Who are those who recalcitrate about jingoism? They are people who have never forgiven Almighty God for suffering them to be born American sovereigns instead of British subjects. They are those whose ideal man is some stupid, forked, radish "stuck o'er with titles, hung 'round with strings," and anxious to board with a wealthy American wife to avoid honest work. They are the people whose god is the dollar, their country the stock exchange, and who suspect that a foreign policy with as much backbone as a scared rabbit would knock some of the wind and water out of their bogus "securities." It is those who would sell their citizenship for a copper cent and throw in their risen Lord as lagniappe, who are forever prating of "jingoism" and pleading for peace at any price. And these unclean harpies of greed and gall have been too long permitted to dominate this government. The result is that the greatest nation known to human history—the sum and crown of things—is an object of general insult. If it be rumored that we contemplate protecting American citizens in Cuba, every European government emits a growl—there's talk of rebuking Uncle Sam's "presumption," of standing him in a corner to cool. If it be suggested that we annex an island—at the earnest request of all its inhabitants worth the hanging—there more minatory caterwauling by the European courts, while even the Mikado of Japan gets his little Ebenezer up, and the Ahkound of Swat, the Nizan of Nowhere and the grand gyasticutus of Jimple- cute intimate that they may send a yaller-legged policeman across the Pacific in a soap-box to pull the tail- feathers out of the bird o' freedom if it doesn't crawl humbly back upon its perch. If a fourth-class power insults our flag we accept a flippant apology. If our citizens are wrongfully imprisoned we wait until they are starved, shot, or perish of blank despair in dungeons so foul that a hog would die therein of a broken heart; then humbly ask permission to investigate, report that they are dead, and feel that we have discharged our duty. Why? Because this nation is dominated by the dollar—is in the hands of those who have no idea of honor unless it will yield somewhat to eat, no use for patriotism unless it can be made to pay. When we concluded to protect our citizens from Weylerian savagery, instead of sending a warship to Havana to read the riot act if need be in villainous saltpetre we had our ambassador crawling about the European courts humbly begging permission of the powers, and as we got no permission we did no protecting. When the church people elect me president of this Republic I'll have ante-mortem investigations when American citizens are held prisoners by foreign powers, and those entitled to Old Glory's protection will get it in one time and two motions if Uncle Sam has to shuck his seer-sucker and fight all Europe to a finish. I shall certainly ask no foreign prince, potentate or power for permission to protect American citizens in the western world. There'll be one plank in my platform as broad as a boulevard and as long as a turnpike, and it will be to the effect that the nation which wrongs an American citizen must either apologize with its nose in the sand or reach for its six-shooter. I'd rather see my country made a desolation forever and a day, its flag torn from the heavens, its name erased from the map of the world and its people sleeping in heroes' sepulchres, than to see it a mark for scorn, an object of contempt.

In continually crying "Peace! Peace!" Uncle Sam is chasing a rainbow that has a dynamite bomb under either end. If history be philosophy teaching by example what is the lesson we have to learn? In little more than a century we've had four wars, and only by the skin of our teeth have we escaped as many more, yet we not only refuse to judge the future by the past, but ignore the solemn admonitions of Washington and Jefferson and stand naked before our enemies. We have no merchant marine to develop these hardy sailors who once made our flag the glory of the sea. We have a little navy, commanded chiefly by political pets who couldn't sail a catboat into New York harbor without getting aground or falling overboard. We have an army, about the size of a comic opera company, officered largely by society swells who cannot even play good poker, are powerful only on dress parade. We have a few militia companies, scattered from Sunrise to Lake Chance, composed chiefly of boys and commanded by home-made colonels, who couldn't hit a flock o' barns with a howitzer loaded to scatter; who show up at state encampments attired in gaudy uniforms that would make Solomon ashamed, and armed with so-called swords that wouldn't cut hot butter or perforate a rubber boot. And that's our immediate fighting force. Uncle Sam is a Philadelphia tenderfoot flourishing a toy pistol at a Mexican fandango. When I succeed Mr. McKinley I'll weed every dude and dancing master out of the army and navy and put on guard old war dogs who can tell the song of a ten-inch shell from the boom-de-aye of a sham battle. I'll call the attention of my Hardshell Baptist Congress to Washington's advice that while avoiding overgrown military establishments, we should be careful to keep this country on a respectable defensive posture, and that if that advice is not heeded, I'll distribute the last slice of federal pie among the female Prohibitionists of Kansas. If this is to be a government of, for and by a lot of nice old ladies, I'll see to it that none of my official grannies grow a beard or wear their bronchos clothespin fashion. And I'll warrant you that were this nation ruled by sure-enough women instead of by a lot of anaemic he-peons of the money-power, Columbia would not be caught unprepared when "the spider's web woven across the cannon's throat shakes its threaded tears in the wind no more."

. . .

To the American patriot familiar with the rapid development of this country it seems that the hour must assuredly come when its lightest wish will be the world's law— when foreign potentates will pay homage to the sovereigns of a new and greater Rome; but let us not be too sanguine, for nations, like individuals, have their youth, their lusty manhood and their decay; and despite the rapid increase in men and money there are startling indications that Uncle Sam has already passed the zenith of his power.

"First freedom, then glory, when that fails,
Wealth, vice, corruption—barbarism at last."

Freedom we have won, and glory, yet both have failed— we have become, not the subjects of native Caesars, but the serfs of foreign Shylocks. Wealth we now have, and Oriental vice, and corruption that reaches even from the senate chamber through every stratum of society. That we are approaching barbarism may be inferred from the magnificence of the plutocrat and the poverty of the working people. The first reaps where he has not sown and gathers where he has not strewn, while if the latter protest against this grievous injustice they are branded as noisy Bryanites or lampooned as lippy Populists. To the superficial observer, a nation seems to be forging forward long after it has really begun to retrograde. There's an era of splendor, of Lucullus feasts, of Bradley- Martin balls and Seeley dinners; there's grand parade of soldiery and ships, miles of costly palaces, and wealth poured out like water in foolish pageantry; there's refinement of manners into affectation, dilettantism, epicureanism—but 'tis "the gilded halo hovering 'round decay."

The heart of that nation is dead, its soul hath departed, and no antiseptic known to science will prevent putrefaction. How is it with us? Forty thousand people own one-half of the wealth between two oceans, while 250,000 own more than 80 per cent. of all the values created by the people. What is the result? Money is omnipotent. Power is concentrated in the hands of a little coterie of plutocrats—the people are sovereigns de jure and slaves de facto. A mongrel Anglomaniaism is spreading among our wealthy, like mange in a pack o' lobo wolves. Our plutocrats have become ashamed of their country—probably because it permits them to practice a brutal predacity —and now cultivate foreign customs, ape foreign fashions, and purchase as husbands for their daughters the upper- servants of European potentates—people who earned their titles of nobility by chronic boot-licking or sacrificing their female relatives to the god of infamy. Year after year these titled paupers—these shameless parodies on God's masterpiece—paddle across the pond to barter their tawdy dishonor for boodle, to sell their shame-crested coronets to porcine-souled American parvenues, who if spawned by slaves and born in hell would disgrace their parentage and dishonor their country. Our toadies and title- worshippers now have a society called the "Order of the Crown," composed of puppies who fondly imagine that they have within their royal hides a taint of the impure blood that once coursed through the veins of corrupt and barbarous kings. Perchance these dudelets and dudines will yet discover that they are descended in a direct line from King Adam the First and are heirs to the throne of Eden. Our country is scarce half developed, yet it is already rank with decadence and smells of decay. Our literature is "yellow," our pulpit is jaundiced, our society is rotten to the core and our politics shamefully corrupt —yet people say there's no need of iconoclasts! Perhaps there isn't. The iconoclasts used hammers, while those who purify our social atmosphere and make this once again a government of, for and by the people may have to empty gatling guns and load them with carbolic acid. National decay and racial retrogression may be inferred from the fact that alleged respectable white women have been married to black men by eastern ministers who insist on solving the race problem for God and the South by giving to the typical American of the future the complexion of a new saddle and the perfume of a Republican powwow. When these ethnological experts tire of life, they should— come to Texas. When white people lose their racial pride they've nothing left that justifies the appointment of a receiver. We hear a great deal about "race prejudice," and I want to say right here that there's just enough of it in my composition to inspire an abiding faith that the white man should be, must be, will be, lord paramount of this planet. I promise you that when you elect me to the presidency, nothing that's black, yaller or tan gets an office under my administration. I shall certain not follow Mark Hanna's understudy and fill the departments at Washington with big, fat, saucy blacks, to employ white women as stenographers and white men as messenger boys. There's lots of good in the Senegambian—lots of it; but not in a thousand years will he be fit for American sovereignty. Half the white people are not fit for it, else instead of a wooden-headed hiccius doctius we'd have Billy Bryan in the presidential chair today. Whenever I look at McKinley, I think of Daniel Webster—not because Bill resembles old Dan, but because he doesn't. I like the negro in his place and his place is in the cotton patch, instead of in politics, despite the opinion of those who have studied him only through the rose-tinted lorgnette of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I also like the Anglomaniac in his place, and that is the geographical center of old England, with John Bull's trade-mark seared with a hot iron on the western elevation of his architecture as he faces the rising sun to lace his shoes. As between the nigger and the Anglomaniac, I much prefer the former. The full-blooded nigger is a fool positive, but the Anglomaniac is an ass superlative. The first is faithful to those who feed him; the latter is a sneaking enemy to the country that has conferred upon him every benefit.

Despite the optimistic cackle anent the march of science, industrial progress, and all that sort o' thing, it appears to be the general consensus of opinion that there's something radically wrong. There's no lack of remedies— the political drug store is full of panaceas, each with the trade-mark of some peculiar school of therapeutics blown in the bottle. Strange that all these catholicons for earthly ills propose to inaugurate the millennium by improving the pecuniary condition of the people—as though the want of money in this or the other pocket were the only evil. Certainly a better distribution of wealth were desirable, but a general dissemination of God's grace were far preferable. Given that, all worthy reforms will follow; without it we will continue to chase foolish rainbows to our fall, Dives becoming more insolent, Lazarus left more and more to the care of the dogs. I do not mean that by acquiring a case of the camp-meeting jerks we will solve the riddle which the Sphinx of Time is propounding to this republic—that we will find the solution of all life's problems in the amen-corner. Not exactly. The average church is about the last place to which we need look for relief. It's too often a lying rainbow painted on the dark mist of ignorance by the devil's own artist. It promises more and performs less than a Republican candidate for Congress. I've noticed that shouting hosannahs has little tendency to make one more truthful —that when a man professes himself the chief of sinners, he may feel obligated to substantiate his statement. I've never known a man to borrow any money of the bank on the unctuosity of his amen, but I have known people who could double-discount Satan himself at dodging an honest debt, to weep real water because I declined to come into their sectarian penfold and be measured for a suit of angelic pin-feathers. There are many church people who will slander you unmercifully for dissenting from their religious dogma, then seize the first opportunity to stick you with a plugged dime or steal your dog. There are worshippers who do not consider in outward rites and specious forms religion satisfied; but these never accumulate vast fortunes. The path to heaven is too steep to be scaled by a man weighted down with seven million dollars. He may be long on hope and faith, but he's short on charity, and without charity religion is as big a fraud as McKinley's international bimetallism. Charity is a word that is awfully misunderstood. If a man's income be $5,000 a year and he gives half of it to the less fortunate, he's a pretty decent fellow, but if he reserves for himself half of a $100,000 income while people are going hungry to bed, he's simply a brute. With a world full of woe and want, what right has any professed follower of Jesus to shove $50,000 a year down his jeans? The true test of a man's charity is the sum which he reserves for himself; hence when Jno. D. Rockefeller—my good Baptist brother who's building collegiate monuments to his own memory with other people's money—reserves tens o' millions in excess of his needs and imagines himself full to the muzzle with the grace of God, he's simply chasing a rainbow that may land him in Malebolge with the dull sudden plunk of a Republican campaign promise hitting the tidal wave of prosperity. Imagine Jesus Christ with John D.'s money—loaning it at 5 per cent. a month! Why if he'd had half so much cash he'd never have been crucified. Those who clamored for his death would have run him for mayor of Jerusalem on the reform ticket and tried to work him for his last dollar.

. . .

If all who call themselves Christians were Christlike, then indeed might there be hope for humanity; but what is there to inspire belief that the church will ever win the world from a foolish quest of rainbows? What hope in Talmage, with his nightmare visions and stertorous dreams, his pilgrimings to Palestine and rummaging among the mummified cats and has-been kings of ancient Egypt for "Scriptural evidence?" What hope for a people so mentally emasculate that they can patiently listen to his jejune wind-jamming, can read and relish his irremediable tommyrot? What hope in Sam Jones and other noisy ignorami of that ilk, with their wild war on dancing and the euchre deck, the drama and decollete? Be these the strongholds of Abriman in his ceaseless war on Oromasdes? Does the Prince of Darkness, who once did fill the wondering cosmos with the clangor of celestial steel, now front the hosts of Heaven armed with a euchre-deck? Is Tara Boom-de-aye the battle-hymn and the theater hat the blazing gonfalon of him who strove with Omnipotence for universal empire? Does Lucifer expect to become lord paramount of all the gleaming worlds that hang like jewels pendant in heaven's imperial concave by persuading some miserable son of Adam to work his toes on Sunday, dance with the girls on Monday or play seven-up for the cigars? O Jonesy, Jonesy! would to heaven that thou and all thy brother blabsters and bubblyjocks would go hang yourselves, for you know naught of the war that rages ever like a sulphurous siroc in the human soul. Ye are but insects that infest great Igdrasyl, the ash tree that upholds the universe. One atheistical Stephen Girard playing Good Samaritan in a plague-swept city while the preachers hit the turnpike; one deistical Tom Paine, braving the guillotine for the rights of man; one Father Damien, freely laying down his life for the miserable lepers of Molokai; one sweet-faced sister of charity bravely battling with the reeking slums of a great city, striving to drag souls from that seething maelstrom of sin, were worth legions of those sanctified lollypops who prate of sacrificing all for their Savior, yet never risk life or gold in the service of their God.