There are times when language seems made, as Talleyrand would
say, to conceal thought; times when in no known tongue can one
body forth his indignation or express a tithe of his contempt--he
gropes in vain for invectives that bear upon their sulphurous
wings an adumbration of his anger. One must sometimes stand
speechless before a subject, else burn his lips with blasphemy or
befoul them with billingsgate. Two months ago my attention was
called to a precious pair of attorneys at San Antonio, Texas, who
seem to have not only touched the profoundest depths of
subter-brutish degradation, but to have wallowed there like swine
in an open sewer, proud of their own dishonor, infatuated with
their rank disgrace. Time and again I have been requested to hold
them up to the scorn of human-kind, and time and again I have
essayed the subject only to find the product of my pen
unprintable--it would have melted the type and burned a hole in
an asbestos mailbag. But indignation cools as the days run,
philosophy asserts itself, and perchance I can speak of these
offenders in language sufficiently polite to escape the attention
of the police. The facts may be summarized as follows: A modest,
well-behaved German girl named Wulff was brutally assaulted and
raped on a lonely road by a negro named Robinson, who decoyed her
to the place of her undoing by telling her mother that he had
been commissioned by a reputable white woman to secure a
serving-maid. His victim dragged herself back to her mother's
door, and, half dead with grief and fright, related the awful
story of her despoilment. The lying coon was apprehended and
tried for his hellish crime. There could not be the slightest
doubt regarding his guilt. He was fully identified. His general
bad character was amply proven. The doctors declared that the
child had been forcibly despoiled. The neighbors testified that
she had returned to her home with torn and muddy clothing, half
strangled and crying. The good character of plaintiff was
demonstrated beyond peradventure of a doubt. Yet in San Antonio,
that Mecca of Southern chivalry, there stood forth two
white-skinned lawyers to defend the lecher. These were McAnderson
and E. D. Henry. Do not forget these names--they represent the
sum and crown of infamy. They are names with which to conjure
evil spirits. By one shameful act they have been "damned to
everlasting fame." Henceforth when babes are naughty their
mothers will affright them with these foul bogey-men. In almighty
Milton's catalogue of unclean demons there is naught so damnable.
These two champions of a rape-fiend first attempted to establish
an alibi, to prove that the girl was lying about their
sweet-scented protege--that she was laying claim to a sexual
distinction which she did not deserve. That having failed
miserably, the attorneys changed their tactics. They knew that
their client was guilty, yet were anxious to turn the black son
of Perdition loose upon society. They admitted that he had
debauched the girl, but insisted that it was with her
consent--that this modest little German maid was the black
brute's mistress. They scared up a brace of worthless brutes who
testified to having seen plaintiff bathing naked in a creek with
the prisoner at the bar. It was quickly demonstrated that these
fellows were guilty of deliberate falsehood. The perjured
witnesses were impeached. To say that defendant's attorneys did
not know when they placed these witnesses on the stand that they
would exploit a foul calumny cooked up for the occasion, were to
brand them as hopeless fools. If they did know it they were
knaves--and they are welcome to impale themselves on either horn
of the dilemma they like. They next attempted to badger and
browbeat the poor girl into an admission that she had made an
assignation with the Senegambian. The local papers in reporting
the case said the language used by these chivalrous (?) Southern
gentlemen to the plaintiff was unprintable. They secured no
admission of guilt--not one word that could be distorted to her
discredit; but they did succeed in driving the child into
hysterics with their brutal insults and damnable innuendos.
Remember that this was not Muckle-Mouth Meg who was thus publicly
accused of criminal intimacy with a coon, but a 16-year old maid
of respectable family who was seeking a situation as housemaid to
assist her mother. But the foul-mouthed and foul-minded creatures
who had undertaken to save the neck of the ravisher cared naught
for a young girl's reputation. The villain Robinson was given a
life-term in the penitentiary--and his attorneys expressed
themselves as "satisfied with the verdict." Why were they
satisfied? Because they knew that their client deserved to hang
like a sheep-stealing hound. It was a brutal confession that in
questioning the good name of Miss Wulff, in branding her as the
mistress of a black, they were guilty of a more heinous crime
than the beast who defiled her body. And this actually happened
in San Antonio, a city whose very name thrills every fibre of
American manhood--a city from whose turrets the flags of five
nations have proudly fluttered--a city whose every foot of soil
has been time and again baptised with the blood of the brave--a
city that twice within the century has put Thermopylae to shame!
Yet I am told that these unclean birds, who befoul so fair a nest
are allowed to live in San Antonio, to walk her streets, to elbow
her proud sons and look her proud daughters in the face! How have
the mighty fallen! There was a time when to have breathed a word
against the good name of an honest girl, howsoever humble, would
have meant the bowie-knife's fearful plunge and a dead face
staring at the stars. It were curious to reflect what would have
happened had the victim of Ethiopian lust been Lady Vere de Vere
instead of a scullery maid! What would have happened? Why, the
brute would have been torn limb from limb and his carcass fed to
the buzzards, while any man who dared hint that she was his
paramour would have been hanged higher than Haman. "The trail of
the serpent is over us all," the golden calf has become our
supreme god, and even in the South it now matters much whether a
woman seeking justice be clothed in gowns of Worth or
linsey-wolsey.
I once discovered in Massachusetts what I considered to be the
world's meanest man. It was Rev. Spenser B. Meeser, engineer of a
Worcester gospel-mill. He was a beggar's brat who had been
clothed, fed and educated by old Stephen Girard's bounty, but
when he grew to manhood--or doghood--he puked on the grave of his
benefactor because the latter elected to be an Atheist instead of
a bigoted Baptist. I could not at the time conceive of anything
meaner wearing the name of man, of a crime blacker than base
ingratitude, of aught more damnable than calumniation of the
honored dead; but Massachusetts will have to surrender the
pennant of infamy to the South. Texas has succeeded in producing
two men, either of whom is infinitely meaner than Meeser. The
latter did no more than insult the memory of the man whose bread
he had broken, and he did this as an excuse for not contributing
a little money towards building him a monument. The meanness of
Meeser was solely mercenary--he found it easier to slander the
dead than to give up a dollar. The San Antonio lawyers sought to
turn a black rape-fiend loose to defile the women of the South,
to endanger their own daughters; and to perpetrate this crime
strove with tooth and nail to commit one even more damnable.
Fifty years ago Macaulay wrote of Bertrand Barere: "When we put
everything together, poltroonery, baseness, effrontery,
mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a novel we
should condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no
parallel can be found in history." It is indeed a pity the great
essayist did not live to contemplate this pair of Texas
attorneys. He would have learned, doubtless to his surprise, that
"the Anacreon of the guillotine" was a pretty decent fellow--by
comparison. Barere was a monster born of a reign of blood. He
gave the friends of his youth to the guillotine. So terrible was
his savagery that he became known as "the Witling of Terror." He
was an able-bodied and enterprising liar who never told the truth
unless by accident; but in his most demoniac moods it did not
occur to him to prove recreant to his race, to torture children
that he might enjoy their agony, to brand innocent girls, who
could scarce look upon their own budding bosoms without a blush,
as the depraved paramours of syphilitic Senegambians. Ah
Macaulay! from thy Seventh Heaven, reserved for the lords of
intellect--the children of genius, who needs must be the
favorites of Omniscience--shake down a drop of cold water upon
the blistered lips of Bertrand Barere, for they did not frame the
supreme falsehood--nor did he strive to unchain a black lecher
that he might imperil the honor of the ladies of his native land.
Despite all his sin and shame, he would have looked upon that
dishonored daughter of the Caucasian race and cried for
vengeance.
Carlyle, greatest of critics, the supreme lord of
literature--that Scottish Arcturus before whom even Shakespeare's
glorious star pals its ineffectual fires--awards the palm of
correlated cussedness to Cagliostro; yet the "count" was merely a
successful swindler and professional pander. He plucked rich
dupes, but I find not in his long catalogue of crime that he
slandered youthful serving maids--for a consideration. He was
advocate for many an unclean thing, but it is not recorded that
he ever took a fee from a negro rape-fiend--that he ever defended
a lecherous son of Ham who had dared raise his wolfish eyes to
the fair face of Japhet's humblest daughter. Even when put on
trial for his own worthless life he did not seek to save himself
by the perjured testimony of the sons of slaves.
Cagliostro, Barere and Meeser--the positive, comparative and
superlative of infamy hitherto! but we must turn to "Grand old
Texas" to find unblushing effrontry and irremediable rascality.
Some months ago a creature named Otis, who conducts somewhere in
Southern California a putrid abortion miscalled a newspaper,
declared in his columns that Southern women are often paramours
of black bucks, and that the frequent lynching of so-called
rape-fiends are due to discovery of these unnatural liaisons. But
as Otis commanded a company of coons during the war--a job which
no gentleman would have accepted to save his immortal soul--and
as he has a head shaped like a gourd and a face strongly
suggestive of a degenerate simian, his foolish lies only produced
a general laugh; yet here are two alleged Southern gentlemen,
certifying in open court that Otis' cowardly falsehoods have a
broad foundation of fact! In the whole world's history there is
but one other instance of such shameless infamy, and that too
belongs to Texas. When the 14-year old "ward of the Baptist
church" was debauched at its chief storm center of bigotry and
bile, Baylor University, the sweet scented son-in-law of
President Burleson tried to make it appear that she was enciente
by a Senegambian--that young and innocent girls committed to its
care were so poorly guarded that it was possible for them to have
nigger babies!--Yet this defamer of Baptist womanhood has not yet
been introduced to a rope by the male students, attacked from the
rear by Baylor trustees, or told to leave town! Fortunately the
young lady was able to refute this slander of the University and
its inmates by putting a white baby in evidence--the pickaninny
specialty having been reserved by Providence for the manager of
the Baptist missionary board.
One cannot help asking if Miss Wulff has no male relatives, or if
gunpowder is no longer sold in the Alamo City. As I understand
it, her people are late from the Fatherland--have yet to learn
that in some cases society expects a man to overlook the law, to
kill as unclean curs those who thus defame a female member of
their family. It is possible that there are other shyster lawyers
as mean, other bipedal coyotes as contemptible as those under
consideration; but if so they have not yet been called to the
attention of the ICONOCLAST. True it is, however, that the
average attorney cares more for victory than for virtue.
Howsoever honest and upright he may be in private life, the
moment he enters the court-room he becomes an unnatural monster,
willing to accept the devil as client and win his case at any
cost. It is likewise true that the courts allow too large a
liberty to lawyers in the examination of witnesses for the
opposition, permitting them to call in question the honor of men
of well-known probity and cast suspicion on the character of
women full as good as their wives in order to make an impression
on the jury that will redound to the interest of cut-throat
clients. It has come to such a pass in this so-called chivalrous
country that sensitive women will submit to almost any wrong
rather than seek redress in our courts of law, where they are
liable to be subjected to studied insult by unconscionable
shysters. It were well for the people to take this matter in hand
and make it plain to all concerned that courts do not exist for
the express purpose of enabling blackguard lawyers to pocket fat
fees for aiding professional criminals to escape the legitimate
consequence of their crimes, but to secure even and exact
justice--to insist that henceforth these legal parasites be
compelled to treat them with common courtesy. It might be well
for the South to vary the program by lynching fewer rape-fiends
and more shysters lawyers.
* * *
COINING BLOOD INTO BOODLE.
Some months ago the ICONOCLAST paid its respects to the old line
insurance companies. It demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a
doubt that they are but so many cut-throat gambling concerns. It
proved that they are consuming the substance of the people by
returning in satisfaction of matured policies about one-third
what they collect in premiums. Of course, the expose aroused the
ban-dogs of Dives, and they made the welkin ring from Tadmor in
the wilderness to Yuba Dam. The ICONOCLAST became a target for
oodles of cheap wit and barrels of black-guardism by the
journalistic organ-grinders for the insurance buccaneers; but as
yet none of the megalophanous-mouthed micrococci have attempted
to answer its arguments or to demonstrate that the indictment was
too drastic. A gentleman who has made an exhaustive study of the
insurance problem sends me some valuable data which I propose to
draw upon from time to time, not with the expectation of making
high-toned thieves ashamed of themselves and thereby effecting
their reformation, but to keep their newspaper panders and
potwallopers snarling and snapping until general attention is
attracted to the consummate meanness of their masters and thereby
curtail somewhat their powers of despoilation. The old line life
insurance fake is the most colossal scheme of predacity known to
human history. Enough money is annually filched from the people
to clothe every pauper like unto Solomon in all his glory and
feed him upon the fat of the land. Millions of Americans are
today denying themselves creature comforts to pay premiums on
policies that will never yield their dependents one penny. The
old line fraud flourishes simply because, in the language of the
erstwhile P. T. Barnum, the American people love to be hood-dooed
and humbugged. I do not by this mean to reflect upon the
commercial integrity of all men soliciting old line insurance.
Many of them are elegant gentlemen who have engaged, quite
unconsciously, in very bad business. The Deity should forgive
them for they know not what they do. They really believe that
they are engaged in a work of philanthropy, while devoting their
best energies to the promotion of a fraud. The average
policy-holder knows little or nothing about life- insurance. He
desires to provide for his dependants; but being unable to
accumulate much property, he scrapes and saves and pays to some
remorseless robber all his surplus money. He wants to be doubly
sure that the company is solvent and will remain so, hence he
selects one boasting enormous "assets." It does not once occur to
him that the aforesaid assets have been accumulated in a very few
years by bumping the heads of other suckers. He pays the rate
prescribed without considering whether it be high enough to keep
the company solvent or low enough to stamp his investment as
commercial sanity. He is little concerned about "dividends," but
wants to be assured that at the time of his death his heirs will
be paid a certain number of dollars. So he goes up against a
mammoth slot-machine which absorbs dollars while it rolls out
dimes. He knows that the widow so-and-so was paid so much
insurance, and takes it for granted that it is a good thing. He
sees the little pile of coin poured into her lap, but he does not
see the greedy hands of the corporation despoiling a hundred
pockets to make up treble the amount. He hears much about what
the Flim- Flam Life Insurance Co. has paid on policies, but
nothing about what it has collected in premiums. So he makes his
old threadbare coat do for another decade, lets his wife go
without a new gown, feeds his children on slapjacks and sop and
surrenders for life insurance the surplus thus saved. No "cheap
insurance" for him!--he wants to get into a "time-tried"
financial Gibralter. He is told by the agent of an old liner of
its enormous "legal reserve," and innocently supposes this to be
a portion of its available assets--the one thing which makes it
"solid." He contemplates a long array of figures and assumes that
Old Mortality might sweep the land with War or pestilence without
affecting the solvency of his patron saint. The agent neglects to
inform him that the "legal reserve," which looms up like a
seventy four in a fog, cannot be utilized in the discharge of
death-claims, that insofar as the average policy holder is
concerned it is simply a beautiful legend on an advertising
blotter. When I was editor of the San Antonio Express the
philanthropic proprietor gave me a block of land in the city of
Laredo in lieu of a raise of salary, but neglected to supply me
with a deed to same. The land is mine, all right enough, but is
no part of my available assets--it's my "legal reserve." Like its
insurance namesake, it's a liability to the exact extent that
it's an asset. It is an awfully nice thing to have, but adds
never a cent to my solvency. My correspondent points out that it
costs policy holders in old line companies more to maintain the
legal reserve than it does to provide for losses by death, and
adds that this is proven by the fact that all such companies
doing business in the State of New York must have on hand in
cash, or in invested assets approved by the insurance department,
the reserve belonging to all the policies which they have in
force. This means that they must retain or keep invested a sum
equal to about two-thirds of all the premiums paid on all
existing policies. The moment they part with any portion of this
reserve for any purpose whatsoever, they are declared insolvent
and wound up by a receiver. In other words, the corporation is
d----d if it does and the policy holder is d----d if it doesn't.
That the latter gets the sulphur bath goes without saying. The
four largest old system companies doing business in New York had,
on Jan. 1, 1893, $48,265,798 more in legal reserve than the total
amount which they have paid in death losses and endowments during
their entire existence! With this fact before him, how in the
name of heaven any sane man can be induced by an old system
company to enact the role of sucker surpasses my comprehension.
Five years ago the net assets of the largest old line life
insurance company in the world amounted to $165,000,000, of which
more than $158,000,000 was legal reserve. Had a shrinkage of 10
per cent occurred in the value of its investments its reserve
would have been impaired and the corporation declared insolvent.
So long ago as 1878 the Union Mutual Life Insurance Co.
acknowledged over the signatures of its general officers that it
had collected from its policy holders more than $45,000,000
"beyond the necessities of our business." It felt so badly about
this that it proceeded to raise the cost of management from $5 to
$11.57 on the $1,000 and shove up the premium something more than
20 per cent! It is believed that the gutta percha conscience of
the general officers is now reasonably easy--that "the
necessities of our business" are not on a parity with the ability
of the corporation to yank the legs of the guileless yap. In 1873
this company paid in dividends $29 on each $1,000 insurance in
force; in 1895 it paid--despite the increased cost of
premiums--but $2.16. All the old line companies, so far as I
know, have been increasing premiums and cost of management while
decreasing dividends. "Loading" is another scheme by which all
old line or legal reserve companies rob the people. "Loading"
means simply the placing of a sufficient burden on the patron to
freeze him out before maturity of his policy and enable the
company to pocket all he has paid in premiums. The idea of the
old liners is to squeeze a victim dry and get rid of him--to
"load" him until his financial back is broken. That the system is
proven by the fact that only one policy in seven is ever paid.
Six out of every seven people who insure in the old line
companies pay heavy premiums for a longer or shorter period and
never receive back a cent. They lie down under their "load." By
such methods these systematic blood-suckers acquire those vast
assets that make them so "solvent." By such practices they are
enabled to pay $75,000 salaries to their presidents while the
chief magistrate of the Republic must worry along on less money.
By the pernicious system of "loading" a patron is charged four
times as much for operating expenses at 60 years of age as he is
charged at 25, although it costs the same to collect his premiums
and furnish a receipt therefor. The idea is that the older he
grows the more likely he is to prove a loss to the company,
hence his burden is made too grievous to be borne. Life insurance
should be a public blessing instead of a bane. Properly applied
it would well-nigh eliminate pauperism. As matters now stand it
is too often a promoter of poverty instead of a preventative. To
shelter one family the old line companies turn two or more into
the street. To feed the few they starve the many. They coldly
speculate in the holiest affections of the human heart. They
remorselessly coin blood into boodle. They wring the last
farthing from the thin purse of labor for their own enrichment.
They obtain patronage of the ignorant by false pretenses. They
permit the people to regard their legal reserve as available for
all purposes. They parade eight and nine-figure assets as things
to be proud of, when they are in reality the fruits of shameless
despoiliation of the poor. They pose as benevolent institutions
while the land is filled with those whom they have robbed and
wrecked. The government should suppress these eminently
respectable gambling games. They have caused more sorrow,
destitution and crime than all the cards and dice this side of
the dark dominion of the devil. The horse-leech's daughters
should be pulled off the body politic. Not only should the
government suppress these shameless skin games which collect gold
and distribute copper, but it should supply life insurance to
heads of families at cost and make it compulsory. It should be an
offense against the law, punishable by imprisonment for a man to
bring a child into the world without first providing for its
support in case of his death or disability, and in no other way
can the poor so easily make such provision as by a system of life
insurance conducted for the benefit of the many instead of the
enrichment of the few.