A KANSAS CITY ARISTOCRAT.

I sometimes rejoice with an exceeding great joy and take

something on myself that the ICONOCLAST is read by a million

truth-loving Americans, as I am thereby enabled not only to make

it uncomfortable for frauds and fakes, but to hold an occasional

bypedal puppy up by the subsequent end that Scorn may sight him

and stick her cold and clammy finger so far through his miserable

carcass that Goliah might hang his helmet on the protruding

point. Sometime ago I found America's meanest man in

Massachusetts: I have just discovered the most contemptible of

all God's creatures in Kansas City. Some may suppose that the

first discovery excludes the last; but such forget that there is

the same difference between cussedness and contemptibility that

exists between the leopard and the louse, between a Cuban

hurricane and the crapulous eructations of a chronic hoodlum. I

want the world to take an attentive look at one Walter S.

Halliwell, to make a labored perscrutation of this priorient

social pewee, this arbiter eligantarium of corn-fed aristocracy,

this Beau Brummel of the border, for though Argus had a compound

microscope glued to his every eye he might never look upon the

like again. He resembles a pigmy statue of Priapus carved out of

a guano bed with a muck rake and smells like a maison d'joie

after an Orange Society celebration of the Battle of the Boyne.

Mr. Halliwell evidently has an idea rumbling round in his

otherwise tenantless attic room that he's a Brahmin of the

Brahmins, an aristocrat dead right, a goo-goo for your Klondyke

galways, a Lady Vere de Vere in plug hat and "pants." He's the

Ward McAllister of Kay-See, the model of the chappies, and traces

his haughty lineage back in an unbroken line to the primordial

anthropoid swinging by his prehensile tail to a limb of the Ash

tree Ygdrasyl and playfully scratching the back of the hungry

behemoth with the jawbone of an erstwhile ichthyosaurian. Walter

S. Halliwell was born when quite young, where or why deponent

saith not, and had gotten thus far on life's tow-path, absorbing

such provender as he could come at, before I chanced to hear of

him. As there be tides in the affairs of men which taken at the

flood lead on to fortune, so there be waves which straddled at

the proper time will bear a Halliwell on their niveous crest to

the dizzy heights of fame, quicker'n the nictitation of a

thomas-cat. Walter made connection with the climbing wave, and

here he is, bumping the macrencephalic end of himself against the

milky-way and affrighting the gibbous moon. His opportunity to

make an immortal ass of himself, to earn catasterism and be

placed among the stars as an equine udder, thus happened to hap:

Kay-See was to have a "Karnival" modeled upon the pinchbeck rake

with which Waco worked the gullible country folk once upon a

time--when she so far forgot herself as to trade on womanly

beauty to make it a bunco-steerer for her stores. The chief

attraction wass to be a "Kween Karnation" and her maids of honor,

the latter consisting of the most beautiful young ladies of the

various Missouri towns. I presume that these fair blossoms were

(or will be, for I know not the date of the brummagen blowout)

paraded through the streets bedized in royal frippery to make a

hoodlum holiday while the megalophanous huckster worked the

perspiring mob with peanuts and soda pop, and the thrifty

merchant marked his shopworn wares up 60 per cent, and sold them

to confiding country men "at a tremendous sacrifice." I infer

from the dispatches that Halliwell was made lord high executioner

of the "Karnival"--at least accorded ample space in which to

wildly wave his asinine ears. Miss Edna Whitney, described as

being "one of the most beautiful young ladies of Chillicothe,"

was put forward by her friends as a candidate for the honor of

representing that city at the royal court of "Kween Karnation,"

the citizens to determine the matter by a voting contest. Now

Miss Whitney, while dowered with great beauty, popular and of

good repute, is a working girl instead of a fashionable

butterfly, being employed in a cigar factory. When it appeared

certain that she would bear off the honor, the snobocracy of

Chillicothe, furious at being "trun down" by a working girl,

appealed to Halliwell to exclude her from the contest, and this

miserable parody of God's masterpiece promptly wired that her

business occupation was an insuperable barrier. How's that for a

country boasting of "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity"--its press

and politicians ever prating of "the dignity of labor"! The

contest, I'm told, was open to all "respectable young women"; but

a working girl, though pure as the lily and fair as the rose, is

not considered "respectable" by the would-be patricians of

Corncob Corners and the grand panjandrum of the Kay-See Karnival!

Working girls must not presume to be pretty or popular or enter

into contests for holiday honors with the high-born daughters of

successful swindlers, but will be kindly permitted by the lordly

Halliwell to stand on the curb and see beauts who are only by the

grace of boodle, roll by like triumphant Sylla on Fortune's bike.

During the Saturnalia in ancient Rome the master acknowledged the

brotherhood of man by ministering to his slave; but Kansas City,

thanks to the omnipotent Halliwell, has cut the working class off

from mankind--the hewers of wood and drawers of water are no

longer considered human! Surely we are making rapid

"progress"--are nearing that point in time when the working

people will enter a protest against insult added to injury by

tying a few bow-knots in the rubber necks of presumptuous

parvenues. If it be a disgrace for a woman to work then is this

nation in a very bad way, for few of us are the sons or daughters

"of an hundred earls"--can go back more than a generation or two

without finding a maternal ancestor blithely swinging the useful

sad-iron or taking a vigorous fall out of the wash-tub. The

parents of some of the wealthiest people of Kansas City, the

bon-ton of the town, smelled of laundry soap, the curry-comb or

night-soil cart. Some made themselves useful as hash- slingers in

cheap boarding houses or chambermaids in livery stables, nursery

maids or barbers, while others kept gambling dens, boozing-kens

or even run variety dives. There is now a bright young woman

working for a wealthy man in Kansas City for six dollars a week.

The wife of her employer was once her mother's servant and

laundered her infantile linen. The ex-servant, scarce able to

read or write, ugly by nature and gross by instinct, is now a

glorious star in Fashion's galaxy, while the child whose diapers

she used to deodorize, compelled by poverty to accept employment,

is socially ostracized. People of gentle blood--those who for

many generations back have been educated men and cultured women,

do not act as do Halliwell and the snobocrats of Chillicothe.

These are giving a very exact imitation of people who lately came

up from the social gutter, and it were interesting to know how

far we would have to trace their "genealogical tree" before

finding something much worse than a working woman. It is said

that "three generations make a gentleman"; and if that be true

there is some hope of Halliwell's great-grandsons--granting, of

course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide

himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that

the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and

sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the

social gulf between the House of Have and that of Have-Not, is

steadily widening and deepening--that we have reached that point

in national decay where gold suffices to "gild the straitened

forehead of the fool," where WEALTH instead of WORTH" makes the

man and want of it the fellow." Of course it is not to be

expected that working girls, however worthy, will be generally

carried on the visiting list of wealthy women, that their society

will be sought by the followers of Fashion. None expect this, and

few desire it. King Cophetua's beggar maid would have cut a sorry

figure at court ere his favor raised her to fortune. For

Cinderella to attend the Bradley-Martin ball clothed in rags

would be embarrassing both to herself and the company. The woman

who must work for a living has little time for the diversions of

the wealthy; and is usually too proud to accept costly social

courtesies which she cannot repay in kind. Society divides

naturally into classes, dilettantism and pococurantism

dawdling luxuriously here, labor at hand-grip with Destiny there.

"Birds of a feather flock together," say the old copy-books, and

Fortune gives to each such plumage as she pleases. Still, boodle

does not map out all the social metes and bounds. It was said of

old that every door opens to a golden key, but this is not

altogether true. The honest working girl shuns the society of the

wealthy wanton, and the stupid ignoramus, whatsoever his fortune,

is accorded no seat at the symposiac--is blackballed by the

brotherhood of brains. Imagine Goethe giving Richter the "marble

heart" or Byron snubbing Burns because of his lowly birth! The

world would be quick to rebuke their arrogance, would assure them

that a singer was not esteemed for his siller, but for his song.

In the carnival case it was a question of beauty not of boodle,

of popularity instead of purses, and to exclude from the contest

a candidate of the working class was to acknowledge her

superiority and avenge defeat with brutal insult that would shame

the crassest boor. The King of Syracuse was not ashamed to

contend with the humblest for Olympian honors, nor the Emperor of

Rome to measure swords with Thracian gladiators to prove his

skill at arms. Ever does genius sympathize with folly and the

truly learned with the unlettered; but Mammon "least erect of all

the angelic host that fell from heaven," puts the mark of the

beast on the brazen foreheads of all who bow down to his

abominations. When working-girls are treated thus, what wonder

that some of them become imbittered, discouraged, and go

head-long to the devil--affording the wretched pharisees whose

brutality wrought their ruin, an opportunity to "rescue" them and

pose before the world as Christian philanthropists! What

inducement has a young and beautiful woman to toil early and late

for an honest livelihood when by so doing she forfeits the right

to be called respectable--is flouted by even the paltry

plutocracy of a country town and proclaimed a social pariah by

such a headless phthirius pubis as Halliwell! If labor be no

longer respectable wherein are our thousands of virtuous working

girls superior to prostitutes? Clearly if the dictum of Halliwell

be correct it were better for the daughter of poverty to regard

her face as her fortune and hasten to sell herself--with approval

of law and blessings of holy church--to some old duffer with

ducats and be welcomed by the "hupper sukkle" as a bright and

shining ornament. Or if no beducated old duffer can be come at,

she might marry the first shiftless he-thing that offers itself

and pick up a luxurious livelihood for her family among her

gentlemen friends, as so many enterprising society women now do,

and be "respectable" to her heart's content--even a devout church

member and prominent in "rescue" work among fallen women. Somehow

I cannot help wondering whether Halliwell's respectability be not

due to some ancestor who was too lazy to work and too cowardly to

steal. To the grand army of working women I would say, Be not

discouraged by such gross affronts, prompted by splenetic hearts

and spewed forth by empty heads. You may be flouted on the one

hand by a few purse-proud parvenues and pitied on the other hand

by bedizened prostitutes, but the great world, which learned long

ago that the reptile as well as the eagle can reach the apex of

the pyramid, estimates you at your true worth and binds upon your

pure brows the victor's wreath, while ringing ever in your ears

like a heavenly anthem are the words of Israel's wisest--"A good

name is more precious than fine gold."

P.S.--Since the foregoing was put in print I have received

Kansas City papers giving a fuller account of the affair, and it

is in every way more miserable than I had imagined. Halliwell,

who is bossee of the whole business, says he sent the telegram at

the request of the board of lady managers of the flower

parade--in other words, that, at the solicitation of a lot of

snobby old females, he made even a greater ass of himself than

nature had originally intended. Mrs. J. K. Cravens, chairman of

the aforesaid board, denies that the ladies had anything to do

with the matter, then flies into a towering passion "cusses out"

the newspapers, figuratively speaking, rips her silk lingerie to

ribbons, and otherwise conducts herself like a woman educated in

a logging camp. I shall not attempt to decide the question of

veracity between Halliwell and Mrs. Cravens, but that one is a

mental vacuum and the other a ripsnortin' old virago is

established beyond the peradventure of a doubt. Everybody

connected with the Karnival is doing the Artful Dodger act to

escape the withering storm of indignation which the pitiful

episode called forth from the American people. The most

encouraging feature of the whole affair is the withdrawal of

several of Chillicothe's society girls from the contest because

of the gratuitous insult tendered Miss Whitney in the Halliwell

telegram, thus indicating that the old town's upper ten is not

composed exclusively of pudding heads and parvenues.

* * *

A PICTORIAL PAIN KILLER.

Puck is what the erstwhile Artemous Ward would call a "yewmerous"

paper, and is published solely for the benefit of bad barbers.

When you take your seat in the butcher's shambles he provides you

with a copy of Puck because its jokes are so excruciatingly

painful that it pulls your piligerous annex out with a

stump-extractor and rubbed aqua fortis into your face with a bath

brick, the physical ill would be forgotten in the mental agony. I

never saw anybody but a barber purchase a copy of Puck not any

son of Adam reading it outside a "tonsorial parlor." Should the

Populists carry the country and barbers be tabooed Puck's mission

on earth would be ended--unless it could persuade dentists to

adopts it as an anaesthetic, and sheriffs to read it to condemned

criminals to make them yearn for death. The last time I was

shaved the razor pulled so dreadfully that I sought refuge in

this pictorial pain-killer's editorial page. I there learned,

much to my surprise, that the rise in the price of wheat had

killed the silver cause; also that W. J. Bryan had "said, in that

pose of easy omniscience for which he became remarkable, that 'a

bushel of wheat and an ounce of silver were ordained by nature to

become equal each to the other'--'wheat cannot rise unless silver

rises.' " If W. J. Bryan said that, even in his salad days, he's

a hopeless damphool, unfit to be pound-master, much less

president; but I'll pay two-bits for incontestable evidence that

he ever made such an idiotic remark. My private opinion is that

the malice of Puck's mendacity is equalled only by its

awkwardness. It is possible that its editor mistakes falsehood

for fun. Or he may have heard somewhere the statement he parrots

and really supposed it true, for a man capable of conducting so

jejune a journal might easily believe anything. Another article

in his paper says that Cardinal Wolsey managed all "Bluff King

Hal" divorce business, while the fact is that his hostility to

that feculent old tub of tallow's matrimonial crimes was the

efficient cause of his downfall. As a historian Puck is about as

reliable as Mark Twain's acerbic old sea captain; hence his

asservations anent Bryan's utterances should be taken with

considerable chloride of sodium. Every man who knows as much

about political economy as a terrapin does of the Talmud is well

aware that a rise in the price of one commodity simultaneous with

the decline in price of another commodity has nothing whatever to

do with the currency question. Those who cackle about a rise in

wheat synchronously with the fall of silver make a very indecent

exposure of their own ignorance. If I had a ten-year old boy who

was such a hopeless idiot I'd drown him as not worth honest grub,

then seek a surgeon and make sure that I'd never again inflict

the world with progeny cursed with cretinism. Wheat went up and

silver down, as Mr. Bryan recently explained to the satisfaction

of every man possessing an ounce of brains, simply because the

demand for the one was increased by foreign crop failures, the

demand for the other decreased by Anglo-Cleveland skull-duggery.

"Law of supply and demand," bawls Puck and all the other

journalistic puppets of an impudent plutocracy. You miserable

little hiccius doctius, do you expect to deceive an intelligent

people with that kind of howl, while the trade in wheat is left

untrammeled and the demand for silver arbitrarily limited by law?

Suppose that while the world's wheat fields were producing

abundantly the leading nations should prohibit their people

purchasing any more of that cereal for food production; would any

macrocephalous donkey ascribe the decline in the price of wheat

to "the immutable law of supply and demand?" When silver is

placed on an equality with all other commodities; when the people

are permitted to freely employ it as they please, then will the

natural law of supply and demand apply to the white metal, and

New York editors cease to jabber financial nonsense with the

stupid persistence of a poll-parrot praising its own personal

pulchritude. The editor of Puck should avoid political economy as

a subject a trifle too large for the knot on the end of his neck,

and confine himself to his threadbare specialty, that of

belittling the Jews with his watery wit and atribilarious art.

The only funny thing I find in his paper is its solemn "notice to

publishers" that all its raccous rot is copyrighted, that

infringement will be "promptly and vigorously prosecuted." The

editor who would steal from Puck would walk through

Stringfellow's fruit farm to crib a wilted cabbage leaf from a

blind cow. The best things in Puck scarce rise to the dignity of

Slob Snots' milk-sick drivel in the Gal-Dal, while Texas has a

hundred country editors pulling a Washington hand press and

building stallion poster, who could write brighter things if they

were drunk--or dead. "Promptly and vigorously prosecuted" O the

devil! Why don't you say that you'll have any fool who attempts

to father your hand-made yermer sent to an insane asylum to be

treated for prolapsus of the intellect?

* * *

MAN'S GUST FOR GORE.

Hon. Chas. P. Johnson has written for the Globe-Democrat an

article that will doubtless receive the careful consideration of

every sociologist, for he therein assumes that man's instincts

are as brutal and bloody to-day as in those far times when, clad

only in his "thick natural fell," and armed with a stone, he

struggled for food with the wild beasts of the forest--that the

prevalence of lynchings is not due to incompetency of our

criminal courts, but to an alarming revival of savagery in man

himself. He declares that our courts are more effective than ever

before, but that Judge Lynch continues active without other cause

than the inability of the people to restrain their murderous

proclivities. He assures us that the entire suppression of the

savage instinct is impossible by any civilization whatever, and

adds that "its control and regulation is as difficult to-day as

it has been at any period since the historical birth of man." Why

this is so he does not directly say, but the following paragraph

is significant:

"Perhaps the statesmanship which looks solely to the development

of our material resources and the accumulation of wealth is

overlooking the growth and development of many social vices which

may yet engulf us in a vortex of anarchical passion or

governmental revolution."

Thus Mr. Johnson endorses the position of the ICONOCLAST that

the getting of gain should not constitute the sole aim of man;

that society cannot long exist with self- interest for "sole

nexus," as the French physiocrats would say--that the worship of

Mammon is dragging us back to barbarism. It is quite true that

man's savage instincts cannot be wholly eradicated; and it is

likewise true that could you drain all the Berserker out of his

blood he would sink to the level of an emasculated simian. A man

in whom there's no latent savagery were equivalent to mint julep

in which buttermilk were used as a succedaneum for bourbon. Life,

we are told, is "a battle and a march," and an indispensable

prerequisite for such stubborn work, call it by what name you

will, is but a refinement of the barbaric gust for blood. Whether

he be poet or philosopher, priest or prophet, it is the combative

man--the man who would find a wild fierce joy in a bayonet

charge--who wins new territory from the powers of Darkness and

the Devil. Man IS a savage, and civilization but a cloak with

which he covers his ferocity as best he can. If the cloak be

scant--as with the Turk--or frayed by time--as with the

Spaniard--we may expect to catch frequent and shocking glimpses

of the predacious animal. But Mr. Johnson is mistaken in

supposing that the lynchings of which he complains evidence an

abnormal thirst for blood on the part of the American people. He

says:

"As the masses of ancient Rome enjoyed the carnage of the

amphi-theater; as the populace of Paris crowded with eager

avidity around the guillotine to see the blood gush from the

heads and trunks of the victims of the revolutionary tribunal; as

the Spaniard in holiday attire followed over the plaza the

procession and rapturously looked upon the execution of the

wretches of the auto da fe; as in all ages the spirit of savagery

has made men to enjoy scenes of suffering, brutality and

death--so does the modern mob look with frenzied delight upon

like exhibitions to-day."

For a man so erudite and earnest, Mr. Johnson comes painfully

near being ridiculous. The evidence is ample that never since the

first settlement of this country have the people found LESS

pleasure in the effusion of blood and scenes of brutality.

Instead of the savage instinct becoming dominant, we are fairly

open to the charge of effeminacy, of super-estheticism. Our very

sports are becoming namby pamby as those of the Bengalese, the

element of danger which gave zest to them in auld lang syne being

all but eliminated. Bear-baiting, cocking- mains, shin-kicking,

bulldog-fighting, etc., all greatly enjoyed by the general public

a generation or so ago, are now quite generally tabood. Many of

us can remember when pugilism was practiced with bare-knuckles

and every fight to a finish; it is practiced now with feather

pillows "for points," and under police supervision. About the

only game left us that is more dangerous than playing

Presbyterian billards with an old maid from Boston is college

football, and even that will soon be stripped of its vigor on the

plea that it is barbarous. When our fathers quarreled they took a

pot-shot at each other at ten paces; now disagreements involving

even family honor are carried into the courts--the bloody Code

Duello has been relegated to "innocuous desuetude." Texas is

supposed by our Northern neighbors to be the "wurst ever," the

most bloodthirsty place this side the Ottoman Empire; yet the

Houston Post, leading paper of Harris county, is crying its poor

self sick because some peripatetic Ananias intimated to an

Eastern reporter that our wildest and wooliest cowboys would even

think of shooting the pigtail off a Chinaman bowling along on a

bike. Our governor earned the title of "heroic young Christian"

by calling a special session of the legislature to prevent Prof.

Fitzsimmons giving it to Prof. Corbett "in de slats" with a buggy

cushion--was re-elected on the proposition that a boxing- match

is "brutal"--which proves that our people are not ahunger and

athirst for gore, do not yearn for the sickening scenes of the

Roman amphitheatre, where holy virgins by turning their thumbs up

or down, decided questions of life and death. "Bloodthirsty?"

Good Lord! The average American would grow sick at the stomach if

required to slaughter a pullet with which to regale the palate of

his favorite preacher. During the past two decades we have

practically become Quakers, and now suffer foreign powers to vent

their rheum upon us and rub it in, because to maintain our

dignity might precipitate a war, and bloodshed is so very brutal.

Mr. Johnson seems to imagine that the usual method of procedure

in Judge Lynch's court is for the mob to trample its victim to

death, bray him in a mortar, kerosene him and set him on fire,

then dance the carmagnole around his flaming carcass. This, I am

pleased to remark, is simply a mid-day nightmare which should be

subjected to hydropathic treatment, reinforced with cracked ice

and bromo-seltzer. As a rule lynchings are conducted in quite as

orderly and humane a manner as legal esecutions. It is true that

cases have occurred, when the public patience had become

exhausted by repeated offenses, or the crime committed was

peculiarly atrocious, wherein respectable God-fearing men were

seized with a murderous frenzy, and whole communities noted for

their culture, united in torturing or burning at the state the

object of their displeasure; but these were usually instances

where failure to enforce the law was notorious, or it did not

provide an adequate penalty. The courts imprison the man who

steals a mule, or even a loaf of bread to feed a starving family.

They hang the man who in a fit of rage of jealousy or drunken

frenzy commits a homicide: they can do no more to the brutal buck

negro who ravishes and murders a white babe--so Judge Lynch takes

cognizance of his case and builds for him a beautiful bonfire;

but the average lynching appeals no more strongly to the savage

instincts of man than does a hanging by the sheriff. Then, it may

be asked, why do lynchings occur. I have treated this subject at

considerable length in former issues of the ICONOCLAST, hence

will but recapitulate here and add a few observations suggested

by Mr. Johnson's very able but sadly mistaken article. Lynchings

occur because, whatsoever be the efficiency of our courts, they

are a trifle shy of public confidence; because there are some

offenses for which the statutes do not provide adequate

penalties; because the people insist that when a heinous crime is

committed punishment follow fast upon the offense instead of

being delayed by a costly circumlocution office and perhaps

altogether defeated by skillful attorneys--men ready to put their

eloquence and tears on tap in the interest of worse criminals. I

will not take issue with so distinguished an authority as Mr.

Johnson regarding the competency of our courts to deal with

criminals in accordance with the laws of the land; but the people

see that despite the vigilance of officers, the erudition of

judges and the industries of juries, murders multiply, rapes

increase and portable property remains at the mercy of the

marauder. If my memory of statistics does not mislead me, we have

in the United States something like 10,000 homicides per annum,

while every newspaper teems with accounts of robbery and rape.

When we consider this in connection with the further fact that

the courts continue to increase in cost--are already a veritable

Old Man of the Sea about the neck of the Industrial Sinbad--can

we wonder at the impatience of the people? But there is another

feature which Mr. Johnson has quite overlooked in his vision of a

brutal mob drunk with blood--like most lawyers, he stands too

close to his subject to see more than one side, views it from

beneath rather than from above. We set a higher value on human

life than did our ancestors of the old dueling days. This may be

called the Age of Woman--the era of her apothesis. She occupies a

higher intellectual, social and political level than ever before

in human history, and as she increases in importance crimes

against her person assume more gravity. A generation ago such a

thing as the criminal assault of a white woman by a negro was

almost unknown, but now it is of every day occurrence; thus as

womanhood becomes more sacred in our eyes it is subjected to

fouler insult. Nor is this all: The American people are becoming

every year more mercurial. The whole trend of our

civilization--of our education, our business, even our

religion--is to make us neurotic, excitable, impatient. In our

cooler moments we enact laws expressive of mistaken mercy rather

than of unflinching justice. Some of the states have even

abolished capital punishment and in but one can a brute be tied

up and whipped for the cowardly crime of wife-beating. We

establish courts rather to acquit than to convict by

disqualifying intelligence for jury service and enforcing the

stupid unit rule. We provide convicts with comforts unknown to

millions of honest working men and regard them as poor

unfortunates to be "reformed rather than as malefactors to be

punished. And when our misguided mercy has borne its legitimate

fruit we take fire, curse the laws and the courts, seize and hang

the offender, and have the satisfaction of knowing that there's

one less monster alive in the land. Mr. Johnson suggests no

remedy for what he regards as the evil of the age, and is

therefore like unto the doctor who volunteers the entirely

superfluous information that you "have a misery in your innards,"

but provides neither pill nor poultice. As Judge Lynch probably

makes fewer mistakes than do the courts; as those he hangs

usually deserve hemp and he renders no bill of costs to the

country; and as the people are the creators and not the creatures

of the courts, I am not particularly interested in his

suppression, notwithstanding the fact that he seriously

interferes with the material welfare of the professional juror

and my lawyer friends. But were I duly ordained to perform that

duty I would not begin by creating new deputies or calling out

local militia companies to shoot down their neighbors and

friends, to protect the miserable carcass of a rape-fiend. I

would wipe out our entire penal code and frame a new one in which

there would be no comfortable penitentiaries. If a man were found

guilty of rape or homicide I'd promptly hang him, if of a less

heinous offense I'd give him stripes proportionate to his crime

and turn him loose to earn a livelihood and thus prevent his

family becoming a public burden. For the second offense in crimes

like forgery, perjury, theft, arson, etc., I'd resort to the

rope. I would abolish fines in misdemeanor cases, thereby putting

the rich and poor on a parity, and set the offenders in the

stocks. I'd get rid of the costly delays which are the chief

cause of lynchings, by elective jurors and the majority rule, by

appointing one man well learned in the law to see that all the

evidence was properly placed before the court, and advise the

rest of the legal fraternity now making heaven and earth resound

with their eloquence and weeping crocodile tears at so much per

wope, that it were better to make two fat shoats flourish where

one hazel- splitter pined in the hitherto, than to employ their

talents and energies securing the conviction of the innocent and

the aquittal of the guilty. By such a system almost any criminal

case could be fairly tried in a couple of hours. If the defendant

desired to appeal from the sentence of the court, instead of

sending the case up to a higher tribunal thereby entailing heavy

cost and vexatious delay, I would empanel a new jury then and

there, composed of reputable citizens of the community, retry the

case, and if the first verdict was confirmed, the sentence should

be executed within the hour. The quicker the courts "get action"

on an offender the more terror they inspire in the criminal

classes and the better they please the people. If a murderer or

rape-fiend captured at daylight could be fairly tried and

executed by sundown Judge Lynch would speedily find himself

without an occupation.

* * *

A RIGHT ROYAL ROAST.

THE ICONOCLAST MADE HARD TO CATCH.

Galveston, Tex., August 12, 1897.

MR. W. C. BRANN:

In your editorial on the "Henry George Hoodoo," which appears in

the August number of the ICONOCLAST, the following passage

occurs: "It seems to me that I have treated the Single Taxers as

fairly as they could ask, and if I now proceed to state a few

plain truths about them and their faith they will have no just

cause to complain." From the tone and tenor of these words it is

fair to assume that in the editorial referred to you have

discharged against the Single Taxers and their faith the heaviest

broadsides of which your ordnance is capable. If, notwithstanding

all the time you have wasted "crucifying the economic mooncalf"

which has played such sad havoc with the wits of Single Taxers,

it should turn out that the monstrous concept, far from being

crucified, annihilated, or even "dying of its own accord," only

gathers strength, energy, and renewed activity from the healthful

exercise with which you provide it, must it not seem the part of

prudence for you, even if occasion of regret for us, that you

should abandon the war and leave the calf to his fate? Your

belated and apparently desperate resolve to "tell some plain

truths" about us, Single Taxers, justifies the inquiry, what were

you telling before? The fact that it seems to yourself that you

have treated Single Taxers fairly is not absolutely irrefragible

proof that they have been so treated at least it has not brought

conviction of the fact to them. That the offer of your space to

Mr. George was courteously declined affords no just ground for

refusing it to those "whose matin hymn and vesper prayer reads,

there is no God but George," etc. I'll warrant you that if you

and the Single Taxers had access on equal terms to a journal

which neither controlled, and whose space both were bound to

respect, you would not have to go outside the limits of your own

state to find a dozen foemen worthy of your steel, and I'd stake

my life on it that you'd find not a few to unhorse you. This is

not claiming that any one of them, or all of them together, can

come anywhere near you in the artistic manipulation of words or

the construction of ear-tickling phrases; but it is claiming, and

that without any false pretense of modesty, that they have yet

seen no reason to fear you in rigidly logical argument when the

Single Tax is the question at issue. Their cause is so palpably

just, its underlying principle so transparently simple and

elementary, its practical application so direct, feasible and

efficient that no mere wizardry of words, no thimble-riggery or

language, can by any possibility obscure the principle--or

confuse the advocates. Of course there are among Single Taxers,

as among other enthusiasts, men who indiscreetly use abuse for

argument, and of these you may have some reason to complain; but

should not your great talents and the immense advantages which

the undisputed control of your own journal give you, enable you

to rise above their abuse, to ignore it completely, and to

grapple with only those who present you with argument? I have no

right to expect from you more consideration than has been meted

out to better men; still, you can but refuse this rejoinder to

your August editorial, which is respectfully offered for

publication in your journal. If you are quite sure of your

ground, you can only gain strength from exposing my weakness, but

even if you are not sure of it, both the requirements of simple

justice and the amende honorable to Single Taxers would still

plead for the publication of this article.

You say that Mr. George has obtained no standing of consequence

in either politics or economics "because his teachings are

violative of the public concept of truth." Do you really believe

that the fact that he has obtained no standing of consequence in

politics is in any way derogatory to his character or his

teaching? Do you not know full well that a Bill Sykes, a Jonas

Chuzzlewit, or a Mr. Montague Tigg would have a hundred chances

to attain that distinction to-day to the one chance that Henry

George, Vincent de Paul or even Jesus Christ would have? Don't

you know this well, and if you do, why do you use it as an

argument against Henry George? As to his standing in economics,

that, I submit, is a matter of opinion. You think he has no

standing of consequence; I think his teaching is the most active

ferment in the economic thought of to-day. We may be both

mistaken, but whether we are or not cuts no figure in the truth

or falsity of the Single Tax. But it is worth while to point out

that the reason you have given for his lack of "standing" lends

neither weight nor force to your argument. "Because," you say,

"his teachings are violative of the public concept of truth."

When did the public concept of truth become the standard by which

to test it? The public concept of the best form of money is, and

has been for thousands of years, gold and silver coins. I am much

mistaken if that be your concept. By the way, why did you not say

"violative of truth," instead of "violative of the public

concept," etc.? I guess you had an inward consciousness that a

thing is not true or false by public concept, but by being

inherently so. What Henry George taught was inherently true or

false before he ever taught it, and would be so still if he had

been never born. The only difference would be that so many of us

who now bask in the blessed light of inward, if not of outward,

freedom would, in that event, be still barking with the great

blind multitude over every false trail along which blinder

teachers might be leading them and us.

You admit that Mr. George is a polemic without a peer, and you

say that "no other living man could have made so absurd a theory

appear so plausible, deceived hundreds of abler men than

himself." Surely there is something very faulty in the position

you assume here. If what you say be so, how do you know that you

are not yourself the victim of deception at the hands of some

inferior? Or is it only men who have "gone daft on Single Tax"

that possess the extraordinary power of leading abler men than

themselves by the nose? Surely that were too much honor for an

antagonist to concede to them. More surely still, if a man's

intelligence is not proof against deception by inferiors in

argument, he can never reach finality in a process of reasoning,

and logical proof for him there is none.

"He mistakes the plausible for the actual and by his sophistry

deceives himself." O pshaw! We all say things sometimes that just

do for talk, but this hasn't even that poor excuse. I might just

as well say, "He takes the conceivable for the supposable and by

his logic enlightens himself. One statement would be as valuable

as the other and neither would be worth a pinch of snuff. Come,

let us argue with dignity and composure, like honest men

sincerely searching after truth, and eager to lend a hand in

abolishing this social Inferno of legalized robbery which fairly

threatens to consume us all.

There is, you'll admit, such a thing as land value, i. e. value

attaching to land irrespective of improvements made in or on it

by private industry. This value arises from the presence of a

community and can never actually exist without it. If the

exclusive creator or producer of a thing is its rightful owner,

land belongs to the community that creates or produces it, and

can never, in the first instance, rightly belong to any other

owner. The Single Tax is the taking of this value for this

community. Is it just? The highest homage, the highest act of

faith which the human mind and heart can offer to God is to say

that He could not be God and pronounce the Single Tax unjust!

Here now is a gage of battle cast at the feet of whoever wishes

to take it up, be the same logician, metaphysician or theologian.

(Pardon me, Mr. Brann, for momentarily turning aside from you.)

The justice of the Single Tax is beyond all question of

refutation. What about its efficiency for the cure of social

ills? Here, I think, is where we are widest apart. You say, "the

unearned increment is already taken for public use under our

present system of taxation." If by "unearned increment" you mean

what I have defined as land value (and I think you do) your

statement is the wildest and most astounding I ever heard or read

from a sane man making an argument. Is it possible you have not

learned that where all the land value is taken in taxation there

can be no selling value? And where is the land to-day with a

community settled upon it that has not selling value? If land

value is already absorbed by taxation, what is it that goes to

maintain landlordism? Perhaps you'll contend that landlordism

doesn't exist. What value is it that a man pays for when he buys

an unimproved lot in the heart of a city? What is it that the

boomer booms and the land speculator gambles on when he adds acre

to acre and lot to lot without any intention of productive use?

What, if not the community value which he expects to attach to

his land as a result of increase of population? And what

advantage to him as a speculator would this community value be

if, as you claim, it is now being absorbed in taxation and should

continue to be so absorbed as fast as it arises? Do landlords in

cities and towns retain for themselves only the rent of buildings

and hand over to the government the full amount of their ground

rents as tax? I know an old eye-sore of a building in this city

not worth $150, whose occupant pays $100 a month rent. Do you

seriously believe that all of this $1,200 a year which does not

go to the city and state in taxes is rent on the old $150

rat-warren? Why, the thing is too childish for serious

discussion; and to have discussed it with you without having been

driven to it by yourself, I should have regarded as in the nature

of a slight on your intelligence. If what you claim as a fact

were true, we would have the Single Tax in full swing now and

would be fretting ourselves to fiddle-strings, not to bring it

about, but to get rid of it for its evil fruit.

As to whether the Single Tax, in full force, would provide enough

revenue for municipal, county, state and federal governments, we,

Single Taxers, are not greatly concerned. We have our own

opinions on that question and can give better reasons for them

than our opponents can give for theirs. But the question is not

essential to our argument. What we hold to is that until land

values fully taxed prove inadequate for the expenses of

government economically administered, not one cent should be

levied on labor products, no matter in whose possession found.

This, however, belongs to the fiscal side of our reform. Of

infinitely more importance is the social side. Here our end and

aim is to secure to all the sons of Adam an equal right to life,

liberty and pursuit of happiness by securing to them an equal

right in the bounties of nature--and passing strange it certainly

is that men who would not dream of denying this right in the

abstract are ever ready to anathematize it in the concrete.

With the Single Tax in force, that is, with the plain behest of

nature observed and respected, no man will hold land out of use

when, whether he uses it or not, he must pay to the community its

annual value for the privilege of monopolizing it. No man will

hold land for a rise in community value when that value is taken

from him for the use of the community as fast as it arises. No

man will need to mortgage his home and the earnings of his

most vigorous years to a boomer or speculator for the privilege

of living on the earth for there will be no boomer or speculator

to sell him the privilege, and the privilege itself will have

ceased to be such and become an indefeasible right.

"He (Mr. George) is a well-intentioned man who confidently

believes he can make the poverty-stricken millions prosperous by

revoking the taxes of the rich and increasing the burthens of the

poor." Fie, fie! What is to be gained by such transparent,

palpable misrepresentation as this? Do you verily believe that

land values, which Mr. George proposes to tax, are mainly in

possession of the poor? Did you not see--of course you did--a

diagrammatic exhibit made not long ago by the New York Herald of

the holdings of twenty New York real estate owners? Let me quote

a passage from an article in the New York Journal on this

exhibit:

"The reason 170 families own half of Manhattan Island, as stated

in the Herald, and that 1,800,000 out of the two million

residents of Manhattan Island, until very recently, had no

interest whatever, except as renters, in this superb property, is

because, until the last few years, it required a fortune to own

the smallest separate parcel of this great estate. Only the rich

could participate in its ownership, its income, its profits."

Now is it your view that all this is but clumsy lying, and that

in reality it is the poor people of New York as of other large

cities that own the bulk of its land values? Again you say, "He

would equalize the conditions of Dives and Lazarus by removing

the tax from the palace of the one and laying it upon the potato

patch of the other." This statement is much more artistic than

the preceding one. It wears a jaunty semblance of truth. Indeed

it is true in a sense as far as it goes. But it is vague and

incomplete, and for that reason as deceptive and misleading as

half truths always are. With your permission I will fill it out

in parenthesis and convert it into an honest whole truth: "He

would equalize the conditions of (both freedom and justice for)

Dives and Lazarus by removing the tax from the palace of the one

(and from the labor products of the other) and laying it upon

(the community value of the land occupied by the palace and) the

potato patch of the other." Now, if the potato patches of the

poor occupy, as a rule, more valuable land than the palaces of

the rich, there might be some apparent ground for your

contention. It would be only apparent, however, for in such a

case the potato patch would be as much out of place as a public

school on a wharf front. To devote highly valuable land to

ordinary potato culture would be about as sensible as to print

the Sunday edition of the Galveston News on costly linen paper.

One of the virtues of the Single Tax is its potency to prevent

such stupid waste of opportunity. Your way of stating the case,

however, has this virtue that it is a welcome variation of the

old wearisome chestnut about the poor widow owning a valuable

lot, etc.

You believe Progress and Poverty inspired by the plutocracy,

"250,000 of whom own 80 per cent. of the taxable wealth of the

country, while the land is largely in possession of the great

middle class." Passing over the source of the inspiration, you

have come pretty close to the truth here! Unfortunately for you,

however, the statement has no value in the argument. Single

Taxers do not need to deny that the great middle class largely

own the land, but they do claim, and you won't have the hardihood

to deny it, that the plutocracy own the vast bulk of the land

values. You will perceive the distinction when you reflect that

the land is nearly all out in the country, while the land values

are nearly all in the cities and towns. To tax land according to

area is the bug-a-boo you are putting up your guards to; to tax

it according to community value is what we invite you to smash if

you can. You "cannot understand how a man possessed of common

sense could fail to see that removing taxation from the class of

property chiefly in the hands of the rich and placing it

altogether on property chiefly in the hands of the comparatively

poor, could fail to benefit the millionaire at the expense of the

working man." Neither can I, if you tax it according to quantity,

but that is not the Single Tax and it is time you knew it. Let me

tell you now something that I can't understand--why a man who has

the means and the ability to strike giant blows for the cause of

the blind, stupid, plundered humanity prefers to waste his time,

his talents, his opportunities making himself a straw man and,

with that silly-looking thing for antagonist, belaboring all

about him like a bull in a china shop. You sincerest

well-wishers, of whom I claim to be one, earnestly hope you will

soon change your tactics.

You ask some practical questions which it may be well to answer:

"How will you prevent the Standard Oil Company forcing weaker

concerns to the wall by the simple expedient of selling below

cost of production?" The Standard Oil trust is maintained (1) by

monopoly of oil lands; (2) by monopoly of pipe lines; (3) by

collusion with railroads. The Single Tax and its corollaries

would absolutely destroy each of these advantages; (1) by

throwing unused oil lands open to all on equal terms; (2) by

government ownership or complete control of pipe lines to all

distributing points, such lines being open for use to all oil

producers on equal terms; (3) by exactly analogous treatment of

railroads. With the three-fold monopoly of oil lands, pipe line,

and railroad abolished, the Standard Oil trust would find no wall

against which to crush weaker concerns. As to the trust, we hope

that the abolishment of the thieves' compact, i.e. the protective

tariff, will make the trusts sick unto death. Absolute free

trade, a necessary concomitant of the Single Tax, will leave 99

per cent. of the trusts stranded. If any survive it will not be

the fault of the Single Tax. Be it remembered that the evils

which the Single Tax is guaranteed to cure are, primarily, land

monopoly, and, secondarily, all the other monopolies based upon

it; as those of the coal, iron and lumber trust, the Standard Oil

trust, etc.

"With coal fields leased to the operators by Uncle Sam, how would

you prevent Hanna organizing a pool, limiting production, raising

prices and reducing wages?" Coal fields are included in the

economic term, land. When unused land is free for occupancy,

unused coal fields will also be free. If Mark sought to limit

production by shutting down his mines, one of two things would

happen. Either somebody else would start in to mine coal, or

Mark's tax would be raised till the wisdom of either letting go

or resuming would dawn on his fat wits. Unless he owned or

controlled the coal fields he could not limit production, raise

prices, or cut down wages. "How will you prevent the Standard Oil

company forcing weaker concerns to the wall by the simple

expedient of selling below cost of production?" We wouldn't

prevent them. But if they afterwards tried to recoup their losses

by raising prices as they do now, we might get after them with a

tax commensurate with their asinine generosity, and keep after

them till other concerns got well on their feet. If they became

too refractory, what's to prevent the government from taking hold

itself and working the oil wells for the benefit of the whole

people? Remember the government is theoretically the people's

servant, and it could be actually so if the people only had a

little intelligence and moral courage.

You very needlessly tell your Ft. Hamilton friend that land is

the primal source of all wealth; that it does not produce wealth,

but simply affords man an opportunity to produce it; you forgot

to add--provided the landlord doesn't prevent him. You say in

another place, "Figure it as you will, adjust it as you may, a

tax is a fine on industry and will so remain until you get blood

from turnips," etc. This very objection in protean form is

continually being raised by a class of shallow-thinking men with

whom the editor of the ICONOCLAST should not be proud to herd.

"What difference docs it make," they say, "whether I pay rent to

the government or to a landlord when I've got to pay it anyhow?

And what difference does it make whether taxes are levied on my

land or my improvements, or both, so long as I've got to pay them

with the products of my labor?"

Now, it is quite true that all taxes of whatever nature are paid

out of the products of labor. But must they be for that reason a

tax on labor products. Let us see. I suppose you won't deny that

a unit of labor applies to different kinds of land will give very

different results. Suppose that a unit of labor produces on A's

land 4, on B's 3, on C's 2 and on D's 1. A's land is the most,

and D's is the least, productive land in use in the community to

which they belong. B's and C's represent intermediate grades.

Suppose each occupies the best land that was open to him when he

entered into possession. Now, B, and C, and D have just as good a

right to the use of the best land as A had. Manifestly then, if

this be the whole story, there cannot be equality of opportunity

where a unit of labor produces such different results, all other

things being equal except the land. How is this equality to be

secured? There is but one possible way. Each must surrender for

the common use of all, himself included, whatever advantages

accrues to him from the possession of land superior to that which

falls to the lot of him who occupies the poorest. In the case

stated, what the unit of labor produces for D, is what it should

produce for A, B and C, if these are not to have an advantage of

natural opportunity over D. Hence equity is secured when A pays

3, D, 2 and C, 1 into a common fund for the common use of all--to

be expended, say in digging a well, making a road or bridge,

building a school, or other public utility. Is it not manifest

that here the tax which A, B and C pay into a common fund, and

from which D is exempt, is not a tax on their labor products

(though paid out of them) but a tax on the superior advantage

which they enjoy over D, and to which D has just as good a right

as any of them. The result of this arrangement is that each takes

up as much of the best land open to him as he can put to gainful

use, and what he cannot so use he leaves open for the next.

Moreover, he is at no disadvantage with the rest who have come in

ahead of him, for they provide for him, in proportion to their

respective advantages, those public utilities which invariably

arise wherever men live in communities. Of course he will in turn

hold to those who come later the same relation that those who

came earlier held to him. Suppose now that taxes had been levied

on labor products instead of land; all that any land-holder would

have to do to avoid the tax is to produce little or nothing. He

could just squat on his land, neither using it himself nor

letting others use it, but he would not stop at this, for he

would grab to the last acre all that he could possibly get hold

of. Each of the others would do the same in turn, with the sure

result that by and by, E, F and G would find no land left for

them on which they might make a living. So they would have to

hire their labor to those who had already monopolized the land,

or else buy or rent a piece of land from them. Behold now the

devil of landlordism getting his hoof on God's handiwork! Exit

justice, freedom, social peace and plenty. Enter robbery,

slavery, social discontent, consuming grief, riotous but unearned

wealth, degrading pauperism, crime breeding, want, the beggar's

whine, and the tyrant's iron heel. And how did it all come about?

By the simple expedient of taxing labor products in order that

precious landlordism might laugh and grow fat on the bovine

stupidity of the community that contributes its own land values

toward its own enslavement! And yet men vacuously ask, "What

difference does it make?" O tempora! O mores! To be as plain as

is necessary, it makes this four-fold difference. First, it robs

the community of its land values; second, it robs labor of its

wages in the name of taxation; third, it sustains and fosters

landlordism, a most conspicuously damnable difference; fourth, it

exhibits willing workers in enforced idleness; beholding their

families in want on the one hand, and unused land that would

yield them abundance on the other. This last is a difference that

cries to heaven for vengeance, and if it does not always cry in

vain, will W. C. Brann be able to draw his robe close around him

and with a good conscience exclaim, "It's none of my fault; I am

not my brother's keeper."

It will not do, my dear friend; you must think again on the

Single Tax, even though, in doing so, you might make men suspect

that you are not infallible. The sublimest act it will ever be

given you to perform is to candidly confess to your grand and

ever-growing constituency that you were mistaken in your estimate

of the Single Taxers and their faith. "Government must compel

each to pay toll in proportion the amount of wealth it has

produced--and this is the only equitable law of taxation." Just

reflect for a moment what a monstrous conclusion flows from these

premises. Labor applied to land produces all wealth. Landlordism

as such produces nothing. Therefore labor should bear the whole

burden of taxation, while landlordism and all other forms of

monopoly should go scot free. The iniquity of our present system

of taxation is that a portion of it is levied on land instead of

being all levied on labor products, like the tariff! To be

strictly just, we must quit taxing land and exact no royalty from

owners of coal mines and oil wells! That your view?

"There is every indication that his cult has had its day and is

rapidly going to join the many other isms, political and

religious, that have been swallowed up like cast off clothes and

other exuviae by the great mother of dead dogs." This is fine,

incontestably fine! Also forcible, impressibly forcible--with the

force of a squirt of tobacco juice. If "the Single Tax party will

not long survive its creator," perhaps it is because it has not

as much attraction for the great sovereign voter as the blessed

protective tariff, which, to use your own fantastic expression,

you should "cosset on your heaving brisket" for its splendid

success as a survivor of its primogenitors. Look at the pinnacle

of political success to which the McKinley bill has brought Bill

McKinley (excuse the paltry little pun) and sound money (saving

your presence) brought Grover Cleveland, and then contemplate the

ignominy and obscurity has brought George and free silver has

brought Bryan. Evidently George isn't a mouse to McKinley, while

Bryan is but a brindle pup compared to the great and only Grover.

Yes, the "public concept of truth" makes it plain that protection

is all right and Single Tax all wrong. "George is a reformer who

can't reform because he took issue with the wisdom of the world,"

just like the man who said that the earth was round and that the

sun didn't go round it every twenty-four hours, contrary to what

the wisdom of the world had long ago decided.

You are not mistaken in saying that "Mr. George was unable to

keep one of these expounders of his doctrine (a S.T. paper) from

running on the financial rocks." It is a very logical deduction

to draw from this fact that the teachings of the paper were

worthless. Why should anybody teach what does not, in the

teaching, promote his financial prosperity? See what fools

Professors Bemis and Andrews have made of themselves. Because

they did not have due regard for the "public concept of the

truth" they are cashiered; and it serves them right, for the

truth must be vindicated--if it pays. On the other hand, see what

splendid financial successes the ICONOCLAST, the Galveston News

and the so-called yellow journalism of New York all are.

"Deserve, in order to command success," the old copy-book

headline used to say, from which it follows as mud does rain,

that whatever succeeds deserves it, and whatever doesn't,

doesn't. It doesn't take much besides capital to succeed,

however, "where the conditions for the propagation of empiricism

are more favorable than ever before." All you have to do is to

propagate and expound the "public concept of truth" and let the

truth itself alone. The Single Taxers respectfully solicit some

more plain truths on the "Mumbojumboism of George." THOMAS

FLAVIN.

. . .

Ever since the appearance of my first courteous critique of the

Single Tax theory the followers of that faith have been pouring

in vigorous "replies"; but as my articles were directed to Mr.

George and not to his disciples, I saw no occasion for the latter

to intermeddle in the matter, and the tide of economic wisdom

went to waste. Although a publisher is supposed to be privileged

to select his own contributors, and Mr. George had been requested

to make reply at my expense, the Single Taxers raised a terrible

hue and cry that the ICONOCLAST was unfair in that it "permitted

one side to be presented." In order to cast a little kerosene

upon the troubled waters I decided that they should be heard, and

selected Dr. Flavin as their spokesman, believing him to be the

ablest of those who have followed this particular economic

rainbow into the bogs. So much by way of prolegomenon; now for

the doctor.

My very dear sir, I shall heed your advice to "rise above" the

abuse of those who mistake impudence for argument, and ignore the

discourteous remarks with which you have so liberally interlarded

your discourse. Doubtless you include yourself among that

numerous tribe of Texas titans who can "unhorse" me as easily as

turning a hen over; and having accorded you unlimited space in

which to acquire momentum, I would certainly dread the shock were

I cursed with an atom of polemical pride. Frankly, I wish you

success--trust that you can demonstrate beyond a peradventure of

a doubt that all my objections to the Single Tax are fallacious,

that it is indeed the correct solution of that sphinx riddle

which we must soon answer or be destroyed. At a time when the

industrial problem is pressing upon us with ever increasing

power, it is discouraging to hear grown Americans prattling of

"unhorsing" economic adversaries--priding themselves on polemical

fence, like shyster lawyers, and seeking victory through

sophistry rather than truth by honest inquiry. That is not

patriotism, but a picayune partisanship which I profoundly pity.

Regarding "the public concept of truth" which seems to irritate

you sorely, I will simply say that the people are slow to accept

new and startling truths like those promulgated by Galileo,

Newton and Harvey; but a truth, howsoever strange, GROWS year by

year and age by age, while a falsehood creates more or less

flurry at its birth, then fades into the everlasting night of

utter nothingness. That Mr. George's theory, after several

years of discussion, is declining in popular favor, and has never

made a convert among the careful students of political economy,

is strong presumptive evidence that it is not founded on fact.

The more you hammer truth the brighter it glows; the more you

hammer Georgeism the paler it gets. It is not for me to prove the

fallacy of the Single Tax theory--the onus probandi rests with

its apostles, and they but saltate from mistaken premises to

ridiculous conclusions. Like the German metaphysicians, they are

abstract reasoners who do not trouble themselves about

conditions. It is not well to sneer at "the great blind

multitude" because it fails to see the beauty or wisdom in the

Single Tax, for many a great man before Lincoln's time had

profound respect for the judgment of the common people. "Truth,"

say the Italians, "is lost by too much controversy;" and while

the Georges and Flavins split hairs and spute and spout

themselves into error, the hard- headed farmer and mechanic,

exercising their practical common-sense, arrive at correct

conclusions. In saying that Mr. George has, by his sophistry,

"deceived hundreds of abler men than himself," I simply

accredited him with a feat that has been a thousand times

performed. Carliostro was an ignoramus and possessed very

ordinary intellect, yet for several years he succeeded in

deceiving some of the wisest men of his day with his Egyptian

Masonry idiocy. Thousands of fairly intelligent people believed

poor looney Francis Schlatter a kind of second Messiah, some of

the ablest men of Europe were misled by half-crazy Martin

Luther--and Dr. Flavin regards Henry George's economic

absurdities as omniscience. The latter has "mistaken the

plausible for the actual," has deceived himself with his own

sophistry, else he and his few score noisy followers are wiser

than all the rest of the world, or, for the sake of gain or cheap

notoriety, he's peddling what he knows to be arrant nonsense. You

may take as many "pinches of snuff" on that proposition as you

please.

All your remarks about land values, their origin and rightful

ownership--the tiresome old piece de resistance of every Single

Tax discourse--I answered fully in my two former articles on this

subject, wherein I also explained how the "unearned increment" is

at present appropriated by the public, and I cannot afford to

rethresh old straw for the benefit of Single Taxers who WILL

write and WON'T read. I will remark en passant, however, that by

"unearned increment" I mean exactly what I suppose Mr. George to

mean--increase in the market value of land for which the

proprietor is not responsible. This, I have explained, is already

appropriated by the public, because the total annual increase in

land values in this country--barring betterments of course--does

not exceed the total annual tax levied upon the land. There's

always a boom in land values here and there; but hundreds of

millions of acres, urban and suburban, have not increased a penny

in selling price during the past decade. The owners are reaping

no unearned increment, but they are paying taxes regularly into

the public till. "The exclusive creator or producer of a thing is

the rightful owner," says Dr. Flavin. Quite true; and as the only

thing the community creates for the land owner is the unearned

increment, it has no moral right to take anything more. The

Single Taxers persist in ignoring the fact that there is an

EARNED as well as an UNEARNED increment, and that the former is

as much the property of the individual as the barn he builds or

the calf he breeds. Of this earned increment more anon.

"The highest homage, the highest act of faith which the human

mind and heart can offer to God is to say he could not be God and

pronounce the Single Tax to be unjust!" O hell! That's not

argument, but simply empty declamation intended to tickle the

ears of the groundlings--to raise a whoop among the gallery gods.

As you have suggested, "Come, let us argue with dignity and

composure," instead of emitting fanatical screeches like fresh

converts at a Methodist campmeeting, let's see about this God of

Justice business: About 200 years ago a party whom we will call

Brann, as that happened to be his name "cleared" a farm in the

wilds of Virginia, enduring all the hardships and dangers of the

frontier. He built roads and bridges, drained swamps,

exterminated Indians and wild animals. His descendants helped

drive out the British butchers, some of them being scalped alive

by John Bull's red allies, while their wives and children were

tomahawked. They contributed in their humble way to secure the

blessings of free government which the present inhabitants of

Virginia enjoyed. They helped support schools, churches and

charities and otherwise make the district desirable as a place of

residence. Finally railways were built and stores opened, not to

enrich these people, but to be enriched by them. These

conveniences added to the value of the land, but were paid for at

a good round price, as such things ever are by the users. The

land is now worth about $30.00 an acre, and while this value is

unquestionably due to the presence of populatoin,{sic} it is fair

to assume that in two centuries the estate has yielded that much

in the shape of taxes. As the present owner, I ask, has the Old

Dominion against that property for unearned increment? I say it

has not; that the $30.00 an acre represents the savings of seven

generations of my ancestors; that while the community created the

land value, said value has been duly purchased and paid for--that

it represents EARNED increment. Unearned increment is not what

Dr. Elavin is after; he would confiscate the RENT of my

patrimony; he would deprive me of the VALUES created by my

people--would allow me no larger share therein than he accords to

the newly arrived immigrant from that damned island we call

England. If our God says THAT is just, then I want no angelic

wings--prefer to associate with Satan. Has the son a just right

to wealth created and solemnly bequeathed him by his sire? That

land is as much mine as the gold would be mine, had my people

their savings in that shape, and the rent is mine as justly as

the interest on the gold would be. It is quite true that none of

my clan CREATED that land; it is true that I cannot show a title

to it signed by God Almighty and counter- signed by the Savior,

any more than I can show a title from the same high source to the

watch I hold in my hand; but I have a title to all the rights,

conveniences and profits appertaining to control of the land,

issued by their creator, the community, for value received. I

have the same title to the land that I have to the watch; not to

the material made by the Almighty, but to whatsoever has been

added of desirability thereto by the action of man. The community

has been settled with up-to-date for both the land and the watch,

but has a continuing claim against them so long as it enables me

to employ them advantageously than I could without its

assistance. If I sell my land the purchaser receives in return

for his money all those advantages which it required so many

years of toil and danger to win--he pays for the sacrifices made

by others in preference to going into the wilderness and making

them himself. The market value of my land is a "labor product,"

just as my watch is a labor product, hence all this prattle about

relieving industry of governmental burdens by any economic

thaumaturgy whatsoever is the merest moonshine.

It is quite true that "the great middle class" does not own the

most valuable lots in New York and London; but I have the

"chilled steel" hardihood to affirm that not only the bulk of the

land but of the land values are in the possession of people who

are poor as compared with the occupants of those sumptuous

palaces which the George conspiracy for the further enrichment if

Dives and the starvation of Lazaras would exempt from taxation.

The total wealth of this nation is not far from 75 billions,

while all the land, exclusive of improvements, would not sell for

more than 20 billion. The naked land of our 5 million farms is

estimated at about 10 billion, so that leaves but about 10

billion for urban lands--less than one-seventh of the total

value. I have no reliable statistics at hand showing what

proportion of urban inhabitants own their homes; but we may

safely assume that one-half do so. Now, if this be true, we may

also assume that the land values held by the very wealthy--the

people whom the Single Taxers profess to be after,--do not exceed

one-fourth of all land values, or one-fifteenth of total property

values. Hence you see it is quite possible for 250,000 to own 80

per cent of ALL values, while the bulk of the LAND values remain

with the common people. And it is these common people that the

Single Tax will crush for the benefit of these 250,000

plutocrats, the bulk of whose wealth is in personal property.

Sit down and think it over, doctor; you are really too bright a

man to be led astray by the razzle-dazzle of Single Tax

sophistry. You do your enviable reputation for intelligence a

rank injustice by mistaking poor old George for an economic

Messiah, and if you are not careful somebody will try to sell you

a gold-brick or stock in a Klondike company. Suppose that you and

Hon. Walter Gresham occupy residence lots worth $1,000 each, but

that you inhabit a $1,500 cottage and he a $150,000 mansion; and

suppose that your income is $2,000 a year while his is $20,000:

Do you think there is any necessity for tearing your balbriggan

undershirt because not compelled to put up as much for the

maintenance of government as your wealthy neighbor? Is it at all

probable that Gresham will become discouraged, refuse to longer

serve the corporations and sit in the woodshed and sulk, even

jump off the bridge, because taxed in proportion to the property

in his possession rather than according to the land he occupies?

If Col. Moody builds a million dollar cotton mill on suburban

land worth but $500 why should you refuse to sleep o' nights

because not required to pay double the taxes of that old duffer?

As a worthy disciple of Aesculapius you should know that too

heavy a burden on your own back is liable to make you bow-legged.

I suspected all along that the Single Tax would require several

able-bodied "corollaries" to enable it to effect much of a

reformation, to usher in the Golden Age. It were very nice to

throw unused coal and oil lands "open to all on equal terms,"

have the government pipe off all their products for equal pay,

then compel operators by piling on taxes to maintain high prices

to consumers "till other companies got well on their feet"--and a

combination was effected. If Rockefeller, Hanna, Carnegie, et id

genes omnes tried any of their old tricks "we might get after

them"--just as we HAVE long been doing. These plutocrats are so

afraid of our politicians that there is danger of their dying of

neuropathy. If the coal, iron and oil operators advance prices

we'll advance their taxes--for the people to pay. And I suppose

that when the whiskey trust get gay, the doctor will raise the

rent of corn land, when the cotton-seed oil trust becomes too

smooth, he'll knock it on the head by adding a dollar an acre to

cotton land, and so on until we get the cormorant fairly by the

goozle. It's all dead easy when you understand it--works as

smoothly as an "iridescent dream" on a toboggan slide! We are

continually discovering new coal, iron and oil districts, and

these are "open to all on equal terms"--I can acquire them just

as cheaply as can Rockefeller or Carnegie. Then what's the

matter? I lack the capital to properly develop them, to produce

so cheaply as my wealthy competitors. Or if able to become a

thorn in the side of the great corporations they either lower

prices and freeze me out or make it to my advantage to enter the

syndicate. When Rockefeller lowers the price of oil he lowers his

rent; when I am either crushed by competition or taken in out of

the cold, he advances the price of oil. His rent is regulated by

competition for the use of oil lands--you cannot make him pay

more than the market price. When you raise his rent you raise

that of all the other operators in proportion, and the same is

the same as an increase of the excise on whisky--the people get a

meaner grade of goods at a higher price. If an ordinary man

cooked up such a scheme as that for the benefit of the people,

I'd feel justified in calling him a "crank," and I cannot

conceive how a man like Dr. Slavin can tack his signature to such

tommy-rot. Before we can make the Single Tax "a go" we've got to

have government ownership of telegraphs, railways, pipe-lines,

etc., etc., and use the taxing power to regulate prices just as

the Republicans do the tariff--and for what? To humble the

haughty landlord? Oh no; to knock the stuffing out of capital--so

long wept over by Single Taxers as a fellow sufferer with toil.

Why not call the George system Communism?--"a rose by any other

name," etc.

When the doctor get matters arranged it will really make no

difference whether a farmer is located in the black-waxy

district, or on the arid cactus-cursed lands of the trans-Pecos

country, as he will have to surrender to the public all he

produces in excess of what the poorest land in use will yield. He

will have no incentive to study the capabilities of his land and

bring to bear upon it exceptional industry, for he will be

deprived of all the increase he can make it yield by such

methods. A will be placed on a parity with D because he took the

best land he could get instead of the poorest he could find.

Intelligence and enterprise are to have no reward under the new

regime. You can squat on a sand-bank or pile of rocks in any

community and be on a financial parity with the man whose black

soil reaches to the axis of the earth--no need to bundle the old

woman into a covered wagon, tie the brindled cow to the feed-box

and head for a country where better land is to be had. There will

be no temptation to carve out a home in the wilderness, for later

immigrants will set at naught your toil and sacrifices and

deprive your children of their patrimony--the best situated

merchant in Waco will have no advantage of the keeper of a tent

store on a side street of Yuba Dam or Tombstone. A tax will not

longer be "a fine on industry"--it will be a fine on fools.

My Galveston friend should not work himself into a fit of

hysteria because I declared that the George doctrine has had its

day, it being sheer folly to quarrel with a self-evident fact.

When Henry George first flamed forth he made a great deal of

money out of his writings, and has thus far shown no more

aversion to the silver than has your humble servant. His paper

was doubtless launched with a view of promoting his financial and

political fortunes, for he did not go broke publishing it "for

the good of the cause," but promptly rung off when he found that

it did not PAY, hence I fail to see that he is entitled to any

more credit than Col. Belo or myself. I called attention to the

failure of his paper, not in a spirit of rejoicing over its

downfall, but simply to accentuate the fact, after giving

some years to consideration of his rather pretty platitudes, that

people condemned them--that his heroic attempt to reclothe with

living flesh the bones of the impot unique had proven a dismal

failure. Now, my dear doctor, I have not undertaken in this hasty

article to fully expose this Single Tax fallacy, having attended

to that heretofore, but simply to answer a few of your arguments

which I had not hitherto heard. Let's drop the subject--let the

dead go bury its dead, while we devote our energies to LIVING

issues.

* * *

TEXAS TOPICS.

I note with unfeigned pleasure that, according to claims of

Baylor University, it opens the present season with a larger

contingent of students, male and female, than ever before. This

proves that Texas Baptists are determined to support it at any

sacrifice--that they believe it better that their daughters

should be exposed to its historic dangers and their sons

condemned to grow up in ignorance than that this manufactory of

ministers and Magdalenes should be permitted to perish. It is to

be devoutly hoped that the recent expose of Baylor's criminal

carelessness will have a beneficial effort--that hence forth

orphan girls will not be ravished on the premises of its

president, and that fewer young lady students will be sent home

enciente. The ICONOCLAST would like to see Baylor University, so

called, become an honor to Texas instead of an educational

eye-sore, would like to hear it spoken of with reverence instead

of sneeringly referred to by men about town as worse than a

harem. Probably Baylor has never been so bad as many imagined,

that the joint-keepers in the Reservation have been mistaken in

regarding it as a rival, that the number of female students sent

away to conceal their shame has been exaggerated; still I imagine

that both its morale and educational advantages are susceptible

of considerable improvement. The ICONOCLAST desires to see Baylor

a veritable pantechnicon of learning--at least a place where the

careful student may acquire something really worth

remembering--instead of a Dotheboys (and girls) hall, a

Squeeritic graft to relieve simple Baptist folk of their

hard-earned boodle by beludaling the brains of their bairns with

mis-called education. Unfortunately there is more brazen

quackery in our sectarian colleges than was every dreamed of by

Cagliostro. The faculty of such institutions is usually composed

of superficially educated people who know even less than is

contained in the text-books. As a rule they are employed because

they will serve at a beggarly price, but sometimes because their

employers are themselves too ignorant to properly pass upon the

qualifications of others. You cannot estimate a man's intellect

by the length of his purse, by the amount of money he has made

and saved; but it is quite safe to judge a man's skill in his

vocation by the salary he can command. I am informed that there

has never been a time when the salary of the president of Baylor

University exceeded $2,000 per annum--about half that of a good

whisky salesman or advertising solicitor for a second-class

newspaper. If such be the salary of the president, what must be

those of the "professors"? I imagine their salaries run from $40

a month up to that of a second assistant book-keeper in a

fashionable livery-stable. Judging by the salaries which they are

compelled to accept, I doubt if there be a member of the Baylor

faculty, including the president, who could obtain the position

of principal of any public high school in the state. People

cannot impart information which they do not possess; hence it is

that the graduates of Baylor have not been really educated, but

rather what the erstwhile Mr. Shakespeare would call

"clapper-clawed." There is no reason, however, why the

institution should be in the future so intellectually and morally

unprofitable as in the past. Change is the order of the universe,

and as Baylor cannot very well become worse it must of

necessity become better. It will have the unswerving support

of the ICONOCLAST in every effort to place itself upon a higher

educational plane, to honestly earn the money it pockets as

tuition fees. I am even willing to conduct a night school free of

charge during three months in the year for the instruction of its

faculty if each member thereof will give bond not to seek a

better paying situation elsewhere as soon as he learns something.

In any event, when Baylor can send me a valedictorian fresh from

its walls who is better informed than the average graduate of our

public schools, I'll give it a thousand dollars as evidence of my

regard, and half as much annually thereafter to encourage it in

the pursuit of common sense.

. . .

I greatly regret that my Baptist brethren, Drs. Hayden and

Cranfill, Burleson and Carroll, should have gotten into a

spiteful and un-Christian snarl over so pitiful a thing as

Baylor's $2,000 presidency--that they should give to the world

such a flagrant imitation of a lot of cut-throat unregenerates

out for the long green. If one-half that Hayden and Cranfill are

saying about each other in their respective papers be true--that

I presume that it is--then both ought to be in the penitientiary.

Brethren, please to remember that ye are posing as guardians of

morals, as examples for mankind--as people out of whom the

original sin has been soaked in the Baptist pool and whose paps

are filled to the bursting point with the milk of human kindness.

If you must fight and scratch like a brace of Kilkenny cats, why

the hell don't you sneak quietly into the woods and fight it out

instead of exhibiting your blatant jackasserie to the simple

people of Dallas and McLennan counties and thereby bringing our

blessed church into contempt! Gadzooks! if you splenetic-hearted

old duffers don't sand your hands and take a fresh grip on your

Christian charity I'll resign my position as chief priest of the

Baptist church and become a Mormon elder. I'll just be

cofferdamned if I propose to remain at the head of a church whose

educators, preachers and editors are forever hacking away at each

other's goozle with a hand-ax and slinging slime like a lot of

colored courtesans.

. . .

Our little boiler-plate contemporary, the Austin Statesman,

prints a court docket containing 69 divorce cases--side by side

with 12 church notices. Which is cause and which effect I will

not assume to say; but Austin is headquarters for

camp-meetings--and every neurologists endorsed the ICONOCLAST'S

theory that emotional religion is a terrible strain on the

Seventh Commandment.

. . .

"Our heroic young," etc., etc., announces himself a candidate for

the United States Senate to succeed Roger Q. Mills. The young

man's modesty is really monumental. Having succeeded by all

manner of petty chicanery in capturing the governorship, I am

surprised that he isn't seeking the job of Jehovah. Displacing

Mills with Culberson were much like substituting a Chinese joss

for the Apollo Belvedere or an itch bacillus for a bull-elephant.

I really cannot consent that the little fellow be sent to

Washington lest some hurdy gurdy man should swipe him. Chawles

says: "Next spring and summer I shall canvas the state

thoroughly, presenting my views of public questions to the

people." Which is to say that while we are paying him a good

stiff salary for doing his little best to discharge the duties of

one office, he will "canvas the state thoroughly" chasing

another. If he attempts to perpetuate such a brazen swindle on

the tax-payers of Texas, I'll camp on his trail to some extent,

and see that he has a hot time in at least a few old towns. I

cannot afford to trail him at my own expense all spring and

summer, while he's cavorting around on free passes and drawing

$11 a day from the public purse for unrendered services; but I'll

trump his card in all the large Texas towns as quick as it

strikes the table. I'm getting dead rotten tired of helping pay

the salaries of Texas officials for time devoted to

fence-building, and it will afford me considerable SATISFACTION

to place this cold-blooded little ward on the body politic

properly before the people. The duties of the governor's office

were supposed to be so onerous that a board of pardons was

created at the tax-payers' expense to lighten his labors; yet Mr.

Culberson proposed to spend the spring and summer, not in a

reasonable effort to earn his salary, but in explaining why he

should be sent to the senate. Coming before us thus

self-evidently unfaithful over a few things, this "heroic young

Christian" poker-player and red-light habitue has the supernal

gall to ask us to make him lord over many things,--to accord him

political promotion for dereliction of duty! In the name of

Balaam's she-ass, does this snub-nosed little snipe suppose that

we are all hopeless idiots? You are the state's hired hand,

Charlie boy--duly employed to remain at Austin and display your

anserine ignorance in the governor's office. The people don't

care two whoops in hades what your "opinions" may be on any

subject within the purview of the United States Senate. If you

want to spend the "spring and summer" rainbow chasing, a proper

sense of duty to your employers, even a slight conception of

commercial honor, would induce you to resign your present

position. If you are destitute of both honor and decency you will

probably campaign at our expense as you have promised; but I

opine that I can pour enough hot shot under your little

shirt-tails in a few engagements to drive you back to your duty,

and that you will go in a gallop. What the devil do you suppose

that Texans want with a two- faced little icicle like yourself in

the United States Senate? What taxpayer has asked you to become a

candidate? Despite all your wire-pulling, your trading and

self-seeking, and the further fact that you are employing the

state machinery to strengthen your pull, you really stand no more

show of succeeding Roger Q. Mills than you do of succeeding the

Czar of Russia. You have managed to get thus far, not on your own

merits, but solely because you are "Old Dave" Culberson's son.

Yours is simply a case of magni nominis umbra, and the umbra is

getting deuced thin at the edges, is no longer capable of

concealing the ass. For many years past we have been paying men

fat salaries for gadding about the country exploiting their

supposed "opinions." It is high time we put an end to such

idiocy, and I have selected you, as probably the worst specimen

of these political malefactors, of which to make an example in

the interest of honesty.

. . .

A correspondent writes me from Nacogdoches, Texas: "The Baptists

of this town have forced your agent to promise to discontinue

selling the ICONOCLAST under penalty of expulsion from the

church." That's all right; having purchased and paid for a

Baptist ticket to the heavenly henceforth, he doesn't want to be

bounced from the boat. Being thrown overboard in a canal two feet

wide and four feet deep is not so bad by itself considered, but

contumacious recalcitrants are invariable boycotted in business

by the hydrocephalous sect which boasts that it was the first to

establish liberty of conscience and freedom of speech in this

country, yet which has been striving desperately for a hundred

years to banish the last vestige of individuality and transform

this nation into a pharisaical theocracy with some priorient

hypocrite as its heierach. The ICONOCLAST is in its seventh

volume and has never yet been caught in a falsehood or published

an unclean advertisement. I am proud to say that no honest man or

virtuous woman was ever its enemy, but that holy hypocrites and

sanctified harlots regard it with the same aversion that a

pickpocket does a policeman. Yes; the action of the Baptists of

Nacogdoches was perfectly natural. What they want is a paper that

will afford them a charming mixture of camp-meeting notices and

syphilitic nostrums, prayer-meetings and abortion pills,

Prohibition rallies and lost manhood restorers. I cheerfully

recommend the Baptist Standard to their kindly consideration.

. . .

When J. S. Hogg was governor of Texas he compelled the Southern

Pacific road to move a train-load of Coxey-ites, whom it had,

carried in from California and side tracked west of San Antonio

to starve. As counsel for that impudent corporation--whose

officials seem to have been formed of the quintessential extract

of the exerementitious matter of the whole earth--he now makes a

"compromise" with the Culberson crew whereby it is some $975,000

IN and the state that much OUT. James Stephen can scarce be

blamed for securing every possible advantage for his client, even

tho' it be such a notorious criminal as the "Sunset"; but had he

been attorney for the state instead of for the corporation there

would have been no compounding of a felony "for the good of the

people," no sacrifice of both dignity and dollars. It is amusing

to see Culberson and Crane making a house of refuge of the coat

tails of Reagan. "He approved it! he approved it!" Of course he

approved it--Attorney General Crane "not having time during his

term of office to prosecute all the cases." But he'll "have time"

just as hard to spend half of next year chasing the governorship

on time paid for by the people. Reagan was compelled to accept

the compromise because the Culbersonian crew were too busy

office-chasing to prosecute the corporation. If the Culbersonian

crowd lined their pockets by that compromise they are a set of

thieves; if they didn't line their pockets they simply suffered

the corporation to play 'em for a pack of damphools. As neither a

thief nor a fool is fit to hold a public office, I move that we

build a large zinc-lined political coffin and bury the whole

crowd.

. . .

The St. Louis Mirror, the brightest weekly in the world, recently

had a remarkably interesting article on Texas politics; but

somehow it suggested to my mind that German metaphysician who,

having never seen a lion or read a description of one, undertook

to evolve a correct idea of the king of beasts from his own inner

consciousness.

. . .

It were interesting to know what kind of a swindle W. L. Moody &

Co. have in soak this season for the guileless cotton grower. I

have provided this office with a car-load of nickel-plated

tear-jugs for the benefit of cotton men who will call later to

tell me their troubles. My idea is to build a condenser, start a

wholesale salt store and supply Baptist dipping-tanks with water

free of wiggletails. Say! There's millions in it. Col. Mulberry

Seller's eye-water enterprise were as nothing to my graft when I

get it agoing.

. . .

I note that the Wrong-Reverend E. H. Harman, formerly presiding

elder of the Methodist church at Brenham, but given the grand

bounce for getting too gay at Galveston, where, in company with

another sanctified ministerial hypocrite named Wimberly, he had

"a hot time in the old town," with hacks, harlots and

barrel-house booze, has been converted to the Christian (or

Campbellite) faith and proposes to preach. Possibly his

conversion is genuine; but it is worthy of remark that he saw

nothing attractive in the Christian cult until no longer allowed

to occupy a Methodist pulpit--until reduced to the necessity of

either seeking a job in a new corner of the Lord's vineyard or

taking a fall out of the lowly cotton patch. He ought to make an

excellent running mate for the "Rev." Granville Jones, the poorty

preacher who puts his picture on his evangelical guttersnipes to

show the people how a holy man of God looks after confessing to

having forged a letter derogatory to a poor motherless working

girl's reputation. As my father is a Christian preacher I feel I

have a right to protest against his being placed on a clerical

parity with bilkers of hack bills and crapulous associates of

two-for-a-penny prostitutes. If Harman attempts to defile the

Christian pulpit with his presence, I hope to the good Lord that

the decent members of that denomination will tie him across a

nine-rail fence and enhance the torridity of his rear elevation

with a vigorous application of pine plank.

* * *

THE RETORT COURTEOUS.

F. L. Lewis writes from San Antonio to an obscure sheet called

the Railway Age, that Brann is not an Englishman as the Age

editor in one of his elephantine efforts to be humorous seems to

have suggested, and that "all Englishmen in this country

repudiate his every utterance." Thanks, awfully; that's the

highest compliment ever paid an American sovereign by a British

subject. When I next visit San Antonio I'll testify my gratitude

by giving Lewis 50 cents instead of the usual two-bits for toting

my grip from the "Sap" depot to the Menger hotel. I once said,

"There are some very decent and brainy Englishmen;" but as all

Englishmen in this country repudiate the soft impeachment, I

hasten to acknowledge my error. As the editor of the Age is quite

anxious to ascertain my nationality he probably suspects that I

may be his father.

. . .

The Independent, which I infer from the date-line of a letter

calling attention to its existence, is published at Pomeroy,

Wash., proposes, bumbye, to "give a history of the robberies

committed by Brann during the war." H----;! I can do that myself.

Attired in a triangular strip of birds-eye linen and emitting

savage yells, I repeatedly stormed and captured the most

magnificent breast-works ever built in Kentucky and ravenously

appropriated whatsoever I found therein without so much as a

thankee mum. Yes sirree, I was a robber dead-right in those old

days; but the Independent editor is safe: he's got nothing but a

shirt-tail full o' pied type and a card of membership in the

A.P.A.--Aggregation of Pusillanimous Asses. I have no use for his

"plant," and God knows I would not be caught dead in a Chinese

opium den with his certificate of infamy concealed in my clothes.

. . .

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch of August 20, contains a half-page

puff of one John Morrissey, who seems to be a peripatetic

iconoclast who has started out with a Bible in one hand, and a

free lunch in the other to abolish preachers. According to

Morrissey he was a Roman Catholic until he learned better, a

drunkard until "the Spirit of God entered his heart" and caused

his reformation, and used to write sermons for St. Louis

preachers who palmed them off as their own. I don't know about

that; but I know that of the interview he gave the Pee-Dee a

column was cribbed without credit from the article on "Charity"

in "Brann's Scrap-Book." "The Spirit of God" may have done much

for Morrissey, but it hasn't cured him of the thieving habit, and

I would advise people to keep a sharp eyes on their portable

property until this religious reformer succeeds in breaking into

the penitentiary.

. . .

The Texas Republican, which appears semi-occasionally at

Greenville, Tex., denounces in what Dorenus was wont to term

"livid language," my statement to the effect that a nation pays

for its imports with its exports. He says it is all "iconoclastic

foolishness," declares that a nation does nothing of the kind,

and proceeds to animadvert in an unchristian spirit on the

density of my economic ignorance. My contemporary's criticism is

clearly unconstitutional in that it is cruel and unusual

punishment. Now that its editor has annihilated my poor little

theory, it is his duty as a great public educator and charter

member of the Markhanna Illuminati, to inform me what the hades a

nation DOES pay for its imports with, instead of

permitting me, as he seems inclined, to "burst in ignorance." You

have the floor, my sweet little man, and the shades of all the

standard economists from Smith to Walker are waiting to see you

raise one of their favorite dogmas over the ropes. Call Prof.

Jevons a jackass, give Ricardo a tremendous rap, have no mercy on

John Stuart Mill, make old Adam Smith's bones to rattle, take a

terrible fall out of Turgot--then flap your ears and bray until

the welkin rings again. That's the way to settle a political

adversary who goes galivanting off after false economic gods. In

the meantime it might be a good idea to take your brains out,

brush the cobwebs off its cogs and apply a little kerosene with a

corncob.

. . .

It is seldom indeed that I give any attention to insulting

letters, but I cannot refrain from paying my respects to one

Byron Jassack Wales, who, with gray goose-quill for Pelian spear,

charges down on the ICONOCLAST as blithely as a gay moss-trooper

making an English swine-herd hard to catch. Such insults usually

come unsigned--are simply crass insolence which their cowardly

authors fear to father; but Byron sets down all the dreaful

things he thinks of Brann, boldly signs his name and adds an

ornamental flourish of defiance. The possibility of some long-

legged, slouch-hatted, wire-moustached cowboy ambling into his

august presence armed with a shooting iron carrying iron bullets

as big as goose-eggs and hurling him with a flash and whoop into

the problematical hitherto, does not shake to its base the heroic

fortitude of the man whose mother named him for the most

notorious chippy-chaser known to history. Byron proposed to

express his opinion, to say what he dad-burned pleases, though

the redoubtable Lieutenant-Colonel Rienzi Miltiades Johnsing, of

Houston, who does all the ICONOCLAST'S fighting under yearly

contract, should swoop down upon him like a double-barreled besom

of destruction,

"With death-shot glowing in his fiery hand And eye that

scorcheth all it looks upon."

Byron is offended because I saw fit to criticize New York's

priorient parvenues for exploiting the pregnancy of their wives

in the public-prints, and he lets me know where he can be found

in case his remarks offend, by daringly dating his letter "New

York." True, he refrains from giving his street and number--even

tears the printed headings off the letter paper he employs; but

that does not matter, as in a little village like New York a

Texan with a hair-trigger temper has only to inquire of the first

man he meets to be directed to the one he wants. Byron insists

that I print his letter to show people what a desperate

dare-devil he is; but I refrain lest it scare all the cattle off

the range and cause Bill Fewell and Doc Yandell of EL Paso to

move over into Mexico. Among other dreadful things he promises to

have my paper suppressed by the postal authorities if I speak of

him disrespectfully, which proves that he has a tremendous

political pull concealed about his person. I guess I'm safe so

far as he is concerned for a careful inspection of his letter

makes apparent the utter impossibility of speaking of Lord Byron

Jassack Wales disrespectfully--indicates that it were fulsome

flattery to refer to him as a blind pile on the body politic, a

suppurating sore on the hedonistic society of Sodom.

. . .

T. Shelley Sutton, of Boise City, Idaho, has "writ a pome"

entitled "That Man Brann," and the proud author sends me an

A.P.A. paper containing his production. It is an excellent

composition--of its kind; and I am gratified to learn that it has

at least gravitated to its proper level. Some six months ago a

commercial traveller sent me substantially the same thing, saying

that he had copied from the walls of a water closet in a Kentucky

hotel. It appears that it was too foul to harmonize with the

place in which it was composed, so it was stolen by a thieving

yahoo in search of carrion and puked into the putrid columns of

an A.P.A. paper. T. Shelley Sutton can probably find more

"original poetry" in the same place.

. . .

"Rev." Bill Homan, who conducts a little pecasmman paper

somewhere in North Texas for the long green and the misguidance

of three or four hundred fork-o'-the-creek Campbellites, devotes

two more columns of his raucous tommyrot and brainless balderdash

to the Howell-Jones imbroglio. Although he manages to tell at

least three deliberate lies in his idiotic eructation, he dares

not deny that the trial committee, of which he was a member,

permitted Jones to continue belching his fetid bile in the

Christian pulpit after being cornered and compelled to confess to

a cowardly crime which should be rewarded with a rope. Until this

corticiferous little cur explains why he is defending a

fourth-class preacher who confesses to having foully insulted, by

a base forgery, a motherless young girl committed to his care,

the ICONOCLAST must, for the sake of its own self-respect,

decline further controversy.

* * *

BRANN VS. BAYLOR.