CHAPTER XI.

WITNESSES FOR PLUTOCRACY DISCREDITED.[8]

[8] For part of this chapter credit is due to Carl Vrooman.

When the nature of the present world conflict is understood, those who favor the people's cause will cease to receive any further instruction or advice whatever from their enemies or the allies or agents of their enemies.

If America declared open war upon Britain should we put the slightest confidence in any statement, emanating from English sources as to the best line of attack? And, if a coterie of young Britishers were to enter our camp and advise our soldiers to open fire in a northward direction, should we not rather suspect an attack from the enemy on the south? Is it not a rule in war always to fire in the direction opposite to that advised by your enemies? In all business and other practical affairs of life is it not universally recognized as the extreme of folly to accept as facts the statements of those who may profit by our discomfiture?

Most assuredly! And it is time for the merchants and workingmen of America to apply to their political struggle these simple maxims so well established elsewhere.

WORTHLESS TESTIMONY.

Imagine a courtroom filled with spectators and a group of culprits being tried for wholesale theft. The strongest evidence has been produced by both the prosecution and defense and the result is in doubt. Anxious crowds are waiting in suspense for some decisive stroke that shall give an advantage to one side or the other. The counsel for the defense arises and plays his last card by an eloquent appeal in behalf of the prisoners, basing his plea entirely on the superiority of his witnesses. He shows that they stand much higher in the community than the witnesses for the prosecution, who are poor, untutored countrymen. "My witnesses," says he, "include the leading men in your community--your parson, the principal of your high school, and the editor of your paper. Yours are mere yahoos and ignoramuses, not capable of exercising judgment in such a case as this." A murmur of assent passes around the room. There is a cheer of confirmation, and the jurors nod their heads significantly.

The prosecuting attorney, instead of making a speech, plays his last card by taking the jury to the stable, where they discover that the horse on which the teacher rode to court is one of those stolen from Farmer Hayseed's stable, and further he proves that the suit of clothes worn by the parson on the witness stand was made of the very piece of woolen goods taken from the country storekeeper, and that the coins that fill the purse of the respected editor are the same identical marked coins accumulated by Widow Jones for her old age and taken from her money drawer on the night of the crime in question. No speeches, no arguments are necessary after this. The jurors purge their memories of the testimony for the defense, and the culprits are sent to prison.

In the great case of "The People versus Monopoly," now being tried at the bar of Public Opinion, the defense, beaten upon every other point, bases its last plea upon the superiority of its witnesses. It is claimed that the authorities on finance, the press and the pulpit are witnesses in defense of Monopoly. We acknowledge this, and in answer wish only to take the jury, who are to decide this case, to the homes of these witnesses, where they can see for themselves that they are sharers in the plunder that has been taken from the plaintiffs.

THE PRESS.

The first important witness in behalf of the defense is the great metropolitan press, the peculiar and special product of the dying years of the present century.

Now, the modern newspaper is a corporation, formed for the one purpose of paying dividends to stockholders. In order to make money it must serve the people who have money, for now all the profits of the great dailies are derived from the sale of space in their columns, the receipts for the sale of papers not covering expenses. The business manager, with a few exceptions, controls the editorial department and dictates all policies. So we poor wayfarers, hungry for information concerning some important interest, seize upon a learned editorial in a great metropolitan daily, and while we think we are being instructed by the weighty opinion of some friendly and scholarly writer, we are in fact reading THE PAID ADVERTISEMENT of our enemies, placed in the paper to confuse us. When, in the news department, we read a speech or an interview, it is often so garbled that the meaning is quite changed. And what we consider to be a simple statement of fact is often a doctored narrative, containing fictitious figures, and printed for the sole purpose of misleading the public.

The attempt of the gold press to array the agricultural producers against the city laborers, and the mechanics against the agriculturists is cruel and deliberate. And this power to deceive and mislead carries with it the power of life or death.

Suppose I were to go to Mr. Jones and tell him that Mr. Smith had declared to me that he was going to shoot him on sight, and that I had seen him purchase a revolver for that purpose; and then I should go to Mr. Smith and tell him that his friend Jones had just armed himself to the teeth for the purpose of killing him, stating that I had heard him swear and curse and declare before heaven that Smith should not live another day. Now, suppose these two neighbors, heretofore warm friends, were to approach each other, and Smith, as a precaution, would reach his hand toward his hip-pocket, and Jones, in order to save his life, would pull out his weapon and fire, both men shooting each other at the same time.

The result would be TWO DEAD FOOLS, the victims of ONE LIVE LIAR.

The power to deceive great masses of people by simultaneous and premeditated conspiracy on the part of the papers owned by monopoly, carries with it the power to weaken the masses by dividing them in a struggle over false issues; and while they fight among themselves, to rob them and legislate their children into slavery.

Here are the words of the great journalist, John Swinton, before the New York Press Association, in response to a toast, "The Independent Press:"

"There is no such thing in America as an independent Press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare express an honest opinion; if you express it, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid one hundred and fifty dollars a week for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. Any man who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the street hunting for another job. The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and race for his daily bread, or for about the same thing--his salary. You know this, and I know it; and what foolery to be toasting an 'Independent Press.' We are tools and the vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, all are property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

In the case of "The American People versus the Banks and Trusts," we have found, by personal examination, as also by the confession of a member of the family, John Swinton, that the money which inflates the purse of the prominent editorial witness consists of the marked coins that made up a portion of the booty in question. No sane juror will believe the testimony of such a witness.

CLERGY NEEDS SYMPATHY, NOT BLAME.

It is also claimed that God's ministry has offered its testimony in behalf of the defense. It is not my purpose to say anything against the clergy, because if there is an abused and ill-treated class of men on the face of the earth to-day, who need pity and prayer and succor, it is the men who have dedicated their lives to the Christ who was killed by the rich of His time, and who are now dependent for their living, their children's food and their wives' clothing, upon the blended piety and pride, the virtues and vanities of the rich of to-day.

In all that inconsistent barbarism, which we call civilization, there is no man who needs sympathy so much and deserves blame so little as he who is attempting at the same time to preach for God and to get his living from God's enemies, to build monuments to the Christ who lived and died for the poor, and gain the material and cost of these monuments by flattering those who are grinding the faces of the poor.

Many clergymen have told me how their hearts have bled for the victims of social injustice; how in anguish they have wept over the piteous cries for help uttered by their dying brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ; how, bursting with indignation, they have longed to strike a blow against the brutality that crushes Christ's little ones in order to grind from their bones and blood colossal and unnatural fortunes. But they said, "We must conceal our tears and swallow our indignation, though it chokes us. We dare not speak out--we could neither destroy the tyrant nor save the victims. We would only succeed in dragging down our own wives and little ones into that dark stream of poverty, from which those who have once fallen in can never hope to rise. First of all, we must live--and then do what little we can to temper the reign of injustice and oppression. The overthrow and destruction of this system of injustice rests upon the shoulders of God and the common people."

I would ask the workmen of the country who are rapidly leaving the churches not to judge the clergy harshly, because the majority are dumb in your behalf and because a few openly and blatantly champion the cause of the oppressors.

But I must also ask you to place no confidence in their testimony in this political trial, for their lips often utter words their hearts fain would withhold, and they often pray for success to the banner for which they cannot fight.

Let us not condemn them because they are bound with chains of dependence, but let us rather include them among those whom we shall liberate when we establish a POLITICAL SYSTEM WHICH SHALL SET ALL MEN FREE.

In the case of "The American People versus the Money Lending and Bondholding Class," we find that the long, flowing garb of the ministerial witness, that at first inspired our confidence in his testimony, because of the holy office it suggested, is made of the very cloth, a part of the plunder, the disapperance of which is the basis of the present trial. The testimony of such a witness, cajoled, terrorized, and a sharer in the booty taken, is also without value.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE COLLEGE AUTHORITIES.

Now, as to the college professors: From the earliest times down to the present day, learning has been fostered, patronized and supported by wealth. The kings and nobility of various times and nations, too stupid or lazy to acquire distinction in the field of scholarship themselves, have vied with each other in gathering around them the greatest scholars, musicians, poets and minstrels, as well as the greatest athletes, the most beautiful and voluptuous women, the fastest horses, and the most interesting curios of every description. Some of the patrons of learning and art have been really serious in their devotion to the beautiful and true. It is, perhaps, one of the greatest encomiums that we can pronounce upon the wealth of the world, that in all ages it has supported learning as the stalk supports the flower. This condition of affairs has not existed, however, without causing an undesirable dependence on the part of the beneficiaries.

Who has passed through the great art galleries of the Louvre at Paris, and beheld the acres of canvas, covered with the work of the immortal Rubens, without being filled with anger and disgust as he thought of the genius and years of toil which, instead of being devoted to conceiving and executing new masterpieces to delight and inspire all future ages, were applied to daubing the vain and cruel countenance and the unattractive person of the patroness who gave him his bread?

The first and greatest universities in this land were founded, have been built up, and are at present supported by the bequests and donations, the gratuitous contributions of the rich. The vast undying benefits that have flowed from this wealth, which have been devoted to learning, ancient and modern, cannot easily be overestimated. What the world would have been without the enlightenment which has come from this source it is not easy to imagine. We should hold in high esteem the solitary student who, in past ages and to-day, gropes his silent, difficult way towards those hidden truths in science, in history or in art which will one day enlighten and beautify the world. We should be lovers of all that is beautiful, and all that is true, and all that is lovable in this great world of ours. Music, painting and sculpture, the sciences, literature and history, should be to all sources both of inspiration and of light. With all our hearts let us welcome these products of man's talent and genius.

The historian is the hinge linking the present to the past. His office is not only a useful, but a sacred one. Scholarship is like womanhood--one of the most holy and sacred things in the world. But, like womanhood, when prostituted, it becomes the most debased. He who muddies with error and personal prejudice the fountain of pure truth is an enemy to his race. But let us not attempt to blame nor censure individuals. We know that wealth has been the friend of learning; that in all times past those who have devoted their time to the pursuit of truth or beauty have been dependent upon the support of the rich and powerful. You say that if wealth has been the friend of learning, it is only natural that learning should be the friend of wealth. Yes, this is exactly the fact in the case. Learning is the friend of wealth for two reasons: One, because she feels grateful for past favors; the other, and greater, because she is hopeful for favors to come.

It is well known in educational circles that any college found propagating "heresies" like "free silver" or "government ownership of the railroads"--in other words, any institution which does not distort and curtail its teachings so as to bias the student in favor of the single gold standard and the eternal reign of monopoly--will be cut off without a dollar by plutocracy and doomed to a future of comparative impotence and uselessness for lack of funds.

THE RESULT.

What is the result? The president of a large private university, knowing that his reputation for success or failure depends upon the growth of his university as compared with that of neighboring universities, continually trims his sails to secure favors of those who have money to dispense. It is a common thing for a college president to make what he calls a "begging tour." He endeavors to show to those who are supposed to have money to bestow that his university is in great need, and can make the best possible use of "sound" money in propagating "sound ideas."

A good illustration of this is the tour which Brooker Washington, the famous colored orator, the President of the Tuskegee Institute, made in 1896, through the North and East. He is a man of intellectual power. He is, no doubt, thoroughly devoted to the enlightenment of his race; but the way he flatters and cajoles the rich, advocates the gold standard, overlooks and keeps silent about their corruption and crimes, and assents to their plans for further aggrandizement, is a lesson which every patriot can study with profit. He has become a pet and fad among the wealthy classes of New York and New England. Even Harvard in 1896 conferred upon him an honorary degree. He has doubtless gotten heavy endowments for his college, but he has had to fawn and flatter and stultify his manhood to do it. And he has given a striking example of what almost every college president must do to a greater or less extent.

The fact is, that PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES, DEPENDING AS THEY DO UPON THE CHARITY AND CONSCIENCE MONEY OF THE RICH FOR SUPPORT AND GROWTH, LIKE ALL THOSE WHO LIVE BY CHARITY, HAVE ACQUIRED THE FAWNING SPIRIT OF SERVITUDE AND DEPENDENCE, AND FAITHFULLY LICK THE HAND THAT FEEDS THEM. "Verily the ox knoweth his master's crib."

Many college presidents dare not use any but "orthodox" gold standard text-books, and professors who dissent from the views of these books are forced to swallow their own opinions and propagate error.

Many of "our great authorities" are mere sycophants of wealth, creatures of the millionaire, placed by him in the same category as his musician, his ballet dancer or chaplain, all valuable dependents. The money lord of creation often builds the college (Chicago University, for example), places the poor book-worm in the position that makes him a "recognized authority," and the "authority" must dish up statistics as a cook dishes up his delicacies to suit the taste of his master. If he refuses he loses his job, and is no longer a "recognized authority."

Young men are not only taught in many instances that the rights of monopoly and money are more sacred than the rights of men and women, but are shown frequently that if they want to make a success in life, and be an honor to their family and their college they must ally themselves with the powerful corporations and trusts and keep their skirts clear of all popular and reform movements.

The recent action of the Yale students who brutally attempted to insult the honored guest of their city, Mr. Wm. J. Bryan, is not without significance.

The authorities and the respectable element among the students were no doubt, deeply humiliated by such a disgrace. Yet it is fairly plain that the dogmatic, uncharitable and violent opposition to Free Silver indulged in by the professors, has contributed its part toward causing this exhibition of anarchy and puppyism.

There is a wide distinction however, between professors and professors.

There are numerous truly great men who are aristocrats at heart, who love luxury and culture and refinement, whose friends are principally among the rich, whose sympathies are with the rich, and whose interests in life are bound up with the prosperity of the wealthy classes. These men oppose popular rights as conscientiously as did the old Feudal Lords. They all oppose the New Democracy.

There are many others--men of splendid intellect, but utterly without principle--who are mere dishonest, mercenary tools of the highest bidder, willing to distort and manufacture history, tamper with statistics, and lie like "shyster lawyers."

As, for instance, the learned professor of the Chicago University, who declared with brazen effrontery that whatever might be charged against Mr. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Trust, no one could say that he had accumulated his millions in any way that interfered with the accumulations of others.[9]

[9] See detailed account of the lawless Anarchistic methods used by Standard Oil Trust to destroy competitors in "Wealth Against Commonwealth" by H. D. Lloyd.

Again there are a few university "authorities" who, at the risk of their living and the success of the institutions they represent, have told the truth fearlessly. They oppose monopoly and the gold standard. But their testimony is buried beneath the overwhelming mass of prejudice, sophistry and misinformation supplied by their colleagues.

Very distinct from any of these classes is that swarm of cowardly pusillanimous book-worms, who, as underlings in the large universities, and as full-fledged professors in the small colleges, retail at second-hand with stupid pertinacity and pig-headed bitterness, all the errors of the "authorities," together with new ones of their own special brew.

It is by the prejudiced and purchased testimony of such men as these that the monopolies of the country try to prove that empty stomachs are full, bare backs clothed, and that a constantly growing and appreciating dollar is an honest one. It is with such untrustworthy witnesses that they attempt to prove to us that the men who have stolen our property are more honest than we.

The teacher witness for the defense may be more "respectable and learned" than the witnesses of the prosecution, but when we see that the universities are built and professors' salaries paid from the booty wrung from the people--in other words, "that the teacher rides to court on one of the very horses taken from Farmer Hayseed's stable" it does not take us long to decide that this testimony is misleading and false.

Therefore, the workmen, merchants and tax-payers who compose the jury, which is to hand in its verdict in 1900, must refuse to consider the testimony of these collegiate, pulpit and editorial witnesses, who are proven to be sharers in the tribute forced from the people by that gigantic and almost sublime system of world exploitation carried on scientifically and persistently by those powerful "trusts" which have cornered the world's gold and monopolized nearly every necessity and comfort of life.

The pivotal point in this campaign is the question of the reliability of witnesses. Not only do opinions differ, but the history, statistics, and facts, advanced by the defenders of monopoly and the gold standard contradict the history, statistics and facts discovered by the champions of the people. There can be only one truthful history of the crime of seventy-three, and the seventy-three other crimes of the shirkers against the workers. Figures do not lie. Only one set of statistics, as to the rise in the value of the gold dollar, can possibly be correct. Facts do not conflict. When men contradict each other upon a question of fact, one side is wrong.

Whose history and statistics are we to believe in this campaign?

Are we to believe the interested, prejudiced, purchased witnesses of corrupt wealth, or are we to believe the testimony of the witnesses of the people--men who have sacrificed and suffered in order to tell the truth.

It is because the classes who have the advantages of culture and leisure, always care more for their own comforts than for truth and justice, that these problems, my reader, must be worked out, by the millions made of the same identical common mud that you and I are.

As William E. Gladstone has said, all the reforms brought about in England during the last century, and of which all her citizens now boast, "were at first merely impossible ideals in the minds of the ignorant and fanatical poor," and were carried through by the working people "in opposition to the cultured and leisure class."

It is because those who possess the power and the learning to lead mankind aright have always proven recreant to the trust imposed upon them, that God, in directing the course of human history, has invariably swept this class aside and accepted as His instruments the poor, the simple-minded and uncorrupted. From the birth of the primitive church among the poor fishermen of Galilee to the abolition of chattel slavery by an agitation instituted by social and political outcasts, the hand of God moving in the world has invariably brushed aside the rich and powerful with the intellectual parasites that swarm about them, and in building nations, religions, or instituting great reforms, has uniformly chosen the normal, healthy material at the base of society still uncorrupted by luxury.