anybody is in sight with a gun at all. He argues, indeed, in favor of nationalism; but, before he begins, he whispers to you, confidentially, that he is not much of a nationalist after all. Like Bottom, in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he is anxious not to scare anybody, and so lets out the secret that he is not a “truly” lion, but is only “taking the part.” In effect he tells the audience that “I will roar you as gently as a sucking dove.”
Let us see, from his own words, how much of a nationalist, and what kind of a one he really is. “It is not without some question, however, that I accept the generous challenge.” (That is, to reply to the editor of The Arena.) “For I am not sure that I myself believe in the military type of socialism which the editor seems continually to have in mind. The book (‘Looking Backward’) which, more than all others combined, has brought socialism before American thought, has also furnished to its opponents a splendidly clear target in its military organization. It cannot be repeated too often, however, that the army type is not conceded by socialists to be an essential, even if nationalistic, socialism.”
Later on, speaking of “the hostile critics,” he says: “They delight to picture the superb riot of corruption, if nationalists could have their way at once. They will never listen, they will never remember, while nationalists declare they would not have their way at once if they could. A catastrophe by which nationalistic socialism might be precipitated would be a deplorable disaster to human progress.”
Later still, he brings out the idea that all he seeks is to begin, in a small way, with towns and cities, and see how it works.
And once more he declares, “We certainly want no nationalism that is not an orderly development.” … “Nationalism is only a prophecy. It is too distant to be certainly detailed.” (“For this relief, much thanks!”) … “We may be inspired by it as the end towards which present movements are tending. But each age solves its own problems; and the passage into the promised land is the issue for another generation. A nearer view alone can determine where the passage is, and whether the land is truly desirable….
“Meantime, what our people must vote upon in the present year of grace is whether great private corporations shall control legislatures and city councils, and charge their own unquestioned prices for such public necessities of life as light and transit…. The future is in the hands of evolution.”
This latter paragraph challenges and receives my most unbounded admiration. It is one of the neatest changes of base I ever witnessed. I have seen remarkable feats performed by the prestidigitateur on the stage; but they were clumsy compared with this. I thought it was nationalism I was looking at. But, “presto, change!” I look again, and the only thing visible is the question as to “whether great private corporations shall control legislatures and city councils, and charge their own unquestioned prices for such public necessities as light and transit.” I was looking for the “garden of Eden,” the “kingdom of heaven,” the “promised land,” or, at the very least, the fulfilment of Mr. Edward Bellamy’s dream of a Boston with poverty gone and everybody happy, and lo! I am put off with economical electric lights and cheaper street cars! To be sure, these latter are not to be despised; but when one, like More’s “Peri at the Gate,” has been looking into heaven, even free street lights and street cars are a disappointment!
But however disappointed we may be, let us turn and seriously face the situation. The Rev. Francis Bellamy is not at all sure that he is in favor of his brother’s kind of nationalism. And yet, the kind and method were the only peculiar and distinctive things in his brother’s book. Dreams are old and common; but when this book appeared, people shouted “Eureka! We have found the way. This is the fulfilment of our dreams!” Now we are told, on authority, that it is not. And we are just where we were before.
People may suffer from a vague discontent for any number of years, while yet they do no more than complain and wish they were more comfortable. So, for example, the farmers have been doing. But, so long as they go no further, there is no definite “cause” either to uphold or oppose. But, when they call a national convention and construct a platform, announcing definite aims and methods, then there is something to talk about. Now, a man is either for or against “The Farmers’ Alliance.” Of course, he may be profoundly interested in the farmers’ welfare, and yet oppose their aims and methods, because he does not believe that real help can come in the way that they, at present, propose. But, until some plan is proposed, there can hardly be said to be any farmers’ movement at all.
So of nationalism. It does not consist in an indefinite confession that the industrial condition of the world is not all that one could wish, and an equally indefinite dream, or hope, or trust in evolution. If that be nationalism, then, of course, we are all nationalists. The nationalist clubs have platforms, declarations of principles, statements of aims and methods. The one only value of Mr. Edward Bellamy’s book—beyond mere entertainment—was in its clear statement of an end to be reached in certain definite ways. Take this feature away, and there is no nationalism left to even talk about.
As there are many different types of socialism, so, of course, there may be many different kinds of nationalism. But there must be some kind, if the matter is to be intelligently discussed. But the Rev. Francis Bellamy declines to be held to the scheme of Mr. Edward Bellamy; and he does not give us any other in its place. He says he wants nothing “that is not an orderly development”; nationalism is “only a prophecy”; it is “too distant to be certainly detailed”; “we may be inspired by it,” but nobody can yet tell whether we shall want it or not; its sudden coming would be “a deplorable disaster,” etc., etc.
Now I submit to the candid reader as to whether this sort of thing is not too nebulous and tenuous for the uninitiated mind to discuss. “An orderly development”—but of nobody knows what nor in what direction—“a prophesy,” an intangible “inspiration”; these may be very fine, but where are we, and what are we talking about? For all I know, up to the present time, I may be in cordial agreement with the Rev. Francis Bellamy’s state of mind—if only I could find out what it is. He does not agree with his brother; nor do I. So far we are in accord. But I cannot tell whether I can take the next step with him, until he tells me what the next step is. But he does not even suggest a definite end, nor hint one definite method. I am heartily with him in being in favor of the millennium; but the practical question is,—which way?
The only definite thing he does suggest is that, as the process of natural evolution goes on, men will be competent to decide what they want; and if they do not want any particular thing, they will not have it. This is all very harmless; but it is so commonplace a truism that it is hardly worth while to get excited over it.
But while he does not define himself, nor tell us what it is, nor how it is to be come at, it is plain, all the way through, that he is a believer in “nationalistic socialism.” Now, we cannot indict a man for cherishing hopes, or for encouraging them in others. But, in the case of the negroes, at the close of the war, it was a real evil for them to be expecting “a mule and forty acres of land” from the government; for it stood in the way of real effort in practical directions. So, while a nobler ideal is of incalculable benefit to a people, it is a real evil for them to be indulging in impractical dreams. They waste effort and divert power from practical ends, and result in that kind of disappointment that discourages the heart and unnerves the arm. Those, then, who talk of nationalism as a solution of our troubles, ought to tell us just what they are after, and what methods they propose. Then we can find out whether the plans will work or not. Otherwise time, enthusiasm, and effort may all be wasted.
But the only definite end this article hints at is the destruction of those monopolies that make light and transportation dear. But it is conceivable that this may be done without a resort to nationalistic socialism. And this, which he says is the first step, may be a step in any one of several different directions. And if what he is after is to come only as the result of a natural evolution, when everybody wants it, and not as the result of a social catastrophe, then it would seem to be difficult to tell the difference between it and individualism. “The rounded development of the greatest number of individuals,” he himself sets forth as the motive and end of his kind of nationalism. Now if somebody is going to make me take on a “sounder development,” that is one thing, but if everybody is only going to let me do it, that is quite another thing. Mark Twain’s “Buck Fanshaw” was going to have peace, if he had to “lick every galoot in town” to get it. This may well stand for Edward Bellamy’s military nationalism. But if we are only going to have peace when everybody wants it, and will behave himself, why this seems like the Rev. Francis Bellamy’s nationalism, with the “military” left out. And this, I say, looks to me very much like the kind of individualism which I believe in.
I pass by, completely, the philosophical discussion as to what constitutes “a nation.” This I do, because it does not seem to me relevant to the matter in hand. If my individual liberty is interfered with, I cannot see that it helps me much to reflect that a nation, or “the nation,” is not a “sand-heap,” but is “an organic being.” The oppression is the matter; and I had as lief be oppressed by a sand-heap as by an organic being. What I object to is being oppressed by either of them. And, whatever may be in the future, when men get to be something different from what they are, so far in the history of the world it has been true that all kinds of governments have oppressed the individual. And, so far, the only safety of the individual has been such guarantees of personal rights and liberties as have limited the governmental power. And until some one can give the world assurance that human nature is to be transformed, it will be just as well to maintain the guarantees, instead of putting still more power into the hands of the government—whether it be called one thing or another. While even one wolf is abroad, the wise shepherd will not get rid of his dog.
But, while the Rev. Francis Bellamy has “come down,” to the extent of virtually giving up any kind of nationalism definite enough to fight about, he nevertheless goes on with his arguments against the editor’s positions just as though nothing at all had happened. He stands up for “nationalistic socialism” as though it were something clearly in mind. And he argues at length that the state of things covered by this term will not be open to such dangers as have been found to exist under all other forms of government. Either human nature is to be changed—though he does not tell us how—or there is to be some charm in “nationalistic socialism” that is to change the nature of “politics,” disarm prejudice, make philistinism broad-minded, and turn bigotry into tolerance. Wonderful is the power of my particular panacea!
Neither of the brothers Bellamy expect or propose any sudden change in human nature. “Looking Backward” plainly and positively disclaims any such expectation. So we are not only at liberty to deal with social forces and factors as they have been, and as we know them, but we are even compelled to do so. Let us, then, take up some of Mr. Flower’s points against nationalism, and see whether Mr. Bellamy has adequately met them.
Mr. Flower thinks that nationalism would mean governmentalism and paternalism—in the historic sense of those terms—raised to the highest degree; and that these are both bad things. Mr. Bellamy admits that they have been bad things in the past; but claims that something in nationalistic socialism is to change their nature. As, in the millennium, the lion is to “eat straw like the ox,” so, in this coming Edenic condition of affairs, the age-long oppressors of the individual are to lose their man-eating proclivities. The world is open to conviction on this point; but it will take more than words to produce the result. When we see a lion eating grass, while the sheep play about his feet, we will believe in his conversion. For—let the reader take earnest heed—it is not the conscious evil in men that has been oftenest the oppressor of their fellows; almost always the plea for it has been the general good. Church and State both have set this propensity down among the great cardinal virtues. As Saul of Tarsus thought he was doing God service when he persecuted the early Church, so the Church herself sang Te Deums over St. Bartholomew, and believed verily that the groans of the Inquisition and the fires of her autos de fé were for the glory of God and the good of man.
The curse of the whole business is just here—that a set of men should fancy that they know better what their brothers ought to think and do than the brothers themselves know. Mr. Bellamy himself lets out, in a most curious way, his own advanced (?) idea of “toleration.” By the way, I would like to know how it happens to be any of his business, for example, to “tolerate” me. Who sets him, or anybody else, up on high to look down with “toleration” on other people?
But let us note his idea of “toleration.” He says, with great emphasis, “A man may prove to me by inductive data, reaching uninterruptedly over ten thousand years”—I did not know he was so old—“that my own nature is intolerant; he may even corroborate his proof by pointing to my occasional acts of thoughtless disregard for another’s opinion; yet all this array does not overwhelm me, for I know [Italics mine] that I am not intolerant.” This superlative confidence in his own goodness makes me think of the congressman of whom it was said, “He is the most distinguished man in Washington. I know he is, for he admits it himself.”
But a little later on creeps out an indication, in the light of which we have a right to interpret this claim. Mr. Flower, in his editorial, had shown how a Christian Scientist had been arrested in Iowa for this offence. In the words of the indictment, “She had practised a cure on one Mrs. George B. Freeman.” After the physicians had pronounced the case hopeless, and had given her up, this criminal woman had actually dared to “cure” her. The heinousness of the offence was admitted. It was not, in the ordinary sense, malpractice; no medicine had been given, no pain was inflicted, no harm done. But she had been presumptuous enough to “cure,” and not after the “regular,” the orthodox way. Now the Rev. Francis Bellamy shows his “tolerance” in regard to this crucial case, by saying, “But it is certainly true that the State has the right to prevent malpractice—a right none of us would wish renounced.” Just what this has to do with an instance where the only malpractice even charged was that she “had practised a cure,” after all the physicians had given her up, is not very plain to the worldly minded. But he goes on,—“And as soon as there are sufficient data to convince an intelligent (sic) public opinion that the theory, with its perilous repudiation of all medical skill, is not fatal to human life, it will receive an ungrudged status.”
“Here’s richness,” as Mr. Squeers would say. Mr. Bellamy’s “tolerance” then is limited carefully to what has an accepted “status” as judged by “public opinion.” It begins now to be plain as to what “tolerance” is to be in the millennial era of nationalism.
But there is one more hint in Mr. Bellamy’s article, without which this new and improved definition of tolerance would not be complete. He says, “It is hard to discover what individualism is surrendered except bumptiousness.” But who is to decide what is “bumptiousness”? Why, “an intelligent public opinion,” of course. And who is to settle as to what is “an intelligent public opinion,” that has the right to put down “bumptiousness”? Why, the “intelligent” public, of course. So it comes back always to this,—we, the ruling majority, are intelligent, and we have the right to decide as to what shall be and shall not be permitted.
But now to go back a moment to a point that must not be lost sight of; for it involves the whole issue between personal freedom and tyranny, whether of a part of the people or all of them. He says, “as soon as there are sufficient data to convince an intelligent public opinion, etc., etc.” But just how is this “data” to be accumulated, so long as anybody who dares to have a new idea is to be arrested and imprisoned? The very most fatal objection to this universal supervision and control of all individual action by the governing power, which nationalism contemplates and which is of its very essence, is that it would become the tyranny of mediocrity, and would stand in the way of growth.
Two forces, at work freely, are necessary to evolution: heredity and the tendency to vary. The one conserves all the valuable attainments of the past; and the other, like the new sprouts and twigs on a growing tree, has in it all the promise of the future. Such a control of life as nationalism contemplates would suppress the new twigs as “bumptiousness,” or would—while breaking them off as fast as they appeared—ask them to accumulate “sufficient data to convince an intelligent public opinion.”
The “intelligent public opinion” of Europe thought Copernicus, and Bruno, and Galileo, and Luther very bumptious sorts of persons. With “an intelligent public opinion,” such as existed in England and America thirty years ago, on the subject of the origin of species, what would have become of Darwin—provided that, at that time, the governing power had assumed and exercised the right to put him to some “useful” occupation, or to suppress ideas popularly believed to be dangerous?
The plain fact of the matter is, that all the persecutions of the past have grown out of just this idea, which Mr. Bellamy endorses, that an “intelligent public opinion” has the right to tell certain individuals what they shall believe and teach. And all the growth of human civilization thus far has been in the direction of the rise of the individual as over against the claim of the majority to control. And there is no safety for the individual, and no sure and swift promise of human advance, until “intelligent public opinion” is taught to mind its own business.
While, then, Mr. Bellamy denies that there is any danger of “governmentalism” or “paternalism” under nationalistic control, he himself admits and defends the principle. This he does while loudly claiming to be tolerant. What, then, may we expect on the part of the great mass of the people whose equal (?) tolerance he does not undertake to guarantee? Is it just possible that his nationalism, which is not of the military type even, is already manifesting some symptoms of the incipient disease?
Five cases of the tyranny of the majority, that had been adduced by Mr. Flower, his antagonist claims to deal with. I have already touched on his treatment of Case II., that of the Christian Scientist. His treatment of only one other is significant enough to call for notice on my part. Case V. is that of one Powell of Pennsylvania. This man had put a large sum of money into the business of manufacturing oleomargarine. He had complied with all the conditions of the law. His product was what it claimed to be, and was stamped as such. Nobody was deceived or injured. But a later legislature—as if there were not already crimes enough in existence—declares this manufacture a crime. The “intelligent public” majority calmly robs him of his property and ruins him, and feels no sort of compunction in the matter. One year it encourages him to start a business; the next it ruins him for starting it.
Mr. Bellamy, however, says this “proves too much. It shows a vested money interest controlling a legislature and voting a rival business into outlawry.” And he adds, “This is a kind of instance socialists like to get hold of.” If socialists like to play with dynamite, then I should think they might like such cases; otherwise, not. For it happens precisely not to illustrate what Mr. Bellamy says it does. Instead of its having been a case of “a vested money interest controlling the legislature and voting a rival into outlawry,” it happened to be the “intelligent public opinion” of the farmers, who wanted their butter business protected even though it took robbery to do it. And this is just the kind of justice any new business may expect, under nationalistic control, until it has accumulated “data” enough to satisfy “intelligent public opinion.”
Governmentalism and paternalism have always been evils, Mr. Flower asserts. This Mr. Bellamy admits. For this reason, Mr. Flower thinks the power of government should be minimized, and the individual left more and more free. This would seem to be a most logical inference. But, no, says Mr. Bellamy, for there is something peculiar in nationalism that is going to neutralize all these malign tendencies. He does not make it quite plain to the uninitiated as to how this is to be done. The chief point seems to be that, instead of one man doing it, as in a monarchy, or a few men doing it, as in an aristocracy, everybody is going to do, and whatever everybody does is necessarily going to be all right. Those to whom this appears perfectly plain and satisfactory, of course are “not far from the kingdom of heaven,” as nationalism views it. I, for one, however, would like a few of the “data,” supposed to be so efficacious in other matters.
To sum the matter up, in closing, I wish to state definitely and clearly a few objections to nationalistic socialism that seem to me fatal.
1. The world began in socialism. In the barbaric period the tribe was all and the individual nothing. Every step of human progress has kept pace with the rise of the individual.
2. Military socialism, such as Mr. Edward Bellamy advocates, would be only another name for universal despotism, in which the individual, if not an officer, would only count one in the ranks. It would be the paradise of officialism on the one hand, and helpless subordination on the other.
3. Nobody is ready to talk definitely about any other kind of nationalism; for nobody has outlined any working method. If it is only what everybody freely wishes done—and this seems to be the Rev. Francis Bellamy’s idea—then it is hard to distinguish it from individualism. At any rate, it is not yet clear enough to be clearly discussed.
4. Nationalism, as commonly understood, could mean nothing else but the tyranny of the commonplace. Democracy, as we know it, is limited in all sorts of ways. It only looks after certain public affairs, while the main part of the life of the individual is free. But suppose the majority undertook to manage all the business of the country, appoint each man his place and keep him in it, determine what should be known, and taught, and done—it fairly stifles one only to think of it! There has never been a time in the history of the world, when the wisest and best things would not have been voted down. For it is always the few who lead in religion, in morals, in art, in literature, in learning, in all high service. But these few now do it, not by despotic power, but only by influence; so all may be free. And there has never been a time in the world’s history when the most important things that were being done were of apparent utility in the eyes of the crowd. Consider Homer and Virgil, Isaiah and Jesus, Dante, Shakespeare, Angelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Goethe, Luther, Servetus, Newton, Darwin, Spencer, Galvani,—had nationalism been dominant in their days, how long would it have been before the “intelligent public opinion” of the governing board of their departments would have had them up to show cause why they should not “go to work for a living”?
The progress of the world, up to the present hour, has always meant the larger and still larger freedom of the individual. This freedom has always had its evils. So all life has its disadvantages. But only a few people, in any generation, believe in suicide as a cure. Nationalism, freely chosen, would be the murder of liberty and social suicide. When people have thought about it enough to comprehend its meaning, they will choose to bear what ills they must, and seek some more helpful method of cure, rather than adopt such an “heroic” treatment as kills the patient in the hope of getting rid of the disease.
INDIVIDUALITY IN EDUCATION.
BY PROF. MARY L. DICKINSON.
In this day of multiplied facilities for education, a day when training begins with the kindergarten and ends in what is called “higher education” both for men and women, the thoughtful observer is constantly confronted by the question, why are not the people educated? It is quite true that a great many people are; that very many more believe they are; and still more believe the day is coming when they are to be educated in the broad and liberal sense of the word. Our systems, founded upon the old scholastic idea, are generally considered satisfactory, and any failure that may be observed in results is attributed to the fact that, in particular cases, they have not yet had time or opportunity for successful operation. And yet, year after year, we are passing through the mills of our public schools and colleges multitudes of minds that come out like travellers who climb to the top of every high tower in their journey, because they will not come home without being able “to say they have done it.”
Apparently, too many of our students go through their course for no better reason than to say they have done it. There are grand and noble exceptions, but these are generally among those who do not care to SAY anything about it. The great majority, however, come forth in the mental condition of the man, who laboriously climbs step by step of the tower, takes his bird’s-eye view of the field of learning, accepts the impressions made upon his mind by the vast picture and the vast mixture, and comes down to his own level again with no more real knowledge of that at which he has glanced than has the traveller who has taken a glimpse from the heights which he climbed, because the guide-book said this was “the thing to do.”
In every walk of life, among statesmen, men of business, and artisans, exist noble examples of exceptional profundity and reality of knowledge, but in the great average of so-called educated people of our own generation, we find the majority possessing very fragmentary interest in any of the subjects which, as students, were supposed to engage their attention. What they would have been without the so-called education we cannot judge, and it might be unfair to infer, but what they are no discriminating person, with a knowledge of what our systems claim, can fail to see. We cannot ignore the fact that for some reason they have failed to attain their natural and possible development.
Our educational theories, on paper and in text-books, are well-nigh perfect; in actual operation why should they fail? Like a great machine, fed with the material of thought, the crank turns, the wheels go round, and the whole world is a-buzz with the work and the noise, but the creature on whom all this power is expended, is only in rare instances a truly educated man or woman. What, then, is the defect? If the machine is right, then the material with which it is fed must be defective. If the material is right, then the machine has every virtue except that of adaptation to the use for which it was intended.
Since the whole end and aim of education is to develop, not the ideal mental constitution, but the real mind just as we find it, the real creature just as he is; and since we cannot change the human mind to make it fit the machine, the effort should be to adapt the educational process to suit the human mind. To what extent they are doing this is one of the great questions for teachers of the present day. To what extent,—admitting that now in some particulars they fail,—it may be possible to modify and adapt methods to the actual and genuine needs of human nature, is certainly a problem worthy of the earnest thought of the broadest and best cultured minds. In attempts at adaptation we have fallen into a process of analyzing the youthful human creature. Having discovered that he possesses mathematical capacity, we have supplied him with mathematical training, and have in this department thrust upon him all, and sometimes more, hard work than he can bear. Having found he possessed religious faculty, we have emptied upon him the theologies and psychologies, and when we have supplied him in these and other directions we look for the educated man. Judge of our disappointment. We find the faculties, we find the modifications produced by the training, but we look in vain for the man. With all our multiplied facilities for producing a trained and disciplined nature, what we think we have a right to expect,—but what we do not find,—is a creature conscious of his own great heritage, conscious of his kinship with all humanity, of his kingship over the universe, of his power to grapple with the world outside of himself, and of his rightful dominance over both the life without and the grander life within. Instead, we find men weak where they should be most purposeful and brave. We find him the slave of the body who should be able to make the body the servant of his soul. We find hands untrained to practical uses, minds unequal to grasping the common wants of existence, hearts in which the high ideals of character and strong impulses toward true usefulness are over-swept by that consideration for self that makes one’s own interests seem the very centre of the universe of God.
The day needs giants; it produces pigmies. It needs men to fight; it produces men to run. It needs women with minds broad enough to think and hearts large enough to love. It needs motherhood that, while it bends protectingly over the cradle of its own child, reaches out a mother-heart to all the suffering childhood of the race. It needs the capacity for heroism; it yields the tendency to cowardice. In the midst of learning, ignorance triumphs, vice rules, and sensualism thrives; and all this, not because of education, but in spite of it. And when we consider that our schools in their lower grades, our kindergartens and our primary and Sunday schools, take the infant mind before the tendency to vice has had any chance for development, and that the next higher grades take them on through successive years, without being able to prevent such results as these mentioned above, we naturally feel that, at the very outset, our educational system must be wrong. However it may be suited to the ideal conditions it cannot be adapted to the average human creature, taken exactly as he is. The lack, which begins at the very basis of our so-called intelligent discipline, runs through the whole, in constantly increasing ratio. Brain is stimulated, and heart and soul are left to starve, and nothing is more neglected than the cunning of the hand. Even where some attempt is made at the training of the whole nature, it is done without recognition of the infinite variety in the human mind. Processes ought to be adapted, not only to the universal but to the individual need. It does not follow that the universal need is necessarily or invariably unlike the individual need, or that individual needs are always identical, but any system of education that gives, for a great variety of minds, precisely the same course of training, is sure to be, for a majority of those minds, a pitiful and conspicuous failure.
What then? Shall we have a separate school for every child? Shall we have a special teacher for each mind? That would probably be impossible, but we certainly should have so small a number of pupils under each teacher that she (and we are taking it for granted that the teachers of little children will largely be women) may be able to study the whole nature of every little one committed to her care. She should be not only in communication, but in real communion with the mother; should know the child’s mental and moral inheritance, and, in as far as her own watchful care and the help of the family physician may enable her to do so, she should understand its physical constitution. She should acquaint herself with the temperament, the habits, the degree of affection, and the little germs of spiritual insight and inspiration, all of which go to make up the nature of the little creature in her charge. If she be the true teacher, she should combine the threefold duties of mother, instructor, and physician for the young life unfolding in her care. If she has not the heart to love the child and to let the child love her, and so to lay foundation for the larger loving, that, by and by, shall out-reach and take in the whole humanity of God, then we will not say she has mistaken her calling, but her own process of education has been defective and she has much to learn.
Such threefold development for heart, hand, and brain of the little child makes preparation for the next higher steps of educational work. Whatever form the training may assume, the individuality of the human soul should be kept inviolate. That individuality betrays itself in many ways; by emotion and sentiment, by quickness or dullness of perception, and above all, by preferences and dislikes. These minute indications as to just what elements of spirit and mind have entered into the nature of the child, are the little delicate fibres that show the texture of the human soul with which we have to deal. The child learns too soon to draw in and hide the frail, sensitive tendrils that indicate that the life of the soul-plant is feeling its way toward the light of God.
In the primary school, the teacher (and sometimes in the cradle, the mother, who is, whether she would have it so or not, the child’s first teacher) begins the process of training by which the little one is made to do as others do, to say what others say, and to conceal the fact that it has any inward life or impulses that are not the same as those of other children.
Instead of being able to read the God-given signs as to what the infant nature really requires, we give it instead an arbitrary supply, based upon what we think it ought to need, and then marvel that it does not thrive upon its unnatural diet. We have not supplied what it craved but that which, from our preconceived notion, we thought it ought to want.
This process of applying our rule and line to the mind goes farther and bears harder upon the student with every succeeding year, until, long before the so-called education is completed, three quarters of the students have lost the consciousness that they ever cared, or ever could have cared, for anything except that which the class supplied. To be what the class is, to do what the class does, to be satisfied with knowing what the class knows, to have lost the sense of the value of the thing to be gained, and to measure by false standards, comes to be the rule, until the conceit of knowledge takes the place of the modesty of conscious ignorance, and the student becomes a drop in the annual out-pouring stream of so-called teachers, many of whom, in the highest sense, have never been genuine students at all.
Searching for causes of such results, we cannot fail to see that much of this dead sameness of intellectual character is due to our habit of educating in masses. We make an Arab feast of our knowledge. A dish is prepared that contains something that might be strengthening for each partaker. With hands more or less clean, students select their savory morsels from the sop. As in the Arab family, for old and young, for the babe in arms, and the strong man from his field of toil, the provision is the same, so in all our class-work we have the sameness of provision with almost as great disparity of capacity and need. If, out of the whole mental “mess of pottage” that can be taken which builds the student up in true wisdom and knowledge, it is fortunate; but if nothing is assimilated on which the mind could truly thrive, no fault is found with the provision, nor is resultant ignorance considered to be specially worthy of blame.
The evil effects of educating in masses, or in classes, is sufficiently apparent to cause us to consider the question whether there is any possible remedy,—whether there could be a substitution of individual for general training, or a combination of the two that would produce a better result. That student is losing ground as an individual who comes to be considered or to consider himself as simply a factor of a class. If the general teaching must be that which is applicable to the entire class, there should also be provision for instruction that could be adapted to the individual need, and as great effort as is made to adapt class work to the general need should be made in the special direction also. But the objection arises that the modern teacher is not able to work in both directions in the time allotted for student life. We are very well aware that we have not yet passed the stage where the value of the teacher’s work is measured by the number of hours in which he is engaged in the classroom. Trustees, as a whole, pay for the professor’s full time, and expect it to be fully employed. Neither are the educators many who would know what to do if simply let loose among students and left free to make their best impressions upon the minds of the young.
To many teachers the mind of youth is, in reality, an unexplored region, and until we have a change in this respect, and learn that the knowledge of books is only the beginning of wisdom, and that the true knowledge must include also that of the living book,—the student entrusted to our care,—we have scarcely learned the alphabet of true education.
The day will come, though it may be long in coming, when every institution of learning will have, besides its technical teachers, its lecturers and its conductors of recitations,—one man or one woman, or as many men and women as are needed, whose special province it will be to study the individual temperament, to discover native tendencies, tastes, and capacities of the mind, and whose knowledge will be true wisdom in the sense that they will know not only how to ascertain, but how to supply real needs.
That cramping and stifling of natural tastes, which is now so marked a feature of school training, will be replaced by the cultivation of every good natural ability, and the suppression of only that which in itself is evil. Quite too often, even in this latter day, the restraint is put upon the natural powers, simply because their development calls for extra labor and special trouble, or because these powers indicate training in lines of work not being attempted by the class.
Let the routine work continue to be done, and, if necessary, in the routine fashion, but let every institution have on its Faculty one soul, at least, whose province is not to crush, but to cultivate and develop individual traits of mind and character. Such an instructor must not be ignorant of books, but that intricate book, the human heart, should be his special study, and he should know, not only what human beings are, but should be able to help them to grow into what God meant them to be. Such a man with a large and sympathetic heart that can be hospitable to boyhood as it is, will do more toward the moulding of genuine manhood than can a dozen professors of the ordinary type. One such woman in every institution for the education of girls holds really the future destiny of those girls in her own hand, for her life among them could have but one dominant desire,—that of helping them to be the thing God meant. Practically living out that desire she becomes, not the restraint and destroyer of their natural vitality of thought and feeling, but the guide and director of all their native forces into every beautiful field of learning, and into the highest type of development possible for woman, under present limitations, to attain.
Whether we recognize the fact or not, there is not a phase of our social or national life that is unaffected by the lack of proper development of individuality. The whole tendency of our civilization has been in the direction of making people, as nearly as possible, like other people. Characters of marked individuality are relegated to the class of so-called cranks. To be above the dead level of general sentiment and attainment is to be in decidedly bad form. This work of taking out of people the characteristics placed within them by nature, and making them over into the convenient and conventional types that think as others think, and do what others do, has marked our civilization from its earlier stages, and the more civilized we become the more pronounced are the results. Among these results are great loss of spiritual and mental vitality. It is time to call a halt, to change our methods, or to supplement them by methods of individual training. The beginning of such a work will mark an educational era, the inception of which should not be longer delayed.
THE WORKING-WOMEN OF TO-DAY.
BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
The story of working-women, of those women forced by changes in industrial and social conditions into occupations outside the home, is limited to the last hundred years. The division of labor resulting in the factory system, and the multiplication of trades, has opened many employments hitherto unknown, in which the use of female labor has become almost a necessity. Woman has had her share of work from the beginning, often much more than her share, but it ran usually in the simple lines of household requirements; and if it chanced, here and there, to be of larger scope, this was, after all, mostly tentative. Work with deliberate intent to earn a living is chiefly a fact of the nineteenth century, and any tangible estimate of woman as a competitor of man in the struggle for existence must be based upon the facts of the past hundred years. It is within hardly more than a generation that the importance of the subject has become plain, and now we are all questioning as to what is included in the life of the working-woman; what is her economic and social condition; what are her rights and her wrongs; what bearing have they on society at large, and what concern is it of ours why or how she works, or what wage she receives?
We are well aware that humanity has always had the enforced work of women as an essential part of its development, enforced not by law but by the necessities of life. In any new country, the work of women is a vital factor in its success or failure, in its growth and general prosperity; and in the early days of our own country this was far truer than now. There were then no trades open to women, because the organization of society was much less complex than it now is, and the family represented a union of trades. This had been the case in England and, indeed, in all civilized countries, and is even true of those early days when skins were all that was needed, and thorns were the only needles and pins. But from the day of that disastrous experience in the Garden, clothing, and the necessities involved in it, has been the synonym of sorrow for women, and the needle stands as the visible token of disaster, sorrow, and wrong of every order—“the asp upon the breast of the poor.”
Civilization has always in the nature of things meant war. It is only out of the conflict of class with class, interest with interest, that advance comes. “Strife is the father of all things and the king of all things,” was the word of Heraclitus the Wise. “It hath brought forth some as gods and others as men, and hath made some bond and others free. When Homer prayed that strife might depart from amongst gods and men, he wist not that he was cursing the birth of all things, for all things have their birth in war and enmity.”
It is only in this later day that we begin to realize other possibilities, and to wonder if the world has not had enough of wars and tumults, and cannot bring about the desired end without further expenditure of blood and tears. With war has ever been, and ever will be, the forcing of women left with no breadwinner into the ranks of the earners, and only later centuries have given an opportunity beyond domestic service. It is the last fifty years that has suddenly opened up the myriad possibilities in the more than four hundred trades into which women have thronged.
The field is so enormous that one is tempted aside from the real point at issue. What we have to do is to consider work for women as a whole, with all that it involves for womankind. It is not alone the worker herself, but the woman who uses the product of the worker’s labor that should understand what obligation is laid upon her. She is not free from responsibility, for certain conditions which have come to the surface, that form part of the life of the day, and must be dealt with in wiser fashion than heretofore, if we are to attain the “consummation devoutly to be wished.”
In the beginning of our history, women were at as high a premium as they are now in the remote West, but this was a temporary state, and as more and more, Fortune smiled on the struggling colonies, many forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them no less grinding. To “better one’s self” was the effort of all. Long before the Declaration of Independence had formulated the thought that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” this had become the faith of those who, braving the perils of the deep, had settled in an unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine “plain living and high thinking,” until in course of time the family remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary, which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.
The first factory established in New England, early in the present century, ended the old order or rather was the beginning of the end. But long before machinery had made the factory a necessity, there had been the struggle to break the bonds which held all women save the few who had wealth fast to the household. The same spirit that brought the pilgrim over the sea stirred in his descendants. The kitchen had proved itself a prison no less than now, and women and girls flocked into this new haven and worked with an enthusiasm that nothing could dampen.
“Oh, those blessed factories!” said to me one day, a woman, herself an earnest worker for present factory reform, and who began her literary life as contributor to the Lowell Offering. “You people will never know the emancipation they brought. I loathed the kitchen, and life went by in one. So many New England kitchens were built with no outlook, and ours was one. I used to run round the house to see the sunset over the mountain, and I can hear Aunt Nabby now: ‘There goes that child again! I’d lock her up if she were mine!’ We were all locked up! No chance for more than the commonest education; no money for any other. And then came these blessed factories! You laugh, but that was what they seemed then. We earned in them and saved, and in the end got our education, or gave it to our brothers, who were almost as shut in. They have altered—yes; but they were deliverance in the beginning, I can tell you, and in spite of present knowledge, I never see one of the tall chimneys without remembering and being thankful.”
Such has been the story of most of man’s inventions. Beginning as blessing they have in the end shown themselves largely as instruments of oppression. But in this case it is not the factory; it is the principle of competition, carried to an extreme, that has brought in its train child labor and many another perplexing problem. So many changes for the better are also involved; the general standard of living is so much higher, that unless brought into direct relation with workers under the worst conditions, it is impossible to know or realize the iniquities that walk hand in hand with betterment.
To one who has watched these conditions, the question arises, does the general advance keep step with the special? Mental and spiritual bonds are broken for the better class. Does this mean a proportionate enlightenment for the one below? Has the average worker time or thought for self-improvement and larger life? Are hours of labor lessening and possibilities increasing? These questions, and many of the same order, can have no definite answer from the private inquirer, whose field of observation is limited, and who can form no trustworthy estimate till facts from many sources have been set in order, such order, that safe deductions are possible for every intelligent reader.
It is to Massachusetts that we owe the first formal, trustworthy examination into the status of the working-woman, and the remarkable reports of that Bureau of Labor, under the management of Mr. C. D. Wright, have been the model for all later work in the same direction. As the result of a steadily growing interest in the subject, we have now under the same admirable management, the first authoritative statement of conditions as a whole. The fourth annual report of the United States Bureau of Labor, entitled, “Working-women in Large Cities,” gives us the result of some three years’ diligent work in collecting information as to every phase of the working-woman’s life, from the trade itself, with its possibilities and abuses, to the personal characteristics of the woman who had chosen it. It is not only the student of social science who needs to study the volume, but the working-women themselves will find here the answer to many questions, and to some of the charges now and then brought against them as a class.
The value of figures like these is seldom at once apparent, since many facts seem isolated and irrelevant. But the fact that they have not been gathered in the interest of a theory but are set down merely as material for deduction, gives them a value, not always attached to figures, and will make them serve as the basis of many a practical reform.
It is women earning a living at manual labor who are meant by working-women, and thus all professional and semi-professional occupations, such as teaching, stenography, typewriting, and telegraphy, with the thousands who are employed in them, are excluded from the report. Outside of these occupations, three hundred and forty-three distinct industries have been investigated. Twenty-two cities have given in returns, all representative as to locality, and ending with San Francisco and San Jose for the Pacific slope. Personal interviews were had by the government agents, with 17,427 women, this being, according to the estimate of the report, from six to seven per cent. of the whole number of women engaged in the class of work coming under observation. I am convinced that this estimate of the United States report is very misleading. The 17,427 women being six per cent. of all those engaged in the three hundred and forty-two industries investigated, the total so employed in the twenty-two cities would be 290,450, which on the face of it appears to be absurd. The New York Commissioner of Labor, in the report of his Bureau for 1885, estimates that there were, in 1884, over 200,000 women employed in the various trades in the city of New York alone. Neither of these reports includes women employed in rougher manual labor, such as scrubbing, washing, and domestic service. If the New York Commissioner’s estimate for New York City is correct, and I confess it seems to me to be nearly so, and if Mr. Wright’s estimate is as much too low in all the other cities as it seems to be in New York, the actual number employed in trades in the twenty-two cities instead of being only 295,450, cannot be far from 1,200,000. With the exception of certain statistics on prostitution, the entire work of the United States report has been done by women appointed by the Bureau, and Mr. Wright bears cordial testimony to the efficiency of each one in a most difficult and laborious task, adding: “They have stood on an equality in all respects with the male force of the Department, and have been compensated equally with them. It was considered entirely appropriate in an investigation of this kind, that the main facts should be collected by women. The wisdom of this course has been thoroughly established.”
Here, then, for the first time since labor questions began to attract the attention of students of social science, is an aid to stating definitely certain facts hitherto unknown to the public at large, and only surmised by those interested in the subject. Save for the Massachusetts reports already mentioned, and the valuable one of the New York Commissioner, Mr. Charles H. Peck, for 1885, with that of the first report of the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 1887 and 1888, prepared under the very competent and careful supervision of Mr. E. J. Driscoll, there has been no authoritative word as to numbers employed, ages, conditions, average and comparative earnings, hours of labor, nationalities, and the many points most difficult to determine.[13] Few but students, however, are likely to read these volumes, and thus a resumé of their chief points might find place here were I not limited as to space. Having in mind the injunction of the editor of The Arena, to be brief, I shall quote only from the United States report. As all three of the Commissioners named agree in the most important details, except as to numbers employed, the United States report will speak for them all.
In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of the United States Bureau, the average age at which girls begin work is found to be fifteen years and four months. Charleston, S. C., gives the highest average, it being there eighteen years and seven months, and Newark the lowest, fourteen years and seven months. The average period during which all had been engaged in their present occupations, is shown to be four years and nine months, while of the total number interviewed 9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to earn a living.
As against the opinion often expressed that foreign workers are in the majority, we find that of the whole number given, 14,120 were native born. Of the foreign born Ireland is most largely represented, having 926 and Germany next with 775. In the matter of parentage, 12,904 had foreign born fathers, and 12,406 foreign born mothers. The number of single women included in the report is 15,387; 745 were married and 1,038 widowed, from which it is evident that as a rule it is single women who are fighting their industrial fight alone. They are not only supporting themselves, but are giving their earnings largely to the support of others at home. More than half—8,754—do this, and 9,813, besides their occupation, help in the home housekeeping. Of the total number, 14,918 live at home, but only 701 of them receive board from their families. The average number in these families is 525, and each contains 248 workers.
Of those who reported their health condition at the time their work began, 16,360 were in good health, 883 in fair health, and 183 in bad health. A distinct change in health condition is shown by the fact that 14,550 are now in good health, 2,385 in fair health, and 489 in bad health.
Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions, 15,831 reported. Of these, 10,456 were educated in American public schools and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage, comprehending 2,309 do not attend church at all. In home conditions 12,020 report themselves as comfortable, while 4,693 give the home conditions as poor. “Poor” is, to the ordinary observer, to be interpreted wretched, over-crowding, all the numberless evils of tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A side light is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn less than a hundred dollars a year, and this class lost an average of 86.5 for the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of earnings the lost time decreases; the 2,147 who earn from two hundred to two hundred and fifty losing but 37.8, while 398, earning from three hundred to five hundred dollars a year, lost but 18.8 days.
The average weekly earnings by cities is no less suggestive. In Atlanta the wages are the lowest of any of the twenty-two cities, being only $4.05; in San Francisco they are the highest, being $6.91. The wages in the other cities vary between these two extremes. In New York the average wage is $5.85; in Boston, $5.64; in Chicago, $5.74; in St. Paul, $6.02; and in New Orleans, $4.31.
These sums represent the earnings of skilled labor. Many women under this head can earn eight and ten dollars a week, but the general average is only $5.24. The large proportion of unskilled workers whose wage does not exceed one hundred dollars a year, include cash girls and the least intelligent class. It is this class that suffer most from the fine system, since punctuality and thoroughness are the result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little more than subsistence, and the lowest, $4.05, is far less than decent subsistence requires.
Absolute violation of sanitary laws, overcrowding, and a host of other evils are specified as part of the factory system. Deliberate cruelty and injustice are met only now and then, but competition forces the working in as inexpensive a manner as possible, and so makes cruelty and injustice necessary to continued existence of the employer as an industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond tolerable. For the most part, they must be summed up as intolerable. Inspection, the efficiency of which has greatly increased; the demand, by the organized charities, for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of popular interest, are bringing about a few improvements, but the mass at all points are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that go with ignorance, want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and improvidence, are all in the count against the poorer order of worker, but for the most part they are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely dreary lives. This fact is emphasized in every Labor Report in which the subject of women wage-workers is treated, and impersonal as figures are usually counted to be, from each one sounds a warning which, if unheeded, must in the end mean the disaster to which these returns point as inevitable. Even in Colorado, a State not included in the government report, where opportunity is larger, it has been said, than at almost any other point in the Union, Mr. Driscoll’s report for that State shows an average wage for women of about six dollars, which, considering the cost of living, is less than the New York rate.
It is a popular belief that the working class forms a large proportion of the numbers who fill the houses of prostitution, and that “night-walkers” are made up largely from the same class. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the last statement, the falsity of which was demonstrated in the fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, its testimony being confirmed and repeated in the report we have under consideration. For the first, diligent investigation in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest number classed by occupations came from the lowest order of workers, those employed in housework and in hotels, and the next largest was found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and cloak makers, both of these industries in which under-pay is proverbial. The great majority receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on this sum, but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without. More than this. Since the deepening interest in their lives, and the formation of working-girls’ societies and guilds of many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting rooms, pay for instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and disabled members. Aids, alleviations, growing interest, all are to-day given to the worker. “Homes” of every order open their doors, some so hedged about by rules that self-respect revolts and refuses to live the life demanded by them. In all of these homes, even the best, lurks always the suspicion of charity, and even when this has no active formulation in the worker’s mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other proffering a substitute in a charity, which is to reflect credit on the giver, and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name is associated with the work of charity organizations throughout the country,—Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. I doubt if there is any one better fitted by long experience and almost matchless common sense to speak authoritatively. Within a short time she has written: “So far from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have discharged all their obligations to man and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the prime causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the insult which is added to the injury done to the mass of the people by insufficient payment for work.”
Disguise this fact as we will; bear testimony to the inefficiency and incompetency of the workers; admit every trial and perplexity of employers, every effort to better conditions, yet there remains in the background always this shadow, in which the woman who elects to earn an honest living must walk. No more heroic battle has ever been fought than this daily one, waged silently and uncomplainingly in our midst by these workers. Their lot is all part of the general evolution from disorder, ignorance, and indifference, into the larger life, opening so slowly that impatient spirits demand dynamite to hasten the process, but as surely as the earth marches forever on its round toward that central sun that draws each smallest star of that system we call our universe.
It is certain that this is a transition period; that material conditions born of a phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress, and that the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago one of the wisest of modern French thinkers, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, wrote of women wage-earners: “From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization—the principle and formula even of social progress, that mechanical engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms.”
Untrained intelligence finds earning a more and more difficult task, and for all of us it has become plain, that in the mighty problem given us by a civilization which at so many points fails to civilize, every force must be brought to bear upon its solution. These pale, anæmic, undeveloped girls swarming in factory and shop, are the mothers of a large part of the coming generation, defrauded before birth of all the elements that make strong bodies and teachable souls. It is not alone the present with which we deal. Out of the future comes a demand as instant, and justice to-day bears its fruit in larger life for other days to come. For this must be two awakenings. One for the looker-on in the struggle who has no eyes for what lies still in shadow. The other for the worker, who must join the army already aroused, realizing its limitations, reaching out for training and larger opportunity, and seeking with the eagerness born of hard conditions, some permanent way of escape. And for watcher and worker alike the word is the same:
“Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,
The hands are mighty were the head not blind.”
THE INDEPENDENT PARTY AND MONEY AT COST.
BY R. B. HASSELL.
A political revolution is in progress and has attained such proportions as to command attention and repay study. The magnitude of the movement and the definiteness of its aims are not understood and appreciated by those who live far from its field of operation. The reader is asked to lay aside his preconceived notions of the subject, and consider observations made, at short range, by one whose information is gleaned not from partisan newspapers, but from the field of action.
Before passing to an analysis of the platform demands of the new party, let us adjust the perspective; consider the work already done, and the method, motive, and personnel of the party.
Scarcely twelve months have passed since the birth of the party,—one political campaign. In that short period, an organization has been perfected which carries upon its rolls 1,200,000 voters; and an esprit de corps has been created which is worthy of comparison with the enthusiasm of the old parties. It has elected two United States senators and a respectable body of congressmen. It has won its victories in the strongholds of the hitherto dominant party, overcoming in one instance an adverse State majority of 80,000. An army of lecturers has been set at work, most of them well equipped. About a thousand newspapers have been established in the interest of the movement. A national bureau of information has been created which keeps a large force of clerks constantly busy. A committee has been appointed on organization. Under its direction, State after State is being organized, and the prophecy is freely made that, before the snow flies again, an efficient branch of the central body will have been established in nearly every hamlet in the nation.
The surprising advance already made by the Independents would not need to concern us, were it not that the national conditions which made it possible, in the first instance, still exist to sustain and accelerate it. If asked to explain this advance, most partisans would say, at once, poor crops, extreme poverty and demagogism; or, as South Dakota campaign speakers were known to say, hot winds and Mr. Loucks. But these are mistaken ideas. Poverty of the people made many listeners and voters who, under other circumstances, would not have deemed it worth their while to leave the plow. An examination, however, of the vote in the counties of one State, from which a United States senator has been elected, shows that the heaviest majorities for the new party were cast in counties where farming is most diversified, and where the people have been blessed with a succession of good crops. In the counties where the people were poorest, they were more effectually under the thumb of money loaners and bankers, who held chattel mortgages over their heads. In such counties a corruption fund had a powerful influence toward keeping voters in line. Extreme poverty is always a menace to the purity of the ballot. In the well to do counties, or rather the counties where good crops had prevailed, and in which the people were reputed well-to-do, and where the heaviest vote was cast for the party, the writer has made a careful study of conditions and finds none that do not exist in most agricultural districts of the United States. The herds of cattle and bursting granaries, years ago, would have been sure indications of competence and contentment.
A little inquiry now, however, reveals discontent and a hand to hand struggle with adversity and against odds. Market values leave no margin for profit. Abundance at harvest time, disappointment on market day. Men can understand the connection between short crops and lean pocket-books, and are easily reconciled to such conditions. They may grumble but they are sensible enough to understand that they must sow again and wait for the heavens to smile. But when great heaps of corn lie in their fields awaiting sale at twelve cents a bushel, when a mighty crop of wheat brings its possessor but fifty cents a bushel, when cows are worth but fifteen dollars apiece, and good butter sells for eight cents a pound, while thousands in the land are known to be suffering because of the lack of these things, a leanness of pocket-book results which the farmer may understand, but to which he is not easily reconciled.
His eyes are open. The over-production theory explains nothing to him while the mouths of a multitude go unfed; while the beef that he sold for one and a half and two cents a pound on foot, retails in the eastern market, when dressed, for from ten to eighteen cents a pound; and while his corn and his wheat, at the other end of the line of transportation, brings twice the price he received for it here. He is able to put two and two together. He knows that primarily all wealth comes from the soil, in response to the toil of himself and his fellows. His eyes rest upon the 31,000 millionnaires of the land who roll in wealth. He says, “I helped produce that. How did they get it?” He knows that the money could not be had last fall to handle his grain and that, in consequence, a ridiculously low price was offered him in order to keep it off the market. He knows that a few men take advantage of his necessities and dictate prices just at the time when he must sell. He knows that railroads absorb nearly fifty per cent. of crop values for transportation charges, in order to pay dividends on a capitalization, fifty per cent. of which is fictitious, and that when the laws forbid it the courts of the land step in and declare it “reasonable compensation.”
In a word, it does not take a very sharp farmer to see that although hot winds, or murrain, or hog cholera increase the leanness of his pocket-book, these things do not explain that irresistible and invariable current which bears such a large portion of what he does earn into the plethoric pocket-books of the few rich. The farmer has become, perforce, a student of economics; and, although we may laugh at some of the vagaries in which he indulges, a close study of the situation and of his demands will probably show him to be about as reasonable as those are who champion the present order of things.
If the symptoms of an unnatural and unnecessary agricultural depression were confined to the Dakotas, and Kansas, and Nebraska, the farmer student might be nonplussed in his investigations. He might be led to consider his inexperience and extravagance as the source of the disease so deeply fixed upon him. But the farmer of to-day reads and travels. A Dakota farmer, a few weeks since, visited the paternal homestead in Ohio. He found, to his surprise, that his father’s farm, which fifteen years ago lay within three miles of a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, paying an annual tax of fifteen dollars, and worth a hundred dollars an acre, now pays a tax of seventy-five dollars, and is worth but forty-five dollars an acre, although the neighboring town has increased its population to ten thousand, and is noisy with shops and factories. He found that this was not an isolated case, but a fair example of the depreciation of farm values. He was not surprised to learn that the Ohio farmers were even then gathering to organize a State alliance. A careful survey of the United States, we are sure, will measurably confirm the conclusion of the western farmer, that farming, except in those localities where it has taken on the form of market gardening, or where it yet monopolizes some specialty, is unprofitable and disappointing.
Most farmers are ready to admit that their surroundings are better and their comforts more numerous than in ancestral days, when stoves were unknown, and the women slaved over the hand-loom and spinning-wheel, when medical men bungled and schools were luxuries; but they can see with half an eye that the mighty material advances of the last half century in this country have been made to serve the rich rather than the poor, the strong instead of the weak. They do not object to railroads, and the constantly increasing facilities for travel and transportation; but they do object to laws and customs which make railroads a means of transferring the hard earnings of the farm to the coffers of money kings. The farmer has received comforts at the hands of our civilization, but he has paid a good price for them, not to the genius which created, but to the plutocrat who bought. It is not because the farmer is facing starvation that he moves politically; but because, in the midst of plenty, comparative poverty is his portion. As a legitimate result of the civilization in the presence of which he lives, his tastes have improved, and his desire for education and comfortable living has increased, and with this improvement and increase has come a widening of the distance betwixt his possessions and his desires. In other words, the shadows of contrast in social conditions in our country are hourly deepening, and it is at such times that the canker of discontent eats closest. It will serve no purpose for us to spend time in condemning this spirit, and making light of it, because it is a natural result and a political fact that can only be remedied by a removal of the immediate cause. It is not possible or desirable to rid the people entirely of the spirit of discontent, but it can be so minimized that it will be no longer a menace to national life but an incentive to progress.
It is necessary to understand thoroughly the conditions under which the work already described has been done. We have discussed the general social and financial condition of the farmer. How about his intellectual standing? We hear a great deal about the stupid, foolish farmer, easily led by demagogues. It is well to remember in this connection that those States where the Independent party has had greatest influence are the States where the smallest per cent. of illiteracy exists and, by parity of reasoning, the highest per cent. of intelligence. The fact is that the farmer of the West is not the clodhopper, at whose expense the funny man of the modern journal likes to crack jokes. He reads more widely and thinks more deeply than tradesmen or city people do, as a class. Tradesmen wear better clothes, are more urbane, and obtain a certain polish and self-possession which comes only from close contact with one’s fellows in the business and social world; all of which is very useful to them in improving the “main chance” in a competitive struggle, and might be labelled finish and sharpness. They live an intense life, within a limited circle, and have little time and less inclination to weigh questions from the larger world. To this fact may be attributed the slight interest such people take in municipal government and the dominance of slum and saloon influences. It is not so with the farmer. He reads much and widely, and the solitary plow-furrow and the quiet country road conduce to thought. A certain sturdy intelligence follows, which again and again has proven the salt of the world, the re-inforcing element of society, and is to-day the hope of our nation. While the tradesman dwells much on commercial law, trade customs, and the means of attracting trade, the farmer thinks more naturally of the general law of the land, under which he is protected or robbed, prospered or ruined. His sales are made at wholesale prices. His eyes, therefore, seek out not so much the local factors in the make up of prices as the world-wide influences which are supposed to determine them. It is a large world in which he lives, and his vision, from necessity, sweeps the whole of it.
The people of the East will never understand the merit and magnitude of the present political movement, until they give the farmer credit for intelligence of a superior order. Those who think of him as the easy prey of demagogues are mistaken. He has been such in the past. We have convincing proof that it is otherwise now. Those who are familiar with the campaign plans of the dominant parties in these days, the shameless misrepresentation of facts by party organs, the open use of large sums of money to keep so-called leaders in line, and the tremendous power of public patronage can understand how much of demagogism in every community the farmers have had to meet and overcome in order to conquer an eighty thousand majority. It has required patriotism, common sense, and a Spartan-like heroism to face their organized foes and come off victorious. To their honor be it said that few Judases have been found among them at the ballot-box, or in the halls of legislation.
The work of the Independent party, so far, has been educational in two directions. It has increased the sum of information and developed a much needed self-confidence among the farmers. The alliance meetings, to which most of us object because of their secret and exclusive nature, are schools of economics and parliamentary tactics. The secrecy of the order, however, is not as objectionable as some of us have been inclined to think. As the leaders say, the veil of secrecy in this order is quite gauzy,—intended to keep out individuals rather than to conceal deliberations and doings. It throws the farmer on his own resources. He becomes a chairman, an investigator, a committee man, and a debater. If it were otherwise, the aggressive members of the professions would frequent the meetings, and naturally assume such functions. We are confident the farmer will come to see that these same ends may be attained by methods less objectionable to the thought and spirit of our people. Justice requires us to say that the secret order of the alliance and the Independent party have no necessary connection, although they are natural allies, and the former is the source of the latter. In fact, scores of men belong to the alliance who have not yet committed themselves to the political movement, and many who are bitter in their opposition to it. Political affiliation has nothing to do with membership, and all actual farmers and their families are entitled to it. Freedom in the expression of opinion is courted and strong, ready men are being developed.
The writer has met old farmers, during the last twelve months, who are as well posted in the history of finance as the Shermans and the Allisons of the country, and who read the lessons of that history with as clear a vision. They do not get their facts from demagogical documents, as many suppose. We call to mind a laughable incident in the last campaign. A joint discussion was progressing between a bright member of the legal fraternity, who was advocating the present order and extolling the Republican past, and an uncouth but clever old farmer, who took up the cudgel in behalf of financial reform. The lawyer vociferously declared the demand notes never sold at par with gold. The farmer calmly insisted that they did, and read from an authority. The lawyer demanded the authority. The farmer asked the lawyer if he would read to the audience the name of the authority, if it was shown him. The latter could only say yes. The pamphlet was opened at its title page, and the lawyer read with best grace he could, to an audience that fairly rolled in the chairs with merriment, “Report of the Treasurer of the United States.” The farmers are going to a school where imagination is given small play, and facts are studied, uncolored by party traditions. Shall we not expect from this some good? Have we not reason to believe that the reading, intelligent majorities of the western prairies are to bring us some light and benefit?
It is useless to deny that these farmers have some intense prejudices. What class has not? And these prejudices must necessarily color opinion, and somewhat determine action. The farmer is bound to look at things from the standpoint of the poor man rather than from that of the corporation and the money loaner. The latter have had the thought and service of our statesmen for years past. As a consequence, the account between the rich and the poor is in an abnormal condition. Perhaps it is only right that the selfishness of the laboring classes should have its own way for a time, and even things up somewhat, before a new start is made.
But the class prejudice and selfishness of the farmer has been greatly over-estimated by his political enemies. His sub-treasury bill and plan for loaning money on real estate, to be sure, are intended to afford immediate relief to the farmer; but he believes, in his soul, that they would result in great advantage to the whole business world. He says, moreover, that condemnation of his plans comes with bad grace from the men who are even now supporting a financial system which delivers the money of the country over to the few and trusts them to distribute it among the many. His plan may have the same selfish ear-marks, but they are not so deep. We have been trusting a few men to distribute the currency of the nation, and have made it extremely profitable for them to do so. He asks now that this trust be transferred to the many, and gives good assurances, in the nature of things, that the many will touch the remotest needs of our people, and so diffuse currency that competition, if such a principle ever can be effective, will keep interest at a rate where labor can live and prosper.
That the independent movement is not considered a class movement, in a bad sense, but decidedly in the interest of all the middle classes, we have some proof in the citizens’ alliances and the labor unions, which have united forces everywhere with the farmers, brought about by a recognition of the simple fact that where the farmer has money, the tradesmen of his market town have money and industries of all kinds thrive. Here lies the strength of the movement. The farmers are, perhaps, the largest distinctive class of citizens, and can exercise great political influence by themselves; but they are not numerous enough to work radical changes without aid from other classes. As it is, however, in the strictly political movement among the farmers, all who sympathize with their political views are welcomed. The best evidence of this is the election of such men as Rev. J. H. Kyle and editor Peffer to the United States Senate. While the farmer has a great deal to say about the utter absence of farmers from the national halls of legislation, he is not disposed to say that farmers alone should be sent there. He is willing to send the men who are best fitted to do the work that is to be done, but they must be worshippers of the common people as distinguished from the bankers and “financiers.”
It is not possible to discuss the platform of the new party at any length within the necessary limits of this article. We shall be content to undeceive, if possible, those of our readers who have been charging that the platform is indefinite.
One of the chief recommendations of the Independent platform, to the voters of the West, was its brevity and definiteness, refreshing qualities in the minds of a people who had been accustomed for years to the platitudes and straddles of the old parties. Most of the Independent county and State platforms could be summed up under three heads, money, transportation, land. They declare in favor of a full legal tender currency to come direct from the government to the people, in volume sufficient to meet the demands of business; the government ownership and control of railroads and homes for the American millions. The main planks were summarized in the flaring posters which announced the great rallies of the party last fall. “Money at Cost! Transportation at Cost!” These were the headlines which everywhere caught the public eye, and drew the crowds. Opponents saw in these advertisements traces of a demagogue’s hand. If it is demagogism to awaken curiosity, arouse thought, and in a terse sentence to express the party faith, then are the Independent leaders guilty of it. But whether guilty or not, these two expressions have awakened echoes that will not cease reverberating until our ideas and systems of finance and transportation are quite revolutionized. As we are not proposing here to discuss the wisdom of the farmer’s demands, we need waste no time on the land and transportation questions. So much has been written on these questions, and the dividing line between disputants is so clearly drawn, and farmers have settled down so decidedly on one side of that line, that they are no longer open to the charge of juggling with words when they declare in favor of “homes” and “transportation at cost.”
With the money question it is different. “Money at cost” is one of those essences of thought which will bear analysis. We desire to show that with the farmer’s party it means but one thing,—that it is a declaration of war with the piratical system of the present. “Money at cost” is a sentiment and conviction which has grown up in the minds of the producing and laboring classes of this country out of a deep sense of the injury done them during the last quarter of a century, and a pretty clear conception of the nature of money and the duty of government.
Money, they say, is a medium of exchange necessary in the transaction of business between citizens; that it is the first duty of government to provide this medium for its citizens directly and at the minimum expense; that it should not be considered property in any sense, and that every incentive to the hoarding of it should be removed; that there is no such thing as “cheap money” under a proper system, because only commodities are cheap or dear according to the market price of them, and money is not a commodity; that money can be issued by government or by authority of government, safely and honestly, in but two ways: in return for services rendered, or as a loan on adequate security, and should always represent days of toil or material of value; that the present bank systems by which money is farmed out for private gain, furnishes a fairly reliable currency but an unreliable means of distribution; that loans should be made on lands or imperishable products to the many who have personal need of the money with which to improve homes and develop enterprises, thus giving not only a safe currency but providing also for a wide and safe distribution of it; that government creates money out of anything it chooses; that it should create only the best money, by which is meant a stable, full, legal tender currency; that the curse of an unstable currency is now upon us blighting our people; that an unstable currency is one whose volume is regulated by the owners of private banks, dependent upon the uncertain output of mines, and varying with the caprice of the few who hold and control it; that a material scarce by nature is not fit to receive the stamp of government, because it is sure to vary in supply; that the medium of exchange should be of material so plentiful that blind nature or designing men cannot reduce the supply of it below the government demand for it; that the money so created should be durable, easy of transportation, and difficult of counterfeiting; that paper money is the easiest of transportation, the most difficult to be counterfeited, and in a sense the most durable, because so easily replaced when lost; that to base the medium of exchange upon value is as effectual as to stamp it upon value; that out of deference to foreign customs and the necessities of foreign trade, our government should buy up the gold and silver bullion of the country and hold for resale to those who have foreign balances to settle; that the country to-day is suffering from a contracted and contracting currency, on account of which the debtor class has had its burden doubled, to the corresponding advantage of the creditor class; that if contraction has been good for creditors, inflation must be good for debtors; that any measure, therefore, which looks toward an increase of the circulating medium is to be favored; that free silver coinage is to be favored; that instead of flying to the relief of the stall-fed speculators of Wall Street in times of financial stringency, it is time that the government was coming to the relief of the common people; that loans from the government should be made at a merely nominal rate of interest, not to exceed two per cent., because any higher rate is a congestor of wealth and gives capital a leverage over labor; that money-loaning as a business, except on such a basis from the government to its subjects, should go out of fashion, and might be expected to disappear under a proper financial system; that the unemployed capital of the country would then seek investment, labor would then be employed, factories would hum and the credit system might go to the dogs; that rates of interest cannot be satisfactorily regulated by law until we have banks that are national in fact as well as in name, managed by salaried officials of the nation whose duty it shall be to make loans at cost, under wise and conservative rules, to those needing them who can bring themselves within the rules; that the proposed sub-treasury and land loan plans are suggestions in the right direction and calculated, when perfected, to bring the government into touch with the needy citizen, and make of it a distributor as well as a creator of money; that paper in the shape of checks and drafts already transacts ninety-one per cent. of the business of the country, and might be trusted to properly supplement our currency and make supply equal demand, were it not that the great bulk of our people are not known beyond the communities in which they live, and therefore are debarred from using checks to any extent in the outside world; and that each piece of national currency, issued as a full legal tender, in the hands of the people, would be in the nature of a certified check, enabling the citizen to do business with despatch anywhere.
Running through the above statement of the independent doctrine of finance, we see that three ideas are most prominent. First, a desire that the government supersede avaricious man and blind nature in the creation and distribution of money, in order that money may be a stable purchasing power. Second, a determination that money shall no longer be a commodity to be bought, and sold, and manipulated, a leech upon labor in the hands of a few, but a convenience of trade, accessible to the many at first cost. Third, a demand that the misnamed national bank system of the present shall have its spirit of greediness exorcised, so that it may hereafter serve the people instead of its management. Are these ideas indefinite? Do they not mean “money at cost”?
We would now call attention to those facts which the western farmer says have opened his eyes, made him indifferent to the sneers of the banking class and its servitors, and fixed him in his purpose to effect a permanent change in the financial system of the country.
He says that the average profits of business enterprises in this country do not exceed three per cent.; that money loaning at six and seven per cent. of necessity congests the wealth of the nation; that eighty cents’ worth of silver, stamped by government as a dollar, or a cent’s worth of paper, bearing the same stamp, buys as much for him in the markets of the country as a gold dollar; that it is easier for him to pay his debts when money is plentiful; that the paper demand notes of ‘62, a full legal tender, stood at par with gold while the greenbacks, repudiated in terms by the very bill which created them, went skyward; that a contraction of currency has preceded every serious financial panic in the history of the country; that prosperity for the laborer, the producer, and the debt-payer has always accompanied currency expansion; that money loaners are strangely interested in keeping money scarce, and for that purpose fought gold in ‘50 when California and Australia threatened to flood us, the greenback in Lincoln’s administration, and silver in ‘73, ‘78, and ‘91; that the farmer’s products have been refused a market within a year past because there was not money to handle them; that present rates of interest consume him; and that, with good security to offer, he is obliged to pay exorbitant rates for money and in many cases is refused it altogether.
Let us remember that the last word has not yet been spoken upon the financial question; that the world, even the financial world, has not seen all of truth and wisdom yet; that reason is better than authority, especially if the authority is open to a suspicion of prejudice; and that there may be a financial bigotry as hateful and unprogressive, and as much out of sympathy with this growing age, as is the dry-as-dust ecclesiasticism of the day. Every citizen should give courteous attention to the new voices that come to us from the West, and be careful that his decision, on the whole matter, is not influenced by his position as one of the creditors of the land.
PSYCHIC EXPERIENCES.
BY SARA A. UNDERWOOD.