_Out of the Depths_
The protest of the soul of man confronted with injustice and
groping for a remedy.
The People's Anthem
BY EBENEZER ELLIOTT
(One of the leaders of the Chartist movement in England,
1781-1849; known as the "Poet of the People," and by his
enemies as the "Corn-law Rhymer")
When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy! when?
Not kings and lords, but nations!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they!
Let them not pass, like weeds, away!
Their heritage a sunless day!
God save the people!
Shall crime bring crime for ever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, O Father!
That man shall toil for wrong?
"No!" say thy mountains; "No!" thy skies;
"Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
And songs be heard instead of sighs."
God save the people!
When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy! when?
The people, Lord! the people!
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people! thine they are;
Thy children, as thy angels fair;
Save them from bondage and despair!
God save the people!
A Hymn
BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON
(English essayist and poet, born 1874)
O God of earth and altar
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not Thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honor and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.
Tie in a living tether
The priest and prince and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to Thee.
The World's Way
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
(One of the series of sonnets in which the English dramatist,
1564-1616, voiced his inmost soul)
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry--
As, to behold desert a beggar born,
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced,
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,
And strength by limping sway disablèd,
And art made tongue-tied by authority,
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,
And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
And captive Good attending captain Ill:--
Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,
Save that, to die, I leave my Love alone.
Written in London, September, 1802
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
(One of the great sonnets of England's poet of nature;
1770-1850. Poet laureate in 1843)
O friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest
To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook,
Or groom!--We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest;
The wealthiest man among us is the best;
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore;
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.
The Preface to "Les Miserables"
BY VICTOR HUGO
(The poet and humanitarian of France, 1802-1885, has in this
passage set forth the purpose of one of the half-dozen greatest
novels of the world)
So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom,
a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization,
artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny
that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three
problems of the age--the degradation of man by poverty, the
ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by
physical and spiritual night--are not solved; so long as, in
certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other
words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as
ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be
useless.
Bound
BY MAY BEALS
(Contemporary American writer and lecturer)
Sometimes I feel the tide of life in me
Flood upward, high and higher, till I stand
Tiptoe, aflame with energy, a god,
Young, virile, glorying in my youth and power.
But not for long; the grip of poverty
Seizes me, sets my daily task; the eyes
Of those I love, looking to me for bread
Pierce me like eagles' beaks through very love.
I am Prometheus bound; these cares and fears
Tear at my vitals, leave me broken, spent.
And unavailingly 'tis spent, my life,
My wondrous life, so pregnant with rich powers.
That stuff in me from which heroic deeds,
Great thoughts and noble poems might be made
Is wrenched from me, is coined in wealth, and spent
By others; save that I and mine receive
A mere existence, bare of hope and joy,
Bare even of comfort.
Comrades, stretched and bound
In agony on labor's rock, we live--
And die--to fatten vultures!
To a Foil'd European Revolutionaire
BY WALT WHITMAN
(America's most original and creative poet, 1819-1892; printer and
journalist, during the war an army nurse, and later a government
clerk, discharged for publishing what his superiors considered an
"indecent" book)
Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also;
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel, the world over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life, to be lost at any moment....
When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go,
nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go--it is the last.
When there are no more memories of martyrs and heroes,
And when all life, and all the souls of men and women are
discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty, or the idea of liberty, be discharged
from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.
Chants Communal
BY HORACE TRAUBEL
(American poet and editor, born 1858; disciple and biographer
of Walt Whitman)
You will long resist me. You will deceive yourself with initial
victories. You will find me weak. You will count me only one
against a million. You will see the world seem to go on just
as it is. One day confirming another. Presidents succeeding
Presidents in unvarying mediocrity. Millionaires dead reborn
in millionaire children. Starvation handing starvation on.
The people innocently played against the people. Demand and
supply cohabited for the production of a blind progeny. The
landlord suborning the land. The moneylord suborning money. The
storelord suborning production. All will seem to go on just as
it is. And you who resist me will be fooled. You will say the
universe is against me. You will say I am cursed. Or you will
in your tenderer moments ask: What's the use? But all this
time I will be keeping on. Doing nothing unusual. Only keeping
on. Asleep or awake, keeping on. Compelled to say the say of
justice all by myself. Willing to wait until you are shaken up
and convinced. Until you will say it to yourself. And say it to
yourself you will.
There are things ahead that will stir you out of your
indifference or lethargy or doubt. Give you an immortal
awakening. So you will never sleep again. I do not know just
what it will be. But something. And you will know it when it
comes. And then you will understand why I am calm. Why I am
not worried by delay. Why I am not defeated by postponements.
Why all the big things that seem to be against me do not seem
to worry the one little thing that is for me. Why my faith
maintains itself against your property. Why my soul maintains
itself against injustice. Why I am willing to say words that
are thought personally unkind for the sake of a result that is
universally sweet. Why I look in your face and see you long
before you are able to see yourself. Why you with all your
fortified rights doubt and despair. Why I without any right
at all am cheerful and confident. Why you tremble when one
little man with one little voice asks you a question. Why I
do not tremble with all the states and churches and political
economies at my heels.
These Populations
(_From "Towards Democracy"_)
BY EDWARD CARPENTER
(English poet and philosopher, born 1844; disciple of Walt
Whitman)
These populations--
So puny, white-faced, machine-made,
Turned out by factories, out of offices, out of drawing-rooms,
by thousands all alike--
Huddled, stitched up, in clothes, fearing a chill, a drop
of rain, looking timidly at the sea and sky as at strange
monsters, or running back so quick to their suburban runs and
burrows,
Dapper, libidinous, cute, with washed-out small eyes--
What are these?
Are they men and women?
Each denying himself, hiding himself?
Are they men and women?
So timorous, like hares--a breath of propriety or custom, a
draught of wind, the mere threat of pain or of danger?
* * * * *
O for a breath of the sea and the great mountains!
A bronzed hardy live man walking his way through it all;
Thousands of men companioning the waves and the storms,
splendid in health, naked-breasted, catching the lion with
their hands;
A thousand women swift-footed and free--owners of themselves,
forgetful of themselves; in all their actions--full of joy and
laughter and action;
Garbed not so differently from the men, joining with them in
their games and sports, sharing also their labors;
Free to hold their own, to grant or withhold their love, the
same as the men;
Strong, well-equipped in muscle and skill, clear of finesse and
affectation--
(The men, too, clear of much brutality and conceit)--
Comrades together, equal in intelligence and adventure,
Trusting without concealment, loving without shame but with
discrimination and continence towards a perfect passion.
* * * * *
O for a breath of the sea!
The necessity and directness of the great elements themselves!
Swimming the rivers, braving the sun, the cold, taming the
animals and the earth, conquering the air with wings, and each
other with love--
The true, the human society!
The Ship of Humanity
(_From "Gloucester Moors"_)
BY WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY
(American poet and dramatist, 1869-1910)
God, dear God! Does she know her port,
Though she goes so far about?
Or blind astray, does she make her sport
To brazen and chance it out?
I watched when her captains passed:
She were better captainless.
Men in the cabin, before the mast,
But some were reckless and some aghast,
And some sat gorged at mess.
By her battened hatch I leaned and caught
Sounds from the noisome hold,--
Cursing and sighing of souls distraught
And cries too sad to be told.
Then I strove to go down and see;
But they said, "Thou art not of us!"
I turned to those on the deck with me
And cried, "Give help!" But they said, "Let be:
Our ship sails faster thus."
Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue,
Blue is the quaker-maid,
The alder-clump where the brook comes through
Breeds cresses in its shade.
To be out of the moiling street,
With its swelter and its sin!
Who has given to me this sweet,
And given my brother dust to eat?
And when will his wage come in?
Freedom
BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
(American scholar and poet, 1819-1891, author of many impassioned
poems of human freedom. An ardent anti-slavery advocate, it was said
during the Civil War that his poetry was worth an army corps to the
Union)
Men! whose boast it is that ye
Come of fathers brave and free,
If there breathe on earth a slave,
Are ye truly free and brave?
If ye do not feel the chain
When it works a brother's pain,
Are ye not base slaves indeed,
Slaves unworthy to be freed?
Is true Freedom but to break
Fetters for our own dear sake,
And, with leathern hearts, forget
That we owe mankind a debt?
No! True Freedom is to share
All the chains our brothers wear,
And, with heart and hand, to be
Earnest to make others free!
They are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think:
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
BY THOMAS GRAY
(English poet and scholar, 1716-1771; Cambridge professor. It is said
that Major Wolfe, while sitting in a row-boat on his way to the night
attack upon Quebec, remarked that he would rather have been the author
of this poem than the taker of the city)
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth, e'er gave
Await alike th' inevitable hour:--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave....
Can storied urn, or animated bust,
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre;
But knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind;
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
The Land Question
BY CARDINAL MANNING
(English prelate of the Catholic Church, 1808-1892)
The land question means hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to
quit, labor spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon, the
breaking up of homes; the misery, sickness, deaths of parents,
children, wives; the despair and wildness which springs up in
the hearts of the poor, when legal force, like a sharp harrow,
goes over the most sensitive and vital rights of mankind. All
this is contained in the land question.
The Lady Poverty
BY JACOB FISHER
(Contemporary American poet)
I met her on the Umbrian Hills,
Her hair unbound, her feet unshod;
As one whom secret glory fills
She walked alone--with God.
I met her in the city street;
Oh, changed her aspect then!
With heavy eyes and weary feet
She walked alone--with men.
Preface to "Major Barbara"
BY G. BERNARD SHAW
(Irish dramatist and critic, born 1856; recognized as one of
the world's most brilliant advocates of Socialism)
The thoughtless wickedness with which we scatter sentences of
imprisonment, torture in the solitary cell and on the plank
bed, and flogging, on moral invalids and energetic rebels, is
as nothing compared to the stupid levity with which we tolerate
poverty as if it were either a wholesome tonic for lazy people
or else a virtue to be embraced as St. Francis embraced it.
If a man is indolent, let him be poor. If he is drunken, let
him be poor. If he is not a gentleman, let him be poor. If he
is addicted to the fine arts or to pure science instead of to
trade and finance, let him be poor. If he chooses to spend his
urban eighteen shillings a week or his agricultural thirteen
shillings a week on his beer and his family instead of saving
it up for his old age, let him be poor. Let nothing be done
for "the undeserving": let him be poor. Serves him right!
Also--somewhat inconsistently--blessed are the poor!
Now what does this Let Him Be Poor mean? It means let him be
weak. Let him be ignorant. Let him become a nucleus of disease.
Let him be a standing exhibition and example of ugliness and
dirt. Let him have rickety children. Let him be cheap and let
him drag his fellows down to his price by selling himself to do
their work. Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous
congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect our young men with
the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him by turning
the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty,
hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of
oppression and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still
less deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not
treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth. This being
so, is it really wise to let him be poor? Would he not do ten
times less harm as a prosperous burglar, incendiary, ravisher,
or murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's comparatively
negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were to
abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that
poverty is the one thing we will not tolerate--that every adult
with less than, say, £365 a year, shall be painlessly but
inexorably killed, and every hungry half naked child forcibly
fattened and clothed, would not that be an enormous improvement
on our existing system, which has already destroyed so many
civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours in the same way?
The Jungle
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
(See pages 43, 143)
Now the dreadful winter was come upon them. In the forests,
all summer long, the branches of the trees do battle for
light, and some of them lose and die; and then come the raging
blasts, and the storms of snow and hail, and strew the ground
with these weaker branches. Just so it was in Packingtown;
the whole district braced itself for the struggle that was an
agony, and those whose time was come died off in hordes. All
the year round they had been serving as cogs in the great
packing-machine; and now was the time for the renovating of
it, and the replacing of damaged parts. There came pneumonia
and grippe, stalking among them, seeking for weakened
constitutions; there was the annual harvest of those whom
tuberculosis had been dragging down. There came cruel cold, and
biting winds, and blizzards of snow, all testing relentlessly
for failing muscles and impoverished blood. Sooner or later
came the day when the unfit one did not report for work;
and then, with no time lost in waiting, and no inquiries or
regrets, there was a chance for a new hand....
Home was not a very attractive place--at least not this winter.
They had only been able to buy one stove, and this was a small
one, and proved not big enough to warm even the kitchen in the
bitterest weather. This made it hard for Teta Elzbieta all
day, and for the children when they could not get to school.
At night they would sit huddled around this stove, while they
ate their supper off their laps; and then Jurgis and Jonas
would smoke a pipe, after which they would all crawl into their
beds to get warm, after putting out the fire to save the coal.
Then they would have some frightful experiences with the cold.
They would sleep with all their clothes on, including their
overcoats, and put over them all the bedding and spare clothing
they owned; the children would sleep all crowded into one bed,
and yet even so they could not keep warm. The outside ones
would be shivering and sobbing, crawling over the others and
trying to get down into the center, and causing a fight. This
old house with the leaky weather-boards was a very different
thing from their cabins at home, with great thick walls
plastered inside and outside with mud; and the cold which
came upon them was a living thing, a demon-presence in the
room. They would waken in the midnight hours, when everything
was black; perhaps they would hear it yelling outside, or
perhaps there would be deathlike stillness--and that would be
worse yet. They could feel the cold as it crept in through
the cracks, reaching out for them with its icy, death-dealing
fingers; and they would crouch and cower, and try to hide from
it, all in vain. It would come, and it would come; a grisly
thing, a spectre born in the black caverns of terror; a power
primeval, cosmic, shadowing the tortures of the lost souls
flung out to chaos and destruction. It was cruel, iron-hard;
and hour after hour they would cringe in its grasp, alone,
alone. There would be no one to hear them if they cried out;
there would be no help, no mercy. And so on until morning--when
they would go out to another day of toil, a little weaker, a
little nearer to the time when it would be their turn to be
shaken from the tree.
The Sad Sight of the Hungry
BY LI HUNG CHANG
(A poem by the Chinese statesman, 1823-1901; known as the
"Bismarck of Asia," and said to have been the richest man in
the world)
'Twould please me, gods, if you would spare
Mine eyes from all this hungry stare
That fills the face and eyes of men
Who search for food o'er hill and glen.
Their eyes are orbs of dullest fire,
As if the flame would mount up higher;
But in the darkness of their glow
We know the fuel's burning low.
Such looks, O gods, are not from thee!
No, they're the stares of misery!
They speak of hunger's frightful hold
On lips a-dry and stomachs cold.
"Bread, bread," they cry, these weary men,
With wives and children from the glen!
O, they would toil the live-long day
But for a meal, their lives to stay.
But where is it in all the land?
Unless the gods with gen'rous hand
Send sweetsome rice and strength'ning corn
To these vast crowds to hunger born!
The Right to be Lazy
BY PAUL LAFARGUE
(A well-known Socialist writer of France. He and his wife,
finding themselves helpless from old age and penury, committed
suicide together)
Does any one believe that, because the toilers of the time of
the mediæval guilds worked five days out of seven in a week,
they lived upon air and water only, as the deluding political
economists tell us? Go to! They had leisure to taste of earthly
pleasure, to cherish love, to make and to keep open house in
honor of the great God, _Leisure_. In those days, that morose,
hypocritically Protestant England was called "Merrie England."
Rabelais, Quevedo, Cervantes, the unknown authors of the
spicy novels of those days, make our mouths water with their
descriptions of those enormous feasts, at which the peoples
of that time regaled themselves, and towards which "nothing
was spared." Jordaens and the Dutch school of painters have
portrayed them for us, in their pictures of jovial life. Noble,
giant stomachs, what has become of you? Exalted spirits, ye
who comprehended the whole of human thought, whither are ye
gone? We are thoroughly degenerated and dwarfed. Tubercular
cows, potatoes, wine made with fuchsine, beer from saffron, and
Prussian whiskey in wise conjunction with compulsory labor have
weakened our bodies and dulled our intellects. And at the same
time that mankind ties up its stomach, and the productivity
of the machine goes on increasing day by day, the political
economists wish to preach to us Malthusian doctrine, the
religion of abstinence and the dogma of work!
The First Machine
BY ANTIPAROS
(Greek, First Century, A. D. The poet celebrates the invention
of the water-mill for grinding corn)
The goddess has commanded the work of the girls to be done by
the Nymphs; and now these skip lightly over the wheels, so
that the shaken axles revolve with the spokes, and pull around
the load of the revolving stones. Let us live the life of our
fathers, and let us rest from work and enjoy the gifts that the
goddess has sent us!
BY JOHN STUART MILL
(English philosopher, 1806-1873)
Hitherto, it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions
yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
The Man Under the Stone
(_From "The Man with the Hoe and other Poems"_)
BY EDWIN MARKHAM
(See page 27)
When I see a workingman with mouths to feed,
Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn,
And coming home, night after night, thro' the dusk,
Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal,
I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep.
He strains it onward inch by stubborn inch,
Crouched always in the shadow of the rock....
See where he crouches, twisted, cramped, misshapen!
He lifts for their life;
The veins knot and darken--
Blood surges into his face....
Now he loses--now he wins--
Now he loses--loses--(God of my soul!)
He digs his feet into the earth--
There's a movement of terrified effort....
It stirs--it moves!
Will the huge stone break his hold
And crush him as it plunges to the Gulf?
The silent struggle goes on and on,
Like two contending in a dream.
BY BOETHIUS
(Roman philosopher, 470-524)
Though the goddess of riches should bestow as much as the sand
rolled by the wind-tossed sea, or as many as the stars that
shine, the human race will not cease to wail.
[Illustration: COLD
ROGER BLOCHE (_French sculptor; from the Luxembourg Museum_)]
[Illustration: THE PEOPLE MOURN
JULES PIERRE VAN BIESBROECK
(_Sculptor of the Belgian Socialist and co-operative movements;
born 1873_)]
The Wolf at the Door
BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
(America's most brilliant woman poet and critic; born 1860)
There's a haunting horror near us
That nothing drives away;
Fierce lamping eyes at nightfall,
A crouching shade by day;
There's a whining at the threshold,
There's a scratching at the floor.
To work! To work! In Heaven's name!
The wolf is at the door!
The day was long, the night was short,
The bed was hard and cold;
Still weary are the little ones,
Still weary are the old.
We are weary in our cradles
From our mother's toil untold;
We are born to hoarded weariness
As some to hoarded gold.
We will not rise! We will not work!
Nothing the day can give
Is half so sweet as an hour of sleep;
Better to sleep than live!
What power can stir these heavy limbs?
What hope these dull hearts swell?
What fear more cold, what pain more sharp
Than the life we know so well?...
The slow, relentless, padding step
That never goes astray--
The rustle in the underbrush--
The shadow in the way--
The straining flight--the long pursuit--
The steady gain behind--
Death-wearied man and tireless brute,
And the struggle wild and blind!
There's a hot breath at the keyhole
And a tearing as of teeth!
Well do I know the bloodshot eyes
And the dripping jaws beneath!
There's a whining at the threshold--
There's a scratching at the floor--
To work! To work! In Heaven's name!
The wolf is at the door!
BY ROBERT HERRICK
(Old English lyric poet, 1591-1674)
To mortal man great loads allotted be;
But of all packs, no pack like poverty.
Each Against All
BY CHARLES FOURIER
(One of the early French Utopian writers, 1772-1837; author of
a theory of social co-operation which is still known by his
name)
The present social order is a ridiculous mechanism, in which
portions of the whole are in conflict and acting against the
whole. We see each class in society desire, from interest,
the misfortune of the other classes, placing in every way
individual interest in opposition to public good. The lawyer
wishes litigations and suits, particularly among the rich;
the physician desires sickness. (The latter would be ruined
if everybody died without disease, as would the former if
all quarrels were settled by arbitration.) The soldier wants
a war, which will carry off half his comrades and secure
him promotion; the undertaker wants burials; monopolists
and forestallers want famine, to double or treble the price
of grain; the architect, the carpenter, the mason, want
conflagrations, that will burn down a hundred houses to give
activity to their branches of business.
BY MATTHEW ARNOLD
(English essayist and poet, 1822-1888)
Our inequality materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our
middle class, brutalizes our lower class.
Fomá Gordyéeff
BY MAXIM GORKY
(A novel in which the Russian has portrayed the spiritual
agonies of his race. In this scene a poor school-teacher voices
his despair)
Yozhov drank his tea at one draught, thrust the glass on the
saucer, placed his feet on the edge of the chair, and clasping
his knees in his hands, rested his chin upon them. In this
pose, small sized and flexible as rubber, he began:
"The student Sachkov, my former teacher, who is now a doctor
of medicine, a whist player and a mean fellow all around, used
to tell me whenever I knew my lesson well: 'You're a fine
fellow, Kolya! You are an able boy. We proletarians, plain and
poor people, coming from the backyard of life, we must study
and study, in order to come to the front, ahead of everybody.
Russia is in need of wise and honest people. Try to be such,
and you will be master of your fate and a useful member of
society. On us commoners rest the best hopes of the country.
We are destined to bring into it light, truth,' and so on. I
believed him, the brute. And since then about twenty years
have elapsed. We proletarians have grown up, but have neither
appropriated any wisdom nor brought light into life. As before,
Russia is suffering from its chronic disease--a superabundance
of rascals; while we, the proletarians, take pleasure in
filling their dense throngs."
Yozhov's face wrinkled into a bitter grimace, and he began to
laugh noiselessly, with his lips only. "I, and many others
with me, we have robbed ourselves for the sake of saving up
something for life. Desiring to make myself a valuable man,
I have underrated my individuality in every way possible. In
order to study and not die of starvation, I have for six years
in succession taught blockheads how to read and write, and had
to bear a mass of abominations at the hands of various papas
and mammas, who humiliated me without any constraint. Earning
my bread and tea, I could not, I had not the time to earn my
shoes, and I had to turn to charitable institutions with humble
petitions for loans on the strength of my poverty. If the
philanthropists could only reckon up how much of the spirit
they kill in man while supporting the life of his body! If
they only knew that each rouble they give for bread contains
ninety-nine copecks worth of poison for the soul! If they could
only burst from excess of their kindness and pride, which they
draw from their holy activity! There is no one on earth more
disgusting and repulsive than he who gives alms. Even as there
is no one so miserable as he who accepts them."
The Sight of Inequality
(_From "The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe"_)
BY DANIEL DEFOE
(English novelist and pamphleteer, 1661-1731; many times
imprisoned for satires upon the authorities)
I saw the world round me, one part laboring for bread, and
the other part squandering in vile excess or empty pleasures,
equally miserable, because the end they proposed still fled
from them; for the man of pleasure every day surfeited of his
vice, and heaped up work for sorrow and repentance; and the
man of labor spent his strength in daily struggling for bread
to maintain the vital strength he labored with; so living in a
daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working
but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome
life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.
Settlement Work[A]
[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.
(_From "A Man's World"_)
BY ALBERT EDWARDS
(Pen-name of Arthur Bullard, American novelist and
war-correspondent)
After all, what good were these settlement workers doing? Again
and again this question demanded an answer. Sometimes I went
out with Mr. Dawn to help in burying the dead. I could see no
adequate connection between his kindly words to the bereaved
and the hideous dragon of tuberculosis which stalked through
the crowded district. What good did Dawn's ministrations do?
Sometimes I went out with Miss Bronson, the kindergartner, and
listened to her talk to uncomprehending mothers about their
duties to their children. What could Miss Bronson accomplish
by playing a few hours a day with the youngsters who had to
go to filthy homes? They were given a wholesome lunch at the
settlement. But the two other meals a day they must eat poorly
cooked, adulterated food. Sometimes I went out with Miss Cole,
the nurse, to visit her cases. It was hard for me to imagine
anything more futile than her single-handed struggle against
unsanitary tenements and unsanitary shops.
I remember especially one visit I made with her. It was the
crisis for me. The case was a child-birth. There were six other
children, all in one unventilated room; its single window
looked out on a dark, choked airshaft; and the father was a
drunkard. I remember sitting there, after the doctor had gone,
holding the next youngest baby on my knee, while Miss Cole was
bathing the puny newcomer.
"Can't you make him stop crying for a minute?" Miss Cole asked
nervously.
"No," I said with sudden rage. "I can't. I wouldn't if I could.
Why shouldn't he cry? Why don't the other little fools cry? Do
you want them to laugh?"
She stopped working with the baby and offered me a flask of
brandy from her bag. But brandy was not what I wanted. Of
course I knew men sank to the very dregs. But I had never
realized that some are born there.
When she had done all she could for the mother and child, Miss
Cole put her things back in the bag and we started home. It was
long after midnight, but the streets were still alive.
"What good does it do?" I demanded vehemently. "Oh, I know--you
and the doctor saved the mother's life--brought a new one into
the world and all that. But what good does it do? The child
will die--it was a girl--let's get down on our knees right here
and pray the gods that it may die soon--not grow up to want and
fear--and shame." Then I laughed. "No, there's no use praying.
She'll die all right! They'll begin feeding her beer out of
a can before she's weaned. No. Not that. I don't believe the
mother will be able to nurse her. She'll die of skimmed milk.
And if that don't do the trick there's T. B. and several other
things for her to catch. Oh, she'll die all right! And next
year there'll be another. For God's sake, what's the use? What
good does it do?" Abruptly I began to swear.
"You mustn't talk like that," Miss Cole said in a strained
voice.
"Why shouldn't I curse?" I said fiercely, turning on her
challengingly, trying to think of some greater blasphemy to
hurl at the muddle of life. But the sight of her face, livid
with weariness, her lips twisting spasmodically from nervous
exhaustion, showed me one reason not to. The realization that I
had been so brutal to her shocked me horribly.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I cried.
She stumbled slightly. I thought she was going to faint and I
put my arm about her to steady her. She was almost old enough
to be my mother, but she put her head on my shoulder and
cried like a little child. We stood there on the sidewalk--in
the glare of a noisy, loathsome saloon--like two frightened
children. I don't think either of us saw any reason to go
anywhere. But we dried our eyes at last and from mere force of
habit walked blindly back to the children's house. On the steps
she broke the long silence.
"I know how you feel--everyone's like that at first, but you'll
get used to it. I can't tell 'why.' I can't see that it does
much good. But it's got to be done. You mustn't think about it.
There are things to do, today, tomorrow, all the time. Things
that must be done. That's how we live. So many things to do,
we can't think. It would kill you if you had time to think.
You've got to work--work.
"You'll stay too. I know. You won't be able to go away. You've
been here too long. You won't ever know 'why.' You'll stop
asking if it does any good. And I tell you if you stop to think
about it, it will kill you. You must work."
She went to her room and I across the deserted courtyard and up
to mine. But there was no sleep. It was that night that I first
realized that I also _must_. I had seen so much I could never
forget. It was something from which there was no escape. No
matter how glorious the open fields, there would always be the
remembered stink of the tenements in my nostrils. The vision of
a sunken-cheeked, tuberculosis-ridden pauper would always rise
between me and the beauty of the sunset. A crowd of hurrying
ghosts--the ghosts of the slaughtered babies--would follow me
everywhere, crying "Coward," if I ran away. The slums had taken
me captive.
Concerning Women
(_From "Aurora Leigh"_)
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(English poetess, 1806-1861; wife of Robert Browning, and an
ardent champion of the liberties of the Italian people)
I call you hard
To general suffering. Here's the world half blind
With intellectual light, half brutalized
With civilization, having caught the plague
In silks from Tarsus, shrieking east and west
Along a thousand railroads, mad with pain
And sin too!... does one woman of you all,
(You who weep easily) grow pale to see
This tiger shake his cage?--does one of you
Stand still from dancing, stop from stringing pearls,
And pine and die because of the great sum
Of universal anguish?--Show me a tear
Wet as Cordelia's, in eyes bright as yours,
Because the world is mad. You cannot count,
That you should weep for this account, not you!
You weep for what you know. A red-haired child
Sick in a fever, if you touch him once,
Though but so little as with a finger-tip,
Will set you weeping; but a million sick--
You could as soon weep for the rule of three
Or compound fractions. Therefore, this same world,
Uncomprehended by you.--Women as you are,
Mere women, personal and passionate,
You give us doting mothers, and perfect wives,
Sublime Madonnas, and enduring saints!
We get no Christ from you,--and verily
We shall not get a poet, in my mind.
Women and Economics
BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
(See page 200)
Recognizing her intense feeling on moral lines, and seeing in
her the rigidly preserved virtues of faith, submission, and
self-sacrifice--qualities which in the dark ages were held
to be the first of virtues,--we have agreed of late years
to call woman the moral superior of man. But the ceaseless
growth of human life, social life, has developed in him new
virtues, later, higher, more needful; and the moral nature of
woman, as maintained in this rudimentary stage by her economic
dependence, is a continual check to the progress of the human
soul. The main feature of her life--the restriction of her
range and duty to the love and service of her own immediate
family--acts upon us continually as a retarding influence,
hindering the expansion of the spirit of social love and
service on which our very lives depend. It keeps the moral
standard of the patriarchal era still before us, and blinds our
eyes to the full duty of man.
The Wrongfulness of Riches
BY GRANT ALLEN
(English essayist and nature student, 1848-1899)
If you are on the side of the spoilers, then you are a bad man.
If you are on the side of social justice, then you are a good
one. There is no effective test of high morality at the present
day save this.
Critics of the middle-class type often exclaim, of reasoning
like this, "What on earth makes him say it? What has _he_ to
gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it?"
So bound up are they in the idea of a self-interest as the
one motive of action that they never even seem to conceive of
honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that
is in one. To such critics I would answer, "The reason why I
write all this is because I profoundly believe it. I believe
the poor are being kept out of their own. I believe the
rich are for the most part selfish and despicable. I believe
wealth has been generally piled up by cruel and unworthy
means. I believe it is wrong in us to acquiesce in the wicked
inequalities of our existing social state, instead of trying
our utmost to bring about another, where right would be done
to all, where poverty would be impossible. I believe such a
system is perfectly practicable, and that nothing stands in its
way save the selfish fears and prejudices of individuals. And
I believe that even those craven fears and narrow prejudices
are wholly mistaken; that everybody, including the rich
themselves, would be infinitely happier in a world where no
poverty existed, where no hateful sights and sounds met the
eye at every turn, where all slums were swept away, and where
everybody had their just and even share of pleasures and
refinements in a free and equal community."
Despair
BY LADY WILDE
(Irish poetess, mother of Oscar Wilde; wrote under the pen-name
of Speranza)
Before us dies our brother, of starvation;
Around are cries of famine and despair!
Where is hope for us, or comfort or salvation--
Where--oh! where?
If the angels ever hearken, downward bending,
They are weeping, we are sure,
At the litanies of human groans ascending
From the crushed hearts of the poor.
We never knew a childhood's mirth and gladness,
Nor the proud heart of youth free and brave;
Oh, a death-like dream of wretchedness and sadness
Is life's weary journey to the grave!
Day by day we lower sink, and lower,
Till the God-like soul within
Falls crushed beneath the fearful demon power
Of poverty and sin.
So we toil on, on with fever burning
In heart and brain;
So we toil on, on through bitter scorning,
Want, woe, and pain.
We dare not raise our eyes to the blue heavens
Or the toil must cease--
We dare not breathe the fresh air God has given
One hour in peace.
Inequality of Wealth
BY G. BERNARD SHAW
(See page 193)
I am not bound to keep my temper with an imposture so
outrageous, so abjectly sycophantic, as the pretence that the
existing inequalities of income correspond to and are produced
by moral and physical inferiorities and superiorities--that
Barnato was five million times as great and good a man as
William Blake, and committed suicide because he lost two-fifths
of his superiority; that the life of Lord Anglesey has
been on a far higher plane than that of John Ruskin; that
Mademoiselle Liane de Pougy has been raised by her successful
sugar speculation to moral heights never attained by Florence
Nightingale; and that an arrangement to establish economic
equality between them by duly adjusted pensions would be
impossible. I say that no sane person can be expected to treat
such impudent follies with patience, much less with respect.
The Two Songs
BY WILLIAM BLAKE
(See page 98)
I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing:
"Mercy, pity, and peace,
Are the world's release."
So he sang all day
Over the new-mown hay,
Till the sun went down,
And haycocks looked brown
I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze:
"Mercy could be no more
If there were nobody poor,
And pity no more could be
If all were happy as ye:
And mutual fear brings peace.
Misery's increase
Are mercy, pity, peace."
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.
BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
(English historian, 1818-1894)
The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the
marvel of human society.
Savva
BY LEONID ANDREYEV
(In this strange drama, which might be called a symbolic tragi-comedy,
the Russian writer has set forth the plight of the educated people
of his country, confronted by the abject superstition of the
peasantry. Savva, a fanatical revolutionist, endeavors to wipe out
this superstition by blowing up a monastery full of drunken monks.
But the plot is revealed to the monks, who carry out the ikon, or
sacred image, before the explosion, and afterwards carry it back into
the ruins. The peasants, arriving on the scene and finding the ikon
uninjured, hail a supreme miracle; the whole country is swept by a
wave of religious frenzy, in the course of which Savva is trampled to
death by a mob.
In the following scene Savva argues with his sister, a religious
believer. The tramp of pilgrims is heard outside)
SAVVA (_smiling_):--The tramp of death!
LIPA:--Remember that each one of these would consider himself
happy in killing you, in crushing you like a reptile. Each one
of these is your death. Why, they beat a simple thief to death,
a horse thief. What would they not do to you? You who wanted to
steal their God!
SAVVA:--Quite true. That's property too.
LIPA:--You still have the brazenness to joke? Who gave you the
right to do such a thing? Who gave you the power over people?
How dare you meddle with what to them is right? How dare you
interfere with their life?
SAVVA:--Who gave me the right? You gave it to me. Who gave
me the power? You gave it to me--you with your malice, your
ignorance, your stupidity! You with your wretched impotence!
Right! Power! They have turned the earth into a sewer, an
outrage, an abode of slaves. They worry each other, they
torture each other, and they ask: "Who dares to take us by the
throat?" I! Do you understand? I!
LIPA:--But to destroy all! Think of it!
SAVVA:--What could you do with them? What would _you_ do? Try
to persuade the oxen to turn away from their bovine path?
Catch each one by his horn and pull him away? Would you put
on a frock-coat and read a lecture? Haven't they had plenty
to teach them? As if words and thought had any significance
to them! Thought--pure, unhappy thought! They have perverted
it. They have taught it to cheat and defraud. They have made
it a salable commodity, to be bought at auction in the market.
No, sister, life is short, and I am not going to waste it in
arguments with oxen. The way to deal with them is by fire.
That's what they require--fire!
LIPA:--But what do you want? What do you want?
SAVVA:--What do I want? To free the earth, to free mankind.
Man--the man of today--is wise. He has come to his senses.
He is ripe for liberty. But the past eats away his soul like
a canker. It imprisons him within the iron circle of things
already accomplished. I want to do away with everything behind
man, so that there is nothing to see when he looks back. I want
to take him by the scruff of his neck and turn his face toward
the future!
The Man Forbid
BY JOHN DAVIDSON
(Scotch poet and dramatist, 1857-1909; after struggling for many years
in London against poverty and ill-health, committed suicide, leaving
some of the most striking and original poetry of the present age)
This Beauty, this Divinity, this Thought,
This hallowed bower and harvest of delight
Whose roots ethereal seemed to clutch the stars,
Whose amaranths perfumed eternity,
Is fixed in earthly soil enriched with bones
Of used-up workers; fattened with the blood
Of prostitutes, the prime manure; and dressed
With brains of madmen and the broken hearts
Of children. Understand it, you at least
Who toil all day and writhe and groan all night
With roots of luxury, a cancer struck
In every muscle: out of you it is
Cathedrals rise and Heaven blossoms fair;
You are the hidden putrefying source
Of beauty and delight, of leisured hours,
Of passionate loves and high imaginings;
You are the dung that keeps the roses sweet.
I say, uproot it; plough the land; and let
A summer-fallow sweeten all the World.
Peasantry
(_From "Death and the Child"_)
BY STEPHEN CRANE
(American novelist and poet, 1870-1900)
These stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold
potentates on their thrones, make statesmen illustrious,
provide generals with lasting victories, all with ignorance,
indifference, or half-witted hatred, moving the world
with the strength of their arms, and getting their heads
knocked together, in the name of God, the king, or the stock
exchange--immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses, who surrender
their reason to the care of a shining puppet, and persuade some
toy to carry their lives in his purse.
An Italian Restaurant
(_From "A Bed of Roses"_)
BY W. L. GEORGE
(Contemporary English novelist)
They sat at a marble topped table, flooded with light by
incandescent gas. In the glare the waiters seemed blacker,
smaller and more stunted than by the light of day. Their faces
were pallid, with a touch of green: their hair and moustaches
were almost blue black. Their energy was that of automata.
Victoria looked at them, melting with pity.
"There's a life for you," said Farwell, interpreting her look.
"Sixteen hours' work a day in an atmosphere of stale food. For
meals, plate scourings. For sleep and time to get to it, eight
hours. For living, the rest of the day."
"It's awful, awful," said Victoria. "They might as well be
dead."
"They will be soon," said Farwell, "but what does that matter?
There are plenty of waiters. In the shadow of the olive groves
tonight in far-off Calabria, at the base of the vine-clad
hills, couples are walking hand in hand, with passion flashing
in their eyes. Brown peasant boys are clasping to their breast
young girls with dark hair, white teeth, red lips, hearts that
beat and quiver with ecstasy. They tell a tale of love and
hope. So we shall not be short of waiters."
Tonight
BY CARLOS WUPPERMAN
(Contemporary American poet)
Tonight the beautiful, chaste moon
From heaven's height
Scatters over the bridal earth
Blossoms of white;
And spring's renewed glad charms unfold
Endless delight.
Such mystic wonder the hushed world wears,
Evil has fled
Far, far away; in every heart
God reigns instead....
Tonight a starving virgin sells
Her soul for bread.
A South-Sea Islander
BY FRANCIS ADAMS
(English poet and rebel, 1862-1893; his life, a brief struggle
with poverty and disease, was ended by his own hand)
Aloll in the warm clear water,
On her back with languorous limbs
She lies. The baby upon her breast
Paddles and falls and swims.
With half-closed eyes she smiles,
Guarding it with her hands;
And the sob swells up in my heart--
In my heart that understands.
_Dear, in the English country,
The hatefullest land on earth,
The mothers are starved and the children die
And death is better than birth!_
Out of the Dark
BY HELEN KELLER
(America's most famous blind girl, born 1880, who has come to
see more than most people with normal eyes)
Step by step my investigation of blindness led me into
the industrial world. And what a world it is! I must face
unflinchingly a world of facts--a world of misery and
degradation, of blindness, crookedness, and sin, a world
struggling against the elements, against the unknown, against
itself. How reconcile this world of fact with the bright
world of my imagining? My darkness had been filled with the
light of intelligence, and, behold, the outer day-lit world
was stumbling and groping in social blindness. At first I was
most unhappy; but deeper study restored my confidence. By
learning the sufferings and burdens of men, I became aware as
never before of the life-power that has survived the forces of
darkness--the power which, though never completely victorious,
is continuously conquering. The very fact that we are still
here carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihilation
proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity.
The world's great heart has proved equal to the prodigious
undertaking which God set it. Rebuffed, but always persevering;
self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted,
tenacious, the heart of man labors towards immeasurably distant
goals. Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish
of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that
whispers: "Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised
Land."
Heirs of Time
BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
(American poet and essayist, 1823-1911; a vehement anti-slavery
agitator, he was colonel of the first negro regiment during the
Civil War, and in later life became a devoted Socialist)
From street and square, from hill and glen,
Of this vast world beyond my door,
I hear the tread of marching men,
The patient armies of the poor.
Not ermine-clad or clothed in state,
Their title-deeds not yet made plain,
But waking early, toiling late,
The heirs of all the earth remain.
The peasant brain shall yet be wise,
The untamed pulse grow calm and still;
The blind shall see, the lowly rise,
And work in peace Time's wondrous will.
Some day, without a trumpet's call
This news will o'er the world be blown:
"The heritage comes back to all;
The myriad monarchs take their own."
Beyond Human Might
BY BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON
(Next to Ibsen, the greatest of Norwegian dramatists, 1832-1910. In
the following scene, from a two-part symbolic drama of the problem of
labor and capital, a young clergyman is speaking to a crowd of miners
in the midst of a bitterly fought strike)
BRATT:--Here it is dark and cold. Here few work hopefully, and
no one joyfully. Here the children won't thrive--they yearn for
the sea and the daylight. They crave the sun. But it lasts only
a little while, and then they give up. They learn that among
those who have been cast down here there is rarely one who can
climb up again.
SEVERAL:--That's right!...
BRATT:--What is there to herald the coming of better things?
A new generation up there? Listen to what their young people
answer for themselves: "We want a good time!" And their books?
The books and the youth together make the future. And what do
the books say? Exactly the same as the youth: "Let us have a
good time! Ours are the light and the lust of life, its colors
and its joys!" That's what the youth and their books say.--They
are right! It is all theirs! There is no law to prevent their
taking life's sunlight and joy away from the poor people. For
those who have the sun have also made the law.--But then the
next question is whether we might not scramble up high enough
to take part in the writing of a new law. (_This is received
with thundering cheers._) What is needed is that one generation
makes an effort strong enough to raise all coming generations
into the vigorous life of full sunlight.
MANY:--Yes, yes!
BRATT:--But so far every generation has put it off on the next
one. Until at last _our_ turn has come--to bear sacrifices and
sufferings like unto those of death itself!
Weavers
BY HEINRICH HEINE
(See page 97)
Their eyelids are drooping, no tears lie beneath;
They stand at the loom and grind their teeth;
"We are weaving a shroud for the doubly dead,
And a threefold curse in its every thread--
We are weaving, still weaving.
"A curse for the Godhead to whom we have bowed
In our cold and our hunger, we weave in the shroud;
For in vain have we hoped and in vain have prayed;
He has mocked us and scoffed at us, sold and betrayed--
We are weaving, still weaving.
"A curse for the king of the wealthy and proud,
Who for us had no pity, we weave in the shroud;
Who takes our last penny to swell out his purse,
While we die the death of a dog--yea, a curse--
We are weaving, still weaving.
"A curse for our country, whose cowardly crowd
Hold her shame in high honor, we weave in the shroud;
Whose blossoms are blighted and slain in the germ,
Whose filth and corruption engender the worm--
We are weaving, still weaving.
"To and fro flies our shuttle--no pause in its flight,
'Tis a shroud we are weaving by day and by night;
We are weaving a shroud for the worse than dead,
And a threefold curse in its every thread--
We are weaving--still weaving."
Alton Locke
BY CHARLES KINGSLEY
(See pages 78, 84)
Yes, it was true. Society had not given me my rights. And woe
unto the man on whom that idea, true or false, rises lurid,
filling all his thoughts with stifling glare, as of the pit
itself. Be it true, be it false, it is equally a woe to believe
it; to have to live on a negation; to have to worship for our
only idea, as hundreds of thousands of us have this day, the
hatred of the things which are. Ay, though one of us here and
there may die in faith, in sight of the promised land, yet
is it not hard, when looking from the top of Pisgah into
"the good time coming," to watch the years slipping away one
by one, and death crawling nearer and nearer, and the people
wearying themselves in the fire for very vanity, and Jordan
not yet passed, the promised land not yet entered? While our
little children die around us, like lambs beneath the knife,
of cholera and typhus and consumption, and all the diseases
which the good time can and will prevent; which, as science
has proved, and you the rich confess, might be prevented at
once, if you dared to bring in one bold and comprehensive
measure, and not sacrifice yearly the lives of thousands to the
idol of vested interests, and a majority in the House. Is it
not hard to men who smart beneath such things to help crying
aloud--"Thou cursed Moloch-Mammon, take my life if thou wilt;
let me die in the wilderness, for I have deserved it; but
these little ones in mines and factories, in typhus cellars
and Tooting pandemoniums, what have they done? If not in their
fathers' cause, yet still in theirs, were it so great a sin to
die upon a barricade?"