Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

I presume, Doctor, that at this season of the year you are copying the style of the white man, and that you are wearing a straw hat.

Well, the Latins taught us how to make straw hats.

I presume that you recognize the value of _glass_—one of whose hundreds of uses is to show you how you look.

Well, the Latin taught us how to make glass.

I presume you realize how much the modern world, during the last thousand years, has been indebted to the modern ship.

Well, the Latin taught the Anglo-Saxon how to build modern ships.

I presume you appreciate good rice, Doctor.

Well, the seed of the heavy upland rice which we have in this country was brought out of Italy in the pockets of Thomas Jefferson—gentleman-smuggler in that instance.

I presume you will wear pink silk undergarments this season as usual, won’t you, Doctor?

Well, the Latin taught modern Europe how to make and use silk.

And remember that the Latin took the clumsy musical instruments of the ancient world and fashioned them into the perfect forms of the present time; and that the Italians, whom you despise, had created the violin while your race was “rattling the bones” and gradually climbing toward the “cakewalk.”

* * * * *

What has the negro in these United States been doing for the last thirty years, Doctor?

_Copying the white man._ That’s all.

He has simply been imitating, as best he could, the dress, the talk, the manners, the methods, the work of the whites.

The Latin whites _originated_ a civilization; the negroes are _copying_ one. Is there no difference between the higher genius which conceives and the lower talent which copies?

It required the genius of Raphael to conceive and paint “The Transfiguration.” Any ordinary artist can make a fair copy of it. But does anyone compare the copyist with the original artist? It required the genius of Sangallo and Michelangelo to rear St. Peter’s at Rome: any well-educated architect of today might rear its duplicate. But would that make the modern architect equal to the two Italian masters?

Ten thousand negro men and women may be able to sit down at the piano and render Verdi’s “Il Trovatore,” but does that entitle the negroes to class themselves with the Italian composer?

My thought is this—the negro, assisted in every possible way by the whites, is copying the ways and learning the arts of the white man; _but the fact that he can learn to read the white man’s book does not make him the equal of the white race which produced the book._ The fact that he may learn from us how to practice law or medicine does not make him equal to the white race which _created_ the code of laws and the science of medicine. It may have required a thousand years _for us to learn_ that which we can _teach him in one year_, but the point is that the negro, in his native home, had just as much time and opportunity to evolve a civilization as we had, AND HE DID NOT DO IT.

Let me repeat to you, Doctor, the unvarnished truth—for it may do you good:

The advance made by your race in America is _the reflection_ of the white man’s civilization. Just that and nothing more. The negro lives in the light of the white man’s civilization and _reflects a part of that light_.

He imitates an example kept before his eyes; copies models never out of his sight; echoes the words the white man utters; patterns after the manners and the methods of the whites around him, and thus _reflects_ our civilization.

He has originated nothing, and if the copy, the pattern, the example were taken away he would fall back as he did in Haiti.

He has never either evolved nor sustained a civilization of his own.

Fortunately for the _Afro-American_, he finds himself better situated than his brethren elsewhere. In Africa and Haiti _they_ have to scuffle _for themselves_. Result—barbarism.

In America _he_ swells the ranks of civilization’s advancing army, and he _has_ to go forward. We not only support him with aid of all sorts, we not only give him daily precept and example, but we _compel_ him to live a better life than he would live in Africa and Haiti. This compulsion is of two kinds, the fear of punishment and the hope of reward—thus enlisting two of the most powerful passions of the human being.

It should be significant to Doctor Washington that the only portion of his race which has ever made any development is that which has the vast advantage of being sustained, encouraged, taught, led and _coerced_ by the whites among whom they live.

Not long ago a negro preacher whose self-appreciation was as great as that of Doctor Washington went out to Liberia to subdue the heathen, in the home of the negro race.

The heathen were not subdued, but the preacher was. He threw off his store clothes, gave a whoop, gathered up an armful of wives and broke for the woods; the “Call of the Wild” was too much for his newly soldered civilization.

Now, I don’t mean to say that Doctor Washington would relapse, under similar circumstances; but when I hear him call his new race _Afro-Americans_ and listen while he soberly tells them that _they are superior to the whites_, I beg that he will remember his kin across the sea, his brethren in Santo Domingo, the decadents of Liberia, and the tens of thousands of his race here in this country who devoutly believe in witch doctors, in ghosts, in the conjure bag, and in the power of one negro to undo another by the mysterious but invincible “Trick.”

Remember this, Doctor, education is a good thing, but _it never did, and never will, alter the essential character of a man or a race_.

Of course, Doctor, if you think your race the equal of ours, you have the right to say it. It’s a free country, you know.

But, really, you ought not to “crowd the monkey” by putting in a claim for superiority.

_Such a claim does your race no good._

It _may_ do them harm. It may cultivate a spirit of truculent self-assertion which even your warmest admirers, North and South, might find it hard to tolerate.

In the “History of Civilization,” Buckle says:

“Above all this, there is a far higher movement; and as the tide rolls on, now advancing, now receding, there is, amid its endless fluctuations, one thing, and one alone, which endures forever. The actions of bad men produce only temporary evil, the actions of good men only temporary good; and eventually the good and the evil altogether subside, are neutralized by subsequent generations, absorbed by the incessant movement of future ages. But the discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal, they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggle of rival creeds and witness the decay of successive religions. All _these_ have their different measures and their different standards; one set of opinions for one age, another set for another. _They_ pass away like a dream; they are as a fabric of a vision, which leaves not a rack behind. _The discoveries of genius alone remain_: it is to _them_ we owe all that we now have, _they_ are for all ages and for all times; never young, and never old, _they_ bear the seeds of their own life, they flow on in a perennial and undying stream; _they_ are essentially cumulative, and giving birth to the additions which they subsequently receive, _they thus influence the most distant posterity, and after the lapse of centuries produce more effect than they were able to do even at the moment of their promulgation._”

Noble lines!

And amid these “discoveries of genius” to which “we owe all that we now have,” bearing the seeds of intellectual life and improvement to “the most distant posterity” what treasures are richer than those which the Latin brings?

Architecture, Agriculture, Manufactures, Commerce, Civil Engineering, Finance, Legislation, Religious Organization, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Literature, Science, the wedding of the Fine Arts to Religion—in each and every one of these fields _his_ genius has been creative and masterful.

_Upon our civilization the Latin has imposed, as an everlasting blessing, an imperishable Public Debt._

What does civilization owe to the negro?

Nothing!

_Nothing!!_

NOTHING!!!

_Amending the Constitution_

I am not one of those who believe that the Constitution of the United States is a flawless piece of workmanship.

It was not so considered by those who made it nor by those who adopted it. It never would have been ratified had it not been that amendments were promised and misrepresentation made as to the character of the instrument.

There has been a great deal of discussion recently about making a new Constitution or amending the old.

When the Constitution was adopted _a government was created_ of which the Constitution is the supreme law, and _this cannot be changed except in the manner prescribed in the instrument itself_.

If two-thirds of the states composing the Union, acting through their legislatures, shall apply to Congress for “a Constitutional convention for proposing amendments,” and these amendments should be ratified by three-fourths of the states, then a practically new Constitution might be framed; but in no other legal way could the people alter the fundamental law.

Congress can take the initiative by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses, and can propose amendments which, if adopted by three-fourths of the states, would become a part of the Constitution; but it must occur to all that this method of effecting reform is slow and cumbrous to the last degree.

_The framers of the Constitution meant that it should be so._

In a very able article in the last number of this magazine Mr. Frederick Upham Adams discusses the necessity for amendments to the Constitution.

He cites four changes that should be made.

First.—The election of President and Vice-President should not be decided by a majority of the states, but by a majority of the people.

Second.—United States Senators should not be elected by legislatures, but by direct vote of the people of the states.

Third.—The states should be represented in the Senate according to population.

Fourth.—The powers and functions of the Federal Judiciary should be enumerated and limited.

I heartily concur with Mr. Adams in his view of the Federal Judiciary. It has usurped functions and powers unprecedented in the history of judicial tribunals.

In order to change the character of the government at Athens from an aristocracy to a democracy Solon gave the people control of the courts, which _exercised the supreme power over laws and men_. Aristotle says that by this method the people established a democracy where there had previously been an aristocracy. The aristocrat controlled the lawmaking power, but as the people controlled the judiciary a pure democracy resulted.

Alexander Hamilton used the same device _for the opposite purpose_. He took away from the people and put into the hands of the aristocracy _the supreme control over our laws and rulers_, and our judiciary, thus controlled, has changed the United States, which under the old Confederation was a democracy, into an aristocracy.

It will require a Constitutional amendment to drive the usurpers from the high place in which they are entrenched, but such an amendment cannot possibly be passed through the _Upper House of Congress_ and through the _Upper Houses of three-fourths of the states_ until a tremendous revolution shall have taken place in public sentiment.

If we should attempt to curtail the powers of the Federal Judges by Constitutional amendment we should surely find “Jordan a hard road to travel.” Most of us would be dead and forgotten before the purpose could be reached by that route.

What, then, can be done?

_The swiftest remedy for the evil lies in the election of a President who will_ ASSERT HIS EXECUTIVE AUTHORITY.

The very essence of our system of government is the _Balance of Power_. The Legislative function should not encroach upon the Judicial; the Executive should not invade the Legislative, and the Judicial should not usurp prerogatives belonging to the other two.

_Inherent in each of these three departments of government lies the power of self-defense._

Just as the Government, as a whole, has the inherent, inalienable right of self-preservation against external or internal attack, so each of the three separate departments of the Government has the inherent right of self-preservation as against an attack from either one or both of the other two.

When John Marshall made the attempt to encroach upon the Executive, during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, the President treated the Court with contempt, and the Court was powerless to go forward. When the same partisan Judge made a decision against the state of Georgia, which President Andrew Jackson considered unjust, the Executive refused to support the Judiciary, and the decision came to naught.

When Chief-Justice Taney, during President Lincoln’s administration, encroached, as the President thought, upon the Executive, the Judiciary again came to grief.

_Had Mr. Cleveland been at heart in favor of the Income tax of 1893, the Supreme Court would never have dared to pronounce against it._

That law was based upon a principle which the Supreme Court had indorsed for a hundred years, and the first deliverance of the Judges upon the act of 1893 was favorable to it.

That act was the outcome of the work of the Legislative department acting within the scope of its authority. The Executive department had sanctioned the act, and it had become LAW.

Had Cleveland boldly announced his purpose to _execute that law, by virtue of his inherent power as Chief Executive_, the Supreme Court would never have made the second decision, which was a national scandal.

By that decision the accumulated wealth of the millionaires is exempted from taxation—relieved of the duty of contributing to the support of the Government by whose unjust laws those millions were accumulated.

But let the people really get in power; let them really elect a President; let them place in authority another Andrew Jackson, who isn’t afraid to show his friendship for the common man and his animosity to the greedy corporation—_then_ you will see the Supreme Court draw in its horns.

Federal Judges are human like the rest of us, and they know with considerable accuracy which side their bread is buttered on.

_Get the right sort of man in the Executive Chair, get the right sort of men in Congress, create the right sort of public opinion, and I venture the prediction that the Federal Judiciary will not attempt the role of Dame Partington without meeting with the same luck._

* * * * *

I agree with Mr. Adams also that Senators should be elected by the direct vote of the people in each state, but he is perhaps in error when he says that the system of electing Senators by state legislatures is “the fountain head of the corruption of American politics.”

On the contrary, there never could have been a corrupt Senate until there was a corrupt Legislature. When New Jersey sent to the Senate a man like Jim Smith the Legislature of New Jersey had already become corrupt. When Pennsylvania sent to the Senate a man like Quay the Legislature of Pennsylvania had already become corrupt. Standard Oil had to buy the Ohio Legislature before Henry B. Payne became United States Senator.

In other words, the corrupt Senator is simply the fruit of the tree of legislative corruption, and the corrupt Legislature has been too often the result of corrupt elections.

We might as well tell the truth, and the whole truth, while we are discussing the question. _Every one of us knows that elections of almost every sort, from the highest to the lowest—town, county, state and national—have been influenced by money and whisky, fraudulent practices of all sorts, the stuffed ballot-box, the doctored returns, and the God’s truth about the matter is that the people themselves are, to a large extent, responsible for the kind of men who get into the Legislature, into the House of Representatives and into the Senate._

Too many of our honest men have shirked election duty, as they have shirked jury duty; and just as ignorant or corrupt juries too often decide questions in the court house, so the ignorant or corrupt voters—pliant tools in the hands of unscrupulous politicians—decide questions of legislation which require the best thought and the best energies of our most intelligent and upright citizens.

If direct legislation and the Recall should be put in practice, there could not be such things as corrupt legislatures, and therefore there would be no such thing as corrupt senatorial elections.

The fountain having been purified, the stream would be pure. At present the fountain itself is too often impure, and therefore the stream which flows from it cannot be pure.

* * * * *

On the other two points made by Mr. Adams there will be greater difference of opinion. His objections proceed upon the assumption that the United States is a nation with a government national in all particulars. Here he is at fault.

Our Government is only partially national. It is Federal, also, in part. It is not altogether the one nor altogether the other.

Ours is a peculiar system. To the foreign world we present the aspect of a sovereign nation. Among ourselves we are a collection of sovereign states which, for purposes stated in the preamble of the Constitution, have delegated to the central Government a portion of those powers which once belonged entirely to those sovereign states.

The state government existed before the Federal Government came into being. If the Federal Government were abolished tomorrow, each one of the states would still remain a sovereign state capable of conducting government.

The state of Connecticut, for instance, was an independent republic when there was no such thing as the United States.

Would Connecticut ever have gone into an “indissoluble union” if she had not been assured that this union was to be composed of “indestructible states”? The two propositions are linked together in Constitutional law.

Among sovereigns all are, in law, equal, and each one of these states was sovereign at the time the union of states was formed.

Would either of those independent sovereign states have accepted a place of inferiority in the Government? Assuredly not.

Then how is the indestructibility of the states guaranteed in the Constitution? By giving the state, as a state, its full power in the United States Senate, and, in a smaller degree, in the election of Chief Magistrate.

The Constitution itself was modeled by delegates chosen, not by citizens of the United States, _acting as individuals composing the entire nation_, but by voters acting as _citizens composing distinct and independent states to which they respectively belonged_. When the completed Constitution was referred back to the people for adoption, it was not acted upon by them as citizens of the entire nation, but it was ratified by each state, acting as a state, separate and distinct from every other state. _Therefore the Constitution itself is the result, not of a national, but of a Federal act._

Mr. Madison himself took this ground in _The Federalist_. The facts all prove it.

In the exercise of its legislative powers the Federal Government is both national and Federal. The House of Representatives is a national body, because it is composed of members chosen according to population. The Senate is a Federal body, because it is chosen by the states, acting as states.

The executive department of our Government also combines in itself both the national and the Federal features.

The Electoral College is composed of two messengers from each state, and also of messengers equal in number to the members which the state has in the House of Representatives.

The two messengers first mentioned correspond with the two Senators, and therefore represent the state in its Federal capacity. The other messengers correspond with the Representatives of the state in the Lower House, and as the Lower House is national, so those messengers are national.

If the people fail to elect a President, and the election is thrown into the House of Representatives, _this House, which in its organization as a legislative body is national, at once becomes Federal, because each state has one vote, and the voice of Ohio or Pennsylvania is not more potent than that of Rhode Island or Delaware_.

It is only when our Government comes to put its laws into operation that it is purely national.

It is not strictly correct, politically or legally, to say that the United States is a nation, for a nation does not properly exist when the Government is one of limited power. That our Government is one of limited power, absolute only within the sphere of action granted to it by the states, cannot be denied. While secession has been forever decided as not being among the reserved rights of the states, there are very many other reserved rights which still belong to the states, and which always should be retained.

As the Washington _Post_ remarked some time since: “The United States has not a single voter, and does not hold elections for any office. _All elections are state elections._”

Already there has been too much concentration of power in the central Government. To take away from the states their power of selecting Senators would be nothing short of revolution, and would lead to such a consolidation of power as would entirely change the form and spirit of our Government.

If the principles of Populism grow strong enough to carry the large states they will probably be found strong enough to carry the small states. If they be found strong enough to control the state elections, they will control national offices, because, as the Washington Post very aptly points out, _the Federal Government holds no elections and has no voters_: it is the state that holds the election and furnishes the voters; it is the state that prescribes the limits of the franchise, and says how, when, where and by whom these elections shall be held; _and even the Federal Judiciary has not yet ventured to infringe in the slightest degree upon that reserved right of the separate states_.

* * * * *

Speaking of the equal representation of the states in the Senate, Mr. Adams says, “_This vicious compromise was made in the Constitutional Convention as the price for the perpetuation of slavery._”

This compromise he characterizes further as “_cowardly and unfair_.” And he adds: “Now that the logic of events has made this a nation, despite the restrictive clauses of the Constitution, the dual participation of the unrepresentative Senate is so grotesque that its continuance is fraught with a danger which at any time is likely to precipitate civil war.”

Is Mr. Adams quite sure that “this vicious compromise was the price of the perpetuation of slavery”?

Of course, I knew in a general way that slavery had been responsible for pretty nearly every mean old thing that has ever happened to this country; and it has always grieved me, with more or less poignancy, that New England could not have _foreseen_ that she couldn’t make slavery pay. We lost much precious time while she was discovering that she couldn’t. When at length she _did_ discover that there was no money in it for _her_, she thoughtfully sold most of her slaves, and went in for Emancipation.

_Then_, to be sure, the sacred “Cause of Freedom” advanced at a gallop; but, as I said, we had lost a good deal of time waiting for New England to make her experiment, and a good deal of unhappiness resulted.

But while I knew all this, in a general way, I really was not aware that the slave-owning states in the Constitutional Convention forced Washington, Madison, Franklin and Randolph to act in the cowardly and vicious manner described by Mr. Adams.

The state of Virginia bitterly opposed the equal representation of the states in the Senate. This was strange conduct in Virginia, if the purpose of that compromise was the “perpetuation of slavery.”

The state of New Jersey was the leader of those states in the convention which demanded equal representation in the Senate. If that senatorial equality was intended to perpetuate slavery, New Jersey’s attitude was most peculiar.

This compromise which Mr. Adams calls “vicious, cowardly and unfair” is known to constitutional history as _the Connecticut Compromise_. The men who championed it most ably were Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. Were these men actuated by a desire to perpetuate slavery?

All the books which I have read upon the subject state that equal representation in the Senate was a compromise which _the smaller states wrung from the larger states, as the price of the union_, not the price of the “perpetuation of slavery.”

New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware were afraid to give up their independent, sovereign existence as states and to go into a union where the large states, like Pennsylvania and Virginia, would have so much greater power than themselves, if that power should be based on population.

When New Jersey refused to consider any plan of union which did not safeguard the interests of the small states, she was not thinking of perpetuating slavery. When Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth made such a determined fight to preserve, in part, the equality which then prevailed among the states, they were not thinking of perpetuating slavery. _Their motive was to protect Connecticut, the small state, against Virginia and other large states._

When Benjamin Franklin finally proposed that the Convention adopt the Connecticut idea, that aged philosopher and friend of human liberty was not acting in the interest of the slave-owners.

When Washington gave his consent, he was not guilty of cowardice and unfairness for the purpose of protecting slavery.

These men knew perfectly well that they were exceeding their authority in making a _new_ Constitution. They were sent there _to amend_ the Articles of Confederation; and when New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware took the resolute position which was voiced by Patterson, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, Washington and Franklin both had sense enough to know that it would be utter folly to go before the people, seeking a ratification of _a new Constitution_, unless the difference between big states and little states had been first adjusted in the Constitutional Convention. Indeed, Rhode Island, another small state, was so jealous of her rights that she refused to send delegates to the Convention.

My authorities are Bancroft’s “History of the United States,” “The Constitutional History” of Landon, McMaster’s “With the Fathers,” Hildreth’s “History of the United States,” Schouler’s “History of the United States.”

The latter historian says expressly that the compromise under discussion “_was secured through the determination of the smaller states not to yield entirely the rule of representation which the larger states were bent on invading_,” and, he adds, “_this compromise admirably preserves the composite character of our system_.”

The historian declares that the smaller states expressly committed to the New Jersey plan which sought to retain the sovereignty of the states were New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware.

Hildreth, in his “History of the United States,” takes the same position, and says: “The party of the smaller states, known also as the State Rights Party, included the delegates from Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and a majority of those from Maryland and New York.

“The party of the larger states, or National Party, included not only _the delegates from Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania_, but also those from _the two Carolinas and Georgia_, states which anticipated a very rapid increase of population.”

(I could quote Woodrow Wilson to the same effect, only Woodrow isn’t worth while.)

* * * * *

Now it must occur to Mr. Adams that these facts are at war with his theory.

Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, the two Carolinas and Georgia would never have been found opposing the equality of representation of the states in the Senate if the purpose of that senatorial equality was the perpetuation of the institution of slavery.

There _was_ a compromise which the slave-owners wrung as a concession from the free states, but this compromise benefited them _in the lower House, not in the Senate_.

When the Constitution gave the slave states representation based upon _three-fifths of the slaves_, the institution of slavery derived strength from the _national idea_ of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Virginia—_not from the State Rights idea_ of New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut.

“_Take the Children_”

In France the Privileged Classes had created a situation which pleased them perfectly.

A fifth of the soil belonged to 30,000 noble families; another fifth belonged to the clergy; another fifth belonged to the king and city governments; the remaining two-fifths belonged to all the other people, middle class and peasants.

To the support of the Government the clergy contributed nothing except as a free gift; the nobility contributed pretty much what they pleased, and they did not please to contribute a great deal.

The king’s family spent $55,000,000 per year. Two brothers of the king spent $2,000,000; and, to pay the debts of one princely bankrupt, King Louis XVI took $3,000,000 out of the public funds.

Two hundred and ninety-five cooks served in the king’s kitchen. Nearly two thousand horses stood in his stables. A squad of soldiers escorted his dinner to the table. A magnificent band furnished music while he ate, and a dozen gallant lords, paid for the service, helped him to undress and get to bed when the arduous do-nothing of the day had been finished.

Some 30,000,000 Frenchmen did not enter into this world of privilege. The merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, the manufacturer, the farmer, the laborer—all these stood outside the pearly gates, catching only a glimpse of the radiance within, hearing only, as from a distance, the music of this Eden, created by class legislation.

The peasant neither owned his land absolutely nor _himself_ absolutely. Over him and his was suspended the heavy sword of class privilege.

The noble hunter of game, who enjoyed the exclusive privilege of killing game, might trample down his grain with the utmost unconcern, at whatever time the pleasure of the noble huntsman dictated. Mr. Peasant was not allowed to protect his fields and crops by putting up any kind of inclosure.

Mr. Peasant must not kill the wild boar or the antlered stag, even though those noble beasts, reserved for noble huntsmen, were destroying the crop upon which he and his family were dependent for a living.

He could not, under any conditions whatsoever, destroy the pigeons which came sweeping down upon his grain, nor must he, during certain seasons, manure his crop or hoe out the grass, lest he injure the flavor of the young partridges, and deprive them of the shelter necessary for their comfort and growth.

He could not press his grapes save at the nobleman’s wine-press, nor grind his wheat save at the nobleman’s mill, nor bake his bread elsewhere than in the nobleman’s oven.

These monopolies were peculiar to the lord, and the peasant must pay toll lest the lord’s revenues decrease.

The peasant could not vote, had really no civic existence, was not considered in the government of the country; could be made to work whether he wished to do so or not for the noble and the king. His horses could be taken from the cart, or from the plow, if his superiors demanded it. Neither for his labor nor his horse was he paid. He could not put salt into his victuals without paying a high price for it, and he was not allowed to eat his victuals unsalted. The law _compelled_ him to buy a certain portion of salt every year at an exorbitant price.

The church took from him one-tenth of all he made, besides which he must pay fees for christenings, marriages, burials and pardons for sins—to say nothing of prayers in behalf of the living, the dying and the dead. The feudal lord took from him annually a certain part of all he made.

The French historian Taine says that in some portions of France the peasant paid in feudal dues, church tithes and royal taxes _more than three-fourths of all that he made_. In other portions of France _the entire net produce of the soil went to the church and state_, and so great was the intolerable burden that _the peasants quit in despair, left the land to become a desert waste, and flocked to the cities to swell the army of The Wretched_.

To throw off the shackles of this frightful system of misgovernment the French Revolutionist roused the people.

At first Great Britain rejoiced in the movement which Lafayette, Mirabeau, Necker, Sieyès and Camille Desmoulins inaugurated. These early revolutionists declared their purpose to set up a constitutional government in France such as Great Britain enjoyed, but when these moderate and constitutional reformers were thrown aside by the radical democrats who were determined to establish a republic—when this democracy had confiscated the lands held by the church, had issued paper money and had taken for national uses the abandoned estates of the immigrant nobles, the ruling powers of church and state in Great Britain became greatly alarmed, and it was resolved that war to the death should be waged against the principles of the French Revolution.

Unless this were done, democracy might assert itself in Great Britain, and those things which had been taken from the people under forms of law might be restored in the same way to the original owners. Therefore William Pitt, Prime Minister and actual ruler of Great Britain, declared war upon France, blockaded her coasts, organized European kings into confederacies against her, and for more than a dozen dreadful years poured armed legions upon her.

During this era of “blood and iron” men were torn from peaceful pursuits throughout Great Britain to supply the navy and the army with food for powder.

As a necessary consequence, the demand for labor was greater than the supply; and as England depends especially upon her manufactures, it was there that the scarcity of labor was most injuriously felt.

It is said that a deputation representing the manufacturers waited upon the Prime Minister and laid their grievances before him, asking the question, “_What must we do?_”

Mr. Pitt is reported to have answered, “TAKE THE CHILDREN.”

This story may not be true, but it is a fact that it represented precisely the emergency, and the manner in which that emergency was met. It also represents correctly the attitude of Mr. Pitt as defined in his speeches in Parliament.

A cruel, unjustifiable war had devoured the laborer who should have been at his task. The laws had dragged him into the army and into the navy whether he wished to go or not. Press-gangs had prowled about the lanes and alleys clutching at every poor man who happened to be sound of limb, and had carried him off by force into a battleship, where he might be kept until the bride whom he had left at the church door had counted him as dead, or until the family which he had left contented and happy had been lost to the knowledge of men.

_Having taken the father, the same remorseless class-greed demanded the child, and took it._

Upon the altar of English lust for money has been sacrificed more helpless men, women and children than ever fell before the ruthless hordes of Tamerlane or Attila.

“Within carefully guarded limits, child-labor is no more to be objected to in manufactures than in agriculture, but in the early days of the factory system these limits were utterly discarded.

“In the infancy of the system it became the custom of the master manufacturers to contract with the managers of workhouses throughout England and of the charities of Scotland, to send their young children to the factories of the great towns. _Many thousands of children between the ages of six and ten_ were thus sent, absolutely uncared for and unprotected, and left to the complete disposal of masters who often had not a single thought except speedily to amass a fortune, and _who knew that if the first supply of infant labor were used up there was still much more to be obtained_.

“Thousands of children at this early age might be found working in the factories of England and Scotland, usually from twelve to fourteen, sometimes even fifteen and sixteen hours a day, not unfrequently during the greater part of the night. _Destitute or drunken or unnatural parents made it a regular system to raise money by hiring out their children from six, sometimes from five, years old, by written contracts and for long periods. In one case brought before Parliament a gang of these children was put up for sale among a bankrupt’s effects, and publicly advertised as part of the property._ In another an agreement was disclosed between a London parish and a Lancashire manufacturer in which it was stipulated that _with every twenty sound children one idiot should be taken_.”

* * * * *

“Even as late as 1840, when the most important manufactures had been regulated by law, Lord Ashley was able to show that _boys employed in the carpet manufacture at Kidderminster were called up at three and four in the morning, and kept working sixteen or eighteen hours_: that children five years old were engaged in the unhealthy trade of pin-making, and were kept at work from six in the morning to eight at night.” (Lecky, “England in Eighteenth Century.”)

In the coal mines and in the salt mines men, women and children were literally beasts of burden—were chattels, and when the mines were sold the human machines passed from one owner to another just as the mechanical apparatus passed.

There were women who in these coal mines, where the tunnels were too narrow to allow them to stand upright, had to crawl back and forward on their hands and knees for fourteen to sixteen hours a day, drawing after them the trucks loaded with coal.

_These trucks were securely fastened to the woman by means of a chain which passed between her legs and was attached to a belt strapped round her waist. The woman seldom wore any clothes except an old pair of trousers made of sacking._

“Little children were forced to work underground from year to year. Deep in the gloom of a night which had neither moonlight nor stars; rarely ever seeing the face of nature and of day—lost to God’s glory of sunlight, shady woods, silvery waters—lost to intelligence, happiness, enjoyment, reduced to the helpless condition of beasts of burden.”

What was true of the mines was also true of the factories.

Men, women and children were forced to work for a number of hours absolutely inconsistent with physical and moral development.

In the year 1833 Lord Ashley led in the noble effort to redeem the children from the clutches of unscrupulous commercialism, and to lighten the burden of men and women by regulating the hours of labor and the conditions of service.

After a most stubborn resistance, in which the corporations urged against the reform every reason which we hear urged in our day, England did herself the immense credit of checking the tyranny of those who were grinding the lives out of the poor in order that the rich should become richer.

In this country the cry of commercialism is the same as that which in Great Britain said, “_Take the children_.”

Corporations want cheap labor. If they can’t get the adult, they take the child.

In the Southern states the tendency to employ children has had alarming development. In 1880 the total number of cotton factory employees was 16,740. Of these, 4,090 were children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total number of employees had increased to 97,559. Of these, 24,459 _were children under sixteen years of age_.

In the states outside of the South there were, in 1880, 155,803 employees in cotton factories. Of this number, 24,243 were children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total number of cotton factory employees in states outside of the South was 205,302. Of these, only 15,796 were children under sixteen years of age.

In other words, within the Southern states the children under sixteen years of age constitute now, as they did twenty years ago, _25 per cent. of all the operatives employed_: whereas, _in the states outside the South the children under sixteen number less than 8 per cent. of all those employed_. Therefore the situation which was justly considered so bad in Great Britain that it was reformed seventy years ago, and which has been reformed in most of the states outside of the South, is three times worse in the South than it is in any other portion of the Union, _and is just as bad now as it was twenty years ago_.

In _The Tradesman_, of Chattanooga, Tenn., August 15, 1902, the statement is made that the number of children under sixteen years of age now at work in the Southern mills approximated 50,000.

The 50,000 little ones who troop to the mill every morning, breathe the steam-heated, dust-laden, germ-infected atmosphere of the close rooms throughout the entire day, who light, with lanterns, their way home across the fields when darkness has fallen, are white children. During the same hours that these white boys and girls are finding their way to the factory where their energy and strength is offered up as a sacrifice to mammon, 50,000 black children are singing merrily on their way to school, _where they are gaining what the white children are losing_.

Glance forward twenty years and ask yourselves what will be the relative positions of the 50,000 white children and the 50,000 black children. _It will be a miracle if most of those white children are not either in their graves, or in the hospitals, or in the slums, or in the prisons, while the 50,000 black children will be holding clerkships in some department of the Federal Government._

The kind of civilization which we are going to have in the future is being determined now. Race development and progress cannot be extemporized or bought ready-made. It is a matter of preparing the soil, planting the seed, cultivating the crop.

We shall reap as we shall have sown.

The most profoundly disgusting feature of the Southern political situation today is that _the Democratic bosses who control our state legislatures will not allow us to give our white children as good treatment as the negro children are getting_.

Almost universally the Southern mills are controlled by Northern capitalists; but it is the Southern politician, officeholder, editor or stockholder who rushes to the legislature saying that _child slavery must continue because it is good for the child_.

These Northern capitalists who own Southern mills are, to a large extent, Republicans in politics. The unprincipled Southern men who put up a plea in behalf of child slavery are almost exclusively Democratic.

Just as J. P. Morgan, the Republican railroad king, uses the Southern Democratic machine to rob the people through his railroads, so the Northern Republican millowner uses the Southern Democratic politician to rivet upon the Southern white child the chains of commercial serfdom, _ruinous to the child and ominous to the future of the white race in the South_.

It was class-greed which first raised the cry, “_Take the children_.” It is class-greed which _now_ says, “TAKE THE CHILDREN.”

_Paternalism_

One of the dreadfulest words that ever scared a mossback is “Paternalism.”

He does not know what it means, and he does not want to know. He flees from it as from something too blood-curdling to look upon. His leaders, his orators, his editors, have all told him that no language could fully describe the horrors of “Paternalism”; and therefore he feels that while poverty, slavery, hunger and starvation are sometimes annoying incidents in life, they bear no comparison to the pitiless rigors of “Paternalism.”

He has got used to unmerciful taxes, to ill-paid labor, to squalid surroundings, to empty pockets, and to the cry of children hungering for bread. All these discomforts he can stand, because they have come to him in the natural course of events under the rule of Democracy and Republicanism. But the very idea of a new party springing up and practicing “Paternalism” unnerves him. He fears he couldn’t stand it.

We had this terror-stricken victim of Democratic bugabooism in mind today when we read the decision of Cleveland’s Attorney-General, to the effect that whisky in a bonded warehouse could not be reached by process from a State Court.

Under a law which has stealthily slipped upon the statute-book while the people were not noticing, the producers of distilled liquors get the privilege of storing their “firewater” in a government warehouse and getting a certificate of deposit.

The Government takes care of the whisky until the owner feels like paying a tax upon it.

Formerly, under an act passed by Republicans and Democrats, this exemption from tax lasted three years. At the last session of Congress the Democrats, out of tender consideration for the poor, downtrodden Whisky Trust, extended this exemption to eight years.

The great and good Government of the United States, therefore, steps forward through its officers, and kindly says to the distiller: “Hand me your whisky bottle: I’ll take care of it for you until you get ready to pay your taxes.”

Not only does our great and good Government say substantially these very words to the distiller, but it guards his whisky bottle so jealously that no writ or execution or other process from a State Court is allowed to touch the liquor which is thus being held by the Government for the benefit of the owner.

Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, tried to bring his power as Chief Magistrate of a sovereign state to bear on some of the whisky which Uncle Sam was taking care of for the Whisky Trust, but the voice of our great and good Government was promptly heard saying, “Keep off the Grass.”

Brave Benjamin had to let the whisky alone.

The certificate of deposit issued on the liquor by the Government to the distiller becomes at once valuable commercial paper upon which he can get any amount of money he wants.

He can go to New York, borrow money on his certificate at 2 per cent., and use it for eight years without difficulty, because the money-lenders have the certificate which shows to them that the Government is taking good care of the whisky all the time.

Is this “Paternalism”?

If so, please don’t mention it to the mossback whom we have described. It might make him run away and tear the buggy up.

_Planting Corn_

The bluebird was out today; out in his glossiest plumage, his throat gurgling with song.

For the sunlight was warm and radiant in all the South, and the coming spring had laid its benediction on every field and hedge and forest.

The smell of newly plowed ground mingled with the subtle incense of the yellow jasmine; and from every orchard a shower of the blossoms of peach and apple and pear was wafted into the yard and hung lovingly on the eaves and in the piazzas of the old homestead—the old and faded homestead.

Was there a cloud in all the sky? Not one, not one.

“Gee! Mule!!!”

“Dad blast your hide, why don’t you gee-e-EE!!”

Co-whack! goes the plowline on the back of the patient mule—the dignified upholder of mortgages, “time price” accounts, and the family credit generally.

Down the furrow, and up the furrow; down to the woods, and up to the fence—there they go, the sturdy plowman and his much-enduring but indispensable mule.

For the poplar leaves are now as big as squirrel-ears and it’s “time to plant corn.”

On moves the plowman, steady as a clock, silent and reflective.

Right after him comes the corndropper, dropping corn.

The grains faintly chink as the bare feet of the corndropper hurry past; and before the corn has well cuddled itself into the shoe-heel of the plowman’s track, down comes the hoe of the “coverer”—and then the seeds pass into the portals of the great unknown; the unknown of burial, of death and of life renewed.

Peeping from the thicket, near at hand, the royal redbird makes note of what is going on, nor is the thrush blind to the progress of the corndropper. And seated with calm but watchful dignity on the highest pine in the thicket sits the melancholy crow, sharpening his appetite with all the anticipated pleasures of simple larceny.

The mocking-bird circles and swoops from tree to tree, and in her matchless bursts of varied song no cadence is wanting, no melody missed.

The hum of the bees is in the air; white butterflies, like snowflakes, fall down the light and lazily float away.

The robin lingers about the China tree, and the bluejay, lifting his plumed frontlet, picks a quarrel with every feathered acquaintance and noisily asserts his grievances.

The jo-ree has dived deeper into the thicket, and the festive sapsucker, he of the scarlet crest, begins to come to the front, inquisitive as to the location of bugs and worms.

On such a day, such a cloudless, radiant, flower-sweetened day, the horseman slackens the rein as he rides through lanes and quiet fields; and he dares to dream that the children of God once loved each other.

On such a day one may dream that the time might come when they would do so again.

Rein in and stop, here on this high hill! Look north, look east where the sun rises, look south, look west where the sun sets—on all sides the scene is the same. In every field the steady mule, the steady plowman and the children dropping corn.

Close the eye a moment and look at the picture fancy paints. Every field in Georgia is there, every field in the South is there. And in each the figures are the same—the steady mule and the steady man, and the pattering feet of the children dropping corn.

In these furrows lie the food of the republic; on these fields depend life, and health and happiness.

Halt those children—and see how the cheek of the world would blanch at thought of famine!

Paralyze that plowman—and see how national bankruptcy would shatter every city in the Union.

Dropping corn! A simple thing, you say.

And yet, as those white seeds rattle down to the sod and hide away for a season, it needs no peculiar strength of fancy to see a Jacob’s ladder crowded with ascending blessings.

Scornfully the railroad king would glance at these small teams in each small field; yet check those corndroppers and his cars would rot on the road and rust would devour the engines in the roundhouse. The banker would ride through those fields thinking only of his hoarded millions, nor would he ever startle himself with the thought that his millions would melt away in mist were those tiny hands never more to be found dropping corn. The bondholder, proud in all the security of the untaxed receiver of other people’s taxes, would see in these fields merely the industry from which he gathers tribute; it would never dawn on his mind that without the opening of those furrows and the hurrying army of children dropping corn his bond wouldn’t be worth the paper it is written on.

Yet it is literally so.

Feed the world, and it can live, work, produce and march on. Starve it, and what becomes of railroads, banks, mills, mines, notes, mortgages and bonds?

Great is the might of this republic!—great in its schools, churches, courts, legislatures; great in its towns and cities; great in its commerce, great in its manufactures, great in its colossal wealth.

But sweep from under it all these worn and wasted fields, strike into idleness or death the plowman, his wife and his child, and what becomes of the gorgeous structure whose foundation is his field?

Halt the food growers, and what becomes of your gold and its “intrinsic value”?

How much of your gold can you eat?

How many of your diamonds will answer the need of a loaf?

But enough.

It is time to ride down the hill. The tinkle of the cow-bell follows the sinking sun—both on the way home.

So with many an unspoken thought I ride homeward, thinking of those who plant the corn.

And hard indeed would be the heart that, knowing what these people do and bear and suffer, yet would not fashion this prayer to the favored of the republic: “O rulers, lawmakers, soldiers, judges, bankers, merchants, editors, lawyers, doctors, preachers, bondholders! _Be not so unmindful of the toil and misery of those who feed you!_”

_Not Parson Brownlow’s Son_

KNOXVILLE, TENN., April 26, 1905.

_Hon. Thomas E. Watson, Thomson, Ga._

DEAR SIR: In your article on “Politics and Economics” in TOM
WATSON’S MAGAZINE for May, you speak of the salary grab of
congressmen as follows: “Tennessee will not be shocked to
know that ‘Slippery Jim’ Richardson voted for the grab.
She may be shocked to know that Brownlow did the same
thing—Brownlow, the _son_ of the famous Parson.”