WE LOOK OVER MY COLLECTION OF HARNESSES.
Wires for light and heat had been put into the vault, and it was as warm
and bright and habitable a place as it had been a century before, when it
was my sleeping chamber. Kneeling before the door of the safe, I at once
addressed myself to manipulating the dial, my companions meanwhile
leaning over me in attitudes of eager interest.
It had been one hundred years since I locked the safe the last time, and
under ordinary circumstances that would have been long enough for me to
forget the combination several times over, but it was as fresh in my mind
as if I had devised it a fortnight before, that being, in fact, the
entire length of the intervening period so far as my conscious life was
concerned.
"You observe," I said, "that I turn this dial until the letter 'K' comes
opposite the letter 'R.' Then I move this other dial till the number '9'
comes opposite the same point. Now the safe is practically unlocked. All
I have to do to open it is to turn this knob, which moves the bolts, and
then swing the door open, as you see."
But they did not see just then, for the knob would not turn, the lock
remaining fast. I knew that I had made no mistake about the combination.
Some of the tumblers in the lock had failed to fall. I tried it over
again several times and thumped the dial and the door, but it was of no
use. The lock remained stubborn. One might have said that its memory was
not as good as mine. It had forgotten the combination. A materialistic
explanation somewhat more probable was that the oil in the lock had been
hardened by time so as to offer a slight resistance. The lock could not
have rusted, for the atmosphere of the room had been absolutely dry.
Otherwise I should not have survived.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," I said, "but we shall have to send to the
headquarters of the safe manufacturers for a locksmith. I used to know
just where in Sudbury Street to go, but I suppose the safe business has
moved since then."
"It has not merely moved," said the doctor, "it has disappeared; there
are safes like this at the historical museum, but I never knew how they
were opened until now. It is really very ingenious."
"And do you mean to say that there are actually no locksmiths to-day who
could open this safe?"
"Any machinist can cut the steel like cardboard," replied the doctor;
"but really I don't believe there is a man in the world who could pick
the lock. We have, of course, simple locks to insure privacy and keep
children out of mischief, but nothing calculated to offer serious
resistance either to force or cunning. The craft of the locksmith is
extinct."
At this Edith, who was impatient to see the safe opened, exclaimed that
the twentieth century had nothing to boast of if it could not solve a
puzzle which any clever burglar of the nineteenth century was equal to.
"From the point of view of an impatient young woman it may seem so," said
the doctor. "But we must remember that lost arts often are monuments of
human progress, indicating outgrown limitations and necessities, to which
they ministered. It is because we have no more thieves that we have no
more locksmiths. Poor Julian had to go to all this pains to protect the
papers in that safe, because if he lost them he would be left a beggar,
and, from being one of the masters of the many, would have become one of
the servants of the few, and perhaps be tempted to turn burglar himself.
No wonder locksmiths were in demand in those days. But now you see, even
supposing any one in a community enjoying universal and equal wealth
could wish to steal anything, there is nothing that he could steal with a
view to selling it again. Our wealth consists in the guarantee of an
equal share in the capital and income of the nation--a guarantee that is
personal and can not be taken from us nor given away, being vested in
each one at birth, and divested only by death. So you see the locksmith
and safe-maker would be very useless persons."
As we talked, I had continued to work the dial in the hope that the
obstinate tumbler might be coaxed to act, and presently a faint click
rewarded my efforts and I swung the door open.
"Faugh!" exclaimed Edith at the musty gust of confined air which
followed. "I am sorry for your people if that is a fair sample of what
you had to breathe."
"It is probably about the only sample left, at any rate," observed the
doctor.
"Dear me! what a ridiculous little box it turns out to be for such a
pretentious outside!" exclaimed Edith's mother.
"Yes," said I. "The thick walls are to make the contents fireproof as
well as burglar-proof--and, by the way, I should think you would need
fireproof safes still."
"We have no fires, except in the old structures," replied the doctor.
"Since building was undertaken by the people collectively, you see we
could not afford to have them, for destruction of property means to the
nation a dead loss, while under private capitalism the loss might be
shuffled off on others in all sorts of ways. They could get insured, but
the nation has to insure itself."
Opening the inner door of the safe, I took out several drawers full of
securities of all sorts, and emptied them on the table in the room.
"Are these stuffy-looking papers what you used to call wealth?" said
Edith, with evident disappointment.
"Not the papers in themselves," I said, "but what they represented."
"And what was that?" she asked.
"The ownership of land, houses, mills, ships, railroads, and all manner
of other things," I replied, and went on as best I could to explain to
her mother and herself about rents, profits, interest, dividends, etc.
But it was evident, from the blank expression of their countenances, that
I was not making much headway.
Presently the doctor looked up from the papers which he was devouring
with the zeal of an antiquarian, and chuckled.
"I am afraid, Julian, you are on the wrong tack. You see economic science
in your day was a science of things; in our day it is a science of human
beings. We have nothing at all answering to your rent, interest, profits,
or other financial devices, and the terms expressing them have no meaning
now except to students. If you wish Edith and her mother to understand
you, you must translate these money terms into terms of men and women and
children, and the plain facts of their relations as affected by your
system. Shall you consider it impertinent if I try to make the matter a
little clearer to them?"
"I shall be much obliged to you," I said; "and perhaps you will at the
same time make it clearer to me."
"I think," said the doctor, "that we shall all understand the nature and
value of these documents much better if, instead of speaking of them as
titles of ownership in farms, factories, mines, railroads, etc., we state
plainly that they were evidences that their possessors were the masters
of various groups of men, women, and children in different parts of the
country. Of course, as Julian says, the documents nominally state his
title to things only, and say nothing about men and women. But it is the
men and women who went with the lands, the machines, and various other
things, and were bound to them by their bodily necessities, which gave
all the value to the possession of the things.
"But for the implication that there were men who, because they must have
the use of the land, would submit to labor for the owner of it in return
for permission to occupy it, these deeds and mortgages would have been of
no value. So of these factory shares. They speak only of water power and
looms, but they would be valueless but for the thousands of human workers
bound to the machines by bodily necessities as fixedly as if they were
chained there. So of these coal-mine shares. But for the multitude of
wretched beings condemned by want to labor in living graves, of what
value would have been these shares which yet make no mention of them? And
see again how significant is the fact that it was deemed needless to make
mention of and to enumerate by name these serfs of the field, of the
loom, of the mine! Under systems of chattel slavery, such as had formerly
prevailed, it was necessary to name and identify each chattel, that he
might be recovered in case of escape, and an account made of the loss in
case of death. But there was no danger of loss by the escape or the death
of the serfs transferred by these documents. They would not run away, for
there was nothing better to run to or any escape from the world-wide
economic system which enthralled them; and if they died, that involved no
loss to their owners, for there were always plenty more to take their
places. Decidedly, it would have been a waste of paper to enumerate them.
"Just now at the breakfast table," continued the doctor, "I was
explaining the modern view of the economic system of private capitalism
as one based on the compulsory servitude of the masses to the
capitalists, a servitude which the latter enforced by monopolizing the
bulk of the world's resources and machinery, leaving the pressure of want
to compel the masses to accept their yoke, the police and soldiers
meanwhile defending them in their monopolies. These documents turn up in
a very timely way to illustrate the ingenious and effectual methods by
which the different sorts of workers were organized for the service of
the capitalists. To use a plain illustration, these various sorts of
so-called securities may be described as so many kinds of human harness
by which the masses, broken and tamed by the pressure of want, were yoked
and strapped to the chariots of the capitalists.
"For instance, here is a bundle of farm mortgages on Kansas farms. Very
good; by virtue of the operation of this security certain Kansas farmers
worked for the owner of it, and though they might never know who he was
nor he who they were, yet they were as securely and certainly his thralls
as if he had stood over them with a whip instead of sitting in his parlor
at Boston, New York, or London. This mortgage harness was generally used
to hitch in the agricultural class of the population. Most of the farmers
of the West were pulling in it toward the end of the nineteenth
century.--Was it not so, Julian? Correct me if I am wrong."
"You are stating the facts very accurately," I answered. "I am beginning
to understand more clearly the nature of my former property."
"Now let us see what this bundle is," pursued the doctor. "Ah! yes; these
are shares in New England cotton factories. This sort of harness was
chiefly used for women and children, the sizes ranging away down so as to
fit girls and boys of eleven and twelve. It used to be said that it was
only the margin of profit furnished by the almost costless labor of the
little children that made these factories paying properties. The
population of New England was largely broken in at a very tender age to
work in this style of harness.
"Here, now, is a little different sort. These are railroad, gas, and
water-works shares. They were a sort of comprehensive harness, by which
not only a particular class of workers but whole communities were hitched
in and made to work for the owner of the security.
"And, finally, we have here the strongest harness of all, the Government
bond. This document, you sec, is a bond of the United States Government.
By it seventy million people--the whole nation, in fact--were harnessed
to the coach of the owner of this bond; and, what was more, the driver in
this case was the Government itself, against which the team would find it
hard to kick. There was a great deal of kicking and balking in the other
sorts of harness, and the capitalists were often inconvenienced and
temporarily deprived of the labor of the men they had bought and paid for
with good money. Naturally, therefore, the Government bond was greatly
prized by them as an investment. They used every possible effort to
induce the various governments to put more and more of this sort of
harness on the people, and the governments, being carried on by the
agents of the capitalists, of course kept on doing so, up to the very eve
of the great Revolution, which was to turn the bonds and all the other
harnesses into waste paper."
"As a representative of the nineteenth century," I said, "I can not deny
the substantial correctness of your rather startling way of describing
our system of investments. Still, you will admit that, bad as the system
was and bitter as was the condition of the masses under it, the function
performed by the capitalists in organizing and directing such industry as
we had was a service to the world of some value."
"Certainly, certainly," replied the doctor. "The same plea might be
urged, and has been, in defense of every system by which men have ever
made other men their servants from the beginning. There was always some
service, generally valuable and indispensable, which the oppressors could
urge and did urge as the ground and excuse of the servitude they
enforced. As men grew wiser they observed that they were paying a ruinous
price for the services thus rendered. So at first they said to the kings:
'To be sure, you help defend the state from foreigners and hang thieves,
but it is too much to ask us to be your serfs in exchange; we can do
better.' And so they established republics. So also, presently, the
people said to the priests: 'You have done something for us, but you have
charged too much for your services in asking us to submit our minds to
you; we can do better.' And so they established religious liberty.
"And likewise, in this last matter we are speaking of, the people finally
said to the capitalists: 'Yes, you have organized our industry, but at
the price of enslaving us. We can do better.' And substituting national
co-operation for capitalism, they established the industrial republic
based on economic democracy. If it were true, Julian, that any
consideration of service rendered to others, however valuable, could
excuse the benefactors for making bondmen of the benefited, then there
never was a despotism or slave system which could not excuse itself."
"Haven't you some real money to show us," said Edith, "something besides
these papers--some gold and silver such as they have at the museum?"
It was not customary in the nineteenth century for people to keep large
supplies of ready money in their houses, but for emergencies I had a
little stock of it in my safe, and in response to Edith's request I took
out a drawer containing several hundred dollars in gold and emptied it on
the table.
"How pretty they are!" exclaimed Edith, thrusting her hands in the pile
of yellow coins and clinking them together. "And is it really true that
if you only had enough of these things, no matter how or where you got
them, men and women would submit themselves to you and let you make what
use you pleased of them?"
"Not only would they let you use them as you pleased, but they would be
extremely grateful to you for being so good as to use them instead of
others. The poor fought each other for the privilege of being the
servants and underlings of those who had the money."
"Now I see," said Edith, "what the Masters of the Bread meant."
"What is that about Masters of the Bread?" I asked. "Who were they?"
"It was a name given to the capitalists in the revolutionary period,"
replied the doctor. "This thing Edith speaks of is a scrap of the
literature of that time, when the people first began to fully wake up to
the fact that class monopoly of the machinery of production meant slavery
for the mass."
"Let me see if I can recall it," said Edith. "It begins this way:
'Everywhere men, women, and children stood in the market-place crying to
the Masters of the Bread to take them to be their servants, that they
might have bread. The strong men said: "O Lords of the Bread, feel our
thews and sinews, our arms and our legs; see how strong we are. Take us
and use us. Let us dig for you. Let us hew for you. Let us go down in the
mine and delve for you. Let us freeze and starve in the forecastles of
your ships. Send us into the hells of your steamship stokeholes. Do what
you will with us, but let us serve you, that we may eat and not die!"
"'Then spoke up also the learned men, the scribes and the lawyers, whose
strength was in their brains and not in their bodies: "O Masters of the
Bread," they said, "take us to be your servants and to do your will. See
how fine is our wit, how great our knowledge; our minds are stored with
the treasures of learning and the subtlety of all the philosophies. To us
has been given clearer vision than to others, and the power of persuasion
that we should be leaders of the people, voices to the voiceless, and
eyes to the blind. But the people whom we should serve have no bread to
give us. Therefore, Masters of the Bread, give us to eat, and we will
betray the people to you, for we must live. We will plead for you in the
courts against the widow and the fatherless. We will speak and write in
your praise, and with cunning words confound those who speak against you
and your power and state. And nothing that you require of us shall seem
too much. But because we sell not only our bodies, but our souls also,
give us more bread than these laborers receive, who sell their bodies
only."
"'And the priests and Levites also cried out as the Lords of the Bread
passed through the market-place: "Take us, Masters, to be your servants
and to do your will, for we also must eat, and you only have the bread.
We are the guardians of the sacred oracles, and the people hearken unto
us and reply not, for our voice to them is as the voice of God. But we
must have bread to eat like others. Give us therefore plentifully of your
bread, and we will speak to the people, that they be still and trouble
you not with their murmurings because of hunger. In the name of God the
Father will we forbid them to claim the rights of brothers, and in the
name of the Prince of Peace will we preach your law of competition."
"'And above all the clamor of the men were heard the voices of a
multitude of women crying to the Masters of the Bread: "Pass us not by,
for we must also eat. The men are stronger than we, but they eat much
bread while we eat little, so that though we be not so strong yet in the
end you shall not lose if you take us to be your servants instead of
them. And if you will not take us for our labor's sake, yet look upon us:
we are women, and should be fair in your eyes. Take us and do with us
according to your pleasure, for we must eat."
"'And above all the chaffering of the market, the hoarse voices of the
men, and the shrill voices of the women, rose the piping treble of the
little children, crying: "Take us to be your servants, for the breasts of
our mothers are dry and our fathers have no bread for us, and we hunger.
We are weak, indeed, but we ask so little, so very little, that at last
we shall be cheaper to you than the men, our fathers, who eat so much,
and the women, our mothers, who eat more than we."
"'And the Masters of the Bread, having taken for their use or pleasure
such of the men, the women, and the little ones as they saw fit, passed
by. And there was left a great multitude in the market-place for whom
there was no bread.'"
"Ah!" said the doctor, breaking the silence which followed the ceasing of
Edith's voice, "it was indeed the last refinement of indignity put upon
human nature by your economic system that it compelled men to seek the
sale of themselves. Voluntary in a real sense the sale was not, of
course, for want or the fear of it left no choice as to the necessity of
selling themselves to somebody, but as to the particular transaction
there was choice enough to make it shameful. They had to seek those to
whom to offer themselves and actively to procure their own purchase. In
this respect the submission of men to other men through the relation of
hire was more abject than under a slavery resting directly on force. In
that case the slave might be compelled to yield to physical duress, but
he could still keep a mind free and resentful toward his master; but in
the relation of hire men sought for their masters and begged as a favor
that they would use them, body and mind, for their profit or pleasure. To
the view of us moderns, therefore, the chattel slave was a more dignified
and heroic figure than the hireling of your day who called himself a free
worker.
"It was possible for the slave to rise in soul above his circumstances
and be a philosopher in bondage like Epictetus, but the hireling could
not scorn the bonds he sought. The abjectness of his position was not
merely physical but mental. In selling himself he had necessarily sold
his independence of mind also. Your whole industrial system seems in this
point of view best and most fitly described by a word which you oddly
enough reserved to designate a particular phase of self-selling practiced
by women.
"Labor for others in the name of love and kindness, and labor with others
for a common end in which all are mutually interested, and labor for its
own joy, are alike honorable, but the hiring out of our faculties to the
selfish uses of others, which was the form labor generally took in your
day, is unworthy of human nature. The Revolution for the first time in
history made labor truly honorable by putting it on the basis of
fraternal co-operation for a common and equally shared result. Until then
it was at best but a shameful necessity."
Presently I said: "When you have satisfied your curiosity as to these
papers I suppose we might as well make a bonfire of them, for they seem
to have no more value now than a collection of heathen fetiches after the
former worshipers have embraced Christianity."
"Well, and has not such a collection a value to the student of history?"
said the doctor. "Of course, these documents are scarcely now valuable in
the sense they were, but in another they have much value. I see among
them several varieties which are quite scarce in the historical
collections, and if you feel disposed to present the whole lot to our
museum I am sure the gift will be much appreciated. The fact is, the
great bonfire our grandfathers made, while a very natural and excusable
expression of jubilation over broken bondage, is much to be regretted
from an archaeological point of view."
"What do you mean by the great bonfire?" I inquired.
"It was a rather dramatic incident at the close of the great Revolution.
When the long struggle was ended and economic equality, guaranteed by the
public administration of capital, had been established, the people got
together from all parts of the land enormous collections of what you used
to call the evidences of value, which, while purporting to be
certificates of property in things, had been really certificates of the
ownership of men, deriving, as we have seen, their whole value from the
serfs attached to the things by the constraint of bodily necessities.
These it pleased the people--exalted, as you may well imagine, by the
afflatus of liberty--to collect in a vast mass on the site of the New
York Stock Exchange, the great altar of Plutus, whereon millions of human
beings had been sacrificed to him, and there to make a bonfire of them. A
great pillar stands on the spot to-day, and from its summit a mighty
torch of electric flame is always streaming, in commemoration of that
event and as a testimony forever to the ending of the parchment bondage
that was heavier than the scepters of kings. It is estimated that
certificates of ownership in human beings, or, as you called them, titles
to property, to the value of forty billion dollars, together with
hundreds of millions of paper money, went up in that great blaze, which
we devoutly consider must have been, of all the innumerable burnt
sacrifices which have been offered up to God from the beginning, the one
that pleased him best.
"Now, if I had been there, I can easily imagine that I should have
rejoiced over that conflagration as much as did the most exultant of
those who danced about it; but from the calmer point of view of the
present I regret the destruction of a mass of historic material. So you
see that your bonds and deeds and mortgages and shares of stock are
really valuable still."