being able to leave his crops unworked for two days in the
week, Mr. King ploughed them on Sunday, after having kept
the Sabbath the day before. He was arrested under the Sunday
law, and in order to make it effective against him it was
alleged that his work on his own farm on Sunday created a
public nuisance. On this entirely untenable ground he has
been harassed from court to court. He was a poor man, but he
has been supported by the friends of religious liberty. Mr.
King has been greatly wronged, but his only remedy at law is
under the law and Constitution of Tennessee. It appears that
for the present his remedy is denied him, and this being the
case he has no better recourse than to submit to the
oppression and go to prison--to the convict camp, if it
suits the convenience of his persecutors to send him there."
SOCIAL CONDITIONS UNDER LOUIS XV. A LESSON FOR THE PRESENT DAY.
To the superficial observer who, as guests of royalty, loitered
through the sunny days which marked the closing years of Louis XV.,
France presented the aspect of a gay, thoughtless, happy, butterfly
nation, whose government on the whole satisfied the requirements of
the rich and powerful, and was sustained by the strong arm of the
army on the one hand and the impregnable influence of the Church on
the other. Small heed was to be given to the pamphleteers, whose
brilliant satire, biting sarcasm, and pointed logic afforded amusement
at the Louvre, rather than struck dismay to the hearts of those who
fondly believed that the Church still held in thrall the brain of the
masses, and that as for centuries the people had been content with
slavery and vassalage, it was absurd to imagine they had now come to
man's estate, had, Phoenix-like, arisen from the ashes of old-time
sullen obedience or ignorant content, into the tumultuous atmosphere
of intellectual activity. It is true, some far-seeing brains beheld
the coming storm and warned the king, urging him to either suppress
the philosophers, or concede to the masses a greater meed of justice,
but their views were scouted by the ruling or conventional thought of
the court, and life at the Louvre continued a merry whirl of carnal
and selfish delight. The morning brought the chases, and evening the
banquet, the theatre, or the ball; while at intervals grand
polytechnic exhibitions delighted the populace, being given, probably,
in the vain hope that they would satisfy the rising discontent, much
as the gladiatorial shows satisfied, while they still further
brutalized, the degraded populace of ancient Rome, making possible the
toleration of such colossal iniquity as marked the decline of the
Empire. Such, then, was the aspect of court life, while above the
social and political horizon were gathering clouds which prophesied
the greatest cataclysm civilization had witnessed. The wilful
short-sightedness, the supreme indifference to the principles of
justice, liberty, and fraternity; the conspicuous absence of the
spirit of humanity, which characterized those who might have averted
the coming baptism of blood, was the legitimate result of the
anaesthetizing of the soul of the Court and aristocracy with the lust
of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. The divine
spark had disappeared. The spiritual nature had given way to the
sensual. Ambition and pleasure were enthroned in the seats of justice
and humanity. Selfishness was the keynote of aristocratic life. And
with this fact kept in view, the short-sightedness of royalty in the
presence of the rising tide of intelligent discontent is by no means
strange. Indifferent to the fate of the masses in any struggle that
might be precipitated, guided by none of the higher impulses of life,
and possessing implicit confidence in the impregnability of that
triple bulwark of conservatism, the army, the police, and the Church,
the ruling party of French aristocracy drifted down the stream
garlanded with roses, revelling in wine and music, abandoning itself
to pleasure on life's lowest plane.
To the student of social conditions, who might have been a guest of
the philosopher Rousseau, the picture photographed on the mental
retina would have been far different. Above he would have beheld the
round of selfish, thoughtless gaiety, in which the images and
intrigues of Madame Dubarry and Marie Antoinette, of Choiseul and
Rohan, of Louis and Richelieu, were strangely mingled and distorted by
exaggeration, as they sifted down from the Court through several
layers of brains until they reached the world of the newly awakened
laborer. Below him would have yawned, in all its hideousness, the
blackness of the pit, the social cellar into which he would have seen
thousands and scores of thousands of his fellow-men crowded or driven
by want, misfortune, or the avarice of the more powerful, and from
which so few who once fall ever rose to the noble estate of true
manhood and womanhood. Around him he would have noted still another
world, more interesting and yet more terrible in its ferocity and
power than those above and below--the realm of the common people--the
sphere of the masses--the _current_ which passed over the darkest
dregs and bore on its surface the scum. In this world the strange and
interesting phenomenon would have met his eye of a newly awakened
brain, an intellect which after ages of semi-unconsciousness, had, in
a surprisingly short time, been aroused by the intellectual brilliancy
of thinkers who had flooded a nation with new ideas, who had kindled
the fires of justice, who had spoken in the _ear of all the people_
the doctrine of the essential brotherhood of man, the kinship of the
throne and the shop, the idler in the palace and the idler in the
cellar; the cormorant who dined off the labor of others at Lucerne,
and the low-browed outcasts occupied in the same way but pursuing
different methods, in the social sewer. And he would have noticed an
unusual activity in this working world; secret meetings were being
held on every hand. The great philosophical works of Rousseau
breathing a new hope and a larger life into the soul of every reader,
and the withering satire of Voltaire falling against the battlements
of the church and the throne--these were the text-books and watchword
of the new revolution. Tens of thousands of men who a few years before
had accepted unquestioningly the assurance of the priests and obeyed
as children the decrees of Royalty, were now thinking as never before
on justice and equity, were students and intelligent expounders of the
master brains which blossomed forth on every hand, in spite of priest
and police. Heresy and liberty, justice and freedom, progress and
equity had joined hands; conventionalism was doomed. The cry for
justice went up from every hand to the crown and the aristocracy, only
to come back with a mocking laugh or a royal restrictive decree. Thus
the flame was fanned. The noble teaching of the great apostles of
light and justice which illuminated the brains of the people and at
first filled their hearts with holy love and wonderful tenderness,
making them ready to accept and only desirous of receiving that
measure of justice and consideration to which they knew they were
entitled, later changed to feelings of hate and desire for revenge
which ever grows as mushrooms in the average mind when justice is
denied and oppression bears down more relentlessly at each complaint
that comes from the oppressed. It is a law of life on the lower plane
that selfishness, indifference, and heartlessness coming from above
are photographed upon the sensitive intellect of the struggling minds
below, which vainly ask for justice, only to return in time
intensified a hundred-fold--selfishness becomes active and is
complemented by an insane desire to destroy. Indifference calls forth
unbridled ferocity. Heartlessness awakens sentiments of cruelty and
brutality as relentless and destructive as the cyclone.
The social sewer or cellar of Paris at this time presented as
interesting and suggestive a study as the toiling world above. Here
were thousands of human beings dwelling in the atmosphere of crime and
brutality, hungry, cold, and well-nigh hopelessly vicious by virtue of
want, association, and environment, and ready for, if not eagerly
anticipating any social upheaval which would afford them an
opportunity to plunder and pillage. This world presented then, as it
ever must, the saddest and most hopeless spectacle in the kaleidoscope
of life. There were scores of thousands in this social sewer and new
recruits coming daily. The avarice and extravagance of the Court
pressed upon the great stratum of middle life, which in time bore down
upon the lower sphere with crushing weight, while many of its numbers,
weary of the eternal struggle, relaxed their hold on respectability
and fell into the pit of crime and moral death. The inhabitants of
this realm presented a picture of ferocity and despair, which must
necessarily prove a frightful element in a revolution. The social
cellar was only waiting for the signal when its hideous throat would
belch forth death as surely as cannon or mortar ever hurled the
life-destroying bomb. Such was life in France in the world of the
wealthy and the world of want; while Louis drank Dubarry's health;
while Marie Antoinette longed for her childhood home, and the Dauphin
busied himself with geography, lock-making, and clock-repairing.
When Louis XV. died the scum had so thoroughly poisoned the great
current of life in France that it is probable that even had there been
far wiser heads at the helm of State than Louis XVI. and his
councillor they would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to
prevent a bloody reckoning, for the love of peace and reverence for
justice, the cool judgment and mature wisdom which swayed the popular
mind at an early day was well-nigh drowned in the rising tide of angry
discontent and intense hate. A settled conviction pervaded the soul of
the masses that the hour had come when might should make right the
age-long wrongs of the people; and when an idea of this character
possesses the rank and file of a nation it is almost impossible even
by a liberal policy to avert a bloody issue.
I have dwelt upon this striking passage of history because it bristles
with suggestive lessons and warning notes to the great Republic at
the present time, and because the grave evils, which are as
symptomatic to-day as were the signs of the times portentous in the
reign of the easy-going, sensual Louis, are being met by those who
have it in their power to avert a social catastrophe in precisely the
same short-sighted spirit as characterized the conservative
aristocracy when it denied the existence of the universal discontent
among the masses and flippantly dismissed the angry muttering of the
coming storm as merely the expression of a few shallow-brained
malcontents. To-day we find the same brutal indifference and
selfishness as was so conspicuous at the Louvre in 1770, exhibited by
our mushroom aristocracy of the dollar, composed of those who form and
control the great monopolies, syndicates, trusts, and combines, which
are so cruelly oppressing the many that the few may grow many times
millionnaires; together with the great railway magnates, who have
through watering stock on the one hand, and plundering the
commonwealth of farmers by exorbitant freights on the other,
dishonestly amassed colossal fortunes. And that still more baleful
communion which forms such an important part of America's shoddy
aristocracy, the Wall Street gamblers, they who rule "the street,"
paralyzing healthy business, causing panics at will, and annually
sweeping to the wall, to ruin and to death numbers of victims who have
been lured into their snares by deceptive reports industriously
circulated and extensively published by paid agents of these same
brigands of the commercial world.
This mushroom plutocracy, whose representatives hold colossal fortunes
acquired rather than earned, practically rule our business interests
by virtue of the enormous opportunities afforded by their great
wealth. And year by year are they increasing the rising tide of
indignation in the hearts of millions of hard-working men and women,
by grinding down more and still more hopelessly the multitude
dependent on them, whom they can reduce to starvation if they rebel.
Another element, which, viewed from the plane of justice and equity
may be rightly termed _criminal_, is the popular and conservative
economist who caters to the plutocracy and with brazen effrontery
denies facts susceptible of proof, while he denounces every reformer
who seeks to expose the iniquities of the present. This course is
precisely a repetition of the policy of those who minified the real
danger and misrepresented the grave facts to the Court of France, at a
time when an honest, truthful representation might have averted the
most terrible revolution in the annals of civilization. Only a short
time since a popular economic writer denounced a Boston clergyman for
unveiling the horrors of the sweating system in the modern Athens. He
could not deny the truth of the sickening facts described, but termed
the minister a member of one of the "_most dangerous class_" of
citizens, merely because he spoke the truth with a view to bettering
the condition of society's exiles.
At a recent meeting of the Rhode Island weavers, a distinguished and
popular conservative economic writer addressed the hard struggling
workingmen. During his remarks he sought to make them blindly and
contentedly accept their lot by saying in honeyed tones: "_Why, my
dear friends, the production of the country only furnishes $200 a head
annually, and it is hard to make it go around. It is only by hard
pinching and careful economy that we can make it do so;_" while almost
within gunshot of the speaker rose the palaces of America's
millionnaires, at Newport, where gigantic fortunes are annually
squandered with lavish hands; where Mr. McAllister and his butterfly
coterie of wealthy gourmands eat, drink, and dance away the summer,
and illustrate how _these_ children of idleness and wealth have to
"_pinch and plan_" _to make their share_ "_of the $200 go around_," of
which the distinguished conservative economist spoke. If the masses of
our people were unable to read or write, if they had been accustomed
to centuries of oppression, a policy so glaringly unjust and
disingenuous might succeed for a time. But with conditions as they
are, the persistent crying of peace when there is no peace, and
attempting to juggle with facts is more than foolish, it is
_criminal_. One who does not regularly read the labor and agricultural
press of this country is incapable of forming an intelligent idea of
the nature or extent of the discontent at the present time. Then
again, beyond this commonwealth of struggling toilers rises another
commonwealth, the frightful condition of which no careful student can
ignore. I refer to society's exiles, or the contingent of the social
cellar. This element grows more powerful with each year. It is not
securing justice at the hands of civilization and must some day be
reckoned with.
In every agitation, every crusade against wrong, every battle for
humanity, every contest for a broader sweep of justice, conventional
critics have arrayed themselves on the side of the evil conditions,
and denounced as dangerous agitators those who have sought to arouse
the higher impulses of the people to right the crying wrongs of the
hour. The treatment of Garrison and Phillips by this class in Boston,
even in the shadow of the Cradle of Liberty, during the anti-slavery
agitation, is of sufficiently recent date to emphasize this point,
which has been paralleled in every important agitation for a higher
civilization and a more just condition. To ignore the serious social
unrest of the present, and the bitter cry of the weak for justice, is
to follow the fatal precedent set by the French government. To deny
the reality of the wrongs complained of, or lightly dismiss them as
our popular economists are doing, is to pursue the ostrich policy with
the certainty of being overtaken by the results of the evil which
might have been averted. It matters not whether our "eminent"
authorities are ignorant of the true social condition in city and
country life to-day, or are wickedly juggling with truth in order to
curry favor with plutocracy and conservatism, the fact remains that
they are deceiving their masters as courtiers have often deceived
thrones at moments when deception meant ruin. The duty of the hour is
to _turn on the light_, to compel the thoughtful among our wealthy and
powerful people to know the truth as it is, and to seek such a just
and equitable revolution as will save a baptism of blood. The day for
prophesying smooth things is past; we are face to face with problems
and conditions which will not brook dishonest treatment. The
exigencies of the present hour demand that we frankly face the social
problems as they are and honestly discuss them in all their bearings.
That we call to witness the impressive lessons of history and if
possible, avert the repetition of the cataclysms of the past by prompt
measures, marked by wisdom and justice. It is not too late to prevent
a revolution of force if _wealth and power_ will heed the cry of _want
and weakness_; if justice, courage, and duty supplant self-interest
and indifference in the hearts of those who see and feel the rising
tide of angry discontent. To-day if we would demonstrate that a
century of civilization and free government has lifted us to a higher
ethical level than humanity had attained a hundred years ago, we must
face conditions as they are and promptly adopt measures that will
secure such a meed of justice for the weak as shall take from his
heart the bitterness of injustice and establish a feeling of common
brotherhood and good-will.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies. The transcriber made the following changes to the
text to correct obvious errors by the publisher:
1. p. 589, "Samangala" changed to "Sumangala"
2. p. 603, "Lassez-faire" changed to "Laissez-faire"
3. p. 607, Both "J. S. Moffitt, Jr." and "J. S. Moffit, Jr." appear
on page 607.
4. p. 622, "nothng" changed to "nothing"
5. p. 632, "Even he carrion" changed to "Even the carrion"
6. p. 633, "Sabbath or" changed to "Sabbath on"
Also, several occurrences of mismatched quotes remain as published.
End of Transcriber's Notes]