BOOK XII

_Country_

The higher patriotism; the duty of man to his country as seen from the point of view of those who would make the country the parent and friend of all who dwell in it.

Our Country

(_Read July 4, 1883_)

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

(New England Quaker poet, 1807-1892; a prominent anti-slavery advocate)

We give thy natal day to hope, O country of our love and prayer! Thy way is down no fatal slope, But up to freer sun and air.

Tried as by furnace fires, and yet By God's grace only stronger made, In future task before thee set Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid.

Great, without seeking to be great By fraud of conquest; rich in gold, But richer in the large estate Of virtue which thy children hold.

With peace that comes of purity, And strength to simple justice due-- So runs our loyal dream of thee; God of our fathers! make it true.

O land of lands! to thee we give Our love, our trust, our service free; For thee thy sons shall nobly live, And at thy need shall die for thee.

The New Freedom

BY WOODROW WILSON

(President of the United States, born 1856. The following is from his campaign speeches, 1912)

Are we preserving freedom in this land of ours, the hope of all the earth? Have we, inheritors of this continent and of the ideals to which the fathers consecrated it,--have we maintained them, realizing them, as each generation must, anew? Are we, in the consciousness that the life of man is pledged to higher levels here than elsewhere, striving still to bear aloft the standards of liberty and hope; or, disillusioned and defeated, are we feeling the disgrace of having had a free field in which to do new things and of not having done them?

The answer must be, I am sure, that we have been in a fair way of failure,--tragic failure. And we stand in danger of utter failure yet, except we fulfil speedily the determination we have reached, to deal with the new and subtle tyrannies according to their deserts. Don't deceive yourselves for a moment as to the power of the great interests which now dominate our development. They are so great that it is almost an open question whether the government of the United States can dominate them or not. Go one step further, make their organized power permanent, and it may be too late to turn back. The roads diverge at the point where we stand.

An Ode in Time of Hesitation

BY WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

(In these noble words the poet voices his pain at the Philippine war, and the wave of "imperialism" which then swept over America)

Was it for this our fathers kept the law? This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth? Are we the eagle nation Milton saw Mewing its mighty youth, Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth, And be a swift familiar of the sun Where aye before God's face his trumpets run? Or have we but the talons and the maw, And for the abject likeness of our heart Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?-- Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat? Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?

Ah, no! We have not fallen so. We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!... We charge you, ye who lead us, Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain! Turn not their new-world victories to gain! One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays Of their dear praise, One jot of their pure conquest put to hire, The implacable republic will require; With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon, Or subtly, coming as a thief at night, But surely, very surely, slow or soon That insult deep we deeply will requite. Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity! For save we let the island men go free, Those baffled and dislaureled ghosts Will curse us from the lamentable coasts Where walk the frustrate dead, The cup of trembling shall be drained quite, Eaten the sour bread of astonishment, With ashes of the heart shall be made white Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent; Then on your guiltier head Shall our intolerable self-disdain Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain; For manifest in that disastrous light We shall discern the right And do it, tardily.--O ye who lead, Take heed! Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.

The Price of Liberty

BY THOMAS JEFFERSON

(See pages 228, 332)

Cherish the spirit of our people and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

To the Goddess of Liberty

(_New York Harbor_)

BY GEORGE STERLING

(See pages 504, 552)

Oh! is it bale-fire in thy brazen hand-- The traitor-light set on betraying coasts To lure to doom the mariner? Art thou Indeed that Freedom, gracious and supreme, By France once sighted over seas of blood-- A beacon to the ages, and their hope, A star against the midnight of the race, A vision, an announcement? Art thou she For whom our fathers fought at Lexington And trod the ways of death at Gettysburg? Thy torch is lit, thy steadfast hand upheld, Before our ocean-portals. For a sign Men set thee there to welcome--loving men, With faith in man. Thou wast upraised to tell, To simple souls that seek from over-seas Our rumored liberty, that here no chains Are on the people, here no kings can stand, Nor the old tyranny confound mankind, Sapping with craft the ramparts of the Law

For such, O high presentment of their dream! Thy pathless sandals wait upon the stone, Thy tranquil face looks evermore to sea: Now turn, and know the treason at thy back! Turn to the anarchs' turrets, and behold The cunning ones that reap where others sow!

In those great strongholds lifted to the sun They plot dominion. Thronèd greeds conspire, Half allied in a brotherhood malign, Against the throneless many....

Would One might pour within thy breast of bronze Spirit and life! Then should thy loyal hand Cast down its torch, and thy deep voice should cry: "Turn back! Turn back, O liberative ships! Be warned, ye voyagers! From tyranny To vaster tyranny ye come! Ye come From realms that in my morning twilight wait My radiant invasion. But these shores Have known me and renounced me. I am raised In mockery, and here the forfeit day Deepens to West, and my indignant Star Would hide her shame with darkness and the sea-- A sun of doom forecasting on the Land The shadow of the sceptre and the sword."

To the United States Senate

BY VACHEL LINDSAY

(Upon the arrival of the news that the United States Senate had declared the election of William Lorimer good and valid)

And must the Senator from Illinois Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes? This brazen gutter idol, reared to power Upon a leering pyramid of lies?

And must the Senator from Illinois Be the world's proverb of successful shame, Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal, Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame?

If once or twice within his new won hall His vote had counted for the broken men; If in his early days he wrought some good-- We might a great soul's sins forgive him then.

But must the Senator from Illinois Be vindicated by fat kings of gold? And must he be belauded by the smirched, The sleek, uncanny chiefs in lies grown old?

Be warned, O wanton ones, who shielded him-- Black wrath awaits. You all shall eat the dust. You dare not say: "Tomorrow will bring peace; Let us make merry, and go forth in lust."

What will you trading frogs do on a day When Armageddon thunders thro' the land; When each sad patriot rises, mad with shame, His ballot or his musket in his hand?

The Duty of Civil Disobedience

BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

(See page 295)

What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them.

A Prophecy

(_Written during the Revolutionary War_)

BY THOMAS JEFFERSON

(See pages 228, 332, 596)

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may become persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing essential right, on a legal basis, is while our rulers are honest, ourselves united. _From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill._ It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will be heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.

An Election Campaign in New York

(_From "The House of Bondage"_)

BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN

(See pages 53, 167)

For many days previously, any outsider, reading the newspapers or attending the mass-meetings in Cooper Union and Carnegie Hall, would have supposed that a prodigious battle was waging and that the result would be, until the last shot, in doubt. There were terrible scareheads, brutal cartoons, and extra editions. As the real problem was whether one organization of needy men should remain in control, or whether another should replace it, there were few matters of policy to be discussed; and so the speechmaking and the printing resolved themselves into personal investigations, and attacks upon character. Private detectives were hired, records searched, neighbors questioned, old enemies sought out, and family feuds revived. Desks were broken open, letters bought, anonymous communications mailed, boyhood indiscretions unearthed, and women and men hired to wheedle, to commit perjury, to entrap. Whatever was discovered, forged, stolen, manufactured--whatever truth or falsehood could be seized by whatever means--was blazoned in the papers, shrieked by the newsboys, bawled from the cart-tails at the corners under the campaign banners, in the light of the torches and before the cheering crowds. It would be all over in a very short while; in a very short while there would pass one another, with pleasant smiles, in court, at church, and along Broadway, the distinguished gentlemen that were now, before big audiences, calling one another adulterers and thieves; but it is customary for distinguished gentlemen so to call one another during a manly campaign in this successful democracy of ours, and it seems to be an engrossing occupation while the chance endures.

The Doom of Empires

BY ROBERT G. INGERSOLL

(American lawyer and lecturer, 1833-1899)

The traveler standing amid the ruins of ancient cities and empires, seeing on every side the fallen pillar and the prostrate wall, asks why did these cities fall, why did these empires crumble? And the Ghost of the Past, the wisdom of ages, answers: These temples, these palaces, these cities, the ruins of which you stand upon, were built by tyranny and injustice. The hands that built them were unpaid. The backs that bore the burdens also bore the marks of the lash. They were built by slaves to satisfy the vanity and ambition of thieves and robbers. For these reasons they are dust.

Their civilization was a lie. Their laws merely regulated robbery and established theft. They bought and sold the bodies and souls of men, and the mournful wind of desolation, sighing amid their crumbling ruins, is a voice of prophetic warning to those who would repeat the infamous experiment, uttering the great truth, that no nation founded upon slavery, either of body or mind, can stand.

The Statue of Liberty

(_New York Harbor, A.D. 2900_)

BY ARTHUR UPSON

(American poet, 1877-1908)

Here once, the records show, a land whose pride Abode in Freedom's watchword! And once here The port of traffic for a hemisphere, With great gold-piling cities at her side! Tradition says, superbly once did bide Their sculptured goddess on an island near, With hospitable smile and torch kept clear For all wild hordes that sought her o'er the tide. 'Twas centuries ago. But this is true: Late the fond tyrant who misrules our land, Bidding his serfs dig deep in marshes old, Trembled, not knowing wherefore, as they drew From out this swampy bed of ancient mould A shattered torch held in a mighty hand.

BY FRANCIS BACON

(English philosopher and statesman, father of modern scientific thought; 1561-1626)

Let states that aim at greatness take heed how their nobility and gentlemen do multiply too fast. For that maketh the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain, driven out of heart, and in effect but the gentleman's laborer.

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

(New England statesman and orator, 1782-1852)

The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create a rapid accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor and dependent.

The Deserted Village

BY OLIVER GOLDSMITH

(English poet and novelist, 1728-1774)

Sweet-smiling village, loveliest of the lawn! Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green; One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain; No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But, choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries; Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand; Far, far away thy children leave the land.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates, and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade-- A breath can make them, as a breath has made: But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied. A time there was, ere England's griefs began, When every rood of ground maintained its man; For him light labor spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required, but gave no more: His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are altered: trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose; And every want to luxury allied, And every pang that folly pays to pride, Those gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little room, Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, Lived in each look, and brightened all the green-- These, far departing, seek a kinder shore, And rural mirth and manners are no more....

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen, who survey The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay, 'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; Hoards, e'en beyond the miser's wish, abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. Yet count our gains; this wealth is but a name, That leaves our useful products still the same. Not so the loss: the man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds; The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, Has robbed the neighboring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green; Around the world each needful product flies, For all the luxuries the world supplies; While thus the land, adorned for pleasure all, In barren splendor, feebly waits the fall....

Where then, ah! where, shall poverty reside, To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride? If, to some common's fenceless limits strayed, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And even the bare-worn common is denied. If to the city sped, what waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind; To see each joy the sons of pleasure know Extorted from his fellow-creatures' woe. Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade; Here while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The dome where Pleasure holds her midnight reign, Here, richly decked, admits the gorgeous train; Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square-- The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy! Sure these denote one universal joy! Are these thy serious thoughts? Ah! turn thine eyes Where the poor, houseless, shivering female lies; She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, Has wept at tales of innocence distrest; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; Now lost to all--her friends, her virtue fled-- Near her betrayer's door she lays her head; And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour When, idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel, and robes of country brown....

O luxury! thou curst by Heaven's decree, How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions, with insidious joy, Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigor not their own. At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.

England in 1819

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

(See page 272)

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,-- Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn--mud from a muddy spring,-- Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow-- A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,-- An army, which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,-- Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed; A Senate,--Time's worst statute unrepealed,-- Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

The Victorian Age

BY EDWARD CARPENTER

(See pages 186, 541)

I found myself--and without knowing where I was--in the middle of that strange period of human evolution, the Victorian Age, which in some respects, one now thinks, marked the lowest ebb of modern civilized society; a period in which not only commercialism in public life, but cant in religion, pure materialism in science, futility in social conventions, the worship of stocks and shares, the starving of the human heart, the denial of the human body and its needs, the huddling concealment of the body in clothes, the "impure hush" on matters of sex, class-division, contempt of manual labor, and the cruel barring of women from every natural and useful expression of their lives, were carried to an extremity of folly difficult for us now to realize.

Coronation Day

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(See pages 62, 125, 139, 519)

Vivat Rex Eduardus! They crowned a king this day, and there have been great rejoicing and elaborate tomfoolery, and I am perplexed and saddened. I never saw anything to compare with the pageant, except Yankee circuses and Alhambra ballets; nor did I ever see anything so hopeless and so tragic.

To have enjoyed the Coronation procession, I should have come straight from America to the Hotel Cecil, and straight from the Hotel Cecil to a five-guinea seat among the washed. My mistake was in coming from the unwashed of the East End. There were not many who came from that quarter. The East End, as a whole, remained in the East End and got drunk. The Socialists, Democrats, and Republicans went off to the country for a breath of fresh air, quite unaffected by the fact that four hundred millions of people were taking to themselves a crowned and anointed ruler. Six thousand five hundred prelates, priests, statesmen, princes and warriors beheld the crowning, and the rest of us the pageant as it passed.

I saw it at Trafalgar Square, "the most splendid site in Europe," and the very innermost heart of the empire. There were many thousands of us, all checked and held in order by a superb display of armed power. The line of march was double-walled with soldiers. The base of the Nelson Column was triple-fringed with bluejackets. Eastward, at the entrance to the square, stood the Royal Marine Artillery. In the triangle of Pall Mall and Cockspur Street, the statue of George III was buttressed on either side by the Lancers and Hussars. To the west were the red-coats of the Royal Marines, and from the Union Club to the embouchure of Whitehall swept the glittering, massive curve of the First Life Guards--gigantic men mounted on gigantic chargers, steel-breastplated, steel-helmeted, steel-caparisoned, a great war-sword of steel ready to the hand of the powers that be. And further, throughout the crowd, were flung long lines of the Metropolitan Constabulary, while in the rear were the reserves--tall, well-fed men, with weapons to wield and muscles to wield them in case of need.

And as it was thus at Trafalgar Square, so was it along the whole line of march--force, overpowering force; myriads of men, splendid men, the pick of the people, whose sole function in life is blindly to obey, and blindly to kill and destroy and stamp out life. And that they should be well fed, well clothed, and well armed, and have ships to hurl them to the ends of the earth, the East End of London, and the "East End" of all England, toils and rots and dies.

There is a Chinese proverb that if one man lives in laziness another will die of hunger; and Montesquieu has said, "The fact that many men are occupied in making clothes for one individual is the cause of there being many people without clothes." We cannot understand the starved and runty toiler of the East End (living with his family in a one-room den, and letting out the floor space for lodgings to other starved and runty toilers) till we look at the strapping Life Guardsmen of the West End, and come to know that the one must feed and clothe and groom the other....

In these latter days, five hundred hereditary peers own one-fifth of England; and they, and the officers and servants under the King, and those who go to compose the powers that be, yearly spend in wasteful luxury $1,850,000,000, or £370,000,000, which is thirty-two per cent of the total wealth produced by all the toilers of the country.

At the Abbey, clad in wonderful golden raiment, amid fanfare of trumpets and throbbing of music, surrounded by a brilliant throng of masters, lords, and rulers, the King was being invested with the insignia of his sovereignty. The spurs were placed to his heels by the Lord Great Chamberlain, and a sword of state, in purple scabbard, was presented him by the Archbishop of Canterbury, with these words:--

"Receive this kingly sword brought now from the altar of God, and delivered to you by the hands of the bishops and servants of God, though unworthy."

Whereupon, being girded, he gave heed to the Archbishop's exhortation:--

"With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the Holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss, and confirm what is in good order...."

"And how did you like the procession, mate?" I asked an old man on a bench in Green Park.

"'Ow did I like it? A bloomin' good chawnce, sez I to myself, for a sleep, wi' all the coppers aw'y, so I turned into the corner there, along wi' fifty others. But I couldn't sleep, a-lyin' there 'ungry an' thinkin' 'ow I'd worked all the years 'o my life, an' now 'ad no plyce to rest my 'ead; an' the music comin' to me, an' the cheers an' cannon, till I got almost a hanarchist an' wanted to blow out the brains o' the Lord Chamberlain."

Why the Lord Chamberlain I could not precisely see, nor could he, but that was the way he felt, he said conclusively, and there was no more discussion....

At three in the morning I strolled up the Embankment. It was a gala night for the homeless, for the police were elsewhere; and each bench was jammed with sleeping occupants. There were as many women as men, and the great majority of them, male and female, were old. Occasionally a boy was to be seen. On one bench I noticed a family, a man sitting upright with a sleeping babe in his arms, his wife asleep, her head on his shoulder, and in her lap the head of a sleeping youngster. The man's eyes were wide open. He was staring out over the water and thinking, which is not a good thing for a shelterless man with a family to do. It would not be a pleasant thing to speculate upon his thoughts; but this I know, and all London knows, that the cases of out-of-works killing their wives and babies is not an uncommon happening.

One cannot walk along the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of morning, from the Houses of Parliament, past Cleopatra's Needle, to Waterloo Bridge, without being reminded of the sufferings, seven and twenty centuries old, recited by the author of "Job":--

"There are that remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks and feed them.

"They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow's ox for a pledge.

"They turn the needy out of the way; the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

"Behold, as wild asses in the desert they go forth to their work, seeking diligently for meat; the wilderness yieldeth them food for their children.

"They cut their provender in the field, and they glean the vintage of the wicked.

"They lie all night naked without clothing, and have no covering in the cold.

"They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.

"There are that pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.

"So that they go about naked without clothing, and being an hungered they carry the sheaves."

Seven and twenty centuries agone! And it is all as true and apposite today in the innermost centre of this Christian civilisation whereof Edward VII is king.

The Wrongfulness of Riches

BY GRANT ALLEN

(See page 210)

Have you ever reflected with what equipment of rights the average citizen is born endowed in England? With the right of moving up and down the public roads till he drops from exhaustion. That is all. Literally and absolutely all.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

(English poet and essayist, 1775-1864)

A want of the necessaries of life, in peasants or artisans, when the seasons have been favorable, is a certain sign of defect in the constitution, or of criminality in the administration.

The True Imperialism

BY WILLIAM WATSON

(English poet, conspicuous for his courage in opposing the Boer war; born 1858)

Here, while the tide of conquest rolls Against the distant golden shore, The starved and stunted human souls Are with us more and more.

Vain is your Science, vain your Art, Your triumphs and your glories vain, To feed the hunger of their heart And famine of their brain.

Your savage deserts howling near, Your wastes of ignorance, vice, and shame,-- Is there no room for victories here, No fields for deeds of fame?

Arise and conquer while ye can The foe that in your midst resides, And build within the mind of Man The Empire that abides.

Letters from a Chinese Official

BY G. LOWES DICKINSON

(See page 510)

Like the prince in the fable, you seem to have released from his prison the genie of competition, only to find that you are unable to control him. Your legislation for the past hundred years is a perpetual and fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of your economic system. Your poor, your drunk, your incompetent, your aged, ride you like a nightmare. You have dissolved all human and personal ties, and you endeavor, in vain, to replace them by the impersonal activity of the State. The salient characteristic of your civilization is its irresponsibility. You have liberated forces you cannot control; you are caught yourselves in your own levers and cogs. In every department of business you are substituting for the individual the company, for the workman the tool. The making of dividends is a universal preoccupation; the well-being of the laborer is no one's concern but the State's. And this concern even the State is incompetent to undertake, for the factors by which it is determined are beyond its control. You depend on variations of supply and demand which you can neither determine nor anticipate. The failure of a harvest, the modification of a tariff in some remote country, dislocates the industry of millions, thousands of miles away. You are at the mercy of a prospector's luck, an inventor's genius, a woman's caprice--nay, you are at the mercy of your own instruments. Your capital is alive, and cries for food; starve it and it turns and throttles you. You produce, not because you will, but because you must; you consume, not what you choose, but what is forced upon you. Never was any trade so bound as this which you call free; but it is bound, not by a reasonable will, but by the accumulated irrationality of caprice.

Utopia

BY SIR THOMAS MORE

(See pages 160, 490)

When I consider and way in my mind all these common wealthes, which now a dayes any where do florish, so god helpe me, I can perceave nothing but a certain conspiracy of riche men procuringe theire owne commodities under the name and title of the commen wealth. They invent and devise all meanes and craftes, first how to kepe safely, without feare of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the worke and laboure of the poore for as litle money as may be. These devises, when the riche men have decreed to be kept and observed under coloure of the comminaltie, that is to saye, also of the pore people, then they be made lawes. But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their unsatiable covetousnes devided among them selves al those thinges, whiche woulde have sufficed all men, yet how faire be they from the welth and felicitie of the Utopian commen wealth?

Tales of Two Countries

BY MAXIM GORKY

(A volume of short stories representing the later work of the Russian novelist, the fruit of his sojourn in Capri. It is interesting to note how this change of environment altered not merely his point of view, but even his literary style. The following narrative has the clarity and delicacy of the best French prose. It is the story of an Italian workingman)

"I was born naked and stupid, like you and everybody else; in my youth I dreamed of a rich wife; when I was a soldier I studied in order to pass the examination for an officer's rank. I was twenty-three when I felt that all was not as it should be in this world, and that it was a shame to live as if it were....

"We, our whole regiment, were sent to Bologna. The peasantry there were in revolt, some demanding that the rent of land should be lowered, others shouting about the necessity for raising wages: both parties seemed to be in the wrong. 'To lower rents and increase wages, what nonsense!' thought I. 'That would ruin the landowners.' To me, who was a town-dweller, it seemed utter foolishness. I was very indignant--the heat helped to make one so, and the constant travelling from place to place and the mounting guard at night. For, you know, these fine fellows were breaking the machinery belonging to the landowners; and it pleased them to burn the corn and to try to spoil everything that did not belong to them. Just think of it!"

He sipped his wine and, becoming more animated, went on: "They roamed about the fields in droves like sheep, always silently, and as if they meant business. We used to scatter them, threatening them with our bayonets sometimes. Now and then we struck them with the butts of our rifles. Without showing much fear, they dispersed in leisurely fashion, but always came together again. It was a tedious business, like mass, and it lasted for days, like an attack of fever. Luoto, our non-commissioned officer, a fine fellow from Abruzzi, himself a peasant, was anxious and troubled: he turned quite yellow and thin, and more than once he said to us:

"'It's a bad business, boys; it will probably be necessary to shoot, damn it!'

"His grumbling upset us still more; and then, you know, from every corner, from every hillock and tree we could see peeping the obstinate heads of the peasants; their angry eyes seemed to pierce us. For these people, naturally enough, did not regard us in a very friendly light....

"Once I stood on a small hillock near an olive grove, guarding some trees which the peasants had been injuring. At the bottom of the hill two men were at work, an old man and a youth. They were digging a ditch. It was very hot, the sun burnt like fire, one felt irritable, longed to be a fish, and I remember I eyed them angrily. At noon they both left off work, and got out some bread and cheese and a jug of wine. 'Oh, devil take them!' thought I to myself. Suddenly the old man, who previously had not once looked at me, said something to the youth, who shook his head disapprovingly, but the old man shouted: 'Go on!' He said this very sternly.

"The youth came up to me with the jug in his hand, and said, not very willingly, you know: 'My father thinks that you would like a drink and offers you some wine.'

"I felt embarrassed, but I was pleased. I refused, nodding at the same time to the old man and thanking him. He responded by looking at the sky. 'Drink it, signor, drink it. We offer this to you as a man, not as a soldier. We do not expect a soldier to become kinder because he has drunk our wine!'

"'D-- you, don't get nasty,' I thought to myself, and having drunk about three mouthfuls I thanked him. Then they began to eat down below. A little later I was relieved by Ugo from Salertino. I told him quietly that these two peasants were good fellows. The same night, as I stood at the door of a barn where the machinery was kept, a slate fell on my head from the roof. It did not do much damage, but another slate, striking my shoulder edgewise, hurt me so severely that my left arm dropped benumbed."

The speaker burst into a loud laugh, his mouth wide open, his eyes half-closed. "Slates, stones, sticks," said he, through his laughter, "in those days and at that place were alive. This independent action of lifeless things made some pretty big bumps on our heads. Wherever a soldier stood or walked, a stick would suddenly fly at him from the ground, or a stone fall upon him from the sky. It made us savage, as you can guess."

The eyes of his companion became sad, his face turned pale and he said quietly: "One always feels ashamed to hear of such things."

"What is one to do? People take time to get wise. Then I called for help. I was led into a house where another fellow lay, his face cut by a stone. When I asked him how it happened he said, smiling, but not with mirth:

"'An old woman, comrade, an old gray witch struck me, and then proposed that I should kill her!'

"'Was she arrested?'

"'I said that I had done it myself, that I had fallen and hurt myself. The commander did not believe it, I could see it by his eyes. But, don't you see, it was awkward to confess that I had been wounded by an old woman. Eh? The devil! Of course they are hard pressed, and one can understand that they do not love us!'

"'H'm!' thought I. The doctor came and two ladies with him, one of them fair and very pretty, evidently a Venetian. I don't remember the other. They looked at my wound. It was slight, of course. They applied a poultice and went away....

"My comrade and I used to sit at the window. We sat in such a way that the light did not fall on us, and there once we heard the charming voice of this fair lady. She and her companion were walking with the doctor in the garden outside the window and talking in French, which I understand very well.

"'Did you notice the color of his eyes?' she asked. 'He is a peasant of course, and once he has taken off his uniform will no doubt become a Socialist, like all of them here. People with eyes like that want to conquer the whole of life, to drive us out, to destroy us in order that some blind, tedious justice should triumph!'

"'Foolish fellows,' said the doctor--'half children, half brutes.'

"'Brutes, that is quite true. But what is there childish about them?'

"'What about those dreams of universal equality?'

"'Yes, just imagine it. The fellow with the eyes of an ox, and the other with the face of a bird--our equals! You and I their equals, the equals of these people of inferior blood! People who can be bidden to come and kill their fellows, brutes like them.' ...

"She spoke much and vehemently. I listened and thought: 'Quite right, signora.' I had seen her more than once; and you know, of course, that no one dreams more ardently of a woman than a soldier. I imagined her to be kind and clever and warm-hearted; and at that time I had an idea that the landed nobility were especially clever, or gifted, or something of the kind. I don't know why!

"I asked my comrade: 'Do you understand this language?'

"No, he did not understand. Then I translated for him the fair lady's speech. The fellow got as angry as the devil, and started to jump about the room, his one eye glistening--the other was bandaged.

"'Is that so?' he murmured. 'Is that possible? She makes use of me and does not look upon me as a man. For her sake I allow my dignity to be offended and she denies it. For the sake of guarding her property I risk losing my soul.'

"He was not a fool and felt that he had been very much insulted, and so did I. The following day we talked about this lady in a loud voice, not heeding Luoto, who only muttered:

"'Be careful, boys; don't forget that you are soldiers, and that there is such a thing as discipline.'

"No, we did not forget it. But many of us, almost all, to tell you the truth, became deaf and blind, and these young peasants made use of our deafness and blindness to very good purpose. They won. They treated us very well indeed. The fair lady could have learnt from them: for instance, they could have taught her very convincingly how honest people should be valued. When we left the place whither we had come with the idea of shedding blood, many of us were given flowers. As we marched along the streets of the village, not stones and slates but flowers were thrown at us, my friend. I think we had deserved it. One may forget a cool reception when one has received such a good send-off."

The Rights of Man

BY THOMAS PAINE

(English radical writer, who took a prominent part in the American and French revolutions; 1737-1809)

The superstitious awe, the enslaving reverence, that formerly surrounded affluence, is passing away in all countries, and leaving the possessor of property to the convulsion of accidents. When wealth and splendor, instead of fascinating the multitude, excite emotions of disgust; when, instead of drawing forth admiration, it is beheld as an insult upon wretchedness; when the ostentatious appearance it makes serves to call the right of it in question, the case of property becomes critical, and it is only in a system of justice that the possessor can contemplate security.

BY OTTO VON BISMARCK

(German statesman, 1815-1898)

I believe that those who profess horror at the intervention of the state for the protection of the weak lay themselves open to the suspicion that they are desirous of using their strength for the benefit of a portion, for the oppression of the rest.

The Demand of Labor

BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN

(President of the United States; 1809-1865. A frequently quoted passage attributed to Lincoln, prophesying the developments of modern capitalist industry, has been proven to be spurious. It therefore seems worth stating that the passages quoted in this volume have been duly verified)

Inasmuch as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things ought to belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others, without labor, have enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor as nearly as possible is a worthy object of any good government.

Bryanism

(_From the New York "Tribune"_)

(The following passage is given space as a curiosity of the class-struggle, and by way of encouragement to social reformers who may suffer under the lash of capitalist abuse. It is from an editorial published in one of New York City's most conservative and respectable journals on the day after the presidential election of 1896; its subject is the Hon. William Jennings Bryan, now a conservative and plodding Secretary of State)

The thing was conceived in iniquity and was brought forth in sin. It had its origin in a malicious conspiracy against the honor and integrity of the nation. It gained such monstrous growth as it enjoyed from an assiduous culture of the basest passions of the least worthy members of the community. It has been defeated and destroyed because right is right and God is God. Its nominal head was worthy of the cause. Nominal, because the wretched, rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rottenness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. He was only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of Altgeld, the anarchist, and Debs, the revolutionist, and other desperadoes of that stripe. But he was a willing puppet, Bryan was--willing and eager. Not one of his masters was more apt than he at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign against the Ten Commandments. He goes down with the cause, and must abide with it in the history of infamy. He had less provocation than Benedict Arnold, less intellectual force than Aaron Burr, less manliness and courage than Jefferson Davis. He was the rival of them all in deliberate wickedness and treason to the Republic. His name belongs with theirs, neither the most brilliant nor the most hateful of the list. Good riddance to it all, to conspiracy and conspirators, and to the foul menace of repudiation and anarchy against the honor and life of the Republic!

BY FERDINAND LASSALLE

(German Socialist leader; 1825-1864)

It is the opposition of the personal interest of the higher classes to the development of the nation in culture, which causes the great and necessary immorality of the higher classes.

The Rough Rider

BY BLISS CARMAN

(American poet of nature, born 1861)

Take up, who will, the challenge; Stand pat on graft and greed; Grow sleek on others' labor, Surfeit on others' need; Let paid and bloodless tricksters Devise a legal way Our common right and justice "To sell, deny, delay."

Not yesterday nor lightly We came to know that breed; Our quarrel with that cunning Is old as Runnymede. We saw enfranchised insult Deploy in kingly line, When broke our sullen fury On Rupert of the Rhine....

Now, masking raid and rapine In debonair disguise, The foe we thought defeated Deludes our careless eyes, Entrenched in law and largess And the vested wrong of things, Cloaking a fouler treason Than any faithless king's.

He takes our life for wages, He holds our land for rent, He sweats our little children To swell his cent per cent; With secret grip and levy On every crumb we eat, He drives our sons to thieving, Our daughters to the street....

Against the grim defenses Where might and murrain hide, Unswerving to the issue Loose-reined and rough we ride Full tardily, to rescue Our heritage from wrong, And stablish it on manhood, A thousand times more strong.

BY WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE

(English liberal statesman, 1809-1898)

In almost every one, if not in every one, of the greatest political controversies of the last fifty years, whether they affected the franchise, whether they affected commerce, whether they affected religion, whether they affected the bad and abominable institution of slavery, or what subject they touched, these leisured classes, these educated classes, these titled classes, have been in the wrong.

The Bad Shepherds

BY OCTAVE MIRBEAU

(Celebrated French man-of-letters, born 1850. A play, first produced in 1897, with Sarah Bernhardt in the leading rôle, presenting the class-struggle from the point of view of the anti-parliamentarian. At the height of a desperate strike of steel-workers, the leader of the strikers is addressing a secret gathering in a forest, near a religious shrine)

JEAN:--You reproach me--and this is the worst charge you bring against me--that I refused the meeting with the radical and socialist deputies who wanted to mix up in our affair, and take the direction of the strike?

VOICES:--Yes--yes! Silence! Hear him!

JEAN:--Your deputies! Ah, if you had seen them at work! And you, yourselves--have you forgotten the infamous rôle, the pitiful, sinister comedy they played in the last strike? How, having pushed the workers to a desperate resistance, they gave them up weakened, despoiled, bound hands and feet, to the master--the very day where a last effort, a last surge, would have compelled him, perhaps, to surrender? Ah, no indeed! I have not wished that intriguers, under the pretext of defending you, should come to impose upon you combinations--wherein you are nothing but a means to maintain and increase their political power--a prey to satisfy their political appetites! You have nothing in common with those people! Their interests are not any more yours--than those of the usurer and the creditor, of the assassin and his victim!

VOICE:--Bravo! It's true! Down with politics! Down with the deputies!

JEAN:--Understand, then, that they exist only by your credulity! Your brutalization, they exploit it as a farm--your servitude, they treat it as an income. They grow fat upon your poverty and your ignorance, while you are living; and when you are dead they make a pedestal of your corpses! Is that what you want?

VOICE:--No, no. He is right!

JEAN:--The master is at least a man like yourselves! You have him before you--you speak to him--you make him angry--you threaten him--you kill him. At least he has a face, a breast into which you can thrust a knife! But go now, and move that being without a face that is called a politician! Go kill that thing that is known as politics! That slippery and fugitive thing, that you think you have, and that always escapes you--that you believe is dead, and it begins once again--that abominable thing by which all has been made vile, all corrupted, all bought, all sold--justice, love, beauty! Which has made of the venality of conscience a national institution of France--which has done worse yet, since with its foul slime it has soiled the august face of the poor--worse yet, since it has destroyed in you the last ideal--the faith in the Revolution! Do you understand what I have desired of you--that which I still demand of your energy, your dignity, your intelligence? I have desired, and I desire, that you shall show for once, to the world of political parasites, that new example, fecund and terrible, of a strike made, at last, by yourselves, for yourselves! And if once more you have to die, in this struggle which you have undertaken, know how to die--one time--for yourselves, for your sons, for those who will be born of your sons--and no more for those who trade upon your suffering, as always!

MADELEINE (_a girl-striker, springs up_):--March--march with him, and no longer with those whose hands are red with the blood of the poor! March! The road will be long and hard! You will fall many times upon your broken knees--what matters it? Stand up and march again! Justice is at the end!

A VOICE:--We will follow you!

MADELEINE:--And do not fear death! Love death! Death is splendid--necessary and divine! It makes life young again! Ah, do not give your tears! Through all the centuries that you have wept, who has seen them, who has heard them flow? Give your blood! If blood is as a hideous spot upon the face of the hangmen, it shines upon the face of martyrs as an eternal sun! Each drop of blood that flows from your veins--every stream of blood that pours from your bosoms--will mean the birth of a hero--a saint (_pointing to the crucifix_)--a god! Ah, would that I had a thousand lives, that I might give them all for you! Would that I had a thousand breasts, so that all that blood of deliverance and love might pour out upon the ground where you suffer!

The Cultured Classes

BY JOHANN GOTTLIEB FICHTE

(German philosopher, 1762-1814)

It is particularly to the cultured classes that I wish to direct my remarks in the present address. I implore these classes to take the initiative in the work of reconstruction, to atone for their past deeds, and to earn the right to continue life in the future. It will appear in the course of this address that hitherto all the advance in the German nation has originated with the common people; that hitherto all the great national interests have, in the first instance, been the affair of the people, have been taken in hand and pushed forward by the body of the people.

The Duty of Civil Disobedience

BY HENRY DAVID THOREAU

(See pages 295, 600)

The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, gaolers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.

Others--as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders--serve the State chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without _intending_ it, as God.

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and _men_, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON

(See pages 235, 522)

Let man serve law for man; Live for friendship, live for love, For truth's and harmony's behoof; The state may follow how it can, As Olympus follows Jove.

The Happiness of Nations

BY JAMES MACKAYE

(American writer upon economics, born 1872)

Everywhere we are taught that "life is sacred," that "liberty is sacred," that "property is sacred,"--but where are we taught that happiness is sacred? And yet it is only because of their relation to happiness that these other things have a trace of sacredness.

Paris

BY ÉMILE ZOLA

(See page 91)

All boiled in the huge vat of Paris; the desires, the deeds of violence, the strivings of one and another man's will, the whole nameless medley of the bitterest ferments, whence, in all purity, the wine of the future would at last flow.

Then Pierre became conscious of the prodigious work which went on in the depths of the vat, beneath all the impurity and waste. What mattered the stains, the egotism and greed of politicians, if humanity were still on the march, ever slowly and stubbornly stepping forward! What mattered, too, that corrupt and emasculate _bourgeoisie_, nowadays as moribund as the aristocracy, whose place it took, if behind it there ever came the inexhaustible reserve of men who surged up from the masses of the country-side and the towns!... If in the depths of pestilential workshops and factories the slavery of ancient times subsisted in the wage-earning system, if men still died of want on their pallets like broken-down beasts of burden, it was nevertheless a fact that once already, on a memorable day of tempest, Liberty sprang forth from the vat to wing her flight throughout the world. And why in her turn should not Justice spring from it, proceeding from those troubled elements, freeing herself from all dross, ascending with dazzling splendor and regenerating the nations?

Farewell Address

BY GEORGE WASHINGTON

(See page 305)

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations, cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt but, in the course of time and things, the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it; can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue. The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which enobles human nature. Alas, is it rendered impossible by its vices?

America the Beautiful

BY KATHARINE LEE BATES

(Professor at Wellesley College, born 1859. This poem has been adopted as the official hymn of the American Federation of Women's Clubs)

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Whose stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!