Better days; or, A Millionaire of To-morrow

by Thomas Fitch; Anna M. Fitch

“I have always thought that our civil war was a moral education to this people and to the world,” remarked the doctor.

“War was an educator,” conceded the professor, “yet the tree of knowledge with its crimson leaves yielded evil fruit as well as good. The moral nature of the American people has, I fear, reacted from the tension of generous and patriotic sacrifice which war evolved. Some of the very men who helped to strike shackles from black slaves have been busy ever since forging other shackles for white slaves, and in twenty-five years from the days when we freely paid lives and treasure to preserve the existence of the nation, and free it from the wrong of slavery and the rule of a slave-holding oligarchy, we have passed under the sway of other despots, more selfish, more sordid, more relentless, and more rapacious of dominion. The dusk-browed tyrant of Egypt has been overthrown, but in his place Plutus reigns.”

“I grant you,” interposed Dr. Eustace, “that the wealth owners are the rulers of our later civilization, but, so far as I have observed, instead of endeavoring to curb or overthrow them, we are all doing our best to join their ranks and participate in their power. You appear to be the only living millionaire who declaims against his class. I know of no other man who is brave enough to defy the power of money, great enough to ignore it, or strong enough to resist its influence, and I dare say you would change your views if you were to lose your millions. We all defer to the plutocrats. The Spanish nobleman who, for his ancestor’s services, was permitted to remain with his head covered in the presence of his sovereign, would have been sure to take off his hat if he had entered the office of the president of a country bank, with a view of negotiating a small loan on doubtful security. There was a great truth inadvertently given to the world in the programme of a Fourth of July procession, wherein it was announced that the line would end with bankers in carriages, followed by citizens on foot.”

“This subservience to King Gold, and pursuit of his favors, must cease, Dr. Eustace, or this republic will be lost. The people must be taught to assume a more independent and manly attitude toward the owners of money.”

“Ah, John, money is so necessary, and it is so hard to turn one’s back upon it! This way lies comfort, ease, luxury—that way deprivation and sacrifice. This way ‘the primrose path of dalliance trends’—that way ‘the steep and thorny road.’ This way the wife and children beckon and sue for safety and peace—that way only rocks, and bruises, and hunger, and loneliness summon. What wonder that the Christ, voicing the cry of the human to the infinite Father, placed as the central thought of the Lord’s prayer the words, ‘Lead us not into temptation’! But, John, honestly now, do you think the eight thousand millionaires you rave about are such an utterly bad lot as you make them out to be?”

“Individually I dare say they are good husbands, fathers, and neighbors,” replied the professor, “but they conceal their selfishness and rapacity, and exercise their despotism from behind the shields of corporations which they create and govern, and tyranny is none the less tyranny because it is decreed not by kings, but by entities which fear neither the assassination of man nor the judgment of God.”

“Professor, pardon me, but you generalize a good deal, and I fear somewhat loosely. It would make a difference to me, in my feelings, at least, whether I was knocked down by a ruffian, or by an electrical machine.”

“Doctor, your simile was not considered as carefully as are your prescriptions. If the machine be guided by the ruffian, what matters it whether you be struck by his hand, or with an electric current directed by his hand? If our great newspapers, which are influential, which claim to be independent, and which ought to be free, are restrained from publishing articles advocating postal telegraphy, or criticising the management of a news corporation, what matters it that the freedom of the press is choked by a board of directors rather than a government censor? If the citizen dare not give voice to his views on public affairs, what matters it whether his utterances be choked by the knuckles of a king, or the polite menaces of an employer? If the voter cast his ballot against his own convictions, and in accordance with the will of another, what matters it whether he be coerced by a soldier with a musket or a station agent with a freight bill? If the settler lose his land, what matter whether the despoiler be a personal bandit armed with a rifle, or a corporate robber equipped with a land-office decision? If capital exempt itself from taxation, and place the burden of sustaining government upon the broad back of labor, will it alleviate the pain of the load to know that it is not the law of feudal vassalage but of modern politics which accomplishes the exaction?

“Hallo! I have a bite! Ah! ha! my boy, your eagerness to swallow that minnow has brought you to grief!”

And the speaker lifted a twenty-ounce pickerel from the placid waters of Nine Mile Pond, and deposited it, struggling and shining, upon the green turf at his feet.