The influences which have degraded the rich and debased the poor, and, under the forms of Democracy, given over the metropolis of our country to the rule of a class more unscrupulous and more arrogant than that of the hereditary aristocracy from which it is our boast that we of the new world have emancipated ourselves?
The type of modern growth is the great city. Here are to be found the greatest wealth and the deepest poverty. And it is here that popular government has most clearly broken down. In all the great American cities there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the most aristocratic countries of the world. Its members carry wards in their pockets, make up slates for nominating conventions, distribute offices as they bargain together, and—though they toil not, neither do they spin—wear the best of raiment and spend money lavishly. They are men of power, whose favour the ambitious must court, and whose vengeance he must avoid.
Who are these men? The wise, the good, the learned—men who have earned the confidence of their fellow citizens by the purity of their lives, the splendour of their talents, their nobility in public trusts, their deep study of the problems of government? No; they are gamblers, saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a trade of controlling votes, and of buying and selling offices and official acts.
It is through these men that rich corporations and powerful pecuniary interests can pack the Senate and the Bench with their creatures. It is these men who make school directors, supervisors, assessors, members of the Legislature, Congressmen.
Mr. George was a magnetic man—a man of intense enthusiasm and tireless energy. He spoke night after night, and as the contest waxed hotter and hotter his discourses rose in temperature, until, before the contest came to a close, he pledged himself to send Richard Croker to the Penitentiary as a thief; and he left his hearers in very little doubt that if he could have had his way, the Republican boss would occupy the adjacent cell. To Mr. Seth Low, Mr. George was a great speculative writer and a dreamer. To General Tracy, he was a man who went in for Free License and Free Everything excepting Free Silver. To Tammany he was a most dangerous foe.
The following extract from a speech delivered by Charles Frederick Adams is a fair illustration of the kind of ferment that is working under the surface of American politics:—
Everywhere that man is oppressed by man the people are straining their ears to hear of Henry George’s election. He is a man of men, one who dues not confine his attention to the great individuals and the more fortunate classes, but one who lends his head and heart to the cause of man. He is the Moses to whom we all look to be led out of the wilderness. He is the lodestar of suffering humanity.
This is no single tax movement. It is a movement to benefit down-trodden man, a movement to throw off the chains of serfdom in order that we may once again breathe God’s pure air with freedom. Henry George has the respect of every intelligent man and woman in this country. His name is the keynote to truth and freedom. And yet there are men who claim to be his friend who went to him and asked him not to accept a nomination for first Mayor of the Greater New York. They appeal to his modesty, telling him that he is only wanted by a handful of mere agitators. They know they lied when they tried to turn him aside, and yet they call themselves his friend, but their friendship is like a celebrated kiss in a celebrated garden.
It is not a question of silver, the tariff, or anything of that kind; it is the more vital question of trying to rescue a great city from a lot of organised robbers. As a guarantee of our sincerity we ask Henry George to be our candidate and raise us from the contemptible tyranny of little men. If we were held in thraldom by a Cæsar or a Napoleon we might stand it, but, my God! a Croker, a Croker, gentlemen; a Croker or a Platt!
The time has come when the common man, that great crucified of eternity, shall say like the crucified divinity: “Choose ye now which ye will serve; he that is not with me is against me,” and with these words I ask you to take off your coats and work for the election of Henry George.