And he began to speak boldly in the Synagogue: whom when AQUILA and
PRLscill-A had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the
way of God more perfectly.-Mºrs, 18th chapter, 26th Verse.
Reformation : Revolution,
WHICH2
O R,
bºund the political solves
A SPEECH DELIVERED IN
coop ER IN sºr ITU T. E.
OCTOBER 17, 1873,
AND THROUGHOUT AMERICA
VICTORIA C. WOOD HULL.
TO AN AUDIENCE OF 4,000 PEOPLE,
Filling to its utmost capacity the Hall, to which hundreds found
it impossible to gain admission.
–-
Alºu ºuth :
WOODHULL & C LAF LIN.
1873.

|-

VICTORIA wooDHULL-MARTIN.


9- 3. * - / 73 2.
P.S. Thie was written by me at this time in going over this booklet and in
adding to the Collection the other booklet of hers that once belonged to
James B. Elliott and also the other booklet that once belonged to James B.
Elliott , byt Frances Wright . And then, too, a leaflet or two that once
belonged to Elliott that was Voltairine de Clayre's - - These three woman
--- public speakers and all writéreſſ in their day make a trio .
- - -
-
- --- --- - ---
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - -
- -
-
--
- --
-----' - -
- - -
-- -- --- -
- -
- - - - ------- --- --------- * ---



T --
Victoria C. Woodhull, in Detroit , in 1879.
See- " Woodhull and Clafbin's Weekly, - Vol. VI. No 26.- Whole No. 156.
1875- November 29.4%h. to be found in the John R. Commons Cobl.
in Madison. Wisconsic.
" In the West."
Our appearance in the staid and very respectable city of Detroit "etc.
In this report of her speaking in Detroit November 14, 1875, in
Music Hall , she tells of the difficulty encountered after renting the
hall to keep it . She tells abou the Mayor and the Police.
Her subject was "Reformation or Revolution—which?" l
The tecture was reported in the " Daily Union." in the Journal od
wommerce, and in the Detroit Evening News, of Nov. 15, 1875-
It is a surmise but it isspossible that this booklet was bought at that
meeting by Jo Labadie . This booklet was Jo's at all events - And was among
those sent by him to the Collection -being one of the furst of the things
given, in 1912- when the Collection first came - I found it among the
things when I first came to work in the collection , in 1924.
Cºlº


* of Sº * -ºº
And he began to speak boldly in the Synagogue: whom when AQUILA and
PRIscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the
way of God more perfectly.—ACTS, 18th Chapter, 26th Verse.
Reformation : Revolution,
WHICH2
O R,
BEHIND THE POLITICAL SCENES,
A SPEECH DELIVERED IN
COO E E R INSTITU TIE
OCTOBER 17, 1873,
AND THROUGHOUT AMERICA.
VICTORIA C. WOODHULL,
TO AN AUDIENCE OF 4,000 PEOPLE,
Filling to its utmost capacity the Hall, to which hundreds found
it impossible to gain admission.
--
*iºnſ ºurk:
WOODHULL & CLAF LIN.
1873.







PROSPECTU.S.
Woodhull & CLArlin's Weekly.
[The only Paper in the World conducted, absolutely, upon the
Principles ºf a Free Press.]
It advocates a new government in which the peoqle will be
their own legislators, and the officials the executors of their will.
It advocates, as parts of the new government-
1. A new political system in which all persons of adult age
will participate.
2. A new land system in which every individual will be en-
titled to the free use of a proper proportion of the land.
3. A new industrial system, in which each individual will
remain possessed of all his or her productions.
4. A new commercial system in which “cost,” instead of
“demand and supply,” will determine the price of everything
and abolish the system of profit-making.
5. A new financial system, in which the government will be
the source, custodian and transmitter of all money, and in which
usury will have no place.
6. A new sexual system, in which mutual consent, entirely
free from money or any inducement other than love, shall be the
governing law, individuals being left to make their own regula-
tions; and in which society, when the individual shall fail, shall
be responsible for the proper rearing of children,
7. A new educational system, in which all children born shall
have the same advantages of physical, industrial, mental and
moral culture, and thus be equally prepared at maturity to enter
upon active, responsible and useful lives.
All of which will constitute the various parts of a new social
order, in which all the human rights of the individual will be
associated to form the harmonious organization of the peoples
into the grand human family, of which every person in the world
will be a member.
Criticism and objections specially invited.

Let us repeat that old story from Sufi :-There was a man who, for seven years did
every act of charity, and at the end of seven years he mounted the steps to the gate
of Heaven and knocked. A voice cried, “who is there?” “Thy servant, O Lord,” and
the gate was shut.
Seven other years he did every other good work, and again mounted the three steps to
Heaven and knocked. The voice cried, “who is there?” He answered, “Thy slave,
O God,” and the gates were shut.
Seven other years he did every good deed, and again mounted the steps to Heaven, and
the voice said, “who is there?” He replied, “THY SELF, O God,” and the gates wide
open flew. --
-
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase),
Awoke one night from a dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich and like a lily bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold;—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said:
“What writest thou?”. The vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord,
Answered “The names of those who love the Lord,”
“And is mine one?” said Abou, “Nay, not so,”
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said: “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men.”
The angel wrote, and vanished,
The next night
It came again with a great awakening light,
And showed the names who love of God had blessed,
And lo! Aen Adhem's name led all the rest.
- Leich Hunt.
Reformation or Revolution, Which?
Or, Behind the Political Scenes.
__
--
It may appear presumptuous, perhaps ridiculous, for a woman
to talk to an audience composed largely of men, about politics and
government. Men have had the management of these questions so
long, it ought at least to be presumed that what they do not know is
not worth talking about. have listened attentively to speeches
from many different men—Statesmen, Legislators, Congressmen—
but I failed to find in the institutions which they represented
anything that is an excuse, even, for the grandiloquent laudations
that they usually indulged in. On the contrary, I find so much of
which to complain, in which not only my own interests, but those of
every working man and woman in the country are involved, that I
cannot hold my peace and see the impending desolation—which now
threatens to bring a period of woe to us all—approach unopposed.
We live in an age of progress. Not anybody of whom I know
A 2














4.
even pretends that our institutions are perfect; although the action
of some may seem to assume that they are. Not anybody will
venture to say we have reached a point in anything beyond which it
is impossible to go. Not anybody will deny, however, that individual
enterprises have outstripped the general institutions by which they
are regulated; nor that it has come about that these enterprises
control the institutions that created them, and, by so doing, are
remanding the country backward from democracy towards despotic
control; are increasing the distance between the extremes of wealth
and poverty—making the representatives of the former fewer and
more powerful, and the victims of the latter more numerous and
destitute every year; in a word, are subjugating the “Lower Millions"
to the will of the “Upper Ten.”
In the early days of the Republic, so-called, when simplicity and
patriotism were the moving characteristics in the minds of the people;
when the wealthiest in the land considered it no dishonor to sit at
the dinner-table with the men and women in their employ; when the
haughtiest dames put their hands to the spinning wheel and loom;
when persons were elected to the offices on account of their fitness,
instead of, as now, by money and the prostitution of the polls; I say
when these things existed, it is not to be wondered at that the country,
under the then recently constructed government, which was in many
respects so great an improvement upon the old, was entitled to be
called a republic; or that, having supreme confidence in their own
honesty of purpose, its framers did not provide for an opposite order
of things; for a time when their places might be filled with persons
of different impulses and motives, seeking positions of trust which
should offer a price at which they would be º to part with their
honor. In those days there were no Credit Mobilier enterprises,
and the danger hidden in the womb of the future was not provided
for. They imagined, no doubt, that they had constructed a govern-
ment for themselves that would meet all demands of posterity.
But they were mistaken. A single century has dissipated the
hopes which were built on their work. That which they intended
should secure to every person the inalienable rights of the Text of the
Constitution has become a gigantic engine of oppression, grinding to
the earth a large proportion of the common people who, all their lives
long, tax their strength to the utmost, and die at the end, leaving
their families destitute, and without the means to decently bury them,
while the results of their toil is being enjoyed by others.
So general and oppressive has this condition become, and its
injustice so evident, that on every hand the murmurings of discontent
among the masses are breaking out into rebellion, in which the hope
for reformation is replaced by the desire for revolution. All up and
down this broad country secret meetings are held, in which the most
extreme remedies are freely discussed; and yet those to whom the
people have entrusted the public interests sleep on peacefully, and

5
dream of the next job, seemingly ignorant that the day of judgment
is at hand; while still another class are watching the opportunity,
tiger-like, to spring upon the throat of liberty as it struggles in the
strife, and strangle it in its despotic grasp, so that they may plant
themselves upon its ruins. When we thus pass behind the political
scenes and observe what is there going on, the heart that beats with
the love of justice and freedom; which cares for its country's welfare;
which has a single sentiment of the brotherhood of man born in the
soul, may well cry out: Can there be Reformation, or must it be
Revolution, before justice shall be done
But what were the ends to be secured by the establishment of
this government, different from those that had resulted from other
governments, and wherein has it failed, and of what can it be
impeached Let us go back to the beginning, and by the words of
its constructors learn what their intentions were. We can then
decide by comparing them with what the results have been, whether
their ideas are realized, or whether there is a failure.
I presume you are aware that some of the original proposers
of a new government, and prominently among them Benjamin
Franklin, entertained apprehensions as to the durability and efficacy
of the Constitution as it was finally adopted. On the 17th of
September, 1787, this venerable man said: “I confess that there
are several parts of this Constitution which I do not approve. I
agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, because I believe a
general government necessary for us; and I further believe that
this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and
can only end in despotism when the people shall become corrupted.
Thus I consent to this Constitution, because I expect no better.
The opinions I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the public
good;" and in speaking thus he undoubtedly expressed in a very
guarded manner, the fears of all who moved originally in the
matter. -
It may be useful, also, to refer to some eloquent remarks of
the late eminent jurist, Judge Story. He said: “Let the American
youth never forget that they possess a noble inheritance, capable of
transmitting, if wisely improved, to their latest posterity, the
peaceful enjoyment of liberty, of property, of º and of in-
dependence. It has been reared for immortality. Its defences are
impregnable from without. It may, nevertheless, perish in an
hour, by the folly or corruption or negligence of its only keepers,
the people. Republics fall when the wise are banished from the
public councils because they dare to be honest, and the profligate
are rewarded because they flatter the people in order to betray
them.”
Now what is the deduction to be drawn from this language,
coming from these great men? Clearly, when carried to the ultimate,
that the government is not the Constitution and the laws enacted

6
under it, but really the persons who, for the time, make and
administer the laws—a good government when these are good
men, a bad government when these are bad men—which amounts
in substance, to this: that there is no system of government in
existence; that which is called a system being the will merely of
those in power for the time being. And to be convinced that this is
really so here, it is necessary to review the political history of the
country only as far back as 1860. It would be as safe for the people
if there were no Constitution, the government being evolved from
ear to year, as to depend for political existence upon what
is now called a Constitution. Indeed, it is to be questioned if there
have not been times when it would have been better for the public
welfare had there been no constitutional obligations standing in the
way of public opinion; and whether those obstacles do not oftener
prevent the right than the wrong from being done.
Furthermore, a constitution for a republic should contain no
rovisions that could possibly cause the popular will to be defeated.
onstitutions and governments for republics should be framed; first,
to protect the inalienable rights of each member of the community,
and should declare these rights in language so clear that they could
not be mistaken; and second, to administer the popular will, as
expressed by the people themselves in their approval of all measures
before they take effect. The Declaration of Independence and the
text of the Constitution were written evidently with these two ideas
prominent, and the reason it was feared by some that the Constitu-
tion, as adopted, would prove a failure, was because it was not
framed in consonance with these ideas. This Declaration and text
were the rule by which the structure should have been erected, and
had it so been erected, there would have been no need for, or danger
of, revolution to-day; whereas we are standing upon its verge,
without the remotest hope that it may be averted, and perhaps when
the situation is inspected, it may not appear altogether as if it ought
to be averted. There are times in the affairs of nations when
revolutions are not only necessary, but obligatory upon a people,
and it is an open question if such a time is not now impending over
this country. One of two things will surely be: There must be
reformation behind the political scenes, or there will be revolution
outside of them.
Is it asked of what the people complain that, ignored, should
call them to take back the power which the government has
smuggled : If so, the reply will come back: Of almost everything
that exists to-day as the result of government. There is neither
freedom, equality or justice in the land, as I will shortly show. The
attempt, by the British Government, to enforce a stamp act, such as
the people have endured here, almost without murmur, for the last
ten years, was one of the chief causes of disaffection of the colonies;
while the further attempt to introduce and tax tea, was sufficiently

7
obnoxious to rouse the people to declare that “The time of
destruction, or manly opposition, has now come."
And now mark the result. The action of about fifty men, in
destroying a cargo of tea, brought on the revolutionary war. If fifty
men, out of three millions of inhabitants at that time, with the
limited dissatisfaction that existed against the crown, could bring
about a revolution, how many men and women out of forty millions
inhabitants are required, with the wide-spread dissatisfaction now
existing, to bring about revolution ?
Do not misunderstand me. I am not advocating revolution; I
am demanding what belongs of right to the people. I am asking for
reformation; but if it be denied, I fall back upon the right of
revolution, which no freeman will deny, and I will use every effort I
have at my command to produce it.
The people all over the country are saying: Give us back
our rights, or we will take them; and the stupid legislators and
blundering officials, with their consciences and perceptions alike
blunted by the array of spoils upon which their eyes are fixed,
to the exclusion of everything else, don't seem to know that any-
thing is the matter; they act as if everything was calm and quiet.
And so it is, but it is the calmness that precedes the earthquake;
and I forewarn them that they are sleeping over what is liable
to burst forth any day, and cost them their heads for their stupid
blundering.
This may be called seditious; but would you have me, knowing
this, permit it to come upon them unawares? I speak for the
people, the great, honest, industrial masses, who, being obliged to
toil every day to obtain barely their needed sustenance, have no
time to look after the persons to whom they have intrusted their
interests, and who, knowing they are being robbed day after day,
year after year, cannot leave their labor to counsel together as to the
means of relief. Want stands at their home-door, grinning a ghastly
in at their families, and warning them to waste no time; they
now there is something wrong somewhere, but they have not the
opportunity to find it out.
I repeat, I speak for this class, and as against that class which
devotes its time and talent to devising means to secure the results
which the other class produce. As between these two I demanded
justice; and by the God of Justice it shall be rendered, peaceably if
it can, forcibly if it must. Hunger, with its long, bony fingers,
inched cheeks and fiery eye, shall not much longer hold horrid revel
in hut or hovel, in a land that trembles under the weight of its own
productions, and is studded from end to end with palatial homes in
which luxury abides. Not much longer shall thousands of men,
women and children eke out a miserable life upon what a “sport”
would disdain to feed his dogs, while the favored few wallow in
superfluities.

GENERAL CHARGES.
But I was about to speak of the causes for dissatisfaction that
are driving this country into revolution, and had said that almost
everything which exists as a result of government belongs among
them. Two years ago, when I was importuning Congress to do
political justice to woman, which was denied, I found that the wiser
portion of Congressmen feared the country was drifting into
revolution. Not less than three, whom I consider the wisest of the
whole lot, confessed, when pressed to answer, that they did not
believe another administration would P. without tremendous
political changes; and the pulse-beats of the country indicate that
they are near at hand. The immediate causes will be, as I shall
shortly show, the efforts of those who have monopolized the power,
the wealth and the money, to hold them, as against the growing
demand for a settlement on the part of the people who have
produced them.
Will they who scout the idea of revolution remember that
until Fort Sumter was fired upon, there were scarcely a hundred
people in the country who believed war possible; and that they
were accounted as insane : But it came in spite of the wise ones,
and it scourged the country as it was never scourged before. The
single question of losing its negroes inspired the South to fight. Shall
we repeat the blunder of that time by assuming that the people who
hold the political power and the wealth of the country will not fight
when they see that they are going to be taken from them.
Do not deceive yourselves. Negro slavery was not so great a
cause of dissatisfaction then, as are the more subtle slaveries of
to-day, now. Nor were the slave oligarchs any more alarmed about
their slaves then, than are the political, financial and industrial
oligarchs for their possessions, now. The public sentiment, however,
had outgrown the institution of slavery, and sealed its doom. So also
is the public sentiment outgrowing the despotic rule of the aristocrats
of to-day, and it will seal their fate. But the latter, no less than was
the former, are a part of our system of government, and as slavery
proved a failure, and as such was abolished, so also are the others to
follow in the same way.
The developments of the past two years—the corruptions, frauds
and failures—are sweeping condemnation of the system under which
they have flourished. From Tammany down to the latest Brooklyn
expose, first and last, one and all—they speak in unmistakable tones
of the approaching culmination of the system. They prove beyond
cavil that the government has degenerated into a mere machine, used
by the unscrupulous to systematically plunder the people. Look
where we may, confirmation stares us in the face. From the head at
Washington down to the pettiest public office, it is the same story—
fraud, corruption, peculation everywhere.

9
What else is to be expected 2 If Congress—in league with,
probably, the Cabinet, if not the President himself—can be induced to
push a Pacific Railroad scheme to obtain stock in a Credit Mobilier,
and, being exposed, can whitewash itself by such a farce as was
enacted in Congress last winter, why, indeed, should not every
official in the country go into the same business, and hope to escape
in like manner * Examples like that, set in high places, will be
copied in lower grades; and these again are legitimate fruit of our
system of government.
Even the highest officials no longer hesitate to openly ally
themselves with professional speculators, and this brings the exclama-
tion: Can it be possible that the people's money, paid by them into
the public treasury, is being used as a basis for speculation, that
officials, even the President himself, should rush frantically to the
rescue of the jeopardized market? Can it be true, as hinted by those
who ought to know, that the large banking firms, recently suspended,
were operating on government funds; and, as has been stated of a
case in Washington, that drafts upon the Treasury for large amounts
were made recently to bolster up their trembling ventures 2
Nothing is more probable. It is a well-known fact that on the
eve of the Pennsylvania election last year the Secretary of the Treasury
went into Wall Street and manipulated the market through his pet
bankers. Who that knows anything about that little scheme doubts
that the profits were largely used to make that election certain *
When officials near the head of the government are known to
speculate a la Credit Mobilier; when jobbing schemes are continually
bought through Congress, to say nothing about the needed approval
at the White House; when men of highest respectability in the
community, and very religious withal–Head-Lights in the Young
Men's Christian Assassination Association—warm friends of the
administration—by a method that is winked at as a mistake only,
accidentally defraud the revenue of a few millions; when bank officials
remove from the country and safely carry the people's deposits with
them; when a Tammany Ring converts millions of the public money
to its own use, for charitable purposes (?), and it is accounted of little
significance; when hypocrisy sits enthroned in the most popular
churches, and the Christians, in a holy unity that was never known
until now, seek to establish a Sectarian God, Christ and Bible in the
organic law of the country, and are going to succeed; in a word,
when everything that is false, corrupt and damnable runs riot at the
expense of the hard working, industrial masses, and is considered too
respectable to be inquired into by anybody who comes out of a
Nazareth; when all these things are, is it not time that a change
comes 2 is it not time for this Babel (which we call government, and
which is growing so high as to put its occupants beyond reach of
the people) to topple over and be buried in its own ruins?
I do not war upon the people as individuals who are involved in

IO
these things. To put others in their place would be a change of
persons merely. It is the system that is at fault. If it were not for
its glaring defects, individuals, however badly disposed, could not take
advantage of the people, who elevate them to positions of honor and
trust. I repeat again, therefore, that our system of government, after
a century's trial, has been proved a failure. It has ultimated in
corruption and peculation in all its departments, and is rotten and
ready to fall; and it ought to fall, and it will fall.
It is in vain to hope that the tide now rushing on a headlong
course can be turned into safer channels. Things are going from bad
to worse too fast, and with too great momentum. No mere revulsion
can purify them. A system in which disease generates and spreads
to involve its every part, coursing with fevered rapidity in all its veins,
is as impossible of medication as rottenness itself. These things to
which we have referred are the symptoms of the disease, which,
itself, lies back in the vital parts of the system out of which they
are evolved. -
SPECIFICATIONS.
I charge upon this government, in the first instance, that it is not
republican in form, and is therefore directly opposed, not only to the
spirit of the Declaration of Independence, but also to the letter of the
onstitution. The Preamble to the Constitution declares that govern-
ments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, to secure the inalienable rights to life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. Now, if a government be instituted and
maintained which does not obtain its powers from the consent of the
$º can it, according to the Constitution itself, and the purposes
or which it was adopted, be a just government 2 and if not a just
government, can it be a republican government 2 Nobody will so
pretend. Nevertheless, this government is maintained by the absolute
denial of the right to express either consent or dissent of more than
one-half of the governed; what is still more reprehensible, they who
are thus excluded are recognized by the Constitution as lawful citizens
and entitled to equal civil and political rights with any other class.
A despotic government is one in which people are governed
without their consent. As a principle, it does not matter whether the
governing º is vested in the hands of one person, as in Russia; in
those of a Parliament and a Queen, as in England, or in those of one-
half the people, as in this country. There is no difference at bottom
between these several governments. Each is the arbitrary rule of a
part of the people over the remainder who have no voice or power in
that rule.
For my part (and I speak now for myself only), I deny the right
of the men of this country to legislate for me, and } will not submit to
any of their laws to which I could not consent if I were permitted to
dissent, and that limit my personal rights, declared inalienable by the

II
text of the Constitution; and more especially will I not conform to
those which are made to control my social rights, when everybody
knows they are intended for women only, men never even pretending
to conform to them. I spit upon such despotism; and every woman
who does not is either a willing or unwilling slave; and they are
rapidly waking up to this fact. The government of this country was
instituted and is maintained and administered by men over women
who have not consented to it, and many of whom protest against it.
It is, therefore, in no sense of the word a republican government, and
upon this count it ought to fall; and it will fall.
Again I charge upon this government that it is a failure, because
it has neither secured freedom (and by this I mean the personal rights
of individuals), maintained equality nor administered justice to its
citizens. These three terms constitute the political Trinity. If it
have any existence at all in a government, each of the terms will be
present. There can be no such thing as justice unless there are
freedom and equal conditions; there can be no such thing as equality
unless there is freedom. The Trinity is, therefore, to be expressed
thus: There must be equality maintained among a few people, whose
intercourse is regulated by justice. Institute that law in any country
and there will be perfect government; and so far as it does not exist
in this country to-day, so far is the government not republican, and,
consequently, a failure.
Moreover, it is evident that the legislation of the country, State
and National, tends to defeat equality and justice and to introduce
and build up unequal conditions, and unjust relations; while caste
and class distinctions are becoming more distinctly marked, every
day. How much further this may proceed, depends upon the temper
of those upon whom the so-called upper classes are presuming to
establish themselves.
These “upper classes" may be variously enumerated. First of
all is the Land Oligarchy, and this class probably is the foundation
of all the rest, since if it did not exist, the others could never have
arisen. Now what is the principle underlying this oligarchy? How
did it come about that they own the land 2 They purchased it, it is
replied. Of whom did they purchase it Of its previous owners-
away back to its first occupants. And how did its first occupants
obtain it * Oh, they took it. Is it not clear then that all the title
anybody has to any land, is that which they who “took it” had to
convey And this is no title at all, unless they can show they pur-
chased it from its Maker. For this is to what we are soon come to
in property rights. There is but one fact that can give individual
title to anything; and that is, the fact of being its maker; or the
further fact of equal exchange of things between makers.
Man never made the land, and, therefore, be can never obtain a
title that can make it justly his, as against the claim of any other
living being. Land, like the water and air, is natural wealth, the use

I2
of which belongs of right to all the people; and being a natural right,
cannot be alienated or forfeited. There is as much right to bottle u
the air and deal it out for pay, as there is to claim the land and sell it
for gain.
Man individually has certain demands that require the use of the
land to supply; and therefore every man, woman and child has a
God-given right to his or her share for this purpose, the withholding
of which by any power whatever, is as arbitrary an usurpation as it
would be to shut them out from breathing the air, or to deprive them
of the use of water. You see, my friends, that it is human justice and
human rights, as interpreted by the laws of nature, and governing the
existence of man that I am seeking, and before these all human
enactments must sooner or later fall.
The Land Oligarchy, then, will be compelled to surrender the
land to the people; and the government must institute a just method
of securing its use to them, having a proper regard to the relations
between the mechanic and the farmer. The difference between that
condition and the present, would not be so great as at first may be
supposed; the single exception would be that no person could control
more than his equal proportion, of which he would hold possession
so long as he paid the taxes minus the rentals, now exacted by the
oligarchy.
Do you not see how infinitely this would better the condition of
every occupant of a small body of land, and especially the farmers of
the great West ? It could never be encumbered by debt or mortgage,
and could never be taken away so long as the small taxes should be
paid. But taxes, even, are soon to be among the things of the past.
A government that cannot support itself ought not to exist. But I
will not discuss this just here. º will repeat, merely for the sake of
emphasis, that a government that cannot support itself without taxing
the people, ought not to existſ
But I must pay my parting respects to the Land Oligarchy. A
more unjust, inhuman and unnatural thing does not exist. A single
instance will demonstrate that it is all of these. For comparatively
nothing the ancestry of the present Mr. Astor obtained possession—I
will not say acquired title—of the land in this city, which, by its
increase in value, has made him worth half a hundred million dollars,
and the income from the land has enabled him to cover it with costly
warehouses and dwellings, increasing its money producing capacity at
every step.
Now, even admitting that he had a rightful title to it originally,
I want to ask who is entitled to the increase? Have the Astors
added to its value? Nobody will pretend it. It was the general
growth and prosperity of the city, which resulted again from the
general growth and prosperity of the country that has done this.
I cannot pursue this further. I throw out these hints to direct
your attention to this infamous wrong. The principles underlying

I3
them are fundamental, and are as certain to obtain in practice as is
the right to come uppermost; and they who have rolled in luxuries,
without so much as a single day's productive labor in their whole
lives, and at the expense of those who have labored, will be compelled
to lay their hands to work, in order to obtain the means of life. The
solution of this question of Industrial Justice means just this and
nothing less, and those whom it is going to put to work may as well
begin to prepare.
Having disposed of the land question, there come the almost
equal tyrants, wealth and money to be beheaded. The relations
which these terms bear to each other are so little understood, it is
necessary, before º upon their discussion, to point them out.
Money is not wealth. ealth cannot be money. ealth is what-
ever there is that can be used to sustain life or add to its comforts,
and it consists of two kinds, natural and artificial.
All natural wealth belongs of original right to all the people
collectively, for their individual use, and each person is an heir to an
equal proportion. All other wealth is produced, and of natural right
belongs to the individuals who produce it; or to those who obtain it
by an equitable exchange of something they do produce.
To illustrate: a farmer may exchange one-half of the yearly
products of his own labor for one-half the yearly products of the
labor of a mechanic, and that would be an equitable exchange.
What we are seeking is equity, and it would not be equity for the
farmer to exchange one-half of his products for one-fourth of the
mechanic's products.
This question of justice in industry is a subtle one, and yet it is
most simple. The equitable price of anything is determined by its
cost; and cost consists of two items only, consumption of time in its
roduction and of material, out of which it is produced, where this is
itself a production. The establishment of price by the rule of supply
and demand can never be equitable. To demonstrate this unques-
tionably, we have only to consider that a barrel of flour will sustain
the life of a given number of persons a given number of days. It
will not do more than this if it cost a thousand dollars; it will not
do less if it cost but fifty cents, and so of every other necessary or
comfort of life.
The chief cause of the present unequal distributions of wealth, it
is clear is this unjust system of exchange, regulated by the ever vary-
ing rule of demand and supply, instead of the equitable rule of cost.
To show the iniquitous effect of this rule, we have only to imagine a
case where a person has a remedy which cannot be obtained else-
where, in time, which another requires to save his life. By the rule
of demand and supply, the price is fixed at a million dollars and paid
—while had it been fixed by its cost, it would have been no more
than five dollars. Now is not this result the same as it would have
been, had the equitable price been asked and paid, and the remaining

I4.
nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-five
dollars, stolen The difference is in the manner of its getting, not in
the thing done. One is considered legal, while the other is donominated
robbery. “A rose by any other name smells as sweet” still holds
ood.
g And it is also clear that, if the system of effecting exchanges of
commodities was governed by cost, there could be no such unequal
conditions as now obtain, and the system of middlemen, merchants,
more properly hucksters, would be abolished.
ith the abolition of the system of middlemen, would follow the
downfall of its ally—the modern newspapers. As the advertising
medium of this class, without the support of which three-fourths of
them could not exist, they are conducted specifically in the interest
of trade and as against those of labor. This is the reason why the
influential papers let the discussion of the labor problem severely
alone. So long as the present systems exist, so long must the interests
of these two classes remain in antagonism. One hundred and fift
millions dollars are annually paid by the hucksters in puffing their
wares, every one of which is a tax upon labor in the increased cost
of what they consume, or else in the decreased cost of what they sell.
Remember I do not impeach the Press; I am questioning the manner
of its conduct merely. But this again is another evidence of the
fallacies of our system which, when changed to a correct basis, will
rear a Press of its own, dedicated to humanitarian, instead of class
interests, upon the latter of which it will not rely for support. More
than this; The inauguration of a system of public markets would
return to productive labor one-half the people who are now living
by retailing its products, upon the productive class, and thus, by so
much, lessen the number of hours for daily labor.
The practice of permitting one class of people to speculate in the
products of the laboring class, robs the producer or consumer, or
perhaps both. We have prominent examples of this in New York
City. The consumers of coal have paid as much as $15 a ton for
that which at the mines in Pennsylvania cost a dollar and a half.
Now either the producer of the coal received thirteen and a half
dollars too little, or the consumer paid that sum too much, less only
the actual cost of transportation. Again I repeat, a legal system of
robbery, not less infamous in its conception than it is cruel in its
results.
Furthermore, it is to be observed that coal is natural wealth in
which no one can have a right to traffic for profit; and with all other
natural wealth obtained from the earth, such as metals, salt, oil and
wood, belongs to the people as a whole, and should be produced for
their use, by the government, at cost. Whatever objection may be
made to these propositions, we can only reply that they are principles
existing in nature, for which no one is responsible, and which cannot
be diverted from their natural application, except at the cost of

I5
injustice to somebody. In a word there is no escape from them;
and until they are taken up and reduced to a working system of
government, the peoples of the earth will continue to suffer from
industrial injustice, the ignorant and the weak being subjugated in
some way by cultivated talent to the strong.
Now money is the thing invented—not produced—to represent
wealth and to facilitate its exchange; and gold being wealth, cannot
be money. Gold is natural wealth, and all the gold there is in
the world belongs of right to all the people, and may be used but
not owned rightfully. True, gold may be coined and called, and
used for, money, but it is a costly money, and is more gold, when so
used, than Bank-note paper is paper when in the form of money.
The reason why gold coin is considered the best money, is because
it is something more than money, being wealth, and changes from
its character as money into its original properties, whenever
that which it is used to represent, as money, is no longer represented
by it. But it is no better as money, than something else would be
which is only money—a scientific representation of wealth. The
excuse for using gold as women may be used with equal force for any
other kind of wealth, which is equally as convenient.
A representative of wealth is good so long as that which it re-
presents is commanded by it. A note at hand is one kind of money,
and is good so long as its maker is possessed of the wealth with
which to redeem it; and of the willingness to redeem it; and this
is the test of all personal money. Individuals or companies may
part with the wealth which their outstanding notes or money re-
present, and lose the proceeds, and then the money becomes worthless.
Therefore all individual notes or money, or the notes or money
of any company, or bank, under whatever regulations, are liable to
become worthless, and consequently are not a safe money.
Bank notes are never perfect money, unless there is dollar for
dollaringold wealth with which to redeem them, and if this were always
maintained, there would be no method of profit and consequently no
banks. Hence banks are not a legitimate subject for legislation,
either for protection or regulation, under a republican government.
A perfect representative of wealth and consequently a safe money,
is that which represents wealth that cannot be destroyed, lost,
exchanged, sold or carried out of the jurisdiction of the government
under which it is issued. A money issued by a government represent-
ing the total wealth of the country, therefore is the only safe
money that can be made. This, then, is the money which the
people of republics should have ; and it should be loaned by the
government to the people, without interest, upon the deposit of
sufficient security. And this should be the only dealings permitted
in money under the guarantee of law, dealings between individuals
being left to their honor. This would abolish all banks, and all
speculative operations, and reduce the business of the country to a

16
legitimate basis, and with cost as the limit of price, fix something like
permanent values upon every commodity of exchange.
With such a money as this the government may retire its out-
standing obligations including bonds, at par, stopping the interest
upon the latter at once, which would inaugurate successfully the new
order of things. But this, even, would be an act of injustice, since I
shall show you why the Public Debt ought to be repudiated.
The Public Debt was incurred to carry on the war, and was
largely, if not wholly, obtained from those who had money in their
possession which did not represent any product of labour' the
result of their own industry; but which was the result of the
industry of others, obtained without equity. Hence if it were given
to prosecute the war, it was done in behalf of the whole people, to
whom all surplus wealth, over a proportionate amount of the whole,
for each individual, of right belongs.
If justice were established in the world, it would be impossible
for a few of the people to accumulate all the wealth; therefore it
cannot be unjust to restore to the people that which has been un-
justly taken from them. Now consider this question impartially and
without prejudice: To whom does the accumulated wealth of this
country belong To the few who pretend to own it, or those who
created it Dispense with your legal ideas and preconceived notions
of property, and answer this as though necessary for your soul's
safety. Again I ask who are the rightful owners of the accumulated
wealth of the country I say, those who produced the wealth by
their labor, for which they could not have been equitably paid, since
if they had, they would not be poor to-day. And if this is so, then
repudiation is right.
But there is another reason why the bonds ought not to be paid.
In the exigency of the war, many of these bonds were sold at
sixty cents on the dollar, which has been almost wholly returned in
the shape of interest, and therefore is equitably cancelled. The
bondholders, however, want to obtain for the six hundred dollars
which these bonds cost, first, twenty years' interest—twelve hundred
dollars—and, finally, one thousand dollars on the maturity of
the bond; or twenty-two hundred dollars for six hundred. And
this is called legal honesty; but justice writes it down as common
robbery. It may be urged against repudiation that it would be a
breach of faith; but a sufficient reply to this is, that an unrighteous
pledge is better broken than kept. And, finally, the most compli-
mentary light in which the holders of the accumulated wealth of the
world can be considered, is that they have it in trust for the whole
people, to be returned to them when called for, which it will soon be,
and that, too, in unmistakable terms.
Another outrage which is perpetrated upon the productive classes
by the government, and which should naturally follow the public
debt question for consideration, is that of taxation. Let it appear

17
as preposterous as it may, it is nevertheless true that these classes
pay every dollar of taxation—they run the government and pay its
debts. No matter in what form the tax is levied and collected, it
comes home atlast to the door of the daily laborers of the country. To
show this conclusively requires scarcely more than a single statement:
Probably the total taxation of the country, for national State,
county and municipal P.". is not less than a thousand millions
dollars. At the end of the fiscal year, has the accumulated wealth
in the hands of the few been reduced by this amount * No ; it
has been increased instead of reduced. How increased ? By the
addition of more produced wealth. Produced by whom By the
laborers of the country. Therefore, though these taxes have been
paid to the Treasury by the holders of wealth, the laborer must have
furnished the means, else would their bank accounts have been
decreased. Can anything be clearer than this, or anything more
monstrous and unjust 2 And when the industrial classes have taken
time to consider these things, they will refuse to submit to it.
Do you ask how this is to be remedied ? I will tell you how it
may be remedied, and how, if revolution be not precipitated, it can be.
If Congress would save the country from temporary anarchy, it ought
to pass, immediately it assembles, a general law entirely remodeling
the system of taxation, which, if carried out, may safely carry the
country over the gulf of revolution.
Every family not having more than a numerical proportion of the
entire wealth of the country should be exempt from all taxes, while
those possessing more than this average, should be taxed progressively,
after the following manner: If ten thousand dollars be exempt, all
over that sum should be taxed, say, one-half per cent. ; all over fifty
thousand, three-fourths percent. ; all over one hundred thousand, one
per cent. ; all over two hundred thousand, two percent. ; and so on
up to a million, which should be taxed twenty-five per cent.
This would inaugurate a redistribution to the people of the
accumulated wealth, and, in a measure, do justice to labor. In other
words, it would put a penalty upon holding more than an average
amount of wealth. This, in conjunction with the abolition of the
revenue system and the adoption of free money, without which free
trade would be destructive to mechanical industry, may be accepted
by the industrial interests as a settlement of the now unsolved ques-
tion between them and capital.
But why do I come before the people with the fundamental
principles of scientific organization, at this specific time 2 Because
we are on the verge, if not already in the flood of a financial con-
vulsion that will shake this country from centre to circumference, and,
if I mistake not the signs of the times, that will prove a more
memorable event than as ever occurred, and in what respect I shall
show you hereafter.
What is the financial condition in this city ? Complete stagnation;
B

18
greenbacks at a premium of four per cent. and interest three
per cent. per day on Government. Bonds as collaterials. Nothing
doing in other securities. Nobody depositing any money in the
banks, but everybody becoming his own banker. Merchants doing
nothing, are glum and fearful; and manufacterers discharging their
employes. Fifty thousand men in the city withoutwork and without
money. Such a condition cannot last long. There will soon be a
breaking loose somewhere. A month's continued pressure and one-
half the firms in the city will fail
But what has produced this condition ? It is the result of the
recent panic in Wall street, introduced by the failure of Jay Cooke &
Co., and followed by other pet bankers of the government. This
involved a sufficient number of professional speculators, who were
obliged to realize on their ventures, to cause a fall of from ten to
twenty per cent. in all the speculative stocks, and in two days it was
found necessary to close the Stock Exchange, shut the doors of the
Clearing House (which was virtually the closing of every bank), and
to call upon the government in lustiest tones to come forward to avert
the threatened disaster.
What was this danger ? Simply this: Had not business been
stopped by these precautionary measures, every banker and broker
involved in stocks and every bank would have failed. Why?
Because the banks are loaded up with these railroad stocks, upon
which they have loaned up to within ten, and on some to within five
per cent of their recent market value, and it was impossible for their
customers to make good, in money, the shrinkage of ten to twenty
percent. that took place, aggregating perhaps not less than a hundred
millions of dollars for the banks of this city alone.
A continuation of sales of stocks under the panic and increasing
failures would have pressed them down fifty per cent, broken every
bank, and tumbled the whole country into financial dismay and ruin;
and more than probably before this time have ultimated in riot and
anarchy and the E. of martial law, to have been soon
followed by the Dictatorship, or perhaps the Empire. But of this
Inore anon.
Now, all this confusion and threatening anarchy was not the
result of any want of general productiveness of the industrial classes.
No! We are exporting at this special time more than ever before,
the balance of trade is *} in our favor, and even in the panic the
price of gold is decreasing. It appears, therefore, that this is a purely
speculative condition, brought about by a failure of the outside public
to go into Wall street, as has been their custom to do, and buy the
stocks after the manipulators had worked them up to enormous prices.
Finding themselves with the whole list of stocks on their hands, and
large interest constantly augmenting their cost and no purchasers, the
sº had at last to begin to throw them over—that is to realize
—at a loss.

I9
By such an operation as this, have the commercial and in-
dustrial interests of the country been jeopardized. But this is not
the end. The grand bursting of the speculative bubble has been put
off merely, not prevented. The most extraordinary measures
resorted to, re-enforced by the whole power of the government,
aided by a systematic attempt on the part of the papers—purchased,
no doubt—have been able only to delay the day of reckoning,
without in the least restoring confidence or curing the malady.
And now the papers are beginning gradually to break the real
condition to the people; to tell them that things have a “fictitious
value” and a “ º basis,” which “must be remedied.” That the
merchants are getting involved because they cannot obtain their
usual accommodations from the banks, which have advanced their
deposits on these depreciated stocks.
Thus the money of the business community deposited in banks
and of the laboring classes in savings institutions is locked up in
stocks at a price greatly above the possibility of present or even
future realization. Of course there must be a crash, and no one can
tell to what extent the disaster will spread.
Now what shall be the verdict against a system of finance
conjoined with that of internal improvements which puts it in the
power of a few bold or reckless speculators at any time to entirely
unsettle and undermine the industrial interests of the country For
my part I would say, Sink it in everlasting oblivion. I would have
the people take possession of the entire railroad system of the
country, upon the stocks of which the tendency to speculate has
been introduced into the country, and thus destroy the chief means
of indulging this mania that is spreading to almost every staple
product of the country. It is not uncommon now to hear of
“corners” in cotton, pork, wheat, and so on to the end of the list,
every one of which is conceived and executed at the expense of the
producing classes.
Moreover the railroad system of the country is too extensive
and too intimately involved with the general public welfare to be
longer trusted in the hands of those who make it the basis of these
speculative schemes, and thereby keep the country in a constant
turmoil. Sixty thousand miles of railroad, at a cost of three billions
dollars, is an immense power, and wielded, as it virtually is, by a
half dozen men, is a dangerous power, and is already potent enough
to control the legislation of the country in its own interests. A
system of watering their capital stocks has also obtained, by which
process the industries may be taxed a thousand millions dollars to
make the roads earn their eight per cent. dividends.
It is becoming patent, however, even to the railroad kings, that,
unless some great national revulsion in favor of despotism is actually
accomplished, they will have to give up their roads to the people.
Already is the West, which is taxed two bushels of wheat to
B 2

2O
transport one bushel to New York, up in arms against the oppression,
and is moving public o inion in the direction of the remedy, while
the “Granges"—the first political organization to which women
were ever admitted as equals—are organizing for reformation, or
revolution, if it come.
I am aware of the very general prejudice that exists against
the management of the railroads by the government; but this is
largely due to the prevalent and growing idea that everything with
which the government is connected is liable to abuse from official
corruption; certainly, however, this could not possibly exceed that
which exists in railroads now. This should not, however, be judged
from the present government, but from that which is to succeed it.
But the experience in the same direction that is furnished by the
postal service, indicates that there would be equal improvement in
the railroad service over the present, that there is in this over the
old method.
And were the same regulations applied to the transportation
both of passengers and merchandise that obtain in the mails, there
would be a perfect solution of the vexed questions of freight and
Rºº er tariffs. The same principal that transports a letter from
New York to San Francisco for three cents, while it costs the same to
send one to Philadelphia, would set the wheat of Minnesota down in
the New York . costing no more than that grown in the
Genesee Valley.
If the postal service is self-supporting, or nearly so, conducted
upon this principle, why cannot the entire system of transportation
be made the same 2
The government being the source of money is its legitimate
custodian and carrier. It should prepare methods to receive the
people's money and to pay or transmit it from one to another, on
demand, but without interest. The post office is the natural channel
and the money-order system the true method of exchange, and by
adding to its present functions, the further one as a depository of the
people's money, a reliable commercial system, infinitely superior to
the present, as the blindest must see, would be the outcome. In
such a system there would be no bank suspensions; no worthless or
depreciated currency; no protested drafts; no failure of savings
banks and robbery of the poor ;--in short all the imperfections and
insecurities of the present, would be replaced by regularity and
security.
There is no doubt but this will be the future of transportation.
Indeed, it is necessary, to establish equal conditions for the people
all over the country. The people of the Mississippi Valley are
now compelled to pay larger prices for everything they consume,
and realize less for all they have to sell, than do the inhabitants
not so far removed from the commercial centre of the country.
This is an inequality of which they have just cause of complaint,

2I
although they do not yet understand the principle upon which it
is founded.
SUMMARY OF GENERAL REFORM.
Thus I have rapidly sketched the moving principles upon which
any system of general reform, to meet the demands of justice and
equity, must be based, and have made hasty reference to the
oppressive systems that have been builded, and which subsist upon
productive labor; but to bring these pointedly to view, I will briefly
restate the three general principles, which, if adopted, will settle the
questions at issue between labor and capital and inaugurate industrial
justice, and the three methods by which this is now prevented, to
wit: The monopoly of land, in defiance of natural right; the
monopoly of wealth, through the regulation of prices by the law of
demand and supply, in defiance of the law of equity, instead of by
that of cost, which is its exemplification, and interest for the use of
the mere representative of wealth-money. Abolish these and
inaugurate a system of free land by the payment of taxes; of free
money, based upon the public faith, and, as a method of transition, or
of equalization of the accumulated wealth, of progressive taxation.
The exchange of all commodities, all produced wealth, by the
law of equivalents, cost being made the limit of price, would leave in
the hands of the producer the entire results of his labor, or their
equivalents. Under this law, to possess property a person would
have first to produce it, while commercial exchanges should be
effected by the paid agents of the people through a general system of
public markets.
In addition to this, the abolition of interest, together with the
institution of progressive taxation, would quickly compel the bond-
holders and the money lenders—the leeches now fastened upon the
vitals of industry, sucking, sucking, sucking its blood, day after day
and year after year—to earn their own food, clothing and shelter,
instead of stealing it, legally I admit, from those who do labor.
In this analysis all considerations of policy and expediency, which
are ever at war with principles, have been ignored, and an earnest
effort made to reach the truth. It may be said that it is impossible
to change our systems so that they shall be founded upon these
principles; but I affirm that truth and justice are always possible,
and it is only the unwillingness of those who are playing the part of
the executors of falsehood and injustice that stand in the way.
Granted, that the common industrial classes do not understand what
is theirs by natural right; it does not follow that they never will, nor
that they ought not to enjoy it. The negro slaves did not know
their rights until, in many instances, they were actually forced upon
them; but the Garrisons and the Douglasses and the Phillipses
understood them, and paved the way for them to be obtained. So
now shall the Garrisons, the Douglasses and the Phillipses of labor
22
slavery also pave the way for its slaves to obtain their rights, born
with them from the very Constitution itself, of their Mother, Nature;
and I will never cease the demand or stop agitation until the modern
oligarchs shall willingly deliver these slaves to freedom, or else until
they are compelled to do so by the stern logic of war.
ERRORS OF OMISSION.
I have thus far discussed chiefly those evils which oppress the
people by the commission of errors by the government. There is
still another class of crimes, almost equally reprehensible, which may
be named Errors of Omission. These have special reference to the
dependent and unfortunate classes—the women, the children, the
criminals, the maimed and the insane, which together make up a sum
total of human misery almost too horrible to contemplate, and which
fix a stigma of reproach, an indelible blotch of infamy, upon this
pretendedly enlightened people which would merit the contempt of
the most barbarous nation on the globe. This, at the first glance,
may seem to be too severe an indictment of our civilisation; but I
say it is just, since such things as obtain here would put the savages
to shame.
The people have fought for freedom, and become drunk upon the
name. They have forgotten that this blessed boon cannot exist
unless equality and justice also obtain. They have imprinted the
former, omitting the last two, upon their banners, and have first gone
mad with enthusiasm, and, secondly, have sunk into a comatose
condition, in which they occasionally, when stung into temporary
consciousness by some passing event, yelp out Freedom with all their
might, without the least idea as to what is really going on about them
in the world. -
I say the dependent and unfortunate classes, and name women
as among them, and they belong to both of them. And when I say
they so belong, I mean that the beautiful social system that has been
enforced virtually commits every woman to one or the other of these
classes. I do not say that there are not any women who rise superior
to the condition imposed upon them by the system. No thanks to
the system, however, that they do it; but, in spite of it. I say that
the present social system, enforced both by law and a falsely educated
public opinion, makes every woman dependent for support and comfort
upon some man, and it does not give the least consideration as to
whether she obtains it or not. It says to her: Here is the theory,
live by it if you can ; die by it if you must and the devil take the
unfortunate. We, the government, we the men to whom belong all
the realities of this world, can't do anything more for you except you
become a social outcast, as they gracefully call unfortunate women,
when we will perhaps patronize you as our demands require. I repeat
again, and I wish my voice could reach the ear and the soul of every


23
man and woman in the world, that the theory of our social system is,
that women are dependent upon men, and that to secure support they
must marry and merge their identity and individuality in some man,
and then it leaves her unmindful, and indifferent as to whether she
Secure it or not.
If she do not do this, however, and, following the male theory,
attempts to support herself and to answer the demands of her
maternal nature, she is compelled to suffer social death. Hence, I
say, woman belongs to the unfortunate as well as to the dependent
class. These are facts, and though you may ignore you can't dodge
them, however unpalatable they may be. ake them home and
think about them, and see if you can come to any just and truthful
conclusion except that woman is man's industrial and social slave,
dependent upon her ministrations to his demands to obtain a support.
Think of it, I repeat, calmly and deliberately, and then condemn
those who are demanding social reform, if you can.
So long as men maintain this social theory, and so long as women
are its willing slaves, I say change the law, so that they shall be pro-
tected in it; so that women shall not be made dependent upon
individual men. Make it a duty of the State to see that the theory
which it insists on enforcing is carried out to its logical results. Let
it see that woman has a support and not compel her to surrender
herself to a single person, and forever after to be compelled to rel
upon him for life and its comforts, when in so many instances bot
are denied her.
I want to ask every woman who, under this theory, has secured
all the necessities and the comforts of life, how many women would
frequent the haunts of vice in the Green Streets of the world, if they
were placed on an equality with you; and before you come to a
conclusion, remember, if you had been situated in the same circum-
stances that have driven them there, and they in those that have
surrounded you, that it is more than probable you would have been
where they are while they, perhaps, would have filled your places 2
Therefore, society having constructed a social system that makes
it impossible that there should not be unfortunately circumstanced
women, and as it afterward condemns them to social ostracism and
death because they are unfortunate, it is a self-contradiction and
stultification and needs to be remodelled to make it consistent with
itself. The fashionable women of the day say that outcasts prefer to
remain in vice rather than do the menial work they can obtain; but
let them ask themselves if they were driven to the acceptance of one
or the other of these alternatives, whether they would not choose the
comforts that are lavished upon the mistress, with indolence and ease,
rather than the drudgery to which the kitchen scrub is subjected 2
A beautiful thing, this social system of yours! People sit in
judgment over their brothers and sisters, when, if they were to
exchange places, they would do the same thing which is condemned.

24
Yea, verily, a beautiful, a just, a righteous system, worthy a so-called
Christian civilization, but which would not be tolerated among the
heathen. Let the government, let the male lords and rulers provide
that women shall not be dependent upon men as individuals. So
long as she conforms to the instituted theory and is therefore
dependent, make her the ward of the State, of man collectively.
The same principle involved here applies with equal force to
children. Under this social system children are born and made
dependent upon the individual—the father—for support and proper
training, without any provision whatever for a failure. If the father
do not or cannot provide for them, what does the State care, except
to commit them for vagrancy *
What does the City of New York, this Christian city, with its
numerous churches dedicated to God and Christ, care for the thousands
of children who live from its slop barrels, or the thousands more who
die from partial starvation and neglect I Does your beautiful social
system have any place or care whatever for them 2 No! none at
all. The very classes which need its care and protection are utterly
ignored in its provisions. Out upon such Christianity as this. It is
unworthy of a barbarous age, to say worthy of this professedly
Christian time. -
I arraign this thing that goes by the name of Christianity, as a
fraud; and its so-called teachers as impostors. They profess to be
the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, while they neither teach, preach
or practice the fundamental principles which He taught and practiced.
Poets and seers of all ages, climes and tongues have sung and pro-
phesied of a good time coming, when the lion and the lamb shall lie
down together (on earth of course), and a little child shall lead them;
when swords shall be beaten into plow-shares, and spears into pruning-
hooks (on earth of course), and the nations shall learn war no more
(because there shall then be no causes for war, as the people will
then have learned that they are all brothers of one common parent,
and will no longer be in active competition for everthing as they now
are); when all shall know the Lord, from the least even unto the
greatest, and when the whole race shall be united in one government,
as a common human family, owning God as the common parent, and
Nature as their common inheritance.
All these are doctrines, fundamental to a religion that has any
right to the name of Christian. But do we hear them taught by
Christian orators 2 No! The only good time coming of which they
give us any hope, is when the human family is to be divided into
two parts; one part of about ninety-nine one-hundredths being in
hell, and the one one-hundredth part in heaven rejoicing over their
salvation.
This is their future. But what of the practical present 2 Do
they ever preach : Inasmuch as ye gave no meat to him that was an
hungered; no drink to him that was a thirst; that ye took not

25
the stranger in ; clothed not the naked; ministered not to the sick,
and visited not them who were in prison;–I say do they preach
that, inasmuch as Christians have done none of these things to the
least among you, that they have not done them unto Christ?
When I used to go to their churches I never heard such preaching.
They may have varied in the last fifteen years. Still I don't think
the leopard has changed his spots very decidedly, although I do hear
that it isn't popular to preach up quite so hot a hell as they once did
(the stock of brimstone is probably running low); nor quite so
horrible a devil as the one th. used to beat God whenever he had
a tustle with him (perhaps he's growing aged, and infirm, and
isn't quite so hard to handle as formerly); neither do I hear as
much about the gold and silver that was so bountifully provided for
the fortunate ones in heaven (which, by the way, had better be
sent to earth to relieve the suffering and needy); and I think they
have also changed the psalm that was continually sung around the
throne;—all these things, I say, may be modified, as rather unpopular
just now ; but it is after all the same old devil, with his claws
where people have nails, and hoofs where the feet ought to be—the
same that used to frighten me and my mates from the back seats in
the church to the mourners bench; and I denounce them as infamous
frauds, palmed off upon a people which will not think for itself,
by forty thousand ministers, who, if their devil should accidentally get
killed, wouldn't know what to do for their bread and butter.
I charged these forty thousand ministers that they are frauds,
wantonly ignoring the real doctrines of Jesus, and imposing others
upon the people. The fundamental principles to which I have
referred are never retailed from Christian pulpits nor practiced by
Christian laymen. Therefore, judged by their own standard, they
are impostors and Christianity a failure; and it ought to fall; and it
will fall.
Jesus frequented the abodes of the lowly and despised of earth.
He ate with publicans, sinners and harlots; and of these last He said
to the Scribes of His time, as He would to the Scribes of our times,
They will enter the kingdom of heaven before you. If Jesus, with
His rough-clad disciples, should make His appearance, some Sunday,
near a Fifth-avenue church, and should offer to heal the sick by
the laying on of hands, and to tell fortunes, as He did, these impostors
would have Him arrested as a blasphemer; or if he were to pass
through the country and break into a field of corn and gather it
for Himself and disciples, He would be charged as a thief and sent to
Sing Sing; or again, if Paul were to stand up in any of the churches,
and discuss the social question as he did to the Corinthians, the
Y. M. C. A. would have him in Ludlow for obscenity; and would
take care to fix his bail at so large a sum they would feel sure that
none of his crowd could get him out;-and this is your boasted
Christianity. How many years longer shall such a disgrace to an

26
enlightened people rear its head in this land 2 I give it until 1900 to
die, twenty years for every spire that now points sky-ward, to be
levelled with the ground or changed to other uses. Remember, I say
till 1900.
There are thousands of fathers in New York out of employment
and out of money, with wives and from three to ten children suffer-
ing for bread. How are they to get on through the winter Does
your boasted system ask or care : No! But if they should steal
a loaf of bread to keep the children from starving, or a basket of
coal to keep them from freezing, it makes ample provision that they
shall be sent to Sing Sing. Isn't this true? Then never again extol
your social system, until you have swept it of its brutalities; nor of
your beautiful government and of your Christian institutions, until
those who need their protection are #. consideration. I'll none of
them until some of the principles and teachings of Christ are reduced
to practice.
The Bible says, “Go to now ye rich men, weep and howl for
the miseries that shall come upon you. Behold the hire of the
laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is kept back by
fraud, crieth, and the cries of them which have reaped, have entered
the ears of the Lord." Do the professed Christians, with their long
purses and longer faces, believe this? Did the recent Evangelical
Alliance have anything to say about it * No || Yet it is in the
Bible, by which they profess to govern their lives! The judgment day,
however, is at j. The cries of them that have reaped down
the fields of the rich ; that have builded their houses; that have
produced their wealth, crieth, and the cries of them have reached the
ears of the Lord of Justice, and woe to the rich men. Let them
weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon them if they
hearken not to the cries, while yet there is time of their own accord to
do justice to the classes who have made them what they are.
So long as the government maintains a theory that compels
every man to depend upon his individual exertions for a living for
himself, wife and children, it should also guarantee him continuous
labor at equitable wages. I said there are thousands whose families
are suffering for food who cannot obtain work at any price. What
shall they do? Beg, steal or starve : These are their only alterna-
tives, and yet you will curse them if they do either.
Governmental employ for everybody who cannot obtain labor else-
where; and governmental care for wives and children who need it,
must be introduced as a supplement to the present systems. Not to
do this is barbarous. Already is our civilization blackened with the
disgraceful accounts of the miseries that the omission to do this has
caused, and if it be not done, and that at once (I speak it in sorrow,
but I know it too well), there will be riot in New York before Spring.
Yes, there must be provisions for unprovided wives and uncared
for children by government, that will place them upon an equality with

27
the best classes of society as to food, shelter and clothing, with
Physical and industrial, as well as intellectual education for the
children; and employment must be given to every needy man and
Woman. Under such regulation only, is there the remotest possibility
for a continuation of the present governmental and social systems.
In no other way can Reformation prevent Revolution; and it ought
not to be prevented by anything less.
Your criminal jurisprudence has also developed another infamous
System. Your station-houses and jails are a sickening disgrace; while
your prisons and penitentiaries are foul generators of misery and
Crime. A term in them will harden the best man or woman into con-
firmed degradation. In your eagerness to punish crime, you destroy
the man or woman. You rush them, being merely charged with
crime, into your pest-hells, where they lie pent up for months, with-
ºut even an investigation, and then you hurry them through some-
thing called a trial, often without a defense, and if it is possible to
fix the act upon them with any degree of certainty, they are hurried
to the place which seals their future career, and where they are
treated worse than brutes, and as if they were not human. A “States
Prison Bird” has little chance in your social system. He can prac-
tice only those things for a living which continually return him. And
all this is done by your system and its executors, as I said, in the case
of unfortunate women, never stop to think if they had been placed
in the same circumstances as under which the criminal committed his
crime, that they would have undoubtedly done the same thing,
or perhaps something worse.
You erect and maintain a system one of the legitimate fruits of
which is crime, and then you punish the unfortunate individuals who
Snact the villain character of the drama prepared by you for them.
erily consistency is a jewel that is sadly wanting in all parts of this
beautiful system which is palmed off upon the world as the one thing
$º and true and pure, but in which ignorance too frequently passes
or innocence and experience is mistaken for crime.
You must, therefore, change your criminal discipline from the
theory of punishment for crime, to that of reform for the man and
Xoman. In the first place, according to your own theory of
Christianity, you have no right to punish anybody. “Judge not lest
ye be judged,” is fundamental to the Christian theory, and how can
you punish, unless you first judge 2 I repeat, then, that you have
no right whatever to punish anybody for any crime; but you may
Protect yourselves from its recurrence. In doing this, however, you
should use no means that of themselves will tend to make men and
women worse than they are. Your Prisons must be transformed into
Yast Reformatory Workshops, where men and women can work and
be paid equitable wages, having all the common comforts during their
restraint.
Sometimes, however, when I see the utter indifference to the

28
horrid barbarities that are practiced under these systems, I almost
despair of reform. Indeed, f seem to feel to say to you that there
will be no reformation except through bloody revolution. Wrongs
have been heaped upon wrongs until they have reached heavenward
and moved the avenging angel. Great wrongs have always been
washed out by great rivers of blood, and I fear the time for this has
not yet passed away from the earth.
Behind the political scenes the actors in the political drama are
so busily engaged in their own personal schemes they have no time
to listen to the cries that are reaching the ears of the God of Justice,
and you, the people, are too much engrossed in your individual money
getting, to give the necessary attention to secure any change. For
the last three years, in one way and another, I have done everything
that lay in my power—I have sacrificed fortune, reputation and
friends—in the attempt to rouse the people to a sense of the impend-
ing danger. But they will not listen. For my efforts, however,
they have branded me all over the world as the vilest of women and
the most dangerous of individuals. They have robbed me of every-
thing except my self-respect, which they could not take and with
which only remaining I defied them as they made off with the rest;
they have locked me up in jail when the officials who made out the
order knew there was no law for it, and have pursued me without
mercy on every hand.
And why? Simply because, as I told you, I have endeavored to
rouse the people to a realization of the impending judgment, for long
years of crime which the government has committed against the
people. And they knew unless they could shutmymouth that I should
succeed and they would be relieved by the people from further official
duty. Yes, though I am only a little woman, the political oligarchs
who are manipulating this country for a monarchy, fear me. And
well they may, for I preach their doom. I sing the battle cry of
freedom, equality and justice for the people, and they know that it
will be caught up by them and that its re-echo from the pine forests
of Maine, from the wheat fields of Minnesota, from the golden
mountains of the Pacific slope, from the cotton and rice plantations
of the South, will hurl from the places builded by the labors of the
masses all who have been false to the trusts reposed in them.
Now to what does all this logically tend ? Clearly, if it be
correctly understood, To the redistribution among the people of the
natural wealth of the world as well as the equal benefits and comforts
resulting from its use, and the establishment for the present aristo-
cracies of society, which are the chief aim of almost everybody's life,
an aristocracy founded on personal worth, intellectual capacity and
moral grandeur, which will become the new incentives or motives of
life. Now, only man is compelled by the political, industrial and
social systems that are enforced, to make wealth or money-getting
his chief aim, while every woman's highest aim is to entrap the most

29
successful man into marriage. Then, for these will be substituted in
the case of both men and women, who will be equal in the wealth
º the attainment of the highest positions in the community, not
or the sake of their emoluments, for these will be equal in all grades,
but for the sake of doing the most good to society, and of thus be:
coming its most honored and beloved members. Can anyone think
of any really valid objection to such a change 2 I think not!
A RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL DESPOTISM.
And now I come to consider the means that are to be used to
prevent, if possible, the attainment by the people to what I have
shown you is theirs by natural right; to prevent even the peaceable
reformation that is sought, and to fasten the present conditions irre-
vocably on the people. In the first place, it is to be observed that a
religious despotism or even a national religion, cannot exist in a
politically free country, since in the former instance it would be liable
to be overturned at any time by a popular election, nor, in the latter
instance, since a free people could not be compelled to support a
national religion. Hence it is evident at the outset that they who
are moving for a national religion as they term it, know it can be
established only when freedom, politically, ceases to exist.
Therefore this God-in-the-Constitution movement means more
than the establishment of a formal national religion. Indeed if what
is going on behind the political scenes were really made known to the
people, the intentions of a grand conspiracy would be exposed, in
which the leading spirits of all the monopolies are engaged, but which
as yet has existence only in secret conference. The God-in-the-Con-
stitution movement, the gradual concentration of the monopolies, and
the consolidation of political power are all parts of a single conspiracy
to change this form of government first, probably, to a Dictatorship
and then to an Empire. - -
No movement approaching this in significance and importance
was or can ever be sprung upon a nation without a vast deal of
previous secret plotting and preparation, and each of the parts of this
conspiracy are now driven together to make common cause against a
common foe—Progress. As I have already shown, monopoly and the
present political strategists are doomed, even in their success, to fall;
ut no more certainly than is their near ally in the conspiracy, whose
present foundation is being undermined by the rapid spread of what
they call the heresy of Spiritualism.
During the last twenty-five years not less than ten millions of
people have changed their belief of existence in a future state to the
knowledge of that existence. Millions of people have had communi-
cations from their so-called dead friends, denying the truth of the
chief doctrines of the so-called Christian religion; and this knowledge
and denial have spread into the churches, and are powder-posting

30
their structures with such fearful rapidity that its “pillars" realize
unless something can be done at once to relieve the condition—to
stop this infidelity, as the Evangelical Alliance recently put it—that
the whole Christian structure will crumble to pieces and fall. They
also know there is but one way to stop it; and that is, to crush it out
by whatsoever stringent means, directed by the strong arm of the
general government.
The bond holders, money-lenders and railroad kings say to the
politicians: If you will legislate for our interests, we will retain you in
power, and, together (you with the public offices and patronage and
we with our immense dependencies and money), we can control the
destinies of the country, and change the government to suit ourselves;
and now, finally, come in the threatened church power, and it says:
If you will . your government a Christian government, we will
bring all the “Faithful" to your support; and thus united, let me
warn you, they constitute the strongest power in the world. It is the
government, all the wealth of the country, backed up by the church,
against the unorganized mass of reformers, everyone of whom is
pulling his or her little string in opposing directions.
Now, my friends, do not dismiss this as a matter of image
conjured up in my mind. I am sorry to affirm to you that there is
too much truth in it, the half of which I have not even touched
upon. Stop for a moment and consider what? God-in-the-Constitu-
tion, with these hell-fire people as its executors, means. It is nothing
less than the substitution of the Bible-God and Christ, as interpreted
by the church, for the present rule. Now do not understand me as
impeaching the Bible, God or Christ as I understand them, but as
objecting to being compelled to accept or give tacit assent to the
interpretations of the church.
R. one more strenuously than I do, can urge the teachings
attributed to Christ. I believe in His law of love, which instructs us
to love our neighbours and their children as well as we do ourselves
and our children, and in thus loving to care for them as well; I
believe in His advice to the rich man to “go sell all thou hast and
give to the poor," and I believe in His judgment of the woman:
* Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” I believe that “to
the pure in heart all things are pure ;" and in its corollary, that to
the impure in heart all things are impure; in a word, I believe in
the beauty and º of all the teachings of Christ, as laid down in
the Bible; but I do not happen to believe that they were original
with Him, since every one of them, in some form, are found in Christs
of earlier origin than Jesus, or that He, any more than all other men
and women, or in any other sense, was the Son of God.
But I do not believe in the Christian God nor the Christian devil,
nor in their heaven or hell; and it is because the facts of Spiritualism
have exploded these misinterpreted remnants of mythological figures.
It is robbing them of their power over the people, by dispelling the

31
fear of death, the devil, and hell, and they are roused to the necessity
ºf putting down this most dangerous of all humbugs, as it has been
denominated by one fully convinced of its facts. I grant that they
fully appreciate it, because it is the most dangerous thing to their
ridiculous creeds and dogmas and to their power and positions that
could arise in the world.
The people, however, do not *º any danger, nor will
they until it is too late, and they find themselves called upon, under
Pressure, to be converted. ou remember the arguments that
hristians used to make in Spain and elsewhere, not to mention the
ºnore modern ones of burning witches §º Quakers by the
Puritans of New England, whose God, Christ and devil was the self-
same of which these Christians now desire to become the self-consti-
tuted earthly vicegerents. - -
Don't comfort yourselves with the idea that they will not use
equally as persuasive measures as they teach that their God uses to
convert you, nor that they think a few turns on “The Wheel,”
or a few stretches on “The Rack," or a little quiet roasting at “The
Stake,” at all out of place when the issue is so great as the salvation
of your souls from everlasting torments in hell fire; where the worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched, where the pavements are
of infants' skulls, a span in length, and all the necessary appointments
to make the place good and hot. No I Don't mistake people who
profess to believe in such an infernal monster as they picture their
9d as being, who would torment in hell a child whom he loves, and
whom, if almighty, he could save, for a º unrepented crime. They
will have no more mercy or pity than He has, nor will they leave
any means untried to save you from the vengeance of His wrath.
I do not overstate the picture. I take their own words, their
own God as interpreted by themselves, and draw the unavoidable
conclusion. If their religion is such infernalism, they should not
blame me for depicting it to the people. Indeed, if they believe it
themselves, they ought rather to thank me for the service I render,
in showing the importance of escaping such dreadful things.
I, however, do not fear their God, I am only afraid of them, for
I know if once they get the power, I shall be one of the first upon
whom they will try their persuasive arguments; there will be need
of my immediate conversion. -
ut, seriously, it will not do to let this thing succeed. It is the
last frantic effort of expiring despotism, struggling to regain its lost
estate; and if it succeed, it will endeavour to crush out the last pros-
Pect for progress. It was necessary only to have attended the recent
sessions of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, to have com-
prehended what this means; but if it fail, the last hope of despotism
of every kind will sink into merited oblivion and be buried in the
dead past, only thenceforth to be thought of as one of the horrors of
antiquity, because of the crimes that belong to its reign on earth.

32
I have already shown you how all this may be accomplished in
the event of a general panic resulting from wide-spread financial and
commercial ruin. If this do not come about in the regular order of
events, and at the proper time, it can be made to order. Indeed,
who can tell but what has already occurred is the initial step in the
drama. Does it not seem just the least bit strange that notably
among the ruined, are all the houses specially known as Government
Bankers; and with them also notably houses supposed to be in the
interest of one of the railroad kings of the country, and probably the
wealthiest of them all Think of it, and see if by putting this and
that together you cannot frame a reasonable theory for all that is
passing, as connected with a grandscheme to subvert the government
But if this is not as I suspect it to be, a genuine panic can be
inaugurated any day. There are many millions of gold loaned, on
call, in Wall street, mostly from English bankers. If that were to be
suddenly “called" it would put gold to two hundred and United
States bonds to fifty and speculative stocks to nothing, and ruin every
bank, banker, broker, merchant and business in the country, conducted
upon accommodation loans as nearly everything is at the present.
In such a condition riot would certainly ensue, martial law become a
necessity, and the empire a probability, because, as I say, all “the
powers that be" are in league to make one. -
Who can say that the prominent European powers are not in the
secret and that they would not lend it every possible aid : . Do you
not remember that the most autocratic of all the generals of the army,
and the one nearest the President, last year, made the tour of Europe,
virtually having conference with every monarch : Wasn't that also
just the least bit singular, at such a time and conducted under the
circumstances it was And who shall say that every ambassador to
an European court is not secretly committed to such a movement?
The result once accomplished Europe would extend all needed
aid, and, though the value of all stocks, banks, and property would be,
for the time, almost nothing, yet the movers rely upon the general
prosperity of the country to advance them again, in the course of time,
to their present prices, and being as they would be, securely aggregated
in the hands of the few and the despotism firmly established, their
end would be accomplished. They would have the government and
the wealth safely vested in themselves. This, I have good reason for
believing, is the programme already laid out to establish a monarchy
on the ruins of this so-called Republic. And what, I ask, have the
people with which to oppose it?'. At most a few liberal leagues and
a few secret societies, without either general concert of action or
means of any kind to resist anything successfully. You may laugh at
it if you will, but the people of this country are to-day powerless as
against such a combination, and I fear they will find it out only when
too late.
I have thus reviewed the present political situation, and analysed

33
the principles of Reformation demanded by the times and shown how
Revolution may be averted, unless there are movers behind the Political
Scenes who intend to force it; in which case there will be a short,
sharp, bloody and decisive struggle, that at first will be altogether in
favour of the conspiracy, but which will ultimate in the success of the
º and the inauguration of a new and higher order of civilization.
he Dictatorship, even the Empire, may succeed, and the Christian
Bigots be installed as God's vicegerents on Earth, but their reign will
be short and bitter, and the more decisive their success at the outset,
the more terrible will be their ultimate overthrow. They will go
down in a common ruin and there will be no more despots ever again
to possess themselves of the rights and liberties of the people.
Let us hope, however, that all this may be averted, at least let us
not be guilty of any remissness of duty in endeavoring to avert it; and
that the reign of peace on earth and good will among men may come
without being preceded by a reign of terror. Let us hope also that
the delirium or madness by which the despots would retain their
power, may give way to the sentiments of humanity and brotherhood,
and that the real Christ—the spirit of º indeed become an
earthly ruler and build up a reaſ Republic in the Earth in the place of
this which is one only in name.
Now, as a summary, permit me to present the outlines of a form
of government for a Republic: At its base would be all the people of a
given age and upward, of the various wards of cities and the school-
districts of the country. These would elect their city and county
governments from among themselves, which in turn would elect also
from among themselves, the governments of the several States. Each
of these would form their own organizations and appoint their executive
heads, and also, during good behaviour, all executive officers of what-
ever branch of the government having jurisdiction within their several
limits. The State governments would also, in turn, elect, from their
own members, the national government, which would also appoint its
own executive officers and form itself into the several national executive
Bureaus, each having its own executive head; while all propositions,
made by the several governmental bodies, would be legislated upon
by the people, by popular vote, before becoming laws.
In such a government as this there would be no political parties.
Party strife and the demoralizing effect of general political elections
would be abolished, and all the public efforts of the people turned to
proper legislation, and the business of the Public Press directed to the
advancement of the general welfare and intelligence. In this govern-
ment every citizen, of a given age, would be a legislator; and every
person elected in any ward or school district, a candidate for the
executive head of the nation, each department of the government of
which would be a natural outgrowth of the next below it, and all of
which together would form a single structure reaching from the base,
the people, the legislative power, to the apex—the executive head,
C

34
administering the will of the people. To the inauguration of such a
government for this people is my life dedicated.
But let us now enlarge the range of our speculations. Let us
rise from the nation to the world. hat is the condition of mankind
at large, at this juncture, and with reference to the subjects under con-
sideration ? It is one in some measure of feverish agitation; but
one still more of the symptoms of a world-wide commotion which is
suppressed for the moment by the circumstances of the times. It is
the partial calm before the storm; the clearing of the decks for action;
the marshalling of forces—as it presents itself to my mind–for the
final and decisive conflict between grand and universal opposing
principles. These are, in the main, the principles of arbitrary
authority and the principle of freedom.
These two principles have always stood in open or suppressed
antagonism to each other; but it has been, so far as manifested,
hitherto, within limited areas, or as affecting special questions.
To-day, the controversy is being broadened out to the universal
arena, and is involving all issues. It is beginning to appear that
principles are in their nature universal. There is not one set for
politics, another for religion, another for domestic life and so on;
but one and the same set of principles for all spheres. It is
social, or more strictly universal science which is teaching us these
results.
But even in advance of science, the stern logic of events is
leading up to the same conclusion. Conservatism and Radical Pro-
gression are the same in kind whether they crop out in the church or
in the State or elsewhere; and each knows and affinitises with its
own in other and whatsoever divine ranges of affairs. The absolute
monarch knows, by an unfailing instinct, that the absolute Pope
is his friend and natural ally, at bottom; whatsoever minor
dissensions may exist between the crown and the tiara ; and the
most radical progressionist recognizes, by the same instinct, despite
all intense family feuds, the essential affiliation with him or her
of the free religionist or the great popular preacher who allies himself
in any sense with the spirit of progress.
To superficial observers minor differences are apt to disguise
fundamental identities. At bottom, or viewed on the large scale,
Protestanism as a whole movement, and the Christian Alliance
itself—in so far as it means Protestantism—revivalism and the
sanctification movement in the churches, are in common cause with
Atheism, Infidelity, Spiritualism and Socialism, on the one hand,
tending to the freedom of the individual; and Papacy and Despotism
or Caesarism are in common cause with all conservatism and retro-
active tendency in society at large, on the other hand. In the
big family difference, therefore, even brother Comstock and myself
belong to the same wing, are members of the same communion;
however distasteful to him may be the affiliation, and I confess that

35
it is with some difficulty that I am philosophical enough to recognize
such a sample of fraternity. But such is the fact in the broadest
division there only those two armies in the field, conservatives and
radicals. Conservatism though retroactive ending in despotism; and,
radicalism by the way of progression, ending in the sovereignty of
the individual, and all the freedoms–free love bein merely the
logical and legitimate ultimatum of that drift. Mr. Comstock, the
Young Men's Christian Association, the Christian Alliance and Pro-
testantism itself, are therefore illogical as long as they are not free
lovers, and conservatives of all schools are illogical while not
subscribing to the infallibility of the Pope, or of some supreme
potentate or other. -
This double universality of the two underlying principles of
human society—authority and freedom -is as I have said becoming
every day more distinctly pronounced—both actually, or in the logic
of events; and theoretically, or in the scientific understanding of the
subject. Now it has appeared to me that this national arraying of
these great opposite forces must continue to become more and more
pronounced; the lines more and more strictly drawn; the antagonism
and mutual aggressiveness fiercer and fiercer, until the mosttremendous
and bloody conflict would inevitably ensue. This reasoning of mine,
such as it is, has been continuously reinforced, in my mind, for some
}*. past, by a succession of vivid spiritual presentations or visions,
have repeatedly seen, in this way, the streets of this very city
drenched in blood, the mobs and armies headed by priests and clergy
and even by women, new Amazons and Joans of Arc, mingling in the
bloody fray; the stores and warehouses of the great merchants taken
for military hospitals and the deposits of arms; and whole quarters
of the city desolate—burnt and burning, while the deadly fight was
still raging from street to street and from house to house, with
hecatombs of victims piled up in the public avenues and crossings.
Material-minded men may call all this fancy, imagination, halluci-
nation, what they will; but I know better. I know that these
visions, of which I have been a subject from early girlhood to this
hour, are something very different from ordinary imagination, and
that they are a distinct class of mental phenomena having a quality
and a value of their own. Thousands of other intelligent men and
women know the same in their own experiences and by observation
in this age. Some hundreds, probably, of this audience, have as
I have, more or less of this second sight.
Imay not know, however, and indeed I do not profess to know the
exact nature and the full value of these extraordinary and exceptional
experiences. It seems to me that the priest and the doctor who
charge themselves with the care and cure of the souls and bodies of
men should have been able to help me to the better understanding of
myself in this matter; but whenever I have consulted them I have
found them either weakly and confessedly ignorant, or else pompously
C 2

36
pretentious and dogmatically ignorant on the whole subject. So I
have been left to wend my way unaided through the mazes of an
experience so strange that I could not allude to the title of it without
risking my reputation for decent good sense, if not indeed for sanity.
I must be excused, therefore, for any extravagancies I may seem to
commit, on the ground that even the wisest of the old style teachers
have proved failures whenever they have undertaken to guide me.
Left to my own guidance I have simply done, therefore, the best that
I could. I have said what I thought. I have been true to the
conviction that was in me. I have said and written that I believed
we were on the verge of a great social convulsion. I have seen that
it was absolutely essential to the well-being of humanity that freedom
should be vindicated. I have committed myself with unstinted
earnestness, with the enthusiasm and the daring of an iconoclast, to
the destruction of everything which stood in its way. I have
established, I believe, the reputation of honest conviction and earnest
devotion in that direction. I have not shrunk from contemplating all
consequences. I have seen, or supposed I saw, the worst even, of
what I was helping to provoke. I reasoned that to ultimate or drive
out to extremities the demand for freedom, would incite a corres-
ponding reaction on the side of conservatism, and the assertion of
authority. I expected persecution, a resort to repressive legislation,
an alliance of all the conservative forces, a desperate and final
struggle in behalf of authority. I expected to see Catholicism and
despotism reinforced by accessions from Protestant and republican
ranks; to see the lines more rigorously drawn; the pressure more
earnest to take sides; a desperate battle inaugurated. Still, with all
these prospects, I felt it imperatively laid upon me to proclaim the
doctrines of freedom.
I may have been mistaken—not I am certain in the divine origin
and the high claims of the doctrine of freedom. But the world may
possibly be riper for change than I, possibly riper than my spirit-
guides may have thought. I have had at my side, all along, friends
who have urged other views. I have been reminded that authority
and conservatism have also their true place in the world; that there
must, therefore, be some just ground of reconciliation between these
two opposing principles—that in other words Reform could be
effected without Revolution, or rather without revolution of the body
and physical force character. I have been told that the time for
adjusting opinion by the sound has gone past; that a positive
physical-force tyranny, like slavery or an unbearable oppression of
that order, might need still to be disrupted and cast off by a physical-
force or uprising, but that nothing whatever would be gained or
could be gained, toward settling metaphysical and social problems by
any amount of violence. It was suggested to me that my interior
views of bloody conflict might be symbolic merely of the great
intellectual and moral warfare which is actually transpiring in the

37
world. These and other arguments have been urged by those to
whom I most habitually defer in matters of judgment. Especially
was it said that in science, of the universe kind, there is steadily
arising an umpire to which both and all parties will in the end gladly
appeal; that the great lispendens of humanity will be tried ultimately
in that court, and that the verdict and the execution of the degree
will be gracefully submitted to on all hands.
I have listened to every statement with an eager ear; I have
wanted to believe. I, too, have prayed for humanity: “If it be
possible, let this cup pass from us." But I have not been able to
believe. My visions and the conviction borne in upon my soul that
we are about to fall upon evil days have been too definite and force-
ful to admit of doubt of their significance. But I dread the truthful-
ness of my own impressions. I shrink with horror from the reality
of bloody strife. And I do not want to be obstinate or perverse. I
know that my forebodings and Cassandra-like ratiocinations have a
meaning; but I am willing, and more than willing to be convinced
that it is other and less fearful, than the interpretation which I have
given them.
I come before you, therefore, to-night, in a new spirit; not so
much to promulgate my convictions; not so much as the trumpeter
of new truths; as to receive impressions: to feel the pulse of public
opinion; to learn of you more, perhaps, than I shall instruct. I
want to know what others think; what is the burden of the mission
whispered to their souls for the waiting millions What is the
common message to mankind upon which we can all agree ? Clearly
to my mind it is either Revolution or Reform-Reform in any event;
either with or without Revolution-Revolution in any event—but,
whether with or without its bloody accompaniments.
To solve this question let us endeavour again to look behind the
scenes. I have said that perhaps the world is riper for change than
I have apprehended. Perhaps the old style conservative reactionary
forces are weaker than . I have thought; perhaps the enmity to
reform in behalf of freedom is already more exhausted and reduced
than I have supposed; perhaps the genial spring-time of humanity's
golden age of the future is destined to come in without the common
cataclysm of the breaking up of the long hard winter.
“We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move;
The sun flies forward to his brother sun;
The dark earth follows, wheeled in her eclipse:
And human things returning on themselves
Move onward, leading up the golden year.
“Ah, though the times when some new thought can bud
Are but as poet's seasons when they flower,
Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore
Have ebb and flow conditioning their tides,
And slow and sure comes up the golden year.

38
“When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps
But smit with freer light shall slowly melt
In many streams to fatten lower lands,
And light shall spread, and man be liker man,
Through all the season of the golden year.
- -- - - + - -
“But we grow old. Ah! when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Through all the circle of the golden year?”
Perhaps the aspirations for the golden year is more diffused in
men's hearts than I have believed, and that they only wait to discern
the signs of its coming. Perhaps the seeming perversity and dulness
of mankind is more of the head, and less of the heart. Perhaps
science, then, which is the opening of the mind's eye, may show the
way and reconcile the most opposite. And perhaps already the
anticipation of some such reconciliation is softening asperities and
cultivating the sentiment of friendly mutual acceptance.
My mind has taken this turn in consequence of the wonderful
change which I have myself experienced within the last few months
in the temperature of the social atmosphere. Upto, and subsequent to
the time of my imprisonment in this city, for the cause of freedom
and free speech, bitterness and hostility towards me personally seemed
literally to fill the air. The glacial breezes from the north pole could
not be more frigid and unsympathetic than the public sentiment which
surrounded me. But of late a wonderful revolution in this particular
has taken place. I have of late been basking in the genial rays of
º favor. In New Jersey, at the State Convention of Spiritualists,
was received after my release from prison with an ovation. In
Massachusetts, at the great camp meeting at Silver Lake and Harwich,
I addressed audiences of from five to fifteen thousand people amidst
acclamations of enthusiasm, and the Boston press reported fairly and
without slang or abatement the substance of what I said. Now, I
have just returned from the three-days' meeting of the National
Convention of Spiritualists at Chicago, where, after three days of the
most unrestricted discussion and with the whole issue centered on the
question of indorsing or repudiating my social doctrines, I was, almost
unanimously, elected for the third time President of that Association.
And there also at Chicago I was treated with courtesy and high
appreciation by almost the entire press. It is not alone Spiritualists,
therefore, but the whole public which seems to have quietly and
sincerely arrived at the determination that I and the principles which
I advocate shall have fair play according to merit, and along with all
other things.
It may at first seem arrogant that I should assume, that a change
of treatment towards me personally and towards my ideas, indicates
any great or wide-spread change in social opinion at large. But if you

39
reflect that I stand representative for the most radical and the most
opprobrious of doctrines, and that these very doctrines as I have pro-
mulgated them, have just aroused the old and seemingly dead lion of
persecution into what we may now hope, were the final agonies of a
feeble death-struggle, it may not seem too much to claim that when
I am tolerated everything is tolerated; and that the extension of
courtesy, kindness and fair play to me, anew, and after all that has
passed, is a solemn reaffirmation of a true Americanism, and perhaps
the tocsin of freedom for all opinion actually achieved, and without
the bloody catastrophy which my too anxious intuitions have foreseen.
I am at least willing and desirous to entertain this hope, and no one
will rejoice more than I to have my own prophecies thus happily
*
ut, yet, mere toleration is not all that is demanded. A sentim-
ental unity of mankind is inadequate. The Christian Alliance, in
agreeing to sink out of sight, in each other's presence, their denom-
inational differences, have not in any radical manner solved the
doctrinal problems which have divided them. So in society, at large,
to tolerate, even to defend the expression of all ideas, is not, of itself,
an arrival at the truth of ideas. Investigation inaugurated is not
investigation accomplished. We have still before us an immense
work; the greater work than all that has preceded it.
The career of distruction and merely critical reforms ends in a
sense when freedom is achieved; but freedom itself is merely oppor-
tunity. With the opportunity secured, we are prepared to learn the
truth, theoretically and experimentally. We must then call in the
great teachers, or become great teachers ourselves. After the war
came the Freedman's Bureau, and its educational operations. So
now if we have received toleration we must show our competency to
improve by its advantages.
Looking again behind the scenes we shall discover, that this age
is the interregnum of faith. A despairing cry comes from the Pope
in respect to the prospects of the Church. Protestanism is oozing
out into infidelity, while, however, infidelity verging into sciences, is
gradually laying the foundations of a new faith. Something grand
and novel is about to burst on the earth. Religion, when it becomes
practical and humanitarian, will come to mean a hundred times more
than it has ever meant yet on the world. Something new and grand
is about to occur; which will crystallize anew and consolidate all the
elements of the new faith and the new social order.
A new age dates from the present. An old dispensation is
closing up. The new element will be something decisive, recon-
ciliative, all-embracing. It will have in it the religious, the scientific
and the practical quality—all in one. Is it these combined and
blended into one; or is it some other and unthought of thing which
shall be the key to the whole mystery of the past, and the keystone
of the arch of the future social structure. I shall be content, for the

40
hour, if I shall have completed the preliminary work of clearing away
obstructions, and establishing the habit of fearless and universal
investigation and experiment; in social matters as well as in all
others.
I cannot rid myself of the impression, however, that we must
strike very deep for the true basis of the final solution and recon-
ciliation. Will not Good and Evil, God and the Devil, be somehow
and sometime reconciled to the comprehension of man Is not the
seeming evil always the dark background merely of the higher good?
And is not the universal scheme of being, broader than we have
apprehended ? Is not the old Persian faith of two eternally opposite
principles, with some modern improvement furnishing their monastic
identity, the higher as it is the older doctrine than Christian theology?
Perhaps I can look forward to the cessation at an early day of
my duties as an agitator. I have a loving heart for all mankind, and
I would far rather be understood and loved than to be misunderstood
and hated. I would rather teach and lead into the higher philosophy
and the higher life than to break up old foundations, horrifying and
disturbing the minds of men. I am tired of fighting. I would rather
be Hypasia than Semiramis or Boadecea. I would rather know and
make known the highest truth than conquer the whole earth.
Thus much at least I see. Politics and patriotism are falling into
the position of relative inferiority as compared with statesmanship
and publicism, and statesmanship and publicism are in turn yielding
the palm to sociology, as that science which deals with every range
of human affairs in their cosmical or planetary amplitude. Sociology
must in time have its basis in universal science. Reformers must,
therefore, I see, become scientific, when they pass from the destruc-
tive to the construction phase of their work.
I would rather help to form true institutions, and so call down
the blessings of this age and of posterity on my head for positive and
permanent achievements, than merely to combat old errors, or achieve
negative triumphs, ever so many, or ever so brilliant. Sympathize
with me my dear sisters, and my true brothers, in the effort to learn,
in order that I may teach; and let us all be instant in season and out
of season in the good work of the future.
Then, when we shall have accomplished this work, will begin the
long time sung and prophesied millennium, in which love, instead of
hate, equality in place of aristocracy, and justice where now is cruelty,
shall reign with undisturbed and perpetual sway, and peace on earth
and good-will among men abound. Because I see this for humanity
in the near future, has made me willing and able to endure what its
advocacy has cost me of personal discomfort and of public censure.
Finally, in conclusion: May the God, Justice; the Christ, Love, and
the Holy Ghost, Unity—the Trinity of Humanity—ascend the
Universal Throne, while all nations, in acknowledging their suprem-
acy, shall receive their blessings—their benedictions.
._