“Ich selber bin Volk.”—HEINRICH HEINE.
The socialistic banquet was a success. Various members of the upper
classes were present, and several representatives of the People. The
Young Reformer presided with great ease.
The repast was not formal. Neither were the speeches afterward. We
hastened over the material part of the feast, and our host dismissed the
waiters abruptly when the coffee had been served.
As I looked around the table in the centre of the great hotel
dining-room, I realized that we were a distinctly curious collection of
human beings. Each one of us stood for a cause. Representatives of
Church and University were sitting side by side with Socialist and
Anarchist. Two residents from Barnet House and the head of the Woman’s
Settlement were there. Opposite me sat a Single Tax agitator. At my left
was a Knight of Labour. There were present also four prominent Trades
Unionists, a Temperance woman, a White Ribbon woman, and a Populist.
Our eyes were all fixed upon the Young Reformer as he rapped upon the
table and called upon my friend, the Resident at Barnet House, to speak
in behalf of Socialism.
The Resident spoke with dignity.
“It is,” he said, “an economic fact that Socialism is inevitable.
Whether we will or no, it is coming as surely as the days are moving on.
It is equally true that it, as a system, offers to the individual a
justice that no other form of government can offer. Under the
centralizing system of Socialism, with land and the forces of production
in the collective ownership of the People, and monopolies done away,
will come at last that granting of equal rights to all that democracy
has failed to realize.”
The speaker was enthusiastically applauded.
Then the Altruist was called upon in behalf of the Brotherhood of Man.
An abstract of his remarks can give no idea of their power. The Altruist
alluded to our new recognition in this century of the close relationship
between high and low. He described certain attempts, both secular and
religious, that have been made to recognize this relationship. Then he
set forth his hope for the future, when government shall be
spiritualized, and the principles of the Christian religion shall be
worked into our laws.
The address was eloquent, and the audience was strongly moved.
The Altruist ended with an appeal. The cultured must return to the
People, and the People must realize that in doing this the upper classes
have no sense of superiority, and are actuated by motives of purest
Christian love.
Our host was leaning back in his chair, and his face wore a happy smile.
A Trades Unionist, in responding to the two preceding orators, said that
it did him good all over to hear remarks like theirs. They expressed his
sentiments exactly. If more folks felt that way, there wouldn’t be all
this trouble between labour and capital. The working-people were going
to have their rights, and if these were not given, they would fight for
them. But the working-man was quite willing to meet the capitalist half
way and settle things peacefully if it could be done.
The young Socialist smiled at this militant formulation of the principle
of brotherly love, but the Altruist did not hear. He rarely listened to
what other people said.
I fell into a fit of abstraction and caught only fragments of the two
next speeches. I knew, in a dim fashion, that the Populist had the
floor, and was insisting that the one way to achieve universal good was
by adopting the platform of his political party. I knew that the
Temperance woman, who was sweet-faced and young, rose to say sternly
that we were all wrong. Only by wakening the moral forces could the race
be saved. For a world given over to passion there was no economic
salvation.
Watching these burdened, anxious faces in the brilliant electric light,
I wondered how I could have lived nine and thirty years without knowing
that this old earth, which I loved, was so very bad. Three months ago I
had seen only here and there a thistle or a bramble bush in its fair
fields. Now it looked to me all weeds and tares, weeds and tares.
But the Professor was responding to the toast: “The University and the
People.”
“There is no gulf between the University and the People,” he said in a
quick, emphatic voice. He had a perplexed air, as if wondering why he
had come.
“The University was founded by the People, for the People. Its interests
are the interests of the People. In its hands lies one of the highest
powers in a nation’s life. Economic conditions, moral forces, are naught
without the intellectual guidance that comes through the trained minds
of a country’s devoted servants, her scholars.”
These remarks were sufficiently noncommittal, yet the Professor was
troubled, fearing that he had not said the right thing.
The word People ran like a refrain through all these remarks, and it
puzzled me. The People, it would seem, had been injured, and their
wrongs were to be set right. But who were the People, and who had harmed
them?
We pronounced ourselves ready to waive all differences between ourselves
and the People. Who had suggested the differences? Surely not the
People. Even now the voice of a clergyman was in my ears, adjuring us
all, indiscriminately, to get nearer the People. I, who was conscious
that I belonged to the People and had never gone away, was puzzled,
feeling a certain lack of programme in the suggestion.
At last the Anarchist arose. I had heard of him before, but had not seen
him. His quoted opinions had made my blood run cold. Now I gazed at him
in surprise, for he did not at all resemble the picture of him that my
fancy had made. Standing with his large old hands folded, and his long
gray beard rippling over his bosom, he looked like an aged apostle who
was near the beatific vision.
“Friends,” he said, and his voice was like the sound of a benediction,
“I’ve heerd all you’ve said about injestice and wrong. You hain’t said
half enough. Nobody could say half enough about how bad things be. But
you ain’t got the right remedy. Talkin’ won’t do it. We’ve got to act.
Friends, we’re workin’ towards peace, but we may hev to walk to it
through blood.”
There was a look of benevolence in his large, mild eyes as he said this.
“None of you goes down far enough,” he continued. “It’s gover’ment that
is the root of all evil, and gover’ment has got to be wiped out.”
We sat motionless around our broad table, as if held to our chairs by a
spell, forgetting even to drink our coffee, which grew cold as we
listened. There was an awful fascination about the Anarchist as he went
on to describe the millennium of anarchy, where there should be no
government, but where each man, standing as a law to himself, should
seek his own good in the good of his neighbour. The oration was long and
full of rambling eloquence, whose mixed metaphors suggested confusion of
thought.
But the Anarchist stopped. “I hev spoke the truth,” he said solemnly,
“but ’twont hev no effect. ’Twill be like the morning dew, in at one ear
and out at other.”
There was a pause. Then we all drank cold water to the success of our
respective causes, and shortly after came away.
All the way home my thoughts and my feet kept pace with those lines
concerning two reformers who strolled one day by the sea:—
“The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand.
‘If this were only swept away,’
They said, ‘it would be grand.’”