Chapter IV (3)

The reactionary kick is not without virtue; it is usually a gentleman’s instrument. It may even be charming, as with those dear ladies in _Cranford_ who never used any word “not sanctioned by Johnson.” The charm may arise from the fact that the reactionary kick really requires no thought at all; a fair acquaintance with the literature of past ages, of one past age in particular,--the Periclean, the Medicean, the Spenserian, the Johnsonian,--is all that is necessary. Therefore one can put one’s effort on manner and style, and may produce the effect of great suavity and wisdom. The reactionary kick is really terribly easy, possibly the easiest of all intellectual exercises,--indeed, it barely merits the name of intellectual; for it really consists in putting some standard on ice, and taking it off from time to time whenever a warm modern idea is thought to be in need of cooling. Whereas, on the other hand, the man in the thick of an active enterprise must work and think with all his might, and etiquette and style are of minor moment.

Yes, on the whole, the reactionary kick must in turn react on the intellectual and moral quality of its operator and cause his fibre to degenerate through easefulness. But this we seldom notice. The poet says:

“The crown of olive let another wear;
It is my crown to mock the runner’s feet
With gentle wonder and with laughter sweet.”

and we scorn him, calling him hedonist, epicurean, indifferentist, “quitter;” but he is really less bad than the reactionary kicker who, when he has energy enough to get into the game, still hugs the side lines or keeps trotting back to the bleachers to shout needless warnings to players who know quite as much as he. Or again, we usually reckon it doubtful ethics to quarrel with another man’s job, and can see the absurdity in lack of harmony between the pot and the kettle; for we are fundamentally of the opinion that live and let live is ordinarily a good public and private motto. And yet, the strife that sometimes arises between the representatives of various activities is no more absurd than the attempt to pry down from its various pedestals the enterprise of modern times, with the levers and pulleys of past generations. The reactionary kick is, on the whole, as useful as plowing with wooden plowshares, battling with the pilum, crushing flies with a steam-hammer, repudiating the typewriter and the locomotive, or giving one’s days and nights to the volumes of Thomas Aquinas.

* * * * *

A word as to technic, which is in a comparatively crude state and leaves much to be desired. That is perhaps inevitable, since really skilful kicking, no matter in what direction, does not really proclaim itself as such, and is consequently not likely to be thought of at all as anything more than advice or persuasion, whereas the unskilful technician is too likely to call names to be really effective. Some of the phrases in vogue will show the crudeness of the technic: the white man’s burden, the strenuous life, a tendency toward socialism, this is an age of transition, simplified spelling is an entering wedge, let us sweep anarchy into the sea, we are up against it in life, home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse, I fear that I am too old-fashioned, we must uplift the masses, what are home and children and country if we have not the vote, America for the Americans, destroy the very foundations of our faith, threaten to overwhelm our fairest institutions beneath a wave of ignorance and despotism, to crucify mankind on a cross of gold,

“Why be this juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a snare?
A blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a curse, why then, who set it there?”

etc., etc., etc., etc.

Nor is the pantomime of kicking more advanced: the melancholy air of grave concern at the state of scholarship in America; the tears in the voice lamenting the decay of our dear mother tongue; the placid large-eyed sorrow at the spectacle of corruption, of reckless automobiles, or of unkempt pavements; the firm and elevated chin and stretching neck of her who presses into the service of the Cause; the slow and silent tread, albeit in public places, of him who goes about in meditation on the misery of mankind (_eheu miser!_);--all these methods were the object for the satire of a Swift or the sweet rationality of a Montaigne; but they must be content with this sketchy cataloguing from a humbler pen.

One school of kickers only, so far as I am aware, has paid much attention to the technic of the great art. Their names will presently appear (for should they not be named with honor?), but the essence of their method is this, that they side-step every move in the game and, as the play goes rushing by, plant a skilful kick where they think it will be effective. In this game they do somewhat imitate the methods of the reactionary kicker, who as we have seen, retreats to the rear of the field, bidding the play come to him on the ground where it was played by St. Thomas, Samuel and Noah. That is to say, the method consists in assuming a point of view different from the current one. There the resemblance ceases, for these modern masters of technic rarely retreat to the rear, but keep alongside the game or even ahead of it, and even mingle in it with jest and laughter. And thus Mr. Shaw, from his coign of vantage just ahead of the player, is constantly thrusting things between his legs to trip him up if he run awkwardly; and Mr. Wells is making diagrams of how badly the game has been played in the past, and showing how it is bound to improve when we divest it of old and ragged toggery, which somehow holds together; and Mr. Chesterton is engaged in proving that nobody but himself knows anything about sport anyway; while Mr. Galsworthy, Mr. Belloc, and a host of others are kicking away brilliantly, imagining that they also have discovered something quite new in the annals of the sport. Meanwhile hosts of good quiet people are lending a helping hand or are, like skilful guards or backs, actively but unostentatiously pushing the good cause through the opponents’ line and towards the goal.

If, by way of summary, one were asked to draw a brief sketch of the ideal kicker, much as Herbert Spencer drew the character of the ideal writer, the answer would be something like this. The ideal kicker is he who would improve his own condition or the condition of the town, community, age, and atmosphere in which he lives, mainly according to the light of his own generation. His attack is against the particular and the immediate; for he knows that for the purposes of his art, life is made up of an infinite number of small and specific acts. The larger abuse he recognizes to be assailable chiefly in its detail, and hence the pursuit of it, except in rare circumstances,--as when a whole community is like minded with himself,--is likely to be a sort of guerilla warfare and a kind of pot-hunting. But it is guerilla warfare and pot-hunting directed to as large ends as can be compassed by the limits of one’s imagination and practical common sense. The adroit kicker knows that many sad objects will in the usual course of events be left behind, by a sort of common consent, just as we discard certain clothes, less by deliberate pursuit of the ragman than by forgetting the old suit in the delightful possession of the new. He therefore spends his strength in calling attention to the new and beautiful attire of civilization. Nor is he likely to be seduced into the belief, that the armor of old days, or the stately shoe buckles and flowered waistcoats and well-curled wigs of the eighteenth century, are a better costume for our light running modern world and our warm climate than the flexible jersey and springy stockings of the contemporary athlete.

Do you ask if such an ideal kicker actually exists? I am forced to admit that I know no such one, any more than Spencer could have pointed to the actual embodiment of his deduction. And if it be further objected that the foregoing pages do by no means wholly exemplify the doctrine that they attempt to expound, in that they kick at what is essentially unkickable, the _Stossenslust_ of humanity, I can merely register a mild and dainty kick to the effect that it is unreasonable to expect me, more than any other reformer or _censor morum_, to abide quite exactly by the doctrine that I would inculcate. Does it at all matter? Not very much one way or the other.

THE GENTLEMAN-SPORTSMAN

Here upon the opening of the shooting season, I am reminded of the impression made on me some time ago by an article on hunting lions in Africa written by a very well-known author. I remember being much struck by his admirably expressed and lucid explanation of his reason for engaging in that pursuit. Being a native of Vermont I had never devoted much thought to the ethics of lion-hunting and was interested to read that the author of the article felt justified in killing lions because there is really no place for them in the modern world; because they are anachronistic and objectionable survivals from another phase of the world’s history; because they are obstacles in the advancing tide of colonization. This very obvious line of reasoning had never chanced to occur to me before. I stopped a moment to savor the pleasure one always feels at having hazy ideas clarified and set in order, and before I went on with the article I reflected that the world owes a debt of gratitude to the highly educated men of trained minds who undertake out-of-the-way enterprises, because with their habit of searching and logical analysis they bring out the philosophy underlying any occupation they may set themselves.

Then I read on further through some most entertaining descriptions of African scenery till I came to an eloquently written paragraph denouncing in spirited terms those men who hunted lions in “an unsportsmanlike manner.” My curiosity was aroused. I wondered what this objectionable method could be--probably one which involved the escape of many of these undesirable lions, or possibly more suffering to them. My astonishment was great, therefore, when I read that this pernicious manner of hunting lions consisted in going after them with dogs and horses, and that the author objected to it because it is practically sure to secure every lion hunted. He put it with an evident distaste, that the lion became so worn out with running and so dazed with the barking of the dogs that the hunter could walk up to him and put the rifle-barrel in his ear. If you really want to kill a lion, my sportsman-author went on disdainfully, the thing to do is to shoot a zebra, cut holes in the carcass, put strychnine in the holes, and leave the carcass where the lions can get at it. The ringing accent of scorn in which this whole passage was written cast me into the greatest bewilderment. Had I not just read that the author considered it a laudable thing to put lions out of the world? I must have mistaken his meaning. Feeling greatly perplexed, I hastily turned back over the pages until I encountered that first passage again, and found that I had not in the least mistaken his meaning. He had said in so many words that lions ought to be killed because they were an anachronistic survival, etc., etc. Putting the two statements side by side I looked from one to the other in the first of the seizures of complete perplexity which marked my attempt to understand his ideal of sportsmanship. I read on into the article with the liveliest curiosity, hoping that the author would throw more light on the subject of what constituted a really sportsmanlike method of killing an objectionable animal, and from the sum total of his remarks I made out quite clearly why he objected to the zebra-strychnine method. It was not after all because it was sure, for his own avowed aim was to kill every lion he encountered, and to look up all he possibly could, whether they evidenced any desire to encounter him or not. It was because it “did not give the lion a chance.”

In varying forms he repeated this sportsman’s ideal of “giving the game a chance,” but from the context it was clear, even to my inexperienced eye, that he did not mean to be taken literally. It was not a real chance the lion had when the sportsman could arrange matters to his taste--it was a hypothetical, metaphysical chance. The aim was to give the animal the illusion of having a chance, and when, acting on that idea, he had furnished the hunter with sufficient excitement in frustrating his desperate attempts to escape, the sportsman was to kill him in the end, thus proving his own skill and ingenuity. Yes, it was all quite clearly set forth in the same lucid style which had aroused my admiration at first.

With the repetition of these manœuvres in the case of every lion killed in the author’s gentlemanly advance across Africa, I had a stronger and stronger impression that somewhere else I had encountered this sort of reasoning. Somewhere I had heard it all before; or if I had not heard it, I had seen it. But how could I, a Vermont rustic, ever have seen anything which might remind me of lion-hunting according to these impeccably sportsmanlike rules? I laid down the book, trying to bring up the haunting memory more clearly, and in a moment it had flashed up vivid and clear-cut. Why yes, the sportsmanlike method of killing lions reminded me of something with which I had been familiar all my life,--of a cat playing with a live mouse before eating it. It was now more evident that, in comparison with the brutally direct methods of the pot-hunting dog, the cat is actuated by the finest devotion to the ideals of sportsmanship. Not for her the quick pounce and avid crunch of Rover. She “gives the mouse a chance,” and only kills him after she has extracted the most deliciously titillating excitement out of his frenzied dashes for liberty. The facts that he never does get away from the cat, and that the lion does sometimes get away from the man only prove how infinitely more clever in this game of sportsmanship, is the cat than the man, since the open purpose of both cat and man is to kill the other animal in the end.

Now nothing can be more unphilosophical in one’s attitude towards the world than to blame creatures for acting according to their natures, and I have never felt in the least inclined to censure the cat, although I always put her out of the room with some violence if she brings in a live mouse and begins her sportsmanlike tactics with him. This is not because I think the cat is a wicked animal and ought to be punished, but merely because the sight of the frantic mental sufferings of the mouse happens to be very disagreeable to me. I have no illusions about pussy. I know that if I kicked her out of the room a thousand times ten thousand, I could never inculcate in her any genuine conception of the idea that it may be wrong to get her fun out of another’s extreme pain. That is the way cats are. Her virtues lie in other directions. If she keeps herself and her kittens clean, and does not steal my beef-steak, I can ask no more from her.

But now as I meditated on her character, for which I felt a contemptuous tolerance founded on a knowledge of her limitations, I was most disagreeably struck by the close resemblance between her nature and that of the gentleman-sportsman. It is all very well to make the best of the cat’s shortcomings, to refrain from expressing, in the only way she can understand, my disgust at a trait she cannot alter, but it is quite another thing to resign myself to the presence of the same trait in the character of many human beings for whom I should like to feel nothing but admiration and respect.

I recognize of course that the lion-hunter may shift his ground, admit that he hunts more for the excitement of the chase than to protect poor colonists from marauding lions, yet still protest against my criticism. “It is unfair,” he may urge, “to assume that human nature is all mind and spirit. Flesh and blood exist and have their claim for consideration. Killing animals might be unworthy for a seraph, but I am a man, and for me it is a harmless method of exercising my age-old inherited battle-lust. I as well as the cat am linked to the past. Is it fair for you to censure in me what you pass over in her?”

Such a plea will hardly answer. Human nature is not animal nature, and though dogs and cats may possibly have their own standards of right and wrong, based on the needs and possibilities of their species, man with his different needs and possibilities has no ethical point of contact with them. But in his own case he is and always has been convinced of the spark disturbing his clod. He is not content to regard himself as a highly intelligent primate, destined to make over the material world for his own uses; whatever his practice may be, he cannot free himself from the belief that he must be good, and must become better. Nor has this conviction wasted itself in impotent speculation. Throughout his history, he has continued to set up standards of conduct so lofty that no age has come near to living up to its profession of right living. Nevertheless aspiration has induced development: for the standard of its ancestors has seemed inadequate to every generation. What the grandfather considered a matter of course, and the father condoned as a peccadillo, the son and his contemporaries proclaim a vice. They may themselves indulge in the vice, but they do so with a feeling of guilt, and they hail with rejoicing the moments when they resolve to improve their lives: such wishes are everything: the rest is merely a matter of time.

No man, therefore, can regard himself solely as the son of an earthy family: for with the lusts of the flesh he has also inherited the aspirations of the spirit; and he is bound by this mental heredity to hold himself responsible as the father of a posterity always advancing toward perfection. Unless he is willing to confess himself either an imbecile or a criminal, he is not justified in yielding to an impulse which he recognizes as unworthy.

Again, the gentleman-lion-hunter may object that I am stating the matter with too much heat. Even though forced to admit that hunting is neither really useful (since lions can be exterminated more easily and surely without it) nor an ineradicable heritage from man’s savage past (since men have outgrown so many other supposedly ingrained instincts) he may make a stand on the contention that hunting is a blameless pastime, and that if a gentleman chooses to spend his vacation shooting lions, instead of climbing mountains, neither he, nor society, nor posterity will ever be a penny the worse for it.

I cannot agree with the Gentleman-sportsman. His contention that lion shooting is an obviously blameless recreation for civilized men does not appear to me self-evident. Among the difficulties which beset us in our great campaign to keep the higher elements in human nature, and to discard the lower ones, there is no more puzzling problem than the question of our relation to the animal-world. On this problem there is a great difference of opinion between the older and the younger branches of the Aryan family. The Hindus elaborated their merciful and elevated theory of life at a time when, so to speak, we were still tearing meat from the bones and eating it raw. When, at a much later period, we ourselves came to face the problem, the discoveries of science had so widened the horizon of our knowledge that we were unable to accept the Hindu doctrine of never taking animal life because the principle of life is sacred. Aware that life is not only animal, but exists in everything, we perceived that to eat a dish of oatmeal is to destroy life as truly as to butcher an ox. It is apparent to us that one of the dark mysteries of the world is that we can avoid taking life only by refusing to live ourselves.

Confronted with this problem, when we began to question our habits, we have, after a fashion, worked it out on logical grounds, and have decided that we have a right to take life which is necessary to ours, or which is injurious to ours; but we have tempered this high-handed decision by the feeling, based on all that is best and highest in our natures, that to take life is a serious business, should be undertaken in a serious spirit, for some evident purpose, and should be accomplished in the most painless fashion possible. All the nation-wide campaign against flies has not lessened by a jot our horror at the child who amuses himself by tearing off their wings. Moderns think of themselves as the legal executioners of those animals which they elect must die; and the essence of the executioner’s duty is to be merciful, quick, competent in the accomplishment of his task. Most of us would not care to work in a slaughter-house, but that is not because we think the butcher a wicked man. Neither would we choose of our own accord to care for the insane, or clean out the sewers in a city, but that is not because those are shameful acts. They are necessary but uncomely parts of the world’s economy, to be performed with a decent reticence and as quickly and economically as possible.

This theory of the entire subservience of the animal world to our human needs can certainly not be criticized for being too ethereally exalted. In fact its best friends cannot claim that it is very elevated doctrine; but at least it is an honest acknowledgment of apparent necessity, it is tempered by all the mercy possible under the circumstances, it is fairly consistent, and it has been accepted by the majority of the inhabitants of the civilized world as a working theory. But how can the curious institution of the good sportsman be fitted into this frank and open modern attitude about a sombre mystery in the intertwined interests of the world? As a matter of fact modern ideas and the good sportsman cannot possibly be reconciled, and whenever society has cast a glance at sportsmanship, that institution, dreading a real scrutiny and a resulting question concerning its right to existence, has hastily thrown out a sop of concession, muttering angrily under its breath about the demagogic modern mob which undertakes to restrict the freedom of gentlemen. In this way, some hundred years ago, the institution of bear-baiting was conceded to be not precisely a sport to inculcate fine qualities in its human spectators; many years later, the contention that prize-fighting was good fodder for the younger generation was given up, and very recently, with a pettish protest that really the world is becoming _too_ emasculated, the fine, virile joys of trap-pigeon-shooting have been grudgingly abandoned. But for the most part society is busy about more important matters, and no one except a few unheeded sentimentalists pays any attention to the conflicting claims of man and the animals. During such tranquil periods, the sportsman revises his code according to his own ideas, for, having long outlived the days when its contribution to the food supply gave it actual value, hunting has reached the critical, codified stage common to the senility of all institutions. To an outsider it is rather entertaining to see the unanimity with which each succeeding generation of sportsmen looks back with scorn on its predecessors as a parcel of muckers with no true idea of gentlemanly restraint in sport; a mild diversion is to be extracted from the elaborate platforms in which they set forth the latest rules,--that artificial flies are noble,--that bait is an abomination,--that a magazine shot-gun is fit only for the pot-hunter,--that men need precisely the exercise for their wit, courage, foresight, perseverance and skill which is to be found in hunting animals according to whatever rules chance to be in vogue in the sporting world of their day.

It is true that hunting animals trains a man to use his brains and perseverance in overcoming obstacles. It is also true that everything worth while is achieved against obstacles, so that we do well to train ourselves to overcome them in our play as well as our work. And it is true that a man playing a trout with light tackle enjoys the delight of exercising his own wit, ingenuity, and perseverance in the battle against obstacles; but so would he if, without tying the animal, he should set himself to the difficult undertaking of skinning a dog alive. The fact that he causes more pain in one case than in the other, differentiates the two pursuits only in the matter of degree. How shall the line be drawn? How much pain, in what manner, to what sort of animal, may a man cause for the sole purpose of enjoying the exercise of his wit, ingenuity and perseverance?

As to the exercise of courage in hunting, it is difficult to take seriously this claim on the part of huntsmen, who for the most part are quite unable to travel far enough to encounter any animals more ferocious than a trout, a fox (whose cowardice is proverbial), or at most a deer, who asks nothing better than to be allowed to run away as long as breath lasts. But there are exceptions. There is, for example, the gentleman-sportsman in Africa, who by the expenditure of a great amount of time, effort, and money has succeeded in getting to a country inhabited by an animal which, if sufficiently annoyed would undeniably eat up a gentleman-sportsman if he could get at him. This is exciting no doubt, this undoubtedly calls for physical courage. Courage is a virtue, and excitement is certainly a need of the human heart. No observer of human nature can deny that we need excitement as much as we do bread. But the modern world does not consider even this great desire to justify every and any mode of gratifying it. The man who hunts lions according to the code of the gentleman-sportsman gets his excitement out of the fact that the animal he is attempting to kill may possibly be able to turn the tables and kill him. It would be even more exciting and dangerous, and would call for even more courage, to attempt to track down and kill a man fully armed like the hunter. But the conscience of the world, insensitive as it is to some of the finer points of conduct, would not for a moment countenance turning loose even the lowest of convicted criminals for the purpose of allowing other men to extract excitement out of his chase,--no! not though all the most delicate distinctions of the most modern and fastidious code of gentlemanly hunting were thrown around this most inimitably thrilling of sports. The fact is that the world is becoming more and more squeamish about the way in which its inhabitants are to secure their excitement. There was a time when all the gentlemen-sportsmen supplied themselves with excitement by sitting in comfortable seats about an arena and watching wild animals tear human beings to pieces. There is still a modern nation which allows its gentlemen to vary the monotony of their lives by watching bulls gore horses and even men, to death. There is even a considerable amount of excitement to be extracted from a whiskey-bottle if administered to that end. But there are some ingenious moderns who manage to escape from boredom by seeking for rare and valuable new plants in remotest Thibet, or in risking their lives in the pursuit of the microbe which causes cancer, or (if these pursuits are too costly for their means) there is the profession of fireman in a great city, or coastguard on a dangerous shore, or surveying engineer in a new country. All of these occupations call for a reasonable amount of physical courage, and supply a change from the dull routine of humdrum life.

To return to our lions; although to hunt them by the sportsman’s code undoubtedly takes courage, does it not seem rather a pity to waste in the destruction of animals admitted vermin, a human quality so fine, so inspiriting, so necessary as physical courage, sanctified as it is by a thousand struggles of men against disease, against wrong and violence, against the inert forces of Nature? Lions interfere with the peaceable occupation of the world by humanity: therefore we believe we have a right to kill them. Formerly the only way in which they could be killed was by the exercise of physical courage on the part of men. But that is not in the least necessary, now that a powerful drug has been discovered which will do the unsavory but necessary task for us and leave us free to use our courage for more valuable purposes. Why not let this unimportant and unpleasant detail of the world’s work be attended to in the most competent way possible, without the unseemly attempt to make it at the same time an entertaining spectacle for human beings? And why not apply the same principle to the killing of other animals for whose destruction we feel we have a fair warrant of execution signed by our reasonable needs. Rabbits and foxes injure our crops, and propagate so fast that they are a menace to our husbandry. If they are to be killed, and everyone except an occasional zoölater grants that the world is not large enough now both for them and for us, let us kill as many as we need to put out of the way, as quickly and surely as may be, with no quaint discrimination against ferrets in the case of rabbits, or rifles in the case of foxes. If we need fish as a variety in our diet, let us go honestly about the business of securing it, and not quibble about the great ethical elevation of light tackle as opposed to nets. And if a man is trying to kill a bird for food, let him forget the grotesque reasoning that it is not fair to shoot it sitting on a bough where he can almost certainly kill it at one shot, but must let it fly so that there are ten chances to one that the shot will only maim or mutilate it.

Now it is certainly true that there are among our twentieth century men, a good many individuals from whom no help in the upward movement of the race can be expected, and whose fondness for hunting, undoubtedly is based upon the survival in them of the paleolithic liking to kill. They prefer to hunt rabbits rather than shoot at a mark, because a target cannot shed blood. If they make no pretence about this taste being the basis of their liking for hunting, it would be showing no due sense of the proportion of things to visit them with too serious a reprobation. It is possible that this sort of man, if he were not allowed to amuse himself by tormenting animals might react from the humane régime of his time by committing deeds of violence against human beings. Only let this outlet for non-eliminated pre-historic instincts be frankly a drainage-pipe for the purpose of moral sanitation only. Let there be no attempt to fool our noses as to its true scent, by the use of the musk of pseudo-gentlemanliness. If hunters will but be open about it, theirs is not a very heinous survival of what was a most necessary, though now superseded instinct in humanity. There are many worse things than having fun out of the dying struggles of a trout or a rabbit. Hunting in the open air is certainly better than the opium habit. Animals nearly always die a violent death anyhow, and it does not, I daresay, make a vital difference to them whether it is a fox or a man, or a bigger fish which finally dispatches them.

The number of human beings unleavened by humanity appears larger than it really is, because most children as they live rapidly through their personal reproduction of the history of mankind, pass through the cave man’s phase of frank, thoughtless, and unconscious cruelty; and some of them are slow to pass out of it. But cases of prolonged atavism are few, and though disagreeable, need be little more regretted than the occasional outcropping survival in a modern of the tremendous jaw and beetling brows of our neolithic grandsires. Left to themselves, these anachronistic and objectionable traits will vanish as the race ascends the slow spiral of its upward way. Already most twentieth-century boys and girls (if their development be not arrested by perverted public opinion) tend to outgrow this relic of savagery, as they outgrow their exaggerated gregariousness, their slavish conformity to the ideas of others, and the rest of the primitive phases of their development. The process needs no special attention from their instructors: good example and encouragement to clear thinking about habitual actions will almost always do the work.

But few young brains are vigorous enough to continue clear thinking under the narcotic influence of a generally accepted social hypocrisy. It is not acquaintance with the grim necessity of killing as the butcher practises it which is dangerous to young consciences, it is the sight of the sportsman killing without necessity. What stupifies the moral sense in this connection is the pretence that to take one’s pleasure at the cost of another’s suffering is a commendable, highly respectable, nay, even very aristocratic amusement for grown men of brains and education. The most gentlemanly restrictions cast about hunting animals for fun, cannot mask the fact that its essence is enjoyment taken consciously at the expense of another’s pain, an enjoyment against which the conscience of the world has pronounced a righteous verdict of total condemnation. The butcher kills, the pot-hunter kills, the sportsman kills; but only the last openly finds entertainment in the act.

TRADE UNIONISM IN A UNIVERSITY

The so-called strike of the Wisconsin Student Workers’ Union has much of instruction for those who have been watching the trend of University development during the past few years and are inclined critically to examine the effect upon the student of modern educational methods.

The strike occurred in an institution that is recognized as the leader in progressive education; that has given extraordinary liberties to the student body; that is probably working more directly for the material interests of the people than is any other American university; and it occurred in a State that is convinced of the expediency of generously maintaining an institution of higher education, and is levying taxes therefore which during ten years have increased more than threefold.

Largely under the initiative of the University, but with faith, often fully justified, in the practical value of the instruction therein given, the State has adopted many of the principles enunciated in the class room, and has accepted as advisors, or taken over and appointed on its commissions, practically every professor and instructor whose counsel might be of direct service in its legislative and executive efforts, or of indirect service to the people at large. The professional staff of the University, and the legislative and executive staff of the State, have thus organized what might be called a beneficent interlocking directorate, which is expressed more or less truthfully in the local aphorism: “The State University is destined to produce a University State.”

During the past decade, influenced by and participating in the political and social changes that have made Wisconsin conspicuous, and encouraged by the large enrollment in the so-called social and political sciences--an enrollment of nearly two thousand students, containing a generous representation from the congested districts of American cities, from the oppressed people of Europe and from formative governments generally--the University has added to its staff of professors and instructors, until these departments are not surpassed in attractiveness by any institution in America or indeed in Europe.

There is, then, among the student body a liberal admixture of those whose social and political convictions, so far as they are definitely formed, are not in entire accord with prevailing conventions. Some of the more restless have organized a Socialists Club, and affiliations have been established with Socialist organizations at Milwaukee and elsewhere, and speakers of advanced anarchistic views, such as Emma Goldman, on coming to Madison, draw large and not entirely unsympathetic student audiences.

Within the University, and justified under the plea for a more perfect democracy, the presence of strong class distinction and party feeling often introduces an earnestness and bitterness into student gatherings which is much more intense than in our older institutions of the east. Moreover, the discussion of party differences is not confined to the campus. The contestants, even though students, are accustomed to air their views in the public press; and the state legislature--in which there is a liberal admixture of representatives of all political parties--is occasionally called upon to adjust real or imaginary student wrongs.

To the Wisconsin student there is no mystery about the making or unmaking of law; to him the capitol is a place of recreation, and the legislators, many of them alumni, are his companions. The freshman comes under the control of a student legislative body that defines his privileges and attempts to control his liberties. This elective body not only assumes jurisdiction over the student as an individual, but, like an interstate commerce commission, it regulates the activities of various student organizations, particularly those alleged to have aristocratic tendencies. It fixes penalties for the infraction of student laws, authorizes arrests, and sees that culprits are brought before the Student Court, where they are tried and sentenced. This student legislative body, through its representation on student publications, and in other ways, is an active agency in making and molding student opinion, and the faculty has already recognized its jurisdiction. The Regents have agreed not to alter or abridge the control of Student Self-Government, except through process of conference. The student body has thus assumed, in certain respects at least, the same attitude toward the administration of the University that the University is accused of having assumed toward the administration of the State; or, to paraphrase the aphorism already given, “The University Student is destined to produce a Student University.”

The student labor trouble, therefore, is not to be looked upon as the result of a justifiable grievance between a handful of waiters, and the Steward in control of the University Commons. The relations between the student workers and the Steward had been cordial, and the reduction in the number of student employees was an economic necessity, and ordinarily would have excited no particular opposition. But under the peculiar conditions existing at Madison, where there are students who do not believe in the present order of things, where it is thought, by not a few, that legislation by labor will bring better social conditions, where machinery for organized resistance is fabricated as a pastime, where the tactics of “collective bargaining” are thoroughly understood, and where there are impulsive students anxious to assume leadership, the temptation to translate static into kinetic energy became irresistible.

It seems that about one hundred and thirty students had been given positions in the University as waiters, kitchen helpers, etc., receiving in compensation a substantial meal for each hour or fraction thereof of service. There was no dispute concerning the amount of service or the value of the compensation. The students admitted that the work was light, the board excellent; and the positions were considered the most desirable of their kind in the city. The body waited upon some two hundred and fifty men students, and upon nearly three hundred women students. (Thirteen women student waiters and helpers, employed in one of the dormitories, did not join the Union, and took no active part in the agitation.)

The completion of a new central kitchen had led to economies, and a few weeks before the end of the semester--it was thought in ample time for the young men to find employment elsewhere--preliminary announcement was made that the staff of student employees would be reduced, and twenty students out of a total of one hundred and thirty were individually so informed. Since it was perfectly obvious that their services were in fact not needed, the waiters received the announcement in good spirit and without serious question.

It was at this point, however, that certain other students, who were not employed by the University, but were generally interested in organized agitation, called a mass meeting of the student workers both of the University and of the city, and through the vigorous application of well-known forensic excitants, brought about a condition of hysteria, which affected a large proportion of the student employees, although the general student body remained immune.

The waiters and helpers found themselves organizing a Union, subscribing to extravagant declarations, and electing as their officers representatives from the most violent of the agitators. It was alleged that the organization had more than four hundred members. The president of the Union, a student in Law, was not a University worker. The secretary was the president of the local Socialist Club, and originally registered at the University as from New York City.

The leaders of the “strike” (a strike was only threatened) took the position that they would protect the student waiters, that the number of waiters should not be reduced, that economies, if necessary, should be effected in some other way, and that dire consequences would result if the plans of the University administration were carried into effect. In any event, nothing should be done until the organization was duly recognized by the University authorities, until proposed changes in the method of conducting the business of the Commons had been submitted to the Student Union for its approval, and until it was agreed that all present and future grievances and difficulties should be submitted to a board of arbitration satisfactory to the Union.

At Madison it is customary to adjust differences through conferences, or a series of conferences, but here was a case that affected the business management of the University, and where delay would involve loss to the State. The situation was also extremely amusing, because of the fact that the longer a settlement could be deferred, the longer the student waiters would continue to be fed at the expense of the University. It resembled some of the difficulties our government experienced in the neighborhood of the Rio Grande.

As a coercive measure, the leaders submitted a document to the effect that if the original plans of the administration were not altered there would be a sympathetic “walkout” on the part of a hundred or more boarders.

Startling articles appeared in the press, syndicalism and sabotage were academically discussed, and there were threats that unless “justice” were shown the students, every dining room in Madison would be closed.

As time went on, the general disturbance had its effect upon the regular kitchen staff of the University, composed of paid employees, who saw, or thought they saw, in the rising power of the student body, their own impending extinction. At this time, a strike or walkout on the part of the regular paid force would have been serious: for the University was practically under contract to house and feed approximately three hundred women students, enrolled residents of the dormitories.

Hearings were held before the Regents, but all efforts on the part of the management to change the attitude of the leaders were futile, and the appetites of the aggrieved seemed to increase with the vigor of the agitation.

At a critical moment the cooks sent in their ultimatum, calling the Steward to declare allegiance either to the insurgents or to the regulars; or in default of such declaration, operations in the kitchen would abruptly terminate. This announcement was decisive: for

We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.

The administration ordered the doors of the dining halls closed, locked, and guarded; service within the women’s dormitories was conducted as is customary in convents, and the debarred student waiters, boarders, and guests gathered without on the campus, dumfounded that a public institution should close its doors to the populace. It certainly looked like a “lockout,” and it was alleged that the plant was being operated by “scabs.”

All the stage machinery that accompanies a real strike and lockout was brought into requisition--circulars were issued appealing for the sympathy of the public, and implying that poor students had been discharged for no other reason than that they had belonged to the “Union,” and stating that girls working their way through college had been dismissed because they had expressed sympathy. Mass meetings were called, speakers were imported, inflammatory addresses were delivered, additional resolutions adopted, and appeals made to the Federation of Labor, to the State Industrial Commission, and to the Governor.

But in due time the members of the Student Workers’ Union found that their services were not indispensable, that State institutions do not invariably yield to the pressure of organized resistance, and as chastened individuals they applied for such positions as remained vacant, and went back to work.

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The recital of these occurrences as a trivial circumstance has no place in a publication of this kind, but the significance, so far as it may throw light upon the general path of university development, and may help to determine the kind of mind and men that universities are producing or may produce, justifies serious contemplation.

It is generally admitted that universities are destined to become something different from what they now are. University men have a duty to perform, not only in watching the trend of this inevitable drift, and determining its probable course, but they are in a measure responsible for the course.

Not all institutions move with the same rapidity. Some possess a power that takes them away from their companions and into new territory. The records of their movements and the attendant results are generally looked upon as public property. It thus becomes possible for the conservative university, or the university that is not inclined, or does not have the means, to go into expensive experimentation, to learn much through the inexpensive process of observation.

What have we to learn from the conditions and occurrences above outlined?

Are we really getting all of the good things out of our institutions of higher culture that we think we are getting?

When the citizens of a commonwealth tax themselves in order to give university instruction to their children, does it necessarily follow that the university life will develop the highest citizenship? Does it develop a feeling of pride in the State and of loyalty to it? Is the position of the State as an instrument of modern civilization strengthened or weakened thereby?

Does university training tend to produce an accelerated or a deferred maturity of the judicial sense--the power to distinguish between what is reasonable and what is unreasonable, what is genuine and what is false; and to distinguish promptly between the man that is frankly striving for principle, and the one who is falsely striving for position?

If any considerable number of college graduates should be of the opinion that the State, in addition to providing some twenty-five years of free instruction, should also provide free board, is it not obvious that difficulties akin to those that surround the issue of fiat money would quickly arise on the issue of fiat food?

If graduates on becoming citizens believe that they are entitled to anything and everything that can be extracted from the State, and if their lives are to be spent under this obsession, ought not the community to prepare itself for a long series of constitutional amendments?

Is a university graduate sufficiently prepared to meet the strife of adult life if he leaves his institution wise with facts, emotional to the spell of the professional agitator, and innocent of the craft of the publicity agent?

Our institutions may teach what is right, but what is being done to develop the moral fibre and personal independence that will put the right into operation? What forces are at work to encourage open and vigorous opposition to social doctrines that are generally considered damaging to the State?

Does free and excessive opportunity engender a feeling of gratitude on the part of the recipient, or are such feelings inconsistent with modern conventions?

When the lust for individual gain and personal possession on the part of the few, is legitimatized at the expense of many, are the results more reprehensible when the process has been conducted by the aristocratic adult, than when conducted by the proletariat youth?

When students have listened to and communed with the most eminent instructors in social and political science that the State can furnish, why should they believe that labor, when organized, has inherent rights that labor individualized does not possess?

Are the cardinal principles of our form of constitutional government being upheld when it becomes necessary for the individual to declare allegiance to some party or organization before he can enjoy the ordinary privileges of citizenship?

Why should a body of university students--men that have enjoyed the privileges of education--take the position that unless the prerogative of the few is promptly recognized and implicitly followed, the innocent will be harassed, and the entire community made to suffer?

Is it not possible that in our effort strictly to maintain the principles of academic freedom, we are giving instruction with such impartial neutrality that those who have worthy views conclude that their convictions are subject to question, and those who have ulterior motives are encouraged to believe themselves justified?

What the State really needs at the present time is some agency that will develop the powers of discrimination, that will enable its citizens to arrive at conclusions independent of plausible presentations.

MONARCHY AND DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION

It is a truism that since the day of Plato’s _Republic_ no subject has had such widespread discussion as has that of the proper form of government. It is equally a truism that if imitation is the sincerest flattery, the hundreds of written constitutions that have sprung up since 1789 attest the belief that America has successfully put into practical form the theories of democracy. Yet a minority has always questioned whether democracy is after all the panacea for political evils, and recent writers like Mr. Lecky, have but given expression to a somewhat widespread feeling of uncertainty as to the permanent success of democratic institutions.

It is noteworthy, however, that the discussion of democracy has been confined to the field of politics, and that its adaptation to educational institutions, where presumably a high grade of intelligence, education, opportunity and experience seem to offer the greatest promise of success, is never publicly discussed, much less in this country practiced.[20]

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It is equally anomalous that in Europe, with its tendency to monarchy in the state, there is found absolute democracy in the government of educational institutions, while America, democratic in the state, furnishes the most extreme illustration of absolute monarchy in the government of its educational institutions. It seems, if possible, even more strange that American college students have for years been going to European universities, and yet apparently have paid no attention to questions of educational organization. It can only be explained by the general lack of information and interest in the management of educational institutions.

The UNPOPULAR REVIEW is not a fitting place for the discussion of questions concerning the college, if frequent discussion means popularity: for the fashionable question in the serious periodical of the day is “What’s the matter with the colleges?” But while there is absolute agreement that _something_ is the matter, every diagnostician has his own explanation. Athletics, the curriculum, the classics, vocational training, and every part of the educational system unable to speak for itself, have been held responsible for the existing evils. It may, however, be sufficiently unpopular for a mere college professor to say that in his humble opinion at least one thing the matter with the college is its form of government, and that here is an interesting place in which to test democracy before abandoning it as hopeless. Certainly these opinions have been so unpopular as to lead many who honestly hold them to hesitate to state them. When they are stated, it is generally by those not within the academic pale.