A New Aristocracy

by Alice E. Bartlett

“Why, all attempts at pacification,” he cried, “are dead failures. Monopolists are more arrogant, trades unions more bitter than ever. ‘Give us more wages,’ we cry; ‘We’ll give you less,’ they say. ‘We don’t want to work so many hours a day,’ we respond; ‘You shall have more,’ they answer. ‘We won’t work under such conditions,’ we declare; ‘Then starve,’ they hiss. Do you know there are over three millions of workingmen who are crying all this? And the capitalists ask: ‘What are you going to do about it?’ We’ll show them what we’ll do about it. Let them beware! Let them remember the dark days of the French Revolution, and note how many patrician heads went under the axe because the rabble like us—the sans culottes like us, if you please—went crying for bread, and when they couldn’t have bread they cried for blood and had it. Why, men, this is the greatest war of history. It is a war not of countries, but of the globe, and the two great forces, the very rich and the very poor, those bonded slaves of an arrogant aristocracy, are closing in upon each other. As yet it is a bloodless strife; but let them beware, I say, let them beware! This trouble will never cry itself to sleep. There are too many mighty passions surging through the bosoms of outraged and insulted beings. There are too many hungry wives and freezing children. From the Bastile to the portals of this hall stalks a long line of menacing ghosts, who with pointing fingers demand that the cause for which they died shall yet be made triumphant. Blind is he who cannot see that the edicts of society are crushing to the wall the helpless toilers, the unfortunate women and innocent children of this world. Blind is he who looks upon the cruelties indorsed by capital without rising in righteous indignation to echo the cry that rings along the line, ‘Down with the aristocracy!’ It is a lie that all men have an equal chance in this world; I tell you the competition is unequal and capital forces the issue. Success! success! is the Moloch of the world’s worship, and into its ravenous maw you and I and every one of the toilers feed daily the writhing bodies of wives and children. It is feasting on the putrid carcasses that are crushed under its triumphal car. And all the while there is wealth enough in this world for every man to have and to spare. I tell you, fellow-mortals, the torch and the shotgun, the bomb and the bludgeon, are as much for the toiler as the blue-coated minions of the law.”

The man took his seat on the rear of the platform amid the wildest cheers, and Margaret watched the eagle-like face and the trembling, attenuated form with more than usual interest. There had been many grains of truth in his wild harangue, and they had inspired her conservative breast with an enthusiastic desire to behold the wide gulf, between the two great opposing forces of the world, narrowed down to the line of arbitration and adjustment, to which all such questions must finally come. But she shuddered with horror at the sanguinary battle which the speaker’s inflammatory words had conjured. A second French revolution, intolerably bitterer, bloodier, more wide-spread than its prototype! God forbid! There was just then a call from the chairman for volunteer speakers, and Margaret’s eyes became stony in their wonder and terror, as she saw Gilbert rise from his seat and advance to the front of the platform. Tall, lithe, like a young sapling, with a wealth of dark hair pushed back from a high, straight brow, piercing dark eyes, a square, firmly-set mouth and chin, and fine thin nostrils expanding with the fire of enthusiasm, he stood before them all. For the first time in her life Margaret realized the singular beauty and magnetism of the boy’s presence. To her he had been always only Gilbert, to be watched over and taken care of with a mother’s unfailing forethought. Now she saw, with a bitter wrenching of her heart-strings, that the chrysalis had burst and her lad had gone away forever. Before her stood the man Gilbert, on whose utterances she hung in breathless apprehension. There was something almost wonderful in the boy’s self-possession as he stood and gazed the noisy crowd into curious silence.

“Friends and brother toilers,” he began in a rich, sonorous voice that filled the hall. “You have called for volunteer talks, and although I am not yet fully come to man’s estate, the impulse to speak is too strong to be resisted. It is time that something was done to lift this burden under which we are groaning, and yet it is the old, old question that for thousands of years before Christ oppressed the bondsmen of the earth. How long, O Lord, how long, before this world shall see the fruition of the mighty labors of the millions who have gone down to death for the good of their brothers? How long before vengeance shall overtake the insatiable greed of capital, which has no more care for the toiler in its grasp than the tiger in the jungle for the man he has smitten with his paw? What is it to capital that labor goes unshod, to the well-fed gourmand that the slave who serves him is starving for the crust he despises? What does the capitalist care for the wails of woe that go up from thousands of infantile throats, for the shiverings of the naked wretches at his door, so that piled higher and higher in his safes he sees the gold these wretched toilers have wrested from the mighty bowels of the earth? Who cares for the wretched twenty-four thousand souls that live in one precinct in this great and wealth-rolling city, within a compass of two small blocks? Who cares for the nobodies that live in hovels where the water from the street pours in on the floors, and where sixty or seventy people live in eight or ten rooms and exhibit the morality of the dogs they represent? What millionaire philanthropist goes down into his pocket to pay his men living wages, so that the poverty which shames old-country degradation need not be re-enacted here? Where is the churchman who, giving largely to conspicuous charities, would be willing to turn that charity into specific help in business to the man or men who do his bidding? It is only a few years back that the ‘boss’ worked at the same bench with his men. Now this is all changed. Now he has his elegant office, his carriage, his fine attire; but the workmen show no such advance in prosperity. They work for even less wages, wear the same cheap clothing, and toil just as many hours as when they and the ‘boss’ were co-workers. What has wrought this change? What has made these conditions possible? I will tell you. It is governmental aid. It is because the government has fostered the schemes of the rich man and made him a ward of the nation. But it is unjust, and a relic of the old feudality that the government should recognize one son to the exclusion of the others equally well-born, and equally deserving. On this principle, therefore, we demand that we be made wards of the nation. We demand a distributive justice, by pacific means if possible, and if not, then by a retributive justice, by force of arms——”

“Gilbert! Gilbert!”

A hand laid on the lad’s shoulder caused him to turn in wonder and confusion to meet Margaret’s pleading face and terror-stricken eyes.

“You are wrong, Gilbert,” she cried earnestly. “Wrong! wrong! You must not incite to violence. Just see what turbulent elements are before you!”

There had come an instant hush with her appearance on the platform; men and women had risen to their feet and were peering curiously at the two. Flushed, trembling, intoxicated with enthusiasm, Gilbert cried: “But the terrible wrongs of the poor! You know what they are—you who toil for a daily pittance! They must be avenged!”

“But not in the way you indicate. Not by bloodshed or violence. See! we are attracting attention! Will you let me speak for you?”

For a moment resentment gleamed in Gilbert’s eyes, and then, as he glanced at Margaret’s uplifted earnest face, he answered: “Yes, correct me if I am wrong. God speed you!”

Gilbert sank back into a chair, his eyes intently fixed upon his sister’s face as she advanced to the front of the platform and stood looking out upon the sea of wondering faces.