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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030425320 By DAVID A. GORTON THE MONISM OF MAN : OR THE UNITY OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN. ETHICS, CIVIL AND POLITICAL. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON / u ETHICS CIVIL AND POLITICAL BY DAVID ALLYN GORTON, M.D. author of " principles of mental hygiene," "the monism of man," etc. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON Ube KnicIierbocRec press 1902 BRIGHT, ig02 I Copyright, 1902 DAVID ALLYN GORTON, M.D. Published, November, 1902 %tt fcnfcberbocber press, Itew Itfotft PREFACE SOME of the theses that comprise this volume were originally published in the National Quar- terly Review and the American Journal of Civics. Who saw them in the old form will hardly recognize them in the new. They have been revised and re- written, the untenable or questionable dropped out, and the more mature views put in. The volume is not a treatise, be it observed, but rather a series of discourses on living, fundamental problems of the day, which are intended as a pro- phecy and a warning. The author will be charged with pessimism, and not without a certain degree of justification. While he holds that whatever is is wrong, he believes that man is passing from darkness to light, and that it doth not yet appear what he shall be ; but he feels assured that when the race makes its exit from darkness it will leave behind old measures and systems, and em- brace such as may be dictated by a clearer conception of justice and brotherhood. Many who, from a standpoint of abstract right, will approve the ethics herein advocated may think iv Preface them premature, if not impracticable. To such the author has to say that whatever is wrong or un- ethical is susceptible of being corrected. Let the seeds of truth be sown even if the harvest be late. Reformation is easy enough, when the means thereto are forthcoming and the necessity of it is clearly ap- prehended. None but the well-fed optimist will fold his arms in the presence of the ever-increasing num- ber of the lean and hungry, the infirm and destitute, and say: "It is inevitable; it is God's will; there is nothing to be done. ' ' It was not so long ago that manhood suffrage was regarded by good conserva- tive folk as impolitic and impracticable; nor yet, when the same class frowned with disfavor upon the policy of free schools as a species of injustice to the taxpayer ; nor yet, again, when the alphabet was re- garded as undesirable for the common, not to say, "base born," to learn. It is ignorance on the one hand and thoughtless laisser-faire on the other that keep the masses on the extremes of want, and the few in measureless and equally debasing affluence. This extreme of un- equalness that makes for wretchedness in the body politic is not the fault of the individual ; nor is it due to premeditated design on the part of the ruling class. It is rather the legitimate outcome of the wage and profit system, under the burden of which society groans to-day, and the every -man-for-himself policy which our politico-economic philosophers re- gard as desirable. But come a way there will, in the process of social evolution, to right all wrongs, for without it there can be no peace and brotherhood Preface v between members of the same species and children of the same Father. If this volume shall serve to awaken thought on the subject it will do that which lies near to the heart of The Author. CONTENTS PAGB PREFACE iii PART I ETHICS OF EDUCATION 3 PART II ETHICS OF LABOR 3^ PART III ETHICS OF TRADE ....... 6l PART IV ETHICS OF INDIVIDUALISM ..... I03 PART V ETHICS OF DEMOCRACY ...... I35 PART VI ETHICS OF OLIGARCHY ...... 167 PART VII ETHICS OF PAUPERISM AND CRIME .... 205 vii PART I. THE ETHICS OF EDUCATION "Ethics, the most important object of practical philosophy." — Ernst Haeckel. " To live is not to breathe, but to act ; it is to make use of our organs, of our senses, of our faculties, of every element of our nature which makes us sensible of our existence." — Rousskau. PART I THE ETHICS OF EDUCATION THE common school has been the hope of the reformer from time immemorial. It is pointed to by the wise doctrinaires of the period as the north star of civilization, by which nations that would escape from darkness and oppression into a realm of light and liberty must steer their course. The phil- anthropist and millionaire with their schemes of be- nevolence and college endowments ; the ward poli- tician and would-be statesman ; the political reformer and time-serving place-seeker; in fine, the dema- gogues and demigods, all find, or profess to find, in the general diffusion of knowledge and the develop- ment of intelligence, a panacea for all the woes of mankind. One's confidence, well founded, perhaps, in the strength and stability of the American Re- public, is in the education of the American people — that is, education in its broader sense. The general extension of the common-school system, but lately undertaken in the enlightened centres of Christen- dom, and the enforcement of the law of "compulsory education," are expected to put wisdom at the helm 3 Ethics, Civil and Political of State, keep mediocrity out of responsible ofifices, remove corruption from places of trust, banish pau- perism and poor laws, vice, peculation, and pestilence, and, as a finality, sweeten the fountains of public morality, so that justice and fair dealing shall be the rule between all classes and conditions of men and nations in all the relations of life. Such is the hope, and such the means, of the leaders of public poin- ion and the promulgators of cheap books and free schools. It remains to be seen in what sense, and to what extent, these desirable hopes and schemes are realizable by these means. If by education is meant instructing the mind in general literature and abstract science ; strengthening the memory and storing the mind with knowledge, one may well doubt, desirable as this is, the efficacy of the specific. It has certainly failed to meet the indications, or to justify the confidence reposed in it thus far. If we mistake not, the rise and fall of empires and civilizations, the progress and destiny of nations and peoples, the course of human history since the revival of letters, as well as before that period, teach in terms, clear and unmistakable, the fallacy of trusting the future of any people to mere scholastic, or book learning. The condition of American politics and of American industry to-day furnishes both an illustration of, and a warning against, pursuing such an educational policy. Such an education may develop the cunning in one's nature; make one a bigger rogue; increase one's native ability to create, invent, deceive, contrive, and devise ; enable one to practise more successfully the The Ethics of Education arts and tricks by which one can easier fleece one's less cunning neighbor, and the better maintain one's own ascendency in the struggle for existence ; and possibly refine the perceptions and improve the manners. So far as the possession of the more de- sirable of these qualities and accomplishments is con- cerned, so far so good. But such an education can never fit one for the hardier responsibilities of life. It cannot put wisdom in the heart and sense in the head, nor make one an honest man ; nor make one more a man and a better citizen ; nor prepare one to practise the virtue of self-sacrifice ; nor even fit one to care for one's self in the broader and more signifi- cant acceptation of the phrase. It is an education that oftener effeminates ; that leaves the heart cor- rupt ; that not unfrequently makes one more depen- dent, taking the man out of men and the woman out of women, without leaving in their stead any ade- quate compensation. Against the fallacy of such an education may the gods protect us ! Consider [says Thomas Carlyle] the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt a man's life to its present height, and see what part of them he owes to institutions, to mechanism of any kind; and what to the instruction, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him, and still continues to him. Shall we say, for example, that science and art are in- debted principally to the founders of schools and univer- sities? Did not science originate rather and gain ad- vancement in the obscure closets of the Robert Bacons, Keplers, Newtons, in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts, whenever, and in what guise soever, nature, 6 Ethics, Civil and Political from the first times downward, had sent a gifted spirit down upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shak- speare members of any guild, or made poets by means of it? Were painting and sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No, science and art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited and unexpected gift; often, even, a fatal one. These things rise up, as it were, by spontaneous growth in the free soil and sunshine of Nature.* The truth that training in letters does not improve the morals of men is evidenced by the fact that the percentage of crime and pauperism increases with the extension of the common-school system; and that the virorst crimes are often perpetrated by college graduates. These facts are very significant. If they prove anything they prove defects and shortcomings in our school and college systems ; and that under the regime at present in vogue they are no prophy- lactic against crime, nor its closely allied phenome- non, pauperism. According to a statement of the Superintendent of Prisons of the State of New York, made in 1894, out of 3304 inmates of penal institu- tions in that State only 350 could not read and write. Some of the inmates were college bred. The large majority had received a so-called good educa- tion — that is, they had been given the advantages afforded by the common and high schools, which, in the absence of an industrial education, the real education that they should have had, was very de- fective, t o say the least. According to the experi- * Miscellanies, vol. ii., p. 328. The Ethics of Education ence of Mr. Brockway, at Elmira Reformatory, manual training in the arts would have saved eighty per cent, of them. Before beginning a painting one must have a can- vas ; before a book-education one must have brains to receive it. Mental pabulum, like physical, should be adapted to the age and condition of the recipient. "Lessons which scholars learn from each other in a college yard are a hundred times more useful to them," says Rosseau in Emile, "than all that will be told them often in the class-room." They are receptive to the former; they have no faculties for the latter. If by education, on the other hand, is meant the broader view of developing one's faculties and capa- bilities, and increasing not only the power to think, but the capacity to do, and that, too, correctly ; the skill to execute as well as the ability to devise ; edu- cating the hand and the brain alike, and thus com- bining in the same individual the qualities of master and servant ; making men and women more self-help- ful and mankind-helpful, — and to love their neighbor as themselves, — then must one admit its specific adaptation to the requirements of to-day and all days, and bid its diffusion Godspeed. The educa- tion that one most needs is one that makes us freer men and women ; that develops the skill to do and the courage to dare ; both to think and to act ; that gives the power clearly to discern and to perform life's duties and obligations ; in brief, that qualifies one to do what one is appointed by nature and cir- cumstances to do, and to do it well, whether it be 8 Ethics, Civil and Political high art, or low art, boot-blacking or bread-making, the use of the pen or the plane, the needle or the brush, or the study of science, literature, or philos- ophy, in their proper time and place. Rousseau, in his extreme, but apt, way of pre- senting this subject, has well said, that in order to learn to think we must exercise our limbs, our senses, and our organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence; and in order to derive all the advantage possible from these instruments it is necessary that the body, which furnishes them, should be robust and sound. Thus, so far is it from being true that the reason of man is formed independently of the body, it is the happy constitution (and condition) of the body which renders the operation of the mind facile and sure.* Rousseau is right. It is an error to suppose that an education, in any proper sense of that term, can be acquired at school or college, an error that has wrecked countless human lives. Under the present regime the pupil struggles through and finishes a curriculum at an age when it should be begun, if at all, and graduates with a smattering of learning which he does not comprehend; often broken in health, if a girl, without ambition to do anything, and totally incapable of doing it, if he or she had. The opportunity of a life has been sacrificed to a false system, and to narrow, mistaken conceptions of education and the proper method of acquiring it. * Entile, Jean Jacques Rousseau. This facile writer of the eighteenth century seems to have been the first among moderns to comprehend the unity of body and mind. The Ethics of Education g We insist that the true object of education is not "to teach the young idea how to shoot," but, prim- arily, to develop men and women, fit them to care for themselves, and to take a man's and a woman's part in the sphere to which their native genius calls them. To this end, it is well, of course, to begin with the alphabet, and that the little pupil should learn to read and to write. This may properly be followed with the elements of mathematics, since the mathematical faculty is one of the first to develop. To this music may be added for the same reason. But here we pause with books. Their utility is ex- hausted for several years. The pupil should now be put to object-lessons ; be made to learn things and to do things ; be taught some trade, the use of tools, the pencil and brush, and as strength comes, to en- gage in some useful industry in the shop, or on the farm, all directed to the end of making the pupil self-helpful and independent. The indulgence in games and sports that develop physical strength and activity has its place in education, no doubt ; but the hoe and spade are far more important to develop a boy than the bat and ball ; and devotion to the useful industries, in the garden, or on the farm, or in the various trades, fills a much larger place than games in the organic economy. One is play, the other is work ; and while there is a useful exhilaration in the former to the growing pupil, there is an inspiration in the latter, an awakening of an endeavor, which the devotee of pastimes never feels. Moreover, to put a pupil, scarcely in his teens, long before the age of reason, to studies which have lo Ethics, Civil and Political little more effect than to tax the memory, is a grave error. Nature should guide in this matter; her rebellion against books should be respected, and studies selected that are adapted to the stage of mental development of the pupil. Of what utility, pray, is geography to a child who has no practical knowledge, nor any interest in, the sections of the earth? What use is astronomy to one too young to comprehend the nature of the elements and the equilibrium of forces? Why teach grammar to one before the reason is open to the science of language? Or rhetoric and composition, before the pupil has power to think, or ideas to formulate? Or civil gov- ernment when there is no such thing as a science of government? Or history, when the pupil has not the wit to comprehend the significance of the events which he is forced to memorize, always to his hurt? These, and analogous studies should be deferred to a later period, when the pupil is able to digest and assimilate the matters of which they treat. At an earlier period, they seem mostly to confuse and en- cumber the youthful mind, to make him hate books; and what he learns of them in his early teens, while body and brain are actively growing, he seldom re- members and is compelled to learn over again at a later day. Before the pupil is sufficiently developed to enter upon these studies the laws of organic life demand his attention. Beginning with the floral and agricul- tural kingdoms, he should follow with the elements of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, and thus be- come familiar with the laws and conditions of life, The Ethics of Education 1 1 and a knowledge of his own relations to the physi- cal world. Withhold from him the purely hypo- thetical and speculative. Keep him away from the Sunday-school curriculum, creeds and faiths, the philosophical and abstract, the theological and fic- titious, as subjects entirely beyond him. The latter themes require the awakened faculties to fathom, which seldom come, when at all, until full maturity. How unreasonable to tax the mind of youth with themes which only the astute and mature thinker can comprehend ! It should be borne in mind that the power to think, or mental power, is not developed by the acquisition of knowledge ; that it is oftener impeded thereby. In general, brain and body are one. Each is built up and its power and integrity established by nutrients, rather than books. The exercise of the organs of each results in a loss— an expenditure of force and substance, which nutrition alone can sup- ply. "Knowledge is power" in a certain sense, it is true ; but it is a power based on, and supported by, the vitalized plasmon which one takes as food. It is thus that knowledge may make a pedant, or even a learned man, but never a thinker. The thinker is oftener not the learned man. He is more often found in the back country, away from schools and libraries, and isolated, even, from his fellow-men, communing only with nature and the spirit which animates the earth and heavens. Knowledge stores the memory, and, as we have said, is often a bar to thought; while contact with men and things and taking a lively part in the world's work make the all- 1 2 Ethics, Civil and Political round man, expanding and enlarging his being in the harmonious development of body and mind. Such are the agencies that develop the thinker. If produc- ing pedants is the object of education, send the pupil to college, or stuff him with the lore of books. We submit, therefore, that the popular conception of education is erroneous, and that it has led to fal- lacious methods of teaching, and has failed, there- fore, to meet the exigencies of the occasion. Manual work, science and art, books and mechanical imple- ments, we repeat, should supplement each other in fitting the individual to meet with fidelity the obli- gations which devolve upon him as a useful member of the body politic. Let us not be understood as disparaging the study of literature, or of the fine arts, or underrating the in- fluence of the institutions of learning, upon those who have decided tastes for literature. Familiarity with the best thoughts of the best minds^ is an advantage not to be lightly esteemed. Man is a social being, and the mental powers would decline, permanently isolated from the stimulus of other minds. It is noteworthy that the masters in any profession or calling have been patient, laborious students of other men's thought and other men's work, and thus have they embodied in their own thought and life the combined thought and life of those who have lived before. The advantage of schools of whatever char- acter, however, is as means, and not as an end. An education that ends with the acquisition of the means of culture and discipline is a deception, de- priving the mind and body of the salt that saves, or The Ethics of Education 1 3 that makes either of them worth saving. The con- flict of mind with mind, and with opposing circum- stances, earnest work for a just compensation, are indispensable to an education in any proper sense ; for it is only by such influence that strength of body, vigor of mind, and soundness of judgment can be acquired. The age has undervalued the influences of labor as an educator. Its influence on mental develop- ment has been ignored by the pedagogue, to be enunciated by the savant. And it is because of its importance in mental economics, in training the mental faculties, and perfecting the other bodily powers, and in conserving health, as well as in cur- ing maladies of both mind and body, that we give special emphasis to it in this place. Carlyle must have felt the force of this principle, in part, when he wrote : " A man that can succeed in working is to me always a man. ' ' * And again to the same effect : "There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works. ' ' f Mrs. Craik ap- pears to have appreciated the same high principle when she wrote : To do work for work's sake moderately, rationally so as to preserve the power for doing it for the longest term that nature allows — this, the noblest aim a man can start with, becomes often swamped in the ignoble one of work- ing merely to be superior to somebody else.* * Past and Present, p. 199. f Ibid. % Sermons out of Church. 14 Ethics, Civil and Political All effective work, be it observed, is the product of energy inspired by the love of it ; and it is cer- tainly educating when thus inspired, whether the plane of industry be high or low ; whether it be with the sculptor's chisel or the blacksmith's hammer; the pen or the plow ; and whether the work itself be the masterpieces of literature, scientific discovery, or invention, or the products of mechanical skill; the industrial arts, or common manual labor, faithfully done — done with both hand and heart. The power that directs with certainty and integrity the hand in any case — in all cases — is the mind. And surely the skilled hand could not exercise its cunning, if the mind, whose bidding the hand obeys, were un- educated. "It is by action," says John Stuart Mill, "that the faculties are called forth, — more than by words, — more at least than by words unaccompanied by action. ' ' * The remark, although a truth founded upon the experience of individuals, is likewise a truth founded upon physiological observation. The loss of an arm or a leg results sooner or later in atrophy of the brain on the opposite side of the body from which such loss has occurred, and consequently im- pairs the mental powers of the brain on that side. This fact has been verified in numerous autopsies. The reason of it is self-evident. The brain depends for its healthy stimulus to action upon the activity of the organs of the body. The brain needs the hand no less than the hand needs the brain. If it be deprived of such normal stimulus, it ceases to perform its functions, and according to an organic *The Claims of Labor. The Ethics of Education 1 5 law of all growth, becomes, in consequence, dwarfed and enfeebled, in the same manner precisely that a muscle not used becomes impaired and finally use- less. In all sound development, therefore, action must supplement thought. The child that should sit and reason upon the theory of walking would never walk. What more effective stimulus to mental action can there be, therefore, than the employment of the hand in honest work, the mind in useful industry? It may never teach one the alphabet, to read and write, or the multiplication table; the nomenclature of one's mother tongue, or the meaning of conic sections, or other technicalities, useful only as means of knowledge ; but it does discipline the faculties of mind and body ; it does make one a more strongly conscious and better-centred man or woman ; puts one more in harmony with nature and nature's method and processes; and brings one nearer the secret of God, the divine, and, therefore, the most skilled Worker. He can only work as does nature, ceaselessly, consistently, with perfect adaptation of means to an ideal, — the perfect attainment, — who has the perfection of nature in him, working in him and through him, the will of the divine Workman. It may seem commonplace enough, this following a plow or using a chisel or a hammer ; but to him who is in harmony with the life of things, this putting forth the hand and operating on nature is full of profound significance. We have heard common mechanics say that the delight which came to them upon the successful completion of some simple 1 6 Ethics, Civil and Political mechanism, over which they had labored long and diligently with might and main, exceeded their power of expression. It could only be compared to that exhibited by Archimedes, who, upon discover- ing the law of specific gravity, ran naked from his bath, crying, "Eureka! Eureka!" oblivious of every- thing but the supreme joy of his discovery. The delight that thus overpowered Archimedes like a flash of light from the Eternal upon his dis- covery is no other than the inspiration which waits upon, cheers, and warms every successful worker; no other than that which the Divine Architect himself experienced, one may suppose, as day by day He reviewed His work, and said, with infinite satisfac- tion, "It is very good." The great composer, the late Gounod, found in his task not only the highest reward but his greatest pleasure. He wrote : Woe to him who iinds not his highest reward in the act of creating ! The composition of Romeo and Juliet has filled my soul night and day for years — filled it with pleasure, filled it with pain ; I am indebted to it for the happiest hours of my life, and have found therein my re- ward. That which follows the completion of the work — rehearsals, performances, and success — all this is weari- ness and disappointment. If a god were to give me the power to create a masterpiece, whole and imperishable as Shakespeare's, on condition that no mortal should ever know the author's name, I should be a thousand times happier than over the success of my works and my know- ledge of their imperfection. Watt was by no means of an enthusiastic tempera- The Ethics of Education ly ment, but Dr. Black, one of his eminent biographers, says that he was filled with rapture when the grand discovery of the improvement of the steam-engine first "flashed across his mind." Every discoverer or successful worker needs not to be told of the joy which attends the birth of a new idea. We have known students of literature become as happy as a child with a toy, over the writing of an exceptionally fine paragraph. Such joys are not unknown to the lower grades of work, or workers. Many a poor starved soul has forgotten his wretchedness in the inspiration of his task. Any good cook or devoted housekeeper, we venture to say, can appreciate the comfort which possessed "Aunt Chloe's " * heart when the family and their guest relished her cooking. What a pleasant pride and satisfaction she took in her pies, which ' ' Mas'r George liked so well " ! Her soul was in those pies ; and we feel sure that they were indeed good, since flour and water were by no means the most essential elements that entered into their composition ! The Greeks live in the works of their hands even more than in the works of their brains. What peo- ple ever equalled them in sculpture, painting, and architecture? For fine originality, idealistic concep- tion, and exquisiteness of workmanship they give us models, the attempt to improve upon which would be presumption the most idle. The exquisite cunning of their hands disclosed the profound genius of their minds ; one supplemented the other, and, as might be said, they mutually educated each the other. Yet * Uncle Tom's Cabin. 1 8 Ethics, Civil and Political they could, with rare exceptions, neither read nor write. Were they, for that reason, the less edu- cated? Many of the greatest minds that ever helped to shape the course and destiny of human life have been developed through honest toil, unaided by the knowledge of letters. The tradition of the divine Jesus must have perished but for the memories of unlettered men. Jesus himself was an apostle of work, a carpenter by trade. The Apostle Peter was a fisherman unfamiliar with letters. And if the others of the twelve were superiorly educated it does not appear in the record. It was wise that they were selected from the ranks of the simple and lowly. Their mission was to the poor. Faith was the instrument they used, not knowledge ; faith was the element they appealed to, not the intellect. Hence, it is not at all strange that the Christian Church discredited learning, and that for more than a thousand years but few of its votaries could read and write ; nor that the Christian clergy, for the same period, were unlettered. In almost every council [writes Hallam], the ignorance of the clergy formed a subject of reproach. It is asserted by one, held in 992, that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew the first elements of letters. Not one priest in a thousand in Spain about the age of Charlemagne could address a common letter of salutation to another.* And yet what mighty trusts were reposed in those early Christians, and with what remarkable fidelity * History of the Middle Ages, vol. iii., p. 288. The Ethics of Education 19 did they execute those trusts ! Moreover, the Em- peror Charlemagne himself could not write his name. And the wise King Alfred was not master of the Latin language, the almost exclusive language of literature in his time. The most famous and power- ful of the Ostrogothic kings of Italy, Theodoric, could not write his name ; while the Emperor Fred- erick Barbarossa, King John of Bohemia, and Philip the Hardy of France, could not read, much less write. Hallam says that signatures first began to appear in the fourteenth century, before which seals were used to authorize state papers; and before these, the sign of the cross was in common use for the same purpose. Minds stamped with strong individuality often turn away from the means and methods which help other and humbler minds to rise in life, and strike out independent courses of their own. It is easy for them to succeed where others fail ; to rise where others fall. What a noble example of unaided suc- cess, except it be the aids that wait upon every man or woman of genius, have the aspiring youth in Ben- jamin Franklin — "he who snatched the thunder from Heaven, and the sceptre from kings!" He was a poor boy of humble parentage and still humbler means, who aspired to become a printer, and having learned well his lesson in that art, was prepared by it to become the man he was in adult life ; a man head and shoulders above his contem- poraries in those qualities of character which place one in the front rank of men of science, letters, and statesmanship. 20 Ethics, Civil and Political Another example, equally eminent, may be ob- served in that of Horace Greeley. Mr. Greeley was called the modern Franklin, and not inaptly, for like Franklin he was of humble origin, with even less school privileges than had ' ' Poor Richard ' ' ; like Franklin, he was a printer and worked his way ; like Franklin, too, from putting other people's ideas into type, he went on to printing his own; but unlike Franklin, he continued the art and the business he learned and established to the end of a life, which, if it did not reach the length of the average of his type, was sufificiently long for him to achieve an en- viable renown. We revere the character of Horace Greeley. He was pre-eminently worthy the immor- tality which he achieved. He needs no great news- paper, no tall tower, no work of bronze or marble to perpetuate his name to the ages to come. How truly has Carlyle said : ' ' From the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height ' ' ! Favored is he who can keep step therein ! Among novelists who have raised to themselves an imperishable renown, unaided by hands save their own, stands Dickens, high on the scroll of eminent names. His father, a clerk in the pay department of the English Navy, and afterwards an humble re- porter of debates of Parliament, endeavored to fit his son for the law by sending him to college. Study of books appears to have been distasteful to the youth; law by no means agreeable to him. He, therefore, abandoned both and applied himself with the whole energy of his mind to the literary work which ultimately gave him such a distinguished re- The Ethics of Education 21 pute. So, too, his distinguished contemporary, Mme. George Sand, secured the position she at- tained in letters unaided, except by the efforts of a rare genius. Having an origin, an entrance into this world of conventionalisms, under circumstances to which more or less infamy is attached in most civi- lized countries, barely escaping the fact, but retain- ing the odium of illegitimacy ; born in affluence, but left when a woman-grown in poverty to care for herself, she took up the pen, and to her surprise and that of the world became by unwearied industry in her calling the most celebrated romancer of her time — perhaps of any time. The career of the late lamented author of Peter Stirling, Paul Leicester Ford, affords another strik- ing example of what indefatigable industry will do in the development of character. Being enfeebled by an injury at a tender age, he was never sent to school. The education he acquired was in his father's library, and his rare genius as a novelist and litterateur was developed by practice. Then, in physical science, of whom can so much be said to his honor for real solid achievement, in a brilliant scientific age, as of Michael Faraday? His father was a humble blacksmith ; the son, a strug- gling youth, suffering more from the throes of sup- pressed genius than from poverty and ignorance, great as were the latter. Through the influence of Sir Humphrey Davy, Faraday obtained a humble though coveted position in the laboratory of the Royal Institution, where his genius had ultimately an opportunity to show itself. Not many years 22 Ethics, Civil and Political elapsed ere the young pretender to fortune's favor distinguished himself as a discoverer in physical science. "As Ampfere had made magnets by elec- tricity, so Faraday produced electric phenomena by magnets." But it was not alone in the sphere of discovery that this hardy son of industry became dis- tingished. He was eminent as a teacher of science at the Royal Institution. Nothing [says Professor de la Rive] can give a notion of the charm which he imparted to these improvised lec- tures, in which he knew how to combine animated and often eloquent language with a judgment and art in his experiments which added to the clearness and elegance of his exposition. He fascinated his auditors and excited in them un- bounded enthusiasm in his subject. In the light of Faraday's experience, who can be so weak as to say : ' ' I might have achieved something worthy of a man if fortune had smiled upon me as it does on some people ' ' — a sentiment unworthy a place in the heart of one on whom the impress of divinity has been stamped. In every department of activity, of science, art, and literature, the record of untitled merit is equally remarkable. Ambrose Par6, the founder of the French school of surgery, and the most distin- guished French physician of the sixteenth centuiy, never saw the inside of a college. And John Hun- ter, the great English naturalist, anatomist, and surgeon of the eighteenth century, received his edu- cation in the dissecting room. He had neither the The Ethics of Education 23 time nor the opportunity to attend college. Robert Boyle, the distinguished English chemist, philoso- pher, and theologian, of whom Hallam says, "No one Englishman of the seventeenth century, after Lord Bacon, raised to himself so high a reputation in experimental philosophy," repeatedly refused to be titled, believing, no doubt, that he whom God honors with the impress of His own divinity is in need of no college or other certificate of endorse- ment. Sir Astley Cooper, to whom modern surgery is largely indebted, although made a baronet for his eminent abilities and important services to medical science, never acquired the title of doctor of medi- cine. Having the substance, he could well afford to despise the shadow of the honor. Ricardo, the most eminent economic philosopher of the nine- teenth century, was trained to trade and exchange, receiving but a meagre schooling in his native coun- try, Holland. Hugh Miller was a stone mason by trade ; Captain Cook rose from a day laborer ; Ste- phenson was a stoker; Barry an Irish tailor; Burns a Scotch peasant; Alexander, King of Macedonia, was a clerk at Rome ; Peter the Great was a carpen- ter, and later a drummer in his own regiment ; Spin- otza, who first conceived the unity of the Kosmos and the theory of Monism, was a glass-blower by trade ; the eloquent Dwight Hillis was a shoemaker (and boasts of it) ; the excellent Robert Collyer was a blacksmith; while Turner, the eminent chemist, was a barber. Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the History of Civilization in England, was an alum- nus of no college; neither was his distinguished 24 Ethics, Civil and Political contemporary, the essayist and philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Harriet Martineau was denied a "lib- eral education ' ' ; and Margaret Fuller, though learned in the classics, was taught them chiefly at home. Charlotte Bronte taught school for a liveli- hood, but received a meagre schooling herself. The renowned Mile. Rachel was born of humble Jews, and made her own way to the stage, where she achieved celebrity only by the most indefatigable industry. Her no less renowned and admired rival, the incomparable Ristori, was mainly indebted for her reputation to the brilliancy of her genius and the unwearied devotion she gave to her art. Paganini was the eccentric son of a poor tyrannical father. Ole Bornemann Bull was a wandering Norwegian, favored by fortune rather than by birth ; and Ruben- stein acquired his rare excellence as a pianist, accord- ing to his own acknowledgment, "by practice." Nothing can be truer in human life than that the price of superior excellence in any department of in- dustry is indefatigable diligence, be the aids what they may. "The leaders of industry," says Carlyle, "are nat- urally the captains of the world." It is, indeed, no uncommon phenomenon, in the trying epochs of a nation's career, for men to spring forth, Minerva like, from the brain of Nature, fully armed to meet the exigencies of great occasions — unlettered, uneducated men, except it be the education which comes to them by toil and sweat in some useful de- partment of the world's industry, and from intimate converse with men and things. Of them it may be The Ethics of Education 25 said more truly than of any other class of men that they are called by God — endowed by nature to fill the place and to do the work to which they seem to have been divinely appointed. The man to whom civil and religious liberty in England is most in- debted, a man who stands a peer among peerless men of any age, was in college but a single year. The early years of his life were devoted to agricul- ture and to the performance of those social duties which ordinarily devolve upon a public-spirited citi- zen. The occasion came for the services of a com- manding genius, and this man was equal to it. He came unsought, an awkward, uncouth, rustic youth, unaccustomed to speaking, still less accustomed to writing; a man of prayerful habit and undaunted courage; a believer in himself as well as in God; whose chief tutor was the occasion, whose chief training was the work in hand. He came unsought, but not unbidden, for the unseen but strongly felt Power behind all phenomena called him from out the depths to become the protector of a great com- monwealth. The so-called ' ' educated ' ' statesmen of that period looked down with proud disdain upon the farmer, soldier, and stateman who, inexperienced in statesmanship — let us rather say, statesmancraft — as he was, aspired to preserve the liberty of a peo- ple and to promote the welfare of mankind. But, in the language of Sir Philip Warwick, many of them lived to see this slovenly, uncombed gentle- man, this same Oliver Cromwell, "by multiplied suc- cesses, and by mere converse with good company, appear in my own eye, of a comely presence, and a 26 Ethics, Civil and Political great and majestic deportment." " Rapidly as his fortunes grew," says Lord Macaulay, "his mind ex- panded more rapidly still;" and so it always is. It is almost incredible what power familiar converse with things and the inspiration of a great occasion have to make a man a god, when there is anything Godlike in him ! In striking contrast by nature and training with this unlettered son of God — we mean to be taken literally, "for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God," * are they not? — was King James I. of England. Born a prince and a coward, educated a prince and a theologian ; familiar with letters, but unfamiliar with labor; trained in the ecclesiasticism of the period, which, like a mono- mania, frequently possesses the small minds of the species, he was as wanting in the sense called com- mon — but which is by no means common — as any ape-like creature with the least show of brains could well be. Anticipating a Cromwell, Nature seemed to have reserved a supply of materials for statesmen for several generations, which is a sufficient reason and an apology for the infliction of a James. What he might have been, this prince in name, had he been brought up to dig and delve, to act as well as to think, and to work as well as to act, the world can never know ; what he was the annals of history too plainly show. The history of every people is replete with exam- ples illustrating the efficiency of that mental disci- pline which comes to one through patient, persever- * Romans viii. , 14. The Ethics of Education 27 ing toil. One of the greatest American statesmen of the last generation was a man who early in life was inured to toil, and whose faculties expanded into fine proportions under the stimulus of physical and mental exertion. If he ultimately became dis- tinguished as an orator and a man of letters, it was through indefatigable industry in the public service, rather than advantage derived from a college course.* So, likewise, the man whose rare wisdom and broad statesmanship guided the government of America safely through the most trying ordeal of its life, and preserved the union of the States from irretrievable wreck, was a hardy son of the soil, accustomed in early life to do, and to do well, whatever his hand found to do. Although, years before entering the public service, he was a successful lawyer and skilful debater, they were accomplishments achieved inde- pendently even of an ordinary common school. But the genius of Abraham Lincoln will live, grow in favor, and be revered when that of the most brilliant of his collegiate contemporaries has become dim, or been forgotten. But it were needless to multiply examples of self- made, better say unaided, men and women — for everyone is self-made, if made at all — of distinguished repute, to illustrate and emphasize a principle in mental economics familiar to every observant indi- vidual. The examples are too numerous and well known to need further recounting here, and the moral they point is sufificiently obvious. * W. H. Seward. PART II ETHICS OF LABOR 29 " Every man's task is his life preserver.'' — Emerson. " Do not work from necessity, but work for glory. Condescend to the state of the artisan in order to be above your own. In order to put fortune and things under subjection to you, begin by making yourself independent •f them. In order to reign by opinion, begin by reigning over opinion." — ^Jean Jacques Rousseau. 30 PART II THE ETHICS OF LABOR DO we sufficiently appreciate the intrinsic benefi- cence of labor as an educator? It occurs to us that we do not so appreciate it, and for reasons which can be easily traced to the faults of our edu- cational system. The tendency is to escape the trouble of labor ; to avoid work, instead of to seek it ; to secure its rewards without its pains. The spirit of Mammonism, which despotically rules the age, has put a money valuation upon a man's time and sense alike, and estimates character and success by the same unequal standard. The youths who depend upon their wits or the work of their hands for a subsistence are impelled by the force of circumstances and the influence of the time-spirit to do that which they must, and only so long as they must, merely as a stepping-stone to something that can be done easier or better, or that pays better. It is thus that they are debarred from taking an abiding interest in what they do, and consequently seldom or never attain to - 31 32 Ethics, Civil and Political excellence in anything. The same anomaly may be observed in our schools and colleges. The struggle of the student is to get on, to attain position, rather than to build character, to acquire rather than to possess. In his haste he overlooks the substance, and contents himself with the semblance of learning. We all know what a bugbear examinations are to the student, and how he is crammed and coached for them, that he may have a better showing than he deserves and reap rewards which he has not earned. The inevitable result on the student is superficial accomplishments, pretence in place of performance and defective scholarship; on labor, industrial disturbance, bad workmanship, adultera- tion, and shoddy. The real dignity and nobleness of labor are lost sight of, and the chief benefit de- rived from labor the physical and moral benefit, is lost altogether. Now the influence of labor is twofold, subjective and objective, on the laborer himself and on those for whose benefit labor is performed — Society. Unless a man loves his work, takes a lively satisfac- tion in its performance, he fails to reap the blessing it would otherwise confer on him; yea, more, the loss is twofold. The work fails to bless him, and he fails to bless his work ; for it is impossible to do any service, however humble, honestly and faith- fully, when the heart is not in it. Besides, society suffers immeasurably from work indifferently done. Lord Derby, in his Advice to Young Men, has well said, and the idea cannot be too often repeated, that The Ethics of Labor 33 What a man really takes a keen interest in, he is sel- dom too dull to understand and to do well ; and, con- versely, when a man does not care to put the best of his brains into a thing, no amount of mere cleverness will enable him to do it well if it is a thing of real difficulty, or else it is one which he has trained himself to do easily by much previous practice, in which latter case he is really reaping, in present ease, the fruit of past exertion ; living, so to speak, upon the capital he has accumulated by early industry.* In our near-sightedness we are too prone to regard the money equivalent as the chief end of work. It is no doubt a very important desideratum, and one not likely to be either overlooked or undervalued ; but we submit that the material compensation for one's labor is altogether secondary compared with the spiritual benefactions which come to a soul wholly devoted to a congenial calling. These can- not be measured or weighed like merchandise ; nor can their value be set down in figures and reckoned up in dollars and cents. Good health is among the rewards of honest work. Who shall estimate its market value? So likewise are a clear head and an honest heart. Who shall compute the money value of the delights which they bring? Can any one give the exact equivalent in currency of the raptures which come with a new idea ; a beautiful thought ; a noble consecration; an elevated sentiment; or a tender, reverent emotion ? Probably not. Yet these ♦Address to the students of Liverpool College, England, 1874. 3 34 Ethics, Civil and Political are some of the delights which well up from the depths within one as a reward of work well done, of trusts faithfully discharged. He who does honor to his work is enlarged and ennobled by it in his whole being, body and soul ; Nature cares for him precisely as she cares for every good being or thing that is true to itself and to her, and fills its appointed sphere, and does her bidding; saying all the time, so distinctly as to be almost audible, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Such a soul reaps the choicest fruits of living — the joy that comes to one whose every fibre and faculty thrills with life and emotion — born of the love of his task. What more could a rightly constituted individual properly ask for than this? What, more, indeed, could he have? His existence is an overflowing fountain of delight, which money might detract from, but could not add to. If he were indeed mortal, having noth- ing to hope for or to expect beyond this present life, the pleasure of well-doing makes life worth the living. One should remember that some acknow- ledgment is due to the claims of self-respect and the dignity of human nature, without regard to ulterior hopes and fears. Every man is in duty bound to he a man ; to act his part on life's stage like a man ; to do his work like a man, with compensation or without compensation, even though it were for three score years and ten ; even though it were for a year ; even though it were for a day, and trust the providences for the rest. Nature holds him or her on whom she would confer the high dignity of manhood or womanhood, whether rich or poor, to fearful respon- The Ethics of Labor 35 sibilities, which neither can in anywise disregard. And this is one of them. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, more than any other man, possessed the brains of the eighteenth century, expressed the same thought, in Emile, or his volume on education. Speaking of him who was born in aflfluence, he says : You owe more to others than as though you were born without property ; you were favored in your birth. It is not just that what one man has done for society should release another from what he owes it; for such a one owing his entire self can pay only for himself; and no father can transmit to his son the right of being useless to his fellows.* On this principle of social economics we have en- larged elsewhere, and forbear, therefore, further comment in this place. We cannot too strongly insist that it is work for work's sake that puts a crown upon a man. Work for the love of working, for the interest in the thing done, the object produced, work that enlists the energy of the arm and brain, is a developing power of unlimited proportions, an educator that has no superior. He who brings such consecration to his task is rewarded for his pains, though the money consideration be barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. There is a law in the constitution of Nature which apportions deserts to her subjects, with a justice that is absolutely even handed, depend *P. 177. 36 Ethics, Civil and Political upon it ; and he who fails of his meed, whether of rewards or punishments, in one way is sure to get it in another. It may come in the form or manner one least desires or expects; unobserved, invisible as the dew or the gentle zephyrs ; imperceptible as the approach of dawn, the flight of time, or the pulse-beat; mysterious as a providence or a pesti- lence ; but come it must and does, for Providence is no doubtful paymaster, be assured. It is our blind- ness that conceals the fact, and obscures a power as certain and as unerring in its results as the growth of a flower, or the justice and benignity of God. The query has often risen in our mind, whether a man is made by his task, or his task by him? The point is by no means so easily determined, if his task be a congenial one, as it at first sight appears to be. Cromwell is described by Macaulay as a rest- less, purposeless man until the occasion came that was to awaken his genius. The same is true of our own General Grant. We have known grown boys too stupid to learn their spelling-lesson become by contact with the world and devotion to congenial pursuits capable men and good citizens. Mechanics, merchants, bankers and brokers, farmers, business men of all sorts, and statesmen, even, of noble records, comprise the long catalogue of men of that description, which our memory recalls. Very dull minds we repeat, may be awakened, quickened into activity, by work that fully engages their sympathy and commands their energies. Rousseau, to whom I have already referred, has well said: "Instead of making a child stick to his The Ethics of Labor 37 books, if I employ him in a workshop, his hands labor to the profit of his mind ; he becomes a philos- opher, but fancies he is only a workman."* We have in our memory a stupid lad, born of semi-idiotic parents, too dull in fact to learn any- thing at school, whose experience is apropos of our subject. Having been born in abject poverty, he was compelled to work for his bread, or starve, or become a pauper. His was a docile, plastic nature, submitting readily to whatever lot befell him. In the course of events he happened to become appren- ticed to a village blacksmith. The blacksmith's shop proved to be a school par excellence to him; the smith his natural schoolmaster. His progress, how- ever, was slow. For a long time he seemed incapa- ble of mastering the minor details of the shop, and was accordingly retained to do little else but blow the bellows and swing the sledge, keeping the alter- nate stroke with that of his master's hammer. In the course of a few years his faculties began to grow, expanding, as it were, under the blows of his heavy sledge, until he finally became a good blacksmith and a respected citizen — thanks to the benign potency of the sledge-hammer. This case is by no means an exceptional illustra- tion of the power of even rude labor to educate a man when kept to his task. How much the world is indebted for its men to the unwieldy sledge must forever remain one of those unfathomable mysteries, of which the world is so full to-day. We make no * imile, p. 153. 38 Ethics, Civil and Political secret of our conviction, however, that the annals of the workshops, were they written, would reveal an innumerable throng of hardy saints manufactured from very crude material; and that those of the professions would show a throng, less numerous, of course, of doctors, lawyers, clergymen, and others spoiled by books and schools, but whom the sledge- hammer would have converted into good artisans and useful citizens. Of them it must be written: "Spoiled for the want of sledge-hammers! " It is the life which a man puts into his task, how- ever humble it may be, that enables his task to put life in him — paradoxical as it seems. It is a grave error to suppose that work kills people. There is, on the contrary, more work killed by men than men killed by work. Worry may cause death, and idle- ness kill, and damn while it kills ; but honest work never killed anybody with age and strength propor- tioned to his task. The interdependence of genius and the medium of its exercise is' so reciprocal that neither can subsist independently of the other. Action is the condition of development in any direction. Did the arm find nothing to act upon it would never round out and mature. The muscle or the tooth that is not an- tagonized withers away. An eye isolated from light loses the power of vision. So genius, unemployed, deprived of its natural stimulus, would inevitably die, for it is as dependent upon exercise for its un- folding as the arms of the smith on the hammer, or the tint of the rose on the sunbeam. To him with special mental defects — and who of us is without The Ethics of Labor 39 them? — we would say, Find them out and work them into fruition. Give the weak faculty some- thing to do, that indolence may be helped into activity, poverty into plenty. The weakest faculty in us may thus be developed into respectable pro- portions. Genius and the works of genius go hand in hand, and mutually supplement each other. From this point of view it may be said, for example, that the Birds of America, that incomparable work of genius, immortalized Audubon, and that The Animal King- dom created a Buffon and a Cuvier. Those distin- guished naturalists live in their works, and it is difficult to dissociate their own history from the Natural History they so ably wrote. The degree of patient, painstaking toil that all of them gave to their task almost justifies Goethe's declaration that "genius is patience." They possessed the genius of taking pains. Of Buffon it is said that he wrote his great work. The Animal Kingdom, consisting of twenty volumes, eighteen times over! What man- ner of man must he be with so poor a genius that he could not produce a respectable piece of literary or other work after eighteen earnest trials ! Bishop Butler's celebrated Analogy is said to have been re- written seventy times. It is such a complete ex- ponent and exemplification of the author's thought, that not a word could be added to or taken away from it without injury to both author and book. Each has a renown equally inseparable. The work is certainly a masterpiece of industry ; and as a theo- logical text-book, Protestant theologians are deeply 40 Ethics, Civil and Political indebted to it ; but not more so, it is believed, than was the Bishop himself for the genius which so greatly distinguished him. The ancient Greeks, to whom we have already re- ferred, have set the world incomparable examples of diligence in their work without which it is reason- able to presume they never would have attained acknowledged excellence. Their students took pains. Their artists could never do anything too well, and, accordingly, each had his specialty in which he excelled. In painting, for example, some were distinguished for high finish, as Protogenes; others for fancy, as Theon; others again for com- position, as Pamphiles ; still others, for depth of ex- pression, as Aristides; while for grace, Apelles is said to have been unrivalled; and "Euphranor was in all things excellent." We read, too, that Pro- togenes spent seven years on his most excellent work, the figure of lalysus with his Dog. So excel- lent was this work of art, indeed, that Apelles, the most celebrated painter in point of grace in all Greece, and probably the foremost painter of all time, stood speechless in astonishment when he first saw it, finally pronouncing it wonderful.* Apropos of Greek industry and love of applica- tion, it is instructing to note the course pursued by Demosthenes to enable him to become the world's most celebrated orator. Though studying rhetoric in his youth with a master, his first attempt before a popular assembly was a failure, according to Plu- *See an excellent article on painting in Anthon's Greek and Roman Antiquities. The Ethics of Labor 41 tarch. The people laughed at his awkward manners, ungraceful gestures, and defective periods. The ridicule which was poured upon him would have dissuaded many men from repeating the effort, but in him it served rather to kindle renewed energy, inflame ambition, and to stimulate perseverance. He shaved one side of his head, it is said, that he might not be tempted to go into society. Retiring into subterranean seclusion, he practised before a looking-glass the art that was to distinguish him, and that he was to distinguish. With him, as chief companions, were the rhetorical works of Grecian masters, which he studied unremittingly. The most famous of these for depth of thought and energy were the writings of Thucydides, which Demos- thenes is said to have transcribed no less than eighty- eight times. That was indeed taking pains. But how well did the gods reward him for it. ' ' Of all human productions," says Hume, "his orations present the models which approach the nearest to perfection." And Macaulay, himself a master of speech, speaks of him as ' ' standing at the head of all the mighty masters of speech. ' ' That is enough glory for any one to earn in one lifetime. Despine leads one to infer that he was actuated by the love of truth in writing his able work on Psychologie Naturelle: "L 'amour de la verity et ne doit esp^rer d'autre recompense pour sa peine que la satisfaction que ce sentiment lui fera ^prouver." All truly excellent work is the outcome of pains- taking thrift, for the intrinsic love of it, and is not the product of an hour, or the momentary spasm of 42 Ethics, Civil and Political an exceptional genius. Mushrooms may be pro- duced in a night, and the white myceHum of fungus in an hour; but the hardy, wholesome grain con- denses within its cells the sunshine of months ; the stately oak or elm that of a century. So it is with the masterpieces of genius. The trash that costs the least, that is soonest produced, the soonest dies ; but that which grows the slowest, maturing by slow process under the strong force of persistent toil, the longest lives. We are well aware that many so- called masterpieces of literature were produced with great rapidity. Thus, Dryden is said to have writ- ten Alexander' s Feast in a day and a night ; John- son, his Life of Savage in thirty -six hours ; and Mrs. Browning, her Lady Geraldine s Courtship in twelve hours. But it would have been exceedingly unwise in these eminent authors to entrust their literary immortality to these little pieces, chiefly remark- able, we make bold to say, for the ease and rapidity with which they were produced. No, no; these are not "masterpieces " of literary excellence that are begun and finished in hours, but the mere foam of exceptional genius, and are as un- like the real masterpieces of art as shadow and sub- stance. The real masterpieces, we repeat, either of literature, the fine arts, mechanics, or of invention, have come through the throes of hard and pro- longed labor. They are not the productions of a day, a month, a year. They are often the growth of a decade, a generation, a lifetime — sometimes of a century, artd even a decade of centuries. Shake- speare's plays occupied the best part of a rare life- The Ethics of Labor 43 time. Paradise Lost was forming in the busy brain of its illustrious author for many years ere it took definite form and shape. It is said of a certain col- lege professor that he spent five minutes over every sentence he ever wrote. That seems like slow work ; but it had one advantage over most literary work, — that of needing no revision. One may well be sus- picious of the quality of hasty literary productions. He who is sparing of his pains in letters, no less than in other work, never attains to a high degree of perfection in them. There can be no great ex- cellence without great labor. Newton blew soap-bubbles in the sunlight forty years before he dared to announce the discovery of the laws of refraction. So with Hahnemann and Jenner; each plodded and experimented year after year for a decade, before either had the courage to declare to the world that he had made a discovery, the one in therapeutics, the other, in prophylaxis. Robert Fulton dreamed and worked, worked and dreamed, for a generation over the invention of the steamboat; and the despondent Watt, his prede- cessor, plodded amid most discouraging and vexa- tious difficulties also for a generation to get his improvements of the steam-engine recognized and accepted. Morse, though dying at a green old age, barely lived long enough to perfect his life-work, the electric telegraph. Professor Faraday was not less fortunate, living to see a discovery in physical philosophy, the unity and mutual convertibility of the forces, the truth of which was demonstrated by Meyer and Helmholtz at the age of maturity. 44 Ethics, Civil and Political universally accepted by men of science. That was glory enough for them. These, with Faraday, poor, are greater than the multi-millionaire. Time will add lustre to their names long after the name of him with a hundred millions is forgotten. The experience of these painstaking workers, se- lected promiscuously from the long catalogue of in- dustrious heroes who have given their lives to labor, who were educated by labor, is that of the innumer- able throng of men and women who claim it as a grateful privilege to do the world's work, just for the sake of doing it. These " captains of industry," the leaders of the world, as Carlyle declared, in any field of labor, or any department of thought, have found no royal road to success — rarely a money compensation. Anxious, laborious days, sleepless nights, vexation of spirit, disappointments, mis- representation, self-renunciation, privation, and sor- row have been their chief companions from beginning to end. Their course has been up steep and craggy pathways — the pathways of the gods, as Porphyry declares — ^beset with difificulties which, but for the patience to wait, the spirit to animate, and the cour- age to persevere, would have proved insuperable. Surely, immortality is oftener signalized by a crown of thorns than a garland of roses. II Finally, we have to note briefly the baneful in- fluence of work inspired by the love of gain or worldly advancement. "Vice," says an ancient The Ethics of Labor 45 historian,* "is instigated to action by the prospect of gain ' ' ; and we would add that when labor is in- stigated solely by the prospect of gain, it is very likely to end in vice. The same author has shrewdly observed that "When the passion for wealth has become prevalent, neither morals nor talents are proof against it." f This sage conclusion of a man by no means distinguished for unselfishness was the result of no abstruse reasoning or psychological study, but of actual observation of the state of so- ciety and the course of political events at Rome just previous to the final subversion of the great Re- public and the establishment of a royal government on its ruins. If it were based on observations of society throughout Christendom to-day it could not be more just. History is sadly repeating itself. The "passion for wealth " has indeed become the ruling passion of the hour ; the love of money the object rather than the means of life ; and is fast cor- rupting and demoralizing every department of do- mestic industry — science alone resisting its insidious approach. The evidence that labor is being demoralized by the revival of Mammonism seems quite conclu- sive. In all the trades, professions, and avocations of industrial life the struggle for profits taxes the ingenuity and exhausts the energies of the best minds and the worst. Work for money has become a barter between labor and capital. The strife for * Sallust's First Epistle to Casar. \Ibid., p. 248. 46 Ethics, Civil and Political profits results in giving the least possible price for the greatest possible amount of labor on the one hand, and the least amount possible of labor for the great- est possible amount of money on the other. This is the first result and the least. The second, and the most important, is the demoralization of labor itself — the production of articles of traffic and merchan- dise of inferior quality and value, and, what is of vastly more consequence still, the moral degradation of the industrial classes to which the sequence in- variably leads. The present state of industry and of private and public morality is just such as we should expect to find as the legitimate result of thus debasing the ideal in industry — work for its own sake.* The professions form no exception to the opera- tion of the law of excellence in labor, nor to the corruptions of Mammonism. No man or woman attains an enviable renown in law, medicine, the ministry, or other professional avocation who is actuated by other motives than the intrinsic love of it. When greed steps in, character drops out. The love of distinction, glory, social position, of prefer- ment, is as fatal to rare attainments in the artistic or learned professions as the love of money. True genius abhors a title as an honest man a certificate * ' ' English goods are no longer esteemed as they used to be, be- cause English workmanship no longer possesses its old preeminence. English workmanship no longer possesses its old preeminence be- cause English workmen now care only for the money which their work brings in instead of, as formerly, taking an interest in the work itself." — The Spectator, July 29, 1876. The Ethics of Labor 47 of character. It is said of Sir Astley Cooper that he firmly declined the proffered aid of influential relatives and friends in prosecuting his professional education, preferring, as he said, to attain his stand- ing and to occupy the place in the professions to which his merits alone entitled him.* That was manly. The straining after unmerited honors and cheap diplomas, — diplomas so cheap, indeed, that their unhonored possessors, for the most part, have too little learning to read them, — of which one sees so much, is a most melancholy fact in the experience of college life. The professional aspirant for such empty distinctions is rarely fitted to enter upon the trusts to which his diploma legally entitles him ; the means obscures the end which one endowed with true nobility of character should seek — pro- ficiency in one's calling— in the Master's work. To obtain perfection in one's calling, one's task, is the greatest and most enduring distinction. Weakness alone seeks nobility through less noble means. The eminent scholar Strauss seems to have entertained a similar opinion. He writes : The citizen who fancies himself honored by the pur- suit, or, worse still, the purchase, of a patent of nobility, degrades himself in my eyes ; and even if a man of merit gratefully accepts a proffered elevation to the peerage as a reward for his genius, I shrug my shoulders at this dis- play of a pitiable weakness, f * Vide Life of Sir Astley Cooper, vol. i., chap. ii. f The Old Faith and the New, vol. ii. , p. 90, 48 Ethics, Civil and Political According to a law of worship a devotee can never rise above the god he worships. So a man that devotes himself to trade and exchange, or to the sciences, the arts, or the professions, exclusively for the emoluments they bring him, becomes sooner or later identified with the principles which rule the market and supply his profit and loss. He comes to know no law superior to that of Supply and De- mand. It is the key to his business policy, and his business success is in exact ratio to the degree of sagacity which he brings into requisition in prose- cuting it. He is alert to absorb the spoils — profits — on that which he neither sowed nor reaped. This is the aspect presented by the industrial world to-day, when the love of money and the hate of work are the ruling passions. The schools are full of pupils; the colleges are crowded with stu- dents ; the charities are full of paupers ; and the jails and prisons are overflowing with criminals. Yet, when there is so much work to be done, when the harvest is so great — and when, indeed, is it not great? — and there are so many who need to be up and do- ing it, it is well-nigh impossible to find any one will- ing or competent to do any kind of work well. In spite of our schools and excellent colleges, not one cook in a hundred can make good bread, or serve a savory soup ; scarcely so large a proportion of shoe- makers, or tailors, or dressmakers can make a good shoe or cut and make, without grave defects, a simple coat or dress. Wages are high and shoddy rife in every department of domestic industry. The absence of honesty and painstaking, except it be to The Ethics of Labor 49 defraud, is apparent in many of the trades, and in most of the work we have done. Adulteration is the rule in nearly every article of sale and manu- facture. Nor is this melancholy feature of industry confined to any particular branch of labor. It per- vades the fine arts, literature in all its branches, and even the great professions, and like a canker is cor- roding and corrupting all alike. There is a sickly sentiment among men and women, engendered by a false education, that in- vests different kinds of work with different degrees of respectability; as if some kinds of work were noble and others ignoble. Such and such employ- ment is regarded as too vulgar to engage the faculties or to sustain the dignity of this or that needy man or woman. The man will not black his own boots, drive his own horses, or run upon his own errands ; the woman will not do her own kitchen work, be seen in the street with a parcel, or go out with her baby, and both sexes feel humiliated if they are com- pelled by the force of inexorable circumstances to do any of these things. Genteel leisure, which means downright idleness, is preferred to manual work of any sort, because it is regarded, falsely so, as more respectable. There are those among us who are so strongly imbued with this shallow prejudice against manual work that they seem to take more solid satisfaction in knowing that an ancestor was guilty of stealing or was hung for treason or apostasy, than that he died in poverty or in want ; or that he made a fortune through piracy or highway robbery, rather than as an honest cooper or a thrifty cobbler. It 50 Ethics, Civil and Political is this false pride of the aristocracy of wealth and of the high status of idleness that keeps thousands and thousands of men and women above the mental rank of cook or wood-chopper unemployed alto- gether ; and compels a like number to lie, cheat, de- fault, embezzle, hypothecate, and practise other forms of genteel thieving, in order to avoid the re- proach of work and to maintain the semblance of gentility. When society comes to respect a good carpenter or horseshoer more than a poor banker or preacher, a good cook more than a vulgar " lady, " a competent tailor or seamstress more than an in- competent doctor or lawyer, a common laborer more than a genteel idler, then shall we come to the end of a fallacy that is confusing the scale of social values and sapping society of its moral life.* Moreover, the business, literary, professional, and other classes pander, to a wrong and unwarrantable * One of the most significant indications of the degeneracy of a people is the interest they take in connecting themselves or their genealogy with some ancient family of distinguished repute. Pro- fessors of heraldry are said to do a thriving business in America, in connecting the names of some of her ambitious sons with that of some ancient nobleman. One would be inclined to regard the state- ment as a libel upon her citizens were it not supported, unhappily, by indubitable facts. Thus says one of these professors, of New York City : " It is becoming quite the fashion now, and it surprises me to see men of education and eminence trying to tack their names on the record of some noble family. They'll buy a book of genealogy and study it carefully, and wonder ' where we come in.' " This statement was made in connection with the charge, alas but too true, that one of America's ministers abroad had changed the spelling of his name to correspond with that of a family of English nobility ! This is the acme of snobbishness. The Ethics of Labor 51 extent, to the vices and prejudices of mankind for the sake of gain and the greed of wealth, to the dis- credit and injury of morals. Many of the great in- dustries of civilized life, in which a few men become rich and thousands of men become poor, or, worse than poor — criminals — are thus carried on and main- tained. The malt, tobacco, patent-nostrums, alco- holic, and opium trade we make bold to class among the most prominent in this branch of industry. The manufacture, sale, and prescription of drug medi- cines and quack nostrums, not a thousandth part of which is needed for honest, legitimate purposes, and if the rest of which were thrown to the dogs or into the sea mankind would be infinitely better off thereby, must be classed in the same baleful cate- gory. But for the ease with which the traffic in quack medicines makes the venders and prescribers of them rich and influential, the trafific itself, it is believed, would soon die out and poor human nature cease to be victimized through an amazing but otherwise virtuous credulity. The newspaper press, periodical and book literature are largely inspired by the same evil spirit — the love of money. Literature has become an industry and authors are hired to write what will sell on themes that strike the eye or take the fancy. For this reason most of the litera- ture of the day is trash. Enterprising publishers print and vend the same to meet the demands of a vicious taste which they themselves create in the interest of a vicious Mammonism. But we forbear to pursue this most noisome part of our theme, the full details of which would fill a volume and cover 52 Ethics, Civil and Political with shame and confusion — unless conscience be quite dead in them — thousands of so-called Christian people. The age has grown skeptical of the power of truth, right, honesty, work. Its measure of values is false. Much of the teaching, preaching, loving, working, is false. Our methods of practice are mostly false. Faith in virtue and the ideals of life is perishing. Religion is losing its life, and therefore its power to animate and inspire. Its teachers have become in- fected with \k\.^" Zeitgeist" or time-spirit, the love of money, and must have large salaries for preaching the Gospel. There is no lack of high ideals and objects of inspiration among us, but they have measurably ceased to influence our policy and shape the direction of our lives. We are probably the best-intentioned people of modern times. We con- tinually profess and honestly intend one thing and practise quite another, so strong is the abnormal current in which we helplessly drift. The love of money is a stronger passion with us than the love of principle, in spite of our good intentions. A smooth-skined ape, or a downright idiot, with one hundred thousand dollars in his pocket is of vastly more consequence than a man with sense in his head and nothing in his pocket. Ignoble pretensions meet with more favor than modest worth. A lie is regarded as the equal of the truth so long as it is as vigorously asserted and can be as readily negotiated. Worldly gain and social preferment, instead of honest work and mental attainment, are the ends to which the best energies of our lives are devoted; The Ethics of Labor 53 and it actually costs one more pains and penalties, more troublesome and annoying mortifications, to be an honest man than to be a respectable rogue ! One likes to have one's little vanities tickled and one's weaknesses flattered. The pompous and in- flated, the stylish and pretentious are mostly pre- ferred to modest unpretentious worth. In the choice of a physician, the one who drives in livery is preferred to him who drives in a buggy, and the latter is generally received with more favor than one who walks. Then, as a rule, the doctor who panders to the patient's prejudices, affects mannerisms, puts on airs, looks wise, and is darkly mysterious is more successful than the doctor who is open and frank and gives his patient good though unwelcome ad- vice. Through this peculiarity of our weak human nature the ignorant and pretentious in the profession of medicine often succeed, when the learned and un- pretentious often fail. The age is hypocritical and sincerity is at a dis- count. The most difficult task a man of convictions has to perform nowadays is to deal fairly and squarely with his fellows, and to give an equiva- lent for what he takes. Not to take advantage when one can, inevitably subjects one to suspicion, in which explanations are worse than idle, of being a weak fool or a rustic person. It is not character which is the object of envy in these degenerate days, but success. Everybody is anxious to do homage to a man who is a success — success that is measured by the extent of his real and material acquisitions. Character has little place in the inventory. The 54 Ethics, Civil and Political man who dies poor, in the popular acceptation of the term, is regarded a failure, though his private life be as sweet as the breath of spring, and his presence diffuse cheer and sunshine into wretched homes and hearts wherever he goes, and it could be truthfully said of him as it was scoffingly said of an- other "failure," the poor self-sacrificing man of Judea, "He saved [helped] others, himself he could not save." It never occurs to us to attribute to modest worth any element or quality to which the word success could possibly apply. Its possessor is as unpopular as unostentatious — an object of commiseration, rather than of envy. His friends are relieved of the necessity of declining flowers at his grave, for they are not likely to be in excess, so small a figure does he make in the public eye, so small a vacancy does he leave in the public heart. Only a branch of the pine, the emblem of pity, is required to symbolize the public sentiment over his demise ! When mankind become so oblivious of the value of the virtues that character weighs less in the balance than money, moralists may well be alarmed for the future of civilization on the earth. That is a materialism more rank, more destructive of religion and true piety, than the philosophy of Epicurus or Spencer, and a thousand times more difficult to uproot. While the latter is a skepticism of the in- tellect, which contains within itself the leaven of its own purification, the former is a skepticism of the heart, which, like a moral sirocco, dries and destroys every sweet and tender aspiration which Heaven has implanted in the human breast. The Ethics of Labor 55 UNHERALDED HEROES Blessed be they that dare to die For man slave-bound ; Honor the place wherein they lie, 'T is holy ground. II Hail to the man who bravely fights In Justice's name ; Who gives his life for others' rights And seeks not fame. Ill Bravo to him who leads the van For others' good ; Whose flag, inscribed " The Rights of Man," Means brotherhood. IV Make way for him that essays th' task Of equal laws ; That finds it sweet his lot to cast With Justice's cause. Take off the hat to him who serves In modest form ; That keeps his troth and never swerves In stress of storm. VI Heroes of modest valor wake No notes of song ; They sow and richest harvests make, And oft reap wrong. 56 Ethics, Civil and Political VII Like seeds that fall in fallow ground True heroes live ; They go in silence on their round, And blessings give. VIII In every rank of life they toil With equal poise ; Soldiers, sailors, tillers of the soil, And make no noise. IX In workshop, mines, art, and science, They take the lead ; Devotees of trade and finance, They progress speed. X Artisan, scholar — all that strive. Without ado. To bless and make the whole world thrive- Are heroes true. XI If deeds like force do interchange, Or correlate. The Reaper of the psychic grange Will each one take. XII In the economies of God No deed is lost ; The Wielder of the chast'ning rod Knows each one's cost. XIII The hero never dies in vain, Howe'er unknown : The Ethics of Labor 57 The sacrifice, the toil, the pain. Are seeds well sown. XIV Though never to our mortal sight His deeds appear ; To Him who knows no day nor night They are quite clear. XV Hail, then, to the heroes that fall For whom none weep ; Angels of God their names shall call From out the deep. XVI Hail, too, to him who strives in vain Success to win ; The "Book of Days" will not disdain To count him in. XVII Full is earth of unheralded dead, That kept their trust ; Who sacrificed themselves, and shed Their blood for us. XVIII Rest in peace, ye unselfish host. And sweetly sleep ; Your deeds, which God doth honor most. He '11 safely keep. PART III ETHICS OF TRADE 59 ' ' Whosoever takes by force or stratagem that which is not the product of his labor destroys his social character — he is a brigand." — Proudhon. "Who shall abide in Thy Tabernacle? He that walketh up- rightly and speaketh the truth. He that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent." — Psalmist. 60 PART III ETHICS OF TRADE THE connection that subsists between worldly advantages and moral and intellectual accom- plishments is too close to be safely ignored by any one who has his moral and intellectual fortune to make. It may be a melancholy fact that in the course of things money has become possessed of such amazing significance ; but if it be true, if the fact be really so, it demands recognition, and that degree of respect and consideration which one instinctively accords to every stubborn thing in nature. Men often act £is if to break the microscope would do away with the infusorial life which it reveals — break an instrument of discovery to annihilate a fact ! The custom has been, and is yet, among cer- tain dialecticians to ignore or deny the existence of that which is unsightly in nature, or inconsistent with their idea of the divine economy. That which cannot be reasoned away is put out of sight or covered up, as one hides a physical deformity or a 6i 62 Ethics, Civil and Political loathsome disease. Life itself is declared by time- serving philosophers to have no basis in reality ; and to protect the reputation of Omnipotence from as- persion as the author of seeming evil, they main- tain that justice is an abstraction, selfishness a form of virtue, and evil a mere name for that which is a ' ' universal good ' ' — a means of righteousness, with- out which the virtues could not be grown, any more than could the harvest without the storm-clouds, rain, thunder, and lightning which herald it. Thus has it been the custom, among those who fail to appreciate the necessity of trade and a medium of exchange, to decry money, as if it were the agent of darkness. Shakespeare contemptuously calls it "chaff," and didactic moralists have dubbed it "filthy lucre," the very presence of which in places of worship is regarded as a desecration^or rather, we should say, used to be so regarded; for times have changed, and money-changers are no longer sacrilegious objects anywhere. This shallow preju- dice against that which is a mere medium of ex- change in the business world, and a symbol of power in society, for good or evil, according as it is used or abused, was predicated upon the usually low in- fluence of money, and the character of the low-born beings who dealt in it, rather than upon money itself. This symbol of power or exchangeable value being so frequently found in bad company, and de- voted to bad uses, naturally shared the reputation of both. As it is not always easy to discriminate between the agent and principal in a transaction, so the influence of money and the money itself became Ethics of Trade 63 confounded and the latter compelled to bear the odium, in undiscriminating minds, reflected upon it by the evil transactions of those who trade in money and trafific in the welfare of human souls. It is idle to indulge a prejudice against that which is a mere symbol, and which brings to one his meat and drink, and is the medium of exchange for such material and spiritual benefactions as one is able to appropriate and enjoy. Under the prevailing regime of individualism, only he can afford to indulge a con- tempt for money who has it in excess, or has no wants to provide for. It is well to bear in mind, however, the distinction between money earned and money won. While great wealth may not be an object of envy to any right-minded man, — even Mr. Carnegie says it is a disgrace to die rich, — great poverty is still less an object of envy to him. Poverty is a curse if it shut one out of that which a man most needs ; a blessing if it stimulate to self- help and self-culture. Extremes, in either direction, are, in fact, often accompanied with consequences so serious to the moral character that good men and women of every age have prayed to be delivered from them. In one direction, the evil shows itself in mendicity and lawlessness ; in the other direction, in indolence and selfishness. In both extremes, the moral condition is closely allied, if not identical. The one conduces to sloth and want, the other to sloth and luxury. It has been well said that great destitution is in- consistent with good morality. Both philosophy and observation support the truth of the assertion. 64 Ethics, Civil and Political Destitution means the lack of those elements of health, rational enjoyment, and rejuvenation upon which the physical and moral integrity of both soul and body depends. To be more explicit, it means the want of that which is essential to man's rational existence — the want of wholesome food and drink; of pure air and bright sunshine; of good clothes, sweet homes, and cheerful society ; of good books, fine pictures, and aesthetic culture, and the leisure to enjoy them ; of rest and recreation, of self-respect, social appreciation, fair play, and just appreciation, — these, in brief, are the wants, the non-supply of which causes many people's deterioration, dehumani- zation, and death. The iron does, indeed, enter the soul, and drive to despair one who plods on as regu- larly as come the days, month after month, and year after year, for a meagre subsistence, until death comes — plodding that gives wealth to the world, and blessings manifold, and starvation to him, the poor unrequited toiler. Such a life is a sacrifice to humanity ; such a death a disgrace to the cause of humanity; it is the essence of inhumanity imper- sonated. And one cannot but commiserate the moral condition of a man who is able to look com- placently on such a spectacle and enjoy his good dinners, ample income, luxurious drawing-rooms, fine linen, etc., which the accident of birth or social position gives him, and feel no responsibility for its existence and perpetuity. The ill-bred race of men, women, and children "who live to toil, and toil only to die," of whom one is wont to say, deprecatingly, they cannot ap- Ethics of Trade 65 preciate the privileges that well-bred people possess ; the miserable creatures of toil, made miserable by want, who are too deeply absorbed in low, bread- and-butter aims to care for either the love of heaven or the fear of hell, — for that which is either vile or virtuous anywhere, — they that dig our coal, peg our shoes, weave our fabrics, make our clothes, cook our food, wash our linen, groom our horses, supply our markets, make our wines and all the other good things that minister to the stay, comfort, and joy of better lives — lives made better by these ministra- tions ; these are the toiling millions of our race who, with their bodies, bridge over the wide chasm be- tween earth and heaven, that the rest of mankind — the favored few — may pass safely over to that abode of peace and rest, and be forever blest, or — "sink to endless depths." We should not be over-pathetic concerning the condition of the so-called laboring classes. It is not that labor is degrading, nor that it is compulsory upon the masses that we are moved to write these things. Work is chief among the choicest blessings of mankind, as has been shown. The happiest man in the writer's acquaintance works in a stable and has five beautiful children to care for — and the most wretched is a childless millionaire. No honest work, however low its grade, is degrading. Man is made to toil. It is by toil that he attains his normal status. Would to Heaven that he were universally compelled to engage in it, if it so be that he receive fair compen- sation. It is labor poorly requited, toil without adequate remuneration, against which we protest. 66 Ethics, Civil and Political It is that one reaps where many sow, that one ab- sorbs the wealth created by the many, and uses it to wrong and oppress them, that excites our concern and calls forth our condemnation.* If such injustice were the exception and not the rule in civilized society, if it were anomalous or due to exceptional causes, ephemeral in origin and influence, one might be justified in enduring and excusing it. But it is everywhere the rule, everywhere confirmed by the exceptions. It cannot, therefore, be due to the in- fluence of exceptional causes, but rather to causes which have their origin in grave defects of our social polity, which nothing, we fear, but a new order of things can remove. The great desideratum has been, and is yet, the establishment of justice between man and man. We are well aware that justice is a principle the nature of which has been a subject of debate since the days of Plato, and the application of which is no nearer being consummated than it ever was — than it was in Plato's Republic. If in making change one returns nine dollars for ten, the iniquity in the * No one toiled harder than Edmund Burke, and were we to esti- mate his reward, only in a pecuniary sense, we should say that there never was toil of equal value more unrequited than his. Yet at no time did Burke agree with those who regarded labor as a misfortune ; on the contrary, he always combated that view as false and per- nicious. "Every attempt," he says, "to fly from it [work] and refuse the very terms of existence becomes much more truly a curse." Montesquieu presents the same view in another form. Speaking of the laboring class, the French philosopher says ; " On doit chercher & en augmenter, nonJ>as i en diminuer le nombre" (De V esprit des lois, liv. xxiii., c, xvi.). Ethics of Trade 67 transaction is evident enough; but no one thinks it improper or unjust to make purchases at a large per cent, below cost, or to accept services for labor, manual or otherwise, far below the value received and rendered — sometimes ten, twenty, or a hundred per cent, below such value. This, however, is a manifest injustice, of which there seems to be no near correction. But who that believes in the reign of divine wis- dom and the ultimate triumph of justice can doubt the coming of a new order of things in which such griev- ances shall be done away and such wrongs righted? Have not the prophets foretold it? And the poets, have they not heralded it in song and story? Have not the philosophers held to such an idea as the re- sult of the triumph of reason? Did not the divine Plato's ideal republic embody such a conception of a civilization? Christian or no Christian, Pagan or Jewish, Oriental or Celestial, call not that impossible of attainment and realization which has existed as an ideal in the world's noblest minds since the be- ginning of the race ! Let us not be deceived by names ; nor permit absorption in the details of our own little affairs to make us insensible to the light of philosophy. The ideal is the embryo of that which is realizable. And who shall limit the realiz- able? or set bounds to the possible? As the dawn presages the coming of the sun, so do ideal concep- tions presage the possible in things human and divine. "No Christian civilization can be organized which shall render great fortunes impossible, or prevent 68 Ethics, Civil and Political successful effort for their transmission." So writes The Spectator.* To those who look upon Chris- tianity as a divine institution, embodying principles the full development and application of which shall establish equity and compose all the differences in the relations of individuals and peoples, such a senti- ment as that from The Spectator will seem painfully harsh. The view we have been pleased to entertain is entirely opposed to that. So far as the influence of morality can affect the institution of justice and equality in worldly prefer- ment and property interests, the Christian system, in its early teachings and ideal precepts, seems pecu- liarly adapted to meet the exigencies of the occasion. Christianity was at first a Democracy and enjoined the doctrine of Equality upon its followers. But when we compare the present ecclesiastical develop- ment and practical workings of the system of religion which prevails in Christendom, we are made pain- fully aware of the wide chasm that divides the actual from the ideal in practical Christianity ; and we are constrained to believe that it is an unwarrantable assumption, and an exhibition of bad taste, to call that Christian which popularly goes by the name. The highest virtue postulated by the great Founder of Christianity was self-sacrifice. It is needless to point out how utterly impossible it would be to maintain the prevailing distinctions between rich and poor, privileged and oppressed, which is nursed with such obtuse pertinacity by self-styled Christians, were that virtue duly recognized and respected in * March 4, 1876. Ethics of Trade 69 Christendom. It is not too much to say that under the influence of that virtue the greed of gain would be as rare a phenomenon as ice in the tropics, and disappear as soon. The author of Ecce Homo* maintains that There are superior and inferior breeds of men as of other animals; and the rich man will be led by his wealth into a mode of life which must remove him to a certain distance from the poor man. The danger is, lest the dis- tinction and the distance should turn to a moral division, to a separation of interests and sympathies in which Christian union perishes. The one, we remark parenthetically, is an inevita- ble sequence of the other; the moral division pre- cedes, the property distinction follows, in the logical order of events; and it is idle to talk of "danger" under such circumstances. One might with equal propriety talk of the danger of smallpox to one who had already imbibed the contagion ! Therefore [continues the author], against all unjust privilege, against all social arrangements which make the prosperity of one man incompatible with the prosperity of another, the Christian is bound by his humanity (prin- ciples) to watch and protest, to which we say. Certainly, but to what purpose? The anomalies of the present development of the Christian system present themselves in twofold aspects: First, the tendency to redundancy of capital; and second, the tendency to redundancy ♦Third Ed., p. 219. 7o Ethics, Civil and Political of labor. The redundancy of capital, or more properly, the unequal distribution of wealth, pre- sents a problem of exceeding complexity for the political economists to deal with. That it is a problem the solution of which is beset with diffi- culties is by no means conclusive proof that its solution is beyond the scope of human reason. The tendency has been to leave the adjustment of problems of such complexity to themselves, to work out their own solution, or non-solution, as best they may. It has seriously been maintained that the law of supply and demand is equal to the proper adjustment of the difficulties between labor and capital, without any direct interference by legis- lation, or the interposition of moral distinctions. This view would be perfectly correct if the law were left to operate uninfluenced by disturbing and un- equal causes, as war and conquest, social convulsions and rival class interests, and justice and fair dealing were the rule and not the exception in our industrial polity. Under existing circumstances, however, experi- ence amply demonstrates its fallacy. The law of self-interest, as men now are, is unduly stimulated, and overrides justice and fair play. In the struggle which ensues for place and power, the strong are masters of the situation and put the weak under the ban. The latter must submit to such conditions of existence as the strong impose upon them. To leave the problem of equity to solve itself, under such circumstances, is vitually a license to oppress and enslave ; to place the weak at the mercy of the Ethics of Trade 7 1 strong. The result is inevitable ; the poor grow poorer, and less able to care for themselves; the rich grow richer, and more able to dominate them. It is thus that monopolies are formed, and caste classes established with privileges, hereditary and perpetual. But the mischief does not end here. An advantage, at first taken by might and main- tained by force, is finally claimed as a privilege. Injustice is perpetrated under the name and under the forms of law by one class, and despite forms of law by the other. Disorders are bred in the strug- gle, like fungus, on the body politic. Liberty and license are the rule of the few; self-assertion and poverty the rule of the many. The struggle for ex- istence becomes intensified, and grows more unequal with the increase of ignorance and poverty; and between the two evils crime is bred as legitimately as mould on cheese, or mildew in moisture and heat. The difficulty tends to multiply itself and to spawn disorder like an infection. Crimes against persons and property, under the pressure of want, are not only produced by this anomalous condition, but not infrequently war and rebellion likewise follow in the long train of social sequences. The history of the race shows that nothing is so prolific of sedition and rebellion as want and oppression. Catalines are legitimate sequences of inequality of worldly posses- sions, the pang of hunger and the sting of want, or, as Montesquieu has testified, "It is those who are dying of hunger that engage in insurrection." * * " Les communes qui mouraient de faim, se soulevirent." — De r esprit des lois, liv., xxiii., c. xvi. *J2 Ethics, Civil and Political It is too much to hope, perhaps, that the evils growing out of an unequal concentration or distribu- tion of wealth will be remedied by the growth of a spirit of justice and fair dealing alone among men. Economic philosophers have never indulged the idea. The nurture of that spirit, however, ought to follow as the legitimate result of religious culture and discipline. This is the highest purpose which religion could subserve, surely. But so long as re- ligion is regarded as the exclusive service of God, and confined to the exercise and enjoyment of the emotional feelings, as the highest and most appro- priate expression of that service, it must necessarily fail to produce that result. Economic polity will not be changed thereby. Justice will not be done. The rights of property will ever receive more considera- tion than those of man — than the claims of duty and morality. The religious devotee, be he Christian, or what not, may pray and sing, shout his hallelu- jahs, and declare himself a poor miserable sinner, as he undoubtedly is, forever, and forever remain ob- livious to the claims of his higher duties and obliga- tions to himself and his fellow-men in this regard. Something more than prayer and religious observ- ances is evidently required to meet the demands of the occasion. Nothing is more common in the highest circles of Christian culture than the display of self-interest at one's neighbor's cost. One takes every possible advantage, short of downright falsifying, and fre- quently is not limited to that, of the other, in trade or exchange; the other expects that he will, and 81, Ethics of Trade 73 each pardons the other for any advantage which is gained over him by the exercise or practice of some sharp trick, superior adroitness, or activity, under the plea that it is a purely business affair. There is a feeling in business circles, which all share, that it is unmanly to admit that one is not his antagonist's equal in business sagacity, and if cheated he pockets the loss and waits for an occasion to retrieve it. Both wait and watch like beasts of prey for a victim ; and so that the means be legal the victim feels that he has no right to complain. It is agreed between them that business is business, to be conducted on business principles, which is simply to make the largest possible profit on the smallest possible outlay or exertion. "No friendship in business" is the commonest tablet in business life; and the habits that prevail in Christendom among business men are such that no man can be a successful business man who fails to respect the maxim. Honesty is no doubt the best policy to practise in the long run, if manhood is to be placed in the balance of profit and loss ; but it is no part of a thriving business policy. The man who, by some lucky turn of events, or good fortune, derives an unexpected and unforeseen profit or ad- vantage, and voluntarily shares his neighbor's loss in the transaction, would be regarded as a fit sub- ject for ridicule, if not for a lunatic asylum. Such a procedure would be a flagrant violation of the con- ditions of business success, which is to get all one can, and to keep what one gets. It would also be a palpable violation of the fundamental condition of 74 Ethics, Civil and Political profits in trade or exchange, namely, secrecy. No tradesman would long feel sure of his profits, did he permit them to be known. Were he to publish them to the world, his customers might think them in excess ; insist upon a reduction ; or regard them- selves as victims of an attempt to swindle, and refuse to deal with him on any terms. Accordingly the utmost secrecy prevails in most business circles in respect of costs and margins. Every dealer has his own peculiar mark, to indicate the first element, known only to himself and his responsible clerks, and regards its divulgence as a flagrant breach of trust, which it doubtless is under the system of ethics that rules the shops. Then with what subtle artifice does he seek to persuade his customer that the price he asks is too low for the quality of goods he is endeavoring to sell ; that it is really less than the first cost of the article! The article, under scrutiny, may be the very embodiment of shoddy, but its good quality is endlessly dilated upon, while its defects are studiously withheld or left to be de- tected by the artless buyer. The latter, however, is not unfrequently zs, wily in driving a bargain as his adroit antagonist. He is too sharp to display any particular preference for the article he wants, though he wants it badly, hav- ing learned to his cost that the price usually goes up or down with the fluctuations of the strength of his desires. He is, accordingly, never anxious to buy — never exhibits likes and attachments for this or that. His policy, on the contrary, is to be cynical. He criticises freely, finds various faults, in reason Ethics of Trade 75 and out of reason, with everything, and is pleased with nothing. He has seen something which he likes better elsewhere, a few doors below or above, and at much less cost. He is not disposed to buy to-day on any terms ; nevertheless, he would take a certain piece of goods, or article of manufacture, could he have it at a certain named price, rather than to take the trouble to call again or to go elsewhere. So cleverly does he play the David Harum in the game of trade that an unsophisticated dealer is de- ceived, and after due consultation with his partner, perhaps, consents to let him have the goods on his own terms, which, after all, are such as to return a sufficient profit, while the customer gets precisely the goods he really wants, and in a way and at a price which gives him infinite satisfaction. But it will be said that this peculiar phenomenon in the business world is no longer witnessed in the higher circles of the mercantile trade ; the more reputable dealers confining themselves to the dis- play of their goods and the price put upon them, never soliciting a purchase, and never deviating from the one price — except on "bargain days." The merchants, however, who are able to pursue this method, so eminently proper and self-respect- ing, are only those whose means enable them to enter the best markets of the world and under- buy the vast majority of their neighbors; so that they are able to sell a superior article at a lower price than their numerous rivals can an inferior one. Their wealth also gives them other advan- tages of no small importance, as, elegant shops and 76 Ethics, Civil and Political outfits, polite and educated clerks, trained ushers, waiters, etc. But what of a frank, honest, unpretentious deal in the great world of trade and exchange? Does the experienced observer of human events and of the course of business and trade know of any of that character? The shams, we think, are far more numerous than the genuine ; indeed, the most con- scientious will freely confess that under the present regime in trade or social intercourse it is impossible to pursue a policy at once frank, open, and honest and succeed. How many runners or agents is the successful merchant or manufacturer supposed to employ to solicit purchasers for his goods, the ex- pense of which the consumer is compelled to pay? How many of them use honest material in manu- facture? A personal friend of the writer, and a large manufacturer of a superior article of domestic con- sumption, laments the necessity his house is under, owing to the heat of competition and the number of imitations of his goods of inferior quality in the market, that can be sold at a less price than his own, of keeping a large number of runners or agents, to solicit orders for his house, and protect its interests and repute at home and abroad. The expense it entails is one of the largest items in the cost of pro- duction, which, of course, is borne by the consumer. "It is all wrong," he says; "the consumer ought to seek the producer, and not the producer the con- sumer. It would greatly reduce the cost of pro- duction." This is self-evident. The necessity of pursuing the opposite course indicates an unnatural, Ethics of Trade 'j'] enforced, unhealthy state of trade, and carries with it abnormal moral and economic sequences of too serious a character long to endure. Apropos of secrecy and deception in trade, broker- age, exchange, and manufactures, we maintain that both are necessary conditions of success under the present order of things. The consumer would, by no means, voluntarily submit to become a party and a victim to such enormous profits as often accrue from the sale of articles of various degrees of utility and non-utility, were he cognizant of the truth. We doubt if even the tariff-worshippers in the Amer- ican Congress would have maintained its high tariff on steel rails, had it known the great profits Mr. Car- negie was deriving from their manufacture. It is safe to assume, we think, that the tippler would find fault with his glass of grog, did he know that it was two or three times diluted, and that he paid the dispenser of it several hunded per cent, profit. The consumer of wines would be equally disgusted had he any ade- quate idea of the enormity of the profits derived from their sale ; even more disgusted, we believe, did he know, what is a positive fact, that at least nine tenths of the vinous article he buys is of doubt- ful origin and of still more doubtful value. The tea-drinker, too, would lose much of the pleasure he now derives from his cup, had he the least idea that the tea for which he pays a dollar or more a pound costs in New York and other commercial centres from ten to twenty-five cents, or less, per pound, and is of a mixed and questionable quality at that. But the suspicion that he is thus defrauded 78 Ethics, Civil and Political or overreached is so strong in well-informed circles that no specific confirmation is needed to justify the statement. Fortunes are made from the sale of patent med- icines that would be as worthless to venders as they are to the buyers thereof were the true char- acter and composition of them known to the public — credulity being the basis of most the good they do. What quantities of money are made and lost by dealers and drinkers of foreign and domestic mineral waters ! Yet it is our conviction that not one person in a thousand is benefited by their use ; while, on the other hand, we are firmly convinced that many are positively injured by them. Fortu- nately, the injury falls mainly on those who can best afford to bear it — to be made sick. But unfortunately it is quite otherwise with the legitimate traffic in drug-medicines and fashionable viruses. Medicines that cost dimes are sold for dol- lars, the huge profit being extorted chiefly from the credulous dupes whose burdens are already too grievous to be borne. Most of the drugs that yield such prodigious profits to their manufacturers and venders are devoid of any intrinsic value whatever ; while as now used mankind would be infinitely bet- ter off without them; their indiscriminate and ex- travagant use causing really more disease than they cure; themselves creating the very demand they so falsely and greedily supply. Of this nefarious traffic, falsely regarded as legitimate, it may be said more truly than of any other of less respectability that its success as a business depends on cupidity, Ethics of Trade 79 secrecy, and deception on the one hand, and blind, unreasoning credulity on the other. No one with a truly enlighened conscience could practice the one or take a selfish advantage of the other. But we must not tarry on the confines of our subject. It is the prevailing custom everywhere in the busi- ness world to disregard the obligation to render equivalents for equivalents, pound for pound; to ignore the claims of right and justice ; and to take advantage of weakness and stupidity to drive a bar- gain and obtain a profit. It is by profits that unequal fortunes are acquired. If the consumer received full value for his money, and the producer full value for his wares, the dealer could receive no advantage over either. An old acquaintance of the writer, and a type of a class of business men by no means un- known to the reader, is a large manufacturer whom we have purposely selected from the numerous ex- amples of the kind to illustrate the point we wish to make. We know him to be a consistent, acceptable Christian, exemplary in speech, pure in personal habit, irreproachable in private life, and an honest — as honesty goes in business affairs — but a thorough business man. We venture to affirm that no note of his making ever went to protest, no promise unfulfilled; but he has "shaved " many a note for a struggling mortal with less means and heavier lia- bilities than his own. Indeed, he has discounted his own notes before they became due, and turned in that way an " honest " penny at the expense of a needy creditor. He is exact in keeping his engage- ments and lives up to the letter of his agreements. 8o Ethics, Civil and Political Scores of men, women, and children are employed by this gentleman, and it is chiefly from the profits of their labor, that is, by receiving more than he gives, that his large fortune has been derived. It is need- less to say that the wages paid his laborers are not in excess of the customary rates ; nor does he fail to take advantage of any depression in business to slack up on time and throw the loss, if any, on them. If trade is dull, he does not hesitate to reduce the wages of his employees. If government lays a tax on an article of manufacture, it is entered in the ac- count of cost and is paid by the consumer. Thus he escapes taxation, while the consumer's is doubled. Then, what sagacity does he not exercise in selecting workmen that are thoroughly sound in body, and mentally and physically able to doubly earn their wages ? In that respect no eye of a slave-master could be more acute ; no slave-driver more watchful and exacting. When a hand is disabled by age, in- firmity, or hard work, he is set aside, and one more competent to fill his place is substituted. Such a course, he avers, is the only one to pursue consist- ent with the success of his business. "Among so many hands did I not look sharply to them, weed out the incompetent, and see that all of them fully earned their wages, my profits would not be as- sured. Competition is active, and margins run close. It will not do to be undersold." These are the reasons that justify him in getting the largest possible amount of labor for the least possible amount of wages. An experienced business man will regard them as good and sufficient. And so Ethics of Trade 8i should we, did he practise, we will not say the same frugality — but a moiety of it — in his own life and home that his laborers are compelled to practise in theirs, and if he lived and died, we will not say in poverty like them, but in comfortable circumstances, instead of living and dying a millionaire. The ab- sence of these prominent facts, so constant in the history of trade and manufacture, is too significant to be ignored in making up a just judgment upon his case; and since the men, women, and children produce the wealth which makes him rich, while they themselves remain poor, we cannot escape the conclusion that either their labor is underpaid, or the profits are in excess of a just percentage on the cost and outlay. II The common-sense of Christendom is at fault on the subject of profits and wages and the means of obtaining them ; and herein lies the most trouble- some complication with which it is beset. Here, for instance, is Mr. , a Christian after the pre- vailing and most approved model, whose two fine boys go regularly to Sunday-school, and are regu- larly taught by their pious and exemplary father, among other fine precepts, not to steal ; not to take the name of the Lord, in vain ; and to remember the Sabbath day to keep it inviolate. The tenth com- mandment in the decalogue, not to covet thy neigh- bor's property, is clearly not enjoined ; for sharpness in trade is inculcated on them as if it were one of the new commandments. Accordingly, while respecting c 82 Ethics, Civil and Political the Sabbath and the name of God, and the precept against general theft, the boys drive sharp bargains in their little dealings with other and smaller boys. On one occasion one of the smaller boys found he had been cheated, and demanded restitution. But restitution was not the business order of his older comrade — one of the exemplary youths referred to. He replied : "My father says, 'Never give up a good bargain without a forfeit.' That is the way men deal. Give me three cents and I will trade back with you. It was a fair bargain." The father is a successful New York merchant, and desires his boys to become such likewise, and trains them accord- ingly in the business ethics that rule trade and ex- change on week-days, and the precepts that are so pretty to teach and learn on Sunday. It is thus that our Christian youth are reared for the larger business operations of adult life. Early practice in the art of overreaching makes them ultimately shrewd business men, or adroit swindlers or "black- legs ' ' — it is not always certain which. This is in- evitable. And he cannot consistently complain of the result who is satisfied with the means. Shall one find fault with the fruit the seed of which he has had the selection ? or bewail the whirlwind if he sow the wind? We condemn, and properly so, the custom of the ancient Spartans, who trained their boys in the art of stealing as a means of developing their tact and sagacity. But we fail to see in what respect the Grecian custom was inferior, or more disreputable, than that of Christendom. The means may differ, but the method is the same — both a Ethics of Trade 83 wrong that cannot be too earnestly condemned, nor too soon reformed. We repeat that the business sentiment of Christen- dom is at fauh. The degree of insensibility to ethical relations and bearings exhibited by people of good repute, in respect of subjects affecting their own interests, pecuniary, or otherwise, borders on moral apathy. It does not occur to them that great profits presuppose great losses, or great wrongs. The man who can drive the hardest bargain is, in the popular estimation, the one, above all others, who is to be trusted with public business, and who is best entitled to the confidence of the business community. Public sentiment supports him; and by virtue of such support he often attains the high- est position in the council of state. His business sagacity is a possession that renders him worthy a cabinet position in the great American Republic ! * The mistaken homage thus paid to success leads one to uncover to a millionaire, and to decline to entertain abstract questions concerning the morality of the means and methods by which he became such. In general, the bare fact is sufficient ; and if he is benevolent to the poor; is "large-hearted," ' ' whole-souled, ' ' in brief, a good fellow ; gives liber- ally to the Church and the charities; contributes largely toward the religious welfare of the heathen abroad ; establishes free libraries and public hospitals at home — he can occupy the highest -price pew in the highest-price church, and have every honor accorded * A la Stewart's nomination by President Grant as Secretary of the Treasury. 84 Ethics, Civil and Political him which he deigns to accept, not excepting a seat in the Congress. He is a dispenser of patronage — an influential citizen. Hundreds live on his bounty. He is public-spirited and enterprising — a leader in good works. There is an air of superiority about a man of this character who has plenty and lavishes it freely which removes him from the taints and sus- picions of the common run of mortals. His errors are eclipsed by his generosity, his meanness by his magnanimity. He does not count his small change, nor require the details of his domestic bills. He lives above the petty faults and meannesses which the common people so often perpetrate; and alto- gether above those of a graver sort which often spring from want and misery rather than from native depravity, and for which they are made to suffer the extreme penalty. And yet, notwithstanding these princely traits, he is not too much of a man to use his superior wit and sagacity against a man of inferior wit and sagacity, to drive a bargain which feathers his own nest and despoils that of his neigh- bor. He does not pretend to be a moral philoso- pher. Ethical problems, in his view, belong to the clergy. Business is his specialty ; and in its prose- cution the laws of trade — of supply and demand — are his all-sufiScient warrant or excuse for any deal or bargain he can make. If his neighbor is in need, he is only too happy to have the opportunity to fore- close a mortgage, shave a note, buy his goods at a ruinous discount, or to take such other advantage of the occasion as the rights of business, and not morality, give him. In this respect our Christian Ethics of Trade 85 millionaire and man of business often plays the r61e of the good Samaritan and thief combined. He is the adroit thief first and the good Samaritan after- ward. After stripping a neighbor of all he has, he will lend him the means to begin business again, or contribute liberally to the maintenance of his family ! It is not many years since the world beheld a mag- nificent spectacle of this kind in a princely merchant of New York sending a ship-load of provisions to the starving cotton operatives of Great Britain. All England sang paeans in praise of the munificent act. Everybody exclaimed, "How grand! " "How generous!" and so it was, both. But, unhappily, we cannot be oblivious of the fact that it was mainly the unremunerated toil of those same starving men, women, and children — starving because trade was dull and they were out of work for a few weeks, and because their wages were barely sufificient in pros- perous times to enable them to live in rags from hand to mouth — that gave this same thrifty mer- chant his princely income, and put it in his power to return to them as a gift part of that which he took from them through the "laws of trade." Now, while the shrewd devotees of trade and ex- change, of which fair samples, and by no means the worst, have been given, cannot be held morally re- sponsible for the unjust and equivocal business method which they pursue, for they are them- selves legitimate products of the spirit of the times, and are ruled imperiously by it, they are neverthe- less a species of the conventional robber class — thieves despite themselves, if there is any truth in 86 Ethics, Civil and Political the Gospel. They take without rendering an equiva- lent, even in money. They violate the first prin- ciple of natural justice, which is equal right to life and an equitable share of the means which support life. They fail to do by others as they would be done by; and appropriate the lion's share of that which in greater part belongs to others. Their business habits accord in principle precisely with the selfish customs of robbers from time immemorial. The latter made raids upon their neighbors with spear and sword ; the former by civil prowess, and the laws of trade. Might of business prowess is the means by which the modern capitalist gains his possessions, and in feudal times it was might of military prowess by which the baron gained his possessions, the sole difference being one of method, rather than principle — a difference with no wide distinction. Strauss has said that "the brute is cruel to the brute, because, although having very strong sensa- tions of its own hunger or fury, it has not an equally distinct conception of the pain its treatment inflicts on others. ' ' * That learned man evidently knew little of the course and conduct of business in the commercial centres of Christendom ; and probably never had anything to do with greedy brokers and grasping landlords; money-lending sharks, or the tricksters in bargain-making; nor of those sportive speculators on the street known as "Bulls" and "Bears," the "Shorts" and the "Longs," who take the moral marrow out of men, crippling the ♦ The Old Faith and the New, vol. ii., p. 58. Ethics of Trade 87 fortunes of small capitalists and trebling the fortunes of large ones. The cruelty of the brute to the brute is incomparably less than the cruelty of man to man. The brute, however hungry and keen its appetite or fury, seldom equals the cruelty of those human monsters, wild with the greed of gain. The desires of the one are satiable ; those of the other are insatiable. Appease the appetite of the brute animal, and he voluntarily gives the trough to his hungry fellow. But the greed of the human animal is never appeased until stricken dead with apoplexy or paralysis. After bleeding one victim to the last drop, he has only whetted his appetite for another ; and if he is more sensible than the brute of the pain and distress he inflicts upon his fellow, may the gods commiserate him ! He who takes from his fellow the means of gain- ing an honest living, robs him of his life — of both body and soul. To one thus robbed it makes little difference whether it be done lawfully or unlaw- fully ; by sharp practice or trade combination ; by legal device or forcible possession. And it is a strange twist of business ethics that justifies the end, be the means as humane as they may. Unless our ethical sense is all astray, it does not follow that because one possesses a high order of business talent; is shrewd in investing and buying; is able to make vast business combinations, and control the laws of trade, that he has the right to use those powers to the wrong and detriment of his less talented fellow who can enter into no equal competition with him. If it be a wrong to control 88 Ethics, Civil and Political the wills of our fellows, to subjugate and enslave their minds and bodies, it is not less a wrong to sub- jugate and enslave their time and purses, whatever be the means by which the result is effected; for those who enslave their purses take possession of the means which supply their bodies and brains and build up the fabric of their imperishable souls, if such they have. Finally: "Falsehood is odious both to God and man," said Socrates; and deception and sharp prac- tice cannot be less so. No man can long respect himself who prosecutes concealed and deceptive aims in business or private life to the detriment of his fellow. He who pursues hidden purposes lives a He to the public, and sooner or later becomes a lie unto himself. It is only uttering a truism to say that equity is the basis of an honorable business, be the nature of that business what it may. Every man should have exactly what he earns, be it large profits or small ; honor or dishonor ; and a share in public prosperity to which he contributes. The law of equivalents should be conscientiously observed in the affairs of trade and exchange. We are not un- mindful that to secure these desirable ends in bus- iness, difificulties of great magnitude have to be met and overcome; economic problems solved; the finances adjusted ; rates of interest equitably estab- lished ; and the laws of trade equitably established. But the ethics of a subject are not affected by the difificulties of its solution. That remains the same, even though the difificulties environing its applica- tion prove insuperable. Ethics of Trade 89 The eminent economist, David Ricardo, depre- cated any interference on the part of the State with the rate of interest on money. In all countries [says he], from mistaken notions of policy, the State has interfered to prevent a fair and free market rate of interest, by imposing heavy and ruinous penalties on those who shall take more than the rate fixed by law.* It is with diffidence that one controverts so emi- nent a reasoner as Ricardo, yet he seems to have overlooked the experience of the race in past civ- ilizations, and to have underestimated the force of human greed, when left to operate unrestrained by law. From the earliest ages governments have been compelled to interfere between usurers and their victims ; first releasing the person from their toils, as did Solon at Athens ; and then part of his pos- sessions ; and then a greater part ; and so on down to within rational limits, as in England to-day. Ricardo seems to have been oblivious of the true functions of government, regarding it as an agent of the public to transact public business, rather than an instrument of public protection and for the ad- ministration of justice between peoples and indi- viduals. The end of government, says Thomas Carlyle, is to "guide men in the way wherein they should go ; towards their true good in this life, the portal of infinite good in a life to come." f There * Principles of Political Economy, third ed., pp. 178-9. f Past and Present, p. 208. go Ethics, Civil and Political is a slight tendency on the part of modern govern- ments towards the fulfilment of the end thus idealized by Carlyle : we would gladly see it go on to perfection and have Plato's dream realized on earth. In respect of the relations of capital and labor, we remark that while they involve a problem in economical science, the discussion of which is foreign to the purpose of this essay, they also have ethical bearings which must not be overlooked. Unless our sense of equity is at fault, the laborer is justly entitled to share in the profits of a business which his labor creates and maintains. The foundation of his rights in that direction is the self-evident fact that capital is the child of labor — the surplus which labor alone provides.* The rise in real estate and the profit of investment are due to productive industry; and equity declares that such profits be- long to those on whose industry they depend. Mr. Presbyopia, for example, buys a tract of land in some remote part of the earth, at a nominal price. In the course of time, the progress of emigration, and the turn of events, railroads are built upon it and canals are dug through it ; population literally swarms in its vicinity; and villages and cities are *" Labor was the first price — the original purchase money that was paid for all things." — Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, hook i., chap, v., London, 1820. " In the early stages of society, the exchangeable value of these commodities (products of human Industry), or the rule which de- termines how much of one shall be given in exchange for another, depends almost exclusively on the comparative quantity of labor expended on each." — Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy, third ed., p. 10, London, 1821. Ethics of Trade 91 built upon and around it ; and that which cost but a dollar or less an acre suddenly becomes worth a dollar or more a square foot. Meanwhile the shrewd, or otherwise, owner of it resides in Thibet, Japan, or other remote place, having done no more to en- hance the value of his land than the mythical man in the moon. To whom do the profits of his invest- ment belong? The law of most communities accords them to him who holds the title-deed. We make bold to say that the law in such a case is based upon a misconception of equity. The rightful heir of the profits, when in excess of any equitable rate of in- terest on the cost, is the community whose industry created them. This supposititious instance is no exception to the course of things in the business world. It is the ordinary source of great individual wealth the world over. We maintain, therefore, that to deny those who by their industry create the world's surplus — wealth — participation in its use and enjoyment is a manifest injustice, leading to undue concentration of wealth, monopolies and privileged classes; pro- moting idleness by destroying the stimulus of labor, and also by withdrawing from business a class who find themselves in a position to live without labor, — that is, to become drones, or parasites, — and pros- trating and demoralizing industry itself; so that those who live by the labor of their hands sooner or later find themselves deprived of the opportunity of earning even in that way an honest living. Many proprietors of large mercantile establish- ments and corporate bodies are beginning to act on 92 Ethics, Civil and Political this idea of equity, and to allow their clerks and em- ployees a certain percentage on the profits of their sales, or to hold stock in their corporations. It is done, however, more to stimulate them to increased vigilance and activity, and to make them contented, than as a measure of right and justice; more as a business policy than from a sense of equity. And we have heard the proposition broached by conscien- tious capitalists and proprietors of manufacturing interests, to set aside an equitable percentage of the net profits of their business as a fund to be divided pro rata, annually, among their employees. The proposition has been acted upon in England by at least one proprietor of an extensive iron mill, but with what success we are not advised. We do not see why such a plan should not be perfectly feasible. It commends itself to one's ethical sense, and the only difficulty, as far as we can see, in the way of its execution is the general unwillingness to put it in operation. It is certainly more practicable than cooperation ; and it would give more satisfaction to employees; besides, it would, if faithfully carried out, unite the interests of employers and employees, and improve their social relations — a desideratum of superlative importance to both. Should a measure of this kind be put into faithful execution, it would measurably mollify the mythical conflict between capital and labor, of which one hears so much in these latter days. In truth, there is no such conflict in progress, nor was there ever one commenced. The real conflict is between indi- viduals and classes; the weak and the strong; the Ethics of Trade 93 shrewd business man and the dullards in the business world. This conflict has been going on from the beginning, and it will continue to the end, unless some measure or policy in business bear rule looking to the interests of those who are too stupid, or too weak, it matters not which, to care for themselves. Such a policy on the part of business men would be wholly gratuitous from a purely business point of view. It simply comprehends the introduction of an element of humanity, altruism, in the conduct of business and the operation of the ordinary laws of trade and exchange. Shall such an element ever be interposed between parties whose interests are seemingly divergent, in the conduct of business life? We may be over- sanguine in respect of the ultimate reign of equity in business relations ; our conviction of what ought to be, may possibly influence our belief of what will be; but we are confident that the day will come when the element of humanity will exercise a con- trolling influence in all the interests of mankind, material as well as spiritual — for the destinies of both are inseparably connected. Should it fail to come, and the power of greed continue unchecked to control the laws of trade, the earth and everything of value therein will ultimately be in the hands of a small minority of individuals, now known as capital- ists, a class by no means distinguished for meekness ; while the large majority of mankind will be reduced to dependence and beggary. This result is as in- evitable under the present regime as the ebb and flow of the tides, the procession of the seasons, or 94 Ethics, Civil and Political the law of gravity — as the history of all nations and peoples proves. Again : closely allied to this subject in its bearings and influence is that of the rights of property as compared with those of labor. The most humane will hold the rights of property forever sacred. The politician regards the rights of capital paramount even to the rights of man. "No taxation without representation " was the cry of our fathers of revo- lutionary fame. The women's rights people reiterate the cry in support of woman suffrage. In England the suffrage is denied to all women, and only per- mitted to such men as are college graduates, house- holders, and those that pay an income tax. Our Northern States formerly required a property quali- fication of their colored voters, and most of the South- ern States would to-day require the same qualification of their poor voters, black or white, if it were consti- tutional. In their view it is property, not man, that should be represented. In all the reasonings of these politically wise people, of either sex, it seems never to occur to them that the rights of property and the rights of man are the same, one and inseparable, and that they can never be rightly dissociated. The subject of interest is one of great importance to the well-being of society, and cannot be safely ignored by her. The earnings of money, even at the so-called legitimate rates of interest, which do not nearly represent its true earnings, the laws being continually evaded, are out of all proportion to the wages paid for an equivalent of human labor. The struggle for existence is rendered grossly unequal Ethics of Trade 95 thereby; the poverty of the productive class in- creasing in direct ratio with the increase of wealth, so that the wealthiest state, in time, becomes the poorest. Such a phenomenon may be seen to-day in Great Britain, where one person in six of her population is a pauper. It is a causus morbi, leading to uniform results everywhere. And if the world were to begin anew, with the earnings of capital in excess of the wages of labor, there is no reason to anticipate results upon society differing in any wise from those which prevail to-day : wealth, produced by one class, the laborer; accumulated in the hands of another, the rich. High interest rates have been the curse of man- kind, and nothing gives us a better showing for posterity than the evident tendency to their reduc- tion. They were the bane of the ancient kingdoms of Greece, and the most suspicious defect in their knowledge of political economy. There, indeed, the exorbitant rate of fifteen to eighteen per cent, per annum was lawful; and not unfrequently thirty- three and one third per cent, per annum was ex- acted — chiefly on cargoes, however, which was a kind of insurance — by the bankers at Athens. It is a satisfaction, however, to know that the usurers became objects of contempt, and that the fact that a man was a money-lender was sufficient "to preju- dice him, even in a court of law, among the Athen- ians." * It is interesting to note also that Aristotle objected, on principle, to putting money out at in- terest, as in his judgment it was a diversion of it from * Vide Demosthenes, C. Pant. 96 Ethics, Civil and Political its proper and natural use, as a medium of exchange, and tended to "the reproduction and increase of itself," and thus become a burden to industry and the productive classes. Moreover, it enables one class to live in idleness on the sweat of another. With the growth of a sound financial system, and a clearer understanding of the laws of political economy, of which it is a part, many of the anoma- lies of trade and the disorders of industry would die out for the want of sufiRcient stimuli to keep them alive ; for vice is not self-sustaining any more than is virtue. But no economic system practicable to-day, howsoever perfect, would be fully equal to the oc- casion. It would need to be supplemented by a radically different industrial polity in which man lived more for the state and less for himself. The present generation is past help in this regard ; but the rising generation can be moulded to almost any mode of feeling or form of thought that may be desired. The child should be taught by example as well as precept the value and necessity of earning his own living, of living a frank, open life, and of pursuing an inflexible, honest purpose ; the infamy of lying; the sacredness of truth-telling; the dis- honor of taking an unfair advantage in trade ; the superiority of character to mere worldly possessions ; that the proper ethics in business is to confer mutual benefits ; and that a trade or exchange which fails of this end is a wrong and an injustice to one, if not to both of the parties. A life embodying and illus- trating precepts of an import similar to these, incul- cated on children, and lived in their presence, before Ethics of Trade 97 their eyes, would be of more real, substantial value to them than the wealth of a Stewart, or the pos- sessions of a Vanderbilt. If we are too hopeful of the potency of such teaching and training to remove the grave disorders of the times, it is some satisfaction to know that it is an error of judgment shared by a great many good and great men- — sages whom the world de- lights to honor. Our faith in the divine in man stands firm amid all the destitution which his avarice and selfishness have brought into the world ; and we cannot but believe that, with a better knowledge and appreciation of himself and his relations to his fellow and to society, the individual would come to see and feel the moral degradation, not to say gross impiety, of devoting all the force of his corporeal and intellectual powers to the acquisition of wealth, or the mere gratification of a temporal ambition. "Every sin is allied to ignorance," says the Talmud, and we believe it. Thoughtlessness is often the mother of selfishness. If man must pursue selfish aims and ends, let them be such as relate to his nobler self. In this respect the chief difficulty that environs him is materialism, or want of faith in the value of possessions that cannot be handled, weighed, and measured like merchandise, or figured up in dollars and cents. Truth is too obscurely outlined on his mental horizon to command his unreserved trust and confidence, and compel the surrender of his whole life and soul to its authority. While acquiescing in the truth of the precepts of the poets and religious mystics in a feeble, half-yielding, 98 Ethics, Civil and Political half-refusing attitude, he holds firmly on to his rents and incomes ; keenly scrutinizes the prices current, the stock reports, and loses no opportunity to profit by the indications of a rise or fall in the market. The status of such matters is subject to no doubts in his mind; the result subject to no misconception as to profit and loss ; though, as time goes on, his confidence does become more or less shaken on the subject of values — the millions in his safe failing to yield the satisfaction which he had confidently an- ticipated from them. "The wealth of a man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blest by. ' ' * One may be rich in this sense and have neither houses nor lands ; and one may be poor in this sense and own a city. And, surely, all the gold of Midas put out at the highest rate of interest could yield no joys comparable to those which come to one who has this wealth — whose life is full of the infinite Life, and whose heart is full of the infinite Love. To him life and death have a similar mean- ing — are closely allied. He has within him that which is superior to either, and which gives him pleasures unbroken — imperishable. If a man could be brought to a certain knowledge of this truth, not as a vague sentiment — to be realized in some mysterious Utopia of an indefinable future — but as a living, palpable attainment, now, here, it could not but have a powerful influence in shaping his course. If this be impossible, if he be so thoroughly of the earth earthy as to be insensible * Carlyle's Past and Present, p. 346. Ethics of Trade 99 of the life spiritual, he may, at least, be brought, by an appeal to his love of self-interest, to some appre- ciation of his higher relations and prospective affini- ties; to realize, perhaps, that he is mortal, and that the love of the sensuous can only be temporarily enjoyed; that the selfish pleasures, even, are en- joyed more in their renunciation than in their grati- fication; that serving others gives infinitely more delight than being served; that the wrong-doer is wronged infinitely more than the one he wrongs; and, finally, that the noblest and most enduring pleasures are known only in aesthetic culture. Once bring him to know and feel the truth of this, we re- peat, and there is a strong probability that he will renounce the course of life which gives him so little joy and satisfaction, and live less for himself and more for the welfare of his fellow-men. He does not always lose his life who gives it freely to the cause of humanity. Oftener it is he who does not thus consecrate his life that loses it. And, more- over, to do this, to endeavor to live for the good of others, is by no means a difficult task. The en- deavor, we say, is not so difficult. Self-interest ought to lead one in that direction, for any one of average intelligence can easily persuade himself by study and reflection and converse with men and things that an overweening love of this world — of acquisition — is as certain to unbalance his character and curtail his joys as is an inordinate and unre- strained appetite to lead to plethory or madness. This sentiment of Mohammed is fragrant with po- litical wisdom and sound morality: "If a man have 100 Ethics, Civil and Political two loaves of bread let him exchange one for some flowers of the narcissus, for bread only nourishes the body; but to look on the narcissus feeds the mind." Let him who hath a surplus of this world's goods exchange some of it for the nobler virtues, for wealth may perish, but pleasures which spring from the virtues can never die. PART IV ETHICS OF INDIVIDUALISM " God IS the author of only a small part of human affairs ; of the larger part He is not the author ; for our evil things far outnumber our good things, and the good things we must ascribe to no other than God, while we must seek elsewhere, and not in Him, the causes of the evil things." — Dialogues of Plato. PART IV THE ETHICS OF INDIVIDUALISM THAT great commoner, the late Horace Greeley, declared that "Whatever is, is wrong." We are in hearty accord with that sentiment, believing that society at present is in a state of evolution, and, as compared with the ideal social condition, that it is but a slight remove from the barbaric. Mr. Emerson thought that we had hardly reached the dawn of civilization. "We are only at the cock- crowing and the morning star, ' ' said he. The ideal civilized state comprehends the adjust- ment of human relations in accordance with uni- versal justice. In a state thus constituted no one could or would take an inequitable or unfair advan- tage of another. Every one would fill the niche in the body politic to which his talents best fitted him, and would receive his meed, and no one could have what was not his due, or more than a just share of the fruits of another's industry and genius. In other words, the ideal state comprehends giving every man his place and an equitable share of the profits of industry which we call wealth, and an 103 I04 Ethics, Civil and Political equitable share in the benefits which wealth brings to its possessor, namely, opportunities for education and culture, or the things which make life most worth living. It must be apparent to the most casual observer that society has not yet reached a condition of civilization approaching so desirable a consumma- tion, and that the number of individuals who would welcome it is exceedingly small. Most men still prefer the freedom to make conquest, to contend, rather than to cooperate, to- indulge in warfare, not against evils and the elements, the proper objects of warfare, but against their fellows; to win by cun- ning and sharp practice, rather than to earn by honest toil. We do not deny that society has made some progress along the line of the ethical. Piracy no longer exists, except among publishers; free- booting on the high seas has gone out of date ; fili- bustering has disappeared, except in Great Britain and the United States ; wars of conquest and sub- jection have been abandoned, except by America, Spain, Great Britain, Germany, and Russia; the great governments of the world have grown more civil and less aggressive toward such as have arma- ments equal to their own ; and there is a growing tendency to cultivate relations of amity and reci- procity between nations g,nd peoples, without, how- ever, disbanding armies, neglecting coast-defences and the building of heavy iron-clads and turreted monsters. While we concede all this, and admit that ethical ideas have made an advancement during the last The Ethics of Individualism 105 two hundred years, we still maintain that the ad- vancement has been more apparent than real. There has not been so much change in the spirit which animates nations and peoples, as there has been in the agencies and methods by which that spirit finds expression. Warfare still exists, and is not less in- tense than of yore, among all so-called civilized peoples, but the scene of strife is changed and the methods of contention are more refined and less barbaric. So the weapons of aggression have changed. The warfare has been shifted from the agencies of armies and battlements to those of eco- nomic forces ; from territorial conquest to the sub- jugation of the industries and industrial classes. While we concede that the agents and the methods are more refined, that is to say, more civilized, the result can hardly be said to be less cruel, or attended with less misery and fatality. The conquest of the oil industry by the Standard Oil Company is said to have wrecked seventy thousand lives. The con- quest of the industries, tha't is to say, the warfare between capital and labor, has wrecked untold mil- lions of lives, and placed nearly three fourths of the wealth of the United States in the hands of less than one tenth of the people, and reduced a large majority of the people, the producers of that wealth, to tenancy, or abject servitude, with all the misery that that condition implies. The unhappy consequences of this mal-condition of the people — due, not to overproduction, the fer- tility of our soil, and the beneficence of our climate (how ridiculous the thought), as our politicians and io6 Ethics, Civil and Political political economists would have us believe, but wholly to causes which tend to the unjust and un- equal distribution of wealth. Great fortunes on the one hand necessitate great poverty on the other, because a few absorb the surplus earnings of the many. It is amazing to us that the thinkers and statesmen of the period do not see the perils which menace Christendom from this mal-condition of things, and exercise wisdom and courage sufficient to devise and apply the remedy. The obliquity dis- played on this subject by politicians, the supposed experts in statecraft, is so great as to excite amaze- ment. One hears them discussing the policy of protection and free-trade, of taxation as a means of prosperity, the currency, as if the settlement or ad- justment of these questions would remove the evils of the times ; we hear them gravely discussing the relations of wages and capital, monopoly and com- petition, of employees and employer, of trusts and combines ; and talking, as did Professor Clark at the yearly meeting of the American Economic Associa- tion in New York in 1896, of honest competition as a remedy for industrial evils, and of the natural laws of industry, and natural economic forces, as if this was the end-all and the be-all of political economy ! The rationale of natural forces and natural laws seems to be misapprehended. To say a force is natural, or according to natural law, is not the same thing as saying it is just, or inevitable. The laws of all phenomena are natural, whether normal or abnormal. A stone thrown into the air ascends and descends according to law. Nations rise and fall The Ethics of Individualism 107 conformable to law. Disease exists according to law, no less than health. The movements of money, the mal-operations of trade and industry are con- formable to natural law, and so likewise are the equitable operations of trade and industry. Evils have their laws — natural laws — no less than benefi- cence ; vices no less than virtues. All phenomena, of whatever character, proscribe laws. Change the conditions, or introduce new elements, the result is changed ; old laws are no longer operative and new ones take their place. How idle it is, therefore, to talk about the natural laws of our economic system, and of natural economic forces, as if because they are natural they are justifiable and not to be con- travened. A better phrase to characterize existing conditions is the "Natural laws of Individualism." The need of the hour is to discover the natural laws of cooperative industry. Again, our political wiseacres insist that the great need of the hour is honest competition. They do not realize that competition is warfare, and that free competition means a free fight between economic forces, and that honesty is not in it. We maintain that competition itself is an evil. Competition is the bane of honesty in business. It means warfare between individuals, in which the least scrupulous wins. It leads to deceit, dishonesty, and downright lying, short weight, adulteration, and shoddy. John Bright never uttered a more significant truth than when he declared that competition was the parent of adulteration — an evil which has debased every possible article of manufacture and commerce, as io8 Ethics, Civil and Political well as the traffic in it. But aside from that, com- petition has produced and is forcing combinations in every branch of industry — the very things our legislators are legislating against ! While admitting that competition is the genesis of the evils of which we complain, and many of which we have not yet spoken, evils that have no parallel in the history of the world, evils so monstrous as to make one's head swim and one's heart sick to contemplate, it is urged in extenuation of them that competition is th* life of business; that it is due to it that the grand achievements of the modern era have been pro- duced; all of which we freely concede. And if there were not a better way to promote these re- sults, a way more rational, a more intelligent, right- eous, and humane way, one might concede that the end justified the means. But there is a better way, a way more conservative, more just, a way in which to achieve all the grand results of civilization without the awful wreck and waste of human life which competition has produced and is producing. That way is alone to be found in the nationalization of industry, or the union and systematic coordination of industrial forces ; harmonious cooperation rather than hellish strife and division. The horrid anomalies of the existing system of economics is due to an intense individualism. It may be seen not only in the pickings and stealings of greedy sharks and grasping corporations, tricks of competitors, formations of trusts and combines to put down expense and to put up profits, brib- ery, blackmailing, embezzlement, and defalcation, so The Ethics of Individualism 109 characteristic of the times, but in the warfare of the industries, the destitution of the masses, and the in- crease of the criminal and pauper classes, in other words, the unequal distribution of the earnings of labor — wealth. The evils of it are seen in store- houses full of grain produced by people who are in want of food ; shops overladen with goods made by those who have nothing to wear; markets over- stocked with necessaries, as well as the luxuries of life, the productions of men and women who are compelled to live without them, or to accept them as charity ; thousands out of work who under a just regime would never want for it; land, the rightful heritage of every man, held at a price at which it would not pay to till it ; homes earned by one and owned by another; the disgraceful growth of charities, poorhouses, penal institutions, and state hospitals; estates of the rich, palaces, luxurious homes, homes of want and misery ; and the growth of a class exempt from the necessity of labor, beside which nothing could be so prolific of misery. Is there not something fundamentally wrong in this condition of the body politic? It exists in a more marked degree where society is the more ' ' civilized ' ' and wealth and luxury the more abun- dant. It is the natural, inevitable result of our eco- nomic system, and we know not which of its victims to pity most, the very rich or the very poor. The very poor of such a social state are vastly worse off than the savage who roams the forest for his food, oblivious of a higher or nobler life. He is free, while his pale-faced brother under the ban of want no Ethics, Civil and Political is a slave. Can we reasonably wonder that the "civilized " victims of want and misery become des- perate, aggressive, and lawless? We cannot. The wonder is that crimes against property are not more frequent than they are, and that the masses do not rise in rebellion against an order of things that fosters so gross an inequality. It is a strange anomaly that the public should be so little sensible of the ethics of wealth which is due to, or created by, associated thrift, and not at all by individual effort or production. So sensitive is value to improvements that one cannot improve his own dwelling without, by the same act, enhancing the value of his neighbor's. For instance: One buys a piece of land, plants a garden, sets out shade and fruit trees and flowering shrubs, lays out lawns and drives, and builds a fine house thereon ; imme- diately the contiguous lots double and treble in value. This increased value is the so-called incre- ment, the unearned increment which we have al- ready alluded to and discussed farther on, and which should be the source of public revenue rather than of private gain. Another illustration of our mal-system of eco- nomics may be observed in the effects of the division and organization of labor. Under a just r6gime the division of labor and the introduction of labor-saving machinery would be productive of universally be- neficent results. They would give the wage-earner higher wages, shorter hours, and more leisure and means for mental culture. As it is, they are pro- ductive of wrong and oppression to the wage-earner The Ethics of Individualism 1 1 1 by reducing the number of the employed, and re- manding thousands who Hve by labor to idleness and want. They cause inequality by restricting the distribution of wealth, and tend, therefore, to create dissension in the body politic, and the growth of a desperate class. The result is injustice, and injustice very properly breeds discontent and dissension. Again, under our abnormal system of taxation the wage-earner and the tenant class pay an un- just proportion of the revenue needed by the government and the state. The poor man with a large family of children pays more of the tariff tax than a millionaire with a small family of children need necessarily pay. Every open mouth, every hungry stomach, every bare back, every tool of the laborer, every implement of the husbandman, is a source of revenue to the gov- ernment under our barbarous tariff laws. But this is of minor importance compared with the evils of our indirect tax system, which makes the tenant pay the property tax of the landlord. To the land- lord it does not much matter what the rate of tax is. He puts it in the rent and collects it from his tenant. This is inevitable under our economic system, but it is the rankest injustice nevertheless. But the in- justice does not spring from the mal-administration of our economic system, or from the dishonest ap- plication of it, but directly from the mal-system itself. The fault lies in the system. Look at the operation of this abominable system in the instance of Trinity's old rookeries. One hundred millions of dollars have been wrung from the miserably poor of 1 1 2 Ethics, Civil and Political New York City within a few score of years for the privilege of occupying its death-dealing old shanties. The Corporation of Trinity, Christian gentlemen every one of them, has exacted twenty per cent, rental from the wretched, hard-worked children of poverty, which, after paying themselves comfortable salaries, they have expended in building churches for the affluent and fashionable to worship God in ! Could anything illustrate the fallacy of this every- man-for-himself policy more forcibly than this? Could anything be a greater burlesque on the Christ- religion? Yet our sleek and fat professors of po- litical economy can see nothing in our economic polity to amend or apologize for ! But the perils of popular government in America lie not dimly con- cealed in such an economic polity. It impoverishes the people, and through impoverishment subjects and enslaves them. The few become rich and powerful, powerful by reason of the influence they gain over the masses through the favors — crumbs — they dispense to the poor and dependent who live, or, rather, subsist by the grace of their superiors. In the wake of dependence and destitution follow ignorance, discontent, disease, and crime — all, every one, the legitimate product of antecedent conditions and environments. We insist that this brood of evils is due to ab- normal causes, which it is incumbent on society to correct in justice to its members. We repeat, in justice to its members. What is justice in this con- nection? It is equal right to life and the things which make for righteousness to every man, woman. The Ethics of Individualism 113 and child in the state. To be more precise, justice to the individual comprehends the right to work and to the wages and profits of work. In other words, the right to food and drink, clothing and shelter, and opportunities for rational enjoyment, which industry and enterprise entitle one to. That is justice. To be despoiled of these things when one has earned them is an injustice, whether it be done lawfully or unlawfully, by the tricks of trade, the devices of individuals, or combinations of them ; and a community which allows it is in no just sense a civilized state. We have no sympathy with the toiler, as such. He can take care of himself under a just regime. The greatest heroes of the world are the greatest toilers. The greatest brains of the world have owed their brains to toil. Moreover, it is incumbent on every man, be he rich or poor, more especially if he be rich and favored of fortune, to work, to produce, and thus to make some show of return to society, to which he owes everything. The individual is ever in debt to the state — by which is meant the social environment in which he lives and from which he derives his being. So great is his debt to the state that he can never repay it, except with his life. The state acts upon this hypothesis when in stress of peril and in need of defense, and calls for this sacrifice. Whatever of good, whatever of cul- ture, whatever of civilization, the individual has attained has been by contact with his fellows and the beneficent influences that their genius and in- dustry have showered upon him. Left to himself, 114 Ethics, Civil and Political unaided, owing no one anything, receiving nothing from others, he would remain a savage. Instance the pubHc school by which the humblest born, as position is rated, have risen to high estate ; instance the colleges and universities, the accumulated learn- ing of ages, which constitute associated learning and the means thereto, that train men and women in science, literature, and the industrial arts, and that could not exist but for the coordinate efforts of men animated by motives the most altruistic: can these advantages be computed in cash? Compare the modern home and living with life in the humble cabin of the isolated frontiersman : all the culture, comfort, and luxuries of the former are due to the advantage of coordinate industry, the result of the accumulated labor and genius of countless lives de- voted to science and invention, utilized by the indi- vidual for his own aggrandizement, comfort, and enjoyment, for which he is indebted to powers su- perior to his own. Have these things a money equivalent? The truth of this proposition applies with even more force and pertinancy to the profes- sions than to the commonalty. Instance the profes- sion of medicine : every member of it is the recipient of blessings, pecuniary and intellectual, evolved from the centuries of human activity, so great, that, were his life multiplied many fold, he could never make an adequate return for them to the source whence they came — society. And to the honor of that pro- fession, be it observed, a member who should seek to turn a discovery — even of his own making — to his own exclusive benefit and profit, or keep it secret The Ethics of Individualism 115 from his fellows, would be accounted infamous. The profession of medicine is a vast treasury of knowledge, on which the doctor of medicine may draw without stint or measure, and turn to his own pecuniary advantage and profit. Could he pay for this with money? Not if he possessed all the gold of Midas. The illustrious pioneer of letters in France has given forcible expression to the obligation of the in- dividual to society — the state — in his £mile, holding that neither riches nor genius can release him from such obligation. It is not just [he writes], that what one man has done for society should release another man from what he owes it, for each one, owing his entire self, can pay only for himself; and no father can transmit to his son the right of being useless to his fellows. . . . He who eats in idleness what he himself has not earned, steals; and a landholder whom the state pays for doing nothing [which the state does do in the allowance of interest on money] does not differ from a brigand who lives at the expense of travellers. Outside of society [continues the author], an isolated man, owing nothing to any one, has a right to live as he pleases ; but in society, where he necessarily lives at the expense of others, he owes them in labor the price of his support ; to this there is no exception. To work, then, is a duty indispensable to the social man. Rich or poor, powerful or weak, every idle citizen is a knave.* And the author rightly compares an idle man, living on a patrimony, to a drone in the hive that lives on honey accumulated by the industrious bees. ^ Entile, p. 177, Jean Jacques Rousseau. ii6 Ethics, Civil and Political While such is the obligation of the individual to the state and his dependence on society for develop- ment, there is an obverse side to the picture which shows itself when society is imperfectly or im- properly organized, that is, when it is organized on principles subversive of justice. It then becomes an influence of evil to him, engendering seeds of disease and depravity and impulses of hatred and resentment, which impels him to acts of lawlessness. "After a visit to a prison," said Count Tolstoi, — and he might have also included hospitals, — "I always have the impression that the social regime is alone guilty." His impression is correct^well founded. It is the imperfection of the social state, or society, to which these evils are due. The true position of money in the body politic is not understood, or, if understood, it is overlooked. Money has no intrinsic value in itself. Its value is an exchangeable value, a value conferred upon it by governments, as a medium for the exchange of values. A pound of coal or bread has more real value than a pound of gold. One could dispense with gold with little inconvenience; while coal is indispensable to comfort and to civilization itself. Moreover, it contains within itself celestial energy which is a correlative of brain-force, or mind. Surely no one will claim that gold possesses any such equivalence. So, likewise, it is with bread. It possesses intrinsic value. It nourishes body and mind. It has power to sustain life and carry on the processes of mind ; to generate, in other words, the finest thoughts of the poet and philosopher, Gold The Ethics of Individualism 1 1 7 sustains no such relation to the real values — to the life-giving and promoting substances. Let no one suppose, therefore, that in giving a dime for a loaf of bread he has paid an equivalent for it. He has done nothing approaching an equiva- lent for it, not if he had paid a thousand dimes, nay, ten thousand dimes. He has simply given a token, which the government says shall be taken in ex- change for an equivalent of the bread. All know how dear bread becomes when famine prevails. Money may be plenty, but the cry for bread is not appeased by it. Instance Paris in the siege during the Franco-German war, or the Southern States during the late Rebellion, or India, when its rice and wheat crops fail. One might as well offer stones to the starving as gold ; and he evinces a poor sense of equivalents who, having a hundred millions of dollars, would not exchange it for a hundred loaves of bread should the scarcity of that article warrant so anomalous a transaction. Count Tolstoi, the distinguished Russian thinker and writer, has expressed the true ethics of this sub- ject in his conversation with a newspaper corre- spondent, Mr. Creelman. A man [he says] may neglect the duty of laboring for bread ; he may buy a loaf of bread with money ; but that loaf still belongs to the person whose labor earned it. For, even as a woman cannot purchase motherhood with money, nor in any other way, so a man ought, by the work of his own hands, to procure the necessary food for his own subsistence and that of his wife and children. 1 1 8 Ethics, Civil and Political He cannot elude the obligation by any means, whatever may be his rank or merit.* It is needless to say that the author emphasizes his economic convictions by indulgence in manual labor in the field and shop. But to return from this digression : We are wont to regard the criminal as self-made and responsible for his conduct. The fact is, that he is made by society, by social environments which society creates and fosters, and which society only can reform. Given the germ of being, the criminal is as dependent for his unfolding on his environments as is the vege- table on the quality of soil and air, or the flower on sunshine and water. There are no chance products in nature — generation is never spontaneous. The character of a man is dependent upon his ante- cedents; his development on his environments. Believe me : every thief, every brigand, whether he be a Jay Gould or a Captain Kidd ; every mur- derer, every burglar, every highwayman, every pau- per, every miser, every drunkard, every libertine, and every species of vulture in human form that preys on the weak and unsuspecting for a living, is himself a victim of environments which he did not make, but which made him. Of this subject we shall speak at further length in another place. In the unequal division of the profits of organized labor and of labor-saving machinery lies an injustice to the wage-earner as we have seen. It would seem but just that those who invent machinery should * The Great Highway, p. 154. The Ethics of Individualism 119 share in the profits derived from its use. It is rarely the case that they do. Inventors oftener die in the poorhouse than in a palace. The inventor of the "pipe-line" died in want. The man who in- vented the first machine for making envelopes is to- day supported by his relatives. The man who revolutionized the steam-engine died in penury. The discoverer of the anaesthetic quality of sul- phuric ether went around begging in his later years. Gibbs, of sewing-machine fame, never made a for- tune. The genius of a Franklin, a Whitney, a Jen- ner, a Fulton, or a Gray, while conferring manifold blessings on mankind, brought to its possessors fame rather than wealth. The profits of inventions, we repeat, seldom enrich the inventors. They are oftener a pecuniary disad- vantage to them and their class. While machinery has increased production many fold, it has never pro- portionately increased the laborer's wage, the major part of the profit of such increased production being absorbed by capital to swell the coffers of the employer of labor, and to create social distinctions. The same is true of the profits of organized labor — -by which I mean the employment of a number of men on the same piece of work, giving to each a single section, in which by frequent repetition he becomes an ex- pert, and doubles the value of his time. A few men thus working together are able to do in a few min- utes, a few hours, or in a few days, what one man could not do in a few hours, a few weeks, or in a few years, or what he could not do at all. A few men working together, with the aid of machinery, could 1 20 Ethics, Civil and Political build a bridge across the Hudson, or a tunnel under it ; construct a railroad across the continent and run it ; build a cathedral or the Pyramids, while one man could do none of these things, though he had all time to do it in. But the daily wage of men whose genius and labor are thus organized is nearly the same as if each were working singly without concert of efifort. Though their earnings by this means are enhanced a thousandfold, they go to swell the profits of capital, to multiply the number of millionaires, and increase the number of the poor and dependent. This is one of the chief causes of the unequal divi- sion and distribution of wealth. It is needless to observe that under our system of economics every man is for himself, by reason of the failure of society to protect his rights. He lives for himself. Every other man is his legitimate prey. He is expected to get what he can and to keep what he gets — by lawful means if he can, but by evading lawful means if he must. Harmonious cooperation is regarded as inimical to the interests of the individual and the progress of civilization. One hears a great deal these days from apologists of our industrial polity, about the necessity of en- couraging individualism, and the need of personal rivalry as incentives to industry. They seem to be- lieve that the Author of the Kosmos made a mis- take in fashioning the mental machinery of man in accordance with justice and the demands of the social state. Man is by nature indolent and im- provident, it is falsely said, and, like the hound, needs the scent of game — the privilege of preying The Ethics of Individualism 1 2 1 on his fellows — as an inducement to labor! We wonder if Paul was actuated by the love of gain in embracing Christianity? If Homer wrote his im- mortal Odyssey for money? If Luther or Savonarola was instigated to the work of reform by the hope of place and power? If Joan of Arc was inspired by the scent of gain? If men of science, art, and litera- ture are inspired by a money reward? If Dante and Shakespeare wrote for money? Or if any of the great captains of industry — a Bruno, a Watt, a Stephenson, a Roebling, or an Edison — were stim- ulated in their labors by the hope of the emoluments which their labor might bring? If the great stu- dents of the stars, or the elements, or medicine — a Herschell, a Newton, a La Place, a Swift, a Helm- holtz, a Cavendish, a Galen, or a Hahnemann — were stimulated by money? We will not believe it. In every rightly constituted mind, the love of doing is a far stronger incentive to invention and discovery than thelove of getting. The claim that gain is the normal stimulus to labor is a base calumny on the human race, and the idea itself is disproved by the facts of human toil in every department of industry. Modern society is, however, the result of this idea of individualism. The child is falsely taught that he is the architect of his own destiny. Association and brotherhood have had no part in modern edu- cation. St. Paul's declaration of human brother- hood and mental dependence as members of one body is ignored in the school as well as in our in- dustrial polity. The new commandment. That thou love thy neighbour as thyself, is disregarded, except 122 Ethics, Civil and Political as a precept ; so also is the declaration, " That ye are not the servants of man, but of God." For nearly nineteen hundred years the new era has been shaped in contempt of this economic and philosophic pre- cept. For nearly nineteen hundred years have pre- cept and practice been thus at variance! Science and philosophy have made during this time marvel- lous strides; progress in the industrial arts, under the stimulus of invention and discovery, has out- stripped any previous age ; yet ethics and morality lag behind. Are we alone in this opinion? By no means. Listen to the true and dispassionate words of the learned Dr. Alfred Wallace, of England : "Compared with our astounding progress in physi- cal science and its practical application, our system of government, of administrative justice, and of national education, and our entire social and moral organization," he says, "remain in a state of bar- barism." Ernst Haeckel, a German contemporary- and man of science, fully endorses Dr. Wallace's sentiment. Speaking of the sentiment of justice, Professor Haeckel declares that "No one can main- tain that its condition to-day is in harmony with our advanced knowledge of man and the world." * Meantime, the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth has been preached. The Bible has been freely distributed — sold, or given away. Learned men have been hired to set forth its precepts every Sunday from thou- sands of pulpits ; and most eloquently has it been done. The Sunday-school has been a prominent feature of every parish or society. No labor has * The Riddle of the Kosmos, p. 6, The Ethics of Individualism 123 been spared to inculcate in the young the precepts of Christianity. The beauty and utility of the Golden Rule have been endlessly dilated upon. The life and character of Jesus have been held up to the people as a model for their emulation. The lesson of the Cross, the symbol of self-sacrifice, has been taught, and Jesus himself represented as the Lord and Saviour whose precepts it was incumbent on every man to obey. And what has been the result in shaping the motives of men, or on the business morality of the commonwealths? The in- evitable has been the result. Preaching without practice is nil. The experience of nineteen hundred years proves this. Crime was never so prevalent and the criminal class never so proportionately large as they are in the world to-day, at least since the days of statistics. In the great Republic of America the proportion of convicted criminals in 1850 was one in three thousand four hundred and forty-two of the population; in 1890 it was one in seven hun- dred and fifty-seven of the population. These statistics, be it observed, take no account of the un- convicted classes of wrong-doers, or of crime per- petrated under the forms of law, and of criminals not under the ban of the law — a much larger class. Christianity has failed to arrest the increase of crime and the criminal class, because it has not been taught and applied to the conduct of business and practical affairs — to our industrial polity. The Christian polity has been mainly to save the soul in the other world, and to leave the body to the devil in this, oblivious of the fact that soul and body are 124 Ethics, Civil and Political one, and that the welfare of the body comprehends that of the soul. It is within the truth to say that at no time in the history of the modern era has the practice of deceit and duplicity been so prevalent as it is to-day, or crime so rampant. Why is it? Because every man is for himself. He obeys not the divine injunction to love his neighbor as himself. A prominent broker said to us the other day, "We are a nation of rascals." In business every man is against every other man. Why is it? Because the precepts of Jesus have been preached by the lips and broken by the heart. It is not that the precepts of Jesus are at fault, but every business man will tell you that they are impracticable. At no time in the history of the world have there been such great thieves or such gigantic robberies as exist and are perpetrated to-day under the very shadow of the Cross. Why is it? Because, to be effective, prac- tice must accord with precept, religion must be fer- tilized by justice in the relations of men. In neither case has this requirement been complied with. Practice has not accorded with profession. Lip homage has been paid to principles which conduct has flagrantly disregarded. In the fierce struggle for individual advantage, it seems as if moral distinctions had been broken down ; that morality and business had forsaken each other. When a man took what did not belong to him he used to be called a thief. Now he is characterized by a more euphemistic name, if he be a big thief. The thief of former days has been evolved into the defaulter, embezzler, or hypothecator of to-day. The man who misrepre- The Ethics of Individualism 125 sents for business ends used to be called a swindler; now he is a shrewd man of affairs. The liar of former times is the dissembler of to-day; the sharper, the business enthusiast. Why is it? Be- cause every man is for himself and the devil for the hindermost ; because money is of more consequence than honesty, and success more highly prized than honor. The public puts a crown on a successful man and asks no questions as to his methods. It has no use for a man who allows his scruples to interfere with his success. In this arraignment of the business morality of the times, we do not include the methods of the baser elements of society, the criminal class, — the burglars, safe-robbers, train-wreckers, pick- pockets, forgers, confidence operators, etc., — but the thieves and thieveries in high business circles — legitimate thieves and robbers — lawful thieving and robbery ; the men who make corners and control the laws of trade and the circulation of money, like a Gould or a Vanderbilt ; tie up commerce, and put up or down, as suits their interests, the price of the necessaries of life, like a Leiter, or an Armour; who speculate on the miseries of the masses and take advantage of the unfortunate for their own ag- grandizement; bribers of courts and legislatures; extortioners of profitable franchises, as railroad magnates; adepts at competitors' tricks of trade; purchasers of government favor, as the Sugar Trust magnates ; wreckers of railroad corporations, like an Ives or a Gould; circumventors of the revenue laws, like a Babcock or a Dodge; swindlers in the 1 26 Ethics, Civil and Political government service, like an Elkins or a Dorsey; sharpers as respectable as ever ran a life-insurance company, stole a railroad, or promoted a fraudulent enterprise to fleece the unwary. No department of industry is free from the vul- tures of greed. The professions are being corrupted by them. And why not, if individual gain is the proper motive of human activity? One stands aghast at the awful exposure of the Lexow Com- mittee of the Police Department of the City of New York, and the corruptions of Tammany and the Brooklyn ring, as well one may; but we tell you, men and brethren, that the conduct of corporate enterprises is but little better. In many cases, it is infinitely worse. Instance the charter got up for Greater New York, the infamous course pursued by the Standard Oil Trust, the Whiskey Trust, the Sugar Trust, the Ice and Beef Trusts, etc. Bribery and peculation, political jobbery and partisan ascen- dency in some form or other, or in some guise or other, are interwoven in our industrial polity. Few men regard ofifice as a public trust. It is expected that every man will take advantage of the laws and their administration to enrich himself. Why should he not do so, if self-interest be the ruling normal motive of conduct? Our industrial polity sets a premium on crime, and our political polity makes the office-holder a self-seeker. Was not the late William E. Dodge an honorable citizen? Never- theless, he made tens of thousands of dollars by evading the revenue laws of his country. There is no lack of good men, but goodness is no proof The Ethics of Individualism 127 against wrong-doing that the public conscience, or want of conscience, regards as legitimate. Another instance of the disregard of ethics, which is a serious menace to popular government, is the alienation of land from the people, to which we shall have occasion to refer more in detail in the follow- ing chapter. Freedom for the masses in the past has turned on land tenure. Seizure of the soil by the patricians disrupted the ancient republic and begot a subject class. Seizure of the soil of Italy reduced the masses to beggary. The people of an- cient Gaul were enslaved by the same means. And if the French Revolution of '93 and the career of Napoleon did nothing more for freedom of the masses than to destroy the institution of landed in- terests, they would be entitled to the lasting grati- tude of mankind. The people of England have been kept in servitude for centuries by being de- spoiled of their rights to the soil. The people of Russia are enslaved to-day by the same cause — re- ducing the tillers of the soil to tenancy. While we have not, as in most European countries, a landed aristocracy with a monopoly of the soil, the land is fast drifting into the hands of the capitalists and corporations, and the masses are gradually be- coming tenants. The alienation of the soil and concentration of wealth have been the chief causes of the wreck of nations from the beginning. When ancient Egypt collapsed her wealth was in the hands of about two per cent, of the population. The wealth of ancient Babylon, before her fall, was owned by the same per cent, of her people. At the 128 Ethics, Civil and Political fall of ancient Persia the land was owned by one per cent, of her population. When Rome went down about eighteen hundred persons owned the whole civilized world ! Such a condition of society is like a pyramid balanced on its apex. Is it any wonder that it falls? Nay, the wonder is that a civilization thus built and poised survives as long as it does. Without the support of bayonets it would not sur- vive a day. Far be it from our purpose to impugn the motives of any man in this indictment ; it is the public polity that we condemn. This abnormal condition of pub- lic and private morality is the natural, legitimate outcome of the polity of "every man for himself." It is perfectly consistent if individual gain be the proper motive of conduct ; and there can be no re- lief from it until the polity of our industrial system is reformed, or rather, abolished, and in place of it an industrial polity substituted, in which living for the public good would be the primary considera- tion. Such a system would place a premium on honesty. The incentive to wrong-doing would cease to exist. Wisdom, justice, and liberty would then unite to maintain that indispensable element of popular government, equality, and civilization meet no counter-currents in its progress. "That alone is wise which is just ; that alone is enduring which is right " — a proposition as true in economics as it is in individual conduct. We have seen that under the existing industrial polity wealth must necessarily drift into the hands of the few, and thousands of the best blood and The Ethics of Individualism 129 the most industrious citizens of the republic go to the poorhouse, or into charitable institutions ; that gross inequality is necessarily fostered by it among the people of the same blood and lineage, and with it every form of wrong and iniquity known to the species; that these things are on the increase, and that there is no reasonable hope for betterment on the line of the present polity. Not until the prin- ciples of ethics, political and economic, are recog- nized and applied to the relations of men shall peace and prosperity to all classes and conditions of men begin. The reign of the individual has bred a hideous race of monsters and mendicants, and de- stroyed that sense of brotherhood among men which is the basis of trust and confidence. Is not a change of polity urgently needed ? Let us strive to inaugu- rate that which was first introduced by Lycurgus, at Sparta, nearly three thousand years ago, and again formulated by the divine Nazarene, that of living for others, for men in the mass — for society and the sttite. Such was Plato's Republic — the ideal state. Plato laid great stress upon the necessity of the Rulers of the State, or "Guardians," as he called them, being men versed in philosophy, and devoid of avarice, or the spirit of selfishness. Such char- acters, he averred, would not seek office or official position, and would only accept them as a public duty, when thrust upon them. He who seeks office, one may be sure, does so with the hope of personal gain; tempted either by its emoluments, or the love of personal preferment — fame, rather than for the service he may be to the people. In 1 30 Ethics, Civil and Political general, it is true, then, that who seeks office is not fit for it, or to be trusted with its responsibilities. So weak and narrow is the public's sense on this subject that one hears upon every hand the senti- ment expressed that it is an honorable ambition to aspire for official position, to aspire to be mayor of a great city, or governor of a great state, or presi- dent of a great republic, or president of a bank, or some colossal corporation. Accordingly, nothing is more common than to see men more distinguished for push and cheek than brains and intellectual ac- complishments bending all their energies to obtain these coveted positions; and, once obtained, using all their cunning and the emoluments and patronage of their high positions to keep them, or to use them to advance themselves to something better. It is a political phenomenon to-day ; the reverse of it the most uncommon, even by magistrates whose con- duct of their offices has been otherwise exemplary, and against whose integrity, in other respects, no- thing could be said. And he who, in office, does not act upon this low idea of propriety and honor, or who lives up to a higher and more noble con- ception of them, is not regarded with party favor, but is looked upon as wanting in sagacity, or as being unpractical. However advanced in the industrial arts and sciences the civilization of the twentieth century may be, it is evidently far behind, in political sentiment and philosophy, the ideal of Plato. The security of the individual is alone to be found in a well-governed state. The state thus constituted is the proper custodian of his destiny, and alone has The Ethics of Individualism 131 power to put an end to the pauper-breeding policy of competition by taking charge of the industries, organizing labor, giving every man and woman their place, and systematizing production and distribu- tion. Under a just regime life would be no longer an abnormal struggle for existence, and we should cease to hear the oft-repeated cant about the "fit- test " and the "non-fittest." Every man would have his place in the body politic, and take a man's part in what goes on in life. Let no one object that this proposition is ideal and impracticable. Nothing is impracticable that is just and equitable. The state finds no difificulty in managing the common schools, the public water- courses, the public water supply, the highways, the postal service, the public health, making war, and preserving the autonomy of public policy. Why should it not with equal wisdom and prudence ex- tend its functions to embrace the industries, and put an end to the hideous warfare of classes, which, if unchecked, must inevitably disrupt the state? With the coordination and harmonizing of the industries, the individual would be relieved of the necessity of having to take thought for the morrow, of what he shall eat and drink, or wherewithal shall he be clothed, for the state would be his banker and the custodian of his earnings; nor would he have incentive to wrong or to overreach his brother. When this consummation is assured, justice and peace shall embrace each other, and want and misery and every other hideous thing shall disappear from this fair earth — and not till then. PART V ETHICS OF DEMOCRACY 133 ' ' I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." — RuMBOLD. 134 PART V THE ETHICS OF DEMOCRACY AS we turn the pages of history and trace in the record of events the slow development of so- ciety, the fact becomes clearly manifest that the progress of civilization has been over wild and thorny wastes, accompanied with sweat and tears, weari- ness, pain, and sorrow, and at a fearful cost of blood and treasure. At every step in its broken and devious course have the masses struggled against oppression and injustice ; ignorant rulers and strong, self-seeking tyrants ; divinely appointed despots and usurping demagogues. Freedom has been the con- dition of the few who were willing to die for it ; the rest of mankind have been slaves. Of this phase of social life we make no complaint ; for he who is not willing to die in defense of his freedom, which is a struggle for manhood, is un- worthy of it. The struggle to which we refer has been, not so much with material nature — clods and stones; not so much with the physical elements — frosts, earthquakes and storms; nor altogether be- tween capital and labor, as some would have us 135 136 Ethics, Civil and Political believe ; but between the rulers and the ruled ; be- tween the privileged few and the unprivileged many ; between the strong on the one hand and the weak on the other. It has been a mental conflict between members of the same species, brothers of the same lineage — children of the same Father; and in the end the strongest, rarely the fittest, has survived. The founders of the government of the United States were exceedingly jealous of the rights of the few, and entertained no little concern lest the rule of the majority should prove oppressive to the minority. But they might well have spared the pains they took to create barriers against so unlikely a contingency; for the history of all governments points clearly to the fact that the few rule and that the many are slaves, — in fact, if not in name. And it must be so until equality is a fixed condition among citizens of the same state, and justice becomes the order of the body politic, to which all should aspire. There is no phenomenon in all history more strange, and in some respects more melancholy, than the warfare of man with man in his struggle for place and pbwer. The course of physical nature generally is marked by hardship and cruelty at best. Vegetation seems to need the opposing force of gravity and the withering touch of the sunbeam; and animal life, the buffets of opposition and the blasts of apparent ill-fortune to develop symmetry of form and firmness of fibre. So likewise, all nature is supported and her processes carried on by a system of antagonisms. One species of animals The Ethics of Democracy 137 devours another, usually an inferior species; and certain other species prey on each other; but it re- mains for him who boasts, with questionable pro- priety, of a lineage superior to that of other animals, to live at the expense of his own species, and at the same time indulge a degree of cruelty toward it limited only by his genius to devise and enforce in- struments and means of conquest. But amid all this antagonism, the war of classes and the clash of interests, is discovered a prophecy, not of "harmony not understood," but of an im- proved order of things, from barbarism to civilization — through darkness to light — in which Justice shall mete out to every man his due. It is for that pur- pose that governments are instituted among men, miscarry as they may ; and if they have any other just and proper mission on earth it is difificult to discern what it is. "The greatest question in the world," most truly says the clever authoress of Felix Holt, "is how to give every man a man's share in what goes on in life." The question has been asked and answered several times in the history of the world, but it re- turns to us for a new solution with each new political decade. That condition of society in which every man has his proper place and fulfils his proper des- tiny comprehends the perfection of government. It is embodied in Plato's Republic, and was exem- plified in the government of some of the democratic cities of ancient Greece, notably Athens before her corruption and decline. If it has ever been at- tained in equal perfection by any considerable city, 138 Ethics, Civil and Political community, or state since the decline of Grecian civilization, we cannot recall the instance. The dominant passion of uncivilized man impels society in a direction quite the reverse of this. If there is in mankind, or in an organic community, a principle, or impulse, which causes them to struggle toward the attainment of this ideal condition, there is also in them an inclination or passion of exceeding tenacity toward a counter-attainment— the preven- tion of a man having a man's share in what goes on in life. With us it is individualism against the state. The wisest statesmanship — let us say, rather, the unwisest — has been generally exercised to secure privileges for the few at the expense of the many. This fact is so common in the best governed com- munities of modern times that it can hardly be called anomalous. And it does not speak well for our civilization. It is a relic of barbarism. The rivalry between alien classes and adverse interests ; the pride of birth and fortune; the vanity of position and authority ; the love of gain and glory, — even among those who subscribe to the doctrine of mutual kin- ship through Adam and the formula of brotherly love, — all contribute to perpetuate a struggle in which the few succeed in enslaving the many ; com- pelling them to accept conditions of being — say rather of dying- — which cannot but render them more and more unfitted to perform a man's share in what goes on in life. Such is the aspect of society to-day in both Europe and America. The social status which the decadence of feudalism left in Europe is vigilantly sought by the ruling caste to The Ethics of Democracy 139 be maintained; while in America the advantages which accrue to hereditary or acquired wealth are as vigilantly sought by the dominant class to be perpetuated indefinitely. Mr. William R. Gregg, in a chapter in Enigmas of Life, deprecates the growing influence of the masses in political life, and dolefully declares that if they ever come to the surface, "and bear sway permanently, ' ' the day of his ' ' cherished vision must indeed be distant." But I don't believe [he continues] the tendency to be so irresistible as is fancied. I am not sure that it may not contain within it the seeds of a counteracting and cor- recting agency. ... As long as property is safe and its rights respected, the legitimate and inevitable influ- ence it must ever wield, directly, and through the acces- sories which belong to it (of which wealth and superior knowledge, refinement, and intelligence, are the princi- ples), is so enormous that we cannot doubt its winning an easy victory in any struggle, and even warding off the near approach of any such struggle, provided only the holders of property hang together and recognize in time the danger of division in their ranks ; and there is surely sagacity and foresight enough to create close union among all possessional classes at the first serious menace to the security and sacredness of property. This is the first safeguard we have to trust to.* We should be sorry to believe that Mr. Gregg magnifies the force of the tendency to which he re- fers, though he evidently does exaggerate the danger * Vide p. 66 et seq. The italics are his. 140 Ethics, Civil and Political to come of it. It is no little surprise to us, how- ever, that so accurate an observer of public events in England and America as he should put so much confidence in the union of the property class, or in the desirableness of such union, under the status of property interests as it exists in England. "When rogues fall out honest folks get their due." It is a wise circumstance that dissension is not confined to the poor and foolish, but that it is likewise an in- firmity shared with them by the wise and wealthy. The rights of man, — mankind, — ^which are likely to be promoted thereby, are more sacred in the eye of divine Wisdom, we are happy to believe, than the rights of property, or of those of an exclusive caste. Besides, it is an error to presume that the rights of property can be dissociated or in anywise separated from the rights of the masses. But the spectacle of maintaining by political cunning rights obtained by military force, or civil prowess, as in England, is by no means an edifying one. The most fundamental right of all is the right to life. In this right are included all the privileges and advantages that make life desirable or worth living — of value to itself or an honor to its being. And to permit a human being to exist and withhold from him the means to turn that existence to good ac- count in the divine economy is a crime too heinous for us to venture to characterize in language it de- serves. And when we reflect upon the frequency with which that crime is perpetrated in the very heart of Christendom, we cannot but sympathize with the atheistical sentiment of the fool referred to The Ethics of Democracy 141 by the Psalmist, who said in his heart, "There is no God"; for the power that dominates society and shapes its course to-day is a greed-god, of such stalwart proportions as naturally to excite skepticism of the existence of that all-powerful, benignant Father whom good people instinctively believe in and confidingly worship. Infinite greed ! The colossus of self, incarnated ! Yes, that is the power that assails the rights of humanity, and, like a sponge on a rock, sucks, and saps and appropriates the life of things, regardless of interests not its own ! Who can live in contact with its wonderful absorbing powers, endowed not with equal powers of absorption? Having taken forcible possession of the earth and everything of value therein, it ignores the claims of friend and foe, kindred and alien, neighbor and stranger, alike; places humanity under tribute; dictates terms and conditions to industry; and prescribes jails and poorhouses, charity and prisons, indiscriminately, to those who accept and to those who reject its pro- ceedings — to those who work on its terms, and to those who do not ; for honest industry, under the conditions imposed by this greed-god, is no protec- tion against pauperism, even if its victims do happily escape the penitentiary.* * We are credibly informed that a trusted clerk, for fifty years in the service of the Astors of New York, now an old man, is a pauper to the estate of the late Mr. William B. Astor. That he retained his position so long is sufficient testimony to his honesty, fidelity, and frugality. Yet the savings from his wages were inadequate to preserve him from want and dependence in his old age. Such in- stances are very common in our modern life. 142 Ethics, Civil and Political Now, it is obvious that a condition of society which encourages the growth of monopolies and privileged classes, or which permits their existence, is grossly abnormal. It can scarcely be called a de- mocracy. Such a condition of society exists to-day. The rights of the masses are continually encroached upon; the masses themselves are kept under ban. Capital, the product of the masses, has become an instrument to assail them — the real producers of it — with deadly effect ; labor is despoiled of its just reward, and the laborer rendered by it not unfre- quently unworthy of his hire. Nor do we charge this mal-condition of the industries to any man, or class of men. The fault is to be found in the system under which the arts and industries are prosecuted, for which society is responsible and not the individual. Christianity was wont to exalt poverty to the rank of a virtue, and to decry wealth as a grave peril to the future welfare of its possessor. But the Chris- tian sentiment on this subject has wisely changed somewhat — at least the example, if not the precept. Its disciples prefer to accept the injunction of St. Paul instead of that of the divine Nazarine, namely, that "parents should lay up for their children," thus escaping the perils of laying up treasures on earth for themselves! It is manifestly absurd to deride that which furnishes the wherewith to keep body and soul together, and provides that without which life would not be worth living. Wealth gives luxury and the means of aesthetic culture ; the want of it causes penury, privation, and wretchedness. And for this reason fair play in the struggle of life is The Ethics of Democracy 143 indispensable to general moral progress, if not to political order. It is ill-gotten gain and the greed of it against which one should guard. It is not too much to say that upon the proper adjust- ment of equivalents in the business relations of human beings, so that every man has what he earns and gives an equivalent for what he takes, hangs for the mass of mankind the issues of freedom or slavery, serfdom or proprietorship, political subjection or in- dependence ; and in the scale of social values, indi- vidual consequence or inconsequence; for in the civilization of the nineteenth century in the Western world, the social influence of a man is determined in no small degree by his bank account, the loans he has out on call, and the amount of gold-paying bonds or paid-up stocks he has in his safe. Say what we may in praise of the "best government the sun ever shone upon," the freedom of the press, or the personal liberty of the citizen in America, this is the unfortunate aspect of political affairs to-day. And so it is that the problem of democracy ever presents itself, whatever form of government prevails. It is impossible for any individual of average in- telligence to be oblivious of the increasing tendency in Christendom to social distinctions and inequal- ity ; alienation of interests ; the formation of rings, unions, monopolies, etc., all of which is inconsistent with a good government, though inevitable under a bad. Much of this is necessary to protect labor from the oppression of capital, and to secure the weak against the encroachments of the strong, and the strong from trespasses on each other. By these 144 Ethics, Civil and Political means the poverty of the poorer classes has been amehorated to some extent. Still, while the con- dition of the middle class in Europe and America has greatly improved, is, in fact, superior to any- thing hitherto known in Christendom, that of the laboring masses, the men, women, and children who till the soil, grade and pave the streets and roadways, mine our coal, run the machine-shops and factories, and do the common drudgery of society, that others may be well fed, clothed, housed, and otherwise comfortably provided for, is but slightly ameliorated from the wretchedness of a few centuries ago. Side by side with the most prodigal luxury, in any large city or commercial centre, may be seen the most pitiable destitution. Elegant turnouts, costly equipages and expensive toilets, dog-carts, mendicant-cripples, half-clad scavengers and starv- ing women and children, make up the partial pano- rama of the public highway. The sight of disease, want, and pauperism — legitimate products of in- justice and oppression, every one — is so common in every corner of Christendom that the heart often becomes callous to human suffering, and the ear deaf to charitable appeals. The devout optimist looks with complacency on this picture of human misery and seeks consolation in the belief that the world is under the special care and ministration of a wise Governor, whose thoughts are not our thoughts, and whose ways are not our ways ; that the discord, so wide-spread and manifest in the relations of men, is harmony not understood ; ' ' that all partial evil is universal good" ; and that injustice here will some- The Ethics of Democracy 145 how be made right there, in the shadowy realms beyond. That may be. Such a system of human rewards has been promulgated among the low-born members of the race from time immemorial, as a soporific against discontent and sedition; and, we believe, with the effect to make them more contented with their lot. Christ taught the doctrine to the lowly and despised of Judea; and it was largely due to this teaching that his name was so endeared to the common people, and that his influence became the power it was among them in the subsequent cen- turies. "What are a few years of toil, privation, pain, and sorrow," the primitive propagandists of Christianity might have said, "compared with the eternity of bliss that waits upon the life to come? Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and concern not thyself with the manner or means by which Caesar came with them. Submit quietly and in peace to be enslaved, thou and thy children, and thy children's children, to the will and service of thy covetous and powerful neighbor. ' Better a dog in peace than a man in anarchy.' * Let him kill thy body if he will, thy soul dost still survive ! Thou and thine will be abundantly compensated, and thy unjust neighbor receive his just deserts, at the final Judgment. Dost thou not remember the reward of that humble but filthy beggar Lazarus, and the fate of the rich and luxurious Dives? Be patient with thy lot, even though it be that of Lazarus. Thy tongue shall not be parched in the eternal fires, and * Chinese maxim. 146 Ethics, Civil and Political if it should be, thou at least shalt not want for water to slake thy thirst in the eternity to come, as did Dives. ' ' This weak logic of the early mystics and super- naturalists could not but have had a powerful in- fluence on the masses to induce them to abdicate their heaven-born rights of equality and manhood, and to withdraw from the world and the perform- ance of a man's share in the conduct of it. Nor is it altogether inoperative to-day. Dazed by the grandeur of that life, after seeming death, which the experience of Jesus so vividly and unmistakably re- vealed to the lowest and most mortal of dullards, and the meanest and most dullard of mortals, it is by no means strange that the fallacy of the logic which puts the rule of the world into the hands of the few and reduces the many to dependence and subjection should not have been detected and exposed. The light which so suddenly illumined the mental dark- ness of the poor and despised of that age, and re- vealed to them the splendors of an age to come in which fortunes should be reversed, and the poor here were to be rich then and there, temporarily overshadowed reason and the common mind. Time and enlightenment were necessary to re-enthrone them and restore their authority and influence in the common life. To us it is self-evident that the best preparation one can make for heaven, admit- ting that to be the highest goal for which one should strive, is that which best prepares one for earth. It is becoming to be suspected that the soul in some way shares the fortune, if not the fate, of the body ; that the wreck of one affects the welfare of the other. The Ethics of Democracy 147 To ignore the advantages of this life, therefore, is to deny ourselves those of that to come; for it is subjective benefits, and not objective possessions, that count in the final and larger test of values — mind, rather than matter, to which the highest place is reserved and the chiefest honor paid in the heavenly "kingdom." And it is perfectly evident to the average mortal that mind of a superior order cannot be developed except through ministrations and advantages to be had only on terms marked down in the price current. Hence, performing one's part here, — doing one's work now, — assuming and dis- charging with fidelity one's trusts on earth, making the most of time, place, and opportunity, is needful to fit one to enter upon and assume the higher life and trusts in the "kingdom " to come. And it is impossible for one, with the light of history to aid his vision, to be oblivious of the fact that the failure of one man or of many men to do the full measure of their part in the world's work brings wrong and injustice to the individual and the race alike. Such is the reciprocity of influences in human life that no one can become a slave without at the same time creating a master; accept injustice without inviting its perpetration ; submit to any wrong without en- couraging wrong-doing ; and that system of philos- ophy, religious or political, which encourages the counter view is a moral soporific of most mischievous and far-reaching consequences. We have had too much of it. The questions involved in the problem of democracy, therefore, possess greater moral and intellectual significance than those which do 148 Ethics, Civil and Political ordinarily engage the attention of politicians and political parties. It is not a question of party politics. It involves problems of human develop- ment. They are the same to-day that they were nineteen hundred years ago, and will be nineteen hundred years to come. They are not legal ones to be turned over to the courts for adjudication; nor political, to be decided by packed caucuses or party conventions ; nor religious, to be settled by oecumen- ical councils or resolutions of ecclesiastical bodies. Were they exclusively any of these their proper ad- justment would easily follow their formal reference to one of these tribunals. But they are too grave and intricate to be adjusted by any single tribunal, ju- dicial, ecclesiastical, or political, since they compre- hend the Rights of Man — the principle of Justice in the dealings of man with man and men with men ; fair play in the struggle for existence; equality in property interests, worldly preferment, civil rights, political privileges, and civil guaranties. So far as a government is able to secure these ends to the in- dividual, and to administer exact and equal justice to all its members, impartially, it fulfils its functions and is wise and salutary; and so far as it fails in these things, so far, and 'to that extent, it comes short of fulfilling these ideal ends, and is unwise and defective, whatever be the form of government or mode of its administration. The late Dr. Francis Lieber advanced substan- tially the same idea: To speak of civilized nations [he writes], that govern- The Ethics of Democracy 149 ment ought to be good which amply protects and in which every man can obtain justice ; which for its exist- ence does not require a class by whose privileges others are injured, be this a wrongly privileged aristocracy, or democracy, or party. That government is best under which we find the greatest number of laws and institu- tions, essential to the state, with which the nation works heart and hand for just and great ends.* Were the status of democracy in America judged by this high standard of political justice it is evident that it would be found wanting. It would doubtless contrast favorably with the best government of Europe and Asia in this respect ; but, still, the ex- hibit would not be such as to please a political critic, or justify the vain boasting of empty-headed admirers of "democratic " institutions. The personal liberty of an American citizen is undoubtedly assured to a de- gree beyond comparison with that of any other con- temporary nation. Indeed, barring certain abuses which certain corporate bodies may indulge, with more or less impunity, towards individuals who hap- pen to be obnoxious to them, the liberty of an American is so complete as almost to amount to license. He is as free to do wrong as right. He is so free politically that he may practise iniquity ad libitum upon himself, and indirectly upon those dependent upon him, to the moral enslavement of both. But if there is anything in this particularly to be proud of, we fail to see it. So long as the indi- vidual has not attained perfect moral freedom, and is * Political Ethics, vol, i., p. 317. 1 50 Ethics, Civil and Political not a law therefore unto himself, such a liberty is incompatible with the attainment of a high social condition. Personal objects are sought under it, at the expense of the general welfare, and, therefore, in the end, to the injury of the offending individual himself. And herein will be observed the wide difference between ancient and modern democracy, in favor, in our view, of the former. In the ancient system of democracy, even under the form of "king- dom " to which we refer, the interest of the indi- vidual, while it was subordinate to that of the state, was best served by the state. "The safety of the state is their principal problem ; the safety of the in- dividual is one of our greatest." * The welfare of the state was supreme, and not because the jus naturale, or the natural rights of man, were ignored or misapprehended by them, but because the highest good of the individual was inseparably bound up in the welfare of the state ; and it is perfectly obvious to statesmen of to-day — if any there be — that in the stability and orderly condition of society repose the hopes of the individual for right and justice, and his only safeguard against the aggression and tyranny of those stronger than himself. Besides, in the organization of individuals, on a basis of equity and natural right, which constitutes the ideal state, ad- vantages both moral and physical are secured to them which could not possibly be obtained by any by disunited, individual effort. This fact is illus- trated in the superiority of civilization in cities over that which obtains in scattered or isolated commu- * Lieber's Political Ethics, vol. i., p. 359. The Ethics of Democracy 151 nities, the rationale of which is too self-evident for serious argument. It is not illogical to maintain, therefore, in con- formity with the illustrious statesmen of antiquity, foremost among whom stands Aristotle himself, that absolute liberty of the individual is an ideal condi- tion, which man should indeed aspire to, and strug- gle for, as the ultimate of his earthly hope, but which, by himself, unaided, he can never achieve. It is something to be conferred on him, not accom- plished by him individually. Under the ordinary conditions of human life man is beset by a thousand foes against which he is as powerless to struggle single-handed as a feather in the wind, or drift-wood in a flood. A well-organized body politic is alone equal successfully to contend with them and protect the individual against irretrievable disaster, and guide his helpless and erring footsteps toward the blessed haven of his hopes. To promote this de- sirable end personal liberty must be subordinate to the general welfare. In the present initiative condition of the race, equity, rather than liberty, is the principle which should be the object of our immediate concern ; — though equity to equality is the true order of the state ; for without equality there cannot be general, political, and moral freedom. And without these elements personal liberty is a delusion and a snare. The present status of American society affords abundant evidence in proof of our position. It is idle to disguise the fact that despite personal liberty, freedom of the press, independence of the judiciary, 152 Ethics, Civil and Political etc., some of the worst evils that ever cursed Euro- pean politics are being engendered in ours. Cov- etousness has seized upon the common mind. The attachment to party is stronger than the love of principle. The fear of ostracism is a stronger emo- tion than the fear of a wrong, or of a falsehood. A charge persistently denied is regarded as good as dis- proved. And it has not been uncommon in both the state and national legislatures to witness the spectacle of senators and vice-presidents solemnly denying charges of official peculation, in the face of their own letters and check-vouchers, and boldly continuing to perform their oiificial functions in de- fiance of both charge and evidence ! But this is not the worst. Ministers of finance have been known covertly to interfere with the stock market in the interest of speculators who happen to be their friends, and given official information for the benefit of parties in their confidence and esteem. Presi- dents have been bargained for by political dema- gogues years in advance of their nomination by party "bosses." Even vacancies in the Supreme Court of the nation have been filled with the view of influencing decisions of contingent questions. Judges have been bribed and legislators bought and sold for money, like bonds in the market, in the in- terest of rings, monopolies, and corporations, and against the interest, peace, and order of the indi- vidual and society — even to the disregarding of national obligations. Nay, stronger than this : The present Congress of the United States (1902) is lacking in political honor, as a body. Its course The Ethics of Democracy 153 toward our conquered possessions is little better than barbarous; while it seems to be politically callous to the obligations that the government as- sumed toward Cuba. The New York Times, Febru- ary 28, 1902, in a leading editorial, voices the ethics of the moral and political attitude of the craven majority of the present Congress in language which we cannot forbear to endorse. It observes : They have shown themselves willing to repudiate a solemn national obligation. They have denied relief to a helpless people on the verge of starvation and ruin for whose well-being we have become responsible. They have attempted to cheat expectation with a measure de- lusive in its promises and fraudulent in its inadequacy. They have coldly put out of their thoughts the interests of the mass of the American people while giving faithful obedience to the commands of gluttonous devourers of the public bounty. They have shut their ears to the clear voice of public opinion and to the urgent appeals of the President and the Secretary of War. They have split hairs of tariff percentages and by dawdling adjourn- ments put off a work of beneficence and of duty in which every day of delay imperils the prosperity and the peace of a people whose independence we have achieved and bragged about it as a deed of humanity. Dishonor, cruelty, deceit, false pretense, faithlessness to public trust, collusion in schemes of public depreda- tion, betrayal of the popular will, greed, and sordidness — these are the meanest of vices, and the Republicans of the House have been guilty of them all. To such a pass had official peculation come at one period of our history that no man could collect a 1 54 Ethics, Civil and Political claim against the general Government, or secure a business charter from the State Legislature, except he pay a large per cent, to a go-between at Washing- ton in the one case, and a handsome lobby-fee in the other. So notorious have these facts become that a man of small means is debarred a successful applica- tion for a charter, and a government creditor is com- pelled to augment his claim sufficiently to cover the charges of the claim-agent or solicitor.* The by- way — we will not say highway — to an office with a respectable salary is so hedged about by craft on the part of the political aspirant, and made the oc- casion of gain by the poor wretch whose influence is necessary to elect him, that no one of moderate means, whatever be his show of ability, would pre- sume to enter the contest. It is well known that men buy their way to the Senate of the United States, and Presidents intrigue for renominations. The longest purse has a decided advantage in the race for politi- cal "honors" — say, rather, preferment. It is no * The writer happens to be personally familiar with the details of an instance of a gentleman of the highest integrity, who, during the late war, presented a just bill against the Government at Washington for payment. All the formalities in regard to the bill were duly carried out and the customary rules and regulations complied with ; but still his bill was not paid. A politician intimated to him the cause of the delay ; that he should put the matter in the hands of a solicitor to procure a settlement, etc. At first the proposition was refused, but subsequently he was obliged to yield and allow a large per cent, to a third party through whom the claim was promptly paid. Many instances have come to the writer's personal knowledge of gentlemen of moderate means spending all the funds they could command at Albany to secure the passage by the Legislature of a simple business charter, and failing in the first attempt then. The Ethics of Democracy 155 wonder, therefore, that the successful candidate, having won by so large an expenditure of time and money, embraces such opportunities as his position affords to retrieve his fortune, or repay his outlay. It is thus, moreover, that mediocrity in both vir- tue and talent gains ascendency in the councils of the Government ; while the best blood of the nation is remanded to private life — which, however, it pre- fers. The rich accede to official position and power by virtue of their moneyed influence, though they may be as unlettered as General Grant or Blind Tom, and as ignorant of the science of government as the most benighted patron of lager bier or Celtic disciple of St. Patrick; and naturally carry into places of trust and responsibility the rules and prin- ciples which shaped their course behind their coun- ters, in the stock exchange, or market place. It is notorious that the present Congress of the United States is honored by the presence of no distinguished scholar or man of science. The present Cabinet, too, with one or two exceptions, is equally deficient in scholars, though justice requires it to be said that it contains worthy and estimable men ; and that the chief executive is distinguished for great ability, and qualities of mind and heart which promise well for his repute and the nation, albeit his ofifice was se- cured by political chicane and the incident of an assassin. Nevertheless, he is not above the tempta- tion "to use the patronage of his great ofiRce to secure a renomination," in the language of an ex- Senator,* knowing that "his party will be compelled * Hon. David B. HUL 1 56 Ethics, Civil and Political to accept him." So, likewise, men are often se- lected to fill posts under executive appointment on account of political service rendered their chief and party, rather than for scholarly acquirements, special fitness, or distinguished ability. By a singular "co- incidence," the delegate who nominated the Presi- dent of the United States in 1876 was rewarded by the latter with the position of Minister to France. Other supporters were also rewarded with " fat " places. One of the first notable acts of ex-President Grant was to displace a distinguished scholar and historian from his position as Minister to England, and to appoint in his stead a party magnate whose first social act was to disgrace the position, as well as the nation he represented. One would naturally conclude from these things that the republic was not in need of scholars. The present (1902) execu- tive of the State of New York has forced legislation, by the free use of the "party whip," to place the great charities and hospitals of the State under par- tisan control, and has sought likewise to control the judiciary of the State for partisan purposes, and in other ways to use the power of his official position to usurp functions belonging to local and municipal authorities, under a government by the people, for the people. So low has the grade of official char- acter notoriously become, and so mediocre the statesmanship of the nation, as to be subjects of note by the most casual observers at home and abroad. More than thirty years ago this feature of ofificial mediocrity was so noticeable as to lead M. de Tocqueville to remark that he "was surprised to find The Ethics of Democracy i^y so much distinguished talent among the subjects, and so little among the heads of the government ' ' in America. Even so accurate and philosophical an observer as he seems not to have discerned the true cause of so noticeable an anomaly; but at- tributed it to a distaste, on the part of men of dis- tinguished talent, for ofificial position, which is partly true. And there are many semi-intelligent people in America to-day who deceive themselves by taking a similar view of the anomaly. M. de Tocqueville, however, makes another ob- servation equally pertinent in this connection, and as ominous as it is pertinent : It is a constant fact [he writes] that at the present day the ablest men in the United States are rarely placed at the head of affairs ; and it must be acknow- ledged that such has been the result in proportion as de- mocracy has outstripped all its former limits. The race of American statesmen has evidently dwindled most re- markably in the course of the last fifty years.* If this could be truthfully said of the United States half a century or more ago, in the palmy days of the republic, when men like Cass, Clay, Web- ster, Marshall, Sumner, Hale, Seward, and others were prominent in political life, how much more noteworthy is it to-day when those men and many other statesmen of like ability are deceased, and mostly politicians are left to fill — say, rather, occupy their places? The distinguished writer just cited was a warm admirer of American institutions, and a * Democracy in America, vol. i., chap, xiii., pp. 253, 254. 158 Ethics, Civil and Political firm believer in the triumph of democracy, both here and in France. Had he lived to witness the present decadence of political affairs in America, his faith in derriocracy would still have remained, but his estimate of American statesmanship could not but have dwindled materially, even from the low standard he put upon it in 1848. Carlyle has forcibly said that "no one man can depart from the truth without damage to himself ; no one million of men. . . . Show me a nation anywhere in this course, so that each expects it, permits it to others and himself, I will show you a nation travelling with one assent on the broad way." * And all history affirms with one involun- tary echo his ability to make good his assertion. The calm words of Dr. Francis Lieber, expressed with equal force, but less piquancy, are to the same effect. He writes : Excessive ambition, excessive attachment to kinsmen or friends, excessive party attachment, excessive shame to confess wrong, excessive love of action, all have become at times injurious to the state, and may most seriously disturb its essential prosperity; but none of all these passions can be compared in their baneful effects to pub- lic dishonesty. All the former may still coexist with some redeeming qualities; we may think even of con- spirators against their country, impelled by criminal am- bition, not without feeling horror indeed, yet without actual loathing; but we cannot so regard a band of pecu- lators. Peculation presupposes meanness and total deg- radation, which do not absolutely belong to the ambitious * Past and Present, p. 178. The Ethics of Democracy 159 conspirator. A man who commits knowingly a wrong for money, who sells himself, has been considered the most abject of evil-doers, and may be supposed ready to com- mit all the evil acts of the others besides his own crime. So soon as covetousness becomes general in a civilized nation ; so soon as dishonesty is a general crime ; so soon as public places are considered by common consent as fair opportunities to enrich their holders ; willing to wink at each other's embezzlements; so soon as parties con- sider themselves by their success entitled to the spoils of the public — so soon is there a deadly cancer in the vitals of that society, and hardly anything but severe changes and revolutions can save it.* While these distinguished authors have the uni- versal teachings of history in support of conclusions so eminently rational and just, it does not necessarily follow that a nation thus politically infected may not contain within itself the leaven of its own puri- fication. The political is not altogether unlike the human body, whose reflection it is. An infection of an individual is sometimes the occasion for a healthier moral tone. As an eruptive disease, like smallpox, or measles, sometimes transforms a turbu- lent character into one of sweetness and placability, so an infection of thieving, bribing, gambling, stock- jobbing, and other forms of legal political peculation which so frequently seize upon the body politic may be of signal benefit to a vain and selfish people in bringing them down on their knees — teaching them humility, compelling them to change their guilty course, and to modestly seek guidance of * Political Ethics, vol. i., p. 464. i6o Ethics, Civil and Political wisdom. Something of this sort it did for England in the seventeenth century, when political morality was at a confessedly lower ebb than it is in America to- day.* And it was equally efificacious for France, f under like circumstances, toward the close of the eighteenth century. If those nations could rally from the depths of political corruption into which they were sunk at the periods to which we refer, there is certainly hope for democracy in America. Heaven grant that the American people may escape the dire penance which was inflicted upon France and England, since it is the guilty that escape and the innocent that have to suffer the penalty of po- litical wrong-doing. In view of this anomalous condition of American politics, — or of the "political crisis in the United States, " as it used to be called (as if democracy was not always and properly in a crisis), — the public clamor is for laws and constitutional amendments, as if the laws were not already in excess, and the Constitution had not been patched until the original document were well-nigh unrecognizable. The most stable government on the face of the earth, be it observed, is without a constitution ; and as for laws, no people were ever so well supplied with them as ourselves. Our Digests and Reports are so numerous *Vide the reign of Charles II. and the character of his chief advisers, popularly known as the Cabal, Hume's History of England, vol. vi., p. 82 et seq. The political and economic condition of Eng- land after the fall of Napoleon is equally instructive. f Vide Guizot's Histoire de France for information in respect of the political morality of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries at Paris. The Ethics of Democracy i6i that no attorney in active practice has time to become familiar with them ; and the statutes are changed so frequently to suit the demands of some new occasion that few practitioners can keep the run of them. We respectfully maintain, therefore, that it is neither multiplicity of laws nor multiplicity of amendments to the national Constitution that th>. hour demands. The freest people are those with the fewest laws and the least need of their enforce- ment. It is public virtue personified in men and women in places of trust of which the nation is in most urgent need. The best laws badly adminis- tered are worse than bad laws wisely administered, and that government is best that is best adminis- tered. Or, as Montesquieu has better expressed it : ' ' When the principles of the government are corrupt, the best laws become bad and operate against the state; when the principles of the government are sound, bad laws have the effect of good ones. ' ' * Let there be intelligence, honor, and virtue dis- played in the affairs of state and the fewer the laws the better. Without these indispensable elements in the administration of public affairs, the most cunningly devised and ingeniously multiplied laws are of no avail. Nothing in the past experience of mankind is more demonstrable than this, and we forbear, therefore, to dilate upon it. * ' ' Lorsque les principes du gouvernment sont une f ois corrompus, les meilleures lois deviennent mauvaises et se tournent contre I'Etat ; lorsque les principes en sont sains, les mauvaises lois ont I'effet des bonnes ; la force du principe entraine tout." — Montesquieu's De Vesprit des lois, c. xi. 1 62 Ethics, Civil and Political The most famous republics of the past took special care that none but trained hands and wise heads should devise the laws and administer the government. No one was eligible to a post of official responsibility in the early days of Thebes who had worked at a trade within ten years, so care- fully was the government guarded from the dangers of incompetence. And it could not but redound to the glory and advantage of the United States if they were equally zealous of the standing and qualification of their officials and representatives. It would be unwise, of course, to discriminate as did Thebes ; but other and more just lines of discrimi- nation might easily be adopted to secure the end which is so much to be desired, namely, learned and wise men at the head of affairs. By these means, too, much of the evil and all the danger of universal suffrage would be abated and removed. Apropos of official qualifications and the reform of the civil service of the national government of which one hears so much to-day in the discussion of party politics, the suggestions of Dr. Lieber may not be altogether out of place. At the risk, then, of placing before the reader matter which he is not unlikely to regard as Utopian, we extract a brief paragraph, chiefly for the benefit and edification of those seeking positions under the government : Keep yourself independent, which includes first, as a matter of course, a total discarding of that silly and little- minded desire to rival your rich neighbor in his way of living; and secondly, that you should be possessed of the The Ethics of Democracy 1 63 means of maintaining yourself, be this by the possession of a moderate property, or a profession, or trade (Spinoza was a glass-grinder) ; and, that these means may be easily acquired (for otherwise you would not feel independent), reduce your wants to the lowest degree compatible with a continued communion with your fellow-beings, by way of intercourse with your neighbors, and by way of books with the distant and dead, on the one hand, and a de- corous but modest maintenance of your family and the sound education of your children on the other.* But what a change in the tendency of American politics must take place ere Dr. Lieber's advice could be acted upon ! If the day ever comes when such principles bear sway among the masses, and actuate the conduct of those who seek places of trust, official or otherwise, it can be brought about only by a most rigid system of moral and intellectual discipline. It can never be effected by the chief executive or by laws. It is manifest that the agencies of the Church and School, rather than those of laws, franchises, and constitutions, must play the more important part in effecting so happy a con- summation. Let the schoolmasters and the clergy- men, therefore, awaken to a sense of their high responsibility in the matter of setting an example of right living as well as correct thinking. The effi- ciency of the schools, both public and private, should likewise be reformed and increased, that a thorough, sound, and practical industrial education may be within the reach of every youth ambitious to be of * Political Ethics, vol. i., p. 463. 164 Ethics, Civil and Political use to the state. By these means it is obviously not too much to hope that ere the lapse of another cen- tennial year the "Ship of State" will have men at the helm with clean hands and clear heads, and exhibit in her conduct a majesty of bearing that will rejoice the heart of the patriot and excite the admiration of mankind. This is the true road to civil-service reform, rough and difificult though it may be. By no other course can competency and faithfulness in public servants and the citizen be secured ; justice in administering the laws maintained, and equality and fraternity in the state assured. It has already been observed that, primarily, equality is the safe- guard of democracy, as it is the security of the citizen ; but equality is possible only by securing to all an equal share in what goes on in life and the general diffusion of a genuine culture. Que facit veritatem venit ad lucent. PART VI ETHICS OF OLIGARCHY i6s " So soon as a majority of a people cease to be in a state of sub- stantial independence, eagerly maintaining it, or honestly striving for it, so soon will appear below a large abject class of submissive paupers, and above a turbulent or arrogant class of a few powerful proprietors, who, indeed, may harrass government, or extort great franchises for themselves, but must always produce a state of things incompatible with a healthy, vigorous, lasting, and not precarious, civil liberty, having within itself the energy to maintain itself." — Francis Lieber. "When the passion for wealth has become prevalent, neither morals nor talents are proof against it." — Sallust. I66 PART VI THE ETHICS OF OLIGARCHY THE republic of America is confronted with a problem of political economics that demands the most serious consideration. It is a problem the solution of which by right belongs to the province of the politician and statesman. It is not a problem on which parties may divide, or that may be settled, as the Church settles an ecclesiastical question, by synods and councils. It is a problem in political science, and needs to be considered in a judicial spirit, free from partisan bias and the interests of class, and wholly from a politico-philosophical point of view. The problem to which we refer is not new. It is old as society itself, as has been observed again and again, and returns again and again to disturb the existing order of things. This problem compre- hends the establishment of equality and fraternity in the body politic, the absence of which has upset republics and disrupted dynasties from time im- memorial, and caused more misery than all other abnormal causes put together. 167 1 68 Ethics, Civil and Political It is interesting to observe that, in the evolution of states and governments, the idea of equality has been dimly recognized and feeble attempts made to incorporate it in the constitution and the laws. This may be observed in the Magna Charta, the Reform Laws, etc., of England. It is noticeable, likewise, in the formation of the Federal Constitu- tion of the United States. Fraternity and equality were the watchwords of the Revolution, and the idea obtained a place in the Constitution, but as a sentiment merely, since no provision was made to carry the idea into effect, except by the adoption of universal suffrage. It is not too much to say that the political philosophers of that revolutionary period clearly perceived the divine principle that underlies social and political order, and entertained views con- cerning the rights of man in harmony with the advanced thought of the most advanced nation, France. The French revolutionists of '93, inspired by the writings of the illustrious Rousseau, insisted that men were born equal, that is, that one child was of as good quality as another, or that its condition was not necessarily affected by the accident of social position of its parents. Vauvenagues, a French writer of that century, maintained, indeed, that the distinction between men was not mental at all, but consisted of "a little more or a little less bile." The real test of blood-quality is that afforded by the chemist and microscopist. Judged by these standards, the blood of the potato-eating Celt would be found superior, we fear, to that of the endogenous royal family of England or Germany. No one has The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 69 any right to boast of his genesis or lineage whose blood will not stand these tests ! Be that as it may, Jefferson and the much-derided Paine held to this doctrine of universal equality, and gave forcible ex- pression to it, but, like other reformers and revolu- tionists, they confined themselves to postulates and precepts, failing utterly to devise or body forth a system of political ethics that would give it practical effect. They clearly saw and seriously deprecated the evils which afffict the masses of mankind under the iron rule of social despotism, but did not, like Lycurgus and Solon, possess sufficient sagacity to devise means to prevent their generation and de- velopment in the polity of the new government. Instead of boldly extirpating the deadly upas which had strangled and was strangling society in Europe, and establishing an ethical system in the industrial polity of the republic, they depended on the ballot to secure equity and to maintain equality in the new country. Surely, thought they, with the ballot in every man's hand, he will be able to take care of himself. Their bearings were all astray. They might better have given him a dagger. They over- rated the popular intelligence and the state of social evolution. It was as if they had planted the vine without first destroying the thorns; or sown rare grain and left in the soil the seeds of a noxious weed to grow up, choke, and destroy the whole- some plant. But it may be said that the people were too ignorant or too selfish to appreciate or give effect to a polity of economics that would secure justice and equality to each in the body politic, or 170 Ethics, Civil and Political that they were not prepared to accept a polity of equity and fair dealing, preferring rather the privi- lege of scrambling for profits and spoils, and of tak- ing the chances for winning a fortune in what, to the ignorant and unthinking, is the game of life. The latter was undoubtedly the case. The man of to-day, like the semi-savage that he is, prefers an industrial polity that allows him to act for himself and his family, unhampered by moral distinctions or the scruples of conscience, regardless of justice or the rights of his fellow-men, taking the risk of the poorhouse or penitentiary rather than content himself with honest toil and the fruits that it brings. He aspires to the supremacy that great wealth fosters, and would not if he could have an order of things in which great fortunes, which mean great swindlings, could not exist. It is "the deep-rooted selfishness which forms the general character of the existing state of society," says John Stuart Mill, that is at fault in the matter — a selfishness, he says, that is "fostered by existing institutions."* He that is greatest among you let him be your teacher, not your master and despoiler. It is one of the strangest inconsistencies to be observed in so- called civilized society, that while the human animal gravely prays for the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and for grace to imitate his divine Exemplar, he de- liberately and covertly preys on his fellow-men, and disregards the precepts of the divine Teacher. The reflective observer cannot but be amazed at the spectacle of a professedly honest man — a so-called * Autobiography, p. 233. The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 7 1 Christian man — practising all manner of secrecy, deceit, duplicity, prevarication, and downright ly- ing, to further schemes of selfish profit, to the wrong and injury of his fellows. Such wrongs are rated legitimate by a misguided public sentiment ; and he who is most accomplished in their practice is an ob- ject of admiration and is looked upon as shrewder than other men and the fitter to survive. He is the successful man, and for that reason is intrusted with great enterprises, in which large fortunes are won — not earned — from a public less sharp and cunning but more confiding than himself. He who possesses or controls the property of a people is master of their liberties. It matters not how it is done, whether by sharp practice or by piracy, the exactions of a Czar or taxation, "cor- ners " or special legislation, "combines " or the laws and customs of business, — the people are enslaved all the same. The lesson taught by the ancient Re- public ought to be instructive to this. Or, must a republic, like youth, learn by its own experience? There is no certain way to judge the future but by the past. Let us cite a solitary example from Rome. When Rome acquired possession of Italy large estates fell into the hands of the patricians and conquerors. These estates were cultivated by tenants, who, free before, now became slaves. Thus was prevented the growth of a free agricultural class, the mal-consequences of which may be seen in Italy to this day. The patricians by these means gained enormous wealth, which they used to corrupt the commonalty of the capital. By monopolizing the 172 Ethics, Civil and Political products of labor they subjected the laborer. War and rapine served the patrician and demoralized the people through the power of wealth. When Rome became a nation of soldiers she threw off the toga, the emblem of citizenship, and put on the sword. The condition of the middle class fell by degrees to that of the plebeian, living mainly on the expendi- tures of the privileged or patrician class, forced to do their bidding and to fight their battles. And when a reformer arose in the person of Tiberius Gracchus, and proposed to limit the possession of the soil by the patrician to four hundred acres each, and to divide the balance among the people, giving them thirty acres apiece, he was violently assailed, and finally slain at the hands of a patrician mob. It was to prevent the repetition of such movements in behalf of justice and equality that a stronger government, a Julius Caesar, was introduced and enthroned. The fate of democracy at Rome has been repeated in the history of every people. One of the most modern illustrations of the enslaving of a people by spoliation in Europe may be found in Russia. Liv- ing a simple, pastoral life, cultivating the earth and the arts of peace, the people of that empire enjoyed for centuries the free possession of the soil they tilled and lived upon. Peace prevailed, if not plenty, and mendicity was unknown. But evil days came by the irruption in the sixteenth century of that great robber and chieftain, Boris Godonouf, who established a system of government which was fast dying out in the rest of Europe, namely, the The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 73 Feudal System. The change from a peaceful, pas- toral life to one of strife, war, reprisals, and rapine, developed the usual results, — rival factions and powerful chieftains, civil and military, among whom the people and all their possessions were freely dis- tributed. The land, the common mother and right- ful heritage of all men, became the exclusive property of those whose might in strife proved them to be equal to its possession. Life estates were estab- lished, at first by force, and afterward by "law." Thus was laid the foundation of a noble and privi- leged class. The owners of the soil were freemen ; the tillers of the soil were vassals, whom the great Godonouf, at a later period, boldly reduced to a condition closely allied to slavery. His decree was "that the servants of nobles who worked by con- tract should not be allowed to quit their masters ; and the masters were prohibited from dismissing their servants who had lived with them for a certain period. By this law, multitudes became serfs with- out knowing it." * A century later came Peter the Great, whose greatness was shown in riveting the chains of servitude on the masses which were so skil- fully forged by Godonouf. What had hitherto been held as a life estate, Peter made hereditary and per- petual. In 1845 nearly the whole of the vast territory of Russia was held by a few thousand "nobles," and with it, also, the men, women, and children and other animals who were permitted to drudge upon it — slaves every one, as abject and absolute as a * History of Russia, etc., vol, ii., p. 267, by Alphonse Rabbe and Jonathan DuncaQ, 174 Ethics, Civil and Political Louisiana negro before the late civil war — number- ing, exclusive of beast and cattle, about twenty-four million souls, or rather serfs, for their souls were long since crushed to death beneath the iron heel of a selfishness as base and demoniacal in conception as any the arch enemy of mankind could devise. Need we wonder that it produced a crop of Resents, or Nihilists and Anarchists? The historians of the period, the Messrs. Rabbe and Duncan, characterize the conduct of Peter the Great "as a most atrocious crime, far outweighing any service he may have rendered to civilization." By beggaring the people he despoiled them of their liberties. What Peter the Great did in Russia, Charlemagne in Germany and France, William the Bastard and his mail-clad followers and adventurers did in Eng- land, and England has ruthlessly done in the Trans- vaal to-day, and, by the same means, despoiling the people of their lands. Having taken forcible pos- session of the island, William proceeded to divide it into baronies, and to apportion them among his foreign coadjutors and native adherents. "The whole kingdom," says Hume, "contained about seven hundred chief tenants, and sixty thousand two hundred and fifteen knights." * Some of these land grants were enormous. His Majesty's sister's son, Hugh de Brincis, received the whole county of Chester; Odo, Bishop of Baieux, had four hundred and thirty-nine manors and lordships ; Robert, Earl of Montaigne, nine hundred and seventy -three ; Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutance, two hundred and * History of England^ vol. i., p. 195. The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 75 eighty, etc. These feudal grants were at first life estates, but were afterward made hereditary, be- cause "a man would more readily expose himself in battle if assured that his family should inherit his possessions." This was the foundation of that great robbery, the land tenure of England, by which nineteen twentieths of the English people own no land and are practically serfs to-day. And what William of Normandy did in England the ruling class of England has done to-day in South Africa, despoiled the thrifty, honest people of the Boer republic of their liberty and land. The course of the United States in the Philippines is not much better. The status of ownership of land in England has changed somewhat for the better during the last century. While the number of landowners has in- creased, three hundred and thirty-three peers still — I was about to say own, but can any one own any part of the solar system? — have possession of about one sixth of the soil of England. More than one half of the ratable land of England is held by less than five thousand persons — the gentry. One fourth of England is held by seven hundred and ten per- sons ; one twentieth, by public bodies and corpora- tions; about three quarters of a million hold a fraction of an acre apiece; while upward of nine- teen millions are landless. In Scotland, the landed situation is still worse, the half of her soil being held by seventy persons. Less than seventeen hundred persons hold more than nine tenths of her territory, about half of the area of England. Her nobility 176 Ethics, Civil and Political possess immense estates from which they derive princely revenues, which they mostly spend abroad. These estates are hereditary, be it observed, and cannot be bought nor given away out of the family, except by revolution and confiscation. This last procedure would have long since taken place had it not been for the asylum which the broad acres of America and the English provinces have afforded the oppressed of the United Kingdom. England is a type of an oligarchy, the direct result of this state of land tenure. It had the effect to produce a privileged class, who made laws to pro- mote their interests, to perpetuate their powers and privileges, and to keep in a position of dependence bordering on pauperism the masses of Englishmen. In England the industrial classes live to toil, and toil only to eat and die. Within a few years since, "the ox, the ass, the man slave, and the woman slave were in the same legal position ; their comfort and desires were no further consulted than was necessary to keep them in good condition for work."* The rulers held up to the people the Cross, the symbol of self-sacrifice, but trampled it under foot themselves. Wages were regulated by law, and were barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. Young children were put to toil, and were forbidden by statute to go to school or to learn to read. In Russia, the catechism of the Greek Church taught children to love the Czar be- fore God, and went so far as to denounce it a crime to love any one but the Czar. The circulation of * Fortnightly Review^ August, 1875. The Ethics of Oligarchy 177 the Bible was prohibited, and the penalty for a peasant reading it was flogging and banishment to the mines of Siberia. In England, under the Feudal System, the masses were even more degraded and oppressed than in Russia, and for a like reason. Their function was to work and to serve at such wages as the laws — laws which they had no hand in making — prescribed, the profits of which went to swell the coffers of their masters. As society emerged from feudal- ism, and the civil power assumed the functions hitherto exercised by the military, the existing order of social distinction was guarded with zealous care. The masses were denied a voice in the gov- ernment, in making or interpreting the laws. Prop- erty was held in higher regard than human life. It is so to-day in all "civilized " countries. The pen- alty for robbery was the same as for treason and murder. The enginery of religion and the terrors of superstition were invoked to keep the masses in ignorance and subjection. They might learn to re- peat the catechism and to pray for their rulers and all others in authority, but it was unlawful for them to learn to read. Was not Bunyan thrown into prison for teaching the Bible to the poor but a little more than two hundred years ago? The education of the poor was prohibited by special statutes. The man or woman who refused to work on terms pre- scribed by law was a rebel — an outlaw ; had the letter V burnt into his flesh, meaning "villein," or was sent to prison and kept on bread and water. No Christian priest dared tell his flock that mankind 178 Ethics, Civil and Political was of one flesh and blood until long after the Reformation. Such were the causes and such the conditions of society in England until far into the eighteenth cen- tury. It was followed by what we are wont to call, and falsely so, prosperity, meaning an increase of wealth. Wealth did increase enormously. So like- wise did poverty and destitution. England became the richest country in the world — and the poorest. She is so to-day. The sun never sets on her do- minions; but, nevertheless, one sixth of her popu- lation depends for support, in whole or in part, on public or private charity. Her prosperity was fol- lowed, and legitimately so, by an enormous increase of the criminal class. Late in the sixteenth century, the state was literally deluged with thieves, burglars, highway robbers, pickpockets, coin clippers, beg- gars, etc. During the reign of Henry VIH. no less than seventy-two thousand thieves and robbers, made such by wrong and oppression, were ex- ecuted; while a large number of honest men lan- guished in prison for debt. Let us repeat and emphasize our maxim : He who controls or possesses the property of a people is master of their liberties. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty, ' ' said Solomon. George Eliot, with equal force, likened poverty to leprosy. And Robert Dale Owen declared that "men in the mass cannot be miserable and virtuous " * ; and let us add : neither can they be miserable and of sound mind. With the loss of liberty there follows a long train of * Essay on Labor, The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 79 evils, — destitution, loss of self-respect, vagrancy, petty larceny, disease, and criminal impulses, which mean inherited resentments against wrong and op- pression. Let us not deceive ourselves as to the causes of disease and crime, nor overlook the fact that they are correlative, that is, interchangeable both as to causes and effects. Mental disease and criminal impulses are frequently identical. Thus physical disease may corrupt the moral nature and both be due to want and misery. An oppressed people propagate a progeny that breed the worst forms of diseases, both moral and physical, by reason of such oppression, and it is an ominous sign to see a state filling up with an infirm and criminal class, necessitating an increase of poorhouses, hos- pitals, foundlings, reformatories, and penitentiaries. We pride ourselves on the magnitude of our philan- thropy and the splendor of our charities. Those things ought to be our shame, as a civilized nation. Philanthropy ! We hate the name ! What the indi- vidual needs from society is justice, not alms. He could then take care of himself. In a civilization worthy of the name, there would be no necessity for alms, nor of charitable institutions. They are pointed to as evidence of our growth in the humani- ties. And so they are. But what self-respecting man or woman is there among us who would have such virtues cultivated and practised on him or her? Would you, our self-respecting reader? What we would not have imposed upon us we should not impose upon our fellows, nor foster a social condition that makes the imposition a necessity. If the virtue i8o Ethics, Civil and Political of philanthropy cannot be developed without a sub- soil of poverty and degradation to grow in it, in the name of Heaven, let it be given up. In contrast with the condition of society in Russia, England, or, indeed, any other European state, that in An:ierica is so greatly improved that one does not feel like finding fault with it. But the experience of the past makes demands that must not be ignored. America is fast sinking into an oligarchy. No ob- servant individual can fail to find in America the leaven of inequality which is the bane of democracy, insidiously at work in the body politic. There are evils at work in our society over which it is danger- ous to slumber. Money is the power behind the ' ' throne ' ' to-day. In politics there is ' ' Bossism, ' ' a type of politician that has come to the front as the result of an intense partisanship, and that is a seri- ous menace to civil liberty. It is not too much to say that the people of the State of New York have not had a governor of their own choosing for a quarter of a century ; not that they have not voted for candidates; but they have had no voice in se- lecting their candidates. In this respect, they are no better off than the people of Canada, Australia, or Porto Rico, that have their governors appointed for them. Indeed they are worse off, for they are less likely to have good governors. Moreover, the passion for wealth, which Sallust justly says is proof against morals, has become dominant in America. The seeds of dissension which our forefathers failed to uproot have grown into such proportions as The Ethics of Oligarchy i8i to threaten the existence of popular government. America has become, if not the richest, at least the next richest country in the world. The develop- ment of great fortunes is dividing society into classes similar to those of Europe, namely, the cultured and the uncultured, the rich and the poor, the ruling and the ruled. Not only are capital and labor pitted one against the other, but the capitalist and the laborer are at war with each other. Each has organized against the other. Instance the great strikes of railroad em- ployees, and those of other corporations, represent- ing billions of capital, which occur from time to time. This, too, is a serious menace to civil liberty. History is repeating itself. The evils of inequality which have divided society in the Old World, and made a standing army a necessity, are being devel- oped in the New, and from the same causes^the unequal distribution of wealth. Seizure of the soil and the establishment of a landed aristocracy led, as we have seen, to social distinctions, divisions, and disruptions in the Old World ; the organization and combination of capital and privation of the laborer from sharing the increment of his labor are the causes which have led to the unequal distribu- tion of wealth and the creation of social distinctions based on wealth in the New. A standing army is already a necessity in this great republic to keep peace between the rich and the poor, the employed and the employer. The soil has been alienated from the people to a large extent, but not, it is true, enough so to produce any serious consequences at present. But the effect of these causes is already manifest 1 82 Ethics, Civil and Political in the creation of great fortunes — the greatest for- tunes the world has seen — and an alarming in- crease of poverty and of a pauper and criminal class. More than three fourths of the wealth of the country is in the hands of about one tenth of the people. Nine tenths of the people — the producers of wealth — are mostly poor, and live from hand to mouth. Many of the large fortunes in the United States have been made by direct connivance of the Govern- ment. In many cases the people's representatives have been bribed to vote subsidies and land grants to great corporations. The Credit Mobilier affair is fresh in living memory. The courts, too, it is alleged, have been induced by money to violate their trusts against the people's interests. In the matter of interest due the Government by the Pacific railroads, the late Senator Stanford — the man of a hundred million of dollars — is alleged to have bought an opinion in favor of his roads of the United States Supreme Court. Be that as it may, there is evidence to prove that the officers and directors of the Central and Union Pacific railroads have despoiled those companies of millions of dollars within a period of twenty-five years. The thieves are well-known "high-toned" gentlemen every one, all multi-millionaires, and mostly residents of New York and Boston. Their names were published in the New York World, April 20, 1896. That paper, in commenting upon this rascality, says: The robbing of this company by its managers and trus- tees is the very worst page in American history, and it is The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 83 a disgrace that they should even be considered worthy of being treated with by an American Congress. They have diverted to their own use in various ways from the earn- ings of the road in the last twenty years $115,000,000 without a protest from the Government or any one rep- resenting it. The conduct of these high-toned gentlemen to- wards their confiding stockholders is neither worse nor better probably than that of officials of other great railroads. It is chiefly significant in this place as showing the signs of the times. But pickings and stealings and misappropriations of the people's possessions are unhappily not the worst features in the maladministration of a govern- ment "by the people and for the people." The property of the people is diverted from its legitimate use; the unoccupied lands, mines of gold, silver, copper, coal, etc., fountains of oil, and other re- sources of wealth on land and in the sea, are being squandered or given away to monopolists and cor- porations. The government grants and subsidies to railroad companies are enormous. The grants to the Union Pacific Railroad Company alone were 12,000 acres to the mile, making a total grant, to 1800 miles of road, of 21,600,000 acres — an amount of land almost equal to two thirds of the terri- tory of England. It has been equally generous to the other Pacific railroads, giving to them, inclu- sive of the Union Pacific, a total of about 170,- 000,000 acres, or 265,587 square miles. The grants of land to railroads other than the various Pacifies 1 84 Ethics, Civil and Political were even more enormous, but we cannot undertake to give the figures. This amount of land forms an area nearly six times that of the great State of New York, more than eight times the territory of New England, or of Old England, larger than Cali- fornia, nearly as large as Texas, and a little less than half as large as Alaska. Is it any wonder that rail- road magnates are millionaires ? But the Govern- ment has been equally improvident — not to say profligate — to these companies in subsidies of bonds, giving its bonds bearing six per cent, interest to the amount of $27,236,512.00 to the Union Pacific alone. The total subsidies of the Government to the various Pacific railroad companies in bonds since 1862 nearly equal the national debt previous to the War of the Rebellion, as the following official state- ment shows : Bonds issued to the Pacific Railway Companies, in ac- cordance with the Acts of July i, 1862, and July 2, 1864, bearing six per cent, interest, payable in lawful money, January and July, and redeemable in thirty years. Central Pacific, Principal outstanding Kansas Pacific Union Pacific Central Branch, Union Pacific Western Pacific Sioux City and Pacific Total . $25,885,120.00 6,303,000.00 27,236,512.00 1,600,000.00 1,970,560.00 1,628,320.00 $64,623,512.00 Moreover, the Union Pacific Company mortgaged its land grants, from which it realized ten millions of The Ethics of Oligarchy 185 dollars more, which the president of that corporation is said to have put in his pocket. Messrs. Stanford, Hopkins, Crocker, and Huntington realized out of those roads from thirty millions to one hundred mil- lions of dollars each. It is not surprising that the recipients of these benefits are able to found libraries and endow universities ! Jefferson, the father of democracy in this country, laid down the broad principle that no government can rightly hypothecate the public domain, the right- ful heritage of the people, nor make perpetual grants of it to individuals or corporations for any purpose or consideration whatsoever. It is manifestly in- consistent with this view, or with sound political ethics, for the Government to permit individuals to monopolize, purchase, or appropriate more of the soil than they can use or cultivate to the best ad- vantage. To do any of these things is to trespass on the rights of future generations. Many students of ethics have maintained, indeed, that equity "does not permit property in land " at all. Mr. Herbert Spencer, once on a time, held this doctrine. If one man may pre-empt a portion of the soil for his own exclusive possession, other men may do the same, and this procedure may go on until the whole sur- face of the earth has passed into private ownership. Supposing the entire habitable globe to be so inclosed, it follows [observed Mr. Spencer in i860] that if the landowners have a valid right to its surface, all who are not landowners have no right at all to its surface. . . . Save by the permission of the lords of the soil they can have no room for the soles of their feet. 1 86 Ethics, Civil and Political They might equitably be expelled from the earth altogether, as trespassers, he says. It is manifest, therefore, ' ' that an exclusive possession of the soil necessitates an infringement of the law of equal free- dom. " * It is true that Mr. Spencer has repudiated this doctrine of land tenure. But a man could with equal propriety repudiate the multiplication table or the law of multiple proportions. From the point of view of Jefferson, or the broader, more ethical, point of view of the late Mr. Spencer, it must be confessed that the national Government has violated every principle of equity, not only in grants to corporations, but in allowing individuals, both foreign and native, to acquire vast tracts of the people's domain ; but they are acts of supererogation on the part of the Government, and ethically void. The authority of the Government should be exercised only to secure fair play and no favor to every individual ; to hold inviolate the soil for the people's use and cultiva- tion ; to maintain a system of finance or exchange which operates equally on all classes; to establish freedom of trade ; to establish an economic system which is just to all classes — which does not enrich one by impoverishing another; and to prevent monopolies and undue concentration of wealth in the hands of individuals and corporations. To this end, the Government should own and maintain all the great industries. These are the principal functions of a government by the people and for the people. Nothing less is consistent with a democracy. * Social Ethics. The Ethics of Oligarchy 187 It is said that the advantages which accrue to a people in the effect of railroads on internal com- merce, and on the value of real estate in sections traversed by them, more than compensate the people for the gifts of their land and money. That may be. But such enterprises may be carried on without compromising the people's interests. We repeat: The people should build, own, and operate the roads themselves. The danger of building up, or permitting to be built up within the State, corpora- tions of such gigantic proportions, is too apparent not to be zealously guarded against. Frequently in our history have such corporations bought up legis- latures and the courts, and controlled the action of Congress in their interest and against the interest of the people. It is a fact of common notoriety that the great State of California has been under the domination of the Southern Pacific Railroad for years. Its people have repeatedly and vainly been crying to the Congress for relief. It is equally notorious that much of the legislation of the great State of New York has been controlled by the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad during the last quarter of a century. The State of Delaware is at present under the dominance of a corporation — a trust. For years the Vanderbilts retained, it is alleged, a gentle- man at Albany to look after the interests of the Vanderbilt railroads. That gentleman is at present Senator from New York. He did not bribe the legis- lators exactly, but at the close of the legislative ses- sions it was generally understood that such members 1 88 Ethics, Civil and Political as had voted in favor of the Vanderbih interest, or as had not voted against it, could receive a pres- ent of five hundred dollars by calling at his office. For years, it is alleged, the Pennsylvania Railroad has paid an agent twenty-five thousand dollars a year to look after its interests at Trenton, New Jer- sey. All know how difficult it is to obtain charters, or to get bills through either branch of the national or State legislature that are inimical to great trusts, monopolies, and corporations. Among venal legis- lators, greedy corporations, and machine politics, the people are despoiled of their property and de- prived of a voice or influence in choosing their rulers, or in directing the course of public affairs. Suffrage they have, it is true, which gives them an apparent advantage over the commonalty of the Old World ; but the advantage is only apparent. Experience shows that the suffrage is powerless against public corruption, or the evils of a false economic system. The late mayoralty election in New York City may be cited as an example (1902). But the existence of monopolies, trusts, rings, and combinations — forms of business which are inevit- able under the existing industrial system — is not the worst form of oppression from which the public suffers. A far greater wrong to the industrial classes, a wrong more fundamental and fraught with more direful consequences, is non-participation of the laborer in the profits of his labor over and above his daily wage, and allowing the increment of indus- try to be absorbed by capitalists. We have elsewhere had occasion to refer to this social abnormality. It The Ethics of Oligarchy 189 is an injustice so rank that we wonder the people do not rise up against it. So long has it been en- dured that the sufferers have become callous to it and ceased to feel its chafing. Let us look at it a moment : Mr. A. buys an acre of land in a certain township, for which he pays a few dollars. He locks his deed in his safe or drawer, and disappears from the scene. Meantime, the population multiplies in this town- ship, factories are built, and industries established. A railroad is run through it. Possibly a mine of some useful and valuable metal is discovered in it, by which reason it becomes a flourishing business centre. The property in and around this centre, including the acre of land purchased by Mr. A. a few years since at a nominal price, becomes valuable, and that gentleman realizes on his venture a hand- some profit. Now, whatever he realizes from these causes over the purchase price is the increment. It has made him rich, possibly, without the raising of his finger ; but the increase in the value of his acre is entirely due to the growth and development of an industrial population, and not at all to any thrift or foresight of his own. In equity, therefore, the in- crement belongs to the community that produced it, and should be shared in by every man, woman, and child that belongs to that community, or that owns property near it. It was the increment of labor that put millions in the pockets of the late Mr. Ogden of Chicago, and the Stuyvesants and Rhinelanders of New York City. It was the increment of labor that IQO Ethics, Civil and Political made the Astors rich. The Trinity Society of New York has been made more than princely rich by the increment of an industrious and enterprising people. The Vanderbilts have more than ten times doubled their holdings by the industry and enterprise of the people through whose possessions their matchless railroad runs. Many of these distinguished citizens have contributed to the increment of possessions that lie by the side, or along the route of, their own, and many of them have not ; but it is of small mo- ment in comparison with that which has been added to their own by the sweat and toil of the people of the Empire State. But, we tell you, men and brethren, that in ethics the people have a claim to a share in all these properties ; and it is the height of ignorant insolence for the holders of them to snap their fingers in the people's face, and declare, "We will manage our own property to suit ourselves." We are wont to regard the acquisition of large fortunes as due to exceptional thrift and enterprise, or to far-sightedness, and the existence of poverty to indolence and improvidence, as well as to a want of sagacity and foresight. But this is not true. While there is great diiTerence in business sagacity and qualifications for business, no man can earn a great fortune by honest toil, nor can any man ac- quire a large fortune — by which we mean become a millionaire — and give the public an equivalent in return for it. Like the hound for its prey, some men have a keener sense of spoils and profits than others ; are shrewder in trade and more alert for op- portunities, and less scrupulous in improving them, The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 9 1 than others. The possession of these qualities is rather to be deprecated than boasted of. Who would not rather be poor, like a Sumner or a Stevens, a Whittier or a Hawthorne, or even a Burns, than rich like a Gould, a Mills, or a Sage? Again, the love of money is stronger in some than in others. It often amounts to a passion, and dominates all considerations of fair play, honesty, and even honor. Some of our richest men are the most ignorant of letters. Men thus constituted bend all their powers to business, and accordingly succeed, not by weight of talent or exceptional abil- ity, except it be for business, but rather by tak- ing advantage of other men's genius, and by reason of enterprise and unscrupulousness as to methods. Men of distinguished ability and commanding talents more often do not acquire fortunes. If they did, there never would have been a Shakespeare, nor a Dante. The thinkers, scholars, statesmen, inven- tors, discoverers, men of science and philosophy, the benefactors of the race and the pioneers of let- ters and civilization have, as a rule, no love of money, or genius for business. One of the best scholars of the day died recently in Kings County poorhouse; while, at the same time, a millionaire, without learning, died in New York in a palace. The man who discovered the author of Junius's letters is buried in Potter's Field, and but for the philanthropy of a millionaire the remains of one of the greatest mathematicians of modern times would lie there to-day, not by reason of improvidence, but from absorption in scientific studies of public benefit. 192 Ethics, Civil and Political Frederick E. Sickels, the actual inventor of the Cor- liss engine, of the apparatus for steering ships by steam, and of the Sickels's automatic trip steam cut- off, which revolutionized the steam-engines of the world, died a poor man after others had made for- tunes from his inventions. We must get rid of the idea, therefore, that it is men of brains that make money, and the lack of brains that keeps a man from making a living and winning a fortune. Oftener it is men without brains, or men with misplaced brains — brains behind the ears — who achieve what is called success, who ac- quire great wealth, and the brainy man who fails, as failure goes. The inventor of the steam-engine never made a fortune; Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, died in moderate circumstances, pen- sioned by the Government; Morton, the man who first discovered the anaesthetic quality of ether, went around begging in his later years ; Gibbs, the inven- tor of the sewing-machine that bears his name, died poor ; and the inventor of the little attachment to the sewing-machine called the hemmer, which Singer patented, and from the profits of which his colossal fortune was increased, died recently in this city just beyond the confines of poverty. Gerard Sickles, the inventor of the first envelope machine, sold his inven- tion for a small sum, the purchasers realizing an im- mense fortune, while the inventor was supported by his sons. America's greatest astronomer, the vener- able Professor Swift, retired from his scientific labors of a lifetime full of titles, honors, and decorations, it is true, but with a cash remuneration of only a few The Ethics of Oligarchy 193 hundred dollars. The man whose genius revolu- tionized the cotton industry, out of which fortunes have been made for other men and countless bene- factions showered on mankind, never made anything out of the invention himself. Franklin and his co- adjutors in electro-dynamics never made anything but fame for their pains. Even Morse, whose in- spired genius developed telegraphy, never great'y enriched himself. On the other hand, the men who have won their millions have mostly begun life with- out learning or education, or brains to take either. The late Jay Gould was a penniless surveyor; Com- modore Vanderbilt drove a stage for wages; John Jacob Astor trapped animals for their hides ; D. O. Mills kept a saloon in San Francisco; Dwyer, the noted turfman, kept a meat market, and Croker, the equally noted "heeler," had a po- litical "pull." The late David Dows, the grain broker, was an uneducated, penniless lad. He left twenty millions (to his relatives), and died with- out having discovered that any part of his vast possessions belonged to the State and the people from whom he won them. Mr. Andrew Carnegie, a man with a hundred millions, began life poor. While his millions have been won legitimately, that is to say, legally, though ill-gotten, he is showing a good, if not a wise, purpose, in returning them to the public, whence, by the help of a myopic Govern- ment, he extorted them. Trainor Park, the Ver- mont millionaire, began life as a bootblack; and John Starin, as a newsboy. Few men who have won colossal fortunes have contributed anything to 194 Ethics, Civil and Political science, letters, or invention, their millions having been acquired by taking advantage of the genius and industry of other men less cunning but more brainy than themselves. Sharpness in trade and alertness in taking an unethical advantage of one's fellows are too often regarded as qualities to be emulated. Hon. Oscar S. Straus, ex-Minister to Turkey, relates an anecdote of the late Baron de Hirsch, in point : It was during a financial crisis in Bavaria, in 1840 [writes Mr. Straus], that the father of the late Baron was summoned to court to consult on the financial welfare of the country. The King was apparently surprised at the great fortune that the Baron had amassed in the cattle trade, and asked him how it was that he had made so much money while dealing in cattle. "Ah! your Ma- jesty, ' ' replied the old cattle dealer, ' 'I not only dealt in cattle, but with cattle." The Baron chuckled over the smart reply of his father as he related the anecdote to me.* This is the unethical advantage the barons of trade take of other men. It is a confidence game, in which deceit wins from credulity^ — and chuckles over it ! "When wealth and the wealthy are honored in a state, virtue and the virtuous sink in estimation, "f The facility with which a man may make a fortune or win a high office in the republic of America is pointed to by the political demagogue and short- sighted citizen as something to be commended. It is the boast of such people that the humblest born may * Quoted from New York Times. \ The Republic of Plato, p. 27. The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 95 become its president, or find his way to its Senate, or become the governor of a State, or distinguish himself as a judge, or a general, or become rich. While this is true, it is not altogether a matter that commends itself to the reflective observer. We are not wanting in "cattle " in America, be it observed; and money is more powerful in politics than brains. Moreover, American "cattle " have votes. Positions of trust and responsibility in a great state should, however, be within the reach of the wise and learned in statecraft only. Where it is otherwise there is danger that the incompetent, or men of mediocre ability, may attain to them, and that the state may suffer from shame and discredit thereby. This fact has been illustrated many times in the history of the great Republic. In respect to the facility with which the humble born and uneducated may acquire great riches, it is a matter for reproach, rather than pride. Great fortunes could not be acquired under a just or equitable regime, in which the ideal of life, public and private, were high and noble, and culture, honor, and probity were prized above money and the vanity of distinction which money brings to its possessor. They could only exist in an oligarchy as the legitimate fruit of low and sordid aims, to which culture and the higher personal virtues were sacrificed. It is perfectly evident that if society should start anew to-day, under conditions of perfect equality as to property, the laws of trade and conditions of in- dustry remaining the same, with the same ideals, scarcely a generation would pass away ere wealth 196 Ethics, Civil and Political would be in the hands of a comparative few, and society be again divided by the extremes of social position — a dependent and an affluent class. Excepting the introduction of machinery, no cause has been so operative in concentrating capital and creating large fortunes and dividing the people into masters and employees, landlords and tenant classes, as non-sharing by the people of the increment of labor. Most of the colossal fortunes of Americans have been won by monopolizing this element of in- dustry, as has been observed. The effect has been to reduce a large majority of the American people, the most tjirifty and industrious people in the world, to a condition of dependence — a social condition in- imical to the permanence of free institutions, since freedom and pecuniary independence are inseparable conditions. So soon as a majority of a people [says Dr. Francis Lieber, in his excellent work on Political Ethics] cease to be in a state of substantial independence, eagerly maintaining it or honestly striving for it, so soon will ap- pear below a large abject class of submissive paupers, and above, a turbulent or arrogant class of a few powerful pro- prietors, who, indeed, may harass government, or extort great franchises for themselves, but must always produce a state of things incompatible with a healthy, vigorous, lasting, and not precarious, civil liberty, having within itself the energy to maintain itself. There may not be a majority in America who have ceased to be in a state of substantial independence, but there is a large majority who are more or less The Ethics of Oligarchy 197 dependent — dependent in the sense of holding posi- tions and earning a living by the grace or good will of another. According to the late census, less than fifty per cent, of American families, farmers and others, of which there are nearly thirteen millions, own their farms and homes, and twenty-seven per cent, of these have encumbrances on them, while more than fifty per cent, are tenants. More than one third of the small proprietors, farmers, me- chanics, clerks, etc., have mortgages on their prop- erty, farms, houses and lots, shops, factories, etc. These are mostly held by bankers, manufacturers, trust companies, and other corporations. Of the farming class, over thirty-three per cent, in this country are tenants, that is, they occupy their houses and till the soil at the will of landlords — as in England and Russia. Of the non-farming class, nearly sixty-six per cent, having — or rather occupy- ing — liomes are tenants, subject to having their rents raised, or to being dispossessed at the caprice or behest of another. The peoples of cities and large towns are worse off in this respect than the farmers. The realty of New York City is owned by less than seven per cent, of her families, more than ninety-three per cent, being tenants. The showing of Boston is a little better, about nineteen per cent, of her families own- ing the city, leaving about eighty-one per cent, of tenancy. About the same proportion of tenants and landlords exists in the city of Brooklyn. Jersey City has a little better showing ; so, also, has Cin- cinnati. About twenty-nine per cent, of the families 1 98 Ethics, Civil and Political of Chicago own their homes, while seventy-one per cent, are tenants. The tenancy of Bahimore is seventy-three per cent. ; Cleveland, about sixty-one per cent. ; Denver, over seventy per cent. ; Minne- apolis, nearly sixty-nine per cent. ; New Orleans, over seventy-eight per cent. ; Philadelphia, more than seventy-seven per cent. ; St. Louis, nearly eighty per cent. ; San Francisco, over seventy-eight per cent. ; and Washington, D. C, about seventy- five per cent. We doubt if the cities of the Old World could show a larger percentage of tenancy than this. Under the existing order of things the condition of the tenant class must steadily decline. Neither the employed class nor the tenant class is independent in the sense that their employers and landlords are. No man that owes another what he cannot pay is a free man. He may be more or less independent, with an increasing tendency to be a little less. Then, there is a large and rapidly increasing class of absolute dependents whose position is allied to the serfs of Russia. They are the common laborers, tramps, servants, employees in various capacities of unskilled labor. These classes have no interest in public affairs, and no object in life above their bread and butter, made so by conditions not of their choosing. They are a menace to liberty, because they have votes which are controlled by the politi- cian and demagogue, as well as by their masters and employers. A prominent politician residing in the interior informs us that there are enough of this class in every election district of the Empire State The Ethics of Oligarchy 1 99 that can be bought for fifty cents a head to carry the election either way. We can remember when it was thought infamous of a man to sell his vote. But one man in the district in which we were brought up was known to do it, and he was execrated on ac- count of it. But times have changed since then, and politically for the worse. We have heard it de- clared to be a sufficient apology and excuse for a man to sell his vote if it be to buy bread for a family in want. Below this class of dependents are the steadily growing vagrant and criminal class — the beggars, tramps, thieves, housebreakers, pickpockets, con- fidence operators, highway robbers, train wreckers, forgers, embezzlers, murderers, defaulters, black- mailers, hypothecators, gamblers, outside of Wall and Broad Streets. Then there exists a multitude of respectable people, too proud to steal, who trade in money, shave notes, deal in "futures," "puts" and "calls"; the grain and stock gamblers, the "bulls" and "bears," who profit on the miseries of the unfortunate and prey on private purses, all for the greed of wealth and the failure to win wealth by fairer means, by which we mean honest toil. Above this class in respectability are the rich and powerful who batten on privileges, increments, and franchises ; control legislation and the course of jus- tice ; buy positions of honor and prominence under the Government and in the legislatures; establish trusts and form combines to control the laws of trade and to fleece the public; dispensers of priv- ileges and charities ; builders of churches ; endowers 200 Ethics, Civil and Political of hospitals, libraries, and institutions of learning; bosses in politics and presidents of great corpora- tions, etc. While this class is not what Dr. Lieber would call a turbulent class, they constitute an arro- gant class who regard the wage-earner as fit only to toil, or to serve their betters and masters. They are a thousand times more dangerous to the liberties of a people than an army of slaves and dependents, by reason of their power to corrupt courts and legisla- tures, embarrass the government, and influence the making and execution of the laws. This class, as a rule, have contempt for the commonalty and de- mand a strong government and a standing army to protect their interests and preserve the autonomy of political and economic affairs. Their interest in free institutions has lapsed with their rise into affluence. It was this class at Rome that created a Julius Caesar. It has been this class that has always sub- verted popular governments. Far be it from our purpose to ignore the benefits which accrue from combinations of capital — even in the hands of individuals — and corporations. It is self-evident that no great industry or public work could be carried on without it. It is better, how- ever, that such industries should be conducted by a responsible centre, created by the people, and car- ried on for the people with the people's money. The benefits to be derived from them would be shared then by all the people, and the profits would not drift into the hands of a few to create a moneyed aristocracy, and perpetuate divisions and distinctions' in the state. The Ethics of Oligarchy 201 We are no alarmist, and have no wish to magnify the evils of the political and economic situation of the United States. We cannot, however, close our eyes to the history of other republics, nor be insen- sible to the lessons which their fate teaches. Ethi- cal principles cannot be violated without serious consequences. It is perfectly evident to the dispas- sionate observer that democracy in America is pass- ing through the experiences of other democracies, and becoming an oligarchy. It remains to be seen if it is to share a like fate. The people must be all free or all slaves. There is no middle status for them. If freedom is to be theirs, they must have an equal share in the profits of labor and in the wealth and culture which labor creates and makes possible. On no other condition can the masses of mankind be free; nor can a nation justly be said to be pros- perous when the masses are poor and their poverty is constantly increasing. And no real prosperity and no substantial progress in freedom can come to them until the economic and industrial polity shall be so reorganized that every man shall get what he earns, and that no man shall get what he does not earn — or what another man earns. But this state of things cannot exist until society is revolutionized, methods of business radically changed, and man lives less for himself and more for his fellow-men. It can only come through an evolution from the struggle for life, to what Mr. Henry Drummond has called the struggle for the life of others, which is the complete evolution of what Mr. Herbert Spencer has termed Altruism. When this stage of develop- 202 Ethics, Civil and Political ment has been reached, the greatest among us will be the teacher, and the condition of master and slave, rich and poor, will be unknown. Is the wisdom of our statesmen equal to the task of piloting the ship of state into this haven of frater- nity and peace ? Are the people of America, the ruling class, magnanimous enough to make such concessions as may be necessary to promote this end ? Will the affluent surrender privileges sanc- tioned by custom and protected by law, law of their own making, but which have no warrant in equity, in the interest of the state ? Not without a struggle. We recall no instance in history of a class renouncing privileges which custom had confirmed, in favor of a subject or an alien class. Hereditary privileges pos- sess all the force of natural rights, which most men will die for, or, at least, fight for. Besides, the majority are mad with the passion for wealth, "its vapid pomp and idle toil," and the thirst for power and preferment, and will not permit any considera- tion for the rights and well-being of others to stand in the way of their attainment. It is idle, therefore, to look forward to, or to expect anything but a re- petition of the struggle between a dominant and a subject class, which' has so often convulsed Euro- pean states, until a revolution takes place and a new order of things supervenes upon the ruins of the old. PART VII ETHICS OF PAUPERISM AND CRIME 203 " Lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines, and calico-printing machines. They are neither ac- cidents nor anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality ; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are and by what laws they work." — Henry Maudsley, M.D. 204 PART VII ETHICS OF PAUPERISM AND CRIME HE who has followed the author with an unbiassed or judicial mind cannot have failed to see that the miseries of the world, comprehensively speaking, may be referred to three primary causes, namely : First. To an unperfected physical environment, that is to say, the existence of morbific causes, inimi- cal to health and longevity, in the physical world. Second. To an unperfected social environment, by which is meant a social state in which the elements of a well-ordered state have not been evolved, the consequences of which are the genesis and causation of injustice. Third. To ignorance of the laws of organic life and of the conditions requisite for the ethical de- velopment of sentient beings. The failure of mankind to found a government or a state in such a way as that no wrong shall be done to any citizen thereof has not been altogether due to ignorance, but rather to rapacity and the love of conquest, which have animated man in the state of savagery from the beginning. The love of conquest 205 2o6 Ethics, Civil and Political still exists ; but it has been largely transferred from that of conquests of nations and peoples to that of trades and industries. The agencies employed are more refined and less cruel, but the results are quite as barbarous and barbarizing. We boast of the progress of the Anglo-Saxon in the arts and sciences, discovery and invention, perhaps justly; but such progress does not constitute civilization. Our pro- gress has been material and intellectual, rather than moral and ethical — that is to say, rather than civil. It is not too much to say that our progress in the knowledge and appreciation of the ethical has not kept pace with our progress in the other depart- ments of knowledge. Ethics has been relegated to the sphere of sentiment ; whereas it has the possi- bilities of a science, and is indispensable in the con- stitution of good government. The principles which should be applied to the government of men in the mass, that is, in constitut- ing a state, including, of course, the industries, were formulated by Plato more than two thousand years ago. They have been translated in all the modern languages. If governors and the leaders of public opinion desired the reign of Justice, that is to say, equalness, in the body politic, they could have found in the Republic of Plato the ways and means of it set forth — not very clearly, it is true, but yet, set forth. Presumably those on whom it has devolved to institute government among men have, therefore, purposed to look after their own interest and that of their followers and chief supporters first, and to subordinate the interest of the masses of mankind, Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 207 which has resulted in the breeding of hate and dis- content, naturally, and other consequences that such breeding inevitably entails. These facts and principles have been kept con- stantly in view in the foregoing pages, set forth and often repeated, with such force and clearness as we have been able to command. That injustice is the fruitful mother of pauperism, disease, and crime, can- not be too strongly insisted upon. Man's inhumanity to man has made and is making countless thousands mourn, besides breeding in the hearts of the masses the bitterest resentments towards those they conceive to be their oppressors. The pages of the moral and political history of the race are all ablaze with the evidence of this fact. Let no thinker be deceived as to the genesis of psychic abnormal causes. The ruling classes have, through ignorance and rapacity, corrupted the fountains of morality, and made the conditions of a degenerate progeny. They began by prostituting the mothers of the race and debasing motherhood ; they are continuing on the same line. The social position of woman has been the most abject from the earliest history among all races and peoples down to within almost living memory, and it is still not greatly improved, even in Christendom outside the United States. The result of the deg- radation of woman could not but be to spawn an ill-begotten brood to embarrass the State and to encumber the earth. In view of the abnormal causes at work in the genesis of human beings — for it was early impressed upon the flaccid brains of Christen- dom that man was conceived in sin and brought 2o8 Ethics, Civil and Political forth in iniquity — no one should be surprised at the rapid and enormous increase of the lawless or criminal class. The surprise is, rather, that there should be intelligent men and women and eminent students of criminology that persist in closing their eyes to the true rationale of the phenomenon, or that should prefer to seek for the causes of it in those twin relics of barbarism, pauperism and crime, or to discover in humanity a principle of degeneracy known as atavism, thus making the all-wise Father and Crea- tor of the race its author and cause. It is needless to say that this view differs in no essential particular from that of the Christian fathers, who conceived an evil genii in possession of certain of the human family, instigating them to evil, that is to say, rebellion against their higher instincts. The author of Heredity and Human Progress,* an erudite and well written volume, himself a physi- cian, possessing the humane instincts of the profes- sion, takes substantially that view, in admitting that there exists a principle of atavism in the human economy. ' ' Poverty, disease, and crime, ' ' he writes, "are traceable to one fundamental cause — depraved heredity; they are not a necessary human heritage, but result from our toleration of the weak and vicious ' ' (p. 184; the italics are his). The author is partly right and partly wrong. It is probably true that the immediate causes of a perverted humanity are trace- able to heredity. It is also true that the proximate causes of a disordered or mal heredity have their source in the wrongs inflicted on our forefathers and * W. Duncan McKim, M.D., Ph.D. Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 209 mothers. It is true, likewise, that they are not a necessary heritage, because under a wise regime they would not exist, or, if existing, would be promptly removed. As it is, however, they are an inevitable heritage. But the author is in error in supposing or assuming that they are the result of allowing the "weak and vicious" to survive. It is, rather, in allowing them to be bred, that is, in not purifying maternity. He wrongly maintains that the chief miseries of humanity could be removed by putting away the miserables, and in that way preventing their propagation. If pauperism, disease, and crime were phenomena confined to a certain class of the low or base-born, the author's remedy would be effective, and no humane person, not under the thraldom of sentiment, could reasonably object to it. But, alas, the truth of the matter is other- wise. The so-called degenerate is not always the base-born. The best specimens of the human race have sprung from among the lowly, and the worst specimens from among the high-born. Surely, there was nothing to be proud of in Mr. Lin- coln's paternity, nor in that of Horace Greeley, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Booker T. Washington, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Rachel, or Sand. There was, on the other hand, much to boast of in the parentage of a Burr, an Arnold, a Buchanan, a Catherine, a James, a Charles, and a Henry, and thousands of others who have sent their vicious blood in torrents down the centuries ! The author argues the proposition to put to death the vicious and chronically infirm, in a spirit of 2IO Ethics, Civil and Political humanity, strange to say, and with a sincere, ingen- ious plausibility. The critic is bound, therefore, to treat his argument with perfect candor and such re- spect as the gravity of the subject demands. With all the respect due to an earnest and sincere colleague and collaborator in the cause of human progress, we are compelled to differ from him as to the efficiency of the remedy that he proposes. In the first place, it would not reach the primary causes of the evil he would combat or remove. It is mani- fest that it would destroy a few branches of the deadly vine, leaving the root to sprout again and bear fruit. Again, it would be like damming the streams of a poisonous spring without correcting or purifying the source whence the spring was supplied. It would be a hopeless undertaking to destroy the vicious fruits on the tree of humanity without de- stroying the tree itself, since good and bad fruit grow on the same tree, or from the same primitive root. The experiment was tried once, it was alleged, by the Lord himself in Noah's time ; and although the best stock or blood of the race, the fittest to survive, it is reasonable to believe, was preserved, and the ill-bred brood of the rest totally destroyed, yet after a few generations the mass of mankind was as "weak and vicious " as before. Even Noah became a "degenerate" before he died, and was addicted to strong drink to the extreme of becoming insensibly drunk. The experiment was admitted to be a failure, and a promise given by the Creator that it should never be repeated, which was a tacit ad- mission that it never should have been made. Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 211 But, seriously, if it be proposed "to lay the ax at the root of the tree " in this matter, one would be at a loss to know, with reasonable certainty, where to begin. Surely, no just-minded person would confine the application of so radical a remedy as the infliction of death to persons addicted to petty crimes and vices, such as the murder of single in- dividuals and petty attacks on private property, and let the big offenders, such as kill by the thousands and burn and destroy whole cities and lay waste vast townships, go free. Nor would it be just to take the lives of small thieves, robbers, burglars, etc., and permit the big thieves, those that steal rail- roads and despoil confiding stockholders of their dividends, or instigate raids on an industrious, in- offensive, and not always defenceless people, for the purpose of wholesale robbery, as did that ' ' great ' ' and much admired Cecil Rhodes in the Transvaal,* to live. The number of "gentlemen " that do these things and keep out of the penitentiary is very large. We have no statistics on this point, but we feel sure that it is far greater in America than the number of convicted criminals. If our ethical sense be not astray, these depredators against the laws of right and equity, these adepts at spoliation of the prop- erty of the hard-working, industrious classes, who wreck happy homes and fill the world with wailing widows and orphans, the rapacious monsters of human greed, whose appetite for spoils is never ap- peased — these, it seems, to us, are as unfitted to live, and as unworthy to propagate th?ir kind, as are * The Jameson raid. 212 Ethics, Civil and Political the smaller and less pretentious depredators upon the human race ; and it would manifestly be ill-advised, and defeat the end in view, which is to purify the fount of vice and iniquity, to destroy the latter class and allow the other class to go at large. We are too prone to overlook the fact that the noblest of the race of men are to-day not far re- moved from the predatory class. Every' one of mature years is familiar with instances of good men and women gone wrong under the stress and strain of mal circumstances too strong for them to bear. We have personally known high-toned clergymen whose sons became dements, thieves, and libertines — yes, and excellent clergymen themselves, that went wrong in vice and crime, as well as their chil- dren. Every one who indulges in retrospection must feel that he himself has not far outgrown the savage state, from which he was but lately evolved. Every one must feel at times, under the stress of provoca- tion, all the savage impulses which the worst criminal exercises. It is impossible, therefore, to draw the line by classes, and to decide justly who is the fit- test, or the unfittest, to survive ; whom to permit to propagate, and whom not ; whom to put to death, and whom to spare alive. As to the taking off, in a humane way, hopeless idiots and dements, whose interest in life has lapsed, or was never awakened, and the old, feeble, and in- firm, that suffer from some loathsome and incurable disease, we regard it as a measure dictated by the highest sentiments of humanity. It is a duty we ©we to them to return them to the disintegrating Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 2 1 3 forces of nature at the earliest practicable moment. The proposition has long been advocated by us, and whenever advanced it has always been met by scruples of sentiment from the profession, and the maxim flung at us that it is the province of the physician to save life, not to take it. We cannot but feel differently, however, in respect of the criminal class. The typical criminal is him- self a victim — a product of abnormal social condi- tions, which, as we have seen, he did not make, and is entitled, therefore, to humane consideration. Moreover, it is impossible to draw the line between the curably and the incurably vicious. Sudden transformations of purpose are not infrequent among the worst classes, nor the best. They are not con- fined to a Paul, nor a Gough. We knew of a hard character who, on the death of his pal, exclaimed in a mood of penitence that he would be G damned if he did not lead a better life! And he kept his word. Thus it is that injustice might easily be done by putting to death men and women simply because they are dangerous to society, — thus removing them from the sphere of experience and dis- cipline. Society does not need so monstrous a sacri- fice; nor does she deserve it. It is her duty to care for the waifs of misfortune that strew the course of her progress. What is her work, if it is not that ? It is perfectly evident that a system of industrial training, by which we mean manual labor on the farm or in the shops, if early initiated, would reclaim to society a large majority of them, and prevent an equal number of the well-born from degenerating. 214 Ethics, Civil and Political We have personally known a few cases of the weak- minded acquiring an average degree of intelligence, and becoming respectable citizens, by persistence in hard manual labor. Work that engages all the powers of body and mind has long been known to have a cura- tive effect in many forms of disease of the nervous system, notably hysteria and epilepsy. The experi- ence with epileptics at the Craig Colony for Epilep- tics, Sonyea, State of New York, supports this view. It is supported also by our own personal observa- tions. The value of manual labor is still more strik- ingly manifest in reforming the habitual — the almost incorrigible — criminal, especially if taken in hand in early life. Mr. Brockway, whose work at the Elmira Reformatory has justly given him a world-wide cele- brity, informed us that eighty per cent, of the cases under his care were permanently cured of criminal im- pulses, and became good citizens. This class being the legitimate product of the social state has mani- festly a just claim on the state, whose victim it is, for such aid as the state is able to give it. Humanity requires this, no less than justice. Students of physiology and criminology [we have else- where maintained] are too slow to recognize in man a physiological unity. They, for the most part, persist in regarding him as a dual creature, consisting of a body and a soul, permeated and acted upon by two antagonistic principles, the one good, the other evil. The dominance of one impels to good conduct; the dominance of the other, to evil. The conception is sufficiently archaic to be obsolete; but, nevertheless, it continues to exercise a powerful influence upon the popu- Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 215 lar mind, and even upon moral philosophy itself. This explanation of the phenomena of good and evil is too clearly fallacious to be perpetuated. Broussais long ago pointed out that the phenomena of the pathological state are simply prolongations of the phenomena of the normal state beyond the normal limit of variation. If this prin- ciple were carried out to the explanation of the morbid phenomena engendered by disorders of the brain and nervous system, much that is now obscure or falsely in- terpreted in morals would submit to a rational elucidation. Morbid mental phenomena, that is, disease and criminal impulses, may properly be classed into two categories in respect of their causes. The first cate- gory w^ould naturally fall under mental pathology, comprehending the phenomena of mental disease. The second category would constitute a class of simi- lar phenomena usually and properly recognized as wicked, vicious, occurring in individuals whose bodily and mental soundness are above suspicion or reproach, and which arises solely in the disproportionate size and activity of the bodily and mental organs and functions ; a mental condition entirely due to errors of conception and gener- ation in the first place, and improper training and de- velopment in the second. A person thus constituted would necessarily exhibit phases of character in striking contrast to that of a harmonious, well-balanced one ; fall- ing into excesses in one direction or another, according to the circumstances in which he lives, or the force and nature of the temptation to which he is exposed.* * Paraphrased from the author's Drift of Medical Philosophy, pp. Il-ia. 2i6 Ethics, Civil and Political A few words concerning the anthropological posi- tion of the criminal class and we have done with our theme : In regard to moral idiocy, its existence among the criminal classes, and a much larger class of the human family that are kept from crime by the grace of God and the restraining influence of a favorable environ- ment rather than a sentiment for the love of right, admits of no doubt by those whose studies qualify them to form a valid judgment. The conclusion of Professor Benedikt, of Vienna, whose studies in the cerebral anatomy of criminals entitle it to great weight, is that the criminal, like beings more happily endowed, obeys the organic laws of his being ; that it is not from any lack of understanding of what so- ciety requires of him, for knowledge of the conven- tional right and wrong that he commits crime, but rather the lack of the inhibitory sentiment; or the "inability to restrain " himself from its commission. Professor Benedikt's investigations go to show that "the cerebral constitution of criminals exhibits mainly deficiency — deficient gyrus development — and a consequent excess of fissures, which obviously are fundamental defects." * He accounts for such deficiencies on the theory of atavism, or a reversal to a more primitive type. But these atypical charac- teristics of the criminally inclined brain are not the only ones. The autopsies of these atypical brains show disproportional development of cerebrum and cerebellum, the latter being unduly large as com- * The Brains of Criminals, p. viii. Translated by Dr. E. P. Fowler, New York. Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 217 pared with the cerebrum, or the former dispropor- tionately small. Its convolutions are smaller, fissures more numerous, and the sulci less deep. Moreover, among the robber class, the cerebrum fails to extend backward so as to lap over the cerebellum, as it does in the typical brains of more highly civilized people. The basilar regions of the brain are large ; the head is low in front and broad and thick posteriorly. The general conformation of the head of the lowest type of criminals, as well as their type of brain-de- velopment, corresponds very closely to that of the predatory animals, as the tiger, bear, and lion, that know no law except that of the gratification of their desires and impulses. It would seem, from the analogy of the mental development of these atypical human beings, or beasts in human form, that they are not what Lombroso calls degenerates, for that implies a previous superior state, but cases of ar- rested development, or Reversion, from pre-natal causes; or cases that have failed to complete their evolution from the predatory class of the human species, to which the whole human family belonged within historic memory, and from which compara- tively few of us have, as yet, been fully evolved. In-other words, they are Survivals. To arraign these moral delinquents in a court of justice, for obeying the laws of their own being, or for failing to obey the laws of a type above their own, and inflicting penalties upon them, the justice of which they cannot feel, seems in itself, to us, a procedure akin to barbarism. With almost equal propriety, the predatory animal, that is but little 2i8 Ethics, Civil and Political below the worst type of the human species, might be brought to the bar of justice and be required to plead to a criminal indictment, tried, and sentenced. The proceeding would impress the average person as farcical, and so it would be, but only in a less de- gree than does the same proceeding to a criminolo- gist, involving the trial, conviction, and punishment of the average criminal. How much more rational, not to say just and humane, it would be, to turn these beasts of prey in human form over to institu- tions under the control and observation of physicians and scientists, whose education especially fits them for their care and training! The victims of moral idiocy deserve to be studied from the point of view of the naturalists, as phenomena, having legitimate antecedents, and, therefore, a reason to be, no less so than the more fortunate and nobler types of man, as a Plato, a Plotinus, a Pascal, an Emerson, or a Channing. It is time that the old metaphysical doctrine of Free Will, and its correlative, moral re- sponsibility, should be abandoned in practice, as it has been in philosophy, especially in d^^aling with the victims of human ailments and deformities. We have reformatories for youthful delinquents, young criminals, thanks to the progress of enlighten- ment, who in law have not reached the age of full responsibility ; let us have reformatories for men and women whose age of moral adolescence is perpetual, and who can never reach the state of responsibility contemplated by the civil law, and which is not con- ceivable as possible to any, except to such as have attained the heights of human excellence, and no Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 219 longer need laws to regulate their relations and duties to their fellow men. The drift of sentiment among criminologists is to relegate the moral idiot, or criminal, to a distinct and lower type of the human species. Prof. Bene- dikt, whom I have before quoted with approval, states with emphasis, as a definitive conclusion of his studies, "that the brains of criminals exhibit a devi- ation from the normal type ; that criminals are to be viewed as an anthropological variety of their spe- cies."* Lombroso is evidently of the same opinion, and seeks to establish a system of anthropometry, f His editor, however, does not fully assent to the procedure. He says the criminal population ' ' is com- posed of casual offenders who do not differ to any great extent from the ordinary man ; it is composed of juvenile offenders," the insane, weak-minded, epileptic, inebriate, beggars, and vagrants, which, he thinks, is a "weighty objection to the doctrine of a distinctively criminal type," with which opinion we are in full accord. The criminal "is only one member of a family group," he says; "his abnor- malities are not peculiar to himself ; they have a com- mon origin, and he shares them in common with the degenerate type of which he furnishes an example. ' ' These views of Mr. Morrison, the learned editor of Prof. Lombroso's work. The Female Offender, seem to us to be quite consistent with the facts of the natural history of man. For the term "degen- erate," however, which he uses in the concluding * Brains of Criminals, p. 157. \ The Female Offender, 2 20 Ethics, Civil and Political sentence quoted above, we would substitute the term " unregenerate. " We object to the phrase "degenerate types of man" being applied to any class of the human family. Nothing is clearer to the philosophical student of history than the fact that the highest types of the human species have themselves but recently emerged from savagery. Within living memory, the most horrible crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by or under the sanction of the higher — I will not say the highest — types of the species. Witness some of the atroci- ties committed against defenceless men during our late civil war; or the atrocities committed in the Philippines by American soldiers, by order of their commanders ; or the lynchers in the Southern States. And what shall be said in extenuation of the recent Armenian massacres of defenceless men, women, and children, by the "civilized" Turk? What of the moral status of Englishmen who could perpetrate and sanction such horrors as were witnessed in sup- pressing the Sepoy rebellion? Or of England's dealings with China, in forcing the opium trade upon that people with the bayonet and bullet; or with defenceless Ireland in Cromwell's time and later? There is no page in history which records worse cruelties than those which England com- mitted in Ireland, India, China, and the Transvaal, solely for selfish power and profit, against peoples whose only offence was the love of freedom and the desire to own their own homes and firesides. Again, what shall be thought of the Christian zealots who committed the massacre of St. Bartholomew, in Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 221 France, late in the sixteenth century, during which unknown thousands of defenceless Huguenots were treacherously put to death? Or of the anthropo- logical status of Pope Gregory XIII., who ordered a Te Deum to be sung in St. Peter's in celebration of the horror? What shall be said, again, of those thieving and devastating bands in mediaeval times, who, as cru- saders, carried the Cross to the infidels? Again, what shall be said in extenuation of the barbarities of the Inquisition, under the rule of a Christian Pope, Pius v., in Spain, at that time the most civilized country on the earth? Were the abettors and perpetrators of the crimes against human nature, which the above instances call to mind, degenerates? If not, are the Western cowboys and train-wreckers degenerates? It seems hardly worth while to repeat that the perpetrators of trifling crimes and misdemeanors are necessarily lower in the scale of mentality than those who do those things on a large scale ; that the man who steals a railroad and beggars thousands of con- fiding stockholders is not on any higher level morally than the miserable fellow who robs a hen-roost. If my ethical sense is intact, the moral status of a man who holds up a train, or even wrecks it for booty, is no worse, morally, than the mediaeval knight errant, the bank forger, or embezzler; nor inferior to the leaders of freebooting and piracy, in which all the more enlightened nations — the dite of the earth — have indulged for gain within a few generations ; the safe-robber and burglar is quite the equal, morally, 222 Ethics, Civil and Political of the Panama swindlers, the Credit Mobilier pro- jectors, the high-toned robbers of the Pacific rail- road companies, or the modern promoters of fraudulent industrial enterprises, with which the United States is deluged. And if the cerebral con- volutions, gyri, and fissures, or even the anthro- pometry of the two types of "degenerates" were compared, the difference between them would in our opinion be found inconsequential. We repeat that we have all been evolved through barbarism, and but a few have reached the dawn of civilization. This fact is evidenced by the char- acter of modern sports and pastimes. ' ' Gentlemen ' ' and ' ' ladies ' ' still love the chase, the hunt, trap- shooting, etc., in which innocent and harmless ani- mals are tortured and put to death. The toreador and the ring are still popular in the heart of Christen- dom, and the practice of running down escaped offenders with bloodhounds and sheriffs' posses is still prevalent. The love of killing still exists ; and he who has a fondness for killing animals, harmless or otherwise, is not very far removed, mentally, from him who wantonly takes the life of his fellow man. Those who have outgrown these savage im- pulses should be thankful, and at the same time charitable to the stragglers who lag in the rear, sur- vivals of a type from which a comparative few only have arisen. Finally, in concluding, it is important to call at- tention to, and to emphasize the fact of the defects of our penal system, and the fallacies of our judiciary in dealing with moral delinquents. Our penal sys- Ethics of Pauperism and Crime 223 tern is itself in a state of barbarism. The ethics of this subject seem not to have been yet evolved from the barbaric stage of judicial development. The penal method is still punitive, as if the victims were responsible for their acts, and little effort is made to adjust penalties to "the nature of the offender as well as to the nature of the offence," with the result of having to try, convict, and sentence the same offender, for the same offence, again and again. We have to note a little advance in the jurisprudence of this subject, however. A distinction has recent- ly been made between impulsive and premeditated homicide, and some allowance in the sentence of the human thief who steals bread from hunger is made. A few other mitigating circumstances are recognized in the reform code. But the same penal code that makes these trifling humane distinctions condemns the unsuccessful suicide to fine and imprisonment, despite the fact that according to the consensus of medical opinion the attempt at self-destruction is an insane act. It is well known that the criminal population is composed of many types, each type having pecu- liarities which require different penal treatment, as much so as the different types or forms of malady. Age, sex, education, physical condition, pecuniary state, strength of temptation, mental condition, physical habits, as the use of alcohol, cocaine, or other hypnotics, which in many persons disturb or disorder the mental functions, should all be taken into consideration in the sentence to be passed on any offender. In no case should their treatment 2 24 Ethics, Civil and Political be punitive. Moreover, the types of the offenders should be classified, and the cases differentiated, that each may receive individualized treatment, or disci- pline. Until reforms are instituted along these lines it is idle to look for a check to the increase of crime, or in the growth of the criminal classes. INDEX Alexander, King of Macedonia, humble origin of, 23 Alfred, King, wise, but igno- rant, 19 America, decline of democracy in, 39 Analogy, Bishop Butler's, 39 Animal Kingdom, The, of MM. Buffon and Cuvier, 39 Apelles skilled in grace, 40 Arc, Joan of, inspired by patriot- ism, 40 Aristides excelled in expression, 40 Astor, W. B., a life-long clerk of, a pauper, footnote, 141 Audubon and The Birds of America, 39 Autobiography of John Stuart MUl, cited, 170 B Barbarossa, Emperor Frederick, unlearned, 19 Barry, bred a tailor, 23 Benedikt, on the Brains of Crim- inals, cited, 216 Black, Dr., Biography of Watt, cited, 16 Blood-quality, tests of, 168 Book-learning, fallacies of, 14 Boyle, Robert, the chemist, 23 Brain, dependence of, upon bodily organs, 14 ; misplaced, 192 ; examples of, ib. Bright, John, on evils of compe- tition, 107 Brockway, Mr., experience in criminology, 7, 214 Bronte, Charlotte, 24 Browning, Mrs., and Lady Ger- aldine^s Courtship, 42 Buckle, Henry Thomas, meagre education of, 23 Bull, Ole Bomemann, humble origin of, 24 Burke, Edmund, as a toiler, 66 Bums, the poet, 23 Carlyle, independence of college, 5-i ; on the wealth of a man, 24 ; on the captains of indus- try, 44 ; on the true end of government, 89 Catilines, and sedition, 71 ; want, cause of, ib, Charlemagne, Emperor, unlet- tered, 19 Chinese, maxim of, 145 Christianity at first a democracy, 68 ; equality enjoined by its Founder, ib. ; self-sacrifice the highest virtue of, ib. ; 225 t 226 Index Christianity — Continued. abortive preaching of, Ii8 ; rea- sons why, 123 ; increase of crime under, ib. ; reasons for, lb. ; mistaken concern for the fate of the soul, 145 Church, Christian, its discredit of learning, 18 Civilization, course of, over thorny wastes, 135 Clark, Professor, on natural law of economic forces, contro- verted, 106 Class, the predatory, 212 CoUyer, Robert, Rev., 23 Common school, delusive hope of the reformer, the, 3 Competition, the bane of hon- esty, 107; John Bright on, 107; evils of, shown, log Conquest by economic forces, 105 Cook, Captain, 23 Cooper, Sir Astley, and untitled merit, 47 Craig Colony for Epileptics, 214 ; policy of, ib. Craik, Mrs., cited, 3 Creeds, error of, in teaching the youth, n Criminal, not self-made, 118 ; made by environment, ib. ; society the author of the, ib. Criminals, putting to death, 210 ; some of gentle blood, 211 ; examples cited, ib. ; crimi- nal and diseased impulses, two categories of, 215 ; not a. dis- tinct class, 219 ; the views of Lombroso on, controverted, 219 ; Mr. Morrison quoted on, ib. ; illustrations cited, 220 ; invidious distinctions, unwis- dom of making, between crimi- nals, 221 ; differentiation in the treatment of, 223 ; the need of individual treatment of, 224 Cromwell, Oliver, early career of, 25 ; contrasted with James I., 26; obscure parentage of, 36; described by Macaulay, ib. Cuba, failure of Congress to do justice by, 153 D Degenerate, the, not always base- born, 209 Degeneration, sign of, 50, foot- note De la Rive cited, 22 Democracy, Ethics of , 135; mass- es, struggles of, ib.; contest with despots, ib.; nature of, 136 ; greatest question in the world, 137 ; ideal state of Plato, the, ib.; not attained by the moderns, ib.; rights of property vs. the rights of man, 139 ; Mr. Gregg controverted, ib.; union of property inter- ests, ib.; man's inhumanity to man, 141; wealth and moral progress, 142 ; want and mis- ery caused by poverty, 143 ; defects of Christ's maxims, 145; other -worldliness of Christian polity, ib.; depend- ence of body and mind, 146 ; fate of one involves the other, ib.; progress rests on equity, 148; democracy and equality inseparable, ib.; Dr. Lieber quoted with approval, ib.; free- dom and democracy not in- separable, 149 ; equity rather than liberty, the ideal, 151; abuses in the American gov- ernment, 152 ; disregard of honor, ib.; Congress and Cuba, 153 ; New York Tinted char- acterization of the course of, ib.; spread of political corrup- tion, 154 ; the struggle for of- fice, evils of, ib.; infects the of- ficials, 155 ; mediocracy in the Cabinet, ib.; talent remanded toprivatelife, 157; deTocque- ville on, ib.; Carlyle on na- Index 227 Democracy — Continittd, tional virtue, 158 ; Dr. Lieber's warning, ib.; decline of public morality, 159; laws not needed, 161 ; virtue the requisite, ib.; Montesquieu quoted, ib.j ex- ample of Thebes referred to, ib.; advice of Dr. Lieber, 162; church and school the need of the hour, 163 Democracy in America, cited, 157 Demosthenes, the world's great- est orator, 40, gs Derby, Lord, Advice to Young Men, 32, 33 Despine's Natural Psychology, cited, 41 Dicltens, Charles, bom in pov- erty, 20 Division and organization of labor, the profits of, 1 10 ; no advantage to the wage-earner, in ; profits of, absorbed by capital, ib. ; cause of unequal division of wealth, 119, 120 Drift of Medical Philosophy, cited, 214, 215 Drummond, Henry, on living for others, 201 Dry den and Alexander's Feast, 42 Duncan and Rabbe, History of Jiussia, cited, 173 E Ecce Homo, cited : Christian union, dangers to, 69 Education, Ethics of, 3 ; functions of, ib.; confidence in, contro- verted, ib.; proper and im- proper object of, 4; Carlyle's views of, 5; crime on the in- crease despite of, 6 ; Rousseau on, 7 ; education defined, ib.; Rousseau cited, 8 ; course of, outlined, 9 ; mistakes of edu- cators, ib.; evils of book-stud- ies, 10 et seq.; studies, adapta- tion of, to age, II; oneness of brain and body, ib.; thinker often not learned, ib., et seq.; popular conception of educa- tion erroneous, 12; manual work supplemented by books, ib.; stimulus of other minds, dependence on, ib.; schools a means, not an end, ib.; under- valuation of labor as an educa- tor, 13; Carlyle on the value of labor as an educator, ib.; Mrs. Craik quoted on, ib.; work in- spired by love, 14; faculties stimulated by action, ib.; mu- tual dependence of brain and body, ib. ; God the skilled work- er, 15; the perfect attainment, ib.; operating on nature, signifi- cance of, ib.; Archimedes, ex- perience of, i6 ; Gounod's tes- timony to, ib.; Dr. Watt's ex- perience, 17; the joy of a new idea, ib.; Aunt Chloe's experi- ence, ib.; Greeks' success in work, ib.; painstaking in toil of the, ib.; unlettered geniuses, 18; ignorance of the clergy in the Middle Ages, 18; Hallam cited on, ib.; the kings, early European, not able to write, ig ; Mr. Greeley self taught, 20; Franklin self educated, ib.; Dickens, humble origin of, ib.; Mme. Sand born in pov- erty, 21; Ford, Paul Leicester, educated by industry, ib.; Faraday, Michael, son of a blacksmith, ib.; the charm of his lectures, 22 ; Prof, de la Rive cited, ib.; Pare, Am- brose, never in college, ib.; Hunter, John, educated in dis- secting-room, ib.; Boyle, Rob- ert, had no college certificate, 23; Cooper, Sir Astley, never acquired the title of Doctor, ib.; Ricardo, meagre school- ing of, ib.; Miller, Hugh, a stone mason, ib.; Captain 228 Index Education — Continued, Cook a day laborer, ib.; long list of the great uneducated, except by labor, ib. , et seq.; the captains of the world, 24 ; Carlyle on, ib.; called by God for great occasions, 25 ; power behind phenomena, ib.; the protector of a great common- wealth alumnus of no college, 25 ; Macaulay on, 26 ; unlet- tered sons of God, ib.; born a Prince and a coward, ib,; na- ture exhausted in a Cromwell, ib.; American statesmen made by labor, 27; signal examples of, in Lincoln and Seward, ib. Education, popular, 4 ; fallacies of, ib.; erroneous methods of, ib. Eliot, George, greatest question in the world answered by, 137; on the curse of poverty, 178 Elmira Reformatory, method in, 17 Emerson, apothegm by, 30 ; on the dawn of civilization, 103 Amile, Jean Jacques Rousseau's, cited, 7, 8, 18, 30, 35-37 Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, ignorance of letters, 19 England, soil of, mostly held by peers, 175 ; the type of oli- garchy, ib.; her disregard of ethics in the Transvaal, ib. Enigmas of Life, cited, 139 Equality, the fathers of the Re- public's views on, 168 ; the Revolutionist of '93's views on, ib. Essay on Labor, by J. S. Mill, cited, 178 Ethics, apothegm, i ; of educa- tion, 3 ; of labor, 31; of trade, 61 ; of individualism, 103; of democracy, 135 ; of oligarchy, 167; of pauperism and crime, 205 Euphranor noted for excellence, 40 Fable of Lazarus and Dives, 145, 146 Faraday, Michael, educated by his tasks, 21 ; charm of his lectures, ib. Felix Holt, the Radical, cited, 137 Female Offender, The, contro- verted, 217 Financial system, necessity of a sound, 96 Ford, Paul Leicester, bred by in- dustry, 21 Fortnightly Reineiv on indepen- dence and slavery, 176 Fortunes, great, won, not earned, 182 ; connivance of the Gov- ernment in, ib., 183, 184 et seq. Franklin, Benjamin, educated by labor, 19 Freedom, for those only who are willing to die for it, 135 ; war- fare of man with man, 136 Fuller, Margaret, taught at home, 24 Fulton, Robert, the poor inven- tor, 43 Gain, baneful influence of the greed of, 121 Genius, death of, unemployed, 38 ; not influenced by money, 121; the power of taking pains, ib.; and the works of, 139 ; mutual dependence of, ib, Godonouf, Boris, fatal decree of, 172 Goethe's deflnition of genius, 39 Gounod's joy in his tasks, 16 Government, end of, 35 ; true principles of, formulated by Plato, 206 Grant, General U. S., educated by the occasion, 36 Index 229 Greeks and the genius of taking pains, 17 Greeley, Horace, educated by his tasks, 20 ; pessimistic sen- timent of, 103 Gregg, W. R., on the growing influence of the masses, 139, danger of, to property, ib. ; holders of property should hang together, ib. ; his views contro- verted, 140 Guizot's History of France cited, i6o, footnote H Haeckel, Prof. Ernst, maxim from, I ; on tardy evolution of the ethical sense, 122; does not keep pace with knowledge, ib. Hahnemann, Samuel, not in- spired by gain, 121 Hallam, on ignorance of the Middle Ages, 18 Health among the rewards of labor, 33 Helmholtz and the law of corre- lation, 43 Henry VIII., low state of mor- als during reign of, 178 ; death penalty for thieving, ib. Heredity and Human Progress controverted, 208 Herschell not inspired by hope of gain, 121 Hill, Hon. David B., on presi- dential patronage, 155 Hillis, Rev. Dwight, humble origin of, 23 Hirsch, Baron de, significant anecdote by, 194 History of the Middle Ages, cited, 18; of England, 160; of France, 160 ; of Russia, 173 Hume, History of England, cited, 160 ; on land tenure, ib. Ideals, necessity for a change of, 201 Increment, the, defined, 1 10 ; unequal effect of, ib, ; for- tunes made by the, 189 ; illus- tration of, ib. Individual, dependence of, on the social state, 113 ; ever in debt to the state, ib. ; culture derived from the social state, ib, ; ever a savage left to him- self, 114 Individualism, Ethics of, 103 ; social evolution, low state of, ib.; Horace Greeley, maxim by, ib.; Emerson on the social status, ib. ; civilized state, ideal of, ib. ; warfare of class not ended, 105 ; agencies of, more refined, ib. ; laws of trade, 106 ; law defined, ib.; Professor Clark controverted, ib. ; economic forces, law of, 107; competition, evil of, ib.,et seq. ; individualism, evils of, 108 et seq.; law of, ib. ; tariff, wrongs of, III ; division of labor chief benefit to employer, ib. ; increment of labor chief source of wealth, ib. ; unequal operations of the, ib. ; causes of disease and crime, 112, 211 et seq. ; individual, obligation of, to state, 115 ; views of Rousseau cited on, ib.; values and symbols, 116 ; gold and bread, value of, compared, ib,; Count Tolstoi's views on, quoted, 117; genius, unselfish character of, 119 ; examples cited, ib. ; wages and ma- chinery, ib. ; chief benefits of machinery accrue to capital, 120; injustice to labor,l2i; false teaching the cause of, ib. ; the Gospel has not promoted the ethical sense, 122 ; Dr. Wal- lace and Professor Haeckel cited in confirmation, ib. ; failure of the pulpit, ib., et seq. ; causes of, 123 ; compar- ative increase of crime, ib,; 230 Index Individualism — Continued. false ideals, 124 ; lawful thiev- ing, 125 ; the growth of greed, 126 ; land tenure and free- dom, 127 ; illustrations cited, ih.; unequal division of wealth, evils of, ih.; business moral- ity at a discount, 128 ; Plato's Republic referred to, 129 ; liv- ing for others, ib.; hope of the individual lies in the state, 130 et seq.; necessity of hon- esty, 130 ; ignoble ambitions, ib. ; the state the depository of individual welfare, 131 ; universal peace and happiness found only in justice, ib. Individualism, fallacy of, 120 ; foundation of present civiliza- tion, ib. ; every-man-for-him- self policy, ib.; fallacy of, exposed, ib. ; no man the architect of his own fortune, ib. Industry, harmonizing of, a ne- cessity of the hour, 131 ^< seq.; a cure for criminal impulses and degeneracy, ib. Influence of a man determined by his bank account, 153 Inventors, in general, die poor, iig ; instances cited, ib. ; pro- ducers of wealth, ib.; benefits of, absorbed by capitalists, ib. Jefferson, Thomas, political prin- ciples of, 185 Jenner, Dr., and vaccination, 43 Jesus an apostle of work, 18 Johnson and the Life of Savage, 42 Judiciary lacking in the sense of ethics, 223 King Alfred not master of Latin, 19 King James I. of England, 26; familiar with letters, unfam- iliar with labor, ib,; weakness of, ib. King John of Bohemia, igno- rance of letters, 19 Knowledge a bar to thought, II ; the thinker unlearned often, ib. Labor, Ethics of, 31; beneficence of labor, ib.; false ideas of, ib.; desire to escape from, ib.; po- sition preferred to character, 32 ; semblance and substance of learning, ib.; unearned re- wards, desire of, ib.; nobleness of labor, ib.; subjective influ- ence of, ib.; the love of work, necessity of, ib.; twofold in- fluence of work, ib.; Lord Derby on, ib.; putting one's heart in work, 33 ; pecuniary benefits secondary, ib.; good health and honest work, ib.; clear head and labor, relation of, ib.; equivalence in currency of, ib.; sentiments exalted by, 34 ; soul and body ennobled by, ib.; the choicest fruits of living, ib,; the duty of being a man, ib.; what one owes to society, 35; Rousseau cited on, ib.; work for work's sake, ib.; the reward of taking pains, 36; the certainty of rewards and penalties, ib.; Providence no doubtful paymaster, ib.; the task and the man, relation of, ib. ; the occasion and the genius, ib.; the child and the workshop, ib.; Rousseau cited on, 37; the blacksmith's shop the schoolmaster, ib. ; potency of the sledge hammer as an educator, ib.; men spoilt for the want of, 38; men not killed by work, ib.; genius and the Index 231 Labor — Continued. medium of its exercise, ib.; re- lation of muscle and brain, ib.; overcoming mental defects by labor, 39; genius and the works of genius, ib.; men who live in their works, ib.; the declar- ation of Goethe, ib.; the rela- tion of author and book, ib.; the Greeks as toilers, 40; pains- taking in tasks, ib.; Greek painters referred to, ib.; De- mosthenes, the orator, ib.; his renown won by toil, 41 ; success by practice, ib.; taking pains, ib.; the love of truth a stimulant to industry, ib.; excellent work the out- come of thrift, ib.; no excel- lence without great labor, 42 ; examples in nature, ib.; mas- terpieces result of prolonged labor,:i.jexamplesof,cited,2'^., et seq.; Paradise Lost referred to, 43 ; advantages of slow, earnest work, ib.; distinguished examples cited, ib.; discover- ers in science, ib.; the glory achieved by, 44 ; giving one's life to labor, ib.; the privilege of doing the world's work, ib.; captains of industry the lead- ers of the world, ib.; disap- pointments, the companions of, ib,; self-renunciation, the practice of, ib.; the saying of Porphyry, ib.; love of gain, baneful influence of, ib,; vice stimulated by the prospect of gain, 45 ; the passion for wealth, Sallust on, ib.; history repeating itself, ib.; demoral- ization of industry, ib.; revival of Mammonism, ib.; struggle for profits, demoralization of, ib.; giving little, taking much, ib,; public morality at a dis- count, 46 ; debasing the ideal in industry, ib.; The Spectator, quoted on, ib,, footnote; cor- rupting the professions by Mammonism, ib,; unmerited honors, 47 ; cheap diplomas, ib.; the patent of nobility, the love of, ib.; a pitiable weak- ness, Strauss on, ib.; the de- votee and his God, 48; supply and demand, the law of, ib.; scarcity of laborers, ib.; un- trained laborers, ib.; the reign of shoddy, ib.; painstaking to defraud, 49 ; adulteration in manufacture, ib.; no branches of industry exempt, ib.; vul- garity of labor, ideas of, ib.; hu- miliation of being compelled to work, ib.; genteel leisure and downright idleness preferred, ib.; unworthy ideas of dignity, ib.; false pride of aristocracy, 50; the superior status of idle- ness, ib.; false standards, ib.; genteel thieving preferred to honest industry, ib.; confusion of social values, ib,; degener- acy and respectability, the al- liance of, footnote, ib,; trac- ing genealogy, ib.; studying heraldry, ib.; the acme of snobbishness, ib,; the evils of patent nostrums, 51; the press debased by love of money, ib,; literature suffers by, ib.; the power of truth, scepticism of, 52; false measure of value, ib.; fallacy of preaching, ib.; faith in virtue suffering, ib.; uni- versality of time spirit, ib. ; pre- valence of good intentions, ib.; yielding to dishonest practices, ib.; the cost of being honest, 53; the pompous and inflated, ib.; modesty at a discount, ib.; the hypocrisy of the age, ib.; character not an object of envy, ib.; the homage paid to success, ib.; the disgrace of dying poor, 54; failure of the self-sacrificing, ib,; reason to be alarmed for the future of 232 Index Labor — Continued. civilization, ib.; rank material- ism of the age, ib.; the scep- ticism of the heart, ib.; un- heralded heroes, poem on, 55- 57 Land, freedom of, necessary, to free men, 127; monopoly of, the bane of republics, 127; ten- ure of, in England, 174 ; Her- bert Spencer on freedom of, 185, 186 La Place inspired by love of truth, 121 Law, natural, defined, 107; phe- nomena prescribe law, ib. Legislatures, venal character of, 154 Lieber, Dr. Francis, on the ele- ments of government, 148,149; on the baneful influence of ofiicial dishonor, 158; advice of, to government officials, 162, 163 ; apothegm by, 166 ; on political independence, 196 Lincoln, Abraham, educated by labor, 27 Lombroso, Dr., on degenerates, 217 et seq. Luther inspired by love of truth, 121 M Macaulay, Lord, cited, 26 Machinery, inequitable effects of, no Mammonism, corrupting spirit of, 31 ' Man, civilized, comparative in- ferior position of, 109 Manual training must supple- ment mental, 12 Martineau, Harriet, referred to, 24 Maudsley, Dr. Henry, maxim from, 204 McKim, Dr. W: Duncan, Hered- ity and Human Progress cited. 208 ; his remedy for pauper- ism, disease, and crime, ib. Men, produced by great occa- sions, 25; endowed by nature, ib. Mental powers, overtaxing of, n; little danger of, ib. Meyer and the law of correla- tion, 43 Mill, John Stuart, on labor, 14 ; on selfishness, 170 Miller, Hugh, referred to, 23 Milton and Paradise Lost re- ferred to, 43 Miscellanies, Carlyle's, cited, no Mohammed, sentiment from, 99 Money, true position of, 116; has no intrinsic value, ib.; a medium for exchange of values, ib.; coal has more in- trinsic value, ib.; value of bread and gold compared, ib.; money no equivalent for bread, 117; Count Tolstoi on equiva- lents, ib.; bread cannot be paid for with money, ib.; labor the only equivalent for, ib, Montesquieu, and the laborer, footnote, 66 ; on cause of in- surrection, 71 ; on principles of government, 161 Moral idiocy, vnde prevalence of, 216 ; Prof. Benedikt on, ib.; to be studied from the point of view of the naturalist, as phenomena, 218 Morals, not improved by letters, 6; statistics cited, ib.; at a dis- count in business, 125 ; illus- trated by business methods, ib.; instances of lawful thieving and robbery, ib.; high-toned swindlers, ib,; wreckers of rail- roads, ib.; cornerers of the necessaries of life, ib.; bribery and stock-jobbing, ib.; evad- ing the revenue laws, 126 Morse and the electric telegraph, 43 Index 233 Morton and anaesthesia, 43 Motherhood, debasing of, 207 ; cause of ill-breeding, ib. N Nature cares for the worker, 34 Newton and soap bubbles, 43 New York Times on the craven majority of Congress, 135 Old Faith and the New cited, 86 Oligarchy, Ethics of, 167 ; prob- lem stated, ih., et seq.; equal- ity, problem of, ib.; Vauve- nagueson, 168 ; watchwords of the Revolution of '93, ib.; of '75, ib.; struggles of democ- racy, ib.; failure of the ballot, ib.; democracy at Rome, ib.; subversion of, ib.; in Russia, 172, 173 ; in England, 174 ; land tenure in England, 176 ; in Scotland, ib.; democracy subverted by state of, ib.; agency of superstition invoked by rulers, 177 ; crime to teach human equality, 178 ; pros- perity in England, ib.; in- crease of wealth, ib. ; of crime and pauperism, ib.; products of prosperity, ib.; deluge of thieves and robbers, ib.; the bane of poverty, ib.; George Eliot's opinion on, cited, ib.; that of Solomon, ib.; of Rob- ert Dale Owen, ib.; kinship of disease and crime, 179 ; the evils of philanthropy, ib.; sig- nificance of, ib.; justice the requisite, not alms, ib.; money the bane of democracy, 180 ; the potency of, ib.; bossism in politics, ib.; defeat of the influ- ence of suffrage, ib.; growth of distinctions, i3i ; division of society into rich and poor, employed and employer, ib.; history is repeating itself, ib.; alienation of land, ib.; increase of the army necessary to keep peace, ib.; increase of the poor and lawless, 182 ; fortunes in the United States, ib.; aided by government policy, ib.; bribery of the Supreme Court, ib.; high-toned thieves, ib.; New York World on, ib.; idle distinctions, 183 ; im- providence of Government in gifts, ib., et seq.; stealings of railroad directors, 185 ; policy of Government condemned by Jefferson, ib.; alienation of land condemned by him, ib.; likewise by Herbert Spencer, ib.; law of equal freedom in- fringed thereby, 186 ; Social Statics cited, ib. ; danger of gi- gantic corporations, ib. ; brib- ery of legislatures, 187, 188 ; increment of labor illustrated, 189; source of great fortunes, ib.; examples cited, ib.; genius the creator of, 190, et seq.; sharpers the winners of, ib.; examples cited, 191 etseq.; ill- gotten gains, 193 ; Baron de Hirsch's fortune, 194 ; anec- dote of, ib.; New York Times quoted, ib.; barons of trade, ib.; false ideals, ib,; Dr. Lie- ber, views of, 196 ; growth of inequality in wealth, 197 ; among farmers, ib.; worse in cities, ib.; statistics of, 197, 198 ; dependence, increase of, ib.; prostitution of the ballot, 199 ; turbulent class, 200 ; ar- rogant class, ib.; drift toward oligarchy, 201 ; teachings of history, ib.; change of ideals needed, ib.; altruism com- mended, ib.; Mr. Drummond cited approvingly, ib.; warn- ing against passion for wealth. 234 Index Oligarchy — Continued. 202 ; power and privilege, ib.; a prophecy, ib. Ostrogothic kings of Italy, un- lettered character of, 19 Owen, Robert Dale, on poverty, 178 Paganini, the genius of, 7^ Famphiles and composition, 40 Pare, Ambrose, French school of surgery, 22 Past and Present cited, 13, 8g, 98. 173 Paul, the apostle, not actuated by gain, 142 ; against Christ, ib. Paitperism and Crime, Ethics of, 205 ; three causes of ib.; er- rors of the social state, ib.; civilization at fault, 206 ; jus- tice violated, ib.; physical and psychic evils, common origin of, 207 ; conditions of ma- ternity disregarded, ib.; low position of woman, ib.; low ideas of maternity in Christen- dom, ib.; Heredity and Hti- man Progress controverted, 208 ; depraved heredity, ib.; putting away the miserables, fallacy of, 2og ; degenerates not confined to a class, ib.; put to death the vicious, propo- sition to, of Dr. McKim, ib.; not feasible, reasons why, 210 et seq.; experiment tried in Noah's time a failure, ib.; high-toned miscreants, 211; typical criminal himself victim, ib.; did not make himself, ib.; society's duty, 213 ; physical labor the cure for the crimi- nal, 214 ; experience of Mr. Brockway cited, ib.; curative effects of manual labor on epileptics, ib.; experience at Craig Colony, ib.; problem stated, ib.; Drift of Medical Philosophy cited, ib., et seq.; moral idiocy, 216 ; Benedikt quoted on, ib.; Lombroso cited on, ib.; anthropometry of the criminal class, ib.; brains of criminals, pecul- iarities of, ib.; family de- velopment of, ib., et seq.; not responsible, 218 ; obey laws of their own, ib.; the race but slightly removed from barbarism, 220 ; evidence ad- duced, ib., et seq.; love of killing, prevalence of, in high circles, 222; significance of, ib.; fallacy of the penal code, ib.; differentiation in exami- nations of criminals, the need of, 223 ; principles of treat- ment indicated, ib. Pauperism and crime, the causes of, stated, 205 Penal institutions, educated in- mates in, 6 Peter the Great, unlettered, 18 ; the crime of, 23 Philanthropy, the necessity for, a disgrace, 179 Philip of France, ignorance of, ig, 178 Plato's Republic referred to, 56 ; maxim from, loi Political Ethics, Dr. Lieber's, cited, 148, 149, 359, 463, 464 Politicians buying their way, to Congress, 155 ; to official posi- tions, ib. Poverty and great riches go hand in hand, 178 Presidents intriguing for renom- inations, 155 Principles of Political Economy, Ricardo's, cited, 89 Privileges, non-surrender of, 202 Professions, debt of, to the so- cial state, 114 ; could not be paid with money, 115 ; Rous- seau on, ib.; who eats in idle- ness, steals, ib.; the idle citi- Index 235 Professions — Continued. zen a knave, ib.; compared to a drone in the hive by, ib. Progress material rather than ethical, 206 Protogenes the painter, 40 Proudhon, maxim from, 60 Providence no tardy paymaster, 361 Psalmists, maxim from, 60 Question, the greatest in the world, answered, 137 R Race, prostitution of the mothers of, 207 Rachel, Mme., of low birth, 24 Raid, Jameson's, referred to, 211 Railroads, the Pacific, thieving by officials and directors, 182 et seq.; grants of land to, 183; bonds to, 184 ; domination of the States by, 187 Republic of Plato, maxim from, 194 Republic of America, common school, false hope of, 3 ; the problem confronted by the, 167 Ricardo, the philosopher, 23 ; Principles of Political Econo- my by, 90, footnote; on in- terest, 3g, go Riddle of the Kosmos, yM cited, 122 Ristori, Mme., 24 Rome enslaved Italy by robbing her of land, 171 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, his £mile quoted, 7, 8, 18, 30, 35- 37 ; and the brains of the eighteenth century, 35 Rumbold, maxim from, 134 Sallust on vice and the passion for wealth, 166 ; maxim from; ib. Sand, Mme. George, 21 Savonarola not influenced by the hope of reward, 121 Scholar, the, displaced from office, 156 ; dying poor, 191 ; instances cited, ib. Schools, limited benefits of pop- ular, 12 ; defective methods in, 32 ; workshops the better, 37,38 Seward, W. H., statesman, bred by industry, 27 Shakespeare, his immortal plays, 42 ; rewarded by glory, rather than money, 121 Smith, Adam, on labor, 90, foot- note Society, demoralization of, 199 ; increase of the criminal class in, ib.; decline of ethics in, ib.; the function of, 213 Solon, regulation of interest at Athens, 89 Soul and body ennobled by labor, 34 Spectator, The, cited, 46, foot- note ; on great fortunes, 68 Spencer on rights to the soil, 185, 186 ; Social Statics, cited, ib. Spinoza, the monist, 23 Standard Oil Company, cost of its conquests, 105 State, the, responsible for the in- dividual, 116 ; for his disease and depravity, ib.; Count Tol- stoi on, ib. Stephenson the inventor, 23 Stewart's nomination as Secretary of Treasury by PresidentGrant, 83, footnote Strauss, on patents of nobility, 47 ; on cruelty of the brute to brute, 86 Students and superficial scholar- ship, 32 Swift, astronomer, rewarded by decorations, 121 236 Index Talmud, maxim from, 97 Taxation, inequality of. III The Claims of Labor, cited, 14 Thebes, care in guarding the government against incompe- tence in, 162 Theodoric, Italian king, 19 Theon and fancy, 40 Tocqueville, M. de, on the decay of American statesmen, 157 Toil, beneficence of, 113 Tolstoi, on values, 14 ; on re- sponsibility for disease and crime, 116 Trade, Ethics of, 61 ; moral and intellectual accomplishments, connection of, ib.; money, sig- nificance of, ib., et seq.; found in bad company, bl et seq.; ne- cessity of, ib.; contempt of, by moralists, ib.; filthy lucre, dub- bed as, ib.; prejudice against, ib.; symbol of power, ib.; of value, ib. , et.seq; money earned and money won, distinction be- tween, 63 ; wealth not to be envied, ib.; disgrace to die rich, ib.; Mr. Carnegie's senti- ment, ib.; poverty a curse, ib.; cause of mendicity and law- lessness, ib.; wealth, cause of indolence and selfishness, ib.; results of destitution, 64 ; drives to despair, ib.; unre- quited toiler, sacrifice to hu- manity, ib.; demoralization of luxury, ib.; necessity of in- dustry, 65 ; work not degrad- ing, ib.; one reaps where many sow, 66 ; the rule of, ib.; jus- tice beween man and man requisite, ib.; justice difficult to define, ib.; Edmund Burke as a toiler, ib. , footnote ; Montesquieu, cited, ib., foot- note ; equivalence illustrated, ib. ; triumph of justice proph- esied, 67 ; foretold by Plato and the poets, ib.; the ideal, the embryo of the realiz- able, ib.; great fortunes in- evitable, 68; The Spectator quoted, ib.; failure of Chris- tianity, ib.; the greed of gain, 69 ; inferior breeds of men, ib.; Ecce Homo on, ib.; re- dundancy of capital, 70 ; the problem of, ib.; law of supply and demand, ib.; miscarriage of, ib.; struggle for place and power, ib.; evils of, ib.; lib- erty and license, 71 ; ignorance and poverty, ib.; crimes against persons and property, ib.; result of hunger and want, ib.; Montesquieu, cited, ib.; religion, highest purpose of, 72 ; not the service of God, ib.; claims of duty and moral- ity, ib.; self-interest, rule of the present, 73 ; no friendships in business, ib.; axiom of Christendom, ib.; conditions of trade, 74; secrecy a necessity of, ib.; sharp practice an ob- ject of envy, ib.; the David Harums in trade, 75; honesty in trade impossible, 76 ; ill conditions of trade, ib.; de- ception in trade universal, 77 ; the tariff worshippers, 78 ; Mr. Carnegie's profits and the tariff, ib.; fortunes in patent medicines, ib.; fortunes re- sults of unequal profits, 79 ; great profits inconsistent with equivalents, 80 ; the struggle for advantage in trade, 81 ; common sense of Christendom at fault, ib.; teaching to steal, 82 ; overreaching one's neigh- bor, ib.; the custom of the Spartans condemned, ii. / great profits presuppose great losses, 83 ; homage paid to success, ib.; the successful man, con- duct of, 84 ; ethics in trade not studied, ib.; despoiling the Index 237 Trade — Continued. unfortunate, ib.; the Samari- tan and the thief, 85 ; why the brute is cruel to the brute, 86 ; Strauss cited, ib.; customs of greedy brokers and grasping landlords, ib.; money-lending sharks, ib.; tricksters in bar- gain making, ib.; the insati- able man-brute, 87 ; ethics of business, the problem stated, ib.; the odiousness of false- hood, ib.; of deception and sharp practice, 88 ; necessity of equity, ib.; of rendering equivalents, ib.; Ricardo on interest controverted, 89 ; the errors of the ancients, ib.; the end of government, ib.; maxim of Carlyle, ib.; relations of capital and labor, go ; labor the purchase money, ib.. Wealth of Nations cited, ib.; footnote ; Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy cited, ib.: fortunes from the incre- ment of labor, 91 ; sharing of profits of industry with labor- er, ib.^ et seq.; altruism in the conduct of business, 93 ; neces- sity of its introduction, ib., et seq.; increase of poverty with that of wealth, 95 ; pauperism in England, ib.; usury at Athens, ib.; money lender under ban at Athens, ib.; in- terest, the burden to industry of, 96 ; industrial polity, the need of a change of, ib.; living forthestate, ib.; living a frank, open life, ib.; the sacredness of truth-telling, ib.; sin allied to ignorance, 97 ; the wealth of a man, Carlyle on, 98 ; Past and Present cited, ib.; better be wronged than wronging, 99 ; selfish pleasures, delusion of, ib.; aesthetic culture, pleasures of, ib.; living for others, ib.; the sentiment of Mohammed, ib.; immortality of the virtues, 100 Trinity's old rookeries, iii Turner, the chemist, 23 U Uncle Tom's Cabin, 17 " Unheralded Heroes," poem on, 55-57 Unity, man a physiological, 214 et seq.; The Drift of Medical Philosophy cited on, 214 Vanderbilt, control of the State Legislature by, 188 Vauvenagues on the distinction between men, 168 Virtues, true value of, 54 W Wallace, Dr. Alfred, on the fail- ure of the evolution of the eth- ical sense, 122 Warfare, not ended, 104 ; agencies of, more refined, not less cruel, 105 Warwick, Sir Philip, testimony to Cromwell, 25 Watt the plodder, 43 Wealth of Nations, cited, 90, footnote Wealth of a man, the, how measured, 98 ; Carlyle on, ib.; unequalness of, increasing, 197 ; statistics of, ib. Work, effective, inspired by love of it, 14 ; highest development attained through, 15; ill-work, demoralization of, 32 ; joy and delight of, ib.; delight which comes in, 34 ; a cure for malady, 214 Workshop a school/ar excellence, 37.38 ^^i'.'h'i-fftff/.i'/a'.a'.t'. I '■''T'.'.'JS' ;-l'S''V-*jt'.'^"'-^.'*V4A?j>^'^i/'J^".^V