“Friends,” she began in a low voice, “I have a story to tell you. The lad who has just addressed you is my brother. For seven years I have been mother, counsellor, friend to him. I promised his dying father to watch over him with unremitting vigilance until his feet should be firmly set in the paths of upright manhood. That father was a man who believed in and practiced the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man. He recognized not that all men are created equal mentally and physically, for that is a manifest absurdity, but that there is a principle underneath all conditions of society calling for the respect, veneration, and love of man as man. We must respect humanity in all its phases, and there is no right, divine or earthly, that permits us to cripple it, enslave it, or destroy it. This idea was one of his ardent beliefs; but it would have cut his gentle heart to the quick to know that his son would ever be misled into uttering words that could in any way incite to violence or wrong-doing. I have listened to-night to words that made my heart bleed; not only for the evils afflicting labor, not only for the misguided ideas of the so-called upper classes, but for the deeper wrongs you are inflicting on yourselves.”
A stir among the audience and a few hisses for a moment disturbed Margaret’s equanimity, but gathering heart again she went on in a voice of deep and commanding earnestness: “Nay! hear me out. I premise here that I am not against you; indeed, I am one of you. I toil for my daily bread, and I receive but a pittance for my work. I take slop-work from the factories, and make men’s shirts for forty-five cents per dozen, and men’s overalls for fifty cents per dozen pairs. So you see I know what labor has to contend with.”
Shouts of “You’re a good one!” “Go on!” encouraged the increasing tide of thought that surged to her lips. She stood before them pale, earnest, like a prophet, and forgetting time, self, place, she swept the now listening throng with the full force of the unselfish convictions which had made her mistress of herself and untoward circumstance.
“Once more I say to you, O my brothers and sisters, you are wrong, and I repeat it with the facts of history as a bulwark of defence. Let us go back a little to the dim days of which we catch but faint shadows, two thousand years and more before the Christian era, when there were but two classes of men, feudal lords and bondsmen. Let us trace up through the freedom given the slaves under Moses, fourteen hundred years before Christ, and through all the struggles of the toiler up to the present day, the results of violent uprisings of brute force. History gives but two evidences where such uprisings on the part of labor’s slaves were not terribly disastrous to the insurgents. Thousands of years have passed away, men have fought with the desperation of tigers for their rights, and still these rights are in a measure denied, and the millennium of labor is not yet in sight. You may strike the torch to the factory, aim the shotgun at your fellow-workman because he refuses to listen to your dictation, put your bombs on railroad tracks before the midnight express, leave the ship without sailors or the printing press without workers, because any or all of these are not conducted with a true regard for mutual welfare, and you will only find yourselves still deeper in the mire of dissatisfaction and wrong. You cripple your own resources and injure your own prospects when you preach the doctrine of physical force. Leave the development of that doctrine to the brute whose only resource it is, and lift yourselves up to the higher plane where exists the reason of man. But you are no doubt asking where that reason must begin. Back of all sophistries, back of all calculation, on that primitive plane of the newly awakened—the conscience! This, in the age of intricate reasoning and perplexing sophistries, may seem to you but the utterance of a simple-minded woman; but history proves, through experience, that the great and seemingly complex problems of the day never can be and never will be solved on any other basis. It was not indeed until the gentle Nazarene walked the earth that its toilers began to grope upward toward the light of reason and conscience. He it was who first took the taint from the grimy hand of the worker; He it is who ought to-day to be the sole advocate and mediator in all your wrongs and suffering. I am not talking to you of the religion that the occupants of velvet pulpits preach to the occupants of velvet pews, nor of the Christianity, so called, that is reserved for the rich man who builds churches where he and his class may worship in unsullied seclusion; but of that fundamental principle which led the Carpenter of Nazareth to render absolute justice to all men and which prompted the good Samaritan to do a generous deed to his fallen neighbor. Yes, you say all this would do very well if men could be made over on a higher basis; but they are greedy, avaricious, and prompted more by self-interest than brotherly love. True; but there is always the acorn before there is the oak. Social reforms must begin with the individual. In order to have an upright community it must be largely composed of upright individuals, and if every man reformed himself the proposition of a reformed society would be of very simple solution. It is wonderful indeed how the little leaven leavens the whole lump. Wonderful how the gulf between classes is already being widened by these injudicious threats of violence. Let us beware, then, of incendiary words! We are all of us, Dives and Lazarus alike, striving for the same goal; we would all be rich, prosperous, happy if we could. We are indignant because Dives gets in our way and hinders our advancement, when he ought, by all the laws of good-fellowship, to give us fair play and equal chances. But when we as Lazarus, by a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, come at last to Dives’ importance, how is it that we take the same mean advantage of some less capable or lucky mortal? Ah, my friends, until we learn that all these great problems lie partially at least within ourselves, and, like Atlas, are willing to bear the world on our shoulders, we shall never gain the object we are seeking. In the conscience of every individual lies the hope of the world’s progress. Let us seek, therefore, to cultivate that light within our own breasts, so that, feeble ray though it may be, it shall illumine the pathway of some weaker brother and help him toward the diviner light of the gentle Nazarene. I protest against the indiscriminate and wordy assaults upon rich men. Not alone in the poor man’s breast are all the virtues. Much of the poverty of the world is the fault of the individual. Natural thrift and industry have their reward even in the present untoward industrial conditions. You cannot smoke away, and drink up your income, and justly blame the bloated capitalist who employs you if your children are shoeless and the table stands empty. But you can use your reason, you can be thrifty, careful, and educate yourselves on the side of conscience and humanity. I look upon this talk of reform which is in the air as excellent for the great cause of universal brotherhood. This is the tendency of the times; the cardinal truth underlying the welfare of the world. Capital is identical in interest with us, and must recognize sooner or later the trite truth that we are only the fulfilment and complement of each other. Let us beware, then, my friends, how we antagonize those whose help we need. Let us make capital feel, by reason of our foresight, our fidelity, our judgment, our generosity, that it cannot afford to ignore our rights and must open wide the doors to human progress or fall a victim to its own inertia. With you I believe in organization; organization upheld by, and upholding, the rights of the people, irrespective of class; organization prompted by the still small voice of conscience, which abridges no man’s freedom while seeking its own. In this way only can your wrongs and mine be righted. But before we mend the steps of those who oppress us, let us as individuals sweep the inner chambers of the heart, and garnish them anew for the long-waited guest of universal justice.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
The night of Margaret’s meeting with the anarchists was an eventful one for the three members of the Murchison family. Elsie, tired of waiting for Gilbert’s appearance, and strenuous in her desire to spend her nights at home, had been again compelled to ask William’s escort, a fact which raised the spirits of the mercurial young Irishman to a point of emphatic self-gratulation. He felt sure, to use his own phraseology, that “Elsie was getting soft on him,” and while preparing himself for the walk he resolved to put into definite shape his growing fondness for her. It so happened that when he and Elsie left the area door, Herbert Lynn, violin case in hand, walked down the front steps of the Mason mansion and leisurely followed them up the street. As William possessed the native wit of his race, together with an abundant fund of good-humor, Elsie’s laugh was frequent at the droll remarks and anecdotes he poured into her ear. This only increased the self-elation with which he viewed his prospects, but lacking the finesse of language wherewith to proclaim his passion, he allowed the precious moments to slip by, until, having reached the dimly-lighted entrance to Elsie’s home, he felt that decisive action alone could serve his purpose.
“Good-night, and thank you,” said Elsie as they stepped within the narrow hall.
“Not so fast,” he cried, clutching at Elsie’s dress and detaining her. “I must be better paid.”
“To be sure,” answered Elsie, reaching into the depths of a woman’s long pocket and bringing her purse to view. “How careless I am.”
“No, you don’t! Put that pocketbook up. Sure an’ this is what I mean,” and grasping Elsie round the waist he strove to imprint a kiss upon her lips.