The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 12

by William Cowper Brann

I'm no philanthropist who's trying to reform the world for the fun of the thing—who's willing to starve to death for the sake of an attractive tombstone. I want to so amend industrial conditions that I won't have to hustle so hard—and so long—between meals; and when they are bettered for me they will be bettered for you, and for every man who—with pick or pen, brain or brawn— honestly earns his daily bread.

I want more holidays; more time to sit down and reflect that it is good to be alive; more time to go fishing—not fishing for men, but for sure—enough suckers. Here in America if the average mortal aspires to fill a long-felt want with first-class fodder, he's got to chase the almighty dollar on week-days like a hungry coyote camping on the trail of a corpulent jack-rabbit, and spend Sunday figuring how to circumvent his fellow-citizen. Life with the American people is one continental hurry, and rush from the cradle to the grave. We're born in a hurry, live by electricity and die with scientific expedition. Half of us don't take time to become acquainted with our own families. We've even got to courting by telephone, and I expect to see some enterprising firm put up lover's kisses in tablet form, so that they can be carried in the vest pocket and absorbed while we figure cent per cent. or make out a mortgage.

. . .

For a score of years I had been listening to the boast of the American people that they were Sovereigns by right divine, and at last it occurred to me to swear out a search warrant for my crown and go on a still-hunt for my scepter; but soon found that the jewels of my throne-room, the rod of my authority and my purple robe of office were conspicuous by their absence and I wasn't married at the time either. The American citizen is a sovereign, not to the extent of his voice and vote, but to the exact amount of Uncle Sam's illuminated mental anguish plasters at his command. Money is lord paramount, Mammon our prophet, our god the golden calf.

The dollar is indeed "almighty." It's the Archimedean lever that lifts the ill-bred boor into select society and places the ignorant sap-head in the United State Senate. It makes presidents of "stuffed prophets," governors of intellectual geese, philosophers of fools and gilds infamy itself with supernal glory. It wrecks the altars of innocence and pollutes the fanes of the people, breaks the sword of Justice and binds the Goddess of Liberty with chains of gold. It is lord of the land, the uncrowned king of the commonwealth, and its whole religious creed is comprised in the one verse, "To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance, while from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath."

"We, the people, rule"—in the conventions; but our delegated lawmakers have a different lord. In 1892 we demanded "tariff reform" with a whoop that shook the imperial rafters of heaven, and declared for the minting of gold and silver without discrimination against either metal. But our so-called "public servants," instead of hastening to obey our behests, spent months manufacturing excuses for disregarding their duty. Placed between the devil of the money power and the deep sea of public opinion, they wobbled in and they wobbled out like a drunken boa-constrictor taking its jag to a gold cure joint. They were like the little boy who put his trousers on t'other side to—we couldn't tell whether they were going to school or coming home. But our doubts were all dispelled last November. They are the fellows who were going to school—to that school of experience where fools are educated.

. . .

Slave or Sovereign? The last is an individual entity, a controlling power, his will is law. The first goes and comes, fetches and carries at the command of a master; creating wealth he may not possess, bound by laws he does not approve, dependent upon the pleasure of others for the privilege of breaking bread. Is not the latter condition that of a majority of the American people to-day? Are they not at the subsequent end of a financial hole, the sides soaped and never a ladder in sight?

In a country so favored—a veritable garden of the gods, where every prospect pleases and not even the politician is wholly vile—the lowliest laborer should be a lord, and each and all find life well worth the living. But it is not so. People starve while sunny savannas, bursting with fatness, yield no food; they wander houseless through summer's heat and winter's cold, while great mountains of granite comb the fleecy clouds and the forest monarch measures strength with the thunderstorm; they flee naked and ashamed from the face of their fellow-men while fabrics molder in the market-place and the song of the spindle is silent: they freeze while beneath their feet are countless tons of coal—incarnate kisses of the sun-god's fiery youth; they have never a spot of earth on which to plant a vine and watch their children play—where they may rear with loving hands lowly roof and rule, lords of a little world hemmed in by the sacred circle of a home; yet the common heritage in the human race lies fair before them and there is room enough.

The people of Texas do not realize how terrible is the industrial condition of the world to-day—how wide the gulf that separates Dives and Lazarus, how pitiful the poverty of millions of their fellowmen. The Texas merchant complains of dull trade, the farmer of low prices, the mechanic of indifferent wages; yet Texas is the most favored spot on the great round earth to-day. I defy you to find another portion of the globe of equal area and population where the wealth is so well distributed, where so few people go hungry to bed without prospect of breakfast. But the grisly gorgon of Greed and the gaunt specter of Need are coming West and South in the wake of the Star of Empire. Already Texas has begun to breed millionaires and mendicants, sovereigns and slaves. Already we have an aristocracy of money, in which WEALTH makes the man and want of it the fellow, and year by year it becomes easier for Dives to add to his hoard and for Lazarus to starve to death.