and harmony, and with boundless sympathy for the suffering of the
masses. One whose deep, sensitive nature could not endure the barbarisms
of our times. Such was the personality of the man who staked his life as
a protest against tyranny and iniquity; and such has Alexander Berkman
remained all these long, dreary fourteen years.
Nothing was left undone to crush the body and spirit of this man; but
sorrow and suffering make for sacred force, and those who have never
felt it will fail to realize how it is that Alexander Berkman will
return to those who loved and esteemed him, to those whom he loved so
well, and still loves so well,--the oppressed and down-trodden
millions--with the same intense, sweet spirit and with a clearer and
grander vision of a world of human justice and equality.
UT SEMENTEM FECERIS, ITA METES.
By VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE
(To the Czar, on a woman, a political prisoner, being flogged to death
in Siberia.)
_How many drops must gather to the skies
Before the cloud-burst comes, we may not know;
How hot the fires in under hells must glow
Ere the volcano's scalding lavas rise,
Can none say; but all wot the hour is sure!
Who dreams of vengeance has but to endure!
He may not say how many blows must fall,
How many lives be broken on the wheel,
How many corpses stiffen 'neath the pall,
How many martyrs fix the blood-red seal;
But certain is the harvest time of Hate!
And when weak moans, by an indignant world
Re-echoed, to a throne are backward hurled,
Who listens hears the mutterings of Fate!_
[Illustration]
THE WHITE TERROR.
_I.--The Flogging of a Student._
(BY AN EYE-WITNESS--M. KIRILOV, OF THE "RUSS.")
December 18th. Near the Gorbaty Bridge, Moscow. A group of soldiers of
various arms and an officer. Great animation, jokes, cries,
gesticulation, contented faces. A student has fallen into their hands.
"Well, boys, make room," says the officer. "The performance begins!"
"Take off your trousers," says the officer, turning to the student. The
latter is pale, silent, and does not move.
"Trousers off!" cries the officer, in rage; but the student, without a
drop of blood in his face, whiter than the snow, does not move, but only
looks around in silence with horrified eyes and meets everywhere the
triumphant faces of his tormentors. He drops his head and remains silent
as before.
"Well, then, boys, we must assist our dear student; his hands, poor
thing, are frost bitten and do not obey."
The voice of the officer changes; it becomes sweet and smooth. He looks
at the student with pleasure.
"Take off his dear little trousers!" he orders his soldiers. The latter
unbutton and tear down his trousers. The student does not resist. Then
he is thrown on the ground.
"Give him beans, boys!"
Two powerfully-built soldiers step forward, holding whips in their
hands.
The flogging begins. It lasts a long time, accompanied by loud laughter,
jokes and noise. The student is silent all the time and lies with his
face buried in the snow. He is constantly being asked whether he feels
allright, and is kicked with the boots on his head.
"Halt!" cries the officer at last, when the whole body of the student
has been covered with blood. The excited soldiers do not leave off at
once, but continue for some time. At last they stop.
"Please, sir, won't you allow us, too, to have a little game?" smilingly
ask a couple of artillery soldiers, saluting the officer.
"Well, have a go at him," says the officer kindly.
The second shift gets to work, and turning up their sleeves, takes over
the bloody whips and resumes the flogging of the student, who still, as
before, is lying in the snow without uttering a word. Only his body
still thrills instinctively as the soldiers get more and more excited
and the blows become more and more frequent.
"Sir, we, too, want some of the lark," impatiently interfered some of
the dragoons, and having received the permission of the officer,
substituted themselves for the artillery men and with new force and zeal
began to flog the student, who still lay strictly as before, only his
body scarcely moving.
"Well, here you are, you got your higher education--all the three
faculties!" somebody joked as the flogging at last stopped and the
student lay motionless in the snow.
But he was not flogged to death. He was taken to the other side of the
river and there shot.
_II.--Lieutenant Schmidt, of the Sevastopol Mutiny, after being
captured._
(From a letter received by Prof. Miliukov from a lady correspondent who
saw Schmidt in the Fortress and had the tale from his own lips.)
....He only remembers how the officers of the "Rostislavl" posted him
naked, with a broken leg, between two sentries in their mess-room and
approached him in turns, shaking their fists in his face and abusing him
in the vilest terms. Schmidt's son, who, for some unaccountable reason,
had been kept in fortress for two months, said to me: "I cannot tell you
how they abused my father, the terms are unpronounceable." Schmidt
himself spoke to me sobbingly of the painful treatment meted out to him
by the officers.... For twenty-four hours the two of them, father and
son, were kept stark naked and without food, under a fierce electric
light, on the open deck. They lay together, pressing against each other
so as to warm themselves, and everyone who passed looked at them, and
those who wanted, abused them. When Schmidt, being wounded, asked for a
drop of water, the senior officer shouted at him: "Silence, or I'll stop
your gullet with my fist."
[Illustration]
PATERNALISTIC GOVERNMENT.
By THEODORE SCHROEDER.
HISTORY serves no purpose to those who cannot, or do not avail
themselves of it as a means of learning helpful lessons, for present
use. From a few sources not readily accessible to the masses, I have
copied a partial summary of paternalistic legislation which even the
most devout devotees to mass or ruling class wisdom would now decline to
defend.
It is helpful, perhaps, to look back to the persistent fallacious
assumption that men can be made frugal and useful members of society by
laws and edicts. Every thoughtful student feels sure that future
generations will look upon our present efforts to regulate the
self-regarding activities of humans with the same cynical leer as that
which now flits over our faces as we read the following:--
The earliest sumptuary law was passed 215 B. C., enacted that no woman
should own more than half an ounce of gold or wear a dress of different
colors, or ride in a carriage in the city or in any town or within a
mile of it, unless on occasion of public sacrifices. This law was
repealed in twenty years. In 181 B. C. a law was passed limiting the
number of guests at entertainments. In 161 B. C. it was provided that at
certain festivals named the expense of entertainments should not exceed
100 asses, and on ten other days of each month should not exceed 10
asses. Later on it was allowed that 200 asses, valued at about $300, be
spent upon marriage days.
A statute under Julian extended the privileges of extravagance on
certain occasions to the equivalent of $10, and $50 upon marriage
feasts. Under Tiberius, $100 was made the limit of expense for
entertainments. Julius Cæsar proposed another law by which actual
magistrates, or magistrates elect, should not dine abroad except at
certain prescribed places.
Sumptuary laws, that is to say, laws which profess to regulate minutely
what people shall eat and drink, what guests they shall entertain, what
clothes they shall wear, what armor they shall possess, what limit shall
be put to their property, what expense they shall incur at their
funerals, were considered by the Early and Middle Ages as absolutely
necessary for the proper government of mankind.
Tiberius issued an edict against people kissing each other when they met
and against tavern keepers selling pastry. Lycurgus even prohibited
finely decorated ceilings and doors. In England the statutes of
laborers, reciting the pestilence and scarcity of servants, made it
compulsory on every person who had no merchandise, craft or land on
which to live, to serve at fixed wages, otherwise to be committed to
gaol till he found sureties. At a latter day, all men between twelve and
sixty not employed were compelled to hire themselves as servants in
husbandry; and unmarried women between twelve and forty were also liable
to be hired, otherwise to be imprisoned. All this, of course, was to
compel people of modest wealth to remain among the laboring class purely
for their own good. (?) But they were quite impartial in enforcing
benefits, since the Star Chamber also assumed to fine persons for not
accepting knighthood.
Compulsion was also used at the time of the Reformation, to uphold the
Protestant faith and keep people in the right way. Refusing to confess
or receive the sacrament was first made subject to fine or imprisonment,
and a second offense was a felony punishable by death, and involved
forfeiture of land and goods. Those who, having no lawful excuse, failed
to attend the parish church, in the time of Elizabeth, were fined twelve
pence--at that time a considerable sum. This penalty was afterwards
altered to twenty pounds a month, but those were exempted who did not
obstinately refuse. The penalty on all above sixteen who neglected to go
for a month was abjuration of the realm; and to return to the realm
thereafter was felony. And two-thirds of the rent of the offender's
lands might also be seized till he conformed.
An ordinance of Edward III., in 1336, prohibited any man having more
than two courses at any meal. Each mess was to have only two sorts of
victuals, and it was prescribed how far one could mix sauce with his
pottage, except on feast days, when three courses, at most, were
allowable.
The Licinian law limited the quantity of meat to be used. The Orcian law
limited the expense of a private entertainment and the number of guests.
And for like reasons, the censors degraded a senator because ten pounds
weight of silver plate was found in his house. Julius Cæsar was almost
as good a reformer as our modern Puritans. He restrained certain classes
from using litters, embroidered robes and jewels; limited the extent of
feasts; enabled bailiffs to break into the houses of rich citizens and
snatch the forbidden meats from off the tables. And we are told that the
markets swarmed with informers, who profited by proving the guilt of all
who bought and sold there. So in Carthage a law was passed to restrain
the exorbitant expenses of marriage feasts, it having been found that
the great Hanno took occasion of his daughter's marriage to feast and
corrupt the Senate and the populace, and gained them over to his
designs.
The Vhennic Court established by Charlemagne in Westphalia put every
Saxon to death who broke his fast during Lent. James II. of Arragon, in
1234, ordained that his subjects should not have more than two dishes,
and each dressed in one way only, unless it was game of his own killing.
The Statute of Diet of 1363 enjoined that servants of lords should have
once a day flesh or fish, and remnants of milk, butter and cheese; and
above all, ploughmen were to eat moderately. And the proclamations of
Edward IV. and Henry VIII. used to restrain excess in eating and
drinking. All previous statutes as to abstaining from meat and fasting
were repealed in the time of Edward VI. by new enactments, and in order
that fishermen might live, all persons were bound under penalty to eat
fish on Fridays or Saturdays, or in Lent, the old and the sick excepted.
The penalty in Queen Elizabeth's time was no less than three pounds or
three months' imprisonment, but at the same time added that whoever
preached or taught that eating of fish was necessary for the saving of
the soul of man, or was the service of God, was to be punished as a
spreader of false news. And care was taken to announce that the eating
of fish was enforced not out of superstition, but solely out of respect
to the increase of fishermen and mariners. The exemption of the sick
from these penalties was abolished by James I., and justices were
authorized to enter victualing houses and search and forfeit the meat
found there. All these preposterous enactments were swept away in the
reign of Victoria.
Of all the petty subjects threatening the cognizance of the law, none
seems to have given more trouble to the ancient and mediæval
legislatures than that of dress. * * * Yet views of morality, of
repressing luxury and vice, of benefiting manufacturers, of keeping all
degrees of mankind in their proper places, have induced the legislature
to interfere, where interference, in order to be thorough, would require
to be as endless as it would be objectless.
Solon prohibited women from going out of the town with more than three
dresses. Zaleucus is said to have invented an ingenious method of
circuitously putting down what he thought bad habits, namely, by
prohibiting things with an exception, so that the exception should, in
the guise of an exemption, really carry out the sting and operate as a
deterrent. Thus he forbade a woman to have more than one maid, unless
she was drunk; he forbade her to wear jewels or embroidered robes, or go
abroad at night, except she was a prostitute; he forbade all but panders
to wear gold rings or fine cloth. And it was said that he succeeded
admirably in his legislation. The Spartans had such a contempt for
cowards that those who fled in battle were compelled to wear a low
dress of patches and shape, and, moreover, to wear a long beard half
shaved, so that any one meeting them might give them a stroke. The
Oppian law of Rome restricted women in their dress and extravagance, and
the Roman knights had the privilege of wearing a gold ring. The ancient
Babylonians held it to be indecent to wear a walking stick without an
apple, a rose, or an eagle engraved on the top of it. The first Inca of
Peru is said to have made himself popular by allowing his people to wear
ear-rings--a distinction formerly confined to the royal family. By the
code of China, the dress of the people was subject to minute regulation,
and any transgression was punished by fifty blows of the bamboo. And he
who omitted to go into mourning on the death of a relation, or laid it
aside too soon, was similarly punished. Don Edward of Portugal, in 1434,
passed a law to suppress luxury in dress and diet, and with his nobles
set an example. In Florence a like law was passed in 1471. And in
Venice, laws regulating nearly all the expenses of families, in table,
clothes, gaming and traveling. A law of the Muscovites obliged the
people to crop their beards and shorten their clothes. In Zurich a law
prohibited all except strangers to use carriages, and in Basle no
citizen or inhabitant was allowed to have a servant behind his carriage.
About 1292, Philip the Fair, of France, by edict, ordered how many suits
of clothes, and at what price, and how many dishes at table should be
allowed, and that no woman should keep a cur.
The Irish laws regulated the dress, and even its colors, according to
the rank and station of the wearer. And the Brehon laws forbade men to
wear brooches so long as to project and be dangerous to those passing
near. In Scotland, a statute enacted that women should not come to Kirk
or market with their faces covered, and that they should dress according
to their estate. In the City of London, in the thirteenth century, women
were not allowed to wear, in the highway or the market, a hood furred
with other than lamb-skin or rabbit-skin. In the Middle Ages, it was not
infrequent to compel prostitutes to wear a particular dress, so that
they might not be mistaken for other women. And this was the law in the
City of London, as appears from records of 1351 and 1382.
The views and objects of English legislators as to the general subject
of dress, however preposterous in our eyes, were grave and serious
enough. They were so confident of their ground that it was recited that
"wearing inordinate and excessive apparel was a displeasure to God, was
an impoverishing of the realm and enriching other strange realms and
countries, to the final destruction of the husbandry of the realm, and
leading to robberies."
The Statute of Diet and Apparel in 1363, and the later statutes,
minutely fixed the proper dress for all classes according to their
estate, and the price they were to pay; handicraftsmen were not to wear
clothes above forty shillings, and their families were not to wear silk
or velvet. And so with gentlemen and esquires, merchants, knights and
clergy, according to graduations. Ploughmen were to wear a blanket and a
linen girdle. No female belonging to the family of a servant in
husbandry was to wear a girdle garnished with silver. Every person
beneath a lord was to wear a jacket reaching to his knees, and none but
a lord was to wear pikes to his shoes exceeding two inches. (1463.)
Nobody but a member of the royal family was to wear cloth of gold or
purple silk, and none under a knight to wear velvet, damask or satin, or
foreign wool, or fur of sable. It is true, notwithstanding all these
restrictions, that a license of the king enabled the licensee to wear
anything. For one whose income was under twenty pounds, to wear silk in
his night-cap was to incur three months' imprisonment or a fine of ten
pounds a day. And all above the age of six, except ladies and gentlemen,
were bound to wear on the Sabbath day a cap of knitted wool. These
statutes of apparel were not repealed till the reign of James I.
Sometimes, though rarely, a legislature has gone the length of suddenly
compelling an entire change of dress among a people, for reasons at the
time thought urgent.
In China a law was passed to compel the Tartars to wear Chinese clothes,
and to compel the Chinese to cut their hair, with a view to unite the
two races. And it was said there were many who preferred martyrdom to
obedience.
So late as 1746, a statute was passed to punish with six months'
imprisonment, and on a second offense with seven years' transportation,
the Scottish Highlanders, men or boys, who wore their national costume
or a tartan plaid, it being conceived to be closely associated with a
rebellious disposition. After thirty-six years the statute was repealed.
While the act was in force it was evaded by people carrying their
clothes in a bag over their shoulders. The prohibition was hateful to
all, as impeding their agility in scaling the craggy steeps of their
native fastnesses. In 1748 the punishment assigned by the act of 1746
was changed into compulsory service in the army.
Plato says it is one of the unwritten laws of nature that a man shall
not go naked into the market-place or wear woman's clothes. The Mosaic
law forbade men to wear women's clothes, which was thought to be a mode
of discountenancing the Assyrian rites of Venus. The early Christians,
following a passage of St. Paul (1 Cor. xi.), treated the practice of
men and women wearing each other's clothes as confounding the order of
nature, and as liable to heavy censure of anathema.
There was formerly rigorous punishment of persons poaching game with
blackened faces. Those who hunted in forests with faces disguised were
declared to be felons. And as disguises led to crime, and mummers often
were pretenders, all who assumed disguise or visors as mummers, and
attempted to enter houses or committed assaults in highways, were liable
to be arrested and committed to prison for three months, without bail.
The Mosaic law prohibited the practice of using alhenna, or putting an
indelible color on the skin, as was done on occasions of mourning, or in
resemblance of the dead, or in honor of some idol. And two fashions of
wearing the beard and hair were prohibited, as has been supposed, on
account of idolatrous association. Even Bacon said he wondered there was
no penal law against painting the face.
(_To be Continued._)
LIBERTY IN COMMON LIFE.
By BOLTON HALL.
IT seems to me that none of us see how far-reaching freedom will be.
The Socialists have abundantly shown that if only the wastes of
production and distribution were saved, two or three hours' labor per
day would produce all that we produce now. If, in addition to this
saving, the land, including all the resources of nature, were opened to
labor, so that all workers would use the best parts of the earth to the
best advantage, wealth would be so abundant that interest would
disappear.
Even now, with increased production, and notwithstanding the
restrictions on the issue of money and our crazy banking system,
interest is decreasing so that we find it hard to get 4 per cent. here.
Suppose to-day the mortgages and railroad bonds, which are forms of
ownership of land, were taken out of the market, what interest could we
get? Certainly not one per cent.
Were the restrictions on production of the tariff, taxes on products of
labor, patent monopolies, hindrances to the making of money through
franchise privileges done away with, and above all were private
appropriation of rent abolished, wealth would not be so abundant and so
easy to obtain that it would not be worth anyone's while to keep account
of what he had "lent" to another. With the disappearance, at once, of
interest and of the fear of poverty the motive for accumulations of more
than would be sufficient to provide against disability or old age will
disappear, while such small but universal accumulations made available
by a system of mutual banking will provide ample capital for all needed
enterprises.
Co-operation will spring up as a labor-saving device, and the great
abilities of the trust managers will be turned to public service instead
of public plunder.
Henry George is wrong in thinking that the increased demand for capital
due to free opportunities for labor would increase interest. If it did,
it would perpetuate a form of slavery. He omits to notice that the very
use of the capital would reproduce wealth and capital so much more
abundantly that it would destroy the motive for accumulation.
The time will come--it is even now at hand--when dollars and meals and
goods will be given to those who ask these as freely as candies or water
or cigars are offered to visitors. If I am wrong in this, then I am
wasting my efforts, as far as sincere efforts can be wasted.
If Socialism or Anarchism is needed to insure voluntary communism of
goods, then it is for Socialism or Anarchism that we should work; and
for me, if I could see, I would turn from single tax to either of them
as readily as I would turn down hill if I found that up hill was the
wrong road.
At present, hardly any one favors these views--of course, not
plutocrats, because the doctrine is dangerous; not Socialists, because
they think that its words turn Socialists into land reformers; nor
Anarchists, because they regard compulsory payment of a fair price for
the land one uses as a form of tax; not even single taxers, as yet,
because they are wedded to the theory of Henry George.
My only fear, if there be room for fear, is that the new liberty and
leisure will come too soon for the sordid people to make a wise use of
it. Yet such a fear is like that of a man who should fear that his jaw
would grind so hard as to destroy his teeth.
The world is moved by one Spirit, which everlastingly adjusts action
against reaction, so that all is and always must be well.
Do not shy at truth for fear of its logical consequence.
[Illustration]
STATISTICS.
By H. KELLY.
(_Special Cable Despatch to "The Sun."_)
"LONDON.--The result of the first organized census of the British Empire
is issued in a Blue Book. It shows that the empire consists of an
approximate area of 11,908,378 square miles, or more than one-fifth of
the entire land area of the world.
"The population is about 400,000,000, of whom 54,000,000 are whites. The
population is roughly distributed as follows: In Asia, 300,000,000;
Africa, 43,000,000; Europe, 42,000,000; America, 7,500,000, and
Australasia, 5,000,000.