_The Chasm_
The contrast between riches and poverty; the protest of common
sense against a condition of society where one-tenth of the
people own nine-tenths of the wealth.
Wat Tyler
BY ROBERT SOUTHEY
(One of the so-called "Lake School" of English poets, which included
Wordsworth and Coleridge; 1774-1843. Poet-Laureate for thirty years.
The refrain of this song was the motto of Wat Tyler's rebels, who
marched upon London in 1381)
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Wretched is the infant's lot,
Born within the straw-roof'd cot;
Be he generous, wise, or brave,
He must only be a slave.
Long, long labor, little rest,
Still to toil, to be oppress'd;
Drain'd by taxes of his store,
Punish'd next for being poor:
This is the poor wretch's lot,
Born within the straw-roof'd cot.
While the peasant works,--to sleep,
What the peasant sows,--to reap,
On the couch of ease to lie,
Rioting in revelry;
Be he villain, be he fool,
Still to hold despotic rule,
Trampling on his slaves with scorn!
This is to be nobly born.
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
The Poor-Slave Household
(_From "Sartor Resartus"_)
BY THOMAS CARLYLE
(See page 31)
"The furniture of this Caravanserai consisted of a large iron
Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen
Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon
which the inmates slept; and the space below was divided by
a hurdle into two apartments; the one for their cow and pig,
the other for themselves and guests. On entering the house we
discovered the family, eleven in number, at dinner; the father
sitting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the children on
each side, of a large oaken Board, which was scooped out in
the middle, like a trough, to receive the contents of their
Pot of Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal distances to
contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk stood on the table; all the
luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes, were
dispensed with." The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found,
as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal
strength, and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned
but well-featured woman; and his young ones, bare and chubby,
had the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical or Religious
tenets or observances, no notice or hint.
But now, secondly, of the _Dandiacal Household_:
"A Dressing-room splendidly furnished; violet-colored curtains,
chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length Mirrors
are placed, one on each side of a table, which supports the
luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Perfume, arranged
in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller table of
mother-of-pearl; opposite to these are placed the appurtenances
of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of
Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being partly open,
discover a profusion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small
size monopolize the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe a door
ajar gives some slight glimpse of the Bathroom. Folding-doors
in the background.--"Enter the Author," our Theogonist in
person, "obsequiously preceded by a French Valet, in white silk
Jacket and cambric Apron."
* * * * *
Such are the two sects which, at this moment, divide the more
unsettled portion of the British People; and agitate that
ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, their
mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord and
hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles of
Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or
Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may
be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant and
nowise considerable shapes: nevertheless, in their roots and
subterranean ramifications, they extend through the entire
structure of Society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths
of English national Existence; striving to separate and isolate
it into two contradictory, uncommunicating masses.
In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor-Slaves or
Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal,
again, is by nature no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts of
great hereditary resources, and is strong by union; whereas the
Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying-point;
or at best only co-operate by means of partial secret
affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a _Communion
of Drudges_, as there is already a Communion of Saints, what
strangest effects would follow therefrom! Dandyism as yet
affects to look down on Drudgism; but perhaps the hour of
trial, when it will be practically seen which ought to look
down, and which up, is not so distant.
To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day
part England between them; each recruiting itself from the
intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either
side. These Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandyizing
Christians, will form one body; the Drudges, gathering round
them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan;
sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals,
refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general mass,
will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudgism to two
bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out on opposite
quarters of the firm land; as yet they appear only disquieted,
foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover-in;
yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening; they are
hollow Cones that boil-up from the infinite Deep, over which
your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! Thus daily is the
intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire of the two
Buchan-Bullers extending; till now there is but a foot-plank,
a mere film of Land between them; this too is washed away; and
then--we have the true Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is
outdeluged!
Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed
unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the "Machinery of
Society"), with batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the
Negative, Dandyism the Positive; one attracts hourly towards it
and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation
(namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy with the
Negative (that is to say the Hunger) which is equally potent.
Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and sputters;
but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an electric
state; till your whole vital Electricity, no longer healthfully
Neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and
Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there bottled-up
in two World-Batteries! The stirring of a child's finger
brings the two together; and then--What then? The Earth is but
shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thunderpeal; the
Sun misses one of his Planets in Space, and thenceforth there
are no eclipses of the Moon.
BY CHARLES MAURICE DE TALLEYRAND
(French bishop and statesman, 1754-1838)
Society is divided into two classes; the shearers and the
shorn. We should always be with the former against the latter.
The Lotus Eaters
BY ALFRED TENNYSON
(Probably the most popular of English lyrical poets; 1809-1892.
Made Poet-laureate in 1850, and a baron in 1884)
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,
In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind.
For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world:
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and
praying hands.
But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song
Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,
Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong;
Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
Till they perish and they suffer--some, 'tis whisper'd--down in hell.
Yeast
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY
(English clergyman and novelist, 1819-1875; founder of the Christian
Socialist movement. In the scene here quoted, a young University man
is taken by a game-keeper to see the degradation of English village
life)
"Can't they read? Can't they practice light and interesting
handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry do?"
"Who'll teach 'em, sir? From the plough-tail to the
reaping-hook, and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir,
they are not like us Cornish; they are a stupid pig-headed
generation at the best, these south countrymen. They're
grown-up babies who want the parson and the squire to be
leading them, and preaching to them, and spurring them on, and
coaxing them up, every moment. And as for scholarship, sir,
a boy leaves school at nine or ten to follow the horses; and
between that time and his wedding-day he forgets every word
he ever learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a
heathen savage at heart as those wild Indians in the Brazils
used to be."
"And then we call them civilized Englishmen!" said Lancelot.
"We can see that your Indian is a savage, because he wears
skins and feathers; but your Irish cotter or your English
laborer, because he happens to wear a coat and trousers, is to
be considered a civilized man."
"It's the way of the world, sir," said Tregarva, "judging
carnal judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes; always
looking at the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much
deeper. But as for reading, sir, it's all very well for me,
who have been a keeper and dawdled about like a gentleman with
a gun over my arm; but did you ever do a good day's farm-work
in your life? If you had, man or boy, you wouldn't have been
game for much reading when you got home; you'd do just what
these poor fellows do--tumble into bed at eight o'clock, hardly
waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you must turn
up again at five o'clock the next morning to get a breakfast
of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire's dripping, and
then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week
after week, year after year, without a hope or chance of being
anything but what you are, and only too thankful if you can
get work to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over."
"But do you mean to say that their labor is so severe and
incessant?"
"It's only God's blessing if it is incessant, sir, for if it
stops, they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than
the thieves in gaol. And as for its being severe, there's many
a boy, as their mothers will tell you, comes home night after
night, too tired to eat their suppers, and tumble, fasting, to
bed in the same foul shirt which they've been working in all
the day, never changing their rag of calico from week's end to
week's end, or washing the skin that's under it once in seven
years."
"No wonder," said Lancelot, "that such a life of drudgery makes
them brutal and reckless."
"No wonder, indeed, sir: they've no time to think; they're born
to be machines, and machines they must be; and I think, sir,"
he added bitterly, "it's God's mercy that they daren't think.
It's God's mercy that they don't feel. Men that write books
and talk at elections call this a free country, and say that
the poorest and meanest has a free opening to rise and become
prime minister, if he can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is,
that in practice he can't; for one who gets into a gentleman's
family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty
know that they've no chance before them, but day-laborer born,
day-laborer live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching to
get not meat and beer even, but bread and potatoes; and then,
at the end of it all, for a worthy reward, half-a-crown-a-week
of parish pay--or the work-house. That's a lively hopeful
prospect for a Christian man!" ...
Into the booth they turned; and as soon as Lancelot's eyes
were accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated at
two long temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of "My
brethren," as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling,
stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and drooping lips--interspersed
with more girls and brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in
their caps, whose sole business seemed to be to cast jealous
looks at each other, and defend themselves from the coarse
overtures of their swains.
Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foulness
of language which prevailed; and the utter absence of anything
like chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, towards
women. But lo! the language of the elder women was quite as
disgusting as that of the men, if not worse. He whispered a
remark on the point to Tregarva, who shook his head.
"It's the field-work, sir--the field-work, that does it all.
They get accustomed there from their childhood to hear words
whose very meanings they shouldn't know; and the elder teach
the younger ones, and the married ones are worst of all. It
wears them out in body, sir, that field-work, and makes them
brutes in soul and in manners...."
Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation
of the men round him. To his astonishment he hardly understood
a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, made up
almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had
never before been struck with the significant contrast between
the sharp, clearly defined articulation, the vivid and varied
tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street-boy, when
compared with the coarse, half-formed growls, as of a company
of seals, which he heard round him. That single fact struck
him, perhaps, more deeply than any; it connected itself with
many of his physiological fancies; it was the parent of many
thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there he could
distinguish a half sentence. An old shrunken man opposite him
was drawing figures in the spilt beer with his pipe-stem, and
discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, "when
there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than
there were hands." "Poor human nature!" thought Lancelot, as he
tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about
the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which
ended, as usual, in more swearing, and more quarrelling, and
more beer to make it up--"Poor human nature! always looking
back, as the German sage says, to some fancied golden age,
never looking forward to the real one which is coming!"
"But I say, vather," drawled out some one, "they say there's
a sight more money in England now, than there was afore the
war-time."
"Eees, booy," said the old man; "_but it's got into too few
hands_."
"Well," thought Lancelot, "there's a glimpse of practical
sense, at least." And a pedler who sat next him, a bold,
black-whiskered bully from the Potteries, hazarded a joke--
"It's all along of this new sky-and-tough-it farming. They used
to spread the money broad cast, but now they drills it all in
one place, like bone-dust under their fancy plants, and we poor
self-sown chaps gets none."
This garland of fancies was received with great applause;
whereat the pedler, emboldened, proceeded to observe,
mysteriously, that "donkeys took a beating, but horses kicked
at it; and that they'd found out that in Staffordshire long
ago. You want a good Chartist lecturer down here, my covies, to
show you donkeys of laboring men that you have got iron on your
heels, if you only knowed how to use it...."
Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst out
as melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one side
in delighted attention.
"I zeed a vire o' Monday night,
A vire both great and high;
But I wool not tell you where, my boys,
Nor wool not tell you why.
The varmer he comes screeching out,
To zave 'uns new brood mare;
Zays I, 'You and your stock may roast,
Vor aught us poor chaps care.'
"Coorus, boys, coorus!"
And the chorus burst out--
"Then here's a curse on varmers all
As rob and grind the poor;
To re'p the fruit of all their works
In ---- for evermoor-r-r-r.
"A blind owld dame come to the vire,
Zo near as she could get;
Zays, 'Here's a luck I warn't asleep,
To lose this blessed hett.
They robs us of our turfing rights
Our bits of chips and sticks,
Till poor folks now can't warm their hands,
Except by varmers' ricks.'
"Then, etc."
And again the boy's delicate voice rang out the ferocious
chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish
exultation, and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh,
that indicated no malice--but also no mercy....
Lancelot almost ran out into the night--into a triad of fights,
two drunken men, two jealous wives, and a brute who struck
a poor, thin, worn-out woman, for trying to coax him home.
Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a man seized his uplifted
arm.
"He'll only beat her all the more when he getteth home."
"She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven
years, to my knowledge," said Tregarva; "and worse, too, at
times."
"Good God! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?"
"No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can afford such
luxuries; your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor
woman to a ruffian, but once done, done for ever."
"Well," thought Lancelot, "we English have a characteristic
way of proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of
Justice and Pity cannot sever it, only the stronger demon of
Money."
Alton Locke
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY
(See page 78)
"What!" shriek the insulted respectabilities, "have we not
paid him his wages weekly, and has he not lived upon them?"
Yes; and have you not given your sheep and horses their daily
wages, and have they not lived on them? You wanted to work
them; and they could not work, you knew, unless they were
alive. But here lies your iniquity; you have given the laborer
nothing but his daily food--not even his lodgings; the pigs
were not stinted of their wash to pay for their sty-room, the
man was; and his wages, thanks to your competitive system,
were beaten down deliberately and conscientiously (for was it
not according to political economy, and the laws thereof?)
to the minimum on which he could or would work, without the
hope or the possibility of saving a farthing. You know how to
invest your capital profitably, dear Society, and to save money
over and above your income of daily comforts; but what has he
saved?--what is he profited by all those years of labor? He
has kept body and soul together--perhaps he could have done
that without you or your help. But his wages are used up every
Saturday night. When he stops working, you have in your pocket
the whole profits of his nearly fifty years' labor, and he has
nothing. And then you say that you have not eaten him!
Looking Backward
BY EDWARD BELLAMY
(One of the classics of the Socialist movement, this book
sold over four hundred thousand copies in the first years of
its publication. Its author was an American school-teacher,
1850-1898)
By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression
of the way people lived together in those days, and especially
of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps
I cannot do better than compare society as it then was to a
prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to
and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The
driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace
was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing
the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with
passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents.
The seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out
of the dust their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their
leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining
team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the
competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first
end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to
leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a
man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other
hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time
be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were
very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons
were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they
were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to
drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly.
It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose
one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them
or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of
those who rode.
But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their
very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with
the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and
the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil! Had
they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only
distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently
expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the
coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in
the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly
steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the
team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless
lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were
trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which
often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on
the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call
down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them
to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation
in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others
contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and
injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach
should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general
relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over.
This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for
there was always some danger at these bad places of a general
overturn in which all would lose their seats.
It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the
spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to
enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats
upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more
desperately than before. If the passengers could only have
felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever
fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to
the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled
themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.
Rich and Poor
BY LEO TOLSTOY
(Russian novelist and reformer, 1828-1910)
The present position which we, the educated and well-to-do
classes, occupy, is that of the Old Man of the Sea, riding on
the poor man's back; only, unlike the Old Man of the Sea, we
are very sorry for the poor man, very sorry; and we will do
almost anything for the poor man's relief. We will not only
supply him with food sufficient to keep him on his legs, but we
will teach and instruct him and point out to him the beauties
of the landscape; we will discourse sweet music to him and give
him abundance of good advice.
Yes, we will do almost anything for the poor man, anything but
get off his back.
A Tale of Two Cities
BY CHARLES DICKENS
(Celebrated English novelist, 1812-1870. The novel here quoted
deals with the French Revolution, and the scene narrates how
one of Monseigneur's guests drives away from the palace)
Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had
stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been
warmer in his manner. It appeared under the circumstances,
rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed
before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run
down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the
furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face,
or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made
itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that,
in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician
custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in
a barbarous manner. But few cared enough for that to think of
it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the
common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as
they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment
of consideration not easy to be understood in these days,
the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners,
with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other
and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at
a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a
sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number
of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would
not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and
leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened
valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at
the horses' bridles.
"What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the
feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the
fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like
a wild animal.
"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive
man, "it is a child."
"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"
"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis--it is a pity--yes."
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where
it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the
tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at
the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an
instant on his sword-hilt.
"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both
arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. "Dead!"
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis.
There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him
but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing
or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first
cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of
the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its
extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them
all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
"It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that you people cannot
take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of
you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have
done my horses. See! Give him that."
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the
heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as
it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly
cry, "Dead!"
Paris
BY ÉMILE ZOLA
(French novelist, 1840-1902, founder of the school of "Naturalism."
The present is one of his later works, in which he indicates his hope
of the regeneration of French society. The hero is a Catholic priest
who first attempts to reform the Church, and then leaves it)
Pierre remembered that frightful house in the Rue des Saules,
where so much want and suffering were heaped up. He saw again
the yard filthy like a quagmire, the evil-smelling staircases,
the sordid, bare, icy rooms, the families fighting for messes
which even stray dogs would not have eaten; the mothers, with
exhausted breasts, carrying screaming children to and fro; the
old men who fell in corners like brute beasts, and died of
hunger amidst filth. And then came his other hours with the
magnificence or the quietude or the gaiety of the _salons_
through which he had passed, the whole insolent display of
financial Paris, and political Paris, and society Paris. And
at last he came to the dusk, and to that Paris-Sodom and
Paris-Gomorrah before him, which was lighting itself up for the
night, for the abominations of that accomplice night which,
like fine dust, was little by little submerging the expanse
of roofs. And the hateful monstrosity of it all howled aloud
under the pale sky where the first pure, twinkling stars were
gleaming.
A great shudder came upon Pierre as he thought of all that
mass of iniquity and suffering, of all that went on below amid
wealth and vice. The _bourgeoisie_, wielding power, would
relinquish naught of the sovereignty which it had conquered,
wholly stolen; while the people, the eternal dupe, silent so
long, clenched its fists and growled, claiming its legitimate
share. And it was that frightful injustice which filled the
growing gloom with anger. From what dark-breasted cloud would
the thunderbolt fall? For years he had been waiting for that
thunderbolt, which low rumbles announced on all points of the
horizon. And if he had written a book full of candour and hope,
if he had gone in all innocence to Rome, it was to avert that
thunderbolt and its frightful consequences. But all hope of
the kind was dead within him; he felt that the thunderbolt was
inevitable, that nothing henceforth could stay the catastrophe.
And never before had he felt it to be so near, amidst the happy
impudence of some, and the exasperated distress of others. It
was gathering, and it would surely fall over that Paris, all
lust and bravado, which, when evening came, thus stirred up its
furnace.
[Illustration: THE HAND OF FATE
WILLIAM BALFOUR KER
(_Contemporary American illustrator_)
_Copyright by J. A. Mitchell._]
[Illustration:
_Copyright by J. A. Mitchell_
KING CANUTE]
King Hunger
BY LEONID ANDREYEV
(Russian novelist and dramatist of social protest; born 1871. In this
grim symbolical drama is voiced the despair of Russia's intellectuals
after the tragic failure of the Revolution. In the first scene King
Hunger is shown inciting the starving factory-slaves to revolt; in the
second, he presides over a gathering of the outcasts of society, who
meet in a cellar to discuss projects of ferocious vengeance upon the
idlers in the ball-room over their heads, but break up in a drunken
brawl instead. In the present scene, King Hunger turns traitor to
his victims, and presides as a judge passing sentence upon them.
The leisure class attend as spectators in the court-room, the women
in evening gowns and jewels, "the men in dress coats and surtouts,
carefully shaven and dressed at the wig-makers")
KING HUNGER:--Show in the first starveling.
(_The first starveling, a ragged old man with lacerated feet,
is conducted into the court-room. A wire muzzle encases his
face._)
KING HUNGER:--Take the muzzle off the starveling. What's your
offense, Starveling?
OLD MAN (_speaking in a broken voice_):--Theft.
KING HUNGER:--How much did you steal?
OLD MAN:--I stole a five-pound loaf, but it was wrested from
me. I had only time to bite a small piece of it. Forgive me, I
will never again----
KING HUNGER:--How? Have you acquired an inheritance? Or won't
you eat hereafter?
OLD MAN:--No. It was wrested from me. I only chewed off a small
piece----
KING HUNGER:--But how won't you steal? Why haven't you been
working?
OLD MAN:--There's no work.
KING HUNGER:--But where's your brood, Starveling? Why don't
they support you?
OLD MAN:--My children died of hunger.
KING HUNGER:--Why did you not starve to death, as they?
OLD MAN:--I don't know. I had a mind to live.
KING HUNGER:--Of what use is life to you, Starveling?
(_Voices of Spectators._)
--Indeed, how do they live? I don't comprehend it.
--To work.
--To glorify God and be confirmed in the consciousness that
life--
--Well, I don't suppose they exalt Him.
--It were better if he were dead.
--A rather wearisome old fellow. And what style of trousers!
--Listen! Listen!
KING HUNGER (_rising, speaks aloud_):--Now, ladies and
gentlemen, we will feign to meditate. Honorable judges, I beg
you to simulate a meditative air.
(_The judges for a brief period appear in deep thought--they
knit their brows, gaze up at the ceiling, prop up their noses,
sigh and obviously endeavor to think. Venerable silence. Then
with faces profoundly solemn and earnest, silent as before,
the judges rise, and simultaneously they turn around facing
Death. And all together they bow low and lingering, stretching
themselves forward._)
KING HUNGER (_with bent head_):--What is your pleasure?
DEATH (_swiftly rising, wrathfully strikes the table with his
clenched fist and speaks in a grating voice_):--Condemned--in
the name of Satan!
(_Then as quickly he sits down and sinks into a malicious
inflexibility. The judges resume their places._)
KING HUNGER:--Starveling, you're condemned.
OLD MAN:--Have mercy!
KING HUNGER:--Put the muzzle over him. Bring the next
starveling....
(_The next starveling is led into the room. She is a graceful,
but extremely emaciated young woman, with a face pallid and
tragic to view. The black, fine eyebrows join over her nose;
her luxuriant hair is negligently tied in a knot, falling down
her shoulders. She makes no bows nor looks around, is as if
seeing nobody. Her voice is apathetic and dull._)
KING HUNGER:--What's your offense, Starveling?
YOUNG WOMAN:--I killed my child.
(_Spectators._)
--Oh, horrors! This woman is altogether destitute of motherly
feelings.
--What do you expect of them? You astonish me.
--How charming she is. There's something tragical about her.
--Then marry her.
--Crimes of infanticide were not regarded as such in ancient
times, and were looked upon as a natural right of parents. Only
with the introduction of humanism into our customs----
--Oh, please, just a second, professor.
--But science, my child----
KING HUNGER:--Tell us, Starveling, how it happened.
(_With drooping hands and motionless, the woman speaks up dully
and dispassionately._)
YOUNG WOMAN:--One night my baby and I crossed the long bridge
over the river. And since I had long before decided, so then
approaching the middle, where the river is deep and swift, I
said: "Look, baby dear, how the water is a-roaring below." She
said, "I can't reach, mamma, the railing is so high." I said,
"Come, let me lift you, baby dear." And when she was gazing
down into the black deep, I threw her over. That's all.
KING HUNGER:--Did she grip you?
YOUNG WOMAN:--No.
KING HUNGER:--She screamed?
YOUNG WOMAN:--Yes, once.
KING HUNGER:--What was her name?
YOUNG WOMAN:--Baby dear.
KING HUNGER:--No, her name. How was she called?
YOUNG WOMAN:--Baby dear.
KING HUNGER (_covering his face, he speaks in sad, quivering
voice_):--Honorable judges, I beg you to simulate a meditative
air. (_The judges knit their brows, gaze on the ceiling, chew
their lips. Venerable silence. Then they rise and gravely bow
to Death._)
DEATH:--Condemned--in the name of Satan!
KING HUNGER (_rising, speaks aloud, extending his hands to the
woman, as if veiling her in an invisible, black shroud_):--
You're condemned, woman, do you hear? Death awaits you. In
blackest hell you will be tormented and burnt on everlasting,
slakeless fires! Devils will rack your heart with their iron
talons! The most venomous serpents of the infernal abyss will
suck your brain and sting, sting you, and nobody will heed your
agonizing cries, for you'll be silenced. Let eternal night be
over you. Do you hear, Starveling?
YOUNG WOMAN:--Yes.
KING HUNGER:--Muzzle her.
(_The starveling is led away. King Hunger addresses the
spectators in a frank and joyous manner._) Now, ladies and
gentlemen, I propose recess for luncheon. Adjudication is
a fatiguing affair, and we need to invigorate ourselves.
(_Gallantly._) Especially our charming matrons and the young
ladies. Please!
(_Joyful exclamations._)
--To dine! To dine!
--'Tis about time!
--Mamma dear, where are the bonbons?
--Your little mind is only on bonbons!
--Which--is tried? (_Waking up._)
--Dinner is ready, Your Excellency.
--Ah! Why didn't you wake me up before?
(_Everything assumes at once a happy, amiable, homelike
aspect. The judges pull off their wigs, exposing their bald
heads, and gradually they lose themselves in the crowd, shake
hands, and with feigned indifference they look askance,
contemplating the dining. Portly waiters in rich liveries, with
difficulty and bent under the weight of immense dishes, bring
gigantic portions; whole mutton trunks, colossal hams, high,
mountain-like roasts. Before the stout man, on a low stool,
they place a whole roasted pig, which is brought in by three.
Doubtful, he looks at it._)
--Would you assist me, Professor?
--With pleasure, Your Excellency.
--And you, Honorable Judge?
--Although I am not hungry--but with your leave--
--I may, perhaps, be suffered to--(_the Abbot modestly speaks,
his mouth watering._)
(_The four seat themselves about the pig and silently they
carve it greedily with their knives. Occasionally the eyes of
the Professor and of the Abbot meet, and with swollen cheeks,
powerless to chew, they are smitten with reciprocal hatred and
contempt. Then choking, they ardently champ on. Everywhere
small groups eating. Death produces a dry cheese sandwich
from his pocket and eats in solitude. A heavy conversation of
full-crammed mouths. Munching._)
London
BY HEINRICH HEINE
(German poet and essayist, one of the most musical and most
unhappy of singers; 1797-1856)
It is in the dusky twilight that Poverty with her mates, Vice
and Crime, glide forth from their lairs. They shun daylight the
more anxiously, the more cruelly their wretchedness contrasts
with the pride of wealth which glitters everywhere; only Hunger
sometimes drives them at noonday from their dens, and then they
stand with silent, speaking eyes, staring beseechingly at the
rich merchant who hurries along, busy and jingling gold, or at
the lazy lord who, like a surfeited god, rides by on his high
horse, casting now and then an aristocratically indifferent
glance at the mob below, as though they were swarming ants, or,
at all events, a mass of baser beings, whose joys and sorrows
have nothing in common with his feelings....
Poor Poverty! how agonizing must thy hunger be where others
swell in scornful superfluity! And when some one casts with
indifferent hand a crust into thy lap, how bitter must the
tears be wherewith thou moistenest it! Thou poisonest thyself
with thine own tears. Well art thou in the right when thou
alliest thyself to Vice and Crime. Outlawed criminals often
bear more humanity in their hearts than those cold, blameless
citizens of virtue, in whose white hearts the power of evil
is quenched; but also the power of good. I have seen women on
whose cheeks red vice was painted, and in whose hearts dwelt
heavenly purity.
London
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
(English poet and painter of strange and terrible visions.
1757-1827)
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow;
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlots curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
A Life for a Life[A]
[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.
BY ROBERT HERRICK
(American novelist, professor in the University of Chicago; born
1868. In this novel a young American, hungering for success and about
to marry the daughter a great captain of industry, is taken by a
strange man, "the bearded Anarch," and shown the horrors of American
industrialism)
And thus this strange pilgrimage, like another descent into
purgatory and even unto hell, continued,--the shabby bearded
Anarch leading his companion from factory, warehouse, and mill
to mine and railroad and shop, teaching him by the sight of his
own eyes what life means to the silent multitude upon whose
bent shoulders the fabric of society rests,--what that "life,
liberty and the pursuit of happiness"--brave aspirations of
the forefathers--has brought to the common man in this land of
destiny and desire.
The wanderer breathed the deadly fumes of smelter and glass
works, saw where men were burned in great converters, or torn
limb from limb upon the whirling teeth of swift machines,--done
to death in this way and that, or maimed and cast useless upon
the rubbish heap of humanity,--waste product of the process.
"For," as his guide repeated, "in this country, where Property
is sacred, nothing is cheaper than human life. For, remember,
the supply of raw labor is inexhaustible."
He recalled the words of a sleek and comfortable man of
business, at the end of the day, with his good dinner
comfortably in his belly and a fat cigar between his lips:
"There's too much sentimentalism in the air. Some religion less
effeminate than Christ's is needed to fit the facts of life.
In the struggle the weak must go under, and it is a crime to
interfere with natural law." The weak must go under! Surely if
that were the law, any religion that would offer an anodyne to
the hopeless were a blessing. But again and again the question
rose unanswered to his lips,--who are the weak? And the sleek
one with his cigar said, "Those who go under!" ...
So they passed on their way through squalid factory towns
reeking with human vice and disease, through the network of
railroad terminals crowded with laden cars rolling forth to
satisfy desires. They loitered in busy city stores, in dim
basement holes where bread and clothes were making, in filthy
slaughter-houses where beasts were slain by beasts....
At sunset of a glowing day the two sat upon an upper ridge of
the hills. All the imperial colors of the firmament dyed the
western heavens among the broken peaks of the mountains. Below
in the lonely valleys were the excoriations of the mines, the
refuse, the smudged stains of the rough surface of the earth.
The guide pointed into the distance where the huge smelter of
Senator Dexter's mine sent a yellow cloud upward.
"Near that is the charred debris where the miners blew up the
old works. Below the brow of yonder hills lies that stockade
where miners, with their women and children, were penned for
weeks like wild animals, guarded by the troops of the nation.
Beyond is the edge of the great desert, into whose waterless
waste others were driven to their death. Of these I was one
that escaped. Men were shot and women raped. But I tell over
old tales known to all. In this place it has been truly a life
for a life according to the primitive text--but more honest
than the cunning and hidden ways of the law. Here the eaten is
face to face, at least, with the eater."
The twilight came down like a curtain, hiding the scars of
man's dominion over the earth. The two sat in silent thought.
This was the apex of their journey together, and the end.
Behind this lofty table-land of the continent began the grim
desert, not yet subdued by man, and beyond came other fertile
valleys and other mountains, and finally another ocean. Thither
had been carried the same civilization, the same spirit of
conquest and greed, and that noble aspiration after "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" bore the same fruit in
the blood of man. Wherever the victorious race had forced its
way, it sowed the seeds of hate and industrial crime. And the
flower must bloom, early or late, upon the lonely cattle ranch,
in the primeval forest, the soft southern grove, or the virgin
valley of the "promised land."
Thus spoke the Anarch.
In the glimmering twilight the fierce eyes of the bearded one
rested upon the wanderer.
"Have you seen enough?"
"Enough! God knows."
"So at last you understand the meaning of it all!"
"Not yet!" And from the depth of his being there flashed the
demand, "Why have you shown me the sore surface of life? What
have you to do with it? And what have I?"
His guide replied, "So you still long for the smooth paths
of prosperity? You would like to shield your eyes from the
disagreeable aspects of a world that is good to you? You would
still have your comfort and your heart's desire? Your ambitious
fancy still turns to the daughter of privilege, dainty and
lovely and sweet to the eyes?"
* * * * *
(The young man returns to the rich woman whom he had meant to
marry.)
He knelt and taking the hem of her garment held it in his hands.
"See!" He crushed the soft fabric in his hand. "Silk with
thread of gold. It is the tears! See!" He touched her girdle
with his hands. "Gold and precious stones. They are the groans!
See!" He put his fingers upon the golden hair. "A wreath of
pure gold! Tears and groans and bloody sweat! You are a tissue
of the lives of others, from feet to the crown upon your
hair.... See!" His hot hands crushed the orchids at her breast.
"Even the flower at your breast is stained with blood.... I see
the tears of others on your robe. I hear their sighs in your
voice. I see defeated desires in the light of your eyes. You
are the Sacrifice of the many--I cannot touch!"
Isabella, or The Pot of Basil
BY JOHN KEATS
(One of the loveliest of English poets, 1795-1821; a chemist's
assistant, who lived unrecognized and died despairing)
With her two brothers this fair lady dwelt,
Enrichèd from ancestral merchandise,
And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torchèd mines and noisy factories,
And many once proud-quiver'd loins did melt
In blood from stinging whip,--with hollow eyes
Many all day in dazzling river stood,
To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.
For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark;
Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp wracks at work, to pinch and peel.
The Sons of Martha
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
(Under this title the English poet has written a striking picture
of the social chasm. He figures the world's toilers as the "Sons of
Martha," who, because their mother "was rude to the Lord, her Guest,"
are condemned forever to unrequited toil. "It is their care in all the
ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock." The poem goes on to
tell of the ignorance and torment in which they live--while the Sons
of Mary, who "have inherited that good part," live in ease upon their
toil.)
"They sit at the Feet--and they hear the Word--they see how
truly the promise runs.
They have cast their burdens upon the Lord, and--the Lord He
lays them on Martha's sons."
On the other hand the sons of Martha have to face reality.
"They do not preach that their God will rouse them an hour
before the nuts work loose,
They do not teach that His pity allows them to leave their work
when they damn-well choose."
The entire poem may be found in the 1918 Collected Edition of Mr.
Kipling's poems.
Reflections Upon Poverty
(_From "The New Grub Street"_)
BY GEORGE GISSING
(Novelist of English middle-class life, 1857-1903. Few have ever
equalled him in the portrayal of the sordid, every-day realities of
poverty. The story of his own tragic life is told in a novel called
"The Private Life of Henry Maitland," by Morley Roberts)
As there was sunshine Amy accompanied her husband for his walk
in the afternoon; it was long since they had been out together.
An open carriage that passed, followed by two young girls on
horseback, gave a familiar direction to Reardon's thoughts.
"If one were as rich as those people. They pass so close to
us; they see us, and we see them; but the distance between
is infinity. They don't belong to the same world as we poor
wretches. They see everything in a different light; they have
powers which would seem supernatural if we were suddenly
endowed with them."
"Of course," assented his companion with a sigh.
"Just fancy, if one got up in the morning with the thought that
no reasonable desire that occurred to one throughout the day
need remain ungratified! And that it would be the same, any day
and every day, to the end of one's life! Look at those houses;
every detail, within and without, luxurious. To have such a
home as that!"
"And they are empty creatures who live there."
"They do _live_, Amy, at all events. Whatever may be their
faculties, they all have free scope. I have often stood staring
at houses like these until I couldn't believe that the people
owning them were mere human beings like myself. The power of
money is so hard to realize, one who has never had it marvels
at the completeness with which it transforms every detail of
life. Compare what we call our home with that of rich people;
it moves one to scornful laughter. I have no sympathy with the
stoical point of view; between wealth and poverty is just the
difference between the whole man and the maimed. If my lower
limbs are paralyzed I may still be able to think, but then
there is no such thing in life as walking. As a poor devil I
may live nobly; but one happens to be made with faculties of
enjoyment, and those have to fall into atrophy. To be sure,
most rich people don't understand their happiness; if they did,
they would move and talk like gods--which indeed they are."
Amy's brow was shadowed. A wise man, in Reardon's position,
would not have chosen this subject to dilate upon.
"The difference," he went on, "between the man with money and
the man without is simply this: the one thinks, 'How shall I
use my life?' and the other, 'How shall I keep myself alive?'
A physiologist ought to be able to discover some curious
distinction between the brain of a person who has never given
a thought to the means of subsistence, and that of one who has
never known a day free from such cares. There must be some
special cerebral development representing the mental anguish
kept up by poverty."
"I should say," put in Amy, "that it affects every function of
the brain. It isn't a special point of suffering, but a misery
that colors every thought."
"True. Can I think of a single object in all the sphere of my
experience without the consciousness that I see it through the
medium of poverty? I have no enjoyment which isn't tainted
by that thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn't
increase. The curse of poverty is to the modern world just what
that of slavery was to the ancient. Rich and destitute stand
to each other as free man and bond. You remember the line of
Homer I have often quoted about the demoralizing effect of
enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way."
"It has had its effect upon me--I know that too well," said
Amy, with bitter frankness.
Reardon glanced at her, and wished to make some reply, but he
could not say what was in his thoughts.
The Veins of Wealth
BY JOHN RUSKIN
(English art critic and university professor, 1819-1900; author
of many works upon social questions, and master of perhaps the
greatest English prose style)
Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that
men of business rarely know the meaning of the word "rich." At
least if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for
the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite
"poor" as positively as the word "north" implies its opposite
"south." Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were
absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific
precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power
like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities
or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in
your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your
neighbor's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no
use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately
upon the need or desire he has for it,--and the art of making
yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense,
is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your
neighbor poor.
Lynggaard & Co.
BY HJALMAR BERGSTRÖM
(Contemporary Danish dramatist, born 1868. The present play deals with
the modern industrial struggle. The wife of a great manufacturer has
become the victim of melancholia after a strike)
MRS. LYNGGAARD (_absorbed in her memories_):--I shall never
forget the day when the people went back to work. I was
watching them from my bedroom window. For four months they had
been starving--starving, do you understand?--they and theirs.
Then they turned up again one winter morning before daylight,
and there they stood and shivered in the yards. They had no
over-clothes, of course, and they were shaking both from cold
and from weakness. And then their faces were all covered with
beards, so that one couldn't recognize them. There they stood
and waited a long time, a very long time.... At last Heymann
[the manager] appeared in the doorway and read something from a
paper. It was the conditions of surrender, I suppose. None of
them looked up. Then, as they were about to walk in and begin
working, Heymann stopped them by holding up his hand, and he
said something I couldn't hear. But after a little while I saw
Olsen [the strike-leader] standing all by himself in a cleared
place. (_A shiver runs through her at the recollection._) Once
I saw a picture of an execution in a prison yard.... It lasted
only a few seconds. Then Olsen said a few words to his comrades
and walked away, looking white as a ghost. The crowd opened up
to let him pass through. Then the rest stood there for a while
looking so strangely depressed and not knowing what to do. And
at last they went in, one by one, bent and broken.
MIKKELSEN:--Olsen wasn't allowed to go back to work?
MRS. LYNGGAARD:--It was he who had been their leader, and it
was his fault that they had held out as long as they did. And
then Olsen began to look for work elsewhere, but none of the
other companies would have anything to do with him.
MIKKELSEN (_shrugging his shoulders_):--War is war.
MRS. LYNGGAARD:--A few months later, as I was taking a walk,
I was stopped on the street by Olsen's wife. I tell you, the
way she looked made my heart shrink within me. Her husband
was completely broken down, she told me. And on top of it all
he had taken to drink. Everything she and the children could
scrape together, he spent on whiskey. She herself was so far
gone with her eighth child that she would soon have to quit
work.... Then I went home to my husband and begged and prayed
him to take Olsen back and make a man of him again. It was the
first time during our marriage that I saw him beside himself
with rage. There came into his eyes such an evil expression
that I wish I had never seen it, for I have never since been
able to forget it entirely. But, of course, I guessed who was
back of it. (_With emphasis._) Then I did the most humiliating
thing I have ever done: I went in secret to Heymann and pleaded
for that discharged workman.
MIKKELSEN:--Well, and Heymann?
MRS. LYNGGAARD:--Since that moment I hate Heymann. There I was,
humbling myself before him. And he measured me with cold eyes
and said: "If I am to be in charge of this plant, madam, I must
ask once for all and absolutely, that no outsiders interfere
with the running of it."
MIKKELSEN:--I don't see that he could have done anything else.
MRS. LYNGGAARD:--What I cannot forgive myself is that I let
myself be imposed upon by that man. I behaved like a coward. At
that moment I should have gone to my husband and said: "This is
what has happened--now you must choose between Heymann and me!"
But I was so cowardly, that I didn't even tell my husband what
I had done.
MIKKELSEN:--Nor was it proper for you to go behind your
husband's back like that.
MRS. LYNGGAARD (_with an expression of abject horror in her
fixed gaze_):--A little afterwards this thing happened. It was
one of the first warm summer days, and I was walking in the
garden with Jacob. At that time a splendid old chestnut tree
was growing in one corner. And there, in the midst of green
leaves, and singing birds, Olsen was hanging, cold and dead.
And the flies were crawling in and out of his face.... (_She
trembles visibly._)
MIKKELSEN:--Yes, life is cruel.
MRS. LYNGGAARD:--And there I perceived for the first time how
utterly poor a human being may become. Anything so pitiful
and miserable I had never seen before. There was no sign of
underclothing between his trousers and the vest. And I don't
know why, but it seemed almost as if this was what hurt me
most--much more than that he had hanged himself.... And since
that day I haven't known a single hour of happiness.
My Religion
BY LEO TOLSTOY
(From an essay in which the Russian novelist and reformer,
1828-1910, has set forth the creed by which he lived)
What is the law of nature? Is it to know that my security
and that of my family, all my amusements and pleasures, are
purchased at the expense of misery, deprivation, and suffering
to thousands of human beings--by the terror of the gallows; by
the misfortune of thousands stifling within prison walls; by
the fears inspired by millions of soldiers and guardians of
civilization, torn from their homes and besotted by discipline,
to protect our pleasures with loaded revolvers against the
possible interference of the famishing! Is it to purchase every
fragment of bread that I put in my mouth and the mouths of my
children by the numberless privations that are necessary to
procure my abundance? Or is it to be certain that my piece of
bread only belongs to me when I know that everyone else has a
share, and that no one starves while I eat?
The Octopus[A]
[A] By permission of Doubleday, Page & Co.
BY FRANK NORRIS
(The young American novelist, 1870-1902, planned this as the first
of a trilogy of novels, the "Epic of the Wheat." The second volume,
"The Pit," was written, but his death interrupted the third. The
present story narrates the long struggle between the farmers of the
San Joaquin valley and the railroad "octopus." The farmers have been
beaten, and several of them killed while resisting eviction from their
homes. The hero is at a dinner party in San Francisco, at the same
time that the widow and child of one of the victims are wandering the
streets outside)
All around the table conversations were going forward gayly.
The good wines had broken up the slight restraint of the
early part of the evening and a spirit of good humor and good
fellowship prevailed. Young Lambery and Mr. Gerard were deep
in reminiscences of certain mutual duck-shooting expeditions.
Mrs. Gerard and Mrs. Cedarquist discussed a novel--a strange
mingling of psychology, degeneracy, and analysis of erotic
conditions--which had just been translated from the Italian.
Stephen Lambert and Beatrice disputed over the merits of a
Scotch collie just given to the young lady. The scene was gay,
the electric bulbs sparkled, the wine flashing back the light.
The entire table was a vague glow of white napery, delicate
china, and glass as brilliant as crystal. Behind the guests the
serving-men came and went, filling the glasses continually,
changing the covers, serving the entrées, managing the dinner
without interruption, confusion, or the slightest unnecessary
noise.
But Presley could find no enjoyment in the occasion. From that
picture of feasting, that scene of luxury, that atmosphere of
decorous, well-bred refinement, his thoughts went back to Los
Muertos and Quien Sabe and the irrigating ditch at Hooven's.
He saw them fall, one by one, Harran, Annixter, Osterman,
Broderson, Hooven. The clink of the wine glasses was drowned
in the explosion of revolvers. The Railroad might indeed be a
force only, which no man could control and for which no man
was responsible, but his friends had been killed, but years
of extortion and oppression had wrung money from all the San
Joaquin, money that had made possible this very scene in which
he found himself. Because Magnus had been beggared, Gerard had
become Railroad King; because the farmers of the valley were
poor, these men were rich.
The fancy grew big in his mind, distorted, caricatured,
terrible. Because the farmers had been killed at the irrigating
ditch, these others, Gerard and his family, fed full. They
fattened on the blood of the People, on the blood of the men
who had been killed at the ditch. It was a half-ludicrous,
half-horrible "dog eat dog," an unspeakable cannibalism.
Harran, Annixter, and Hooven were being devoured there under
his eyes. These dainty women, his cousin Beatrice and little
Miss Gerard, frail, delicate; all these fine ladies with their
small fingers and slender necks, suddenly were transfigured in
his tortured mind into harpies tearing human flesh. His head
swam with the horror of it, the terror of it. Yes, the People
_would_ turn some day, and, turning, rend those who now preyed
upon them. It would be "dog eat dog" again, with positions
reversed, and he saw for an instant of time that splendid house
sacked to its foundations, the tables overturned, the pictures
torn, the hangings blazing, and Liberty, the red-handed Man
in the Street, grimed with powder smoke, foul with the gutter,
rush yelling, torch in hand, through every door.
* * * * *
At ten o'clock Mrs. Hooven fell.
Luckily she was leading Hilda by the hand at the time and the
little girl was not hurt. In vain had Mrs. Hooven, hour after
hour, walked the streets. After a while she no longer made any
attempt to beg; nobody was stirring, nor did she even try to
hunt for food with the stray dogs and cats. She had made up her
mind to return to the park in order to sit upon the benches
there, but she had mistaken the direction, and, following up
Sacramento Street, had come out at length, not upon the park,
but upon a great vacant lot at the very top of the Clay Street
hill. The ground was unfenced and rose above her to form the
cap of the hill, all overgrown with bushes and a few stunted
live-oaks. It was in trying to cross this piece of ground that
she fell....
"You going to sleep, mammy?" inquired Hilda, touching her face.
Mrs. Hooven roused herself a little.
"Hey? Vat you say? Asleep? Yais, I guess I wass asleep."
Her voice trailed unintelligibly to silence again. She was not,
however, asleep. Her eyes were open. A grateful numbness had
begun to creep over her, a pleasing semi-insensibility. She no
longer felt the pain and cramps of her stomach, even the hunger
was ceasing to bite.
* * * * *
"These stuffed artichokes are delicious, Mrs. Gerard, murmured
young Lambert, wiping his lips with a corner of his napkin.
"Pardon me for mentioning it, but your dinner must be my
excuse."
"And this asparagus--since Mr. Lambert has set the bad
example," observed Mrs. Cedarquist, "so delicate, such an
exquisite flavor. How _do_ you manage?"
"We get all our asparagus from the southern part of the State,
from one particular ranch," explained Mrs. Gerard. "We order it
by wire and get it only twenty hours after cutting. My husband
sees to it that it is put on a special train. It stops at this
ranch just to take on our asparagus. Extravagant, isn't it, but
I simply can not eat asparagus that has been cut more than a
day."
"Nor I," exclaimed Julian Lambert, who posed as an epicure. "I
can tell to an hour just how long asparagus has been picked."
"Fancy eating ordinary market asparagus," said Mrs. Gerard,
"that has been fingered by Heaven knows how many hands."
* * * * *
"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda, trying to push open Mrs.
Hooven's eyelids, at last closed. "Mammy, don't. You're just
trying to frighten me."
Feebly Hilda shook her by the shoulder. At last Mrs. Hooven's
lips stirred. Putting her head down, Hilda distinguished the
whispered words:
"I'm sick. Go to schleep.... Sick.... Noddings to eat."
* * * * *
The dessert was a wonderful preparation of alternate layers of
biscuit, glacés, ice cream, and candied chestnuts.
"Delicious, is it not?" observed Julian Lambert, partly
to himself, partly to Miss Cedarquist. "This _Moscovite
fouetté_--upon my word, I have never tasted its equal."
"And you should know, shouldn't you?" returned the young lady.
* * * * *
"Mammy, mammy, wake up," cried Hilda. "Don't sleep so. I'm
frightened."
Repeatedly she shook her; repeatedly she tried to raise the
inert eyelids with the point of her finger. But her mother no
longer stirred. The gaunt, lean body, with its bony face and
sunken eye-sockets, lay back, prone upon the ground, the feet
upturned and showing the ragged, worn soles of the shoes, the
forehead and gray hair beaded with fog, the poor, faded bonnet
awry, the poor, faded dress soiled and torn.
Hilda drew close to her mother, kissing her face, twining
her arms around her neck. For a long time she lay that way,
alternately sobbing and sleeping. Then, after a long time,
there was a stir. She woke from a doze to find a police officer
and two or three other men bending over her. Some one carried a
lantern. Terrified, smitten dumb, she was unable to answer the
questions put to her. Then a woman, evidently the mistress of
the house on the top of the hill, arrived and took Hilda in her
arms and cried over her.
"I'll take the little girl," she said to the police officer.
"But the mother, can you save her? Is she too far gone?"
"I've sent for a doctor," replied the other.
* * * * *
Just before the ladies left the table, young Lambert raised
his glass of Madeira. Turning towards the wife of the Railroad
King, he said:
"My best compliments for a delightful dinner."
The doctor, who had been bending over Mrs. Hooven, rose.
"It's no use," he said; "she has been dead some
time--exhaustion from starvation."
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to
steal bread.
Progress and Poverty
BY HENRY GEORGE
(One of the most widely-read treatises upon economics ever published,
this book was the fountain head of the single-tax movement. The writer
was a California journalist, 1839-1897, who devoted all his life to
the propaganda of economic justice)
Unpleasant as it may be to admit it, it is at last becoming
evident that the enormous increase in productive power which
has marked the present century and is still going on with
accelerating ratio, has no tendency to extirpate poverty or
to lighten the burdens of those compelled to toil. It simply
widens the gulf between Dives and Lazarus, and makes the
struggle for existence more intense. The march of invention
has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the
boldest imagination could not have dreamed. But in factories
where labor-saving machinery has reached its most wonderful
development, little children are at work; wherever the new
forces are anything like fully utilized, large classes
are maintained by charity or live on the verge of recourse
to it; amid the greatest accumulations of wealth, men die
of starvation, and puny infants suckle dry breasts; while
everywhere the greed of gain, the worship of wealth, shows the
force of the fear of want. The promised land flies before us
like the mirage. The fruits of the tree of knowledge turn, as
we grasp them, to apples of Sodom that crumble at the touch....
This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma
of our times. It is the central fact from which spring
industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex
the world, and with which statesmanship and philanthropy
and education grapple in vain. From it come the clouds that
overhang the future of the most progressive and self-reliant
nations. It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to
our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed.
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress
brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase
luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of
Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot
be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from
its foundations, and every new story but hastens the final
catastrophe. To educate men who must be condemned to poverty,
is but to make them restive; to base on a state of most glaring
social inequality political institutions under which men are
theoretically equal, is to stand a pyramid on its apex.