It is a call for a leader to freedom—the freedom we bought with our blood and signed away in ignorance. I care not where you turn, the voices of the people crying for their rights rise stronger, fuller, more threatening, year by year. Day by day they organize. A meeting of farmers at St. Louis files formal protest against the profits of the middleman, and forms a committee to investigate and report, and puts together a League of Reform. A machine-made politician in New York, in Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania, is crushed by the votes of the people he fondly had dreamed he owned. A firmly entrenched public officer is branded a liar and a thief, no matter what committees may whitewash him. A public document published to clear the skirts of a ruling party of the charge of being in part responsible for the rising prices is laughed out of court by the people themselves.
A daring and preposterous attempt on the part of organized railroad owners to advance rates to the general public, while holding them down for the “big interests,” is met by a storm of organized protest. Chambers of commerce, industrial clubs, manufacturers’ guilds, consumers’ leagues, spring up all over the country, expostulating, pleading, threatening, hurling legal thunderbolts. A President yields to the clamour, and an attorney-general launches the thunder of Washington against a move that, ten years ago, would have met only the scattered, sporadic, half-hearted, hopeless invective of the private citizen. The railroads yield, and begin the revision of rates “at the top,” by making agreements with the big organized shippers, the trusts.
The time is ripe, or nearly ripe; the fight begins. The status quo is to be changed. In the political arena all is confusion. Already, from the lips of the old, trained leaders, who, through long periods, have served the interests of the plutocracy while wearing the livery of the people, come hesitating phrases of fear and confusion. One announces that he will retire after his present term. Another goes down to defeat, fighting to the last for his masters. A third, branded a corruptionist, sees ruin stalking him amid the shadows of the coming day. Another, reading the papers, dubs them traitors, and madly curses them before the eyes and in the ears of all the people.
And, meantime, we need a Marius, a Lincoln, a strong man of the people, in whose hands will be the threads of political destiny. Events are opening to this strong man the gates of mighty power. When he comes (and he is sure to come), he will hear the clear, unmistakable call of destiny to its chosen. Can he help but heed? History supplies the answer. Go read it, you who rest secure within your flimsy barriers of self-interest, self-confidence, and gold. When another Lincoln comes, we shall know him.
“Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent yet so baneful an influence, as indolence. Body and mind both unemployed, our being becomes a burthen, and every object about us loathsome, even the dearest. Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical. Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, and cheerfulness of mind; all these make us precious to our friends. It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterwards. The fortune of our lives, therefore, depends on employing well the short period of youth.”
—Thomas Jefferson.
Chapter Eight
FIGHTING FOR LIFE
The very first direct result of the growing consciousness of conditions throughout the country is a sudden growth in the volume of money devoted to charity, and a sudden and quite extraordinary increase in the personal interest shown by the wealthy in the matter of reform.