Chapter XXII: Explanations (8)

“Is civilization a failure? Stretch out your gaze over all the
civilized world. There are, perhaps, in Christendom two or three
hundred millions of people, and one-half of them never have
enough to eat. And even in this country one-half of the people
have never had enough of mental food. All over the world one-half
of Christendom starves either bodily or mentally. That is no
exaggeration. You may go to France or England, and find a million
of men that never saw meat once a year. Take your city, and go
down into the very slums of existence, where human beings by the
thousands live year in and year out in dwellings which no man in
Fifth Avenue would trust his horses in for twelve hours. I will
take the great social spectre that confronts social science the
world over--prostitution, the social ulcer that eats into the
nineteenth century. And everybody who studies the subject will
confess that the great root from which it grows is that the
poverty of one class makes it the victim of the wealth of
another. Give woman her fair chance in her own fields of
enterprise, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to buy
diamonds and velvets with the wages of shame. Give man his fair
chance in the world of labor and enterprise, and ninety-nine out
of a hundred men will disdain to steal. The grog-shops of the
great cities have always appointed the municipalities as their
own standing, committees. And this is at once the cause and
effect of the poverty of the masses. I have known men who were
intemperate in Boston cured by being sent to Paris. Why? Because
in the brighter life, the more generous stimulant, the great
variety of interest in the European capital, he found something
that called out his nobler nature, starved out his appetites. So
it is with the intemperance of a nation; and to cure it, you must
supplement their life with the stimulus of the soul. Why is it
that three-fourths of the criminals are of the poorer classes?
Why do the students of crime tell you that when you have taken
out about fifteen per cent. of the criminals, consisting of the
enterprising, energetic, and intelligent, the rest are below par
bodily and mentally? Because they are the children, grandchildren,
or great-grandchildren of persons who were bodily and mentally
weak. Out of these weak ones the devil selects his best tools.
Feed that class better, and you will empty your prisons.”

This plainly enough attributes the evils the workingmen seek to remedy to modern civilization, which enables the few to become rich and leaves the many poor, destitute, festering in ignorance and vice. M. Desmoulins, in his _Apology for the Internationals_, as quoted by _The Dublin Review_, says: “The Parisian Red, far from being out of the pale of human nature, is only a spontaneous product of what is pompously styled modern civilization--a civilization that, resting to this hour on war between nation and nation, town and town, farm and farm, men and men, is still in many respects sheer barbarism.” As far as we are able to collect the views of the Association, it attributes the undefined grievances of the proletarian class to no one specific cause, but to modern civilization in general. In this, if the workingmen confine their objection to material civilization--the only civilization the age boasts or recognizes--we are not disposed to quarrel with them. Yet we all remember the outcry raised in all classes of society and from all quarters against the Holy Father, because he refused to form an alliance of the church with modern civilization, and for his supposed condemnation of it in the Syllabus. The International Association of Workingmen, whose members are spread over nearly the whole world, and are numbered by millions, is a vast 696 organized revolt against this boasted civilization of this nineteenth century. And so far it is not wholly without excuse, and even much may be said in its defence, though their proposed substitute for it may be utterly indefensible.

Modern material civilization, dating from the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, and more especially from the accession of the House of Hanover to the English throne, and the accession to power in England of what in the time of Swift and Addison was called the Urban party--money-changers, bankers, traders, merchants, and manufacturers--has been based on capital employed in trade and industry, in opposition to capital invested in land and agriculture. It is a shopkeeping and manufacturing and maritime civilization, essentially and eminently a burgher civilization, and resulting especially in the burgher class, or, as the French say, the _bourgeoisie_. A civilization based on material interests, and proposing the multiplication and amassing of material goods, necessarily produces the state of things which excites the opposition of Mr. Phillips and the Internationals. It creates necessarily an antagonism between the interests of capital and labor, and therefore between the employers, as representatives of capital, and the employed, or workmen. The interest of capital is to get labor at as low a rate of wages as possible; the interest of labor is to get as high a rate of wages as possible. This antagonism is inevitable.

Employers in vain pretend that the interests of capital and labor are the same. They are not so under a civilization based on Mammon, or under a civilization that seeks only the advancement of material interests, and invests capital only for the sake of material profit. In the struggle, the stronger party, under a material system, is always sure to succeed. And this is always the party of capital; for labor seeks employment to live--capital, for profit or gain; and the capitalist can forego profit more easily than labor can forego employment, since to live is more urgent than to gain. This secures the advantage always to the capitalist. The inequality which necessarily results cannot be overcome by equality of suffrage, or the extension of suffrage to the proletarian class, as politicians pretend; for, though numbers may triumph at the polls, the stronger interest, as our American experience proves, is sure to carry the victory in the halls of legislation. “The stronger interest in a country,” said Mr. Calhoun to the writer, “always in the long run wields the power of the country.”

Universal suffrage, which was defended on the ground that it would tend to protect labor against capital, has in fact a contrary tendency, and in practice almost invariably favors capital. The whole of our legislation--which so favors capital or its substitute, credit, or which mortgages the future for the present, and makes debt supply the place of capital, covers the towns with money or business corporations, and builds up huge monopolies--has grown up under a system of universal suffrage. In an age and country where material interests predominate, what the people, capitalists or proletarians, ask of government is, laws that facilitate the acquisition of wealth; but when such laws are enacted, not more than one man in a hundred can avail himself of the facilities they afford.

The great scientific discoveries of which we boast, and which have wrought such marvellous changes in our modern industrial world, were, as to their principles, made in a less material age than the present, 697 before the modern burgher civilization was fairly inaugurated; but their application to the mechanic arts, to production and transportation, whether by sea or land, has been made since, and chiefly within the last one hundred years. The introduction of labor-saving machinery has, to an extent not easily estimated, superseded human labor, broken up the small domestic industries, as carding, spinning, and weaving, carried on in the bosom of the family, and securing it a modest independence, and small farming, carried on chiefly by the father and his sons, and built up in their place large industries and large farming, beyond the reach of people of no means or small means but their labor, and in which human labor is employed only in the form of labor at wages. The introduction of machinery, or the working of mills or farms by machinery driven by steam or by horse-power, requires capital, or an outlay possible only to large capital or combinations of small capital. Take, for instance, the steam carder, spinner, and weaver; the mule, jenny, and power-loom; the patent mower, reaper, and horse-rake; threshing and winnowing machines--hardly any of them heard of or only beginning to be heard of in our own boyhood, at least in this country; take the railway and the locomotive--and you can easily see that modern industry, and in a measure even agriculture, fall necessarily into the hands of large capitalists, individual or corporate, and cannot be prosecuted on a small scale, at least profitably. We have corporations for condensing milk and making butter and cheese, regardless of our youthful friend the dairymaid, and for supplying us with ice. Perhaps nothing has tended so much to enlarge the inequality between capital and labor as the introduction of labor-saving machinery in nearly all branches of industry.

We do not make war on labor-saving machinery, which, we have heard it said, increases the power of capital six hundred million fold, though that seems to us hardly credible. We could not now do well without it. We could not well dispense with our cotton and woollen factories, and go back to the hand-cards, and spinning-wheel, and hand-loom which, in our own boyhood, were in every farmer’s house; but we cannot forget that the independence of the laborer--now a laborer at wages, and obliged to make cash payments for what he consumes--has gone with them to the advantage of the capitalist. We could not well dispense with railways, and yet there is no denying that they are monopolies, that labor cannot compete with them, and that they impose a heavy tax on labor. They also tend to convert the independent laborer into a workman at wages, and the freeman into the slave of machinery, to enrich a few railway presidents and directors, and stock-jobbers. Then, those great corporations, without souls, are not only stronger than the laborer, but stronger than the government. No great feudal lords in France or England were ever more formidable to the crown than such corporations as the Pennsylvania Central, the New York Central, the Union Pacific, with our National Bank system, are to the government, state or general. Neither state legislatures nor Congress can control them, and they have already made both simply their factor or agent.

There is a truth which cannot be denied expressed in the following paragraph from Mr. Phillips’ lecture:

“Now, look at it. You say, why do you find fault with 698
civilization? Tonight is a cold night, and you will go home to
parlors and chambers warmed with the coal of Pennsylvania. Why
don’t you have it here for $3 and $4 a ton? Why don’t you have it
here at an advance of $1 or $2 over what it is sold for at the
mouth of the pit? Because of the gigantic corporations and vast
organizations of wealth. The capitalists gather three or four
millions of tons in your city--sell it when they please, at such
rates as they please, and the poor man struggling for his bread
is the sufferer. A rich man is careful; he won’t put his foot in
any further than allows of its being pulled back. If he heard a
groan coming from the people at something he did, he would
withdraw his investment, for nothing is more timid than wealth.
But let that man take $100,000 or so and put it in with nine
others, and make a capital of $1,000,000; then he is as bold as
Julius Cæsar. He will starve out 13,000 coal miners. The London
_Spectator_ says that the colossal strength of Britain has reason
to dread the jointure of $456,000,000 of railroad capital. How
much more should America have reason to dread such combinations,
when Britain has more than ten times our wealth!”

Yet is there not some compensation to the proletarian class in the very system which tends so fearfully to increase their numbers and dependence? Grant that coal might be delivered from the mines in Pennsylvania in this city at $3 a ton; but suppose there were no railroads and no railway monopolies, could or would coal from the same mines be delivered in this city as cheap as it now is? Suppose there were no railways between this city and the great West, would wheat, flour, beef, pork, and the other necessaries of life be cheaper for the laboring class in this city than they now are? Railway companies may charge exorbitant rates of freight, and yet the laboring classes get the chief necessaries of life cheaper than they would, other things being equal or unchanged, without them. Those things might be cheaper in the localities where they are produced, but not elsewhere. The evil of these monopolies and corporations is not so much in the enhanced cost of living chargeable to them, as their multiplication of the class dependent on capital for employment; and in their power to shape the action of the government to their special interests. It is far better for the workman to depend on a single wealthy individual who is likely to have a soul than on a soulless corporation. The combination of capital in corporations for industrial or trading purposes founds an aristocracy, or ruling class, far more humiliating and crushing to the class below them than aristocracies founded on land and birth, education and manners.

This is the view taken by the Internationals. They war specially against the rule of the burgher class, which is now supreme in society, as formerly were the church, kings, and nobilities. In this opposition to the rule of the burgher class, supposing the means and methods of their warfare just and honorable, we confess we might sympathize with the Internationals, as we have always sympathized with the working-classes. We never have been able to get up much liking for an aristocracy based on Mammon, who, Milton tells us, was the meanest of all the angels that fell, and who, even in heaven, went about head down, and his eyes fixed on the gold of heaven’s pavement. It is well for no country when its ruling class are the moneyed or business class. Yet it would be difficult to say, as to our country at least, what class can be better trusted with the government, or what class has more virtue, more nobility of sentiment, chivalric feeling, nobler aims, or higher purpose. Nothing better from the proletarian class 699 could be expected, and, judging from the Paris Commune, nothing so good. The workingmen have all the love of money, all the sordid passions, low views, and degrading vices that can be charged to the burgher class, and, perhaps, fewer redeeming qualities. Civilization has descended to the burgher. What would it gain by descending to the proletary? But let us listen once more to Mr. Phillips:

“I think our civilization is better than anywhere in the world.
Now, gentlemen, you say to me, What do you intend to do? Every
man has a different theory, and I have no panacea. My theory is
only this: I know that a wrong system exists, and that the only
method in these states of turning the brains of the country on
one side is to bring it into conflict, and organize a party. If I
should ask one of your editors to-night to let me indite an
article on labor and capital, very likely he would refuse me, or
if he granted it, it might be because a fanatic like me would
sell a copy or two. But if you will give me 50,000 votes on one
side, and the balance impartially divided between your Fentons
and Conklings and Seymours, I will show you every journal in the
city of New York discussing the question with me. Labor is too
poor to edit a column in a New York journal, but when it comes in
the shape of votes, then those same journals cannot afford to
disregard it. Now, let us organize it. The ultimate view which we
aim at is co-operation, where there is no labor as such, and no
capital as such--where every man is interested proportionately in
the results. How will you reach it? Only by grappling with the
present organizations of power in the nation. It is money that
rivets the chains of labor. If I could, I would abolish every
moneyed corporation in the thirty states. Yet I am not certain
that that would be a wise measure, because it seems probable that
the business of the nineteenth century can hardly be carried on
without corporations; but if it be true that facility and
cheapness of production are solely to be reached by the machinery
of corporations, then I say, gentlemen, that the statesmanship of
this generation is called upon to devise some method by which
wealth may be incorporated and liberty saved. Pennsylvania has
got to find out some method by which Harrisburg may exist without
being the tail to the kite of the Pennsylvania Central.

“I think, in the first place, we ought to graduate taxes. If a
man has a thousand dollars a year and pays a hundred, the man
that has five thousand a year ought to pay five hundred. I would
have a millionaire with forty millions of dollars taxed so highly
that he would only have enough to live comfortably upon.”

That our civilization is the best in the world, it is patriotic to believe, and under several aspects it no doubt is so, or at least was so, a few years ago; but the burgher influence, which decides the action of government, is fast preventing this from continuing to be so. We were intended by nature to be a great agricultural people, and we have labored with all the force of the government and artificial contrivances to become, spite of nature, a great manufacturing and commercial people, like the people of Great Britain, as if our territory were as limited as that of the British Isles. Whatever advantages we possessed over the nations of the Old World in the beginning, we owed to the extent, cheapness, and fertility of our vast tracts of unoccupied lands, which enabled the working-man, after a few years of labor at wages, to become a land-owner, and to become the cultivator of his own Sabine farm. But the influence of the ruling classes, with its chief seats in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, has been steadily exerted since 1824 to deprive the country of these advantages, and to create as large a proletarian class as possible, so that no doubt, if, aside from the vast public works, or rather, the so-called internal improvements undertaken by private corporations, 700 and which give for the time employment to large numbers of workmen, skilled and unskilled, we now offer any advantages to the laborer over those he has abroad--at any rate, if we do, those advantages are fast disappearing.

We are no more favorable to the system of corporations than is Mr. Phillips; and the writer of this for years opposed with whatever abilities he had their creation and multiplication. He did so till he saw opposition could avail nothing to check their growth. No opposition can avail anything now, since the abolition of slavery has, in a great measure, identified the great planting interests of the South with the burgher interests of the North, as it was intended to do. For this Mr. Phillips is himself in no small degree responsible, and as an International, or a leader in the labor movement, he is only trying to undo what he hoped to do as an abolitionist. Philanthropy is an excellent sentiment when directed by practical wisdom and knowledge; but, when blindly followed, it creates a hundredfold more evil than it can cure, even if successful in its special aims. Even Mr. Phillips doubts if the corporation system can be safely abolished. We tell him there is no power in the country that can abolish it, because it governs the general government and nearly all the state governments. Give Mr. Phillips the fifty thousand votes he asks for, and the party he wishes to organize, he would, no doubt, become a power in elections, and could command an important place in the government for himself, and places also for his friends; but, however important the place to which he might be elected or appointed, he would find himself impotent to effect anything against the system he opposes, or in favor of the system he approves.

Mr. Phillips tells us that his main reliance is on the “education of the masses.” So do we, only we protest against calling the people who have rational souls “the masses,” as if they were piles or heaps of brute matter. But education given by the burgher civilization as educator, or suffered to be freely given by it, will tend to perpetuate that civilization, or the very system, social and industrial, which Mr. Phillips and the Internationals war against, not to displace or reform it. Let the education of all the children of the land be entrusted to a society whose principles were so admirably summed up and approved by a former governor of Massachusetts, namely, “Let the government take care of the rich, and the rich will take care of the poor,” how much would the education given do to elevate or meliorate that society? No order of civilization or society ever does or ever can educate in reference to a higher ideal than its own. Hence the reason why the state or secular society cannot be a fit educator of children and youth, and why all education can be safely entrusted only to the spiritual society whose ideal is the God-man, perfect, and the highest conceivable.

Purely secular education proceeds on the assumption that men and nations always act as well as they know, or that all individuals and nations will act uniformly in reference to their own interests so far as they know them--an assumption disproved by every one’s daily experience, as well as by the universal experience of mankind. Mr. Phillips ought to know that men who ought to know better are often carried away by their lusts, their passions, the force of events, and social and other influences, to act in direct opposition to their 701 better judgment. There are comparatively few of us who cannot say with the heathen poet:

“Video meliora, proboque,
Deteriora sequor.”

Men do wrong or fail to follow the right less from ignorance than from passion and infirmity of will. Society could not subsist if founded on what the philosophers in the last century called enlightened self-interest, or what Jeremy Bentham called “utility,” or “the greatest happiness” principle. What is wanted is something stronger than interest, something stronger than passion, which, while it enlightens the intellect, gives invincible firmness to the will.

The only power that can control this system, the evils of which Mr. Phillips points out, while its social and industrial tendencies he deplores, and adjust the various conflicting interests of society on the principles of justice and equity, is and must be supernatural. The English system of checks and balances, of restraining or balancing one interest by another, is a delusion, as the failure of the experiment fully proves. It restrains the weaker interests, but strengthens the stronger, makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer, and hence in no country do you find larger accumulations of wealth, and side by side with them a deeper or more widespread poverty or more squalid wretchedness. There are no resources in the order of nature for a people that adopts the burgher system, and makes material interests the great aim of life, from which power can be drawn adequate to overcome the evils of the system against which the Internationals wage their relentless war. We can find no deliverance in the natural order, and must seek it, if anywhere, in the supernatural, that is, in religion--and in a religion that speak with a supernatural authority, infuses into the soul a supernatural energy, and lifts it above the world and its systems or civilizations, above all earthly goods, and fixes its affections on the Unseen and the Eternal--a religion that gives light to the intellect and firmness to the will. It is only education in and by this religion that can avail anything.

But religion is precisely what the Internationals reject, hate, or despise--what the great body of the workmen in our towns, cities, and manufacturing villages have ceased to believe, and even with those of the so-called proletarian class generally who do not formally reject religion, it has ceased to be a power, to have any hold on the conscience, and has become a vague tradition or a lifeless form. It is pretty much the same with the burgher class, and was so with them before it was so with the proletarian class. Modern civilization itself is based on atheism, or the purely material order. Hence the evils the Internationals seek to remedy are the natural and inevitable result of the new order of civilization, not yet two centuries old. The Internationals see it, and make war on the existing civilization for that very reason. But on what principles, and in what interest? On the principles and in the interests of that very civilization itself. Their success would simply oust the burgher and put the proletary in his place. They introduce or propose not a higher and a nobler civilization, but, so far as there is any difference, a still lower and more degrading civilization.

The revolution that has been going on in society since the close of the fourteenth century has had several phases. The first phase was the union of the burghers and the sovereigns against the Pope and the feudal nobility, and resulted in the triumph of absolute monarchy 702 in the sixteenth century and the seventeenth. The second phase was the union of the burghers, or the _tiers état_, and the people or a portion of them against monarchy and the church, which issued in establishing the supremacy of the burghers. The third phase is that in the midst of which we now are, and is--monarchy and the church gone or assumed to be gone--that of the proletaries against burghers. Neither of the preceding phases of the revolution effected the good hoped for, or satisfied the revolutionary appetite, but really aggravated the social evils it was sought to remedy. The friends of the revolution said it did not go far enough, and stopped short of the mark. It has now descended to the bottom, to the lowest stratum, or to the lowest deep, and proposes to wrest the power from the burgher class and rest it in the proletarian class. It is some consolation to know that we at length have reached the last phase of the revolution, and that after its failure, as fail it will, nothing worse is to be feared. “When things are at worst, they sometimes mend.”

The principal objection to the Internationals is not that they oppose what is called modern civilization, or that they seek to remedy undeniable social evils; but that they seek to do it on false principles, by inadequate means, and unlawful and even horrible methods, and can only lose even by success.

The International has absorbed all the other labor unions, and may be said to represent the whole proletarian class in Europe and America, and its leaders are avowed atheists; they reject the entire supernatural order, disdain or contemn all forms of religion, and seek to redress the material by the material. This alone is sufficient in itself to condemn them. They reject not only religion, but also government, or the entire political and civil order. They will have no God, no king, no aristocracy, no democracy, no law, no court, no judges, but simply--we can hardly say what. Practically, they will fall under the authority of irresponsible and despotic leaders, governing in the name of nobody, and by their own passions or interests alone. They may aim at positive results, but at present their means are only adequate to the work of destruction. Thus an organized and secret, and, when practicable, open war on all religion, on God, on all authority, all law, and especially on capital or individual property. What positive result is to follow, Mr. Phillips confesses his inability to tell.

From Mr. Phillips we learn that they aim at the destruction of the whole modern industrial system, and propose that the workmen shall take possession of the establishments created by capitalists, incorporated or not, and run them on their own account, and share the profits among themselves, without any indemnification to the owners. As to land, no individual is to own it or any portion of it--it is to be made common, and open, as to the usufruct, to any one who chooses to occupy it. Mr. Phillips says:

“I have another proposition. I think when a man has passed five
years in the service of a corporation, though he may not have
bought a dollar of its stock, he is in a certain sense a
stockholder. He has put his labor and persistency there, and I
think every man who has been employed in a corporation for a year
or two should have a voice in its financial management. In Japan,
when a man dies, his land is left to the state. Do you not think
that is a wiser plan than ours? The land becomes more valuable
through the labor of the whole country, and not by that of the
man who eats off of it. Our great hope in the future is in the 703
education of the masses, for they will yet be our rulers. New
York stood aghast at the defalcation of millions of dollars, but
will you submit to be robbed of hundreds of millions by
monopolists? Fifth Avenue cannot afford to let the Five Points
exist. You cannot get wealth enough to fortify you against
discontented ignorance within your reach. The lesson taught by
Chicago is that wealth cannot afford to neglect poverty.”

How the matter would be adjusted if two or more men should happen to insist on occupying the same house and lot we do not know. They would all have an equal right, or one would have as good a right to it as another, and, there being no authority, no law, and none of them having any moral or religious principle, they would most likely, all having the pride and obstinacy natural to the human heart, be obliged to settle the question by fighting it out, and leaving the house and lot as the prize to the victor. Might or craft would then settle the right. Society and mankind would fall back into a state of war, in which might is the only rule of right, and which Hobbes contends was their natural state, out of which they were happy to get by the surrender of all their natural rights or natural liberty to any one who would consent to be their king, and in return would maintain them in a state of peace.

The Paris Commune, endorsed by Mr. Phillips, and which was led on and approved by the Internationals, tells us not only the principles of the Association, but its method of carrying them out and reducing them to practice. We cite here a passage from _The Dublin Review_ on the principles and spirit of the Commune:

“M. Auguste Desmoulins is one of those fanatical believers in the
infallibility of the unknown, to whom the past is all
superstition, the present all corruption, and the future the one
reality of life. He is inaccessible to conviction either in the
way of holy water or the way of petroleum; and with him, as with
all those of his school, the mind has become so far softened that
the terminology which has hitherto served not merely among
Christians and Jews, but among such heathens as the Greeks and
Romans, the Turks, the Indians, the Red Indians, to distinguish
between right and wrong, has ceased to convey a meaning. The
world is not a mere Babel of tongues nowadays: it is, outside the
church, a far worse Babel of thought. In the following passage,
which really sums up the argument of his paper in a sufficiently
trenchant and complete form, M. Desmoulins does not hesitate to
convey his opinion that the coveting of one’s neighbor’s goods is
suggested by, or at least connected with, a sentiment of justice;
that the daily bread earned by labor is much more keenly enjoyed
by a man who does not believe in God, or heaven, or hell; and
that as neither the French workman nor his master believes in a
future state, it is only natural and quite right that the workman
should heal the difference between them here by robbery:

“‘The Parisian workman is often obliged to visit the
handsome quarters of the town, while new buildings are
ever thrusting him further away beyond the old barriers
into vile habitations. In this condition, which is made
for him. anything helps to irritate him. How can he find
content in a home that is narrow, ill-lighted, foul,
nearly without air, when he compares this wretched hole,
for which he pays so dear, with the sumptuous chambers
that he has either built or decorated in the rich
quarters? It is easy to denounce in eloquent homilies the
spirit of envy that devours the lower classes. We should
recognize that a true notion of justice mixes with the
feeling.

“‘The desire to enjoy the fruits of his labor is
especially likely to spring up in the mind of the French
workman, who does not believe, any more than his master,
in the reparations of a future life; who does not
perceive for the right of the master any other sanction
than the material fact of possession; and whom, besides,
universal suffrage invests with a share of sovereignty
equal to that of the capitalist. Whatever may be said by
those who have been justly called mammonite writers, we
can easily understand that the proletary who has just
given his vote finds it hard to resign himself to social
serfage at the very moment when he feels himself
politically sovereign. This striking contrast between his
rights as citizen and his condition of pariah in society,
accompanies him everywhere, reproduces itself in every
act of his life, and adds a perpetual gloom to exhausting
labor and never-abating privations.’

“This passage contains the essence of M. Desmoulins’ apology for 704
the Commune; and it supplies, we submit, matter for reflection in
its every line. The statesmen and the classes in society who
delight in seeing the influence of religion weakened or
destroyed, never seem to realize until it is too late that they
are sure to be the especial victims of their own success. The
great truths of life hang together and sustain each other:

‘All is contained in each:
Dodona’s forest in an acorn’s cup.’

The man who scorns to love God, how shall he continue to love his
neighbor? The man who has said, ‘There is no God,’ is he not on
the point of also saying, ‘Lust is lawful,’ ‘Property is
robbery’?”

We copy also from the same _Review_ a letter from General Cluseret from this city to a member of the Society:

“NEW YORK, 17th February.

“MY DEAR VARLIN: I have just received your welcome letter of the
2d. It explains the delay in replying to my application. Need I
say that I accept, and will set to work at once in endeavoring to
be useful to my brethren in poverty and toil? The newspaper which
I told you of is not yet established. I think it better not to
renew my attempts in that direction, considering the late events
in France, and the numerous letters I have received from my
friends, who are unanimous in recalling me to Europe.

“In all probability, I shall be there next summer, but, in the
interval, I shall have arranged international relations between
the different French and American groups, and selected one person
or several persons (at the discretion of the French committee) of
proved zeal and capability, to replace me. As you say, we shall
surely, infallibly triumph if we persist in demanding success
from our organization. But we must remember that the aim of our
Association is to associate (_solidariser_) the greatest number
for action. Let us, then, be liberal; let us round off our
angles; let us be really brethren, not in words, but in deeds;
let not such mere terms as doctrine and individuality separate
those whom common suffering, which means a common interest, has
united: we are all and all, we must acknowledge that; if we are
beaten, it is our own fault. I have not been able to picture our
people to myself during the late troubles. What has been the
attitude of the workmen’s societies, and what are their present
dispositions? Certainly, we must not sacrifice our ideas to
politics, but we must not detach ourselves from them, even
momentarily. In my mind, the meaning of all that is going on is
simply this, that the Orleans are slipping little by little close
to power, and paring his nails for L. N., so that one fine
morning they will merely have to substitute themselves for him.

“Now, we ought to be ready, physically and morally, for that day.
_On that day, we, or nothing_. Until then I shall probably remain
quiet, _but on that day, I affirm_--and you know my ‘Nay’ never
means ‘Yea’--_Paris shall be ours, or Paris shall exist no longer_.
This will be the decisive moment for the accession of the
people.--Yours ever, CLUSERET.

“You are mistaken in believing, for a moment, that I am
neglecting the socialist in favor of the political movement. No;
it is only from a purely socialistic point of view I am pursuing
the revolutionary work; but you must thoroughly know we can do
nothing in the direction of social reform if the old political
system be not annihilated. Let us not forget that at this moment
the Empire exists merely in name, and that government consists in
party abuse. If, under these grave circumstances, the socialist
party permits itself to be lulled to sleep by the abstract theory
of sociological science, _we may wake up one fine morning to find
ourselves under new masters, more dangerous for us than those we
have at present, because they would be younger, and consequently
more vigorous and more powerful_.”

We have personally known General (?) Cluseret, and we know him to be a man who acts from deliberation, not impulse, who means what he says, and who can be restrained from going straight to his end by no religious principle, moral scruple, or sentiment of mercy, pity, or compassion. His disposition is as stern and inexorable as a physical 705 law of nature. When he threatened to burn Paris rather than surrender it, he meant it, and he was the man to do it or to see that it was done if within the limits of the possible. Mr. Phillips seems also to appear, at least, to threaten incendiarism as a means of accomplishing his purpose. What means this, the closing sentence of his lecture: “The lesson taught by Chicago is that wealth cannot afford to neglect poverty”? Does this mean that the Internationals burnt Chicago? or does it simply mean that other cities may be burnt as well as Chicago, and will be, if wealth continues to neglect poverty or refuses to yield to the demands of the International Association of Workingmen? This gives the question a startling aspect. Certain it is that the Association holds itself free to introduce its socialism or communism by murder, assassination, robbery, plunder, and conflagration at the pleasure or dictation of its chiefs. Take the following letter, read and endorsed by Mr. Phillips before a New York audience:

“Before proceeding to speak of it, you will allow me to read a
notice which has been placed in my hand, and in the object of
which I sympathize cordially, because the great foreign movement
can be commemorated by it. The French Commune has always seemed
to me to deserve the cordial respect of every lover of the
progress of the masses throughout the world. I have no doubt that
in due time its good name will be vindicated, and its leaders
lifted to the unqualified respect of the civilized world. The
notice I hold in my hand is as follows:

“‘_To the Workingmen of New York, friends of humanity,
enemies of bloodshed, and lovers of justice_: Citizens!
The recent barbarous executions in France, in cold blood,
six months after all struggles are over, and the ferocity
with which the conquerors pursue their victims, are a
disgrace and shame to humanity. We must not allow the
human race to be stained by the shedding of its own blood
without a protest. You, workingmen, would you let your
friends the workingmen be murdered because they have
defended our rights in any part of the world? No!
certainly not without raising your voice and making it
heard across the ocean. To give effect to these purposes,
a grand funeral procession will take place in New York on
Sunday, the 10th of December, at 1 o’clock, forming
opposite the Cooper Institute. All men, without
distinction of party, of race, of nationality, friends of
justice and freedom, are invited to join. By order of the
Committee of Arrangements of the Federal Council.’

“I hope every man who loves his fellow will show himself there.
There was never nobler blood shed, never more high-minded and
disinterested effort made in the long history of Freedom’s
struggle, than in Paris, when, in defiance of all the oligarchies
of Europe, that city stood up for the individual and for liberty
in the nineteenth century.”

The impudence of the writers of this letter is sublime, and only surpassed by that of the lecturer in endorsing it. Why, these fellows would persuade us that they are “enemies of bloodshed and lovers of justice,” meek as lambs, timid as sheep, and harmless as doves--they who, without a shadow of justice or excuse, made the streets of Paris run with the blood of the innocent, the noble, and the saintly. “Enemies of bloodshed”!--they whose hands are reeking with blood! Yes, to having their own blood shed, but not to the shedding of the blood of others. “Enemies of bloodshed and lovers of justice”! Good God! can hypocrisy or self-delusion go so far? Let the assassination of Generals Le Comte and Clement Thomas, the horrible murders, when it was known that the cause of the Commune was lost, of the holy and unoffending Archbishop of Paris, of Jesuit fathers, and a dozen Dominican friars and lay brothers, to say nothing of other murders hardly less horrible, reply to that false pretence. It would seem that these miscreants count for nothing the blood they shed without authority, in violation of law, religion, morality, and every principle of justice, and every sentiment of humanity; it is only when 706 justice overtakes them, and, after trial and conviction by legitimate authority, orders them and their fellow-criminals to be shot or sends them to the guillotine in punishment for their crimes, that they have a horror of bloodshed! Then, and only then, they ring out their dastard cry against injustice and for the sympathy of that humanity they have so greatly outraged! The men who have been executed by the government at Versailles deserved their fate--men without a single virtue or noble quality except personal bravery in face of death. Deluded were they? Yes, as every great criminal, murderer, or assassin is deluded.

What most excites our indignation is to find an educated and refined American gentleman, of no mean ability and rare eloquence, and past middle age, coming forward before an American audience to express in a written lecture deep and unreserved sympathy with, and approval of, these horrors and abominations, equal to those of ‘93, and applauded by his auditors for such an outrage on common morality and decency. Yet it is no more than we might have been prepared for, since Mr. Phillips only gave a logical expression to the principles he had always defended as an abolitionist; and while there are fools enough among us who imagine that the issues of the war have endorsed them and they have been sanctioned by the God of battles. We love our country, and have been proud of our countrymen; but, if they have fallen so low as to applaud the Paris Commune and its horrid butcheries and profanations, we can only say, Alas for them!

It may have become unsafe to oppose the Internationals, since the police has taken them under its protection, and granted them their impudent demands. We are surrounded by Internationals--our city is at the mercy of men who are restrained by no law, by no religion, by no morality, by no sentiment of humanity, from using any means or methods they judge likely to serve their ends, and New York is hardly less wealthy and more combustible than Paris. Herein is there a grave danger. At its head are men who are in dead earnest, desperate men, who shrink from nothing likely to further their ends. We are not surprised that Prussia and Austria have taken the alarm--consulted together as to the means of protecting themselves and society against their machinations. France keeps them in check only by her army, and knows not how soon even the army may fraternize with them--and fraternize with them it certainly will if it loses all hope of restoring the Empire or the monarchy. Great Britain is now using them, but will soon find herself obliged to suppress them, as she did or as she attempted to suppress the Thugs in India, if she means to preserve her institutions. Here they will make trouble, for each party will bid for their votes, and fear to offend them for fear of losing an election; but they can acquire less power out of our cities here than elsewhere, unless they enroll in their ranks the recently emancipated negroes, and rouse their savage instincts to dispossess the planters and to take possession of their plantations; for the passion for individual property is too strong in our agricultural laborers, and the facilities for individuals to rise from proletaries to capitalists, or to the ownership of land, are too great to afford them, when it comes to the test, any appropriate support. Yet they will confuse our politics, corrupt still more the morals of our community, and defeat any wise and salutary action of the government. They will strengthen the burgher class and corporations in towns by 707 compelling many who are not favorable to these classes and interests to support them, as the only means left of saving society from lapsing into complete barbarism.

We shall probably return at an early day to this subject, for it is really the great question of the hour.

[144] 1. _The Dublin Review._ Article IX.: The International
Society. London. October, 1871.

2. _The Labor Movement._ Lecture of Wendell Phillips.
Steinway Hall. _New York Tribune_, Dec. 7, 1871.

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ON CATHOLIC LIBRARIES.

It must be confessed that the Catholics of this country, in proportion to their numerical strength and untiring zeal for the interests of religion, do not present that proportionately large class of readers which we find among the Protestant sects. Their exertions in building churches, schools, and charitable institutions have been beyond all praise, and have constantly elicited the admiration and astonishment of their opponents; but as yet very little organized effort has been made by the influential portion of the laity to place within easy reach of their humbler co-religionists the means of cheap and instructive reading. The more intelligent and wealthy are too often content to purchase a few standard Catholic works, and after perusing them with more or less attention place them with their other books on the shelves of their libraries, there to remain secluded from public view, and of comparatively little value to any person but their owners. The less favored class, who for obvious reasons are unable to indulge in this luxury, are still practically cut off from one of the chief sources of knowledge and amusement--good books--and are necessarily compelled from uncontrollable circumstances to go through life with their minds and tastes undeveloped, and their time dissipated in idleness, or wasted over the trashy and deleterious contents of the many cheap story newspapers and novels which the American press is constantly scattering broadcast over the land.

This melancholy fact is most observable in the ranks of our adult immigrant population, who, coming from countries where education was almost unattainable, money scarce, and books dear, have not generally acquired either ability or taste for reading, though it has been remarked that even among them, when an opportunity is at all presented, the desire for information is excited in a remarkable degree, and only requires a reasonable impetus to develop it still more. Still, from the fact of their usually limited means and comparatively unsettled modes of life, they are as yet unable to purchase or retain any appreciable collection of desirable publications.

The remedy for this defect in our growing Catholic society lies, in our opinion, in the formation of local libraries, suitable in variety and extent to the wants and capacity of particular localities. There are at least twenty-five hundred centres of Catholic population in America where very respectable collections of books could be purchased and placed in some safe and accessible place, say in the school-rooms or church basements, and half as many more, particularly in our Western settlements, where at least a few good books would be of great 708 advantage to the hardy tillers of the soil, and where, even if there be no public place to deposit them, there is always some prominent settler who would willingly assume the honorary office of librarian. Experiments of both plans have been tried in many of our large city parishes, and in a few isolated instances in the country, with marked success.

The advantages of libraries conducted on this system are numerous, and ought to be apparent to every one, not the least of which would be _cheapness_. Let us suppose, for instance, that, in any given locality, fifty persons would each subscribe two dollars. This would create a capital of one hundred dollars, or sufficient to purchase, on an average, one hundred and fifty volumes, great and small, of readable books, from any of our large publishing-houses in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. Thus, for two dollars, a subscriber would have, for reading or reference, the practical ownership of works at least fifty times the value of his contribution, and, by charging new members a small fee for the use of each volume, a fund might be created to purchase new books as they appeared from time to time. In this manner, and with proper attention, a library of dimension commensurate with the growing wants of the neighborhood would be brought into existence without much expense to any particular class of the community.