Chapter VI: Part 6

In replying to my paper Mr. Bellamy thus flippantly dismissed this case: "Of this it may be remarked that had it happened two centuries ago it would have been symptomatic; to-day it is a curiosity." It will be observed that in order to minify the dangers of Paternalism, Mr. Bellamy entirely ignored the point I had italicized, viz.: the Christian sentiment of society was not outraged and what was more, "_the religious press was so dominated by bigotry and ancient prejudice that it was blind alike to the Golden Rule and the inexorable demands of justice_." To-day we are told that this great judicial crime is a curiosity, although the religious bigotry of the majority has been upheld by the lower, the federal, and supreme courts, while the religious press has, with rare exceptions, sanctioned the persecution or ignored the case.

In vain the long-cherished idea that this country was to pass down the cycle of time known as the land of freedom; that it was to be forever the asylum for religious liberty and the cradle of progress, unless the sober thought of our people be at once aroused to stem the rising tide of Governmentalism and the steady encroachment of religious organizations and despotic foreign thought.

Comparatively few of the leading secular journals[6] have deemed this outrage sufficiently important to call for editorial comment, notwithstanding it marks the establishing of a precedent which must inevitably work great misery to innocent people at the hands of religious fanatics, unless there is a sufficient agitation to cause the repeal of many iniquitous laws which are a menace to the rightful freedom of citizens as long as they remain on the statute books.

[6] Among the few papers which have denounced this judicial
crime are the New York _Commercial Advertiser_ and the St.
Louis _Republic_. The former journal observes: "It seems
that the glorious clause of the Constitution can give no
protection to men who conscientiously believe they should
literally observe the Fourth Commandment.... It seems that
when a State seeks to enforce religious duty all consciences
must bow before it. That is to say, if, for example, the
Catholics of Louisiana were to pass a law that no man should
taste meat on Friday, the act would be no infringement of
religious liberty.

There can be but one opinion upon this decision among all
liberal-minded men. It is odious sophistry, unworthy of the
age in which we live. And under it an American citizen has
been condemned to spend the rest of his days in a dungeon
unless he shall stoop to deny the dictates of his own
conscience and dishonor his own manhood.

The _Republic_ in an editorial of August second says: "Not
being able to leave his crops unworked for two days in the
week, Mr. King ploughed them on Sunday, after having kept
the Sabbath the day before. He was arrested under the Sunday
law, and in order to make it effective against him it was
alleged that his work on his own farm on Sunday created a
public nuisance. On this entirely untenable ground he has
been harassed from court to court. He was a poor man, but he
has been supported by the friends of religious liberty. Mr.
King has been greatly wronged, but his only remedy at law is
under the law and Constitution of Tennessee. It appears that
for the present his remedy is denied him, and this being the
case he has no better recourse than to submit to the
oppression and go to prison--to the convict camp, if it
suits the convenience of his persecutors to send him there."

SOCIAL CONDITIONS UNDER LOUIS XV. A LESSON FOR THE PRESENT DAY.

To the superficial observer who, as guests of royalty, loitered through the sunny days which marked the closing years of Louis XV., France presented the aspect of a gay, thoughtless, happy, butterfly nation, whose government on the whole satisfied the requirements of the rich and powerful, and was sustained by the strong arm of the army on the one hand and the impregnable influence of the Church on the other. Small heed was to be given to the pamphleteers, whose brilliant satire, biting sarcasm, and pointed logic afforded amusement at the Louvre, rather than struck dismay to the hearts of those who fondly believed that the Church still held in thrall the brain of the masses, and that as for centuries the people had been content with slavery and vassalage, it was absurd to imagine they had now come to man's estate, had, Phoenix-like, arisen from the ashes of old-time sullen obedience or ignorant content, into the tumultuous atmosphere of intellectual activity. It is true, some far-seeing brains beheld the coming storm and warned the king, urging him to either suppress the philosophers, or concede to the masses a greater meed of justice, but their views were scouted by the ruling or conventional thought of the court, and life at the Louvre continued a merry whirl of carnal and selfish delight. The morning brought the chases, and evening the banquet, the theatre, or the ball; while at intervals grand polytechnic exhibitions delighted the populace, being given, probably, in the vain hope that they would satisfy the rising discontent, much as the gladiatorial shows satisfied, while they still further brutalized, the degraded populace of ancient Rome, making possible the toleration of such colossal iniquity as marked the decline of the Empire. Such, then, was the aspect of court life, while above the social and political horizon were gathering clouds which prophesied the greatest cataclysm civilization had witnessed. The wilful short-sightedness, the supreme indifference to the principles of justice, liberty, and fraternity; the conspicuous absence of the spirit of humanity, which characterized those who might have averted the coming baptism of blood, was the legitimate result of the anaesthetizing of the soul of the Court and aristocracy with the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The divine spark had disappeared. The spiritual nature had given way to the sensual. Ambition and pleasure were enthroned in the seats of justice and humanity. Selfishness was the keynote of aristocratic life. And with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher impulses of life, and possessing implicit confidence in the impregnability of that triple bulwark of conservatism, the army, the police, and the Church, the ruling party of French aristocracy drifted down the stream garlanded with roses, revelling in wine and music, abandoning itself to pleasure on life's lowest plane.

To the student of social conditions, who might have been a guest of the philosopher Rousseau, the picture photographed on the mental retina would have been far different. Above he would have beheld the round of selfish, thoughtless gaiety, in which the images and intrigues of Madame Dubarry and Marie Antoinette, of Choiseul and Rohan, of Louis and Richelieu, were strangely mingled and distorted by exaggeration, as they sifted down from the Court through several layers of brains until they reached the world of the newly awakened laborer. Below him would have yawned, in all its hideousness, the blackness of the pit, the social cellar into which he would have seen thousands and scores of thousands of his fellow-men crowded or driven by want, misfortune, or the avarice of the more powerful, and from which so few who once fall ever rose to the noble estate of true manhood and womanhood. Around him he would have noted still another world, more interesting and yet more terrible in its ferocity and power than those above and below--the realm of the common people--the sphere of the masses--the _current_ which passed over the darkest dregs and bore on its surface the scum. In this world the strange and interesting phenomenon would have met his eye of a newly awakened brain, an intellect which after ages of semi-unconsciousness, had, in a surprisingly short time, been aroused by the intellectual brilliancy of thinkers who had flooded a nation with new ideas, who had kindled the fires of justice, who had spoken in the _ear of all the people_ the doctrine of the essential brotherhood of man, the kinship of the throne and the shop, the idler in the palace and the idler in the cellar; the cormorant who dined off the labor of others at Lucerne, and the low-browed outcasts occupied in the same way but pursuing different methods, in the social sewer. And he would have noticed an unusual activity in this working world; secret meetings were being held on every hand. The great philosophical works of Rousseau breathing a new hope and a larger life into the soul of every reader, and the withering satire of Voltaire falling against the battlements of the church and the throne--these were the text-books and watchword of the new revolution. Tens of thousands of men who a few years before had accepted unquestioningly the assurance of the priests and obeyed as children the decrees of Royalty, were now thinking as never before on justice and equity, were students and intelligent expounders of the master brains which blossomed forth on every hand, in spite of priest and police. Heresy and liberty, justice and freedom, progress and equity had joined hands; conventionalism was doomed. The cry for justice went up from every hand to the crown and the aristocracy, only to come back with a mocking laugh or a royal restrictive decree. Thus the flame was fanned. The noble teaching of the great apostles of light and justice which illuminated the brains of the people and at first filled their hearts with holy love and wonderful tenderness, making them ready to accept and only desirous of receiving that measure of justice and consideration to which they knew they were entitled, later changed to feelings of hate and desire for revenge which ever grows as mushrooms in the average mind when justice is denied and oppression bears down more relentlessly at each complaint that comes from the oppressed. It is a law of life on the lower plane that selfishness, indifference, and heartlessness coming from above are photographed upon the sensitive intellect of the struggling minds below, which vainly ask for justice, only to return in time intensified a hundred-fold--selfishness becomes active and is complemented by an insane desire to destroy. Indifference calls forth unbridled ferocity. Heartlessness awakens sentiments of cruelty and brutality as relentless and destructive as the cyclone.

The social sewer or cellar of Paris at this time presented as interesting and suggestive a study as the toiling world above. Here were thousands of human beings dwelling in the atmosphere of crime and brutality, hungry, cold, and well-nigh hopelessly vicious by virtue of want, association, and environment, and ready for, if not eagerly anticipating any social upheaval which would afford them an opportunity to plunder and pillage. This world presented then, as it ever must, the saddest and most hopeless spectacle in the kaleidoscope of life. There were scores of thousands in this social sewer and new recruits coming daily. The avarice and extravagance of the Court pressed upon the great stratum of middle life, which in time bore down upon the lower sphere with crushing weight, while many of its numbers, weary of the eternal struggle, relaxed their hold on respectability and fell into the pit of crime and moral death. The inhabitants of this realm presented a picture of ferocity and despair, which must necessarily prove a frightful element in a revolution. The social cellar was only waiting for the signal when its hideous throat would belch forth death as surely as cannon or mortar ever hurled the life-destroying bomb. Such was life in France in the world of the wealthy and the world of want; while Louis drank Dubarry's health; while Marie Antoinette longed for her childhood home, and the Dauphin busied himself with geography, lock-making, and clock-repairing.

When Louis XV. died the scum had so thoroughly poisoned the great current of life in France that it is probable that even had there been far wiser heads at the helm of State than Louis XVI. and his councillor they would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to prevent a bloody reckoning, for the love of peace and reverence for justice, the cool judgment and mature wisdom which swayed the popular mind at an early day was well-nigh drowned in the rising tide of angry discontent and intense hate. A settled conviction pervaded the soul of the masses that the hour had come when might should make right the age-long wrongs of the people; and when an idea of this character possesses the rank and file of a nation it is almost impossible even by a liberal policy to avert a bloody issue.

I have dwelt upon this striking passage of history because it bristles with suggestive lessons and warning notes to the great Republic at the present time, and because the grave evils, which are as symptomatic to-day as were the signs of the times portentous in the reign of the easy-going, sensual Louis, are being met by those who have it in their power to avert a social catastrophe in precisely the same short-sighted spirit as characterized the conservative aristocracy when it denied the existence of the universal discontent among the masses and flippantly dismissed the angry muttering of the coming storm as merely the expression of a few shallow-brained malcontents. To-day we find the same brutal indifference and selfishness as was so conspicuous at the Louvre in 1770, exhibited by our mushroom aristocracy of the dollar, composed of those who form and control the great monopolies, syndicates, trusts, and combines, which are so cruelly oppressing the many that the few may grow many times millionnaires; together with the great railway magnates, who have through watering stock on the one hand, and plundering the commonwealth of farmers by exorbitant freights on the other, dishonestly amassed colossal fortunes. And that still more baleful communion which forms such an important part of America's shoddy aristocracy, the Wall Street gamblers, they who rule "the street," paralyzing healthy business, causing panics at will, and annually sweeping to the wall, to ruin and to death numbers of victims who have been lured into their snares by deceptive reports industriously circulated and extensively published by paid agents of these same brigands of the commercial world.

This mushroom plutocracy, whose representatives hold colossal fortunes acquired rather than earned, practically rule our business interests by virtue of the enormous opportunities afforded by their great wealth. And year by year are they increasing the rising tide of indignation in the hearts of millions of hard-working men and women, by grinding down more and still more hopelessly the multitude dependent on them, whom they can reduce to starvation if they rebel. Another element, which, viewed from the plane of justice and equity may be rightly termed _criminal_, is the popular and conservative economist who caters to the plutocracy and with brazen effrontery denies facts susceptible of proof, while he denounces every reformer who seeks to expose the iniquities of the present. This course is precisely a repetition of the policy of those who minified the real danger and misrepresented the grave facts to the Court of France, at a time when an honest, truthful representation might have averted the most terrible revolution in the annals of civilization. Only a short time since a popular economic writer denounced a Boston clergyman for unveiling the horrors of the sweating system in the modern Athens. He could not deny the truth of the sickening facts described, but termed the minister a member of one of the "_most dangerous class_" of citizens, merely because he spoke the truth with a view to bettering the condition of society's exiles.

At a recent meeting of the Rhode Island weavers, a distinguished and popular conservative economic writer addressed the hard struggling workingmen. During his remarks he sought to make them blindly and contentedly accept their lot by saying in honeyed tones: "_Why, my dear friends, the production of the country only furnishes $200 a head annually, and it is hard to make it go around. It is only by hard pinching and careful economy that we can make it do so;_" while almost within gunshot of the speaker rose the palaces of America's millionnaires, at Newport, where gigantic fortunes are annually squandered with lavish hands; where Mr. McAllister and his butterfly coterie of wealthy gourmands eat, drink, and dance away the summer, and illustrate how _these_ children of idleness and wealth have to "_pinch and plan_" _to make their share_ "_of the $200 go around_," of which the distinguished conservative economist spoke. If the masses of our people were unable to read or write, if they had been accustomed to centuries of oppression, a policy so glaringly unjust and disingenuous might succeed for a time. But with conditions as they are, the persistent crying of peace when there is no peace, and attempting to juggle with facts is more than foolish, it is _criminal_. One who does not regularly read the labor and agricultural press of this country is incapable of forming an intelligent idea of the nature or extent of the discontent at the present time. Then again, beyond this commonwealth of struggling toilers rises another commonwealth, the frightful condition of which no careful student can ignore. I refer to society's exiles, or the contingent of the social cellar. This element grows more powerful with each year. It is not securing justice at the hands of civilization and must some day be reckoned with.

In every agitation, every crusade against wrong, every battle for humanity, every contest for a broader sweep of justice, conventional critics have arrayed themselves on the side of the evil conditions, and denounced as dangerous agitators those who have sought to arouse the higher impulses of the people to right the crying wrongs of the hour. The treatment of Garrison and Phillips by this class in Boston, even in the shadow of the Cradle of Liberty, during the anti-slavery agitation, is of sufficiently recent date to emphasize this point, which has been paralleled in every important agitation for a higher civilization and a more just condition. To ignore the serious social unrest of the present, and the bitter cry of the weak for justice, is to follow the fatal precedent set by the French government. To deny the reality of the wrongs complained of, or lightly dismiss them as our popular economists are doing, is to pursue the ostrich policy with the certainty of being overtaken by the results of the evil which might have been averted. It matters not whether our "eminent" authorities are ignorant of the true social condition in city and country life to-day, or are wickedly juggling with truth in order to curry favor with plutocracy and conservatism, the fact remains that they are deceiving their masters as courtiers have often deceived thrones at moments when deception meant ruin. The duty of the hour is to _turn on the light_, to compel the thoughtful among our wealthy and powerful people to know the truth as it is, and to seek such a just and equitable revolution as will save a baptism of blood. The day for prophesying smooth things is past; we are face to face with problems and conditions which will not brook dishonest treatment. The exigencies of the present hour demand that we frankly face the social problems as they are and honestly discuss them in all their bearings. That we call to witness the impressive lessons of history and if possible, avert the repetition of the cataclysms of the past by prompt measures, marked by wisdom and justice. It is not too late to prevent a revolution of force if _wealth and power_ will heed the cry of _want and weakness_; if justice, courage, and duty supplant self-interest and indifference in the hearts of those who see and feel the rising tide of angry discontent. To-day if we would demonstrate that a century of civilization and free government has lifted us to a higher ethical level than humanity had attained a hundred years ago, we must face conditions as they are and promptly adopt measures that will secure such a meed of justice for the weak as shall take from his heart the bitterness of injustice and establish a feeling of common brotherhood and good-will.

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[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 the following changes to the text to correct obvious errors by the publisher:

1. p. 589, "Samangala" changed to "Sumangala" 2. p. 603, "Lassez-faire" changed to "Laissez-faire" 3. p. 607, Both "J. S. Moffitt, Jr." and "J. S. Moffit, Jr." appear on page 607. 4. p. 622, "nothng" changed to "nothing" 5. p. 632, "Even he carrion" changed to "Even the carrion" 6. p. 633, "Sabbath or" changed to "Sabbath on"

Also, several occurrences of mismatched quotes remain as published.

End of Transcriber's Notes]