We have been boys and girls and have gone from our parents to our
school-mates and play-fellows for the information to which we are
entitled by very reason of living, but, more than all; because of our
need to live right. We all know the hideous untruths we were told
because of Comstockery; we all know how much we had to unlearn, and how
great the suffering mentally, how great the deterioration physically in
the unlearning; we all know our unfitness for parentage at the time we
entered it; every man knows how the brothels kept open doors and
beckoning inmates by the thousand for his undoing. And yet we endure
it--Comstockery.
It is such a subtly pervasive thing, this Comstockery, it steals in
wherever it can and puts the taint of its own uncleanness on whatever it
touches. Clothing becomes a matter of Comstockery. We do not always see
it, but such is the fact. We do not wear clothing for convenience, but
to cover our nakedness. You see nakedness is obscene. Not in itself, but
only in man. You may take a naked dog on the street, but not a naked
human being. The summer previous to the last one was a very hot one in
New York, and a poor wretch of a boy of fourteen years of age, being on
the top floor of a crowded tenement was half crazed by the heat and the
lack of fresh air, of which there was absolutely none in the closet in
which he was trying to sleep. He ran down into the street nude at two
o'clock in the morning in the hope of finding a surcease of his
distress. A policeman saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in
time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the
magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory,
remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have
seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.
Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest
man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more
children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear
any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for
motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science of
life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon
our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health;
or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from
instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no
means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way
to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the
average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with
her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our
parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children.
The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes,
at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing
we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with
sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus
we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be
our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex,
should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest
subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell
our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because
we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because
of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the
club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the select
company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our
Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows
this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As
has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be
sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.
Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex
discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of
sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live well
ourselves and fit us to bring into the world such children as will amaze
us with their health of body and purity of mind. No alteration of the
facts of life is necessary, but only a change of attitude. Why, when
Trilby brought the bare foot into prominence, it was gravely debated
whether or not such an indecency should be permitted. It was assumed
that a naked foot was indecent. Why a foot more than a hand? Why any one
part of the body more than another? Comstockery! Comstockery!
[Illustration]
DON QUIXOTE AND HAMLET
In Peter Kropotkin's Book: "Russian Literature" (published by McClure,
Phillips & Company), there is a quotation from Turgenieff's works, which
shows the Russian poet's genius and psychological insight in all its
wonderful depth. Here it is:
"Don Quixote is imbued with devotion towards his ideal, for which he is
ready to suffer all possible privations, to sacrifice his life; life
itself he values only so far as it can serve for the incarnation of the
ideal, for the promotion of truth, of justice on earth.... He lives for
his brothers, for opposing the forces hostile to mankind: the witches,
the giants--that is, the oppressors.... Therefore he is fearless,
patient; he is satisfied with the most modest food, the poorest cloth:
he has other things to think of. Humble in his heart, he is great and
daring in his mind.... And who is Hamlet? Analysis, first of all, and
egotism, and therefore no faith. He lives entirely for himself, he is
an egotist; but to believe in one' self--even an egotist cannot do that:
we can believe only in something which is outside us and above us.... As
he has doubts of everything, Hamlet evidently does not spare himself;
his intellect is too developed to remain satisfied with what he finds in
himself; he feels his weakness, but each self-consciousness is a force
where-from results his irony, the opposite of the enthusiasm of Don
Quixote.... Don Quixote, a poor man, almost a beggar, without means and
relations, old, isolated--undertakes to redress all the evils and to
protect oppressed strangers over the whole world. What does it matter to
him that his first attempt at freeing the innocent from his oppressor
falls twice as heavy upon the head of the innocent himself?... What does
it matter that, thinking that he has to deal with noxious giants, Don
Quixote attacks useful windmills?... Nothing of the sort can ever happen
with Hamlet: how could he, with his perspicacious, refined, sceptical
mind, ever commit such a mistake! No, he will not fight with windmills,
he does not believe in giants ... but he would not have attacked them
even if they did exist.... And he does not believe in evil. Evil and
deceit are his inveterate enemies. His scepticism is not
indifferentism.... But in negation, as in fire, there is a destructive
power, and how to keep it in bounds, how to tell it where to stop, when
that which it must destroy, and that which it must spare are often
inseparably welded together? Here it is that the often-noticed tragical
aspect of human life comes in: for action we require will, and for
action we require thought; but thought and will have parted from each
other, and separate every day more and more....
"And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sickled o'er by the pale cast of thought...."
[Illustration]
ON THE BANKS OF ACHERON
By EDWIN BJORKMAN
The air was still and full of a gray melancholy light, yet the waters of
the river boiled angrily as if touched by a raging tempest. The billows
rose foaming above its surface, all white with the whiteness of fear.
When they sank back again, they were black--black as despair that knows
of no hope.
Steep hills mounted abruptly on either side of the river until they
touched the sullen, colorless cloud-banks overhead. Their sides were
seamed with numberless paths, running on narrow ledges, one above the
other, from the river's edge to the crest of the hill. Men were moving
along those paths: they swarmed like ants across the hillside, but I
could not see whence they were coming nor whither they were going. All
were pushing and jostling and scratching and howling and fighting. Every
one's object seemed to be to raise himself to the path above his own and
to prevent all others from doing the same.
Down at the water's edge, they moved in a solid mass, arms pinned down,
shoulder to shoulder and chest to back. At times a man got an arm out of
the press and began to claw the up-turned, tear-stained faces of his
neighbors in wild endeavors to lift his whole body. But soon his madness
subsided, the writhing arm sank back, and the man vanished out of sight.
The mass once more moved stolidly, solidly onward. Once in a great while
its surface of heads would begin to boil like the waters of the river
near by, and a man would be spouted into the air, landing on one of the
paths above. Then each face would be turned toward him for a breathless
moment, at the end of which the mass glided slowly onward as before.
The crush on the paths higher up on the hillside was not so great, but
the fighting of man against man was incessant and bitter. I could see
them clambering up the steep sides of the ledges, with bleeding nails,
distorted features and locked teeth. Waving arms and clutching fingers
pursued them from below; ironshod heels trampled them from above.
Ninety-nine out of the hundred ended their struggles with a fall, and in
their rapid descent they swept others with them. But rising or falling,
they all pushed onward, onward--from nowhere to nowhere, as it seemed to
me. I watched them for hours, for days, for years--always the same
wandering, the same scrambling, the same tumbling, without apparent
purpose or result. Then my blood rose hotly to my heart and head. A
scarlet mist floated before my eyes and my soul swelled within me almost
unto bursting.
"Why?" I cried, and the word rolled back and forth between the hillsides
until its last echo was swallowed by the murmur that hovered over the
wrathful river. The strugglers on the hillside paths, each and all,
turned toward me. On every face I read astonishment.
"Why?" I yelled at them again, and the sound of my voice lingered above
the waters like a distant thunder. Gradually the expression on all those
staring faces changed from wonder to scorn. A man on one of the paths
near the crest of the hill laughed aloud. Two more joined him. It became
contagious and spread like wildfire. All those millions were laughing
into my face, laughing like demons rather than men.
My frown only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my
clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their
ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once more in defiance.
"Why?"
As when on a bleak winter day the black snow clouds suddenly begin to
darken the sky, so hatred and rage spread over their faces. Crooked,
bony fingers were pointed at me. Men leaned recklessly from their narrow
ledges to shout abuse at me. Stones and mud were flung at me. A hundred
arms seized me and tossed my body in a wide curve from the hillside out
over the river. For one long minute I struggled to keep myself above the
yawning waters. Then I sank. All grew dark about me. A strange fullness
in my chest seemed to rise up toward my head. There was a last moment
of consciousness in which I heard a single word uttered by a ringing,
bell-like voice that came from within myself. That last word was:
"Why?"
[Illustration]
The British Elections and the Labor Parties
By H. KELLY
"We are a left-center country; we live by compromise."
The above statement was made by an aged member of Parliament to
Kropotkin some years ago, and the present elections testify strongly to
the truth of that remark. For a country which produced the father of
political economy, Adam Smith--for Scotland is included in our
generalization--Robert Owen, the father of libertarian Socialism, which
in the forties stood almost at the head of the Socialist movement in
Europe, which has been the scene of so many Socialist and workingmen's
congresses and has furnished a refuge for so many distinguished exiles,
it is passing strange, to say the least, that up to the present no one
has been elected to Parliament on a purely Socialist platform; this
notwithstanding that, in the elections just past, of forty-three labor
members elected nineteen are members of the Independent Labor Party and
one of the Social Democratic Federation. John Burns was elected to
Parliament just after the great Dock Strike on his trade-union record
and has been elected regularly ever since, although he has long since
ceased to be a Socialist. Keir Hardie was elected for West Ham as a
Radical, and when he stood for re-election as a Socialist was defeated.
In 1900 he was elected again as member for Merthyr Tydfill, a radical
mining district in Wales, on a trade union-Socialist platform, and
undoubtedly received a large number of votes on the ground of having
been a miner once himself. R. B. Cunningham-Graham, probably the ablest
Socialist who has yet sat in the British Parliament, was elected as a
Radical, announcing himself a Socialist some time after his election.
The British workman, true to his traditions, has consistently demanded
compromise before electing anyone, and where that has been refused, the
candidates have gone down to defeat. Hyndman, founder of the Social
Democratic Federation and the ablest Socialist in public life; Quelch,
editor of "Justice," the official organ of that party, for more than a
decade, and Geo. Lansbury, one of their oldest, ablest and most
respected members, refused to compromise in the recent election, and
paid the inevitable penalty. Hyndman's case was really remarkable, he is
a man of exceptional ability, has devoted himself for twenty-five years
to the Socialist and labor movement, was endorsed by all the labor
bodies of Burnley, and Mr. Phillip Stanhope, recently created a lord and
one of the ablest Liberal politicians in the country, did him the honor
of declining to stand against him. Still he was defeated--while
politicians of an inferior stamp like John Burns, Keir Hardie, J. R.
MacDonald and two score of others were triumphantly elected on a labor
platform. Therein lies the secret, they were elected on a "Labor
Platform!" Eight-hour day, trade-union rate of wages, better factory
legislation, secular education, annual sessions of Parliament, paid
members, one man, one vote, etc. All excellent things in themselves, but
not Socialism and in no way disputing the right of one man to exploit
another and leaving untouched the basic principle of Socialism, real
Socialism, the right of labor to the fruits of its toil.
Under conditions such as those described, is it to be wondered at that
many Anarchists are frankly cynical as to the benefits labor will derive
from the labor parties? There will be at least two, that have suddenly
forced the gilded doors of the "Mother of Parliaments" and about which
the guilty middle class grew nervous. We know that men like T. Burt, H.
Broadhurst, W. Abraham, F. Madison and a score of others are but
nominal labor men not having worked at their various trades for years
and are middle class by training and income, that others like Keir
Hardie, J. R. MacDonald, John Ward and many more are at best labor
politicians so steeped in political bargaining and compromising that the
net results to labor from them will be very small indeed. It is not
necessary nor would it be just to question the honesty or well-meaning
of many of the forty-three labor members, to prove that a distinct
disappointment awaits those who elected them. Past history foretells the
future clearly enough. We have seen John Burns, hero of the Dock Strike,
who entered Parliament as a Revolutionary Socialist, becoming in a few
short years as docile as a lamb to those above him in power and as
autocratic as a Russian provincial governor to those who needed his
assistance, finally enter a Liberal Cabinet with the "hero of
Featherstone," H. H. Asquith, by whose orders striking miners were shot
down in real American fashion, Sir Edward Grey, and other Jingo
Imperialists--and the end is not yet. There are our other friends (?).
H. Broadhurst, special favorite of the King; W. Abraham, ex-coal miner,
who so endeared himself to the coal operators of Wales in his capacity
as official of the Miners' Union and Scale Committee that when his
daughter was married several years ago she received a cheque for L100
from one of the aforesaid operators, and others whom space forbids
mentioning. Such is the material of which the labor parties now in the
House of Commons is formed, and it requires a violent stretch of
imagination to see any real, lasting benefit can accrue from the
forty-three men now sitting there as representatives of the oppressed
masses. An inability to see this, however, by no means implies a lack of
inherent good in the formation of the Labor Representation Committee and
the Miners' Federation, their fraternization with the Socialists and the
forces which impelled that organization and fraternization. It is the
agitation which preceded it, and we hope will continue, and the growing
desire on the part of the workers for a larger share of the product of
their toil and a part in the management of industry that we see hope.
The form that movement has taken or the beneficial results from the
efforts of the elected are details. It is scarcely five years since the
Labor Representation Committee sprang into existence, and it says much
for the solidarity of labor that over a million trade unionists,
thirteen thousand members of the Independent Labor Party and eight
hundred Fabians could be got together on a political program in so short
a time.
For good or ill the British workingman has gone in for political action
and will have a try at that before he listens to the Anarchists. Slow of
thought and used to compromise, he is a stern taskmaker and will exact a
rigid account of the stewardship entrusted to those who sought his
suffrage. When the disillusionment comes, as it surely will, real
progress may come. The process of disillusionment does not come with
geometrical precision. To some it comes over night, to others it is a
process of years, and to some it is denied altogether. For years the
Anarchists have been scoffed at as impossible dreamers for advocating
the General Strike as the only effective means of overthrowing the
present system. The glorious fight of the Russian people for freedom has
changed all this, and we find even Bebel threatening the German
Government with a general strike if they attempt to withdraw the
franchise; and Hyndman, who opposed it for years, has finally admitted
its effectiveness. The effect has been felt in Great Britain in the
shape of the unemployed agitations and demonstrations, and although
temporarily allayed by the elections, it will blossom forth again.
If the advent of the Liberal party to power, backed by the Home Rule and
Labor parties, causes an undoing of the harm of the Balfour-Chamberlain
government, it will be more than can reasonably be expected. The trade
unions can never be restored to quite the same legal immunity they had
previously. The forty thousand Chinese imported into South Africa to
take the places of white miners will remain even if no more are brought
in. The Education Act, passed with the assistance of the Irish
Archbishops and attacking secular education, will be amended and not
repealed. The endowment of the brewers will continue, and my Lords Bass,
Burton and the rest will merely await future opportunities to plunder
the British public. In short, little constructive legislation, even of
that mild and tentative character one might expect from a Liberal party,
made up of capitalistic units can be expected after the ten years of
corrupt and extravagant rule of this band of modern pirates.
They who advocate the complete reconstruction of society are under no
illusions as to the time and trouble required to overcome the
superstitions of the past. Being imbued, however, with the belief in
what Christians call "the eternal righteousness of their cause," they
meet the future with smiling face; and far from being downcast over the
turn of events in Great Britain, see hope in the formation of the Labor
Parties.
[Illustration]
AND YOU?
BOLTON HALL
"What would you do," asked the Idealist, "if you were Czar of Russia?"
"I would first abolish monopoly of land, for that is fundamental," said
the Reformer, "and then resign. What would you do?"
"I would first resign, and then teach the people to abolish monopoly of
land, the same as now," answered the Idealist. "But what would you do,
Teacher?"
"I would teach the people from the throne that they were oppressed by
their system of monopoly--and by their Czar."
NATIONAL ATAVISM
BY INTERNATIONALIST
The Jewish circles in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and other cities of
America are aroused over the visit of a spectre called Nationalism,
alias Territorialism. Like all spectres, it is doing a lot of mischief
and causing much confusion in the heads of the Jewish population.
The spirit of our ancestor, Abraham, has come to life again. Like
Abraham, when Jehovah commanded him to go in quest of the promised land,
the Jewish Nationalists make themselves and others believe that they
long for the moment, when with wife and child and all possessions, they
will migrate to that spot on earth, which will represent the Jewish
State, where Jewish traits will have a chance to develop in idyllic
peace.
Natural science calls retrogression of species, which shows signs of a
former state already overcome, atavism. The same term may be applied to
the advanced section of the Jewish population, which has listened to the
call of the Nationalists. They have retrogressed from a universal view
of things to a philosophy fenced in by boundary lines; from the glorious
conception that "the world is my country" to the conception of
exclusiveness. They have abridged their wide vision and have made it
narrow and superficial.
The Zionism of Max Nordau and his followers never was more than a
sentimental sport for the well-to-do in the ranks of the Jews. The
latter-day Nationalists, however, are bent on reaching those circles of
the Jewish race that have so far followed the banner of Internationalism
and Revolution; and this at a moment when revolutionists of all
nationalities and races are most in need of unity and solidarity.
Nothing could be more injurious to the Russian revolution, nothing prove
a lack of confidence in its success, so much as the present
nationalistic agitation.
The most encouraging and glorious feature of revolutions is that they
purify the atmosphere from the thick, poisonous vapors of prejudices and
superstition.
From time immemorial revolutions have been the only hope and refuge of
all the oppressed from national and social yokes. The radical
nationalistic elements seem to have forgotten that all their enthusiasm,
their faith and hope in the power of a great social change, now falters
before the question: Will it give us our own territory where we can
surround ourselves with walls and watch-towers? Yes, the very people,
who once spoke with a divine fire of the beauty of the solidarity of all
individuals and all peoples, now indulge in the shallow phrases that the
Jew is powerless, that he is nowhere at home, and that he owns no place
on earth, where he can do justice to his nature, and that he must first
obtain national rights, like all nations, ere he can go further.
These lamentations contain more fiction than truth, more sentimentality
than logic.