One thousand secrets of wise and rich men revealed

by C. A. Bogardus

I consult my watch, a beautiful piece of machinery, and learn that it is three o'clock; it is July 21st, 1902. It has been raining, or rather drizzling for about twenty hours. It is an ideal time for reflection. Near the window where I sit is a large, vacant lot. The grass is fragrant, its surface is smooth and elevated. I remember viewing the same lot eight years ago, just after a similar rain to the one that is now abating. The lot was then a large pond, eighteen inches deep. What a change labor has made on its surface! Looking another direction, I see a lot, now covered with water as it was eight years ago. I will venture the assertion that it will be covered with water a thousand years hence, unless labor improves it as it has the one just mentioned.

My library contains several volumes devoted entirely to the history of the United States. They all say that four hundred years ago, what is now the United States was a vast territory of uncultivated land, crossed by the mountain ranges and rivers, that still hold forth. There were also people here, and they had a government. We call it tribe rule, and tribal relations. They were savages. Hence, looking backward as far as history permits, we find the United States a tract of land that was the home of Nature, and Natures, beasts. Inhabited by the roaming Indian, whose government and mechanical ability were as widely different from the present style as the City of Chicago is from old Fort Dearborn, in Lake Michigan swamps of 1811.

History recounts that European government had succeeded in governing so that the toiling subjects preferred to come to America, and dwell among Indians, and rule themselves, than to stay in Europe among friends, and be ruled by the old style, European government. Be it remembered that it was not the tangible improvements which were the handiwork of labor, from which the poor of Europe fled. But it was the European laws that oppressed them. It was oppression from which they were fleeing. They did not come to the New Connecticut because it was new, but because it was the only available place for them. They did not come to America because they did not like law, or because they did not want to worship God, but to gain justice and privilege of worship.

The poor came to America to earn a living without kingly interference. The king sent rulers not to earn a living, but to get a living. The poor said, "I will go to America and eat bread in the sweat of my face." The ruler said, "Where you go, I will go also, and I will eat bread in the sweat of your face." Thus we see that the oppressed came to America to avoid tyranny, while simultaneously the rulers came over to impose the very rule the toilers were seeking to avoid. So successful were they in their purpose that in 1776, the toiling class (who are always in the majority), concluded that they needed no more European rule, and in seven years of war, the idle rulers were driven from America.

In forming the new government, the people, who had so courageously fought to drive out England's "Kingly" rule, commenced to look for formulas for a government. They turned to England for precedents, consequently a government was formed, which in many respects resembled the English government. Especially was this resemblance noticeable in the Supreme Court, for the Judges hold office for life, during good behavior. Right here let me observe that there is no good reason why the inferior courts should not have a life tenure of office, if such a policy is correct for the Supreme Court, and if it is better for inferior courts to hold office for short terms, it is best that the Supreme Court be subject to the same policy. It is ridiculous that our representatives should be made such by popular vote, and the laws they make be construed by a set of judges whose office expires only when the spirit judge has a harp, and the dust judge has a coffin. Popular vote retires the inferior judge, a fashionable funeral retires the supreme judge, but the robe is left as the imperial emblem. It seems to me it is time to abolish the life tenure of office with our Supreme Court, and it is entirely fitting that their robes be hung in the curio hall of some popular museum, as a souvenir of a ridiculous custom no longer desirable in a popular government. Let me here drop a thought. You may have it for what you think it is worth. The expressed will of a majority of the people should be the Supreme Court decision in the United States. Were that the case an income tax would be constitutional, and a tariff between the states and some territory owned and controlled by our government would be unconstitutional.

Since the victory at Yorktown, great questions have been argued and settled by the laboring men and inventors; great questions have been argued, but not settled, by the politicians. Washington used candles, we use electric lights. Washington's four men picked the seed from twenty-five pounds of cotton per day; four men in our generation, gin 25,000 pounds per day; Washington traveled with horses and oxen, thirty miles per day; we travel by steam 1,000 miles per day; Washington sent a letter one hundred miles and waited a week for the answer; we telegraph thousands of miles and get an answer within the hour; Washington's voice could be heard a quarter of a mile; we talk and carry on conversation hundreds of miles. Each of these propositions, and thousands of others have been settled by the inventors and toilers. In short and in fine, the difference between the United States with her natural resources of 125 years ago, and the United States of today, with her vast farms, great mines, magnificent cities and half a hundred thousand miles of railroad, and other improvements too numerous to mention, all this difference, I say, is co-extensive with America before and after taking the labor treatment. But what can we say of the politician and his doings during these years, stripped of all ambiguity, when we tell the unpolished, but plain truth, we must say he never advanced one iota until he was routed from his old position by the toiling masses. It is curious to note that every new social, political, and ethical idea hatches in the same mind and is developed by the same crowd that contrives the machinery and builds the cities, railroads, farms, mines, etc.

The politicians, except where labor has compelled them to march forward, stand where Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson put them when the Constitution was adopted. Of course there were some steep places in our governmental structure, and where labor has not buoyed up the politician, he has occasionally slid back to the rules of King George the III. As King George had one tax for England at home, and another for the Colonies, so with us, of late, we have one tax for ourselves and another for our possessions. (We should, however, give the politician, due credit for the way he spells colonies.) English style is to commence with a "C." Our modern style necessitates commencing with a "P." Then, the pronunciation is different; in England it is "Colonies," in America, "Possessions." Yet all over the world they mean the same, to-wit, the strong taxing the weak without allowing representation.

It is literally true that Henry, Jefferson, Washington, and the Adams argued the slavery question. As long as we retain the Philippine Islands, that question still faces us, for their advent to our possession brought slavery for us to foster, and we are fostering it.

The money question was argued one hundred years ago, and it is still up for argument.

Politicians still are turning on both wings of the tariff. Republicans hold to the argument that the European manufacturers, because of the low wages paid their workingmen, would undersell our home manufacturers if free trade was adopted by the United States. Democrats contend that Free Trade will work to benefit 99 per cent of our people, where, as they claim, protection benefits only 1 per cent, to the injury of the masses. According to the Chicago Tribune of July 19th, 1902, Europe is afraid that, unless a high tariff law protects it, American manufactures will flood their markets, thus hindering their home industry.