newspaper comments on two bogus institutions which had been chartered
some years ago, to depart from their settled policy and pass a law
prepared by the medical clique, but not quite as stringent as that of
Iowa. Gov. Bodwell, however, vetoed the bill, pointing out its
objectionable features, and the Senate, which had passed it
unanimously, after being enlightened by the governor rejected it by a
nearly two thirds majority, showing how thoughtlessly a great deal of
our legislation is effected.
Under the laws which the colleges and their clique seek to establish,
Priessnitz could never have introduced hydropathy, Pasteur could not
have inoculated for hydrophobia without danger of imprisonment, and
the great American Medical Reformation, which abolished the lancet and
mercurial practice, and which is now represented by seven colleges,
would have been strangled at its birth, for its primitive origin was
outside of college authority. There are other great ideas, great
discoveries, great reforms, not yet strong enough to be embodied in
colleges, which medical legislation is designed to suppress, to
enforce a creedal uniformity.
Another piece of legislative quackery is revealed in the action of
Congress as stated in the following paragraph concerning "a new
bureau."
"One of the acts of the retiring Congress has not been noted so far,
but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of
subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the
country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which
allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor "for the
collection of statistics of and relating to marriage and divorce in
the several states and territories, and in the District of Columbia."
This gives the opportunity, which has heretofore not existed, to
obtain reasonably accurate statistics of what is going on as concerns
the integrity of the family throughout the whole country. This will be
a department under Col. Wright, in the work of the bureau of labor,
and is one of the results of persistent work which the National
Divorce League has done, under the direction of its secretary, Rev. S.
W. Dike. Col. Wright has already formulated plans which are likely to
make this new branch of the labor bureau the channel for one of the
most valuable reports which have yet come from his hands. It will be
the gathering of facts whose study will suggest wise legislation in
the future."
It may not be absolutely unconstitutional for Congress to collect such
statistics, but it is contrary to the spirit of the constitution.
Congress has nothing whatever to do with such social questions, which
are exclusively matters of state legislation. It has allowed itself to
be made a cat's paw by the National Divorce League for its
retrogressive policy. The welfare of society is deeply concerned in
breaking up all unhappy, discordant marriages, which are simply
nurseries of misery and crime. Every generous sentiment should prompt
us to go to the relief of the large number of women who suffer in
secret from tyranny and brutality, while from poverty, timidity,
helplessness, and a dread of publicity or censure, they endure their
wrongs in silence, and continue to bear children cursed from their
conception with intemperance and brutality. And when they seek to
escape, a barbarian law comes in to give the brutal husband the
ownership of their offspring; and thus they are bound fast as galley
slaves in their unhappy position.
The Legislature of Massachusetts had the opportunity of redressing
this wrong at their present session; but, like other masculine
legislatures in the past, they were deaf to the voice of mercy, and
the press quietly reports (March 18) that "Inexpedient was reported
by the House judiciary committee on equalizing the respective rights
of husband and wife in relation to their minor children, and on
equalizing their interest in each other's property."
The ladies who are so active in behalf of woman suffrage might have
taken more interest in this vital question, which was so easily
disposed of. A great wrong remains unredressed.
The barbarous policy of the church of Rome, which has been finally
abolished even in Catholic France, where divorce is now permitted, our
clerical bigots would revive in this country, as if it were the
business of the state to encourage or compel the propagation of the
worthless and criminal classes!
It is not the interest of the state to encourage human multiplication
at all, for it is already too powerful and progressive. It is the
public interest to check all propagation but that of good citizens,
and to protect all women from enforced maternity, whether enforced
under legal powers or by the arts of seduction and libertinism.
Prostitution, in the light of political economy, is far less of an
evil than the enforced maternity of wretched and discordant families,
which becomes the fountain of an endless flow of crime, while
prostitution shows its evils only in the parties immediately
concerned, and effectually purifies society in time by arresting the
propagation of its most worthless members. In the same manner it may
be said that some epidemics are an advantage to society, by cutting
off the feeble and worthless constitutions so as to leave a better
race. Any one who recollects the history of the Jukes family, and the
number of criminals infesting society who were descendants of one
depraved pair, will not believe that such a propagation of crime
should be permitted. The worthless class should not be allowed to
marry, and the criminals whom the state finds it necessary to confine
in the penitentiary should be permanently deprived of the power of
parentage.
Few ever reflect upon the necessary consequences of the growth of
population. The great wars, famines, and pestilences as in the past
will not be able to keep down population, and where it has free course
under favorable circumstances it doubles in twenty-five or thirty
years. In two centuries more we shall begin to feel a terrible
pressure, and that pressure will be aggravated by the exhaustion of
coal mines, of petroleum, of gas, and of forests. In Great Britain
alone 120,000,000 tons of coal are annually mined.
It may be safely assumed that one thousand to the square mile is about
the limit of population of the world, a limit at which population must
be arrested. Massachusetts is already within less than a century of
its utmost possible limit. It has at this time about 250 to the square
mile, and at the American rate of growth it would reach its utmost
limit by the year 1950, and begin to realize the crush and crisis of a
crowded population, which must either cease to grow or encounter the
horrors of famine and social convulsions arising from the struggle for
life, or the calamities arising from unfortunate seasons which in
China and India have in our own time hurried millions into their
graves.
If Massachusetts is within sixty years of this collision with destiny,
other countries are still nearer the dead line of the coming century.
Italy is parallel with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but Great
Britain and Ireland are considerably further advanced. British India
and the Netherlands are still further advanced, and half a century, if
they had the American ratio of growth, would bring them to their
limit, while Belgium's progress would be arrested in thirty years.
A wise statesmanship would not seek to hurry mankind on to this great
crisis, the results of which have never been foreseen or provided for,
but would realize that the greater the amount of inferior and
demoralized population the more terrible must that crisis be when it
comes--a crisis which can be safely borne only by elevating the entire
population to a higher condition than any nation has ever heretofore
attained.
Calculate as we may, the crisis must come, as certainly as death comes
to each individual; and whether our social system can bear the strain
of such conditions is beyond human ken. Look even two centuries ahead,
and what do we see? At that time the prolific energy of the people of
this republic, if continued as it has been in the past, will give us
more than twice the estimated population of the entire globe at
present--more than three thousand millions.
It is possible that our vast territory (including Alaska) of three
million, six hundred thousand square miles may, with the greatly
improved agriculture of the future, maintain such a population,
especially if relieved by overflow to the north and south.
If the evil elements at work to-day predominate in our population,
which retrogressive legislation would promote, it will be a time of
calamity and social convulsions; but if the benevolent and
enlightening influences now at work predominate (as we may hope), two
centuries hence will bring us to a consummation of prosperity,
enlightenment, and happiness, of which the pessimistic and sceptical
thinkers of to-day have no conception. A thorough comprehension of the
science of man will lead us in the path of enlightened progress.
EVILS THAT NEED ATTENTION.
The public mind has been greatly stirred upon the subject of
monopolies and legislative abuses; but there are some glaring evils,
which a short statute might suppress, that are flourishing unchecked.
Speculative dealers in the necessaries of life have learned how to
build colossal fortunes by extortion from the entire nation, and the
nation submits quietly because gambling competition is the fashion.
The late Charles Partridge endeavored to show up these evils and have
them suppressed. We need another Partridge to complete the work he
undertook.
A despatch to the _Boston Herald_, March 5, shows how the game has
been played in Chicago on the pork market:
"'Phil Armour must have been getting ready for this break for three
months,' said a member of the board of trade to-day. 'Since September
last he has visited nearly every large city in the country. He knows
from observation where all the pork is located, and, having cornered it,
his southern trip was a scheme to throw his enemies off the scent, and
enable his brokers to quietly strengthen the corner. His profits and
Plankinton's cannot be less than $3,000,000.'
"But if Armour and his old Milwaukee side partner have made money, so
have hundreds of others here. A messenger boy in the board of trade drew
$100 from a savings bank on Monday last at 11 o'clock and margined 100
barrels of pork. To-day the lad deposited $1,000, and has $300 for
speculation next week.
"Those poor snorts who are expecting to have pork to-day to make their
settlement, paid $21. Anything less was scouted. 'You will have to pay
$25 next Saturday night,' was all the comfort afforded.
"An advance of 2 cents a bushel in wheat was also scored by the bulls
to-day. The explanation is that the several big wheat syndicates
encouraged by the action of pork have made an alliance. The talk at the
hotels to-night is that Armour has started in to buy wheat."
We have laws that forbid boycotting, and they are enforced in New York
and New Haven by two recent decisions. Financial extortion is an equal
crime, and needs a law for its suppression. Why is the metropolitan
press silent? Have the syndicates too much influence? Will editors who
read these lines speak out?
In the last _North American Review_, James F. Hudson, in an essay on
"Modern Feudalism," says:--
"The conquest of all departments of industry by the power of combination
has just begun. But the mere beginning has imposed unwarrantable taxes
on the fuel, light, and food of the masses. It has built up vast
fortunes for the combining classes, drawn from the slender means of
millions. It has added an immense stimulant to the process, already too
active, of making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The tendency in
this direction is shown by the arguments with which the press has teemed
for the past two months, that the process of combination is a necessary
feature of industrial growth, and that the competition which fixes the
profits of every ordinary trader, investor or mechanic, must be
abolished for the benefit of great corporations, while kept in full
force against the masses of producers and consumers, between whom the
barriers of these combinations are interposed."
WHAT IS INTELLECTUAL GREATNESS?
A large amount of that which the world calls greatness is nothing more
than vigorous and brilliant commonplace. Taine, who is the most
splendid writer upon Bonaparte, ascribes to him intellectual
greatness, but it was greatness on a common plane--the plane of animal
life. He had a grand comprehension of physical and social forces, of
everything upon the selfish plane, for he was absolutely selfish, but
of nothing that belongs to the higher life of man, to the civilization
of coming centuries. To him Fulton was a visionary and so was Gall. It
was not in his intellectual range to see the steamships that change
the world's commerce, and the cerebral discoveries that are destined
to revolutionize all philosophy.
The pulpit orator, Beecher, who has just passed away, was estimated by
many as intellectually great; but Mr. Beecher never took the position
of independence that any great thinker must have occupied. He never
moved beyond the sphere of popularity. He never led men but where they
were already disposed to go. Upon the great question of the return of
the spirit, one of the most important and fundamental of all religious
questions, Mr. Beecher was silent. That silence was infidelity to
truth, for Mr. Beecher was not ignorant of the truth he concealed. Nor
was he faithful to any true ideal of religion. With his princely
salary he accomplished less than other men, living upon a salary he
would have scorned. He lived for self--he spent thousands of dollars
on finger rings, and a hundred thousand on a fancy farm, but little if
anything to make the world better.
The _Boston Herald_ estimates very fairly his intellectual status,
saying: "He spoke easily. His stories were well told, his points well
put. He invested people with a new atmosphere, but he did not set them
to thinking, and can hardly be called a thinker himself. Much as he
has done to forward the vital interests of humanity, he has
contributed nothing to the vital thinking of his generation. The
secret of his power is the wonderful combination of animalism, with a
certain bright way of stating the thoughts which are more or less in
the minds of all men. Few preachers have lived with their eyes and
ears more open to the world, and few have better understood the art of
putting things. Mr. Beecher knew supremely well two persons--himself
and the man next to him. In interesting the man next to him he
interested the multitude. He had in a great degree the same qualities
which made Norman McLeod the foremost preacher of his day in the
Scotch pulpit. Such a man lives too much on the surface to exhaust
himself. He has only to keep within the sphere of commonplace to
interest people as long as he lives.... Mr. Beecher lived on the
surface of things. He never got far below the surface. If he ever was
profound it was only for a moment at a time.... His work was to
illustrate the ideas which were operative in the world at the time,
not to originate or formulate them."
This is a just estimate. Brilliant commonplace is not greatness, but
the man who is thoroughly commonplace in his conceptions, who
expresses well and forcibly what his hearers think, is the one to win
applause and popularity. Had Beecher been a great thinker, a church of
moderate size would have held his followers. But he was not and
thinkers knew it. The Rev. George L. Perin, of the Shawmut
Universalist Church, Boston, said of Beecher, "As we have tried to
analyze the influence of his address we have said to ourselves, 'There
was nothing new in that, for I have thought the same thing a thousand
times myself;' and yet at the same time everything _seemed_ new, and
we have gone away thinking better of ourselves because he taught us to
see what we were able to think but had not been able to express. He
had the remarkable faculty of dressing up the things that everybody
was thinking, and making us see that they were worth thinking. And
there was something contagious about his wonderful faith in human
nature. He believed in the divinity of man and made others believe in
it." In other words, he added much to the sentiment of his hearer, but
little to his thought. This was greatness of character and personal
power, but not intellectual greatness. Beecher was a great man, but
not a great thinker. The great thinker overwhelms his hearers with new
and strange thought. The multitude, fixed in habit, reject it all.
Clear and dispassionate thinkers feel that they cannot reject it, but
it is too new even to them to elicit their enthusiasm. They sympathize
with him only so far as they had previously cherished similar
thoughts.
Hence we see it is ordained that the teacher of great truths must
struggle against great opposition; and in proportion to his resistance
by his contemporaries is the grandeur of his reception by posterity;
in proportion to the power arrayed against him is the remoteness of
the century in which that power shall be extinct and his triumph
complete.
SPIRITUAL WONDERS.
SLATER'S WONDERFUL SPIRITUAL TESTS (described by a Brooklyn newspaper
correspondent).--"I have something to say to that gentlemen with the
black hair and high forehead," he continued, turning to another part
of the house; "you have a business engagement to-morrow morning at 10
o'clock with two men. I see you go up a flight of steps into a room
where there are two desks. In the second drawer of one of these are
the papers of the transaction which you had in your hand to-day. You
are going to invest $4,000. Is that all so?"
"Perfectly," said the man, in amazement.
"Well, now, these two men are sharpers, and if you want to save that
$4,000 keep out of that bargain. Legal advice is good, but mine is
better."
"I believe it," said the man, emphatically. His name was C. G. Bulmer,
and he lives at 229 Macon Street, Brooklyn. Your correspondent has
since verified the accuracy of the test.
"And don't you suffer with your limbs?" he inquired of a lady just in
front of him.
"Well, not now; I used to; I feel it now."
"Well, I am going to show you that I know all about your limbs. The
pain is here," he continued, touching the calf of his leg. "You have a
peculiar feeling of drowsiness and then sharp pains run through you,
right there. Is it true?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll tell you something else. You missed what your sister called a
big chance when you were seventeen years old, and she said you were a
great fool to let it go by. Is that so?"
"It is," said the lady reddening.
"There's a man in the hall," he continued, pacing restlessly up and
down with clasped hands. "He has been sitting here and saying to him
self, 'Well, this is all mind-reading. Now, if he will tell me
something that is going to happen I may believe something in
Spiritualism.' He has been rather scoffing me. Now, I want to know if
this is true. I am talking to you," pointing his long, thin finger at
a gray-haired man who sat on his left. "All correct?" The man bowed
his head. "Well, I tell you, that one Christmas day," he continued, so
solemnly that a hush fell on the audience--"I don't think the spirits
ought to tell these things, but I am forced to say that one Christmas
day a member of your family will die." A startled look passed over his
face, and a shiver ran through the audience at the uncanny message.
The man's name could not be learned, but on the succeeding Sunday your
correspondent heard two women get up in the audience and admit that
the young Spiritualist was correct.
SPIRIT PICTURES.--Henry Rogers, a slate writing and prescribing medium
of established reputation, recently located at 683 Tremont Street,
Boston, has wonderful powers in the production of spirit pictures of
the departed. His most recent success is certainly a fine work of art,
resembling a crayon portrait of a young lady. His previous pictures
are entitled to a high rank as works of art. They are purely spirit
productions, no human hand being concerned. San Francisco has similar
productions under the mediumship of Fred Evans, but the pictures have
not the artistic merit of those produced by Rogers, whose beautiful
pictures, however, require many sittings for their production; while
those of Duguid of Glasgow, and Mrs. De Bar of New York, are produced
in a few minutes and are also highly artistic. One of the very finest
works of art at San Francisco is the portrait of Mrs. Watson, made by
a medium, Mr. Briggs.
Our highest productions in art, music, poetry, philosophy, and
medicine, are destined yet to come from the co-operation of the spirit
world. We have no music at present superior to that of the medium
Jesse Shepard.
SPIRIT TELEGRAPHY.--In 1885 we were informed of the success of spirits
at Cleveland, Ohio, in communicating messages by the telegraphic
method in rapping, in which our millionaire friend, Mr. J. H. Wade,
has taken much interest. A little apparatus has been constructed, with
which the spirits give their communications in great variety. I have
repeatedly stated that the diagnoses and prescriptions of deceased
physicians have always proved in my experience more reliable than
those of the living. This has been verified at Cleveland. The late Dr.
Wells of Brooklyn has been giving diagnoses and prescriptions through
the telegraph. One of these published in the _Plain Dealer_ exhibits
the most profound and accurate medical knowledge. The full account of
these telegraphic developments in the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_ I
expected to republish, but my space was already occupied. It may be
found in the _Banner of Light_ of April 9. But we shall have other
reports hereafter.
SPIRITUAL MUSIC.--Maud Cook, a little blind girl nine years of age, at
Manchester, Tenn., is an inspired musical wonder,--a performer and
composer. She is said to equal Blind Tom, and the local newspapers
speak of her in the most enthusiastic terms. She needs a judicious and
wealthy friend to bring her before the public in the best manner.
SLATE WRITING.--Dr. D. J. Stansbury, of San Francisco, is very
successful in obtaining spiritual writing in public as well as in
private. The _Golden Gate_ says:--
"There came upon the slates at Dr. Stansbury's public seance, last
Sunday evening, the following message from Judge Wm. R. Thompson, father
of H. M. Thompson, of this city: 'The essential principles of primitive
Christianity and the precepts of Modern Spiritualism are essentially one
and the same, which, if practised, would lead to the highest standard of
morality and be the means of grace by which all might be saved.'"
THE FIRE TEST.--At the great spiritual convention held at Cincinnati
for several days at the end of March, (the spiritual anniversary) the
report states,--
"Mrs. Isa Wilson Porter, under control of an Oriental spirit, held her
bared hands and arms in the flames of a large coal oil lamp. She also
heated lamp chimneys and handled them as readily as she would in their
normal condition, and made several gentlemen cringe and some ladies
screech by slightly touching them with the hot glass. The test was made
under supervision of a committee of doctors and well known physicians,
who reported at the conclusion that previous to its commencement they
examined the lady's hands and arms, and that they were in their natural
condition, and that her pulse beat was seventy. While the test was in
progress the pulse indicated forty. After its conclusion the pulse beat
was sixty-five; the arms and hands were a little red, but unscorched,
and the hair upon them not even singed. This incident seems weak in the
description after witnessing the fact of tender flesh and blood held in
such a flame for several minutes."
MISCELLANEOUS INTELLIGENCE.
ERRATUM.--In the April number, the view of the upper surface of the
brain, by mistake of the printer, was turned upside down--see page 29.
The engraving on page 31 must be referred to, to illustrate the
description in this number.
CO-OPERATION is making great progress. A colony similar to that at
Topolobampo is to be established on 3,000 acres at Puget Sound.
Manufacturers are beginning to adopt the principle of giving a share
of profits to their employees, but space forbids details. Topolobampo
has 400 busy colonists, and is not ready yet for any more.