“EfcYSIA” 
 
Property of 
 
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LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
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 ELYSIA 
 
 A Prophecy 
 
 The Freedom, Nationalism, Christianity 
 of a Better State 
 
 Property of 
 
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 Iz- 7 
 
 HORATIO C. BENT, B. S., LL. B. 
 
 BLOOMINGTON, ILL 
 
Copyright, 1913. 
 
 By 
 
 HORATIO C. BENT, B. S., LL. B. 
 Bloomington, 111. 
 
401 I II; 
 
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 I I 1 626 1 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 The Answer of Individualism 
 
 It is the coming Political Power. 
 
 It is Christianity revived, invigorated, prac- 
 ticed. 
 
 It is a Nationalism with a meaning. 
 
 It appeals to the honest. It convinces the con- 
 scientious. It converts the skeptical. It trans- 
 lates the intentions of the thoughful and, progres- 
 sive into a concerted and powerful action. 
 
 If its principles meet with your approval com- 
 mend it to your friends, disseminate it, let it take 
 root. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is the tendency to turn to the state as the 
 remedy for the evils of society, in the mistaken 
 belief that movement need but be concerted and 
 social to be right and justifiable, rather than as 
 Christianity would have us, to the individual as 
 the primary unit in social reconstruction. 
 
 The purpose of the writer is to overcome this 
 wayward and mistaken tendency, to build his 
 state from the individual, to Christianize the man 
 before he creates his state, to recognize first the 
 fundamental natural rights, the highest system 
 of moral law, and not build upon those wrongs 
 which are within, the resultant of ideas socially 
 and wrongly conceived and basically false. 
 
 To present a political course of action, demo- 
 cratic, individual, practical. One which the la- 
 boring man and the business man will recognize 
 immediately as logical, patriotic and Christian. 
 That is devoid of the materialism which renders 
 others obnoxious and unsatisfactory. That dig- 
 nifies labor, recognizes the benefits of science as 
 a product of individualism, is not iconoclastic or 
 revolutionary, but a transition gradual and in- 
 
 5 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 evitable, if society is not to fall back into the 
 idolatry of materialism, and the stagnation of 
 ignorant and mistaken social conceptions. 
 
 To show that the ethical and religious in our 
 National life, a higher idealism, must be the foun- 
 dation of all political progress, and that by build- 
 ing upon this higher conception is the assurance 
 of a greater and nobler system of government. 
 
 
 6 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 
 
 Before presenting the remedy, the solution of 
 our Governmental problems, it will be first nec- 
 essary that an approach be made in a state of 
 mind, free from the narrow bias of personal ad- 
 vantage, uninfluenced by private motive, but only 
 by a generosity, considerate and honest, a highly 
 conscientious, truly Christian sense of fraternal 
 obligation. 
 
 The State, whether we will or not, is the creat- 
 ure of that influence that silently, continuously 
 and ever more powerfully, works within, inde- 
 pendent, yet at the same time, the determinator 
 of its form and substance. 
 
 The Church as a moral influence in a commun- 
 ity, Christianity as it is appreciated and applied, 
 is the determinating factor as to the strength, 
 the durability, the sufficiency of the State. 
 
 Christianity is undeniable truth, the ultimate 
 law. The Church is Christian as it understands 
 and preaches it, the individual as he applies it. 
 
 7 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 As the Church is narrow and weak in its con- 
 ception of Christianity, the State is inefficient, 
 and as the tone of Christian thought is elevated 
 and broadened, as the Church performs the pur- 
 pose of its existence, the State approaches more 
 closely that perfection of form and substance that 
 is enduring, just, progressive and satisfying. 
 
 A condemnation of the State is but a censure 
 of the Church, a plea for an enlightened and an 
 extended Christianity, a call to a higher concep- 
 tion, the prayer of a struggling and unperceptive 
 people. 
 
 And so we find the relation of Church and 
 State undeniable. The State is but the Church’s 
 handiwork; the Church is but Christian thought, 
 and Christian thought is but a realization of the 
 intent and meaning of the idealism of Jesus 
 Christ. The Trinity of human activities — 
 Church, State, Christianity — are an inseparable 
 unit in their perfection. 
 
 So he who touches the problems of the State, 
 who would advise as to those policies to be pur- 
 sued, must be governed by the highest concep- 
 tions, the deepest and most reverential of mo- 
 tives, and he who would have improvement, who 
 would desire a progress, must recognize and fol- 
 
 8 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE 
 
 low the Christian, in the real sense of being, the 
 highest and loftiest of his understanding. 
 
 The State is reverenced as Christianity is a 
 power and a reality, undeniable, convincing, up- 
 lifting, ennobling ; teaching in the lessons of prac- 
 tice the possibilities of the future, inspiring 
 thoughts of immortality in life rather than in 
 that of death’s uncertainty, with a faith and op- 
 timism ever increasing, a joyousness ever more 
 deep and real, as the hold upon life becomes 
 stronger and the feeling of kinship extends be- 
 yond the confines of family into those of society. 
 Making Religion not a creed, nor a philosophy 
 of Death, but a habit of life, that strikes a re- 
 sponse in every manly heart, that imagines man 
 the perfection that he is, and to realize him the 
 ultimate purpose of Life, which the State as a 
 Paternal Power ever encourages and protects. 
 
 9 
 
CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Religion as mortality lias reached the extent of 
 its development, the limit of its toleration. Men 
 are not naturally seekers of another world, but 
 finders of the substance of this. It is not to be 
 expected that men should rest satisfied with 
 promises of another world when satisfaction in 
 this is the chief desire of future longing. It is 
 the present that gives best proof of the future. 
 It is its tendency and achievements that are the 
 best criterions of a future expectancy. The 
 promises of religion as being those of another 
 world are but the faithless thoughts of the God- 
 less and agnostic, but the believer is a follower 
 of present optimism, with hopes of a greater 
 present and a transcendent future, which the 
 power of the Almighty renders real and lasting 
 as that internal force known as Christianity 
 plays an ever greater part in the activities of 
 men. 
 
 Christianity then is of this world. A power 
 not to be denied. A force never listless nor un- 
 successful, but always progressive, never failing 
 as it is truthfully understood and wisely applied, 
 
 10 
 
CHRISTIANITY 
 
 but is ever present, ever laboring, ever practiced 
 by those who believe it, who feel it as a present 
 need and would not retard its expanding power. 
 
 For those who seek Heaven in the next world 
 rather than in this, scarcely appreciate the mean- 
 ing of Christianity, and have little faith in it as a 
 transcendant law. It is a living power in the af- 
 fairs of men that commands attention, gains pre- 
 cedence in their thought and molds them into an 
 appreciative and active understanding. Such is 
 Christianity, which in righteous application con- 
 cerns, not the dead nor death, but the living and 
 life, and is faith and hope in the power of love as 
 the ultimate law, satisfying and complete and un- 
 der which we live to our hearts content with de- 
 sire fulfilled. 
 
 Which means that in Life there is hope and the 
 expectancy of much, and in death there need be 
 no fear if the harvest of life is full and complete. 
 
 So tarry in the fervor of your creed and the 
 thought of mortality, and consider the lilies of 
 the field how they grow, they toil not, neither do 
 they spin, and wherefore, in the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity, should the life of man be hardship and his 
 existence problematical ? 
 
 n 
 
MAN. 
 
 Man is but Time and Place in combination. 
 
 A child is born into the world and irrespective 
 of all other things there is stamped in and be- 
 queathed to him at his very birth a certain length 
 of time. By this I would not have you think I 
 am a fatalist, but rather that his physical strength 
 and vigor, his natural intuition, prescribe for him 
 in the course of nature a life of definite duration, 
 and if by chance there are forces that terminate 
 the period of his existence sooner than his want, 
 we find mistake, his murder. 
 
 This natural heritage to live, his Time, is a 
 gift of a transcendant law, and law is law, only 
 as it preserves the fullest measure of Time’s 
 fruitive power. 
 
 But Time is not the wherewithal upon which a 
 man can live. He must have Place as a recipro- 
 cating power. And Time’s adjustment to the 
 Place he has, determines his success or failure in 
 the world. And so we have in man, a creature of 
 both Time and Place. The whole end of life be- 
 ing but to bring these two to an adjustment. And 
 Law to insure Time assures a Place. One is of 
 the other wrought, both much alike. 
 
 12 
 
GOVERNMENT 
 
 The idealisms of the human race, of Liberty, 
 Progress, Fraternity, all are but different names 
 for a common state that has its end in Christ’s 
 great thought of Love itself. 
 
 They serve their purpose in that they but pave 
 the way and are but means to the ultimate 
 thought of man’s great place. 
 
 But what is Liberty if it be not Love, and what 
 is Love if it be not Life, and what is Life if it be 
 not Free, and what is Freedom but Harmony of 
 Time and Place? And here creeps in the pro- 
 vince of the State, the Law. Amidst the conflict- 
 ing passions of mankind to preserve the higher 
 and restrain the lower. Maintain a peace and 
 hold always open the gate of opporunity, which 
 is no more nor less than freedom. For Govern- 
 ment if it do naught but preserve the Time and 
 Place of man, affords him all the opportunity 
 that he need, protects him in all the natural rights 
 he has and gives him all he honestly can demand. 
 
 But if it through mistake attempts at more 
 than this, it shirks the only purpose that it right- 
 fully has. The problem of Time and Place, the 
 preservation of internal peace, is the chief con- 
 cern of Governmental Parentage. 
 
SOCIETY 
 
 Man comes into the world through no fault or 
 purpose of his own, but rather through the desire 
 of those who come before and choose his being. 
 Now it is not right that when he comes robbery 
 should meet him at the cradle, impoverish rather 
 than nourish him, and teach him from his birth 
 a false doctrine of success, that measures life not 
 by what he creates, but by the amount he takes 
 to himself from his fellows. Eather should it be 
 that presents be awaiting him, that wise men ap- 
 preciate him, that his first conception be that 
 there is a place made ready, a welcome, that he 
 may feel a natural impulse to be generous in fill- 
 ing it. 
 
 Embarrassed would one feel at a hospitality 
 that offers a cold hand, a sharp look and a ques- 
 tioning gaze. That gives no promise of refresh- 
 ment nor affords an opportunity for rest. That 
 would have the visit as short as possible and 
 the exit, as the the entrance, unheralded. 
 
 Embarrassment that makes an enemy of a 
 friend who might return even a hundredfold in 
 time of need a favor that meant no sacrifice. 
 
 14 
 
SOCIETY 
 
 But such is not the case ; for the great majority 
 there is no place made ready. At birth there is 
 imposed a task which becomes greater as age im- 
 poses obligation, and when at last he falls in with 
 decrepitude it is hard to understand why he has 
 stored so little. One reason is he was not born 
 a free man and never became one. Each year of 
 his life he paid one-half his earnings as tempo- 
 rary ransom for the freedom of place. He lived 
 from day to day, year to year, paying heavily 
 for the privilege of existence. Of such men there 
 are many, industrious, economical, valuable, but 
 the very fact of their enjoyment of the higher 
 and more commendable of society’s opportunities 
 has kept them struggling and worrying. Men 
 live strenuously when they should live peace- 
 fully, labor when they should rest, become nar- 
 row when they should become broad, and because 
 they fail to see the operation of divine law in the 
 activities of men turn skeptic and join themselves 
 with their enemies. Not understanding the prob- 
 lem of which they are a part, not understanding 
 themselves and their consequent rights and privi- 
 leges, they loose faith in the practicality of higher 
 law and pronounce a severe judgment that so- 
 ciety is and can be naught but a limitation of Hell. 
 
 15 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 Now, if such is the idea of many who are tem- 
 perate, industrious and frugal, intemperance 
 leads but to exaggerated thought and aggravated 
 action. Criminality is but the fruit of injustice. 
 If we would be our brother ’s friend, be Christian 
 in its primal conception, exploitation cannot be 
 the basis of our excuse. 
 
 For if you exploit a man as to his Place you rob 
 him as to his Time, and slavery, serfdom, murder 
 are naught but being unbrotherly. 
 
 The failure in the preservation to a man of 
 Place is the resultant wrongs that beset men in 
 the problems of government. 
 
 h 
 
 16 
 
EXPLOITATION 
 
 Society resolves itself into two great classes — 
 Exploiters and Exploited; the third is so small it 
 need not here be mentioned. You probably be- 
 long to one class or the other. At the present 
 time a man and his family are worth about $5,- 
 000.00 in the market. A difference between 
 economic and legalized slavery is that in one 
 instance the public does not know and has no 
 means of finding out the exact price and in the 
 other it has. The economic is the more polite 
 and politic, but it is just about twice that amount 
 that elevates a man from a position where he 
 must labor and support two families to that 
 where his own is supported. We all desire suc- 
 cess, but its chief meaning is to elevate oneself 
 from the exploited to the exploiters. A success- 
 ful man is generally a man of wealth, and his 
 wealth is almost invariably capital and has ex- 
 ploitationary power. Practically all wealth the 
 moment it is created resolves itself under our 
 present system into capital. A man cannot have 
 wealth unless he be a capitalist and an exploiter. 
 Wealth for that very reason is enslaving man. 
 
 17 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 If we could have wealth that was not capital we 
 would be a most wonderful people. Our hanks 
 would be so full of money that you would almost 
 have to pay the borrower. Pay the banker to 
 take care of it, as though you were putting it in 
 a Safe Deposit vault. 
 
 But, as money in the eyes of our present think- 
 ers does so much and man so little, it is in great 
 demand, greater sometimes than man himself. 
 The reason for this is that so many live on money 
 that there is an under production and insuf- 
 ficiency of natural necessities. 
 
 At the end of the year, with the assistance of 
 those who live on money, we have eaten up most 
 everything and worn out nearly everything, and 
 the great majority must borrow enough to last 
 until the next pay day. 
 
 Wealth as wealth is a good thing, but as capi- 
 tal it is a curse to the human race; the encour- 
 agement of indolence and all of its vices. So at 
 the place where wealth resolves itself into capi- 
 tal, it is well to question it, to diminish its power 
 over the people and protect them in their free- 
 dom. 
 
 Now wealth resolves itself into capital, not in 
 the air we breathe, nor in the Sun that shines, 
 
 18 
 
EXPLOITATION 
 
 not in the abstraction of thought, nor in the vivid- 
 ness of imagination, but as is and can only be 
 the case, upon a very substantial and material 
 footing, the solid ground upon which we live. 
 And wherever and whenever land is permitted to 
 be a basis of exploitation, there capitalism is, and 
 it grows and thrives as land exploitation is in- 
 creased and extended under selfish and autocratic 
 law. 
 
LAND EXPLOITATION 
 
 The idea that land exploitation is the basis of 
 mnch social and governmental wrong is not new. 
 It has had consideration in the writings of many 
 of our most renowned and reputable political and 
 social authorities, but their remedies have been 
 so Utopian and their application involved so con- 
 siderable a change that their thought has had 
 but a limited influence upon governmental pro- 
 cedure. The existing order changeth but slowly. 
 Eeformation is a long-drawn-out and difficult 
 process. It is not the end that attracts the mind 
 and attaches to itself practicality so much as the 
 methods towards its achievement. It is only as 
 the means are at hand and the steps unfolded 
 that effort is made toward accomplishment. But 
 our land system is wrong, and it is wrong be- 
 cause it has been capitalized. And of all things 
 that deny the truth of the definition of capital as 
 savings it is a most striking example. Capital 
 is, as has been said, wealth in the process of ex- 
 ploitation, and landed wealth is no exception to the 
 rule. Now land has been capitalized, and this 
 capitalization is continually increasing for sev- 
 
 20 
 
LAND EXPLOITATION 
 
 f 
 
 eral reasons. There is a limited amount to be 
 had. The demands upon the land are ever in- 
 creasing with the growth of population and the 
 pressure and requirements of social advance. 
 The cost of its protection is continually decreas- 
 ing with its increased value and the burden of 
 this increased cost is being shifted onto improve- 
 ments and personalty. That is from the should- 
 ers of the land owners upon the backs of the peo- 
 ple, irrespective of the protection they receive, 
 and their necessity for it. Here is the reason 
 and it is well founded for those ideas ranging 
 from Anarchy to Socialism. The poor man is a 
 disinterested party who labors and pays for a 
 protection that exploits him. He can’t be blamed 
 for he is right, and unless men realize a few prin- 
 ciples of justice aside from protection of prop- 
 erty, the whole system will swing from despotism 
 to anarchy and the compromise of justice remain 
 disregarded. There may be such a thing as right 
 
 >■ to property, but there is no such thing as a right 
 
 to exploit with property, for with exploitation 
 creeps in injustice, and the whole purpose of the 
 law if society is to remain free and the state 
 just, is to prevent this exploitation as far as pos- 
 sible. Now the foundation of all wealth, the 
 
 21 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 source of all opportunity, the basis of all free- 
 dom, the beginning of all natural right, is land, 
 and when you capitalize place, you capitalize man 
 and the whole social system under which he op- 
 erates. The basic thing is not to prevent land 
 being capitalized, hut land becoming wealth, for 
 if land is not first wealth, it can never become 
 capital. Wealth is that which has value in ex- 
 change, and if land has but little value in ex- 
 change it represents but little wealth. Land value 
 is a mortgage on society. Land means Liberty. 
 So the whole process of the law should be to pre- 
 vent as far as possible land having value in ex- 
 change, and to render it at all times as easy of 
 access as possible. This can never be done under 
 our present system of land ownership, which is 
 becoming more and more independent of the 
 state, with a stewardship ever less likely to be 
 called to account. It is simply a strife as to who 
 can seize upon the most territory. There is no 
 reason for it, it is not in harmony with law, nor a 
 necessity for it, but is a most anarchic and des- 
 potic procedure, capitalizing and upsetting every- 
 thing. If land is tilled when the owner gets half 
 and the tiller half, it would yet be tilled if the 
 tiller got the whole thing. An unrestricted own- 
 
 22 
 
LAND EXPLOITATION 
 
 ership is far from an incentive to increased ef- 
 fort, and if we have tillers now we would yet 
 have tillers if those who did not till never inter- 
 fered. In other words, a man who does not work 
 never inspires another with the idea. Our civili- 
 zation does not need landlords to make it pro- 
 gressive, but farmers and producers. Those who 
 theorize that their work as boss is necessary to 
 obtain anything out of a man are badly mistaken. 
 A man is his own best boss. Their sympathy for 
 their fellows is sadly misdirected and society 
 would be better off if they first took good care of 
 themselves. 
 
 Now there are many who have favored nation- 
 alization and socialism proceeds on that theory, 
 but it is not here the purpose to advocate such a 
 scheme of land tenure, for there is a better 
 method, more suited to present standards and 
 present conditions. Nationalization in its in- 
 cipiency necessitates a working over of our pres- 
 ent system productive of unnecessary commo- 
 tion, change and unrest, and conducive to a feel- 
 ' ing of insecurity and injustice. The problem is, 
 not to upset society, but inculcate into it a differ- 
 ent working order, that in itself will slowly, al- 
 most imperceptibly change the whole modern 
 
 23 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 tendency. Nationalization is not necessary, for 
 it is not expedient. It partakes of an imperson- 
 ality, an autocracy that is to be avoided as much 
 as possible. The individual does not exist for the 
 state, but the state for the individual. Independ- 
 ence cannot be achieved where there is no free- 
 dom of choice, nor justice be where there is no 
 trial of effort. A man has a right to obtain that 
 which he desires, irrespective and independent 
 of any intermediary providing his desire is sane 
 and his method honorable. He has a right to 
 change his abode as often as he may desire, pro- 
 viding he meets those obligations which such a 
 change may rightfully impose. Upon his free- 
 dom of choice depends his happiness, and if he 
 stay, let it be long or short, as he is prompted. 
 Private ownership is the one under which we now 
 live and it is the one under which we can best 
 continue, for it means nothing more than perma- 
 nency, security, and those ideas of kinship which 
 it would be unwise and intolerable to supplant. 
 That upon Private ownership there he imposed 
 the task of rightful usage is the chief concern of 
 society. 
 
 24 
 
V 
 
 RIGHTFUL USAGE 
 
 But how are we to impose the task of rightful 
 usage? And is it not so that usage is indeter- 
 minate and uncertain, dependable upon many 
 things such as scientific discovery, increased pop- 
 ulation, increasing needs, who is to be the arbiter 
 of all this and what automatic power can make it 
 so ? The answer is, the State. But can the State 
 enact a law stable and certain, under which a 
 man can live with a feeling of security, and at 
 the same time meet a condition of society that is 
 ever changing, a standard that is always rising? 
 Can it act without being unpleasantly dictatorial 
 and foolishly inquisitive? In its actions can it 
 prompt regard and give rise to a patriotic desire 
 to meet demands rather than evade? Can it do 
 this and yet maintain an individual rather than a 
 social right? We shall see. 
 
 25 
 
PATERNALISM 
 
 If the law would penalize indolence and reward 
 activity, if the State took cognizance that the in- 
 dividual was a social trustee, and expected from 
 him a rightful accounting for his stewardship, 
 there would enter some justice into our govern- 
 mental relationship, some respect for it as an in- 
 stitution, but where it chastises the progressive 
 and heaps an ever-increasing burden on the pro- 
 ductive faculty, it encourages no virtue, but 
 arouses distrust seeking the first opportunity to 
 evade. 
 
 The individual is never called into question by 
 the state as to his stewardship. That rightful 
 usage which is the first concern of Society is not 
 enforced. The individual never meets the state 
 on a moral plane, it is always and invariably the 
 economic, and being the economic, it is mistaken. 
 On the creative, the productive part of its sub- 
 jects, it acts like a slave driver, rather than a sen- 
 sible man. Imposing ever-increasing burdens, as 
 the subject shows evidence of endurance, until at 
 last, the backbone of society is broken. The good 
 
 26 
 
PATERNALISM 
 
 are all broken down or killed off, and the indolent 
 are more indolent than ever. 
 
 But wherein is this indolence to be penalized, 
 and in what manner is thrift to be rewarded? 
 How can the system be individual and at the 
 same time not involve impossible specializations. 
 Rightful stewardship is the chief concern of So- 
 ciety. It is here the government meets the in- 
 dividual and passes judgment. It is here that 
 indolence can be penalized and thrift rewarded, 
 and it can be done simply, uniformly, justly in 
 the application of the taxing power under a gen- 
 eral law. 
 
 r 
 
POWER OF TAXATION 
 
 In the face of the system of taxation we now 
 have, we find it difficult for that which is civiliza- 
 tion to maintain itself. There is a conspiracy 
 against it ever within. 
 
 Taxation is the first incident to sovereignty. 
 It is the chief arm of the state to enforce Black- 
 stones, conception of the law which would com- 
 mand that which is right and prohibit that which 
 is wrong. Without taxation a state is powerless 
 to carry out its decrees or maintain its organiza- 
 tion. The strength of the governmental idea is 
 dependent upon the nature and manner of the 
 taxing power. Taxation is the first concern of 
 Society in its Governmental Relationship. It is 
 the question that must be first solved and rightly 
 before the state can undertake the task for which 
 it was created. It is the basis of all right social 
 dealing and relationship, and if injustice creeps 
 into society, it is most likely through an abuse of 
 this taxing power. The main purpose of the 
 state, to maintain justice, is often jeopardized by 
 its own autocratic misdemeanor. A just system 
 of taxation is the first requisite of a just sov- 
 
 28 
 
POWER OF TAXATION 
 
 ereignty, and a strong system of a strong state. 
 
 It is a moral question of the highest importance 
 and its economy is inseparate from a moral ideal- 
 ism. It knows no such thing as expediency. It ; 
 expects no such thing as sacrifice. It involves in 
 its application the highest social feelings and 
 the keenest appreciation of duty, as a rod of 
 chastisement ever ready to punish and restrain, 
 but never to arouse the slightest fear in him who 
 pursues the tenor of an honest way. An ex- 
 change between society and the individual, its 
 continuance is based unequivocably upon a strata 
 of honorable dealing. Taxation then is not an 
 economic idea, but fundamentally a social rela- 
 tionship, and one that requires thoughtful study 
 and a deed regard for individual rights and privi- 
 leges. 
 
 29 
 
PEINCIPLES OF ADAM SMITH. 
 
 The four principles or canons of Taxation as 
 laid down by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Na- 
 tions have met with some acceptance, not because 
 they represent any unusual economic idea, but 
 because they are in most part social truths and 
 cannot well be denied. But the application of 
 these principles to the system of taxation as in- 
 stituted has in the main been rather limited: 
 
 (1) The subjects of every state ought to con- 
 tribute towards the support of the Government 
 as near as possible in proportion to their re- 
 spective abilities; that is, in proportion to the 
 revenue they enjoy under the protection of the 
 state. 
 
 (2) The tax which every individual is bound 
 to pay ought to be certain and not arbitrary. 
 
 (3) Every tax ought to be levied at the time 
 and in the manner in which it is most likely to be 
 convenient for the contributor to pay it. 
 
 (4) Every tax ought to be contrived so as 
 both to take out and keep out of the pockets of 
 the people as little as possible over and above 
 
 30 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ADAM SMITH 
 
 what it brings into the public treasury of the 
 state. 
 
 These maxims are insufficient in that they give 
 no general idea of a possible system, but they 
 are worth using to test the desirability of those 
 systems which are in force, and it will be found 
 that none of those in force meet the requirements 
 of these principles. 
 
 It is not maxims of taxation, however, which 
 the people want, but a system that can be de- 
 fended in the face of criticism. When such a sys- 
 tem is presented the need of maxims is done away 
 in the clear, moral righteousness of the system 
 itself. 
 
 31 
 
A VIOLATION OF RULES 1, 2, 3, 4 
 
 The imposition of an indirect tax is but the be- 
 ginning of a series of injustices. It has its foun- 
 dation, in distrust and its continuance is sys- 
 tematized deceit. This system of taxation, which 
 would pick a man’s pocket without his knowing 
 it, is conducive in itself to that very method of 
 retaliation. It is a tax not only on patience, but 
 on virtue, and brings unto the coffers of the state, 
 the smallest proportion to the cost of its imposi- 
 tion. It is an unprofitable business. When the 
 state acts toward its subjects as though they 
 were unperceptive creatures, and trusts for its 
 popularity on their ignorance and dup-ableness, 
 it is high time to question its morality and doubt 
 the truth of its economy. The state must at all 
 times act free and openly, must take its citizens 
 into its confidence or it can beget little in return. 
 
 32 
 
PROTECTIVE TARIFF 
 
 s 
 
 A protective idea is a type of special legisla- 
 tion, a narrow sectionalism, giving rise to in- 
 ternal differences unjustifiable and unnecessary. 
 
 Nationalism is Internationalism, peace, har- 
 mony and Christian, but Sectionalism means do- 
 mestic uncertainty, unrest and foreign dissension. 
 
 Protection is the outgrowth of Capitalism. It 
 is an idea that has no basis of fact, and is encour- 
 aged by a superficial conception of social econ- 
 omy. Its application brings into practice the 
 evasive, the dishonest and the disagreeable. It 
 is impractical and uncertain. A temptation from 
 its inception to its enforcement. An appropria- 
 tion in the nature of robbery with governmental 
 sanction. It is expensive, elusive and disgusting, 
 it has no moral side, but a ridiculous impecuni- 
 osity. 
 
 
 33 
 
PERSONAL TAX 
 
 Personal property is fundamentally and truth- 
 fully the nearest approach to property right. 
 The right to property in land is more or less a 
 communal right, because it represents no per- 
 sonal expenditure of labor, and the state should 
 and must have authority as to its disposition, its 
 development and its usage, in order to maintain 
 the fundamental purpose of its existence, but that 
 branch of property which is brought into exist- 
 ence through the expenditure of labor alone, and 
 commonly called personal property, is rightfully 
 personal, and the authority of the state should 
 be on the side of its prctection, its encourage- 
 ment and a freedom of all the prerogatives which 
 the individual may choose to exercise in regard 
 to it. Any interference is a usurpation of social 
 authority over individual right and privilege. It 
 is an exploitation by society of the individual. An 
 unnecessary and uncalled for interference on the 
 part of the state in matters in which it rightfully 
 has no concern. An intermeddling, which is 
 baneful, in that it is a tax on thrift and energy, 
 to maintain indolence and indifferent application. 
 
PERSONAL TAX 
 
 Individualism, freedom, liberty, the highest and 
 impelling motives in human nature revolt at such 
 interference. A continual division, a communism 
 of all production, socialism with the dictatorial 
 prerogatives of a tyrannical majority are not, but 
 in line with the maintenance of such an absurd 
 and basically unjust policy. Let the government 
 tax the opportunity it gives, and not the fruits 
 of its exercise. Why should the man who creates 
 pay the taxes of a man who does nothing with 
 an equal or greater opportunity in which he 
 is protected f Why should thrift, and a desire to 
 be presentable, be taxed and burdened, while 
 sloth and carelessness escape the censure of no- 
 tice? Why should a man labor to build a borne, 
 fill it with furnishings pleasing to the eye, and 
 comforting to the body, and be burdened with 
 tax that indolence may be less burdened and more 
 encouraged. Two men own adjacent tracts of 
 ground of sanle size and value. A improves his 
 and makes use of it, he is of service to himself 
 and the community. B makes no use of his, but 
 holds it as a speculation. The more A pays the 
 less B pays. Wherein is this a symposium of 
 justice ? Truly from the states standpoint, a man 
 is better off if he does nothing, or has the tools 
 
 35 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 and implements of savagery, rather than civiliza- 
 tion. Every time the state steps into a man’s 
 home, instead of encouragement and commenda- 
 tion, it leaves behind its censure. My home is 
 my castle. The state should so regard it, and 
 has no more right therein than an individual 
 without my asking, and if he cannot come with 
 commendation for my efforts I care not to have 
 him, and if law is but an inexcusable and unwar- 
 ranted censure and interference on the part of 
 many, it has no friendship for me nor I for it. 
 
 A tax on personalty is naught at its best, but a 
 gradual social absorption of individual effort. 
 At times it is not gradual but swift, despotic and 
 uncompromising. An inconsiderate and unjust 
 appropriation. 
 
 36 
 
JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE. 
 
 John Doe under our present system owns sev- 
 eral hundred, perhaps several thousand acres of 
 land, far more than his natural need, far more 
 than he can personally cultivate. He is protected 
 by law in this ownership, he can do as he pleases 
 with it. There is only one condition imposed and 
 that is he pay a tax. This tax being direct is 
 never national, if it is outside of corporate limits 
 it is never municipal. It remains to be merely 
 county, township and state, and as a result is in- 
 considerate and small. If a municipal tax were 
 imposed he would never cease his complaint, 
 could not understand its justice, yet he lives in 
 the very center of our civilization, enjoys all of 
 its advantages, sells in the city markets and is 
 unquestionably a citizen, not only of his locality, 
 but first and fundamentally of the nation, which 
 must be localized in order to have practicalness 
 and centralization. Because this burden of civili- 
 zations maintenance is cast from him onto the 
 shoulders of the city dweller, he has little concern 
 for any question outside of his own immediate 
 vicinity, and that this separation be continued 
 
 37 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 as long as possible is liis chief concern. His 
 stewardship is great, but his accounting is small, 
 and about all he knows is that the people are keep- 
 ing up a very expensive organization of which he 
 gets the chief and greatest benefit, of which he is 
 almost entirely independent, but in which they 
 are entirely dependent. He is independent and 
 because he is so, is rich. 
 
 Richard Roe buys a city lot of John Doe, who, 
 when the city came up to his land, had a part of 
 it annexed to the city that he might obtain its 
 advantages and subdivided. Roe buys the lot on 
 the installment plan, and after considerable sav- 
 ing and economy gets it paid for. He then pro- 
 ceeds to build his house, following out a laudable 
 and commendable undertaking, prompted by nat- 
 ural need. To do this he must borrow consider- 
 able money, and now how the law does smite him. 
 As long as John Doe had it he paid about 50c an 
 acre tax, or perhaps 15c on that vacant lot, but 
 the next year under Richard Roe’s ownership 
 the tax rises to $40 or $50 on the same piece of 
 ground. John Doe has done nothing but exploit, 
 Richard Roe has done something and is exploited. 
 Richard pays a tax on enterprise, and a tax on 
 enterprise is a robbery of virtue. But the tax 
 
 38 
 
JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE. 
 
 Richard Roe pays is on all the property and he 
 rightfully and in truth only owns the lot, the bal- 
 ance represented by a mortgage is owned by 
 someone else. Say the mortgage is $3,000. Now 
 when the mortgagee loans his money he makes 
 the interest rate high enough so he can pay a tax 
 on it, and Richard, instead of being able to bor- 
 row at 5 per cent, pays 6 or 7, possibly 8 per cent. 
 Poor Richard, he now pays taxes on $7,000 worth 
 of property and only has $500 worth, and that he 
 paid a big price for. But Roe’s tax does not 
 end here. He pays a tax on his household goods. 
 The neater, more tasty and artistic his tastes, the 
 higher his tax, and then when he clothes and 
 feeds himself, in steps the Government taking the 
 very food out of his mouth and the clothes off 
 from his back, and these taxes are all on necessi- 
 ties. Truly the Government does not tax him in 
 proportion to the protection it bestows, or on the 
 property right defended, but on the thrift he 
 shows even in the face of obstacles and the more 
 he acts like a civilized man. Now if this $70 or 
 $80 tax, Roe’s contribution to the Government, 
 or more properly $150 which more nearly repre- 
 sents his contribution, were levied right in the 
 first place, and the burden of increased taxation 
 
 39 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 was kept upon the land, rather than placed upon 
 the necessities of life, land values would not in- 
 crease as they do, and land exploitation would be 
 far from as attractive a pursuit. Wealth, instead 
 of pouring into the laps of individuals would 
 pour into the coffers of the state as taxes. John 
 Doe could not long hold his lots at a high price in 
 the face of a tax like that, nor could he afford to 
 allow his land to escape the highest possible cul- 
 tivation. If he did not do the right thing by so- 
 ciety, the government supplants his stewardship 
 with that of a man who will. 
 
 So, instead of penalizing labor by robbing a 
 man of its fruits and handicapping him at the 
 outset, we should encourage him and this means 
 the removal of all tax on labor, or its products, 
 the tax resting where it originally lay, on the 
 basic opportunity, on land alone. 
 
 A man never improves a tract of ground hut 
 that his neighbors are an interested party. He 
 never labors but that it is of social advantage. 
 His thrift and industry have their social lesson. 
 His productiveness can result neither directly 
 nor indirectly in aught but social betterment. 
 Now this faculty is one that society commends, 
 and the state should encourage, and instead of 
 
 40 
 
JOHN DOE AND RICHARD ROE. 
 
 41 
 
 increasing liis tax as he created the state should 
 lower it and the punishment of a high tax would 
 fall all the more heavily on that which was unde- 
 veloped and uncultivated, and the unimproved be 
 within closer reach of the state and consequently 
 a better stewardship. 
 
 But the State can never be too watchful of the 
 Liberty of its citizens. By the time a man’s fac- 
 ulties are extended over a square mile or so of 
 territory, in the present populated condition, even 
 if not in the hunting stage of society, he has 
 plenty of freedom to live and develop and exert 
 himself to the full limit of all his powers. A 
 proper guardianship necessitates therefore some 
 limitation, and this can be effected by adding the 
 element of progression. So, if the tax would be 
 lower as he improves, let it increase as he concen- 
 trates, for the whole effort should be to bring 
 about the highest possible development, that 
 values shall not go into the land, but upon the 
 land, and a man could not extend his stewardship 
 were it not attended by a high development of his 
 properties and a management exceptionally pro- 
 ductive and business-like, requiring close per- 
 sonal attention and application, the antithesis 
 of the absentism of our present system. 
 
 41 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 The world is a heritage to man, with a steward- 
 ship ever changing, a responsibility ever increas- 
 ing, a division that must be ever continuing. A 
 law that would make the ultimate the finest and 
 the finished. Civilization is the practice of this 
 law, Christianity is its perfection. Ye cannot 
 tell one from the other. Government is a success 
 or failure as it seeks its enforcement. Taxation 
 is just or unjust as it approaches it in its appli- 
 cation. 
 
 42 
 
A PROGRESSIVE, GRADUATED LAND TAX 
 
 First. It would make land as a speculative in- 
 vestment far less desirable, for the state would 
 be appropriating to itself yearly as taxes, a great 
 part of the unearned increment, that is, of its ad- 
 vance in value irrespective of any improved con- 
 dition. 
 
 Second. It would effect a continual division of 
 land as a result of the increased taxation on an 
 increased value, following natural demands, 
 which would bring into operation a more intense 
 system of cultivation, to meet the increased need. 
 This division would not be autocratic, but so grad- 
 ual and unperceptive as to cause no disturbance 
 of property right nor tenancy. 
 
 Third. It would limit a man’s holdings to that 
 which he improved, and every continuance of ac- 
 quisition would require a little better improve- 
 ment than that which preceded, rather than less 
 as is now the case. But it puts no arbitrary 
 limitation on his opportunities nor any unjust re- 
 striction on his stewardship. It is not dictatorial 
 nor personal. 
 
 Fourth. It would encourage a development and 
 
 43 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 improvement far ahead of the present, and by 
 lowering the tax on the first acquisition when im- 
 proved would insure him (1) a Greater perma- 
 nency of this tenancy and a greater independence. 
 (2) The improvements in themselves adding to 
 the productivity would be to the advantage of 
 the State and still farther strengthen his posses- 
 sion, so in a highly improved property a man 
 would not only be as safe, hut safer in his pos- 
 session than he is now ; but in a poorly improved 
 piece his tenancy would be more precarious, his 
 stewardship more questioned, and he would not 
 progress in his ownership except as he was satis- 
 fied he could meet the requirements and exactions 
 of the state. Consequently he cannot simply own, 
 he must make use of his ownership and improve 
 it, or his right is in jeopardy and he cannot ex- 
 tend, but that he must meet a greater require- 
 ment. If the state expects something from the 
 landholder it will get something, otherwise it will 
 not. 
 
 Fifth. By lowering land values it would un- 
 questionably draw population back to the land 
 and from the cities into the rural districts. This 
 is a necessity if our civilization is to be anything 
 
 44 
 
A PROGRESSIVE, GRADUATED LAND TAX 
 
 but a congested, dissatisfied, disgruntled mass 
 with a livelihood both precarious and uncertain. 
 
 The idea that people live in town, and the coun- 
 try is deserted because of a natural desire to cen- 
 tralize, and because of the fascination of city life, 
 is untrue. That it is more natural for the human 
 race to live in crowded tenements and in conges- 
 tion than to live in the free and open is an unwar- 
 ranted and ignorant condemnation of human na- 
 ture. It is not so. But it is not natural to expect 
 them to live miles apart, when the population 
 would have them closer together. It is not nat- 
 ural to expect them to live in dilapidated houses, 
 look at dilapidated barns, see hen houses and pig 
 pens without any attempt at beautification. If 
 the country was more populous, as the greatness 
 of our population and our city congestion proves 
 it should be; if it was improved and beautified 
 and not left a mass of black loam, as unattractive 
 as a desert ; if roads and fences, houses, barns 
 were built after some idealized conception that 
 follows ownership rather than tenancy; if li- 
 braries, schools, churches were not supported by 
 an absentee landlord, but by a permanent and in- 
 terested occupant; if country life was the life 
 of home and friends it would take on a far differ- 
 
 45 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 ent aspect, would be far more attractive. The 
 city is overdone and the country is underdone. A 
 building a quarter of a mile high is not near as 
 sane as one a quarter of a mile long. If on every 
 40-acre tract valued at $10,000 there was $10,000 
 worth of improvements, what a different aspect 
 our rural communities would take. But values 
 are going into the land, when they should go on 
 the land. The passion is for land, rather than its 
 improvement. And why is it? Because we tax 
 the improvement rather than the land, and the 
 tax on improvement is ever increasing, and on 
 land ever decreasing, and there is no limitation 
 or restriction on ownership. The original source 
 of all productivity is the rural district, and it 
 must increase in population or society will die of 
 congestion. The country not only feeds the city, 
 but it feeds its mills and factories, and if the sup- 
 ply is not of the kind and great enough for these, 
 they shut down in idleness. Country life is a sign 
 of a nation’s living. It is a standard of civiliza- 
 tion. It is not the enormous architectural and 
 engineering triumphs, but its domesticity. 
 
 Sixth. It would give our civilization and our 
 population a greater permanency. Possession 
 now in the face of such high taxes, high prices 
 
 46 
 
A PROGRESSIVE, GRADUATED LAND TAX 
 
 and high interest rate is to the debtor, and the 
 man who improves, rather precarious and uncer- 
 tain. There is little permanency of occupation 
 or location in our civilization. A great mass of 
 our population is on the move. This is not a con- 
 dition to be desired. It is restless, immoral, un- 
 productive. There is a lack of skill in those em- 
 ployed because of the uncertainty of steady em- 
 ployment. Men are becoming more and more fol- 
 lowers of all trades and masters of none. This 
 unrest and dissatisfaction always follows the 
 growth of landlordism and under it any country 
 will go to ruin. The Landlord exploits the tenant 
 and the tenant abuses his possession, and we have 
 in time famine, for we have not reckoned with the 
 transcendent law of nature. 
 
 Seventh. A tax on land alone is more reliable, 
 more easily assessed and collected, more con- 
 ducive to honesty, besides its conformity to 
 higher standards of justice. It cannot be shifted 
 without effort, an effort which is the mainspring 
 of society, and that which is shifted, if it be so, is 
 more equitably diffused and easily borne. It acts 
 as an incentive to the highest and most intense 
 development, for profit is a balance not before, 
 but after, an original application. And the 
 
 47 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 greater the original application the greater the 
 impetus given in keeping society in motion, and 
 the greater must be the original application with 
 the greater social need and increased tax. 
 
 48 
 
UNEVENNESS AND LACK OF SYMMETRY 
 IN OUR CITY DEVELOPMENT 
 
 One of the strongest and most prominent char- 
 acteristics of our municipalities is the lack of 
 symmetry in their development. Irregularity 
 and non-conformity are everywhere in evidence. 
 Improvement is side by side with dilapidation 
 and neglect. Beauty, a general scheme of archi- 
 tecture, a harmonious blending of ideas, is en- 
 tirely lacking. Skyscrapers, hundreds of feet 
 high, rise adjacent to poorly built and practically 
 unkept properties. The extremes meet side by 
 side. A $10,000,000 building is next to a $10,000 
 one. The $10,000,000 has been spent on an area 
 that should have been several times as great, but 
 high land value prevented it, and the more taxes 
 improvements pay the less land has to bear, the 
 higher its value and the more difficult is such ex- 
 tension. Our system of taxing in the air is con- 
 ducive to air construction. It is an air tax. If 
 we kept the tax a little closer to the ground, we 
 would have less building of air castles and more 
 extended development. This skyscraping busi- 
 ness is an eyesore. It is a waste in time, ma- 
 
 49 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 terial, labor and human life. If the entire busi- 
 ness district of New York had nothing on it less 
 than 40 stories high, what waste and foolishness 
 it would represent. But 40 stories is a paying 
 investment ; after a time it will be either a hole in 
 the ground or 60 stories, sometime 80 stories 
 and so on. What genius to exist side by side with 
 such foolishness. Now, if half the tax on the 
 $10,000,000 building was shifted onto the adjacent 
 property, the improvements would run much 
 more even. The skyline would be more on a level, 
 the development more harmonious, of greater 
 beauty, safety and permanency. Genius cannot 
 be ever getting us out of such conditions; there 
 is a limit to sane and sound construction. En- 
 gineering skill can be overtaxed and uselessly 
 overworked. 
 
 50 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF REVENUE. 
 
 The possibilities arising out of a correct sys- 
 tem of taxation are greater than have been 
 enumerated. “The power to tax,” said Chief 
 Justice Marshall, “involves the power to de- 
 stroy.” How slow the people are to grasp the 
 opportunities of its exercise. Preservation and 
 creation are, however, the ultimate end of the law 
 and the legal exercise of all taxing power. 
 
 Taxation means power and as the state has this 
 power and rightfully exercises it, it brings within 
 the province and possibility of government, 
 whether National, State or Municipal, undertak- 
 ings that were before regarded as private in their 
 development, though public in character. I refer 
 to those things now done by public service cor- 
 porations, as lighting, heating, telephone and 
 street railway systems and interurban lines. 
 These things being so universally public are gov- 
 ernmental in their nature, as in our educational 
 and postal system. But these functions are not 
 numerous; they are important, and upon their 
 correct exercise depends much of social comfort 
 and communication, but the universality of a few 
 
 51 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 of our social needs does not necessitate a sociali- 
 zation of the whole. It is only in those lines 
 where competition is wasteful or extravagant, or 
 those monopolistic, that we need governmental 
 initiative and support. Every field of endeavor 
 should be left to the individual that can remain 
 free and open, without being destructive or 
 monopolistic. Now the basis of monopoly in our 
 great railway systems is the highway over which 
 the traffic is carried, and whenever it is possible 
 to leave this traffic to individual enterprise, it 
 would be well to do so. The State building and 
 maintaining the highways at its own expense, 
 and keeping always open the opportunity for pri- 
 vate initiative. Our highway system is now in- 
 complete and insufficient. It is not near what it 
 should be or could be made to be if it had back of 
 it the state, as compared to the centralized wealth 
 of individuals. Fine terminals and stations 
 would take the place of the congested and inade- 
 quate facilities of our present day. The question 
 not of dividends but civic pride and social con- 
 venience would always be uppermost in the minds 
 of our citizens. There would be less waste, 
 greater uniformity and systematization. A build- 
 ing with some regard to permanency and safety. 
 
 52 
 
THE POSSIBILITIES OF REVENUE 
 
 Think of an eight-track system from New York 
 to San Francisco and Chicago to New Orleans 
 with ramifications adequate and substantial. A 
 highway for every manner of conveyance and 
 every speed of travel. Such a thing is not within 
 the reach of Corporate law. It is too gigantic, 
 too idealistic, but it is within the reach of our 
 National government. It is one of those things 
 that gives to civilization the majesty of enduring 
 achievement, that inspires posterity to effort, that 
 is evidence of a concerted social movement. 
 
 The tendency of monopoly by shutting off in- 
 dividual enterprise is to cause a scarcity, and our 
 present accommodations are far behind the times, 
 but you allow individual enterprise always its 
 opportunity and it will furnish a supply equiva- 
 lent in extent and character with the demand, and 
 the power of originality will always be in evi- 
 dence. The great waste in our system of corpo- 
 rate privilege, where ten or fifteen trains a day 
 are run over a couple of poor unstable tracks, in- 
 stead of twenty over one of permanent and proud 
 construction, shows that corporate law cannot in 
 such undertakings take the place of social effort. 
 The possibilities of competition renders all such 
 construction cheap and haphazard. Roads are 
 
 53 
 
54 
 
 ELYSIA 
 
 built without regard to social need, but according 
 to a conception limited by financial means and the 
 uncertainty of dividend-paying power. Such en- 
 terprise is always incomplete, in many instances 
 inefficient, and because it is so is the most dear 
 and expensive. It lacks the fundamental element 
 of personal feeling. There is not back of it the 
 man, but the dollar. 
 
 The Age of Capitalism is passing away. We 
 are in the dawn of a New Era, where the past is 
 inspiring men with dreams of gigantic efforts, 
 with thoughts of magnificent achievements. 
 Where the man is rising great and mighty. So- 
 ciety is laboring and uniting in a great scheme 
 of universal brotherhood. Where the prophets 
 of a false idealism have no place, but the great 
 universal law, unseen but felt, dwells within and 
 moves the whole human race. 
 
 54 
 
CAPITALIZATION 
 
 The obstacle between man and opportunity, be- 
 tween him and freedom, the bar which limits his 
 effort, is capitalization. It is not that which sets 
 him in motion as is generally supposed, but on 
 the contrary is a chain with a heavy ball. Capi- 
 tal in the sense economically used is naught but 
 the mortgage the devil holds on social progress. 
 For a capitalistic idea I have naught but pity, 
 contempt and derision. Those who would for- 
 mulate laws of wealth are blindly superficial and 
 socially ignorant. Capital knows no law unless it 
 be that of gravity, and an attempt to spiritualize 
 it and impart intelligence, life and movement to 
 it is but ignorance and superstition bowing 
 down and consulting a vain, sensless imagery. 
 Man, when you give him a place, is the whole 
 thing, but when you endeavor to make a creature 
 of the air out of him that never alights, yon under- 
 take an impossible thing, as he is now known to 
 be physically constituted, and when you endeavor 
 to describe such a creature’s movements in the 
 air, you undertake a task which in some of our 
 great writers is termed genius, but is naught but 
 
 55 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 Imagination run wild, and because of this known 
 force of gravity makes it difficult for even genius 
 to satisfy us as to such adaptation and give a 
 clear and definite description of such a creature 
 and his movements. Love, not capital, is the 
 moving power of the world. Now you capitalize 
 man when you capitalize place, and you capitalize 
 place when you remove man and labor from their 
 just and rightful opportunity. When land is 
 readily accessible, labor has a first and rightful 
 capitalistic value, that is, it is of some impor- 
 tance, it is the basis of some credit, but if it is in- 
 accessible, labor loses its dignity, and a dicta- 
 torial and selfish whim takes precedence over all 
 exertion. Liberty is fundamentally a question 
 of a country’s land system, and a correct land 
 system depends upon a correct application of the 
 taxing power. 
 
 56 
 
GOVERNMENTAL SOCIALISM 
 
 The Governing power should never be too far 
 removed from the people. If it is it ceases to be 
 of the people. There is a limitation that is not 
 only social, but geographical. The strength of all 
 organization depends upon the personality of 
 which it is composed, and the interknowledge of 
 that personality, the feeling of confidence and 
 friendship engendered. Now the strength of the 
 governing personalities can be discerned only 
 after intimate fellowship and association, and 
 the larger the body the more impossible such 
 knowledge becomes and the greater the probabil- 
 ity of an incapable leadership. This leadership, 
 where it is always subject to observation and cen- 
 sorship is more apt, and of necessity must be, 
 not only more democratic, but more efficient and 
 patriotic; but the larger the unit becomes the 
 greater is the opportunity for local favoritisms, 
 prejudices and differences to creep in, and the 
 more likely it is that important issues be unde- 
 termined and progressive methods be hampered. 
 The most efficient organization, the most progres- 
 sive, the most enthusiastic is that which is large 
 
 57 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 enough to perform the intended task, but not so 
 large that it lacks the feeling of strong personal 
 responsibility. Large units are not only un- 
 wieldy, but unprogressive, and the fundamental 
 reason is not economic, but social. 
 
 Society is primarily individual and the effort 
 of all Governmental activity should be to main- 
 tain it so. When society acts in large bodies of 
 men, it acts autocratically, often mistakenly, 
 slowly and with far less intelligence and patriot- 
 ism. The success of all undertakings, no matter 
 how great they are, is dependent upon an indi- 
 vidual spirituality, individual motive, individual 
 intelligence. Now the essential difficulty with 
 governmental Socialism is, that it concerns itself 
 in that in which there is no need. The strength 
 of this governmental idea is due to the prevalence 
 of the capitalistic and corporate idea. Capitalism 
 seems to possess such power that the Government 
 appears to be the only institution capable of con- 
 tending against it. Now this capitalistic idea is 
 absolutely nonsensical and idolatrous. It is a 
 fallacy and governmental capitalism is just as 
 foolish and unnecessary as capitalism itself. So- 
 cialism is naught but Governmental Capitalism. 
 We are in need of neither the one nor the other. 
 
 58 
 
) 
 
 GOVERNMENTAL SOCIALISM 
 
 It is individualization we want to get back to ; * 
 such is democratic, but Governmental Collectiv- * 
 ism is not democratic, but autocratic. A strife 
 between classes, rather than competition among 
 the masses, the dearth of individualism and its 
 initiative, a reactionary and thoughtless expe- 
 dient. 
 
 59 
 
LAW 
 
 The Universe is ruled by one great Law. It 
 regulates the movements of the stars. It perse- 
 veres in the activities of men. Because of it all 
 chaos has taken form, and Infinity moves on to- 
 ward the unknown. Our poor imaginations can- 
 not grasp its scope, nor can our thought pene- 
 trate its meaning, but within us an inherent be- 
 lief in the eternal fitness of things lifts us into 
 the hope, the confidence, that through it all one 
 great purpose runs, and Unity, Harmony, Love, 
 is Law, is God. 
 
 60 
 
CORPORATE LAW 
 
 What have Corporations done for us? Noth- 
 ing. 
 
 What have they done us for? Everything. 
 
 Our present civilization requires capitalization 
 no more than did that of our forefathers, when 
 life’s needs were simple as were its tools. 
 
 The reason why the laboring man has not 
 reaped the benefit of mechanical advancement is 
 not because of the impracticality of invention, or 
 the undesirability of improvement, hut because he 
 has permitted every idea invented to be capitalized 
 and monopolized from its origination through all 
 periods of its use. 
 
 We have by putting capitalization first made 
 socialization difficult to achieve. This is shown 
 to be the case in municipal undertakings, none of 
 which but would have come sooner had not capi- 
 talization and incorporation stood in the way. 
 Government construction of highways would, if 
 it had preceded that of corporate initiative, have 
 been far more swift, substantial and satisfactory. 
 As it is, the people have built and paid many times 
 over for the construction of the roads we now 
 
 61 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 have. This construction should have been done 
 by the government and operation and use left to 
 the people, and it could so have been done had the 
 government been originally endowed with a cor- 
 rect exercise of the taxing power, but it was so 
 weak it could not raise the revenue, and so short- 
 sighted it made no effort. The government had 
 neither system nor business in its management. 
 The statesman or politician could talk patriotic- 
 ally of the rights of the people and turn around 
 and exploit them. 
 
 Every branch of industry that has been monop- 
 olized by corporate law could have and would 
 have been just as thoroughly productive and ef- 
 ficient had it been left to operate under the law 
 of partnership where it originated. The partner- 
 ship is not too small an agreement for legitimate 
 business, but it is not satisfactory as a monopo- 
 listic institution. Nearly, if not all, of our great 
 Corporations started out as partnerships and 
 could have remained so, as far as the needs of the 
 people were concerned, but Corporate law af- 
 forded not only a means of concentration beyond 
 legitimacy, but was autocratic and permitted an 
 absenteeism to creep in, which every man who 
 had built up a business v and wanted to hang on to 
 
CORPORATE LAW 
 
 it beyond liis natural time, was prone to take ad- 
 vantage of and regarded as necessary. As a 
 result we have fossilized and stagnated our in- 
 dustrial advance, rather than rendered it neces- 
 sary and possible for the original and progres- 
 sive ideas to be the predominant and powerful 
 ones. 
 
 Corporations have done naught for us, but they 
 have done us considerable. There is no field of 
 productivity so large, no industry that requires 
 in its operation so much preparation that the peo- 
 ple by social organization and generous personal 
 contribution cannot insure it a successful and 
 prosperous inception, and an operation demo- 
 cratic and progressive. Our law of mortgages 
 insures as broad and as liberal a contribution un- 
 der a social agreement as it does under an eco- 
 nomic one. 
 
 The corporation on its very face is a relic of 
 Monarchy. It has been handed down to us from 
 the days when Kings and Queens showed signs 
 of their approval and favoritism in the grant of 
 monopoly and privilege. 
 
 63 
 
COERUPTION AND CORPORATE LAW 
 
 Corruption is the natural sequence of Corpo- 
 rate law, for Corporate law is but legal recogni- 
 tion of a corrupt idea. We have corruption for 
 we have legalized it, and that which we have 
 sown that shall we also reap. The effect of a 
 recognition of the capitalistic idea in the law of 
 a state is demoralizing to an incalculable degree 
 on the morals and equitable conceptions of the 
 people. It is conducive to a get-rich-quick ex- 
 ploitationary idea, so fascinating as it presents 
 itself in the guise of legal encouragement and pro- 
 tection, that it unconsciously influences the great 
 body of citizenship toward a dishonest, unsym- 
 pathetic and thoughtless conception of social duty 
 and obligation. 
 
 This tendency when encouraged becomes in the 
 weak and more unscrupulous flagrant dishonesty 
 and graft, and eventually ^inexcusable and pre- 
 meditated crime. Incorporation is and has come 
 to be recognized not only as a special economic 
 privilege, but as a means to evade acts which, if 
 individually performed, would be criminal in 
 nature. This possibility and fact of evasion has 
 rendered it necessary that there be enacted spe- 
 
 64 
 
CORRUPTION AND CORPORATE LAW 
 
 cial acts of punishment that will eventually reach 
 back again behind the corporation and inquire 
 into individual act and purpose, and restore the 
 personality and consequent liability, that has here- 
 tofore been evaded by the original incorporation. 
 This enactment of criminal statutes, especially 
 affecting the officers and directorate of the great 
 corporations, is hut the first knowledged sign of 
 the partiality, favoritism and injustice of the 
 corporate idea. 
 
 The few prosecutions that have been under- 
 taken, and the convictions that have been made, 
 are but evidence of the difficulty and improbabil- 
 ity of hasty and equitable punishment when a man 
 is permitted to take advantage of the many ave- 
 nues and recesses which the law affords him as 
 means of escape. 
 
 But incorporation has been so overdone and so 
 extended beyond all bounds of legitimate excuse, 
 and capitalistic accumulation has by it been per- 
 mitted to become so great, that the temptations 
 of and incentive to avarice are greater than that 
 of political power and far more subtle. And so 
 we find the corrupt influence of the corporation 
 in every branch of our political and governmental 
 life, and a farther enactment of statutes against 
 
 65 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 campaign contributions and for forced publicity. 
 These acts are but a beginning of a recognition 
 of the great corporate evil, and the nonsense of 
 the idea that ever brought them into existence 
 will become more and more apparent as the in- 
 justice and incorrigability of licensed privilege 
 begins to dawn upon the people. The eventual 
 complete repeal of corporate law is the only solu- 
 tion for the elimination of the dangerous and 
 powerful political entities, which have sprung up 
 within the state to combat and thwart the will of 
 a progressive citizenship. 
 
 The courts of the United States should never 
 endow a soulless, consciousless, capitalistic, dead, 
 intangible property right with a fiction that would 
 make it the equal of a living man. It is the doc- 
 trine of a superficial, unprogressive, narrow and 
 paganistic philosophy. A laughable, yet pathetic 
 attempt at a perpetuity no statute can ever estab- 
 lish, but rests alone in the operation of natural 
 law, recognized and obeyed. Christianity is far 
 above such teaching, far above such a conception. 
 The race would yet move on without corporate 
 law. It came into existence long before it was 
 ever thought, and it will live on long after it is 
 dead. 
 
 66 
 
GENIUS AND WASTE 
 
 Our present civilization is the most wasteful of 
 historic record. It is wasteful in every respect, 
 in material, life, labor, mentality. It is contin- 
 ually creating situations requiring a technical 
 mentality, which in turn proves to be a severe 
 drain on natural and material resources. The 
 mentality running as it does into specializations 
 has a tendency to narrow, confine and in a way 
 weaken the mind and the labor expended to so 
 approach the realm of brute force as to be unin- 
 spiring, tedious and undeveloping. It is, as it 
 appears in great part, a material civilization, 
 with a continual mechanical tendency; there is 
 nothing broadening nor spiritual about it. A 
 lawyer is a successful drudge, the architect a 
 detailer, the doctor and all professional and scien- 
 tific pursuits more or less the masters of a slavish 
 and intense application, purely intellectual. They 
 do the thinking and another man the labor, one is 
 devoid of thought, the other of physcial exertion ; 
 such a situation develops a man in reality but 
 little. There is an enormous waste in our intel- 
 lectual training, and a tremendous and ever-in- 
 
 67 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 creasing number of cases of nervous, physical 
 breadown and exhaustion. Our engineering feats 
 are evidences in many instances of wastefulness 
 in construction. Iron is used unsparingly, coal 
 wastefully and unnecessarily. 
 
 The conservation of natural resources under 
 present conditions is, as a practical thing, a most 
 difficult and important problem. A solution with- 
 out the adoption of governmental interference 
 and regulation of output is seemingly impossible. 
 Such interference is going to meet with its ob- 
 jections, it has its drawbacks. In the face of pres- 
 ent conditions, as the resultant of law, it will 
 effect the economic, and in turn, rights and privi- 
 leges. It means another autocratic step that must 
 be taken in the nature of enforced remedy, rather 
 than incipient prevention. 
 
 Now much of this waste is directly traceable to 
 our capitalistic and corporate law. The corpo- 
 rate gives rise to an unnatural and startling de- 
 mand. It must be ever feeding on genius, it is 
 ever testing mental and physical powers. It is 
 without question the great enslaver of the race. 
 There is no conservation about it. Waste in- 
 stead of being individual becomes vast and far- 
 reaching, mistakes, momentous, follies, gigantic. 
 
 68 
 
GENIUS AND WASTE 
 
 You cannot get back to the simple life and 
 thread your way through the maize of technical- 
 ity which our corporate law not only represents, 
 but produces. Law after law, statute after sta- 
 tute, but adds to the confusion of what is in real- 
 ity an anarchic and uncertain social relationship. 
 God alone can bring order out of the chaotic con- 
 fusion of infinite and endless detail, 
 
 69 
 
FINANCIAL SITUATION 
 
 It is only of recent date that the President of 
 the United States and his cabinet refused to sup- 
 port a group of American Bankers in their nego- 
 tiation of a $125,000,000 Chinese loan. Their re- 
 fusal to take part in this transaction aroused a 
 comment over the country, which was generally 
 favorable and well might it be so, for it involved 
 a question of extra-territoriality, and was so spe- 
 cial in its nature as to be a clear case of govern- 
 mental favoritism. While this group of Ameri- 
 cans were endeavoring to loan American Deposits 
 to a foreign power, thousands upon thousands of 
 American citizens were petitioning the brokers of 
 the United States in vain for loans to be used in 
 the improvement and development of property. 
 High rates of interest and high commissions were 
 being charged for accommodations involving no 
 risk of loss or any inconvenience. Many are the 
 deserving applicants who were being turned away 
 with a story of a money scarcity, and many were 
 the disappointments that met cherished plans and 
 deferred hopes. Yet, here alone, we know of a 
 vast sum seeking investment. The strange situa- 
 
 70 
 
FINANCIAL SITUATION 
 
 V* 
 
 tion of an American citizen unable to borrow his 
 own money. With security and integrity un 
 questioned lie must yield his place to the for - 
 eigner. at the door of his own American Bank, and 
 was not only asked to yield his place to the for- 
 eigner, but to lick him, if he failed to be as de- 
 serving as he. Is this patriotism or is this busi- 
 ness? Plainly business, and a poor business at 
 that. I most emphatically disagree with those 
 distinguished gentlemen who think our financial 
 situation is in good hands. It is in the hands of 
 naught but exploiters, who are deaf to every sen- 
 timent of patriotic appeal and blind to the real 
 demands and needs of the American people. 
 They rarely consider the good the dollar can do, 
 but the return it will make. This financial condi- 
 tion is but a usurer’s business, and if the business 
 is in good hands it is not because the business is 
 good, but the management safely usurious. Now, 
 wherein is the difficulty and the mistake? It is 
 fundamentally this : our system of finance as our 
 business generally is economic, not social. The 
 man is lost sight of in the enormity of the trans- 
 actions involved. These enormous loans involve 
 a responsibility of too great a magnitude. They 
 give to our financial institutions a questionable- 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 ness they might not otherwise have. It means 
 too close and dependable a relationship between 
 panic and the stock market. The surest loan, the 
 wisest loan, the best loan is the small personal 
 loan on improved real estate, with a good, honest, 
 temperate, industrious man back of it. There you 
 will find not only safety, but the feeling of obli- 
 gation; but when you make impersonal loans, as 
 those to corporations, you are, as has proven to 
 be the case, oftentimes loaning on naught but a 
 monopolistic idea and a temporary earning ca- 
 pacity. 
 
 In the face of all this we are met with a demand 
 for continued centralization. Get a little farther 
 away from the individual. Enterprises are now so 
 gigantic, some bankers tell us, that such centrali- 
 zation is required. Enterprises may be gigantic, 
 but legitimate enterprise is yet, as it always has 
 been, small, and if it is prosperous, it is conserva- 
 tive and not prodigal, growing naturally and not 
 spasmodically and of a sudden. But impersonal- 
 ity is not the only evil of our financial system. 
 There are many others deeply and firmly rooted 
 in an economic idea, in its turn deeply and firmly 
 rooted in an ignorance that has no root at all, and 
 among these is the loaning of money not only by 
 
 72 
 
FINANCIAL SITUATION 
 
 banks, but by individuals, on unimproved realty. 
 The willingness of our banking institutions and 
 private individuals to make farm loans, and their 
 preference for this class of security to that of im- 
 proved real estate, is but a sign of the confidence 
 people have generally in the continuation of land 
 as the basis of exploitation. This preference for 
 farm loans has done much to enhance land values ; 
 it has kept huge, yes, enormous sums out of pro- 
 ductive activity. It has cheapened the idea of 
 improvement, it has put many a check on busi- 
 ness and social enterprise. It is one of the rea- 
 sons for high prices, one of the reasons for low 
 wages, a great social misdemeanor. 
 
 But our system of money lending is so operated 
 as to be conducive of a credit rather than a cash 
 system, and it is easy to see why financial insti- 
 tutions should desire it so. The greater the credit 
 system the greater the run of deposits, and the 
 greater the amount of borrowing. But the credit 
 system is an expensive system, and the one in 
 which the wealthy man invariably has the advan- 
 tage. The banks are always ready to receive him 
 and money is nearly always his for the asking. 
 But the poor man when he wishes to borrow 
 money, even though he may furnish good mar- 
 
 73 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 ginal security, is very often refused with the ex- 
 cuse that national banks cannot loan on real 
 estate or that of tightness and scarcity. 
 
 , This law, passed to prevent the loaning of 
 i money on real estate, had some specific reasons. 
 Chief of which, in all probability, was the avoid- 
 ance of land speculation and monopoly. But the 
 good that was in truth a basic reason for this law 
 is not the practice, but the theory. The owner- 
 ship of vast tracts of land is the basis of credit 
 and the basis of much of the credit given by our 
 national banks. Labor is very seldom ever the 
 basis, for the banks extend credit on that which, 
 under the existing laws, is the safest and best, 
 and this is very often a land basis or a monopoly 
 springing from an extended land privilege. 
 
 This money lending on farm values shows, how- 
 ever, no signs of abatement. There is a present 
 agitation in favor of cheaper money for the 
 farmer. It is maintained that cheaper money to 
 him will mean cheaper prices to the consumer, 
 and also that his high interest rate, which is now 
 lower than that of any other class of our popula- 
 tion, is the cause of the high cost of his produc- 
 tion. Governmental aid is the proposed remedy. 
 Now this is in great measure a mistake, any oc- 
 
 74 
 
FINANCIAL SITUATION 
 
 cupation that needs governmental support is a 
 losing and venturesome proposition, and it is 
 just as undesirable that the state take part in it 
 as that individuals continue it. But farming is * 
 not now a losing business. It is a profitable * 
 business, and this cheap money lending is not with 
 the idea of making farming any less profitable, 
 but more so. It would subsidize a higher land 
 value. Now cheap money to the farmer and he 
 alone is class distinction. Its benefits would re- 
 sult in giving farming a yet higher tone of inde- 
 pendence. It would not lower land values, but in- 
 crease them, and the interest on this increased 
 land value would be paid by the community. 
 Loaning should be done with the idea that the bor- 
 rower and not the community shall repay. The 
 borrower can truly repay only as he renders serv- 
 ice, that is, performs labor, so labor should be 
 first and fundamentally the basis of all money ad- 
 vances. If you have any system that is preferred 
 to this, no matter how low the interest rate may 
 be you elevate the system and not the man. 
 
 A repeal of the corporate idea would restore 
 personality to our loans, while it would unques- 
 tionably do away with one great instrument and 
 demand of concentration. A correct system of 
 
 75 
 
* 
 
 i 
 
 ELYSIA 
 
 taxation would abolish the necessity of bond is- 
 sues and render greater funds accessible for 
 individual need. While a heavy tax on unim- 
 proved realty would render it less desirable and 
 safe as in investment and bring labor nearer a 
 basis for money advances, and elevate it to the 
 dignity it deserves. Money under such condi- 
 tions would be always more plentiful, at a low 
 rate of interest, to meet the needs of legitimate 
 enterprise. 
 
 76 
 
DEBT 
 
 The nation is in debt, the state is in debt, the 
 county, township, municipality are all in debt. 
 Bonds, Bonds, Bonds, such is the only possible 
 method the branches of government have of rais- 
 ing enough money to carry out needful public en- 
 terprises. And why so? Because the poor man 
 is taxed to the limit and the rich refuse to pay a 
 greater tax than they can possibly help. If just a 
 small portion of the unearned increment of land, 
 a small portion of that which the rich get through 
 capitalistic and corporate scheming was turned 
 into the public treasury, there never would be a 
 necessity for a bond issue, the coffers of the vari- 
 ous branches of government would be overflow- 
 ing, public improvement would be surprising. 
 The castles and mansions which house the rich 
 would become the libraries, the city halls, the pa- 
 vilions, the schools, the art gallaries, the music 
 halls, the baths, the gymnasiums, the coliseums, 
 the pride of our village centers. Their gardens 
 would be the parks, the play grounds, the park- 
 ways of every community. What a fascinating 
 picture. Where would be the end of civic pride 
 
 77 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 and civic virtue. What an inspiration to noble 
 citizenship and priesthood of governmental serv- 
 ice. 
 
 78 
 
TRADE VS. EXPLOITATION 
 
 The present civilization is characterized by an 
 enormous trade between the nations of the world. 
 The magnitude of which is but a sign of civiliza- 
 tion’s advance. It is something not only to be 
 wondered at, but encouraged. A circumstance 
 greatly to be desired. But in speaking of trade is 
 meant the process of a fair, advantageous and 
 profitable exchange, not exploitation, nor ex- 
 change that is not on an honorable and upright 
 plane of dealing. Nations, as individuals, must 
 regard the same laws of business honesty or they 
 lose eventually, custom, confidence and good will. 
 These are the essentials that must always char- 
 acterize the successful and permanent business 
 institution, and also a permanent increasing and 
 profitable national commerce. 
 
 But national ideas are far behind those of in- 
 dividuals, they partake of a narrowness, a bias, 
 oftentimes an unfairness of the most inexcusable 
 type. The idea of exploitation is always at the 
 surface. It is an exploitation by peaceful means, 
 but none the less an exploitation, and as a result 
 leads oftentimes to disagreements that are and 
 
 79 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 can be settled only by force of arms. So the na- 
 tions have not yet passed the stage of war. 
 Armaments are ever on the increase and inter- 
 national peace is always in jeopardy. So long as 
 nations pursue a policy of narrow nationalism in 
 their trade relationships, so long will the world’s 
 peace be a long way off, and peace prizes and 
 peace endowments be of little consequence. Af- 
 ter all the ultimate test of a man’s and nation’s 
 Christianity, their basic good intent is the pres- 
 sure of economy. 
 
 Now any economy is false that is basically sus- 
 picious and distrustful of human nature. That is 
 discriminating and unfair in its application of 
 principles of fundamental moral cognizance. 
 The armaments and armies of the world repre- 
 sent a loss and a waste that certainly no policy 
 entailing a liberal national sacrifice would equal. 
 Nevertheless, it is a sacrifice that is becoming 
 greater rather than less. There is a false idea 
 prevalent as to the meaning of national honor. 
 Nations are even more sensitive than formerly as 
 to what constitutes it. Now no law that cannot 
 and should not be of local application, need not 
 and should not be international. Principal knows 
 no geographical boundries nor is it subject to 
 
 80 
 
TRADE VS. EXPLOITATION 
 
 racial and national distinctions. If it is local it 
 is world-wide. If our laws are just locally, there 
 need never be any complaint by the rest of the 
 world as to their operation. Treaties and inter- 
 national agreements have their origin not only in 
 a narrow national policy, but in a narrow local 
 one. Their origin is oftentimes a mistake. In 
 the main a nation that rightfully manages its own 
 affairs, is not the one most likely to he embroiled 
 in international disagreements. A correct code 
 of law regulating the acts of citizens, as between 
 themselves, will he generally found sufficient to 
 meet all the requirements of international comity. 
 Treaties and Trade agreements, as between na- 
 tions, are but the outgrowth of governmental in- 
 terference in individual rights. They are the re- 
 sultant of a substantial international disagree- 
 ment and represent naught but temporary com- 
 promise. They are not progressive in character, 
 but oftentimes a hindrance and check upon a freer 
 exercise of individual initiative and privilege. 
 If a man will not trade with me fair, I need hut 
 cease my business dealings with him ; if he and I 
 find trade to our mutual advantage, we will both 
 be only too glad to continue it. Trade is a mat- 
 ter of individual right and individual relation- 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 ships. It has no concern tvitli the fundamental 
 purpose of the state, and where the state permits 
 itself to he a party in the squabbles arising over 
 exchange it mixes unnecessarily in private busi- 
 ness and belittles itself and its purpose. But 
 these international disagreements are a continual 
 source of annoyance and uncertainty. They ren- 
 der trade of an uncertain character, they give rise 
 to an untrue and narrow conception of national 
 right and honor. They arouse national animosi- 
 ties and drag nations into wars that need never 
 have been anything hut individual differences, 
 peaceably and amicably adjusted. 
 
 Now one cause is a tariff, whether it be for 
 protection or revenue only. It represents a nar- 
 row nationalism, a sectionalism. It is a usurpa- 
 tion of individual right and privilege. It denies 
 me a freedom of the contractual relation when I 
 deal with a man of another race or nation. It is 
 governmental usurpation pure and simple. It 
 knows no universality of principal. It is as nar 
 row as the old Greek idea that all other than 
 Greeks were barbarians, or the Boman idea that 
 other than Bomans were not citizens. It is fun- 
 damentally so narrow that it is by nature warlike 
 and unchristian. Another is the idea of national 
 
 82 
 
TRADE VS. EXPLOITATION 
 
 exploitation, either for the expansion of a trade 
 unnaturally stimulated or the development of a 
 social condition among a people at a heavy and 
 usurious rate of profit. These things have no 
 moral side, and moral law is the basis of all real 
 social advance. 
 
 Alien ownership of land is but a continuation 
 into international relationships of absentee land- 
 lordism and extra territoriality. Its solution in- 
 volves the question of the homogeneity of a pop- 
 ulation which, it is generally considered, a nation 
 has the right to maintain and the proposition 
 which is local in its application of the justice of 
 an absentee system of land ownership, especially 
 where it meets with no limitations. 
 
 The basis of a prosperous and exemplary stand- 
 ing as a great and irresistible power in the prog- 
 ress of the world, where might makes right and 
 right fearsome and undeniable dare not be as- 
 sailed. Where the very majesty of justice creates 
 consternation in the ranks of those who question 
 is the support by a just and equitable administra- 
 tion of internal law of a correct social order. 
 
 83 
 
CRIMINALITY AND CIVILIZATION 
 
 Great cities are the product of economic rather 
 than social causes, and from economy springs the 
 pathological in human nature and society. Con- 
 gestion is conducive to an uncleanness, both of 
 body and morals, and being devoid of a proper 
 conception of beauty and feeling of healthful 
 exercise, shuts a man off from an adequate op- 
 portunity for natural investigation, which is the 
 basis of belief in the operation of divine law, and 
 the fundamental in evolutionary and spiritual 
 progress. So our cities are heathenistic, for the 
 air is so impure, the surroundings so unsightly, 
 the sounds so annoying, the tastes so unnatural, 
 not one of all the senses but is deceived and 
 limited. A man to be natural must live naturally, 
 or you have but a partly grown, partly developed, 
 unfinished product, unnatural in desires and 
 tastes, in habit and mode of life. A man must be 
 physically well environed and physically well de- 
 veloped to have a fair chance at an intellectual 
 approach. Now, intelligence is not all of books, 
 it is much of the body, in fact, more of it is of the 
 body than our social judgment rightfully consid- 
 ers. The human race cannot grow in respect to 
 
CRIMINALITY AND CIVILIZATION 
 
 the head alone, if it does you have a monstrosity 
 as hideous as any brutish form, and just as incap- 
 able and untrustworthy. Culture and refinement 
 have a physical side. Social encouragement of 
 an intellectual approach beyond the bounds of a 
 fundamental need is but a fallacious development 
 of mentalities, and a corresponding weakening of 
 the physical organism. An intellectual error is 
 but a physical deformity. Abstract thought is 
 fundamentally of little value to the human race. 
 Every thought, that cannot find in act expression, 
 is rather useless to society, and will generally be 
 found to be outside the pale of truthful knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 So all our schools and colleges, our centers of 
 learning will develop into but training schools of 
 idleness, unless they are in turn supported by a 
 natural social order that gives a corresponding 
 impetus to physical development and exertion. 
 Now this physical development is every whit as 
 important as the intellectual idea.. You cannot 
 by training the mind develop the body. Man is a 
 physic creature. He grows by expression, not by 
 repression. He does not spring up in a night, his 
 growth is a matter of years, and his training 
 must cover a considerable period. His growth 
 
 85 
 
into an occupation is as gradual as his growth 
 into himself. You cannot teach a boy arithmetic, 
 algebra, geography, spelling, develop his mind 
 alone until he is 18 years old and then expect him 
 to be physically much good at anything. He is 
 after such a period all mentality. He clings to 
 ’and is inclined to a sedentary life and profession. 
 His athletic prowess is rather uncertain, his athle- 
 tic achievements rather transitory. It requires 
 effort to get him into a condition that was his nat- 
 urally and an effort to keep him there. Cramming 
 of the physical makeup is just as foolish as a 
 cramming of the intellectual. Both are severe 
 strains on the powers of retention and a weak- 
 ening of the will power. Man comes in the full- 
 ness of time. You may hasten his growth by ar- 
 tificial means, but you dwarf his tenacious power, 
 his hold upon life and upon himself. When you 
 build a man for eternity it takes eternity to build 
 him, but if you build him in a period of years, you 
 have a man only so many cubits long. 
 
 So it is important that youth be a period of 
 freedom, a period of observation, not all a period 
 of intellectual development. What boy is there 
 who at 12 can now be about his father’s business, 
 not as a hired hand, but because it is a labor of 
 
 86 
 
CRIMINALITY AND CIVILIZATION 
 
 love, not one that overtaxes his strength, but 
 arouses his desire, opens and strengthens his 
 ideals, allows him to Build with his own hand the 
 day dreams of his youth. But youth and age have 
 here no companionship. They are greatly sepa- 
 rated, both as to time and place. The boy learns 
 idleness because he is not close enough to his 
 father at an impressionable age to learn the joy- 
 ousness of labor. So we have a civilization of 
 towers, the boy looks up and scarce wonders. He 
 has not seen a rivet placed nor drilled a hole. He 
 knows his father as but a tired man carrying a 
 tin bucket. 
 
 Herein is the philosophy of theft and of crime. 
 It originates and breeds where alleys are play- 
 grounds, where observation is not of useful 
 things, but of debauch and intemperate idleness. 
 Where labor is spoken of as hardship and ex- 
 ample is a conspiracy against nature. All our 
 civilization with its towering achievements 
 amounts to but little in the end if it be accom- 
 panied by the idea, and the fact that the end 
 sought is the avoidance of physical application, 
 and a man, by reading a book on skyscrapers, is 
 as much and truly a builder as though he drove 
 each nail and put every brick in place. 
 
 87 
 
ELYS I A 
 
 The boy is father to the man, but if he is poorly 
 fathered he is a poor man. This absenteeism of 
 the basic example in all youthful attainment, the 
 separation and lack of sympathy between father 
 and son, mother and daughter, the disintegration 
 of the family and the distinctiveness of individual 
 interest. The lack of parental application from 
 the pressure of economic necessity, this is a suf- 
 ficient reason for the weakness that is ever pre- 
 senting itself in object lessons of family life. A 
 strong sympathetic family is the unit upon which 
 in turn the state .depends for its strength and 
 support. You cannot substitute for the idealisms 
 of life, monotony and systematization. Routine 
 can never take the place of family, nor absentee- 
 ism be the basis of affection. 
 
 38 
 
VICE AND ECONOMY 
 
 Social ideas change with Economy, as the Eco- 
 nomic idea ascends the social descends. The eco- 
 nomic is the antithesis of the social and natural, 
 and is conducive to those social notions which are 
 naught but mistakes, wrongs and injustices. So- 
 ciety becomes so used to hearing what wealth can 
 do that it loses sight of what man can do. So- 
 cialism in its present plan and pui'pose is not so- 
 cialism, but economyism. Wherever the eco- 
 nomic ides is stronger than the social, wherever 
 it is encouraged and the social discouraged we 
 find vice and unreliability on the increase and the 
 higher idealisms of life belittled with the thought 
 of impractical. Such is the tendency of modern 
 times. Practicality is never separate from the 
 ideal, but economic enterprise is conspiring to 
 dwarf faith in the higher and ideal conceptions 
 of life, and substitute an alluring and tempting 
 conception, careless and irresponsible, weak and 
 vacillating, fearful and uncertain, sinful and 
 chaotic, and every problem that confronts us as 
 social is more or less urged on and supported by 
 a basically economic, fallacious law and order. I 
 believe in man and society, in social pleasures, so- 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 cial efforts, social ideas, but I have no faith in 
 economy as a factor in any progressive move- 
 ment. It is the law of the underworld and the 
 sooner we rid ourselves of it, the sooner will 
 those social efforts well meaning, but greatly in- 
 sufficient, become of consequence for civic right- 
 eousness. The fight is between man and the dol- 
 lar. Society and Economy. You cannot serve 
 God and Mammon. It is a law of love or no law 
 at all, and all the efforts of man cannot establish 
 nor invent another. 
 
 When you encourage a young man or woman 
 to put off the responsibilities of marriage when 
 the time is ripe, the desire strong, the idealisms 
 true and the results of consequence, when you be- 
 \ little one of the natural and fundamental institu- 
 tions of life and substitute as practical, a linger- 
 ing, dilly dally, superficial and unmeaning prac- 
 tice, you encourage every vice human nature is 
 subject to, and every weakness of which it is cap- 
 able. Extravagance and superficiality of amuse- 
 ment, intemperance and irresponsibility, disre- 
 gard, selfishness, the vicious in human nature, 
 take the place of a companionship that produces 
 virtue, temperance, industry and Christian citi- 
 zenship. Human nature is not half bad if you 
 
 90 
 
VICE AND ECONOMY 
 
 give it half a chance. But a strange inconsist- 
 ency meets us in the fact that while the marriage 
 relationship should be contracted younger if in- 
 telligence and precocity are ahead, rather than be- 
 hind former times, it is being contracted later in 
 life. This means fundamentally that the physical 
 and mental is in reality behind, rather than ahead 
 of the times and vice and divorce, intemperance 
 and deformity are on a continual increase. It is 
 not a shortness of life in the face of hardship 
 and accomplishment, but a longevity of weakness 
 and inaccomplishment. The fineness and finish 
 of a civilization are no criterion as to its strength 
 and durability. 
 
 A young woman at 18 snould be fitted and 
 ready for the great services of life and oppor- 
 tuity be commensurate with desire. A young 
 man at 20 should be trained and educated to do 
 a man’s work and it be given him, he should have 
 his place that he may fill it. Morality demands 
 it, Christianity teaches it, the law should enforce 
 it, but when you deny a man a man’s right, the 
 fullest opportunity for the exercise and develop- 
 ment of his faculties, you dwarf his intelligence, 
 his ambition, the whole scheme of life’s opera- 
 tion. 
 
 91 
 
THE EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENTAL 
 POWER 
 
 The first symptom of republican decline and the 
 beginning of an autocratic and despotic regime 
 ! is the extension by one method or another of gov- 
 ernmental power. At first this extension assumes 
 a democratic guise, but gradually in the course 
 of events reaches the stage where it can no longer 
 with any pretense to truth so defend itself and 
 the bold fact is announced of republican failure. 
 
 This assumption of power is a thing which the 
 people must closely guard if they long retain their 
 position as free men, and it must be guarded jeal- 
 ously and intelligently or demagogy gets the 
 upper hand. The tendency is always for those in 
 positions of trust whether it be executive, legis- 
 lative or judicial to extend rather than diminish 
 it, and the rivalry for place gives rise to a jeal- 
 ousy and suspicion which but exaggerates and ag- 
 gravates acts and intentions. There is no neces- 
 sity of intricate, complicated and massive legal 
 verbiage for the preservation of right and the 
 maintenance of justice, and successive measures 
 are very often a confession of failure on the part 
 
 92 
 
THE EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER 
 
 of laws preceding which should have been re- 
 pealed rather than remedied, and the state is 
 also too often induced to meddle in affairs in 
 which rightfully it has no concern, and such in- 
 terference but confuses and adds to a legal tangle 
 out of which justice is after considerable delay 
 and with difficulty and much cost finally extri- 
 cated. 
 
 The strong government is one that always la- \ 
 bors toward simplicity, that takes to itself only 
 such powers as the preservation of peace and 
 order of society necessitate and those which not 
 a bare but a great majority may willingly sur- 
 render with cognizance of social advantage and 
 betterment. Government that is truly such is not 
 that of a majority so much as that of unanimity. 
 
 A government of bare majorities is one that is 
 always proposing questions upon which rightfully 
 there is a wide divergence of opinion, and these, 
 if it is sensible, it avoids rather than encourages, 
 for their solution and enforcement are always un- 
 certain and their presentation the cause of much 
 friction and loss. 
 
 The old doctrine of social compact has it that 
 in government individuals surrender to each 
 other that is to government certain rights and 
 
 93 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 privileges in order that they may more safely en- 
 joy those they retain, and the problem of govern- 
 ment itself would make these rights as few as 
 possible, rather than numerous for the surren- 
 der of numerous rights, but confuses the indi- 
 vidual as to those which remain and hampers 
 him in the exercise of initiatives in which others 
 may not be concerned. , 
 
 Eights are personal and individual in nature 
 and not collective, and the moment you undertake 
 a collectivism of rights, you undertake the im- 
 possible. It but resolves society into groups 
 striving for powers rather than individuals and 
 wrongs become more extensive and offenses more 
 frequent. 
 
 So when the state assumes powers, it should be 
 only after careful analysis of the need and not 
 with the mistaken idea that that which a man sur- 
 renders that he can also keep. The idea that a 
 trusteeship of rights in government is as desira- 
 ble as individual retention is a most dangerous 
 fallacy, for after all the trusteeship has back of 
 it personality, and it is to the weakness and abuse 
 springing out of a disinterested personality that 
 the government owes it troubles and weaknesses. 
 The fundamental purpose of the state is not to 
 
 94 
 
THE EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENTAL POWER 
 
 act as trustee, but guardian, and insure to its citi- 
 zens rights, not assume them. The great fault 
 with present-day reform is that it refuses to get 
 to the root of the evil and eradicate it, but rather 
 to conciliate wrong by palliation. Our political 
 doctrinaires and all of our political parties are 
 of this tendency. They are remedists and not 
 constructionists. They would build up and elab- 
 orate upon a continually increasing legal tech- 
 nicality, which means that justice can be sought 
 and found only with ever-increasing difficulty. 
 They lose sight of the individual before they have 
 even started in their reasoning, and find them- 
 selves soon arguing and debating upon a mass of 
 abstractions that have no basis either in com- 
 mon sense nor experience. The great public finds 
 itself unable to understand, and willing to accept 
 verbosity as wisdom becomes the gullible tool of 
 an egotistical and mistaken intellectuality. 
 
 95 
 
THE REMEDIAL AND THE CONSTRUC- 
 TIVE 
 
 There is much on our statute books that under 
 a correct and just social order supported by the 
 state would be uncalled for and unnecessary. In 
 fact, would be regarded as an infringement of 
 personal liberty. But the state laboring orig^ 
 inally on the side of an unjust social system is 
 as a flagellant, ever bandaging self-inflicted 
 wounds. This legislation of that type that might 
 be termed remedial is a frequent makeshift of 
 the legislator to bridge a present indefensible so- 
 cial condition. Long hours of work for the young, 
 far longer than growth and adolescence can with- 
 stand. Tasks too difficult and strenuous for sex- 
 ual makeup. Carelessness and indifference as to 
 health and safety of employes. An unfeeling, 
 cold, unsympathetic, soulless system of moralities 
 is a condition the government finds itself called 
 upon to contend with. Each and every one of 
 which is a resultant of governmental privilege. 
 Each and every one being fostered and nurtured 
 by corporate law, that cold, soulless, senseless 
 statute that does naught but incorporate into so- 
 
THE REMEDIAL AND THE CONSTRUCTIVE 
 
 ciety its own attributes. But remedial legislation 
 is a poor type of legislation. It is never that of 
 the statesman nor humanitarian. It is the favor- 
 ite instrument of the demagogue who would per- 
 petuate himself and the jingo who is ever seeking 
 a change. Constructive legislation is the only 
 kind a great and progressive state ever knows. 
 It is the only kind that ever lasts. It is the only 
 kind that ever satisfies, but remedial legislation 
 is never sufficient. It must be ever extending 
 itself, and with every extension shows only the 
 more clearly the futility of the groundwork upon 
 which it is founded, the hypocrisy and deceit of 
 the capitalistic idea and the crime of its recog- 
 nition in the basic law of a state. 
 
 97 
 
FORM AND SUBSTANCE 
 
 It is the natural order of things that the state 
 be held responsible for the social conditions of 
 its citizens and the government be strong or weak 
 as the internal condition is either prosperous or 
 otherwise. The very existence of the state is in 
 this day and age dependent upon the whim, the 
 caprice, the tone of social feeling. The state, 
 not the individual, is held at fault. Uneasy is 
 the head that wears a crown, but unrest is not 
 confined to monarchy. Republics as well are con- 
 stantly suffering spasms of internal commotion 
 and change. It is but another phase of human 
 nature in its strife after consciousness. A social 
 effort for the attainment of peace and happiness. 
 Now what society must learn is that it is not only 
 the form but the substance of law that may be 
 at fault. Monarchy as a form has been con- 
 demned and is passing, while republicanism is 
 taking its place. But a good monarchy may be 
 much desired over a bad republic. The substance 
 of the law is ever as important as the scheme 
 of its operation. The material as important as 
 the design. Rome was a republic, but chose to 
 
 98 
 
FORM AND SUBSTANCE 
 
 become a monarchy again. There is much in lead- 
 ership. It will be ever so, and form can never 
 displace it. But leadership may be ambitious and 
 leadership may be mistaken. If republicanism is 
 the form, think not that leadership has less a 
 place, it is the same but different as it operates. 
 In monarchy it is of force ; in republicanism it is 
 of persuasion. Whether we are any more ready 
 for it than the Romans were depends upon 
 whether we are any more Christian, ready to give 
 a listening ear and heed experienced counsel. 
 Will substance coincide with form in being a 
 liberal and democratic recognition of human 
 rights, or will idealism end in theory and practice 
 be but continuance of custom is the future enigma, 
 
 99 
 
IMPETUOSITY 
 
 Our government has been censured, its form 
 has been criticized, changes of great importance 
 have been advocated. Honesty has been ascribed 
 to the many and dishonesty to a few, but these 
 few nearly always happen to be those in position 
 of trust. Suspicion is the current fashion of those 
 who seek position, and explanation is the current 
 fashion of those who would retain it. Honesty 
 after all but proves itself intelligence, and the 
 trouble is not that the way is not paved with 
 good intentions, but that they are not intelligent 
 ones. 
 
 A conflict between the form and substance of 
 government is unavoidable where they do not 
 both advance the same end, and this conflict gives 
 rise to such intense disagreement that motives 
 and character are assailed and the basic element 
 of good intent, a most common trait of human na- 
 ture, is vigorously and viciously accused. Such 
 is the present tendency and in such a condition 
 of society the time is ripe for the demagogue 
 and doctrinaire. Public opinion in the feverish 
 whirl of compromise and disagreement arrives 
 
 100 
 
IMPETUOSITY 
 
 at no decision of moment. A chaotic, anarchic 
 condition grips society and unconscious and con- 
 scious murmurings of truth fall from lips least 
 likely to be heard or heeded. 
 
 So we have our Supreme Court decisions criti- 
 cized and our judges accused. The individual is 
 belittled in his own eyes before the questionable- 
 ness of those whom he has thought fit to trust. 
 The pessimist, the accuser, oftentimes a hypo- 
 crite, belittles manhood, for he attacks the citadel 
 of honesty^ Principal is above man, it makes 
 him, it can be ever recognized. Personality is 
 of little consequence. If I cannot prove intelli- 
 gence the basis of my stand, I have no place either 
 here nor there. 
 
 The courts of our land are filled with men of 
 purpose, noble in aim and high of hope, but they 
 cannot and never will be able to relate a sub- 
 stantive law of mean conception to a principal of 
 enduring potentiality. So we have poor laws, 
 remedial in nature to be construed in the fight of 
 permanency. This cannot be done. The consti- 
 tution of this country is an exceptional document. 
 It is exceptional in spirit and in form, but it calls 
 for the exercise under it of a great constructive 
 faculty, and when you endeavor to harmonize and 
 
 101 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 associate it with remedies you are attempting the 
 impossible. Minimum wage bills, child labor 
 laws, liability acts are not of a nature to conform 
 with a spiritual conception of a great state. They 
 are but a confession of failure, the resort of a 
 decrepit and unsatisfactory leadership. 
 
 But in addition to remedial laws, we have the 
 remedist in the character of a cpmmissianor,,and 
 if the nation wishes to get hack to the monarchial 
 system there is no better nor shorter road. If 
 ever autocracy would clothe itself, it could choose 
 scarce a better habit. When a state is in such a 
 condition that the subtle actions of its citizens 
 can have an extended influence over a great com- 
 munity, when secrecy is prompted by the nature 
 of law and not the nature of the act, but the in- 
 centive to it is made the basis of indictment, we 
 have a deplorable situation. 
 
 The grant of special privilege carries with it 
 eventually the necessity of a special analysis and 
 judgment. It but adds to the burdensomeness 
 of the law and shows more clearly the imprac- 
 ticality of enormous legal verbiage and the im- 
 possibility of justice being coincident with a per- 
 siflage of technicality. 
 
 Subtlety is a part of the corporate system, 
 
IMPETUOSITY 
 
 which is a fraud and swindle from beginning to 
 end. Its origin is in privilege, it exists without 
 reason, it encourages and practices deception, con- 
 centrating and gathering to itself as an octopus. 
 We are yet tempted, but it is not always a ser- 
 pent. 
 
 When the decisions of our judiciary do not co- 
 incide with legislative enactment, be not so ever 
 ready to criticize and censure, to question judicial 
 integrity, for a more intelligent examination may 
 show that the nature of our legislative acts fall 
 far short of a constitutional standard. Our legis- 
 lators are unfortunately not the equals of our 
 judges, either in a moral or intellectual sense, 
 and even so in their fidelity to the functions of 
 their office. If the courts have done anything, I 
 would not choose to call it dishonesty, for I cast 
 a stigma not only on them, but representing, as 
 they must, a standard of social integrity and in- 
 telligence, upon the great body of our citizenship. 
 I choose rather to think that it is because they 
 have been performing as near as they were able 
 the functions of their office, but the conflict is be- 
 tween poorly and corruptly enacted substantive 
 law oftentimes remedial, and our constitutional 
 form, and the courts have been endeavoring to 
 
 103 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 tell us that such laws are un-American and do not 
 conform with the spirit of our constitutional idea. 
 That is, this country remedial legislation is no 
 legislation. It is below the dignity of an enlight- 
 ened and progressive state which must always 
 and ever be constructive in its acts and policies. 
 
 104 
 

 WEAKNESS OF OUR NATIONAL GOVERN- 
 MENT 
 
 The idea that we have a strong national gov- 
 ernment is erroneous. It is a weak government. 
 It was weak when it originated, and it is weak 
 today, and this weakness is becoming more and 
 more apparent as it comes in contact with great 
 corporate power. Corporate power can exact a 
 direct tribute from the people, but the govern- 
 ment can levy no direct tax, and its efforts are 
 strongly in support of the great corporate enter- 
 prises, which are inimical to popular interest. 
 
 Our government originated when the state’s 
 rights idea was strong, and though we have had a 
 great civil war to formulate and strengthen the 
 national idea, our national government, except 
 in its possibilities, is no stronger as regards its 
 attitude toward the individual citizen than it was 
 before. It pursues the same economic regime, its 
 taxing power remains practically limited as it 
 has been to an indirect system. It comes in con- 
 tact with the individual openly in but few in- 
 stances, and in all others chooses to work unseen 
 and unnoticed. 
 
 105 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 Wlien our National Government was formed, 
 state jealousies and sectionalistic ideas prevented 
 the states from giving to the National Govern- 
 ment the power to levy a direct tax. This system 
 of revenue they retained for themselves, for it 
 was a dependable and producing one, but the 
 other was not, and that it has become so is due to 
 no fault of the states themselves, but the pressure 
 of special and favored interests. If we enjoyed 
 free trade in this country and the special inter- 
 ests were not protected, the government could 
 raise scarcely any revenue and bond issues would 
 avail but little, as credit would be at a minimum. 
 So our government has found it necessary to sup- 
 port a system favorable to privilege in order to 
 have power, and it has acquired power and exer- 
 cised it at the expense of its citizens. 
 
 When times were bad, trade fell off and reve- 
 nue was reduced, the government was so weak 
 it could do nothing for the people. At the very 
 moment they needed a powerful and strong state 
 to. come to their assistance it was foundering on 
 the rocks of insolvency. So it has ever been. 
 It is not because free trade is wrong, but because 
 an indirect system of taxation is weak, and a free 
 trader might as well stand for anarchy. Let us 
 
 106 
 
WEAKNESS OF OUR NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 
 
 hope that republicanism, though it has taught us 
 at much expense the secret of our weakness, has 
 at least strengthened our national conception. 
 Republicanism is certainly a narrow Ism for a 
 great state, but ours is in reality no state at all, 
 but an Idea. We have a National Idea, but no 
 National State. 
 
 Republicanism is incompatible with the govern- 
 ment it has strengthened, for it would have it 
 that everything we consumed we produced, no 
 matter how great our fitnes and protection would 
 limit and restrict the trade to such an extent 
 that we would import nothing, but export every- 
 thing and consequently have to remodel our sys- 
 tem from an import tax eventually into an export 
 one. So the first thing for us to do before we 
 lose our heads over the impracticability of de- 
 mocracy and the follies of republicanism is to 
 organize and maintain a strong National Gov- 
 ernment. This can be done not alone by endow- 
 ing it with an admirable form and a beatific ideal- 
 ism, but also with a strong, honorable, just, open 
 and infallible system of taxation. You must give 
 it life, dynamic power, or it is a useless, deceitful 
 and cold idol of Nationality. 
 
 The Democratic party is attempting to right 
 107 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 the injustices which have sprung up out of our 
 indirect system, and have been strengthened by 
 the possibility of levying an income tax in con- 
 junction with a reduced tariff. But the income 
 tax, while direct, is the weakest, most rotten and 
 unjust system of direct taxation that can be estab- 
 lished. It is too uncertain. It is unpleasantly in- 
 quisitive. It cannot but be conducive to dishonesty 
 and injustice. Circumstances should be that a 
 state should not find it necessary to take from a 
 man what he has made, nor inquire as to how 
 he has made it, but should see to it that the op- 
 portunity for honest making be the only method 
 afforded and allow a man to remain in an un- 
 disturbed possession of the fruits of his labor. 
 
 108 
 
CONSERVATISM AND RADICALISM 
 
 There is no political party in the United States 
 today that is conservative and fundamentally 
 logical and progressive. They are all more or 
 less radical, and this radicalism is ever on the 
 side of injustice. It is either that of narrow in- 
 difference or hasty and overzealous remedyism. 
 Strongly antagonistic, none are right either in 
 the theory advanced or applied. As a result of 
 this chaotic and unsatisfactory condition our na- 
 tional politics is to a sensible man rather an un- 
 satisfactory and uncertain problem. 
 
 We appear to be drifting, and no man knows 
 whither, unless it be, as the last election seemed 
 to show, toward Socialism. Socialism is gaining 
 because it means a change from Corporate to 
 Governmental Capitalism, and it is because Cor- 
 porate power has been abused and privilege been 
 unbridled. The Progressive party, so-called, rep- 
 resents an extension of Grovernmental power in 
 the direction of an autocratic and despotic exer- 
 cise of the executive function, and its existence 
 is due to the fact that the legislative branch has 
 acted ignorantly and narrowly. Republicanism 
 
 109 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 is a failure because it is an inconsistent and an 
 unnecessary intermeddling and privilege-grant- 
 ing policy. Democracy can do but little, for it has 
 not been inculcated with the idea of a great Na- 
 tionalism. 
 
 What we need is a State, and what we need is 
 a great National Party to see we have one. Let 
 us turn from these false leaders and give to our 
 Constitution, beautiful and sufficient in its form, 
 the power to put its ideals into practice. We 
 have listened to these demagogues who have been 
 educated and brought up with pinhead percep- 
 tions long enough. Give to our National Gov- 
 ernment the power to levy a direct tax on land. 
 Abolish your excise taxes and taxes of every other 
 description. Tax opportunity, not its exercise. 
 Do away with the corporate idea entirely and 
 you will have no watered stock nor inflated valua- 
 tions to contend with, nor great subtle influences 
 at work corrupting and enslaving the people. 
 
 Undertake great national improvements, have 
 great national ideals, put faith in man himself 
 and you will have in time a God-fearing, God-wor- 
 shiping and progressive citizenship that ever 
 grows in the truth, and recognizes the perfection 
 of Jesus Christ’s divine message. 
 
 no 
 
PROGRESS 
 
 Freedom of movement, society in motion, man 
 in action, these can never be realities unless free- 
 dom of place is first maintained. Concentration 
 is stagnation, and capitalism is its outgrowth. 
 The sign of something unnatural, a stimulant, a 
 narcotic upon which Society as a sick man must 
 be always feeding. It is the intemperate. A link 
 in the chain of immorality that has its origin in 
 selfishness and exploitationary conceptions. A 
 part of that idolatry that is naught in reality hut 
 agnosticism, atheism, criminality, ignorance, 
 superstition. A knowledge of the true law is hut 
 an unfolding revelation, a progress in idealisms. 
 The highest fancies and conceptions of man are 
 but limitations of that which is not only possible, 
 but the probable, and the intended. Man is imper- 
 fect in that he cannot believe, blind in that he 
 does not see, wicked in that he does not strive, 
 and foolish in that he will not understand the 
 intent and meaning of Jesus Christ, who knew and 
 understood a world greater than any Jew ever 
 thought but him, grander than any man ever 
 dreamed but God, and if we think our progress 
 
 ill 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 great, if one decade reveals wonders to the world, 
 what ages have in store is but a thought for pious 
 souls. 
 
 112 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 Slightly above this world, and part of it, though 
 not always in.it, is a rare atmosphere of strange 
 constituency and elementary power. It is the at- 
 mosphere of immortality. Men need but breathe 
 it and it will make them live. It gives to them a 
 power it seems they could not have; it puts a 
 tinge to their complexion that color cannot de- 
 scribe, a look upon their face that beams and 
 shines with confidence and strength marked in 
 every line. It is the Elysium of the Elysian fields 
 awaiting entrance into this old world. The Spirit 
 of Him Who Sent Thee. 
 
 Ages may come and go, men may live and die. 
 The essence of their lives, a sweet perfume, be- 
 comes a part of that inspiring power. But when 
 that day shall come, what we shall be depends 
 if they but dwell in us, then we in they. 
 
 And so we labor on. Is it a blinded end? To 
 make this world a place for man. ’Tis thought 
 that draws down here its benediction. Moulds 
 and shapes the contour of perfection, and in the 
 end rewards us with the Time and Place of 
 Heaven. 
 
 113 
 
ELYSIA 
 
 So may it be, not in Bigotry, but in Wisdom. 
 Our Father which art in Heaven, 
 
 Hallowed be Thy name. 
 
 Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, 
 
 On Earth as it is in Heaven; 
 
 Give us this day our daily bread, 
 
 And forgive us our debts as we forgive our 
 debtors, 
 
 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us 
 from evil, 
 
 For Thine is the Kingdom, and the Power and the 
 Glory, forever and ever, 
 
 Amen. 
 
 What better proof need ye that He was the 
 Son of Man? 
 
 [the end] 
 
 114 
 
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