Title: Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Author: Various
Language: English
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Vol. I.                     JUNE, 1906                   No. 4

MOTHER EARTH


[Illustration]



CONTENTS

                                               PAGE

Mrs. Grundy    VIROQUA DANIELS                    1

A Greeting    ALEXANDER BERKMAN                   3

Henrik Ibsen    M. B.                             6

Observations and Comments                         8

A Letter    EMMA GOLDMAN                         13

Libertarian Instruction    EMILE JANVION         14

The Antichrist    FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE            15

Brain Work and Manual Work    PETER KROPOTKIN    21

Motherhood and Marriage    HENRIETTE FUERTH      30

Object Lesson for Advocates of Governmental
Control    ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M.              33

The Genius of War    JOHN FRANCIS VALTER         36

Dignity Speaks                                   36

Paternalistic Government    (CONTINUATION)
    THEODORE SCHROEDER                           38

Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement
    MAX BAGINSKI                                 44

Refined Cruelty    ANNA MERCY                    50

"The Jungle"    VERITAS                          53

The Game is Up    SADAKICHI HARTMANN             57



10c. A COPY    $1 A YEAR


MOTHER EARTH


Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
           Published Every 15th of the Month

EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station,
                     New York, N. Y.

Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office
at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

Vol. I        JUNE, 1906        No. 4



MRS. GRUNDY.

By VIROQUA DANIELS.


     _Her will is law. She holds despotic sway.
     Her wont has been to show the narrow way
     Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave,
     From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave._

     _"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands
     The high, the low, in great or little lands.
     She folds us all within her ample gown.
     A forward act is met with angry frown._

     _The lisping babes are taught her local speech;
     Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech.
     They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,--
     In everything the little tots obey._

     _The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims.
     They play her games. They sing her holy hymns.
     They question not; accept both truth and fiction,_
     _(The_ OLD _is right, within her jurisdiction!)._

     _Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow.
     She with contempt or ridicule may cow.
     They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate,
     At variance with the program on her slate._

     _Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown,
     Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone.
     With great ado, they publicly conform--
     Vain, cowards, vain; revolt_ MUST _raise a storm!_

     _The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight,
     Attempt to live as they consider "right."
     Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere
     The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"_

     _In tyranny the Mistress is supreme.
     "Obedience," that is her endless theme.
     Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen,
     Her aid is sought by bosses over men._

     _Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised.
     From Ignorance, her bulky body's sized.
     When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury.
     But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury._

     _Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe
     To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know.
     So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing.
     Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring._


[Illustration]



A GREETING.

By ALEXANDER BERKMAN.


Dear Friends:--

I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an
absence of fourteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of
my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not
past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the
dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great
miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a
three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back
to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;--'tis the
twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor
assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets
say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx--and may be it is a
good thing for them that they don't--but you can see that there is an
occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a
hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is
not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving
Christians.

It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had
bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind
me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary
night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day;
and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning--my
first breath of freedom in fourteen years--it seemed to me as if a
beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most
alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a
sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me;
beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome;
green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me
a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift
its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!"
It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy,
and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.

I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so
much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into
a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I
retired from the world, or rather when I _was_ retired from the
world--that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth
century--at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering
under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could
hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the
clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that is different now--I
thought as I left the prison--for have I not been told that the world
had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother
wouldn't know it again." And that thought made me _doubly_ happy: happy
at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in the fond hope that I
should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the
happiness of my fellow-men.

Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so
changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest
lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me
down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red
devils--automobiles you call them--and I have been told about the winged
children of thought flying above our heads--talking through the air, you
know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps--and here in New York
you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and
without any ground at all.

These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have
considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face _only_.
For as I looked further, past the outer trappings, down into the heart
of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of
Mammon, enthroned upon a dais of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless
wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of
liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and
children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic
Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the
modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.

With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about
the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond
hope of returning into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my
feet....

No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no
improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the
nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real improvement, for
this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in
its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the
more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rational, the
less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly
characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we
produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are.
Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends,
so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the
production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more
savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of
our civilization.

But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and
our civilization?

Simply this:--a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our
boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic
lie--the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose
fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and
unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your
civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned
shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading
cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most
malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a
race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking
the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do
the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies,
slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality
and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that
social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater
nations of the ancient world.

It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men.
Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it
needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of
originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the
scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to
break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women
strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new
and happier ways.

And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the
bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of
the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I
will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in
the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has
sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my
energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes
of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my
sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in
breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and
helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind
selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road
leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of
Freedom in Brotherhood.

[Illustration]



HENRIK IBSEN.

M. B.


I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any
literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school
or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular
ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great
individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the _sole_
Truth," "the _only_ true principle." The waves of his soul would break
down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving
currents of life.

A seer has died.

He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society--he
found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social
foundations--its pillars shook: they were rotten.

The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the
hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust,
and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he
exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their
ideals.

In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against
the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule.
Doctor Stockmann--that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the
pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.

"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the
Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The
Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"--living pictures
revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions,"
"our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the
inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick
conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing
them of the joy of life.

The moralists howled long and loud.

"Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve
everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?"

Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.

But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart
so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler
ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the
idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the
altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before
the craven images that the State and Church have created for the
subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves
was a nightmare.

His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the
man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that
was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true
naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.

The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His
attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is
that of the most unprejudiced judge.

What is the result?

We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We
sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we
build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down.
Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.

A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet
not without leaving its powerful impress--for Henrik Ibsen stood upon
the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the
heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays
of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.

[Illustration]



OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.


Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to
them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem
drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance.
One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and
stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through
the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes--which, by the way, is the
real field of activity of the journalistic profession.

We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy"
exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company
against the slugging system of the reporters.

Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the
newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every
suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to
Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen
hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street--there the reporters made some
miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways
of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the
latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons,
of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of
the Reds.

"Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of
your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked.

One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three
days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand,
sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means
864 lives in three days."

This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They
fled in terror.

[Illustration]

Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th.
He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with
the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the
battle of freedom, in your young days?"

"Yes," said Carl.

"If the reports of my men are correct--and I am confident my men are
more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet--you
were even a Revolutionist?"

Carl Schurz nodded.

"And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?"

"There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily.

The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000
tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul
for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary
sinner."

[Illustration]

No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar
expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president
of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name
of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of
justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?

If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they
would soon behold this trinity--the thief, the liar, and the hangman.

[Illustration]

Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is
the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the
sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest
force--love--must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly
respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire
father-in-law for marrying his daughter.

[Illustration]

Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of
jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one
utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of
culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the
safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak
louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words
apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of
their capital!

Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How
it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the
importance of those that give.

Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty
in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the
people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!

Again, philanthropy as a money mania--in one instance it feeds the
clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of
self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday
schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to
listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives
every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these
milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a
hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.

Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of
the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries,
maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding
sea horses.

Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while
another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots.
Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists
are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for
the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity,
pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it
all.

[Illustration]

The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the
Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor
of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:

"Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a
meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the
Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was
discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of
the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing
his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the
doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.

The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the
same voice called:

"Down with America! Up with Anarchy!"

There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach
the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a
German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell
against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a
member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in
turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a
man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.

The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers
were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion
and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out.

Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a
watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however,
with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave,
and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and
God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to
Havel, said:

"That's all right, father."

Ben Bansig saved Chicago,--there can be no dispute about that. As to
Sercombe, the editor of _To-Morrow_, he deserves recognition. I suggest
that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.

Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter--who, as I can
authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel--can console
themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of
Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.

[Illustration]

That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt
the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the
latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and
prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some
loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities.
What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and
the dear little piggies grunt!

[Illustration]

Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such
creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone.
There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government
in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so
clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as
its helpmates.

[Illustration]

The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He
destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.



A LETTER.


Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.

Dear Editor:--I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings
by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize
with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised
article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to
waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of
my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either
neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith
in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit
the story.

It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German
skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to
doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do
not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not
worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to
remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse--I
have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love,
honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred
institutions, I sent them about their business.

Much as I realize the importance of my articles for MOTHER EARTH, you
cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for
Earth's sake.

I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence
between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts;
therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just
graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary--the
curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment--objects
to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare
not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening,
and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning
hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for MOTHER
EARTH?

But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable
magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my
meetings were very successful, and that MOTHER EARTH is being received
with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.

After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the
handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised
that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police,
just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope
this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest
parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police
Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys
at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No
officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that
awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority
and law."

After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public
meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.

I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the
press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of
MOTHER EARTH, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care
and affection.

EMMA GOLDMAN.

[Illustration]



LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.

By EMILE JANVION.


AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should
occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most
effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin
at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated
attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.

Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be
considered as the natural consequence of the latter.

Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized,
narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction
which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power
of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of
the character.

Our instruction should be _integral_, _rational_, and _mixed_.

_Integral_--Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a
complete, free _ensemble_, equally progressive in all knowledge,
intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the
earliest age.

_Rational_--Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with
actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom
and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the
abolition of the fiction _God_, the eternal and absolute cause of
subjection.

_Mixed_--Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant,
fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to
the character of their manners a special earnestness.

To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship,
instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and
reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in
point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small
importance.

To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of
its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to
preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the _pros_
and _cons_ of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle,
that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.

That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and
firmly.

[Illustration]



THE ANTICHRIST.

    From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander
    Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New
    York.


I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it
everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very
beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos
which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye
once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the
sight--of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a
virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things,
he unites the good conscience to the _false_ mode of seeing,--he demands
that no _other_ mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has
made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and
"eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is
the most diffused, the most peculiarly _subterranean_ form of falsity
that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, _must_ needs be
false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most
fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held
in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as
theologist-influence extends, the _judgment of value_ is turned right
about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what
is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates,
affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."

                           *       *       *

Let us not underestimate this: _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are
already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of
war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue."
The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered:
the most precious discernments, however, are the _methods_. _All_
methods, _all_ presuppositions of our present-day science, have for
millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a
person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men--he passed for an
"enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a
scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire
pathos of mankind against us--their concept of that which truth _ought_
to be, which the service of truth _ought_ to be: every "thou shalt" has
been hitherto directed _against_ us. Our objects, our practices, our
quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode--all appeared to mankind as absolutely
unworthy and contemptible.--In the end one might, with some
reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste
which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a _picturesque_
effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to
operate strongly on their senses. Our _modesty_ was longest against the
taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of
God----.

                           *       *       *

The Christian concept of God--God as God of the sick, God as
cobweb-spinner, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of
God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low
water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to
the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and
its eternal _yea_! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to
the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world,"
for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will
to nothingness declared holy!

                           *       *       *

That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves
the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to
speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly
and decrepit product of _décadence_. There lies a curse upon them,
because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated
sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have
_created_ no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new
God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an
_ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the God-shaping force, of the _creator
spiritus_ in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This
hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in
which all _décadence_ instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul
have their sanction!

                           *       *       *

Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the
commencement of the Bible--the story of God's mortal terror of
_science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_
begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he
has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great
danger.--

The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection,
promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even
Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is
entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for
the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he
forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of God: man
did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not
even want to be an "animal"--God consequently created woman. And, in
fact, there was now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman
was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent,
Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in
the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_
also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the
tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old God was seized by a
mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had
created a rival, science makes _godlike_; it is at an end with priests
and Gods, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing
forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin,
the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou
shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror
God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one's
self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer:
away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to
thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and
the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in
pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all
_sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science!
Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful!
the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the
Gods,--what to do!--The old God contrives _war_, he separates the
peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another
(the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things,
a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emancipation
from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final
resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become
scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...

                           *       *       *

--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the
_entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great
danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But
science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one
must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in
order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made
unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One
makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with
this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole
"moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to
science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man
is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is
_not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is
not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to
need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt
and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation,"
and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any
psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_
in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And
_not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and
love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most
ignoble instincts! A _priest's_ attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A
vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural
consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be
brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by
"spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward,
punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of
perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has
been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human
self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of
making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility
of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.--

                           *       *       *

I _condemn_ Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most
terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his
mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has
had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The
Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has
made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a
baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still
dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To _do away with_
any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest
expediency, it lived by states of distress, it _created_ states of
distress in order to perpetuate _itself_ eternally.... The worm of sin
for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this
state of distress!-- ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To
breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation,
a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good
and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of
Christianity!--Parasitism as the _sole_ praxis of the Church; drinking
out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anæmic ideal of
holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality;
the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that
has ever existed,--against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness,
courage, intellect, _benevolence_ of soul, _against life itself_....

This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls,
wherever there are walls,--I have letters for making even the blind
see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic
depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is
sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, _mean_,--I call it the one
immortal blemish of mankind!



BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.

By PETER KROPOTKIN.


IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most
to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work
and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton
learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young
mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his
researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his
instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for
its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of
inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses
preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical
speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while helping his father--a
practical gardener--in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses
handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches--it rather favored
them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few
opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their
intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed
in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of
familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends
with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his
fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and
thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a
well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become
later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we
have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The
masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than
their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of
even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a
mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget
the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science,
they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a
telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable
of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a
vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to
invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of
manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say,
"must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them,
and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the
patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented
for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot
improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take
care of the progress of science and industry."

It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong
to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual
workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy
circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific
knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely
there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have
escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is
precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in
old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the
irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the
screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few,
in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry--and of
science as well, as I am about to prove--that all over the world we hear
complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education
which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in
Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general
dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific
engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will
see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose
task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost
the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the
great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he
invented very much. Manual workers--not men of science nor trained
engineers--have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and
all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the
last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the
worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can
a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing
anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines
grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for
life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest
celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?

"At the outset of modern industry, three generations of workers _have_
invented; now they cease to do so. As to the inventions of the
engineers, specially trained for devising machines, they are either
devoid of genius or not practical enough. Those "nearly to nothings," of
which Sir Frederick Bramwell spoke once at Bath, are missing in their
inventions--those nothings which can be learned in the workshop only,
and which permitted a Murdoch and the Soho workers to make a practical
engine of Watt's schemes. None but he who knows the machine--not in its
drawings and models only, but in its breathing and throbbings--who
unconsciously thinks of it while standing by it, can really improve it.
Smeaton and Newcomen surely were excellent engineers; but in their
engines a boy had to open the steam valve at each stroke of the piston;
and it was one of those boys who once managed to connect the valve with
the remainder of the machine, so as to make it open automatically, while
he ran away to play with other boys. But in the modern machinery there
is no room left for naïve improvements of that kind. Scientific
education on a wide scale has become necessary for further inventions,
and that education is refused to the workers. So that there is no issue
out of the difficulty unless scientific education and handicraft are
combined together--unless integration of knowledge takes the place of
the present divisions." Such is the real substance of the present
movement in favor of technical education. But, instead of bringing to
public consciousness the, perhaps, unconscious motives of the present
discontent, instead of widening the views of the discontented and
discussing the problem to its full extent, the mouth-pieces of the
movement do not mostly rise above the shopkeeper's view of the question.
Some of them indulge in jingo talk about crushing all foreign industries
out of competition, while the others see in technical education nothing
but a means of somewhat improving the flesh-machine of the factory and
of transferring a few workers into the upper class of trained engineers.

Such an ideal may satisfy them, but it cannot satisfy those who keep in
view the combined interests of science and industry, and consider both
as a means for raising humanity to a higher level. We maintain that in
the interests of both science and industry, as well as of society as a
whole, every human being, without distinction of birth, ought to receive
such an education as would enable him, or her, to combine a thorough
knowledge of science with a thorough knowledge of handicraft. We fully
recognize the necessity of specialization of knowledge, but we maintain
that specialization must follow general education, and that general
education must be given in science and handicraft alike. To the division
of society into brain-workers and manual workers we oppose the
combination of both kinds of activities; and instead of "technical
education," which means the maintenance of the present division between
brain work and manual work, we advocate the _éducation intégrale_, or
complete education, which means the disappearance of that pernicious
distinction. Plainly stated, the aims of the school under this system
ought to be the following: To give such an education that, on leaving
school at the age of eighteen or twenty, each boy and each girl should
be endowed with a thorough knowledge of science--such a knowledge as
might enable them to be useful workers in science--and, at the same
time, to give them a general knowledge of what constitutes the bases of
technical training, and such a skill in some special trade as would
enable each of them to take his or her place in the grand world of the
manual production of wealth. I know that many will find that aim too
large, or even impossible to attain, but I hope that if they have the
patience to read the following pages, they will see that we require
nothing beyond what can be easily attained. In fact, _it has been
attained_; and what has been done on a small scale could be done on a
wider scale, were it not for the economical and social causes which
prevent any serious reform from being accomplished in our miserably
organized society.

The experiment has been made at the Moscow Technical School for twenty
consecutive years with many hundreds of boys; and, according to the
testimonies of the most competent judges at the exhibitions of Brussels,
Philadelphia, Vienna and Paris, the experiment has been a success. The
Moscow school admits boys not older than fifteen, and it requires from
boys of that age nothing but a substantial knowledge of geometry and
algebra, together with the usual knowledge of their mother tongue;
younger pupils are received in the preparatory classes. The school is
divided into two sections--the mechanical and the chemical; but as I
personally know better the former, and as it is also the more important
with reference to the question before us, so I shall limit my remarks to
the education given in the mechanical section. After a five or six
years' stay at the school, the students leave it with a thorough
knowledge of higher mathematics, physics, mechanics, and connected
sciences--so thorough, indeed, that it is not second to that acquired in
the best mathematical faculties of the most eminent European
universities. When myself a student of the mathematical faculty of the
St. Petersburg University, I had the opportunity of comparing the
knowledge of the students at the Moscow Technical School with our own. I
saw the courses of higher geometry some of them had compiled for the use
of their comrades; I admired the facility with which they applied the
integral calculus to dynamical problems, and I came to the conclusion
that while we, University students, had more knowledge of a general
character, they, the students of the Technical School, were much more
advanced in higher geometry, and especially in the applications of
higher mathematics to the most intricate problems of dynamics, the
theories of heat and elasticity. But while we, the students of the
University, hardly knew the use of our hands, the students of the
Technical School fabricated _with their own hands_, and without the help
of professional workmen, fine steam-engines, from the heavy boiler to
the last finely turned screw, agricultural machinery, and scientific
apparatus--all for the trade--and they received the highest awards for
the work of their hands at the international exhibitions. They were
scientifically educated skilled workers--workers with university
education--highly appreciated even by the Russian manufacturers who so
much distrust science.

Now, the methods by which these wonderful results were achieved were
these: In science, learning from memory was not in honor, while
independent research was favored by all means. Science was taught hand
in hand with its applications, and what was learned in the schoolroom
was applied in the workshop. Great attention was paid to the highest
abstractions of geometry as a means for developing imagination and
research. As to the teaching of handicraft, the methods were quite
different from those which proved a failure at the Cornell University,
and differed, in fact, from those used in most technical schools. The
student was not sent to a workshop to learn some special handicraft and
to earn his existence as soon as possible, but the teaching of technical
skill was prosecuted--according to a scheme elaborated by the founder of
the school, M. Dellavos, and now applied also at Chicago and Boston--in
the same systematical way as laboratory work is taught in the
universities. It is evident that drawing was considered as the first
step in technical education. Then the student was brought, first, to the
carpenter's workshop, or rather laboratory, and there he was thoroughly
taught to execute all kinds of carpentry and joinery. No efforts were
spared in order to bring the pupil to a certain perfection in that
branch--the real basis of all trades. Later on, he was transferred to
the turner's workshop, where he was taught to make in wood the patterns
of those things which he would have to make in metal in the following
workshops. The foundry followed, and there he was taught to cast those
parts of machines which he had prepared in wood; and it was only after
he had gone through the first three stages that he was admitted to the
smith's and engineering workshops. As for the perfection of the
mechanical work of the students I cannot do better than refer to the
reports of the juries at the above-named exhibitions.

In America the same system has been introduced, in its technical part,
first, in the Chicago Manual Training School, and later on in the Boston
Technical School--the best, I am told, of the sort; and in this
country, or rather in Scotland, I found the system applied with full
success, for some years, under the direction of Dr. Ogilvie at Gordon's
College in Aberdeen. It is the Moscow or Chicago system on a limited
scale. While receiving substantial scientific education, the pupils are
also trained in the workshops--but not for one special trade, as it
unhappily too often is the case. They pass through the carpenter's
workshop, the casting in metals, and the engineering workshop; and in
each of these they learn the foundations of each of the three trades
sufficiently well for supplying the school itself with a number of
useful things. Besides, as far as I could ascertain from what I saw in
the geographical and physical classes, as also in the chemical
laboratory, the system of "through the hand to the brain," and _vice
versa_, is in full swing, and it is attended with the best success. The
boys _work_ with the physical instruments, and they study geography in
the field, instruments in hands, as well as in the class-room. Some of
their surveys filled my heart, as an old geographer, with joy. It is
evident that the Gordon's College industrial department is not a mere
copy of any foreign school; on the contrary, I cannot help thinking that
if Aberdeen has made that excellent move towards combining science with
handicraft, the move was a natural outcome of what has been practised
long since, on a smaller scale, in the Aberdeen daily schools.

The Moscow Technical School surely is not an ideal school.[1] It totally
neglects the humanitarian education of the young men. But we must
recognize that the Moscow experiment--not to speak of hundreds of other
partial experiments--has perfectly well proved the possibility of
combining a scientific education of a very high standard with the
education which is necessary for becoming an excellent skilled laborer.
It has proved, moreover, that the best means for producing really good
skilled laborers is to seize the bull by the horns, and to grasp the
educational problem in its great features, instead of trying to give
some special skill in some handicraft, together with a few scraps of
knowledge in a certain branch of some science. And it has shown also
what can be obtained, without over-pressure, if a rational economy of
the scholar's time is always kept in view, and theory goes hand in hand
with practice. Viewed in this light, the Moscow results do not seem
extraordinary at all, and still better results may be expected if the
same principles are applied from the earliest years of education. Waste
of time is the leading feature of our present education. Not only are we
taught a mass of rubbish, but what is not rubbish is taught so as to
make us waste over it as much time as possible. Our present methods of
teaching originate from a time when the accomplishments required from an
educated person were extremely limited; and they have been maintained,
notwithstanding the immense increase of knowledge which must be conveyed
to the scholar's mind since science has so much widened its former
limits. Hence the over-pressure in schools, and hence, also, the urgent
necessity of totally revising both the subjects and the methods of
teaching, according to the new wants and to the examples already given
here and there, by separate schools and separate teachers.

It is evident that the years of childhood ought not to be spent so
uselessly as they are now. German teachers have shown how the very plays
of children can be made instrumental in conveying to the childish mind
some concrete knowledge in both geometry and mathematics. The children
who have made the squares of the theorem of Pythagoras out of pieces of
colored cardboard, will not look at the theorem, when it comes in
geometry, as on a mere instrument of torture devised by the teachers;
and the less so if they apply it as the carpenters do. Complicated
problems of arithmetic, which so much harassed us in our boyhood, are
easily solved by children seven and eight years old if they are put in
the shape of interesting puzzles. And if the _Kindergarten_--German
teachers often make of it a kind of barrack in which each movement of
the child is regulated beforehand--has often become a small prison for
the little ones, the idea which presided at its foundation is
nevertheless true. In fact, it is almost impossible to imagine, without
having tried it, how many sound notions of nature, habits of
classification, and taste for natural sciences can be conveyed to the
children's minds; and, if a series of concentric courses adapted to the
various phases of development of the human being were generally accepted
in education, the first series in all sciences, save sociology, could be
taught before the age of ten or twelve, so as to give a general idea of
the universe, the earth and its inhabitants, the chief physical,
chemical, zoological, and botanical phenomena, leaving the discovery of
the _laws_ of those phenomena to the next series of deeper and more
specialised studies. On the other side, we all know how children like to
make toys themselves, how they gladly imitate the work of full-grown
people if they see them at work in the workshop or the building-yard.
But the parents either stupidly paralyze that passion, or do not know
how to utilize it. Most of them despise manual work and prefer sending
their children to the study of Roman history, or of Franklin's teachings
about saving money, to seeing them at a work which is good for the
"lower classes only." They thus do their best to render subsequent
learning the more difficult.

    *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *       *

The so-called division of labor has grown under a system which condemned
the masses to toil all the day long, and all the life long, at the same
wearisome kind of labor. But if we take into account how few are the
real producers of wealth in our present society, and how squandered is
their labor, we must recognize that Franklin was right in saying that to
work five hours a day would generally do for supplying each member of a
civilized nation with the comfort now accessible for the few only,
provided everybody took his due share in production. But we have made
some progress since Franklin's times. More than one-half of the working
day would thus remain to every one for the pursuit of art, science, or
any hobby he might prefer; and his work in those fields would be the
more profitable if he spent the other half of the day in productive
work--if art and science were followed from mere inclination, not for
mercantile purposes. Moreover, a community organized on the principles
of all being workers would be rich enough to conclude that every man and
woman, after having reached a certain age--say of forty or more--ought
to be relieved from the moral obligation of taking a direct part in the
performance of the necessary manual work, so as to be able entirely to
devote himself or herself to whatever he or she chooses in the domain of
art, or science, or any kind of work. Free pursuit in new branches of
art and knowledge, free creation, and free development thus might be
fully guaranteed. And such a community would not know misery amidst
wealth. It would not know the duality of conscience which permeates our
life and stifles every noble effort. It would freely take its flight
towards the highest regions of progress compatible with human nature.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] What this school is now, I don't know. In the last years of
Alexander II.'s reign it was wrecked, like so many other good
institutions of the early part of his reign.

[Illustration]



MOTHERHOOD AND MARRIAGE

By HENRIETTE FUERTH.

(_Translated from the German for_ MOTHER EARTH by ANNY MALI HICKS.)


    Knowledge becomes understanding only when its scope includes the
    origin, the development and the conclusion of things.--Bachofen,
    "Right to Motherhood."

"THE future will endeavor to extend its power through its own ideas of
facts and appearances, however unfamiliar these may seem, rather than to
be influenced by a past and submerged civilization with a spirit far
removed from its own."

There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on
motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are
few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside
causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and
sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and
marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound
together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality
and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a
religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds
the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one
based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this
standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially
justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In
consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit
of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in
judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and
enlightened era,--ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the
religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and
as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend
the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into
all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a
godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias,
the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it
also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its
accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the
mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the
permanent form of sex relation.

But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived
and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm
and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how
differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done
this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so,
however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to
succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion.

But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and
a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a
wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And
it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun
of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it
is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap
begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown
earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers
and autumn fruits.

And this same brown, misty earth, what a different aspect shall she
present to her children, for whom conditions are so changed, with truer
sex relations, encompassing the ethical and spiritual needs of the free
individual. Then only will it be _possible_ to base these needs and
demands on the surrounding world of realities filled with material and
spiritual phenomena.

But first it must be proven that the present form of marriage and its
effect on motherhood is not necessarily permanent, but, like all else,
subject to natural development and change. What indeed is the much
talked of marriage bond of to-day,--which is considered the cornerstone
of both Church and State? Is it something towards which the steps of
development in nature and history all go? No seriously minded person
could in truth make such a statement. In the plant and animal kingdoms,
whose species evoke as do those of the human race, we find no examples
of sex relations to which the term marriage would apply. And this is
also true of the historical development of man and social conditions. It
is not marriage but motherhood which has given permanence to sex
relations wherever they appear. Motherhood standing at the source of
life with its creative and ever recreative force.


     "Goddesses enthroned in solitude,
     Surrounded not by time or place,
     These are the mothers!
     About them formed and formless,
     Eternal stability and endless change
     In images of all created life."


Thus does Goethe describe the depths of being which enclose the eternal
mystery of motherhood, leading not into known, but unknown paths.

And truly, how far have we strayed from the path of true and natural
feeling when we seek to justify motherhood from the standpoint of
expediency and custom! It is something in itself holy, and is its own
reason for being. I ask all mothers, all real mothers, when their child
comes to them, with eyes brimming with childlike love and affection,
against which all else counts for naught, I ask them do they think
whether that child is legitimate or what is called an illegitimate
child? No! the joy of motherhood completely fills the heart, there is no
room for other feelings, and truly the answer comes, Nature does not
discriminate between the legitimate and illegitimate mothers, any more
than she labels the children brought into the world as such. And this
alone is the foundation to which we must hold fast. Nature acknowledges
motherhood only, wisely providing for its needs. Not so marriage, which
is a form men have given their sex relations, and established from the
standpoint of social and economic exigencies and considerations, it is
consequently subject to limitations and changes. Motherhood is an
eternal force lying at the root of life, not subjected to time or
change.

[Illustration]



OBJECT LESSON FOR ADVOCATES OF GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL.

By ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M.


THE best literary efforts possible have been exhausted in a vain effort
to convey to those fortunately not in San Francisco on the morning of
April 18, 1906, what terrible things resulted from the earthquake and
the fire which left that city a complete ruin; likewise has the kodak
and the camera--though busy at work while the flames roared around the
operator driving him, from one vantage point to another, before its
resistless power--failed to depict in its entirety the horrors, the
tragedies that followed in the wake of the crumbling walls, the
crackling flames that licked up alike palatial mansions and the squalid
homes of the poor, not content to feast upon the products of the forests
of California and the Eastern States alone, but, with the strategy of a
warrior, surrounded and penned within four walls hundreds of human
beings, stalwart men, delicate women, and babes at the breast, who were
then slowly roasted to death upon the funeral pyre of San Francisco.

Upon the minds and hearts of the survivors, alone, who walked between
the walls of fire those days, who escaped the frightful holocaust but by
a miracle while loved ones perished before their eyes, are written, are
recorded, too complete, too vivid, those terrible scenes, and fain would
they efface from their mind's negative those pictures of horrors which
now turn their dreams of the night into such a frightful nightmare that
they dread to close their eyes in slumber.

While the horrors of the earthquake and fire were so terrible, yet there
was something far worse, for the earthquake and fire were beyond human
control, but the still worse acts of the soldiers into whose hands the
control of the city were delegated could have been restrained by the
authorities had they so chosen; now that the world is being made aware
of the fact that the soldiers ruthlessly shot down men and women--yes,
women as well as men; in one case a woman was shot down by a soldier
because she dared to light a match to see where to lay her little sick
baby down--and that without any justification other than the order of
their superiors who likewise were so ordered by the authorities--a
natural result of governmental control--hence they are doing all they
can to controvert the facts regarding the brutal murders and worse of
the soldiers. In one case they went so far as to threaten the
confiscation of a printery if the editor did not call in and suppress an
issue in which was printed an article by a marine telling of seeing the
soldiers shoot down the inmates of a hotel so surrounded by fire it
seemed they else must be burned up--the excuse the soldiers gave for
shooting them--and so the soldiers shot them down to save (?) them. The
marine in this article did not tell how many of those thus shot down by
the soldiers were only wounded and writhed in agony on the increasing
heated floor until the fiery fiend ended their misery from the gun shot
wounds.

Brevity precludes going into details of what is already a matter of
history; of the soldiers shooting the inmates of an improvised hospital
that were unable to be moved when the fire surrounded the building; of
the soldiers shooting an old man for refusing to work, though so infirm
with age that he had to walk with a cane; of the shooting of a Red Cross
man while in his auto on a deed of mercy bent; of the man shot in the
back for talking back to a soldier, and that after he had turned away
from the drunken brute; of the shooting of a man for having whisky in
his possession and refusing to give it up--that the soldiers had plenty
is in evidence from the fact that a large per cent. were so drunk that
they could walk with but difficulty--of their insulting women, and even
far worse than mere insult also; of shooting persons for looting while
they themselves did the same; all this and much more and worse are known
to be true, and, in the language of another writer on this same subject,
"Strive as they may the authorities will never be able to whitewash the
military abominations inflicted upon San Francisco and vicinity." In
this regard the same writer says most truly:


     "The rulers of the State furnished us an example of 'anarchy,'
     according to their own definition of the term."


In times like these it brings out what is in the man, and these murders
and lesser brutalities of the soldiers while policing San Francisco tell
us that the soldier is but an infuriated thug, ready to do murder and
rapine at the first opportunity; the civic authorities of Oakland
recognized this as a fact when they finally allowed the reopening of the
saloons, for the barkeepers were specially interdicted from selling or
giving liquor to soldiers; they were already loaded too heavy with
murderous instincts and propensities and it would not do to run the risk
of touching off that magazine of murder with the match of whisky.

These brutal butcheries and rapine by the soldiers while thus in control
of San Francisco are the legitimate fruits of governmental control, and
it would be well for those who are so strenuously advocating
militarism--the true name for Governmental Control--to bear these things
in mind, for such horrors would be the daily menu under such system, for
there is lots of the savage in the most of us and it needs but to put a
gun in the hands of some and decorate them with brass buttons with U. S.
inscribed thereon to bring to the surface--like a plaster on a boil--all
the native savagery there is in the man; personally, I would prefer to
run my chances among the Head Hunters on the Isle of Borneo than among
uniformed thugs protected and encouraged by martial law to carry out
their natural murderous propensities as was the case in San Francisco,
following the earthquake on the morning of April 18, 1906.



THE GENIUS OF WAR

By JOHN FRANCIS VALTER.


     _I am the Genius of War.
     My standard's the Skull and the Bones.
     I raise my voice--I stamp my foot,
     And legions rise out of the ground._

     _Armies advance and retreat,
     Poisoned, diseased and maimed:
     All that is left is a grewsome aspect
     To the moonlight, the ghouls and Me._

     _All this to a laudable end:--
     The general has his star;
     Shylock his four per cent;
     The contractor's wife a costly gem
     To enhance her vulgar charms;
     The mother a harvest of tears;
     The wife a broken heart;
     The unborn babe a prenatal curse;
     While I have my surfeit of blood_.


[Illustration]



DIGNITY SPEAKS.


"Hark ye, millions, and tremble! I am more powerful than the Law.
Together with my sister, Respectability, I reach far beyond the boundary
of the authority of governments. I am supreme.

Behold the miserable criminal, desperately resisting the brutal
treatment of the police officer. I shall force him to his knees. I shall
subdue him. Enthroned upon the seat of Justice, robed in the solemn
black of my sacred office, I shall break the rebel's spirit.

'Tis in this that the highest refinement of tyranny manifests itself--it
enters into the very innermost depths of the human mind and there it
ravages, till its foul breath has withered the last resistance of the
unfortunate soul, and the consciousness of self is destroyed; this
accomplished, the man himself is dead.

The Law! See how the timid masses cower at the mere mention of my name.
See them tremble as I enter the arena of the Legislature.

The Dignity of the Law!

The Majesty of the Law!

It must forever remain my great secret that the Law is the Cerberus that
guards the portals of our earthly paradise against the common herd--we
must not be disturbed in our orgies.

The Law! 'Tis our beastly greediness, our bloodthirsty rapacity
expressed in statutes. 'Tis the insatiety of the human beasts of prey
immortalized in jurisprudence, and I, Dignity, sanctify all that.

As a captain of industry, as a prince of commerce, or as a king of
finance, I speak with solemn face of the heavy responsibilities that
rest upon those to whose care God, in his infinite wisdom, has entrusted
the wealth of the universe; I speak with zeal of the sacred duty of the
rich to lend a helping hand to our less fortunate brothers; I never tire
to emphasize the necessity of wise stewardship.

In the meantime, I exploit the "poor brothers" and I appropriate the
lion's share of the fruit of his labor; he is made to pay me an usurious
profit on my investments.

I fill my shops and factories with men, women and children, and I
transmute the base metal of their bones into the noble coin of the
realm; my coffers grow fat, my slaves grow lean, but I acquire the
reputation of a public benefactor, a public-spirited citizen, a noble
humanitarian.

As military commander, as a great general, I eulogize the heroism and
self-sacrifice of my blind slaves and hirelings that have returned from
a successful campaign against a weaker nation. I speak of the great
benefit that the success of our arms will confer upon the people, I
emphasize its stimulating effect upon the progress of our country and
upon our civilization.

Yet while my anointed lips pour forth these solemn lies, my mind travels
over the bloody fields of carnage; I behold the thousands of the slain,
the mutilated bodies, the torn limbs, the streams of human blood....

I stand in the pulpit and call the faithful to prayer. I thunder eternal
curses upon the heads of the unbelievers; I threaten the people with the
torments of hell and I try to bribe them by the promise of heaven.
Believe, live and be saved, I cry. Or else you will die and be damned!

For I am the visible representative on earth of those invisible,
extra-mundane spirits whom man, in his fear and ignorance, created to
his own continued mental enslavement.

Terrified, sin lies prostrate at my feet. It does not know that a sick
conscience is a characteristic trait of all slaves. It is the universal
self-accuser. Were the people--individually and collectively--to sin on
a grand scale, were they to refuse to be the puppets of the man-made
idols--were that to happen, masters and slaves would cease to be.

The tyrants of the world are under great obligations to me. They must
not forget this. For if they should, I will unfold my solemn black robe,
I will smooth the hypocritical lines on my face--then shall the world
behold all the filth and corruption that I, Dignity, hide."

[Illustration]



PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.

By THEODORE SCHROEDER.

(_Continuation._)


HERE is paternal solicitude with a vengeance in a law I requote from
Wordsworth Donisthorpe:

"They shall have bows and arrows, and use the same of Sundays and
holidays; and leave all playing at tennis or foot-ball and other games
called quoits, dice, casting of stone, kailes, and other such importune
games. Forasmuch as labourers and grooms keep greyhounds and other dogs,
and on the holidays when good Christians be at church hearing divine
service, they go hunting in parks, warrens, and connigries, it is
ordained that no manner of layman which hath not lands to the value of
forty shillings a year, shall from henceforth keep any greyhound or
other dog to hunt, nor shall he use ferrets, nets, heys, harepipes nor
cords, nor any engines for to take or destroy deer, hares, nor conies,
nor other _gentlemen's game_, under pain of twelve months imprisonment.

"For the great dearth that is in many places of the realm of poultry, it
is ordained that the price of a young capon shall not pass threepence,
and of an old fourpence, of a hen twopence, of a pullet a penny, of a
goose fourpence.

"Esquires and gentlemen under the estate of a knight shall not wear
cloth of a higher price than four and a half marks, they shall wear no
cloth of gold nor silk nor silver, nor no manner of clothing
embroidered, ring button nor brooch of gold nor of silver, nor nothing
of stone nor no manner of fur; and their wives and daughters shall be of
the same condition as to their vesture and apparel, without any
turning-up or purfle or apparel of gold, silver nor of stone.

"Because that servants and labourers will not nor by long season would,
serve and labour without outrageous and excessive hire, and much more
than hath been given to such servants and labourers in any time past, so
that for scarcity of the said servants and labourers the husbands and
land-tenants may not pay their rent nor live upon their lands, to the
great damage and loss as well of the Lords as of the Commons, it is
accorded and assented that the bailiff for husbandry shall take by the
years 13s. 3d. and his clothing once by the year at most; the master
hind 10s., the carter 10s., the shepherd 10s., the oxherd 6s. 8d., the
swineherd 6s., a woman labourer 6s., a dey 6s., a driver of the plough
7s. at the most, and every other labourer and servant according to his
degree; and less in the country where less was wont to be given, without
clothing, courtesy, or other reward by covenant. If any give or take by
covenant more than is above specified, at the first that they shall be
thereof attained, as well the givers as the takers, shall pay the value
of the excess so taken, and at the second time of their attainer the
double value of such excess, and at the third time the treble value of
such excess, and if the taker so attained have nothing whereof to pay
the said excess, he shall have forty days imprisonment."

Our puritan fathers had the same paternal solicitude as all other
tyrants. They made it a crime to disregard the Sabbath, or to deny
Scripture, or the truth of Christianity or of the Trinity. In the
records of the colony for September 1639 it is written: "For as much as
it is evident unto this court that the common custom of drinking one to
another, is a mere useless ceremony, and draweth on that abominable
practice of drinking healths, and is also an occasion of much waste of
the good creatures, and of many other sin," etc. Then it declares that
such is a reproach to a Christian commonwealth, "wherein the least evils
are not to be tolerated."

In the instructions of the Massachusetts Company to Endicott and his
Council, the trade in tobacco is only allowed to the "old planters," "if
they conceive that they cannot otherwise provide for their livelihood."
It is left to the discretion of Endicott and his Council "to give way
for the present to their planting of it, in such manner and with such
restrictions" as they may think fitting. "But," it is added, "we
absolutely forbid the sale of it or the use of it by any of our own
particular (private) men's servants, unless upon urgent occasion, for
the benefit of health, and taken privately." In the Records of the
Colony of Massachusetts for September 3, 1634, "it is ordered that
victuallers or keepers of an ordinary shall not suffer any tobacco to be
taken into their houses, under penalty of 5s. for every offence to be
paid by the victualler, and 12d. by the party that takes it." "Further
it is ordered that no person shall take tobacco publicly under the
penalty of 2s. 6d., nor privately in his own house or in the house of
another before strangers, and that two or more shall not take it
together anywhere, under the aforesaid penalty for every offence."

The laws which our Colonial fathers enacted against "excess and bravery
in apparel" are fitted to excite a smile. But there is something more
than ludicrous in the aspect of grave lawmakers passing judgment on all
the minutiæ of dress, and finding matter of offence in an extra "slash,"
or a needless garniture of "lace." Against this last-named article the
zeal of our Puritan fathers seems to have been especially stirred up. In
1634 it was ordered "that no person, either man or woman, shall
hereafter make or buy any apparel, either woolen, silk, or linen with
any lace on it, silver, gold, silk, or thread, under the penalty of
forfeiture of such clothes." In 1636 it was enacted "that no person,
after one month, shall make or sell any bone-lace or other lace, to be
worn upon any garment or linen, upon pain of 5s. the yard for every yard
of such lace so made, or sold, or set on; neither shall any tailor set
any lace upon any garment, upon pain of 10s. for every
offence,--provided that binding or small edging laces may be used upon
garments or linen." Again, three years later, a new edict was launched
at this obnoxious material, because "there is much complaint of the
excessive wearing of lace and other superfluities, tending to little use
or benefit, but to the nourishing of pride and the exhausting of men's
estates, and also of evil example to others." The law of 1634 was indeed
repealed in 1644; but in 1651 the Court, to their great grief, are
compelled to try their hand at the work again, though frankly confessing
the impotence of all previous legislation, and evidently awakening to a
sense of the inherent difficulties of the subject. "We acknowledge it,"
say they, "to be a matter of much difficulty, in regard of the blindness
of men's minds and the stubbornness of their wills, to set down exact
rules to confine all sorts of persons"; and so, leaving the wealthier
class to their own conscience of fancy, they undertake to prescribe for
"people of mean condition." It was therefore ordered (in 1651) that no
one whose estate is not of the value of £200 "shall wear any gold or
silver lace, or gold or silver buttons, or any bone-lace above 2s. per
yard or silk hoods or scarfs"; and moreover, the selectmen of the town
are required to fine anybody whom "they shall judge to exceed their rank
and ability in the costliness or fashion of their apparel, in any
respect"! And finally, a law passed in 1662 forbids "children and
servants" to wear any apparel "exceeding the quality and condition of
their persons or estate," "the grand jury and country court of the
shire" being judges of the offence.

One provision of the law of 1634 against "new and immodest fashions" is
too remarkable to be omitted. It reads as follows: "Moreover, it is
agreed, if any man shall judge the wearing of any the forenamed
particulars, new fashions, or long hair, or anything of the like nature,
to be uncomely or prejudicial to the common good, and the party
offending reform not the same, upon notice given him, that then the next
Assistant, being informed thereof, shall have power to bind the party so
offending to answer it at the next Court, if the case so requires;
provided, and it is the meaning of the Court, that men and women shall
have liberty to wear out such apparel as they are now provided of
(except the immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great
veils, long wings, etc.)." What intolerable tyranny of private
surveillance is indicated in the phrase, "what any man shall judge to be
uncomely"!

In the second letter of instructions (dated June, 1629) to Endicott and
his Council, they are exhorted to prevent the sale of "strong waters" to
the Indians, and to punish any of their own people who shall become
drunk in the use of them. In the preamble to a law enacted in 1646, one
is led to expect an enforcement of the modern principles of abstinence
and prohibition; since, after declaring that "drunkenness is a vice to
be abhorred of all nations, especially of those which hold out and
profess the Gospel of Christ Jesus," it goes on to assert that "any
strict laws against the sin will not prevail unless the cause be taken
away." But it would seem that "the cause," in the eyes of our Puritan
lawmakers, was an indiscriminate sale of spirituous drinks; for the law
chiefly enacts that none but "vintners" shall have permission to retail
wine and "strong water." It is also permitted to constables to search
any tavern, or even any private house, "suspected to sell wine contrary
to this order." Moreover, no person is "to drink or tipple at
unseasonable times in houses of entertainment,"--the "unseasonable" time
being declared to be after nine in the evening.

But these laws were of small avail, for, in 1648, the Court is grieved
to confess: "It is found by experience that a great quantity of wine is
spent, and much thereof abused to excess of drinking and unto
drunkenness itself, notwithstanding all the wholesome laws provided and
published for the preventing thereof." It therefore orders, that those
who are authorized to sell wine and beer shall not harbor a drunkard in
their houses, but shall forthwith give him up to be dealt with by the
proper officer, under penalty of five pounds for disobedience.

In 1636 one "Peter Bussaker was censured for drunkenness to be whipped
and to have twenty stripes sharply inflicted, and fined £5 for slighting
the magistrates," etc. In March, 1634, it was ordered, "that Robert
Coles, for drunkenness by him committed at Roxbury, shall be
disfranchised, wear about his neck and so to hangg upon his outward
garment a D made of red cloth and set upon white; to continue this for a
year, and not to leave it off at any time when he comes amongst company,
under penalty of 40s. for the first offence and £5 for the second." What
was the efficacy of the whipping or the "scarlet letter," we are not
informed.

Of course, people capable of such legislation must frame fantastic
definitions of Liberty. Here is an old one whose sentiments have been
often parroted by unthinking humans of modern times. It reads: "True
Liberty consists in a freedom of doing and receiving good under the
protection of a government solicitous for the people's good." Such has
always been the tyrant's conception of freedom, and, strange to say,
finds many endorsements even to this day.

It has recently been solemnly announced from the judicial bench that the
only liberty an American has is the liberty to do the right thing, of
course according to other people's conception of right. That is
precisely the kind of tyranny or liberty that was enjoyed by the victims
of the paternalistic laws above described.

Persons afflicted with newspaper intelligence express their conception
that the individual has no rights that government may not invade, by
that hollow phrase, "Liberty under the Law." Liberty under the law is
what the government-ridden peasants of Russia enjoy. Liberty under the
law was the pleasure of those who expired with indescribable agony on
the rack and amid the flames. Liberty under the law was meted out to the
millions of victims of the witchcraft delusion. Liberty under the law
was also the liberty of our Southern chattel slaves before as well as
after the war. Liberty under the law is the same old idea of liberty
which every tyrant has ever advanced. As for myself, I shouldn't object
to a little liberty in spite of the law, when that does not conform to
the rule of liberty as laid down by Herbert Spencer in these words:
"Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes
not the equal freedom of any other man."



AIM AND TACTICS OF THE TRADE-UNION MOVEMENT.

By MAX BAGINSKI.


TRADE unionism represents to the working man the most natural form of
association with his fellow-brother. This medium became a necessity to
him when he was confronted by modern industrialism and the power of
capitalism. It dawned on him that the individual producer had not a
shadow of a chance with the owner of the means of production, who,
together with the economic power, enjoyed the protection of the State
with its various weapons of warfare and coercion. In the face of such a
giant master all the appeals of the workingman to the love of justice
and common humanity went up into smoke.

The beginning of modern industry found the producer in abject slavery
and without the understanding of an organized form of resistance.
Exploitation reigned supreme, ever seeking to sap the last drop of
strength of its victims. No mercy for the common man, nor any
consideration shown for his life, his health, growth and development.
Capitalism's only aim was the accumulation of profits, of wealth and
power, and to this moloch everything else was ruthlessly sacrificed.

This spirit of accumulation did not admit of the right of the masses to
think, feel, or demand; it merely considered them a class of coolies,
specially created, as it were, for their masters' use.

This notion is still in vogue to-day, and if the conditions of the
workers at this moment are somewhat better, somewhat more endurable, it
is not thanks to the milk of human kindness of the money power.
Whatsoever the workingmen have achieved in the way of better human
conditions,--a higher standard of living, or a partial recognition of
their rights,--they have wrenched from their enemies through a hard and
bitter struggle that required great endurance, tremendous courage and
many sacrifices.

The tendency to treat the people as a herd of sheep the purpose of which
is to serve as food for parasites is still very strong; but this
tendency no longer goes unchallenged; it is being met with tremendous
opposition; increased social knowledge and revolutionary ideas have
taught the workingmen to unite their efforts against those who have been
comfortably seated on their backs for centuries past.

The first unskilled attempt on the part of the people to gain a clear
conception of their position brought out blind hatred against the
technical methods of exploitation instead of hatred against the latter.

In England, for instance, the workingmen considered machinery their
deadly foe, to be gotten rid of by all means. The simple axiom that
machinery, factories, mines, land, together with every other means of
production, if only in the hands of the entire community, would serve
for the comfort and happiness of all, instead of being a curse, was a
book of seven seals for the people in those days. And even at this late
hour this simple truth is entertained by a comparative few, though more
than one decade of socialistic and anarchistic enlightenment has passed.

The first trade-unionistic attempts have met with the same ferocious
persecution that Anarchism is being met with to-day. Even as to-day
capital avails itself of the strongest weapons of government in its
attack upon labor. The authorities were not slow in passing laws against
trade unionism and every effort for organization was at that time
considered high treason, organizers and all those who participated in
strikes were considered aides and abettors of crime and conspiracy,
punishable with long years of imprisonment and, in many cases, even with
death.

At the behest of Money, the State sent human bloodhounds on the trail of
the man who in any way was suspected in participating in the trade-union
movement. The most villainous and brutal methods were employed to
counteract the growth and success of labor organizations. The powers
that be recognized the great force that is contained in organized labor
as the means of the regeneration of society much quicker than the
workingmen themselves. They felt this force hanging like a Damocles
sword over their heads, which danger made them dread the future, and
nothing was left undone to nip this force in the bud.

The fundamental principle of trade unionism is of a revolutionary
character and, as such, it never was and never can be a mere palliative
for the adjustment of Labor to Capital. Hence, it must aim at the social
and economic reconstruction of society.

Many labor leaders in this country, who consider their duty performed
when they sit themselves at the table of wealth and authority, trying to
bring about peace and harmony between Capital and Labor, might greatly
profit by the history of trade-unionism and the various economic
struggles it has fought.

Only ignorance can account for the birth of such superficial stuff on
the labor question as the book of John Mitchell that has been launched
upon the market through loud and vulgar advertisement. Nothing could
have disproved the fitness of Mr. Mitchell for a labor leader so
drastically as this book.

As already stated, the violent attempt to kill trade unionism or its
organizations have proven futile. The swelling tide of the labor
movement could not be stopped. The social and economic problem brought
to light by modern industry demanded a hearing, produced various
theories and an extensive literature on the subject--a literature that
spoke with a tongue of fire of the awful existence of the oppressed
millions, their trials, their tribulations, the uncertainty, the dangers
surrounding them; it spoke of the terrible results of their conditions,
of the lives crippled, of the hopes marred; a literature that demanded
to know why it is that those who toil are condemned to want and poverty,
while those who never produced were living in affluence and
extravagance.

Well-meaning people have even attempted to prove that Capital and Labor
are twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they
ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance
against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful
way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital,
and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to
her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious child
into submission.

Along with the forcible subjection of organized labor, the minds of the
people were confused and blurred by the sugar-coated promises of
politicians who assured them that the trade unions ought to be organized
by the law, and that all labor quarrels ought to be settled by political
and legal means. Indeed, legislatures even discussed a few
labor-protective laws that either never saw the light of day, or, if
really enacted, were set aside or overridden by the possessing class as
an obstacle to profit-making.

Every government, no matter what political basis it rests upon, acts in
unison with wealth, and therefore it never passed any legislation in
behalf of the producing element of the country that would seriously
benefit the great bulk of the people or in any way aim at any change of
wage-slaving or economic subjugation.

Every step of improvement the workingmen have made is due solely to
their own economic efforts and not to any legal or political aid ever
given them, and through their own endeavors only can ever come the
reconstruction of the economic and social conditions of society. Just as
little as the workingmen can expect from legislative methods can they
gain from trade-unionistic efforts that attempt to better economic
conditions along the basic lines of the present industrial system.

The cardinal fault of the trade-union movement of this country lies in
the fact that its hopes and ideals rest upon the present social status;
these ideals ever rotate in the same circle and, therefore, cannot bear
intellectual and material fruit. Condemned to pasture in the lean
meadows of capitalistic economy, trade-unionism drags on a miserable
existence, satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the heavily laden
tables of their lordly masters.

True social science has amply proved the futility of a reconciliation
between the two opposing forces; the existence of the one force
representing possession, wealth and power inevitably has a paralyzing
effect upon its opposing force--Labor.

Trade-unionistic tactics of to-day unfortunately still travel the path
marked out for Labor by the powers that be, while the majority of the
labor leaders waste the time paid for by their organizations in
listening to or discussing with capitalists sweet nothings in the form
of arbitration or reconciliation, and are apparently unaware of the
fundamental difference between the body they represent and the powers
they bow to. And thus it happens that labor organizations are being
brutally attacked, that the militia and soldiers are maiming their
brothers in the various strike regions while the leaders are being dined
and wined. The American Federation of Labor is lobbying in Washington,
begging for legal protection, and in return venal Justice sends
Winchester rifles and drunken militiamen into the disturbed labor
districts. Recently the American Federation of Labor made an alleged
radical step in deciding to put up labor candidates for Congress--an old
and threadbare political move--thereby sacrificing whatever honest men
and clear heads they may have in their ranks. Such tactics are not worth
a single drop of sweat of the workingmen, since they are not only
contradictory to the basic principles of trade unionism, but even
useless and impractical.

Pity for and indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the
spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as
often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. Or is it
not laughable, if it were not so deadly serious, that the producers
publicly discuss for months in advance where and when they might strike,
and therewith give the enemy a chance to prepare his means of combat.
For months the papers of the money power bring long interviews with
labor leaders, giving detailed descriptions of the ways and means of the
proposed strikes, or the results of negotiations with this or that mine
magnate. The more often these negotiations are reported, the more glory
to the so-called leaders, for the more often their names appear in the
papers; the more "reasonable" the utterances of these gentlemen (which
means that they are neither fish nor flesh, neither warm nor cold), the
surer they grow of the sympathy of the most reactionary element in the
country or of an invitation to the White House to join the Chief
Magistrate at dinner. Labor leaders of such caliber fail to consider
that every strike is a labor event upon the success or failure of which
thousands of lives depend; rather do they see in it an opportunity to
push their own insignificant personalities into prominence. Instead of
leading their organized hosts to victory, they disclose their
superficiality in their zeal not to injure their reputation for
"respectability."

The workingmen? Be it victory or defeat, they must take up the reins of
every strike themselves; as it is, they play the dupes of the shrewd
attorneys on both sides, unaware of the price the trickery and cunning
of these men cost them.

As I said before, the unions negotiate strikes for days and weeks and
months beforehand, even allowing their men to work overtime in order to
produce all the commodities to continue business while the strike is
going on.

The printers, for instance, worked late into the night on magazines that
were being got ready four months in advance, and the miners who
discussed the strike so long until every remnant of enthusiasm was gone.

What wonder, then, that strikes fail? As long as the employer is in a
position to say, "Strike if you will; I do not need you; I can fill my
orders; I know that hunger will drive _you_ back into the mine and
factory, _I_ can wait," there is no hope for the success of the strike.

Such have been the results of the legal trade union methods.

The history of the labor struggle of this country shows an incident that
warrants the hope for an energetic, revolutionary trade union agitation.
That is the eight-hour movement of 1886 which culminated in the death of
five labor leaders. That movement contained the true element of the
proletarian and revolutionary spirit, the lack of which makes organized
labor of to-day a ball in the hands of selfish aspirants, know-nothings
and politicians.

That which specifically characterized the event of 1886 as a
revolutionary factor was the fact that the eight-hour workday could
never be accomplished through lobbying with politicians, but through the
direct and economic weapon, the general strike.

The desire to demonstrate the efficacy of this weapon gave birth to the
idea of celebrating the first of May as an appropriate day for Labor's
festival. On that day the workingmen were to give the first practical
demonstration of the power of the general strike as an at least one-day
protest against oppression and tyranny, and which day were gradually to
become the means for the final overthrow of economic and social
dependence.

One may suggest that the tragedy of the 11th of November of 1887 has
stamped the general strike as a futile method, but this is not true. The
battle of liberation cannot be put a stop to by the brutality and
rascality of the ruling powers. The vicious anger and the wild hatred
that strangled our brothers in Chicago are the safest guarantee that
their activity struck a potentially fatal blow to government and
capital.

Neither Mr. Mitchell nor Mr. Gompers run the risk of dying upon the
gallows of sacred capitalistic Justitia; her ladyship is not at all as
blind as some suppose her to be; on the contrary, she has a very keen
eye for all that may prove beneficial or dangerous to the society that
draws its subsistence from the lives' blood of its people. She has quite
made up her mind that the gentlemen in the ranks of Labor to-day lead
the people about in a circle and never will urge them out into the open,
towards liberation.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration]



REFINED CRUELTY.

By ANNA MERCY.


CIVILIZATION has eliminated none of the qualities that marked the age of
savagery. The cruelties which especially characterized primitive man is
exercised as much to-day as in the days of cannibalism.

Civilization has been the refining agent of our qualities. Just as a
number of chemicals put into a crucible are refined by a certain acid,
while yet the original substances remain, though in different forms, so
has civilization refined and remolded the crude elements of our nature,
leaving the essence of our primitive qualities the same.

The subtlety with which cruelty is exercised to-day makes of it a
far-reaching and far more destructive force than formerly. Instead of
attacking our neighbors with sticks and stones and tomahawks, and
forcing them into captivity in order that they may work for us, we
obtain the same or even better results by numerous subtle methods. We
instill respect for law, wealth and morality. We withdraw the land and
other natural resources from general use. With a show of generous
sentiment, we allow the lambs we have shorn to assist us in the
shearing of other lambs.

Every morning and every evening we see a long procession of men and
women going or coming from the work, at which they have given up their
life force for the sake of a mere pittance. Look at these men and women!
There they go, evidently free! No shackles are on their hands or feet,
no overseer keeps them in check by club or gun. There they go
voluntarily to their prison factories, offices, stores, in the morning;
and in the evening, when the glorious sun is hidden from sight, they
come out again, haggard and worn, to creep to their prison homes.

When the savage desires to rob you, he may attempt to strangle and maim
you. But the civilized man scorns such crude methods. He builds cheap
tenements in which you may gradually and surely choke to death; and not
satisfied with that, he, with a great show of kindness, prepares your
foods for you, that they may slowly, very slowly, but surely, hasten
your deliverance. Babies are not frankly murdered any more, but they are
served with nice, adulterated milk, which accomplishes the same purpose
in a quieter way.

Under the name of law many atrocious crimes are committed. Imprisonment,
capital punishment and war are yet crude in their methods. They are
still susceptible of more refining. Here cruelty has rather a thin
garment on and needs to be covered up a little more.

Even in our every-day relations with each other, we use many and varied
forms of refined cruelty. When displeased, we no longer beat each other,
but we use the subtler forces of sarcasm, irony, slander, neglect. We
regard directness a rudeness, when in reality it is the greatest
kindness imaginable. Instead of being positive and direct in our
dealings with each other, we constantly exercise a passive cruelty, in
other words, the cruelty of refinement. We are evasive, delusive,
subdued, falsified. But we deceive with dignity, tell falsehoods
fluently, use words and cold behavior as daggers.

To-day we do not turn away an unwelcome visitor, but we announce that we
are not at home; or we slander him behind his back. When we love we
pretend to be modest and indifferent, while, in an indirect way, we
attempt to build walls around the person we love. There is nothing free
in the expression of our emotions, for we are subdued, crushed; we are
civilized!

Everything is sham and hypocrisy, and hidden daggers are everywhere, in
one form or another. These daggers are concealed under kindness,
charity, benevolence, morality, law, and are, therefore, difficult to
deal with. The blades are thrust into the back; you can feel them, but
you cannot grapple with them.

Our inherent cruelty is best illustrated in the treatment we give those
who are absolutely in our power--little children and the dumb animals.
With what authority do we elicit respect and obedience from our little
people! With rod in hand and with venomous tongues we begin the process
of subjugating and civilizing our little free, emotional people. In the
name of "their highest good" do we mould them to be actors, that they
may properly enact the tragedy of life as we had enacted it before them!

The dumb animals receive the cream of our refined cruelty. In order to
appear civilized, we drive in carriages pulled by horses whose spinal
columns have been docked, whose necks are held stiff by tight check
reins, whose eyes are blinded by "fashionable" devices.

There used to be cannibalism and human sacrifices; there used to be
religious prostitution and the murder of weak children and of girls;
there used to be bloody revenge and the slaughter of whole populations,
judicial tortures, quarterings, burnings at the stake, the lash, and
slavery, which have disappeared. But if we have outlived these dreadful
customs and institutions, this does not prove that there do not exist
institutions and customs amongst us which have become as abhorrent to
enlightened reason and conscience as those which have in their time been
abolished and have become for us only a dreadful remembrance. The way of
human perfecting is endless, and at every moment of historical life
there are superstitions, deceits, pernicious and evil institutions
already outlived by men and belonging to the past; there are others
which appear to us in the far mists of the future; and there are some
which we are now living through and whose over-living forms the object
of our life. Such in our time is capital punishment and all punishment
in general. Such is prostitution, such is the work of militarism, war,
and such is the nearest and most obvious evil, private property in land.

[Illustration]



"THE JUNGLE."

A Recension by VERITAS.


"THE JUNGLE," a recent story by Upton Sinclair, is a nightmare of
horrors, of which the worst horror is that it is not a phantom of the
night, but claims to be true history of one phase of our
twentieth-century civilization. Nothing but the book itself could
represent its own tragic power. In my opinion it is the most terrible
book ever written.

It is for the most part a tale of the abattoirs, those unspeakable
survivals in our Christendom in which man reeks his savage and sensual
will on the lesser animals; and indirectly it is a story of the moral
abattoirs of politics, economics, society, religion and the home, where
the victims are of the species human, and where man's inhumanity to man
is as selfish and relentless as his age-long cruelty to his brothers and
sisters just behind him in the great procession.

Possibly the title is inappropriate. There is a "law of the pack," which
is observed in the genuine jungle, but these human beasts appear to have
all of the jungle's vices and few of its virtues. The author might have
called his history, "The Slaughter House," or, perhaps, plain "Hell."

It is a common saying about a packing house, "We use all of the hog
except the squeal." This author uses the squeal, or, rather, the wild
death shrieks of agony of the ten millions of living creatures tortured
to death every year in Chicago and the other tens of millions elsewhere,
to pander to the old brutal, inhuman thirst of humanity for a diet of
blood. The billions of the slain have found a voice at last, and if I
mistake not this cry of anguish from the "killing-beds" shall not sound
on until men, whose ancestors once were cannibals, shall cease to devour
even the corpses of their murdered animal relatives. But while "The
Jungle" will undoubtedly make more vegetarians, it would take more than
the practice of universal vegetarianism to cause the book to fulfil its
mission; for this is a story of Civilization's Inferno and of the crisis
of the world, a recital of conditions for which, when once comprehended,
there can be no remedy but the revolution of revolutions, the event
toward which the ages ran, the establishment of a genuine political,
industrial and social democracy.[2]

If the story be dramatized and Mrs. Fiske take the part of Ona, her
presentation will make Tess seem like a pastoral idyll in comparison.

The book is great even from a political standpoint.

But more than this, it is a great moral appeal. Not in Victor Hugo or
Charles Dickens does the moral passion burn with purer or intenser light
than in these pages.

I should not advise children or very delicately constituted women to
read it.

I have said it is a book of horrors. I started to mark the passages of
peculiar tragedy and found that I was marking every page, and yet it is
a justifiable book and a necessary book.

The author tells as facts the story of "diseased meat," and worse, the
preparation in the night time of the bodies of the cattle which have
died from known and unknown causes before reaching the slaughter pens,
and the distribution of the effects, with the rest of the intentional
killing of the day; he describes the preparation of "embalmed beef" from
cattle covered with boils; he even narrates the story of "men who fell
into the vats," and "sometimes they would be overlooked for days till
all but the bones of them had gone out to the world as Durham's Pure
Leaf Lard"; he writes of the making of smoked sausage out of waste
potatoes by the use of chemicals and out of spoiled meat as well; and he
further speaks of rats which were "nuisances, and the packers would put
poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread and
meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no
joke; the meat would be shovelled into carts and the man who did the
shovelling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw
one--there were things which went into the sausage in comparison with
which a poisoned rat was a tidbit."

But the worst of the story is a tale of the condition of the workers at
Packingtown and elsewhere. It is the story of strong men who justly
hated their work; of men, for no fault of their own, cast out in middle
life to die; of weeping children driven with whips to their ignoble
toil; of disease-producing conditions in winter, only surpassed by the
deadly summer; of people working with their feet upon the ice and their
heads enveloped in hot steam; of the perpetual stench which infests
their nostrils, the sores which universally covered their bodies; of the
terrible pace set by the continual "speeding up" of the pace makers,
goaded to a pitch of frenzy; of accidents commonplace in every family;
of the garbage pile of refuse from the tables of more fortunate
citizens, from which many were forced to satisfy their hunger; of the
terrors of the black list, the shut-down, the strike and the lockout;
and of the universal swindle, whether a man bought a house, or doctored
tea, coffee, sugar or flour.

It is still further a story of the moral enormities and monstrosities of
the almost universal graft, "the plants honeycombed with rottenness. The
bosses grafted off the men and they grafted off each other, and some day
the superintendent would find out about the boss, and then he would
graft off the boss."

When the men were set to perform some peculiarly immoral act, they would
say, "Now we are working for the church," referring to the benefactions
of the proprietors to religious institutions.

It tells the story of the training of the children in vice, of girls
forced into immorality, so that a girl without virtue would stand a
better chance than a decent one. It is a tale of the terrible ending of
old Antanas by saltpeter poisoning; of Jonas, no one knows how, possibly
he fell into the vats; of little Kristoforas by convulsions; of little
Antanas by falling into a pit before the door of his house; of Marija,
in a house of shame; of Stanislovas, who was eaten by rats; and of
beautiful little Ona, to the description of whose ending no other than
the author's pen could do justice.

The book shows how men graft everywhere, not only in the packing house,
but how the slime of the serpent is over almost all of our modern
commercial and political practises.

No one can justly hold the meat kings responsible for all of this.

Nothing less than a thorough reconstruction of our whole social organism
will suffice. Palliative philanthropy is, as the author says, "like
standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing snow balls in to
lower the temperature."

"The Jungle" is the boiling over of our social volcano and shows us what
is in it. It is a danger signal!

We are all indicted and must stand our trial. There rests upon us the
obligation to ascertain the facts. The author of "The Jungle" lived in
Packingtown for months, and the eminently respectable publishers who are
now issuing the book sent a shrewd lawyer to Chicago to report as to
whether the statements in it were exaggerated, and his report confirmed
the assertions of the author.

This book is a call to immediate action.

The Lithuanian hero found his solution of the problems suggested in
Socialism. The solution lies either in that direction or in something
better, and it behooves those who warn us against Socialistic
experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy.
Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social
redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in
practice would modify or abolish the evils of our modern conditions.

"The masters, lords and rulers of all lands," the thinkers and workers
of our time must speedily give themselves to the understanding and
application of some adequate remedy, or there will be blood, woe and
tears almost without end, "when this dumb terror shall reply to God,
after the silence of the centuries."

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Genuine or not genuine: we live right now in a democracy. If, in
spite of that, such diabolical crimes as Sinclair describes them are
committed daily, then this only proves that democracy is no panacea for
them. Why should it, if criminals of the Armour kind realize profits out
of their wholesale poisoning of such dimensions that they can easily buy
all the glory of the people's sovereignty.--Editor.



THE GAME IS UP.

By SADAKICHI HARTMANN.


"HELLO, Morrison, may I come in?" The door stood slightly ajar.

Morrison came to the door--the complexion of his face was sallow and his
eyes had a peculiar look--he recognized his visitor, hesitated for a
moment whether he should admit him, then opened the door and made a sort
of mock courtesy.

"Cleaning up?" the tall, lean man asked as he entered the little hall
room.

"Yes," and a wistful smile glided over Morrison's pale face; "cleaning
up for good."

The room had a peculiar appearance. There was no disorder and yet a lot
of things were lying about; it looked as if the lodger intended to go
away on a long journey and had tried to straighten up matters previous
to his departure. The visitor gazed curiously about the room. He had a
strange foreboding, but forced himself to ask in a jocular mood: "Going
to Egypt again?"

"Farther than that this time, but it won't take so long; the journey I
am contemplating will be over by to-morrow evening, I hope."

"What do you mean?"

"The game is up."

The tall, lean man made no immediate reply, he merely gazed steadily
into the face of his friend. He had always suspected that it would come
to this some day. He really wondered that Morrison had not done it long
ago. If any man had a right to dispose of his life it was surely
Morrison. He had endured more than most human beings. His case was
absolutely hopeless.

"Is there no way out of it?"

Morrison shook his head. He wanted to say something, but his voice
failed him. He stepped to the dresser near the window, looked into the
mirror and arranged his faded, threadbare tie. It was pitiful to see how
shabbily he was dressed. He no longer set the fashion as in his days of
success, years ago in Boston.

"Would money help you?" and the tall, lean visitor fumbled in his
pockets. Although fairly well dressed, he was hard up most of the time
and only ventured to broach the subject as he just happened to have a
few dollars to spare that day.

"No, what good would the little do that you could give me?" and he
continued to adjust matters and tuck things away in his trunk.

"There, you are right again, not much. But I won forty dollars on the
track; I sometimes go out there," he added as a sort of excuse, "as it
is impossible to live on literature alone. I could spare ten."

"Can you really spare them? I won't be able to return them, you know. I
would like to have them. I suppose you will refuse to let me buy a
revolver with them. I have all sorts of poisons," he pointed to some
little bottles, "but I would prefer not to use them, it wouldn't be
esthetical, and then I want to go away to some place where nobody knows
me. I don't want to be identified."

The literary man slowly pulled a small roll out of his pocket. He
thought of his wife and children who needed the money. It was really
foolish to have made that offer. Well, it was probably the last service
he could render his friend. Morrison was serious about his departure,
there was no doubt about that. "Here!"

"Thanks," Morrison answered, though he did not take the money right
away. He looked about absentmindedly, as in a dream. This was friendship
indeed. He had not believed that anybody could so completely enter
another man's state of mind. Not a word of opposition. This was
glorious! They had known each other for more than seventeen years. They
had often drifted apart and, somehow, had always met again. They had
never been very intimate, they had merely respected each other for the
work they had accomplished, each in his profession; although they
differed largely in ideas. Morrison was a sculptor, and almost an
ancient Greek in his feelings for the beauty of lines. The tall, lean
man, on the other hand, was a strange mixture of a visionary and brutal
realist. They both were cynics, however, that found life rather futile.
With the literary man this was merely a theoretical view point, while
Morrison was really embittered with life. The incidents of this
afternoon had surprised him. He was deeply moved and felt as if he
should give utterance to his emotions. He remembered that his attitude
towards his friend had been rather arrogant at times. He now felt sorry
for it, but somehow could not form his sentiments and thoughts into
coherent sentences.

"Thanks," he simply repeated, "Has anybody seen you enter the house?"

"No, the door was open and I walked right up. Why do you ask?"

"I don't want anybody to be mixed up in this affair, as it only concerns
me."

The literary man smiled: "Could any man influence you one way or
another? As far as I can make out you are beyond mortal influence."

A pause ensued. Morrison threw the last thing into his trunk. "Well, I
am ready. Everything is settled."

"How about your statues?"

"Pshaw!" Morrison shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody was interested in them
while I lived. Why should I bother to think what might become of them
after my death?"

The author nodded and scowled at the same time. He was not satisfied
with the answer. But there were still other things on his mind. He was
used to analyze everything to shreds and tatters. "Are you not afraid
that you might make a botch out of the whole job?"

Morrison weighed the question in his mind, then shook his head and
answered: "No, there is hardly a chance for it now. I have been tuned up
to it, trained myself to it, so to speak. The fruit is ripe. It has to
fall. It would be awful, though--" he added, with an after-thought. "Do
you remember my emerald ring? I had to pawn it, but I kept the poison
which was hidden under the stone. I will take that if anything goes
wrong."

"Would you object to my company?" asked the tall, lean man, "I mean
until all is over. I, myself, am not quite ready yet for any such
heroical performances."

"Oh, don't think of it," the sculptor ejaculated; notwithstanding, the
tone of his voice indicated that he would not object, that he would even
prefer a traveling companion for the last few hours of his life.

"Well, I'll go with you. Where are you going?"

"To New Haven. It's a nice trip." Morrison carefully brushed his hair
and clothes, there came a flush to his face as he realized how shabby
his clothes really were. The tall, lean man was delicate enough to look
away as if he had not noticed anything.

A few moments later they left the room. Morrison locked the door and
they went out into the street. They did not talk much, merely
commonplace phrases that did not bear upon the subject. Both were
occupied with their own thoughts, and strange thoughts they must have
been. They leisurely strolled to a store of sporting outfits, bought a
revolver and cartridges, had their shoes shined at the next corner, and
slowly wended their way toward the depot. Their actions were almost
mechanical. Suicide is an attack of insanity, a sort of mental plague.
If one has caught the fever, one is doomed. There is no escape from it.
At the same time it is contagious. The literary man was somewhat
infected by it. All his interests in life seemed to be dulled,
obliterated as it were. He could only think the one thought, "Morrison
is going to kill himself. But who knows, he may, after all, turn up next
week with the excuse that he had changed his mind. No, not he!--it was
really too bad!" Morrison, on the other hand, grew quite cheerful. With
him the idea that he would do it, had become so matter-of-fact, that he
ceased to think of it. Nothing could influence him any more. Even if
some vague current of soul activity should revolt at the very last
moment, he was certain that his hand would mechanically perform the
task.

"Only one return ticket," he whispered as he approached the ticket
office. "Oh, I almost forgot," replied his friend.

During the trip they silently sat opposite each other, smoking. Now and
then Morrison pointed out the beautiful sights. He seemed to be familiar
with the scenery. At their arrival in New Haven, at dusk, they at once
adjourned to a hotel and sat down at a table in the bar-room. They began
to talk about art, they discussed commercialism, the lack of
appreciation and the vanity of all serious work, at least as far as art
is concerned. They began to relate reminiscences of their student
years, and reviewed the hopes and ambitions of their youth. If they had
been realized, what wonders they would have accomplished!

"I gave the other side a chance. They never responded. I waited for ten
long years, and now, it's all up. Let us have another drink, waiter, the
last." They clinked glasses. "And now for a decent departure as in the
good old times, when Hegesias, the Cyrenaic, preached suicide in
Alexandria--"

They arose. It had grown dark. They sauntered forth into the night.
Morrison seemed to know where he was going. "I once spent very pleasant
days out here," he explained, "years, I hardly remember how many years
ago." After that they did not converse any more. They finally arrived at
a beautiful avenue of old elms that extended far into the country. Its
deep, dark vista was lit up only by the shimmer of a distant lake.

Morrison stopped, seized his friend's hand, shook it, and said in a firm
voice: "Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

And Morrison walked away. It was so dark that in a few moments his form
became invisible. Only his footsteps could still be heard. They grew
fainter and fainter. The tall, lean man stared after his friend into the
blackness of the night. His eyes grew dim.

A few rain drops fell on his face and hands. "I hope it won't rain," he
murmured, "it might make dying more difficult, but no--the sky is
clear." Then he slightly bent forward and listened eagerly. Everything
was calm, motionless, as in suspense. Nobody passed through the avenue.
Only in the adjoining side streets pedestrians flitted by like ghosts.

So this was the end! After having struggled bravely for years, after
living up to high ideals as well as one could, to go down a long, dark
avenue--a falling star flashed across the tree tops.

The tall, lean man pressed his hand to his heart, although he was not
certain of having heard a report, he felt, that his friend had arrived
at the goal of his life's journey. The game was up!

       *       *       *       *       *

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+The Game of Life.+ A new volume of 111 fables. Most of them have been
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*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature" ***

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