NATURAL LAW AND CONDUCT
Many of the crimes fixed by law are purely arbitrary. To commit them
or to refrain does not necessarily imply innocence or guilt. Of such
a character, for instance, are revenue laws, the observance of holy
days and the like. A large number of forbidden acts that are generally
supposed to imply moral guilt are also purely arbitrary. Most of the laws
governing the taking and obtaining of property, which constitute the
great burden of our penal code, are arbitrary acts, whose sole purpose
is to keep the great mass of property in the hands of the rulers and
exploiters and to send to jail those who help themselves and who have
no other means within their power to sustain their lives. Most of the
so-called thieves and other offenders against property dimly know this
fact. Without being able to analyze or logically realize it, they, after
all, feel that they have committed no wrong, and that they took the only
road life had left open for their feet.
Nearly our whole criminal code is made up of what may be called property
crimes, or crimes against property, if they may be so called. These
crimes are burglary, larceny, obtaining property by false pretenses,
extortion, and the like. The jails and penitentiaries of every nation
in the world are filled to overflowing with men and women who have been
charged with committing crimes against property. Probably nine-tenths of
all the business of criminal courts come directly from property crimes.
A very large proportion of the balance comes indirectly from this cause.
Nothing could more completely show the humbuggery, knavery and the
absolute hypocrisy of all punishment by the state than the patent facts
with reference to these crimes. From first to last these inmates of
jail and penitentiary, these suffering outcast men are utterly without
property and have ever been. In the penal institutions of the world are
confined a motley throng charged with committing assaults upon property,
and yet this whole mass of despised and outcast humanity have ever been
the propertyless class, have never had aught whereon to lay their heads.
But where is all the property that has been the subject of these dire
assaults? No matter where you turn your eyes in the world, the whole
property is in the hands of a chosen few, and the so-called owners of all
this wealth created by the labor of man and the bounty of nature—these
so-called owners have committed no crime against property. The statement
of the fact is sufficient to show the inequality of the whole system
under which the fruits of the earth are kept in the possession of the
few. These despised and outcast ones have violated no law of conscience
or justice, have committed no unrighteous assault on property. The plain
fact that will one day stand clearly forth to explain the whole brutal
code which is used to imprison and enslave,—the plain reason and object
of these laws is the fact that the rulers who have forcibly seized the
earth have made certain rules and regulations to keep possession of the
treasures of the world, and when the disinherited have reached out to
obtain the means of life, they have been met with these arbitrary rules
and lodged in jail.
* * * * *
The advocates of punishment believe that law controls the natural world.
The movement of the earth about the sun, the changes of the moon, the
rising and falling of the tide, the change of seasons, all these depend
on natural law. It is even known that the distribution of animal life
upon the earth is due to natural law. Certain climates and locations
produce certain animal life. Particular seasons of the year increase or
diminish insect life. The wild fowl flies north in summer and south
in winter. The swarming of bees, the homes of ants, in short all the
activities, lives and deaths of the brute creation are surely seen to be
the subject of natural law. The distribution, growth and decay of plant
life is no less within the realm of law, than is the animal life, which
depends upon the same powers and forces, the same great source of life.
But when man is reached it would seem that the rule of law is at an end.
His life and death, his goings in and out, his myriad acts are due to
no rule or system or law, but are the result of capricious will alone.
True, in many of his acts man recognizes the great force in whose mighty
power he is like the insect, or the grain of sand tossed by the angry
sea. Here and there he seems to dimly understand the great laws of
necessity, of sequence, of consequence, that govern human life. Every
father who takes pains in the rearing of his child, who surrounds it with
the influences that build up character and develop judgment and reason,
recognizes the law of necessity, the controlling power of environment,
the strength of habit and circumstance. The life of tribes and races and
nations show that fixed laws control in the actions of men, as everywhere
else within the realm of nature. Man is a part of nature, the highest
evolution of all, but still a part firmly bound by law to every atom of
matter and every particle of force which the wide universe contains. The
life and death of man, his distribution over the earth, his permanency
as an individual or a tribe, depend upon all other life. Man draws his
sustenance from the animate and inanimate world. The lives of bees depend
upon the flowers, their number and condition, their coming and going;
their birth and death is due to this natural cause outside the control
of the individual bee. The life of man depends upon his supply of food
and shelter, upon his ability to obtain the necessities of life. It
is true that in his progress he is no longer bound so closely to the
earth as in his early stages. He has learned something of the laws of
nature and is able to take some thought for the morrow; but yet famine
destroys him, disease overcomes him; severe droughts, protracted heat,
great inundations of flood, all these affect his life, change population,
destroy vast numbers, always the weaker, those less able to provide
for themselves, those who, from circumstances, have taken the smallest
thought for the morrow.
Even in the most civilized, progressive lands man is dependent on nature.
The constant thought of much the largest portion of mankind is for the
procurement of those things that will sustain, prolong and render their
lives more comfortable. The vast majority of men are closely bound to the
soil and their whole life is a struggle for the means to live. Even the
large majority of those whose condition is the most tolerable, find life
an endless struggle and anxiety their constant companion. Such a thing
as a free choice of life is out of the question for the vast majority
of men born upon the earth; their residence, occupation, hours of labor,
method of life, are fixed almost irrevocably in obedience to the demands
of their physical being. After those whose conditions of life are the
most tolerable, come a great mass whose existence is most precarious,
dependent upon the condition of the harvest, the condition of trade,
the amount of rain or snow, the quantity of sunshine, and a thousand
circumstances far beyond their control.
As a consequence of his desire for life and the means that make it
certain and pleasant, man has ever turned his attention toward the
conquest of nature, reducing vegetable and animal life to his control.
But his conquest does not end here. Not vegetables and animals alone must
be his slaves, but man as well. Ever has man enslaved his fellow; from
the beginning of his career upon the earth he has sought to make his own
existence pleasanter and more certain by compelling others to toil for
him. In its more primitive stages slavery was enforced by the ownership
of the man. In its later and more refined stages it is carried on by
the ownership of the things from which man must live. All life comes
primarily from the earth and without access to this great first source of
being, man must die. Passing from the ownership of individuals, rulers
have found it easier and more certain to own the earth—for to own the
earth is to fix the terms on which all must live. More and more does the
master seek to control access to land, to coal, to timber, to iron, to
water—these prime requisites to life. More and more certainly, as time
and civilization move on, do these prime necessities pass to the few.
Every new engine of production makes it easier for the few to reduce the
earth to their possession. Even land itself is of no value without the
railroads, the harbors, the mines and the forest. Everywhere these have
passed into the hands of the few. From the private ownership of men, the
rulers have passed to the private ownership of the earth and the control
of the land. The rulers no longer have the right to buy and sell the man,
to send him here and there to suit their will. They simply have the power
to dictate the terms upon which he can stand upon the earth. With the
mines, the forests, the oil, the harbors, the railroads, and the really
valuable productive land in the rulers’ hands, the dominance and power
of man over his fellows is absolute and complete. It is not necessary
to show that it is the ruling class who own the earth—the owners of the
earth must be the ruling class.