Forty Years of It

by Brand Whitlock

It seemed to annoy, and in some cases even to anger, those whom I told of my resolution not to prosecute anyone any more. They would argue about it with me as if it made some real difference to them; if every lawyer and every man were so to decide, they said, who was to proceed against the criminals, who was to do the work of purifying and regenerating society? It has always been, of course, a most interesting and vital question as to who is to do the dirty work of all kinds in this world; but their apprehensions, as I could assure them, were all unfounded, since there are always plenty of lawyers, and always plenty of them who are not only willing but anxious to act as prosecutors, and to put into their work that energy and enthusiasm which the schools of efficiency urge upon the youth of the land, and to prosecute with a ferocity that could be no more intense if they had suffered some injury in their own persons from the accused. And there are even men who are willing, for the most meager salaries, to act as guards and wardens in prisons, and to do all manner of things, even to commit crimes, or at least moral wrongs, in order to put men into prison and keep them there, unless they can kill them, and there are plenty who are willing to do that, if only society provides them with a rope or a wire to do it with.

XX

There was, however, in Toledo one man who could sympathize with my attitude; and that was a man whose determination to accept literally and to try to practice the fundamental philosophy of Christianity had so startled and confounded the Christians everywhere that he at once became famous throughout Christendom as “Golden Rule Jones.” I had known of him only as the eccentric mayor of our city, and nearly everyone whom I had met since my advent in Toledo spoke of him only to say something disparaging of him. The most charitable thing they said was that he was crazy. All the newspapers were against him, and all the preachers. My own opinion, of course, could have been of no consequence, but I had learned in the case of Altgeld that almost universal condemnation of a man is to be examined before it is given entire credit. I do not mean to say that there was universal condemnation of Golden Rule Jones in Toledo in those days: it was simply that the institutional voices of society, the press and the pulpit, were thundering in condemnation of him. When the people came to vote for his reëlection his majorities were overwhelming, so that he used to say that everybody was against him but the people. But that is another story.

In those days I had not met him. I might have called at his office, to be sure, but I did not care to add to his burdens. One day, suddenly, as I was working on a story in my office, in he stepped with a startling, abrupt manner, wheeled a chair up to my desk, and sat down. He was a big Welshman with a sandy complexion and great hands that had worked hard in their time, and he had an eye that looked right into the center of your skull. He wore, and all the time he was in the room continued to wear, a large cream-colored slouch hat, and he had on the flowing cravat which for some inexplicable reason artists and social reformers wear; their affinity being due, no doubt, to the fact that the reformer must be an artist of a sort, else he could not dream his dreams. I was relieved, however, to find that Jones wore his hair clipped short, and there was still about him that practical air of the very practical business man he had been before he became mayor. He had been such a practical business man that he was worth half a million, a fairly good fortune for our town; but he had not been in office very long before all the business men were down on him, and saying that what the town needed was a business man for mayor, a statement that was destined to ring in my ears for a good many years. They disliked him of course because he would not do just what they told him to,—that being the meaning and purpose of a business man for mayor,—but insisted that there were certain other people in the city who were entitled to some of his service and consideration—namely, the working people and the poor. The politicians and the preachers objected to him on the same grounds: the unpardonable sin being to express in any but a purely ideal and sentimental form sympathy for the workers or the poor. It seemed to be particularly exasperating that he was doing all this in the name of the Golden Rule, which was for the Sunday-school; and they even went so far as to bring to town another Sam Jones, the Reverend Sam Jones, to conduct a “revival” and to defeat the Honorable Sam Jones. The Reverend Sam Jones had big meetings, and said many clever things, and many true ones, the truest among them being his epigram, “I am for the Golden Rule myself, up to a certain point, and then I want to take the shotgun and the club.” I think that expression marked the difference between him and our Sam Jones, in whose philosophy there was no place at all for the shotgun or the club. The preachers were complaining that Mayor Jones was not using shotguns, or at least clubs, on the “bad” people in the town; I suppose that since their own persuasions had in a measure failed, they felt that the Mayor with such instruments might have made the “bad” people look as if they had been converted anyway.

It was when he was undergoing such criticism as this that he came to see me, to ask me to speak at Golden Rule Park. This was a bit of green grass next to his factory; he had dedicated it to the people’s use, and there under a large willow-tree, on Sunday afternoons, he used to speak to hundreds. There was a little piano which two men could carry, and with that on the platform to play the accompaniments the people used to sing songs that Jones had written—some of them of real beauty, and breathing the spirit of poetry, if they were not always quite in its form. In the winter these meetings were held in Golden Rule Hall, a large room that served very well as an auditorium, in his factory hard by. On the walls of Golden Rule Hall was the original tin sign he had hung up in his factory as the only rule to be known there, “Therefore whatsoever things ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” In the course of time every reformer, every radical, in the country had spoken in that hall or under that willow-tree, and the place developed an atmosphere that was immensely impressive. The hall had the portraits of many liberal leaders and humanitarians on its walls, and a number of paintings; and in connection with the settlement which Jones established across the street the institution came to be, as a reporter wrote one day in his newspaper, the center of intelligence in Toledo.

Well then, on that morning when first he called, Jones said to me:

“I want you to come out and speak.”

“On what subject?” I asked.

“There’s only one subject,” he said,—“life.” And his face was radiant with a really beautiful smile, warmed with his rich humor. I began to say that I would prepare something, but he would not let me finish my sentence.

“Prepare!” he exclaimed. “Why prepare? Just speak what’s in your heart.”