The dispatches state that during the three weeks George Gould was
lazing and luxuriating in a foreign land "the business revival
added at least $15,000,000 to the value of the Gold securities."
Gadzooks! how sweet idleness must be when sugared with more than
$714,000 per day! I'm willing to loaf for half the lucre. How
refreshing it is to contemplate our plutocrats lying beside their
nectar like a job lot of Olympian gods--"careless of
mankind"--while
"--they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery
sands,
Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships and praying
hands."
One of Mr. Gould's employees, who was toiling at risk of life
and limb for about $2 a day while his imperial master was doing
the dolce far niente act for $714,000 per diem and his board,
comments as follows in a letter to the ICONOCLAST:
"W. C. BRANN: It might be pertinent for you to find out how the
festive George, of yacht-racing, Waler-hob-nobbing fame, has
managed to reap such pronounced benefits from the revival in
business. It is notorious among railroad men that one of the
first moves of Superintendent Trice, who succeeded Tim Campbell
as manager of the I. & G. N., was to inaugurate a series of
'reforms,' the chief feature of which was the cutting salaries of
from 20 to 40 per cent, especially among the office men, and at
the same time covering it by swapping the men around as much as
possible. Forces were reduced by compelling the half-starved
employees to do overtime at less pay, and the poor devils can
only grin and bear it. Suppose you write down, and get the true
data from the various places where the I. & G. N. touches, and
then show the true source, or the real 'revival' that has given
the festive George such a boost in his cash box."
In the first place, "the business revival" has not "added
$15,000,000 to the value of the Gould securities"--it is a
political falsehood which George can be depended upon to promptly
repudiate when the tax assessor calls around to tender
congratulations. It is eleven to seven that Georgie assures him
that the Gould estate is in a very bad way, that only by the most
heroic self-sacrifices in this period of business depression can
he succeed in remaining solvent; that there was a slight advance
in railway values while crops were moving, only to be succeeded
by a doleful slump, caused by the high tariff, which cuts so
dreadfully into tonnage. If he refrains from putting up some such
game of talk as that I'll take up a collection among the
bootblacks of Texas to help pay his taxes. Fifteen millions in
three weeks! Oh my! Since "Count" Castellane pulled one leg off
the estate it is no larger than it was when old Jay went to
He-aven. Now Jay was an honorable man--at least he wouldn't steal
the buttons off your undershirt while you had it on, and hotel
keepers; did not take the precaution to chain his knife and fork
to the table; but in his palmiest days he paid taxes on but
$75,000 worth of personal property--railway securities and
"sich." Heavy crops, for which Providence and the industry of the
American people are alone responsible, have added somewhat to the
present earning power of railway properties, but it is doubtful,
if the total mileage and equipment owned by the Goulds would sell
for as much actual cash as before the election of McKinley. The
great bulk of the boasted advance in Gould securities consists of
wind pumped in by the "pulls"; but just the same the American
people will be bled to pay dividends on this speculative
boodle--both patrons and employees will suffer that interest
may be collected on "invested capital" which never had an
existence. But even were the dispatches true, what must be said
of a "business revival" that reduces wages, that adds enormously
to the wealth of the plutocrats while making economic conditions
harder for the great mass of the American people? The general
trend of wages is downward, while the cost of living is enhanced
by the Dingley tariff and the advance in flour caused by foreign
crop failures. Why? Because, despite the pumping of the
Republican press about the "return of prosperity," the country is
full of idle men, and the inevitable tendency of the gold
standard and high tariff is to increase their number and further
lower wages by the pressure of these people for employment.
Railway securities have advanced a little despite the repressive
effect of Republican policy, have beaten up somewhat against the
adverse winds, impelled by speculators whose vis vitalis was the
crops of the country--the great bulk of which were produced by
men who voted for Bryan. The necessary sequence of an
appreciating standard of value is depreciation in the selling
price of property, whether such property be Gould securities or
Irish potatoes; while a high tariff inevitably reduces tonnage
below what it would otherwise be--chisels a yawning hiatus into
the revenues of every American railroad. This fact is so
self-evident that it may seem unnecessary to say more on the
subject--that arguing the matter were like wasting time proving
that water is wet; but as a number of Republican papers are
having a serious of violent epeliptoid convulsions because I
recently asserted that a nation can only be paid for its exports
with its imports, it may not be amiss to make a few remarks
adapted to the understanding of the kindergarten class. Trade,
whether between the people of this republic, or those of Europe
and America, is, when reduced to the last analysis, nothing more
than an exchange of commodities. It may happen that we sell
largely to a country of which we buy but little; but the nations
that purchase of our debtor pay for our products. Our exports
usually exceed our imports, and for the simple reason that we owe
vast sums abroad, the surplus being employed in the payment of
interest and the discharge of our foreign indebtedness. When we
become a great creditor nation like England, our imports will
exceed our exports--we will begin to absorb the labor products of
foreign lands. If America received foreign gold for all her
exports it would be nothing more than a commodity weighed to her
at so much per ounce and which she might exchange at her good
pleasure for foreign goods, just as she does her cotton and corn.
Some gold crosses the sea; but it goes and comes just as go other
commodities--seeks the most advantageous market. A tariff wall,
by keeping foreign products OUT keep American products IN,
thereby narrowing our market and limiting production. If the
workman does not produce he cannot consume, and production
and consumption are the basis of railway business. But why, it
may be asked, would the railway corporations cut their own
throats by helping elect McKinley? Surely they understand their
business much better than does a Texas maverick-brander who
writes economic editorials while astride a mustang. Possibly so;
but it were well to remember that while it is evidently to the
interests of the stockholders of such a corporation that it
should prosper, the bond-owner, who is a kind of wholesale
pawnbroker and flourishes best during periods of business
depression, also has something to say. Whether the former
receives any dividends or not the latter must have his interest,
and the more of labor products required to pay it the more he is
enriched. The railway bondholder is usually the party who holds a
$500 mortgage on a $10,000 farm. Crops may fail, the hogs get the
cholera and the poultry die of the pips; cotton may go down and
cloth go up; but the sorrows of others cause him to lose no
sleep. As I have hitherto pointed out, we have it on the
authority of Mark Hanna's newspaper organ "lower wages are
certainly a feature of the new prosperity"--that the American
workman need not hope for permanent employment until willing to
accept the same wages paid "the pauper labor of Europe," from
whose disastrous competition the Republicans solemnly promised
him protection. If Supt. Trice is reducing wages and overworking
his men it may be accepted as certain that he is compelled
thereto by a higher power--that the edict has gone forth that the
employees of the I. & G. N. must work longer hours for less money
that interest be paid on the $15,000,000 which the blessed
"business revival" added to the value of Mr. Gould's securities
while he was idling about Europe.
* * *
SALMAGUNDI.
The daily press announces that there is to be another Cleveland
baby. It is to make its debut some time this month. "Mrs.
Cleveland has been sewing dainty garments all summer." "Presents
of beautiful baby clothes are arriving from friends and
relatives." Same old gush, gush, gush! slop, slop, slop! that has
set the nation retching three times already. Good Lord! will it
never end? The fecundity of that family is becoming an American
nightmare. Will the time ever come when a married woman of social
prominence can get into "a delicate condition" without having the
fact heralded over the country as brazenly as though she had
committed a crime? There being little hope that the daily
press--"public educator," "guardian of morality," etc.--will
suffer a renascence of decency, we can only appeal to Grover not
to let it happen again. He certainly owes it to the nation to
apply the soft pedal to himself. In no other way can he protect a
long-suffering nation from seasickness, or his estimable wife
from the unclean harpies of the press. I do not believe that Mrs.
Cleveland is particeps criminis in these pre-natal proclamations
to which the h'upper suckkles of New York are so shockingly
addicted. I do not believe that she cares to have the public
contemplating her profile portrait just previous to a
confinement. Of course it will be urged that a woman of much
native delicacy could never have married so crass an animal as
Grover Cleveland, have taken him fresh from the embraces of an
old harlot like Widow Halpin; but these forget that he held the
most exalted position of any man on earth, and his $50,000 per
annum had been touched by the genie-wand jobbery--forget that
"--pomp and power alone are woman's care And where these are
light Eros finds a feere; Maidens like moths, are eer caught by
glare, And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair."
Probably she has regretted a thousand times that she bartered
her youth and beauty for life companionship with a tub of tallow,
mistaken at the time for a god by a purblind public, but even
though it be true, as often asserted, that the old boor gets
drunk and beats her, a woman could scarce apply for divorce from
a man who has twice been president. Furthermore, association with
such a man will lower the noblest woman to his level. Every
physiognomist who saw Frances Folsom's bright face, its
spirituelle beauty, and who looks upon it now and notes it
stolid, almost sodden expression, must recall those lines of
Tennyson's:
"As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee
down.
Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule,
Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of the
fool."
Last month it was announced with typographical and pictorial
trumpet blasts that Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney was about to present
her gilded dudelet with a family edition de luxe, and the Duchess
of Marlborough to find an heir to that proud title whose
foundation was laid with a sister's shame, the capstone placed by
the pander's betrayal of his rightful prince; and now before the
world can recover from its nausea, flaming headlines announce
that the Clevelands are about to refill the family cradle. Hold
our head, please, until we puke! Lord, Lord, is there nothing
sacred about motherhood any more? Is a married woman no better
than a brood-mare, her condition fair subject for comment by
vulgar stable-boys? We thank thee, O God, that the South has not
kept pace with New York's super-estheticism--that when our women
find themselves in an "interesting condition" they seek the
seclusion of the home instead of telephoning for a reporter and a
chalk artist and exploiting their intumescence in the public
prints.
. . .
Thomas M. Harris, who claims to be 84 years old, has writ a
little yellow pamphlet entitled, "Rome's Responsibility for the
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln." I have expended almost 5
minutes glancing over Mr. Harris labored lucubations, and must
confess that I have in that time acquired more information--of
its kind--than I ever did in 5 hours before. Of the reliability
of his statements there can be no question, as most of them are
grounded on the testimony of "Father" Chiniquy--conceded to be
the most accomplished liar since Ananias gave up the ghost. It
was Chiniquy who first started the story that the Pope was
responsible for the assassination of President Lincoln, and I am
expecting him to prove that Guiteau who gave the death-wound to
Garfield, was a Jesuit in disguise and acted on orders received
from Rome. Harris says that agents of the Confederacy in
Canada--whom he admits were not Catholics--employed Booth and his
accomplices to do the bloody business; that John Wilkes Booth was
a Catholic; that the priests were all Southern sympathizers; that
but 144,000 Irishmen enlisted in the Federal army, of whom
104,000 deserted; that the cellars of Catholic cathedrals are
filled with munitions of war to be used against the government,
that Catholics hold the bulk of the offices and dominate the
American press. Harris says other things equally awful and
interesting. I much fear that he got to thinking how many of his
A. P. Apes have broken into the penitentiary, and dreamed a bad
dream.
. . .
I once mentioned a little saweiety sheet, published in New York,
under the title of Town Topics, because it afforded me a kind of
languid pleasure to kick the feculent sewer-rat back into the
foul cloaca from which it had crawled to beslime the ICONOCLAST.
I must beg the patient reader's pardon for again soiling my
sandal-shoon with what should only be touched with a shovel. I
have been receiving through the mails for some time past, both
from disgusted Northerners and indignant Southerners, a paragraph
clipped from its epecine columns where in some mental misfit
eager to do the Smart Alex act begs to be informed what right
Mrs. Jefferson Davis had "to address a peculiar letter to the
Queen Regent of Spain, demanding the release of a party accused
of a serious crime," then adds: "If Miss Cisneros is released it
will be because she is innocent, and not because her case has
been meddled with by a party of irresponsible old freaks." I
sometimes wish the ICONOCLAST had no lady readers, that I might
freely express my opinion of such pestiferous pole-cats. I dearly
love the ladies, but they are awfully in the way when only
full-grown adjectives will do a subject justice. If the Tee-Tee
editor had half the gumption of a Kansas Gopher he would know
that neither Mrs. Davis nor any other American woman made
such "demand." Perhaps he did not know it,--if it be possible for
the editor of such a quintessential extract of utter idiocy to
know anything--but couldn't resist the boorish impulse to insult
an aged woman, because he's built that way. The case of Senorita
Cisneros appealed to the sympathy of every manly man and noble
woman throughout the world--to every living creature within whose
hide there pulses one drop of human blood unblended with that of
unclean breasts. Mrs. John A. Logan, Mrs. Jefferson Davis and
other magnificent types of American womanhood, HUMBLY PETITIONED
the Queen Regent of Spain in behalf of the Cuban heroine. And
these noble women, whose names are respected in the very brothels
and boozing kens of Boiler Avenue, are referred to by this foul
parody on God's masterpiece as "a party of irresponsible old
freaks." Christ! is it possible that aught born of woman--that
any animal that can learn to walk on its hinder legs--should sink
to such infamous depths of degradation! Yet this is the fellow
who was so concerned for the feelings of certain sawciety she-
males who personated French prostitutes at the Bradley-Martin
debauch, that when I criticized their brazen bid for "business"
he came near having hydrophobia. Did the Tee-Tee trogolodyte
contain within his anthropodial diaphragm a single diatom of
decency he would have applauded Mrs. Davis' womanly act, else
blocked the yawning hole in his prognathic head with a flat-car
load of compost. If Mrs. Davis is permitted to petition the King
of Kings to have mercy on the miserable journalistic
piano-pounder for Gotham's high-toned honk-a-tonks, certainly she
may with propriety appeal to the substitute sovereign of a nation
of bankrupt assassins to spare Senorita Cisneros.
. . .
Lawd Chelmsfold, now inspecting the Canadian border to ascertain
what resistance it could offer in case of a brush with Uncle Sam,
is out with an interview in which he says one great element of
John Bull's strength is to be found in the fact that our
Anglomaniacs could never be convinced "of the justice of any war
that might spring up between America and Britain." Lawd
Chelmsford, like most Englishmen, is a large, juicy chump. Of
course our Anglomaniacs are all traitors in posse, as their Tory
forbears were in esse, and would sympathize with "deah old
England, dontcherknow," should war be precipitated by her burning
all our coast cities without provocation; but as Chimmie Fadden
would say, "Dat cuts no ice." They are but a few thousand in
number, and in the whole caboodle there's not a chappie who would
fight should a Digger Indian fill his ear with a bushel of
buffalo chips, squirt tobacco juice on his twousahs and throw
alkali dust in his optics. Lawd Chelmsford has suffered himself
to be deceived by the bloodless hermaphrodites employed on such
papers as Josef Phewlitzer's Verrult and Belo's double-barreled
Benedict Arnold. Still it is just as well to know that John Bull
considers that he can depend upon the sympathy and assistance of
our Anglomaniacs in case of war with this country. While these
fellows are slobbering over "the mother country," the leading
papers of London are sneering at the United States as "a
fourth-class power" and proclaiming that if it doesn't conduct
itself more to John Bull's liking, "it will soon feel the iron
hand beneath the velvet glove." Turn loose your "iron hand," you
old he-bawd--and you'll soon stick it further under your own
coat-tails than you did at Yorktown. . . .
The New York Wail and Distress approves the scheme of Spain,
Italy and Germany, to establish a penal colony for anarchists.
Yes, yes, granny dear; but would it not be much better to alter
those conditions that produce anarchists. Anarchy is simply a
protest against oppression. When enough people in a revolt
against tyranny it becomes a successful revolution and its
promoters are enshrined in history as worthy patriots. When a few
men strike blindly but desperately at the hydra and are over-
powered, they are traitors or anarchists, rebels or rioters. The
Wail and Distress was once edited by a party who, according to
his father-in-law, "could be more kinds of a d--n fool than any
other man in the country," and it is evidently maintaining its
old-time reputation.
. . .
It is reported that a British company is about to secure control
of the Panama Canal. If it does so, John Bull will practically
have Uncle Sam surrounded, and it is worthy of remark that,
despite his tearful protestations of friendship, he fortifies
every strategical point regardless of expense. What does he want
with such Gibraltars as those at Van Couver, Halifax, Bermuda,
St. Lucia and half a dozen other points if he loves us so dearly
as Anglomaniacs would have us imagine? It costs hundreds of
millions to construct and equip these fortifications, yet they
are not worth a dollar to him except in case of war with this
country. The fact is that he expects another tussle with the
Western Titan--intends to precipitate it in his own good
time--when India is quieted and he has naught to fear from the
continental powers of Europe. Arbitration is the soothing lullaby
which Anglomaniacs are to sing to his unsuspecting "cousin" until
he gets his "iron hand" in order--weaves about him an
anaconda-coil of cannon. Despite all the milk-sick drivel anent
"ties of blood, language and literature," "community of interest
of the ger-ate and gal-orious Anglo-Saxon race, ad
infinitum, ad nauseam, the cold facts of history prove that for
more than a century, England has been our implacable enemy. Why?
Wounded pride in the first place, commercial rivalry in the
second; but the chief reason is that England desires to
perpetuate its supremacy as a world power, and sees growing up
here a giant who will sooner or later, as Napoleon said, "clip
the lion's claws." The best thing this nation can do is to
quietly "fix" itself, and then at the first provocation compel J.
B. to pull his freight completely out of the Western world. Uncle
Sam is an idiot to go practically unarmed while British guns are
pointing at his head from all directions. Arbitration the devil!
Dismantle that cordon of forts which you have built for our
benefit, and we may take some stock in your Pecksniffian
professions of friendship. "Actions speak louder than words,"
says the old adage; and while J. B.'s words are those of Achates,
his acts are those of an enemy. The voice is the voice of Jacob,
but the hand is the hand of Esau.
. . .
If the dispatches from Hogansville, Ga. be correct, the present
federal administration is depriving American citizens of their
rights to an extent that suggests the impudence of Germany's
swell-head emperor or the petty tyranny of the Turk. It appears
that a nigger postmaster was appointed at that place who was
persona non grata, and the people employed at their own expense
the ex-postmaster to receive their mail for them from the moke.
Although a man has an inalienable right to appoint what agent he
pleases to receive his money or his mail, the ex-p. m. is to be
prosecuted for "conducting a post-office." They then ordered
their mail to an adjacent town and sent a private messenger for
it, but this was prohibited on the plea that a only government
has the right to establish a mail route." To crown the infamy the
people were not permitted to mail their letters on postal cars.
Here are three flagrant violations of the rights of American
citizens, and to compel them to patronize a nigger Republican
postmaster. The first agent employed by the people was no more
"conducting a post-office" than is the ICONOCLAST, which receives
and distributes the mail of a dozen or more people. The messenger
sent to the adjacent town was no more running a mail route than
is the farmer who brings to town the letters written by his
neighbors and carries back those intended for them. The postal
department has discharged its entire function when it receives
mail, by whosoever presented, and delivers it to those for whom
it is intended or to those duly authorized to receive it, and the
postmaster-general who permits the department to exceed that
simple duty and intermeddle with the rights of the people should
not only be impeached and removed from office in one time and two
motions, but taken by the slack of the pantalettes and pitched
headlong into the penitentiary. It appears that the indignant
people assaulted the nigger postmaster. That is indeed to be
regretted; still I can but wonder that they do not shoot the
whole umbilicus out of every impudent tool of a petty tyranny who
attempts to prevent them mailing letters on postal cars while
that right is freely accorded to others. The whole affair serves
to accentuate the contention of the ICONOCLAST that postmasters
should not be appointed by successful politicians, but elected by
the people. If the latter can be trusted to choose presidents,
congressmen, etc. they can certainly be trusted to select
competent men to lick stamps and shuffle postal cards. As matters
now stand the wishes of the people, who "pay the freight," are in
no wise respected--the pie is shoveled out to a horde of hungry
political heelers, not because of services rendered their
country, but as payment for their pernicious activity in
promoting the interests of a corrupt and conscienceless party.
Thus it happens that in about half the cases federal officials
are regarded with aversion by the people they are supposed to
serve. It is to be hoped that every Southern white man who
hereafter votes the Republican ticket will have his billets de
amour clapper-clawed and liberally scented by some big fat coon.
. . .
The Buffalo (N.Y.) Distress, commenting on the acquittal of a
negro near Barton, Ark., who killed another negro for having
criminally assaulted a woman of their own race, wants to know if
the law of justification would have held good had the rapist been
a white man. Had the Distress but paused to reflect that the
white men of Arkansas are free silver Democrats, it would not
have indulged in a supposition so far-fetched and foolish. Now in
Buffalo, which gave Cleveland to the country, and permits a
nigger-loving lazar like the editor of the Distress to run at
large, almost anything in petticoats, from old Sycorax to a
malodorous coon, might be in some danger of assault by so-called
Caucasians.
. . .
There's every indication that another gigantic prize fight fake
will soon make a swipe for the long green of the cibarious
sucker. Were it not a violation of the law of the land and the
canons of the Baptist church to wager money that we should give
to the missionaries, I'd risk six-bits that Corbett and
Fitzsimmons get together within a year and that the gamblers who
are on the inside "make a killing." For six months or more before
their last mill these two worthies chewed the rag, making
everybody believe that the battle was to be for berlud. The odds
were on Corbett, and he got lost in the shuffle as a matter of
course--just as Fitz did when he mixed it with Sharkey. Now the
rag-chewing has begun over again, and Bob is doing the lordly
contempt act just as Jeems did before the late unpleasantness. He
has "retired"--wants Corbett to "go get er repertashun"--says
"Corbett quit in the last go like er cowardly cur." It will take
time to work the thing up, to resuscitate the old excitement, to
set fools to betting wildly on their favorite; but when the
pippin's ripe it will be pulled. There's not the slightest reason
for the existence of any personal ill will between these
pugs--it's all in the play, and being bad actors they overdo the
part of Termagant, do protest too much. It is quite noticeable
that in the "big fights" nowadays nobody gets seriously bruised.
It's easy enough to start the claret, and an ounce o' blood well
smeared satisfies the crowd as well as a barrel. The result of
the "fight" will be determined beforehand--as soon as the
managers learn how they can scoop the most money. The best thing
you can do with your ducats is to send them to me with
instructions to bet them even that Bill McKinley's job will soon
fit Bryan. The man who bets on the result of a prize-fight ought
to have a guardian appointed.
. . .
A Los Angeles, Cal., correspondent informs me that the editor of
the Times of that town, who I trimmed up last month for
permitting impudent coons to insult Southern white women through
his columns, is named "Col." H. G. Otis, and that during the war
he commanded a negro company. He also sends me the following
extract from the alleged newspaper published by the ex-captain of
the Darktown Paladins:
In considering the crimes of which some negroes are frequently
guilty it should not be forgotten that these traits of violent
sensuality are undoubtedly inherited from mothers and
grandmothers who were subjected to the lust of their masters
under the slavery system. In other words, the sins of the fathers
are being visited upon their children to the third and fourth
generation.
That is a vast improvement over the original statement published
by Coon-Captain Otis to the effect that Southern white women seek
black paramours, and that most lynchings are caused by the guilty
parties getting caught. It is a matter of utter indifference to
the ex-slaveholders what this calumnious little fice says about
them, if he will but refrain from voiding his fetid rheum upon
their families. Doubtless some slaveholders were degraded
sensualists, but such were exceptions to the rule. Not one yaller
nigger in a hundred is the child of its mother's old master.
There were comparatively few mulattoes in the South before the
war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers--and it
is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional
"nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on
the character of the Northern people--these fellows were simply
the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of
civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in
Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and
choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less
valuable than a black one, he threatened to subject his overseer
to a surgical operation if another half-breed pickaninny appeared
on the place. I do wonder if this "Col." Otis--who knew so much
about the management of coons that he was placed in command of a
colored company--can be the same fellow; also what was the result
of my relative's ultimatum? Can anybody in Los Angeles tell me
what state this "Col." Otis came from, or send me a good picture
of the ex-commander of coons?
. . .
While the preachers were hustling out of the fever infected
districts of Louisiana, the Sisters of Charity were hurrying in
from points as far distant as San Francisco. And what were the A.
P. Apes doing? They were standing afar off, pointing the finger
of scorn at these angels of mercy and calling them "prostitutes
of the priesthood." In this land every man has a perfect right to
entertain such religious views as he likes; but those who defame
women who cheerfully risk their lives for others' sake should be
promptly shot. "By their fruits ye shall know them," says the
Good Book; and while the Church of Rome is producing Good
Samaritans to wrestle with the plague, the A. P. Ape is filling
the penitentiaries. I care nothing for the apostolic pretensions
of the Pope or the dogmas of the Priesthood; but I'm strongly
tempted to make a few off-hand observations with a six-shooter
should these papaphobes speak disrespectfully of the Sisters of
Charity in my presence.
. . .
Justice Van Fleet of the supreme court of California recently
rendered an opinion which indicates the utter emptiness of our
boast that in this land all men are equal before the law. Because
of the confusion or ignorance of a new motorman, the young child
of a plumber, playing upon the track, was killed by an electric
car. The parents sued the company and were awarded damages in the
sum of six thousand dollars. Defendant took an appeal, which the
supreme court sustained, and the cause was remanded on the ground
that the damages awarded were excessive--that the boy would
probably have followed his father's occupation, and an embryo
workman is not, in Justice Van Fleet's opinion, worth so much
money! Measured by this standard, what would have been the
average "value" of American presidents when they were boys? Now
that Justice Van Fleet is measuring human life solely by the gold
standard, perhaps he can tell us what a juvenile Shakespeare or
Webster is "worth." I have held to the opinion heretofore that
blood could not be measured by boodle, that the children of the
common people were of as much importance in the eye of the law as
the progeny of the plutocrat--that the anguish of parents did not
depend on the length of the purse; but Justice Van Fleet seems to
agree with Kernan's weeping Canuck, that the more siller one has
the more deeply he feels the loss of a son. He seems to need a
powerful cardac for his heart and a hot mush poultice for his
head, being as fine a combination of knave and fool, as one can
easily find. Had the supreme court declared that the plaintiffs
in the case were not entitled to a dollar I would heartily
approve the opinion; but to measure the "value" of a son by the
gain-getting capacity of its sire is simply monstrous. A statute
should be enforced impartially, without regard to persons; but I
should like to see the law so amended that people could not trade
upon their tears, could not coin the blood of their relatives to
fill their pockets. A child should not be considered a piece of
property for which the accidental destroyer must PAY, just as a
railway company must cough up the cash value of the cow it kills.
As not one child in a thousand ever returns to its parents the
cost of its rearing it cannot be urged that the plaintiffs in
this case were pecuniarily damaged one penny. All they had to
sell was "mental anguish," and that should never be made a
merchantable commodity. We have criminal courts to deal with
those who, through criminal negligence or otherwise occasion
death. It may be argued that when the party killed has dependants
for whom he or she is providing, the slayer should be compelled
to make good the damage in so far as money can do it. I say
NO--that if there be blood guiltiness let the offender be
punished in accordance with our criminal code; if there be none
then is he blameless, and to deprive a person of his property
because of a harmless act is a crime. "But the dependants should
be provided for." Certainly they should; but not through rank
injustice to others. We are carrying entirely too far the theory
that the principal is responsible for the acts of his agents. If
the agent is guilty of criminal negligence he is punished by one
law and his principal by another; if the agent blunders he is
found not guilty and discharged, yet his principal is punished
for being a co-partner in his innocence. It should not be
forgotten that the agent of a private company is also a
representative of that larger and more powerful corporation which
we call the state. The private company can do no more than
outline his duty and discharge him for dereliction; the public
corporation not only prescribes his duty but imprisons or hangs
him for neglect; the private company is itself but a creation of
the state which exercises over it autocratic power while shirking
responsibility. If I loosen a rail on the "Katy" road and cause
the destruction of $100,000 worth of property the company must
pocket the loss, notwithstanding the fact that it is paying the
state for protection. If a dozen people are killed in the wreck
the relatives of the last one of them will sue for damages and
the state compel it to pay for its own failure to afford that
protection to which it is clearly entitled. What then? Let the
state issue life insurance at cost and compel every person who
has dependants to carry a policy payable on the annual
installment plan. For 5 or 6 cents a day it can, without loss,
issue a policy to every man in America that will provide his
family with the necessaries of life for at least ten years after
his death, and the man who cannot pay that premium is worth
precious little to anybody considered purely from an economic
standpoint. If the state wants to bring damage suits for the
slaughter of its citizens, well and good; but for God's sake let
us get rid of the degrading spectacle of people hawking the
corpses of their relatives through the courts.