First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

“Now I must tell you that the man who spoke to you just now is wrong; and he is not only wrong, but he means to be wrong; in other words, he lies. He would have you behave like a child who has just been given a gold watch, and smash it because he does not know how to use it. You have all got your gold watches. You have got your roads and your mills and your schools and your votes. When he tells you to destroy the government, he tells you to undo what your hands have created. Bad as things may be, they are bad because you voters are not wise enough; but he would destroy all wisdom, do away with schools and votes, and then the first big general would be a czar over you again.

“I say you are not wise enough. If things are wrong, whose fault is it? It is you who make them. Do you trust to the best men? Do you try to see who is wise and what is excellent? or do you give the power to him whom you justly hate—the rich monopolist, the selfish trader, who says he is a coarse, plain man like you, and then buys your sovereignty with the sweat of your own brows and a sop of the very mess of pottage you have sold your birthright for?

“If you care more for a glass of beer than your welfare, whose fault that selfish men have found the beer comes cheaper than your family’s comfort in their dividends?

“Your foreign friend—who is no wise leader for American workmen, and if you choose him, you will choose wrong—your foreign friend has told you to destroy. Suppose you tore up these railroads and wrecked these mills and furnaces and flooded all the mines and burned the oil—you know what farmers’ wages are; would you be better off? And if you all went out and wanted work in the fields, where would the wages go to? You say you would not want wages, but would take the land; very good, there is the land now: will any of you like to change your work and earnings for a freehold farmer’s life? ‘No, we want the mills and railroads, but we do not want the rich,’ you say. And if we wiped away the rich, who would build your railroads? Can you do it alone, and feed and pay yourselves? But if the rich must do it, what shall be their reward? They give you money—what will you pay them in? Money, or money’s worth, and human bodies, are the only values that the world has ever known. Will you pay them in your bodies, in your slavery? If no, why, then, object that they have money?

“Because they have more than we, you say. Well, that may be mended. But if people are to use money to help you build your railroads, they must have the money to start with.

“Because they have more money than we have, you say again. And now be honest. Will you promise me one thing: that you will try not to think the world all wrong until it has no justice? They say there is no justice in the country of our friend here, and that is why he had to fly to us. If you can say there is no justice here; when you can honestly say, ‘I have not got what I deserve’—then we will take it, though we wade through seas of blood, and I go with you. But tell me honestly, now—do you think you want money so much as some of the rich? Do you think it so needful to you? Do you think, each one of you, your know-how is so valuable? Do you think to-day, if you had a million apiece, you would use the money on the whole so well? You all know Coal-Oil Patsy—he got five millions, and he kept a bad circus, and a bad hotel, and a bad base-ball nine, and bad women, and took to drinking himself blind, and bribed himself a seat in Congress, and killed his wife or broke her heart, and at last he lost his money, and now he gets a dollar and a quarter a day, when he is sober enough—and he is worth no more—and what cent of his money ever did you any good? It is now all gone, and he built no single furnace, nor mill, nor railroad, nor worked a mine, nor gave any one of you a day’s work while his money lasted. And one thing more: do you think you are better, or as fit to spend this money that your railroad or your coal mine makes—I do not mean, whether you may be so in a short time—but fairly now, as you stand, to-day, are you kinder, wiser, nobler; have you higher tastes, more learning, better knowledge of all the things that take money to buy? For remember, beer and beef and clothes and tobacco and rum are cheap enough—you know you get all of them you need to-day—it is fine learning, and clean manners, and great pictures, and new sciences, and poets, and high music, that come expensive. Even are you quite as good? Are your boys quite as well-bred and sober and respectful, and your little girls quite as generous and gentle? I do not say that all these things are so forever—that you may not all become so—and believe me, the first young man or woman that comes along and says, ‘Look here, I am fit to be a gentleman,’ and the world does not admit him such; the first old man who has knowledge to make and spend money, and has not got it—and I will let him say, like our friend here, ‘Away with learning and effort and order and wisdom and their universal works, and let us burn and kill! for behold, I have not my deserts.’”

The great mass of men had begun to hear Derwent speak with some attention; but the crowd thinned rapidly. Probably the greater part of it did not understand English at all; and toward the end several Huns and Poles collected little groups about them and began themselves to speak in the corners. But as the Englishman closed, James Starbuck took the place; he was known to be one of the masters in sympathy with them, and the multitude pressed eagerly back.

Starbuck looked slowly around the great multitude; and you might have heard the murmur of a child, so silent was their expectation. Then he began; and his words dropped hissing, one by one, like drops of molten iron falling into water.

“What has this fine gentleman to do down here, with us rough workmen?” he began. “Do you think he would let one of you marry his sister?” Starbuck uttered each word staccato, by itself, thinking of his sister Jenny; and his frame seemed to quiver with malice; and he paused again, as if to recover his control. “I saw him riding many times last winter, in a carriage with footmen, with servants in livery, and a lady wearing diamonds, whose dress would buy a house for you and me. She is a fashionable belle, in the newspapers, and they say she is no better than she should be; but she would not touch our wives and daughters with the glove upon her hand.

“This aristocrat may have lost his money—as many of them do, by gambling, as well as poor old Coal-Oil Patsy—and he may have other ways of getting it, for all I know. Perhaps he was paid for his speech to-night. But are you such flats as to think he really cares for the likes of us?” The crowd already had begun to murmur angrily.