Chapter IV (8)

In the letter to Washington, partially unjust as it is in view of the fact that Gouverneur Morris and not Washington was responsible for the failure to save Paine from prison in France, as we now know, thanks to Moncure Conway, but which Paine did _not_ know,--in this letter, I say, will be found the most terrible arraignment of the constitution ever penned. We who are Anarchists are called traitors for much calmer talk. Yet here was the man "whose pen had done more for the revolution than Washington's sword," as his bitterest enemy declared; who believed heart and soul in the republic, who had given his money and his substance and taken the chances of his life in battle for it; the man whose devotion to America could not be gainsaid; this man declared that the American constitution was the mirror of the most vicious features of the British constitution, a fecund soil for monopolies with all their ills. It is we who experience those ills, we who know what a gigantic tool of oppression the constitution and the cumbersome machinery of the lawmaking power have become. Yet probably even we do not feel so keenly as he the fatal blunder; for while we know how it grinds us in our flesh and souls, rears its prisons and scaffolds for us, we have had the yoke about our necks always,--while he _had once seen_ the country free. He had been through all the battle, had fought his fight and won his victory, only to see it lost through cowardice of thought. That was indeed bitter; and it is that bitter outcry against this sacrifice which marks Paine out among most of his time for influence on future history. The fact that he was the initiator of the direct movement for political independence in America, in the famous meeting where Adams, Franklin and Washington all shrank from uttering the thought heavy upon their souls, is a matter of past history. The fact that he was the one man in America to write the right thing at the right time, his voice the wind to sweep the scattering flames of insubordination and revolt into the conflagration of revolution; the fact that he proposed and headed with the whole contents of his purse the subscription to save the army when even Washington was in despair at the prospect of mutiny and desertion among the soldiers; the fact that he raised all the feeling possible against the fiction of divine rights and so got himself hunted out of England; the fact that he took the most active part possible in aiding the work of the French revolutionists, which he believed would be the beginning of the breakdown of monarchy throughout Europe and the building up either of one universal continental republic or a confederation of sister republics; the fact that he was the one man in the convention who dared to stand for the life of Louis the XVI, and thereby got himself suspected, thrown into prison, and condemned to death--all these facts are of import in reading the character of the man, and in comprehending the record of those days when they were making history fast. Yet none of these has so much influence upon the demands of to-day as the voice of discontent crying for eternal vigilance, which sounds through these almost unknown letters. These are the things which it will pay to reprint in the day when American liberty feels in its tomb the first stirrings of the resurrection. Did we like Paine believe in God, we might say "Pray God it may not be far away."

Such are the characters whose historic influence is greatest; they who hew, and hew hard to the line laid down for them by the events of their time; yet are not blinded by the stir and roll of things; who see clearly where the deflection from the line is likely to occur, and where it will lead; who raise the warning treble that goes shrilling to the future, startling, waking with its eerie cry custom-dulled ears, and sodden souls, who start to ask, was it not a ghost of the Revolution? In that day which may not be so distant as we fear, Paine will be more alive than ever; he will be watching at a million firesides with the old keen, strong eyes.

While I have deprecated the fact that the religious reformer has been exalted to the neglect of the political one, I cannot omit that part of his life-work so well-known to all, yet never old. The "Age of Reason" has long been both exaggerated and despised as an iconoclastic work. But we are indebted to Conway, the greatest of Paine students, who out of the many biographies he has written has chosen that of Paine to be the master-piece of his life (and it is a work which any author might be proud to regard his master-piece), to him I say we are indebted for a different view of the "Age of Reason."

I know not whether Mr. Conway's own Unitarian bias may not have influenced him; it is possible. It is possible that his eager search for positivism may have unconsciously determined his attitude towards the great hero, and modified his interpretation of Paine's words. I believe it has; because I believe _that_ is inevitable. I believe we read our own ideals into other people, and must do so if we think at all. But making all allowance for the biographer's prejudgment, Conway has still a magnificent argument for putting Paine in the defendant's position. We are no longer to view the book as an attack upon religion but as its defense,--the defense of what is beneficial, permanent, necessary, in the religious element of human nature against the scribes and pharisees on the one hand and the philistines on the other. It was the plea for the redemption of the edifice from the dirt and cobwebs, the protest against smashing the stones to kill the spiders. The great prerequisite to the understanding of the "Age of Reason" is an acquaintance with the literature of that time--especially French literature. The pamphlets, periodicals, and books are the crystals wherein _the Zeitgeist_ of the 18th century is preserved. Without this acquaintance we cannot realize how the people continually thought, and what was new and what was old, what was acceptable and what unacceptable to them. And we shall find by it that the fashion of sneering popularized by Voltaire, and so admirably embodied by the _finesse_ of the French language (always a language of double meanings and hemi-demi-semi-shaded insinuations), the still more reprehensible habit of deducing immense generals from very scanty particulars, or in fact contriving the generals first and then fitting in or suavely waiving the particulars altogether, had so permeated not only French philosophy, but the heads of the common people as well, that religion had become almost a byword, a baseless superstition unaccounted for by, and unnecessary according to, the all-accepted theory of Natural Law. To defend it, to maintain that there was something else in it, was equivalent to pleading for the life of the King before the convention! That was to maintain that there were claims of the human--after the King had been stripped; this was to say that underneath the gewgaws and tinsel of religions the undying heart of man, the man of all the past, had been expressing its noblest aspirations. And Paine stripped off the tinsel and said, "Put your hand here,--it beats"; and because he tore the tinsel, the orthodox would have stoned him; and because he said "it beats," the philosophers would have whetted the knife. And between the two he stood firm, proclaiming what he believed, not counting the cost. We may not believe as he; most of us do not. But that is the man we love: who has something in him superior to the judgments of men; who holds steadfast--steadfast even in persecution, even to death.

Perhaps there is no more pathetic thing than the last years, the death, and the burial of Paine. The world would have been poorer had he died sooner; but to him, to the man, the gun-shot or the guillotine had been kinder than the unhappy life rejected by the nation he had given all to free, shunned by political cowards and persecuted by religious bigots,--even on his death-bed. But though so lonely, so pathetically lonely, there is something that sends a fine, cold thrill along the nerves in that strange procession and burial--that poor procession, that procession of the Hicksite Quaker, the two negroes, the widowed Frenchwoman and her son. I wonder what sort of day it was; whether the sun shone or the clouds lowered over the solitary grave on the little farm, when Margaret Bonneville said to her child, "Stand you there at his feet, for France; and I will here, for America." I do not know where the negroes and the Hicksite stood when that august corpse was lowered to the depths, but there, close, somewhere, stood the unfreed race, for whom he had vainly plead, and there, close, somewhere, the soul's revolt at spiritual masters. And from that tomb there went away the scattering fires, of the risen ghost, the '61 living Paine, the Grand Reality.

Dyer D. Lum (February 15, 1839--April 6, 1893)

One of the silent martyrs whose graves are trodden to the level by their fellows' feet, almost before it is seen that they have fallen, completed his martyrdom one year ago to-night.

There are thousands of such, why then commemorate this one?

Let our answer be that in this one we commemorate all the others, and if we have chosen his day and name, it is because his genius, his work, his character was one of those rare gems produced in the great mine of suffering and flashing backward with all its changing lights the hopes, the fears, the gaieties, the griefs, the dreams, the doubts, the loves, the hates, the sum of that which is buried, low down there, in the human mine.

No more modest a man than Dyer D. Lum ever lived; partly, nay mostly, indeed, it was inborn, instinctive; but it was also fostered by his conception of life, which led him to consider self as the veriest of soap-bubbles, a thing to be dispelled by the merest whiff of wind, so to speak; and therefore, personal recognition or personal gain as the most silly, as well as unworthy, of motives. For this reason his works have often gone where his name did not, and thousands of persons have been influenced by his logic and his sentiments who never heard of his personality. Indeed there were some of us who wondered when he died, what certain labor leaders would henceforth do for a cheap scribe to furnish them brains.

I have often heard him quote as his motto, both for organization and for literary effort, the expressive sentence: "_Get in your work._" "Let fools take the credit if they want it," was the implication of his tone, and I shall never forget the delightful smile with which he repeated Charles Mackay's lines, most singularly transposing the author's meaning: "Grub little moles----." He took an especial pleasure in grubbing, and smiling when a streak of sunlight fell on some one else.

I have said that this distinguishing characteristic, so fruitful in results in his later life, was partly instinctive and partly a philosophic conviction. The instinctive side may be best understood by a brief sketch of his ancestry. It is generally complained that the troublesome people who are never satisfied to let society alone, must necessarily be foreigners; at least they can never belong to the same nation as we, the good, the respectable. The easy method of laying everything pestilent to the charge of the foreigner, will not serve a conservative American against Dyer D. Lum. The first of the Lums to set foot in this country was Samuel L., a Scotchman, in the year 1732. They rooted in New England soil, and at the time of the Revolution, Dyer's great grandfather was a minute-man in the very town, Northampton, where his own corpse was laid a year ago. On the maternal side the Tappan family were also revolutionists, and back of revolutionists Reformationists in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and still back of that, Crusaders. All this would be important enough and indeed even distinguishing, were I relating it by way of "gilding refined gold"; but they acquire meaning the moment we regard them as data for a character. They are fraught with mysterious symbolism, and he himself becomes a symbol of the deep-rooted faith of humanity, when we see that subterranean stream of blood running from Jerusalem through Europe and across the sea to America. It shows how profound is the well-spring of devotion to cause in the human heart; through how many centuries the spirit of rebellion lives. But what, say you, had it to do with his instinctive modesty? This: _the devotee of a cause is never the devotee of self_.

Now as to his philosophic convictions, it would be easy to deliver a whole lecture upon them; and unfortunately his profoundest work on that subject has not yet been printed. Of course, I can present them but briefly. I must preface that, as you will no doubt observe later on, his beliefs were in his own case a plain testimony to their own correctness. It sounds ridiculous to say that a thing can prove itself; but you will understand me when I explain that he regarded the conscious life of man, which includes, of course, his processes of reasoning and therefore his philosophy, as the merest fragment of him; that this process itself, which we are wont so fondly to consider as setting us higher than the brute, is but an upgrowth of our instincts. Man, the race Man, psychologically as well as bodily, might be likened to a tree, which every year adds small new growths whose bright green verdure opens to the sunlight, while below and supporting them quivers the great dark green mass of the tree, which year after year repeats itself, whispering in its shadows the old whispers of the centuries. The new verdure would represent the conscious life and growth of individuals, budding upward in response to the conditions surrounding them and adding what tiny mite they may to the experience of the race; but beneath and through, and all about them rustle the traditions of the dead--dead as individuals, but living, more potently living than ever, in the great trunk and branches of unconscious, or instinctive life. And as the shape of the newly budding leaf, the shade of its green, the length of its stem, its size, are determined more by the nature of the tree than by surrounding circumstances, so the philosophy of the individual is determined by the instinctive life of the race.

The winter of death comes; the individual withers like the leaf; but the small item of growth that he has added is there, brown and barren though the twig appear. From him new buds will shoot, though its own leaves hereafter rustle in the deep green shadows of unconsciousness. As time passes away useless boughs wither and die, and are stricken utterly from the life of the race; such are the worthless lives, the abnormal growths, which no longer add anything either to the beauty or the service of the whole.

Or, to adopt one of Comrade Lum's own figures, the useless or brutish elements in man slowly sink down like sediment deposited by the moving current. Now, in a case where we are able to trace a strain of blood as far back as this of his, and further are able to look at the conscious work of the man, and see that the one was the offspring of the other, modified of course by circumstances, we are able to make the seemingly absurd statement that the belief proves its own correctness.

Let me particularize concerning this belief. First he was in all his writings the advocate of resistance, the champion of rebellion. But long before he had reduced the matter to a syllogism, he was a resistant in fact. What else could you expect from the Crusader, the Reformationist, the Revolutionist? It might be said by the people who believe in the supreme influence of circumstances, that it was his social environment which made him such--that given the ideal social order and he would have been as mild a pacificator as Jesus: which is equivalent to saying that given the outward circumstances and an ear of wheat will grow from a seed corn.

Lum was the resistant, the man of action; the man who while scarcely more than a boy, enlisted as a volunteer in the 125th New York infantry to fight a cause he then deemed just; who being taken prisoner, twice effected his escape; who sick of the inaction of superiors, while a third-time prisoner waiting to be exchanged, took his exchange in his own hands, at the risk of death for desertion, and within a month re-enlisted in the cavalry, where by sheer force of daring he rose from private to captain; the man who smashed the idol of the Greenback movement, sooner than let him betray its voters, reckless himself of the rebound of hate from the politicians; the man who cast all business prospects and journalistic hopes aside as so much chaff, when he picked up the fallen banner of the fight in Chicago, by editing the paper of Albert Parsons, then in prison and doomed to die; the man who could say to his well-beloved friend, when that friend asked him whether he should petition Governor Oglesby for his life, knowing that that petition would be granted, the man who, under these circumstances could say: "Die, Parsons"; the man who poor, defeated, dirty, ragged, hungry, could proudly refuse the proffered hand of the then king of the labor movement, that king who had kept his kingdom by repudiating the martyrs of Chicago from the limitless height of one soul over another, answer "there's blood on it, Powderly"; the man who faced a public audience to defend the shooting of Frick by Alexander Berkman, a few days after the occurrence, because he felt that when another has done a thing which you approve as leading in the direction of your own aspirations, it is your duty to share the effects of the counterblast his action may have provoked; the man who seized the unknown Monster, Death, with a smile on his lips--all of this man was germinating in the child of the pious home who even when a mere boy had dared Jehovah.

Having "weighed Him, tried Him, found Him naught," he threw the Jewish God and cosmogony overboard with as much equanimity as he would have eaten his dinner, and set about finding a more reasonable explanation of phenomena. In this, as in all other matters, the man of action has a certain advantage over a pure theorist, which is this: he plunges immediately into the conflict, he throws the gauntlet, rashly sometimes, but boldly; he settles the question at once; if there is any suffering attached to the attempt, he suffers once and has done with it; while the theorist, the fellow who walks tiptoe round the edge of the battle-field, dies a hundred times and still suffers on.

My own conversion from orthodoxy to freethought was of this latter sort. I never dared God; I always tried to propitiate him with prayers and tears even while I was doubting his existence; I suffered hell a thousand times while I was wondering where it was located. But my teacher winked at the heavens, braved hell, and then tossed the whole affair aside with a joke.

Nevertheless, he did not, as nearly all of our modern image-breakers have done, deny all religions in their entirety, because he had run a lance through a stuffed Mumbo-Jumbo. Indeed, the spirit of devotion to something greater than Self, which will be found as the kernel of every religion, was so thoroughly in him, or indeed _was_ he himself that whether he fancied himself _willing_ it or not, his inclinations directed all his conscious efforts to read the riddle of life into the channel of Buddhism. I do not know whether he ever accepted its peculiarly fanciful side or not; but if he did, it was early corrected by a no less characteristic trait, also an inheritance of the Tappan family, that of critical analysis. An omnivorous reader, he was always abreast of the times in matters of scientific discovery; and his inexorable logic would never have permitted him to retain a creed which necessitated any doctoring of facts; he rather doctored the creed to fit the facts and thus evolved a species of modern Buddhism which he called "Evolutional Ethics," whose principles may be briefly stated as follows:

Man is the continuation of the process of evolution up to date. He is thus united to all other products of evolution, and is governed by the same laws. The two factors which determine form in the organic world are _adaptation_ and _inheritance_; and since evolution is no less a matter of psychology than physiology, the soul of man as well as the soul of animals and plants, must be moulded by these factors. That inheritance tends to crystallize existing forms, while _adaptation_, or the influence of environment, ever tends to modification of forms, whether physical or intellectual. That mind as much as body is unconscious, so far as there is perfect adaptation to surroundings; and that only when inharmony of the organism with the environment as the result of change in the latter, arises, can there be _consciousness_. That this consciousness is a state of pain, more or less sharply defined; and will continue to increase in intensity until the necessary adaptation is accomplished, when _as a result_ a feeling of satisfaction or pleasure will ensue, gradually sinking into the blissful unconsciousness of perfect harmony. That progress thus demands this stepping constantly up the rough stairway of pain; and that not even one step is passed until moistened by the blood of many generations. That the path up the mountain side is not laid out _by_ us, but _for_ us, and that we _must_ travel there whether it pleases us or not. That the chances are it will _not_ please us; that our whole lives, in so far as they are conscious, will probably be one record of never achieved struggle; and that rest will come only when we descend to the unconsciousness of Death.

Thus he was a pessimist of the darkest hue; and yet he never wasted a moment's regret on the facts. He watched this passing spectre man, gliding among the whirling dance of atoms, contemplated his final extinction with composure, sneered at metaphysicians while he himself was buried in metaphysics, and cracked jokes either at his own expense or somebody else's.

The result of all this speculation was the conclusion that man, being a social animal, must adapt himself to social ends (not determined by him but for him--unconsciously); that therefore the one who sets himself and his egotistic desires against the social ideal is the supreme traitor. He had a peculiar power of expressing volumes in an epithet; and the epithet he gave to the Egoist was "Dung-Beetle." For the sake of those who may not be familiar with the insect referred to, I may explain that a dung-beetle is a sort of bug that exhibits its instincts by rolling a ball of dung, and who sometimes appears to meditate when he rolls over the ball that the universe has turned bottom up--because he has.

Now, it is well known that the greater part of the reform camp--particularly the Anarchistic camp--is made up of Dung-Beetles, I mean of Egoists; people who declare that the desire for pleasure is the motive of action, who think a great deal of their egos and don't care a rap for society. The result was they sharpened their pencils and wrote scathing editorials denouncing him. To which he answered never a word. First, because he didn't consider himself worth fighting about; and second, if he had, he was altogether too good a general to do it. His opponents were a disputatious sort, who liked nothing better than argument; he knew what his enemy wanted and _didn't do it_.

But when a question worth discussing arose, then woe to those who had courted the rapier of his wit, or challenged to duel with the diamond-tipped dagger of his sarcasm. He could answer columns with a paragraph.

I do not know whether this philosophy of his had crystallized in his own mind before he became an Anarchist or not. I believe, however, it had not; I think it grew along with his other conceptions, being broadened and corrected, and in turn broadening and correcting his thought in other channels. But at any rate, fully developed or not, it certainly influenced his conclusions on economic subjects greatly. True to his instincts he was always at the front of battle, and when the war closed his first move was to attach himself to the Greenback party, the first widespread expression of organized protest against monopoly of the means of production in America. He still had faith in the saving grace of politics, and was active enough in the agitation to be nominated for Lieut. Governor of Massachusetts with Wendell Phillips for Governor. The fight, which besides being a demand for fiat money, embodied a short-hour movement, took on a national character; and Dyer D. Lum with five others, including Albert R. Parsons, was appointed on a committee to push the matter before Congress. This was in 1880. Six years later, time and the tide had driven both of them into the great current of Socialism, and final repudiation of politics as a means of attaining Socialistic ideals. And here came in the philosophy of the unconscious. The socialization of industry was the next step up the mountain side, not because men wished or planned it; but the pressure of surroundings made it the only possible move; but on the other hand the reactionary, system-building Socialism advocated by the great master Marx, and all his train of little repeaters, was seen to be at variance with a no less marked feature of the evolving social ideal, viz., elasticity, mobility, constantly increasing differentiation; which is only possible when units of society are left free to adapt themselves to the slightest changes, unforced by the opinions of other people who know nothing of the matters in question, but who, being in the majority (for where is ignorance not in the majority?) could suppress the free movements of the minority by enacting their ignorance into laws.

Thus it will be seen that he looked forward to free Socialism as the industrial ideal; the requirements of that ideal are laid down in his "Economics of Anarchy."

A few of his caustic sentences may here be quoted:

"The Statist assumes that rights increase in some metaphysical manner, and become incarnate in half the whole plus one."

"Politics discovers wisdom by taking a general poll of ignorance."

"Every appeal to legislation to do aught but _undo_ is as futile as sending a flag of truce to the enemy for munitions of war."

"When Caesar conquered Greece, he subjugated Olympus, and the Gods now measure tape behind counters with Christian decorum."

Lum had faith in humankind. He always trusted the people; the people that maligned him, the people that injured him, the people that killed him. When I asked him once why he did not get angry at an individual who industriously circulated lies about him, he answered with a twinkling laugh, "For the same reason that I don't kick the house-cat." And yet he had an abiding faith in that man, and other similar men, to work out the judgments of the human race, undisturbed by the fact that they let their only honest leaders die in garrets.

And underneath the speculative philosopher who confused you with long words; underneath the cold logician who mercilessly scouted at sentiment; underneath the pessimistic poet that sent the mournful cry of the whip-poor-will echoing through the widowed chambers of the heart, that hung and sung over the festival walls of Life the wreaths and dirges of Death; underneath the gay joker who delighted to play tricks on politicians, police and detectives; was the man who took the children on his knees and told them stories while the night was falling, the man who gave up a share of his own meagre meals to save five blind kittens from drowning; the man who lent his arm to a drunken washerwoman whom he did not know, and carried her basket for her, that she might not be arrested and locked up; the man who gathered four-leafed clovers and sent them to his friends, wishing them "all the luck which superstition attached to them"; the man whose heart was beating with the great common heart, who was one with the simplest and the poorest.

Lum held that evolutional ethics, or Anarchist ethics, in fact, must take account of both the altruistic and egoistic impulses; that while determining causes will ever lie in the mysterious realm of the unconscious life, consciousness may discern the trend of development and throw in its quota of influence for or against. That in its endeavor to comprehend the trend of development, it should take fair account of ancient truths, however enveloped in superstitious husks; should aim to extract the virtue even in the much mistaken altruistic doctrines of vicarious atonement and personal abasement; and while emphasizing the negation of human rulership as destructive of the possibilities of true growth, at the same time to acknowledge the vain conceit of self as anything more than a temporary grouping of instinct developed in beast, in plant, in man; to acknowledge the individual creature as a sort of mirrored reflection of the cosmos, constantly shifting, now scintillant, now vague and evanescent, now gone forever as Death breaks the mirror.

The notion of immortality which grows from such a conception of self is purged of the old vain conceit. It has been most beautifully voiced in George Eliot's "Choir Invisible," Mr. Lum's favorite poem; and in the lines is expressed the last great limitless shadow which engulfs even this immortality, the blind, tremendous darkness which lies at the end of all, the sense of the invincibility of which must have lain upon our teacher's soul when after the last searching, inexplicable, farewell look into a friend's eyes he went out into the April night and took his last walk in the roar of the great city--he who should soon be so silent!

Most of his comrades were surprised. They said: "I never thought Dyer D. Lum would go alone." But I who know how often and how wearily he said "What's the use," am sure that that mocking question lay at his heart, and paralyzed the _will_ to do.

Like Olive Schreiner's stars in the African Farm, the soul about to depart sees the earth so coldly--all the ages are as one night--and like them he watches little helpless creatures of the earth come out and crawl awhile upon its skin, then go back beneath it, and it does not matter--nothing matters.

Francisco Ferrer

In all unsuccessful social upheavals there are two terrors: the Red--that is, the people, the mob; the White--that is, the reprisal.

When a year ago to-day the lightning of the White Terror shot out of that netherest blackness of Social Depth, the Spanish Torture House, and laid in the ditch of Montjuich a human being who but a moment before had been the personification of manhood, in the flower of life, in the strength and pride of a balanced intellect, full of the purpose of a great and growing undertaking,--that of the Modern Schools,--humanity at large received a blow in the face which it could not understand.

Stunned, bewildered, shocked, it recoiled and stood gaping with astonishment. How to explain it? The average individual--certainly the average individual in America--could not believe it possible that any group of persons calling themselves a government, let it be of the worst and most despotic, could slay a man for being a teacher, a teacher of modern sciences, a builder of hygienic schools, a publisher of text-books. No: they could not believe it. Their minds staggered back and shook refusal. It was not so; it could not be so. The man was shot,--that was sure. He was dead, and there was no raising him out of the ditch to question him. The Spanish government had certainly proceeded in an unjustifiable manner in court-martialing him and sentencing him without giving him a chance at defense. But surely he had been guilty of something; surely he must have rioted, or instigated riot, or done some desperate act of rebellion; for never could it be that in the twentieth century a country of Europe could kill a peaceful man whose aim in life was to educate children in geography, arithmetic, geology, physics, chemistry, singing, and languages.

No: it was not possible!--And, for all that, it was possible; it was done, on the 13th of October, one year ago to-day, in the face of Europe, standing with tied hands to look on at the murder.

And from that day on, controversy between the awakened who understood, the reactionists who likewise understood, and their followers on both sides who have half understood, has surged up and down and left confusion pretty badly confounded in the mind of him who did not understand, but sought to.

The men who did him to death, and the institutions they represent have done all in their power to create the impression that Ferrer was a believer in violence, a teacher of the principles of violence, a doer of acts of violence, and an instigator of widespread violence perpetrated by a mass of people. In support of the first they have published reports purporting to be his own writings, have pretended to reproduce seditious pictures from the walls of his class-rooms, have declared that he was seen mingling with the rebels during the Catalonian uprising of last year, and that upon trial he was found guilty of having conceived and launched the Spanish rebellion against the Moroccan war. And that his death was a just act of reprisal.

On the other hand, we have had a storm of indignant voices clamoring in his defense, alternately admitting and denying him to be a revolutionist, alternately contending that his schools taught social rebellion and that they taught nothing but pure science; we have had workmen demonstrating and professors and litterateurs protesting on very opposite grounds; and almost none were able to give definite information for the faith that was in them.

And indeed it has been very difficult to obtain exact information, and still is so. After a year's lapse, it is yet not easy to get the facts disentangled from the fancies,--the truths from the lies, and above all from the half-lies.

And even when we have the truths as to the facts, it is still difficult to valuate them, because of American ignorance of Spanish ignorance. Please understand the phrase. America has not too much to boast of in the way of its learning; but yet it has that much of common knowledge and common education that it does not enter into our minds to conceive of a population 68% of which are unable to read and write, and a good share of the remaining 32% can only read, not write; neither does it at all enter our heads to think that of this 32% of the better informed, the most powerful contingent is composed of those whose distinct, avowed, and deliberate purpose it is to keep the ignorant ignorant.

Whatever may be the sins of Government in this country, or of the Churches--and there are plenty of such sins--at least they have not (save in the case of negro slaves) constituted themselves a conspiratical force to keep out enlightenment,--to prevent the people from learning to read and write, or to acquire whatever scientific knowledge their economic circumstances permitted them to. What the unconscious conspiracy of economic circumstance has done, and what conscious manipulations the Government school is guilty of, to render higher education a privilege of the rich and a maintainer of injustice is another matter. But it cannot be charged that the rulers of America seek to render the people illiterate. People, therefore, who have grown up in a general atmosphere of thought which regards the government as a provider of education, even as a compeller of education, do not, unless their attention is drawn to the facts, conceive of a state of society in which government is a hostile force, opposed to the enlightenment of the people,--its politicians exercising all their ingenuity to sidetrack the demand of the people for schools. How much less do they conceive the hostile force and power of a Church, having behind it an unbroken descent from feudal ages, whose direct interest it is to maintain a closed monopoly of learning, and to keep out of general circulation all scientific information which would tend to destroy the superstitions whereby it thrives.

I say that the American people in general are not informed as to these conditions, and therefore the phenomenon of a teacher killed for instituting and maintaining schools staggers their belief. And when they read the assertions of those who defend the murder, that it was because his schools were instigating the overthrow of social order in Spain, they naturally exclaim: "Ah, that explains it! The man taught sedition, rebellion, riot, in his schools! That is the reason."

Now the truth is, that what Ferrer was teaching in his schools was really instigating the overthrow of the social order of Spain; furthermore it was not only instigating it, but it was making it as certain as the still coming of the daylight out of the night of the east. But not by the teaching of riot; of the use of dagger, bomb, or knife; but by the teaching of the same sciences which are taught in our public schools, through a generally diffused knowledge of which the power of Spain's despotic Church must crumble away. Likewise it was laying the primary foundation for the overthrow of such portions of the State organization as exist by reason of the general ignorance of the people.

The Social Order of Spain ought to be overthrown; must be overthrown, will be overthrown; and Ferrer was doing a mighty work in that direction. The men who killed him knew and understood it well. And they consciously killed him for what he really did; but they have let the outside world suppose they did it, for what he did not do. Knowing there are no words so hated by all governments as "sedition and rebellion," knowing that such words will make the most radical of governments align itself with the most despotic at once, knowing there is nothing which so offends the majority of conservative and peace-loving people everywhere as the idea of violence unordered by authority, they have wilfully created the impression that Ferrer's schools were places where children and youths were taught to handle weapons, and to make ready for armed attacks on the government.

They have, as I said before, created this impression in various ways; they have pointed to the fact that the man who in 1906 made the attack on Alfonso's life, had acted as a translator of books used by Ferrer in his schools; they have scattered over Europe and America pictures purporting to be reproductions of drawings in prominent wall-spaces in his schools, recommending the violent overthrow of the government.

As to the first of these accusations, I shall consider it later in the lecture; but as to the last, it should be enough to remind any person with an ordinary amount of reflection, that the schools were public places open to any one, as our schools are; and that if any such pictures had existed, they would have been sufficient cause for shutting up the schools and incarcerating the founder within a day after their appearance on the walls. The Spanish Government has that much sense of how to preserve its own existence, that it would not allow such pictures to hang in a public place for one day. Nor would books preaching sedition have been permitted to be published or circulated.--All this is foolish dust sought to be thrown in foolish eyes.

No; the real offense was the real thing that he did. And in order to appreciate its enormity, from the Spanish ruling force's standpoint, let us now consider what that ruling force is, what are the economic and educational conditions of the Spanish people, why and how Ferrer founded the Modern Schools, and what were the subjects taught therein.

Up to the year 1857 there existed no legal provision for general elementary education in Spain. In that year, owing to the liberals having gotten into power in Madrid, after a bitter contest aroused partially by the general political events of Europe, a law making elementary education compulsory was passed. This was two years before Ferrer's birth.

Now it is one thing for a political party, temporarily in possession of power, to pass a law. It is quite another thing to make that law effective, even when wealth and general sentiment are behind it. But when joined to the fact that there is a strong opposition is added the fact that this opposition is in possession of the greatest wealth of the country, that the people to be benefited are often quite as bitterly opposed to their own enlightenment as those who profit by their ignorance, and that those who do ardently desire their own uplift are extremely poor, the difficulty of practicalizing this educational law is partially appreciated.

Ferrer's own boyhood life is an illustration of how much benefit the children of the peasantry reaped from the educational law. His parents were vine dressers; they were eminently orthodox and believed what their priest (who was probably the only man in the little village of Alella able to read) told them: that the Liberals were the emissaries of Satan and that whatever they did was utterly evil. They wanted no such evil thing as popular education about, and would not that their children should have it. Accordingly, even at 13 years of age, the boy was without education,--a circumstance which in after years made him more anxious that others should not suffer as he had.

It is self-understood that if it was difficult to found schools in the cities where there existed a degree of popular clamor for them, it was next to impossible in the rural districts where people like Ferrer's parents were the typical inhabitants. The best result obtained by this law in the 20 years from 1857 to 1877 was that, out of 16,000,000 people, 4,000,000 were then able to read and write,--75% remaining illiterate. At the end of 1907 the proportion was altered to 6,000,000 literate out of 18,500,000 population, which may be considered as a fairly correct approximate of the present condition.

One of the very great accounting causes for this situation is the extreme poverty of the mass of the populace. In many districts of Spain a laborer's wages are less than $1.00 a week, and nowhere do they equal the poorest workman's wages in America. Of course, it is understood that the cost of living is likewise low; but imagine it as low as you please, it is still evident that the income of the workers is too small to permit them to save anything, even from the most frugal living. The dire struggle to secure food, clothing and shelter is such that little energy is left wherewith to aspire to anything, to demand anything, either for themselves or their children. Unless, therefore, the government provided the buildings, the books, and appliances, and paid the teachers' salaries, it is easy to see that the people most in need of education are least able, and least likely, to provide it for themselves. Furthermore the government itself, unless it can tax the wealthier classes for it, cannot out of such an impoverished source wring sufficient means to provide adequate schools and school equipments.

Now, the wealthiest classes are just the religious orders. According to the statement of Monsignor José Valeda de Gunjado, these orders own two-thirds of the money of the country and one-third of the wealth in property. These orders are utterly opposed to all education except such as they themselves furnish--a lamentable travesty on learning.

As a writer who has investigated these conditions personally, observes, in reply to the question, "Does not the Church provide numbers of schools, day and night, at its own expense?"--"It does,--unhappily for Spain." It provides schools whose principal aim is to strengthen superstition, follow a mediaeval curriculum, _keep out_ scientific light,--and prevent other and better schools from being established.

A Spanish educational journal (_La Escuela Espanola_), not Ferrer's journal, declared in 1907 that these schools were largely "without light or ventilation, dens of death, ignorance, and bad training." It was estimated that 50,000 children died every year in consequence of the mischievous character of the school rooms. And even to schools like these, there were half a million children in Spain who could gain no admittance.

As to the teachers, they are allowed a salary ranging from $50.00 to $100.00 a year; but this is provided, not by the State, but through voluntary donations from the parents. So that a teacher, in addition to his legitimate functions, must perform those of collector of his own salary.

Now conceive that he is endeavoring to collect it from parents whose wages amount to two or three dollars a week; and you will not be surprised at the case reported by a Madrid paper in 1903 of a master's having canvassed a district to find how many parents would contribute if he opened a school. Out of one hundred families, three promised their support!

Is it any wonder that the law of compulsory education is a mockery? How could it be anything else?

Now let us look at the products of this popular ignorance, and we shall presently understand why the Church fosters it, why it fights education; and also why the Catalonian insurrection of 1909, which began as a strike of workers in protest against the Moroccan war, ended in mob attacks upon convents, monasteries, and churches.

I have already quoted the statement of a high Spanish prelate that the religious orders of Spain own two-thirds of the money of Spain, and one-third of the wealth in property. Whether this estimate is precisely correct or not, it is sufficiently near correctness to make us aware that at least a great portion of the wealth of the country has passed into their hands,--a state not widely differing from that existing in France prior to the great Revolution. Before the insurrection of last year, the city of Barcelona alone had 165 convents, many of which were exceedingly rich. The province of Catalonia maintained 2,300 of these institutions. Aside from these religious orders with their accumulations of wealth, the Church itself, the united body of priests not in orders, is immensely wealthy. Conceive that in the Cathedral at Toledo there is an image of the Virgin whose wardrobe alone would be sufficient to build hundreds of schools. Imagine that this doll, which is supposed to symbolize the forlorn young woman who in her pain and sorrow and need was driven to seek shelter in a stable, whose life was ever lowly, and who is called the Mother of Sorrows,--imagine that this image of her has become a vulgar coquette sporting a robe whereinto are sown 85,000 pearls, besides as many more sapphires, amethysts, and diamonds!

Oh, what a decoration for the mother of the Carpenter of Nazareth! What a vision for the dying eyes on the Cross to look forward to! What an outcome of the gospel of salvation free to the poor and lowly, taught by the poorest and the lowliest,--that the humble keeper of the humble household of the despised little village of Judea should be imaged forth as a Queen of Gauds, bedizened with a crown worth $25,000 and bracelets valued at $10,000 more. The Virgin Mary, the Daughter of the Stable, transformed into a diamond merchant's showcase!

And this in the midst of men and women working for just enough to keep the skin upon the bone; in the midst of children who are denied the primary necessities of childhood.

Now I ask you, when the fury of these people burst, as under the provocation they received it was inevitable that it should burst, was it any wonder that it manifested itself in mob violence against the institutions which mock their suffering by this useless, senseless, criminal waste of wealth in the face of utter need?

Will some one now whisper in our ears that there are women in America who decorate themselves with more jewels than the Virgin of Toledo, and throw away the price of a school on a useless decoration in a single night; while within a radius of five miles from them there are also uneducated children, for whom our School Boards can provide no place?

Yes, it is so; let them remember the mobs of Barcelona!

And let me remember I am talking about Spain!

The question naturally intrudes, How does the Church, how do the religious orders manage to accumulate such wealth? Remember first that they are old, and of unbroken continuance for hundreds of years. That various forms of acquisition, in operation for centuries, would produce immense accumulations, even supposing nothing but legitimate purchases and gifts. But when we consider the actual means whereby money is daily absorbed from the people by these institutions we receive a shock which sets all our notions of the triumph of Modern Science topsy-turvy.

It is almost impossible to realize, and yet it is true, that the Spanish Church still deals in that infamous "graft" against which Martin Luther hurled the splendid force of his wrath four hundred years ago. The Church of Spain still sells indulgences. Every Catholic bookstore, and every priest, has them for sale. They are called "bulas." Their prices range from about 15 to 25 cents, and they constitute an elastic excuse for doing pretty much what the possessor pleases to do, providing it is not a capital crime, for a definitely named period.

Probably there is no one in America so little able to believe this condition to exist, as the ordinary well-informed Roman Catholic. I have myself listened to priests of the Roman faith giving the conditions on which pardon for venal offenses might be obtained; and they had nothing to do with money. They consisted in saying a certain number of prayers at stated periods, with specified intent. While that may be a very illogical way of putting things together that have no connection, there is nothing in it to offend one's ideas of honesty. The enlightened conscience of an entire mass of people has demanded that a spiritual offense be dealt with by spiritual means. It would revolt at the idea that such grace could be written out on paper and sold either to the highest bidder or for a fixed price.

But now conceive what happens where a people are illiterate, regarding written documents with that superstitious awe which those who cannot read always have for the mysterious language of learning; regarding them besides with the combination of fear and reverence which the ignorant believer entertains for the visible sign of Supernatural Power, the Power which holds over him the threat of eternal punishment,--and you will have what goes on in Spain. Add to this that such a condition of fear and gullibility on the side of the people, is the great opportunity of the religious "grafter." Whatever number of honest, self-sacrificing, devoted people may be attracted to the service of the Church, there will certainly be found also, the cheat, the impostor, the searcher for ease and power.

These indulgences, which for 15 or 25 cents pardon the buyer for his past sins, but are good only till he sins again, constitute a species of permission to do what otherwise is forbidden; the most expensive one, the 25c-one, is practically a license to hold stolen property up to a certain amount.

Both rich and poor buy these things, the rich of course paying a good deal more than the stipulated sum. But it hardly requires the statement that an immense number of the very poor buy them also. And from this horrible traffic the Church of Spain annually draws millions.

There are other sources of income such as the sale of scapulars, agnus-deis, charms, and other pieces of trumpery, which goes on all over the Catholic world also, but naturally to no such extent as in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, where popular ignorance may be again measured by the materialism of its religion.