RADIANCIES OF CONTENT AND DISCONTENT
I want to radiate a spirit of content. The dictionary says that to be
content is to be "held full." If one is full, that is enough. He is
satisfied. He has peace of mind. All this is implied in the word
content. I want to radiate this sense of fullness, of satisfaction. I
want people to feel that I am full of physical health, full of mental
vigor, full of spiritual power, and, with the exceptions that I shall
note later on in this chapter, that I am satisfied.
I want to radiate a large-hearted contentment with things as they are. I
am content with the world as it is. Its glories, its beauties, its
charms, its allurements, its variety, satisfy me. There is nothing in
scenery that the mind can conceive that I cannot find; every sort of
climate is offered to me. I can surround myself with people or I can
dwell in the virgin solitudes. I can live under the gray skies of the
East or under the cerulean blue of the West. The snow-covered heights of
the Himalayas are mine or the wastes of the Sahara. I can toss on the
stormy ocean or bask in the sun-kissed gardens of the South. It is a
glorious, beautiful, blessed world.
Yet I hear people complaining on every hand. It is too hot, or they wish
it hadn't rained. Why does the wind blow so fiercely? The snow has just
come at the wrong time. Then, too, they find fault with the every-day
occurrences of life. They are angry because they missed a train, have
failed to carry through a business transaction, were delayed and lost an
important appointment. The other day I met a young man holding his
wrist, and with a look of severe pain on his face. In doing some work in
the gymnasium he hurt his hand and wrist. It is hard to radiate
contentment under the annoyance and pain of such things as this and the
circumstances I have mentioned. Yet in these, as in all other things in
life, I believe with Shakspeare:
There is a Divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them as we may.
Many a time it is the best thing in the world to have lost an
appointment, to have missed a train, to have sprained one's wrist. The
wet weather is as good as the sunshine, and the storm equally beneficent
with the calm. Hence I want to be content and to radiate my content with
things as they are. Discontent is a burning acid. It eats away the
happy, blessed things of life. It destroys the beauty of an otherwise
perfect life. It takes away the smile and substitutes a frown. It
injects bitterness into words that would otherwise be sweet. It changes
the kind word into an angry curse. And it burns and corrodes far deeper
than one imagines.
I once had a surgical operation in which a severe corroding substance
was injected into a certain part of my body. My physicians, men of
wisdom and men who loved me, thought they knew how much that corrosive
substance would burn. But it burned far more severely and destroyed much
more tissue than they conceived, and my life came near to paying the
penalty. Discontent works in exactly the same way, only worse. Its
burnings are of the mind, and, therefore, more seriously injurious. Its
burns are deep and uncertain. To put it in another way--it sours the
milk of human kindness. It turns the butter rancid. It pulls down the
shades and shuts out the sunlight. It turns the steam off from the
radiator. It shuts out the fresh air. It banishes the fairies of
jollity, healthfulness, happiness, and content.
Do not radiate discontent, therefore, but radiate a glorious, buoyant,
exuberant contentment. Think of the books we have to-day, as compared
with those possessed by people who lived a few hundred years ago--the
poems, the dramas, the essays, the histories, the novels, the accounts
of adventure and travel, the revelations of science. Think how cheap
they are, how easy to obtain. Think of the public libraries established
in almost every city, town, and village of the civilized world. In many
states they have now established a method by means of which the library
systems may become county-wide in their influences instead of confined
to the cities and towns. Books are being sent to the remotest farmhouse,
to the shack of the lumberman, the moving home of the sheep-herder, the
log hut of the miner, anywhere, everywhere that a human hand is seen
stretched forth for a book, the new library system seeks to reach.
Think of the music of to-day! The great bands, the marvelous orchestras,
the soul-inspiring choruses, the wonderfully equipped opera companies,
the cheapness of the organ and piano, the universality of the
graphophone, with its records of music of every character that can be
heard in the humblest home.
Think of the multiplication of the opportunities for hearing the drama,
some good, some indifferent, some bad, but all more or less revealing
artistic power and calling forth the satisfaction of the onlookers.
Think of the spread of educational opportunities, the public schools,
the colleges, the universities, the correspondence schools, the women's
clubs and leagues. I went through a high school the other day that was
ten times better equipped for the higher education, as far as it went,
than the universities were a hundred years ago.
Think of the ease with which we travel--electric cars, railway trains,
automobiles, flying machines.
Think of the annihilation of distance in conversing with our friends,
the telephone, the telegraph, the telepost, the wireless.
Think of the opportunities of enjoyment and education offered to the
poor in our large cities by means of the parks, the children's
playgrounds, the free museums, and the art galleries.
Think of the improvements during late years in the conditions of home
life--the application of gas and electricity for lighting, heating,
cooking, ironing, and, now, even for sweeping and cleaning up.
Think of the improvements of the condition of lives of our farmers and
their laborers in the remote districts. Little by little the conditions
of life are being made easier for them. Labor is being lightened and the
hours shortened, uncertainties are being eliminated, results made more
sure.
Think of the growing spirit of freedom and true democracy, of
brotherhood and comradeship that are welding the world together in the
bonds of humanitarian brotherhood; treaties between nations,
federations of nations, world's fairs, the Red Cross movement, The Hague
Peace Tribunal, arbitration instead of war, and agitation for the
reduction of armies and navies.[D]
[D] This was written prior to the breaking out of the war of 1914-15,
when "hell was let loose in Europe." Yet I do not feel inclined to
change one single line of what I then wrote. During 1915, I was engaged
speaking daily to large audiences at the Panama-Pacific Exposition in
San Francisco--I estimate that I addressed not less than 300,000 people
during that time. In many of these addresses I expressed my thoughts
about the hideousness, the needlessness, the waste, the devilishness of
war, with open frankness, and without a single exception my
denunciations of the system of war were received with hearty applause. I
refer to this merely as an index as to what I believe is the general
thought of all intelligent people on the subject. All except war-mad and
war-hypnotized people hate war and desire to see it abolished, and the
higher standards of brotherly and amicable conference and equitable
adjustment of difficulties take its place. That nations were urged into
the European conflict is no proof that they love war. It is rather a
proof that they hate war enough to die to make future wars impossible.
This, I sincerely hope and confidently expect, will be the tendency of
the result, if not an actually accomplished result.
One has but to study the changes that have taken place in our
civilization since Dickens began to write, for instance, to see how
wonderfully the world has progressed. He wrote _Nicholas Nickleby_ to
call attention to the horrible abuses existent in boys' boarding
schools, where boys, who for any reason were desired out of the way at
home, were put in charge of human fiends in the guise of
"schoolmasters." Step-children, heirs who were in the way, natural
children, and those whose parents had no natural affection for them,
were put into these dens, and so cruelly abused that they often died;
and at the best they dragged out their miserable existence afraid of
what each hour of the day might bring forth and finding only in their
troubled sleep the relief from the active cruelties they were made to
bear.
_Little Dorrit_ graphically pictured the horrors of the "prison for
debt" system, and in the wonderfully painted character of Little
Dorrit's father, Dickens showed how every human trait and feeling, every
noble passion and emotion was dwarfed, twisted, distorted, and perverted
by the action of this unnatural, cruel, and monstrous law.
_Barnaby Rudge_ called equally vivid attention to the laws which placed
political disabilities upon Jews and Roman Catholics, rendering them
incapable of voting and holding office throughout the British dominions,
and sought to remove the hatred, prejudice, and dissensions which
unnatural acts of Parliament always caused.
In _A Tale of Two Cities_ the curse of caste is revealed; the inevitable
results of giving special privileges to a so-called aristocratic class,
and while its teachings were veiled as being connected with incidents in
the French Revolution they were a wonderful help to the forwarding of
true ideas of pure democracy and genuine recognition of the doctrine of
the brotherhood of man.
In _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the theme is the horrors of the "Circumlocution
Office"--that vast, hideous, monstrous juggernaut that rode rough-shod
over all justice, truth, honor, right, decency, and sincerity, by its
evasions, quibblings, dodgings, twinings, twistings, and deliberate
perversions of the truth.
Other writers made their novels the themes of similar crying abuses that
needed reform. Henry Cockton wrote his _Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist_
to expose the hideous dealings of private mad-houses, where helpless men
and women were confined by law, who were perfectly sane, yet who were in
the way of dishonest lawyers, judges, administrators, heirs, or
relations. I can never forget the powerful and terrible impression this
story made upon me, though it is nearly forty years since I read it,
especially where the author described what it is said he himself had had
to pass through, when he was driven into temporary insanity by being
strapped to his cot while fiends in human form mocked and taunted him
and at the same time "tickled his feet" until he was a raging maniac.
To the people of to-day the term "Chartist" means nothing. Nine-tenths
of the population of the United States possibly never heard the term.
Yet it is only a few generations since men were sentenced to "Botany
Bay" and other penal settlements for twenty, thirty, and more years,
and sometimes "for life," for joining in this reform which demanded
certain rights that _we_ have enjoyed without a thought ever since we
were born. One of these grand old warriors for man's greater freedom
used to visit at my father's house when I was a lad. He was an
intellectual giant who had won the honor and fame the world freely
accords to those who do not take it by the throat too severely, and once
in a while he could be induced to tell of the days of his earlier
conflict;--how that he and his compeers fought for a repeal of the corn
laws--laws which made it almost impossible for a poor man to get
bread--and for the right of a man to sell the products of his own labor
from door to door to save himself from starvation. He was imprisoned and
sentenced for a long term of years and while in prison wrote a poem of
tremendous power and influence. How my heart burned to the old warrior,
and I then and there declared that
I live to learn their story
Who've suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And to follow in their wake:
* * * * *
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance.
Then, too, how I recall the fight for religious freedom in England--some
of it before my time, but some of it under my own eyes, and in which I
had the joy of bearing a small part. The Lord George Gordon riots,
described by Dickens in _Barnaby Rudge_, were provoked by religious
hostility. When I was a boy, no Jew or Catholic could hold office in
England--I think I am correct. This act, passed in the reign of Charles
II--I write from memory--was thus in operation for two hundred years;
two hundred years of injustice, prejudice, fostering of religious hatred
and separations. Yet Benjamin Disraeli made a great premier, and was one
of the most brilliant statesmen of Europe, and the Howard family,
Cardinal Manning, and Cardinal Newman, all of whom were Roman Catholics,
were loved and revered on every hand for their enlightened patriotism
and the help they gave to everything that had the welfare of England at
heart. It was a glad day for England that saw the removal of the
disabilities from such good citizens as these, merely because they chose
to exercise their perfect God-given right of freedom of choice in
religious belief. And still, even as late as the ascension to the throne
of George V, son of King Edward, and grandson of that progressive and
liberal-minded Queen, Victoria, there remained in the oath a hateful
spirit of narrowness and intolerance against Catholic beliefs. Thirty to
forty years previously Charles Bradlaugh was refused his seat in the
House of Commons because he desired to "affirm" instead of "taking the
oath." He was an "unbeliever," and claimed his right to be such, and yet
to take his seat as a representative of the people without being
compelled to swear to an oath in which he did not believe. He was fought
an every hand, and with physical violence; yet he kept resolutely on
with the conflict, until I saw him myself, with joy, take his place
before the speaker of the House, victorious. Yet I am not an unbeliever,
nor do I accept Bradlaugh's conclusions as to God and the making of the
universe. Nor is it necessary. Equally so it is not necessary that I
should attempt to force my ideas down his throat and if he refuse to say
that he swallows them should seek to keep him from exercising his
political rights.
To us, living to-day, it seems impossible that a great civil war was
necessary ere the shackles were shaken from the limbs of four millions
of slaves; it seems incredible that New Englanders as well as
Southerners were engaged in fostering the iniquitous slave trade--the
murderous trade in human flesh and blood. Grant everything the South
claims to-day as to the difficulty of handling the negro problem, that
does not alter the fundamental principle of the Declaration of
Independence that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To us it seems incredible
that honest and honorable men, clear-sighted, clear-brained religious
men who knew the value of words and their meaning, could have so
befuddled their intellects, let alone their moral nature, as to dare to
read these words and at the same time own slaves. Yet it was so, and not
until the heroes whose work led ultimately to the Declaration of
Independence for the slave, called the Emancipation Proclamation, set
their faces against this great iniquity, was anything done to mitigate
its evils.
How well do I recall the endeavors of many Englishmen to induce the
Government to interfere with the Turks and prevent further infliction of
horrible and murderous atrocities upon the Bulgarians and other subject
people, because of religious differences. But "politics stood in the
way." And yet I heard the words of Cleveland ring around the world when
he bade England: "Hands off," from Venezuela. Again was I thrilled when
McKinley justified the prophecy of Joaquin Miller, uttered nearly thirty
years previously, in his _Cuba Libre_, where he declared:
She shall rise, by all that's holy!
She shall live and she shall last;
* * * * *
She shall rise as rose Columbus,
From his chains, from shame and wrong--
Rise as Morning, matchless, wondrous--
Rise as some rich morning song--
Rise a ringing song, and story,
Valor, Love personified.
Stars and stripes espouse her glory,
Love and Liberty allied.
The time came when we "flashed her lights of freedom," as we had done
before, but this time there was an admixture of personal feeling in
which the cry, "Remember the _Maine_," bore a large part. Yet the main
issue was raised, viz., the intervention of a strong power to prevent
another strong power from too seriously oppressing a confessedly weak
power. This is a step in the right direction. The bully, whether in
school, in the street, in business, or among nations, should be taught
that his bullying is unsafe, and that if he must fight he must choose a
"fellow of his own size."
While I do not close my eyes to the facts that nations are human and
liable to err, I hail this as a great forward step, and was filled with
rejoicing when the United States Government refused to accept any
indemnity from China for its share of the expense of putting down the
last great Boxer Rebellion.
In our National and State governments there is a growing spirit of
righteous intervention. In his last presidential message, President Taft
voiced this spirit in his recommendation of an enlarged measure of
protection for railroad employees, and states and cities are moving
more rapidly than ever before in the enactment of laws and ordinances
for the protection of those least able to protect themselves.
Reforms in law procedure are progressing. In his 1910 message, President
Taft thus spoke:
One great crying need in the United States is cheapening the cost of
litigation by simplifying judicial procedure and expediting final
judgment. Under present conditions the poor man is at a woeful
disadvantage in a legal contest with a corporation or a rich
opponent. The necessity for this reform exists both in United States
courts and in all state courts. In order to bring it about, however,
it naturally falls to the general government by its example to
furnish a model to all States.
This is a great step in the right direction. The honest and manly
recognition of a crying evil is often the beginning of its removal, and
I sincerely hope to live to see the day when our laws, and legislative
procedure, will truthfully be equally for the poor and the rich.
The activity of the Federal Government in pursuing the nefarious
malefactors who are conducting the "white slave traffic," is also a sign
of marked improvement in affording protection to those who are helpless
and often unable and incompetent to know what to do for their own
welfare.
And how I hail with joy the movement so energetically furthered by Mr.
Bok, of the _Ladies' Home Journal_, the Bishop of London, the _Physical
Culture_ magazine, _Collier's_, and others, for the education of the
young of both sexes as to the sacred relations of sex and all they
imply. The W. C. T. U. has done a little, the magazines and physical
culture movement more, and now the better schools--such as the
Polytechnic High School of Los Angeles, and the High School in Pasadena,
California--are giving definite and specific instruction upon these
matters to boys and girls whose parents have been remiss in neglecting
this all-important part of their _home_ education and training.
The pure food bill is another step forward in our national progress; the
great conservation movement and the work of the United States
Reclamation Service, which is providing means for irrigating the soil
and thus rendering possible the establishment of thousands of homes on
lands that otherwise would be arid and useless--these are gigantic
strides of advancement. The postal-savings bank and parcels post are
already facts, thus demonstrating that, little by little, the powers
that have controlled our Government, for the benefit of the few, instead
of for all the people, and especially those who need such benefit the
most, are gradually losing their hold. Soon, let us hope, we shall have
the "penny postage"--one cent for a letter instead of two, as now. The
extension of the eight-hour day law; the honest endeavors now being
made to give labor a fair opportunity to state its needs and
requirements and thus help bring oppressive employers to time, are also
forward steps. Granted that labor often makes unreasonable and unjust
demands, let it not be forgotten that it is only within the last few
decades that they have been allowed to have a voice at all. For
centuries they have been "chained to the wheel of labor,"
The emptiness of ages in their face,
And on their back the burden of the world.
What if, now that "whirlwinds of rebellion" are shaking the world and
these hitherto "dumb terrors" have found, or are finding, a voice, they
speak a little too loudly, or too harshly, or ask more than they ought?
Whose fault is it? Who has kept them in bondage so long? They will
learn, by and by, to speak more rationally, but this will come only by
speaking, so I hail with delight the fact that "the rulers and lords of
all lands" are recognizing their right to be heard, and are more or less
respectfully listening to what they have to say.
It is another grand sign of universal progress that the owners and
landlords of vile tenement houses, of the horrible kennels in which
human beings in the past used to be penned as in pigsties, are no longer
allowed to reap monetary rewards from such abominable and cursed holes.
Boards of health, civic improvement bodies, tenement reform associations
are taking upon themselves the work of protecting the poor, helpless,
and often unfortunate dwellers in these plague spots and compelling that
they be made decent, healthful, and sanitary--often seeing that they are
razed and entirely removed. What though oftentimes the people who dwell
in these places are brought thither by their own misconduct? Are men,
women, and innocent children to be "damned" on this earth--as well as in
the future--because morally they have been weak and unfortunate? The
greater the weakness and the lower the fall, the greater the cry and
need for help. Jacob Riis was a brave and heroic leader in New York,
William Booth and his gallant army in London and the thousand and one
other cities of the world, and the day is dawning when there will be no
"slums" in any decent, self-respecting city, when such books as _How the
Other Half Lives_, _The Submerged Tenth_, _If Christ Came to Chicago_,
and _The People of the Abyss_ can no longer be written, for the
true-hearted, loving, brotherly, and sisterly, will have been aroused to
do their plain, simple, and manifest duty and "slums," "abysses," and
"plague spots" will cease to exist.
There are many other excellent things I might comment upon that help
bring content to the soul. They betoken a glorious and blessed
improvement upon the "days of things as they were" and they should lead
every man to get into line, to find the step and keep it, marching on
with this vanguard of human progress, which seeks the best possible
condition of body, mind, and soul for all men.
Yet, in spite of this large-hearted contentment with things as they are,
and with the way the world generally is progressing, which I would
radiate, I would equally radiate a great discontent with many things as
they are. When I look at my own faults and failings, my inadequacies and
incompetencies, my blindness and stupidity, my ignorance and
willfulness, I find much of my content disappear like the airy visions
of a dream. I certainly do not want to be content with these things and
so I call up as often as I can a mighty discontent which is a constant
urge to the higher, nobler, truer, better life. I am as self-willed as
other men, and yet I well know that human will is both ignorant and
blind, and that only when it is made subject to the Great Controlling
Will of the Universe will it lead me aright and in the paths of
ultimate, permanent success. And by success, I do not mean the paltry
thing most men regard as success. I certainly wish to radiate discontent
with what men generally regard as success. Mere money, fame, honor,
social distinction, count for little unless character, divine sympathy
with one's needy fellows, and an enlarged conception of the brotherhood
of men accompany them.
And how can I do other than radiate a large and tremendous discontent at
the suffering and woe of the unfortunates of life? It is little or
nothing to me what causes their misfortune. I have learned that the
judgment of sociologists, theologists, and reformers generally is of
little account in interpreting the causes of things. As a rule, they
look only on the surface and see nothing of the hidden springs of action
and therefore know little of the movement of hearts of men and women
whose condition they so complacently and conceitedly imagine they can
change.
Some years ago, Jack London wrote a book entitled, _The People of the
Abyss_. It was severely censured and criticised and some critics went so
far as to assert that it was full of untruths. It told of the dismal
lives of London's poor, who daily find themselves with nothing but one
meal, two meals, three meals between themselves and starvation--poor
wretches to whom the "wolf at the door" is an ever present reality, and
who tremble every time their employers look towards them with a frown or
speak with a voice that threatens dismissal. What a frightful,
pitiable, pathetic position for men and women--my brothers and
sisters--to be in. I certainly do not wish to radiate contentment at the
fact of their unfortunate condition. I want somehow to take some of
their burdens upon my life. I want to realize something of the spirit
that led Walt Whitman to exclaim, "I will take nothing for myself that
cannot be given upon equal terms to all men."
When I read the stories of child labor and learn of the many cruelties
practiced upon helpless little ones, in the name of business; when I see
those boys and girls of tender age in the cotton mills of the South,
owned by wealthy men of the North, plodding back and forth, hour by
hour, behind the whirling spindles; when I see them, as I have often
done, so utterly weary that when the noon hour came, they would stretch
out on the bare floor and try to gain a little snatch of forgetfulness
of their weariness in sleep, rather than eat their inadequate lunch, I
have certainly felt, as I now feel, that I wish to radiate a tremendous
amount of discontent that such inhuman facts can exist. When I see the
private palace car owned by the many-times millionaire, and catch
glimpses of the extravagant and wasteful luxury in which he and his
family live, and realize that this prodigal wastefulness is made
possible by the life-destroying labor of poor, anæmic children in the
glass-blowing factories of New Jersey, I wish I had the power to send a
great wail of discontent through the country that would thrill the
hearts, awaken the senses, and arouse the consciences of every man and
woman in the nation.
When I realize the inadequacies of our legal system to do justice alike
to all men and women, the poor as well as the rich, the innocent and
confiding as well as the crafty and cunning, I feel nothing but
discontent and long for the time to come when justice and mercy shall be
of higher value in the courts of our land than precedent and legal
procedure.
It often takes moral courage to radiate real living discontent with
these injustices and crimes against our needy and defenseless fellows. I
long to possess this moral courage in fullest measure, and to radiate it
on every hand. In view of the need for strong protest against the smug,
contented betrayers of the poor and needy, I would radiate a spirit that
has not inaptly been termed that of _contemporaneous protest and
rebellion_. By this I mean that present spirit of protest and rebellion
against wrongs that exist _now_, so that my protest will be
contemporaneous with the evil.
It is easy enough to line up with the winning side and shout Hurrah!
with the victors in any conflict. Even the English of to-day agree that
the American Revolution was a good thing and that the acts of George III
were indefensible tyranny. But it required considerable courage to join
one's forces with those of Washington when money was scarce and men few,
when the day seemed dark and gloomy, and the prospects of success were
doubtful.
It is easy enough to-day to Hurrah! for the principles of Lincoln, but
many a great statesman like Henry Clay felt it was better to compromise
than face the fierce antagonism of such men as Calhoun, Jefferson Davis,
and others who believed in the opposing ideas.
What I desire with all my heart is to radiate not only my _readiness_
and _willingness_ to line up with the unpopular cause, _but the fact
that I am already lined up_. That, without being asked, people will know
what my position is sure to be; that I naturally belong on the side of
the "under dog," and that in any conflict against entrenched power and
wrong, where the weak and oppressed are fighting for rights which are
inherently theirs, that as soon as I hear the battle-cry my "HERE!" will
ring out immediate, bold and clear.
Nor do I always want to wait to be called upon. I may not have either
the wisdom and discretion or the ability to be a leader and I have no
desire to thrust myself forward as such. At the same time, I do not want
to be cowardly and hang back when I see that which I feel is inherently
wrong. Even though I stand alone, I want to stand in protest and
contemporaneous rebellion against the wrong that I see.
Nay, further, I want to radiate as _my habitual attitude of mind_ that I
am ever on the alert to _seek out opportunities for rebellion_ against
any and all systems of wrong, no matter how powerful, that I may gladly
take upon my shoulders some part of the burden of helping forward the
real progress of the entire human race.
James Russell Lowell expressed the passionate desire of my heart in his
_Present Crisis_. In that majestic poem he shows the need for this
contemporaneous rebellion:
Backward look across the ages, and the beacon-movements see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's Sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet Earth's chaff
must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.
Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne,--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.
The whole poem is full of this passionate great-hearted, manly, God-like
sympathy, _now_ and _here_, with the needy, the oppressed, the helpless
of today. The crises are here now, those stern winnowers that test and
try men's souls, that discover whether they are wheat or chaff, ashes or
gold. Oh, for men who have made already the "choice momentous"--while
the battle is raging, when there is danger, risk, peril, possible death
in the conflict. Is he a true man who waits, pauses, hesitates, wavers
in such conflicts, "till the judgment hath passed by"?
I would radiate, again let me say it, my readiness to march at the sound
of the drum, to advance with the front ranks, to fight at the first
word.
History affords us many noble examples and "beacon lights" of those who
have lived in accordance with the principles herein laid down.
Stephen Langton and the barons of England protested against the
tyrannical power of King John. They did so at the peril of their heads.
Yet they were possessed of this spirit of contemporaneous rebellion, and
they fought against John and won from him that great charter of the
liberties of men, that has been the basis of all proclamations of
freedom ever since.
Cromwell, Hampden, Pym, Milton, and the other great commoners and
democrats of England were in a state of contemporaneous protest and
rebellion against the undue pretensions of King Charles I. Their
protests might have cost them their lives--yet they protested. And they
won a victory that has made republics possible throughout all time.
So with the leaders of the French Revolution. There were many awful and
bloody events connected with that great act of contemporaneous protest,
but that the ultimate outcome upon mankind has been good most
true-hearted thinkers agree. Yet the protests were made by the earlier
agitators under great danger.
When Patrick Henry, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and the
other American revolutionists protested against King George's tyranny,
and when the noble band met at Philadelphia and signed the Declaration
of Independence, they knew they did it at the peril of their lives--yet
they protested and won for mankind the victory that Joaquin Miller calls
"Time's burst of Dawn."
Had Langton, Cromwell, the French Revolutionists, Washington, and the
signers of the Declaration of Independence failed, they would all have
forfeited their lives for their temerity. It was an act of great moral
courage to rebel.
When Galileo rebelled against the dictum of the ecclesiastic authorities
in regard to the movement of the earth, it meant his imprisonment, yet
he rebelled and thus ushered in a new day of advancement in astronomical
knowledge. Darwin did the same. Both men required daring and courage,
yet they did not hesitate or falter.
There are evils to-day that should be fought; fashions, customs,
entrenched wrongs in existence _now_ against which manly men are called
to be in contemporaneous rebellion. Those of us who live to-day are
reaping great and blessed privileges, freedom, liberties, won for us as
the result of the protests, rebellions, warfares of the moral heroes of
the past; so should we further the progress of the world by protesting
and fighting the existing wrongs, in order that future generations may
be freer than we are, and may push on still further the glorious chariot
of human progress.
Henry George was a recent heroic example of contemporaneous protest
against current evils. Garibaldi, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Kossuth, were
all noble and inspiring examples of the like spirit. Ruskin's life was a
perpetual protest against the sacrificing of beauty, peace, harmony, and
brotherhood for the rush and show of material prosperity. William
Morris's life, work, voice, and pen were ever in active, open,
contemporaneous hostility and opposition to the damnable spirit of
modern competition, and demoralizing commercialism which destroyed
artistic labor, banished fellowship, and substituted therefor the rule
of the jungle where the strong devour the weak. Thank God! the ranks of
the morally courageous have always found glad and willing recruits; men
willing to spend and be spent for the benefit of humanity; willing to be
rebels and accounted and treated as such that they might help gain
larger victories of freedom for their fellow-men.
We sometimes think that there was more moral heroism in the days gone by
than there is to-day. I do not believe it! In this matter of moral
heroism and contemporaneous rebellion against entrenched wrong, we have
many fine and noble living examples on every hand. I could mention a
hundred of them in as many minutes. A few must suffice.
When Edwin Markham wrote _The Man with the Hoe_, he showed his spirit of
contemporaneous protest and rebellion. Here was no reflection upon labor
or its dignity, as some thoughtless critics have affirmed, but it was a
tremendous and powerful onslaught upon the "Kings and Rulers of All
Lands" who permit employers to chain the laborer to the "wheel of
labor." Markham's poem is a direct challenge and throwing down of the
gauntlet to those who contend that they have a right to purchase labor
in the open market at any price, however demoralizing to mankind. It is
a contention that manhood is more than money; that the laborer is more
than the labor; and that the employers who value the labor done more
than the men who do the labor are unworthy the honor and respect of
decent men; are unworthy to be called real men because of their
tyrannical abuse of their helpless brothers.
William Booth, president of the Salvation Army, Jack London, the
socialist novelist, Jacob Riis, the New York newspaper idealist, Maud
Ballington Booth, the leader of the Volunteers of America, Charles
Montgomery, of San Francisco, the prisoner's friend, and Dana Bartlett,
of Los Angeles, the brother of poor "Dagoes," Portuguese and Mexicans,
are all more or less widely diverse examples of contemporaneous
rebellion and protest against existing social conditions. Each works in
his own way to ameliorate these conditions, but the work of each is a
protest against those laws of supply and demand, of competition, of
worship of material things, that allow it to be possible that some men
can gain more wealth than they can ever utilize, even if they lived to
be ten thousand years old, and never earn another cent, whilst others
can earn barely enough to keep body and soul together and who live every
day in dread of the future because they are capable of earning no more
than enough to keep them one, two, or three meals away from starvation.
In a copy of his book, _The People of the Abyss_, which Jack London sent
to me, which truthfully portrays the life of the submerged tenth of
London, he wrote something like this on the title page: "Dear
James--With the facts of these pages before me, I may agree with you in
your favorite quotation from Browning, that 'God's in his heaven,' but I
cannot agree with you that 'All's right with the world.'"
It is the fashion with certain people to decry Jack London's socialism,
but I happen to know that he has personally sacrificed thousands of
dollars to his principles in this matter, has lost the friendship of
many wealthy people who would have showered their gifts upon him had he
been complacent towards what he calls "predatory wealth," hence I hail
his acts of contemporaneous rebellion and his taking upon himself of the
battle for these, his weaker brothers and sisters, as heroic, and fully
worthy of the highest esteem of all good men, whatever they may think of
the methods by which he would bring about the desired changes.
All through his life there has been a strong current of contemporaneous
rebellion and belligerent sincerity in the work of the poet of the
Sierras, Joaquin Miller. He was brought up as a Quaker and taught to
believe in non-resistance, hence he preached peace at the beginning of
the Civil War until his printing office was wrecked and his life
threatened. When the world at large was condemning the Indian, he went
and stood by his side, and when he believed him to be in the right,
fought battles on his behalf. All through his life he has boldly stood
for man's larger freedom, and against entrenched tyranny. When England
made war upon the Boers, he denounced the warlike and jingo politicians
with a power and strength seldom surpassed in poetry, in spite of the
fact that the English had always been his best friends and the largest
purchasers of his poems.
While he lived in California, not far from San Francisco, and California
was a hotbed of the sentiment that demands the exclusion of the Chinese
and Japanese, he ever fearlessly and in unmistakable terms denounced
this action as opposed to the fundamental principles of the fatherhood
of God and the brotherhood of man, and demanded of his fellow citizens
that they adhere strictly to these never-failing and abiding truths.
These men are but few of the many I might mention, but they will serve
as types. They have been and are willing to suffer for the general good
of mankind. Therefore, in the presence of their moral heroism and
courage, let us cry with George Linnæus Banks:
I live to learn their story
Who've suffered for my sake,
To emulate their glory,
And to follow in their wake;
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages,
The noble of all ages,
Whose deeds crowd history's pages
And Time's great volume make.
I live...
For the cause that lacks assistance,
For the wrong that needs resistance,
For the future in the distance,
And the good that I can do.