THE BROTHERHOOD
I cannot give you, my dear brother, a detailed account of every day's
occurrences, although I know that your love for me would make every
incident of interest to you. I shall, however, jot down my
reflections on sheets, and send them to you as occasion serves.
The more I have seen, and the more I have conversed with Maximilian,
the more clearly I perceive that the civilized world is in a
desperate extremity. This Brotherhood of Destruction, with its
terrible purposes and its vast numbers, is a reality. If the ruling
class had to deal only with a brutalized peasantry, they might, as
they did in other ages, trample them into animal-like inability to
organize and defend themselves. But the public school system, which,
with the other forms of the Republic, is still kept up, has made, if
not all, at least a very large percentage of the unhappy laboring
classes intelligent. In fact, they are wonderfully intelligent; their
organizations have been to them clubs, debating societies and
legislatures. And you know that all the greatest minds of the earth
have come out of the masses, if not directly, at least after one or
two removes. The higher aristocracy have contributed but very few to
the honored catalogue of men of pre-eminent genius. And therefore you
will not be surprised to hear that in these great organizations there
have arisen, from among the very laborers, splendid orators, capable
organizers, profound students of politics and political economy,
statesmen and masterly politicians. Nature, which knows no limit to
her capacity for the creation of new varieties, and, dealing with
hundreds of millions, has in numerable elements to mingle in her
combinations, has turned out some marvelous leaders among these poor
men. Their hard fortunes have driven out of their minds all
illusions, all imagination, all poetry; and in solemn fashion they
have bent themselves to the grim and silent struggle with their
environment. Without imagination, I say, for this seems to me to be a
world without a song.
And it is to the credit of these great masses that they are keen
enough to recognize the men of ability that rise up. among them, and
even out of their poor, hard-earned resources to relieve them of the
necessity for daily toil, that they may devote themselves to the
improvement of their minds, and the execution of the great tasks
assigned them. There is no doubt that if the ruling classes had been
willing to recognize these natural leaders as men of the same race,
blood, tongue and capacity as themselves, and had reached down to
them a helping and kindly hand, there might have been long since a
coming together of the two great divisions of society; and such a
readjustment of the values of labor as would, while it insured
happiness to those below, have not materially lessened the enjoyments
of those above. But the events which preceded the great war against
the aristocracy in 1640, in England; the great revolution of 1789, in
France; and the greater civil war of 1861, in America, all show how
impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, to induce a privileged
class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of its advantages. There
is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of caste; and long
established wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire and sword. And
hence the future looks so black to me. The upper classes might reform
the world, but they will not; the lower classes would, but they
cannot; and for a generation or more these latter have settled down
into a sullen and unanimous conviction that the only remedy is
world-wide destruction. We can say, as one said at the opening of the
Cromwellian struggle, "God help the land where ruin must reform!" But
the proletariat are desperate. They are ready, like the blind Samson,
to pull down the pillars of the temple, even though they themselves
fall, crushed to death amid the ruins; for
"The grave is brighter than their hearths and homes."
I learn from Maximilian that their organization is most perfect.
Every one of their hundred millions is now armed with one of the
newest improved magazine rifles. The use of the white powder reduces
very much the size of the cartridges; the bullets are also much
smaller than they were formerly, but they are each charged with a
most deadly and powerful explosive, which tears the body of the
victim it strikes to pieces. These small cartridges are stored in the
steel stock and barrel of the rifles, which will hold about one
hundred of them; and every soldier therefore carries in his hand a
weapon almost equal to the old-time Gatling or Armstrong gun.
The mode in which these guns were procured shows the marvelous nature
of the organization and its resources. Finding that the cost of the
guns was greatly increased by the profits of the manufacturer and the
middleman, and that it was, in fact, very doubtful whether the
government would permit them to purchase them in any large
quantities, they resolved to make them for themselves. In the depths
of abandoned coal mines, in the wildest and most mountainous part of
Tennessee, they established, years ago, their armories and foundries.
Here, under pretense of coal-mining and iron-working, they brought
members of their Brotherhood, workmen from the national gun-works;
and these, teaching hundreds of others the craft, and working day and
night, in double gangs, have toiled until every able-bodied man in
the whole vast Brotherhood, in America and Europe, has been supplied
with his weapon and a full accompaniment of ammunition. The cost of
all this was reduced to a minimum, and has been paid by each member
of the Brotherhood setting aside each week a small percentage of his
earnings. But, lest they should break out permaturely,{sic} before
the leaders gave the word, these guns have not been delivered
directly to their owners, but to the "commanders of tens," as they
are called; for the Brotherhood is divided into groups of ten each;
and it is the duty of these commanders to bury the weapons and
ammunition in the earth in rubber sacks, furnished for the purpose,
and only to deliver them when the signal comes to strike. In the
meantime the men are trained. with sticks in all the evolutions of
soldiers. You can see how cunning is all this system. A traitor
cannot betray more than nine of his fellows, and his own death is
certain to follow. If the commander of a squad goes over to the
enemy, he can but deliver up nine men and ten guns, and perhaps
reveal the supposed name of the one man who, in a disguise, has
communicated with him from the parent society. But when the signal is
given a hundred million trained soldiers will stand side by side,
armed with the most efficient weapons the cunning of man is able to
produce, and directed by a central authority of extraordinary
ability. Above all this dreadful preparation the merry world goes on,
singing and dancing, marrying and giving in marriage, as thoughtless
of the impending catastrophe as were the people of Pompeii in those
pleasant August days in 79, just before the city was buried in
ashes;--and yet the terrible volcano had stood there, in the
immediate presence of themselves and their ancestors, for
generations, and more than once the rocking earth had given signal
tokens of its awful Possibilities.
If I believed that this wonderful Brotherhood was capable of anything
beyond destruction, I should not look with such terror as I do upon
the prospect. But after destruction there must come construction--the
erection of law and civilization upon the ruins of the present order
of things. Who can believe that these poor brutalized men will be
capable, armed to the teeth with deadly weapons, and full of
passions, hates and revenges, to recreate the slaughtered society? In
civilized life the many must work; and who among these liberated
slaves will be ready to lay down their weapons and take up their
tasks? When the negroes of San Domingo broke out, in that
world-famous and bloody insurrection, they found themselves, when
they had triumphed, in a tropical land, where the plentiful bounties
of nature hung abundant supplies of food upon every tree and shrub.
But in the temperate regions of America and Europe these vast
populations can only live by great toil, and if none will toil all
must starve; but before they starve they will slay each other, and
that means universal conflict, savagery, barbarism, chaos.
I tremble, my brother, I tremble with horror when I think of what is
crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent,
treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves,
and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tense-drawn limbs of steel,
ready for the fatal spring. When comes it? To-night? To-morrow? A
week hence? Who can say?
And the thought forever presses on me, Can I do nothing to avert this
catastrophe? Is there no hope? For mankind is in itself so noble, so
beautiful, so full of all graces and capacities; with aspirations
fitted to sing among the angels; with comprehension fitted to embrace
the universe! Consider the exquisite, lithe-limbed figures of the
first man and woman, as they stood forth against the red light of
their first sunset--fresh from the hand of the Mighty One--His
graceful, perfected, magnificent thoughts! What love shines out of
their great eyes; what goodness, like dawn-awakened flowers, is
blooming in their singing hearts! And all to come to this. To this! A
hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of slaughter.
God is not at fault. Nature is not to blame. Civilization, signifying
increased human power, is not responsible. But human greed,--blind,
insatiable human greed,--shallow cunning; the basest, stuff-grabbing,
nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work! The rats
know too much to gnaw through the sides of the ship that carries
them; but these so-called wise men of the world have eaten away the
walls of society in a thousand places, to the thinness of
tissue-paper, and the great ocean is about to pour in at every
aperture. And still they hoot and laugh their insolent laugh of
safety and triumph above the roar of the greedy and boundless waters,
just ready to overwhelm them forever.
Full of these thoughts, which will not permit me to sleep at night,
and which haunt my waking hours, I have gone about, for some days,
accompanied by Maximilian, and have attended meetings of the
workingmen in all parts of the city. The ruling class long since
denied them the privilege of free speech, under the pretense that the
safety of society required it. In doing so they have screwed down the
safety-valve, while the steam continues to generate. Hence the men
meet to discuss their wrongs and their remedies in underground
cellars, under old ruined breweries and warehouses; and there, in
large, low-roofed apartments, lighted by tallow candles, flaring
against the dark, damp, smoky walls, the swarming masses assemble, to
inflame each other mutually against their oppressors, and to look
forward, with many a secret hint and innuendo, to that great day of
wrath and revenge which they know to be near at hand--
"And with pale lips men say,
To-morrow, perchance to-day,
Enceladus may arise!"
But as any member is permitted to bring in a friend--for these are
not meetings of the Brotherhood itself, but simply voluntary
gatherings of workmen,--and as any man may prove a traitor, their
utterances are guarded and enigmatical.
More than once I have spoken to them in these dim halls; and while
full of sympathy for their sufferings, and indignant as they
themselves can be against their oppressors, I have pleaded with them
to stay their hands, to seek not to destroy, but to reform. I preach
to them of the glories of civilization; I trace its history backward
through a dozen eras and many nations; I show them how slowly it
grew, and by what small and gradual accretions; I tell them how
radiantly it has burst forth in these latter centuries, with such
magnificent effulgence, until today man has all nature at his feet,
shackled and gyved, his patient logman. I tell them that a ruffian,
with one blow of his club, can destroy the life of a man; and that
all the doctors and scientists and philosophers of the world, working
together for ages, could not restore that which he has so rudely
extinguished. And so, I say to them, the civilization which it has
taken ten thousand years to create may be swept away in an hour; and
there shall be no power in the wit or wisdom of man to reestablish it.
Most of them have listened respectfully; a few have tried to answer
me; some have mocked me. But it is as if one came where grouped
convicts stood, long imprisoned, who heard--with knives in their
hands--the thunderous blows of their friends as they battered down
the doors of their prison-house, and he should beg them not to go
forth, lest they should do harm to society! They will out, though the
heavens and the earth came together! One might as well whisper to
Niagara to cease falling, or counsel the resistless cyclone, in its
gyrating and terrible advance, to have a care of the rose-bushes.