LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AR OQ loaa THE PERIL THE REPUBLIC, By W. a. TAYLOR. COLUMBUS, OHIO: NiTSCHKE Brothers, MDCCCLXXXVI. Copyrighted by W. A. Taylor, 1886. '* Sapiens crepidas sibi nunquam, Nee soleas fecit: Sutor tamen est sapiens, quo? Ut quamvis. tacet Hermogenes, cantor tamen, atque Optimus est modulator; est Alfenus vafer, omni Abjecto instrumento artis, clansaque taberna Sutor erat: Sapiens operis sic optimus omnis Est opifex solus, sic rex." THERE are seven classes to whom the accompanying ob- servations will neither be welcome nor profitable: 1. Dishonest and mercenary pub- lic officials. 2. The worshippers of Mammon. 3. The Aristocracy of Wealth. 4. The Corporations and Monop- olies that are absorbing the wealth of the Commonalty. 5. The spores of European mon- archisms upon the body politic, who would degenerate liberty into license, and who are sowing broadcast the 6 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. gospel of revolution and a govern- ment of blood and iron. 6. Fools and sycophants, who feed upon the teachings of demagogues. 7. Demagogues, who ply their vo- cation for the stipends they draw from all the other classes. Is it presuming too much to repose some confidence in the rest of man- kind? ©AIH^IOJUISM YEI^SUS OpPIGIAL (sOP^^UPIiION. I. PATRIOTISM is a noble attri- bute in the human soul, and is the base upon which all other graces are founded. But even Patri- otism cannot withstand the evolu- tion that accompanies the ever pro- gressive march of events. It is commendable patriotism for men to regard the American Repub- lic as invincible and invulnerable against all attacks, either from with- out or within, and its lease upon life as perpetual. We are not wont to canvass and scan the possibilities and probabili- ties of its early decay and overthrow. 10 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. We do not like to confess the fact that there is a decline in real patri- otism, and that a bastard growth — a love of the public loaves and fishes — is taking the place of the genuine article and rooting it out of the soil. To point out and discuss the very unpalatable truths involved in this declaration, is not only thanklessly unpopular, but is readily construed as being unpatriotic. But even at the unpleasant risk of being con- temned by the thoughtless, as being prompted by unpatriotic motives, we shall give some rather unpalatable views as regards the present condi- tion of our political affairs, which bespeak a complete social and politi- cal revolution and a radical revision of the political map of the continent, among the earlier decades of the PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. H twentieth century, unless a political miracle intervenes, which at present is not among the probabilities. The tendency is all in the opposite direc- tion, from the ward primary up to the administration of one of the great departments of the National Government. The prostitution of offices, from the lowest to the high- est, to the basest of purposes, self- aggrandizement and pecuniary gain, is no longer the exception. It is the rule. Because this is the case, it does not follow that the career of the country in material gain and mate- rial greatness, is at all endangered, for the present, at least. The student of history knows that the most striking epochs of the growth among the ancient commonwealths, were 12 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. marked, not only by commercial progress and rapidly accumulated wealth in a national sense, but by the debasing practices of the office holding class, who in the midst of general prosperity, made commerce of politics and battened and grew wealthy and powerful, according to the degree of their opportunities, upon the public weal, while under the garb of a pretended patriotism they loudly protested that they were conserving it. The student of history knows, also, that this condition of affairs has invariably preceded the disrup- tion of the commonwealth, the carv- ing out of new nationalities, and the erection of new dynasties. It is a deplorable thought to a patriotic American citizen, to think PARTIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 13 that a generation or two hence, men will behold not the Union of to-day, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf, but half a dozen or more rival nations, and perhaps not one of them recognizing the great cardi- nal doctrine of the present govern- ment — the right of self-government. But because it is a deplorable thing to contemplate, does that make it at all improbable or impossible? We know that before and at the time that Csesar, Pompey, and Crassus, with a becomingly modest, yet suffi- ciently ostentatious show of patriot- ism, formed the triumvirate which was to preserve the liberties and glory of Rome — and serve the pur- poses of the office holding class — that there were Roman patriots who 14 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. foresaw, and did not hesitate to pro- claim, the inevitable — that the days of the Republic were numbered and the disruption of the Empire only a matter of mathematical calculation. And we also know that they were held in disesteem, if nothing worse, first, by the honest patriots who be- lieved the Republic was immortal and invincible, and second, by the patriots who were working the rich placers of public office, and absorb- ing the substance of the millions in one direction, while the commercial monopolies they had created, were doing the same thing in another direction. And yet when the plains of Phar- salia ran red with the blood of Roman factions, and a little later, the unpopular patriots were perhaps PARTIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 15 lifted a little higher in public esteem — that is, they were regarded as prophets of evil. And yet they were not prophets. It does not require a prophet to say that if you plunge a fire-brand into a hogshead of water it will be extinguished, any more than it requires a prophet to solve a simple problem in mathematics. It is often unpopular to grasp the truth of important facts, and the man who does unflinchingly grasp them in the final crisis of a nation, gener- ally figures in subsequent history as the political prophet of his time — a distinction, by the way, to which he is not entitled. When we find nine money grub- bers to one statesman in office, at moderate salaries, growing visibly rich thereon, while living extrava- 16 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. gantly; when we see the most effi- cient political leaders rise from the rabble — not from the ranks of the poor men and the workers — but from the rabble who toil not, but prey upon honest labor — from the purlieus on the border land of out- lawry; when we see the chief offices parcelled out in caucusses by men whose under jaws have greater lon- gitude than their craniums, and whose brain you would hardly injure by removing the head from the mouth upward; when we see the denizens of the slums and perlieus of the cities — the ward workers who commit the crimes against the ballot^ visit Senators and the high- est officials for confidential confer- ences, and to discuss matters of State, and when we see, as we have PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 17 seen, a court in the National Capi- tal permit the trial of one set of thieves to drag through a year to the end that another set of thieves might bag fortunes under the sham title of attorney's fees, while still other sets of official thieves, under cover of the rattle of the legal ma- chinery, were plundering the Treas- ury from a dozen different direc- tions, the conclusion is irresistibly forced, that the end is not far off. Although Prometheus fed innu- merable hordes of vultures from his constantly renewed vitals, the feast did not last forever. So also the vitals of the Republic will cease to renew themselves, although at pres- ent they furnish a goodly feast for the official vultures, and the long retinue of political vermin who eu- 2 18 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. able them to fly and keep on the wing. The unselfish Roman patriot, as he saw, either actually, or by logical reasoning, the Republic transformed into the Empire, and the Empire dissolve into fragments, no doubt honestly believed that he beheld the world's total and final political eclipse. And yet is there a historian or a publicist who is bold enough to say that the world is better off to-day because the Republic of Rome once existed? That mankind is better or worse because the Csesarian dynasty was stamped out and a corrupt em- pire became a number of nations? Would the political and social conditions of to-day be different, either for better or for worse, had Caesar, and not Pompey, been de- PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 19 feated on the banks of the Enipeus and stabbed to death on the sands of Egypt? Had Marc Antony and young Brutus, rather than Juba and Petreius, slain each other for patri- otic love and soldierly protection, at the bolted gates of Zama? Did the triumph of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo profit mankind? And had Napoleon won the day instead, would any of us be better or worse off? The most of us doubt the influence of this proximate event upon the present generation, while survivors of the tragic day are still among us — living witnesses of an event that made and unmade the political map of Europe. Brilliant writers, it is true, have speculated upon the won- derful train of events that would 20 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. have followed, had not the eagle of the Corsican failed him at that su- preme moment. Yet neither tlie pro- foundest statesman, nor the ablest publicist, has told us the good or the evil that followed the victory of the Allies on that day, which makes a purple page in the annals of Belgium. The remoter days of Rome seem to have lost even the influence that experience is supposed to exert, and we gaze complacently at the hollow compact of the contemporaneous triumvirate, altogether too patriotic, or too blind, to see the end of the problem that must soon solve itself — a triumvirate in which the rapidly degenerating office holding class rep- resent Csesar, the monopolies Cras- sus, and the brainless shoddv aris- tocracy Pompey. PATRIOTISM VS. OFFICIAL CORRUPTION. 21 It would indeed be curious to speculate on what the men of ten centuries hence will think, and what estimate they will place upon the perished Republic, as they seek to apply our somewhat uncertain and misty history to the current politics of the dozen or more nationalities that will then be embraced within our present territorial limits. But will that day ever come in the history of the Western Hemi- sphere ? That is a matter for further consideration. ©HE I^BAL ©HE ©f^EiPBNDBD ISSUB. II SUPERFICIAL statesmen and thinkers lay the flattering unc- tion to their souls that the only real danger that threatened the life of the Republic and the perpetuity of the Union, was the so-called doctrine of State Rights, and that that doc- trine was wholly abrogated and wiped out by the result of the war of the Rebellion. This is a beautiful theory to con- template, but it will not bear analy- sis and inspection. The truth of the matter is, the doctrine of State Rights was not involved in the late 26 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. civil war, other than incidentally. It was not a direct issue. Neither section of the country was sincere as to the true object of the war, prior to President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; and even afterward, up to Gen. Lee's surrender, the object was not frankly proclaimed by the friends of the Union. Looking at the subject dispassion- ately to-day, but little blame is to be bestowed because of the conceal- ment of the real purpose of the war by the National Government. By diplomatically pretending that one question was in issue, all com- plications were kept out of the real one, and it was successfully and sat- isfactorily settled. What was the real, and what was the assumed, question at issue in THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 27 the late civil war? The real issue, as regards the North, which repre- sented the whole government, was the extinction of human slavery. The progress and civilization of the age demanded its extinction, without regard to the form of political gov- ernment anywhere in Christendom. Chattel slavery was as repugnant to the most absolute monarchy, as to the Abolitionists of the Northern States. The real issue, so far as the South was concerned, was both the perpetuation and extension of chat- tel slavery. Had the Confederacy triumphed, it would not have been content with territorial and political independence. The conquest of the North and the extension of slavery would have been the logical sequence of the war. 28 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. But did the South frankly admit and proclaim that their real object was the perpetuation and extension of slavery? No. It was not politic to do so. They justified the act of secession of the. several States by falsely assuming that it was merely the vindication of State Rights, in the exercise of which any State might secede when dissatisfied with, or menaced by the central govern- ment. By so doing alone could they justify themselves in the eyes of civilized nations, or hope for sympathy and recognition. Yet every secession statesman knew that the pretended issue was a false one. Did the North frankly admit and declare that the real issue was the abolition of slavery? No. It was not politic to do so. Nine-tenths THE KEAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 29 of the men of the North of a mili- tary age, believed in the constitu- tional right of the people of the South to hold human beings as chat- tels, and so great was their reverence for these conceded rights, that it would have been impossible to have recruited armies upon the naked issue of depriving the South of their ''constitutional rights." And yet the statesmen and the captains of the North knew that the real issue was not to extirpate the doctrine of State Rights, but slavery. The rec- ognition of the issue was gradual, and the reprimands administered to Gens. Fremont, Hunter, and others, early in the contest, look grotesque when read in the light of President Lincoln's memorable proclamation, in which the true 30 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. issue of the war was discernible. Some of the ablest and most dis- tinguished officers of the North in the war were men who believed in State Rights and hated slavery; men who went into the war fully under- standing the issue, and came out of it with their faith in State Rights unshaken, and they still retain it. Gen. Butler is a believer in State Rights to-day as he always was. Gen. Grant died a believer in the doctrine, as does Sheridan and did Hancock. Not the so-called doc- trine of State Rights which declared the right of secession, but the doc- trine of the independence and equal- ity of the States in the federal com- pact. This anomaly will arrest the at- tention of the future historian who THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE, 31 deals intelligently with the great civil war, in which he will find the South pretending to an issue of State Sovereignty for the purpose of en- listing the civilized world in the cause of slavery, while the North pretended to make war against State Sovereignty, as a foil to the real purpose, and to overcome the con- stitutional scruples of their citizens in the great work of overthrowing human slavery. We do not believe that the outcome would have been as beneficent and happy, had the real issue been made in the begin- ning. The " war necessity " solved a problem over which statesmen would have wrangled resultlessly for years, as they had been wrangling under cover of a system of false pretenses from 1820 down to 1860. 32 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. The men who took part in the war remember the bitter and acrimoni- ous denunciations that were hurled at Hinton Rowan Helper, who pro- mulgated the " Impending Crisis," and the declaration of an '' irrepres- sible conflict" between freedom and slavery, by Abraham Lincoln. The latter was made in a local campaign, and its true significance was hardly appreciated either by the political friends or enemies of Mr. Lincoln at the time. But in 1860, the "ir- repressible conflict" doctrine was given national prominence, and even with the fatal split in the Democratic party, came near losing him the Presidency. The Republican press and speakers of the day, by a mighty and combined effort, succeeded in explaining, in a plausible way, that THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 33 Mr. Lincoln meant nothing inimical to slavery in what he had said, but only treated the matter as an ab- stract question of political science. By so doing they succeeded in hold- ing a large body of conservative Whigs and Democrats who had joined the Republican party subse- quent to 1856, and carried enough of the Northern States to elect him. Mr. Lincoln, himself, was appealed to, to explain or modify what he had said, but steadily declined to do so, much to the annoyance and discom- fiture of the party managers. Both Lincoln and Helper merely drew logical conclusions from a study of existing and recognized facts. There was a crisis impending in the history of human slavery, and the conflict was irrepressible, 3 34 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. It began the moment Massachusetts could no longer steal slaves in Africa and sell them in South Carolina, Alabama,' Georgia, and other parts of the South — just as we shall see in a few years a strange revolution of local sentiment on the tariff question. A half a century or so ago, South Carolina sought to secede from the Union, on account of the tariff laws, which were unquestion- ably almost solely in the interest of the New England States. Now Massachusetts and New England are getting ready to demand free trade, while South Carolina and the Cotton States are becoming saturated with the doctrine of protective tariff — the fostering of home manufactures. Inside of a generation nearly all the cotton and print mills of New ! THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 35 England will be closed. The South will manufacture as well as raise the cotton, and this will largely draw in sympathy the major portion of sev- eral of the leading industries thither. New England not being able to com- pete with the new field, will become a commercial instead of a manufact- uring section, and then a protec- tive tariff will become burdensome to it. Inside of a century the conditions will be entirely reversed, and the cradle of '' protection " will become the abiding place of free trade, and the tariff question, in spite of the wisest endeavors of real or assumed statesmen, will be a radically sec- tional one, and we will see the doc- trine of State Rights assert itself in a new quarter — a real issue of State 36 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. Sovereignty — perhaps in several sections at the same time, under new conditions, and under circum- stances that will make the dismem- berment of the Union inevitable, if, indeed, it is not acquiesced in by the powerful and controlling sections. Territorial limits do not usually determine the extent of a nation- ality. But even if they did, we have territory enough for a dozen more powerful nationalities than either of the great European powers, with Canada on one hand and Mexico on the other to divide into provinces and dependencies. We have only been growing people on the continent so far — we will begin to grow nations after while. The rule is, that military nations, or nations governed by military men THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 37 and ideas, extend their boundaries, annex adjacent territory, and acquire dependencies. But this country is an exception. While we are excel- lent fighters we are not a military people. And yet we have acquired, partly by conquest, but more largely by purchase, an extent of territory equal to all habitable Europe, in addition to the vast area of the original thirteen States and their territorial appurtenances. As long as our population — in- creasing as rapidly as it does — could spread itself over this vast domain, reaping the benefits of a single con- stitutional form of government, with plenty of elbow room for everybody in all sections, the nation naturally cohered, as there was no impelling cause toward several separate nation- 38 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. alities, save in the instance of civil war referred to. But when we begin to crowd upon one another, as we are now begin- ning to do — when great commercial, political, and social interests begin to grow up in one section, and an- tagonistic interests grow as strongly in another; when the ambitious pol- iticians get a real rabble behind them; when the office holding class have enough retainers and depend- ents in their favor to turn the scale of the ballot-box, and when this office holding class and its following begin to break into factions, and there are not rooms enough in one house to accommodate all the lodgers, then comes the supreme peril of the Republic as a political fabric, and the Union as a national autonomy. THE REAL AND PRETENDED ISSUE. 39 It is not in the nature of alarmism to say that we are approaching that condition of affairs very rapidly at this time. Bl^AIN AS A BAP^ SlNISfPBP^. III. THERE are certain things that every observant person must have noticed, which show that the tide is setting strongly against a Democratic-Republican government. Ninety per cent, of our people measure men by two standards, im- plied in these questions: 1st, Is he wealthy? 2d, Is he a successful politician? An affirmative answer entitles him to rank among the nobility; a negative answer consigns him to the lower rank. It does not matter what mere out- ward form of government a nation 44 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. may have, it is simply a debased form of monarchy, where wealth is the chief claim of distinction. Men's obituaries are long or short according to the length of their rent rolls, their stock accounts, and their bank balances. A man who has robbed his employes during a life time, and sent men, women, and children to premature graves by means of under-pay and over-work, figures in the obituary columns of the publications, as one of the dis- tinguished men of the age and country — provided he leaves a few million dollars, as a monument to his heartless robberies, behind him. It is not the wealthy alone that pay tribute to wealth. The middled classes and the most abjectly poor do the same thing. They look with BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 45 pity or contempt upon men of brain, who struggle through life and die amid impoverished surroundings, trying to improve mankind, and teach the doctrine that the wealth of the intellect is greater than the wealth of the pocket. Such men are looked upon as little better than lunatics. They are kicked out of '' society," not because they are not respectable; not because they are not talented and cultured; but simply because they are not wealthy. The inquisition of " soci- ety" extends no further than the candidate's bank account. If that is satisfactory, the "permit" is is- sued without further enquiry. If it is unsatisfactory, the case is dis- missed and the candidate sent hence without day. 46 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. Men of wealth, and successful in- triguing politicians, whose success gives them control, if not actual possession, of vast sums of money and great material interests, destitute of brain, but possessed of a good share of cunning and shrewdness, are the rulers of this country, and are as absolute monarch s as may be found in Christendom. If you place a pint of water in a basin and drop a sponge into it, every particle of moisture is quickly absorbed. But if you should place a piece of granite in it, not a drop of the water is withdrawn from the use of the creatures of nature. The moneyed aristocracy repre- sents the sponge. It speedily ab- sorbs all the comforts of life in a nation, giving luxury to a limited BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 47 class, and want and a bitter struggle to the vast majority. Brain repre- sents granite. Its increase or recog- nition does not decrease men's op- portunities, but on the contrary spreads them over a greater surface. It is a pretty custom in our schools to honor the memories of really great men — who lived one hundred or five hundred years ago. But the application is defective. A Gold- smith or a Wilberforce is given as the ancient example — a Gould or a Vanderbilt as the modern subject for study. The rising generation should be taught that no liberal government ever survived the per- manent establishment of a moneyed aristocracy. Its survival would be an impossibility. And yet' 99 per cent, of all the directed and con- 48 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. eentrated effort of the country, and 95 per cent, of all the vital legisla- tion, State and National, is toward the building up of a wealthy, and necessarily governing class. This is not a very encouraging view of the situation, but it must be recognized sooner or later. We had as well recognize it now, as to have our children and grandchildren con- temning our lack of foresight and logical powers of reasoning. Mankind, in this country, espe- cially, have a queer way of making applications. There is much prating about temperance. The unfortunate victim of alcohol, and the small retailer — as long as he is in mod- erate circumstances and active busi- ness — comes in for a vast amount of moralization, or denunciation, as BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 49 the case may be. But the force of the argument is defeated by the facts that are woven into surround- ing society — by the absolution that the wordiest temperance advocate is willing to lay upon the altar of wealth. Who are quite a number of the "pillars of society?" Men who yet carry about them the odors of the still, and who have behind them graveyards that are plethoric with the slaughtered victims of alco- hol; shrewd manipulators of whisky rings; successful engineers of cotton speculations; men who played the shark a few years ago as successful gamblers, brainless and mercenary to the last degree, but whose wealth makes them potentates in that " so- ciety" which looks with lofty and parvenue contempt upon cultivated 4 60 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. intellect in a setting of poverty. In truth, intellectual gifts are about the only stain in the estima- tion of *' society," that wealth will not efface. We could give a notable instance in which a gentleman was a few years ago forced to relinquish a high official position, because '' so- ciety" could not forgive him the possession of brains and conscience, as well as money, and accordingly failed to "recognize" him. A bar sinister in his escutcheon would have been readily gilded over by his princely fortune. Had he been a re- formed pirate or an unconvicted, and consequently wealthy, Star Route conspirator, with just enough brains to simper common places and betray his ignorance to educated men and women, the door of '' society " would BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 51 have been wide open to him. But he had brains, and that was the unpardonable sin that even wealth could not wipe out, in the estimation of the disciples of Mammon. Politics and '' society ^' run in the same groove. We see men — and plenty of them — in the United States Senate, whose chief merits are the possession of $5,000,000 or $10,000,000 or $30,000,000, a pro- found reverence for the judicious distribution of the public plunder, or an unlimited stock of ignorance of statesmanship and political econ- omy, or a marvellous talent for draw poker and vulgar display, who command greater attention, and have an immeasurably larger fol- lowing than such men as the able Senator from Vermont — for they 52 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. have their millions, while Geo. F. Edmunds has nothing but his brains. We see that prince of American statesmen, Allen G Thurman, living in honored retirement, simply be- cause he was a statesman of broad and enlightened views, and inter- posed the spear of his incontroverti- ble logic between the horde of har- pies and the political inheritance of posterity. Every aggrandized corporation in the nation unlocked its coffers and distributed corruption funds from the primaries to the polls, to keep him from thundering against them in the Nation's forum. They poured out money like water to prevent him from reaching the Presidency; and now in his green and vigorous old age, in the calm and quiet of his home, whose every BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER 53 comfort he earned with honest toil of hand and brain, they have him environed by skilled liars and slan- derers, and watched by spies and Janus-faced knaves, least, haply, some wise suggestion of his might reach the ears of the Democratic Ad- ministration, and militate against the schemes, and the schemers, who are trying to adjust themselves to a change of parties. These are but isolated instances out of hundreds that might be as pointedly advanced. If any one imagines that the Republic can long withstand the present tendency to deify wealth and trample intellect under foot, he is certainly ignorant of all the lessons of history. There is no record of any liberal govern- ment that survived the final decay 54 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. of the aristocracy of intellect. There is no record of a liberal government in which a moneyed aristocracy was the ruling factor, and there will be no such record, even on that day when ''the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll." It will, doubtless, be objected that this is a sordid view of modern and American society. But in the light of all the surrounding circumstances, politically and socially, and so closely interwoven, and with an unmistaka- ble trend, what other view shall we take, and have a proper regard for the truth and existing facts? It would be a great relief to be satis- factorily convinced that this view is a mistaken one. But unhappily it is too true to be ignored or passed over in silence by BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 55 the writer of to-day who has the boldness to grapple with the actual problems of the age. As a nation we have entered upon the sordid era, in which shrewdness and heart- less cunning are palmed off as talent, and wealth is set up as the only standard of distinction. This is the rule, and there are honorable excep- tions to it, of course, but the excep- tion is not sufficient to stay the en- croachments of the inevitable flood. We are only committing the com- mon mistake of all countries in as- suming that national wealth and national greatness are synonymous terms, and then carrying the false dogma to the extent of legislating in favor of monopoly and against pro- ductive labor, to the end that a limited number of persons shall 56 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. absorb and control all the wealth — that the hundreds shall be sovereigns and the millions shall be serfs, in fact, if not in name. The complaint that at our popular elections money, rather than ability and honesty, is the controlling and potent factor, is well-founded ; in fact, it has become the rule rather than the exception. For months a num- ber of men were on trial in the National Capital on the charge of stealing millions from the National Treasury. These millions seem to have been divided about equally be- tween the private exchequers of the thieves and the corruption coffers of the party to which they professed allegiance. In fact, the principal thief of the gang held the money bags of his BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 57 party, taking them to the treasury vaults and filling them from the public funds, defiantly and almost openly, after the robbery had been pointed out and denounced in the public press. The time was when such a revelation would have caused a popular uprising that would have driven the party and the adminis- tration from power and into igno- minious retirement. That it failed to excite even serious public con- cern, shows how rapidly the public virtue is dying out, and the inevita- bly speedy overthrow of the existing form of government. In fact, the Republic is dead the moment a majority of the ballots become a purchasable commodity. The fact that there are politicians and office seekers corrupt enough to 58 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. purchase an election, is a puny evil in comparison with the fact that money can be successfully used in the purchase of votes. As long as the people themselves are virtuous, and their ballots unpurchasable, the political institutions are safe, be the number of corrupt politicians great or small. But when a large propor- tion of them become the stipendi- aries of corrupt place seekers, and grasping moneyed aristocrats, work- ing through their hired tools in legislatures and Congress, the Re- public indeed becomes a hollow mockery and a sham. It does not follow that a man must necessarily be rich to buy his way into an office. We see, on the con- trary, men starting up from the slums, whose only characteristic is BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 59 brazen effrontery, who were never known to earn a living by honest toil, proclaiming themselves the champions of labor and economy — men whose impecuniosity had grown into a proverb, and who suddenly open a mine of wealth that enables them to hire the rabble in all the stages, from the primary to the formal ballot. Where do they get the money? One has only to watch their official course, especially if they get legisla- tive positions, to solve the mystery. They are found to be the champions of corporations and combinations which are systematically engaged in the absorption and concentration of the wealth of the country into a few hands. The men at the head of these combinations are shrewd 60 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC, enough to know that they must not be seen in the management and shaping of public affairs, least their motives be suspected. They invest their money in legislators, judges, and other public officials as a matter of business, and they make immense dividends upon the investment. Is there, then, much of a mystery about the matter, when we find a man, who could never keep his grocery accounts squared, spending $2,000 to get an office with $1,000 apparent emoluments, and growing rich by making such dispropor- tionate investments? How many have we in our own midst who are engaged in this sort of business? We submit these sug- gestions as an answer to all possible complaints. We think that the BRAIN AS A BAR SINISTER. 61 reader will agree with us that they are well founded. The apathy of the people and the constituted authorities, and the im- munities enjoyed by derelict officials, who happen to be backed by power- ful friends and combinations, ought to suggest that we have not over- drawn the picture of the condition of affairs. ©HE Signals OP ^PPf^OAGHING DaNGBI^. IV, THERE are five things that un- mistakably mark the crisis of political institutions. 1 . The decadence of public virtue. 2. The passion for wealth and os- tentation. 3. The creation of commercial and monetary monopolies under the auspices of the government. 4. When religious teachers vie with each other in feeding their dev- otees on sensations, and when public instructors teach licentiousness and depravity. 66 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. 5. When a moneyed aristocracy combine with the governing and office-holding class for a common end — the plundering of the masses for self-aggrandizement. All these are the effective minis- ters of tyranny and despotism, and all these we have, in a greater or less degree of development. 1. The decadence of public virtue. Is not the public virtue indeed in a deplorable condition ? The civil war was a gigantic blister that cured the ailment to which it was applied — extinguishing that relic of barbar- ism, slavery — but the surgeons in charge seem to have neglected to properly treat the wound which nec- essarily ensued. That blister, ap- plied for a noble and lofty purpose, brought all the bad humors of the THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 67 body politic to the surface, and the political surgeons instead of remov- ing them, let them remain and fos- tered them, as common quacks do, to augment their fees and prolong their custody of the patient. The extent of official malfeasance, from Cabinet officials down to the smallest town- ship offices, within the past fifteen years, is something appalling to contemplate. No statistician has been bold enough to tabulate them. Such a tabulation would stand as a moun- tain of accusation against the theory of self-government — just as some Generals dare not make public the list of their dead after gaining a victory. This epidemic of malver- sation would not be dangerous, if it excited either public apprehension 68 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. or public indignation. But instead of doing either, it commands secret approval while it lulls the unthink- ing portion of the public into a lethargic apathy. In the general scramble for wealth, the management of public affairs is consigned to characterless intriguers, who know only too well how to utilize the public apathy. Now and then a statesman — looking deep into futu- rity — arises and protests. And then his political friends and ene- mies, by common consent, unite and ostracise him. The counsels of the greatest statesmen and purest patri- ots of the age, Thurman, of Ohio, and Edmunds, of Vermont, have less weight with their respective parties than characterless men who do not look beyond their own im- THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 69 mediate advantage, and who follow '' politics " for the money there is in the business. Here is the beginning of the corruptions that have honey- combed the entire political fabric. Men go into office little else than paupers, and accumulate indepen- dent fortunes in a single term, thus enabling them to fasten themselves upon the public treasury, and still the public apprehension is not aroused to the point of action. Almost twenty-three centuries ago, Demosthenes, in one of his memora- ble Phillipics, depicting the deca- dence of the Athenian Democracy, said: " There must be some cause, some good reason, why the Greeks were so eager for liberty then, and now are so eager for servitude. - There was 70 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. something in the hearts of the mul- titude then, which there is not now, which overcome the wealth of Persia, and maintained the freedom of Greece, and quailed not under any battle by sea or land, the loss where- of had ruined all and thrown the Greek world into confusion. What is this? No subtlety or cleverness; simply this, that whoever took a bribe from the aspirants to power or the corruptors of Greece was univer- sally abhorred. It was a fearful thing to be convicted of bribery; the severest punishment was inflicted on the guilty, and there was no inter- cession or pardon. The favorable moments for enterprise which fort- une frequently offers to the careless against the vigilant, to them who will do nothing, against those who dis- THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 71 charge their entire duty, could not be bought from orators or generals; no more could mutual concord, nor distrust of tyrants and barbarians, nor anything of the kind. But now all such principles have been sold as in open market, and principles imported in exchange by which Greece is ruined and diseased. What are they? Envy, when a man gets a bribe; laughter, if he confesses it; hatred of those who denounce the crime — all the usual accompani- ments of corruption." These words were spoken to the tottering Republic of Athens — which falsely imagined itself invin- cible — three hundred and forty-one years before the Christian era. And now after the lapse of more than twenty-two hundred years, they may 72 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. be spoken truthfully, and almost without a modification, of the great Republic of the West. The people of Athens might have restored the public virtue, but they regarded Demosthenes as an alarmist. We all know what befell Greece. And all of us, who choose to apply the logic of events, see that our own government is following directly in her footsteps. 2. In a former chapter we pointed out the prevailing mania for money- grubbing to the exclusion of all loftier ambitions — the rapid growth, largely under government protection, of an aristocracy of wealth which has declared perpetual and remorse- less war upon the natural aristoc- racy, the aristocracy of brains. '' He is worth a million dollars," is, to-day THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 73 a higher recommendation to a man than the greatest service he can perform for mankind. A man may be a scholar, a thinker, a statesman, but if he is poor, he is spurned aside to make room for the rich ignoramus. When a man is the victim of both brains and poverty, his condition is deplorable indeed. If a man is so unfortunate as to be poor, the road to success lies in cultivating ignorance and chicanery. The latter will pass for mental ability, and each thousand dollars he adds to his wealth will hide some blemish of character. We do not submit this as advice to young men. We merely state a fact which stands to the discredit of the age. Ex-President and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant furnished a striking example 74 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. of the reign of Mammon, and the absolute despotism he exercises. It is to his credit that he came out of the war as poor as he went into it. For eight years " society," the moneyed aristocracy, either held him at arm's length or treated him as a curiosity, a sort of a rough diamond. Then for reasons that must be obvious to thoughtful men, this same "society" concluded to adopt him. How did they go about it? Each took a portion of his surplus wealth, threw it into a com- mon fund, and made a millionaire out of the impecunious General. This was only a modification of the way in which a king or an emperor ennobles a man whom he can make useful. Grant's acceptance of that gift will be the one thing that will THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER. 75 stand against him when the future historian writes the history of the riotous career of the moneyed aris- tocracy of this nation. The distinguished General and patriot had too much faith in man- kind, and was — be it said to his undying credit — too unlettered in the growing chicane of the age, to see or suspect the base deception that was practiced upon him. The same chicane and intrigue which conceived and carried out the idea of making the successful leader of our armies a member of the moneyed aristocracy, dragged him into the toils of the great bank swindler, whose gigantic crimes broke the heart and spirit of the straightforward and simple minded soldier, and sent him to his grave 76 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. years before his time. But, fortu- nately, no stain or obloquy can per- manently tarnish the glory of his name. 3. The creation of commercial and moneyed monopolies under the auspices of government. These we see in continual process of erection around us. It is the rule to clothe associated capital with privileges and immunities that no private citi- zen is permitted to enjoy. The result is that the rich confederate together to secure the advantages of an unwise policy of legislation. Great corporations created by the government, clothed with almost sovereign privileges, already defy its creator in Congress and the courts. Within a bow shot of where we write, lives in honored retirement THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 77 one of the foremost statesmen of the century in any country, who was driven out of the nation's councils, because he dared to put a curb bit in the mouths of these insolent and opulent corporations. We refer to ex-Senator Allen G. Thurman — and up among the mountains of Vermont the same corporations are laying the ropes to ensnare, and render hors de combat, his great and worthy co- adjutor, Senator Geo. F. Edmunds. These insolent creatures of a mis- taken government will take care that no real statesman shall control the policy of the people's Congress. 4. A high order of religious sen- timent — not the mere outward pro- fession of religion — is essential to the stability of any form of govern- ment. This has been the history 78 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. of the world in Pagan, Jewish, Mus- selman, and Christian countries, alike. Grotesque religious sensa- tions invariably precede religious zealots and religious excesses, and with the latter come revolutions that go to the bottom of the whole fabric. We have now reached the sensational period, and the mountebank is in demand. The sensational preacher is the order of the day, and his impious balderdash commands a high premium. One society and one community vie with another to get possession of the greatest sensa- tionalist. The wheel has moved around, and the religious charla- tanry of the third and fourth centu- ries begins to manifest itself toward the close of the nineteenth. It varies but little from its pagan pro- THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER 79 totype of three thousand years ago, or its more recent parallel of the Middle Ages. It conforms itself to its surroundings, but it is the out- growth of the same principle. It manifests itself in all civilized com- munities, but in this country more fully than in any other. The great public instructor in this country to-day is the press. The schools and the pulpit, which were, in their day, the public instructors, are now only auxiliaries to the press. And the press is largely licentious; that is to say, a large proportion of the press is licentious. It depraves and debauches where it should ennoble and elevate. It is licentious because it is mercenary. The publisher counts his own gains, not the gains of mankind at large. 80 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. Debased and depraved publications find a ready market. The higher order of thought goes begging, with here and there a patron and a friend. This has reference to newspaper publications. The temptation is all in the direc- tion of the depraved and the de- bauching. The mountains of dis- couragement are placed in the pathway of the man who under- takes to elevate mankind by en- nobling journalism. The merchant prefers to advertise and pour his money into the coffers of the news- paper thaf fills its columns with the reeking filth of the slums, rather than the newspaper which he is willing his wife and children should read. The result is that the public instructor — the press — bitten by THE SIGNALS OF APPROACHING DANGER, g] the cankerworm of mercenary gain, becomes debauched, and men won- der that crime and social corruption increase. 5. There is a natural affinity be- tween the moneyed aristocracy and the office-holding class. They be- come mutually helpful to each other, and each succeeding political cam- paign sees them in closer alliance. Neither of them want a change — the office-holders because the change deprives them of power and emolu- ments — the aristocracy because the change might deprive them of priv- ileges and immunities already held. All attempts to reform the public service is met with such a violence of opposition, and in quarters so unexpected at times, as to give force to the idea that the greatest crime 82 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. a man can commit in public office is to be honest and efficient, and refuse to lend himself and his official power and influence to the plunder of the public treasury and the enrichment of party favorites. I70NBSIPY AN INHEI^ENIP ^l^INGIPIiB, V. THESE views of the tendency of the times are not new, even if they should strike a reader, now and then, as startling. We have endeavored to state each point in plain, blunt Anglo-Saxon, for the very immensity of the subject itself makes all rhetorical flourishes and ornamentation unnecessary. Shortly before his death, the late Judge Jeremiah S. Black, of Pennsylvania, gave to the public a paper which well might challenge the attention of the most unthinking. In refer- 86 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. ring to the prevailing shortcomings of the office-holding class, and men in positions of public trust and responsibility, Judge Black observes: '^ I aver that a man or a corpora- tion, appointed to do a public duty, must perform it with an eye single to the public interest. If he perverts his authority to purposes of private gain, he is guilty of corruption, and all who aid and abet him are his accomplices in crime. He defiles himself if he mingles his own busi- ness with that intrusted to him by the Government, and uses one to promote the other. ''I am able to maintain that all the corruption and misgovernment with which the earth is cursed, grows out of the fatal proclivity of public servants to make a business of their HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 87 duty. Recall the worst cases that have occurred in our history, and see if every one of them does not resolve itself into that. Tweed and his associates in New York, the Phila- delphia Rings, the carpet-bag thieves, the Star Route conspirators, all went into business for themselves while pretending to be engaged in the pub- lic service. Oakes Ames distributed the stock of the Credit Mobilier where he thought it would do the most good to himself and others with whom he was connected, and that was business in him who gave and in those who took his bribes." This is but a simple statement of facts that must be patent to the least thinking of men, and a state- ment that carries with it all the force of a statesman's warning. 88 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. If the spirit which he points out were on the decline; if it were dead and extinct; if the force of public opinion were concentrated against it, we might look at the matter with- out apprehension, and with reason- able faith in the future. But so far from being on the decline, its growth is perceptible and- on the increase. To plunder the whole body of the people by means of official chicanery is not only the fashion, but has become a regular profession. It is a profession that has defend- ers among men outside the official class, and of recognized honesty and respectability. Suppose we give a very recent case in point. A short time ago it was discovered that a number of HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 89 clerks in the financial department of the government of the city of New York were engaged in stealing by means of selling to confederates outside, the coupons of bonds which had been paid on presentation. It was the duty of these clerks to cancel the coupons, but instead of doing so, large amounts of them were presented for redemption a second time in the mode indicated. The Commissioners of Accounts investigated and reported on this systematic plan of public robbery and peculation. Some of their con- clusions were remarkable, and no doubt unconsciously to themselves, they became the apologists of the thieves. Take for instance the following specimen of their logic: 90 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. '' It is certain," they say, ''that no system or organization can succeed without the aid of honest and capable agents and clerks, and it cannot be supposed that they can be had unless reasonable salaries are paid. The business man, as a rule, pays for honesty, talent, and experience, and gets it. It cannot fairly be consid- ered that $1,100, $1,250, or $1,300 a year is reasonable salary for a clerk who has the responsibility of hand- ling and accounting for millions of dollars a year." We are in favor of paying public officials fair and reasonable salaries for the services they perform for the public, the same as we are in favor of men receiving fair wages for the services they perform for private citizens. But we do not believe HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 91 in this system of thieves' logic. You cannot make a man honest by paying him a price for his hon- esty. The very acceptance of it makes him a bribe taker and neces- sarily dishonest. An honest man will handle a million dollars just as honestly as he will ten thousand, and never think about his salary being too small to keep him within the line of honesty. A man's responsibility in dollars and cents is no criterion in estab- lishing the value of his services, for the public official who handles a million dollars in a year may have less actual manual and mental labor to perform than the man who han- dles only one-tenth of that sum, or, possibly, never touches a dollar of the public funds. 92 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. If he is a dishonest man, his salary is too small for him, it matters not how large it may be. Every man who abuses a public or private trust, and robs the govern- ment or his employer, excuses him- self by pleading inadequacy of sal- ary. " If I had received double the salary, there would have been no necessity for me turning thief," he says in extenuation of his crime, and the public is disposed to accept this as a palliation, if not a conclusive defense. The man who is not honest on a salary of $1,200 a year will not be honest on a salary of $2,400 a year. This may be set down as an immu- table fact. The public official, as well as the private offender, is dis- honest: 1. Because he has the in- HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 93 clination. 2. Because he has the opportunity. Wherever and when- ever the first exists, the second will be taken advantage of as soon as it presents itself. As Judge Black so tersely says, all the corruptions of government arise from the fact that public ser- vants make a business of their duty. They proceed upon the assumption that they owe everything to them- selves and nothing to the public — that public office is simply a means and an opportunity to augment their private fortunes. Even in the most profligate gov- ernments the wealthy class suffer comparatively little from the depre- dations of dishonest officials. The stolen money is all paid by the middle classes and the day laborers. 94 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. If the stealings increase the burdens of public taxation, the wealthy sim- ply increase the tribute which the masses are forced to pay them, and thus make up the deficit without any impairment of their own capi- tal. On the contrary they seize upon it as a pretext for adding to their own fortunes. If the landlord finds that his taxes increase ^ve dollars, he makes it a pretext to collect ten dollars additional rent, and profits thereby. It is the laboring class, therefore, who are more deeply interested in official honesty than any other, for it is an undisputed historical fact, that a moneyed aristocracy and offi- cial and political corruption and dis- honesty fiourish contemporaneously. And being thus interested, the labor- HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 95 ing and producing masses should see that honest men are chosen to fill the offices. The man who sells his vote at any price, is mistaken when he thinks he gets anything for it. The bribe giver and his associ- ates rob the bribe taker over and over again by indirect means — rob him once to enrich the dishonest public official and once to enrich the wealthy class, who become the toll gatherers between the masses who pay, and the men who despoil the treasury — and the toll gatherers are sure to charge a heavy commis- sion. Men who judge the world by their immediate surroundings, sel- dom make a mistake in the aggregate estimate. We must begin the pro- cess of reasoning at home, and 96 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. reason outward, to arrive at the exact truth. We may have smaller specimens here than are to be found in other localities, but they all belong to the same genus. We have seen men in our midst running for office, or anxiously seek- ing the opportunity to run for office, whose sole aim and object is to make public duty a private business, a scheme to make money without labor. They have no other capacity — no other qualification — and the public cannot be ignorant that such is the case, even in advance of their getting office. We might go on and particularize, if it were necessary, and point out aspirants who are known to be public thieves and plunderers of the treasury; and the managers of the leading political HONESTY AN INHERENT PRINCIPLE. 97 parties commit the astounding folly of permitting them to contaminate these parties by their candidacy. What we see on a small scale around us is going on on a larger scale all the way up to the highest posi- tions under the government — men holding public office for purposes of private gain, and when they bungle in their stealing, or quarrel over their thefts, and are found out, an apathetic public is ready to say of him who has been detected: '' Well, he was a bright, shrewd fel- low, and his salary was so small that it is no wonder he stole." It is upon such sickly sentimen- tality as this that public rapine feeds, and is daily crowding honesty and ability into the background to give place to dishonest shrewdness 98 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. and cunning. This is one among the gravest perils that threaten our political institutions and national existence. Can it be averted? That is a question that the public itself must answer by a speedy and radical change of sentiment. LiABor^ iins Own Cnslaybi^. VL THE issue — or rather the sup- posed issue — between capital and labor, is by no means one of the unimportant perils which threatens our institutions, and presages a rev- olutionary upheaval, the end of which no one can reasonably predict. By a false system of government, capital no longer stands in its true relation to the body politic. Labor has forged its own chains, by casting an almost solid ballot for this false and pernicious system, under the delusion that it was pro- 102 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. tecting itself. The annals of all time and all nations show that the masses have been the willing vic- tims of the same delusion, and have been entrapped in the same snare, modified to suit the time and the occasion. We have had a surfeit of " pro- tection of American industries " for the promotion of the general welfare. That is the theory — the practical result was the promotion of million- aires, and the aggregation of a con- trolling amount of the wealth and capital in the hands of a limited class, who can meet in the great Hall of Cooper Institute, close the doors in executive session, and with our 60,000,000 of people excluded, practically decide what they shall wear and how much they shall eat. LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 103 Our diversified industries are di- versified in name and appearance only. Capital and investment are no longer diversified, in the broad and catholic sense of wide and inde- pendent division, thanks to a mis- named system of protection, the tendency of which was toward mo- nopoly, and concentration of the most of the actual capital in the hands of a few, and the creation of a system of corporations, each of which exercises a greater power than four-fifths of the European and Asiatic potentates. In the name of "industry" we have created baronies, who coin the blood of their serfs into gold, and these same serfs have made it a life business to give their oppressors the power — the power of vast wealth 104 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. and confederated capital — to put them upon the rack of starvation. The men who pointed out the danger of fostering and promoting monop- oly and the confederation of capital, under the flimsy cloak of protection, have been considered the enemies of the public and of the individual, by the very men who now alternate between hopeless strikes against the iron hearted giants they helped to create through the ballot box, and working for enough to keep the wolf of starvation from the door. Strikes and distress among the laborers were unknown until the era of concentrated and confederated capital. When our industries were really diversified, when a single em- ployer's payroll held a hundred, or two or three hundred names at most. LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 105 there was neither the inducement nor the opportunity to oppress the laborer, or deny him a fair share of the profits of his labor, for then one man could not lift his finger and stop the bread of tens of thousands, and compel his dependents to choose between his selfish terms and the uncertain dole of charity. It is true, that in those days there was no false show of prosperity ; we did not see the towers and turrets of millionaires' palaces piercing the sky, and casting their shadows on the bare and unfurnished hovels of the laboring man; we did not see men accumulate $10,000,000 in a decade, and $100,000,000 in a score of years, but neither did we see battalions of paupers on every hand, and ill-fed and ill-paid working men 106 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. making vain and hopeless battle against the scale-armored giant who drank their blood. For every millionaire who has grown up under the piracy of pro- tection promoted by law, 10,000 working men and their families have been brought to the borders of pau- perdom. There is but one real issue between capital and labor: the em- ployers are too few and the employes too many; that is to say, there are too many employes in proportion to the number of employers. The greater the number of men that an individual or a great corporation employs, the less the wages and the more bitter the struggle to keep them on the living side of the line of hunger and starvation, want and misery. LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 107 We appeal to intelligent working men to say whether this is not their experience. When their employer had $100,000 invested, and employed 100 operatives, their wages were fair and strikes were unknown. When he put his profits and his credit into the business, and made his invest- ment $500,000, and 1,000 men were employed, wages were reduced 15 per cent., and trouble and dissension ensued. By and by he put a million into his business, and the roll of his emplo^^es was lengthened out into thousands, till the whole community was dependent upon him, and the reduction was raised to 25 per cent. Then followed strikes, disastrous only to the strikers. Having be- come a millionaire, he confederates with other millionaires, and vast 108 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. populations are dependent upon a syndicate that acts like a single individual, and strikes are forced on full stocks, to serve as a convenient plea for robbing the consumer, after having first robbed the operative. If the millionaire had not been fostered by pernicious and specious legislation in the first place, the syndicate could not have been formed, under which $10,000,000 or $20,000,000 of capital, confederated and acting in concert, can by a single stroke of the pen deprive 25,000 or 50,000 people of the means of sup- port, and whose vast number gives them no choice but between ulti- mate starvation or the eventual acceptance of the syndicate's terms. With this same $10,000,000 or $20,000,000 in 100 or 200 separate LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. 109 investments, there could have been no confederation, no oppression, and labor would have had a just propor- tion of its earnings. The problem of labor and capital can only be solved by disintegrating the confederated capital of the nation, and multiplying employers who will be content with moderate fortunes, and are willing to ''live and let live." But is any one fool- ish enough to think that this is an easy task? The evil was accom- plished in a few years of sinister and ill-advised legislation. The pro- cess of eradication will be tedious, if, indeed, it is practicable. Knights of Labor organizations and Workingmen's Unions may re- tard the march of the giant, but they cannot stop it, unless the gov- 110 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. ernment sails upon a new tack, and the policy of seggregating capital — expelling it from the few arteries and turning it into all the network of veins in the body politic, is adopted. The destruction of the property of the millionaires and syndicates is worse than criminal folly. It will only aggravate and intensify the evil. It is a species of revolution that only sinks the revolutionists lower in the scale of misery and dependence. They must intelligently appeal to the legislative power for relief — not by making unconsidered demands, but by choosing as their national legislators, men who do not believe that statesmanship consists in the creation of millionaires on one hand and paupers on the other. LABOR ITS OWN ENSLAVER. m The process will be slow, but it is not impossible, if the people will ostracise '' business " from politics, and brain demagogues with their contempt. If the current once sets that way, statesmen will be found to hold the helm, and devise legislative measures that will break up and redistribute the vast aggregations of capital without injury to a single vested right. But will the current turn? SPBGUliAiIiIONS AS mo Haipional Boundap^ies. VII. AND yet there is another peril that threatens, which may well be pointed out in conclusion. Even among native Americans, and those of our adopted citizens who have perfectly assimilated our institutions, there is gradually and almost imper- ceptibly growing up feelings, ideas, and sentiments of separate national- ities, which one only begins to realize when he studies the people in all sections of our vast domain, so vast that statists may well marvel how the chord of common sympathy and 116 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. national identity can be stretched so far without snapping. To say that these slowly but surely growing ideas and sentiments are the offspring of unpatriotic ancestry would be absurd, for where shall we locate the standard of patriotism, and which sentiment shall we declare comes up to the standard? These varied ideas are not disloyalty to the genius of the Republic, for as yet they all have a common shrine of homage and devotion. They are but the inevitable growth that comes with a rapidly multiplying popula- tion, and the clash of thought, and education, and the indefinable in- fluences of topographical causes which prescribe and fix certain lim- its within which homogeneity, and, if you please, nationality, national NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 117 ideas, and national traits will be confined, and where they will be- come clearly defined with the lapse of time. The history of Europe is going to be the history of America, in this respect, with such important modi- fications as go with the fact that America has been populated, and political ideas and theories planted and nurtured, by a people wholly civilized from colonial and national infancy, and not by nomads and semi-barbarous communities with whom the process of political and social evolution were both slow and tortuous. All the vital European social and political ideas are sown in our soil; some of them are growing, modified by soil and climate, and some are 118 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. germinating. Does any one suppose they are going to produce a homo- geneous crop, it matters not how much of an improvement the new growth may be upon the original seed? The Roundhead and the Cav- alier, the Puritan and the scoffer of Colonial days, live in the States of the Union, and although the character of their antagonism may be changed, it is none the less existent. And, then, within a recent period we have had the most turbulent ideas of Europe — the same ideas that have kept the Old World's nations in an uproar for centuries — dumped upon our shores. Their representatives do not even seek citizenship, and their invective is as NAlIONAL BOtJNDARIES. HQ fierce against the Republic as against the despotisms from which they were shipped to this country by wise statesmen who used the grasping barons of the Republic as pack mules to carry them beyond their borders, and with them subdue the restive workingmen of this coun- try. By the natural laws of gravitation all this class are being drawn to one of the natural geographical divisions of the country, and the historian of future ages will have an interest- ing tale to tell of them. The pro- fessed haters of all forms of govern- ment now, they and their progeny, and the kindred element they will draw after them, will become potent factors in the creation of a nation- ality in the very heart of the 120 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. Republic, and we are willing to go down to posterity as predicting, that the historian of the 24th century, at the farthest, will record of them that which will eclipse the story of Rome, and put to shame the proudest achievements of a Csesar or an Antony. Draw a line from the extreme eastern shore of Lake Ontario to the crest of the Alleghenies, and thence south to the Kanawha region, thence to the Ohio, down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and up the Mississippi to the western shore of Lake Supe- rior, and thence east to the place of beginning, and you have the approximate boundaries of this future home of Mars. The mighty industries that now flourish within its limits will slowly disappear, and NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 121 the science of war, and the politics of ancient and predatory Rome will take their places. Conquests for territorial aggrandizement and con- quests for plunder among its wealthy neighbors will afford ample employ- ment for its people. Its mighty inland sea coast will compensate it for any lack of ocean outlets, and as it will have no com- merce to depend on, it will not be harrassed by its neighbor's ships, nor need it go to sea for argosies, when so many neighboring States and cities may be conveniently plun- dered of the flotsam and jetsam they pick up. And what of the other national divisions that sleep in the womb of the future? All the North Atlantic Coast, 122 THE PERIL OP THE REPUBLIC. down to and including the Chesa- peake Bay, will likely cling together, although the chord of sympathy is not as yet so very strong between Maryland and Virginia and their Northern neighbors. But the muta- tions of half a century may work a wonderful change. From the Chesapeake down to the mouth of the Mississippi is a com- munity of feeling which points to a nationality, with its frontier upon the Mississippi and the Ohio. The great Southwest, with Galves- ton Bay as its entrepot, will form another nationality, with which the Great West beyond the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and up to and beyond the Canadian border, will naturally go at first. Later on it may be bisected, east and west, at NATIONAL BOUNDARIES. 123 St. Louis, and the Northern half set up as the military rival of her sister across the Father of Waters, some- times in alliance and sometimes at sword's points, with intervals of peace, when peace is profitable to either or both. When, or even before, this division takes place, the empire of the Southwest will absorb all Northern Mexico, and contest for the maritime and naval supremacy of the Pacific Ocean as well as the Gulf and the Atlantic. This will become the great maritime, com- mercial, manufacturing, and agri- cultural empire of the continent. West of the Rocky Mountains will be the empire of the Pacific, with vast possibilities and wonderful opportunities for commerce, stand- ing, as it will, as the toll-gate between 124 THE PERIL OF THE REPUBLIC. the Occident and all its cis-Atlantic and trans- Atlantic contemporaries. These may be regarded as mere speculations concerning possibilities, and we have no desire to force their adoption upon any one. The re- cording finger of Time can alone verify them or show their baseless- ness.