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Title: The Arena
Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897
Author: Various
Editor: John Clark Ridpath
Release Date: September 25, 2009 [EBook #30081]
Language: English
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THE ARENA.
EDITED BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, LL. D.
VOL. XVIII
JULY TO DECEMBER, 1897
PUBLISHED BY
THE ARENA COMPANY
BOSTON, MASS.
1897
COPYRIGHTED, 1897
BY
THE ARENA COMPANY.
SKINNER, BARTLETT & CO., 7 Federal Court, Boston.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Citadel of the Money Power:
I. Wall Street, Past, Present, and Future HENRY CLEWS 1
II. The True Inwardness of Wall Street JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 9
The Reform Club's Feast of Unreason Hon. CHARLES A. TOWNE 24
Does Credit Act on Prices? A. J. UTLEY 37
Points in the American and French Constitutions Compared,
NIELS GRÖN 49
Honest Money; or, A True Standard of Value: A Symposium.
I. WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN 57
II. M. W. HOWARD 58
III. WHARTON BARKER 59
IV. ARTHUR I. FONDA 60
V. Gen. A. J. WARNER 62
The New Civil Code of Japan TOKICHI MASAO, M. L., D. C. L. 64
John Ruskin: A Type of Twentieth-Century Manhood B. O. FLOWER 70
The Single Tax in Operation Hon. HUGH H. LUSK 79
Natural Selection, Social Selection, and Heredity,
Prof. JOHN R. COMMONS 90
Psychic or Supermundane Forces CORA L. V. RICHMOND 98
The American Institute of Civics HENRY RANDALL WAITE, Ph. D. 108
An Industrial Fable HAMILTON S. WICKS 116
Plaza of the Poets:
Reply to "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," BARTON LOMAX PITTMAN 122
John Brown COATES KINNEY 125
Demos W. H. VENABLE, LL. D. 126
The Editor's Evening: Leaf from My Samoan Notebook (A. D.
2297); _Vita Longa_; Kaboto (a Sonnet) 128
A Stroke for the People: A Farmer's Letter to THE ARENA 134
Evolution: What It Is and What It Is Not Dr. DAVID STARR JORDAN 145
Has Wealth a Limitation? ROBERT N. REEVES 160
The Battle of the Money Metals:
I. Bimetallism Simplified GEORGE H. LEPPER 168
II. Bimetallism Extinguished JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 180
The Segregation and Permanent Isolation of Criminals,
NORMAN ROBINSON 192
How to Increase National Wealth by the Employment of Paralyzed
Industry B. O. FLOWER 200
Open Letter to Eastern Capitalists CHARLES C. MILLARD 211
The Telegraph Monopoly: Part XIII. Prof. FRANK PARSONS 218
The Provisional Government of the Cubans THOMAS W. STEEP 226
A Noted American Preacher DUNCAN MACDERMID 232
The Civic Outlook HENRY RANDALL WAITE, Ph. D. 245
"The Tempest" the Sequel to "Hamlet" EMILY DICKEY BEERY 254
The Creative Man STINSON JARVIS 262
Plaza of the Poets:
The New Woman MILES MENANDER DAWSON 275
Under the Stars COATES KINNEY 275
The Cry of the Valley CHARLES MELVIN WILKINSON 276
A Radical ROBERT F. GIBSON 277
The Editor's Evening: Our Totem; _Vive La France! Le Siècle_
(a Sonnet) 278
The Concentration of Wealth: Its Causes and Results: Part I,
HERMAN E. TAUBENECK 289
The Future of the Democratic Party: A Reply DAVID OVERMYER 302
The Multiple Standard for Money ELTWEED POMEROY 318
Anticipating the Unearned Increment I. W. HART 339
Studies in Ultimate Society:
I. A New Interpretation of Life LAURENCE GRONLUND 351
II. Individualism _vs._ Altruism K. T. TAKAHASHI 362
General Weyler's Campaign CRITTENDEN MARRIOTT 374
The Author of "The Messiah" B. O. FLOWER 386
Open Letter to President Andrews THE EDITOR 399
Plaza of the Poets:
The Onmarch FREEMAN E. MILLER 403
The Toil of Empire JOHN VANCE CHENEY 404
The Day Love Came THEODOSIA PICKERING 405
The Question JULIA NEELY-FINCH 405
Triolet CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE 406
The Cry of the Poor JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 407
The Editor's Evening: A Knotty Problem; A Case of Prevision;
Concerning Eternity; A. L. (a Sonnet) 419
The New Ostracism Hon. CHARLES A. TOWNE 433
The Concentration of Wealth: Its Causes and Results: Part II,
HERMAN E. TAUBENECK 452
The Rights of the Public over Quasi-Public Services,
Hon. WALTER CLARK 470
Prosperity: the Sham and the Reality JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 486
Jefferson and His Political Philosophy MARY PLATT PARMELEE 505
The Latest Social Vision B. O. FLOWER 517
The Dead Hand in the Church Rev. CLARENCE LATHBURY 535
Hypnotism in its Scientific and Forensic Aspects,
MARION L. DAWSON, B. L. 544
Suicide: Is It Worth While? CHARLES B. NEWCOMB 557
Plaza of the Poets:
Old Glory IRONQUILL 562
_Vita Sum_ JUNIUS L. HEMPSTEAD 563
Gold CLINTON SCOLLARD 564
Richard Realfe REUBIE CARPENTER 565
The Dreamer HELENA M. RICHARDSON 565
The Editor's Evening: The Greatest Lyric; "Thrift, Thrift, Horatio;"
The Pessimist; The Physician's Last Call (a Sonnet). 566
Freedom and Its Opportunities: Part I Hon. JOHN R. ROGERS 577
"The Case Against Bimetallism" Judge GEORGE H. SMITH 590
The Initiative and the Referendum ELIHU F. BARKER 613
The Telegraph Monopoly: Part XIV Prof. FRANK PARSONS 628
The Laborer's View of the Labor Question:
I. How the Laborer Feels HERBERT M. RAMP 644
II. Up or Down? W. EDWARDS 654
III. The Farm Hand: An Unknown Quantity WILLIAM EMORY KEARNS 661
Practical Measures for Promoting Manhood and Preventing Crime,
B. O. FLOWER 673
The Demand for Sensational Journals JOHN HENDERSON GARNSEY 681
Is History a Science? JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 687
Plaza of the Poets:
Our Brother Simon ANNIE L. MUZZEY 707
Thou Knowest Not HELENA M. RICHARDSON 708
Optim: A Reply GEORGE H. WESTLEY 709
The Murdered Trees BENJAMIN S. PARKER 709
The Hidden Flute MINNA IRVING 710
Retroensetta CURTIS HIDDEN PAGE 710
The Editor's Evening: Tantalus and His Opportunities; The Man
in Bronze; Franklin (a Sonnet) 711
Idylls and Ideals of Christmas:
I. What I Want for Christmas ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 721
II. Christmas, the Human Holiday Rev. MINOT J. SAVAGE, D.D. 722
III. Santa Claus: A Poem JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY 726
IV. The Aryan at Christmas JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 727
A Séance With Eusapia Paladino: Psychic Forces CAMILLE FLAMMARION 730
The Influence of Hebrew Thought in the Development of the Social
Democratic Idea in New England CHARLES S. ALLEN 748
Priest and People E. T. HARGROVE 772
Immigration, Hard Times, and the Veto JOHN CHETWOOD, Jr. 788
The Founder of German Opera B. O. FLOWER 802
The Truly Artistic Woman STINSON JARVIS 813
Poor "Fairly Rich" People HENRY E. FOSTER 820
Shall the United States be Europeanized? JOHN CLARK RIDPATH 827
Hawaiian Annexation from a Japanese Point of View,
KEIJIRO NAKAMURA 834
A Political Deal: A Story ELIZA FRANCES ANDREWS 840
Plaza of the Poets:
Glad Tidings MARION MILLS MILLER 849
The Yule Log CLINTON SCOLLARD 852
How to Get an Article in a Magazine THE EDITOR 853
The Editor's Evening: Sir Thomas Kho on Education; Journey
and Sleep (a Sonnet) 855
BOOK REVIEWS.
The Emperor 137
President Jordan's Saga of the Seal 284
Some Prehistoric History 426
A Bard of the Ohio 572
Critic, Bard, and Moralist 717
Guthrie's "Modern Poet Prophets" 860
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Opposite Page
HON. CHARLES A. TOWNE 1
DR. DAVID STARR JORDAN 145
MULTIPLE-STANDARD TREASURY NOTE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY 289
DR. E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS 433
GOVERNOR JOHN R. ROGERS 577
CAMILLE FLAMMARION 721
PSYCHIC SÉANCE WITH EUSAPIA PALADINO 737
THE ARENA.
Vol. XVIII. JULY, 1897. No. 92.
THE CITADEL OF THE MONEY POWER.
I. WALL STREET, PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.
BY HENRY CLEWS.
I.
The twenty-seven respectable citizens of New York who, in 1792, met
under a buttonwood tree in front of the premises now known as Number
60 Wall Street, and formed an association for the purchase and sale of
public stocks at a fixed and unvarying commission, with a proviso of
mutual help and preference, committed themselves to an enterprise of
whose moment and influence in the future they could have formed no
adequate conception. At that date Wall Street was a banking district,
small indeed when compared with its present condition, but important
in its relations to the commerce of the nation. This transaction of
the twenty-seven--among whom we find the honored names of Barclay,
Bleecker, Winthrop, Lawrence, which in themselves and their
descendants were, and are, creditably identified with the growth of
the community--added the prestige and power of the stock exchange to
those of the banks, and fixed for an indefinitely long period the
destinies of the financial centre of the Union.
During the earlier part of this century the banking interests of Wall
Street quite overshadowed those of the stock market. The growth of
railway securities was not fairly under way until the opening of the
fifth decade. Elderly men can recall the date when the New York
Central existed only as a series of connecting links between Buffalo
and Albany, under half-a-dozen different names of incorporation; and
passenger cars were slowly and laboriously hoisted by chain power over
the "divide" between the latter city and Schenectady. Since there were
but few railways in the entire country, there were few opportunities
for speculative dealings in their shares. These shares, too, were as a
rule locally held, and were more frequently transferred by executors
under court orders than by brokers on the stock exchange.
Prior to 1840 and 1845, however, the members of the stock exchange
were not idle. Public stocks were largely dealt in. The United States
government frequently issued bonds, and the prices of these bonds
fluctuated sufficiently to afford tempting chances of profits. State
bonds also were sold in Wall Street in larger amounts than to-day.
About the year 1850 the sales of Missouri sixes and Ohio sixes
frequently amounted to millions of dollars daily. During that
uncertain epoch of finance when the United States Bank was both a
financial and a political power, the shares of that institution were a
favorite subject of speculative dealing. The shares of Delaware &
Hudson, and of the original Erie Railway, the latter laboriously
constructed over a rough, barren, and thinly settled portion of the
State, partly by State funds, had also become actively exchangeable in
the market.
During this period a relatively enormous quantity of banking capital
had located itself in and near Wall Street. The Bank of New York
existed before 1800, and later, although not long after, the Street
witnessed the erection of buildings of a now obsolete, and yet at that
time an attractive, style of architecture, devoted to the uses of the
Manhattan Banking Company, the Bank of America, the Merchants, the
Union, the Bank of Commerce, and others. Were it not that land in the
banking district is so valuable, and that the need of upstair offices
is so great, one might be tempted to regret the demolition of the
graceful money temples occupied by three of these corporations on the
north side of Wall Street. In each of them the entablature rested upon
two fluted stone pillars with Doric capitals, in addition to the
supports of the side walls. Between the steps and the doors of the
temple extended a marble-paved court which often served as a
convenient place of 'change for borrowers and lenders. Entering the
doors you found yourself in a large, airy, dome-lighted room, the
sides of which were occupied by the clerks of the institution, guarded
by high barricades from the intrusive eyes and feet of the general
public. At the rear were the offices of the president and cashier.
Throughout the entire building there reigned a solemn and
semi-religious silence. One may witness something like this to-day in
the Wall-Street end of the U. S. Treasury Building, and only there.
Up to the epoch of the rise of railway building and railway-share
speculation, the main aliment of Wall-Street banks was the profit
derived from the discount of commercial paper and from loans upon
government and State securities. But when railway shares and bonds,
based upon lines of road which were constructed through the rich
regions of the Union lying between the Atlantic and the Mississippi
river, came upon the market in large amounts, affording ample security
for investment and loans, the great banks of Wall Street were quick to
appreciate the advantages of loans made upon such undoubted values,
which were at all times convertible into cash on the stock exchange.
In times of pressure, commercial paper is an inferior asset for a
bank, all of whose obligations are payable on demand. At such times
notes become practically unsalable, and are not always paid at
maturity. A failure of one firm brings down others, and renewals are
urgently required from banks just when they are least able to grant
them. Salable securities are on such occasions an ark of safety, and,
dating from the early fifties, this class of securities has always
been the basis of a large amount of the loans of the banks of Wall
Street and their near neighbors of the same class in lower Nassau
Street and also Broadway.
With the immense outgrowth of business consequent upon the discovery
of gold in California in 1849, and the construction of the great
railways of the Middle West, such as the Michigan Southern, the
Northern Indiana (now the Lake Shore), the Michigan Central, the
Galena & Chicago, the Rock Island, and others of like importance and
real value, the banks and banking houses of Wall Street, and the stock
exchange, grew into most important factors in developing the
prosperity of the country. Enterprises were originated by able men
acting under corporate powers, and when these were brought before the
committees of the stock exchange and duly approved and listed, capital
instantly flowed forth from its reservoirs in answer to the
securities thus offered. And it may safely be said that but for the
combined machinery of the New York banks and the stock exchange the
actual developments of twenty years would have dragged laboriously
through an entire century.
Amid so much progress and activity, speculation was not idle. Those
were the days of many of our greatest railway operators, daring, able,
enthusiastic men, who had the rare gift of imparting confidence to
their followers and the public, and realized the fable of King Midas,
whose touch transmuted all things into gold. Their careers were those
of conquest and accumulation, like that of Napoleon; and, like him,
they underwent, with few exceptions, their retreats from Russia and
their Waterloos. Of such were Jacob Little, Daniel Drew, Anthony
Morse, and others, to whom now the motto of Junius applies: _Stat
nominis umbra_. Merely the shadows of their names reach over to us
from the horizons where their suns set so long ago.
There was an epoch too in the Wall Street of the past when gigantic
and deeply considered combinations were set in motion, entitled
"corners." As to corners, a word of explanation may not be amiss.
There are always two factions in the stock market: the bulls, who want
stocks to rise in price in order that they may sell out; and the
bears, who want stocks to fall in price so that they can buy in.
Contrary to the superficial belief of the public, the bulls are
sellers and the bears are buyers. But in order to sell a commodity you
must buy or borrow it; and in order to buy at a future date you must
sell at a previous date; and thus the bull buys for the purpose of
selling at a profit, and the bear sells something which he doesn't own
for the purpose of buying it at a lower price. The bull therefore
hopes to push prices up so that he can sell his purchase at a profit,
and the bear hopes to drag prices down so that he can buy what he has
sold, also at a profit.
Meanwhile, the bear has delivered the shares sold by him, and in order
to deliver them, has borrowed them, and given security in money at its
market price. Here he has placed himself in danger, because the owner
of the shares may at any time tender him this money and demand the
shares, which the bear may not be able to provide himself with, except
at the price which the owners choose to set upon them.
Thus a person might be under contract to deliver the shares of some
corporation which might be absolutely worthless, and yet these shares
_might_ be so held that the holders could exact one thousand dollars a
share. Given a railway with a share capital of ten millions, one
person or knot of persons might own every certificate of its stock,
and have it all loaned out to bears who had sold, borrowed, and
delivered it. It is obvious that this person or club of persons could
compel purchases of the shares which he or they alone possess, at
whatever price he or they think proper to demand; and since such
things can be done by skilful combinations under able generalship,
they have been done, and were a favorite scheme during the eventful
years between the sixties and the eighties. The corners in Harlem,
Hudson, Erie and Northwest, in which Vanderbilt, Drew, and Gould
achieved such success for themselves and their associates, have passed
into history as a conspicuous portion of the great events of Wall
Street. Their interest is chiefly historical, because of late years no
comprehensive corners have been organized. Share capitals are so large
that it is difficult for one man to control any one of them, and a
divided corner is apt to fail. But in their day and generation they
have offered brilliant illustrations of genius and strategic skill in
financial warfare.
The system of selling short, however, which gave birth to the idea of
creating corners, and which came into vogue in the fifties, has never
ceased to be a leading factor on the stock exchange. It was the result
of certain inflations of values which necessarily follow the
construction of great enterprises. However high a valuation may be set
upon any given commodity, there are always persons who expect a higher
price. Early historical examples of this fact are the South-Sea shares
and John Law's Mississippi shares, over which England and France
respectively went crazy in the last century. The loftier the figures
to which these shares mounted, the greater was the eagerness of the
public to buy them. But at that period the art and mystery of selling
short had not been brought into practice, and when the bubbles
collapsed there were universal losers and no direct winners.
During the latter half of this century there have been periods in the
history of Wall Street when the prices of railway and industrial
shares have been forced enormously above the standard of actual
values, and innumerable persons have parted with good money in
exchange for mere phantoms of imaginary values. At such times the
short sales of discernment, directing the X rays of clear-sighted
criticism into the swollen and opaque mass of financial carrion that
is exposed for sale in the market, are of the utmost benefit to the
public. The bear is then a benefactor to the community, and when he
pulls down and tears to pieces the rotten carcass of some gigantic
humbug, strewing the highway with its remains, we cannot praise his
work too highly.
II.
The present condition of Wall Street is one of lassitude and
expectancy. The great banks have an abundance, perhaps a
superabundance, of money, their own and their depositors, which they
are only too glad to lend on solid and readily salable collateral at
low rates of interest, approximating the prevalent rates in London and
Paris, where similar accumulations of idle capital exist. A large part
of this money is deposited with them by local banks in all parts of
the country, which recognize New York City as the financial centre of
the Union, and are content with interest of from one to two per cent
upon the funds which they are unwilling or unable to use safely at
home. The stock exchange is also in a condition of quietude. The
public are neither buying nor selling stocks in any large amount.
This state of things is the resultant of well-known facts. Numerous
over-capitalized and badly managed railways have gone into bankruptcy,
and either are in the hands of receivers or have emerged from such
guardianship, and are painfully toiling along on the road to
prosperity on the twin crutches of assessments upon stockholders and
the withholding of dividends from the same long-suffering and patient
class.
The transactions at the stock exchange at present average about two
hundred thousand shares a day, exclusive of bonds, government, State,
and railway; and a certain class of observers who like to subject
circumstances to a minute analysis inform the public that the daily
profits of the members of the exchange are about sufficient to pay
the expense of office rent and clerk hire. This conclusion takes it
for granted that these profits should be equally divided among the
membership. This is not a reasonable supposition. Many of the members
are such only in name, and rarely go on the floor. Others live during
most of the time on their accumulations, and come into the market to
buy or sell only when prices are abnormally low or high. The
comparatively small busy portion manage somehow to keep fairly active,
and are cheerfully looking forward to better times, through a vista
from which the cloud of a change of the monetary standard has already
passed away, and into which the genius of enterprise beckons them to
enter.
III.
While in many respects the future is a sealed book, yet there is such
a thing in the economy of nature as an absolutely accurate prevision
of events, such as eclipses of the sun and moon, and conjunctions of
the planets, and a relatively correct prevision of events depending
upon the growth of enlightened communities. Since the incorporation of
the Bank of New York, at the corner of Wall and Williams Streets, the
banking capital of New York has increased more than sixtyfold, of
which more than one-half is held and used in and around Wall Street,
and the aggregation of deposited and loanable capital has grown from a
few millions to over half a billion. If this has been the result
during one century, what will take place in the same direction during
the next century? The ratio of increase will not be kept up. A
thousand dollars may be doubled in a day, but no such ratio as a
hundred per cent a day can be predicated of a million. And yet it is
certain that, under proper management, the million will go on
increasing; and in the same manner will our half-billion increase by
its own earning power, and by contributions from all parts of the
Union. The development of the United States in the direction of
population, agriculture, manufactures, and mines is so enormous and so
steady that this nation will at some not distant period become the
most opulent of all the nations of the planet, unless unforeseen and
improbable political events happen by which our great commonwealth
shall be disrupted or its financial stability overturned. Under a
normal condition of things the capital of the citizens of the Union
will continually increase, and the banks of the city of New York will
be the depositary of larger and larger reserves of whatever capital is
temporarily idle in the places where it is created. In due time the
financial centre of the world will be shifted from London to our
imperial city.
Such a destiny has been foretold for St. Petersburg, in view of the
construction of the Siberian Railway and its branches, which in time
will open up to industry an immense tract of productive soil in the
most fertile parts of Asia, abounding in wheat and corn land, and full
of superior water power. But in this superb rivalry between the United
States and the colossus of Europe and Asia, the former nation has an
immense start as to time, and a still greater advantage in the
character of its population. And in addition to these we have the
undoubted and constantly increasing supremacy of the English language.
Just as during the Middle Ages Latin was the vernacular of the learned
classes, and as to-day French is the language of diplomacy in Europe,
so is English the common tongue in all the commercial localities of
the globe. With English a man can commit himself to foreign travel
anywhere, while outside of Russia there are few towns on the various
continents in which Russian is not an unknown speech. These
controlling conditions cannot be readily or easily changed, especially
since no paramount reasons exist why they should be changed.
It is then a reasonable forecast of the future, that in due time the
weighty import of the names of Lombard[1] and Threadneedle Streets
will be transferred to the name of Wall Street, and the facts implied
by such a transfer are of a dignity and power which it is impossible
to estimate. The road leading to this great destiny can only be
blocked by injurious legislation, and the good sense of our citizens
may be confidently relied upon to prevent the creation of such a
barricade against national prosperity.
[1] It will be recollected that Macaulay has pictured a New
Zealander of some future day as sitting upon a broken arch
of London Bridge, contemplating the ruins of St. Paul's
cathedral; and readers of the classics may recall the
forecast of Seneca in the time of Nero, as to the discovery
of a Western continent by which Rome should be dwarfed: "In
later ages the time shall come when the ocean shall loosen
the chains which bind us, a mighty continent shall be
disclosed, and a deity shall unveil a new world beyond
Britannia."
II. THE TRUE INWARDNESS OF WALL STREET.
BY JOHN CLARK RIDPATH.
The organized powers of society are always anxious to conciliate
public favor. They know that they exist by sufferance--by sufferance
of a mightier than themselves. In proportion as they know themselves
to be aggressors and spoliators their anxiety increases. Every abusive
power in the world is thus driven to adopt schemes and devices--some
dangerous and some merely ludicrous--to keep a footing at that silent
bar of opinion before which all wrong must, sooner or later, quail and
slink away.
The great concern called Wall Street is such an organized power in
society. It exists as a fact in our American system, and would fain
conciliate the favor of the public. Wall Street has become one of the
most conspicuous features in our national life. Knowing that it is
challenged by public opinion--knowing indeed that it is already under
the ban and condemnation of the American people--it now seeks, after
the manner of its kind, to save itself alive. It would go further than
mere salvation; it would make mankind believe that it is a reputable
part of the universal swim. Aye more; it seeks to ingratiate itself,
sometimes by force and sometimes by gentle craft and stratagem, into
the good graces of that civilization which it has so mortally
offended.
To this end Wall Street strives to justify itself in periodical and
general literature. No other power in human society to so great a
degree and in so subtle a manner exploits its own virtues. Taking
advantage of the well-known carelessness of American readers, and
knowing full well how easily they are duped--how easily they are
cozened out of their senses and led into false beliefs with mere
plausibilities and sophisms--this imperial and far-reaching Wall
Street, this elephantine fox of the world, takes possession of
American journalism--owns it, controls it. It seizes and subsidizes
the metropolitan press. It purchases newspapers and magazines by the
score. It establishes bureaus; it buys every purchasable pen, from the
pen of the gray philosopher to the pen of the snake editor. It
overawes every timid brain, from the brain of the senator to the
brain of the tramp. What it cannot purchase it terrorizes; and the
small residue which it cannot terrorize it seeks to cajole: all this
to the end that its dominion may be universal and everlasting.
In this work of gaining possession of public opinion and perverting
that opinion to its own uses Wall Street employs all methods and uses
all expedients. Wall Street deliberately marks its game; and we have
to confess that the game generally falls at the first fire. We have
heard, however, of a single case of a brave man, now dead, who, when
offered ten thousand dollars for his voice against his conviction and
his opinion against his soul, in the matter of electing President of
the United States the man who was the candidate of Wall Street, told
the subtle committee to make an immediate and expeditious visit to the
bottom of the old theology.
This train of thought rises vividly to mind when I consider the
article of Mr. Henry Clews on "Wall Street, Past, Present, and
Future." This article came unsought and unexpected to the editorial
desk of THE ARENA. I confess that I doubted its genuineness. For why
should Mr. Clews address the public through the columns of THE ARENA?
What has THE ARENA done to merit such distinction? Satisfying myself
that the contribution was genuine, that it was not--and is not--a
hallucination, I at once divined that it must be a sort of challenge
to this magazine. I do the author of "Wall Street, Past, Present, and
Future," the honor to believe that he does not suppose THE ARENA to be
sufficiently verdant to publish his adroit and well-covered apology
for the great institution which he represents,--without knowing the
sense and significance of it. If indeed the distinguished gentleman
imagined that we could do such a thing here, then in good sooth he
must be undeceived. Or if he supposed that a paper of the kind
submitted would be _rejected_ at this office because of our well-known
antagonism to the fact which Mr. Clews defends, let him in that
instance also be undeceived.
At the office of THE ARENA we take all challenges. Nor should our
friends suppose or fear that the welcome admission of Mr. Clews's
article to the pages of THE ARENA implies timidity or some possible
weakness in the presence of that gigantic institution known by the
name of Wall Street. The fact is, that the nightmare which that power
has been able to spread, bat-like, over the souls of men for a quarter
of a century has about been dissipated; it is already the beginning of
the end. It is the dawn; the day is not very far in the future when
the American people, roused at last to the exertion of their majesty,
will shake themselves from the dread of this incubus and spring up
like a giant refreshed from slumber.
Mr. Clews's article on "Wall Street, Past, Present, and Future," is a
most gentle and dove-like performance. It is not a paper intended to
produce alarm, but to allay it. It is one of the finest examples of a
literary opiate that I have ever seen. The bottom theme of the paper
is that Wall Street is a natural growth, and is therefore inevitable.
Wall Street has come by a gentle evolution. Good men and true have
conspired with nature to bring it forth. Under natural and necessary
conditions Wall Street has appeared in our American system, and under
these conditions it flourishes. Whatever great fact in society has
thus appeared has been born of necessity and out of the nature of
things. If Wall Street have been born out of necessity and the nature
of things, then it has come of righteousness, and is the child of
truth. If of righteousness and truth, then Wall Street is good as well
as glorious. That which is good and glorious ought to be admired and
honored. Whatever is admired and honored, whatever is good and
glorious, should have influence and power in society and state. Such a
golden product of evolution is Wall Street; therefore the sceptre
which Wall Street stretches forth over the prostrate Western world
should be obeyed and upheld by the voice and hand of the American
people.
Not only so, but the sceptre should be extended. The empire of Wall
Street should become universal. It should be enlarged and confirmed
until all outlying kingdoms and all islands of the sea shall pass
under the beneficent sway of this monarchy of the world! Then with Mr.
Clews we may well consider his "reasonable forecast of the future."
With him we shall be able to see "that in due time the weighty import
of the names of Lombard and Threadneedle Streets will be transferred
to the name of Wall Street." With Mr. Clews we shall be able to see
that "the facts implied by such a transfer are of a dignity and power
which it is impossible to estimate." Then, finally, with Mr. Clews we
shall agree that "the road leading to this great destiny _can only be
blocked by legislation_." Mr. Clews says "injurious" legislation.
Certainly; that is true--most true. The consummation hoped for by Mr.
Clews can verily be blocked by legislation! But when it comes to the
definition of "injurious" how fearfully do we part company! The writer
of "Wall Street, Past, Present, and Future" flatters himself, in fine,
with the belief that "the good sense of our citizens may be
confidently relied upon to prevent the creation of such a barricade
against national prosperity." Oh, it is "national prosperity" then
that we have in view! That is good. If there be anything under heaven
which Wall Street adores and dotes on more than any other thing in the
world it is national prosperity! When it comes to national prosperity
Wall Street is always full-handed. With the mere mention of national
prosperity Wall Street raises a shout of sympathetic enthusiasm which
reverberates from Passamaquoddy to San Diego, and from the Florida
everglades to the snow-capped shoulders of Shasta!
Let me, however, explain to Mr. Clews one thing, and that is that the
blessed condition of universal society in which Wall Street, having
absorbed Lombard and Threadneedle, shall be supreme over the nations
will occur only when our free American institutions shall be crushed
into fragments and when civil liberty shall lie bleeding among the
ruins. It will occur _then_, and not before. It will occur when the
residue of the old American spirit has been stamped out, and when a
miserable, slavish subserviency shall have been substituted for the
revolutionary freedom which our fathers won and made sacred with their
blood on every patriot battlefield from Lexington to Appomattox.
Temperately and patiently I will follow Mr. Clews's paper through. The
writer of the article is a gentlemanly and able representative of that
colossal power which he has helped to build up and fortify. From being
a child of that power he has now become, in a most theosophical
manner, one of the fathers of it! As such he has made himself the
apologist of a gigantic and rampant beast on whose horns of hazard
the values produced by the labor of seventy millions of Americans are
tossed about as if the wreckage were so much waste excelsior thrown on
the horns of a bull! Mr. Clews tells us that in 1792 twenty-seven
gentlemen met under a buttonwood tree and formed the association known
as Wall Street. The purpose of the association was "the purchase and
sale of public stocks at a fixed and unvarying commission, with a
proviso of mutual help and preference." The result was the addition of
"the prestige and power of the stock exchange to the prestige and
power of the banks." That indeed is a combination worthy to be
considered! A consolidation of interests was effected between the
exchange and the banks to purchase and sell stocks "with a proviso of
mutual help."
The organization thus created has existed for one hundred and five
years. It has made a history. It has become ever greater and more
firmly fixed in and _on_ American society. It has made itself to be
the foundation of all things financial and political in the United
States. The story of the process by which this prodigious result has
been reached is narrated by Mr. Clews in the manner of one who gives
an account of the formation of a temperance society or a Sunday
school! In the whole article there does not appear a symptom of a
suspicion that the thing of which he gives the history is the most
dangerous and abusive fact that ever threatened the integrity of a
nation. The argument is that if twenty-seven gentlemen thus met and
created Wall Street, then the result, being a natural product, is good
and wholesome. But the inquiry at once arises whether it is valid
logic to suppose that what men do is right, simply because they do it.
The affirmative of such a proposition would make Aristotle stagger. It
amounts to this, that whatever is is right; therefore, let it alone.
By this argument of Mr. Clews all the tyrannies of the past, all the
horrors that have afflicted the human race, all the sufferings which
men have endured from sword and pestilence, from servitude, from the
butchery of war and the cruelty of the Inquisition, have been right
merely because they have been natural. Under this rule every monster
that has tormented society from the first day until now can find full
justification for itself on the simple ground that it exists! Under
such an argument a howitzer is as good as a plough, a sword is as good
as a sickle, a pillory is as good as a baby-wagon. By such reasoning a
shark is as useful as a horse. By this logic a boa-constrictor is as
good as a reindeer, a tiger is as useful and salutary in his office as
an ox or a St. Bernard, and a cancer is as beautiful as a blush. That
is, everything is good, not because it is useful and just, but because
it is.
Or again, Mr. Clews's argument is this: that the men who created Wall
Street were gentlemen; therefore their work was salutary. Just as
though respectable people could not engage in a nefarious business.
Just as though gentlemen could not, and would not, make a conspiracy
to enslave the human race. The "gentleman" is a very uncertain factor
in civilization; his devotion to right and truth requires always to be
tested with a chemical and to be taken with the usual combination of
chlorine and sodium.
Mr. Clews explains that the stocks underlying our old railroad
properties in the United States were aforetime "held locally," and
that they were transferred "more frequently by executors than by
brokers on the stock exchange"--as though that were an evil. Then
"there were but few opportunities for dealing in shares"--as though
_that_ were an evil! It thus became necessary for Wall Street to get
the old stocks belonging to the people out of the people's hands and
into the hands of the Street--as though _that_ were a good. Our public
improvements were in the first place made by the people, but the
people were not fit to own them. Our railways were constructed with
capital subscribed by the people, generally by those through whose
country the given improvement was extended. The people themselves then
owned their own, and controlled it. Until Wall Street reached out and
clutched such properties--first putting down the prices of the shares
to nothing and then pulling the given stocks to par--the people were
able to protect themselves; but never afterwards.
The same was true of all other securities, whether public or private.
Nearly all bonded debts were at first local; but the holding of
securities _locally_ has always been a thing abhorrent to Wall Street.
The idea of the Street is that all stocks and all securities belong,
not to the public, but to itself. Of course the _money capital_ of the
country belongs to the Street. And if, with the consent of public
authority, the _stocks_ of the country also can be held by the Street,
then a humble peasantry, paying perennial rents and compound interest,
can be created and kept under forever throughout the domains of the
great Republic. It may ultimately require arsenals to do it, but these
we can supply.
The next stage in the game was the creation by Wall Street of
fictitious enterprises for the distinct purpose of getting possession
of the stocks on which such enterprises were based, and of speculating
in the shares of such properties. When the _existing_ stocks of
railways were not sufficient--when the bonds of States and of the
general government were insufficient in quantity to fill the maw of
the benevolent being called Wall Street--then an _artificial_ supply
must be created; that is, some scheme of debts must be invented by
which the people might be made to pay tribute to the good Wall Street,
and pay it still more abundantly.
Thus were invented new banks and new banking systems. Thus came the
bull and the bear and the bucket-shop. Thus were projected a thousand
railways and canals. Many of these were laid into impossible
regions--all "for the benefit of the people!" Other enterprises which
were not sufficiently stocked began to be stocked more heavily--this
also for the benefit of the people. The plan of watering was invented;
the method of "promoting" enterprises was perfected,--until, as early
as the time of the Civil War, Wall Street had acquired the greatest
skill in _making_ debts, or, in the language of James Fisk, Jr., in
"rescuing the property of other people from themselves."
These beautiful processes are glossed over by Mr. Clews with a
pleasant account of how, with the growth of business and the discovery
of gold and the oncoming of the age of construction, great enterprises
were "promoted" by Wall Street, and how "capital instantly flowed
forth from its reservoirs in answer to the securities" that flowed
thereto. The author of "Wall Street, Past, Present, and Future,"
affirms "that but for the combined machinery of the New York banks and
the stock exchange the actual developments of twenty years would have
dragged laboriously through an entire century." Permit us to say that
it would have been better that such "actual developments" should have
dragged through _two_ centuries than that the United States of America
should have been stocked and mortgaged and bonded and enslaved, under
the tyrannous lash of debt, by such a master as Wall Street.
Mr. Clews next comes to the subject of corners. On this topic we doubt
not that he speaks as one having authority. He tells us quite
complacently that there was "an epoch in the Wall Street of the past
when the gigantic and deeply considered combinations were set in
motion entitled 'corners.'" Then he goes on to explain what corners
are. He does so without the slightest expression of criticism or
aversion. He tells us of the bulls and the bears by whose agency a
corner is conducted as though they were the friendly competitors in
some great philanthropy! Instead of describing corners as so many
carefully contrived schemes to rob the people of the proceeds of their
labor by putting the prices of their commodities and securities down
until such commodities and securities are taken from their hands, and
then putting the prices _up_ in order that the robbers may reap the
harvest, he speaks of corners as offering "brilliant illustrations of
genius and strategic skill in financial warfare!"
The fact is that the men who are reared in Wall Street, who from their
youth are familiarized with its processes, and who are well set in the
plastic age to consider human life as an auspicious opportunity for
getting possession of something that does not belong to them, are
fatally blunted in their sensibilities; the ethical quality in them is
battered out--or at least battered; they come to regard the human race
as an enormous ranch of sheep to be shorn at the pleasure of the
shearers; they even grow to consider each other as so much mutton to
be butchered and roasted by whoever is able to do it.
I notice with surprise that Mr. Clews in his sketch of Wall Street
dwells not at all upon the benevolent agency of that power during the
Civil War. This is an oversight which I beg leave to supply. There has
never perhaps been an instance in human history in which a great power
has so ardently devoted itself "to the preservation of free
institutions" as did Wall Street in that epoch of mortal agony. Then
it was that Wall Street engaged in the patriotic work, first of
destroying the national credit, then of buying it up at half price,
then of converting it into a bonded debt to be perpetuated for a full
generation, and finally of compelling the people to pay it in a dollar
worth four times as much as the dollar with which it was purchased. It
was a beautiful scheme of devotion and self-sacrifice the like of
which history has never before recorded. It was a speculation which
involved the life of the American Republic. The Union was on trial.
All nerves were strained, and all hearts were torn. The nation was
bleeding at every pore. Every freight-train that came from the front
brought back its loaded boxes of dead. Fathers and mothers gathered at
the station, and each received his own. The rough coffin containing
the body of the patriot boy who had given his life for the flag was
taken by the silent father and mother to its resting-place under the
apple trees. All true men had tearful faces, and a stern resolve in
the heart. And while _this_ was the condition of the nation and the
people, the high-toned Wall Street was speculating on the life of the
Republic. It bought and sold blood. It was a bull on disaster and a
bear on victory. It established bureaus through which to falsify
intelligence and to bring the nation to the verge of ruin. It had no
compunction. It regarded the gore of battlefields as the rich rain and
mould out of which its own harvest was to grow. The more blood the
merrier. The more tears the richer the yield. The more war the more
debt. The more depression of the national credit the more cheaply we
shall be able to gather it up! The more grape-vine despatches the more
distraction and the better opportunity for us. The more death the more
millions. The more horror and devastation the heavier will be our
coffers. The more the people groan the more we will shout. The more
they die the more we will live. The more the flag is torn the more our
damask curtains will flutter. The more liberty perishes and withers
from the earth the more we shall plant ourselves and flourish and rule
and reign over a nation that we have destroyed and a people whom we
have enslaved. If Mr. Clews wishes any further outline of the history
of Wall Street during our Civil War we shall be glad to contribute
such a sketch as a reminiscence of a great fact which appears to be
dim in his memory.
There is another almost fatal omission in Mr. Clews's article. He says
but little about the principal work in which Wall Street, historically
considered, has been engaged during the last thirty years. I do not
like the way in which this great section of the "Past" of Wall Street
is glossed over. During the period referred to, that institution has
had one bottom purpose and one reason of action from which it has
never deviated. This purpose, this reason of action, has been the
perpetuation of the national debt and the increase of its value by
bulling the unit of money in which the debt is payable. Wall Street
knows that the bonded debt of the United States is the basis, or
central fact, in the whole system of bonds and stocks. Wall Street
knows that the dollar is the central fact in the bond. It knows that
if the bond can be made everlasting and the dollar can be increased in
value until a single unit of it shall be equivalent to an acre of
farming land, then the Street can own the United States in fee simple,
and can presently annex the rest of the world.
I acknowledge a certain admiration when I consider this stupendous
scheme. It is more than Napoleonic; it is continental, interplanetary,
sidereal! I cannot recall another conspiracy in the history of mankind
quite equal in colossal and criminal splendor to the profound and
universal plot of Wall Street to make perpetual the national debt, to
keep that debt the bottom fact in the banking system of the United
States, and to bull the unit of money and account until it shall be
worth four times as much, or perhaps ten times as much, as it was when
the bulk of the debt was contracted.
The history of this scheme in its true inwardness is the history of
Wall Street for the past thirty years. The details of the history
relate to such small circumstances as the transfer of the government
of the great Republic from the hands and control of the people to the
hands and control of the Street. Of course no such scheme as that
referred to could be carried into successful operation _unless_ the
national government could be delivered over to the keeping of the
Street and be locked up, as it were, in the same vault where the
national debt is deposited.
This feat, however, was easily accomplished. Wall Street reached out
its hand and plucked down the American eagle from his perch. Wall
Street got possession of the government. The _coup_ was accomplished
while the nation was asleep--else it never could have been
accomplished. Wall Street climbed the Tarpeian rock in the night, and
no goose cackled to give the alarm. Columbia had gone to bed. The
keeper of her treasure-house had already given the key to the enemy.
The keeper of the treasury was a _part_ of the enemy. He gave up both
citadel and city. In the morning the walls were placarded with lying
posters which said that the delivery of the government into the hands
of the Hessians had been rendered necessary in order "to preserve the
national honor!" It was done in order to keep faith with those
benevolent patriots who had bought the debt of the nation at less than
fifty cents to the dollar, and who, not satisfied with bringing it to
par, were now engaged in the honorable work of making it worth two
hundred cents to the dollar. The fact that the industries of the
people would be crushed and the people themselves be reduced to
poverty by the transfer of the national sovereignty from the capitol
to the stock exchange was nothing in comparison with the "preservation
of national honor."
The scheme was carried out. The methods by which it was carried out
constitute the subject-matter of the true history of Wall Street
during the past generation. Wall Street, from being a financial
organization, became a political power. It took full possession of the
executive and legislative departments of the government. It controlled
them both. It promptly established and defended its ownership. It
instituted one scheme after another. For the purpose of fortifying its
usurpation, it learned to choose its men and to prepare its measures
in advance. In 1884 it created an administration for its own purposes,
and manned it to the same end. It forced its way into the House of
Representatives and stood with a bludgeon behind the Speaker's chair.
It entered every committee-room and dictated every successful bill.
The people's bills all went one way. If by any chance one of the
people's bills got before the House the subsidized press, owned by
Wall Street, raised against it a chorus of groans and catcalls; _that_
was "an expression of public opinion"!
From that day forth the popular voice was strangled into silence. The
next administration (that of 1888) was prepared in the same manner.
Wall Street has no politics except the politics of the bond; it has no
platform except the platform of cent per cent. It suffices that when a
president is to be elected he shall be one of us. He shall not be a
man of the people; else in that case he would be a demagogue, a
windbag, a _vox et præterea nil_. _Our_ man shall not even know the
despised people. He shall not smell of the filthy ground, but must be
"sound" on questions of finance. If he be not "sound," we will make
him so. We will teach him his paces. If the people conclude to change
their government, we will see to it that the incoming powers are just
like the outgoing. As for the "principles" on which the candidate
shall be chosen, we will attend to that. We will make his principles
for him. We understand principles perfectly. We will fix the platform;
we know the carpenters. If the candidate and his friends have already
fixed a platform before the date of the convention, and if it have
been published everywhere as the decision of the candidate and his
following, we will take that platform from the wires and will
carefully revise it, to the end that the "national honor" shall be
preserved. We will write it over again into new meanings. We will
interpret it so that no harm shall be done to the "national credit."
We will make our candidate into a puppet. When we put our foot on the
treadle his jaw shall drop and he shall utter many mocking words about
the "national honor" and the "prospects of our glorious
country"--signifying nothing.
All this we will do for the public good. We will say that we are
striving for national prosperity. We will proclaim our candidate as
the advance agent of prosperity--until after the election. Then we
will say that prosperity will come with the inauguration. Then we will
say that it will shine out promptly when Congress adjourns and ceases
to menace the national credit. Then we will say that prosperity will
reveal itself when the hot season is over. By this time the hoodwinked
people can be coddled to sleep, or else set to dancing with rumors of
foreign wars. To this end we will have our newspapers carefully
promote our principles and studiously avoid all reference to those
subjects in which the people feel the deepest concern. Finally, we
will omit all these matters from our history of "Wall Street, Past;"
we will proceed to speak of our "Wall Street, Present," and will
explain that it is in a state of "lassitude and expectancy." Indeed
"lassitude and expectancy" is good.
But there is still another yawning chasm in the history of "Wall
Street, _Past_," and that is Mr. Clews's failure to discuss the
transfer of the Treasury of the United States to the custody of the
Street, and the consequent reduction of the Secretary of the Treasury
to the rank of a clerk. This very thing has been most successfully
accomplished. I believe that the Secretary still has an office at
Washington, but that should be closed in the interest of economy and
reform. To do so, we doubt not, would be a strong factor in the
restoration of confidence. Perhaps the Washington office might be left
in charge of a janitor, for it is understood that some official
correspondence is still directed to the old address! The presence of
the Secretary in New York, however, has become so essential to the
proper discharge of his duties that the removal of his residence
thither can only be deferred by an absurd deference to public opinion!
The results of the transfer of this vital function of the national
government have, in the meantime, been so salutary as fully to
vindicate the change. This was shown in 1893-94 when the Street, with
a strong repugnance to investing money in useful enterprises, and
having a prodigious accumulation of funds on hand, concluded that a
sale of Government bonds was necessary for the "national honor." To
this end the managers began to pull the treasury. In that institution
a large sum of gold was stored, wholly without warrant of law. The
people needed the gold beyond measure--that is, they needed the
_money_; and gold is one form of money. The industries of the people
had been prostrated by an international conspiracy, and the nation was
quivering on the verge of apprehended ruin.
In this crisis the patriotic Street devised the bucket-chain, the
crank of which was in the hand of the Street, while the "chain" ran
through the Treasury of the United States. Every bucket came out
filled with gold. Lazard Frères emptied out the gold and shipped it
abroad to their confederates. This created the necessity for buying it
back with bonds. The people were stunned with the audacity of the
thing--just as the unfortunate owners of a house in flames are stunned
to see gentlemen of the profession rush in and empty the safe. Wall
Street danced and shouted while the work was done. The bonds were
"popular," and the Street got them--got them for one price and sold
them for another.
By this beautiful process the great American nation was literally held
up and _robbed_ of more than nineteen million dollars! No highwayman
ever more successfully clutched the wizen of his victim than did the
Street with its supple fingers around the white larynx of Columbia.
The wheezing of the strangulated Republic could be heard from the St.
Lawrence to the Rio Grande. The nation was thus "saved," and the
robbers took the money and went sailing away on summer cruises to
Norway and Venice and the Cyclades. The "national credit" was
preserved; Wall Street "rescued" us from dishonor! That part of the
proceeds not consumed in yacht races, pyrotechnics, and balls was
passed to the credit of the reform fund, needed for the restoration of
prosperity in the fall of 1896! Certainly a history of "Wall Street,
Past," ought to contain some reference to these crimes.
Mr. Clews, turning to "Wall Street, Present," tells the nation that
now "the great banks have a superabundance of gold to lend on solid
and readily salable collateral at low rates of interest, approximating
the prevalent rates in London and Paris, where similar accumulations
of idle capital exist." This is a true statement of the facts. Mr.
Clews has here spoken by the books. What he says signifies that Wall
Street is now ready to go ahead and issue new mortgages on the
American people. It is now ready to offer inducements to our fourteen
millions of voters to sell themselves into another twenty-year cycle
of bondage. If they will only be gentle and not interrupt us; if they
will give us a true death-grip on themselves, on all they possess, and
all they ever hope to possess, we will lend back to them a part of the
very money which we have sucked up from their wheat fields and
pastures, from their barns and potato patches, from their humble
stores and markets, from their mills and their mines, and we will thus
_expedite_ them on the way to serfdom. Meanwhile we will continue to
bankrupt their railways, to snatch their local stocks, to convert all
shares in all enterprises into bonds, and to put the bonds into our
safes to the end--that confidence may be restored and prosperity come
back like the flowers that bloom in the spring.
For the time being we, the Street, are able to toss "two hundred
thousand shares a day" on the horns of our bull, and to put the same
amount of securities under the custody of our bear. "This conclusion
takes it for granted that the profits should be equally divided among
the membership." Such are Mr. Clews's very words. By the bond of my
faith! there is nothing else so beautiful and magnificent as this
among the arts invented by mankind! As for the people, one of your own
kings, Messieurs of the Street, has very properly indicated your wish
and purpose with regard to _them_.
Mr. Clews tells us that the "Future" of Wall Street is a sealed book;
and yet we may allow that "there is such a thing as an accurate
prevision of events." Of this kind are eclipses, occultations, and
tides of the sea. If the capital of Wall Street has, since the
institution was founded, increased more than sixtyfold, as Mr. Clews
declares, then we may expect it, according to his philosophy, to
increase full sixty times sixty, until the world shall be swallowed
up. Then, when Threadneedle and Lombard Streets shall have lost their
sceptre; then, when Seneca's forecast of the time to come shall have
been fulfilled; then, when Macaulay's New Zealander shall have made
his sketch, not only of St. Paul's, but also of the bank of England;
then, when _all_ the wealth, and _all_ the power, and _all_ the
functions of civil society in the United States shall have been
transferred to Wall Street; then, when nothing shall remain to the
American people except their squalid huts and the sorrowful
reminiscences of a great republic; then, when Wall Street in very
truth shall have possessed itself of the earth and consumed
mankind,--I suppose that the benevolent owners of the world will found
a few libraries, build a few marble mausoleums for themselves, and
sally forth to establish a stock exchange in Mars! That done,
interplanetary wars may be engendered, bonds on the solar system may
be issued and bought at half price, a gold standard of values may be
fixed on the basis of the pound sterling good from the sun out to
Neptune, and the inhabitants of the worlds, either by arms or by
journalism, may become the helots of consolidated wealth enthroned as
the governing power of the universe.
THE REFORM CLUB'S FEAST OF UNREASON.
BY HON. CHARLES A. TOWNE,
_Chairman Provisional National Committee Silver Republican Party._
On Saturday evening, April 24, 1897, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York,
there was held a political banquet intended as a most impressive
function, but which has passed into history as a very ridiculous one.
Big with self-complacence and puffed with pride, as it appeared in the
brilliant lights and gorgeous appointments of the palatial
supper-hall, within twenty-four hours the lacerating indignation of
Mr. Watterson and the trenchant raillery of Mr. Bryan had let the
tumid pretentiousness all out of it, and it had collapsed into a
flaccid and "innocuous desuetude." The "star-eyed goddess" turned her
back upon it, the "wild-orbed anarch" snapped his fingers at it, and
even everyday Mrs. Grundy laughed it to scorn. Projected with the most
alluring and satisfying expectations, the feast has dwindled to the
memory of a sad mistake in the mind of every man that assisted at it.
Planned as a sort of coronation ceremony, its completed performance
unaccountably wore the complexion of belated obsequies irreverently
disturbed by the guffaws of the multitude.
But the aspect of this banquet as a piece of ill-conceived political
strategy that never was formidable, or as a rite in the ceremonial of
a hero-worship that is as inexplicable as inopportune, does not now so
much concern me as does its office as a dispenser of misinformation
and unsound philosophy, which are always dangerous. Many who condemn
the folly of it as a move in practical politics nevertheless loudly
commend the economic doctrines it contributed to spread. But inasmuch
as, in my opinion, the science it taught is as bad as the politics it
practised, I propose to call attention to a few of the arrogant
assumptions and mischievous theories that found emphatic and repeated
expression at this feast.
Did the purpose of this article permit, it would be interesting to
make Mr. Cleveland's speech the text of some examination into the
ex-President's peculiarities of style. It was Clevelandesque to the
core. All his protuberant characteristics are there: the leviathanic
egotism, the profound and tenebrous ponderosity, the labored intricacy
of the commonplace, the pedagogic moralizing, the oracular
inconsequence. How absurdly obvious it all is now, and how
inexplicable that the glamour of high place should ever have clothed
such matter as his with the seeming of philosophy and statesmanship!
'Tis the very frippery and trumpery of the stage after the lights are
out and the audience has departed.
In his opening Mr. Cleveland says: "On every side we are confronted
with popular depression and complaint." This language stirs an echo of
the long ago. In his special message to the extra session of the
Fifty-third Congress in August, 1893, he thus announced a similar
condition: "Suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on
every side." But he accounts differently for these two identical
phenomena. The situation to-day he largely attributes to "the work of
agitators and demagogues." In 1893 he declared: "I believe these
things are principally chargeable to Congressional legislation
touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the general
government."
The ex-President's explanations are both wrong, and nobody ought to
know it so well as himself. His relations with the great gold bankers
were exceedingly intimate in 1892 and 1893, and have been so ever
since. It is notorious that the panic of 1893 was a bankers' panic
deliberately brought about by these men to frighten public sentiment
into supplementing their demand for the repeal of the purchasing
clause of the Sherman law of 1890. The agitation against that law was
a whooped-up and manufactured agitation. No legitimate interest had
suffered from its operation. On the contrary, the access of standard
silver dollars coined under the laws of 1878 and 1890 had been of
incalculable advantage to the country. In his annual message of
December 2, 1890, President Harrison had thus referred to this fact:
"The general tendency of the markets was upward from influences wholly
apart from the recent tariff legislation. The enlargement of our
currency by the silver bill undoubtedly gave an upward tendency to
trade and had a marked effect on prices." And again: "It is gratifying
to know that the increased circulation secured by the act has
exerted, and will continue to exert a most beneficial influence upon
business and upon general values."
Such an influence that circulation did indeed continue to exert. The
comparative prosperity of the two following years, which, in contrast
with the conditions of the subsequent period, causes 1892 to wear to
wistful eyes so beautiful a hue in these unhappy days, would have been
an absolute impossibility but for the silver legislation.
Nor was the credit of the government menaced. It was a malicious
afterthought that represented the silver dollar as a charge upon the
credit of the nation. That dollar was a standard dollar. It was never
"redeemed" in anything but the money-work it did. There was no law for
its redemption, and there was as yet no attempt, such as Mr. Carlisle
in 1896 declared himself ready to make, to commit the crime of an
administrative degradation of the circulating silver dollars into
promises for the payment of gold. The Treasury Notes, issued in
payment for silver bullion under the law of 1890, were redeemable in
either gold or silver at the discretion of the Secretary of the
Treasury; and inasmuch as there was silver behind every one of them,
they could become a menace to the credit of the government only in
case of the betrayal of his duty by that official.
But the contractionists looked with alarm upon the improving
conditions of the country. Something must be done to discredit silver,
or by and by there might arise such a demand for the full restoration
of its mint privileges and money powers as could not be balked, as
every similar demand had been balked since 1873; and in that event the
slow villany of many years would have been fruitless and the
contractionists' occupation would be gone. Then was formed the deep
design to compel the repeal of the purchasing clause of the Sherman
law. The gigantic forces that had been behind Mr. Cleveland in the
memorable campaign of 1892 had not lost their cunning or their power.
They knew their implements, and they had had much experience. Their
strategy was customary and it was effective. To-day Mr. Cleveland
complains because the Republican party, having won the contest of last
November on the money question, should have hurried into the current
extra session on the tariff question. Let him recall his own course
when, having carried the country in 1892 on the tariff question, he
summoned the extra session of 1893 to consider the money question.
Such a reflection might possibly assist him in fathoming the present
motives of the men who won in 1892 to achieve the gold standard and in
1896 to preserve it.
For the election of Mr. Cleveland was a carefully executed move in an
elaborate and merciless programme. The president of a national bank in
North Dakota, a man of character and thorough reliability, has
recently made public a conversation between himself and a prominent
New York bank president, held not long after that election, in which
the latter, whose institution was a member of the Associated National
Banks, declared in substance as follows: "We have just elected Grover
Cleveland President of the United States upon the express
understanding with us that the policy of the administration shall be
to uphold and advance the gold standard"; and he foretold, with
startlingly faithful prevision, the repeal of the Sherman purchase
law, the successive bond-issues, and the general and ruinous fall of
prices, which seem to have evidenced the strict performance of the
agreement by the party of the second part.
How persistently the power of the executive was used, and how
carefully the offices were dispensed, to influence Senators and
members of Congress against the Sherman law, were matters of ordinary
comment at the time. Meanwhile the banks were putting in motion their
peculiar and enormous persuasions. For months no man could go into any
bank in any State of the Union for any purpose without having thrust
under his nose, with a more or less pointed request for his signature,
a petition demanding the repeal of the obnoxious statute. Then, in the
latter days of April, 1893, on the stock exchange, there began that
concerted onslaught upon stocks and values, vaunted as an
"object-lesson" to the people, as a result of which within eight
months six hundred of the relatively smaller banking institutions of
the country went down, dragging with them fifteen thousand industrial
and business enterprises, involving a total loss of seven hundred and
fifty millions of dollars.
The object-lesson served its purpose. With the business world
shattered into fragments, enterprise stifled, and credit dead, a
terror seized upon the people. The opportunity for which the big
bankers had been coolly waiting had come. Cunningly and in many places
at once they started the cry that the Sherman law had caused all this
havoc, and that the only hope for a return of prosperity lay in the
immediate repeal of the feature providing for the purchase of new
silver bullion. The clamor was eagerly repeated, and fear eagerly
believed it. At precisely the right moment the President himself made
official proclamation that the rumor was true, and summoned Congress
in extra session to obey the mandate of the bankers. Under this spell
Congress acted and the law was repealed. Thus was the country made
dependent upon gold alone for its new supplies of full-power money,
and thus, aided by similar action elsewhere, was inaugurated an era of
accelerated fall of prices more pronounced than the world has known
since the middle ages, and a precipitate decline of values more
ruinous than any other chronicled in history.
"Agitators and demagogues" indeed! Is it not monstrous that any
intelligent man should believe the present frightful condition of the
country to be due to the work of agitators and demagogues? Mr.
Cleveland of course knows better; but many people have actually been
convinced that some millions of our citizens would rather agitate than
work; that thousands of them have deliberately and by preference
forsworn business and become demagogues by trade. The thoughtful man
knows that agitation is first a result and afterward a cause. It is a
cruel as well as an ignorant thing for Mr. Cleveland and his disciples
to cast into the faces of the suffering producers and workers of the
United States, as a reproach, the fact of their discontent and
complaining. Of course our people are in distress. Of course they are
crying out against it. Of course they will endeavor to learn what
occasions it. And of course when they have ascertained what the matter
is they will agitate for relief. Substantially all men prefer to be
busy about the ordinary and interdependent offices of social life.
This is especially true of the great middle classes in the United
States. Under just and rational laws they will be so. The absence of
such a temper is ground for suspicion against the laws. Existing
conditions confess their weakness and injustice when they revile
admitted discontent. I would rather the cause I believe in sprang from
suffering than that suffering should follow my cause.
The full magnitude of this achievement for the gold standard in the
repeal of the law of 1890, will not be grasped unless we bear in mind
that it occurred at a time when the indications were unusually
favorable that an international bimetallic agreement, which the world
had been trying to accomplish for nearly twenty years, might soon be
secured on an acceptable basis. It has long been suspected that the
strongest discouragement of this hope, and probably the determining
factor in its failure, was the attitude of President Cleveland as
quietly caused to be understood abroad. Very recently this
well-grounded suspicion has been turned into certainty by the
distinguished English bimetallist, Mr. Moreton Frewen, who, in a
letter to the Washington _Post_, says:
But Mr. Cleveland made it known, through the subterranean
channels of diplomacy, that, far from giving any support to
silver, he was preparing to urge on Congress the repeal of the
silver-purchase clauses of the Sherman act. Mr. Cleveland's
intention became known in official circles in Calcutta. That this
was the case I learned at the time and at first hand. The
government of India believed that the cessation of all silver
purchases in America would still further reduce the exchange
value of the rupee, and therefore, in advance of the pending
anti-silver legislation anticipated from Washington, the Indian
mints were closed.
Mr. Cleveland may well be deified in the gold-standard cult, for
clearly he has been the arch-enemy of bimetallism.
One of the characteristics of the discussion now going on between the
advocates of gold monometallism and those of bimetallism is the
disingenuousness of the former. They will rarely consent to a clear
definition of the issue, but seek to evade it both by preëmpting the
use of moral labels and catchphrases which satisfy their partisans
without inquiry, and by stigmatizing their opponents with such vile
imputations and base epithets as seem to place them beyond the pale of
moral and intellectual tolerance. "Sound" and "honest" they write
above their creed. They pose as consecrated guardians of public honor
and private property. We are depicted as dishonest and imbecile,
repudiators of national and individual obligations, communists or
anarchists bearing the torch and axe. This specialty is Mr.
Cleveland's long suit. Little wonder that his school should place him
at its head. His preëminence in the field where self-admiration is a
supreme virtue and ribald abuse passes for irrefutable argument will
scarcely be denied by anybody who shall have read the following
characteristic specimens from this Waldorf essay, carefully written
down and calmly delivered: "We are gathered here to-night as patriotic
citizens anxious to do something toward ... protecting the fair fame
of our nation against shame and scandal." It is not recorded that
anybody smiled at this. Indeed, the astonishing thing about this
business is that these people seem able to impose successfully on one
another. But Mr. Cleveland is even better at the other kind, as for
example: "Agitators and demagogues," "ruthless agitators," "sordid
greed," "inflamed with tales of an ancient crime against their
rights," "unfortunate and unreasonable," "restless and turbulent,"
"reckless creed," "boisterous and passionate campaign," "allied forces
of calamity," "encouraged by malign conditions," and so on _ad
nauseam_.
This is the attitude of nearly all the defenders of the gold standard
who have the hardihood to say anything at all. Undoubtedly in many
cases it is assumed because of ignorance on the merits of the case, so
that nothing remains but to "abuse the other fellow." But occasionally
this course is adopted by men who are well informed, and who know that
the gold standard is incapable of meeting bimetallism in an honest
contest of argument with any hope of success. The strategy of these,
therefore, is to avoid fair discussion by so prejudicing the public
mind against their opponents as to forestall a hearing.
The result has been surprisingly successful. In many localities, and
in fact in nearly all localities in the East, the most intolerant
spirit has been manifested by the most prominent persons in the
community, who had never taken the pains to examine the subject on
which they so violently and fanatically expressed themselves. To
people of any acquaintance with the literature, the history, and the
science of money, it has seemed most marvellous that business men of
large affairs, of much general information, and of excellent natural
abilities, should be content to remain absolutely ignorant of
fundamental monetary principles and the overwhelmingly attested
lessons of past experience. It is infinitely pitiful to see men of
affairs led away in so-called "business men's sound-money
associations" and other similar movements, when a knowledge of the
conditions on which their welfare depends would send them in an
exactly opposite direction.
Why? Because business men are men who do business, or at any rate who
want to do business; and all legitimate business consists in the
performance of some appropriate function in connection with the
production or the exchange of commodities. It is apparent to even the
dullest apprehension that whatever prevents or discourages production
is destructive of business, and that a money system which provides a
measuring unit that constantly demands, as an equivalent, an
increasing quantity of everything produced, is the greatest burden on
production that could possibly be devised. But it is precisely this
kind of a unit that the gold standard furnishes. No one economic fact
is so conclusively established and so generally conceded as that of
the progressive fall of average prices throughout the gold-standard
world during the last twenty-four years. This fall amounts to almost
fifty per cent, and indeed, in respect to the great staple products of
the country, exceeds fifty per cent; so that, to state the same fact
in its converse, the purchasing power of gold has increased since 1873
one hundred per cent.
The significance of this awful fact is deftly obscured behind the
deceptive and specious plea for "a dollar of the greatest purchasing
power." This is one of those artful expressions that are used by the
advocates of the gold standard as a kind of thought-deterrent. It
seems so obvious, at the first suggestion, that the best dollar is the
dollar that will buy the most, that it is hard for a man to get even a
hearing who asserts that, on the contrary, such a dollar is the very
worst dollar conceivable. But a moment's reflection will satisfy any
sane mind that such is the case. The demonstration is so simple that
one feels like apologizing for making it. Yet it is in respect to
principles just as plain as this one that people are constantly
allowing themselves to be taken in by the supporters of the single
standard.
The demonstration is this: whatever is bought by a dollar, itself buys
the dollar. For example, when a dollar exchanges for a bushel of
wheat, the dollar buys the wheat, and the wheat buys the dollar. To
say, therefore, that a dollar that buys two bushels of wheat, being a
dollar of greater purchasing power, is better than the dollar that
buys one bushel, is to say that the dollar which it requires two
bushels of wheat to buy is a better dollar than that which can be
bought with one bushel. Consequently, to increase the excellence of
your dollar all you need to do is to increase the scarcity of the
stuff out of which dollars are made, so that each one shall constantly
stand for more and more wheat, or, using wheat merely as
representative of commodities in general, so that it shall constantly
require more and more of all other things on earth to get a dollar. It
is wholly credible that the man with dollars should profess this
philosophy, but it is absolutely inexplicable how it should receive
the support of men interested in getting dollars with things, who
comprise about seven-eighths of society.
Now as it continually takes more products to get a given quantity of
gold, is it not clear that the producer who becomes liable for taxes
and gets into debt must constantly bear an increasing burden of
taxation, and that his debt, payable in more commodities than it
represented when he incurred it, needs only to run long enough to grow
beyond the hope of his ability to pay it? Such a policy cannot but be
fraught with certain ruin to producers. It is causing in the United
States a condition frightful to contemplate. The mass of debts is
piling up at a ratio that absolutely threatens, if a halt in the
automatic process is not soon called, a universal insolvency. Indeed a
general liquidation is already impossible. He is no alarmist who
counsels a timely and rational remedy as not only demanded by justice,
but as anticipatory of violent readjustment. Under such disquieting
conditions is it not as criminal as it is unscientific for men to go
about prating of the system that has occasioned these things as
"honest money," and "sound money," and denouncing its opponents as
repudiators and anarchists?
In the presence of epochal and fundamental disturbance, when men,
patient beyond example and willing to argue the correctness of their
claims, are crying out against the injustice of a money system that
day and night and year upon year, with unerring and pitiless
precision, takes from the producing many and hands over to the idle
few that which it ruins those to lose and but pampers these to gain,
our ex-President offends decency and insults millions of his
fellow-citizens with this reference to their contention: "Honest
accumulation is called a crime." Where does he find anybody calling
honest accumulation a crime? Men indeed stigmatize the maintenance of
this odious money system as a crime, but only because of the things
they claim it to be guilty of. Why does he not join issue on these? He
knows that nowhere in all this world is there, or has there ever been,
a more honest body of citizenship than the millions of Americans who
to-day are toiling on the farms and in the workshops of the country
and who demand from the laws they obey nothing but equity and justice.
It was easier, and more pleasant to those who heard him, to wrong
these men with a sneer than to answer them with an argument. He might
possibly have done well to relinquish this task to one who sat near
him, his ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who had himself, in 1878,
discovered something that _he_ thought a crime and had thus denounced
it: "According to my views of the subject the conspiracy which seems
to have been formed here and in Europe to destroy, by legislation and
otherwise, from three-sevenths to one-half the metallic money of the
world, is the most gigantic crime of this or any other age."
The speech of Mr. Carlisle was notable for stating his position more
extremely than he had previously done since his apostasy. He boldly
takes the stand logically demanded by consistency in the man who
opposes silver coinage and denies the arguments based on the
appreciation of gold. He comes out squarely for the gold standard and
places bimetallism of any and all sorts under a common ban. But alas!
what a sorry appearance he makes. Nowhere in our political history do
I find quite so pathetic a figure as that presented by this once
strong and virile champion of the people's rights in his contrasted
role of defender of their oppressors. Where now is that compact and
cogent argument, that sincere and moving eloquence, which made his
forensic style so singularly effective; which marked him the
parliamentary darling of his party, a predestined president of the
republic? Shrunken to the dreary platitudes of the gold-standard
catechism, babbling of "sound currency" and "intrinsic value."
This talk of intrinsic value was not confined to Mr. Carlisle. Mr.
Patterson, of Tennessee, and Senator Caffery, of Louisiana, were
likewise guilty of it. It is, indeed, the characteristic folly of
their school. Having destroyed the money demand for silver while
adding almost incalculably to that for gold, they have caused an
increasing disparity in the values of the two metals; and now, when it
is sought to restore the parity by restoring the equivalence of use
and demand on which alone it depends, they pretend to have discovered
some inherent perfection in gold and an original sin in silver which
forbid all attempts to reconcile them. In the face of monetary
principles whose nature has been understood for more than two thousand
years, and of historic and economic facts which every college freshman
knows, Mr. Carlisle has the appalling audacity to use the following
language: "Natural causes have separated the two metals, and while it
is possible that natural causes may hereafter change their present
relations to each other, it is certain that these relations cannot be
changed by artificial means."
It is difficult to speak with becoming moderation of such stuff as
this; and it is really pathetic to see the dominant opinion of whole
sections of the country taking its cue from men who assume superior
airs and rebuke the presumption of thinking on the part of some
millions of Americans, while they peddle such insufferable nonsense as
this just quoted from Mr. Carlisle. "Natural causes" indeed, when we
can turn to the statute books of half the world and put our fingers on
the "artificial means" whereby the hoarders of gold have legislated
demand into one metal and legislated it out of the other. Let once a
wrong be achieved by artificial means, and instantly those who profit
by it represent it as the inevitable decree of evolutional forces.
"Natural causes," we are asked to believe, have made gold dear and
silver cheap during a period when the cost of producing gold has been
cheapened more than any other mechanical process; when both metals
have continued on substantially their old relative planes of use in
every respect save as money; when their relative production has been
from three to twenty times less disproportionate than at any other
similar period in the past four hundred years; and when in actual
weight the stocks of coin and bullion available for coinage have risen
from a proportion of thirty-two of silver to one of gold up to that of
sixteen of silver to one of gold coincidently with a fall of the
so-called market ratio from fifteen and one-half to one, when the
mints were open to both, down to thirty-three to one when only the one
can be freely coined. It is simply an incredible and impossible
proposition.
Intrinsic value is as unthinkable as intrinsic distance. Both distance
and value are relations. Neither can exist or be stated except by
comparison. The value of a thing is what it is worth; and it is worth
what it will bring. Value in exchange is the only value that political
economy knows anything about; and what a given thing will exchange for
depends on the ratio of the supply of it to the demand for it. A piece
of money is worth what it will buy. Other things remaining the same,
it will buy more when the stuff out of which it is made is plentiful,
and less when that is scarce. The proposition of the bimetallists
rests on only time-honored doctrines of political economy as justified
by the experience of mankind. We desire to restore the parity of gold
and silver by perfectly "natural causes" set in operation by
"artificial means." We propose to invoke the law to equalize their
opportunity and to make them interchangeably and indifferently
responsive to the same money demand.
Space has not permitted reference to all the errors committed at this
wonderful banquet, nor a complete discussion of even those cited. I
have endeavored only to point out the most glaring ones in the hope
that some persons inclined to accept, somewhat carelessly, the
assumedly authoritative statements of these eminent men, may be led to
study this great subject whose proper understanding and wise
management are of such vast importance not only in American politics
but in the progress of the race. For the cause of bimetallism must
commend itself to the intellect and the conscience of the country or
it cannot win. Those who have spent some time in an earnest and
thoughtful investigation of the matter and are convinced that the
success of silver coinage is the first step in a series of rational,
safe, and necessary reforms, are ready to be judged as much by the
reasonableness of their doctrine as by the sincerity of their motives.
They intend from now on to force the fight. The enemy will be sought
out and assailed wherever found. No pretentious claims of
infallibility will be accorded immunity from criticism. No authority
will be permitted to shelter folly. It is time to expose the
preposterous assurance of the gold-standard pundits. Nonsense will be
called nonsense whoever utters it, and, what is more, it will be
proved to be nonsense.
DOES CREDIT ACT ON THE GENERAL LEVEL OF PRICES?
BY A. J. UTLEY.
It is conceded by all standard writers on political economy that the
value of money--that is, its purchasing power--is fixed and regulated
by the amount of money available for use.
John Stuart Mill says:
If the whole money in circulation was doubled prices would be
doubled. If it was only increased one-fourth, prices would rise
one-fourth. There would be one-fourth more money, all of which
would be used to purchase goods of some description. When there
had been time for the increased supply of money to reach all
markets, or (according to conventional metaphor) to permeate all
the channels of circulation, all prices would have risen
one-fourth. But the general rise of price is independent of this
diffusing process. Even if some prices were raised more, and
others less, the average rise would be one-fourth. This is a
necessary consequence of the fact that a fourth more money would
have to be given for only the same quantity of goods. General
price, therefore, in any such case would be one-fourth higher.
The very same effect would be produced on prices if we suppose
the goods diminished, instead of the money increased: and the
contrary effect if the goods were increased, or the money
diminished. If there were less money in the hands of the
community, and the same amount of goods to be sold, less money
altogether would be given for them, and they would be sold at
lower prices; lower, too, in the precise ratio in which the money
was diminished. _So that the value of money, other things being
the same, varies inversely as its quantity; every increase in
quantity lowering the value, and every diminution raising it, in
a ratio exactly equivalent._
This is known as the quantitative theory of money, and is recognized
by Ricardo, Jevons, Macleod, John Locke, James Mill, John Stuart Mill,
Senator John P. Jones, David Hume, William Huskisson, Sir James
Graham, Prof. Torrens, Prof. Sidgwick, J. R. McCulloch, Mr. Gallatin,
Prof. Fawcett, Prof. Perry, N. A. Nicholson, Earl Grey, Prof. Shield
Nicholson, Lord Overstone, and, in fact, by all writers on political
economy of any prominence since Adam Smith. Formerly it was supposed
that the value of money depended upon the cost of production; that the
reason why a dollar in gold or silver was worth 100 cents was because
it took 100 cents' worth of labor to produce metal enough to make a
dollar. This theory, however, has been abandoned by the best writers
and speakers; in fact, by all economists of any standing, and it is
now conceded that the cost of producing the metal has no influence on
its money value, only as it may tend to increase or reduce the amount
of money, and that it is the quantity of money, the number of units,
available for use that determines and regulates its value; that is, if
the quantity is increased its value will fall, and if the quantity is
diminished its value will rise, and that it will fall or rise in value
in a ratio exactly equivalent to the increase or diminution of the
volume of money; and that if sufficiently reduced in volume, a dollar,
whether stamped on gold, silver, or paper, would buy a plantation or
pay a man for the labor of a lifetime. There can be no doubt as to the
correctness of the quantitative theory of money.
John Stuart Mill says:
That an increase in the quantity of money raises prices, and a
diminution lowers them, is the most elementary proposition in the
theory of currency, and without it we have no key to any of the
others.
Prices, however, are not fixed by the total amount of money in
existence; only that part of the money that is available for use can
act on prices.
Mr. Mill says:
Whatever may be the quantity of money in the country, only that
part of it will affect prices which goes into the market of
commodities and is there actually exchanged for goods of some
description. Whatever increases this portion of the money in the
country tends to raise prices. Money kept in reserve by
individuals to meet contingencies which do not occur, does not
act on prices. Money in the coffers of banks, or retained as a
reserve, does not act on prices until drawn out to be expended
for commodities.
It is also conceded that in fixing prices not only all the money
actually available for use must be taken into consideration, but the
rapidity of circulation must also be regarded; and due allowance must
be made for the number of times commodities change hands before
consumption.
The same dollar may, by passing from hand to hand, make a number of
purchases, and the same goods may be sold repeatedly before
consumption. It is, probably, correct to say, that the money available
for use multiplied by the rapidity of circulation, or, as Mr. Mill
expresses it, by its efficiency, equals the total money to be
considered; and the commodities sold multiplied by the average number
of sales equals the total commodities to be taken into consideration
in fixing the general level of prices.
Are there any other elements that act on the general level of prices?
Of course an abundant yield, or a short crop, or an over-production,
so called, or under-consumption, of any particular commodity may
depress or raise the price of that particular crop or commodity; but
are there any elements other than those above enumerated that act on
the general level of prices? I think there are none.
If, then, prices are controlled by the volume of money available for
use; and if the general level of prices will rise as the volume of
money is increased, and fall as the volume of money is diminished, and
rise or fall in an exact ratio corresponding with the expansion or
contraction of the volume of money, it becomes important to ascertain
what money is, and also whether there is anything which can be used as
a substitute for money in such a manner as to affect the general level
of prices.
Senator John P. Jones, than whom there is no one better informed,
says:
The money of a country is that thing, whatever it may be, which
is commonly accepted in exchange for labor or property and in
payment of debt, whether so accepted by force of law or by
universal consent. Its value does not arise from the intrinsic
qualities which the material of which it is made may possess, but
depends entirely on extrinsic qualities which law or common
consent may confer.
Aristotle says:
Money has value only by law and not by nature; so that a change
of convention between those who use it is sufficient to deprive
it of its value and power to satisfy our wants.
Adam Smith says:
A guinea may be considered a bill for a certain quantity of goods
on all the tradesmen in the neighborhood.
Henry Thornton says:
Money of every kind is an order for goods. It is so considered by
the laborer when he receives it, and it is almost instantly
converted into money's worth. It is merely the instrument by
which the purchasable stock of the country is distributed with
convenience and advantage among the several members of the
community.
John Stuart Mill says:
The pounds or shillings which a man receives are a sort of ticket
or order which he may present for payment at any shop he pleases,
and which entitles him to receive a certain value of any
commodity that he may choose.
Appleton's Cyclopædia defines money in the following words:
Anything which freely circulates from hand to hand, in any
country, as a common, acceptable medium of exchange, is, in such
country, money, even though it ceases to be such, or to possess
any value, when passing into another country. In a word, an
article is determined to be money by reason of the performance by
it of certain functions, without regard to its form or substance.
Francis A. Walker says:
Money is that which freely passes from hand to hand through the
community in final discharge of debt and in full payment for
commodities, being accepted equally without reference to the
character or credit of the person who offers it, and without the
intention of the person who receives it, to consume it, or enjoy
it, or apply it to any other use than in turn to tender it to
others in discharge of debts or in payment for commodities.
It has been contended by certain economists that bank checks and bills
of exchange are money, or, at least, that they discharge the money
function and act on prices the same as money; but this definition
excludes checks and bills of exchange. A bill of exchange or bank
check is not accepted without reference to the character or credit of
the person who offers it. But Francis A. Walker leaves us in no doubt
on this question. On page 123 of his work on "Political Economy" he
says:
Money is a medium of exchange. Whatever performs this function,
does this work, is money, no matter what it is made of, and no
matter how it came to be a medium at first, or why it continues
to be such. So long as, in any community, there is an article
which all producers take freely and as a matter of course in
exchange for whatever they have to sell, instead of looking
about, at the time, for the particular things they, themselves,
wish to consume, that article is money, be it white, yellow, or
black, hard or soft, animal, vegetable, or mineral. There is no
other test of money than this. That which does the money work is
the money thing. It may do this well; it may do this ill. It may
be good money; it may be bad money; but it is money all the same.
We said _all_ producers, since it is not enough that a thing is
extensively used in exchange, to constitute it money. _Bank
checks are used in numerous and important transactions, yet are
not money._ It is essential to money that its acceptability
should be so nearly universal that practically every person in
the community who has any product or service to dispose of will
freely, gladly, and of preference, take this thing money, instead
of the particular products or service which he may individually
require from others, being well assured that with money he will
unfailingly obtain whatever he shall desire, in form and amount,
and at times to suit his wants.
It appears from the accepted definitions that bank checks and bills of
exchange are not money. They may to some extent, as other forms of
credit may to some extent, add to or increase the rapidity of
circulation; but, certainly, credit is not money nor does it possess
the essential elements of money. I think it is an essential element of
money that when used it closes the transaction between the parties to
the transaction. In other words, money, when paid in the purchase of a
commodity, closes the transaction, and neither party to the
transaction has any further claim or demand against the other.
Anything which does this (barter, of course, excluded) is money, and
anything which fails to do this is not money. If a credit is given or
a check received the transaction is not closed until the debt is paid
or the check cashed. I do not find that any economist has made this
distinction, in so many words, between money and credit, but I am
satisfied that it exists.
Does all the money available for use act on prices? It is contended by
a certain class of economists that only money of ultimate and final
redemption--in other words, gold and silver, in countries where gold
and silver are the standard money, and gold only, in countries where
gold is the standard money--can act directly on prices, and that other
forms of money can only act on prices in an indirect manner, and to
the extent only that they may increase the rapidity of the circulation
of redemption or standard money; that paper money, whether convertible
or inconvertible, covered or uncovered, and token money, can have no
direct influence on the general level of prices.
Is this contention true? We have already seen that money is a medium
of exchange, a counter for reckoning, an order for goods, and that its
value does not depend upon the intrinsic qualities which the material
out of which it is made may possess, but depends entirely upon
extrinsic qualities which law or common consent may confer, and that
anything (barter, of course, excluded) that closes transactions
between the parties to the transactions, is money; and also that the
value of money, that is, its purchasing power, is fixed and regulated
by the amount of money available for use. Why, then, should any part
of the money that possesses and discharges all the functions of money
be excluded? What peculiar property has money stamped on gold and
silver that it only can act on prices?
John Stuart Mill says:
After experience had shown that pieces of paper, of no intrinsic
value, by merely bearing upon them the written profession of
being equivalent to a certain number of francs, dollars, or
pounds, could be made to circulate as such, and to produce all
the benefit to the users which could have been produced by the
coins which they purported to represent, governments began to
think that it would be a happy device if they could appropriate
to themselves this benefit, free from the condition to which
individuals issuing such paper substitutes for money were
subject, of giving, when required, for the sign, the thing
signified. They determined to try whether they could not
emancipate themselves from this unpleasant obligation, and make a
piece of paper issued by them pass for a pound, by merely calling
it a pound and consenting to receive it in payment for taxes. And
such is the influence of almost all established governments, that
they have generally succeeded in attaining this object: _I
believe I may say they have always succeeded for a time, and the
power has only been lost to them after they had compromised it by
the most flagrant abuse._--"Political Economy," Book 3, Chap. 13.
Mill further says that such inconvertible paper money will act on
prices. And if inconvertible paper money will act on prices, why will
not convertible paper money, that is, paper money convertible into
coin on demand, also act on prices? Token money, especially if a legal
tender, and whether a legal tender or not, if accepted without
objection in the payment of debt, or if received in full payment for
commodities, discharges the money function, and is to all intents and
purposes money. It is not absolutely necessary that to make a thing
money it should be a legal tender in the payment of debt. Anything
which is commonly accepted in exchange for labor or property and in
payment of debt, whether so accepted by force of law (that is, its
legal tender property) or by common consent, is money. From 1861 to
1873 we had no gold or silver money in the United States, or virtually
none. The official reports of the Secretary of the Treasury show that
the gold and silver coin, including the gold and silver bullion in the
United States Treasury during that period, amounted to but
$25,000,000, and even that was not in circulation, except to a very
limited extent on the Pacific Coast. Yet during that period prices
reached the highest level ever attained in this country. Certainly,
the level of prices during that period was not fixed by the gold and
silver money available for use. In view of the foregoing facts I think
it must be apparent that any money which is received in full payment
for commodities, whether so received on account of its legal tender
property or by universal consent, and whether it is gold, silver,
paper, or token money, acts on prices, and tends to fix the general
level of prices.
It is claimed by a great many writers on political economy that credit
has the same influence in fixing the general level of prices that
money has, and that an expansion or contraction of credit would
inflate or contract prices in the same manner and to the same extent
as would result from a contraction or expansion of money; that if
credit is extended, if more commodities are sold on credit than
formerly, such extension of credit will tend to raise prices in the
same manner and to the same extent as would so much additional money;
and that if credits are contracted, if less credits are given than
formerly, such contraction of credits will tend to depress prices in
the same manner and to the same extent as a withdrawal of a like
amount of money from the channels of trade would depress them. At the
head of this school of political economists stands John Stuart Mill.
He says:
I apprehend that bank notes, bills, or cheques, as such, do not
act on prices at all. What does act on prices is credit, in
whatever shape given, and whether it gives rise to any
transferable instruments capable of passing into circulation or
not. (See Book 3, Chapter 12.)
Is this contention true? If so, then it is not true that the general
level of prices is determined by the amount of money available for
use; but is determined, rather, by the amount of credits available for
use. The debts of the world (and the credits, of course, are precisely
equal to the debts, as there could be no debt without a corresponding
credit) amount, in round numbers, to $200,000,000,000, and the money
in the world amounts in round numbers to $10,000,000,000. That is,
there are twenty dollars of credit to one dollar of money; and if
credit exercises the same influence in fixing the general level of
prices that money exercises, then it is absurd to say that the volume
of money available for use fixes the general level of prices, and at
the same time to contend that credit, dollar for dollar, is an equal
factor in fixing prices. If credit affects the general level of
prices in the same manner and to the same extent that money does, then
credit exerts an influence on prices twenty times greater than that
exerted by money, and we should say: The general level of prices is
fixed by credit, modified, it may be, to some extent by the amount of
money in circulation.
The difficulty seems to be in distinguishing between money and credit.
If we keep in mind the fact that anything which closes the transaction
between the parties to the transaction (barter excluded) is money, and
anything which leaves something still to be done is credit, we shall
have no difficulty in making the distinction.
Can credit affect the general level of prices? One of the most
familiar and common illustrations given by those who contend that
credit will raise the general level of prices, is that of a man
entering the market to buy cotton.
They say: "Suppose a person with $5,000 in money enters the cotton
market, and with his money purchases $5,000 worth of cotton. His
demand for cotton and his purchase of $5,000 worth will tend to
advance or stimulate the price of cotton." "Now," they say, "suppose
he has a credit of $5,000 and with this credit he purchases an
additional $5,000 worth of cotton. The second purchase, made on
credit," they contend, "will tend to still further advance the price
of cotton in the same manner and to the same extent that the cash
purchase did." Is this true?
Let us suppose that he purchased the second bunch of cotton on ninety
days' time. At the end of the ninety days he must pay for this cotton.
If he draws the $5,000 with which he pays this debt from money
invested in the cotton trade, the withdrawal of that sum from money
invested in that industry will tend to depress the price of cotton to
the extent that it was stimulated by the credit. If he withdraws it
from the grain trade or from some other industry, the withdrawal of
that sum of money will tend to depress prices in the industry from
which it is withdrawn to the same extent as the cotton industry was
stimulated by the credit. Whether the money to pay the debt is taken
from the cotton industry or from some other industry, the general
level of prices has not been raised. The purchase in the first
instance may have temporarily stimulated the price of cotton, but if
the payment of the debt is made from money drawn from that industry,
it will depress the price of cotton to where it was before the credit
purchase was made; and if the payment is made from money drawn from
some other industry, it will depress prices in that industry to the
same extent that the price of cotton was stimulated. In either event
the general level of prices remains the same. It is like robbing Peter
to pay Paul. It may make Paul richer, but how about Peter? There is no
more wealth in existence than before the robbery was committed.
Again, it is claimed that credit stimulates prices by causing
commodities which are sold on credit to be sold for higher prices than
commodities of the same value are sold for when sold for cash. It is
true that sales on credit are, as a rule, at a higher price than sales
for cash in hand. Why is this so? For two reasons:
1st. Business done on credit is always attended with considerable
risk. Even when the utmost caution is exercised, bad debts will be
made, and a greater margin on sales is necessary.
2nd. When time is given a certain amount must be added to the price of
the goods to compensate the seller for the use of his capital between
the date of sale and the maturity of the account.
The additional price, thus received, is of no advantage to the
producer or to the seller of the commodity. The addition to the price
is consumed by losses from bad debts and in interest on capital. In
fact, the additional prices charged, when properly analyzed, are not
for the goods, but for the risk on the credit and for interest on
capital. The net selling price of the commodity is not increased.
Experience has proven that men who sell for the lesser price for cash
in hand are more apt to succeed than those who charge the higher rate
on the credit system.
Credit is always burdened with interest. If interest is not directly
charged, the goods are sold at an advance on the cash price equal to
the interest, which amounts to the same thing. Interest acts on
commerce like friction on machinery. As friction absorbs a portion of
the motive power, so interest absorbs a part of the value of all
commodities sold on credit. Interest, the necessary accompaniment of
credit, produces no wealth; but, on the contrary, absorbs wealth and
tends to concentrate it in the hands of the few; and, necessarily, in
the same ratio it takes from the masses the power to purchase the
things they desire and would otherwise consume. Its ultimate result
must be to lower prices. Credit burdened with interest, as it always
is, may temporarily increase the demand for a certain commodity and
consequently temporarily raise its price; but it must do this at the
expense of other commodities. Like a stimulant administered to a human
being, it may produce spasmodic results of extraordinary power; but
when the stimulant has spent its force it leaves the individual weaker
and in a worse condition than he was before the stimulant was
administered.
Henry Thornton, an English economist, attempts to prove that a bill of
exchange is money, and that, being money, it acts on prices. He says:
Let us imagine a farmer in the country to discharge a debt of £10
to his neighboring grocer by giving him a bill for that sum,
drawn on his corn-factor in London, for grain sold in the
metropolis; and the grocer to transmit the bill, he having
previously indorsed it, to a neighboring sugar-baker in discharge
of a like debt; and the sugar-baker to send it, when again
indorsed, to a West India merchant in an outport; and the West
India merchant to deliver it to his country banker, who also
indorses it and sends it into further circulation. The bill in
this case will have effected five payments, exactly as if it were
a £10 note payable to the bearer on demand. A multitude of bills
pass this way between traders in the country, in the manner which
has been described; _and they evidently form in the strictest
sense a part of the circulating medium of the kingdom_.
Mill in his "Political Economy" quotes this illustration with
approval. Is the conclusion arrived at correct?
Suppose that instead of a bill of exchange for £10, a horse worth £10
had been made use of, and the farmer had delivered the horse to the
grocer in satisfaction of his debt, and the grocer had turned it over
to the sugar-baker, and the sugar-baker to the West India merchant,
etc. The horse would have paid the five debts in precisely the same
manner that the bill of exchange did, but would such a use of the
horse _have made the horse, in the strictest sense of the term, a part
of the circulating medium of the kingdom_? I think not! A bill of
exchange is not money, but an order for money, and would be valueless
unless honored by payment on presentation. From the time the bill was
drawn until finally paid an amount of money equal to the demand of
the bill must be held out of circulation for its payment. It adds
nothing to the circulation, and in no sense does it constitute a part
of the circulating medium. It may, possibly, increase the rapidity of
circulation, but it is difficult to see how it could do even this. The
£10 held out of circulation for the payment of the bill would have
paid the debts in the same manner that the bill of exchange did, and I
fail to see why they would not have made the circuit as quickly. If a
horse had been made use of in the settlement of the debts mentioned by
Mr. Thornton, it would have been barter, pure and simple, and not a
money transaction.
That the contraction of the volume of credit will not tend to depress
prices in the same manner and to the same extent that a contraction of
the volume of money would will be apparent from the following
illustration.
The most conservative estimates place the national, municipal,
corporate, and individual debts in the United States at
$30,000,000,000. The Secretary of the Treasury estimates the amount of
money in circulation at $1,600,000,000. There is not, in fact,
one-third of the amount available for use; but for the purpose of this
illustration we will take the Secretary's estimate as correct. Now let
us suppose that the volume of credit should be reduced to
$28,400,000,000, either by the payment of $1,600,000,000 of the debt
or by bankruptcy proceedings or in some other manner. If that amount
of the credits were extinguished by payment, business would be
stimulated. That sum of money, or at least a considerable portion of
it, would pass into the hands of the creditor class, where it would
seek investment, and the tendency would be, not to contract, but to
expand prices. If that amount of the credits were extinguished by
bankruptcy proceedings in which no money passed in either direction,
such an extinguishment could not depress or expand prices; it could
have no influence upon them.
Now suppose that $1,600,000,000 of the money, every dollar now claimed
to be in circulation in the United States, should be withdrawn from
the channels of trade, it would not be difficult to see that prices
would fall; would, in fact, be completely annihilated. There would be
no money with which to make purchases or to pay debts, civilization
would go backwards, and universal bankruptcy and ruin would ensue.
Suppose that only one-half or one-third of the money available for use
should be withdrawn from circulation; even then business would be
paralyzed, the money remaining would be hoarded or would be collected
in the great money centres, prices would fall, and business men all
over the country would be forced into bankruptcy. I think that it must
be perfectly apparent that a contraction of credit does not act on the
general level of prices in the same manner and to the same extent that
a contraction of the volume of money does; that, in fact, it does not
act on the general level of prices at all.
I, therefore, conclude that money, and money only, acts on the general
level of prices, and that credit does not and cannot act on prices
except only as it may increase the rapidity of the circulation of
money; and even then it is the greater efficiency of the money, and
not the credit, that stimulates prices. Credit may temporarily
stimulate the price of the product of some particular industry, but to
do this it must attract money from some other industry, and the
stimulation will be at the expense of a corresponding depression in
prices in the industry from which the money is attracted.
LOS ANGELES, COL.
POINTS IN THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH CONSTITUTIONS COMPARED.
BY NIELS GRÖN.
There are several reasons why, particularly in the light of what is
going on in the two countries, a comparison between certain points of
the constitutions of the French and United States republics should be
of more than passing interest. Successive ministerial crises in France
threaten the stability of the republic; here, while political
conventions representing millions of people meet and produce radical
platforms, nobody is apprehensive of revolution or trouble. The
constitution is a bulwark against sudden change; its wisdom is
believed to be guarded by impregnable security against caprice or
panic.
One in the Eastern hemisphere, the other in the New World, the two
countries are the only great republics; both are watched by monarchies
with invidious eyes, and, as before suggested, both have passed
through, or are passing through, interesting not to say exciting
experiences. American admirers of the republican form of government
believe that the cause of human liberty would be seriously injured
were the French Republic to cease to exist; they go further, and say
that the death-knell of civil freedom would be sounded the moment the
American republic became a failure. Something like a crisis is seen in
the United States to-day, brought about by a whole series of
concomitant causes, such as business depression, bank failures,
industrial disputes terminating in strikes and lockouts, Coxey armies,
panicky people, and unsettled views regarding commerce and finance,
this last cause predominating.
Though France has her difficulties about raising sufficient money to
carry on the administration, and an income tax is just as unpopular
there as it would be here, nevertheless the chief cause of her trouble
is to be traced, not to financial, but to constitutional sources. The
country is very rich, and its ministers probably will always find some
means of raising enough money to pay the cost of administration.
Quite true, it is a sore point for a proud country which yearns for
revenge upon Germany and longs for large colonial possessions, that
its population does not increase, while the populations of its enemy,
Germany, and of its well-wisher, the United States, go up by leaps and
bounds. True, there are economic writers who regard the dearth and
even the decrease of population in France as an advantage to the
country. But these need not be considered in this inquiry, for it is
quite obvious that any country which really aspires to be numbered
with the great powers, and effectually wishes to own important
colonial possessions, must have a stalwart and increasing people. And
it is a real source of weakness that there should yet be in France so
many Royalists constantly on the alert and hoping always for a change
in the existing form of government.
Happily, on the contrary, no matter how widely the Western American
may differ from his friend in the East, or how keenly the
ex-Confederate may feel over the "lost cause," the warm-blooded son of
Kentucky will fight as bravely under the flag of the republic as will
his frozen-featured brother from Minnesota, and the dreamy individual
who gazes poetically upon the placid waters of Puget Sound will shout
as loudly for one country, and one allegiance to its glorious emblem,
as will the gilded youth whose republicanism is artistically refreshed
by a constant vision of the Statue of Liberty triumphantly standing in
New York harbor.
Royalism, conservatism, concentrationism, moderate republicanism,
opportunism, radicalism, ultra-radicalism, socialism, and heaven knows
how many other "isms" besides, exist in France to-day, and make it
hard for any ministry to carry on the government. Numerous
disintegrating influences are ever present, and political convictions
are seldom sufficiently decided for any ministry to form a stable
majority.
Though France has had the experience of two previous experiments in
republican forms of government (the one set up in 1792, and the second
established in 1848), they were such mere makeshifts and so very
short-lived that they could not have taught the country very much of
the real genius of republican institutions. The centralization and
tyranny of centuries brought revolt and hatred of the past, but did
not prepare the people for self-government; while here the principles
of civil liberty, transplanted from the mother country and flourishing
in congenial conditions under colonial administration, found apt and
natural expression in the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution. The event of republican institutions twice tried in
France failed to show that even the leaders understood the principles
of liberty as they were understood by the fathers of the American
system of government, and enthusiastically adopted by the people, as
the crystallization, so to speak, in definite terms, of what they had
long enjoyed. Short-sighted acts of tyranny, exercised by George III
and his ministers, were regarded, and justly so, as mere accidents of
the time and as innovations to be resisted and overcome. The outcome
was the vindication of the principles of government founded by the
countrymen of King Alfred the Great, their expansion, and the
invaluable expression of those principles in the Declaration and the
Constitution.
Some of the bravest and best under the French monarchy helped to
establish the reign of popular liberty in the United States, and there
can be no question but that the French Revolution was accomplished in
part as a result of what had been seen and done on this side of the
Atlantic on behalf of the civil rights of the people; but the founders
of the first republic in France had no complete foundation on which to
build a fabric firm and lasting. It was not easy for a venerable
European nation, intrenched within its own regal institutions, in
shaking off the past to begin a future of popular sovereignty. Much
was gained by sweeping away the worst abuses of the past, but reaction
came, succeeded, after a long lapse of time, by a second attempt to
establish a republic, again to fail, until the collapse of the power
of the adventurer whose election to the presidency was the beginning
of the end of the republic of 1848, led to the third experiment, the
permanent success of which we all hope for.
If--much virtue in an "if"--the leaders of the first French Republic
had been thoroughly masters of and thoroughly imbued with the
principles of American liberty, it is possible they might have so
instructed and led a bright and capable people as to lay a sure
foundation for the future. But even this modified statement is open to
question. While it may be regretted that the American Constitution was
not copied in the establishment of the successive French republics, it
is by no means certain that this matchless paper would have been so
far appreciated in its recognition of the great principles underlying
it, as to insure success. Some of the South American republics have
the American Constitution, more or less, but are not shining examples
of republican success. No one can question that monarchies like the
United Kingdom and Germany enjoy a larger diffusion of civil liberty
than they.
Taking the French system, however, as it exists to-day, there can be
no question that it would be vastly improved by copying the American
model. It seems to have been founded with a view to the possibility of
restoring the monarchy, and, this being so, the men who created it had
no object in studying the American Constitution with a view to
preventing those ministerial crises which threaten the destruction of
the third republic. It will not do to attribute these crises to the
unstable character of the fiery Frenchman, nor can the difficulty be
disposed of by saying that a French minister will create a crisis for
the sake of a pleasing _bon mot_ or a sprightly paradox. A crisis
supposes something outside of, or above, or beyond the ordinary, but
French ministerial crises have become so common that they are the
laughingstock of the nations, and may be said to be almost the normal
condition of the legislative assemblies of France. So long as such
critical situations can be thus easily brought about there cannot be
that continuity of policy which is essential for carrying out great
projects. The problem to be solved is a constitutional one,--a
statement, I think, easily proved true.
Article Six of the constitution of 1875 reveals the real cause of
ministerial crises in France: "The ministers are in a body responsible
to the Chambers for the general policy of the government, and
individually for their personal acts." This article obviously leaves
the respective powers of both houses very undefined. Which chamber is
the superior? To which of them are the ministers in fact responsible?
The ministers may have a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and may
be in a minority in the Senate. Then there is a crisis. The Senate
blocks the way and will not allow the government to go on, for it
claims that it is the superior body. This absence of the proper
demarcation of the powers of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies,
and of the ministers necessarily leads to conflict; conflict is but a
step from instability, and instability is a crisis which threatens
revolution.
The remedy for these oft-recurring ministerial crises in France is to
be found in the American Constitution. The French Constitution should
be revised and changed at the part quoted and all parts relating to
it, so as to provide against ministerial crises; and the instrument
presenting a sure guide in the performance of this necessary work is
the American Constitution. It has been in operation over a hundred
years and has been found to be an admirable working document,
affording ministerial stability to its cabinets for over a century.
Such a document is surely worthy of the closest study by the public
men of the sister republic. It was inevitable that in so long a time
some amendments should have become necessary; but for a long period it
has undergone no change, save such as noted, and formulating the
results of the civil war. Now and then are heard murmurings which
claim the necessity of a sixteenth amendment, to the effect that the
name of God should be put in the Constitution. The obvious answer to
this is, that in the official life of the United States there is a
more real acknowledgment of the Divine Being than there is in the
official life of any other country, and it is better to have the name
of God impressed upon the hearts of the people than upon even the best
official document ever drawn up.
It would not be correct to say that no attempts have been made to
bring about a ministerial crisis in the United States by encroachment
upon the rights of the Executive. Only once, however, when Andrew
Johnson was President, has the action of the Executive been seriously
hampered. Professor Bryce's remark may be applied to all other
attempts. He writes: "Congress has constantly tried to encroach, both
on the Executive and on the States,--sometimes like a wild bull driven
into a corral, dashing itself against the imprisoning walls of the
Constitution." There is the secret. The "imprisoning walls" of the
American Constitution keep contending powers in their proper places.
The Constitution is so well drawn up that a deadlock is an
impossibility, the equilibrium of concomitant powers is easily
maintained, and the sovereign will of the people has a fair
opportunity of finding a natural exponent.
In the United States the Senate and the House of Representatives are
coördinate bodies; in the French Republic each claims superiority over
the other. In the United States bills are never introduced by the
Cabinet, all bills must originate either in the Senate or in the House
of Representatives; such is not the case in the French Republic. In
the United States the chief duty of the President is to see that the
laws are faithfully executed; the Cabinet administers; its members are
rather the aids or secretaries of the chief magistrate of the nation
than otherwise. They are his advisers and helpers. During the four
years for which the President of the United States is elected, the
limitations of his authority are so remote and theoretical that, for
practical purposes, it may be stated that he always serves out his
full term of office. On the contrary, Presidential resignations are
not unknown in the French Republic. France elects her President for
seven years, yet Thiers, MacMahon, Grévy, Carnot, Casimir-Périer, and
Faure make a list longer than that of the names of the men who have
lived in the White House during the past quarter of a century. In the
United States, the Cabinet lasts as long as the President's term of
office; in the French Republic, the Cabinet sometimes goes to pieces
in four months. Briefly, it is quite clear that in the United States
there can be no ministerial crises, since the President's chief duty
under the Constitution is to see that the laws are faithfully
executed, and the members of his Cabinet do not introduce bills, even
for finance or supplies, but act as his aids. As previously intimated,
the difficulty with the French legislative bodies is that royalistic
precedents and rules run side by side with republican principles, and
the result is a mongrel institution divided, too often, against
itself. When matters shall be so arranged that the French President
will have to fill out his full term of office, and French ministers
will not be permitted to originate legislation, and cabinets shall be
selected to serve as long as the Presidential term, then the French
Republic will enjoy the same ministerial stability as that of the
United States.
It were hard to say that the French method of electing a president is
any better or any worse than that of the United States. The President
of the French Republic is elected by the majority of the votes of both
Chambers. This plan does not seem to remove him further from the
people than does the system of electing a president by electors, as in
the United States. As human ingenuity has not yet succeeded in
creating the ideal republic, wherein, according to Ouida, there would
be no president, some system of election must be followed. The
question is not a burning one. There is notable, however, a growing
tendency in France in favor of electing the president directly by the
votes of the people. The seven-years' period for which the French
president is elected is considered by many to be an excellent
provision; but it loses half its excellence by reason of the fact that
the president has the power to initiate laws, this and other things
concurring to make his resignation a possibility, and not a remote
one.
That the office of vice-president does not exist in France seems to be
of no great consequence. In the history of the American Republic there
have been five vice-presidents who have been called upon to step into
the Presidential chair by the deaths of presidents. According to the
French Constitution, in case of a Presidential vacancy, whether from
death or any other cause, the two Chambers proceed immediately to the
election of a president. In the interval the ministers are invested
with executive power.
What I have written regarding the growing tendency to think it would
be better to elect the president directly by the votes of the people,
applies with a little more force to the election of senators. In
France the municipalities elect the senators, as do State legislatures
in this country. It is held by some who have discussed the question
that it is much more in conformity with the genius of republican
institutions that the people express their will directly by ballot
rather than through the votes of municipal councils, as in France, or
of legislatures, as in the United States. I cannot see that the
difference of terms, that of French senators being nine years, and of
American six, is of practical consequence. While both republics are
at one as to the necessity of a second chamber, providing thus a check
to hasty and unconsidered legislation, many thinkers in both countries
agree that some change is necessary to make it possible for others
than millionaires to be elected senators.
If I were a Frenchman and had the power, I should get every newspaper
throughout the land, and every public man and influential citizen, to
enter upon a crusade for the purpose of impressing upon the minds of
the whole people the following extract from the Constitution of the
United States:
Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
In France, there are constantly continuous and unseemly clashes
between church and state. No matter what complications may exist as
results of the past, surely it would be better for all concerned to
leave the churches to be sustained by the voluntary contributions of
the people. In the United States churches seem to live and thrive
under this system of noninterference by the state in religious
matters, and voluntary support. The more than eighty thousand
clergymen are provided for. In the French Republic one reads
everywhere, on the walls of churches and of schools, the words
"_Liberté, fraternité, égalité_," while there seems to be a serious
disagreement between Clericals, on the one side, and Radicals, on the
other, as to the meaning of these words. To effectually put an end to
this strife, the adoption of the clause I have quoted would be
sufficient.
In writing thus freely of the French Republic I am free, I trust, from
the spirit of the carping critic delighting in comparisons to the
advantage of his own country. I appreciate the splendid literature,
the brilliant art, the advanced civilization of the France of to-day.
I recognize with gratitude the debt which the United States owes the
gallant Gallic people for sympathy and material aid in her struggle
for independence. It is now only necessary to be in France on the
Fourth of July to realize the reality and depth of the friendship
which exists between the sister republics. But I do think that until
France shall copy more closely the Constitution of the United States,
the stability of the third republic cannot be regarded as assured.
HONEST MONEY; OR, A TRUE STANDARD OF VALUE:
A SYMPOSIUM.
I. BY WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN.
We hear much about a "stable currency" and an "honest dollar." It is a
significant fact that those who advocate a single gold standard have
for the most part avoided a discussion of the effect of an
appreciating standard. They take it for granted that a gold standard
is not only an honest standard, but the only stable standard. I
denounce that child of ignorance and avarice, the gold dollar under a
universal gold standard, as the most dishonest dollar which we could
employ.
I stand upon the authority of every intelligent writer upon political
economy when I assert that there is not and never has been an honest
dollar. An honest dollar is a dollar absolutely stable in relation to
all other things. Laughlin, in his work on "Bimetallism," says:
Monometallists do not--as it is often said--believe that gold
remains absolutely stable in value. They hold that there is no
such thing as a "standard of value" for future payments in either
gold or silver which remains absolutely invariable.
He even suggests a multiple standard for long-time contracts. I quote
his words:
As regards national debts, it is distinctly averred that neither
gold nor silver forms a just measure of deferred payments, and
that if justice in long contracts is sought for, we should not
seek it by the doubtful and untried expedient of international
bimetallism, but by the clear and certain method of a multiple
standard, a unit based upon the selling prices of a number of
articles of general consumption. A long time contract would
thereby be paid at its maturity by the same purchasing power as
was given in the beginning.
Jevons, one of the most generally accepted of the writers in favor of
a gold standard, admits the instability of a single standard, and in
language very similar to that above quoted suggests the multiple
standard as the most equitable, if practicable. Chevalier, who wrote
a book in 1858 to show the injustice of allowing a debtor to pay his
debts in a cheap gold dollar, recognized the same fact, and said:
If the value of the metal declined, the creditor would suffer a
loss upon the quantity he had received; if, on the contrary, it
rose, the debtor would have to pay more than he calculated upon.
I am on sound and scientific ground, therefore, when I say that a
dollar approaches honesty as its purchasing power approaches
stability. If I borrow a thousand dollars to-day and next year pay the
debt with a thousand dollars which will secure exactly as much of all
things desirable as the one thousand which I borrowed, I have paid in
honest dollars. If the money has increased or decreased in purchasing
power, I have satisfied my debt with dishonest dollars. While the
government can say that a given weight of gold or silver shall
constitute a dollar, and invest that dollar with legal-tender
qualities, it cannot fix the purchasing power of the dollar. That must
depend upon the law of supply and demand, and it may be well to
suggest that this government never tried to fix the exchangeable value
of a dollar until it began to limit the number of dollars coined.
II. BY M. W. HOWARD.
The term, "a standard of value," so often used, is erroneous and
misleading. There can be no fixed standard of value, and the student
who wishes to delve into our financial problems should clear his mind
of such a fallacy at the very threshold of his investigations.
Money is a commodity; it is regulated by the same laws of supply and
demand which regulate the price of corn, cotton, wheat, land, labor,
etc. If the wheat crop is short, wheat will be dear; if abundant, it
will be cheap. So with money. If the money supply is not sufficient to
meet the demands of business and commerce,--if the money crop is
short, in other words,--the money will be dear; it will command too
high a price, its purchasing power will be too great.
On the other hand, if the money supply is abundant, sufficient to meet
all demands upon it,--in other words, if there is a bountiful money
crop,--it will be cheaper; it will not have such a large purchasing
power; it will be worth less when measured by our labor, our lands,
and the products of our labor.
I oppose the single gold standard because it makes the money crop
short, gives us a small circulating medium, and hence enhances the
value or price of money.
We have a certain demand for breadstuff, which is constantly
increasing as our population multiplies; suppose that we cease
producing corn, and find no substitute for it, would not the price of
wheat be greatly enhanced, providing there is no increased wheat
production? So with the money supply. There is a certain demand for
money, ever increasing as population grows. How shall we meet it? By
producing more money, or by destroying one-half of that which we now
have, by eliminating one-half of the base of future supplies of money?
The latter is now the policy of this government, and as a consequence
the price of gold has been greatly enhanced, and its purchasing power
has increased each year, and will continue to do so.
The advocates of the gold standard call this "honest money." Their
idea of honest money is money that ever increases in purchasing power
because of its ever-increasing scarcity.
My definition of honest money is: "A sufficiently large circulating
medium, whether of gold, silver, or paper, to bring down the price of
money so that we shall obtain fair prices for all labor and products."
Then as population increases and as the demand for money becomes
greater, let the government meet that demand from time to time by
enhancing the money supply.
III. BY WHARTON BARKER.
The true test of an honest dollar is its purchasing power, and that
dollar, and only that dollar, is honest that does exact justice
between creditor and debtor. The gold monometallists harp on the
injustice of a depreciating dollar, but they ignore the injuries
inflicted by an appreciating dollar. They tell us that a depreciating
dollar defrauds the creditor, but just as a depreciating dollar
defrauds the creditor, an appreciating dollar defrauds the debtor, and
it is not one whit worse to defraud the creditor by obliging him to
accept a depreciated dollar from his debtor than to defraud the debtor
by obliging him to pay in a dollar made artificially scarce and dear.
An appreciating dollar works injustice to the debtor just as a
depreciating dollar works injustice to the creditor, but an
appreciating dollar is many fold more injurious to trade and industry,
for while the depreciating dollar taxes the creditor for the benefit
of the debtor, the appreciating dollar takes from the debtor, from
producers in general and the industrious classes, and gives to the
creditor classes, the drones of society, a larger and larger share of
the products of labor, which of necessity discourages industry. Under
a depreciating standard the recompense of the producer becomes greater
and greater, the creditor classes receive a smaller and smaller
portion of the products of labor, the profits of industry increase,
and consequently production is encouraged and trade and industry are
stimulated. But under an appreciating standard the recompense of labor
becomes smaller and smaller, and the share of the products of labor
absorbed by the creditor larger, which tends to discourage industry
and stifle enterprise.
IV. BY ARTHUR I. FONDA.
The value of any commodity is measured by what it will exchange for.
It is in fact its purchasing power, or power in exchange. This in
substance is the concrete definition of value given by all economists,
and they all unite in stating that value is determined by the supply
of a commodity relative to the demand for it; all other factors
affecting value being secondary and acting through their effect on
either supply or demand.
Since both the supply of and the demand for every freely produced
commodity is variable, and since a true standard of value, like a true
standard of weight or length, must be invariable as regards that which
it measures, it necessarily follows that no single freely produced
commodity can be a true standard of value. But while it is true that
every single commodity must vary in value, it is also true that all
commodities taken together cannot do so. This principle is also
accepted as correct by all economists.
It is evident then that a true standard of value can only be found in
a composite unit containing a definite quantity of every commodity, or
practically speaking, a definite quantity of each of a large number of
the most important commodities. This is what is known as the "multiple
standard," or the "commodity standard," and has long been in use by
economists in the form of tables of index numbers to show fluctuations
in general prices, or what is the same thing, changes in money values.
The only function of money is to facilitate the exchange of goods. In
doing this it acts directly as a circulating medium, and the demand
for it for this purpose, relative to the supply, determines its value;
for money, whether of coin or paper or both combined in one
circulation to meet one need, is subject to the same law of supply and
demand which governs all commodities, and which indeed is as universal
in the economic world as the law of gravitation is in the physical
world.
Incidentally the value of money fills the important function of
serving as a measure of the values of goods transferred without the
direct use of money, both immediate and deferred. This, however, has
no effect on the demand for money or on its value.
The people are accustomed to regard money as of constant value, and an
honest money must necessarily conform to this belief. If money varies
in value, the people are deluded, and many are wronged if they are
unaware of the fluctuation. If they become aware of it,--as they
generally do by a bitter experience,--they are confronted with an
uncertainty that is most detrimental to any business or enterprise.
Imagine what our business would be with our measures of weight,
length, and capacity all variable! Yet such a condition would be less
disastrous than a fluctuating money value when it became fully known
that it was so.
The _demand_ for money varies from many causes, chief among which are
changes in the quantity of goods exchanged, the extent to which other
credit instruments take the place of money in such exchanges, and the
activity of money, or the extent to which it is hoarded, all of which
are entirely beyond control. The _supply_ of money, however, can be
controlled, and to maintain money at a constant value the supply must
be constantly adjusted to the ever-varying demand, so that its
general purchasing power may remain the same. The test of a constant
money must be a constant general level of prices; and this must be
judged by the prices in the open market of those principal commodities
which would be selected to constitute the standard of value, the
quantity of each being proportioned to its importance in trade.
The only function of gold and silver in a monetary system is to _limit
the volume of the money_, either by their scarcity when freely coined,
or by the laws limiting their coinage. And as this limitation of the
supply bears no definite relation to the demand for money, the value
of the money necessarily fluctuates. Our industrial system is
constantly growing more sensitive to even slight changes in money
value, owing to the greater diversification of industries and the
greater division of labor, and the need for preventing such changes is
constantly growing more imperative.
When the people arrive at a clearer perception of these facts and
principles they will understand that the chance production of gold and
silver is too clumsy a contrivance to properly control so delicate a
matter as the value of money under modern industrial conditions, and I
believe they will substitute for the present system a circulating
medium of paper money, properly guaranteed, and susceptible of prompt
and certain increase or decrease of volume to meet every possible
variation in demand, and rigidly controlled to conform in value to a
true standard of value, a standard composed not alone of gold or
silver or both combined, but of all the leading commodities.
In short, they will separate the standard of value from the medium of
exchange, demonetizing both gold and silver as to the latter function,
but using both and many other things in conjunction therewith for the
former function.
V. BY A. J. WARNER.
From whatever side the question is approached, in the last analysis
the value of money of any kind is found to depend upon its quantity,
and not upon color, or ductility, or malleability, or any other
particular quality of the thing upon which the money function is
impressed. There can be therefore, in fact, no other standard of
value, or money standard, except the quantity of whatever is used as
money. When gold and silver are used, the value of each unit of money
depends upon the number of such units, and these in turn depend upon
the quantity of the metal from which the money is made. Any cause,
therefore, which restricts, limits, or contracts the quantity of any
kind of money, increases the value of each unit. On the contrary,
causes that operate to increase the supply of money have the opposite
effect.
Hence, only that currency can properly be called "sound" currency
which is made to maintain stable relations to things to be bought and
sold. In other words, general prices are determined by the proportion
between money on the one side, and things offered against money on the
other side. Such money only is "honest" money.
The whole question, therefore, of money standard is a question of
money supply; for, as the price of single things, money being
constant, depends upon supply on the one hand, as against demand for
it on the other, so, in general, prices depend on money supply on the
one hand, and things to be bought and sold on the other. This I
believe to be the fundamental law of money.
THE NEW CIVIL CODE OF JAPAN.
BY TOKICHI MASAO, M. L., D. C. L.
Ever since the establishment of the present imperial government in
1868, the one unceasing aim of Japan's foreign policy has been the
abolition of the extra-territoriality régime, under which certain
quasi-judicial functions are exercised on the Japanese soil by the
ambassadors and consuls of the Occidental nations. This anxiety on
Japan's part to rid herself of this shameful régime imposed upon her
against her will, will not appear surprising when the fact is learnt
that one Occidental nation went so far as to call her consul at
Yokohama, "Her Britannic Majesty's the Most Honourable Court for
Japan"--a name almost enough to imply that Japan was a British
province. Extra-territoriality rests upon the assumption that the laws
and procedure of the non-Christian nations are so unlike to and
different from those of the Christian nations that without the
protection of this system the safety and well-being of the subjects of
the latter sojourning in the territory of the former would be placed
in constant jeopardy. Accordingly in the early seventies Japan came to
the conclusion that the only possible way of emancipating herself from
the disgraceful yoke of extra-territoriality was to adopt one of the
systems of law obtaining in the Christian world and compile a code of
law based upon that system, and applicable alike to the Japanese and
to the foreigners residing in Japan.
There were three such systems--the Anglo-American, the French, and the
Germanic Roman--each offering itself for adoption. Mr. Yeto
Shimpei,[2] who became the Minister of Justice in 1872, seems to have
had a personal preference for the French system. He called to his
assistance some of the most eminent jurists of France and entered upon
the work of drafting a code. At the same time he established in Tokio
a law school known as the "Department of Justice Annex Law School," in
which French law was taught by those same jurists whom he had called
from France. About this time there was also established in the
University of Tokio a law school in which instruction was given
chiefly in English law. It was while teaching in this university law
school that Mr. Henry T. Terry (a New York lawyer and an alumnus of
Yale College) wrote his memorable book on English law, designed
especially for the use of Japanese law students. From henceforth
"Terry's Leading Principles of Anglo-American Law" became as familiar
to them as are "Blackstone's Commentaries" to the law students of this
country.
[2] Those who have followed the course of events in Japan
since the beginning of the new era will remember that upon
the return of Prince Iwakura, in 1873, from his
around-the-world embassy, Mr. Yeto had to withdraw from the
cabinet, owing to a difference of opinion between him and
the Prince with regard to the Corean problem then pending.
Returning to his native province, Saga, he tried to raise
troops against the government (to carry out, of course, his
own convictions in regard to the Corean problem), resulting
in the famous "Saga rebellion" of 1873. Defeated by the
government troops, he betook himself to the interior of the
country in disguise, was arrested, found guilty of treason,
and executed according to law. It is a familiar saying in
Japan that Mr. Yeto died a criminal at the hand of his own
Penal Code.
Thus, side by side there existed in Tokio two law schools in which two
distinct systems of law were taught--the English and the French. The
primary object of the Department of Justice in establishing the French
law school being to make it a training school of judicial officers,
the students of that school were, upon graduation, to render, for a
limited number of years, an obligatory service to the government in
the various capacities of judges, magistrates, and prosecuting
attorneys. On the other hand, the University of Tokio being a strictly
independent institution in which learning is pursued for the sake of
learning, the graduates of the university or English law school were
at entire liberty in their choice of professions. Naturally enough the
majority of these did not wish to enter the same service which the
graduates of the other school were obliged to enter as a matter of
fulfilment of contract. Thus it happened that the bench was recruited
from the French law school, while the bar was recruited from the
English law school. This state of affairs lasted for about twenty
years, during which time there was also established a German law
school in the University of Tokio. Those who know something about the
rivalry that existed in ancient times between the Sabinians and the
Proculians, or even about the rivalry which exists to-day between the
Yale method and the Harvard method, between the Waylandians and the
Langdellians, can readily imagine what intellectual competition was
carried on between these three Japanese law schools representing three
distinct systems of law.
After twenty years of assiduous labor the Code Commission submitted a
draft of a Civil Code to the two Houses of Parliament in 1890,
accompanied by the recommendation from the Bureau of Legislation that
the draft might receive the parliamentary sanction in such a manner
that it might be possible for it to be put in effect by the year 1893.
As might have been expected from the personnel of the Commission,
consisting, in its conception, of Mr. Yeto Shimpei and the eminent
French jurist Prof. Boissonade, etc., the draft was a genuine French
code, being almost a literal translation of the Code Napoleon in all
its parts excepting the part dealing with the Law of Persons. The
question may well be asked why it took the Commission twenty long
years to produce this imitation draft code when we know that the draft
of the Code Napoleon itself was completed within the short period of
four months. The answer seems to be that the Commission spent almost
this entire time in their efforts to reconcile the principles of the
French Law of Persons with the Japanese laws and customs bearing on
that subject.
As has been the case with many other draft codes this draft Civil Code
of Japan was destined to go into oblivion. As soon as it was submitted
to the Parliament there ensued a most desperate fight against its
adoption. As figuring most prominently among the champions of the
opposition I may mention the names of Mr. Kazuo Hatoyama, the present
Speaker of the House of Commons of the Imperial Japanese Parliament,
and His Excellency Mr. Toru Hoshi, the present Japanese minister at
Washington.[3] Inspired by these and other eminent jurists of the
English school the entire bar was set against the adoption of the
draft code. This was not a case of a bar accustomed to one set of
rules and formulas opposing the adoption of a new code for fear that
they might be compelled to learn a new set of rules and formulas. On
the contrary, the bar was composed of men who had studied law as a
science, and science for the sake of science. The spirit of their
opposition was very plainly shown by the objections they raised
against the code. They said:--"The draft Code was a blind imitation of
a foreign Code which itself was far from being free from defects. It
abounded in definitions, illustrations, and examples, and presented an
appearance more becoming to a text-book of law than the Civil Code of
a great nation. It went into too minute details and left too little
room for voluntary development of jurisprudence. It incorporated, like
the French Code, the law of evidence into the body of the Civil Code,
which was totally at variance with the modern theory of evidence,
being a failure on the part of the Commissioners to distinguish
adjective from substantive law. It made too many innovations upon the
Law of Persons hitherto obtaining in Japan. It changed the Family Law
of the Japanese from the foundation, which was a gross disregard of
the historical principle of jurisprudence," etc., etc., etc. Such were
some of the grounds upon which they opposed the adoption of the draft
code, reminding one of the fight in Europe between the historical
school and the analytical school, between the jurists of France and
those of Germany; of the fight in Germany between the Code party and
the anti-Code party, between Savigny and Thibaut. Who can say, then,
that the Japanese are childish imitators of anything that looks well?
The fact is that this sort of conflict between the more conservative
and the more radical, the more scrupulous and the more unscrupulous,
the more positive and the more speculative, is going on all the time.
[3] I make mention of these two gentlemen as representative
of two classes of a fairly large number of Japanese lawyers,
viz., those who have been educated in the United States, and
those who have received their education in England. Mr.
Hatoyama is a D. C. L. of Yale. For nearly ten years
(1880-1889) he was a professor of law in the University of
Tokio Law School, and during most of this time he was also
Dean of the school. Mr. Hoshi is a barrister-at-law of one
of the English Inns of Court. For many years he was regarded
as the leader of the Japanese bar. Like many distinguished
members of the English bar, he is more of a lawyer than of a
jurist.
At last in 1892 the Parliament passed an act deferring the taking
effect of the code till 1897 and ordering in the meantime a careful
revisal of the draft. A new Commission was appointed which consisted
of three most eminent professors of law in Japan, each representing
one of the three systems of law recognized there.[4] These
Commissioners, aided by a number of efficient assistants, looked into
the codes and laws of some fifteen leading American and European
states. As representing the French system they consulted the codes of
Louisiana, Belgium, France, Holland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. As
representing the German system they consulted the codes and laws of
Austria, Montenegro, Prussia, Saxony, Switzerland, and the draft Civil
Code of the German Empire. As representing the English system they
consulted the leading American and English reports and treatises, the
draft Civil Code of New York, and the codes of California and British
India.[5]
[4] I refer to Professors Hodzumi, Tomii, and Ume. Prof.
Hodzumi is a barrister-at-law of the Middle Temple, and is
one of the ablest representatives of English law in Japan.
Prof. Tomii is a _Docteur en Droit_ of the Facility of
Lyons, and is by far the ablest expounder of the French
codes in Japan. Prof. Ume, though a bearer of the same
degree from the same Faculty as Prof. Tomii, has attended
several German universities, and is more of the German
school than of the French. The Commission itself consisted
of several other distinguished personages, with the Prime
Minister at the head. But these three professors composed
what was called the "Compilation Committee," so that
practically they were the Commission.
[5] Prof. Ume, a member of the Commission, is responsible
for these statements so far as they relate to the codes and
laws consulted. The classifications, however, are my own.
After four years of the most constant application the Commission
submitted in 1896 a revisal of a part of the original draft. Had the
Commission had the entire code revised they could not have shown
greater wisdom. For the parts incomplete were those dealing with the
Family Law and Successions, and the Commission remembered that these
were the parts that occasioned the most vital objections to the old
code. The Parliament referred the revised draft code to a Committee of
their own, of which Mr. Hatoyama, the present Speaker, was made the
chairman. After making a careful examination and some important
modifications, Mr. Hatoyama reported favorably to its adoption. The
Parliament acted according to his advice, and the draft became the
law.
In its general arrangement the new code follows what the German
jurists call the Pandekten system. It is divided into five general
parts. Part I is called "S[=o]soku," or General Laws, and deals with
persons, natural and artificial, as the subjects of rights; with
things as the objects of rights; and with juristic acts as setting
rights in motion. One cannot help being astonished at and gratified
with the remarkable extent to which Prof. Holland's views as expressed
in his book on jurisprudence seem to be adopted in this part of the
code.[6] Part II is called "Bukken," or _Jus in Rem_, corresponding
to the Sachenrecht of the German code, and dealing with Possession,
Ownership, etc., etc. Part III is called "Jinken," or _Jus in
Personam_, corresponding to the Forderungsrecht of the German code,
and dealing with General Law of Obligations, with Obligations arising
_ex contractu_, _quasi ex contractu_, and _ex delicto_. The General
Law of Obligations is taken largely from the Forderungsrecht of the
Swiss code. The law of Contracts and Torts is taken entirely from the
English law. Parts IV and V, dealing with the Family Law and the Law
of Successions respectively, have not as yet been published, for
reasons already indicated.
[6] This may be a mere conjecture on my own part. It is
possible that the Commissioners never consulted his book,
though to assert such a thing of them would be an insult to
their scholarship. Be it as it may, it is a fact beyond
question that their arrangement of these topics presents a
remarkable coincidence to that of Prof. Holland's, and this
is a matter upon which every thoughtful Japanese may well
pride himself.
Such is the new Civil Code of Japan, adopted by the Imperial
Parliament in its session of 1896. Truly, the year 1896 has been an
eventful year for Japan. The war with China had brought glory to her
arms. Formosa and numerous other islands had been added to her
possessions. The insurgents of Formosa had been pacified. The treaties
with the leading nations of the world had been revised, providing for
the abolishment of the disgraceful extra-territoriality régime in
Japan, to take effect, however, upon the taking effect of the new
Civil Code. The last and greatest event of all, the new Code was
adopted. With equal propriety, then, the Emperor Mutsuhito might have
joined Justinian, in proclaiming:--"Imperatoriam Majestatem non solum
armis decoratam, sed etiam legibus opportet esse armatam, ut utrumque
tempus et bellorum et pacis recte possit gubernari!"
JOHN RUSKIN:
A TYPE OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY MANHOOD.
BY B. O. FLOWER.
The name John Ruskin is justly entitled to a foremost place among
those of the builders of twentieth-century civilization. In him we
find a rare combination of genius, culture, and refinement, blended
with a tender concern for all earth's unfortunates. He is at once
artist, philosopher, and philanthropist; but he is more than these;
there is much of the austere religious reformer, giving a serious
gravity to all the utterances of the glad-souled artist, a mingling of
the spirit of a Savonarola with the imagination of a Turner.
John Ruskin, more than any other man of our time in like station of
life, stands for the civilization which we believe is destined to
glorify the coming century, for in his life all thought of ease, fame,
and preferment,--all consideration of self,--is overmastered by his
love for others. Endowed by nature with the imagination of a poet, the
eyes of an artist, the brain of a philosopher, the soul of a prophet,
and the heart of a man, he has conscientiously employed all his gifts
as a sacred trust given to him that he might bless and enlighten his
day, and ennoble his civilization for all time.
He was born amid affluence, and received the best educational
advantages the age afforded. After graduating from Oxford in 1842, he
studied painting under Copley Fielding and J. D. Harding. Subsequently
he spent some time in Italy, finishing his art education in the land
of earth's greatest painters.
While in college he composed many poems, but on leaving the university
he turned his attention to art and prose composition. His "Modern
Painters" was justly hailed as one of the noblest works of the
century, and instantly placed its author in the ranks of the foremost
art critics of the world.
Few if any of his admirers will agree with all his critical views. He
not infrequently falls into those errors which we naturally expect to
find in a man of intense feeling, of strong conviction, and of vivid
imagination. If a positive idea takes possession of his mind, it is
liable to give a strong bias to his thought, and in a degree
interferes with that nice sense of proportion so essential to a great
critic. On more than one occasion Mr. Ruskin has frankly admitted that
his views and opinions were erroneous owing to being based on a
partial appearance or influenced by pernicious ideas. A notable
illustration of his thought being biassed by preconceived ideas is
found in the religious opinions put forward in the early edition of
parts I and II of "Modern Painters." And in a preface written in 1871
for a revised edition of his works, the philosopher calls attention to
his early views, declaring that he was "wholly mistaken" and
continuing: "I had been educated in the narrow doctrine of a narrow
sect, and had read history obliquely, as a sectarian necessarily
must."
Such are the blemishes which occasionally creep into the works of this
master mind. They are, however, merely spots on the sun, which do not
appear frequently enough to seriously dim the splendor of a critical
work which in my judgment surpasses in real value that of any English
scholar of the century. "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice,"
"The Seven Lamps," and his other works dealing with art are far more
than criticisms; they touch the sleeping soul, they fire the spirit
and awaken the conscience. They make the reader feel a new love for
nature and art alike, and with this pure and inspiring love comes the
desire for more knowledge. They appeal to the spiritual aspirations
even more than to the artistic impulses or the intellectual
apprehension. The moral exaltation which pervades his writings springs
from his profoundly philosophical and religious nature. In all his
work, as in his noble life, he has ever been moved by an intense
desire to uplift and dignify humanity and to impress upon the public
mind the subtle but positive effect for good exerted by true art. "I
have had," he tells us in "The Two Paths," "but one steady aim in all
I have ever tried to teach, namely, to declare that whatever was great
in human art was the expression of man's delight in God's work."
With Ruskin, life is august; its possibilities for good and evil are
never forgotten.
"Remember," he urges, "that every day of your life is ordaining
irrevocably for good or evil the custom and practice of your
soul; ordaining either sacred customs of dear and lovely
recurrence, or trenching deeper and deeper the furrows for seed
of sorrow. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do
not make yourself a somewhat better creature.... You will find
that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to
help other people, will in the quickest and delicatest ways
improve yourself."
The pleasure which springs from loyalty to duty is strenuously
insisted upon by Ruskin, and he, more than any other illustrious man
in our time, has reached such heights of unselfishness as to enable
him to fully appreciate the unalloyed pleasure which flows from a life
of sacrifice. If he is austere, he is also very humane. The fountains
of pleasure that he would have us drink deeply from would leave no
bitter aftertaste. He delights in no pseudo-pleasure; faithfulness to
the highest ideal, untiring effort at complete self-mastery, a settled
determination to work for the good of all and to be ever on guard lest
by some inadvertence we injure some other living creature,--such are
some of the lessons upon which our philosopher insists as essential to
man's happiness.
"If," he urges, in writing for the young, "there is any one point
which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong,
wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience
discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more
than any others; that His first order is, 'Work while you have
light;' and his second, 'Be merciful while you have mercy.' 'Work
while you have light,' especially while you have the light of
morning. There are few things more wonderful to me than that old
people never tell young ones how precious their youth is....
Remember, then, that I, at least, have warned _you_, that the
happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in
earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now.
They are not to be sad days; far from that, the first duty of
young people is to be delighted and delightful; but they are to
be in the deepest sense solemn days. There is no solemnity so
deep, to a rightly thinking creature, as that of dawn.... You
must be to the best of your strength usefully employed during the
greater part of the day, so that you may be able at the end of it
to say, as proudly as any peasant, that you have not eaten the
bread of idleness. Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be
cruel. Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so; and
indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately
unkind to any creature; but _unless you are deliberately kind to
every creature, you will often be cruel to many_."
Ruskin is often disquieting to conventionalists; he is too candid to
be popular with those who make long prayers and descant on charity
while they ignore justice. He puts questions to them which they do not
want to consider themselves, or to have others consider. By insisting
on the substitution of justice for charity, and by taking the
teachings of Jesus seriously, he offends the sleek money-changers who
occupy choice pews in the modern palaces of ease dedicated to the
lowly Nazarene. Such expressions as the following from the magnificent
lecture on "Work" prove far less satisfying to this class than the
popular sermons they are accustomed to hear:
"It is the law of heaven," says Ruskin, "that you shall not be
able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are first resolved
to judge what is just, and to do it. That is the one thing
constantly reiterated by our master--the order of all others that
is given oftenest: 'Do justice and judgment.' That's your Bible
order; that's the 'service of God.' The one divine work--the one
ordered sacrifice--is to do justice; and it is the last we are
ever inclined to do. Anything rather than that! As much charity
as you choose, but no justice. 'Nay,' you will say, 'charity is
greater than justice.' Yes, it is greater; _it is the summit of
justice_; it is the temple of which justice is the foundation.
_But you can't have the top without the bottom_; you cannot build
upon charity. You must build upon justice, for this main reason,
that you have not, at first, charity to build with. It is the
last reward of good work. It is all very fine to think you can
build upon charity to begin with; but you will find all you have
got to begin with begins at home, and is essentially love of
yourself.
"You well-to-do people, for instance, who are here to-night will
go to 'Divine Service' next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your
little children will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and
lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think,
complacently and piously, how lovely they look! So they do; and
you love them heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their
hats. That's all right; that _is_ charity; but it is charity
beginning at home. Then you will come to the poor little
crossing-sweeper got up also--in its Sunday dress--the dirtiest
rags it has that it may beg the better: we shall give it a penny,
and think how good we are. That's charity going abroad. But what
does justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian justice
has been strangely mute, and seemingly blind; and, if not blind,
decrepit this many a day: she keeps her accounts still,
however--quite steadily--doing them at nights, carefully, with
her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles (the only modern
scientific invention she cares about). You must put your ear down
ever so close to her lips to hear her speak; and then you will
start at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, 'Why
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its
head, as well as your own child?' Then you may ask justice, in an
amazed manner, How she can possibly be so foolish as to think
children could sweep crossings with feathers on their heads? Then
you stoop again, and justice says--still in her dull, stupid
way--'Then, why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child
to sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church in a
hat and feather?' Mercy on us (you think), what will she say
next? And you answer, of course, that you don't, because
everybody ought to remain content in the position in which
Providence has placed them.
"Ah, my friends, that's the gist of the whole question. _Did_
Providence put them in that position, or did _you_? You knock a
man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain content in the
'position in which Providence has placed him.' That's modern
Christianity. You say, 'We did not knock him into the ditch.' How
do you know what you have done or are doing? That's just what we
have all got to know, and what we shall never know until the
question with us every morning, is, not how to do the gainful
thing, but how to do the just thing."
These thoughts suggest to us Ruskin, the social economist, for we must
not lose sight of the fact that this greatest of all art critics, this
strong, sane ethical philosopher who has emphasized so forcibly the
possibilities, duties, and responsibilities of the individual in all
his complex relations, is also one of the most enlightened and
broad-visioned economists of our wonderful age. By treatises, essays,
and letters he has striven for a brighter day for the breadwinners. He
has sought to elevate the ideals and tastes of all toilers, while he
has labored unremittingly to secure for them that meed of justice
which is their right, but which has so long been denied them.
So far back as 1868, when few people of position dared advocate so
sane a proposition as the governmental ownership of "natural
monopolies," John Ruskin published these bold and thoughtful words in
the London _Daily Telegraph_:
The ingenious British public seemed to be discovering to its
cost, that the beautiful law of supply and demand does not apply
in a pleasant manner to railroad transit. But if they are
prepared to submit patiently to the "natural" laws of political
economy, what right have they to complain? The railroad belongs
to the shareholders; and has not everybody a right to ask the
highest he can get for his wares? The public have a perfect right
to walk, or to make other opposition railroads for themselves, if
they please, but not to abuse the shareholders for asking as much
as they think they can get. Will you allow me to put the _real_
rights of the matter before them in a few words?
Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong
to any private persons. All means of public transit should be
provided at public expense, by public determination, where such
means are needed, and the public should be its own shareholder.
Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends
to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, and no more.
All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods,
levied by the persons to whom the road or canal belongs, for the
right of passing over his property, and this right should at once
be purchased by the nation, and the original cost of the
roadway--be it of gravel, iron, or adamant--at once defrayed by
the nation, and then the whole work of the carriage of persons or
goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried officers, as the
carriage of letters is done now.
Happily these suggestions of the distinguished Englishman have been
followed, in part at least, by several enlightened nations, but to the
disgrace of our republic, and to the great cost of the producing and
consuming masses, we are lagging behind in these respects, becoming a
camp-follower instead of a leader in the march of progress, because of
the influence exerted by a small class, who have grown so powerful
through special privileges given to them by the nation that they now
assume to thwart beneficent legislation in order that they may
continue to grow richer through this vicious form of governmental
paternalism, which places the multitude in the power of a few.
Ruskin's views on money are as disturbing to the usurers and those who
through special privileges in money have amassed fortunes of unearned
wealth as his sound position on railroads is distasteful to the
monopolists who impoverish the producer and consumer by exorbitant
rates on transportation.
The great Englishman is also too clear-sighted to accept the
fallacious doctrines of the money-changers in regard to the medium of
exchange. He is too honest to hold his peace in the presence of a
great wrong, hence his definition of money is far more nearly correct
than the false and essentially injurious definitions so industriously
promulgated by special pleaders for an interested class. "The final
and best definition of money," says Ruskin, "is that it is a
documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation to give or
find a certain quantity of labor on demand."
In 1873 our author carried on a spirited discussion with some
conventional economists regarding the money of the rich. One writer
undertook to defend the lavish and reckless expenditures of the
wealthy by calling to his aid the well-worn plea that money thus paid
out finds its way into the pockets of poor families, and that thus
through the bounty of the rich the starving are blest. Ruskin, in the
course of his reply, observed that, were he a poor man instead of a
moderately rich one, he would be sure that the paper referred to would
suggest the question:
These _means of living_, which this generous and useful gentleman
is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me--where does he get
them himself?... These are the facts. The laborious poor produce
"the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess
themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these
means of life, and, keeping as much means as they want for
themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest usually only in
return for _more labor from the poor_, expended in producing
various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now
gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep
in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life"
they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra
occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than
that of other people.
The conventional economist replied to the question relating to how the
rich man got his wealth by stating that it was obtained by the
possessor or his ancestors through a "mutually beneficent partnership"
between the rich and the poor by which the poor had their share of the
joint returns advanced to them. Mr. Ruskin in his reply stated the
question again, and then proceeded to answer it by a telling personal
illustration. He says:
"Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself
see how a more straightforward question could be put! so
straightforward, indeed, that I particularly dislike making a
martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day--a
martyr, at least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people
don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some
day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for sometime
back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the
other. Well, for the point in question, then, as to means of
living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state
how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and
his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously
styles "a mutually beneficent partnership" with certain laborers
in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a
certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by
my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts,
of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to
the laborers. In which state of mutual beneficence my father and
his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally
remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me.
Space forbids a more extended notice of Mr. Ruskin's broad and
thoughtful views on economic problems, but before closing this paper,
I wish to notice how the life of this great philanthropist has touched
and brightened other lives. Many men think noble thoughts and at times
are stirred by the loftiest aspirations, but in actual everyday life
they sadly fail to live up to their teachings; but he who can and does
master himself, he who gives his life for justice and thinks of the
welfare of others before he considers himself, has reached a far
higher summit than have the most gifted intellects who, while
apprehending the beauty of goodness, fail to express that beauty in
their daily lives. John Ruskin's life has been at once earnest, pure,
and unselfish.
Of the unexampled manner in which he gave up his beautiful wife to his
friend--how he quietly secured a divorce that she might become the
wife of the man she loved--electing to pass the rest of his life alone
rather than destroy her happiness,--these facts are well known, and
Mr. Ruskin has been severely criticised for not holding his wife in
unwilling bondage. But he was so constituted that it was impossible
for him to endure the thought of being directly or indirectly the
cause of another's misery.
Another striking illustration of his unselfishness is seen in the
manner in which he has disposed of his fortune, which at the time of
his father's death amounted to a million dollars. With this money he
set about doing good. Poor young men and women who were struggling to
obtain an education were helped, homes for working men and women were
established, and model apartment-houses were erected. He also promoted
a work for reclaiming waste land outside of London. This land was used
for the aid of unfortunate men who wished to rise again from the state
into which they had fallen through cruel social conditions and their
own weaknesses. It is said that this work suggested to General Booth
his colonization farms. Ruskin has also ever been liberal in aiding
poor artists, and has done much to encourage the artistic taste among
the young. On one occasion he purchased ten fine water-color paintings
by Holman Hunt for $3,750, to be hung in public schools of London.
By 1877 he had disposed of three-fourths of his inheritance, besides
all the income from his books. But the calls of the poor and the plans
which he wished to put into operation looking toward education and
ennobling the toilers, and giving to their gloomy lives something more
of sunshine and joy, were such that he determined to dispose of all
the remainder of his wealth except a sum sufficient to yield him
fifteen hundred dollars a year on which to live.
Of all English writers of our century no one has left a more valuable
literary legacy than has John Ruskin, but the splendid and voluminous
works of his brain are even less priceless than the example of his
wonderful life. That he is in the shadow in his old age is by no means
strange; a nature so sensitive, so finely strung, so keenly alive to
the sufferings of others on every hand, has necessarily felt what the
well-kept and self-engrossed animals around him knew nothing of.
Indeed, just here we find the chief reason why the finest natures
suffer so keenly in this age of heartless greed, self-absorption, and
gold madness, of wanton extravagance and biting poverty, of widespread
misery and growing discontent. Sensitive natures who are spiritually
alive to the misery around them must suffer while they sow the
seed-thoughts of a new day--suffer uncomplainingly until the
waiting-time of this great transition period has passed.
In John Ruskin we find great breadth of thought and a wide range of
intellectual vision, going hand in hand with a profound philosophical
grasp of life's deepest problems; and, what is more, these excellences
are rendered luminous by the influence of an enlightened soul. His
life has been characterized by nobility of purpose, purity of thought,
a passion for nature and art, and an enthusiasm for humanity.
THE SINGLE TAX IN OPERATION.
BY HON. HUGH H. LUSK,
_Ex-Member of the New Zealand Legislature._
Few if any of the various economic theories that have been advanced,
claiming attention in virtue of their practical benefit to the
existing conditions of human affairs, have gained so immediate or so
widespread an acceptance amongst intelligent persons as that which is
familiarly known as "the single-tax" theory propounded by Mr. Henry
George. In all parts of the English-speaking world, at least, the
theory has obtained many and enthusiastic disciples, who have
believed, and probably still believe, that they find in Mr. George's
doctrine a panacea for many of the most apparent of the evils which
oppress society not less under our advanced civilization than they did
at any former period of the world's history. It may be said, indeed,
that we hear less of Mr. George and the single tax now than we did a
few years ago, and from this some will argue that the idea has died or
is dying out of men's minds; this, however, is almost certainly a
mistake.
In the history of any great system of alleged reform there may be
traced at least three distinct stages which are marked by different
degrees of prominence in the public regard. The first of these may be
called the period of promulgation, the second that of fermentation,
and the third that of experiment. If the evils proposed to be reformed
are manifest and widely recognized the first of these stages is almost
certain to excite wide attention and much controversy on both sides.
The earliest stage, that of mere discussion, however, soon wears
itself out, and the theorists who argued in favor of, as well as those
who argued against, the new system, having exhausted their ingenuity
in argument, turn for the most part to something newer, and let the
matter drop.
Then follows the period of incubation. Removed from the din of
controversy a certain number of people are always found who are keenly
sensible of the evils which the new system was supposed to cure, and
who continue to meditate upon the possibility of its possessing the
power to do so. These persons, it may be, make but little noise in the
arena either of literature or politics, but they are not the less
active, nor perhaps in the end the less really influential, on that
account. Their influence is of the sort that depends upon a solid
conviction, right or wrong, that the theory which they support is the
true one; and as long as the evils, which the system they adhere to
professes to cure, continue to exist, so long their influence may be
expected to increase.
It is the third or experimental stage which is the critical one, and
generally speaking it is well when that stage can be reached without
any needless delay. By experiment alone can the value of such theories
be tested to the satisfaction of the practical mind of humanity, and
it is only as the result of a trial that men will either consent to
admit the value of a proposed reform or to abandon a specious theory
to which they have once given their adherence.
The single-tax theory of political economics advanced by Henry George,
having passed through the first of these three stages with something
more than the usual publicity and controversy, has already been in its
second stage for a good many years. The cessation of active
discussion, which appears to some people to argue that it has passed
into oblivion, or is at any rate well on the way toward such a
consummation, is only evidence that it is in its second, or
fermentation, period. Nobody can pretend for an instant that any one
of the evils pointed out by Henry George as the things that called
loudly for reform, have actually been reformed since the date of the
publication of his original essay on "Progress and Poverty." No
reasonable man can doubt that many, if not all of these evils, ought
in some way to be dealt with, and if possible amended. While such is
the case it is impossible wholly to get rid of the theory which
trenchantly pointed out those evils and professed at least to offer an
effective remedy.
Under these conditions few things could be more desirable than that
the matter should be advanced to the third of its natural stages by
being submitted to the critical test of experience. Nothing short of
this will ever satisfy the mass of mankind of the feasibility of the
system proposed, or of its adequacy to meet the evils complained of;
nothing less will set free the minds of many thousands of intelligent
persons to inquire into other methods of reform than the fair trial of
the single-tax system, and its failure to cure the evils which its
author expected it to cure. The difficulty, which indeed is by no
means a slight one, is to find a favorable arena in which the
experiment can be tried, and a community prepared to make the
experiment.
It must be remembered that, if the evils aimed at by the proposed
remedy of the single tax are great and far-reaching, its complete
application could hardly, in most communities, amount to less than a
practical revolution. Striking as it does at the whole received theory
of land tenure, as sanctioned throughout the civilized world by the
practice of many centuries, it arrays against itself the prejudices of
the most influential classes in every long-established community, and
its introduction is necessarily surrounded by difficulties and at
least apparent injustices which must indefinitely delay any attempt to
bring it to the test of experiment there. The only reasonable hope,
indeed, of reducing the theory of the single tax to the plane of
experience is to find a country not yet fully committed to any other
system, and occupied by a self-governing people sufficiently
intelligent to perceive the evils of other existing systems of land
tenure, and sufficiently enterprising to be willing to experiment in
this direction.
It may perhaps prove of no little benefit to other communities that
one self-governing country has been found which has been both able and
willing to make trial of the principle which has been so strongly
contended for by the author of "Progress and Poverty," and by those
who have seen in his proposals a way of escape from many of the most
serious difficulties that beset civilized communities at the present
day. There is probably no other country which is to-day in so good a
position to enter upon experimental legislation in this and other
directions as the British colony of New Zealand. An island community
separated by more than a thousand miles from its nearest neighbors,
possessed of practically unlimited powers of self-government, and
inhabited by a prosperous and intelligent population, substantially
of unmixed British race, there is little either in their external
relations or internal circumstances to prevent the colonists of New
Zealand making many experiments in economic legislation. And during
the last quarter of a century this fact has been fully realized by the
people and their leaders. They have established a system of education
which is at once more popular, free, and comprehensive than even the
most complete systems in force in this country; they have placed local
option in the control of the liquor traffic upon a broad and entirely
popular basis, which has rendered New Zealand the most sober and
law-abiding of communities, without introducing the doubtful principle
of prohibition; they have thrown open the franchise unreservedly to
all persons of full age and competent education, without regard to
sex; and they have successfully introduced life insurance and
trusteeship of estates by the government, as well as many others of
the proposals which are generally comprehended under the term "State
Socialism."
It is by no means surprising that a community which has made so many
experiments in legislation should have turned its attention to the
question which may perhaps be looked upon as most specially inviting
attention from social reformers in a new country. The circumstances of
New Zealand in relation to the land were from the first exceptional.
In every other country occupied by savage tribes in modern times which
has been taken possession of for purposes of settlement by people of
European race, the ownership of the soil has been assumed, as a matter
of course, to vest not in the aboriginal natives, but in the intruding
settlers. Spain, England, France, Holland, Germany, and the United
States have one after the other adopted this convenient theory of
international morality, and entered with a cool assumption of right
upon the inheritance of their comparatively helpless predecessors. In
New Zealand the conditions of the country and its inhabitants rendered
this popular system wholly inapplicable. The area of the country was
limited, to an extent which rendered it impossible to adopt the
fiction which has lain at the root of nearly all the forcible
confiscation of the territory of native tribes, namely, that they
could make no profitable use of so great an area. The islands of New
Zealand contain only a little more land than Great Britain itself,
and sixty years ago, when England first thought of annexing them to
her empire, the native inhabitants numbered little if anything short
of a hundred thousand souls. They were besides a settled people who
cultivated the soil, and moreover they were warlike, and formidable to
any invader. In consequence of these things a wholly new departure was
made in the case of New Zealand. The country was not occupied on any
plea of discovery or of conquest, as had been done in so many parts of
the world before, but the sovereignty of the islands was obtained by
treaty with the chiefs of the native tribes, upon the distinct
guarantee that the full rights of the aboriginal inhabitants to their
lands should be recognized and protected by England against all
comers.
From the first, therefore, the lands of New Zealand have been
purchased by the government before they could be disposed of to the
settlers. The community had no vast tracts of land to dispose of which
had cost nothing but the expense of survey, but as a matter of fact
had to look on every acre as an investment which must be sold for a
certain definite price unless the transaction was to result in an
absolute loss of money to the people at large. It may well have
happened that the result of so unusual a condition of affairs was to
lead the community to regard the public lands in a somewhat different
light from other people. At any rate it led to all lands being sold
for a price which prevented their being lightly esteemed or as a rule
held as freeholds in large areas. So much was this the case that from
the first nearly all pastoral lands were held under leases from the
government at fixed annual rentals. Fully forty years ago the
southern, and larger, of the islands was nearly all purchased from the
comparatively small native population by the government, and in that
island a very large proportion of the land has always been let on
lease for grazing. In the northern island nearly one-half of the land
even now belongs to the original native owners, and much of this area
is leased from them by Europeans for farming or grazing purposes.
In this way it has happened that in New Zealand, more than in any
other country occupied by people of European race, the inhabitants
have grown accustomed to the idea of holding land on lease, with the
people at large, as represented by the government, for landlord. Under
these conditions it is easy to understand how the doctrine of the
single tax found a peculiarly congenial home in the minds of New
Zealand public men. It is true that large areas of the lands of the
country had been disposed of in freehold to settlers. It is true that
the freehold tenure of the native inhabitants had in a certain sense
been guaranteed to them by treaty, at least in so far that it should
never be taken from them without compensation. It is true that the
mass of the people were very fully possessed by the apparently almost
universal preference for the idea of a freehold over every other
tenure of lands so far as they were personally concerned. But, on the
other hand, they had grown accustomed to the practice of holding areas
of land on lease both from the government and from the native owners,
whose tenure was not individual, but tribal, and they had learned the
lesson that there was no intolerable hardship in the system.
The attempt to introduce a system which should give effect to the
principle underlying the economic theory of Henry George in New
Zealand was not hastily made, nor was it attempted on a scale that
could be fairly open to the charge of being revolutionary in its
incidence. The first step taken by the legislature was in the
direction of so dealing with the public estate of the country as to
encourage settlers to lease rather than to purchase the freehold. With
this in view a system of leases in perpetuity was established, and
areas of the best and most accessible of the land still unsold were
set apart to be dealt with under the new plan. Any person, not already
the holder of land in freehold, which, together with the land applied
for under perpetual lease, would make an area of more than six hundred
and forty acres, or one square mile, could apply for a lease of not
more than three hundred and forty acres on perpetual lease. Five
dollars per acre was fixed as the price of the land, such being the
average price of first-class freehold land unimproved in the country,
and the applicant was entitled to a lease for 999 years of the land
applied for, subject to the conditions that he resided upon the land
during the first ten years of the tenancy; that he improved it to the
extent of thirty per cent of its upset value within six years; and
that he paid as annual rental interest at the rate of five per cent on
the price or value of the land.
Each lease contained clauses rendering the land subject to revaluation
at the end of each period of twenty-one years, on which the rental
would be calculated. If the new valuation, which it was provided
should rigidly exclude all improvements on the land, was assented to
by the tenant, the matter was settled for another twenty-one years;
but if he objected to the new valuation as excessive, it was provided
that he could demand that it should be offered by public auction
(subject to payment of the value of his improvements), and that the
amount bid for it either by himself or by anybody else at the sale
should be esteemed the value on which the rental was to be calculated
during the twenty-one years next following the sale. In case the
present holder of the lease was the highest bidder, this was the only
result of the sale; but in case he was outbid he was bound to transfer
the lease to the best bidder, on receiving from the government the
amount at which his improvements had been valued. This payment might
be made in government bonds, bearing interest at four per cent, at the
option of the government, and the new holder of the lease was charged
as rent the interest on the value of the land as bid by himself and
also interest at five per cent upon the former leaseholder's
improvements. By this means it was proposed to retain for the
community at large the increased value of the lands of the country
which was not due to the improvements made from time to time by the
leaseholder. The inducement held out to the public to accept such
leases in preference to a freehold was the saving of capital involved
in not paying for the land when taken up, but only interest on the
amount. This, it was hoped, would suffice to render it popular with a
considerable class of actual working settlers as distinguished from
speculative buyers.
It is only fair to say that in spite of every effort that could be
made by the government, the system did not commend itself to the
judgment or the prejudices of the persons interested to any very great
extent. What they wanted--what it may be taken for granted is wanted
by nearly everybody in dealing with land--was a fixed tenure. It was
not enough to know that they had a lease for 999 years; they wanted to
know what they were to pay for it, not only during the first
twenty-one years, but at any time during the 999. Eventually this had
to be conceded, and as the land law of New Zealand now stands the
holder of a perpetual lease gets it for a rental of four per cent upon
the original price fixed by government on the land, subject still,
however, to the conditions as to residence and improvements on the
land during the first ten years.
Having abandoned this promising and theoretically perfect plan for
securing to the state all state-produced increase in the value of the
public lands, the New Zealand parliament was still anxious to secure
for the country the other advantages held out by the author of the
single-tax doctrine. These advantages may be briefly summed up in the
words, the discouragement of large holdings and the prevention of
speculation in future land values. To obtain these results without
laying the community open to the charge of practical confiscation,
which has been, and probably will always be, the strongest argument
against the practical application of the doctrine of the single tax,
as propounded by its author, was felt to be no easy matter. Even in
New Zealand there were already some large freehold estates, and these
naturally included some of the most desirable and valuable of the
land. It was eventually decided to impose a land tax, the incidence of
which would tend at least to discourage speculation, while it supplied
revenue for the public expenditure.
A uniform tax of one penny in the pound sterling, equivalent to one
two-hundred-and-fortieth part of the capital value of all land in the
country held in freehold by Europeans, was imposed, the value of
improvements being in all cases deducted from such valuation. Each
owner of land is, however, allowed an exemption of land to the value
of two thousand five hundred dollars, on which no tax is payable, as
well as of all mortgage money secured on the freehold. Thus all
freehold lands held by any individual are liable to be taxed above the
value of $2,500, so far as he is really interested in them; while all
money lent on mortgage of land is subject to a tax of five per cent on
the annual interest reserved by the terms of the mortgage. New Zealand
is mainly a country of small holdings, and the result of this system
has been that, out of about 90,000 holders of land in freehold, only
about 13,000 actually pay the tax on land. In other words, the
settlers of the colony who own land which, apart from improvements and
mortgage debts, is worth more than $2,500, are found to be only about
one-seventh of the whole number.
To provide for the discouragement of land speculation on a large scale
a further provision is made by the enactment of a further tax upon all
lands held by individuals or corporations of a value exceeding $25,000
clear of incumbrance. This is called the graduated land tax, and
provides for a farther taxation on all such lands, beginning at
one-eighth in addition to the original tax, and rising by advances of
an additional eighth for each sum of $25,000 at which the land is
valued, until a maximum rate of three times the original tax is
reached in the case of large estates. To provide for the risk of
vexatious opposition to valuations on the part of owners, there is a
farther provision that the government may at its option elect to
purchase, at an advance of ten per cent over the valuation objected
to, any unimproved land held in freehold. It is also a part of the
system that the government may compulsorily purchase at a valuation
any lands not in actual use in case any association of persons shall
apply to have this done, undertaking satisfactorily to take the land
upon its purchase under the conditions of perpetual lease, which of
course includes subdivision into small areas, with residence and
improvement.
By these means the people of New Zealand confidently expect to secure
the subdivision of the lands of the country into small areas; to
discourage to the utmost the holding of land by capitalists in
expectation of greatly increased values at the expense of the less
wealthy classes; to render practically impossible the establishment on
any extensive scale of private landlordism in respect of agricultural
lands; and gradually to substitute, as far as possible, the payment to
the state of a yearly interest on value, for the purchase of the
freehold in the land of the country.
So far as the experience of the last eight years, during which the
system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the
experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the
tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which
threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It
has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of
taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large
areas of land have developed a strong inclination to subdivide and
sell lands which they formerly were disposed to hoard and increase.
The power given to the government to purchase lands where the owners
have objected to the valuation for taxation purposes has not been
widely exercised, but several very important and considerable
compulsory purchases of estates have been made in cases where
associations of persons wishing to take the land on perpetual lease
have applied to the government for that purpose. The chief benefit of
such examples, indeed, seems to have been in compelling owners either
to use the land themselves or to offer it for sale to persons anxious
to use it; but from the New Zealand point of view this would appear to
be almost if not quite equally desirable. Finally, the land tax has
largely enabled the country to do without other taxes, which would
necessarily have fallen more heavily upon the class of workers with
small incomes, instead of being levied on the classes best able to
bear them.
It yet remains to be seen whether evils may not lurk, as yet
unnoticed, in the system, which may impair if not destroy its
usefulness. One consequence which was predicted by its opponents,
however, has not been found to follow upon the introduction of the
system. It was said that capital would be withdrawn from the country,
and that poverty and stagnation would result. No such result has
followed up to this time. New Zealand, with its less than a million
inhabitants, is to-day looked on as one of the soundest dependencies
of the British empire; it continues to draw to it from the mother
country as much capital as it can profitably use; its exports steadily
increase; and its people, if not rich, are well-to-do and comfortable.
It may be said, indeed, that New Zealand has not accepted Henry
George's doctrines as they were propounded by their author, and this
is literally true. It is, however, also true that they have accepted
the essential spirit of those doctrines, and, applying that spirit to
the circumstances of their own country, are giving probably the most
useful practical illustration of all that is best in them for the
world's acceptance. No doctrine in economics yet propounded for the
acceptance of humanity has ever been found to be applicable in
exactly the same form or to exactly the same extent under all
circumstances, and this, it may be safely said, will prove
emphatically true of the doctrine of the single tax. The single tax,
like all other economic plans, is not an end, but only a means. The
end must be the amelioration of the condition of the masses of the
people, and the consequent prosperity and happiness of the great
majority. In New Zealand the people and their leaders believe this to
be secured by taxing wealth rather than comparative poverty; by giving
every encouragement to those who will devote themselves to the
cultivation of the land; and by throwing every obstacle in the path of
those who would fain establish and promote the pernicious system of
private landlordism, which everywhere tends to create and perpetuate
class distinctions, with their long train of attendant evils.
In these respects New Zealand presents an object-lesson which can
hardly fail to be of value to other countries, even if their
conditions differ widely from her own. Her successes may be noted with
advantage, her mistakes may be criticised with profit, in every free
country and by all those who see that existing conditions are far from
perfect in any part of the world, and that the safety as well as the
advancement of society may depend largely upon the introduction of
wise and, it may be, far-reaching reforms.
NATURAL SELECTION, SOCIAL SELECTION, AND HEREDITY.
BY PROFESSOR JOHN R. COMMONS,
_Of Syracuse University, N. Y._
The term "natural selection" is a misnomer, as Darwin himself
perceived. It means merely survival. "Selection" proper involves
intention, and belongs to human reason. Selection by man we call
artificial. Natural selection is the outcome of certain physical
facts: 1. Environment: the complex of forces, such as soil, climate,
food, and competitors. 2. Heredity: the tendency in offspring to
follow the type of the parent. 3. Variation: the tendency to diverge
from that type. 4. Over-population: the tendency to multiply offspring
beyond the food supply. 5. Struggle for life: the effort to exclude
others or to consume others. 6. Consciousness of kind: the tendency to
spare and coöperate with offspring and others of like type. 7.
Survival of the fittest: the victory of those best fitted to their
environment by heredity, variation, numbers, and consciousness of
kind.
These biological facts underlie human society, but a new factor enters
with novel results. This is self-consciousness. Society is based not
merely on consciousness of kind, as worked out by Professor Giddings,
but peculiarly on individual self-consciousness.
Self-consciousness is a product of evolution, at first biological as
explained by natural selection, and second, sociological. The
biological character is the prolongation of infancy, i. e. the
prolonged plastic and unfolding state of the brain. This makes
possible a new kind of development unknown to the animal, namely,
education. Education is preëminently a social activity. I say
education instead of environment. In natural selection there is a
physical environment which presses upon individuals, and only those
survive who are fitted to sustain this pressure. In social selection
society enters between the individual and the physical environment,
and, while slowly subordinating the latter, transforms its pressure
upon the individual, and he alone survives who is fitted to bear the
social pressure. This pressure reaches the individual through the
educational media of language and social institutions, especially the
family, the state, and property. Institutions rest upon ideas and
beliefs, and these are epitomized in language. Language in turn, by
giving names to things and relations, and by thus transmitting to each
individual the accumulated race experience, gradually brings him to
the consciousness of himself. This is education.
But self-consciousness is at first only vague, capricious, and
unprincipled. It grows by becoming definite, self-controlled, and
conscientious; that is, more regardful both of its own higher self and
of others. It thus develops into moral character, which we call
personality. Personality is the final outcome of social selection.
When once liberated it becomes a new selective principle to which all
others are subordinated. What, then, are the social conditions which
promote or retard the survival of personality?
It is a debated question where we shall place the dividing line
between pre-social and social man. In view of what precedes we should
look for that line at the point where self-consciousness begins to
throw about itself a social covering. This covering is private
property. The former view that primitive property was common property
is now nearly abandoned. The supposed village communities of free
proprietors were really villages of slaves and serfs. The semblance of
common property in primitive times belongs to the pre-social or
gregarious stage, and differs but little from the common use of a
given area by a colony of beavers.
Private property involves two facts: 1. Perception of enduring value
in external objects; 2. Exclusive control and enjoyment of those
objects. Its psychological basis is therefore self-consciousness,
which is the knowledge not of an abstracted and isolated self, but of
self as related to external nature and human beings.
The first private property was animals and tools. Artificial selection
begins with the domestication of animals. Soon it lays hold on man
himself by means of social institutions, all of which originate as
private property. The primitive social family was not a state of
promiscuity nor even the voluntary pairing of animals and birds, but
it was private property in women, beginning as wife-capture and
becoming wife-purchase and polygamy. Natural selection, too, is
transcended when cannibalism ceases. The self-conscious victor
enslaves his enemy and reduces him to property. Next, government
arises as private despotism, and with it the land becomes the property
of the chief. Thus the family, the state, protracted industry, and the
control of social opportunities begin with that artificial selection
denoted by private property.
Property in its early forms means the domination of the powerful over
the weak. Social institutions develop out of this primitive tyranny,
where the caprice of owners crushes the personality of the masses,
towards a state of equal rights and opportunities for all. The
industrial classes emerge from slavery and serfdom into a wage system,
which in turn is modified in the direction of fair wages, short hours,
and security of employment--fundamental conditions for personal
development.
The family has arisen from the private property of a despot to the
mutual coöperation of lovers, and the woman becomes a person instead
of a chattel. The legal successor of polygamy--the slavery of
women--is not monogamy, but prostitution, which is the wage system of
the sexes, grounded on the subordinate position of women and their
meagre opportunities for self-support.
Government is passing into democracy, and property in land and capital
is being hedged about by the police and taxing powers, or diffused and
socialized in the interest of the personal equality of all.
Social evolution is therefore the evolution of freedom and
opportunity, on the one hand, and personality, on the other. Without
freedom and security there can be no free will and moral character.
Without exalted personality there can be no enduring freedom. The
educational environment, therefore, which develops personality must
itself develop with freedom. The ruling ideas of justice, integrity,
morality, must move in advance, else the personality of individuals
will not survive the temptations of freedom. To what extent,
therefore, can education modify the individual? The answer is to be
sought in the problems of heredity and degeneration.
The human degenerate is essentially different from the animal
degenerate. The latter is solely a physical product, and by losing
certain organs is better fitted for survival, as parasites and snakes.
Human degenerates, however, do not form a new type, but are on the
decline to extinction. They are those who lack personality; that is,
they are not moulded into harmony with a social environment which
unfolds self-consciousness. They are strictly biological only when
they are congenital and therefore not educable. They are social
degenerates when they are the product of a degraded education. Both
factors are radical. A born idiot can never be other than an idiot. On
the other hand, the deprivation during childhood and youth of language
and education, as shown by Caspar Hauser, or the wolf-boy of Agra, or
the experiment of Emperor Akbar, leaves the normal natural endowments
as idiotic as though they never existed. The two factors vary
independently through all degrees. Education ranges from the slums to
the pure firesides. The congenital equipment varies from the idiot to
the genius.
The relative weight of these two factors is a matter of statistics.
Absolutely speaking, heredity is everything; relatively, its social
significance depends upon the actual proportion of abnormal to normal
births.
The highest estimate I am able to make of the total number of
degenerates, both born and induced, is five and one-half per cent of
the population, as follows:
ESTIMATED TOTAL OF DEFECTIVES PER MILLION POPULATION.
Census estimate (1890).
Insane 1,697
Feeble-minded 1,526
Deaf and Dumb 659
Blind 805
Prisoners 1,315
Juvenile delinquents 237
Almshouse paupers 1,166
-----
7,405
Outdoor Criminals (five times the number of inmates) 7,760
Tramps (McCook, 1895, New Haven Conference of Charities
and Correction, 85,768) 1,308
Drunkards (Crothers, 1893, Chicago Conference, 1,200,000,
equal to about 10 per cent of voting population) 19,000
Prostitutes (weighted average of Levasseur's estimate for
rural (600) and urban (11,200 to 17,200) France, in
"La Population Française," vol. ii, p. 434) 5,000
Outdoor Paupers (weighted average of report at Nashville
Conference, 1894, 46 per cent in Penna. to 2.2 per cent
in N. Y.) 15,000
------
55,473
This estimate would make the maximum number of all degenerates 5.54
per cent of the population. From these must be deducted those who are
not congenital. We can estimate the congenitals by three methods: by
statistics of _atavism_, or _consanguinity_, and by _experiment_.
In the statistics of atavism we add together the physical
abnormalities of the individual, assuming that a criminal type is
found when these abnormalities reach the number of three or more. The
statistical method always suffers the limitation that it indicates not
identity, but probability. Yet it has an important value, provided it
discovers ratios of probability which concur. This is not the case in
the method by atavism. Sixty to seventy per cent of criminals do not
belong to the assumed criminal type; and sixteen per cent of normal
males are classed as criminals, whereas the actual number is less than
three per cent of the males of criminal age. (See Lombroso, "The
Female Offender," pp. 104, 105.)
While atavism itself is unquestioned, this method seizes upon rigid
physical characters to measure educable qualities. And where the
latter are themselves abnormal the causes may lie with education and
not heredity.
The method by consanguinity seeks not the abnormalities of the patient
himself, but the signs of disease and degeneracy in his blood
relatives. It therefore greatly increases the apparent weight of
heredity, for it collects symptoms from several individuals instead of
one. The medical authorities ascribe fifty to eighty per cent of
inebriety to heredity. This method fails as does the other, for, as
seen in the Jukes or the drunkard, the child gets both its heredity
and its education from the same degraded parents, and the method
provides no measure for separating the two.
In sociology the method of experiment has but limited employment. The
modern sociologist cannot mate the parents nor vivisect the soul,
after the methods of the biologist. He can only move the child from
one education to another, and his experiment is incidental to the
larger purpose of saving the child. His results, too, can appear only
as a ratio of probability; but this ratio measures the mental and
moral qualities themselves directly and not by inference. Elmira
Reformatory and others cure eighty per cent of their charges. Model
placing-out institutions and free kindergartens save nearly all. And
these are taken from the most vicious and criminal parentage in the
land. Our five and one-half per cent of degenerates must therefore be
greatly reduced in order to find the residuum of congenitals. I have
made the following deductions:
ESTIMATED DEFECTIVES NOT CONGENITAL, PER MILLION POPULATION.
Criminals (80 per cent of total) 7,369
Prostitutes (80 per cent of total) 4,000
Outdoor Paupers (80 per cent of total) 16,000
Tramps (80 per cent of total) 1,046
Drunkards (50 per cent of total) 9,500
------
37,915
Which deducted from 55,473
leaves congenital defectives 17,558
equal to 1.75 per cent of the population. Overlappings would diminish
this ratio; greater infant mortality and the omitted youthful
defectives would increase it.
If less than two per cent of the births are below the normal Aryan
brain level, on the other hand possibly two per cent are above the
average, and should be classed as the geniuses who could achieve
eminence regardless of surroundings. The remaining ninety per cent or
more are born with ordinary equipment; they are hereditarily neither
good nor bad, criminal nor virtuous, brilliant nor stupid. With these
masses of the people the first fifteen years of infancy and youth are
decisive.
We may now classify the selective forces of society. Social selection
is partly natural and partly artificial. It originates artificially in
the self-consciousness of dominant individuals. Struggle and conflict
ensue, out of which private property survives in its various forms as
an intended control over others. This control is then transmitted as
the various social institutions to succeeding generations and becomes
for them natural and unintended. These social institutions then
constitute a coercive environment, not over wholly unwilling subjects,
but over those whose wills are shaped by education and social pressure
to coöperate with the very institutions that suppress them.
Gradually, as subordinate classes become self-conscious, innovations
are made which aim to check the unbridled despotism of private
property; new conflicts thereupon take place and certain innovations
survive, which, at first artificial, become natural for the next
generations.
As society becomes more definite, reflective, and humane, as it
acquires fixed laws and government, it increases the range of
artificial selection; it supplants custom by statute, and remodels its
inherited institutions.
It is now animated by a new motive, the development of moral character
in all the people. With reference to this new motive social selection
is either direct or indirect. Direct selection is highly artificial,
but it is only negative. It consists in segregating the degenerates to
prevent propagation. Society cannot, of course, directly interfere
with the marriage choice of normal persons, for that would be to choke
the purest expression of personality. But it can isolate the two per
cent who will never rise to moral responsibility. This would doubtless
increase the wards of the state, but it is needed both for the reason
already given and, more especially, to clarify the public mind on the
causes of delinquency and dependency. As long as these evils can be
charged to heredity the public is blinded to the share that springs
from social injustice.
The increase and classification of the custodial population here
contemplated is a problem for administrative charity. Possibly the
colony system would make that population mutually self-supporting and
also remove the current sentimentalism against long isolation of the
incurables.
With the ground cleared of the true degenerates, the operations of
indirect social selection can be seen. This also is artificial, but in
a less mechanical way. It consists in so adjusting the political,
industrial, and social environment as to affect personality, either to
suppress or develop it. The two instruments are legal rights and
education. For example, the tenement-house congestion, with its
significant educational environment, is the product of laws of
property and taxation which favor owners and speculators instead of
tenants, and of private property in rapid transit which puts a tax on
exit to the suburbs. It cannot be said of this and other selective
factors, such as the profit-making saloon, long hours of work, low
pay, irregular employment, that they permit natural selection to
operate. They suppress personality, which preëminently is the natural
fact in the human being. Social selection is therefore tending to
become less and less arbitrary, but is making room for a higher
natural selection--a natural selection where not brute force and
cunning are the fittest to survive, but where, with freedom, security,
and equal opportunity, the human personality will work out its own
survival. Man alone of all the animals can rise to the angels, but he
alone can fall below the brutes. This is the glory and the penalty of
personality. It becomes a unique selective agency whose standard is
raised with the advance of civilization. The Australian cannibal,
without opium, tobacco, alcohol, or syphilis, may survive with a low
morality. The American exposed to these destroyers must be a better
man or perish. Personality, thus becoming a keen selective principle,
is based not necessarily on overpopulation and competition, but on
that self-destruction which comes from vice, disease, and drunkenness.
Its degraded offspring will perish or feed the ranks of the hereditary
degenerates to be properly segregated and ended.
But with education and opportunity the higher forms of human character
will naturally increase and survive. With the independence and
education of women sexual selection becomes a refined and powerful
agent of progress. With the right to work guaranteed, the tramp and
indiscriminate charity have no excuse, and the honest workman becomes
secure in the training and survival of his family.
We hear much of scientific charity. There is also a scientific
justice. The aim of the former is to educate true character and
self-reliance. The aim of the latter is to open the opportunities for
the free expression of character. Education and justice are the
methods of social selection. By their coöperation is shaped the moral
environment where alone can survive that natural yet supernatural
product, human personality.
PSYCHIC OR SUPERMUNDANE EXPERIENCES.
BY CORA L. V. RICHMOND.
From between ten and eleven years of age I have been endowed with
gifts and favored with experiences that, I am well assured, are very
exceptional, and that, until quite recently, have not been admitted to
the realm of psychical investigation, philosophical discussion, or
even human credence. Lately, however, there have been found a
sufficient number of well authenticated facts in similar lines of
experience to warrant the investigation and classification of them (if
possible) under a modern name, "Psychic Research," and under a well
established and not so recent one, Spiritualism.
I am not intending to discuss these subjects, _per se_, nor to
endeavor to classify or explain the experiences I am about to relate.
They are _experiences_, as real as any of those in my human or mundane
existence; indeed, if I were called upon to decide that one is real
and the other illusion, I should say without hesitation that these,
and similar ones throughout my lifetime, are the real, and the
ordinary mundane experiences unreal.
At the age above referred to I was, without any seeking, and without
any surrounding circumstances to "suggest" such a state, taken
possession of (entranced) by intelligences, distinct personalities in
thought, word, and action, who spoke through my organism, unfolded and
educated my mind, in fact became my mental and spiritual instructors.
The public discourses and teachings given under these conditions are
well known to many of the readers of THE ARENA, as these labors are
the work of a lifetime.
It is not of this public work that I am constrained to write; but I
may as well say here that I have had no other teachers, no other
instructors, and have pursued no course of study or reading of human
books; those whom I call my guides and guardians have been my
teachers. During the time that these outside intelligences are
controlling and speaking through my organism I am wholly unconscious
of what is passing in human life and wholly unaware of that which is
being uttered through my lips. I am also unaware of the lapse of time.
It may be best for me to here declare that I am not, in the usual
sense, peculiar, nor was I different in my childhood from other
children, save as each differs from the other. I was very diffident,
and--not using the word in the psychical sense--sensitive. I was not
given to morbid states or to the "dreaming of dreams." Perhaps I was
imaginative; most children are; and I loved fairy tales, but not
unduly. This is simply to show that there was no abnormal condition of
mind or body to produce the supernormal results that I have referred
to.
I ought also to say that I never made the slightest preparation for
the discourses and poems given through my lips, many of which, as the
reader may know, were listened to by able and thoughtful minds, and
from them received the highest praise. I tell this, not boastingly,
but with humble gratitude that I have been made the instrument of
giving the message of immortality to the world.
My own experiences during this period of entrancement, or while in the
supernormal state, may be of peculiar interest to the reader, since
they seem to be almost unique. While passing into this state I
experience no physical sensations that are describable; a sense of
being set free, of passing into a larger realm,--not of being
transported or going anywhere,--is all that I can ever recall as
sensation. Before I have time or opportunity to think how I feel, I am
in the other state. Then I see, but I now know it is perception more
than sight; I sometimes experience that which we call hearing in the
human state, but I am fully aware; perception supersedes the senses.
Those whom I meet are individualities; many are friends known to me in
the form before they passed from the mortal state; many are those who
were unknown to me personally, only known by name and fame; and many I
have never known until they revealed themselves to me in this "inner,"
"higher," other realm. When returning to outward consciousness, I
often see, or remember as sight, such visions of surpassing loveliness
that no language, no gift of art, even with genius-portraiture, could
describe or picture them. These scenes and visions are associated with
individuals who exist in that state, and, apparently, are objective;
yet I am fully aware that they illustrate or depict the states and
tastes of the individuals with whom they are seen, and are not organic
physical forms, but psychic projections of the individual spirits.
These forms and scenes readily pass and change according to the state
of the one seeing them, or according to the state of the individual
with whom they are associated. The "sphere" of a spirit, or of
spirits, is the state or condition, not the environment.
In early life, before my mind had thought on the "objective" and
"subjective" meanings of thoughts and things, I thought these scenes
were "objective" in the human, mundane sense. I am now perfectly aware
that every sensuous faculty--seeing, hearing, etc.--is superseded by
this "perception" to which I have before referred; in fact, that the
bodily senses as well as the mental faculties--brain expression--are
but the different avenues of perceiving and conveying the intelligence
of the individual spirit while associated with material form, this
perception, or awareness, being the one supreme state of the spirit.
Still I have been shown series after series of beautiful
scenes,--gardens, landscapes, visions of art, transcendent pictures of
tint, form, and tone that no language can portray; and I am sure these
abide for all who wish for or have need of them, and are the
illustrations of the spiritual states of those with whom one comes in
spiritual contact--_rapport_. Yet the greater the degree of
perception, the less important become these illustrations of states;
we not only see "face to face," but perceive soul to soul. I became
ashamed, almost, of the state of mind requiring these illustrations or
any similar presentations. I found knowledge, however, in all the
methods employed by my teachers, for they knew my needs.
Conversation in that state is not by means of speech or even language;
sometimes before the thought is formulated the answer comes. Such is
the rare sympathy existing between teacher and pupil in this state
that the guide knows before the question is formed. Still, there must
be the conscious desire for knowledge, or no knowledge can be
received; reminding one of the "Seek, and ye shall find" of the
ancient Truth-Teller.
When in that state I readily pass to a knowledge of what intimate
friends in earth-life are doing and thinking. I even enter into such
_rapport_ as to be aware of their material surroundings, their states
of mind, and their bodily health, obtaining all this from their minds,
not from physical consciousness or sensation. Many times they have
been also conscious of my presence, and we have afterward verified
these experiences by outward correspondence, mostly to satisfy our
friends. One or two instances will suffice to illustrate this class of
experiences.
When I was yet a child, twelve years of age, my father accompanied me
on one of my pilgrimages of spiritual work to western New York, our
former home. During that visit or tour a circle for investigation and
experiment was formed in Dunkirk, N. Y. After we returned to our then
home in Wisconsin, I was one evening entranced,--as was usual,--and
while in that state was distinctly conscious of being in Dunkirk, of
seeing every member of the circle, with all of whom I was acquainted
except one lady. She proved to be the seer of the evening. She saw me
and described me so accurately that everyone in the circle recognized
me, and, of course, thought I was dead. This so disturbed her mental
or psychic state that I could not impress upon her mind that my body
was entranced and that this was but one of my usual spiritual
pilgrimages. On returning to my mundane state I narrated what I had
experienced, and asked my father to write at once to the circle in
Dunkirk and relieve their minds. He did so, but, as naturally would
occur, they had also written, the letters crossing each other on the
way, and their letter confirmed what I had told in every particular.
Later in life I had a lady friend whom I repeatedly visited and
comforted, for she was in great sorrow. One time I made her see my
body, or its apparition, so plainly that she saw the dress in which it
was clothed--precisely what I had wished, as it was the color she most
liked to see me wear. Another friend in California became so
susceptible to my presence that she wrote long letters from
me--automatically--which I, in this state, dictated to her, thus
rendering correspondence between us almost superfluous except for
verification to our outward senses. My own mother was aware of my
presence almost daily; and it was a curious fact that my telltale
spirit would go to her and reveal the very things I wished to keep
from her,--any little surprises or presents, or the time of my
arrival home on a visit. However late the hour, I always found her
ready with a warm supper to receive me. When arriving after the
journey home she would say: "You came to me last night in spirit and
told me you were coming in body." All important things connected with
my welfare she knew in a similar way.
Two friends, Mr. and Mrs. B----, were extensive travellers. At one
time they were absent three years, taking a tour of the Orient. We did
not keep up a regular correspondence, as mutually our time was too
much taken up with our respective duties or pleasures, but I could
always locate them while I was in this "inner" state. At one time I
saw them surrounded by what seemed more like a scene in the spirit
state than in earth-life. They were on an island, surrounded by
water-lilies; the skies were full of golden light, and they were amid
pavilions, grottos, and altars of quaint and unique design. I could
not place them, but on returning to my mundane state I related to my
family what I had seen, and I wrote down the date. In about three or
four weeks I had a letter from them dated at Tokio, giving a
description of this very island I had seen; they were there on that
very day when I saw them, and the island was as I had seen it. It
proved to be one of the sacred islands in Japan.
This consciousness of visiting earth friends is, however, only the
smallest part of these inner experiences; and usually occurs when I am
passing into or out of the deeper or more spiritual states. Although I
could fill volumes with these interesting experiences,--verified by
being shared with others in human life,--I feel it due to the reader
that I narrate my more inner experiences; at least in sufficient
degree that they may be recorded, and that there may be some
perception, however inadequately expressed, of what is possible in
this surpassing realm.
I cannot pass from this subject of my visits to human friends,
however, without here recording one other phase of this many-threaded
line of experiences. While in this realm of spirit I often meet and
converse freely, or commune, with friends that are yet in human forms,
but who appear as spirits and seem to possess all the activities of
the spiritual state. They meet and mingle freely with those who have
"died" to human life, yet I am perfectly sure they recall nothing of
this when in their human state. Why I should remember or take with me
these experiences that the others whom I saw within this realm could
not recall, I could not divine until it was explained by my guide.
The explanation is this: "In sleep mortals pass into this realm for
spiritual rest and change, as it is the normal realm of the spirit;
but they do not pass through the spiritual awakening of the faculties
as those do who are endowed with 'spiritual gifts,' therefore the
experiences cannot be recalled _as experiences_; still, they sometimes
have vague reminiscences or glimpses of 'unremembered dreams' that aid
them throughout the whole day, often for days; and thus the outward
life is sustained and fed from this realm. By and by the race will
have spiritual growth to know and remember the experiences of the
spirit as they now do of the human life." I have frequently met those
in that state who were strangers to me here, and who were still in
human life; and in after years I have met them face to face in outward
form, often wondering if they thought they had seen me before, as I
was certain I had seen them. When the whole of this other side of
human experience is made known, how many things now veiled will stand
revealed! By far the greater number of volumes could be filled with
those transcendent experiences referred to earlier in these pages,
with friends in spirit states, with teachers and guides in their own
realm.
My mother, always intuitive, sympathetic, religious, and caring much
for the sick and ailing while in earth life, I was accustomed to see
in a sphere or state of her own near the "Healing Sphere" of one
of my teachers. She was surrounded with her own favorite
flowers--old-fashioned hollyhocks, sweet-williams, and fragrant
healing herbs. My guide explained that in _her thought_, or spiritual,
state she requires these things to aid her in healing or ministering
to those on earth. Whenever I visited her state it seemed to be in the
midst of scenery such as she loved on earth, and under a
morning-glory-covered lattice, where she sat in a low chair like one I
had seen her use in earth life. Though not limited to that state, she
always revealed herself thus to me; and I would return to my earth
state with a sense of homesickness, and with the odor of thyme and
rosemary clinging to my _psychic olfactories_.
My father was interested in all the reforms of the day; he was a truly
practical Christian, though not a professing one. He was looking for
that ideal social state which we all hope is sometime coming, of
"peace on earth and love to all." His spirit state was revealed to me
as among those arisen workers and reformers, whose work for humanity
he loved and shared on earth, and learning of the wise ones,--a vast
and wonderful sphere of individualities, who are still laboring for
the good of humanity. I wished to know of my father, who passed out
from the mortal form when I was thirteen years of age, and who was
often my spirit teacher in my early life, why, after my mother had
passed on, he was not always with her as in earth life. He replied,
with a rare smile: "We are together; our work is different, but when
we need each other we cannot be apart."
Singly or in groups, or as my needs seemed to require, I was aware of
every relative and friend who had passed from mortal life, whom our
mutual wish or need attracted toward me. I am sure there may be those
related by ties of consanguinity whom I have not seen, and many
related only by spiritual sympathy and kinship whom I have met and
loved in that state.
My babe, now a beautiful young woman in the spirit state, is my almost
constant companion in those visitations and experiences. I have "seen
her grow," to use our mortal speech; have noted her spiritual
unfoldment, and have many times been her pupil,--so wise are these
"little ones" in the love of the angels, so sweet and simple is she in
her teaching.
How few know the real meaning of "nearness" as applied to those they
love! One thinks of the friend whose bodily presence is removed by
mountains, rivers, and oceans as being far away; yet London, China,
and India are as near in thought as the chair beside one, and doubly
near the one whose body may be sojourning there. This very nearness of
sympathy debars any separation. If people would turn to the real
indications,--sympathy, intuition,--whenever desired the friend is
near. Doubly true is this of those who have passed the barrier of
death and are revealed to the heart of love. They have not died, they
have not gone; they are so near as not to be seen or felt by the
grosser sense that governs the physical state of recognition; so very
near that even the thoughts of the friend still immured in the
earthly form are shared by them, the very innermost longings responded
to. Yet people unaccustomed to seek them in the inner instead of outer
realm of existence, cannot find them, and say, "They are gone." With
space and time annihilated, what shall prevent the loved from being
ever near?
Teachers and guides bear a nearer relationship than those in human
states, and teach by the magic law of adaptation and love. I cannot
name, in earthly language, the tie that binds me to those who have led
me through these many realms, who have taught by vision, illustration,
and thought, until the awakened _perception_ knew, the _a priori_
knowledge came.
I have often been conscious of visiting at desire a realm of music
that led through the world of tone, through the spheres of matchless
harmony in which the great masters of music abide,--Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, Mozart, and to the divine realm of Wagner.
The realm of art, leading through color and form to the images of
perfect life, until form and tint and tone are merged in the supreme
soul of beauty, and sculptured image or architectural grandeur is lost
in the eternal, all-forming, all-changing changelessness of the Soul
of Art.
The realm of nature (the material universe), seen from the inverse
side, appears to be the effect of causes that are in that realm of
consciousness; laws that are the operation of the Supreme Will, the
Logos. There science is reconstructed and made plain, and made secure
by the knowledge of these fundamental principles.
The realm of philosophy, traced to its primal sources, reveals the
truths concerning universal knowledge, often perceived by the great
teachers, but dimly stated by minds enshrouded by the environments of
earth.
The realm of religion,--the ineffable meaning of the All-Love and
Wisdom; the nearness, the perfectness, the absoluteness of the Divine;
the kinship of souls, the fraternity of spirits,--never in all this
realm was there a thought, or teaching of thought, separate from a
conscious individual entity.
I find that there is no Time or Space in this inner realm; the entity
is not governed by the limitations of the person, so the terms and
usages of earthly existence must fall into desuetude. One is not
hampered by an ox-team while flying across the plains in a palace
coach impelled by steam, and one does not need winter garments and
furs in the tropics. The state of spirit needs no earthly day and
night; all these are but incident to the physical earth and physical
existence. The spirit is free from these limitations--time, space, and
sensuous environment.
It will be interesting for the reader to know that my physical health
does not suffer from these experiences, nor from the active duties
incident to my spiritual work in human life.
I enter this spirit realm as naturally and easily as one enters the
realm of sleep; yet it is not sleep. The body and brain are actively
employed by another intelligence, loaned as an instrument might be,
while the individual consciousness, the _ego_ of the human being, is
set free to visit these illimitable realms or states of the "inner,"
the vaster, life.
When the mundane consciousness returns, it is instantaneous; but the
mental and physical sensations vary according to whether the
experiences have been "near or far" from the human state, with
reference not to distance, but to resemblance or similarity in
quality. When the experiences have been furthest removed from those
usual in human consciousness, many minutes, and sometimes hours, are
required to adjust myself to the conditions. This inner state is far
more intense, but not unlike that experienced when one has been wholly
wrapped and folded from the outer world in perusing a favorite
author--living with and experiencing the scenes depicted; or when one
has listened for hours to the all-absorbing strains of music in the
grand operatic creations of Wagner. On returning to the mundane state
my food has often tasted like chips or straw; the fabric of my dress
would feel coarse to the touch, as though woven of cords or ropes; and
every sound seemed harsh or far too loud. Gradually these
supersensitive conditions would depart, leaving the usual state of
mind and body.
I have said it is easy to pass into that state; not so easy is the
returning to the human environment; yet one _must_ return. Like the
child bidden to the task, reluctant to leave the garden of flowers and
the freedom of the outer world, yet, constrained by love and duty, one
consents to return. I suspect that these sensations I experience, of
return to the human state, are something like those of resuscitation
after one has been nearly drowned. The drowning is easy, because one
is going into life; the restoration is painful, because one returns,
if not to death, to mere existence. The work, the duty, the loved who
are embodied here must win one to the form which has been loaned; but
the spirit seems reluctant sometimes to leave that freedom and
knowledge for the narrow walls of clay, the prison-house of sense. The
only true way is to bring that realm with one into daily life. One
learns after a time to do this: to clothe the earthly scenes with the
inner brightness, and the human tasks with the spiritual aura of love
and wisdom.
I cannot judge whether the scenes of earth seem lovelier to me than to
most mortals; whether there is more ravishing sweetness in the
springtime, more glory in summer, more richness and beauty in the
autumn, more rest and whiteness in the winter, more transcendent
splendor in the sunset sky and glory in the starlit heavens. But it is
certain that in being admitted to this inner realm the writer has not
lost any blessing of earth,--of love, of home, of friends, of
practical knowledge and interest in the daily duties and work of life;
nor, I believe, can one be barred from any needed experience, however
bitter. These teachings, visions, and experiences of soul-life have
given to earth an exquisite beauty; to life's work a meaning and
impetus; to trials a lesson and interpretation; to the change called
death a glory and radiance; to spirit states a nearness, and to soul a
reality. Nor do these experiences rob one of one's individuality; the
petty _personality_ to which mortals cling is, happily, forgotten or
cast aside, but the _individuality_ cannot be lost, merged in another,
or governed, except for its good. When the _personal_ is cast aside,
one is grateful for the impersonality of the _individual_.
Trailing clouds of glory accompany me across and into the barriers of
time and sense, and when the sharp contrast is over--which the guide
ever prevents from being too sudden--I realize the great sweetness of
the gardens of paradise by the fragrance that is filling the earthly
dwelling, and I know that being aware of the visitations of angels,
and of somewhat of the light which is theirs, does not hinder, but
helps human endeavor and accomplishment.
THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CIVICS.
BY HENRY RANDALL WAITE, PH. D.
The standard represented by popular institutions will seldom be
higher, and as time goes on may become lower, than that set for
themselves by the majority of the people who established and are
intrusted with the duty of maintaining them. They may represent noble
aims and point to high ideals, but the extent of their duration and
salutary influence must always be dependent upon a sufficient
manifestation of the spirit which called them into being.
Institutions and laws, however perfect in other respects, cannot,
therefore, safely omit from their functions provisions for the
fostering and developing of the spirit which gave them birth. This
spirit, it is to be remembered, may, and too often does, without
extinguishment, actually become a thing so much apart from the
machinery which it has established, as to have little appreciable
influence in controlling its operation.
The institutions and laws of the United States, in their inception,
represented the spirit of a people who were actuated by the highest
concepts of human duty, and who sought to establish a political system
which should realize the highest ideals. The possibilities of the
system have been demonstrated by the experience of more than a hundred
years. Functionally considered this experience has made painfully
evident the failures which have attended the system in its operation.
It is evident to every intelligent student of American history that
these failures have been chiefly due to the fact that the spirit which
gave life to the American Republic has too often and too far been
supplanted in the control of its affairs by a spirit utterly hostile
to that which it was intended to be, and which, if the partial or
complete failure of the system is to be averted, must, everywhere and
always, be dominant. It is undoubtedly true that citizens whose
character and ability fit them for the service necessary for the
proper control of political affairs, constitute a sufficient number in
the voting population to assure the ascendency of right ideas if
their efforts can be united for the purpose. The fact that intelligent
and controlling convictions of duty are absent, and that they do not
thus unite, however explained, clearly accounts for the subversion of
the spirit which founded our institutions, and the ascendency of a
spirit of chicanery, greed, and corruption.
It is also evident that the political evils which challenge our
attention are primarily due, not to faults in our institutions
themselves, but to failures in the assertion of the spirit of true
Americanism by which they are intended to be controlled. How to secure
ascendency for this spirit and thus to restore, in every part of the
republic, the sovereignty of highest manhood, is the most pressing
problem which can engage the attention of patriotic and intelligent
American citizens.
For more than fifteen years this question has been a matter of
profound interest to the writer. The fact that ordinary uprisings
against political evils fail to accomplish permanent results, seemed
to him to afford convincing evidence that attention must be given to
the roots and not confined to the branches; and that this foundation
work must represent patient, persistent, and unselfish efforts for the
promotion everywhere of the basic virtues of true patriotism,
intelligence, integrity, and fidelity in citizenship relations.
Believing that this work could be best accomplished through a
permanent national institution which should invite and command the
coöperation of good citizens everywhere, regardless of party, creed,
sex, or class, he sought the advice and coöperation of a few
distinguished men in the preparation of plans for such an institution.
The assistance sought was willingly extended by such citizens as
Morrison R. Waite, William Strong, and S. F. Miller, then respectively
Chief Justice and Justices of the United States Supreme Court; by
Theodore Woolsey, Noah Porter, F. A. P. Barnard, Mark Hopkins, Julius
H. Seeley, and Theodore W. Dwight, among educators; and by such other
eminent Americans as U. S. Grant, William Fitzhugh Lee, Robert C.
Winthrop, Hugh McCulloch, John J. Knox, Orlando B. Potter, A. H.
Colquitt, George Bancroft, Hannibal Hamlin, John Jay, Right Reverend
William I. Kip, David Swing, and Phillips Brooks.
The result of conferences and correspondence with these and other
citizens of like character led to the founding, in 1885, of the
American Institute of Civics, which was subsequently chartered under
the laws of Congress, and was dedicated to the service of promoting
the qualities in citizenship which Washington sought to promote by his
latest labors and final bequests, and which he, in common with
Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison, believed to be necessary "to the
security of a free constitution," and to the welfare of the government
and people of the United States. Its distinctive purposes are
succinctly set forth in its charter as follows:
1. To promote on the part of youths and adults generally, without
reference to the inculcation of special theories or partisan
views, a patient and conscientious study of the most essential
facts relating to affairs of government and citizenship, to the
end that every citizen may be qualified to act the part of an
intelligent and upright juror in all affairs submitted to the
decision of the ballot.
2. To promote, in the same spirit, such special attention to the
study of Civics[7] in higher institutions of learning, and
otherwise, as shall have a tendency to secure wise, impartial,
and patriotic action on the part of those who shall occupy
positions of trust and responsibility, as executive or
legislative officers, and as leaders of public opinion.
[7] Defined in the Standard Dictionary as follows: "The
science that treats of citizenship and of the relations
between citizens and the government: a new word directly
derived from the adjective _civic_, introduced by Henry
Randall Waite."
Organized under such auspices and with such purposes it represents the
only practical and sustained effort which has been made by the people
of the United States for the realization of the aims above outlined;
and with persistency of purpose and increasing usefulness it has for
more than twelve years prosecuted its mission for the safeguarding of
American institutions.
Political conditions past and present clearly justify the views of
Washington and his contemporaries, and the opinions of the Institute's
founders, as to the need of a central source of salutary influences in
the form of a national institution wholly devoted to a propaganda of
the principles and ideas comprehensively described in Washington's
words as "the fundamental maxims of true liberty."
The sole object of this national, non-partisan, non-sectarian,
popular, and permanent institution, is to voice these maxims, to
inspire the spirit and give force to the principles which should have
supreme control in affairs of government, citizenship, and social
order.
What the national military establishments at West Point and Annapolis
are intended to accomplish in the way of preparing a few citizens for
useful service in times of war, it is the purpose of this popular
civil institution, with patriotic insistency and through all available
efficiencies, to aid in accomplishing through provisions for properly
preparing all citizens for the highest service of their country at all
times.
In the accomplishment of its objects, it directs its endeavors not so
much to the creation of new agencies as to the giving of inspiration
and energy to those already existing; and in pursuing this wise policy
it has been a most useful factor in establishing the solidarity and
increasing the power of the influences which represent civic virtue
and true patriotism.
Its efficiencies include, beside its National Board of Trustees,
composed of thirty-three members, and its advisory faculty, composed
of twelve members, the following departments:
1. Department for the extension of information and activities
promotive of good citizenship, through which provisions are made for
home studies, and for lectures, discussions, studies, etc., in
connection with schools, lyceums, civic associations, labor
organizations, and institute clubs; this work being carried on with
the coöperation and under the supervision of councillors in the
communities where they reside, and with the aid of a corps of
lecturers now numbering more than two hundred.
2. Department of Educational Institutions conducted in coöperation
with State and local officers of public instruction, teachers in
elementary and high schools, and members of faculties in nearly two
hundred and fifty higher institutions of learning.
3. Publication Department, through which the equivalent of nearly
twenty million pages of octavo matter has been issued under its
auspices.
4. Department of Legislation, in connection with which councillors and
citizens generally have efficiently aided in securing needed reforms
in the administration of public affairs, the protection and elevation
of the suffrage, and the conservation of the highest interests of
citizens and the state in other respects.
5. Department of Applied Ethics, in connection with which efforts are
made to properly and efficiently enlist the great body of citizens,
including youths as well as adults, who profess to be governed by the
highest concepts of duty, in practical labors for the establishment of
wise, just, and salutary civic and social conditions.
It is obvious that an institution of this character cannot depend for
its maintenance upon citizens of merely negative virtue, nor can it
expect the sympathy of scheming politicians to whose plans and power
it is in direct opposition. Its dependence must be solely upon the
willing services and financial support of those members of the body
politic who are animated by the spirit of Washington, and who believe
that in matters affecting the highest interests of our free
institutions, such as civic virtue and civic fidelity, formation is
better than re-formation, and that to constantly maintain salutary
political conditions is infinitely preferable to frequent and
disappointing struggles with corruptible elements, which through
neglect of civic duty have been permitted to secure controlling power;
in other words, that it is better to safely guard our inheritance of
freedom than to battle for its rescue from unworthy hands.
The Institute admits to membership in its National Body of Councillors
all citizens who are commended to its Board of Trustees, by those
already members, or by other citizens of known high character, as
worthy of such membership by reason of their ability to contribute in
some degree to the accomplishment of its purposes. It does not solicit
the membership of citizens whose political affiliations are such as to
rank them among those who are contributing to the evils which it seeks
to correct. Its councillors are asked to share in an undertaking which
tests the character of their citizenship by offering no rewards for
their coöperation. It has employed no paid officers and no paid agents
for the solicitation of funds. The united activities of its members
have enabled it, and it is believed will continue to enable it, to
present in itself an eloquent object-lesson in patriotism and a potent
appeal to the spirit in citizenship--the true Americanism--which it
seeks to foster. Its contributing councillors are asked for annual
remittances of sums of from $2.00 upward, in accordance with their
financial ability and the degree of their interest in its work. Those
contributing $3.00 or more annually are entitled to receive all of its
own publications, and also THE ARENA, whose aims are largely identical
with its own, and through which its official announcements will
hereafter be published.
It will be seen that the degree of responsibility resting upon its
councillors financially and otherwise is a matter for their own
determination, and one which will be decided in accordance with the
disposition of each to recognize the truth, that the patriotic and
unselfish labors of those who have gone before us, and of which we
enjoy the priceless benefits, have laid upon us a sacred obligation
which we can discharge only by the performance of similar labors.
The foregoing statements, however encouraging, are chiefly significant
as indicative of what may be, rather than of what has been,
accomplished. Gratifying as the results of the Institute's work have
been, they represent but a tithe of what it might have accomplished
with a larger degree of moral and pecuniary support. The extent of its
field and the magnitude of the labors necessary in order to make it
widely and effectively useful, when compared with the resources at its
command, have constantly presented difficulties which would have
discouraged its officers but for their abiding confidence in the
ultimate willingness of the American people to give to it the measure
of support warranted by the importance of the objects to which it is
devoted. It has been not inaptly compared to a noble piece of
enginery, whose highest possibilities in the way of efficiency and
usefulness cannot be realized because the fuel furnished is
insufficient for the supply of motive power. Its highest possibilities
are, in truth, little more than dreams, the fulfilment of which may
not be realized in the lives of those who are now giving it such
unselfish service as they find possible in the midst of other pressing
occupations.
The time must soon come when it will be necessary to make arrangements
for the permanent establishment of its central efficiencies, with
adequate provision for its maintenance, at some suitable point yet to
be selected. The suggestion has been made by some of the most
distinguished of its councillors, that the descendants of American
patriots cannot more worthily honor the memory of their sires, or
more effectively promote the safety and perpetuity of the institutions
for which they battled, than by making it their mission to maintain
the American Institute of Civics. The fact that it was conceived,
established, and has been conducted in the spirit of truest
patriotism, and the results which it has already accomplished through
services rendered wholly in the spirit of the words upon its corporate
seal, "Ducit Amor Patriæ," would seem to prove its title to the
confidence and support of all who are proud of the fact that their
forbears have been among the founders and defenders of our American
institutions. It may not be a vain hope that this thought will, in
some manner and at some time, take definite shape, perhaps in the form
of a national memorial building at the capital, devoted to the
collection and preservation of material illustrative of the nation's
history and progress, and to memorials of its illustrious dead. As has
been said elsewhere,
Such a building, dedicated by enfranchised manhood to the cause
of human freedom, may include a Hall of History and Civics, for
the collection of appropriate relics, manuscripts, and books of
colonial, continental, revolutionary, and subsequent periods; an
Army and Navy Hall, devoted to exhibits illustrative of military
and naval affairs, including battle-flags, arms, accoutrements,
and similar material; a Memorial Hall, where the memory of
illustrious Americans, statesmen, soldiers, philanthropists, and
other great leaders, may be honored, and their memory perpetuated
in statuary, paintings, mural tablets, and other appropriate
ways, and which shall be to the people of America what
Westminster Abbey is to the people of England--a place where the
great exemplars of virtue, wisdom, and patriotism, the noblest
citizens of the passing years, though dead, shall yet speak and
have salutary influence, through successive generations; and a
Hall of Instruction, which shall be the centre of the nation-wide
activities of this noble American institution, and also of a
school of civics to which American youth may come from every part
of the land to avail themselves of exceptional opportunities for
studies and investigations which shall qualify them for highest
usefulness in the public service and in all the walks of
citizenship.
However this may be, the Institute, by its many years of patient,
persistent, and, in view of the circumstances, remarkably successful
activities, has established a claim upon the confidence and support of
good citizens which must in due time receive suitable recognition.
Further than this, these activities may be regarded as a necessary and
fitting preparation for labors which shall be more fruitful in
results, and in the hope of which those who have hitherto directed its
affairs have found inspiration and encouragement.
It has been truly said that,
If any honor attaches to the citizenship in which intelligent,
loyal, and unselfish devotion to the highest interests of country
are made paramount, the names of those who have united in efforts
for the establishment of this Institute of Patriotism constitute
a roll of honor. Its ability to fully realize its objects is
dependent upon the number and the efforts of those whose names
are upon this roll.
Here is an opportunity for, and an appeal to, citizens of wealth.
Money cannot be more worthily or wisely bestowed than in feeding
the streams in whose life-giving power is the strength of the
republic. Honorable names may find their noblest memorials by the
gifts and endowments which shall forever connect them with this
National School of Patriotism.
AN INDUSTRIAL FABLE.
BY HAMILTON S. WICKS.
The King of a certain country, whose power was absolute and whose will
was despotic, issued an edict that all the laborers of his dominion
who were engaged in honorable toil should exchange places with those
persons who did no work or were engaged in dishonorable or merely
speculative avocations, so that the laboring man should fare
sumptuously and the non-laborer poorly. Those who worked up in the
sunlight on the tall buildings should sit down in the evening to
bountiful banquets and should sleep in fine linen on luxurious
couches; while those who crawled below in the bleak valleys between
the beetling cliffs of architecture should go to frugal meals and
sleep amid the rough surroundings of the abodes of the poor. The
monarch reasoned that those who did the world's work were more
deserving of the good things of the world than were the idle or the
vicious, however wealthy. He imagined that the world was turned upside
down socially and economically, and he proposed to turn it back again
by his royal fiat.
Backed by his sword, "which is the badge of temporal power wherein
doth sit the dread and fear of kings," he apprehended no failure in
his plans, which had been worked out in their minutest detail. His
army was the largest of any nation, and was to a man devoted to its
King. His genius had won many victories and extended the borders of
glory. Through his impartial system of promotion men from the ranks
had risen to be commanders. The soldiery were well fed, well housed,
and well paid. A word, a nod, from their King would set in motion this
mighty machine to crush out all opposition. Supplementing the military
arm of his government the King had organized the most elaborate system
of _espionage_, so that all secrets were open to him, and no
whisperings in the street or the club but were conveyed distinctly to
his royal ear by the microphone of his spy system. The press was
gagged or inspired; the legislature was composed of fawning
sycophants; his judiciary was merely a reflection of the royal will;
and Holy Church itself displayed its purple robe and golden bowl but
to ornament his processions or to hallow his feasts.
Thus matters stood on the evening of the day this great social
revolution was inaugurated. It fell out that a group of honest
laborers were descending the elevator that carried the brick and
mortar to the twentieth story of a certain downtown sky-scraper. While
all of them knew of the edict of their King, none had taken it
seriously or imagined for a moment that it would be carried into
effect literally. On their arrival at the ground floor, a policeman
stationed there stopped them and, motioning to an elegant equipage
standing across the way, informed them that it was the King's command
that they should enter it and be driven to one of the avenue clubs
which had been assigned for their accommodation. Into it they were
thrust, dinner-pails and all. They had scarcely time to recover their
equanimity, as they were rapidly whirled through one thoroughfare
after another, till the avenue in question was reached and they were
deposited in front of a stately brownstone mansion. Their coming had
been expected, and the great doors swung open as they alighted, whilst
a uniformed lackey motioned them to enter. Their astonishment was
redoubled at the splendor of the interior furnishings. Each was
assigned a room, where they were bathed and groomed and dressed in
garments suitable for their surroundings. Dinner was served by the
time they were ready, and into the glittering _salle à manger_ they
were duly ushered. A fashionable _table d'hôte_ was a new sensation to
every man of them, and they certainly astonished the _table d'hôte_.
It (the _table d'hôte_) never realized before what it was to be fully
appreciated. An evening of cigars, wine, and billiards followed; and
then they stretched their tough and sinewy workmen's legs between the
whitest of silken sheets, spread over the springiest of hair
mattresses, on the brightest of brass bedsteads. There we leave them
to such dreams as their surroundings invited, to turn our attention to
four bachelor brokers on the stock exchange, whose apartments at the
club our bachelor workingmen were inhabiting.
With as little thought of the reality of the great King's edict as the
workingmen themselves, they were sauntering forth from the exchange
at the hour of 3 P. M., when they were pounced upon by a quarter score
of stalwart policemen and landed inside a rough luggage conveyance.
Baxter Street was a Garden of Eden compared to the slums to which they
were driven, and they were finally sheltered in a dirty tenement that
arose in a series of rickety stories to a dizzy height. Their
fastidious taste would not permit them to indulge in sleep amid such
commonplace surroundings, where the only furniture of their room
consisted of two dirty beds and a filthy sink. So they sat up all
night smoking the cigars they happened to have in their clothes when
captured, and muttering deep curses against their eccentric ruler.
The following morning the awakening of the laborers resembled that of
Christopher Sly in "The Taming of the Shrew." They were bewildered
with astonishment at the appointments of their surroundings and the
service of their attendants. A champagne headache was a natural
accompaniment to the previous night's drinking and gorging; so that
fashionable "coffee and rolls," though served in the most delicate of
faïence, seemed but meagre fare upon which to commence the arduous
labors of the day. At precisely 5:30 A. M. the same carriage they had
occupied the previous evening, with its crested panels, its liveried
coachman, and its spanking span of bays, was at the door to convey
them back to work.
The same routine was substantially carried into effect each day, a
natural consequence of which was that they became weary of their
enforced luxury, and their hearts yearned for the humble living of
their tenement, with its rough and hearty jollity, and its freedom
from constraint and the supervision of lackeys, however well dressed
or polite. In the case of the fastidious brokers kept under
surveillance, tired nature at last, reluctant, yielded. There came a
day, or rather a night, when even they were able to sleep--an uneasy,
troubled sleep, it is true--amid the mean surroundings of the
tenement.
The determined will of the monarch so ordered affairs that the
conditions under his edict were kept in force for many days. He
proposed to give a thorough test to his quixotic ideas. The portion of
the workmen was hard manual labor by day in the upper regions of air
and light, and by night the relaxation of enervating luxury; and the
portion of the brokers was deep dejection, deep curses, and haggard
sleeplessness.
The culmination of this condition of unrest occurred at a great ball
which another royal edict had blazoned forth to be given as a tribute
to the laboring masses, and at which the non-producers would be
compelled to assist, not indeed as menials, but as experienced
advisers. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars at least would be
expended on the pomp and glory of the occasion. The sage counsellors
of state, men deeply versed in the lore of the past, were called
together to devise costumes for the crude working people and to frame
rules of etiquette for their behavior. The most elaborate descriptions
appeared in the daily press of what was proposed. For weeks the vast
preparations went steadily forward. Everything of luxury and ornament
that the commerce of the empire sucked up from the farthest confines
of the earth was made to minister to the great event.
At last the auspicious day arrived. One of the grandest palaces of the
King himself was the scene of the festivity. The costumes worn
represented many of the great names of history, from Julius Cæsar to
Napoleon Bonaparte, and from Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. The height
of the great occasion was reached somewhat after midnight when the
_quadrille d'honneur_ was announced. The great King sat upon a raised
dais, or throne, the better to view the gorgeous pageant. A mighty
fanfare of trumpets, which seemed to whirl the feelings for a moment
into the forces beyond mortality, invited to the initial movements of
the quadrille. It was as though an army with banners was about to
launch its squadrons upon the foe in some majestic Friedland or
Gettysburg. As the sound died away, there was a pause. The great King
looked up in amazement, and stamping that foot whose heel had rested
upon the necks of mighty potentates, now his willing vassals, he arose
with frown black as midnight.
Suffer me, O reader, to recall the elements of this unparalleled
occasion: On the one hand, almost omnipotent power, backed by
transcendent though wayward genius, a will that hitherto had never
been balked, an unsullied prestige, a front of Jove to threaten and
command, upon which great thought registered every varying
expression, one of the least of which would have endowed an ordinary
prince with lasting renown. On the other hand, "fantastic compliment
strutting up and down tricked in outlandish feather." A motion from
the hand of majesty, now fully erect, sent another mighty wave of
martial music flying on invisible wings, in thousand forms, throughout
every corridor. As this second summons for the masterpiece to be set
in motion died away in turn, two bands of men detached themselves from
the distant throng massed in the farthest background, and came slowly
forward with bowed heads and deferential tread. At the same instant a
hundred brilliant officers of the household stepped out of the
corridors behind the King with drawn swords, and other hundreds
crowded behind them prepared to do their master's instant service.
The Great Strategist comprehended the situation with a single sweeping
glance of his eagle eye, and drawing himself up full height motioned
his servitors with his left hand back into their concealment, while
with his extended right hand he encouraged with benignant gesture the
approach of the representatives of the people, who had shrunk back in
dismay when the King's guard sprang forth so abruptly. It was now seen
that the approaching bands were composed in equal parts of the gaudily
caparisoned workmen and their plainly dressed advisers. Each party
bore in its midst an enormous roll, whose weight impeded anything like
rapid progress. On arriving at the front of the throne, they deposited
their burdens and then prostrated themselves before the King. When
bidden to arise and state their purpose, a stalwart son of toil
stepped forward in front of his comrades. He was attired in a $10,000
costume, representing Henry of Navarre. This costume sat upon his
rugged limbs as though they had been melted into it. The King gazed
complacently upon his manufactured nobleman and bade him proceed.
"August and Sovereign King!" thus began the blacksmith, for such he
was when not intoxicated or attending a costume ball--"August and
Sovereign King, I have been pushed forward by my fellows who have
joined in this petition, with a vast multitude of their co-workers,
similarly gorged with hateful luxury. They ask me to state plainly to
your Majesty that they now know from actual experience how hollow and
worthless are all the glories of the merely rich, whose time is
devoted to vain shows and in devising new delicacies for the palate.
They beseech your Majesty that you, in accordance with your gracious
pleasure, should restore them to their simple and humble paths of
life, wherein they will dwell in reasonable contentment hereafter."
The workman ceased, and the spokesman for wealth and idleness stepped
forward and pleaded his case very eloquently. He showed, in the
petition which many thousands of his class had signed, that through
their recent experience they all had been made to feel the weight of
life as it rests upon those under them. He averred that he and his
fellows were heartily sick of their lives thus ordered, and that they
petitioned the King to send them beyond his confines, or place them in
his army, or, better still, allow them to seek honorable employment in
vocations more in accord with their taste and inclination.
The King, esteeming that he had sufficiently disciplined the wealthy
and had measurably cast out the "daimon of unrest" from the mind of
labor, while at the same time he had given a notable illustration to
all his people of the folly of outrunning too far the sentiments of
your age, and the arrant rot of placing edicts upon the statute books
that at once become a dead letter unless backed by despotic force, and
feeling the security of his position, stood before his petitioners,
lightly leaning on his left foot, with his right hand in the breast of
his coat, and thus addressed them:
"My people, the results flowing from my edict are not otherwise
than I fully believed would result; I am satisfied at the real
good that has been accomplished. Many there are who would like to
see human nature changed by an equally absurd upheaval of the
social fabric, which would instantly place the limbs of labor
between cambric sheets and line their stomachs with sweetmeats.
The truly wise base their expectations for the race upon no such
sudden revolution, but rather see salvation for their fellows in
a gradual and natural betterment of conditions, a growth upwards
that can be maintained through all the spasms of reform, a
lifting of the whole fabric of society by the great forces of
education, faith, and persistency, which are and have ever been
the architects of the race."
PLAZA OF THE POETS.
REPLY TO "LOCKSLEY HALL SIXTY YEARS AFTER."
BY BARTON LOMAX PITTMAN.
Nay, my grandsire, though you leave me latest lord of Locksley Hall,
Speak of Amy's heavenly graces and the frailty of her fall,
Point me to the shield of Locksley, hanging in this mansion lone,
I must turn from such sad splendor ere my heart be changed to stone.
While you prate of pride ancestral and the dead dreams of your youth,
I, despite my birth and lineage, am a battler for the truth.
To the work-worn, half-starved peasants of this realm my heart goes
out--
Those who, plundered and forgotten, find this life a ruthless rout.
In the rustling robes of Amy bloomed the roses that had fled
From the cheeks of pauper maidens forced into the brothel-bed;
In her saintly smiles and glances flashed the sunlight that was shut
By the iron-hand injustice from the cotter's humble hut.
Nay, 'tis wrong that we should range with science glorying in the
time,
While we force our brother mortals into squalor, need, and crime;
Wicked we should pose as Christians singing songs to God on high,
Heedless of his tortured creatures who in pauper prisons lie.
Christless is the crime of turning creed-stopped ears to teardrops
shed
By the women whom oppression robs of virtue for their bread.
Satan's blush would mantle crimson could he see the stunted child
Slaving in our marts and markets, helpless, hopeless, and reviled--
See its pallid face uplifted from the whirling factory wheels,
Tear-stained with the grief and anguish of a baby brain that reels,
Tortured in life's budding springtime, toiling on with stifled cries,
Seeing, through its tears refracted, rippling cascades, azure skies;
Skies and birds and flowery meadows made for children wealthy-born,
While God's outcasts, with their parents, robbed and drudging, live
forlorn,
Men in whom the fires of hope have sunk into a sordid spark,
Mothers rearing helpless infants for the brothel's dawnless dark.
While this world seems far too crowded to provide us work for all,
Acres spread their untilled bosoms, while the nations rise and fall.
Nature's storehouse, made for all men, is monopolized by some,
Robbing labor of its produce, making almshouse, jail, and slum.
Side by side with art and progress creeps the haggard spectre,
Want--
Creeps the frightful phantom, Hunger, with its bloodless body gaunt.
Wider, wider spreads the chasm 'twixt the wealthy and the poor,
Social discontent declaring that such wrongs cannot endure.
And this yawning of the chasm is the curse of every race,
As it saps and kills its manhood ere it reach the zenith-place;
Spartan valor, Grecian learning, Roman honor had their day,
But land plunder rose among them, dooming death by slow decay.
Shall we wait for evolution, let it right these monstrous wrongs,
While the helpless, young, and tender writhe and groan 'neath social
thongs?
Nay, 'tis better all should perish in a battle for the right,
Than let philosophic cowards keep us in this stygian night.
Locksley Hall has now a master who would claim the earth for all,
Who would make the titled idler cease to rob his tenant-thrall;
Wreck the Church and State if need be (better such in time will
rise),
But who from this glorious purpose nevermore will turn his eyes--
Never, till the arms of nature clasp in joy her outcast child,
Long since driven from the meadow and the dell and woodland wild,
Till to each belongs the produce of his hand and heart and brain,
And glad heralds of millennium thrill along our path of pain.
Though the world has piled its fagots round the great and good and
brave;
Thrust its Socrates the hemlock, scourged its Jesus to the grave;
Though its sneer has chilled the tender, and its frown has cursed
the good,
While its Nero sways the sceptre and its Emmett dies in blood;
Yet in Truth there is a power that through ceaseless cycles slow
Will inscribe the doom of Error in an ever-fadeless glow,
That will trample on oppression, burst the chains and crush the
throne,
Rearing on the blood and ruin justice-reign from zone to zone.
Idealistic dreamer, say you? In your youth you once felt so?
Well, I only pray life's sunset, bowing down my head with snow,
Shall not swerve me from my purpose, though the victor-laurels twine
In my reach, and if forsaking my convictions they are mine.
Do not so condemn the realists, rhymesters, authors, and their way,
Just because they point about us to the errors of to-day;
Spare them, though they gaze not upward from our self-wrought
piteous plight,
For, though blinded and despairing, they are struggling toward the
light.
Let the realist dip his falcon in the boiling blood of life,
Tracing in heartrending horror all the hoary wrongs and strife,
Till the world shall sick and sadden of its folly and its sin,
Hearkening through the roar of traffic to the still small voice
within--
Voice which murmurs Christ's own message as we circle round the sun:
That, though greed and creed divide us, still humanity is one--
One in all its godlike longing, one in all its hopes and fears,
With its calvaries, scaffolds, hemlocks, and its seas of unshed
tears.
Then this star of sorrow swinging through the vast immortal void
Shall, regenerated, slumber while man's heart is overjoyed,
Thrilled with yearnings altruistic, triumphing o'er clods of clay,
As we march into the love-light of the grand Millennial day.
JOHN BROWN.
BY COATES KINNEY.
The Great Republic bred her free-born sons
To smother conscience in the coward's hush,
And had to have a freedom-champion's
Blood sprinkled in her face to make her blush.
One Will became a passion to avenge
Her shame--a fury consecrate and weird,
As if the old religion of Stonehenge
Amid our weakling worships reappeared.
It was a drawn sword of Jehovah's wrath,
Two-edged and flaming, waved back to a host
Of mighty shadows gathering on its path,
Soon to emerge as soldiers, when the ghost
Of John Brown should the lines of battle form.
When John Brown crossed the Nation's Rubicon,
Him Freedom followed in the battle-storm,
And John Brown's soul in song went marching on.
Though John Brown's body lay beneath the sod,
His soul released the winds and loosed the flood:
The Nation wrought his will as hest of God,
And her bloodguiltiness atoned with blood.
The world may censure and the world regret:
The present wrath becomes the future ruth;
For stern old History does not forget
The man who flings his life away for truth.
In the far time to come, when it shall irk
The schoolboy to recite our Presidents'
Dull line of memorabilia, John Brown's work
Shall thrill him through from all the elements.
DEMOS.
BY W. H. VENABLE, LL. D.
America, my own!
Thy spacious grandeurs rise
Faming the proudest zone
Pavilioned by the skies;
Day's flying glory breaks
Thy vales and mountains o'er,
And gilds thy streams and lakes
From ocean shore to shore.
Praised be thy wood and wold,
Thy corn and wine and flocks,
The yellow blood of gold
Drained from thy cañon rocks;
Thy trains that shake the land,
Thy ships that plough the main!
Triumphant cities grand
Roaring with noise of gain!
Yet not the things of sense,
By nature wrought, or art,
Prove soul's preëminence,
Or swell the patriot heart;
Our country we revere
For that from sea to sea
Her vast-domed atmosphere
Is life-breath of the free.
Brown Labor, gazing up,
Takes hope, and Hunger stands
Holding her empty cup
In pale, expectant hands.
Brave young Ambition waits
Thy just law's clarion call,
That power unbar the gates
Of privilege to all.
Trade's fickle signets coined
From Mammon's molten dust,
With reverence conjoined,
Proclaim "In God we trust."
Nor doth the legend lie:
The People, patient, bide,
Trusting the Lord on high,
To thunder on their side.
Earth's races look to thee;
The peoples of the world
Thy risen splendors see,
And thy wide flag unfurled;
Kelt, Slav, and Hun behold
That banner from afar,
They bless each streaming fold,
And cheer its every star.
For liberty is sweet
To every folk and age,--
Armenia, Cuba, Crete,--
Despite war's heathen rage,
Or scheming diplomat
Whose words of peace enslave.
Columbia! Democrat
Of Nations! speak and save!
As mightful Moses led
To Canaan's promised land;
As Christ victorious bled,
Obeying Love's command;
So thou, Right's champion,
God's chosen leader strong,
Gird up thy loins! march on!
Defend mankind from Wrong.
THE EDITOR'S EVENING.
Leaf From My Samoan Notebook. (A. D. 2297.)
In that age (_siècle_ XIX, _ad finem_) great attention was given on
the continent of Am-ri-ka to increased speed in locomotion. Men and
women went darting about like the big yellow gnats that we see at
sundown on the western coast of our island when the bay is hazy. The
whole history of that century in both Am-ri-ka and Yoo-rup might well
be written around the fact of _transit_, for transit was the spinal
cord of the whole social, civil, and political order. Man-life then
seemed to oscillate more rapidly than ever before, as if in sympathy
with the vibration of the universal ether.
The struggle for the increase of speed began in the early part of the
century referred to--about 1822. Scarcely had the wars of Na-Bu-Leon
subsided when the matter of getting over the earth's surface at a
greater velocity was taken up as eagerly as if life consisted in going
quickly to a certain point. Men, it would appear, had not yet learned
that the principal aim of this existence is the _going_, and not the
_getting there_. Then it was that the steam En-jo-in was invented. The
Bah-lune had been frequently tried, but always with ludicrous or fatal
results. A young man by the name of Dee Green once essayed this method
in Am-ri-ka, with a most ridiculous catastrophe. A poem was written
about the affair beginning thus--
An aspiring genius was Dee Green.
For more than half a century locomotion by steam prevailed in
Am-ri-ka, though it did not satisfy the demand for swiftness. When
this method no longer sufficed, several expedients were found to
_avoid_ going anywhere. It was observed that the necessity of going
depended upon the limitation of the human voice; that is, of hearing
vocal utterances. The voices of human beings could not then be heard
beyond a certain limit. To hear the voice of a man from Am-ri-ka to
Ing-land was then thought to be impossible. The possessors of voices,
therefore, had in that age to _get together_ before they could
communicate. True, there were some men upon whom this necessity did
not rest, for they could be heard at a great distance. It might be
noted, however, that this kind, called _Homo politicus_, had so little
sense that nobody cared to hear them, so that their success in
vociferation amounted to nothing.
All the people of Am-ri-ka who were civilized spoke in a low tone, and
any who cared to communicate must seek each other's presence. This had
been the reason for the old invention of E-pistol-ary correspondence.
This method, however, was not satisfactory, since it required much
time to say only a little, and since what was said in this manner was
found so wide of the mark as to produce disastrous results. Society
was, on this account, frequently rent with lawsuits, having no better
foundation than a bundle of Let-yers.
To avoid this trouble another invention, called the Far-talker (or
Tel-ef-oan), was made; and by means of this conceit the people of
Am-ri-ka could speak to one another many miles apart. The Far-talker
was a remarkable sort of invention by which one merchant, by
stretching a copper thread across the country to the ear of another
merchant, could talk to him _through the wire_. The other merchant
could reverse and talk back! Sometimes a young woman would tiptoe up
to the box where the wire ended and say the most absurd things to her
favorite fop down-town; this was often overheard. People had not yet
learned the method of understanding each other's thoughts without the
ridiculous contrivance of speech, written scratches, wires, and
Fo-ny-grafs.
It was at this time that men, in their effort to carry themselves from
place to place, seem to have taken the first hints from nature. It was
remembered that _between_ swimming and flying, and _between_ flying
and walking, certain forms of locomotion, quite rapid withal, are used
by our poor relatives on land and sea. Thus the flying-fish rises from
the water and shoots, quite parabolically, for some distance through
the air. The genus Cheiroptera also gives a hint of progress by means
of wings that are not made of feathers. The flying lemur, nearly akin
to _Homo bifurcans_, shows how one may rise and go by a sort of aërial
progress along the ground.
Out of these hints the men of Am-ri-ka, at the epoch of which we
speak, sought inventions by means of which they might keep close to
the ground for safety, but otherwise fly; for the age was very fast!
Under these conditions some Unknown Man invented what was called the
By-sigh-kel. It was a sort of flat-sided, rotary ground-skimmer, very
thin and notorious. It came coincidently with another invention called
the Trol-lee. The latter was an electrical wagon for general travel in
cities and suburbs, while the By-sigh-kel was a personal carriage for
one or possibly two. The passenger in this case had to start his
machine and then jump on. The propulsion was effected by a pump-like
action of the legs, very tiresome and elegant. The passenger generally
leaned forward in a position strongly suggestive of the favorite
attitude of his arboreal ancestors. It was the peculiarity of the
Trol-lee that it made a sort of humming roar as it went that sounded
like a hundred prisoners groaning in unison; but the By-sigh-kel made
no noise in going except in collisions and wrecks. The latter were so
frequent that a whole cycle of restorative arts had to be undertaken
of which the principal was dentistry. At the close of the century
there were few front teeth remaining--except artificials.
Many accounts of the Age of the By-sigh-kel and Trol-lee have been
preserved among the old records of Am-ri-ka, and traditions of it are
found in the antiquarian papers of other countries. We have seen
pictorial representations made by Fo-to-graf-ure of scenes from the
age referred to. The streets of extinct cities are found pictured in
this way. There was an instrument called the Cow-dack which was used
in taking pictures in an instantaneous manner, so that the scene would
look like life.
A busy street, thus pictured, in that time, shows many Trol-lees
rushing by, filled with merry people. Along the side-ways scores of
passengers are seen, mounted on their 'Sigh-kels, going in divers
directions at full speed. The passengers present many aspects; for
riding the 'Sigh-kel was an art which had to be acquired; and by some
this could not be done--at least not gracefully done. Many tried, but
few were chosen. Two classes of people suffered much in this
particular, namely, the very fat and the very bony. Those whom nature
had favored in form and feature, and who had acquired the art of
sitting upright, look well enough in these old pictures of a past age.
But the clumsy and obese, the slender and angular people may well be
laughed at even through the shadowy retrospect of four centuries.
One of the 'Sigh-kel machines was made _double_; and an old cartoon
which is now before me gives to this kind the name of Tan-doom. On
this men and women frequently rode together, the woman going before,
for that was the age in which the woman, becoming new, showed her
newness by being forward.
Nor may we leave these reminiscences of a bygone age without
reflecting upon the absurdities of our ancestors, who had not yet
imagined the ease and excellence of our own method of locomotion by
skimming at will the surface of the earth. The facile beauty and
natural art with which we now rise from the ground and propel
ourselves by our own thought and wish to any distance--thus
vindicating our superiority to all other creatures in our method of
excursion--are facts so obvious and ever-present that we fail to
reflect upon the impediments and hardships of the people of Am-ri-ka
and indeed of the whole world in the nineteenth century....
Thinking on these things I can but imagine that I have myself seen
them in some previous epoch of my existence. The facts which I have
recorded appear dimly, as if in memory of what I once beheld; but the
vision of it is so obscure that I still doubt whether it be dream or
reality. I have long imagined that we retain from one epoch of our
existence to the next a vague recollection of our experiences in the
remote ages of the past. I sometimes think that it is not impossible
that I myself, in some forgotten avatar, used to sit alone at the
window of my office, looking into the street of one of the old towns
of Am-ri-ka where the Trol-lees were going one way and the
By-sigh-kels the other way, crossing and darting hither and yon,
according to the wills of the riders; but the vision is so dim that it
looks like the fictions of sleep.
Vita Longa.
The question is not how long this bodily life may last, or how long
the mind, so conditioned, can endure. It is not even how long the
mind may continue to produce; for the mind, like a poor,
half-exhausted field, urged with rain and fertilizers, may produce
only potatoes, mullen, and cockle. The real question--the deep-down
essence of it--is how long the mind, or soul, may retain the
enthusiasm and passionate power of _creation_. That is the only true
test of longevity; and when that ceases there is nothing left. The
real duration of man-life is measured only by the persistency of
creative power.
Longfellow, standing in the old pulpit, on the fiftieth anniversary of
his class at Bowdoin, and saying to those who would introduce him, "I
wish the desk were large enough to conceal me all," makes a beautiful
section of this theme by citing some of the most inspiring instances
of the long life of the soul:
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand OEdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years;
And Theophrastus at fourscore and ten
Had but begun his "Characters of Men;"
Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales,
At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales;
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were past:
These are indeed exceptions; but they show
How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.
Measured by this test of creative power and its persistency, how
variable is the duration of human life! Sometimes the creative power
appears in early youth; but when that happens there is generally an
early surcease. Sometimes the power comes late and remains long.
Sometimes it flashes forth in the early morning and remains in the
after twilight. Estimated by years this productive power (which goes
by the name of genius) sometimes reaches only to a few score moons.
Sometimes it reaches to a score of years. Sometimes, though rarely, it
extends to three-score years or more.
Thomas Chatterton went to a suicide's grave in Potter's Field when he
was only seventeen years, nine months, and four days of age. I know of
no other case of so great precocity; it is beyond belief. His mind had
been productive for about three years. Byron's productive period
covered sixteen years--no more. Pope began at twelve and ended at
fifty-six.
In our own age, Tennyson has done well. Making an early effort to
begin, he, like Dryden, did not really reach the creative epoch until
he was fully thirty. His creative period covers about fifty-nine
years. It extends from "A Dream of Fair Women," in 1833, to "Crossing
the Bar," in 1892.
The best example, however, in the history of the human mind, is that
of William Cullen Bryant; that is, Bryant has real creations that lie
further apart in time than can be paralleled, so far as I know, in the
case of any other of the sons of men. The date of "Thanatopsis" is not
precisely known. It belongs, however, to the years 1812-13. Bryant was
then eighteen--in his nineteenth year. Add to 1812 sixty-four years
and we have 1876, the date of the publication of the "Flood of Years."
The two poems in question lie apart in production by the space of
fully three-score and four years. It is a marvel! And why not?
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms,
why should not life, productive life, enthusiastic fruitful life, be
extended until its last acts of creation, shot through with the
sunshine of experience and wisdom, shall flash in great bars of haze
and glory over the landscape of the twilight days?
Kaboto.
Old John à Venice in his cockleshell
Breasted the salt sea like an Englishman!
He saw the bleak coast of the Tartar Khan
To left-hand in the distance. "All is well!"
He cried to Labrador. The roaring swell
Bore him to shore, whereon his hands upran
The Lion flag and flag republican
Of the old Doges' wave-girt citadel.
Dominion and Democracy are ours!
From the first day unto the last we hold
To Liberty and Empire! We shall be,
Under the Star-flag, for eternal hours,
Even as Cabot's two flags first foretold,
Both free and strong from mountain crag to sea!
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"SYLVAN GROVE, KANSAS, May 22, 1897.
"_To_ THE ARENA.
"GENTLEMEN: I enclose my subscription for THE ARENA for the
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"_Second._ Those who are still paying interest or keeping the
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"I live in the beautiful little West Twin Creek valley about
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"When our debts were contracted the values of everything were
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could but ejaculate, 'May the Lord have mercy on your ignorant
soul! what does it matter to _you_ what kind of money they use in
Europe?'
"We are now taking the advice of Governor Morrill, who says: 'If
you cannot get seventy-five cents a day, work for fifty cents.'
Our Republican speakers advise us to dress plainly, live the
same, and work still harder. We are told to 'stop running around
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"However, Kansas is coming to the front again. Since the mortgage
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eruptions he pours lava upon his party in fine style. But he does
not break out often enough!
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"Sincerely yours,
"A. BIGGS."
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BOOK REVIEWS.
[_In this Department of_ THE ARENA _no book will be reviewed which is
not regarded as a real addition to literature._]
The Emperor.[8]
[8] "Life of Napoleon Bonaparte." By Willian Milligan
Sloane, Ph. D., L. H. D.; Professor of History in Princeton
University. Four volumes, imperial octavo; pp. 1120. New
York: The Century Company. Boston: Balch Brothers, 1896.
At the hour when, on the evening of the first day of this century,
the first asteroid was discovered by Piazzi at Naples, an
olive-complexioned man was sitting smileless in a box in the opera
house in Paris. He sat back where nobody could see him. It was his way
not to be seen--except on business.
The man was thirty-one years, four months, and sixteen days of age. He
had already done something. If he had not equalled the work of
Alexander at the corresponding age, he had at least surpassed Cæsar;
for Cæsar at thirty was still a comparatively unknown roué in Rome.
The figure in the opera box was slender and trim. He who sat there was
only five feet, four and a half inches high; but his head was fine,
heavy, symmetrical. His features twitched when he was disturbed, but
were beautiful when he smiled. To a profound observer he looked
dangerous. He had the faculty of making his face signify nothing at
all. He had been begotten an insular Italian, but was born a
Frenchman. His wife, a Creole, more than six years older than he, was
in the box with him. She sat at the front, and was seen by thousands.
She _wished_ to be seen; and when the pit shouted in the direction of
the box she smiled a little smile, with a puckered mouth--for her
teeth were not good.
The birthplace of this man had been oddly set on the map of the world,
for the meridian of Discovery and the parallel of Conquest intersect
at the birthplace of NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. The birthlines of Cæsar and
Columbus--drawn, the one due west from Rome, the other due south from
Genoa--cross each other within a few miles of Ajaccio! It is a
circumstance that might well incline one to astrology.
About the birth of great men cycles of fiction grow. Friends and
enemies alike invent significant circumstances. The traducers of
Napoleon have said that he was illegitimate--that his father was the
French marshal Marboeuf. They also say, on better grounds, that the
marriage of Letitia Ramolino to Carlo di Buonaparte was not solemnized
until 1767--that the first two children were therefore born out of
wedlock. On the other hand, the idol-worshippers would fain have
Napoleon born as a god or Titan. Premature pangs seize the mother at
church. She hurries home, barely reaching her apartment when the
heroic babe is delivered, without an accoucheur, on a piece of
tapestry inwrought with an effigy of Achilles! This probably occurred.
It was the 15th of August, 1769.
Thus, as it were before the Corsican saw the light of day in this
world, dispute began about him. It has been continued for a hundred
and twenty-eight years. Whatever else he succeeded in doing--whatever
else he failed to do--he at least did succeed in dividing the
civilized world into two parties; he made himself the subject of a
controversy which has not ceased to the present hour. The reason, no
doubt, is that we do not as yet understand human history and the part
which the individual plays in the progress of events. Nearly all men
begin with a prejudice in judging all other men, and nearly all men
end as they begin. So it has been in the case of Bonaparte. After a
while we shall see things more clearly; after a while we shall be able
to interpret _men_--but not yet.
The writings relative to this man constitute a cycle. The books on him
and his times make a library, the perusal and study of which might
absorb a large section of an active life. The name of such productions
is legion. Most of them will fortunately perish. The controversial
aspect of the life of the Emperor must at last subside. Nine out of
ten of the books about him will go down to the nether oblivion. Then
the judicial aspect will arise--if it has not already arisen--and will
occupy the attention of those who are still curious to study the
career of him who shares with the son of Philip and the matchless
Julius the triune honor of being the greatest warriors known to human
history. If a fourth should be added to the group it would be
Hannibal, and if a fifth, Charlemagne.
Here at the date of a century from those days in which the star of
Napoleon emerged from the mists and clouds and began to climb the sky
the interest in his life revives. In America this revival is
attributable in part to general and in part to special causes. The
general causes are to be found in the fact that society _de la fin de
siècle_ is in such a state of profound disturbance, and the existing
order feels so insecure, that that order--as it always does--begins to
cast about in the shadows to find, if it may, some Big Man with a
Sword; him when found we will make our Imperator, and by sharing some
of our estates with certain of his military subalterns we will make
sure of the rest--and after us the deluge. The special cause--at least
in America--is the tremendous and growing tradition of General Grant.
Albeit, General Grant hated the Bonapartes, from the Great One to the
Little One; yet his own luminous setting has left a glow in which the
nation sees men as trees walking--and among these the greatest
simulacrum is Napoleon Bonaparte.
Of this man, who began as the son of a Corsican peasant-mother working
in a mulberry orchard, and who, after fifty-one years, eight months,
and twenty days, ended in a cyclone on the rock called St. Helena,
having meanwhile for nearly a third of his life bestridden western
Europe like a colossus,--a new biography claiming to be the ultimate
summation of the Emperor's life and character has appeared. Professor
William Milligan Sloane, of Princeton University, has entered the
lists which may be said to have opened with Walter Scott and finished
with the McClure Syndicate, passing meanwhile by way of such
personages as De Staël, Las Cases, Victor Hugo, and Lanfrey, and such
drudges as Bourrienne and Méneval, to lodge at last with the
miscellaneous hacks who get three dollars a column for their
boiler-plate philosophy in American newspapers! Heavens, what a
scrimmage!
It were difficult to say when the _final_ biography of a man has been
produced. Hard, hard is it to decide when anything in this world is
final. The never-ending progress of events shapes and readjusts not
only the present materials of history, but also by reaction the
materials of the past. Much that is supposed to be complete is seen to
be unfinished; the done becomes undone, and the peroration of an epoch
has to be rewritten for an exordium.
This is as true of the individual lives of men as it is of great
events. If the ages have to be reconstructed, so also must the men of
the ages. If only a mummy now turn over in his porphyry sarcophagus, a
papyrus is generally found under him; and the finder, with the papyrus
in his hand, may go forth fully warranted to revise every event from
the first cataclysm of the Devonian age to the last earthquake in
Java, and every man from Moses to Cagliostro.
On the whole I incline to the opinion that Professor Sloane has
brought the Emperor Napoleon to a kind of final interpretation; I will
not say to a full stop, but to something very much resembling a
period. In the first place, I offer on the "Life of Napoleon
Bonaparte," the eulogium that the work has, in a great degree,
_naturalized_ the Corsican as he was never naturalized before--thus
bringing him out of cloudland and mere impossible fog to the plain
level of human action and purpose.
This is much. In accomplishing thus much Professor Sloane has
vindicated his claim to be regarded as a great biographer. It has been
the bane of nearly all biographical writing that the subjects of it
have been completely mythologized. Thus far in the history of mankind
biography might be defined as the art of myth-making. I scarcely know
what exceptions to cite to this universal vice except only and always
Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson." As for American biographies thus
far produced, there is scarcely a single example of a work which is
not to be classified as a recorded myth. The trouble in all this
business has been that the myth-makers, living in a certain
atmosphere, have imagined that they are obliged to make their
characters conform to the established antecedents of greatness. These
established antecedents of greatness have for the most part been
created out of superstitions, credulities, blank idealism, and mere
dogmatic bosh. No living, active men have ever conformed, or could
conform, to the standards which the logicians, the philosophers, and
the priests have fixed up for them; and if any of them should conform
to such a standard, their place under classification would be with
automata, not with living men.
Nevertheless, our biographers have been so weak and servile as to make
their characters according to this pattern. One character is labelled
Washington, another is labelled Franklin, another is labelled Adams,
and still another, Lincoln.
All this, I think, Professor Sloane has studiously avoided. As a
literary doctor he has done much to destroy the mythical disease. He
has written an elaborate work in which the man Napoleon moves and
acts, neither as an angel nor as a devil, but as a man, moved upon and
moving by the common human passions, though inflamed, in his case, to
a white heat in the furnace of his ambition.
All this was to have been expected in view of the plan of Professor
Sloane as expressed in his preface:
"Until within a very recent period," says he, "it seemed that no
man could discuss him [Napoleon] or his time without manifesting
such strong personal feeling as to vitiate his judgment and
conclusions. This was partly due to the lack of perspective, but
in the main to ignorance of the facts essential to a sober
treatment of the theme. In this respect the last quarter of a
century has seen a gradual but radical change, for a band of
dispassionate scientific scholars have during that time been
occupied in the preparation of material for his life without
reference to the advocacy of one theory or another concerning his
character. European archives, long carefully guarded, have been
thrown open; the diplomatic correspondence of the most important
periods has been published; family papers have been examined, and
numbers of valuable memoirs have been printed. It has therefore
been possible to check one account by another, to cancel
misrepresentations, to eliminate passion--in short, to establish
something like correct outline and accurate detail, at least in
regard to what the man actually did. Those hidden secrets of any
human mind which we call motives must ever remain to other minds
largely a matter of opinion, but a very fair indication of them
can be found when once the actual conduct of the actor has been
determined."
From this point of view Professor Sloane has proceeded with his
tremendous work. His studies at home and abroad have been ample. We
may remark, in passing, upon the physical vigor of the author as shown
in his portrait. From such a face and figure we can but expect energy,
persistency, accomplishment. I do not pretend to disclose the reasons
of Professor Sloane for indulging in this prodigious Napoleonic dream
and for delineating it in what is likely to be regarded as the best
product of his intellectual career. We can only take what he has
produced and give it such cursory notice as our space will permit.
The first volume of the work extends from a survey of the conditions
under which Napoleon was born and reared to the conclusion of his
twenty-eighth year. The first events depicted are those historical
movements in which the Bonapartes, within the narrow limits of their
island, were involved in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century;
and the last event recorded in this volume is the fall of Venice, at
the end of May, 1797. I incline to regard this as the most
interesting, though not the most important, of the four great volumes
of Professor Sloane's work. In the nature of the case the ascendant of
a man is the more inspiring part. In it he appears as an orb whose
full majesty, not yet revealed, solicits the imagination and kindles
by sympathy the ambitions that in some measure are common to us all.
Here in volume I is portrayed the youth of the man Napoleon Bonaparte.
In this he is revealed in the full charm of that electrical audacity
which had as yet lost none of its sharpness and burning flash. Nor had
Napoleon, as a _man_, as yet become sufficiently involved with the
general maze of history, sufficiently immersed in the storm-cloud of
that tempestuous epoch, to be lost from view. This volume shows the
man emerging from boyhood into the full career of a military
conqueror. It shows him in his magical transformation from the
character of an adventurer into the character of a leader of armies
and a dictator of events. It also shows Napoleon with the still fluid
heart of boyhood passing through the lava floods of his first loves,
in particular his love for Josephine, into the age of cynicism and
calculation.
This first volume brings sufficiently to memory the progress of the
youthful Napoleon. Here we see him at his mother's knee; then in the
time of his school days; then in Paris and Valence; then as a neophyte
author, quite absurd in his dreams; then on garrison duty, and then
swept away with the tides of the oncoming revolution. In the smoke of
the South his slender figure is seen here and there until he emerges
at Toulon. In his character of Jacobin he becomes a general in the
army at a time of life when most men are happy to be lieutenants. Then
for the first time he touches the revolutionary society of Paris. He
meets Josephine; Barras delivers her to the coming man. They are
wedded, and from that date the stage widens, the wars in Italy break
out, and the young general begins to whirl his sword at Mantua,
Arcole, and Rivoli--from which he was wont to date his military birth,
saying on that occasion, "Make my life begin at Rivoli;" and finally
at Montebello and Venice, where, in the late spring of 1797, he is
joined by Josephine. There from the French capital they seemed to
stand afar as the cynosure of all revolutionary eyes, expecting a
greater light.
In the second volume Professor Sloane begins with the rescue of the
Directory. Hard after we have the great episode of the Treaty of Campo
Formio, and then the expedition to Egypt. The story of that expedition
is known through all the world; so also the return, and the overthrow
of the Directory.
From that day Bonaparte became the embodiment of the revolution. He
became a statesman and a strategist. He found himself in the
geographical and historical storm-centre of Europe. Then came the
epoch of great wars. Marengo marks the close of the old century, and
the treaty of Lunéville the beginning of the new. Napoleon undertakes
the pacification of Europe, and reorganizes France. He steps
cautiously towards the restoration of monarchy. There is a
life-consulate, transforming itself quickly into an empire. The old
royalism is extinguished, and the new military imperialism is
glorified in its stead. The third coalition of Europe succeeds the
second. Trafalgar strews the sea with the wrecks of France, and
Austerlitz strews the land with the wrecks of Russia and Austria. The
sea is virtually abandoned by the man of destiny, but over the land he
rises as War-lord and Emperor.
The second conflict breaks out with Prussia and ends with the ruin of
that power at Jena and Auerstadt. The year 1806 sees the parvenu
emperor, now thirty-seven years of age, the master of all the better
parts of Europe. Here ends the second volume of his life, according to
Professor Sloane's division, and the third begins with the devastation
and humiliation of the Prussian kingdom.
In this volume the author views Napoleon for the first time as the
arbitrary diplomatist of the West. It is evident that from this time
the emperor's vision widens to a more remote horizon than he had ever
scanned before. The Berlin decree was issued. The battle of Eylau was
fought, and then was achieved the victory of Friedland. Nor may we
pass without noticing the acme which Napoleon, according to the
judgment of many, now reached on that memorable field. Here it is that
art has caught and transmitted him. For it is in the trodden
wheat-field of Friedland that Meissonier's pencil has delineated
Napoleon with his marshals around him, in one of the greatest pictures
of the world.
By this epoch ambition in the emperor had swallowed up all other
passions. He goes on from conquering to conquest. The dream of a
French Empire, coextensive with the borders of Europe, seizes the
Napoleonic imagination. The emperor's armies strike left and right.
They are seen first on one horizon, then on another. The Corsican on
his white horse is now upon the Pyrenees, now on the Germanic
frontier, and now in Poland. He faces Alexander of Russia, and laughs
at him! His gray coat and three-cornered hat become the best known
symbols of military genius in modern times.
Kingdoms and principalities are transformed. Already the mythical
Roman empire has passed away. Austria is threatened with extinction.
The Corsican is seen first in one and then in another of the ancient
capitals of Europe. Aspern follows Eckmühl, and Essling and Wagram
follow Aspern. The treaty of Schönbrunn promises peace to the nations,
but the hope is broken to the lips. In this crisis Josephine goes down
in the shadows, and the daughter of Austria is led to the imperial
chamber--this from the necessity of establishing a dynasty. The
relations between France and Russia are strained to breaking. The
fatal year 1812 comes, and there is a congress of kings. Alexander
gives his ultimatum, and the invasion of Russia is begun. There is an
indescribable struggle on the Moskwa, and then the flames of Moscow
are seen across the deserts of Russian snow.
The fourth and last volume begins with the return of the allied armies
from Russia. Then follows the universal revolt of the nations.
Insurrection breaks out on every horizon, and treachery, as might have
been expected, is added to the combinations that are rapidly formed
against the imperial Corsican. The borders of France are broken in.
There is a narrowing rim of fire bursting into battle flame here and
there; and then the catastrophe of the capture of Paris. There is an
ambiguous abdication and an equivocal exile of a few months' duration
to Elba. It was much like the establishment of a live lion on
Governor's Island!
The lion got away. Then came an instantaneous upheaval of old
revolutionary France, which had now become imperial France. The
Emperor was welcomed home as a returning god. The country was drained
to the last drop of its resources, and everything was staked on the
final strategy of the Hundred Days and the hazard of the
ever-memorable battle.
"There was a sound of revelry by night,"
and then the imperial eagle was seen stretched upon the plain, pierced
through with the shafts of banded nations. He was caged and
transported to that far rock which in his school-essay at Autun he had
described thus: "St. Helena is a _small_ island!" He found it so. For
nearly six years his captivity continued until his stormy career ended
in a May hurricane that might well have shaken the desolate
foundations of his ocean-girt prison. Then the historical tide rolled
on without him. France was transformed into the old image, but her
soul was still imperial. At last the bones of her great dead were
recovered, to be placed at rest in that red-black sarcophagus over
which the world looks down and wonders.
Such is the fiery but fruitful chaos through which the life-line of
Napoleon is drawn with a master hand by Professor William Milligan
Sloane. My judgment is that, on the whole, he has produced the
greatest biographical work which has yet appeared in American
literature. I think that in the main his accomplishment has been equal
to his ambition. It is not an unworthy thing that an _American_
professor, at the seat of an _American_ university, turning his
energies to this great task, has succeeded in making a well-nigh final
record of the life and work of that unequalled organizer, that sublime
dissembler, that cruel reformer, that heartless philanthropist, who,
for half a lifetime, converted old Europe into a mire of murder and
desolation, for the ultimate good of man.
Only one thing may be said in adverse criticism of Professor Sloane's
book, and that is, that his style is too mathematical and too little
imaginative for the subject which he has in hand. His rather cold
precision, however, we concede to him; for it is, no doubt, the
natural method of his expression. We do our part to acknowledge and
welcome the remarkable work which he has produced, and to commend it
to all readers as the best existing and best probable account of the
personal and historical career of Napoleon Bonaparte.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Notes: Every effort has been made to replicate this
text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant
spellings and other inconsistencies.
The transcriber made these changes to the text to correct obvious
errors:
1. p. 6 over-capatalized --> over-capitalized
2. p. 18 successfull --> successful
3. p. 23 benovelent --> benevolent
4. p. 60 ecocomists --> economists
5. p. 68 A macron diacritical mark, a straight line above
a letter, is found on the first letter o, in the
word Sosoku. This letter is indicated here by the
coding [=x] for a macron above any letter x.
Thus, for example, the word Sosoku appears as
S[=o]soku in the text.
6. p. 76 staightforward --> straightforward
7. p. 94 abnormalties --> abnormalities
8. p. 124 desparing --> despairing
9. p. 144 stategy --> strategy
End of Transcriber's Notes]
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