[Unedited]
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty!
Shines that high light whereby the world is saved;
And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”
John Hay.
On Picket Duty.
It was the contention of the prosecuting attorney, in the trial of Ravachol, the dynamiter, that the accused was simply a common murderer, who, on being detected, professed the cause of Communist-Anarchism, simply to give his crime eclat. If such really were the case, one cannot help wondering why the prosecuting attorney did not defeat this clutch for a martyr’s crown by trying Ravachol for the common murder he is said to have committed rather than for his dynamite exploits, which killed nobody. The truth is that the anxiety in the matter was all on the side of the prosecuting attorney, who was far more desirous of exhibiting this reputed murderer in the role of a Communist than was the murderer of enacting that role.
There has been a law on the Pennsylvania statute books since 1885 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of butterine. Under the decisions of the United States courts, however, producers outside the State are able to ship their goods into the State and sell them in the original packages. An increasing number of dealers buy these packages, open them, and retail from them in violation of the law. So prevalent has this practice become that the Pennsylvania butchers, who used to sell their fats to the butterine factories, and now have to sell them in Holland much less advantageously, are taking advantage of it to prosecute the guilty parties in the hope of securing a repeal of the obnoxious law. Meanwhile the dear and protected people, instead of eating sweet and wholesome butterine, are forced to eat strong butter, for which they pay a monopoly price to the protected farmers and dairymen. The people are protected in the right to be robbed, and the farmers and dairymen in the right to rob. All these protections should be wiped out. The only protection which honest people need is protection against that vast Society for the Creation of Theft which is euphemistically designated as the State.
Godkin and a few other shallow moralists are highly indignant over the action of the editor of the “North American Review” in printing articles written by such “vile rogues” as Quay and Croker. Addressing a correspondent of his, Godkin assures him that his abhorrence of “Barnumized literature” is not old-fashioned, and that his objection to Quay and Croker as contributors to a Review shows him to be a “schola[?] and a gentleman.” Godkin continues: “This extraction of dull rogues from their semi-criminal obscurity to inflict their hypocritical cant and swash on the public, side by side with writers who are an honor to the human race, is a great public nuisance and ought to be abated. We appeal to the editors of magazines, and especially to the editor of the ‘North American Review,’ to give us no more of it. Croker and Quay discoursing on virtue and principle and statesmanship in a Review are not a whit more respectable than the Tattooed Man or the Bearded Woman. The only contributions they can properly make to respectable literature are personal confessions.” Godkin and his tearful friends may be more “virtuous” than Quay and Croker, but they are certainly less shrewd and keen. One has to be very dull indeed not to see that the disgrace consists not only in printing the cant of rogues, but in having rogues in high offices and at the helm of the ship of State. Quay is a United States Senator and the chairman of one of the great political parties “controlling the destinies” of this people. It is this fact which makes his utterances interesting and important. Croker is a power in the great State of New York and in the nation, and his word is law. A nation that gives such individuals power and influence cannot complain of having to read the official opinions of its own masters and rulers. The Reviews are not responsible for the fact that rogues govern this nation; they must supply what the public demands.
Traceable Always to Privilege.
[“Philos” in Journal of the Knights of Labor.]
In your issue of April 7, 1892, you make a singular error to which I feel impelled to call your attention. In your leading editorial on “The Disposal of Large Fortunes” you allude to the millions accumulated by the late W. H. Smith, the conservative leader of the English House of Commons. You say:
Mr. Smith began life poor, and his enormous wealth was accumulated from what was a practical though not a legal monopoly, the sale of books and newspapers at the railway bookstalls. Mr. Smith’s monopoly was not secured by the aid of legal enactments depriving the people of their natural opportunities, but was simply the result of his own shrewdness and a favorable conjunction of circumstances. It is not a case that could be reached by any measure of tariff reform or land taxation, or by any means short of the nationalization of the system of the distribution. We commend a consideration of this instance of an enormous fortune piled up during a single lifetime without the benefit of any special legislation or privileges, other than those afforded to the shrewdest and cunning under competition, to our individualist and single-tax friends, who are always contending that, if unequal laws were repealed and competition had full swing, great fortunes would be impossible.
Your error consists in holding that Mr. Smith was not aided by existing laws, and that the abolition of the land monopoly would not have interfered with him in the acquirement of his fortune. Is it not an accepted fact that the freeing of vacant land and the solution of the money question would make it impossible for him to secure the services of sellers of books and papers at the salary he had paid them? If he did not offer them the full wages for their labor, or at least all but the smallest fraction of it, would they not take advantage of freed natural opportunities for gaining a living? Allowing even that they did not choose to leave the city, would not the supply of city labor have been much diminished by the exodus of very many to idle lands not too far away? Besides this, rent, or at least high rent, would have disappeared, and labor could better afford to insist upon getting its full wages. Give us free land and free money, with the interest-bearing public debt abolished, and I believe that it will be impossible to find any one willing to sell his labor for so much less than his wages as to enable an intermediary to thereby become a millionaire.
No Discussion on Socialism.
[Reynolds’ Newspaper.]
The remarkable conduct of the Bishop of Lichfield in vetoing a discussion on Socialism at the annual Diocesan Conference at Lichfield is not without its lesson. Socialism was down for discussion, but the Bishop, exercising his prerogative, postponed its discussion. The Bishop of Shrewsbury stated that Mr. T. Salt, M. P., the lay secretary, had resigned his position because no discussion was permitted when last year the subject was brought before the Conference by Mr. Philip Stanhope, M. P. He (the Bishop of Shrewsbury, protested against the subject being shirked.
Liberty at a Bargain.
Burlington, Iowa, May 4, 1892.
Dear Liberty:
Glad, very glad, to see you again after such a long absence, although I do not like the looks of your New York garb as well as I did your Boston outfit.
When I was young, I was told that eternal vigilance was the price of liberty. Mr. Tucker says that from this on it will be two dollars a year. I trust this will create a more spirited demand for it. The other price evidently was too dear, for it found no market.
Your friend,
Werner Boeckun.
Walt Whitman.
[Punch.]
“The good gray poet” gone! Brave, hopeful Walt!
He might not be a singer without fault,
And his large, rough-hewn rhythm did not chime
With dulcet daintiness of time and rhyme.
He was no neater than wide Nature’s wild,
More metrical than sea winds. Culture’s child,
Lapped in luxurious laws of line and lilt,
Shrank from him shuddering, who was roughly built
As cyclopean temples. Yet there rang
True music through his rhapsodies, as he sang
Of brotherhood, and freedom, love and hope,
With strong, wide sympathy which dared to cope
With all life’s phases, and call nought unclean.
Whilst hearts are generous, and whilst woods are green.
He shall find hearers, who, in a slack time
Of puny bards and pessimistic rhyme.
Dared to bid men adventure and rejoice.
His “yawp barbaric” was a human voice;
The singer was a man. America
Is poorer by a stalwart soul to-day,
And may feel pride that she hath given birth
To this stout laureate of old Mother Earth.
“In abolishing rent and interest, the last vestiges of old-time slavery, the Revolution abolishes at one stroke the sword of the executioner, the seal of the magistrate, the club of the policeman, the gunge of the exciseman, the erasing-knife of the department clerk, all those insignia of Politics, which young Liberty grinds beneath her heel.” — Proudhon.
The appearance in the editorial column of articles over other signatures than the editor’s initial indicates that the editor approves their central purpose and general tenor, though he does not hold himself responsible for every phrase or word. But the appearance in other parts of the paper of articles by the same or other writers by no means indicates that he disapproves them in any respect, such disposition of them being governed largely by motives of convenience.
The Essentials of Anarchism.
In a sermon preached five or six years ago, when Mr. Pentecost was a disciple of Henry George, he declared that “a book is not an Anarchist’s argument.” Since then Mr. Pentecost has not only accepted the Anarchistic teaching, but he has lived to see his old-time slander hurled at his own head. Now, however, strange to say, it is uttered by a professed Anarchist, who seems rather proud to think that “a book is not an Anarchist’s argument.”
The man who holds this singular view is an Italian, Xavier Merlino, who has come over to America to teach us what Anarchy is. Perhaps it is needless to say that he is a Communist-Anarchist. He is “surprised at the ignorance of native Americans” on the subject of Anarchy. The object of his visit is to dispel this ignorance, and he has allotted one month for the performance of his task, at the end of which period he intends to go to England, to redeem, I suppose, the balance of the Anglo-Saxon race.
He begins his work of redemption by clearing up the ground. To know what Anarchy is it is necessary first to know what it is not. Therefore he says: “I don’t consider Pentecost of the ‘Nineteenth Century’ [sic] or Tucker of the ‘Liberty’ real Anarchists, as they are bookworms and cannot exert any influence.” There you get it, Mr. Pentecost. It is your old statement in another form. “A book is not an Anarchist’s argument,” and, as you and I read books, we cannot be Anarchists. This then is Dr. Merlino’s first lesson to the ignorant native Americans, — that there are two essentials to the making of an Anarchist, viz., the avoidance of books and the exertion of influence. As I am lacking in at least the first of these essentials, I fear I must resign my claim to the name Anarchist. To the charge that I have read and studied more or less, I am forced to plead guilty. I am so much of a bookworm that, when I criticise the theories of Communists like Dr. Merlino, I am conscious of having qualified myself to do so by reading the best expositions thereof that can be found. It is too painfully evident that Dr. Merlino is not a bookworm, since his criticisms of the school to which I belong show no knowledge of what its theories are. He doesn’t read books, and therefore possesses the first requisite of an Anarchist.
When it comes to the second requisite, — the exertion of influence, — I feel that we of the bookworm school stand a much better show. He undoubtedly excels us in ignorance, but in influence we are his peers, if not his superiors. In spite of the fact that we read and study, we really do succeed in convincing many of our fellow-men that we are right. If Dr. Merlino supposes that we have no influence, let him ask his friend Most. That despiser of books will tell him that on the day of the revolution the first duty of the revolutionists will be to kill all the “Tucker men,” as he calls us, and that, if this is not done, the revolution will be a dismal failure. Does Dr. Merlino ask how I know that Most will make him this answer? I will tell him. Because he made exactly this statement in a letter to one of his old adherents who was giving signs of abandoning Communism for the doctrine which Most generally speaks of as “that damned Tuckerism.” Men without influence are not usually considered worth killing.
But if this does not satisfy Dr. Merlino, he can test our influence in still another way. He announces his intention of lecturing in all our large cities. In every large city that he visits he will find one or two or three or more of the brainiest and most active men in the labor ranks arrayed on the side of the bookworms. If he makes inquiry, he will be told that it is only a few years since these men were among the most prominent Socialist and Communist leaders; that in their secession and opposition Socialism and Communism encounter their greatest obstacle; and that this obstacle is due in no small measure to the influence of Liberty and the “Twentieth Century.”
When Dr. Merlino has had full opportunity to appreciate this influence, he will begin to think that, in trying to offset it in a month, he has taken a large contract. And never again will he dispute our right to the name Anarchist on the ground that we do not make ourselves felt. T.
The Black Caps.
By Miriam Daniell.
“You are a shorthand writer?”
“I am.”
“A reporter?”
“Yes.”
“Come then, if you will, with me, and attend a play at the Old Theatre.”
“The Old Theatre?” I replied incredulously, holding the hall door wider open that I might better observe the man who spoke to me, in order to ascertain if he was mad or drunk, “the Old Theatre, that has been burned to the ground, as you should know, three weeks ago, and in the cold gray ashes of its gilded mummery or crushed amidst its blackened ruins lie the dust of Its bravest ballet dancers, the charred bones of beautiful actresses, and the dumb, distorted faces of arch actors, whose lively antics drove remembrance of sorrow and death from the minds of their audiences but a few seconds before the tragic end of their comedy in the fire.”
The man without was standing in the gloom of a shadow, and I could not discern even the fashion of his garments.
“I am a stranger,” he said quietly, “but I heard of your local event.”
“Local event!” I replied, nettled at this mode of reference to the terrible occurrence, “that was no mere local event which took from the stage its most perfect flowers of comedians and desolated a thousand homes. I escaped myself — by a miracle, being borne down the passage without once touching the ground, in the middle of the first wave of a river of frantic women and men, half of whom at its edges were battered beyond recognition from the pressure of the central movement. I cast one backward look as I fled from the death trap. Yellow flames were licking forwards from the stage as if the Devil had monopolized the place for a hell. Amidst the choking smoke and leaping fire the spectators were running, pushing, fighting, with tossing arms and despairing screams of harsh terror. What manner of man are you who call so-great and horrible a catastrophe a local event?”
“I am a mere messenger,” he said vaguely; “the Theatre I speak of is older than the one which collapsed as you say.”
“Excuse me, Sir,” I persisted, “I know this city as well as any man; and, without boasting, I may claim to be better acquainted with its places of amusement than a newcomer. There remain now only the New and the Princess Theatres, which are both closed on account of public mourning.”
“Tarry not,” he said, leaning patiently against the stone wall, “I wait for you. You and you alone can report correctly what we shall witness this night at the Old Theatre.”
The dignity of the dim figure of the man and a certain vaticinal quality in his voice, to which my spirit responded, made me reason not, but take my coat from the pegs and accompany him forth.
You may marvel that I neither sought to retrace my steps nor questioned, when he turned towards the open country and led me on to the summit of a lonely hill which slept the double sleep of winter and night, huddled under white sheets in repeated layers of frozen snow. The north wind bit my face like a vampire and insidiously pierced my garments, warring with my vital warmth, but I made no complaint, ashamed to be less manly than the fellow who climbed, uncomplainingly by my side. After a short time, however, my hair stiffened with ice, and from my beard hung little icicles. I was encrusted with the flying snow crystals. This state was a preface to another condition, in which the cold seized my feet, so that to lift them alternately like dead logs I had to use both hands. It was a foolish fancy, but in the course of a few moments I thought that my blood had congealed in my body and that the algor had taken my brain from its skull, and the man, my companion, was kicking it as a football, while my frozen tongue clapped under my vaulted palate, unable to protest against such an unhallowed sport.
A blank succeeded. I was becoming conscious of the fact. I was again within my house of flesh, lifting my hands and limbs with curious pleasure, testing the perfection of its parts as a man might test the mechanism of a machine.
It was day. The dawn brightened in the Spiritual East with a breathless, intense growing light. Two-purple wings of clouds hung over a large sphere which was revolving in dusky space, and seven amber feathers of the morn brushed the dust of darkness from its surface ere the sun shone obliquely upon it.
“What is that planet below us?” I cried wonderingly to my strange associate.
“The Old Theatre,” he answered, smiling slightly at me; “it is the Earth.”
“But we are upon it, are we not?” I questioned wildly; “am I bereft of my senses?”
“You are but just sane,” he said, gently taking my hand; “concentrate therefore on what will pass upon the Stage beneath, for it concerns the world to have a-true report of its own performance as seen from the air circle.”
Strength filled me, and I took the golden quill he gave me and dipped it in an ancient tear bottle which he held for my use,
“This ink will be invisible,” he said, “to those who may not read what you shall write upon this linen scroll, but the least heat of sympathy shall render its characters visible to a few, at any rate, who have experienced grief.”
“I see one side only of the ball, Europe, Asia, sable Africa, set in opal oceans.”
“Upon the other half the play is the same,” he said, “but by a different troupe and less vindictively and realistically performed.”
Below us a seething multitude of many nationalities thronged into a Hall of Justice, the vast proportions of which were in keeping with the occasion. The sun was high before the last man and woman had entered and the door was shut.
“How many are there?” I enquired.
“Almost all the populations of the Isles and Continents,” my friend answered; “there are comparatively few in the prisons, though really a considerable number.”
“Why do they all wear black caps?” I asked again, for I had observed the fact as an eccentric one.
“They are all judges,” he answered gravely, “self-appointed, full of a temporary and temporal power, and they wear that symbolic headgear, for they sit to condemn the minority who have offended them, to Death, and Death in Life.”
The Roof of the Hall of Justice was lifted, and I saw the Christ, thorn-crowned, led by his captors into its precincts.
“Who is the accused?” asked the crowd.
“A blasphemous Jew.”
“His crime?”
“Anarchy. He seeks to subvert the social order by teaching the divinity and equality of men. He defies authority.”
“Crucify him! Crucify him! Away with him!” cried the multitude, and he went forth calmly with willing feet to his death.
Very different was another criminal dragged from the dungeons into the light. A young Prostitute outworn with unpleasurable work, covered with syphilitic sores, cursing and protesting, buffeted by one and another into silence at last.
For her not Death, but Death in Life. To live away from her fellows. To have no chance of human love because she had once lusted. To be obliged to starve, enter a dismal penitentiary, or remain in her hellish trade, which would shortly kill her of exhaustion.
The women said coldly:
“Cast her forth ostracized.”
She lay upon the floor, tenaciously twining about the base of a fluted column with her body.
“How many of you I see in black caps were in these arms a month ago!” she screamed. “Oh, my masters, are you better than I? You had bread and I had none. Let me bide and wear a cap too. I am afraid, afraid I tell you, to be thrust out thus. Anyone will feel he can murder me, and no one will care, since you say I have no rights.”
But they quickly expelled her.
“Can it be true about those who are judging her?” I asked, disgusted at the spectacle before us.
“Look at them closely,” replied my companion. And I saw that the men and women, almost without exception, were bearing pronounced or disguised marks of venereal taint in scrofulous scars or pimples and other weaknesses and impurities of the blood, and that the young men were listless and rotten.
“It is true. How long shall these things be?”
“As long as Love is denied or fettered. Lust will obtain entrance into the Soul. The divine eternal morality and order of natural law, with its inevitable penalties and necessary consequences to transgressors, is not taught, but is supplanted by man’s passing custom, by his written dogmas with their attached unjust punishments to breakers of human rules and regulations. While this is so Prostitution will go on and disease will spread through all the race, being born and reborn in their children’s bones. But you miss the play – See – .”
An errand boy stood before the People. Another crime of hunger. He had stolen from his employer’s till some money which he had expended on food for his sick mother.
An offence against property to be avenged. An example had to be made of him. The lad was to be hidden in a reformatory, closely associated with other criminals and forbiddingly self-righteous guardians, for five years, and coming forth branded for life as a felon, was to meet with the denial of his fellows. I looked below the little lad’s red lids as be turned his face to the sky, and I saw that he was full of rebellion and despair.
He passed. Once more a woman stood in his place. A Russian Nihilist. Sophia Petrovskaia of the Aristocracy. She had a sweet and noble air, full of high courage, and faced her accusers with unwavering faithful eyes.
Terrorist she. What devilries committed upon the hapless and innocent, under the name of Justice, had made her renounce her path of cultured ease and pleasure for one of toil and danger, with a cruel and infamous death athwart it, that she might aid the oppressed? She had conspired, this girl, against a bestial tyranny which made even the tyrannical shudder. She had sought in the absence of settled and equitable laws to exterminate the murderer of many and inspire the cowed people to dream of Liberty. Would not she thus bring the crimes of a Czar before other nations and give privilege an object lesson?
A young man with a worn hunted expression, wearing a red cap, stood unobserved by the crowd listening to the consummation of the tragedy. His white nervous hands were clenched, and he muttered between his teeth:
“Pity her not, O women in black caps. To death with the Revolutionary. You are neither in danger from pestilential goals, nor have your sons been marched along the corpse-strewn road to Siberia.”
I saw the rosy face of the girl as she went down unfalteringly to her doom in the death-cart.
The youth in the red cap saw her also, and his great love did not shrink from the self-imposed task of being present with her in her death-hour.
When the horrid scene was over, he cried aloud: “She is not dead. You have no power to kill her, or the movement towards democracy. O women in the black caps.”
But a friend standing near him clapped his hand over the youth’s mouth and whispered in his ear:
“O sir fool, what good will you do by speaking here and openly. They will only twist your goose’s neck for you and stop your eloquence for ever. Menace them not. Save your power for the secret cause, and if you are anxious to die you will have many opportunities.”
And I paused from writing and looked away to the Sun.
“Are such things done in full daylight? Surely these are rather deeds of darkest night.” And I wept. “It is so frightful, there are so many, each one a type with thousands of species, all judged by these accursed judges.”
And he who held the fluid with which I was writing placed the vessel beneath my dropping eyes and caught the tears.
“Write,” said he kindly, “write on, for only thus canst thou relieve thy grief’s burden. Tell the world of its Acts. There is but a little time before thou art thyself to face yonder crowd.”
I looked once more below.
A poor servant girl of eighteen years, pale and weak with down-cast head and shamed aspect, seemed to excite more wrath and hatred than any other criminal. She had in the springtime of her life a passion which leapt fiercely and unacknowledged in her veins. She thought that it was Love. How could she guard the gates of her body when she not only was ignorant of their existence, but was unsuspicious of foes. The sweet thrilling kiss upon the lips, a firm hand upon the breast, — these have no meaning to a child. A groom in her master’s employ had wooed her with cunning lies, which had been received as truths by the simple country lass. A pregnancy followed, concealed from natural fear of the harsh scoldings and the unsympathetic horror of those about her. Then an infant born in the fields with no one to nurse the agonized and half-crazed mother. It was the old story. The men yawned or winked at each other lasciviously as they listened.
“What came next?”
The prisoner was speaking in a faint voice. “I can’t remember exactly — I think I laid it on some withered leaves down a ditch in a soft place and left it, for nobody wouldn’t want it, poor little thing, and what was I to do? After a bit I crawled back to it, but it was cold and dead.”
The women were very eager in this case, but they were divided into two factions, one of which would have incarcerated the girl for life, but the other, the majority, decided that she should be hanged. The criminal was taken out, dazed and silent. But the mute misery of her being vibrated the air about me as she passed dumb, with no one to stand by her and comfort her, but a champion who took a salary for his pity and his prayers from those who slew her in the prison-yard.
More, more, more, I cannot write them all here. I saw public opinion oppose and try to squash every effort at progress in turn; Communists shot upon the steps of the Pantheon, Socialists put to the sword, Royalists slaughtered upon the field. It was a war of extermination.
A young lady of the middle class, with a jaunty, coquettish hat upon her head, was in the dock.
“The crime?”
“Smoking cigarettes.”
I laughed aloud, but the women judges gravely sentenced her to social ostracism (death in life).
Then I cried angrily: “Do they condemn for such trivial offences? Is there no appeal?”
And my companion said:
“There is no appeal, and there is nothing you can do which is not an offence to some section of the black caps. But wait.”
The last of the types against social law and order had been brought to the Court. An old man, white-haired, was struggling in the arms of his captors and sobbing, “Let me alone, I shall soon trouble you no more. I want my Liberty. If you take me, it will kill me.”
“His crime?”
“Omitting to save for old age.”
Condemned to the workhouse, Death in Life.
“Has he worked?”
“All his days.”
“Could he not provide for himself?”
The proceeds of his labor were filched from him as profits by rich men who had employed him. He had only enough wages to obtain necessaries of life for himself and his family. He has dreaded “the Union” all his days.
“Will he soon die?”
“In three days, of a broken heart.”
And this is the end.
A woman in the crowd was going about speaking to one and another of the old man. “Could we not support him for a time in his room as he wished?”
“He ought to go to the Poorhouse. It is the place provided for such as he out of the rates,” said a fashionably dressed girl. “He has been foolish and improvident. If we begin supporting such people, we shall soon have more than enough to do.”
The others shook their heads.
“We cannot interfere.”
“The law must take its course.”
“I had thought,” I said to the silent man at my elbow, “that the individuals would have been few in number who would not have felt, with a humane and creditable shudder, glad that they had not the weighty task of condemning a man to death.”
“It is not so,” he replied. “Look again.”
“Is it not over?” I asked.
“It is never over.”
“But there are no more in the jails who differ from them?”
“They are condemning each other.”
And I saw that the black caps were accusing their own acquaintance and kind, and that few remained in the Hall of Justice. Then I said: “These are old civilizations, the veins of which are choked with morbid matter, the accumulations of centuries. The other side of the sphere is younger, better. The watchword of America is Liberty. Let me see what is passing there. One glance, I pray you, I ask no more.”
And the Globe revolved.
Some Chicago men were being tried with the semblance of a trial, and I noticed that they wore, not black, but red, caps. They were charged with killing with a bomb the police who attacked them at their legitimate meeting. A jury was called, and I was surprised to see that, out of 1,000 black caps summoned, only ten were of the same class as the accused. Anarchy endangered the interests of the monopolists who were determined to bruise its head in Chicago at once and forever. Speeches were made, which appealed to passion, not to reason, by the accusers.
It was a foregone conclusion that five men were condemned to death, three others to death in life, for holding and propagating beliefs which, if generally accepted, would prevent greed from usurping the people’s rights.
Men of opposite opinions and tendencies from the prisoners watched the scene from Europe with close attention, and pronounced their conviction that the accused were innocent of the act, and that, in their eyes, it had not been justly proven.
Sick at heart, I followed these martyrs to the end, all minor criticisms overwhelmed in one cry against the evil murder and the mock trial.
“Will they indeed muffle forever the voices of those who utter for the exploited mass? Can they exterminate an idea?”
And he who was by my side answered:
“They cannot. Look at the sight a little longer.” And I saw that the blood of the dying men splashed those around them with crimson stains, and that both men and women conceived a new idea and grew big with Anarchy. These did no longer bow the knee as theretofore in the Temple of Man’s Law, but walked erect, every one controlled alone by Love within himself, free and unfettered by his fellows.
And he who bade me report these things said:
“Each martyr is as the pollen dust of a tree. Those who rudely cut it down when the golden flower is ripe do not destroy the tree, but further its life, for the energizing dust flies far and wide as it falls, and straightway a forest springs to birth.”
And, behold, I saw a red stain upon my own breast, and was glad that I too had received from the Christs of Chicago.
Once more the Earth rolled heavily around. From the Hall of Justice, on a sudden, they called me by my name.
And I answered boldly from where I stood:
“Here I am, David Tuttle, at your service, for I have done no act which I cannot defend as an abstract principle. I am not a judge, moreover, but judged I will not be. What is the nature of your charge against me?”
“You have been false to Society. You report some things which have been settled by bye-gone ages and other things which must not be discussed. You will harm the morals of the ignorant.”
Then I answered them gladly, and was unafraid, saying:
“Who are you who would stop freedom of speech and of the press, and who would deny to the accused the best pleading? Who are you who elect to be final judges of what is and what is not good, and who cater for others’souls? By my tears they shall hear and read and choose for themselves between Authority and Liberty. O, monopolists of all wisdom and power, can you not see that good is invariably alloyed with evil, that evil is disproportion, and that no one is perfectly virtuous and no one is utterly vicious?”
But I noticed that they were mostly blind who wore the caps.
“At any rate you shall listen to truth,” I said, “even if you cannot see it.”
But he by me said: “They are deaf to Truth also. The wool of prejudice is in their ears. They are fearful that its call might crack their drums. Besides, they are impure at heart. Only the pure in heart see God.”
And I asked him:
“What is purity?”
And he said: “To have a perfect will to follow the highest path open to the soul.”
And I asked him again:
“What is God?”
He spread his strong, sinewy pinions exultingly, as he answered:
“Love and Intelligence, or Heat and Light, or Female and Male, a dual principle for ever working rhythmically in the Universe.”
And the golden quill in my hand was transformed into a bronze trumpet, and I blew through it three strong blasts which shook the Hall, “Awake, Awake, Awake, O Dreamers! Take off your black caps. O People! The day is here. And Love and Light and Liberty.”
. . . . . . .
It is one of those tiresome dream stories, says the reader, the author will presently tell how he awoke.
Nay now, if a dream, still a dream, and I yet write from a tear jar, with one at my side, of things as seen from the air circle.
Don’t keep Liberty to yourself, share it with others!
Liberty’s Library
Leonard E. Read: Accent On The Right: To Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850), who sought for truth rather than outcome and never witnessed the fruits his labor bore. Obedience to conscience was his first rule; we witness the results.
Leonard E. Read: Anything That’s Peaceful: Many favor peace but not many favor the things that make for peace. — Thomas à Kempis
Leonard E. Read: Awake for Freedom’s Sake: Finally, share with others. Forget about “reforming” them! The more we share, the more we learn. This is in the interest of self and freedom!
Leonard E. Read: Castles in the Air: If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. — Henry David Thoreau
Libertarian Anarchy: Against the State: Political philosophy is dominated by a myth, the myth of the necessity of the state. The state is considered necessary for the provision of many things, but primarily for peace and security. In this provocative book, Gerard Casey argues that social order can be spontaneously generated, that such spontaneous order is the norm in human society and that deviations from the ordered norms can be dealt with without recourse to the coercive power of the state.
Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers: Murray Rothbard: Murray Rothbard (1926–1995) was an economist, historian, philosopher, and legal theoretician. His work was unified by a passionate and resolute commitment to a libertarianism that may be characterized as ‘anarcho-capitalism’ and which implied a belief that even the legal system may be provided privately without the need for a coercive collective authority. Hence, anarcho-capitalists envisage a society where the traditional role of government is wholly subsumed by private, profit-making enterprises and all social relationships are ultimately founded upon consent.
