Part 23

Illustrating the method by which the one party appropriates the property of the other, Mr. Pinckney cites our infamous Tariff System.

“The amount of prices advanced under a 40 per cent. tariff and _transferred from one private pocket to another_, would ... soon extend to figures to _dwarf the national debt_.”

Some one has calculated that from Independence to 1861, the amount thus transferred from private pockets to other private pockets, without consideration, was something like $2,770,000,000.

The sum so stolen from private pockets by the damnable Tariff, since 1861, and put into other private pockets is a great deal more than the colossal figures mentioned above.

Mr. Pinckney likewise takes up the National Banker and shows how the Government allows him advantages over his fellow man that are “utterly without right, reason, or justification.” After explaining the juggle which takes place over the bonds, and the notes, he sums it up thus:

“_The people are taxed in order that the privilege of issuing money may be farmed out to the banks._”

Nobody has ever summed up the iniquity of the National Banking System in a more startling sentence, and a good Democrat, like Mr. Pinckney, must have been sorely grieved when he saw every Democratic Senator and every Democratic Representative unite with the wicked Republicans in 1893-1894 to renew the charters of the National Banks for twenty years.

Space forbids the extending of these comments further. I will only add that no student of present conditions can afford to miss Mr. Pinckney’s book.

=Letters and Addresses of Thomas Jefferson.= Edited by Wm. B. Parker, of Colombia University, and Jonas Viles, of the University of Missouri. The Unit Book Pub. Co., New York.

When two college professors start out to give the world a new book on _Thomas_ Jefferson, the world has a right to expect an unusually valuable book.

Professors Parker and Viles did not undertake an original composition. Theirs was the simpler task of making a good selection from the letters, State papers and addresses of Mr. Jefferson. That such a selection should be a success, it was necessary that the compilers acquaint themselves intimately with all that Jefferson wrote, and that the selections made should fairly represent _Jefferson himself_—Jefferson the man, the scholar, the farmer, the builder, the inventor, the advanced thinker, the man of bold speculative ideas, the statesman, the student of social and industrial problems.

Have our learned professors done this?

Mr. Jefferson’s book, “Notes on Virginia,” contains more than 300 pages. It is full of his most characteristic thinking. It displays the working of his mind on matters great and small, social, racial, historic practical and speculative.

Our Professors quote eight pages from the book, wherein Mr. Jefferson discusses Religion, Slavery and American Genius—three subjects only. These are important quotations, but what a pity it is that the Professors did not quote Jefferson’s profound study of the Indians, their physical and mental peculiarities, their mode of life, their love of their children, their fortitude under suffering, their undying loyalty to friends, their skill and bravery in war, their eloquence in council, their system of tribal government. Mr. Jefferson wrote nothing more interesting than this account of the Indians of Virginia. It was in this that he reproduced and handed down to posterity that gem of oratory which we boys used to “speak” at school—“Logan’s speech” sent to Lord Dunmore.

On page 166 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson gives a concise and comprehensive statement of the wrongs which the colonies suffered at the hands of the King. Inasmuch as we have developed a school of Tory historians who make light of the American grievances, it might have been a good thing had the Professors quoted Mr. Jefferson’s summary of those grievances.

On page 172 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson makes a remarkable prediction of the manner in which abuses will creep into our Government, and he solemnly warns his countrymen to combat these abuses “before they shall have gotten hold on us.”

Inasmuch as the abuses which Mr. Jefferson dreaded have gotten hold on us, his prophecy, published more than a hundred years ago, deserves a place in any collection of Jefferson’s works.

On page 216 of the “Notes,” Mr. Jefferson has a word to say on popular self-government which every American boy should read as soon as he becomes a voter. I am sorry the Professors left it out.

The most powerful chapter in the “Notes on Virginia,” is that beginning on page 228 and ending on page 235. As it stands written, it is a masterpiece. To spoil a good thing is easy; and the Professors spoilt the best chapter in Jefferson’s book by cutting out only a portion of it for use, and not the best part at that.

On page 240 of the “Notes” is Mr. Jefferson’s splendid tribute to the working classes of the rural communities—but the Professors seemingly attached no value to it.

What could have been more timely than the re-publication of Mr. Jefferson’s magnificent plea against War, and against Militarism, which covers pages 253, 254, and 255 of the “Notes”? The Professors could not have embraced in their collection anything of greater intrinsic and eternal value than this, and they have given much space to matter which, compared to this, is mere trash.

I have neither the time nor the patience to compare the letters which these Professors have collected with those which they have left out. If they selected the letters in the same spirit that they culled from the “Notes,” their compilation is just as far from doing justice to Mr. Jefferson as “The True Thomas Jefferson,” by W. E. Curtis, was from the truth. There is no American book of the same size that contains more errors than Curtis’s “True Jefferson;” and when I saw that these two Professors had named that book as one of their authorities—well, you can see for yourself how it stimulated my attention.

=Democracy in the South Before the Civil War.= By G. W. Dyer, M. A., Pub. House of the M. E. Church South. Nashville, Tenn.

The author modestly calls this a compendium of a more comprehensive work which will be published later.

It is an exceedingly valuable study. The author has dug up a lot of buried treasure. His refutation of many unfounded opinions concerning social economic and political conditions in the South prior to the Civil War is supported by a diligence of research that gather all the necessary evidence.

Among other facts of importance which Mr. Dyer establishes, Prof. John Bach McMaster to the contrary notwithstanding, are:

(1) There was no land monopoly in the South. On the contrary there was a better pro rata distribution of land than in the free States.

(2) Manual labor was not a badge of disgrace. On the other hand, the white population of the South was engaged in all kinds of manual labor, excepting menial service.

(3) The South had a larger number of miles of railroads in 1860 in proportion to her free population than the rest of the country.

(4) In 1860, Southern people were engaged in almost all kinds of manufacturing.

(5) In 1860 the South was the richest section of the country, and her wealth was increasing with greater rapidity than that of the other sections.

It will be remembered that in one of his great speeches in Congress William L. Yancey demonstrated this truth.

(6) Wages were higher in the South than in the North in 1860.

So they are even now. The laborer who produces that free trade product, cotton, gets nearly one-half of the value of the cotton produced. In the Protected industries of the North the laborer does not receive an average of twenty-five percent of the product of his labor.

Mr. Dyer proves another fact worth mention:

The idea of a State fund for the education of those who were not able to pay their tuition originated in the South. In other words, the present American system of State free public schools was born in the South. If Mr. Dyer’s more comprehensive work increases in value as it increases in size it will deserve to be a most successful book.

“=Sonnets to a Wife.=” By Ernest McGaffey. William Marion Reedy. St. Louis, Mo.

Mr. McGaffey makes his Sonnets a continuous hymn of the beautiful in Nature. The clean atmosphere of the open world is in every sonnet. All the airs of heaven blow pureness about these lovers. The spiritual significance of the great Nature, of which husband and wife and their love for each other are a part, is always strongly suggested, and this without cant either of orthodoxy or of the dolorous minor poet lamenting the loss of himself to the world.

=The Eternal Spring.= A Novel. By Neith Boyce. Fox, Duffield & Co., New York, $1.50, postpaid.

The story opens at an Italian villa, overlooking Florence. Elizabeth Craven is wearing “second mourning” for a deceased husband who was too old for her, and who had never satisfied her womanly cravings for male companionship. Elizabeth is thirty-eight years old, but is still in the flush of health and strength and beauty. Hers is the villa, and to her comes Barry Carlton, who has been stock-gambling for several years in Chicago, and has quit because he had won a modest competence and had brought himself to the brink of nervous collapse.

Barry Carlton had known Elizabeth intimately five years before and had become warmly attached to her. Poor Elizabeth! She had loved Barry all the while, and she loves him yet.

She is radiantly happy as she welcomes Barry to her villa. She knows that he has come from America to ask her to become his wife. He is thirty years old, and while worn down to a painful thinness she has no doubt whatever that rest and loving attention will soon restore his robust youth.

_Then_ she will live. She has never known life; she has been cramped and confined all these years; when she marries her young lover, she will know the passion of _living_.

But alas! Barry wooes tamely. Elizabeth is coy, expecting more heat. Barry cannot give it, the wooing lags, no engagement occurs, and then comes the shipwreck of Elizabeth’s hopes. Barry falls in love with a divinely gifted and lovely young creature who is also a guest at the villa.

A strange thing happens to the reader. Elizabeth has won _his_ heart, and she holds it to the end. She is so womanly in her devotion to Barry; so womanly in her grief at losing him, so majestic in her renunciation of her own hopes, so beautifully generous and helpful to the man and the girl who have broken her own heart, that the reader feels himself about to say:

“One Elizabeth were worth a dozen Claras.”

For the reader does not fall in love with Clara. She is a bit unnatural and uncanny.

Her mother, the bad but magnificent Mrs. Langham, is far more real and interesting.

As to Barry himself, the reader never does quite understand why the women find him so irresistible. It does not appear that he is very handsome, or very accomplished, or very anything else, excepting that he is abominably selfish in his dealings with Elizabeth. The women who fall in love with him rave about his “honesty,” but that is a quality which seldom carries women off their feet. Decidedly Elizabeth remains the heroine and next to her in interest comes the bad, beautiful Mrs. Langham. The author tells the story with superb art. There are no incidents, no thrills, no dramatic climaxes, and yet there is not a dull page in the book.

_Cause for Joy_

“Well, now, which do you think is correct, ‘measles is’ or ‘measles are’?” chucklingly inquired the landlord of the Torpidville tavern. “Also, would you say, ‘The Glee Club are’ or ‘the Glee Club is’?”

“D’know!” replied the patent-churn man, shortly. “Those old catch-questions don’t interest me a little bit. But what I’d like to know is why everybody looks so pleased and smiling today? Is there a picnic or celebration or something of the sort on the tapis?”

“No, skurcely that. It’s the relief that is tickling ’em, not anticipation. You see, the Glee Club of the village Academy was going to give a concert and cantata tomorrow night, assisted by our best local talent, and now the measles have, or has, as the case may be, broken out, up there in the temple of learnin’, and every member of the Glee Club have, or has, got it, or them, good and plenty and the entertainment has been indefinitely—haw! haw!—postponed.”

The Democrat has no axe to grind, no scores to settle nor heads to whack in advancing the erection by the city of an electric lighting plant. From every standpoint it is right.—_Grand Ireland (Neb.) Democrat._

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Paul Morton, president of the Equitable, says he is not going to pay any more money to legislators to protect his insurance company. This reminds the _Syracuse (N. Y.) Herald_ of the story of the old darkey, never regarded as being at all particular about how or where he gathered up a penny, who dropped his pocketbook in a crowd one day. As the nickels and dimes scattered about, the old man began to scramble for them, shouting, “Befoh de Lawd! Let evahbody be honest now.”—_Leeton (Mo.) Times._

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Democracy means always independence of thought, and unless the party leaders treat the people fairly they will find it also means independence of action. This was fully demonstrated last year in both National and State campaigns, and it is time the Democratic leaders in Missouri should heed the warning.—_Ozark (Mo.) Democrat._

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Congress is now asked to appropriate $16,500,000 in one lump to the Isthmian Canal. This nice little sum will only serve to grease the skillet for a short time.—_Panola Watchman, Carthage, Tex._

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It has been only a few weeks since Mr. McCall of the New York Life Insurance Company was standing on his dignity and trying to make a joke of the insurance investigation—just as Mr. Rogers of the Standard Oil Company tried to make a joke of the investigation in New York last week. But today Mr. McCall is a disgraced man in the public eye, and another man signs as president of the New York Life. And it may be only a short time until Mr. Rogers is holding an unenviable seat with Mr. McCall and a lot of other unscrupulous fellows who a short time ago imagined that they were practically the whole financial show. These money grafters are up against an aroused public sentiment which in America today spells destruction for whatever it may be directed against. In America there is no system that can stand against the will of the people, and Mr. Rogers and his Standard Oil crowd will yet live to see the day—and that soon—when they will put off their arrogant airs in answering a criminal investigation by the legal representatives of a great state.—_Darlington (Mo.) Record._

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The Department of Agriculture is now undertaking to show the farmers how they can raise better tobacco. What the farmers would much prefer would be for Secretary Wilson to show how to get more than 34 cents for it from the Tobacco Trust.—_Tarboro (N. C.) Southerner._

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The steamer _America_, from Honolulu for San Francisco, carried $750,000 in coin sent by registered mail by local bankers, in order, it is alleged, that the money might be at sea, and beyond the territorial jurisdiction on December 31st, when a tax of one per cent. is levied on all money on deposit by the banks on that date. It is understood that the money will be returned immediately. Deducting the charges of shipment, the saving made will be approximately $7,000.—_Argonaut, San Francisco._

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The attention of the public is unpleasantly attracted to the position of Henry H. Rogers, active head of the Standard Oil trust, in relation to the testimony sought by the supreme court of Missouri. The Missouri court, in seeking the enforcement of the anti-trust law of that State, has undertaken to procure testimony upon the allegation that the Standard company is violating the law. Among the witnesses is Mr. Rogers. He dodged service of the subpoena until outwitted by an officer and in the witness chair he refuses to answer questions propounded by the attorney general of Missouri. He refuses with a supercilious air that asserts his contempt for such humble affairs as courts and officers of the law. The world’s greatest trust, the world’s richest men, tell the world that they are not amenable to the regulations to which the balance of the world is bound to conform. This is the anarchy of wealth. Recently representatives of the oil trust told Commissioner Garfield that the Standard Oil was greater than the government; that John D. Rockefeller was a bigger man than the President of the United States; that he owned the Senate and the House and was able, by the mere passing of the word, to cause the removal of Secretary Metcalf and Commissioner Garfield. A few years back in history the Standard Oil corporation defied the Supreme Court of Ohio and caused the political defeat of the presumptuous attorney who brought an action against it and won because his case was just. Now comes Henry H. Rogers, second to John D. Rockefeller, bristling with defiance because a Western court proposes to make him and his associates obey the same law that common persons have to obey. It is greatly to be feared that the oil magnates are invoking a test of strength—feared because some one is going to be roughly handled should there come a popular adjustment between the forces of wealth and government. The American people have been very patient and are still patient. But if they are called upon to pass upon certain points raised by the contumacy of Mr. Rogers and the rest, the controversy will be short, sharp and decisive.—_Howard (S. Dak.) Advance._

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Let those with a sense of humor laugh now, while the game is barely on, at such naïve expressions of alarm as those of Secretary Taft in a recent speech wherein he feared that the “dangerous classes,” such as populists and socialists, might succeed in arraying the masses against capitalism to the injury of the latter. Secretary Taft fears that the ninety per cent of our population are going to demand the right to rule. Awful, isn’t it?

This fat sow of the system with its nose in the trough, its distended guts groaning and still filling, sounds the warning that the razor-backs are preparing to assume control of the swill. Wough! Secretary Taft believes that this country is only safe when every bank, the House, the Senate, every State legislature, and every public office is manned and controlled by a McCall, McCurdy, Hyde, Armour or Rockefeller; that is, safe for the system. We say this country is not safe when ten millions of its inhabitants live in dire poverty and two hundred and seventy thousand people fill its jails.

We say there is something radically wrong with our educational and economic systems. We say the multi-income grafters must be hurled back to one man power, for there is not a banker nor so-called financier in America that has not for years been in collusion with Hyde, McCall and McCurdy, and consciously participated in their stealing.

Come, now, Secretary Taft, would men who have been brought up to do real work be any more dangerous in high places?—_Parker H. Sercombe in To-Morrow._

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And now it is announced that all three of the big life insurance presidents in New York are down with nervous prostration. Sounds from testimony as though it ought to be the policy holders.—_Alma (Neb.) Record._

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With the arraignment of Standard Oil officers, life insurance fakirs, Panama Canal investigations, United States senators losing their dignity, and being tried like other criminals, and all manner of “big bugs” having to shudder at the majesty of the law, we are made to wonder what is going to happen next.—_Durant (I. T.) Farmer._

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Announcement is made of another donation by John D. Rockefeller to the University of Chicago. This time it is $1,450,000. Where did he get it?—_Granville (Ia.) Gazette._

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Rockefeller may fire Rogers for talking too much. Rogers admitted that he knew his own name and had heard of Standard Oil.—_People’s Voice, Norman, Okla._

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Now that railroad passes are abolished and the franking privilege is to be stopped, what will Congressmen do, poor things? They have been sending their soiled clothes back to their district and having them returned free, have been getting beef, butter, eggs, and vegetables in the same way, and to cap the anticlimax of their perquisites Hon. Shepard of Arkansas has discovered that their mileage allowance of twenty cents per mile made in the old stage-coach era, is a gross over-allowance and has introduced a bill to cut it down to six cents a mile, which is quite enough for the Pullman car accommodations nowadays.—_Luck (Wis.) Enterprise._

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The State of New York which has a population of 8,000,000 and wealth far in excess of any state in the Union has had no representative in the Senate since the holiday opening of Congress. Its two Senators, Platt and Depew, are prevented by ill-health from attending the sessions and it is not known when they will be able to take their places in the Senate Chamber. Senator Platt with his new wife is at Virginia Hot Springs, looking in vain for the fountain of youth. He is palsied with age and he is so feeble that he cannot walk about unsupported. On the daily drives and outings that Mrs. Platt is obliged to take to maintain her vigorous health she is never accompanied by the aged Senator, who remains in his room nearly all of the time. The situation with Senator Depew is scarcely more agreeable. Instead of the triumphant, jovial Depew of old he is now a man broken in health and spirit by the revelations of the New York insurance companies which have placed him in such a questionable light before the public.—_Kiowa (Colo.) Record._

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As this country becomes more and more a manufacturing country, it needs to give more heed to this fundamental problem. Urged by purely selfish motives, commerce and industry are ever tending to exploit the labor of the child because it is low priced, and to oppose restraining legislation. This, observes the _Chicago Tribune_, is why the child labor laws of England are considerably less stringent than those of progressive countries on the Continent. The latter, pressing upon each other’s frontiers, realize that child labor impairs the military efficiency of a nation. Military considerations may not weigh so heavily with the people of this country as they do with continental Europe. But child labor should be prevented in America with a view to securing for children that better preparation for life and that worthy type of ultimate citizenship which American ideals demand. In the interest of social and civic efficiency, and so of our national future, the rising generation, both North and South, should be protected against premature toil.—_Bath (N. Y.) Plaindealer._

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The new officials in Philadelphia should see that their predecessors get their just dues—a long term in the penitentiary.—_Winona (Minn.) Leader._

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