Three times has our nation been called upon to pass into the shadow of humiliation, and each time in the past it has learned its severe lesson. When Lincoln fell, slavery perished. To the American of to-day human slavery in a land of civilization is almost an impossible conception, yet many of us who think ourselves still young can remember when half of this land held other men in bondage and the dearest hope of freedom was that such things should not go on forever. I can remember when we looked forward to the time when “at least the present form of slavery should be no more.” For democracy and slavery could not subsist together. The Union could not stand—half slave, half free.
The last words of Garfield were these: Strangulatus pro Republica. (Slain for the Republic.) The feudal tyranny of the spoils system which had made republican administration a farce, has not had, since Garfield’s time, a public defender. It has not vanished from our politics, but its place is where it belongs—among the petty wrongs of maladministration.
Again a president is slain for the Republic—and the lesson is the homely one of peace and order, patience and justice, respect for ourselves through respect for the law, for public welfare, and for public right.
For this country is passing through a time of storm and stress, a flurry of lawless sensationalism. The irresponsible journalism, the industrial wars, the display of hastily-gotten wealth, the grasping monopoly, the walking delegate, the vulgar cartoon, the foul-mouthed agitator, the sympathetic strike, the unsympathetic lockout, are all symptoms of a single disease—the loss of patriotism, the decay of the sense of justice. As in other cases, the symptoms feed the disease, as well as indicate it. The deed of violence breeds more deeds of violence; anarchy provokes hysteria, and hysteria makes anarchy. The unfounded scandal sets a hundred tongues to wagging, and the seepage from the gutter reaches a thousand homes.
The journal for the weak-minded and debased makes heroes of those of its class who carry folly over into crime. The half-crazy egotist imagines himself a regicide, and his neighbor with the clean shirt is his oppressor and therefore his natural victim. Usually his heart fails him, and his madness spends itself in foul words. Sometimes it does not, and the world stands aghast. But it is not alone against the Chief Magistrate that these thoughts and deeds are directed. There are usually others within closer range. There is scarcely a man in our country, prominent in any way, statesman, banker, merchant, railway manager, clergyman, teacher even, that has not, somewhere, his would-be Nemesis, some lunatic, with a sensational newspaper and a pistol, prepared to take his life.
The gospel of discontent has no place within our Republic. It is true, as has often been said, that discontent is the cause of human progress. It is truer still, as Mr. John P. Irish has lately pointed out, that discontent may be good or bad, according to its relation to the individual man. There is a noble discontent which a man turns against himself. It leads the man who fails to examine his own weaknesses, to make the needed repairs in himself, then to take up the struggle again. There is a cowardly discontent which leads a man to blame all failure on his prosperous neighbor or on society at large, as if a social system existed apart from the men who make it. This is the sort of discontent to which the agitator appeals, that finds its stimulus in sensational journalism. It is that which feeds the frenzy of the assassin who would work revenge on society by destroying its accepted head.
It is not theoretical anarchism or socialism or any other “ism” which is responsible for this. Many of the gentlest spirits in the world today call themselves anarchists, because they look forward to the time when personal meekness shall take the place of all statutes. The gentle anarchism of the optimistic philosopher is not that which confronts us to-day. It is the anarchy of destruction, the hatred of class for class; a hatred that rests only on distorted imagination, for, after all is said, there are no classes in America. It is the hatred imported from the Old World, excited by walking delegates whose purpose it is to carry a torch through society; a hatred fanned by agitators of whatever sort, unpractical dreamers or conscienceless scoundrels, exploited in the newspapers, abetted by so-called high society with its display of shoddy and greed, and intensified by the cold, hard selfishness that underlies the power of the trust. All these people, monopolists, social leaders, walking delegates, agitators, sensationalists, dreamers, are alien to our ways, outside the scope of our democracy, and enemies to good citizenship.
The real Americans, trying to live their lives in their own way, saving a little of their earnings and turning the rest into education and enjoyment, have many grievances in these days of grasping trusts and lawless unions. But of such free Americans our country is made. They are the people, not the trusts or the unions, nor their sensational go-betweens. This is their government, and the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. This is the people’s President—our President—who was killed, and it is ours to avenge him.
Not by lynch law on a large or small scale may we do it; not by anarchy or despotism; not by the destruction of all that call themselves anarchists, not by abridging freedom of the press nor by checking freedom of speech. Those who would wreak lawless vengeance on the anarchists are themselves anarchists and makers of anarchists.
We have laws enough already without making more for men to break. Let us get a little closer to the higher law. Let us respect our own rights and those of our neighbor a little better. Let us cease to tolerate sensational falsehood about our neighbor, or vulgar abuse of those in power. If we have bad rulers, let us change them peacefully. Let us put an end to every form of intimidation, wherever practiced. The cause that depends upon hurling bricks or epithets, or upon clubbing teamsters or derailing trains, cannot be a good cause. Even if originally in the right, the act of violence puts the partisans of such a cause in the wrong. No freeman ever needs to do such things as these. For the final meaning of democracy is peace on earth, good-will towards men. When we stand for justice among ourselves we can demand justice of the monopolistic trust. When we attack it with clear vision and cool speech we shall find the problem of combination for monopoly not greater than any other. And large or small, there is but one way for us to meet any problem: to choose wise men, clean men, cool men, the best we can secure through our method of the ballot, and then to trust the rest in their hands. The murder of the President has no direct connection with industrial war. Yet there is this connection, that all war, industrial or other, loosens the bonds of order, destroys mutual respect and trust, gives inspiration to anarchy, pushes a foul thought on to a foul word, a foul word on to a foul deed.