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The Columbia University Libraries reserve the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. Author: Parsons, Frank Title: The drift of our time Place: Chicago Date: [1 899] MASTER NEGATIVE * COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DIVISION BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET ORIGINAL MATERIAL AS FILMED - EXISTING BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD V BUSINESS 203 D13 I I i m i ■ ! ■■ ■ »■ ■!« Parsons, Frank, 1854-1908. • •• The drift of our time, by ••• Freuik Parsons Chicago, Kerr tl899j cover-title, 16 p. (Unity library, no, 101) • • • Bound with Dague, R« A. A postal banking system proposed to prevent bank panics. [1899j o iJ RESTRICTIONS ON USE: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA RLM SIZE: ^frtm REDUCTION RATIO: JILL IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA (HA) IB IIB DATE FILMED: S-Z-'i'^ INITIALS: 1^^ TRACKING # : Ays// CSI'^^^ ^ (Bof^ m/m5h ooiys-) FILMED BY PRESERVATION RESOURCES. BETHLEHEM. PA. > o a rn m O O "D lO JO X ^* #« •i*^ CJl 3 3 > o m DL"n CD O GfQ S3 I ^ O O X < X M w A^ ^ ^T^. a^ ^c: C?: J" '^: o 3 3 S 3 3 O E"^I5P|S|5|5|? II,; 1^ I bo c> 00 o K3 ro I In 1.0 mm 1.5 mm 2.0 mm ABCDCrGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ »bcde»ghi(t- '^ L% ..^^ <^ c> ^cr k:^^ fo ^f^ 'Sf m H O O "o m "o > C CO X Tl ^ m 3D O m _**«v *' *«■- ■*. ■^^ '^Z^ '^ 1— » K> (Jl O 3 3 1 ABCDE cdefghi 2^m FGH jkim HIJKLM nnopqr IJKLM nopqr az OPQRST uvwxyzl OPQR uvwxy r^c M !-< 00 INI IJ1< o o^x '•J-K C»ISI V£> O '^-V '* ^^. u Price, 10 Cents THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME BY Prof. Frank Parsons 1 1 * Unity Library, No. loi December 15, 1899 Monthly, $3.00 a year Entered at the postoffice, Chicago, as second-class matter r« Charles H. Kerr & Company, Publishers 56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME BY PROF. FRANK PARSONS. Life consists of relations, animate and inanimate — relations with material things, and relations with things that live. For man the most important relations are not those which bind him to the material universe, nor those which pertain to other species of living things, but those which subsist between the members of the human family— it is the human relations that chiefly control the lives of men and make them true or false, kind or cruel, just or unjust, good or bad, happy or miserable; it is the human relations, therefore, to^ which we must give the most careful attention if we^ seek the elevation of mankind. These human relations fall naturally into five great groups, which we may call the relations of Severance, Conflict, Mastery, Partnership and Devotion. The first is the relation of separation, isolation, disunion, disconnection, unassociation ; the others are relations of contact and association. Conflict and Mastery aro THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. y forms of antagonism, Partnership and Devotion aro forms of co-operation. Everywhere we find abundant illustrations of these five relations. The solitary savage wandering in the woods of Borneo, the hermit in his cave, the monk in his monastery shut from the active world, the pioneer, too far beyond the line of settlement to hold communi- cation with his fellows, nations whose remoteness or unlikeness keeps them out of touch, show us severance in various phases and degrees. Similar phenomena exist in the world of mind and heart. The thoughts and emotions of men may sever them no less effec- tually than seas and continents, although they dwell beneath one roof and eat at one family table. Conflict is everywhere. Where man comes into his- tory's ground the air is full of javelins and arrows, and, as the glance runs down the centuries, blazing armor, glittering steel and marching hosts fill up the years.' Across the water, warfare is raging now, and millions of armed men are waiting the word that any day may set the armies of all Europe in motion. The roar of musketry and the boom of cannon has scarcely died from our ears, the smoke of battle scarcely lifted from our skies. Conflict is with us still, in market and court-room and church, in strike and election, in Con- gress and State House and Council Hall, wherever a buyer or seller of labor or goods is seeking to over reach the other, wherever determined men are pushing \ V ; ,1. THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. 3 or maintaining a selfish purpose against the active opposition- of their fellows. Mastery, too, is everywhere— conflict crystallized into conquest and developing new conflicts for the future. Chief, general, king, political boss, and military des- pot, priest, capitalist, corporation manager, princes of market and factory, such are some of the masters who control the world. Wherever a life is controlled by another for the primary benefit of the controller, the relation of master and slave exists. It makes no difference in the essential nature of the relation whether you buy a whole life at once, as the Southern planter did before the war, or buy the life a little at a time on the installment plan, a day, a week, a month, a year at a sale, as in our Northern factories today— it is the purchase of manhood, the bargain for mastery just the same, and whether it be for fifty years at once, or day by day for fifty years, with the whip of want to compel the transfer each morning anew, is merely a matter of degree. The right to political freedom even may fail to prevent enslave- ment—so long as the masters make their servants vote as they bid, the ballots in truth belong to the masters. Freedom is indivisible. If another is your master in any essential department of life, he is your master in all. Power to control your supply of air or water or food is power to control you. The man who is depen- dent on the arbitrary will of another, for the oppor- 4 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. tunity to make a living, is not free. The man who controls you religiously can govern you politically and industrially if he will. The man who controls you politically can rule you industrially and religiously if he so desires. And the man who controls you indus- trially is your master politically, religiously and socially. If several controls exist and clash, it is a . battle of the masters, in which perhaps the slave may win his freedom from them all. Partnership also is a universal relation. Savages hunt together and divide the spoils. Families co- operate for the common good. Merchants, artisans and professional men combine for mutual help. A nation is a partnership for defense against aggression from without or from within. Protestantism is part- nership in religion— public works, co-operative indus- tries, profit-sharing enterprises, even the trusts and combines are instances of partnership in different stages of development. Finally, devotion is found wherever humanity dwells, and whether it be the devotion of lovers to each other, of parents to their children, of martyrs to their faith, of patriots to their countr}', of inventors to their great conceptions, of authors and scientists to the search for truth, of poets and musicians to the creation of beauty, of philosophers and philanthropists to their high ideals, the book of life is rich with the pages of its history. f i t THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. 5 If we examine the matter closely, we find a relation among these relations. The first three groups are of a low order. The last two are of a high order. Severance lacks the stimulus and movement that characterize even the lowest forms of contact and association. Antagonism means destruction, waste, debasement. Mastery means oppression, injustice, arrogance, subjection, degradation. On the other hand, Partnership embodies the principles of justice, economy, harmony and mutual help; while Devotion is the outward form of love. In the ideal society, severance, conflict and mastery must cease, equity and common sense demand that there shall be mo relation of a lower order than partnership or co-operation on the plane of justice, and when love at last is sovereign, no relation below that of devotion will be. tolerated. There is a steady tendency of the lower forms of relation to pass into the higher. Institutions and emo- tions have their laws of selection and survival, as well as individuals and races. As population increases, the severance of distance gives way to contact in conflict or in union. Conflict merges into mastery or partnership or devotion. Mastery is almost as unstable as conflict — there is conflict in its heart, unless the mind of the slave is dead and the soul of the master forever asleep. It builds upon rebellion's soil; there is no rest, no permanence, no safety till mastery is \ I 6 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. changed to partnership or devotion; and when once we have partnership, devotion is only a question of time for growing sympathy to change the crude justice that is satisfied with the absence of aggression into the higher justice we call love, that is satisfied only by the gift of our all for others. In every department of life, with a wave-like motion, through the tangled mass of retrogressions and ad- vances, a general drift toward the nobler relations is clearly visible, and each new century accelerates the progress toward the supremacy of partnership and devotion, the rule of justice and sympathy, the sov- ereignty of love. Government may be a mastery, a partnership, a devotion or a mixture. So far as the ruler uses his power for his own selfish purposes, it is a mastery. So far as he acts as an honest agent of those he governs, it is a partnership in which the partners to some extent entrust to one or more of their number the management and direction of the common busi- ness, for the benefit of all concerned. So far as the ruler gives himself to the service of the people in sym- pathy and love, it is a devotion. The government of Napoleon was a mastery. The government of Lincoln was a devotion. When men first came together for aggression or defense, there was little control but that of individual strength and cunning. Recognized leadership and \ <<> 111 THi: D?aFT OF OUR TIME. 7 due subordination were sure to follow because they increased the efficiency of the union. The leaders, once firm in their seats, abused their power, and when the people became aware of this and were wise enough to understand the remedy, and brave enough to apply it, democracy was the result. In religion similar changes have been wrought. A few in sympathy worshiped together. Some man of peculiar power became the leader. The groups grew larger, the leaders more powerfid. Then they abused their trust. A few in the North rebelled, and Luther established democracy in religion. In industry the same great facts appear. Every- where there is a tendency for the first simple unde- fined association to become a mastery, which advancing civilization inevitably transforms into a partnership or democracy, and will finally transform into a devotion. At first men worked alone. Then, finding out the power of union, they worked in groups— partnerships, factories, corporations, syndicates, trusts, combina- tions of greater and greater magnitude. At every step the organization must have management, and chiefs, and monarchs of market and mine, railroads and manufactures came into being. These leaders have perverted their power to their own selfish purposes, just as the leaders of religious and political combina- tions formerly did. The people are awakening to this fact, and soon they will write their industrial consti- 8 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. \ THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. tiations and hold the rulers of wealth responsible as they already do the rulers of war. Organization, leadership, despotism, democracy — that has been the history of religion and politics, and it will be the history of industry also. The aristocracy of the priest- hood is broken ; the aristocracy of birth is dead ; but the aristocracy of the dollar is in the meridian of its splendor. Political power no longer descends to the worthless son of a trusted ruler. But the mighty power of wealth, the irresponsible control of unnumbered mill- ions, the arbitrary government of human interests vaster than the political affairs of the greatest states — these still descend from father to son, as kingly power did in less enlightened times. The aristocracy of wealth must follow the aristocracy of birth. There is one more despotism to demolish, one more slavery to abolish. There is one more republic to be built, one more proclamation of emancipation to be written. Our fathers gave us a political republic. We must give our children an industrial republic. Co-operation has brought suit in ejectment against the competitive system for possession of the field of civilization. The case is on trial at the bar of human progress. Common Sense and Love are counsel foi co-operation. Greed, Ignorance, Prejudice, and Primeval Combativeness defend the competitive sys- tem. The ultimate issue cannot be doubted. The competitive system means antagonism, conflict and mastery, relations condemned by reason, religion and common sense, and doomed by the progress of civiliza- tion. Co-operation means partnership and devotion, relations commended by reason, religion and common sense, and the inevitable goal of advancing civilization. Oppressed and outraged manhood is just as sure to rebel against industrial despotism and try to establish an industrial democracy, an industrial government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as the patriots of '76 were sure to rise against the mastery of England. Industrial partnership will come from above downward and from below upward — the public absorp- tion of monopolies and the growth of profit sharing and co-operative enterprise with larger and larger federations of public and private co-operative groups will finally expel antagonism and mastery from labor's world. Even the trusts and combines help. A trust is only a partnership internally considered. It is of no use to make laws to destroy them — they exist in obedi- ence to a law far higher than any that Congress can make — the law of industrial gravitation — strength and economy lies in union. A trust is a very good thing for those on the inside. Let the people inside, and let US not be satisfied with a match trust, an oil trust, a sugar trust, and a steel trust, but let us have a world trust for the production of manhood and human happiness. It will come whether we lift a finger to help it or not. Human nature is plastic and yields to pressure. lO THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. Antagonistic forces tend to destroy each other and leave only those that can act together in harmony. In the long run, nature represses evil by entailing painful consequences on it, and encourages good by following it with pleasant results. Action goes where resistance is least and the harvest of happiness is greatest. Right conduct is simply a matter of fore- sight, common sense and self-control. The wisdom of righteousness is a demonstrable certainty. Imagina- tion is the basis of sympathy and sympathy is the basis of morality. Self-interest, rightly judged, will lead to goodness, to save remorse and retribution.. Egoism married to wisdom gives birth to altruism— the savage, under Nature's training, will, in time, become the angel. Automatic evolution will at last bring man to mutualism, if the world continues long enough to roll unharmed in median temperatures around the sun. But we can hasten the movement greatly by intelligent selection, which is as far superior to automatic selection in the development of nobler character and better institutions, as it is in the development of finer horses, cattle, dogs and sheep. We must go to the sources of good and evil, pull up the weeds, abolish the germs of evil and nourish the tender growths of good. Take the children out of the slums. Guard the unborn against a criminal, diseased or pauper parentage. Put crimi- nals and vicious persons where they cannot harm their THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. XI r V r ■•i fellow men, but may be trained to useful lives, and have their freedom once again when long good con- duct has rebutted the presumption from their former badness that they would do wrong if not restrained of their liberty. Let us squeeze the last black drop of savage blood out of humanity's veins. Let us recog- nize the true relations of sin, and not give honor to the big transgressor while we crush the little one. Let us turn our boys from the lust for gold, to intellectual and spiritual attainments, and the service of mankind as the goal of their ambitions. Let us strive to destroy the commercialization of labor-the purchase of man- hood as a commodity. The question with employers ought to be, "How much can I afford to pay?" instead of. "How little can I get that labor for?" When mas- ters ask, "How would I wish my daughter treated if she were this working-girl? What wages would I wish this work to command if I myself, or my son, were doing it?" And Capital says, "I will pay all I can and clear myself. New capital shall come from the sav- ings of labor." Then partnership and brotherhood will be in sight. A little further on, the wages system and industrial slavery will go, and leave the world to profit sharing and industrial self-government— mastery will give place to partnership. The workers will see that the change is made in time, but employers, if they will, can smooth and shorten the path from competi- tion to co-operation. Let us change our institutions 13 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. to a purer type, for better government, and fairer diffusion of wealth and power and opportunity. In- stitutions and character react upon each other; we must labor for them both, or, rather, we must labor to improve our institutions, as one of the strongest means of improving our manhood. And finally, above all else, let each strive to mold himself to the mutualistic character, so that the Golden Rule may be an instinct with him, so that his every relation, so far as condi- tions can be controlled by him, shall be a devotion, a partnership with love at the heart of it, a co-operation of the highest order, a mutualism whose motive is the , deepest philosophy, and the purest emotion. Imagine a body of colonists settling on a fertile island and finding plants and animals of an injurious nature with others of a beneficial sort. They would naturally make a definite and determined effort to rid the island of poisonous plants and dangerous animals, pull up and destroy the weeds, cut down the useless trees, and exterminate the lions, tigers, wolves, rattle- snakes, tarantulas, or whatever pests infested the country, while they would nourish, protect and develop the animals that were useful in their domestic economy, and plant the seeds of valuable fruits, grains, and vegetables, aiding their growth with diligent care. If they were wise they would give no less attention to the removal of injurious elements and the cultivation of beneficent ones, in their characters, institutions and \ « M 'V THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. t$ social relations. The spirit of a wolf or anaconda in a man is far more harmful than in its appropriate form. And a noble man is worth far more than a well-bred horse or a Jersey cow, an orchard of apples, or a field of wheat. A false relation debases and poisons the whole community, while human relations of higher order translate the earth into heaven. *'The Kindom .of Heaven is within you," for the power of love is within you, and that, if you put it into your lives, will make this world a heaven. Man has colonized this planet, and century after century, for thousands of years, he has striven to mold to his use the flora and fauna of the globe. He has given some attention also to molding himself and his relationships. He made a splendid move when he nationalized and democratized defence and the admin- istration of justice. He will make another grand advance when he nationalizes and democratizes indus- try. In the earliest times, when each one defended himself unaided, it took the whole life of a man for warfare and the training and preparation it required. ^But after a while men said: ** There's a better way than this. We'll form ourselves into a nation, and guarantee safety to every man, and put the whole power of the state behind the promise. Then a few men with guns will be able to keep the peace for all, and a vast amount of vigor and time will be saved. " And they did, and the energy thereby released has y 14 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. / developed the commerce and science of modem times. The material civilization of the nineteenth century is the result of the nationalization of defence, and the equalization of safety. So it will be with the national- ization of industry and the equalization of security from hunger and cold; the larger part of the time and attention devoted to getting material wealth will be given to higher pursuits, and the twentieth century may see a civilization of the soul, a spiritual develop- ment as magnificent as the material advancement of the nineteenth. There are many indications of the new development. A multitude of papers are urging the claims of labor to partnership in industry. Hundreds of leading men are in sympathy with the cause. The wealthy them- selves, for the most part, desire a system that will lead to a more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity. Labor is organizing to demand the change; political parties are swinging into line; public ownership is in the air, and the '* Brotherhood of the Co-operative Commonwealth" is rapidly developing. Beyond and beneath all this is the growth of sym- pathy,* the admiration for devotion to humanity, the ♦ Since this lecture was written a new proof of the growing P°^«J. °f.f/SP^*iiy hasapoeared in the war forCuban independence. We know so well the benefits 5f^l?t^cal freedom and our sympathy with others who are st^"^J^^;?/ J^J^^ ^ J2 er^t that we are willing to fieht. if need be. that another people, who j?ive promise of TbiKty to learS the art cf self government *«fyf"Jgi>„^„%^i?;^°g Sf liberty we valiie so highly for ourselves Some peoole »" Eu'-ope seem to think it is Inst for territory that moves America b"* ^»'7,""j;;^/,^_ !5d7^^^^ that from the truth that the great nia^sof our people would regard the «^^^ of Cuba as an undesirable burden. Commercial interests ^av^lmd some part and the Maine has bad a stroug influer.ce in causing intervention; but only as V V > THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. 15 deepening hold of love upon the public and private life of the people. A little thing sometimes reveals the future. Now it is a nation pouring out its wealth to aid the victims of a conflagration, flooa or other dire catastrophe, and then it is a breeze from Scot- land lifting the curtain to disclose the spirit of the new' time. The grand devotion of the Doctor of the Old School is one of the richest passages in modern literature; indeed the whole book, with its Domsie and Drumsheugh, and Burnbrae, and Marget, is full of the finest spirit, and its wonderful success, its un- paralleled popularity, means much, for where our ideals are we strive to climb. Mankind will some day find the highest happiness in the service of each others- mastery, conflict, unjust agreements, political frauds and ostentatious wealth will become as repugnant as highway robbery is today; morality will become m- stinctive, natural as reflex motion, and men will desire wealth merely as a means of fitting themselves for the highest and fullest intellectual and spiritual activities of which they are capable, and ask for power simply to serve their fellownien. The eighteenth century, with its Arkwrights and Whitneys, Watts and Fultons, laid the foundations of the splendid mater ial^evelopn^^ hurls the shell from the cannon's «outh— and u is nui j ^gio^e x6 THE DRIFT OF OUR TIME. wliicn we live. The nineteentli century, with its Dar- win, Spencer, Huxley, Helmholtz, Davy, Faraday, Rumford, Goethe, Herschel, Agassiz, Lyell and a host of others, has laid the comer-stone of the temple of knowledge. The twentieth century must build a home for the soul. We know how to build for the body and the head, the character and heart must have attention now. We have learned something about the creation of wealth and the acquirement of knowledge. Let us study how to diffuse wealth and power and goodness among the people. Let us discover how to make everybody comfortable, well off, intelligent and virtuous. The diffusion of wealth, knowledge, power and virtue is the problem of the twentieth century- justice and love, partnership and devotion are the keys. The eighteenth century gave us material development ; the nineteenth has given us intellectual development; let the twentieth give us spiritual development. From the eighteenth, power ; from the nineteenth, knowl- edge; from the twentieth, virtue. We have knowl- edge, wealth and power, let us sanctify them all with brother love that no living creature may be wrongec' or suffer enslavement, degradation, injustice or los of rightful opportunity forevermore on earth. Th eighteenth century was powerful ; the nineteenth has been glorious; let us make the twentieth happy. END OF TITLE