I am told that hospitals, jails, almshouses and insane-asylums are for
people who are unable to care for themselves properly. Therefore, they
are sent to these places, where men and women, specially delegated, spend
their lives looking after them. ¶ So it seems that the incompetent,
in addition to not adding to the wealth of the world, actually take
competent people from a world of usefulness to minister to them. After
a few years as a guard, the man is quite as incompetent as are the
prisoners—and more so—because the prisoner works and the guard does
nothing but guard. ¶ And for the man who works there is a chance; but
the man who doesn’t is damned, body and soul. Hospitals, prisons and
poorhouses are places where people live who can’t or won’t work. These
places do not cure our bodily or social ills—they are palliatives, all.
They do not prevent incompetence nor stop the production of the weak and
incompetent. Every year we have to pull down our hospitals and build
greater. Ben Lindsey, Luther Burbank, John Davey, Horace Fletcher, all
men essentially of one type, are working to shut off the regular annual
crop of criminals ❦ Preachers have preached their silly tales of where
we came from and where we are going to, directing the attention of men
from this world to another, and with myth, miracle, mystery—with dead
languages, dead ideas and dead formulas—have scared the world stiff.
That’s why we are sick. ¶ We have bred from the worst in the worst
possible way, under the worst conditions ❦ We have it thundered at us
from a million pulpits that the indissoluble marriage-tie was a sacred
scheme, devised by God Almighty, who also provided that women shall be
incarcerated in a kitchen. The result has been the doormat wife, with
a liar for a husband—for men lie only to inferiors and tyrants—and a
brood of legitimate candidates for hospitals, poorhouses and prisons. ¶
Christianity was absolutely supreme for a thousand years. Did she abolish
poverty, disease and crime? Not exactly—these things increased under
Christian rule. And Religion is not yet willing to step aside and give
Science a chance ❦ Revivalists get a thousand children in a room and
play on their nervous sensibilities in the name of the Gentle Christ,
and then the doctors vaccinate them with pus from diseased animals, and
we wonder why they die or go insane! The Clerics killed Ferrer because
he was working to make men free. ¶ Freedom means responsibility. And
responsibility means the making of decisions. By deciding for ourselves
we grow, and this exercise of the will in deciding what is best to do
and doing it is the only method of attaining growth known in Nature. But
woman’s decisions have been made for her by male man, and so low has she
sunk that millions of women are willing that this should continue. The
passion for freedom is Nature’s cry for growth. ¶ A judge of the Supreme
Court of the State of New York once said to me: “Divorce should be as
free as marriage, and if it were, there would be no more separations than
there are now. We give men and women the right to put their heads into a
noose, but decline to let them pull their heads out. Those whom God hath
joined together no man can put asunder. Also, the word ‘illegitimate’
should be stricken from the judicial record, forever. An act may be
illegitimate, but a child, never.” ¶ “Why don’t you talk like this in
public?” I asked. And the answer was, “If I did, I’d lose my job inside
of twenty-four hours.” “Well,” I said, “I’ll say it for you.” “If you do
and mention my name I’ll—but, say, you will not, you must not quote me.
You can agitate—I can only conform ❦ We are ruled by the archaic. You are
working to make men free, and only a free people can be a healthy, happy,
virtuous, self-reliant and competent people. Keep ’er going, but on your
life, don’t quote me. Here’s two dolodocci to renew my subscription to
_The Fra_.”
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